Whether History's Rhyming
#71 Was the crime wave during 1920-1933 alcohol prohibition amplified by the 1918 flu pandemic?
If you’re reading a forwarded copy, this is the COVID newsletter tracking information that goes viral.
Contents:
Introduction
In Florida’s Shadow
Bird Flu Groceries
Rhythm Recovery
Item: Criteria for anti-vaxxer, antivaxxer
Diagonalism Coming in Hot
Item: HBO-Max’s ‘Curb Your Enthusiasm’
Introduction
The 1918 Spanish Flu pandemic, after dropping in severity at the two-year-mark in 1920, plateaued and carried a longer tail of infections than revised 21st-century history textbook summaries have attested to.
And suppressing, due to insufficient time, whether hunches that sociological trends that pandemic preceded are echoing today in the COVID-19 pandemic of 2019, is a duty many of us carry. Like whether the flourishing of organized crime in the years of alcohol prohibition from 1920 to 1933 was buttressed by pandemic mayhem, is what many strive not to think about.
But a trusty distraction source, sports, which I’d hoped would be an agent of post-pandemic cohesion, is failing to pull my attention away from these troubling notions.
In Northern California, our Oakland A’s baseball team owner John Fisher is accruing bad press coverage as he commits one bad-faith negotiation blunder after another to move his team to Las Vegas, Nevada where the team apparently will earn higher revenue even with lower audience attendance.
Fisher’s move follows that of the Oakland Raiders NFL football team, or the Las Vegas Raiders, as they’ve been since relocating in 2019. And that the NFL’s championship game the superbowl, was hosted by Last Vegas begs the question whether this background chatter about “sports betting” we’ve acclimated to has something to do with these moves to the gambling capital of the United States, Nevada.
The writer Jay Caspian Kang’s recent column evokes the shift in the sports-betting experience as smartphone “in-game betting” rolls out, now legal in 38 states:
Mar 29 Online Gambling Is Changing Sports for the Worse | Betting should be legal, but pro leagues and major networks are undermining the value of sports in a bid to get in on the action. (New Yorker) - "These digital changes bring a veneer of respectability. The local bookie who used to make his money by pumping degenerates, letting them gamble with high-interest loans, has been replaced by an app. The app also allows you to bet on credit, but, instead of your points going to organized crime, they go to Discover or American Express."
Is this lack of restraint on behalf of the National Basketball Association (NBA) which now encourages wagers on micro-victories like predictions of a player missing his free-throw, a case of that word of the year, corporate revanchism? Are team owner cohorts attempting to regain profits lost during the 2020 lockdowns and 2021-2022 social distancing rules? While this app-betting development will be explained away as the natural outcome after Supreme Court legalized sports betting in 2018, it seems to have snuck up on us.
I sent that New Yorker sports column to a contact who’d ridiculed my sentimentality about Oakland, CA losing their baseball team in 2025 or 2028. I expected a more nihilist response, but my source surprised me when he concurred with Kang:
🗣️ Mar 30 Neoliberal Source Predicts Betting Crisis (IRL Conversation) - "[Companion's name redacted] and I both agree that the betting has really damaged the experience. When we go to Nuggets games they even have the betting guy speaking to the crowd before tipoff. I hear it is 5% of revenue for the league. It seems like much more. There has to be a large gambling problem brewing here like the opioid problem before it. JB Bickerstaff, head coach of the Cavaliers, has been reporting death threats by sports bettors. This won't end well"
All the more reason to continue to integrate COVID mitigation into our routines, get more of it on autopilot, so we can escape tunnel vision and catch up on recent changes in our world.
In Florida’s Shadow: Tennessee
Florida’s vaccine politics receive more coverage in all the niche media spheres, but Tennessee is more deserving of headlines in a few ways.
=>Foster kids are now barred from getting vaccines, basically.
Tennessee’s legislature and governor last year outlawed the ability of grandparents and foster parents to permit charges in their care to receive vaccine jabs at doctor’s appointments.
Mar 07 Tennessee vaccine law pits parental rights against public health (Kaiser Family Foundation via NBC News) - “In January, Borne took a foster baby, born extremely premature at just over 2 pounds, to her first doctor’s appointment. The health providers said that without the consent of the child’s mother, they couldn’t vaccinate her against diseases like pneumonia, hepatitis B, and polio. The mother hasn’t been located, so a social worker is now seeking a court order to permit immunizations. ‘We are just waiting,’ Borne said. ‘Our hands are tied.’”
=>Almost Reasonable: Tennesse lettuce heads
Produce and animal agriculture has traditionally been optimized with fertilizer and antibiotics, respectively. Arborists know trees can catch infectious diseases1. Forestry veterans contend old-growth trees can be invaluable to a grove because they transmit acquired immunity to their juvenile neighbors via underground root networks.
But two weeks ago Tennessee formalized that all future vegetation crops optimized with vaccine farming products are to be classified as drugs. FDA nightmares aside, this bill, which is now a law, could be worthy of public discussion. As the clip from NewsChannel5 shows, some legitimate questions about agriculture vaccines, which likely have reasonable answers, should be aired. (Though it’s doubtful growers inject polio vaccines into crops for the covert benefit of humans a la fluoridated water.)
