Coal Me Irresponsible

 

China is building more coal plants, otherwise unable to keep up with their rapidly rising industrial and consumer demand for electrical power through alternative energy sources. This, despite their policy and pledge to reduce their use of coal-powered energy. Like many other countries in this strange time of hyper accelerating fossil fuel costs, coal remains an economically viable and plentiful. While there is no such thing as “clean coal” – effluents are still pumped underground in many of the “cleanest” coal-fired power plants – older facilities are clearly the worst greenhouse offenders. The above coal-fired plant in Heyuan, China is an example. See also my August 5th Demon Coal blog.

 “In China, the worst 5 percent [of coal-fired power plants] accounted for roughly a quarter of the country's total emissions. In the US, the worst 5 percent of plants produced about 75 percent of the power sector's carbon emissions. South Korea had similar numbers, while Australia, Germany, and Japan all saw their worst 5 percent of plants account for roughly 90 percent of the carbon emissions from their power sectors.

“When it comes to carbon emissions, the worst 5 percent of power plants account for 73 percent of the total power sector emissions globally. That 5 percent also produces over 14 times as much carbon pollution as it would if the plants were merely average.” John Timmer writing for the August 14th Wired.com. No one expected such a surge in late pandemic demand for all forms of fossil fuel, from natural gas for heating (and power generation) to gasoline for the explosion of travel. 

Energy costs have also skyrocketed because of supply chain issues, mostly stemming from the lack of sufficient dockworkers and truck drivers, and the sizeable effort required to reignite fossil fuel extraction and refining. Europe alone has seen a tripling of natural gas prices, the mainstay of home heating as a cold fall-winter rolls in. Many fossil fuel companies see these factors as temporary, and hence there has been a decided disincentive for them to invest in new refineries and expensive oil and natural gas drilling. So cheap and abundant coal use picked up much of the slack. Inflation roars. Thus, the world’s cutback in coal-fired power generation turned back around to “worse.” 

“Of the three fossil fuels — coal, oil and natural gas — coal is the biggest climate villain. It’s responsible for about 20% of all greenhouse gas emissions. It’s also a fuel that is relatively easy to replace: Renewable alternatives to coal-fired power have been available for decades. The burning of coal also has other environmental impacts, including air pollution contributing to smog, acid rain and respiratory illnesses…

“China, the world’s most populous country and a manufacturing giant, is by far the world’s biggest coal consumer, followed by India and the United States. In 2019, China produced 4,876 terawatt hours of electricity from coal, almost as much as the rest of the world combined, according to the International Energy Agency. But adjusted for population size the situation is different: Australia has the highest per capita coal emissions among the Group of 20 biggest economies, followed by South Korea, South Africa, the United States and China, according to an analysis by Ember, a climate and energy think tank.

“Why are countries still burning coal?... The short answer is coal is cheap and plentiful. But even as renewables become more competitive on price, coal isn’t that easy to get rid of. Electricity needs are soaring as the world’s population and prosperity increase, and renewables simply aren’t enough to satisfy that growth in demand. The IEA projects that India will need to add a power system the size of the European Union’s to meet expected growth in electricity demand in the next 20 years. Coal’s role in the power sector has remained relatively stable in the last five decades. IEA statistics show that in 1973, coal’s share of global electricity generation was 38%; in 2019 it was 37%.” Associated Press, November 14th.

In the early November COP26 climate change conference, “Government negotiators in Glasgow wrote and rewrote a paragraph that spells out that fighting climate change requires the world to end coal power, along with fossil fuel subsidies. The wording on coal was weakened one last time just before the gavel came down after coal-dependent India insisted on replacing the words ‘phase out’ with ‘phase down.’… Announcements made in the run-up to and during the Glasgow conference mean some 370 more coal plants around the world were given a close-by date, according to the Center for Research on Energy and Clean Air. The U.S. has not made such a pledge yet.” AP. But then the power demand surge stalled that progress. 

As climate related natural disasters and searing summer heat rise, we are obviously out of time; delays are no longer tolerable. So… what can we do? The immediate and most implementable initial policies to reduce greenhouse emissions would thus focus on those most toxic of coal plants noted above. Take them offline NOW! Everywhere. They should be shut down no later that the summer of 2022. Alternative energy needs to be ramped up, and as unfortunate as this may be, new nuclear plants are probably unavoidable. Fortunately, the new molten salt reactors are both vastly less dangerous and are more efficient in their use of radioactive fuel (producing less waste). But sitting around and kicking the can down the road will slowly strangle us.

