Category: Coronaplague

Sam Bankman-Fried continues to make people rich

by philg

Having previously enriched the campaign treasuries of Democrat politicians nationwide, the great Effective Altruist Sam Bankman-Fried continues to enrich at least some Americans, according to “A $700 Million Bonanza for the Winners of Crypto’s Collapse: Lawyers” (New York Times):

Lawyers, accountants, consultants, cryptocurrency analysts and other professionals have racked up more than $700 million in fees since last year from the bankruptcies of five major crypto firms, including the digital currency exchange FTX, according to a New York Times analysis of court records. That sum is likely to grow significantly as the cases unfold over the coming months.

What is the NYT’s evil twin, the New York Post, writing about? “Migrant arrested 6 times for 14 crimes in first two months in NYC”:

A man who arrived in New York City two months ago from Venezuela has randomly attacked at least three strangers and two cops, and gotten arrested – and released – six times on 14 different charges, police and sources said.

Daniel Hernandez Martinez, 29, arrived on June 27 and allegedly committed his first crime the following day.

On Aug. 21, he violently attacked a woman in Midtown, cops said. He “grabbed a stranger by the hair, dragged her across the floor and kicked her,” and smashed her phone on West 45th Street around 1 a.m., court documents show.

What else has been interesting in recent news? “Maryland elementary school brings back MASKS for kids as it forces third-graders to don N-95s again after spate of pupils testing positive for COVID-19” (Daily Mail):

In a letter sent to parents on Tuesday, Rosemary Hills Elementary School principal Rebecca Irwin Kennedy said she made the move after ‘three or more individuals’ caught the virus in the last ten days.

She demanded students don thick N95 masks to ‘keep our school environment as safe as possible’, despite a recent study finding the mask may expose users to dangerous levels of toxic chemicals.

And while even embattled medical guru Dr Anthony Fauci admits there is a lack of evidence the masks stop the spread of Covid, Kennedy told parents the N95s will only become optional after 10 days.

This is my old school district, as it happens, Montgomery County Public Schools. It’s interesting that there is no explanation of how SARS-CoV-2 will be stopped if the students remove their masks “while eating or drinking”. The letter from the principal doesn’t mention any changes to lunch procedures. So the kids all sit in the classroom together wearing masks and then they all sit together at lunch not wearing masks?

What the Maryland principal did, of course, would be illegal under Florida law. Not contrary to a governor’s order, but illegal under a statute passed by the legislature. Third graders in Florida could tell the fearful Fauci-denying adults where to put their N95 masks.

Readers: What’s caught your eye in recent news?

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Indoor, Outdoor, and Bearded Maskers in the Boston Area

by philg

Photos from August 21, 2023, Allston, Massachusetts (adjacent to Boston University):

My favorite, of course, is the surgical mask over full beard as a means of blocking out an aerosol virus. However, the most confusing are the outdoor maskers. The risk of being in a crowded city is so high that they need a mask when outdoors… yet they won’t move away from the crowded city. I guess the masked supermarket shoppers are also tough to explain. Why don’t they stay safe at home and let the Latinx essential delivery workers incur the risk of gathering groceries? (See The social justice of coronashutdowns)

I visited a friend in Brookline who warned his elderly mother to stay away from me because I was insufficiently cautious about the possibility of a SARS-CoV-2 infection (I had arrived from an oceanfront estate in Maine with about 3,000 square feet of space per person). A few minutes later, he decided that it would be too onerous to cook pasta at home, safe from COVID-19, on the high-end induction cooktop. So we then all went out to a cramped neighborhood Italian restaurant in which the elderly mom was within breathing distance of about 30 local humans (presumably not Covid heretics, however).

Both the mom, a Manhattan resident, and the grandkids spontaneously offered the opinion that Florida schools were terrible, partly due to the fact that reading was banned in Florida. Said grandkids had been removed from the Brookline, Maskachusetts public schools (one of the highest-rated districts in the state) due to being bored and the school system not having any gifted program. So they were paying private school tuition ($55,000+/year per student) on top of state income tax (banned by the FL constitution), state estate tax (also banned by the FL constitution, unless it can be credited toward federal), and property tax at a similar rate to what a typical FL county charges. I pointed out that Florida state law required every public school district to offer gifted education beginning in 2nd grade and that, if necessary, there was also the Big Hammer in which Florida high school kids can take online or in-person courses for free at any state-run college or university (and taxpayers have to buy them the textbooks as well!). Finally, the larger counties run magnet schools for those who are artistically or academically inclined (one of Miami’s is the #4-ranked public high school in the U.S.).

