Rudy Giuliani testified that he represented Trump's 2020 

campaign for free because the president 'ordered me to do it'

AMERICAN APHORISM;

THERE IS SUCKER BORN EVERY MINUTE 

Kenneth Niemeyer

Fri, October 8, 2021

Rudy Giuliani. Jacquelyn Martin/AP

• Giuliani said Trump ordered him to represent his campaign for free, according to court documents. 

• He was called to testify in a defamation suit brought by a former Dominion Voting Systems employee.

• Giuliani said Trump told him to "go over and take over the campaign, tell them you're in charge."

Rudy Giuliani testified that he represented President Donald Trump for free after the 2020 election because Trump "ordered me to do it," newly released court documents showed.

Giuliani had led the Trump campaign's effort to contest the 2020 election results by filing dozens of lawsuits that alleged there was widespread election fraud, all of which were thrown out by federal judges.

An executive for Dominion Voting Systems, Eric Coomer, subsequently brought defamation lawsuits against Giuliani, the former federal prosecutor Sidney Powell, and MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell, alleging that they knowingly spread false information about his involvement in election fraud.

According to a newly released deposition transcript, Coomer's attorney Charles Cain asked Giuliani whether he was ever paid to represent the Trump campaign. Cain noted that Giuliani said in a conspiracy-theory-filled November 19 press conference that he was representing both Trump personally and the Trump campaign.

Giuliani replied that he was not paid to represent the campaign and had been reimbursed for only his expenses, according to the transcript. Cain then asked Giuliani why he would represent the Trump campaign without compensation.

"The president - the president ordered me to do it," Giuliani said.

Trump had previously cut off Giuliani and was refusing to pay his legal bills, Michael Wolff says in his book "Landslide: The Final Days of the Trump Presidency." The amount that Trump may owe Giuliani is unclear, but Maria Ryan, a Giuliani associate, told The New York Times Giuliani gave a rate of $20,000 a day to the Trump campaign for his work on the election lawsuits.

According to the deposition transcript, Giuliani told Cain Trump called him into the Oval Office on "either the 4th or the 5th" of November - after the presidential election - and told him to "go over and take over the campaign, tell them you're in charge."

Giuliani's attorney Joe Sibley immediately reminded the former New York City mayor not to disclose information about his conversation with Trump that could be protected by attorney-client privilege, according to the transcript. 

"It doesn't matter if he made the statement. Don't disclose it if it's attorney/client privilege," Sibley said, to which Giuliani replied that he would be "very careful" not to disclose any privileged information.

"He said go over and tell them you're in charge, it's got to be straightened out," Giuliani said, adding that he wasn't sure if Trump wanted him to take over the entire campaign or only the campaign's legal representation. 

  

Stephanie Grisham said she was 'part of something unusually evil' in the Trump White House

John L. Dorman

Sat, October 9, 2021, 

White House Press Secretary Stephanie Grisham watches as US President Donald Trump speaks to reporters before he boards Marine One at the White House on November 08, 2019. Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

• Stephanie Grisham said a "rebrand" would be tough after her time in the Trump administration.

• In a New York Magazine profile, the former White House press secretary opened up about her tenure in the White House.

• "I think this will follow me forever," she said.

Former White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham said in an article published this week that her role in former President Donald Trump's administration will make it difficult for her to "rebrand" and would likely stick with her "forever."

Grisham, who was former first lady Melania Trump's chief of staff and press secretary at the time of her resignation on Jan. 6, was the subject of a profile by New York Magazine's Olivia Nuzzi, where the longtime GOP official said her future opportunities would be limited.

The former press secretary recently released a bombshell memoir, "I'll Take Your Questions Now," which chronicles her time in the often-turbulent Trump White House.

While scores of former White House press secretaries have catapulted from their high-visibility role at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue to plum positions in the private sector and academia, many former Trump staffers have had difficulties in the job market, and even more so after the Capitol insurrection.

"I don't think I can rebrand. I think this will follow me forever," Grisham told Nuzzi of her time in the White House. "I believe that I was part of something unusually evil, and I hope that it was a one-time lesson for our country and that I can be a part of making sure that at least that evil doesn't come back now."

Grisham, who said in a recent CNN interview that she didn't vote for Trump in the 2020 election, is ringing the alarm regarding another stint in the White House by the former president, which she said would be defined by "revenge."

"He's on his revenge tour for people who dared to vote for impeachment," she told ABC News host George Stephanopoulos on Monday. "I want to just warn people that once he takes office, if he were to win, he doesn't have to worry about reelection anymore. He will be about revenge."

"He will probably have some pretty draconian policies that go on," Grisham added. "There were conversations a lot of times that people would say, 'That'll be the second term.' Meaning, we won't have to worry about a reelection."

In a Friday interview with Insider, Grisham said that she struggled with anxiety and had to be "deprogrammed" after her resignation from the White House in response to the Jan. 6 riot.

