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President Joe Biden said Thursday the U.S. will continue the evacuation and 'will not be deterred by terrorists.'

LOUISVILLE, Ky. Two suicide bombers and gunmen attacked crowds of people in Kabul Thursday, killing at least 12 U.S. troops and 60 Afghans.

U.S. officials said 11 Marines and one Navy medic were among those who died. More than 140 Afghans were wounded, an Afghan official confirmed.

President Joe Biden said Thursday evening the U.S. will continue the evacuation and "will not be deterred by terrorists." Biden said he has ordered commanders to "develop operational plans to strike ISIS-K assets, leadership and facilities."

"These ISIS terrorists will not win," Biden said. "We will rescue the Americans in there, we will get our Afghan allies out and our mission will go on. America will not be intimidated."

Biden said his heart aches for the families of service members killed in the attack and said the U.S. will "hunt down" those responsible and make them pay.

"We will find them, and we will get them," Biden said.

Kentucky and Indiana lawmakers have been weighing in on evacuation efforts and the attack that killed American service members. Senator Mitch McConnell said in a statement he is sickened and enraged by the news of the attack.

"Terrible things happen when terrorists are allowed to operate freely," McConnell said. "I remain concerned that terrorists worldwide will be emboldened by our retreat, by this attack, and by the establishment of a radical Islamic terror state in Afghanistan. We need to redouble our global efforts to confront these barbarian enemies who want to kill Americans and attack our homeland."

McConnell is one of the few Republicans who advocated for staying in Afghanistan. His colleague Rand Paul did not agree, saying he believes it was time for the U.S. to get out of Afghanistan.

Paul said Wednesday "the thing that's most upsetting" about the evacuation is that the U.S. could be leaving equipment that could fall into the wrong hands.

Paul released a statement Thursday afternoon saying he was "deeply saddened by the further loss of life as our military returns home from Afghanistan."

"Kelley and I pray for those lost and wounded, and for the safe and speedy rescue of all Americans still trapped," Paul said in a tweet.

Sen. Mike Braun of Indiana said the attack were "a result of [Biden's] incompetence and decision to trust the Taliban to protect our troops."

Rep. Andr Carson, one of only two Democrats representing districts in Indiana, said the "heartbreaking" attack "further prove that getting our troops out of harm's way in Afghanistan is the right thing to do."

John Yarmuth, Kentucky's only Democrat on Capitol Hill, said he does not expect the U.S. to be out of Afghanistan by Aug. 31 as previously planned due to Thursday's attack.

"This incident probably delays some of the removal activities because it creates more confusion at the entrance to the airport so I think it's unlikely," Yarmuth said. "I'm glad that President Biden, even when he said he was going to hold to the Aug. 31 date, asked for contingency plans and I suspect that we'll see those contingency plans implemented."

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McConnell, Yarmuth respond to Kabul attack, evacuation efforts - WHAS11.com

Al Cross| Opinion contributor

Permanent federal approval for one coronavirus vaccine Monday should have eliminated the arguments of some sadly misled, vaccine-hesitant Americans that Operation Warp Speed is just one big experiment.

But as Kentucky deals with another deadly surge of the coronavirus, it has started a heavily fraught experiment involving all three branches of its government, one that will likely affect the course of the pandemic and the lives of many Kentuckians.

For almost 18 months, Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear has been a pandemic czar, under a state of emergency he declared under a law the last completely Democratic legislature passed for a Democratic governor in 1998. This year, the firmly Republican legislature put a strict 30-day time limit on governors emergency orders, and last Saturday the state Supreme Court unanimously upheld it, pending arguments that the idea that 30 days is unconstitutionally short.

Beshear said he was surprised by the decision, since the high court had unanimously upheld his use of emergency powers. But the state constitution makes clear that the General Assembly is the main policy-making branch of government; it writes laws and can limit governors emergency powers.

Beshear should know that; he was attorney general before he was governor. His remark may reflect the warped sense of reality you can develop when you are a czar, issuing orders and mandates that affect personal behavior while winning approval in public-opinion polls.

More: 5 takeaways from the Kentucky Supreme Court ruling on Gov. Andy Beshear's power

Most Kentuckians seem to take the pandemic seriously, but not enough to keep the state from having the nations fifth highest infection rate when this column was written Wednesday morning. Thats largely because we rank 28th in vaccinations, with only 48% of us fully vaccinated the only figure that counts against the highly contagious delta variant.