Related:

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Among the Covidians in Burlington, Vermont

by philg

Some photos from a recent trip to downtown Burlington, Vermont…

The front door of a state government building:

Inside a bookstore, a follower of CNN:

COVID-19 is dangerous enough that one should wear a mask, but not so dangerous that one should shop for books on Amazon?

We are informed that marijuana can cure almost any illness, yet below is a marijuana shopper who feels the need to protect him/her/zir/theirself via a mask (Fauci-approved cloth version). If he/she/ze/they is about to inhale healing cannabis, why does he/she/ze/they need to worry about a minor bug such as SARS-CoV-2? Note also the trans-enhanced rainbow flag on the front door.

Speaking of rainbow flags, nearly every merchant had one, but only some featured Black Lives Matters or Trans People Belong signs.

Note the tattoos behind the Sign of Justice:

The University of Vermont featured both indoor and outdoor maskers of the young/healthy/slender variety, but unfortunately I was too slow to get good photos. Even more upsetting: the “intentional intersectional space” was closed.

Shout-out to Heritage Aviation at KBTV for the usual awesome service. Also to U.S. Customs at Burlington for hassle-free clearance inbound from the Land of Blackface and Political Unity.

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Harvard requires the 2020 COVID vaccines; how well do they work in 2023?

by philg

On August 7, 2023, I was checking some Harvard University academic calendar dates and found the following page:

COVID-19: To keep Harvard healthy, if you will have an “on-campus presence,” you must comply with Harvard University’s COVID-19 immunization policy. You are required to submit documentation within 10 days of registering for any course with any on-campus presence. You risk being dropped from your on-campus courses, even after classes begin, if you do not upload your documentation in an expedited manner or if your status is non-compliant. Visit the Immunization Requirements page for details.

Following the link:

Harvard University requires 2 FDA- or WHO- authorized COVID-19 vaccinations, OR 1 bivalent dose for all eligible students.

You must submit proof of vaccination (or medical or religious exemption documentation) to University Health Services if you will have any on-campus presence.

You are required to submit documentation within 10 days of registering for any course with any on-campus presence. You risk being dropped from your on-campus courses, even after classes begin, if you do not upload your documentation in an expedited manner or if your status is noncompliant.

Also, for good measure…

Flu: one immunization after July 1, 2023

(The flu vaccine isn’t available to those 13-64 years of age in the UK, but the public health experts at Harvard require it for healthy college-age humans.)

A few questions… the J&J one-shot COVID-19 vaccination was FDA-authorized (though never “approved”). Why does Harvard then demand 2 shots? Let’s assume for the sake of argument that college-age students benefit from COVID-19 shots. Is there any evidence that the 2020 COVID-19 shots provide any benefit with respect to the currently circulating variants of SARS-CoV-2?

Related:

If any of the above is memory-holed:

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How did the crippled-by-Long-Covid Swedes beat the American soccer world champions?

by philg

We are informed by the New York Times and CNN that Long COVID is (a) crippling, and (b) almost inevitable for those who reject Faucism. Sweden is renowned for letting SARS-CoV-2 rip through its younger-than-70 population while the elderly hid (excess mortality data by country). The Swedish women’s soccer team doesn’t contain anyone over age 73 and, therefore, must necessarily be riddled with Long COVID. How do we explain “Knocked out. Sweden bounces top-ranked U.S. out of the Women’s World Cup in penalties” (state-sponsored NPR) then?

It can’t be that the world champions are also Covid-plagued. From summer 2020, “Megan Rapinoe one of three internationals to withdraw from NWSL Challenge Cup” (BBC):

Forward Christen Press and midfielder Tobin Heath will not play because of “uncertainty” caused by the virus.

“Megan let us know that she has decided not to play,” said Bill Predmore, chief executive of Rapinoe’s team OL Reign.

“Like all NWSL players, she was given the option to participate … but we understand and respect her decision.”

The tournament, being played in empty stadiums, starts on Saturday in Utah and will last for one month.

Star players also cowered in their bunkers in the fall and winter of 2020… “NWSL star Megan Rapinoe says she won’t play in fall series” (CBC):

Two-time World Cup winner and OL Reign midfielder Megan Rapinoe is opting out of the National Women’s Soccer League (NWSL) fall series starting next month, the Washington-based franchise said in a statement.

