Forced vaccination in the Land of Liberty (TM)

by philg

“Should the Government Impose a National Vaccination Mandate?” (New Yorker, by Jeannie Suk Gersen (quoted in the Domestic Violence chapter of Real World Divorce) provides a good window into the thinking of the elites:

Despite claims to the contrary, there are many routes to legally requiring COVID inoculation.

The pre-covid legal landscape, in other words, was quite clear: a state could require vaccinations to protect public health, even imposing criminal penalties for noncompliance. And vaccination as a condition of attending school or of government employment has been widely, if not universally, accepted.

There has been a plethora of legal challenges to covid-vaccine mandates imposed by public and private institutions, but courts have been quick to dismiss them.

No city or state has yet issued a straight-up requirement that all private citizens be vaccinated against covid-19, along the lines of the Massachusetts smallpox-vaccination law upheld in Jacobson, but some have edged toward it. The closest so far is New York City’s requirement of proof of having received at least one dose for access to certain activities, including indoor dining, gyms, and performances. Various states have also ordered certain subsets of their populations, including health-care and nursing-home workers, school teachers, and state employees, to be vaccinated or face regular testing. The F.D.A.’s full approval of the vaccine this week makes it more likely that cities and states will impose general mandates on residents. If they do, they can feel confident that such requirements will be upheld by the courts, so long as they include medical and religious exemptions.

The only real question is whether it is a state governor’s job or Presidents Biden and Harris’s to order residents to be injected:

And, in fact, the government has never issued a national vaccination mandate—perhaps because, in the past, leaving that role to states and localities has sufficiently contained epidemics. If any federal statute currently provides authorization for a national covid-vaccination mandate, however, it would be the Public Health Service Act, which gives several agencies the authority “to prevent the introduction, transmission, or spread of communicable diseases” from foreign countries or between states. The government can use this law to pursue quarantine policies, and the statute, broadly construed, may also allow the government to mandate vaccinations to prevent interstate spread of covid-19.

After the tens of $trillions spent on defending liberty from foreign bogeymen (our military is our #3 federal expense, after Social Security and Medicare/Medicaid), will it ultimately turn out that foreigners enjoy more freedom to choose which medical interventions to accept?

Separately, most of the above examples of forced vaccination wouldn’t apply to someone who stays home playing Xbox in public housing while shopping for food via EBT. Instead of emigrating to Sweden or a similar foreign haven, perhaps an American who loves freedom could simply transition to disability/welfare.

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Hidden car price increase: destination charge inflation

by philg

My mid-life crisis order from General Motors was pushed from the 2021 model year to the 2022 model year. There have been two price increases since the order was placed in January, but there is also a hidden price increase. The “destination charge” for getting the vehicle from the factory in Kentucky to the dealership has gone from $1,095 to $1,295, i.e., reflecting 18 percent inflation.

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Olympic moving sport?

by philg

After observing some guys pack our stuff into three containers on the last day of Tokyo 2020, an idea for future Olympics: See who can pack stuff, with a range of fragility, into boxes and furniture blankets, move items into 16’ container, and then pull everything back out the fastest. Containers get shaken in the middle and points are deducted for anything broken. A team sport with 5 team members that combines a mental and a physical challenge.

Readers: would you prefer to watch this compared to a running race, for example?

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Checking in on the wicked Swedes

by philg

Sweden hasn’t been in the news lately. Let’s see if the wicked never-masked never-locked-down Swedes are being punished by the mighty and just CoronaG*d. First, “cases” (adjusted for population size):

Case rate can vary tremendously depending on a country’s love for running PCR machines. Let’s look at ICU hospitalization rate:

Why aren’t the Swedes being punished for their sins?

Remember that the typical Swede lives a fairly urban existence, as noted in Analysis of Sweden versus UK COVID-19 outcomes. So it isn’t that Swedes don’t encounter one another.

Maybe it is the miracle of vaccines? It turns out that vaccination rate is almost the same in Sweden compared to the U.S.:

How about hot weather driving people into air-conditioned shared indoor environments as an explanatory factor? The case rate (above) in the UK is higher than in the US, despite the UK being cooler than the US.

How about the choice to let humans co-evolve with what the Swedish MD/PhDs predicted would be a permanent companion virus, similar to influenza? “Having SARS-CoV-2 once confers much greater immunity than a vaccine” (Science, August 26, 2021):

The natural immune protection that develops after a SARS-CoV-2 infection offers considerably more of a shield against the Delta variant of the pandemic coronavirus than two doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, according to a large Israeli study that some scientists wish came with a “Don’t try this at home” label. The newly released data show people who once had a SARS-CoV-2 infection were much less likely than vaccinated people to get Delta, develop symptoms from it, or become hospitalized with serious COVID-19.

