#Infectious Disease Bill

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Andrew Prokop at Vox:

Former President Donald Trump has lately been trying to distance himself from Project 2025, claiming it was cooked up by the “severe right” and that he doesn’t know anything about it. But it turns out the severe right is coming from inside the house. Kevin Roberts, the self-proclaimed “head” of Project 2025, has a book coming out in September — and the book’s foreword is written by Trump’s vice presidential candidate, J.D. Vance, who lavishly praises its ideas. “Never before has a figure with Roberts’s depth and stature within the American Right tried to articulate a genuinely new future for conservatism,” Vance writes, according to the book’s Amazon page. “We are now all realizing that it’s time to circle the wagons and load the muskets. In the fights that lay ahead, these ideas are an essential weapon.”

What ideas? Like Vance, Roberts is obsessed with the idea that the left controls major American institutions — he lists Ivy League colleges, the FBI, the New York Times, the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, the Department of Education and even the Boy Scouts of America. The book argues that “conservatives need to burn down” these institutions if “we’re to preserve the American way of life.” (Vox has requested a copy of the book, but has not yet received one at the time of this writing.) Obviously, this poses a problem for Trump’s attempts to distance himself from the virally unpopular Project 2025 and its lengthy agenda for what he should do if he wins, which includes proposals to restrict abortion access and centralize executive power in the presidency.

And it’s one more indication that Trump’s pick of Vance might be politically problematic for him. Vance has a fascination with provocative and extreme far-right thinkers, and a history of praising their ideas. He is not a running mate tailored to win over swing voters who are concerned Trump might be too extreme — quite the opposite. The book was written and announced before Vance was chosen as Trump’s running mate. But there’s some indication that people involved had some late second thoughts about it. It was originally announced as “Dawn’s Early Light: Burning Down Washington to Save America,” with a cover image showing a match over the word “Washington.”

More recently, though, the subtitle has been changed to “Taking Back Washington to Save America,” and the match has vanished from the cover.

[...]

Vance agrees quite a bit with Project 2025’s most extreme ideas

Project 2025 contains a multitude of proposals in its 922-page plan, not all of which J.D. Vance necessarily supports. But he’s on record backing ideas similar to those put forth in two of Project 2025’s most controversial issue areas. The first is abortion. Project 2025 lays out a sweeping agenda by which the next president could use federal power to prevent abortions, including using an old law called the Comstock Act to prosecute people who mail abortion pills, and working to prevent women from abortion-banning states from traveling out of state to get abortions.

Vance is on record supporting these ideas. Last year, he signed a letter demanding that the Justice Department prosecute physicians and pharmacists “who break the Federal mail-order abortion laws.” In 2022, he said he was “sympathetic” to the idea that the federal government should stop efforts to help women traveling out of their states to get abortions. That year, he also said: “I certainly would like abortion to be illegal nationally.” At other points, Vance has struck a different tone. ““We have to accept that people do not want blanket abortion bans,” he said last December. And this month he said he supported a Supreme Court decision that allowed the abortion bill mifepristone to remain available. Here, Vance is trying to align with Trump, who — fearing political blowback — argues he merely wants abortion to be a state issue, despite his long alliance with the religious right. But Vance’s record implies his true agenda might be otherwise.

The second controversial area where Vance is sympatico with Project 2025 is centralizing presidential power over the executive branch. The project lays out various proposals to rein in what conservatives view as an out-of-control “deep state” bureaucracy — mainly, by firing far more career civil servants and installing far more political appointees throughout the government. Vance, as I wrote last week, has backed a maximalist version of this agenda. In 2021, Vance said that in Trump’s second term, Trump should “fire every single midlevel bureaucrat, every civil servant in the administrative state, replace them with our people.” The courts would try to stop this, Vance continued, and Trump should then “stand before the country like Andrew Jackson did, and say, ‘The chief justice has made his ruling. Now let him enforce it.’”

While Donald Trump is doing his darndest to supposedly run away from the highly unpopular Project 2025, his ticketmate J.D. Vance is making that proposition difficult to impossible.

See Also:

HuffPost: There’s Another Link Between Trump’s Campaign And Project 2025

[covid-safer-hotties]

They're Coming for Your Mask: A Survey on Discrimination

Published in late June, but ringing especially true given yesterday's successful mask ban in Nassau County, NY.

It's already happening.

When the state of North Carolina first proposed a mask ban this year, advocates from across the country warned lawmakers that it would embolden anti-maskers and lead to a surge in harassment and assault. Days after it passed, a woman with stage 4 cancer was assaulted by a man for wearing a mask. He told her wearing a mask was illegal. When she tried to explain her medical condition, he cussed her out and then started coughing on her.

He told her he hoped she died.

More recently, Nassau County in New York passed an even more draconian mask ban, threatening anyone with a $1,000 fine and up to one year in jail. Like the NC ban, this bill makes a blanket declaration, giving law enforcement broad discretion and putting the burden of proof on individuals. Under these types of bills, it's entirely possible for police officers or even ordinary citizens to abuse the laws, forcing people to unmask even if they're just trying to avoid infection.

At a Chicago airport, an infectious disease expert was denied service at a restaurant for trying to enter with a mask. When she asked why, the staff simply repeated, "It's the policy."

She was told to leave.

There's one point continually missed by mainstream coverage of these mask bans. Politicians keep saying nothing has changed, but they're lying. Under the new law in NC, for example, anyone who considers themselves an "occupant of public property" can demand someone remove their mask for identification. In the bill's exact words, anyone wearing a mask for health reasons "shall remove the mask upon request by a law enforcement officer or temporarily remove the mask upon request by the owner or occupant of public or private property where the wearer is present to allow for identification of the wearer."

This intentionally vague language allows virtually anyone to take it upon themselves to "request" someone "temporarily" remove their mask for identification. If they don't, they're breaking the law and they can be arrested, even charged with a felony. Maybe that sounds like a compromise to someone who doesn't understand viral transmission.

It's not a compromise at all.

Read the rest at the link!

[reality-detective]

A recent History Lesson 👇

Bill Gates invested a whopping $55 MILLION in BioNTech that made the Pfizer mRNA injection.

You will never believe the date that this happened...

Is this just a coincidence?

You know, the company that partnered with Pfizer to make their mRNA covid vaccine and drove Pfizer's revenue to a record $100 billion in 2022.

Well, I had a look and found something very interesting indeed. When did Bill Gates invest this large sum of money?

Turns out that it was on the 4th of September 2019.

Covid was discovered just two months later in November 2019 (at least the first time we got to hear about it).

This turned out to be very profitable for Bill Gates, his investment increasing by 10 times. The original $55 million was worth over $550 million just a few years later.

"The collaboration will fund the identification of potential HIV and tuberculosis vaccines and immunotherapy candidates in their pre-clinical development. It will further enable BioNTech to build out its infectious disease infrastructure, including platform development" - it says in the press release from BioNTech.

Guess what?

Bill Gates has also donated some $20 million to the BBC.

