Separately, what are readers’ predictions about the final score at this superspreader event? Combining the home field advantage (a whole stadium full of Science-following Californians cheering discreetly through their Science-verified cloth masks) with my total ignorance of football, I expect the Rams to win and predict 28-25 Rams-Bengals.
In other words, relief from the central planners will arrive some weeks after CVS was forced to mark COVID-19 tests down due to oversupply.
I remarked on the low price and ample quantity available, saying “Those would have been very valuable a month ago.” The 6-year-old immediately responded, “let’s buy some now and keep them at home and then sell them for $20.99 during the next wave.”
I’m not going to leave him alone with any Dr. Seuss books (re-sold for up to $1,700 on Amazon before being banned there)!
Readers: Did your tests from the central planners arrive? If so, when? It was supposed to be “seven to 12 days” from January 19.
Speaking of COVID-19, let me take this opportunity to give a shout-out to selfless front-line workers, such as the physician (see the license plate) who parked this Ferrari on the street near the above-mentioned CVS:
Who knows Ferraris well enough to say what model this is and estimate the value? My guess is a Portofino retractable hard top (worth about 250,000 in 2022 mini-dollars).
Science, August 2021 edition: Getting COVID-19 (e.g., in Florida) is due to stupidity, irresponsibility, failure to get injected with an emergency use-authorized vaccine, Science-denial, and support for Donald Trump. It’s mostly old people dying, which is why we need to redouble our restrictions on the young.
Science, February 2022: Despite a near-record death rate, Governors should drop the mask orders and other restrictions that they had imposed starting in March 2020. The immunocompromised can fend for themselves. If SARS-CoV-2 wants to have a mutation party in an unmasked school, that’s okay too. It’s mostly old people dying and there are thousands of such deaths per day, but we don’t need to do anything special to try to prevent these deaths.
Some Americans cheered the moves, mostly by Democratic governors, but others questioned the timing, with more than 200,000 new virus infections being reported each day.
New York’s governor said on Wednesday that she was ending the state’s indoor masking rules. The governor of Massachusetts announced that face coverings would soon become optional in schools. And by day’s end, the governors of Illinois, Rhode Island and Washington said that they, too, would loosen coronavirus rules.
… others asked whether states were moving too fast at a time when more than 200,000 new infections were being announced each day and when the country was reporting more than 17,000 deaths a week, more than at any other point in the pandemic except last winter.
Note that it is “Democratic governors” who are delivering freedom to the people and who are being cheered.]
What’s the situation in Washington State, for example, where the governor is loosening the rules dictated by Science? Deaths tagged to COVID-19 are at an all-time high:
The above progression seems inconsistent with “normal science”. A paradigm shift (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy; Wikipedia) has occurred, apparently, and that requires “extraordinary research” according to Thomas Kuhn. But who did the extraordinary research?
My vote is Dr. James Kraus, MD, PhD. His/her/zir/their discovery was “Everybody takes a beating sometimes.” (I apologize for the source, but this is one video moment that the New York Times and CNN don’t seem to have covered.) Dr. Kraus, MD, PhD tells us that, as occupiers of the biosphere, humans are fated to be attacked periodically by viruses and we shouldn’t try to defend ourselves.
Dr. Kraus, MD, PhD’s results and conclusions were rejected by peer reviewers (the jurors in the Kyle Rittenhouse case), just as Thomas Kuhn predicted. But, also as Kuhn predicted, when data inconsistent with the old paradigm (saliva-soaked bandanas are effective PPE against an aerosol; shutting down schools while keeping marijuana stores open will make a respiratory virus go away) became too glaring to ignore, Dr. Kraus, MD, PhD’s new paradigm was accepted.
February 9, email from the “person of color” who is the principal of a high school in Maskachusetts:
Last night I announced that Lincoln Sudbury would shift from mask required in school to mask optional effective Monday, March 7. … The notion of stepping away from the mask requirement will evoke a range of response and emotion from members of our community. … Mask wearing absolutely remains an option for everyone. I expect we will respect each person’s personal choice.
