POSITIVE!

Posted on by accordingtohoyt
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Yesterday, on the Denver Post (I think! It’s a Colorado Newspaper anyway) site I came across a headline that’s so wrong that wrong would be an improvement.

“US tops 500000 Covid-19 cases. Europe looks on in horror.” [For those correcting the “typo” via various means: I think they meant NEW cases.  The article was muddled, but that was the feeling I got. The headline was JUST that.]

Do I need to break it down?

Half a million cases means, of course, a half million tests positive right now. Which means we have almost 0.2% of people positive for a respiratory virus.

Let’s imagine that indeed Europe is looking on in horror — we’ll go into that part later — what precisely are they horrified about? Because such a low number of infected people means that our lockdown orders are fracking insane and the mandatory mask orders in many states (I suggest Jared Polis wear a whole-body condom. Sealed) are even crazier, even if masks did in fact do anything except make it more likely for people to get infected. So, Europe looks down in horror as we descend into psychotic destruction of our own economy over a bug that seems to be affecting almost no one? Is that it?

Needless to say that wasn’t their slant, of course.

Let’s then drill down into cases. What the hell are cases, actually? I bet you most people reading that headline think cases are deaths, or at the very minimum hospitalizations.

I want to point out right now even if we had a half million residents in hospitals right now, all it would mean was that the hospitals would not be laying off medical personnel, and perhaps it would cut down on the tik tok dance time for some nurses, but still no, let’s be clear cases aren’t hospitalizations.

And cases aren’t deaths — I have run into people who thought this too — and sure, if we topped half a million deaths it would be bad. Very bad. It would be about five times the mortality of a normal “bad flu year.”

Which when all is said and done would still leave us rather far of “condition zombie apocalypse.”

Why precisely Europe would be looking on in horror at that kind of numbers is something else. But of course, it depends on who in Europe they asked, which countries in Europe, and actually what the hell they mean by Europe or how Europe even heard about our “cases.”

Let me start by saying I have family in Europe. Despite their marked tendency to call me when there are fires in California, because this is “near” Colorado and therefore I must be at risk, I have yet to get a panicked phone call asking me if my sons — even my son who is a medical professional — are okay, or if I — who am notoriously hampered in the lung department and also have a tendency to catch everything that comes through town or even waves from the next town — am being careful, take all precautions, etc.

In fact, while my father in law asks us in every call if health professional son is okay and is taking all precautions, my family in Europe is more worried about whether we all have jobs, because of what this insanity is doing to the US economy. If they mention the dread plague from China, it usually starts with “I don’t understand why the US seems to be so scared. This is what is scaring our own government/s, that they think the US knows something special.”

Uh uh. To an extent, they are in fact looking on in horror, and wondering if we should have put anti-psychotics in the water a while back. In fact, their tone reminds me exactly of the tone I heard around me in 1968 (about the earliest I remember hearing the US mentioned) and it has this undertone of “Whatever the hell is going on in America, can you guys fix it already?” To the extent they are worried about the bug in their own countries, it is because they have this, totally unwarranted, belief that the Americans are possessors and learners of secret knowledge, and that if we are going ape shit, there must be something they aren’t seeing.

Now granted I only have regular contact with people in three European countries, but really…. what European COUNTRIES do these headline writers mean? Precisely? With diagrams?

Let’s be honest,t hat headline is very compelling to the average American born-and-bred who has never really thought about Europe, but to anyone who knows EUROPE it’s a belly laugh.

Who in hell is horrified? Poles? Swedes? Spaniards? Europe, despite the EU is — for purposes of culture and communication — not a version of the US with the countries instead of states. Europe, fragmented into languages and dialects and broken into very, very different cultures (yes, the US has very different cultures per state and region, too, but not that different. For those differences you need to marinade in insularity for a few centuries) is a fragmentation of peoples most of whom until the EU would need a passport (for the cat) to swing a cat, and would need a translator to tell their neighbor to duck while the cat is swung.

If Europe is horrified at our number of cases, exactly why are they so?

Is it because they have no idea that our population is somewhere between 300 million and 350 million? Or is it because their governments lie to them and tell them they’re doing much better? Or is it because their entire information about our country comes via CNN who makes up shit to make it seem like we’re all dropping dead in the streets and then is spun by THEIR individual press, in their individual countries who firmly believe the government in the US has some control over the press, and therefore what they hear via CNN is dressed up to “best case scenario?”

Yeah, I imagine Europe (Whoever the hell is meant by that) looks on in horror at the US. But they also look down in horror at our crime situation, which they believe to be something out of Fast and Furious, our gun ownership (speaking of fast and furious) because — I swear I’m not making this up — they believe we all fight duels in the streets all the time, and our health (in general, not just winnie the flu) situation, because they believe that our hospitals refuse to treat the uninsured, and therefore we’re all piling up dead at the door to the hospitals. (Which of course means they’re horrified. As many decades as they think we’ve been shooting/murdering/refusing care to each other, not to mention the fact that they take those idiotic “hunger” surveys from the Obama years (remember, when they asked if you ate everything you wanted to that day and took a no to mean you were suffering from hunger. (To be fair, most of us are dieting, so that too is not even wrong.)) and assume we’ve been starting for decades. I mean, at this point they probably think the last half million Americans just fell down dead.)

And given the silliness of that picture above, and the bizarre ideas of the trolls who regularly come here to school us about what is “really” going on in America, bring up the most interesting question of all: Who the f*ck actually cares if Europe is “horrified”? They neither pay our taxes nor are in any state to make war on us. They have nothing we want, and know nothing about us and why PRECISELY should we give a d*mn if they’re horrified, elated, jumping for joy, or picking their nose?

Of course, this plays on the insecurities of the pseudo intellectuals with journalism degrees, who have been taught that Marxist Europe is the be all and end all, the pattern card of perfection of which we will forever fall short. They’re afraid that some random European will tell them how backward America is.

I have a solution: leave. Go to Europe. Leave there. Only before you go give up your citizenship, because when you try to come back — and you will. It will in fact take tops 5 years — I want to be able to make sure you’ve learned better.

But this is the kind of nonsensical headline people are being scared with. The ridiculousness is at a point some survey found that Americans thought “10%” of Americans had died of Covid-19.

Think about it for a moment. 10% is one in ten people. It is in fact about what our unemployment level is right now. So everyone would know at least five or six people who are unemployed. Even in my highly competent and adaptable circles, I know 5 people who are unemployed, and a few more whose jobs are in doubt or in abeyance.

I know ONE FOF who died of this, and yes, there were other complications, etc. And again, not someone I know directly, just a relative of an on-line friend.

I do know two people who caught it (again, one online — I’ll run her post tomorrow–) and both recovered, one of them without hospitalization.

And I remind you my net on line is very, very broad. There are 4k of you who are regulars of this blog (Ah, if each of you gave me $1 a month… 😉 Okay, it still wouldn’t be a ton, given the paypal fee, but a woman can dream) judging by the hits and IPs that hit it regularly. Then — though there is some overlap — there are the 1500 or so in my fan group on FB, the people who email me regularly about posts on instapundit, etc. etc. There must be about 10k people who have some contact with me on the semi-regular. One death. Two cases.

So– what in actual hell? Why do people believe that ten percent of the population have died?

Well, it’s the news. In the few times I had to read a local paper for some reason, or was trapped in front of streaming news, or got input from the MSM in some way, they always fudge “cases” with “cases actually needing treatment” — the second is a fraction of the first — and “deaths” which is a much, much smaller fraction, and even that inflated by the fact that they are counting people dead while positive for covid, instead of people who died of COVID-19.

And always, always, our media sneeringly implies that other countries did much better/are doing much better. Even if they were — they’re not — when is the last time they told us we were so much harder-hit by the flu or the common cold than oh, Spain, and therefore Spain is better? Never?

But no, they’re not. In fact if you take away the cases in places that are hives of humanity, like NYC or Chicago (where being ventilated with a shot through the chest causes COVID-19) our cases are right in the middle of the pack for north European and Scandinavian cultures, whether they locked up or not. Which makes perfect sense, of course, because what actually matters is not the measures but the culture. And in the US, the chances of you coming cheek to jowl with humanity is zero or close to it.

Which, btw, bring us to “But Korea” well, yes, Korea — and other Asian countries — had to do a lot more control and be a lot more proactive because they live in density and proximity and social conviviality that would in fact make most Americans start singing “don’t stand so close to me.”

Look, guys, if this virus hasn’t actually utterly depopulated North Korea? No big.

Again the question is, though: WHY are they trying to terrify everyone and give them the impression that Europe, totalitarian, sclerotic, old-age-home Europe did so much better?

The answer is simple. They’re trying to fashion a saddle, and mean to ride us.

Refuse to be infected with statism. Laugh in their faces. Give them the middle finger. If the virus is so dangerous, ask them why it’s taking so long for them to die.

And above all? Be Americans. They can’t stand that.

 

 

322 thoughts on “POSITIVE!”

  1. “Whatever the hell is going on in America, can you guys fix it already?”

    We Canadians are really bad for this. I wish we cared as passionately about our own politics as we do about yours. I mean, our leaders are no great prize either.

      2. To be faor, that’s mostly because the Canadian Press isn’t interested in reporting the sort of silliness that Trudeau and his crotchel enhancement have gotten up to…

        1. If they can get the GOP out of power the US Press won’t find much about our political leaders worthy of attention.

          But we can be sure that any conservative protests will not be “peaceful” no matter how well they clean up afterwards.
          –

          1. That’s not true. They will find every day some great sacrifice on our behalf or wise pronouncement to protect us the current Dear Leader has made, just as they did from 2009/01/20 to 2017/01/19.

    2. To be honest, it looks like the average Canadian has more influence on American politics than they do their own, which seems to be entirely comprised of SJWs and Karens.

      I know it probably isn’t, but thats’ the picture that seeps across the Frost Line…

      1. We need to join the States already and get it over with. Then our complaints about your country might actually mean something.

          3. I’ll take Quebec over Ontario. The former are ersatz cheese eating surrender monkeys. Ontario is theoretically Anglosphere so they have no excuse.

        2. Lazarus Long said (TEfL) that Canada was a part of the United States where they were so smart they didn’t pay taxes.

  2. I think when the American media and/or pundit class says, “Europe,” they generally mean, “France, Germany and Britain.” France and Germany may swap places, but Britain is perpetually third.

