Category Archives: Covid19

News You Can Use

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The science on masks and viruses:

No mask is 100% effective. An N95, for example, is named as such because it is at least 95% efficient at blocking airborne particles when used properly. But even if a mask has an 80% efficiency, Marr said, it still offers meaningful protection.

…

Marr said her team aerosolized the coronavirus, pulled it through a mask, and then examined how much virus survived on the mask. The study reported some viral particle remained on some cloth masks, but no virus survived on the N95s or surgical masks.

Marr’s team also touched artificial skin to masks and looked at how many virus particles transferred to the artificial skin. No infectious virus transferred.

“I hope the study kind of shows that it’s something we don’t need to worry about as much as we were told,” Marr said.

News you can use

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Interesting:

To summarize, the review examined various studies that compared median serum vitamin D levels to factors such as COVID-19-positive cases, the severity of the infection, disease survivors, deaths, levels of inflammatory cytokines and markers such as C-reactive protein, and the number of days spent in the hospital.

Overall, the results reported no significant associations between vitamin D levels and COVID-19 severity, mortality, or hospitalization duration. Vitamin D deficiency seemed to be associated with the likelihood of being COVID-19 positive, but the nearly significant association decreased when examined at a larger scale.

Another one bites the dust.

Vitamin D supplements are good for a lot of things but apparently COVID prevention and cure isn’t one of them.

COVID observations from the WA islands

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Via the Seattle Times:

Measured by the ultimate marker of pandemic success — the death rate — San Juan County, population 17,850, ranks as the second-best county on the West Coast, and among the top dozen in the nation.

The San Juans also had the lowest hospitalization rate in the state, by far, even though it’s one of the older counties demographically (35% of its people are 65 or older).

“For the first two years, we had the lowest case rate in the United States,” says San Juan’s health director, Dr. Frank James. “You’re the first person in the media who has called to ask us how we did it.”

…

So how’d the San Juans do it? For starters, they are islands, which James says gave them a built-in virus management advantage. It’s also a relatively homogeneous population.

But the story of what happened there isn’t just geographic luck. The county with the highest death rate in Washington state, Ferry County, has less than half the people of the San Juans, and is more remote. The reality is the novel virus eventually infiltrated every corner of every state. (Example: the North Slope Borough, up on the Arctic Ocean in Alaska, reports a COVID death rate more than 10 times higher than the San Juans).

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Long story shortened: The San Juans imposed the first mask mandate in the state, and possibly the first one in the nation. When the sheriff told James he couldn’t enforce it due to lack of manpower, James turned to the businesses to impose it instead.

…

Ironically the San Juans are one of the least vaccinated places for childhood diseases. Against COVID it became the most vaccinated county in Washington, at 83%, and more than 95% for its seniors.

Bottom line: By the time of the San Juans’ first death, in January 2022, the state had already suffered 11,000 deaths, the nation more than 875,000.

The virus crashed through eventually. Suddenly this spring towns that had mostly evaded it were reporting the highest case rates in the state. By then most everyone had been vaccinated and boosted, “so it didn’t end up causing the severe disease that was experienced by almost every other community in the U.S.,” James says.

The islands’ grand total of two deaths, one in January and one in March of this year, were among unvaccinated residents, the health department says.

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The counties with the highest death rates bring up the rear in getting vaccinated. Ferry County is still only 43% vaccinated. Its neighbor Stevens County remains the least vaxxed place in the state, at 36%, despite 158 deaths and a rate nearly 30 times that of the San Juans.

The tragedy is that most of the deaths in these counties happened after vaccination became widely available.

image

Anecdotal. But worth looking into.

Something not mentioned is the COVID variants hitting in the later stages of the pandemic were probably less deadly. If they were able to nearly eliminate entry of the first, and perhaps most deadly, variant(s) to the island then that may have contributed to lower death rates.

Also not mentioned and necessary for a full analysis is the vaccine injury/death rates.

COVID-19 Vaccine Mandate Court Case Go Fund Me

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I received this email yesterday:

Joe,

Long time reader but not a comments kind of guy. I was hoping maybe you can contribute or share this info.

