My husband had stage 4 melanoma. He was dying before our eyes. In a Hail Mary, his doctors at MGH Boston got him into a Phase 1 drug trial using a personalized mRNA cancer vaccine. He was cured. Not in remission. Cured. That was in 2019. All of these mRNA cancer trials are now being canceled by these evil morons, taking hope away from families like mine. These is so much blood on their hands.
What does that mean? Because all I heard was "RFK Jr. has stocks in a company that can't actually compete but will pretend it will."
Our genes are made of DNA and RNA. I wonder if RFK knows that. What the hell is he talking about, it makes no sense whatsoever, this man is a homicidal maniac. We're going to move beyond what's in our genes to ??? and then PROFIT.
But only those who have clearly not drunk the Kool-aid and genuflected to the bleached-blond, combed over senile old man. Maybe dement is more accurate than senile, but I'm not a psychiatrist.
Senile, demented; six of one, half dozen of the other…:)
I’m not sure they’re sparing their own ilk. Usually they’re the ones who suffer the most. See the religious people in Texas dying of measles. Farmers in red states paying a heave price, and Medicaid and SNAP cuts that will ultimately hurt them more than in blue states.
Bottom line: Our only hope is if they die out faster than we do, then problem solved!….:)
Here's the problem: their outrage increases when they're screwed over by these policies and god only knows why they don't blame the person creating the policy. Instead they blame whatever convenient scapegoat they can find, rather than admit they were wrong.
Agreed. Their magic power is making their low information voters believe every demonic and asinine policy is the work of the deep state run by a cabal of elites including Obama, Clinton and Soros, when the calls are coming from inside the house.
They’re just too stupid to know better, and if they do, they don’t care. As Mark Twain famously said, “it’s easier to fool a man, than to convince him, he’s ever been fooled!”…:)
...and it does seem that the Grim Reaper is the most assured way to reduce the numbers for the Felon. Well, remembering the old Toyota commercial, You asked for it, you got it, the Felon!
During the height of COVID, it was cold comfort thinking that probably more of them than us would die. The thought almost seemed immoral. It still does, to me. They’re supposed to be the heartless s.o.b.’s, not us.
I fall back on voters are morally and intellectually responsible for their choices. Trump was clear on what RFK Jr's role would be in his cabinet during the campaign. The fact that RFK Jr is a heroin addict, serial adulterer and has a brain worm did not prevent a plurality of the electorate from voting for Trump. And if voters weren't aware of all of this, it was by choice. 49.8% of the electorate chose what's about to happen, and I believe they should fully experience the consequences of their votes. I think that's very moral.
Yeah, I admit I had a bad attitude on the anti Covid vaccine people thinking they wanted to solve this with herd immunity - I was like cool, put them all in the same space and go for it. I'm a little bit better of a person, but not much :-)
The virus didn't ask anyone how they voted. It's not just the MAGA people who died of COVID (and we know that their Red States got hit hardest). It was everybody on the bus with them, everyone in their households. There are countless stories of immune-compromised people whose spouses, families, colleagues, etc., adamantly refused the vaccine, regardless of its efficacy. They worshipped Trump first and last and they were forcing everyone around them to join in the risk and dangers.
"Hoping" MAGAs (or their children) die because they refuse vaccines doesn't make it happen. I guess I don't specifically "hope" for that, but I do want them to start to see the consequences of their actions. Of course, there are one or two MAGAs out there who see sacrificing their children to preventable diseases as acceptable, in their devotion to Trump.
If you avoid them, that's a big heads up there, immunity wise. I also do that as much as possible in my community. CoVid taught me that last time. We might as well use precautions ala 2020 pre-vaccine and stock up. Next he will be banning Paxlovid for all us seniors
It's the only thing that makes sense. RFK Jr. must know that grinding vaccine research and availability down to a halt is going to have a fatal impact on the United States. And since he knows, that tells me that people needlessly dying is something he's willing to accept.
Of course! He is the Eugenics poster child. If anything, I wish it would infect him. Good riddance....but that's the survival of the fittest little Bobby. Deal.
Robert Kennedy JR, is a terrible human being. He sold heroin out of his room at Harvard, and he drove his 3rd wife to hang herself in their house. He shouldn't have a job of any in the federal government, let alone be head of HHS.
He may be one of those people who thinks the problem with the world is that there are too many (poor) people. He probably believes if we can kill off a million of them, it will be better for the ruling class.
I think the world would be better off with fewer narcissistic sociopaths, but that doesn't mean I want the federal government to devise a way to kill them off. In other words, if we assume that killing people is the goal and that approach becomes normalized, there's nothing stopping a future federal government from going after...oh, white evangelicals. Once Pandora's Box is opened, look out.
Agree. Add to this boneheaded decision the cuts to research funding, impending efforts to strangle Medicaid and Medicare, deport the primary providers of home health care and nursing homes, cancel food assistance, throw anyone they don't like into detention centers to rot, keep the "wrong" people from voting for any change and completely abandon notion that our government is of the people, by the people and for the people... and the goal becomes quite clear.
Agreed and well said. Unfortunately, RFK Jr. and his ilk are just a bunch of cheap snake oil salesman getting rich off of a graft, while real people suffer and die.
I doubt it has even dawned on him or he has enough self awareness to understand this fact (see Samoa, Texas, and the measles).
And what makes matters worse is that too many people associate the name with experience and intelligence; yet here we are.
Personally, In think the wrong Kennedy died in that plane crash; and as a result, the rest of us are paying a heavy price!…::)
I am holding my breath & worrying that bird flu or some other unknown virus hits while this idiot is HHS director. Because lots of people will die. And it seems we have no way of stopping him. Imagine your life right now without the covid vaccine
MGH is a wonderful hospital, and I'm grateful your husband was able to receive care there.
As for the cancellation of mRNA trials, never forget that 49.8% of the electorate either willingly ignored Trump's promise to elevate RFK Jr. to a position of responsibility or heard Trump clearly and didn't care. If memory serves, Ginny, you're in Florida. Next time you go to Publix, look around and remember a majority of the shoppers chose what's about to happen.
Thanks, Tim. MGH is a wonderful hospital and we are very lucky to not only live in the Boston area 20 miles away from it, but also live in a state with very progressive health care laws. Our 3 year long battle with melanoma was traumatic for us and our girls, but we did not have to go into medical debt for his life to be saved. I have been a MassHole all my life, and will not even visit Florida until this madness is over. I dwill never understand how anyone could vote for the DirtyOldMan.
There is a "Reel" on Facebook in which a young man asks what is presumably a boomer-aged Walmart shopper "Which nation did the US fight for independence?" The woman's answer was a tentative "Vietnam??" No wonder we ended up with this ridiculous administration.
But alas, those who you asked may yet be the anti-vax casualties themselves. Oddly how this double edged sword can work.....and cruelly, they are the ones that are "cullible". Ain't this sick?
I am a Masshole, too. Have lived here for 10 years, lived in Fl prior to that SO glad to leave that sorry excuse for a state! Love Ma, great healthcare,I have been treated for breast cancer,in remission now. The state does things for the good of their residents, free breakfast and lunch in schools and the billionaires tax has brought in revenue for the state
I am in a MAGA-infected state and it is hot. Sorry to say, we must go inside to our energy blasting air conditioners that carry droplets, but if we, the vaxxers and science believers, can stay proactive....our little petri-dish of a state may provide its own eugenic solution (good Lord look at that verbage!). In Texas with climate deniers in power we are unfortunately giving a double whammy to our vulnerable with natural disasters, Oh! and school shootings too. Stay in Mass....eat your apples, enjoy your safe beaches, wonderful information systems and be healthy. Cold weather is refreshing and it does kill germs outside.
I have to laugh at "Masshole". My daughter went to Bridgewater State, she played softball there. The families took good care of her, since we were in NY and couldn't get to all the games. I have good memories of MA. Edited to add: I'm glad that your husband was able to get the cutting edge care he needed.
Oh yes. Count on it. Jerome Powell's term is up next spring. The effects of the every changing tariffs are just beginning to be felt. The convicted child molester Maxwell will get her pardon. Stephen Miller's bloodlust for migrants hasn't hit every community—yet. A cat 5 hurricane hasn't hit yet, or a devastating US earthquake, or major tornadoes.
Don't forget the potential for a non-domestic terrorist attack. If ever there was a time for our enemies to strike, we are there and they have to be salivating
Docs actually use leeches today to help break down the charred skin of burn victims and help blood flow to damaged tissue. It’s creepy and cool. But yes, can bloodletting be in our future? As for the rest, yep, absolutely! We are in trouble. I wonder at what point to start masking again.
Ginny-Your family's miracle of modern medicine cure is very encouraging and hopeful. How did so many Americans become such dopes and ignoramuses turning against life saving science and medicine? The stupidity is mind boggling--evil morons as you call them.
Because they are science (and history) illiterate and believe what the want—and have long been encouraged to do so. Anyone with an education is an "elite." Not the people with money to buy politicians. In Cambodia under Pol Pot, wearing glasses was a sign of being elitist and they were interned and either killed or sent to work as farm laborers. It's willful stupidity, not just ignorance, which really does make it evil.
I recently read a Quora piece that posited that trump voters were uneducated. There were dozens of responses from allegedly well educated people with at least one graduate degree, some with multiple. All trump supporters, but most interesting was the underlying message in nearly all of their responses: they hate Democrats.
