Tag: bankruptcy

CDC study: Masks do nothing to stop COVID-19 infection

10:52 pm

A new CDC study shows that masks appear to have zero effect in stopping the spread of the COVID-19 virus.

An underreported, recently-published CDC study adds to the pile of evidence that cloth masks or other forms of mandated face coverings only contribute negatives to our COVID-19 problem. The study also displays — despite the constant accusations of widespread misbehavior from public health officials — that Americans are adhering to mask wearing, but mask wearing is not doing us any good.

The CDC study, which surveyed symptomatic COVID-19 patients, has found that 70.6% of respondents reported “always” wearing a mask, while an additional 14.4% say they “often” wear a mask. That means a whopping 85% of infected COVID-19 patients reported habitual mask wearing. Only 3.9% of those infected said they “never” wear a face covering.

The graph below from the study is damning. It shows that wearing a mask made no difference between those who got the disease (left column) and those in the control group.

CDC study graph: masks made no difference.

In either case, the number of cases remained the same no matter how much you wore the mask.

I suspect however that a larger study will find more infections among full-time mask wearers, especially if that study delineates between those medical professionals who are trained to wear the mask properly and with care, keeping it anti-septic, and the general public who fingers their mask continually and then sticks it in their pocket between uses.

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Florida proves (again) the stupidity of mask mandates

12:58 pm

On September 25, 2020 the Republican governor of Florida, Ron De Santis, lifted all mandates on mask use while ending all restrictions on restaurants

He was immediately lambasted by numerous Democratic Party Florida mayors as well as:

Dr. Anthony Fauci, who warned that the change is “very concerning to me. When you’re dealing with community spread, and you have the kind of congregate setting where people get together, particularly without masks, you’re really asking for trouble.”

The mayor of Miami Beach, Democrat Dan Gelber, was especially harsh, stating in a letter to De Santis that
» Read more

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The Navy’s overreaction to COVID-19

12:09 pm

On October 10th the press breathlessly reported that “nearly two-thirds of the Navy’s deployable warships have endured COVID-19 outbreaks”.

What was not mentioned was the number of sailors killed by the outbreaks. Though the NAVY report says nothing about mortality, it does say this:

Sailor rates of infection are generally the same as the rates of infection in the local area. … Within the uniformed Navy population, roughly 35 percent of infected sailors exhibit few to no symptoms. This should build confidence in the ship’s ability to fight through outbreaks.

I strongly suspect that practically no one has died yet from coronavirus on a Navy ship. In fact, this sounds exactly like a typical flu season, where the flu quickly spreads among those confined in close quarters, but then peters out shortly thereafter, forgotten.

In other words, COVID-19 in the Navy (as elsewhere) is really nothing more than a variation of the flu, possibly more infectious to all and more harmful to the elderly sick, but harmless to practically everyone else.

The bad part of this is that, rather than let the disease play out quickly so that crews are promptly immune and the epidemic no longer can effect efficiency — as humanity has done for eons — the Navy is panicking like everyone else, instituting strict quarantines on all those infected, plus social distancing and mask rules. All this will do is prolong the agony, and interfere with the Navy’s operation. You can’t run a ship or a submarine realistically if you require everyone to keep six feet distance at all time.

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The idiocy, ignorance, and corruption of California’s Governor Newsom

12:44 pm

In the past week the Democratic governor of California, Gavin Newsom, has demonstrated that in his quest to cement the dictatorial powers he gave to himself with the arrival of the Wuhan virus, he really has no interest in any facts or real scientific data.

First, he announced with great fanfare on October 5th that the country and his state were entering a new terrible outbreak of COVID-19. “This is the second wave,” he declared grimly, adding,

“We continue to have a lot to do on COVID-19 transmission,” he said. “You’re starting to see an increase in COVID cases across the country,” the governor observed. “You’re seeing this not just across the country, you’re seeing this across the world.” Newsom then reported that 21 states across the U.S. are seeing increases.

Newsom then made reference to the Spanish flu pandemic that hit America in 1918, noting that “the second wave in 1918 was the most deadly.”

The problem for Newsom however are the facts, as shown in the graph below.
» Read more

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Government takes down pro-Trump sign on private property, without permission

10:46 am

They’re coming for you next: California state officials quickly moved to take down a pro-Trump billboard, even though it was on private property and they apparently did not have permission to do so.

