Lorie

🧵🪡 The Century-Long Pattern: How Viral Illness Sets the Stage for Bacterial Pneumonia For more than a hundred years, the same sequence has repeated itself in hospitals, military camps, and pandemic waves: a viral infection damages the airway, resident bacteria invade, and untreated bacterial pneumonia becomes the real killer. The names on the death certificates change. The underlying physiology does not. The Rehearsal in the Army Camps In the crowded U.S. Army training camps of 1917 and 1918, measles outbreaks produced devastating secondary pneumonias and empyemas. Contemporary pathologists and later historical reviews found that the dominant organism was beta-hemolytic streptococci—almost always Group A Streptococcus pyogenes (then called Streptococcus haemolyticus). Pure cultures were repeatedly recovered from lung tissue, blood, and pleural fluid. Soldiers who developed measles were roughly ten times more likely to die of pneumonia or empyema than those who did not. In some camps, post-measles bacterial complications struck half of cases, with empyema rates reaching as high as 90 percent. Parallel primary streptococcal pneumonias occurred even without measles. These camp outbreaks were recognized at the time as clinically, radiologically, and pathologically similar to the secondary bacterial pneumonias that would soon kill most people during the 1918 influenza pandemic. The camps were the dress rehearsal.

Senator- THIS IS FALSE! Slotkin said Michigan lost about 12,000 manufacturing jobs in the year and a half since Trump took office. She used a December 2024 baseline (~595,600 jobs). Trump took office in January 2025, when the figure was already 578,700. By September 2026 the BLS number was 583,800 — a net gain of roughly 5,100 jobs since inauguration, not a 12,000 loss. The big drop she cites happened before or right at the transition. Fact-checks rate the claim false for this baseline error. Michigan’s manufacturing decline is a multi-decade trend. Democrats (including Gov. Whitmer) have controlled state government for years, so state policy shares responsibility. Selective layoff anecdotes do not equal a statewide net loss. Bottom line: official data show a small gain since Trump took office, not the loss Slotkin claimed.

Just a reminder 2020- Transition Integrity Project (TIP) was a short-term 2020 scenario-planning exercise (not a permanent organization) that ran tabletop “war games” focused on potential disruptions to the U.S. presidential election and transition. It was organized in late 2019 by Rosa Brooks (Georgetown Law professor and former Obama-era Pentagon official) and Nils Gilman (historian at the Berggruen Institute). The project operated under the auspices of Protect Democracy and was driven by concern that the Trump administration might manipulate, ignore, undermine, or disrupt the 2020 election and transition process. Its stated goal was to identify risks and encourage steps to keep the process free, fair, and accepted as legitimate. In June 2020, TIP convened roughly 67 active participants (with more than 100 people involved overall) in a series of matrix-style tabletop exercises. Participants included former officials, campaign operatives, academics, and journalists. Named figures included John Podesta, Donna Brazile, Jennifer Granholm, Michael Steele (former RNC chair), Bill Kristol, David Frum, Trey Grayson, and Max Boot. The Republican participants were predominantly Never-Trumpers; the overall group was heavily critical of Trump. The Four Scenarios They gamed four main outcomes: 1. Ambiguous result — Outcome unclear on and after Election Night; contested states; ballots destroyed in one state; neither side concedes. 2. Clear Biden win — Biden wins both the Electoral College and popular vote. Trump alleges fraud and takes steps to protect himself/family interests but ultimately leaves. 3. Clear Trump Electoral College win (modeled as 286–252) with Biden winning the popular vote (~52–47%). In this simulation, the Biden side refused to concede, encouraged Democratic governors in states Trump won to submit alternate elector slates, threatened secession by California, Oregon, and Washington, and pushed the House not to certify Trump. 4. Narrow Biden win — Slim popular-vote and Electoral College margin for Biden. Trump’s side sows chaos; eventually Senate Republicans and the Joint Chiefs accept the result; Trump refuses to leave and is removed by the Secret Service. The August 3, 2020 report, Preventing a Disrupted Presidential Election and Transition, assessed a high likelihood of a chaotic legal and political landscape. It stated that President Trump was likely to contest the result by both legal and extra-legal means in an attempt to hold onto power, citing his public comments, the Attorney General’s embrace of fraud claims, and other actions. Key points included that the traditional “election night” concept was outdated because of mail-in ballots, that most scenarios (except a large Biden victory) involved street-level violence and political crisis, and that the executive branch (including DOJ and potentially the military or National Guard) could be used in ways that strained norms. The report framed itself as a warning to spur mitigation rather than a prediction of inevitable collapse. judicialwatch.org/wp-content… ia803103.us.archive.org/0/it…