"It 'may be true' that COVID vaccines cause AIDS"

In a video interview published on the right-wing social media platform Rumble, Sen. Ron Johnson said it “may be true” that vaccines against COVID-19 cause AIDS. 

Johnson was being interviewed by anti-vaccine lawyer Todd Callender, who alleged that the shots induce AIDS and that the FDA knew so when the vaccines were approved for emergency use. 

“The way to approach this is from a criminal point of view because that’s what has happened. And until we start holding people accountable, [Dr. Anthony] Fauci number one, you’re going to see people still falling out, still getting sick,” Calendar said. “You’ve got more than a hundred doctors here, all of whom will tell you that these shots caused vaccine-induced AIDS. they purposefully gave people AIDS. They knew this.”

Johnson responded that it’s possible the allegations are true, but that anti-vaccine activists need to wait for public opinion to be on their side before criminally charging health officials. 

“Let me challenge you there, that’s way down the road,” Johnson said. “You’ve gotta do one step at a time. Everything you say may be true, but right now the public views the vaccines as largely safe and effective, that vaccine injuries are rare and mild. That’s the narrative, that’s what the vast majority of the public accepts. So until we get a larger percentage of the population with their eyes open to ‘woah, these vaccine injuries are real, why?’ You’ve got to do it step by step, you can’t leap to crimes against humanity, you can’t leap to another Nuremberg trial.” 

It's not often that I'm at a loss for words, but the words I do have at the moment are ones I shouldn't commit to print.  I'll just leave this here to illustrate the (gotta stop typing)...

Milkweed leaves "trenched" and "skeletonized" - updated x2

Reposted from 2019 to add the photo above - my best yet at depicting the early feeding pattern of the first instar of a Monarch caterpillar.  Contrary to what I stated below when I started this post in 2011, the first instar does not begin by cutting the hole.  The first step - after eating its eggshell - is to eat the trichomes (the "little hairs" on the undersurface of the leaf).   The above photo, taken a few days ago, captures that moment in time.

With that clarification you can now proceed with the rest of this old post; I'm not planning to re-edit all the old text.

[2011 text] If you're walking past milkweed plants, sometimes you can see a tiny hole in the leaf.  Turn the leaf over, and you may see droplets of the sticky latex sap oozing from the cut area.

In this case, the perpetrator is not present.  This is the feeding pattern of the first generation (first instar) larva of the Monarch butterfly.  The female Monarch lays her egg (typically one to a plant) by grasping the leaf edge with her feet and stretching her abdomen underneath.  When the larva hatches, it begins eating the leaf by cutting that circle, which breaks the flow of latex to the tissue in the center.  The little instar can then continue eating that part of the leaf without being physically overwhelmed by the flow.

Here's one at work.  First they eat the little hairs inside the circle, then they finish the contents of the circle, then (usually as a larger second instar) head out to work on the leaf edge itself.

When we see leaves like the one at the top, it typically means the caterpillar has fallen victim to a bird or to the ants who patrol the plant tending their aphids.

There's one other caterpillar that has evolved to favor the highly toxic milkweed leaves as a food source - the "milkweed tussock moth."

Unlike the monarch cats, these are gregarious creatures, emerging from large clusters of eggs laid by the moth.  They can tolerate the cardiac glycosides in the latex, but also don't want to be overwhelmed by the flow, so while they are little, instead of cutting the vein as the Monarch does, they eat between the veins.  The result looks like this leaf I photographed yesterday -

Totally "skeletonized" but with the arborized veins still intact.  In this case they had moved on to a different leaf; as they get larger they are capable of consuming the entire leaf and defoliating the plant.  Milkweeds have large taproots and tolerate the process quite well, especially because these are late-summer caterpillars and the plant is already in blossom or seed.

Addendum July 30:  Here's what leaves look like that have been consumed by the next generation of tussock moth instars.  It's not as delicate.  The generation after this one is capable of stripping a milkweed right down to the stem.

Reposted from 2011 to add this photo and comments:

The image above shows why we bring Monarch eggs into the house and screen porch.  The milkweed plant in the photo is next to our driveway.  We have never seen a caterpillar on it.  Each of those holes represents a location where a Monarch deposited an egg, the first instar emerged and began feeding, perhaps molted once... and then disappeared.  At our location that probably represents predation (or accidental dislodgement) by ants.  The survival percentage may be higher in more rural locations, but it is still high; consider that a female Monarch can lay 500 eggs in her lifetime, and sustaining the population requires that 2 survive, then do the math.