Too many Kentuckians take cues from irresponsible politicians like U.S. Sen. Rand Paul and Rep. Thomas Massie, who have repeatedly cast doubt on the need to get vaccinated and mask up; and from their allies in partisan media and echo chambers on social media, who make villains of public-health experts who deserve our respect.

Most Republicans who lead the General Assembly have been more responsible, focusing their criticism of Beshear on his unwillingness to work with them and, more recently, their preference for local and parental decision-making on the issue of masks in schools.

Beshear did himself no favors when he rebuffed Republicans offer of help early in the pandemic. He could have brought them at least partially into his tent, perhaps co-opting them but also learning from them, and about them. He has yet to develop a real working relationship with them, almost 21 months into his 48-month term. Now he must, and so must they.

Related: Will Gov. Andy Beshear call a special legislative session for COVID? Here's what to know

It may not be easy. Republican leaders are saddled with the consequences of their national partisan allies politicization of the pandemic, which has made much of their voter base resistant to vaccination and masking, the two main preventive measures we need.

That showed in Senate President Robert Stivers quick rejection of a mask mandate for all indoor public spaces, something Beshear would be reviving shortly if not for the Supreme Court. Stivers signaled Republicans preferred approach by announcing a pro-vaccination campaign in his home Clay County, which has the states highest infection rate. Shots will be given at schools, which will compete for prizes, and the vaccinated will get coupons for free pizza.

The incentive approach seems likelier to work on the local level, with local influentials delivering the messages, than the vaccine lotteries being used by Beshear and some other governors. More incentives are needed.

House Speaker David Osborne of Prospect has a district with one of the states lowest infection rates, but his job is more difficult because all his members are up for reelection next year, and some are outspoken firebrands who are indirectly damaging public health, like Paul and Massie.

Joe Gerth: Senate Republicans wait 18 months to tell us their COVID-19 plan ... and it's pizza

Osborne already had a big member-management problem. Republicans face the challenge of drawing new House districts to conform to the 2020 census, which will surely pit some of them against each other because rural areas have lost population. Republicans would rather put off redistricting until after the 2022 elections, but courts are unlikely to allow that.

Osborne told me in an email, Our caucus is going to continue to be deliberate and intentional in how we approach this pandemic. ... It is our intent to work closely with the administration, hear their recommendations, and work with them as well as other stakeholders to set the policies.

Before long, Osborne, Stivers and other legislative leaders will hear recommendations that will be politically unpopular. We can only hope that their judgments wont be determined by politics, and if that requires risking their own leadership positions by going against the political grain, they will show courage for the greater good.

Al Cross, a former Courier Journal political writer, is professor and director of the Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues at the University of Kentucky. He writes this column for theKentucky Center for Public Service Journalism. Reach him on Twitter@ruralj.

Read more:
Kentucky GOP lawmakers get the power they wanted. Now they must use it wisely, show courage - Courier Journal

From the right: Biden Needs To Show Strength

President Bidens withdrawal from Afghanistan has been compared to our 1975 Vietnam withdrawal, but its more like Beirut, 1983, when terrorists killed 241 US service members and President Ronald Reagan cut and run, emboldening Osama bin Laden, contends Marc Thiessen at The Washington Post. The 9/11 mastermind predicted wed retreat from Afghanistan, too, and now Bidens fulfilling bin Ladens prophecy. Instead, he should show strength, tell the Taliban theyre responsible for Thursdays attack and thus were not leaving on Aug. 31 but only when every American and our allies are out. He should also say were establishing our own secure perimeter around the airport and reclaiming the Bagram air base. When the United States runs after a terrorist attack, the result is not safety and security, it is even more terrorism.

Woke watch: Theyve Got Rocks in Their Heads

The University of Wisconsins decision to remove a campus boulder because of what some writer said one day during the Coolidge administration (using the N-word to describe the rock) infuriates The New York Times John McWhorter. The students who demanded the move are fashioning their take on the rock as a kind of sophistication or higher awareness. But what they are really demanding is that we all dumb ourselves down. They essentially demanded that an irrational, prescientific kind of fear that a person can be meaningfully injured by the dead be accepted as insight, implying that the rocks denotation of racism is akin to a Confederate statues denotation of the same. This is Kabuki as civil rights its fake, its self-involved, and it helps no one.