I’m Peter Dekom, and it is little wonder that younger generations, those most saddled with climate change consequences, are raging that our leadership and money-making power houses are doing way too little way too to fix their world.

Before Self-Driving Vehicles…

 

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), part of the Department of Transportation (DOT), tells us that just before the pandemic raged forward in 2019: “Every day, about 28 people in the United States die[d] in drunk-driving crashes — that's one person every 52 minutes. In 2019, these deaths reached the lowest percentage since 1982 when NHTSA started reporting alcohol data — but still 10,142 people lost their lives.” That’s about one third of all highway fatalities. But as the pandemic ebbed, highway fatalities skyrocketed in 2021. 

“[In October], the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration reported that an estimated 20,160 people died in traffic collisions in the first half of 2021, the highest number since 2006. The agency has pointed to speeding, impaired driving and not wearing seatbelts as factors behind the increase.” Hope Yen and Tom Krisher for the November 10th Associated Press. Using the one third fraction noted above, that suggests that 2021 should see well over 13,000 deaths from DUI accidents.

For people convicted of DUI (“driving under the influence,” also DWI, “driving while intoxicated”), there is the fine and legal costs, the potential restrictions on a driver’s license, the increase in insurance rates and even the possibility of forfeiture and jail/prison time. Increasingly, convicted DUI offenders, who do not lose their driving privilege, are also required to outfit their vehicles with a breathalyzer control device (as pictured above) that prevents the car from being started when the driver is intoxicated. I’m sure you can picture ways such devices can be circumvented. But the death and injury of innocents are the toxic results of such inebriated drivers. 

The issue is so important, so pervasive, with vastly more injuries than the fatalities noted above, that the new infrastructure bill has carved out a mandatory technology for all vehicles manufactured after 2026 to prevent intoxicated drivers. Will the device recognize more than just alcohol? We don’t know yet. But it probably won’t be a breathalyzer, which has a strong negative popular response. Still, “Congress has created a new requirement for automakers: Find a high-tech way to keep drunk people from driving…. It’s one of the mandates alongside a burst of new spending aimed at improving auto safety in the [bipartisan] $1-trillion infrastructure package…

“Under the legislation, monitoring systems to stop intoxicated drivers would roll out in all new vehicles as early as 2026, after the Transportation Department determines the best form of technology to install in millions of vehicles and automakers are given time to comply… ‘It’s monumental,’ said Alex Otte, national president of Mothers Against Drunk Driving. Otte called the package the ‘single most important legislation’ in the group’s history, a measure that marks ‘the beginning of the end of drunk driving… It will virtually eliminate the No. 1 killer on America’s roads.” AP. The new legal requirement says that this technology must “passively monitor the performance of a driver of a motor vehicle to accurately identify whether that driver may be impaired.” It may be a monitor in the vehicle, a vehicle-linked detection system on the highway or some other technology that has yet to be developed and standardized:

“Sam Abuelsamid, principal mobility analyst for Guidehouse Insights, said the most likely system to prevent drunk driving would be infrared cameras that monitor driver behavior. That technology is already being installed by automakers such as General Motors, BMW and Nissan to track driver attentiveness while using partially automated driver-assist systems… The cameras make sure a driver is watching the road, and they look for signs of drowsiness, loss of consciousness or impairment… If signs are spotted, the cars will warn the driver, and if the behavior persists, the car would turn on its hazard lights, slow down and pull to the side of the road.”  AP.

Will self-driving cars provide a longer-term alternative? DOT head Pete Buttigieg suggests eliminating the car entirely where possible has to be part of the equation: “The best way to allow people to move in ways that are better for congestion and better for climate is to give them alternatives…this is how we do right by the next generation.” DUI has been a problem ever since there have been cars on roads. Perhaps this new wave of technology solutions may just bring this activity under control.

I’m Peter Dekom, and as monitoring and tracking technology improves, we may lose a bit more of our privacy, but sometimes the result is more than worth it.