    And since Europeans have been sneering at us for at least a century or two., I really don’t care what they think.

    1. I’d amend that post-Brexit by removing Britain totally from that list, as obviously the “right-thinking” continental Brits are on the outs with their EU-district-of-residence these days, donchaknow. Jeeves, bring me more caviar!

      And I’d actually propose that the “Europeans look on in horror” actually means quite minuscule subsets, basically the Anointed-Class French and their German bankers.

  3. Isn’t that a kind of evergreen headline: “United States [insert event], Europe Looks On In Horror!”?

    Frankly, in my lifetime it has seemed that Europe’s favorite spectator sport is Looking On In Horror.

    Especially when it gives them a chance to look down their collective schnozzola at the United States.
    –

    1. As a mild corrective to improve perspective I suggest that whenever one reads the phrase “Europe Looks On In Horror” you simply substitute “Europe Clutches Pearls” — it more accurately expresses the effectiveness and importance of that incontinent continent.
      –

      1. >> “As a mild corrective to improve perspective”

        Is this corrective elective? I’m always selective about a prospective corrective since what counts as improvement in matters of perspective is, after all, subjective.

    2. The “elites” (actual and would-be) of Europe have been ‘Looking on in horror’ at the United States for slightly longer than the United States has existed. During that time we have been a constant refutation of everything that justifies their continued existence. And it doesn’t help that we had to pull their fat out of the fire twice in three decades.

      Pity they haven’t LEARNED a goddamned thing, with all that looking.

      Just about every horror of WWI, save perhaps only poison gas, was predicted by the American Civil War, and the Europeans still managed to be caught by surprise by all of it.

      So, the European Intellectuals are watching us in horror…again? Piss on them from a great height.

        1. Arguably?
          Vietnam *was* us bailing out the French. Or trying to. As I recall (from various sources, including AP US History (yes, AP makes a difference here)) and Dad, who was there, we went in because France asked us to pull their butts out of the fire. Then they bailed. Then, when we were winning, the Left threw a collective hissy fit and snatched defeat from the jaws of victory.

          1. The problem, on our side, was that Vietnam was what my Mother called “a Legions’ war”. The kind of military action that a professional military handles much better than a draftee army. It strikes me that both the ‘we were winning’ and ‘we were losing’ narratives are simplistic.

            Now, the Fascist Left LOVED that war; it gave them an in with a whole generation of kids that, not too surprisingly, had no burning desire to go somewhere corrupt and uncomfortable to get shot at.

            The South Vietnamese government was as corrupt as one might expect from a former French colony. The Communist North was as bad, or worse. Several vets of that conflict have told me we should have made common cause with the Montagnards, and fought in both directions.

            Of course, the REAL problem was the collapse of the Colonial system, which the Fascist Left hates because (with rare exceptions) it governed better than any of the Democratic Peoples’ Republics that replaced it.

            If, at any point in the post-WWII era, the West had flat out said, “This ain’t working, and if we’re going to have to send in soldiers to put a stop to genocide, we might just as well stay and run the place.”. The world would be much better off.

            1. Exactly what the Vietnamese thought — the “American War” was attempted colonization. Vietnamese lowlanders (83% of population) are the same tribe, blood, and family. They defeated 3 Mongol invasions. There was no way the Americans could win.

              1. Nope – there were a number of ways to win – the “unwinnable war” idea is ex-post-facto excuses.

                One involved an invasion of North Vietnam to cut off the main supply routes, then a long counterinsurgency occupation with heavy cross border work on all the not-Chinese borders to eliminate sanctuaries.

                For another see Col. Harry Summers “On Strategy”, ending up with a fortified border manned by the ARVN backed up by tripwire US forces and external air power on the South Korean model.

                All of them would have required sustained commitment, something that the US could not, in the end, provide, arguably because the down payment by LBJ was just disproportionately too large vs. the return.

                Better all around if the 1960s Democrats who ramped up the commitment to South Vietnam spent that blood and treasure instead on Cuba by simply reinforcing the Bay of Pigs invasion with US troops – a western hemisphere free of Castro’s malignancy would be a much better place.

                1. I think the “winnable vs. unwinnable” arguments talk past each other.

                  There were multiple military strategies to win. I have yet to be convinced there was a political one and given what war is there has to be a political way to win regardless of the battlefield methods. If the pols won’t allow the military to win the military will not.

                  The real chance to “win”, ie, keep a lot of former colonies (at least French ones) out of the Soviet sphere would have been to tell DeGaule to bugger off on getting colonies back where colonial populations had fought the Axis and wanted their own government. France surrendered. You surrender, you don’t get colonies back.

                  1. Restoration of the pre-hostilities colonies of France was part of the Atlantic Charter between Churchill and Roosevelt. Though the US reneged on the African colonies later, and then the Far Eastern ones.

                    When the Communists started getting the upper hand in French Indochina De Gaulle came to the US with hat in hand, asking for help. He was not only turned down, but lectured that the US would not support “French Imperialism.” We wound up in French Indochina anyway, as part of the “containment policy”, but De Gaulle never forgot that insult. That was root reason why France started cozying up to the Soviets and withdrew from NATO.

                    That came, not from the President, but from the Department of State, which was essentially a rogue bureaucracy in the 1940s and 1950s, announcing US policies and playing “geopolitics” without support of, and sometimes in direct contravention of, Presidential and Congressional policies.

                    1. De Gaulle never forgot ANY insult, real or imagined. One of the reasons I admire Eisenhower is the diplomatic work he did behind the scenes, keeping Patton from shooting Montgomery and Churchill from throttling de Gaulle.

                      Still, that has to rank high on the “blunders committed by Foggy Bottom that we all got to pay for” list.

                    2. Department of State, which was essentially a rogue bureaucracy in the 1940s and 1950s

                      –
                      WAS? When did they stop?

                    3. “… the Department of State, which was essentially a rogue bureaucracy in the 1940s and 1950s”

                      It was not rogue, merely working for a different nation.
                      –

                2. I remember Barry Goldwater saying that he would bomb the dikes in North Vietnam and turn it into a swamp.
                  I guess we all know what LBJ said…

                  1. I remember what my Dad said about that election. The Democrats were all crying about how if people voted for Goldwater, we’d go to war in Southeast Asia. In 1965, Dad said, “Whaddya know, they were right. I voted for Goldwater, and we went to war in Southeast Asia.”

            2. There’s plenty of evidence that the Pentagon didn’t *want* to “win” Vietnam, from the removal of Westmoreland to them outright disobeying orders from the Commander In Chief.

              Lots of money to be made in an active conflict, you know.

              JFK wasn’t much of a President, but even he wondered WTF was going on, and how we got stuck with that tar baby in the first place. He demanded a explanation, which kept being delayed and wasn’t delivered until after his death. No single person made any big decision, it was just herd action at State setting US foreign policy and involving us in a foreign civil war… And I still think many of Nixon’s problems came to a head when his opponents realized he was actually making progress at derailing their gravy train.

              1. That’s another problem with the Vietnam War; it was never quite urgent enough to cause the career ending purges of peacetime officers than generally happen in the first few months of a Big War, as they prove themselves incompetent/corrupt/insubordinate/dumb-as-a-post.

                1. It’s cynical even by my standards, and I don’t believe it to have been a factor, but there’s a certain benefit to be gained by having a long-term low-intensity war going on. I expect any of us could list a half-dozen of those benefits, but as you observe the drawbacks are (at least) equally severe. Getting “comfortable” with combat and inculcating a lack or urgency for victory are two of the worst.
                  –

    4. Until they need their ass bailed out of a war.

      There should be a US Army version of Tommy for how we get treated by the Europeans.

      1. Too busy being glad that we’re here, not there?

        My great-grandfather, as I’ve often mentioned, came over here with one of his brothers so they could get the money to drag the whole family across. (because Mom Said; may I be a fraction as scary as she must have been)

        They got settled in here, citizens and all, owned land, even the relatively wild brother had started a family…aaaaand then we have the next official record, where he’s registered for the draft.

        Since they were Scottish, we probably couldn’t understand any…enthusiastic…response they’d give to that, but I think the tone would’ve peeled paint.
        But they didn’t complain about it, and even the more obnoxious cousins didn’t have any story of trying to out-do them with complaining about WWII. Going off of dad and grandma, they probably sighed and if they grumbled it was the cry of the Responsible Adult everywhere, that adulting is never done.

      2. My Grandfather used to say when the English complained about the Americans that “they filled your empty bellies” after both the wars. The rest of them too.

        A certain class of Americans tend to cringe around Europeans and sometimes American behavior abroad is cringeworthy But the best way to deal with the class of Europeans who mock us is to simply point out the truth, bluntly. They’ll back off.

        Being an American abroad, and i spent many years abroad, was great. I could do whatever I wanted. If i was rude, well that was what they expected and if I wasn’t rude they didn’t know how to deal with it. What really got to them was my knowledge of their history, they really couldn’t deal with that. France has had five republics, two empires, and three monarchies since the US Constitution was signed. I would end all BS about American stupidity with that one.

        The best, absolute best, thing about being an American was that I could come home when I wanted.

        1. Same government since 1789. Which makes us the oldest polity in the New World, and most of the Old.

          France is a nouveau upstart. There are people reading this who were alive when the Fifth Republic of France was formed in 1958…

        2. I think the main problem they have with Americans is we all walk around like we own the place. I have been told that the hardest thing to train into intelligence folks going undercover overseas is to make them walk and hold themselves like foreigners do unless they are the ruling class – Americans basically all move and stand and hold themselves like nobility, and thus are easy to spot in crowds over there.

          1. That’s what it was! I worked in western Africa for a year, and one of my friends was an African-American man who worked for a different organization (doing, I think, relief and development work, though it’s been over a decade so I don’t remember). One day I was driving to the office and I saw someone walking down the road ahead of me (facing away from me), who stood out to me somehow. Same black skin as everyone else I saw every day, and he was wearing clothing that was typical for the area, not Western clothing, but I said to myself, “That’s an American.” Passed him and saw his face in the rear mirror, and recognized my friend.

