Fast pass

Kudos to the Times-Picayune/Advocate for polling its stable of "influencers" on the... well.. the kind of things the influencers might think about.  This question, for example, is just not the sort of thing the ordinary non-influential Joe or Jane might have to consider. 

We also asked a speculative question: If allowed, how much would respondents pay to be one of the first people vaccinated? More than half wouldn't bite.

Just this week the Governor laid out the state's plan to administer as many as 159,000 vaccinations by the end of the month. That number may be optimistic depending on how many doses become available and when.  The first batch of 39,000 injections could happen as early as this weekend.  But it will take many more months to get the vaccine out to everyone so we have had to prioritize health care workers. 

Between 200,000 and 215,000 people are estimated to be in the first priority group for the vaccines, according to state Health Department figures. That includes 75,000 to 80,000 residents and staff of nursing homes and other long-term care facilities and between 125,000 and 135,000 health workers.

The T-P Power Poll question doesn't only presuppose that the blessed elect should have the option of skipping this line. It goes straight on past that and asks them how much would they pay to have that privilege validated.  Turns out that's extremely valuable to some of them!

Byron LeBlanc, president of LeBlanc & Schuster Public Relations, said he'd consider it: "I'd probably be willing to pay more than $100 for the vaccine if it meant I could get a wrist band or something that would let me do away with the masks and resume normal behavior and travel."

What is this, Disney World? I just want to ride on the planes again.  Please let me buy a fast pass. Actually, going super-early would not allow you to "do away with masks and resume normal behavior."  Because vaccinations, much like masks and social distance precautions, are only effective when everyone has them.  Until that happens, early vaccine recipients who aren't being careful around others could be even more dangerous. 

Only people who have virus teeming in their nose and throat would be expected to transmit the virus, and the lack of symptoms in the immunized people who became infected suggests that the vaccine may have kept the virus levels in check.

But some studies have suggested that even people with no symptoms can have high amounts of coronavirus in their nose, noted Dr. Yvonne Maldonado, who represents the American Academy of Pediatrics at meetings of the federal Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices. The first person confirmed to be reinfected with the coronavirus, a 33-year-old man in Hong Kong, also did not have symptoms, but harbored enough virus to infect others.

Vaccinated people who have a high viral load but don’t have symptoms “would actually be, in some ways, even worse spreaders because they may be under a false sense of security,” Dr. Maldonado said.

As with so many human problems, no one is really safe from COVID until we all are safe from COVID.  Elites such as those identified by the Times-Picayune as "influencers" tend to think they can buy their way out of that social contract. A lot of the time this makes them suckers.  But mostly it just makes things difficult for the rest of us.

Can't they just write angry letters to the editor?

It was an oddity when Scurlock did it the other day. But it's starting to look now like this politicians-sue-the-newspaper thing is a deliberate tactic. 

Louisiana Supreme Court Justice Jefferson Hughes III has filed a defamation lawsuit against The Advocate’s parent company, alleging that the newspaper knowingly published false and damaging information last year about his actions in a decades-old child abuse and custody case that led to a lengthy FBI investigation.

Ordinarily there are a range of options available to a political figure who doesn't  like what the press was saying about them. You can wait out the news cycle and ignore it altogether. That's usually the smart move. If the story persists a little too long, then you Issue A Statement. This can be a letter to the offending outlet which, most of the time, they will happily publish for you.  Or, if you want an actual audience for your side of the story, just post something on social media.

But, really, the thing to do most of the time is let it die quietly.  Any other tactic, including filing a lawsuit, by the way, just puts the whole story back in the public eye. So killing the story is never the purpose of these things.  If your purpose is to kill (or at least intimidate) the free press, on the other hand, well, this might be a thing you choose to do.

Okay well thanks for pointing that out

Frank wants everyone to know that he was not arrested but instead only cited for lewd conduct in the back of an Uber in Los Angeles in 2018.  It is very important that we, as we now recall the various other details of that incident which many of had put out of our minds, that we remember this one fact in particular.

The lawsuit does not discuss or dispute the specifics of that incident, instead focusing on the newspaper’s use of the word “arrest” and asserting that he was never arrested. The allegation that he was arrested “is injurious to Scurlock’s personal and professional reputation,” the suit says.