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Pandemic analyst finds herd immunity could be slowing COVID spread — yet Dr. Fauci still warns against it

At the moment, nobody knows exactly what the threshold of population infection needs to be at to attain herd immunity. Mike Ryan, executive director of the World Health Organization’s health emergencies program, said most scientists believe 60% to 80% of the population needs to be vaccinated or have natural antibodies to achieve herd immunity.

Researchers from Stockholm University in Sweden and the University of Nottingham in Britain published a new study in the journal Science on Friday.The scientists estimate that herd immunity could be achieved at a population-wide infection rate of approximately 40%.

Youyang Gu, a computer scientist whose coronavirus projections are one of 34 pandemic models tracked by the CDC, believes that herd immunity could help in the fight against COVID-19.

“Immunity may play a significant part in the regions that are declining,” Gu told MIT Technology Review. Gu estimates that approximately 35 million Americans have now been infected, which is more than 10% of the country’s population.

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Twitter ‘accidentally’ suspends satirical site Babylon Bee after it mocked Kamala Harris and USPS conspiracies

Twitter suspended the account of parody news site The Babylon Bee after it mocked Democrat VP candidate Kamala Harris and ‘mail vote suppression’ conspiracies. It was shortly restored amid protests about censorship.

The Bee went dark around 6 pm on Monday. Archives showed that their last tweet was a story about President Donald Trump “riding around in an SUV” smashing mailboxes “to make it impossible for people to mail in their ballots.” 

The tweet before that one was about Harris proposing a “housing plan” where “everybody gets free 10’x10’ room and three meals a day” – a clear reference to prison, as Harris had been a prosecutor before getting elected to the Senate.

One conservative commentator pointed out that Twitter spokesman Nick Pacilio was previously the press secretary for Harris’s abortive presidential campaign.

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California Lawmakers Want a Wealth Tax to Soak the Rich for Living There. Also, for Leaving.

A pack of Democratic lawmakers in California are proposing a wealth tax for the state’s richest citizens, forcing them to pay more essentially just for owning a lot of stuff. They also, amazingly, want the tax to follow Californians who flee the state in response, attempting to make them continue paying taxes on wealth that’s not even in the state.

Assemblymember Rob Bonta (D–Oakland) is blunt about his reasons for introducing the California Wealth Tax (A.B. 2088). Rich people have money. He wants more of it to pay for and expand state services. And that’s it.

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Michelle Obama and the kids in ‘cages’

Michelle Obama assailed President Donald Trump on Monday for ripping migrant children from their parents and throwing them into cages, picking up on a frequent and distorted point made widely by Democrats.

She’s right that Trump’s now-suspended policy at the U.S.-Mexico border separated thousands of children from their families in ways that had not been done before. But what she did not say is that the very same “cages” were built and used in her husband’s administration, for the same purpose of holding migrant kids temporarily.

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