Reaction from a heretical bandana-denier friend who received the email:
I wish you had respected our personal choices over the last two years.
A paywalled article from the UK Independent is available at MSN: “Tube ‘low risk’ for catching Covid, study finds”. The authors followed people who rode London’s mass transit system and compared them to those who didn’t, testing the study and control groups periodically for COVID-19? Not exactly.
The joint study by Leeds University, the Defence Science and Technology Laboratory (DSTL) and Manchester University found that the risk of commuters contracting the virus on underground train carriages – previously feared to be a “super spreader” environment – was “likely to be quite low”.
A team of science and engineering researchers built a computer-generated simulator based on a Tube-like carriage to demonstrate how the virus might spread from passenger to passenger.
The Transmission of Virus in Carriages model (TVC) simulated the risk of catching the virus from airborne particles, when standing two metres from other passengers, and after touching contaminated surfaces.
Using the tool to track the journey of the virus, researchers found that there was a “small chance of transmission” from ”touching a contaminated surface” and that this could be mitigated by frequent handwashing and passengers avoiding touching their face – validating the government’s “hands, face, space” messaging from 2020.
The government-funded and government-employed researchers validated the government’s action…
The CDC advised that countries force citizens to wear masks and receive injections of experimental-use-authorized vaccines. Let’s have a look at some of the countries that followed the advice most assiduously. NYT vaccination rate leaderboard:
These same countries are typically also notable for harsh mask orders.
The UAE, with 99% vaccinated (Are they sticking infants?), is at “Level 4: COVID-19 Very High; Avoid travel to the United Arab Emirates.” (CDC) This is the maximum level of coronapanic authorized by Science (map and legend, showing levels 1-4).
Cuba, the paradise of universal health care? Level 4. (My comment after visiting: “Immigration killed all the natives; Socialism killed all of the buildings.”)
Austria, where it is illegal to sit at home unvaccinated? Level 4. Canada, where even a truck driver who stays in his/her/zir/their cab all day must be vaccinated? Level 4. Australia, which kept itself safe by deporting Novak Djokovic (the first athlete to be disqualified for not taking a drug?)? Level 4. Singapore (vaccines required in order to work and, unlike in the U.S., labor force participation in Singapore is growing)? Level 4.
How can people have confidence in the ability of Science, as embodied by the CDC, to “manage the virus” if Science says that the places that Followed the Science are unsafe for humans to visit?
The current CDC map shows that the world’s safer places, leaving aside the special case of China, are mostly in Africa. Since we #BelieveScience, should we infer from this that Africans are better at following CDC advice than non-Africans?
The news is packed with stories about the Canadian truck drivers protesting against a vaccine order (Wikipedia). Premier Blackface (Justin Trudeau) says that, while Canadians have some right to free speech, to assemble, and to protest against the government, the truck drivers are engaging in “hate speech” and therefore these rights do not apply.
Since the Canadian government has all of the guns, I’m assuming that #Science will prevail and the drivers will eventually be forced to accept vaccination or to leave the workforce (not as attractive a proposition as in the U.S. because the Canadian welfare system is far less generous and lifetime “means-tested” everything is tougher to obtain; Canadian family courts are a great option, however, for those who want spending power without engaging in wage labor (but the typical truck driver might not be a successful plaintiff)).
My question for today is why #Science requires that truck drivers be vaccinated. If they’re sitting or sleeping in their trucks 95 percent of the time, do they have enough contact with other humans to make their vaccination status of interest to anyone else? (let’s assume for the sake of this argument that COVID-19 vaccines substantially reduce infection risk from Omicron and whatever additional variants develop)
How many close contacts can a truck driver have if he/she/ze/they is working? (and, given the shortage of trucking that we’ve heard about, aren’t most truck drivers working at least full time?) Walking into a truck stop to use the restroom isn’t comparable to working all day in an office, store, or school with fellow employees and customers.
Why does Science require that the handful of heretics be dragged out of their cabs and stuck with a needle?
As the U.S. inches up to a 64% vaccination rate for the entire population, only 42% of those eligible for a booster have gotten the extra shot, and experts aren’t sure what will move the needle, so to speak.