When we find eggs on milkweed leaves, we pluck the leaf and bring it inside away from predators.  The containers require cleaning and changing, but the cats are quite content to pupate there.

This (September) morning we had a couple eclose; we released them from the south side of the house because they have a long trip to get to Mexico before the weather turns cold (though they can travel a hundred miles in a day).

Milkweed's spectacular autumn podcast

The final stage in milkweed's life cycle is a magnificent aerial dispersal of its seeds.  The dried pods, remants of those huge blossoms, crack open and several hundred aerodynamic seeds are exposed to the wind; this happens gradually, over a period of days rather than all at once, presumably to maximize the range of distribution of their landing sites.

I hope that every child (and the inner child of every adult) has had or will have the opportunity to hold a dried stem aloft and shake it gently on an autumn day.  One can't help but marvel at how this immensely effective dispersal mechanism has evolved over the millennia.



Those who raise milkweed in butterfly gardens need to be aware that neighbors may not share their enthusiasm for the plant.  We cut down the stems of all our plants just before the pods open. The seeds are then available for "stealth gardening" along roadsides or in wastelands.

For those who want to distribute the seeds by hand in a more controlled fashion, the seeds can be separated from the fluff (the coma), or even more simply just digitally removed from a mature but unopened pod (instructive video here).

(and yes, I know it's actually a "seedcast," not a podcast, but I couldn't resist using the word)

Milkweed in midsummer

The timing varies with latitude and microclimate, but in general, common milkweed reaches its floral maximum in midsummer.    It would be a bit of an exaggeration to call the plants "magnificent" or "stately," but they are certainly impressive, rising 4-5 feet high with a thick stem to help support a half-dozen blossoms as big as softballs.

Through the summer months those compound blossoms provide an abundance of nectar and pollen not just for the Monarchs, but for other butterflies and innumerable solitary bees and other insects. 

I posted earlier this summer about the complex morphology of the blossoms and how their strategy for pollination makes the blossom occasionally lethal to unwary small insects.  That is an uncommon occurrence, and for the most part when one wanders through a patch of mature milkweed, there is an abundance of small insects hovering nearby (and often a resident crab spider lurking in the flower). 

The fragrance is strong and reasonably pleasant, but not a prominent feature of the plant.  Midsummer will also find the plant hosting a variety of other insects - aphids tended by ants, milkweed beetles and milkweed bugs, lacewings and their eggs, and the milkweed tussock moth.  The ecology is complex and worthy of a separate post (next summer).

Next step:  the spectacle of seed production.

Of pollinia, pollinaria, and milkweed blossoms

YouTube link.

Yesterday I was fortunate to observe a phenomenon that I have never witnessed before, though I had read about it years ago.

As I left the house on an errand, I saw a small butterfly frantically quivering its wings, but unable to escape from a milkweed blossom.  I've seen this before when butterflies have their legs entangled in spiderwebs; at a milkweed blossom it could also have encountered a lurking crab spider.

In this particular situation the debate as to whether to "let nature take its course" was irrelevant, and I paused only a few milliseconds before walking over to free the innocuous butterfly from the wicked spider.  Much to my surprise (and intellectual delight), I discovered that the butterfly was entrapped not by a spider or a web, but by the blossom itself..

Milkweed is not a carnivorous plant, but its pollination system can be lethal to small

insects.  Unlike most other flowering plants, milkweed pollen is not free as a powder, but is stored in rather large sacs.  The legs of visiting insects can become entrapped in the structure of these plants; when the insect leaves, it pulls away the entire sac, which then can be transported to the pistils of the next blossom.

An encounter with a pollinarium is not a problem for large insects like Monarch butterflies, bumblebees, or even robust solitary bees.  But the butterfly I saw was one of the small "hairstreaks" which are only the size of one's fingernail (see the embed at right of a different hairstreak).  It lacked the propulsive force necessary to pull the pollinarium away from the blossom, and would have perished there from exhaustion or fallen victim to a roving predator.

I removed from the large milkweed blossom the individual flower holding the hairstreak; it was still unable to escape until I grasped its wings with my other hand and pulled; it then flew away.

The video at the top has excellent visuals of this phenomenon.  A detailed text description with illustrative photos was posted at Eye On Nature in 2012.

