'Breakthrough' Cases Show the Power of Shots

So says the Los Angeles Times.

Here, "‘Breakthrough’ COVID-19 cases rising in L.A., but the vaccinated are still protected, data show":

Los Angeles County has seen a rise in “breakthrough” coronavirus cases as of late, but data continue to show those who are vaccinated for COVID-19 enjoy vigorous protection — even from the contagious Delta variant — and are far less likely to be hospitalized should they become infected.

The latest figures underscore how the county’s recent coronavirus surge is different from the pandemic’s earlier spikes, both in terms of who is getting sick and how the virus is spreading countywide.

In June, fully vaccinated residents made up 20% of all confirmed coronavirus infections in those 16 and old

er, according to figures from the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health. However, that same month, they accounted for only 8% of all COVID-19 hospitalizations.

That trend has persisted into July. Over the first half of the month, roughly 26% of all diagnosed cases were in fully vaccinated residents, according to figures county Public Health Director Barbara Ferrer presented this week.

This means unvaccinated residents still accounted for almost three times as many infections, even though they’ve been a minority of the population since the start of the month.

And despite the uptick in post-vaccination “breakthrough” cases, the proportion of those people becoming sick enough to require hospitalization over the early part of this month remained essentially flat from June.

“Although vaccinated people are seeing a rise in new COVID diagnosis, they are primarily experiencing their infections not as severe illnesses that bring them to the emergency room, but as bad colds,” Ferrer said this week.

Those who are unvaccinated, she continued, “simply do not have the same level of confidence if they get infected with this virus that it will lead to mild illness.”

Out of the 504 people who died of COVID-19 countywide from April 1 to June 30, 96% were either unvaccinated or had not completed their inoculation regimen, data show.

County health officials are trying to better understand the factors, such as being immunocompromised, that may put fully vaccinated people at risk of dying from COVID-19, Ferrer said.

The rise of vaccinations is also shifting the trajectory of this summer spike. In previous surges, lower-income, densely populated areas were hardest hit as essential workers got COVID-19 on the job and then spread it at home. Areas such as East Los Angeles, the northeast San Fernando Valley and South Los Angeles saw some of the worst spread.

This time is different.

As of July 17, communities that had high rates of transmission included downtown Los Angeles, West Hollywood, Beverly Hills, Venice, Hollywood Hills and Studio City, Ferrer said.

“These are different communities from those with high case rates during our previous surges,” she said. “So far, it appears transmission in these areas is being driven mostly by community spread among young adults.”

In some areas, she added, “there were several smaller outbreaks among persons experiencing homelessness that also may have contributed, just slightly, to the higher rates. And we also have noted that there have been outbreaks in some of these communities at food and bar establishments that also are contributing to the higher rates.”

More than 53% of Angelenos have now been fully vaccinated, according to data compiled by The Times...

Professor William Jacobson on 'The John DePetro Show' (Radio Interview)

His efforts combating this destructive ideology are impressive and mounting. 

At Legal Insurrection, "Critical Race Theory is a Societal Dead End":

DePetro (02:11):

Bill Jacobson, right now we’re in mid to late July. When did critical race theory first start to appear on your radar and the radar of Legal Insurrection?

Jacobson (02:23):

Well, I’ve actually followed it really almost since law school, because one of my classmates, Kimberle Crenshaw is one of the developers of critical legal theory, and eventually critical race theory. So I’ve always been aware of it. That’s going back to 1984. And I was at Harvard Law School, which is where critical race theory and critical legal theory really developed. If you look at the early people, the early professors doing it, that’s where it was. So I’ve been aware of it for over 30 years. It was more and more on our radar, but it really jumped onto my radar last summer. It was almost now to the day that the president of Cornell University announced, in the wake of the George Floyd killing and the protests and the riots, that Cornell was going to become an “anti-racist” campus. And I really wasn’t sure what that meant, and they proposed summer reading for the entire university, Ibram Kendi’s book, “How to be an Antiracist.”

