SCIENCE! – Page 28

SECOND wave?

Posted on June 27, 2020June 28, 2020 by Mike

There never was a first one—not that remotely resembled the pig in a poke we were sold, anyway.

The coronavirus doomsayers could not even wait until the fall for the apocalyptic announcements of the dreaded second wave. Because the red states recklessly loosened their lockdowns, we are now told, the US is seeing a dangerous spike in coronavirus cases. ‘EXPERTS SKETCH GLOOMY PICTURE OF VIRUS SPREAD: FAUCI TELLS OF “DISTURBING” WAVE, WITH A VACCINE MONTHS AWAY,’ read the front-page lead headline in the New York Times on Wednesday. ‘VIRUS SPREAD AKIN TO “FOREST FIRE”’ read another front page headline in the Los Angeles Times on Monday, quoting Michael Osterholm, one of the media’s favorite public health experts. Osterholm had told NBC’s Meet the Press: ‘I’m actually of the mind right now — I think this is more like a forest fire. I don’t think that this is going to slow down.’

The ‘this’ is an uptick in daily new cases from 19,002 on June 9 to 38,386 on June 24. The high to date in new daily cases was on April 24 — 39,072. Since April 24, the daily case count started declining, then began rising again after around June 9. What virtually every fear-mongering story on America’s allegedly precarious situation leaves out, however, is the steadily dropping daily death numbers — from a high of 2,693 on April 21 to 808 on June 24. That April high was driven by New York City and its environs; those New York death numbers have declined, but they have not been replaced by deaths in the rest of the country. This should be good news. Instead, it is no news.

There are no crises in hospital capacity anywhere in the country. Nursing homes, meat-packing plants, and prisons remain the main sources of new infections. Half the states are seeing cases decline or hold steady. Case counts are affected by more testing; the positive infection rate captured by testing is declining. The current caseload is younger, which is a good thing. The more people who have been infected and who recover, the more herd immunity is created. Meanwhile, daily deaths from heart disease and cancer — about 3,400 a day combined — go ignored in the press.

From all I’ve seen, the “exploding” number of case counts currently threatening to exterminate all life on Earth (almost all of which cases are asymptomatic) closely tracks with the huge increase in testing, which only stands to reason. Hey, anybody out there remember when our masters were saying America dared not reopen until more testing was done? It was the second subterfuge they used to extend their usurpation of freedom, right after “flatten the curve” and before the ludicrous “not until there’s a vaccine.” Of course, it was a lie; all three of these stalling tactics were, along with pretty much everything else they’ve said about this phony crisis. But still—good times, good times.

More inconvenient truths, actual data, and genuine science that will be ignored in favor of continued Commie opression:

Early in the epidemic, public-health experts feared the virus might kill up to 2 percent of those infected, potentially causing millions of deaths in the United States and tens of millions worldwide. Those terrifying estimates prompted the lockdowns that have done incalculable harm to the economy, shattered small businesses and left children traumatized and untold numbers suffering from brutal isolation.

In fact, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimated in May that the coronavirus kills about 0.26 percent of the people it infects, about 1 in 400 people. New estimates from Sweden suggest that only 1 in 10,000 people under 50 will die from the virus, compared to 1 in 14 of people over 80 and 1 in 6 of those over 90.

To be sure, these estimates still have some uncertainty. The actual figure could be as low as 0.1 percent or as high as 0.4 to 0.5 percent, though treatment advances should mean it will trend lower over time. Even at 0.26 percent, the rate is still significantly higher than influenza most years, more comparable to a bad flu strain like the 1968 Hong Kong flu.

But it is far lower than we initially thought — a fact that should be cause for celebration.

Instead, some media outlets insist on using the out-of-date estimates that are much higher. For example, an ESPN article this week said public discussions about reopening the National Football League were “ignoring a mortality rate that has been estimated at 1.4 percent.” That figure is more than five times the CDC’s best estimate. Even more jarring, it is more than 100 times the actual risk to people in their 20s and 30s — the age range for nearly all NFL players.

Using those overstated estimates is a recipe for panic, bad public policy — and continued lockdowns that may delay to return to normality.

Let’s hope that isn’t the reason people in the media are using them.

OF COURSE it’s the reason, you big silly. What other reason could there be? What, you think the same Enemedia that tripped over itself to gleefully praise the national spree of urban violence and destruction is all of a sudden suffused with concern about a clear and serious danger to the health and well-being of Americans or something? Gedouddahere, willya.

The COVID shamdemic was much ado about very little all along, the proof of which is mounting every single day. And you can be sure that the Clampdown is going to continue, with onerous restrictions and requirements; patently illegal and unconstitutional decrees; a total rejiggering of our routines, habits, and daily lives without our consent; and an ongoing metastasization of the Amerikan police/surveillance state and its authoritarian powers, regardless of what the science is telling us. Perhaps that might provide a sharpish hint as to what this is really about, no?

WE. HAVE. BEEN. HAD. They fully intend to bend us over and have us again, too—in the exact same way, using the exact same lies as their justification. If we passively allow it to happen, then we deserve no better, and never really did.

(Both via Insty)

Update! Lest we forget: even the underwhelming reported body count is a sham.

Dr. Deborah Birx, the respected physician who heads the Trump administration’s coronavirus team, reportedly argued back in May at a closed Centers for Disease Control meeting that the agency’s death estimates were 25% too high, according to a Washington Post report.

Anecdotal evidence at the state level suggests this is true. In fact, estimates may be off by more than 25%.

…But the fact remains: The death totals are almost certainly grossly exaggerated due to intentional miscounting. There are strong incentives to over-report, but few to under-report.

The Centers for Disease Control admits as much in its June 24 update of the data:

“For 7% of the deaths, COVID-19 was the only cause mentioned. For deaths with conditions or causes in addition to COVID-19, on average, there were 2.5 additional conditions or causes per death.”

So in only one in 14 deaths out of the current total of 125,000 can COVID-19 be said to be the actual cause.

As grotesque a manipulation as all that is, though, it’s just the tip of the deception and hype iceberg:

This Issues & Insights editorial (cited above—M) does a good job of bringing together some of the relevant data. But let’s start with something they didn’t mention: this acknowledgement by the Director of the Illinois Department of Public Health:

I just want to be clear in terms of the definition of people dying of COVID. So, the case definition is very simplistic. It means that at the time of death it was a COVID-positive diagnosis. So that means if you were in hospice and had already been given, you know, a few weeks to live and then you were also found to have COVID, that would be counted as a COVID death. It means that if, technically, even if you died of a clear alternate cause but you had COVID at the same time it’s still listed as a COVID death. So, everyone that’s listed as a COVID death doesn’t mean that that was the cause of the death, but they had COVID at the time of death.

That certainly is clarifying.

