Illinois rapid saliva test for COVID-19 appears to be up and running at UIUC. Classes begin August 26. If this works, UIUC shouldn’t be joining the schools that switched from in person to online within weeks of classes starting. 🙂
592 thoughts on “20,000 tests a day planned.”
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To potentially introduce a new topic. Wonder what people here think of requiring non-Stem college students to take calculus. My son (who had a very good math ACT score) took an online calculus class this summer which cost me $1,000. Although he is generally a motivated student, he hated it and at one point said all he wanted was a D-. (He can make the class pass fail on his academic transcript.)
It did turn out that he had an 87 average, but since he is majoring in business and marketing, I am wondering about the point of the calculus. I will point out that I strongly encouraged him to take AP statistics in High School, which he liked and considers useful, and, of course, with all of the climate shenigans that I have seen, I also consider very useful.
I know many here are very skilled in math, and I am curious about your thoughts on this subject.
I’m not in business so I don’t know if calculus helps people in business or not. I do think some statistics is useful.
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Topics in high school algebra 2 and pre-calc can be useful. (Knowing about geometric growth and exponents is useful to understanding time value of money.)
If rapid saliva test works, it will be further egg on the face of the Big Ten conference, which cancelled football last week instead of evaluating the situation week by week to see if Covid is out of control with respect to the football teams.
Calculus is used in economics, even in basic courses. However, it’s not clear if any of that is practical. You can’t predict what the sales will be in response to a price change to allow you to calculate the maximum revenue or profit.
Calculating an internal rate of return is probably done in excel, but you might use geometric series formulas, or Newton’s method for estimation.
Mike N: “Calculus is used in economics, even in basic courses. However, it’s not clear if any of that is practical….Calculating an internal rate of return is probably done in excel, but you might use geometric series formulas, or Newton’s method for estimation.”
Seems to me there should be computer programs or apps to do any of the practical things that calculus might be used for. Such as I use amortization tables all of the time.
JDOhio,
Depending on how the material is presented, calculus can be a PITA. My first exposure was with a teacher who started on the upper left side of a large blackboard and ended on the lower right with the sequence: theorm, proof, theorm, proof, theorm, proof… etc in every lecture. It was calculus for math theoreticians, and quite horrible. But understanding the concepts and basic uses of calculus can be valuable in many fields. It changes the way you think about how things work. I use the concepts frequently.
JD,
As a computer programmer or software engineer, I’ve virtually never used calculus. As Steve says above, I’ve found the concepts to be useful and I’ve used them. Such as I remember them, I’ve forgotten virtually everything but the very basics (simple integration and differentiation). I’ve used numerical approximation methods much more. Programming is usually more discrete math and approximation anyway in my experience.
As SteveF says, many of the concepts in calculus are broadly useful. But as JD says, for most purposes you don’t need to actually know how to evaluate an integral, let alone prove the theorems used.
Undergrad degree requirements are often heavily influenced by what profs want their entering graduate students to know, even if 99% of the undergrads will never consider grad school.
Math opens many intellectual doors. When you stop learning math, those doors that have not yet been opened will remain closed forever. But that is an argument for encouraging students to take math rather than requiring it.
Calculus teaches you about things like area under the curve. Something that almost everybody uses or needs to understand at some point.
Like SteveF I went into a calculus class for future Math Theoreticians. Way over my interest level. Have you even heard of Metric Spaces? Ugh! But I also met the popular “Anna Step Function” (a lot of the theoretical math professors speak English as a second language). 🙂
Advice: basic calculus is useful. Going much beyond that depends on the interest level of the student. Any skills in analysis will be broadly useful.
EE was crammed full of calculus. I never liked it but could regurgitate the math on demand. It’s mostly used as weeding out wannabe engineers, whether this is appropriate is debatable.
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My real job of electrical board design and embedded software uses virtually none of it. I have implemented a bunch of algorithms and DSP where advanced math is required so a background in these type of things is necessary. If you are hacking out HTML then you wouldn’t need it. I would have found more statistics / data processing techniques to be more useful than additional years of calculus.
Would say that my only memory of calculus is getting 4 out of 8 questions right on my first quiz (an F of course) as a freshman at UCSB and thinking here we go. Somehow I think I ultimately got a C. Have never used calculus once and have zero memories of what I apparently temporarily learned.
JD Ohio,
I imagine lawyers never use calculus again. The same goes for history majors. My sister got her BA in philosophy and a masters in library science. I’m sure she’s never used any of her high school calculus in her “real” life.
She did have an amusing story about an econ elective. She was in the class– mostly male. Our maiden names started with T, so her name was called near the end of the roll. The teacher was calling names and majors. Most the guys were econ or poli sci . When the prof called her name and major a number snorted or laughed. (I know her… she rolled her eyes.)
Anyway… the teacher finished calling roll. He asked, “Who’s taken calculus.” ONE hand went up. One. The teacher looked at the guys who snorted and said: “Well, you just blew your chance to get help from the one student who’s going to get the easy A.”
Lucia,
I don’t know how 20,000 tests per day at a college campus is going to work out (I wish them luck, but remain skeptical… having known a few people in that age range). At least it is clear new cases and death rate have both passed their peaks in Florida; herd immunity here we come!
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Unfortunately, Illinois is more complicated. There were lots of deaths (too many!) early, but the number of confirmed cases is still too low to be closing in on herd immunity, and social distancing is going to mean it will be a while to pass the second new-case peak. Plan on mask theater for some months.
SteveF,
Also, kids at UIUC come from all over the state. More will be from suburbs; less from the densely hit zipcodes in Chicago. Many kids will not have had summer jobs. My guess is they won’t be close to herd immunity.
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The testing part probably won’t be the hard part. It’s rounding up those whose tests came out positive.
There are books written on applying calculus in mathematical finance and there is the famous (some may say infamous) Black-Scholes equation that in broad terms is a partial differential equation that can be derived for options and derivatives.
https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9783540434313
There are lots of algorithms and models used every day that apply principles of calculus even though the calculations are most often made numerically using computer code. I think it can be helpful in a variety of professions and even hobbies to know something about how calculus is applied in the world. My granddaughters are taking college level calculus in high school and I do not think they are planning on a career that would traditionally use it on frequent basis. I would guess that more high school kids than ever are learning calculus. One of my daughter-in-laws just passed a test that allows her to teach advanced mathematics in high school. She learned calculus from her sister, who has taught it in high school for several years, and from online tutorials.
lucia (Comment #189422)
I notice that you refer to UI as UIUC which I assume means the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Back in the day it was UI and UIC for the U of I Chicago. Is that designation something you use or is it common practice these days? An old guy who may be more out of touch than he thinks wants to know.
There was a discussion about Jacobson suing Clack & Caldeira over their critique of his 100% renewable energy paper. The threat was diverted when it became obvious that the Jesuit blogger did not understand the difference between power and energy and watts vs watt-hours.
An engineer chimed in with an explanation that power is the instantaneous derivative of energy.
MikeN,
Hopelessly unknowing leftists, driven by a combination of utter ignorance and crazy ideology…. which makes actually learning about physical reality almost impossible…. will always make fools of themselves if required to address a factual subject. It is why they just lie about anything factual, or avoid it if they can.
Kenneth,
Yes. UIUC is Champaign-Urbana. UIC is Chicago (formerly “Circle”.) I think I’ve used UIUC since at least graduate school. Heck, I’d be at conferences and a lot of UIUC engineering grads would answer “Urbana” to “where did you go to school”.
I’m sure no one answers “Chicago” as short for UIC!
I should have added Kenneth: According to the article, the tests are being done at UIUC specifically. This isn’t something happening at both campuses.
Thanks, Lucia, you answered both my questions. I did see the references to UIUC in my recent searches and attempts to become current. And also thanks for reminding me that the C in UIC was Circle Campus not Chicago.
It will be interesting to see if UIUC remains open to on-campus classes if a significant number of students become infected and/or parties are well attended.
I was attempting to recall my last visit to the UIUC campus. I think it was when I was in college and attending an Illini Army football game. Those cadets could really party. My buddy and I were banned from a sorority house by the house mother. Neither of us could figure out what we did as it was no different than how we acted in our own college town.
“power is the instantaneous derivative of energy.” Steve, I thought the point was about a lack of a calculus curriculum.
Kenneth,
“I thought the point was about a lack of a calculus curriculum.â€
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Sure, but after suffering the general unknowing idiocy of the left for decades (yes, including a lack of understanding of basic calculus) I have concluded that the woeful lack of technical understanding is part and parcel of embracing leftist ideology.
SteveF,
Alas, all too many university math professors are fully on board with the left leaning policies. A parent of mine was one of them.
Not sure why I turned out differently from the rest of my family. Maybe it is that I’m the only one that went into an engineering field? Maybe. But the younger engineers seemed to lean more to the left than my age peers in the office.
FL cases down 66% in one month while staying open, the media are singing the praises of the DeSantis Florida miracle and openly acknowledging they really don’t understand this virus after all.
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No not really, ha ha. What is actually happening is Florida is no longer in the news at all. Instead we are breathlessly treated to how the Sturgis motorcycle rally where 500K people attended has produced upwards of … 20 cases so far. Contact tracers curiously weren’t forbidden from asking about this rally as opposed to protests. Experts are very concerned about this one though, so pay very close attention to people you don’t support getting what they deserve.
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FL is interesting, unclear why cases declined so fast. I really haven’t noticed massive behavior change. Definitely more masks in public, but that is about it. It is very hard to predict, and experts aren’t very useful.
Tom Scharf (Comment #189449): “What is actually happening is Florida is no longer in the news at all. Instead we are breathlessly treated to how the Sturgis motorcycle rally where 500K people attended has produced upwards of … 20 cases so far.”
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Indeed. It is only a week since the rally ended, so that number will go up. But with the current rate of new cases, a random group of 500K people should have about 65 new cases per day. So a 10 day rally should produce at least 500 cases, even without promoting transmission. Sounds like motor cycle rallies might be pretty safe.
Tom Scharf,
“ FL is interesting, unclear why cases declined so fast.â€
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The simplest explanation is that the pandemic is running out of fuel. Random blood samples from the Miami metropolitan region (in May) showed that the number of people with antibodies was 11 times higher than the number of confirmed cases (CDC study); my analysis of the same data indicated it was more like 18…. they failed to account for the delay between illness and developing antibodies, so the appropriate date to count confirmed cases was a couple of weeks earlier.
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In any case, there almost certainly have been many millions of asymptomatic cases in Florida, along with 600,000 symptomatic cases. Add in people with existing resistance (30%?) and the fact that about 15% are children younger than 15 and so not easily infected, and herd immunity looks to me like what is happening. It is clear that the earlier (low) peak in cases and deaths, followed by a slow decline was due to social distancing and closures of many businesses, and the second peak by easing up on restrictions and opening of restaurants and businesses.
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As they once said on the start ship Enterprise: “It’s dead Jim.â€
The question is whether FL is vulnerable to a third wave. NYC seems to be immune to a 2nd wave at the moment (we shall see in winter). If quasi herd immunity is being reached then FL should be done with big outbreaks. I’m not confident enough to predict anything at the moment.
Tom,
It’s it’s really herd immunity over the whole state, then no third wave. The problem with social-distancing ending a first wave is that unless you run the virus into the ground (which isn’t happening) or have a vaccine, you get a 2nd wave when you give up social-distancing.
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We in Illinois are sort of just slowly easing, but our first waves wasn’t the Tsunami NY had. I don’t know when the top for the 2nd waves will arrive. I keep thinking we are near, but… nope. Not there yet.
Tom Scharf,
NYC area for sure is immune to a second wave. NY state’s continuing relatively low rate of new cases and deaths (750 per day and 10-15 respectively) is consistent with slow continued spread to regions which did not have many cases early in the pandemic. Since most of NY’s population is in metropolitan areas that already have a lot of cases, any second surge would likely be relatively small. For me the interesting contrast is between Sweden and NY. Sweden (with half as many people as NY) has quite a few new cases, but very few deaths in recent weeks…. 2 or 3 per day. This suggests the people in Sweden who are getting symptomatic cases are younger than people in NY with symptomatic cases.
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I will be shocked if Florida has any significant ‘surge’ in cases that lead to death.
Lucia,
The good news is that while cases have been increasing, deaths are still flat…. younger people are getting the virus, so they are making progress toward herd immunity. If florida is any guide, the when Illinois reaches ~350,000 cases, the pandemic will rapidly subside.
lucia (Comment #189453): “It’s it’s really herd immunity over the whole state, then no third wave.”
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The herd immunity threshold is not a single number. If it depends on behavior (likely, but possibly small), then it will be different in different parts of the state and will change when behavior changes. If it depends on environment (also likely), then it may change when the weather changes, or when people spend more or less time indoors, or when air conditioning use changes.
So cases could be declining due to herd immunity in some places now and might still rise in other places and/or at some time in the future.
Also, the nice, smooth, deterministic equations of models are surely a big oversimplification. In reality, there is probably a huge random/chaotic component. There are indications that the window of being contagious is small, that some people are prone to be super spreaders, and (for sure) that certain environments are prone to transmission. The wrong person in the wrong place at the wrong time and the next thing you know, there is a big outbreak.
People create just so stories about why this or that change in case load occurred, but so far as I can see they are entirely without any real evidence. The virus does not care what we think it should do.
SteveF,
IMO, the asymptomatic cases are the people with existing resistance. Cross-reactive T-cells alone likely wouldn’t clear the virus, but assuming they weren’t overwhelmed by a massive initial viral load, they might keep the virus under sufficient control until the B cells produce antibodies and clear the virus.
On overwhelming the immune system: A friend of mine reminded me the other day that the company I worked for had worked on a vaccine for E. coli induced mastitis in cows. They massively miscalculated the dose of bacteria to administer to test for immunity and managed to kill cows in 24 hours. But that was actually injecting the cows with a bacterial culture.
DeWitt,
“Cross-reactive T-cells alone likely wouldn’t clear the virus, but assuming they weren’t overwhelmed by a massive initial viral load, they might keep the virus under sufficient control until the B cells produce antibodies and clear the virus.”
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Sure, but multiple studies have shown people who were for certain exposed to the virus (living with a symptomatic household member) had reactive T-cells but no antibodies. The antibody screening studies by the CDC (which showed ~11 times higher incidence of serum antibodies than confirmed cases in six different regions of the USA) could not catch people without measurable antibodies. There is no doubt overlap between groups, but I suspect plenty of people with cross-reactive T-cells never develop measurable serum antibodies.
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Too bad about the cows.
DeWitt Payne (Comment #189457): “IMO, the asymptomatic cases are the people with existing resistance.”
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There are a couple problems with that. One is that the percentage of asymptomatic cases (50% is commonly cited) is greater than the percentage with cross-reactive T-cells (about 30%). Another is that there have been outbreaks in prisons and meat packing plants where 90% of the cases were asymptomatic.
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A better explanation might be that initial infective dose matters, with some environments conducive to widespread modest initial doses and others conducive to large initial doses. Here is an interesting, but not convincing, discussion:
https://www.realclearscience.com/articles/2020/08/22/learning_our_lessons_from_asymptomatic_covid-19.html
Mike M,
“there have been outbreaks in prisons and meat packing plants where 90% of the cases were asymptomatic.”
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And don’t forget the near 100% asymptomatic cases at a Boston homeless shelter at the peak of the hysteria in Massachusetts. Lots of people are exposed but never develop symptoms. Exactly how many will be figured out as more studies are completed…. and especially after the pandemic is over and the hot spotlight of OMB politics is past.
MikeM
Agreed. By “real” herd immunity, I mean the herd immunity percentage when people are back to behaving “normally”– no masks not distancing etc. (Mind you, there may be a new normal now that some companies found telecommuting worked for them. But still– with people no longer curbing their behavior to avoid getting sick.
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Yep. College campuses are actually special cases for immunity. Lots of students left for the summer. Now they are coming back and the “mixing” on college campuses is much greater than in typical suburbs. Fortunately, most the students won’t die. But the %recovered to reach herd immunity on campus during summer will be different from the % required during spring and fall semester!
SteveF,
However, in Mike M.’s link there was also at least one documented case where the opposite occurred and more than 90% were symptomatic.
It’s been over six months since COVID-19 was officially declared a pandemic and we still have little understanding of the details of how it’s transmitted.
DeWitt,
“It’s been over six months since COVID-19 was officially declared a pandemic and we still have little understanding of the details of how it’s transmitted.”
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Yup. Which I suspect is at least in part due to how politically charged the response to the pandemic has become. I mean, not many researchers are going to do a study which could get them in hot water if the results are not PC. Not to mention many academic types really don’t want to publish anything which diminishes the whole “It’s horrible and it’s all Trump’s fault” narrative on continuous display in the MSM. I note that much of the information about T-cell cross reactivity and T-cell resistance has come out of Sweden, where there is no fear of political ramifications for saying the rate of infection is limited.
Biden Harris “interview” on ABC tonight. It’s more of an ad than an interview. They keep jumping away from the interview and running segments that are essentially advertisements for the two, after every three or four softball interview questions.
I’ll give Biden this; he’s stringing words together coherently.
mark bofill,
“ he’s stringing words together coherently.â€
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Did they have the questions ahead of time? Is he using a teleprompter?
No idea.
Trump, Azar, and company are touting convalescent antibodies as a treatment for the Wuhan virus. They say it reduces fatalities by up to 35%, which is great. But the evidence seems to be that hydroxychloroquine reduces fatalities by a factor of 3, maybe even better if the protocols are optimized. And HCQ reduces hospitalizations, whereas the plasma is only used on hospitalized patients, I think.
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America’s Frontline Doctors have a white paper on HCQ that makes interesting reading. It seems that there is more to the suppression of HCQ than just Orange Man Bad, although some of their speculation is too conspiracy theoryish for my taste.
https://americasfrontlinedoctorsummit.com/
https://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2020/08/trump-misleads-the-nation-yet-again-about-covid-19-miracle-cure/
There is truly no limit to TDS. To summarize the “reasoning” in the article that Fuller cites: 99% of those infected with the Wuhan virus survive. A perfect cure would increase that to 100%. That is just a 1% change, which is insignificant. Therefore, there would be no real value to a perfect cure.
Pretty funny, I was just thinking that now that Trump has promoted plasma then we will get an avalanche of articles on how he is wrong and plasma is bad, even dangerous. Yawn, yawn, yawn.
“It’s been over six months since COVID-19 was officially declared a pandemic and we still have little understanding of the details of how it’s transmitted.â€
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Why yes, I’d love to beat this dead horse some more, ha ha. It is noted that all our esteemed and self congratulatory moralizing experts in the media no longer provide model estimates or predictions. This has become an embarrassment and the media is almost like Pravda in its inability to even question or criticize “state” science.
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You have Biden saying he will do what “science” says. I’m curious what exact science he is referring to. Is it the one where there is large amounts of uncertainty on transmission after 23M have been validated to have the disease? Is it the science with questionable benefits on state directed citizen behavior? The one with a checkered history of modeling of virus outbreaks? Is it a science that leaves out economics and only asks those who are living in a well paid academia self serving bubble? The science that believes it is immoral to perform challenge trials on a vaccine to speed up progress? etc. etc.
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Not impressed at all.
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What science needs now is a great big heaping helping spoonful of humility. Stop reading your press clippings. The institution of science has become fat, dumb, and lazy. Especially academia. I worshiped at the science alter for decades, but the last decade or so has seen the institution get arrogant and political. The media / science interface has become corrupted (mostly from the media side) with too many using the authority of science to further activist agendas. Perhaps this was always there and I didn’t notice it, but it seems worse now.
Thomas Fuller
As usual, journalists don’t disappoint. The writer is an idiot. I do agree with him that the survival rate isn’t 35% based. It’s 25%. But… we;;…
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Really? He the author thinks that number is not important to anyone else? That’s exactly the important rate for “anyone else”. You want to know the fraction of those who would have died who are saved.
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Of course, you can’t increase the survival rate based on everyone infected by 35%. The true survival rate including asymptomatic currently looks to be 99%. It can only be raised to 100%, so using that idiot of a journalists standard of the rate we should “care” about no drug can increase the true survival rate more than (100-99)% = 1%. This is a number no one should care about.
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And even if we use the number of seriously ill people used in the study, the most 30 day survival rate was already 29.6%. A drug that drove that to zero would only have a 29.6% survival rate.
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Trump’s number is not the right– he should use the longest time one. That’s is the sort of stupid thing Trump does. But Trump’s number still way better than the number that author picked. The author is a blithering idiot.
The old post “A call to honesty in pandemic modeling” is prescient at this point.
https://medium.com/@wpegden/a-call-to-honesty-in-pandemic-modeling-5c156686a64b
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This exposed a NYT model that hid future outbreaks after social distancing was relaxed. “Flatten the curve” has now been replaced by “eliminate the disease”. This isn’t a bad goal, it’s just not viable once the outbreak has reached epidemic proportions. It isn’t unreasonable at this point to assume that everyone is going to hit approx. 20% outbreak levels before the virus diminishes on its own.
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One wonders if everyone should just get it over with. Sitting in FL there is a bit of relief that we may have gotten it over with and have less to worry about going forward, same for AZ I suspect. There is still great uncertainty, with long term small outbreaks still almost a certainty under any circumstance.
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My official (likely wrong) guess at the moment is that a year from now we will all be wearing masks and social distancing by post traumatic reflex with the virus at 1% of it’s current level and it killing as many people as the flu. We will just learn to live with it.
Yes that article is pretty poor from avowed members of Team Science. Improving deaths rates by 25% is significant for any disease. It’s amazing how easily triggered some of the media are.
The normal history is that numbers like that get smaller as larger tests are done to a gold standard, we shall see.
Tom Scharf,
Yes. “Eliminate the disease” is not going to succeed unless we get a very effective vaccine with few side effects. Even then it will be difficult because dealing with the anit-vaxers will be very challenging. Given our political system, it will take a decade to sort out whether we can force enough of the unwilling adults to be vaccinated. (And yes… it will take that long even if there are precedents saying we can. I don’t know if we do have such precedents.)
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The proper goal is to getting things to the point where even fairly risk averse people can go about their daily lives without too much risk. Seeing low new case rates or a vaccine will give that option. Both together even better.
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BTW: wrt to antivaxxers, my feeling is let the anti-vaxers take risks if they prefer that. If that means we don’t wipe out Covid the way we wiped out smallpox, so be it. We might see periodic bursts of Covid in neighborhoods with lots of anti-vaxers. So be it.
lucia (Comment #189479): “Even then it will be difficult because dealing with the anit-vaxers will be very challenging.”
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Anti-vaxers are something like 1-2% of the population. They are irrelevant to any eventual success of a Wuhan vaccine.
MikeM
Supposedly, surveys find roughly 25% of americans will refuse to take the Covid vaccine. I’ve assumed those are anti-vaxers. Maybe they are something else.
Lucia,
“it will take a decade to sort out whether we can force enough of the unwilling adults to be vaccinated.”
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As far as I know, nobody in the USA has ever been forced to receive a vaccination. People do have to accept certain vaccinations to do certain things (like enroll in grade school, attend summer camp, etc) but I really don’t think the SC is ever going to go along with forcing people to accept a vaccination against their will. That is way beyond the pale under US law, and more typical of laws in places China and Cuba.
This article claims 50% won’t take the vacinne and 25% wavering,
https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/06/just-50-americans-plan-get-covid-19-vaccine-here-s-how-win-over-rest
Likely these aren’t all anti-vaxers. They might just be cautious about the fast production schedule Whatever the reason for refusing: Once the vaccine is widely available, the argument for shutting down the economy to protect “others” goes down the tube. Those who don’t take the vaccine have cast their lot into thinking the risk of not being vaccinated is lower. That’s fine. Their choice. I don’t think I should be quarantined to give them further protection.
The polls I saw showed that approx. 35% of the US don’t want to take a vaccine, even if it is free.
https://news.gallup.com/poll/317018/one-three-americans-not-covid-vaccine.aspx
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This is crazy IMO. There is something very wrong here and the question is when and why did this happen. A failure of trust in institutions no doubt plays a big role. 53% of red Americans are stoopid will be the media take no doubt, all while ignoring 41% of independents and 41% of non-white saying they won’t take it.
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They should start public messaging on this NOW. I’m not sure if private companies can require a vaccine or antibody test to be employed but that might be one route to increase compliance. This is going to be a hard problem, and it needs to be treated seriously.
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As a reference 40% of Germans are saying they won’t take a vaccine in July.
https://www.dw.com/en/coronavirus-vaccine-germany/a-54146673
Tom Scharf,
“Is it the science with questionable benefits on state directed citizen behavior? The one with a checkered history of modeling of virus outbreaks? Is it a science that leaves out economics and only asks those who are living in a well paid academia self serving bubble? The science that believes it is immoral to perform challenge trials on a vaccine to speed up progress? etc. etc.”
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Rhetorical questions all. OMB politics has nothing to do with science and everything to do with the left gaining power to control the lives of you and everyone else who does not hold political power. The mind numbingly stupid jornos who spew rubbish constantly are just the propaganda wing of the leftist cabal. And just in case you forget: everything in the world, including all math and scientific knowledge, is just a construct designed specifically to preserve white privilege over people of color.
They’re just afraid of zombie Hitler is all…
https://babylonbee.com/news/partial-vaccine-success-increased-immune-response-but-resurrected-hitler-as-a-zombie
I really do not give a hoot if some people don’t want to receive an effective vaccine….. so long as it is available to those who do want it, some people refusing to be vaccinated will only hurt the foolish. There isn’t even an argument to force minors to receive a vaccination over the objections of their parents….. those minors don’t suffer severe covid-19 illness in 99.9% of infections…. and they can decide what to do for themselves when they reach 18.
Tom,
There’s no point in messaging now. The vaccine isn’t around yet.
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My prediction: Eventually, the private sector will join the government almost everyone will get vaccinated. Meat packers, everyone with congregate living facilities and so on will require proof of vaccination to for employment. (Some may fake their papers. but whatever.) The NBA, NFL, Baseball and so on will all promote vaccination to their fans who come to games. But it’s too early for a big push because the vaccine isn’t here. You need someone who is persuade to go out and get a vaccine before they change their mind. Can’t do that yet!
The vaccine will likely only be partially effective. If the vaccine doesn’t drive the virus in the entire community to near zero then just because you took it does not necessarily mean it will protect you.
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Smallpox was 95% effective. Most routine childhood vaccines are effective for 85% to 95% of recipients. Measles was >99%. The first vaccine for covid will be ???. So vaccination rates still matter.
I probably answered my own question, distrust of science authority being why vaccination is unpopular. I think it will take a while to convince people on vaccination, and the messenger is going to matter. So not Trump, not Biden, not a condescending media complex. This leaves, ummm, not sure. Tiger Woods?
Tom,
Yes. It might be partially effective. If the vaccine is only 95% effective, that still puts the odds in my favor if I take it. Yes… herd immunity would help even more. Also, even when the smallpox vaccine didn’t prevent smallpox, it made the disease milder.
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But honestly, this disease isn’t smallpox or plague. It will just be yet another risk in life– but a risk that I can make the chance of getting it at all much smaller by getting a vaccinated. And if I do get it, my case will likely be milder. Let’s face it, a mild case of Covid doesn’t seem all that bad. There are plenty of entirely asymptomatic cases!
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Of course living someplace with herd immunity will help even more. But.. oh. well. I’ll fee pretty safe if I get a vaccine.
The article about Germany does not give the question asked. The other two are basically asking if people want to be first in line, not whether they might want the vaccine eventually. They do not indicate anti-vax sentiment, they indicate a reasonable degree of caution.
———
From what I can find, the direct effect of the Wuhan virus is relatively mild disease, ranging from no symptoms to a bad cold. Call this W-cold. The ARDS (acute respiratory distress syndrome) phase of the disease is an over reaction of the adaptive immune system, leading to such things as a cytokine storm, viral pneumonia, blood vessel inflammation, blood clots, heart damage, lung damage, and death. I very much do not want W-ARDS.
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W-ARDS is not a direct effect of the virus. It is an indirect effect, triggered by the virus.
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The effectiveness of the vaccine is going to be evaluated in terms of preventing W-cold, with the assumption being that will also prevent W-ARDS. A reasonable assumption, but an evidence free assumption.
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The purpose of the vaccine is to prep the adaptive immune system so that it reacts to the virus faster and stronger than it otherwise would. W-ARDS is an over reaction of the adaptive immune system to the virus. It is not obvious to me that the vaccine will prevent that. It might prevent ARDS, it might make ARDS more likely, or it might be somewhere in between. Prevent may be likely, but I am not going to bet my life on it.
Lucia,
A demonstrably effective vaccine would be nice, but I still think it will be mostly closing the barn door after the horse is long gone. Continuing the farm metaphor… the herd in the pasture will already be mostly immune when the vaccine becomes widely available. Look at the new case rate in evil places where there have been lots of confirmed cases (like Florida, Texas, and the most evil Sweden), cases have dropped or are dropping rapidly. Same with deaths. Unfortunately for you, public policies in Illinois are going to delay reaching herd immunity for some time.
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WRT the safety of vaccines: the general public (AKA, most of us) are at the back of the line for receiving vaccination when a vaccine becomes available. By the time we can get a vaccination, there will be a substantial safety (and efficacy) history from all the people of higher priority than the general public. Safety of the vaccine will by then be a non-issue, which should re-assure all those in doubt of safety. But still, I think the vaccine(s) will be a minor issue, because by then there just won’t be many cases in most places.
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BTW, I agree that even if a vaccine is less than 100% effective, it will make severe illness very much less likely. Nobody cares much about a cold…. well, compared to death.
WSJ online:
It’s pretty solid. They had serum samples from the previous infection so the virus was sequenced and the reinfection was a different strain from the first infection. Of course with n=1 we have no statistics. There’s also quite a few column inches on T-cells vs antibodies, but I’m not going to quote that for obvious reasons.
DeWitt,
“had an asymptomatic recurrence months later”
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I think that bold part is important.
Yeah. I’d be happy with an asymptomatic infection.
Lucia,
One too many spaces in #189497.
edited…
I finally know someone with covid-19. My production manager’s daughter (6 years old, and quite a pistol) went to first grade in Louisiana and promptly caught covid-19. She had a fever of 100.5F, so her parents gave her Tylenol. Fever went away. Three days later, she is perfectly OK, but has to wait 14 days to return to school. Not sure yet about her parents and older sister (9 YO). So far only her dad has a “head cold”, but with no test results for covid available for them until later this week. They are all young, and will for sure be OK.
lucia and SteveF,
” I’d be happy with an asymptomatic infection.”
Sure. I say again, however: no statistics. We only know for sure that we have now had a documented case of reinfection. So it’s possible. There will be more. At some point we will be able to say whether reinfections are less severe than the initial infection. We can’t say that yet.
DeWitt,
“At some point we will be able to say whether reinfections are less severe than the initial infection. We can’t say that yet.”
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OK, at least in theory. But as a practical matter, it is almost certain that any “re-infection” with a closely related virus will be less severe than a naive infection.
SteveF (Comment #189502): “But as a practical matter, it is almost certain that any “re-infection†with a closely related virus will be less severe than a naive infection.”
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There is a well established counter example. Dengue fever is usually a mild illness the first time you get it. You are then immune for life with respect to that strain. But if you catch a different strain, you are in big trouble.
MikeM,
Dengue virus is an exception, but of course not at all related to the corona viruses. Are you willing to bet that covid-19 will behave like dengue?
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When my sister in law spent a year in Colombia (teaching English) she had a bout of dengue…. and was warned of the danger of re-infection. She returned to the States.
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Lesson: avoid mosquitoes.
SteveF (Comment #189504): “Are you willing to bet that covid-19 will behave like dengue?”
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Nope. And I am not willing to bet that it won’t.
Now it is completely clear, that damned OMB is always 100% wrong, and experts who condemn him are always 100% right: https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.06.26.20056507v1.full.pdf
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If you tried, you couldn’t make this stuff up; except maybe at the Babylon Bee.
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Maybe MSM reporters could invest in large doses of fish tank cleaner… no, that would be too much to hope for.
