Category: Coronaplague

Government says employers can require experimental vaccines

by philg

“U.S. agency says employers can mandate COVID-19 vaccination” (Reuters):

U.S. companies can mandate that employees in a workplace must be vaccinated against COVID-19, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) said on Friday.

The EEOC, in a statement posted on its website explaining its updated guidance, said employees can be required to be vaccinated as long as employers comply with the reasonable accommodation provisions of the Americans with Disabilities Act and other laws.

In other words, a healthy 25-year-old does not have to agree to take an “investigational” non-FDA-approved vaccine designed to prevent deaths among the unhealthy elderly, but he/she/ze/they will not be receiving a paycheck if he/she/ze/they refuses.

For anyone whose earning potential is near the median, this is another great argument in favor of choosing the welfare lifestyle. The is no vaccine requirement to continue occupying means-tested public housing. There is no vaccine requirement to continue receiving free health insurance via Medicaid. There is no vaccine requirement to continue purchasing food via SNAP/EBT. There is no vaccine requirement to continue chatting on an Obamaphone. Employers can mandate random drug and alcohol tests and transportation-related employers are required to conduct random drug and alcohol tests, but, at least here in Maskachusetts, a resident of public housing can enjoy “essential” alcohol and marijuana every day. In other words, an American with a job is not free to decide what drugs to take and what drugs not to take while an American on welfare is free to choose what drugs and medical treatments to accept and what recreational drugs to consume.

(The American on welfare is, of course, much better situated for avoiding coronavirus infection than the American who goes to work. The American on welfare need not leave his/her/zir/their apartment when variant COVID is raging. The American on welfare need not commute in a bus or subway. The American on welfare need never be in a public indoor environment.)

How about the spending power? From back in 2013, before all of the coronapanic-related enhancements to government programs, The Work versus Welfare Trade-Off (CATO):

Let’s also consider freedom of speech. The First Amendment isn’t useful if your employer disagrees with what you say or write. A recent story from Massachusetts, “An Elementary School Teacher’s Secret Life As A White Nationalist Writer” (HuffPost):

But “Sinclair Jenkins,” HuffPost has now confirmed, is really a pseudonym for Benjamin Welton, a 33-year-old Boston University history PhD candidate who, until this week, taught English, social studies and computer science at Star Academy, an elementary school in Massachusetts. When HuffPost contacted the school for comment, Welton was put on leave, and was fired shortly before this article was published.

Like many conservatives, Welton has expressed anger about the teaching of “critical race theory” in American schools. Last August, shortly before he began teaching at the Star Academy, he tweeted under a pseudonym that a return to American greatness “requires defunding critical race theory.” It’s clear from his pseudonymous writings where his real objection lies: criticism of white people.

A group of anti-fascist researchers, the Anonymous Comrades Collective, figured out Welton’s double life and shared the details with HuffPost.

Regardless of the content of his thought, speech, and writing, Mr. Welton (unlikely to become “Dr. Welton” given that his Ph.D. program at Boston University is right next to a Center for Antiracist Research) would have enjoyed a secure spending power and standard of living if he’d chosen welfare rather than work.

Related:

  • “Child Support Litigation without a Marriage” (Real World Divorce); the American who has sex with two already-married dentists and harvests the resulting child support can enjoy the same spending power as a dentist without the need to accept non-FDA-approved pharmaceuticals, interact with the COVID-plagued public, or worry about the reaction to what is said or written (alimony also works since family court profits are not conditional on medical decisions or thought/speech/writing content, but collecting alimony requires persuading a future divorce lawsuit defendant to agree to get married rather than a future slam-dunk child support lawsuit defendant to agree to have sex for one night or one hour (see Hunter Biden, for example))
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Real-world N95 mask test

by philg

As part of our move from Maskachusetts to the Florida Free State I had to spend some time cleaning out a shed attached to the back of our garage. Under the no-squirrel-is-illegal principle, rodents had occupied the fiberglass-insulated attic of said garage, which resulted in a shower of fiberglass fragments and dust into the shed.

To protect my lungs against the fiberglass dust and years of ordinary dust, I donned an N95 mask (March 2020 value: $100!) given to me by a dentist friend (she buys them 3,000 at a time). Ready to enter the variant COVID-19 clinic, right? Within a minute, I began sneezing from the dust that had apparently slipped around the edges of the mask.

Hospitals employ professional mask fitters and make at least 6 different sizes and shapes of N95 masks available to patient-facing staff. Now I know why!

