Vaccine advice from the voices of life experience: Love Thy Neighbor

Unfortunately, I doubt any of the stupid anti-vaxxers will ever read this echo opinion letter published in Alabama's Opelika-Auburn News. Nevertheless, life experience can be as powerful a persuader as is the medical science about proving vaccine effectiveness and safety.  Will anti-vaxxers will listen?

An Auburn University nursing student gives a COVID-19 vaccine to a woman at EAMC’s virus vaccination site. Photo: Sara Palczewski/

A 98-year-old reader sounds off about the vaccine - and how to live a long life.  (Read and follow the voice of life experience!)

Three words of experience:

I write today to express the pleasure which reading Bruce Gladden's* letter gave me (see below). He wrote from a perspective that I wish every citizen shared, that we should be guided by science in matters of health, and our university system and leaders within it should speak in support of improving our well-being and that of the students under their care and tutelage.

Every year since World War II, the lifespan of Americans increased until this epidemic struck. No matter where you live or what concerns you have, getting a vaccine is the right thing to do.

Are you concerned about the national debt? Get the vaccine! Vaccines are free for citizens and cost the government about $20 each, vs. $1,250 if you get sick and require (and can get!) transfusion treatment.

Are you worried about rising medical costs? Get the vaccine! A stay in the ICU costs $3,000 to $12,000 per day.

Would you like your health insurance cost to decrease? Get the vaccine!

Would you like to go to football games, movies, restaurants, and church, and be able to sing or yell without being worried? 

Yep! Get a vaccine.

Let's show the world that American citizens are educated and will not be misled by social media or politicians and those dependent on them. We're smarter and more experienced than that, and you don't enjoy a long life, children, grandchildren, and more, without paying attention to the right people.

From Nell Wetzel

98 years old from Auburn, Alabama

* The following message was sent to leaders of the Auburn University administration, University Senate, Coach Bryan Harsin and Athletics Director Allen Greene, from Bruce Gladden, Ph.D., professor in the School of Kinesiology at Auburn University, where he has been since 1989:

                    Thank you Bruce Gladden, Ph.D., Auburn University

"I feel like I am living in Bizarro World. This morning I received an email invitation to a Football Preseason Kickoff for Saturday, Aug. 28. This is during a time when:

• East Alabama Medical Center ICU is nearing full capacity.
• Rate of COVID-19 cases is soaring in Alabama.
• Evidence that the Delta variant can be passed outdoors when people are close to each other, especially without masks and for extended periods of time.
• Vaccination rate in Alabama is near the bottom of the entire U.S.
• Alabama has passed a law against vaccine mandates and against even asking students or employees if they have been vaccinated
•  Vaccination rate of Auburn University faculty and staff is somewhere between 33% and 60% according to different sources (I’m not aware of any official number)
•  Vaccine rate among AU students is unknown but likely lower than faculty and staff
• AU football coach will apparently not even say whether he has received the vaccine.
• No substantial public outreach from AU Athletics encouraging vaccination, nor information about vaccination rates among AU athletes. 

At least the University of Alabama Athletics Department has been very public about vaccine encouragement – witness public service announcements from Coach Saban, and the University of Mississippi touts its 100% vaccination rate in its Athletics Department. We know that Coach Saban is a great football coach, but it now appears that he also understands science better than our folks at AU. Athletics is given such huge emphasis at AU, and now is a time when it could actually be helping to save lives, but instead it’s throwing a party.

I’ve always thought that a university is a place where science is front-most and center. I’m questioning that view about Auburn right now. Despite these comments which I intend to be direct and to the point, I do appreciate your efforts on behalf of Auburn University. Hoping for the good health and success of all of us.”

Since then, I have received exactly one response. That response came from the Auburn University's Executive Director of Public Affairs, and it essentially restated Auburn University’s policies on COVID-19, including the following statement: “The top priority of the university in all decisions is the health, safety and well-being of the campus community.” In the meantime since my message, all ICU beds in Alabama became occupied, and Coach Harsin tested positive for COVID. Back in July, Coach Harsin stated that taking the vaccine was “an intensely personal decision.” I beg to differ. When declining vaccination means that you are more likely to pass the infection to others, more likely to permit the development of a more dangerous variant and more likely to cause serious illness, hospitalization (including placing strain on health care facilities and workers) and death of others, it hardly seems an intensely personal decision. Instead, it seems that it’s a Golden Rule decision; “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” I also find it ironic that some evangelical Christians are among those refusing the vaccine, given that Jesus said, “Love thy neighbor as thyself.”

Auburn University continues to advertise the Auburn Family Football Preseason Kickoff, and local high schools continue to fill stadiums for games. 

It appears that their answer to the greatest pandemic in our lifetime is, “Party on!” I guess that’s a personal decision also. As Dr. Fred Kam did in a recent Plainsman letter, I call on everyone to take responsibility for keeping Auburn (the University, the City and the surrounding communities) healthy during this challenging time.

L. Frank Baum can teach cowardly Democrats to follow Cheney up the Yellow Brick Road

In my opinion, many Democrats need the infusion of L. Frank Baum, author of The Wizard of Oz, as they trip up the Yellow Brick Road to find the courage needed to challenge the Former Guy Donald Trump. Representative Liz Cheney is the right wizard who might give courage to the cowards who are reticent in the face of right wing Trumpziism. 

Rep. Liz Cheney might not see herself as an example of Dorothy, in The Wizard of Oz but somebody must lead Democrats to learn about courage in the face of challenging Trumpziism! 

Check out this 60-Minutes with Lesley Stahl and Representative Liz Cheney.

An echo opinion by essay writer Thomas L. Friedman published in The New York Times. 

A few months ago I had the chance to have a long conversation with Wyoming Representative Liz Cheney. While we disagreed on many policy issues, I could not have been more impressed with her unflinching argument that Donald Trump represented an unprecedented threat to American democracy. I was also struck by her commitment to risk her re-election, all the issues she cares about, and even physical harm, to not only vote for Trump’s impeachment but also help lead the House investigation of the Jan. 6 insurrection.