            I had cued in on his body language: standing tall, striding along with large steps rather than taking the smaller steps that everyone else seemed to take. I didn’t have the words for it at the time, but “walking around like he owned the place” was exactly what he was doing. Not because he was arrogant, but just because he knew, deep down in his bones, that he was an individual who had worth in the eyes of his Creator. Which ends up showing in your body language.

          1. Of course, those observations were being made on film thirty years earlier in The Americanization Of Emily

            Written by Paddy Chayefsky
            –

        4. when the English complained about the Americans that “they filled your empty bellies”

          –
          Yeah, we sent ’em Liberty Ships packed to the gunwales with SPAM. No wonder they’re miffed!

                  1. I’ll take your spam, I love it. I’m having spam, spam, spam, spam,spam, baked beans, spam, spam, spam and spam.

                    Bloody Vikings!

      3. “And it’s ‘Yankee this’ and ‘Yankee that’ and ‘chuck ‘im out, the brute!’
        But it’s ‘saviour of the world’ when the guns begin to shoot.”

    5. If they’d really want to be horrified, I wonder how they’d react to the Philippine news. The restrictions are stupid beyond parody. For example, today my mom informed me that a government official said that social distancing should be practiced right after sex. There really are people who’ve donated their brains to science and somehow are still able to work in government!

      1. Fauci did say that anonymous gay sex was OK and I think the EU wants hookers to wear masks. It’s all just magic.

        1. Wait, what?!? Did he say it was okay for others or did he say, “This evening works for me, is it good for you?”

          Asking for a friend.
          –

          1. (long quote, modified slightly)

            QUESTION:
            If you’re swiping on a dating app like Tinder, or Bumble, or Grindr, and you match with someone that you think is hot, and you’re just kind of like, “Maybe it’s fine if this one stranger comes over.” What do you say to that person?

            FAUCI: You know, that’s tough. Because it’s what’s called relative risk. If you really feel that you don’t want to have any part of this virus, will you maintain six feet away, wear a mask, do all the things that we talk about in the guidelines? If you’re willing to take a risk—and you know, everybody has their own tolerance for risks—you could figure out if you want to meet somebody. And it depends on the level of the interaction that you want to have. If you’re looking for a friend, sit in a room and put a mask on, and you know, chat a bit. If you want to go a little bit more intimate, well, then that’s your choice regarding a risk. The one thing you don’t want to do is make sure the person is feeling well.

            https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2020/04/anthony-fauci-on-new-rules-of-living-with-coronavirus

            Tinder is standard hook-ups, Bumble is females-initiate-contact app (can’t find if it’s more traditional dating or hook-ups), Grindr is a gay hook-up app.

          2. He’s not my type.

            Funny how he proposed closing the whole world for this virus rather than restricting access to nursing homes and proposed closing the whole world for the AIDS virus rather than restricting access to the bath houses.

            My only regret is that I took him seriously very early on when the democrats were asking us all to come down for Chinese New Year and show we’re not racists like Trump. Good times!

            1. And then when Fauci promised a coronavirus vaccine ‘in a few months’ NOBODY stood up and demanded, “Where’s that AIDS vaccine you promised 35 years ago?”

      3. >> “There really are people who’ve donated their brains to science and somehow are still able to work in government!”

        Science didn’t want their brains and sent them back.

  4. People are innumerate. For the most part most people can hear “ten percent” and not ever progress from “that’s a small number” to “wait, that’s one in ten people.”

    1. Or go back the other way, that one in ten is only ten per cent.

      Big headline in today’s overseas Stars and Stripes: worldwide cases top 20 million. All I could think was, is that all? In the entire world? Right now or ever?

    1. And according to Joe Biden’s statements, there have 150 million Americans killed by guns, and the 120 million Americans killed by COVID-19. No wonder his events have such low attendance – most Americans are dead! 😉

      1. Biden looks more and more like the Democrats took the hot wash of “You really couldn’t have picked a worse candidate than Her Shrillness” and said, “Hold my Chardonnay.”

        1. Given that the Democrats cannot abandon their platform of Liberal Fascism, who other than Biden could they pick that wouldn’t be an even worse candidate?

          1. I don’ know. Seems to me that even a full-bore Moonbat without a creepy-groping history, who could string three sentences together without actually sounding brain damaged would be a better CANDIDATE.

            1. We’ve all got “never live it down” moments in our youth. You just made the mistake of admitting to one of yours publicly. 😉

              But speaking of things that were done long ago, I touched up that guest post we’ve been talking about and sent it to your scifihoyt address. Hopefully it goes through this time. I’ll note that the post itself is in an attached .txt file, in case you’re blocking emails with attachments. The subject line is “LP guest post.”

                1. Y’know, I’m not superstitious, but it’s really starting to feel like the universe is trying to tell me something here. With a clue-by-four.

                  Just on the off chance that’s the issue, do you have a problem receiving email from yahoo.com addresses?

                    1. Ah. So what the universe is trying to tell me is “I’ve had my fun, but I’m going to yank your chain one last time for the hell of it.”

                      Do we have an eye-roll emoticon, by any chance?

  6. I saw a specific quote from a doctor in Italy about the discontinuity of message, how what they were saying in New York was different from what they were saying in Florida. (And that we needed a cohesive reaction to this—um… have you seen this country?)

    Hey, guess what, we’re a collection of small states in a trenchcoat, pretending to be a big country. We’ve never had fewer than sixty or a hundred viewpoints on things.

      1. Have you ever seen the Uncle Rob videos? The guy does various “normal day” things, and then it inevitably starts involving gasoline. Or a blowtorch. Or explosives.

        As someone who lives west of the Dry Line (look at a colored version of the US map and it’s quite clear), it’s vaguely disconcerting seeing him start huge fires, even when the grass around is green and lush. (Because, y’know, “green and lush” doesn’t mean “fire resistant” around here.) Obviously, he lives where grass is a perfect fire deterrent.

        *My* specific needs and fears don’t necessarily transmit to what’s necessary in *his* area. I’m perfectly fine with the ban on personal aerial fireworks in my area, because they inevitably result in house fires or worse. But Georgia? Go to town, folks, can’t burn down your humid forests.

        1. I can hit the water table digging holes for fence posts. Water is a major issue here; we have so much of it half the state is swampy. Yet the Fed mandates “water saving” toilets, because some Californians insisted on building cities in the desert and vampire water from four states…

          1. If Calexit ever becomes a real thing, we can pretty much shut down the whole goddamned State by turning off the water and electricity they get from their neighbors.

            1. SoCal yes – but the political power base is in SF*, and between the Sierras and SF there’s plenty of water in Northern California, even with the Jerry Brown Dam and Reservoir Construction and Especially Maintenance Moratorium of the past of the past 40 years.

              * Note where the CA Senators and governor are from – that’s how it works. LA just provides money and votes – no candidates from down there get to Sacramento, let alone Washington.

                1. In the City and County of San Francisco, the people in those tents and on those streets are an excuse to hire more unionized municipal workers, which builds up the public sector unions.

                  When things get out of hand (coincidentally in the leadup to elections) the City and County sends out workers and get an area cleared – see https://youtu.be/alkkHFsxXiQ

                  So basically pruned.

                  Think of it as agriculture: In SF the homeless are farmed to justify and expand the municipal payroll.

              2. There isnt ‘plenty’ of water in NorCal. There isn’t even *enough*. shut down the pumps from the Colorado and L.A. is basically missing 70% of its water supply.

                1. Plenty in NorCal for NorCal – blow up the sending-all-our-water-to-LA canals and NorCal would be fine.

        2. Heh. All very true. But, as someone who grew up west of that line myself, I’m going to point out that late every summer in Idaho and Washington, farmers burn grass to prep the (hay) fields for next year.
          It’s hell if you have allergies.

            1. In Oregon field burning is mostly banned. Like to say it was just because of the southern Willamette Valley whining & worse. But, no. The major pile up on I-5 woke people up, from a field burn that was going fine, until the black smoke turned east and drove down onto the busy highway. Matter of where car was, how lucky, when it descended, VS driving ability; a few got lucky on their blind decision, not many. It was bad.

              Still some field burning. Sure not forest fires (there aren’t any where you’ll see smoke columns). Nothing near major freeway or highway. Easy to forget how bad smoke was mid August on, until we got the smoke/ashes from forest fires last few years. Either we were getting it from north-east, east, or south, never enough to clear smoke out. It bothered me & I don’t normally have issues.

                1. It’s also possible they did and I just forgot. But if Washington state will still authorize them, they probably still happen in the panhandle too, at least some of the time. Grass burning was a season when I was a kid.

                  1. Grass burning was a season when I was a kid.

                    –
                    Ditto in Oregon. Field burning went from anytime/anywhere (for all practical purpose). To “if wind not blowing south” (tends to pile up in Eugene/Springfield). To “not blowing/not expected to”, regardless of direction. To finally, “Not happening”. The start of the final nail was http://www.usdeadlyevents.com/1988-aug-3-multi-vehicle-pileup-smoke-from-burning-field-i-5-near-albany-or-7/

                    Didn’t get around to full ban until 2010 (passed in 2008). Willamette Valley only.

      2. That is something the New Democrat Agenda intends to fix.

        Although some of us will live more the same way than others.
        –

    2. Italy? ITALY is complaining about a lack of cohesion?
      I’m in Purgatory at the moment, and reading Dante gives you a clear view of just how cohesive Italy used to be and presumably still is (not).

      1. The Italians at least USED to be pretty united on the proposition that their National Government was a concatenation of tiresome clowns. Back in the ‘80’s I had the chance to ask an Italian gentleman why Ilona Staller (aka porn star Cicciolina) could get elected to the Italian Parliament. His answer was that Italians felt that if their Parliament was going to be useless, it could at least be entertaining.

          1. I don’t think we’ve had a full-on porn star, yet. May be mistaken.

            As I recall, over here the news stories about Cicciolina’s election were kinda vague; it wasn’t at all clear whether she was a sometime nude model, or made films that would make Fellini blush. Over in Italy it rapidly became clear that it was the latter.

            She was (is?) also full on batshit nuts: ‘Free love will save the world’ with a hardcore porn twist. THAT kind of entertaining. I seem to recall her offering to f*ck the leaders of some conflict if they would stop the fighting.

          2. I won’t hold that against them. Uncle Ronnie *acted* like a President, and did better than some of the professionals who sat in the Oval Office.