Oh very much so. There are plenty of “smart” people who voted for him and for all the GOP. All the GOP RW propaganda and vitriol for the past thirty plus years has succeeded in portraying Dems as the epitome of all evil. For many of these people it’s either their religion or their greed (or both) motivating them.
I watched my father die from pancreatic cancer (at age 60, never smoked). mRNA research meant that maybe some other son, daughter, spouse...wouldn't have to go through what we did.
I'm so sorry for your loss. My grandmother died of pancreatic cancer. No one--and no family--should have to go through that. Cancer sucks. The fact that these monsters are taking away access to promising break throughs is beyond the pale.
My brother died of melanoma in 2012. The breakthroughs on treating it, like MNRA with your husband, along with other previously untreatable cancers are amazing. Too bad the US will fall behind in this kind of medical care & research. I can only hope these scientists continue their work in other countries like France who are offering support.
This. These dipshits don't understand the mRNA vaccines are tailorable cures for a range of diseases including those of INDIVIDUAL people. It's a flexible and much more easily implemented technology than the blunt force approach we've used to date. Why we're listening to anyone other than the experts is beyond me...literally could be a major key to solving a many disease vectors moving forward.
I'm looking forward to the day when you show up to the airport and everyone on a flight draws straws to see who will be flying the plane, regardless of their ability to do so. Not a lot different than listening to HS graduates and college drop outs on Tik Tok. Or cranks who found they can make money by being cranks, for cranks sake.
I'm so happy to hear about your husband's recovery from a an extremely serious form of cancer. Your husband's personalized cancer treatment is the future of most if not all cancer treatment: individualized and in accordance with the unique characteristics of each tumor, in each individual. The personalized mRNA vaccine enlists the patient's own immune response to those tumor unique features. As opposed to the blunt instrument of chemotherapy. The technology is brilliantly designed to target just the cancer. With a prod by the tumor-specific vaccine, the patient's own body heals itself.
But of course, the necessary knowledge of the human genome to construct this level of personalized mRNA to treat cancers, as well as mRNA triggered immunity to viral pathogens, was the product of decades of open, funded and unfettered scientific research, all of which is now being threatened with extinction. By the HHS of RFK, Jr. A secretary with no medical training but a "background" in half-baked superstitious quackery, and a determination to undo the greatest innovations in medical achievements over the past 50 many decades. And stunt what should be even more great advances. Your husband's triumphant recovery over melanoma was a great achievement of science. How wonderful for you both!
I don't mean to quibble, but I am a biologist, and I think it's absolutely a requirement that the most accurate information about the mRNA vaccine be expounded. Ben Parker is correct that the COVID mRNA vaccine trains the human immune system to fight a specific feature of the virus. However, it does not train itself against the mRNA that is injected. What happens is that the mRNA in the vaccine mimics our own messenger RNA (mRNA), but it codes for an important chunk of the spike protein that is on the surface of the virus. The human machinery translates this mRNA just as it translates its own mRNA to produce this benign protein and only this protein, and the immune system then trains itself against the produced spike protein. Nothing could be safer.
Thank you, Mark. I am a physician and I was just about to write the same correction about what the mRNA does. We need to be accurate. But the error does not detract from the main point— these are very effective and safe vaccines. Heaven forbid that we forego this technology.
Bruce, you are absolutely correct. When the mRNA vaccine came out, I was amazed at the new technology. I also teach an evolutionary medicine course, and so I've kept up with the progress and the safety concerns. Given that it's also the safest method of vaccine, this makes absolutely no sense. (Unless the point is to destroy American science and a lot of Americans along the way.)
Thanks for your detailed correction. For those who are interested, Nature published a history of mRNA vaccines in 2021. Research on the potential for using mRNA as a vaccine started in the mid-to-late 1980s, over 30 years before the emergence of Covid-19. It is just this sort of basic research that Trump, Kennedy and Congressional Republicans are hollowing out. We don't know what basic research discoveries today will become the treatments/cures of tomorrow and now, we'll never know.
Absolutely. At least my impression is that mRNA development has progressed enough, and enough foreign countries are researching it now, that if a new HHS secretary reverses course in the next four years, we’ll hopefully only have a pause and slowdown (with some regression). That’s still utterly insane, and the deciders should rot in hell for it. But it’s not the worst decision HHS(+DOGE) has made with regards to promising new treatments — many others have effectively been cancelled and erased from existence.
mRNA as a vector for vaccines and other treatments, and gene-editing with CRISPR, are, in my opinion as a biologist and an educator, the two most important scientific breakthroughs in the last 15 years. That we as a country would turn our back on these amazing science and medicine tools is just gobsmacking. rfk is a menace.
I’m not a subject-matter expert like you two are, but I’m not sure the error *didn’t* detract from the main point. mRNA is undoubtedly safer and more versatile than live-attenuated vaccines, for instance, but there are many other kinds of vaccines. It’s so promising because it’s a biotechnological platform, not a tweak or even “next generation version” of earlier vaccines.
I also came here to say this. I am a public health physician. Mark is correct.
It is also quite frightening that we are not working on this technology for flu. COVID was horrible and killed millions of people - but its overall mortality (death rate for those infected) was way less than 5%. Bird flu right now has a mortality of about 50% - a 10x increase. The mRNA technology allows us to manufacture a vaccine much quicker than traditional methods - we need only get the genome sequence, isolate the portion that is essential to the virus but doesn't harm humans by itself, and insert it into the vaccine vehicle. If bird flu develops a way to directly transmit from human to human (thought to be only a few mutations away) then we are in existential trouble. The mRNA technology is our best hope. The next pandemic is not an "if" - it's a "when".
Ben, Not dumb at all. Unless you're steeped in the mechanisms of molecular biology, DNA transcription, and mRNA translation to make proteins, it will be opaque about how an mRNA vaccine works. We all just want the public to completely understand how safe and effective this new delivery system for training the immune system against new pathogens is.
Could I summarise via the analogy of old vaccines vs mRNA were like a mass bomb being dropped as a blunt force instrument vs some targeted missiles? Best I could come up with, please correct me!
Two things are special about the mRNA vaccine - there is no chance the organism can reproduce because the vaccine only makes one protein component. The mRNA is the code to make the protein and only the code for that one protein is incorporated into a non-living particle. That particle is then taken up by the host cells and our own cells make only the coded protein. So no chance of a runaway infection from the vaccine. Also, once you know the code of the target organism, you can inject the piece of code you want into the vaccine vehicle - development is much faster than traditional vaccines.
The basic premise of their justification for cancelling is also bogus. They claim that the COVID mRNA vaccine is not effective against COVID, because vaccinated people still contract COVID. This is also RFKJr's fundamental misunderstanding or more likely lie. Vaccines do not prevent people from getting infected. Vaccines prime the immune system so that when you do get infected, your immune system fights off the infection faster. This reduces the symptoms that are experienced. For some viruses (e.g., measles), the immune system is primed by the vaccine to make antibodies that prevent symptoms from happening altogether in most people.
So if you're vaccinated against measles and you're in a room with a person who has measles, you get infected, but your immune system fights off the virus so fast and effectively that you never develop symptoms. The antibodies against the COVID spike proteins do not stimulate as effective a response. So vaccinated people still develop symptoms from COVID infections, but much milder than if they were unvaccinated. I have gotten every COVID vaccination, and I contracted COVID for the first time that I know of in February of this year. I just thought I had a mild cold, but I tested myself and sure enough it was COVID. I felt like I had a cold for one day and was perfectly fine for the rest of the infection. I tested positive for 14 days and vigorously exercised every one of those days, feeling in great shape!!
I have an autoimmune disorder which makes me more susceptible. And to treat it I’m on a TNF-α inhibitor, which in 2020 was thought to also be likely to make one more susceptible to Covid and/or bad Covid outcomes (although I’m not sure what the thinking is today on that, I haven’t seen newer research).
I can function (with a lower quality of life) without the drug, so I went off the drug for almost two years during the worst of the pandemic, and I was second in line for the vaccine — being under 50, I was behind elderly folks who also had underlying health issues of concern. (Fun detail: I was supposedly the 10,000th person to be vaccinated at the Javits Center, the largest vaccine-distribution center in New York. Probably not really — they didn’t stop the lines to make sure the count was right before administering my shot, and some people were probably already getting their second shots by that point, but they celebrated it as if I were, so that’s fun.)
I kept up with the most-aggressive booster schedule and I didn’t contract anything symptomatic or that I tested positive for until early 2023 — ironically, the day before we were going to leave for an annual cruise that we had last been on in March 2020; it had been the very last cruise ship in the world to make a previously-scheduled disembarkation just minutes before the Do Not Sail order went into place. (It’s a geeky cruise and we’ve always had several virologists, immunologists and infectious-disease physicians vacationing on board, so in 2020 we were the best-informed group on the high seas.)
My husband got a nasty case between my induction and second vaccine doses in early 2021. I double-masked and we threw open every window and outer door the moment he heard about his exposure (brr!), and despite living on top of each other in a small Manhattan apartment, I managed to avoid contracting it that time.
But when I finally got it two years later, I got Paxlovid and had the classic response for someone like me at that time: a quick remission for several days, then a wretchedly uncomfortable (but not-clinically-concerning) rebound right after the course finished. I did daily tests just because I was interested¹ and it was fascinating to see a bright-magenta test line go in 48 hours to nothing, then four days later when the Paxlovid was done return and eventually give me the darkest test line I ever had.²
I got the H1N1 flu in 2009, and that was the worst I’d ever felt from a respiratory infection. That Paxlovid rebound was a close second, though (if it had had gastric symptoms too like the flu, it would have been worse).
