Return of the Tax Returns:

The Treasury Department must turn over six years of former President Donald J. Trump’s tax returns to House investigators, the Justice Department said in a legal opinion issued on Friday that most likely paves the way for their eventual release to Congress and potentially to the public.

Treasury says okie doke.

Yet even as the decision lowered a key barrier for Congress, it was unlikely to be the final word in the dispute. A highly litigious and determined protector of his financial records, Mr. Trump could seek an injunction in the coming days to try to stop the transfer, setting off a new round of legal wrangling that could take weeks or longer to resolve.

Jobs program for lawyers.

Mr. Trump’s son Eric Trump and his allies in Congress recoiled at the prospect of his political adversaries gaining access to six years of his personal and business tax data, as well as related I.R.S. files. They accused Mr. Neal and House Democrats of lying about their real intentions, which they claimed were to embarrass and cudgel Mr. Trump.

Oh dear, really? How shocking, when he’s such a nice man.

Now in case you’re wondering why men would want to identify as women in order to cheat at sport, Fair Play for Women provides a hint:

The IOC decided in 2015 that, for their purpose, a female is anyone who says they are, as long as their testosterone, the primary male hormone, has been below 10 nanomoles per litre (nmol/L) for the past 12 months. The typical testosterone level in females is less than 1 nmol/L. 

These Games are the first since these new rules applied. We know of at least three competitors, Stephanie Barrett of Canada, Chelsea Wolfe of the USA and Laurel Hubbard of New Zealand, whose performance would not be good enough for qualification in the male category, but who have taken a place in a category reserved for female athletes.

That’s why.

They’re not good enough for the Olympics. They’re way closer than I am, for one, but that’s beside the point. The point is that they’re not good enough, and they know it, so they decided to cheat.

I don’t believe for a second that Hubbard genuinely “feels like” a woman or thinks he is one or thinks he has a brain that doesn’t match his body or anything like that. I think he’s just cheating, with no illusions about it. I’m less absolute about the other two, but in Hubbard’s case it’s painfully infuriatingly obvious.

Don’t let anyone tell you that it costs nothing to allow male athletes who identify as women into a female sports category. That if they don’t win a medal they haven’t taken anything away from anyone else. There are at least three women who should be Olympians this year but got bumped off the list to make room for athletes born male.

Heads they win tails we lose.

Janice Turner on The Laurel Hubbard Question:

Samoa enjoys few sporting glories but it excels at weightlifting. Feagaiga Stowers, just 20, a child sexual abuse survivor who started lifting while living in a domestic violence shelter, won gold at the 2018 Commonwealth Games. She looked a cert for the 2019 Pacific Games too, but instead the podium was topped by 41-year-old trans woman Laurel Hubbard. Bumped to second place, Stowers and team mate Iuniarra Sipaia, who took bronze, hung their heads in dismay.

While inferior athlete Laurel Hubbard loomed over them in cheating triumph.

Back in Samoa, the response was more baffled than furious. The prime minister asked how it could be fair that this New Zealand fa’afafine was competing against women. The question will echo across the world on Monday when Hubbard competes in the Olympic women’s 87kg-plus weightlifting. Stowers and team mates aren’t even there. Covid risk is the official reason. But given that all other qualifying Samoans are in Tokyo, there’s speculation the female lifters are protesting at the injustice of their event.

Reviewing Helen Joyce’s recent book Trans, my colleague David Aaronovitch remarked that her tone was too angry. But when I think about Stowers battling such odds, or Roviel Detenamo, only 18, a lifter from even poorer Nauru, denied her first Olympics because Hubbard took her qualifying slot, I’m filled with white-hot rage.

Same here, and it happens all over again every time I see Hubbard smugly proceeding along this path of stealing medals from women, and women of color at that.

Men like the International Olympic Committee’s medical and science director Dr Richard Budgett have no skin in this game. “Everyone agrees that trans women are women,” he said this week, “a lot of aspects of physiology and anatomy and the mental side contribute to elite performance.”