At the start of the COVID-19 pandemic last year, Grisham moved to a small town in Kansas and spent her final months in the administration commuting between her new home and Washington, DC. In her interview, she spoke of the pressures that came with her tenure in the Trump White House.

"I don't want to speak for my colleagues, but I know for me, a toxic environment was normal," she said. "I've tried to explain to people that when I left and went to Kansas, normal things were not normal to me. Like quiet nights with crickets chirping and stars, it gave me anxiety. And having just dinner with family and watching TV, normal things made me anxious because I had been so used to the chaos."

While speaking with Insider, Grisham also said that she would have resigned from the White House even if her relationship with the Trumps hadn't soured and the events of Jan. 6 had never occurred.

"I was, by that time, done," Grisham said. "I had been done for probably six months before I resigned and had tried to resign a few times and the first lady had talked me into staying, which also contradicts her statements that I was troubled and terrible."

UPDATES

Czech election: Opposition wins surprise majority

Two opposition alliances have narrowly defeated Prime Minister Andrej Babis's ANO party in the Czech parliamentary elections. The Pirates and Mayors grouping says they want to start talks on forming a government.


Spolu leader Petr Fiala celebrates winning the Czech election on Saturday

The Czech center-right and liberal opposition groups have won a majority in the lower house, narrowly defeating Prime Minister Andrej Babis' centrist ANO party in Saturday's parliamentary election.

The surprise development could spell the end of the populist billionaire's time in power.

What were the results?

Together, a liberal-conservative three-party Spolu coalition won 27.8% of the vote, while Pirates and Mayors, another opposition group, got 15.6%.

The two alliances have won a combined 108 seats in the 200-member lower house, according to the Czech Statistics Office.

The Pirates and Mayors coalition leader Ivan Bartos said they will begin talks on forming the next government.

The ruling ANO party, led by populist billionaire Babis, finished in second place, winning 27.1% of the vote, according to the latest results.

"Ano" means yes in the Czech language. Babis, a Euroskeptic, was hoping to secure a second term in office despite a turbulent first term with many scandals.
Babis concedes defeat

Billionnaire Babis finally accepted the results of the vote on Saturday night but not without first lashing out at his rivals.

"That's life, we understand and accept that," the 67-year-old said. But Babis accused the opposition of a "smear campaign" during the lead-up to the election.

Czech Prime Minister and founding leader of ANO Andrej Babis votes in the Czech elections

"The change is here, we are the change," said the conservative Spolu leading candidate, Petr Fiala.

But despite the surprise result from the 65% election turnout, more drama could still unfold as the winning coalition tries to form government.

President Milos Zeman has said a number of times he will only give the mandate to a single party and not to a coalition of different political groupings.

A presidential spokesman said Zeman has invited Babis to talk about his chances of continuing in office on Sunday morning.
At odds with the EU

Before Saturday's vote, Babis led a minority coalition government consisting of ANO and the Social Democrats, with the support of the Communists.

Throughout the campaign, Babis scapegoated asylum-seekers and refugees even though the Czech Republic is not home to very many. He also condemned the EU's climate change plans.

He has not ruled out forming a coalition with Freedom and Direct Democracy, a party that seeks an exit from the EU and hopes to hold a referendum on the country's NATO membership.

This week the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists reported that Babis placed over $20 million in shell companies to purchase 16 properties in France as part of its "Pandora Papers" reports.

ar/rc (AP, Reuters)

Populist Czech PM Babis's party narrowly loses election in surprise result

Czech Republic's Prime Minister and leader of centrist ANO (YES) movement Andrej Babis addresses the media after most of the votes were counted in the parliamentary elections, Prague, Czech Republic, October 9, 2021.

 © Petr David Josek, AP

Text by: NEWS WIRES

Issued on: 09/10/2021 - 

Prime Minister Andrej Babis' centrist party on Saturday narrowly lost the Czech Republic's parliamentary election, a surprise development that could mean the end of the populist billionaire's reign in power.

The two-day election to fill 200 seats in the lower house of the Czech Republic’s parliament took place shortly after the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists reported details of Babis’ overseas financial dealings in a project dubbed the “Pandora Papers.” Babis, 67, has denied wrongdoing.

With almost all the the votes counted, the Czech Statistics Office said Together, a liberal-conservative three-party coalition, captured 27.8% of the vote, beating Babis' ANO (Yes) party, which won 27.1%.

In another blow to the populists, another center-left liberal coalition of the Pirate Party and STAN, a group of mayors, received 15.6% of the vote to finish third, the statistics office reported.

“The two democratic coalitions have gained a majority and have a chance to form a majority government,” said Petr Fiala, Together's leader and its candidate for prime minister.

Five opposition parties with policies closer to the European Union’s mainstream compared with the populist Babis put aside their differences in this election to create the two coalitions, seeking to oust the euroskeptic prime minister from power.