A buddy of mine is suspended without pay for refusing to get vaccinated and is currently in court over this issue. The Go Fund Me link has all the details. He is looking for financial help for the legal expenses.
I thought you might be interested in supporting this GoFundMe, https://gofund.me/511282ac.
Even a small donation could help Jonathan Lucas reach their fundraising goal. And if you can’t make a donation, it would be great if you could share the fundraiser to help spread the word.
Thanks for taking a look!

I have mixed feelings about this. Government mandates? NO WAY!!! Private mandate? Hmmm…. maybe. Your mileage may vary. I’d be interested in your thoughts.

I donated a little bit. The link given to me after my donation was https://gofund.me/cc1fcb01.

EPA approved releasing two billion mosquitos

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Interesting:

Scientists have been playing god with mosquitos for a couple of years now. Back in 2021, British company Oxitech released 750 million lab-modified mosquitos in Florida. Now, the company is gearing up to release another 2 billion genetically modified mosquitos across more of Florida and in California as well.

The new species, codenames OX5034, is made up entirely of male mosquitos. The new species is derived from the Aeses aegypti family of mosquitos. Just like others the company has released, this new 2 billion should produce female larvae that die off before they reach adulthood.

…

Despite its size, the mosquito is the world’s deadliest animal. That’s because this insect can carry multiple deadly and disabling diseases. Oxitech’s derived its new species from one notorious for carrying Zika, yellow fever, and even dengue. Other species can spread Malaria, lymphatic filariasis, and West Nile Virus.

The male larvae do not die off and will continue to produce dead female offspring.

Expect some fragment of this to be incorporated into COVID-19 vaccine conspiracy claims.

See also: What caliber for the most dangerous animal in the world?

Quote of the day—ALLAHPUNDIT

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The clearer the “memory” the immune system has, the more sophisticated the antibodies it can produce. According to new research, someone who’s had three exposures to the spike protein on the Wuhan virus via three doses of vaccine is capable of developing antibodies that can neutralize variants that didn’t exist when they were vaccinated, like Omicron. Just as the virus evolves in the wild as it passes from host to host, the T cells and B cells of someone who’s been boosted will generate more “evolved” antibodies.

And those T cells and B cells don’t fade in a matter of months like antibodies do. The latest data points to them lasting years, which means a person who’s had three doses might be equipped to avoid severe illness from the next serious variant to come down the pike even if that variant doesn’t arrive until 2025 or whatever.

ALLAHPUNDIT
February 21, 2022
New data: Protection from COVID boosters may last for years, avoiding need for fourth shot near term
[It seems to me the pandemic has focused a lot of attention on the immune system which resulted a rather rapid advance in the understanding of how it works and how to enhance it.

Two popular phrases come to mind:

  1. Every dark cloud has a sliver lining.
  2. Never let a crisis go to waste.

This mindset is applicable to many other situations.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Laura Cannizzaro Rodrigue

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What started as a temporary means to protect the community from unknown risks of a virus has turned into a circus of mandates that no longer make sense to any rational person. Enough is enough. People all over our great State who live, work, and worship in New Orleans are united in this effort to take back control of their lives and families.

Laura Cannizzaro Rodrigue
February 1, 2022
New Orleans Mayor Sued Over COVID-19 Vaccine Passports
[I’m interested to see the result of this. The entire State of Washington has a mask mandate, could such a lawsuit be successful in Washington?

Here is the legal basis in Rodrigue’s lawsuit:

This is an action for declaratory and injunctive relief challenging Defendants’ issuance and enforcement of mandates for vaccination and mask usage in the City of New Orleans in violation of individual constitutional liberties and the separation of powers. First, the vaccinate-or-test mandate violates La. Const. art, I, § 5 by infringing on the fundamental right to privacy with overly broad restricts lacking no accommodation for religious objections, personal or philosophical choice, natural immunity, medical contraindications, or the wide range of factors influencing the severity of the disease process. Second, the vaccinate-or-test mandate denies equal protection under La. Const. art. 1, § 3 by classifying persons based on vaccination status and threatening to punish the exercise of a fundamental right in order to coerce compliance. Third, the mask mandate is unconstitutionally vague and overly broad, and thus fails due process under La. Const. art. 1, § 2. Fourth the third-party enforcement provisions offend due process under La. Const. art. 1, § 2 by unlawfully conscripting private persons into the role of public enforcement officers under the threat of criminal and regulatory sanctions and the denial of municipal services. Finally, the Mayor’s emergency orders violate the separation of powers under the State constitution and the City Charter by purporting to enact law without legislative authorization.

