Why Are New SARS-CoV-2 Variants Spreading So Dramatically Around The World?


Distribution of the virus's genomes. (https://nextstrain.org/)


SARAH OTTO, UBC, THE CONVERSATION
24 JANUARY 2021

A new variant of coronavirus has swept across the United Kingdom and been detected in the United States, Canada and elsewhere. Scientists are concerned that these new strains may spread more easily.

As an evolutionary biologist, I study how mutation and selection combine to shape changes in populations over time. Never before have we had so much real-time data about evolution as we do with SARS-CoV-2: over 380,000 genomes were sequenced last year.

SARS-CoV-2 has been mutating as it spreads, generating slight differences in its genome. These mutations allow scientists to trace who is related to whom across the family tree of the virus.

Evolutionary biologists, including myself, have cautioned against over-interpreting the threat posed by mutations. Most mutations will not help the virus, just like randomly kicking a working machine is unlikely to make it better.

But every once in a while a mutation or suite of mutations gives the virus an advantage. The data are convincing that the mutations carried by the variant that first appeared in the UK, known as B.1.1.7, make the virus more "fit."

Higher fitness or chance?

When a new variant becomes common, scientists determine the reason behind its spread. A virus carrying a particular mutation can rise in frequency by chance if it is:

carried by a superspreader;

moved to a new uninfected location;

introduced into a new segment of the population.


The latter two examples are called "founder events": a rapid rise in frequency can occur if a particular variant is introduced into a new group and starts a local epidemic. Chance events may explain the rise in frequency of several different SARS-CoV-2 variants.

But B.1.1.7 is an exception. It shows a very strong signal of selection. For the past two months, B.1.1.7 has risen in frequency faster than non-B.1.1.7 in virtually every week and health region in England. This data, reported on Dec. 21, 2020, helped convince UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson to place much of the country under lockdown and led to widespread travel bans from the UK

The rise of B.1.1.7 cannot be explained by a founder event in new regions, because COVID-19 was already circulating across the UK Founder events in a new segment of the population (e.g., following a conference) also aren't plausible given the widespread restrictions against large gatherings at the time.

Our ability to track the evolution of SARS-CoV-2 is due to the massive effort by scientists to share and analyze data in real time. But the incredibly detailed knowledge we have about B.1.1.7 is also due to just plain dumb luck. One of its mutations altered a section of the genome used to test for COVID-19 in the UK, allowing the picture of evolutionary spread to be drawn from more than 275,000 cases.

Evolution in action

Epidemiologists have concluded that B.1.1.7 is more transmissible, but there are no signs that it is more deadly. Some researchers estimate that B.1.1.7 increases the number of new cases caused by an infected individual (called the reproductive number or Rt) by between 40 and 80 per cent; another preliminary study found that Rt increased by 50-74 per cent.

A 40-80 per cent advantage means that B.1.1.7 isn't just a little more fit, it's a lot more fit. Even when selection is this strong, evolution isn't instantaneous. Our mathematical modelling, as well as that by others in Canada and the U.S., shows that it takes B.1.1.7 a couple of months to reach its meteoric rise, because only a small fraction of cases initially carries the new variant.

For many countries, like the U.S. and Canada, where the number of COVID-19 cases has been precariously rising, a variant that increases transmission by 40-80 per cent threatens to push us over the top. It could lead to exponential growth in cases and overwhelm already threadbare medical care. Evolutionary change takes a while, buying us maybe a few weeks to prepare.

More variants

One surprise for researchers was that B.1.1.7 bears a remarkable number of new mutations. B.1.1.7 has accumulated 30-35 changes over the past year. B.1.1.7 doesn't mutate at a higher rate, but it appears to have undergone a bout of rapid change in the recent past.

(NextStrain/CC BY 4.0)

The virus may have been carried by an immunocompromised individual. People with weaker immune systems fight the virus constantly, with prolonged infections, recurrent rounds of viral replication and only a partial immune response to which the virus is constantly evolving.

Preliminary research reports that have yet to be verified have described two other variants of concern: one originally from South Africa (B.1.351) and one from Brazil (P1). Both variants show a recent history of excess mutations and rapid increases in frequency within local populations. Scientists are currently gathering the data needed to confirm that selection for higher transmission, not chance, is responsible.
What changed to allow spread?

Selection plays two roles in the evolution of these variants. First consider the role within those individuals in which the large number of mutants arose. B.1.1.7's 23 mutations and P1's 21 mutations aren't randomly arrayed across the genome but clustered in the gene encoding the spike protein.