            1. The only thing the ‘professionals’ are professional AT is winning elections. Oh, and soliciting bribes fundraising. Actually doing the job afterward is purely hit-and-miss — mostly miss.

            2. Reagan learned politics doing his best to take the Screen Actors’ Guild away from the hard core Commies. He had some success, though not enough.

              1. Olivia de Haviland’s obituaries gave opportunity fr retelling how she and Roald Reagan … well, just look at this:

                How Olivia de Havilland and Ronald Reagan Beat the Hollywood Communists
                By JOHN FUND
                When Olivia de Havilland, the grande dame of the Golden Age of Hollywood, died last week at age 104, the tributes and memories for a life well lived poured in. She was the last surviving cast member of the epic Gone with the Wind. She won two Academy Awards. She was romantically pursued by everyone from Jimmy Stewart to Howard Hughes to a young Jack Kennedy. She challenged and helped change punitive film-industry practices toward performers.

                But one chapter in her life was missing from almost all the tributes. In its 3,000-word obituary the New York Times failed to mention the key role she played in defeating the Communist subversion of Hollywood in the 1940s.

                The Washington Post devoted not one word of its 2,400-word obit to it. Neither did the Los Angeles Times, Hollywood’s local paper, in its 2,200-word sendoff.

                But the story is a fascinating one and needs to be told even as it still makes many on the political left (for whom the Hollywood Blacklist is an honor roll) uncomfortable. While much of it has been recounted by others, I’ve been given exclusive new details from the diaries of a top FBI agent who worked with de Havilland to extricate her from a Communist front group and then to neutralize the group.

                The broad strokes of the story have been admirably told by historian Ronald Radosh in his recent Wall Street Journal essay “De Havilland Saved Hollywood from Stalin.” Briefly, after meeting President Franklin Roosevelt at the White House in 1940 as a 24-year-old actress, she jumped at opportunities to support him. In 1944, she joined the pro-FDR Independent Citizens’ Committee of the Arts, Sciences and Professions, a group whose 3,000 members included Bette Davis, Gregory Peck, and Humphrey Bogart in its Hollywood chapter. “I thought, ‘I’ll join and try to be a good citizen,’” de Havilland, who had only become a U.S. citizen in 1941, told journalist John Meroney in a 2006 interview. …
                –

        2. There’s a quote from “Dallas”, about how the people didn’t insist on good government, just entertaining government.

    3. Most people don’t understand just how big the US is. Italy, for example, has about the same area as Arizona, which is about as far away from DC as Rome is from Edinburgh.

  7. They’re trying to fashion a saddle, and mean to ride us.

    They seem desperate to believe that COVID will prove that they’ve been right all along, that we are “better for being ridden” as Lincoln accused them of believing.

    “…they always bestrode the necks of the people—not that they wanted to do it, but because the people were better off for being ridden.”

    1. They seem desperate to believe that COVID will prove that they’ve been right all along

      Even as the spectre of contagious disease invalidates all of their pet “stuff the maximum number of humans in the minimum amount of space” projects.

      Oops.

        1. Even worse, as ridership dropped they also dropped the number of trains so that the number of people per car would stay high.

            1. That is only a show of how much they love us and wish to protect us from the burdensome expense of car ownership, especially in cities, where parking is so dear and the risks of vandalism and car-jacking so high.
              –

          2. They can quite manage the dedicated lanes for inner party members that the Soviets had, so they improvise with HOV lanes (do you really think the cops don’t have a list of license plates to ignore?) and light rail to keep the Unwashed out of their way.

            1. It says something about me that I immediately thought, “Hmm, I wonder if I can manage to get a job as a DC cop, and hold it long enough to get told about the list of license plates to ignore in the HOV lane?” Because as soon as I could get my hands on that list, I would immediately use it as a list of plates to target for ticketing for HOV violations (if and when they actually committed one) — and when the inevitable complaints hit, I’d say, “But chief, are you telling me that the legislators are allowed to ignore the law?” And just keep repeating that line, to every camera anyone shoved in my face, until they came up with some excuse to throw me out of the job.

              It says something about this place that I suspect that I’m FAR alone in having that reaction.

              2. Back in the 90s, Montgomery AL had a brief flirtation with “speed cameras” It lasted until dome good elf leaked the list of “cover tags” issued to the Mayor and City Council, and people “customized” their license plates and the politicians started getting tickets by the bucketload. 😎

            2. No need to even be that blatant – Driver and VIP are two occupants, and that qualifies any vehicle for all the diamond lanes out here. Plus they can work on Important VIP Business while being driven! It’s a win-win!

              1. Well, Buckley did report that he earned enough money off work he did in his limo to pay the chauffeur and help support the conservative movement.

          3. Most Congressmen and Senators commute by limousine. Purely for efficiency, of course; so they can work while en route.

            Several of them have been observed using their limos to troll for hookers, which apparently isn’t anything the Office of Congressional Ethics is worried about.

            1. Any elected representative cavorting with hookers is interacting with a higher class of person than that with which they commonly associate.
              –

        3. Still is running– and they even started cleaning it ONCE A DAY only about a month or two after admitting it was a problem!

  8. Bravo, Sarah. Keep up the good work. It encourages many and scares the hell out of them. Sue

    On Mon, Aug 10, 2020 at 3:11 PM According To Hoyt wrote:

    > accordingtohoyt posted: ” Yesterday, on the Denver Post (I think! It’s a > Colorado Newspaper anyway) site I came across a headline that’s so wrong > that wrong would be an improvement. “US tops 500000 Covid-19 cases. Europe > looks on in horror.” Do I need to break it down? ” >

  10. and “deaths” which is a much, much smaller fraction, and even that inflated by the fact that they are counting people dead while positive for covid, instead of people who died of COVID-19.

    Yeah, was on FB yesterday and pointed out that, “No, in fact we aren’t counting Covid deaths like we count every other death. And that the various state health departments admit to this.” It’s one of the little lies that is being used to justify the bigger lie that We’re all gonna die! It’s sad that so many people just buy into whatever the msm is telling them, without bothering to look at underlying conditions/reasoning. And it’s by people I would otherwise consider to be reasonably intelligent enough to poke holes in a BS story, since they do it every day as part of their jobs. Critical reasoning is apparently out the window these days.

    1. Then we get things like the “seven year old in Georgia without underlying conditions dies of COVID.” Except someone dug into the records. The child had a seizure and fell while taking a shower. The child later died of complications of the fall and seizure. However, a post-mortem test for the Wuhan virus came up positive, and so we have another “died while positive” turned into “died from.”

      1. Hell, there was a case down in Florida a few weeks back where a man was killed in a motorcycle accident… but when they did the autopsy, he had COVID antibodies in his system, so they marked his death down as having been caused by COVID.

        1. Guy in NYC shuffled off this mortal coil thanks to severe blood loss due to seven rapid-onset lead-initiated perforations. And was listed as a COVID death. That’s the one that started a lot of people outside of NYC wondering just who was cooking the books and how badly.

          [/sarc] Gee, if you subsidize it, you get more of it. Who’d a thunk that? [/sarc off]

          1. The motorcycle case, combined with several dozen people being notified that they’d tested positive for COVID when they’d never actually been tested — among many other shenanigans that came to light over the space of about a week — have got most Floridians wondering the same. Or so I’ve heard from my parents (they retired down there).

            1. Wasn’t there a country where some local government officials used the WHO SARS2-CoVid-19 tests on a mango, a chicken, and a goat* and the dewberries at WHO gave them a “positive” result?

              (*curry recipe!)

    2. Critical reasoning? But that’s a tool of the privileged patriarchy, you X-ist, Y-ist Z-ophobe! How could you?

  11. There’s something about these numbers that has been bothering me for a few days.

    Every country in Subsaharan Africa and Eastern Asia has very low death rates. Practically no exceptions (a couple of marginal cases in Africa but they’re still below world average). The list includes countries that are both poor and crowded, like Nigeria, Indonesia and the Philippines.

    Here are some death rates per million for reference, as of today:
    Belgium: 851
    UK: 685
    Spain: 610
    USA: 501
    France: 464

    Kenya: 8
    Nigeria: 5
    Ethiopia: 4
    Angola: 2

    Indonesia: 21
    Philippines: 21
    Japan: 8
    South Korea: 6
    China: 3
    Thailand: 0.8
    Taiwan: 0.3
    Vietnam: 0.2

    Doesn’t anybody find it the least bit odd that the death rate per million in, say, the United Kingdom is 100 times greater than in Nigeria? Is it perfectly normal that a respiratory virus is 100 times deadlier in rich industrialized countries as it is in Africa?

    Why doesn’t anybody ever mention the possibility that susceptibility to the virus might have a genetic or racial component? I haven’t seen it anywhere.

    2. China’s numbers are bunk. Even the Washington Post had an article on how common-sense things like “looking at cremation numbers” and such indicates that their actual death toll is off by at least a factor of ten, and quite probably more.

      Which would make sense, since these epidemics are almost always worst at the start.

      (Of course, you can’t discount that those are the actual numbers and the other people were “disappeared” instead. But it’s more likely they fudged the numbers to look better, because that’s what Xi wants.)

      1. I saw a figure for Iran’s COVID count was a mere one-twentieth of the actual number. Meaning that the 328,844 reported cases represent an actual 6.6 million cases. With a reported population of just over 84 million that means the Iranian infection rate is 7.83% compared to the 1.52% experienced n the United States.
        –

      2. The Party has incentivized not counting deaths (or cases) in The Middle Kingdom Where Winnie Is God-Emperor, which is directly opposite to the incentives in the US.

        Incentives work.

      1. They’re surely understating their Wuhan Flu numbers but they’ve been overstating population numbers for decades, so maybe net they’re about right?
        –

    4. IF you survive childhood drinking THEIR water and living in THEIR world, YOU too would have little trouble with COVID19.
      You see, when your immune system is attacked day after day with stuff that would kill most of us without a problem, your immune system being attacked by COVID19, probably doesn’t really notice it.
      That is why those parents raising their children in antiseptic homes are NOT doing them any favors.
      Personally, even at my advanced age, I don’t try to hard. Germs in reasonable amounts are good for you. I normally just don’t worry about it. Yes, you can get a bug and die but if your immune system is strong there are few bugs that can do that fast enough you can’t get help AND those are also rare.