Related:

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Saudi Arabia banned anyone from leaving for 14 months

by philg

I was chatting with a petroleum engineer who has lived for much of his career in Saudi Arabia (and sent three children to the Aramco school there, then on to boarding school in the U.S.). He mentioned that, as an expat, he was allowed to exit the kingdom, but Saudis were not free to leave for fear that they would return with coronaplague. His return to Saudi Arabia won’t be simple. He must spend two weeks in a country that the Saudis consider safe (i.e., not the U.S.!) and then transit only through airline hubs in countries that the Saudis consider safe. Once home in Saudi Arabia he must quarantine for two weeks with COVID-19 tests every five days.

See also “Saudi Arabia Eases Travel Ban for Vaccinated Citizens” (AP in USA Today):

Vaccinated Saudis are being allowed to leave the kingdom for the first time in more than a year as the country eases a ban on international travel aimed at containing the spread of the coronavirus and its new variants.

For the past 14 months, Saudi citizens have mostly been banned from traveling abroad out of concerns that international travel could fuel the outbreak of the virus within the country of more than 30 million people. The ban, in place since March 2020, has impacted Saudi students who were studying abroad, among others.

With limited exception, foreigners from 20 countries, including the U.S., U.K, UAE and France, remain banned from directly entering the kingdom.

I mentioned that a friend had been similarly restricted from leaving the U.S. He lost his passport shortly before coronashutdown (a First World Problem… he has three houses and they’re all huge so the passport could be hiding anywhere within about 20,000 square feet). Getting a replacement passport requires an in-person interview, but the federal government shut down all in-person interviews except for family emergencies. As of this month, it looks as though the government has still not developed an alternative procedure (e.g., via videoconference) and appointments are “extremely limited” for “urgent travel” and “limited” for “LIfe-or-death emergencies” (like Ted Cruz going to Cancun?):

Related:

  • “Passports Were a “Temporary” War Measure” (FEE): “In 1914, warring states of France, Germany, and Italy were the first to make passports mandatory, a measure rapidly followed by others, including the neutral states of Spain, Denmark, and Switzerland.”
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97 percent of Maskachusetts school districts shut down for at least part of 2020-2021

by philg

Headline from a rich white town’s “school committee update”:

We are among only 3% of MA school districts to hold in-person classes all year 5-days-per-week!

Of course one would not want to imagine that the government could lie to us, but, as part of his 68 (so far) orders, Governor Baker delayed the start of school here in Maskachusetts until mid-September. Therefore, the “all year” part of the above should be “almost all year” (also, the school day was shorted to end at 1:45 pm instead of 2:50 pm, except on the days when teachers already were entitled to a free afternoon (Wednesday), in which case school ended around 12:30 pm).

Flipping this around, we learned that 97 percent of school districts (and the bigger ones were in this group so it would be more than 97 percent of students) denied children at least some of what previously would have been considered their right to an education.

The same newsletter, prepared by white people who administer a school in a nearly all-white town, contains a section titled “Facing dual traumas of racism and inequity” and we learn that “School Committee members have committed to our own anti-bias training,…” and “Middle school students organized a Black Lives Matter group.” Nowhere is it mentioned that the probability of a young Black life being educated in a school in Massachusetts has been extremely low for the 2020-2021 year.

Related:

  • states ranked by COVID-19 death rate (compare to countries ranked and see that science+masks+shutdown would have landed Massachusetts near the very top of the world’s countries in COVID-19 death rate, if MA were its own country)
  • “Wellesley School District Faces Civil Rights Complaint From Parents Group” (WGBH, an NPR affiliate): In March, the [almost-all-white] Wellesley schools hosted a Zoom session described as a “Healing Space for Asian and Asian-American students” and other students of color in grades six through twelve. Attached to the complaint was a screenshot of the invitation, which stated: “*Note: This is a safe space for our Asian/Asian-American and Students of Color, *not* for students who identify only as White.” .. “If you identify as White, and need help to process recent events, please know I’m here for you as well as your guidance counselors,” the invitation read. “If you need to know why this is not for White students, please ask me!” … “The goal was to provide a safe space in which students and staff could reflect, share, and be supported as members of our school district,” the email said. “At the same time, we can also understand the discomfort that some members of our community have shared when learning of a practice that they perceive to be discriminatory. It’s important to note that affinity spaces are not discriminatory.”
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Government cheese is better than European PDO cheese

by philg

From the Wine and Cheese Cask of Somerville, Massachusetts, purveyors since 1970 of imported Protected Geographical Status cheeses:

After 51 years of continuous operation, the cheese counter is closed about half the time that the store is open (they also sell alcohol, which doesn’t need to be cut to size). In other words, for the first time in 51 years, government cheese has become irresistible to the shop mice.