One change in the spike, called N501Y, arose independently in all three variants, as well as in immunocompromised patients studied in the U.S. and UK Other changes in the spike (e.g. E484K, del69-70) are seen in two of the three variants.

Beyond the spike, the three variants of concern share one additional mutation that deletes a small part of the drably named "non-structural protein 6" (NSP6). We don't yet know what the deletion does, but in a related coronavirus NSP6 tricks a cellular defence system and may promote coronavirus infection. NSP6 also hijacks this system to help copy the viral genome. Either way, the deletion might alter the ability of the virus to take hold and replicate within our cells.
Easier transmission

The parallel evolution of the same mutations in different countries and in different immunocompromised patients suggests that they convey a selective advantage to evade the immune systems of the individuals in which the mutations occurred. For N501Y, this has been backed up by experiments in mice.

But what accounts for the higher transmission rate from individual to individual? This is challenging to answer because the many mutations that arose at once are now bundled together in these variants, and it could be any one or a combination of them that leads to the transmission advantage.

That said, several of these variants have arisen before on their own and haven't led to rapid spread. One study showed that N501Y had only a weak transmission advantage on its own, rising rapidly only when coupled with the suite of mutations observed in B.1.1.7.

While the evolutionary story of COVID is still being written, one important message is emerging now. The 40-80 per cent transmission advantage of B.1.1.7, and potentially the other variants B.1.351 and P1, will overwhelm many countries in the next few months.

We're in a race against viral evolution. We must roll out vaccines as quickly as possible, stem the flow of variants by restricting interactions and travel, and get in front of spread by ramping up surveillance and contact tracing.

Sarah Otto, Killam University Professor in Evolutionary Biology, University of British Columbia.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Is news worth a lot or a little? 

Google and Facebook want to have it both ways

Tim Dwyer

January 24, 2021

Executives from Google and Facebook have told a Senate committee they are prepared to take drastic action if Australia’s news media bargaining code, which would force the internet giants to pay news publishers for linking to their sites, comes into force.

Google would have “no real choice” but to cut Australian users off entirely from its flagship search engine, the company’s Australian managing director Mel Silva told the committee. Facebook representatives in turn said they would remove links to news articles from the newsfeed of Australian users if the code came into effect as it currently stands.

Read more: Expect delays and power plays: Google and Facebook brace as news media bargaining code is set to become law

In response, the Australian government shows no sign of backing down, with Prime Minister Scott Morrison and Treasurer Josh Frydenberg both saying they won’t respond to threats.

So what’s going on here? Are Google and Facebook really prepared to pull services from their Australian users rather than hand over some money to publishers under the bargaining code?
Is news valuable to Facebook and Google?

Facebook claims news is of little real value to its business. It doesn’t make money from news directly, and claims that for an average Australian user less than 5% of their newsfeed is made up of links to Australian news.

But this is hard to square with other information. In 2020, the University of Canberra’s Digital News Report found some 52% of Australians get news via social media, and the number is growing. Facebook also boasts of its investments in news via deals with publishers and new products such as Facebook News

.

Facebook executive Simon Milner appears before the Senate committee via video link. 

Mick Tsikas / AAP

Google likewise says it makes little money from news, while at the same time investing heavily in news products like News Showcase.

So while links to news may not be direct advertising money-spinners for Facebook or Google, both see the presence of news as an important aspect of audience engagement with their products.

On their own terms

While both companies are prepared to give some money to news publishers, they want to make deals on their own terms. But Google and Facebook are two of the largest and most profitable companies in history – and each holds far more bargaining power than any news publisher. The news media bargaining code sets out to undo this imbalance.

What’s more, Google and Facebook don’t appear to want to accept the unique social role of news, and public interest journalism in particular. Nor do they recognise they might be involved somehow in the decline of the news business over the past decade or two, instead pointing the finger at impersonal shifts in advertising technology.

The media bargaining code being introduced is far too systematic for them to want to accept it. They would rather pick and choose commercial agreements with “genuine commercial consideration”, and not be bound by a one-size-fits-all set of arbitration rules.

Read more: Changing the rules to control monopolies could see the end of Facebook domination

A history of US monopolies

Google and Facebook dominate web search and social media, respectively, in ways that echo the great US monopolies of the past: rail in the 19th century, then oil and later telecommunications in the 20th. All these industries became fundamental forms of capitalist infrastructure for economic and social development. And all these monopolies required legislation to break them up in the public interest.

It’s unsurprising that the giant ad-tech media platforms don’t want to follow the rules, but they must acknowledge that their great wealth and power come with a moral responsibility to society. Making them face up to that responsibility will require government intervention.