2009, a genetically re-engineered measles virus, originally created as a cure for cancer, turns lethal. I am legend, Will Smith.
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Amazed at the number of fervent vaxxers who decide they will not have an untested vaccine because of side effects.
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Double standards or an abundance of caution?
At nearly 70 I would gladly trial the Russian vaccine to lessen the risk.
Lucky it is a democracy and one is free to choose, well maybe not in Australia.
angech,
The Russian vaccine is an exception for me. I do want to see phase III trials!
The problem is that the planned phase 3 trials will be insufficient. They will not test if the vaccine continues to be safe and effective after the initial surge of antibodies wears off.
MikeM,
Not conferring long term immunity is not a big problem. It’s
something we can deal with through a protocol of monitoring and boosters.
In the first place, it’s true that researchers will not have established that long term immunity is conferred. Papers reporting the existence of long term immunity from small pox vaccines appeared in 2008 long after people were no longer being vaccinated. But the long term immunity did exist even if that fact had not yet been proven.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2610468/
So in some sense, whether the vaccine does or does not confer long term immunity, the risk averse will have to operate on the assumption it does not. If we know it doesn’t, then we’ll get boosters. (I got boosters for polio. My whole 2nd grade class lined up and got these from the school nurse. Not a big deal.)
I’ll be happy to get the vaccine, have short term immunity and live a more normal life while the medical community continues to monitor whether long term immunity was conferred. If they advise a booster, I’ll get a booster. If another vaccine is developed that does confer long term immunity, I’ll be happy to get the new better vaccine.
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If it turns out the booster was unnecessary, not a big deal (provided it was safe.)
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The real potential problem is doctors will not have been able to detect any side effects that only manifest far in the future. OTOH: they also won’t be able to detect any negative impacts infections with Covid that appear only far off in the future. For all we know there could be long term negative impact of asymptomatic infections of Covid. Future negative impacts are not unprecedented (e.g. shingles). But.. well… yeah.
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We don’t know the far-off negative impacts of a vaccine or an infection because those can only be learned with time.
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I’m going to get the vaccine after it’s through phase III trials.
Mike M,
I read the most recent study in Science about second-case Dengue illness. Turns out the risk profile is complicated. Any reasonably high level of antibody is actually protective (reduces risk by a factor of 2 to 10) against both recurring illness and recurring severe illness (including potentially shock and death). A very low level of antibody or none at all (a naive victim) have the same risk profile for both illness and severe illness. There is an intermediate level of antibody which actually increases the risk of severe illness relative to no antibody at all by a factor of about 2.
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So in the case of Dengue, if you have the illness once, it is important to get booster vaccinations to keep antibody level high, but if you have never had the illness, it may be better to never get vaccinated….. unless you are willing/able to test antibody level and maintain a high level with booster vaccinations.
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Most of all, it is important to avoid mosquitoes.
Covid-19 Surge in Illinois Is Inflamed by Rural Counties
Shift follows a broader trend in the Midwest since July, in which cases in rural areas have outpaced those in urban ones in several states
https://www.wsj.com/articles/covid-19-surge-in-illinois-is-inflamed-by-rural-counties-11598362161
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“In the past two weeks, eight of the 10 counties in Illinois with the fastest rates of new Covid-19 cases per capita were in smaller nonmetropolitan counties across the state, compared with two metro counties, according to an analysis of data tracked by Johns Hopkins University.
This is a reversal from an earlier trend, which saw Cook County, which includes Chicago, leading the state in coronavirus infections. Since March, Cook County has accounted for about 55% of the state’s Covid-19 cases. But its contribution has slowed as cases have spread to other corners of the state. In the week prior to Aug. 17, Cook County accounted for 38% of the state’s new cases.
In rural Effingham County, with a population of 34,000, cases recently surged from a few dozen in mid-July to 427 as of Sunday. That increase gave the county the highest rate of cases by population for the week ended Aug. 17, with more than 400 cases per 100,000 residents. By contrast, Cook County had a rate of about 100 cases per 100,000 residents for that week.”
Tom,
Yep.Cases have been rising since a couple weeks after the first riots. 9. (Not necessarily related, I just put a line on my default graphs at that point.) Deaths kept dropping for a while, but then sort of flatlined. Looked at weekly, they are sort of up/down for 8 weeks.
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The boonies are getting hit but they aren’t dying the way they died in Chicago. It’s probably a mix of demographics and care. I haven’t looked at the demographics.
By the way, the two “metro” counties are probably Kane and Kankakee. They’ve been bad on and off for a long time. Kane is next to DuPage.
I haven’t seen state breakdowns, but overall hospitalization are down by a little over a third from the peak, and are now just 40% over the May low.
MikeN,
What is your source for hospitalizations? Actual data, or a model? I am pretty sure that any “data” from May is actually a model.
MikeN,
Despite the best efforts of many Democrat governors to have it go on indefinitely, this sorry chapter in US history is drawing to a close. They really can’t stop development of herd immunity, much as they would like to. Even here in super-PC Massachusetts, I am seeing people start to roll their eyes at the mask charade. At some point soon, enough people will conclude “this is stupid†that the rules will start to be ignored, and then (finally) rescinded.
I think it’s more corona fatigue than changes in ideology. It’s really hard to maintain social distance discipline over months and months. If you don’t have a bunch of people getting ill around you then you start to gradually slip back to the old ways. It’s like trying to maintain a diet or exercise regime, it just doesn’t last. Public health should understand that and account for it.
It’s also the fact that we now know this is not The Black Death. Also, to some extent many people have a bigger problem going on right now: Rioting and destruction. That bigger problem is the ever growing “largely peaceful demonstrations”. Kenosha, Wisconsin looks like it’s been firebombed. The “protestors” brought bricks, gasoline and so on.
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I bet Kenosha residents are barely thinking about the dangers of Covid relative to the dangers of having bricks and gasoline thrown at them.
Bad idea: “I think I’ll try chasing down that guy with a rifle, that’s sure to end well”
https://www.foxnews.com/us/jacob-blake-kenosha-wisconsin-protest-shooting-militia
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It’s a bit unclear what happened before this. Reports were that people were protecting a car lot after a couple lots were burned the previous couple nights.
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The police stop doing their job, “protesters” are given free reign, a bunch of untrained militia types take matters into their own hands, and then outcomes are predictable.
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Alternately I find it unacceptable that the Kenosha police department has remained silent on what happened in the original shooting.
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I’m on the fence between let protesters / rioters blow off steam and police busting heads to end this riot and looting madness. It seems self evident at this point that the lack of police response is an invitation to more bad behavior. If you are going to have a curfew then you should enforce it.
Tom,
Yep. If police can’t or wont protect businesses or people against “protestors” who break windows and loot (and in the case of a gas station might, for all we know, get gas to thrown on things), then vigilantee groups are going to take matters into their own hands. Basically: the wild west was wild because police were often absent or far away.
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This doesn’t make vigilantees “right”. But this is totally predictable.
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Lots of people in Wisconsin hunt. The state has been voting “blue” a lot, but lots of people have guns. They are going to be used.
Tom
BTW: I also haven’t heard the Kenosha police say anything about the shooting.
WSJ: Two Dead in Kenosha Shooting, Police Say
https://www.wsj.com/articles/two-dead-in-kenosha-shooting-police-say-11598436656
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Tuesday night saw armed citizens patrolling the streets, who said they were there to protect local businesses from looting and destruction. It wasn’t clear that the shooting was connected to those people.
Wearing an AK-47 and a tactical vest, Josh Binninger, 41, said Tuesday night that he had organized a group of some 200 people via Facebook to come out and protect the streets of Kenosha.
“We’re here because we just watched our hometown be terrorized and burnt down the last two days,†Mr. Binninger said. “This is not going to be a Portland.â€
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A classic no win situation here. This is the backlash to freedom to riot for “correct” causes. People will rightfully say they don’t want hundreds of vigilantes with AK-47’s roaming the streets either. If the police don’t step up and do their jobs then chaos is going to happen. Tough to be the police in 2020.
The governor of Wisconsin has called out the National Guard. Where were they? Real question.
Mike M,
“Where were they? Real question.”
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The governor is a Democrat; ‘nough said.
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He called them out too late and in small numbers (125). Now he has increased that to 250…. still not nearly enough. How about actually outnumbering the looters and arsonists; say a couple of thousand.
Best for a mob to not chase after someone with a rifle, ’cause some people in the mob will end up shot.
Lucia,
“Kenosha, Wisconsin looks like it’s been firebombed.”
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There is a chance the rioting will spread to Racine and Milwaukee. Count on the governor doing nothing in those places either until much damage has been done.
My hunch is that the rioters are inadvertently doing more to re-elect Trump than anyone else right now. I’ve read that this situation is similar to what happened in Nixon’s time.
Whatever the reason, the polls appear to be tightening. 538’s forecast has gone from ‘Biden is favored to win the election’ with Trump’s odds of roughly 1 in 4 to ‘Biden is slightly favored to win the election’ with Trumps odds of roughly 1 in 3.
I don’t know what’s going to happen. I hope Trump pulls a victory, obviously. At least we don’t have all that much longer to wait to find out.
[Edit: Rasmussen finds a virtual tie between the two among likely voters.]
This appears to be the originating event.
https://twitter.com/AnonOpsSE/status/1298627537980010504?_ga=2.68823121.1967459702.1598462215-1021722102.1598462215
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Ummm … A person I can only refer to as “Mr. Genius” … chases a guy with a rifle and looks to throw a Molatav cocktail at him, continues to chase after him, the guy with the rifle apparently gets cornered in the parking lot with Mr. Genius and does what people would be expected to do under that circumstance. Mr. Genius is no longer with us.
marc bofill,
“My hunch is that the rioters are inadvertently doing more to re-elect Trump than anyone else right now. I’ve read that this situation is similar to what happened in Nixon’s time.”
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I agree, every time “peaceful protesters”, enthusiastically supported by progressive politicians…. especially Biden and Harris….. decide to riot, loot, and fire-bomb, they make it ever more likely voters will return Trump to office. Of equal import is what impact the “peaceful protesters” will have on House and Senate races.
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There are similarities to the 1968 election, but my perception from 1968 was that in spite of remarkably “neutral” coverage of rioting by the MSM, nearly all local officials condemned the violence and acted to counter it. Not so today, with many local officials acting as allies of the rioters, looters, and arsonists, and refusing to act against them in any meaningful way.
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There has always been (since before 1968!) a criminal underclass in many American cities, quite willing to engage in most any kind of criminal behavior if they believed they could get away with it. What has changed is the politicians who run those cities.
Thanks Steve. I didn’t know that and hadn’t uncovered it reading. All the better for Trump’s chances, AFAICT.
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[Edit: on a different note, about 538’s forecast. I actually like 538 despite the liberal slant, but. In their forecast graphic they show 69 blue bubbles that can be hovered over with a mouse cursor to display a scenario where Biden wins. I count no less than three (3) bubbles where Alabama goes to Biden. Three of sixty nine, which seems to imply a better than 4% chance that Biden wins Alabama. I hate to pick nits, but I really doubt that Biden has a 4% chance in Alabama. Makes me wonder about their simulation methods.]
The second victim apparently attacked the same originating guy with the rifle later on down the road using a … skateboard. Took an assault round in the chest for the effort and died.
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Everyone who got shot here attacked the guy with a gun.
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People, don’t chase and attack people with rifles. Quite frankly I expect this guy will get arrested, charged with murder, and walk away free. It’s really hard to see this as unjustified.
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I do take issue with the guy showing up to an expected riot with an assault weapon and expecting things to go well. I would not particularly feel sorry for him either if the mob had taken him out.
mark bofill (Comment #189547): “In their forecast graphic they show 69 blue bubbles that can be hovered over with a mouse cursor to display a scenario where Biden wins. I count no less than three (3) bubbles where Alabama goes to Biden. Three of sixty nine, which seems to imply a better than 4% chance that Biden wins Alabama. I hate to pick nits, but I really doubt that Biden has a 4% chance in Alabama. Makes me wonder about their simulation methods.”
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Seems farfetched. But surely it is not 4%, the 3 scenarios where Biden takes Alabama are presumably all very low probability. How many scenarios have Trump winning? I doubt any of those have Biden taking Alabama; if any do, then the simulation is indeed pure junk.
I think a 4% chance that Trump could do something immensity stupid enough to annoy even Alabama as entirely possible, ha ha.
Mike,
Of course I don’t really know if the graphic is intended to be representative of anything; it might just be eye candy. What bothered me about it was that I figured they might be showing some proportional or representative summary of results. I really have no basis for supposing that.
No, there are no red bubbles where Trump does not win Alabama.
Thanks Tom, I guess. :p
I don’t know if Trump could do anything to lose Alabama. Come out in favor of tax payer funded abortion maybe, or convert to Islam.
Tom Scharf,
“The second victim apparently attacked the same originating guy with the rifle later on down the road using a … skateboard.”
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The shooter probably had seen all the videos of other skateboard attacks in the last few months.
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Maybe the victim was suicidal. But more likely just really, really dumb. Lemme see…. “This guy just killed Billy, but for sure he would never shoot me when I knock him to the ground and try to bash his head in with my skateboard.” Terminal stupidity. Or maybe he thinks rifles have only a few rounds of ammunition.
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I look forward to hearing Joe Biden’s public responses.
SteveF,
I hope it doesn’t move south to Waukegan!
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These places aren’t even real cities. oy!
Tom Scharf (Comment #189550): “I think a 4% chance that Trump could do something immensity stupid enough to annoy even Alabama as entirely possible”
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For sure. But the question is whether he could annoy them enough that they vote for the party of Racism, Rioting, and Ruin. That I doubt.
Steve,
Biden will come out against the rioting. Even Don Lemon has realized the situation is trouble for Democrats. It’s past time to condemn the riots and (more importantly) the polling and focus groups are apparently finally telling them that.
mark bofill,
When a true moral authority like Don Lemon gives Biden cover, he could actually try to say something sensible…. if he had any sense. So, no, it will be just mushy tripe about the need for “racial justice”, not a clear “you must stop rioting, looting and arson.” Biden can’t actually condemn the “mostly peaceful protests” because that will de-motivate his most ardent supporters.
Lucia,
“I hope it doesn’t move south to Waukegan!”
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Let’s hope not. But if it does, count on Pritzker to step up and… and do nothing.
Well, you could be right. I think only Fox news reported it, but I read that the progressives are not as solidly behind Biden’s platform as he might have hoped. https://www.foxnews.com/politics/over-1000-democratic-delegates-voted-against-party-platform
We shall see!
Lucia,
Yup. That sums it up nicely.
“BLM Protester: “These people don’t represent our movement!””
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Yes, they absolutely DO represent your evil movement.
mark bofill,
The more rational dems understand that the whole social justice/green new deal/medicare for all/wealth confiscation/70% tax rates will mean Biden won’t get elected. But don’t worry, they will push those things constantly if ol’ Joe gets elected.
Nah, Biden condemned the needless violence.
https://www.cnbc.com/2020/08/26/biden-says-he-talked-to-jacob-blake-family-condemns-violence-in-kenosha.html
mark bofill,
And Biden called for immediate intervention of the National Guard wherever “peaceful protests†turn into riots to protect society from this “unnecessary violenceâ€, or when rioters try to burn down Federal Courthouses, right? Nah, of course not.
Steve,
Only when the polls say so I guess!
MikeM, I’m using this source. It is off on the death count pretty substantially. I think this is because it is missing some one time adjustments, but haven’t checked.
https://covidtracking.com/data/national
During the 1968 Democratic convention in Chicago, the police were present and active. So active, in fact, that the clearing of protesters from Grant Park was referred to as a ‘police riot’ by a federal commission. The protests were against the war in Vietnam, so, IMO, somewhat more consequential than rioting over the death of a drug addict. But it certainly didn’t help Humphrey. 1968 also had the assassination of MLK in April and RFK in June.
Orcs March On Minas Tirith In Mostly Peaceful Protest
https://babylonbee.com/news/orcs-march-on-minas-tirith-in-mostly-peaceful-protest
If the Dems have the power to make the riots stop, they ought to use that power soon, in my view. I don’t think they have that power. Biden can condemn the violence as much as he likes, but I think the riots will remain a factor that increases support for Trump more than Biden.
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For the news:
https://babylonbee.com/news/aftermath-of-riots-30-fires-started-dozens-of-buildings-burned-down-thousands-of-new-trump-voters-created
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For the satire:
https://thehill.com/homenews/media/513902-cnn-ridiculed-for-fiery-but-mostly-peaceful-caption-with-video-of-burning
mark bofill,
I agree they don’t have the power to stop these riots. The general tendency for liberals to criticize those who pointed out that looting, throwing molotov cocktails, bricks and so on was to be condemned is going to cut against democrats.
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People also don’t think Trump has been helpful. That won’t change because he hasn’t been helpful and his ‘leadership’ (aka ‘counter productive tweets’) has not made anything better. (Even when he has some elements of correct, he says things so ridiculoudly badly that it just doesn’t help.)
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But I think on the balance if the rioting continues, it’s going to go the way that pizza shop owner says: more people will vote for Trump even though they disapprove of him. It’s going to be a question of the lesser evil.
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I don’t know if this will say enough votes to Trump. Honestly, I doubt it. But I don’t know. ( I also don’t know how the riots are going to proceed. But the Democrats better hope they stop.)
That’s the thing, isn’t it. It’s shaping up to be a nail biter this year.
Thanks Lucia.
I have been searching for words that best describe the two current candidates for US president. For Joe Biden I came up with apparatchik for the Democrat party. He has appeared throughout his political career to be malleable to the current Democrat thinking on issues and following their lead even when he had to do 180 degree turns on his former positions.. This makes him the ideal candidate for the Democrat party that is intent on radical change (bigger and more intrusive government) but does not apparently want their plans fully revealed before the election is over. If they can sell Biden as a nice, harmless and moderate old man during the campaign and then call on his apparatchik nature after being elected, the Democrat party and MSM will have pulled off a democratic coup d’etat.
For Don Trump I could only come up with willful jerk. His defending, offering or criticizing any serious philosophical thoughts about government are lost in his willfulness in being a jerk.
Discussion of ideas from philosophical or intellectual points of view in political campaigns is always a scarce commodity and in this one it will be non existent.
The irony. Nearly the entirety of the sports world didn’t play yesterday in solidarity with the Milwaukee Bucks not playing to protest the Kenosha shooting. I’m not a fan of sports and politics getting in bed together, but whatever. Then in Minneapolis a murder suspect decides to commit suicide before capture. A social media rumor goes out that it was a police shooting and the mostly peaceful protesters skip the protest and go directly to looting.
https://www.foxnews.com/us/minneapolis-stores-looted-as-mayhem-erupts-following-gunmans-suicide-police
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The scope of damage:
https://bringmethenews.com/minnesota-news/a-list-of-the-buildings-damaged-during-rioting-in-minneapolis
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This is why Fox News has to exist even though it is highly partisan. This was pretty much ignored by all other networks. NPR did address looting though, ha ha:
NPR: One Author’s Argument ‘In Defense Of Looting’
https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2020/08/27/906642178/one-authors-argument-in-defense-of-looting
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In other news mostly peaceful Hurricane Laura protested the human race.
The Democrats don’t need to stop the criminal behavior, they only need a convincing show of force to attempt to stop the criminal behavior. Example was Chicago’s mayor who had a big show of force.
They fear their own mob so much now that they find it hard to condemn * looters * as opposed to * looting *. Identity politics and protected classes get complicated when the protected classes behave badly.
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Trump can’t solve the problem either, he is simply setting up a trap to offer help and anticipate the knee jerk liberal refusal of such help so that they clearly own the problem. It boggles my mind that the political calculation here is to do nothing. It can’t be ignored any more.
Tom
Oddly… this is dangerous for them too.
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One difficulty is that many have pinned themselves to the view that the “peaceful protesting” somehow mysteriously veering off into looting is the natural consequence of frustrations springing from systemic racism. So…. then it would be unjust to thwart that natural consequence of justified frustration and arresting, imprisoning and so on these victims.
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I think they’d honestly love it if Trump overstepped his authority and sent in some sort of federal militia. The riots could be slowed or halted and he’d be the only “bad guy” in their rhetoric.
But for the most part, Trump isn’t doing that. He did a little bit– and then pulled back and so likely won’t in future. So the Democratic governors and mayors are now just sort of stuck. Either (a) they need to make their own show of force, (b) permit these mostly peaceful demonstrations accompanied by incidental throwing of molotov cocktails, bashing in heads with skateboards and so on continue or (c) figure out some creative way around this (so far, none of them have figured that out. ( Lori LIghtfoot did raise bridges– but most cities don’t have that!)
Actual CNN chiron: “Fiery But Mostly Peaceful Protests After Police Shooting†with a reporter standing in front of burning cars in Kenosha.
It gets harder and harder to tell CNN from the Babylon Bee.
When the people who support you politically think looting is justified, you have the wrong supporters. That is the problem the democrats face. They have thrown normal governance to the wind, and are in danger of reaping the whirlwind. I sincerely hope they do.
I don’t think they will lose a single vote by clamping down on riots. “I was going to vote Biden but they arrested looters so I’m voting Trump”. One can say they oppose racism and actively oppose crime simultaneously and nobody is confused at all. Overt failure to protect property is very confusing. The left/media are under the impression that viral videos of looters being manhandled is worse than free form looting. The politicians were basically saying that Minneapolis looting was unjustified because it wasn’t a police shooting (as opposed to justified looting?). That’s confusing to me. It looks like the message is looting will be tolerated when an officer shooting occurs.
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EDIT: At least 83 people arrested in Minneapolis.
The FL lag from case trend to death trend appears to be right around 14-17 days. This is consistent with previous estimates.
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/us/florida-coronavirus-cases.html
Turns out the man shot by the police in Kenosha had a long rap sheet and an existing arrest warrant outstanding for multiple felony counts. He resisted arrest….. including wrestling with officers on the ground, and was attempting to enter his car when he was shot…. even though they had guns drawn and warned him to stop. I am sure the cops will say they feared he had a gun in the car. They will not be charged. The rioting, however will continue.
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Lucia,
I agree that so long as Trump leaves Democrat local and state officials to deal with the riots without Federal help, his odds of reelection will increase, as will the odds of Republicans gaining ground in the House and Senate. The rioting in Democrat controlled Cities and States is the most convincing argument I can imagine for why Democrats should not be in control of the Federal government.
Tom Scharf,
You often link to the NYT. Those who don’t have a NYT subscription can’t follow those links.
Tom,
Not so much, no. But it’s certainly possible that at least some of the more radical progressives might say, “I was going to vote Biden but they arrested activists and protesters. Biden is on the wrong side of history on this. I’m staying home this election, Biden can kiss my grits.”
[Well, except for the grits part. I don’t think any self respecting leftist speaks of grits. I mean, nothing screams ‘I’m a closet white nationalist’ than a southern cultural orientation! / semi-silly]
I don’t pay for that rag, ha ha. The coronavirus coverage was free, and sometimes incognito works, sometimes it doesn’t. The FL dashboard does death cases by date of death and only shows 30 days which makes it pretty useless for trends.
I don’t think this is so far fetched. BLM leaders in Chicago have explicitly supported looting as a form of reparations. It’s not that implausible to think that at least some BLM supporters aren’t going to vote for anybody who supports cracking down on ‘reparations’.
mark bofill,
Lots of them think ANY discrepancy in wealth is immoral and 100% approve of looting and theft from ‘rich leople’.
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Tom Scharf,
The coverage may be free, but the links never work.
Vox has come up with a nice spin on the Kenosha shooter!
When a mob is chasing after you, they aren’t going to hurt you. No reason to think that at all. Odds are they’re only going to apprehend and disarm you.
PuhLeeze.
I think the number of activists staying home to not vote against Trump will be measured in the single digits. They were complacent last time in 2016, and they will not be this time. Ultimately this turnout will probably seal Trump’s loss. Everyone has a reason to vote against Trump. I won’t be crying tears if Trump loses, although it’s not my preference for SC and policy reasons. The entire opposition believes elections are referendums on character and not policy (this time around), and if that was true then I’d vote differently.
Bah! Rasmussen finds that half of them won’t even brave coronavirus to vote in person.
I just tutored a girl with corona virus. She says she feels pretty dang bad. (Exhausted, shortness of breath.)
Her brother had it too– but is further along.
mark bofill,
Yes, the takes on this are pretty hilarious. They were headlining he was a Trump supporters and supported Blue Lives Matter. Therefore … ??? What does being a BLM and Biden supporter make somebody?
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The narrative they are leaving unstated is “crazy militia member indiscriminately opens fire on peaceful protesters”. This doesn’t stand up to the video evidence (he was being chased and attacked and only shot people attacking him). There would be frame by frame analysis if the video supported the preferred narrative. So the media simply doesn’t discuss that evidence at all. They then perform an investigation into the shooter (high school dropout, etc.) and perform standard selective character assassination. This is an isolated demand of rigor as the character and night’s behavior of the fire throwing / skateboard bashing victims is not even looked into. Their aggressive actions are not even stated.
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This detail is rarely reported, obviously due to word count limitations, ha ha:
https://www.wabe.org/alleged-kenosha-shooter-fervently-supported-blue-lives-joined-local-militia/
“Less than an hour earlier, the victim of the shooting had been recorded yelling at the armed men, “Don’t point no mother—— gun at me homie.â€
Then the man said, “Shoot me n—-! Shoot me n—–!â€
.
Well, he eventually shot you. This is an idiot vs idiot showdown and should be reported as such. Lots of homicides are exactly this. All of these people are looking for trouble. This is what the world without police looks like.
Tom,
I think we agree about that.
Remember the manipulated graph on mask vs. no mask? I wasn’t aware of the source at the time, but it turns out the creator, Lee Norman, is the Secretary of the Kansas Department of Health and Environment. The graph was clearly designed to make Laura Kelly’s mask order look good. She’s a Democrat, needless to say.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/kansas-democrats-covid-chart-masks-the-truth-11598483406?mod=opinion_lead_pos10
Btw, the distortion is not limited to using different scales, but also involves the starting date. Here’s a more complete graph:
https://images.wsj.net/im-224764?width=1260&size=custom_1024x512
The data is solid. That wasn’t the complaint. It was the presentation of the data which was disingenuous at best and outright fraudulent at worst.
DeWitt,
Thanks for the complete graph (linked in #189599 above). Not just the presentation (scales), but the start date.
On the other hand, that graph looks a little off. First, there seem to be two entries for July 7 (vertical line segment). Plus it claims to be a rolling 7-day average, but seems a little too choppy for that.
Some on the left like to declare: “To abandon facts is to abandon freedom.” They are absolutely correct. Which explains why they hate facts so much.
DeWitt Payne (Comment #189599): “the distortion is not limited to using different scales, but also involves the starting date. Here’s a more complete graph”
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Thanks for that link. It is truly illuminating.
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Addition: More on the mandate. The Governor issued the mandate but most counties in Kansas countermanded the order. Those counties have 40% of the population and include 6 of the 10 counties with the highest number of cases prior to the order.
https://www.kansas.com/news/politics-government/article244091222.html
Tom
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Correction idiot-asshole vs idiot-asshole. We need a word for that combination. Unfortunately, we either have synonyms for “asshole” (e.g. jerk, dickwad) or idiot (e.g. moron, imbecile). But I don’t think we have a word that specifically indicates they are both.
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We need one.
The NYT helpfully points out that the third guy who was shot and now needs $50K to save his arm went running holding a handgun to the guy with the rifle and got shot. The 17 year old rifle bearing idiot-hole somehow managed to only hit threatening targets in this entire affair. He’s either very lucky or very good with a gun. That might just save him a lot of years in timeout.
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The cop may be much less lucky. 7 shots in the back because the victim was reaching for something isn’t going to end well I suspect. The victim was being non-compliant and assisted in his own demise but the policing standards have changed. The only thing that could have helped him would be if the guy was reaching for a gun.
Tom,
Yeah…. 7 shots in the back are rather hard to justify…. Evidently, the guy was not reaching for a gun.
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I read there was a knife in the car, but I didn’t read whether the guy was reaching for the knife or if the just was in there somewhere.
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I guess we’ll see how much leeway cops get from juries or the way the law is written. This isn’t like Floyd, but it’s definitely bad.
Tom
Maybe the non-idiots decided to not threaten and also stay far away from the long-gun carrying idiot-hole. That’s what I would have done.
So, not all the facts are in. But what exactly makes this dumb kid an i-hole?
I can sketch why he at least doesn’t necessarily look like a royal i-hole to me.
I summarize this, from the New York Times. Maybe they have it all wrong.
1- He was apparently guarding a car dealership.
2- He had apparently offered medical assistance to protesters.
3- He leaves the dealership, and when he tries to return the police tell him he can’t. So he heads off.
4- Six minutes later, a mob is chasing him.
5- He turns at the sound of a gunshot and muzzle flash.
6- One of the mob lunges at him and he shoots the person.
7- He runs
8- He trips
9- As three people rush him, he fires four shots, killing at least one and wounding at least one other.
10- he tries to surrender to police, but they don’t understand what’s going on.
11- he flees.
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So, he’s a dumb kid. I read someplace else that he was some sort of youth police cadet. Showing up to protect a car dealership as part of a vigilante group isn’t a brilliant idea, so I’ll give you the idiot part if you like. I don’t really see the ‘hole’ part.
He was trying to leave. He defended himself from a pursuing mob. Now I wouldn’t have been there in the first place, but. If a mob accosted me on the street and I felt like I couldn’t get away, sure; I’d shoot if I was armed. I don’t think that makes me any sort of hole.
shrug.
mark,
You may be right. That list doesn’t sound like a “-hole”.
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Also, if he was a relative or friend of the car dealership….. I can understand why he would want to defend it in the circumstances. That’s not “-hole” behavior.
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It’s sort of amazing how ubiquitous cameras and video have become!
Tom Scharf (Comment #189606): “The only thing that could have helped him would be if the guy was reaching for a gun.”
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I don’t see why that matters. We can not expect the cop to be psychic. So there is no difference between reaching for a gun and could be reaching for a gun.
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The criminal seems to have been shot 4 times. I don’t know if the cop somehow missed 3 times or if it just sounded like 7 shots because of echos.
Lucia: “Yeah…. 7 shots in the back are rather hard to justify…. Evidently, the guy was not reaching for a gun.
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I read there was a knife in the car, but I didn’t read whether the guy was reaching for the knife or if the just was in there somewhere.”
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To me, I can see no good reason for Jacob Blake, with the police pursuing him, to go to the car unless he wanted to grab a weapon. Would be a different story if he was just running away.
So far, in my mind, I don’t see a huge mistake by the cops. My understanding is that cops are trained to shoot to kill because so many bullets are off target, and I would guess that the officer shot so many times because some of the bullets weren’t slowing Blake down. Also, a decent chance that the cop wasn’t shooting to kill, because at that close range he probably could have hit the head if he had aimed for it. In either event, with so much going on, it is easy to imagine that it was hard to accurately aim the gun.
Of course, my guess could be wrong.
Mom: So son, where you going?
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Son: There is some unrest over in Wisconsin, I’m to grab my assault weapon and roam the streets where riots are happening to protect some random people’s property that I don’t know where I will be vastly out numbered by an irate mob.
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Mom: OK honey, drive safe, wear your mask!
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I fully concur that once he was in that situation and was being chased down he was justified in shooting. I think he will walk, after his parents mortgage the house to pay the legal bills.
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Perhaps he is borderline mental with good cop fantasies and watches CHIP reruns every day. Showing up armed to a volatile riot where you are likely to be viewed as the enemy is not conducive to a long life. He was a hair’s width from being beaten or shot to death by the very same mob. Because this shooting is politically tainted / high profile he will be charged and not likely plea bargained. The chances for this to go sideways was very high. He put himself in that situation and it escalated property crime into death and mayhem. The police should be doing their job instead, but citizen militias are not the answer.