This LA Times report on the massive Trump sign on a hill near the 405 says that state authorities went on private property to take it down because they claimed the political speech was a “visual distraction” to drivers.

So, in California your first, fourth, fifth, and sixth amendment rights are now null and void. If government officials don’t approve of your political signage, they now claim the right to enter your property, without permission and without a search warrant, and take down your signage.

The article at the first link notes that for some reason, these same California authorities did not consider it a “visual distraction” for Antifa and Black Lives Matter protests to stand on these same highways and block traffic.

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“When someone says he wants you dead, he wants you dead.”

1:17 pm

Link here. The author reviews the almost gleeful desire by many Democrats and their base to have Trump and his supporters die, either of COVID-19 or from a political revolution instigated by them.

And that’s a very dangerous thing to want, because the intended victim gets a say, and he may start saying the same thing about you. I could talk about walking through the wrecked villages of Kosovo – villages that had mostly belonged to the Serbs who started the civil war then lost it – but that is probably going to be lost on the pampered and parochial left. History, be it modern Balkans or ancient, such as the cautionary tale that was the decline and fall of the Roman Republic, is something they are too smart to bother studying. They know what they think and what they want and they can’t be bothered with pests nagging them about how their paucity of wisdom could very well set into motion events they cannot control and that are unlikely to turn out in the way they hope.

Read it all. He concludes by noting that we have a chance on election day to stop these fascist Democratic Party thugs, if only for another four years. And he is right. The defense of liberty never ends, and the moment you think so is the moment your liberty begins to disappear, taken by bullies whose only interest in life is the wielding of power.

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“N-Word Science” Proves You’re a Racist!

6:44 pm

Link here. The author delves into the so-called “science” of some of the most hyped “white supremacy” academic research, and finds it not only wanting, he finds it downright garbage and not worth the recycled paper it is written on.

No surprise. Race and gender studies are all lies and bigotry, designed not to improve the knowledge of the human race, but to slander all whites, to dehumanize them, and to make it justifiable to treat them as second-class citizens.

I liked his opening however:

With summer 2020 finally in the rearview mirror, and after seven months of “two weeks to flatten the curve,” I’m getting a little sick of “the science.” Not science, mind you, but theee science, the thing that leftists keep assuring us exists—a singular, canonical truth we all must obey. Mind you, it sure seems like there’s not a great deal of agreement about “the science” regarding COVID: You don’t need masks/You do need masks. Hydroxychloroquine doesn’t work/Hydroxychloroquine totally works. Sunlight doesn’t help/Sunlight helps. COVID doesn’t linger in the air/COVID totally lingers in the air/COVID doesn’t linger after all.

Large crowds spread COVID/Large crowds don’t spread COVID (if it’s a BLM crowd).

Theee science is whatever today’s CNN home page says it is. If that happens to contradict yesterday’s home page, well, that’s your fault for having a memory. [emphasis in original]

The number of lies and inconsistencies coming from the “We’re all gonna die from COVID-19” crowd is legion. In this one short quote he sums the worst up quite succinctly.

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Trump proves COVID-19 is nothing to fear

12:34 pm

The recent spat of positive tests for COVID-19 among the Washington elite, including President Trump, highlight spectacularly the continuing overreaction and unnecessary fear and terror that people have of this respiratory illness.

All told since October 1st about eighteen Washington elected officials, staffers, and reporters have announced testing positive for the coronavirus, based on several reports here, here, and here.

These of course are only the announced cases. I suspect that in Washington a lot more are testing positive but are keeping quiet about it.

And yet, among these announced cases has anyone died? No. Has anyone gotten seriously ill? No. In fact, almost no one has been hospitalized, except for Trump, and he recovered so fast that he was released from the Walter Reed hospital today after spending less than four days there. Moreover, he was sent to the hospital only out of caution, not because he was having any significant problems. During his stay it appears he continued his work schedule with almost as much vigor as before.

We used to have a saying during flu season. “Something’s going around, everyone’s got it.” » Read more

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Michigan Supreme Court calls lock down orders by governor illegal

4:16 pm

The Michigan Supreme Court today struck down the endless number of arbitrary lock down orders imposed by Democratic governor Gretchen Witmer, stating that her actions were “an unlawful delegation of legislative power to the executive branch in violation of the Michigan Constitution.”

In a 4-3 ruling, the court determined the governor did not have the authority under state law to issue any additional emergency declarations pertaining to the pandemic after April 30. That was the last date when the legislature allowed the governor to declare an emergency.