Since then I had one more bout earlier this year. I got a course of Paxlovid again just to be on the safe side. (Pro Tip: go to the Paxlovid web site and get your discount code *before* you fill your prescription, it can make a hundreds of dollars copay disappear now that the federal government doesn’t cover it!) It felt like a moderately-bad cold and there was no rebound that time.
Some people would look at this record and say “see, the vaccine doesn’t really work”. I look at the same record and see nothing but the hospital beds (three different times) I *didn’t* need.
—
¹ Don’t worry, I wasn’t overusing tests during a shortage; I was one of those who was provided with enough tests to use daily for work purposes, and I usually worked from home anyway, so I had a surplus that would have expired otherwise.
² The intensity of the test line of a lateral-flow test isn’t provably significant, and varies due to many factors, including specimen collection technique. But as I self-administered and was very careful to test the same method each time with a mirror and timers (and I used the throat-nostril method used elsewhere rather than the nostril-only method approved in the US) I think the intensity was likely at least somewhat significant. It’s clinical data that tells a story, anyway.
In case anyone’s curious, the second sentence I wrote above prompted me to check out the research on TNF-α inhibitors and Covid. It turns out that suspending my drug — though correctly cautious at the time — probably removed protection from a bad outcome of Covid more than it increased my susceptibility.
Which makes sense as it tends to suppress immune response in general in a way that usually does more to prevent symptoms of infectious disease from causing dangerous “cytokine storms” than it does to make one more susceptible to the infections that can cause this. In fact, due to this characteristic, these drugs were once considered as potential prophylactics for first-line responders to a pandemic flu.
The evidence from Covid makes the case for such application even stronger, but these are very expensive drugs to produce (they’re “biologics”, whose cost can run into the hundreds of thousands of dollars a year), so are unlikely to actually find such use until (and unless) “biosimilar” generics can bring the costs way down.
It looks like four or five of us all had the same thought and wrote up replies, but we each took the basic biological correction in different directions. It underlines the amazing potential of mRNA technology as a platform. HHS’s decision in retrospect will be viewed by history as poorly as if DARPA had killed the Internet in 1988.
If anyone is interested, here is a great piece from Derek Thompson in 2021 about mRNA, how it came to defeat COVID-19, and its future potential (before we let a brain wormed drug addict psycho loose to destroy our medical research).
"The dream of mRNA persevered in part because its core principle was tantalizingly simple, even beautiful: The world’s most powerful drug factory might be inside all of us."
Power is quite the aphrodisiac, along with money. That's the only explanation I can come up with these days. People like Hassett are just giving their souls away to have power and/or money.
I may also add that Hassett was not that good or bright to begin with per my comment below. He punched above his weight by ingratiating himself with conservative inc, doesn’t matter who is in charge.
Trump has a clever policy of giving big jobs to people who don't deserve it and I think it has to do with: 1) They become highly indebted to him 2) They will be somewhat incompetent and won't outshine him 3) He values loyalty over expertise
While I don't doubt your reasoning, I believe an additional criteria he has is 4) he deliberately tries to pick the absolute worst person possible for the role. Whoever will upset the "libs" the most. You look at his cabinet appointments, and in nearly all cases you're hard-pressed to think of a worse person for that position. They really are breathtakingly terrible.
The same could be asked of every "normie"/quasi-normie cabinet member - Rubio, Bessent, the secretary of agriculture (I can never remember her name), Burghum, etc. Of course, the list of normies in the Trump 2.0 administration is rather short, but each one made a calculated decision to value political power over personal integrity. While that is enough to warrant condemnation, it makes sense from a realpolitik standpoint. The normies no longer have a seat at the table in today's GOP, and it's not like those who have maintained their integrity (i.e. Kinzinger, Cheney, Romney) have grown fat from a diet of board seats and other non-governmental employment opportunities. If you're a republican and want to continue operating in government and government-adjacent roles, you need to jump on the MAGA train.
The message emphasized by the Oath-Breaker & Robert F. Crackhead is that government information cannot be trusted. No sources are required to support their statements:
- "...today’s Jobs Numbers were RIGGED in order to make the Republicans, and ME, look bad"
- "...the data show these vaccines fail to protect effectively against upper respiratory infections like COVID and flu"
This is the MAGA/MAHA point: If government data cannot be trusted, government cannot be trusted.
Impeachment is what should be pursued by all in Congress who continue to support our Constitution and "the American way".
Our next door neighbors moved to Vancouver just last week. She's an ER doc and they didn't want to raise their young children here. Especially their daughter. And now the U.S. has one fewer competent physician.
Good on her, but man that sucks for this country. How many qualified and expert doctors, scientists, and other researchers is this regime driving away with their medieval thinking? Sigh...
They were incredibly close (physically and emotionally) neighbors/friends so it's a personal loss. And I agree that it's one of many, many tangible losses for the greater good of the U.S. I have training in psychology and if the U.S. were a human, I'd be doing a suicide assessment.
as a resident of BC, I'm glad - sorry for you guys on so many levels and ways and over-all and... kinda scary tho, for us, now that the meth lab is exploding
If I was Canada I wouldn't allow anyone across the border who isn't vaccinated. During Covid, there was a hockey player named Tyler Bertuzzi who played for Detroit at the time (go Red Wings!!!) who refused to be vaccinated, so he wasn't allowed to go to Canada for games -- and his wife had just given birth. The team fined him and didn't pay him for those games, but good on les habitants for closing the border to him.
Can we all agree that there is no plan. There was no plan. That DOGE was not about efficiency, it was a performance piece. And all the kings men are on board with everything - so ready with the lies, all is ok. Any complaints are TDS.
There absolutely was a plan, just not what they said it was. It was never about waste, fraud, and abuse. The plan was always to just decimate the government. That was is. It was about crippling the institutions to the point they become ineffective and can be sidelined like the BLS. Elon got the bonus of being able to destroy every investigation into him and destroy every institution that would have been tasked with opening one against him. Destruction was the plan.
Yes, so much of what has happened was outlined in Project 2025, you know the blueprint the media credulously reported that Trump had "no knowledge of or nothing to do with" because he said so.
DOGE had a plan. Musk thought he could privatize weather services and make money from it. And if Musk could build anything, it might have worked, but the days when his companies built good things quickly are long gone.
Actually there was a plan all along. It’s Project 2025, and depending who is asked, it is 42,%, or 80% in progress. That is the goal. And the fools who voted for Felon Trump need to see what they have done, and own it.
They can be stopped when those in charge (Democrats) reverse the loyalty essays in the hiring applications and return to the Civil Service rules regarding Federal employees. Sack those who put this heinous project into action, and whenever possible, not if, put them in jail.
"He’s not the sort of guy you’d expect to join in an authoritarian purge. But that’s precisely what he’s done."
He's exactly the sort of person I would expect to join an authoritarian purge. Yes, he's a coward. But he's a special kind of coward. He's the sort of coward who went to a Quaker college and prays to the Lord. So he is convinced he is a "good person," even though he lies constantly and effortlessly and does things that hurt people. The republican party is filled with these kinds of cowards.
Speaking of men (and women) who are not dumb, how can it be that America’s elite universities, Columbia and Brown and the University of Virginia among them, with their elite faculties and their elite administrators, a collection, presumably, of some of the best minds in the country, how can it be that they are not smart enough to realize that a deal made with Donald Trump is not a deal at all, but rather, at best, only a temporary reprieve? Trump has a long and well-known history of screwing anyone and everyone unwitting or unlucky enough to have made a deal with him, from Atlantic City to the City of Lights. Yes, granted, Donald Trump is a famous dealmaker. But he also has an infamously long history of not honoring the deals he makes—and for one simple (and what should be obvious) reason: Donald Trump is not an honorable man. He cheats. He lies. And sooner or later, he reneges on his deals. Routinely. Donald Trump lies even when the truth would better serve his ends—because he doesn’t know how to do anything other than lie. And he has lied to Columbia and Brown and the University of Virginia (and Harvard, too, no doubt) same as he lied to the students he so casually fleeced through his anything-but-elite Trump University. It follows, then, that the deals Brown and Columbia and Virginia have made with Donald Trump will most likely come to nothing—or worse. When it serves his interest to renege on those deals, Trump will, most likely, bait and switch and smear and lie and sue and lie some more—and then renege. So, can someone please explain to me how it can be that all the brilliant minds at all these elite universities do not know this? How can they not know what is almost certain to become of their deals with Donald Trump? How can they not know there is gambling in Casablanca? How can they be so blind, so willfully blind, to the long history of the man they are dealing with? The deals these elite universities have made are deals with a devil. How can they not know that?
They probably do know it. And saw this as a short term fix.
What’s somewhat amusing to me is that Trump hated NAFTA, so he “renegotiated” it during his first term and renamed it to put the US first. It was substantially the same deal, but he was crowing about his achievement and liked his awkward new name, USMCA.
In Trump 2.0, he decided that the US no longer has a free trade arrangement with its largest partners and started issuing threats and slapping tariffs on Canada and Mexico.
In other words, he broke his own deal and maybe doesn’t even remember having made it, (like he forgot that he hired Jerome Powell in his first term).
The boards of directors of these colleges tend to be made up of rich donors or important politicians. They agree completely with Trump. They would rather give him money to burn, literally burn in a pile, than let foreign students get it.
Foreign students aren’t getting money. Foreign students are giving money; they pay full tuition, no US foreign aid. This helps support financial aid to lower income US students.
