Maggie's FarmWe are a commune of inquiring, skeptical, politically centrist, capitalist, anglophile, traditionalist New England Yankee humans, humanoids, and animals with many interests beyond and above politics. Each of us has had a high-school education (or GED), but all had ADD so didn't pay attention very well, especially the dogs. Each one of us does "try my best to be just like I am," and none of us enjoys working for others, including for Maggie, from whom we receive neither a nickel nor a dime. Freedom from nags, cranks, government, do-gooders, control-freaks and idiots is all that we ask for. |
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Monday, April 13. 2020Monday morning linksMaggie's HQ Easter Report: Went out early to do some outdoor chores after a morning run. Repairing and painting birdhouses, planting some herbs, shed-cleaning, shrub pruning. Almost stepped on (photo) a Robin's egg in the grass. Sheesh, like a perfect Easter Egg. Then I saw a baby Cottontail bunny hopping away. That is called an Easter Blessing. Then, in respect for my father-in-law (quarantining sort-of, here) we streamed Cardinal Dolan's Easter mass at St. Patrick's. What a fine fellow he is. Later, I watched a squirrel enjoying that egg. New York without New Yorkers: The city at its emptiest:
Progressive Destruction: The Pandemic is the Perfect Time to Abolish the Family. There's no nightmare the Left won't pursue to achieve its earthly paradise Coronavirus: At least two NHS hospitals trialling anti-malaria drug hydroxychloroquine hailed by Trump The Post-Quarantine City - What New York can do to ensure a sturdy recovery from Covid-19 REPORT: 30%-50% Of Patients In Chicago Tested For COVID-19 Already Have Antibodies In System JPMorgan Predicts GDP Will Completely Crater, Forecasts a Staggering 40 Percent Second Quarter Drop U.S. government gave $3.7million grant to Wuhan lab at center of coronavirus leak scrutiny that was performing experiments on bats from the caves where the disease is believed to have originated THE EXPERTS HAVE BEEN WRONG OVER AND OVER AGAIN ON THIS PANDEMIC WHAT WOULD WE DO WITHOUT EXPERTS? How Long has the Chinese Coronavirus Really Been in America? Sunday Talks – Dr. Fauci Plays The Hindsight Game With Furrowed Brow Tapper… From somewhere: Dr. Fauci is a slippery one, a CYA guy like most people in government Why Are We So Scared? Trump Uses Persuasion, Not Force, in Coronavirus Crisis. So of course that’s not acceptable either. Liberals Panicked by Virus Are Trying to Buy Guns, and Are Shocked and Outraged About All the Hoops They Have to Jump Through ‘Crossed the line’: Ban-happy Michigan governor blasted for ‘insane’ overreach in response to coronavirus outbreak (here are several examples) The WHO Lied and Created a Global Panic: Second Extensive Study Finds Coronavirus Mortality Rate Is 0.4% Not 3.4% — Similar to Seasonal Flu New Data Shows U.S. Companies Are Definitely Leaving China Good ‘China Was Not Truthful’: Ex-FDA Chief Scott Gottlieb Explains How Beijing Misled The World About Coronavirus Dr. Fauci: Coronavirus Erupted in December While China Lied About Human-to-Human Spread China lied? That's a dog bites man story China Seals Border with Russia as Imported Virus Cases Surge China’s desperate attempt to erase its connection to the Wuhan coronavirus is not going well How Weird Could The 2020 Campaign Get? You Have No Idea New York Times edits Biden sexual assault coverage, deletes references to past inappropriate 'hugs, kisses and touching' America Must Have a 'Regime Collapse' Strategic Goal for Iran Really? Leave it up to their people. Trackbacks
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QUOTE: WHAT WOULD WE DO WITHOUT EXPERTS? In my experience, we'd get a lot more done, and done economically. I could tell you stories. “a CYA guy like most people in government”
1000%. The career path breeds risk-aversion and bureaucratic mind rot, the exact opposite of leadership. We should not care in the slightest about Fauci’s opinions about anything other than medicine, and even there we have to consider the source. I saw more premeditated self-deception than mind rot. The bigger problem is that all this breeds crisis habitation. That makes it a lot easier to blame somebody else, and makes the requirement for a persuasive case for any action of much less importance.