Red State Ban of CRT vs Blue State Mandate for Ethnic Studies

 

The above map reflects the status of anti- “critical race theory” (CRT) laws across the United States as of this summer. It is clear, particularly after the narrow recent victory of successful Virginia GOP Governor-elect, Glenn Youngkin, that the embrace of the “culture war” mantra by the Republican Party may just resonate with enough voters to make a difference in the upcoming mid-terms and even in the 2024 presidential election. It is equally clear that most Republicans who decry CRT are not particularly clear what that concept even means. See my recent OK, OK, It’s Really Bad… But What is It? blog for specifics. Yet the anti-CRT theme has become the overriding cornerstone, over and above the “stop cancel culture” tide, in the minds of those GOP culture warriors. They cast their battle as an effort to improve education, but the resulting forced distorted censorship seems to produce just the opposite effect. And then there is blue state backlash.

Just as it is impossible for a German high school student to graduate without a mandatory school trip to a WWII concentration camp restored and embellished with artifacts and horrific photographs, a “never again” mea culpa to the Holocaust, California is committed to make sure its high school students know and understand where oppression has defined American and California history. The notion is simple: if you tell the truth and actually show the injustices and horrors of past racial, ethnic and religious highly discriminatory realities, there will be fewer of such attitudes and practices in the future. That’s a tall order for a nation where polls show that at least half of US adults adhere to at least one factually unsupportable conspiracy theory.

Writing for the November 11th Los Angeles Times, Melissa Gomez explores a new mandate that will require an ethnic studies class as a condition for graduation from a California high school by 2030. “At a time when schools throughout the country are under siege for how race and history are taught — with at least 12 states passing legislation to limit the discourse — California is barreling in the opposite direction, the first state to mandate a high school ethnic studies course. The California law envisions a class designed to help students understand the historic and ongoing struggles of marginalized people — Black, Latino, Asian, Indigenous Americans and others.

“But ethnic studies courses have been dragged into political attacks by conservatives and right-wing activists against critical race theory, an academic framework used mainly in universities that examines how race and racism are embedded in American institutions, policies and law. Ethnic studies in California high school classrooms encourages students to think more broadly about history by considering the perspectives of other groups, races and cultures.

“The state law allows school districts to design courses that are particularly relevant to their communities. For instance, a high school in East Los Angeles may delve deeply into the Chicano movement while in Glendale, schools could decide to examine the Armenian immigrant experience… Yet, in California, too, activists have invaded school board meetings — often in communities outside their own — to protest ethnic studies curricula in Los Alamitos, Placentia-Yorba Linda, Tustin and Paso Robles.” 

Scratch the surface of these anti-CRT protests, and there is a clear white underbelly of racial bias. An unequivocal reflection of the historical precedents set out in my October 26th An Underlying Notion of Superiority blog. Some communities focus on local cultural awareness with less of an emphasis on injustice, while other California school districts have more searching approaches. Topics like “settler colonialism” and “the hallmarks of oppression” are open for discussion. But there does seem to be a tempering among teachers who structure and present the courses that create “an environment without judgment, one where students are learning as much about their own cultural roots as those of others.” Gomez.

The GOP fear of teachers’ proselytizing Marxism and Communism as superior to our American form of government or casting the United States as the pariah scapegoat with all that is wrong with the nation (and the world) seems to have little real-world evidence, even as enraged GOP candidates need to fabricate such instances to make their point. Evidence from that recent gubernatorial election in Virginia suggests that the less education a voter has, the more likely that voter is to buy into this GOP posture. 

Could book burning be far behind? On November 10th, Texas Governor Greg Abbott “wrote a letter directing the state education agency, library and board of education to create standards ‘to ensure no child is exposed to pornography or other inappropriate content in a Texas public school.’ Earlier this month, Abbott wrote to the Texas Assn. of School Boards, demanding they ‘shield children from pornography and other inappropriate content.’” LA Times, November 11th. Abbott launched a criminal investigation into such library material. The Governor cited the presence of LGBTQ characters in a high school library book as one example of inappropriate content. Texas is one of the states with the most far-reaching anti-CRT laws in the country.