Online pioneers Vint Cerf (now VP and Chief Internet Evangelist at Google) and Tim Berners-Lee (“inventor of the World Wide Web”) have also made submissions to the Senate committee advocating on behalf of the corporations. They made high-minded claims that the code will break the “free and open” internet.

Read more: Web's inventor says news media bargaining code could break the internet. He's right — but there's a fix

But today’s internet is hardly free and open: for most users “the internet” is huge corporate platforms like Google and Facebook. And those corporations don’t want Australian senators interfering with their business model.

Independent senator Rex Patrick hit the nail on the head when he asked why Google wouldn’t admit the fundamental issue was about revenue, rather than technical detail or questions of principle.
How seriously should we take threats to leave the Australian market?

Google and Facebook are prepared to go along with the Senate committee’s processes, so long as they can modify the arrangement. The don’t want to be seen as uncooperative.

The threat to leave (or as Facebook’s Simon Milner put it, the “explanation” of why they would be forced to do so) is their worst-case scenario. It seems likely they would risk losing significant numbers of users if they did so, or at least having them much less engaged – and hence producing less advertising revenue.

Google has already run small-scale experiments to test removing Australian news from search. This may be a demonstration that the threat to withdraw from Australia is serious, or at least, serious brinkmanship.

People know news is important, that it shapes their interactions with the world – and provides meaning and helps them navigate their lives. So who would Australians blame if Google and Facebook really do follow through? The government or the friendly tech giants they see every day? That’s harder to know.

For transparency, please note The Conversation has also made a submission to the Senate inquiry regarding the News Media and Digital Platforms Mandatory Bargaining Code.

AUTHOR

Tim Dwyer
Associate Professor, Department of Media and Communications, University of Sydney

Disclosure statement
Tim Dwyer receives funding from the Australian Research Council for media policy projects researching media pluralism and online news, and platform governance.
Partners

University of Sydney provides funding as a member of The Conversation AU.

Chicago Teachers Union members vote to continue teaching remotely Monday

Light, Alan. (2015). "Chicago Skyline" [Photograph]. Retrieved from Flickr.

AUTHOR
Roger Riddell@K12DiveRoger

PUBLISHEDJan. 24, 2021

Dive Brief:
Members of the Chicago Teachers Union voted this weekend to continue teaching remotely Monday in a move that runs counter to Chicago Public Schools’ reopening plan, the Chicago Sun-Times reports.

As a result, the district will delay its plan until Wednesday to allow time to resolve differences without disrupting learning.

The union said if no deal is reached or teachers are barred from remote work, it would “officially” strike, according to the Sun-Times.

The only LMS that includes your assessment and data solutions.Discover Otus
Dive Insight:

Tensions between the union and district escalated last week, resulting in a union-wide vote on a resolution that passed the organization’s 700-member House of Delegates with 84% approval. The resolution would see members pledge to continue teaching remotely while refusing an in-person return until a written agreement on safe working conditions is reached with the district.

CPS, which has planned to bring back around 70,000 K-8 students on Feb. 1, had previously warned such a walkout would amount to an “illegal strike.” Initial data from the district issued the week of Jan. 11 showed 678 educators didn’t return the first day schools were reopened for pre-K and special education students.

The district had previously taken steps including locking non-returning teachers out of remote learning platforms and threatening to dock pay if they didn’t return.

The Chicago impasse comes as proposals to return to in-person school nationwide are met with mixed feelings from many in school communities.

As detailed in our ongoing tracker of the COVID-19 pandemic's impact on K-12, it's widely understood that most students see greater benefit from in-person learning and many are suffering from the lack of both social and academic ties. But as the pandemic persists and vaccination efforts hit bumps in the road, educators — an estimated quarter of whom are at high-risk due to age or comorbidities, or are taking care of someone in a high-risk group — are also concerned about risks to themselves and their families.

A DECADE OF AUSTERITY

Prior to COVID-19, states cut $600B in ed funding since Great Recession

"Money" by Ervins Strauhmanis is licensed under CC BY 2.0

AUTHOR
Roger Riddell@K12DiveRoger

PUBLISHEDJan. 15, 2021

Dive Brief:
A pair of reports released Thursday by the Education Law Center — "Making the Grade 2020" and "$600 Billion Lost: State Disinvestment in Education Following the Great Recession" — add deeper context to the financial turmoil facing the nation's public schools and further highlight the adverse impact states' education funding cuts were already having prior to the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic.

According to "$600 Billion Lost," public schools lost a total of $598 billion in state and local revenue in the years following the Great Recession, with PK-12 funding in all but four states in 2018 representing a smaller portion of economic activity than before the crisis. The report graded how equitably states funded public schools based on three metrics: funding level, funding distribution and funding effort.

