Jeff Mullis leads the fight for election security
Georgia Sen. Jeff Mullis, a Republican from Chickamauga, issued the following statement on Wednesday, Dec. 9. Mullis, who is chairman of the Senate Rules Committee, represents Senate District 53, which includes Catoosa, Dade, and Walker counties and portions of Chattooga County.
“I have heard the concerns of my constituents from day one, issuing my first statement on this egregious attempted election theft by radical socialists on November 5th. I was one of the first Republican officials in the State of Georgia to speak out about the actions of the radical left and I will continue to lead the fight for President Trump and my constituents here in the 53rd Senate District. I know you are angry and I can assure you, my rage burns just as hot. Below is the statement of the GOP Senate Caucus that details our plan to fight for you, the good people of Georgia.
“The Georgia Senate Republicans have heard the calls of millions of Georgians who have raised deep and heartfelt concerns that state law has been violated and our elections process abused in our November 3, 2020 elections. We will fix this.
“Our state constitution precludes us from calling a special session due to the lack of a threefifths majority in both chambers. As constitutionalists, we must respect that. Even if we could secure the requisite numbers to convene, our laws provide no avenue for us to retroactively alter the results from November 3, 2020. However, an avenue to move this matter even quicker than a special session now exists and is pending before the United States Supreme Court.
“As the upper chamber of the General Assembly and consistent with our prerogatives for legislative oversight:
“1) We are calling upon the elections officials to engage the GBI to investigate any and all fraudulent activities, including those which were brought to light during Senate committee hearings on December 3, 2020.
“2) We insist that all counties immediately preserve all data from the November 3, 2020 General Election in order to conduct a forensic audit. We also call on these counties to perform a signature audit. We call on the State Elections Board to oversee and monitor that closely.
“3) We will continue to conduct public hearings up to and through January 5, 2021 to ensure that fraud and misconduct do not taint the next election.
The method for creating the new coronavirus vaccine is radically different. It starts with a snippet of genetic code that carries instructions for making proteins. Pick the right virus protein to target, and the body turns into a mini vaccine factory.
If you look at an image of the virus you’ll see the red, spiky parts. Those allow the virus to engage with the body and replicate. Those S proteins, or spike proteins, are what this vaccine targets.
“(The vaccine allows) your immune system to recognize the spike protein is a bad thing,” Voccio said. “It senses the foreign substance and sets up an immune response.”
It appears to work very well, he said. The question is how long it lasts.
“We do not know if it will be lifelong,” he said. “We do not know if you’ll need to get it once a year.”
That little fact comes down to how the particular vaccines produced by Pfizer and Moderna work. But the research leading to this type of vaccine has been in place for years.
“They’ve had the research down. They just had to get it done in bulk form,” Voccio said.
Long before COVID-19 was on the radar, the ground
work was laid in large part by two different streams of research — one at the National Institutes of Health and the other at the University of Pennsylvania — and because scientists had learned a bit about other coronaviruses from prior SARS and MERS outbreaks.
They used that research from the other coronaviruses, including researching a vaccine for MERS, to develop a vaccine for the novel coronavirus that causes COVID-19.
The model for the MRNA vaccine for COVID-19 was first developed by scientists in China, where the virus first struck, early in 2020. Scientists in America saw the research and got to work. Days later, they sent Moderna that recipe — and the vaccine race was on.
Shipments from the national supply are expected soon in Northwest Georgia’s hospitals and pharmacies for distribution.
As for Voccio, a veteran pulmonologist turned public health director, he admits that he was skeptical early on. But he said the science holds up and the vaccine could be very beneficial to fighting the rapid spread of COVID-19.
“I strongly encourage people to get this vaccine,” Voccio said.