Everyone agrees that men are women? I think you’ll find that it’s not quite everyone.

Now the IOC rules state that any male who wants to punch female boxers or run the women’s 100 metres must simply get their testosterone below 10 nanomoles per litre for a year. The normal testosterone range for women, including elite athletes? It’s 0.12-1.78 nmol/L. So even when applying this one paltry measure of fairness — the level of rocket-fuel male hormone — they didn’t try for parity. Five to ten times the female norm was just fine. And what if a woman athlete used drugs to raise her testosterone to 10nmol/L? She’d be disqualified for doping.

How is that fair exactly? It isn’t, but they’re doing it anyway, because hey it’s only women who lose out.

Nope nope nope.

It’s not too hard for anyone to understand, but it’s not true. It’s just trendy jargon.

“not just cis women” – classic. It’s not just women who have ovaries, you bigot! Except it is.

As for creating “a safe space,” guess what: it’s not dangerous to be called a woman even if you identify as nonbinary or a man or Paul Bunyan’s blue ox Babe.

The NY Times tells us:

President Donald J. Trump pressed top Justice Department officials late last year to declare that the election was corrupt even though they had found no instances of widespread fraud, so that he and his allies in Congress could use the assertion to try to overturn the results, according to new documents provided to lawmakers and obtained by The New York Times.

In other words he “pressed” them (meaning bullied, screamed at, threatened them) to lie about the election to enable him to steal it.

The demands were an extraordinary instance of a president interfering with an agency that is typically more independent from the White House to advance his personal agenda.

Not to mention of a president trying to bully an agency to steal an election and install a dictator. I think the Times’s language is a good deal too cool and restrained here.

They are also the latest example of Mr. Trump’s wide-ranging campaign during his final weeks in office to delegitimize the election results.

And steal the election.

The exchange unfolded during a phone call on Dec. 27 in which Mr. Trump pressed the acting attorney general at the time, Jeffrey A. Rosen, and his deputy, Richard P. Donoghue, on voter fraud claims that the department had disproved. Mr. Donoghue warned that the department had no power to change the outcome of the election. Mr. Trump replied that he did not expect that, according to notes Mr. Donoghue took memorializing the conversation.

“Just say that the election was corrupt + leave the rest to me” and to congressional allies, Mr. Donoghue wrote in summarizing Mr. Trump’s response.

“Just get him to come to the restaurant and leave the rest to me.”

The Justice Department provided Mr. Donoghue’s notes to the House Oversight and Reform Committee, which is investigating the Trump administration’s efforts to unlawfully reverse the election results.

To steal the election and install a dictator.

“These handwritten notes show that President Trump directly instructed our nation’s top law enforcement agency to take steps to overturn a free and fair election in the final days of his presidency,” Representative Carolyn B. Maloney, Democrat of New York and chairwoman of the House Oversight and Reform Committee, said in a statement.

That’s more like it.

Tom Nichols used to admire J. D. Vance, the Hillbilly Elegy guy, and now does not.

Not so long ago, he talked about the self-defeating bias against education among poor whites. He acknowledged the self-destructive habits of some of the people he grew up around. Vance wrote, in this very magazine, that Donald Trump “is cultural heroin”—a powerful charge from someone who hails from the epicenter of the opioid epidemic—and provided a “quick high” that could not fix what ails the country. All of that vanished once Vance decided he wanted to go to Washington—and after the Trump supporter Peter Thiel dropped $10 million into a political action committee.

Instead of a truth-teller in his own community, Vance as a candidate has become a contemptible and cringe-inducing clown. His attempts at authenticity are so grating because they are so blatantly artificial. His recent tweets, for example, attempting to ingratiate himself with rural Ohioans by slagging New York City were embarrassingly amateurish; we can only wonder which social-media consultant thought them up. “Serious question,” Vance tweeted. “I have to go to New York soon and I’m trying to figure out where to stay. I have heard it’s disgusting and violent there. But is it like Walking Dead Season 1 or Season 4?”