Ain’t it, though. Ain’t it just. John finishes up:

Why is this important? Because in all likelihood, the actual Wuhan fatality rate is not much different from a relatively virulent seasonal flu. Every year, the seasonal flu bug kills tens of thousands of Americans. Just two years ago, the CDC says it killed 62,000–and that was without a Medicare spiff or other pressures to build up the numbers. The reality is, I think, that in response to the COVID-19 epidemic, we devastated our economy–which means that we devastated tens or hundreds of millions of lives–needlessly.

So what do we do next year, or the year after? It is a virtual certainty that during next year’s flu season, absent a comprehensive shutdown, and perhaps with a shutdown, tens of thousands of Americans will die, and have their deaths attributed to that virus. COVID-19 presumably will still be active and will add to the total. There are powerful forces in our society that yearn to shut down economic activity and thereby increase poverty, unemployment and dependence on government. Those forces likely control the Democratic Party, which could well be in charge of the Executive Branch in January.

Without any track record of sensible risk assessment, what will stand in the way of another shutdown next Winter? Or the year after that? The case for hysteria will be more or less as strong as it was this year.

The case was never strong at all. The problem is that enough of us are weak, cowardly, and stupid enough to let them get away with it anyway.

And because of that stupidity, cowardice, and total absence of any will whatsoever to resist the abridging of Constitutional rights and freedoms they neither appreciate nor understand, you can count on occasional shutdowns, masks, social distancing, one-way grocery store aisles and bare shelves, plastic sneeze-guards between you and the cashier, and the rest of the Commie rot as now being integral parts of our New American Life. Those things and more were always on Big Boss Man’s wish list, and now that he’s seen how easy it was to get ’em, only a fool would think he’ll ever give them up.

Stalin could only dream of having a slave class as docile and compliant as present-day America’s.

The science is settled, the facts are in

Posted on June 26, 2020June 26, 2020 by Mike

COVID is a sham, and masks are the bunk.

I wore surgical masks daily for 36 years as an anesthesiologist. Their purpose was to reduce the chance that I would infect an open wound with bacteria from my mouth. This article of faith has been shown to be false. If staff who are working outside of the immediate sterile field do not wear masks, there is no increase in wound infections. And this is in a closed environment where staff will be present for hours. This casts a very large cloud of doubt on the utility of masks for COVID-19.

Another problem arises when we look at the use of masks by the public. Even accepting the uncertain premise that masks are useful, “incorrect use and disposal may actually increase the risk of pathogen transmission, rather than reduce it, especially when masks are used by non-professionals such as the lay public.” Given that most “masks” are simply kept handy for use when required, set aside, and then re-used, most mask-wearing by the public is likely to increase virus exposure, not reduce it.

But do properly used surgical masks reduce disease spread in the general public? To say there are almost no data would not be overstating the case. When households with sick kids were examined, even rigorous mask-wearing provided no statistically significant improvement in adult infections.

Let’s put that in plain English. Even if you did everything to protect yourself with surgical masks, even keeping it on when your kid wants to see your face, it might reduce your chance of getting sick, but we can’t prove it. And that’s in a well designed study intended to get a meaningful result. “[H]ousehold use of face masks is associated with low adherence and is ineffective for controlling seasonal respiratory disease” (emphasis added).

What about homemade cloth masks? In a study using influenza, masks made from cotton T-shirts “should only be considered as a last resort to prevent droplet transmission from infected individuals.” They were only one third as effective when worn by the sick person as a surgical mask. If you’re sick, they’re better than nothing, but that’s not much. The CDC says, “Cloth face coverings may slow the spread of the virus and help people who may have the virus and do not know it from transmitting it to others.” Translation: It might help, but we don’t have any data to back that up.

As we can see from other studies, even surgical masks have minimal benefit in preventing you from getting sick. This was confirmed in a hospital study. Cloth masks had a “relative risk” of flu infection thirteen times greater than medical masks. “Moisture retention, reuse of cloth masks and poor filtration may result in increased risk of infection.”

What about the fabled N95 respirator masks? “Respirators work as PPE only when they are the right size and have been fit-tested to demonstrate they achieve an adequate protection factor.” Translation: If you haven’t gone through the fit-testing I’ve been through (the first model didn’t fit!), N95s won’t reduce your exposure to the virus. Sorry.

Of course, smarmy, grasping little pétit dictators like NC’s own Comrade Cooper almost certainly know all this, and issue royal decrees mandating universal mask use anyway. Might there be an explanation for that, you ask? Oh, there certainly might at that.

Merriam-Webster defines pseudo-science as “a system of theories, assumptions, and methods erroneously regarded as scientific.” The Oxford dictionary clarifies by stating, “a collection of beliefs or practices mistakenly regarded as being based on scientific method.“

Pseudo-science quickly emerged as the principal domain of Technocrats, but they soon found that scientific debate with those promoting real science was most inconvenient to their social engineering goals. The solution was simple: claim that their own pseudo-science was indeed the real science, and then refuse debate by excluding all other voices to the contrary.

The American public is being spoon-fed a steady diet of pseudo-science in order to justify the wearing of face masks, social distancing and contact tracing. Yet, the actual science points in the polar opposite direction.

Furthermore, those who try to present the real science are shamed, ridiculed and bullied for having such narrow-minded views.

This is a clear sign of Technocrats-at-work. Instead, these are the ones who should be exposed, shamed and ridiculed.

In sum, these dangerous and destructive policies are designed to curtail economic activity, break down social cohesion and control people.

There you have it, folks. And yet somehow, as I always say, here we all are.

A lot of egg, on a lot of faces

Posted on June 17, 2020June 17, 2020 by Mike

Still waiting for the mass apologies that are due for inflicting the COVID idiocy on all of us. Not holding my breath, naturally.

In the early days of the pandemic, there was debate over whether lockdowns were worth the economic costs. Now, with months of data, we know the verdict: Lockdowns did very little to save lives, were not worth their economic costs, and their collateral damage could lead to far more deaths worldwide due to social turmoil and disruptions in medical care and food supplies.

The COVID-19 lockdowns may be one of the biggest medical and economic blunders of all time, and those who supported them may have a hard time reconciling their past views with new data. However, it’s not too late to have an open mind.

It’s understandable that so many people were early supporters of lockdowns when fear and panic drowned out data and reason. We should not, however, be so forgiving of experts who led us astray, nor to leaders who were so quick to destroy people’s livelihoods without strong evidence, without due process, and without full consideration for the unintended medical, societal, and economic consequences of their decisions; all this for a virus which the CDC now estimates has a survival rate above 99.9% for people under 65.

As the world awakens to how fear and panic drove unnecessary lockdowns, we will also witness political fallout as leaders are exposed for how they turned medical decisions into political ones. For example, U.K. political leaders and their scientific advisers are now pointing fingers at each other over who was behind the quarantine policy.

The Danish Health Authority is also trying to exonerate itself from Denmark’s March 13 lockdown order after a leaked March 15 email stated: “The Danish Health Authority continues to consider that COVID-19 cannot be described as a generally dangerous disease, as it does not have either an usually serious course or a high mortality rate.”