I found this interesting and may mean such a lawsuit in other jurisdictions would fail even if this one succeeds:

Louisiana’s constitutional right to privacy “is one of the most conspicuous instances in which our citizens have chosen a higher standard of individual liberty than that afforded by the jurisprudence interpreting the federal constitution.”

…

The right to privacy under Article I, § 5 includes “the right to decide whether to obtain or reject medical treatment.”

And, of course, the city will drag their feet for months or years and try to make the case moot before it can be decided.—Joe]

Statistics experiment results

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As I requested last weekend people gave me some numbers regarding how many people they knew in the following categories:

  1. Had a reaction to a mRNA “vaccine” which resulted in an ER visit and/or hospitalization.
  2. Had a reaction to a mRNA “vaccine” which resulted in long term (two or more months) adverse effects.
  3. Had a reaction to a mRNA “vaccine” which resulted in death.
  4. Had COVID-19 which which resulted in an ER visit and/or hospitalization.
  5. Had COVID-19 which resulted in long term (two or more months) adverse effects.
  6. Had COVID-19 which resulted in death.

The raw numbers and simple statistics are:

Question 1 2 3 4 5 6
Vaccine COVID-19
ER/Hosp | Long Term | Death | ER/Hosp | Long Term | Death
1 0 0 1 1 1
0 0 0 1 1 0
  0 0 0 0 0 0
2 0 0 1 0 0
1 2 0 1 3 0
0 0 0 0 2 0
  0 1 0 1 0 2
0 0 0 0 0 1
60 0 4 1 2 0
0 0 0 0 0 1
0 0 0 0 1 0
0 0 0 0 0 0
0 0 0 1 0 0
3 0 2 1 0 0
0 0 0 0 1 2
0 0 0 0 0 2
0 0 0 1 0 1
2 2 0 0 0 0
0 2 0 3 0 0
0 0 0 0 0 0
0 0 0 0 1 1
0 0 1 1 0 1
0 1 0 0 0 2
1 5 0 2 2 0
0 0 0 0 0 0
0 1 0 0 1 1
0 0 0 1 1 1
1 0 0 1 0 0
Total 71 14 7 17 16 16
Mean 2.54 0.50 0.25 0.61 0.57 0.57
Std Dev 11.29 1.11 0.84 0.74 0.84 0.74

We have an outlier in row 9. A 60 when the mean is 2.54 (including the outlier!). This is nearly 5.1 standard deviations above the mean. If this sample were part of the same population as the rest of the samples the odds of that happening by chance are about 1 in 5.6 million. I considered keeping this row anyway and ascribe the greater numbers to a much greater set of people known. But the ratios are nowhere close to another other samples. So, for the following discussion I’m going exclude that row. You can easily modify any conclusions on your own if you want to include that row.

This gives us the following simple statistics:

Totals: 11 14 3 16 14 16
Mean 0.41 0.52 0.11 0.59 0.52 0.59
Std Dev 0.80 1.12 0.42 0.75 0.80 0.75

There is still one “vaccine” death report with a 4.46 standard deviation which one could argue is an outlier but I’m leaving it in. The numbers we are dealing with are just so small that things may look odd when they really aren’t.

At least 76% of the U.S. population, just under 250,000,000 people, has had at least one dose of one of the vaccines.

Our sample is 27 people. A rough rule of thumb is that people knows about 600 people. I think that is a bit high but let’s go for it since it is based on some evidence as opposed to my gut feel from a collection of other sources (sociological issues develop when the groups get larger than about 200). But knowing 600 is different than having a tribe of 600.

With this information our 27 reports represents about 16,200 people.

This means that the odds of dying from COVID-19 is about 16 / 16,200 or 0.099%. This is not the odds of dying once you were infected. This is the odds of dying after living through two years of the pandemic and taking whatever precautions, including vaccinations, these people engaged in.

The odds of dying from the “vaccine” is about 3 / 12,312 or 0.024%. This set of people deliberately exposed themselves to this risk which is about 1/5 the risk of dying if they were to continuing using whatever precautions to avoid being infected and dying of COVID. But these numbers are too small to have much reliability. A difference of just one less or one more changes the odds to 0.016% or 0.032%. Even the higher number is less than one third the risk of a COVID death.