      1. Most folks in Africa don’t ever get old enough to experience severe symptoms from COVID19.

      2. This was my thought – the recent stuff on T-cell immune responses in people who only ever had common-cold coronaviruses in the past would implicate widespread similar-enough coronavirus stuff in those African cities that gave them all some defenses. Couple that with the strain variation, the climate, and the blood type stuff, and it could explain some of this variation.

        What does India’s rate look like from that source?

    5. Assuming the numbers are valid (big assumption, but I’ll run with it), population density. I’m be willing to bet all those cases are from a handful of their cities and the associated slums. That could show even crappier numbers from rural areas (numbers issue) or just no one in the large rural population interacts with the cities enough to be exposed to diseases spread from halfway across the globe by the movement of people.

      Mask, no mask, isolation, no isolation, hot, cold, wet, dry, if you aren’t exposed you cannot catch the disease.

  13. ” The ridiculousness is at a point some survey found that Americans thought “10%” of Americans had died of Covid-19.”

    Man that would really decimate our population.

            1. actually wrong. It takes seven. Two to argue over the proper way and 5 to stand around criticizing their methods from an historical perspective. if the carp gets flung at all is immaterial in the long run.

              2. you forgot the one who comes up with the BS physics for flinging a carp at faster than light velocity , the two who stand around telling him nothing can go faster than light, the one who sits there and figures out a range table for catapulting a carp using a traditional catapult design, the one that insists the catapult design isn’t authentic enough and uses a trebuchet design instead…

                  2. Oh, we do. They just tend to run screaming into the night.
                    WHICH FYI is why I need each of you to push my books to ten friends.
                    <makes sad puppy dog eyes.

              3. Then the sea serpent in the minion pool gets annoyed and says if you’re taking carp out of her pool, at least you could actually THROW them.

  14. Just a note, current confirmed positive US case count is 5 million, not 500,000, which definitely does not preclude some headline writing idiot from having screwed up the decimal point.

    I’d also point out that while the EU + GB is only showing ~1.8 million cases, they have a death rate amongst confirmed cases of ~10%. We show roughly 1/3 of that at ~ 3.5 %, so if you triple their case numbers, to bring fatality rates roughly in line (back of the envelope math) with one another, they would have had ~ 5.4 million confirmed cases if they were capturing as many of those who were positive as we are (I know from friends in the UK at least, that testing is not nearly as available there as here, no idea about other parts of Europe at the moment). Total population of EU + GB is ~5.1 million, so not significantly different. Yes, yes, *very* rough modeling, but I figure it’s at least as reliable as the modeling we’ve been getting from the real experts.

    That doesn’t change the fact that currently only 1.5% of the entire country has had a confirmed positive case. So thinking the death rate is 10% shows a complete disconnect with reality. Which is the goal of our media, as far as I can tell.

    Of course we are missing between 5 and 10 cases for each one we count, except when we count them twice when, as in my state, they count each positive test, even if it is the same patient. Therefor, I’m two cases since mine was repeated in the ER. But spouse is zero cases, because he got a false negative, which was only confirmed by antibody testing (which my state does not include, but others do).

    And by their own admission on their website (at least they are transparent about it?), now that the CDC is being required by the White House to submit hospitalization data, they count and hospitalization of anyone who had a positive COVID-19 test in the last 14 days as a COVID-19 hospitalization, regardless of the reason for hospitalization.

    Anyway, TLDR, all the numbers are nonsense. It’s going to be years before we have any idea what the real case fatality rate of this was, but I can virtually guarantee it won’t have been high enough to justify all the collateral fatalities from the shutdown.

    3. We’ve known what the rates, all of them, were going to be since Pacific Princess. Ioannides study came out in May and confirmed what was already known It’s not hard, the data were there, you just had to look. The death rate is similar to a bad flu and, for young healthy people, significantly lower than the flu. Everything since has been a political op.

      The only positive thing that has come out of this is to lower the respect the average person had for experts. Outside of simple, physical problems without significant interactions, no one knows nothing.

      I’m an expert on something and many people here are experts in something. We know what it takes to become an expert and we know how little we know. These idiots either don’t know they don’t know, or were bought and paid for, or —. I’m looking at you Fauci — enjoyed being the center of attention. Of course, these could all be true

      1. I’m an expert on something and many people here are experts in something. We know what it takes to become an expert and we know how little we know.

        Yep. And I know how much time it takes to stay current in my field, so that I don’t have time to become expert in anything else. In fact, I can’t even stay current in every single aspect of my field of expertise (I know a lot about software, but on a closely-related topic like the 5G wireless-data standards, the sum total of my knowledge is “Yes, that’s a thing that exists”). So why would I think I, or anyone could be an expert in a second field? There’s not enough time in the day. Okay, maybe a few people like Travis Taylor (I’m pretty sure he’s who Buckaroo Banzai was based on) can truly become experts in multiple fields, but they are few and far between.

        But more importantly, being a true expert in one field has given me a “feel” for when someone else is an expert in their own field. For example, when I watch Shadiversity’s videos about medieval weaponry, I immediately recognize him as another expert, who loves his field and wants to share it with people. Whereas with many self-proclaimed “experts” in the MSM, there isn’t nearly the same expertise recognition. Which leads me to classify them as Dunning-Kruger “experts” rather than real ones.

        1. >> “But more importantly, being a true expert in one field has given me a “feel” for when someone else is an expert in their own field.”

          If you can put it into words, I’d love to hear you describe the tells (both positive and negative). Someone getting angry or evasive over a question they should be able to answer is an obvious sign they’re a fake, but I might be missing others.

          1. Not sure about him, but what you mention is about halfway there.

            How do they respond to someone getting curious? Do the go “oooh! WEEEE!!!” and go charging in? Or do they snarl and start slamming their “I’m an expert” card on the table?

            A signal-mixer is if they look at you funny and start asking cautious questions– that usually means they’re expecting a gotcha, and it can go either way.

          2. Ooh.

            I have a speech I’m planning to write and deliver sometime on reasons to trust experts, and why you should be trusting me as little as possible.

            An expert is someone with unusual knowledge of a specialized or obscure subject, which makes them more effective in making related decisions or giving advice. There may be a mental skill or ten involved.

            Detecting false experts is a competition versus a human’s ability to deceive, so there are no fixed formula.

            People become experts for different reasons, and one is enthusiasm. You also have profit, and some others which I haven’t sorted out.

            People pretending to be experts may be trying to trick you, trying to serve their ego, crazy, or plain stupid.

            Enthusiasm is a good indicator. If you haven’t been burned by people who aren’t interested pushing to take part, this stuff is cool, you love it, you want to share the love with people who might feel the same way. Or, you might really enjoy a discussion over related details. People do learn for money, but you always go a little deeper when you love it, or it excites you somehow.

            There’s a type of layman’s enthusiasm that can be a bit wearing. Example for writers is the fatigue for “I give you the idea, you do the work, we split the money”. There are other illusions that the public has, that are still tiring to field even if they are less grasping and less entirely ignorant of the real challenges.

            One quality of an expert is specialized habits of thought. You might not be able to detect that this one guy is the expert in some area of law, but if you know them well, and have met a bunch of lawyers, you can probably see the lawyer in him.

            Of course, you generally aren’t trying to figure out the people you know well. You also are probably working on a limited amount of interaction, which may not show them at their best.

            Expertise has limits. Someone who doesn’t realize their limits, or who neglects relevant limits, or who only mentions limits as a humble brag, is going to be making claims outside those limits. Okay, it is very tempting to follow enthusiasm down all sorts of isolated dark alleyways.

            Expertise relies on intellectual tools, which rely on assumptions. These assumptions may or may not be true. Some assumptions are pretty reliable, and questioning them really is a waste of time. An expert can tell you what their assumptions are, which ones might not be true, and may tell you the ones you should keep in mind when following their advice.

            How do they frame their arguments? If an argument falls apart because someone neglects to mention their Bachelors of Arts in History, or if the audience isn’t impressed with the credential, probably not an expert. What would be normal for a genuine expert in their position to need to communicate with you?

            Do they feel the need to shout their experience or expertise from the rooftops? People can’t read your mind, but if you really know your stuff, they can tell from what you do. Also, if you are the guy for a survey on pre-Columbian Meso-American basket weaving, the people who need to know can find out from the community that knows you. “The people who matter know or can tell” is more of an expert behavior, credential dropping more of an ego thing.

            Anyone who makes a point of making you aware of their advanced degrees. If someone is afraid you may mistake them for a mere bachelors of science in chemistry, they aren’t letting their work speak for them.

            Intelligence can be very specialized, so little questions that are a cognitive test may not be reliable.

            ESR has an essay advising actors on how to emulate subtle signs that can indicate intelligence.

            Crazy can mimic enthusiasm. But crazy is broken, and may be detectable that way. If someone is fixed on explaining things comprehensively, always returns to the same material, or gets really upset at weird interruptions, they may be crazy. On the other hand, if you are an expert that other experts consult, you may find it quite challenging to work with someone who doesn’t give you time, or who is too confused about the fundamentals to follow what you are saying.

            My general assumption is that one is a potential client when one is looking at an expert. An ethical expert is not going to be bullying /you/ into giving /them/ your business. They should be happy if you find another competent expert who you are comfortable doing business with. If you aren’t willing to walk away from deal, you will probably make a bad deal. An expert that is unwilling to let you feel free to make your business decision is probably not someone you should prefer to do business with.

          3. Good signs: enthusiasm, responding to questions with “Actually, that’s really interesting because …”, and so on.

            Bad signs: as Foxfier mentioned, getting huffy at being “challenged”, even if that “challenge” was just someone asking a question about something the expert isn’t 100% certain about. (As you mentioned).

            Oh, and the BEST sign: actually saying “I don’t know” or some variant thereof in response to a question. That’s something the Dunning-Kruger “expert” would NEVER admit to.

            If anything else comes to mind I’ll let you know, but that’s what I can think of right now. The enthusiasm and wanting to share this really cool thing with others is the main thing that “clicks” for me.

            1. I’d have to go with the I don’t know too. In my field, economics, no one knows nothin. People who say they do, don’t. Alas, that leaves out everyone on TV.