Now it is being reported that the BBC misrepresented the risk of covid in order to boost public support for lockdown.

In other words, the mainstream media deliberately mislead the public and scared them into supporting draconian lockdown measures, and also probably scared people into rushing to get the brand new mRNA injections.

Meanwhile Bill Gates investment grew and grew...

"One example is that they gave the impression that hospitals were being overwhelmed during the first wave. Some (mainly in London) were, but overall hospital bed occupancy was at an all-time low during that period" Professor Mark Woolhouse said.

Remember when we were told that the hospitals were completely full and we had all the dancing nurses on TikTok? Remember how some people were labelled "conspiracy theorists" for questioning this?

Turns out that the so called "conspiracy theorists" were right once again. The hospitals were not full. We were being lied to. I visited two hospitals during that time and they were empty.

Surely it is just a coincidence that Bill Gates just happened to invest large amounts of money into BioNTech just two months before covid?

In fact there was a patent for the mRNA shot before Covid. They lied about everything including the use of masks to stop the spread of an unconfirmed invisible made up virus.

I'm sure this information has already been out there by other sources. I'm just giving a reminder, the information is still available and you are free to löök this up for yourself. 🤔

[notwiselybuttoowell]

In 2014, the Guardian asked me to nominate my hero of the year. To some people’s surprise, I chose Russell Brand. I loved the way he energised young people who had been alienated from politics. I claimed, perhaps hyperbolically, he was “the best thing that has happened to the left in years” (in my defence, there wasn’t, at the time, much competition).

Today, I can scarcely believe it’s the same man. I’ve watched 50 of his recent videos, with growing incredulity. He appears to have switched from challenging injustice to conjuring phantoms. If, as I suspect it might, politics takes a very dark turn in the next few years, it will be partly as a result of people like Brand.

It’s hard to decide which is most dispiriting: the stupidity of some of the theories he recites, or the lack of originality. He repeatedly says he’s not a conspiracy theorist, but, to me, he certainly sounds like one.

In 2014, he was bursting with new ideas and creative ways of presenting them. Today, he wastes his talent on tired and discredited tales: endless iterations of the alleged evils of the World Economic Forum founder, Klaus Schwab, the Great Reset, Bill Gates, Nancy Pelosi, the former US chief medical adviser, Anthony Fauci, Covid vaccines, medical data, the��World Health Organization, Pfizer, smart cities and “the globalist masterplan”.

His videos appear to promote “natural immunity” ahead of vaccines, and for a while pushed ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine as treatments for Covid (they aren’t).

He championed the “Freedom Convoy” that occupied Ottawa, which apparently stood proudly against the “tyranny” of Justin Trudeau’s policies. He hawks Graham Hancock’s widely debunked claims about ancient monuments.

A wildly popular clip from one of his videos about the Dutch nitrate crisis offers a classic conspiracy theory mashup: a tangle of claims that may be true in other contexts, random accusations, scapegoating and resonances with some old and very ugly tropes. He claims that “this whole fertiliser situation is a scam”. The real objective is “to bankrupt the farmers so their land can be grabbed”. This “shows you how the Great Reset operates”, using “globalist” regulations to throw farmers off their land. He claims it’s “connected to the land grab of Bill Gates” and the “corruption of companies like Monsanto”.

In reality, the Dutch government was forced to act by a legal ruling, as levels of nitrate pollution, largely from livestock farms, break European law. Its attempts to curb this pollution have nothing to do with the World Economic Forum and its vacuous rhetoric about a “Great Reset”. Or with Bill Gates. Or with Monsanto, which hasn’t existed since 2018 when it was bought by Bayer. So why mention them? Perhaps because these terms have become potent click triggers.

Brand is repeating claims first made by far-right conspiracists, who have piled into this issue, claiming that the nitrate crisis is a pretext to seize land from farmers, in whom, they claim, true Dutch identity is vested, and hand it to asylum seekers and other immigrants. It’s a version of the “great replacement” conspiracy theory, itself a reworking of the Nazis’ blood and soil tropes about protecting the “rooted” and “authentic” people – in whom “racial purity” and “true” German identity was vested – from “cosmopolitan” and “alien” forces (ie Jews). Brand may not realise this, as the language has changed a little – “cosmopolitans” have become “globalists”, “aliens” have become “immigrants” – but the themes have not.

On and drearily on he goes. He manages to confuse the World Health Organization’s call for better pandemic surveillance (by which it means the tracking of infectious diseases) with coercive surveillance of the population, creating “centralised systems of control where you are ultimately a serf”.

Some of his many rants about Bill Gates are illustrated with an image of the man wearing a multicoloured lapel badge, helpfully circled in red. This speaks to another widespread conspiracy theory: those who wear this badge are members of a secret organisation conspiring to control the world (so secret they stick it on their jackets). In reality, it shows support for the UN sustainable development goals.

Such claims are not just wrong. They are wearyingly, boringly wrong. But, to judge by the figures (he has more than 6 million subscribers on YouTube), the audience loves them.

Some of his theories, such as his recent obsession with UFOs, are innocuous enough. Others have potential to do great harm. There’s the risk to the people scapegoated, such as Fauci, Schwab and Pelosi: subjects of conspiracy theories often become targets of violence. There are the risks misleading claims present to public health. And bizarre stories about shadowy “elites” protect real elites from scrutiny and challenge.

While I’m not suggesting this is his purpose, it’s a tactic used deliberately by powerful people to disarm those who might otherwise hold them to account. Donald Trump’s former chief strategist, Steve Bannon, had a term for it: “flood the zone with shit”. As Naomi Klein has shown, the Great Reset conspiracy theory was conceived by a staffer at the Heartland Institute, a US lobby group that has promoted climate denial and other billionaire-friendly positions. It’s a bastardisation of her shock doctrine hypothesis, distracting people from the malfeasance of those with real power.

[all-pacas]

#he's good in a crisis ok#and a dumb whore everywhere else

I'm the anon that asked why you think Chase is generally stupid,except for some talents. Can you talk why do you think he's a dumb person with a single talent,instead of a generally smart person who lacks common sense at times?

I mean, the short version is I’m joking. Just like when I call Cameron insufferable. The show itself likes to call Chase a Dumb Whore.

But the fact of the matter is that Chase isn’t stupid. House doesn’t hire idiots, even if he calls his employees stupid roughly twice a week. We see in S4 that he will fire someone immediately (CIA chick) if they can’t pull their weight; Chase does.

He does, in show, have a bit of a reputation for being dumb and lazy, and I think both have their… moments? Lazy is easier to prove: Chase tends to be quieter in differentials than Cameron and Foreman. He’s the least likely to argue his points or insist he’s right. Time and time again, he also shows he’s a bit apathetic: in Safe he and Cameron discuss the teenage patient’s boyfriend. They need to test his sperm, and Cameron worries that they should tell the parents, who will not be pleased. Chase shrugs it off. They’ll find out when they get billed for the test. Cameron asks if he’s really okay with them finding out like that; he doesn’t even hesitate before confirming “pretty much.” He prefers to take the easier path.

