AstraZeneca Got Its Vaccine Right. The Rollout Has Been a Mess . . . AstraZeneca promised the world more vaccines, at a lower cost, than any of the more established vaccine makers. Its public fight with U.S. medical officials over the precise effectiveness of its Covid-19 shot has upset regulators, chipped away at the drugmaker’s reputation in its biggest market, and heightened doubts about the company’s data analysis, threatening to lengthen the regulatory review. Wednesday evening U.S. time, AstraZeneca revised its estimate of the shot’s efficacy from large-scale U.S. trials based on additional data, saying it was 76% effective in preventing symptomatic Covid-19, down from the 79% it reported from an analysis on Monday. Among people 65 and older, the vaccine was 85% effective, compared with 80% in Monday’s report. In both analyses, the vaccine was found to provide 100% protection against severe disease and hospitalization, though the numbers of such serious cases were small. AstraZeneca has said it plans to submit findings to the FDA by mid-April, in hopes of gaining authorization to use the shot in the U.S. Wall Street Journal

 

 

 

Sleepy Joe already has outlived Soviet Kommissar Leonid Brezhnev, whose senility we endured in the USSR for 18 years.  While tolerating his disastrous policies aimed at accelerating the progressives' monumental push of the country leftward is too much to bear, the alternative would entail even greater lunacy, I am afraid.  

 

Biden used cheat sheets during his first press conference . . . New photos reveal several cheat sheets used by President Biden during his Thursday press conference — including one with the headshots and names of reporters he planned to call on. POTUS also used notes to assist with facts about US infrastructure, a policy area Biden is focusing on during his first months in the White House. The press pool at Thursday’s briefing, the first one held by Biden since taking office 65 days ago, was limited to 25 reporters.

Biden only took questions from a list of journalists whose names and outlets he read from a cue card. A photo of the card shows circled numbers around select reporters. New York Post

President Biden supports moving toward abolishing the filibuster . . . Biden suggested he wants to move toward abolishing the filibuster if he can’t get legislation passed that he wants. “We’ve got the get to the place where I get 50 votes so the vice president of the United States can break the tie, or 51 without her,” Biden said. He indicated an initial step would be to make senators speak during the filibuster. But if that doesn’t work, he would be willing for go further toward ending it. White House Dossier

Liberals think Biden just made getting rid of the filibuster easier . . . Senate proponents of filibuster reform said they scored a win Thursday when President Biden said he agrees the procedural tool is “a relic of the Jim Crow era.”Senators who are the most adamant about eliminating the filibuster argue their job just got easier now that the president himself has associated it with the racist and oppressive policies of the Jim Crow South.

Biden didn’t explicitly call for eliminating the legislative filibuster at his White House press conference, but he signaled support for progressive critics who want to portray the procedural tactic as tainted by a racist history in their bid to finally get rid of it. The president’s comments are expected to increase pressure on Senate Democrats to repeal the filibuster. The Hill

Pentagon needs to become a smarter shopper . . . China and Russia are challenging America’s high-tech dominance. The goal: not just to contest but to achieve superiority in every fighting domain, including air, land, space, sea and cyberspace. Focused on enhancing censorship, surveillance and military capabilities, China and Russia — each of which represents an existential threat to the U.S. — are developing and deploying new technologies together. Alarm bells should be ringing in the White House, because the number of high-tech companies partnering with the Department of Defense has been steadily decreasing. The U.S. military still has not cracked the code on expanding the defense industrial base to keep pace with its rivals’ technological advances. Analysis/Opinion Washington Times

US nonprofit failed to disclose taxpayer grants to Wuhan coronavirus lab . . . A watchdog group is claiming that a U.S. bio-research nonprofit failed to follow U.S. law and publicly disclose its taxpayer-funded grants to a Chinese coronavirus laboratory under scrutiny for its immediate proximity to the COVID-19 pandemic. The White Coat Waste Project, a group dedicated to stopping taxpayer funding of what it claims is "wasteful and cruel animal experimentation," claimed last week that EcoHealth has engaged in "widespread violations of federal spending transparency law" by way of numerous press releases over the past several years.  Federal tax records show that EcoHealth Alliance funneled federal NIH grants to the Wuhan Institute of Virology for several years leading up to the start of the pandemic, ultimately handing the lab hundreds of thousands of dollars in taxpayer money to conduct experiments into potentially pandemic coronaviruses. The Wuhan lab is located just a few miles from where Chinese officials claimed the pandemic began at a local wet market. Just the News

 

Southwest Pilot’s Hot Mic Rant Against San Francisco Goes Viral . . .A Southwest Airlines pilot’s rant against San Francisco residents during a March 12 flight went viral this week. The unidentified pilot called Bay Area residents “goddamn liberal f*cks,” according to live audio from Air Traffic Control (ATC). The rant begins around the twenty-minute mark. “F*cking weirdos, probably driving around in f*cking Hyundais, f*cking roads and sh*t that go slow as f*ck,” the pilot said. San Jose International Airport’s air traffic controller scanner picked up the pilot’s broadside of Bay Area residents, The Hill reported Thursday. A Southwest Airlines spokesman confirmed the unidentified man works for the airline, and that they are “fully addressing the situation internally,” SFGATE reported. Daily Caller