We can’t just have cops shooting their guns at close range 7 times because somebody having a bad day was reaching for “somethingâ€. I’m for giving cops a fairly long leash, but not that long. There were many alternate paths that would have ended non-fatally, the bottom line is he probably should have waited to see what was happening. You don’t need to shoot people on domestic calls who are trying to flee.
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This was a snap decision shooting like most of the bad shootings out there.
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“So there is no difference between reaching for a gun and could be reaching for a gun.â€
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Yes, there is a difference, and you can bet the jury will think there is one. There is also a difference between holding a gun, and pointing it at someone. If someone is holding a gun they are told to drop it, but if they move to use it then deadly force is easily justified. The Atlanta stolen taser incident momentary decision being more justifiable.
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I understand cops are trained to keep shooting once it starts until the threat is over, so multiple shots aren’t surprising.
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We definitely don’t know the whole story here, but my guess is the police silence on this issue is telling. The victim might keep his car keys under the floor mat or something. This was a judgment call by a cop but I think it was not likely the right one. It doesn’t necessarily mean murder, but it might easily mean getting fired.
Tom,
I agree the kid was a fool to put himself in the situation. A car dealership isn’t the hill I’d choose to die on. Maybe if it was my business I’d feel differently. Not sure.
[Edit: I agree that vigilantism isn’t the answer. Police are far better.]
I haven’t made up my mind about the Blake shooting yet.
In both cases we likely don’t know the whole story yet.
In other news, satire sites Babylon Bee & CNN have merged.
https://babylonbee.com/news/the-babylon-bee-purchases-competing-satire-site-cnn-for-12-billion
Tom Scharf (Comment #189614): “We can’t just have cops shooting their guns at close range 7 times because somebody having a bad day was reaching for “somethingâ€.”
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But that is not what happened. It was not “someone having a bad day”. It was a repeat violent criminal violently resisting arrest
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Tom Scharf: “the bottom line is he probably should have waited to see what was happening. … This was a snap decision shooting ”
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The cops did wait until the last possible second when waiting one second longer might well have cop the cop his life. We should hold cops to a high standard, but near suicidal action is too far.
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Tom Scharf: “If someone is holding a gun they are told to drop it, but if they move to use it then deadly force is easily justified.”
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But that is essentially what happened. The criminal had repeatedly ignored orders from the cops, even with guns drawn.
Here’s a bit of irony for you. Of the two people shot by tbe kid, one was a convicted pedophile. The other had been convicted of domestic abuse. What are the odds? The guy shot in the arm? Burglar barred from carrying the pistol he was armed with.
What a surprise. The mostly peaceful rioters turn out to have a high concentration of criminals.
Awesome fireworks. Totally over the top and totally Trump.
This is what cops are wary of.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mssNOhv1UMc
I expect the two cops involved will walk away from the Kenosha shooting with no criminal charges. They may be fired, but if that happens, count on Kenosha facing civil action, which the cops would likely win. I think the smart think would be for Kenosha to fire the cops, and pay them enough to disappear and keep quiet.
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WRT the people shot by the 17 YO: Most people involved in rioting, looting, and arson turn out to be, well, criminals. The stupidity of chasing after someone with an AK-47 is perfectly consistent with the stupidity of their individual criminal histories. The kid will walk on the three shootings; maybe he will be charged with something, but no jury is going to convict him. The prosecutors know that, so any charges filed will be politically motivated.
Maybe they’ll get him on the ‘possession of a dangerous weapon by a person under 18’ charge. I don’t see how he gets around that. But I’m no lawyer.
I’ve been thinking this recently, and I find 538 has written an article about it:
https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/bidens-supporters-appear-way-more-likely-to-vote-by-mail-than-trumps-that-could-make-for-a-weird-election-night/
Because the mail in voting looks like it’s going to be skewed heavily on Biden’s side, it’s more likely than it would otherwise be that Trump may look like he’s won on November 3’d, even if he’s lost.
It’s going to be a mess. I read that the electors of the electoral college don’t vote until December anyway, so technically I don’t think we really know who’s won until the end of December.
But just visualize it. Trump is going to call foul / mail fraud if he loses. The Dems, the press, and the rioters will go berzerk. It’s going to be yugly.
SteveF (Comment #189626): “The prosecutors know that, so any charges filed will be politically motivated.”
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We have our answer: Rittenhouse has been charged with ‘first-degree intentional homicide’, which seems to be Wisconsinese for first degree murder. Purely political.
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mark bofill (Comment #189628): “Maybe they’ll get him on the ‘possession of a dangerous weapon by a person under 18’ charge.”
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That one is a misdemeanor. https://docs.legis.wisconsin.gov/statutes/statutes/948/60
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Addition: “Class A misdemeanors, the most serious misdemeanor crimes in Wisconsin, are punishable by up to 9 months in jail, a fine of up to $10,000, or both jail and a fine.”
https://www.criminaldefenselawyer.com/resources/wisconsin-misdemeanor-crimes-class-and-sentences.htm
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I can’t imagine that he would deserve anything more than a suspended sentence or probation.
Thanks Mike.
mark bofill,
Strictly speaking, we don’t know who won until a joint session of the newly elected Congress certifies the results from the Electoral College during the first week in January with, in this case, Pence presiding. Electoral votes can be challenged and potentially rejected. If no candidate gets at least 270 votes, the House selects a President from the top three candidates with each state getting one vote. If by some chance, nobody gets a majority of states in the House by noon on January 20, I believe the Speaker of the House becomes acting President. Trump would have no role in this. His term ends at noon on January 20 unless he is re-elected.
Thanks DeWitt. I believe you’re correct on all counts there.
Acting President Pelosi. What a thought.
Let’s see. He’s running away and doesn’t shoot until he’s cornered by people he’s never met who are clearly threatening him with physical harm. Sounds like first degree murder to me. /sarc
Btw, here’s the capsule from the daily ten points news section of the WSJ:
DeWitt Payne (Comment #189632): “If by some chance, nobody gets a majority of states in the House by noon on January 20, I believe the Speaker of the House becomes acting President.”
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Not quite. If nobody gets a majority in the electoral college, the Senate picks the vice president from the top *two*. So there should be no reason for a delay on that. Then if the House is still in limbo on Jan. 20, the VP-elect would become acting president. If memory serves.
I’m not sure that I have the narrative correct (and would love to be corrected if appropriate) but I think from what I have heard is that the kid shot one person, was chased as a result by several protesters, fell to the ground and shot two others.
I don’t know why he shot the first person, if indeed he did. I don’t much care. He drove to Kenosha from another state, waltzed around with a semi automatic assault rifle in the middle of a protest and what happened was perfectly predictable.
Mike,
Now I think you’ve got it right. The only path for somebody down the chain to assume Acting President seems to be if the election is delayed. USA Today argues that if the elections were delayed, Pelosi would still not become acting President since she would have to step down as well (she is up for re-election), and Chuck Grassley would become acting President. I’m not clear on whether or not the [House] election[s] would still occur if the Presidential election was delayed as of yet, I need to go read more.
First degree murder was obviously a political charge, if the jury can’t reduce that to 2nd or 3rd then he will walk for sure.
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Here’s a slow-mo of the first shooting. I’m not really sure if that was a Molotov cocktail or not. He definitely threw something at him and the guy is definitely running away.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eWBx5K6dl3g
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Here you can easily see the guy with the handgun. It kind of looks like he forgot to “rack the slide” to allow the first shot to be fired and is trying to do that. Oops, too slow, hero. Also note the “lesser idiot” close by who clearly just puts up his hands, walks away, and disengages. This will also show the shooter was not randomly engaging people.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eLlUVxVLiLU
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In this slow mo, you can see “skateboard hero” trying to take out the gunman by thrusting the edge of the skateboard at his head, near miss. The first guy who tries to kick the gunman barely misses getting shot himself, he thinks better of the engagement and runs away.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fNFWyMh93L4&bpctr=1598632389
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You aren’t going to find 12 people to agree to convict this guy IMO.
Lucia is embedded the youtube videos
Fuller, you can fill in any narrative you want, please do. There’s the video evidence above. He was obviously being chased by the first guy, and the dude threw something at him. Apparently got cornered and killed the guy who was chasing him. Then chaos ensues and people start attacking him who very likely have no idea what just happened up the street beyond the yells of “that guy just shot someoneâ€.
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It’s not “innocent protesters randomly shot by alt-right terrorist†and it’s not “innocent teen forced to shoot irate mob with his assault rifle walking home from choir practiceâ€.
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I read the entire thing started when people started breaking windows at the gas station and were told to stop. No evidence for that though.
Thomas Fuller,
I don’t see much to disagree with in what you said. I’ll defer to Lucia on whether or not the kid ‘waltzed’. A minor detail; I think ‘riot’ is a better term for the destruction that’d been going on in Kenosha than ‘protest’.
Shrug.
Florida was social distancing less and less, until its summer coronavirus explosion
https://www.tampabay.com/news/health/2020/08/28/florida-was-social-distancing-less-and-less-until-its-summer-coronavirus-explosion/
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Cell phone tracking shows activity flat-lined (but did not decrease) when the virus had a big breakout in the summer. This article misses the real question though. If citizen behavior remained constant what caused the big decline in cases over the last month?
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Virus burnout or some other form of behavior change such as masks. I would say if masks were really that effective then the mask data would have been very clear a long time ago.
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I don’t think they know, but I also think they are hesitant to ask the right questions sometimes. There is a lot of hesitation to blame anything but citizen behavior in the MSM.
Thomas
I read he was being chased by a group of people who were yelling. The person chasing him threw something at him (a bag) and missed, meanwhile the kid shot at the person who hurled something at him. That was the first person shot.
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So the chasing happened before the first shot– and the first person shot was already chasing him.
One of the other protestors approached with a gun. The other one was weilding a skateboard.
The events are on various videos shot by a variety of people who sent thme into the NYT.
Well… yeah. It was also perfectly predictable that the person in the crowd chasing a guy with a gun who then hurled something at him got shot.
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It was equally predictable that the guy carrying a gun while approaching the downed kid with a gun got shot. It was also predictable the one weilding a skateboard got shot.
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And tom scharf previously noted: idiot vs. idiot. Lots of this was predictable.
BTW: You can watch waltzing online today here:
https://www.hoadancesport.com/livestream
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They are on a break right now. I’m not sure which events are next. I think it will be the “closed bronze smooth multi-dance” events.
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I’m recording to check out my competition…. But I think it will resume soon. (15 minutes? 30?)
It appears to me that the ‘bag’ thrown was on fire. I wonder exactly what was in the bag. Hot cheetos perhaps, an obvious friendly gesture. Or not…
[Edit: Thanks for the waltzing link Lucia. That’s soothing to watch.]
Thomas Filler,
“ ….what happened was perfectly predictable.“
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Maybe less that perfectly predictable. Had “protesters†not chased after him, I doubt anyone would have been shot. What is perfectly predictable is the progressive take on the episode. As to whether or not that 17 YO had reason to be there, we don’t have enough information; if he was protecting his uncle’s used care business from arsonists, then maybe he did.
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Here’s the thing Thomas: The “protesters†were arsonists, looters, and rioters. The rest of what happened follows naturally. I can make a confident prediction: arsonist, looters and rioters will always be in substantial danger of being shot by someone. If it is not the police, then someone else.
I got to see one of my online friends dancing in one of the multidance finals. Only problem: there were 6 competitors and I have no idea what she looks like, don’t now her entry number…. and so. (I’ll go look up her number. 🙂 )
mark bofill,
Definitely a bag of Cheetos served a la flambé.
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The kid was attacked and defended himself. He will walk. The dead guys will not. When you attack someone carrying an AK-47, that is what usually happens to you. What happened is exactly why someone would carry an AK-47.
mark bofill,
BTW, the sessions so far are “bronze”. That’s the lowest level in competition. Silver then Gold are next. Some time later, it’s the pros.
Rhythm (the american version of latin) is tomorrow… I think.
Thanks Lucia! I wouldn’t have guessed it, the dancers looked pretty smooth to me. I’ll have to watch Silver and/or Gold for a comparison.
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Steve,
Yup. I read that it was an AR-15 though. I blush to admit I can’t tell the difference on sight (I don’t own either weapon).
My online friend WON the multidance!!!! What’s a amazing is she only started dancing this year and this is her first competition. She beat 12 other dancers.
She’s taking like… uhmmmm 8 lessons a week. So that does make a difference. Plus based on her posts, she practices a lot. I don’t…. So obviously great lessons, good pro and practicing makes a difference. Everyone at the dance forum is cheering her on.
She’ll do rhythm tomorrow.
My “local competition” got #1 in the final in her age bracket. (I’ve competed against her around here. My online friend is in a younger more competitive division.)
SteveF,
Yeah…. if the details I read are correct, the kid will not be convicted of murder. They’ll probably get him on something else. (Illegal possesion? Transporting a gun from Il to WI? ) dunno.
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Fine with me if they get him on the other things.
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Also, yeah: Only an idiot would chase a guy carrying a gun and throw something at him. The idiot who did it is now dead. He probably doesn’t deserve to be dead, but it’s pretty predictable that if you chase someone carrying a gun, you’ll get shot.
Video 1: The kid with the gun is running. The guy chasing him tosses something that definitely looks like it’s on fire. Pretty good argument for self defense on that one.
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Video 2: A whole bunch of angry self appointed enforcers of anti-gun laws (aka vigilantes) are running after guy with AK-15. AK-15 guys falls on his butt. While he’s on his butt, a gun weilding vigilante approaches him with gun drawn. AK-15 guy shoots gun wielding vigilante.
Video 3. Self appointed law enforcers continue to enforce anti-gun laws. One decides to hit AK-15 guy in a vulnerable area– (aka head)– with large heavy skateboard. AK-15 guy kills him.
I don’t see a jury convicting AK-15 guy of murder or manslaughter for defending himself of vigilantes trying to enforce anti-gun laws.
“My online friend WON the multidance!!!!”
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Congratz!
The AK-47 is a rifle capable of full automatic fire. It was designed by Mikhail Kalashnikov and produced for the Soviet army and also exported to many of the USSR’s allies. There are a few actual AK-47s registered in the US, from before the passage of the Firearm Owners Protection Act. Accordingly, AK-47s are fairly rare and very expensive.
The common “assault rifle” in the U.S. is the AR-15, a semi-automatic weapon based on the design of the ArmaLite AR-15, which was a select-fire weapon designed for military use.
It is more accurate to call it a style or platform, as there are numerous manufacturers producing weapons and accessories that are interchangeable with those of other manufacturers. Because there are so many different weapons and ranges of accessories one would be hard pressed to ascribe a particular visual appearance to an AR-15 rifle.
It is likely that any reference to an AK-47 in the US by the press or on social media is utter BS.
AK-47?
AK-15?
Guys, this is painful. The weapon used is an AR-15 design.
The AK is a Russian design and AR is an American design, each looking nothing like the other.
I could buy a semiauto AK-47 for between six hundred and a thousand dollars. Look:
https://www.sportsmansoutdoorsuperstore.com/category.cfm/sportsman/ak-47-rifles
https://www.classicfirearms.com/long-guns/ak-47-for-sale/
What I usually see is mostly a more curved, distinctive magazine on the AK-47. Also often a wooden stock, and there’s … something I can’t put my finger on about the barrel that’s sort of distinctive. But these are heuristics; some AK-47’s don’t have wooden stocks, and I imagine some have different style magazines… It’s slipperly.
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[Edit: I agree with you Earle about the AR-15. It’s a modular platform and there are a yuge number of customizations for them]
Earl and Ed,
OK then, AR-15. Still has semi-automatic action and a magazine larger than 6 shots. If you chase after someone with either of these rifles in their hands, you very likely will end up dead. Note to “peaceful protestersâ€: don’t chase after someone holding a long rifle; it’s really dangerous.
I guess it’s the …gas tube?.. that makes the AK-47 barrel area sort of distinctive looking on top.
https://www.quora.com/In-total-how-many-parts-does-an-AK-47-have
I still might have a hard time identifying an AK-47. Maybe less now that I’ve stared at a bunch for awhile.
shrug.
Since we’re discussing it, I’ll add that I’ve read AK-47’s are legendary for being reliable and cheap to make and not all that much more. I read that you can bury it in the dirt, dig it up a year later, pour oil down the barrel and shoot the darn thing successfully. Drag it in the mud, drag it through the sand, whatever; it’s all good. Not as accurate at longer ranges as the AR-15 though.
Earl, Ed.
I totally admit to not knowing guns. Not embarrassed about this.
The AK profile is very distinct. They all have the beluga whale bump and the curved magazine, which is shaped like that to stack the tapered bullets.
Second note to “peaceful protestersâ€: Don’t become involved in assaults, rioting, looting, and arson. If you do, you may well end up dead. Your family and friends will mourn your death, but few others.
Lucia,
“He probably doesn’t deserve to be dead,â€
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On this I must respectfully disagree. I can think of few people who deserve more to be dead than those two who died. Reports are Kenosha had a relatively peaceful night last night. I doubt that is a coincidence.
Deserve? I wouldn’t presume to say. Attacking people is an action that can have terrible and unpredictable consequences. It’s not the game these fools act like it is.
mark bofill,
Maybe a better description than “deserve“ is few who “merit†being shot more than the three who were in fact shot.
Steve,
They made really foolish choices and died for it. They died largely as a direct consequence of insanely reckless behavior. So yes, they were responsible for their decisions and …
They should have been prepared to accept the outcomes.
There were shots fired by someone before Rittenhouse shot the first rioter. Also, it seems that Rittenhouse called 911 before running from the rest of the mob. That from an eyewitness.
A discussion on Wisconsin self defense law.
https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/08/does-kyle-rittenhouse-have-a-self-defense-claim/
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“Quite typically for a U.S. state, Wisconsin allows civilian use of deadly force when one “reasonably believes that such force is necessary to prevent imminent death or great bodily harm.†One major issue, then, will be whether Rittenhouse reasonably thought that the folks engaging with him meant to inflict serious injury, not just disarm him.”
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Not at all obvious what would have happened had they got his gun away. “Handgun hero” is open/shut self defense I think. “Skateboard hero” is less obvious but I doubt he even had any idea what was happening and just fired. The first death is unknown but the fact the guy threw something at him and was chasing isn’t helpful to his cause. It’s not clear the shooter even saw the guy throw the item.
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I think it might be reasonable to quite a few jurors that the mob attack was a threat of great bodily harm. The first death is the least quantifiable.
https://www.breitbart.com/crime/2020/08/28/prosecutors-unveil-charges-against-kyle-rittenhouse-faces-life-in-prison/
Charge sheet also states he was being attacked when he fired. Seems like the charging attorney knows it is self defense but politically has to charge him.
Shots fired by others, he runs away, cornered by others trying to take his weapon, assaulted with deadly weapons including one bringing a pistol online with his head.
Yep, best case for premeditated murder 1 I have ever seen.
> but politically has to charge him.
No, this DA previously charged murder against someone who was abducted and being raped. Held on million dollar bail. I think this case is ongoing.
It occurs to me that the survivor who was shot in the arm- is he to face no charges for his part in all this? He was part of a mob who chased and attacked someone and this resulted in two deaths. I read that apparently his only regret is that he didn’t kill Kyle with his pistol. It sounds like a clear cut assault to me.
[https://nationalfile.com/kyle-rittenhouse-victims-only-regret-was-not-killing-the-kid-emptying-entire-mag-into-him/]
Gage Grosskreutz was apparently a felon. Illegal for him to be carrying a firearm I thought. A felon carrying a firearm committing an assault, during the commission of this assault two people were killed. And he faces no charges.
Bizarre.
mark bofill
Well… that statement is going to be brought up in Kyle’s defense as evidence the gun toting guy did intend bodily harm.
I won’t bore y’all by ranting on this further than this last remark. Gage and Kyle both had GoFundMe pages setup. Kyle’s was apparently taken down by GoFundMe. A Change Petition was started to have charges brought against Gage. It has been taken down.
This whole thing stinks to high heaven.
https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2020/aug/27/kyle-rittenhouse-gofundme-campaigns-removed/
Kyle Rittenhouse will attract donors without the go-fund-me page. I’m not giving, but I know there will be people eager to support his defense.
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I wouldn’t be surprised if there end up being some gun possession charges filed. Gun advocates will flock to defending those with appeals as high up the court chain as they can get.
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However, the page vanishing means there won’t be media accounts reporting how much money has been donated to support Rittenhouse.
Ok, there is a weapons charge
He’s guilty on that. Totally.
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From https://journaltimes.com/news/local/read-the-criminal-charges-filed-against-kyle-rittenhouse/article_58490a6a-f25d-51fc-b2d1-a7d58ac685b1.html
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The charging documents evidently say the pursuer throw a bag. Well… heh. If they stick with that, it’s going to make for some interesting video analysis that apply the high school physics topic “projectile motion” along with fluid mechanics of “drag”.
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Basically, if it’s a bag the forward speed of the throw object will slow noticeably as it travels. I mean… try to throw a feather forward.
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If it’s something heavy the forward speed will be close to constant. (There is still some drag, but really not much.)
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Using the “method of the eyeball”, that doesn’t look like a bag.
Another example of what cops worry about when someone they are arresting reaches into a car:
https://www.foxnews.com/us/harrowing-video-shows-roadside-gun-battle-between-pennsylvania-police-man-pulled-over-for-traffic-stop
do a search for “video showing cops getting shot during traffic stop” and see what pops up. Traffic stops are tough since the cops have no expectations of the driver. In the Kenosha case they already knew the guy had reasons to be arrested.
I wouldn’t want a cops job. And its even worse these days since its damned if you do and damned if you don’t for the cops.
Rule of Law doesn’t happen without enforcement of those laws. If the people we hire and train to do that enforcement are not allowed to use force against the violent? Rhetorical question, sorry.
New York Times actually did an outstanding bit of journalism tracking down Kyle’s movements using video posted by various people from that night. Worth a read. https://twitter.com/trbrtc/status/1298839097923063809
Lucia,
Yes. If it was a bag, it doesn’t appear to have been an empty bag. I’ve watched the video several times and I still think the object was on fire. It appears to ‘flare’ in the video early in its trajectory, and the shading of the object in the video appears to me to be too bright to be reflection of light – I think we’re seeing fuel burning there. The video quality isn’t excellent, and as always I could be wrong.
In one sense the bag seems superfluous to the issue. If an aggressor chases you without any weapons at all and you are fleeing and you come to believe your life is in danger, I think you’ve met the threshold for legal self defense. Kyle wasn’t ‘standing his ground’. He was trying to get the heck out of there. In the confines of the environment of the gas station, the building and the vehicles, and given the proximity of his pursuer, it might be reasonable to think he felt like he wasn’t going to escape and that he was in imminent danger of being physically attacked. I don’t think there’s any requirement that the attacker have a weapon. I may have this all wrong though, or be overlooking something important.
The bag needn’t have been a plausible weapon, but if it was I think that only helps Kyle’s case.
AIUI, the flare effect is a trick of the light and camera. Bricks are placed in bags to allow more forceful throws and swings.
I sympathize with this kid to an extent. However, I do hope they find him guilty on the misdemeanor weapons charge. He was clearly guilty of that. I still think he was a fool for being there in the first place, and my remarks about insanely reckless behavior pretty much apply to him too. This kid allowed himself to be separated from his group and seemed pretty ill prepared to deal with the resulting situation without resorting to shooting. Somebody wants to be a soldier, join the Army or the Marines, not a militia. Join the National Guard. At least those institutions have some legitimate authority and provide decent training and enforce discipline.
Thanks Dave. Maybe I got that wrong. I appreciate the correction if so.
mark,
My issue with “the bag” claim is not that Rittenhouse’s defense requires it to “not be a only a bag”. I suspect your notion of self-defense is correct. (Like you: I don’t really know.)
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BUT my thought is if the prosecutors bring up the claim that it was “a bag”– perhaps a lunch bag? 5 cent grocery bag? etc. the “bag” is going to be discussed. The questions of: “Doesn’t it look like it’s on fire” is going to come up. And, doesn’t it look like an awfully heavy if it’s an empty bag because it sure as hell didn’t fly like “a bag”.
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The reaction of almost everyone seeing that “bag” is going to be “that’s not ‘just a bag'”. It looks like it’s on fire and it’s heavy.
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This is going to make the case for self defense really strong. Moreover, if all three cases are tried together, this sets up the case for Rittenhouse being in grave danger. It’s not just a question of whether a “reasonable” person could consider himself in danger. He was obviously in danger at that time.
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Yeah… he was an idiot to go to the “largely peaceful protest” in the first place. Those things are dangerous. Carrying a weapon is likely to trigger bad reactions– so even more dangerous. But I don’t think those stupid choice matter to the final situation. I could be wrong, but i don’t think the standard is that you only get to defend yourself if you were a thoughtful person who only ended up in a dangerous situation owing to some totally surprising unforeseen circumstance.
Sure. But one good reason we should have laws not allowing minors to tote guns is they lack judgement. They also lack training. He almost certainly lacked both– and what happened proved that.
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His actions did get him in this situation. So he deserves the gun charge and any punishment that goes with that. But I think most jurors are going think there is a reasonable case for self defense. So he’s not going to be convicted of that.
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Thanks Lucia. I agree with everything you said there.
Earlier we wondered if he had some connection (family or friend) to the car dealership he was protecting. Over on Quora’s War Elephant (Jon Davis) I read in the comments:
I haven’t substantiated any of this.
The Wisconsin self defense link above talks about when you give up your right to self defense by provoking the situation (such as robbing a store) where it will no longer apply. It also talks about when you can then reclaim the right to self defense.
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“(a) A person who engages in unlawful conduct of a type likely to provoke others to attack him or her and thereby does provoke an attack is not entitled to claim the privilege of self-defense against such attack, except when the attack which ensues is of a type causing the person engaging in the unlawful conduct to reasonably believe that he or she is in imminent danger of death or great bodily harm. In such a case, the person engaging in the unlawful conduct is privileged to act in self-defense, but the person is not privileged to resort to the use of force intended or likely to cause death to the person’s assailant unless the person reasonably believes he or she has exhausted every other reasonable means to escape from or otherwise avoid death or great bodily harm at the hands of his or her assailant.
(b) The privilege lost by provocation may be regained if the actor in good faith withdraws from the fight and gives adequate notice thereof to his or her assailant.
(c) A person who provokes an attack, whether by lawful or unlawful conduct, with intent to use such an attack as an excuse to cause death or great bodily harm to his or her assailant is not entitled to claim the privilege of self-defense.â€
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The shooter was running away, apparently got cornered at the gas station and shot the first victim, then ran away again but tripped and was attacked by the other victims. Had any of the victims disengaged then they would not have been shot, which is exactly what happened with “lesser idiot†who put up his hands and was not targeted at the second scene. The shooter then basically attempted to give himself up to police (helpful), was ignored, then left town (not helpful).
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It’s not a clear cut case, I just don’t see 12 people agreeing on it either way.
The bag debate is a bit bizarre. Somebody should have taken a picture of this bag at some point. One account I read said victim #1 grabbed the gun.
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“Video captured by eyewitnesses at the scene shows Rosenbaum, who the complaint says was unarmed, was chasing Rittenhouse through the car lot. Rosenbaum is seen throwing something toward Rittenhouse, which the criminal complaint says was a plastic bag.
A witness told investigators Rittenhouse shot the man when he grabbed for Rittenhouse’s gun.”
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Do members of an angry mob attempting to disarm you make it reasonable to believe great bodily harm is to follow? Not clear, situation specific.
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Update: The bag
https://twitter.com/Lee_DaVinci/status/1299009296475267077/photo/1
Tom,
Beg pardon? Are you suggesting that an angry mob attempting to disarm you does not make it reasonable to believe great bodily harm is to follow; that’s not clear cut?
[Edit: How can one even tell if the intent of an angry mob is to disarm, rather than inflict great bodily harm? Real questions. The two things aren’t mutually exclusive, in fact they align quite nicely with each other.]
[Edit2: Thanks for the link to the ‘molotov’ though]
Legal Definition of great bodily injury
: physical injury suffered by the victim of a violent crime that causes a substantial risk of death, extended loss or impairment of a body part or function, or permanent disfigurement : physical injury that is more serious than that ordinarily suffered in a battery.
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Yes, you can’t tell what they wanted, and there is probably many people with many motivations. Some will just want to neutralize the threat while other maybe more. Somebody apparently shouted “beat him up†while he was running down the road and there were multiple gun shots not fired by the shooter that could be interpreted as intended for him. To this point there haven’t been any huge significant beatings or deaths by these mobs, it has been primarily property crime. There have been lots of intent to injure with rock throwing and so forth directed at police.
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The point is that the outcome of being disarmed here is just not known and can only be speculated on. The outcome of the case will likely hinge on this speculation. Handgun hero might very well have shot him so I think that one is clear cut. In the video you can actually see what appears to be the clip of his handgun being ejected when he gets shot, so he was disarmed (both figuratively and medically).
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Many of these protest heroes are similar in that they see themselves as there to help, provide security, and medical assistance. When put in a unprecedented situation they will do … who knows what. A bunch of untrained hooligans out past curfew proving definitively why police need to exist.
I’ll remind you of that if you ever find yourself being chased by an angry mob.
Did the defendant have reason to believe he was in danger of imminent great bodily harm? Obviously.
Additionally, prior to getting canceled, Rosenberg was filmed aggressively shouting at the kid “shoot me ni**a”. Applying the lefts standards to themselves, it is the duty of all rightminded individuals to remove such violence from society.
Look, I continue to agree vigilantism and militias defending businesses aren’t a very good solution. I’d prefer that the police do the job, I think most people with any sense would agree about that. But we live in a time where ‘Defund the police’ is the slogan, and some support abolishing the police, and when riots are becoming common, and where police are standing down, and politicians are supportive of rioters and adverse to police enforcement, and when prosecutors are bringing charges against people trying to defend themselves and their property against mob violence. In context, there’s a case citizens can make about standing up to put a stop to it. I don’t know that I agree with that case, but it’s not like there’s no reason for it to be happening.
Tom Scharf (Comment #189695): “To this point there haven’t been any huge significant beatings or deaths by these mobs, it has been primarily property crime.”
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Wake up and smell the coffee. There have been a large number of deaths and far more serious injuries. Here are a couple articles from a month ago:
https://www.deseret.com/u-s-world/2020/6/2/21277917/death-toll-george-floyd-protests-riots-officers-protesters
https://dailycaller.com/2020/07/30/24-people-killed-george-floyd-riots-protests/
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Tom Scharf: “The point is that outcome of being disarmed here is just not known and can only be speculated on. The outcome of the case will likely hinge on this speculation.”
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There is no need to speculate on what would have happened. All that is needed is the most serious outcome that reasonably might have happened. I do not see how a reasonable person can disagree with the claim that Rittenhouse was forced into a situation in which he reasonably feared for his life.
It’s my understanding that someone phoned in for a social services mental intervention team but they were too busy throwing rocks at the police and setting fires to respond.
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Instead of having 17 year olds with long rifles roaming the streets deciding who should get shot and who shouldn’t, maybe we should fund and train a force of responsible adults to do it in a more organized and professional manner.
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They are going to throw the book at the shooter because they need to make an example of him. Remember Bernhard Goetz? In the criminal trial, Goetz was acquitted of attempted murder, but he was found guilty of illegal firearms possession. Later, the jury in a civil trial awarded Cabey millions in damages. Goetz then declared bankruptcy.
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This one may follow a similar trajectory. The process will be the punishment.
I suspect that Kyle will come to rue leaving Gage Grosskreutz alive when Gage brings civil suit against him.
Tom Scharf
Bear in mind, “left town” in this context means went to his home to Antioch, IL. It’s probably a 10 minute drive. Kids from Libertyville, IL used to drive to Kenosha, WI to go drinking. The WI drinking age was lower. It was not a long drive. Antioch is between Libertyville and Kenosha. Antioch is literally on the Wisc/Il border.
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It sounds bad that he “left the state”, but it’s not entirely clear what he should have done. Driving to Milwaukee and gotten a hotel room so he wouldn’t leaving the state doesn’t sound quite reasonable.