At the end of our conversation, though, I could only shake my head and ask: Liz, how could there be only one of you?

She could only shake her head back.

Congresswoman Liz Cheney is the daughter of former Vice-President Dick Cheney and she is the Republican Congressional Representative for the citizens of Wyoming.

After all, a recent avalanche of news stories and books leaves not a shred of doubt that Trump was attempting to enlist his vice president, his Justice Department and pliant Republican state legislators in a coup d’état to stay in the White House based on fabricated claims of election fraud.

Nearly the entire G.O.P. caucus (save for Cheney and Representative Adam Kinzinger, who is also risking his all to join the Jan. 6 investigation, and a few other Republicans who defied Trump on impeachment) has shamelessly bowed to Trump’s will or decided to quietly retire.

They are all complicit in the greatest political sin imaginable: destroying faith in our nation’s most sacred process, the peaceful and legitimate transfer of power through free and fair elections. Looking at how Trump and his cult are now laying the groundwork — with new laws, bogus audits, fraud allegations and the installation of more pliant state election officials to ensure victory in 2024 no matter what the count — there is no question that America’s 245-year experiment in democracy is in real peril.

Our next presidential election could well be our last as a shining example of democracy.

Just listen to Cheney. Addressing her fellow Republicans on “60 Minutes” on Sunday, she noted that when they abet Trump’s delegitimization of the last election, “in the face of rulings of the courts, in the face of recounts, in the face of everything that’s gone on to demonstrate that there was not fraud … we are contributing to the undermining of our system. And it’s a really serious and dangerous moment because of that.”

This is Code Red. And that leads me to the Democrats in Congress.

I have only one question for them: Are you ready to risk a lot less than Liz Cheney did to do what is necessary right now — from your side — to save our democracy?

Because, when one party in our two-party system completely goes rogue, it falls on the other party to act. Democrats have to do three things at the same time: advance their agenda, protect the integrity of our elections and prevent this unprincipled Trump-cult version of the G.O.P. from ever gaining national power again.

It is a tall order and a wholly unfair burden in many ways. But if Cheney is ready to risk everything to stop Trump, then Democrats — both moderates and progressives — must rise to this moment and forge the majorities needed in the Senate and House to pass the bipartisan infrastructure bill (now scheduled for a Thursday vote in the House), a voting rights bill and as much of the Build Back Better legislation as moderate and progressives can agree on.

If the Democrats instead form a circular firing squad, and all three of these major bills get scattered to the winds and the Biden presidency goes into a tailspin — and the Trump Republicans retake the House and Senate and propel Trump back into the White House — there will be no chance later. Later will be too late for the country as we know it.

So, I repeat: Do Representative Josh Gottheimer, the leader of the centrist Democrats in the House, and Representative Pramila Jayapal, leader of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, have the guts to stop issuing all-or-nothing ultimatums and instead give each other ironclad assurances that they will do something hard?

Yes, they will each risk the wrath of some portion of their constituencies to reach a compromise on passing infrastructure now and voting rights and the Build Back Better social spending soon after — without anyone getting all that they wanted, but both sides getting a whole lot. It’s called politics.

And are centrist Democratic Senators Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema ready to risk not being re-elected the way Liz Cheney has by forging a substantive compromise to ensure that consequential election integrity, infrastructure and Build Back Better measures go forward? Or are they just the Democratic equivalents of the careerist hacks keeping Trump afloat — people so attached to their $174,000 salaries and free parking at Reagan National Airport that they will risk nothing?

And, frankly, is the Biden White House ready to forge this compromise with whatever pressures, Oval Office teas, inducements, pork and seductions are needed? It could energize the public a lot more by never referring to this F.D.R.-scale social reform package as “reconciliation” and only calling it by its actual substance: universal pre-K, home health care for the sick and elderly, lower prescription drug prices, strengthened Obamacare, cleaner energy, green jobs and easier access to college education that begins a long-overdue leveling of the playing field between the wealthy and the working class. 

Also, the White House needs to sell it not only to urban Democrats but to rural Republicans, who will benefit as well.

The progressives need to have the courage to accept less than they want. They also could use a little more humility by acknowledging that spending trillions of dollars at once might have some unintended effects — and far more respect for the risk-takers who create jobs, whom they never have a good word for. If Biden’s presidency is propelled forward and seen as a success for everyday Americans, Democrats can hold the Senate and House and come back for more later.

The moderates need to have the courage to give the progressives much more than the moderates prefer. Income and opportunity gaps in America helped to produce Trump; they will be our undoing if they persist.

We’re not writing the Ten Commandments here. We’re doing horse-trading. Just do it.

None of the Democratic lawmakers will be risking their careers by such a compromise, which is child’s play compared with facing the daily wrath of running for re-election in the most pro-Trump state in America, Wyoming, while denouncing Trump as the greatest threat to our democracy.

But I fear common sense may not win out. As Minnesota Democratic Representative Dean Phillips (a relative) remarked to me after Tuesday’s caucus of House Democrats: “The absence of pragmatism among Democrats is as troubling as the absence of principle among Republicans.”

Pope Francis and the right wing Catholic media: The work of the devil

Maine Writer: Pope Francis is a Holy Man!

Echo report by Gerard O'Connell published in America Magazine

Bratislava, Slovakia: When a Jesuit in Slovakia asked Pope Francis “How are you?”, the pope stunned them with his answer: “Still alive, even though some people wanted me to die.”

Pope Francis in Cathedral of Saint Martin, in Bratislava, Slovakia

“There were even meetings between prelates who thought the pope’s condition was more serious than the official version. They were preparing for the conclave,” Pope Francis said.

That statement was not the only striking piece of information given by the pope during his conversation with 53 Jesuits from Slovakia. The group met at the nunciature in Bratislava on Sept. 12 during the pope’s visit to the country. Antonio Spadaro, S.J., the editor in chief of the Jesuit magazine La Civiltà Cattolica,was present at the meeting and published the full transcript of the conversation today.

