Malevolent Designer News - Creationism's Beloved Malevolence is Fighting Back

SARS-CoV-2 Y453F and L452R variants contribute to evasion from cellular immunity and the L452R variant also increases viral infectivity.

From: Motozono, C. et.al., Cell Host & Microbe, 2021.(CC BY 4.0)

SARS-CoV-2 spike mutation L452R evades human immune response and enhances infectivity | News | Kumamoto University

Creationist mode:

Creationism's malevolent designer, having gone to such lengths, catalogued in this blog, to design the SARS-CoV-2 virus to kill as many people as possible and make many more sick, was never going to take defeat by human medical science with its clever vaccines, lightly.

Now scientists from Kumamoto University, Japan, have shown how it has redesigned the virus' spike protein so it not only makes it more infective but also helps it evade the immunity produced in response to the vaccines, which specifically target the spike protein.

This mutation, or as Creationists would call it, the new design, is known to science as L452R and is already present in both the δ-variant and the ε-variant. The δ-variant is the one currently responsible for the massive increase in infections in much of the world, include the UK, where new cases have rocketed from under 1,700 daily new cases in early May to over 54,000 four days ago, although we have seen a slight falling back from that figure to 44,000 new cases today. Most experts are predicting a large increase over the next few weeks, possibly reaching 100,000 new cases next month. Unless some of the restrictions, including obligatory wearing of face coverings in enclosed public spaces and public transport are reimposed, I think this figure is easily achievable.

UK Daily New Covid-19 infections (21 Jul, 2021)

Source: GOV.UK Coronavirus (COVID-19) in the UK

Immunity in response to the vaccines has two components:

1. Humoral immunity (antibodies circulating in the blood which attack the viral spike proteins rendering them innactive).
2. Cellular immunity (pre-programmed helper and killer T-cells, produced in the bone marrow on demand when cells signal that they have been infected).

The new 'design' appears to lessen the effect of the humoral immunity because the modification in the spike protein means they don't bind so firmly to the virus. It makes the virus more infective because it binds more firmly to the ACE2 proteins on the cell surface, so gains entry to the cell more quickly, and it reduces the mobilisation of T-cells, especially in people who carry the HLA-A24 allel, which is common in East and South-Asian people.

So, it seems the intelligent [sic] designer has left no stone unturned in its search for its next move in the arms race with human medical science.

Creationist mode:

Now the real science:

The L452R mutation is a hallmark of the Delta variant that is currently spreading worldwide, and in Japan, about 60% of the population have HLA-A24, which is responsible for cellular immunity. The L452R mutation not only evades the HLA-A24 cellular immunity but can also enhance the infectivity of the virus. We have been carefully investigating the immune response against emerging SARS-CoV-2 variants in real time to monitor how the mutations affect human immunity and viral infectivity.

Dr. Chihiro Motozono, Senior author
Division of Infection and Immunity,
Joint Research Center for Human Retrovirus Infection,
Kumamoto University, Kumamoto, Japan

In this study, the research group first used immunological experiments to demonstrate that an antigen derived from the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein is strongly recognized by HLA-A24-restricted cellular immunity, which is often found in Japanese people. They then performed a large-scale (>750,000) sequence analysis of SARS-CoV-2 strains and found several important mutations in the spike protein region typically recognized by HLA-A24. These are the Y453F spike mutations found in strain B.1.1.298, which was prevalent in Denmark in 2020, and the L452R mutation in B.1.427/429 and B.1.617 (commonly known as the Epsilon and Delta variants respectively) that are currently spreading around the world. Further immunological experiments demonstrated that these mutations escape HLA-A24 cellular immunity. The researchers believe that this is the first time a “variant of concern" has been demonstrated to evade cellular immunity.

The Y453F and L452R mutations were located in the receptor binding domain of the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein, which are crucial for gaining entry into host cells. Researchers thus examined the effects of these mutations on the infection and replication efficiency of the virus. They found that the L452R mutation enhances its membrane fusion activity, infectivity, and viral replication.

The team's findings were published recently, open access, in the journal, Cell Host & Microbe:

Highlights

• L452R and Y453F mutations in the SARS-CoV-2 spike RBM have emerged
• L452R and Y453F mutants escape HLA-A24-restricted cellular immunity
• L452R increases viral infectivity and fusogenicity and promotes viral replication

Summary

Many SARS-CoV-2 variants with naturally acquired mutations have emerged. These mutations can affect viral properties such as infectivity and immune resistance. Although the sensitivity of naturally occurring SARS-CoV-2 variants to humoral immunity has been investigated, sensitivity to human leukocyte antigen (HLA)-restricted cellular immunity remains largely unexplored. Here, we demonstrate that two recently emerging mutations in the receptor-binding domain of the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein, L452R (in B.1.427/429 and B.1.617) and Y453F (in B.1.1.298), confer escape from HLA-A24-restricted cellular immunity. These mutations reinforce affinity toward the host entry receptor ACE2. Notably, the L452R mutation increases spike stability, viral infectivity, viral fusogenicity, and thereby promotes viral replication. These data suggest that HLA-restricted cellular immunity potentially affects the evolution of viral phenotypes and that a further threat of the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic is escape from cellular immunity.

Motozono, Chihiro; Toyoda, Mako; Zahradnik, Jiri; Saito, Akatsuki; Nasser, Hesham; Tan, Toong Seng; Ngare, Isaac; Kimura, Izumi; Uriu, Keiya; Kosugi, Yusuke; Yue, Yuan; Shimizu, Ryo; Ito, Jumpei; Torii, Shiho; Yonekawa, Akiko; Shimono, Nobuyuki; Nagasaki, Yoji; Minami, Rumi; Toya, Takashi; Sekiya, Noritaka; Fukuhara, Takasuke; Matsuura, Yoshiharu; Schreiber, Gideon; Ikeda, Terumasa; Nakagawa, So; Ueno, Takamasa; Sato, Kei
SARS-CoV-2 spike L452R variant evades cellular immunity and increases infectivity
Cell Host & Microbe, Volume 29, Issue 7, 1124 - 1136.e11

Copyright: © 2021 The authors. Published by Elsevier Inc.
Open access.
Reprinted under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0)

The reason this is happening with the SARS-CoV-2 virus is obvious to anyone who has even a rudimentary understanding of evolution. Occasional variations in the replication of the viral RNA in infected cells are sifted by the sieve of natural selection, so that those few that are better at surviving and reproducing in the environment we are creating with our vaccines will quite quickly become the dominant form in the viral gene pool. A higher survival rate is a consequence of becoming more infective, producing more viruses and/or evading the immunity the vaccines are conferring on us.

Hospital Admissions (21 July 2021)

Source: GOV.UK Coronavirus (COVID-19) in the UK

Deaths (21 July, 2021)

Source: GOV.UK Coronavirus (COVID-19) in the UK

The significant factor here is that these mutations don't need to arise in people who have been vaccinated; they only need to infect vaccinated people to be selected for. So long as there are billions of people who have not been vaccinated, there is a high probability that a billion to one chance mutation will happen daily in the viral population numbered in the trillions. It is only by massively reducing this breeding ground by vaccinating as many people as possible that we can reduce the chance of these mutations arising.

The good news is, that, as the figures from the UK show, while new infections are approaching figures last seen last January and February, the number of hospitalisations and deaths are only a small fraction of what they were then. The vaccines are working to prevent serious illnesses and deaths.