The new analysis relies on the database of Maccabi Healthcare Services, which enrolls about 2.5 million Israelis. The study, led by Tal Patalon and Sivan Gazit at KSM, the system’s research and innovation arm, found in two analyses that people who were vaccinated in January and February were, in June, July, and the first half of August, six to 13 times more likely to get infected than unvaccinated people who were previously infected with the coronavirus. In one analysis, comparing more than 32,000 people in the health system, the risk of developing symptomatic COVID-19 was 27 times higher among the vaccinated, and the risk of hospitalization eight times higher.

Note that the above data contradict #Science as known to American public health experts. There would be no point in ordering the previously infected to get vaccinated before going to work or school if we didn’t know from #Science that vaccines confer much better protection than infection with the actual virus. (Remember that staying home and playing Xbox doesn’t require any vaccination, masking, or other COVID-19-related compliance!)

Readers: What’s your theory as to why Sweden is not suffering a dramatic plague right now?

Separately, how should science-following journalists characterize a country that gave the finger to the coronavirus and ended up with half the death rate of masked-and-shut Maskachusetts (where the urban kids whose lives purportedly matter lost an entire year of education)? It all depends! Part of a screen from Apple News:

(Note that even the Telegraph folks who are apparently willing to consider the advantages of children being able to leave the house and attend school refer to Sweden following W.H.O. pandemic respiratory virus advice from pre-2020 as an “experiment”. It is not the countries that have tried general public mask orders and year-long school shutdowns that are experimenting.)

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130-hour pilot takes off for a round-the-world flight in a light airplane

by philg

“Pilot Attempting Around-the-World Flight Crosses Atlantic” (Flying):

Zara Rutherford wants to be the youngest woman to fly around the world solo, as FlyZolo. She has completed the Atlantic crossing, the first major hurdle along the way.

The 19-year-old Belgian pilot is flying a Shark Ultralight single-engine airplane approved in the rough European equivalent of the light sport category, with a maximum takeoff weight of 600 kg, retractable gear and a variable-pitch propeller.

Rutherford comes from a family of pilots, and she had more than 130 solo hours logged prior to departing on the flight.

On her FlyZolo site, she says “I want to reduce the gender gap in aviation as well as in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM).” Yet a career in STEM is the opposite of flying around the world. Lots of sitting at a desk! (And, at least in a lot of U.S. states, a woman who wants to have the spending power of a man working in STEM can simply have sex with one or two men working in STEM. So there is no economic motivation for a woman to stick her nose into a stack of textbooks for 10-20 years.)

As a child of the Equality Feminism movement of the 1960s and 1970s, I’m not surprised that someone who identifies as “female” can fly. But I am surprised and impressed that someone would do this trip without an instrument rating (impossible to obtain at 130 hours, I think)!

Let’s check back in a month or two and see how this effort has unfolded?

Related:

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The consequences of telling the public that simple cloth and paper face coverings are protective

by philg

On arrival in Florida, which coincided with a (presumably typical going forward) summer COVID-19 case peak, I noticed that the wearing of face masks was actually more common than in Maskachusetts. This surprised me a little, given that MA has been the land of ordering people to wear masks and FL has been notable for its lack of mask orders. But, of course, given the hysterical media stories about Florida as the worst-afflicted state in the nation (except for all of the other states where the death rate has been much higher (and the COVID Olympics score would be even more in FL’s favor if you adjusted for percentage of population over 65)), it is natural that the more fearful residents and visitors would wish to protect themselves from a raging plague.

What was interesting was how the fearful had chosen to protect themselves. Instead of wearing N95 and P100 masks, as you might expect for people concerned about an aerosol virus, they were wearing simple cloth and paper masks, about as effective as a chain link fence against sand. I wonder if this is partly due to the media and government telling us that bandanas, paper surgical masks, and stylish cloth masks are “protective”. (I am aware that the theory is that if 100 percent of people wear such masks that transmission will be reduced (such that everyone gets COVID a few weeks later than otherwise? What is the point if R0 is not reduced below 1?), but this is seldom explained clearly. Certainly no public health official says, in public, “it is pointless for you to wear a mask if nobody else is.” (though sometimes they say that in private; see “Fauci Said Masks ‘Not Really Effective in Keeping Out Virus,’ Email Reveals” (Newsweek))

Some of the same phenomenon is on display with vaccine propaganda. A guy in his 60s cited Dr. Fauci for his belief that 99 percent of people having problems with COVID-19 are unvaccinated (according to the UK’s far superior medical record system, however, the Delta variant kills without distinction; roughly 60 percent of those hospitalized with COVID-19 in Israel are fully vaccinated). To show his concern regarding COVID-19, he was wearing a cloth mask emblazoned “Combat COVID” …. under his nose.

