#but according to the notes she had polio!!!

[bohemian-rhapsody-in-blue]

[Video ID/transcript: a display of American Girl Dolls, with a person reading off bits of information from the placards below each one, in turn. Each doll is shown onscreen as the narrator talks about her.]

“Kaya’s life changes when an enemy tribe invades her camp.”

“Caroline’s life changes when her papa is taken prisoner.”

“Cécile and Marie-Grace help their families, friends, and neighbors survive the deadly yellow fever epidemic.”

“Addy escapes slavery and being separated from her family.”

“Kit helps by working hard when times are tough.”

“Nanea’s life changes when Japan attacks Pearl Harbor.”

“Maryellen—(laughs) is left-handed…” (continues to laugh)

End ID.]

I saw Maryellen with the devil!!!

[girlactionfigure]

She just wanted to make things better for everyone, her brother said.

She was called a “true force of nature”, a “rolling warrior” who never gave up, continuously fighting for what she believed in and inspiring everyone around her.

When she died this past week on March 4 at the age of 75, she was remembered as a major American civil rights hero.

She “was born in 1947 [in Philadelphia] to two parents who had separately fled Nazi Germany as children in the 1930s,” according to Philissa Cramer, writing for JTA. “All of her grandparents and countless other family members were murdered in the Holocaust.”

At the age of 18 months, she contracted polio, an infection so severe, she spent several months in an iron lung and lost her ability to walk, according to her brother.

She said she believed it was her parents’ experience that led them to reject doctors’ advice to have their daughter institutionalized after she lost the use of her legs, according to Cramer.

“They came from a country where families got separated, some children sent away, others taken from their families by the authorities and never returned — all part of a campaign of systematic dehumanization and murder,” she wrote in her memoir.

“The experience of fleeing Nazi Germany left the parents and their children with a passion.,” according to the Los Angeles Times.

“We truly believe,” her brother would say "that discrimination is wrong in any way, shape or form."

Susan Mizner, Director of the Disability Rights Program and Kendall Ciesemier, Host of At Liberty and Senior Executive Producer of Multimedia, American Civil Liberties Union, wrote:

“When [she] was born, the fight for civil rights didn’t include people with disabilities. Disabled people faced rampant discrimination and segregation in American life. Disabled people experienced high rates of unemployment and were taught in separate schools. Changing these institutions wasn’t just a calling for [her], it was a necessity. At a young age, [she] learned that the world did not see her the way she saw herself, and she spent the rest of her life committed to changing that.”

“The first time that I really remember someone making me feel different was when I was about eight years old,” she told April Coughlin in Story Corps. “My friend and I were going to the candy store. She was pushing my wheelchair, and this young boy came over to me and said, ‘Are you sick?’

“I wished the ground would open and swallow me up. It made me realize that people saw me differently than I saw myself.

~~~~~

NPR correspondent Joseph Shapiro wrote:

“When she was 5 and it was time to go to kindergarten, her parents . . . went to register her but were turned away at the nearby public school.

“It would create a fire hazard, the principal said, to let a girl in a wheelchair go to the school.

“Her mother . . . fought to end the isolating and erratic hours — just a few hours a week — of home instruction and eventually [she] was allowed into a school building.”

“Kids with disabilities were considered a hardship, economically and socially," she would later write.

She spent the rest of her life fighting, first to get access for herself and then for others, her brother recalled.

“Years later, [she] graduated from college where she studied to become a teacher. Being a speech therapist was one of the few professions, she was told, open to a young woman in a wheelchair,” continued Shapiro.

“But again, she was deemed a fire hazard. This time, in 1970, New York City's Board of Education ruled that a teacher in a wheelchair would be unable to evacuate children during an emergency and denied her a teaching license.

“Having learned from her mother's advocacy, [she] sued. She got support in the local press. "You Can Be President, Not Teacher, with Polio," ran one newspaper story, noting the presidency of Franklin Roosevelt.”

She said she wanted to see “feisty disabled people change the world”.

She did.

She “broke down barriers for disabled children and educators in New York City schools, protested until federal legislation protecting people with disabilities was passed and advised multiple presidential administrations on disability issues,” wrote Cramer.

Her tireless advocacy led to her being widely considered "the mother of the disability rights movement," the American Association of People with Disabilities wrote in a press release.

Her name is Judith Heumann.

This is a new story for the Jon S. Randal Peace Page. The Peace Page focuses on past and present stories seldom told of lives forgotten, ignored, or dismissed. The stories are gathered from writers, journalists, and historians to share awareness and foster understanding, to bring people together. And, as such, the stories this month for Women’s History Month are never relegated to one single month - they are available all year in the Peace Page archives and on this page each week throughout the year. We encourage you to learn more about the individuals and events mentioned here and to support the writers, educators, and historians whose words we present. Thank you for being here and helping us share awareness.

~~~~~

“Women have been making history for centuries; for some, this was the only choice they had. For women with disabilities in particular, it was either live the way others expected them to or fight for the lives they knew they (and all people with disabilities) deserved,” according to Melissa Young.

Judith Heumann “was perhaps most recognized in recent years from her appearance in the documentary ‘Crip Camp: A Disability Revolution’, which chronicled the forgotten history of a freewheeling summer camp called Camp Jened in upstate New York for teenagers with disabilities in the 1970s,” wrote Edwin Rios of The Guardian.

“Her experience at Camp Jened inspired a groundswell of US political activism and sparked a movement of young activists with disabilities who fought for civil rights protections at a time when they were treated like second-class citizens.”

She also wrote “Being Heumann: An Unrepentant Memoir of a Disability Rights Activist” and “Rolling Warrior: The Incredible, Sometimes Awkward, True Story of a Rebel Girl on Wheels Who Helped Spark a Revolution.”

Brian P.D. Hannon and Heather Hollingsworth of the Los Angeles Times wrote:

“She lobbied for legislation that eventually led to the federal Americans With Disabilities Act [and the] Individuals With Disabilities Education Act.

“Heumann also was involved in passage of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons With Disabilities, which was ratified in May 2008.

She helped found the Berkeley Center for Independent Living, the Independent Living Movement and the World Institute on Disability and served on the boards of several related organizations, including the American Assn. of People With Disabilities, the Disability Rights Education and Defense Fund, Humanity and Inclusion and the United States International Council on Disability, according to her website.

“Judy pushed the international human rights community to focus on issues facing people with disabilities when confronting the world’s challenges — whether it be war, climate change, pandemics, poverty or anything else. She ensured that disability was included in the Country Reports on Human Rights Practices and was the first disabled person to serve on the board of Human Rights Watch,” wrote Rebecca Cokley, program officer for the US Disability Rights program at the Ford Foundation and co-founder and director of the Disability Justice initiative at the Center for American Progress.

“Along with 80 activists, and with a little help from the Black Panthers, Heumann staged a sit-in for 25 days, the longest sit-in at a federal building to date,” according to writer Lester Fabian Brathwaite. “As a result, regulations were passed enforcing the Rehabilitation Act.”

“It also served as a demonstrable show of force by a community previously framed by society and the media as weak, incapable and dependent. They were anything but that,” wrote Cokley.