Menwhile, we can only wonder at the mindset of those fanatical Creationists who are so full of admiration for what they believe to be the creator of this terrible pandemic.

How Come no Religion Ever Told Us the Universe is This Amazing?

Five galaxies as seen with MUSE on ESO’s VLT at several wavelengths of light

Galactic fireworks: new ESO images reveal stunning features of nearby galaxies | ESO

A stunning set of photographs of nearby galaxies and an accompanying video, has been released by the European Southern Observatory (ESO). They were obtained by ESO's Very Large Telescope (VLT).

By combining these observations with data from their partner, the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), they are shedding new light on the what triggers gas clouds to condense to form these galaxies, the details of which remain a mystery.

Catholic Abuse News - Compensation for Victims of Paedophile Priests Bankrupts Yet Another Diocese

Bishop Michael R Cote
“grievously sorry.”

Connecticut diocese files for bankruptcy amid abuse claims

In common with many other American Catholic diocese, the diocese of Norwich, Connecticut has declared itself bankrupt and applied for Chapter 11 protection. This is often a devise to protect church funds from claimants and ensure victims are denied the compensation they are entitled to while the diocese hangs on to the funds it needs to pay its expenses such as the wages and pensions of those who oversaw the abuses.

This action was precipitated by dozens of lawsuits of victims of the regime that ran the now closed Academy at Mount Saint John School, a residential treatment centre for 'troubled youth' in Deep River. They are also suing the former Bishop of Norwich, Daniel Reilly.

According to this report in Religion News Service:

Malevolent Designer News - How SARS-CoV-2 Attacks Children

New UK study reveals extent of brain complications in children hospitalised with COVID-19 - News - University of Liverpool

Just so it leaves no stone unturned in its determination to do maximal harm with its brilliantly-designed virus, Creationism's beloved malevolence has even included a design in SARS-CoV-2 for attacking the brains of children.

At least this should be the conclusion of intelligent [sic] design advocates to whom there is only one permitted explanation for the apparent design of living organisms and their parasites.

A new study has found that, while the risk of children needing hospitalisation when infected by the coronavirus is small, about 1 in 20 children who do need to be admitted, go on to develop neurological complications.

The discovery was made by the CoroNerve Studies Group, led by scientists from the University of Liverpool, UK. The group was formed to investigate reports that:

Unintelligent Designer News - Ludicrously Complex Solution for a Simple Problem

The photosynthetic sea slug, Plakobranchus ocellatus type black, (left) and an electron micrograph displaying sequestered algal chloroplasts within a sea slug cell (right).

A genome of photosynthetic animals decoded: Genome analysis reveals chloroplast acquisition without gene transfer in photosynthetic sea slugs | National Institute for Basic Biology / News

One of the strongest arguments against intelligent design in nature is the example of stupidity to be found in the many ludicrously complex solutions to problems that should have been simple for an omniscient, omnipotent creator.

I spell out several examples of this in my popular book, Unintelligent Design: Refuting the Intelligent Design Hoax. Creationists have been fooled into believing that complexity is evidence for design, not against it, even though one of the basic principles of good design is minimal complexity and maximal simplcity. Complexity should be the minimum sufficient to achieve the design purpose, since anything more wastes resource and adds to the production cost while adding nothing it terms of utility value.

And here we have another example of this unnecessary complexity in nature, when a simpler solution was readily available.

Malevolent Designer News - Amazing Success of SARS-CoV-2 Virus

Identification of over 200 long COVID symptoms prompts call for UK screening programme | EurekAlert! Science News

Creationist mode:

As an example of spiteful mendacity, Creationism's beloved intelligent [sic] designer's design of the SARS-CoV-2 virus takes some beating. No wonder Creationists are so much in awe of its genius. Strangely though, they don't seem to notice the nastier side of its hateful nature, or maybe they just don't see anything wrong with making us suffer because of unresolved anger issues.

It now appears that the coronavirus causing Covid-19 and the pandemic devastating economies, businesses and families world-wide, is designed with a nasty little sting in its tail, metaphorically speaking. If you do manage to survive an attack by it, it rampages through your body causing any or all of over 200 symptoms spread across ten systems, any of which debilitates in some way.

This was the finding of a research group led by scientists from University College, London, UK (UCL) together with a patient-led research collaborative. The group conducted an online survey of patients with confirmed or suspected 'long-COVID'. The survey was designed to characterise the symptom profile and time course of the disease as well as its impact on daily life, work and return to health.

Creationist dogma requires Creationists to believe that this malevolent designer is also omniscient, so would have been fully aware in complete detail, of the effects of its design, and designed it perfectly to produce exactly that outcome. The alternative would be to believe it can be surprised by the results of its own design and blunders blindly on not knowing what will happen and powerless to prevent it when it happens. The UCL news release summarises the findings:

End-Times News - The End is Nigh for American Christianity

Declining Christianity Leads to Dramatic US Religious Realignment, CRC Study Finds - Arizona Christian University

It looks like the USA is belatedly following the rest of the developed world in rejecting the intellectual absurdity and justification for hate that is Christianity today, if this poll is anything to go by.

It was conducted by the Barna Group which is hosted by Arizona Christian University, who, to their credit, do little to gloss over the findings which should terrify those whose livelihood depends on people turning up to church and giving their tax-free donations. Amongst the main findings of the AWVI 2021 are:

Trumpanzee News - Right-Wing Capitol Insurrectionists in the US Police

Jan 6th failed Trumpanzee coup d’état in progress

Photo: Gallagher Photography via Shutterstock

15 Law Enforcement Officers Charged In Capitol Insurrection | Right Wing Watch

The effort from the extremist right in the USA is to blame the January 6th failed coup d’état on the liberal left and Black Lives Matter activists, by fruitloop conspiracists and Talibangelical liars for Trump such as Michelle Bachmann. The truth is, of course, the diametric opposite in terms of their politics, as the prosecutions are revealing.

Amongst those so far charged, for example, are these fifteen law-enforcement offices that no-one in their right mind would call liberal left. The following table comes courtesy of Right Wing Watch, with additional graphics from Internet sources:

Another Stink Rising from the Vatican Cesspit

Former Cardinal Giovanni Angelo Becciu, now under indictment in the Vatican for bribery, abuse of office and embezzlement.

Vatican indicts cardinal and nine others connected to financial scandal.

The murky world of Vatican finances is to be brought under the spotlight again towards the end of July when a Vatican tribunal begins hearing charges brought against former cardinal and powerful chief of staff of the Vatican secretariat of state, Giovanni Angelo Becciu and nine other business associates and Vatican officials are facing corruption charges in connection with a $225 million property deal in London in 2014.

The corruption charges relate to the use of the Vatican slush fund known as "Peter's Pence", which is the recipient of charitable donations throughout the Catholic world and which is supposed to be used by the Pope for charitable works. As former effective number 2 in the Vatican, Becciu had access to this largely unregulated account. I appears that he, like so many Vatican officials before him with access to large, unregulated slush funds, couldn't resist the temptation to plunge his grubby hands deep into the coffer.