During the Q&A session, another Jesuit told Francis that in the Slovak church “some even see you as heterodox, while others idealize you. We Jesuits try to overcome this division.” He asked the pope, “How do you deal with people who look at you with suspicion?”

Pope Francis remarked, “There is, for example, a large Catholic television channel that has no hesitation in continually speaking ill of the pope.” He said: “I personally deserve attacks and insults because I am a sinner, but the church does not deserve them. They are the work of the devil. I have also said this to some of them.”

While Francis did not name the “large Catholic television channel” in his answer, his remark “I have also said this to some of them” offers a clue as to which station he was referring to. 

America has learned from three different Vatican officials, who asked for anonymity because they were not authorized to speak, that the Pope touched on this same topic on his flight from Rome to Baghdad on March 5, when he greeted each of the journalists on the flight.

On that occasion, when the pope reached EWTN’s reporter and cameraman, one of them told him they were praying for him. He responded that maybe Mother Angelica, EWTN’s founder, is in heaven praying for him, but that they—referring to the entire network—“should stop speaking badly about me.” He used the Italian word sparlare, which means “to bad-mouth,” “to say nasty things” or “to speak ill of.” America’s Vatican correspondent was on the papal flight and learned this immediately after the visit to Iraq.

EWTN and its associated publications, the National Catholic Register and Catholic News Agency, along with its more than 500 radio affiliates, have been highly critical of Pope Francis. The National Catholic Register was one of two outlets that published the former nuncio to the United States and QAnon conspiracy theorist Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò’s explosive 2018 “testimony” calling on the pope to resign. Raymond Arroyo, the host of EWTN’s “The World Over,” has interviewed many of Pope Francis’ most fervent critics, including Archbishop Viganò, Trump adviser Steve Bannon and Cardinal Raymond Burke.

But, Pope Francis told the Slovak Jesuits, it is not only a Catholic television channel that speaks badly about him. “There are also clerics who make nasty comments about me,” he said. “I sometimes lose patience, especially when they make judgments without entering into a real dialogue. I can’t do anything there. However, I go on without entering their world of ideas and fantasies. I don’t want to enter it, and that’s why I prefer to preach.”

Francis added, “Some people accuse me of not talking about holiness. They say I always talk about social issues and that I’m a Communist. Yet, I wrote an entire apostolic exhortation on holiness, ‘Gaudete et Exsultate'.”

Sanctuary inside the Cathedral of Saint Martin in Bratislava

Commenting on his decision to issue “Traditionis Custodes,” restricting the celebration of the Tridentine Latin Mass and liturgy, Pope Francis said, “I hope that with the decision to stop [allowing priests to automatically opt in to celebrating] the ancient rite, we can return to the true intentions of Benedict XVI and John Paul II,” who hoped to maintain church unity and heal schisms by approving celebrations of the pre-Vatican II Mass.

Pope Francis reiterated that his decision was “the result of a consultation with all the bishops of the world made last year,” which, he said in a note accompanying the decision, showed him that the opportunity to celebrate the Tridentine Mass, intended to foster unity, was instead “exploited” to increase divisions in the church.

Pope Francis responds to attacks from EWTN and other church critics: ‘They are the work of the devil.’

Speaking to the Slovak Jesuits, the Pope said, “From now on those who want to celebrate with the vetus ordo [the old form of the Mass]must ask permission from Rome, as is done with biritualism,” that is, permission to celebrate in two different rites, like the Byzantine and Roman rites.

“There are young people who after a month of ordination go to the bishop to ask for [permission to celebrate the Tridentine Mass],” the pope continued. “This is a phenomenon that indicates that we are going backward.”

He told the story of a cardinal who was visited by two newly ordained priests asking for permission to study Latin. “With a sense of humor, he replied, ‘But there are many Hispanics in the diocese! Study Spanish to be able to preach. Then, when you have studied Spanish, come back to me, and I’ll tell you how many Vietnamese there are in the diocese, and I’ll ask you to study Vietnamese. Then, when you have learned Vietnamese, I will give you permission to study Latin.’”

Francis said that the cardinal made the young priests “‘land’; he made them return to earth.”

“I go ahead, not because I want to start a revolution,” he said. “I do what I feel I must do. It takes a lot of patience, prayer and a lot of charity.”

Another Jesuit who had lived in both Slovakia and Switzerland told the pope that he had experienced “pastoral creativity” while the church was repressed under Communist rule in Slovakia, but that more recently he had seen “that many people want to go back or seek certainties in the past…. What vision of church can we follow?”

Pope Francis responded: “Life scares us…. Freedom scares us. In a world that is so conditioned by addictions and virtual experiences, it frightens us to be free.” He cited a passage from “The Grand Inquisitor” scene from Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov, in which the inquisitor approaches Christ and “reproaches Jesus for having given us freedom: a bit of bread would have been enough and nothing more.”

“That is why today we look back to the past: to seek security,” the Pope said. “It frightens us to celebrate [Mass] before the people of God who look us in the face and tell us the truth. It frightens us to go forward in pastoral experiences. I think of the work that was done—Father Spadaro was present—at the Synod on the Family to make it understood that couples in second unions are not already condemned to hell. It frightens us to accompany people with sexual diversity.”

The first Jesuit Pope concluded his answer, “Today, I believe that the Lord is asking the Society to be free in the areas of prayer and discernment. It is a fascinating time, a beautiful moment, even if it is that of the cross.”

Another Jesuit asked the Pope about his frequent references to “ideological colonization,” a term the pope has often tied to the idea that gender is separate from biological sex.

“Ideology always has a diabolical appeal, as you say, because it is not embodied,” the Pope said. “The ‘gender’ ideology of which you speak is dangerous, yes. As I understand it, it is so because it is abstract with respect to the concrete life of a person, as if a person could decide abstractly at will if and when to be a man or a woman. Abstraction is always a problem for me.”

The pope emphasized: “This has nothing to do with the homosexual issue, though. If there is a homosexual couple, we can do pastoral work with them, move forward in our encounter with Christ.”

Francis concluded, “When I talk about ideology, I’m talking about the idea, the abstraction in which everything is possible, not about the concrete life of people and their real situation.”