This does not take into account the apparent higher risk of vaccination for young people and the higher risk of COVID death for old people and other risk factors such as obesity, etc. At some point on the curves we are likely to see the tradeoffs cross over. It is easy to imagine that a young healthy person has a higher risk of death from the vaccine than from taking some precautions and risking a COVID infection and death. Also not taken into account is the probable higher vaccination rate in those with higher risk factors.

For the long term adverse effects the odds are worse for the “vaccine” than COVID. They are 14 / 16,200 versus 14 / 12,312 or 0.086% versus 0.113%. The same caveats as in the death rates apply.

The ER/hospitalization rates are 16 / 16,200 and 11 / 12,312 or 0.099% and 0.089%. Or for our sample size, essentially the same.

My conclusions from this is that the average risk of death from COVID is significantly greater than the average risk of death from the “vaccines”. The average long term adverse effects (known at this time) are a little higher.

I have had the two Moderna shots early last year and the booster shot 10 days ago. The side effects for the first two shots were a sore arm for several days, and chills, fever and low energy for one day. The booster effect were a slightly sore arm and slightly lower energy for one day. Barb’s experience with Pfizer were essentially the same for the first two and somewhat greater than mine for the booster a couple months ago. I’m confident we made the right decisions for us. Our risk of death is now much lower and we escaped the known adverse effects of the shots.

Make the best decision you can for yourself.

What are you thinking?

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I’ve been busy recently and haven’t posted some things I wanted to weeks ago. It has come to the point I’m irritated so much that I have to say it. I’m withholding names to protect the guilty. Please don’t take offense if you decide I’m talking about you. I could be, but just because I am does not mean that I am going to shun you or am deliberately shaming you. That’s not my intent.

I’m pretty open minded about a lot of things. Reality is hard. I know that. Can we still keep things friendly even though I think you might have a circuit or two crosswired in your brain?

God? Gods? Pro-Life? Pro-Choice? I can probably argue four or more different sides to each of those questions and be reasonably convincing to the average person even though I am pretty sure which is the correct answer. Believe what you want as long as you don’t insist everyone conform to your beliefs and as far as I’m concerned we’re all good.

There are things which are less certain. Some of the UFOs (currently called Unidentified Aerial Phenomena–UAPs) are alien craft? Global warming/cooling/climate-change? The 2021 presidential election was totally rigged? Bitcoin will replace the U.S. Dollar in the next ‘N’ years? Bitcoin is a great/terrible investment? I just don’t know. I suspect the general public does not have enough information to determine an answer with a high degree of certainty to any of these questions. Again, I can probably be convincing to the average person no matter which side I wanted to take.

There are other things which are more clear cut. Actual moon landing or faked? Flat earth or spherical? 9/11 was an inside job? Sorry. You don’t get any slack from me if you start trying to convince me we don’t actually have satellites in orbit or that because steel doesn’t melt at burning jet fuel temperatures the WTC collapses had explosive help.

Let’s think about the claim all test animals for the mRNA “vaccines”* died. I first heard this several months ago and went looking for the research papers. It turns out that, at least in the papers I saw, this was true! Damning evidence, right? No.The animals died because the researchers performed necropsies on all of them. The results, that I saw in the papers I read, were that everything looked normal.

It is as if someone was trolling the general population to see how many people would draw the incorrect conclusion from factual data. Good joke! I actually laughed at the cleverness. But why would anyone persist in believing that even if they didn’t find the research papers and read them? Think about it some!

Suppose all, or even 10% of the test animals, died from the mRNA vaccine. How many researchers are going to go before their human subject testing review board** (sample of what is involved here) and say, “All the test animals died. We are going to test it on humans next.”?

Sure, there are people that think people are a plague on the earth and all humans (except perhaps others like them who are sufficient “woke”) should be exterminated. They don’t convince tens of thousands of other people to work on their project, get billions of dollars to produce and deliver their product without someone getting cold feet about the prospects and delivering overwhelming evidence to the general public of the impending doom of half the human population. Even small religious cults have people leaving and telling the dark stories from the inside.

After giving this a little thought, if you actually believe the whole mRNA “vaccines” are “Going to kill 100s of thousands (or more)” and people knew this all along, I have to ask, “Really? What are you thinking? How do determine truth from falsity? What color is the sky in your universe?”

