Maggie's Farm

We 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.

Our Recent Essays Behind the Front Page

Much Sorry with Delays
Birth, Death and All That Stuff in Between
How to Honor Labor Day, Every Day
My Yom Kippur Miracle (Repost from 2010)
Good intro to fly casting
Peach update, with pie
NYC update
Easy for you to say: To the elites on mass immigration
For NYC on 9/11, Sailors' Snug Harbor
Pickled Peaches
Water Shoes
Labor Costs in U.S.
Your "identity"
Good news about The Great Courses
Uses of Hot Pepper Jelly/Sauce, Chutneys, and Jams
A Saturday Drive to Litchfield County, CT
How to Pick a Kayak
Civilized: Fruit forks and knives
Loads of kayaking on Cape Cod
Psychology Experiments' Questionable Results

Categories


All categories

Quicksearch

Links

Blog Administration

Open login screen

RSS Readers

Add to Google

Subscribe with Bloglines

Thursday, April 29. 2021

Thursday morning links


Why haven't we seen a dramatic drop in COVID-19 cases yet?


 Fauci still not ready to say it's okay for kids to be outside without masks


Elites and New York’s Future - Influential citizens rallied to the city’s rescue in the 1970s, but it’s not clear that we will see a repeat


What Is Systemic Racism? John McWhorter, Lara Bazelon, Glenn Loury, Kmele Foster, Chloé Valdary and Kenny Xu weigh in.


Joe Biden Proposes Crippling Taxes, Strangling Regulations, and Completely Unsecure Elections in Prime-Time Speech


 5 Things to Know About Joe Biden's Address to Congress


 Bezos-Owned Washington Post To Stop Keeping Track of Biden’s Lies


 CNN Laughs, Accuses Sen. Tim Scott of Tokenism, an Uncle Tom for GOP


Here is Sen. Scott's rebuttal


How much immigration do Americans want? 


Spy chiefs look to declassify intel after rare plea from 4-star commanders. Top military leaders said the U.S. is falling behind China and Russia in the information war.


 On Point: Reviving Obama's Iran Nuclear Deal Means War, Not Peace


Posted by Bird Dog in Hot News & Misc. Short Subjects at 06:58 | Comments (36) | Trackbacks (0)

Trackbacks
Trackback specific URI for this entry

No Trackbacks

Comments
Display comments as (Linear | Threaded)

Why haven't we seen a dramatic drop in COVID-19 cases yet? That's easy. Because, to the Covidians, "cases" means positive tests with the TC cranked up to the max to maximize the panic. Eighty percent of those "cases" have mild or non-existent symptoms. What we need to see are hospitalizations. Oh wait, do you mean to tell me that there were only 30 hospitalizations in the entire Country last week? ...almost all of them over 50 years of age? We can't let that get out or people would stop wearing masks...
#1 snopercod on 2021-04-29 07:57 (Reply)
Exactly right - these are not cases in any medical sense.

These case numbers are garbage data and therefore fairly useless in deciding anything, except possibly as a proxy for the actual case numbers at 1/10 of this rate or some such estimate.

Positive tests are not cases. Especially when the tests are gamed with 35x amplification to get positive test results when no live virus is detected.

It’s not just a coincidence that this sloppiness with terms and what they mean exaggerates exponentially the severity of the pandemic.
#1.1 Jeff Brokaw (Link) on 2021-04-29 09:15 (Reply)
This is important, b/c the Hot Air article was a failed attempt to answer the question.

A dramatic drop should be expected compared to 12 months prior when weather conditions were roughly the same. Comparison to Jan is not necessarily a legit comparison, and in this case it's fair to say it isn't.

Why aren't we lower than 12 months ago, when the virus was new and the weakest could still catch it? Why aren't we lower than 12 months ago when allegedly 1/10 of the population has had it and has antibodies? Whey aren't we lower than 12 months ago, when we've had vaccines for 2 months?

"Improved" testing, or rather over-sensitive testing, is a viable, and likely answer. A legit response, whereas what Morrissey wrote is not. Although the inclusion of fatality rate IS a good point.
#1.2 DrTorch (Link) on 2021-04-29 10:24 (Reply)
seven day average of 43,000 hospitalized, about a third of the January peak.

But why let facts get in the way?
#1.3 Sal D. on 2021-04-29 11:26 (Reply)
Hospitalization numbers include everyone admitted for any reason who tests positive, I believe. “Admitted with” vs. “admitted due to”.

We already know they count as “COVID death” anyone who dies for any reason who tested positive while alive. “With” vs. “from”.