If you remember Enron, those who tanked the company thought they were the smartest people in the room. That’s this new crop of over educated, but lacking in common sense people in Felon Trump’s administration. They know exactly what they are doing because they see a future where they are the new rulers of higher education; get on the boards of the colleges and universities they vanquished. Ran out of time with Enron. Are running out of time now, I hope.
It's because every smart person is stupid as well. We all have our blind spots. They're so smart they think they'll figure it out, and if they can't, they'll buy time to figure it out.
But they won't fight. That's someone else's job. They're preserving what they can so when things get better, their schools and most importantly their personal reputations/legacy will show just how smart they were.
But really, it's how they can rationalize giving up everything they ever professed to care about. There's plenty of high achievers who believe the work they did to reach a certain level in their careers and society was the sacrifice they needed to provide for their communities and prove their worthiness. They forget that those "sacrifices" only bought them the opportunity to prove their value and worthiness in those roles. And because they've always chosen to take on battles that made sense to them and they're sure they can win, they didn't realize they were weak cowards who shouldn't lead. Because, "Look at where I am and what I've done. I must be smart."
The guy who gave us the wonderful book “Dow 36,000” back in 1999 and touted investing in comic books is trying so hard to be the next Fed chair, and it’s probably what this country deserves for electing the dumbest American to be President. If it’s not Kevin Hassett, the next Fed Chair should be Ron Vara (Peter Navarro with a fake mustache).
I remember when that book came out. I was a tech entrepreneur in the dot com world, so I of course wanted to believe in number go up, but it was obvious even to me that it was a load of crap.
DJT on the roof of the White House is not quite as compelling as the Beatles doing their final concert on the Apple Records rooftop. In fact it's not compelling at all. (Except perhaps for the number of people below who secretly wished that he would jump.) He makes for a lousy John Lennon stand-in. Which reminded me all the while how much I wish two specific people were still alive to offer us their views on DJT and the MAGA phenomenon: John Lennon and George Carlin. (On the former, I'd settle for George Harrison and both his dry, acerbic wit and his habit of speaking unvarnished truth. On the latter, it is clear that Bill Maher is by no means an adequate substitute.)
Except imagine if it were Biden up on the roof shouting into the wind. The stories would be endless and there would be a call for an immediate psych eval and hold. The NYT alone would have multiple stories on its front page for weeks. Weeks! They would write editorials demanding his resignation and excoriating every Dem for not denouncing him. A feast they would dine on.
But Trump, nah, nothing to see here.
It's just one more piece of evidence of the political media's incompetence and bias.
When I saw pictures of Trump on the White House roof, I recalled years ago standing at the foot of Los Angeles City Hall with other Vietnam War protesters, chanting “Jump, Yorty, jump!”.
Come on, Stephen Miller will not let Trump back away from rounding up the farm workers. The Secretary of Agriculture recently said that these workers doing backbreaking work would be replaced by people on Medicaid. And DeSantis wanted to use kids to replace them—I mean think how much fun it is to go pumpkin picking in the fall and blueberry picking in the spring! Same thing, right?
HHS' abandonment of 22 mRNA research projects matches the action of the orange narcissist-felon when in his first term, arriving at the White House, he discharged the Obama team tasked with creating effective plans to counter the coming pandemics.
Those pandemics are coming. If it isn't the looming bird flu it could be something much worse. Another element of preparedness has been removed.
The medical-research vacuum created by the wanton abandonment of science will not only pose the dangers of dire consequences for our children, grandchildren and beyond. It will stimulate the sane governments of the world to step up. Nature hates a vacuum. Meantime, the US slides further down the tubes.
Not only that, but the cutting back on intelligence gathering means that the eyes and ears that can pick up on a threat like this—in addition to all the man-made threats—makes us more vulnerable.
It's headbanging. Many of the people who voted for Trump simply refused to believe that he would do so much damage. They remember "how good it was" before the pandemic, blamed Covid and its impact solely on Joe, and believed it couldn't be any worse than what we saw from 1/20/17 until 1/20/21.
My stepdaughter's husband is a cancer research scientist with his own lab at one of our top universities. He said that other countries are pretty far behind where we are in terms of R&D. They will hire our scientists because they see opportunity—and people need jobs—but it won't be the same. The loss of US leadership in science will be devastating not only to our own nation and health but to the world.
Get your Covid boosters while you still can! They may be your only (regrettably partial) protection against the next pandemic since HHS Secretary Death will be relying on Herd Immunity and Ivermectin alone to solve the next viral crisis!
Trump is under a lot of pressure because the world now perceives him as a pedophile. Being a rapist was OK with most people because he was a celebrity, and everyone knows celebrities can do what they want. But pedophiles fall into a different category.
Like any wounded irrational animal, under pressure Trump lashes out. If he is going down, he will take the world with him. He has found a way to threaten everyone who works for him into supporting his lies,, and lying to cover his secrets and his incompetence. This becomes increasingly difficult because Trump’s lies and policies change every day.
Tariffs? Epstein?s taxes? immigration? FEMA? NOAA? Obama? unemployment? Harvard, law firms? courts? judges? Vaccines? Student loans? Ukraine? Gaza? Does anyone have any idea what the US is doing, of what they are supposed to be saying.
Meanwhile, Trump is up on the roof, losing his mind.
I don’t think America can withstand another three years of this without breaking apart. Yet, people are blindly supporting a raving pedophile because ?
Regarding your last couple of questions...it seems to me that Trump represents their "grandpa shouting from the porch" part of their ego. With Trump, grandpa got off the porch and is in the white house attempting to implement all of his "ideas" to improve things. Problem is that, grandpa, is addled, doesn't think things through and has zero relevant experience to help him implement them or realize that the ideas actually suck.
Gramps, who wanted very much to play president again, is now both bored with and agitated by the position. Golfing is a pleasant enough diversion, and cheating at golf makes it pleasantly spicy. But now, to take his mind off the pressure of having to president, he recalls his days as A Builder of Things - big, beautiful things, the biggest, most beautiful, many have said. The extravagant, czarist ballroom is turning out to be lots of fun, and reminds him of when he was young. So he roams the roof on his swollen legs, remembers the old times, wants them back. What else can he build on the WH, and will his building mean he never really dies?
I so agree with your comment about Trump being bored with the Presidency. I swear that some of this shix he does is just because he likes to stir things up because it's "interesting" and holds his attention.
My husband had stage 4 melanoma. He was dying before our eyes. In a Hail Mary, his doctors at MGH Boston got him into a Phase 1 drug trial using a personalized mRNA cancer vaccine. He was cured. Not in remission. Cured. That was in 2019. All of these mRNA cancer trials are now being canceled by these evil morons, taking hope away from families like mine. These is so much blood on their hands.
“We’re moving beyond the limitations of mRNA"
What does that mean? Because all I heard was "RFK Jr. has stocks in a company that can't actually compete but will pretend it will."
Our genes are made of DNA and RNA. I wonder if RFK knows that. What the hell is he talking about, it makes no sense whatsoever, this man is a homicidal maniac. We're going to move beyond what's in our genes to ??? and then PROFIT.
I believe the goal is to kill people.
But only those who have clearly not drunk the Kool-aid and genuflected to the bleached-blond, combed over senile old man. Maybe dement is more accurate than senile, but I'm not a psychiatrist.
Senile, demented; six of one, half dozen of the other…:)
I’m not sure they’re sparing their own ilk. Usually they’re the ones who suffer the most. See the religious people in Texas dying of measles. Farmers in red states paying a heave price, and Medicaid and SNAP cuts that will ultimately hurt them more than in blue states.
Bottom line: Our only hope is if they die out faster than we do, then problem solved!….:)
Here's the problem: their outrage increases when they're screwed over by these policies and god only knows why they don't blame the person creating the policy. Instead they blame whatever convenient scapegoat they can find, rather than admit they were wrong.
It's suicidal and stupid, but here we are.
Agreed. Their magic power is making their low information voters believe every demonic and asinine policy is the work of the deep state run by a cabal of elites including Obama, Clinton and Soros, when the calls are coming from inside the house.
They’re just too stupid to know better, and if they do, they don’t care. As Mark Twain famously said, “it’s easier to fool a man, than to convince him, he’s ever been fooled!”…:)
HMMMM, scapegoating, lying and never admitting mistakes. Who does that sound like?
...and it does seem that the Grim Reaper is the most assured way to reduce the numbers for the Felon. Well, remembering the old Toyota commercial, You asked for it, you got it, the Felon!
Both can be true, David.
If you say so, my medical knowledge is limited to bandaids and the German equivalent of 911 (if my BiL is out of town).
Eugenics is the policy -
Yup. And when the MAGAe start dropping like flies, I will remind them that MAHA is what they signed up for.
Assuming, of course, I don't die.
During the height of COVID, it was cold comfort thinking that probably more of them than us would die. The thought almost seemed immoral. It still does, to me. They’re supposed to be the heartless s.o.b.’s, not us.
I fall back on voters are morally and intellectually responsible for their choices. Trump was clear on what RFK Jr's role would be in his cabinet during the campaign. The fact that RFK Jr is a heroin addict, serial adulterer and has a brain worm did not prevent a plurality of the electorate from voting for Trump. And if voters weren't aware of all of this, it was by choice. 49.8% of the electorate chose what's about to happen, and I believe they should fully experience the consequences of their votes. I think that's very moral.
