HOW TERRIBLE IS SENATOR JOSH HAWLEY?

 Here is a portion of an email I sent to a friend this morning:

I've been trying to find out for almost two years now what the asymptomatic rate for COVID-19 is.  These are the individuals who are going around innocently infecting people.  The CDC and Fauci seem to think 40-45%.  I have read reports ranging from 20% to 90%.  I think this figure is closer to 90% than 45%.  When China shut down Shanghai these past two weeks they tested everyone.  Here is an article indicating that the asymptomatic rate is 97%!!!

Shanghai counted more than 20,000 new cases on April 7, but the asymptomatic rate has stood at around 97%, far higher than anywhere else in the world, where it has been closer to 50%.

The resultant sense is that this 97% rate is so high because those suffering from only mild COVID symptoms were placed into that category.  This Omicron BA.2 subvariant is relatively benign compared to Delta and other wave-producers.  But what, then, what is the true asymptomatic rate???

If it is "only" 80% and you do all the mathematics, we have certainly reached herd immunity, and some people are getting infected a second time.  Notice that all those politicians in DC who this past week caught COVID were vaccinated and boosted.

The good news is that those who go through the recommended series don't die, or even get sick much.  It's possible that COVID has just become another form of common cold today if protected.  However, if you haven't been vaccinated, you remain in danger.  This article said that 98% to 99% of those dying of this coronavirus are unvaccinated.  I haven't seen any recent info contradicting this estimate.  I wonder why the CDC doesn't use this data to convince anti-vaxxers to save themselves.

About my focus today, on 6 January 2021 Missouri Republican Senator Josh Hawley sealed his doom during the riot on the U.S. Congress.  Read Sen. Josh Hawley becomes a pariah on Capitol Hall.

From The Atlantic on 4 February 2021:

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POLITICS

THE KNIVES COME OUT FOR JOSH HAWLEY

The elite conservative world saw the Missouri senator as America’s next great statesman. Instead, he’s revealed uncomfortable truths about the movement.

By Emma Green

FEBRUARY 4, 2021

since josh hawley was a young man, powerful people have told him he was special. His teachers gave him the “Special R” award, just one feather in the Rockhurst High School valedictorian’s cap of outstandingness. Hawley’s mentor at Stanford, David Kennedy, took a shine to him just weeks into his freshman year, and came to see him as possibly the most gifted student he ever taught. At Yale Law, the dean, Harold Koh, took care to seat the young banker’s son from Missouri beside the state’s former senator John Danforth when Danforth visited. Hawley was working on a book about Theodore Roosevelt; he was fascinated by Alexis de Tocqueville’s idea that American democracy depends on regular people in local communities. It wouldn’t have been polite for Hawley to admit to ambitions such as becoming senator or president. But the glimmer of potential lingered in the air. Here, Danforth thought, is somebody who is really special.

Later:

In the days since the attack on the Capitol, Danforth has been performing public penance. “‘Disappointed’ would be an understatement. I feel responsible,” he told me. The former senator did not seem to hate Hawley so much as grieve what he has become. “I feel that he had so much to offer. He could have been a terrific senator, and a terrific leader. Maybe presidential, who knows?” he said. Hawley had potential, intellect, and ability—a conservative version of Pat Moynihan, Danforth likes to say. “But instead of being positive and constructive, he turned out to be destructive.”

Further:

The Missouri senator became the avatar of the congressional insurrection, the one lawmakers started before the mob showed up. Conservatives and liberals alike blamed Hawley for encouraging the Capitol attackers by questioning the legitimacy of the election. Sure, seven other senators, including Alabama’s Tommy Tuberville and Kansas’s Roger Marshall, also challenged the results, as did 139 members of the House of Representatives. But Tuberville was schooled by Nick Saban, not John Roberts—the former Auburn coach wasn’t marked for political greatness. It didn’t even matter much that Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, who has a similarly elite résumé, stuck it out with Hawley and disputed Arizona’s Electoral College results. “Ted is now just that annoying fly in the room—okay, we’ll swat it eventually,” a Republican campaign operative told me. “Josh is seen as so much worse.”

So do read that Atlantic article.   There is a lot more.

 

No wonder then that  Republican Congressman Adam Kinzinger slammed Republican Josh Hawley as "one of the worst human beings.  More specifically, he Tweeted:  I hate to be so personal, but Hawley is one of the worst human beings, and a self egrandizing (aggrandizing?) con artist.  When Trump goes down I certainly hope this evil will be layed (laid?) in the open for all to see, and be ashamed of.

Then this week a congressional colleague chimed in.  Take a Minute and Watch Hawaii Senator Brian Schatz Absolutely Destroy Josh Hawley.  Watch this on You Tube.

Just sent to me by Netflix:  Yaksha:  Ruthless Operations.  Rotten Tomatoes audiences have already rated it at 100%.  A brand new Korean film about a deadly war between spies.

Sent to me by Gladi Meyerson:

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