The result means “an absolute change of the politics in the Czech Republic,” analyst Michal Klima told Czech public television. “It stabilizes the country’s position in the West camp.”

“It’s a huge defeat for (Babis),” he added.

The major anti-migrant and anti-Muslim force in the Czech Republic, the Freedom and Direct Democracy party, finished fourth with 9.6% support.

Both the Social Democrats and the Communists, the country’s traditional parliamentary parties, failed to win seats in parliament for the first time since the split of Czechoslovakia in 1993.

Babis has had a turbulent term featuring numerous scandals, but all public polls before the vote had favored his ANO party to win the election.

“We didn't expect to lose,” Babis said. “We accept that.”

He still declared the election results “excellent.”

Prior to the vote, Babis led a minority coalition government of ANO and the Social Democrats in the Eastern European country of 10.7 million people, which is a member of both the European Union and NATO. He has also governed with the support of the maverick Communists.

The leader of the strongest party usually gets a chance to form a new government. President Milos Zeman didn't immediately comment but previously indicated that he will first appoint the leader of the winning party, not the winning coalition, to try to form a new government, which would be Babis. The two leaders will meet on Sunday.

“We're the strongest party,” Babis said. “If the president asks me to create a government, I'll open the negotiations about it.”

Any new government has to win a parliamentary confidence vote to rule, however, and Babis and his potential partner, the Freedom party, don't have enough support for that.


Czech voters oust communists from parliament for first time since 1948

Michael Kahn and Robert Muller

Sat, October 9, 2021, 1:39 PM·2 min read

PRAGUE (Reuters) - Czech voters evicted the communists from parliament on Saturday for the first time since the end of World War Two, voting out a party whose forebears ruled the central European nation from 1948 until the Velvet Revolution of 1989 that ushered in democracy.

The communists jailed tens of thousands in forced labor camps in the 1950s and brutally repressed dissidents such as playwright-turned-president Vaclav Havel, but remained in parliament following the revolution.

In this week's election https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/czechs-vote-final-day-election-pm-babis-seeks-cling-power-2021-10-08, the Communist Party of Bohemia and Moravia took 3.62% of the votes with nearly all precincts reporting, less than the 5% needed to enter parliament and potentially marking a final chapter for a party that has gradually shrunk as its ageing membership dwindled.

"It pleases me, it pleases me a lot," Jiri Gruntorad, 69, a former dissident who signed the dissident Charter 77 statement and was jailed for subversion from 1981 to 1985 by the communist authorities, told Reuters. "But it's coming too late."

"It was one of the last communist parties in the world apart from the Chinese and Cuban ones that held on to its name. The others have at least renamed themselves and started behaving a little differently."

Voters also handed a defeat to Prime Minister Andrej Babis' ANO party against centre-right opposition group Together in a surprise result.

After 1989, the communists sought to appeal to senior citizens and working class Czechs but they never resonated with younger voters and failed to shake the party's history with others as a totalitarian rulers who had stifled freedom.

"I am very disappointed because it is a really big failure," said Communist Party leader Vojtech Filip, who also resigned.

POST-1989

Havel opposed banning the party -- which resisted the country's European Union and NATO membership and kept warm ties with Russia and China -- despite calls from the public to do so.

The communists lingered mostly in isolation after 1989, though they cooperated with other parties seeking votes to pass legislation in parliament. They were also close to current President Milos Zeman.

The party regained influence in 2018 when Babis -- a former Communist Party member -- leaned on them to support his minority government with the Social Democrats.

It was the closest the party came to power since 1989 but appears also to represent their final act as a political force in the former Soviet-bloc nation.

"I am overjoyed that this era is now over – not only for those of us still living, but also for those who have passed away and who were persecuted by the regime,” said Hana Palcova, 74, who left the country under threat from the secret police.

(Writing by Michael Kahn; Additional reporting by Jan Lopatka; Editing by Mike Harrison)

SEE https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/2021/10/czech-communists-stalinists-risk.html

SpaceX astronaut says she was sick for the first 2 days of Inspiration4's mission and thought the spaceflight wasn't long enough, a report says

Kate Duffy
Sat, October 9, 2021

Dr. Sian Proctor, on the far right, told National Geographic she felt sick during the first part of her mission. Inspiration4/John Kraus


Dr. Sian Proctor, a SpaceX astronaut, told National Geographic she felt sick for two days in space.


Proctor also said SpaceX's three-day mission around the Earth wasn't long enough.


She said her head was "a little stuffy" on the second day, National Geographic reported.

A SpaceX astronaut who took part in the company's Inspiration4 mission a month ago said she was sick for the first two days in space, National Geographic reported Friday.

Dr. Sian Proctor, one of the four crew members onboard SpaceX's first all-civilian mission, told National Geographic that she started feeling unwell on the first day.