Whitmer has relied on an interpretation of an emergency powers law passed in 1945 and the Emergency Powers Act of 1976 to issue a litany of executive orders related to the pandemic. The orders mandated the closure of businesses and restricted the number of people allowed to gather at events, all in the name of safety and preventing the spread of coronavirus.

Everyone whose businesses were damaged or lost their job because of her illegal actions should sue Witmer personally. This abuse of power should cost her, in the hope that other governors down the road will think twice before trying the same thing.

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Doctors: COVID-19 case counts, hospitalization numbers, and death counts are “meaningless”

3:15 pm

It has all been lies upon lies upon lies: According to an editorial written by Kristin Held, president of the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons (AAPS), the case counts, hospitalization numbers, and death counts published by government agencies across the United States are “meaningless” and “manipulated.”

From her full editorial [pdf]:

The COVID-19 case counts, hospitalization numbers, and death counts are meaningless in their current fluid form. Their malleability primarily serves those who seek to distort reality.

The morphable numbers are reported, then manipulated by federal, state, county, city, and hospital authorities and agencies. The manipulation is driven by power and money and fueled by fearmongering, panic stoking, and promise of monetary and political gain. All this is bought and paid for under the guise of trying to save the world from the COVID-19 pandemic.

Read it all. She carefully documents the changes imposed by the CDC around June 14-16 that ballooned the numbers, often for entirely unjustified reasons. For example, hospitals get a lot of federal money for labeling a hospitalization from the coronavirus. The result?
» Read more

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It WAS a coup attempt

2:51 pm

In the past few days a number of news stories have confirmed, unequivocally, that the effort in the FBI, CIA, and Justice Department to spy on the Trump campaign before the election and then pin the false accusation of Russian collusion on Trump after his election were all an effort to dictate the results of the election, and then overturn it when Trump won.

It was an out-and-out coup attempt by these government officials, apparently aided and abetted by Obama when he was still president.

First we learn that the FBI agents working on the fake prosecution of former National Security were so worried their misconduct would be uncovered by the Trump administration that they bought liability insurance to protect themselves.
» Read more

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California to ban all gas-powered vehicles

8:55 pm

This is not the Babylon Bee: California Democratic governor Gavin Newsom today announced that as of 2035 the state will outlaw all gas-powered vehicles.

Newsom said that his new executive order would “eliminate” the sales of “internal combustion engines” and move to electric vehicles — a move that he said would create jobs and allow California to “dominate” the market, and address climate change. Those who currently own gas-powered vehicles would still be allowed to operate them and to sell them on the used market.

2035 happens to be the same year that former Vice President Joe Biden has set as a deadline for the U.S. to eliminate fossil fuels from electricity production, five years later than originally proposed by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) in her “Green New Deal.” Ocasio-Cortez led the climate change panel on the “Biden-Sanders Unity Task Force” earlier this year.

The ignorance displayed by this policy decision is spectacular. These Democrats obviously believe that the power from electric cars comes from magic. They also seem to believe that new technology can magically be decreed, by government fiat.

What this degree will do is bankrupt California, and make living there a living hell, suitable only for the very very rich or the very very poor (whose survival will be wholly dependent on those very very rich).

Remember this when you go to vote in November. Newsom, Ocasio-Cortez, and Biden are very typical of the modern Democratic Party. Give it power and it will do the same for the entire nation.

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Survival rates for COVID-19

8:43 pm

The CDC last week posted its new estimate of the survival rates for COVID-19, broken up by age.

This link put those number in clear terms:

0-19 years: 99.997%
20-49 years: 99.98%
50-69 years: 99.5%
70+ years: 94.6%

Those numbers are practically identical to those of the flu. In other words, practically no one dies from it. It makes some people sick for a week or so, and then goes away.

And we have destroyed western civilization over this. It boggles the mind (for those who are still using it).

The worst part is that no one will believe me. Instead, too many will be outraged that anyone would even hint that this virus is not the plague.

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Four graphs prove the utter failure of lockdowns and masks

5:43 pm

The data is now in. Not only is the coronavirus nothing more than a very bad flu, harmless to the vast majority of the population, the bad policy imposed by almost all governments worldwide has done nothing to alleviate it, and in fact has probably helped kill people, from both the virus and their bad policy.

