Families of US Embassy personnel in Ukraine ordered to begin evacuating as soon as Monday: officials
https://www.foxnews.com/world/us-embassy-personnel-family-in-ukraine-ordered-begin-evacuating-officials
606 thoughts on “This ain’t good.”
Comments are closed.
Biden waited too long to evacuate the personnel in Afghanistan. Maybe he is overreacting here…. And maybe not. I have every confidence he is doing it wrong though.
It may be important to keep in mind Putin may have plans for action in the Baltics also. “ The Sorry State of Baltic-Russian Relationsâ€
https://carnegiemoscow.org/commentary/83612
Insanity. Putin wants a guarantee of no military alliance between Ukraine and the west. Perfectly reasonable. We want Putin to respect Ukraine’s autonomy. There is a deal to be made. But our foreign policy idiots think it important that Ukraine be able to join NATO. Even though NATO does want them. The reason seems to be to avoid the Finlandization of Ukraine. Because neutrality was such a catastrophe for Finland. Insanity.
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p.s. – You did, of course, spot the sarcastic sentence in the above.
Mike M,
Absolutely right. The issue in the Ukraine is that Russia does nor want US weapons installed on its boarder. There is a deal to be made: accept Crimea (and its military port) is part of Russia, and Nato will not expand to the Ukraine. Simple. But Biden is a demented old man who was actually an idiot long before the dementia set in. There is no limit to the damage Biden can do to international relationa. Where is PC Gen Miley reassuring everyone he won’t let Alzheimer-Joe do crazy stuff? Maybe the overweight worm thinks an Alzheimers president who endorses PC garbage is perfectly OK.
Steve,
I haven’t had as much free time as I’d like to investigate, but I believe you’re correct. Apparently the only issue here is – how much of Ukraine will Putin seize.
Mark,
The Russian nationals are mostly in the eastern 10-15%, maybe 100-150 miles.
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Trying to take beyond the Russian regions would be very unwise:the Russians could be facing a western funded insurgency supported by the local population… always a losing deal.
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That Alzheimers-Joe can’t negotiate with Putin (quietly) about the Ukraine just tells me that 1)Biden is hopelessly demented, and 2) those pulling his puppet strings are idiots and fools.
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Really, there is zero reason the Ukraine has become a crisis beyond that Biden is demented.
SteveF (Comment #208830): “There is a deal to be made: accept Crimea (and its military port) is part of Russia, and Nato will not expand to the Ukraine. Simple.”
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Well, it is not quite that simple. Ukraine would need something in return beyond Russia won’t invade. Say, a guarantee of Ukraine’s borders, including the Donbas, and no overt interference in Ukraine’s internal affairs.
SteveF (Comment #208832): “Really, there is zero reason the Ukraine has become a crisis beyond that Biden is demented.”
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Actually, I don’t think this is on Biden except in the buck-stops-here sense. It is the permanent foreign policy establishment (part of the deep state) driving this.
Russian attitude on Ukraine joining NATO is probably about same as if Mexico had joined the Warsaw Pack. Old Black Jack Pershing would have been recalled to duty and the US would have occupied Veracruz AGAIN to show the US’s displeasure.
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Russia likely believes that better to resolve the issue now while they still have operational room and Europe relies on Russian energy. A winter campaign in February or March would have a number of benefits from the Russian point of view.
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NATO has been used aggressively in Kosovo, Iraq, and Afghanistan, so Russia has good reasons to see Ukraine in NATO as a direct threat to Russia itself. It’s hard to declare NATO is a defensive force when all of its combat operation have been aggressive.
Predicting Putin is a lot more uncertain and dangerous than predicting Covid. Although I had quite a lot of success predicting Covid…. I wouldn’t dare try to predict Putin.
[off topic] Sarah Palin vs NYT trial about to start; I agree with CNN and I couldn’t be happier: “Even though I expect The Times will ultimately win this case, the trial is likely to be an excruciating experience for everyone associated with it at The Times,” https://www.cnn.com/2022/01/22/media/sarah-palin-new-york-times-trial/index.html
It’s not so much that the NYT, et. al. make mistakes, that is inevitable, it is that they make those mistakes in the same partisan direction 99% of the time. I doubt Palin will win this case, and it really isn’t that severe of an error in the grand scheme, but the casualness with which these media outlets disparage their political opponents and assume malicious intent on the thinnest of evidence has gotten rather tiresome. It has only hurt their own credibility in the long run.
If the US has a Russia policy, they seem to be keeping it a secret. I have no idea what it is, and I haven’t seen anyone else who can document it clearly.
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It looks to be transactional, any cooperation on a specific subject is based on mutual benefit and there is an assumption of mistrust on both sides.
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Biden has no magic fairy dust in this relationship, and the Hunter Biden incident will likely cloud his judgment in hard to predict ways. If one was to believe Biden and the media’s election propaganda then we would be seeing a very public unified front with Europe. The silence is deafening. This may mean quiet negotiations are happening, or it may mean Russia isn’t cooperating at all.
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The media isn’t even curious. The media has been basically ignoring a massive military buildup by Russia while breathlessly reporting every rumor from the Jan 6th committee as they try to criminalize lack of cooperation from people who weren’t even there. Russia wants to invade a sovereign nation, but really to protect democracy Trump’s wife needs to be compelled to testify about Jan 6th, or something.
Tom Scharf (Comment #208843): “If the US has a Russia policy, they seem to be keeping it a secret.”
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Oh, but they do have a Russia policy. Russia is bad and Putin is evil since they colluded with Trump to get him elected and bring American democracy to an end. But it does not seem that they have a Russia policy that has even a small foundation in reality.
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Tom Scharf: “then we would be seeing a very public unified front with Europe. The silence is deafening.”
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Indeed. Europe no doubt knows that a word from Putin and they will be freezing in the dark.
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Tom Scharf: “The media has been basically ignoring a massive military buildup by Russia”.
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Fox News excepted.
Mike M.,
While I’m sure the tinfoil hat brigade of the Democrats actually believe this, (I’ve seen examples in the comments section at the WSJ) I’m not at all sure that Biden, or whoever is pulling his strings, believes it. OTOH, Germany is in bed with both Iran and Russia. If you think that US politicians will do anything to stay in power, remember that Merkel shut down Germany’s nuclear power plants and started the whole Energiewende thing because she was afraid that the Green Party would get just enough votes to throw her out after the Fukushima incident.
Btw, the TDS people insist that the known contacts between people in the Trump campaign and people in Russia prove their case beyond any doubt.
Speaking of Energiewende, while checking to see if I spelled it correctly, I found this:
I seriously doubt that made the NY Times.
Now Biden is threatening to send troops to eastern Europe. Big threats of sanctions, but not doing anything, so it looks like Biden is just bluffing. Brinksmanship and sabre rattling, by incompetent boobs with no intention of backing it up. Just the sort of thing to get us embroiled in a ever deepening mess leading to disaster.
Trump: Peace through strength.
Biden: War through weakness.
Sigh.
Commenting on the now closed thread. CFR has been about 1.3% in the US. Actual fatality rate is a factor of 2-5 lower, due to under reporting of cases. Omicron is maybe a factor of 5 less deadly. So the actual fatality rate should be in the range 0.05-0.13%. Vaccination is another factor of 10-20 for earlier strains, maybe a factor of 2-5 for omicron. So maybe 0.02-0.05% fatality rate in New Zealand.
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So if half of Kiwis get omicron, ballpark 1K deaths. Compared to perhaps 40K death in a normal year. They should get through this pretty easy, as long as people don’t panic.
Mike M. (Comment #208865)
Mike, I would be interested in any sources you have for the under count for reporting cases – and preferable for over time.
With the start of omicron and my latest US data the reported deaths to reported cases ratio had trended down to 0.007 (0.7%) and was on a downward movement.
In my analysis of world regions for the important factors in explaining Covid-19 deaths and to a lesser extent cases , at least earlier in the pandemic, the portion of the population that was overweight and over 65 years old contributed a goodly portion to the r squared value in multi-variant regressions.
Oceania was a large outlier with fewer cases and deaths even though its population for portion overweight and over 65 ranked up there with the US and Europe. It will be interesting to see what follows with omicron.
The WSJ has an article today headed by “New Zealand Moves to Highest Level of Covid Curbs” . In the article it mentions “New Zealand …was an early success story of the pandemic, adopting a version of China’s aggressive lockdowns and closing its borders..”
It appears that the main body of the article is not necessarily in line with the heading as it talks only about mask mandates and gathering sizes.
The NZ prime minister, Jacinda Ardern, has cancelled her wedding plans. Gosh, I hope that does not mean she will be living in sin.
At home testing in the omicron era is going to make the trend of the positive test ratio unreliable to the point of useless IMO. I can’t find a number but the number of tests out there is likely on the order of 100M. Some of these are used at test sites and would be reported, others unlikely to be reported.
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Additionally part of the the increase in PCR positives may be antigen confirmations. Certainly omicron increased positives on its own as well.
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It looks like the US as a whole peaked with omicron about a week ago, with the early adopters peaking a week or two before that. I do find the almost hard coded length of these breakouts (2 months) in independent regions to be somewhat bizarre and unexpected. You would think that breakouts would be controlled by the human contact rate and this would be significantly different in regions, but it seems once again to have a “factor X” involved.
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Also I should note my grocery store had all the at home tests you wanted to buy this week in FL. We will likely have 1B tests sitting around with little use in the US when they finally show up after omicron declines. It’s hard to criticize this, but always being one step behind in a fast moving crisis is SOP for big bureaucracies.
The SC will hear the Harvard racial discrimination admissions case. Good luck winning that one, Harvard. Great news.
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A very good chance the days of overt racial discrimination in academia are coming to an end. It’s not just this case, there are endless examples of blatant discrimination across the board.
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Ultimately what needs to happen is that race cannot be listed on an admissions form, or cannot be viewed by an admissions committee. The committees cannot be taken at their word they will disregard it when making judgments, see Asian personality scores.
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Now I don’t believe for a second that they won’t just replace this with a proxy for race. Whether it is a zip codes and socioeconomic status or by a wink and nod “make it obvious in your essay” method. The penalizing of poor whites is just not acceptable. They could have always used socioeconomic status and gotten better racial disparity numbers legally, they chose to be overt racists as a badge of honor. Not honorable in my view. I hope the SC smacks them down hard.
Kenneth,
Case Fatality Rate (CFR) vs Infection Fatality Rate (IFR). CFR is based on confirmed infections. IFR is based on estimated infections, most of which do not get reported or tested. At one time, the CDC was estimating the difference being as much as a factor of 10. A factor of 2 to 5 are probably conservative given the reports of how mild Omicron infections tend to be.
Tom Scharf,
The problem with using race instead of, or even in addition to, socioeconomic status is that Blacks from well to do families get a boost that ultimately discriminates against whites with a low socioeconomic status. The claim that having a diverse student body is a benefit to everyone is bogus because Blacks, for one, self segregate on campus. At some schools, even the graduation ceremonies are split by race.
Supreme Court pointed it out 15 years ago, that it’s a strange coincidence this diversity seems to apply in very specific ways. Hispanics are always a certain proportion, Native Americans at 1%, etc.
“It appears that the main body of the article is not necessarily in line with the heading as it talks only about mask mandates and gathering sizes”
Kenneth, NZ used lockdowns etc to keep virus out and suppress. With virus in, and once vaccination rates for eligible were close 90%, government went to a “traffic lights” system applied regionally which has various measures designed to slow spread – masks and gathering limits being the main ones. Omicron put the whole country into “red light” so a maximum of 100 at gatherings. Ardern and her partner had baby in first year of office so totally festering in sin for those that care about such things. If I were her, I would postpone wedding till closer to next election and hope for feel-good publicity…
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Mike – “They should get through this pretty easy, as long as people don’t panic.” Just what kind of “panic” would you say would increase the death rate??
Phil Scadden (Comment #208873): “Just what kind of “panic†would you say would increase the death rate??”
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Well, panic could result in deaths via avoided medical treatment. That seems to have happened here. But what I meant is that the worst of it might be worry and fear, rather than virus caused illness.
So it seems that NATO is now moving military assets to the Eastern Front. Two fighter jets here, 4 there, etc. Not enough to matter, but maybe enough to provoke.
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Above (Comment #208845) I made a sarcastic comment about what is driving policy. Maybe I gave the Ruling Class too much credit. Or maybe they will surprise me and avoid turning Ukraine into a massive FUBAR.
Not to worry, sounds like the situation might be coming under control:
https://babylonbee.com/news/ukraine-asks-kyle-rittenhouse-to-guard-their-border
Tom,
It turns out Mindy Kaling brother posed as Black to get into med school.
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/asian-america/mindy-kalings-brother-i-posed-black-get-med-school-n337026
I believe that the best approach to tracking the relative number Covid-19 cases over time would involve using the reported deaths to reported cases ratio (DCR). Deaths are better tracked than cases even though the issue of definitions of death with and from Covid-19 may have muddied the waters. I do not judge that issue renders the uncertainty of reporting deaths close to that for reporting cases given asymptomatic cases and testing accuracy.
If improvements in medical treatments reduce the actual deaths to actual cases, the DRC should change (decrease) based on that improvement over time. Additionally, more testing would be expected over time to increase the reported portion of actual cases and in turn reduce the DCR. That both changes could reach some asymptotic value is a realistic assumption. In fact, when DCR is plotted against time or number of tests this is what occurs when the series are smoothed. The asymptote value before the omicron onset was a DCR of approximately of 0.013. That value should be considered one that is not DCR of the actual deaths to cases but rather a value proportional to it.
Given the assumptions required by other methods to get an estimate of an actual DCR, I judge that this method can provide a DCR value pre-omicron that can be compared with the omicron period. As noted previously the early weeks of omicron show a continuous downward trend in DCR that has already reached 0.007.
Here we go again getting involved in a situation that should be handled by the nations closer to the dispute between Russia and Ukraine. We are not going to go to war over this situation no matter how it proceeds. Sanctions will not work given Europe’s dependence on Russian fossil fuel and particularly Germany who is very dependent on those fuels given the mess they have made to their energy program. Besides sanctions can hurt those, including the US, who impose them.
If our political leaders on both sides of the aisle were smart their would be a bipartisan trend in the direction of disengaging from being a world military power and do it with a powerful message to the rest of the world that we will do what we do best: create – and not destroy.
Vox explains Harvard admissions:
“Harvard is an extraordinarily selective university. If you group all undergraduate applicants into deciles based on their academic records, Harvard still rejects more than 85 percent of applicants in the top decile. Race is one of several factors that can push an outstanding applicant who is on the cusp of admission into the pool of students invited to attend Harvard.”
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The WSJ fills in a few details Vox left out:
“Also, what is the limit on a racial plus factor? Students for Fair Admissions, the petitioner in both cases, says Harvard admits 56.1% of black applicants in the top academic decile, compared with 31.3% of Hispanics, 15.3% of whites, and 12.7% of Asians. A black applicant who’s in the fourth-lowest decile, it adds, “has a higher chance of admission (12.8%) than an Asian American in the top decile.—
Re: Lying to Get an Affirmative Action Admission.
My son’s former college roommate was half-Filipino and half Caucasian. His father is a white lawyer. He lied and claimed to be Hispanic and immediately got a prestigious internship with an accounting firm. I doubt that he will ever get caught because most probably the diversity people never talk to the people who actually do the work, and the people doing the work don’t really care about the roommates ethnic background.
JD Ohio,
Once he’s finished the internship, it’s done. No one can take it back.
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I suspect the people he’s working with are used to seeing white Hispanics. Argentines, European background Latin American’s and so on. Yes, some of the Hispanics who have good grades and are going to good colleges are children of immigrants. But the category often doesn’t even distinguish between “Hispanic and mostly raised in the US” from “Hispanic born and raised by a wealthy family in Brazil who sends then to college in the US.” ( One of the Hispanic student in grad school at UofI was precisely that. He was born and raised in Brazil. His parents were Brazilian citizens. He had a Scandinavian last name, was blond. His skin was darker, so his other parent must have been from some place outside of Scandinavia. But plenty of people in Latin America are white.)
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After seeing a stream of white Hispanics, no one is going to bat an eye at a Filipino Hispanic.
lucia,
As I’ve said before, if gender can be thought of as a social construct, then race should also be equally fluid as both are genetically determined and can’t actually be changed. You can drug or mutilate yourself with surgery, but a genetic male will never become a female capable of giving birth and vice versa. Whenever I get a form that includes questions about race, I either refuse to answer them or fill in the blank with “none of your business.”
It is not entirely unreasonable for Filipinos to identify as Hispanic.
From the Pew Research Center:
https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2021/09/23/who-is-hispanic/
That article goes on to say:
By that definition, Filipinos are not Hispanic. Neither are Brazilians. But Spaniards are Hispanic.
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It seems that Spain recognizes Filipinos as Hispanics and gives them the same immigration priority as Hispanics from Latin America.
DeWitt, instead of “none of your business” perhaps “undecided” would be the better modern day reply.
blank with “none of your business.†= White obviously ha ha. I told my daughters to identify as white instead of Asian on their college applications, not that this makes much difference. I’m pretty sure my relatives are descendants of Africa, it just may go a little farther back.
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One of the problems with trans athletes who undergo hormone conversion therapy to reduce testosterone is they don’t get any less tall. This makes a difference in sports like swimming, unlike Jeopardy …
My cleaning lady who is originally from Mexico officially becomes a US citizen tomorrow. You should have seen how happy she was about it, it’s nice to see that side occasionally. It took three years. The process is variable depending on “factors”. Family members, clean record, etc.
|I doubt that he will ever get caught because most probably the diversity people never talk to the people who actually do the work, and the people doing the work don’t really care about the roommates ethnic background.
My wife was adopted and up until she took a genetic test a few years back had no idea of her racial background. She’s darker and can pass for white, black (especially in the summer), or Hispanic. She found out she has a predominately Italian genetics and mother and potential fathers were all from Italian family names. When she mentioned this to her HR director he was upset because he had listed her as Hispanic.
“It is a sordid business, this divvying us up by race.”—Chief Justice Roberts
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and of course his most famous line:
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“The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race.â€
Tom Scharf,
Their shoulders and wing span don’t shrink which affects swimming. Their pelvises don’t widen which affects the mechanics of running.
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The other issue is they are allowed a testosterone range that is still way above the norm for women. It’s in the range achieved by a small fraction who generally have something like policystic ovary disease. Now, the women with that disease are allowed to compete. But still, they man-trans-to-woman women remain on the bleeding edge of testosterone levels for women.
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It’s worth noting that the trans-women winning almost never seem to be the size that would be riding in the Kentucy Derby.
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I don’t think they are required to be surgically modified which creates interesting questions about whether they might rediscover their gender and revert.
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By the way Tom:
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I see competitive sports as a business as being largely “entertainment”– just like Madonna or Justin Bieber singing. I don’t view playing sports and competing as some sort of “human right”.
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From my POV, one of the big problems with allowing Trans-women compete against Cis-women is the sport becomes boring. It will destroy Women’s sport because it will no longer be entertaining.
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I could say more about the whole “human right” argument. But honestly, I don’t see that tack as a really supporting the notion trans-women must be allowed to compete with cis-women. The could still compete in the XY category. I mean, my 215 lb husband could compete against NFL linebackers. The rules don’t block it. He’d be pulverized, but that’s no reason to let him play in the XX category.
Speaking of testosterone range, Roger Pielke, Jr. has weighed in on the science, or lack of it, behind the testosterone range allowed by the WA (formerly IAAF).
https://rogerpielkejr.substack.com/p/bombshell-world-athletics-admits
https://rogerpielkejr.com/2021/08/18/why-is-bg17-so-crucial-in-the-world-athletics-regulations-for-female-eligibility/
I think what he is saying is that there is no scientific basis to use testosterone levels (rather than, say, chromosome analysis) to restrict participation in women’s sports at the international level. But it’s not entirely clear. He may be saying that WA cannot bar anyone who claims to be female from competing.
Kenneth Fritsch,
Other possibilities besides ‘none of your business’ or ‘undecided’ would be ‘all’ or ‘human’.
If I understand Pielke, I disagree with him. My main disagreement is this:
I think he thinks the correct view is that we should not bar people-who-identify as women from women’s sprots unless we have solid scientific proof that high testosterone helps performance.
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I think the opposite. I think we should bar people who are not XY chromosomed unless we have scientific proof testosterone does not help.
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That is: I put the burden of proof on those who say it does not help and he does the other.
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In the case of the T factor, who has the burden of proof pretty much dictates the outcome of decisions. The reason is that it is very difficult to do any experiments or pull together any statistically significant data comparing top level trans-women athletes who train a lot to top level cis-women athletes who train a lot. And this is especially true if, to decide if Caster Semnya has an advantage your data is taht Caster won! Or did not win!
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I also have the impression he sees himself as interpreting what some sort of existing rule means. And judiciously avoids discussions of what it ought to be. I don’t give a hoot what the existing rule is. I only care what it should be.
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If the governing associations made the wrong rule, in my view they should change it. This shouldn’t be any different from what happens if our legislature makes a stupid, wrong law. If it’s wrong, they should change it.
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That said: this is not a big deal for me. I don’t watch these sports much. Mind you: I’ll be less likely to watch it if it’s boring because the class of winners is predetermined to fall among a small set of people who are XY chromosomed but allowed to play. But, that’s just me.
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I am glad the college athletes deal is improving. As far as I can tell, college athletics is a business. I see no reason athletes should not only not be paid but also not be able to commercialize themselves. That part of their value was added by being on the tean doesn’t bother me at all. That old rules prevented them from even commercializing things that were independent of the team was ridiculous.
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I’m still not going to watch much college sports. No basket ball at all. snoooooozzzzzze.
Something helps men in a large number of sports and I’m not sure it really matters that it is discovered exactly what that is. Men are completely dominant in many sports that are strictly measured in quickness, strength, etc. One could argue that it is cultural (chess?), that men’s sports are more competitive and that leads to non gender-specific improved tuning, but I’m just not buying it. It’s not to say the gap is huge in all sports, but that removing specific sports for women would effectively be removing all women from those sports and that is not a good outcome.
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Nobody is really arguing that, but the other argument that trans should have their own category is another answer nobody likes.
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2019 USA Olympics mixed gender 4x100M relay final. You really don’t understand the gap without seeing it as shown on the first leg. Don’t tell me it isn’t a factor in swimming, see the 3:00 mark here. That’s a 20M gap after 100M.
https://youtu.be/N-9JCUdgoI0
Tom Scharf,
Well, I think especially the trans-women athletes. They generally were already not dominating the men’s sports. After transitioning, they often are dominating the women’s sports. I’m the transitioning probably does make them even less competitive with cis-men.
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They like playing in a league where they aren’t bound to lose. But that’s not really a good argument for why they “have a right” or “should” get to compete in XXs sports.
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Also, the XY-women know no one would watch the XY-women competitions. There are too few people in it. So it doesn’t even look like a competition. I beat three other people to win the Gold isn’t too impressive.
Tom Scharf,
IMO, testosterone level is just a marker and isn’t the sole factor that determines factors like width of the pelvis and shoulders. So suppressing testosterone for a year will probably not level the playing field. AFAICT, it demonstrably doesn’t. And only looking at the benefits to the trans-women fails miserably as a measure.
Neil Young say Spotify needs to fire Joe Rogan over his covid misinformation. “They can have Rogan or Young. Not bothâ€.
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I like Neil Young’s music, he has always been political, and he can say whatever he wants. Spotify makes way more money from Rogan than Young so it isn’t going to happen, whatever. Small potatoes.
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I read a couple stories on this and what is striking is the articles never actually say what Rogan said, but fall back to vague assertions that the always anonymous Information Ministry does not approve of some things. You have to dig hard to find the specific sins. Mostly it is things guests have said on his show that are nowhere near the Bill Gates has chips in vaccines category.
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Open Letter from “the global scientific and medical communities”
https://spotifyopenletter.wordpress.com/2022/01/10/an-open-letter-to-spotify/
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Linking to a sin list:
https://www.instagram.com/unbiasedscipod/p/CYT5hwmL4ND
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You have to love the misinformation of “Natural immunity is better at protecting against developing the disease” and their retort that doesn’t even address the statement. Some of these things are squirrely, but Rogan is a professional fighter and comedian. That an untrained podcaster can’t invite a doctor onto his show and get squirrely opinions for fear of losing his job is ridiculous.
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What is even weirder is that the MSM seems seriously threatened by this. A podcaster is usurping our (Eric Cartman’s voice) authoritah! Authoritarian suppressing of speech just doesn’t lead to an increase of trust.
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The CDC is better than Rogan for up to date covid info, but their record isn’t exactly stellar either and they aren’t really that far apart. The CDC publishes the info that makes vaccinating the young look like a close call. That the CDC recommends something doesn’t mean that the decision isn’t a judgment call on a spectrum.
NY, NJ, CT, FL all in the bottom 10 of covid case rates now. Still high rates in absolute terms but everyone else can likely expect the same dramatic up/down cycle going forward.
Here’s an article about managing personal Covid risk at judithcurry.com from Javier, a frequent commenter:
https://judithcurry.com/2022/01/25/managing-personal-covid-risk/#more-28264
For the credentialists, he has a PhD in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, among other things.
He then points out that, absent treatment, an HIV infection is 100% lethal. It just takes an average of 11 years to happen. That’s plenty of time to cross the bridge.
I can say for certain the Information Ministry would disapprove of that one, ha ha.
I made a statement about there being 2-5 actual covid infections per case and someone asked about sources. I did not bother to reply since my sources was that I have been paying attention and I figured that anyone else paying attention would recognize that as the plausible range, although some might prefer a number near one end or the other.
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But here is a guy citing 258M through Jan. 19, at which time there were 67M official infections. So that would be a ratio of 3.8:1. I have not studied the stuff at his link.
https://www.bloombergquint.com/gadfly/proof-of-vaccination-at-restaurants-is-starting-to-feel-like-theater
I thought (hoped) Covid Cases were dropping in Illinois. But Monday, the 7 week average shot up, rising to make a new record. Sigh…. We’ll we’ll see.
Lucia,
Do you mean the 7 day average?
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IIRC, Illinois still has a mixture of omicron and delta. So death rates will probably be a little higher that they might be with only omicron. But still a lot lower than if they were all delta cases. Lots of cases, not so many deaths.
In other news, “the great reset” has been rebranded “the great narrative” and Reuters is partnered with the WEF. For those who haven’t been following, these people are so grossly out of touch that they posted what amounts to your average dystopian sci-fi as their bright vision for the future. A totalitarian wetdream where everything is provided as a service and you have no privacy, for the greater good, of course. Total control. They are text book cartoon villains, but naturally only see themselves as the heros. It’s the kind of stuff that’s so outlandish, the average person will dismiss the threat as a silly conspiracy theory but they are deadly serious and well connected and funded.
Yes. I mean the 7 day average. I was looking at new case rates, Illinois, all counties.
I looked this morning and there was a huge “up” spike. But then later, it’s down again. Maybe it will turn out this is a blip from “catching up” entering deaths after MLK day that shifted just enough into that specific 7 day band to make it shoot up. But… we’ll see next week. Fingers crossed. . .
DaveJR,
So I went to the WEF (World Economic Forum) web site just for giggles. One of the featured videos was titled: “Scientists say preventing the pandemic would have been 500 times cheaper than fighting it.” The title is so beyond stupid that I have zero interest in watching it. You’re right, they’re clueless.
Mike M. (Comment #208903)
“actual covid infections per caseâ€
Yale/ Harvard/ Stanford group publishes a guesstimate …. https://covidestim.org/
lucia (Comment #208907): “I looked this morning and there was a huge “up†spike. But then later, it’s down again. Maybe it will turn out this is a blip from “catching up†entering deaths after MLK day that shifted just enough into that specific 7 day band to make it shoot up.”
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Same thing in New Mexico: A 40% jump from Sunday to Monday followed by an equally extreme drop on Tuesday. That is for 7-day averages. I don’t see how to get such a blip without negative numbers in the daily data. A zero day followed by a double day would only cause a 14% spike.
Mike M. (Comment #208903)
January 25th, 2022 at 8:22 pm
Mike that somebody was me and my interest was in the ratio changing over time. Thanks for the link as all such information is taken for consideration.
Your reply reminded me of my working days when a manager was attempting to explain what an IR spectra meant and when questioned on it by a young worker he told him he did not answer stupid questions.
Sub variant of omicron found in the US.
https://www.democratandchronicle.com/story/news/2022/01/26/ba-2-variant-what-know-stealth-version-omicron/9223346002/
Kenneth Fritsch (Comment #208912),
I never said that asking about a source was a stupid question. I just meant that all I had to offer was general knowledge and that I assumed others were familiar with same; so I had nothing useful to add. Until I stumbled on the source I cited above.
Mike M. (Comment #208914)
Mike M thanks for the reply. I was leaving the “stupid question” as an open question. I have asked lots of stupid question in my life and received lots of information from the asking.
In more detail, my interest is in the change in reported deaths/reported cases over time as it is related to the actual deaths/actual cases change over time. My hope is that somebody has found a proxy or a unique way of looking at the problem that might help with an estimate with a smaller uncertainty range.
At the moment I would not have a lot of faith in a straight modeling approach unless it differs significantly from what has been applied to date with a lot of the Covid-19 modeling familiar to me.
[Off topic] Time for Big Brother to step in and regulate! In October the USPS changed its first class delivery standard from 2-3 days to 3-5 days. OK, I don’t mind a slower pace of life, but, here’s the rub: Credit card companies can still charge late fees of $39.00 after 21 days, and report you after 30 days. Late fees are an enormous source of income [$3 Billion in 2019]. This does not affect me personally, because we pay [almost] everything electronically. But I know many, many old people that are not tech savvy and pay the old fashioned way, by receiving bills and posting checks via USPS. So double the delay for 2 to 4 days [send and receive] and a lot of folks are getting the shaft.
https://www.nerdwallet.com/blog/credit-card-data/2019-consumer-credit-card-report/
Russell Klier (Comment #208916)
But I know many, many old people that are not tech savvy and pay the old fashioned way, by receiving bills and posting checks via USPS. So double the delay for 2 to 4 days [send and receive] and a lot of folks are getting the shaft.
I have no data, but I would guess that most credit card late fees are from younger people.
I have read that banks are relenting on the amount of fees charged for overdrafts.
I do all my business electronically. I find it sad that doing things electronically would be more advantageous for older people and that there are too many of them that do not have the confidence to learn to do it that way. I think confidence is more of the key here than capability. They should be shown or aided by their families in these matters. Automatic payments and deposits can make the process easy and nearly hands off.
Russel,
When I paid credit card by mail, none of the companies sent the bills out less than two weeks before they were due! The only way the new slower delivery is going to cause bill payers a problem is they wait for the bill to “mature” and mail their payment 5 days before it’s due. That’s their choice– not the USPS
lucia (Comment #208895) “I’ll be less likely to watch it if it’s boring because the class of winners is predetermined to fall among a small set of people who are XY chromosomed but allowed to play.”
It’s not about the spectators for me. My granddaughters are very sports minded and each engage in competitive athletics. I hate to think of them becoming disillusioned with a sport that they cannot possibly win because they are forced to compete against hairy apes who are screwed up in the head.
Russell Klier,
I’m not all that big a fan of utilitarianism, but allowing trans-women to compete against cis-women is clearly a violation of the greatest good for the greatest number. I’m reminded of the people who come flying up the lane that is going to be closed to traffic who rely on the ‘generosity’ of the people at the head of the line to let them in. I suspect these ‘generous’ people think they are being polite by allowing what is exactly equivalent to line cutting.
lucia (Comment #208895) “I’ll be less likely to watch it if it’s boring because the class of winners is predetermined to fall among a small set of people who are XY chromosomed but allowed to play.”
This young lady articulates it much better than I did….
“For four years, I competed as a high school runner and made it to the state championships every one of those years. But in my junior year, I lost four of the state titles I earned to males who identified as females.”
“They give awards based on who wins—typically the person with the strongest muscles, the greatest lung power, the fastest speed—not based on how a person identifies. At the end of the race, it’s about biology, not gender identity. And no amount of testosterone suppression can change a male’s innate physical advantages, like bone structure and muscle mass.”
https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/ncaa-leaders-injustices-womens-sports-chelsea-mitchell
Russell,
Equivalent to training on steroids and stopping before competing.
The Nord Stream 2 Gas line, Russia direct to Germany, looks to be the main reason that Russia will not invade Ukraine in the short term.
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https://www.dw.com/en/nord-stream-2-gas-pipeline-what-is-the-controversy-about/a-44677741
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Currently, Russian gas moves into Europe through Ukraine, with Ukraine collecting about $2 billion/yr in transit fees.
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Once this new line is complete, Ukraine loses both major funding and the ability to blow up the existing gas lines that would hurt Russian gas exports in case of invasion.
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Once completed, German reliance on Russian gas increases and this decreases German interest in any German response to any Russian incursion into Ukraine.
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Loss of $2B/yr will cripple the Ukrainian economy, leading Ukraine being forced to offer concessions to Russia.
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Russia can get what it wants in the long term without a messy armed invasion in the short term.
Ed Forbes,
Russia may get what it wants from Nord Stream 2, but maybe not Putin. He’s pretty much always skating on thin ice with no way to stop.
The owners of substack detail their views on free speech. A good read and something you just won’t find in the legacy media unless one of their reporters is being threatened.
https://on.substack.com/p/society-has-a-trust-problem-more
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In other news Spotify is removing Neil Young’s music per his ultimatum.
Yet another way that Biden is betraying the American people:
https://nypost.com/2022/01/26/leaked-video-reveals-joe-bidens-hush-hush-migrant-invasion/
Makes the blood boil.
My conspiracy theory… The Democrats will keep Covid in play until closer to the the election. Then when the country opens, the economy surges, kids are maskless in school, unemployment bottoms out and everybody is upbeat they can claim credit.