Conservative: Liberalism Failed in Afghanistan

Twenty years after 9/11, the War on Terror has come full circle, writes Daniel McCarthy at Spectator World. Everyone expected the Taliban to surge back to power as soon as American forces left Afghanistan. Instead, the surge began while Americas embassy in Kabul was still open. Simply put: Terrorism won, nation-building lost. The Washington foreign-policy community believed the absence of liberalism and democracy was the root cause of terrorism, and its cure was therefore the promotion of liberal democracy through regime-change and nation-building. Yet liberalism cannot bind people together in conditions of profound insecurity, as religion and tribalism do. Nor does liberalism provide such compelling reasons to kill or die. A man will die for heaven or kill for his brother. No man will die for liberalism.

Natl-security beat: Sack Austin and Milley

After Kabul fell, neither Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin nor Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley appeared publicly for three days to explain what happened or why we appeared so ill-prepared to extract our citizens, sighs Ray McCoy at American Greatness. When they did appear, Austin claimed he didnt have the capability to collect large numbers of people. And this was supposed to be the team that returned competence to Washington, the experts that Joe Biden said he would trust. The president now has a chance to do some good by sacking Milley and Austin, as well as the mediocrities running his national security policy. If everyone from Tony Blair to Rand Paul is trashing this performance, we might as well start from scratch.

Libertarian: SCOTUS Soundly Slaps Eviction Ban

By 6-3, the Supreme Court ruled that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention lack the authority to promulgate and extend the eviction moratorium, Elizabeth Nolan Brown cheers at Reason. The ruling notes that the downstream connection between eviction and the interstate spread of disease is markedly different from the direct targeting of disease that characterizes the measures identified in the Public Health Service Act. This, she notes, is also an important affirmation that private property rights still exist in this country and a good stand for the separation of powers since Congress can still pass a law extending the eviction moratorium but its unconstitutional for the executive branch to unilaterally make this decision.

Compiled by The Post Editorial Board

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Biden needs to show strength and other commentary - New York Post

The director of the National Institutes of Health said Monday it appears Covid-19 originated from an animal, but he didn't rule out the possibility that scientists at the Wuhan Institute of Virology were secretly studying it and that it could have leaked out from there.

It's still unknown if the virus leaked out of a Wuhan lab, NIH director Dr. Francis Collins said Monday in an interview on CNBC's "Squawk Box," adding that the World Health Organization's investigation into the origin of the coronavirus has gone "backwards."

"The vast evidence from other perspectives says no, this was a naturally occurring virus," Collins said. "Not to say that it could not have been under study secretly at the Wuhan Institute of Virology and got out of there, we don't know about that. But the virus itself does not have the earmarks of having been created intentionally by human work."

The WHO investigation has been made harder by China's refusal to participate, says Collins.

"I think China basically refused to consider another WHO investigation and just said 'nope not interested'," Collins told CNBC's Squawk Box.

"Wouldn't it be good if they'd actually open up their lab books and let us know what they were actually doing there and find out more about those cases of people who got sick in November of 2019 about which we really don't know enough," Collins said.

U.S. intelligence reports first reported by the Wall Street Journal indicated that in November 2019, three workers at the Wuhan Institute of Virology fell ill with symptoms similar to those seen in Covid-19 infections, a report that China said was "completely untrue."

About three months ago, President Joe Biden initiated an investigation of his own and gave his intelligence community 90 days to further the investigation the virus' origins and report the findings. The deadline is Tuesday.

"It will be an interesting week because tomorrow is the day of the 90-day deadline that President Biden set for the intelligence community to do all their poking around that they could to see if they could come up with anymore insight as to how this virus got started in China," Collins said.

Most of the information gathered will likely remain classified, but some information from the report will be released, according to Collins.

"We don't know what they're going to come up with either, but we're intensely interested," Collins said.

Collins also weighed in on the debate over whether or not the U.S. funded so-called gain-of-function research at the Wuhan lab, a debate that Republican Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky and medical advisor to the president, Dr. Anthony Fauci, have engaged in time and time again. Gain-of-function research is when scientists take a pathogen and make it more contagious, deadly or both to study how to combat it.