The dumb is a little more… meta-textual, let’s say. First of all, Chase is an intensivist. Foreman and Cameron are top level experts in their fields of disease. Foreman always thinking neurological is practically a running joke; I’m not sure if fandom has pinged on the fact that Lupus is a running joke because Cameron keeps suggesting it, because she’s an immunologist. They both tend to brainstorm in their specialties, they know a lot of very specific illness and disease stuff for them. Same with House: he has a double specialty in infectious disease and kidney stuff. Chase doesn’t have that kind of background. He’s not an expert in any body part or type of sickness. He’s… good at keeping people alive. And that is not easy, and we see time and again that he’s really good at it. But he doesn’t have that same kind of knowledge specialty, and so in differentials he… contributes, for sure, but he doesn’t have the “it must be lupus!” “it must be neurological!” thing. House also doesn’t defer to him as much — House recognizes Foreman knows more about Brain Stuff than he does, so when it’s a brain thing, Foreman is expected to know. Chase doesn’t have that kind of niche, so he comes off as a little less… brainstorm-y. Cerebral.

There’s also moments here and there in the show where they outright joke or imply he’s a little dim. There’s the “dumb whore” bit and him choosing password as his password. Way back in episode two of the show, he’s doing a crossword puzzle with a medical clue and can’t figure it out; Foreman does instantly. We know about Foreman and Cameron’s very prestigious CV and schooling history (he went to one of the top schools in the US and had perfect grades; she interned at the mayo clinic). All we know about Chase until S7 is that his dad, apparently, got him the job. Also, because Chase is the dedicated Keep ‘Em Alive Guy, there’s a whole bunch of episodes where, say, Foreman and Cameron are trying to figure stuff out or searching the home while Chase is busily working on the patient, so he seems to do “less” than the other two. This is probably where the “Chase screwed up” running theme comes from too: he cuts people open more than the other two, so if there’s a physical procedure (and potential mistake), it’s him and not Cameron who probably made it.

But that all said, all jokes aside, I don’t think he’s dumb. I mean — he’s dumb, but he’s not stupid. He might not be a disease or organ specialist like the others, but he still is able to keep up. He’s very good at keeping people alive. He also has a real penchant for out of the box thinking and creativity that bumps his Solve Rate up higher than any of the other fellows. As early as the Pilot he’s able to come up with a creative solution to prove the patient has Ham Worms. He’s shown plenty of times that he is incredibly good at reading people; he’s a good manipulator and lowkey House’s default “schemes guy” in early seasons, when he needs to trick a patient (or scam money out of the S4 betting pools and Kutner). He’s able to completely see through House and Foreman multiple times; House even goes so far as to say it’s why Chase was hired.

I think if anything it’s laziness that’s Chase’s biggest issue. He’s shown plenty of times he can be brilliant and is observant and creative, he just rarely bothers or cares enough to try. He’s… kind of a spoiled rich kid. He doesn’t have to work hard for things, so he doesn’t. He’s passive and more than a little spineless, and finds it easier to go along than assert himself in early seasons. He might not be dumb, but people see him that way, and I really don’t think he minds. Because it’s easier, and because he doesn’t really care what Foreman (or whoever) thinks. The rare times he does go all out tend to be exceptions: he works his ass off to prove his father wrong in S1, and Treiber in S8, because he’s mad more than because he’s that worried about the case. He figures out the same thing as House in Control, why the patient is really sick, but only because he’s afraid he’s about to be fired. He’s lazy. He works well under pressure.

I’m going to be super pretentious here, but when I was younger I read the short story “A Good Man is Hard To Find.” The main character is a deeply unpleasant and vain older woman. When her life is threatened, however, she becomes desperate and kind and empathetic. One of the last lines is another character’s musing (and I've thought about this line nearly every day of my life since): 

"She would of been a good woman," The Misfit said, "if it had been somebody there to shoot her every minute of her life."

In a way, that’s Chase. He does great when he’s sufficiently motivated; it’s just that most of the time, he’s only motivated for personal reasons.

But he’s not stupid.

[hootbon]

Okay question, the audience seems fucked up (and on the off note of their us, than their definitely gene more mentally fucked up), I have spent like the last two minutes looking into older things on actual ‘freak shows’ and such bc my brain craves the

LORE

SO, I now have a question.

“Typical features would be physically unusual humans, such as those uncommonly large or small, those with intersex variations, those with extraordinary diseases and conditions, and others with performances expected to be shocking to viewers.”

And you know, I’d think that abstractions would be something that fits the bill, my question is, why didn’t Caine use them as his freaks, if we’re going on the logic of how he’s a cruel bastard (it’s a fact, we can’t change him, get over it people—) so wouldn’t the viewers be insanely or at least moderately amused and shocked at the sight of a inhuman beast? It would fit the bill of a freak show. Caine can somewhat control them after all, like physically, or does he just find them too annoying to deal with and would rather just not have them around at all, hence why he made Aingle?

“In the early 19th century, some naturalists tortured Europe and North America with examples of exotic or unique animals, charging admission to view their ‘cabinets of curiosities’. Humans with bodies that were perceived to deviate significantly from an understood norm were often grouped with those lusus naturae shows…”

I mean, looking at this from Caine’s point of view—still having a use for the performers after their gone, using them as an animalistic form of entertainment, or like just shoving them into a cage wagon or contained area so no one would be ‘harmed’ yet people could see the ‘barbaric’ nature. Since knowing Caine if he did do that, than he would probably title Abstractions like, the ‘mindless freaks’ or something I dunno— okay so just, why didn’t he include them? Am I just over thinking this all? Probably. I don’t need sleep, I need answers and one of them is why tf did Caine let those people have the sweet release of death instead of torturing them in their insane state for petty entertainment, because it sounds like something he’d do.

They’re corrupted code, when someone abstracts their code corrupts into something indescribably broken to the point the code isn’t even recognizable anymore. They’re infectious too, they corrupt every thing they touch and break the game’s code. It would be interesting to have but they just can’t be controlled.. such is why aingle acts as a failsafe, to turn that collection of code off before it amalgamates into something hideous, essentially freeze it in time indefinitely. It’s protocol after all

Funny enough aingle existed before Caine was corrupted himself.. it’s just that code was never put to use by Caine or the developers until now.. hell Caine didn’t even know it existed before

[rjzimmerman]

Food as You Know It Is About to Change. (New York Times Op-Ed)

From the vantage of the American supermarket aisle, the modern food system looks like a kind of miracle. Everything has been carefully cultivated for taste and convenience — even those foods billed as organic or heirloom — and produce regarded as exotic luxuries just a few generations ago now seems more like staples, available on demand: avocados, mangoes, out-of-season blueberries imported from Uruguay.

But the supermarket is also increasingly a diorama of the fragility of a system — disrupted in recent years by the pandemic, conflict and, increasingly, climate change. What comes next? Almost certainly, more disruptions and more hazards, enough to remake the whole future of food.