Tom Scharf (Comment #189695)
Rittenhouse would also have seen himself as there to provide security — to the car dealership. He ended up shooting someone. So a person’s self described motive does not necessarily make him not a danger.
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Tom Scharf (Comment #189700)
Something similar is probably going to happen here.
lucia (Comment #189703): “Something similar is probably going to happen here.”
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That probably depends on how he came to be carrying the gun. If he brought it with him from IL, then yeah, minor in possession of a gun, misdemeanor. But if it was given to him for self defense in a dangerous situation, then he would have a good defense on even that charge.
Again unsubstantiated, but I’ve read claims that he obtained the gun from a friend in state. Kyle’s attorney has released a statement claiming the gun did not cross state lines. Who knows though.
mark bofill,
The gun story is not improbable. If you live on the north edge of Antioch, Wisconsin is literally across the street. On a farm the boundary can be an invisible line across a corn field.
At this point, the minor in possession of a weapon charge is looking to go away if the below poster is correct on the law.
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“ The witness, whose identity McKenna says she confirmed but called “Walt” to avoid doxing, said Rittenhouse was with his brother that night who “was his guardian at the time which made it legal for him to possess a firearm.” ..â€
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http://www.informationliberation.com/?id=61687
Comment on the bag reminds of a question from Mathcounts nationals.
You have 15 marbles placed in bags, with at least one marble in each bag, and a different number of marbles in each bag. What is the maximum number of bags you can use?
Original question used more marbles. One student argued that his answer was correct that was higher than the ‘correct’ answer, and they gave it to him.
In this case, the answer is more than 5.
https://www.naturalnews.com/2020-08-29-best-memes-about-kyle-rittenhouse-american-hero.html
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Some of these are pretty funny and some are very much on point
MikeN,
Presumably, he argued you can split marbles. So
1, 1.5, 2, 2.5…..
If you get to split them, the correct answer should be “infinity”.
MikeN,
If each marble can be in only one bag, then the answer would be 5. But if you take those bags and put them in other bags, I suppose the answer is 8.
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Uh, 9.
Mike M. —
If you’re allowing bags within bags, why not 15? Put one marble in bag 1. Bag 2 contains bag 1 + one more marble. Etc.
Actually, 16. Have an empty bag (bag 0) which you put into bag 1.
HaroldW,
Even better!
Actually I saw a picture of the suspect carrying a knife before trying to get into the car. The car belonged to someone else and he was trying to steal it apparently. This suspect was a pretty bad guy. He also assaulted the police officers long before they drew their guns and put a neck hold on one of them.
One of the problems here is how dishonest the press is. These facts were only revealed by a policeman’s union lawyer in the last few days but they are verified by video evidence.
It’s difficult for me to speculate on how these cases might come out. It is an insane time and really aweful legal decisions are being made. Ellison’s decision to charge Chauvin with murder seems to me to be unsupportable. The coroners report which has finally been released says that Floyd had a fatal level of fentanyl in his blood. He apparently also stated that in any other circumstance this death would be ascribed to a drug overdose. Excessive use of force perhaps, but murder? It’s insane. We don’t even know if racial bias played any role in the incident. Once again the media are just lying to further their narrative about blacks being killed by police indiscriminately. Bari Weiss’ resignation letter shows what is going on. The Times is stoking a false narrative that is causing people to die and damaging the property of millions. Just like in the 1930’s when the Times covered up Stalin’s atrocities.
David Young (Comment #189719): “The car belonged to someone else and he was trying to steal it apparently.”
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With his kids in it? Or someone else’s kids? Or his kids in the custody of their mother?
Yes, HaroldW got it. The answer is 15(no empty bags).
I saw this on a test site, usually with the caveat of no bags within other bags, but one time it gave the history.
Just found this piece of intersectional propaganda at of all places scientific american which is now on my list of propagandists.
https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/voices/george-floyds-autopsy-and-the-structural-gaslighting-of-america/
The article is tendentious. It also is a lot of rhetoric surrounding one relevant bit of data. That data is that doctors interpretation of the medical report does not align with the prosecutors spin on the medical report. That’s been known a long time.
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It is sad to see scientific american become basically an opinion column running long winded opinions at that. But… oh well….
Lucia,
Yes, the essential demise of Scientific American as a technical publication is very sad, though not very recent…. it ceased being about science and became mostly about PC talking points about 15 years ago, right around the time C&E News (American Chemical Society) became the same kind of content free politically motivated rag.
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In the 1960’s I would go to the library just to read Scientific American, where you could learn about building a model rocket (and Newton’s Laws) or construct your very own NMR instrument from a surplus magnetron magnet and some vacuum tubes, or a Van de Graf generator of a million volts potential. I learned a lot of physics and chemistry before I formally took physics or chemistry from Scientific American. You can’t learn anything from the ignorant journalism majors who run the rag now. Nearly every article has factual errors which betray a shocking lack of technical knowledge by the writer; they really don’t understand what they write about. SA is now just a joke. That is a real loss.
SteveF,
The article David Young linked is definitely not about science.
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I can only assume the magazine must have been losing readership and went in another direction without changing the name of it’s title. Sort of like “Sports Illustrated’s” February edition having nothing to do with sports, though I guess you could say it has something to do with “Illustrated”.
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Mind you, I don’t care what Sports Illustrated does with any issues. I only note that magazine titles don’t always match their content. My guess is the readership likes to imagine they are reading “Science” even if they don’t really like science.
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In contrast, the Sports Illustrated crowds mostly is interested in sports and wouldn’t continue reading if the entire magazine was cover to cover political opinion.
Science had authority based on its fair and neutral evaluation of evidence. Science had earned this authority fairly. It is unsurprising that many people want to misuse this authority to further their own agendas. The question is how and why science let their authority be misused, and if they could have even stopped it if they wanted to.
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Part of the equation is the media who selectively quote “science” to further their own agendas, parts is the liberal takeover of academia, and part is scientific societies losing control of their spokespeople to activists and failing to understand the long term ramifications of loss of trust.
Tom Scharf (Comment #189735): “The question is how and why science let their authority be misused, and if they could have even stopped it if they wanted to.”
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Power corrupts. Many scientists have given in to the temptation to see their work turned into policy and so have made common cause with those who know how to make that happen. “Science” does not exist as an organized entity, so there is no mechanism for “science” to decide how results will be used or not used. The prevailing ethic is to be dispassionate and to stay out of politics. So the bad actors have free reign.
I noted today that many of the countries in Europe, much like most of the larger states in the USA, are now in a “second wave†of covid cases, but so far at least, deaths remain very low per case compared to the initial outbreak that killed so many in most of those countries. Once again, either doctors have miraculously learned how to keep people from dying, or it is mostly younger people now catching the virus.
Tom Scharf,
Scientific America doing something is not the same as “science” doing it. That’s a magazine. They pick a title to sell subscriptions. I suspect the fraction of scientists who subscribe is fairly small. Similarly, the fraction of scientists who watch Nova is small. (Nova tends to be ok. I just doubt many scientists sit down and watch it.)
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Lucia,
The chief editor from 1948 to 1985 at Scientific American was Dennis Flanagan, who focused on having editors work as much as possible with well known scientists (Einstein, Oppenheimer, Pauling, etc), who wrote original articles for the magazine; many of these were “overview†articles that summarized the “state of the fieldâ€; my memory says they were very technical. That started changing after 1985.
Scientific American is the one doing the gaslighting in this case. The magazine hasn’t deserved its title for decades.
SteveF,
I would have stayed a member of the ACS if there had been an option to not pay for and receive C&E News. However, it was always a rag, just not as political when I first joined. I’m also an SCCA (Sports Car Club of America) member and rarely read the club publication Sports Car. It is better than C&E News, though.
DeWitt,
C&E News was always more news/business than science and engineering. Over the past 25 years, it has become even less focused on science and engineering, but as you note, terribly focused on advancing ‘progressive’ priorities on every policy question. It is now irritating to read at all.
I have sent in a small donation for Kyle’s legal fund at
https://www.givesendgo.com/GUCZ
A few bucks spent in a good cause as obvious self defense vs ANTIFA should be supported
Ed,
I have to admit I’m waiting to hear more, but I’m guessing he’s get donation.
Lucia, are you familiar with the selection process for IMSA?
Do they have quotas for minorities, or per school or district?
MikeN,
What’s IMSA?
Oh… Ok. Illinois Math and Science Academy. I have no idea. It’s a state school, but I have no idea what the selection criteria are.
IMSA was also the acronym for the International Motor Sports Association, but I think they changed their name a while back.
Mike N,
From the IMSA site:
Sounds like entrance information for every Ivy League college. Like those competitive colleges, the racial makeup of the school is almost certainly controlled through selective admissions to match the makeup of the state.
SteveF,
I doubt they achieve balance. Most parents don’t want their high school kids in boarding school especially not if the kids can’t at least spend weekends at home. So most end up being from within a 2 hour drive of the school. I can’t be sure of that. But I bet even though the school is very good, they probably don’t get many applications from as far away as Rockford, Il.
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The guidance counselor for IMSA often went to dance classes at the studio where I used to dance. I never really discussed the school with her.
Speaking of college admissions, the weekend WSJ had an essay on that subject. The author was embedded in three college admissions offices to see how the sausage was made.
For a few non-subscribers who are interested, I should be able to convert the article to a pdf and email it.
I was wondering about IMSA because Peter Stuyvesant and other NYC elite schools as well as Thomas Jefferson and Academy of Loudoun in Virginia are also being pushed to adopt racial quotas, and Loudoun recently passed sweeping changes to adopt per school quotas, as well as a change in the admissions process. Before it was 3 tests followed by a written submission at a later stage. Now it is STEM Thinking Test and the essay both at the first stage, with the essay now about striving. The goal is to boost minority and low income enrollment, using the essay to get around lower test scores.
MikeN,
As SteveF pointed out, the language on their admissions page suggests there is potential for hidden quotas. I suspect people aren’t scrutinizing IMSA much because the school itself is quite a distance from the city. On the one hand, parents in the city might want to get their kids into a public school; on the other hand, the may not want the kids to go to boarding school. So the ambitious city parents probably try to get their kids into Lane Tech and other magnet schools that are nearer to their homes.
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Schools around here are good, even though IMSA is excellent, so parents who might like to send their kids to IMSA at least know Naperville, Aurora, Downers Grove, Wheaton and etc. schools are not dysfunctional. So while they might wish their kids to get into IMSA and some might have negative opinions about any quotas, they aren’t going to make complaining about it a major focus of their lives. They’d rather pick their battles and find other ways to benefit their kids.
And in more news of the weird, the Sierra Club is cancelling their founder, John Muir, because of his views on race, even though at least some of those views changed later in his life.
Following the logic of the New York AG’s move to dissolve the NRA because of Wayne LaPierre, the Sierra Club is clearly even more fundamentally corrupt and should properly dissolve itself.
https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/08/john-muir-is-canceled-whos-next
Where I see the admissions “improvements†going is that schools will eventually loosen their requirements so much in the name of diversity and inclusion that they will need to dumb down the classes so that everyone can pass them. I have seen exactly zero articles lately that college is “too hardâ€. The people who fail out of college now are people who make no effort at all to pass.
Things like pass/fail criteria or no criteria at all (see Evergreen) will become commonplace. This will eventually erode the credentialism in place now and having a college degree will be less important. This may be a good thing. Private industry can provide their own condensed and focused training with real measurements of outcomes.
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This is not what striving parents want. They want their kids separated by ability, even though many verbalize the exact opposite for other kids. The recent NYT “Nice White Parents†tracked down all the people who wrote letters to support more integrated schools in an area and not a single one sent their kid there after it was built.
Information on the latest heroic shooter:
Man under investigation in fatal shooting after pro-Trump rally allegedly took loaded gun to earlier Portland protest
https://www.oregonlive.com/crime/2020/08/man-under-investigation-in-fatal-shooting-after-pro-trump-rally-allegedly-took-loaded-gun-to-earlier-portland-protest.html
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A fine citizen. I don’t feel particularly sorry for the pro-Trump victim either. Apparently he was running around macing people. It appears the Oregon governor has had enough, we shall see if it is real or just a show of virtue. The politicians need to allow the police to take action, and give them enough leash to get the job done.
I’m afraid I’ll need to see some evidence that he was “running around macing people”. Stories which present no evidence are invariably false, deliberately designed to push the “he had it coming” narrative.
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My prediction is he wasn’t running anywhere, the people who got maced did.
This looks like a trove of data from the CDC: https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid_weekly/index.htm
This bit is stunning:
Unsurprisingly this shooting was caught on video.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YhHbkMHsjW0
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The victim apparently maced the shooter. Who did what first is hard to tell. It appears they had words and the Trump guy brought mace to a gun fight and lost the exchange.
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There is no end to this entertainment, he was spending quality time with his daughter the night before:
“Michael Forest Reinoehl, the 48-year-old man under investigation in the fatal shooting Saturday night of a right-wing demonstrator in downtown Portland, attended a Black Lives Matter protest the night before outside the mayor’s home.
Reinoehl brought his daughter, who was carrying a baseball bat, according to photos by an Oregonian/OregonLive photographer and others present Friday night at Mayor Ted Wheeler’s condominium building.”
https://www.oregonlive.com/crime/2020/08/man-under-investigation-in-fatal-shooting-of-right-wing-demonstrator-in-portland-was-outside-mayors-condo-night-before-with-daughter.html
Honestly, I don’t know why people go if they think they need to bring a gun or mace to defend themselves. Yes… I know sometimes it makes sense. But most these people don’t need to be there.
lucia (Comment #189802): “Honestly, I don’t know why people go if they think they need to bring a gun or mace to defend themselves. Yes… I know sometimes it makes sense. But most these people don’t need to be there.”
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I suppose that many think they *do* need to be there to stand up to the revolutionaries who are trying to destroy the community and the country. That is certainly true for the people like Rittenhouse who are there to defend property. But possibly also for the counter protesters.
From WSJ James Freeman’s opinion page we have:
“Writer Vicky Osterweil’s book, In Defense of Looting, came out on Tuesday. When she finished it, back in April, she wrote (rather presciently) that “a new energy of resistance is building across the country.†Now, as protests and riots continue to grip cities, she argues that looting is a powerful tool to bring about real, lasting change in society. The rioters who smash windows and take items from stores, she says, are engaging in a powerful tactic that questions the justice of “law and order,†and the distribution of property and wealth in an unequal society.”
Questions for the author of the looting manifesto from the HuffPost’s Claire Fallon include:
“Your book really could not be more directly speaking to the moment, in a lot of ways, especially because there ended up being as there often is during these waves of protests — a lot of discourse about looting and whether it’s effective, whether protest should be nonviolent… How have we seen looting and sort of non-nonviolent tactics playing a role in what’s going on with these Black Lives Matter protests?”
And further
“…You discuss organizing, as opposed to something like rioting, as being a bit of an obsession for a lot of people on the left, as being almost fetishized as the only right way to oppose the state and white supremacy. I would love for you to talk a little bit about why we should, in fighting white supremacy, be more skeptical of organizing and organizations, and what the risks and pitfalls are of relying on organizing as a tactic.”
How about the softball framing with “sort of non-nonviolent tactics”. Probably lifted from the Babylon Bee.
lucia (Comment #189784)
A niece of mine attended IMSA and her family thought it was a much better school (at least for her) than the not dysfunctional area schools. It appears to come from a totally different approach to teaching and administrating. That is the same feedback I get from my son and daughter-in-law who send one of my granddaughters to a private prep school in MN. The public school where her sisters attend is excellent but my son says there is a notable difference in approaches for these schools.
Mike M. (Comment #189795)
I heard the lady doctor who appears frequently on Fox the other morning indicate that many of the non Covid attributed causes of death in this analysis were actually caused/brought-on by Covid. What I hear from other media reports indicated to me that the 94% had pre-existing conditions that after infection from Covid caused the death. There is an important distinction here that I need to research. The doctor above made the analogy to her breast cancer practice where she said the cause of death would be recorded as, for example, respiratory but that that condition was brought on by the cancer.
NPR did a similar fawning interview on this book that I linked to earlier. They are very unconvincing attempts to provide cover for the violence in the protests. It would benefit Trump for this kind of alternate universe logic to continue, so I think we will see this propaganda end pretty quickly. Biden has had to come out twice now and denounce violence because it is hurting their polling numbers.
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I think some disciplined low grade violence (blocking roads, etc) in a protest as a tactic does make sense, actual peaceful protests don’t get media coverage for the most part unless there are a massive number of people. Extending this tactic to looting is pure insanity, and pretending looting is even a tactic at all in these cases (as opposed to simple criminal behavior) is delusional. It boggles my mind that this type of logic even makes it to print.
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I found it hilarious that the NYT ran an article stating that vigilantes and right wing agitators need to be preemptively stopped by the police before they get to a protest, while they said nothing for months about arson and looting needing to be stopped by the police. The protests are only useful as a political tool to these organizations.
Kenneth,
I’m sure it IMSA does have a different approach. They are skimming only bright students from motivated ambitious families. Those families and students actively want to be given a top-knotch education and do not want any “lowest common denominator” teaching. Being able to count on that makes a difference to how students will collectively respond.
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Nevertheless, people in this geographical area aren’t going to panic if their kids don’t get into IMSA. That’s not quite the same in NY city with it’s magnets.
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I’d like it if there were more public magnets of various sorts. But I suspect the local public schools would be not thrilled if the top 1/4 to 1/3rd of students in terms of motivation or inherit intelligence all tried to and often succeeded in decamping to the magnet. (Lets face it, if the idea was to make magnets widespread, it would be a lot of students and parents looking to be “tracked into” something on the upper end of ability spectrum!)
Kenneth
Yeah… this is a big argument right now. I tend to think those wanting to say only a tiny fraction were “really” Covid are vastly min-interpreting. For example: diabetes is a co-morbidity. But these people didn’t die of a sudden drop in blood sugar caused by taking too much insulin or of actual consequences of diabetes. Their diabetes made them more vulnerable to Covid. W/o Covid, they would have survived many years with diabetes.
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I had a diabetic cat. I gave him insulin for years. He did have his life cut shorter by diabetes — he just slowly degraded, stopped being able to walk and so on. If he’d gotten something like a cold or cancer in addition to diabetes, and clearly died of the cold or cancer, he was more vulnerable. Someone would call the diabetes a “co-morbidity”. But really…. it was the colder or cancer that killed him. Not the diabetes!
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The people trying to knock the statistic down to 6% are really stretching a huge amount. Using the standards applied outside COVID, these people mostly died of Covid.
Tom
Well…. obviously, if they were to stop the right-wing agitators, they would need to stop all protestors. Stopping one without the other isn’t remotely legal, and can’t really be justified.
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As for vigilantes: We are seeing some individuals on the right and some left resort to trying to enforce the law on their own. So, there are both right and left wing vigilantes. Some of these deaths seem to be vigilante vs vigilante. But only one side gets called vigilante (which possibly shows that the other side is know to be the instigators of the illegal activity!)
They put most of the magnet schools in undesirable areas in my county. The schools themselves were then segregated between “traditional” education classes and advanced classes. Basically two schools in a school in many places.
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Dual track schools were common in my county and we took advantage of them. NYC has been moving to eliminate all forms of dual tracking. This is your basic “drag down the good kids to make things equal” strategy. They claim that this doesn’t hurt the good kids but you can count me in on the track of I don’t believe that for a nanosecond. Nobody wants to let their kids be guinea pigs in the left’s latest social engineering debacle, not even the left’s parents.
We have freedom fighters vs terrorists as usual, ha ha. Never mind that one side thinks antifa are the freedom fighters. Anybody firing paintball guns at random citizens or shooting commercial grade fireworks/lasers at police need to be arrested with prejudice. Why is this put up with? I suppose this is just a social spasm every generation needs to go through once to realize why police are needed and that a police free utopia and summer of love isn’t on the horizon any time soon.
Covid is killing plenty of people. Excess deaths surplus compared to prior years proves this. The actual death cause debate is semantics. However what we will probably see is that in the next few years we will run an excess death deficit as many of those very sick people were just taken out a few years early.
Kenneth Fritsch (Comment #189817): “I heard the lady doctor who appears frequently on Fox the other morning indicate that many of the non Covid attributed causes of death in this analysis were actually caused/brought-on by Covid. What I hear from other media reports indicated to me that the 94% had pre-existing conditions that after infection from Covid caused the death. There is an important distinction here that I need to research. ”
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A doctor I sent that link to pointed out the same thing to me. If you look at Table 3 at the CDC page, the total of the causes of death is between 2 and 3 times the number of deaths. Some are clearly a consequence of the infection (mostly, it seems, due to the immune system going haywire), some are clearly unconnected, and some could be either. I see no way to determine how many people had no condition related to the infection other than an infection.
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My opinion of the CDC continues to decline.
Tom Scharf (Comment #189818): “Biden has had to come out twice now and denounce violence because it is hurting their polling numbers.”
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Yes he has come out against violence. I suppose that Biden is also in favor of apple pie, although motherhood is in doubt.
But I don’t think Biden has actually come out against rioting. That would require admitting that rioting is happening, as opposed to some incidental violence on the fringes of the protests.
Biden also has not said anything about the groups, such as Antifa and BLM, who are driving the violence. Instead he says it is all Trump’s fault.
Hidin’ Biden is not just hiding from the public and the press, he is hiding from the truth.
Tom Scharf,
” I suppose this is just a social spasm every generation needs to go through once to realize why police are needed and that a police free utopia and summer of love isn’t on the horizon any time soon.”
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There is some truth to that I think. Many young people spend their school years being indoctrinated by left leaning teachers about how good socialism is and how bad capitalism is…. not to mention how evil a country the USA is. So lots reach adulthood thinking crazy-leftist nonsense is actually true. Only a dose of reality can begin to change that, with that reality often being in the form of opportunistic criminals who are always waiting to ‘get away’ with blatant criminality like looting followed by arson.
lucia (Comment #189821): “As for vigilantes: We are seeing some individuals on the right and some left resort to trying to enforce the law on their own. So, there are both right and left wing vigilantes.”
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I have not seen any evidence of right wing vigilantes. People protecting their property, or helping others protect their property, are not vigilantes any more than a home security company is a vigilante operation. They are just playing defense. Vigilantes are on offense.
Mike M,
“Biden also has not said anything about the groups, such as Antifa and BLM, who are driving the violence. Instead he says it is all Trump’s fault.”
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Which reminds me a bit of the Carl Sandburg quote:
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“If the facts are against you, argue the law. If the law is against you, argue the facts. If the law and the facts are against you, pound the table and yell like hell.”
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Biden and his campaign are in the uncomfortable position of having to avoiding condemning their many supporters who advocate criminal behavior without at the same time offending everyone else, so they just yell about Trump. If Biden wasn’t descending into dementia this would be a difficult task. But he is descending into dementia, and will continue to lose support among swing voters.
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What is not clear is if he loses enough support between now and November for Trump to win reelection.
The violence is Trump’s fault is an easy argument to make as he is the President at the moment. He also says lots of dumb things that can be twisted very easily, but he doesn’t care, and part of his appeal to some is that he doesn’t care about linguistic perfection. The argument is facile as the violence is democratic cities with democratic governors and those parties are making minimal attempts to stop the violence in many cases. The argument is about tolerated violence.
Tom Scharf
I also don’t believe it. Not. One. Bit.
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I’ve heard people theories that the teachers can deal with the range of abilities by “differetiating” and handing out extra assignments for the ones who finish. Sure, if you had a 1 room school house with 5 well behaved kids, you could do this, But if you control for the same number of students– say 15-30 in a class, this is more work for the teacher. Some will not do it at all. Some will pretend to do it. It will not be done well.
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I’ve heard other theories that the teacher can encourage the “faster” students to help the “slower” ones. Well… that can work to some extent — if the faster students want to do it and the slower ones are willing. But, sorry, the theory that this benefits the faster ones more than having then in a class that covers more material is bunk. Sorry, but learning fractions “even better” instead of moving on to pre-algebra does not benefit the kids who are ready for pre-algebra. They already know fractions!
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Even in 2nd grade we had three groups for reading. I’d just moved to the US and was put in the “middle” group the first week. I didn’t know it was the middle group. After a week, the teacher moved me to “another group”. My friend said, “Oh! You’ve been moved to the fast group”. The kids knew.
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By 6th grade we had tracking in almost everything. The exceptions I remember was history/social science, foreign language, PE and band. We weren’t told which class was the “faster one” and which “slower”, but we all knew. There wasn’t any sense of shame that I could tell. No one thought the faster kids were “better”. (Coordinated, strong, fast, good looking were better! : ) )
The tracking was better for us.
Lucia,
There is a big benefit for “tracking” for the faster learners, and learning more advanced material, faster, puts those kids at an enormous advantage when it comes to applying for a competitive college…. though not as much as it used to. I think the movement to dumb-down competitive entry and to force quicker learners in grade school to sit in classes with slower learners is perfectly consistent with the “progressive” demand for equality of outcome, not equality of opportunity. Even the suggestion that there are big differences in learning ability seems now frowned upon but the ‘progressive left’….. hense the movement away from scolastic aptitude testing in college admissions. The result is a lot of dumb graduates from well known schools who know little of use.
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Colleges and universities seem hellbent on making themselves useless and obsolete. It would be shocking save for the politics of educators.
Steve (and all),
At this point, I honestly don’t know if Trump is winning or losing.
The RCP polls in the battleground states generally favor Biden by something less than four points, except for Pennsylvania where the difference is 4.7 points. I haven’t found a convenient way to link this as I’ve had to go state by state, but if one looks over the 2016 elections, the polling was quite similar in 2016. Trump was usually more than four points behind in battleground states, and yet of course he won in the end. The polling didn’t reflect what was going on until the very end (in some cases it never reflected what was going on).
TLDR; the polling data favors Biden in more or less the same way that the polling data favored Clinton in 2016. I don’t see what else to conclude except that the polling trends aren’t predictive. Personally, I suspect that in reality Trump is actually ahead at this point. I cringe to say that because I don’t have a way of correcting for my own bias in analyzing what amounts to anecdotal evidence. But I don’t see a serious analysis of the current state of affairs that shows Biden has much going for him at this point, except that he’s not Trump.
Shrug.
The anecdotal (or maybe qualitative) factors I think benefitting Trump right now:
1) Mostly people don’t blame Trump for the COVID-19 rise in unemployment. They’re not holding it against him. https://today.yougov.com/topics/economy/articles-reports/2020/05/13/who-americans-blame-unemployment
2) Two thirds of people are afraid of expressing political opinions, and the further from the far Left they are, the more this fear increases. This ought to skew polling of independents some.
https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2017/aug/22/inside-the-beltway-republican-party-gets-some-maga/
Even centrist liberals are starting to have a problem with cancel culture, see the Harper letter.
3) Support for BLM is cratering in the Blue Wall states, or at least in Wisconsin. https://www.mediaite.com/news/support-for-black-lives-matter-drops-13-points-in-wisconsin-before-latest-riots/
4) If you believe mail in voting is going to retard turnout, this is a point against Biden. Most articles I read claim it does not. I think it does. It’s a PITA, and people aren’t particularly enthused about Biden to begin with.
5) Biden is less likely to do a lot of big rallies than Trump due to him boxing himself in with COVID and his statements about listening to the scientists.
6) Biden is either going to have to debate Trump or not. Not debating Trump will impose a cost in people’s minds. Debating Trump could go either way, but I think Biden would get trounced. Not going to help him.
I’m probably leaving stuff out, but that’s my overview of the situation. There are a lot of factors that seem to favor Trump this go round.
Aww crud, I linked the wrong poll about people being afraid to speak political opinions.
https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2020/jul/30/inside-the-beltway-inevitable-americans-now-censor/
There.
mark bofill,
I continue to believe that the polls are simply not accurate, because they can’t take into account the “shy Trump supporter” factor. There is much anecdotal evidence that Trump supporters are far less likely to be interviewed by pollsters (they just hang up) than Biden supporters, especially in swing states, and often avoid disclosing their support for Trump to co-workers and even to family. Could Biden win? Sure, that is possible in a very close election. If I had to bet money, I would bet on Trump winning, but with a more narrow margin that 2016.
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More important that the presidency if Biden wins is control of the Senate, where if Democrats gain control they will immediately scrap the filibuster and quickly enact a huge amount of very damaging legislation…. dramatic restrictions on fossil fuel exploration and use (European style fuel taxes will be the starting point), huge increases in income tax rates, obligatory medicare for all, near 100% wealth confiscation upon death, restricting free speech (AKA any speech Democrats don’t like), “obligatory” gun buy-backs of semi-automatics, moves to outright ban all private gun ownership, and legislation guaranteeing permanent racial preferences along with endless “financial reparations” for slavery that ended 155 years ago.
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With sniveling worm Roberts as the swing vote, I doubt the SC would stop any of the onslaught of ‘progressive legislation”, especially since Democrats will immediately threaten to expand the court and pack it with leftists if Roberts resists. It is a scary scenario for the country.
Thanks Steve. I haven’t been paying close attention to the Senate races. Maybe I ought to have a look.
mark bofill (Comment #189836): “4) If you believe mail in voting is going to retard turnout, this is a point against Biden. Most articles I read claim it does not. I think it does. It’s a PITA, and people aren’t particularly enthused about Biden to begin with.”
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I think that is confusing absentee ballots with “mail in voting”. You have to request an absentee ballot. I think also there are various security measures involved and you have to make sure it arrives before the election or gets postmarked before the election. The “mail in voting” pushed by the Democrats has ballots being sent out to everyone registered, without regard to whether they are living or dead or still at the address on the registration. And I think they also want to reduce the security checks on returned ballots and allow for ballot harvesting. Whatever it takes to felicitate fraud.
Thanks Mike. The potential fraud opportunities IMO favor Biden, this is true. There was an interesting piece on this in the NY-Post a couple of days ago, here.
But I take your point; the universal voting idea would remove a lot of the pain and maybe cause more people to be willing to vote by mail, in addition to increasing opportunities for fraud.
What, Trump actually survived 4 years as a the President? He beat the odds on that one.
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People remember they thought Clinton was going to win in a walk, they won’t make that mistake again. There will likely be huge turnout. The pollsters are going to try harder this time around. If the election was today, Trump loses IMO. It is still Trump vs. Not Trump as it was last time, except we all saw Trump for 4 years. HRC thought that Not Trump was a sure path to victory, Biden would be stupid to replicate that, although he seems to be trying. I’d prefer to vote for a vacant office for 4 years, ha ha.
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Events may change things. Trump doing something stupid or being caught with previous bad behavior is almost guaranteed and pretty much baked into the vote already. All the endless pundit blathering at max volume will have no effect. Mr. Decency is more vulnerable to getting hurt this way.
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I doubt the world will end with a narrow Senate loss. Doing stupid things will get that reversed 2 years later and nullify any alleged “progress”.
I’ve been doing mail in voting for years. It’s simple and easy.
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The panic over mail voting was a farce, apparently NY told voters they could request a mail in vote within 7 days of the election (by mail!). The post office said it couldn’t guarantee 2 or 3 mail cycles could be completed in time, duh. The solution is making the deadline longer, not making the post office jump through hoops.
Didn’t happen that way with Obamacare.
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Also, anything you’ve been doing for years is likely to be ‘simple and easy’ for you. I’ve never voted by mail. I don’t usually mail things anyway, I generally pay bills on line. Do I even have a stamp or an envelope? Beats me.
First, even if the Senate flips again, one can’t undo legislation without a majority large enough to override a veto. And the House would also have to change.
Second, there’s a ratcheting effect which seems to be present. Once governmental power expands, it’s difficult to reverse. One reason might be that legislation tends to benefit a favored group more strongly than it negatively effects the remainder of the population. Often as simply as taxing many persons a little each, and providing a greater per-person benefit to a smaller group. Those favored have a stronger incentive to maintain that position, than those disfavored.
Another reason may be that the negative consequences aren’t as visible. E.g. if a raise in the minimum wage increases unemployment among the less-skilled (as seems likely to me), it’s easy to point to those who are better off (paid more); it’s more difficult to identify an individual who didn’t get a job as a restaurant table-busser (say) because the restaurant couldn’t afford to hire another person at the higher wage.