Nursing 101: Hospitals cannot open beds when there is a nursing shortage

Nurses are leaving the profession, and replacing them won’t be easy- Echo essay published in The Conversation.

Nurse workforce retention!

"Despite more awareness of the challenges nurses currently face, nurse staffing and its impact on patient safety have been studied for more than 20 years. My role as a nurse researcher and assistant professor at the University of South Florida is to evaluate the needs of the nursing workforce and design and implement programs to address them," Rayna M. Letourneau.

The fourth wave of COVID-19 is exacerbating the ongoing crisis for the nursing workforce and has led to burnout for many nurses. 

As a result, many are quitting their jobs in substantial numbers all across the country, with 62% of hospitals reporting a nurse vacancy rate higher than 7.5%, according to a 2021 NSI Nursing Solutions report.

But the global pandemic has only worsened problems that have long existed within the nursing profession – in particular, widespread stress and burnout, health and safety issues, depression and work-related post-traumatic stress disorder, and even increased risk of suicide.

In addition, nurses need to contend with growing workloads and inadequate staffing, or not having the right number of nurses on the right units to ensure that patients receive safe quality care. Mandatory overtime is another challenge and occurs when nurses must work extra hours beyond their shift because of staffing shortages. 

All of these issues can lead to low job satisfaction among nurses and are likely to contribute to nurses’ leaving the profession, a trend that began well before the current pandemic struck.

Despite more awareness of the challenges nurses currently face, nurse staffing and its impact on patient safety have been studied for more than 20 years. My role as a nurse researcher and assistant professor at the University of South Florida is to evaluate the needs of the nursing workforce and design and implement programs to address them.

Here’s why the pandemic has made the nursing shortage even worse, and why I think health care leaders need to make bold changes to address the well-being of nurses – for the sake of nurses and patient care in our country.

Disruptions in health care delivery

Nurses, like many health care workers, are physically and emotionally exhausted after working in what has been described as a “war zone” for the better part of the past year and a half. One nurse on the front lines reported irreversible damage from the trauma of caring for extremely sick patients. Others are experiencing shortages of oxygen, equipment and other needed supplies to keep themselves safe and to keep their patients alive.


As more nurses leave the workforce, patient care will no doubt suffer. Research has shown a relationship between nurse staffing ratios and patient safety. Increased workload and stress can put nurses in situations that are more likely to lead to medical errors. Lower nurse staffing and higher patient loads per nurse are associated with an increased risk for patients of dying in the hospital.

Sarah Flannagan, R.N. on Twitter: "The damage is irreversible, many of us who leave will vow to never go back to the bedside. We are already scarred & the scars just continue to grow. You can’t say we didn’t warn you. You can’t say you didn’t know. Profits were prioritized over people."

Because hospitals cannot open beds if there are no nurses to staff them, some hospitals are being forced to shut down emergency rooms and turn away patients in need of medical care. 

That is a problem for not only hospitals in large cities; rural hospitals are also struggling. Alarmingly, some hospitals are considering the need to potentially ration medical care.

Some hospitals are addressing the shortage

Hospitals are desperate to fill nursing vacancies. One hospital system in South Dakota is offering incentives as large as US$40,000 sign-on bonuses to recruit nurses to work in the clinical areas that are in most need. This may be a great attempt to draw nurses to an institution, but sign-on bonuses and incentives might not be enough to persuade some nurses to work at the bedside and continue contending with the current workload of the pandemic.

Another strategy to fill vacancies is the use (Maine Writer, many say "over use") of travel nurses. Travel nurses work for agencies that assign them to hospitals that cannot fill vacancies with their own staff. Although this can be a successful short-term solution, the use of travel nurses is not sustainable over time and it does not help retain experienced staff nurses in an organization. 

Travel nurses make significantly more money than staff nurses, which may lure nurses away from permanent positions and in turn increase the staffing deficit for hospitals. The average salary for a travel nurse in the U.S. is $2,003 per week, with $13,750 in overtime per year. Some nurses even accept “crisis assignments,” which can pay as much as $10,000 per week. That is significantly higher than the average of $1,450 per week ($36.22 per hour) for a staff nurse.

Focus on nurses’ well-being

For the past 18 years, nursing has been identified as the most trusted profession. Nurses are caregivers, role models, educators, mentors and advocates and have a direct impact on the health and well-being of patients. The health of the nation’s nursing workforce is fundamental to our health care industry. As identified by a 2021 National Academy of Medicine report, nurse well-being and resilience are needed to ensure the delivery of high-quality care and to improve the health of the nation.

Research demonstrates that people with higher levels of well-being have lower levels of burnout and perform better at work. 

Therefore, some hospitals and unions are offering resources and programs to nurses during the COVID-19 pandemic that seek to reduce stress, promote resiliency and increase well-being. 

We have yet to see the long-term effectiveness of these programs on the health and wellness of nurses.

While nurses are responsible for prioritizing self-care, health care organizations are responsible for creating a workplace environment in which nurses can flourish. Nurses report fewer medical errors when their well-being is supported by their organizations and they are in better physical and mental health.

A long-term solution to the nursing shortage calls for systematic changes that value nurses and offer them a safe place to work.

Examples include implementing appropriate salaries and flexible schedules, ensuring adequate nurse staffing, and creating jobs that allow aging nurses to continue working in direct patient care roles so they can remain in the workforce longer instead of retiring. The pandemic has made more people aware of the distressing conditions many nurses work in. 

Unfortunately, without systematic changes, the drain of nurses out of the profession – and its negative impact on patient care – will only continue.

Rayna M. Letourneau, Ph.D., R.N., is assistant professor of nursing at University of South Florida.  Dr. Letourneau's research focuses on nursing workforce development, transition to practice, and quality and safety education for nurses.

President Joe Biden is the winner of the 2020 presidential election! #ArizonaBust

Echo in stero!

How can we teach Cyber Ninjas how to count? This group of right wing cult followers make false election claims because they obviously do not know how to count!