Meanwhile, "Making the Grade" shows dramatic variations in school funding levels from state to state, with those in the Northeast and Midwest generally trending toward higher funding levels than the South and West. In the top states, funding provided as much as 50% more than the national average of $14,548 per pupil, while the bottom states were as low as 30% less.

Dive Insight:

The dual reports highlight the perilous financial situation schools across the U.S. faced prior to the onset of the novel coronavirus pandemic in spring 2020. According to "Making the Grade," for example, 15 states also have "regressive" systems for K-12 funding that allocate less funding to high-poverty districts than those with lower poverty rates — an issue that can cause even more strife if, for example, the same formulas are used to disburse emergency COVID-19 relief funds to schools.

“As states confront the COVID-19 public health crisis, these reports are a stark reminder of the long-lasting implications of shortsighted economic policy,” said Jennifer Doeren, director of the Partnership for Equity & Education Rights, in a press release. “Going forward, it’s critical that threats to school funding are met with a strong and sustained demand that governors and legislators not reduce but increase their state’s investment in its public schools.”

ELC Executive Director David Sciarra added, “We’ve already seen New York, Texas and other states make devastating budget cuts in response to the economic downturn brought on by the pandemic. Our students, especially in schools segregated by poverty and race, simply cannot afford to lose teachers, counselors, nurses and other supports at a time when they need more not less.”

On top of pandemic-related cuts that have been made or are expected in the coming years, school districts have also incurred significant new expenses as they transitioned to online learning models and added safety measures that mitigate transmission of the virus in school buildings. In May, the Association of School Business Officials International and AASA, The School Superintendents Association, estimated the average district would have to spend approximately $194,045 for personal protective equipment, $1.23 million to hire additional staff such as custodians and nurses, and $116,950 for health and disinfecting equipment.

Under December's relief package and last spring's Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security Act, K-12 schools were provided $54.3 billion and $13.5 billion, respectively.

Compounding the issue, The New York Times reports wealthy private schools were able to gain access to emergency Paycheck Protection Program funds made available to help small businesses weather the pandemic.

Sierra Canyon High School, an elite Los Angeles private school serving the children of stars including LeBron James, was cited as an example, having received $3.14 million under the program while the city's traditional public schools received around $716,000 in relief funds. Similarly, the Sidwell Friends School, a District of Columbia private school once attended by Sasha and Malia Obama, reportedly received $5.22 million in PPP funds while D.C. Public Schools got an average of $189,000 in relief funds.

RIP
Jimmie Rodgers, who sang the hits 'Honeycomb' and 'Kisses Sweeter Than Wine,' dies at 87

GUILTY PLEASURES GROWING UP

The Associated Press

PALM DESERT, Calif. – Jimmie Rodgers, singer of the 1957 hits "Honeycomb" and "Kisses Sweeter Than Wine" whose career in music and movies was disrupted by a severe head injury a decade later, has died at age 87.

Rodgers died from kidney disease on Jan. 18 in Palm Desert, California, and had also tested positive for COVID-19, publicist Alan Eichler said Saturday, citing family.

Rodgers performed for $10 a night around Nashville while stationed there with the U.S. Air Force after the Korean War. He appeared on a talent show and got an audition with Roulette Records, which signed him after hearing him perform "Honeycomb," a song by Bob Merrill.

With a style of singing and playing guitar that included elements of country, folk and pop, the Camas, Washington native recorded many other Top 10 hits during the late 1950s, including "Secretly," "Oh-Oh, I'm Falling in Love Again," and "Are You Really Mine?"

Rodgers continued making albums for the better part of the 1960s, producing music that ranged from covering traditional songs like "The Wreck of the 'John B.' " and "English Country Garden" to popular fare such as the ballad "Child of Clay."

He had established himself on television with performances on variety shows when he moved into acting in movies during the 1960s. His film credits included "The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come" and "Back Door to Hell" with a young Jack Nicholson.


POLICE BRUTALITY
In 1967, Rodgers was found in his car on a Los Angeles freeway suffering from a fractured skill and other injuries. He said he had pulled over and stopped in response to a driver behind him who was flashing his lights and that an attack from an an off-duty police officer had caused his head injuries.

"I rolled the window down to ask what was the matter," he told The Toronto Star in 1987. "That's the last thing I remember."

Los Angeles police officers insisted that Rodgers had injured himself in a fall while drunk. Rodgers filed a lawsuit and agreed to a $200,000 settlement. He subsequently developed a condition that caused spasms in the muscles of his voice box. He also had occasional seizures, which he said were due to the attack.