Yeah, I admit I had a bad attitude on the anti Covid vaccine people thinking they wanted to solve this with herd immunity - I was like cool, put them all in the same space and go for it. I'm a little bit better of a person, but not much :-)
The virus didn't ask anyone how they voted. It's not just the MAGA people who died of COVID (and we know that their Red States got hit hardest). It was everybody on the bus with them, everyone in their households. There are countless stories of immune-compromised people whose spouses, families, colleagues, etc., adamantly refused the vaccine, regardless of its efficacy. They worshipped Trump first and last and they were forcing everyone around them to join in the risk and dangers.
"Hoping" MAGAs (or their children) die because they refuse vaccines doesn't make it happen. I guess I don't specifically "hope" for that, but I do want them to start to see the consequences of their actions. Of course, there are one or two MAGAs out there who see sacrificing their children to preventable diseases as acceptable, in their devotion to Trump.
If you avoid them, that's a big heads up there, immunity wise. I also do that as much as possible in my community. CoVid taught me that last time. We might as well use precautions ala 2020 pre-vaccine and stock up. Next he will be banning Paxlovid for all us seniors
I believe you’re right!…:)
It's the only thing that makes sense. RFK Jr. must know that grinding vaccine research and availability down to a halt is going to have a fatal impact on the United States. And since he knows, that tells me that people needlessly dying is something he's willing to accept.
You’ll get no argument from me…:)
Make the US dependable on others county's medicine and science Yeah! :)
Of course! He is the Eugenics poster child. If anything, I wish it would infect him. Good riddance....but that's the survival of the fittest little Bobby. Deal.
Robert Kennedy JR, is a terrible human being. He sold heroin out of his room at Harvard, and he drove his 3rd wife to hang herself in their house. He shouldn't have a job of any in the federal government, let alone be head of HHS.
He may be one of those people who thinks the problem with the world is that there are too many (poor) people. He probably believes if we can kill off a million of them, it will be better for the ruling class.
I think the world would be better off with fewer narcissistic sociopaths, but that doesn't mean I want the federal government to devise a way to kill them off. In other words, if we assume that killing people is the goal and that approach becomes normalized, there's nothing stopping a future federal government from going after...oh, white evangelicals. Once Pandora's Box is opened, look out.
But since he preaches that he won't be proactive or vaccinate....he may yet be a casualty too to the Master Race. Wouldn't that be special?
Agree. Add to this boneheaded decision the cuts to research funding, impending efforts to strangle Medicaid and Medicare, deport the primary providers of home health care and nursing homes, cancel food assistance, throw anyone they don't like into detention centers to rot, keep the "wrong" people from voting for any change and completely abandon notion that our government is of the people, by the people and for the people... and the goal becomes quite clear.
Just look at life expectancy in Mississippi vs New York and see our future. Our poor, poor grandchildren.
I agree..tax cuts for the rich; social security & Medicare for middle class survivors as long as there are fewer.
It worries me, it really does. RFK Jr is a homicidal maniac, and I'm not sure the people surrounding him realize it.
They will probably kill their own. Odd.
Agreed and well said. Unfortunately, RFK Jr. and his ilk are just a bunch of cheap snake oil salesman getting rich off of a graft, while real people suffer and die.
I doubt it has even dawned on him or he has enough self awareness to understand this fact (see Samoa, Texas, and the measles).
And what makes matters worse is that too many people associate the name with experience and intelligence; yet here we are.
Personally, In think the wrong Kennedy died in that plane crash; and as a result, the rest of us are paying a heavy price!…::)
I think RFKJr thinks our genes are made up of little Sydney Sweeneys. That would be in keeping with his focus and intelligence.
If even a basic biology course was a prerequisite to this guy getting a diploma before heading to law school, he obviously slept through it.
He's a Kennedy. They have to let him in law school.
His anti-vax legions heard "prophet" when he was really saying "profit".
I am holding my breath & worrying that bird flu or some other unknown virus hits while this idiot is HHS director. Because lots of people will die. And it seems we have no way of stopping him. Imagine your life right now without the covid vaccine
Kate, You mean our genes are not made out of what Sydney Sweeney wears? :)
MGH is a wonderful hospital, and I'm grateful your husband was able to receive care there.
As for the cancellation of mRNA trials, never forget that 49.8% of the electorate either willingly ignored Trump's promise to elevate RFK Jr. to a position of responsibility or heard Trump clearly and didn't care. If memory serves, Ginny, you're in Florida. Next time you go to Publix, look around and remember a majority of the shoppers chose what's about to happen.
Thanks, Tim. MGH is a wonderful hospital and we are very lucky to not only live in the Boston area 20 miles away from it, but also live in a state with very progressive health care laws. Our 3 year long battle with melanoma was traumatic for us and our girls, but we did not have to go into medical debt for his life to be saved. I have been a MassHole all my life, and will not even visit Florida until this madness is over. I dwill never understand how anyone could vote for the DirtyOldMan.
There is a "Reel" on Facebook in which a young man asks what is presumably a boomer-aged Walmart shopper "Which nation did the US fight for independence?" The woman's answer was a tentative "Vietnam??" No wonder we ended up with this ridiculous administration.
We are so screwed.
But alas, those who you asked may yet be the anti-vax casualties themselves. Oddly how this double edged sword can work.....and cruelly, they are the ones that are "cullible". Ain't this sick?
I am a MassHole, too. My wife was a MGB for surgery last month. We’re lucky to live where we do.
Tim, Ginny, I say the same thing daily.🥂
The only downside to New England is the harsh winters. But I'd rather deal with that than deal than a MAGA-infected state with warm winters.
I am a Masshole, too. Have lived here for 10 years, lived in Fl prior to that SO glad to leave that sorry excuse for a state! Love Ma, great healthcare,I have been treated for breast cancer,in remission now. The state does things for the good of their residents, free breakfast and lunch in schools and the billionaires tax has brought in revenue for the state
The winters aren’t as harsh as they used to be, which isn’t good.
I am in a MAGA-infected state and it is hot. Sorry to say, we must go inside to our energy blasting air conditioners that carry droplets, but if we, the vaxxers and science believers, can stay proactive....our little petri-dish of a state may provide its own eugenic solution (good Lord look at that verbage!). In Texas with climate deniers in power we are unfortunately giving a double whammy to our vulnerable with natural disasters, Oh! and school shootings too. Stay in Mass....eat your apples, enjoy your safe beaches, wonderful information systems and be healthy. Cold weather is refreshing and it does kill germs outside.
I have to laugh at "Masshole". My daughter went to Bridgewater State, she played softball there. The families took good care of her, since we were in NY and couldn't get to all the games. I have good memories of MA. Edited to add: I'm glad that your husband was able to get the cutting edge care he needed.
Many of them—especially lefties—voted for him because of RFK.
Welcome to the new dark ages. Brush up on your alchemy and prayers.
The dumbing down of America is almost complete.
Oh, I'm guessing things can and will get worse.
Oh yes. Count on it. Jerome Powell's term is up next spring. The effects of the every changing tariffs are just beginning to be felt. The convicted child molester Maxwell will get her pardon. Stephen Miller's bloodlust for migrants hasn't hit every community—yet. A cat 5 hurricane hasn't hit yet, or a devastating US earthquake, or major tornadoes.
And the MAGAe will cheer all of it on as they fall behind on their bills and their health suffers.
Don't forget the potential for a non-domestic terrorist attack. If ever there was a time for our enemies to strike, we are there and they have to be salivating
Except for a small little island of bulwarks.
Be advised the dumber downers are the most vulnerable in all aspects....and given a health denial, will be the first to go. It is what it is.
Don’t forget the leeches!
And the blood-letting for the treatment of the humors.
Dear oh dear how stupid America has become, and it only took Rupert 30 years to do it.
Docs actually use leeches today to help break down the charred skin of burn victims and help blood flow to damaged tissue. It’s creepy and cool. But yes, can bloodletting be in our future? As for the rest, yep, absolutely! We are in trouble. I wonder at what point to start masking again.
There's something more sinister here. Bill Cassidy knew better and still voted to confirm Kennedy. Please. Anybody explain this.
Ginny-Your family's miracle of modern medicine cure is very encouraging and hopeful. How did so many Americans become such dopes and ignoramuses turning against life saving science and medicine? The stupidity is mind boggling--evil morons as you call them.
Because they are science (and history) illiterate and believe what the want—and have long been encouraged to do so. Anyone with an education is an "elite." Not the people with money to buy politicians. In Cambodia under Pol Pot, wearing glasses was a sign of being elitist and they were interned and either killed or sent to work as farm laborers. It's willful stupidity, not just ignorance, which really does make it evil.
I recently read a Quora piece that posited that trump voters were uneducated. There were dozens of responses from allegedly well educated people with at least one graduate degree, some with multiple. All trump supporters, but most interesting was the underlying message in nearly all of their responses: they hate Democrats.
Oh very much so. There are plenty of “smart” people who voted for him and for all the GOP. All the GOP RW propaganda and vitriol for the past thirty plus years has succeeded in portraying Dems as the epitome of all evil. For many of these people it’s either their religion or their greed (or both) motivating them.
I watched my father die from pancreatic cancer (at age 60, never smoked). mRNA research meant that maybe some other son, daughter, spouse...wouldn't have to go through what we did.
I'm so sorry for your loss. My grandmother died of pancreatic cancer. No one--and no family--should have to go through that. Cancer sucks. The fact that these monsters are taking away access to promising break throughs is beyond the pale.
My brother died of melanoma in 2012. The breakthroughs on treating it, like MNRA with your husband, along with other previously untreatable cancers are amazing. Too bad the US will fall behind in this kind of medical care & research. I can only hope these scientists continue their work in other countries like France who are offering support.