“She would later serve as an advisor on disability rights to the Clinton administration, the World Bank, and the Obama administration,” added Brathwaite.

~~~~~

In NPR’s article:

Shantha Rau Barriga, disability rights director at Human Rights Watch, said in a statement Heumman was a “true force of nature”.

“She was a giant in the human rights movement and led with such integrity,” she added. “This loss will be felt far and wide but what a legacy she leaves behind.”

“Beyond all of the policy-making and legal battles that she helped win and fight, she really helped make it possible for disability to not be a bad thing, to make it OK to be disabled in the world and not be regarded as a person who needs to be in a separate, special place,” the president and CEO of the American Association of People with Disabilities, Maria Town, told the Hollywood Reporter.

Heumman said, “Disability only becomes a tragedy when society fails to provide the things we need to lead our lives – job opportunities or barrier-free buildings, for example . . . It is not a tragedy to me that I’m living in a wheelchair.”

She also said, “I wanna see a feisty group of disabled people around the world…if you don’t respect yourself and if you don’t demand what you believe in for yourself, you’re not gonna get it.”

“Judy is often referred to as the mother of the disability rights movement, and for good reason. Not only did she usher forward sweeping changes for disabled people around the world, she mentored, befriended, inspired, and empowered countless disabled people who now carry on her legacy,” wrote Mizner and Ciesemier.

“Hers was one of the first voices to tell us that we matter and that we are worth fighting for. Now, we continue the fight. Judy lives on in every disabled kid who gets to join their classmates in school and every disabled adult who lives in the community, not an institution. She lives on in every disabled person who is feisty enough to pursue their dreams.”

~ jsr

May her memory be a blessing.

The Jon S. Randal Peace Page

[head-post]

Israel carried out ground raid into Syria, over 50 children killed in Israeli strikes in Gaza’s Jabalia in 2 days

The Israeli military said on Sunday it had carried out a ground raid into Syria and captured a Syrian national linked to Iranian networks, while UNICEF said more than 50 children had been killed in devastating attacks in northern Gaza that put many aid workers at risk.

Israeli forces kill 2 paramedics in in southern Lebanon

Israeli forces struck a medical centre in the southern Lebanese town of Bazouriye, killing two paramedics, Lebanon’s Health Ministry said on Sunday. It said in a statement:

The Israeli enemy targeted a positioning point for the Islamic Health Association in Bazouriye.

The ministry said the death toll in Lebanon’s health sector has reached 180 and the number of wounded has reached 294 since the start of hostilities.

Israel has intensified its air campaign in Lebanon since late September against what it claims are Hezbollah targets, an escalation after years of cross-border warfare between Israel and the Lebanese group since Israel launched its brutal offensive on the Gaza Strip.

According to Lebanese health authorities, Israeli attacks have killed nearly 3,000 people and injured more than 13,300 since October 2023. Israel expanded the conflict by launching an invasion of southern Lebanon on October 1 this year.

More than 50 children killed in “deadly weekend” in Gaza: UNICEF

More than 50 children have been killed in devastating attacks in northern Gaza, with many aid workers at risk, according to the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF).

UNICEF Executive Director Catherine Russell said in a statement released on Saturday:

This has already been a deadly weekend of attacks in north Gaza. In the past 48 hours alone, over 50 children have reportedly been killed in Jabalia, where strikes leveled two residential buildings sheltering hundreds of people.

UNICEF said the personal vehicle of one of its staff members involved in the polio vaccination campaign came under fire from a quadrocopter that appeared to be driving in Jabalia al-Nazla. Although the vehicle was damaged, the staff member was not injured but was “badly shaken.”

Another strike injured three children outside a vaccination clinic in Sheikh Radwan, where the polio campaign was continuing, Russell said. She also said, describing the escalation as part of “one of the darkest periods” of this war:

These attacks on Jabalia, the vaccination clinic, and the UNICEF staff member are yet further examples of the grave consequences of the indiscriminate strikes on civilians in the Gaza Strip.

Russell also emphasised that international humanitarian law requires the protection of civilians and civilian structures, including aid workers and homes.

She noted that “relocation or evacuation orders do not allow either side to the conflict to treat all people or facilities in an area as military targets.” Russell also condemned the repeated disregard for these principles, which has resulted in “tens of thousands of children killed, injured and deprived of basic services necessary for survival.”

UNICEF called on Israel to conduct an “immediate investigation” into the incident involving its staff and demanded that those responsible be held accountable. Russell said, adding that it is beyond time to end this war:

UNICEF also calls on member states to use their influence to ensure respect for international law, prioritising the protection of children.

The war began on October 7, 2023 when Hamas-led militants stormed southern Israel, killing about 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and kidnapping another 250. The Israeli offensive has killed more than 43,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza health authorities, which do not say how many were combatants but say more than half were women and children.

Israel carried out ground raid into Syria, seizing a Syrian citizen connected to Iran

The Israeli military said on Sunday it carried out a ground raid into Syria and seized a Syrian citizen linked to Iranian networks. It was the first time in the current war that Israel announced that its troops were operating in Syrian territory.

Israel has repeatedly carried out airstrikes inside Syria over the past year, targeting members of Lebanon’s Hezbollah organisation and officials from Iran, a close ally of Hezbollah and Syria. However, they had not previously reported any ground forays into Syria.

The Israeli military said the capture was part of a special operation “that has been carried out in recent months,” although it did not say when exactly it was carried out. Syria did not immediately confirm the claim, but the pro-government Syrian radio station Sham FM reported on Sunday that Israeli troops carried out a “kidnapping operation” in the south of the country over the summer.

Israel has been conducting an escalating bombing campaign in Lebanon for the past six weeks, as well as a ground invasion along the countries’ shared border, promising to cripple Hezbollah. On Saturday, an Israeli military official said the navy raided a town in northern Lebanon and captured a man it identified as a senior Hezbollah militant.

The army identified the man as Ali Soleiman al-Assi, saying he lives in the southern Syrian region of Saida. They said the man had been under military surveillance for months and was involved in Iranian initiatives targeting areas of the Golan Heights, annexed by Israel, near the border with Syria.

Surveillance video released by the army shows soldiers seizing a man wearing a white T-shirt inside a building. The man was taken to Israel for interrogation, the military said.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu visited the border with Lebanon on Sunday, saying his aim was to prevent Hezbollah from rearming by using the “oxygen lifeline” of Iranian weapons supplied to Lebanon via Syria. Israel says its campaign in Lebanon is aimed at pushing Hezbollah away from the border and ending more than a year of shelling into northern Israel.

Readn more HERE

[mst3kproject]

The Ape

In the vein of movies that should not be confused with eerily similar previous entries, The Ape is distinct from The Ape Man... but not by much.  Both feature a slumming horror superstar, glandular secretions, and a stupid gorilla suit.  All these things also showed up in early seasons of MST3K, of course, and The Ape Man also has a surprise bonus.  Apparently, the guy in the gorilla costume is none other than Crash Corrigan, of Undersea Kingdom!

Long ago, Dr. Adrien lost his daughter to polio, and ever since he's been obsessed with finding a cure.  That sounds pretty noble, but unfortunately, Adrien is a mad doctor, so the cure he comes up with requires killing healthy people to drain them of their cerebralspinal fluid!  In order not to arouse suspicion, he kills and skins a gorilla that escaped from a circus, and wears its hide when he murders people... you know, as one does. To nobody's surprise but his, he ends up getting shot, but hey, at least he cured beautiful young Frances' paralysis!

This is a weird, dumb movie but one thing I can say in its favour is that everybody seems to have given it a good try.  This material was far beneath Boris Karloff but he takes it seriously and actually gets a couple of decent moments, as does Maris Wrixton (who was also in The Face of Marble) as Frances.  Nobody else is even close to Karloff's level, being just bland 40's actors who talk too fast, but none of the main cast are phoning it in, either.

Conversely, the worst thing in the movie is its truly horrendous gorilla suit.  The puppet face shows the actor's eyes and can curl its lip, which is cool, though the features don't look very gorilla-ish.  The rest of the suit, however, is terrible. It's way too shaggy and in order to give it a gorilla-like silhouette, they stuck a big hunchback on it.  This might have worked if Corrigan had tried to walk on all fours like gorillas actually do, but instead he waddles along upright like a toddler with a full diaper, which ruins it.  The people who made the movie also appear to think gorillas are nocturnal which, for the record, they are not.

Gorillas were kind of a big thing in movies of the 40's and 50's.  The species had been scientifically described a century earlier, but hadn't really been studied until the 1920s and most people had never seen one outside of King Kong. Films of the period were not kind to the gorilla.  One of the first gorilla movies was 1930's Ingagi, which purported to be a documentary about gorillas kidnapping women as sex slaves.  That kind of set the tone, and subsequent movies depicted gorillas as creatures prone to violence and rape.  Examples from this blog alone are numerous: The Ape Man (1940), Panther Girl of the Kongo (1955), and Bride of the Gorilla (1951) for starters... Robot Monster (1953) might also count.

The Ape has a slightly more nuanced approach to gorilla behaviour.  Yes, its gorilla does maul people to death... but the first victim is its trainer, who has been shown mistreating it.  Another circus employee even tries to tell him that he'll catch more flies with honey.  When the ape batters its way into Dr. Adrien's house, it does so in order to get at the trainer's coat, which Adrien left draped over a chair when the dying man was brought to him for treatment.  We see far more fear of the escaped ape than we do of the animal itself, and it does not commit near as many murders as Adrien does while dressed in its skin!

So that's halfway progressive for the 1940s.  We can also look at the treatment of Frances, the wheelchair-user partially paralyzed by polio.  She is clearly meant to be an object of the audience's pity, and Adrien is obsessed with making her able to walk again – as he could not do for his own daughter.  To some extent the movie infantilizes her, as she is clearly dependent on her mother, unable to have much of a social life, and her boyfriend Danny professes his willingness to 'take care of her'.  When she regains movement in her legs at the end of the movie, she and her mother immediately burn her wheelchair.  Apparently she's not allowed to build up her stamina slowly... if she walks ten minutes from home and then can't continue, she's just gotta sit there until she recovers or somebody finds her.

On the other hand, Frances' family aren't trying to force Adrien's possible cure on her, but let her choose it for herself. Her mother doesn't mind looking after her, and Danny is happy to accommodate her by, for example, hiring a cart so she can accompany him to the circus.  Danny in particular is very suspicious of the fact that the injections Adrien gives to Frances are causing her pain, and takes the doctor to task for it, telling him he would rather have her disabled and happy than walking but in pain.  “I'd rather carry her around all my life!” he says.  Her loved ones are willing to try for the cure, but it doesn't seem like anyone will be miserable if it fails.  Frances herself wistfully admires the acrobats at the circus, but shows no anger or bitterness that she cannot be like them.

Frances is even allowed some initiative, as she hurries down the road in her wheelchair calling to Dr. Adrien and trying to warn him that the gorilla is in the area.  This, ironically, is what leads to Adrien getting shot, as it attracts the attention of the posse hunting the animal.  But as Adrien lies dying, he gets to see Frances standing for the first time in ten years, so I guess we're meant to think this was all worth it.

But was it?  Several people died in order to provide the spinal fluid that helped Frances heal.  The movie shows them as terrified of Dr. Adrien and/or the gorilla, but other than that it is oddly uninterested in their fates.  None of the deaths are presented as tragedies, with families left in mourning... the only family we hear about for the gorilla trainer is a father who is already dead, and another one of the victims was an asshole who told his wife if she didn't like him cheating on her she could always drown herself(!??).  So... are we supposed to think they don't matter?  That their deaths are acceptable because they helped Frances – who was not dying or even deteriorating, and was satisfied with her life as it was – to a cure?

It is notable that we do not see what happens when Frances finds out that people had to die for her to be able to walk.  She would have to reassess her opinion of Dr. Adrien, whom until now she has thought of as a loving father figure.  She would have to figure out what this means for her future and perhaps need reassurance that she is not culpable.  Her unconcerned happiness at the end suggests that nobody bothered to tell her, and that she has not yet made the connection herself.  This is really quite unfortunate, because it deprives Frances of her only real chance to be a character rather than a plot point – which is ultimately all she is here.

