Noteworthy News

[Angrboda]

The Food and Drug Administration approved Moderna’s mRNA flu vaccine this week — a major public health breakthrough for an administration that’s been troublingly down on vaccines.

The flu is a gigantic and costly illness, causing 1 billion infections and 300,000 deaths each year. But this new shot, built on advances from the Covid-19 pandemic, is expected to outperform the standard flu vaccine that we've used, largely unchanged, for the past 80 years.

The new shot fixes a problem that has long bedeviled the traditional vaccine: the gap between how quickly the flu virus mutates and how slowly vaccines are produced. The flu is changing constantly. But under current methods, manufacturing a flu vaccine — which, to my enormous fascination, most commonly involves secret chicken farms — takes six to eight months.

That long lag often means the virus circulating during flu season isn't the one the vaccine was designed to target. But the new mRNA vaccine works differently: Instead of using a weakened or dead virus to trigger an immune response, mRNA vaccines contain genetic instructions that train the immune system to fight influenza.

mRNA vaccines also take less time to manufacture, so they can be produced closer to flu season. In a clinical trial, older adults who received Moderna’s mRNA vaccine were 27% less likely to get the flu than those who received the standard vaccine.

- Vox

[Deesse23]

Drone with 1kg Semtex found and disabled at Leipzig airport. Origin and background is completely unclear 

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cyvlg4q48l3o

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

Racist Cartoonist Is Paralyzed

Scott Adams, the creator of the workplace comic strip “Dilbert” said he is now “paralyzed below the waist” amid his battle with advanced prostate cancer.

“So here’s the latest update,” . “I am paralyzed below the waist in the sense that I can’t move any muscles. I do have feeling; I just can’t move any muscles. And the solution as of today is we’re gonna ambulance me over to a facility to get radiated, and they’re going to try to radiate that pesky tumor that’s around my spine.”

A multitude of publications carrying Adams’ “Dilbert,” his 1989-launched office-set featuring the everyman nerd of the same name, dropped his strip in 2023 after he said Black people were members of a “hate group.” 

He then declared, “The best advice I would give to white people is to get the hell away from Black people.”

Boru

[Jackalope]

Huh, I thought he was dead already. Must have been some other racist loon.

[Fake Messiah]

Yeah, Scott Adams died in January. Boru is posting an old news.

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

Yeah, Scott Adams died in January. Boru is posting an old news.

Mea culpa.

Boru

[The Valkyrie]

Yeah, Scott Adams died in January. Boru is posting an old news.

Mea culpa.

Boru

To be fair, it's worth celebrating again when a Trump supporter dies...