PHOENIX, Arizona -- A Republican-backed review of the 2020, presidential election in Arizona's largest county ended Friday, without producing proof to support former President Donald Trump's claims of a stolen election.  #ArizonaBust
'Irresponsible and dangerous': Maricopa County responds to questions raised in Arizona audit- Twisted logic!

"The bogus Cyber Ninjas’ opinions come from a misuse and misunderstanding of the data provided by the county and are twisted to fit the narrative that something went wrong," County Board Chairman Jack Sellers said in a statement shortly after the three-hour presentation ended.

After six months of searching for evidence of fraud, the firm hired by Republican lawmakers issued a report that experts described as riddled with errors, bias and flawed methodology. Even that partisan review came up with a vote tally that would not have altered the outcome, finding that President Joe Biden won by 360 ++= more votes than the official results certified last year.

(FYI to Cyber Ninjas! In Elections 101, the first requirement is to learn how to count.  Like 1...2....3....etc.  Then, in Elections 201, we must learn how to add.  Like 1  plus 2 = 3, etc.  In a democratic election, the person who earns the most votes is the one who wins! Just so you know.)

The finding was an underwhelming end to a widely criticized quest to prove claims that election officials and courts have rejected. It has no bearing on the final, certified results.

Previous reviews by nonpartisan professionals have found no significant problem with the vote count in Maricopa County, home to Phoenix.

Still, for many critics, the conclusions reached by the firm Cyber Ninjas and presented at a hearing Friday, underscored the dangerous futility of the exercise, which has helped fuel skepticism about the validity of the 2020 election.

"We haven't learned anything new," said Matt Masterson, a top U.S. election security official in the Trump administration. "What we have learned from all this is that the Ninjas were paid millions of dollars, politicians raised millions of dollars and Americans' trust in democracy is lower."  (So, in fact, the entire futile and expensive vote audit undertaking was a waste of time, but the effort may have been a zero sum game. In loosing the purpose, i.e., President Biden actually gained more votes as a result, the overriding objective was achieved. In other words, in creating doubt about election outcomes, the audit caused skepticism about the integrity of the democratic process.)

Other critics said the true purpose of the audit already may have been realized. It spread complex allegations about ballot irregularities and software issues, fueling doubts about elections, said Adrian Fontes, a Democrat who oversaw the Maricopa County election office last year.

"They are trying to scare people into doubting the system is actually working," he said. "That is their motive. They want to destroy public confidence in our systems."

The review was authorized by the Republican-controlled state Senate, which subpoenaed the election records from Maricopa County and selected the inexperienced, pro-Trump auditors.

The Arizona report claims a number of shortcomings in election procedures and suggested the final tally still could not be relied upon. Several were challenged by election experts, while members of the Republican-led county Board of Supervisors, which oversees elections, disputed claims on Twitter.

"Unfortunately, the report is also littered with errors & faulty conclusions about how Maricopa County conducted the 2020 General Election," county officials tweeted.

Election officials say that's because the review team is biased, ignored the detailed vote-counting procedures in Arizona law and had no experience in the complex field of election audits.

Odd Methodology!

Two of the report's recommendations stood out because they showed its authors misunderstood election procedures -- that there should be paper ballot backups and that voting machines should not be connected to the internet. All Maricopa ballots already are paper, with machines used only to tabulate the votes, and those tabulators are not connected to the internet.

[DOCUMENT: Read Cyber Ninjas' draft report on their findings in Maricopa County, Ariz. » arkansasonline.com/925cyberninjas/]

The review also checked the names of voters against a commercial database, finding 23,344 reported moving before ballots went out in October. While the review suggests something improper, election officials note that voters like college students, those who own vacation homes or military members can move temporarily while still legally voting at the address where they are registered.

"A competent reviewer of an election would not make a claim like that," said Trey Grayson, a former Republican secretary of state in Kentucky.

The election review was run by Cyber Ninjas CEO Doug Logan, whose firm has never conducted an election audit before. Logan previously worked with attorneys and Trump supporters trying to overturn the 2020 election and appeared in a film questioning the results of the contest while the ballot review was ongoing.

Logan and others involved with the review presented their findings to two Arizona senators Friday. It kicked off with Shiva Ayyadurai, a coronavirus vaccine skeptic who claims to have invented email, presenting an analysis relying on "pattern recognition" that flagged purported anomalies in the way mail ballots were processed at the end of the election. (OMG! Crazy is as crazy does!)

Maricopa County tweeted that the pattern was simply the election office following state law.

"'Anomaly' seems to be another way of saying the Senate's contractors don't understand election processes," the county posted during the testimony.

Logan followed up by acknowledging "the ballots that were provided for us to count ... very accurately correlated with the official canvass."

He then continued to flag statistical discrepancies -- including the voters who moved -- that he said merited further investigation.

The review has a history of exploring outlandish conspiracy theories, dedicating time to checking for bamboo fibers on ballots to see if they were secretly shipped in from Asia. It's also served as a content-generation machine for Trump's effort to sow skepticism about his loss, pumping out misleading and out-of-context information that the former president circulates long after it's been debunked.

In July, for example, Logan laid out a series of claims stemming from his misunderstanding of the election data he was analyzing, including that 74,000 mail ballots were recorded as received but not sent.

Trump repeatedly amplified the claims. Logan had compared two databases that track different things.

Arizona's Senate agreed to spend $150,000 on the review, plus security and facility costs. That pales in comparison to the nearly $5.7 million contributed as of late July, by (stupid!) Trump allies.

Maricopa County's official vote count was conducted in front of bipartisan observers, as were legally required audits meant to ensure voting machines work properly. A partial hand-count spot check found a perfect match.

Two extra postelection reviews by federally certified election experts also found no evidence that voting machines switched votes or were connected to the internet. The county Board of Supervisors commissioned the extraordinary reviews in an effort to prove to Trump backers that there were no problems.

On Friday, Senate President Karen Fann sent a letter to Republican Attorney General Mark Brnovich, urging him to investigate issues the report flagged. However, she noted the review found the official count matched the ballots.