Nobody else is shown dealing with the aftermath, either.  The town has long mistrusted Dr. Adrien because of rumours that he was experimenting on his patients, and a recent spate of missing dogs is shown to be his fault.  An early scene shows a group of boys bothering the doctor by throwing rocks at his house (which made me wonder if toilet paper hadn't been invented yet. According to Wikipedia, it dates to 1857, so there's your Fun Fact for the day). Seeing their worst fears realized really ought to have some effect on the people.  Even if nobody bothers to tell Frances how her miraculous cure was effected, others will surely figure it out and have to weigh up what he achieved versus the crimes he committed to get there.

Yeah, I know: this is a movie about a guy killing people while wearing a dead gorilla.  I'm thinking too hard.

Finally, I want to note some interesting possible connections between The Ape and a number of other movies I've seen.  Both The Ape and The Ape Man appear to have been inspired by the 1932 movie Murders in the Rue Morgue, which also features a gorilla and injections of bodily fluids in the name of mad science, and did not feature very much resemblance to Edgar Allen Poe's story of the same name.  I don't know if these films directly inspired each other, and it's been ages since I saw Rue Morgue... but the combination of plot elements here seems weirdly specific to be something different people came up with independently.  I should watch all three again and see if I notice any more similarities between them.

There are also interesting likenesses between The Ape and another Boris Karloff movie, 1945's The Grave Robber.  The latter is the story of a doctor who needs fresh corpses as part of his research, which culminates in surgery to allow a paralyzed girl to walk again.  The doctor in this film is more a victim than a villain, himself, as he finds that the man he's been paying to rob graves for him is actually murdering the homeless, and he can't expose this criminal without jeopardizing his work and incriminating himself.  It's been a long time since I saw this movie, either (as I mentioned a few weeks ago, I've had some shit going on and I haven't had a lot of time for movies, bad or otherwise), so I can't actually say if it's better than The Ape, but it's definitely less silly.

Anyway, the moral of this story is vaccinate your fucking kids or a gorilla will kill you.

[1962dude420-blog]

Today we remember the passing of James Garner who Died: July 19, 2014  in Los Angeles, California

Garner was born James Scott Bumgarner on April 7, 1928 in Denver, Oklahoma (now a part of Norman, Oklahoma). His parents were Weldon Warren Bumgarner, a widower, and Mildred Scott (Meek), who died five years after his birth. His older brothers were Jack Garner (1926–2011) and Charles Bumgarner (1924-1984), a school administrator. His family was Methodist. After their mother's death, Garner and his brothers were sent to live with relatives. Garner was reunited with his family in 1934, when Weldon remarried.

Garner's father remarried several times. Garner came to hate one of his stepmothers, Wilma, who beat all three boys (especially him). He said that his stepmother also punished him by forcing him to wear a dress in public. When he was 14 years old, he fought with her, knocking her down and choking her to keep her from killing him in retaliation. She left the family and never returned. His brother Jack later commented, "She was a damn no-good woman". Garner's last stepmother was Grace, whom he said he loved and called "Mama Grace", and felt that she was more of a mother to him than anyone else had been.

After the war, Garner joined his father in Los Angeles and enrolled at Hollywood High School, where he was voted the most popular student. A high school gym teacher recommended him for a job modeling Jantzen bathing suits. It paid well ($25 an hour), but in his first interview for the Archives of American Television, he said he hated modeling; he soon quit and returned to Norman. He played football and basketball at Norman High School, and competed on the track and golf teams. However, he dropped out in his senior year. In a 1976 Good Housekeeping magazine interview, he admitted, "I was a terrible student and I never actually graduated from high school, but I got my diploma in the Army."

Shortly after his father's marriage to Wilma broke up, his father moved to Los Angeles, leaving Garner and his brothers in Norman. After working at several jobs he disliked, Garner worked as a merchant mariner in the United States Merchant Marine at age 16 near the end of World War II. He liked the work and his shipmates, but he suffered from chronic seasickness.

Garner enlisted in the California Army National Guard, serving his first 7 months in California. He then went to Korea for 14 months, as a rifleman in the 5th Regimental Combat Team during the Korean War, then part of the 24th Infantry Division. He was wounded twice, first in the face and hand by shrapnel from a mortar round, and the second time in the buttocks from friendly fire from U.S. fighter jets as he dived into a foxhole. Garner received the Purple Heart in Korea for the first wound. He qualified for a second Purple Heart (eligibility requirement: "As the result of friendly fire while actively engaging the enemy"), but he did not actually receive it until 1983, 32 years after the event.

In 1954, Paul Gregory, a friend whom Garner had met while attending Hollywood High School, persuaded Garner to take a nonspeaking role in the Broadway production of The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial, where he was able to study Henry Fonda night after night. During the week of Garner's death, TCM broadcast most of his movies, introduced by Robert Osborne, who said that Fonda's gentle, sincere persona rubbed off on Garner, greatly to Garner's benefit.

Garner subsequently moved to television commercials and eventually to television roles. In 1955, Garner was considered for the lead role in the Western series Cheyenne, but that role went to Clint Walker because the casting director could not reach Garner in time (according to Garner's autobiography). Garner wound up playing an Army officer in the 1955 Cheyenne pilot titled "Mountain Fortress." His first film appearances were in The Girl He Left Behind and Toward the Unknown in 1956.

In 1957, he had a supporting role in the TV anthology series episode on Conflict entitled "Man from 1997," portraying Maureen (Gloria Talbott)'s brother "Red"; the show stars Jacques Sernas as Johnny Vlakos and Charlie Ruggles as elderly Mr. Boyne, a librarian from 1997, and involved a 1997 Almanac that was mistakenly left in the past by Boyne and found by Johnny in a bookstore. The series' producer Roy Huggins noted in his Archive of American Television interview that he subsequently cast Garner as the lead in Maverick due to his comedic facial expressions while playing scenes in "Man from 1997" that were not originally written to be comical. He changed his last name from Bumgarner to Garner after the studio had credited him as "James Garner" without permission. He then legally changed it upon the birth of his first child, when he decided she had too many names.

Nominated for 15 Emmy Awards during his television career, Garner received the award in 1977 as Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series (The Rockford Files) and in 1987 as executive producer of Promise. For his contribution to the film and television industry, Garner received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

In 1990, he was inducted into the Western Performers Hall of Fame at the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. He was also inducted into the Television Hall of Fame that same year. In February 2005, he received the Screen Actors Guild's Lifetime Achievement Award. He was also nominated for Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Supporting Role that year, for The Notebook. When Morgan Freeman won that prize for his work in Million Dollar Baby, Freeman led the audience in a sing-along of the original Maverick theme song, written by David Buttolph and Paul Francis Webster.

Garner was a strong Democratic Party supporter. From 1982, Garner gave at least $29,000 to Federal campaigns, of which over $24,000 was to Democratic Party candidates, including Dennis Kucinich (for Congress in 2002), Dick Gephardt, John Kerry, Barbara Boxer, and various Democratic committees and groups.

On August 28, 1963, Garner was one of several celebrities to join Martin Luther King Jr. in the "March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom". In his autobiography, Garner recalled sitting in the third row listening to King's "I Have a Dream" speech.

For his role in the 1985 CBS miniseries Space, the character's party affiliation was changed from Republican as in the book to reflect Garner's personal views. Garner said, "My wife would leave me if I played a Republican."

There was an effort by California Democratic party leaders, led by state Senator Herschel Rosenthal, to persuade Garner to seek the Democratic nomination for Governor of California in the 1990 election. However, future United States Senator and former San Francisco Mayor Dianne Feinstein received the nomination instead, losing to Republican Pete Wilson in the election

Garner was married to Lois Josephine Fleischman Clarke, whom he met at a party in 1956. They married 14 days later on August 17, 1956. "We went to dinner every night for 14 nights. I was just absolutely nuts about her. I spent $77 on our honeymoon, and it about broke me." According to Garner, "Marriage is like the Army; everyone complains, but you'd be surprised at the large number of people who re-enlist." His wife was Jewish.

When Garner and Clarke married, her daughter Kim from a previous marriage was seven years old and recovering from polio. Garner had one daughter with Lois: Greta "Gigi" Garner. In an interview in Good Housekeeping with Garner, his wife, and two daughters, conducted at their home, and published in March 1976, Gigi's age was given as 18 and Kim's as 27.

In 1970, Garner and his wife briefly lived separately for three months. In late 1979, Garner again separated from his wife (around the time The Rockford Files stopped filming), splitting his time between living in Canada and "a rented house in the Valley". The two resumed living together in September 1981, and remained married for the rest of his life. Garner said that the separations were not caused by marital problems, instead stating that he simply needed to spend time alone in order to recover from the stress of acting. Garner died less than a month before their 58th wedding anniversary.

Garner's knees became a chronic problem during the filming of The Rockford Files in the 1970s, with "six or seven knee operations during that time". In 2000, he underwent knee replacement surgery for both of them.

On April 22, 1988, Garner had quintuple bypass heart surgery. Though he recovered rapidly, he was advised to stop smoking. Garner quit smoking 17 years later.

Garner underwent surgery on May 11, 2008, following a severe stroke he had suffered two days earlier. His prognosis was reported to be "very positive". Garner was a private and introverted man, according to family and friends, On July 19, 2014, police and rescue personnel were summoned to Garner's Los Angeles-area home, where they found the actor dead at the age of 86. He had suffered a "massive" heart attack caused by coronary artery disease. He had been in poor health since his stroke in 2008.

Longtime friends Tom Selleck (who worked with Garner on The Rockford Files), Sally Field (who worked with Garner in Murphy's Romance) and Clint Eastwood (who guest-starred with Garner on Maverick and starred in Space Cowboys) reflected on his death. Selleck said, "Jim was a mentor to me and a friend, and I will miss him." Field said, "My heart just broke. There are few people on this planet I have adored as much as Jimmy Garner. I cherish every moment I spent with him and relive them over and over in my head. He was a diamond." Eastwood said, "Garner opened the door for people like Steve McQueen and myself."

[nomanwalksalone]

ARNYS ET MOI AND ME

by Réginald-Jérôme de Mans

How do you remember something you never knew? The orphaned opening words of Arnys et moi, journalist Philippe Trétiack’s memoir of the late and legendary Paris shop Arnys, raise that question: “I never stepped in. I never bought anything there. And now, it’s too late.” This ellipse adds romance to Trétiack’s incomparable book, which contrasts the rise of the family behind Arnys with Trétiack’s own. Like the Grimberts of Arnys, Trétiack’s ancestors were Jews from Eastern Europe who immigrated to Paris at the beginning of the 20th century and ended up the garment trade.  But where the Grimberts’ boutique became, to some, synonymous with a neighborhood, an attitude, a philosophy, and even Paris itself, the boutique tended by Trétiack’s mother stayed a neighborhood mediocrity, a sinkhole of time, money and, in Trétiack’s telling, of lifeforce itself as he describes how his mother kept shop despite the hate she had for the shop, for the clothes she sold and for their potential customers.  A far cry from the supposed intellectual and political salon that was Arnys.

How do we remember Arnys? Despite Trétiack’s professed unfamiliarity with the shop, readers may never encounter a more knowledgeable and measured historical account of the Arnys shop: the implantation in Paris of educated left-wing garment dealer Jankel Grünberg, whose successes across multiple shops allowed him to settle on the very established avenue Foch in the 16 arrondissement; the immigrant’s cultural emphasis on education that led his sons Léon and Albert to pursue studies on the at once more aristocratic and artistic Left Bank; the polio that derailed one son’s medical career and drove both to enter the family trade, this time in a Left Bank shop space close by the colleges and medical schools he had been attending; the burgeoning family success; the horrors of the Second World War, which saw Jankel and his wife die in Auschwitz; the evolution of Arnys the shop and the brand from a neighborhood corner in a sleepy part of Paris to the epicenter of a certain hip bohemia, of a self-conscious rebellion, of a subversively elegant set of limousine liberals (the loose equivalent of the French gauche caviar), and finally of a dated, sated establishment… before communion with luxury conglomerate LVMH forced Arnys’ transubstantiation into the nominal custom tailoring and shirtmaking arm of LVMH-owned brand Berluti. Even the mysterious name “Arnys” itself is finally explicated: the Grimberts (name eventually Frenchified) had moved into the space vacated by a shop named Loris; by coining a similar-sounding name for their new shop Léon and Albert hoped to attract, through confusion, some of the old shop’s former customers. 