This conclusion is starkly illustrated in the following four graphs (source), all of which show the history of COVID-19 during the entire 2020 epidemic, now clearly ending. All four graphs are updates of graphs I’ve referenced previously, but now they take us through the epidemic’s present waning, and give us a better context of both the virus’ flu-like nature and the terrible policies imposed by governments in their panic over it.

Daily mortality from COVID-19 in the U.S.

First to the right we have the daily mortality numbers for the entire United States. The steady drop in deaths since epidemic’s second peak on August 12th is very evident. The epidemic appears to be winding down, though very slowly. Furthermore, it had an unusual summer peak that is almost never seen in such respiratory diseases. The reasons for both the slowness of the virus’s decay and its second peak will become clear as we look at the next three graphs, covering the epidemic’s peak in New York, New Jersey, and California.
» Read more

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Modern fascist America: No mask, no healthcare

12:36 pm

Right now my inclination to post or write or do anything is low. In fact, emotionally I am beginning to think there is no point living, as I do not wish to live in a nation as oppressive as America is becoming.

Today I learned unequivocally that in today’s America, you will be denied healthcare if you do not wear a mask, even if you have legitimate medical issues for not doing so. I have both asthma and heart issues, and according to numerous long-standing advisories by both doctors and government health agencies (until May of this year), wearing a mask when you have such conditions is a mistake. To quote just one such advisory from the California Department of Health,:

“Mask use may give the wearer a false sense of security, which might encourage too much physical activity and time spent outdoors. Also, wearing a mask may actually be harmful to some people with heart or lung disease because it can make the lungs work harder to breathe.” [emphasis mine]

Yet now doctors are demanding all patients, no matter their health, wear these feel-good useless muzzles, or they will deny you all treatment.

In late May I simply raised this issue with my long-standing GP, only to receive a letter from him the next day telling me he had cancelled me as a patient. Just raising the issue with him was verboten. Since then I have been trying desperately to find another GP, without success. None will see me without demanding I wear a mask. None will even consider my own health issues in the mix, at all.

Today I arrived at what I thought would be my new GP. I had called his office twice beforehand to explain my health issues and to make sure I would not have an issue when I arrived. All a waste of time. As I was signing in the office manager marched up to demand I put on the mask that she was nonchalantly fingering with her hands. When I pointed out how unsanitary that was, irrelevant of my own issues, she seemed shocked and surprised, as if she had no idea what I was talking about.

Nor was she interested in considering my own situation, or the actual law in Tucson. When I noted that the local ordinances also permit no masks if you can either socially distance (which would be easy to do in her office) or have medical issues, she said that doesn’t matter. Their office requires masks at all times, regardless. Common sense and basic medical science were irrelevant to them.

I was forced to walk out. I presently do not have a doctor to handle my medical issues. Nor do I expect to find one, unless by some miracle there is some local doctor in southern Arizona who understands the absurdity of this mask obsession, reads this post, and offers their help. Personally I have zero expectation of that.

Welcome to the new America. Obey, or you will be denied your most basic human rights of existence.

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Anti-maskers invade Target, demanding everyone “Take off that mask!”

9:54 pm

We need more of this: Anti-maskers this week marched through a Florida Target shouting “This is the United States of America, take off that mask!”

They didn’t harass anyone, they simply went down the aisles cheerfully calling for people to get rid of the mask. Watch the video below the fold.

The sad part is how few people in the store remove their masks. Many clearly agreed with the protesters, but still kept the mask on.
» Read more

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Nashville authorities cover up proof bars & restaurants do not spread COVID-19

9:44 pm

Local authorities in the mayor’s office and health department in Nashville, rather than release the data and open things up, kept secret evidence that showed there was no reason to close bars or restaurants. [The quote below comes from a local Fox TV news story that has since been taken down.]

Emails between the mayor’s senior advisor and the health department reveal only a partial picture. But what they reveal is disturbing. The discussion involves the low number of coronavirus cases emerging from bars and restaurants and how to handle that and most disturbingly, how to keep it from the public.

On June 30th, contact tracing was giving a small view of coronavirus clusters. Construction and nursing homes causing problems more than a thousand cases traced to each category, but bars and restaurants reported just 22 cases.

Leslie Waller from the health department asks “This isn’t going to be publicly released, right? Just info for Mayor’s Office?”

“Correct, not for public consumption.” Writes senior advisor Benjamin Eagles. [emphasis mine]

In other words, these corrupt officials, who appear quite typical of today’s government rank and file, had found in June that closing bars and restaurants was pointless, that their focus should be nursing homes and construction (though I suspect a deeper dive in the data would discount construction as well). Instead, they kept this data secret so that the lockdown of bars and restaurants could continue, putting thousands out of work.