Lots, lots more here, all of it adding up to one thing:

It is early and we don’t yet know exactly how this will play out, but the false narrative of lockdowns and the efficacy of their underlying models is disintegrating by the day.

The Clampdown isn’t about any silly-assed virus, and as time goes on I begin to doubt that it ever was at all. It was about an opportunity for the authoritarians to flex their muscles, to see what they could get away. Sadly, that turned out to be one hell of a lot, as millions of purported “Americans” proved all too eager to take counsel of their cowardice and throw away what precious little liberty they still enjoyed.

But the signs were all there almost from the very beginning, and they still abound, as those same authoritarians who piously proclaimed all along that they were only “following the science” double down on fascism yet again, despite the actual science now serving to expose them for what they really were all along. To wit:

Mecklenburg leaders pushed for a mask mandate Tuesday as coronavirus cases and hospitalizations continue to escalate in the county, and asked county health officials to return with an official recommendation by next week.

County commissioners say cloth face coverings are crucial in preventing COVID-19 outbreaks — and could be the deciding factor in avoiding another stay-at-home order.

The Raleigh City Council made a similar step Tuesday toward possibly implementing a mask mandate. In Durham and Orange counties, residents already are required to wear face coverings in public settings where social distancing may be difficult.

Looking like three hots and a cot, bread and water, and steady work making license plates and/or picking up roadside trash are in my near future, I’m afraid. Because I ain’t putting on no face diaper, and I do not give a skinny shit what some whey-faced, lying commie—be he in Charlotte, Raleigh, or Washington—may require of me.

Arbitrary update! Bullshit, plain and simple.

When he announced on May 1 that masks would be worn in public places, Massachusetts governor Charlie Baker was emphatic.

“We view this as common sense. This is going to be basically a way of life. No ifs, no ands, no buts, no doubts.”

Yeah, go fuck yourself, little Stalin.

First, Baker’s order said to wear face coverings when in public places and unable to keep a social distance of six feet. Why’d he pick six feet? There is no research showing that six feet means anything in a public space.

That six-foot idea is an arbitrary guess that was “conjured up out of nowhere,” according to Professor Robert Dingwall, a top scientific adviser to the British government, which like the U.S. has adopted six feet as a safe social distance. The authorities guessed that it might be a good distance because some study had shown that a cough could travel six feet in a tightly closed dead-air space. The relevance of that to everyday life — who knows?

Anyone claiming the six-foot rule is not arbitrary should explain why the World Health Organization suggests a three-foot distance and why Austria, Norway, Sweden, and Finland have adopted that rule, and why Germany and other countries use a 4.5-foot rule. Does the coronavirus behave differently in Europe?

Second, the order never defined public places. Did it mean indoors or outdoors? No one knew, and Baker probably didn’t know himself. It seemed as if he was talking about indoor spaces with other people nearby. However, upon hearing Baker’s poorly defined order, anxious people extended it and ran with it. Suddenly, we saw multitudes wearing masks and bandannas everywhere, even when it didn’t make sense because no one was around. They jogged and rode bikes with them on, walked in the parks with them, wore them in their cars. When crossing a street alone, carrying groceries home, or even climbing mountains, they burdened themselves with all kinds of masks.

The disease isn’t contagious in the open air, but the mask-wearing anxiety sure is.

Not at my house, it ain’t.

Not knowing about this disease, people anxiously want to do something. Eight weeks ago, it was buying mountains of toilet paper, and today it’s needless masks. There’s social pressure — the unanimity is worrisome. And Governor Charlie Baker is looking at you. And there are busybodies who will be masked when they light into you. Yikes.

Oh, how I hope one of them tries. They’re gonna get one hell of a lot more than they bargained for.

Mask-wearing is not benign, either. (1) Masked faces feel hostile because you can see no relaxation or smile in the person you’re facing. (2) People feel disconnected, and a national survey shows that depression and suicidal thoughts are way up. (3) Public misbehavior is amplified when actors are anonymous — riots, anyone?

People make mistakes, but rigidly sticking with a mistake is inexcusable.

It is that, at minimum. High time Real Americans stopped excusing them, then, and started confronting and defying them instead, openly and aggressively. There’s way more at stake now than any health concerns, real or imaginary, can account for.

Fake, phony, fraud

Posted on June 12, 2020June 12, 2020 by Mike

Much ado about very little.

The Covid-19 death toll may be less than half of what has been recorded because many victims of the pandemic would have died soon anyway, one of Britain’s leading medics has said.

Professor Karol Sikora, a senior oncologist who has built a huge Twitter following for his positive takes on the virus crisis, said doctors were sometimes too eager to put Covid-19 on death certificates.

Speaking to The Telegraph’s Planet Normal podcast – which you can listen to on the player above – Prof Sikora said the virus would be mentioned on death certificates when there was “any hint” that it could have been the cause, without proof, as well as retrospectively over the phone.

The total number of deaths, rather than what is on the death certificates, should be used to judge the impact of the virus, he said, estimating the real death toll to be 20,000 to 30,000.

He said: “It could end up that more people have died because of lack of medical care directly caused by the unavailability of it, because its facilities have been taken over for Covid.

“If we look at the numbers, how many people have really died from Covid that wouldn’t be dead at the end of the year? The numbers vary enormously. The current ONS data suggests 60,000 people have died from Covid. I’m sure that’s not really the case, it’s because of the counting we discussed earlier.”

Ahh, but even though our masters temporarily suspended the COVIDIOT panic so as to allow for the Black Lies Murder/PantiFa riots, don’t dream it’s over. Sundance sees what’s coming.

If we think they’ve thrown the kitchen sink at us, just wait. The Trump campaign has announced the restart of Keep America Great rallies to begin in Tulsa Oklahoma on June 19th. And with that announcement we can immediately predict the apparatus of the resistance forces will once again start pushing the COVID-19 narrative.

My response, SCREW ‘EM.

I refuse to live on my knees.

“Rally to the standard” is a call to arms when a situation is critical, there is no time for lengthy debate, and optimal solutions are needed. The COVID-19 virus was weaponized for political purposes against us and our economy. Nothing they attempt now to try and retake that position should be taken seriously.

Given their overlong record of incompetence, dishonesty, and utter failure, I can scarcely believe how seriously they were taken the first time, myself. The simple truth:

Is there going to be a second wave? Maybe. It doesn’t matter. We know enough about COVID-19 to realize that it’s not an excuse to continue to destroy the economy and send people into destitution. It’s not enough of a threat to destroy jobs, tank companies, and push people into another panic. We need precautions for the most vulnerable among us, namely the elderly and those with preexisting conditions. For the rest of us, we need (the) freedom to live our lives, go to work, go to church, or essentially whatever else we want to do.