The WHO Lied and Created a Global Panic: Second Extensive Study Finds Coronavirus Mortality Rate Is 0.4% Not 3.4% — Similar to Seasonal Flu
I've been consistently skeptical of many of the C19 numbers flying around but calling it 'similar to the season flu' at this point in time is just wrong. It's at least twice and probably four times the mortality rate unless you think seasonal influenza cases are over counted which is highly unlikely. Not the Black Death but mitigation is definitely in order. “Two to four times”
Simply not a factual statement, not yet. Maybe someday. Take the under. It's many magnitudes greater than the flu. The worldwide death rate as of yesterday afternoon was at 6.2%.
https://www.facebook.com/scmp/videos/630813664431185/ Not really. The annual mortality for influenza is approximately 8% of confirmed cases. That's about the same as initial reports of COVID-19.
Mortality of estimated cases is much different. We have no clue yet as to how pervasive this corona virus is or will be. Something of concern? Yes. Orders of magnitude? Not that I see. Could it be said that we have no clue as to any of the numbers that matter. Due to its asymptomatic nature, the variability of its effects on individuals, the coding of all covid deaths as covid; regardless of actual cause, i.e. co-morbidities, etc. and don't forget Chinese lying, and still lying.
We have no idea how many have had it, how many have recovered nor how many have directly died from it. Well, I'm reminded of a tale from my youth - there were three truths - what Uncle Walter said on the TV, what Westmoreland was reading, and what really happened on the ground...
Volunteer time is being cut where I'm at due to a lack of admitted cases. The "clean floors" are almost deserted, and it was a bit odd to walk from F to A on level 3 (if you've ever been to MD Anderson, you'll know) and only see staff. The 20 counties of SE Texas are under 1000 patients, with some 1500 total statewide being a seemingly steady number for the week. With "social distances" and other means, we're not quite seeing the forecasted numbers, so... I will ask again what those numbers mean. You keep saying it's 1,000...1,500. Texas has 12,000 cases at present.
New York without New Yorkers
For many of us deplorables, hell is other people. Turns out it is for many New Yorkers as well. Add - this AM's update says that the number of patients statewide now under 1200...
"The Pandemic is the Perfect Time to Abolish the Family."
Actually, it probably isn't. From personal observation, the family is the single strongest element of society right now. It's the cooped up post-modern singletons of various genders who appear to be having the toughest time of it. Depending on the length of this pandemic, I suspect a lot of "woke" notions could potentially be swept away by it. Regards" Coronavirus: At least two NHS hospitals trialling anti-malaria drug hydroxychloroquine hailed by Trump
Chinese study showing cardiac complications. WHAT WOULD WE DO WITHOUT EXPERTS? Better. New York
"Times edits Biden sexual assault coverage, deletes references to past inappropriate 'hugs, kisses and touching'." Just one more reason for me to despise, detest, and distrust the NYT. (The WaPoo, too. And the rest of the msm.) Smithfield shutting U.S. pork plant indefinitely, warns of meat shortages during pandemic
Smithfield foods is shutting down their pork packing plant in Sioux Falls, SD. It is being done so on the "recommendation" of the mayor, "Smithfield said it will resume operations in Sioux Falls after further direction from local, state and federal officials." Smithfield's employees have been diagnosed with 238 cases of coronavirus, over half the total cases in SD. Cargill and Tyson have also closed plants due to the cornavirus. I don't know if there is enough extra killing capacity in the industry to divert market ready hogs to other plants. If there is not, huge disruptions to the supply chain may be coming. 1) Meat in grocery stores comes from packing plants like Smithfield's. If the production can't be increases at other plants, less meat will be flowing into grocery stores. That could mean shortages and higher prices. 2) This could wreak havoc on the producers. You can't just put a hog on the shelf and wait for the plant to reopen. Hogs continue to eat, and they continue to grow and get heavier. In just a couple of weeks, these hogs will be too big for the optimum weight range for marketing hogs. They can still be sold, but they will be discounted if they weigh too much. If this becomes a problem industry-wide, the increased pork tonnage will depress the market price for all hogs. In addition to all that, these large hog units' pigs move to different buildings during their life. Little pigs are born in one building, moved to a nursery, and then to a finishing barn. If the finished pigs can't be moved out, then where will the pigs coming up behind them go? https://tinyurl.com/txbyg5x This is all such bullshit, but if it's not your ox getting gored, then no price is too high to pay to reduce the risk of getting the corona virus. Would be interesting to see if/how much of that capacity was going to China.