              You could take any number of quotes from Richard Feynman, who was an expert by just about any definition. Perhaps for your purpose “The idea is to give all the information to help others to judge the value of your contribution, not just the information that leads to judgement in one particular direction.” That ties in with the “actually that’s really interesting.“

              Or “I learned very early the difference between knowing the name of something and knowing something. “ I’ve tried very hard to live up to that one. It’s the difference between doing well on tests at school and doing well in real life.

              You’re spoiled for choice with Feynman.

            2. The “bad signs” that Robin mentions are also indications a teacher has gone from teaching-mode to classroom-control mode– and just like in the military, if you have to remind people that you have authority, you’re in trouble.

              1. All of the kids’ worst teachers DEMANDED I “respect my position”
                To which my half stunned reaction was “WHAT position? You have a notional education, and are doing the job you were hired for POORLY. You’re not some holy priest, or someone who struggled for years to get to a difficult position. Get off my face NOW or I’ll make you hurt.”
                Viewing your job as some kind of holy office people MUST bow down to is a very bad sign.

          4. After mulling it over a bit longer, I think it comes down to where the person’s focus is: enthusiasm or ego. Bob pointed out the credentialism thing, which is a huge negative tell. If someone wants to make sure you know they have a Ph.D., then 98% of the time they’re the ego-driven Dunning-Kruger type, who can’t stand to admit there’s something they don’t know. (The other 2% are the ones who happen to mention it in passing, in a way that actually sounds like a humblebrag, but they really did just happen to mention it because it was relevant to the topic. Like “Oh right, the mating habits of snails. I actually did my dissertation on that one. See, what happens is…” The topic is the focus, and the dissertation is mentioned in passing. And note how my fictional expert is assuming you know the difference between a dissertation and a thesis.) But the credentialism is just part of the larger picture, which is whether the expert is focused on making sure you know that he’s an expert, or making sure that you know the information. The former is a Dunning-Kruger “expert”, the latter is the real thing. (And because making sure you know the information includes making sure you know which parts of what he’s saying are 100% reliable, and which ones are informed guesses, the real expert will also tell you “Now, this part is questionable and we’re not sure, but our best guess is that …”).

            1. There’s another metric that is a little ambiguous.

              Consideration for audience.

              If you are enthusiastic about sharing, you will try to put the cool bits in terms you think your audience can understand. Not a perfect test, because of expert’s experts, who could not communicate with a five year old, a young adult layman, or a professor of an unrelated field if their life depended on it.

        2. Expertise is a little like those flashlights cops (used to?) carry — the big, steel-tubed ones using 4 D-cell batteries.

          Some use it as illumination for a path through the fog, some use it as a bludgeon.
          –

          1. It’s a versatile tool, and there are situations in which each function is appropriate. Or both. Identify the suspects, then beat ’em over the head.

        3. Presuming you’re not the “read one page in the book that the others didn’t ONCE and so get ALL the questions FOREVER” type of expert. (Being that kind of expert is annoying.)

    4. the lockdowns will murder more people than the virus kills … and yes, murder … those people are being killed on purpose by other people …

      1. I saw a great measure. Cuomo’s nursing home orders killed 4. 9/11’s. Since they hugely undercounted the nursing home deaths it’s probably twice that.

  15. That should read “so not significantly different as a percentage of overall population”.

    WordPress really needs and edit function for comments, my brain gets ahead of my fingers.

        1. Disqus is a Javascript mess that doesn’t even work on my main web browser. Plus it requires an account and logging in, which is why I don’t participate on Peter Grant or Kim du Toit’s blogs, which require WordPress logins.

          I’m already tracked quite enough, thank you.

  16. Don’t forget Ohio governor Mike DeWine. Tested positive, then re-tested 4 more times, all negative. If he wasn’t a governor, would they have bothered to re-test, or just counted ‘one more positive’?

    The ‘5 million cases’ mean that 5 million people got positive test results ON THE DAY THEY WERE TESTED. The tests have been ongoing for 5 months. Everybody they tested before June don’t have coronavirus any more.

    The tests are still only 70% to 80% accurate.

    Here’s the final kicker: How many deaths were there from ALL causes between January 1 and June 30? Because I can’t find that number. Based on data from the last 4 years, there should have been about 1.5 million deaths from all causes in the first six months of this year.

    The only number I could find stated 505,000 deaths from all causes between March 1 and April 25 — which is just about the number we should expect in an average year. It does not appear that the overall death rate is any higher than usual this year. In spite of all the Chicken Littles have done to make the situation worse.
    ———————————
    Facts do not depend on opinions. Unfortunately, for far too many people, opinions do not depend on facts, either.

    1. “The tests are still only 70% to 80% accurate.”

      With a 20% false positive AND a 30% false negative. That takes effort and talent.

      1. I generally have scant patience with the passel of morons collecting data on the Kung Flu in the US, but in this ONE instance I will ask; is there some test, practical for mass use, that’s notably better?

        1. The fast test does something chemical that finds antibodies to any coronavirus that is close enough. (Including SARS and some forms of the cold.) The slower test is just looking at a lab slide for COVID. (Or something like that.)

          1. The slower test is looking for COVID RNA. That’s why it takes longer to get a positive than a negative. The test has to run through several replication cycles to ensure that any RNA is amplified to the point it can be reliably detected. If you’re already sick the virus is doing that for you.

    2. Statistics on deaths and causes in the US don’t generally get compiled in a publicly available format until a couple of years have gone by. For example, I went searching for info on suicides in the US this year, but wasn’t able to find anything later than 2018.

    3. oh, his positive was counted as a new case that day … the labs can’t tell you who got tested (HIPPA)

    4. If you look at this from “What is the preferred case?” I would think something like “A lot of the population has had the bug that shall not be named on YouTube with mortality in the same order of magnitude as deaths from influenza and pneumonia a normal year” would be ideal – enough to gain solid herd immunity to further spread, making rapid vaccine production moot, with no order-of-magnitude increase in deaths.

      The CDC dashboard at https://www.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/index.html#cases shows 5,023,649 positive tests as of today, and 161,842 Covid-19 deaths. Full-year 2018 Influenza-and-pneumonia deaths (per CDC) totaled 59,120, so we’re running 2.7 times a normal year, with caveats about very aggressive death counts for the Pneumonia Coronavirus Which Is From Wuhan China Where Winnie Is God-Emperor. You can bet any Influenza-and-pneumonia deaths this year are being tagged as Covid-19 deaths without bothering to test.

      So what we should want is craaaazy high case counts with deaths in the same order-of-magnitude range as a normal flu year – and at least here in Santa Clara County that’s what we’re seeing, with soaring case counts and death rates of 1 every few days, with occasional four death days, but alos plenty of no death days (I’d add another link but that would put me in moderation). But beloved spouse still is not allowed to get a haircut.

  17. Here’s a few examples of cases I know of:
    * A friend’s elderly aunt in a nursing home tested positive for at least a fifty-plus day period, but was asymptomatic.
    * A friend of my fiance had moderately-bad cold symptoms for about 36 hours.
    * A friend’s mom in a nursing home tested positive for a few weeks, but was asymptomatic.

    1. Honestly, my daughter and I were wondering exactly this. Mind you, our first-person social networks don’t go out very far, but as for online friends and correspondents … and among all those, no one confessing to have caught the Chinese Commie Crud? No one at all? Mind you, we know a few people (mostly elderly, and/or immune compromised) who are sh*t scared of catching it. But .. the silence and absence regarding the CCC is … significant. Mind you, I also didn’t know personally anyone who contracted HIV/AIDS, but considering that there was a stigma attached.
      But still – how widespread is this, if no one you know personally or at a remove has contracted it … I mean, really contracted it, badly enough to require hospitalization? I’m rapidly coming to the conclusion that practically everything we are told about the CCC is absolute bunk.

      1. I have three online contacts with confirmed cases, all of them had an experience that sucked, and none of them ended up in the hospital. (Two, whose ages are in the 35-45 range, have reported shortness of breath and lack of energy weeks after the active infection, so yes, we’re talking a sucky virus.)

        1. One of our employees has had it. She felt horrible for one day (woman in her early 20s) then said she felt better. She was still testing positive at her next test. Have secondhand report of 10 people at local country church testing positive.

          I have two anecdotes from older ladies from back in January. One was miserably ill for most of a month and still weak and easily tired for weeks after that. Symptoms included fever, malaise and dry, hacking cough. The other mentioned having what felt like a cold until several days in, when she developed shortness of breath which was “pretty bad.” Her husband had it worse, but neither was hospitalized.

          I worked in daily contact with our clients all tax season and never had a sniffle. Mind you, Murphy being what It is, I could come down with it tomorrow.

          By the way, mu nickname for masks is, “face diaper”.

    2. One sort of contact (mother of one of my daughter’s school friends) tested positive this spring. No one else I know in any way has tested positive. Everyone else who’s been sick and gotten the test is negative.

    3. Friends Mom, a few months shy of age 100 with lots of other health issues, came up positive in her skilled nursing facility and passed away within a couple of days last month.

      Three younger relatives of coworkers tested positive, were sick, and got better, with none spending time in any hospitals.

      That’s it for my circle of direct knowledge.

      There’s possible math there to estimate using degrees of Kevin Bacon (4 total all three Bacons out from me, one fatality) that should yield estimates with error bars, but confidence interval/error bar size would be huge.

    4. I’ve got to a) clean my glasses b) adjust the contrast on this monitor c) rest my eyes more/better d) get my mind right — I looked at “in a nursing home tested positive for at least a fifty-plus day period, but was asymptomatic” but read it as “in a nursing home tested positive for at least a fifty-plus day period, but was nymphomaniac.”

      I might be wrong but I believe those two terms are not interchangeable.
      –

  18. The crime comments remind me of the America flashbacks in “Comrade Detective”.

    I don’t know anyone who for sure died of the Wuhan virus. I have a friend who *might* have died of it. He’d recently finished a second round of chemo, and was supposed to be doing good. But then – based on what I heard from his family – he broke his leg in late February, and suddenly passed away due to complications from this and the after-effects of the chemo. Due to the timing, it’s possible that he caught the Wuhan virus, and no one checked for it because people were just becoming aware of it. But that’s just speculation in my part.