"This is the most important and encouraging finding of the audit," Fann wrote.

Trump issued statements Friday falsely claiming the results demonstrated "fraud."

(Yawn!) Other $$$$State Reviews

Despite being widely pilloried, the Arizona review has become a model that Trump supporters are pushing to replicate in other swing states where Biden won. It has intensified the fight over similar partisan ballot reviews in Pennsylvania, Texas and Wisconsin, with Trump pressing for such examinations and Democrats stepping up their efforts to block them.

A day earlier, Trump demanded that Gov. Greg Abbott, a Republican, open a similar audit in Texas, even though the former president easily won the state and its top elections official declared in March that 2020 voting "was smooth and secure."

Abbott, a potential 2024 presidential contender, responded hours later with an announcement from the secretary of state's office that a "full and comprehensive forensic audit" would take place -- and that it was already underway in four large counties, three of which voted for Biden.

That was news to Clay Jenkins, the top elected official in Dallas County, who said none of the four counties -- Dallas, Harris, Tarrant and Collin -- have received word from state officials.

"I don't believe at this moment that an audit has started in any of these counties," said Jenkins, a Democrat. "What I believe is that once again our weak governor has caved to our former disgraced president. It's sad to see someone being led around by a puppeteer."

A spokeswoman for Abbott did not respond to a request for comment.

Pennsylvania's Democratic attorney general, Josh Shapiro, sued Thursday to block a GOP-issued subpoena for a wide array of election materials.

"I never in a million years would have thought that the party that's supposed to be about limited government and personal privacy would try to compromise the personal, private data of 9 million Pennsylvanians to further the 'big lie' -- and to do so on the taxpayer's dime," Shapiro said in an interview Friday.

In Wisconsin, a retired conservative state Supreme Court justice is leading a Republican-ordered investigation into the 2020 election, and this week threatened to subpoena election officials who don't comply.

Michael Gableman has come under fire for using an unsecure private email account to send instructions to county clerks about preserving evidence related to the 2020 election. The retired justice also caused a furor when he suggested in a video posted on YouTube that the burden fell to county clerks to prove that the election was not tainted.

Some Wisconsin clerks have balked at the effort and have sought help from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to resist any demands that they hand over voter information or election machinery that could compromise national security, according to Dane County clerk Scott McDonell, a Democrat. A department spokeswoman declined to comment on the query.

None of the reviews can change Biden's victory, which was certified by officials in each of the swing states he won and by Congress on Jan. 6 -- after Trump's supporters, fueled by the same false claims that generated the audits, stormed the U.S. Capitol to try to prevent certification of his loss.

Information for this article was contributed by Bob Christie and Christina Cassidy, Jonathan Cooper and Nicholas Riccardi of The Associated Press and by Amy Gardner of The Washington Post.

Vaccine arithmetic 101: Vaccines are effective and free

Cases of ivermectin poisoning.

Echo opinion letter published in Tuscon.com

After reading about the use of Ivermectin (use to treat infections caused by some parasitic worms, and head lice and skin conditions- used by #TFG cult to treat COVID), one opinion writer reflects growing up in Wyoming. 

Right Wing #TFG cult would rather pay for horse medicine! 

My Tweet:

Juliana L'Heureux@julianawriter
@FoxNews More evidence about #TFG cult are arithmetic challenged! These obsessed #AntiVaxxer people would rather pay average retail price for the useless anti-worm drug #Ivermectin taken by idiots is $107.99 but @pfizer @moderna_tx & @JNJNews is #FREEVaccine @CNN #VaccinesWork

Local ranchers used an array of veterinary medicines; antibiotics for infections, vaccines to prevent infection and anti-parasitics to deworm.

Following misinformation from (snake oil sales!) conservative commentators and podcasts, many are self treating with an “off the shelf” dewormer, now resulting in overloading ER’s and ICU’s. Ivermectin apparently is effective on cattle, horses, jackasses and “delusional” elephants . 

After discharge from treatment, at least those users should be parasite free. But the rest of us, after an exasperating four years, see the continued side effects of the worst (stupidity!) parasite to ever infect America . Please be considerate of your fellow human being as we are all on this small planet together. Educate , Vaccinate and Vote !!!

Jonathan Schultz - Northwest side Tuscon Arizona

Republicans deliberately instigate expensive election chaos

Associated Press echo report:

#RepublicansAreTheProblem

PHOENIX (AP) — Ten months after Donald Trump lost his 2020, reelection bid in Arizona, supporters hired by Arizona Senate Republicans were preparing to deliver the results of an unprecedented partisan election review that is the climax of a bizarre quest to find evidence supporting the former president’s false claim that he lost because of fraud.

Arizona 2020 election audit in Maricopa County turned out to increase the President Biden 2020, winning vote margin.

Nearly every allegation made by the review team so far has crumbled under scrutiny. Election officials in Arizona and around the country expect more of the same Friday from the review team they say is biased, incompetent and chasing absurd or disproven conspiracy theories.

“Every time Trump and his supporters have been given a forum to prove this case, they have swung and missed,” said Ben Ginsberg, a longtime Republican election attorney and vocal critic of Trump’s push to overturn the election.

The unprecedented partisan review — focused on the vote count in Arizona’s largest county, Maricopa — is led and funded largely by people who already believe that Trump was the true winner, despite dozens of lawsuits and extraordinary scrutiny that found no problems that could change the outcome. They’ve ignored the detailed vote-counting procedures in Arizona law.

Despite being widely mocked, the Arizona review has become a model that Trump supporters are eagerly pushing to replicate in other swing states where Biden won. Pennsylvania’s Democratic attorney general sued Thursday to block a GOP-issued subpoena for a wide array of election materials. In Wisconsin, a retired conservative state Supreme Court justice is leading a Republican-ordered investigation into the 2020 election, and this week threatened to subpoena election officials who don’t comply.

No matter what the reviews in Arizona and elsewhere purport to find, they cannot reverse Biden’s victory.