"The kind of gain-of-function research that's under very careful scrutiny is when you take a pathogen for humans, and you do something with it that would enhance its virulence or its transmissibility," Collins said. "They were not studying a pathogen that was a pathogen for humans, these are bat viruses."

Some of the research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology that was funded, in part, by the NIH through a grant to non-profit EcoHealth Alliance studied how bat viruses could infect humans.

"So by the strict definition, and this was look at exquisitely carefully by all the reviewers of that research in anticipation that this might come up, was that this did not meet the official description of what's called gain-of-function research that requires oversight," Collins said. "I know this has gotten lots of attention, but I think it's way out of place."

Read more:
NIH director says Covid likely came from nature, but doesn't rule out it could have escaped from lab - CNBC

Why the Delta scare? As a virus mutates, it becomes more contagious and less lethal. And then eventually it mostly disappears. Many voices claim that Delta will be with us for a very long time, but we should be so lucky. Its way more likely that it will soon be followed by a next variant that will in turn become dominant. And more contagious and less lethal.

And no, thats not because of unvaccinated people, or at least theres no logic in that. If most people are not vaccinated, the virus has no reason to mutate. If many people are, it does. So this CNN piece is suspect. Vaccinated people are potential variant factories, just as much, if and when the vaccines used dont stop them from being infectious, as the present vaccines dont, far as we know.

Unvaccinated People Are Variant Factories, Infectious Diseases Expert

Unvaccinated people do more than merely risk their own health. Theyre also a risk to everyone if they become infected with coronavirus, infectious disease specialists say. Thats because the only source of new coronavirus variants is the body of an infected person. Unvaccinated people are potential variant factories, Dr. William Schaffner, a professor in the Division of Infectious Diseases at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, told CNN Friday. The more unvaccinated people there are, the more opportunities for the virus to multiply, Schaffner, a professor in the Division of Infectious Diseases at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, said. When it does, it mutates, and it could throw off a variant mutation that is even more serious down the road.

Even more serious? Well, yes, it can become more contagious, but then it loses lethality. Maybe thats what we want. Maybe we want a virus that everyone can be infected by, and build resistance to, without serious consequences. Maybe thats even what we should aim for. And also, maybe thats what we already have, with survival rates of 99.99% among most people.

And maybe, just maybe, a one-dimensional solution in the shape of an experimental vaccine is the worst response of all. Because it doesnt protect from anything other than more severe disease, while unleashing potential adverse effects for decades to come in the inoculated. Maybe one dimension simply doesnt cut it. Maybe we should not refuse to prevent people from becoming infected, or to treat them in the early stages of the disease.

Maybe the traumatic effects of lockdowns and facemasks should be part of benefits and risks models. And maybe we should start trying vitamin D, ivermectin and HCQ on a very large scale. No research, you say? Theres more research for those approaches than for the vaccines. But its largely been halted in the west to maintain the viability of the one-dimension solution; the medical Siamese twin of the Trusted News Initiative, one might say. Of which The Atlantic is also a valued member, look at this gem:

The 3 Simple Rules That Underscore the Danger of Delta

2. The variants are pummeling unvaccinated people.

Vaccinated people are safer than ever despite the variants. But unvaccinated people are in more danger than ever because of the variants. Even thoughtheyll gain some protection from the immunity of others, they also tend to cluster socially and geographically, seeding outbreaks even within highly vaccinated communities.

The U.K., where half the population is fully vaccinated, can be a cautionary tale, Hanage told me. Since Deltas ascendancy,the countrys cases have increased sixfold. Long-COVID cases will likely follow. Hospitalizations have almost doubled.Thats not a sign that the vaccines are failing. It is a sign that even highly vaccinated countries host plenty of vulnerable people.

[..] And new variants are still emerging. Lambda, the latest to be recognized by the WHO, is dominant in Peru and spreading rapidly in South America. Many nations that excelled at protecting their citizens are now facing a triple threat: They controlled COVID-19 so well that they have little natural immunity; they dont have access to vaccines; and theyre besieged by Delta.

First, the vaccines dont confer immunity on the jabbed, there is no evidence of that. Second, a large majority of healthy people have an immune system strong enough to fight off the infection, even without ever being infected. So to suggest that unvaccinated people might gain some protection from the immunity of the vaccinated is simply nonsense.