Humorous framing from the legacy media coming around to schools without masks.
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After 2 years, growing calls to take masks off children in school https://www.npr.org/2022/01/28/1075842341/growing-calls-to-take-masks-off-children-in-school?sc=18&f=1001
“What’s different about this moment is that there is a third camp — call them pro-vaccine, anti-mask. And they’re getting louder.”
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Yes, the old camp was just delusional anti acience people. I have seen a bunch of these suddenly, the word is out, the Information Ministry says it is OK to discuss masking at schools. Nothing really changed here.
Another dangerous winter storm for the East Coast… Virginia to Maine… including Blizzard warnings. Where the heck is Global Warming when you need it!
Watch forecast: https://youtu.be/GN6VluUvrx0
Delta reportedly now at 0.1% of cases. Totally killed off in about 2 months Caution:. This might be a CDC “estimate”, ha.
Tom Scharf,
If Delta has gone away, it implies that Omicron provides immunity from Delta. I think, maybe. OTOH, we probably don’t really know why previous surges went away.
DeWitt Payne (Comment #208931): “OTOH, we probably don’t really know why previous surges went away.”
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My money is on that option.
So, pardon me for bringing this off-topic mess to y’all. But I feel like I’ve lost the thread here and maybe you can help.
I read here the following:
(emphasis added)
So – if a person claims to be trans, but has an X and Y chromosome, male genitalia, and is still attacted to women, in what sense can they be considered transsexual?
I see now that this question is rhetorical. I believe the answer is, they are not transsexual. Merriam Webster defines transsexual as follows:
and clearly that is not the case in this instance.
So I guess my real, non-rhetorical question is, WTF is going on here?
I guess it’s possible that the guy has decided he’s a transsexual lesbian. Stupid as that sounds, I think it would sort out OK. His gender identity is opposite the sex he was identified as having at birth, check. He’s attracted to women, check.
But really. Eventually the absurdity gets to be a little much.
I await photos of ‘the shlong’.
Lucia,
Good grief, I hope not.
shudders That’s gross Lucia. I read that HRT can cause testicular shrinkage and anecdotal reports that it can reduce penis size.
I just don’t ‘get’ what this guy believes it means to be female. When you can’t gestate a fetus, when you have guy parts, when you are sexually attracted to females, and when you have an X & Y chromosome, well. There’s this term for that, it’s been around awhile. Heterosexual male.
SteveF/mark bofill,
I think photos will materialize. Just saying.
Lucia,
Now I’m wondering. Is it less ‘offensive’ if a guy has an itty bitty teeny as opposed to .. an endowment? (It’s not a rhetorical question exactly, but as usual I’m doubting the wisdom of pursuing my line of questioning…)
[Edit: Is it a matter of personal taste?]
The Peanut Gallery (pun intended) is becoming the Peep Show.
In L.A., a late twenties male has just been sentenced to two years in juvie. He pleaded guity to the sexual assault of a 10 year old girl in a women’s restroom. It happened about a decade ago, just before the creep’s 18th birthday. Luckily, he was interrupted. But from what I hear, such cases are never one-offs.
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Now here is the part that takes this to a whole new level of madness. After getting arrested, the guy decided to self-identify as a women. So he will serve his time in the girls’ wing of juvie.
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I don’t know that it gets any sicker than that.
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p.s. – I am aware that I am committing word-crime by using biologically correct pronouns rather than the perv’s preferred pronouns. Reality matters. Language matters.
mark,
The level of offensiveness of Leah’s display will be the same. So will the level of offensiveness of the invasion of privacy inherent in taking locker room pictures. Nevertheless, I predict it will happen. It’s almost inevitable. Once it happens, the shlongs “aspects” will be discussed. There will be outrage expressed by various parties– from various views. But I think it’s going to happen.
MikeM,
I think XY chromosomed person who was convicted of sexual assault on a female should not be placed in a female prison. No matter how the identify nor even how long they have been identifying that way. This policy goes double if they still have their shlong.
Thanks Lucia.
Mike,
I agree.
I have long ago been schooled by experts in the matter that transgender is not an indication of sexual preference be it gay, lesbian or straight. That could make it a locker room issue.
Kenneth,
Yes, I read that too.
Speaking of experts, it strikes me as odd that experts called transgenderism a mental disorder not all that long ago and have now apparently decided otherwise. I wonder on what scientific basis this reversal rests.
mark bofill,
There is no legitimate science. As I remember, the worst of the failure to reproduce published results is in psychology. Homosexuality was a mental disorder not all that long ago too. It’s all narratives.
Thanks DeWitt.
I’m not willing to poke the homosexuality mental disorder hornets nest. From my ignorant perspective, homosexuality appears to be less crazy to me than gender dysphoria.
Sigh. Having stumbled onto this ground, it behooves me to say – I don’t care what consenting adults do. This includes adults tak[ing] hormone therapy and having surgery to mutilate their genitalia as well as having whatever crazy sex with other consenting partners floats their boat; it’s no concern of mine. Nor do I care if people are crazy as loons provided they don’t injure my life, liberty or property.
But this is not the same as thinking that nobody is crazy.
Just my politically incorrect opinion; I suspect transgender people are insane, by the same reasoning that leads me to believe that people who believe they are the Queen of England (Elizabeth Alexandra Mary Windsor aside) are crazy; because they appear to believe something to be true that is obviously false.
I believe the existance of the Queen is a social construct.
Mark,
I should have added: I see it similarly to you. I think gender dysphoria is a mental disorder. Interestingly, if gender is only a social construct, why are they so sure they are the other one? I would think believing that would make you more flexible and be willing to accept that, perhaps, you really are the gender you were assigned at birth. I don’t see why you would feel a strong need to change your body if you think it’s just a social contruct!
lucia,
It is a social construct. I don’t think that means it’s completely subjective or arbitrary.
Let me not get mired by my choice of example. I will rephrase:
We could still deconstruct this example as well. But then again, we could deconstruct anything if we set to it with a will, which to my mind invalidates the whole general idea of postmodern deconstruction.
shrug.
Lucia,
Yes. That’s bothered me before too.
I hate to come across as callous when I say it’s no concern of mine. Life is full of suffering, even as it’s worth living. I don’t wish unnecessary suffering on anyone and if people are really mentally sick and suffering because of it, I hope they get well and stop suffering. But far be it from me to enforce my opinions on the world! If people think they are OK and they aren’t treading on me, no problem. Go be crazy, you do you as they say. Maybe I’m wrong, what the heck do I know. Just my opinions.
It’d be nice if we could have opinions without [risking accusations of] thought crime, bigotry, transphobia, racism, and all the other evils the enlightened woke smack us with for doing so. But. Oh well!
I think you and I see things similarly. I have no objection to adults taking hormones having surgery and so on. If that’s what makes them be able to better deal with their dysphoria, then that’s likely a good thing to do. But I do think it’s a mental disorder.
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A balanced person should be able to accept that you do have the body you have. That it’s somehow real.
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A balanced person should be able to accept that other people see you in some way and you can’t dictate how they see you. That means you should be decreeing that people are committing thought crimes for seeing you as a male just because you perceive yourself as a female.
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A balanced person should be able to accept that if they have a shlong, it is not socially acceptable to display it in an XX locker room. Even if you think you are a female.
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All of these things are symptoms of some sort of inability to deal with reality.
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Mind you: not everyone who is crazy belongs in an institution. I’m also not sure crazy can always be fixed. I know people who are crazy in other ways– and I’m fine and accepting of them. But I do think they are crazy. But yes, I think there is an element of cray-cray going on with gender dysphoria.
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I don’t think the same thing of homosexuals. As a general rule, they seem to be just as self accepting, know how people see them, know how the fit in. They don’t seem any different from heterosexuals in this regard. They just are attracted to their own sex. That’s a minorty preference. I don’t know what causes it. But I don’t see it as cray-cray in the way transgender is.
lucia,
I’m not fond of saying gender/sex is assigned, which implies choice to meet a quota or something, and especially not at birth. Ultrasound imaging can determine sex long before birth and sex is actually determined, not assigned, at conception.
DeWitt,
Sure. I’m using the language of those who want to promote trans-gender automatically getting things like access to bathrooms, female sports and, if imprisoned, female prisons. The thing is if we use that language, their arguments sort of don’t make sense. Because to some extent, their argument is that gender is innate and immutable.
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They just think they are — some how have a mismatch. And they think the the gender in their head is the innate one– not the one in their chromosomes or bodies. And then they want to change their bodies (with chromosomes) to be what they “are” “inately”. But, of course, if you can change something, it is not “immutable”.
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The bigger problem is that many of the more aggressive activists want to change people’s thoughts. Well, they are no more going to fully win this than fat activists are going to make 100% of the population think obesity is attractive. You can get people to think the obese have equal human worth as others. But you aren’t going to make everyone think it’s attractive or sexy. If people’s feelings of attraction were that mallable we could convert homosexuals to heterosexual and vice versa. But we can’t.
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The most you can do on this is get people to shut up about what they believe.
It’s a real life example of 2+2=5. They want you to accept absurdities.
I think that some activists and psych professionals probably believe that by increasing societal acceptance of transsexual people they can reduce suicide rates. link here for the suicide rate problem. That’s not an evil motive, I get that. I sort of think the problem is, it’s really really hard to reengineer society. It’s not the sort of thing people get right, too chaotic and too many unintended consequences perhaps. Unintended consequences like – oh I dunno – putting adult biological male sex offenders in female juvenile facilities and letting biological males dominate women’s sports competitions, among the more obvious ones.
I think you’re right Dave. I think the problem comes in when you want people to act as if things are true that are obviously not true. I don’t think good ultimately comes from this. I’d like to believe you can treat people with tolerance and respect and goodwill and compassion without having to accept and act as if delusions are reality.
Hopefully just this one last remark from me. I think the whole idea of social constructs set us back centuries. This idea that human abstractions are all social constructs contains some nuggets of truth, but I think they make a fundamental error someplace. Somehow they get from this to the notion that societal beliefs are completely arbitrary and have no relationship to objective reality. It’s hard for me to nail down precisely, which keeps my interest alive in it.
Anyways, thanks all,
The fundamental error is in assuming people are born a “blank slate”. This has been pushed forward, by feminists in particular, to support the “there’s no difference between men and women” narrative, which therefore allows every identified difference to be assigned to “patriarchy” and “sexism” etc. However, if we look at the entirety of the animal kingdom, we can see that instinctive social behavior is a very powerful force. We are to assume humans are unique in this respect. That we have no instinctive social behavior, and it’s all a social construct.
My post here will be more orientated towards the thinking of people who want to transgender. As a libertarian I am like Mark with regards to what people chose to do with their bodies and in their bedrooms or say about it. It is their business. It only concerns me if those activities directly or indirectly involve some coercion on others.
My only familiarity with an individual transitioning was with an individual in a company where I worked many years ago and before wokeness. This person was a scientist/engineer who I would see at the company’s annual patent banquet. All technical managers and any of their staff who received patents during the year were invited to a gathering that covered several divisions of the company. He/she was not a manager, so I suspect this person was receiving patents almost every year. I would say hello to this person but never had a lengthy conversation with him.
When this person began to transition, he wrote a lengthy open letter to the whole corporation. It read like a letter a person might write who was having emotional and mental issues, but on thinking about it I felt I could not judge the situation because this was all foreign to me. The company, to its benefit, accommodated the transition without making a big deal out of it or being woke about it before woke was in. The person continued to work at the company and received patents as a he and a she. The she version seemed less sociable and I never had an opportunity to talk to her.
This person was obviously a valuable asset to the company and the company knew this. The person, I would guess, was working mostly with the same scientists and engineers before and after transitioning and that may well have helped the transition.
On a very superficial level when you put a dress and heels on a somewhat burly unkempt guy you get a look, to me anyway, that is preferential to the guy version without dress and heels -and I am as straight as they come.
mark bofill (Comment #208960): “This idea that human abstractions are all social constructs contains some nuggets of truth, but I think they make a fundamental error someplace. Somehow they get from this to the notion that societal beliefs are completely arbitrary and have no relationship to objective reality. It’s hard for me to nail down precisely, which keeps my interest alive in it.
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“Social constructs” and traditions evolve as the result of generations of trial and error. There is a great deal of wisdom contained in them, even if that wisdom is not obvious or if reasons have been forgotten. So to simply throw them out results in all sorts of unintended negative consequences. That does not mean that wisdom of our forefathers is sacrosanct. It must continue to evolve as conditions change. But that evolution should be incremental, not revolutionary.
Mike and Dave,
I don’t disagree with either of your sets of observations. Thanks. I would elaborate further on my issues with social constructionism, but that I can’t express them concisely or elegantly implies to me that they need more work. I will refrain from flailing about trying to articulate them at this time.
I meant to say in my previous post
“On a very superficial level when you put a dress and heels on a somewhat burly unkempt guy you get a look, to me anyway, that is notpreferential to the guy version without dress and heels -and I am as straight as they come.”
Since it was admittedly superficial it probably makes no difference.
I meant to say in my previous post: not preferential to the guy version without dress and heels.
Since the comment was admittedly superficial it probably makes no difference to readers here. I would see this person in question on occasion thinking that she would start looking more like a woman, but it was always a guy (longer hair maybe) with dress and heels. That might have been to that person’s credit.
Things get a bit fuzzy when parents encourage their children at a young age toward a “social construct” life that will be difficult. There is a fine line between not disrespecting a lifestyle choice and peddling a fantasy that society will fully accept you if you make that choice. You don’t have to make your boys play with GI Joe, but if you actively encourage them to play with Barbies then you may be pushing a difficult life upon a child who does not understand, and cannot understand what is happening here.
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I have no idea what is the right age to allow kids to explore those choices, but it’s probably between 14 and 24. Making that type of decision in middle or high school is going to be brutal peer wise.
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These groups have minority viewpoints and lifestyles, but everyone has their own minority viewpoints on a host of subjects. However If you parade your viewpoints in an activist style you are likely to get some negative feedback. Wearing your MAGA hat in New Haven is going to get you some negative looks. I’m not a fan of public displays of affection between homosexuals, but that is 99% because I don’t like public displays of affection between anyone. I look at gay marriage like a bowl of spinach, yuck. If other people like spinach that is fine with me, but don’t try to make me eat it and I don’t want to be forced to pretend I like it. I’m not going to publicly berate people for eating spinach and there is a good chance it is good for them. Female-female relationships are more like a bowl of broccoli though, not my favorite but I can eat it if I have to.
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What drives me crazy is the “celebration” of these lifestyles like they are something super special. The first openly (fill-in-the-identity group) (fill-in-the-position). Who cares? The SC justice nomination is all about identity, they don’t even discuss legal opinions.
Tom Scharf,
“What drives me crazy is the “celebration” of these lifestyles like they are something super special”
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Ya, I don’t much care how people choose to live their lives, but it is kind of a genetic dead-end, short of medical intervention, surrogates, etc, and seems strange to me.
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I just don’t see it as something to celebrate. I shrug my shoulders and move on…. nothing to see here folks.
Mark Bofill
“ it’s no concern of mine. Nor do I care if people are crazy as loons provided they don’t injure my life, liberty or property.”
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Where do the lines cross?
While you sensibly will take reasonable precautions and make sensible decisions does this not also include others who may run into problems despite their best intentions?
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Transgender is a mental , not physical, process.
As such it part of a much bigger concept of how we deal with the world when it does not behave the way we think it should behave.
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We all have desires.
The trouble is that we usually desire something that we do not or cannot have.
We sometimes also want them because other people want them thus putting a value on them.
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I can understand wanting to have a yacht, be young rich and famous.
I can understand others wanting to be overweight (which I am), not handsome or pretty or wanting to believe they are a different sex.
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It is not confined to humans, pet cats and ducks will believe they are some other adoptive creature for a while.
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Should you humour them, or ignore them or live with them?
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What should not be done, in my opinion only, is to actively encourage their reality into your reality where it becomes destructive.
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In the current case of sport it is instructive to watch people not wanting to hurt feelings.
Yet thereby creating a situation hurting lots of other peoples rights and feelings.
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The answer is simple and hard.
You cannot always have what you want in life in the real world but you can indulge it as much as you want in your own fantasy world, not the others real world.
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angech,
I said something similar here.
Life isn’t fair and any attempt to make it fair will likely harm more people than are helped. See Harrison Bergeron. Vonnegut, btw, was a lefty as was Orwell. So being totally clueless is not a requirement.
Angech,
So – if I understand you properly (and I apologize if I do not), you are touching on something Kenneth made me realize.
His was a better answer than mine. It’s not just myself I’m concerned with. I don’t always write as carefully as I ought to.
DeWitt Payne (Comment #208970)
angech,
In the current case of sport it is instructive to watch people not wanting to hurt feelings. Yet thereby creating a situation hurting lots of other peoples rights and feelings.
Life isn’t fair and any attempt to make it fair will likely harm more people than are helped. See Harrison Bergeron.
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Thank you De Witt, and MB.
Harrison Bergeron was a story that actually made me cry when I read it many years ago.
Incredibly emotive, sad and instructive.
Should strike a nerve in many people if they ever get to read it.
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Life and sport share a lot in common including not being fair.
The vast majority of this stuff is designed simply to win an argument. The means devised, and “evidence” collected to support it, is ignored the second an opposing argument arises which is supported by their own “evidence”. This leads to contradictory positions on any related subjects ie “born this way” and “social construct”, which are used interchangeably depending on the goal. The aim is simply subversion of existing values , like justice and compassion, to support the desired goal. The constant abuse of these values leads to a loss of confidence in the system and, eventually a breakdown in law and order and social cohesion.
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It’s inevitably a losing position because enough people eventually realize what’s going on. The question is whether enough people realize soon enough before they’ve handed over the keys and they find questioning is no longer allowed (the cops knocking on their door for “hate speech”). Feminists are learning this lesson the hard way. Their earstwhile political allies against the “patriarchy” have stabbed them in the back with a knife of their own creation. It eats itself, sure, but usually for desert.
Tom Scharf (Comment #208967)
January 29th, 2022 at 4:01 pm
I believe that Tom’s comments hit on issues that most of us here would agree. The spinach and broccoli metaphors were interesting and applicable to most of us but probably not mentioned much in conversations.
I have gay relatives and friends who I admire greatly and with whom I enjoy talking about any issue, but I will never understand being attracted to another male sexually. That is a singular difference between them and me that really does not get in the way of our relationships.
I said singular but they are probably less likely to forget a birthday than I am.
When my wife was alive she had the same take on these issues as I did – except from a female perspective.
The issue of younger and under age people gender transitioning and their parents’ involvement sounds problematic to me and like a human experiment where we await the results years down the road.
While the people behind “it” seem varied, from authoritarian competitors, globalist oligarchs, to idealist dreamers, their problem and solution seem largely the same. The problem is that freedom is an inconvenience. It prevents action on climate change. It prevents an effective covid response. It opposes authoritarianism. It prevents the “doogooders” from “doing good”. It works against people’s “best interests”. It leads to “inequity”. It sets a bad example to the rest of the world.
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China has created their idea of an ideal society. One that employs increasingly high tech means to ensure you have no choice but to do what you’re told. “They” offer safety from the chaos they create, and they only ask for your freedom in exchange.
Heh.
I must be more pervy than y’all. I understand well enough. I don’t think it’s that complicated; women are attracted to men, why? There are reasons. For that matter, when you get right down to it, why are women attractive? If intelligent people care enough (and maybe that’s the thing, there’s no particular reason to care) I think it can be puzzled out.
On a different note, underage (or even just young) people transitioning, yeah. I think that’s unwise. I don’t have a perfect theory describing the lines between parental governance of a child and societal / legal governance. I don’t know how the lines should be drawn here.
So I bought a new can of shaving cream today. Seven ounces for $2. The last time I bought a can, which admittedly was a while ago, it was eleven ounces for $2. But inflation is only 6%. Right. Maybe the BLS thinks that shaving cream has improved so they made a hedonic adjustment to the price increase like they have done with cars and TV’s. Or shaving cream isn’t in the basket because most people shave with electric shavers.
When I saw how small the cans were, I thought at first I was looking in the wrong place.
mark bofill (Comment #208976)
January 30th, 2022 at 10:38 am
Of course, I do not understand how a man is sexually attracted to another man is what I meant. I understand how women are sexually attracted to men and in my case how could they not be attracted and even at my advanced age.
That last part I inherited from my father who lived to be 95.
DeWitt Payne (Comment #208977)
January 30th, 2022 at 10:41 am
Or the thinking might be that older frugal men will use less of the more expensive shaving cream and thus the BLS algorithm will take that into consideration in their cost per shave. They are all knowing in these matters, you know.
Alternatively the more expensive shaving cream might motivate the shaver to convert to an electric shaver where improvements are more readily considered with the BLS algorithm.
All this makes us realize that us mere mortals are not equipped to make these calculations.
DeWitt,
Yeah. I feel you.
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Also: Meat is definitely more expensive.
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I’m always a little amused by articles explaining how to save money on food. Consider buying store brands. Consider lower priced cuts of meat. All this advise is given in a tone that suggests some one didn’t do these things before!
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I’ve always tried store or bargain brands and in many cases there is no difference. (Sorry General Mills, but no “Cheerios” aren’t better than any of the other “Oat Ohs” on the shelf. )
I’ve always looked at what meat is cheaper. Ham and pork have been relatively good deals lately. During early covid, small whole chickens were really cheap. So I bought those a lot. Thighs and drumsticks are often a good deal relative to breasts. (And sorry, the fat % is not sufficient to make breasts absolutely necessary for just “regular meals”.)
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I own a sous vide device and a vaccuum sealer. I often do something like marinate – then sous vide to make some bulk buy things what I consider tasty. Then I pull out mostly cooked, tender stuff, pull out a smaller portion, and have that. I freeze the rest. It’s precooked/tenderized. (Example: Big packages of pork were $0.99/lb. I discovered marinating pork chops in garlic, a little salt and milk, the sous viding. Then taking two of them and grilling quickly. I loved them! Cheap can be good.)
(On the small chickens: My understanding was the small were often “restaurant” size. Restaurants often put half a chicken down on the menu, so it’s usually half a 2 lb chicken, not half a 4 lb chicken. Anyway, restaurant going collapsed. I LOVE those small chickens. That’s a nice size for two people. You don’t have leftovers for nights on end! If company is coming and you want more food, you can cook 2! I don’t quite know why people didn’t snap these up, but it seems they didn’t. )
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We do buy “non-bargain” stuff too. We can afford what we want. But I always look at price. With respect to “everyday” meals, I don’t want to pay an extra 50% for a “brand” when the “non-brand” is just as good. I don’t want to pay twice as much for “meat A” when “meat B” is also perfectly delicious.
Kenneth,
I don’t think you don’t understand it. I suspect you mean you don’t personally experience it. Shrug. This is neither here nor there and of no consequence, so I’ll drop it.
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[Edit: Something of much greater interest to me actually that I’d like to ask you. How do you draw the lines as a libertarian regarding parental authority over kids as opposed to state / laws governing kids?]
You must like NFL football! Why would a group of people form a pact to get Twitter to shame people who don’t love football (or any other random subject)? This makes no sense. The biggest problem with the conformity police is it really is just loosely connected to the policy du jour, it is about exerting control.
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This statement is old and tired by now, but once the conformity police get another notch on their belt they simply go looking for the next victim. There is no actual endpoint. The process is the goal. It’s closer to entertainment for these bored busybodies. The wild west, hang’em high. Pretty soon Alex Jones and Joe Rogan are one and the same. “White supremacy”, covid “misinformation”, all the same. The roving mobs.
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How they actually got this power is a bit of a mystery. They are universally unpopular. A few high profile takedowns and the populace falls in line. Nobody saw this coming with social media, and it is pure social poison. I’m still optimistic this insanity will pass, but I also thought covid would be gone by now, ha.
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Realistically all the Twitter shamers should just get a real hobby, like the NFL. Daytime soap operas used to fill this void for the human need of social drama I suppose. I just don’t have this need, artificial social drama just repels me, or maybe the NFL is where I get it.
The state has to step in for actual child abuse. There needs to be a pretty high bar here but that is going to be a judgment call. Being raised by people who use government social aid for children to buy drugs isn’t optimal. My local paper has lots of stories of the state not stepping in for abusive households, many more than they ever run for the state being overly assertive.
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On the other hand there are lots of people who think the state should get much more involved early on to solve lots of cultural problems that turn up later. Educational attainment being a big one. First free kindergarten, then free Pre-K, etc. There have been some wins here, like free school breakfast and lunch that I now see as good ideas to prevent malnutrition which likely has a real effect.
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The rest is pretty debatable. The social science backing up some of these programs is rather poor. Recent example, NYT:
Cash payments for low-income mothers increased brain function in babies, a study found, with potential implications for U.S. safety net policy.
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This is likely bad science but I don’t have the energy to track that stuff down, the entire social science backing up these preferred policies is unreliable. Some kids are going to have bad parents and will suffer for it. Not clear that this needs fixed by state intrusion except in clear cut cases.
Hmm. It occurs to me that I sometimes don’t come across when I post the way I mean to. Kenneth, my question about parent – child / state child lines was meant to be amiable and respectful, asked in the hopes of learning something. It’s perfectly fine if you don’t have this nailed down, or it’s too tedious to go into. I’ll freely admit I don’t know how to sort this out, I don’t think there’s any shame in that. But if you know or even if you just have ideas about it, I’d be pleased to hear it for my own benefit.
Just in case that was unclear. Thanks.
I think you beat yourself up too much, Mark! It seems to me that there are no shrinking violets around here that you need to fear offending (Our host is waiting for schlong pics…). Most discussion occurs with good humor and the more forceful disagreements lead to no lasting “damage”. Apart from the well informed opinion and resourced information on various topics, this is another reason I stick around here!
Nostradamus time.
Russian invasion 14th February as a day of loving relationships.
Also a big Tectonic event, Greenland or Italy on 17th February.
I have a 15-25% accuracy rating,
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Apropos damaged kids being brought up in damaged families.
Taking them out causes permanent damage.
Leaving them in causes permanent damage.
And there are just too many, kids and families, to do anything practical about it.
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Not saying one should not try.
The best one can hope for is enough food water and clothing and a society that provides education and encourages people to consider being appropriately caring and kind to others.
T,J and the American way are a reasonable model
DaveJR,
More accurately: I predict they will materialize. I am waiting in the sense that I am waiting to see when that happens. I don’t especially want to look at them.
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But I agree that Mark does tend to think he doesn’t say things well and worries about it. I, on the other hand, tend to just blurt things out.
Tom Scharf,
“Some kids are going to have bad parents and will suffer for it. Not clear that this needs fixed by state intrusion except in clear cut cases.”
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Once the nanny state gets involved it gets ugly fast. A Dutch couple I know well needed to have their only son miss 1 day of school to travel to the States…. and they are a super-responsible, loving couple. The school system forbade it…. threatening them with prosecution.
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That many think parents should have no input into school curricula…. or much of anything else on raising their kids… is a common thread on the left, and the more extreme left the more extreme the policies become. It is all related to the religious belief on the left that people are born “blank slates” that the state can turn into proper citizens, but only if parents can’t interfere. The fundamental belief that everyone is identical and so all differences in outcome are due to social inputs is one of the world’s enduring sources of great evil and great harm.
Mark and Lucia do not stop being you – which I am confident you will not.
I consider children as individuals with a nearly full set of rights that need to be protected. I differ with the more extreme views of Rothbard in this case. The government, on one hand, does a lousy job of preventing child abuse and neglect and on the other gets too much involved in matters where the parents should be in charge.
In my ideal world these matters would be handled by means other than government , but that world has no hope of existing anytime soon. I judge that the problem with government is inherent and not something that will be fixed to any goodly extent by putting so called better people in charge. The best I think that can be done in present time is to steer government away from making family decisions and towards protecting children and spouses from abuse and neglect by other family members.
Lucia wrote: “I, on the other hand, tend to just blurt things out.”
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It gives the place character beyond the, often, dire outlook on current events. I am afraid I am an English immigrant. A dry sense of humor and dark sarcasm is part of the culture. Besides, comic relief is a welcome respite!
Thank you Kenneth.
My wife was an excellent bargain hunter and we never suffered from bad quality or lower end products. I never learned her ways and now buy food that I like at the price charged at the stores that are conveniently located. I could not tell you with any precision the prices of individual items I buy, but I am acutely aware of the totals I see on my charge receipts and those are very noticeably increasing.
I do have the advantage of prefering less of a high end product versus more of a lower end one and seldom wasting any food. I am still learning about buying and cooking for one person. Doing this has gone from my preconceived view of it as drudgery to one that requires a strategy and some creative thinking.
Kenneth,
I don’t memorize the price of everything. But I do compare equivalent things, and I at least try the cheaper brand. At least as far as I can tell, “Toastie Ohs” and “Cheerios” aren’t of equal quality, and I buy which ever is cheaper. Usually that is Toastie Ohs and the difference is noticeable. But every now and then General Mills has some special and its Cheerios. I do the same with Tuna, canned tomatoes and lots of stuff. There are some items that have no comparable store store brand item. Sometimes the brand is better. I think Oreos really are better than other chocolate sandwich cookies.
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I also just compare prices of meat and I do tend to know the current “band” of prices. I know which things tend to be higher priced and lower priced.
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Other than that, like you I notice that total I spend in a trip is rising. So there is a general inflation. But I do notice that for lots of cuts of meat, prices have gone up quite a bit. Some veggies too– but not others. (The Roma tomatoes at Butera haven’t moved up significantly in price, but the “on the vine” have. But it might be the season– the “on the vine” do vary more by season. Go. Figure.)
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I go to Butera which always seems to hunt around to supply things that might be a special bargain. (So, for example, that was the only store where I found the $0.69/lb whole –but small– chickens early in Covid. Jewel seemed to only continue to stock their “normal” chickens, and the price was higher. I was like– “These little chickens are sooooo cheap and made quite a few roast chickens during that period. )
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I’ll also go on a Walmart run for brand items. Walmart and Kmart tend to have the lowest prices on branded items, but they’re a bit far. So I go maybe once every two weeks and get things to stock up on. (When I go there, I get other items too. Walmart’s grocery is actually quite nice. It’s just too far to be my regular grocery store.)
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My ballroom dance teacher said he’d mentioned shopping at Walmart to some students and then they scoffed. (If I recall, he said they were “Only Whole Foods is good enough for me” types). I was like, “They’re idiots. Walmart grocery is great!” (I have bought some things at Whole Foods. But I’m not really ‘into’ organic as an idea, so I’m mostly not going to pay their prices.)
It was over a decade ago [Edit: Time flies. 20 years ago I realize now], but my girlfriend at that time and I accidentally food poisoned ourselves with Whole Foods food. I forget what it was she’d bought there. It was in this way that I was forcibly reminded that preservatives are a technological advance to be grateful for, not a scourge to be avoided.
I don’t recall ever buying anything else that had gone bad (well, not quite true, only one other case) at a grocery store.
The best preservative scam is “no nitrites” ie hot dogs. They usually substitute celery juice, which just happens to be high in nitrites…
Kenneth Fritsch
Grocery shopping advice…. My secret is to get a good shopping app for your phone…one that syncs with your other devices. I use “AnyList” but there are many others. It works hands-free [by voice] on many devices. I have it on iPhone, iPad, several Alexa devices, Windows PC and it even works by voice in my car.
If you want, you can enter unit prices by store so you can comparison shop. In the kitchen, voice activation means you can add items as you run out without having to stop and wash the chicken guts off your hands. In the kitchen I have it on Echo Show so my whole list pops up on the screen as I add items.
Russel
If I’m going to run out, I’m going to stop to wash chicken guts off my hands!!
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I don’t shop at multiple stores in any one day. Driving back and forth to several stores for one shopping trip is not worth it. I do go to Walmart once every two weeks or so to stock up on things they price better, but if we run out in between I’ll pay more and buy at the closer store during one of my shorter trips.
Lucia, “you can add items as you run out without having to stop and wash the chicken guts off your hands.” Let me rephrase that. If you use the last of something when cooking you can add it to your list using voice commands. Then you don’t have to stop, wash up and write something down.
Lucia… Welcome to Walmart.
We became regular customers of the curbside service during Covid. Our Walmart was very accommodating. They had an hour [8-9am] reserved for old sick people. We used curbside once or twice a week. I tried a number of their store brands and was [mostly] satisfied with the quality and the price was always right, but usually we bought the name brands. We didn’t get fresh vegetables or meat at Walmart curbside. Our farmer’s market had curbside for those items.
We still get big, heavy and bulky items curbside [like 30 lb bags of charcoal]. We also use Sam’s Club and Target curbside but not as often. I hope the stores keep curbside service after Covid. We switched away from our regular grocer, Publix, because they didn’t offer the service. It is a real help for us. We both have Florida Handicap Parking Permits.
Russel,
I’m not new to Walmart! I’ve always gone there for things like paper, pens, crew socks etc. They have lots of staples well assembled and the prices are good.
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The groceries are *relatively* recent. As in, I don’t think they were there 20 years ago. But I checked them out as soon as they existed. They are nice. Produce is fresh. Prices for things are definitely competitive with Jewel. My local Butera is better priced on many other things and closer.
I don’t do curbside, but I imagine it will remain a fairly popular service.
I wouldn’t buy meat at Walmart. They do something like brining to everything. That means that about 10% of the weight of the meat is added liquid. Or at least they were doing that the last time I looked. It’s one thing to get, say, a Butterball turkey which is pre-brined. It’s entirely another thing for a rib eye steak. High end steak houses dry age their steaks so they lose moisture, not have moisture added.
Btw, in my experience it’s not just Butterball turkeys that are pre-brined. If you want to brine a turkey yourself, you need to read the fine print on the label. If it says “contains x% of a liquid” then it’s a waste of time and money to make your own brine solution and soak the turkey. Brining works for pork too.