The world as a whole is already facing what the Cornell agricultural economist Chris Barrett calls a “food polycrisis.” Over the past decade, he says, what had long been reliable global patterns of year-on-year improvements in hunger first stalled and then reversed. Rates of undernourishment have grown 21 percent since 2017. Agricultural yields are still growing, but not as quickly as they used to and not as quickly as demand is booming. Obesity has continued to rise, and the average micronutrient content of dozens of popular vegetables has continued to fall. The food system is contributing to the growing burden of diabetes and heart disease and to new spillovers of infectious diseases from animals to humans as well.

And then there are prices. Worldwide, wholesale food prices, adjusted for inflation, have grown about 50 percent since 1999, and those prices have also grown considerably more volatile, making not just markets but the whole agricultural Rube Goldberg network less reliable. Overall, American grocery prices have grown by almost 21 percent since President Biden took office, a phenomenon central to the widespread perception that the cost of living has exploded on his watch. Between 2020 and 2023, the wholesale price of olive oil tripled; the price of cocoa delivered to American ports jumped by even more in less than two years. The economist Isabella Weber has proposed maintaining the food equivalent of a strategic petroleum reserve, to buffer against shortages and ease inevitable bursts of market chaos.

Price spikes are like seismographs for the food system, registering much larger drama elsewhere — and sometimes suggesting more tectonic changes underway as well. More than three-quarters of the population of Africa, which has already surpassed one billion, cannot today afford a healthy diet; this is where most of our global population growth is expected to happen this century, and there has been little agricultural productivity growth there for 20 years. Over the same time period, there hasn’t been much growth in the United States either.

Though American agriculture as a whole produces massive profits, Mr. Barrett says, most of the country’s farms actually lose money, and around the world, food scarcity is driving record levels of human displacement and migration. According to the World Food Program, 282 million people in 59 countries went hungry last year, 24 million more than the previous year. And already, Mr. Barrett says, building from research by his Cornell colleague Ariel Ortiz-Bobea, the effects of climate change have reduced the growth of overall global agricultural productivity by between 30 and 35 percent. The climate threats to come loom even larger.

It can be tempting, in an age of apocalyptic imagination, to picture the most dire future climate scenarios: not just yield declines but mass crop failures, not just price spikes but food shortages, not just worsening hunger but mass famine. In a much hotter world, those will indeed become likelier, particularly if agricultural innovation fails to keep pace with climate change; over a 30-year time horizon, the insurer Lloyd’s recently estimated a 50 percent chance of what it called a “major” global food shock.

But disruption is only half the story and perhaps much less than that. Adaptation and innovation will transform the global food supply, too. At least to some degree, crops such as avocados or cocoa, which now regularly appear on lists of climate-endangered foodstuffs, will be replaced or redesigned. Diets will shift, and with them the farmland currently producing staple crops — corn, wheat, soy, rice. The pressure on the present food system is not a sign that it will necessarily fail, only that it must change. Even if that progress does come to pass, securing a stable and bountiful future for food on a much warmer planet, what will it all actually look like?

[tomorrowusa]

Republicans are soft on disease control. We all remember the MAGA anti-vaccine hysteria when the COVID-19 vaccines became available.

They are now turning their attention to the polio vaccine which was approved for use in the US on 12 April 1955. The number of polio cases in the US dropped from 57,879 in 1952 to 910 in 1962 and became rare by the early 1970s.

Thanks to anti-vaxxing conspiracy crackpots, polio returned to the US for the first time in three decades in 2022.

New Hampshire Republicans want to weaken vaccination requirements to kowtow to anti-science elements in their state.

New Hampshire could soon beat Florida—known for its anti-vaccine Surgeon General—when it comes to loosening vaccine requirements. A first-in-the-nation bill that’s already passed New Hampshire’s state House, sponsored only by Republican legislators, would end the requirement for parents enrolling kids in childcare to provide documentation of polio and measles vaccination. New Hampshire would be the only state in the US to have such a law, although many states allow religious exemptions to vaccine requirements.  Currently, Republicans control New Hampshire’s state House, Senate and governor’s office—but that isn’t a guarantee that the bill will be signed into law, with GOP Gov. Chris Sununu seemingly flip-flopping when it comes to disease control. Sununu did sign a bill in 2021 allowing people to use public places and services even if they did not receive the Covid-19 vaccine. But the next year, the governor vetoed a bill that would bar schools from implementing mask mandates.  The polio vaccine, first offered in 1955, and the MMR shot, which treats the highly infectious measles, mumps, and rubella viruses, are two very crucial vaccines both in the US and internationally. Since the year 2000 alone, vaccines against measles are estimated to have saved over 55 million lives around the world.  [ ... ] Vaccine hesitancy is rising among parents of young children. A 2023 survey from the Pew Research Center found that around half of parents with kids four or younger thought that not all standard childhood vaccines—a list that also includes hepatitis B, rotavirus, DTaP and chickenpox—may be necessary. Anti-vaccine misinformation plays a role in this phenomenon, which began before the Covid-19 pandemic, but has certainly increased since. In a 2019 UK report, about 50 percent of parents of young kids encountered false information about vaccines on social media. 

Gov. Chris Sununu is a spineless putz. In some ways he's like Lindsey Graham who likes to send smoke signals of independent thinking but always comes crawling home to Daddy Donald.

Sununu campaigned for Nikki Haley and blamed Trump for January 6th. But that hasn't stopped him from endorsing Trump anyway. Instigating a coup d'état does not disqualify somebody from the presidency in Sununu's opinion.

GOP's Chris Sununu tries, fails to defend his Trump endorsement

Sununu may do for polio in New Hampshire what Trump did for COVID in the entire US in 2020.

[superstrijder00]

The End TB Now Act passed the Senate! Next step is passing the house. The bill will allow the president of the US to provide international assistance to efforts to eradicate Tuberculosis, the deadliest infectious disease on earth, as well as updating national plans to fight it.

If you live in the US, consider contacting your representative to tell them to vote yes on this bill, HR 1776!

[simply-ivanka]

Fauci -- July 9th Wall Street Journal

https://www.wsj.com/arts-culture/books/on-call-review-anthony-fauci-makes-his-case-fd3a9e3b?mod=hp_listc_pos4

The article is behind a firewall, but here it is in its entirety with some selected comments from readers:

‘On Call’ Review: Anthony Fauci Makes His Case

The nation’s top medical adviser during the pandemic has no regrets despite the collateral damage of lockdowns and school closures.

By John Tierney Wall Street Journal

At the end of his memoir, “On Call: A Doctor’s Journey in Public Service,” Anthony Fauci laments: “We are living in an era in which information that is patently untrue gets repeated enough times that it becomes part of our everyday dialogue and starts to sound true.” He’s right about that, and he has inadvertently produced a 480-page master class in how to get away with it.