(The shop did not have to close during Peak Coronapanic here in Maskachusetts because alcohol, like marijuana, is “essential” under our governor’s 68 orders so far.)

Note that it is possible to get cheese here even when the counter is closed. A selection of the full inventory is available as pre-packaged grab and go items.

Related:

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Analysis of Sweden versus UK COVID-19 outcomes

by philg

“Sweden, Covid and lockdown – a look at the data” (The Spectator (UK), May 17, 2021) should be interesting for Church of Sweden adherents.

Sweden currently has Europe’s highest COVID-19 “case” rate, but a fairly low COVID-19 death rate compared to other European nations.

One of the interesting charts is “population-weighted density” (i.e., how dense is the average person’s neighborhood in Sweden compared to other countries):

Swedes are actually packed together more tightly than Germans, despite Swedish ownership of a big area of uninhabited land up north.

What about Stayin’ Alive, the thing that most of us insist on doing even when the other 8 billion folks on the planet say that we wouldn’t be missed?

Even in 2020, the Swedes had a low rate of excess deaths compared to other European nations of similar density (see above). The Swedes should also have a lower rate going forward because they didn’t have a 15 months of lockdowns in which people were unable to exercise and maintain mental health. And they didn’t lose as much economically, which means they’ll have better public health going forward (since they won’t have impoverished themselves the way that other European nations did):

None of this will convince Church of Shutdown members, of course, but I thought readers might be interested to see these data from a 200-year-old current affairs magazine. And maybe it is time to buy Swedish stocks! Unless Nature runs out of coronavirus variants, it seems safe to assume that this coming fall will feature soul- and economy-destroying lockdowns in many countries while Sweden remains open.

Related:

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Keeping the faith, coronapanic edition

by philg

“They’re Vaccinated and Keeping Their Masks On, Maybe Forever” (NYT):

Whenever Joe Glickman heads out for groceries, he places an N95 mask over his face and tugs a cloth mask on top of it. He then pulls on a pair of goggles.

He has used this safety protocol for the past 14 months. It did not change after he contracted the coronavirus last November. It didn’t budge when, earlier this month, he became fully vaccinated. And even though President Biden said on Thursday that fully vaccinated people do not have to wear a mask, Mr. Glickman said he planned to stay the course.

In fact, he said, he plans to do his grocery run double-masked and goggled for at least the next five years.

He has direct personal evidence that his “safety protocol” does not deliver “safety” (since he actually got COVID-19 while wearing two masks and goggles).

The article reminds us that if you’re seeking financial safety, get a state or local government job:

Leni Cohen, 51, a retired kindergarten teacher from New York City who has a compromised immune system, said she planned to continue wearing a mask when she helped out as a substitute teacher. But what she would like more is for her students to stay masked.

“Kindergartners, while adorable, are quick to share their secretions,” Ms. Cohen wrote in an email listing the illnesses, including colds, strep throat, pneumonia, influenza and parvovirus, that she has caught from her students over the years.

“This year is so different!” she continued. “The kids are not sucking on their hair or putting classroom objects or thumbs in their mouths. Their mouths and noses are covered, so I’m (mostly) protected from their sneezes and coughs. I can see keeping up with masks. It is the safest I’ve ever felt in a classroom full of 5- and 6-year-olds.”

51 years old and retired; she was born after 1960 so if she’d chosen to work in the private sector she would reach standard Social Security retirement age at 67, or 16 years from now.

Is this more evidence that reactions to coronavirus are essentially religious in nature?

Related:

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Joe Biden’s mask order meets Florida

by philg

The Florida Free State ends at the border with federally-owned land, e.g., Everglades National Park. See “Biden’s first executive order will require masks on federal property” (CNN). The order isn’t quite as stringent as what we have in Maskachusetts. It is legal to be in the middle of federally-owned woods without a mask on, for example, but you’re supposed to wear one if you can’t maintain a 6′ social distance.

How much difference in individual behavior occurs when there is effective leadership in Washington, D.C.? Last month both Floridians and out-of-towners mingled on the Anhinga Trail boardwalk, politely sharing information regarding alligator and bird sightings. Although a few folks sported chin diapers, nobody actually wore a mask, despite this being the most crowded part of the park, even when coming close to another person (every few minutes).

