Mike Luckovich for August 27, 2020

The Centers for Disease Control used to have a stellar reputation as the model of scientific and disease control and prevention in the world. (Kind of like our postal service, state department, justice department, etc., that were once respected and now the laughingstocks of the world.)

Due to the silencing of real scientists and the elevation of quacks and fakes, including a fake “president” who thinks he knows more than scientists, generals, you-name-it, that once stellar reputation, like that of so much else in our world, is in tatters.

As other countries around the world who listened to actual science have controlled their outbreaks and returned to some semblance of normalcy, Trump’s delays, denials, distractions to snake oil fake “treatments” and outright lies have propelled our once-respected nation to the top of the list of worst-handled failures.

One of the great benefits to a Biden / Harris administration will be a return to acceptance of science and a reliance on real science. I’m sure all the muzzled scientists and frustrated experts will be eagerly voting for the Biden / Harris ticket and looking forward to a return to their proper place of respected expertise being taken seriously.

Il Douche’s motto: “If you can’t beat ’em, install one of your corrupt Toadies to cause them to rot from within!”

Amazing how the Covid Task Force met while Dr. Fauci was in surgery…

https://www.cnn.com/2020/08/26/politics/fauci-coronavirus-cdc-testing/index.html

Now with the CDC obviously compromised, expect more guidelines based on political propoganda instead of science. In fact, how can the FDA be trusted to properly insure the “project warp speed” Covid vaccine(s) are safe and/or effective in this time of Soviet style public service control? Big Pharma can make unbelievable wealth with no oversight and little risk, all with the blessings of the beloved Orange Reaper.

GOD HELP US ALL! And VOTE BLUE 2020!! Save our country and our citizens.

I used to live across the street from the CDC. The sign is accurate and the building is a reasonable “comic” approximation of one of their buildings.

Luckovich operates out of Atlanta, I think. The AJC monogram refers to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution newspaper.

If dumb ass trump had his way he would close CDC also.

Doing their master’s bidding. We need to change the leadership above them.

Don the conman’s CDC: so sad. Well, it’s not going to dictate to us in Detroit; we’ll continue to test all comers. That’s how it’s done.

Remember to tell your children (before you are on the ventilator) how you came to be hooked up to the ventilator.

Any institution dependent on government funding is a priori susceptible to political meddling and corruption. And the CDC has a long-lasting reputation for members that are prideful of their achievements often appropriated from the true achievers in the field. Like many academics, they often grab the glory from from their underlings.

Funny how we have a sudden drop in Covid deaths. I wonder what the nations total death toll is and how it compares to usual for all those it was covid but they also had XX so we are saying they died of XX deaths. Were it a natural disaster ( which it is) then all deaths above the avg would be considered Covid related fatalities. Sad the watchdog agencies to protect the interest of civilians like EPA, FDA, and CDC have become tools pushing a political agenda. Mike’s cartoon is dead on target!

Trump told us he would slow testing down to lower the numbers and now he has.

CDC officials have confirmed that the new policy of reducing testing came straight from the White House, apparently following #45’s idiot policy of “if you don’t count ‘em, they don’t count.”

Furthermore, though they claimed that Dr. Fauci had weighed in on the change, Fauci himself denied it, noting that he was in the operating room under general anesthesia when it was approved. How sleazy is that?

White House pressure: https://ktla.com/news/nationworld/official-says-cdc-was-pressured-from-the-top-down-to-change-coronavirus-test-guidance/

Dr. Fauci: https://www.axios.com/fauci-cdc-asymptomatic-testing-6ac38940-406f-4821-aaae-c9478d4ff107.html

LA-LA-LA-LA-LA! I CAN’T HEAR YOU!

A letter that I just sent to the editors of the newspapers in Kenosha and Racine:

Don’t mourn, VOTE!

Don’t riot, VOTE!

Don’t burn, VOTE!

Don’t loot, VOTE!

Don’t give up, VOTE!

Don’t curl up in a little ball whimpering, VOTE!

Is there any governmental department that Tiny and friends hasn’t weakened or destroyed?

Welcome to the CDC where “It is what it is.”

The politicization of science is criminal, murderous Trump has killed 180,000 Americans and shut down the USA by not doing what every expert says to do.

Many people are very angry about this.

Did anyone notice that one of the speakers at the RNC referred to Covid 19 in the past tense; “the virus was a horrible thing”?