Trétiack writes that it was the recent humiliating scandal of former French presidential candidate François Fillon that had sparked his interest in Arnys. Years after the Arnys shop had actually closed, Fillon made the papers for having accepted thousands of dollars in custom Arnys clothing paid for by Robert Bourgi.  Bourgi is a lawyer whose involvement in a shadowy-world of influence and intrigue between France and its former sub-Saharan colonies known as Françafrique has led members of the French political establishment to call him “radioactive.” According to the very entertaining French Vanity Fair writeup of the debacle, Bourgi would periodically drive Fillon over to the Berluti bespoke shop –  at Arnys’ old address -- when Fillon was feeling down and order him clothing, paid for in cold hard cash.  As a result, Trétiack writes, that shop now limits cash purchases to 1000 euros, or less than 20% of the price of a custom Arnys-by-Berluti suit.  Interestingly, Trétiack also suggests that the papers had referred to Fillon’s scandal at Arnys, rather than Berluti, not because they appreciated the academic distinction that Berluti custom clothing was created by the putative Arnys tailors, but because they feared losing LVMH’s enormous ad spend if they impugned an existing brand in the LVMH portfolio, Berluti, rather than the old brand Berluti had absorbed.

As Trétiack writes at the conclusion of his memoir, this exploration of Arnys allowed him to remember things from his own past that he had almost forgotten, yet felt so deeply.  In fact, ironically, Trétiack’s discussions of his own family’s trajectory are far cloudier (and shorter) than his descriptions of Arnys, no doubt because the latter involved researching and interviewing many of the people historically involved with the shop. Certainly, as Arnys et moi progresses, the personal memoir of Trétiack’s family comes to seem more and more exiguous compared to the gusto with which Trétiack describes not only the arrival of the Grimberts and Arnys, but the development of the garments and the ethos that made the shop an avatar of a sort of French exception, a prerevolutionary throwback, a haven for a certain set of the Parisian bourgeoisie as it wanted to see itself: deeply rooted in a timelessly elegant France of Enlightenment thought and local craft; intellectual without being sterile; a cosmopolitan of the fleshpots of the Sixth and Seventh Arrondissements, which at one time were famous bookstores, discreet art galleries and philosophers’ cafés. But today, Trétiack points out, former customers of Arnys also rue the passing of a certain clientele of the Café Flore, too.

How do I remember Arnys? Unlike Trétiack, I was a regular, if only occasionally profligate, customer of Arnys for the last decade of its existence, and knew it well for years before that, having been like Léon and Albert Grimbert a student in that neighborhood.  Like many of the habitués he describes, I used to stop in nearly every weekend. But those were not sufficient credentials to become part of the salon of intellectuals, esthetes and political figures Trétiack is only the most recent to describe. And as a guilty customer of the Flore for well over 20 years, I can attest that the shift in that café’s clientele to wealthy tourists and Eurotrash is by no means a recent phenomenon.  All that time ago, when as a student I would amble from my home on rue de Sevres past Arnys and its lovely windows to a rare treat at the Flore, it was already evident that the cultural landmarks of that area, those that Arnys claimed to be part of, had mostly disappeared in place of the boutiques of international luxury brands. There was very little left of the intellectual or countercultural long before Arnys itself ceased to be.

As a member of another diaspora, I know it is always my lot to be, in some way, an outsider wherever I am. Outsider that I am, I was shocked to find how closely Trétiack’s and my conclusions tracked: I am writing a book on vanished and vanishing French #steez, and occasionally wondered if a mutual friend like rag trader Ammar Marni, whom Trétiack interviewed for this book, had passed him my manuscript.  Like Trétiack, I concluded that Arnys incarnated a sort of French exception, a parallel universe where Beau Brummell had never imposed his modern English clothing style of simplicity of cut and restraint of color on the world. Arnys was a sort of escapism too lovely for we the uncertainly welcome to resist, a France as it would like to see itself, invented by an immigrant family.  

Arnys et moi laudably and interestingly lays out how Arnys constructed its myth, but occasionally strays into too eagerly believing some parts of that myth.  Trétiack spends a chapter or two lauding the 1940s invention of Arnys’ signature garment, the smocklike Forestière, and the cultural inspirations that led Arnys, in the wake of the Forestière, to create dozens of other garments inspired by the workwear and countrywear of France, as well as by classic French and Italian films of the 1950s and 1960s.  It’s only much later, towards the end of the book, that Trétiack mentions that that Arnys actually had remained a staid, Anglophile haberdasher until the 1990s, when the third Grimbert generation, brothers Jean and Michel, realized that ersatz Englishness was on the way out and that a contrived Frenchness (rich linings, beautiful and exotic materials, grandiosely theatrical designs, and a special notch in the lapel inspired by those created by the 1950s new wave of French tailors) could set the house apart. In other words, Arnys’ performative Frenchness, the thing that set it apart, is of quite recent vintage.  Trétiack also expounds in impressive detail on the magnificence and quality of every object Arnys sold, right down to the rarity of its handmade knives and the lushness of its pashmina scarves handwoven in Srinagar.  As something of a collector of artifacts of the places I write about, I’ve actually had the occasion to own and use items by these makers, including a Sauveterre knife and a scarf from Arnys’ supplier Kashmir Loom.  What Trétiack may not have realized is that the Arnys items were not just exquisite and luxurious, but were often incredibly delicate.  In the case of their handmade, hand-rolled seven-fold ties, they seemed to be deliberately more delicately and clumsily made than they needed to be in order to seem more handmade.  This seemed the case with a number of Arnys items.  Like Trétiack, I never became a bespoke customer of Arnys.  But here he and I diverge, as his words praising the current Arnys-Berluti cutter suggest he had not heard the pervasive and insistent words across the rest of the Paris bespoke population about the custom makers at Arnys. I’ll only note that the longtime Arnys cutter had actually left Arnys around the time it became part of Arnys, and is now retired, while their longtime custom shirtmaker died recently. 

Things change. Like Trétiack, I’ve wondered about the futility of writing about places like Arnys, about what it matters to remember. Then I remember that so many of us, so many different individuals with so many different individual histories, have conferred on this place, on this meaningless pair of syllables, so many different meanings, each with its own reverberations. How much can we know about what we remember?

[hydeparkhistorian]

When Hollywood came to Hyde Park

There have been several movies and TV series produced over the years that focus on the Roosevelt family in some way, shape, or form. Not all of them accurate or even enjoyable (especially if you’re a picky historian like me). There is one movie that stands out for its attention to detail and wonderful acting. Eleanor Roosevelt wrote in her column on June 9th 1960, “I went up to Hyde Park Tuesday morning with Nannine Joseph and Miss Corr, and we arrived at the library to find the filming for Dore Schary's movie, "Sunrise at Campobello," in full swing.” She would stick around long enough to get a photo with Ralph Bellamy, who was playing the role of her husband and Greer Garson, who was playing her! It must have been so odd to sit on the porch of her family’s home surrounded by Hollywood cameras and crew and to know that they were going to recreate her life for all to see on the big screen. (photo below)

Sunrise at Campobello was written as a play by Dore Schary (after he received permission from Eleanor Roosevelt) in 1957. The playwright claimed that he had read everything ever written about the President and focused on details such as how he was able to get around in the days just after contracting polio, the first day he wore leg braces, and the exact dimensions of the kitchen chair that he converted into a wheelchair. The play began in 1958 and ran just over a year on Broadway with Ralph Bellamy playing the role of FDR there first. Eleanor wrote a very detailed review of the play in February of 1958…

“I saw the opening night performance last week in New York of the play, "Sunrise at Campobello", which depicts nearly three years in the life of my husband. I found to be quite true what my son, Elliott, had told me about the play. It is remarkably good and well acted, but I was happy that the actors recognized it as a play and did not try to make it too real. As a result, just as Elliott had said, I was able to see it as drama and not think of it as depicting each individual as he or she really was. Dore Schary, the author, did a remarkable job of gaining an insight into the characters as they were at the time—in 1921. Louis Howe, for instance, who is a delightful and amusing person, could easily have said any of the things that were put into his mouth and I enjoyed the portrayal of him thoroughly, although he could never have looked like the gentleman cast in his role. I thought Miss Mary Fickett did an excellent job of being a very sweet character, which she is in the play. I am afraid I was never really like Mr. Schary's picture of myself, so I could even look upon the portrayal of myself in a fictional light! Ralph Bellamy, as my husband, did a remarkable job of showing, in his study at the Institute for Crippled and Disabled, the way people with polio feel and the patience, hard work and determination that goes into doing each new thing. He suggested my husband very successfully.”

When the plans for a film came after the success of the play, Bellamy was concerned about continuing his role as FDR. He personally believed that he was too old, at age 55, to portray FDR at the ages of 39 through 42 on film and announced that Marlon Brando looked set for the film role. In a Feb 1959 New York Times article, Schary “scotched rumors” that Brando would play the “pre-presidential” FDR. A July 1959 Beverly Hills Citizen article reported that Bellamy was still concerned about playing a younger role that was being filmed in Technicolor close-ups and that Charlton Heston, who was then in his mid-thirties, was being contacted as an alternate for the part. Bellamy would eventually take on the role along side Greer Garson. The movie also starred Hume Cronyn as Louis Howe and Ann Shoemaker as Sara Delano Roosevelt. 

According to studio production notes, the democratic convention sequence was staged in the Los Angeles Shrine Auditorium. Production notes show that exterior sequences of the film were shot at actual historical locations including the lawn of Hyde Park and boating scenes in the Bay of Fundy at the Island of Campobello and Bangor Maine. Exact replicas of the interiors of the Campobello summer home, Springwood, and New York City townhouse on 65th Street were recreated on the Warner Bros. set.  In the opening credits of the film, the director Dore Schary made sure to thank the Roosevelt family, the Presidential Library and the National Park Service for their assistance. The film was nominated for 4 Academy Awards, and Greer Garson won a Golden Globe for Best Actress.   

[xtruss]

Beyond the Booster Shot! Could a “Broad Spectrum” Booster Increase Our Immunity to Many Pathogens Simultaneously?

— By Matthew Hutson | February 8, 2022 | The New Yorker

Illustration by Nicholas Konrad / The New Yorker

The first tuberculosis vaccine was developed in 1921, by two French scientists, Albert Calmette and Camille Guérin. It was called Bacillus Calmette-Guérin, or B.C.G., and has long been one of the world’s most widely administered shots. From the beginning, its power was surprising. B.C.G. contains a bacterium similar to the one that causes TB, and engenders an immune defense specific to that disease. But, as Calmette noted in a paper in 1931, those vaccinated with B.C.G. at birth were around seventy-five per cent less likely to die in their early years of any cause. The effect seemed out of scale with the incidence of TB. There were, Calmette thought, two possibilities. TB might be more widespread than was commonly supposed. Alternatively, the vaccine might somehow confer a broader benefit—“a special aptitude to resist those other infections which are so frequent in young children.”

No one knew how to explain the phenomenon. But researchers observed a similar effect when polio vaccines were introduced, in the nineteen-fifties. Two married virologists, Marina Voroshilova and Mikhail Chumakov, conducted the Soviet Union’s clinical trials for Albert Sabin’s oral polio vaccine, known as O.P.V.; they noticed that it reduced not just the incidence of polio but of many other viral infections. Voroshilova started giving O.P.V. to her children every flu season, as a kind of prophylactic. Meanwhile, she looked at the medical records of more than three hundred thousand people, most of whom had received vaccines for polio and related viruses, across three winters. She found that those who’d received the vaccines were about seventy per cent less likely to have suffered acute flu or respiratory infections. Certain vaccines, she wrote, seemed to offer “a potential means of overcoming the diversity of pathogenic viruses.” (Her son Konstantin Chumakov is now the associate director for research at the F.D.A.’s Office of Vaccines Research and Review. “Knock on wood, but I don’t remember ever having flu,” he told me.)

In 1978, a Swedish organization sent Peter Aaby, an anthropologist with a doctoral degree in medical research, to Guinea-Bissau, in West Africa, to study the country’s high rate of child mortality. The next year, a measles outbreak hit a district in the capital city of Bissau, and Aaby began vaccinating children there. He, too, found that the vaccine reduced child mortality over all—by around half, according to his measurements, which was higher than what one would expect if the vaccine were preventing deaths from measles alone. “That was a very stunning experience,” he told me, on a video call from Bissau. “I guess that is what has kept me here, to try to understand what actually happened.”

Aaby published his initial findings in 1984, then followed up with a fuller report in 1995, describing similar results across ten studies in Bangladesh, Benin, Burundi, Guinea-Bissau, Haiti, Senegal, and Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of the Congo). Since then, he and others have reported that B.C.G., O.P.V., and a measles vaccine called M.V. have significantly reduced mortality from non-targeted diseases in low-income countries. Aaby has run randomized trials on infants in Guinea-Bissau and found that, according to some measures, B.C.G., O.P.V., and M.V.—all of which contain “live” bacteria or viruses, rather than chopped-up bits of pathogens—have reduced child mortality by at least thirty per cent. For this work, he won the Novo Nordisk Prize, Denmark’s most prestigious medical-research award. Surveying data collected by Aaby and others, researchers convened by the World Health Organization concluded that B.C.G. and measles vaccines reduce all-cause child mortality more than would be expected from specific protection. In a report published in the British Medical Journal, in 2016, they wrote that they “strongly recommend further studies.”

