In The Shadow Of Mt Hollywood

As of last January, the word was this: The CDC has struggled with clear messaging and COVID-19 guidance during the pandemic, and the agency will aim to do better, Rochelle Walensky, MD, director of the CDC, told The Wall Street Journal. . . . TWalensky said she is committed to communicating CDC policy more clearly. She is being coached by a media consultant and plans to hold more media briefings in coming months that are separate from the briefings with the White House COVID-19 Response Team. How goes the effort, six months later? Well, they've been pivoting to monkeypox, right? Here's what moneypox amounts to, according to the WHO, which treats the delicate subject of transmission most gingerly: Human-to-human transmission can result from close contact with respiratory secretions, skin lesions of an infected person or recently contaminated objects. Transmission via droplet respiratory particles usually requires prolonged face-to-face contact . . . . While close p...

I started my morning yesterday asking Google what I thought was an easy question: Is Elon Musk the father of Amber Heard's baby? As an answer, I got this: Elon Musk Alleged To Be The Father Of Amber Heard’s Baby Amid Claims They Created Embryos Together . While this is all "alleged"-level stuff, I can only hope and pray that when he took his mother as his date to the Met gala, it was a sign that he'd straightened up. When Heard announced the birth of her daughter, it was reported that the “Aquaman” star was the “sole legal parent” of the baby who was born on April 8, 2021. . . . Heard made the announcement via a July Instagram post in which she made no mention of Musk — whom she dated on and off between 2016 and 2018. “Four years ago, I decided I wanted to have a child. I wanted to do it on my own terms,” she wrote. It was widely assumed the baby had been born via a surrogate as Heard showed no signs of being pregnant in the months prior to the birth. ...

The Guardian, for instance, raises that question : When Hollywood star Johnny Depp’s defamation trial against Amber Heard ended in his favor on Wednesday, some observers worried that the verdict might have a chilling effect on the #MeToo movement. The whole trial enexpectedly turned into a media event with manifold implcations -- Depp was revealed as a master of improv tongue in cheek on the witness stand, for instance. What a loss it's been not to have his talent available for the past half decade. As a personality, he simply outshone Heard, her attorneys, and her witnesses in a way that the worldwide audience found delicious. #MeToo was just an incidental casualty. The main problem is that it was a Hollywood media event, certainly the equivalent of a blockbuster film, except that the Hollywood machine that might have created such an event in the past -- the Star Wars franchise, for instance -- was AWOL, clueless, not involved. It emerged spontaneous, unscheduled, without ...

The sociopolitical histories of COVID have yet to be written, and I'm realizing the whole episode is by no means over as we speak. I just got a notice to come in for another booster, while Alameda County in the San Francisco area has reinstated a general indoor mask mandate, which suggests LA County won't be far behind. This won't go away until people make it go away. Nevertheless, bien pensant opinion is gingerly starting to approach the question of how big a public policy disaster COVID has been. I was out driving Thursday and happend to tune in to the Clay and Buck Show, which is the successor to the late Rush Limbaugh. They had as a guest David Zweig, who writes for The Atlantic. It says something that the powers that be there seemed to think it was OK for him to talk to El Rushbo, or at least the guys in El Rushbo's old tme slot. Here's part of the transcript: BUCK: David, I want to ask you… So, you write for The Atlantic, and not to make any assump...

Within a matter of days, Elon Musk announced that Tesla employees would have to return to in-person work at the office, followed almost immediately by an announcement that 10% of them would be laid off nevertheless . Tesla CEO Elon Musk wants to slash 10% of jobs at the company due to his “super bad feeling” about the economy, according to a Friday report from Reuters. The United States economy shrank at a 1.5% annualized rate in the first quarter of 2022, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis, which associates recessions with two consecutive quarters of negative growth. In a Thursday email to executives seen by Reuters, Musk instructed Tesla to “pause all hiring worldwide” and said that the company needs to cut 10% of jobs. Tesla currently has more than 99,000 employees, The New York Times reported. Before the most recent news on economic activity, the U.S. had been recovering from COVID-19 and the lockdown-induced recession — growing at a strong 5.7% in 2021 after contr...

In my e-mail yesterday was an announcement from the Word on Fire Institute that linked to this statement from Bp Barron: Friends, I am overjoyed and humbled to learn that Pope Francis has appointed me the ninth bishop of the Diocese of Winona-Rochester (Minnesota). The bishop of a diocese is, first and foremost, a spiritual father to the priests and people who have been entrusted to his care. My prayer this morning is that the Lord will give me the grace always to be a good father. The bishop is also, as Pope Francis often teaches, a shepherd with the smell of the sheep—out in front of the flock in one sense, leading the way, but also with the flock, giving encouragement, and in back of the flock in order to gather in those who have fallen behind. I pray also for the grace to be just that kind of shepherd to the Catholics of southern Minnesota. It has been an extraordinary privilege these past seven years to serve as auxiliary bishop in the Archdiocese of Los Angeles, where the p...

Via Reuters: The U.S. Justice Department on Tuesday asked a federal appeals court to overturn a U.S. District Court judge's April order that declared the government mandate requiring masks on airplanes, buses and in transit hubs unlawful. Hours after the federal judge in Florida declared the mandate unlawful, the Biden administration said it would no longer enforce it. The Justice Department told the appeals court that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) order issued in January 2021 was "within" the agency's legal authority. The CDC did not immediately respond to a request for comment Tuesday on whether it would reinstate the requirement if the ruling was overturned. Days before U.S. District Judge Kathryn Kimball's April 18 order, the CDC had extended mask requirements through May 3. The CDC said earlier this month it still recommends travelers continue to wear masks in airplanes, trains and buses. Although some localities still requir...