And it was available for free to people who had a Cornell ID. So I read it, and I was absolutely horrified. It was an ideology which while they use the term “anti-racist,” that’s complete deception. It is actually a very racially discriminatory ideology. And so I read this thing, and I said, “Oh my God.” And we started to look into it at the foundation. We have researchers. And originally I was going to write an op-ed or an article someplace about it. And the deeper we got into it, the more we realized how pervasive it was. And so we rolled out a website in February [2021] called CriticalRace.org, which documents critical race training in higher education. We have an interactive map. You can click on a state, click on a school, and see what’s happening. And then we began to hear from people all over the country because the website got a lot of attention. We got a million views within a day of us taking it public...

 Click the link for the full transcript.

Giles Milton, Churchill's Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare

At Amazon, Giles Milton, Churchill's Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare: The Mavericks Who Plotted Hitler's Defeat.

Driving Ms. Daisy?

Quite a woman.

Glorious:

Swarm of Bees in Diamond Bar Kills Two Dogs (VIDEO)

People can be killed by bees as well. This man's lucky it wasn't worse.

At ABC News 7 Los Angeles: 

Former Senator Carl Levin Has Died at 87

He served 35 years in the Senate. 

I have to agree --- a man of integrity. 

At the New York Times, "Carl Levin, the Senate Scourge of Corporate America, Dies at 87."

And the Detroit Free Press, "Carl Levin, Michigan's longest serving U.S. senator, dies at 87":

Carl Levin, a liberal Democrat who rose from a prominent Detroit family to become Michigan’s longest-serving U.S. senator and helped set military priorities and investigate corporate behavior for decades before retiring in 2015, died Thursday. He was 87.

The Levin Center at Wayne State University, which was formed on the senator's behalf after he left the Senate, put out a statement late Thursday, saying, "With great sadness and heavy hearts, the (center and family) announce the passing of Senator Carl Levin."

Levin disclosed in his recently published memoir, "Getting to the Heart of the Matter: My 36 Years in the Senate," that he was diagnosed with lung cancer nearly four years ago, when he was 83.

U.S. Rep. Andy Levin, D-Bloomfield Twp., put out a statement on his uncle's passing:

“Throughout my adult life, wherever I went in Michigan, from Copper Harbor to Monroe, I would run into people who would say, ‘I don’t always agree with Senator Levin, but I support him anyway because he is so genuine, he tells it straight and he follows through.’

Gov. Gretchen Whitmer called Levin a champion for Michigan.

"He saw what we were capable of when we came to the table as Michiganders, as Americans, to get things done," she said.

A defender of Senate traditions, even when his own party moved to change them, Levin, who was trained as a lawyer, twice served as chairman of the powerful Armed Services Committee, despite having never served in uniform himself.

As such, he helped set U.S. military strength and policy, including in Afghanistan and Iraq, though he voted against authorizing the use of force in the latter.

He also investigated questionable Pentagon spending practices and played a key role in overturning the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” rule that prohibited gay service members from openly acknowledging their sexual orientation prior to 2011. As head of the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, he led probes questioning what he saw as corporate excesses, including those involving Enron, Apple and Goldman Sachs.

As a Michigan senator, he defended the auto industry, supported the bailout of General Motors and Chrysler in 2008-09 and backed numerous projects including Detroit’s RiverWalk, the M-1 Light Rail and the Thunder Bay National Marine Sanctuary, among others. For years, he fought for a new Soo Lock — efforts that only began to bear fruit after he left office.

“We could not aspire to better service than what he has given our country,” the late U.S. Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., said of his Armed Services Committee colleague just before Levin’s retirement. McCain, a war hero, went on to call Levin “a model of serious purpose, firm principle and personal decency” and said that while they often disagreed, Levin never went back on his word...

Still more.

 

 

New Film is Based on Amanda Knox's Wrongful Murder Conviction

I've seen the previews for this, but I mute commercials and I don't care much for Matt Damon.

