Tag: fear mongering

MSNBC’s Heilemann Claims ’30 Million People Right Now’ Ready to Take Up Arms for Trump

MSNBC network national affairs analyst John Heilemann said Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press” that there were “30 million people right now who are ready to take up arms” for former President Donald Trump.

Anchor Chuck Todd said, “I want to read what Bart Gellman wrote in the cover story for The Atlantic. Some might say it is hyperbolic, but John Heilemann, I’m curious if you think it is? The headline is Trump’s Next Coup Has Already Begun. ‘Trump and his party convinced a dauntingly large number of Americans, that the essential workings of democracy are corrupt, that the made-up claims of fraud are true, that only cheating can thwart their victory at their polls, that tyranny usurped their government and that violence is a legitimate response.’ Hyperbolic or fact?”

Heilemann said, “Fact, I think. The strength of that Gellman piece is it lays out this extraordinary reality that there is this research that shows something like 8% and maybe as many as 12% that say Joe Biden was illegitimate and violence is an appropriate tool to removing him and restoring Donald Trump. That’s between 20 and 30 million people. That’s a mass movement in America in favor of political violence, which is a new thing. We’ve been political violence before, lynching many things over the course of time that African-Americans have suffered, but this is 30 million people right now who are ready to take up arms.”

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The Great Big ‘Delta’ Scariant

Why the Delta scare?

As a virus mutates, it becomes more contagious and less lethal. And then eventually it mostly disappears. Many voices claim that Delta will be with us for a very long time, but we should be so lucky. It’s way more likely that it will soon be followed by a next variant that will in turn become dominant. And more contagious and less lethal.

And no, that’s not because of unvaccinated people, or at least there’s no logic in that. If most people are not vaccinated, the virus has no reason to mutate. If many people are, it does. So this CNN piece is suspect. Vaccinated people are potential variant factories, just as much, if and when the vaccines used don’t stop them from being infectious, as the present vaccines don’t, far as we know.

Unvaccinated People Are “Variant Factories,” Infectious Diseases Expert

Unvaccinated people do more than merely risk their own health. They’re also a risk to everyone if they become infected with coronavirus, infectious disease specialists say. That’s because the only source of new coronavirus variants is the body of an infected person. “Unvaccinated people are potential variant factories,” Dr. William Schaffner, a professor in the Division of Infectious Diseases at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, told CNN Friday. “The more unvaccinated people there are, the more opportunities for the virus to multiply,” Schaffner, a professor in the Division of Infectious Diseases at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, said. “When it does, it mutates, and it could throw off a variant mutation that is even more serious down the road.”

“Even more serious”? Well, yes, it can become more contagious, but then it loses lethality. Maybe that’s what we want. Maybe we want a virus that everyone can be infected by, and build resistance to, without serious consequences. Maybe that’s even what we should aim for. And also, maybe that’s what we already have, with survival rates of 99.99% among most people.

And maybe, just maybe, a one-dimensional “solution” in the shape of an experimental vaccine is the worst response of all. Because it doesn’t protect from anything other than more severe disease, while unleashing potential adverse effects for decades to come in the inoculated. Maybe one dimension simply doesn’t cut it. Maybe we should not refuse to prevent people from becoming infected, or to treat them in the early stages of the disease.

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DHS warns ‘perfect storm’ of ‘violent extremist-white supremacists’ is imminent

A Homeland Security bulletin obtained by ABC talks about “violent extremists” and the July 4th holiday.

It warned “attacks” against a “range of potential targets.” With no warning, of course. Those “domestic violent extremists” – aka DVEs, the feds said, are motivated by “violent ideologies” and the “ethnically motivated violent extremist-white supremacists,” or those RMVE-WSs, were sharing information about “mass gatherings.” AND “law enforcement officers.”

“We have the perfect storm,” ABC was told by a “senior law enforcement official.”

So the network posted online: “‘Perfect storm’: Bulletin warns of extremist violence as pandemic restrictions lift.”

However, buried down in the report was the perhaps-significant comment that, “no specific plot has been identified for Independence Day,” but that the warning “ominously” said federal officials are seeing “evidence of planning” by radicals.

ABC said it obtained access to the warning “exclusively,” and that it includes that charge, that “34 states will have State of Emergency orders expire” soon, so that “mass gatherings and social distancing restrictions will be largely lifted.”

It expressed, too, that, “As of 16 June, Racially or ethnically motivated violent extremist-white supremacists (RMVE-WSs) were sharing downloadable links to a publication discussing targeting mass gatherings, critical infrastructure, and law enforcement officers.”

The law enforcement official told ABC, “It’s a very volatile moment and it’s about to be a more target-rich environment.”

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