"Space sickness is one of those things that a lot of people suffer from," Proctor said in the interview. "You're just not on your game."


Astronauts can experience motion sickness when they're in space due to the weightlessness which they feel with zero-gravity.

Proctor told National Geographic that she felt better on the second day but her head was "a little stuffy."

"But man, I woke up the third day, and I was humming, and everything was perfect," Proctor told the publication. "I had adapted, I was good, and I was like, 'What? I have to come home?! No, no, no!'"

The Inspiration4 mission launched on September 16, sending four civilian astronauts into orbit for three days onboard SpaceX's Dragon spacecraft.

"I would go for longer. Three days was not enough," the geoscientist and science communication specialist told National Geographic.

"I think, ideally, a five-day mission in the Dragon capsule with the cupola would be perfect," Proctor added.

The cupola is a glass dome roof located at the nose of the Crew Dragon spacecraft, which the astronauts looked out of to see Earth from space. Proctor told National Geographic that this was "the best feature of our spaceflight."

The toilet, which malfunctioned mid-flight, was also located in the cupola. Proctor said in the interview that it was "a waste fan issue," which the crew members quickly fixed. "I think it was made into an event that was bigger than it actually was," she added.

G__D ENABLED BULLYING

Gas Giants May Have Bullied Planet 9 to the Fringes of Our Solar System

ANTHROPOMORIC COSMOLOGY


Caroline Delbert
Fri, October 8, 2021

Photo credit: Steven Hobbs/Stocktrek Images - Getty Images

A smaller planet more like Earth or Mars could have been pushed to the outer reaches of our solar system (or into deep space), according to a new paper.

Scientists think Planet 9 used to be more like Planet 6 or 7—meaning it once swirled among the gas giants before they ultimately kicked it out of orbit.

The solar system has three zones: inner planets, outer planets, and what's beyond.

Scientists believe that there could be a ninth planet in our solar system, lurking somewhere beyond Neptune—but don't get too excited, because this isn't about Pluto.

Rather, this is the story of a mysterious Earth- or Mars-sized planet that may have swirled beyond the asteroid belt, among the gas giants, before they ultimately swept this potential "Planet 9" toward the outer reaches of our solar system ... or even into deep space. The theory makes sense on its face: Jupiter is kind of known as a bully, after all.

That's according to two researchers from the University of British Columbia and the University of Arizona who have studied various computer simulations depicting the evolution of our solar system. Their findings are outlined in a new paper, published last month in the Annual Review of Astronomy and Astrophysics.

In it, the scientists speculate that there's something missing in those models, like the fact that our solar system would have four gas giants in a row (Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune) and then no other planets after that other than small, irregular dwarf planets like Pluto.

"Logic suggests there should be some planets of other sizes, and their simulations back them up," Phys.org reports. "Adding another Earth- or Mars-sized planet to the outer solar system, perhaps between two of the gas giants, produces a more accurate model—at least during the early stages of development."

The new research focuses on the the initial position of this "Planet 9"—a common name for the loose collection of hypotheses about a potential ninth planet outside the main area of our solar system. Planet 9 could be a black hole, for instance, or it could be 10 times the size of Earth.

Specifically, the paper zooms in on the possibility that the four gas giants pushed Planet 9 to the outer reaches of the solar system. Planets exercise gravity on each other, which is partly why experts suspect that Planet 9 exists in the first place.

How would the gas giants shove out a much smaller, much denser planet, then? Jupiter especially already acts like a linebacker in orbit, deflecting smaller objects like comets or meteors as they approach the solar system. (This is one of many reasons a Melancholia-like rogue planet is extremely unlikely.)

Photo credit: NASA

The scale of our solar system appears even larger when you consider where Planet 9 is roughly believed to exist. First, there is the inner planets zone, where Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars are packed relatively tightly together. After that is the Kuiper Belt, full of icy rocks and other small items.

From there, the scale zooms way out to accommodate Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune, all gas giants that are spread much further apart. Neptune may appear small among these titans (see the image above), but is still many times Earth's mass, and large enough to fit 57 Earths inside by volume.

After that, Pluto is the star of the so-called third zone, a huge expanse dotted by, so far, just dwarf planets and other celestial bodies like comets. This is where scientists get stuck, because it seems so unlikely that the evolution of our solar system would cough up just four very similar gas giant cores and then stop.

How do we actually find Planet 9 if it exists? These scientists posit that increasingly more powerful telescopes could bring us some closure in the near future. If not, one string theorist proposed something a little wild last year: an array of tiny probes that would blanket the third zone in order to shake loose any items—like larger planets or even the primordial black hole—that some scientists believe is Planet 9.

China's Moon mission returned youngest ever lavas


Jonathan Amos - BBC Science Correspondent
Fri, October 8, 2021, 

The rock samples brought back from the Moon in December by China's Chang'e-5 mission were really young.