As for Deltas ascendancy, yes, cases are rising in the UK and Israel, two highly vaccinated countries. Not that anyone would acknowledge a possible connection there: its all despite the vaccines, not because of them. But as the graph below shows, while cases there are up a lot, hospitalization and deaths are not over the past month. They barely register.

On January 20, the UK had 1,823 deaths. Today, they had 15.

I even enlarged the hospitalizations a bit, or you wouldnt see anything.

Hospitalizations have almost doubled, says The Atlantic. Yeah, but theyre still very low, as are deaths. And perhaps thats not all that surprising, because the Delta variant doesnt appear to be the big killer that everyone wants to close their borders and restaurants for again. Theres no conclusive evidence, its too early, but this is what we know today.

Rand Paul Cites 0.08% Delta Variant Death Rate Among Unvaccinated

Kentucky GOP Sen. Rand Paul is telling Twitter followers to not let the fearmongers win, amid growing concerns about the newest delta variant of the coronavirus. Paul, who is a doctor with a degree in medicine from Duke University, cited a study of the strain that shows only a 0.08% death rate among unvaccinated people. Dont let the fearmongers win. New public England study of delta variant shows 44 deaths out of 53,822 (.08%) in unvaccinated group. Hmmm, he tweeted Tuesday to his 3.2 million followers. The variant, which has caused virus outbreaks in Australia and other countries, has resulted in officials reimposing recently lifted health-safety orders including mask-wearing.

In another graph, the Delta variant Case Fatality Rate in the UK even appears 8 times higher among the fully vaccinated than the unvaccinated. Maybe the press should pay a little more attention to that, instead of the Great Big Delta Scare. All they do today is sell fear and vaccines, but that will backfire, promise.

And what goes for the press is also valid for politicians and their experts: there will come a day that people realize you could have focused on prophylactics and early treatment, but chose not to. And that this cost a lot of lives and other misery. What are you going to do then? Apologize?

Maybe its finally time for some real science, instead of clickbait and fear and gene therapy.

Pre-existing polymerase-specific T cells expand in abortive seronegative SARS-CoV-2 infection

Individuals with likely exposure to the highly infectious SARS-CoV-2do not necessarily develop PCR or antibody positivity, suggesting some may clear sub-clinical infection before seroconversion. T cells can contribute to the rapid clearance of SARS-CoV-2 and other coronavirus infections15 . We hypothesised that pre-existing memory T cell responses, with cross-protective potential against SARS-CoV-2612, would expand in vivo to mediate rapid viral control, potentially aborting infection.

We studied T cells against the replication transcription complex (RTC) of SARS-CoV-2 since this is transcribed first in the viral life cycle1315 and should be highly conserved. We measured SARS-CoV-2-reactive T cells in a cohort of intensively monitored healthcare workers (HCW) who remained repeatedly negative by PCR, antibody binding, and neutralisation for SARS-CoV-2 (exposed seronegative, ES).

16-weeks postrecruitment, ES had memory T cells that were stronger and more multispecific than an unexposed pre-pandemic cohort, and more frequently directed against the RTC than the structural protein-dominated responses seen post-detectable infection (matched concurrent cohort). The postulate that HCW with the strongest RTC-specific T cells had an abortive infection was supported by a low-level increase in IFI27 transcript, a robust early innate signature of SARS-CoV-2 infection16.

We showed that the RNA-polymerase within RTC was the largest region of high sequence conservation across human seasonal coronaviruses (HCoV) and was preferentially targeted by T cells from UK and Singapore pre-pandemic cohorts and from ES. RTC epitope-specific T cells capable of cross-recognising HCoV variants were identified in ES. Longitudinal samples from ES and an additional validation cohort, showed pre-existing RNA-polymerase-specific T cells expanded in vivo following SARS-CoV-2 exposure, becoming enriched in the memory response of those with abortive compared to overt infection. In summary, we provide evidence of abortive seronegative SARS-CoV-2 infection with expansion of cross-reactive RTC-specific T cells, highlighting these highly conserved proteins as targets for future vaccines against endemic and emerging Coronaviridae.

Reprinted with permission fromThe Automatic Earth.

Excerpt from:
The Great Big Delta Scare - LewRockwell