Maggie's Farm

Aggie: Six months after his stroke, and the poor guy can't even string words together, coherently.

Doctors say the stroke didn't affect his cognition, just his verbal language skills, which is not uncommon for stroke victims, and they are expected to recover over time.

Aggie: I think more than a few Independent voters, and even some Democrats, are going to be angry that this was the candidate provided, when so many other more suitable choices were weeded out in the machine primaries last spring, after he had his stroke.

Fetterman's stroke was just days before the primary.

Aggie: A few days post-event is more than enough for a medical opinion that it's serious enough to call off a highly-stressful political campaign for national office.

Most experts, including those who have examined Fetterman, believe that his cognition was unaffected by his stroke, and there is nothing suggesting anything other than issues with his verbal skills.

Aggie: The votes will be counted in a few days and you can make your case then.

People can decide based on any basis they want, though we might hope that their decision is founded on the best available facts, as well as consistent with their values.

Aggie: Can't wait to see him fillibuster.

Filibusters haven't required talking for decades. If enough Senators signal they will filibuster, the bill isn't brought to the floor.

Aggie: What makes you say that?

The filibuster became silent when dual-tracking of legislation was instituted in the 1970s. That allowed putting aside a slow-moving bill and moving on to other matters.

Armed people wearing masks and with their license plates covered are staking out drop boxes intimidating voters.

Nonna Mouse: Yep, Antifa still be doing Antifa things.

Drop box vigilantism is being explicitly promoted by Republicans, not antifa.

Nonna Mouse: you only clutch your pearls and get the vapors when the right finally decides to do what the left has been doing for years?

Your claim was that it was antifa. That claim was demonstrably false.

As for your new claim, no one should be subject to intimidation when voting.

SK: The story about the drop boxes has nothing to do with the claims Clinton made, which is what the linked article is about and consisted of her bizarre ideas about how the Supreme Court and state legislatures will attempt to overturn the election.

You're right! There is, indeed, a movement on the right to grant power without court oversight to state legislatures to ignore election results and award the state's presidential electors to their chosen candidate.

SK: Here's a deflection for you--why don't you explain how what happened to Javier Lopez wasn't about voter intimidation...

Hialeah police: ‘No indication’ of political motive in attack on Rubio canvasser.

SK: That was the Clinton model--among many--to delegitimize the 2016 election. Remember "faithless electors"?

Clinton conceded the day after the election.

SK: And you're just enough of a liar to claim to believe it.

The position of those investigating the case makes for a stronger argument than no evidence or fallacious reasoning. The investigation is still ongoing, though.

OneGuy: This is an obvious false flag.

Drop box vigilantism is being explicitly promoted by Republicans, not antifa.

OneGuy: Look back at the J6 videos and you will see the antifa in black block causing trouble and you will notice the Trump supporters never even thought they would need a mask because they thought they lived in America where the constitution allowed you to demonstrate.

Several hundred people have already been convicted for the J6 riot. There is no evidence that they were anything but right-wing Trump supporters.

OneGuy: Drop box monitors is a grass roots group not "Republican" but just good people who don't want the election stolen.

Republicans are encouraging it, the result of which has been complaints of voter intimidation. Ignoring the evidence provided doesn't make it go away.

OneGuy: The "demonstrators" were convicted because they thought they lived in America where they could demonstrate legally and constitutionally.

This is not legal or constitutional. Again, ignoring the evidence doesn't make it go away.

mudbug: In the 2020 election, there were many people who illegally stuffed drop boxes with ballots. There is video and electronic evidence of this but it was ignored.

You forgot to provide the evidence.

mudbug: There is no evidence of that because those were the only people that were searched for and arrested.

There is extensive video of the riots and crowd sourcing of the identities of those involved. Have at it: https://facesoftheriot.com/

mudbug: One provocateur, John Sullivan, was arrested for activities at J6, but unlike the conservatives who languished in jail for almost a year awaiting trial, he was allowed to go home and await his trial.

Federal law presumes pretrial release. To hold the person pretrial, the government has to show the court that the person is a flight risk, likely to interfere with the administration of justice, or be a continuing threat to society. The vast majority of those charged for J6 activities were granted pretrial release. The government argued that Sullivan should be held, but the court released him. How did you think it worked?

That is clearly not correct when comparing to seasonal influenza. More than a million Americans died during the pandemic, which is a population mortality rate of 0.3%. The infection fatality rate would be higher, of course. The case fatality rate is 1.1%. And that is with the rapid development of a vaccine.

The writers are correct that mortality for the young is very low. However, the young do transmit the disease to others; students to their teachers, children to their parents and grandparents.

JustMe: A lot of words without making a point.

Claim: Case fatality rate of COVID is 0.1%
Response: It's false because the population fatality rate is 0.3% and the case fatality rate will generally be at least as high as the population fatality rate.