All of these numbers are so hopelessly corrupted with noise that they are essentially useless.
#1.3.1 Jeff Brokaw (Link) on 2021-04-29 11:58 (Reply)
What's interesting on sites like MF is how the narrative went from "there's no such thing as covid" to "it's just a cold" to "died from" to "died with." I'm going to use a variant of that in my next jury trial. "The victim was injured with a bullet fired by my client's gun, not injured by the bullet." I'll let you know how that works out.

Until I was educated by the reddit-trained MDs on this site, I assumed that an actual MD would know that a hospitalized patient with a serious respiratory infection in the presence of a high viral load of the covid-19 virus, being given oxygen and ventilation, convalescent plasma or remdesivir had covid and not a heart attack, the flu, diabetes or being overweight.
#1.3.1.1 Sal D. on 2021-04-29 12:29 (Reply)
Good luck with all that tilting at windmills and arguing with strawmen you like to do. Must be exhausting.
#1.3.1.1.1 Jeff Brokaw (Link) on 2021-04-29 18:12 (Reply)
oh, you learned a new phrase! and they say public education only turns out idiots.

you got burned again. deal with it.
#1.3.1.1.1.1 Sal D. on 2021-04-30 07:37 (Reply)
Gosh, I’m really hurt now. Some flaming asshole I don’t know in real life is insulting me online!

Run along now toxic troll.
#1.3.1.1.1.1.1 Jeff Brokaw (Link) on 2021-04-30 10:19 (Reply)
does anyone actually say "gosh" except other ten year olds?
#1.3.1.1.1.1.1.1 Sal D. on 2021-04-30 10:50 (Reply)
But...but...he's a genius! Everybody on the internet knows that! Why can't you accept it!!!
#1.3.1.1.1.1.1.2 SK on 2021-04-30 11:09 (Reply)
Careful! He's a real actual lawyer! He says so himself! And now a physician too!

I bet he wants to be a fireman when he grows up!
#1.3.1.1.1.2 SK on 2021-04-30 08:10 (Reply)
Are you calling the CDC a liar. The link I provided says 30 total, for the entire Country. Oh wait, I stand corrected. That number is "per 100,000 population" so you could be correct.
#1.3.2 snopercod on 2021-04-29 15:01 (Reply)
Deaths were going to zero, but stopped declining. In some places they even went up again, though slightly. Opening things up has caused an increase in cases - and as people with mild symptoms can still infect others, they still count - and deaths.

I'm sorry facts are tough for people who can't back down and need to rewrite history. But we opened up, and the deaths increased temporarily, which is about as dramatic a proof that distancing and masks have some value as one could imagine.

Vaccinations will allow us to outrun the increase in cases and make the deaths decline again as the vulnerable are protected. But let's not pretend that what just happened right in front of us didn't happen.
#1.4 Assistant Village Idiot on 2021-04-29 13:37 (Reply)
State governments are taking the best-guess gamble that the increasing number of vaccinations will hold down what otherwise would be the next wave of the pandemic because of the reopenings. This strategy seems to be working, but one wonders if the decreasing rate of complete vaccinations because of the anti-vaxxers, "muh rights" and afraid-of-needles crowd might derail the plan. I suspect it won't, but I'm sure covid will continue to chew through the problem children.
#1.4.1 Sal D. on 2021-04-29 14:32 (Reply)
Here's the Real Reason Woke Corporations Are Adopting the Language of Revolutionaries

https://pjmedia.com/culture/stacey-lennox/2021/04/28/woke-corporations-are-not-adopting-the-language-of-revolutionaries-because-they-fear-boycotts-n1443204
#2 feeblemind on 2021-04-29 08:46 (Reply)
oops. Forgot to add the excerpts.

This is really scary stuff. It goes hand in hand with The Great Reset.

Can they succeed at this?

QUOTE:
So why are they jumping into current events and woke politics internally? The answer is not as a defense against the left-wing mob boycotting them. It is more significant than that.

The secret is in the acronym ESG, which stands for environmental, social, and corporate governance. The concept of ESGs was born in the Sustainable Development Goals in U.N. Agenda 2030. Global business leaders in finance operationalized it at the World Economic Forum. It will become a part of the regulatory environment for public companies based in the United States if we take Lee at her word.

It is the “S,” and “G” in ESG that corporate wokeism is addressing. Social and governance scores include metrics on workforce diversity, pay equity, social consciousness, community involvement, and board composition. Corporations are trying to prepare employees for the changes these requirements will create in the workplace. How wages are determined, who gets promoted according to what criteria, and other terms and conditions of employment, will be affected.


In the globally agreed-upon metrics, these are divided among four buckets: Principles, Planet, People, Prosperity. The reporting burden alone will crush small to medium-sized public companies. It will open global markets to companies that can afford to comply and will be a windfall to the accounting and consulting firms, like KPMG, that helped develop them.