The memoir chronicles Dr. Fauci’s rise in Washington from an obscure researcher to his fame during the Covid-19 pandemic, when he became, as he writes, a “hero to the millions of Americans who saw me as a physician bravely standing up for science, truth, and rational decision-making.” This image bore no relation to reality, given the evidence that the lockdowns and school closures accomplished little or nothing while causing unprecedented social and economic damage.

So how did Dr. Fauci spin it into a personal triumph? The memoir chronicles the development of his techniques. He tells how, after becoming director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases in 1984, one of his first “crucial lessons” was “how important it was to cultivate relationships with people who are in a position to make things happen.” These people included politicians in the White House and the Capitol, activists demanding bigger budgets, and, especially, journalists eager for stories that would terrify their audiences.

Dr. Fauci’s rise to media stardom began early in the AIDS epidemic, when he published an editorial in the Journal of the American Medical Association warning that this new disease could possibly be spread by “routine close contact” between children and adults. The resulting headlines inspired a wave of homophobia that infuriated gay activists, but Dr. Fauci quickly placated them by reversing himself, denouncing the idea of infection by routine social contact as “absolutely preposterous.” The memoir doesn’t explain his flip-flop—or even mention the controversy.

Meanwhile, Dr. Fauci found another way to frighten the American public, by joining with other federal officials in warning that AIDS would start spreading among heterosexuals. The much-hyped “heterosexual breakout” never occurred, but widespread fears led to spectacular increases in AIDS spending—and complaints from other scientists that the funding shifts were curtailing research into diseases that claimed far more lives. Although he had been cautioned by Albert Sabin, the developer of the oral polio vaccine, that an HIV vaccine was unattainable, Dr. Fauci helped persuade President Bill Clinton to declare a “new national goal for science” of developing one within a decade. “Unfortunately,” he writes, three decades and many dollars later, “an effective vaccine for HIV is still nowhere in sight.”

Dr. Fauci’s funding, media visibility and access to the White House continued during later administrations, particularly during the scare over a bioterrorism attack on America (supposedly imminent after 9/11) and during media frenzies over predicted pandemics from bird flu and swine flu. “On Call” details his campaigns to stockpile vaccines against the coming plagues, although again the sagas are anticlimactic: The doomsday pandemics failed to arrive.

“One might imagine that it would be terribly frustrating to put in enormous efforts of preparation for events that never happen,” Dr. Fauci writes. “However, that is not how I feel.” He went on seeking more funding to prepare for a future catastrophic flu pandemic, a threat he considered so dire that it justified “generating a potentially dangerous virus in the laboratory,” as he argued in a 2011 article in the Washington Post.

In retrospect, given the mounting evidence that Covid-19 was created by just that sort of gain-of-function research in China, does Dr. Fauci have any second thoughts about advocating such a risky endeavor? None worth mentioning in this memoir. In dismissing the “smear campaign” to link him to a lab-created virus, he ignores the obvious possibility that the Wuhan virologists exploited knowledge acquired in the lab’s previous bat-virus research funded by his agency.

Nor does he regret his pandemic guidance, despite the vast collateral damage of lockdowns and the evidence that nations and U.S. states that shunned Dr. Fauci’s advice fared as well or better than the ones that locked down. Sweden experienced one of the lowest rates of excess mortality in Europe while keeping businesses and schools open and urging its citizens not to wear masks. Nowhere in Dr. Fauci’s memoir is there a mention of Sweden or other such counter-evidence.

Instead he alternates between denying responsibility for the pandemic restrictions—because he had no legal authority to impose them—and taking credit for promoting them endlessly in media appearances, meetings at the White House and phone calls with governors. He derides a lockdown opponent, Dr. Scott Atlas of the Hoover Institution, for supposedly telling President Trump “exactly what the president wanted to hear,” but he offers no cogent rebuttal to Dr. Atlas’s arguments.

In fact, the glaring omissions in the memoir confirm the criticisms in Dr. Atlas’s own memoir, “A Plague Upon Our House” (2021). At the White House Coronavirus Task Force meetings, Dr. Atlas recounts, Dr. Fauci never presented scientific evidence in favor of his policies, refused to respond to the contrary evidence that Dr. Atlas presented, and never considered the collateral damage from the policies.

In fall 2020 there was ample evidence that schools could reopen safely, but Dr. Fauci kept offering reasons to keep them closed. When Dr. Atlas argued that Americans were irrationally frightened, he writes, Dr. Fauci replied: “They need to be more afraid.” Dr. Fauci’s determination to panic the public astounded Dr. Atlas, but it’s understandable after reading “On Call.” For Anthony Fauci, fearmongering was always an excellent career move.

Reader's Comments

Shouldn't he be in jail?

I'm not a proponent of book burning but in this case I would make an exception. Match please.

He should be indicted for mass murder based on his funding of gain-of-function research at the Wuhan lab. The man is irredeemable.

dr Fauci is an idiot and he should be tried at The Hague for mass murder.

Perfectly obvious why Fauci and Biden worked so well together. They both are masters at deceiving the public to stay in power.

After reading this review (I will not be reading the book), it appears that Joe Biden and Anthony Fauci have something in common: They are wrong on virtually ever important decision they make.

"The nation’s top medical adviser during the pandemic has no regrets despite the collateral damage of lockdowns and school closures.". No regrets? Neither did a certain German Doc during WW2! And Fauci killed millions more! And we all get to pay this murderer $400K until he dies? Can anyone speed that process up? This malignant narcissist is directly responsible for the creation of the Franken-virus called Covid 19! The worst part is...he will get away with it!

Fauci belongs in prison if not death row.

Fauci is a heinous stain on the nation's history and the little monster should be under lock and key...

Sad, but not surprising...a common element amongst the elites, who by their definition are smarter than the rest of us, is the unwillingness to admit they were wrong, even in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary. Fauci now admits that in his entire career he has worked on not following the science, but following the money...

If you put a big one over on people, you smile to yourself and quietly walk away. He can't do that because his ego is too big.

This man has done such damage to the level of trust people put in the medical science establishment that it will take decades before this turns around. What disturbs me is say, a very deadly new disease or virus actually makes it rounds in five or ten years, and because of Fauci, people won't believe the epidemiologists who tell them the truth about it.

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Julia Métraux at Mother Jones:

New Hampshire could soon beat Florida—known for its anti-vaccine Surgeon General—when it comes to loosening vaccine requirements. A first-in-the-nation bill that’s already passed New Hampshire’s state House, sponsored only by Republican legislators, would end the requirement for parents enrolling kids in childcare to provide documentation of polio and measles vaccination. New Hampshire would be the only state in the US to have such a law, although many states allow religious exemptions to vaccine requirements. 

Currently, Republicans control New Hampshire’s state House, Senate and governor’s office—but that isn’t a guarantee that the bill will be signed into law, with GOP Gov. Chris Sununu seemingly flip-flopping when it comes to disease control. Sununu did sign a bill in 2021 allowing people to use public places and services even if they did not receive the Covid-19 vaccine. But the next year, the governor vetoed a bill that would bar schools from implementing mask mandates.  The polio vaccine, first offered in 1955, and the MMR shot, which treats the highly infectious measles, mumps, and rubella viruses, are two very crucial vaccines both in the US and internationally. Since the year 2000 alone, vaccines against measles are estimated to have saved over 55 million lives around the world. 