New York, geddit? Fulla Democrats n brown people.

Worse, Vance has not only repudiated his earlier views on Trump, but has done so with ruthless cynicism, embracing the former president and his madness while winking at the media with a What can you do? shrug about the stupidity of Ohio’s voters. “If I actually care about these people and the things I say I care about,” he told Time, “I need to just suck it up and support him.”

I think he means if he wants to win he has to do that.

I suspect that Vance is also reading his own press, which would explain why a young man who attained early fame is convinced that he can jump right to national office. Take, for example, the Trump-friendly columnist Henry Olsen of The Washington Post, who wrote that Vance scares America’s elites because “he hasn’t surrendered his mind to polls or to the donor class in an effort to fit in.”

But following the polls and capering to a jig played by rich donors is exactly what Vance is doing. His gooberish tweets, his recent declaration that the most important issue for Ohio is securing the southern border, his multimillion-dollar support from “ordinary folks” like Thiel—these all show that Vance is as mossy a creature as the swamp ever produced.

This hypocrisy makes him indistinguishable from other figures in American politics, such as Senators Tom Cotton and Josh Hawley, who are products of privilege and elite education and who now pretend to be tribunes of the Forgotten People. (Vance, predictably enough, has recently expressed his admiration for both.)

It’s that weird upside-down class warfare that’s been so entrenched ever since…what? The 1965 Voting Rights Act? Probably.

Mind you neither party has ever really done much for the working class.

Originally a Miscellany Room post by Sastra.

Well, it appears I’ve finally been banned on Friendly Atheist, presumably for arguments I was making on a post about transgenderism. And what I’m guessing is 5 years of comments have all been marked as “spam” and completely erased. There’s no trace of me left. It is as if my very existence is being denied. Heh.

I’m not sure who banned me; it could have been a new moderator, or one of the other people who post articles on the site. I’ve written to ask, and questioned the spam designation elsewhere. I’m not terribly surprised, but do wonder why the absolute blackout, and not even a suspension or, best compromise, making any trans-related comment of mine only viewable when clicking (to avoid triggering the sensitive.)

I’ve been very, very careful with what I’ve said re Trans on FA. No personal attacks on others; no “misgendering” or discussions on hot button topics like bathrooms; no signs of my being angry, hurt, frustrated. And my arguments were all focused on the highest level — on basic concepts from which all else derives. Gender Identity Theory. I did that partly because that’s where the heart of the issue lies, and partly because I figured it would bore those who wanted to attack on the more personal level. My overall purpose was to persuade, of course, but my practical purpose was to help others understand the opposition, and hopefully recognize that disagreement isn’t hate.

I went out with a bang. Here’s the last thing I was allowed to post:

Glad to hear he’s better.

I, too, got the Moderna shots. I’ll be masking up again, and waiting for them to come out with an effective booster.

These “personal choices” the covidiots are making manage to escape the personal area, and it’s equally frustrating and frightening.

And here’s the last thing I wrote on the trans topic:

No, an idea can be theoretically testable and still suffer from conceptual problems. For example, the existence of God. Atheists can come up with miracles which would be hard to explain without God — the stars rearranging themselves into the words “I am God” and observed by all, say — but there’s still contradictions in a definition with the Omnis, and still a lot of vague hand waving and incoherence. These conceptual problems might take precedence, for a definitive miracle still leaves us with a confusing understanding of its source.

For those who endorse GIT, the very “central point of transgenderism” is Gender Identity. If this central point falls apart under any sort of genuine skeptical or critical examination, that’s not good.

(Edited to add: And there would still be a serious problem regarding what I put as the third point: “Gender Identity, not sex, is what makes someone a man, woman, both, or neither.” Replacing sex with gender requires its own support, and brings in a lot of conflicts involving rights.)

So abusive. Tch.

So we’re just removing the word “women” from the language entirely now?