DeWitt Payne (Comment #209003): “I wouldn’t buy meat at Walmart. They do something like brining to everything.”
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I have noticed that their chicken seems to contain a lot of water. But I have not noticed an issue with their steaks.
Mike M.,
As I said, it’s been a while since I checked the fine print on Walmart’s beef. Maybe they don’t do it any more. I’ll check the next time I’m there. I need to buy some crew socks.
You people have presented some excellent food shopping tips here that maybe some day I will be motivated to use. Lucia, your dissertation sounds like what I would hear from my wife after a trip to the store.
I am naturally a frugal person who does not like to waste things including money. However, when it comes to shopping for food, which I do 2 or 3 times a week, I like to go to a totally familiar store with my shopping list and select the items which I have purchased previously with good results. I use automatic checkout so that my in-store experience is of the shortest duration possible. When I am in an unfamiliar store or looking for unfamiliar items in a familiar store it is a great frustration for me to hunt down the item. Now I am aware that a store app would come in handy in these situations, but my plan in hasty shopping does not include pulling my phone out of my pocket and searching the app – although wandering the store and muttering under my mask about the store hiding items from me is probably not a rational alternative.
My wife was much the opposite to me as she actually enjoyed shopping experiences of all things. When we shopped together, which was not often, I would see her in an animated and friendly conversation with another shopper and when I asked her who that person was she would say she did not know since this was the first time they had talked. She did know most of the people who worked in the stores she frequented and even some things about their private lives. She would insist that we use hand wipes for the cart handles before that was a popular action for shoppers. On occasion, in my mocking resistance, I would say sure and wait until we entered the store and proceed to wipe the entire cart down with eyerolls all around and my wife telling me that these people thing you are crazy. Now I religiously wipe the hand contact areas of the cart.
When shopping for other more expensive items I do my research ahead of time and then order online, if at all possible, with Amazon Prime. If I have to go to a store, it is in and out as fast as possible. When purchasing a car my first line to the dealer representative was: I do not want to be your friend I am here to buy a car and if you have to consult with your manager I will leave. In those situations, my wife was definitely the good cop.
I acknowledge that my food shopping is out of line with my other shopping and maybe some day this old dog will learn a new trick.
DeWitt Payne (Comment #209003)
“Brining works for pork too.”
And how. It works on both large and small cuts [roasts and chops]. It really makes a big difference on the pork I do out in the smoker. Also you wrote:
“It’s one thing to get, say, a Butterball turkey which is pre-brined” gotta love Butterball….. They make you pay for added saltwater and then tell you it’s a good thing by marketing it as “Self Basting”. BTW 8% of a 20 pound turkey is 1.6 pounds. At $2.50 a pound that’s $4.00 added on to your turkey cost.
One more shopping item tale and I promise to stop.
In my first job out of college I carpooled with some older men and one of them would have a running dialogue about the shopping deals he or his wife had made. I was a captive audience and thinking about ways to politely limit that talk when I asked my wife if she had purchased the same item. When she did, it turned out her bargain price was usually the same as the carpool gentleman’s was. I would then ask her where she made the purchase. I would then tell the carpooler that my wife had gotten the same deal and ask him where he or his wife had made the purchase and when it was a further distance from his home than my wife’s was from ours, I would make the point that my wife had gotten the better deal. After a few times of this and hearing my fellow carpooler muttering under his breath, I heard a lot less about bargain purchases.
Russell, that applies to us with short term memory issues and not someone Lucia’s age.
Big difference between a dry and wet brine for steaks.
https://www.charbroil.com/how-tos/dry-brining-steak-tips
Kenneth Fritsch (Comment #209009)
“Russell, that applies to us with short term memory issues and not someone Lucia’s age.”
Kenneth, I have had short term memory issues for as long as I can remember. My mother would send me to the corner grocery with a list with two items on it. And that was in the 1950s.
Russell Klier,
Basting a turkey during roasting is total waste of time and energy. It doesn’t make the turkey moister but it does cool the oven and extends the cooking time. The most important thing in roasting a turkey is internal temperature. You need an accurate probe thermometer. The popup internal temperature indicator only tells you that you have likely overcooked your turkey.
Stuffing a turkey is an invitation to either food poisoning or an overcooked bird unless you precook the stuffing before putting it in the bird hot.
Yes, you’re paying for the water with a Butterball or other pre-brined bird, but you may have to pay more per pound to get a bird that hasn’t been treated.
Edit: $2.50/lb, yikes. I don’t think it was all that long ago when turkeys went for $0.60/lb on sale. That’s worse than my shaving cream example.
I do the shopping at Publix. My wife goes to Sams. I use the Publix shopping app which has a list feature which also tells you the aisle the item is in which is very helpful. It also has an online list which syncs up to the app. The app also helpfully sorts the list by aisle number for the most efficient experience. We use Walmart occasionally but it is farther away so not much.
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Publix has better meat and produce, that is their main benefit beyond being closer to my house and just being “Where shopping is always a pleasure” with a well honed layout and wider aisles, etc.
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Publix is more expensive but we are OCD on their BOGO’s which brings down the expense dramatically, to Walmart levels. I almost always get $50 off when spending $100 ($150 – $50). BOGO’s have a secondary benefit of making you change your selections over time for variety.
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The main benefit of me shopping is I get to personally select all my favorite junk food, Diet Coke, and ice cream. There are weird things you learn over time. They sell “select cuts” of salmon for a higher price, but you can just ask for a whole salmon at the lower price. The select cuts are just the center cuts of the same thing.
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When I first started doing the shopping it was very frustrating searching things out. I’d walk miles every trip. Now I know where everything is, but the lack of a user searchable database at stores seems intentional. I’m looking at you Home Depot.
I finally got my wife to use the oven’s built in meat thermometer. It took a whole new kitchen to get that done, I’m sure the old oven did it too. She knows way more about cooking then I ever will but trying to explain that large meat pieces cook variably based on a several parameters was not met with much acceptance, ha ha. That’s the end of my expertise on cooking unless it is frozen pizza.
On second thoughts I do have a weakness for shopping and enjoying it. It is a grocery store on White Bear Lake in MN called Kowalski’s. When my wife and I visited our family and grandkids near there it was usually our second destination. It was pricey but worth the experience. They would take your groceries to your car unless you told them not to. Many good memories of shopping there.
>I hope the stores keep curbside service after Covid.
Kroger’s Clicklist version predated Covid at least in their home market. First trial run was in 2014. They had it in a 1000 stores by 2017. This is really not going away as they were rolling it out as a way for them to compete with online retailers like amazon. Shipping is cheaper for B&M in that it’s bulk to store and they don’t have to handle the more expensive last mile. Hopefully that’s enough to carry the added real estate and labor costs. I think the fast food ones stick around also. There might be some smaller specialty retailers that drop it due to lack of volume but most will keep it in one form or another.
Walmart & Publix for me. The wife prefers I buy the meat at Publix and a few other specific items. Sometimes we go to ALDI when we’re trying to scrape up an extra few bucks. Not as good a selection but much cheaper.
WHO DEY
SUPER BOWL BOUND
Andrew
Since the topic of the day is food, here is today’s menu from Chez Klier: skillet cornbread and frittata, Southern home cooking meets Italian rustic.
The Bungles did it and Burrow massively built his cred, I’ll be rooting for them. On the other hand KC had an epic collapse that will burn for years. However nobody ever remembers who lost the Superbowl, so you have to finish. Enjoy it while you got it.
Andrew_KY,
Miracles do in fact happen.
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They will almost certainly lose the Superbowl.
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Strangest NFL playoff season evah! Most every higher rated team lost. Usually due to a couple of freak/lucky plays and bad officiating, followed by a field-goal. You couldn’t make this stuff up.
Today’s WSJ:
“One Million Deaths: The Hole the Pandemic Made in U.S. Society”
“Since the start of the pandemic, about 6.8 million Americans have died. That’s roughly a million more deaths than would have been expected in that time. These so-called excess deaths were overwhelmingly attributed directly to Covid-19. The remainder likely include Covid-19 deaths improperly recorded and deaths from other causes amplified by the pandemic.”
Hack Link to bypass paywall: https://www.wsj.com/articles/one-million-deaths-the-hole-the-pandemic-made-in-u-s-society-11643662159?st=55zt5c57h7b0x48&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink
Tom Scharf and SteveF,
It has been a weird season, the officiating has been bad across the board, and sports media tends to over-hype particular players and teams, giving the wrong impression of what is supposed to happen.
The Superbowl is not a foregone conclusion, and LA is probably my fave team after the Bengals… but the Rams are a beatable team, there is no doubt.
Andrew
Nobody seems interested but here goes…..Another big winter storm is brewing. This one is a problem further West than the previous three. Kansas City through to the North East. Starting Tuesday. Major ice and snow event. This guy’s predictions have been spot on for the past three storms: https://youtu.be/Y1sJSf9QGN4
I love Fritatas.
Lucia, last night’s frittata was ham, potato, sweet peppers and red onion the cornbread was jalapeño/cheddar made with homemade yogurt.
Russell Klier,
Do you use wheat flour as well as corn meal in your corn bread? IMO, the best corn bread is made in a cast iron skillet and uses 100% corn meal.
DeWitt Payne, yes on the cast iron skillet. There is no comparison! I use some wheat flour. My wife says it’s how her grandmother from Kentucky made it and we don’t want to spoil a tradition.
I’m not actually a Joe Rogan fan. But I think his statement is eminently reasonable:
It’s hard for me to grasp what honest, good faith objection anybody can have to this guy.
Russell Klier (Comment #209023)
I think it is best to break those million extra deaths down into some logical components. There was an article in today’s WSJ that did a fair job of that. Going forward I believe it best to concentrate on where we currently stand and we can use this past data to accomplish that task.
A very large component of the million were older individuals and a further large component were the unvaccinated. Some of the unvaccinated deaths occurred before vaccines were readily available.
Depending on how the additional and expected deaths are handled in the future, it will be interesting to see what happens in the years following the period of higher infection and death rates from Covid-19. If a significant portion of Covid-19 attributed deaths were the result of individuals who may have died in the near future, the additional deaths should decline and even become negative in the near future. On the other hand, if the Covid-19 period caused individuals to delay needed medical attention, that factor could increase the near future deaths.
The Covid-19 pandemic/endemic is or will be a more complicated issue than it is often given credit for.
mark bofill (Comment #209032)
Mark, what I find interesting in the Spotify dust up is that artists who oppose uncensored dialogue are going against their own artist tendencies that might influence and appear in their works.
When you take them out of their artistic worlds, you can very easily encounter someone who is with the consensus and have an authoritarian streak.
My autistic grandson and I listen to Beyonce on Spotify and so I am hoping she doesn’t leave. I had to convince my grandson that we can listen without paying by listening to few commercials – which initially he was not willing to tolerate.
Kenneth Fritsch (Comment #209033)
“If a significant portion of Covid-19 attributed deaths were the result of individuals who may have died in the near future, the additional deaths should decline and even become negative in the near future.” Yes, I liken it to “Culling the Herd” in animal husbandry and I am amazed that I am still around. I am trying to use that amazement as inspiration to make the most of each new day as it dawns.
I have observed sportcasters over the years and find that they tend to go with the current winner in over hyping their positive attributes and playing down the current underdog by finding negatives. This tendency is more readily observed when it changes from one team to another within a game or from the outcome of a single game. I think they often forget that even the stars are human beings and often young and can have a bad day. I cannot think of a star athlete that I have not seen in a game where they looked, for whatever reasons, very ordinary or as I heard a sportcaster comment about Patrick Mahomes’ second half as being pedestrian.
Speaking of Mahomes, I like his enthusiasm and willingness to admit mistakes and learn from them. Good football teams can make adjustments at halftime and I think you have to give the Bengals a lot of credit for that. The opposing team does not have a halftime to adjust to the other team’s adjustment. The Rams are a beatable team depending on the match up. Not sure how that works with the Bengals since I thought the matchup with the Chiefs favored Kansas City and in particularly in rushing the QB. Turns out that was to the Bengals’ advantage.
Obviously Spotify wants to create a world in which they give every artist veto power over any other unrelated artist on their platform, because that couldn’t ever end badly.
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Humorously Spotify previously made a policy against hate speech and personal misconduct but it swept up a bunch of people of the wrong identity and they had to reverse it within weeks. Somehow there just isn’t a neutral policy that can be written and only enforced against the “right people” so we always end up with very selective enforcement by public mobs or secret anonymous committees.
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Artists are by their very nature culturally edgy, and they should be very careful speaking out in favor of a world of conformity controlled by The Ministry of Truth. It’s really the legacy media that has chosen to amplify this rather small bruhaha into a culture war issue because it suits their narrative. Any smallish artist will get lots of media attention as long as they sell their soul to the progressive narrative.
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It is also notable how few artists are taking up Rogan’s defense (or maybe the media is suppressing it). It’s pretty shameful. Of all the industries that should be behind freedom of expression and association it should be the artists. They are being cowards here, but who wants to put their neck on the chopping block? This really needs to just stop. This is the slippery slope argument made real. Watch/listen to 50 hours of Rogan and you will not find the bizarre and laughable caricature that is being marketed.
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Neil Young, ha. That guy has been crazy for decades and if the media wanted to farm his past statements they would find plenty to complain about. I guess he can do the Hillary 2024 tour now.
Mark wrote: “It’s hard for me to grasp what honest, good faith objection anybody can have to this guy.”
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Is that a rhetorical question? 😉
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“When I am weaker than you, I ask you for freedom because that is according to your principles; when I am stronger than you, I take away your freedom because that is according to my principles.” – James Herbert
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Rogan’s, very large, audience is concentrated in the “young adult” age group and he’s demonstating principles of free thinking and listening to various viewpoints. Viewpoints that challenge the authority of the establishment. That’s a problem! Unfortunately, every concession given by well meaning people like Rogan is just a tightening of a noose around their necks.
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The game played is to claim harm and prey on compassion and empathy to demand people do something about it. Only by removing themselves from public discourse, or joining the cathedral, can these wrongs be righted, however.
Kenneth, yep. So much for ‘sticking it to the Man’.
Dave, I don’t know. I thought it was more of a rhetorical statement.
Thanks all.
TomScharf
I’m lost. I thought Spotify is keeping Rogan? And said so?
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Lots of people who never heard of Rogan now have. For example: My husband. He assumed this was about the guy who was in the movie “Interview” . That would be Seth.
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I hate podcasts so I’m never going to listen to Rogan. But I bet he’s gained ears, not lost them. Explaining his philosophy was good– even if it was framed as an apology.
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I also think Neil Young should do what Neil Young thinks is best. We’ve lost 1 song from Jim’s various play lists due to Young and evidently Joni Mitchel leaving Spotify. We are still going to use Spotify for our dance songs playlists. We’re used to it; they have nice selection. Yada yada…
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Tons of people won’t even notice this flap up.
Lucia,
Me too. I initially liked the idea of listening to podcasts, until I realized how much longer it takes to listen to people speak rather than just reading what they had to say. Plus the fact that I just plain prefer reading to listening in general.
Lucia, I think Tom is referring to both Rogan and Spotify bowing recently to the artists opposed to allowing Rogan’s guest to be heard. They have been very apologetic about the matter.
I am like you about podcasts. It has to be information I could not get any where else and presented by articulate and informed quests. I can read faster and better than I can listen.
The Spotify matter is a private one and the parties can do as they please, but I do have to wonder about a group of doctors not wanting to hear someone say that young people do not need to be vaccinated. I think some of these people fear free speech will weaken the case the government is attempting to make.
Yes, the Streisand effect does play in Rogan’s favor, however, as long time observers of the game note, an apology is an admission of guilt. The establishment is right to be concerned, he admits it himself! Rogan won this fight, but that he issued such a statement is not a promising sign.
My “veto” comment was sarcasm. Allowing your individual talent to veto your product for something as diverse as music and podcasts isn’t a viable strategy. A horrible precedent, see Twitter and YouTube bans.
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I listened to several podcasts with Rogan interviewing people like Jordan Peterson, Elon Musk, Matt Tiabbi, and Bret Weinstein. They are usually 3 hours long and very in depth. He is really a good interviewer and lets the people state their views. He’s moderately entertaining and way more famous than I would expect. It’s only good for people with a lot of time, like driving.
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Of course it’s not about liking Joe Rogan or podcasts, it’s about yet another attempted crushing of a person for social misdemeanors inflated to capital offenses, ruining a person for sport by the Twitter mob as they cover themselves in alleged virtue.
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Joe Rogan is likely a bridge too far. I don’t think they will win this one, but they they can still lose and stifle speech.
Kenneth,
“I think some of these people fear free speech will weaken the case the government is attempting to make.”
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Yes, that is exactly the issue. Up thread somewhere there was discussion of how the CDC delayed release and then (blatantly!) obfuscated an important and perfectly reasonable result: those who recovered from covid-19 were about 1/5th as likely to have a breakthrough infection as those who were vaccinated. But since this perfectly reasonable result proved vaccine mandates for everyone are utterly illogical, and indeed indefensible, the CDC willfully suppressed the information for 6 months. Only evil and stupid people would choose to hide that result.
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There seems to me to be a significant segment of the population enamored of the left, and those people do not care in the slightest about honesty, free speech, personal liberty, or any other niceties. They want absolute control, and nothing else will satisfy them. They ought to read the history of the French revolution and how the mob turned on the originators in the end. I rather doubt they will; the left is poorly educated, profoundly stupid, and with a complete lack of self awareness.
I do not have the seeming confidence that Tom has about a turn around of the likes of the Rogan/Spotify case. There is the obvious lack of public figures making a case for a free speech defense (in the private mode) in this matter and even worse you have Rogan/Spotify apologizing. I quote here in part from today’s WSJ:
Rogan said his show had grown “out of control” and “if I pissed you off I’m sorry” and “I’m going to do my best to balance things out”.
The Spotify CEO said: “..It has become clear to me that we have an obligation to do more to provide balance and access to widely accepted information..”
That is not only an apology but is groveling before the throne of authority and consensus.
It was more of a classic non-apology apology. He apologized to Spotify for making their lives a bit miserable, not the offended illuminati. It seemed a bit carefully worded with a fake spontaneous vibe. It’s going to rightly harden his fanbase and not likely to convert anyone to the censor’s viewpoint. This is the market working itself out unfortunately and I’m not happy about it.
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These efforts are just poisonous to discourse. Where are the defenders? It really is an outrage that people can’t defend him on purely free speech grounds. Mostly Substack, Greenwald, Taibbi, and crew. The MSM is silent.
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I would have been more satisfied with a “if you don’t like what I or my guests say then f*** you, don’t listen”, ha ha. When is somebody just going to step up and say that? From what I have gathered over watching him for a short time, this is likely exactly what he is thinking.
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I’m no fan of group attempts to censor, but can’t they at least be coherent? The facts of this argument are nonsensical and it is portrayed as always as “guilty of misinformation” per The Ministry of Truth. Conclusions, appeal to authority.
Tom,
I also thought it was a classic not-pology.
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Also: some may be upset at the dearth of defenders. But how many people have rallied to Neil Young? I’m not reading of a huge shit-wad of performers yanking their music. An article I’m reading lists these people:
Joni Mitchels– 78,
Nils Lofgren (who you ask? Well, he was a guitarist in Springsteens band.
Graham Nash. Well, yeah. I’m guessing this isn’t going to hit this elderly gentle man in the pocket book. I don’t have him in my playlist. I’m guessing few do.
Now, the non-geriatrics.
Bene Brown. (Who you ask? She’s an author.)
Wendy Zuckerman,
Blythe Terrel
India Arie
So: three geriatrics, and four others. This is hardly a mass exodus of artists from Spotify.
https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/music/story/2022-01-30/spotify-joe-rogan-covid-neil-young-list-of-artists
Prince Harry and Meghan evidently expressed “concerns”. But honestly, what are they going to do. They are lucky Spotify takes them on, not the other way around!
It’s all over for Rogan now. Elvira, Mistress of the Dark, adds her considerable… weight to those demanding censorship!
Stealth omicron BA.2 looks more infectious, maybe 2x to 3x. Wonderful. We get to go to endemic status even faster now! You can see the likely effect in Denmark s-curve numbers where BA.2 is over 60% of cases now. The UK also plateaued after their decline, possibly a BA.2 effect.
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Curiously the UK numbers had a huge spike because … they never included reinfections in their official counts until today. They included them in other reports. This is a bit strange, not sure if other countries do this.
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Norway is removing all covid measures in the middle of a surge, they are just basically giving up and think the hospitals won’t be overwhelmed.
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Anyone who ever thought this respiratory virus could be stopped was wrong.
Tom Scharf,
“Anyone who ever thought this respiratory virus could be stopped was wrong.”
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To paraphrase Little Big Man: the supply of lefty idiots is unlimited; the number of sane people, unfortunately, is very limited.
Omega is killing maybe 1 in 1000 in Denmark (and several other places). Where vaccination rates are lower and/or delta is still around, the rates (per confirmed case) mostly range from 1:250 to 1:1000, and even lower where the population is very young, like Africa. It is all over but the shouting. It is already an endemic illness, Brandon and his evil elf from the CDC both be damned.
Rogan sounded to me a bit like Krestinsky at a show trial in the Stalin era when he finally admitted in court: “I fully and completely admit that I am guilty of all the gravest charges brought against me personally”. Krestinsky was induced by torture while Rogan submitted for money.
The Rogan controversy is very interesting to me because I’m all for the free exchange of ideas and I’m now seeing a convergence on my viewpoint from unexpected groups. I’m not the audience for podcasts, heck I never listened to talk radio so Although I’m familiar with Rogan I don’t listen to him at all.
My kids both go to CU Boulder, the Berkeley of the mountains. They both use Rogan as background noise while they do homework and they actively exchange favorite episodes. When I was in college we had three engineering nerds in a room doing homework and the only requirement to background noise was no lyrics. So we’d listen to Mozart Divertimenti, Philip Glass or Brian Eno type stuff. The most we had was the three of us groaning Koyaanisqatsi.
Anyways, this is their counterculture. Their way of flaunting the man. In that respect my daughter feels like the ultra liberals in Boulder are the oppressive force. They’re the bad guy. For example Boulder instituted a Covid law that you had to walk around campus by yourself, day or night it didn’t matter. What does that feel like to a 20 year old female. Also, they made a Covid law that you couldn’t have two people together go to a store. My daughter didn’t have a car so she’d hit up her roommate and they’d buy groceries together in the next town down the highway.
My point is that things are changing. Young people see who is oppressing them from non sensical rules and are looking for voices that give their plight some kind of volume. No matter how hard they try to stomp out those voices, where there’s a will there’s a way.
Don’t get me started on “everything the man does is bad” Neil Young rolling over.
The screwed up Afghanistan withdrawal was worse than I thought.
It is one thing to have an inadequate plan fall apart in the fog of war. But new revelations show that the administration did not even have a plan. That is not mere incompetence; it is gross negligence.
https://www.axios.com/leaked-document-reveals-bidens-afghan-failures-c27d790c-3a50-4734-8543-7db710898bb2.html?
Mike M,
Biden is demented, utterly incompetent, and 100% reliant on those around him. Those around him are 100% woke idiots… and utterly incompetent. The Afghanistan debacle is just a symptom of that general incompetence. Nearly all the national problems we now face (huge flux of illegal immigrants, highest inflation in 40 years, severe labor shortages, wacko, economically destructive covid policies, continuing efforts to indoctrinate children with leftist mumbo jumbo, etc) are the direct result of the incompetence of the Biden administration…. aided (of course) by a Congress controlled by the same kind of woke idiots as run the Biden administration.
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I was traveling last week and tried one morning to buy a breakfast sandwich from a Burger King restaurant….. Normal business hour, but the restaurant was closed. At the order window the manager said “Sorrry, we are closed. I am the only one here. The entire 7:00 AM shift didn’t show up, and I can’t find anyone from other shifts to fill in.” Low wage people have simply left the labor force.
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Lemme see…. no-questions-asked unemployment benefits, welfare benefits with no work requirements, an extra $300 per child each month, assistance with housing, assistance with food, assistance with medical care. Maybe people just aren’t all that motivated to take entry level jobs like Burger King offers.
Afghanistan collapsed much more quickly than expected and everything else was derived from that. Whether there should have been an expectation of a months long delay before collapse is debatable. I think seeing how fast Iraq collapsed to the Americans followed by a very fast collapse in Syria and Iraq to ISIS should have been red flags that the situation can deteriorate very quickly if there is no will to fight from an opposition. It was a massive failure that Biden owns, mostly because it was preventable with better planning. It was always going to collapse though.
CNN chief Jeff Zucker resigns after lying to investigators about a sexual relationship with an underling. Oddly enough, she is about 15 years his junior and pretty. Oh, and she used to work for Andrew Cuomo before CNN, where, just maybe, her looks made a difference.
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CNN is such a great organization. 😉
The US had over 1,000,000 excess deaths due almost entirely to Covid, either directly or indirectly, according to the Wall Street Journal. The US per capita death rate was the highest of all the developed countries. Our per capita numbers are more like a third world country.
I place a lot of the blame on the Freedom Lugnuts. The Let-er-Rip crowd fought any move the government took to lessen the impact of the disease. They were loud, they started their opposition early and they continue their vociferous recalcitrance even today.
Fauchi is corrupt; The vaccines are dangerous and unproven; Herd immunity is here; the Government has no authority to impose mandates; Natural immunity is better; They died with Covid not because of Covid; Masks don’t work; yada, yada, yada.
Why the US did so poorly is another issue where definitive data will never exist, but you have blood on your hands. You know who you are.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/one-million-deaths-the-hole-the-pandemic-made-in-u-s-society-11643662159?st=55zt5c57h7b0x48&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink
Zucker resigns from CNN because of a relationship with a co-worker. That guy absolutely ruined CNN, turning it into an anti-conservative tabloid. I never go there anymore and haven’t watched their channel for almost a year. I don’t know that this damage is repairable anyway or if there is a will to do it.
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CNN was put in a tight spot in the media ecosystem, there just doesn’t seem to be an economically viable way to do TV journalism now without a huge helping of culture flame wars. Fanning outrage to attract viewers from one side is the defacto standard now. There is smoking crater from where journalism used to be, younger people don’t see this.
Tom Scharf,
” It was always going to collapse though.”
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Yes, the country is full of people who believe in the most severe form of Sharia law… they never wanted the kind of nation we tried to build. A reversion to the Taliban was inevitable. But the withdrawal did cost a lot of lives, and left many Afghans behind who now face torture…. and worse. It was incompetence that led to “nation building” efforts and incompetence that led to the withdrawal debacle. That same incompetence makes the Ukraine a lot more dangerous situation than it ought to be.
Russell,
You are free to map your biases onto unknowns as you wish, but it is more likely that the US’s older population and general bad health were bigger factors. It is well known that the US spends almost twice as much as other countries on healthcare and gets poorer results across the board before covid.
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We are still having large death numbers with a very large in place immunity between vaccines and prior infections. It’s going to be tough to sort out, and just like increases in crime all the “experts” will place blame that matches their prior biases.
I went to a tire store a couple days ago and they were closing on Wednesdays and Sundays now because of lack of employees. I’ve never seen this type of thing happen before.
Tom Scharf,
The difference between the USA and most other developed countries is mainly due to a lower vaccination rate in the USA for people over 50, and especially people over 65. The USA was lower in covid deaths (per capita) than the UK until well after the vaccines were available. The UK got to >95% of their over 50 population vaccinated many months ago, and their death rate since April 2021 reflects that. The higher deaths in the USA were mostly among those who refused the vaccines.
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Dade county hospitals reported last week that ~63% of those hospitalized with covid were not vaccinated, while in Dade county overall vaccination is well over 70% and over 90% among people over 65. People make bad choices, and they suffer the consequences. I don’t find it even slightly interesting.
Russell,
I don’t think Hungary, Poland, Czechia and Slovakia, all of which have higher COVID death rates than the US, can be considered third world. By and large we don’t really know what the COVID death rate is in the third world. Deaths in India, for example, are likely underestimated by an order of magnitude. Their reported death rate is 355/million. I don’t believe it.
Why should Afghanistan surprise us? Nation building does not work. When you provide a paternalistic government that is corrupt from beginning to end and that requires an infusion of funds and equipment from the outside there is little chance that an independent nation will evolve. That does not work domestically when people become nearly totally dependent on government.
Ukraine has had a succession of corrupt governments and an economy that is sputtering. We do not need or can we afford another Afghanistan. If Russia gets more directly involved it could be their second Afghanistan. Better them than us.
Tom Scharf (Comment #209062): “Afghanistan collapsed much more quickly than expected and everything else was derived from that.”
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I don’t see why that matters. The proper sequence of events should be:
(1) Decide to withdraw.
(2) Plan the withdrawal.
(3) Announce/begin the withdrawal.
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But the Biden approach was:
(1) Decide to withdraw.
(2) Announce/begin the withdrawal.
(3) Start planning the withdrawal, with no particular sense of urgency.
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Calling that stupid is an insult to stupid people.
DeWitt,
You are correct. I have been to Hungary, Poland, and Slovakia, and I can attest they are not 3rd world countries. Certainly not as rich as western European countries, but neither very poor.
DeWitt Payne (Comment #209070)
“I don’t think Hungary, Poland, Czechia and Slovakia, all of which have higher COVID death rates than the US, can be considered third world.”
Yes I agree…but those are the ONLY developed nations that had a higher death rate than the US. I should have said the US death rate is comparable to mostly third world countries.
…but even comparing to Hungary, Poland, Czechia and Slovakia, shouldn’t we have done a lot better than them? Why are there more deaths per capita in the US than Spain, France, Germany, Japan, Grease, Austria, Mexico and many more?
Kenneth Fritsch (Comment #209071): “Why should Afghanistan surprise us? Nation building does not work.”
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It sort of worked in India. Of course, that took the Brits a century and a half and still wasn’t done.
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Was South Korea an example of nation building? As late as circa 1970, South Korea was poorer than North Korea. I think that we are still technically at war in Korea.
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The difference is that we did not try to make South Korea something they weren’t; we let them find their own path. The blunder in Afghanistan was trying to make them into the type of nation that we wanted them to be, over their objections.
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Kenneth Fritsch: “Ukraine has had a succession of corrupt governments and an economy that is sputtering. We do not need or can we afford another Afghanistan. If Russia gets more directly involved it could be their second Afghanistan. Better them than us.”
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I don’t see what one has to do with the other. Exactly zero people are suggesting that we invade Ukraine. The issue there has nothing to do with getting into a quagmire. It is that we might get into a hot war with Russia, when we ought to be worried about China.
Tom Scharf (Comment #209067)
“but it is more likely that the US’s older population and general bad health were bigger factors.”
Yes I agree those were probably factors. But all the anti-vaxx rhetoric and opposition to every measure the US public health officials tried to enact could not have had a positive effect on the US death rate. We had many more deaths per capita than nearly every other developed nation.
There is nothing mysterious about covid death rates. There are two dominant factors: demographics and vaccination rate among the elderly. These links pretty well explain it.
https://www.cnn.com/interactive/2021/health/global-covid-vaccinations/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_median_age
There are other factors of course, and before the vaccines were available, the other factors were more important (Japan never had much spread because the Japanese have relatively low rates of social contact). But those two factors are by far the most important.
John Hopkins study says Covid-19 lockdowns were 0.2% effective and that measures should have been voluntary. Claimed effectiveness was by politicians and not scientists and thus should be considered unscientific.
https://khn.org/morning-breakout/lockdowns-had-little-to-no-benefit-on-public-health-analysis-finds/
“Why are there more deaths per capita in the US than Spain, France, Germany, Japan, Grease, Austria, Mexico and many more?”
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We can start here: List of countries by obesity rate
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_obesity_rate
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You can look at any general health index and find the same thing, to the extent that covid is pushing unhealthy people over the edge this partially answers the question. These are secondary causes and the primary cause of vaccination rates matter of course, but I think these are closer than most people imagine. 88% of seniors are fully vaccinated in the US.
Life expectancy:
Spain 83.2
France 82.5
Germany 81.7
Japan 84.3
Greece 81.1
Austria 81.6
Mexico 76.0
US 78.4
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It is a lot of things rolled up into one. Too bad we didn’t have the antivirals or nose vaccines a year ago.
Mike M. (Comment #209075)
You do not have to invade to generate dependencies of a nation or costs to the US. Military equipment and direct aid to a government can do the trick. Sanctions can cost those doing the sanctioning.
The US needs to disengage not only from places like Afghanistan and Ukraine, but generally from being the world’s police, and letting other nations fend for themselves. We make things worse in that mode. We do much better as being an example of a freer society, promoting trade and exchanging ideas that involve the non government private world.
The countries are limited but, high vaccination rates among elderly == low death rates.
https://ourworldindata.org/covid-vaccinations#vaccinations-by-age
Kenneth Fritsch,
I did not say that helping Ukraine would be cost free, just that it would be minuscule cost compared to Afghanistan. They are completely different things, other than both being poor foreign countries.
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I agree that the US should not be either the world’s policeman or the world’s nanny. That said, it is to our advantage if Russia does not invade Ukraine. Putin is trying to rebuild the Russian empire and restore Russia to superpower status. Letting that happen is not in our interest. Ukraine is a democracy, albeit a struggling one. More democracies is in our interest since they tend to be our friends. It is in our interest that nations respect each others borders and sovereignty, because that is in everyone’s interest.
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That does not mean that we should be willing to spill American blood on Ukrainian soil. But it does mean that we should not just ignore what Russia might do there.
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The big problem as I see it is that we have in Washington a bunch of incompetent posturing boobs trying to bluff their way through without having thought through what happens if Putin calls their bluff. Very dangerous.
