Briefly Noted: Markers On Where We Are

Very briefly. Two stories that say so much about the state of America.

By far the best commentary I've seen on the ridiculous Bezos Post propaganda piece is at Zerohedge:

"The War Has Changed" - Leaked CDC Report Claims Delta Spreads As Easily As "Chickenpox"

The CDC is clearly concerned that it's losing the PR war to convince Americans that they must mask up and get vaccinated. Because less than a week after declaring that it would revive its mask mandate, the CDC has just pulled a classic media trick: turning the fearmongering nob up to '11' by leaking an "internal report" that supports the official narrative (even making it look like the more moderate of two options) while laundering the source of the information by allowing a reputable news org to market the story as an "exclusive".

A slide deck apparently shared widely inside the agency in the weeks after it first lifted the original mask mandate in May shows that the delta variant appears to cause more severe illness in younger patients, while spreading as easily as "chickenpox." What's more, it warns that the vaccine's ability to spread via infecting the already vaccinated means the CDC should impose even more stringent guidance - the presentation called for "universal masking." The document "strikes an urgent note, revealing the agency knows it must revamp its public message to emphasize vaccination as the best defense against a variant so contagious that it acts almost like a different novel virus."

Most critically, the slide deck includes "still-unpublished data" from studies showing that even the vaccinated might be able to transmit the virus as easily as the unvaccinated.

According to the Washington Post, the material in the report was "so alarming" that it prompted the CDC to reconsider its masking guidance, and President Biden to impose his federal employee vaccination mandate (with a few notable exceptions) despite his earlier promises not to do so.

Not only does the presentation include "new science", it also suggests "a new strategy" for communicating the urgency of the situation to the public, noting that "public trust in vaccines might be undermined" when people hear about breakthrough infections. At one point, the deck declared that "the war has changed," describing delta as if it were a totally new virus.

Well, maybe Pfizer and the government should have thought about that before they published obviously inflated efficacy numbers of +90%.

Ridiculous.

Next, yet another of those, 'What if Trump or one of Trump's kids' stories, from TGP--the title says it all:

“Other Than F*ck Em?” – Hunter Biden When Asked What He Has to Say to People Questioning His Shady Art Selling Scheme

For sheer sleaze it's hard to surpass the Zhou regime. America's disgrace; but it's what our Ruling Elite think we deserve. Will they be proven wrong?

It's all enough to wonder whether James Kunstler is right:

We are spinning into pandemonium. The vacuum of leadership is awesome, as if God himself has split the scene in utter disgust and left matters to the ancient furies.