Malevolent Designer News - Why The Creator Makes SARS-CoV-2 Variants

Study reveals how our immune system reacts to COVID-19 variants - The University of Sydney

Creationist mode:

For devotees of Creationism's intelligent [sic] designer, this finding by an Australian research group should come as no surprise. The experience of the coronavirus pandemic their beloved malevolence inflicted on humanity starting in late 2019, is that just as we seem to be getting to grips with one variant, along comes another even more infectious version.

The Sydney University researchers have found that these later versions, or variants, tend to be less affected by the antibodies our immune systems produce to the earlier variants, and, fortunately, to a lesser degree by those produced by the vaccines designed for those earlier variants. The designer is clearly deeply involved in an arms race with both human medical science and the immune system it supposedly designed to protect us from the viruses it creates to harm us.

Creationist mode:

Quite why it is having an arms race with itself is anyone's guess, but Creationists have defined it as supremely intelligent, so they must assume this is a hallmark of high intelligence! Cult dogma dictates that this can't be attributed to a natural process like evolution, so intelligent [sic] design is the only option available to Creationists, many of who seem to lack the capacity to work out why normal people find this so risible - which might be related to the reason they became Creationists in the first place.

Of course, to anyone who understands how evolution works, this was entirely predictable and presents medical science with a challenge - how to design vaccines which will also work against future variants, or design production techniques which can quickly switch to new variants as they are detected for annual boosters, like we currently have to do with annual flu jabs.

From the Sydney University News release:

We can learn a great deal from these people who were infected in the first wave in Australia as they were infected with the same variant that our current vaccines are based on.

While the approved vaccines are showing good responses, our study highlights the importance of continued vaccine development, especially taking into account the differences in variants.

Fabienne Brilot, Lead author, Associate Professor Sydney University, Sydney, NSW, Australia.

Australian scientists researching how our immune system responds to COVID-19 have revealed that those infected by early variants in 2020 produced sustained antibodies, however, these antibodies are not as effective against contemporary variants of the virus. The research is one of the world’s most comprehensive studies of the immune response against COVID-19 infection. It suggests vaccination is more effective than the body’s natural immune response following infection and shows the need to invest in new vaccine designs to keep pace with emerging COVID variants.

Published today in PLOS Medicine, the study was made possible by a partnership between the University of Sydney, Kids Research, Sydney Children’s Hospitals Network,

What this work has shown us is that current observations about vaccines show they offer a much broader protection against COVID-19 and its variants than the body’s natural immune response following infection, which is usually only protective against the variant of the virus that the person was infected with. We, therefore, should not rely on the body’s natural immune response to control this pandemic, but rather the broadly protective vaccines that are available.

Stuart Turville, Co-senior author Associate Professor
Kirby Institute The University of New South Wales, Sydney, NSW, Australia

the Kirby Institute at UNSW Sydney, Australian Red Cross Lifeblood, St Vincent’s Hospital and NSW Health Pathology, as well as other local and international collaborators.

The team analysed the serum of 233 individuals diagnosed with COVID-19 over 7 months and uncovered that the level of immunity over time is dependent on disease severity and the viral variant. They show that antibodies developed during the first wave had reduced effectiveness against six variants, ranging from those observed in the second wave in Australia through to three variants of concern that have driven the global pandemic in the UK, Brazil and South Africa...

Neutralising antibodies are part of our immune system’s frontline arsenal that is triggered during infection and vaccination. Their job is to shield cells that are usually the target of a pathogen (such as the SARS-CoV-2 virus which causes the COVID-19 disease) from being infected. The level of neutralising antibody response can be a defining feature of how effectively our body fights off illness.

What makes this study stand out is the level and depth of analysis to neutralising antibody levels in people recovering from COVID infection over time, including comparison of infection recovering from different viral variants.

Fiona Tea, First co-author
Postdoctoral fellow
Kids Neuroscience Centre
Children’s Hospital, Westmead, Sydney, NSW, Australia

Key findings

• SARS-CoV-2 antibody responses are sustained for up to seven months post-infection.
• The immune response remained stable in some individuals, and while it decreased in others, no individual showed a negative response during the seven-month period.
• Levels of virus-neutralising antibodies were associated with COVID-19 severity.
• Antibodies generated after early infection displayed a significantly reduced antibody binding and neutralisation potency to globally emerging viral variants.

Method

10 COVID-19 strains and variants of concern/interest were investigated, including:*

• First known classified SARS-CoV-2 strain (Wuhan -1 D614)
• Alpha (B.1.1.7, United Kingdom)
• Beta (B.1.351, South Africa)
• Gamma (P1, Brazilian)
• Zeta (P2, Brazilian)

*Note naming conventions updated to reflect World Health Organisation classifications.

The researchers used a comprehensive suite of assays that measured:

• The longevity and type of antibody response against Spike from various variants over time in serum of COVID-19 diagnosed individuals.
• Neutralisation of infectious SARS-CoV-2 over time, by infecting cell lines that had ACE2 on its surface (which SARS-CoV-2 binds and targets on the cell to begin infection) with a particle designed to mimic a version of the SARS-CoV-2 virus particle.

The good news is that the antibodies produced by the vaccines appear to be long-lasting and to have a broader range of effectiveness across the emerging new strains than those acquired in response to infection, which appear to be too highly targeted on the variant that triggered them. It looks like the result of medical science are proving to be superior to the results produced by what Creationist's believe is their intelligent [sic] designer's method, i.e. making the victim sick first and being fortunate enough to survive and ending up with an inferior product so being vulnerable still to another infection.

The groups findings are published, open access, in PLOS Medicine:

Abstract
The Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) antibody neutralization response and its evasion by emerging viral variants and variant of concern (VOC) are unknown, but critical to understand reinfection risk and breakthrough infection following vaccination. Antibody immunoreactivity against SARS-CoV-2 antigens and Spike variants, inhibition of Spike-driven virus–cell fusion, and infectious SARS-CoV-2 neutralization were characterized in 807 serial samples from 233 reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR)–confirmed Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) individuals with detailed demographics and followed up to 7 months. A broad and sustained polyantigenic immunoreactivity against SARS-CoV-2 Spike, Membrane, and Nucleocapsid proteins, along with high viral neutralization, was associated with COVID-19 severity. A subgroup of “high responders” maintained high neutralizing responses over time, representing ideal convalescent plasma donors. Antibodies generated against SARS-CoV-2 during the first COVID-19 wave had reduced immunoreactivity and neutralization potency to emerging Spike variants and VOC. Accurate monitoring of SARS-CoV-2 antibody responses would be essential for selection of optimal responders and vaccine monitoring and design.

Tea F, Ospina Stella A, Aggarwal A, Ross Darley D, Pilli D, Vitale D, et al. (2021)
SARS-CoV-2 neutralizing antibodies: Longevity, breadth, and evasion by emerging viral variants.
PLoS Med 18(7): e1003656. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pmed.1003656

Copyright: © 2021 The authors. Published by PLOS
Open access
Reprinted under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0)

Perhaps the most important lesson in all of this is the vital importance of getting a large majority of the world's population vaccinated as quickly as possible to cut down on the rates of transmission of this virus and the opportunities for it to evolve new variants in unprotected victims which can then be passed on to vaccinated individuals to be refined further by natural selection to evolve variant which can evade the antibodies. Cutting down the global viral population to as small a size as possible, is the quickest and most effective way to reduce the probability of new and more deadly strains emerging.

To see how quickly a new variant can spread through a population, see my animation of the daily new cases in the UK and how quickly the δ-variant spread; just as we had reduced the rate of infection to very low levels in most parts of the UK.