I'm so sorry for your loss.
This. These dipshits don't understand the mRNA vaccines are tailorable cures for a range of diseases including those of INDIVIDUAL people. It's a flexible and much more easily implemented technology than the blunt force approach we've used to date. Why we're listening to anyone other than the experts is beyond me...literally could be a major key to solving a many disease vectors moving forward.
I'm looking forward to the day when you show up to the airport and everyone on a flight draws straws to see who will be flying the plane, regardless of their ability to do so. Not a lot different than listening to HS graduates and college drop outs on Tik Tok. Or cranks who found they can make money by being cranks, for cranks sake.
And RFK Jr. can claim he stopped dye coloring in cereals! whoop ti do!
All those sugary sodas and candies are going to be healthy when they're gray!
I'm so happy to hear about your husband's recovery from a an extremely serious form of cancer. Your husband's personalized cancer treatment is the future of most if not all cancer treatment: individualized and in accordance with the unique characteristics of each tumor, in each individual. The personalized mRNA vaccine enlists the patient's own immune response to those tumor unique features. As opposed to the blunt instrument of chemotherapy. The technology is brilliantly designed to target just the cancer. With a prod by the tumor-specific vaccine, the patient's own body heals itself.
But of course, the necessary knowledge of the human genome to construct this level of personalized mRNA to treat cancers, as well as mRNA triggered immunity to viral pathogens, was the product of decades of open, funded and unfettered scientific research, all of which is now being threatened with extinction. By the HHS of RFK, Jr. A secretary with no medical training but a "background" in half-baked superstitious quackery, and a determination to undo the greatest innovations in medical achievements over the past 50 many decades. And stunt what should be even more great advances. Your husband's triumphant recovery over melanoma was a great achievement of science. How wonderful for you both!
So glad your husband recovered.
I don't mean to quibble, but I am a biologist, and I think it's absolutely a requirement that the most accurate information about the mRNA vaccine be expounded. Ben Parker is correct that the COVID mRNA vaccine trains the human immune system to fight a specific feature of the virus. However, it does not train itself against the mRNA that is injected. What happens is that the mRNA in the vaccine mimics our own messenger RNA (mRNA), but it codes for an important chunk of the spike protein that is on the surface of the virus. The human machinery translates this mRNA just as it translates its own mRNA to produce this benign protein and only this protein, and the immune system then trains itself against the produced spike protein. Nothing could be safer.
Thank you, Mark. I am a physician and I was just about to write the same correction about what the mRNA does. We need to be accurate. But the error does not detract from the main point— these are very effective and safe vaccines. Heaven forbid that we forego this technology.
Bruce, you are absolutely correct. When the mRNA vaccine came out, I was amazed at the new technology. I also teach an evolutionary medicine course, and so I've kept up with the progress and the safety concerns. Given that it's also the safest method of vaccine, this makes absolutely no sense. (Unless the point is to destroy American science and a lot of Americans along the way.)
Thanks for your detailed correction. For those who are interested, Nature published a history of mRNA vaccines in 2021. Research on the potential for using mRNA as a vaccine started in the mid-to-late 1980s, over 30 years before the emergence of Covid-19. It is just this sort of basic research that Trump, Kennedy and Congressional Republicans are hollowing out. We don't know what basic research discoveries today will become the treatments/cures of tomorrow and now, we'll never know.
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-02483-w
Absolutely. At least my impression is that mRNA development has progressed enough, and enough foreign countries are researching it now, that if a new HHS secretary reverses course in the next four years, we’ll hopefully only have a pause and slowdown (with some regression). That’s still utterly insane, and the deciders should rot in hell for it. But it’s not the worst decision HHS(+DOGE) has made with regards to promising new treatments — many others have effectively been cancelled and erased from existence.
mRNA as a vector for vaccines and other treatments, and gene-editing with CRISPR, are, in my opinion as a biologist and an educator, the two most important scientific breakthroughs in the last 15 years. That we as a country would turn our back on these amazing science and medicine tools is just gobsmacking. rfk is a menace.
I’m not a subject-matter expert like you two are, but I’m not sure the error *didn’t* detract from the main point. mRNA is undoubtedly safer and more versatile than live-attenuated vaccines, for instance, but there are many other kinds of vaccines. It’s so promising because it’s a biotechnological platform, not a tweak or even “next generation version” of earlier vaccines.
Exactly!!
I also came here to say this. I am a public health physician. Mark is correct.
It is also quite frightening that we are not working on this technology for flu. COVID was horrible and killed millions of people - but its overall mortality (death rate for those infected) was way less than 5%. Bird flu right now has a mortality of about 50% - a 10x increase. The mRNA technology allows us to manufacture a vaccine much quicker than traditional methods - we need only get the genome sequence, isolate the portion that is essential to the virus but doesn't harm humans by itself, and insert it into the vaccine vehicle. If bird flu develops a way to directly transmit from human to human (thought to be only a few mutations away) then we are in existential trouble. The mRNA technology is our best hope. The next pandemic is not an "if" - it's a "when".
Mark, Bruce, Laura--thank you all so much for pointing this out! Dumb mistake by me. I've made a correction. Much appreciated. Y'all are the best.
Ben, Not dumb at all. Unless you're steeped in the mechanisms of molecular biology, DNA transcription, and mRNA translation to make proteins, it will be opaque about how an mRNA vaccine works. We all just want the public to completely understand how safe and effective this new delivery system for training the immune system against new pathogens is.
Thank u all! I am much better informed.
Could I summarise via the analogy of old vaccines vs mRNA were like a mass bomb being dropped as a blunt force instrument vs some targeted missiles? Best I could come up with, please correct me!
Two things are special about the mRNA vaccine - there is no chance the organism can reproduce because the vaccine only makes one protein component. The mRNA is the code to make the protein and only the code for that one protein is incorporated into a non-living particle. That particle is then taken up by the host cells and our own cells make only the coded protein. So no chance of a runaway infection from the vaccine. Also, once you know the code of the target organism, you can inject the piece of code you want into the vaccine vehicle - development is much faster than traditional vaccines.
Excellent summary!
Pretty good!!
The basic premise of their justification for cancelling is also bogus. They claim that the COVID mRNA vaccine is not effective against COVID, because vaccinated people still contract COVID. This is also RFKJr's fundamental misunderstanding or more likely lie. Vaccines do not prevent people from getting infected. Vaccines prime the immune system so that when you do get infected, your immune system fights off the infection faster. This reduces the symptoms that are experienced. For some viruses (e.g., measles), the immune system is primed by the vaccine to make antibodies that prevent symptoms from happening altogether in most people.
So if you're vaccinated against measles and you're in a room with a person who has measles, you get infected, but your immune system fights off the virus so fast and effectively that you never develop symptoms. The antibodies against the COVID spike proteins do not stimulate as effective a response. So vaccinated people still develop symptoms from COVID infections, but much milder than if they were unvaccinated. I have gotten every COVID vaccination, and I contracted COVID for the first time that I know of in February of this year. I just thought I had a mild cold, but I tested myself and sure enough it was COVID. I felt like I had a cold for one day and was perfectly fine for the rest of the infection. I tested positive for 14 days and vigorously exercised every one of those days, feeling in great shape!!
I have an autoimmune disorder which makes me more susceptible. And to treat it I’m on a TNF-α inhibitor, which in 2020 was thought to also be likely to make one more susceptible to Covid and/or bad Covid outcomes (although I’m not sure what the thinking is today on that, I haven’t seen newer research).
I can function (with a lower quality of life) without the drug, so I went off the drug for almost two years during the worst of the pandemic, and I was second in line for the vaccine — being under 50, I was behind elderly folks who also had underlying health issues of concern. (Fun detail: I was supposedly the 10,000th person to be vaccinated at the Javits Center, the largest vaccine-distribution center in New York. Probably not really — they didn’t stop the lines to make sure the count was right before administering my shot, and some people were probably already getting their second shots by that point, but they celebrated it as if I were, so that’s fun.)
I kept up with the most-aggressive booster schedule and I didn’t contract anything symptomatic or that I tested positive for until early 2023 — ironically, the day before we were going to leave for an annual cruise that we had last been on in March 2020; it had been the very last cruise ship in the world to make a previously-scheduled disembarkation just minutes before the Do Not Sail order went into place. (It’s a geeky cruise and we’ve always had several virologists, immunologists and infectious-disease physicians vacationing on board, so in 2020 we were the best-informed group on the high seas.)
My husband got a nasty case between my induction and second vaccine doses in early 2021. I double-masked and we threw open every window and outer door the moment he heard about his exposure (brr!), and despite living on top of each other in a small Manhattan apartment, I managed to avoid contracting it that time.
But when I finally got it two years later, I got Paxlovid and had the classic response for someone like me at that time: a quick remission for several days, then a wretchedly uncomfortable (but not-clinically-concerning) rebound right after the course finished. I did daily tests just because I was interested¹ and it was fascinating to see a bright-magenta test line go in 48 hours to nothing, then four days later when the Paxlovid was done return and eventually give me the darkest test line I ever had.²
I got the H1N1 flu in 2009, and that was the worst I’d ever felt from a respiratory infection. That Paxlovid rebound was a close second, though (if it had had gastric symptoms too like the flu, it would have been worse).
Since then I had one more bout earlier this year. I got a course of Paxlovid again just to be on the safe side. (Pro Tip: go to the Paxlovid web site and get your discount code *before* you fill your prescription, it can make a hundreds of dollars copay disappear now that the federal government doesn’t cover it!) It felt like a moderately-bad cold and there was no rebound that time.