I can see why Ms. Amanda's pissed. 

At the New York Post, "Amanda Knox blasts Matt Damon flick ‘Stillwater,’ claims it’s cashing in on her wrongful conviction."

And Ms. Amanda on Twitter, "Does my name belong to me? My face? What about my life? My story? Why does my name refer to events I had no hand in? I return to these questions because others continue to profit off my name, face, & story without my consent. Most recently, the film #STILLWATER."

Yep

Oh the insanity!

pic.twitter.com/5pY3Lfv3TF

— Sohrab Ahmari (@SohrabAhmari) July 30, 2021

Los Angeles Unified to Mandate Covid Testing Regardless of Vaccination Status

Stupid. 

But this vaccine mandate business is taking off everywhere in California. It's out of control. Perhaps enough people will hate it to get Newsom recalled on September 14th.

At First Street Journal, "Los Angeles Unified School District plans on physically assaulting every student and employee, every week":

Have you ever had a COVID-19 test? I have, and it’s a very unpleasant experience. Basically, a nurse sticks a long, stick-mounted cotton swab — think of an eight-inch-long Q-Tip — up your nose to obtain the ‘material’ to be tested. In every state in the union, if you have not consented to this, it would be considered an assault. Does the Los Angeles Unified School District plan on making public education, something required by state law, to be contingent on consenting to be assaulted?

The Los Angeles Unified School District will require all students and employees who are returning for in-person instruction to participate in weekly COVID-19 testing — regardless of vaccination status, the district announced Thursday.

“This is in accordance with the most recent guidance from the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health,” Interim Superintendent Megan K. Reilly said in a statement.  

Really? The LAUSD employees are unionized. Have the District gotten the OK from the employees’ unions for this? What union is going to approve of this kind of employment condition?

LAUSD, the nation’s second-largest school district, had previously said that fully vaccinated students and employees would not require testing. But as schools district-wide prepare to reopen for in-person instruction on Aug. 16, L.A. Unified said it’s closely monitoring evolving health conditions and adapting its response...

In addition to regular testing, safety measures will include: masking for all students, staff and visitors; maximizing physical distancing as much as possible; continuing comprehensive sanitizing efforts, including frequent hand washing; upgraded air filtration systems; and collaborating with health partners and agencies to support free COVID-19 vaccination.

So, if some parents are concerned about the safety of the vaccines, why would they bother with getting their children vaccinated if they will still be subjected to weekly testing, and all of the other COVID-19 restrictions?

And since the vaccines have not yet been approved for children 11-years-old and younger, that means almost every student through the fifth grade will be unvaccinated. Even if the LAUSD changes its mind, and allows vaccinated students and employees to skip the weekly testing, the District are still planning on physically assaulting every student from pre-school through the fifth grade...

Yeah, I had the covid up-the-nose-test and it was perhaps the most awful (and painful) medical test I've had in my entire life.

Still more.

Yuri Slezkine, The House of Government

At Amazon, Yuri Slezkine, The House of Government: A Saga of the Russian Revolution.

So, Electric Cars Are Destroying the Planet. Uh, Okay

*Shrug.*

Wind power doesn't even come close to providing enough energy to charge America, and it's bad for the environment, especially eagles (and don't mention Third World exploitation).

Leftists are despicable ghouls. 

At LAT, "California’s electric car revolution, designed to save the planet, also unleashes a toll on it":

SAN DIEGO — The precious cargo on the ship docked in San Diego Bay was strikingly small for a vessel built to drag oil rigs out to sea. Machines tethered to this hulking ship had plucked rocks the size of a child’s fist from the ocean floor thousands of miles into the Pacific.

The mission was delicate and controversial — with broad implications for the planet.

Investors are betting tens of millions of dollars that these black nodules packed with metals used in electric car batteries are the ticket for the United States to recapture supremacy over the green economy — and to keep up with a global transportation revolution started by California.