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Maskachusetts tries to preserve the fat and financially unsuccessful with Regeneron

by philg

For the purposes of this discussion, let’s assume that, unlike most new pharma (see Book review: Bad Pharma), Regeneron is actually helpful to humans trying to fight off coronavirus.

Florida makes this therapy available to anyone who wants it. (See Florida implements my renal dialysis-inspired COVID care idea (sort of))

The technocrats in Massachusetts, on the other hand, reserve Regeneron for those with a BMI over 35 (“way fat”) and those who are collecting welfare. From the guidelines (from last November, but they haven’t been updated and hospital web pages repeat the same info):

We are informed that COVID-19 is coming for most of us. Maybe Massachusetts is trying to ensue that all future non-immigrant Americans are descended from the obese and those on welfare?

(How is “social vulnerability” defined? Being on welfare is a plus, but the CDC page on the subject says that “race/ethnicity” are also factored in. So, depending on your neighborhood’s prevailing skin color, you could be left to die and tossed on the body heap at the back of the hospital or saved via this miracle drug. (If you want to be treated equally with other state residents, you need to move to Florida!))

Separately, if we are masking kindergarteners and keeping them pinned to desks 6′ apart in school (rather than letting them socialize/play) because it might save just one life, wouldn’t it make sense to go get Regeneron treatment every week? You never know if you’ve been infected with coronavirus or not (friends who’ve had COVID-19 often did not test PCR-positive until they were nearly fully recovered, so daily PCR testing wouldn’t be sufficient). #AbundanceOfCaution

Potentially helpful tip on how to qualify in MA:

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Coronascience: pack a plane to 100 percent capacity and then have everyone de-mask simultaneously

by philg

“18 US Orthodox Jewish girls kicked off a Delta-KLM flight following a COVID-19 protocols dispute, reports say” (Business Insider):

Eighteen Orthodox Jewish girls were barred from boarding a Delta flight from Amsterdam to New York on Thursday because of a dispute on a KLM flight about COVID-19 protocols, according to reports.

The passengers breached the protocols by taking their masks off to eat their own food outside of the designated mealtimes, The Jerusalem Post reported.

Despite my general adherence to the Swedish level of coronapanic, if I could take over as dictator of the U.S. and issue executive orders, my first order to would to make it illegal for airlines to sell the middle seat, except to families traveling together.

Related:

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Will there be more post-war Afghan refugees than the entire pre-war population of Afghanistan?

by philg

We started the war in Afghanistan in 2001. The country’s total population then was 21.6 million (Google). The estimated 2021 population is 40 million (source). If roughly half of Afghans don’t like the current government, i.e., a similar level of political division to what we have here in the U.S., that means the potential number of refugees seeking to leave could be more than than the total number of people in Afghanistan when we invaded.

If only 20 million want to leave for political reasons, how can the refugee pool expand to 21.6 million? Let’s assume at least a small percentage of people will seek to leave for economic reasons, on top of those who don’t support the Taliban; among nations, Afghanistan is ranked #213 out of 228 in income per person (CIA). Afghans are only 1/4 as successful economically as Guatemalans, for example, whom we are told are “fleeing” poverty when they show up at our open-to-anyone-claiming-abuse southern border. (Once in the U.S., Afghans are the least likely to work of any immigrant group. See “Challenges to the economic integration of Afghan refugees in the U.S.”:

Among adults ages 18–64, Afghans have the lowest rate of employment (59%) among the comparison groups. This is due primarily to the very low rate of employment of Afghan women (46%). The latter is low regardless of how long they have been in the U.S., but it is particularly low among recent arrivals (23% among those in the U.S. for 0–5 years) and those with the lowest and highest levels of education. Further, when controlling for education, Afghan men with a college degree or higher have the lowest levels of employment.

The righteous academics who wrote the above explain why Afghan-Americans don’t work: “we hypothesise that anti-Muslim discrimination is an important unmeasured explanatory factor” (citing white Americans’ support for Donald Trump). Maybe if an Afghan wore a rainbow flag burqa, he/she/ze/they could get a job in San Francisco, despite the postulated anti-Muslim discrimination?)

Is it fair to say that the U.S. will have created a second Afghanistan by invading the first? The second Afghanistan will have the same population as 2001 Afghanistan, but it will be a virtual and distributed country of Afghans in the U.S., Europe, etc.

Here’s the beginning of a design for the rainbow flag burqa, mentioned above:

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