You want to talk about VAERS data? Okay. Let’s talk about it.

You might claim there is a huge increase in adverse reactions to mRNA “vaccines” compared to all other vaccines. Yup, it’s right there for everyone to see. But, there are some things to take into account before you reach valid conclusions. Unless you received a COVID-19 immunization you probably did not know people who received the “vaccine” were encouraged to sign up to receive and fill out a survey every day for a week, then once a week for several weeks, then another after a few months. They would send a text message to (IIRC) the CDC. Then they would receive text messages with links to the surveys. They would be asked how they were feeling. They were encouraged to report even very mild stuff, like a headache or muscle stiffness. Anything that might be considered an “adverse reaction”.

Suppose, they had a headache or some stiff muscles a month later; was it because they drank a little bit too much the previous evening or were hunched over the reloading bench all afternoon? Or was it because of the vaccine? They didn’t ask about those possibilities. The CDC just wanted the “adverse reaction”. I expect the noise was to be filtered out by looking for correlation with reports from other people at week ‘N’. To the best of my knowledge this has never been done with other vaccines. If you are looking at the raw data, without the noise filtering, you are going to see a lot of noise. And the number of reports are going to be much larger than with other vaccines because maybe 100x more people received the COVID-19 shots than your normal flu, MMR, and/or tetanus vaccinations. This combined with the encouragement and easy reporting of trivial “adverse reactions” results in the raw numbers being huge.

I’ve heard things to the effect of “Bill Gates is behind it and he is evil.” Gates was ruthless as a business man. I would have had serious moral qualms doing many of the things he did to competitors. He was good to his employees. When I worked at Microsoft I had numerous people who know him far better than I do say things to the effect that he would be more than fair to employees in situations where he had no obligation to be so. I’ve know people who talked to Melinda Gates about the work done by the Gates Foundation. I know people who worked on the Gates house and had long term personal contact with Bill and Melinda. I know one woman who went on a date with him. I know a woman who volunteered at the same charity has Bill’s mother and worked with her frequently. None of them even hinted at any dark side with him or his family. He was sometimes a little odd, but this was in a geeky rather than evil genius or creepy way.

Could Gates be bankrolling the deliberate extermination of millions? The odds are extremely low. He couldn’t hire enough guards or pay them enough money to keep the angry mobs at bay once it was discovered. He is not stupid. He is not suicidal. I believe the Gates Foundation really is intended to make the world a better place for humans. There is no intent to make the world a better place without humans. It is inconsistent with everything I know about him, his family, and the foundation. I think there is enough public information for anyone to arrive at a similar conclusion without many reservations.

Do I agree with all his politics and projects? No, but I think they are well intentioned even if they are misguided or flat out wrong.

On a different tangent maybe we can work out some answers on our own without relying on information from questionable sources like random podcasts, YouTube videos, word of month, memes, and worst of all, the CDC and other government sources.

Let’s run a little statistics experiment. In the comments or by sending me an email tell me how many people you have personally met*** which meet one or more the following criteria:

  1. Had a reaction to a mRNA “vaccine” which resulted in an ER visit and/or hospitalization.
  2. Had a reaction to a mRNA “vaccine” which resulted in long term (two or more months) adverse effects.
  3. Had a reaction to a mRNA “vaccine” which resulted in death.
  4. Had COVID-19 which which resulted in an ER visit and/or hospitalization.
  5. Had COVID-19 which resulted in long term (two or more months) adverse effects.
  6. Had COVID-19 which resulted in death.

Don’t double report anyone. For example, if the person died don’t also report them as having long term adverse effects.

Here are my answers:

  • One person for item 1.
  • One person for item 4. (Added on 1/25/2022 after I remembered someone else).
  • One person for item 5.
  • One person for item 6.

Please be honest. “Stuffing the ballot box” isn’t going to change anything beyond a tiny corner of Joe’s world. And, almost for certain, the statistics will point you out as being a liar.

Next weekend I’ll collect the data and make a short report. My guess is that this little experiment will be more “interesting” than most people think it would be.

* Quoted as a deliberate concession because I don’t think that point is particularly important one way or the other.

** I had to do this for one project I worked on. I was gathering anonymous data from computers about the movement of the mouse. I was not gathering any information about what applications they were using or even if they clicked the mouse. I only collected timestamps and the position of the mouse at that time. It took weeks and answering lots of questions to get approval.