No reason was given for her decision but Rapinoe, 35, also skipped the NWSL Challenge Cup tournament in June, which was played in empty stadiums due to the COVID-19 outbreak.

Rapinoe sang the praises of lockdown in the Journal of Popular Studies:

Megan Rapinoe on Quarantine Life with New Fiancé Sue Bird: ‘It’s Been Such a Gift’

“Because we’re athletes, we’re constantly on the go and we never get to spend this much time with people that you love,” Megan Rapinoe tells PEOPLE in this week’s issue

So… the soccer players who were out and about in 2020, exposed every day to dangerous levels of SARS-CoV-2, beat the soccer players who wisely cowered in place and thus were protected from Long Covid and the even-more-dangerous Medium Covid. How can this fact be squared with Faucism?

Loosely related… an open-to-all-genders single-city team of 14-year-olds beat the world champions prior to coronapanic (CBS):

Also… “Djokovic Heads Hard-Court Leaderboard” (from the gender-neutral ATP Tour, 6 days ago):

Novak Djokovic has dominated the ATP Tour’s hard courts throughout his career, and the past 52 weeks are no exception for the 36-year-old.

Across a run that includes titles at the 2022 Nitto ATP Finals and the 2023 Australian Open, the Serbian has posted a tour-leading 91.9 per cent win rate (34-3) on the surface during that span. He also won hard-court titles in Tel Aviv and Astana last year as well as at the Adelaide 1 event to start the current season.

How is it possible for someone who was infected with SARS-CoV-2 without a previous vaccination to be the world’s best hard-court tennis player?

Also related, “The social justice of coronashutdowns” (January 2021), in which a friend who lives in a $9.6 million house (pre-Biden money) disagrees with my assertion that “[school] shutdowns are ordered by people who live in mansions (governors) and supported by rich white people who live in 4,000+ square foot suburban houses” and therefore don’t consider “a single parent in a 2BR public housing apartment with three kids” and “what benefit the shutdown is delivering to a 30-year-old single mom and her 10-year-old kids”.

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A humanist looks at Sweden v. Covid

by philg

For us numbers nerds, here’s an interesting thread from Daniel Hadas, a medieval Latin professor in London who describes himself as a “Catholic humanist”… “Some remarks on Covid and Sweden.”:

… what matters is that life in Sweden during Covid continued largely as normal.

Lockdowns are deeply unnatural. They do not happen without intense social pressure, whether it be through legislation or propaganda. That pressure was absent, or at least muted, in Sweden.
At this point, it is customary to start arguing about statistics. Anti-lockdowners point to Sweden’s low excess mortality. Pro-lockdowners point to the number of Covid deaths, or to unfavourable comparisons with some of Sweden’s neighbours.
But there is no need to look at statistics to draw the essential conclusion about Sweden’s response. Any innumerate peasant can draw it, and indeed it is only those whose sense-making relies on statistics who can think some more potent conclusion lies hidden in them.
The essential conclusion is: 𝘯𝘰𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘵𝘦𝘳𝘳𝘪𝘣𝘭𝘦 𝘩𝘢𝘱𝘱𝘦𝘯𝘦𝘥. Sweden’s health system did not “collapse”, whatever that means. Stockholm does not look like Athens after the plague. Sweden is as Sweden was.

No numbers are needed to prove this.

In other words, numbers nerds like me are useless!

Thus Sweden, like every other jursidiction that did little in response to Covid, gives the lie to all the modellers and panic-mongers who screamed at the public that there was 𝘯𝘰 𝘢𝘭𝘵𝘦𝘳𝘯𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘷𝘦 to shutting down society, that every extreme measure taken was not enough.

Maybe Hadas disdains numbers because he can’t think with numbers? Actually he can!

It is ludicrous to maintain that, via statistics, certainty can be established on the causal link between a country’s anti-Covid measures, and the number of deaths in that country. The system we are trying to analyze is vastly complex: the whole of society, over several years. The potentially confounding variables are therefore countless. The effects being sought are small.

I made the following point back in 2020, but he does it more succinctly and eloquently. The majority of Americans assumed that a society with a lower Covid-tagged death rate was superior to a society with a higher Covid-tagged death rate. But that can be true only with some value judgments.

… behind the policy language of “a country’s response to Covid” lie questions for each individual: Should I lock up my children for 23 hours a day? Should I leave my parents to die alone? Should I not touch another man or woman for months on end? … The answer to these questions is not to be found in numbers.