One front in the vaccine wars:

On July 22, Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey said: “It’s the unvaccinated folks that are letting us down,” when asked why Alabama leads the nation in unvaccinated persons. “These folks are choosing a horrible lifestyle of self-inflicted pain. We’ve got to get folks to take the shot. The vaccine is the greatest weapon we have to fight COVID. There’s no question about that.”

So, of course, Team Antivax rushed to say what a monster she is.

State Auditor Jim Zeigler said: “What Gov. Ivey has forgotten – or never knew – is that those who are not vaccinated include a huge number who do not trust the government.  A governor pushing so hard for vaccinations makes those distrustful of government even less likely to take the vaccine.  Common sense is lacking here.”

I bet they trust the government when it’s Trump who stands for “the government” though. It’s not so much distrust of government as it is distrust of anyone who isn’t as stupid and pig-headed and irrational as Trump.

Dean Odle has announced he is challenging Ivey in the GOP primary. Odle is a Lee County pastor and school headmaster. Dean is not vaccinated and has been a vocal opponent of vaccination efforts.

“I believe the people of Alabama need to ask Governor Kay Ivey why she is pushing an experimental vaccine so hard and yet she stayed silent about the lifesaving, inexpensive treatments that were made known in March of 2020,” Odle charged.

There were no such treatments. That’s why 628,121 of us have died of the virus to date.

Former Morgan County Commissioner Stacy George is also running in the Republican primary for governor. George previously ran in the Republican primary for governor in 2014 against then-incumbent Gov. Robert Bentley.

“I thought it was really sad,” George said in response to Ivey’s comments. “I saw an angry governor this morning. She belittled a group of people today, and I say shame on the governor.”

“I am one of those non-vaccinated people that Governor Ivey was talking about,” George said, “I chose not to get the vaccine for various reasons. A governor should never belittle the people of Alabama, even the ones that disagree with her.”

What various reasons? What is this pleasing variety of reasons for not getting a vaccination to avoid a horrible disease with a high fatality rate? Better things to do, not feeling like it, cussedness, making a point? None of those are reasons for such a stupid destructive reckless refusal. If the school is on fire do you decide not to call 911 “for various reasons”? I’m guessing not, so why shrug off this best path out of the pandemic?

H/t Sackbut

Goooooood grief.

Bonds brings in ‘Cheer Bleeders’ to show off period underwear range

Excuse me?

No, it’s not a joke. Cheerleaders=Cheer Bleeders, rah rah rah.

Bonds has launched its latest Bloody Comfy Period Undies campaign, Cheer Bleeders, featuring a specially created cheer team dedicated to making all Australians who menstruate feel more empowered before, after and during their period.

All Australians who menstruate…you mean women and girls? Oh no no no no no no no good god no. That would never do.

The integrated campaign, created in partnership with Special Group Australia, showcases the Bonds’ Cheer Bleeders wearing Bloody Comfy Period Undies as they cheer about different aspects of periods using the tagline ‘Cheer through the Bleed’.

What aspects would those be? Cramps? Having to change the tampon or the pad? Leaking? Those are things to cheer about are they?

‘Cheer Bleeders’ aims to change the uncomfortable experience many Australians still feel when getting their period, with many taking time out from school, sport and other activities due to discomfort, teasing and fears of embarrassment.

Instead, Bonds strives to show people that you don’t have to follow the conventional rules around periods. It’s your period on your terms.

How very very careful this blurb is not to mention the words “girls” and “women.” How very careful it is to pretend menstruation happens to everyone, to Australians in general, to people. How very careful it is to pretend that “teasing” isn’t boys shaming girls for menstruating but just a universal experience, can happen to anyone.

How can girls grow up as feminists in a world where the existence of girls and women is treated as a shameful secret? In a world where they’re forced to pretend that boys can menstruate too?

“Bonds’ mission is centred around making the world a more comfortable place for everyone and there has never been more opportunity to do this than when it comes to young Aussies and the cultural norms around periods,” Special Group creative director Luke Thompson says.

Well thank fuck Luke Thompson is there to explain periods to girls.