Some people would look at this record and say “see, the vaccine doesn’t really work”. I look at the same record and see nothing but the hospital beds (three different times) I *didn’t* need.
—
¹ Don’t worry, I wasn’t overusing tests during a shortage; I was one of those who was provided with enough tests to use daily for work purposes, and I usually worked from home anyway, so I had a surplus that would have expired otherwise.
² The intensity of the test line of a lateral-flow test isn’t provably significant, and varies due to many factors, including specimen collection technique. But as I self-administered and was very careful to test the same method each time with a mirror and timers (and I used the throat-nostril method used elsewhere rather than the nostril-only method approved in the US) I think the intensity was likely at least somewhat significant. It’s clinical data that tells a story, anyway.
In case anyone’s curious, the second sentence I wrote above prompted me to check out the research on TNF-α inhibitors and Covid. It turns out that suspending my drug — though correctly cautious at the time — probably removed protection from a bad outcome of Covid more than it increased my susceptibility.
Which makes sense as it tends to suppress immune response in general in a way that usually does more to prevent symptoms of infectious disease from causing dangerous “cytokine storms” than it does to make one more susceptible to the infections that can cause this. In fact, due to this characteristic, these drugs were once considered as potential prophylactics for first-line responders to a pandemic flu.
The evidence from Covid makes the case for such application even stronger, but these are very expensive drugs to produce (they’re “biologics”, whose cost can run into the hundreds of thousands of dollars a year), so are unlikely to actually find such use until (and unless) “biosimilar” generics can bring the costs way down.
Thanks, that is important.
It looks like four or five of us all had the same thought and wrote up replies, but we each took the basic biological correction in different directions. It underlines the amazing potential of mRNA technology as a platform. HHS’s decision in retrospect will be viewed by history as poorly as if DARPA had killed the Internet in 1988.
If anyone is interested, here is a great piece from Derek Thompson in 2021 about mRNA, how it came to defeat COVID-19, and its future potential (before we let a brain wormed drug addict psycho loose to destroy our medical research).
"The dream of mRNA persevered in part because its core principle was tantalizingly simple, even beautiful: The world’s most powerful drug factory might be inside all of us."
Gift link:
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/03/how-mrna-technology-could-change-world/618431/?gift=ygZxkQSi8gb4BjJT3xAcOBdYQyY8q3nlJkO0ie1CSrU&utm_source=copy-link&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=share
Unfortunately Kennedy is running the Health department and nothing could be deadlier.
When I watched that interview my first thought, “Was this job worth giving up any professional integrity you may have had?”
Power is quite the aphrodisiac, along with money. That's the only explanation I can come up with these days. People like Hassett are just giving their souls away to have power and/or money.
I may also add that Hassett was not that good or bright to begin with per my comment below. He punched above his weight by ingratiating himself with conservative inc, doesn’t matter who is in charge.
Did he have any? He seems like he was always a tool of Conservative Inc.
Trump has a clever policy of giving big jobs to people who don't deserve it and I think it has to do with: 1) They become highly indebted to him 2) They will be somewhat incompetent and won't outshine him 3) He values loyalty over expertise
While I don't doubt your reasoning, I believe an additional criteria he has is 4) he deliberately tries to pick the absolute worst person possible for the role. Whoever will upset the "libs" the most. You look at his cabinet appointments, and in nearly all cases you're hard-pressed to think of a worse person for that position. They really are breathtakingly terrible.
And don't forget -4) they will never contradict anything he says or does
Indeed
The same could be asked of every "normie"/quasi-normie cabinet member - Rubio, Bessent, the secretary of agriculture (I can never remember her name), Burghum, etc. Of course, the list of normies in the Trump 2.0 administration is rather short, but each one made a calculated decision to value political power over personal integrity. While that is enough to warrant condemnation, it makes sense from a realpolitik standpoint. The normies no longer have a seat at the table in today's GOP, and it's not like those who have maintained their integrity (i.e. Kinzinger, Cheney, Romney) have grown fat from a diet of board seats and other non-governmental employment opportunities. If you're a republican and want to continue operating in government and government-adjacent roles, you need to jump on the MAGA train.
Canada, get ready for vaccine tourism. If you'll let us across the border.
And that's another thing! 91% of the public supports vaccines and thinks they're safe. Who exactly are these restrictions on vaccines for?
The message emphasized by the Oath-Breaker & Robert F. Crackhead is that government information cannot be trusted. No sources are required to support their statements:
- "...today’s Jobs Numbers were RIGGED in order to make the Republicans, and ME, look bad"
- "...the data show these vaccines fail to protect effectively against upper respiratory infections like COVID and flu"
This is the MAGA/MAHA point: If government data cannot be trusted, government cannot be trusted.
Impeachment is what should be pursued by all in Congress who continue to support our Constitution and "the American way".
MAGA now stands for May Assholes Govern Always.
K sozhaleniyu, pravda.
No capisco, although I think it is a compliment...🙄
Upon occasion, I slip into Russian. What I wrote means: "Unfortunately, that's true."
So many years in the Navy as a Russian cryptolinguist, I guess.
Which will happen when the Democrats gain full control of the House. We need to make that happen!
Absolyutno!
My wife and I were discussing this very topic last night.
Our next door neighbors moved to Vancouver just last week. She's an ER doc and they didn't want to raise their young children here. Especially their daughter. And now the U.S. has one fewer competent physician.
Good on her, but man that sucks for this country. How many qualified and expert doctors, scientists, and other researchers is this regime driving away with their medieval thinking? Sigh...
They were incredibly close (physically and emotionally) neighbors/friends so it's a personal loss. And I agree that it's one of many, many tangible losses for the greater good of the U.S. I have training in psychology and if the U.S. were a human, I'd be doing a suicide assessment.
as a resident of BC, I'm glad - sorry for you guys on so many levels and ways and over-all and... kinda scary tho, for us, now that the meth lab is exploding
I've commented a couple times about the increasingly attractive proposition of opening a vaccine business in Nuevo Progreso (I'm in TX).
If I was Canada I wouldn't allow anyone across the border who isn't vaccinated. During Covid, there was a hockey player named Tyler Bertuzzi who played for Detroit at the time (go Red Wings!!!) who refused to be vaccinated, so he wasn't allowed to go to Canada for games -- and his wife had just given birth. The team fined him and didn't pay him for those games, but good on les habitants for closing the border to him.
Can we all agree that there is no plan. There was no plan. That DOGE was not about efficiency, it was a performance piece. And all the kings men are on board with everything - so ready with the lies, all is ok. Any complaints are TDS.
There absolutely was a plan, just not what they said it was. It was never about waste, fraud, and abuse. The plan was always to just decimate the government. That was is. It was about crippling the institutions to the point they become ineffective and can be sidelined like the BLS. Elon got the bonus of being able to destroy every investigation into him and destroy every institution that would have been tasked with opening one against him. Destruction was the plan.
And corruption… pay to play
Yes, so much of what has happened was outlined in Project 2025, you know the blueprint the media credulously reported that Trump had "no knowledge of or nothing to do with" because he said so.
The Plan was to unplug every institution of government until all that is left is The Will of Trump.
maybe so.
DOGE had a plan. Musk thought he could privatize weather services and make money from it. And if Musk could build anything, it might have worked, but the days when his companies built good things quickly are long gone.
Actually there was a plan all along. It’s Project 2025, and depending who is asked, it is 42,%, or 80% in progress. That is the goal. And the fools who voted for Felon Trump need to see what they have done, and own it.
There's a plan. It's called Project 2025 and it's associated mini-plans such as Project Esther.
Those plans are in full flow and no longer need Trump as their frontman so they'll continue after he's gone.
They can be stopped when those in charge (Democrats) reverse the loyalty essays in the hiring applications and return to the Civil Service rules regarding Federal employees. Sack those who put this heinous project into action, and whenever possible, not if, put them in jail.
"He’s not the sort of guy you’d expect to join in an authoritarian purge. But that’s precisely what he’s done."
He's exactly the sort of person I would expect to join an authoritarian purge. Yes, he's a coward. But he's a special kind of coward. He's the sort of coward who went to a Quaker college and prays to the Lord. So he is convinced he is a "good person," even though he lies constantly and effortlessly and does things that hurt people. The republican party is filled with these kinds of cowards.
Yep. He’s weak and avaricious.
There are a couple of lines in Hemingway's "For Whom the Bell Tolls" that go like this:
"But are there not many fascists in your country?"
"There are many who do not know they are fascists but will find it out when the time comes."
If he doesn't know it yet himself, all the rest of us now do.
Recommended reading: "Who Goes MAGA?"
https://www.techdirt.com/2025/07/08/who-goes-maga/
Thanks for the link. Will check it out.
The only thing that could cheer me up about the state of vaccine research/policy would be RFK contracting smallpox.
LOL, but how would we know the difference?
Why not something more immediately lethal?
And not contagious!
I’d say it’s more likely to be melanoma. Talk about irony!