In Arizona, five people are scheduled to publicly outline the findings for two top Republicans in the state Senate chamber, including Doug Logan, the CEO of Cyber Ninjas, a cybersecurity consulting firm with no election experience. He served as the head of the review team despite his prior work to promote “stop the steal” election conspiracies.

Shiva Ayyadurai, who has developed a loyal following for promoting COVID-19 misinformation on social media, will discuss his review of signatures on mail ballots. It’s not clear why he is qualified to do so. Ayyadurai, who is known as Dr. Shiva to his fans, has a Ph.D. but is not a medical doctor.

Ben Cotton, a computer forensics expert, will outline his analysis of vote-counting machines. Cotton has walked back his allegation that a key elections database was deleted.

Also scheduled to speak are Ken Bennett, a former Republican secretary of state, and Randy Pullen, a former chairman of the Arizona Republican Party. Both served as liaisons between the Senate and the review team.

They’ve been tight-lipped about their findings, but Bennett told a conservative radio host this week that he will “have a brief report about where Maricopa County failed to meet and comply with state statutes and election procedures.”

A document purported to be a leaked draft of the Cyber Ninjas report circulated late Thursday. It said a hand count of ballots confirmed Biden’s victory and showed a net gain of 360 votes for him. It also outlined a series of alleged shortcomings and recommended changes to state election laws.

Republican Senate President Karen Fann said in a text message the document was “a leaked draft from three days ago,” but did not dispute its authenticity. 

In fact, Fann would not say if the findings from the draft had changed over the course of the week, citing a nondisclosure agreement. (OMG!)

“I have signed an NDA,” she said. “I will not break my word.”

The hand count’s confirmation of a Biden victory goes against Trump’s narrative that widespread election fraud cost him the election. It also undercuts claims by some of this closest allies that vote-counting machines from Dominion Voting Systems, which were used in Maricopa County, changed votes.

“Unfortunately, the report is also littered with errors & faulty conclusions about how Maricopa County conducted the 2020, General Election,” Maricopa County officials said on Twitter.

The Maricopa County Board of Supervisors, controlled 4-1 by Republicans, has vehemently defended the vote count. Republican Chairman Jack Sellers has called the review “a grift disguised as an audit.” GOP Supervisor Bill Gates said Thursday that the review’s reliance on funding from out-of-state Trump allies means the findings won’t be believable.

“The people who are funding this audit, the people who have called for this audit, we all know what they want it to find,” Gates said. “They want it to find that Donald Trump won Maricopa County.”

The Senate has agreed to spend $150,000 on the audit, plus security and facility costs. That pales in comparison to the nearly $5.7 million contributed as of late July by Trump allies.

Another Republican county supervisor, Clint Hickman, has been the subject of an outlandish conspiracy theory claiming a fire that killed 120,000 chickens at his family’s egg farm west of Phoenix was a ruse to destroy evidence of Trump’s victory.

Maricopa County’s vote count was conducted in front of bipartisan observers, as were legally required audits meant to ensure voting machines work properly. A partial hand count spot check found a perfect match.

Two extra post-election reviews by federally certified election experts also found no evidence that voting machines switched votes or were connected to the internet. The Board of Supervisors commissioned the extraordinary reviews in an effort to prove to Trump backers that there were no problems, but Fann and others backing her partisan review were unpersuaded.

Election experts predict the report could misinterpret normal election procedures to claim something nefarious or elevate minor mistakes into major allegations of wrongdoing.

“They’re minor procedural issues, and to try and amplify them to the point where they cast doubt on the election is nothing more than sore loserism,” said David Becker, a former lawyer in the U.S. Department of Justice voting section who founded the Center for Election Innovation and Research.

Biden won Maricopa County by 45,109 votes and Arizona by 10,457 votes. Minor procedural issues wouldn’t affect a margin that large, Becker said.

In July, Logan laid out a series of claims stemming from his misunderstanding of the election data he was analyzing, including that 74,000 mail ballots that were recorded as received but not sent. Trump repeatedly amplified the claims. But they had innocuous explanations.

Friday’s report stems from a process that began nearly a year ago. Trump and his allies, after their claims of election fraud were repeatedly dismissed in court, searched frantically for a way to block the certification of Biden’s victory on Jan. 6. Two top Republicans in the Arizona Senate came through, issuing a sweeping subpoena for all ballots in Maricopa County, the machines that counted them and a trove of election data. They said they would use the materials to conduct a “forensic audit.”

A court battle over the validity of the subpoena delayed the delivery of materials until April, three months after Biden took office. The review was supposed to take about 60 days but has been repeatedly set back, most recently because Logan and four others on his team contracted COVID-19.

The review has energized Trump supporters who hope it will prove he was the legitimate winner of the election and lead to his return to the White House, despite extraordinary scrutiny finding no fraud that would affect the election’s outcome.

Fann, the Republican Senate president, says the review is not intended to overturn the 2020 election but will find ways the Legislature can improve election laws.

Not all Republicans, even in the Senate, trust whatever results will come out of the review.

“They’re going to have to justify their existence, so they’re going to have to come up with something,” GOP Sen. Paul Boyer said Thursday. “And God knows what that is.”
___

Associated Press writer Bob Christie contributed.

Idaho population is in a daunting COVID crisis - #vaccineswork

Idaho population is 1.787 million people.  In COVID blogging, I have seen this low population state report an average of over 1,000 infections a day for over 18 months. How many thousands of Idaho people are COVID protected when, simple arithmetic, the entire state should already be infected?  Nevertheless, Idaho is in a COVID crisis as reported on September 21, 2021, by the Idaho Statesman.

‘Unprecedented event in modern medicine’: St. Luke’s doctor details Idaho COVID crisis. This news report was written by Ian Max Stevenson, published in the Idaho Statesman. 

On Sept. 16, the day Idaho’s Department of Health and Welfare began allowing crisis standards of care at hospital systems across the whole state, the department director’s mother had a stroke. 

Doctors and nurses with St. Luke’s Health System work at the hospital in Boise, in August 2021. The surge of patients is eroding the quality of care the hospital can offer, a doctor said. St. Luke's Health System.