It’s about choice. Just because lockdowns are not implemented again doesn’t mean people will be forced to venture forth into the coronavirus-ridden world if they prefer to stay locked down. But their choice to stay at home should not influence our choice to live our lives. The coronavirus didn’t kill the initial estimate of 2.2 million. It didn’t come close. It wasn’t a nothingburger, but it was nowhere near the existential threat we were told it would be.

Patriots need to stand strong against the next wave of lockdown attempts by government. Those of us in blue states or Democratic-majority cities need to be especially vocal with our unwillingness to comply with draconian mandates. We need to protest and take it to the courts if necessary. We need to engage in civil disobedience at times, and that doesn’t mean riot like the left is wont to do. We don’t need more riots. We need more common sense, and fighting Lockdowns 2.0 is a common sense play.

The fight isn’t over. We must keep the pressure up and make sure Democrats and mainstream media know we’re not going to fall for their fearmongering this time. Whether there’s a second wave or not, we must stand strong against authoritarianism.

We ought to be doing that anyway—continually, reflexively, every day and in every way.

Another thing we very much need to do is to stop granting the premise of the nefarious panic-mongers: squirming around about how we can reopen for business and still “maintain adequate social distancing,” “providing hand sanitizer,” wearing masks, etc—as if we were children begging an indulgence from mom and dad by making extravagant promises about what good little boys and girls we’ll surely be.

To hell with all that rot. Anyone who must beg his masters to grant him a little bit of freedom has already lost it. The Clampdown was an outrageous affront to American Constitutional principles; our supine response provided a grim demonstration of exactly how moribund that document really is…and why. The state and local officials who imposed those illegal edicts far exceeded their legitimate authority, and of right ought to be punished severely for that audacious power-grab. I could be wrong, but I’m pretty certain groveling and forelock-tugging about “safety” is NOT the way to go about that.

Defiance, not compliance, people. It’s the American way. Or it was.

It’s DIFF’RUNT when they do it, see

Posted on June 5, 2020June 5, 2020 by Mike

Anybody out there still kidding themselves that the phony Coronavirus Doomsday ploy was anything other than a head fake, a subterfuge?

This is insane and has no rational or scientific basis. pic.twitter.com/2Cdiw2r4tL

— Dodd (@Amuk3) June 5, 2020

The riots and looting will probably begin to lose steam and gutter out over the next several days, having served their purpose as successfully as the last one did. Which leads me to wonder what the next Deep State/Left/Democrat-Socialist maneuver is going to be. You can be sure that they already have one planned and ready to go.

No mas(k)

Posted on May 19, 2020May 19, 2020 by Mike

Remember what I said the other day about my personal feelings on the wearing of N95 masks for non-surgical purposes?

Yeah. About that.

Every Karen on Facebook is shaming her neighbors for not wearing a face mask. We are being told by governors that if we don’t wear masks we are selfish, horrible human beings with no souls who want Grandma to die a horrible death. Police are tackling people who don’t wear face masks properly in the subway. Grocery stores are throwing maskless people out and denying them service.

But now, there’s another doctor weighing in—besides Dr. Fauci, bonafide sex god and ruler of us all, who also said face masks are largely security theater and of no use to the healthy. Dr. Russell Blaylock, a neurosurgeon, has written an editorial saying that “masks pose serious risks to the healthy.”

First, Blaylock says, there is no scientific evidence that masks are effective against COVID-19 transmission. Pro-science people should care about this.

Beyond the lack of scientific data to support wearing a mask as a deterrent to a virus, Blaylock says the more pressing concern is what can and will happen to the wearer.

Now that we have established that there is no scientific evidence necessitating the wearing of a face mask for prevention, are there dangers to wearing a face mask, especially for long periods? Several studies have indeed found significant problems with wearing such a mask. This can vary from headaches, to increased airway resistance, carbon dioxide accumulation, to hypoxia, all the way to serious life-threatening complications.

Blaylock says studies have also shown that face masks impair oxygen intake dramatically, potentially leading to serious problems.

The importance of these findings is that a drop in oxygen levels (hypoxia) is associated with an impairment in immunity. Studies have shown that hypoxia can inhibit the type of main immune cells used to fight viral infections called the CD4+ T-lymphocyte.

This occurs because the hypoxia increases the level of a compound called hypoxia inducible factor-1 (HIF-1), which inhibits T-lymphocytes and stimulates a powerful immune inhibitor cell called the Tregs. This sets the stage for contracting any infection, including COVID-19 and making the consequences of that infection much graver. In essence, your mask may very well put you at an increased risk of infections and if so, having a much worse outcome.

In other words, if you wear a face mask and contract some sickness, you will not be able to fight it off as effectively as if you had normal blood oxygen levels. The mask could make you sicker. It could also create a “deadly cytokine storm” in some.

That’s plenty good enough for me. Our state kommissar Comrade Cooper can issue whatever decrees he likes, but I’m content to leave the wearing of surgical masks to the pros, thenksveddymuch.

Sick and tired

Posted on May 11, 2020 by Mike

Of our free 30-day trial of Communism. Among other things.

I don’t know about anyone else, but I am finding that my patience is running thin with everything that is going on with the virus. I’ve never been much of a television watcher, but I still catch Tucker’s monologue a few times a week. I’ve stopped that this week as I cannot take another ad from a corporation telling me how much they care and how hard they are working on my behalf. I can’t take anymore nonsense about hero nurses and doctors. In fact, I’m starting to become a nursist.

Know what I’ve grown weary of myself? The sudden emergence of a new vapid, ubiquitous catchphrase for bidding farewell to strangers and/or passing acquaintances alike: “Be safe!” Before, we endured “Have a good one!” with gritted teeth. That one was plenty bad enough if you ask me. Now we’re stuck with this one, God help us.

Going outside has now become a depressing reminder that we now live in an explicitly authoritarian society. It used to be a very soft, passive-aggressive authoritarianism that you could ignore while enjoying your life. Now it is an in-your-face corporate authoritarianism that is impossible to ignore.

Well, yeah. It’s kinda hard to ignore a brand of authoritarianism that orders you to remain in your house indefinitely and summarily removes your ability to make a living, after all.

It is tempting to think that people will finally have enough and put an end to this madness, but that is a fantasy. The few brave souls taking a stand are getting support, for sure, but the bulk of the public is happy to be treated like children. You can be sure the majority oppose the protests at state capitals. Until the food runs out and the machine breaks, people will accept unlimited torment. That means we are left to hope for the end times if we want to escape this madness.

Pretty much, I’m afraid. In fact, as the COVIDIOT panic rapidly recedes in light of a manifest dearth of mass graves, rotting corpses stacked like cordwood and left to fester and ooze on city streets, and the complete breakdown of an overwhelmed health-care system, I’m seeing a perplexing surge in the number of people in masks.

Alas, though, like “Be safe!,” social distancing, and an annual lockdown as an ongoing test to gauge whatever might be left of American defiance and resolve, I suspect the masks are going to be with us from now on—an abiding thing, the New Normal. The sad, sorry truth is that we’ve let the Regulators get their fangs into us deeply. They’ve gotten the taste of blood in their mouths; like the vampires they are, they like it, and you can be sure they’ll be back for more.

