Kevin Drum

We need new drugs to fight the surge of antibiotic-resistant bugs that have been making the rounds in recent years. And we have them! But there's a catch:

Six startups have won Food and Drug Administration approval for new antibiotics since 2017. All have filed for bankruptcy, been acquired or are shutting down.

The problem turns out to be a simple one: there aren't really that many superbugs out there. This means that demand for super-antibiotics is fairly low, which makes them very expensive, which in turn reduces demand even further. A million bucks for a cancer drug is pretty ho-hum these days, but apparently we haven't quite gotten ourselves used to million-dollar penicillin:

About 13,000 people in the U.S. each year develop a severe type of drug-resistant infection that Achaogen’s drug Zemdri was developed to defeat. Up to half of people hospitalized with such infections die. They are among the more than 35,000 people in the U.S. who die annually from drug-resistant bacterial or fungal infections, a toll that has risen in recent years.

The year Zemdri was approved, Achaogen spent almost $200 million on manufacturing, marketing and other costs and generated $800,000 in sales of the drug. Achaogen’s stock price fell more than 96% from approval in June 2018 to the end of the first quarter in 2019.

I don't know how much $800,000 represents in doses, but it's way less than 13,000 people. For some reason, thousands of people die every year from this particular type of infection, but almost none of them were prescribed Zemdri to treat it. This is not a good thing for the future development of super-antibiotics

There are lots of people who think Donald Trump is a boor but plan to vote for him anyway. I'm not talking here about the dead-enders who worship Trump, but the center-right voters who really don't like him but will hold their noses and mark their ballot for him even so. Why? Because the alternative is voting for a Democrat.

You may wonder what's so scary about that. The answer is pretty simple: they don't like Democratic policies. They think we let in too many illegal immigrants. They think we spend too much money and run up the deficit. They think we're too soft on criminals. They think we're too willing to raise taxes in order to spend it on the poor. They think we're sexual libertines. They think we care more about saving a few fish than we do about jobs. They think we're pro-abortion. They think we want religion gone from public life. They think we've been hijacked by identity politics. They think we want to take away their guns.

And guess what? Put aside the uncharitable wording of these complaints and they're basically right about all this stuff.

It's common to say that people don't vote for policy, but that's dead wrong. Sure, they don't care much about minutiae like Title 42 or debt ceiling fights, but they care a lot about the broad outlines. And a lot of them believe the basics of Democratic policy are misguided and dangerous.

The economy affects voters. Fox News affects voters. Political hysteria affects voters. And in a country divided nearly 50-50 that makes all those things important. But by far the most important thing of all is broad policy. If you want to attract more voters on a durable basis, that's what you need to pay attention to.

I drove up to Palomar Mountain yesterday to scout around for skygazing sites, and I was surprised to find out that Caltech's stewards of the 200-inch telescope had finally opened up the observatory to visitors again. So as long as I was there I popped in. I was unable to get a good picture of the telescope itself, but it was a fine clear day for photographs of the dome.

The Washington Post reports that Black churches in Florida are now teaching history themselves because they no longer trust schools to do it fairly. The Rev. Rhonda Thomas, leader of "Faith in Florida," explains:

Thomas said she took particular issue with one of the provisions in last year’s legislation: That instruction should be tailored so no student would feel guilt or “psychological distress” over past actions by members of the same race.

“If you want to look at who feels bad, I was born into this world as if it was designed for me to live feeling bad,” she said with an exasperated laugh. “I don’t think any lesson should be taught to make anyone feel angry, but if it’s history, it’s history, right?”

This is a myth that won't die. Florida law only bars teachers from telling students they must feel guilt over historical events. But as Thomas says, history is history. The law says nothing about "tailoring" history instruction to make sure that no one is ever uncomfortable.

I wonder: What do Florida schools actually teach about African American history? What do parents and students report? I've seen lots of press accounts of AP classes and new laws, but nothing about what happens in real-life classrooms. Maybe someone should get on that.

Were you wondering what's on Donald Trump's mind these days?

There you have it. If elected, Trump promises to try and destroy NBC News for treason.

He won't do it, of course. He's mostly just throwing red meat to the base. Or maybe NBC has a big story coming out and Trump wants to get ahead of it. Who knows? But no matter the reason, no one running for president of the United States should ever say something like this. It's a temper tantrum worthy of a five year old. It continues to baffle me that any Republican politician would support a man who says things like this.

I'm sure this New York Times headline is offered in good faith, but it's just wrong:

This is your periodic reminder that it's Kevin McCarthy who has sown "mass dysfunction," not the small and powerless House Freedom Caucus. McCarthy can sideline them anytime he wants by following the Senate's lead and working on a bipartisan basis in the House. If he did that, he'd get 300 votes instantly for a continuing resolution to keep the government open and probably the same number of votes for a budget based on the deal he made during the debt ceiling showdown.

But he doesn't want to. He wants to work exclusively within the Republican caucus, where he has a razor-thin majority, and this is what gives hardliners their power even though their numbers are tiny.

In the Senate, Chuck Schumer worked with Republicans to pass a budget. If McCarthy worked with Democrats in the House he'd quickly leave the Freedom Caucus howling fruitlessly into the wind as everyone else ignores their antics and gets some work done. He can do it anytime he wants.

The Washington Post today highlights the jihad by conservatives to shut down any and all efforts to combat disinformation:

The escalating campaign — led by Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) and other Republicans in Congress and state government — has cast a pall over programs that study not just political falsehoods but also the quality of medical information online.

....Jordan has issued subpoenas and demands for researchers’ communications with the government and social media platforms as part of a larger congressional probe into the Biden administration’s alleged collusion with Big Tech.

“This effort is clearly intended to deter researchers from pursuing these studies and penalize them for their findings,” Jen Jones, the program director for the Center for Science and Democracy at the Union of Concerned Scientists, an environmental group that promotes scientific research, said in a statement.

Lawsuits, congressional investigations, subpoenas for email, and personal harassment. This is the same game plan conservatives have used to intimidate climate scientists over the past few years.

Republicans want nothing and nobody to interfere with a conservative movement that can only exist amid a huge web of lies. Vaccinations are unsafe. Trump won the election. Climate change is a hoax. Joe Biden is a crook. Voter fraud in Democratic cities is endemic. January 6 was a peaceful demonstration. COVID originated with a Chinese lab leak. The FBI has been weaponized against Republicans. Social media is a liberal cesspool.

The reason that disinformation fighters spend a lot of time on Republican lies is because Republicans lie a lot. It's that simple.

Fuckity fuck fuck fuck:

My multiple myeloma is still hanging around. It turns out I was right to be skeptical of the "no report means no M-protein" claim from my doctor yesterday. Today I suddenly received revised test results and this time they did include an M-protein report. It wasn't zero. It was 0.12. As usual lower is still better, but by no means does this indicate a complete remission. The cancer is reduced but far from gone.

So I guess this was just a screwup from the lab combined with a casual brushoff from my doctor. I remain part of the 20% who didn't get a complete response from Carvykti.

This is completely nuts:

Only 52% of Republicans think the COVID vaccine is safe. The conservative politicians and conservative media that created this situation should be utterly ashamed of themselves.

And to what end? It isn't even a partisan issue. It's not as if Joe Biden would get a surge in the polls if Republicans got themselves vaccinated, after all. It's just a completely craven attempt to spread a dangerous conspiracy theory in service of undermining support for government services of any kind. I hope it was worth it, guys.

I am once again confused:

"Accuses"? Who else would attack Sevastopol? And why shouldn't they? Russia keeps raining missiles on Kyiv, after all. It only seems fair.