Tom Scharf,
“I doubt the world will end with a narrow Senate loss. Doing stupid things will get that reversed 2 years later and nullify any alleged “progressâ€.”
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I could not disagree more strongly. What HaroldW said.
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Reagan managed to slow the process, not reverse it. Trump has rolled back some regulatory rules, but has instituted zero reform of the enabling legislation. Everything Trump has managed to do with regulations would be reversed in one month of a Biden administration. Major tax increases would follow very quickly, followed by re-institution of the individual mandate…. with drastically higher penalties to coerce compliance. The rest of the agenda would follow in the first two years, before control of either house could be placed before the voters.
HaroldW,
“One reason might be that legislation tends to benefit a favored group more strongly than it negatively effects the remainder of the population.”
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Yup. It is what I always call “concentrated benefits, diluted cost” corruption. The politically favored fleece the public with the happy assistance of Congress and the Executive. I see it all the time.
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Here is one particularly galling example: The Federal Marine Fishery department sets regulations for catch and size limits on fish of almost every kind in US water (200 miles from shore). These limits are set by “the science” of managing the fish populations at a “sustainable” level. But the individual states are allowed to institute their own regulations within State waters (4 nautical miles). So where a commercial fishing lobby exists, it usually pressures the state legislature to enact fishing regulations that allow commercial fishermen to destroy the fisheries in state waters, while setting absurd size and catch limits on recreational fishing which preclude any significant recreational catch. Result: nearly all the catch of many species goes to commercial fishermen, and the public gets almost nothing. And here is the best part: you could in theory simply go beyond the 4 mile limit and fish in federal waters to avoid the unfair state regulations, but no, the states then make it unlawful (with astronomical fines) to return to port with any fish which does not comply with the State regulations…. ensuring not only that the commercial fishermen get all the in-state-waters catch, but nearly all the Federal waters catch as well. Concentrated benefits, diluted costs.
No stamp necessary for mail in voting. You do need to sign it though. It is way more convenient. I’d prefer to vote online but I guess that is centuries away.
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Obamacare was somewhat crippled, but the reason it wasn’t eliminated is that health insurance is still a major unsolved problem, so it wasn’t “stupid” in that sense. Not a fan, but also not a fan of $10K / person a year for ever increasing healthcare costs and the byzantine system we have in place.
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We have been through all red and all blue governments in the past 12 years and the world has not ended. Everyone in government is not Pelosi and AOC. I very much disagree with ending the filibuster in the Senate because this provides a good filter for narrow majorities imposing this exact problem on society. A filibuster removal may produce whiplash legislation which is just not useful.
Trigger warning. Andrew Sullivan gets cancelled recently by the NYT for refusing to properly recant his position of “I don’t know” on Race and IQ with sufficient vigor. Insiders at NY Magazine state this is why he was fired. He responds here, and links to everything he has said on the subject. See for yourself, but pretty much a rehash of old arguments and counter arguments. The point being that the orthodoxy is now that the argument is over, and any questioning of that is a career ender for both academia and even journalists to state that someone disagrees.
https://andrewsullivan.substack.com/p/my-record-on-race-and-iq
”
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This is where he now writes, far away from strict orthodoxies.
Tom Scharf,
“ A filibuster removal may produce whiplash legislation which is just not useful.â€
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On at least that we agree. But note that progressives support eliminating the Senate filibuster, or at least severely limiting when it can be used (that is, can’t use any time it might stop progressive legislation). WRT crazies like Pelosi and Occasional Cortex: look at the actual voting records of the entire Democrat caucuses in the house and Senate. We need a new word along the line of ‘lockstep’ but much stronger to describe those caucuses. That Republicans could ever be so ideologically consistent is but a dream.
“the world has not ended.”
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Well, this is so. I agree that in no event, regardless of the elections, and indeed regardless of whether or not elections are even *held*, or are ever held again in this country, will the world end.
The world will not end based on an election, but liberty and future national wealth could be greatly diminished.
Regarding the temper of voters, well, I could be completely wrong. It’s hard to be confident when there are no numbers connected to qualitative factors. What percent of voters in swing states are affected by the things I identified (being pissed off by cancel culture, being sick of soft responses to rioting and looting and BLM, etc) enough to influence their vote. I honestly have no clue.
We will see. Possibly with no firm basis I’m starting to feel optimistic.
There is lock step voting mostly because they never take votes on anything unless they already know its going to pass. There is definitely more party line votes than there used to be. But it’s not “Let’s vote on AOC’s green new deal” and everyone will just line up and vote for that insanity. There are too many people in leaning districts that want to keep their job. Huge tax increases, hate speech laws, gun control, and a host of others are paths to getting thrown out of office. Some of this is just irrational fear, Biden really doesn’t even have a platform beyond Not Trump. Most Biden supporters just want him to be “decent”, the radicals got defeated. If Sanders was running then I say we have something to worry about. Biden is the least threatening of all Dem candidates.
Tom Scharf,
He is suffering dementia and will likely be replaced by Camala Harris within a year. Do you think she is also the least bad?
Part of my problem with Biden is that I actually don’t know what he’s going to do. He promises all things to all people at different times. He said he wanted Beto to lead on gun control. Did he mean it? Does he even remember saying it? Who the heck knows. He appeared not to remember in front of Pittsburg voters that he said debating Bernie no more new fracking permits.
There’s no telling what this guy is going to do. He’s going to raise taxes, that’s about as far as I believe him right now.
Here’s a better link on the fracking flip flop.
https://www.post-gazette.com/opinion/editorials/2020/09/01/Biden-s-confusing-stand-on-fracking/stories/202008260066
And as Steve says, Harris has a decent chance of assuming office if / when Biden steps down. I don’t know what Harris is going to do either. Like Biden, she can play chameleon and point to her more moderate past as well as her extremely liberal recent history.
https://www.cnn.com/2020/08/17/politics/kamala-harris-most-liberal-senator-fact-check/index.html
(Lets face it, if the idea was to make magnets widespread, it would be a lot of students and parents looking to be “tracked into†something on the upper end of ability spectrum!)
Magnets attract certain items, but even the items that do not move to the magnet will be oriented towards it.
However, this doesn’t appear to be the case at Thomas Jefferson as the nearby schools in wealthy Alexandria and Arlington are low rated, and you have to go further out to Fairfax and Tyson’s Corner for good schools.
No magnet schools, but there is a single school near that energy lab in Darien/Countryside that is rated 1/10 when everything else is 9 or 10.
This Biden? This isn’t stuttering, it’s a chaotic organization of thoughts on a message he’s obviously pre-prepared. It’s not like this is the only example. Biden may, somehow, win the vote, but he won’t be president.
https://twitter.com/bennyjohnson/status/1300505836511522817
I’m just wondering, are there any groups on the right that aren’t at least “far right”? I don’t think I’ve read about the existence of a center right group in the last 4 years.
The NYT is up to its usual tricks with an article on the supposed Death Gap. They have a graph that plots the difference between the share of total COVID-19 deaths and share of global population rather than the ratio. That is guaranteed to make the US look much worse than even Brazil.
Oregon Governor put out a 6 point plan to shore up policing in Portland, surrounding areas would provide extra police to help Portland Police Bureau. Surrounding areas give the governor the one finger salute:
https://www.oregonlive.com/clackamascounty/2020/08/clackamas-washington-county-sheriffs-rebuff-gov-kate-browns-request-to-staff-portland-protests.html
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“The sheriffs of both Clackamas and Washington counties released written statements on Monday afternoon saying they would not be sending deputies to Portland.”
“The lack of political support for public safety, the uncertain legal landscape, the current volatility combined with intense scrutiny on use of force presents an unacceptable risk if deputies were deployed directlyâ€
DeWitt – that is a stunning bad graph. It is not as if US deaths per capita arent bad enough but this one must have taken someone a lot of imagination to dream up. Anything that contrived has attract suspicion.
DeWitt,
Looks to me like that graph was prepared by a junior staffer at the NYT, then approved by the Biden campaign…. and that Biden himself approved it; only someone very easily confused could accept such meaningless rubbish. Deaths per capita in the USA are dominated by very high rates in a few densely populated states…. all run by Democrats. Funny the NYT doesn’t present that statistic.
DaveJR,
He is a very confused old man. The 25th Amendment, Section 4 will be invoked if he refuses to step down.
SteveF/DaveJR,
It looks like Biden being out on 25A section 4 would be almost certain. Trump is possible. He’s declining too. SteveF and I both know from experience that some people take sudden turns down. Trump is a harder call because lots of his irregularity is just the way he is. But he may take a nosedive too.
mark bofill (Comment #189860): “I don’t know what Harris is going to do either. Like Biden, she can play chameleon and point to her more moderate past as well as her extremely liberal recent history.”
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I have seen no evidence that Harris was ever a moderate, not even by Dem standards. That idea seems to come from her past as a prosecutor. But look at the sort of prosecutor she was. She went easy on the rich and well connected, such as her Silicon Valley pals and the Catholic Church (she quashed an investigation into sex abuse in San Francisco). She avoided prosecuting the difficult cases that are needed to put criminal bigwigs in prison. But she was relentless in her pursuit of the poor, seeking felony convictions on minor possession charges and even putting the parents of truant children in jail. The poor can’t fight back, so they are easy targets for a prosecutor who wants to pad her record without risk.
.
That does not make her a moderate. It just reveals Harris as an iron fist leftist rather than a bleeding heart leftist.
SARC
First it was the Koch brothers. Now it’s Putin. How much is Putin paying you people to spread these lies about ‘Ol Joe?
https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/dhs-withheld-july-intelligence-bulletin-calling-russian-attack/story?id=72747130
SARC
Mike,
There is that. Interesting. I ought to review Kamala’s career as a prosecutor, but I suspect you’re correct.
Lucia,
Without spending time one-on-one with Trump (not something I would really want to do!) it is not possible for me to evaluate if he has significant mental decline. Certainly he is very irregular in his public pronouncements. Even when he reads from a teleprompter (which unlike Biden, is something Trump can actually do), he wants to stomp all over the prepared text by repeating adjectives, adding extra over-the-top adjectives, and tangential ad-libs. But those don’t strike me as anything which has changed over the past 4 years. He has been driving his speechwriters crazy since day 1 of his campaign.
.
Biden is a very different story; his decline is substantial and obvious over the past 4 years… he now can’t even read prepared text from a teleprompter without becoming confused/lost (DaveJR’s clip above is only one of many instances), and he consistently mis-pronounces common words as he is reading. Mis-pronouncing common words is something I saw in my dad in the transition form early to mid Alzheimers, some months before he moved to an assisted living facility. The final factor is Biden’s inappropriate, bizarre, out-of-control anger when he interacts with the public and receives a question he doesn’t like. Joe Biden looks to me 3 or 4 years into the typical 10 year decline from normal mental capacity to needing diapers. He shouldn’t be running for anything.
SteveF
Agreed. He does seem scattier lately… but that could just be Trump being Trump when things are going badly.
.
Agreed. His looks like decline. It’s getting worse. Voting for Biden is voting for Kamala.
Mark,
All Dems and Joe need to counter that “smear” is for Joe to get out and field questions from a roomfull of reporters. Even looking sharp (as he used to look) with fairly softball questions would help. It just has to seem like they weren’t entirely scripted.
Lucia,
I agree with you. All of this talk about having Joe skip the debates is precisely the wrong way to tackle this problem if Biden is in fact more or less as mentally sharp as ever. If he debates and demonstrates reasonable acuity (and he might; he did OK in the primary debates as far as I remember), that’ll be that. If he does NOT debate, the doubts in some minds will linger and possibly grow.
[Edit: Just opening Joe up to the press would help. It’s not like the press isn’t largely sympathetic in the first place. Not all that much risk there, one would think.]
Maybe we shouldn’t vote for crazy old people in decline.
The least surprising thing I’ve read all day:
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“In a series of surveys conducted in the United States, Britain, the Netherlands and Belgium, a team of social psychologists led by Toon Kuppens found that college-educated respondents had more bias against less-educated people than they did against other disfavored groups. The researchers surveyed attitudes toward a range of people who are typically victims of discrimination. In Europe, this list included Muslims and people who are poor, obese, blind and less educated; in the United States, the list also included African-Americans and the working class. Of all these groups, the poorly educated were disliked most of all.
Beyond revealing the disparaging views that college-educated elites have of less-educated people, the study also found that elites are unembarrassed by this prejudice. They may denounce racism and sexism, but they are unapologetic about their negative attitudes toward the less educated.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/02/opinion/education-prejudice.html
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This has been obvious for a while, elites are baffled why the stupid people don’t support their own obvious wonderfulness. A perusal of the comments on that article confirms its accusations.
Tom Scharf,
I see that attitude all the time in the comments to opinion pieces in the online WSJ. Something like: The author of this piece isn’t an expert in the field and/or has no credentials, with the implication that therefore they can’t be right. Apparently these people have never heard that the argument from authority is a logical fallacy for a variety of reasons. It certainly doesn’t prove that someone with the correct credentials is always right and everyone else is always wrong.
Biden is just campaigning to a traditional schedule, which largely kicked off after Labor Day. He got rushed out a week in advance because of current turmoil, but otherwise is just doing what candidates always used to do.
We’ll see how well it plays.
mark bofill (Comment #189875)
I’ll never understand how a foreign nation can manipulate an image of a candidate who is appearing in public for all to see and judge for themselves. It assumes, I guess, that the public is very gullible and susceptible to misleading information. Oh, wait a minute, politicians already assume that.
And of course the images of candidates can be or at least be. attempted to be spun by the MSM. That is probably my only interest in any debates – to see what lengths the MSM goes to spin the performances. Trump loses that battle.
Kenneth,
I agree. I have a suspicion that the lion’s share of actual Russian interference is for them to leak or plausible sell the idea to Western intelligence that they are interfering. It doesn’t matter how absurd the details are. Russian interference is a destabilizing story that the media can hardly wait to spread far and wide.
And yes. It’s entertaining in a grotesque way to watch the spin. Suddenly Trump is responsible for the violence, when for three months all of the protests had been mostly peaceful, even the ones that were fiery. Wait, violence? Oh, good. Our eyes weren’t lying to us after all.
It’s a tough sell though. It seems to me that if the rioting is the natural and just response of an oppressed people (which I think is a fair paraphrasing of a substantial percentage of liberal voices in recent past) to a systemically racist state, it’s hard to lay that at the feet of a guy who’s been in office less than four years. It’ll please the base but I don’t see alot of independents swallowing that.
Thanks Kenneth.
Add to it that I think more or less everybody knows that it’s been far left activists rioting all these months; Antifa and BLM, and that they’re no friends of Trump. I think my teenage kids probably get that much without having to be told.
Hey! Chris Wallace will moderate the first debate. That’s sort of pleasant and surprising. I’d half expected it to be Chris Cuomo.
Tom Scharf (Comment #189857)
Dream on, Tom. That swing state moderation influencing Democrat legislators’ votes no longer exists. Casting against the party line will get you opposition in your next primary and even withdrawn party member support. If there is a major national change favoring the Democrat party, politicians being politicians, are not going against that trend regardless of their local politics. Biden, is a Democrat party apparatchik and will not resist the push from the extreme left. He has in fact already indicated that.
You want spin, ha ha? The WP Headline:
.
Portland killing renews focus on tactics of far-right group Patriot Prayer
The group has been involved in a string of violent clashes in cities throughout the West Coast, and scrutiny of Patriot Prayer has intensified since a follower of the group was fatally shot Saturday night in Portland.
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We need to “focus” on why these extremists are making us virtuous people shoot them in our cities! Look what they made us do.
Never mind the 100% Antifa person behind the curtain.
Yeah, that’s a good one. Renews focus huh. I doubt there is one person who’d ever even heard of Patriot Prayer for every hundred people who’ve heard of Antifa or BLM, before the shooting.
Joe Biden recently read his scripted marks, including the section heading, ‘Venezuela topline messages’.
What if this is a deliberate strategy? Get Trump and Republicans to attack Biden as senile, then deliver a knockout debate performance.
In the book Shattered, the Hillary campaign thought Trump was winning the first debate until she brought up Alicia Machado. That was not my reaction at the time, but they felt that he had surpassed expectations by just talking calmly.
Speaking of experts, in today’s WSJ by Jason iley:
In reference to the Death Gap graph from the NYT posted above, let’s calculate Death Gaps inside the US:
New Jersey: Share of deaths: 16,053/188,900 = 8.5%; share of population: 8,882,190/331,335,757 = 2.7%; Death Gap 5.8%
New York: Share of deaths: 33,039/188,900 = 17.5%; share of population: 19,453,561/331,335,757 = 5.6%; Death Gap 11.9%
This shows the effect of population is dominant on the death gap even though New Jersey has a higher per capita death rate.
Florida: Share of deaths: 11,379/188,900 = 6.0%; share of population: 21,477,737/331,335,757 = 6.5%; death gap -0.5%
Cuomo looks pretty bad by the NYT’s own measure, which was clearly designed to make Trump look bad, and the reviled DeSantis looks a lot better. Typical failure to consider unintended consequences.
mark bofill,
” I’d half expected it to be Chris Cuomo.”
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Let’s see. Cuomo would start the questioning with something like: “Now that you have killed 190,000 Americans, you miserable mother***ker, how do you dare run for re-election?”
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The guy is obviously much more mentally limited than Fredo ever was, and Fredo suffered a very high childhood fever that damaged his brain. Chris Cuomo doesn’t have that excuse…. he is just plain dumb. At least he can still lift weights and brag about his conquests.
Thomas,
I stick with my position: If the stories he is in decline are smears, all Biden has to do to overcome fears that he is declining is appear in person, participate in debates etc. This is true whether or not his not appearing in public before labor day is normal or unusual. If it is untrue, this should be the absolutely easiest smear ever to get past.
DeWitt,
Using those formulas,
share of deaths / share of population = deaths per million / 570
(where 570 = US deaths per million = 188,900/331,335,757)
So if a state’s rate of deaths (per million) is greater than 570, it has a positive “death gap”; else negative.
An equivalent formulation is
“death gap” = (deaths per million/570 -1)* (population percentage) which I think is your point about population being a dominant factor.
A small area has two small numbers being subtracted and must necessarily produce a small “gap”. E.g., DC has 0.21% of population, 0.32% of deaths, therefore “gap” of 0.11%. Rather than thinking of its per-capita rate as about 50% higher than average.
(P.S. typo in your calculation:
NY’s pop share of 19453561/331335757 = 5.9%, so NY’s “gap” is 11.6%)
Steve,
Whaaaaat? Cuomo can handle things! He’s smart! Not like everybody says… like dumb… he’s smart and he wants respect!
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I think it’ll be interesting to see if Biden does many live events. He’s flip flopped on that too, but most recently he’s landed on the side of doing some I think. This month in fact.
https://www.thedenverchannel.com/news/election-2020/biden-to-hold-in-person-campaign-events-in-september
I see Biden will be visiting Kenosha tomorrow.
https://www.nytimes.com/live/2020/09/02/us/trump-vs-biden
Lucia
I agree with you completely. He needs to get in front of a camera, take questions and provide intelligible answers.
He also needs to quit talking about Trump and his sins, real or imagined. He needs to talk about healthcare, the minimum wage, student debt and Social Security.
We Dems sure forgot what happened in 2018 mighty quickly.
If the bar is to be more articulate than Trump then I think Biden has a pretty low bar to clear.
.
“A troubling trend in recent decades has been the transfer of decision-making authority to expert intellectuals.”
.
What if expert intellectuals are just as self serving and corrupt as everyone else? What if experts are even better at covering up their corruption than everyone else? What if intellectuals are completely fooling themselves that their preferred strategies that benefit themselves are somehow good for everyone (Everyone needs a college degree! The government should pay for it!) .
.
The conflation of expert intellectuals and virtuous is one that needs to be brought to the rubbish bin and burned with enthusiasm. The dictatorship of the experts looks good on paper, but I’m beginning to have second and third thoughts about the reality.
The problem with experts is two-fold. First, they think they can venture outside their area of expertise with impunity. Second, we let them.
In the never ending comedy that is Portland, the Oregon State Police have been deputized by the federal government so that mostly peaceful protesters can be federally charged when they engage in “sort of non-nonviolent tactics” (actual phrase from HuffPost) and bypass the local DA who won’t prosecute them. The Mayor said he is moving after mostly peaceful protesters attempted to burn his apartment building down which housed over 100 other people, he sent an email to them apologizing. No word yet on him apologizing to all the other businesses burned to the ground.
mark bofill,
“ Whaaaaat? Cuomo can handle things! He’s smart! Not like everybody says… like dumb… he’s smart and he wants respect!â€
.
No, he’s as dumb as a box of rocks… which may be a bit unfair to rocks, which are much less pretentious and actually do deserve a measure of respect. Michael C figured out one solution to the Fredo problem. CNN won’t get rid of Chris Cuomo so easily.
.
But in all seriousness, Chris Cuomo really is plainly dumber than the average of people I have met. Being born into privilege has its pluses. Being good looking is another advantage.
Tom Scharf,
“ The Mayor said he is moving after mostly peaceful protesters attempted to burn his apartment building down which housed over 100 other peopleâ€
.
They should at least have let the other people flee before torching the place. IMHO, the mayor can bake in his own juices. (only joking, of course).
Tom Scharf,
Biden may only have a low bar to clear. But he does need to clear it!
Did he pay for their hotel, travel and dinner to cover the cost of evacuating? (I bet not.)
If Biden fails to drool on himself during the debate, he will have exceeded expectations. I doubt his reading the topline is a calculated sandbag to lower expectations, but he’s certainly set up a very low bar for what would constitute success.
.
Possibly more important, presidential debates aren’t *really* debates in the first place — the format doesn’t promote direct interaction, and as long as Biden sticks to his talking points and doesn’t attempt to respond in real-time to whatever Trump just said, he should be able to follow a pre-practiced script. Biden’s anger problem when faced with unexpected hostile questions won’t be a problem, the moderators will see to that.
.
I wouldn’t be surprised to see Biden completely implode in one of the debates, but the highest likelihood IMO is that he will exceed expectations no matter how non-sharp he appears. OTOH, four years of painting Trump as literally Hitler means that Trump also has a high probability of exceeding expectations just by not acting like a cartoon supervillain.
I don’t know that I want to resurrect the Floyd/Chauvin discussion, but it looks like Chauvin’s attorneys are indeed going for the Excited Delirium defense. A townhall article shows something I hadn’t seen before, though — a picture from the Minneapolis Police Department training manual (provided by Chauvin’s lawyers filing for dismissal) showing an officer kneeling on the neck.
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https://townhall.com/tipsheet/katiepavlich/2020/09/02/new-evidence-in-the-george-floyd-case-that-could-change-everything-n2575428
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I don’t know that this particular picture is *that* helpful to the defense, since it *also* warns about sudden cardiac arrest and says to “place the subject in the recovery position to alleviate positional aphysxia”. This Chauvin did not do, and even though Floyd didn’t die of aphysxia it can certainly be used to argue that continuing to kneel was not supported by policy. But it certainly undermines a murder charge!
Dale,
I think you’re right. In a way, I hope you’re right. It sounds foolish and maybe it is, but I sort of fear Trump demolishing an elderly man who’s clearly having cognitive problems might play badly for the President. Scoff if you will, I’ll understand, but. Shrug. Maybe it’s just that I don’t want to have to pity Joe Biden.
Mark, you’re right about it not being a good look to be seen as picking on a helpless old man. But that wouldn’t exactly make a strong argument to vote for Biden either.
Earle, quite true. … I’m not sure how it would turn out, strange at it sounds. Rationally, I completely agree. I could somehow still see a lot of suburban moms voting for Biden specifically because they felt sorry for him.
I’m not sure how strongly I believe what I’m saying. It’s just a weird idea that floated up in my mind from somewhere.
shrug.
There’s some sort of tactical problem with it beyond the sympathies of suburban moms. I think a lot of what progressives hold up as intolerable about Trump doesn’t register as intolerable with Trump’s supporters. Politically incorrect things, specifically, make Trump supporters smile or chuckle rather than cause their blood to boil. But appearing to pick on a senile old man doesn’t have the political incorrectness valence to excuse it. I think it would make some Trump supporters hesitate.
I mean, within reason of course. I expect Trump to advance his cause vigorously. I just hope he doesn’t appear to maliciously humiliate Biden. I hope the situation doesn’t come up.
Never underestimate the power of feeling sorry for someone. The first Menendez brothers trials (they were tried separately) ended in hung juries. Those were the ones who went back in the house to reload their shotguns so they could shoot their parents some more. They claimed that they had been abused.
Interesting contrast today:
.
The Atlantic:
How to Stop a Police Pullback
Reformers must tackle the challenge of underpolicing, which has often allowed officers to exercise an effective veto on reform.
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/09/how-stop-police-pullback/615730/
.
Tampa Bay Times:
Pasco’s sheriff created a futuristic program to stop crime before it happens.
It monitors and harasses families across the county.
https://projects.tampabay.com/projects/2020/investigations/police-pasco-sheriff-targeted/intelligence-led-policing/
.
It seems police are bad for over/under policing simultaneously. These are just tiresome pile-ons for the most part. One thing for sure, the budget for investigative journalism against police is up.
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If all the do-gooders could agree on what it is they actually want beyond performative outrage at everything then possibly some progress could be made.
DaleS, not sitting Floyd up is a key difference between his death and the one in Florida that was posted earlier.
Tom Scharf,
“If all the do-gooders could agree on what it is they actually want beyond performative outrage at everything then possibly some progress could be made.“
.
You are more generous than I would ever be with the description “do-goodersâ€. That said, the only thing they will ever agree upon is that Trump must not be reelected. Everything else is window dressing. If Trump loses, then maybe the rioting will decline. If he wins, count on the rioting to continue indefinitely, at least where cold weather doesn’t stop it. It is 100% leftist politics, nothing more.
Can someone please help me reconcile these figures?
From the FL Dept. of Health dashboard, yesterday’s positive test percentage was 6.22%, with 3646 positive & 55004 negative. [Caveat: website says this figure is only for FL residents.]
On the other hand, the github site seems to show 3350 positive viral tests out of 32053, a rate above 10%. [I computed the day-to-day difference for columns labelled “totalTestsViral” & “positiveTestsViral”.]
I understand that there might be some differences due to resident vs. resident+non-resident counting, but should only be around 1%. Similarly, one might be including antibody/antigen tests, but again those seem to be much less common, so shouldn’t be significant. Most importantly (to me, anyway), why is the rate so different? Even if the two sources refer to different days, the rate — which seems to vary only slowly over time — should be comparable.
Has anyone already looked at these sources and understand why they produce such varying results?
Mike N/Dale S
Well… it’s goign to be interesting to hear Chauvin’s lawyers arguing that Floyd exhibted super human strength when the side effect of Fentimal is physical weakness
https://americanaddictioncenters.org/fentanyl-treatment/side-effects
lucia (Comment #189922): “it’s goign to be interesting to hear Chauvin’s lawyers arguing that Floyd exhibted super human strength when the side effect of Fentimal is physical weakness”
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That is one side effect. Note everyone exhibits all the same effects and not all side effects occur at the same time. And wasn’t Floyd also high on some sort of stimulant?
Floyd also had meth in his system, though I think much lower dose than Fentanyl. But judging from the attorney’s remarks, I think the strategy isn’t to claim that Floyd was already exhibiting drug-induced superhuman strength, but that Chauvin feared Floyd’s drug-induced state would progress to that, making continued neck restraint the appropriate action. Floyd was a 6’4″ bouncer, his regular strength was probably pretty forceful already. For whatever reason, the officers gave up trying to secure him in the back seat of the cruiser, while outnumbering him four to one. I doubt he was demonstrating physical weakness as a symptom at that time.
MikeN,
Sure. But the side effect of the drug they say killed his was weakness not super human strength! That’s a fact they are going to have to explain.
DaleS
Yeah… well…”fear” he would “progress to that” isn’t going to fly with many jurors.
This is not a point in Chauvin’s favor. . .
He showed zero evidence of “super human strength”. Merely “fearing” it such evidence might materialize in the future is a difficult defence for Chauvin.
lucia,
An opiod abuser develops tolerance for the drug much like you can develop the ability to function with high blood levels of alcohol (until you can’t). In fact, that’s a major problem with using opioids to control chronic pain, for which opioids should never have been approved.
And, as Dale S pointed out, Floyd was also a meth abuser. Taking an upper like meth or cocaine and a downer like heroin or fentanyl at the same time is not atypical behavior for an abuser. John Belushi, for example, was shooting up with cocaine and heroin, known as a speedball, when he died. The combination increases the risk of a fatal overdose.
Another problem is that we don’t know if Floyd knew he was taking fentanyl. Fentanyl is up to 50 times more potent than heroin so the probability of an overdose is much higher, especially if he thought he was taking a less potent drug.
https://www.dea.gov/press-releases/2020/08/06/alarming-spike-fentanyl-related-overdose-deaths-leads-officials-issue
Floyd was 46.
Was Chauvin on scene when they took him out of the car?
HaroldW, I would guess the datasets are not up to date. Do you have the same problem if you check numbers for three weeks ago?
Dewitt,
Sure. He used drugs. But that fact by itself doesn’t mean he had “superhuman strength” nor that he had “excited delirium”. You actually need evidence of one or the other. There doesn’t seem to be any. And the drug he supposedly took enough to die off tends to result in reduced strength.
So the fact that drug users might develop tolerance is rather irrelevant to whether someone like Chauvin had reason to expect “exicted deliru” or “super human strength”. If the lawyers argument to support the notion Floyd might have exhibitted either is merely “Floyd was on drugs”, that tends to suggest there is no good evidence Floyd exhibited either.
I don’t know in what sense this was a “problem” with respect to defending or prosecuting Chauvin. Floyd knowing or not knowing doesn’t affect whether he had or exhibited super human strength or excited delirium. It’s just irrelevant.
.
Yeah. People can die of Fentanyl poisoning. They can die of heart attacks. They can die of Covid. They can also be asphyxiated if someone kneels on their neck.
MikeN: “I would guess the datasets are not up to date. Do you have the same problem if you check numbers for three weeks ago?”
Yes. The FDOH website shows test positivity for the previous day, and also for prior weeks. Last two weeks shown are under 7%. [“8/23” & “8/16”, although the bar chart claims that is the last day of a 7-day period, and the line graph labels its x-axis “start date”.] I can’t get percentages that low from the github data for any 7-day period.
Before George Floyd, there was a killing in Rochester where the medical examiner listed excited delirium as a contributing factor.
https://apnews.com/5c2f0cf366e560b7f41ebb3c964b099c
It’s still being investigated, but it looks another contributing factor was coronavirus. Cops put the victim in a hood to keep him from spitting on them.
MikeN,
In that case, the first sentence of the article shows evidence of exited delirium: “running naked through the street”. George Floyd was not exhibiting those sorts of symptoms.
Lucia,
“Yeah. People can die of Fentanyl poisoning. They can die of heart attacks. They can die of Covid. They can also be asphyxiated if someone kneels on their neck.”
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And Chauvin’s lawyers are going to argue that Floyd died of cardiopulmonary cessation becuase of Fentanyl and heart disease, not because of asphyxiation from neck-kneeling — as far as I can tell, the examiner’s report has no physical evidence of internal damage from the neck-kneeling at all. “No physical findings that support death by traumatic asphyxia or strangulation.”
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The private examiner found differently, but that same examiner did the same thing in a parallel case, again without any physical evidence to support the diagnosis. He also claimed “there is no other health issue that could cause or contribute to the death”, which given the high Fentanyl levels and severe heart disease seems implausible, to say the least.
.
At any rate, it’s not required for jurors to believe that Floyd *actually had* excited delirium, only that Chauvin feared excited delirium. This is supported by the fact that Chauvin claimed that *at the time* in the body camera footage, and no one pushed back on that (in fact, that was responding to a suggestion that Floyd’s position be moved *because* of the possibility of excited delirium, showing that at least two officers at the scene feared it.)