*** This needs to be carefully defined to get valid results. Consider “personally met” as meaning you were, at least once, in the same room/location as them and there is a good chance they would remember you as well as you remembering them. My brother’s niece, on his wife side of the family, who I have never met, having serious complications from COVID-19 linger after a year doesn’t count.

COVID-19 treated by Amorphous Calcium Carbonate

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It’s a small sample size but the results are looking extremely good:

All 18 COVID-19 patients hospitalized with moderate or severe symptoms who received the drug Amor-18 developed by Israeli biotech company Amorphical recovered and were discharged in a few days, the company announced on Wednesday. Of the 19 individuals who were given a placebo, six had to be transferred to intensive care, and two died.

As part of compassionate care, two other patients in a very serious condition were given the drug. Both recovered and were discharged.

“Since the patients treated with the drug recovered within a few days and were released to their home, this was 100% successful,” said Dr. Nashat Abu Saleh, co-director of the coronavirus department at Ziv Medical Center in Safed, where the phase II clinical trial was conducted.

…

Amor-18, which uses Amorphous Calcium Carbonate (ACC) as the main ingredient, was administered orally or by inhalation. As explained by the company, ACC has the ability to modulate acidic pH changes around each cell. These changes affect the capability of COVID-19 to penetrate the cells and replicate. This allows the drug to prevent the virus from spreading and thus the patients from deteriorating.

It looks as if it is available as a dietary supplement. It is more expensive than I had expected but it is available now and without a prescription

If all the above is true this is going to be some serious competition to the big pharma drugs.

Quote of the day—Dr. Monica Gandhi

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I think the mRNA vaccine technology is going to have a huge role to play for other pathogens. The mRNA platform allows the human host to generate a protein of the virus or other pathogen to which to raise an immune response, and has been revolutionary for COVID-19. So, after trying so many other vaccine candidates before for HIV without success, this is a very promising platform to hopefully reach this elusive goal.

Dr. Monica Gandhi
December 15, 2021
Scientists are closing in on an HIV vaccine
[I remember when AIDS first hit the news. People didn’t even know if it was a virus. Just like all the different theories about COVID and the vaccines today there were strange things believed by people about AIDS. I remember one guy who claimed there were studies which proved K-Y Jelly caused it. The better known conspiracy theory is that it was a man-made pathogen created to exterminate homosexual men.

Of course it has been conclusively proven that it is a virus, named HIV, and it is believed to have originated in non-human primates in West-central Africa. Back in the early 1980’s I expected, “They will get this figured out in a couple years.” Forty years later yet another “promising vaccine” is in the works. And it will have all, and perhaps more, of the baggage carried by the mRNA COVID vaccines.

Looking at the parallels of the conspiracy theories associated with this pandemic and AIDS, I have to wonder if the resolutions will have a similar time decay constant.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Scott Adams @ScottAdamsSays

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My biggest worry is that some country will become 100% vaccinated and soon discover that 100% of the people who die from any cause were recently vaccinated.

Scott Adams @ScottAdamsSays
Tweeted on December 7, 2021
[+1.

I have seen the same sort of thing from some anti-vax memes going around. Yes, it’s probably true. But it is very deceptive. I don’t have the time to correct everyone and everything that is wrong on the Internet so I just roll my eyes and move on. I’ll let Darwin take care of them at a more leisurely pace.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Brandon Smith

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I will not comply with your illegitimate mandates. IT-WILL-NEVER-HAPPEN. And if you think you can use leverage to force me to comply, threatening me with poverty and death through economic discrimination, then I will view your actions for what they are – An attack on my freedoms and my life. I will therefore respond in kind and eliminate the threat by any means necessary, and, I will be justified in doing so, constitutionally, rationally, scientifically and morally.

Covid cultists like Chomsky, most of them leftists and socialists, should keep this in mind as they continue down this path. They think that the greater good is on their side but this is a fantasy driven by their own hunger for dominance. The question you need to ask yourselves is this: Do you really think your desire to force the mandates and your political ideology on me is greater than my will to stop you and remain free? Are you ready to risk death to impose the vax mandates? Because I am ready to risk death to end them.

Brandon Smith
November 4, 2021
Noam Chomsky Goes Off The Deep End – Proving That All Socialism Leads To Tyranny
[See also what Solzhenitsyn, Thoreau, and I have said about intentions.