There’s a story we typically tell when we explain how vaccines work. We say that they prepare our immune systems to target specific intruders by programming antibodies and T cells. But for decades we’ve also had evidence of another phenomenon. Some vaccines appear to build a degree of defenses against nearly anything that comes our way. In this second mode of action, they work as a general immune-system booster. It’s like taking a cross-training class—for some period afterward, your whole body is extra fit.

The extent of these effects isn’t fully understood, in part because they’re understudied. “It’s almost counterintuitive to use one live vaccine to help protect against diseases caused by one or more other infectious organisms,” the medical researcher David Naylor, the co-chair of Canada’s covid-19 Immunity Task Force and a former president of the University of Toronto, told me. In general, he said, “the scientific compass for many years has been swinging toward precision medicine.” Still, if we knew more about how some vaccines manage to provide a degree of broad protection, we could use that benefit to our advantage. In theory, we could use a preëxisting vaccine to protect against a new virus while more specific vaccines are still being developed. This is the strategy that Naylor adopted for himself during the pandemic. In the fall of 2020, he got a shingles shot.

Mihai Netea, a fifty-three-year-old immunologist at Radboud University, in the Netherlands, coördinates a research group of about twenty scientists, studying how organisms respond to severe infections. In 2010, his team was running an experiment to assess the impact of B.C.G. vaccination on Toll-like receptors—proteins that our cells use to respond to a broad class of microbial structures. The idea was simple. An initial encounter with B.C.G. should increase the production of immune-system molecules called cytokines in response to mycobacteria, the genus of bacteria that causes TB, and it should have no effect on the body’s response to a control stimulus—in this case, a fungus. But the cells showed increased reactivity to fungi, too. Netea thought that one of his students had made a mistake.

After they repeated the experiment and arrived at the same result, Netea searched the literature to see whether anyone else had documented the effects of B.C.G. on diseases besides TB. He discovered epidemiological studies, including Aaby’s, and also lab work done in mice. In those animals, “in the sixties and seventies, people were showing that B.C.G. protects against influenza, Listeria, malaria—everything,” Netea said. “And I thought, Oh, my God.” He developed a hunch about the mechanism at work, and, in a 2011 paper, gave it a name: trained immunity.

Most vaccines target what’s called the adaptive immune system: they work by aiming antibodies and T cells at specific pathogens. But we also have an innate immune system, a more indiscriminate first line of defense, which includes our skin, mucous membranes, and generalist proteins throughout the body that inhibit viral replication. Scavenger cells in this system attack foreign intruders—even ones the body has never seen before—and killer cells destroy any infected cell. All this happens no matter which pathogen is attacking us. Inflammation and fever, mediated in part by cytokines, are tools of innate immunity. Netea compared the adaptive and innate immune systems with specialists and hard laborers: one takes weeks to prepare, while the other goes to work in hours or less.

One proposed explanation for B.C.G.’s broad effectiveness was focussed on the adaptive immune system. Perhaps B.C.G. and the control fungus looked so much alike that adaptive immune cells aimed at the former also reacted against the latter—a phenomenon called cross-reactivity. But Netea suspected something else. Even in the absence of an adaptive immune system, one infection can bolster responses against future infections. In 1933, a similar effect, now called systemic acquired resistance, was identified in plants. Adaptive immunity evolved just half a billion years ago, roughly three billion years after life first appeared on Earth; many living things, including plants and all invertebrates, have only innate immune systems. And yet immunity in those organisms has a kind of memory, too—it can be sharpened by experience.

What could be the mechanism behind such effects? Netea thought that infections might be altering innate-immune cells through a process called epigenetic reprogramming. When cells make proteins—including the ones involved in innate immunity—they do so using instructions that are hard-coded into our DNA. But experience can affect which instructions a cell executes, and how often. In 2012, Netea confirmed that epigenetic changes were behind his lab’s earlier B.C.G. results. Increased production of certain signalling proteins had insured that cells launched an innate-immune response to the TB-causing bacterium while also doing the same for both a very different bacterium and a fungus. In a commentary published alongside the paper, Aaby and his longtime collaborator Christine Stabell Benn wrote, “It is rare that epidemiological and immunological data support each other to such an extent, telling a completely coherent and plausible story.” And yet the story was unfinished: the cells Netea had studied survive for only a few days, but epidemiological evidence showed that trained immunity could last for months or even years. Netea suspected that epigenetic changes took place elsewhere, too—possibly in the cells in our bone marrow that divide and differentiate into innate-immunity cells. Such changes would persist through time even as innate-immunity cells died and reproduced.

In 2020, a multinational team led by Sandrine Sarrazin and Michael H. Sieweke, of the Centre d’Immunologie de Marseille-Luminy, deepened the story, suggesting how the reprogramming might take place. If you were to stretch out all the DNA strands in your body and place them end to end, they would encircle Earth’s equator roughly two million times; they fit inside cellular nuclei by wrapping around proteins called histones, forming a tightly coiled complex called chromatin. A chromatin fibre, Netea explained, is like a book telling the body how to operate. Normally, most of it is closed—but its pages must open so that cells can read the instructions and make proteins. Inflammation, he explained, can alter the chemical structure of histones, essentially placing bookmarks. “You close the book, but the bookmark says, ‘This is where the chapter on fighting infection is,’ ” he said. “So, the next time you fight an infection, you can open it much easier.” Training makes innate-immunity cells faster and better at finding the plans for proteins that kill infected cells, produce signalling molecules, and trigger adaptive immunity.

It’s not just vaccines that train our immune systems. We get sick all the time, experiencing colds, flus, or fatigue; when such illnesses aren’t severe, they usually leave us stronger, better prepared to battle the next infection. Netea recalled how, in his children’s first years of schooling, they continually got sick, with fevers and runny noses. Slowly, illness became less frequent. “Well, part of it is producing antibodies, and so on,” he said. “But also the innate immune system matures. You put in these bookmarks. You catalogue the information.” Some vaccines, it turns out, can help us build those capacities while avoiding sickness.

In 1984, Robert Gallo co-discovered H.I.V. as the cause of aids; in 2011, he co-founded the Global Virus Network, an international coalition of virologists aiming to prevent and control viral epidemics. Early in 2020, when Chinese researchers published the genetic sequence of sars-CoV-2, Gallo grew interested in the possibility of using trained immunity to slow the spread of the virus. A few years earlier, he’d attended a lecture given by Konstantin Chumakov about protecting against the flu with O.P.V. He’d also read about bats, which harbor several coronaviruses simultaneously without growing ill, and without antibodies. “How do they do fine?” Gallo said. “It’s not the classical adaptive-immune response. It’s on all the time. They keep a balance, so that the coronavirus is there but not harmful. This really caused me to become deeply interested in innate immunity.” In 2020 and 2021, Gallo co-authored two high-profile articles—with Chumakov, Aaby, Benn, and Netea on one or both—advocating an attempt to fight the coronavirus by eliciting trained immunity through the use of existing vaccines.

To some extent, the idea had already been put into practice by accident, through ordinary vaccination. Researchers at Virginia Tech and the National Institutes of Health have found that, among twenty-two socially similar countries, those with greater B.C.G. coverage had lower covid-19 mortality rates. (This finding is remarkable considering that the last common ancestor between the bacterium that causes TB and the virus that causes covid-19 existed more than three billion years ago.) Studying O.P.V.’s capacity for covid-19 protection is more difficult, because supply is reserved for polio eradication, but an analysis by Chumakov, Gallo, and others found that Iranian mothers who’d been indirectly exposed to O.P.V. through their children’s vaccinations—the vaccine is transmissible—were better protected against the coronavirus. A study in Brazil, conducted by Swiss and Brazilian researchers, found that a flu shot reduced the odds of death from covid-19 by sixteen per cent.

Other studies seem to tell similar stories. Netea and his collaborators conducted a small study at a Dutch hospital and found that those who’d been immunized against the flu were roughly forty per cent less likely to contract covid-19, thanks, it appears, to changes in their innate immune systems. In a GlaxoSmithKline study of nearly half a million adults in California aged fifty and above, those who’d received G.S.K.’s shingles vaccine were sixteen per cent less likely to contract the coronavirus, and thirty-two per cent less likely to be hospitalized because of it. And, among more than a hundred and thirty-seven thousand Mayo Clinic patients, those who’d received any of several vaccines within the past one to five years—including shots for chicken pox, flu, hepatitis, measles, pneumonia, and polio—had lower chances of covid-19 infection. Polio vaccines reduced the probability of infection by forty-three per cent—even when controlling for comorbidities, other vaccinations, demographics (age, gender, race, ethnicity, county of residence), and regional covid-19 incidence and testing rates. Numerous studies by researchers around the world have presented harmonious findings.

There is a problem, however, with all of these studies. They are “observational”—that is, based on after-the-fact data analysis. Observational studies are suggestive but not conclusive, because it’s impossible to completely rule out biassing variables, such as differences in who gets a vaccine. Researchers are now conducting placebo-controlled trials, in which they randomly administer vaccines to one group and placebos to another, then measure the outcomes. Preliminary results from an ongoing study in Brazil indicate that adults who have received the measles, mumps, and rubella (M.M.R.) vaccine are not protected against covid-19 infection but do have half the rate of covid-19 symptoms, suggesting that the vaccine might reduce the severity of the disease. In preliminary results from a study recently completed by Netea and others in Greece, elderly adults given B.C.G. were sixty-eight per cent less likely to become infected with covid-19. And, in a trial among two hundred elderly people that Netea and others completed just before the pandemic, B.C.G. reduced respiratory infections over the following year by seventy-nine per cent.

The question is whether the takeaways from the observational studies will hold up as more randomized trials roll in. “Mihai does some really interesting science, and I think that’s exactly what we need,” Andrew Pollard, who directs the Oxford Vaccine Group, which co-developed the Oxford-AstraZeneca covid-19 vaccine, told me. But Pollard is unsure whether innate-immune-system boosting will be very powerful beyond young childhood. “As an adult—where we’ve had gazillions of viral infections, we’ve had our vaccines, we’ve been in this soup of exposures to our immune system for decades—whether the additional impact of an intervention will allow protection against other diseases, I just don’t know,” he said. Such existing protection, he added, could help explain why there’s been relatively little interest—until this pandemic—in research on vaccine repurposing for adults. Referring to randomized controlled trials, he told me, “We urgently need the R.C.T. data. The problem with observational studies is this is an area absolutely fraught with biases.”

If trial data point toward clear and long-lasting benefits, Pollard went on, “that really changes thinking going forward.” But the trials may fail to back up the observational studies. If that’s the case, then the immune-boosting effects may be insufficiently large. Or the results could point to “a design question,” Pollard said. “Was it the right population? And were the studies big enough?” The choice of booster vaccine also matters. Most vaccines come in one of two forms: seasonal flu shots, for example, are “inactivated” vaccines, comprising pieces of destroyed viruses, while B.C.G., O.P.V., and M.M.R. are “live attenuated” vaccines, comprising whole bacteria or viruses that have been bred to be weaker than the forms against which they’re meant to inoculate us. In general, live vaccines seem to train the innate immune system more effectively, and so have the greatest potential for repurposing. This is why live non-flu vaccines can sometimes protect against the flu even better than flu-specific vaccines, which, in the worst cases, provide only ten-per-cent protection.

Repurposing old, targeted vaccines to boost our innate immune systems would be a kind of hack. Could a vaccine designed specifically for that purpose elicit larger, more dependable effects? In 2016, Jaykumar Menon, a human-rights lawyer based in New York, founded the Open Source Pharma Foundation to address market failures in drug development. (It received its first funding, in 2018, from Tata Trusts, in India.) One of its goals is to create new vaccines that leverage trained immunity for what it calls “ultra-broad spectrum” coverage. “B.C.G., for example, is not ideal,” Netea told me. “It’s inducing a good trained immunity only in approximately half of the people.” He’d like to have four or five vaccines on the shelf, each proven to prepare different elements of innate immunity—including inflammation and the cellular digestion of invaders—ready for the next pandemic.