The fact that they should have been focusing on nursing homes once again confirms the nature of this virus. Like the flu, it attacks the sick elderly, with everyone else barely noticing their symptoms, or if they do, recovering without serious harm.

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College English Department to only accept students studying “Black Studies”

9:15 am

The coming dark age: The English Department at the University of Chicago will next year only accept new students who focus all their literature work on “Black Studies.”

The University of Chicago’s English Department declared it will only accept applicants interested in ‘working in and with Black studies’ for its 2020-2021 graduate admissions cycle.

In a statement uploaded to the English department’s website in July, the faculty announced their commitment to the “struggle of Black and indigenous people, and all racialized and dispossessed people, against inequality and brutality. For the 2020-2021 graduate admissions cycle, the University of Chicago English Department is accepting only applicants interested in working in and with Black studies. We understand Black studies to be a capacious intellectual project that spans a variety of methodological approaches, fields, geographical areas, languages and time periods.”

“…English as a subject, the department says, has provided ‘aesthetic rationalizations for colonization, exploitation, extraction and anti-Blackness.”

The statement goes on to deem the “collective responsibility” of the faculty to be “undoing persistent, recalcitrant anti-Blackness in our disciplines and in our institutions.”

Or to put it another way, the literature of western civilization can go to hell. All that matters now is race. And race comes first in order to groom that next generation of racists and bigots, now educated to hate whites.

I cannot imagine any parent or student wanting to attend such a program, unless their goal is is to learn how to become a Black-Power bigot aimed at oppressing all other races.

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Tiny amount of rare chemical found on Venus; it is NOT a sign of life

8:53 am

The coming dark age: Scientists today announced that they had detected a tiny amount of the rare chemical phosphine in the upper atmosphere of Venus, and immediately jumped to the absurd conclusion that this was a sign of life.

The international team, which includes researchers from the UK, US and Japan, estimates that phosphine exists in Venus’s clouds at a small concentration, only about twenty molecules in every billion. Following their observations, they ran calculations to see whether these amounts could come from natural non-biological processes on the planet. Some ideas included sunlight, minerals blown upwards from the surface, volcanoes, or lightning, but none of these could make anywhere near enough of it. These non-biological sources were found to make at most one ten thousandth of the amount of phosphine that the telescopes saw.

To create the observed quantity of phosphine (which consists of hydrogen and phosphorus) on Venus, terrestrial organisms would only need to work at about 10% of their maximum productivity, according to the team. Earth bacteria are known to make phosphine: they take up phosphate from minerals or biological material, add hydrogen, and ultimately expel phosphine. Any organisms on Venus will probably be very different to their Earth cousins, but they too could be the source of phosphine in the atmosphere.

To leap from finding twenty molecules out of a billion of a single rare chemical to claiming this is a sign of life is absurd. And yet, this is what these scientists do, in the European Space Agency (ESA) press release at the link above, as well as this Royal Astronomical Society press release.

This discovery is not giving us “a hint of life on Venus.” All these scientists have done is detect a chemical whose formation in Venus’ very alien environment is a mystery. Yes, on Earth this chemical comes from life related activities, but to claim that the presence of biology must explain it on Venus is not science, but witchcraft and the stuff of fantasy. We know practically nothing about the full make-up of Venus’ atmosphere, its chemistry and environment, which makes it impossible to hint at any theories, no less life.

The worst part of this is that we can expect our brainless media to run with these claims, without the slightest effort of incredulity.

We live in a world of make believe and made-up science. Data is no longer important, only the leaps of fantasy we can jump to based on the slimmest of facts. It was this desire to push theories rather than knowledge that locked humanity into a dark age for centuries during the Middle Ages. It is doing it again, now, and the proof is all around you, people like zombies and sheep, wearing masks based not on any proven science but on pure emotions.

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Texas sees 400% increase in homeschooling

11:42 am

The silver lining? Faced with odious rules and remote zoom classes in the public education system due to fear and terror over the corona virus, Texas parents are choosing to homeschool their children this year, with the numbers rising by 400%.

The spike, the group reported, stems directly from the Texas Education Agency’s (TEA) pandemic schooling guidelines sparking a mass exodus from the public school system as parents opt to teach their children at home over enrolling them in a digitized, remote state-run classroom.

