No repetition of “Russia, Russia, Russia!” obscures the bipartisan, *GOP-led* Senate Intel Committee report, pg 943: Manafort strategized with and gave campaign info to a Russian agent during ongoing interference operations in the 2016 campaign.
“These are stubborn facts that cannot be ignored.”
Manafort was a key part of Trump’s willing acceptance of a foreign adversary’s assault on the United States, “in exchange for advancing their own self-interest.”
“This is what collusion looks like.” - Senate Intelligence Committee Report on Russian Active Measures Campaign, chaired by @SenMarcoRubio
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Without evidence (the "what") for impeachment, all we have is the "why." Why launch an impeachment inquiry without evidence of high crimes and without a vote? The equation is pretty basic. Some analysis:
Btwn now and Nov 24 the public will hear a lot of under-oath testimony about Trump's alleged criminality. He may be a convicted felon on election day. GOPs need voters to replace "Trumps corrupt" with "both guys are corrupt." Thats entirely the point of the impeachment inquiry
Is there a precedent? Why yes: In '15, and w Kev McCarthy. He was questioned about the point of a 2-yr investigation finding essentially no wrongdoing by Hillary Clinton, the Dem nominee. His answer: It was a success. Look how we killed her poll numbers. politico.com/story/2015/10/…
The review of Pfizer's mRNA Covid vaccine for emergency use is underway at the FDA's Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee.
These outside experts will decide whether the vaccine appears safe and effective. It's the last major step before FDA approval.
Pfizer is seeking emergency approval for people 16 or older. Most of the action in vaccines is in children, so most of the experts on this committee specialize in pediatric infectious diseases. They'll have to stretch their expertise to adults and elderly patients here.
FDA official Doran Fink tells committee the American public "demands and deserves" a "rigorous" review of Pfizer's data, which has come to FDA in record time.
It's hard to overstate how ridiculously fast Warp Speed development, study and review has gone.
One of the key, under-reported points that could come out of FDA's vaccine advisory committee tomorrow: How to surveil safety/effectiveness after they're unleashed. These 2 vaccines were studied for approx 2-3 mos. How will co's/FDA follow up to see how they do in the real world?
FDA/CDC have a well-established system for monitoring vaccine safety in the wild. But most vaccines don't get out on the market after a warp-speed, emergency development. Effectiveness 6, 9, 12 months after administration has to be monitored too jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/…
There are a lot of other potential issues too. Elderly people. Equitable distribution. Inevitable drop-off after the 1st dose of a 2-dose regiment. Anyway just a small window into the real-world problems behind excellent headlines like "95% Effective"
It's uncanny and disturbing how closely this tactic mirrors those of fascists in WWII Europe. Let's take a quick read of Jean-Paul Sartre's "Anti-Semite and Jew," published in 1944. This tweet from Trump War Room isn't anti-Semitic, but Sartre's analysis reveals a lot:
“Never believe that (they) are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words."
"(They) have the right to play. They even like to play w/ discourse for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert."
We’re racing for a vaccine, and that’s good. But one side effect of a rush to mass use will be...side effects. All vaccines have them. And without years of ph2/ph3 trials, we’ll be running a nationwide human safety trial in real time. This merits some thinking through.
Adverse events at .5% in a study of 1000 people become significant super fast when unleashing a new vaccine on an entire population 100m doses at a time. Its happened w popular pain meds. Controlled trials dont always tell you how it behaves on the big stage when millions take it
With a coronavirus vaccine, every adverse event will be scrutinized. And bad faith/self-serving conspiracists will amplify each one. That can undermine people’s willingness to use it, which undermines immunity. Assuming the vaccine is effective, that’s bad for everyone.