Eventually, these requirements will apply to personal finance. Loans for appropriately green housing and vehicles will be available—but not for the used car a first-time buyer can afford or the natural gas-heated home a young couple wishes to buy. The rich, such as Larry Fink, will become more prosperous and more powerful. More of the working and middle class will become poorer, as has already happened during the pandemic.


If you think this can’t escalate, think again. Researchers have already correlated spending habits with personality, and it is only one step to ideology, political affiliation, or some form of social credit. And if this continues, we will eventually be nothing but consumers in the dystopian vision of the World Economic Forum, where citizens own nothing and are happy about it.
#2.1 feeblemind on 2021-04-29 09:14 (Reply)
QUOTE:
we will eventually be nothing but consumers


That's all you are now. The only value you have to any functioning, diversified economy is as a consumer.
#2.1.1 Sal D. on 2021-04-29 14:42 (Reply)
China’s Making A Bold Military Statement

QUOTE:
Indeed, the United States Office of Naval Intelligence has confirmed that the People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) has surpassed the United States Navy in total battle force ships, approximately 360 to 297, with future projections expecting the gap to grow. By 2025, the PLAN is predicted to field as many as 400 vessels whereas the United States plans only to field 355. Quantitative discussions of this sort have fostered an increasing level of hysteria in the U.S. media and even parts of its foreign policy and defense establishments.

. . . President Xi is ramping up China’s navy because he believes they are likely to use it.

. . . If Politicians Want Infrastructure Spending — Why Not Reboot Our Shipyards?

https://lidblog.com/chinas-navy/
#3 feeblemind on 2021-04-29 08:55 (Reply)
What chance does our woke Navy have, against trained professionals? Will our woke Navy even believe in defending the ship, the country? I have my doubts. I don’t think “Our Democracy” is worth defending.
#3.1 B. Hammer on 2021-04-29 11:25 (Reply)
Count the hulls. Makes perfect sense! But only if you're planning to fight another battle at Trafalgar, Jutland or Surigao Strait.

Go on. Look them up. I'll wait.
#3.2 Sal D. on 2021-04-29 12:38 (Reply)
If you're counting hulls, then consider the Battle of Myeongnyang.
#3.2.1 Zachriel on 2021-04-29 16:04 (Reply)
Leyte Gulf (or Trafalgar or the Nile) would be an example of the kind of qualitative difference hull counters can't grasp.
#3.2.1.1 Sal D. on 2021-04-29 16:16 (Reply)
Sal D: Leyte Gulf (or Trafalgar or the Nile) would be an example of the kind of qualitative difference hull counters can't grasp.

Sure.

As for the Battle of Myeongnyang, there were significant differences in, literally, hulls: the Panokseon vs. Atakebune. While the victory is rightly credited to the inspired leadership of Yi Sun-sin fighting against at least 10-1 odds, he used the differences in ship design and knowledge of the seas to great advantage — there, and at every naval battle he fought.
#3.2.1.1.1 Zachriel on 2021-04-30 12:06 (Reply)
"What Is Systemic Racism?"

If "systemic racism" were actually a real thing rather than the latest "progressive" windchime, then anyone in our society holding a government or corporate position at mid-level management or higher - that is, anyone who has come through the hierarchy to position of influence and authority - ought by rights resign on the principle that they are part of the problem and must get out of the way in order to fix it.

Put another way: President Biden, a man who has been a part of the "system" since 1972 should immediately resign from the US Presidency because he is clearly part of the problem, not its solution.

And that is why I ignore "systemic racism" in its entirety.
#4 JJM on 2021-04-29 09:38 (Reply)
JJM: If "systemic racism" were actually a real thing rather than the latest "progressive" windchime, then anyone in our society holding a government or corporate position at mid-level management or higher - that is, anyone who has come through the hierarchy to position of influence and authority - ought by rights resign on the principle that they are part of the problem and must get out of the way in order to fix it.

That's exactly contrary to the notion of systemic racism, which is, by definition, built into the system itself. A simple example is hiring by the old-boy network, which can perpetuate racial disparities.

https://jacksoncenter.info/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/tumblr_muptxftYvx1qducpxo1_500.jpg
#4.1 Zachriel on 2021-04-29 16:13 (Reply)
Except that's not racism, that's nepotism.

You're always wrong, why are you back.
#4.1.1 DrTorch (Link) on 2021-04-30 08:52 (Reply)
DrTorch: Except that's not racism, that's nepotism.