It's all relative, of course, but the analysis shows the basalt material - the solidified remnants of a lava flow - to be just two billion years old.

Compare this with the samples returned by the Apollo astronaut missions. They were all over three billion years of age.


The findings are reported in the journal Science.

China's robotic Chang'e-5 mission was sent to a site on the lunar nearside called Oceanus Procellarum.

It was carefully chosen to add to the sum of knowledge gained from previous sample returns - the last of which was conducted by a Soviet probe in 1976.


First crew blasts off to new China space station


China lands its Zhurong rover on Mars


China's Chang'e-5 mission returns Moon samples

The laboratory analysis of the basaltic rock gives an age of 1,963 (plus or minus 57) million years

Xiaochao Che and colleagues at the Sensitive High Resolution Ion MicroProbe (SHRIMP) Center in Beijing led the Chang'e-5 dating analysis, but worked with a broad international consortium.

The age data they've produced is fascinating because it proves volcanism continued on the Moon long after one might have expected such a small body to have cooled down and given up the activity.

Theorists will now be thinking through new ideas for what kind of heat source might have sustained the late-stage behaviour.

It doesn't appear to have been driven by concentrated radioactive decay because the Chang'e-5 samples don't contain a lot of the kind of chemical elements associated with this effect.

"One of the other options we discuss in the paper is maybe the Moon was able to stay active longer because of its orbital interactions with Earth," speculated Dr Katherine Joy, a co-author from the University of Manchester, UK.

"Maybe the Moon wobbled back and forth on its orbit, resulting in what we call tidal heating. So, a bit like the Moon generates ocean tides on Earth, maybe the gravitational effect of the Earth could stretch and flex the Moon to generate frictional melting," she told BBC News.

Nothing like Chang'e-5 had been tried since the Soviet Luna-24 mission in 1976

One really important outcome from the study is the way it helps calibrate the crater-counting technique that is used for dating planetary surfaces.

Scientists assume that the more craters they see on a surface, the older that terrain must be; and also, obviously, in the reverse: the presence of very few craters is suggestive of a surface that has only recently been laid or remodelled.

But this technique has to be anchored in some absolute dates that are derived from measured samples, and for the Moon the chronology was not well constrained between one and three billion years ago.

The Chang'e-5 material now provides a precise waypoint in the middle of this time period.

Moon graphic

Prof Brad Jolliff, from Washington University in St Louis, US, is another co-author in the consortium. He's now hoping China will send its next sample return mission to a region on the Moon's farside called South Pole Aitken Basin.

This vast depression, some 2,500km wide and up to 8km deep, was created by a spectacular impactor very early in lunar history.

"If Chang'e-6 goes to South Pole Aitken it will give us the age of the oldest big impact basin on the Moon, and that provides a very different part of the calibration, in the range of four to four-and-a-half billion years ago. We don't know what the flux of big impactors was back then, and a sample from the South Pole Aiken Basin region has the potential to answer the question."

Chang'e-5 marked the start of an astonishing few months for China's national space programme.

Within six months of the lunar probe returning home with its rock samples on 16 December, another spacecraft had successfully entered orbit around Mars to place a rover on its surface; and Chinese astronauts had begun the occupation of a new space station at Earth.

VACCINE SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY UPDATES

US Black and Latino communities often have low vaccination rates – but blaming vaccine hesitancy misses the mark

Sat, October 9, 2021

With many vaccine-eligible people in the U.S. staying away, some vaccine sites have no lines. Mario Tama/Getty Images

By early July 2021, nearly two-thirds of all U.S. residents 12 years and older had received at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine; 55% were fully vaccinated. But uptake varies drastically by region – and it is lower on average among non-white people.

Many blame the relatively lower vaccination rates in communities of color on “vaccine hesitancy.” But this label overlooks persistent barriers to access and lumps together the varied reasons people have for refraining from vaccination. It also places all the responsibility for getting vaccinated on individuals. Ultimately, homogenizing peoples’ reasons for not getting vaccinated diverts attention away from social factors that research shows play a critical role in health status and outcomes.

As medical anthropologists, we take a more nuanced view. Working together as lead site investigators for CommuniVax, a national initiative to improve vaccine equity, we and our teams in Alabama, California and Idaho, along with CommuniVax teams elsewhere in the nation, have documented a variety of stances toward vaccination that simply can’t be cast as “hesitant.”

Limited access hampers vaccination rates

People of color have long suffered an array of health inequities. Accordingly, due to a combination of factors, these communities have experienced higher hospitalization due to COVID-19, higher disease severity upon admission, higher chances for being placed on breathing support and progression to the intensive care unit, and higher rates of death.

CommuniVax data, including some 200 in-depth interviews within such communities, confirm that overall, those who have directly experienced this kind of COVID-19-related trauma, are not hesitant. They dearly want vaccinations. For example, in San Diego’s heavily Latino and very hard-hit “South Region,” COVID-19 vaccine uptake is remarkably high – about 84% as of July 6, 2021.