Another two-month free trial

Posted on May 5, 2020May 5, 2020 by Mike

“Forward, the Light Brigade!”
Was there a man dismayed?
Not though the soldier knew
Someone had blundered.

After a two-month trial, researchers are collecting early outcomes of the Great American Social Distancing Experiment of 2020.

The results, to say the least, ain’t pretty—and the “experts” who initiated this experiment on 330 million well-meaning but unwitting test subjects are starting to admit failure.

“Wait. An experiment?” you may ask. But we have been assured by the credentialed class that keeping a distance of six feet between healthy people for weeks on end was the only tried-and-true way to prevent the deadly spread of the novel coronavirus. No way would the government shutter public schools and colleges for five months, bankrupt small businesses, send tens of millions to the unemployment line, jeopardize the nation’s food supply chain, prevent children from comforting dying parents and grandparents, and subject their fellow countrymen to soul-crushing house arrest for the first time in U.S. history if the so-called “social distancing” guidance hadn’t been carefully vetted over time, you might insist.

Certainly every variable and every side effect of social distancing has been factored into this economy-crashing “mitigation” strategy, right?

I’m sure you all already know the answer to that one.

The country, we now know, is undergoing an experiment to which we never consented: Further, it is as much a political and social experiment as a public health one. The short term results are not what the experts predicted but their lab rats—the American people—are suffering traumatic side effects that could last for years. And unfortunately, like most experts, instead of conceding they had it all wrong and walking away from the failed experiment, they insist they just need a little more time to make it work.

But this experiment needs to end, immediately. Cases continue to rise despite the lockdowns; hospitals are not overwhelmed, nor were they ever (with a few exceptions). The overall death count is inflated; it appears that COVID-19 is asymptomatic for most people and far less lethal than originally predicted. And the economy is in tatters with more bad news on the horizon.

The history of science, sadly, is littered with bad experiments gone horribly wrong. The Great Social Distancing Experiment of 2020, when it is over, will very likely be toward the top of that list.

Ah well, the story didn’t end too well for the Light Brigade, either.

Land of the treed, home of the craven

Posted on May 2, 2020May 2, 2020 by Mike

We are being conditioned to accept the bit. The truly nauseating thing is how very many of us ARE accepting it—when they’re not actively demanding it, screaming for it, that is.

We live in a country where one may be arrested for opening her store or having too many friends at her house for a social gathering. Whiling away the hours under a modified house arrest, we wait for a relative handful of megalomaniacs in government to tell us when we might hope to return to normal life.

Strangely, the American people seem to have swallowed this new reality whole—no questioning, no scrutiny, but complete, embarrassing credulousness at the claims of politicians, bureaucrats, and pundits frantically waving around little more than shoddy, dubious models and barely hiding a lust for tyrannizing innocent people.

This suggests that Americans, thought to be freedom-loving people, will now believe almost anything, conditioned to be fearful and obedient. Even those who had long since abandoned belief in this myth of America as the Land of the Free might have expected at least some resistance in the face of such open attacks on basic freedoms.

William Graham Sumner eloquently exposed the problems with supposing that every social or economic question is susceptible to solution through the “inelastic and arbitrary” means of legislation or regulation. He saw the “mania for interference” as revealing “the prevailing ignorance of what a society is and what methods of dealing with it are rational.” Faced with a particularly complex, vexatious social question, Sumner teaches, “the last thing to do is to legislate about it,” “for it is not possible to experiment with a society and just drop the experiment whenever we choose. The experiment enters into the life of the society, and never can be got out again.”

In America That Was, the old sheep/wolves/sheepdogs analogy has been perverted. For any who have forgotten, or never heard of it:

Thus there is a paradox, and we must grasp both ends of the situation: We may well be in the most violent times in history, but violence is still remarkably rare. This is because most citizens are kind, decent people who are not capable of hurting each other, except by accident or under extreme provocation. They are sheep.

I mean nothing negative by calling them sheep. To me it is like the pretty, blue robin’s egg. Inside it is soft and gooey but someday it will grow into something wonderful. But the egg cannot survive without its hard blue shell. Police officers, soldiers and other warriors are like that shell, and someday the civilization they protect will grow into something wonderful. For now, though, they need warriors to protect them from the predators.

“Then there are the wolves,” the old war veteran said, “and the wolves feed on the sheep without mercy.” Do you believe there are wolves out there who will feed on the flock without mercy? You better believe it. There are evil men in this world and they are capable of evil deeds. The moment you forget that or pretend it is not so, you become a sheep. There is no safety in denial.

“Then there are sheepdogs,” he went on, “and I’m a sheepdog. I live to protect the flock and confront the wolf.” Or, as a sign in one California law enforcement agency put it, “We intimidate those who intimidate others.”

We are a nation of sheep all right. But the sheepdogs have chosen to switch sides, and are now working for the wolves. And…well, here we all are.

Now, can any of you honestly tell me that this looks even remotely like the now-defunct America v1.0 to you? If so, may I have some of whatever the hell it is you’re smoking? Sundance’s headline says it all:

33 People Arrested During Sacramento Freedom Protest…
Sometimes the headlines tell a story all by themselves…That’s the case in Sacramento California where a group of frustrated and rebellious citizens sought to petition their home confinement order by using the first amendment.

Apparently protesting a governor for redress of grievances, during a time of arbitrary suspension of the first amendment to the U.S. constitution, is grounds for arrest.

As a result 33 Californians were were arrested for not complying with the governor’s order they were protesting against.

Their failure of citizens to keep distant from each-other made them scofflaws to the dictates of the state government.

Video from the scene shows California Governor Gavin Newsom ordered fully armored riot police to surround the capitol building; and face down a group of rebellious moms and business owners.

The subversives who did not remain socially distant, during their protest about having to be socially distant, were promptly arrested.

Ahh, but nobody should be surprised or shocked; Commissar Newsom is only a petty liberal tyrant doing what liberal tyrants do, after all, and he’s making the most of the opportunity presented to him just as any other of them would—and have. The question is: who was it who put Newsom in office in the first place? Worse yet: how likely is it that the self-same people currently so angry at Newsom, Whitler, Coomo, and DeBalledZero, and other tinpot despots currently flaunting their true colors in our fearful faces, will happily march off to the polls to re-elect them next time they get the chance?

A near-certainty, that would be my bet. Nobody had to take their freedom away from them; “Americans” willing gave it away themselves, without hesitation. Which leaves me to saw away at the world’s tiniest violin in sympathy with their complaints, while singing a melody whose lyrics were first set down by the prescient Benjamin “A Republic, if you can keep it” Franklin:

Whoever would overthrow the liberty of a nation must begin by subduing the freeness of speech…Those who would give up essential liberty, to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.

And, in the end, will surely find themselves deprived of both.

