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MEANINGLESS PREDICTIONS, PROGNOSTICATIONS, PROJECTIONS, AND PROPHECIES
* Best remarks at the Saturday memorial service for Harry Reid: Barack Obama
* 2022 Super Bowl winner: Green Bay Packers
* Odds Build Back Better is passed by the March 1 SOTU: 22%
* Date by which the Kanye West-Julia Fox relationship is no longer driven by their PR teams: January 22
* Make-up of the Senate after the November results: R +2
* “The Fabelmans” will be a bigger box office hit than “West Side Story”: true
* Due for a health scare: Vladimir Putin
* Destined to be married in the next five years: Leonardo DiCaprio and Lukas Haas (but not necessarily to each other)
* Odds the Biden home testing kit plan will be considered a success by the March 1 SOTU: 15%
* Not each other’s destiny: Pete Davidson and Kim Kardashian
* Most likely 2024 Republican presidential nominees (in order): Trump, other, DeSantis, Cruz
* Another baby on the way: Kate Middleton
* Odds the Supreme Court strikes down the Biden vaccine mandates: 82.56%
* Eric Adams job approval rating on September 1, 2022: 66%
* Odds the Golden Globes redeem themselves: 0%
* Most likely 2024 Democratic presidential nominees (in order): other, Clinton, Biden, Harris
* Odds Jennifer Lawrence’s baby will be adorable: 100%
* Chances that (some of) these predictions are tongue-in-cheek: 50-50
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ESSENTIAL READING
1. The Wall Street Journal on the latest research confirming the current paradigm:
The threat posed by the Omicron variant has now come into sharper focus, with recent clinical data and laboratory studies lending support to early reports suggesting that it is milder but more transmissible than other variants of the new coronavirus.
“It spreads very, very fast, but it doesn’t appear to have the virulence or machismo to really pack as much of a wallop as the Alpha or Delta variants,” James Musser, chairman of Houston Methodist Hospital’s pathology and genomic medicine department and the leader of a new study of Omicron infections, said of the variant.
Recent laboratory studies suggest that Omicron’s lower virulence may reflect its apparent tendency to thrive in cells in the upper respiratory tract rather than in the lungs, where Covid-19 infections can cause potentially fatal breathing problems.
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2. The Washington Post on the CDC’s Rochelle Walensky attempt to right the PR ship.
The director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention took a calculated gamble Friday as she sought to assume greater control over confused public health messaging about the coronavirus as the pandemic enters its third year.
Rochelle Walensky held her first solo covid-19 news conference since becoming the chief of the public health agency nearly a year ago, vowing that it would be “the first of many.”
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3. The New York Times on Democratic worries that the teachers unions will hurt the party in the midterms, as locals push for remote learning, with Mr. Abeigon as the poster person:
In Newark, schools began 2022 with an unexpected stretch of remote learning, set to end on Jan. 18. John Abeigon, the Newark Teachers Union president, said he was hopeful about the return to buildings but that he remained unsure if every school could operate safely. Student vaccination is far from universal, and most parents have not consented to their children taking regular virus tests.
Mr. Abeigon said that if tests remain scarce, he might ask for remote learning at specific schools with low vaccination rates and high case counts. He agreed that online learning was a burden to working parents but argued that educators should not be sacrificed for the good of the economy.
“I’d see the entire city of Newark unemployed before I allowed one single teacher’s aide to die needlessly,” he said….
And if it turns out that Democratic candidates pay a political price for unions’ assertiveness, local labor officials do not consider it to be among their top concerns.
If periods of remote learning this winter hurt the Democratic Party, “that’s a question for the consultants and the brain trusts to figure out,” said Mr. Abeigon, the Newark union president. “But that it’s the right thing to do? There’s no question in my mind.”
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