YECism Refuted Again - 120 Million-year Continuous Record of Early Paleozoic in Yukon, Canada

Ordovician black shales of the Mount Hare Formation, Road River Group (approximately 465 million years old) rise above conglomerates of the Aberdeen Member. The dangerous rapids of Aberdeen Canyon (Nan Zhak Nadhàdlaii), created by the Peel River cutting through the resistant conglomerates, appear at bottom left.

Image credit: Erik Sperling

Longest known continuous record of the Paleozoic discovered in Yukon wilderness

It was probably furthest from their minds but scientists from Stanford University have refuted Young Earth Creationism yet again, as is so often the case when science discovers facts about the geology and/or biology of an ancient Earth.

The problem for YECs is that their beliefs are so at variance with the facts that the facts, when uncovered by science, rarely, if ever support them, and in fact almost invariably refuted them, so all scientists need do is to continue to do what scientists do and discover the facts and, intentionally or not, they refute Creationism.

The case in point is the discovery in the Yukon, Canada, of deposits laid down over a period of some 120 million years of the early Palaeozoic era.

As Jossie Garthwaite, writing in Stanford News, explains:

Hundreds of millions of years ago, in the middle of what would eventually become Canada’s Yukon Territory, an ocean swirled with armored trilobites, clam-like brachiopods and soft, squishy creatures akin to slugs and squid.

It’s unheard of to have that much of Earth’s history in one place. There’s nowhere else in the world that I know of where you can study that long a record of Earth history, where there’s basically no change in things like water depth or basin type.

In order to make comparisons throughout these huge swaths of our history and understand long-term trends, you need a continuous record.

The early animals were still living in a low oxygen world.

There’s a ton of debate about how plants impacted the Earth system. Our results are consistent with a hypothesis that as plants evolved and covered the Earth, they increased nutrients to the ocean, driving oxygenation.

Although more oxygen is really good for a lot of organisms, graptolites lost the low oxygen habitat that was their refuge. Any environmental change is going to have winners and losers. Graptolites might have been the losers.

Erik Sperling, lead author
Geological scientist
Stanford University.

A trove of fossils and rock layers formed on that ancient ocean floor have now been unearthed by an international team of scientists along the banks of the Peel River a few hundred miles south of the Arctic’s Beaufort Sea. The discovery reveals oxygen changes at the seafloor across nearly 120 million years of the early Paleozoic era, a time that fostered the most rapid development and diversification of complex, multi-cellular life in Earth’s history.

“It’s unheard of to have that much of Earth’s history in one place,” said Stanford University geological scientist Erik Sperling, lead author of a July 7 study detailing the team’s findings in Science Advances. Most rock formations from the Paleozoic Era have been broken up by tectonic forces or eroded over time. “There’s nowhere else in the world that I know of where you can study that long a record of Earth history, where there’s basically no change in things like water depth or basin type.”

Oxygen was scarce in the deep water of this and other oceans at the dawn of the Paleozoic, roughly 541 million years ago. It stayed scarce until the Devonian, roughly 405 million years ago, when, in a geological blink – no more than a few million years – oxygen likely rocketed to levels close to those in modern oceans and the diversity of life on Earth exploded. Big, predatory fish appeared. Primitive ferns and conifers marched across continents previously ruled by bacteria and algae. Dragonflies took flight. And all of this after nearly four billion years of Earth’s landscapes being virtually barren.

Scientists have long debated what might have caused the dramatic shift from a low oxygen world to a more oxygenated one that could support a diverse web of animal life. But until now, it has been difficult to pin down the timing of global oxygenation or the long-term, background state of the world’s oceans and atmosphere during the era that witnessed both the so-called Cambrian explosion of life and the first of Earth’s “Big Five” mass extinctions, about 445 million years ago at the end of the Ordovician.

“In order to make comparisons throughout these huge swaths of our history and understand long-term trends, you need a continuous record,” said Sperling, an assistant professor of geological sciences at Stanford’s School of Earth, Energy & Environmental Sciences (Stanford Earth).

Context for past life

With permission from the Na Cho Nyak Dun and Tetlit Gwitch’in communities in Yukon, Sperling’s team, which included researchers from Dartmouth College and the Yukon Geological Survey, spent three summers at the Peel River site. Arriving by helicopter, the research team hacked through brush with machetes beside Class VI rapids to collect hundreds of fist-sized samples of rock from more than a mile of interbedded layers of shale, chert and lime mudstone.

Back at Sperling’s lab at Stanford, a small army of summer undergraduates and graduate students worked over five summers to help analyze the fossils and chemicals entombed in the rocks. “We spent a lot of time splitting open rocks and looking at graptolite fossils,” Sperling said. Because graptolites evolved a vast array of recognizable body shapes relatively quickly, the pencil-like markings left by the fossils of these colony-dwelling sea creatures give geologists a way to date the rocks in which they’re found.

Once the researchers had finished identifying and dating graptolite fossils, they ground the rocks in a mill, then measured iron, carbon, phosphorous and other elements in the resulting powder to assess the ocean conditions at the time and place where the layers formed. They analyzed 837 new samples from the Peel River site, as well as 106 new samples from other parts of Canada and 178 samples from around the world for comparison.

Winners and losers

The data show low oxygen levels, or anoxia, likely persisted in the world’s oceans for millions of years longer than previously thought – well into the Phanerozoic, when land plants and early animals began to diversify. “The early animals were still living in a low oxygen world,” Sperling said. Contrary to long-held assumptions, the scientists found Paleozoic oceans were also surprisingly free of hydrogen sulfide, a respiratory toxin often found in the anoxic regions of modern oceans.

When oxygen eventually did tick upward in marine environments, it came about just as larger, more complex plant life took off. “There’s a ton of debate about how plants impacted the Earth system,” Sperling said. “Our results are consistent with a hypothesis that as plants evolved and covered the Earth, they increased nutrients to the ocean, driving oxygenation.” In this hypothesis, the influx of nutrients to the sea would have given a boost to primary productivity, a measure of how quickly plants and algae take carbon dioxide and sunlight, turn them into new biomass – and release oxygen in the process.

The change probably killed off graptolites. “Although more oxygen is really good for a lot of organisms, graptolites lost the low oxygen habitat that was their refuge,” Sperling said. “Any environmental change is going to have winners and losers. Graptolites might have been the losers.”

The Peel River study section.
(A) Paleogeographic map of Laurentia (ca. 480 Ma) with the study area depicted in the box [from (30)]. (B) Early Paleozoic paleoenvironmental reconstruction of Yukon, Northwest Territories, and British Columbia [modified after (30))]. The northwestern Laurentian margin was divided into a series of shallow-water carbonate platforms (blue) and deep-water shale basins (gray). The Road River Group was sampled at the Peel River locality in the Richardson trough. (C) The majority of the Road River Group consists of unbioturbated interbedded organic-rich mudstone/shale and lime mudstone with local diagenetic chert replacement. Shown here are Tremadocian dark gray to black shale and lime mudstone of the Mount Hare Formation. Seated geologist is at ~38 m in section J1727 [see (30)) for detailed sedimentological discussion of the Peel River section]. (D) Trace fossils occur sporadically throughout the Road River Group, but the primary interval of extensive, continuous bioturbation occurs in the lower to middle Katian (Upper Ordovician). Bedding plane view of heavily bioturbated Katian strata from 81 to 93 m in J1518; 30-cm-long hammer for scale. MCE, Misty Creek embayment; MRE, Meilleur River embayment.