Plenty of Russian blood can be spilled using advanced anti-tank, anti-personnel, anti-air weapons with a motivated insurgency. The shoulder mounted Stinger in the mid 1980’s pretty much stopped those Russian Hind helicopters from flying in Afghanistan. After that it was only jets from 20,000 feet.
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In Iraq just burying old artillery shells in the roads with cell phone triggered detonators caused the US huge amounts of casualties.
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It’s one thing to successfully invade, it’s another thing to have a long term occupation. I doubt the invasion will even be defended against. If the Ukrainians are motivated and the CIA is willing (which I think is a yes on both counts but don’t really know) then there are going to be a lot of dead Russians and a rather unpleasant couple years ahead.
My guess is Zucker was exposed by a former disgruntled employee who was close to him. Hmmmm … wonder who that could be?
Tom Scharf,
“Hmmmm … wonder who that could be?”
Even sniveling, dishonest worms named Cuomo and Zucker betray each other it seems. It would have been better if neither of them ever held a job with any responsibility. But that is spilled milk. Maybe CNN’s owners can learn from this? Nah, not a chance. All dishonest all the time is where they are headed.
A meta-analysis has been published that finds no significant effect on mortality of Non-Pharmaceutical Interventions.
https://sites.krieger.jhu.edu/iae/files/2022/01/A-Literature-Review-and-Meta-Analysis-of-the-Effects-of-Lockdowns-on-COVID-19-Mortality.pdf
I tried reading it, but it’s both very long and filled with a lot of jargon. Some of the studies included in the analysis actually showed an increase in mortality.
The WSJ has an op-ed on the paper.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-lockdown-catastrophe-11643833939?st=osty7h32d3m8ncv&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink
At least one of the commenters, of course, took the position that even if the reduction amounted to only a small percentage of the total deaths, it was still worth it.
DeWitt,
“A meta-analysis has been published that finds no significant effect on mortality of Non-Pharmaceutical Interventions.”
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Surprise, surprise, wrapping a piece of cloth over your face does not really stop the spread of a contagious, air bourn virus. We can now safely conclude that cancer can also *not* be a avoided by wrapping a piece of cloth over your face. The terrible damage due to this stupidity will never be recovered. We might hope that next time irrational fear will not drive public policy, but I doubt it. Irrational fear has driven every crazy public policy with covid-19.
My understanding of the justification for denigrating the vaccine and resisting the efforts of public health officials to slow the spread is thus: The 1,000,000 people in the US who died because of the covid pandemic were expendable. They were old, fat and sick. It didn’t make sense to burden the rest of society trying to prolong their lives with unproven techniques. c’est la vie
DeWitt, that is the paperc to which I referred in a post above. I was familiar with some of the papers in the meta study. The John Hopkins paper selection process eliminated papers dealing with the initial surge in early 2020. When I did my studies I saw some positive effects from lockdown measures in that early period but in later surges I saw essentially what the paper found.
In the initial surge the lock downs were unsustanable – it would have caused worldwide depression. If you looked at the mobility index it can be seen that in almost all nations the index showed more people movement after the initial surge that was never significantly lowered in subsequent surges. I also saw studies that showed evidence that voluntary restrictions were more important than government mandates in lowering people movements.
I was puzzled in my literature searches by the many papers showing positive effects of lockdowns fading after the initial surge.
Russell Klier,
Wrong, wrong, wrong. The original justification for NPI’s was ‘flattening the curve’ to try to avoid overwhelming hospitals, not reducing the area under the curve. Absent vaccines and truly effective treatments, the death rate was going to be about the same over the long term with or without NPI’s.
So for every covid death prevented by the lockdowns, there were 100 non-covid excess deaths caused by the lockdowns. A brilliant policy.
I never understood why they didn’t just run a study of asking people who were hospitalized about their masking and distancing habits. Instead we get all this complex modeling based on observational proxies that are a mess to sort out.
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One could claim that others not wearing masks could still land you in the hospital even if you masked, fine, but at least get the primary data collected and analyzed.
If they ran such a survey, I think people would lie about their masking and distancing, but you would get something.
I suspect something like this is involved in the early data that showed smokers were less likely to get covid, or people who quit and restarted.
Challenge trials could sort out masking pretty quick. I think mask evangelists don’t really want to know the answer because of the highly public commitment they have taken with the alleged efficacy.
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The studies are all pretty worthless I think, too many confounders and too much pressure to come up with the right answer. The best evidence they work is that healthcare professionals in covid wards manage to stay uninfected, so something they are doing must be effective.
Tom Scharf,
“The best evidence they work is that healthcare professionals in covid wards manage to stay uninfected, so something they are doing must be effective.”
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*SOME* healthcare professionals working in covid wards managed to stay uninfected, certainly not all. But then again, I know married couples, both sleeping in the same bed, and with no effort to avoid exposure, where one got covid and the other did not. There are a lot of people who are either completely resistant or who become “infected” but never have any symptoms. I am sure the same applies to health care professionals.
I doubt that healthcare ward protection would translate well to the general population. If all the workers had the same protection it would be difficult to impossible to determine which measures worked and which were more extraneous precautions.
I see in the WSJ news section that this is the third straight day of a piece on the Rogan incident and a repeated quote of his apology. Do you think the news editors have surmised that their readers have a short term memory problem?
I have not yet seen a news section mention in the WSJ about the John Hopkins meta study paper.
Do you think the news editors have surmised that their readers have a short term memory problem?
Tom Scharf (Comment #209095): “Challenge trials could sort out masking pretty quick.”
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I don’t see how one could construct a challenge trial for masks that would have enything to do with the real world.
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Tom Scharf: “The best evidence they work is that healthcare professionals in covid wards manage to stay uninfected, so something they are doing must be effective.”
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Early on, they were using surgical masks, which were ineffective. Most healthcare workers did not catch it, but as SteveF points out, this virus is very much hit-or-miss, for unknown reasons. Then they switch to properly fitted N95 masks, which made a big difference.
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I have not heard of anyone seriously disputing that well fitted N95 masks work. It appears that surgical masks help a bit and cloth masks not at all.
DeWitt, when I looked at nations’ mobility indexes (people movement) versus Covid-19 cases and deaths, I saw in a large number of nations that higher cases and deaths per million population were associated with lesser people movement.
I think some of that could be explained by government mandates and/or voluntary measures kicking in harder in those nations with more cases and deaths.
I should also point out that cases per unit population had a higher correlation, be it negative or positive, than deaths per unit population.
Mike M,
“I have not heard of anyone seriously disputing that well fitted N95 masks work. It appears that surgical masks help a bit and cloth masks not at all.”
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Sure, N95 masks, if properly fitted can make a big difference. The problem is that a properly fitted N95 mask is a bear to wear, and most people don’t want their N95 mask to actually fit properly…. far more comfortable to have open gaps that reduce the significant delta-P’s that you experience with a properly fitted mask. Masking eternally with an N95 mask is not a practical solution to avoid covid illness.
SteveF
I haven’t actually asked Vlad and Brianna if they sleep in the same bed. Brianna got Covid with symptoms. It turned out Vlad had antibodies based on test he got when she had Covid. But he wasn’t positive at the time. They are married, live in the same house. So does her mother. Her mother didn’t get Covid. So it is hit and miss.
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I danced with Vlad unmasked. If I’ve had Covid, it’s been without symptoms. Same can be said for Brianna’s students– most of whom I think were vaccinated. (Vlad and Brianna are now vaccinated because the competitions are requiring it. So, vaccinated after getting sick!)
There is definitely an increasing split between the WSJ’s news and opinion sections. That being said the news sections is still very far to the right of the NYT, which isn’t saying a lot. I would say the WSJ news side is close to center, but others would say center-right.
1. Put a 100 unvaccinated/uninfected people in a small unventilated room, 50 have masks and 50 don’t. Have a series of infected people walk through the room (or just gas ’em with covid, ha ha). Do the relative math.
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2. Put 50 unmasked people in a room 1, have infected people walk through room without a mask. Put 50 unmasked people in a room 2, have the same infected people walk through room with a mask. Compare results.
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There are still confounders and there are probably better designed tests, but this data is a way better first step than the stuff we are getting. The error bars should be much smaller. Maybe you need 500 volunteers, etc.
The most likely scenario of sleeping in the same bed and not getting infected is the other person might have had a previous asymptomatic infection.
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Before delta the chances of in house transmission was about ~25%, with omicron it is ~75%. I haven’t seen very good data for this though.
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Sleeping is also possibly not a big covid spreader. The rule of thumb here is (again, no good data to back this up):
Normal breathing = 1X risk factor
Talking = 10X risk factor
Coughing/Sneezing: 100X risk factor
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So sleeping quietly is one thing, a hacking cough all night is another.
lucia and SteveF,
I think, at least with the earlier strains, there was a large difference in viral load between individuals. The statement was that 20% of the infected caused 80% of the cases. So then the other 80% weren’t very infectious. Then if the person you were exposed to during the first wave was in the 80%, your probability of being infected was low. I don’t hear that any more. Omicron may be more infectious because nearly all the infected are now equally infectious. Maybe everyone with omicron is a superspreader now.
Tom Scharf,
“…a hacking cough all night is another”
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That was definitely the case with one couple where the wife didn’t get covid (she tested negative via PCR). Could she have had an earlier asymptomatic infection? Sure, but no way to tell short of a sensitive antibody test. One thing is certain: exposed people often do not have symptomatic illness. That is pretty much the same for most contagious illnesses…. including the flu and common colds.
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Super-infectious omega spreads rapidly to a smallish fraction of the population, then dies off quickly…. consistent with only a portion of the population being susceptible to omicron.
One thing that was exposed during this pandemic was how little we really know about disease spread of even common endemic illnesses. I’m a bit shocked by this lack of knowledge. Two years after covid and the masking question is pretty much a clusterf*** as far as I am concerned. We actually went through a year+ with cloth masks, how is it they never knew this doesn’t work?
Tom Scharf,
Yes. One thing Lindsey Marr (Virgina Tech I think) did was look into the history of the 6 foot rule. There was a lot of “lore”. I think there was also some evidence that people in medicine wanted to repell the “miasma-bad-air” theory of infection. This desire to repell the idea that disease is transmistted by “bad air” all got a big mixed up and the idea that flu ‘must’ be transmitted by contact sort of took off.
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Being transmitted by very small aerosolized particles is somewhat distinct from “bad air”. It’s not the air that’s bad. But air can carry pathogens as well as pollutants. They can hurt you– same as “bad water”. H20 itself isn’t going to be “bad”. But it can harbor bacteria, virus, and so on. So can air.
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Anyway, the fact is: most MD’s are not epidemilogists. They are practitioners. Most medical research has not been focused on mechanisms of transmission of endemic diseases.
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Early in Covid, I was often amused by people suggesting “talk to your doctor” for information on Covid. Your doctor didn’t know! Because no one knew. They certainly didn’t cover this in medical school. And your doctor doesn’t really have time to read the flood of stuff on Covid. Read the CDC was potentially better advise. The difficulty is they all want to be “on message”, and the result was sometimes arguable and sometimes confusing. And it could change on a dime.
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I also think there are lots of people who are very “attached” the the “dirty surface” theory of contagion. Visibly dirty surfaces do give lots of people an “oh ick” feeling, and they then can imagine things being invisibly dirty. But they tend not to think of clean seeming air as a problem. Many people still want to believe wiping surfaces is important. (Nothing against surfaces being wiped by the way. It’s just not something that makes much difference to COVID– as far as we can tell.)
This is anecdotal for sure, but when my oldest son was infected early in the pandemic the other 5 members where not infected by him. When the omicron surge hit 4 members of the family were infected in rapid fire. The other member was infected after being at college for a week.
My younger son and his wife were infected about week apart with omicron. They sleep together as I know from not asking but in passing from conversations with them.
By the way, in my immediate family of 10, I am the only member that has not been infected.
In my view the WSJ news staff is left of center. I judge this based on differences in wording they use in articles about Democrat and Republican politicians and the amount of investigative reporting they do on private parties versus politicians and government activities. It was not that long ago that over 200 individuals from the news staff signed a petition that the editorial staff be removed.
lucia (Comment #209110)
When my mother-in-law had a hangover (which was not often) it was always “bad liquor” and never too much. She, I think, was referencing her experiences with prohibition and speakeasies.
Kenneth,
“By the way, in my immediate family of 10, I am the only member that has not been infected.”
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Maybe, but only a very sensitive antibody test of your blood would confirm that…. you could simply be one of those who are resistant and had completely asymptomatic illness.
I don’t understand the reluctance by many supposed experts to accept even now that SARS-CoV-2 is transmitted mainly by aerosols, not droplets or contaminated surfaces. The Chinese restaurant superspreader event early on where people several tables downstream from the infected individual were infected was pretty definitive for me.
Out of curiosity, I looked up measles, which is also an upper respiratory tract infection. Here’s a gem from the CDC:
The only way that can happen is for the virus to exist in the form of an aerosol, and a small one at that. Droplets, i.e. the justification for the six foot rule, won’t stay in the air that long. And aerosols don’t require coughing or sneezing to form, although they certainly increase the concentration. Talking or singing is sufficient. Aerosols won’t be stopped by a cloth or surgical mask either. The holes in cloth are too big and a surgical mask has large gaps.
People infected with measles can transmit the infection up to four days before the rash develops according to the CDC page.
According to the local news, the COVID-19 test positivity rate in my area is approaching 50%. New cases are declining in the state as a whole and I think hospitalizations have peaked locally.
DeWitt there was a school concert rehearsal in Georgia that was investigated and their report was silent on the subject, but the facts they gathered showed that aerosols had to be the culprit. I saw an article on medium arguing that CDC was getting it wrong and also that they had the actual COVID particle size wrong.
The very early Princess cruise line breakout was pretty definitve of aerosols. People in different cabins who never made contact after a cabin lockdown, etc. Why they spent so long denying this was a bit embarrassing, another case of expert’s “no evidence”.
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This does not preclude that it is also spread by fomites. What proportion of infections are which type has never been ironed out, and even when the Information Ministry switched to aerosol transmission there was no aha moment or study that was obviously behind that switch. There has been a lot of that over the past year. Science evolves but the “experts” have routinely been wrong on things they claimed with great confidence. We still don’t really know about the efficacy of masks, but don’t say that out loud in polite company. The Information Ministry routinely * infers * they are prophylactics to disease.
“Empty Shelves Biden” has been very busy according to my trip to the grocery store today. I don’t think it is hoarding though, just supply chain. Another swat of in your face inflation at the check out register. They are hiding part of the price increases by decreasing the number of on sale products.
“Empty shelves Biden”
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I like it… a lot.
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Maybe not as cute as ‘Let’s go Brandon’, but more socially genteel and cuts right to the key issue: he is a demented old fool who is making horrible policy choices that hurt people… guided by a gaggle of woke nincompoops who really don’t know their a$$es from holes in the ground.
It might be my imagination, but it seems to me that my Publix has more bare shelves than my Walmart. I haven’t been to ALDI in some time, I might stop by tomorrow or Saturday just to look around.
What a fizzer.
Kamala Harris and Lieutenant Biden reenact third event, blow the terrorists up up wherever they are .
Putting 4 women and a lot of children all over the wallpaper.
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What bright spark came up with this photo shot opportunity to try and make Biden look good.
Cowardly terrorist blows himself up in cowardly bid to evade justice.
Early headlines Australia top of page.
Now a small footnote in the 6th story down and vanishing fast.
Similar to CNN.
When Isis has been defeated and inactive for a year [OK hyperbole] why does it take months of timing and planning and a giant risk to American troops lives to send men on a potential suicide mission to save a President’s reputation.
He was known to shower on the roof for heaven’s sake.
Could no one get a simple Yemeni drone, drop it from a simple helicopter and computer game take him out without killing his wife and kids and female relatives?
Where is the CIA when you need them?
More to the point is the target was against the Turkish border in rebel held land surrounded by Assad and the Russians.
Who gave the Americans free access to the target zone.
So Biden is helped out by Putin and Assad to do their dirty work while pretending to be at loggerheads in the Ukraine.
There are two stories here.
The one they wanted to front page and are disappearing and the one that is invisible but should be front page.
Just an estimate…. Say a million excess deaths occurred due directly or indirectly from covid. Say each one had been receiving a total benefit from the government of $2,000 per month. [Social Security checks alone average $1,600 per month.] So by my geezer math… that comes to $24,000,000,000 per year windfall to the treasury. No wonder all them old people were dying. The government considered them a revenue stream.
angech (Comment #209122)
February 3rd, 2022 at 6:29 pm
I suspect you could be right about the timing and motivation, but do you have more information on the target (not)blowing himself up.
Only those on social security and Medicare should be considered a profit, ha ha. They have to be balanced against those who died early and rudely prevented us from collecting their taxes.
They did release a couple gory photos of the attack that did look like a suicide bombing. The entire thing was documented so they can choose to release the body cams if they want. Clearly the military is in the habit of not admitting targeting mistakes such as the recent drone strike in Afghanistan so it is not unreasonable to wait for more evidence.
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The helicopter had a “mechanical issue”, this is usually code for downed by enemy fire or pilot incompetence.
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That being said war is messy and I’m not expecting there to be zero civilian casualties. A reasonable effort should be made to avoid them and it is rather unfortunate that many people died who didn’t need too. Will we ever know the truth? I doubt it. Another ISIS leader killed is a victory but won’t push the needle very much at this point.
angech,
Desperate Bidens do desperate things.
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Remember his carefully planned killing of terrorists with a guided rocket…one adult and 9 children…. in the aftermath of the Afghanistan debacle? None were terrorists, of course, but he did get a nice photo-op. This is more of the same. Biden is a demented idiot, frighteningly incompetent, and profoundly evil in intent. The man should not be in office. Expect three more years of the same idiocy.
Russell Klier (Comment #209123)
February 3rd, 2022 at 6:51 pm
Not all the deaths were old people, but I suspect that Medicare costs for those people could be more than Social Security. You would have to net out what those people who died would have paid in federal, state and local taxes. My taxes are more than my Social Security income which is above the average and the number you used.
If you net out what the pandemic cost the government (actually the taxpayer and in the neighborhood of 6 trillion dollars) and put an expected years to death on those who would have otherwise survived Covid-19 and also included the economic cost of mandates and voluntary action due to Covid-19 that net is going to be a huge minus.
NYT: “His resignation came after lawyers for Chris Cuomo, who was fired from the network for his role in his brother’s effort, mentioned Mr. Zucker’s undisclosed romantic relationship with a colleague as their client fought for millions of dollars of severance pay.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/03/nyregion/andrew-chris-cuomo-jeff-zucker.html
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No honor among thieves. So covid heroes Zucker, Cuomo #1, and Cuomo #2 are now gone, as are an increasing number of the inner circle. A very bad soap opera.
Kenneth Fritsch (Comment #209124)
I suspect you could be right about the timing and motivation, but do you have more information on the target (not)blowing himself up.
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All a bit strange.
The house certainly looks as if an explosion occurred.
But.
Pictures of the inside of the house featured walls with blood sprays and stains
If we had a Dexter investigating or a Jack Reacher they would say consistent with people being shot at close range in those rooms.
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I mean if a bomb goes up blowing up rooms you do not have clear photos of rooms with bloodstains like this when the bodies were all blown to the outside of the building.
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The photos I saw seemed to have been taken the next morning by the local press?
Not the American troops.
I am sure General Miley will explain.
Tom,
Chris Cuomo revealing it when it was convenient to Chris means he felt it unnecessary to reveal when it was convenient to not reveal it. What a champ! 🙂
Tom Scharf (Comment #209129): “Mr. Zucker’s undisclosed romantic relationship with a colleague”.
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It seems that everyone knew about the relationship, so it can’t be the real reason Zucker was fired. Maybe the real reason was something bad, or maybe the phony reason lets the company get out of a contract with Zucker.
With Zucker gone, maybe CNN will make significant changes in on-air staff, and stop being nothing more than a propaganda outlet for ‘progressives’. Then again, maybe not. I doubt Zucker’s replacement will make any significant changes. The endless bias and outright dishonesty will continue.
Like MikeM says the affair was well known by many people. It was not the affair but rather not reporting it that evidently violated CNN rules. How many people would have known that it had not been reported? It was Zucker who finally admitted it to a company investigator that in turn lead to his resignation. Maybe it was Zucker looking for a way out of the company.
I know MSNBC’s ratings have gone down compared to Fox’s after Biden was elected and have not looked at CNN’s. This appears to be a cyclical ratings effect that when the president is a Republican it helps CNN and MSNBC and when it is Democrat it helps Fox.
Surprised that the networks do not do a Rogan with Fox pushing a Democrat and the other 2 networks pushing a Republican in their financial self interests.
You know what I haven’t heard for awhile? Claims that MMT is safe and that the US can simply create more money to spend without consequence. I’m hoping that the inflation we are currently suffering puts this idea back to sleep for a generation or three. I am probably being overly optimistic though.
mark bofill (Comment #209135): “I am probably being overly optimistic though.”
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If you are expecting inflation to abate before it does much damage but not before it kills the MMT fantasy, then you are being overly optimistic. My guess is that the current inflation will kill MMT, but only after causing a whole lot more pain. But if inflation subside soon, then MMT will roar back.
mark bofill (Comment #209135)
I would not be confident of your hoped for outcome. The Federal Reserve in its public comments does not admit to the current price inflation being the result of MMT type money printing (by the Treasury) but rather by supply chain, Covid-19 and anything but the money supply. It seems almost contradictory that it in turn believes it has the tools to suppress price inflation. It also had a target of increasing price inflation awhile back that would appear that it thinks it has controls in both directions. Like any well self-protected government body it takes credit when things are going well and blames a private entity when things are going bad.
MMT proponents do have limits for inflation but I am not at all sure what that might be. It is rather obvious that MMT proponents are attempting to find a theory that will give those interested in growing government a seeming foundation for it. It is like Keynesian theory – it doesn’t have to be correct it just has to give politicians something authoritatively to point to.
MMT could favor cutting taxes and supporting the resulting deficit by printing money, but that would go against their intention to grow government.
I should have added in my previous post that the Federal Reserve is in a dilemma in that an increase of 1% in Federal bond rates adds 250 billion dollars a year to federal expenditures. If the Fed pushes the economy into recession with increased interest expenditures there is a double whammy.
What amazes me is that whatever the Fed does and the result of their doing, they get cover from the MSM and Wall Street. It will be interesting to see how this plays out in the future.
Kenneth wrote: “This appears to be a cyclical ratings effect that when the president is a Republican it helps CNN and MSNBC and when it is Democrat it helps Fox.”
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The trend was present under Trump. Trump leaving just made CNN and MSNPC fall harder. Anti-Trump rhetoric was about all they had to offer, and all they continue to have to offer to their audience.
Zucker had already committed to leaving after the Discovery merger, my guess is they knew this relationship was going to be exposed so they got out ahead of it, and this helps Zucker retain a golden parachute. As usual there is no condemnation of this from the usual suspects, and a lot of sympathy for Zucker.
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Relationships at work are going to happen, and there are reasons for disclosure. Usually they will prevent the two people from working in the same division. You can’t criticize the work of X1 while X2 is in the same room, X1 and X2 will give themselves favorable treatment, and it really gets bad after an acrimonious breakup.
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I’m not sure this is a termination worthy offense in the grand scheme, but let’s just say people are getting fired for a lot less these days.
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CNN’s ratings are down 90% in Jan from a year ago, but that is an anomaly from the Jan 6th / Covid paranoia coverage. Their ratings are still in a major drop (50%?) that is the predictable from the Trump bashing years. I just don’t see them ever recovering the conservative audience which is the risk they took.
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Realistically I don’t watch any network or cable news anymore. It grates my nerves. It’s like a bunch of meth heads constantly tweaking. The still continuing coverage of Jan 6th is desperate and delusional. Another Trump-Russia collusion type fantasy. A vast conspiracy is about to be revealed really soon, tune in.
I think Zucker agreed to quit on the condition that AT&T/Discovery settle with Chris Cuomo, to keep even more from coming out about Zucker.
Didn’t Zucker’s bit on the side used to work for Andrew Cuomo?
Looks to me like the problem is that CNN is literally the democrat news network and some house cleaning is required to make it even remotely fit for purpose.
Kenneth,
“…that an increase of 1% in Federal bond rates adds 250 billion dollars a year to federal expenditures.”
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Yup, that is the big issue. When the Federal government has to actually pay something for its accumulated debts, it will be terribly disruptive. Either the Federal government “spirals up its own behind” by continuing to issue vast debt, leading to spiraling interest rates and inflation, or tries to control expenditures….. leading to endless loud howls of imminent destruction from the usual suspects who are are feeding at the Federal porcine trough. Or tries to dramatically increases tax rates…. another loosing political proposition. Dems are idiots, always have been, always will be. Dems are like the crazies who insist cold fusion is real and perpetual motion remains a real possibility. And wind energy is way better than nuclear. Idiots, just idiots.
DaveJR (Comment #209143): “Looks to me like the problem is that CNN is literally the democrat news network and some house cleaning is required to make it even remotely fit for purpose.”
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In some age groups, Fox News is being watched by more Democrats than CNN. So yeah, CNN is in real trouble.
Remember “we have no idea how long natural immunity lasts, we know nothing!”?
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https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2788894
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“In this cross-sectional study of unvaccinated US adults, antibodies were detected in 99% of individuals who reported a positive COVID-19 test result, in 55% who believed they had COVID-19 but were never tested, and in 11% who believed they had never had COVID-19 infection. Anti-RBD levels were observed after a positive COVID-19 test result *** up to 20 months ***, extending previous 6-month durability data.”
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This is one of those amazing things that there was “no evidence”, and it is simple enough to just test.
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This wasn’t the point of the study, but here’s another very basic question which should be easy to answer:
What percentage of the unvaccinated have been previously infected, have anti-bodies?
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58% in this study.
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That puts the US at 90% immunity levels – before Omicron.
Some historical perspective…
US Military:
Civil war 620,000 dead
WW1 116,000 dead
WW11 405,000 dead
Viet Nam 153,000 dead
US Population:
1918 pandemic 675,000 dead
Covid pandemic 1,000,000 dead
Yes, by far Covid was the worst death toll of all US events. It rivals the Great Famine that hit Ireland between 1845 and about 1851, causing the deaths of about 1 million people.
We are in the midst of a historical death event and our country is still bickering like school kids.
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/the-covid-19-pandemic-is-considered-the-deadliest-in-american-history-as-death-toll-surpasses-1918-estimates-180978748/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_military_casualties_of_war
https://www.britannica.com/event/Great-Famine-Irish-history
Russell –
A better comparison of US Covid deaths with the 1918 “Spanish flu” would be to account for the fact that the US population then was about 1/3 of its current value. So proportionately, Covid is not quite as bad (yet), though unquestionably a terrible toll.
“It rivals the Great Famine that hit Ireland between 1845 and about 1851, causing the deaths of about 1 million people.”
Not remotely! Ireland’s population was under 10 million at the time, compared to US’s current 300+ million.
Again, this is not to minimize the severity of Covid…but the Great Famine was far worse, taken in context rather than simply as a body count.
Tom,
But of course they had to say this
True. Because their population didn’t include lots of people who’d been infected earlier. But this sort of true point wasn’t emphasized for vaccines until the “unknown” was studied. In in the case of the vaccinated, they add things like “and we only looked at antibodies. They might have T-cells”.
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The results are what you would expect. If the body does become immune to X through vaccines, then you would expect it also expect it to become immune through infection. Yes, the strength and breadth might differ. But it’s implausible that vaccine gives an “effect” while illness does not.
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This caveat also applies to vaccines.
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Part of Omicron’s short duration could, very well, be existing immunity with our without vaccine. Obviously, someone would need to know pre-existing immunity or at least resistance everwhere it hit. But ? was fairly transmissible. So it could have been pretty broad. (In which case the true Ro for omicron must be “Wow!!!”)
I think HaroldW is correct to note that you have to consider per-Capita deaths. Otherwise, you would get silly results like the fact that the current baseline death rate is high compared to Neolithic times (when the population was really low.)
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It’s also worth considering that Covid killing the elderly does make it not as bad as the Spanish flu. Most of us here are middle aged or old. We don’t want to die. But I think we still need to accept that a disease that preferentially kills those 60 and over is less bad to humanity than one that kills children, teens and young adults. (The same can be said of wars.)
lucia,
But the Spanish flu didn’t kill the elderly preferentially. According to the Wikipedia article, 99% of deaths were for people under 65 and half were in the 20-40 age group. The age related mortality plot was W shaped with a central peak at about age 28. Yes mortality was high for the very young and the very old, but there were lots more people in the central age group. one hypothesis was cytokine storms in the otherwise healthy adults.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3734171/
HaroldW (Comment #209149)
“So proportionately, Covid is not quite as bad (yet), though unquestionably a terrible toll.”
Thank you for adding context. On a per capita basis Covid is the second worst death event in our country’s history, not the first worst. And thank you for the “[yet]” because the bodies are still stacking up.
The CDC numbers indicate 2,368 people are dying daily and the rate is still increasing. That is an increase of over 70,000 deaths per month. Twice in the past year the country believed it was over only to be hit with Delta and then Omicron, so “It ain’t over til it’s over.”
It is great solace to me that those dying are only the old, fat and sick, because WE are expendable.
https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#trends_dailydeaths
Covid is nothing much in comparison with wars or the Spanish Flu. Not even within an order of magnitude; probably not within two orders of magnitude. The proper measure should be years of life lost. The median for covid victims is probably 1 or two years. The median for the Spanish Flue was more like four decades.
DeWitt
Agreed. I said Covid killing the elderly did making Covid not as bad as Spanish Flu. I guess I didn’t specifically say Spanish Flu didn’t kill the elderly preferentially, but it did not. That’s why Spanish Flu was worse. It really wiped out people in their prime. That following a war that also killed young men in their prime was really, really bad.
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Relative to the young, yes. We are. And that includes me! It’s all well and good to grouse that, demographically, your death isn’t as lamentable as that of a younger persons, but grousing or feeling bad doesn’t change this fact.
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Feel bad. Grouse away. It remains a fact.
Mike M.,
Yes. According to this from the National Archives, life expectancy in the US dropped by 12 years in one year. COVID has caused a much smaller drop.
Globally, so far less than 6 million people have died compared to 50 million from the Spanish flu from a much smaller population. Sixteen million people were killed in WWI.
I may borrow those three sentences as the occasions arise.
Looking back on my ancestors it was the very young and young adults who died from the Spanish flu. I actually do not recall any older ancestors dying from it.
I think a better estimate of Civil War military deaths would be in the middle of a range of 650,000 and 850,000. These were primarily all young men. The 1860 US population was 31.4 million.
https://www.history.com/news/american-civil-war-deaths
Rogan’s goose is cooked now. He has uttered the Unspeakable Word more than 20 times on his podcasts, and somebody made a compilation of it.
He’d have been OK if he’d just drawn Mohammed cartoons and shouted the word ‘Jehovia’ a bunch of times instead. Too bad.
mark bofill (Comment #209159): “Rogan’s goose is cooked now.”
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Indeed. He has made it far worse by apologizing.
MikeM,
Yeah. The witch has confessed guilt and renounced Satan. It is time for the crowd to drown, stone, and burn the guilty. Mercifully, of course.
The US has lost ~0.25% of their population to covid.
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The Soviets lost about 25M people in WWII or about 13.7% of their population with the Ukrainian area losing 16% of their population and Belarus losing 25%. Poland lost 17% of their population in WWII.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_II_casualties
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The Russians would not be impressed by our history books. The ones where the US bravely enters the war on the Western Front and “wins” the war for the Allies in Europe. The US lost 0.3% of their population. I’m not saying it was useless, but the Eastern Front is what wore down Germany and the Russians did most of the dying and suffering. You can probably forgive the Russians for being a bit bitter about how this is represented, they might even believe they earned the right to take over Eastern Europe the hard way.
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The Russians aren’t angels of course, but if you engage with the Russians and it becomes a war of attrition then I’m betting on the Russians.
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Western literature on WWII is 100% navel gazing and barely acknowledges these stark facts. They lionize the French who surrendered in the first 10 minutes, ha ha.
It just happens over and over again. The Canadian Trucker saga is hilarious. However GoFundMe stated “We now have evidence from law enforcement that the previously peaceful demonstration has become an occupation, with police reports of violence and other unlawful activity” so they decided to commandeer $9M of donations and force them into donations to other charities that GoFundMe would approve of, or veto. What a boneheaded move. It amazes me that people are this blind to their own biases.
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DeSantis, sensing yet another political softball pitch to him, threatened a fraud lawsuit against GoFundMe and they backed down and will now directly refund the money to donors.
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What is happening over and over again though is the blatant double standards used for protests. Companies like GoFundMe will apply their isolated demands for rigor on the rulebook in order to push their political agenda with plausible deniability. Nobody is fooled here.
The NYT documents the … ahem … wisdom of Ukraine giving up its nuclear weapons after the Soviet Union collapse in exchange for security assurances from Russia and others.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/05/science/ukraine-nuclear-weapons.html
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“We gave away the capability for nothing,” said Andriy Zahorodniuk, a former defense minister of Ukraine. Referring to the security assurances Ukraine won in exchange for its nuclear arms, he added: “Now, every time somebody offers us to sign a strip of paper, the response is, ‘Thank you very much. We already had one of those some time ago.’”
“In late 1994, the pledges got fleshed out. The accord, known as the Budapest Memorandum, signed by Russia, Ukraine, Britain and the United States, promised that none of the nations would use force or threats against Ukraine and all would respect its sovereignty and existing borders. ”
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Don’t think that others like Iran and the Norks aren’t going to recognize this.
OLM, Old Lives Matter, I’m gonna be the founding member. It seems to have worked as a get-rich-quick scheme for the BLM founder.
Tom Scharf,
No you can’t. Stalin was a principle enabler of Hitler before the war. The Molotov-Ribbentrop pact of 1939 allowed Stalin and Hitler to partition Poland between them. Then there was the Katyn massacre. Of course it wasn’t Stalin that paid the price. If you lie down with dogs….