Fully vaccinated Americans are 14 times less likely to die of COVID-19 than those who haven’t gotten the shots. Boosted Americans are 97 times less likely.
Those were the figures presented Wednesday by Dr. Rochelle Walensky, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, based on reports from 25 jurisdictions in the week ending Dec. 4. For every 100,000 people, 9.7 of those who were unvaccinated were killed by the coronavirus, compared to 0.7 of those fully vaccinated and 0.1 of the boosted.
Science (the CDC) tells us that the COVID-19 vaccination, in a full three-dose series, is the most effective pharmaceutical intervention ever developed. Although of course we believe Science and trust in the CDC, some questions are raised by this astonishing 97X risk reduction. At least over in Sweden, pre-vaccine SARS-CoV-2 wasn’t dangerous enough to justify terminating citizens’ right to gather, children’s right to attend school, etc. Nor was it dangerous enough to justify ordering people wear masks. We’re told that we a 97X reduction in risk is available and yet American schoolchildren, down to age 2, are ordered to wear masks and subject to various other restrictions. Vaccine papers are checked at restaurants (e.g., for those 5+ in Boston) to make sure that the unclean don’t mingle with the sacred. A range of restrictions are applied to discourage travel. But if the sacred have cut their risk by 97X, why are they worried about the 5% filthy untouchables (unvaccinated)? Is our tolerance for risk 97X lower than what prevails among Swedes? That is contradicted by the fact that Americans refuse to accept my proposed 35 mph speed limit, which would save more life-years than curing COVID-19.
We don’t order all road travel to cease because some people insist on riding statistically dangerous motorcycles. Why do we have COVID-19 orders in place when a 97X reduction in risk is as close as the nearest CVS? The people making the orders are Democrats and we are constantly informed that it is only Republicans who refuse to accept all three Sacraments of Fauci. Why do Democrats care if SARS-CoV-2 winnows out some of the Deplorables who could potentially vote a fossilized Donald Trump into a renewed dictatorship?
Another possibility is that the 97X risk reduction, while proven by Science, isn’t real. Here’s some data from Israel, famous for early adoption of vaccines and boosters:
Deaths tagged to COVID-19 are at an all-time high. This, despite the fact that those who aren’t boosted are excluded from public life. “Israel’s bet on early COVID booster shots pays off” (DW, 11/11/2021):
To enter the club, people must present their green pass, which includes an ID number and a QR code. “When somebody wants to go either to the pool or the gym, we check the green pass. Everybody has it on the phone these days. Sometimes it’s a little bit of an inconvenience, but people understand and cooperate,” said Levi.
In October, Israeli authorities canceled the green passes of those eligible for the third shot but who hadn’t received it yet. Those who don’t have a green pass can get a 24-hour pass by taking an antigen or “fast” test to enter facilities.
I’m wondering if the spectacular cited effectiveness of booster shots among Americans is partly due to the demographics of those who choose to get boosters. In Why rich white Americans believe in masks (October 22, 2020), an MIT professor:
It’s the usual causality problem with epidemiology. Upper middle class Northeasterners (like me) are adamant about mask wearing, and they rarely get sick. So it must be working.
(He added that a mistaken belief in mask efficacy would still be a positive because it would help assure a Biden/Harris victory. He bought his house, his cars, and his common stocks pre-2020, so the first year of the Biden Administration has been fine for him, financially.)
What would the “usual causality problem with epidemiology” look like in the booster world? What if the people who have the time, patience, and inclination to get boosters are rich white people who have the luxury of staying in their suburban bunkers 98 percent of the time? They weren’t likely to get COVID-19 in the first place and they’re not getting COVID-19 during their twice/week N95-masked excursions to the supermarket.
Note that this is not to suggest that the booster shot has no effect (see Maybe it is time for that booster shot? for why you might want to get one even if you think it has no effect!). But a post-boost 1/97th risk level seems tough to achieve by pharmaceutical means alone and without some help from Dr. Differential Demographics.
