JustOneMinute

Sunday Open Thread

An Olympic weekend!

An Imminent Vaccine Mandate For Federal Employees?

Per CNN and "according to a source with direct knowledge of the matter", a big announcement is due Thursday:

Biden will announce vaccination requirement across federal government on Thursday

There will be an exception:

Biden will not impose the requirement on the US military, despite his authority to do so, for the time being. He is, however, likely to outline how the Department of Defense may seek to approach the issue going forward, the source said.

Obvious takeaway - you can keep your freedoms if you have a gun.

As Team Biden puzzles over how to promote vaccine uptake, they might find helpful clues in their NY Times.

The Defense Secretary:

Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III has said he would not be comfortable with a mandate until the Food and Drug Administration fully approved the vaccine.

And a NYC municipal union leader irked by the new DeBlasio mandate:

Oren Barzilay, the president of a union of emergency medical workers that opposes the mandate, said that some of his 4,300 members have expressed concerns about side effects or complications from the vaccine and about the U.S. Food and Drug Administration not yet giving full approval to any coronavirus vaccine.

To belabor the seemingly obvious - if taking the vaccine is such a no-brainer, how come the Big Brains at the FDA are still noodling it? They want more data, but the vax-hesitant are knuckleheads for wanting more data?

I'm pro-vax but anti-nonsense. Biden has said the FDA will approve these vaccines any month now:

“My expectation talking to the group of scientists we put together, over 20 of them plus others in the field, is that sometime maybe in the beginning of the school year, at the end of August, beginning of September, October, they’ll get a final approval” for the vaccines, Mr. Biden said.

September, October, whenever. What's the rush? RUFKM?!?

C'mon, man - I've worked in bureaucracies where 'Hasta Manana" isn't just a saying but a lifestyle commitment. But that is not what we look for in the Fire Department or the Police Department and it certainly shouldn't be the FDA approach to a tremendous public health crisis. I'm getting a mental image of a burning house with smoke, flames and people coming out the windows while the FDA studies whether the fire hoses contain BPA. Get this done!

 

 

What Does A Solid Message Wrapped IN BS Smell Like?

The WaPo tugs at our heartstrings today with the sad tale of a young man (28 yrs old) who did not get vaccinated and subsequently died of COVID. Solid message - TAKE THE SHOT! (Unless you're Ben Simmons.  Never mind...).

However, the timeline makes no sense. His family was infected on March 5. Am I alone in remembering how hard it was to get vaccinated in January or February? Most states were offering vaccines to the elderly and front-line medical workers back then. To be somewhat protective by March 5, this kid would have needed a first shot in mid-February. Alabama did not open vaccines to those under 55 or with other medical issues until MARCH 22.

I endorse their "Take your shot" message but the family should not lose a moment's sleep (or be subject to criticism) for not getting vaccinated back when they were not eligible. And if I were a journalist, I might fact check my stories a bit more carefully. A helpful message wrapped in BS ends up smelling like BS. There's a chance this will not build public confidence in our ostensibly fair-minded yet sometimes agenda-driven media.

NUANCE: An earlier story in a Montgomery paper presents the "Get Vaccinated" message as more of a hypothetical - IF her son had lived he'd be telling the people that COVID is no hoax and no joke and vaccines are a great idea.

"I know that if Curt had survived, he would have made sure everyone knew how serious this disease is, and how important the vaccine is," Christy Carpenter said. "My daughter and I are now carrying out that mission in his memory."

The WaPo quotes turn the hypothetical into a missed opportunity:

Now in Carpenter’s Alabama home, the room belonging to Curt, her “beautiful baby boy” and firstborn, remains empty — a painful reminder of a life that could have been saved if the family had decided to get vaccinated, she said.

“It took watching my son die and me suffering the effects of covid for us to realize we need the vaccine,” the mother said. “We did not get vaccinated when we had the opportunity and regret that so much now.”

ERRATA:

 

Lest you doubt.