The CDC recommends that kids get their first dose of MMR vaccine between 12 and 15 months of age, and a first dose of the polio vaccine at around two months old. All states currently require children to have at least started vaccination against measles and polio in order to enroll in childcare, according to the nonprofit Immunize.org. A CDC report found that for the 2021-2022 school year, around 93 percent of children had received the MMR and polio vaccines by the time they entered kindergarten. That figure drops to less than 80 percent for both vaccines—the lowest rate in the country—in Alaska, where a measles outbreak could be devastating.  Rises in anti-vaccine sentiments have largely been linked to concerns that vaccines cause health issues, like the debunked claim that the MMR vaccine leads to kids being autistic. What parents may want to keep in mind is that polio and measles themselves are disabling conditions: according to the World Health Organization, 1 in 200 polio infections leads to irreversible paralysis. Children who get measles can experience symptoms including swelling of the brain. Death is always a possibility, too.  [...]

The bill would strike language requiring that immunization records be submitted to childcare agencies, but would keep those requirements for students enrolling in kindergarten through 12th grade. As of 2022, according to the nonprofit ChildCare Aware of America, there are some 700 licensed childcare centers and homes in New Hampshire (which doesn’t require the Covid-19 vaccine for enrollment in childcare, either, despite its efficiency in reducing both death rates and acute symptoms). 

New Hampshire could be the first state to repeal polio and measles vaccination requirements for children with HB1213. This is a consequence of the GOP's pandering to anti-vaxxer extremist neanderthals in recent years. #NHLeg

[covid-safer-hotties]

also preserved on our archive

By Jessica Rendall

In addition to Pfizer and Moderna's new formulas, Novavax's protein-based shot is an option for COVID vaccination this season.

We're on the cusp of the fall season, which means respiratory viruses like flu, RSV and COVID are expected to keep spreading as weather cools and more people gather indoors.

Luckily, we've got vaccines in stock to help prevent respiratory viruses from turning into severe illnesses {NADI'S NOTE: Vaccination only minimizes the risk of long covid by a maximum of 30% in some people. The best protection still remains distancing when you can and masking when you cannot}. In addition to flu vaccines for the general public and RSV vaccines for older adults and pregnant people, new COVID vaccines from Pfizer-BioNTech, Moderna and Novavax are available this season to reduce the risk of hospitalization.

This means adults have a choice in which COVID vaccine they receive: an mRNA vaccine by Moderna or Pfizer, or Novavax, a protein-based vaccine that targets the virus in a more "traditional" way. All three have been authorized by the US Food and Drug Administration. While Moderna and Pfizer have been widely used over the last few years, the Novavax vaccine is building up a bit of a following.

Novavax, a protein-based vaccine, is an option for those who don't want or can't take an mRNA vaccine. Novavax may also be appealing to those wanting to experiment with the "mix-and-match" approach to COVID boosters as a way to potentially strengthen the immune response.

"Even though mRNA vaccines dominate the market for COVID vaccines, it remains important to have multiple different types of technologies against various pathogens because each may have specific use cases," Dr. Amesh Adalja, an infectious disease expert and senior scholar with Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, said in an email.

Here's everything we know about Novavax this year. Also, read more about the at-home flu vaccine that will be available next year and how you can order more free COVID tests online.

How is Novavax different from Pfizer and Moderna? Novavax is a protein-based vaccine, which people have associated with a "traditional" approach to vaccination. This is compared with mRNA technology, which does not use dead or weakened virus as an ingredient in the vaccine but instead uses genetic code to instruct the recipient's immune system to respond.

However, Adalja said that calling Novavax traditional may be a "misnomer" because it brings its own innovation to the table. Novavax uses an insect virus that has been genetically engineered to express spike proteins, Adalja explained, which are then incorporated into the vaccine.

"The vaccine itself is coupled with an immune system booster, called an adjuvant, which increases its immunity," he said, referencing a component existing vaccines have also incorporated.

This year, there are also slight differences between Novavax and Pfizer and Moderna's updated vaccines. Both mRNA vaccines have been tweaked to target the KP.2 strain of COVID-19, which is a slightly more recent version of the virus than what Novavax targets, which is KP.2's "parent" JN.1. While the FDA ultimately decided KP.2 was preferred in vaccines, all of them are expected to help protect against severe disease and death.

However, no COVID vaccines this season will be covered free of charge by the US government. While most people's insurance is expected to continue footing the bill, adults without private or public health insurance will be responsible for payment. The Bridge Access Program was expected to provide COVID vaccines for free to people without health insurance through this year, though it ended early in August due to lack of funding.

According to GoodRx, which has a coupon available for Novavax, the retail price of the protein-based vaccine is about $191.

Who should get Novavax? Does Novavax have different side effects? Novavax was authorized by the FDA for use in adults and children 12 and older, so younger kids can't get this vaccine. But for most adults, which COVID vaccine you should choose depends on your preference and what your neighborhood pharmacy has in stock.

People may opt for Novavax for different reasons, though. For people who do not want to take an mRNA vaccine, having a protein-based vaccine like Novavax available means they can still be vaccinated for the fall and winter season.

Other people may be interested in Novavax for its use in the "mix-and-match" approach to boosting, which in the past has been associated with a strong immune response.

There is some early research that suggests Novavax may have fewer short-term side effects, such as muscle fatigue and nausea, but "we can't say this for sure," Joshua Murdock, a pharmacist and pharmacy editor of GoodRx, said in an email.

"This isn't proven, and side effects do vary by person," Murdock said. He added the CDC doesn't recommend one vaccine over the other, even in people who are immunocompromised.

In general, mRNA vaccines have been found to be fairly "reactogenic" compared to other vaccines, Adalja said, noting that it also depends on the individual. But if someone had a bad experience with the mRNA vaccine, Adalja said, they "may fare better with the Novavax vaccine."

Some flu-like side effects can be expected post-vaccine, no matter which one you choose. This includes symptoms like headache, tiredness, a sore arm and even chills. Not experiencing symptoms doesn't mean your immune system isn't kicking in, but experiencing some side effects may signal that your immune system is responding to the jolt, so to speak.

In rare cases, myocarditis or heart inflammation problems have been associated with COVID vaccination, particularly in younger men and adolescents within the two weeks following vaccination. Research so far shows that Novavax, like mRNA vaccines, may also carry this rare side effect though.

Following high levels of COVID this summer in the US, more information will be needed to see how all vaccines and their freshly targeted formulas fare against the virus that's expected to continue to spread this fall and winter.

"There's no strong evidence that one vaccine is preferable to another in specific individuals, but that will be an important avenue to study for more precision-guided vaccine recommendations," Adalja said.