However, vaccine uptake is far from universal in these communities. This is in part due to access issues that go beyond the well documented challenges of transportation, internet access and skills gaps, and a lack of information on how to get vaccinated. For example, some CommuniVax participants had heard of non-resident white people usurping doses that were meant for communities of color. African American participants, in particular, reported feeling that the Johnson & Johnson vaccines promoted in their communities were the least safe and effective.

U.S. First Lady Jill Biden gives comfort to a patient at a vaccination clinic

Our participant testimony shows that many unvaccinated people are not “vaccine hesitant” but rather “vaccine impeded.” And exclusion can happen not just in a physical sense; providers’ attitudes towards vaccines matter too.

For instance, Donna, a health care worker in Idaho, said, “I chose not to get it because if I were to get sick, I think I would recover mostly or more rapidly.” This kind of attitude by health care providers can have downstream effects. For example, Donna may not encourage vaccination when on duty or to people she knows; some, just observing her choices, may follow suit. Here, what appears as a community’s hesitancy to vaccinate is instead a reflection of vaccine hesitancy within its health care system.

More directly impeded are community members who, like Angela in Idaho, skipped vaccination because she couldn’t risk having a negative reaction that might require intervention. Although a trip to the doctor is a highly unlikely outcome after a vaccine, it remains a concern for some. “My insurance doesn’t cover as much as it possibly, you know, should,” she noted. And we have encountered many reports of undocumented individuals who fear deportation although, according to current laws, immigration status should not be questioned in relation to the vaccine.

Christina, in San Diego, illustrates another type of practical barrier. She cannot get vaccinated, she said, because she has no one to care for her babies should she fall ill with side effects. Her husband, similarly, can’t take time off from his job – “It doesn’t work that way.” Likewise, Carlos – who made sure that his centenarian father got vaccinated – says he can’t take the vaccine himself due to his dad’s deep dementia: “If I took my vaccine and I got sick, he’d be screwed.”

Indifference, resilience and ambivalence

Another segment of unvaccinated people obscured by the “hesitant” label are the “vaccine indifferent.” For various reasons, they remain relatively untouched by the pandemic: COVID-19 just isn’t on their radar. This might include people who are self-employed or working under the table, people living in rural and remote places, and those whose children are not in the public school system.

Such people thus are not consistently connected to COVID-19-related information. This is particularly true if they forego social or news media and socialize with others who do the same, and if there are significant language barriers.

vaccine recruitment effort by CommuniVax in June

We also learned that, among some of our participants, the initial messaging about prioritizing high-risk groups backfired, leaving some under 65 and in relatively good health with the impression it wasn’t necessary for them to get the vaccine. Without incentives – travel plans, being accepted to a college or having an employer that mandates vaccination – inertia carries the day.

The indifferent are not against vaccination. Rather, “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” and “you do you” tend to typify their views. As Jose from Idaho reported, “I’m not worried because I’ve always taken care of myself.”

We also saw a modified form of indifference in those who believed that the protective steps they already were taking would be enough to keep them COVID-19-free. A janitor said, “I am an essential worker… So from the beginning we took … all the precautions … face masks, taking [social] distance [and using] natural medicines and vitamins for the immune system.” He had, indeed, so far avoided contracting COVID-19.

The view of vaccines as not immediately necessary is magnified among some Latino people by the cultural value placed on the need to endure – “aguantar” in Spanish — to bear up, push through and avoid complaining about daily struggles. This perspective can be seen in many immigrant or impoverished populations, where getting sick or injured can be a precursor to household ruin through job loss and exorbitant, unpayable medical bills.

Yet another dynamic we learned of is what we term “vaccine ambivalence.” Some participants who view COVID-19 as a significant health threat believe the vaccine poses an equivalent risk. We saw this particularly among African Americans in Alabama – not necessarily surprising given that the health care system has not always had these communities’ best interests at heart. The perceived conundrum leaves people stuck on the fence. Given the legacy of unequal treatment in communities of color, when balancing the “known” of COVID-19 against the unknown of vaccination, their inaction may seem reasonable – especially when coupled with mask-wearing and social distancing.

Attending to blind spots

At this point in the pandemic, those with the means and will to get vaccinated have done so. Providing viable counternarratives to misinformation can help bring more people on board. But continuing to focus solely on individual mistrustfulness toward vaccines or so-called hesitancy obscures the other complex reasons people have for being wary of the system and bypassing vaccination.

[Over 100,000 readers rely on The Conversation’s newsletter to understand the world. Sign up today.]

Moreover, an overly narrow focus on the vaccine leaves a lot outside the frame. A wider view reveals that the problems leading to inequitable vaccination coverage are the same structural problems that have, historically, prevented people of color from having a fair shot at good health and economic outcomes to begin with – problems that even a 100% vaccination rate cannot resolve.