Our government public schools have been corrupted by leftist indoctrination for years, while they have steadily done a worsening job at educating children in the basics. (Witness for example the ignorance exhibited by the Antifa protesters about American history.) Maybe this disaster created by the Wuhan flu panic might have some benefits, such as getting parents more involved once again in their kid’s education, and thus improve it.

Because, based on everything I’ve seen and read about modern public school education and culture, parents really can’t do worse.

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“We quarantined the healthy, and we exposed the sick.”

9:30 am

According to Jay Bhattacharya, director of both the Program on Medical Outcomes and the Center on the Demography and Economics of Health and Aging at Stanford University, the decisions made by most governments during the past six months in reaction to the Wuhan virus made no sense, and actually acted to worsen the epidemic.

“We essentially, in effect, exposed people who were at high risk in nursing homes, in assisted care facilities, elderly populations,” Bhattacharya said. “We essentially, in the early days of the epidemic, did the inverse of the right policy.”

“We quarantined the healthy, and we exposed the sick,” he added.

The professor noted that the World Health Organization, early on in the pandemic, suggested that the death rate for the disease might be as high as 3.4%, significantly higher than that of seasonal influenza. Revised estimates have put that rate as low as 0.26%, though some studies have put it closer to 0.5%. [emphasis mine]

The mortality rate for the flu is generally estimated at about 0.1%, so the Wuhan virus is higher, but really not by much. Moreover, these new estimates are much closer to what could have been gleaned from the early data, data that the WHO and many other government health officials ignored in favor of unreliable models. More important however is that, when compared to the flu, the data today suggests that COVID-19 is less dangerous to the healthy population, and a greater risk to the elderly sick, which once again shows that quarantining the healthy population (the lock downs) makes no sense. It only slows the arrival of herd immunity, giving the virus more time to reach the vulnerable population.

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Five charts prove the continuing COVID-19 panic unwarranted

4:08 pm

Link here. Not surprisingly, the U.S. is doing better than almost every other country in the world, and the numbers also show that the epidemic is dying off.

On confirmed cases per million, the U.S. ranks 9th, but this is in part due to the extensive testing we’ve done. In fact, despite what Biden and Co. will have you believe, we are in the top of the pack when it comes to COVID-19 tests per capita. (Note that only four of the other 36 Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development nations do better than the U.S. on tests per capita. Also, every country that does better than the U.S. has a significantly smaller population — some just tens of thousands. In fact, if you add up the populations of every country in the top 17, it equals a little more than half the U.S. population. )

When it comes to the case fatality rate – the share of confirmed cases who have died – there is no comparison. Not only does the U.S. outperform most countries – as well as the world overall – the case fatality rate in the U.S. has been steadily declining.

Finally, there’s the chart Democrats really don’t want you to see: The number of new COVID-19 cases peaked a month ago and has been trending downward ever since.

Make sure you take a look at where Sweden stands when compared to everyone else. For a country that imposed no odious lock downs, their numbers are quite good, and in fact beat nations like Italy and the United Kingdom, which imposed strict rules and house arrests.

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Report: Astronomy threatened by satellite constellations

11:31 am

A report issued today, resulting from a video conference of astronomers in July, has concluded that much of ground-based astronomy is threatened by the new large satellite constellations being launched by SpaceX, OneWeb, and others.

The astronomers’ report offers six solutions for solving the problem.

  • Launch fewer or no LEOsats. However impractical or unlikely, this is the only option identified that can achieve zero astronomical impact.
  • Deploy satellites at orbital altitudes no higher than ~600 km.
  • Darken satellites or use sunshades to shadow their reflective surfaces.
  • Control each satellite’s orientation in space to reflect less sunlight to Earth.
  • Minimize or eventually be able to eliminate the effect of satellite trails during the processing of astronomical images.
  • Make more accurate orbital information available for satellites so that observers can avoid pointing telescopes at them.

Notice what solution they don’t offer? Maybe astronomy should focus on building space-based telescopes, where the view would be clear, unimpeded by both the satellites and (much more importantly) the atmosphere.

In fact, the claim in the first solution above, that launching no satellites is “the only option identified that can achieve zero astronomical impact” is intellectually dishonest. All astronomers have to do is get their observatories into space, something that is very doable and affordable with today’s cheaper launch capabilities and technology. In space the impact of the satellites will once again be zero. And they will have the added benefit of getting outside the atmosphere, which by the way is actually a bigger limitation to observations than any satellite constellation.