Chrissy Stroop on evangelicals and vaccine-refusal:

As many exvangelicals have been trying to get the American mainstream to understand for years now, evangelical subculture is essentially ground zero for America’s other pandemic—disinformation. Conservative, mostly white evangelicalism, which represents a fear-based, authoritarian outlook on a social scale, has constructed a parallel society, mediated through churches, Christian publishing, homeschooling, Christian schools, Christian colleges and universities, and numerous parachurch ministries, in which certain sacrosanct “truths” are never questioned. When reality contradicts the truths that define group membership, the evangelical community circles the wagons and puts the power and influence of its tight institutional network behind the assertion that, in fact, the emperor is wearing clothes, and anyone who says otherwise is a dirty godless liberal intent on persecuting Christians.

How do I justify such a frank, unflattering assertion? Well, I’m not only well-versed in the relevant data and literature, but I grew up in evangelical authoritarianism myself, with a Christian school education and participation in short-term youth mission trips. I have evangelical vaccine refusers among my close relatives, and I’ve now been writing commentary, journalism, and policy research on the Christian Right beat for six years. And I’m done with sugarcoating my assessment of what’s wrong with right-wing Christians, as I’m convinced that such coddling of Christian nationalists is a luxury that Americans can no longer afford if we hope to avert an even greater public health disaster and to have a democratic future.

I do quite hope for both of those items – no bigger public health disaster, and a democratic future. Yes, I think those are better than the alternatives. Wacky, I know.

While most secular Americans and most religious groups navigate pluralism just fine, there are other religious groups—white Christian groups in particular, but also including a significant proportion of Latinx Christians and some other Christians of color—whose overwhelmingly anti-pluralist, anti-democratic religious views are a key source of America’s critical problems. If we remain trapped in the older, unnuanced thinking about the supposedly intrinsic goodness of “religion” itself, whatever that is—a view that’s still far too widespread among America’s elite pundit class—we will never be able to effectively confront American authoritarianism. 

I think much of the pundit class doesn’t so much hold the view as fear being seen to reject the view.

The tragic fate of the…anti-masker.

Where is he watching children turn on parents? Is he, like, looking into people’s windows? Or what? Because normally that’s not something you can just “watch,” like a football game. I also doubt that friends quarrel with friends over it right in front of him. It sounds dramatic though, to say you’re “watching” it. Drama drama drama, there can never be enough.

“Dangerous vermin”; “unclean.” We’re meant to think it’s like Nazi Germany, and he’s The Jews.

No, we don’t think that, we think people are stupidly and/or selfishly refusing to wear masks, for stupid or selfish or just no real reasons, and thus helping the pandemic kill and harm more people. Do we think that’s a bad thing to do? Yes, of course. It’s nothing to do with vermin, or with “unclean” except in the sense that the virus is contagious – but a mask doesn’t make you “clean,” it just hinders transmission of the virus.

Ah that old festering wound – the fact that smoking around other people became unpopular. So unfair and unkind, isn’t it? To not want other people’s cigarette smoke in your face? It’s not at all that the custom of smoking around other people was always quite rude, no no, it’s the other way around – it’s people who don’t want to be around cigarette smoke who are unreasonable and cruel. Same with masks.

No, being able to compel people is not the goal, the goal is not getting the virus and not allowing the virus to spread. That’s it. We’d love it if everyone had good sense and just did what needs to be done without all this mewling and puking.

More on the Gaetz Gohmert Greene rebellion:

QAnon apostle Marjorie Taylor Greene, unsanctioned high school chaperone Matt Gaetz and the self-proclaimed “dumbest man in Congress” were forced to evacuate a press conference when their regularly scheduled bullshit parade turned into an all-out shitshow.

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), Louie Gohmert (R-Texas) and Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) scheduled a Tuesday press conference outside the Department of Justice in support of the detained Jan. 6 insurrectionists. Contrary to their usual stance on law and order, the elected officials wanted the world to know how unfair it was to punish violent thugs who did absolutely nothing wrong except attempt a violent overthrow of the government at Greene and Gaetz’s behest.