Alongside his docked ship, Gerard Barron, chief executive of the Metals Co., held in his hand one of the nodules he argues can help save the planet. “We have to be bold and we have to be prepared to look at new frontiers,” he said. “Climate change isn’t something that’s waiting around for us to figure it out.”

The urgency with which his company and a few others are moving to start scraping the seabed for these materials alarms oceanographers and advocates, who warn they are literally in uncharted waters. Much is unknown about life on the deep sea floor, and vacuuming swaths of it clean threatens to have unintended and far-reaching consequences.

The drama playing out in the deep sea is just one act in a fast unfolding, ethically challenging and economically complex debate that stretches around the world, from the cobalt mines of Congo to the corridors of the Biden White House to fragile desert habitats throughout the West where vast deposits of lithium lay beneath the ground.

The state of California is inexorably intertwined in this drama. Not just because extraction companies are aggressively surveying the state’s landscapes for opportunities to mine and process the materials. But because California is leading the drive toward electric cars.

No state has exported more policy innovations — including on climate, equality, the economy — than California, a trend accelerating under the Biden administration. The state relishes its role as the nation’s think tank, though the course it charts for the country has, at times, veered in unanticipated directions.

“The ocean is the place on the planet where we know least about what species exist and how they function,” Douglas McCauley, a marine science professor at UC Santa Barbara, said of plans to scrape the seafloor. “This is like opening a Pandora’s box.... We’re concerned this won’t do much good for climate change, but it will do irreversible harm to the ocean.”

The sprint to supply automakers with heavy-duty lithium batteries is propelled by climate-conscious countries like the United States that aspire to abandon gas-powered cars and SUVs. They are racing to secure the materials needed to go electric, and the Biden administration is under pressure to fast-track mammoth extraction projects that threaten to unleash their own environmental fallout.

In far-flung patches of the ocean floor, at Native American ancestral sites, and on some of the most pristine federal lands, extraction and mining companies are branding themselves stewards of sustainability, warning the planet will suffer if digging and scraping are delayed. All the prospecting is giving pause to some of the environmental groups championing climate action, as they assess whether the sacrifice needed to curb warming is being shared fairly...

Keep reading.

 

San Francisco Bar Association to Require Masks

It's actually called the S.F. Bar Owner Alliance, 250-member strong.

At KPIX CBS News 5 San Francisco, "Group of San Francisco Bars to Require COVID Vaccine or Negative Test from Customers."

C.D.C. Recommends Mask-Wearing Indoors (VIDEO)

It's like the C.D.C. can't get its messaging straight. 

At LAT, "CDC recommends masks indoors in U.S. where cases are surging."

And from Mark Tapscott, at Instapundit, "CDC’S NEW MASK GUIDANCE BASED ON FAILED STUDY: Turns out, Just the News reports this morning, that our betters have no problem depending upon a study that failed peer review to justify their new mask guidance."

Oh brother. *Eye-roll.*

G.D.P. Growth

Following-up, "Gross Domestic Product, Second Quarter 2021, Grows 6.5 Percent."

Here's the take, at NYT, "Growth Is Strong, but the Obstacles to Full Recovery Are Big."

Plus, "Economy Recovers Pandemic Losses, but Faces New Test":

The U.S. economy climbed out of its pandemic-induced hole in the spring as vaccinations and federal aid fueled a surge in consumer spending at restaurants, resorts and retail stores.

The revival brought gross domestic product back to its prepandemic level in the second quarter, adjusted for inflation — a remarkable achievement, exactly a year after the economy’s worst quarterly contraction on record. After the last recession ended in 2009, the G.D.P. took two years to rebound fully.

But the rise of the Delta variant of the coronavirus could threaten those gains just as the federal aid programs that helped bolster the recovery are coming to an end.

Gross domestic product, the broadest measure of economic output, grew 1.6 percent in the second quarter of the year, the Commerce Department said Thursday, up from 1.5 percent in the first three months of the year. On an annualized basis, second-quarter growth was 6.5 percent.