Btw, Xi Jinping is reported as being a big admirer of Stalin.
Tom Scharf
If you aren’t going to distribute to the targeted group, refunding is the only ethical (and likely legal) thing to do. Its good DeSantis threatened them. I suspect other some governors would have joined that suit.
Russell,
Found whatever you like. But people will wear “Young lives Matter More” t-shirts in response. Or, they’ll just stick with “OK Boomer”.
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We live in a country that has been overvaluing the old relative to the young for some time.
113 Rogan episodes removed, so far.
Yup. I very nearly responded with that myself.
A Johns Hopkins meta analysis suggests lockdowns reduced mortality by 0.2%, “shelter in place” by 3%. Ooof.
Joe Rogan and Spotify are heading for a breakup is my guess, I doubt Joe Rogan is liking the mass censorship of his old work. It’s just yet another secret committee using vague standards and removing stuff without any transparency to the effort at all. He now knows the Information Ministry will be listening to every word he says from now on.
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Spotify can do this pursuant to the contract, but they are getting close to causing a backlash to the backlash. I have Spotify but not for Rogan.
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His audience existed before Spotify and will follow him when he leaves. In other news, every podcast on Spotify disparaging white people by the usual suspects will be left up because as we know this isn’t hate speech. Once the censor mob has gotten their first bite, they will just demand more and more, then declare it to be insufficient.
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I hate to say it, but one of the very few people who have stood up to this BS and publicly given the censors the finger is … Trump. How SAD!
As I recall Stalin was suffering a bout of depression during part of WWII and was disengaged. He did recover in time to divvy up Europe and put his share behind the Iron Curtain.
DeWitt,
“Btw, Xi Jinping is reported as being a big admirer of Stalin.”
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Stalin was an immoral monster who killed millions of innocents to advance is policy agendas. He had several of his political opponents murdered. If it is true that Xi Jinping admires Stalin, that is a very bad sign for the future of China.
Rogan would be wise to walk away and podcast independently. He would probably make more money and eliminate all the woke censorship.
This the classic dilemma for libertarians, when the other side coordinates and does censoring by mob and other restrictions of liberty, what are the libertarians to do? Revenge at the voting polls?
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This is getting out of control and unless these private companies start feeling pressure from the rebels, the empire is going to win by default.
The WSJ has a story out today about how Hollywood now censors their scripts to Chinese authorities by default, without them even asking.
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How China’s Growing Clout Led Hollywood to Look for a New Villain
https://www.wsj.com/articles/how-chinas-growing-clout-led-hollywood-to-look-for-a-new-villain-11644037244
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It’s absurd, Hollywood casts the US government and it’s private companies as villains routinely, but it won’t cast China as a villain for fear that their entire company, not just the film, being banned in China.
If Biden was to put 10,000 American troops into the Ukraine [on request].
Russia would not invade.
His popularity would soar 15%.
That he has nor done so is very worrying.
Still my first prediction seems to be moot .
I will have to stick to volcanoes and earthquakes.
Is realpolitik so much harder than Diplomacy?
angech,
I doubt that. Inflation and rising gas prices have people irritated, and the man has established a reputation as a senile incompetent by a looong string of screw ups. It’d take a little more than the deployment of 10,000 troops to turn Biden’s numbers around, in my view.
If Biden were to send American troops to Ukraine, his popularity would nosedive. The American people have no appetite for that. If the bluff were to work, his popularity might recover. If not, he’d likely be headed for single digit approval ratings.
lucia (Comment #209168)
“OK Boomer” Well Duh! Old Lives Matter will annoy the Wokesters just like BLM annoys old Conservatives. I have our first marketing ploy; sell cookies on the sidewalk outside stores. Not grocery stores…liquor stores, Hard Rock Casinos and bingo parlors. The cookies will be homemade, contain a “special” ingredient and sell for $50 a baggie.
Warning: Do not underestimate my Tennis Shoe Mafia. You can see our political power every time you walk by a row of empty handicapped parking spots outside your favorite restaurant.
Old Lives Matter!
Claiming credit for “nothing happened” would be a tough sell.
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Kamala claims amnesty for the millions of illegals they let through the border is a priority, thereby encouraging even more. I await to see how they intend to allow them all to vote after losing the “voting rights” bill.
Russell,
Well, you’ve got me there. Voter turnout does increase with age.
Go for it, I guess.
Good luck with your venture. 🙂
Lucia,
“We live in a country that has been overvaluing the old relative to the young for some time.”
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I think the issue is that there is a huge range of “societal value” in every age group, but especially in the elderly. It terms of political power, the elderly do for certain “punch above their weight class”. Mostly has to do with voting turnout.
Tom Scharf (Comment #209176)
February 5th, 2022 at 8:03 pm
Tom, I do not understand your reference to the libertarian dilemma and private (I assume that is to what you are referring) censorship. Individuals and individuals together in groups should be free to act as long as the action is not coercive of others. If a media enterprise chooses to take sides on a political issue that should be their prerogative, however wrong, others might consider that position. If that involves private censorship it should be their right.
It is obviously apparent that I as a homeowner can decide who comes into my house and even what I will allow them to say in my house. That is my right to private ownership and that is what is extended to groups of individuals to “censor” within the frame work of their private ownership. Direct government censorship or censorship from government supported groups is wrong because firstly it would involve coercion and secondly the private ownership right cannot apply.
There are voluntary actions that can be effective against so-called private censorship such as boycotting an entity or finding an alternate entity with which to deal or simply speaking out about the actions to which you oppose. Of course, carrying out these actions requires one to have private property rights to do it.
The worst action would be to use the government with its coercive powers to regulate these issues and particularly considering its arbitrariness and favoring whatever appears popular at the moment. Therein lies the dilemma.
Old Lives Matter. Just not for as long.
The social media site Gab shows libertarian advantages and weaknesses. They were blacklisted by payment processors, internet hosts etc etc. They eventually succeeded by pretty much creating everything from the ground up. Their own server farms, payment processing etc. This is a high bar for entry if the establishment doesn’t like you, well beyond most normal people.
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Oh for simple times when you handed over some money and received what you paid for.
Russell Kiler, you might have a natural constituency in New York/New Jersey Philly, and Michigan.
Sweden is ending all covid restrictions effective Wednesday. Denmark and Norway have already done so. They have decided that covid is no longer a threat to public health.
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Current case rates per 100K:
DEN 710
NOR 350
SWE 300
USA 90
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Why can’t sanity also prevail here?
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Death rates are still higher here. Probably a combination of more misclassified deaths, lower vax rates, and less healthy population. None are reasons to maintain restrictions.
Mike M,
The fact that covid death risk is reduced by (roughly) a factor of 10 to 20 for the vaccinated makes no difference to covid Karens and very freighted elderly. The end of the hysteria will only happen when most everyone refuses to obey crazy rules. Sanity among public officials in blue states is never going to happen.
I do not believe it a conspiracy but at some point what is left but getting the citizens used to the yoke and particularly in light of not a small portion already showing signs of being obedient beasts of burden.
“There are voluntary actions that can be effective against so-called private censorship such as boycotting an entity or finding an alternate entity with which to deal or simply speaking out about the actions to which you oppose.”
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See Parler, ha ha. I agree with you in spirit, but things do change with monopolies and these companies acting in tandem. There are coordinated efforts to suppress speech. My point was more about libertarian philosophy being antithetical to mob action and pressure, but the authoritarian/socialist groups (aka the tolerant loving groups devoted to freedom and democracy) are not. Private companies are bowing to this pressure partly because they know the other side is unlikely to do anything about it. This is an imbalance of power.
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What is curious is that most of big tech formerly embraced the libertarian philosophy. I doubt any of them really want to be part of picking who gets to speak and who doesn’t. It was a big mistake on their end to start doing this. It only goes one direction, more censorship.
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I don’t really want to get in a tit for tat boycott war, but so far there hasn’t been any pressure applied in response to these censorship moves.
Mike M. (Comment #209191)
“Why can’t sanity also prevail here?”
Because in the US covid sanity has nothing to do with sickness and death. The reality is that in areas where the Republicans hold sway they want to poke the Dems in the eye… that means no restrictions. Where the Democrats hold sway they want to poke the R’s in the eye… that means restrictions. It started with the Trump covid response and continues today. Until both sides stop playing this game the current Mexican standoff will continue and the US will continue to lead the world in covid death rate.
Russell Klier,
The US does not lead the world in death rate. We’re eighteenth on the list at worldometers. Peru leads the world with a death rate that is more than twice the rate of the US. And the US death rate (2,772/million) is not that much higher than, say, Italy(2,466/million) and the UK (2,313/million). That difference is most likely explained by the poorer general health of the US population, not politics.
WSJ article on a subject I’ve been curious about:
https://www.wsj.com/articles/does-exposure-to-omicron-help-our-immunity-even-if-we-dont-get-sick-11644229801?st=p1o8gudoph5izrc&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink
Does Exposure to Omicron Help Our Immunity, Even If We Don’t Get Sick?
People who have had repeated close encounters with Covid-19 wonder whether a near miss bolsters their defenses
The answer(s) is(are): maybe, maybe not and it depends. So basically nothing new and not particularly informative. I’m still of the opinion that if you’re reasonably healthy and have had a symptomatic infection, masking and social distancing is counterproductive. I’m less certain about just vaccinated and boosted.
Weight and age are major factors in nation differences in Covid-19 death rates. There are also regional factors where genetics, customs, weight and age make a combined difference in death rates. More recently vaccinations have been a factor, but a factor that has not overcome to this point in time the primary pre-vaccination factors in nation differences.
Most of the politics have been for show. Politicians have much less control over these matters than unfortunately the public is led to believe.
DeWitt Payne (Comment #209198)
February 7th, 2022 at 8:44 am
DeWitt, I find most articles in the WSJ news sections not very informative. I call them nothing-burgers. I see in that article the standard lazy references to some scientists.
There is an article in today’s WSJ about the climate models with high equilibrium climate sensitivities (ECS). It talks about how the recent models have been improved and then gently eludes to the fact that many of those models might have the ECS too high.
It includes a comment that many models get the historically observed temperature trends correct. That has been a topic dear to my heart in that I was interested in how models with high ECS could get the historical temperature trends correct (even if the timing and the hemispherical portions were wrong). There have been some excellent recent papers showing how models can (mis)use the cloud/aerosol interaction to produce a less warming historical period with a high ECS. In one paper it was shown that the more wrong the portions of warming attributed to the hemispheres in the historical period by the model the higher was the ECS.
Of course, this last item was not mentioned in the article. I strongly suspect that these journalists go to consensus scientists or experts in the field on which they are reporting and not bother with alternative and conflicting views of the matter and even when those conflicting views are not controversial. I further suspect that the lazier journalist do some quick reading of the consensus literature to get a feel of it and then refer in their articles to some scientists or experts.
DeWitt Payne (Comment #209197): “Peru leads the world with a death rate that is more than twice the rate of the US. And the US death rate (2,772/million) is not that much higher than, say, Italy(2,466/million) and the UK (2,313/million). That difference is most likely explained by the poorer general health of the US population, not politics.”
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I seem to recall that Peru is a country with extreme restrictions. On the other extreme, Sweden has fared very well. And within the US there is no big difference between blue and red states, or between states with and without harsh restrictions. Politics and policies are pretty much irrelevant, as concluded by the recent report from Johns Hopkins.
There are also really weird outliers like Africa. They have a much younger population which is a big factor but there is also evidence that people who are constantly exposed to disease without hyper active medical intervention have better outcomes (example, homeless people in the US). Asia in general has done much better and that isn’t really explained at all. It could be genetics or their previous exposures to a different host of respiratory viruses.
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The US has done poorly, so we just have to suck it up and accept that. What is not so obvious is what we could have done about it except at the margins. Because we have such an interconnected global society to the US covid and its variants had widespread community transmission before things like border intervention and lockdowns could be effective. Our border is also too porous to even do that.
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Highly transmissive novel pathogens are going to hammer the west first and worst because of our societies. That’s the main lesson. NPI’s are justifiable if an effective vaccine is likely to be created and the NPI’s actually work. The vaccines likely saved a lot of lives in this case, hard to estimate but 100K’s is a reasonable estimate.
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It’s a mess of data here and the impulse of nearly everyone to use intra-society political determinism for outcomes of a novel biological disease has been rather unhelpful except for clickbait revenue.
They don’t really know what the aerosols were in much of the world for their models. So I assume they make them up based on whatever proxies they like. This has always been the big fudge factor. The overly close matching to historical data always seemed more like a red flag of over fitting than validation of models to me.
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How do we match historical data and get really scary model outcomes? If the aerosols were like this in the early 20th century then …
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Complex modeling outcomes that match the modeler’s initial expectations (and their peer’s group think) have become so rampant as to wonder how seriously any of this should be taken. Covid modeling is the same. Hurricanes, sea level rise. These things have shaken my belief in how impartial science is to the point where I disregard a lot of it.
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There was a point in time where economic and stock market models were in vogue for investors. Nobody believes in these things now because this is an area where measured outcomes and model skill actually mattered.
The double standard of protests.
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Ottawa declares state of emergency as trucker protest paralyzes capital’s core
“Ottawa residents have shared accounts on social media of being afraid to leave their homes and facing sleepless nights as truckers blare their horns through the night.” (reports abouts resident’s “fears” are non-existent for other protests)
“Ottawa Mayor Jim Watson said in a statement on Sunday that the demonstration posed a “serious danger and threat to the safety and security of residents.”
“The police service warned that it would be cracking down on anyone attempting to bring in canisters to help refuel the hundreds of trucks blocking roads in Ottawa’s city center. Those caught doing so could be subject to arrest and charges, it warned.” (exactly how that is against the law is unstated or never asked)
“On Sunday alone, the police service said it had made at least seven arrests, with at least 100 tickets issued.” (I assume if these are misdemeanors the charges will be dropped, ha ha).
Kenneth Fritsch,
I also found that the article on climate models missed the point. You simply can’t model clouds with a 100km horizontal resolution, so the people saying that cloud modeling had improved were less than honest. So maybe they think their parametric simulation has improved. So what. I’ve still never seen any proof that higher resolution sub-scale modeling accomplishes anything either. If the low resolution model doesn’t get the boundary conditions for the high resolution model right, it doesn’t matter how well the higher resolution box works.
There’s also the problem that when the models are forced with historical sea surface temperatures, the results are quite different than if the models calculate sea surface temperatures. I don’t think that models will be fit for purpose any time soon.
Returning to the original topic of this thread: I have been trying to wrap my head around the Ukraine situation and the question of what Putin hopes to accomplish. What he wants seems clear: A compliant Ukrainian state that he can control, like Belarus. With that in mind, I have recently learned something that I sort of knew: Putin’s actions in 2014 seem to have backfired.
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Up to 2014, the pro-Russia and pro-West factions in Ukrainian politics were pretty evenly balanced. By annexing Crimea and destabilizing the Donbas, Putin removed the most strongly pro-Russia parts of Ukraine from the electorate. He also alienated many Ukrainians in the rest of the country. As a result, the pro-West factions are now in complete control. Oops.
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I don’t see how an invasion would help Putin. Seizing the Donbas would just make the civil war and economic collapse there Putin’s problem. A military conquest of Ukraine would mean fighting an ongoing guerrilla war, as well as dealing with massive sanctions. It just does not compute.
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I *think* the invasion was always a bluff. Putin hoped that the West would cave. Then he would get his guarantees that Ukraine would stay in his sphere of influence and force Ukraine to recognize his annexation of Crimea and implement the Minsk Accords. The real victory would have been showing Ukraine that they could not depend on the West and that they had best be nice to Russia.
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If that guess is right, then Putin has badly miscalculated and the Biden Administration’s blustering and tough talk may have been the right play. The problem is that with both sides bluffing and posturing there is a major risk that both sides will end up with something they very much don’t want.
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p.s. – If the above is correct, my previous statements re Ukraine were misguided.
DeWitt, I remember Steve Mosher using that phrase in attempts to quell criticism of climate models. I thought he was often times vague and here I think he had his own ideas of how purpose was defined even though I do not remember him ever clearly posting it.
The most recent daily death toll from the CDC is 3,300. The seven day average death count [2,400] for Omicron is 33% higher than the death average for Delta, and still climbing. https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#trends_dailydeaths
Mike M. (Comment #209207)
In my view of Putin’s motivation here, I think he is doing it in hopes of increasing public support in Russia for his regime, letting the pro Russian fighters in Ukraine know he will support them and probably foremost making a statement to the West to see what kind of response he gets and that would include the Ukraine regime. He has claimed he is not preparing for invasion and thus has not drawn any future embarrassing lines in the sand.
He is aware that the ongoing conflict in the Ukraine between Russian supported pro Russian and Ukraine forces is turning the general population of the country against Russia.
Putin is a politician and he will make politician decisions. What do you do if you make a mistake? Admit it? No. Double down on more of the same? Well Ya.
There is something here to be learned by politicians in our country vis a vis foreign policy and how to turn nations ostensibly being helped against you.
I do see our government’s reactions as the typical build-up to we have a crisis and emergency here and that gives us a free hand in the matter – not unlike Covid-19.
Russell Klier (Comment #209209)
February 7th, 2022 at 1:58 pm
Eyeballing a comparison from Worldometer plots for the US of last year’s winter Covid-19 surge and this year’s winter I see a three times higher case rate and a slightly smaller death rate for this year.
The 7 day death average during delta peaked around 2,000 around Oct 2001
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The max 7 day death average peaked around 3,300 around Jan 2001
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The 7 day death average for omicron looks to have peaked very recently around 2,600.
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Omicron has 5X greater case counts than delta (and probably more due to home testing and milder disease).
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Looks like FL omicron deaths are about to peak around 200. Delta deaths peaked around 350 with 3X less cases. Omicron is about 3X to 5X less severe for many different reasons. So for FL is appears a bad delta wave resulted in a less severe omicron wave.
Russell
“The seven day average death count [2,400] for Omicron is 33% higher than the death average for Delta, and still climbing.”
The 7-day average case count is about 5x higher, so omicron is definitely a less severe form. As for “climbing”, that’s not at all clear; US deaths are approximately flat of late. Cases have decreased by over 50% from peak, and because deaths lag cases, that bodes well for decreasing deaths in the coming days. [As we all hope!]
By the way, I typically go to “worldometers” for such statistics. The numbers differ slightly from those at the CDC site to which you linked, but trends are quite similar.
Kenneth Fritsch (Comment #209210): “He has claimed he is not preparing for invasion and thus has not drawn any future embarrassing lines in the sand.”
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Good point. Putin’s prudence is the best reason for hope.
NPR explains the recent natural immunity vs vaccination CDC study. Another case study is bias by omission.
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“These findings, published in the New England Journal of Medicine in December, are consistent with data released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention last month. In that study, a prior infection reduced the risk of hospitalization during the delta surge by more than 50 times compared with in people who hadn’t had a prior infection and were not vaccinated. People who had had both a prior infection and were vaccinated had the most protection.”
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No need to discuss that natural immunity fared 3x to 5x better than vaccination. Wouldn’t want to confuse people. At least they dispelled the “natural immunity doesn’t last very long” propaganda. Baby steps.
A majority of omicron hospitalizations have been incidental. A large portion of the deaths have been incidental. Every winter there is a big spike in deaths associated with respiratory viruses. I await evidence that this year is any worse than usual.
Putin/Macron. Isn’t this just a silly picture?
https://cdn.cnn.com/cnnnext/dam/assets/220207162729-02-macron-moscow-020722-large-169.jpg
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How does that work? Reminds me of a scene from Shrek.
What is Biden up to with all this disaster porn? “Putin is setting up a false flag operation.” “Russia will invade any moment now.” The Russians will be in Kiev in three days”. What doers that accomplish? Real questions.
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Kenneth Fritsch (Comment #209210): “He has claimed he is not preparing for invasion and thus has not drawn any future embarrassing lines in the sand.”
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Is that the answer? Is Biden trying to make it so that Putin DOES lose face if he does not invade? Real questions. If the answer is “yes”, then Biden is greatly increasing the risk that this ends badly.
I think Biden is trying to gain face here, not force Putin to lose it. I said above that something which didn’t happen is a tough sell (same reason for climate fear porn). They’re bigging up the “fight” to capitalize on the “victory”. It could backfire, yes, especially because it’s Biden.
Tom Scharf (Comment #209215)
February 7th, 2022 at 3:09 pm
Deception is more than lying; it can also be what is left out. I think NPR might be assuming that its audience does not realize what is being left out. If NPR is not aware of what is being left out then it is as ignorant as it assumes its audience is.
There ought to be a comparable pinocchio’s for leaving information out. I am attempting to think of a name for it but my evening drink is getting in the way. I am thinking about a Godot as in Waiting for Godot and in this case waiting for someone to provide the missing information.
I once ask a checkout lady at a grocery store how she was doing and she told me she was waiting for Godot. I recovered in time to ask her how long she had been waiting and she told me it was forever.
Mike & Dave,
I’m not sure. Taking the raid on the ISIS guy along with the Ukraine hype, I think that somebody on Biden’s team has gotten the idea in their heads that the way to turn around Biden’s numbers is some quick, decisive military action or victory. I’m not going to go verify now, but my impression is that this has worked for Presidents in the past.
It could be that.
Kenneth,
“I am attempting to think of a name for it but my evening drink is getting in the way.”
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Lies of omission?
Morning Prayer from the Book of Common Prayer of the Episcopal Church.
It looks like Joe Rogan will survive. People are calling it a victory for free speech. It is not since it will not benefit anyone else. If Rogan had defied the cancelers, it might have had some carry over for those who are weaker. It is simply a victory for the all mighty dollar.
mark bofill (Comment #209221): “I think that somebody on Biden’s team has gotten the idea in their heads that the way to turn around Biden’s numbers is some quick, decisive military action or victory. I’m not going to go verify now, but my impression is that this has worked for Presidents in the past.”
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Scary thought. Of course, if it actually comes down to shooting, it won’t be either quick or decisive (well, maybe for Putin). But the fear porn might be so that he can claim that he once again fearlessly faced down Corn Pop and won.
Rogan survives, in what form is yet to be seen, and they might not have finished the attacks yet. It’s no victory for free speech if Joe refuses to speak to “unapproved” guests anymore and it’s already a loss for free speech as previous episodes have been removed, apparently by Rogan himself. Predictably, the media jumped on the apologies as proof of his bad character.
Mike M,
“It looks like Joe Rogan will survive.”
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I should hope. Lots more people listen to Rogan than to CNN, and he is interesting and often funny. You can’t say that about CNN. They are tedious, preachy, biased, with no sense of humor, and worst of all, more often than not factually wrong.
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I still think Rogan could do better flipping the bird at Spotify for not telling the Rogan critics to go to Hell, and going independent.
Rumble has invited him to join them with a 100 million dollar contract. Rogan will come out OK.
Rumble’s contract offer is below what he is worth, as it is over four years. Much smaller podcasters get 20 million.
I spoke poorly in the sense that Rogan is already OK. He’s [Rogan is already] worth 100 million; even if he can be canceled, he’s still set. Still, what you’re saying makes sense Mike. But failure is relative at that level. I’d love to be ‘ruined’ to the tune of 100 million over the next four years. 😉
The CDC did run a mask study similar to what I had pondered:
https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/71/wr/mm7106e1.htm
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Cloth masks 56% lower odds of infection*
Surgical masks 66% lower odds of infection
N95 masks 83% lower odds of infection
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* = This measure was not statically significant for whatever that means here. Unclear.
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The usual confounders discussed here:
https://reason.com/2022/02/07/that-study-of-face-masks-does-not-show-what-the-cdc-claims/
“The researchers identified 1,528 California residents who tested positive for COVID-19 between February 18 and December 1, 2021, then matched them to 1,511 California residents who tested negative. The “controls” were similar to the “cases” in terms of age group, sex, and the region of California where they lived”
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“The mask analysis was limited to 652 cases and 1,176 controls who “self-reported being in indoor public settings during the 2 weeks preceding testing and who reported no known contact with anyone with confirmed or suspected SARS-CoV-2 infection during this time.” Overall, the subjects who said they “always” wore masks in indoor public settings were 56 percent less likely to have tested positive than the subjects who said they “never” wore masks. The comparison presented in the CDC’s graphic is based on a subgroup of 534 subjects who “specified the type of face covering they typically used.”
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Although these results will no doubt be disputed, I think it is a better first step then some of these complex observational studies with even more confounders. The biggest problem here I think is that self reported “always” mask wearers are no doubt more careful in other ways and splitting those apart isn’t possible.
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Even if the result is a reasonably accurate measurement of “being paranoid reduces your risk X amount” then that is still useful information in the grand scheme. Perhaps 56% is the reduced risk of the covid paranoid with a nearly useless mask.
The Rogan Death Watch is probably on. He’s already known to be “transphobic” by commenting on how transgender MMA fighters would have a significant advantage (duh). I’m sure he has sinned in many other ways yet to be weeded out by the mob who called for his ouster without ever listening to a single word he said.
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This is just excruciating from the Spotify CEO:
“There are no words I can say to adequately convey how deeply sorry I am for the way The Joe Rogan Experience controversy continues to impact each of you. Not only are some of Joe Rogan’s comments incredibly hurtful – I want to make clear that they do not represent the values of this company. I know this situation leaves many of you feeling drained, frustrated and unheard.”
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Pure boilerplate insincere generic BS of the highest order, ha ha. Followed by:
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“And I want to make one point very clear – I do not believe that silencing Joe is the answer. We should have clear lines around content and take action when they are crossed, but canceling voices is a slippery slope. Looking at the issue more broadly, it’s critical thinking and open debate that powers real and necessary progress.”
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I can’t wait to hear what Rogan says about this in his own podcast. His listeners are not going to like some PC bullsh** and it isn’t his style.
Tom,
I think the asked people whether they wore masks after the people got their Covid results. Memory being what it is, it’s possible that getting a result affected their interpretion of how often they wore masks!! You get a positive and then remember… “Oh yeah. I didn’t wear my mask at blah, blah”. You get a negative, and can’t remember the mask oversights.
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Or, their memories might be just fine. These things are difficult to do.
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I didn’t see a link to the data and I wondered how the looked at the co-founder of vaxxed/unvaxxed. The footnotes say they did in the “corrected” or “adjusted” data, but it’s just one big long note saying they accounted for “everything” in that second pass (income, age, yada, yada…) I didn’t see details though.
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It doesn’t look like the full paper yet, so perhaps we’ll see more.
It won’t be very hard to convince me they presented the data in the most favorable light for masks, that was the point of their basic graphic. If their data was collected in an unbiased way and the study was well thought out then maybe it has value. This is definitely the type of basic “just ask people simple questions” studies that have been missing IMO. I suspect these numbers will go down with a more critical analysis. We shall see.
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I was thinking more along the lines of asking hospitalized patients the same questions because protection against severe illness is what really matters. The numbers would no doubt look worse because a lot of very susceptible people probably wear masks more often and got sick anyway. There is no reason we can’t have both types of studies for a clearer picture.
Tom Scharf,
Let’s see. I’m pretty sure that most people wear cloth masks. Yet the 56% effectiveness rate for cloth masks isn’t statistically significant? And N95 masks aren’t much more effective than surgical masks? Something is seriously wrong.
Retrospective studies are always, IMO, highly questionable. Retrospective studies of diet, for example, are a complete joke. And that’s not just my opinion. There’s a review article that I posted a while back that concludes the same thing.
DeWitt,
Yep, only carefully controlled studies are acceptable…. unless someone wants to support an arbitrary rule with arm waves and BS… then an on-line survey about the behavior of anonymous Karens is perfectly OK to justify the desired policy. It is rubbish.
DeWitt,
On retrospective diet studies: I can’t remember what I ate yesterday. I can remember things I always eat. M-Sat, I nearly always eat Oat-Ohs and skim milk for breakfast. I add dried cranberries.
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Dinner and Lunch vary. And as for snacks? No way I remember what snacks I ate, and certainly not the portion sizes!
Tom Scharf (Comment #209232): “age group, sex, and the region of California where they lived”.
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They did not control for vaccination status. Or income. Or race. And the reasons for testing were not even remotely comparable in the two groups. 44 non-wearers in the positive group and 42 in the negative group, so of course all results were statistically insignificant.
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Against that, we have multiple large prospective studies that all show no more than a small effect for surgical masks.
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Defund the CDC.
I don’t understand how 56% effectiveness could not be statistically significant with basically a binary measurement of no mask/masked always. Something strange about that.
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I understand everyone want to diss this, but I think people can actually remember whether they wore a mask “always” in public places within two weeks of testing positive. I haven’t read all the details. The mask evangelists always wear masks.
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About half of cases will likely be from home where everyone is unmasked (with this kind of number one wonders why there is an exception for home from science?). Some people will lie and some people will not remember correctly and others will feel pressured to answer “correctly” when asked by authorities and VSP.
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Whether you ate carrots two weeks ago is not the same as “I tested positive for covid”. The first thing everyone is going to do is think very hard about what they did the previous week and where they got it.
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I prefer challenge studies for mask effectiveness, what do you recommend?
Tom Scharf (Comment #209242)
February 8th, 2022 at 9:46 am
Whatever happened to the consensus that masks were worn to protect the people around you from you and not so much to protect you from those around you.
A large portion of Covid-19 infections occur in the home where only a very small percentage would likely be wearing masks and even for the faithful outside the home. Did this experiment account for that factor?
Also if the experiment can determine that a result is statistically insignificant (at what probability) does it list confidence ranges?
The trucker protest is just the best entertainment. The NYT went to live coverage and is in full propaganda mode.
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“desecrating national memorials, wielding Nazi symbols and stealing food from homeless people”.
Guilt by association. Reporting every crime occurrence. Check.
“Justin Trudeau had a defiant message for the protesters in the national capital, whom he accused of undermining Canadian democracy: “It has to stop.””
Unexplained and incoherent threats to democracy. Check.
“Mr. Trudeau said on Twitter that hundreds of Royal Canadian Mounted Police had been mobilized to support Ottawa police officers,”
Those would be the police you spent the last year demonizing?
Check.
“The bridge is the busiest crossing point on the Canada-United States border and critical to the automotive industry for the movement of parts, leading to concerns that a prolonged restriction could lead to factory closings.”
Experts are concerned. Check.
“Some protesters were clearly on the fringe, wearing Nazi symbols and desecrating public monuments.”
Wait, didn’t you already say that? Check.
“mostly peaceful”
Nowhere to be found. Check.
“Photos of the Canadian truckers appeared on anti-vaccine groups on Facebook”
Conflation of anti-vax and anti-mandate. Check.
“prominent far-right figures in numerous countries, including the United States, Australia and Germany, have praised the protests”
Guilt by association of others who support the protest. Check.
Ignoring the attempt by GoFundMe to shutdown funding. Check.
“pushing residents to sleepless fury and anxiety, and causing many businesses to shutter”
Unnamed businesses closed after 10 days of protest. What? Check.
“This influence is hardly hidden at the protests, where Trump and QAnon flags are frequently visible”
No explanation required. Check.
Photography that looks like it was from a 10 year old with a BlackBerry instead of majestic artful photos of protesters. Check.
“Still, a slight majority of Canadians want to end some pandemic restrictions, polls find, which may be why one in three express support for the protest.”
Burying the lede, approx. paragraph 1000. Check.
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Etc. Etc. Hilarious. All the classic forms of bias are being employed in awkward and obvious manners. A great case study to compare to coverage of BLM protests. Just an embarrassment to the profession.
Kenneth Fritsch (Comment #209243): “A large portion of Covid-19 infections occur in the home where only a very small percentage would likely be wearing masks and even for the faithful outside the home. Did this experiment account for that factor?”
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Yes. They did their analysis only on the subset that had no known exposure. Which leads me to wonder why they did not compare to those with exposure.
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I now realize that I erred above when I wrote (Comment #209241): “44 non-wearers in the positive group and 42 in the negative group, so of course all results were statistically insignificant.”
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That was before restricting to those with no known exposure. For the group analyzed, there were 24 no-mask people in the positive group and 11 in the negative group. Those provide the starting point for all their effectiveness numbers.
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Tom Scharf (Comment #209242): “I don’t understand how 56% effectiveness could not be statistically significant with basically a binary measurement of no mask/masked always.”
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I think I just answered that.
In a win for the market the GiveSendGo crowdfunding site has picked up the funding for the trucker protest, now back to $6M.
https://www.givesendgo.com/FreedomConvoy2022
Kind of strange, the cloth mask group should be large relatively according to my observations. At least 75% of people I see have cloth masks.
AIUI, Turdeau has a minority government. I believe he needs to hold a vote to send in the feds and he’s afraid he’s going to lose it.
Tom
Yes. But the ones who came out negative won’t think hard. That’s where a differential in reporting could arise through a differential in remembering.
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During Covid, I have sometimes gone to restaurants. When I do, I pull the mask while eating.
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I’m not a big restaurant goer. But even so, it would be possible for me to forget that I stopped by some diner while driving to X. I’m more likely to remember it if I wrack my brain trying to remember where I might have been exposed. And I’m more likely to wrack my brain if I got covid.
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So I’m more likley to remember that I took my mask off briefly if I got covid!
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I have no idea how big an effect this is on results. It’s just one of the problems with retrospective studies. It’s still a good effort– but whether you wore your mask constantly over two weeks is not as easy to be certain about as whether you got vaccinated.
My government issued covid tests have arrived.
Vitamin D seems to be helpful against viruses in general, and Covid in particular. https://www.businessinsider.com/study-identifies-link-between-vitamin-d-levels-and-covid-19-severity-2022-2
I’ve been taking Vitamin D daily for years. Glad it has some benefits.