The Swedish response to Covid was right, because, or in as much as, Swedes answered such questions in the negative. The only true disaster threatening us in the Covid years was answering them in the affirmative.

Maybe more people should study medieval Latin!

And because I’m not a humanist, but a numberist, let’s check the numbers:

and here’s the curve (of excess deaths) for Ireland (picked as a comparison country for Sweden by the NYT):

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New York Times on protecting the immunocompromised by wearing a mask

by philg

“Should You Still Wear a Mask?” (NYT, April 2022):

Experts weigh in on where, and when, you can safely take one off.

If you have compromised immunity, for example, or live with someone who does, it’s a good idea to continue wearing a mask

“A Positive Covid Milestone” (NYT, today):

“Even for most — not all but most — immunocompromised people, vaccines are actually still quite effective at preventing against serious illness,” [Dr. Ashish Jha, who was until recently President Biden’s top Covid adviser] said. “There has been a lot of bad information out there that somehow if you’re immunocompromised that vaccines don’t work.”

Most immunocompromised people are at little additional risk from Covid — even people with serious conditions, such as multiple sclerosis or a history of many cancers.

Where did the “bad information” that Dr. Jha mentioned come from? Separately, the NYT seems to have discovered that a virus cannot kill the same human twice:

The United States has reached a milestone in the long struggle against Covid: The total number of Americans dying each day — from any cause — is no longer historically abnormal.

The good news is that the mask religion lasts longer than mask Science. Two photos from last week in Ireland (signage that was ignored) and a young slender apparently healthy person wearing a mask outdoors… in front of the Science museum in Salt Lake City (June 2023):

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Branch Covidians in the National Park Service

by philg

3.5 years after coronapanic began, the National Park Service web site:

Tours of Glen Canyon Dam
Following guidance from the White House, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and state and local public health authorities, the dam is closed to the public.

In case the above is memory-holed:

At Yellowstone, the National Park Service encourages visitors to wear a mask and social distance when outside in a 20-knot breeze:

What are other Americans up to? Just 10 minutes from the National Park Service HQ in Washington, D.C., there is a 24/7 bathhouse:

(The 2SLGBTQQIA+ club reopened in the summer of 2021. A 12-year-old needed to show his/her/zir/their vaccine papers to go to a public place in D.C., such as a restaurant, but the Covidcrats didn’t see any infectious disease potential in a venue where a customer might have sex with 25 different partners in one night.)

Perhaps we’re just looking at #AbundanceOfCaution and slavish devotion to CDC guidance? Here’s the CDC’s main page for COVID-19 prevention (the filename is actually “prevention”):

Handwashing is featured above even the sacred Pfizer and Moderna vaccines. The National Parks have become mass gatherings and are more crowded, certainly, than our day-to-day lifestyle in the city of Jupiter, Florida (see this post, and the photos link, regarding Zion). Florida city, county, and state governments are all about building and maintaining clean public restrooms, despite being notorious for rejecting CDC guidance on lockdowns, school closures, mask orders, and forced COVID-19 vaccination. We might expect the Branch Covidians at the National Park Service to have overtaken Florida government officials in providing handwashing facilities to the general public. Yet, in fact, I found the opposite was true during a summer 2023 visit to various parks. Restrooms with running water inside the parks were closed and/or being shut down (sometimes primitive outhouses with no sinks were substituted), thus making it impossible for the humans gathering in these parks to wash their hands per CDC guidance. Said humans are encouraged and/or forced (depending on the park) to ride packed buses, so the “they’re gathering only outdoors” response does not apply.

Here’s an example closed restroom in Yellowstone:

Near the popular Steamboat Geyser:

How about in Canyonlands National Park? Maybe it is unreasonable to ask the Feds to give customers a potentially life-saving running-water bathroom on a plateau that is so high above the water? (Some of the guys running cattle on the adjacent federal land seem to be pumping water, though.) The Feds are charging only $30 per vehicle, after all, so maybe outhouses are all that we can expect. On the same plateau, the Utah state government folks who run Dead Horse Point State Park charge a $20 fee and truck water up so that visitors can enjoy civilized bathroom experiences:

Only very loosely related… the federal government imposes just one rule for what it calls the “Fishing Bridge”: no fishing. Yellowstone National Park:

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Why do Covidians gather en masse?

by philg

Our kids watched part of a Miami Heat v Celtics basketball game. 20,000 people gathered indoors, more or less on top of each other, in a sold-out TD Garden (in Boston’s North End). Hardly any fan had a mask on.