Robust investment in the quarter signaled that businesses were betting on continued growth. But the recovery is far from complete. Output is significantly below where it would be had growth continued on its prepandemic path, and other economic measures remain deeply depressed, particularly for certain groups. The United States has nearly seven million fewer jobs than before the pandemic. The unemployment rate for Black workers in June was 9.2 percent.

“The good news is, this is all occurring much more rapidly than after the financial crisis,” said Diane Swonk, chief economist for the accounting firm Grant Thornton. “The bad news is, the pain was much worse.”

For Sarah Ladley, the economy’s spring reawakening was a glimmer of hope after a brutal year for her business.

Ms. Ladley, 33, started selling banana-based frozen treats out of her Denver food truck nearly a decade ago, just after she graduated from college. The pandemic nearly wiped her out: She made it through last year with the help of a loan through the Paycheck Protection Program, but the business lost money. With pandemic restrictions still in place early this year, she began looking for another job to pay the bills.

Instead, the phone began ringing with people looking to hold events.

“All of a sudden in May, it was like the floodgates opened,” she said.

Now Ms. Ladley has a different set of problems. Business has rebounded, though not all the way, and she is having trouble fulfilling demand. She had to change the cups she uses after a vendor ran out, stores will sometimes be out of the fruit she needs and she has struggled to hire workers amid competition from businesses that can offer higher pay and year-round employment. She says she has had to turn away business to avoid burning out her limited staff.

“Things definitely aren’t normal, but even if they were normal, I wouldn’t be able to handle it,” she said.

Well, better to have robust growth than horrible shrinkage, I guess. *Shrug.*

Still more.

Cornell West, Democracy Matters

At Amazon, Cornell West, Democracy Matters: Winning the Fight Against Imperialism.

Douglas Murray Predicts Boring 2020s and More Covid Mandates (VIDEO)

He's the author of the Madness of Crowds: Gender, Race, Identity, available at Amazon.

Barbara Boxer Assaulted in Oakland, California

Assaulted and robbed, a former U.S. senator, man.

At KPIX CBS News 5 San Francisco, "Update: Former California Senator Barbara Boxer Assaulted, Robbed In Oakland’s Jack London District."

Gross Domestic Product, Second Quarter 2021, Grows 6.5 Percent

At W.S.J., "U.S. Economy Grows Beyond Pre-Pandemic Level":

U.S. gross domestic product grew at a 6.5% annual rate in the second quarter, up slightly from earlier in the year, pushing the economy’s size beyond its pre-pandemic level.

The growth came as business reopenings and government aid powered a surge that is expected to gradually slow in coming months, with Covid-19 variants and materials and labor disruptions clouding the outlook.

Second-quarter growth fell short of economists’ forecasts. Economists surveyed by The Wall Street Journal estimated that gross domestic product, the broadest measure of goods and services made in the U.S., grew at an 8.4% annual rate in the April-to-June period.

Still, the growth propelled GDP beyond pre-pandemic levels, a milestone that underscores the speed of the recovery that began last summer. Widespread business reopenings, vaccinations and a big infusion of government pandemic aid this spring helped propel rapid gains in consumer spending, the economy’s main driver.

“The economy has come roaring back faster than people expected,” said Jay Bryson, chief economist at Wells Fargo Corporate and Investment Bank.

Economists expect growth to remain strong, fueled by job gains, pent-up savings and continued fiscal support. Still, many say growth likely peaked in the second quarter and will cool as the initial boost from reopenings and fiscal stimulus fades.

Rising inflation, continued supply-chain disruptions and a shortage of available workers are additional factors that could restrain growth. The highly contagious Delta variant of Covid-19 also poses an increasing risk to the economic outlook.

There are two main ways the spread of Delta could derail the robust recovery, economists say. Some state and local governments could reimpose restrictions on businesses. Second, consumers could curtail spending on travel, dining out and moviegoing out of heightened cautiousness toward the variant’s spread.