In other news, the NFL seems to have been caught with their hands in the cookie jar with respect to “Deflategate”, per https://www.patspulpit.com/2022/2/7/22921469/deflategate-news-report-nfl-covered-up-facts-would-have-exonerated-tom-brady-patriots
I well remember Steve McIntyre’s analysis refuting the league’s (allegedly) scientific report. And naturally, the league didn’t look into the behavior of its own personnel.
Being from Tampa. I have completely forgiven Tom Brady.
DaveJR (Comment #209248): “AIUI, Turdeau has a minority government. I believe he needs to hold a vote to send in the feds and he’s afraid he’s going to lose it.”
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I think that to prevail, he would only need the votes of either of the two far left parties. The NDP might side with the truckers, assuming that they have not forgotten their roots (it is my impression that they have forgotten). But Quebec has been really extreme, so I would expect that he could count on the Bloc. So unless his own caucus might revolt, he should be able to win a vote.
Since we are back on the mask subject… My position has always been that the US approach to masks makes no sense. The concept was to wear flimsy masks to protect others from your exhale. My position is everyone wears a super mask that protects only themselves from everyone else’s exhale. The wearer of my super mask is protected from others even if they are mask ‘cheating’ [under the chin], mask malfunctioning or even unmasking. Mask mandate or no mandate, En garde! Defend thyself!
Russell Klier,
I think the logic behind recommending cloth masks was the hypothesis that COVID-19 was transmitted mainly by large droplets which might be reduced with a cloth or surgical mask. It was the same logic that justified the six foot social distancing rule and sanitizing hands and surfaces. Droplets larger than 100 micrometers (?m) would mostly fall to the ground in six feet.
But transmission is actually mostly by aerosols with diameters less than 100 micrometers. Cloth masks won’t trap many particles that small and aerosols travel a lot farther than six feet. Aerosols containing the measles virus can stay suspended for hours. OTOH, a properly fitted N95 (or better) or equivalent unvented mask will trap most aerosol particles in both direction.
Then there was the SNAFU about the lack of N95 masks early on because the Obama administration ran down the emergency stockpile of PPE during a flu epidemic and neither they nor the Trump administration replenished it. That led to Fauci lying to the public about masks.
DeWitt,
“That led to Fauci lying to the public about masks.”
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Wait. Are you suggesting that St. Fauci might be less than completely honest?
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OK, OK, maybe he is a blatant liar, but at least he lies for the best of reasons…. like keeping the terrified as terrified as possible for as long as possible, and hiding any personal culpability for funding gain of function research, which may well have caused many millions of deaths. But then again, those are actually horrible reasons for lying. He is a liar, and for the worst of reasons. He needs to be fired ASAP.
I want over the paper that was referenced by Tom’s link above concerning mask wearing effectiveness and excerpted the above bock quotes from the paper. I was interested in the 95% confidence intervals (CI) which are reported above. To obtain the percent lower odds you merely need to subtract the above reported values from 1, i.e. the CI for the N95/KN95 respirator is 36% to 95% lower odds of infection compared to wearing no mask.
Interesting that the graph did not show the 95% CIs which should be the standard for a scientific paper. Notice that the CIs indicate a distribution with a very wide range and skewed towards the percent lower odds. This maybe related to the logistic regression used – I have to look at this further. There is a good amount of overlap in the distributions as evident from the CIs and I judge from this that there is not a statistically significant difference between any of the 3 mask effectiveness – but something that needs further studied.
Notice also the distributions for sometimes and most times wearing a mask exceed 1 and thus are not significantly different, at the 95% confidence level, than not wearing a mask.
The subjects in this investigation who never wore a mask is quite low with 6.7% (44) of the infected positive group and 3.6% (42) of the negative tested control group. In this logistic regression the 44 maskless/infected group was what the other groups were compared and the small number accounts for very large CIs. I am not aware of how the maskless/uninfected group would be used, if at all, to adjust the maskless/infected group.
https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/71/wr/mm7106e1.htm
DeWitt Payne (Comment #209256)
“transmission is actually mostly by aerosols with diameters less than 100 micrometers.”
The mask I use is designed for workmen, like carpenters. They claim to have testing that it “Filters up to 99% of particulates down to .1 micron in size” [whatever that means]. I haven’t seen the test results. In practice it has worked wonders in preventing asthma flare ups, sinus infections and the flu so I’m keeping it no matter the Covid situation.
Because of the thick filter it uses silicone flapper valves to facilitate exhaling. It is not acceptable to CDC, but in Florida anything goes. They recommend changing the filter insert every 60+ hours. It costs about $3. Here it is: https://rzmask.com/collections/trademark-masks/products/navy-m2-mask
My wife has a stylish cloth mask with with adjustable fit and a filter insert. The insert is rated at PM 2.5 [whatever that means]. The inserts only cost $0.20 and recommended life is one week, but my wife goes longer between replacements. https://smile.amazon.com/Filters-Activated-Carbon-Filter-Replaceable/dp/B086JSWCKX/ref=sr_1_6?crid=3RFOKDIINT32Y&keywords=pm+2.5+filter&qid=1644379820&sprefix=pm+2.5+filter%2Caps%2C84&sr=8-6
Vinay Prasad, m.d. and professor at UCSF has a brutal takedown on a new CDC “study” finding masks to be very effective. He gives about 9 examples of cherry picking. His first, at 1:12 was that the study was based on a couple of surveys where only about 10% of the people responded. Here is a link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1hWmFnA3AQ0
Reminds me of many climate studies. The worst effect of this study is that it shows that the CDC is composed of blatant liars, led by Rochelle Walensky and that they have such contempt for the intellectual ability of most people, most particularly their Leftist supporters that they don’t even try to mask their lies. Just throw something out there that is politically helpful, and if it is it doesn’t matter whether it is an easily disproved lie.
Here is his Substack article to the same effect which I only skimmed. https://vinayprasadmdmph.substack.com/p/mask-studies-reach-a-new-scientific
For the type of regression used in the mask study, any of the 4 mask treatments could have been used as the treatment that the other 3 were compared. No mask was used in the reported case here. If instead the N95/KN95 was compared against the other 3 treatments, I strongly suspect that it would have shown a significant difference with no mask and not significant differences with cloth and surgical masks. Those latter differences would have made the study results much less reliable/believable.
I plan to attempt to obtain the condensed data and do the regression with N95/KN95 as base comparator.
Are you attacking THE SCIENCE and causing scientists undue anxiety and sleepless nights by requesting data again, Kenneth? You seditious radical you! 😉
JD Ohio,
OMG. That study is so bad it makes the 1619 Project look good. But I’ve already seen people quoting it to defend masking in the WSJ comments. *sigh*
DeWitt,
Notice many of his objections were listed by different people here before we read it. I commented on the potential biases that arises by asking people if they masked after their test result. I (think) I commented on the difference in vaccination rates. (I know I did elsewhere– on danceforums where someone brought this study up.) I commented (at least on danceforums) about not finding the data and lack of clarity on how they “corrected” for different factors in the adjusted data. Kenneth is asking for the data.
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Reading the footnotes is almost hilarious. They did their analysis “with R”. But there is very little detail. That’s not quite as as saying “We did it with a pen and paper and looked up things on tables”. But they really don’t clarify much.
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It’s nice they tried. But unfortunately, the survey of “did you or did you not wear a mask” needs to be asked before they get their results and yada, yada….
Has anyone ever seen convincing data that aerosols are the primary means of infection for covid?
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The only things I have seen referenced are some superspreader events which indicated aerosols are almost certainly a viable means of transmission, but I have never seen any data that provided a meaningful percentage split between aerosols and fomites. The last I saw on this topic was they thought fomite were responsible for 10% or less of transmissions which was basically a WAG.
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I wouldn’t be surprised if aerosols were 95% of transmissions but I haven’t seen any real science to back that up. The variants may also have changed this dynamic one way or the other.
Tom,
I think some studies are nearly impossible to do. One is determining the in situ rates of spreading by different mechanisms “in the wild”.
There are different arguments that the masking studies are crap and that masks don’t work. It’s possible that the studies are crap and N95 masks are still perhaps 50% effective, which is my guess.
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Observational studies + strong group bias are always going to be a problem as we have seen in food and social science. The existence of bias is not the same as being wrong. The hard part is determining when the group bias is actually correct. High profile misses in science undermine the credibility and science needs to work harder to police these. Who can forget …
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Surgeon General, Feb 2020:
“Seriously people — STOP BUYING MASKS!” the surgeon general, Jerome M. Adams, said in a tweet on Saturday morning. “They are NOT effective in preventing general public from catching #Coronavirus, but if health care providers can’t get them to care for sick patients, it puts them and our communities at risk!”
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Two years later and we still don’t really have good data here. If the group bias was in the reverse direction then one assumes we would have a lot of observational studies showing “no evidence” masks work.
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Climate science had to overcome “efforts” by Michael Mann and company to convince people the surface temperature record was reliable enough for its purpose. That took a while. BEST was a big step here.
Cities in British Columbia faced another hour of conveyance convoys and rallies in solidarity with protesters occupying downtown Ottawa in opposition to COVID-19 mandates on Saturday.
Vancouver policewomen said Saturday afternoon that hundreds of vehicles from a Crop Mainland convoy had entered the downtown insides causing substantive congestion.
https://newsca.ca/
Let Mainland demonstrators gathered in Langley first driving to downtown Vancouver in the direction of a rally at Robson and Burrard streets. The Vancouver Islet convoy hand Campbell River early Saturday, with plans to point a recovery at the Victoria legislature.
Theres not a living soul here interested in any issues other than our freedom. Nothing wants to argue, not anyone wants to war, nothing wants to defile anything, Langley convoy sharer Cliff Caron told Despatch Canada formerly hitting the road.
Answering some of these seemingly simple questions is probably very difficult, but $2T and two years should have helped. Color me unimpressed. Personally I blame the incoherent ethics of medical testing.
I don’t think there was ever a double blind study on penicillin. Or the smallpox vaccine. Or seat belts or any number of other things. Large effects do not require a randomized double blind study. Small effects do require that.
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None of the masking studies are good enough to reliably evaluate a small effect. But they are good enough to rule out large effects, except for N95 masks. I think that is good enough to say that mask mandates are wrong.
Another red flag is these studies are coming up with widely varying effect sizes. This is most likely due to study design and the usual hacking for a preferred result. These are the type of things the CDC should be doing even if the results are not completely satisfactory.
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At the highest level a consistent finding of covid paranoid people get infected less often is repeatable and the order of mask effectiveness from cloth to N95. Not surprising.
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Covid paranoid people got infected much more often with omicron. If they did the same study during omicron the relative differences in outcomes might be useful. Would the masking differences contract or expand with omicron? Hard to say.
Tom, there is data here from border breaches and infection spread happening within managed isolation facilities but I don’t think anything has been published. Some on in-flight transmission too. This is not “in the wild” – I agree with Lucia that this is impossible – but it shows that fomite transmission can happen. From what I have seen though, it would strongly support aerosol transmission being dominant. Schools in UK quickly noted the importance of ventilation in classrooms in reducing spread, but I don’t know if any of that data has been published either.
Drip,drip, drip
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“Two weeks ago, the FDA begged a Texas judge to delay production on the first monthly batch of 55,000 pages of Covid-19 vaccine data submitted to the agency by Pfizer. Originally, the agency was set to produce just 500 pages-per-month.”
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The request to delay was denied.
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“As Rubicon Capital’s Kelly Brown notes on Twitter, the changes to Pfizer’s Q$ earnings releases center around disclosures of unfavorable safety data.”
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“For example, in Q4 they added: “or further information regarding the quality of pre-clinical, clinical or safety data, including by audit or inspection.”
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“ “…challenges related to public confidence or awareness of our COVID-19 vaccine or Paxlovid, including challenges driven by misinformation, access, CONCERNS ABOUT CLINICAL DATA INTEGRITY and prescriber and pharmacy education;””
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https://newspunch.com/pfizer-caught-quietly-changing-fine-print-to-warn-an-audit-of-safety-data-may-impact-business/
MikeM,
Maybe not. They did have clinical trials according to the following:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5369031/#R7
That links to another paper which is behind a paywall.
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The golden age of ‘patent medicine’ ended around 1920. No one has double blind studies for all those medicines back then either.
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You are right that masks can’t be a huge effect or we’d see it. People who wear masks do get sick. Even medical personnel do.
Let’s just say I wouldn’t be very surprised if somebody posted “We actually did some real hard core testing and 50% of in home transmission is from door knobs”. Not saying this is the case, it just hasn’t really been eliminated AFAICT … err … there’s “no evidence” aerosols are the * primary * form of in home transmission. I would continue to assume aerosols are the biggest threat though.
Tom Scharf,
“…there’s “no evidence” aerosols are the * primary * form of in home transmission.”
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Sure. If you never look for evidence, you will rarely find it. There is zero evidence of fomite transmission (at least none I have seen published) and overwhelming evidence of aerosol transmission in multiple settings. I note this is different from flu and rhinovirus colds, where there is plenty of evidence of fomite transmission, as well as aerosol transmission.
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One of the things that just about drives me crazy is the vacuous MSM analysis of how droplet/particle size influences the potential for transmission. As I think DeWitt has pointed out, the 6-foot rule and cloth masks might reduce transmission if the vehicle were 50 to 100 micron droplets in size. But almost certainly, it is particulates that are 5% to 10% that size… meaning they would be airborne 100 to 400 times longer than a 100 micron droplet in still air. (The virus itself is about 0.1 micron.) Even a particle/droplet of 5 microns could contain a hundred virus particles. A particle a few microns in size is not going to settle in any reasonable time, and if any significant air currents are around, they are NEVER going to settle. They are also going to pass through cloth masks as if not present, and even pass through surgical masks. OK, a well fitted N95 mask will stop most particles carrying virus, but realistically, few people will tolerate a well fitted N95 mask for very long. It is all so crazy that I blink in disbelief.
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Mask theater has gone on quite long enough, and I am hoping it will soon end. Unfortunately, the damage that mask theater has done (especially damage to young children) will not end so soon.
I finally said enough is enough and went topless to the grocery store today. Nobody said anything. There was one other guy with no mask.
I would imagine that there is a base load that determines how quickly you get ill and consequently how much time your body has to develop its antibody defences.
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in that regard wearing a mask in conditions of short term exposure, like seeing an infected patient for 5 minutes would materially lower the risk, droplet size regardless as the mask would absorb and deactivate a lot of the load.
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Overall though they are fairly useless.
Imagine being on a train with a Sarin gas release.
Whack your mask on, hold your breath you have still had it.
Ride on a subway with lots of infective people for 45 minutes, gone.
Stay at home with your sick kids , shovel food under the door and wear a mask 50:50.
While the number of viral particle needed to make you sick is suspected to be low of covid, it is not 1. While 6ft is “just a number”, a inverse distance square law applies to viral particle dilution – distance matters. The more particles removed by masks, the lower the probability of getting an infection. Obviously not zero, but not the same as wearing no mask. Sure medical staff have caught covid but not all of them and they are working in areas with high viral loads. Are you seriously proposing that it is pointless for them to be wearing PPE? Given that noone likes wearing mask, the potential for motivated reasoning is rather high in evaluating evidence for ineffectiveness.
Phil
No. It’s just bounding information that tells us something about the size of the protective effect.
Phil Scadden (Comment #209282): “While 6ft is “just a number”, a inverse distance square law applies to viral particle dilution – distance matters.”
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I see no reason to believe that distance matters all that much; it might well be much closer to not mattering at all than to inverse square. Mixing times in most rooms are probably shorter than air exchange times. When that is true, we might have nearly well-mixed conditions for small particles. When not true, direction will matter more than distance.
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My understanding is that medical staff wearing surgical masks proved to be nearly pointless for covid. Then they shifted to N95, which were effective.
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It is quite possible for poor masks to result in more fine particle emission. Small particles go through the mask. Large droplets, which would quickly drop to the ground, get collected, then resuspended as small particles. The result can be more of the small particles that are optimal for transmission.
Phil Scadden,
“While 6ft is “just a number”, a inverse distance square law applies to viral particle dilution – distance matters.”
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Dilution is going to be a lot more complex than that. Yes, there dilution effects, but where currents are random dilution is very difficult to predict. One very early study of a super-spreader outbreak in an office showed some logic… people seated down-wind of the infected person (there was a central AC system moving air) did have a higher chance of infection, but there was also infection of people seated far from the infected person and with whom they had no close contact.
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It may be true that you need to be exposed to more than one viron, but I have seen nothing published showing that is the case. Challenge studies (where that number would be defined) have never been done. Do you have reason to believe some specific number?
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The mask issue is complicated, with potential benefits, especially with better quality masks, but with certain costs. Masking little kids? It’s harmful to the kids, and with near zero benefit. Masking in a covid ward with N-95 masks makes perfect sense…. but that is not where the disagreement is. It is mainly about mandating people to do utterly stupid things many do not want to do…. things like wearing obviously ineffective cloth masks as they walk from the restaurant door to their table, after which they can take off their mask…… just stupid. Or insisting that a cloth mask be replaced and removed on an airplane with each bite of food or sip of beverage. Or forbidding the sale of alcoholic beverages on planes, because, well, for no reason at all, except maybe to make loud objections to the insanity less likely. It is all so stupid and so obnoxious. It needs to end.
Phil wrote: “Are you seriously proposing that it is pointless for them to be wearing PPE?”
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Are you seriously mischaracterising the argument? Cloth masks are mostly useless, particles pass through them. Surgical masks are less useless, particles pass around them. These are used for the prevention of droplet spread diseases. We are wondering exactly how useless they are. N95s are the recommended PPE against airborne diseases and people infected with them are placed in isolation in well ventilated, negative pressure, rooms to prevent spread. See the film “Outbreak” with Dustin Hoffman.
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We are wondering how useless “mask mandates” are, especially where most people walk around in cloth masks. The evidence points to negligible because they cannot get good data. I have seen no push by authorities to advise wearing N95s, but maybe others have.
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Perhaps you missed the recent study that suggested that lockdowns reduced mortality by 0.2%. “Common sense reasoning”, as used by you above, would suggest it should be much much higher than that. No contact, no transmission, but it happened anyway. One remembers when these measures weren’t about preventing mortality, but “flattening the curve”, which they probably did achieve.
Yesterday, I exchanged emails with the lead/corresponding authors of the mask effectiveness paper. I was told by the lead author, who is PhD candidate at UC Berkeley, that for privacy and security reasons it was the groups policy that the data not be released. I have replied that I only wanted the number data used for the regressions reported in the paper and that the data must have been in that form at some point in the process. I also noted that I did not obtain an answer to my question whether a logistic regression had been run using the N95/KN95 respirator category as the reference. The exchanges have been polite, but I am not holding my breath for any positive developments. I will see if or what kind of reply I receive today.
It has been my experience in the past when requesting data or information from corresponding authors that the data and/or information has been forthcoming, and this has been the case whether the authors were “friendly” or “adversarial”. Some of the best exchanges have been with authors that might have been considered not that friendly.
If there were mask protections that were as effective in preventing Covid-19 infection for the wearer as any other source such as vaccination or perhaps better than any other protection (no protection will ever be perfect) would there be mask mandates? In other words, an individual who wanted protection in an environment where others could behave as they pleased vis a vis masking and distancing that protection would be available to that person. Would governments insist on protecting people from themselves with mandates and doubting their good judgements in protecting themselves? Over loading hospitals, even if merely potential, would remain a rationale for emergency government mandates.
Note to Lucia: This is a real and serious question and not rhetorical.
Well the trick there, Kenneth, was that you had to wear a mask to “protect others”, not yourself. Getting N95s onto the vulnerable and the paranoid would have achieved far more, but I guess supply played a big part here. Hospitals were reusing N95s after sterilizing. That should be looked into.
DaveJR, here I am assuming that if the mask protects the wearer it also protects those around the wearer from the wearer. Not an unrealistic assumption, I believe.
Mike M.,
That’s a fair point if true. But I bet that’s something else that no one has looked at. If you just look for droplets, then even cloth masks might look like they would have a significant effect. But if air flow through the mask actually creates aerosols from the collected droplets, then it could, as you point out, make things worse.
I looked and I found this article in Nature.
That’s a good point about cloth masks possibly trapping, and concentrating, particles to be expired at a later time, maximising particle output when saturated!
Kenneth
Hah! [/sarc].
DaveJR (Comment #209291)
“Getting N95s onto the vulnerable and the paranoid would have achieved far more, but I guess supply played a big part here.”
KN95 masks were in ample supply on February 26, 2021, when I bought a pack of 60 from Amazon for $59.99. I did not like the fit and returned them for credit. I purchased a super N99 mask On March 3, 2021 for $28.63. I had numerous choices for the KN95s, but only a few choices for the N99.
Remember at the beginning when the US was critically short of ventilators? Trump used his emergency powers to gear up and in a few months we had ventilators to spare. Hindsight is 20/20, but he should have geared up to make N95 masks.
Russell Klier (Comment #209296): “he should have geared up to make N95 masks.”
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I thought he did: https://www.defense.gov/News/News-Stories/Article/Article/2149726/defense-production-act-contract-to-provide-39-million-masks/
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Other PPE also, if memory serves.
I wouldn’t buy a KN95 mask. They’re Chinese. Like Chinese made drugs, quality control is a crap shoot.
I was supposed to get my free at home COVID tests in the mail yesterday. They didn’t arrive and now the USPS doesn’t seem to know where they are because I don’t have a delivery date for them.
Almost all masks are Chinese, The KN95 is just a different standard of testing. Unlike a lot of things in this pandemic, mask effectiveness as far as filtering ability is testable. There have been many reviews of masks using the same devices used to verify/validate the N95 type masks in the factory.
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In general the 3M N95’s stood up the best and generally tested to 98% or so. Some of the Amazon KN95’s did not pass the test on individual units but still usually tested to around 87% at the worst. There are some straight up fraudulently made masks but this was rare. Realistically you are shopping more for a decent fit to your face than who is 5% better than another. It is more like shoes and pants. The KN95’s tend to be smaller. You can cut them up, they should have 5 layers. You can find comparison reviews in the usual places. On Amazon it is typical to find the same product from China sold under many brand names.
I have noticed a shift to more N95 type masks at the grocery store. It may be caused by the cloth mask wearers just giving up on masks.
“It may be true that you need to be exposed to more than one viron, but I have seen nothing published showing that is the case.”
I dont think there is consistent evidence for Covid19 but for other coronavirus, loads are estimated as several hundred to few thousand. “Not 1” is a good prior. Low transmission in outdoor settings also suggests that dilution matters. Sure dilution is complicated but operating in a way to maximize dilution makes sense (well might be completely moot for Omicron if you are vaccinated).
Statements here rate cloth mask as about 20% effective not zero. So, well better than nothing, but N95 is strongly advised.
Lockdowns in US might be rated ineffective but highly effective elsewhere so taking those studies with grain of salt for moment.
I think weird and stupid rules are by-product of where effective strategies are hard to compress into simple statements. Personally, I find sitting at a red traffic light while there is zero other traffic around is stupid but I would still get a ticket if I was photographed or seen to be ignoring it. Internal travel here has just stopped all food and drink service so that no excuse for taking off a mask.
Phil Scadden,
And the masking of 2 year olds? 4 year olds?
Sensible countries recognized very quickly that kids are at near zero risk, and kept schools open and students unmasked. What has happened with schools in New Zealand?
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I don’t like the analogy of mask wearing to stopping at a red light with no opposing traffic. Forcing people to do stupid things, with little justification, is most certainly not like having traffic lights. Traffic lights are universally needed. Traffic lights might be better timed, or switched to “stop and procede with caution” when traffic is light. OTOH, masks rarely make sense, and are forced upon people independent of circumstances….. same rules for 10 year olds and seniors, even while 10 year olds have 1/10,000 the risk of seniors. Same rules for higher risk and lower risk environments. All so arbitrary and all so stupid. It needs to stop. Let people who want to wear masks wear them, and leave those who don’t alone.
NZ has masks for yr 9 upward at moment. However, it seems schools have some flexibility.
The analogy is that at a stop light you must stop, and stay stopped to it goes green – even when it is safe to do otherwise. However, the rule is simple because it is hard to define “safe to do otherwise”. Assuming that mask-wearing is effective (dubious I know), then rules for when or not to wear mask need to be simple. Simple rules (eg wear when indoors) need some exceptions (like eating) and things get stupid quick. Not offering a solution – more speculating on cause.
Hmm. To avoid confusion, masks for 9year old and up (I think that is K4 in US school system).
DeWitt Payne (Comment #209298)
“I wouldn’t buy a KN95 mask”
KN95 …the “K” is for “Knockoff” but when I bought those, N95s were not available to the public. My wife had a limited supply of N95s because she had direct patient contact at work and the KN95s were definitely not as well made. I really was dissatisfied with the toilet paper masks everyone was wearing and I was looking for something bulletproof for myself. So I sent the KN95s back and bought a non-medical N99 mask. It’s for workmen and athletes; CDC, FDA and Tony Fauci do not approve. It’s as close to bulletproof for the wearer as I could find.
I watched my Pittsburgh Penguins play a hockey game in Ottawa, Canada before 500 fans tonight. The rink was nearly empty. It was quite a contrast to the many full-to-capacity games the Penguins have been playing across the US this season. So I checked the data….. The US has had 273 deaths per 100,000 population; Canada has had 92 Deaths per 100,000 population. The US death rate is currently 300% higher than the Canadian death rate. Shame on US.
https://ig.ft.com/coronavirus-chart/?areas=usa&areas=can&areasRegional=usfl&cumulative=1&logScale=0&per100K=1&startDate=2020-09-01&values=deaths
Mike M. (Comment #209280)
February 9th, 2022 at 6:36 pm
I finally said enough is enough and went topless to the grocery store today. Nobody said anything.
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The mind boggles.
Please remember this is a family friendly blog.
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Ben Simmonds gone but on reflection I might stay a Philly fan this year.
angech,
The 76ers are going to be a very different team after the trade…. and no Aussie accents on the court. 😉
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I think the team handled a difficult situation badly. The result is worse for the 76ers than it could (and should) have been. The reality is that the players are far more important to the team than coaches and management; failure to recognize that leads to bad outcomes.
I have not received a reply from the lead author of the mask effectiveness paper and thus will proceed with determining the statistical significance of the differences between the N95/KN95 respirator, cloth mask and surgical mask using the confidence intervals and mean values for these masking treatments. It is obvious that the lead author could have, with no effort on her part, given me a yes or no reply on whether the logistic regression had been run using N95/KN95 respirator as the reference category and the results if it was run.
I can reconstruct the probability distributions even though skewed using the paper information and run simulations to determine statistical differences. I can even compare the results using various levels of skewness
I will repeat here that with these wide probability distributions listed in the paper it is likely that the paper if fully discussed would have to limit its conclusions to that of the N95/NPK95 respirator and surgical mask treatments if used indoors at all times have a statistically significant difference with no mask wearing at any time indoors. And further that the uncertainty of the gain in odds of not being Covid-19 infected is large for the respirator and surgical mask cases.
The paper does not discuss in any detail the fact that if the mask wearing is not all the times indoor that the infection rates are not significantly different than no mask wearing.
Some asides not directly related to the paper:
Most of the paper’s authors have an affiliation with the California Department of Public Health, besides having other affiliations. When you go to the CA health agencies you see statements like, “COVID-19 has highlighted existing inequities in health. Many of these inequities are the result of structural racism.” They talk about equity of outcomes and not necessarily of equal opportunities for outcomes. They show a table that has portion of state population and of cases for several racial and ethnic groups. For Blacks the portions are very nearly the same, for Whites the portion for cases is lower than population and for Latinos it is significantly higher for cases and population. Asian-Americans do better for ratio of population to cases at the near same proportion as Whites.
I have to wonder how the state of CA will obtain equal outcomes if differences are related to variables such as weight, culture, genetics and number of people in the same household.
The lead author of the paper, who is a candidate for a PhD at UC at Berkeley, has 14 published papers which she has coauthored. That is most impressive. Too bad she cannot author me another email.
Lockdown effectiveness is very dependent on the state of community transmission. NZ securing its borders would mean nothing if they had 1000 cases a day inside the country. Since the US had a lot of covid before it knew what was happening it went into lockdown to prevent hospital overload. One could also argue it is wise to lockdown for a “high” mortality rate until an effective vaccine is widely available (if one thought the probability was high and it was time limited).
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Once an effective vaccine is available, hospitals aren’t overloaded, and you still have widespread transmission without much hope of ever stamping it out (2000 cases a day coming over the border for example) … then what?
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Live with it, move on. It is my view (and I’m covid paranoid) that it takes a lot more courage to argue for ending lockdowns and restrictions than to take a moral preening position in the US to “save lives” at this point. Whether China or NZ should keep up their states of restriction is an entirely different argument. The covid paranoid like myself just need to man up and move on.
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There is no waiting out covid in the US. It will take a while for a lot of people to get there, but there are signs such as ending mask mandates in schools that we are getting there. If they want to soothe their cognitive dissonance by believing “the science has changed” then that is fine by me, the reality is the science war was fought and lost.
I will remind people that “right turn on red” didn’t use to exist when I learned to drive. Try living in that dystopian world, ha ha.
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I’m sure there were some measurable number of more accidents from right turn on red, but society traded a small probability of ended lives and suffering for convenience for all. Adult behavior.
One way to balance outcomes is to restrict the limited supply of Paxlovid by race. Another grand idea far too many refuse to speak out against.
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New York’s Race-Based Preferential Covid Treatments
New guidelines say whites may not be eligible for antibodies and antivirals, while nonwhites are.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/new-york-race-based-covid-treatment-white-hispanic-inequity-monoclonal-antibodies-antiviral-pfizer-omicron-11641573991
Tom Scharf,
“…society traded a small probability of ended lives and suffering for convenience for all. Adult behavior.”
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Yes indeed. And that is the entire problem with the USA response to covid. We drive cars, take drugs with serious side-effects, fly in planes, and even walk on the side of the street with cars passing by. Individually and as a society, we always balance risk versus benefit. Constant covid fear mongering seems to have made society loose its collective mind…. no more thoughtful balance of risks, costs, and benefits, just ever more demands for unachievable zero risk from covid, with teachers unions being the poster child for the worst of actors.
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The consequence is trillions of dollars printed out of thin air, high inflation, a shrunken workforce, and peoples wages dropping in real terms…. not to mention vast economic damage, with many thousands of businesses permanently closed, real damage done to school kids, and a society even more politically divided on public policy than it was before covid.
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If there is anything good that comes form the covid fiasco, it is that many states have passed laws which simply will not allow governors to institute the kinds of draconian (and unconstitutional!) policies that were implemented, at least not for very long. The Federal bureaucracies which made the consequences of the pandemic worse (CDC, FDA, and the hangers-on like OSHA, FAA, Education, etc) remain enormous problems, and I see no plausible path to reform these agencies in the near term. But at least with many states not acting in the crazy ways they did with covid in the event of a future pandemic, people will have clear comparisons of outcomes, and even the craziest of blue states will be unlikely to institute such destructive “emergency” policies again.
Providing Federally funded anti-viral treatment based on race is almost certainly unlawful under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. I expect a Federal judge will enjoin NY state from practicing this discrimination in dispensing antiviral medications.
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BTW, Pfizer has agreed to provide the Federal government with 10 million courses of their antiviral pills by June, and another 10 million courses by September. That ought to be enough to treat anyone who is at real risk of serious illness or death.
SteveF,
Providing Federally funded anti-viral treatment by race is, IMO, a really good way to make systemic racism worse. The only thing I can think of that would be exponentially worse would be slavery reparations.
DeWitt,
I think the argument for “reparations” is as nutty as a fruitcake. The numbers I saw kicked about would cost the Treasury on the order of $4 to $10 trillion in direct payments to individuals. Liberal bastions like the Brookings Institute are now calling for wealth confiscation (not tax increases, *confiscation* of assets) from the top several percent to fund “transfers” to less wealthy individuals. I believe any such effort could lead to armed resistance.
angech (Comment #208986)
January 30th, 2022 at 2:27 pm
Nostradamus time.
Russian invasion 14th February as a day of loving relationships.
Also a big Tectonic event, Greenland or Italy on 17th February.
I have a 15-25% accuracy rating,
SteveF (Comment #
The 76ers are going to be a very different team after the trade…. and no Aussie accents on the court. ????
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Funny old world.
Think I will stay with the 76ers.
Hope they do not do a Nets.-
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May still be 2 aussies somewhere there, no accent
Matisse Vincent Thybulle is an Australian-American professional basketball player
And maybe one loaned out to Spain?
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Why do people think that Russia will invade Ukraine? Has Putin threatened to do so? No, he has repeatedly said otherwise. Has Putin made specific demands? I don’t think so, other than to restate what he has been saying for years. Does it make sense to invade? Not in the slightest. Are the Ukrainians certain there will be an invasion? It seem not, although they are concerned enough to make prudent preparations. So far as I can tell, the only reason to expect an invasion is that the Biden administration has been shouting about it from the rooftops.
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So what evidence does the administration have? They aren’t saying, other than “Trust us, we know”.
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Meanwhile, the invasion across out southern border continues unabated.
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Let’s go Brandon.
MikeM,
Because Putin is massing troops at the border.
lucia (Comment #209327): “Because Putin is massing troops at the border.”
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For war games, supposedly. That is evidence that he MIGHT invade, not that he WILL invade.
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I don’t see any good purpose that invading would achieve. But the possibility of invading does serve a purpose: getting the West to throw Ukraine under the bus, so that they know they have to cooperate with Moscow. Many people (me included, until recently) have advocated for doing that.
Lucia,
Yes, but the number of troops is disputed, and Putin says the number will be falling because military exercises in the region are ending. Russia/Putin seems to want three things: 1) Permanently annex the Crimea (with Russia’s military port), 2) keep the Ukraine from joining NATO, and 3) stop political abuse of native Russian speakers.