$5, 15-minute COVID test millions available by September. Semi-normal life may return sooner than expected.

https://www.investors.com/news/technology/abt-stock-jumps-fda-ok-quick-cheap-coronavirus-test/

It really is EXACTLY as idiotic as pretending that a woman who never takes a pregnancy test will not become pregnant. Meanwhile, in addition to the other liars (and imbeciles, and in some cases lunatics) in the Trump maladministration, we now have the head of the FDA desperately trying to walk back his public lies about plasma therapy. I quote from pundit Michael Hiltzik, from the Los Angeles Times: "Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Steven Hahn, having been battered around for his egregiously inaccurate endorsement Sunday of a purported COVID-19 treatment pushed by President Donald Trump, walked that endorsement back Monday and Tuesday.It isn’t enough. Hahn has damaged his credibility, possibly beyond repair, and taken the credibility of the FDA down with him — at a crucial moment when the agency’s trustworthiness may be more important than at any time in its 114-year history.He has behaved like a Trump sycophant rather than the head of an independent, science-based arm of the federal government, and for that he has to go. […] Let’s take a closer look at what this is all about, and why Hahn’s most recent statements are insufficient.The issue involved convalescent plasma, which is blood fluid taken from patients who have recovered from COVID-19. It’s then transfused into new COVID-19 patients, with the aim of allowing antibodies the original patients developed during their illness to fight the infection in the new patients.Sunday’s White House press conference was called to announce that the FDA had issued an “emergency use authorization” for convalescent plasma in COVID-19 cases. This move isn’t tantamount to FDA clinical approval and has little practical effect, since researchers already were using the substance in clinical trials.But it does raise the possibility that the general public will think that the FDA has concluded that it works for COVID-19 patients, for which there is still no evidence.

And he continues: In short, the FDA’s announcement benefited no patients or researchers. It smacked of being timed to coincide with the start of the Republican National Convention, which opened Monday with Trump’s renomination. Hahn denies that the timing was anything but coincidental. Convalescent plasma has been used for about 100 years as treatment for other diseases. It has never been a “miracle” drug or a “breakthrough,” as Trump has described it. Though researchers have seen some evidence that it may help seriously ill COVID-19 patients, medical experts strongly doubt that it will be a “breakthrough” drug now.

That brings us to Hahn’s original error.

At the White House press conference Sunday, Hahn stated in Trump’s presence that for patients treated with convalescent plasma there was a 35% improvement in survival, which he called “a significant clinical benefit.” He tried to explain what he meant by adding that, of “100 people who are sick with COVID-19, 35 would have been saved because of the administration of plasma.”None of that is true. The Mayo Clinic study on which his remarks were based says nothing of the kind. It says that preliminary results from its trial show that patients given convalescent plasma with a high concentration of antibodies and receive it within three days of diagnosis with COVID-19 have a 35% better survival rate than those given plasma with a low concentration of antibodies and who receive it four days or more after diagnosis.The best one could say is that five out of 100 people in the trial — but really only three out of 100 — would have better survival rates. Even that conclusion is dubious, however, because the Mayo study doesn’t compare the patients who received plasma to those who didn’t receive it at all — it merely compares those who receive different versions of the plasma and on different schedules to each other.From that, it’s impossible to tell what benefit convalescent plasma has on COVID-19 patients, if any.

And the grande finale: Two studies, in China and the Netherlands, that actually tested convalescent plasma against a placebo were both ended early because of safety concerns. But neither showed any positive effect before they were curtailed.

Hahn’s statement instantly drew a pushback from medical experts. Jonathan Reiner of George Washington University medical school called it “shockingly wrong.” Eric Topol, head of the Scripps Research Translational Institute in La Jolla, California, called it “not only blatantly wrong (but) an egregious public statement.”

Hahn’s original statement was so profoundly wrong that his walkback Monday and Tuesday can’t help but increase public confusion.

“This is just blatantly wrong and misleading to the public,” Topol told me. “Millions of people now think that this is a breakthrough miracle treatment, but there’s no data to support that. He has to say that there has been no survival advantage established for convalescent plasma, period, stop.”

Hahn’s apology doesn’t help, because it’s couched in technical language. “The public doesn’t understand the nuances of relative and absolute risk. Until he says that there is no survival advantage established, the public won’t get it,” Topol says. “And he has to say it in public — not through Twitter, and not through an exclusive ‘CBS This Morning’ interview.”As for that interview, Hahn didn’t err on Sunday by doing a bad job “explaining” the data. He completely misrepresented the data. On CBS he described the Mayo Clinic data in a way that was so confusing and incomplete that the lay viewer could still come away with the impression that there’s solid evidence for plasma’s positive effect. That’s completely unacceptable.Of the FDA’s emergency use authorization, Hahn told Gayle King of the CBS program, “I can assure the American people that this decision was made based upon sound science and data.”Can that assurance be taken at face value? Unfortunately, no.

Everyone in the CDC that kowtowed to Trump should be fired come Jan 21.

I would remove everyone from the destructive Trump termite ‘govt’ and replace them before they destroy the USA even more.

The CDC Speaker should be wearing his MAGAhat.