After his initial recovery, Rodgers had a summer TV show on ABC in 1969 and also performed at his own theater in Branson, Missouri.

In a 2016 interview with The Spectrum, a Utah newspaper, Rodgers recalled finding a $10 guitar and singing when he was in the Air Force and stationed in Korea in 1953.

"We were sitting on the floor with only candles for light, and these tough soldiers had tears running down their cheeks. I realized if my music could have that effect, that's what I wanted to do with my life," he said.

Survivors include his wife, Mary Louise Biggerstaff, and five children from three marriages.

The South African coronavirus mutation can infect multiple times, could hamper vaccine

A new study reveals that a large number of people with COVID-19 antibodies may not be protected from the new strain

By MATTHEW ROZSA

JANUARY 23, 2021

A patient with the COVID-19 breaths in oxygen in the COVID-19 ward at Khayelitsha Hospital, about 35km from the centre of Cape Town, on December 29, 2020. 

(RODGER BOSCH/AFP via Getty Images)

A mutant strain of the novel coronavirus discovered in South Africa appears to be able to ward off antibodies from individuals who had previously recovered from COVID-19 — meaning if the new strain becomes widespread, we may see more people getting infected multiple times.

A group of South African scientists made this discovery in a paper published earlier this week by South Africa's National Institute for Communicable Diseases. In it, researchers describe how they studied blood samples from a small group of people who had developed COVID-19 but ultimately recovered. When the human body recovers from a disease, it produces a protein known as an antibody to identify and ultimately protect itself in the future from the bacteria or virus which caused it to become ill. (These illness-causing microorganisms are known as pathogens.) This means that people who were sick with COVID-19 should in theory have antibodies that recognize the pathogen which causes it and neutralize it in the event that they are reinfected.

Instead, according to the authors of the paper, half of the blood samples of the patients they tested did not have the antibodies necessary to protect them from the 501Y.V2 strain of the novel coronavirus, which was identified in South Africa last month. While it was a small study and more research will need to be done, the initial results are not auspicious.

Not only could this interfere with the human population's ability to develop natural immunity, it could also hamper the efficacy of the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines. Both companies are distributing mRNA vaccines, which are different from traditional vaccines that train the immune system to develop antibodies against pathogens by injecting weakened or dead versions of the disease-causing agents into the body. mRNA vaccines, by contrast, inject a synthetic single-stranded molecule of RNA that infects our own cells and makes them produce the protein that grows on the "spike" on the exterior of the coronavirus. The presence of this protein in the body is then recognized as an intruder, and the immune system learns to identify the coronavirus as an enemy and protect against it.

In the case of the COVID-19 vaccines, both of them train the body to recognize a protein on the SARS-CoV-2 virus known as Spike. Spike is the protein that helps the virus enter human cells and resembles little pins that stick out from the sphere of the virus itself, like the spines that poke out all around a sea urchin. Unfortunately, the South African mutation alters that very protein, meaning that it could affect the vaccine's efficacy.

The South African strain is not the only one raising concern. There is a new strain in Brazil that the scientists argue "also has changes at key positions" in ways that could impair antibodies' effectiveness against the disease. Then there is a strain in the United Kingdom known as B117 that, though not deadlier than previous strains, is more transmissible.

"I think transmissible is definitely the word to go with because that highlights what we do know and what we don't know," Dr. Dylan Morris, a postdoctoral research scholar at UCLA, told Salon earlier this month about the British strain. "Even if the disease severity isn't increased or even if it decreases by a small amount, 'more transmissible' is still a very scary thing at this point in the pandemic, because that could result in faster spread and faster exponential growth."

MATTHEW ROZSA
is a staff writer for Salon. He holds an MA in History from Rutgers University-Newark and is ABD in his PhD program in History at Lehigh University. His work has appeared in Mic, Quartz and MSNBC.

A socialist ‘hacktivist’ has helped expose the platform used by both US rioters and UK government ministers

Tom Coburg
23rd January 2021

On 6 January 2021, hundreds of Trump supporters invaded and occupied the Capitol building in Washington DC, the seat of the US Congress and Senate. The rioters damaged property and five people died. Two pipe bombs were reportedly found in buildings not far from the Capitol. In the aftermath, Trump was impeached by the House of Representatives for “incitement of insurrection”.