Menon believes that such vaccines could be profoundly important in the developing world. A vaccine could offer a degree of protection against a new pathogen, “and it already exists in some vaccines that are very cheap, that people in Asia and Africa and Latin America have access to,” he said. “Some of the vaccine-hesitant might be more kindly disposed to it, because you’ve probably taken an M.M.R. in your life.” The ultimate goal, he went on, was to “address pandemics far earlier for all people.”

If the research pans out, and such shots become widely available, we may need to revise our pandemic playbook. At the beginning of a pandemic, before we develop specific vaccines, governments could distribute broad-spectrum boosters, providing some level of temporary protection. It wouldn’t halt a virus’s progression, but it might slow it, and perhaps spare the most vulnerable some of the worst effects. Earlier this year, researchers at Cornell and Oxford published a paper in the scientific journal PNAS describing epidemiological models of such a scenario. According to their calculations, if even a minimally effective immune booster, reducing covid-19 transmission and severity by only five per cent, had been given to one in ten American adults in December of 2020, it would have reduced national mortality by more than fifteen per cent over the following months, saving eighty thousand lives. Even as targeted vaccines roll out, such shots could still have a role to play, by protecting people in poor countries and boosting immunity further in rich ones.

Gallo told me that he’d arranged to receive an M.M.R. shot before the covid-specific vaccines were available. He continues to get the shots. “If my antibodies are going down—it’s month four or month five—I say, ‘Shit, I’m not waiting for somebody to approve being boosted. I’m going to get M.M.R.’ ” He said that “many G.V.N.-center directors” were doing the same, referring to the Global Virus Network. Could general-immunity boosters become part of our regular medical routines? In theory, some of us might want to receive a live vaccine every winter, as a kind of innate-immune-system pick-me-up. If we were to take this approach, we’d be following in the footsteps of the Soviet Union, which distributed O.P.V. shots before the flu season in the nineteen-sixties and seventies. Each winter in Romania, where Netea was born, some people took Polidin, a mixture of thirteen dead bacteria.

Such a scenario may come to pass, or not, depending on how the science turns out. In November, I got a flu shot, seeing it not just as a flu vaccine but as a potential general-immunity booster—albeit one with a weaker effect than a live vaccine like O.P.V. As I tugged up my sleeve, I mentioned to the pharmacist that there was some evidence suggesting that flu vaccines offer a degree of protection against covid-19. She looked alarmed, and asked me whether I’d received a covid-19 vaccination. I must have sounded like a strange variety of vaccine truther. People have lots of ideas about vaccines’ hidden effects. Many of them are negative and unsubstantiated—autism, infertility, microchips. But, while trained immunity is a hidden effect, it’s also a good one. It’s a way in which our vaccines are even better than we thought.

[epacer]

A Little Jab Will Do Ya

San Diego schools offer COVID vaccine clinics to get students, teenagers vaccinated

When the COVID vaccine became available to young people ages 16 and older, Evelyn Arce heard students say they wouldn’t get vaccinated because they don’t trust the vaccine.

They had Evelyn convinced for a day or two. But the 17-year-old senior at Hoover High in City Heights soon changed her mind based on data, not peer pressure.

Recent data show COVID case rates have plummeted as more people have been vaccinated, Evelyn said, and society is opening back up again.

“I was like, ‘Why am I listening to my peers when there’s people that know more?’,” she said Wednesday. “I don’t believe the conspiracy theories going around, because I see the statistics.”

Since then the teen has been working to educate City Heights residents about the importance and safety of the vaccines.

“The vaccine is the only thing that can get us back to normal, back to the way things were,” Evelyn said. “So I feel like, if you can and you feel safe, you should do it.”

Schools and students like Evelyn are joining the push to encourage more young people to get vaccinated.

Next week eight San Diego Unified high schools will hold free clinics offering the Pfizer vaccine, the only COVID vaccine approved for 16- and 17-year-olds.

Sweetwater Union High School District, which hosted a vaccine clinic at Sweetwater High late last month that inoculated 350 students, also is planning more school clinics for next week.

As of Tuesday, about 55,700 San Diego County teenagers aged 16 to 19 have gotten at least one vaccine dose, according to a county spokesperson. That represents 30 percent of teens in that age range.

County Public Health Officer Dr. Wilma Wooten said that’s an encouraging number, given that vaccinations only opened to people as young as 16 on April 15.

Soon the Pfizer vaccine may become available to youth as young as 12.

Federal regulators are expected to announce next week they’re expanding vaccines to that age group, after a recent Pfizer vaccine trial of more than 2,200 adolescents between 12 and 15 showed it had a 100 percent efficacy rate in preventing COVID and high toleration among vaccinated individuals.

Getting more youth vaccinated is not only crucial to lowering the spread of COVID; it may also help convince more families to send their children back to school, educators say.

Can schools require COVID vaccines?

Currently there is no state or federal requirement that anybody, including students, get the COVID vaccine — but the state has the power to require it in the future for K-12 students, according to the California School Boards Association.

The state already requires 10 other vaccines for school attendance, including vaccines against measles, polio, chickenpox and whooping cough.

However, Dr. Howard Taras, a UC San Diego pediatrician who advises schools on COVID safety, said that it’s possible the state won’t make COVID vaccines a requirement for K-12 students, given how long it’s taking to roll out the vaccine to younger children.

Taras said he doubts the state would require COVID vaccines for students until at least the 2022-2023 school year, since vaccines for children ages 6 months to 12 years old are unlikely to receive emergency use authorization until late 2021.

“It is easily conceivable that there will never be such a requirement,” Taras said.

K-12 schools or districts, on their own, cannot require the COVID vaccines while the vaccines only have emergency use authorization, said Troy Flint, spokesman for the school boards association. Emergency use authorization means the vaccines are safe for public use but did not yet complete the full, time-consuming safety approval process typically required for vaccines.

Similarly school districts have not required the COVID vaccine for their staff, who got access to the vaccine earlier this year.

Once the vaccines get full approval, it’s unclear whether school districts can require, on their own, that students attending school in person be vaccinated for COVID, Flint said. The school boards association is studying the issue and will issue an opinion in the coming weeks, he added.

Officials of several local school districts indicated they would defer to the state on whether to require student vaccinations.

A school or district would likely face public backlash and legal challenges if it decides unilaterally to require COVID vaccinations for students, the association noted.

Higher education systems have been quicker to require the vaccine. The University of California and California State University systems announced last month they plan to require COVID vaccines for students this fall, if the vaccines receive full formal approval from the FDA.

Need for youth vaccinations

If kids get vaccinated, families might be more willing to let their kids go to school, said Jason Babineau, principal of Hoover High.

“We hope this opportunity helps ease the concerns of families in our community and allows for more students to comfortably learn on campus,” Babineau said of the school clinics.

About 42 percent of students in San Diego County are still learning full-time at home, according to the San Diego County Office of Education. While most schools have invited all students back to campuses at least part-time for in-person learning, many families are keeping kids in distance learning for fear they might bring home the virus and infect family members.

Early data suggests that COVID vaccines help keep asymptomatic people from spreading the coronavirus, because the vaccines appear to reduce a person’s viral load — one of the key drivers of COVID spread, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said.

Taras said it’s important to get as many people vaccinated as possible, including children of all ages. Not only does having more vaccinated people help communities reach herd immunity — where COVID spreads at significantly lower rates — but it helps reduce the chances of producing new coronavirus variants, he said.

It’s especially important that youth get vaccinated, Taras said, because they represent a growing share of COVID cases.

Children used to account for 5 percent of all COVID cases, he said; as of Wednesday, they accounted for more than 16 percent.

“Children will likely be the largest reservoir of infection at some point, especially if we are successful at vaccinating a large portion of adults,” Taras said. “So as soon as vaccine becomes available to them, we need to take the opportunity and immunize them.”

Vaccine hesitancy

A recent survey suggests most U.S. parents of children under 18 don’t plan to get their kids vaccinated right away.

Poll results released Thursday by the Kaiser Family Foundation show 3 in 10 parents of children saying they would get their child vaccinated as soon as it’s available for their age group. A third said they would wait to see how the vaccine is working.

About 15 percent said they would only get their child vaccinated if their school requires it, and 19 percent said they would not get their child vaccinated at all.

Students, educators and health experts say they have heard various reasons for hesitancy from youth and their parents. Some think the vaccines may have unknown long-term effects or that the vaccines were made too quickly to be safe.

Dr. Mark Sawyer, an infectious disease specialist at Rady Children’s Hospital, said there have been no reports of late-appearing side effects of the COVID vaccine.

“Safety continues to be monitored very carefully and we have now given (more than) 100 million doses of mRNA vaccines in the U.S. and close to 1 billion COVID vaccines in the world,” Sawyer said in an email. “They are all remarkably safe!”

Educators like Babineau say they hope that offering vaccines in schools — which for many students are a safe place and where they receive other vital services like food and mental health counseling — will help encourage students and families to get vaccinated.

Also some students have reported logistical difficulties getting the vaccine in the community, such as figuring out which vaccine clinics serve people in their age group or how to get the necessary parental consent form, Babineau said. California is one of many states that require parental consent for youth under 18 to get vaccinated.

Some groups are pushing to get that changed.

“American teenagers must be given the right to protect themselves from dangerous and deadly diseases, even if their parents reject medical science or embrace baseless conspiracy theories about vaccines,” said the Center For Inquiry, an educational nonprofit, in a press release Thursday.

Even Evelyn, the Hoover High senior, has not been vaccinated yet. She has transportation challenges because her parents work late, and not all vaccine sites are open to youth, she said.

She plans to get her first COVID shot at Hoover on Monday. *Reposted article from the UT by Kristen Taketa, May 8, 2021

[thisdaynews]

JUST IN:Two IPOB Kingpins Arrested In Oyigbo - Governor Wike

New Post has been published on https://thebiafrastar.com/just-intwo-ipob-kingpins-arrested-in-oyigbo-governor-wike/

JUST IN:Two IPOB Kingpins Arrested In Oyigbo - Governor Wike

SECURITY OPERATIVES HAVE ARRESTED TWO IPOB KINGPINS IN OYIGBO – WIKE

Rivers State Governor, Nyesom Ezenwo Wike, says two kingpins of the proscribed Indigenous Peoples of Biafra (IPOB) involved in the killing of six soldiers and four policemen in Oyigbo, have been arrested by security operatives.

He has also maintained that the imposition of curfew in Oyigbo Local Government Area helped to prevent an outbreak of inter-ethnic war between Igbo and Hausa communities in the area.

The Governor stated this when Rotary District 9141 Governor, Mrs Virginia Major led a delegation of Rotarians on a courtesy visit at the Government House, Port Harcourt on Tuesday.

He revealed that security operatives in late hours of yesterday arrested two prominent members of IPOB in Oyigbo.

Governor Wike explained that Rivers State was peaceful during the EndSARS protest, until criminals, under the guise of IPOB attempted to paint the State black by killing ten security agents in Oyigbo.

He noted that while Rivers State has been home to every ethnic and religious groups, some misguided IPOB members, had taken this for granted by unleashing mayhem in Oyigbo and even attempted to cause inter-ethnic war.

“If we did not take the steps we took by imposing curfew in Oyigbo, today, it would have been the Hausa and Igbo that will have been fighting and nobody knows what level it would have taken today” he said.

The Governor said though he has had frosty relationship with Nigerian Army and the Police, he will, however, never tolerate the killing of any solider or police in the State.

“I will not support criminality. I won’t because the soldiers don’t like me, then you go and kill them. And then, I will come out and clap, thank you for killing the soldiers. Thank you for killing the police” he said.

He urged those spreading falsehood that Igbo people are being killed and punished in Oyigbo to be dispassionate when acts of criminality are committed. According to him, if IPOB members did not kill people and destroyed properties, Government will have had any justification to declare curfew in the council.

“No government will wake up in the morning to impose hardship on its people. No government will do that, but government has the right to protect life” he said.

Governor Wike lauded Rotary International for collaborating with government to Kick out polio in Nigeria. He assured the Rotarians that his administration will sustain the campaign against polio because no governor will be happy to hear about fresh outbreak of polio in any part of the country.

District 9141 Governor, Virginia Major, lauded Governor Wike for the manner he handled the well intentioned EndSARS protect, which was almost hijacked by miscreants.

She noted that while the world was facing COVID-19 pandemic of unimaginable proportions, Governor Wike and his colleagues and the Federal Government did not relent in their collective efforts to support polio immunisation at all levels.