    2. A lot of the “mysterious how did they get it” cases of WuFlu seem to have been passed by infected people going to the bathroom, and other people then getting in contact with fecal matter (or breathing it). Just like stomach flu, and aided by people using phones in the bathroom.

      (Helped by handwashing, which as you notice is slightly not a thing again. Amazing how people trust sanitizer, but keep forgetting soap.)

      We have discussed that I think I had it in December. Internet blog friend’s three relatives had it: one died, one hospitalized, one just got sick. Two co-workers had contact with folks who had it, (one being his girlfriend who lived with him), but neither one got sick or even tested positive.

      (Second coworker and management are torqued, because after two negative tests and three weeks, her doctor won’t let her out of quarantine yet. She needs documentation or the company takes back her quarantine pay. Doctor apparently thinks it is okay to imprison a healthy young woman, as long as she is getting quarantine pay. The whole thing stinks.)

  19. Once upon a time, I would have done more than I cared to think about to live in London. Why? More books and libraries in English than you can imagine, the stores, the fact that London was one of the two centers of the latex/rubber/PVC BDSM scene (the other was/is Berlin).

    Then, I went in 2010 for nearly twelve days. Wouldn’t have missed it for anything, but there was no way I could have lived in London itself-I admit the public transit system was good, but I like driving and there was no way I could drive. London had history and you could feel it in your bones…but, they should have been cleaning the sidewalks more often. Rent for a one bedroom in a good spot would have been £1200/month (it’s probably £1600+ now). A tax or fee on everything except breathing air-and I wouldn’t be surprised if they didn’t do that. An absolute terrible fear of knives, and the idea of carrying a gun would be treated if I was carrying around a Davy Crockett by the London Police. The fact that most London women smoke, and many of them really go by their 30’s. The steady growth of political correctness and “diversity” politics.

    And, I could see the increasing population of “Asians” (i.e. Moslems from Pakistan and other places) showing up and doing what Moslems do if they don’t have an immediate fear of death-bring all of the bad things of their home country with them.

    Don’t ask me about the rest of Europe. I know exactly why my ancestors got away from there as fast as they could.

    That the European ruling class (which our E!Democrat “betters” are trying to imitate, like always) is so clutching their pearls and wanting to see Something Done For (To) America doesn’t surprise me at all. This is yet another thing of Europe being Europe and why we should all be glad that we aren’t there anymore.

    1. From what I can tell at a distance, all the really nice places to live in Europe are far enough away from the urban centers that the people can pretty much ignore whatever idiocy their government is getting up to.

      And, of course, their political classes Are trying to change that as fast as they can.

        1. I’ve lived in both places. You’re much better off in Paris. They’re both very expensive but then I’m from NYC so that wasn’t so much a shock to me or for that matter the car thing. I suppose it’s what you’re used to.

          if you have any sort of decent job, France is one of the best places on Earth to live. The UK is too congested.

          One of the issues with the UK is that they actually enforced all those stupid EU rules. The French always laughed about it and even the Germans don’t really enforce all of it. Italy, Spain, and Portugal had their generations long experience dealing with over bearing rulers and simply ignored it. we call it chaos, but it’s actually freedom. If only they had kept their, own money they could tell them all to go whistle. Sigh.

          1. I remember that when it was first announced that the Euro was going to be an actual currency (instead of a Hugh finance abstraction), my first thought was “I wonder if proof sets of the first year of Euros are going to be collectors’ items, or the next Confederate Dollars (that museums used to sell as novelties)”.

          2. I came from the SF Bay Area and lived the dream of a rent-controlled apartment for seventeen years that I was paying $800 for a unit that went up to $2200 when the landlord did “major renovations.” So, yea, I know cost. And, the only way I’d live in Paris would be to have a six figure job, minimum.

            Still…London is sort of a dream city to me.

            1. Paris, mid to high six figures unless you want to live in the boonies. Foreigners can’t systeme D it so we have to pay. London’s about the same. For myself, I’d choose Barcelona except in the summer when I’d take the south coast of England. I love San Francisco, but I’m afraid they’ve lost their way.

              An awful lot of people in NYC owe their “wealth” to being able to buy their rent stabilized apartments at the “insider price” when they went coop. 1991 purchase pre war, 3 bedroom, Kitchen, big living room, foyer. High ceilings, all the architectural plaster work, with parquet floors. $129k. 😉. It’s a racket but you have to play the hand you’re dealt.

    2. > (the other was/is Berlin)

      …and has been for a *long* time. Tuchman mentioned a group of the Kaiser’s generals in WWI who were regulars at a leather club in Berlin, and one of them apparently had his heart give out while dancing in a tutu. So festivities were curtailed and the body was moved to another site while the others arranged their alibis.

      Wild Bill Donovan’s inexplicable pants-less escape from North Africa pales by comparison…

      1. Manchester mentions that incident in “Arms of Krupp”…. except according to him it was at an actual Imperial ball and the general curtsied to the Kaiser, danced off with his “partner”, and dropped dead on the ballroom floor.

        1. Von Hulsen-Haesseler it’s not clear that he wore a tutu normally or if he was made to as part of the Kaisers merry frolics. All male boarding schools have interesting rituals. (Please don’t ask.)

          Eulenburg was the Prime Minister and got caught up in a scandal with one of the Moltke’s. not very Victorian were the Victorians. It went all the way to the top with the Kaiser and some of the princes. Some historians think it was a major contributor to WW I since Eulenburg was a moderate by German standards.

  20. So, I know one person at church who lost a cousin (in her seventies) to covid.
    My nephew was a missionary in the Phillipines when this came down. All the non-natives were thrown out, and he was forced to spend a few days crammed in with hundreds of other missionaries as they waited for flights. He caught covid.
    Passed it to his parents and three brothers when he got home to California. One brother had to be hospitalized for one night, It was nasty for the family, but they got over it.
    A niece in Florida works the covid unit She and a handful of others nurses all caught it at once, (probably from the break room). It was not as bad a strain as the family in California. She was over it in three days. Her parents and one brother caught it, alos shook it off in three days.
    All the anecdotal evidence suggests that this is just a potentially nasty flu, nothing more.
    How many people do you personally know have died of this? That’s the important question.

    1. There’s genetic marker tracing work that says there are two strains, the first that hit Seattle from China earlier on and the second that hit New York from China via Europe, with the Seattle one less severe.

      1. Have you been able to find that?

        I’ve seen theories, but no actual wide-sample genetic work liked it’d take to show that.

        1. Yeah, in fact I think I posted a link here on the geotracing of markers and the blue and red strains, where the web page had a cool time-animation thingee that showed the spread. There was a weird early dot in the northern midwest that I thought was a “dot in North America with no more detailed location” data point that someone commented on. Let me go try and find that again…

            1. There’s nothing there about the strains being worse, though, just about strains.

              Oregon has half the same stuff as New York area– and Iowa is all the same as New York. We don’t have a lot of deaths, and the one guy I know (older working age, but healthy) who had it had basically a weekend flu– and Minnesota actually has more of the strain Washington has, than the one New York got.

              It would be nice if they tried to correlate outcome to the genetic signature.

                  1. Ah, that explains it– the data, when he wrote that, was suggestive, but it appears to have been updated/added to, since then. More infective explains why it’s showing up more, too, but looks like the idea of it being more deadly isn’t panning out.

                    Found another weakness in the World Of Meters rankings, BTW (of course I went to double check the deaths per million again, I don’t trust my memory)

                    They are reporting exactly what is reported, without attempt to norm– so Korea, which is giving people-killed-by-COVID-19 numbers with solid testing to back it up, is being compared to “well they are dead and we can’t prove they weren’t exposed so it’s a COVID-19 death” numbers. (*glares at NYC*)
                    Understandable, but a weakness.

          2. I know someone mentioned it at one point, and that there was a map about severity and a theory about genetic differences, but…..

  21. > California, because this is “near” Colorado

    Well, sure! Denver to Sacramento is about the same as from Porto to Edinburgh, Tunis, Rome, or Munich… Practically in your back yard!

    1. I’ve had two different friends from London come to SF, rent a car, and say that they were going to do a day trip down to LA and see the sights.

      (By the map, it’s about six hours one way. It’s actually eight if you’re lucky. I know a guy that did it in four each way, but I know there were Chippies crying their beer that they couldn’t catch him.)

      One of them, I explained it and they got a room down there.

      The other didn’t listen and was angry when they got back. I gave them a copy of the notes I had given them before they left.

      I blame the media-they make both cities seem so close together…

  22. As i keep saying, I don’t know if the Media is a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Dem party, or it’s the other way round, but I DO KNOW they’re in cahoots! Also, I despise, detest, and distrust the NYT, and it’s little dog WaPoo, too!

  23. For those correcting the “typo” via various means: I think they meant NEW cases.

    I’d guess someone maimed the AP feed. (Yahoo usually does an almost direct post, their headline is “5 M.”)

    That’s usually what happens when stuff is that bungled up, especially if the rest makes you do the head-tilt.

      1. *sad nod* Oh, I believe you. That’s the kind of thing that I’ve run into several times in print, and then when I go look it up on the website either the article doesn’t exist (outside of the search results that send me to it) or it’s been fixed without any note.

        It’s freaking AMAZING how often they screw up stuff when they’re doing the “have someone local read the feed and re-write it so that it looks like we actually do reporting.” (I only found this out via tracking down some of the more creative incorrect claims, like the Pope saying dogs go to heaven, or the kid expelled for saying he had the one ring. Uh, no, that was made up.)

  24. My dental hygienist had it early in the year and thinks she caught it on a flight home from a trip, not from her workplace. She said it felt like just a bad cold. An acquaintance reported a month ago that two people at his workplace had tested positive, but nobody since then. Compare to bad flu seasons when half the people you meet or talk to have had it or someone in their family has. *sigh*

    1. Most people (like 90%) who get the Wu Kung Flu get over it without ever knowing they had it. Few or no symptoms, or just a cold.

  25. One of the great things about being an American is not having to give a flying filigreed fornication about what Europeans think. My ancestors left Europe for a very good reason, thank you very much, and since they’re our protectorates and not the other way around they can keep a respectful tongue in their heads or they can remain silent. Either one works for me.