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According to the local abc station, second degree unintentional murder in Minnesota requires “the death of a human being, without intent … while committing or attempting to commit a felony offense.” Third degree murder requires actions “eminently dangerous to others and evincing a depraved mind, without regard for human life.” Both are satisfied in the public mind by the fact of kneeling, but with the defense proving that kneeling *is* police procedure, with a picture from the training manual yet, I think that may be a hard sell for the jury. Prosecutors selling that kneeling is just fine, but continuing to kneel crosses the line into felony offense and reckless regard for human life is going to be a harder sell, especially without physical evidence that the kneeling caused any direct harm in the first place. Even the kneeling after unconsciousness runs against the hurdle that the unconsciousness was apparently caused *by* the cardiopulmonary arrest that was the actual cause of death.
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Why do you think the failed attempt to put Floyd in the back of the cruiser is a point against Chauvin? If there’s anything in the sequence that might trigger Excited Delirium fears, wouldn’t it be struggling against being put in the back of the cruiser? This is the account taken from local channel 5:
—
According to the transcripts, they struggled to get Floyd into the squad.
During his interview with the BCA, Lane said, “If this was the door, was going to go around and try and pull his arm through the other side of the squad just to get him in there, so we could close the doors and secure him. I walked around to the other side, went to pull him through. He started really thrashing back and forth, and think he was hitting his face on the glass that goes to the front seat. That was the first time I saw that he was bleeding from the mouth.â€
At one point, Floyd said, “I want to lay on the ground, I’m going to lay on the ground. Oh I’m coming down. I’m going down, I’m going down.†Keung replied, “Get in the squad.†Floyd said again, “I’m going down, I’m going down, I’m not going up.â€
Another person on scene told him, “Man you going to die of a heart attack, just get in the car.â€
Floyd said, “I can’t breathe,†as they told him to get in the car again. “l just had COVID, man. I can’t breathe. I can’t breathe.â€
Keung told him to take a seat.
Former officer Derek Chauvin was now on scene and said, “Get him down on the ground.â€
—
Based on the information out so far, I see second degree manslaughter as the only viable conviction for Chauvin — it doesn’t require intent and it only requires “culpable negligence … creates an unreasonable risk, and consciously takes chances of causing death or great bodily harm to another.” If Chauvin knew about or participated in the study dismissing positional asphyxia he may well think that neck restraint does not take the chance of causing death or great bodily harm, but the training slide recommending the recovery position proves that MPD took that possibility seriously.
DaleS,
Yes, His lawyers are going to argue that. Doesn’t mean it’s convincing. We’ll see what the jury decides. OJ got off. Maybe Chauvin will.
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Oh? I’d have to consult a lawyer. But generally the standard has to be that a reasonable person would have feared something. I can “fear” my neighbor is going to come over and shoot me. If he’s done absolutely nothing to suggest that, I can’t shoot him in “self defense”.
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in appropriate circumstances. The problem is convincing people this are remotely appropriate circumstances. You can’t just say “emotion delirium is a thing that exists”, so I can kneel on someone’s neck even though there is no evidence he exhibited it. And no, you can’t just say “cops have decided to say they ‘fear’ it at any and all times… cuz that gives us permission to do whatever we want.
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Yeah. But we have video of the “struggle”. There is no evidence of “superhuman strength”. It looks like my pet cat struggling to not go into the cat carrier. They wiggle. It’s hard. Sometimes they escape. They aren’t stronger than me. I don’t diagnose “excited delirium”. I diagnose they don’t want to go into the cat carrier and are struggling.
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I find it hard to push wiggly odd shaped inanimate things into cars. And these aren’t even things that are wiggling on their own. Once again this is not a sign of “strength”. It’s a sign that pushing something like a non-rigid cylinedr into a car can be awkward. That it wiggles on it’s own even a little makes it harder.
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Heck… we know protesters often “go limp” to be hard to lift. This is not a sign of “superhuman strength” or “exited delirium”. The cop “fearing” something he has no reasonable basis to suspect does not strike me as much of a defense.
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Fair enough. That might be the charge that sticks, owing to the way Minn law is written. FWIW, I don’t think they intended to kill Chauvin. It’s more like “didn’t really give a shit if he happened to die”. That’s different.
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Having said that I think his lawyers are going for innoncent on that too. Not surprising: they are his lawyers. But a lot of stuff getting pumped out there is just red-herrings and sure seem to be being pushed as arguments that Chauvin did not even commit manslaughter.
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I mean… maybe he would have died of fentanyl poisoning 30 minutes later. Or not. But that’s irrelevant to the trial. Floyd didn’t live that additional 30 minutes because the cop kneeled on his neck.
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Excited delirium may be “a thing” that some people sometimes exhibit. But there is no evidence of “exited delirium” in this instance. Resisting arrest is not unusual and doesn’t need much of an explanation. It’s not a symptom of “excited delirium” nor “super human strength”. As I noted: My cats resist going into their carriers and they sometimes win!
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If I were on the jury, I’m pretty sure I’d find him guilty of manslaughter. Of course, maybe something would be presented in the trial to convince me otherwise. But none of the things I’m reading by his inter-tubes defenders makes me think otherwise because they are all just red herrings with respect to the specific circumstances we see here.
“He started really thrashing back and forth, and think he was hitting his face on the glass that goes to the front seat. That was the first time I saw that he was bleeding from the mouth.â€
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Agitated to the point of doing self-harm, with that self-harm having no effect on behavior. That is a sign of excited delirium.
What if the cops had just left Floyd in the back of the cruiser? Yelling; thrashing around; hitting his head against the car roof, the window, and the screen in front of the passenger seat; bleeding from the injuries sustained; eventually losing consciousness and dying. People would be screaming for the cops heads on a platter.
HaroldW,
From our local paper:
“Positivity: The positivity rate, or the percentage of tests conducted that come back positive, can be used to gauge if a community is doing enough testing to capture mild and asymptomatic cases.
In Florida, the average weekly positivity rate is 12 percent, according to Johns Hopkins University.
Health experts have different ways of calculating the positivity rate based on what kinds of tests to include and what to exclude. The Florida Department of Health calculates positivity by including negative retests but not positive retests. Their calculations put positivity at about 6 percent for the week, or 5 percent when excluding a data submission of nearly 75,000 backlogged tests from Quest Diagnostics that came on Tuesday.”
I don’t think I would be very convinced of the super human strength hypothesis. You might put the knee of the neck to start that but you wouldn’t leave it there. Perhaps you might get a hung jury out of it. The lawyers are just going to throw everything out there and hope any of it stick with a couple jurors. Not likely IMO.
MikeM,
I didn’t see that much thrashing in the video. (We all agreed he was resisting.)
The part showing him getting pulled in is after 7 minutes. There is no indication anything is hitting the glass between the seat and the front. No sounds to suggest it. If you can find it, let me know the time.
This looks a lot like my cat trying to not get in the cat carrier. That is not “excited delirium”.
MikeM
Well… if his defense does this, they are going to have to convince them Floyd would begin doing something he doesn’t seem to have previously done. For that, they need evidence of him hitting his head against the car and so on. I have seen none. So if you have it, then his lawyers might. Without it, this claim isn’t going to fly.
From my previous history of watching cop shows (an activity that is now banned) a suspect who is attempting to hurt himself in the back seat of a car is removed every time to prevent this. I have seen head beating against a window or seat grille over 10 times. They will tie his feet and hands and lay him in the seat “hog tied”. The process of hog tying a suspect is usually … aggressive in nature. There are also spit shields (a recent questionable death tied to this) for people who want to spit on cops from the back seat. Unfortunately I also need to throw in that more recently suspects intentionally urinate and defecate in the back seat sometimes as well. Drunk people barfing is also a common occurrence. The requirements for a back seat of a cop car are such that it can be easily hosed out.
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Some suspects have been arrested so many times they know exactly what to say to force cops to bring them in for medical evaluation to a hospital, they do this just to annoy the cops.
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People fight with cops routinely. It almost never ends well. Mostly this is people who are borderline mentally ill and/or have serious anger issues. Certain suspects are known to fight every single time.
USA Today:
“The event has so far been linked to one death. In South Dakota, 118 residents who attended the rally subsequently tested positive for COVID-19. Nationally, about 300 cases have been linked to the rally.
While that’s less than 1% of the more than 460,000 people who converged on Sturgis, Dr. Robert J. Kim-Farley said it’s likely “the tip of the iceberg.”
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Yes, it’s less than 1%, it’s also less than 0.1%. But who is counting? The academic standards for tying cases to BLM protests (definitive proof required) have been abandoned entirely in favor of simple correlation and speculation. Both events happened along with rising rates of the virus. Cannot fathom what might have made them change standards. The old standard:
https://www.vox.com/2020/6/26/21300636/coronavirus-pandemic-black-lives-matter-protests
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I don’t doubt there is increased risk for Sturgis than staying at home. I’m interested in a fair evaluation on what the data says about this. A fair evaluation looks at things like background rates of infection, the increase in Sturgis itself relative to nearby counties, etc. I can’t trust academia or selective quoting of Team Science to provide this due to partisan confirmation bias. A single death is national news here, and there is no count at all for other protests.
The most recent 7 day average nationally is about 40K cases per day or 120 cases per day per million people. The Sturgis rally drew a half million people, so for a random sample that size we should expect about 60 cases per day. The rally lasted 10 days, so expect 600 cases. The number “linked to” the rally is half that, but might include people in contact with attendees at the rally.
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I am tempted to conclude that the Wuhan virus is afraid of bikers. 🙂
Tom,
So,… is it also less than 10%? Enquiring minds want to know. (Not even rhetorical. . .)
Lucia,
I don’t see Floyd hitting his head, and I can’t see squat in the video. Certainly it’s possible that Floyd didn’t hit his head, and the officer only claims that he “thinks” Floyd hit his head and that’s the first time he saw blood from the mouth. I doubt I could hear the “thunk” of hitting anything over the sound of Floyd freaking out. I certainly can’t use the video to prove that the officer was testifying truthfully — or untruthfully. Given the obvious distress from Floyd, I don’t see anything remotely remarkable in the claim he was thrashing, nor do I see anyway for either of us to judge how much strength he was displaying while doing so.
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But more to the point, I don’t agree with the premise that a suspect has to already demonstrate superhuman strength for a reasonable officer to fear excited delirium. If such a thing exists at all (and like positional asphyxia, there are people who believe it doesn’t), it’s a subset of drug-induced-irrational-behavior, which is *entirely* consistent with Floyd freaking out in the back seat. Chauvin’s continuing to kneel protected him and the others *if* Floyd responded to immobilization with excited delirium. He didn’t exhibit it, but given that Floyd *was* on drugs, and *was* resisting, and *was* behaving erratically, I don’t think it’s an inherently unreasonable fear.
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And to be clear, it’s *not* “Excited Delirium” that justifies kneeling — kneeling as part of immobilization was approved by MPD, as shown by the training slide. Excited Delirium is the only reason why you would *continue* to use neck restraint on a suspect that’s lost consciousness.
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“I mean… maybe he would have died of fentanyl poisoning 30 minutes later. Or not. But that’s irrelevant to the trial. Floyd didn’t live that additional 30 minutes because the cop kneeled on his neck.”
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That will be the claim of the state, but is it true? Floyd died of cardiopulmonary arrest, not suffocation. There’s no physical evidence of damage to the larynx. There’s no physical evidence of asphyxia to the brain. There’s no physical evidence that neck restraint *actually* caused any physical effect that produced a cardiopulmonary arrest, while *both* Fentanyl overdose and pulmonary disease could have done that. Floyd’s “Can’t Breathe” precedes the kneeling. Floyd’s freakout precedes the kneeling. Floyd saying he’s going to die precedes the kneeling.
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Now, if the kneeling is a “felonious assault”, that may not matter. My understanding is that if you commit a crime, and if there’s *any* chance that bad act triggered fatal response, it can count as murder — snatch a purse, lady has heart attack, assume the snatching triggered the heart attack. But if the kneeling is legal and approved police procedure, I don’t think that assumption still holds — you’d need something physical to connect the kneeling to the death, and not just a claim that it was the stress of kneeling specifically, not the stress of being arrested or attempted to put in the cruiser or being in handcuffs or the effects of the drugs that caused the arrest. Given how freaked out Floyd was when they attempted to get him in the back seat, and how he was complaining that he couldn’t breathe before he was ever on the ground, I think that is going to be difficult.
Chauvin’s past record is what will weigh significantly in his trail. I assume that complaints against him will be allowed. If not I would assume that selecting jurors could not eliminate those who are familiar with his record. A rookie or inexperienced cop might have a better chance of using some of the extenuating circumstances posted here, but Chauvin not so much.
If a government official could be held accountable for allowing police unions keeping cops like Chauvin on the force there might be ways of avoiding what happened to Floyd. Whatever happens to Chauvin, the taxpayers will probably have to pay some substantial damages. But since a majority of these taxpayers will no doubt keep the same politicians or their clones in place after a dutiful salute to the likes of Black Lives Matter, I cannot generate much sympathy for most of them.
For your entertainment only. A new low in The Woke Gone Wild. Just when you think it can’t get even crazier.
USC Suspended a Communications Professor for Saying a Chinese Word That Sounds Like a Racial Slur
https://reason.com/2020/09/03/usc-greg-patton-chinese-word-offended-students/
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There is even a video for this atrocity. This cannot stand! Thank goodness USC is now “offering supportive measures to any student, faculty, or staff member who requests assistance.” I am truly traumatized.
https://youtu.be/4M0aD78sw8U
Tom Scharf,
It truly is getting more difficult to tell the difference between the Babylon Bee and stories of the idiocy of the woke mob.
Dale S
There is also no sound of him hitting himself against anything solid.
Yep. The officer’s defense sounds like it relies a lot on what he supposedly “thinks” was happening, but which somehow managed to not appear on any of the copious videos. This is not the old fashioned situation where we have no other information than “he said”.
I think you are totally wrong. Different pitches make things audible. Tenors can be heard over entire orchestras– that’s the effect of pitch.
Yah. But you are changing the goal post. The claim isn’t merely that he was “thrashing” (whatever the precise definition of “thrashing” is). It is that he was specifically hitting his head against the windshield.
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No it’s not. His resisting arrest is entirely consistent with… not wanting to be arrested. Resisting arrest is not a subset of “drug-induced-irrational-behavior,”. People who are not on drugs do it.
Uhh… “might” is always possibly true. I think the more pertinent question for Chauvin who — quite honestly– as to rebut the appearance that Floyd died because of the knee to the neck was whether he really died of fentynal poisoning. The evidence for that is spectaculary thin. It is simply that maybe someone with that amount of fentanyl in him– who was walking around not 5 minutes before must really have died of fentanyl poisoning precisely at the time when Chauvin was kneeling on his neck.
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That’s a very unpersuasive argument and remains so even if that is the amount of fentanyl that might (or might not) have killed someone.
“done absolutely nothing to suggest that, I can’t shoot him in “self defense—
The prescribed action for excited delirium isn’t to kill the person but to try and save them. An incorrect diagnosis isn’t going to kill someone absent other medical conditions, like with Eric Garner.
lucia,
Walking around is a bit of a stretch, much like the claim that he was a healthy young man. He was neither young nor healthy. He was clearly in distress exhibiting at least one symptom of a heart attack, shortness of breath, before he was restrained.
DeWitt: Not when he was in his car. Nor when he was buying whatever he bought with the bill.
mikeN
And yet, the defense here is that their actions were because of fear of excited delirium. So, in this case, the result of the incorrect diagnosis was to kill him!
The jury will weigh the evidence.
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It is always possible Chauvin will get off…. after all OJ killed two people with a large knife and he walked. But I think it is almost certain Chauvin will serve serious time. The other officers, especially the two trainees, will likely get off with no time served. BTW, Chauvin’s history will almost certainly be presented to the Jury. His tax evasion and fraudulent residency claims? Maybe not.
Lucia, I’m not convinced Floyd’s death was a result of their actions. In my opinion the knee on the neck would not have killed a healthy person. Chauvin was applying enough pressure to keep Floyd from moving but did not have his weight on it. Did Floyd have a medical condition that would have been exacerbated by the knee on the neck or being placed in that position?
lucia,
A person Floyd’s age who has a heart attack is likely to die very quickly with little or no warning. Can you say Jim Fixx?
DeWitt,
Jim Fixx didn’t have a policeman’s neck to his throat precisely at the time he died.
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Chauvin’s defense will be trying to argue a huge coincidence. That coincidence is that precisely at the time when Chauvin was kneeling on his neck, Floyd has a heart attack that caused him to die. This is a huge coincidence.
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Pointing out stories that amount to “everyone dies” and we can always find examples of people dying, and sometimes suddenly isn’t much help because timing matters and video evidence exists.
MikeN
If he did, this is not a defense against manslaughter or murder. Ever.
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If you shove an old lady and knock her over causing her fragile hip to break and she dies, that’s going to be murder or manslaughter. The same blow would not have killed an ordinary fit adult. The fact that she had the pre-existing medical condition (fragile hip) making her vulnerable to breaking the him and dieing does not turn this into “not causing her death”. It does not make “weak skeletal system” or “old and frail” the cause of her death. The blow– that is your action is what caused the death legally. (Medically it’s going to read like something else).
lucia (Comment #189964): “Jim Fixx didn’t have a policeman’s neck to his throat precisely at the time he died.”
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Neither did George Floyd. The trapezius muscle is not part of the throat.
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lucia: “That coincidence is that precisely at the time when Chauvin was kneeling on his neck, Floyd has a heart attack that caused him to die. This is a huge coincidence.”
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No, you are the one arguing the huge coincidence that precisely at the time Floyd was suffering from a fentanyl overdose he died from something that does not normally cause death or serious injury.
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Note: I am aware that I misused the word ‘precisely’. But I misused it in precisely the way lucia misused it.
lucia,
Once again, Floyd was exhibiting at least one symptom of a heart attack, shortness of breath, before he was forced to the ground and Chauvin put his knee on him. The stress of resisting arrest triggered the attack, not Chauvin’s knee.
There’s a commercial on TV for some online nursing school where a man who collapsed from a heart attack while running a marathon was resuscitated by a graduate of that school. He was very lucky. Only a small fraction of those who collapse from a heart attack are resuscitated and a large fraction of them don’t survive a year. It turns out that running can cause cardiomyopathy (runner’s heart) which Floyd had from meth abuse, leading to heart attacks and collapse while running. Coronary artery disease is a more common cause of death, though.
DeWitt,
You are making a claim. I suspect the attorney’s for Chauvin will make that claim. A jury is going to decide if they believe that claim. I don’t believe that claim. I suspect many won’t.
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Having someone put a knee to your neck while you are having trouble breathing already is just another version of Chauvin picking a delicate target. The target being delicate is not a defense.
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To even remotely be a defense, Chauvin’s lawyers are going to have to persuade the jury that Floyd’s heart attack itself began before Chauvin put a knee on his neck. If all Floyd had is a possible precursor that happens to a heart attack, but the heart attack hadn’t started, then Chauvin’s action is manslaughter.
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lucia (Comment #189968): “Chauvin’s lawyers are going to have to persuade the jury that Floyd’s heart attack itself began before Chauvin put a knee on his neck.”
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Do you have any source for that claim? It strikes me as remarkable. The prosecution normally bears the burden of proof. So the prosecutions would have to show that Chauvin’s actions caused the heart attack while the defense would only have to cast reasonable doubt on that. It seems to be that there is certainly reasonable doubt.
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But there might be aspects of the alleged crime where the prosecutorial burden is lower. But I won’t assume that applies to cause of death without evidence.
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Addition: There is the case in Cleveland where a cop jumped on the hood of a car and fired 15 rounds at the occupants. Found not guilty by a judge on the grounds that the prosecutor did not prove that the occupants were not already dead.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shooting_of_Timothy_Russell_and_Malissa_Williams#Legal_proceedings
I have a question on an unrelated topic. I just read that there were 1.4 million net jobs created in August and that employment increased by 3.75 million. I thought those two numbers should be the same. Can someone explain the difference?
With the video in hand, I think Chauvin is going to have to prove something else really happened. He can’t just claim aliens did it and the prosecution has to disprove this or he walks. The video is everything.
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My guess is Chauvin will need to take the stand here because the evidence is too strong against him. You can choose to sit back and create as much doubt as possible, but I very much doubt we will see “the gloves don’t fit, you must acquit” moment in this trial.
MikeM,
I don’t need a source for that claim. Dewitt is trying to suggest what “triggered” the heart attack. If the heart attack only began after the knee to the neck, sane jurors are going to perceive the “trigger” was the knee to the neck. If the attorney doesn’t try to establish that the heart attack was already happening, he’s going to have a hard time convincing them the “trigger” was Floyd’s own behavior.
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This isn’t “law”. This is an opinion of how people reason and diagnose what “triggered” something.
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Yes. And they have video evidence which I predict they will show the jury. The death happens after prolonged application of a knee to the neck. This is going to affect jury reasoning.
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I’m not suggesting the prosecution doesn’t have a burden. But I (and you) are aware they have copious videos.
I haven’t heard any. But perhaps the lawyers will provide some. Or perhaps the jury can be made to believe that almost any thing that happened well back in time “triggered” the heart attack. Heck… for all I know some juries could be made to believe that eating a very salty ham sandwich 3 hours before the event “triggered” the heart attack. But it is generally the case that people tend to think that
(1) something (like a heart attack) was NOT happening and then
(2) someone acted in a way that could make that thing happen occured (i.e a knee was applied to the neck– this can reduce oxygen flow and either “trigger” a heart attack or asphyxia) and then
(3) the thing (i.e. heart attack) happens.
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Then the act in step (2) “triggered” the event in (3). They may sometimes be wrong. But this is the sort of sequence that will be presented to the jury. They will tend to believe the knee to neck triggered the death eiter by heart attack or asphyxia. The defense will have to rebut that notion.
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So yes: The burden will be on the prosecution to prove. But the prosecution has a strong claim. This is not going to be a case where after the prosecution presents their case, the defense can just say: “Failed to prove. I rest my case”. They are going to have to rebut that case. That is the way the law works. The law doesn’t instruct the jury to believe any and all theories the defense puts forward no matter how tenuous and implausible they sound!
MIkeM,
It’s just silly to bring up that case with the police. There was no video showing they were already alive! And in that case, lots of bullets had already been fired.
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That’s a huge difference relative to Chauvin’s case.
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We have copious video. We obviously know Floyd was alive when Chauvin put a knee to the neck. We can be pretty dang sure that if the defense suggest he was already having a heart attack before the knee to the neck, the prosecutors will ask all four cops if they thought Floyd was having a heart attack. They will ask why the three allowed the knee to then neck and the one applied the knee to the neck if they thought he was having a heart attack. WRT to the three: it’s hard to believe they are going to answer “yes, they thought he was having a heart attack” when they said nothing to suggest they though that might be happening. Moreover, we have tape where the cops were being dismissive of onlookers who were suggesting there was any problem with putting the knee to the neck based on Floyds demeanor. With respect to Chauvin… if he actually says he thought the guy was having a heart attack and then put a kneed to the neck… OMG! He’s toast. Because even though the heart attack needs to have started before to make the “Floyd’s own behavior triggered” plausible, actually putting a knee to the neck of someone who you think is having a heart attack is killing them!
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The thing is: The defense has to present a position that is consitent with lots of video evidence that includes the demeanor of the cops and onlookers during the event. And it then has to be consistent with the heart attack beginning before the knee to the neck. Any other type of defense has a serious risk of Chauvin being found guilty.
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(OTOH: OJ was found not guilty. So who knows?)
Mike M. (#189970) –
Bureau of Labor Statistics release here. I don’t see a figure of 3.75 million there, but there are many different metrics, one of which is nonfarm payroll employment which rose by 1.4 million in August.
[blockquote] Did Floyd have a medical condition that would have been exacerbated by the knee on the neck or being placed in that position?
If he did, this is not a defense against manslaughter or murder. Ever.
[/blockquote/
I’m not saying it is. However, lack of such a condition would mean that Chauvin’s knee did not cause Floyd’s death. I’m unclear on the details here as to whether he had such a condition.
HaroldW,
Thanks for the link, but it is not clear what the terms mean. But scroll down to the bottom and there is a link for charts. That leads to https://www.bls.gov/charts/employment-situation/civilian-employment.htm with a link to a table: https://www.bls.gov/charts/employment-situation/civilian-employment.htm#
The table shows civilian employment in July 202 of 143,532K and for August 147,288K. That confirms the 3.75M increase in employment. But it does not explain why that number is so much bigger than the increase of 1.4M jobs.
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Addition: The 3.75M is in the text that HaroldW linked to:
I also found:
People on temporary layoff are clearly unemployed. But maybe their jobs are not counted as lost jobs until they become permanent?
MikeN
This doesn’t make any sense.
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Whether or not Chauvin had a pre-existing condition, a knee to the neck can cause death or trigger a heart attack. The jury is going to see a knee to the neck held for a prolonged time. They know it can trigger death, and they will hear onlookers telling police precisely that fact. So they’ll know everyone knows a knee to the neck can cause death.
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The prosecution will show this to the jury. The defense almost certainly has to rebut this. Otherwise, the jury will conclude that the knee to the neck killed Chauvin. That’s lots of people impression from viewing the video, so we can be very confident the defense must rebut it.
Mike M.
Thanks for finding that…I only searched for “3.7”, should have looked for “3.8” as well. 😉
There are two surveys in play here. The 3.75 figure comes from the household survey; presumably the the 1.4 figure comes from the establishment survey. I agree with you in not understanding why the figures differ so strongly.
I found this: https://www.bls.gov/covid19/employment-situation-covid19-faq-august-2020.htm
It sounds like what happened is that the system was not set up to deal with the pandemic and as a result the stats are a mess.
Comparing monthly changes in non-farm employment and non-farm jobs, I came up with this:
mnth employ jobs
Mar -2.8 -1.4
Apr -21.1 -20.8
May 3.5 2.7
Jun 4.5 4.8
Jul 1.4 1.7
Aug 3.4 1.4
net -11.1 -11.5
So maybe they finally have it sorted. But it confuses the trends. Was August a great month? Or just mediocre like July?
I’m not arguing what needs to happen in a jury trial. I think you are correct on that.
I am saying I don’t think a knee to the neck as Chauvin was doing, possibly not even the neck according to a post above, would cause death absent a medical condition. I am asking if there was such a condition for Floyd.
Mike N
Why do you think a kneed to the neck can’t case death absent a medical condition? Real question.
I have pretty much the same question as MikeN. I don’t see how a knee to the neck would cause death unless it put pressure on either the windpipe or the major blood vessels. But I thought Chauvin was applying pressure to the trapezius muscle. I don’t see how that would kill someone.
It always astonishes me when the discussion turns to how people believe they can tell from a video whether or not a knee to somebody’s neck is being applied ‘safely’, if there is such a thing. I’m not an expert (although I do have at least *some* real experience with training in grappling, holds, chokes and locks) and it’s darn hard to tell if somebody is doing something right or wrong when you’re standing there watching them in real life, and when you’re already pretty familiar with the technique. I mean, give me a break already. I don’t see how you guys find such certainty from a video that Chauvin wasn’t messing up the application of that technique. Again, assuming that there is some ‘safe’ application of a knee to the neck, which I personally doubt.
In fact, when kids are taught to spar, it was emphasized at my school regularly and repeatedly that it doesn’t matter if you actually get a point. You have to arrange yourself while sparring so that the judges specifically see you getting the point. It’s hard to see exactly what’s happening even when you’re physically there, and even when you’re advanced enough to judge, and even when you’re specifically staring at the fight trying to see what’s going on.
mark bofill (Comment #189986): “It always astonishes me when the discussion turns to how people believe they can tell from a video whether or not a knee to somebody’s neck is being applied ‘safely’, if there is such a thing.”
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Excellent point. So to be clear (which I was not): I do not claim to know that Chauvin was applying the restraint safely. I am only claiming that I *think* that it can be done safely and I am objecting to those who claim to know that it was unsafe. The burden of proof lies on the prosecution.
Fair enough Mike. But from my perspective, a responsible attitude to take would be to avoid applying techniques that I’m not *certain* are safe. I view it as the responsibility of the guy applying force to understand the possible consequences of applying force in a specific way.
In the context of the situation, of course. If someone is trying to kill me, well, I’m not God (meaning I don’t have infinite powers and infinite options). Attacking me isn’t a ‘safe’ thing to do, I can’t guarantee the safety of people trying to attack me. But once the suspect is cuffed and on the ground, I think the police lose the excuse because they are already in control of the situation. There is no obvious need to do things that might be unsafe, where there might be an obvious need in a situation they aren’t yet in control of.
mark bofill (Comment #189990): “But once the suspect is cuffed and on the ground, I think the police lose the excuse because they are already in control of the situation. There is no obvious need to do things that might be unsafe, where there might be an obvious need in a situation they aren’t yet in control of.”
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Indeed. But it is not so simple. To what extent might the neck restraint be unsafe, when used by a person trained to use it? You or I might err on the side of caution even when the risk is minimal. But the police do not have that luxury. To do their jobs they must routinely take actions that might be unsafe for themselves, for others, or both. They simply can not have a take no risks mindset.
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In addition, there is another problem. *If* Floyd was in a state of excited delirium, then allowing him to trash about on the ground and in cuffs might well result in harm. In that case, any action the cops took would have had significant risk for Floyd.
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Of course, we don’t know if Floyd was in a state of excited delirium. There are signs and symptoms that are not evident on video but would have been evident to the cops. We do know that the cops suspected excited delirium, both from the tape and the fact that they called an ambulance fairly early in the process. So the question is then whether their actions were consistent with their training as to what to do in a suspected case of excited delirium. We don’t know if it was or wasn’t. So I object to those who confidently proclaim that the cops were in the wrong.
Thanks Mike. I think we have a fundamental disagreement there. Once a suspect is cuffed and on the ground, I don’t think police ought to do anything that would endanger the suspect. If I understand what you said above (and maybe I don’t), you seem to be suggesting that if the police are trained to do something that might be unsafe to a suspect who is already cuffed and on the ground, that this … I don’t know exactly what. That this in some way is acceptable.
I don’t think police are nearly as well trained as your question seems to imply. I took classes with a police officer who was studying on his own, he was a friend of mine. He paid for the classes out of his own pocket, and he was training with an eye to police work (we’d all chuckle after he’d perform a takedown and reach to his belt for imaginary cuffs and apply them).
It seems to me that if the restraining technique is not obviously fatal, then it’s not obviously murder.
Lord, you gents frighten me.
I’m going to get breakfast and going back to lurking after that.
mark bofill (Comment #189992): “I think we have a fundamental disagreement there.”
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I think we have a failure to communicate.
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“Once a suspect is cuffed and on the ground, I don’t think police ought to do anything that would endanger the suspect.”
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I agree 100%. But I also think that the police should not fail to take actions that might reduce danger to the suspect. And sometimes it can be hard to tell one from the other.
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DaveJR (Comment #189993): “It seems to me that if the restraining technique is not obviously fatal, then it’s not obviously murder.”
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I hope I misread that.
Mike,
Are you saying that the knee to the neck was intended to reduce danger to the suspect?
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I put the question out on social media for my teachers and classmates. One of my instructors pointed out that it’s not really a ‘control’ technique, in the sense that it doesn’t allow you to maneuver the subject around like a wrist lock would for example. It’s more of a submission. She also pointed out that it doesn’t really leave you options, varying pressure is about all you can do from there. Her take was, like me, she wouldn’t use it unless death or serious injury was an acceptable outcome.
My cop friend agreed and mentioned that it’s not a technique taught or recommended by SSGT (apparently that’s the State of Alabama’s academy / recognized system for this stuff).
mark bofill (Comment #189997): “Are you saying that the knee to the neck was intended to reduce danger to the suspect?”
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I am saying that it *might* be. It seems there is no generally accepted procedure as to what should be done before the EMT’s arrive, but that at least some people recommend immobilization in a position that will allow the EMT’s access. It is my impression that the neck restraint is an immobilization technique. I am not sure of any of this. Heck, there is not even universal agreement on whether excited delirium is a thing.