Now, thanks to the swift work of a ‘hacktivist’, more information is coming to light about what really happened during the lead-up to the invasion of the Capitol.
Home for hate speech

Southern Poverty Law Center’s (SPLC) ‘Hatewatch’ has accused social media platform Parler of being “a haven for recruitment and promotion for the Jan. 6 pro-Trump riot at the U.S. Capitol building”. For example, it reports that Proud Boys member Jeremy Bertino wrote on Parler, “Find the traitors and get the rope. THIS IS OUR HOUSE!!”. It also reported that Kevin Greeson, one of those who died during the invasion of the Capitol building, posted “Let’s take this fucking Country BACK!! Load your guns and take to the streets!”

The reaction was swift. Following the Capitol invasion, Google and Apple suspended Parler from their app stores. Not long after, Parler was also suspended by Amazon from its web hosting service.

In its court filings, dated 12 January 2021, Amazon Web Services said:
this case is about Parler’s demonstrated unwillingness and inability to remove from the servers of Amazon Web Services (“AWS”) content that threatens the public safety, such as by inciting and planning the rape, torture, and assassination of named public officials and private citizens.

And there’s this:

Parler has attracted prominent politicians and political activists. In July 2020, the Independent reported that subscribers included far-right commentator Milo Yiannopoulos and Proud Boys founder Gavin McInnes. SPLC reports that Boogaloo’s Last Sons Of Liberty, as well as Infowars‘ Alex Jones and Owen Shroyer, are also Parler subscribers. And CNN Business names QAnon members as subscribers. According to the Independent:”The president is not on the app (yet), but his son Eric Trump and White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany are, along with his Republican allies like Devin Nunes, Jim Jordan, [and Republican congressman] Matt Gaetz“.
UK subscribers

On the other side of the Atlantic, UK government minister Michael Gove was named as one of several Conservative MPs who opened accounts on Parler. Others include foreign office minister James Cleverly, health minister Nadine Dorries, trade minister Ranil Jayawardena, arch-Brexiter Steve Baker, and Conservative MP Ben Bradley.

According to the Guardian:

The most prolific Tory MP on the site was Bradley who sent 52 “parleys” and had more than 12,000 followers. Gove sent at least 26 parleys and had more than 5,000 followers.

Darren Grimes, who worked for BeLeave, was another Parler account subscriber. BeLeave was a pro-Brexit campaign group linked with Vote Leave that was fronted by Gove and Boris Johnson. Hate purveyor Katie Hopkins has a Parler account too.

Financial backers


It’s been revealed that a co-founder and now financial backer of Parler is Rebekah Mercer. Both she and her father Robert have also financed Breitbart News, formerly run by controversial right-winger and Brexit supporter Steve Bannon. And Bannon was also a “board member, vice-president, and part-owner” of Cambridge Analytica (CA), the discredited former data mining company.

But it gets even more complicated. According to the Guardian, Robert Mercer helped bankroll CA as well as Trump’s election campaign. Moreover, it’s claimed that a company called Emerdata is the successor to CA and its parent SCL. And in 2017, Rebekah Mercer set up Emerdata and made herself a director, together with former CA chief Alexander Nix.

As for web hosting, Vice reported on 11 January that Parler was being hosted by Epik, which SPLC describes as “cornering the market on websites where hate speech is thriving”. However, on 19 January, the Guardian reported that Parler is being hosted by Russia-based DDos-Guard, whose clients include the Russian ministry of defence.

As we go to press, the new Parler site appears to be experiencing ‘technical difficulties’. In a statement on its website Parler, denies its role in the Capitol building invasion:

Parler is gratified that the court refused to uncritically accept Amazon’s argument – widely repeated in the media – that the Parler platform was somehow used to plan, coordinate or execute the despicable January 6 riot at the Capitol.

Based on the evidence of which we are aware, the Parler platform was not used in that manner

No hiding place

In the immediate aftermath of the Capitol invasion, hacker donk_enby, who according to Vice considers herself an anarcho-socialist, archived much of Parler‘s content so as to preserve self-incriminating postings. Vice reports she scraped “56.7 terabytes of data, which included every public post on Parler, 412 million files in all—including 150 million photos and more than 1 million videos”. She added how she was helped in the task by the Archive Team.

She also clarified, “Everything we grabbed was publicly available on the web, we just made a permanent public snapshot of it”. A webpage on the Parler archive explains how to access the data. That webpage is part of the Distributed Denial of Secrets site, which includes many other data collections.

Meanwhile, ProPublica has published a selection of 500 videos that were posted on Parler and which help show what happened in the invasion of the Capitol building.
Collateral damage

US attorney and activist Malaika Jabali warns:

Parler may be homeless now, but there is an entire world that welcomes the hatred and violence it cultivates

It’s all about the company you keep; or, to put it another way, which sewer you choose to swim in.

And with the downfall of Trump, there could be more casualties from the Capitol invasion and Parler bans.