Photo credit: Erik Sperling, Stanford University.

The research team's findings are published, open access, in Science Advances:

Abstract
The extent to which Paleozoic oceans differed from Neoproterozoic oceans and the causal relationship between biological evolution and changing environmental conditions are heavily debated. Here, we report a nearly continuous record of seafloor redox change from the deep-water upper Cambrian to Middle Devonian Road River Group of Yukon, Canada. Bottom waters were largely anoxic in the Richardson trough during the entirety of Road River Group deposition, while independent evidence from iron speciation and Mo/U ratios show that the biogeochemical nature of anoxia changed through time. Both in Yukon and globally, Ordovician through Early Devonian anoxic waters were broadly ferruginous (nonsulfidic), with a transition toward more euxinic (sulfidic) conditions in the mid–Early Devonian (Pragian), coincident with the early diversification of vascular plants and disappearance of graptolites. This ~80-million-year interval of the Paleozoic characterized by widespread ferruginous bottom waters represents a persistence of Neoproterozoic-like marine redox conditions well into the Phanerozoic.

Sperling, Erik A.; Melchin, Michael J.; Fraser, Tiffani; Stockey, Richard G.; Farrell, Una C.; Bhajan, Liam; Brunoir, Tessa N.; Cole, Devon B.; Gill, Benjamin C.; Lenz, Alfred; Loydell, David K.; Malinowski, Joseph; Miller, Austin J.; Plaza-Torres, Stephanie; Bock, Beatrice; Rooney, Alan D.; Tecklenburg, Sabrina A.; Vogel, Jacqueline M.; Planavsky, Noah J.; Strauss, Justin V.
A long-term record of early to mid-Paleozoic marine redox change
Science Advances 07 Jul 2021: Vol. 7, no. 28, eabf4382 DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.abf4382

In stark contrast to YECism, which this research refutes in just about every respect; it confirms very much of what science had deduced about this time in Earth's history, how oxygen levels changed over the period and what impact this had on living organisms and the evolution of the major orders. The interesting thing is how well the recorded change in atmospheric oxygen maps onto the fossil record, showing a very strong causal link between those environmental changes and evolution/extinctions.

This tendency of science to validate its hypotheses with several different strands of evidence is of course to be expected, since these major events are often causally linked. Evolution, for example, is driven largely by environmental change and environmental change is driven by geological and biological change.

YECism, on the other hand only has the camp-fire tales of nomadic hunter-gatherers and simple goat-herders with what little science they had in the fearful infancy of our species, when 'magic' seemed like a sensible explanation for the unknown. The astonishing thing is that this backward superstition still survives today in the face of the considerable body of verifiable scientific evidence, such as this paper, that it is wrong. It really is time that YECs accepted that the Bible is best read as an account of what primitive people used to imagine before they knew any better. They did their best but had no evidence, so used best guesses - and got it badly wrong, as we are now discovering.

Unintelligent Designer News - Has Creationism's Intelligent Designer Boobed?

Scanning electron micrograph of methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) bacteria being engulfed by an immune cell known as a neutrophil. Johns Hopkins Medicine researchers have discovered that blocking a specific group of enzymes called caspases boosts the ability of immune cells, including neutrophils, to fight MRSA and other dangerous skin infections — and without the use of antibiotics.

Credit: National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases,
National Institutes of Health

'Fortunate Accident' May Yield Immunity Weapon Against Antibiotic-Resistant Bacteria

Creationist mode:

No-body is perfect, but you would expect Creationism's intelligent [sic] designer to come pretty close if not actually perfect, if it really existed.

But, according to research by scientists from Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD, USA, it may have dropped what we in the UK call, a clanger, with its design of MRSA - the multi-resistant Streptococcus aureus bacterium it redesigned to get around the success of medical science with anti-biotics - and it could be a fatal one for its design!

In fact, it was so unlikely that the researchers discovered it by accident (just like Fleming discovered penicillin - the first antibiotic, so you would think an intelligent designer would have learned from that mistake!). As the John Hopkins University News release explains:

We gave the mice a blocker of all caspases [pancaspase inhibitor], a compound known as Q-VD-OPH, thinking it would leave both sets of mice more vulnerable to MRSA infection. To our surprise, blocking caspases had the opposite effect, resulting in a rapid and remarkable clearing of the MRSA bacteria by keeping the immune cells alive and boosting their protective function.

It’s like a fire department where older firetrucks are kept operating to help put out blazes, when otherwise, they would have been taken out of service

It was an accidental finding by Alexander Fleming that led to the golden age of antibiotics, but now that’s nearing the end because of antibiotic-resistant bacteria. It seems fitting that another surprise in the lab could be the start of a second golden age, the use of host-directed immunotherapy.

Lloyd Miller, M.D., Ph.D., Senior author
Former professor of dermatology, infectious diseases and orthopaedic surgery
Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine,
Now with Janssen Research and Development

...in a paper published today in the journal Science Translational Medicine, researchers at Johns Hopkins Medicine have announced another accidentally discovered, potentially game-changing treatment — one that may provide an alternative immune-based solution to the danger of antibiotic-resistant bacterial infections.

And like Fleming’s surprise finding, the bacterium of note is once again S. aureus — but this time, methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, the life-threatening strain unharmed by methicillin and other antibiotics, and better known by its acronym, MRSA.

The paper’s senior author, Lloyd Miller, M.D., Ph.D., former professor of dermatology, infectious diseases and orthopaedic surgery at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, and now with Janssen Research and Development, says the research team was originally intending to study the mechanisms behind MRSA skin infections in mice with and without the ability to manufacture interleukin-1 beta (IL-1β). This protein, transformed into its active form by enzymes called caspases, enhances protective immunity by helping immune cells called neutrophils, monocytes and macrophages fight bacterial infections.

The paper’s senior author, Lloyd Miller, M.D., Ph.D., former professor of dermatology, infectious diseases and orthopaedic surgery at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, and now with Janssen Research and Development, says the research team was originally intending to study the mechanisms behind MRSA skin infections in mice with and without the ability to manufacture interleukin-1 beta (IL-1β). This protein, transformed into its active form by enzymes called caspases, enhances protective immunity by helping immune cells called neutrophils, monocytes and macrophages fight bacterial infections.

A single oral dose of Q-VD-OPH decreased the size of MRSA skin lesions and rapidly cleared the bacteria compared with vehicle-treated [given the carrier solution without Q-VD-OPH] and untreated mice. And surprisingly, the treatment worked whether IL-1β was present or not — and without administering any antibiotics.

The destruction of macrophages by necroptosis releases large amount of tumor necrosis factor, or TNF, a protein that triggers bacteria-fighting immune cells to swarm into an infected area of skin.

Martin Alphonse, Ph.D., Lead author
A dermatology postdoctoral fellow
Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine.

“We gave the mice a blocker of all caspases [pancaspase inhibitor], a compound known as Q-VD-OPH, thinking it would leave both sets of mice more vulnerable to MRSA infection,” Miller says. “To our surprise, blocking caspases had the opposite effect, resulting in a rapid and remarkable clearing of the MRSA bacteria by keeping the immune cells alive and boosting their protective function.”