“This led to the ultimate certification of Nigeria and by extension, Africa as free of the wild polio virus on August 2,2020 by the World Health Organisation, WHO” she said.

He urged the Governor to use his position to support all the renewed efforts of Government, Rotary and all its strategic partners in their quest for sustained surveillance, awareness, immunisation and of course, keeping polio at zero. KELVIN EBIRI Special Assistant (Media) to the Governor. November 03, 2020.

Source Governor Wike official Facebook handle

[michelemoore]

Takhuk

August, 2020

Michele Moore Veldhoen

COWPOX, COVID, COMMERCE, AND COVAX An Unusual Glimpse Into the Vaccine World

When Covid-19 is eventually neutralized, will its’ backstory be engraved on the tablet of humankind’s greatest achievements, or will it be etched onto a cave wall, a hidden story of humankind’s failure to co-operate…….  

An hour of online immersion into the history of how some of the most important vaccines were developed and distributed reveals at least these key factors: critical observations and personal sacrifice on the part of the scientists working on solutions to disease; public funding; international co-operation; general benevolence ; and, competitive, egotistical, scientists.

Vaccines as they are known to contemporary Canadians have been in use since the late 19th century, although the parent of all modern vaccines, the Smallpox vaccine, was actually invented in the late 18th century by the British doctor Edward Jenner. Jenner noticed that farmers who became infected with cowpox (a virus found in a cow’s udder) subsequently became immune to smallpox. This observation led to his invention of the smallpox vaccine. It can be said then, that we all owe a debt not only to Dr. Jenner, but also to cows. (Thus, the cow photo.)

Jenner’s private medical practice suffered as he dedicated himself to educating the world about vaccination. Without seeking or expecting financial reward, he shared his knowledge with medical practitioners around the world and sent his smallpox vaccine to other European countries and the United States. He also vaccinated the poor, in his own home, for free. Eventually, the British government recognized his sacrifices and the incredible contributions he had made to the health of the human population and provided him with some money.  

About a century later, in the second half of the 19th century, the terribly competitive French chemist Louis Pasteur (think pasteurization), solved the mystery of both anthrax and rabies and made many other crucial contributions to medical science, especially in the area of germ theory. His work led to the creation of the internationally funded non-profit Pasteur Institute, where he continued to unravel the mysteries of germs and disease until he died.

Late 20th century revelations of Pasteur’s character suggest that, along with his zeal for studying and comprehending the way of germs, he was also interested in fame and glory, (he made his family swear never to reveal his notebooks, because, it is now known, in order to best his rivals, he wasn’t always honest about his processes). His deceptions and corresponding arrogance were the trade-offs for his invaluable work, as he has been memorialized around the world with statues and place names on streets, institutes, hospitals, and schools like Calgary’s Lycée Louis Pasteur School. The Pasteur Institute, which continues to be an internationally funded non-profit institute to this day, is likely populated with a few modern versions of Pasteur. Like many great achievers in any field, there is often a dark side to their story.

In Canada, at least one vaccine was developed and mass produced thanks to major contributions from scientists at Connaught Laboratories in Toronto. That vaccine was for polio, which hit Canada very hard throughout the first half of the 20th century. Connaught scientists worked feverishly on a solution and came up with a key aspect of the process that helped the American Dr. Salk produce the vaccine that ultimately saved lives around the world. But it was Connaught, and specifically, the chemist Dr. Leone N. Farrell, who invented a successful method to mass produce the vaccine. Her invention became known as The Toronto Method. The Toronto Method became the method for producing the vaccine which eventually eradicated polio.

What’s most interesting about Dr. Farrell’s story, is that, when asked if she would like to take out the patent for her method, she declined. Apparently, she made a direct request to Connaught that they not patent her method.

Little is known about Dr. Farrell, but it seems more than plausible she made this request because, like many of her predecessors and contemporaries in the world of disease prevention, she wanted her life saving technology to be available to as many people around the world, as possible.

This small collection of stories give an idea as to the range of humanity making profoundly valuable contributions to medical science. Whatever the motivation, we have benefited from their brilliance and often their benevolence.

Naturally, glory and dollars gleamed in the eyes of some of the players during those centuries of medical science enlightenment, however, vaccine production was very difficult and costly and therefore never a money making proposition. Therefore a mix of compassion and practical self-interest – contagious diseases do not necessarily exist only in the domain of the poor – drove the world-wide distribution of vaccines.

Until recently then, pharmaceutical companies gave little consideration to vaccine production. Vaccine manufacturing is heavily regulated and the customer base is small – primarily governments.

But the profit outlook began to change in the late 90’s when H1N1 appeared, threatening a pandemic. In response to this first hint of a possible flu pandemic, governments around the world conceived pandemic response plans and started stockpiling vaccines.

Vaccine stockpiling completely changed the profitability landscape, making big pharma a big player in the world of vaccines. This Globe and Mail article tells the story. https://www.theglobeandmail.com/life/health-and-fitness/health/conditions/how-vaccines-became-big-business/article572731/ .

With big pharma comes big dollars and with big dollars comes big moral dilemmas. Just as Dr. Jenner gave free vaccines to the English farmers and other disenfranchised of his era, today, those people without power and money or good government rely on the generosity of wealthier countries to provide vaccines and other medical resources. And of course, due to world trade and travel, wealthier countries also have a vested interest in the health of populations around the world.

This brings us to this year’s top news story.

Today with Covid-19, a lot of news commentators and analysts are reporting on the ‘race’ for a vaccine.  Fears are being expressed about the possibility of greed (and the desire for glory) running rampant over our collective immune systems as pharmaceutical companies and leaders of some of the most powerful countries try to position themselves to be ‘first’ in the race and maximize profit from and access to the ‘winning’ formula. Already, some of the world’s richest countries have signed deals with pharmaceutical companies to hoard supply as it comes on stream. Russia has ‘certified’ an essentially untested vaccine, therefore allowing its’ leader to claim first place in that particular heat of the race.

Fortunately, there is hope for less financially powerful populations. A major international effort is underway, which Canada is supporting, to establish an equitable, and sensible, way to distribute the vaccine across the globe. COVAX, the COVID-19 Vaccines Global Access (COVAX) Facility, is the brainchild of several international organizations including the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the World Health Organization. This initiative seeks to bring together developed and developing countries to invest in about 12 different vaccines and ensure early access when they become available. “The goal is to have 2 billion doses by the end of 2021,” says Seth Berkley, director of GAVI, the Vaccine Alliance, the third COVAX partner: 950 million for high- and upper middle-income countries, 950 million for low- and lower middle-income countries, and 100 million for “humanitarian situations and outbreaks that are out of control.” A first $750 million deal with AstraZeneca for 300 million doses was announced on 4 June.” (https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/07/vaccine-nationalism-threatens-global-plan-distribute-covid-19-shots-fairly)

So far, according to CBC, 75 developed countries have signed up, including Canada, and are partnering with 90 developing nations. Together these countries represent 60% of the world’s population. (https://www.cbc.ca/news/health/covid-19-vaccine-countries-world-1.5668835) The goal is to be able to provide each participating country with enough doses to vaccinate at least 20% of their populations, with medical related personnel being the first to receive the vaccine.

While some leaders see the acquisition of a vaccine as a winner take all proposition, the irony of such an approach is that, if there is not an equitable and sensible distribution of the vaccine across the world, any given wealthy country that hoards the lion’s share of the vaccine, (and of course, pharmaceutical companies would have to co-operate with such countries, which is where the question of health care provision driven strictly by profit and devoid of any ethical considerations begins to take on a sickly shade of green), the citizens of that country will be prisoners of their own perceived victory. With our supply chains for everything from energy to food to medical supplies to Nike shoes and cell phones being dependent on a healthy population in those countries that have been, thanks to those rich countries, unable to access a vaccine supply, the economy of those rich countries will continue to suffer until the world is collectively on the road to recovery. And, in a winner take all scenario, certainly, tourism will be dead and dried up in the petrie dish. Which means all the freshly vaccinated residents of wealthy countries would have to stay home anyway.

These notes are brought to you by someone soaking up the world’s free supply of Vitamin D while watermelon juice drips from her chin. May the rest of summer be so kind.

www.michelemooreveldhoen.com

[realcleargoodtimes]

Her conduct was one of the factors, according to a source, that prompted a tough letter addressed to Goldston and his boss, then-Disney/ABC Television Group President Ben Sherwood, with the names of 12 Black journalists at ABC News, including Good Morning America star Robin Roberts, The View co-host Sunny Hostin and senior Justice Department correspondent Pierre Thomas, listed at the bottom.

Fedida derisively dubbed the letter “The Black Manifesto,” according to HuffPost’s Yashar Ali. According to one Black on-air ABC journalist, who reached out to The Daily Beast after being alerted to this story by the network’s PR department, the letter was circulated informally among the group but never officially sent to Sherwood and Goldston, who apparently obtained a copy anyway, and the letter’s sometimes confrontational wording wasn’t agreed to by the 12 journalists named as signatories.

“While we recognize our numbers in front of the camera, we are frustrated, demoralized, and angered by the lack of black voices in our newsrooms,” said the Aug. 17, 2016 letter—which was deliberately not addressed to Fedida, a source told The Daily Beast, because she was seen by some in the group as an adversary.

The letter noted in bullet-points: “No black Senior Producers at World News Tonight; No black Senior Producers at Nightline; Only one black Senior Producer at Good Morning America; Only one black Senior Producer at 20/20.”

The letter continued: “The lack of African-American representation in key editorial positions is not only unacceptable, it is also bad for the news division, as is often painfully clear in our coverage. Most recently, we felt that the network’s town hall on race with President Obama”—a July 2016 event moderated by David Muir—“failed completely in its effort to foster a meaningful dialogue on issues of race, a sentiment echoed in our community. But this was a preventable failure. Had just one senior-level black person been involved in a special about black people.”

The memo listed seven concrete suggestions to remedy the situation, including adding a Black senior producer to World News Tonight and a Black senior producer “per shift” at GMA, and adding a Black senior producer to Nightline.

Also requested: that Kendis Gibson be officially named the anchor of World News Now and America This Morning—ABC’s overnight and early morning newscasts—that Hostin be officially named a co-host of The View, that Ron Claiborne be officially named news anchor of GMA Weekend, and that ABC’s Black on-air journalists be accorded a periodic “respectful conversation about individual goals, strengths and areas of improvement.”

A knowledgable insider said that while Goldston was aware of the letter, he might not have actually read it. But at a tense and candid meeting between Goldston and the Black journalists, which was scheduled specifically to discuss their complaints, it was clear to some at the meeting—though not to others—that the ABC News president had received and studied the letter.

There seems to be no dispute, however, that Goldston discussed the concerns and recommendations, point by point, according to participants. Since then, Goldston has been holding periodic sessions with Black ABC News correspondents and anchors.

“James welcomed the opportunity to hear from this group and meet with them regularly,” an ABC News spokesperson told The Daily Beast. “These conversations have led to positive change in the news division. While we’ve made progress, there is more to do and we’re committed to it.”

ABC News declined The Daily Beast’s invitation to enumerate any steps Goldston has taken over the past four years to address the letter’s concerns.

The on-air personality who reached out to The Daily Beast, however, said that several Black senior producers have been installed at several of the news division programs, including in recent weeks. This person also noted that last August, Goldston hired longtime PBS executive Marie Nelson, who is Black, for the new position of senior vice president for integrated content strategy, with the mission of diversifying ABC News content.

Meanwhile, ABC News announced that Fedida was placed on administrative leave pending an investigation of HuffPost’s allegations.

The damaging story recounted that during contract renewal talks with representatives of Robin Roberts, Fedida balked at the GMA anchor’s request for more money, remarking that she was already making enough and “it wasn’t as if the network was asking Roberts to ‘pick cotton.’”

Fedida allegedly denigrated Kendis Gibson by noting that ABC “spends more on toilet paper than we ever would on him.” Gibson, for five years an ABC News correspondent and anchor, left for MSNBC in January 2019.