Speaking of men (and women) who are not dumb, how can it be that America’s elite universities, Columbia and Brown and the University of Virginia among them, with their elite faculties and their elite administrators, a collection, presumably, of some of the best minds in the country, how can it be that they are not smart enough to realize that a deal made with Donald Trump is not a deal at all, but rather, at best, only a temporary reprieve? Trump has a long and well-known history of screwing anyone and everyone unwitting or unlucky enough to have made a deal with him, from Atlantic City to the City of Lights. Yes, granted, Donald Trump is a famous dealmaker. But he also has an infamously long history of not honoring the deals he makes—and for one simple (and what should be obvious) reason: Donald Trump is not an honorable man. He cheats. He lies. And sooner or later, he reneges on his deals. Routinely. Donald Trump lies even when the truth would better serve his ends—because he doesn’t know how to do anything other than lie. And he has lied to Columbia and Brown and the University of Virginia (and Harvard, too, no doubt) same as he lied to the students he so casually fleeced through his anything-but-elite Trump University. It follows, then, that the deals Brown and Columbia and Virginia have made with Donald Trump will most likely come to nothing—or worse. When it serves his interest to renege on those deals, Trump will, most likely, bait and switch and smear and lie and sue and lie some more—and then renege. So, can someone please explain to me how it can be that all the brilliant minds at all these elite universities do not know this? How can they not know what is almost certain to become of their deals with Donald Trump? How can they not know there is gambling in Casablanca? How can they be so blind, so willfully blind, to the long history of the man they are dealing with? The deals these elite universities have made are deals with a devil. How can they not know that?
They probably do know it. And saw this as a short term fix.
What’s somewhat amusing to me is that Trump hated NAFTA, so he “renegotiated” it during his first term and renamed it to put the US first. It was substantially the same deal, but he was crowing about his achievement and liked his awkward new name, USMCA.
In Trump 2.0, he decided that the US no longer has a free trade arrangement with its largest partners and started issuing threats and slapping tariffs on Canada and Mexico.
In other words, he broke his own deal and maybe doesn’t even remember having made it, (like he forgot that he hired Jerome Powell in his first term).
The boards of directors of these colleges tend to be made up of rich donors or important politicians. They agree completely with Trump. They would rather give him money to burn, literally burn in a pile, than let foreign students get it.
Yes, they don't care what all the great minds their universities employ actually think. The capitulation is disgusting, demoralizing, and depressing.
Foreign students aren’t getting money. Foreign students are giving money; they pay full tuition, no US foreign aid. This helps support financial aid to lower income US students.
If you remember Enron, those who tanked the company thought they were the smartest people in the room. That’s this new crop of over educated, but lacking in common sense people in Felon Trump’s administration. They know exactly what they are doing because they see a future where they are the new rulers of higher education; get on the boards of the colleges and universities they vanquished. Ran out of time with Enron. Are running out of time now, I hope.
lotta criticism in Canada of new prime minister for not reaching a 'deal' with the US - I'd be alarmed if he did, given trump's trick record
Reneging on deals is not only Trump's business model, it is, as LE would say, his "MO."
It's because every smart person is stupid as well. We all have our blind spots. They're so smart they think they'll figure it out, and if they can't, they'll buy time to figure it out.
But they won't fight. That's someone else's job. They're preserving what they can so when things get better, their schools and most importantly their personal reputations/legacy will show just how smart they were.
But really, it's how they can rationalize giving up everything they ever professed to care about. There's plenty of high achievers who believe the work they did to reach a certain level in their careers and society was the sacrifice they needed to provide for their communities and prove their worthiness. They forget that those "sacrifices" only bought them the opportunity to prove their value and worthiness in those roles. And because they've always chosen to take on battles that made sense to them and they're sure they can win, they didn't realize they were weak cowards who shouldn't lead. Because, "Look at where I am and what I've done. I must be smart."
dunning-kroeger applies to smart people too
On the bright side, Hassett has 1400% of his integrity intact.
The guy who gave us the wonderful book “Dow 36,000” back in 1999 and touted investing in comic books is trying so hard to be the next Fed chair, and it’s probably what this country deserves for electing the dumbest American to be President. If it’s not Kevin Hassett, the next Fed Chair should be Ron Vara (Peter Navarro with a fake mustache).
💯
I remember when that book came out. I was a tech entrepreneur in the dot com world, so I of course wanted to believe in number go up, but it was obvious even to me that it was a load of crap.
DJT on the roof of the White House is not quite as compelling as the Beatles doing their final concert on the Apple Records rooftop. In fact it's not compelling at all. (Except perhaps for the number of people below who secretly wished that he would jump.) He makes for a lousy John Lennon stand-in. Which reminded me all the while how much I wish two specific people were still alive to offer us their views on DJT and the MAGA phenomenon: John Lennon and George Carlin. (On the former, I'd settle for George Harrison and both his dry, acerbic wit and his habit of speaking unvarnished truth. On the latter, it is clear that Bill Maher is by no means an adequate substitute.)
Except imagine if it were Biden up on the roof shouting into the wind. The stories would be endless and there would be a call for an immediate psych eval and hold. The NYT alone would have multiple stories on its front page for weeks. Weeks! They would write editorials demanding his resignation and excoriating every Dem for not denouncing him. A feast they would dine on.
But Trump, nah, nothing to see here.
It's just one more piece of evidence of the political media's incompetence and bias.
it hurts my head to contemplate the difference...and that there IS a difference...
Trump and Lennon do have one thing in common: they both physically and verbally abused women.
I also nominate Bill Hicks as a Carlin backup.
When I saw pictures of Trump on the White House roof, I recalled years ago standing at the foot of Los Angeles City Hall with other Vietnam War protesters, chanting “Jump, Yorty, jump!”.
Come on, Stephen Miller will not let Trump back away from rounding up the farm workers. The Secretary of Agriculture recently said that these workers doing backbreaking work would be replaced by people on Medicaid. And DeSantis wanted to use kids to replace them—I mean think how much fun it is to go pumpkin picking in the fall and blueberry picking in the spring! Same thing, right?
We are nation in regression.
HHS' abandonment of 22 mRNA research projects matches the action of the orange narcissist-felon when in his first term, arriving at the White House, he discharged the Obama team tasked with creating effective plans to counter the coming pandemics.
Those pandemics are coming. If it isn't the looming bird flu it could be something much worse. Another element of preparedness has been removed.
The medical-research vacuum created by the wanton abandonment of science will not only pose the dangers of dire consequences for our children, grandchildren and beyond. It will stimulate the sane governments of the world to step up. Nature hates a vacuum. Meantime, the US slides further down the tubes.
MAGA: Make America Grovel Again.
Not only that, but the cutting back on intelligence gathering means that the eyes and ears that can pick up on a threat like this—in addition to all the man-made threats—makes us more vulnerable.
It's headbanging. Many of the people who voted for Trump simply refused to believe that he would do so much damage. They remember "how good it was" before the pandemic, blamed Covid and its impact solely on Joe, and believed it couldn't be any worse than what we saw from 1/20/17 until 1/20/21.
If we stop testing for COVID, the numbers will go down. See, problem solved! 😀
Hey, we could cure cancer, too!
I was thinking the same thing. Those scientists whose grants were just canceled will find work for other governments, possibly (probably?) even China.
My stepdaughter's husband is a cancer research scientist with his own lab at one of our top universities. He said that other countries are pretty far behind where we are in terms of R&D. They will hire our scientists because they see opportunity—and people need jobs—but it won't be the same. The loss of US leadership in science will be devastating not only to our own nation and health but to the world.
Yeah, but I bet he used "trans" in his reports. Can we really afford such woke science? 😀 /s
Get your Covid boosters while you still can! They may be your only (regrettably partial) protection against the next pandemic since HHS Secretary Death will be relying on Herd Immunity and Ivermectin alone to solve the next viral crisis!
Kevin Hassett the wunderkind has been wrong at least since 1999: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dow_36,000
JVL wrote a whole column on this idiot.
Trump is under a lot of pressure because the world now perceives him as a pedophile. Being a rapist was OK with most people because he was a celebrity, and everyone knows celebrities can do what they want. But pedophiles fall into a different category.
Like any wounded irrational animal, under pressure Trump lashes out. If he is going down, he will take the world with him. He has found a way to threaten everyone who works for him into supporting his lies,, and lying to cover his secrets and his incompetence. This becomes increasingly difficult because Trump’s lies and policies change every day.
Tariffs? Epstein?s taxes? immigration? FEMA? NOAA? Obama? unemployment? Harvard, law firms? courts? judges? Vaccines? Student loans? Ukraine? Gaza? Does anyone have any idea what the US is doing, of what they are supposed to be saying.
Meanwhile, Trump is up on the roof, losing his mind.
I don’t think America can withstand another three years of this without breaking apart. Yet, people are blindly supporting a raving pedophile because ?
Is it really just greed and racism?
Regarding your last couple of questions...it seems to me that Trump represents their "grandpa shouting from the porch" part of their ego. With Trump, grandpa got off the porch and is in the white house attempting to implement all of his "ideas" to improve things. Problem is that, grandpa, is addled, doesn't think things through and has zero relevant experience to help him implement them or realize that the ideas actually suck.
Gramps, who wanted very much to play president again, is now both bored with and agitated by the position. Golfing is a pleasant enough diversion, and cheating at golf makes it pleasantly spicy. But now, to take his mind off the pressure of having to president, he recalls his days as A Builder of Things - big, beautiful things, the biggest, most beautiful, many have said. The extravagant, czarist ballroom is turning out to be lots of fun, and reminds him of when he was young. So he roams the roof on his swollen legs, remembers the old times, wants them back. What else can he build on the WH, and will his building mean he never really dies?
I so agree with your comment about Trump being bored with the Presidency. I swear that some of this shix he does is just because he likes to stir things up because it's "interesting" and holds his attention.
How the F did we get this loser as our POTUS?
Owning the Libs plays a role, too.