This article is republished from The Conversation, a nonprofit news site dedicated to sharing ideas from academic experts.

 It was written by: 

Elisa J. Sobo, San Diego State University; 

 Professor and Chair of Anthropology

Diana Schow, Idaho State University,

Visiting Assistant Professor of Community and Public Health; Executive Director, Southeast Idaho Area Health Education Center, Institute of Rural Health

Stephanie McClure, University of Alabama.

Assistant Professor of Biocultural Medical Anthropology

Covid vaccine: Why these US workers won't get jabbed

Aleem Maqbool - BBC News
Sat, October 9, 2021

Demonstrations have taken place in cities around the US against mandatory vaccination

Joe Biden has been urging US employers to issue ultimatums to their staff: get vaccinated, or lose your job.

The president says he will soon bring in a mandate that requires all healthcare workers to have had the jab, and has urged states to do the same with teachers.

In Concord, New Hampshire, it is striking to see some of those attending a large protest against vaccine mandates wearing hospital scrubs.

Leah Cushman is prepared to lose her nursing job rather than get vaccinated.

"My beliefs are religious. I believe that my creator endowed me with an immune system that protects me, and if I get sick, that's an act of God. I would not take a medicine that affects the immune system," said Ms Cushman. She denies there is any conflict between these beliefs and the responsibilities of her job.

Ms Cushman argues that the Covid vaccines remain "experimental", despite the Pfizer vaccine having full Food and Drug Administration approval in the US - meaning the FDA considers that enough data has been gathered to indicate the drug is safe and effective. But she says she no longer takes any vaccines at all in any case.

Leah Cushman says she no longer takes any vaccines

Managers who have already decided to impose vaccine mandates at their hospitals say it is primarily about making patients feel safe.

But Scott Colby, CEO of the Upper Connecticut Valley Hospital, acknowledges that he has lost several medical staff over the issue of the vaccine mandate, in a period made busier by the Delta variant and the backlog of non-Covid-related procedures.

The hospital manager says that on balance it is still the right decision to require vaccination, partly because serious coronavirus-related sickness among staff - more likely among the unvaccinated - is an avoidable drain on resources.

But Mr Colby also says he finds some of the opposition does not appear to have a purely medical or religious basis.

"It's not just Covid. There are other vaccines that employees are required to have, like MMR or hepatitis. So to say this is not political would be disingenuous," says Mr Colby.


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Back at the rally Leah Cushman, who as well as being a registered nurse is also a state representative for the Republican Party, says that her stance is also about freedom.

"The Biden administration is targeting our sovereign rights. We're medical professionals, but we still need the ability to choose what happens to our bodies," she says.

Some of the nurses at the demonstration felt that it was the hospitals playing politics, and that if this was really about patient confidence, the onus would be on weekly testing rather than on getting vaccinated, given that even those who have had the jab can pass on the virus.

However even the option of regular testing is unacceptable to many of those Americans who refuse to get vaccinated.

Kahseim Outlaw has just lost his job in Wallingford, Connecticut for that very reason. He was named Teacher of the Year at his high school last year, but felt the mandate to get vaccinated introduced by the state authorities was something he could not comply with.

"I do not use any kind of synthetic ingredients in my life, whether that be for medicinal purposes, supplementation or food. So the idea of becoming inoculated is something that goes directly against the way that I live my life," he said.

Kahseim Outlaw lost his job for refusing to get vaccinated

Like all teachers in the state, Mr Outlaw was offered an alternative of weekly testing but said he viewed that as an "unnecessary medical procedure" that was uncomfortable.

"The way that our soul speaks to us, that little voice that tells us when something is in alignment or not, that voice is telling me that I need to make this particular decision right now."


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One thing Mr Outlaw said he was prepared to undertake was an antibody test to show he had contracted Covid in the past, as he believes he did, and so has the body's natural immunity to the virus. He accepts that there is no telling how long a natural immune response will last.

But this is not an option being offered to him by his employer.

In the classroom, Kahseim Outlaw would of course be in close contact with students, but what of employees who work entirely in isolation at home? Do their employers have the right to require that they are vaccinated?

Rob Segrin lives close to Mount Monadnock in a remote part of rural New Hampshire, but has been told he will lose his IT job if he has not had his first Covid shot by the end of this month.

"I never go into an office, I never interact with people," Rob Segrin says

"My job is a 100% remote, work-from-home type of job for a federal contractor. I never go into an office, I never interact with people. I object to the vaccine because in my opinion there have not been enough years of study into it, but I protect my family in the ways I can," says Mr Segrin.

"It felt like this 'do this or you will lose your job' order was a personal attack against me and my family. Like they are coming after my livelihood," he continues.