It seems to me that this report was written by the faction of astronomers who make their living building big ground-based telescopes. Rather than think of solutions, they want to protect their turf by attacking the achievements of others.

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COVID-19: The epidemic is ending, why do government restrictions remain?

3:45 pm

This essay is going to include a number of graphs [data source], showing the daily numbers related to the Wuhan virus since the beginning of the epidemic. All show that the epidemic is truly tapering off or ending, regardless of where you live. All also strongly suggest that the lock downs, restrictions, mask mandates, and the many other odious rules that were imposed initially for just a few weeks to prevent our healthcare system from being overwhelmed but have remained in force now for many months should immediately be cancelled or removed.

And yet, these restrictions remain, in one form or another, with some rules (such as the mandate to wear masks) being expanded, sometimes to the point of idiocy. That they remain proves again that those lock downs, restrictions, mask mandates and other rules had little to do with the disease. Instead their goal was to impose new authoritarian rules on the citizenry, meant to establish new precedents of power and control for the petty dictators who wish to rule us like servants.

Daily mortality of COVID-19 across the entire United States

The first graph to the right shows the daily deaths across the entire United States. As you can see, after reaching a peak in late April, the disease began fading with the coming of warmer weather, as these seasonal flu-like diseases always do. Then, beginning in early July we saw a slow new rise that peaked in early August and has since begun tapering off.

The second peak is puzzling for a seasonal disease, but we might be able to explain it by thinking about the consequences of the lock downs. Normally a seasonal disease hits, and than fades. Normally however there are no lock downs and restrictions, which means the virus has a chance to quickly spread throughout the population, reach herd immunity, and then die.

This time however we decided to slow the disease’s spread, which means that at some point, when those restrictions were eased (not removed) we were guaranteed to see a new uptick. This is what has happened, though the uptick as should be expected is relatively small, nowhere near as severe as the initial peak.

In fact, to understand the true impact of this virus it is essential to recognize several very important components of these death numbers. First, these numbers are likely exaggerated, by at least 25%. Hospitals get more money if they claim a death came from COVID-19, so they have a strong incentive to assign the cause of death to COVID-19, even when it was only a minor factor. There is ample evidence this has been happening.

These extra benefits have also meant that COVID-19 has cured the flu! This year will see the fewest flu deaths ever, now estimated to be only 6,605 total, an absurdly low number compared to every other year, ever. In other words, of the 168,000 or so deaths assigned to the Wuhan flu a large percentage, maybe as much as half, might actually be cases that would have died (or did die) from the flu.

All told, these numbers tell us that the total deaths this year are simply not much higher than in past years, that they have either been overstated or assigned incorrectly to COVID-19. A hard look instead suggests actually that this year’s epidemic was essentially nothing more than a somewhat worse flu season, painful, but hardly justifying the panic that we’ve seen.

Second, the disease’s mortality continues to be confined almost entirely with the aged sick, with 80% of all COVID-19 deaths occurring in people over 65. Like the flu, the Wuhan flu carries practically no threat for the young and the healthy. If anything, the sooner they can all get infected, the sooner the epidemic will end, actually producing the fewest deaths because the healthy population will choke it off before it can reach the vulnerable parts of the population.

Unfortunately, we did not let this happen, and the consequences for the older population is tragic, as shown by the next two graphs.
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16 comments

Dying Democratic Cities

12:40 pm

Saks Fifth Avenue, summer 2020
Saks Fifth Avenue in 2020 NYC.

Want to move to one of America’s big urban cities? Ever imagine having a penthouse apartment close to or even in downtown so that you could walk to the theater? Well, the options are endless, and the cost is plummeting. It’s a buyer’s market! Just take a look:

None of these trends are new. American cities have been generally suffering since the end of World War II, though for the past few decades they have seen a partial renewal that did not bring them back to the halcyon days of the past but at least made them look vibrant and alive.

The last few months however have seen a perfect storm of circumstances that have led to a major crash, destroying all the gains made in the recent past.
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24 comments

Another SLS screw-up related to Europa Clipper

3:16 pm

Despite being required for years by a legal congressional mandate to use SLS to launch Europa Clipper to the moon of Jupiter, NASA engineers have suddenly discovered unspecified “compatibility issues” that might make use of the rocket problematic.