It's systemic racism when the system has a disparate impact on race. If the management of a business is, due to the legacy of segregation, all-white, then hiring based on the old-boy network, meaning management hiring people they know through their segregated churches, clubs, and neighborhoods, then the workforce will tend to stay white, possibly for generations. This is what led many of the civil rights protests during the 1950s and 1960s.

https://soaddictedtofresh.files.wordpress.com/2013/10/tumblr_muptxftyvx1qducpxo1_500.jpg
#4.1.1.1 Zachriel on 2021-04-30 11:49 (Reply)
DrTorch: Except that's not racism, that's nepotism.

By the way, it could be nepotism, but it doesn't have to be. Hiring someone's son recommended by a fellow church member isn't necessarily nepotism, but a reasonable method of finding talent. In any case, the system of hiring can lead to continuing racial disparities. And that makes it a systemic problem.
#4.1.1.2 Zachriel on 2021-04-30 11:53 (Reply)
ABC wonders: Why haven't we seen a dramatic drop in COVID-19 cases yet? Ummmmm, because those who think they are "our betters" want to keep riding this "gravy train". Cynical?? Moi???? You betcha!

Elites and New York’s Future: Cuomo and deBlasio have shot NYC in both feet.

5 Things to Know About Joe Biden's Address to Congress: I only know one thing: I have no trust in Biden.

Darkness Falls: Bezos-Owned Washington Post To Stop Keeping Track of Biden’s Lies: That's WHY I call it the WaPoo; it keeps WaPooping.

CNN Laughs, Accuses Sen. Tim Scott of Tokenism, an Uncle Tom for GOP: All part of the job for the Crap "News" Network.
#5 Sam L. on 2021-04-29 10:32 (Reply)
Of course Fauci isn't willing to say kids can go outside without a mask, he never says anything definitive that might be able to be held against him. Look at how many times he's said we can't lift the restrictions until the numbers go lower but when pressed to say what number he's looking for, he only repeats "lower". He refuses to give any hard answer to the question of when it will be okay to end the restrictions because he knows full well that's a political decision and not a scientific decision and Joe Biden hasn't told him yet what the answer is. (My guess is that the correct answer is "Never", but you won't hear anybody say that. They'll give you the same sort of answer Fauci gives - "when it's safe". And when will that be? "Hopefully soon.")
#6 Jerryskids on 2021-04-29 15:22 (Reply)
The most maddening thing about this is that they'll lift the restrictions only when they see enough people angry and willing to fight them over this and then they'll say they're following the science and now the numbers are low enough. Bull. You're putting the screws to everyone just to see how much they're willing to take and when you see you've gone too far you'll back off and claim "Science!". Just as Gavin Newsom did in California when he saw the recall petition gathering steam - he suddenly decided the numbers were looking better even though the numbers hadn't changed a bit. These people are evil liars about what they're doing and why they're doing it.
#6.1 Jerryskids on 2021-04-29 15:45 (Reply)
Fauci's been remarkably unforthcoming about hard numbers.

He knows that when he does all of a sudden the interest the media shows him will disappear.
#6.2 Jlawson on 2021-04-29 17:41 (Reply)
Now the CDC decides to reduce PCR test amplification for the vaccinated to 28X.

https://twitter.com/alexberenson/status/1387819126270353413

This is pure sophistry. You absolutely cannot decide to use a different standard later, that will cut out 90% of the “cases” that they pretended we had before, and then compare the trends across all that junk data.

What stupid bullshit this all is.
#7 Jeff Brokaw (Link) on 2021-04-29 18:07 (Reply)
Why haven't we seen a dramatic drop in COVID-19 cases yet?

Because the test is bullshit.
#8 ccoffer on 2021-04-29 21:21 (Reply)
1000 dead on 4/28, 900 dead on 4/29, and 900 dead on 4/30.

This with many people vaccinated, especially the most vulnerable.

I can only conclude they must not really be dead, because commenters at MF say it's all political and unreliable. Do me a favor and call up the people in your community who have a family member who just died and tell them it's all a myth, okay?

But you won't. That would take courage and honesty.
#9 Assistant Village Idiot on 2021-04-30 20:03 (Reply)

Add Comment
(Your e-mail will not show in your comment)

By commenting on this site you agree to the site rules listed here. Email
addresses will not be displayed and will only be used for email notifications.

Quick reference guide: [i] italics [/i], [b] bold [/b], [u] underline [/u],
[url] (web address) [/url]. More tips here.

Enclosing asterisks marks text as bold (*word*), underscore are made via _word_.
E-Mail addresses will not be displayed and will only be used for E-Mail notifications.

To prevent automated Bots from commentspamming, please enter the string you see in the image below in the appropriate input box. Your comment will only be submitted if the strings match. Please ensure that your browser supports and accepts cookies, or your comment cannot be verified correctly.
CAPTCHA

BBCode format allowed
 
 
A Chris Southern Consulting website.