Sensing they might have accidentally uncovered a means of fighting bacterial “superbugs,” Miller and his colleagues conducted their latest study to confirm the unexpected finding was not a fluke.

The results were encouraging.

“A single oral dose of Q-VD-OPH decreased the size of MRSA skin lesions and rapidly cleared the bacteria compared with vehicle-treated [given the carrier solution without Q-VD-OPH] and untreated mice,” says study lead author Martin Alphonse, Ph.D., a dermatology postdoctoral fellow at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. “And surprisingly, the treatment worked whether IL-1β was present or not — and without administering any antibiotics.”

The researchers, says Alphonse, found that the pancaspase inhibitor reduces apoptosis — one of three main methods the body uses to remove worn-out or damaged cells — of neutrophils and monocytes, leaving them in plentiful numbers and better able to remove MRSA bacteria.

“It’s like a fire department where older firetrucks are kept operating to help put out blazes, when otherwise, they would have been taken out of service,” says Miller.

The researchers also saw enhanced necroptosis — a second controlled cell death process similar to apoptosis — of macrophages, which are mature monocytes.

“The destruction of macrophages by necroptosis releases large amount of tumor necrosis factor, or TNF, a protein that triggers bacteria-fighting immune cells to swarm into an infected area of skin,” says Alphonse.

Finally, the researchers tested whether Q-VD-OPH in mice could have broader activity against two other dangerous skin bacteria, Streptococcus pyogenes (the cause of multiple diseases, including scarlet fever, necrotizing fasciitis and toxic shock syndrome) and Pseudomonas aeruginosa (often a threat to hospitalized patients on ventilators, with catheters or suffering wounds from surgery or burns). The targeting of the body’s immune system against bacteria via pancaspase inhibition — referred to as “host-directed immunotherapy” — proved just as successful as it had been for MRSA.

In other words, having been up to its old trick of creating a parasite which turns our immune system against us (the immune system it supposedly designed to protect us from its bacterial and viral parasites) the intelligent [sic] designer has accidentally created a major vulnerability because, by turning off part of this system, the researchers found they could wipe out an MRSA infection. What it had been getting away with until this discovery, was setting up a mechanism whereby the infected host destroyed its own phagocytes, so, by turning off that mechanism, it leaves plenty of phagocytes around to kill the bacteria. In addition, this same mechanism now sacrifices old and worn-out macrophages which then release a substance which causes an invasion of the infected tissues by anti-bacterial immune cells.

Creationist mode:

The serious science, which of course pays no heed to Creationist superstitions and fanciful tales, can be read in Science Translational Medicine:

Anti-infection immunotherapy
Antibiotic-resistant bacteria such as methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) are increasingly prevalent and difficult to treat. Alphonse et al. show that a pan-caspase inhibitor called Q-VD-OPH functioned as an effective immunotherapy in mouse models of community-acquired MRSA, Streptococcus pyogenes, and Pseudomonas aeruginosa skin infections. Q-VD-OPH reduced apoptosis in neutrophils and monocytes and increased necroptosis in macrophages, thereby increasing TNF production and infection clearance in mice. This work suggests a potential strategy to target bacterial infections without requiring the use of antibiotics.

Abstract
Staphylococcus aureus causes most skin infections in humans, and the emergence of methicillin-resistant S. aureus (MRSA) strains is a serious public health threat. There is an urgent clinical need for nonantibiotic immunotherapies to treat MRSA infections and prevent the spread of antibiotic resistance. Here, we investigated the pan-caspase inhibitor quinoline–valine–aspartic acid–difluorophenoxymethyl ketone (Q-VD-OPH) for efficacy against MRSA skin infection in mice. A single systemic dose of Q-VD-OPH decreased skin lesion sizes and reduced bacterial burden compared with vehicle-treated or untreated mice. Although Q-VD-OPH inhibited inflammasome-dependent apoptosis-associated speck-like protein containing caspase activation and recruitment domain (ASC) speck formation and caspase-1–mediated interleukin-1β (IL-1β) production, Q-VD-OPH maintained efficacy in mice deficient in IL-1β, ASC, caspase-1, caspase-11, or gasdermin D. Thus, Q-VD-OPH efficacy was independent of inflammasome-mediated pyroptosis. Rather, Q-VD-OPH reduced apoptosis of monocytes and neutrophils. Moreover, Q-VD-OPH enhanced necroptosis of macrophages with concomitant increases in serum TNF and TNF-producing neutrophils, monocytes/macrophages, and neutrophils in the infected skin. Consistent with this, Q-VD-OPH lacked efficacy in mice deficient in TNF (with associated reduced neutrophil influx and necroptosis), in mice deficient in TNF/IL-1R and anti-TNF antibody-treated WT mice. In vitro studies revealed that combined caspase-3, caspase-8, and caspase-9 inhibition reduced apoptosis, and combined caspase-1, caspase-8, and caspase-11 inhibition increased TNF, suggesting a mechanism for Q-VD-OPH efficacy in vivo. Last, Q-VD-OPH also had a therapeutic effect against Streptococcus pyogenes and Pseudomonas aeruginosa skin infections in mice. Collectively, pan-caspase inhibition represents a potential host-directed immunotherapy against MRSA and other bacterial skin infections.

Alphonse, Martin P.; Rubens, Jessica H.; Ortines, Roger V.; Orlando, Nicholas A.; Patel, Aman M.; Dikeman, Dustin; Wang, Yu; Vuong, Ivan; Joyce, Daniel P.; Zhang, Jeffrey;e Mumtaz, Mohammed; Liu, Haiyun; Liu, Qi; Youn, Christine; Patrick, Garrett J.; Ravipati, Advaitaa; Miller, Robert J.; Archer, Nathan K.; Miller, Lloyd S.
Pan-caspase inhibition as a potential host-directed immunotherapy against MRSA and other bacterial skin infections
Science Translational Medicine 07 Jul 2021: Vol. 13, Issue 601, eabe9887 DOI: 10.1126/scitranslmed.abe9887

Copyright © 2021 The Authors. Published by American Association for the Advancement of Science.
Reprinted by kind permission under licence #5104301214127

It looks like Creationism's incompetent designer didn't see that one coming, any more than it saw what medical science could do with penicillin which, ironically, it had designed moulds to produce to defend themselves from the bacteria which this same designer had designed to attack moulds.

Creationists regard these developments as the work of a highly intelligent, omni-benevolent god whom the frauds at the Discovery Institute now make look like a malevolent, misanthropic, pestilential sadist who loves making its creation sick, by insisting these things can't be the result of a natural process in which neither gods nor magic are involved.

Evolution News - Two Newly Discovered Species of Homo Add Detail To The Picture

Timeline: The Nesher Ramla Homo type was an ancestor of both the Neanderthals in Europe and the archaic Homo populations of Asia.

New Type of Prehistoric Human Discovered in Israel | Tel Aviv University

We have had two pieces of news about new species of related hominins being discovered recently, and they both point to a period in our not-too-distant past when there were several species or subspecies of Homo living contemporaneously in Eurasia. This adds to the picture which has been emerging over recent years of widely scattered human populations evolving in semi-isolation and incompletely speciating, then coming together again and interbreeding, very much like a ring species, so that modern, non-African H. sapiens are the result of multiple hybridizations and have several ancestral species.