    1. Amen.
      My dad once identified I had landed because (and I no longer remember why) I was giving hte border people a piece of my mind ending with “I’m so glad I left and shook the dust from my sandals”
      He said only i could say that so gleefully 😀

      1. The world would be a much better place if we could fix the errors that resulted in Americans like you and US citizens like Pelosi and Biden being born with the wrong passports.

  26. I’m pretty sure I had it in March (and it was horrible, ugh), but I have not been tested to make sure. Reason 1 being the doubtful accuracy of the tests; reason 2 being roommate needs to keep job, and they’ll apparently bounce you if you LIVE with someone who tested positive.

    At any point. No cut-off date. No “oh someone’s gotten over it”.

    Insane.

    1. Here, if you test positive, you have to stay home for 10 days. If a family member tests positive, you have to stay home for 14 days “because of lag between infection and symptoms.” You can come back to work if you [laundry list of qualifiers] or the time has elapsed.

            1. Same.

              Husband pointed out that “because if something goes wrong I will black out and try to get away THROUGH people” is a legitimate medical reason, but I know they mean that they want a doctor’s order that says “will have visibly obvious and direct immediate medical problem with wearing a mask.”

              They do not have the right, either morally or legally, to demand what they are demanding… but bypassing it is wrong, too. Less wrong, yeah, but the closest I can sense to what “should” be done is trying to fix the bad rules.

              Which we both know we can’t do.

              …

              It freaking SUCKS when people take authority but not responsibility.

                  1. Indeed. I knew it, I knew this was likely – I’m lucky, but other people in my genetic tree have mouth problems, so I figured mask breathing -> mouth-breathing -> long-term nastiness. But does anyone listen to me? Noooo…..

                    *Wry* A complaint I’m sure many of us here have.

      2. School for the Kid allegedly starts back on Monday. She gives it three weeks of functioning before they shut it down again, and I am expecting the morning dropoff line to take 2+ hours rather than the usual 20 minutes. (Five-item health questionnaire for *everyone* in the car. Plus a temperature check. I figure we’re lucky if she’s in class by 10.)

  27. I had a coworker pass away after getting a positive diagnosis last month. Not sure Covid was the official cause of death though.

  28. I would also point out that many of the “new” positive cases are NOT NEW. If you tested positive 4 weeks what are the odds you have gone back every week and gotten retested? My bet is VERY HIGH … so you might get 2 more positives before finally getting the negative you are looking for … the second and third positives are counted as NEW (the government does not know who tested positive when it comes to counting, for tracing maybe ) … so with our MASSIVE testing … 60,000 positives on one day will be people who will come back for another test a week later … and a huge percentage of them will pop positive again … and a week later a smaller percentage will still pop positive …

    1. The test is inherently vulnerable to false positives. It tests for the viral RNA, but the RNA alone is harmless. It needs the viral capsid to get it into the cells. So until you clear the last ten parts per billion or so, you’ll test positive. (Yeah, the RNA-doubling PCReaction is that good, and last I heard they ran it twenty-odd times for a multiplier of ten million or more.)

  29. Perhaps of some interest to the Huns:

    1. Shatner was on fire in that thread. He finally had to pull out the “Why yes, I am related to people who died in the Holocaust, and I am not letting you pin a yellow star on people for being Caucasian and heterosexual.”

      Naturally the mob couldn’t imagine why he was offended, and anyway he had no right to be offended; but of course they get to pick their pronouns and descriptors whenever they like.

      1. Starting to think 90% of the drama could be cured by people sincerely considering the possibility that they may be wrong or working on insufficient information, and/or someone can disagree without being ignorant or evil.

        Good on Shatner.

        1. If they started doing that they’d never be able to convince themselves that they’re smart and worthy of the oxygen they’re inhaling.

        2. Then they’d have to give up the hit of “knowing ” they’re “making a difference,” “changi g the world, ” and “being on the right side of history.” At least the leftists would have to give those up. Admit right-wingnuts would have complementary issues to give up.

        3. I’ve always been willing to considering the possibility that I may be wrong or working on insufficient information but have yet to be persuaded to change a view because “If you believe that you’re an evil person” to constitute a salient argument worth reevaluating my views.

          Anyone can disagree without without being ignorant and/or evil (but it certainly increases the probability they are) although the manner of expression of that disagreement often conveys the impression they likely are.
          –

          1. Exercising right to revise and extend remarks:

            Anyone can disagree without without being ignorant and/or evil … but that’s the way to bet.
            –

          2. Assuming there’s no “because (logical reason probably based on the assumptions that are required to reach said belief)” on the end of person, ditto here.
            (Well, that hasn’t happened, but I can see it happening, and would class it under “insufficient or bad information” if accurate.)

  31. I know ONE FOF who died of this, and yes, there were other complications, etc. And again, not someone I know directly, just a relative of an on-line friend.

    I have known three people who have died since COVID reached the states officially, one the same day as the first case here in GA.

    J, the first and the one who died the say COVID officially reached George, died of congestive heart failure. He told us his cough was a cold and hid the swelling in his extremities for weeks. He had his wife take him to the ER the day he died. He was about to be transferred to a room. Had he not had a fear of doctors and gone earlier or hid the swelling from me (who recognized what it was when his wife told me the symptoms) in which case I would have put his happy ass in the car and driven him to the ER 8 days earlier, the last time I saw him, it probably wouldn’t have been fatal.

    Clearly, not a COVID death.

    MB died 10 months after re-occurrence of pancreatic cancer. He’d been cancer free two or three years and went from no signs to stage 4 in between three month checks. He was given 3-6 months when they found the re-occurrence. He made it almost twice that and I wonder if COVID hadn’t shut so much down if he’d still be beating the odds. Probably not, but that would be the only way he was a COVID related death.

    Talina….who the weekend I met her was assigned the task of describing me in one word (it was my first SJW…we all had someone assigned) said she watched me all weekend and said I did nothing without love so the word she gave me was loving…the woman who saw the me I wish I could be and was my friend.

    Talina was murdered (thanks 2020, “has a friend who was murdered” was not an achievement I needed unlocked). The isolation allowed her killer, her roommate, to hide her death behind a supposed COVID diagnosis for two weeks then lead everyone on a wild goose chase that Talina went off to either recover or die (which was plausible because she hadn’t really recovered from the sudden death of her husband two years earlier right before Christmas).

    Not a COVID death, but COVID hysteria may have allowed the killer to cover the tracks enough to not see justice for the murder, just for the thefts afterwards.

    What are the odds I know three people who died “before their time” (ie, not elderly or chronically ill, except maybe MB) during this and none were COVID deaths by any reasonable definition.

    All those Karens and Kyles and children afraid of shadows insisting on masks and no schools deserve their lives, which they refuse to live, less than any of my three friends. My friends lived life instead of hiding in fear.

    We need to do so and tell those who don’t to shut the f— up and stay inside. The adults have things to do.

  32. Someone asked on Twitter “Would you ask your doc to Rx HCQ if you contracted Covid 19?”
    I replied “I live in Portugal, so he would actually choose what works.
    And he would send it by email.
    (Portuguese are allergic to PC doctrines.)”
    Have things reversed so far that there is more liberty in a socialist country that is always “developing” (Used to be third world)?

    1. Why no, I wouldn’t ask. I’d demand he do it under threat of malpractice suit. Meanwhile, I’d be finding another doctor.

      1. The doctor is not afraid of HCQ, nor does he care about politics. Only in the US would a doctor not consider HCQ as an safe and effective treatment.

        1. Most doctors in the US belong to the American Medical Association, which is highly political. (and far left) They’re usually members of state organizations, which are also usually leftist. And given the extensive classroom requirements, they’re effectively academics, which means long exposure to leftist thinking. So when the Left makes its pronouncements, they tend to obey without engaging their critical faculties. Or if they do, the STFU and go along, since most of them are employees nowadays.

          1. That is what the AMA (and the Red Press, aka MSM) would have us believe. I recall contrary facts expressed during the battles of Obamacare and Hillarycare before that, and a quick [searchengine] reveals these representative results:

            Don’t Believe AMA’s Hype, Membership Still Declining …
            medpagetoday
            According to the AMA’s own numbers, 22.5% of AMA members are students and 24.7% are residents (this number in 2016 was 235,000 or 1/6th of America’s physicians).

            The AMA Represents Only About One-Sixth of All Doctors …
            motherjones
            The New York Times weighs in: When President-elect Donald J. Trump chose Representative Tom Price of Georgia to be his health and human services secretary, the American Medical Association swiftly …

            77 Percent Of Doctors Say AMA Does Not Represent Their …
            thinkprogress
            Seventy-seven percent of physicians “say the American Medical Association does not represent their views, according to a new volunteer-based online survey by the physician staffing firm Jackson & Coker.Just 11 percent said AMA’s stance and actions reflects their beliefs.”
            –

              1. So how did your son get through?

                And I give it two years before the same wokeness will be part of the license to practice medicine.

                1. > So how did your son get through?

                  The Che shirt and humming “The Internationale” while being interviewed might have helped…

                  Mom Hoyt flew under the radar for decades before decloaking. I’m sure she passed valuable tips on to Hoyts 2.1 and 2.2.

  34. totally off topic (here? At ATH?) but this guy makes me laugh:

    This is his Lockdown project (so maybe a tiny bit on topic). All his stuff is entertaining, so wade in.

    1. ….I am probably going to end up with a “creative” cake for the Duchess’ birthday, now. He has a birthday cake recipe.

    2. Also, I’m now old. Looking at the guy and going “Huh, cute kid, and very well spoken.”

      While the comment section is drooling.

      1. LOL. One of Marshall’s friends would have made me drool when I was in my twenties.
        Now it’s “Cute kid. Good politics. Stay friends with him.” (I just retain enough memory of myself to know how I’d have reacted, but yeah…. kid. BTW he looks exactly like my mental image of D’Artagnan)

        1. Ugh, and yes, I know the feeling. And then there’s looking at the FB pics of guys that I knew back in the day and thinking … “OMG, who is that old man?!!”
          (Yeah, I found the FB page of a guy whom I adored for a brief period in my mid-twenties. Now a fanatical never-Trumper, corporate drone, on his second marriage or possibly another … and I am thinking … Ugh. What was it that I saw in him, again? Now drugs were involved, for certain – we were both active duty and painfully clean-cut at the time of our involvement. But still … What was I thinking?!)

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