Update (8/29/2019. 5:20 pm est): As if the original article I wrote on Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) wasn't enough to prove how much pain I had to endure watching her seven-and-a-half minute lecture on the climate repeatedly, AOC decided to up the "duh" factor Thursday afternoon by tweeting out that a spoof video of her comments was a "GOP attack ad."
I kid you not. Here's genius on display:
I love everything about this GOP attack ad.
— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) August 29, 2019
Republicans underestimate my intelligence bc I invite people into my home & talk about policy in plain English instead of DC jargon.
They think that’s dumb, so they end up paying for ads that spread & explain our policy positions. 🤣 https://t.co/6XC1YdyKDU
Original Story: Journalism is, like, in trouble when we allow all of these words to be written that only do harm to people. And, like, I wake up from my ten-and-a-half hour nap in a cold sweat, because I’m afraid of the word monster underneath my bed grabbing me and forcing me to, like, say all these words that I’m probably going to have to look up because, like, I don’t know what they mean in the context of complete sentences, ya know?
No, I didn’t have a stroke. But do you see what I’m forced to listen to on a daily basis? This is the level of thought that has become commonplace among the media and politicians in 2019. When you combine all of that oh-so-intelligent blathering on with the socialist ideology, you get the perfect concoction of “what the heck did they just say?”
If climate change prophecies and prehistoric glacier diseases keep you up at night, have I got the rant for you!
Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the artist known as “AOC”:
Did you get all of that? Yes, that actually was sitting member of Congress, socialist Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.).
I’m not going to get into everything she said, but I have to point out one portion of her rant that shows Ocasio-Cortez is out of her depth:
There are a lot of diseases that are frozen in some of these glaciers that scientists fear that there is a potential that a lot of diseases could escape these melted glaciers, things that were frozen for thousands of years, and that they’re going to get into our water, and that humans could contract them, and they’re going to be diseases that are thousands of years old that have vectors that we are not prepared for, that we have never seen. And so, you know, that’s a concern.
Even if there are no diseases frozen at all in these glaciers, you have diseases that are spread by mosquitoes, and now mosquitoes are starting to fly further north that carry diseases like malaria, and a whole slew of other things.
How can one say in one breath that “scientists” say a particular thing, but then in the next breath essentially contradict these supposed scientists’ theory? By saying, “Even if there are no diseases frozen at all in these glaciers,” doesn’t that directly contradict her “scientists” assertion? Which is it?
According to the head of virology at the U.K. National Institute for Medical Research in London, Jonathan Stoye:
Stoye says that whether or not the viruses are infectious depends largely on how the virus was frozen. Viruses frozen in water are likely to be inactivated by the water’s relatively low pH. “But if the virus was in droppings, which presumably is how it was deposited, there seems to be no reason why it should not freeze and survive at low temperatures.”
He adds that viruses are more likely to survive in a frozen state if they freeze and thaw only once, as the freeze-thaw process kills at least 90% of virus each time.
So while there is a slight possibility that diseases could survive in glaciers, if they inhabited frozen droppings, Ocasio-Cortez’s confusion and contradiction of her own assertion makes what she said confusing to most. By using logic, based on the fact that 90 percent of any virus contained in droppings would be killed upon thawing makes the probability of an infectious disease mass effecting a population of people infinitesimal.
And then, Ocasio-Cortez basically says, ‘well, if it’s not diseases in glaciers, it’s mosquitos.’ While I do believe that some mosquitos do carry disease, like the West Nile Virus, how are we expected to take her mosquito assertion seriously if she’s not even sure about the glacier theory?
Even AOC knows that her argument is flimsy, considering her need to continually further her argument by repeatedly qualifying it.
It’s all very confusing, but then again, we are talking about a rant from AOC here.