Related:
“Unvaccinated vs. Boostered: What the COVID Death Toll From Israel Reveals” (Haaretz, 2/6/2022; remember in reading this that “partially vaccinated” in Israel means just the first two shots while “fully vaccinated” is three): “According to ministry figures, on January 31 the death rate per 100,000 people for the over 60s stood at 16.3 for unvaccinated individuals, as opposed to 0.9 for the fully vaccinated.” (1/18th the risk for boosted versus unvaccinated, not 1/97th!) Buried near the end, the demographic angle: “there is also a clear variation in death rates between groups with lower and higher socioeconomic status.”
There is a high demand for pageantry in our household, but we don’t have a TV, so I signed up for the “ad-free” “Peacock Premium Plus” streaming service and used an iPad to show the Olympics opening ceremony (which arrived… with ads, disrespectfully side-by-side with athletes from countries that NBC deems unimportant; the Chinese refused to insert commercial breaks, apparently, so the righteous American boycotters (see below) added commercials to the event itself).
Science tells us that only N95 masks stand any chance of blocking Omicron, yet the athletes paraded out using various forms of non-N95 masks. Other than some performers, Vladimir Putin seemed to be the only person at the event who wasn’t wearing a mask.
Given that nearly everyone in the stadium is vaccinated, was in quarantine before and after international flights, and has been tested multiple times for COVID-19, what’s the chance that SARS-CoV-2 got through to the stadium? The official stats page shows that 308 people involved in the Olympics have thus far tested positive:
On Jan. 14, the first passenger plane for 10 months landed in the country, which is located about 2,500 miles southwest of Hawaii. It may also be the last for the foreseeable future. The plane brought the first cases of COVID-19 to the country; more than two-thirds of the passengers tested positive. The flight subsequently set off a wave of COVID-19 cases in the archipelagos, where 120,000 people live across 33 islands with land area smaller than Rhode Island.
Thirty-six out of 54 passengers on the flight to Kiribati tested positive on arrival. Six others tested positive in quarantine. That’s despite the travelers spending two weeks in pre-departure quarantine, and only being allowed on the flight after testing negative for COVID-19.
The border closures also bought Kiribati and others time to roll out vaccinations. Over 93% of Kiribati’s eligible population has received one COVID-19 vaccine shot, but just over 50% are fully vaccinated.
A few times NBC’s commentators (sports experts?) mentioned “human rights abuses” in China, but their own coverage of the event contradicted their statements. The NBC reporters sounded relaxed. The people in the stadium looked happy and relaxed, including Chinese ethnic minorities such as the Uyghurs who are purportedly victims of “genocide” (we throw this word around and then show up en masse with $1 billion in TV rights cash?). See this statement from the Chinese embassy for another perspective:
The so-called allegations of “forced labor” and “genocide” in Xinjiang are nothing but vicious lies concocted by anti-China forces. Xinjiang’s economic development and social stability is recognized by the whole world. The fact that residents of all ethnic groups there enjoy happy and fulfilling lives is witnessed by all. The US side keeps using Xinjiang-related issues to create rumors and make trouble. Essentially it is engaging in political manipulation and economic coercion, and seeking to undermine Xinjiang’s prosperity and stability and contain China’s development under the pretext of human rights.
It is preposterous for the US, a country with a deplorable track record of human rights issues, to accuse and smear China. The US has serious problems of human trafficking and forced labor. Up to 100,000 people were trafficked into the US for forced labor annually over the past five years. Crimes against humanity against Native Americans in the past constitute de facto genocide. The US should save the labels of “forced labor” and “genocide” for itself.
Xinjiang-related issues are not human rights issues at all, but in essence about countering violent terrorism and separatism.
Who else watched the opening ceremony? What did you notice?
The Cirrus Vision Jet is a great machine, but one thing that it can’t do is go non-stop from South Florida to Denver against a winter headwind. We decided to stop at Flightline KNEW for fuel, muffulettas, and beignets in “The City That Care Forgot”.