It will be interesting to see how Creationists handle this and the news that they probably interbred, so we not only do not have a single founder couple; we do not even have a single founder species, if they don't do the usual thing and ignore the findings, rubbish the science or redefine some standard terms like, 'species' in order to avoid dealing with the inconvenient facts.

Malevolent Designer News - Science is Winning but It Is Not Giving Up on the SARS-CoV-2 Virus Just Yet

What's the 'Delta plus' variant? And can it escape vaccines? An expert explains

News today that should impress dedicated Creationists who are obliged by dogma to believe all things are the work of their putative creator god, in that yet another, potentially even more dangerous, variant of the SARS-CoV-2 virus has been discovered. This new variant appears to have been 'designed' by a small but important tweak of the δ-variant which is responsible for the new wave of cases in several countries and which is set to become the dominant form of the virus in circulation throughout the world.

Talibangelical Nutter News - Robin Bullock Goes Even Further Round the Bend

Pastor Robin Bullock, Youth Force Ministries Church International

Evangelist: The 2008 Democratic Convention Stage Was Modeled on Satan’s Throne | Beth Stoneburner | Friendly Atheist | Patheos

If you want to see the harm that fundamentalist religion can do to a person's mental state, you need look no further than Talibangelist Trumpanzee, Robin Bullock, of Youth Force Ministries Church International, who is now seeing things that aren't there and finding Satan lurking in everything.

Of course, as usual with Talibangelists who earn their living exploiting the fears and prejudices of vulnerable people who have been raised with a morbid theophobic psychosis as part of their fundamentalist conditioning, and since the line between insanity and religiosity is often blurred or non-existent, it is difficult to tell whether these are simply fantasies designed to appeal to his credulous audience or the genuine signs of clinical psychosis and evidence of the harm that religious fanaticism can do, so I'll leave readers to decide that for themselves.

Christian Bigotry News - SCOTUS Decision Confirms Even Christians Must Obey the Law.

Flower Shop owner, Baronelle Stutzman.
Court rules she must not victimise gays even if she is a Christian and so feels she should be entitled to.

Supreme Court Rejects Appeal from Anti-Gay Christian Florist Barronelle Stutzman | Hemant Mehta | Friendly Atheist | Patheos

In declining to hear a case, the Supreme Court of the United States, even with its Trump-given conservative Christian majority, has in effect confirmed that even Christian bigots do not have the right to deny other people their basic human rights and so cannot victimise minorities of their choice.

In 2013, Baronelle Stutzman, the owner of a New York flower shop, refused to supply flowers for the wedding of Robert Ingersoll to Curt Freed, even though same-sex marriage is legal in New York, and discrimination of the grounds of sexual orienation is illegal. She was prosecuted by NY law enforcement officials, found guilty and fined $1000.

Trumpanzee News - The Repugnicans Just Can't Accept Reality!

Fanatical Trumpanzee, Emerald Robinson
Keeping the Big Lie going

The Right-Wing Pundits Fueling Trumpists’ Hope in the Farcical Arizona ‘Audit’ | Right Wing Watch

The strategy of the Trumpanzee cult is now to convince enough Americans that there really was massive electoral fraud in 2020, to give Donald Trump a good chance of a comeback in 2024 as the candidate who will restore democracy and defeat the evil Democrats, as democracy in the USA descends to the kindergarten level of debate. It is a strategy that relies for its success on the gullibility of a large enough number of American voters so he doesn't lose the popular vote again like the last two times, and gains enough state EC votes so the Electoral College doesn't need to return a bogus result to get a Repugnican candidate into the White House, despite being rejected by a majority of the electorate, like it did in 2000 when Gore beat Bush and again in 2016, when Trump lost to Clinton, despite the Russian interference.

Part of this strategy involves a bogus 'audit' of Arizona's Maricopa County 2012 presidential election returns by a company calling itself Cyber Ninjas [sic], whose CEO is a fully signed-up "Stop the Steal" activist, which has been bought and paid for by rich Trumpanzees whose tactics have already included directing its operative to conduct a forensic search for bamboo fibres as 'evidence that the ballot forms were flown in from South Korea!'. Even before his company was awarded the contract (or maybe that was because of it) Cyber Ninja's CEO, Doug Logan, had come out in support of the "Stop the Steal" movement.

Meanwhile, this recount is being repeatedly hyped in the news and social media by a small number of leading "Stop the Steal" activists like Emerald Robinson.

Biden’s Department of Justice is completely out of line in interfering in with Arizona’s audit.
What we are seeing here is a level of election corruption known only in third world countries.

If you didn’t cheat, why would you ever work to stop an audit of votes?@RealCandaceO

— 🛡️jesúsf. (@Jesusf_Malaka) May 7, 2021

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The Democrats are panicking as the election audit in Arizona continues. They can't stop the American people from finding out what happened in the 2020 elections. Watch Arizona Chairwoman @kelliwardaz with Dan Ball on OANN's RealAmerica. #AmericasAudit #ElectionIntegrity pic.twitter.com/XGsYTgqlnf

— Arizona Republican Party (@AZGOP) April 28, 2021

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THIS IS IMPORTANT!! PLEASE SHARE!!!!! #ArizonaAudit

We are ALL WORKING TOGETHER. Gen. Flynn is raising money, We the People AZ Alliance is raising money. IT IS ALL GOING TO THE SAME FUND. WE HAVE 1.7M LEFT TO RAISE!

Please go to https://t.co/QK0JAt1tzi and give what you can!! pic.twitter.com/b1QOO1oQEa

— Anna Khait (@Annakhait) April 30, 2021

Emerald Robinson was shown to be top of the ten most persistent posters of lies and disinformation about the audit, by the non-profit Advance Democracy, Inc which analysed over 215,000 tweets mentioning the Arizona audit between April 1 and June 19. Also high on the list were other leading Trumpanzee cultists, Emerald Robinson was shown to be the top of the ten most persistent posters of lies and disinformation about the audit, by the non-profit Advance Democracy, Inc which analysed over 215,000 tweets mentioning the Arizona audit between April 1 and June 19.

Also high on the list were other leading Trumpanzee cultists, Candace Owens, former Trump adviser George Papadopoulos, the Arizona Republican Party, far-right online personalities Matt Couch and Alex Sheppard, former reality TV contestant Anna Khait, and prominent Trumpanzee Juanita Broaddrick.

In all, just eight accounts were responsible for the vast majority of the disinformation being promulgates in a way which is clearly co-ordinated and one doesn't need to look much further than the Arizona Repugnican Twitter account (@AZGOP) to see who that might be by.

The farcical nature of the audit can be judged from this account of her observation of the audit process by Jennifer Morrell, a former local election official and national expert on post-election audits, writing in the Washington Post:

When Arizona’s secretary of state asked me if I would serve as an observer of the Arizona Senate’s audit of Maricopa County’s ballots, I expected to see some unusual things. Post-election audits and recounts are almost always conducted under the authority of local election officials, who have years of knowledge and experience. The idea of a government handing over control of ballots to an outside group, as the state Senate did when hiring a Florida contractor with no elections experience, was bizarre. This firm, Cyber Ninjas, insisted that it would recount and examine all 2.1 million ballots cast in the county in the 2020 general election.

So I figured it would be unconventional. But it was so much worse than that. In more than a decade working on elections, audits and recounts across the country, I’ve never seen one this mismanaged.

