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🇺🇸 Falling Leaves, Rolled Up Sleeves

🇺🇸 Falling Leaves, Rolled Up Sleeves

Plus, don’t take a deep breath.

The Flag America's Newsletter
August 31, 2022

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Good morning, and happy Wednesday! Even during difficult situations – smile… research shows there are benefits to faking it ‘till you make it…

Plus, a neuroscientist says taking a deep breath actually makes you more stressed – here’s what he suggests instead…

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FLAG POLLS

📉 Biden Job Approval: Approve 44, Disapprove 55 (Rasmussen Reports)

🐘 Georgia: Trump Vs. Biden: Trump 51, Biden 46 (Emerson)

🐘 Georgia Senate - Warnock vs. Walker: Warnock 44, Walker 46 (Emerson)

🐘 Georgia Governor - Kemp vs. Abrams: Kemp 48, Abrams 44 (Emerson)

GIVEAWAY

Labor Day Flag Swag Giveaway

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QUICK CLICKS

Monkeypox Death, Secret Service Agent Out, Battle for Kherson

US: Texas reports what may be the first US death from monkeypox (CNBC)

US: Top Secret Service official at heart of January 6 Trump row steps down (The Guardian)

World: Top military brass in Ukraine's south calls for volunteers as forces look to take back Kherson (Fox News)

US: Garland tightens the reins on Justice Dept. employees' political activities (NPR)

US: Hurricane Season Has Been Unusually Quiet—But Forecasters Are Watching A Potential Cyclone (Forbes)

US: Bull escapes pen at Florida rodeo and enters bleachers. See how one cowboy stepped up (KC Star)

Business: Elon Musk pushes to delay the Twitter trial while citing whistleblower's testimony (The Verge)

US: Alec Baldwin plans his return to acting — on Broadway — in first job since 'Rust' shooting (NY Post)

World: Why There’s Still So Much Controversy 25 Years After Princess Diana’s Death (TIME)

US: Holiday shopping season starts early amid inflation (Axios)

US: Mayor Adams claims he ‘won’ fight against homelessness in NYC subways (NY Daily News)

PANDEMIC

Falling Leaves, Rolled Up Sleeves

A new COVID-19 booster shot is likely to receive approval from federal regulators, potentially as soon as this week. It’s expected the shots will be available shortly after Labor Day. They are reportedly designed to be effective against the Omicron variant.

Reporting From the Left: Fall COVID-19 boosters could roll out soon pending green light from FDA, CDC (ABC News)

Reporting from The Right: Latest COVID booster shots will be released before human testing is complete (New York Post)

From The Flag: Since COVID-19 vaccines first emerged in late 2020, they’ve been a source of controversy. We recently covered the CDC admitting its pandemic response was flawed, while older editions covered the debate over natural immunity, as well as vaccinating children. Here’s more from both sides.

LEFT-LEANING SENTIMENT

It Makes Sense To Roll Out Booster Before New Variant Emerges

While there’s some risk in bypassing human trials, past boosters have proven safe and effective, and any delay risks falling behind a new variant.
The Biden administration has already purchased 170 million of these new doses, but research shows they provide only a moderate boost in protection.
It’s important to consider when you last got a COVID shot before getting a booster – as well as if you’ve been previously infected.

“The new covid booster is a bit of a gamble — but one well worth taking” Editorial Board, Washington Post : “Critics might raise fresh concerns about these new shots, and there are some things the public should know. But the latest booster, as with all the previous shots, promises to be a life raft in dangerous seas. … What’s different this time is that this booster is being rolled out before human clinical trials are complete. … the experience with billions of doses of the earlier vaccines shows they are safe and effective. Also, tests in mice show that the boosters work, and this testing method has been used often in the past with the seasonal influenza vaccine. The new boosters are already in production… Waiting for full clinical trial results might leave the booster well behind the curve if the virus mutates into a new variant. The trade-off — a booster that is currently relevant, with less clinical trial data — seems reasonable.”

