Balloons over El Paso, Super Ads, Homeland Security Soap Opera, Vaccines, Gunperson (?)

Balloons over El Paso, Super Ads, Homeland Security Soap Opera, Vaccines, Gunperson (?)

I was at breakfast the other day when one of my friends broke the news that the El Paso airport shutdown was not due to Mexican cartel drones but because of a party balloon. I almost choked on my biscuit. Then the other friend started singing “99 red balloons” – a song that I was not familiar with. The song is about some party balloons being mistaken for enemy aircraft igniting a nuclear war. Talk about life imitating art! The Trump Administration which seems prone to make statements prior to learning the facts – see the Minneapolis shootings – did it again. Transportation secretary Duffy said that the authorities had confronted a “cartel drone incursion” over El Paso and shut down the airport in order to use experimental lasers to counter the threat – only for the threat to turn out to be a party balloon. This sounds like something from the Babylon Bee and Duffy needs to fire whoever it was that made him look like a fool.

Were there any memorable commercials at the Super Bowl other than the Budweiser ad? The one that I thought was spooky was the Ring commercial that tracked lost dogs. I commented that I did not want those Ring cameras surveilling me. Talk about an invasion of privacy. Maybe it was a trial balloon (ha ha) because Ring has announced that it is discontinuing the feature.

Did you see the hit piece in the Wall Street Journal on Kristi (Border Barbie) Noem? It belonged more in the National Enquirer than in the Wall Street Journal mentioning that her relationship with her close “advisor” Corey Lewandowski, Trump’s former campaign manager, implying over and over a romantic relationship between the two. The article mentions their use of a private jet with a bedroom suite in the rear of the plane – the “adultery airplane.” Lewandowski apparently has a very close relationship with Noem and even tried to get Trump to name her as his vice president. Lewandowski has tried to run ads to burnish Noem’s image while the two have cut 80 percent of the original ICE personnel. Then there is the silly episode where a pilot was fired who did not transfer Noem’s blanket from one plane that had mechanical issues to another. The Coast Guard pilot was told to take a commercial flight home but had to be reinstated when no other pilot was available to fly them home. Basically the article points to infighting, dysfunction, and Noem’s obsessive self-promotion. This is embarrassing. Noem and Lewandowski should both be fired.

Speaking of firing, RFK, Jr and his team have done a good job shaking up HHS especially the “health” part. But they are creating chaos in the vaccine industry – and we all know what Kennedy thinks about vaccines. The latest being Vinay Prasad, Kennedy’s head of the FDA vaccine and biologics division, overruling staff recommendations by denying Moderna’s new flu vaccine application, arguing that its clinical trial was inadequate. Prasad has made a habit of overruling staff recommendations. At least nine companies, many of them focused on rare or hard-to-treat diseases, have said that Prasad has rejected their vaccines. 

Prasad must be doing Kennedy’s bidding here. Surely it has his blessing. Rarely had the FDA refused to review a drug or vaccine application. Prasad is making this a habit. Does this mean that potential lifesaving drugs will be denied the public? Will this be a chilling effect on the development of such drugs so long as Kennedy heads HHS? Moderna’s new flu vaccine is a mRNA vaccine which can be quickly adapted and manufactured to match new strains. The FDA also rejected Regenxbio’s gene therapy for the ultra-rare disease Hunter syndrome—which causes deformities and results in death in teenagers—despite the company following the agency’s guidance to win approval. This is the third rare disease drug Dr. Prasad has nixed in as many months. One writer says “It’s hard to recall a regulator who has done as much damage to medical innovation in as little time as Vinay Prasad.” But libertarians rejoice! The private sector is stepping up to certify safe vaccines since the FDA seems no longer willing to do so. Now, the American Medical Association along with the Vaccine Integrity Project at the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota will privately evaluate the safety and efficacy of selected vaccines.

Lastly, in the reporting of the shooting in Canada’s Tumbler Ridge, the shooter was a male who identified as female. The reporting initially was binary with the New York Post referring to the shooter as “male/he”, the Wall Street Journal saying “female/she” and the BBC going to pains not to use any label at all. One news report said “An 18-year-old Canadian woman shot and killed her mother and stepbrother at their home before going to the school.” Mind you this 18-year old “woman” is a troubled teenaged boy who wanted to be a girl. The Canadian Royal Mounted Police report’s initial emergency alert to residents described the active shooter as a “female in a dress with brown hair.” Then, later after finding out that the shooter identified as female, the RCMP communications referred to the shooter as a “gunperson.” I guess the RCMP doesn’t realize that “person” had “son” as its last three letters.