On Twitter, after his story was published this past Saturday, HuffPost’s Ali reported that Fedida also referred to Hostin as “low rent”—which prompted an emotional response from Hostin and her co-hosts on Monday’s installment of The View.

“It was a tough weekend for me,” Hostin said. “And I was really disappointed and saddened and hurt when I learned about the racist comments that were made allegedly about me, my colleagues, and my dear friends.”

Hostin added: “It’s the type of racism that Black people deal with every single day, and it has to stop, and I look forward to the results of what I hear is going to be an independent, external investigation.”

Ron Claiborne, meanwhile, retired from ABC News in 2018—at the suggestion of management, said a source. Claiborne didn’t respond to voicemail and text messages.

And longtime 20/20 correspondent Deborah Roberts, who is married to NBC’s Al Roker, was said to be “deeply disappointed” in April 2018 when Goldston named Amy Robach, not Roberts, anchor of the primetime show.

Read more at The Daily Beast.

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[funnynewsheadlines]

25 Times People Noticed Animals Following Social Distancing Rules And Decided To Share The Pics Online

When a person who has COVID-19 coughs or sneezes, they spray small liquid droplets from their nose or mouth which may contain the virus. If you are too close, you can breathe in the droplets, including the disease. To avoid that, the World Health Organization (WHO) advises maintaining at least 1 meter (3 feet) distance between yourself and anyone who is coughing or sneezing. Some of us, however, don't get it and aren't following these guidelines.

To teach them how it's done, Bored Panda has compiled a list of photos that show animals "practicing" social distancing in the face of the pandemic. From pigeons and seagulls to cats and moose, if everyone behaved like these critters, we would flatten the curve way quicker!

#1 Social Distancing

Image credits: Rammsteinstochter

Intrestingly, some animals, for example, chimpanzees and honeybees, do take measures to prevent the spread of disease. The two species can be really ruthless when it comes to ousting the sick.

Bacterial diseases that strike honeybee colonies, like American foulbrood, are particularly threatening to them, liquifying honeybee larvae from the inside. "That's where the name comes from, that brown gooey mess. It smells very, very foul," Alison McAfee, a postdoctoral fellow with North Carolina State University's Entomology and Plant Pathology department, told National Geographic.

#2 Cats Get It

Infected larvae emit telltale chemicals that older bees are able to smell, like oleic acid and β-ocimene, a bee pheromone, according to McAfee's research. Immediately after identifying them, the bees will physically toss these diseased members from the hive, she said.

#3 Meanhwhile In Poland

In 1966, as she was studying chimpanzees in Tanzania, Jane Goodall observed a chimp named McGregor who had contracted polio, caused by a highly contagious virus.

His fellow chimps attacked him, casting McGregor out of the troop. Partially paralyzed, McGregor even approached a few chimps grooming in a tree. He reached out a hand in greeting, but the others quickly moved away.

#4 CAT-Cial Distancing In Japan

Image credits: Tokumori_SAIZU

"For a full two minutes old [McGregor] sat motionless, staring after them," Goodall noted in her 1971 book In the Shadow of Man.

Goodall mentioned other instances of ostracized, polio-ridden chimps during her research as well, though highlighted that in some cases, infected individuals were eventually welcomed back into the group.

#5 Social Distancing By A Cat

Image credits: tiradium

Chimpanzees are visual creatures. They're like humans in this regard. According to some research, the initial stigma toward polio-infected individuals may be caused by fear and disgust of their disfigurement—which is a form of avoiding catching the disease that causes such deformations.

So as you can see, social distancing is not a new concept in the natural world!

#6 Social Distancing

Image credits: Septictulip

#7 This Dog From Local News Is Practicing Social Distancing

Image credits: redvakho

#8 Even Dogs Respect And Understand Social Distancing

Image credits: Ramesh_BJP

#9 Even Cats Get It

#10 Peacokcks Know How To

Image credits: vernaculartube

#11 Dogs Keeping Social Distance In Zagreb

#12 This Aussie Heard About Social Distancing, Cat Didn't

Image credits: Beamspex

#13 Even The Moose Are Practicing Social Distancing

Image credits: Channel2Weather

#14 My Friends Cats Have This Social Distancing Malarkey Figured Out

Image credits: verksies

#15 Social Ducktancing

Image credits: zhandercayabyab

#16 Social Distancing Is The Key

Image credits: DrinkWaterDude

#17 Doing Our Part To Keep Apart

Image credits: lotsoflovelindy

#18 These Dogs In Dumaguete Know What Social Distancing Means

Image credits: patricktevespinili

#19 Romeo And Mewliet

#20 Cats Practicing Social Distancing (Karachi, Pakistan)

Image credits: maulajutt27

#21 Social Distancing With My Frenemy Tilly

Image credits: ginjeybear

#22 Clever Cats

Image credits: RAFpolicedog

#23 It's Heartwarming To See Everyone Taking Social Distancing Seriously

Image credits: myAFredditaccount

#24 Social Distancing In Wynyard. Bin Chickens Show Backpackers How It's Done

Image credits: SirBoboGargle

#25 Social Distancing

Image credits: my_lo_kitty

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[benchwpjgs]

roast jokes pilot.

 /by the time I get to the stage it’ll be new competitors . this material was pretty good so figured you might enjoy re The Stand NYC/

Eli is always accusing his competitors of being pedophiles. He needs a new youth-predation van driver and he's willing to build a trust relationship with you about it.

I predict dogs will reject Hutchinsons company and she'll retire from comedy and podcasting having meaningful conversations with a 56k modem. For attention she pads her cameltoe

Katie is someone I would invite to be my condom because she's more form fitting than form filling. That’s a date offer unless you just want to anoint the stage with your fluids here and now.

Corey looks like he's Orlando Jones with pie face. (make earphone breaking news gesture). Oh wait. the next time he eats his wife out , he might have Orlando Jones creampie on his face.

Deep in the south Evan considers steam locomotive whistles an aphrodisiac and humps the nearest living thing. The whole family still hasn't gotten over being pranked by a dominatrix who kept them in kennels and called herself Miss Pavlov.

_____ mother could've been a stripper. She was hired but then she got polio before taking stage the first night. According to the manager polio was the contraindication of stripper poles and too many oreo crumbs still on her face.

 Ian once got catatonically confused attempting triangulation during a bipolar mood swing.

Joel's parents requested used carpets for the baby shower gifts. Only used carpets. Once Joel got the buttscoot down-pat.. potty training was over , they got new scotchguard carpets but that was mainly for his dad's alcoholism. The trails were meant to aid the babysitter.

Luis once thought he was biblical Adam because his dad had a hole in his side from whenst a rib and gauze and hemorrhaging probably did originate.  

Kerryn considers anal sex occupational therapy because with the lack of food in her diet, her body would otherwise forget how to process solid wastes other than her material.

Erik has a granite night stand, he got his tombstone sale price with a Groupon even though he didn’t need it.  Chaplain might want to take notes.  

Freak quilting accident:  Zac Amico.The stuffings on the outside, His trenchcoat was mistaken for an airline tarmac and planes crash at a closer look.  

This is one girl I would expect to have those angel wing tattoos on her back. Isn't she sweet? Erica Spera is most certainly an angel but she should probably get a restock of angel dust. Without some energy in her act, she's going from dead pan to dead from pan handling.

If he failed at comedy , Elon Altman could be a jockey. A horse jockey is just like the parasite he is now but he rides at a faster pace.

//Mikki

[saidnoneever]

“Without blame”? As in, “Don’t blame me for the consequences of what I’ve been saying and doing for all these years”? Nice try, Dr. Bob. You’re not getting off that easily, nor will you be so easily allowed to shift the blame to the parents who listened to you rather than your own words and behavior. In fact, Dr. Bob’s reminded me of so much of an antivaccine meme originated at The Vaccine Machine, a virulently and unfortunately popular Facebook page run by the equally virulent and antivaccine Robert Schecter, that’s dedicated to trashing vaccines and spreading antivaccine pseudoscience that I just had to post it here:

Yes, notice how Dr. Bob even invokes a variant of the “argumentum ad Brady Bunch mum” fallacy when he mentions how “grandma and grandpa” poo-poo the measles as being “just like the chicken pox” and dismiss it with, “We all had it,” an attitude that he compares to that of a 25-year-old mother who’s never seen the measles before and therefore fears it because she doesn’t know it. It’s a rather clever inversion of the argument frequently used by pro-vaccine bloggers that point out that the reason parents don’t fear vaccine-preventable diseases anymore the usual example used being polio is that they’ve never personally witnessed the death and complications these diseases used to cause. In retrospect, I’m actually a bit surprised Dr. Bob didn’t mention the infamous “measles” episode of The Brady Bunch, actually. Come on, Dr. Bob. Let it out! You know you want to!

On that note, after having read Dr. Bob’s treatise above, I’d like you to go and read Marcella Piper-Terry’s initial response to the Disneyland measles outbreak from January 8 entitled “Measles at Disneyland!” Can you tell the difference? Other than Piper-Terry’s longer post, with calculations designed to make you think that measles was never a big deal, Dr. Bob is using exactly the same arguments without adding the calculations, in particular the key argument being that measles in developed countries is not a threat, only in those “other” people in Third World countries who aren’t as developed as we are because, you know, we’re superior. Measles doesn’t kill very many of us compared to those poor, blighted savages! (I exaggerate, but, I contend, only a little.) He dismisses complications of measles as being “treatable” and therefore of little consequence. In fact, he makes it sound as though a measles-associated ear infection is equivalent to measles-associated pneumonia, dismissing them both as “treatable” with a jaunty, “Ya, you don’t want those things to happen, but they are treatable.” Never mind that many, if not most, cases of measles-associated pneumonia require hospitalization, many also requiring an ICU stay. As Dr. Roy Benaroch sarcastically puts it in his post entitled “Dr. Sears continues to salute our children with his middle finger“, many parents would indeed consider an ICU stay “somewhat of an inconvenience.” (I like Dr. Benaroch’s style.)

Think of it this way. According to the CDC, before the vaccine, 48,000 people a year were hospitalized for the measles; 4,000 developed measles-associated encephalitides and 400 to 500 people died. By any stretch of the imagination that was a significant public health problem, and the introduction of the measles vaccine in 1963, followed by the MMR in 1971, made it much less so. As Dr. John Snyder reminded us five years ago responding to Dr. Sears making the same arguments in his book, measles is not a benign disease, regardless of what popular culture thought of it 50 or 60 years ago.

Of course, even Dr. Bob has to concede that measles-associated encephalitis is a Very Bad Thing, but he dismisses the risk with an equally jaunty rejoinder that encephalitis is “extremely rare in well-nourished people” (i.e., his well-off patients at whom his Facebook post is aimed). As for death, Dr. Bob’s message is, “Don’t worry, be happy.” After all, according to him, the risk of fatality is “as close to zero as you can get without actually being zero,” or one in many thousands. Funny how Dr. Bob (and the antivaccine activists to whom he panders) dismiss a possibility of death of this magnitude as being of no consequence; yet, a one in a million chance of Guillan-Barre disease after the meningococcal vaccine (or a one in several hundred thousand risks of severe reactions to vaccines in general) is completely unacceptable. Indeed, if you accept at face value Dr. Bob’s grossly-exaggerated estimate for a severe vaccine reaction of one in 100,000, by Dr. Bob’s own definition, the risk of severe reactions to any given vaccine is even lower than “as close to zero as you can get without actually being zero.” Even if you accept Dr. Bob’s even more ridiculously inflated estimate that the risk that “anyone child will suffer a severe reaction over the entire, twelve-year vaccine schedule is about 1 in 2600,” I can’t help but note that we’re now in the range of the likelihood of a child with measles dying due to this disease in the United States. To Bob, the risk of these vaccine injuries is unacceptable, but a similar or much higher risk of death if a child catches the measles is just the cost of doing antivaccine business. According to Dr. Bob, yes, sooner or later a child is going to die of the measles—and won’t that be so tragic?—but it’ll likely only be one.

Hypocrisy thy name Bob Sears

If Bob Sears weren’t such a worthless excuse for a pediatrician when it comes to promoting misinformation about vaccines, I’d almost feel sorry for him. Almost. He is, however, a perfect example of what the phrase “hoist with his own petard” means. Dr. Bob has for years made a profitable career for himself as the “reasonable” face of the vaccine-averse, painting himself as not like all those other loony antivaccinationists out there but rather as a reasonable pediatrician taking a “middle way” and “listening to parents.” Now the consequences of the ideas Dr. Bob has promoted are starting to become apparent, with measles outbreaks becoming increasingly common right on his home turf, leading the parents of his patients to ask him what to do now that the low vaccine uptake encouraged by him are facilitating measles outbreaks like the most recent one in Disneyland. They are asking him for guidance, and he’s fobbing off the responsibility on them, telling them just to “get the vaccine” and if you “don’t want the vaccine, accept the risk.” Nice.

I’ve been fearing for a long time that the US was only several years behind the United Kingdom and Europe when it comes to suffering a major resurgence of the measles and that such a resurgence was coming. I hope I’m wrong, but I fear that 2015 might finally be the tipping point when measles really come roaring back to levels not seen in a quarter century or even more. If that happens, Dr. Bob Sears will have to take his share of the blame for cashing in on fear and driving vaccination rates down. He’s not alone.