When she went to a St. Luke’s Health System emergency room, the care she received was not what you’d expect.

Other patients were receiving treatment in the emergency facility waiting room, she had to wait longer than usual, and X-rays she received to assess whether she had broken any bones were taken in a “nontraditional” area, said Dave Jeppesen, director of Health and Welfare, at a press briefing on Tuesday.

Instead of being admitted to the hospital for observation overnight, she was discharged the same day.

“The ER team at St. Luke’s was amazing,” Jeppesen said. But “those same dedicated health care professionals across the state need our help.”

Crisis standards allow hospitals to ration care in response to an emergency, and they were activated statewide at the request of St. Luke’s last week. Since then, the number of COVID-19 patients is still rising and the strain on available care for all patients continues to mount.

Though hospital leaders continue to encourage those experiencing medical emergencies to go to a hospital, health care facilities are teetering.

“We’re not providing the same level of care,”  Dr. Jim Souza, the chief physician executive at St. Luke’s, said at Tuesday’s briefing.

Breast cancer patients have had their surgeries postponed, he said, and some COVID-19 patients who should be transferred to an intensive care unit are instead being treated in less-equipped facilities.

“Everybody is going with a little bit less,” Souza said.

In Twin Falls, doctors at St. Luke’s on Saturday were nearly forced to ration care when the condition of six hospitalized patients went south rapidly, and the facility had no available ICU beds, he said.

Other facilities were able to make room for the patients, but Souza said a similar problem is almost certain to recur.

“This happens every day,” Souza said. “And yet, when it happened on Saturday, we were really pressed to find a solution.”

The crux of the problem is the overwhelming number of COVID-19 patients in a state where barely 50% of eligible people are vaccinated.

Eighty people have died of COVID-19 at St. Luke’s facilities this month, stretching from the Treasure Valley to Twin Falls to Ketchum, and 35 of them have died in the past week, Souza said. Three of the deaths were individuals younger than 30, and six were younger than 40.

“For the people who say ‘we all die sometime,’ yes, we do,” said Souza. “But these people didn’t need to die now, and they didn’t need to die like this.”

Seventy percent of the hospital system’s ICU beds are filled with COVID-19 patients, as are 67% of its hospital beds in general, which Souza called an “unprecedented event in modern medicine.” Of those in the hospital beds, 90% are unvaccinated; of those in ICU, 98% are unvaccinated, he said.

The hospital’s COVID-19 mortality rate has grown markedly, from around 28% in ICU beds last winter to 43% (!) today. The patients at St. Luke’s facilities are sicker and younger, too, down from a two-week average of 72 years old for hospitalized patients in December to 58 years old now.

Statewide, there are nearly twice as many ICU patients as there were during last year’s COVID-19 peak, according to Health and Welfare data. The high point last December was 60 in ICU, and that figure was 112 on Saturday.

Bottom line, arithmetic notwithstanding, the daunting Idaho COVID health crisis has been and continues to be preventable.  #VaccinesWork! 

France was snubbed on Constitution Day!

Echo report published in The Atlantic written by the David Frum:

Dining room of the French Embassy, Washington, D.C. digital file from original.

DATELINE: September 17, 2021, in the dining room of the French ambassador’s residence.  Constitution Day.

In fact, the location is one of the most beautiful places in Washington, D.C., a confection of frothed plaster overlooking a garden in the poodle-clipped style the French so love. Before COVID-19, the room was known for the discussion sessions held there, hosted by a gracious series of ambassadors. 

French Ambassador Philippe Étienne was recalled after the usurped submarine deal between the US and Australia was abruptly announced.

It’s been a long time since anyone was able to enjoy an in-person event at the residence. So when invitations arrived to celebrate Constitution Day, September 17, at the residence in a lunchtime discussion with a former justice of the U.S. Supreme Court and an equally distinguished French judge, well, the RSVPs returned quickly.

The timing, however, was unfortunate, as it coincided with an angry upset in Franco-American relations. The United States had snatched a $90 billion submarine contract with Australia from French shipyards. To add (security policy) insult to the (lost jobs and revenues) injury, the redirected submarine contract would consolidate a new U.S.-U.K.-Australia naval defense agreement in the Indo-Pacific, an agreement into which France had not been invited.

Worse still, the French received word only hours before the public found out, reportedly because the Americans and the Australians each insisted that the other deliver the bad news.

The French administered a symbolic protest by canceling a gala event planned for Friday evening: a commemoration of the 240th anniversary of a naval battle that helped secure the American victory at Yorktown in 1781. But lunch? Attendees hastily confirmed: Lunch was safe. Or so it seemed.

The first hour of the lunch event harkened back to pre-COVID days. There was champagne in the foyer and courteous welcomes by embassy senior staff, all as it used to be. 

Guests took their seats. Opening remarks were elegantly spoken, all off the record, but so guarded and careful that there would be no news in them even without an agreement not to quote them. 

Steve Clemons, an editor at large at The Hill and the whiskey-smooth master of ceremonies, set the conversation in motion. But about 15 minutes in, Clemons was obliged to make a regretful announcement: The ambassador had a very important meeting and would be leaving immediately.

Somebody loudly asked, “Off to the State Department?” (Maine Writer: Oh no, I don't think so!)

Only later did we learn where the ambassador was heading: not to the State Department, not to the Pentagon, not to the White House, but upstairs to pack before flying to Paris for “consultations.”

Earlier in the meal, somebody had cracked a joke about U.S.-French relations—how they’d sunk so low that they were now underwater. The Americans laughed. The French did not.

But on the plus side: They did not shove us out on the sidewalk. A powerful symbolic message was sent. France is mad, but not so mad that we will deprive our American friends of lunch and dessert. (Crème brûlée, in case you were wondering, under crackling crusts individually crafted by a sous-chef with a miniature flamethrower.)

It’s like a scene from a marriage that endures despite the quarrels. The aggrieved partner walked out in a rage, but not before ensuring that the other had been properly fed.

David Frum is a staff writer at The Atlantic and the author of Trumpocalypse: Restoring American Democracy