Milkweed as a weed

For my second post in the series on milkweed, I'll address the perception of milkweed as a weed.  The photo above shows a mature patch of common milkweed at the edge of our front lawn next to the driveway; circled in the center of the lawn is a group of four plants that have "escaped" from their assigned seats.

When I helped staff our butterfly group's booth at Madison's Garden Expo this past spring, it was apparent that "wildflower gardeners" were receptive to our encouragement to plant milkweed, but that "perfectly-manicured-English-knot-garden" gardeners were appalled that we would encourage propagation of "weeds."

"Weed" is inherent in the plant's common name, and thus is an unavoidable influence on the plant's perception by the public.  Most gardeners accept the principle that a weed is a "plant out of place," but there are some for whom the weediness is a true problem - especially farmers: 

A common milkweed density of just over one shoot per square foot reduced wheat yields 47%. In soybean and corn, common milkweed is reported to reduce yields 19 and 10%, respectively. Cultivation can fragment and spread underground roots, which generally increases shoot numbers and population size.

Milkweed has evolved two techniques to propagate itself.  The best-known are the autumn seed pods which burst open to release "parachute-equipped" seeds for wide dispersal (more about that later this year).  But when milkweed finds a microenvironment with suitable sunlight and water, it will also propagate itself with underground lateral roots.

The four plants in the center of our yard are upgrowths from an underground root sent out from the larger patch; they are smaller because they have been mowed down each time the grass is mowed.  I've left them there because the fresh shoots have leaves that are way more tender than the more waxy leaves on the mature plants, and thus they provide good food for young caterpillars.

If you want to get rid of them for esthetic reasons, simply reach down, grasp the stem firmly, and pull:

The several inches of white stem represents the extension below ground to the horizontal feeder.  You can also use any common commercially-available broad-leaf herbicide, but we prefer not to employ such agents close to our flower and herb beds.

The non-uniform greenness of the lawn could reflect a misjudgment on my part of the "throw" of the fertilizer spreader, or it could be an artistic statement.  If a neighbor asks, I'll just say it's the new "thing" and that if their lawn isn't striped, they must be hopelessly retro.

Milkweed - the first week

Anyone who has read this blog on a regular basis knows that I have repeatedly decried the sad situation facing Monarch butterflies in the United States.  There's little I can do to alleviate the loss of their winter habitat in the mountain forests of Mexico or to stem the widespread use of Roundup herbicide, but perhaps with a series of blog posts I can inform the public about some of the nuances of growing milkweed - the Monarch's host plant (the only plant its caterpillars can feed on).

At our latitude (southern Wisconsin in the Upper Midwest), spikes of milkweed emerge in early May.  These are growing from deep and well-established root systems that are well-protected from surface freezing temperatures in the winter.  I presume the trigger for cell division is some threshhold temperature or some accumulation of degree-days.  When that limit is reached, the growth is rapid.  The top image shows asparagus-like spears that had not been present the day before.

With an deep-underground branching root system, the spikes can emerge in what appears to be totally inhospitable microenvironments.  This one is coming through an old (probably deteriorated) piece of landscape fabric and past a layer of gravel.  And the early growth is rapid:

This photo was taken one week after the first two.  It's already 6" high and ready to accept Monarch eggs and tolerate the depradations of several caterpillars (Monarchs typically lay their eggs singly, but sometimes two oviposit on the same plant).

In the next installment I'll comment on the perception of the "weediness" of the plant.

Note:  the milkweed shown here is Asclepias syriaca - the "common milkweed."

The joy of milkweed seeds

One of the pleasures of youth (or of adulthood when you don't care what people think) is to shake milkweed pods and watch the fluff fly away. The photos above were taken at the Pheasant Branch Conservatory last week.

For the eternally pragmatic-minded there are some other aspects to consider. The milkweed floss itself has excellent insulation properties (actually better than goosedown). In the 1860s, residents of Salem used milkweed as mattress filling, and during WWII, when Japan cut off the supply of kapok, a nationwide drive collected millions of pounds of milkweed for the manufacture of Mae West lifejackets. There have been modern attempts to farm milkweed and process the down, and instructions are available at Mother Earth News to make your own milkweed down jacket.

Blogged for my Aunt Charlotte, who during WWII was one of thousands of schoolchildren who harvested milkweed from the barnyard and took bagfuls to school for the "Two bags save one life" program.