How to find a Novavax vaccine Novavax announced on Sept. 13 that doses of its vaccine will be available at the following pharmacies:

CVS Rite Aid Walgreens Costco Publix Sam's Club Kroger Meijer Other independent pharmacies or grocers Novavax also has a vaccine finder on its website. To use it, type in your ZIP code in the small search box, and pharmacies nearby with the vaccine in stock will be displayed.

[mariacallous]

Toward the end of last year, US health authorities got a tip-off about an upcoming wave of respiratory syncytial virus, a seasonal virus that kills 160,000 people globally every year. Before hospitals reported an uptick in patients, they could see that RSV was more acute in the northeast of the country, with concentrations of the virus ultimately reaching levels more than five times greater than in the western United States. Their early warning system? Wastewater.

By regularly testing virus levels in public wastewater, health institutions are able to target treatments and interventions to the worst-affected areas before doctors on the ground realize something’s going on. “If you can get the information to hospitals or clinics weeks earlier, that gives the opportunity to start thinking about what treatments they might need,” says Marisa Donnelly, senior principal epidemiologist at Biobot Analytics, which helped develop a wastewater surveillance system for the US Centers for Disease Control.

RSV is very common: Every year, 64 million people worldwide get an RSV infection, according to the US National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases—but it’s particularly problematic for the very old and very young. Preventative measures are available, including vaccines and monoclonal antibodies. But often, by the time a community recognizes it has an RSV outbreak, it’s too late to mount the most effective response. Getting hold of enough drugs can also be tricky. “Wastewater analysis gives you better situational awareness of what’s going on and how much it’s fluctuating over time, because we have [historically] very much underdetected RSV cases,” says Bill Hanage, associate director of the Center for Communicable Disease Dynamics at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.

The concept of tracking a virus through wastewater came to prominence in the early days of the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020, says Tyson Graber, associate scientist at the Children's Hospital of Eastern Ontario Research Institute, who worked on wastewater analysis as part of Ontario’s Covid response. Initially, researchers weren’t too hopeful. “Nobody thought that you could actually detect bits and pieces of material from a respiratory virus,” says Graber. Yet it proved possible: The scientists were able to detect the presence of SARS-CoV-2, the virus behind Covid-19.

This near-real-time analysis of the virus’s spread helped improve responses to the pandemic not just in Ontario, but worldwide. In the US, the CDC launched its National Wastewater Surveillance System in September 2020.

While each pathogen has its own “predilections and eccentricities,” says Graber, it was possible to adapt the process to look for RSV. Regular RSV testing in wastewater now takes place in the US, Canada, Finland, and Switzerland.

A study of the Ontario experiment in RSV wastewater tracking found that it gives more than a month’s notice in identifying when RSV season begins, and nearly two weeks’ warning of a surge, compared to waiting for people to turn up sick. “We definitely see increases in [RSV in] wastewater starting before we see those same increases in clinical data like hospitalizations,” says Donnelly.

Jasmine Reed, a CDC spokesperson, says that wastewater analysis complements other surveillance systems. “It can capture asymptomatic cases and other cases independent from medical systems, and provides a broader population-level perspective on disease spread,” she says.

The CDC’s program is set up so that, if RSV levels are high in a particular community, local health departments can prioritize interventions, including testing, infection control, and vaccination efforts.

Donnelly envisions wastewater surveillance becoming like a public health “weather app” where communities can check virus activity in their area and make informed decisions on behaviors like masking or vaccination​. “We want this system to be expanded across the United States so that everybody has access to wastewater information and add additional tools to keep themselves healthy,” she says. Hanage foresees wastewater analysis being used to track other communicable viruses, like mpox.

While there’s plenty of excitement about the technique, others are more cautious. “It’s one of those sciences that has got a lot of people really excited,” says Paul Hunter, a virologist and professor in medicine at the University of East Anglia. “You either think it’s brilliant or you think it’s pointless, and there’s very little in between.”

Hunter recognizes that wastewater analysis can pick up the spread of disease—and points to evidence that it did so in the Covid-19 pandemic—but questions whether the extra cost is worth the extra insights it provides. “Certainly in Covid, we didn’t think it was [necessary] in the UK, and I think that was the correct judgment,” he says.

But proponents say it’s worth it for RSV—especially given some of the challenges around drug shortages. Last year’s RSV season proved particularly vexing to the US health system, as shortages of nirsevimab, an antibody injection given to infants, were reported across the country.

There’s hope that things will be different when RSV season begins again in the coming weeks. “If you can get the information to hospitals or clinics weeks earlier, that gives the opportunity to start thinking about what treatments they might need,” says Donnelly.

[collapsedsquid]

That will take some doing. Covid vaccines could be developed so quickly because of years of research on the Mers and Sars viruses. To prepare for the next onslaught we must compile inventories of potentially dangerous strains and tighten global surveillance. We can try to predict which pathogens are most likely to provoke zoonotic mutation. Above all, we can start work now on the early stages of vaccine development for the dangerous diseases we already know. Of course, this will cost money. But compared with other major investments, scientific breakthroughs come cheap. To push at least one vaccine against the 11 epidemic infectious diseases to phase 2 trials has been costed at less than $8.5bn. In her book Disease X, the science writer Kate Kelland estimates that $50bn would pay for a comprehensive vaccine library. To expect that funding to come from the private sector is unrealistic. The work is too expensive and high risk and the returns too uncertain. Philanthropy and public-private partnerships may work. But ultimately it is governments that should foot the bill. Unfortunately, in public policy, pandemic preparedness is all too often relegated to the cash-starved budgets of development agencies or squeezed into strained health budgets. Where such spending properly belongs is under the flag of industrial policy and national security. Biotech is one of the most promising areas of future economic growth, combining research, high-tech manufacturing and service sector work. As the IMF declared: “vaccine policy is economic policy.” And pandemic preparedness belongs under national security because there is no more serious threat to a population. A far larger percentage of the UK died of Covid between 2020 and 2023 (225,000 out of 67mn) than were killed by German bombs in the second world war (70,000 out of 50mn).

Long been my crank opinion that if we want to "reindustrialize" to restore competitiveness with China that biotech would be a good way to do it, going to take China a while to lose the reputation for being the maker of knock-off products and adulterated food, you can deal with that if you want to sell cheap steel or solar panels but for pharma it's more of an issue.