Mar 29 Vaccine lettuce bill, aiming to classify food containing a vaccine as a drug, passes in Tennessee | “I’ve been reading about it talking about putting it in and lettuce and mass medicate everybody, like they do with fluoride in the water.” (WSMV-TV NBC 4 Nashville TN) -
Feb 26 Tennessee lawmaker wants rules in place for the possibility of vaccines in produce (WTVF NewsChannel5 NETWORK-UNAFFILIATED Nashville TN) - "If you go to buy tomatoes, and there's a polio vaccine in there, that you're aware of what you're buying as a polio vaccine," said Rep. Cepicky. "The problem we have is if it's not treated as a pharmaceutical... How many tomatoes do I have to eat to get the proper dosage versus how many tomatoes do you have to eat? And if you eat too many, do you get an overdose?"
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Bird Flu Groceries
Doctor-pundits displace news column inches and broadcast minutes with peer-shaming about lost trust in public health due to COVID. Bird flu response is a chance to strengthen, or maintain that trust.
Most outlets within “the media” have reported & produced quality stories calming people down about contracting bird flu.
But that leaves another alarming concern: egg and beef prices. As Alabama showed, air-dropped vaccine pellets can vaccinate livestock. Sure, if Alabama were Tennessee, all raccoons would now be classified as drugs. (<=You read that right. ) But neither the Phillipines, India nor other countries in this section, whose citizens eye warily fluctuating food prices, have passed laws classifying vaccinated livestock and lettuce heads as pharmaceuticals.
Apr 08 U.S. CDC says bird flu risk low, but asks states to be ready with rapid testing (CTV News | Canada) - “The agency asked for plans to quickly test and provide treatment to potentially impacted farm workers following positive results among cattle herds.”
Apr 06 'Bird flu, ASF vax being smuggled in travel luggage' (The Phillipine Star) - “Based on the letter of BAI OIC-director Enrico Miguel Capulong to Customs Commissioner Bienvenido Rubio, significant quantities of ASF and avian influenza (AI) vaccines have entered the country through small tumblers, plastic glasses and similar improvisations with dry ice as preservative.” “‘We have already witnessed the effects of ASF and AI and with its ramifications to our overall economy, it is clear that our continued coordinative efforts at the border are a matter of national security,’ Capulong said.”
Feb 21 Large Grocers Took Advantage of Pandemic Supply Chain Disruptions, F.T.C. Finds (New York Times) - “The report found that some large firms accelerated and distorted the effects of supply chain snarls, including by pressuring suppliers to favor them over competitors.”
Jan 13 Low-flying planes to soon begin dropping rabies vaccines in Alabama (Birmingham News) - “Low-flying planes and helicopters will soon begin dropping rabies vaccines in southwest Alabama to prevent the spread of the virus among raccoons and other wildlife.”
Apr 05 [Misinformation Watch: ] Bird flu scare: How deadly can the upcoming pandemic be for India as opposed to Covid? Doctors debate (News9Live India) - “The death rate from COVID-19 varies greatly based on age, preexisting medical issues, and healthcare access. Human fatality rates from bird flu strains like H5N1 and H7N9 have been significant, occasionally surpassing 50%.”
Apr 04 The USDA Isn't Inspiring Confidence With Its Bird Flu Response | Opinion (Newsweek) - “The government is freaking us out on bird flu. It's not what they're saying—it's what they are not saying.”
Apr 04 What to know about the risks of the bird flu outbreak (National Public Radio) - “So far, the virus does not appear to have mutated in a way that would make it significantly more dangerous. While concerning, the one human case, they say, is consistent with how people usually catch these viruses, through direct exposure to a sick animal. But scientists are watching this outbreak closely. Here's more of what they are learning.“
Jan 09 2023 Yes, humans can get the H5N1 bird flu, but it’s rare (KUSA NBC 9 Denver CO) -
Rhythm Recovery
Child vaccination schedules are back on track in Brazil.
Apr 05 [Translated: ] Government relaunches child vaccination card after three years (Emtempo | Brazil) - [Translated: ] The Ministry of Health launched, this Friday (5), the 6th edition of the Child Health Booklet. The document which, among its main responsibilities, monitors the vaccination calendar, remained three years without being drawn up and distributed to health units spread across the country. The booklet brings new features such as updating the National Immunization Program (PNI) calendar, which includes doses against Covid-19, available for babies from six months of age.
Apr 05 [Translated: ] Problems with vaccines: now there is a lack of doses for children against a dangerous virus (Clarin.com Argentina News HQ in Florida) - [Translated: ] … problems appeared with another vaccine. That of Covid, an old acquaintance but not forgotten, which is preparing to re-enter the field in the season of respiratory infections. … According to Clarín, there have been shortages of pediatric doses for several days and in important jurisdictions.
Item: Criteria
Merriam-webster uses a hyphen and defines an anti-vaxxer as “a person who opposes the use of some or all vaccines, regulations mandating vaccination, or usually both.”
TracingVRL’s definition of an antivaxxer (no hyphen) is an influencer with intent who shows an unrepudiated history of evangelizing vaccine decisions by tradeoff-skewing about vaccine benefits.
Example:
Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s (RFK Jr.’s) unrepudiated history of tradeoff-skewing – a pattern of serially discussing vaccine decisions in public forums by vaguely inflating the harms and minimizing the benefits – make him more than a vaccine-moderate. His record qualifies him as an antivaxxer.
Diagonalism Coming in Hot
Apr 08 Antivaxx Spotting (Twitter.com/DALupton) - “An interesting summary of current #longCovid literature by a professor of immunology, Robert Tindle. He’s quite critical of vax. There’s a section on mRNA vax as potential cause of long COVID but no reference to literature showing they can lessen LC risk”
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