When I watch GOP candidates raise their voices in angry condemnation of those they believe are teaching anti-American CRT theory, I am reminded of the infamous 1925 Tennessee vs Scopes (the “Monkey Trial). “[H]igh school teacher, John T. Scopes, was accused of violating Tennessee's Butler Act, which had made it unlawful to teach human evolution in any state-funded school. The trial was deliberately staged in order to attract publicity to the small town of Dayton, Tennessee, where it was held. Scopes was unsure whether he had ever actually taught evolution, but he incriminated himself deliberately so the case could have a defendant… Scopes was found guilty and fined $100 (equivalent to $1,500 in 2020), but the verdict was overturned on a technicality.” Wikipedia. It was “God’s word” vs. science. We laugh at that simplistic case today, but the anti-CRT movement proves that Scopes-like school censorship is still alive and well in the United States today.

I’m Peter Dekom, and we are watching a sad but growing tendency to condemn truth, support mythology, reject minorities and embrace an anti-science based “reality,” which has now found its way as a formal process to produce future voters who will be completely blind to so many highly relevant truths.

Teachers, Children & America – the Victims of the Culture Wars

“‘What’s going to happen if I teach this?’ — because the penalty is so steep.” 

A teacher’s reaction to the real-world application of a statutory ban on teaching “critical race theory.”

Germany still hangs its national head in shame over the atrocities it committed against Jews and others during World War II. 13 million innocents were enslaved and slaughtered in its concentration camps. Germany’s textbooks are rife with complete accounts of this horrific period. German children cannot graduate from high school without a mandatory trip to one of these camps, preserved and enhanced with historical photographs and ugly proof of the genocide. To post-WWII German politicians, this course of instruction is very much a part of Germany’s “never again” pledge to the world… and to its people. 

Fellow Axis partner, Japan, still pretends that it did not rape and massacre innocents in its brutal occupation of China beginning in 1937 (politely referred to as the Second Sino-Japanese War), including the notorious “rape of Nanking”: “In November of 1937, the Japanese army secured the city of Shanghai, and headed for China’s new capital, a safe zone, called Nanking. The city immediately surrendered, as they were ill-equipped to defend themselves. After the city had been officially captured in early December, a six-week raid on the city began. This consisted of mass murder, rape, pillaging, and destruction of the city. Despite the unconditional surrender of the Chinese military, the Japanese forces targeted and then systematically killed any man known or suspected of serving in the army.” Crimemuseum.org. Scholars believe that as many as 50,000 women were raped, and “In 1946, the International Military Tribunal for the Far East in Tokyo estimated that over 200,000 Chinese were killed in the massacre.” Wikipedia. To this day, Japan denies its proven atrocities.

We seem to be following the Japanese model. Indeed, you have to look deep and far in our textbooks to find mention of American autocracies against indigenous peoples as white Europeans helped themselves to Native American lands, gathering up tens of thousands from 1830 to 1850, tearing them from their tribal lands in the eastern United States and force marching them (many to their deaths) to “reservations” in the Western states. The “Trail of Tears.” Today, under 1% of Americans identify themselves as such indigenous peoples. What happened to the rest? 

Our history with African slaves and their progeny is even darker. Even after the Civil War, black Americans have suffered ultra-violence from resentful whites, been denied the right to vote, access to quality education and faced discrimination in every aspect of their lives. The civil rights legislation that followed the 1954 Brown vs Board of Education Supreme Court school integration case still limps along in a world where equality among races is still questioned and resisted by a sizeable proportion of America. 

If you can even find reference to the event in any textbooks, there is bare mention of the Tulsa Race Massacre, which occurred over 18 hours from May 31 to June 1, 1921, in which a white mob attacked residents, homes and businesses in the predominantly Black Greenwood neighborhood of Tulsa, Oklahoma. According to History.com, “The event remains one of the worst incidents of racial violence in U.S. history… The Oklahoma Bureau of Vital Statistics officially recorded 36 dead. A 2001 state commission examination of events was able to confirm 36 dead, 26 Black and 10 white. However, historians estimate the death toll may have been as high as 300.” Those remaining survivors witnessed far more murders than officially recorded.

But the new shift of Republican issue mongering, the legacy of a party thoroughly coopted by Donald Trump’s populist movement, is to engage in legal opposition to teaching facts that might embarrass the republic, even where indisputably true. The fear voiced is that impressionable children might garner a negative view of American history. To Republicans embracing this approach, America must not be criticized in our public classrooms.