Daylight barking madness

Posted on May 1, 2020May 2, 2020 by Mike

Insanity, cowardice, or plain old stupidity?

The Great UnReason of 2020—a fitting name, I think, for the mass panic over COVID-19 that has been fomented by the economic and politically self-interested actors in Big Government and Big Media.

The intellects of the masses of people have been diseased by a virus of Irrationality—what a friend and colleague of mine ingeniously refers to as “COVIDIOCY” and what we may call, COVIDIOCY-20.

COVIDIOCY? Ohhhh, you can bet your ass I’m gonna be getting a lot of use out of that one from here on out.

The aggressiveness of the tumor of illogic that has corrupted people’s minds can be seen for what it is when we stop and consider that no one who is cowering in their homes (“sheltering-in-place”) has so much as remotely thought about the most fundamental of all questions:

What precisely is it that you think is going to happen to you if you do contract The Virus?

The overwhelming majority of human beings—meaning virtually all of them—that contract COVID-19 fight it for about the same amount of time that they do the seasonal flu and then…recover.

The only people for whom The Virus is potentially lethal are one and the same people—the elderly and others who are immunocompromised—for whom all viruses and infections are potentially lethal. As Dr. John Ioannidis of Stanford University has said, “even some so-called mild or common-cold type coronaviruses that have been known for decades can have case-fatality rates as high as 8% when they infect elderly people in nursing homes” (emphasis added).

More recent studies from locations throughout the country, based as they are on antibody testing, have confirmed what had always been long suspected: Tens of millions of Americans have been infected with The Virus and never even knew it (more thorough information regarding these studies can be found here, here, here, here, here, and here).

They never knew it because their symptoms were mild or they were asymptomatic (like Senator Rand Paul whose experience with The Virus, not coincidentally, receives few mentions from media carnival barkers whose economic self-interest is advanced through 24-hour fear-mongering).

Consequently, they developed immunity to The Virus. They can neither get it nor pass it to others. Thus, Senator Paul’s recent decision to now volunteer helping COVID patients in hospitals.

Of course, the higher infection rate also reveals that the real mortality rate is by several orders of magnitude lower than the numbers which the Experts cited to justify the oppressive policies that they have since imposed upon the country.

It isn’t just studies throughout America, but as well data gathered from other countries such as South Korea, Germany, Iceland, and Denmark that have determined that the real fatality rate from The Virus is anywhere between .1% and .4% — i.e., that of the seasonal flu.

Up to 50%-80% of all those who test positive for COVID-19 are without symptoms. And—get this—about 60% of everyone in their seventies who are infected with The Virus are without symptoms! More have only mild symptoms.

Moreover, the average age in most countries of those who die from The Virus is over 80 years of age, and of these, only 1% had no preexisting conditions.

So, again, the question must be asked: Those Americans who have been seized by the spirit of fear, those of you who studiously remain six feet or more from all other human beings; wear your masks faithfully whenever they dare to venture from their homes; happily embrace the wholesale violation of your Constitutional liberties, the squandering of the inheritance bequeathed to you by earlier generations of Americans who fought and died for it; welcome the swelling by the tens of millions of the ranks of the unemployed and the shattering of the American Dream of hundreds of thousands of small business owners; endorse the indefinite closing of churches and other houses of worship; and vigorously neglect to physically (meaning really) interact with your loved ones—to you who value your own Safety over and above all else, including your own liberty and the overall well-being of others, some of us ache to know:

Of what are you so afraid? What do you think is going to happen to you if you contract…The Virus?!

Emphasis throughout is the author’s own, supporting links (of which there are many) not transcribed. My copious excerpting notwithstanding, there’s still lots, lots more where that came from, not one word of which you want to miss.

Update! I mentioned insanity up top there for a reason, you know.

The man we now know as the Green River Killer, Gary Ridgeway, was sent to prison for more than 500 years. He was convicted of 49 murders of prostitutes, girls on the streets and vulnerable runaways, but he was suspected of committing 71 murders in the 1970s, ’80s and ’90s.

He would take the women and girls, have sex with them, and then strangle them, watching the light go out of their eyes as he squeezed the life out of them. Sometimes he’d use a rope and sometimes he’d use his bare hands. He’d pose their bodies and sometimes come back and have sex with the corpses. His first victims were found in the Green River, giving the monster his moniker.

He was arrested in the ’80s but let go for lack of evidence. A task force was formed to track down the serial killer and in 2001 – decades and multiple victims later – Gary Ridgeway was busted again and confessed to 71 murders.

Ridgeway was spared the death penalty because prosecutors knew it would take many millions of taxpayers dollars to give him appeals for the rest of his natural life. There was understandable outrage at the time, but prosecutors assured victims’ families and the general public that he would never ever, ever get out of prison. Never.

And then came the coronavirus and everything changed.

Read the rest, if you have a strong stomach.

Go to work, go to jail

Posted on May 1, 2020 by Mike

Are we tyrannized yet?

Yesterday, I wrote about a disturbing incident involving a tattoo parlor owner here in North Carolina who was handcuffed and escorted out of his shop Wednesday by police officers after he tried to reopen his business.

Matthew “Jax” Myers, 38, told the Raleigh News and Observer that he had no options left but to open back up because he needed the income, so it was a risk he was willing to take.

Click here to watch the video clip of Meyers being led out of his business by police.

In a separate incident that happened earlier today, police in Roxboro, North Carolina showed up to a woman’s hair salon to get her to shut it down after she attempted to reopen.

For the record, Person County – which is where Roxboro is located – has had a total of 20 cases diagnosed, and one death.

Words fail. But on that note, remember last night when I was all pleased and proud to report the Gaston County insurrection?

Gaston County officially reopened for business yesterday at 5:00 PM. Unlike Gov. Cooper, officials of the North Carolina county have enough sense to understand that endlessly shuttering businesses is a worse situation than coronavirus itself.

Tracy Philbeck, a commission chairman of Gaston County, explained that the return of the county’s economy is “health-minded.” Philbeck additionally noted that a one-size-fits-all solution is not appropriate. Shortly thereafter, he cited precautionary measures to prevent health issues; these precautionary measures entail sanitation, good hygiene, and social distancing.

In Gaston County’s announcement about reopening, they noted that vulnerable individuals should remain at home. The order also states that anyone who doesn’t wish to reopen their business is not obligated to do so. As of yesterday, Gaston County gave gyms, restaurants, movie theaters, churches, and sporting areas the green light to resume operations. Thus far, schools, bars, and activities for young people in Gaston County remain shuttered.

Sounds good, right? Yeah, well, about all that.

As it happens, close on the heels of Philbeck’s announcement, the daughter of a close friend of mine received a call from her boss instructing her to report to work at five. Having inexplicably bought into the frenzied Shanghai Sniffles panic-mongering herself, she was alarmed and VERY reluctant, but in the end screwed up the wherewithal to risk all-but-certain death and head on over to the small Belmont restaurant/pub that employs her anyway, a brand-new place that’s only been open a few months.