Injuring a lot of cops in the process, as we were reminded at the January 6 hearing.

Greene fled the site of the “intolerant left’s” refusal to allow government officials carry out their official duties at a press conference in support of people who wouldn’t let government officials carry out their official duties. It was totally unfair how the media harassed her in the manner that she harassed David Hogg, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Cori Bush and Holocaust victims.

…

The white nationalist saviors were there to support men like Proud Boy leader Joe Biggs, who has spent three months in jail for nothing more than leading a white supremacist gang on a cop-beating spree at the nation’s capital. In a statement issued on Tuesday, Biggs moaned and groaned about how the people at the jail are treating him like he’s in jail.

And like he’s…not white.

The ongoing coup.

I watched some longer clips from the January 6 hearing yesterday. Emotionally grueling, and necessary.

Mo is angrynotangry about those smutty little bikini pants at the Olympics.

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Tucker Carlson is now saying Fauci created the virus. That explains why I was seeing tweets saying Fauci should sue him for libel.

As the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention urged vaccinated people to resume wearing masks under certain circumstances amid low vaccination rates and rising cases from the delta variant, Fox News host Tucker Carlson placed blame on Anthony S. Fauci for the changing mask guidelines.

Yes let’s blame someone for the fact that viruses change and knowledge changes. Let’s pretend that all knowledge is instantly available to all people and that no virus ever changes; that will make everything better overnight.

“Here’s the man who helped to create covid in the first place,” Carlson said.

The host doubled down on the baseless claim minutes later on “Tucker Carlson Tonight” when he cited a handful of “breakthrough” cases of vaccinated people still getting infected by the virus. Studies have shown the two-dose coronavirus vaccines from Pfizer and Moderna are about 95 percent effective at preventing infection, while Johnson & Johnson’s one-shot vaccine is 72 percent effective.

“They have been telling us for six months that this vaccine is perfect, but clearly, in some cases, it doesn’t always work,” Carlson said. “And that’s not our theory, by the way. Take it from the guy who created covid.”

No they haven’t. They’ve been telling us the opposite of that.

Carlson, who has described himself as “pretty pro-vaccine,” has regularly challenged the efficacy of vaccination against the coronavirus to his millions of viewers on his prime-time show. “Maybe it doesn’t work, and they’re simply not telling you that,” he said in April. The claim caused Fauci to rebut what he deemed a “crazy conspiracy theory.”

Why does Tucker Carlson do this? For money and fame and glory. He energetically makes the pandemic worse for his own personal gratification. There ought to be a Nuremberg-type trial just for him, starting now.

When asked by CNN’s Jim Acosta this month about how Carlson’s hostility toward the vaccine would have looked when the country was fighting polio or the measles, Fauci wondered what damage the pushback could have caused.

“If we had the pushback for vaccines the way we’re seeing on certain media, I don’t think it would’ve been possible at all to not only eradicate smallpox. We’d probably still have smallpox, and we’d probably still have polio in this country if we had the kind of false information that’s being spread now,” he said. “If we had that back decades ago, I’d be certain we’d still have polio in this country.”

But it would have been worth it because we would have been free people instead of sheep doing what we were told. Better to die on your feet than live on your knees, right?! Defiance is better than not getting polio!

Despite the new CDC guidance, Carlson claimed without evidence that the new guidelines came from lawmakers trying to hold on to the “unprecedented levels of power” they have amassed in the past year.

“They’re going to keep ordering you around, regardless of the science,” Carlson said on his show. “And, of course, Tony Fauci is going to do his best to defend it all.”

Yeah! They’re so bossy! We just can’t stand that – we’re the people who threw the tea in the harbor. Don’t tread on us! Give us liberty and give us Covid! Don’t ever do what people tell you to do, not during a pandemic or a firestorm or a record-smashing heatwave or a drought or an invasion or any other emergency. Don’t do what you’re told! Do what occurs to you in the moment, however little you know about what’s happening a mile away! The ego is always right and the collective is the enemy. By the way while you’re out there could you grab me some vodka and tortilla chips at 7-11?

