Possible US Variants of COVID and the "Yang Gang" Returns

Today's latest headlines from Quick News Daily include news from Moderna, information about possible new US COVID strains in Ohio and the South African variant, and why Jack Dorsey and Mark Zuckerberg did too little too late. Also discussed are the start of the WHO's COVID origins investigation and Andrew Yang's entrance into the race to become Mayor of New York City. 

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Transcript (mostly accurate):

First segment excluded so the subject of this portion of the show cannot find it as easily.

MODERNA

I guess the Moderna CEO is out on a media tour for some reason because he made some more notable comments at another conference. This time, it was at the JPMorgan Healthcare Conference.

As for his notable comments, they were that he thinks COVID will be around forever. He said, “We are going to live with this virus, we think, forever”.

Viruses that are around continuously, like the flu and the common cold, are called “endemic viruses”. I just thought I’d put that in there in case it’s a trivia answer or you want to sound smart some time.

This actually led me down a rabbit hole, because this CNBC story had links to new information on the South African virus, as well as 2 possible new strains that researchers found that originated in the US.

For the potentially new US strains, it’s the same old story we’ve been hearing: the mutations seem to be making COVID more contagious but have no effect on how deadly it is or how well the vaccine will work.

One of the strains has only been found in one patient, which is pretty crazy. They said that this one had a mutation that’s identical to the UK one, so it made me wonder “are you guys not seeing this? It’s in one person and it’s identical to the UK one? Maybe it’s just the UK one?”

As for the South African strain, it’s spread to a couple of other countries now: the UK, France, Switzerland, Japan, Austria, and Zambia.

The UK Health Secretary said “I’m incredibly worried about the South African variant, and that’s why we took the action that we did to restrict all flights from South Africa. This is a very, very significant problem…and it’s even more of a problem than the UK new variant”. That’s scary enough in itself, but he just didn’t explain why he said any of this.

Thankfully, Dr. Scott Gottlieb (he’s the former CDC Director that I trust most) said that the South African one is concerning him because it seems to be rejecting antibody drug treatment. So, technically, it could become more deadly. But, for what it’s worth, the CDC still says there’s no evidence that it causes more severe illness or that it’s more deadly.  

Since this is the common pattern we’re seeing (every single new strain is more contagious but not more deadly), I just have to ask: are all of these mutations helping it spread more quickly, or are these changes actually not doing anything in terms of how easy it is to spread and it’s spreading more quickly because people are being dumb and getting tired of COVID rules?

Obviously, there are changes to the virus because it’s been confirmed by its genetics, but is it actually just some coincidence that it’s spreading quickly and they happened to catch the new strain when they test?  

The other interesting thing that was in this story about the US variants was about calling these the “UK variant” or “South African variant”. Now that I think about it, it’s probably just trying to shake the blame now that the US might have variants, but some expert in the article said that it’s not really fair to call the variants by where they’re from because it really could have started in another country that isn’t as advanced and isn’t looking for mutations, and it wasn’t found until it reached a country that was more scientifically well-equipped.

BIG TECH

One of my favorite podcasts to listen to, The New Abnormal with Molly Jong-Fast and Rick Wilson, had a great guest on the last episode. The guest was Scott Galloway, who’s a professor at NYU and, apparently, an expert in the world of big tech. The great part was him explaining why Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey isn’t some hero for finally banning Trump, permanently, or why Mark Zuckerberg isn’t a great guy, and what Congress can do about all this.

One of the best quotes was when Galloway said “There is nothing noble, there is nothing patriotic, there was nothing civic in Zuckerberg or Dorsey kicking these people off of their platforms. This is them trying to wallpaper over their delay and obfuscation. People who get DUIs typically have driven drunk 200 times before they kill a family or they’re pulled over, and these guys have been driving drunk and all of a sudden, a family got killed, and now they’re sorry. They deserve zero f’ing credit for doing the right thing in the bottom of the ninth inning.” 

He said that their change of heart in banning people is a direct result of Democrats winning the Senate, and Dorsey and Zuckerberg realizing that now that Democrats are running things, their companies could be broken up through antitrust lawsuits from the Justice Department.