There is an underlying “truth” to these culture wars: that racism in America ended for all time with the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Really? Writing for the November 22nd Associated Press, Travis Loller and Acacia Coronado address one particularly disturbing aspect of these red state culture wars, that statutory ban of so-called “critical race theory” and other controversial subjects: “At least a dozen states have passed measures this year restricting how schools teach about racism, sexism and other topics. Though educators are still waiting to see how they will be enforced, the vagueness of some of the measures, coupled with stiff penalties including potential loss of teaching licenses, already is chilling conversations on race in schools and, in some cases, having consequences that probably go well beyond the intent of those approving the measures…

“In Virginia, Republican Glenn Youngkin won the governor’s race [in November] promising to ban ‘critical race theory,’ a term that has become a stand-in for concepts like systemic racism and implicit bias [or that white privilege exists]. His Democratic opponent faced criticism for saying parents shouldn’t tell schools what to teach.

“[These new] measures that restrict how race is addressed in classrooms have spread confusion and anxiety among many educators, who in some cases have begun pulling books and canceling lessons for fear of being penalized… Education officials have canceled a contemporary issues class in a Tennessee district, removed Frederick Douglass’ autobiography from reading lists in an Oklahoma school system and, in one Texas case, advised teachers to present ‘opposing’ views of the Holocaust.” 

Indeed, as teachers have been fired, teachers and school districts assessed heavy fines by the relevant state attorney general, many teachers have simply stopped teaching anywhere near these “controversial” subject areas. In a nation of rising minorities plus the explosion of white supremacist-armed-and-trained militia (vastly more than any comparable movement on the left as the FBI has acknowledged), forgetting to teach our high school grads the truth leaves them exposed to the fabrications of extremists and those who deny what is undeniable. It also opens the door to recruiting our young into this new populist world of racial and ethnic intolerance, exclusion and hatred. Do we really want another civil war?

I’m Peter Dekom, and that George Santayana admonition – that those who do not study history are condemned to repeat its mistakes – resonates deeply within these culture wars.

 

Power and Money- Changing Facts, Evading Taxes & Ignoring Laws

 

We know that the United States has, rather literally, two legal and two taxation systems: one for the rich, including corporations, and one for the vast majority of Americans. With lots of money at their disposal, the wealthy wield campaign contributions (and indirect financial support via SuperPac protected under the corrupting 2010 Supreme Court ruling in Citizens United vs FEC), hire legions of specialized lawyers, lobbyists and public relations specialists to make sure they get special treatment. With lots of loopholes carefully lobbied into place and a system of taxation that taxes income but leaves wealth mostly untouched, it is not a shock that very successful big corporations pay no taxes and wealthy executives, landowners, developers and shareholders pay taxes at a lower rate than their assistants, if they pay taxes at all. Like Donald Trump.

Wealthy corporations also lobby for environmental loopholes that allow them to pollute, like the exemption from environmental restrictions accorded to the petroleum industry from responsibility for fracking chemicals or the governmental inability to make companies that create constant toxic environmental emissions actually pay for the damage that they cause. Some of this is judicially and statutorily legitimized de facto “corruption,” but it becomes fascinating to look at the biggest issues facing the entire planet from this perspective.

Effectively, this notion of “entitlement of the wealthy” has created the two most consistently destructive forces created by mankind on this planet: corruption and climate change. Yes, we have conflict, genocide, torture and cruel autocracy, but those horribles come and go. Corruption seems incurable, and climate change will not flow away. A simple look at taxation tells us that so many of the rich all over the world will do just about anything to avoid (evade?) paying taxes. Money moves around the world seeking shelter from taxes. Power corrupts!

The October 21st BBC.com shows us a couple of examples of the problem: “Major tax evasion and avoidance schemes have cost governments an estimated €150bn (£127bn [$175bn]) in lost revenues, research shows… So-called cum-cum and cum-ex schemes are designed to exploit weaknesses in national tax laws… They apply to the payments, or dividends, firms make to shareholders… The new figures have been calculated by a team of experts at the University of Mannheim, in partnership with the German not-for-profit group Correctiv.