Another woman punished.

A teacher has been sacked after attempting to scupper the election hopes of a transgender candidate who wanted to be head girl. 

Susan Field told her tutor group she felt the pupil was not “representative” of the student body and that it was not an “appropriate” role for her, the teaching watchdog found.

Ms Field, a French teacher who was said to have previously enjoyed an “unblemished 35-year career”, was dismissed from Ash Manor School, in Surrey, for gross misconduct after a disciplinary hearing into her remarks and subsequently lost her appeal.

I don’t know what being representative of the student body is supposed to mean, but as for a boy who calls himself a girl being head girl, I think that should be off the table. I don’t think boys should take girls’ prizes or jobs or offices or any other scarce commodity of that kind, no matter how they identify.

The student, referred to by the Teaching Regulation Agency as “Pupil I”, had publicly identified as a female student to the school since the start of the academic year.

Whatever. That doesn’t entitle him to take the head girl position away from a girl.

The disciplinary hearing in Coventry was told that, during the 10 to 15-minute conversation in May 2019, various pupils described Pupil I as “disgusting”. Other “hostile and derogatory language” was also used – which Ms Field failed to challenge, the panel said.

During the investigation, she admitted telling her tutor group that it is “not appropriate for a member of the LGBTQI to represent Ash Manor School”.

That complicates the picture, because it shouldn’t be the issue. A lesbian head girl would be a fine thing, it’s the boy as head girl that’s the problem.

They actually say it. Right out in the open! As if it makes perfect sense!

Yes, this is America, where dedicated researchers came up with effective vaccines for polio, to name one.

Here’s someone who would have been glad to have that vaccine available in 1921.

If the vaccine had been available, and mandated, then the people who died or were more or less paralyzed in the decades before it was developed would have benefited.

Of course the people who tell us to get the vax have a right to do so. It’s a matter of public health, and it saves countless lives.

Making sure we “still act free” by refusing to get an effective vaccination during a lethal pandemic is childish, murderous, and beneath contempt.

On the one hand boo vaccines, on the other hand yay ivermectin. Whaaat?

A contingent of Americans has embraced the anti-parasite drug ivermectin as a miracle cure for COVID-19 despite warnings from the American scientific community that little to no evidence exists of its efficacy.

At the same time, many Americans have rejected the COVID-19 vaccines in spite of enormous evidence supporting their efficacy.

No good reason to think ivermectin any use so let’s embrace it, but tons of reason to think the vaccines work so let’s refuse to get them.

I’m not seeing the reasoning here – not even the party or partisan or political reasoning. Your politics are kind of beside the point once you’re dead.

The persistent trust in ivermectin and hesitancy to take a widely-proven vaccine is a logical consequence of rejecting American institutions, and a consequence exacerbated by those who have politicized science.

Used to be, it was the left that was suspicious of institutions. At what point did conservatives say “Hold my beer, I’ll show you suspicious of institutions, you weakling”?

Despite this generally accepted commitment to the process of peer review, a subset of American physicians and politicians took the Egyptian pre-print and ran with it. They endorsed ivermectin in front of Congress, on cable news shows, and in viral social media posts.

We have seen this behavior before from irresponsible actors creating conspiracies about “big science” covering up the wonders of a supposed miracle drug. Playing into anti-vaccine fears, some went as far as to argue “there shouldn’t be vaccines that we’re administering” if ivermectin was so safe and effective.

The words of these “experts” have caused substantial harm by contributing to our current “pandemic of the unvaccinated.”

Which could mean we never get free of the virus and it just becomes a permanent risk. All because people play stupid games.

This is not a game. There are real lives at stake. And those who continue to push the idea that ivermectin is an effective treatment for COVID-19 know exactly what they are doing.

Which is killing people.