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mark – Are you and your instructors assuming a subject who is sane? The right technique to use on a sane person might be different from the right technique to use on a person who is not sane. A person in the throes of excited delirium is not sane, at least not usually.
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Again, I do not know what is right in a case like this. I am arguing against those who claim to know.
Perhaps the knee to the neck is taught, however I’d like to ask the instructors “What should you do if the the suspect becomes unresponsive, and people are yelling at you that the suspect is no longer conscious?”. Obviously the answer would not be “do not attempt to determine the status of the suspect, but instead continue to apply pressure to the neck until the suspect is dead”.
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I’m more willing to believe this is negligent homicide than some kind of poison souled racist murder. I’m not buying this is standard police procedure where an extraordinary event out of police control occurred.
I honestly don’t know what you read. Reasonable doubt suggests that if the restraint was not intended to kill, the death was not deliberate murder. I’ll get my coat.
Mike,
I well understand that argument from authority is a logical fallacy. Mark Bofill and a couple random karate teachers from po’dunk say that knee to neck is too dangerous to use, so we should accept that? No, I get that. I don’t know what else to say though.
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If there’s training for specifically dealing with crazy people in Midori Yama Budokai, I haven’t run across it yet.
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Thanks Mike.
It suspect a proper scientific study of relevant incidents would support the hypothesis that relative to alternative techniques knee to neck causes unintended injury or death more often. I don’t see why that’s a controversial idea, but maybe it is.
MikeM
On what would you base the idea that he was applying pressure to the trapezius muscles (which are not in the neck)?
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But even applying pressure to the back could restrict air paths because it would reduce expansion of the chest. So I can see how that could lower block oxygenation and thus induce a heart attack.
MikeM
We know he died while the restraint was applied. We know that sort of restraint can reduce oxygen and either “choke” the person or trigger a heart attack.
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People (and juries consisting of people) are allowed to see this evidence and come up with a tentative theory that then requires rebuttal. Yes: the burden lies on the prosecuiton. But in this case, that burden appears to have been met unless the defense can come up with a “plausible” counter defense. Some of these counter defenses are “well… people can die of other things precisely at the time when the knee was applied to the neck”. I don’t find that by itself rises to a reasonable doubt that the simpler explanation is the correct on.
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That’s reasonable doubt for murder. But it’s not reasonable doubt for manslaughter.
Dave,
I apologize if you found my remark objectionable. I was (mostly) joking when I said you guys are terrifying.
I haven’t been able to articulate to my own satisfaction what I think my problem was with your idea. Maybe I’ll get to the bottom of it and clarify at some point.
Mark, the lawyers released part of MPD training that showed the knee to the neck was part of their training.
Stopping the struggling of someone with excited delirium is for their own good, according to the whitepaper produced by ACEP. First step is to attempt verbal calming.
I concede it is possible Chauvin’s knee to the neck had his weight on it and could have been dangerous. I am assuming it was not for my arguments, because I don’t think he did. I saw a reference that at one point Floyd picked up his head, but don’t know if this is true.
Tom Scharf (#189940) –
Belated thanks for your response, just saw it now.
I wonder if there are other interpretations of positivity rate.
Thanks Mike. I’ll look into that.
Mike N,
Do you have a link to the full MPD training manual released by the lawyers?
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(On thing I would note that the lawyers are probably going to have to decide if the defense is that Floyd had symptoms of excited delirium (including superhuman strength) or he has symptoms of an ongoing heart attack (which would, if anything, include lack of strength.) Given their need to rebut the “knee on the neck can kill someone– and that person died”, they really can’t just have a defense that’s pretty much all over the place. They will need to chose.
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I get that the collective of people arguing on blogs doesn’t have to decide. The collective doesn’t have a Borg mind and one person might think “symptoms of ongoing heart attack” and other “signs of ongoing heart attack”. But really…. the defense is going to have to decide which is their theory. But otherwise, their story will just look like a scatter gun defense and it won’t sound like any individual story line is plausible. So none of the lines will be seen as reasonable>
I thought Chavin was being charged with murder. I see now that he is apparently being charged with murder and manslaughter.
DaveJR,
Yes. And given the specifics of the statutes in MN, he quite likely will not be found guilty of the murder charges as they need some additional tings beyond merely intentionally killing someone. The manslaughter is where is is vulnerable.
I think they would have to go with excited delirium since Chauvin says this in the video. Another cop tells Floyd, you’re going to have a heart attack.
I don’t have a link to the training.
I did link the ACEP white paper on excited delirium, which was an appendix to an MPD paper, but I don’t think it’s the training.
What would be a good estimate of the number of people infected with COVID but asymptomatic currently?
It seems to me no more than 10% of people listed as dying of COVID would have died of something else.
What I read here for example, or here regarding this training suggests the following:
1) Kneeling on the neck is the position of ‘maximal restraint’ intended for suspects who are cuffed yet who still pose a threat.
2) Periodically, officers using this technique or any other that involves keeping the suspect in a prone position (which I gather is hazardous due to the risk of positional asphyxiation) are required to move the suspect to the recovery position, on their side, to ensure that they can breathe.
3) Police Chief Medaria Arradondo claims that Chauvin was trained to move suspects to the recovery position to alleviate the possibility of positional asphyxiation. He did not do so with Floyd.
4) Lane (the officer who’d only been on the job four days) asked Chauvin twice if they should move Floyd to the recovery position. Floyd said no.
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I gather Chauvin used a technique that he should have known was dangerous and did not adhere to his training and periodically move Floyd into a sideways recovery position where Floyd could breathe. That’s about all I’ve been able to come up with. I haven’t found the actual training materials either.
Aw, crud. Hosed the links.
this
https://www.mprnews.org/story/2020/07/28/mpd-records-suggest-scarce-training-on-dangers-of-improper-restraints
and
https://www.kare11.com/article/news/local/george-floyd/minneapolis-police-training-materials-show-knee-to-neck-restraint-similar-to-used-on-george-floyd/89-9f002e3f-972a-4410-86cb-50a1237fc496
Not that this matters either way, but what my cop friend told me on social media is consistent with this:
[Edit: I’ll grant that apparently Chauvin was taught (or at least saw in a power point presentation) that a knee to a neck could be used in some situations with particularly violent or dangerous individuals who still posed a threat while in cuffs. He didn’t follow the rest of his training, that might have made this dangerous technique more safe.]
MikeN
Reading here…. doesn’t look good for Chauvin who, after all, did not stop using the “maximal restraint” after Floyd was at least passed out (and in fact, dead.) Also, Chauvin did not do this
And Chauvin did not do it despite Lane suggesting it.
Too bad neither of the articles links to the 30 page document evidently mentioned by the lawyers. I guess I’ll have to hunt it down to read something more than small mentioned.
Looks ok for Lane who had been on the job 4 days.
mark bofill
That’s the way I read the info at the links. As I said: doesn’t look good for Chauvin’s defense. Looks ok for Lane’s.
I think so too Lucia. They may get him on murder. I’m starting to really wonder if Chauvin didn’t have some motive we don’t know to want floyd dead. I think manslaughter at least is going to stick.
I don’t think Lane was correct. Lane said he wanted to put Floyd on his side because of the excited delirium, not because he’s unconscious or positional asphyxia. Chauvin says on his stomach is the right move for delirium. I think Chauvin was correct, but at some point had to stop kneeling(perhaps that point had already been reached). Before I said sit Floyd up but it appears on his side is the instruction. I don’t remember what happened in the Florida case when the guy became unconscious.
Mark Bofill, I wonder about deliberate murder. They were working at the same club, which has been suggested is a CIA front based on ownership records. However, Chauvin was not on the scene at first and arrived later. Lane’s prompting should have caused him to put Floyd on his side, even if it was later.
MikeN,
Even if Lane was wrong, it will look bad for Chauvin. Putting him on his side is recommended to avoid positional asphyxia which can occur for many reasons. Lane suggested it twice. It’s recommended on the same pages that discuss the knee to neck restraint.
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Chauvin will have a very hard time trying to look like “just following training” or “procedure” if he tries to claim he did the one bit that is dangerous and specifically omitted the part that is intended to prevent the knee to the neck from killing Floyd!
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I don’t know how Chauvin arriving later would clear him of murder.
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Chauvin took charge, did the knee to the neck procedure and declined the suggestion to shift Floyd to a safer position twice. In the process he failed to follow training (by not shifting his position.)
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If, in his mind, he arrived, saw his “sworn enemy” Floyd and his motive above was to off him, that’s murder. The fact that he arrived later doesn’t matter one iota. (We haven’t heard background on any past interactions. But there does seem a reasonable chance they knew each other, knew of each other or one had had some previous effect on the other’s life.)
Here is a very good article by a guy who has looked into thi more than any of us: https://medium.com/@gavrilodavid/why-derek-chauvin-may-get-off-his-murder-charge-2e2ad8d0911
It has a link to the training docs, including the white paper, just under heading 3.
Note that the issue of prone vs side is in dispute as to which is safer. It is clear that Chauvin thought the prone position to be appropriate under the circumstances.
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Deliberate murder is just nuts. “I want to kill this guy, so I’ll make him lay down on his stomach”. Right. “And I will do it in front of a big crowd and overdo it just so everybody gets the point.” Yeah, that make sense.
From the White Paper:
They got that right. The White Paper does not seem to say anything about what position the subject should be restrained in.
The links posted by mark bofill (Comment #190019) would seem to indicate that there is a grave problem with MPD training. The only person disputing that seems to be the police chief, hardly an unbiased source.
One article has a picture of the recovery position. It obviously can not be used on a person in handcuffs. But the police chief says the cops were supposed to use it. Sounds like he is throwing his officers under the bus.
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What I cited above as “training materials” aren’t. It is a report dated July 26, 2018. The purpose is not entirely clear (bureaucrats, don’t you know) but it says:
Then in the conclusions:
So it sounds like that was done. But then:
No indication those were done.
Thanks Mike.
Link to white paper (See appendix 4, about 41 pages in)
https://lims.minneapolismn.gov/Download/File/1853/Pre-Hospital%20Sedation%20Report%20Revised%2011-20-2018.pdf
I don’t see discussion of position either. Here’s what I find that seems to be as close as it gets (pg 55):
Emphasis added.
There’s a lot there to digest. I’ll think about it some more.
I think a person in cuffs could be rolled onto his side, as my police friend says he’s trained to do.
Regarding this:
Well, it does sort of make sense. I mean, you’re laying out the case that justifies what he did by way of claiming excited delirium. If you’re right, Chauvin has a legitimate out even if his intent was to kill. And I don’t think you or anyone disputes that death was a possible outcome in that situation. It might have been an ‘opportunity’ type murder. [Taking advantage of an unexpected opportunity to murder Floyd, which I speculate he wishes to do for reasons unknown.]
To be clear, I haven’t said (and don’t yet believe) Chauvin had motive to kill Floyd. I merely said I’ve begun to wonder if he has such motive. I don’t have evidence I consider solid of anything more than manslaughter in my view as of yet.
MPD policy: http://www2.minneapolismn.gov/police/policy/mpdpolicy_5-300_5-300
5-316
5-316 IV A
But there is no (b) and the officers did not use a hobble restraint device. I don’t know what to make of that. They did call EMS.
Like mark, I also don’t suspect Chauvin had motive to kill Floyd. There isn’t any evidence for that. I’m just saying Chauvin arriving late isn’t meaningful. If he had motive, he had motive. The sequence of events after he arrived would be enough to make it murder provided he took the steps he did in order to kill him.
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Oddly, I don’t think the presence of the crowd etc is much of counter evidence. if this was a murder of opportunity, the murderer only has to think “knee to the neck is allowed…. I’ll do that, press a bit hard, not roll him over.” He thinks it’s allowed, knows it dangerous, but he thinks the presence of the crowd doesn’t matter.
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But we have no particular evidence of motive. We merely know they could have interacted either directly or indirectly. They worked at the same bar, so their “acquaintance/business/work circles” at least overlapped.
mark bofill (Comment #190033): “I think a person in cuffs could be rolled onto his side, as my police friend says he’s trained to do.”
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But unless your friend works for the MPD, that is really not relevant. The issue is whether Chauvin acted in accord with MPD policy and training, not that of some other department.
There is also the issue of whether that would work in the case of a person irrationally struggling against restraints.
Two words: Reasonable Doubt.
Chauvin doesn’t have to prove he didn’t murder Floyd. The prosecution has to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Floyd wouldn’t have died if he hadn’t been restrained by Chauvin. I think that’s going to be a tough sell.
Before the autopsy results, it did appear to be pretty much open and shut. But now we know Floyd’s heart was damaged and that he was high on fentanyl and meth. Either one of those could result in exertion triggered heart failure. It happens to people who aren’t being restrained. Jim Fixx indeed didn’t have a knee on his back and he died anyway.
DeWitt Payne (Comment #190038): “Two words: Reasonable Doubt.”
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Indeed. There is also the fact that juries are extremely reluctant to convict cops for actions taken in performance of their duties. They are usually willing to use the thinnest of reasons to return a verdict of not guilty.
Mike,
Not at all. This:
is in response to this:
The issue I was responding to was your claim that the recovery position obviously could not be used on a person in handcuffs. A cuffed suspect could be rolled onto their side; the recovery position. They could be rolled onto their side regardless of whether or not my friend works for MPD.
I get the impression BTW that a suspect in the prone position is better and/or safer for the officers when a suspect exhibits ExDS. I don’t actually think anyone is claiming that this is better for the suspect. It seems to be more dangerous for the suspect, due to the risk of positional asphyxiation.
DeWitt
Sure. But there is going to be a trial. The prosecutors are going to present a pretty convincing case he did. His defense will need to to rebutt a strong claim he did — and that needs to provide a reasonable doubt. Unlikely coincidences — like suggesting he had a heart attack that started 2 seconds before the knee to the neck was cutting oxygen– so he “really” died of that heart attack that was not triggered by the kneed to the neck aren’t reasonable doubts.
Sure. But you still need to have those cause his death at just that precise time. That’s not a reasonable doubt relative to the simpler explanation. Maybe the jury will buy it. But I think it’s a tough sell for the defense. If I were on the jury, I wouldn’t buy it.
Sure. But if someone had happened to have been compressing his neck at the time, they’d have a very hard time convincing a juror that it was the heart condition and not the neck compression. So it’s going to be a tough sell for the defense because it requries beliving in a huge coincidence.
MikeM
Historically, they have tended not to convict cops where they might have convicted others.
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But
* this year things could very well be different in terms of attitude.
* historically, juries have not had tons of video evidence of the events surrounding the crime.
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This is a situation with an unusually large amount of video evidence, witnesses who were near by, witnesses who were putting in their 2 cents as the situation was unfolding and so on. Even by today’s standards of cameras everywhere this is an unusually large amount of video evidence and starting very early in the process.
lucia,
Yes. I think it might be difficult to find an impartial jury at this point. [Edit: I should have said, due to the unusually large amount of video evidence that’s been splashed around the Internet and media.]
mark bofill,
Positional asphyxiation seems to be at least somewhat controversial, so we can not assume that keeping a suspect in a prone position is universally prohibited. Yes, a person in cuffs could be rolled onto his side. But that does not mean that it was MPD policy to do that. Maybe it was, maybe not. I have not seen any evidence that it was. The slide used to claim that it was policy in the MPD shows a recovery position incompatible with handcuffs. The MPD policy handbook I linked to above only refers to the recovery position with regard to using the hobble restraint device. So the question of correct MPD procedure with a handcuffed suspect remains open.
lucia (Comment #190043): “* this year things could very well be different in terms of attitude.”
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Yes. I think that likely increases the chances of a hung jury and reduces the chances of an outright acquittal.
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lucia: “* historically, juries have not had tons of video evidence of the events surrounding the crime.”
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But such evidence is not new. Has it made a difference? It did not seem to matter much in the case of the James Boyd shooting.
Mike,
I’m not trying to be difficult, but could you point me towards evidence of that controversy? I don’t seem to be reading anything anywhere that suggests anything other than the notion that the prone position risks asphyxia and that the recovery position doesn’t.
I *did* read the recommendations about the prone position to control people who are still a threat even in cuffs. I *did not* read anything to suggest that people who are still a threat even in cuffs should be put in the prone position to prevent asphyxia. I *did* read things that suggested they should be put in the prone position out of consideration for the safety of the officers.
[Edit: in case it wasn’t clear I’m not being sarcastic. I genuinely wonder if you read something I overlooked in the links. Thanks in advance.]
mark: “I *did* read the recommendations about the prone position to control people who are still a threat even in cuffs. I *did not* read anything to suggest that people who are still a threat even in cuffs should be put in the prone position to prevent asphyxia. I *did* read things that suggested they should be put in the prone position out of consideration for the safety of the officers.”
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I’d say that seems right and that you stated it more clearly than I did. I did not mean to imply that the prone position reduces the chance of asphyxia. It *might* be safer for the person in custody *if* it reduces the chance of self harm. I don’t know if that is the case or not. There seems to be some controversy as to whether the prone position is really riskier in terms of asphyxia. For instance: https://www.forcescience.org/2012/01/is-prone-positioning-really-riskier-for-suspects/
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If the risk to the suspect is indeed very small, then the prone position might well be justified by reducing risk to the officers and bystanders.
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But it does not seems at all clear that Chauvin was wrong by keeping Floyd in the prone position. Maybe he was right, maybe he was wrong, or maybe the MPD was in the wrong and he was correctly following misguided policy and training.
Thanks Mike.
Or maybe he was ignoring MPD training that told him to switch to the recovery position, if that’s in fact part of MPD training. Or maybe the MPD training and policy was confusing or ambiguous.
In other news,
Inconceivable!
I guess Rob Reiner really doesn’t like Trump. Who’d a thunk.
Mark, ‘recovery position’, sounds like something you do after you do something else, in order to prevent severe problems. Yes, I do think the knee on neck is recommended for the good of the person placed in that position. That is my reading of the whitepaper- first try verbal calming, after that you need to physically stop the person from struggling, for their own good.
Lucia, I say arriving late makes the deliberate murder unlikely, because I think Chauvin wouldn’t have known it was Floyd until he arrived, and I think the excited delirium as an excuse would have had to have been thought out beforehand.
I didn’t know Lane had recommended on his side twice. I know when he said he was worried about ‘excited delirium or whatever’. When was the other time?
People evaluating chances of winning at trial seem to ignoring the effects of the riots.
MikeN,
Yes. That’s my understanding of it as well.
Knee on neck isn’t specifically cited in that paper AFAICT, and the impression I got was this:
The control measures don’t stop the suspect from struggling, and I don’t see it talking about the control measures themselves being for the suspect’s own good, but rather as a prerequisite for medical assessment and intervention. The white paper goes on to talk about sedation protocols after this.
I mean, within reason right. I’m sure prone position is useful in preventing someone from mutilating themselves, sure.
Edit: but I don’t think prone position is claimed to minimize the risk of asphyxia, that was my original point I believe.
Well, looking back it wasn’t exactly what I said. I said prone was for the benefit of the officers. It can be for the benefit of the suspect as well, OK.
MikeM
Jason Van Dyke was convicted
https://theappeal.org/police-video-helped-laquan-mcdonalds-killer-get-convicted-but-it-could-have-helped-him-get-acquitted/
I wouldn’t be at all surprised if it depends a bit on what the video shows.
> I don’t see it talking about the control measures themselves being for the suspect’s own good, but rather as a prerequisite for medical assessment and intervention.
The medical assessment and intervention are for the suspect’s own good. The control measures are a prerequisite for that. Which would make the control measures are also for his own good. I think stopping the person from struggling is what is meant by control measures. I thought I saw that specific language in there, as well as needed to prevent severe consequences. The specific control measures were not described, which makes sense from a medical group.
I agree that putting knee on neck is more convenient for cops than on side. It’s not clear you can stop a person from struggling while on their side.
—- The part after control measures, page 55 of the PDF:
When necessary, this should be accomplished as rapidly and safely as possible. Recent research indicates that physical struggle is a much greater contributor to catecholamine surge and metabolic acidosis than other causes of exertion or noxious stimuli. Since these parameters are thought to contribute to poor outcomes in ExDS, the specific physical control methods employed should optimally minimize the time spent struggling, while safely achieving physical control. The use of multiple personnel with training in safe physical control measures is encouraged.
No amount of physical control can prevent someone from struggling.
But perhaps physical control can reduce the level of exertion? If so, that might help prevent metabolic acidosis. And surely control can reduce physical damage from struggling.
I didn’t say that well. Why does a wrist lock work? I think it’s because on a really visceral level we are adverse to having our limbs broken and destroyed. Normal people under normal circumstance will often submit in order to avoid this potential outcome. But we’re talking about excited delirium specifically where the white paper says these tactics are less effective. I think if six people held me down I could struggle all I liked. It’d get me nowhere, but I could do it.
Pain probably has something to do with it too. I think we speak of ‘control’ as the ability to move the subject around using a technique, as opposed to a submission, where maneuvering them around might not be possible. I think part of control is that the subject moves the way you want to alleviate the pain you are causing.
Maybe that’s the point of the knee to neck, I think it’s a submission. I don’t get why someone should continue applying it after the subject submits though.
Shrug.
mark bofill (Comment #190063): “I don’t get why someone should continue applying it after the subject submits though.”
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I think it is because people in excited delirium will sometimes relax for a while then renew struggling. So It might make sense to continue applying the knee with minimal pressure so as to be able to react quickly. I don’t think there is a way to know how much pressure Chauvin was applying or if it was constant.
I went back over the video. We can talk about ExDS and what officers feared Floyd might have done and the utility of knees to necks all we like, but at the end of the day. Floyd, in the prone position, with pressure being applied by multiple police officers to his back / torso, neck and legs repeatedly complained that he couldn’t breathe. He eventually lost consciousness and subsequently died.
I think a reasonable person in the shoes of the police in that situation would have realized that Floyd was exhibiting signs of respiratory distress. I don’t care if Floyd complained about his breathing earlier. Earlier, if he was in respiratory distress the police weren’t doing anything to cause it. Obviously keeping him prone with his hands cuffed behind his back and having multiple people apply pressure could legitimately cause difficulty breathing. And even if the conventional wisdom about the prone position contributing to positional asphyxia were to turn out to be scientifically wrong, it doesn’t change the fact that police are widely trained to believe that the prone position contributes to positional asphyxia.
The bottom line in my view is that the cops appeared to show a callous, reckless indifference to the fact that the tactics they were using appeared to result in retarding Floyd’s ability to breathe, and a callous and reckless indifference to the possibility that Floyd might die as a result.
I hope whatever training materials they have that override what I think anyone else would call common sense in the situation are awfully persuasive, for their sakes.
That’s about all I’ve got. Thanks all.
mark bofill
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This. It expresses problems the defense has.
(1) If Chauvin’s defense wants to argue “just following training” with the knee to the neck procedure because the documents also advise prone for positional asphyxia. So, they are then going to be asked why he…. ehrm… didn’t follow training.
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(2) The excuse that he was having trouble breathing before is not a defense to not following training to deal with the trouble breathing during
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(3) Someone here noted the “picture” of prone didn’t show hand cuffs. But it’s clearly not impossible to turn the guy prone when wearing hand cuffs. If the defense claims so, the prosecution will easily find people to say you very well can do so. As for “the training does show that”… well… jurors might internally guffaw at that. No one expects illustrations of every possible situation showing prone position both with/without hand cuffs, both with/without leg restraints and so on. The argument that police would need a zillion photos in every possible situation is pretty much an insult to police intelligence, and no one thinks cops are that stupid.
The purpose of a jury is for people to hear evidence and use their experience and common sense to decide whether a case is proven beyond a reasonable doubt. So ‘defenses’ might sound ok in isolation on the intertubes. But I can’t help but think most jurors reaction to the “the prone picture doesn’t show hand cuffs” paired with a claim like ‘you can’t turn someone on their side wearing hand cuffs” would just be… “Really?! You want me to believe that… really?” It could easily make jurors think the defense is just flinging shit at the wall and hoping some sticks.
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Though who knows? Maybe flinging shit will work in this case. After all, OJ got off.
The defense just has to get one juror to buy into something and stick to it. It is fairly likely that some jurors will be predisposed to believe the cops are the good guys and are getting a bad rap, so the defense will just try to give those few people an excuse to let him walk (errr … reasonable doubt). As time go by and BLM continues to discredit itself with overly aggressive tactics it might get easier for the defense.
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That Obi Wan, is the defense’s only hope IMO. An acquittal seems very unlikely. I wouldn’t do murder but would easily go for negligent manslaughter. That’s the compromise in the jury room. The judge will then throw the book at him in sentencing for political purposes.
Lucia,
I agree with your summary. And yup. One never really knows what a jury’s going to do.
Tom,
I agree.
Hmmm… a model finds that the Sturgis rally produced around 260,000 Covid infections. While around 260 have been connected to it.
Which to believe, I wonder? (Oops, no rhetoricals. Not the paper.)
Notice how nobody is trafficking in coronavirus predictions and models anymore? I’ve seen a few alarmist articles but for the most part the modeling industry (or the media) has given up on trying to predict this thing.
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Part of this is the seemingly unpredictable second waves popping up everywhere that have different magnitudes and durations.
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There aren’t any simplified models that can do double humps unless some measurable underlying behavior change in humans or the virus can be factored in, and I just don’t see it. We are in a totally reactive phase at this point. Increasing human contacts is a factor (duh) but we are way past lock down tolerance in September.
Blame it on deplorable behavior (see “Sturgis is the GOPâ€) is the instinct of the coastal press but it is really hard to tie it to something convincing.
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This whole thing is just a gigantic turd laid on the world and there isn’t much left to do but hose it down when it is over. pardon my poetic imagery. India is now second in cases (but lower death numbers, maybe lower average age) and is still increasing. Europe has a second wave in progress in several countries (Spain France, UK, Netherlands, Poland). This barely makes the news likely because it is inconvenient in the US election cycle.
HaroldW,
There is nothing more convincing of ivory tower confirmation bias than the academic treatment of Sturgis vs the original mass BLM protests. Both occurred during a big uptick in cases and the data has been parsed in completely different ways. There are certainly big spikes in SD and ND. This would now be better as a social science study where academics are told to study outbreaks tied to friendly and opposing ideological events and see how they change standards of evidence. I’m sure there are some people who care about these standards of evidence, they just won’t likely make it through the media filter with conclusions of “it’s complicated and no easy answers”.
Median age:
India: 26
US: 38
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Percent over 65 years old:
India 6.4%
US: 17%
Tom
Sure. It could end up with a hung jury. Then the state has to decide if they should retry. I don’t know what the state usually does in such instances.
Tom,
I think it’s likely no one wants to face “what about Sweden”. Like it or not, they look like they’ve gone through one wave and unlike people who had stronger shelter in place, so far, don’t seem to be having a second wave.
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Honestly, ours isn’t necessarily a real 2nd wave. We had big waves in big cities, then they moved out to more rural locations. I have no idea what’s “normal” for these things given that human populations are actually in clusters (i.e. cities) separated by some more lightly populated distances. But I know the Black Plague didn’t hit every place in the world in a way that would have shown a single wave if we plotted “cases/day” for the entire world on a graph.
Another trial on a hung jury is a political decision by the district attorney I suppose. Apparently about 6% of trials end in hung juries. I couldn’t find any data on how often they are sent back for another trial. Conviction rates are lower on second trials, not surprising. This is no normal case though, normally this might be plea bargained out with this significant of evidence, but I don’t see the the prosecutor doing that here, too much blow back.
Tom Scharf,
I’d be very surprised in the DA was interested in plea-ing this down.
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I suspect Chauvin will think his chances of not-guilty or hung jury are high. (I think he’s not realistic… but given his tax issues and other things, I suspect he’s a guy who is a bit entitled. He’s likely to be over confident a jury will see things his way. Of course this is arm chair psychology by a non-psychologist. (But I do own some nice chairs, so I’m highly qualified!)
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I also think Chauvin will not want to accept certain jail time. So he won’t take a plea that puts him in jail with prisoners who are not likely to have a generally favorable view of cops in general and especially not those they think use excessive force when arresting people.
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So yeah…. I think this is going to trial. Everything at the trial will be covered. So we’ll see what the defense presents to the jury. Right now, we’ve only seen things the defense has pushed out the the public which is a different thing.
Tom Scharf,
“ This barely makes the news likely because it is inconvenient in the US election cycle.â€
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That is a big part of it. No favorable, or even similar, comparisons with other countries will ever be publicized in the time of OMB.
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The interesting thing is that without exception the second peak in cases corresponds to a dramatically lower rate of fatalities per case. Some may argue that is because most cases were missed in the earlier peak, doctors have become better at treating the seriously ill, that hydroxychloroquine has helped reduce the rate of serious illness, or that the people infected in the second peak are on average much younger (I suspect this is most of it). In any case, the death rates in the second peak, regardless of where, are dramatically lower….. 1/3 to 1/10 of the first peak. The actual “infection fatality rate†is going to keep dropping in most places, until the pandemic gradually declines in coverage and people lose interest.
Lucia,
“ So he won’t take a plea that puts him in jail with prisoners who are not likely to have a generally favorable view of cops in general and especially not those they think use excessive force when arresting people.â€
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Sure. Placed in a prison population with lots of violent offenders, Chauvin would likely be attacked/brutalized, if not killed. He could be placed in solitary for his own protection, but that would make his time to be served much more difficult. He should just have not kneeled on Floyd’s neck, and he would be able to defraud the state Minnesota on taxes, and not worry about being killed by other prisoners.
The media is predictably picking up and parroting the Sturgis study linked to above.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2020/09/08/worst-case-scenerios-sturgis-rally-may-be-linked-266000-coronavirus-cases-study-says/
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“…they estimated 266,796 cases could be linked to the rally. That’s about 19 percent of the number reported nationally between Aug. 2 and Sept. 2”
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Really, 20% of all US cases? Ha ha. How can a media organization print something like that and not even question it. It boggles my mind. This is typical activist “science” and ambush journalism. Get all the talking points out, “12.2B in costs already!”, before any sane critique of the study can be done and then simply never report on it again.
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This is such an embarrassment for everyone involved. Can the media not determine when they are being played or do they simply not care. Also from the museum of the not hard to believe these turn out to be the very same people who had this to say about the BLM protests:
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“We demonstrate that cities which had protests saw an increase in social distancing behavior for the overall population relative to cities that did not,†reads the report called, “Black lives matter protests, social distancing and COVID-19.â€
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Unbelievable. Science should be throwing this organization under the bus, but they are too cowardly / fearful to do so. This defies common sense, come on people.
Aside from the incredible figure of 260K cases — as mentioned above, 20% of US cases over that period — there is the figure of $46K per case. Given the high percentage of asymptomatic or mild cases, I find it hard to believe that’s a fair figure. For a hospitalized case, sure… probably higher, given how hospitals provide an inflated “list price” which insurance does not pay. But most cases don’t incur much in the way of costs.
Caveat: I have not looked at their source for the costs…just a gut reaction of implausibility.
On a different topic, a personal view of Trump’s opinion of military personnel, here
Thanks Harold. I appreciated that link.
On the Chauvin defense – I think in addition to the following the training defense, that they will also argue that Floyd was dying of a drug overdose and would have died whether he was sitting, standing or lying down and restrained per the manual.
I believe I read that when confronted by the cops that Floyd gobbled down the drugs on his person – adding to his overdose problem. The argument will be he would have died had the cops just walked away.
I bet there is reasonable doubt in that argument alone.
We will see.
RickA,
Does anyone have any evidence Floyd gobbled down drugs on his person when confronted with cops? If yes, I’d like to see a link to the video. There is lots of video and my recollection of the bit where the cops arrest him doesn’t show him gobbling anything down.
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I really think theories that involve rank speculation with hypotheticals that “maybe” something happened with zero evidence for that happening don’t make the doubt “reasonable”. If they bring that sort of thing up, the prosecution is obviously going to ask for reasonable evidence for that speculation. If there is clearly non, and I were on the jury, those sorts of utterly speculative things with zero evidentiary support would make me think the defense doesn’t have a real defense. I’d tend to start to view them as presenting a “flinging shit at the wall and hoping some sticks” defense. That’s not a good look.