This was at five (5) PM.

At six, several black-and-whites from the town Schutzstaffel surrounded the place, and po-po strolled in to enforce Comrade Cooperovitch’s illegal edict. The owner, having already done hard time once years ago, saw no reason to risk arrest and immediately complied. And that was that; the Empire struck back, the nascent Rebel Alliance was quickly crushed.

Now, you people know I am not one to reflexively hate on cops. But I can only come up with one ugly little word in reference to LEOs who execute orders they know damned well are invalid, well outside the authority of our pissant little shit of a governor to issue. Such cops are pigs. Sorry and all, it pains me no end to have to say it, but…well, there it is.

Excuse me no excuses about being obliged to comply with the commands of your superiors, boys. “Just following orders” didn’t suffice to wash away the stain of guilt from the Nazis, and it isn’t going to absolve any of you now. The truth is, you all recited a few words before the badge was pinned on your chest:

The widely used oath embraced by the International Association of Chiefs of Police reads, “On my honor, I will never betray my badge, my integrity, my character or the public trust. I will always have the courage to hold myself and others accountable for our actions. I will always uphold the Constitution, my community, and the agency I serve.”

As AG Barr so concisely put it the other day, there is NO pandemic exception written into the Constitution. And just because our professional politicians speak similar oaths with forked tongues, harboring no intention whatsoever of living up to them right from jump, it doesn’t mean that YOU should do the same.

Comes a time when a man—any man, every man—has to decide to stand up for the right, to refuse to go along with things that are patently wrong. Orders of magnitude more so for cops, for soldiers, for any toting a similar weight of communal trust and responsibility. A cop willing to flout the Law Enforcement Oath Of Honor, a solemn and serious covenant, in order to enforce dictates he knows to be unrighteous should never have become a cop in the first place, no matter how polite he might be as he slips the cuffs onto some blameless soul for the crime of trying to keep a roof over his family’s heads in extremely difficult times. He has shown himself to be morally unfit for the job.

Instead of arresting desperate small business owners who stand to lose everything they have or ever will have, LEOs should consider heading to the Governor’s Mansion instead. There’s far more upright and honorable work awaiting you there, fellas.

Oh, by the way: as of yesterday, Gaston County has all of twenty active C-19 cases, and a total of three deaths.

The New Normal: Safetyism

Posted on April 28, 2020April 28, 2020 by Mike

A nation of pussies.

To grasp the urgency of lifting the ubiquitous economic shutdowns, visit New York City’s Central Park, ideally in the morning. At 5:45 am, it is occupied by maybe 100 runners and cyclists, spread over 843 acres. A large portion of these early-bird exercisers wear masks. Are they trying to protect anyone they might encounter from their own unsuspected coronavirus infection? Perhaps. But if you yourself run towards an oncoming runner on a vector that will keep you at least three yards away when you pass each other, he is likely to lunge sideways in terror if your face is not covered. The masked cyclists, who speed around the park’s inner road, apparently think that there are enough virus particles suspended in the billions of square feet of fresh air circulating across the park to enter their mucous membranes and to sicken them.

These are delusional beliefs, yet they demonstrate the degree of paranoia that has infected the population. Every day the lockdown continues, its implicit message that we are all going to die if we engage in normal life is reinforced. Polls show an increasing number of Americans opting to continue the economic quarantine indefinitely lest they be ‘unsafe’. The longer that belief is reinforced, the less likely it will be that consumers will patronize reopened restaurants or board airplanes in sufficient numbers to bring the economy back to life.

To cancel most of the country’s economy for a problem, however tragic, that is highly localized was a devastating policy blunder that must be immediately corrected. The lockdowns are taking a scythe to everything that makes human existence both possible and meaningful. Lives are being lost to the overreaction. Heart attack and stroke victims shrink from calling 911 lest they burden hospitals now dedicated exclusively to COVID-19 cases. Cancer victims have had their stem cell transplants put on hold; heart surgeries are being postponed indefinitely. The cancellation of ‘nonessential’ procedures has prevented the diagnosis of life-threatening diseases, writes a former chief of neuroradiology at the Stanford University Medical Center. Tumors and potentially deadly brain aneurysms are going undetected. Drug abuse deaths from economic despair and isolation may already be rising, as data out of Ohio suggests. The United Nations predicts tens of millions more lives globally stunted by extreme poverty and hundreds of thousands of childhood deaths.

US unemployment is at depression levels. Small businessmen who risked their savings and credit in the hope of creating a successful enterprise have had their efforts destroyed. Up to a third of local businesses may never reopen. The damage to supply chains grows deeper by the day. Farmers are plowing under cabbages and strawberries, pouring out milk, and destroying eggs because they have lost their markets. It is almost impossible to plan future production with demand so irrationally depressed. Retail sales registered their biggest monthly drop on record in March. Department stores and local newspapers may become relics.

Many cultural institutions — small theaters, regional orchestras, and opera companies — will never rise again. Demand for progressive causes such as public transit and dense, multi-unit housing will evaporate the longer that fear is stoked. Yet the safetyism rhetoric is unabating. ‘The vast majority of people want to feel safe,’ a doctor told MSNBC anchor Stephanie Ruhle on April 23. ‘Hopefully people will turn to public health authorities and scientists for [safety] strategies.’ Those same authorities dole out positive reinforcement to keep the populace compliant. ‘Americans have done such a wonderful job’ of social distancing, Dr Deborah Birx, the White House coronavirus task force director, encouragingly announced, ‘so we don’t want to jeopardize their efforts with a hasty reopening’, she added.

To be sure, a revolt is brewing against the idea that perfect safety is the precondition for social and economic life. Even residents of blue states are chafing under their mandates, provoking sniffy rebukes from their public health masters. But enough people have embraced fear to destroy the necessary demand side of an economic recovery. The lockdowns signal that it is not safe to shop, travel, or socialize — a message that in most places is false. The bans must be lifted, while protective efforts are targeted intensely at the vulnerable elderly. As a harbinger of liberation, any true public health expert would tell those Central Park joggers and those solo drivers in their cars to tear off their masks and breathe free.

It’s a sad commentary on our bizarre state of affairs that MacDonald’s perfectly reasonable, rational article could strike anybody as somehow “radical,” “extreme,” or “dangerous.” But you can be certain that it will.

Last laugh

Posted on April 27, 2020April 27, 2020 by Mike

Why yes, I AM still enjoying this rare bit of smoker schadenfraude. Why do you ask?

There’s not much to laugh about these days, but the news that smokers might be protected from Covid-19 is certainly one of them. With study after study showing that smokers are under-represented in coronavirus wards, the renowned French neuroscientist, Jean-Pierre Changeux, is working on a randomised control trial to test the effect of nicotine patches on Covid-19 patients.

