Viral News: Dr. Anthony Fauci, President Biden’s top medical adviser for Covid-19, said yesterday that the current Omicron wave is peaking in the US and that new cases could fall to manageable levels in the coming months.

  “What we would hope,” Dr. Fauci said during an appearance on ABC’s “This Week,” “is that, as we get into the next weeks to month or so, we’ll see throughout the entire country the level of infection get to below what I call that area of control.”

  He didn’t say Covid is going away. Infections will continue, “but they don’t disrupt society,” he said. “That’s the best case scenario.”

  Meanwhile, a Minnesota man whose wife sued the hospital when they tried to take him off a ventilator and let him die, has died. Scott Quiner, 55, who was not vaccinated and had spread Covid misinformation online, had been on a ventilator for two months when his doctors called it quits. His wife had him transferred to a hospital in Texas. 

  The Quiners’ lawyer, also a vaccine skeptic, said the Minnesota doctors didn’t use every protocol available, although the hospital said Mrs. Quiner had asked for treatments that were medically insupportable.

  The family lawyer said Quiner would get better in Texas, “And as he gets better and better, we are going to see that you know what, there are protocols that should be used that hospitals have not been using.” 

  Quiner died on Saturday.

Mistakes and Malice: Jury selection begins today in former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin’s defamation lawsuit against The NY Times in a case that may refine the difference between libel and sloppy journalism.

  A Times editorial in 2017 incorrectly linked the 2011 shooting of Rep. Gabby Giffords to a map circulated by Palin’s PAC that showed certain electoral districts under crosshairs. The Times retracted and apologized, but Palin sued. 

 The case is about the limits of First Amendment protections and the standard set in the landmark New York Times vs. Sullivan case, after which a public figure must prove not only that they were maligned, but that the news outlet in question acted with “actual malice.” Palin’s suit claims malice and The Times said they made an honest mistake.

Urban Warfare: The Glock pistol used to kill a New York City police officer Friday night had a rotary magazine allowing the gun to carry up to 50 rounds. New York City law prohibits magazines of greater that 10-round capacity, but this gun had been listed as stolen. The New York Post found a website selling the rotary magazines that says, “Now you can load up on Tuesday and shoot to Wednesday with this 50 round 9mm magazine for your Glock.”

The Boys of January: Pro football was incredible this weekend. Kansas City and Buffalo traded touchdowns and a field goal, scoring 24 points in the final 74 seconds to go into overtime. The Chiefs won it with a touchdown to go to the AFC Championship.

  In Florida, Tampa Bay quarterback Tom Brady fell short of reaching his 11^th Super Bowl. The Buccaneers ran on two of eight cylinders for three quarters against Los Angeles until Brady tied it at 27 with less than a minute on the clock. The Rams won with a last-second field goal to reach the NFC championship.

  Saturday was also a big night for the foot in football. As time ran out in Green Bay, Robbie Gould hit one from 45 yards out to put San Francisco in the NFC championship  

  Earlier, with just four seconds left, rookie Evan McPherson kicked his fourth field goal for Cincinnati, a 52-yarder, to win 19-16 for a spot in the AFC final game.

Donald’s Choice: Complaining to The Washington Examiner about the January 6 Committee summoning his daughter, Donald Trump said, “They’ll go after children.”

  The child in question here is Ivanka Trump, 40, who was an adviser to her father when he was president. Not a job for a child. Ivanka was witness to events in the Oval Office before and during the insurrection.

  Trump’s former lawyer Michael Cohen said on MSNBC Saturday that Trump said 10 years ago that if one of his children had to go to jail, make sure it was Don Jr., not Ivanka. This was in 2012 when Junior and Ivanka were being investigated by the Manhattan DA for real estate fraud, similar to the current investigation. Cohen said Trump told him, “If one or the other has to go to prison, make sure that it’s Don because Don would be able to handle it.”

The Spin Rack: The State Department has ordered the pullout of diplomatic families from the US embassy in Ukraine. Russia has already done the same. —Arizona Democrats censured their senator, Kyrsten Sinema, who last week opposed changing the filibuster rules, thereby joining Republicans in blocking the voting rights bill. — Four people were killed and one wounded when several gunmen fired at a house party near Los Angeles about 1:30 yesterday morning. Two men and two women died in the shooting in Inglewood, south of downtown LA. — Jean-Jacques Savin, a 75-year-old French adventurer who was attempting to row across the Atlantic Ocean alone from Portugal to the Caribbean was found dead inside his overturned boat Saturday near the Azores after he had sent out distress signals several days before. Having made many dangerous journeys, Savin had said before he departed that this was to be his “last challenge at sea.” 

Clueless in Philadelphia: The average annual wage for Americans in 2021 was $53,383 and the median wage was $34,612, according to the Labor Department. 

  A professor of legal studies and business ethics at the Wharton School of Business in Philadelphia recently asked her students to guess at that figure, the average American wage. A quarter of her students answered that they believe the average American wage is at least $100,000, and one of them said $800,000. 

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