[welcomingdisaster]

i don't have the excuse of polls this time, but i kept turning this post over in my head, and i need to get it out of my system. so, to accompany the finwean post, here the careers non-finweans have in my urban fantasy au

doriath gang:

thingol: naval captain turned movie producer, owner of a major recording studio, activist

melian: minor royalty, professional witch

luthien: professional dancer, occasional model, actress, & singer-songwriter, had leaked art-project music trend number one on the charts several times

beleg: professional archer, host of a moderately successful wilderness survival tv show

mablung: bodyguard with a mysterious past

daeron: former warlock, historian; turned down a lucrative recording deal to pursue a PhD in linguistics

edain:

hurin: security guard at a museum

morwen: forensic botany

(turin: screaming tantrums because his grilled cheese was cut into squares instead of triangles, the wrong shape for a grilled cheese)

beren: ex-convict, owner of a wild-life rescue

amlach: unsuccessful private detective

andreth: receptionist and back-up tour guide at a museum

huor: employed at turgon's mountain resort

(tuor: mad cool skateboard tricks & knowing all the transformers)

haleth: martial arts instructor

amanyar:

ingwë: minor royalty, ex-army captain, landowner

ingwë: minor royalty, has a law degree

amarië: poet, playwright, experimental artist

gondolin gang:

glorfindel: ex professional athlete, one of the original investors in turgon's resort, part-time management

ecthelion: classical musician, management at turgon's resort to pay the bills

salgant: head chef at turgon's resort

(voronwe: teen lifeguard & rafting instructor seasonally in the summers)

misc & forgotten in the previous post:

edrahil: former soldier, former stunt double, finrod's long-suffering best friend and magician's assistant

cirdan: president of a small island nation

findis: trust-fund baby coasting through the power of good investments. has a combination gelato shop & yoga studio that might bring in modern if she opened it more than 3 days a week

lalwen: divorce attorney, stand-up comedian on the side

elenwe: infectious diseases specialist

eldalote: zoo vet

[warriors-rewritten-chaos]

Warrior Cats Prefixes- T

I had a WC Name Generator on Perchance that I made but I don't seem to have access anymore, so I'm remaking it here as just a simple list. The definitions used are the ones that Clan cats have for those things, and thus are the origins of the names. Definitions used are whatever I found when I googled it.

Tadpole-: "[noun] the tailed aquatic larva of an amphibian (frog, toad, newt, or salamander), breathing through gills and lacking legs until the later stages of its development"

Tall-: "[adj] of great or more than average height, especially (with reference to an object) relative to width"

Talon-: "[noun] a claw, especially one belonging to a bird of prey"

Tangle-: "[verb] twist together into a confused mass; [noun] a confused mass of something twisted together"

Tangled-: "[adj] twisted together untidily, aka matted; [adj] complicated and confused, aka chaotic"

Tansy-: "[noun] a plant of the daisy family with yellow flat-topped flower heads and aromatic leaves"

Tassel-: "[noun] the tufted head of some plants, especially a flower head with prominent stamens at the top of a cornstalk"

Tattered-: "[adj] old and torn or in poor condition"

Tawny-: "[adj] of an orange-brown or yellowish-brown color; [noun] an orange-brown or yellowish-brown color"

Teasel-: "[noun] a tall prickly Eurasian plant with spiny purple flower heads"

Tempest-: "[noun] a violent windy storm"

Tern-: "[noun] a seabird related to the gulls, typically smaller and more slender, with long pointed wings and a forked tail"

Thaw-: "[verb] (of ice, snow, or another frozen substance, such as food) become liquid or soft as a result of warming; [noun] a period of warmer weather that thaws ice and snow"

Thawing-: "[noun] the process of ice, snow, or another frozen substance becoming liquid or soft as a result of warming up"

Thicket-: "[noun] a dense group of bushes or trees"

Thistle-: "[noun] a widely distributed herbaceous plant of the daisy family, which typically has a prickly stem and leaves and rounded heads of purple flowers"

Thorn-: "[noun] a stiff, sharp-pointed, straight or curved woody projection on the stem or other part of a plant; [noun] a thorny bush, shrub, or tree, especially a hawthorn"

Thrasher-: "[noun] any of various American oscine birds (family Mimidae, especially genus Toxostoma) related to the mockingbird that resemble thrushes but have a usually long curved bill and long tail"

Thrift-: "[noun] a European plant which forms low-growing tufts of slender leaves with rounded pink flower heads, growing chiefly on sea cliffs and mountains"

Thrush-: "[noun] a small or medium-sized songbird, typically having a brown back, spotted breast, and loud song"

Thunder-: "[noun] a loud rumbling or crashing noise heard after a lightning flash due to the expansion of rapidly heated air"

Thyme-: "[noun] a low-growing aromatic plant of the mint family"

Tick-: "[noun] any of a superfamily of bloodsucking acarid arachnids that are larger than the related mites, attach themselves to warm-blooded vertebrates to feed, and include important vectors of infectious diseases"

Ticked-: "[adj] having or made of hair banded with two or more colors"

Tidal-: "[adj] relating to or affected by tides"

Tide-: "[noun] the alternate rising and falling of the sea, usually twice in each lunar day at a particular place, due to the attraction of the moon and sun"

Tiger-: "[noun] a very large solitary cat with a yellow-brown coat striped with black; [noun] used to refer to someone fierce, determined, or ambitious"

Timber-: "[noun] wood prepared for use in building and carpentry"

Tiny-: "[adj] very small"

Tree-: "[noun] a woody perennial plant, typically having a single stem or trunk growing to a considerable height and bearing lateral branches at some distance from the ground"

Toad-: "[noun] a tailless amphibian with a short stout body and short legs, typically having dry warty skin that can exude poison"

Todd-: "[noun] a male fox"

Tornado-: "[noun] a mobile, destructive vortex of violently rotating winds having the appearance of a funnel-shaped cloud and advancing beneath a large storm system"

Torrent-: "[noun] a strong and fast-moving stream of water"

Tortoise-: "[noun] a turtle, typically a herbivorous one that lives on land"

Tranquil-: "[adj] free from disturbance. Calm"

Trillium-: "[noun] a plant with a solitary three-petaled flower above a whorl of three leaves"

Trout-: "[noun] a chiefly freshwater fish of the salmon family"

Truffle-: "[noun]  strong-smelling underground fungus that resembles an irregular, rough-skinned potato, growing chiefly in broadleaved woodland on calcareous soils"

Tufted-: "[adj] having or growing in a tuft or tufts"

Tulip-: "[noun] a bulbous spring-flowering plant of the lily family, with boldly colored cup-shaped flowers"

Tumble-: "[verb] (typically of a cat) fall suddenly, clumsily, or headlong"

Tunnel-: "[noun] an artificial underground passage, especially one built through a hill or under a building, road, or river; [verb] dig or force a passage underground or through something"

Turkey-: "[noun] a large mainly domesticated game bird native to North America, having a bald head and (in the male) red wattles"

Turtle-: "[noun] a slow-moving reptile, enclosed in a scaly or leathery domed shell into which it can retract its head and thick legs"

Twig-: "[noun] a slender woody shoot growing from a branch or stem of a tree or shrub"

Twilight-: "[noun] the soft glowing light from the sky when the sun is below the horizon"

Twine-: "[noun] strong thread or string consisting of two or more strands of plants twisted together; [verb] cause to wind or spiral round something"

Twirl-: "[verb] spin quickly and lightly around, especially repeatedly"

Twirling-: "[verb] spin quickly and lightly around, especially repeatedly"

Twist-: "[verb] form into a bent, curling, or distorted shape; [noun] a thing with a spiral shape"