After a 15-minute drive over falling-apart roads, we hit Cochon Butcher for the muffulettas and they were everything we dreamed they would be. It is counter service like Panera, but the staff check up on tables periodically, e.g., to make sure that water glasses are full and to see who wants more booze (not us!). This seems like a good system for a country where labor is scarce/expensive.
How about the vaccine papers check that resulted in a family trip cancellation? (see Karen orders two dozen beignets and a three-gallon Hurricane and “Children as Young as 5 Now Under New Orleans Vaccine Mandate” (U.S. News, 12/17/2021) and “New Orleans residents prepare for school vaccine mandate for kids as young as 5” (NBC, 1/22/2022)) It was done with a similar degree of precision as refugee screening during the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan. My friend was ordering while I was parking the crew car. Prior to ordering, he was asked to show a photo of a vaccine card, but not a photo ID. So the restaurant had no way to know whether the card had any relationship to the customer. I walked in from the street directly to the table and never went to the counter, so my vaccine status was never investigated.
We proceeded to the French Quarter to walk off the sandwiches and build up our beignet appetite. “Most of these people look like they’re on meth and haven’t bathed,” said my companion. The buildings and infrastructure in general seemed to be in rough shape. It was a Monday, admittedly, but the streets did not seem busy enough to sustain the shops and restaurants. Café du Monde is operating in a degraded COVID-19-safe fashion. There are no waiters. You order and pick up beignets and coffee from some ladies working behind a counter, then carry them to a table.
Nearly every shop had a significant amount of signage regarding masks. Following CDC guidance, virtually any piece of fabric qualifies as PPE. An official city poster for businesses, downloaded 1/27/2022:
A saliva-soaked bandana not only qualifies as PPE, but is officially recommended. Alternatively, if you’re visiting from New England, pack a scarf to block aerosol Omicron.
Here’s an example of some disrepair and, if you click to enlarge then zoom in, you’ll see that all of the people walking on the sidewalk are wearing masks of various types:
Voodoo is powerful enough to heal or kill people, but its magic isn’t effective against SARS-CoV-2 without cloth masks:
Hot sauce was powerful enough to propel Hillary Clinton to the forefront of American politics (BBC), but it is also insufficient in the fight against Omicron:
How well have these orders from Covidcrats worked? From the NYT, 1/27/2022:
Cases have decreased recently but are still extremely high. The numbers of hospitalized Covid patients and deaths in the Orleans Parish area have risen. The test positivity rate in Orleans Parish is very high, suggesting that cases are being significantly undercounted.
How does this compare to our home of Palm Beach County, Florida, which is not under any vaccine or mask orders?
#CurveFlattened? Our impression was that “The City that All Recent Economic Booms Forgot” would be a better sobriquet for New Orleans than its trademark “Care Forgot.” Yet median household income does not seem to explain the mournful condition of the city:
(Is the Broken Windows Fallacy actually a fallacy? Katrina (2005) seems to have resulted in an income boost.)
Income in the New Orleans metro area is lower than in the U.S. overall, but higher than in Louisiana overall and it should still be sufficient to keep public infrastructure, such as roads, in decent condition.
Our take-away from the visit: “Covid is the least of this city’s problems.”
See also, OpenTable data from 1/26/2022 back to 1/6/2022:
The tourism-dependent cities of Miami Beach, Naples, and Orlando are much more active, relative to 2019, than New Orleans.
Here are some young people at the University of Colorado, January 28, 2022:
It didn’t look as though anyone over the age of 25 was in the room (a good thing, considering that most were wearing the cloth masks that #Science now says are worthless). The university has forced vaccinations and boosters. “Cases” are plummeting in Colorado (NYT). If the mask order can’t be dropped right now, when can it be dropped? What is the university waiting for? If SARS-CoV-2 isn’t going away, does that mean that the (mostly cloth) masks can never go away?
Some of the nearby signs:
A monument to The Boulder Six, who died from car bombs detonated in 1974:
(The father of students in the Boulder public schools related asking his sons why the cafeteria was self-segregated into Hispanic and non-Hispanic sections. The boys replied that the Hispanic students were “always getting into trouble” and that they therefore didn’t want to associate with them.)