One of Trump’s last moves as president was to embolden anti-vaxxer hysteria

Peter Bolton
24th January 2021

The one-year anniversary of the outbreak of coronavirus (Covid-19) passed last December. But following the approval of multiple vaccinations from several different pharmaceutical companies, the end seemed within sight. Just as a return to normality begins to look possible, though, this notion seems increasingly threatened by the rise of a familiar foe of science, progress, and public health. The long-simmering anti-vaccination movement is going into overdrive in its attempts to portray mass vaccination as some kind of evil conspiracy.

The Trump administration established a prolific record of opposing science and promoting all manner of conspiracy theories. But it has perhaps exceeded even its own standards, with one last dismal act of support of anti-vaxxer hysteria.

Over $850,000 in bailout money

On 18 January, the Washington Post reported that the US federal government granted several anti-vaccine groups bailout money from public coffers. This was in the waning days of the disgraced Trump administration. Five of the most prominent organizations belonging to the anti-vaxxer movement received more than $850k in loans from the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP). The PPP was formed to help small businesses and non-profit organizations struggling under the crippling financial fallout of the coronavirus pandemic.

The process has been controversial due to applicants’ ability to self-certify the loans’ approval. The Post also reported that corporate restaurant giants such as Shake Shack, and a defense contractor with billions in sales, “benefitted handsomely” from the loans. Meanwhile “debt collectors and high-interest lenders pocketed more than $500 million”.

A who’s who of the ‘anti-vaxxer’ movement

The five anti-vaccine groups that received PPP money are:
The National Vaccine Information Center.
Mercola Health Resources.
The Informed Consent Action Network.
The Children’s Health Defense.
The Tenpenny Integrative Medical Center.

The Children’s Health Defense is perhaps the most high profile and notorious of these groups. And it was founded by a member of the US’s prominent Kennedy political dynasty, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. On 17 January, Kennedy wrote an article in which he claims that health officials are “depriving people of the information they need to make informed decisions [about coronavirus vaccinations]”.

JOHN BIRCH SOCIETY 1953

The proof is in the outbreaks

Reluctance to vaccinate children, amongst a small but growing section of the US public, has led to localized outbreaks. These outbreaks are of diseases that were thought to have been consigned to the history books decades earlier. In January 2019, USA Today reported that a county in Washington state, known as an anti-vaxxer hotspot, had experienced over 70 cases of measles so far that year.

The articles states:

The county has one of the lowest vaccination rates in the state: Nearly one in four Clark County kindergarten students during the 2017-18 school year did not get all their immunizations, according to data from the Washington Department of Health. At three schools in the county, more than 40 percent of kindergartners did not receive all recommended shots before starting school.

Meanwhile, in December 2019, the World Health Organization reported that “vaccination rates globally have stagnated for almost a decade”. And as a result of these suboptimal vaccine rates, “more than 140,000 people died [worldwide] from measles in 2018″. This was while “measles cases surged globally, amidst devastating outbreaks in all regions”.

A familiar face of conspiracism

Trump himself has been a long-time exponent of anti-vaccination myths. He’s also voiced conspiracy theories about the pandemic, especially during the crucial early months of the outbreak. Trump’s handling of the crisis is widely viewed as one of the major reasons behind his 2020 election loss to Democratic Party challenger Joe Biden. The US, despite being the wealthiest and most powerful country in the world, holds the dubious distinction of having the most coronavirus cases and the most coronavirus related deaths in the world.

Though Trump is gone, the damage caused by these dangerous peddlers of pseudo-science will continue beyond his presidency. And the Biden administration will likely take a less oppositional stance toward science and reason-based public health measures than Trump. But the threat that these groups pose to containing the coronavirus outbreak – and that of other deadly diseases – will remain.

JOHN BIRCH SOCIETY 1953

Who Was John Birch? - VAXOPEDIA

Trump supporter charged over Capitol riot and urging assassination of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

The Canary
24th January 2021

A 34-year-old Donald Trump supporter has been arrested for allegedly taking part in the storming of the US Capitol and posting violent threats. The threats included a call to assassinate Democratic congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

Miller is from the Dallas suburb of Richardson, Texas. He was arrested on Friday 22 January after being named in a five-count federal complaint.

“Just want to incriminate myself”

Authorities allege that Miller posted photos and videos on his social media accounts that show him inside the Capitol on 6 January. He was among supporters of then-president Donald Trump who stormed the building on that day.

He also reportedly called for violence in online posts. One tweet read: “Assassinate AOC,” a reference to Ocasio-Cortez.
 