FWIW, JBS is going whole hog... (sorry 'bout that) Smithfield wholly owned by china, right? Used to be a old Virginia firm. China having had swine flu problems with pork (pigs bought from Russia) I'm sure they will be happy to take some of the surplus off our hands...
Re: THE EXPERTS HAVE BEEN WRONG OVER AND OVER AGAIN ON THIS PANDEMIC
QUOTE: After all, in January the experts were telling us this was no biggie. Wrong! Dr. Fauci was saying there was nothing to worry about throughout February. Not a fan of Fauci's, but to be fair each time I heard him say something like this in the Feb-Mar time frame, he included a qualifier e.g. "We don't have anything to worry about right now" or something similar. I never heard him generalize about the COVID stuff without including a point-in-time reference.
"Worry" is usually a forward-looking concept. Fauci's job is to take into account the facts today and tell us how much we need to worry about in the future. It wouldn't be at all useful for him to say there's no need to worry "today" because cases numbers are small, if he has any reason to suspect that they're growing exponentially and will be a horrible problem in two weeks.
The only reasonable thing for a guy like him to mean by "no reason to worry right now" is "the trend looks good for the foreseeable future." Also to be fair China and WHO lied to us. There is a report that our intelligence community has that states the total death from Covid-19 in China is actually about 30 million dead.
I sympathize with any of the experts who were put on the spot to come up with answers. There is no way that they could be "right" and their comments were going to be dredged up to be used against them. The same exact thing is true today! Those people who are now proclaiming that it's all over and Covid-19 wasn't so bad may well regret jumping to conclusions when the future turns out quite different from what they expected. My point was not to pile on Fauci but to point out that the author did not give the whole story. He should have said, "After all, in February (not January) the experts ..."
But I don't think Fauci should get off lightly. He is suggesting that the administration did not act soon enough. In some cases he has undercut his statements that the virus was not a big problem. I think at the least, this is very poor form. He's part of a team and during the situation, he should be supportive of the team instead of second guessing it. After it's over, he can say his advice was ignored or whatever. He's being spun, as is everything else in the news today. He came to the lectern today to speak to this incident unequivocally and to emphasize that both times he and Birx approached Trump with a recommendation to put mitigations into effect, he took action immediately, even in the face of disagreement from his other team members. Fauci made it clear that Trump acted on public health concerns first and foremost.
A particularly obnoxious CBS correspondent then asked if he was saying this voluntarily, and he responded rather tartly making it clear that he considered the question bush-league. It drives me nuts, the absolutely rabid quality of the press coverage right now; when it's so important to be accurate with information they still will not hesitate to paint something in a way that is badly inaccurate if it has the slightest chance of reflecting badly on Trump. Are you sure today's new York city is the strong, gritty city of just 19years ago? Empty streets, deblasio elected then re elected, mosque built in sacred land of ground zero? Remember 9/11 with guiliano, city under attack and the streets still teeming, life moving on? I think the old new Yorkers left this city to some totally different set of people.
Feminist nation effort to destroy the family.
Question: how do your daughters fit into the "feminist nation"? You can be feminine or you can be a feminist. You can't be both.
Why are we so scared? I wouldn't say I am scared so much as just filled with dread for what's to come. When I see the almost universal turn to government to "save us!" and the acceptance of government edicts with so little pushback and protest over what's being done, I have to wonder what's become of this country. I keep hearing that this lockdown can't go on much longer because people just won't stand for it - I suspect people will endure far more restrictions on their liberty than you think. As I "joked" to my nephew, we're all Democrats now, sitting at home, no jobs, waiting on a government check. Waiting on the government to give us permission to get on with our lives, hoping they're benevolent enough to give us back at least some of the liberties they took away.
The big issue flaring up now is some blue state governors eager to keep their states closed down to increase economic damage and hence political damage against Trump.
Trump is saying he has the power to open the country for business. I think we need to differentiate a positive power from a negative power. The president, as federal executive, has power over interstate commerce although I'm not sure of which specific law he could reference, If a compact of governors are conspiring to restrict commerce they are directly affecting interstate commerce. The president should be able to deal with that. He has the power to stop a negative state power abuse against the Union. This is a dangerous game being played here. The Democrats are once again deliberately hurting the country, tempting Trump to over-react. In November, the issue of who has done the better job for the citizens will be decided by the citizens who vote and whoever the Democrats can get to cheat at the ballot box or through the mail. |