Well, there is this from the bodycam transcript:
https://www.startribune.com/read-the-transcript-of-thomas-lane-s-body-camera-footage/571678791/
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From Urban Dictionary:
https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Hooping
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Of course, slang is always changing.
Tom, BLM protests did lead to social distancing, as people stayed at home to avoid the riots.
I think super spreader events might be important early in an infection breakout, but aren’t nearly as interesting in the midst of an ongoing pandemic. The ratio of the number of contacts the existing infected population has compared to any single event where an infected person attended is likely enormous, many magnitudes. The “living in your house with others” and “going to work” events are the most dangerous of all.
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Just doing the math of your local area you will figure out that a lot of infected people are shopping at your grocery store and getting gas at your gas station. You are being exposed and there is risk. You should minimize that risk with reasonable precautions.
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An event like Sturgis can serve to spread the virus to far away places, however the virus is already everywhere in the US. During the initial outbreak there were many critical “Sturgis” events known as airports that did spread the disease. 2.7M people per day through airports in the US. It’s now unstoppable, it still makes sense to not go to Sturgis and airports if possible, but singling out events on an ideological basis is just political narrative.
The levels of drugs in the body during the autopsy will reveal whether they were potentially fatal, or likely fatal. If you ate up all your Fentanyl then you may very likely kill yourself. Normal levels of these drugs won’t override the video evidence IMO. The cause of death would be labelled a drug overdose. I’m not sure if there are standards for these levels or not.
Superspreader events are critical. The evidence that I have seen is that a substantial majority of people with the virus never transmit it to anyone outside their household. Out of household transmission is dominated by a very small number of people. There seems to be some evidence, still highly speculative, that people are only highly contagious for a short window of time. If a person in that window happens to be in an environment favorable for transmission, like a bar, then you get a superspreader event. Maybe I will try to find links later.
Good luck. All I have found are some anecdotal studies from Asia. There is a gold mine of information from contact tracers that seems to be unexploited. There was a couple recent articles from NPR with limited contact tracing info. The chances of picking it up from an infected family member was only around 25% which I found surprisingly low, but that is consistent with my experience of colds and the flu with my family in the past.
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The few days before and after symptoms appear seem to be the most critical, and some people are much more viral spreaders than others. Incredibly this is still just speculative. Since it takes 2-5 days after exposure to start showing symptoms the amount of spread for a single event is just one or two generations depending on the length.
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As far as these events being critical now, that is also speculative. I don’t doubt these things happen, but I doubt whether their numbers compare to the ho-hum family member or worker transmission numbers.
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Edit: “The virus can spread before symptoms appear, and does so most easily through five P’s: people in prolonged, poorly ventilated, protection-free proximity.”
There are a lot of articles on superspreading, but they all seem to derive from the same source. Here is one:
https://www.advisory.com/daily-briefing/2020/05/22/superspreaders
https://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/937101?src=mkm_covid_update_200909_mscpedit_&uac=372227HT&impID=2556394&faf=1
https://www.wsj.com/articles/are-you-ready-for-some-political-football-11599606173
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Hear, hear! And that’s all I’m going to say about George Floyd for now.
I know that the origin of the virus isn’t our most pressing concern at the moment, but I was fascinated by this story about scientific detective work and the response to it.
Dewitt:
Paused vaccine. 🙁
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Of course, I do prefer the do phase III trials and pause or halt when necessary. But still 🙁
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HaroldW,
You’re right on two counts. It’s not most pressing right now. But it is interesting.
Interesting article, HowardW! Chan sounds like a SteveMc.
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“I was used to social media pundits ignoring inconvenient or politically toxic facts, but I’d never expected to see that from some of our best scientists.” – said someone who never looked into CAGW.
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“It is very difficult to do research when one hypothesis has been negatively cast as a conspiracy theory,†she wrote.
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We’ve seen this trick before: “The number of different studies made it seem as though this virus was ubiquitous in pangolins. Many scientists eagerly embraced the notion that the animals might have been the intermediate hosts that had passed the novel coronavirus”…”Individual copies of a virus coming from different animals should have small differences, just as individuals of a species have genetic differences. Yet the genomes in all of the pangolin papers were perfect matches—the authors were all simply using the first group’s data set.”
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Circular confirmation of results: “Remarkably, one group of authors in Nature even appeared to use the same genetic sequences from the other paper as if it were confirmation of their own discovery. “These sequences appear to be from the same virus (Pangolin-CoV) that we identified in the present study.â€
Thanks for the link, HowardW (Comment #190109). That is a terrific article. There has been a lot of circumstantial evidence that the Wuhan virus was made in and escaped from the Wuhan Institute of Virology. That is why I insist on calling it the Wuhan virus. But Chan’s work really makes the case solid. It might not be quite up to the standard one would want for scientific proof, but it easily meets the legal standard of beyond a reasonable doubt.
DeWitt,
The forced politics during sporting events is just going to generate a backlash. Ultimately these things collapse under their own weight when competing causes are told they aren’t allowed the same platform.
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For those 3 of us that watch golf on TV there has been a fair amount of forced political messaging lately. Fortunately I have a fast forward button. Golfer Cameron Champ who has both white and black parents has been wearing one white and one black shoe with some messages which I find much less divisive than most “in your face guilty white boy” messages that are favored by many activists.
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I like watching football live though, so I will need to endure this. This is very valuable air time so I expect it will dwindle away under capitalist pressure, or at least evolve into a more unifying form. I think their apparent target market for reachable avowed racists is pretty small, ha ha. Which once again brings about the “what is it they are actually asking for that people disagree with?” question. I’m not sure and I don’t think being inundated with sports based messaging is going to reveal it. Perhaps it is just more forced exposure to the plights of minorities. I’m more interested in actionable intelligence though.
I also like watching live football. But I have no intention of enduring the politics and forced racism. The shutdown weaned me from watching sports. I don’t plan to return in the foreseeable future.
HaroldW,
Very nice article. Thanks.
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It would not surprise me at all if it turns out that a researcher in Wuhan, via sloppy practice, caught the virus and then spread it outside the lab.
SteveF,
Another possibility is that the virus jumped to humans in some relatively isolated community months or years earlier and the local authorities hushed it up. There is some evidence of this in the article:
If more than just the three miners who died were infected, that could have been the original source. Gain of function research, though, seems almost insane. Actually, forget the ‘almost’. Haven’t any of those researchers read or seen the TV miniseries version of Stephen King’s The Stand or played Resident Evil or seen any of the movies based on the game? Apparently not, or there’s a lot of cognitive dissonance going around.
It gets kind of complicated. Some of this is theoretically “defensive” biotech research that allows a counter to some future offensive biotech weapon from one’s enemy. It’s pretty clear that if China et. al. had intentionally released a much deadlier similar contagion then the US wasn’t ready for it. If the the US’s answer to a bioweapon release is to wear masks and don’t go to motorcycle festivals then I will be sorely disappointed.
Tom,
The difficulty with releasing a virus that is both deadly and contagious is the country releasing it has to have a vaccine or some way to have already conferred a decent chunk of immunity to its own population. This was a threat to China itself and so was almost certainly not an intentional release.
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I think the perfect bio-tech weapon is more like Anthrax.You spew lots of spores somewhere with a captive population. Those who are infected then die fairly soom afterwards. But the infected people don’t trigger an epidemic because they don’t become contagious.
lucia:
This is what I had seen on Floyd eating drugs:
https://www.fox6now.com/news/minneapolis-officers-attorney-alleges-george-floyd-overdosed-on-fentanyl-says-charges-should-be-dropped
Here is the excerpt from the article:
In Monday’s filing, Gray doubled down on the idea that Floyd swallowed drugs while the officers were attempting to take him into custody, pointing to the disappearance of a white spot on Floyd’s tongue in the body camera video. He argues it looks like “2 milligrams of fentanyl, a lethal dose.â€
If he had drugs on him, he might have tried to get rid of the evidence, and he did have a very high drug level in his blood. Anyway – this is what I had seen, which is in a motion to dismiss.
Will it raise reasonable doubt? I don’t know. But I don’t think the cops killed Floyd – I think he killed himself and just died while being restrained by cops, and would have died anyway. I guess we will see if a jury thinks the totality of the evidence fails to prove the cops killed Floyd beyond a reasonable doubt.
RickA,
There are two long videos in that article. ( One is more than a half hour long). Do you know a time stamp in either video that shows the white spots? (Real q.)
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I’m not sure what difference this allegation would make to the theory he died of an overdose. We already know his blood levels fentanyl. It can’t kill you until it’s in the blood.
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I’m guessing charges won’t be dismissed today. The issue of which thing caused his death is going to be fact-finding left to the jury.
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I think “would have died anyway” is pretty irrelevant. In mercy killings, it is generally the case that the person killed “would have died anyway”….. but at another time. Killing them a some point before that– even only minutes before–is considered killing them.
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If I’m on the jury and you want to create reasonable doubt the cause of death was the knee to the neck, you need to make the case he would have died at that moment. Might have died 10 minute later when the additional fentanyl on his tongue hit his bloodstream (where it would be detected in the blood work) wouldn’t cut it. As far as I can tell, no one arguing he “would have died” from the drugs is managing to make the case that he “did die from the drugs”. You need to make the latter case.
The story from the HaroldW link I judge to be very timely and important and not dependent on whether Chan’s research has found the Covid-19 link. From the article it appears to me that she has done some admirably good and thorough research from evidently mainly online resources she found from her residence and not her laboratory. I like her attitude and courageous use of social medium in making her case and in pointing to some weaknesses in arguments from fellow scientists in the field.
If indeed her alternate theory of the origins of the virus is correct or can shown to have been probable, it in turn could lead to some changes in how these laboratories like the one in Wuhan operate. Without this attention an outbreak like Covid-19 – or something worse – could happen again.
I take most of what the sports world has to say about politics and moralizing about changing the public’s attitude about race or any other area of concern hypocritical and primarily uninformed.
Put a mike on the athletes and penalize them or suspend them for thrash talking. Invoke a code of ethics on womanizing and adulteress behavior. If athletes and their organizations want to become moralists perhaps they should clean their own houses first. I recall Colin Kaepernick using the n word against a Chicago Bear’s player before he evidently found his calling.
DeWitt Payne (Comment #190118): “Another possibility is that the virus jumped to humans in some relatively isolated community months or years earlier and the local authorities hushed it up.”
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I am not buying. To become so well adapted to humans the virus would have had to circulate among humans for a long time. That would have required a fairly contagious virus, so that after years of circulating it would have infected a *lot* of people. It is hard to believe that could happen without anyone noticing. And then the widely circulating but unnoticed virus would have had to disappear without a trace. Unbelievable, if it was already widespread.
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In other words, the virus appears to have evolved to infect humans without infecting any significant number of humans. I don’t see how that could happen outside of a lab.
lucia,
You still have it backwards. The burden of proof is on the prosecution to show beyond a reasonable doubt that the knee on the back/neck was the actual cause of death. I don’t think they can.
Mike M.,
Of course they would have noticed it. Then they covered it up. They even tried to cover it up in Wuhan. If you seriously believe that local authorities would promptly report problems to the central government in China, you’re not paying attention.
“Sure the defendant put his hands around the neck of the deceased and squeezed and we have it on video, but the defense needs to prove definitively it wasn’t a simultaneous heart attack.”
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At some point the burden is met and then it shifts to the other side. I do believe that there are some indications (eye vessels bursting?) during a strangulation that might be able to sort it out further, perhaps similar in this case. Anyhow I wouldn’t be comfortable as a defense attorney to rest the defense on the hope the jury thinks the defendant just happen to die of natural causes with a knee on the neck.
I watched NFL Thursday Night. I didn’t start until 30 minutes late so the SJW theatrics were already over. The rest was basically just like commercials that I tune out anyway so not an issue.
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Apparently there is black national anthem that will be sung before every game on week 1. All the teams are completely confused on what to do (kneel during both, kneel during one and not the other, stay in the locker room for both, etc.). Miami put out a video saying they aren’t interested in theatrics at all and will skip the whole thing and call on the NFL and owners to do real political change.
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The game had 25% allowed attendance and it was just like a normal football game in most aspects, except coaches wearing bizarre face shields.
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I think the second round of performative outrage in sports will have a short shelf life. People like sports as an escape.
DeWitt Payne (Comment #190135): “Of course they would have noticed it. Then they covered it up.”
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They managed to cover up the epidemic in Wuhan for a month before it got too big to cover up. No way did they manage to cover up a spreading epidemic for years.
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And that still leaves the question of where the pre-Wuhan epidemic went.
Dewitt
I don’t have things backwards. The prosecution will make it’s case using video and interviewing police. People can’t just throw out odd ball theories of “doubt”. The doubt has to be reasonable.
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Just saying “He would have died at some point” isn’t a reasonable doubt. In fact, I don’t even thing it amounts to any sort of doubt about the cause of death when it happened. For the knee to the neck to not be the cause of the death, the case has to be made that there is a reasonable likelihood he died from the other alleged cause exactly then. No one has brought any such thing up.
Like with all narcotics, people become acclimated to fentanyl. Showing that Floyd would have died anyway from an OD is a heavy lift, if not impossible.
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OTOH, the video of Floyd begging to be allowed up requires no heavy lifting. The crowd screaming at the officers to let him up after he is unconscious is no lift at all.
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As I have said many times before, Chauvin will spend a very, very long time in prison, where his survival will depend on his exposure to other violent prisoners. If he and his lawyers have a lick of sense (and so far, there is no reason to think they do), they will cop a plea (with substantial time) on condition of being housed in non-violent offender’s prison. The alternative (staying among a population of violent offenders) is not much different from a death sentence.
lucia (Comment #190145): “For the knee to the neck to not be the cause of the death, the case has to be made that there is a reasonable likelihood he died from the other alleged cause exactly then.”
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That makes no sense. We don’t even know when Floyd died. Unless you use the official time of death, which was an hour after Chauvin’s knee was on his neck.
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We do know that Floyd died at some point after taking an overdose of drugs that almost surely would have been fatal. We also know that he died at some point after being subject to a neck restraint that is not normally fatal. I don’t see how you can say that the latter was the cause of death beyond a reasonable doubt.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killing_of_George_Floyd#Medical_response_and_death
Mike M,
“ We do know that Floyd died at some point after taking an overdose of drugs that almost surely would have been fatal.â€
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I don’t think we know that. Please show where the coroner’s report says that fentanyl caused his death.
Tom Scharf (Comment #190137)
September 11th, 2020 at 1:04 pm
“I watched NFL Thursday Night. I didn’t start until 30 minutes late so the SJW theatrics were already over. The rest was basically just like commercials that I tune out anyway so not an issue.â€
Me too. Turns out folks booing the minute of unity we’re booing the BLM messages on the video boards. Haven’t seen that reported credibly by ESPN or their ilk. Red state bad!
By skipping the opening theatrics I had a mostly enjoyable football watching experience. I couldn’t even read the BLM stuff in the out of bounds line in the end zone. I did mute half time. Gonna be tough watching Monday night on ESPN though.
SteveF (Comment #190151): “Please show where the coroner’s report says that fentanyl caused his death.”
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I don’t see why that is relevant. The question is whether the cops killed him or hastened his death. There is no real evidence for that.
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Floyd had an amount of fentanyl in his system that would probably kill someone is not an abuser. He had heart problems. He was experiencing breathing difficulty which would, I think, stress the heart. He also had amphetamines in his system, increasing the risk of heart attack. He was extremely agitated, further increasing the risk of heart attack. That the combination was likely to cause a fatal heart attack is totally plausible. None of that is the fault of the police.
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On the other hand, there is no real evidence that the cops caused his death. Maybe the neck restraint made a difference, but that seems to be speculation; there was no evidence of direct physical harm from the restraint. Maybe they were supposed to turn him on his side, but no one has provided evidence that was MPD procedure.
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So it is possible that the police hastened his death and it is possible it made no difference. I don’t see how that meets the standard for homicide, let alone murder.
The level of drugs in his system is entirely relevant if you are claiming he was killed by drugs. Does anyone know what these levels actually were?
“The lady doth protest too much, methinks”
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The Dangerous Naïveté of Coastal Elites
HBO’s tepid satire about the provincialism of U.S. liberals doesn’t play well in a year as catastrophic as 2020.
https://www.theatlantic.com/culture/archive/2020/09/dangerous-naivete-hbos-coastal-elites/616315/
“Coastal Elites enters a radically different political climate, one in which both the optimism of the Barack Obama years and the media’s patronizing post-election attempts to understand the “white working class†feel woefully dated. Political and moral divides have grown more intractable. Exhortations to read Hillbilly Elegy have come and gone. So, too, have many political pundits’ belief that comedy is an effective way of criticizing the Trump administration.”
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Apparently The Atlantic hates this satire of elites so much it might actually be worth watching, ha ha. Looks like the target was squarely hit.
In response to Trump’s being nominated, The Atlantic published an article saying they need to stop giving out Nobel Prizes.
Tom Scharf (Comment #190172): “Does anyone know what these levels actually were?”
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11 ng/mL fentanyl, plus half that again of its metabolite, norfentanyl. People have died from 3 ng/mL.
19 ng/mL Methamphetamine. It seems that would not normally be considered dangerous on its own.
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There is a fairly well informed discussion at Metabunk: https://www.metabunk.org/threads/claims-of-drug-overdose-in-the-death-of-george-floyd.11288/
As if normalizing relationships in the Middle East was evil in some way. Every President is a mixed bag and much of that bag, especially in foreign relations, is dependent on external events out of their control.
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The binary thinking of many in the media is just mindless click bait. I don’t read any of that crap from the usual suspects anymore except for entertainment value. I could literally write many of the articles in the NYT and Atlantic and their readers wouldn’t notice the difference.
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Here’s another media watchdog now openly advocating the abandonment of objectivity. So trendy, and so wrong.
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It’s time for journalism educators to rethink ‘objectivity’ and teach more about context
It is incumbent upon us to challenge the idea of journalistic objectivity and point out how it manifests
https://www.poynter.org/educators-students/2020/its-time-for-journalism-educators-to-rethink-objectivity-and-teach-more-about-context/
“The “facts†and “truth†that have generally been deemed objective are actually centered on a mainstream, white, male, able-bodied, cis-gendered perspective — not actually objective or neutral at all.”
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I literally have no idea what this doublespeak even means, if anyone knows please enlighten me. The article isn’t helpful.
Just a casual search, not nearly an expert here:
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http://apm.amegroups.com/article/view/37307/29323
“Clinical analgesic doses produce plasma levels of 0.3–0.7ng/mL; doses greater than 3 ng/mL cause loss of protective airway reflexes and CNS depression”
“Mean fatal fentanyl plasma level in this group (deaths) of patients was 15 ng/mL (range 3 to 71 ng/mL). ”
“The average plasma level at postmortem examination is 16.9 ng/mL”
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Fatalities caused by novel opioids: a review
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6609322/
See table 1 for list of publications and range of fatal doses.
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Suffice it to say if he had 11 ng/mL fentanyl, then that is a seriously high level and I am * very surprised * this has been apparently downplayed. This is not trivial and may very well sway the jury, it makes a difference to me.
Tom,
Well, I can’t prove this, but I think it’s the usual application of the selective postmodern deconstruction fallacy to justify whatever the author wants.
The argument that undermines all positions supports none, is the essence of the fallacy IMO. Once one picks up that sword to destroy ‘objectivity’ by calling it an arbitrary interpretation (I.E., by reinterpreting objectivity as a ‘a mainstream, white, male, able-bodied, cis-gendered perspective’), that person has abandoned any claim to the possibility of holding a correct interpretation of anything. There is no reason at that point that a ‘a mainstream, white, male, able-bodied, cis-gendered perspective’ is any more or less valid an interpretation than any other, but this applies equally for all interpretations, if one accepts that premise. Applying the principle consistently leaves the applier without any ground to stand on whatsoever; unable to justify any proposition and therefore any action.
But the idea is always [applied] selectively. Once the target is deconstructed, the sword is sheathed and the inconsistent thinker moves on to espouse whatever drivel they care to, oblivious to the inconsistency.
TLDR – it’s a fallacy used to justify grabbing power, strictly for the suckers.
It’s sort of akin to ‘proving’ that five equals three by multiplying both sides of the equation by zero. At least that’s the way I view it.
Shrug.
[Edit: I said “The argument that undermines all positions supports none, is the essence of the fallacy IMO” and probably I should have said “The argument that undermines all positions supports none, is the essence of the explanation of the fallacy IMO]
Here’s a collection of links on COVID-19:
https://www.mauldineconomics.com/landing/covid-research
There were a few I had already seen on herd immunity levels, but there is a lot more, including on the futility of lockdowns. The author of the collection speculates that a social media panic was the cause of the lockdowns as the CDC, for example, in 2017 did not recommend a lockdown for a flu pandemic as severe as 1918.
Floyd also had pulmonary edema. His lungs weighed 2-3 times normal. That is consistent with fentanyl poisoning and shortness of breath. But Carl Hart of the New York Times thinks it makes me a racist to think that may have contributed to his death more than the police subdual and restraint.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/25/opinion/george-floyd-toxicology-report-drugs.html
Mike M,
“I don’t see how that meets the standard for homicide, let alone murder.”
You have made that clear many times. I think you are just mistaken; the video of the incident is so damning that I am certain he is toast… his behavior is plainly worse than the caricature of an evil sociopathic cop which you might see in a poorly made Hollywood movie.
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But what really matters is what the jury thinks. I would be happy to bet he does hard time. The only possible out for him I see is if his lawyers manage to move the case to some distant rural town, where a hung jury is much more likely. But I think the chance of that is low. He worked in a Democrat controlled city in a Democrat controlled state; the judge is not going to let him move the case. The judge will want to him to sit in prison for a long time.
DeWitt,
“….the CDC, for example, in 2017 did not recommend a lockdown for a flu pandemic as severe as 1918.”
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Of course. The lock down was a panicked response to a lack of accurate information about fatality rates for different age groups. Had the current knowledge been available in February 2020, I suspect there would have been a much less costly and more effective response…. with efforts focused on protecting those truly vulnerable, and otherwise continuing with life as normal (or if you prefer, “a smarter than Sweden response”).
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The panic now has a crazed almost zombie-life of its own, where any suggestion of return to normal is met with rage and social condemnation. New York City is so far past herd immunity that they could re-open everything with barely a blip in cases/deaths. They won’t. The fear is now so great that rational choices for public policy are excluded from consideration.
DeWitt,
I’m still with Lucia and Steve on the issue of police culpability. This said, from the article you linked:
Give me a break. Read the transcript and tell me again how Floyd was behaving ‘rationally and appropriately”. The man was messed up if his utterances were any guide.
DeWitt,
“He also had 11 nanograms of fentanyl in his blood. That number, in and of itself, doesn’t tell us much. Immediately after a person dies, the blood concentration of fentanyl increases significantly, so knowing only the post-mortem amount does not tell us about Mr. Floyd’s level of intoxication before his death.”
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Well you can compare the amount found against others who fatally overdosed, that statement is spin. Unattended people who die from an opiate OD typically die because they stop breathing after they pass out because the amount of drugs is so high the subconscious breathing signal is shut off, breathing stops, cardiac arrest.
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The issue of tolerance is real but not sure we will ever get a good answer to what his tolerance may have been.
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This does not necessarily relieve the police from being negligent by not attempting to provide aid to someone who stopped breathing, but it certainly brings real question in to why the breathing stopped.
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Apparently the main defense here is that the process from going unconscious to breathing stopping during an OD takes a lot longer than a couple minutes.
https://libertyblock.com/beware-of-false-claim-that-floyd-died-of-fentanyl-overdose/
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It’s hard to say, the medical examiners say homicide but there is almost no examination of the medical science on if this can be proven one way or the other. Due to this being toxic the media isn’t looking under this rock very hard it seems, I guess this is part of the new objectivity, ha ha.
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One of the medical examiners who ruled it a homicide had this to say:
“Fentanyl 11. He said, “that’s pretty high.†This level of fentanyl can cause pulmonary edema. Mr. Floyd’s lungs were 2-3x their normal weight at autopsy. That is a fatal level of fentanyl under normal circumstances. . . . AB said that if Mr. Floyd had been found dead in his home (or anywhere else) and there were no other contributing factors he would conclude that it was an overdose death.”
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The video seems to be the difference, but that’s a bit backwards, the medical examiner should be just stating what the examination shows.
So much for the long delay theory:
https://www.livescience.com/58682-fentanyl-overdose-characteristics.html
“One of the major characteristics that the respondents described was the speed of a fentanyl overdose: Seventy-five percent of the respondents said that the symptoms occurred within seconds to minutes.”
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The other defense it would have killed him too fast for what is shown in the video, groan.
OK, it can’t have been a fentanyl OD because it happened much too quickly (Tom Scharf, Comment #190190). Without knowing how long it actually took Floyd to die.
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No, it can’t have been a fentanyl OD because it happened much too slowly (Tom Scharf, Comment #190191). Without considering the difference between taking the drug by injection or swallowing.
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It can’t have been a fentanyl OD because fentanyl kills in one, and only one, specific way (link provided by Tom Scharf, Comment #190190). But it seems that there are at least three ways it can kill: the manner common to all opioids, wooden chest syndrome, and cardiac arrest when combined with uppers.
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“Specifically, his right jugular vein was likely fully compressed by Chauvin’s knee, and his left jugular vein was fully or mostly compressed by the asphalt” (link provided by Tom Scharf, Comment #190190). In spite of the autopsy showing no evidence of that.
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Lots of motivated reasoning on display.
Is the cause of death (OD vs neck compression) in this case more opinion or more science? Did the medical examiner’s prior knowledge of police interaction sway their findings? I can’t answer these questions at all, but one can bet the defense will probe this in a lot more detail than we have gotten from the media so far. That’s why trial by jury may end up with a different verdict than trial by media.
Mike M,
“ Lots of motivated reasoning on display.â€
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If you imagine there will ever be a clear cause of death, then you are in fantasy land. The practical reality is that Chauvin acted like a monster. Could a better choice of restraint have kept Floyde alive? Impossible to tell, but the jury is going to make sure the message to cops is very clear: cops can’t act like sociopathic monsters when they arrest someone. It is really very simple. You are making it far more complicated than it needs to be. Clear message to cops: Absolutely NEVER do anything like this.
SteveF, I would hope that the message would get through to the police unions and the politicians who are supposedly responsible for the police organizations and maybe even the voters in these cities – but I doubt it.
If these problems can be written off as caused entirely by systemic racism the politicians can apparently get off the hook by virtue signaling.
mark bofill (Comment #190179)
Mark, one of your best posts in my opinion. I would hope this fallacy would become clear to others with public venues – like the MSM.
So once somebody employs their new journalism objectivity in the field what does that actually result in?
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I think it is likely more than just doing the usual selection bias on coverage of certain pet issues.
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I think what we are seeing here is for example the (almost) industry wide justification of not covering violence in protests because this is a distraction from the truth they want to sell, oops, I mean report on. The failure to cover criminal histories of police shooting victims, or other complications to the “true” narrative people need to understand of complex issues. This will become less hidden, less subtle, and more overt standard practice.
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That’s just amateur hour Pravda though and you have to be pretty naive to think that is a path to success. It is a lazy shortcut that will explode in their faces, just as protest violence has. And there is Fox News, they may not be a shining light on the hill but they will expose that silliness far and wide. It just won’t work.
Kenneth,
“I would hope that the message would get through to the police unions and the politicians who are supposedly responsible for the police organizations and maybe even the voters in these cities – but I doubt it.”
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Unfortunately, real solutions require effectively neutering, or better yet, eliminating, all police unions, and that requires state legislatures to act in the public interest instead of their own political interests. That is the only way that officers who should be fired for aggressive behavior are in fact fired promptly. So I agree that complete solutions are unlikely anytime soon.
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What I think we can hope for is individual police officers seeing the very negative personal consequences of aggressive behavior when interacting with the public, and especially when making an arrest, and so being much more careful about their behavior in the future.
Tom Scharf,
What I see is evidence that the actual cause of Floyd’s death was a lethal fentanyl overdose, possibly caused by Floyd apparently consuming his stash when he knew the cops were coming, and no physical evidence that the restraint caused, say, fatal asphyxia. Yet the conclusion of the local ME (or whatever his official title) was homicide. Other unnamed sources also conclude homicide but I’ve never seen an explanation of how they knew homicide was the cause of death and not a fentanyl overdose. My tinfoil hat side says the conclusion was political, i.e. the ME thought he would lose his job if he didn’t issue a conclusion of homicide.
By the way, holds that restrict blood flow in the carotid arteries and/or jugular veins generally causes unconsciousness in seconds, not minutes. Being able to say that you can’t breathe is consistent with pulmonary edema. You can’t talk if you actually can’t breathe.
DeWitt,
Tinfoil hats are almost always a bad idea. If the ME says homicide, then homicide it most likely is. Without the tinfoil hat, you need evidence of claims; I have seen no claims of political influence on the ME.
SteveF,
Can you say argumentum ad verecundiam (appeal to authority)? I’d still like to see the logic behind the claim rather than trusting some expert.
If K. Harris can say she believes that Trump would (or could) force the FDA to approve a COVID-19 vaccine without it having passed Stage III trials, I can believe that an ME would know on which side his bread was buttered without any obvious pressure. It’s kind of like how I can tell what the NY Times or MSNBC will report without actually having to read or watch it.
DeWitt,
Then tinfoil hat it is.
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The NYT and MSNBC are not very much like the Minneapolis ME.
>being much more careful about their behavior in the future.
The effect of this is more crime. See Ferguson and Cincinnati.
I would agree that we have gotten a definitive conclusion from the ME but not any explanation on how he can discriminate between the two competing causes of death. Maybe it is there and they don’t say, but the lack of investigation and questioning of this conclusion from the media seems a bit weird. It is dismissed without discussion and that tends to be a red flag. Perhaps he made the correct judgment call, but he is going to have to answer the questions at trial no doubt. The ME will likely be the key witness here, wouldn’t want to be him/her.
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The WSJ reports on Friday:
“The judge in the case against four former Minneapolis police officers charged in the killing of George Floyd removed the county prosecutor’s office from the proceedings Friday, citing sloppy work and saying members of the office are witnesses in the case.”
“One defense attorney said that the county prosecutors had interviewed the county medical examiner without an outside attorney present.”
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Could be nothing.
Dewitt
The ME knows his bread is buttered by the city and police force. So this argument would tend to support SteveF suggestion that if the ME says it was murder by a police officer it probably is murder.
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The ME does have access to the body. The ME does have the skills to better diagnose something that stray people. And to the extent the ME is biased it is generally in favor of the police.
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If we make a probability statement, Steves is the correct one.
Tom
Absolutely. He’ll be questioned by both sides. Attending physicians and EMT people may also be called to the stands.
I would say the “jury is out” on which side the ME might prefer, ha ha. I think by the time they did the autopsy this was exploded all over the media and it is probably useful for them professionally to see that video. I would assume they likely just did their job until proven otherwise, but there is no doubt they did some political math along the way. They almost certainly knew this was not a routine autopsy.
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The defense might be able to find things hypothetically like every previous time an autopsy was done with drug levels that high the cause of death was ruled on OD, etc.
Lucia, out of curiousity, how is the saliva testing working out?
I have not had time to go carefully through this:
https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMc2016359
But it seems to say that the saliva test is more sensitive and more reproducible.
More sensitive is not in itself a good thing, since the tests are already using excessively high cycle numbers.
At UofI? I have to check. I know initially, there was a problem….
The tests were fine, but the modeling….. well… Ph.D’s in physics evidently under estimates how much undergraduates party when they first get back in school. Even XCKD gave them flak for that.
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I read that things got back in control– so in the end the testing was a god-send. It gave them info, and they got things more or less under control?! (Maybe?)
But I need to read more details. (So.. I’ll report back!)