WaPo:

 

Alabama:

Montana Without Fly-Fishing?

Hot, dry waterways are no way to raise fish.

John Tierney Blasts Lockdowns, Masks, Media Panic-Mongering, And More

The iconoclastic John Tierney blasts the scientific community and the media for promoting COVID panic and ideological conformity while abandoning science in favor of masks and lockdowns. He's silent on vaccines, however.

Saturday Morning!

DACA on the ropes, again.

Back In The Wuhan Labs...

Per CNN, Team Biden is giving the lab leak a serious look, although no one is leaking stories of compelling new evidence:

Washington (CNN)Senior Biden administration officials overseeing an intelligence review into the origins of the coronavirus now believe the theory that the virus accidentally escaped from a lab in Wuhan is at least as credible as the possibility that it emerged naturally in the wild -- a dramatic shift from a year ago, when Democrats publicly downplayed the so-called lab leak theory.

Still, more than halfway into President Joe Biden's renewed 90-day push to find answers, the intelligence community remains firmly divided over whether the virus leaked from the Wuhan lab or jumped naturally from animals to humans in the wild, multiple sources familiar with the probe told CNN.

 

Meanwhile, the head of WHO said the lab leak hypothesis is still on the table and is asking China to be a teensy bit more forthcoming. Fun quote:

 

“I was a lab technician myself, I’m an immunologist, and I have worked in the lab, and lab accidents happen,” Tedros said.

 

 

Sporting Sunday

Lots to watch.

Kandahar Collapse

Our withdrawal from Afghanistan is going as expected.

A Tesla Autopilot Lawsuit

The short video of a Tesla rear-ending a pickup truck that was changing lanes shows you can automate Stupid. The Tesla was whizzing down the open lane of a multi-lane highway, blowing the doors off drivers on both his right and left. The pickup truck wanted to move into the lane where traffic was flowing, signaled a lane change to his right, and... boom. The Tesla driving system only slowed a fraction of a second before the crash. A kid in the pickup was not wearing a seat belt, and died.

But sudden lane changes are hardly unusual when traffic is messed up. Rocketing by people as if they are sure to look out for you is a terrible idea, even if done autonomously.

MORE: Video of crash starts at 30 sec. mark in this Fox News coverage.

Independence Plus One

Enjoy the last of the long weekend!

And in the Ongoing Weirdness file: the vaccines that came out of Operation Warp Speed seem like an obvious Trump win. But Republicans aren't exactly celebrating it that way.

Saturday Action

Away we go again.

Tucker Carlson vs. The NSA

I have a hard time taking Tucker Carlson seriously, but who knows?

Allahpundit at Hot Air:

NSA: We never targeted Tucker Carlson's communications with an eye to getting him kicked off the air

Bill Cosby Freed From Prison?

OK, wow. 

Bill Cosby freed from prison after sex assault conviction overturned by court

PHILADELPHIA - Bill Cosby has been freed from prison after Pennsylvania’s highest court overturned his sexual assault conviction.

The Pennsylvania Supreme Court threw out Bill Cosby's sexual assault conviction and opened the way for his immediate release from prison Wednesday in a stunning reversal of fortune for the comedian once known as "America's Dad," ruling that the prosecutor who brought the case was bound by his predecessor's agreement not to charge Cosby.

Cosby, 83, has served more than two years of a three- to 10-year sentence after being found guilty of drugging and violating Temple University sports administrator Andrea Constand at his suburban Philadelphia home in 2004. He was the first celebrity tried and convicted in the #MeToo era.

The former "Cosby Show" star was arrested in 2015, when a district attorney armed with newly unsealed evidence -- the comic's damaging deposition testimony in a lawsuit brought by Constand -- brought charges against him days before the 12-year statute of limitations ran out.

But the Pennsylvania Supreme Court said that District Attorney Kevin Steele, who made the decision to arrest Cosby, was obligated to stand by his predecessor's promise not to charge Cosby. There was no evidence that promise was ever put in writing.