Update: Add C.S. Lewis to the list.—Joe]

Ugly behavior

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Via email from Chet who says, “The crack down/revolt is just beginning”:

Education leaders decry ‘ugly’ behavior by attendees at Washington state school board meetings

It wasn’t their mask mandate to make, but school officials are getting the heat all the same.

…

To reduce the chances for these types of conflicts, some school districts have resorted to calling the police preemptively to monitor meetings, Aune said, or moved their meetings online. The Seattle School Board, seeing cases arise across the state and country, brought on extra security to monitor in-person meetings and escort staff back to their cars over the summer, said Chandra Hampson, the board’s president. To make sure there was enough security at schools when the year began, the board briefly returned to remote sessions. Meetings will resume in person later this month.

Across the country, there have been similar displays, prompting the National Association of School Boards to call for the involvement of the FBI, the Department of Justice and other law enforcement authorities.

While I think a lot of the “facts” quoted by the anti-vax and anti-mask people are taken out of context and/or distorted the politicians believing they have the legitimate power to shut down the economy and force people to accept injections get zero support from me. In fact, I’m sometimes cheering on those opposing the politicians even though I think the opposition is for the wrong reasons.

We live in interesting times. The “ugly behavior” is likely to get uglier on all sides. Prepare appropriately.

Quote of the day—Julius Ruechel

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What other social engineering goals can be rolled into your annual booster shot in the future once you are permanently bound to these annual jabs and vaccine passports? In an atmosphere of hysteria, it’s a system ripe for abuse by opportunists, ideologues, power hungry totalitarians, and Malthusian social engineers. The snowball doesn’t have to grow by design. Mission creep happens all on its own once Pandora’s Box is opened to coerced vaccinations and conditional rights. The road to Hell is frequently paved by good intentions… and hysteria.

Julius Ruechel
September 2, 2021
The Snake-Oil Salesmen and the COVID-Zero Con: A Classic Bait-And-Switch for a Lifetime of Booster Shots (Immunity as a Service)
[Via email from Rolf.

I’m far more inclined to believe there is “mission creep” without “design” rather than a well executed grand conspiracy. Not that it makes all that much difference except, perhaps, in the penalty phase of their trials.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Leana S. Wen

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President Biden’s much-hyped new strategy for fighting covid-19 is a tepid half-measure that falls short of the dramatic reset the country needs. The six-pronged strategy announced on Thursday can be summarized as “more of the same” — these are good steps in the right direction, but they’re not enough to get the job done.

…

Biden needs to acknowledge that we have reached the end of the line when it comes to asking individuals to get vaccinated. We’ve tried education, incentives and appealing to people’s patriotic duty. It’s not working. Now is the time for mandates, with the federal government using the full extent of its authority.

Leana S. Wen
September 9, 2021
Biden’s six-step covid strategy does not go far enough to compel vaccinations
[As President Biden said:

This is not about freedom or personal choice.

Actually, it is about freedom and personal choice. And the lack of authority of the executive branch to create law without going through the legislative branch. And the lack of constitutionality authority for the Federal government to force the injection of foreign substances into individuals without consent.

In short, this action is clearly illegal. It violates 18 USC 242 and probably numerous other laws.

Of course, the courts may not see this as clearly as the rest of us.

If the President has this authority then he also has the authority to force the injection of an abortifacient, a birth control drug, implant fertilized eggs, or sterilize those deemed unfit to reproduce (see previous link). We are no longer considered individuals with inalienable rights. We are little different from cattle in their treatment (no pun intended) of us.

For decades I believed the most likely spark to start Civil War II would be something related to guns. I now think the insanity over forced vaccinations could nudge out gun control.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Thomas Abt

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Everything we know about evidence-based violence interruption says you have to interact directly with the highest-risk individuals. And that’s true for police, but that’s also true for all sorts of community services, including but not limited to street outreach. So for all of these individuals who are at the highest risk, all of a sudden, all of those services stop because of the physical distancing mandates.

Thomas Abt
August 2, 2021
What Philadelphia Reveals About America’s Homicide Surge
[Ahh… This can explain the rise in violent crime over the last year or so. I had not had a good hypothesis for what was going on. This sounds quite plausible.—Joe]