So far, new restrictions have been limited in scope. They include the reinstatement of indoor-mask rules in some localities such as Los Angeles County. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommended Tuesday that vaccinated people resume masking indoors in places with high or substantial transmission of coronavirus.

Americans don’t appear to be retreating into their homes as the Delta variant spreads. Flight volumes and hotel-occupancy rates continue to rise, according to an analysis of real-time data by Jefferies LLC. Public-transit usage is also gaining ground, though it is down compared with pre-pandemic levels, Jefferies said.

The increasing level of vaccinations in the U.S. has made people more likely to keep working and spending money despite the rise in cases.

“I really don’t expect anything like we saw in the spring of last year,” said Ben Herzon, executive director at forecasting firm IHS Markit. “Going forward we’ll just see how high the case count gets and how nervous some people get.”

Consumer confidence rose in July to the highest level since February 2020, according to the Conference Board. The increase in confidence suggests consumers are positioned to continue driving economic growth this year...

Seems like good news to me.

Still more.

 

Megan Parry's Thursday Forecast

She's a beauty. 

At ABC News 10 San Diego:

Wokeness: What's It All About?

It's V.D.H., at R.C.P., "What Is American Wokeness Really About?":

Most Americans were as indifferent to the U.S. women's soccer team's recent loss to Sweden in the Olympics as they were excited about the team's World Cup win in 2019. In between was the team's nonstop politicking, from whining about compensation to virtue-signaling their disrespect for the United States. The celebrity face of the team, perennial scold Megan Rapinoe, is going the way of teenage grouch Greta Thunberg, becoming more pinched the more she is tuned out.

Black Lives Matter co-founder Patrisse Marie Khan-Cullors Brignac used her corporate grifting to buy four homes. The one she bought in California's Topanga Canyon is surrounded by a new $35,000 security fence.

Critical race theory guru Ibram X. Kendi offers virtual, one-hour workshops for $20,000 a pop. He is franchising woke re-education kits -- in between bouts of damning capitalism as a catalyst of racism.

The woke movement is a slicker, more sophisticated and far more grandiose version of Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson's shakedowns of the 1990s. Those, at least, were far more honest in leveraging cash with charges of racism -- and came without the academic gobbledygook of critical race theory.

Our freeways are jammed. Airports are crammed. Labor is short. Huge pent-up consumer demand for essentials and entertainment outpaces supply. Yet Major League Baseball's recent All-Star Game saw record low television viewership -- about a quarter of the audience of 40 years ago, when there were 100 million fewer Americans.

The Summer Olympic Games are getting anemic TV ratings. The NBA's crashing TV ratings have followed the downward trajectory of the NFL's ratings. Woke sports earn the same public disgust as the accusatory and boring Emmy, Grammy, Oscar and Tony awards.

Cable news networks CNN and MSNBC fueled the story that former President Donald Trump allegedly colluded with Russia. They contextualized (to excuse) the summer looting and rioting of 2020. And they cheered on two impeachments as a prelude to their 24/7 woke drumbeat. Their ratings, too, have now dived.

Never has TV been more politicized. Sitcoms, dramas and commercials are designed more to resonate woke messaging than to entertain. So naturally, dismal TV ratings reflect the expected public boredom that ensues when art serves politics.

How many times will disingenuous Dr. Anthony Fauci swear that he never sent federal money to the Wuhan virology lab for gain-of-function research, or blame his critics for pointing out his gyrating advice on masks, or offer yet another noble lie on herd immunity?

In short, Americans are worn out from elite virtue-signaling and woke performance art from critical race theory capitalists, multimillionaire CEOs, revolving-door Pentagon brass, Malibu celebrities and credentialed elite...

The backlash is building, with a vengeance. My view, once again, is that issues involving C.R.T in education should be taken up at the local level, where parents and communities have the power to elect and remove members of local school boards. Education historically is local function and this is problem for the local communities to decide. 

In any case, still more.