Population fatality rate = deaths / population = 0.3%
Infection fatality rate = deaths / infections ≥ 0.3% ∧ ≤ 1.1%
Case fatality rate = deaths / cases = 1.1%

The reason COVID-19 was dangerous was because it was a novel coronavirus, meaning humans did not have immune experience with the viral strain. And that means it takes some time for the immune system to respond, allowing the virus to multiply rapidly and cause serious damage to the body's tissues.

Once the body has experience with COVID-19, either through infection or vaccination, then the immune system has antibodies to respond to infection, and also has a memory of the infection in T and B lymphocytes. Antibodies will immediately attack and prevent most future infections. However, the antibodies appear to wanes over a period of months—but the memory cells remain. If the body is re-exposed to infection after the antibodies have waned, the memory cells do take some time to react, so the person may become infected, but the response will be much faster than a naïve immune system. The immune system will also be able to respond to variants more quickly. Consequently, a person with experience of the virus, either from previous infection or vaccination, will tend to avoid infection, or if infected, to have much less severe disease.

indyjonesouthere: If these statistics are still relying on PCR tests for Covid confirmation, then the statistics are useless.

Population fatality rate doesn't depend on testing. At 0.3% this is much higher than the claimed case fatality rate.

indyjonesouthere: If the Covid deaths were not confirmed by autopsy, then it could just as easily have been death by flu.

Autopsies have confirmed that COVID is a dangerous respiratory illness. Excess deaths confirm the COVID death count.

indyjonesouthere: The case fatality rate does depend on the accuracy of cause of death

No. You act as if disease was never diagnosed before the advent of genetic testing. That’s nonsense. The population mortality rate is about 0.3%. The infection mortality rate will generally be greater than the population mortality rate, or greater than 0.3%. The original claim was wrong.

indyjonesouthere: PCR tests should never have been used to determine cause of death as they are inherently inaccurate.

PCR tests are very accurate, but not perfectly accurate. Sensitivity is about 90%, while specificity is 98%. But PCR testing is not the only diagnostic tool doctors and medical examiners use. Researchers have studied the course of the disease, including what the virus does to human tissues, especially to the lung and circulatory system.

indyjonesouthere: Excess deaths only confirm there were excess deaths and they could be deaths from the flu or any other source.

Medical scientists warned there was a novel coronavirus. People started crowding into hospitals with respiratory distress. Morgues started filling up. Researchers said the virus would spread and could cause hundreds of thousands of deaths. There’s a million extra dead Americans, millions more around the world.

indyjonesouthere: You read nothing in the Brightworkresearch piece.

We did read it. You said it was ”source material,” but it wasn’t. Not sure why you said it was. It was composed of out of context quotes and mangled science. Can you point to an actual scientific source?

indyjonesouthere: If you read it to the bottom of the article it gave a reference to the article in its entirety.

Yes, we read it, which said, “Visit Our Subscription Website on Covid, Vaccines, and Other Medical Topics”. In other words, more of the same, only you have to pay. It’s not original source. It’s junk. It’s mostly just quotes, but without references, so we can’t see the context.

Here’s one nonsensical claim: “The PCR test was developed without a covid sample. . . How can any of these PCR tests have any accuracy claim whatsoever if they never had the actual virus?”

Because you don’t need the virus with modern genetics. You just need the genetic sequence. Your source doesn’t even get this basic fact right, which should make you question their credibility with regards to their understanding of the subject.

We’d be happy to address each point on the page, but you haven’t bothered to respond to what we posted already. See #6.2.2.4 as an example of points you ignored.

indyjonesouthere: You addressed nothing about the CDC's admission and you always avoid the cycle threshold discussion.

The term CDC shows up only once on the linked page. There is no link to the context, and you can't even copy the text. So, we typed in the text and searched for the original source.


That's right! Viral RNA may exist from a previous infection, though the body will normally clear the viral RNA with days or a few weeks at most. And a person with residual RNA may contract influenza or pneumonia in the meantime. Or it may even be a rare false positive. That's why doctors use more than one diagnostic tool. But the original source YOU {indirectly} cited says, "Detection of viral RNA not only aids in the diagnosis of illness but also provides epidemiological and surveillance information."

None of that addresses the actual point. Medical scientists warned of an impending respiratory pandemic with hospitals inundated with patients suffering respiratory distress and deaths numbering in the hundreds of thousands. Excess deaths turned out to be over a million with millions hospitalized. There's no way around this basic fact. There was a deadly pandemic of a novel coronavirus.

SillyMe: I have to admit I do not know all or most of what he has said so maybe he said something offensive. I don't know.

Ye said he would go "death con 3 on JEWISH PEOPLE".

SillyMe: So why does THIS matter????

Threatening mass murder of the “JEWISH PEOPLE”? Can’t imagine why that would be a sensitive issue.

SillyMe: I get it now! You actually think DEFCON 3 is Threatening mass murder of the “JEWISH PEOPLE”

Ye tweeted “death con 3”. Can’t imagine why threatening to bring death to the Jewish people would be a sensitive issue.