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Invading the Ukraine would be very costly, and occupying any part of the Ukraine not dominated by Russian speakers would invite a nightmarish counterinsurgency, one well supplied by the West. There are 45 million living in the Ukraine, most of those adamantly opposed to Russian control. This is not a place Russia wants to occupy.
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I will be very surprised if an invasion happens. The only thing that I believe would cause a Russian attack would be an attempt by the Ukraine to take back control of the Crimea and the Russian speaking east by force. Crimea was part of Russia nearly all of the time from 1783 until it became part of the Ukraine Socialist Republic (at the direction of Moscow). A plebiscite in 2014 supported annexation by Russia, and Russia was only too happy to accommodate. Putin believes Crimea should remain part of Russia. A safe bet is that it will.
SteveF,
When the number falls, they will no longer be massed at the border. Until they fall, they are massed there.
MikeM
Of course it means he might invade. I’ve been assuming that’s what you with your question. Otherwise, you might as well ask “Why do people think they can predict the future with 100% certainty.” And also: I don’t think anyone said they know what Putin will do with 100% certainty.
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People are acting on risk assessments and want to mitigate risks should he invade. Because he appears to have positioned troops to do so.
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I don’t know about you, but I’m not putting down deposits to book any trips to Europe in the next few months. Especially not to Ukraine or Russia. I don’t want to lose my deposit if Putin invades.
It’s no secret that Putin’s mind is pining for the old Soviet days when Russia et. al. mattered. This guy is unpredictable. He did invade the Crimea. Will he invade? I don’t think anybody knows, it doesn’t cost him much to do saber rattling and see how the West reacts, which has been a bit incoherent as the West is completely self absorbed.
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Germany is feckless and China seems to be on Russia’s side. I imagine China is all for it so they can analyze how the West will respond to an invasion of Taiwan.
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If Putin wanted to invade the Ukraine, now would be a good time to do it. I agree with Mike M that it would be unwise to do so, most notably because the EU would likely respond by economically isolating their energy needs from Russia in the future, However Putin is more than a straight self interest kind of guy, I just don’t know how much he is willing to risk to try to reassert Russia on the global stage after their cold war humiliation. Nothing makes humans do stupid things more often than the feeling of humiliation.
A Canadian judge tried to prevent the Trucker Protest from using the alternate GiveSendGo money (now at $9M). They have no jurisdiction over a US company so it’s mostly ceremonial.
https://www.npr.org/2022/02/10/1080022827/a-canadian-judge-has-frozen-access-to-donations-for-the-trucker-convoy-protest
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This is just a terrible idea on a lot of levels beyond just the standard selective enforcement of these type of rulings. This will drive controversial protests (aren’t.they.all?) to fund themselves using cryptocurrencies beyond the reach of government edicts. This type of stuff has to be used selectively and wisely. Truckers?
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Politically there is hardly anything but upside to the protests for the right, nobody is going to miss the contrast of standing around and watching looting and building burning and then ordering law enforcement to crack down on a “mostly peaceful” trucker blockade. Cringe.
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The NYT editorial board took the unusual position of saying this was a test of “democracy” and saying the the protests must be allowed to continue. I’m guessing they are also seeing the political blowback crushing these protests will cause.
Jim’s theory is if Putin invakes Ukraine, China will hit Taiwan. It’s a theory.
|Jim’s theory is if Putin invakes Ukraine, China will hit Taiwan. It’s a theory.
Which will make the current chip shortage look like just a minor a bump in the road. Putin’s going to have to move soon. He loses leverage if Europe isn’t in heating season. He’ll use the excuse of securing the pipeline to take the entire country.
Realistically China needs a few military interventions to practice on before they try to hit Taiwan. They have never been tested and that usually won’t go well on the first outing. It’s the same for China, if they hit Taiwan then the west stops buying everything from China. Not even as government policy, consumers will revolt. This would have enormous consequences for their economy (and others for a while).
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China’s rise will continue, they will be at parity with the US military within about a decade or so. Better to wait. Their vast manufacturing capability will win them conventional wars.
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Taiwan would be very wise to develop nuclear capability. It’s the only thing that will protect them in the long run.
Dumbest thing I read today, from The Atlantic:
“Recently I published a book of speculative nonfiction…”
I think that SteveF (Comment #209329) has the best handle on the Ukraine situation.
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Here is a good discussion of the realities:
https://nationalinterest.org/feature/why-washington-has-lost-its-mind-over-ukraine-200513
lucia (Comment #209333): “Jim’s theory is if Putin invakes Ukraine, China will hit Taiwan.”
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I don’t see how the two are related, unless Biden is such an idiot that he commits large forces to defending Ukraine. Anyway, China does not now have the capability (airborne forces or landing craft) to take Taiwan, other by means of a blockade and a long war of attrition. That would be against their military doctrine of either win quickly or wait until you can win quickly.
MikeM
Opportunity to move while the possible defender of Tawain is busy elsewhere.
Lucia,
“Opportunity to move while the possible defender of Taiwan is busy elsewhere.”
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Maybe Biden’s very feeble mind would be busy with the Ukraine, but the USA certainly would not be busy militarily if Russia were to attack the Ukraine. The USA will not shed blood to defend the Ukraine against Russia. It would be incredibly foolish on multiple levels to do that. I believe (and certainly hope) it is not going to happen.
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Taiwan is a different story. The USA has vial interests in keeping Taiwan from being taken over… with the chips produced in Taiwan chief among them. I hope China has the good sense to not invade Taiwan.
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Tom Scharf,
Sure, nuclear weapons in place in Taiwan would probably ensure Taiwan would not be invaded. But it is not plausible that Taiwan could have a clandestine nuclear program that China would not be aware of. Even starting that development effort would likely cause an immediate invasion by China…. they would recognize that their window of opportunity to *EVER* take control of Taiwan was rapidly closing, and would almost certainly invade, even at huge cost in blood, treasure, and international relations.
Thanks SteveF, you saved me the trouble. Also the main resource we would deploy in defense of Taiwan would be a couple carrier battle groups. Not likely of use in Ukraine.
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It is not just the US who would have an interest in defending Taiwan. If we just let Taiwan fall, South Korea might not last long. I doubt Japan would relish being isolated. China would really push their expansion in the South China Sea, to the detriment of Vietnam, the Philippines, and Malaya. Indonesia might also feel threatened. I am sure China wants very much to reclaim Taiwan, but they might not see their way clear unless they can isolate Taiwan from potential allies.
The USA could, of course, simply hand Taiwan 25 medium yield (250 kiloton) nuclear weapons, with accurate delivery systems…. fait accompli as they say. Of course, China would probably consider that an act of war. The response would be unpredictable and dangerous. I doubt the Chinese leadership could deal rationally with that development.
Lucia, that’s sort of an interesting idea that hadn’t occurred to me, and it probably should have. I’m going to chew on it for awhile.
Thanks!
Mike M. (Comment #209326)
February 12th, 2022 at 9:14 am
Why do people think that Russia will invade Ukraine?
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Think Poland.
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Where is the United Nations?
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Where is the outcry from the European states?
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People power may be the only answer.
Not taking up guns.
angech,
Either it will happen or it won’t. If it does, it will be pretty soon.
Evidently, men have been signing up for the Ukraine territorial militias with great zeal. So much that they are can’t take any more. (Story from WSJ — and specifically discussing the territory with the largest Russian speaking city. Evidently the Russian speaking Ukranians below the age of 60 do not want to be re-embraced by the loving arms of Mother Russian.
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Vlad (my dance teacher) thinks his (former) peeps will definitely all fight if Russia invades. (Former peeps in the sense he is now a naturalized American– and glad of it!)
angech,
Vlad predicts Ukranian people power will involve guns. And so on.
angech (Comment #209345): “Think Poland.”
Things are very different from 200 years ago. Or even 80 years ago.
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angech: “Where is the United Nations?”
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Probably does not matter, since wherever they are, they presumably have their heads up their collective …
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angech: “Where is the outcry from the European states?”
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They have been giving lip service in support of Ukraine. Germany even sent a bunch of helmets.
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angech: “People power may be the only answer.
Not taking up guns.”
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Huh? Maybe putting bouquets of flowers in the canon barrels of the tanks?
Lucia,
“Vlad predicts Ukranian people power will involve guns. And so on.”
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Yep, I spoke with a couple of young Ukrainian men (of military age) at a trade show in Turkey several years ago. They are absolutely opposed to Russia. Of course, the native Russian speakers in eastern Ukraine may not be quite so dedicated, especially those with family ties to Russia, as many have. I doubt the Russians will invade the Ukraine, except if severely provoked.
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angech,
“People power may be the only answer.
Not taking up guns.”
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Ummmm…. there has been armed conflict in the region for a while. A little late for hand-holding and singing Kumbaya to solve all problems.
I would assume almost everything by both sides is propaganda right now. The will to fight by the Ukrainians once kinetic action is started by a superior opponent is an open question. I still think the best option is to lay low, let them waltz in and endure a long term insurgency.
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If you are Taiwan and are examining the Ukraine (gave up nuclear weapons), NK and Iran (little chance of being invaded with a nuclear program) then I think the answer is pretty clear. Another slow motion nuclear development or magically get to the end point quickly via clandestine help. It is a provocation but one that worked for both NK and Iran. If I was a Taiwan nationalist then depending on the US to have their back is pretty chancy given our history with some allies.
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China will not like it when their “Cuba” gets nuclear missiles from an adversary, but also remember there was a * clandestine agreement to not invade Cuba in exchange for removing the missiles from Cuba *. This type of action requires major balls.
There are some Western politics involved in the current Russia/Ukraine tensions. Macron is facing an upcoming election and is looking for some victories (diplomatic in this case) as a mediator. He has publicly stated previously that Europe must be more independent (from the US) in foreign matters and military defense.
Macron and Scholz of Germany have been playing a role with Russia independent of the US. I would happily cheer this development on and would think Washington would also, but I think the current administration needs a diplomatic victory here more than Macron or Scholz. What better way then to sell the imminent invasion and Putin backing off after discussions with Biden. The MSM would be calling it a major victory for Biden and the possibility of turning around his negative polling numbers.
Think more politicians involved here on all sides and certainly not statesmen or leaders with something much beyond personal gain involved.
MIke M,
“…they presumably have their heads up their collective …”
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Let me help you. The UN is controlled by a bunch of very corrupt lefty autocrats, very corrupt sort-of-lefty autocrats, and very corrupt autocrats with no political affiliation. All are dishonest and all suffer irreversible recto-cranial inversions, as do the many political courtesans in NYC and Washington that enable their corruption. The UN can be counted on to do nothing of use in any crisis, 99.9% of the time. IMO, the organization should get thrown out of New York and set up permanent camp in a proper paradise like Caracas, Managua, or Havana.
“Europe must be more independent (from the US) in foreign matters and military defense”
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The only people who seem to be against this is the Europeans themselves. They just want a free lunch. Watching how feckless they are in these type of situations makes me want to just walk away from Europe and let them fend for themselves. During the Libyan conflict the EU ran out of bombs in a week, ha ha. Only the UK is stepping up, the whole thing is quite strange. I can’t figure Germany out at all.
Tom Scharf,
“I can’t figure Germany out at all.”
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Talk with some educated upper middle class Germans. It will be pretty clear what is going on: Most have no kids, no personal connection to the future, and zero interest in Western intellectual traditions. They really don’t care at all. It shows in their politics. They just want to reduce CO2 emissions to make themselves feel morally superior…..even while driving 120 MPH on the autobahns…. drink good beer, and not have many personal obligations.
I’m not sure this qualifies as an outcry from a European state, but Poland has been warning against the consequences of Russian aggression for years.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/will-the-west-heed-polands-warnings-on-russian-aggression-russia-ukraine-georgia-kyiv-nato-crisis-11644602870?st=jqm3wh4g8tf0y18&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink
I have a cruel way of associating countries with characteristics.
Probably as a result of too many BIGGLE’s novels as a youth and forgetting to think rationally.
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An historical fascination is German/ Russia.
Enemies for centuries.
Language differences.
Both always trying to conquer the other.
Somewhere there must be a fit that I do not see.
Not language, not exactly blood but some other relationship born out of a distinct lack of humour and a very basic approach to problems that is common between the two.
Maybe the gas pipeline will bring them together?
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Who benefits?
I cannot work it out but that just means I am not smart enough.
Valentine’s day is here; still no invasion.
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The Administration has been leaking that Wednesday will be the day, but officially it is still any day now.
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I think the Biden Bunch are trying to have it both ways. If Russia invades, they will say “we told you so”. If Russia does not, they will try to claim credit. But I think the result will be the opposite. If Russia invades, they will look impotent. If Russia does not, they will be the boy who cried wolf.
Jim was rooting for the Rams and they won. 🙂
I tracked down the data from the mask effectiveness paper that I needed for looking at the logistic regression with the N95/KN95 respirator as the reference category instead of the no mask category that was used in the paper. I used the glm function in R with the binomial family to attempt to replicate the paper’s results when using the no mask category as reference. For converting to odds ratios and obtaining confidence intervals I used the odds.ratio function from R from library(questionr). My results were in close agreement with those from the paper for both the regressions (mask used and mask usage).
The results of using the respirator category for reference showed no statistically significant infection difference (probability less than 0.05) between respirator and surgical mask and borderline no statistical significance for respirator and cloth mask. As expected from other studies, there was a very significant infection difference between no mask and respirator. The other results are not expected from other studies and, in effect, show the problem of obtaining statistical significance with the small sample sizes available to this study. This type of study is also prone to biases that are either not acknowledged or not properly adjusted for. Smaller sample sizes could make biases more influential on the results.
The second logistic regression in the paper was not discussed in any detail and showed no statistically significant infection difference with indoor mask usage for no mask ever used, sometimes used and most time used. The difference between indoor mask usage never and always was very statistically significant.
I am pretty sure the MSM marketing agency for the Biden Administration will see these results very differently.
I am shocked, shocked I say, to find out that the “organic” certification process is rife with corruption.
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That Organic Cotton T-Shirt May Not Be as Organic as You Think
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/13/world/organic-cotton-fraud-india.html
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“Michael Kors retails its organic cotton and recycled polyester women’s zip-up hoodies for $25 more than its conventional cotton hoodies. Urban Outfitters sells organic sweatpants that are priced $46 more than an equivalent pair of conventional cotton sweatpants. And Tommy Hilfiger’s men’s organic cotton slim-fit T-shirt is $3 more than its conventional counterpart.”
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“In recent months, the credibility of these inspection agencies has been destroyed. In November, the European Union voted to no longer accept Indian organic exports certified by the main companies responsible for organic cotton: Control Union, EcoCert and OneCert. And in January, the international agency that provides accreditation to organic inspection agencies, IOAS, withdrew OneCert’s ability to inspect and certify cotton processors for these labels.”
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“He estimates between one half and four-fifths of what is being sold as organic cotton from India is not genuine. And almost the entire supply chain is implicated in what he calls a game of “smoke and mirrors.””
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A fool and his money are soon parted. Everyone knows it’s a total fraud, including the farmers, the organic inspectors, and the textile companies. The entire thing is such a farce, especially the “science” that not using pesticides, fertilizer and GMO’s is more … ummm … sustainable:
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“What the farmers did not know, however, was that growing without pesticides and fossil-fuel fertilizer produces on average 28 percent lower yields than conventional cotton farming; that organic cotton seeds produce lower quality, shorter fibers”
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Bt Cotton (93% of India cotton) produces an insecticide to combat bollworm, and thus should require less pesticides, but we need to stop using chemicals, and molecules! I can’t remember where cotton is on the periodic table, but it’s there somewhere.
Tom,
LIke you, I too am shocked shocked.
Kenneth Fritsch (Comment #209365): “I am pretty sure the MSM marketing agency for the Biden Administration will see these results very differently.”
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No doubt. And the gullible will believe them. But most people know better.
There is a fundamental problem with the Arbery federal hate crime trial. The defendants had entered a widely reported deal in which they admitted their crime was fueled by racism and would receive time in federal prison instead of state prison:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/02/04/travis-mcmichael-arbery-plea/
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However the judge rejected the deal and the trial is now ongoing. The judge now says any juror that was aware of this plea deal would be struck from the jury, but clearly this information is still widely available. Making court proceedings transparent but preventing this situation is a problem.
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This is not a very good case for a federal hate crime. Apparently the evidence is previous general social media posts and a disputed report that one defendant used the n-word after the crime. Realistically the bar needs to be higher than that IMO. We shall see what comes out in the trial.
Tom, if organic wearing apparel can be classified as virtual signaling, I think we have to consider what that is worth to these buyers. The actual growing conditions are not all that important when you can put a big “organic” on it. The higher the price the greater the virtue.
I see clothing and accessories in the Saturday WSJ priced out of this world. What makes $1500 handbag worth that price? Is it a work of art that I fail to appreciate? Was it made by an artisan who took many hours to produce? Is the brandname worth most of that price and if so how does the buyer benefit from it. At what point would the buyer be consider foolish by his peers?
Kenneth Fritsch (Comment #209364)
“I tracked down the data from the mask effectiveness paper that I needed for looking at the logistic regression with the N95/KN95 respirator”
I finally read the study you all have been discussing.
[I think ….. https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/71/wr/mm7106e1.htm ]
I was elated to see the CDC is finally starting to look at the effectiveness of masks on the person wearing the mask. People are selfish [at least I am]. Forcing people to wear masks to protect others is more difficult than just proving to them wearing a mask is a benefit to themselves.
Except for the cartoon at the beginning, the paper was above my pay grade. It seems to say any mask is a lot safer than no mask and a good mask is a little safer than a toilet paper mask. I was surprised at the effectiveness of the cheap, loose masks. I hope they keep after this line of research. This may not be very definitive, but it is a start.
Tom Scharf: “This is not a very good case for a federal hate crime.”
I fail to understand the value of *any* hate crime law. Regardless of the motivation, Arbery is dead. What difference does the motivation of the perpetrators make? And the vagueness of the phrase “hate crime” sounds like bad law to me. If one beats up a black man, or an Asian woman, or a white man, to me it’s the same crime.
I can see taking motivation into account in parole decisions — someone who beat up a member of and *still hates* those people, seems likely to do it again, because there are still members of that group around. But I don’t understand why it’s a separate crime.
HaroldW,
They want to have a federal crime to get around double jeopardy. The Supremes in their infinite wisdom have decreed that it’s not double jeopardy to get prosecuted for the same crime in both state and federal court. And calling something a hate crime is just so virtuous even though the laws themselves appear to be so ambiguous as to be unconstitutional on their face.
The whole certified organic, non-GMO is such a farce. IMO, the non-GMO movement is a significant factor in the resistance to mRNA vaccines. There’s no way that the population of the world could be fed by truly organic farming. And there is no guarantee that truly organic means higher quality. It can be, but it probably isn’t.
Free range chicken eggs, meaning the chickens have a much more varied diet than pure grains, i.e. bugs and things, are visibly different. The yolks are orange, not light yellow. People claim they taste better, but I’ve never done a blind test to see if I can tell. But then people also say that chicken thighs taste better than breasts. There’s no doubt they taste different. But I think it’s a matter of personal opinion whether they taste better. De gustibus non est disputandum.
Which reminds me of the Perdue chicken ad where they claim that a pure grain diet leads to better tasting chicken. I doubt it. I would bet that the actual diet of truly free range chickens would gross out naive people just as badly as the diet that Perdue claims that their competition feeds their chickens.
DeWitt,
I try to buy (a) cheap chicken and preferably (b) smaller chickens. Its sometimes hard to find both in the same chicken. If I can’t I go for cheap.
The organic people are the same type of people who buy $1,000 audiophile grade digital cables. Don’t even get me started.
Elevating a racial crime over a “I hate my wife” crime doesn’t make a lot of sense. One can argue that being targeted by unknown individuals based on your identity is a form of societal terror that deserves higher punishment. Islamic terror, racial terror, sexual identity terror, etc. We do already have many forms of punishment depending on the intent of the killer. These type of crimes already get near maximum levels of punishment so it’s more for show.
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The double jeopardy problem is very real, and in order to get a guilty verdict after the state gets a not guilty verdict would be an incredibly narrow legal window IMO. The Arbery federal case is kind of useless as they were already convicted by the state.
Tom Scharf,
Sorry, but this is one of my pet peeves as well.
Not just audio, but equally or more expensive HDMI cables too.
Oh and tube amplifiers sound better than solid state (only if you drive both into distortion). And you need to orient your speakers within a few millimeters and a tiny fraction of a degree.
Many years ago I dropped my subscription to Audio magazine when I saw an ad in the classified for something that looked like a digital clock that claimed to clean up your AC power and make your stereo (this was long before multi-channel home theater) sound better.
Yes it was in the classified, but they still didn’t have to accept the ad.
My estimate is there is about 25% snake oil in most high cost cables, note that I didn’t say high quality cables. I read the FDA originally banned many snake oil products not because it wasn’t effective, but because most of them didn’t actually have any snake oil in them, ha ha.
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There are real issues. Getting a real HDMI 2.1 cable or 10G Ethernet cable is an actual need if you have the equipment to support that standard and you actually run it at the speeds that require it. Which almost nobody does. But there are actual standards here and declarations of “oxygen free copper” and all the other silliness is irrelevant to buying a cable that supports and is tested to a standard.
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I had a debate with an electrician during my house renovation about using Cat6 cable. He was totally clueless, I had to buy the cable and give it to him. They don’t know anything about “low voltage” stuff as they like to call it.
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But yeah, AC power conditioners for stereos is pretty funny. Things haven’t progressed much since Dolby Digital came out but the room acoustics calibration some receivers do seems to be pretty effective for some problems (like subwoofers)
Re DeWitt Payne (Comment #209378)
“Oh and tube amplifiers sound better than solid state (only if you drive both into distortion).”
_____
Hi DeWitt,
Whether a tube amp or solid state amp “sounds better”depends on the preference of the listener. Solid state amps measure more accurate than tube amps, but that doesn’t mean all listeners will prefer solid state. The same can be said for preamps.
Do some listeners prefer inaccurate sound reproduction or do measurements fail to capture everything some listeners hear?
Dewitt,
Seems that very accurate analog amplifiers remain popular in spite of eye-watering prices: OPA 627 could be priced at 5 times the current $25 per copy and still would be purchased. It is by far the lowest noise, highest DC accuracy amplifier available below 1MHz. Burns more energy? Sure, but you get what you pay for.
Double blind listening tests can answer some questions. Audiophiles rarely want to take part in them for some odd reason (as far as expensive cables, 256K vs 128K MP3’s etc.). Most people can easily tell the difference between brands of speakers. Which one is better is like picking a favorite color, not to say there aren’t some that are clearly better than others.
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One can add digital filters for a tube amp sound. Lots of people want what they want, whether it is tube amps or higher bass levels or “better” phonographs and LP’s, if it makes them happy, fine. It’s another thing to pretend they are more accurate or have fairy dust in them. Personally my 8-Track is by the far the most accurate sound out there, says I. Buyer beware in the audio world. Your speakers and room probably have more effect on the sound then anything else in your system.
OK_Max,
Unfortunately, you almost never see randomly controlled trials in what used to be called high fidelity publications. The few I have seen appear to show that the differences people claim to hear don’t exist. So-called Golden Ears were no more able than anyone else to distinguish between a cheap amplifier and an expensive amplifier when the sound pressure levels were adjusted to be equal within 0.5 dB and the power levels were within the minimum distortion range of the amplifier. Human ears just aren’t very good.
lucia (Comment #209375)
“I try to buy (a) cheap chicken and preferably (b) smaller chickens”
Recently I tried a novel new roast whole chicken recipe… Chicken was great, the oven was a mess because I used a cast iron skillet and the spatter was pretty bad.
“Starting the chicken in a 450-degree oven and then turning the oven off while the chicken finished cooking slowed the evaporation of juices, ensuring moist, tender meat. “
“Weeknight Roast Chicken” https://www.americastestkitchen.com/recipes/6682-weeknight-roast-chicken
If it’s behind a paywall I will copy it and send it along. There is also a video at that link.
Link to video https://youtu.be/A7jwsYPnrSk
If you want moist chicken, you might want to try a confit method.
I absolutely love tube amps, old school tube radios and vinyl. Unlike the audiophiles who also profess the same I do not find them to be superior in any way except for the ability to repair or refurbish the units. You hand me an old all American 5 radio and a schematic an I can get it singing just like 1938.
I have a solar powered cabin at 11000 ft right next to the continental divide. When class D amps came out 20 years ago I bought a cheap kit ($25) and soldered it together for the cabin. My buddy who’s a huge tube amp guy (yeah he also bought speaker wire that was more expensive than his speakers) is totally amazed that my $25 amp and $19 pair of speakers (thrift store) can sound as good as his $5000 tube amp with $1500 speaker wire and $1000 speakers.
Did I mention he makes great money doing old mine reclamation projects for the government. I wonder if Mike Mann is a speaker wire believer.
Hey wait, I forgot one thing. The folks that believe you have to raise speaker cables off the floor due to coupling affects. I run my speaker wires under the floor, always baffled them if I needed expensive speaker wire risers to lower my cables below the floor joists.
Tube amps do look cool, especially the ones which display the tubes. I always looked with envy at that McIntosh equipment back in the 1970’s. You can still pretty much tell how good a receiver is by simply picking it up and seeing how much it weighs.
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The latest trend to have 9 and 11 channels is a bit much. I admittedly only use my main setup for home theater. I do listen to music on my computer setup when I work which I broke down and paid for some KEF speakers. They have “more transparent sound staging and the mid-highs are sumptuous without being overwrought”, ha ha. Audio reviews became pretty useless years ago as the digital age came upon us and the sound reproduction up to the speakers was more or less perfected.
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LP crackle and pop, tape hiss, somebody bumping the turntable and ruining an album, I do not miss those days. Well maybe I do miss them in some ways, but not for audio quality.
NYT: Ottawa Police Chief Resigns After Trudeau Declares National Emergency to End Protests
“The extraordinary move allows the police to seize trucks used in blockades. And the government will formally ban demonstrations in areas like border crossings, airports and Ottawa, the country’s capital.”
“Mr. Trudeau’s move to invoke the Emergencies Act on Monday was the first time a Canadian government has taken such action in half a century”
“Tow-truck operators, who have been reluctant to cooperate with the police, will now be compelled to work with law enforcement agencies to clear Ottawa’s streets and the border crossings at Coutts, Alberta. If they don’t cooperate, they could face arrest.”
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Trudeau is massively misreading this situation IMO. National Emergency for what amounts to a big tailgate party whose sole function appears to be to annoy the effete elites? Mission Accomplished.
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Antifa may be kind of crazy but some of their strategy is well thought out. Their playbook is to prod authorities into a forced action, either they do not respond and look weak, or do respond and hope they overreact. Trudeau is falling for it. I doubt he will come out this anything but politically weaker no matter what happens.
Funny you should say that. My wife decided to buy a record player a couple of months ago. Interesting to hear the difference. It’s certainly not better quality, but I enjoyed listening to it regardless, probably for nostalgic reasons.
Tom Scharf,
I agree Trudeau is handling the situation badly. His refusal to even talk with the truckers suggests he is unwilling to consider their arguments. “Sniveling”, “weak”, and “arrogant” are the adjectives which come to my mind. He is likely to emerge from this with a lot of Canadians having had their fill of Trudeau.
You guys talking about audio devices and the sounds produced remind me of a master sommelier describing their tasting of wine. I know nothing about audio devices but listen to music some.
When you talk about tubes, I am assuming you mean a vacuum tube. Who still makes vacuum tubes? There was a company called Richardson near me that made vacuum tubes into the modern era. What is the life time of vacuum tubes these days.
Kenneth,
I think there are a couple of companies that still make vacuum tubes, but nearly everything sold, new and used, dates from production many decades ago. It is a bit like there still be companies that make phonograph records. In 1968 I was given a gift of many hundreds of vacuum tubes from the widow of an electrical engineer who died in the mid 1960’s…. never used more than one, and that was to replaced a burned out tube in an aging TV. By the mid 1960’s the future of electronics was already recognized as ~100% solid state, not tubes.
Kenneth Fritsch,
Yes, that’s the idea. But they do blind wine tastings and there are people that can accurately identify wines by taste, well really smell, and mouth feel. The chemistry of wine is extremely complex. There are a lot of volatile compounds. A gas chromatogram of wine looks like a forest. And the composition does change with age. Organic acids can form esters with the ethanol. Also the tannins introduced by oak barrel aging polymerize and precipitate.
They almost never do blind auditions of audio equipment because it would be too embarrassing.
Re Tom Scharf (Comment #209382
“Your speakers and room probably have more effect on the sound then anything else in your system.”
Tom, I agree. Unfortunately, there’s not a whole lot I can do about
the room.
Re DeWitt Payne (Comment #209383)
“Unfortunately, you almost never see randomly controlled trials in what used to be called high fidelity publications. The few I have seen appear to show that the differences people claim to hear don’t exist.”
Yes, in blinded trials people may claim to hear differences in audio equipment, differences that don’t exist. In ABX trials, some listeners
have even unknowingly claimed the same piece of equipment was
two different pieces. Of course, there are some differences in audio
equipment that actually do exist.
DeWitt,
“They almost never do blind auditions of audio equipment because it would be too embarrassing.”
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But oddly enough, blind auditions of classical musicians were very common…. until people began to complain that blind auditions were too racist. I guess music has some kind of side band that allows a discriminating listener (racist listener!) to discern the heritage of the player, although that player is never seen.
The best thing that has happened for speakers and rooms are the built in calibration receivers can do now. Stick a calibrated mic in the listening position(s) and it will attempt to equalize the room for you. Not perfect by any stretch but can iron out some major problems if you have any extra bright room or have issues with the sub.
https://www.soundandvision.com/content/audyssey-me
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My room had a large “room boom” right around 60 Hz that made everything coming out the sub sound like one big 60 Hz pop. You can download frequency test sweeps and my room went nuts around 60 Hz.
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The room calibration flattened my sub response and this really helped. I still like more bass so I upped it the whole bass range a bit anyway after calibration.
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Anything beyond a theoretical empty room gets insanely complex acoustically very fast. You can’t really model this stuff. Speaker positions are limited by reality and you just do the best with what you get and hope to get at least mediocre reproduction without significant deficiencies.
Blind auditions of classical musicians obviously have the same problems the math section on the SAT has …
NYT: Coastal Sea Levels in U.S. to Rise a Foot by 2050, Study Confirms
More precise measurements indicate that the increase will happen “no matter what we do about emissions.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/15/climate/us-rising-sea-levels.html
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That’s right, the future has been CONFIRMED by precise measurements. Science! Whew, glad we don’t have to deal with all that messy uncertainty anymore.
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The latest satellite altimetry shows ~3 mm/year over the last 30 years, perhaps accelerating a bit.
https://www.star.nesdis.noaa.gov/socd/lsa/SeaLevelRise/
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To get to one foot over the next 30 years we will need … 10 mm / year. So rates that have been relatively stable for 30 years only need to immediately change 3.3X starting tomorrow. But science has confirmed the results so we might as well stop launching those unnecessary satellites.
Room calibration tends to squash the sub. The ear doesn’t do as well down there as a microphone.
Tom Scharf,
Yet another scare story in the endless sea level rise scare stories, which are clearly and demonstrably wrong.
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Minor quibble: 28 years and 304 mm = 10.9 mm per year. Even if you believe the current rate is 4 mm per year, to reach 12″ by 2030 the rate would have to increase to 17 mm per year by 2050. That is laughable… a joke, nothing less. Unfortunately, the stooges at the NYT can’t tell the difference between plausible and propaganda….. and that projection is pure propaganda, just like most all of climate ‘science’.
DeWitt Payne (Comment #209399)
February 15th, 2022 at 3:33 pm
DeWitt, I was thinking how sound reproductions and wine/spirits could be put on the same footing. First I would think that sound reproduction fidelity should be a simple matter of measuring the input signal into a device and comparing it to the output signal. It appears to me that sound involves more hard science than the taste of wine and spirits.
I do see where efforts are underway and wine and spirit products are being made that are synthetic. I assume they determine the kinds and quantities of molecules in natural products and then attempt to synthetically duplicate it or even change it to make a better tasting product. That would put, in my view, sound and taste in this case on a closer footing.
Synthetic alcoholic beverages could be made without fermenting and aging and more readily replicated over time. The product could be made to satisfy groups of individual tastes.
You have an a-weighting spectrum that matches the defects of the ear, but calibration should be using a flat frequency response calibrated microphone to try to match the source material as would be recorded by a similar calibration microphone. The receivers include a calibrated microphone, not sure how good they really are.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A-weighting
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It gets really messy though, things change as volume increases and you are supposed to calibrate at a certain reference volume. Cinema reference volumes are actually very loud, much louder than most people (wives) will run their systems. One of things I liked about real cinema was that nobody came running in and screamed at you to turn it down.
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For the most part all this fancy technology will just result in a “meh” unless you have super ears or a serious problem with your room. Making sure you have phased the speakers right, etc.
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The ear does whatever the ear does, and old ears do it worse. The ear definitely doesn’t perceive low end bass at the “correct” levels. When I was doing frequency sweeps my ears were cutting off around 16 KHz and down low at 30 Hz, but I could still feel it a bit.
Breaking News, CNN Dirty Laundry Edition
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CNN’s Marketing Chief (Zucker’s girlfriend) has now resigned after an internal investigation “found violations of company policies”. She used to work for Andrew Cuomo and it’s probably related to that mess. She responds:
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“It is deeply disappointing that after spending the past nine years defending and upholding CNN’s highest standards of journalistic integrity, I would be treated this way as I leave,” Ms. Gollust said.