At an Aug. 17 meeting of NASA’s Planetary Science Advisory Committee, Lori Glaze, director of NASA’s planetary science division, said the Europa Clipper mission had recently discovered compatibility issues involving the Space Launch System, the vehicle preferred by Congress to launch the spacecraft. “There have been some issues that have been uncovered just recently,” she said of the use of SLS for Europa Clipper. “We are in a lot of conversations right now with human exploration and others within the agency about what kind of steps we can take going forward.”

She did not elaborate on the compatibility issues regarding SLS. Such issues, industry sources say, likely involve the environment the spacecraft would experience during launch, such as vibrations. That environment would be very different for Europa Clipper, a relatively small spacecraft encapsulated within a payload fairing, than for the Orion spacecraft that will be the payload for most SLS launches.

“We are currently working to identify and resolve potential hardware compatibility issues and will have more information once a full analysis has been conducted,” NASA spokesperson Alana Johnson said in an Aug. 18 statement to SpaceNews. “Preliminary analysis suggests that launching Clipper may require special hardware adjustments, depending on the launch vehicle.”

This is a joke. It is also absurd and disgusting. Finally, it is also par for the course for NASA and all of today’s government, at all levels. They can’t do anything competently. From the beginning Europa Clipper was mandated to fly on SLS. And yet, they didn’t design the two to be compatible?

Based on this example we should of course demand that the government and these bureaucrats be given more power and more control over our lives. Of course.

13 comments

More data from Sweden demonstrates failure of lock downs everywhere else

7:06 pm

Link here. Sweden imposed almost no rules when the Wuhan virus arrived. And though Sweden’s death toll was higher than many other places, consider this:

Of the 5,783 deaths, how many do you think were of people under the age of 40-years-old? 20%? 10%? No. Not even close. In Sweden, 26 people under the age of 40-years-old have died from COVID-19. That means less than one-half of one percent of the deaths associated with the coronavirus were of people younger than middle age. What’s more is that they have now essentially flattened the curve completely to the point that they often report zero deaths on any given day. [emphasis in original]

Also, only one school-age child died. Only one.

This is not a disease to be feared if you are healthy, especially if you are healthy and young. We should stop panicking.

37 comments

Air Force limits future launch bidding to SpaceX and ULA

4:13 pm

The Air Force today announced that it decided, after more than a year of discussions and negotiations, to limit bidding on all launch contracts for the next five years to only SpaceX and ULA, thus restricting competitive bidding on those contracts.

The awards represent the second phase of the military’s National Security Space Launch program, which is organized by the Air Force’s Space and Missile Systems Center in Los Angeles, California. Four companies — Elon Musk’s SpaceX, ULA, Northrop Grumman and Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin — bid for the contracts, with the military set to spend about $1 billion per year on launches.

The NSSL awards represent nearly three dozen launches, scheduled between 2022 and 2026. ULA won 60% of the launches, and SpaceX won the remaining 40%.

The award blocks Northrop Grumman and Blue Origin from bidding on these contracts. Expect a lawsuit from these two companies demanding that they have the right to bid, just as SpaceX did several years ago when the Air Force tried to maintain ULA’s monopoly on bidding.

On a very common sense level, this approach by the Air Force (its space operations soon to be taken over by the Space Force) makes little sense. Why restrict bidding? Both Blue Origin or Northrop Grumman expect to have their new rockets operating commercially in the next two years. They should have the right to bid on military launches. The competition will strengthen the launch market, reduce the costs to the military, and give it more redundancy and flexibility.

Based on my research, the only real reason I have ever been able to find for the Air Force’s desire to do this is their inability to deal with their paperwork should more than two bids be received.

12 comments

House rejects Artemis; Senate funds Artemis

11:51 am

The Senate gives, the House taketh away: Even as the Democratically-controlled House continues to refuse the Trump administration’s request for $2.6 billion to fund its 2024 manned lunar landing, the Republican-controlled Senate has provided $1.6 billion of those funds in the next COVID-19 stimulus package.

This illustrates why such stimulus packages are utterly corrupt. Much of the money allocated has little to do with helping the country recover from the Wuhan panic, but is instead earmarked for the favorite agencies of the politicians. The Republicans are also trying to use this package to sneak across funding for Artemis without the House Democrats noticing, or being able to object.

It remains to be seen whether that strategy will work. Either way, we continue on the road to bankruptcy and financial collapse, as the federal government is trillions in debt, and simply doesn’t have the money for any of this.

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