In another tweet, Miller posted, “They are right next time we bring the guns,” an FBI agent wrote in an affidavit.

Miller also threatened a US Capitol police officer during an exchange on Instagram. He wrote that he planned to “hug his neck with a nice rope”, the affidavit states.

It also states that after posting a photo on Facebook showing him inside the Capitol, Miller responded to a comment on the picture with: “just want to incriminate myself a little lol,”.

“They thought they were going to succeed”

Ocasio-Cortez posted Miller’s charging documents on Twitter on 22 January and then tweeted:

On one hand you have to laugh, and on the other know that the reason they were this brazen is because they thought they were going to succeed.

Miller’s lawyer, Clint Broden, said his client regrets his actions. Broden said Miller took these actions “in a misguided effort to show his support for former President Trump”. He went on to add:

His social media comments reflect very ill-considered political hyperbole in very divided times and will certainly not be repeated in the future…

He looks forward to putting all of this behind him.

Miller is scheduled to appear at a detention hearing on Monday 25

Viral Video Warns Donald Trump Set to Take Charge    of  'Army of Domestic Terrorists'

BY KHALEDA RAHMAN ON 1/19/21

In author Don Winslow's latest viral video assailing President Donald Trump, a chilling warning is issued—that Trump will take charge of an "army of domestic terrorists" after leaving office and start a civil war in the United States.

The video has already amassed more than three million views since it was posted on Twitter on Monday.

In the clip, a voiceover says that when Trump stops being the commander-in-chief of the nation's armed forces or nuclear arsenal on Wednesday, he will assume control of a "different army" and "encourage and incite violence" in the years to come.

To combat the threat, the video urges Americans to "fight back" by forming a "citizen army" to monitor the online activity of extremists and aid authorities.

The purpose of the video "is to put forth the idea of creating a real network of citizen detectives to uncover and expose white supremacy and domestic terrorism," Winslow, a bestselling crime novelist and vocal Trump critic, told Newsweek.

"For citizen detectives to become amateur intelligence analysts that would feed information to law enforcement."

He added: "The reality is that law enforcement has missed the boat on white supremacy and domestic terrorism and the historical record supports that. It's not hyperbole."

Winslow said the two-minute video posted on Monday has connected with people because "it exposes what we know is out there," adding that Trump "has created this army and after January 20th—directly or indirectly—he will lead them."

In recent months, Winslow and screenwriter, producer and director Shane Salerno have produced videos condemning Trump that have reached a massive number of people. A video posted last week about the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol that Winslow presented as evidence to support Trump's second impeachment has amassed more than nine million views.



"We have to be much more diligent about what is being done online," Winslow said. "Trump's digital war—which went unchecked for four years—has very serious and violent consequences in the real world. January 6, 2021 made that clear."

Noting that many of the Trump loyalists that stormed and ransacked the Capitol that day had wielded Trump flags, Winslow said the outgoing president has spent four years "building an army"—a word he says he uses intentionally because "they are an army loyal to him and not loyal to their country."

Some of the people who have been arrested since the Capitol attack were featured in the video, as a voiceover explained that "the greatest threat facing Americans today comes from within—radical extreme conservatives, also known as domestic terrorists."

It adds: "They're hidden among us, disguised behind regular jobs. They are your children's teachers. They work at supermarkets, malls, doctor's officers and many are police officers and soldiers."

The voiceover also says that Trump had "spoken directly to white supremacists in their language" for years, noting that when asked to disavow white supremacy during a presidential debate last year, e instead told the far-right Proud Boys to "stand back and stand by."

On January 6, he "greenlit them" and "they suited up," it adds. "They flew in. They took hotel rooms. They loaded their weapons and prepared their bombs and they attacked with the intention of killing Nancy Pelosi and hanging Vice President Mike Pence."

In the coming years, Trump will "play the role of arsonist and fireman," the voiceover continues. "He will start a civil war and then say things were more peaceful when he was president. We have to fight back."

But to do so, the video says "computers can be more valuable than guns" and proposes that citizens use their electronic devices to track extremists online and report them to authorities.

It noted that before Osama bin Laden—who plotted the September 11, 2001 attacks—was killed, he was located by a CIA analyst "working on a computer thousands of miles away."

Winslow added that the events of January 6 were "a turning point for America" and were "as important" as the 2001 attacks.

"The image of the U.S. Capitol being taken, largely without force, is forever burned in our minds," he said.

"One of the aspects that is not discussed is the sheer casualness that many of the domestic terrorists exhibited. They are walking around the Capitol confident and largely without fear. Why? What would have given them that confidence? The President of the United States telling them to do it, essentially giving them an order."