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More dirt on Cuomo and CNN’s corruption from a long deeply researched story at the NYT:
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/15/business/jeff-zucker-cnn.html
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“Barely 24 hours later, a letter arrived at CNN. It was from a lawyer representing a woman who had worked with Mr. Cuomo years earlier at ABC News. She said he had sexually assaulted her and that, in the heat of the #MeToo movement, Mr. Cuomo had tried to keep her quiet by arranging a flattering CNN segment about her employer at the time.
The letter described it as an “abuse of power at CNN to attempt to silence my client.””
“It relayed a story that had begun in 2011 when the woman, who was referred to as Jane Doe, was a young temporary ABC employee hoping for a full-time job. One day, after Mr. Cuomo, an anchor, had offered her career advice, he invited her to lunch in his office, according to the letter, interviews with the woman and emails between her and Mr. Cuomo.
When she arrived, there was no food. Instead, Mr. Cuomo badgered her for sex, and after she declined, he assaulted her, she said. She ran out of the room.”
“People in Mr. Cuomo’s camp soon began whispering to reporters that Mr. Zucker had coached Governor Cuomo on how to use his televised briefings to go after Mr. Trump.”
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Chris Cuomo was fired two days after that letter arrived. We can only hope that Cuomo’s lawsuit against CNN makes it to trial for even more truckloads of dirty laundry.
“What Really Happened at the Oroville Dam Spillway?”
Informative review of the final engineering report on the failure from “Practical Engineering”
https://youtu.be/jxNM4DGBRMU
“February 2017 saw one of the most serious dam-related engineering incidents in history with the failure of the service spillway at Oroville Dam. Whether they realized it or not, the people living and working downstream of Oroville Dam put their trust in the engineers, operators, and regulators to keep them safe and sound against disaster. In this case, that trust was broken. This video provides a summary of the event, including an explanation of the engineering details behind the failure. “
CNN’s problem is that if they fire everyone who is corrupt, dishonest, or perverted, there will be nobody left to read the propaganda on air.
https://babylonbee.com/news/to-ensure-no-sex-scandals-cnn-replaces-all-anchors-with-mike-pence
I think this qualifies as demonstrating that previous infection protects from infection better than vaccination, particularly for omicron. Israel, one of the most vaccinated countries, had more than half their total cases from the omicron surge. The US had less than half total cases so far are from omicron. Israel has had 373,000 cases/million while the US has had 238,000 cases/million.
You can see it within the US as well. North and South Dakota had much higher than average cases/million before omicron. The peak omicron case rates in ND and SD were less than twice the peak rate from the highest previous rate. The US as a whole had an omicron peak rate about three times the previous peak rate.
That being said, anyone who doesn’t know for sure that they have had a previous infection should have been vaccinated because vaccination does reduce severe illness, hospitalization and death. Note the past tense. Omicron COVID appears to be pretty much over in the US and is in decline in most of the rest of the world too. The whole vaccination mandate thing is so last year.
I’ve seen about 50 of the videos from Practical Engineering. It’s mostly civil engineering and they are all pretty good and high production quality. He just did one on the NYC blackout which was also interesting.
They should know pretty quickly about previous infection vs vaccination protection for omicron. Whether they choose to release that information in a timely manner is another question. I’m not optimistic this is a question the vaccine evangelists want answered soon (unless of course the preliminary data shows what they like). After sitting on the natural immunity is better for delta for over 6 months I’d have to say I’m not in a trusting mood. Now they are just moving the goal posts and saying they don’t know (anything!?) about this for omicron, so you know, get vaccinated, high five!
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The US’s decision to not treat a documented previous infection as the same as a vaccine for mandates is inexcusable, they still aren’t changing this. Science!
DeWitt,
“The whole vaccination mandate thing is so last year.”
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Maybe you could convince Joe Biden….. and his puppet masters.
Maybe you could convince Turdeux, but I suspect it’s not about mandates anymore. His power has been challenged and, like any good dictator, he realizes that dissent cannot be allowed to stand.
DaveJR,
I suspect Trudeau is politically finished. He is about as disagreeable a politician as exists. It may take a year or so to end his career, but I think he is finished.
DaveJR,
I didn’t catch the spelling the first time ‘Turdeux’ is a winner.
I prefer TrueDope.
I can’t pretend to have much insight into how Canadians feel. But Trudeau does seem to have handled this badly. Starting out with saying snide things, going into hiding, never talking to the “insurgents” and then decreeing a national emergency definitely strikes me as less than statesman like!!
I’m reading that — supposedly– they are going to be able to freeze bank accounts with no court orders. That sounds like something that is bound to misfire. Also: they are going to order towing comapies to tow. Also bound to misfire. ( I’m guessing some companies are driving their tow truck as far the heck from Ottowa as they can. They’ll then find it difficult to “get gas”. Or something.)
Lucia,
” I’m guessing some companies are driving their tow truck as far the heck from Ottowa as they can. They’ll then find it difficult to “get gas”. Or something.’
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Yup. The idiocy, it burns. If Turdeau had just met with them and discussed their complaints he would be 10 times better off. He can’t do that, mostly because he is an idiot. I think his political career is over.
“Russian-backed separatists in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions – collectively known as the Donbass – broke away from Ukrainian government control in 2014 and proclaimed themselves independent, sparking a conflict with the Ukrainian army.”
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Ya, well. We have known that for years. They are Russians by blood and language, and they want to be part of Russia, not a rump region of the Ukraine…. with lots of native Ukrainians hating on them all the time. The solutions here are pretty simple: 1) promise the Ukraine won’t become part of NATO for 25 years, 2) admit reality: the Crimea is part of Russia, and 3) promise ethnic Russians in the Donbass won’t be mistreated by the Ukraine. This isn’t even complicated. If there is anyone who can offer a reasoned argument for war with Russia over the Donbass and Crimea, I haven’t heard that argument.
3 school boards members were successfully recalled in SF with over 70% voting for their ouster. Apparently the Asians turned out in large numbers for the recall. Education is a disaster for the left at the moment, a self imposed and easily avoidable disaster. The SF DA is also up for recall this year. SF has the highest percentage of kids in private schools in the nation, it’s not hard to see why.
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Here is a particularly brutal NewYorker interview with one of the people who was recalled. It reads like a parody of wokeism.
https://www.newyorker.com/news/q-and-a/how-san-francisco-renamed-its-schools
SteveF (Comment #209429): ” If there is anyone who can offer a reasoned argument for war with Russia over the Donbass and Crimea, I haven’t heard that argument.”
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Indeed. But that does not mean that we should give Putin what he wants. I remain convinced that the Russian maneuvers are just that, but done in a way that bluffs an invasion. I say that because I have not seen a reasoned argument for why Russia should invade Ukraine.
SteveF,
I’ll give you everything but wanting to be part of Russia. I don’t think that’s all that clear and would make them a rump region of Russia instead of Ukraine.
From the WSJ (no free link offered so likely paywalled):
https://www.wsj.com/articles/in-eastern-ukraines-largest-city-pro-russia-sympathies-wither-as-war-looms-11643539633?mod=article_inline
P.J. O’Rourke passed away Tuesday at age 74. The WSJ reprinted his 9/23/1993 article on Hillary’s health care reform.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/p-j-orourke-health-reform-license-to-kill-government-programs-1993-price-fixing-bill-clinton-healthcare-11645047223?mod=hp_opin_pos_4#cxrecs_s
Again, probably not a free link.
DeWitt,
O’Rourke was often funny and insightful. He saw the same madness in ‘progressive policies’ as many other people, but used a bit of humor in pointing to the madness. Too bad he died.
Holy smokes. Maybe our intelligence community actually got something right for a change.
https://www.cnbc.com/2022/02/17/ukraine-denies-russian-state-media-claims-that-it-shelled-separatists-accuses-rebels-of-attack.html
Sounds like a false flag operation to me.
[Edit: Might also be that thing about blind squirrels and acorns.. Broken clocks..]
Lucia,
It looks like the US is well positioned to protect Taiwan if China chooses to try to exploit the situation.
https://news.usni.org/category/fleet-tracker
I suppose being in a position to react in Ukraine happens to put the US in a good position to respond in Taiwan as well.
My government COVID test kits finally arrived yesterday. They were mailed on February 5 according to the tracking data, but they didn’t ‘arrive’ at the PO until February 12.
I’m still waiting for mine. And Omicron is so done!!!
You know, I don’t think all those groups out there have anything to do with Ukraine. Ukraine is a heck of a long way inland from the South China sea. The Arabian sea would seem a more logical place to support Ukraine from.
Hmm. Whatever.
[Edit: The Harry S. Truman carrier group is probably there for Ukraine. The others… No idea.]
mark bofill (Comment #209435): “Holy smokes. Maybe our intelligence community actually got something right for a change.”
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Indeed. Invasions traditionally begin with the shelling of important military assets. Like kindergartens.
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If it was a false flag operation, then the real culprits were the Ukrainians. I don’t see why they would do that.
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Maybe it was the pro-Russia rebels in Ukraine trying to trigger something.
Mike, Yup. That’s what it looks like anyway.
Regarding all those other groups, the War Zone says it’s an ongoing massive show of force to China since January.
CDC is saying the nasal swabs for testing, most of them will be in labs for genomic sequencing. I assume this is sequencing of the virus, but their language leaves open the possibility they are building a genetic database of the public.
My mother-in-law was due to fly to the US on Friday. Tested positive on antigen test. Probably been vaccinated three times. No symptoms… sigh
I’ve been tested 8 times via nasal swabs…. mostly due to international air travel. Hated it every time. If omicron is everywhere long past peak and falling, when will testing requirements end? At last count, about 5,000 new cases among 22 million in Florida….. and falling fast. When it is 1,000 cases on 22 million will nasal swabs still be needed? When it is 500 cases in 22 million will nasal swabs still be needed? 100 cases? Since the FAA controls this, I suspect they have no intention of ever relaxing regulations. It all beggars belief, and is the best argument I can imagine for why government powers should always be severely limited.
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Non-symptomatic people should not be tested at all. These endless tests are a stupid waste of money and time; it is all just theater and serves no purpose.
As we all know, the first casualty in war is the truth. I don’t believe anything until satellites show the massive buildup either in the Ukraine or pulled out. Kindergartens, heh.
Sounds like the infamous milk factory bombing in Iraq, the milk factory that had armed guards and razor wire.
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Biden sure is confident Russia will invade, but he isn’t telling us why exactly. Inflation is also transitory and covid is defeated. I mean, Trump should know, right? Right? He has all those inside contacts with the Russians.
Positive antigen tests are about 99% reliable, negative tests are not so reliable depending on your virus level. You can (and should) test twice anyway. So what happens to the flight? Do you just lose the money or do they allow you to change it?
Not sure what’s going to happen yet. Looks like they offer alternative flights/voucher refunds. She was flying over for my son’s birthday, but that’s still a couple of weeks away yet so hopefully she’ll be negative by then. On the positive side, at least my wife can be reassured that she doesn’t have to worry about her catching it anymore!
Omicron looks like it broke South Korea. Exponential rise there beyond any clamp downs. They have moved to “select and focus” whatever that means, mostly it’s protect the vulnerable. They are still epically ahead in the game by getting most everyone vaccinated before the uncontrolled breakout.
South Korea has between 90% and 95% of its entire population vaccinated, and most unvaccianted are kids. They will not suffer very many deaths.
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BTW, I read two interesting things about covid in Florida:
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1) Somewhere between 1/3 and 1/2 of all pediatric hospitalized cases (below age 18) are admitted for something other than covid and test positive.
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2) It looks like ~75% of all hospitalized adult cases are among the unvaccinated, even though they represent only about 20% of the adult population.
Followup, CDC said 10% of tests are sent for genomic analysis.
Airlines were required to offer free flight rescheduling in one of the covid relief bills.
Some of the airlines advertise that you can get free rescheduling when you book with them, leaving out the federal law.
I believe you can buy trip insurance with a COVID rider that will pay for your quarantine lodgings if you test positive while away from home. When traveling outside the US, you should buy trip medical insurance that includes repatriation expenses if you need a medical flight. Your US health insurance probably won’t cover anything.
Russia failed to invade on Wednesday and now they’re going to launch missiles on Saturday? Did Putin put his agenda on google calender or something? This is ridiculous. I’m still not convinced this isn’t Biden claiming credit for something which didn’t happen but I suppose it may also be real and designed to show Putin how compromised his security is. Very odd.
Dave,
I agree with the sentiment. It’s an imponderable. It could be Biden playing games with the public. It could also be Putin playing games on the world stage for his own purposes. I’m inclined to suspect both. But untangling exactly what’s going to happen (or even likely to happen) with the information available is hard. Putin might be improvising for all we know, looking for opportunities to accomplish various different goals and making up his mind on the fly on what to do.
mark bofill,
“Putin might be improvising for all we know, looking for opportunities to accomplish various different goals and making up his mind on the fly on what to do.”
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Could be, but I suspect Putin is better organized than that. Ethnic Russians in the East have already been granted Russian citizenship and offered safe haven should they have to flee their homes in the Ukraine. These steps are designed to pressure the Ukraine.
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The things Putin wants are few and simple (as several here have discussed): Crimea remains part of Russia (as it has been most of the time since the 1700’s), the Ukraine doesn’t joint NATO, and ethnic Russians in the east are not mistreated. Seems to me the Biden administration endlessly harps on having the Ukraine join NATO to ensure a negotiated settlement in the Ukraine is impossible. Biden’s puppet masters see war in the Ukraine as an easy way for Biden to gain desperately needed political support. Am I cynical? You betcha! The USA has zero security interests in the Ukraine, and the Biden administration is straight-out war mongering.
Steve,
I agree that Biden is probably motivated by his abysmal poll numbers in the situation. I don’t really understand what constraints Putin operates under and so I have a more difficult time figuring him out.
It is now a week since Biden sounded the klaxon, predicted an invasion any day, and told Americans in Ukraine to run for their lives. It is starting to look like the invasion is two days away and always will be.
mark
Perhaps. But all this posturing on his part isn’t going to help.
Yes. Putin is playing games too. But Putin isn’t senile!!! Joe is.
Generally speaking, if Putin’s command network is compromised to the point where Biden knows his battle plans then Biden wouldn’t expose that capability for frivolous political points. Many times during WWII communications were compromised but the Allies didn’t act on the information until there was big payoff such as shooting down a Japanese admiral.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Vengeance
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Alternately you probably can’t effectively hide an invasion plan with 100K troops. The media aren’t very curious exactly how Biden allegedly knows these things.
If we wanted to war monger, we would be lining up tanks on the other Ukraine border, flying jets over Ukraine, doing naval exercises in the Baltic sea and letting Putin guess what our intentions are. Biden’s telegraphing that we won’t be doing anything about his invasion was a back down from the start. I’m not saying it is wise to do these things, it isn’t because mistakes can be made that escalate quickly and it is not worth it. But there is little deterrence here for Putin other than future economic pain. Maybe that is enough. My guess is the US natural gas industry (LNG) will be happy to see an invasion.
Tom
Well…this would be true unless Biden is demented. . .
No.
Lucia,
Unlikely to, yes. But Biden has little to lose at this point with regards to his numbers. Maybe he hopes to stumble into some sort of win.
Tom Scharf (Comment #209459): “The media aren’t very curious exactly how Biden allegedly knows these things.”
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Not entirely true. For instance, when Ned Price claimed that Russia was planning to use fake video to accuse Ukraine of genocide against Russian speakers as a pretext for invasion, he was challenged by AP reporter Matt Lee. But Lee’s questions as to how Price knows were met with “because we say so”.
https://nypost.com/2022/02/03/reporters-push-feds-for-evidence-of-russian-false-flag-plan/
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But for the most part, the press have been happen to act as the administration’s stenographers.
My guess at this point is that Putin will keep his forces in place until well after Biden’s warnings of an immanent invasion start sounding like a broken record. Then he will withdraw, saying “I told you I had no intention of invading”.
Tom Scharf,
“If we wanted to war monger”
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Well, no, war mongering can be as simple as refusing to accept that the other side has very different priorities than you have.
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We really don’t care much (strategically) about the Ukraine…. nor should we. But Russia (Putin) cares very much, especially about having medium range NATO nuclear missiles and USA fighters and bombers (also potentially nuclear capable) sitting in the Ukraine just over the border from Russia. Sort of like the Cuban Missile crisis, but without the water.
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Really, the official USA position (Ukraine must ultimately join NATO) is a non-starter, and designed to stop negotiations. It is dishonest and, yes, war mongering.
So let’s see what we have here. Biden says that Putin will invade in the next few days. He is convinced that Putin has made that decision, but it is hard to read his mind. Diplomacy is open until he invades, then it is off the table. Blinken will be meeting with the Russian foreign minister on Thursday. That seems to be more than a few days off, so the claims do not quite add up.
SteveF (Comment #209466): “the official USA position (Ukraine must ultimately join NATO) is a non-starter, and designed to stop negotiations.”
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I don’t think that is quite correct. The US position is that the decision is up to NATO and Ukraine, not Putin. For the time being it is a non-issue since Ukraine joining NATO is not on the table.
Mike M,
“My guess at this point is that Putin will keep his forces in place until well after Biden’s warnings of an immanent invasion start sounding like a broken record.”
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I agree. This is all political posturing. Biden is a demented old fool who should occupy himself with Hawaii 5-O and Mattock re-runs while awaiting the grim reaper…. though in all fairness, Biden will be too demented to recognize the reaper when he finally arrives.
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Putin is a murderous and evil adversary, but not at all demented. No way Putn invades Ukraine… beyond lobbing a few shells and making ugly noises. Everyone knows what he wants. The Biden administration seems perfectly happy to provoke the sacrifice of thousands of Ukrainian lives to improve Biden’s poll numbers. The Biden administration is shameful and evil. Which is pretty much standard for them.
Mike M,
“For the time being it is a non-issue since Ukraine joining NATO is not on the table.”
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You really think so? Putin wants assurances. The west (so far) will not give him this assurances).
Putin wants the USA and Europe to explicitly agree the Ukraine will not joint NATO. Arm waves to the contrary by the Biden administration are willful provocations for war. Really, this is kabuki theater with fatal consequences. Give Putin the minimum he needs for national security.
Biden now says he is convinced Putin will invade.
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Maybe he knows, maybe he doesn’t. What I don’t understand is why he is saying these things. What advantage does he get by these predictions? Trying to play 4-D chess with Putin? Ha ha. I’m taking Putin in anything past Tic-Tac-Toe with Biden.
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Biden has said a lot of dumb things, mostly confident assertions about things he didn’t know anything about (inflation, covid). This could easily backfire on him and also embarrass the US intelligence community, but for what possible benefit?
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How hard would it be for Putin to put out disinformation that he was going to invade? That’s what he would do anyway if it was just saber rattling. I have no idea what Putin is going to do, and I doubt the IC really does either.
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What could be happening is that the usual western “contractors” have in fact sabotaged a lot of Russian friendly areas and as soon as the invasion starts there will be a lot a dead Russians and damaged infrastructure. The US is playing misinformation mind games of their own to make people believe the Russians are doing it. The false false flag operation would probably be too advanced thinking for the Trump-Russia Collusion navel gazers though.
Joe Rogan interviewed Dr. Michael Osterholm (infectious disease expert) for the second time today. A good example of his work. He was obviously on his best behavior but Osterholm did a very good job talking about what is and isn’t known. Recommended, but nothing we all don’t already know. (e.g. “cloth masks are useless”).
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Rogan also interviewed Andrew Dessler and Steven Koonin on climate change this week. These were basically terrible with the expected people saying the expected boring boring boring things. My view was Dessler was particularly bad of course, I will give him credit for pointing out that all the smoke in a “pollution” photo was almost entirely water vapor, the rest was standard used car salesmanship. Comparing Koonin to a cigarette merchant of doubt right off the bat was pretty low, followed by Dessler saying he did not dispute almost every fact Koonin talked about, only that he was a misleading defense attorney for carbon dioxide. Not recommended, ha.
Listening to Dessler is very similar to driving sharp toothpicks under your fingernails. His dishonesty is simply too much to bear. I listened to him talk about global warming once, and became nauseated. The guy makes stinking sacks of dog sh!t seem reasonable and unoffensive by comparison. He should only be ignored.
I have no War Collage training. I have no international diplomacy credentials. I do not have Top Secret Government Clearance. I do not have access to the military intelligence satellite network. Everything I know about the Russian invasion plans and Putin’s intentions I learned from politicians, government spokes people or the news. [Just like everybody else.] I will not be speculating or predicting the future.
Russell, good for you. Most of us have none of those things either. We may speculate.
SteveF,
I vaguely remember Dessler participating in the discussion at Science of Doom a while back when it was a lot more active. He didn’t seem all that bad there, but Science of Doom isn’t the general public.
It’s so hard to listen to climate interviews. I just can’t do it anymore, mostly because there just isn’t anything new happening on a frequent basis.
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Dessler went on and on about renewable energy, did point out that intermittency is a huge problem, baseload was required, and supported nuclear energy. Rogan is no expert and missed a lot of opportunities to ask some obvious probing question such as “but with baseload power you have to pay for two energy systems up front, correct?” or “if renewable is cheaper as you say, why are India and China still building coal plants?”. Dessler stayed away from catastrophizing for the most part and focused on solutions. It was kind of humorous how he told Rogan you can’t trust economic models, ha. That is true.
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Dessler was brought in to effectively balance Koonin but he never really addressed any of Koonin’s main points, so you ended up with what has been common, the skeptics talk isolated areas of science and the science people engage in ad hominen, politicize why things aren’t happening their way, and just assume they are right about everything and they have the unassailable truth. Preachy.
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Tom Scharf,
If Dessler were honest, Rogan wouldn’t have to pose the tough questions….. Dessler knows that China, India, and others continue to build coal plants at a pace that increases CO2 emissions far more than any possible reduction the rest of the world could offset. He knows as well that his many fellow travelers in the loony green left movement will never accept nuclear power…. so lip service support for nuclear costs him nothing. And he knows the intermittency of solar and wind mean you do have to have two complete power systems, only one of which you can rely on. He is utterly dishonest.
In France, an associate of Jeffrey Epstein, awaiting trial on related charges was found dead in his cell. Supposedly hanging, supposedly suicide. No cell mate. Cameras not functioning. Sounds awfully familiar. I have tended to be skeptical of the claims of fouls play re Epstein. Now I am not so sure.
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Canada has suspended civil liberties over a peaceful protest and broke up the protest with a violent police assault. Increasing violence in the Donbas as Putin and Biden cooperate with fanning the flames. The people running things need a big comeuppance.
Mike M,
You need only see the lists of famous names claimed to have gone on the ‘Lolita Express’ with Epstein to suspect foul play. Dead men don’t testify.
Courtesy of PowerLine, here is an appropriate melding of two of this week’s stories:
https://i0.wp.com/www.powerlineblog.com/ed-assets/2022/02/image-5-copy-3-3.jpg?w=551&ssl=1
The Atlantic takes on the recent blowback on mask mandates. David Dowdy, an epidemiologist at Johns Hopkins University:
“From my perspective, the main benefit is not so much the masking itself, but the message to society that this wave is not yet over”
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The Superbowl had a mask mandate, they gave everyone a KN95 mask on entry. Check out the crowd pictures. Nothing is worse for public health and government authority than wide disregard for their edicts. This is the main reason mask mandates are disappearing, because of the public’s in your face disregard of the policies, not because the science changed or the recent wave dissipated.
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Public health authorities seems to be stressing that covid isn’t done with us but are missing the obvious, the public is done with covid restrictions for good and bad. I very much doubt that mandates change people’s behavior much at all now.
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Mask evangelists wish everyone would mask up and I wish teenagers wouldn’t touch their phones while driving and 20 mph e-bikes ridden by rather unskilled people were banned from sidewalks. A perfect world is out of our grasp.
If the main benefit is the message, that means there is no real benefit.
Society can certainly grasp that Covid “isn’t over” when covid cases rise again. They very well may. But we have sufficient access to data that we can all tell. We could certainly go back to masking if that happens. It’s no reason to mask now if the case rate has cratered and the vaccinated mostly not getting sick enough to die. (And the unvaccinated have basically decided they are fine. Or they now have natural immunity.)
And anyway, what does Covid “being over” even mean? Is it “not over” in the same sense that Flu “isn’t over”? The only disease that seems to be ‘over’ is small pox. Yeah, that all looks rhetorical. But I don’t know what the “message” “Covid isn’t over” really means because the criterion for “over” isn’t given. And we can’t necessarily deem that messages is remotely important if we don’t even know what it means. We don’t wear masks to communicate the message that flu isn’t over. It isn’t. I get a shot every year! But I don’t wear a mask!
Tom,
We are still wearing masks at dance events because it’s required. Everyone wants them gone. And no one grumble or leaves about some degree of deviation, or people lifting them and so on. So many people already got covid.
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(As far as I know, Jim and I have not gotten it. Evidently Queen Elizabeth has it. )
On Thursday, Gov. Lujan Grisham unexpectedly announced the end of the mask mandate in New Mexico. It had just been extended yet again, to mid-March. Still quite a few people wearing masks this weekend.
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It has obviously been just politics for a long time. I figure we can breathe easy, at least until Nov. 9.
Good analysis of just how badly Biden is screwing up the Ukraine situation:
https://www.jns.org/opinion/bidens-victory-against-putin/
He is effectively giving Putin a chunk of what he wants, dividing NATO, weakening our international position, and hurting Ukraine.
It’s going to be a long, painful wait for 2024.
Lucia,
“And anyway, what does Covid “being over” even mean?”
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Well, seems to me Covid has effectively been over since vaccinations were available to all early last summer. To me the wider and growing recognition that Covid is ‘over’ means two things:
1) The many arbitrary and irritating ‘mandates’ will be ending….. finally.
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2) There is a chance people will look back at all the collateral damage done (economic, social, and personal) and start to recognize that public policies based on fear and panic are almost always bad policies.
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Thanks to nutty policies, we will have to deal with much higher inflation over the next few years, and the risk of speculative bubble collapse (housing, stocks) is not going away. But on the plus side, most governors now face real limits on their emergency powers, so a repeat fiasco seems much less likely, and that is a good thing.
mark bofill,
“It’s going to be a long, painful wait for 2024.”
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For sure, and that doesn’t even depend on if Biden is removed from office due to dementia… Kamala would be even worse.
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That said, if Republicans control both houses of congress in January 2023, they will place some limits on the damage the demented old fool can do. Small solace, I know, but better than the current situation. The Republicans might even investigate Fauci and the source of Covid, and drive the evil elf into retirement before 2024.
Thanks Steve.
I think it’s still far off enough to be uncertain, but the indicators are pretty good at this point that that will be the case. I sure hope so.
I’m still taking my boots off at the airport, ha ha. Some things stay around a lot longer than necessary.
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The political calculus has changed on restrictions. All the usual suspects are now proclaiming California to be the first state to declare covid “endemic”. They aren’t just reversing restrictions, they are leading everyone else bravely and following the science, or something.
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California changes its COVID strategy and announces a plan to live with the virus
https://www.npr.org/2022/02/18/1081655623/california-adopts-nations-first-endemic-virus-policy
“California became the first state to formally shift to an “endemic” approach to the coronavirus with Gov. Gavin Newsom’s announcement Thursday of a plan that emphasizes prevention and quick reaction to outbreaks over mandated masking and business shutdowns.
The milestone, nearly two years in the making, envisions a return to a more normal existence with the help of a variety of initiatives and billions in new spending to more quickly spot surges or variants, add health care workers, stockpile tests and push back against false claims and other misinformation.
“We are moving past the crisis phase into a phase where we will work to live with this virus,” he said during a news conference ”
“Newsom’s administration came up with a shorthand acronym to capsulize key elements of its new approach: SMARTER”
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Wow, that is awesome. Way to go California! Maybe Florida should follow the lead of our elite SMARTER states. Pardon me while I go barf. NPR, get a clue. How credulous can you be? Answer: Quite credulous.
The invasion prediction has moved from “any day now” to “any hour now”. The government is claiming that Putin has actually given the order to invade. I am not buying.
Lucia, since you mentioned dancing I thought I would ask you about the ballet bun that female professional dancers seem to prefer as a hairdo. I had to google it to find out what it was called and its advantages for dancers.
I was reminded of that hairdo when I saw entire college cheerleader teams (who perform more as dancers/gymnasts than cheerleaders) with that hairdo in national competitions. I was impressed with the look it gave and particularly for brunettes although I am not sure why.
My question to you is whether you ever use the ballet bun for your dancing.
Tom, revisionist history is not normally done in this short time span, but the media, in coming to the rescue of blue states with the current shift in the voting public’s view of mandates, will be doing the NPR revision on a regular basis. They are doing it on other political sensitive issues where things did not go as planned and thus you should expect it. If you barf every time you see revision you should seriously think about a bolemia anonymous membership.
Sigh. Inexcusable.
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NYT: The C.D.C. isn’t publishing large portions of the Covid data it collects.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/20/health/covid-cdc-data.html
“When the C.D.C. published the first significant data on the effectiveness of boosters in adults younger than 65 two weeks ago, it left out the numbers for a huge portion of that population: 18- to 49-year-olds, the group the data showed was least likely to benefit from extra shots, because the first two doses already left them well-protected.”
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… and wait for it …
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“Kristen Nordlund, a spokeswoman for the C.D.C., said the agency has been slow to release the different streams of data “because basically, at the end of the day, it’s not yet ready for prime time.” She said the agency’s “priority when gathering any data is to ensure that it’s accurate and actionable.”
Another reason is fear that the information might be misinterpreted, Ms. Nordlund said.”
“But the C.D.C. has been routinely collecting information since the Covid vaccines were first rolled out last year, according to a federal official familiar with the effort. The agency has been reluctant to make those figures public, the official said, because they might be misinterpreted as the vaccines being ineffective.”
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W.T.F? Not a rhetorical question.
“But the C.D.C. has been routinely collecting information since the Covid vaccines were first rolled out last year, according to a federal official familiar with the effort. The agency has been reluctant to make those figures public, the official said, because they might be misinterpreted as the vaccines being ineffective.”
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WTF, indeed. And that raises the question of what they are hiding as to vaccine side effects.
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Shocking, yet at the same time not even a little bit surprising.
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Defund the CDC.
Tom Scharf,
The CDC needs to be ‘restructured’ and drastically reduced in size. It is 100% politically motivated, and that is exactly the opposite of what it should be. Fire most of them, and keep only a few to actually gather and analyze disease information….. and completely disclose their data.
The CDC isn’t a marketing firm, or so I thought. They don’t need to spin the vaccine data, it stood up by itself. The infection protection against omicron was pretty bad, but it is what it is. This combined with them sitting on the natural immunity data for months is just ridiculous. We all have big boy pants, we can take it. You can misinform people by omission, it’s the same thing and its not clever or OK. I am pretty disappointed.
Governments do not operate as idealized by Civics 101. The CDC would have operated the same under a Republican administration with perhaps more complaints that would have been promptly ignored. It takes crises like Covid-19 to put these inner workings in the public’s eyes.
Interesting (and ignored) article from 2020
https://www.bmj.com/content/371/bmj.m3883/rr
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The authors examined available evidence on IFR with covid, and concluded a population-wide average of 0.23%, but with the vast majority of the death burden in the group over age 70. Their estimate for under age 70 was 0.05% (1 in 2000 infections), and of course even there most of the burden was in the oldest individuals.
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So society and the economy were turned inside out, even while the vast majority of individuals faced no significant risk of death.
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These were pre-delta data, and perhaps the delta wave was a little worse, but not hugely so. In hindsight, many adopted policies were destructive with little benefit, while efforts to protect those truly at risk (especially those over 75) were meager to non-existent (Andrew Cuomo being the poster child for failing to protect those most at risk, of course). I sure hope people learn what not to do from all the mis-steps in the covid fiasco, but I am far from confident of that.
Kenneth,
“The CDC would have operated the same under a Republican administration with perhaps more complaints that would have been promptly ignored.”
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Sure, which is why the CDC should be drastically reduced in size and limited in the scope of what they are allowed to do. Shilling for the Biden administration is something they should *not* be doing, yet that seems their primary function over the past year. Fire them all.
Kenneth
Nope. I wear pony tails for lessons. I wear my hair down for parties.
I wear much more elaborate doos for competition. It’s “the thing” in ballroom. No one wants to look “the same”, but there a certain style.
Ballerina’s are often “background” in dance and often act more as a team. So they want a hair do that is NOT elaborate, that is uniform across the team. So they want everyone’s hair as similar as possible.
Then, in dance, you want your hair to stay not-messy. So “Frozen” hair tends to be the rule. The ballerina bun is a version of “Frozen” hair that is not elaborate and distinctive. So everyone can wear the same thing.
One of the male teachers wears a ballerina bun. (Rodolpho Blanquicette.)
Lucia, thanks for the hairdo info. I see that tightly swept back hairdo used on movie actresses to impart, I think, the image of sophistication and a dominant personality. In my view there can be more to it than just the practical considerations.
The male bun does not have any intrigue for me, although I recall the actor, Steven Seagal, and his male bun. My daughter’s friend who had to work with him on occasions said he was an a..hole and a womanizer.
Now you’re talking, Steve.
SteveF (Comment #209507)
“while efforts to protect those truly at risk (especially those over 75) were meager to non-existent” Right on point. At our house, we were on our own. The local Senior Friendship Center delivered a couple boxes of “Farm to Home “ produce and the Catholic Church called one time to check on us and that was all the help we got.
It would have been much cheaper and more effective to put us in a bubble in our homes and let the rest of the country go about their business. Anyone who left their bubble could do so at their own risk.
The Fog of War….. It isn’t just for the military anymore.
Amateur war correspondents at their computer screens are in their glory. With a plethora of misleading briefings coming from numerous governments in Europe and North America, the Armchair Generals of the cyber world can cherry pick fake facts and create all sorts of narratives. “Independent” news organizations are on the ground only under the aegis of Russian or Ukrainian officials, so no one can dispute the fake stories. Live it up Peanut Gallery.