This is far from being a crackpot theory. Changeux has explained his hypothesis at length here. In simple terms, he says that nicotinic acetylcholine receptors play a key role in the development of the disease and that nicotine can put a brake on it. If he is right – and the banter heuristic says he is – it would not only save thousands of lives but would also be one in the eye for the ‘public health’ groups who have been claiming that smoking and vaping are risk factors for Covid-19.

These groups are so used to lying with impunity that they wasted no time in asserting that smoking caused coronavirus complications when the pandemic began. In the US, newspapers have been filled with reports that smokers and vapers ‘may’ be at greater risk from Covid-19, a weasel word that requires no evidence. A group of doctors in New York urged governor Andrew Cuomo to ban the sale of all tobacco and e-cigarette products on the false premise that ‘mounting evidence demonstrates the link between tobacco use and increased risk for progressive Covid-19’. Meanwhile, the World Health Organisation has been taking occasional breaks from flattering the Chinese Communist Party to make evidence-free assertions about smokers being ‘likely’ to suffer more from the coronavirus.

Is there ANYTHING the panic-mongering “experts” have gotten right about this? Anything at all? Snowdon lays out some numbers in support of the argument for smoking’s health benefits before diving into the schadenfraude deep-end his own self:

People scoffed when Emmanuel Macron exempted tobacco kiosks from France’s lockdown on the basis that they provide an essential service. Who’s coughing now?

Far be it from me to preempt the conclusions of the professor’s research, but let us consider for a moment the policy implications of nicotine being the only tried and tested prophylactic for Covid-19. We could issue Lucky Strikes on prescription. We could #ClapForOurCigarettes every Thursday evening. The case for closing down Public Health England would be stronger than ever. We could open the pubs, but only to smokers and vapers. We might allow a few non-smokers in to enjoy the possible benefits of passive exposure, but only if they stand two metres apart. There is everything to play for.

The icing on the cake would be if British American Tobacco is first out of the blocks with a vaccine. Everyone who works for the World Health Organisation would have to go unvaccinated on principle and rely instead on herd immunity. Smokers would, of course, be pushed to the front of the queue for vaccination. They paid for it, after all.

Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. But, by God, wouldn’t it be fun?

Oh, it already is.

Hey buddy, can I get a light?

Are they sick, or just sadistic?

Posted on April 24, 2020April 24, 2020 by Mike

Your tax dollars at “work.”

Feds Were Buying Cats from Chinese Wet Markets, Fed Them to American Cats for Research: Report

Wait, what?!?

Do you find your stomach turning when you think of the treatment and handling of domestic animals, and the apparent disregard for sanitation, at China’s now-infamous wet markets?

According to one report, you may have been providing those markets financial assistance for many years.

A March 2019 report from the White Coat Waste Project — a watchdog group that wants to “drain the swamp” by ending federal spending on projects that use dogs, monkeys, cats and other animals as guinea pigs — revealed that U.S. taxpayer funding went to these repulsive centers for death and disease.

And it gets worse.

According to the the report, U.S. government researchers had been conducting “kitten cannibalism” experiments — spending taxpayer dollars to buy cats and other animals from Chinese wet markets and then feeding their tissue to kittens in the U.S.

Well hey, it’s right there in the Constitution, you know.

The practice had apparently gone on for some time, too.

“Since 1982, the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) Agricultural Research Service (ARS) has conducted, and continues to perform, toxoplasmosis experiments on cats,” the report said.

“The currently approved protocol for this project calls for up to 100 kittens to be bred each year at ARS’s Animal Parasitic Disease Laboratory (APDL) in Beltsville, Maryland. At eight weeks old, the kittens are fed raw meat infected with the Toxoplasma gondii (T. gondii) parasite, and their feces is collected for up to 3 weeks so experimenters can harvest oocysts (eggs) for use in food safety experiments. These healthy kittens — who briefly pass the parasite’s eggs and become immune within weeks — are then killed and incinerated by USDA because they are no longer useful.”

That’s where the wet markets come in.

Now, I am not a scientist, a doctor, or a veterinarian, and can lay no claim to expertise about such things. Nonetheless, I have to ask: dude, what the fucking actual fuck???

Smoke ’em if ya got ’em

Posted on April 24, 2020April 24, 2020 by Mike

Man, I’ve been waiting a long, long time for something like this.

French researchers are planning to trial whether nicotine patches will help prevent – or lessen the effects of – the deadly coronavirus.

Evidence is beginning to show the proportion of smokers infected with coronavirus is much lower than the rates in the general population.

Scientists are now questioning whether nicotine could stop the virus from infecting cells, or if it may prevent the immune system overreacting to the infection.

Doctors at a major hospital in Paris – who also found low rates of smoking among the infected – are now planning to give nicotine patches to COVID-19 patients.

They will also give them to frontline workers to see if the stimulant has any effect on preventing the spread of the virus, according to reports.

It comes after world-famous artist David Hockney last week said he believes smoking could protect people against the deadly coronavirus.

MailOnline looked at the science and found he may have been onto something, with one researcher saying there was ‘bizarrely strong’ evidence it could be true.

One study in China, where the pandemic began, showed only 6.5 per cent of COVID-19 patients were smokers, compared to 26.6 per cent of the population.

Another study, by the Centers for Disease Control in the US, found just 1.3 per cent of hospitalised patients were smokers – compared to 14 per cent of America.

And research by hospitals in Paris found that smokers were under-represented in both inpatients and outpatients, suggesting that any protective effect could affect anyone, not just those hospitalised by their illness.

‘Our cross-sectional study strongly suggests that those who smoke every day are much less likely to develop a symptomatic or severe infection with Sars-CoV-2 compared with the general population,’ the study reads.

‘The effect is significant. It divides the risk by five for ambulatory patients and by four for those admitted to hospital. We rarely see this in medicine.’

The team says it is not advocating that anyone start smoking because cigarettes have fatal health risks.

Well, naturally not. But why take any chances?

Another factor here in the States might be that we smokers have been “social distancing” for years now, if not by our own choice. As pariahs, societal lepers despised and cast out to slink away, in all kinds of weather, to our ever-shrinking “Smoking zone” ghettos, we’ve long been accustomed to decent folks keeping themselves far out of the way of our filth, our stench, all the revolting physical infirmities and deformations caused by our weak, sinful natures. Our exile has turned out to be a shield.

So not only has smoking, by being that which has not (yet) killed us, possibly made us stronger somehow, it also seems God has seen fit to bless smokers with some sort of mysterious Wuhan Woo Woo-inhibiting genetic quirk carried by our precious nicotine. O, Irony!

Hey, I’ll take it.

CF Search

Login, RSS, &c

CF Archives

Categories

2A/Mostly Guns

Alt-American

Big Dogs

Essayists

Mil

Nuttin’ But News

Odds Bodkins

Overseas/Non-US

Portals

Pure Bloggery

REAL Journalism

Substack Scalawags

The Funny Pages

Comments policy

CF Glossary

Subscribe to CF!

Shameless begging

Correspondence

Allied territory

Notable Quotes

RSS feed

.