From 2020 through mid-2022, preventing deaths tagged to COVID-19 was important enough to Bostonians that they equired 5-year-olds to get injected with an experimental vaccine before going into public places, closed businesses (except “essential” marijuana stores), and required everyone (but especially children down to age 2) to wear masks.

It is the official position of Science that COVID-19 vaccines do not prevent infection by SARS-CoV-2 nor transmission of a SARS-CoV-2 infection. (There are also plenty of other lethal respiratory viruses that can spread when 20,000 people gather indoors.) Why were the Covidians of Boston willing to cram into this arena rather than #StayingHomeSavingLives and watching the game on TV?

The risk of a deadly mutation is increased every time that humans gather en masse. “No, the COVID-19 Pandemic Isn’t Over” (Cleveland Clinic, May 2023):

Simply put: If the virus is circulating, it’s also mutating. As we learned during the delta variant surge, some of those mutations can have devastating consequences.

Same idea in less clinical language:

I remain baffled by folks who say that they haven’t changed any of their Covidian opinions yet they’re doing everything possible to help SARS-CoV-2 spread and mutate. Can someone please explain this?

The Covidians who are still masking and/or staying in their bunkers strike me as more logically consistent. Here is a sampling:

I’m also not surprised when Floridians gather en masse. In 2020 they said that they were still going to attend school, work, and social events despite SARS-CoV-2 so it makes sense for them to be living in the same way now. But why did the Covidians change? It can’t be vaccinations. Nearly 200,000 Americans died with a COVID-19 in 2022, quite a few of them in a state of grace (after having received the Sacrament of Fauci).

(Separately, we were sad that Miami came in 2nd in the NBA Finals, but #2 isn’t terrible!)

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Update War of the Worlds for coronapanic

by philg

I subjected 7- and 9-year-old boys to H.G. Well’s War of the Worlds as an audio book recently. It wasn’t as big a hit as I expected. I enjoyed it, though! I didn’t realize how topical the 1895 book was.

*** spoiler alert ***

I wonder if it is time to update this book for a modern audience. Wells’s prediction of industrial robots needs no tweaking, but he has the Martians being killed by an unknown bacterial enemy. In an updated version, the Martians will reject a bivalent vaccine offered by Pfizer and the director of the CDC. Due to this rejection, which happened because Martians had tuned into Fox News from afar, SARS-CoV-2 kills them all.

The book has a powerful description of humans panicking in the face of a threat and a prescient description of how Californians and New Yorkers might react to Martians wanting to cage and breed them so that they could harvest human blood.

All these—the sort of people that lived in these houses, and all those damn little clerks that used to live down that way—they’d be no good. They haven’t any spirit in them—no proud dreams and no proud lusts; and a man who hasn’t one or the other—Lord! What is he but funk and precautions? They just used to skedaddle off to work—I’ve seen hundreds of ’em, bit of breakfast in hand, running wild and shining to catch their little season-ticket train, for fear they’d get dismissed if they didn’t; working at businesses they were afraid to take the trouble to understand; skedaddling back for fear they wouldn’t be in time for dinner; keeping indoors after dinner for fear of the back streets, and sleeping with the wives they married, not because they wanted them, but because they had a bit of money that would make for safety in their one little miserable skedaddle through the world. Lives insured and a bit invested for fear of accidents. And on Sundays—fear of the hereafter. As if hell was built for rabbits! Well, the Martians will just be a godsend to these. Nice roomy cages, fattening food, careful breeding, no worry. After a week or so chasing about the fields and lands on empty stomachs, they’ll come and be caught cheerful. They’ll be quite glad after a bit. They’ll wonder what people did before there were Martians to take care of them.

In the updated version, this will be developed further. Wells’s character envisioned a human resistance living on in the sewers. In the update, the resistance will be in Sweden and Florida because Martians can’t tolerate Surströmming and are afraid of alligators. SARS-CoV-2 will take a year to kill the aliens, which will give governors in California, Illinois, New York, Massachusetts, etc. time to work with federal officials and the Martians to set up the human farms for their respective meek and compliant populations.

Dr. Fauci will leave his portrait-filled study and return to work organizing the development of ventilators powerful enough to treat Martians suffering from COVID-19. The Fauci Protocol will be to put a Martian on vent after 10 “ullas”.

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