Twitter just fact checked president Trump’s tweets for the first time. They added an “unsubstantiated claim” label on his recent tweets criticizing mail-in voting, instead citing CNN and the Washington post as fact. President Trump was obviously upset, tweeting out: “Republicans feel that Social Media Platforms totally silence conservatives voices. We will strongly regulate, or close them down, before we can ever allow this to happen…”
The President of District Media Group, Beverly Hallberg calls the move a “strategic error”. “First let me just say if we’re going to be fact checking the president one thing that we need to keep in mind is that mail-in ballots lead to lead to a higher percentage of voter fraud, so that is a fact we can look to history, She said. “But I think this is a strategic error by Twitter to be the fact checker of the world’s leaders, because then it begs the question; are they gonna be fact checking all the party leaders of the People’s Republic of China?”
Hallberg went on, ”And if they don’t correct those tweets, does that automatically mean they’re giving their stamp of approval? So I think they’ve made a strategic error by caving to the political pressure on the left because in essence, they have now set themselves out as the arbiters of truth in twittersphere and I’m not really sure that’s a it’s something they can or want to bear.”
Caving to the left may not be considered a strategic error within the very liberal organization that is Twitter. Considering their fact-checker-in-chief and head of cyber integrity is a guy named Yoel Roth, who has a history of very specific anti-Trump tweets calling him an “actual Nazi” and disrespecting the states in the middle of the country by saying “ we fly over those states that voted for racist tangerine for a reason”. The president sometimes is not justified in his angry rants, but this time he is.
Do you think Twitter should censor, or just let it be the verbal Wild West? Respond to this email and let us know what you think!!!
CDC: More Than Half of COVID Positive Tests are Wrong
In updated guidance from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention acknowledged an inability to accurately determine if individuals had been infected with Covid-19 via antibody tests; if the test is used in a population where prevalence is low, it’s possible that “less than half of those testing positive will truly have antibodies.” The info was posted on their website.
There are two kinds of Covid-19 tests: molecular diagnostic tests, which can identify people with who have it and it’s active, even when they have no symptoms, and antibody, or serology, tests, which indicate that a person had it at some point in the past.
According to Christopher Farnsworth, an instructor of pathology and immunology at Washington University School of Medicine, “antibody testing is really helpful in monitoring how widely a virus has spread within a community. Such testing could help determine how many people have recovered from the virus, even if they never had symptoms.”
However, the CDC has acknowledged that antibody testing can be inaccurate, especially in populations where there is a low prevalence of the coronavirus.
In fact, under certain scenarios, “less than half of those testing positive will truly have antibodies,” the agency says. As a result, the CDC advises that antibody test results should not be used to make decisions related to schools, dormitories, or correctional facilities, and that testing shouldn’t be used to determine immune status in individuals.
The CDC giveth (you can’t catch COVID-19 from surfaces) and the CDC taketh away (antibody tests are wrong and we don’t even know if antibodies make you immune). This is the world we live in.
Reply to this email and tell us, are you still engaging in social distancing or are you hugging and shaking hands with family and friends?
Elon Musk’s Spacex Delays Historic Launch
SpaceX and NASA have scrubbed Wednesday’s attempt at launching astronauts from American soil for the first time since 2011. The scrub came after fueling of the Falcon 9 rocket had already begun. The next attempt at launch will come Saturday at 3:22 p.m. If that launch is also scrubbed, the next attempt would be Sunday at 3 p.m.
The move comes after President Donald Trump had traveled to Central Florida and landed at Kennedy Space Center. The history-making flight into orbit was called off with 16 minutes to go in the countdown because of the danger of lightning.
The spacecraft was set to blast off Wednesday afternoon for the International Space Station, ushering in a new era in commercial spaceflight and putting NASA back in the business of launching astronauts from U.S. for the first time in nearly a decade.
Ever since the space shuttle was retired in 2011, NASA has relied on Russian rockets to carry astronauts to and from the space station. A successfully-launched, manned Space Flight by SpaceX, could launch Tesla Inc (NASDAQ: TSLA) stock. These types of successes by SpaceX, Solar City and The Boring Company are looked at as successes for “Musk Inc” and have driven Tesla stock higher in the past.
AbCellera is Raising a Ton of Money
AbCellera is raising money like cray. At the beginning of May, they announced an investment of $175.6 Million from the government of Canada to discover solutions for COVID-19 and build a manufacturing facility for antibody Drugs Today they announced a $105 million Series B round led by OrbiMed and DCVC, which is more than 10 times the company’s 2018 Series . They also have funding from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
This Series B round (which also featured Viking Global Investors, Peter Thiel, Founders Fund, Eli Lilly, University of Minnesota, and Presight Capital) will expand their research capacity to reach what CEO Carl Hansen said has been a long-running rise in interest from other companies who want to partner with them.
AbCellera focuses on therapeutic antibodies, screening, choosing and analyzing millions of naturally produced antibodies to be used as next-generation drug candidates. They are not a public company yet, but you should watch for this one to talk IPO, and also watch the stock of other pharma companies that are investors like Eli Lilly And Co (NYSE: LLY).
The stock is down Seven consecutive sessions and the chart doesn’t look good at all, but a decisive win by AbCellera could put a floor under it.
Constricting the Coronavirus
A Florida craftsman has come up with a novel way of tackling both the coronavirus pandemic and the problem of invasive pythons and iguanas that damage the state’s fragile ecosystem.
Brian Woods, the 63-year-old owner of All-American Gator Products, has turned his hand to designing face masks made out reptile skin.
“I took something that’s very serious and turned it into a fashion statement,” he said at his workshop in Dania Beach, 25 miles (40 kilometers) north of Miami.
Woods got his inspiration from a curious source — a meme he saw of a horse wearing a woman’s bra as a face mask. He asked his wife if he could borrow one of hers to test if the concept would work.
He now sells python skin face masks on his Facebook page for $90. Snake hunter Amy Siewe arrived at Woods’ home with a giant python for skinning.
“They’re wreaking havoc on the Everglades,” she said, referring to the vast wetlands that occupy much of southern Florida.
“They get to be between 18 and 20 feet (5.5 to 6 meters) long and they eat everything from rats to deer.”
The pythons were probably introduced to Florida as exotic pets toward the end of the last century and released into the Everglades, where they have no predators.
The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission pays hunters a bounty to capture the snakes. Iguanas likely also came to Florida as pets before being released into the wild, where they thrive in the balmy climate.