Mr Segrin says his discussions with his employer have so far been unfruitful and as things stand, he will lose his full-time job, and as a result his health insurance and his family's health benefits too.

Across the US, there have been huge inconsistencies in public policy relating to the vaccine, just as there have been inconsistencies at every turn during this pandemic, and Republican states continue to fight vaccine mandates.

But as the US grapples with the arguments over personal freedoms and public health, figures show the virus is still claiming nearly 1,500 American lives a day.

NIH Director Dr. Francis Collins 

says it's 'truly heartbreaking' 

to see fellow evangelicals refuse 

the COVID-19 vaccine because 

of misinformation, urges them 

to 'look at the evidence'

Sarah Al-Arshani

Sat, October 9, 2021, 

Dr. Francis Collins, director of the National Institutes of Health, receives his first dose of the COVID-19 vaccine at the National Institutes of Health. Patrick Semansky-Pool/Getty Images

• NIH Director Dr. Francis Collins said each day over 1,000 people die from COVID-19.

• In an interview with CNN's Jim Acosta, Collins said most of those deaths are among the unvaccinated.

• Collins called on fellow evangelicals to look at the evidence and get vaccinated.

Dr. Francis Collins, the director of the National Institutes of Health, is urging fellow evangelicals to get vaccinated.

In an interview with CNN's Jim Acosta on Saturday, Collins said misinformation is causing evangelicals to be hesitant about getting vaccinated. Calling it "truly heartbreaking," he urged people to look at the "evidence."

"Let me make a plea right here that if you are a Christian, or if you're anybody who has not yet gotten vaccinated, hit the reset button on whatever information you have that's causing you to be doubtful or hesitant or fearful and look at the evidence," Collins said. "The evidence is overwhelming, the vaccines are safe, they're effective, they can save your life."

A June survey from the Kaiser Family Foundation found that 22% of Evangelicals said they will definitely not get vaccinated.

Collins told Acosta there are still more than 1,000 people dying every day because of COVID-19, almost all of them unvaccinated and "therefore didn't have to happen."

"Christians of all people are supposed to be particularly worried about their neighbors and this is also a really critical situation where if you're not vaccinated you may be the one spreading this virus to somebody vulnerable who can't necessarily resist it," Collins said.

Some Christians have argued that they can't get the vaccine because fetal cell lines played some role in the development of the vaccine, the Associated Press reported.

The AP reported that the Vatican's doctrine office has said it is "morally acceptable" for Catholics to get the vaccine even if it was based on research on fetal cells. Pope Francis said not getting the vaccine was "suicide."

Collins, who has served as the NIH director for more than 12 years announced last week that he was stepping down at the end of the year.

FAUX News celebrates 25th anniversary as critics point to network’s dark history


Oliver Laughland in New Orleans

THE GUARDIAN
Fri, October 8, 2021

FAUX NEWS

As the conservative cable news juggernaut Fox News marked its 25th anniversary on Thursday, commemorations were as polarized as many of the channel’s primetime shows.

The channel, founded in 1996 by Rupert Murdoch, entered its anniversary week as the most watched cable news channel in the United States, with third-quarter ratings this year showing a primetime audience of 2.372 million viewers, well ahead of its closest rivals MSNBC and CNN.

On Thursday evening a number of the channel’s famed conservative stars, including Sean Hannity and Tucker Carlson, paid tribute to their employers live on TV.

“Nobody ever thought we would be successful. Nobody ever thought we would compete. And they were all dead wrong,” Hannity claimed. “This channel now has dominated the airwaves for decades, all while giving a voice to the forgotten men and women in this country.”

On Thursday, the Hill reported the Empire State Building in New York City would be illuminated in red, white and blue this weekend to celebrate the anniversary. The report drew outrage online, with some users on Twitter suggesting the building should, in fact, be under “total blackout for spreading lies and falsehoods”.

A spokeswoman for the building did not immediately respond to a request for confirmation from the Guardian and the report had not been confirmed elsewhere.

As the channel celebrated its anniversary into the evening, hosts on different networks were keen to mark the event with an entirely different take.

The late-night talkshow host Jimmy Kimmel, who presents on the ABC network, used his opening monologue to remind viewers of the channel’s frequent extremist rightwing rhetoric and racist dog whistles, with a reference to the realm of evil created in JRR Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings trilogy he added they had been “celebrating all day over at Mordor”.

“That’s right,” Kimmel said on Thursday. “Fox News is now old enough to rent a car, fill it with immigrants, and claim it’s heading to your grandma’s house to bury her alive.”

Despite financial and ratings success, Fox News continues to reel from a series of sexual harassment scandals that led to a number of its senior staff including former presenter Bill O’Reilly and founding CEO Roger Ailes departing the company in recent years.

On Thursday other commentators made reference to these , with Trevor Noah’s Daily Show airing a reel of the network’s worst on-air moments of sexual discrimination and harassment.