Evidence from leaked documents and people involved in the schemes suggests UK taxpayers have also lost out, potentially to the tune of billions of pounds….. The research forms part of a joint investigation carried out by newsrooms worldwide, co-ordinated by Correctiv, known as the CumEx Files 2.0. It casts new light on a growing scandal which first came to public attention in 2018… So-called cum-ex trades were transactions where shares were sold from one investor to another immediately before the payment of a dividend (cum, or with, dividend) but delivered afterwards (ex-dividend)… This tactic effectively created confusion over who owned the shares at the moment when the dividend was paid. It allowed both parties to claim rebates on withholding tax - a levy which had only been paid once, when the dividend was issued.

“This practice became popular in Germany in the early years of the century and continued until 2012, when the law was changed. It also spread to other countries, notably Denmark, but also France, Belgium, Italy and Austria… In Germany, prosecutors have launched a wave of criminal inquiries… Several individuals have already been found guilty of tax evasion. Some 1,000 people are currently under investigation, including junior and senior banking staff, lawyers and brokers…

“[D]ocuments show that bankers were able to carry out related trades to ‘recycle’ otherwise unusable German tax credits and generate profits at UK taxpayers' expense… The complex system relied on so-called ‘manufactured overseas dividends’ (MODs), payments made between parties involved in so-called short sales of borrowed shares in foreign companies… It allowed investors to generate liabilities which could be offset against German tax credits and at the same time, generate a credit against UK tax.

“Estimates vary as to how much this scheme actually cost the UK taxpayer. One individual who was involved in these kinds of trades in the past suggested it would have been several hundred million pounds a year until 2005 - and more than £100m [$138m] per year thereafter… Another whistleblower told the BBC that ‘these were not small trades’, and that the practice ‘must have been used on a significant scale’.” Add to these techniques the out-and-out lying on tax returns, bribing tax collectors and massive deposits in secret (often Swiss) bank accounts. The lost tax revenues go way, way up from there.

But entire countries seem willing to bend the rules, pressure international bodies to rewrite or ignore “facts” where such practices have devastating impact. China’s pressuring the World Health Organization to sanitize the extent of its COVID outbreak is a particularly toxic example that helped the pandemic explode before containment efforts were mounted. But in the world of climate change, the BBC.com also tells us of another nasty practice: “A huge leak of documents seen by BBC News shows how countries are trying to change a crucial scientific report on how to tackle climate change… The leak reveals Saudi Arabia, Japan and Australia are among countries asking the UN to play down the need to move rapidly away from fossil fuels.

“It also shows some wealthy nations are questioning paying more to poorer states to move to greener technologies… This ‘lobbying’ raises questions for the COP26 climate summit in November… The leak reveals countries pushing back on UN recommendations for action and comes just days before they will be asked at the summit to make significant commitments to slow down climate change and keep global warming to 1.5 degrees.

“The leaked documents consist of more than 32,000 submissions made by governments, companies and other interested parties to the team of scientists compiling a UN report designed to bring together the best scientific evidence on how to tackle climate change… These ‘assessment reports’ are produced every six to seven years by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the UN body tasked with evaluating the science of climate change.

“These reports are used by governments to decide what action is needed to tackle climate change, and the latest will be a crucial input to negotiations at the Glasgow conference.” We know that the United States has its share of climate change deniers and conspiracy theorists, tax evaders and mendacious current and former elected officials. But the whole world likes to play games that can kills us, shifting the cost burden of destructive actions from the rich to the not-rich.

I’m Peter Dekom, and since the United States has long since ceded the moral high ground on so many of these crucial issues, it takes committed individuals building broad constituencies to yell, scream, organize, vote and oppose these dark forces on a never-ending basis.

What, Another Spike in the Coronavirus?

 

“The recent rise in COVID-19 cases and the emergence of the Omicron variant pose downside risks to employment and economic activity and increased uncertainty for inflation…  Greater concerns about the virus could reduce people’s willingness to work in person, which would slow progress in the labor market and intensify supply-chain disruptions.”                                 Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell in testimony before Congress  

The family of coronaviruses, from SARS and MERS to COVID-19 (the latter is formally identified as SARS-CoV-2), are so named because of the shapes/shafts/bumps protruding on their surface (outer envelope or “corona” – Latin for crown). “Those bumps are known as spike proteins. They’re actually glycoproteins. That means they contain a carbohydrate (such as a sugar molecule)… [These] spike proteins work a bit like shape-shifting lock picks. They can change shape to interact with a protein on the surface of human cells. Those spike proteins latch the virus onto a cell. This allows them to get entry into those cells.