The #Science-informed Federales want you to stay healthy by drinking nothing but Coke. At the trailhead:

(#Science says protect yourself against an airborne virus by washing your soda can, a behavior that would previously have earned you a diagnosis of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. See also Does disinfectant theater contribute to coronaplague?)

Government experts remind us that immigrants from Africa, Central America, and South America are “unwelcome” and “crowd out their native neighbors”:

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Can our golden retriever get a COVID-19 vaccine before elderly humans in poor countries?

by philg

From our government-funded media, “CDC Says Kids As Young As 12 Should Get The Pfizer COVID-19 Vaccine” (NPR):

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends that the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine be given to adolescents ages 12-15.

CDC Director Rochelle Walensky issued a statement saying, “The CDC now recommends the vaccine be used among this population, and providers may begin vaccinating them right away.”

An independent federal advisory committee on Wednesday had voted — 14 in favor with one recusal — to recommend that the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine be quickly approved for those as young as 12.

Here in Massachusetts, prior to deaths-by-age data being withdrawn from public view, nobody under 18 had ever been killed by COVID-19 (see Maskachusetts: When people aren’t scared enough, change the Covid-19 dashboard). Due to the minimal impact of COVID-19 on the young and the non-FDA-approved status of the vaccines, the physicians whom I’ve talked to say that it would be against the Hippocratic Oath to inject vaccines into young adults, much less children. See Is it ethical for a physician to vaccinate a healthy 20-year-old against COVID-19? and We love our children so much we will give them an investigational vaccine

Even if we believe that a 12-year-old will somehow benefit from getting an “investigational” pharmaceutical, do we think that he/she/ze/they will benefit as much as a 65-year-old in a vaccine-poor country? If we believe our lawn signs (“Black Lives Matter”) and our statements (#StopAsianHate and Brown Lives Matter), why wouldn’t we ship Pfizer doses to India or Colombia to be injected into old (vulnerable) people we refer to as “brown” rather than into white American 12-year-olds?

The map from Our World in Data (“Daily new confirmed COVID-19 cases per million people”):

Colombia, Brazil, Paraguay, India, Costa Rica, et al. all have higher case rates than the U.S. and presumably plenty of people we would regard as worthy vaccine charity cases. Here’s the map of vaccination rate (percent of people who’ve had at least one dose):

India is at only 10 percent. Why does a white American 12-year-old get a vaccine before a 60-year-old in India? At the rate we’re going, is it fair to predict that Mindy the Crippler (our golden retriever) will be eligible for a vaccine before a 50-year-old in India can get one?

Separately, comparing the above two charts shows high vaccination rates in Chile, Uruguay, and Canada, for example, and also fairly high coronaplague “cases”. Considering deaths, the statistics for which are less dependent on testing zealotry, Chile and Uruguay have both a high vaccination rate and a high death rate:

If they’ve vaccinated the old/vulnerable, how is it that these countries are experiencing a significant wave of coronadeath? Are these old/vulnerable folks who got infected months ago and have been in the hospital for a long period of time?

To close on a cheerful note, the plague in India does seem to be subsiding in accordance with Farr’s laws. From the NYT:

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How does shutting down water fountains prevent COVID-19?

by philg

One thing that I have noticed in the Shutdown States is that public drinking fountains are nearly always turned off or blocked off, e.g., in hotels, in government buildings, outdoors near playgrounds, etc. To the extent that this is explained, it is #BecauseScience and #StopTheSpread. But what is the science of COVID-19 spread via water fountains?

From June 5, 2020 (includes an actual “Rationale”!):

So the CDC said the risk was low as of June 2020. Has #Science changed? “CDC: Risk for catching coronavirus from surfaces is low” (April 12, 2021):

The risk for catching the new coronavirus from surfaces is low, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said this week in what some experts say is a long overdue announcement.

“People can be affected with the virus that causes COVID-19 through contact with contaminated surfaces and objects,” CDC Director Rochelle Walensky, M.D., said at a White House briefing on Monday. “However, evidence has demonstrated that the risk by this route of infection of transmission is actually low.”

“Finally,” Linsey Marr, Ph.D., an airborne virus expert at Virginia Tech, told The Times. “We’ve known this for a long time, and yet people are still focusing so much on surface cleaning.” Marr added that there is “really no evidence that anyone has ever gotten COVID-19 by touching a contaminated surface.”

If #Science v2020 and #Science v2021 both say that coronavirus is not spread via surface contamination, how does shutting down water fountains help Americans achieve superior health?

At Temple Karen (reform) in Washington, D.C.:

At the Biltmore Estate in North Carolina (“due to current state health and safety mandates”), April 26, 2021:

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