People are saying that there’s blood on Trump’s hands since 6 people have died from that event, but really, a white supremacist killed a protester in Charlottesville way back in 2017. They also didn’t do anything when Trump said, “when the looting starts, the shooting starts”. The CEOs didn’t decide to kick Trump off until they saw that Mitch McConnell wasn’t going to be majority leader anymore.

Galloway also suggested that there needs to be a “perp walk” for these CEOs (a perp walk is the walk you see on TV when the cops bring the perp to the station in handcuffs in front of all the media so that they’re caught on camera. It’s meant to humiliate and shame them). I think he’s right, honestly. He gave a good example: if someone calls a celebrity and says “I can get your kid into Harvard if you give me $50,000”, the celebrity isn’t going to do that anymore because they perp-walked Aunt Becky (Lori Loughlin) and threw her in prison for a couple months. If some CEOs and/or board members of these social media companies get punished for what they’ve let happen on their sites, then other companies will start to shape up.

He also explained Section 230 that we’ve been hearing a lot about. He said that it was originally designed to protect smaller companies who didn’t have the budget to monitor the content from other people on their platform.

He suggested should move back to that where it’s just for companies who make less than some amount of money, so Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, etc. would have to monitor what’s on their site, and some small startup (who doesn’t have the same amount of resources, like Quick News Daily) wouldn’t.

They already can, but they just don’t want to. He gave an example for YouTube, and I’ve experienced it firsthand: when I post my shows to YouTube, almost as soon as it’s posted, I get a copyright notice from YouTube because I use that 2-second clip from that song from Hamilton *play Never Gon’ Be President*. That one. They also get me for playing the 1812 Overture from V for Vendetta at the end of my shows. The 1812 Overture is public domain because it was made before like 1920, but I like the version from V for Vendetta the best, so I use that one. However, I guess that’s copyrighted, so if I made any money on my YouTube videos, that money would go straight to the composer of the V for Vendetta soundtrack.

The point of that long example is to show that if YouTube’s AI algorithms can find a 2-second clip of a song from Hamilton in my video, they can find a bunch of right-wingers planning to storm the Capitol or kidnap the Governor of Michigan, it’s just that they don’t want to.

COVID INVESTIGATION

Experts from the World Health Organization are due to arrive in China today/yesterday to investigate the origins of the coronavirus. They’ll meet with their counterparts from China, and the big question is whether they’ll visit Wuhan, which is ground zero.

This is notable because China is suffocating (figuratively) anyone trying to research the origins of the virus. Sure, people can research it, but if you want to publish the data or findings, it has to be approved by this brand-new task force that’s managed by China’s Cabinet. China’s Cabinet is directly commanded by, who else, Chinese President Xi Jinping. So, when it comes down to it, that means that research that is published is questionable at best.

In case you’re wondering what the Chinese people are hearing on their TVs, state media has resorted to pushing conspiracy theories that say the virus is actually from somewhere else, so that’s healthy.

This secrecy almost certainly led to warnings coming too late, not enough information getting to the World Health Organization, and slowed down testing early on.

Now, hopefully, we’ll be able to settle where this came from once and for all. Was it just someone eating an undercooked bat or pangolin? Were they studying coronaviruses in bats and then it accidentally got out? Reputable scientists say that it almost certainly came from bats and got to us through an intermediate animal that they eat from the wet markets over there, but the right-wing theory is that it was a weapon that got out.

I can’t remember if I said it on the podcast, but I think it came from a bat because of a crazy dream I had. Maybe I’ll revisit that when the WHO finishes their investigation (or sooner since that could be a while).

Thursday morning, former Democratic presidential candidate Andrew Yang officially joined the race to become Mayor of New York City.

Yang has already been criticized for his lack of engagement in the city's civic and political life before deciding to run for mayor. He’s also going to be cast as “out of touch”, and he made some comments in a recent interview that will give his critics some ammo when it comes to that, be he has lived in NYC since 1996.