“Latest Covid Conundrum Is When to Get Yet Another Shot” Faye Flam, Bloomberg Opinion: “It feels intuitively right that a reformulated booster vaccine aimed at the omicron BA.5 variant would vastly improve our protection against it as well as any offspring that might threaten us in the fall. But intuition doesn’t always agree with scientific data. … There’s almost no public data on the efficacy of the boosters for the currently circulating omicron BA.5. Yet the Joe Biden administration has purchased more than 170 million doses from Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna. … Scientists did gather some data on the potential efficacy of a booster aimed at an earlier version of omicron, BA.1, by measuring how well antibodies in blood samples from volunteers attacked the virus. They found that including a BA.1 component offered only a modest improvement over the original boosters.”

One more opinion piece from the Left: A Simple Rule for Planning Your Fall Booster Shot Rachel Gutman-Wei, The Atlantic

RIGHT-LEANING SENTIMENT

Plowing Forward With More Vaccines, and Ignoring the Evidence

Vaccines are important medical tools, but they have limits in the fight against COVID-19, and its time for authorities to accept that.
Even Democrats know mass vaccination was a failure, as evidenced by their move to blame Trump for its accelerated rollout.
The FDA has chosen to embrace Big Pharma at the expense of everyday Americans, forgoing human trials for this booster.

“The return of Covid fearmongering” Toby Green and Thomas Fazi, Unherd : “The received wisdom from the political-scientific establishment over the past year or so has been that universal vaccination will lead to herd immunity, and therefore to the end of infection… Now, though, even the political authorities (and other figures such as Bill Gates) acknowledge that the vaccines will not get rid of infections and don’t provide protection for long. … Of course, vaccines are key in preventing serious illness and death in those at great risk from Covid — but this was always, in truth, a comparatively small section of the population, as study after study has shown. Now that it is clear that vaccines do not prevent infection, it’s time to shift the focus… Insisting on the same restrictions and vaccine-centric strategy of the past few years and expecting a different result is, as Einstein might have said, simply insane.”

“It Was Democrats That Said The Vaccine Wasn't Properly Tested, Now Trying To Shift Blame To Trump” Tucker Carlson, Fox News : “The vaccine is Donald Trump's doing. We learned that this week from Democrats in Congress. … the Trump administration pressured the Food and Drug Administration to authorize the first COVID-19 vaccines on an accelerated timeline. Following this? … Now that we can blame Donald Trump for the vaccine, we can finally tell the truth about the vaccine without being fired or attacked or thrown off the Internet. … So, let's take a moment to talk about Donald Trump's vaccine and why it seems to be, among other things, dramatically raising death rates among young people. … it turns out when Donald Trump told you, as he did hundreds of times, certainly you must remember this, that this is a pandemic of the unvaccinated, it turned out to be exactly the opposite and we're seeing this in a lot of different places, in a lot of different data sets.”

One more opinion piece from the Right: FDA boldly bows to Big Pharma at Americans’ expense Cheryl K. Chumley, The Washington Times Opinion

FLAG THIS

Older Americans Say They’ll Roll Up Their Sleeves

A new poll suggests the majority of older adults who have already gotten one dose of the COVID-19 vaccine plan to get a booster shot this fall. Among respondents over 50, 61% said they will get a booster. For people 65 and up, the number jumps to 68% (University of Michigan).

Do you plan to get an Omicron booster shot this fall if the FDA approves it?

FLAG FINDS

Flag Swag Survey, Better Bananas, Relaxing Robe

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WATERCOOLER

Kinetograph Patent, Feline Surveillance, Canadian Representation

On August 31, 1897, Thomas Edison received a patent for his movie camera, the Kinetograph. Edison developed the camera and its viewer in the early 1890s and staged several demonstrations. Above is a Kinetoscope parlor, where films could be viewed by one individual at a time.

Experience: I spied on my cat with a GPS tracker

Smithsonian Magazine: This Ultra-White Paint May Someday Replace Air Conditioning

NPR: Why you should stop complimenting people for being 'resilient'

Today I Learned Wolverine was created because Marvel's then editor-in-chief Roy Thomas wanted a Canadian hero to boost north-of-the-border sales.

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