[...]

I was stunned to see spinning conveyor wheels, whizzing hundreds of ballots past “counters,” who struggled to mark, on a tally sheet, each voter’s selection for the presidential and Senate races. They had only a few seconds to record what they saw. Occasionally, I saw a counter look up, realize they missed a ballot and then grab the wheel to stop it. This process sets them up to make so many mistakes, I kept thinking. Humans are terrible at tedious, repetitive tasks; we’re especially bad at counting. That’s why, in all the other audits I’ve seen, bipartisan teams follow a tallying method that allows for careful review and inspection of each ballot, followed by a verification process. I’d never seen an audit use contraptions to speed things up.

Speed doesn’t necessarily pose a problem if the audit has a process for catching and correcting mistakes. But it didn’t. Each table had three volunteers tallying the ballots, and their tally sheets were considered “done” as long as two of the three tallies matched, and the third was off by no more than two ballots. The volunteers recounted only if their tally sheets had three or more errors — a threshold they stuck to, no matter how many ballots a stack contained, whether 50 or 100. This allowed for a shocking amount of error. Some table managers told the counters to recount when there were too many errors; other table managers just instructed the counters to fix their “math mistakes.” At no point did anyone track how many ballots they were processing at their station, to ensure that none got added or lost during handling.

I also observed other auditors working on a “forensic paper audit,” flagging ballots as “suspicious” for a variety of reasons. One was presidential selection: If someone thought the voter’s choice looked as though it had been marked by a machine, they flagged it as “anomalous.” Another was “missing security markers.” (It’s virtually impossible for a ballot to be missing its security markers, since voting equipment is designed to reject ballots without them.) The third was paper weight — the forensics tables had scales for weighing ballots, though I never saw anyone use them — and texture. Volunteers scrutinized ballots for, of all things, bamboo fibers. Only later, after the shift, did I learn that this was connected to groundless speculation that fake ballots had been flown in from South Korea.

The 'auditors' were looking for anything 'suspicious'. This could include a folded ballot paper, because, so it was reasoned, people who vote in person wouldn't fold their paper before posting it in a ballot box! Other grounds for suspicion was evidence of having handled food before handling the balot, such as cheese dust (from Cheetos!) because people who vote in person don't eat snacks while waiting to vote!

And so the farce continued. Cyber Ninjas even changing the process and the training of its contractors in mid-audit!

As Jennifer Morrell concluded:

What I saw in Arizona shook me. If the process wraps up and Cyber Ninjas puts together some kind of report, that report will almost certainly claim that there were issues with Maricopa County’s ballots. After all, Cyber Ninjas chief executive Doug Logan has publicly voiced his wild conjecture about the 2020 election. But the real problem is the so-called audit itself.

Audits are supposed to make our elections more secure and transparent — to strengthen the public’s trust in our democratic process. Maricopa County is known for having some of the best election practices in the country: Officials had already undertaken a hand-count audit and a forensic audit of their 2020 ballots and found no evidence of fraud. Now a group with no expertise, improvising procedures as it goes, is sowing doubt about the result of a well-run election. This is not an audit, and I don’t see how this can have a good outcome.

It’s a threat to the overall confidence of democracy, all in pursuit of continuing a narrative that we know to be a lie.

Matt Masterson
Former Department of Homeland Security official

This is a well-financed campaign designed to fool the American electorate into believing what started life as Trump's desperate attempt to deny that he had been decisively rejected for a second term at the polls and that Biden won fair and square in a secure election. Having failed to convince any court, including SCOTUS with its Trumpanzee stooges, that there had been a massive electoral fraud, based on nothing more than Trump's say-so, Trumpanzee cultists in the GOP are now trying to manufacture the evidence that was singular lacking when the courts asked for it.

The only fraud going on here is that being inflicted on the American electorate by an undemocratic, would-be dictator and the extreme right who can't accept that the American people had the great good sense to boot Trump out of office at the first opportunity and to revert America to a properly run, democratic state with a legitimate president and good governance, in place of the White House-based crime syndicate many of whom are now facing jail, despite the blanket pardons for their crimes handed out by the syndicate boss, President-reject, Donald J Trump.

Christian Talibangelical News - Celebrating Their Freedom to Deny Freedom to Others

A memorial plaque honoring veterans has become controversial in Monument, Colorado.

Photo courtesy of Military Religious Freedom Foundation

Colorado memorial draws religious freedom concerns

If we weren't so used to it in the (until recently) predominantly Christian West, the arrogance of Christians would be breath-taking. In yet another example of their assumed privileged right to impose their religion on the rest of us, regardless of our own religion, or none, Christian Talibangelicals have erected a memorial in a municipal cemetery, purportedly to honour military veterans, but which is a blatant puff for Christianity and factually and historically wrong.

It reads:

"Only two defining forces
have ever offered to die for you:
Jesus Christ and the American Soldier;
one died for your soul, the other died
for your freedom."

We honor those who made freedom a reality

Although enclosed in quotation marks, there is no attribution. Previously, this quote has been falsely attributed to former UK Prime Minister, Tony Blair, in the context of the Iraq invasion, and to General Patton during WWII. In fact, it appears to have been invented out of thin air on the Internet in about 2000.

Covidiot News - Amish Prefer Magic Spells and Other People's Immunity to Vaccines

People in Amish country prepare a horse team to work on a farm in Pulaski, Pennsylvania, on June 23, 2021. The vaccination drive is lagging far behind in many Amish communities across the U.S. after a wave of virus outbreaks that swept through their churches and homes during the past year.

Photo credit: AP Photo/Keith Srakocic

Amish put faith in God's will and herd immunity over vaccine

Religion news service is reporting that Amish communities across America are eschewing the anti-Covid vaccines and relying instead on prayer and 'herd immunity' to protect them. The notion that magic spells cast towards an imaginary mind-reading sky man who can suspend the laws of nature at will can protect them against a potentially deadly virus, would be laughable if the consequences of this childish notion weren't potentially tragic, and not just for the Amish themselves but for anyone else with whom they might chance to come into contact. In fact, for anyone infected by coming into contact with an infected Amish, the consequences could be the same as if one of these peace-loving, non-violent people had taken a gun and shot them.

As for 'herd immunity', this in substantial part, depends not just on the members of their community having immunity (by surviving an infection) but also on a large proportion of thos with whom they might come into contact also having immunity so they are not shedding virus particles even when asymptomatic. This largely depends on other people having the vaccines. So, whatever their reason for declining the vaccines, they appear to think that doesn't or shouldn't apply to others. Any risks involved (and what risks have been identified are very rare) are okay for others, but not for them.

Malevolent Designer News - More Evidence of the Evil Genius Behind SARS-CoV-2

How a corona infection changes blood cells in the long run | Max-Planck-Gesellschaft

Creationist mode:

Today we have two more examples of how brilliant Creationism's putative intelligent designer has been in its determination to do as much damage as possible with its new virus, SARS-CoV-2 with which, according to Creationist dogma, it is causing untold suffering and misery in revenge for someone eating its apple.

First, we have this finding by a German research team working at the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Light (MPL), that infection by the virus can cause red blood cells to change in size and stiffness, causing vascular occlusions and reduced oxygen-carrying capacity and giving rise to the breathlessness, headaches and fatigues that characterise the post Covid syndrome, aka, long covid.