“On February 19, 2020, researchers described the 3-D structure of the spike protein on the novel coronavirus behind the 2020 global pandemic. This confirmed that the new virus’s spike protein also is a shape-shifter. What’s more, it clings to its target on human cells 10 to 20 times as tightly as the SARS spike protein does to the same target. Such a tight grip may help the COVID-19 virus spread more easily from person to person, researchers now say.” ScienceNewsforStudents.org (11/10/20). 

 

Messenger Ribonucleic Acid (mRNA) vaccines, like Pfizer and Moderna, effectively “teach” the human body’s own intrusion fighting cells (like T and B cells) what to look for by creating an inert shape that mirrors that spike protein. The body’s own systems learn to recognize that toxic shape and attack it. “The spike protein is unique to SARS-CoV-2 – it doesn't look like other proteins your body makes. So antibodies created against the spike protein won't harm your body, they will only target coronavirus.” NebraskaMed.com, July 2nd. That second vaccine shot was intended to reach those of the body’s intrusion-fighting cells that missed “the first lesson” and to make up for those older fighting cells that have worn out, reflected in reduced immunity over time. 

 

The current booster is more of the same, but a necessity as this novel coronavirus continues to mutate. There have literally been thousands of mutations (shape-shifting), but only a few of those have evolved into a meaningful threat. As they say, only the strong survive. As millions of human beings are walking around without having been vaccinated, humanity has become a gigantic Petri dish of viral self-generated experimentation, mostly random with mostly no real impact, that has brought us the gift of mutations like the Delta and now the Omicron variants. Delta’s spikes altered from prior incarnations of the virus just enough to accelerate their penetration, their “grip” if you will, on and into human cells. A lot. Faster and deeper penetration allows the virus time to work its misery earlier and faster… increasing transmission rates impacting how contagious the variants have become.

 

We don’t know much about Omicron… yet. Are the changes in the spikes the only structural change in the virus? We believe that Omicron’s spikes (pictured above) have evolved to increase their effective penetration into human cells, hence a more virulent transmission rate. Has the rest of the virus raised its toxicity to increase the danger of an infection? We don’t know. While there is a strong belief that the Omicron spikes are sufficiently similar to past versions of those spikes, hence our existing vaccines are probably at least partially effective against this variant, we really are not certain. Will the Omicron variant be strong enough to replace the Delta version as the dominant variant? We also do not know that.

 

These questions plague us all. “The sudden emergence of Omicron — the dystopian-sounding new coronavirus variant with dozens of mutations that could help it spread more rapidly and partially sidestep our hard-won immune defenses, or not — has ushered in the most disorienting phase of the pandemic since COVID-19 first materialized two winters ago… ‘It’s been about 20 months since we’ve been in a fog-of-war situation [with] the pandemic,” evolutionary biologist Carl Bergstrom tweeted Sunday [11/28]. ‘But we’re back there with Omicron.’” Yahoo News, November 30th. 

Travel bans, which just delay the inevitable, and national lockdowns are rising all over the world. President Biden preaches “concern but not panic” as scientists look for answers over the next few weeks, even as the US is not experiencing Omicron... yet. It will. Most experts fear a winter surge is mounting. Unvaccinated human beings prevent the kind of containment we need to sustain an economic recovery. Clearly, given the shape-shifting realities of this virus, “natural immunity,” especially that acquired a while ago, is not a justifiable solution. Our medical community is positing a possible annual (or more frequent) booster reality, with vaccines tailored for the virus’ emerging proclivities, for the foreseeable future. While there are treatments being generated, still awaiting FDA approval, clinical trials have revealed some serious potential side-effects. 

If there is fault to be assessed, it has to be laid at the feet of those with access to a viable vaccine who, for political or misguided and misinformed conspiracy theory reasons, refuse that clearly superior preventative, and those elected officials, most of whom are themselves vaccinated, who encourage vaccine resistance. There appears to be no short or medium-term return to economic normalcy without those previously unwilling to get vaccinated to change their minds and embrace compassion, to those vulnerable individuals in our society, by not becoming carriers and Petri dishes of SARS-CoV-2 infection.

I’m Peter Dekom, and I cannot believe how so many anti-vaxxers, encouraged by “whatever works to get votes” politicians, have embraced such callous selfishness that they do not care who gets infected by their disregard of medical reality.