Still alive

My last post may have been a bit too negative. But I meant it.

Anyways, just wanted to say I am still here, but very busy. Monkeypox has not visited me yet.

Status update

Light-to-nonexistent blogging until further notice (life sucks).

Here's a couple things for now:

This is brilliant: Software engineer got tired of getting rejected by automated screeners and tested a theory.

Real resume: 0% success

Obviously fake resume stuffed with buzzwords: 90% success rate

Calls from from Notion, AirBnB, Reddit, Dropbox, Robinhood, etc pic.twitter.com/m80GUnPsr2

— Coding Career Community (@Coding_Career) October 30, 2021

Here’s Why Rapid COVID Tests Are So Expensive and Hard to Find. It's empty shelves for reasons unrelated to the supply chain issues. 

Your aristocracy

Much of that is as bad as it looks, but in fairness, part of it is because photo ops. But that sort of makes it worse--taking or keeping the masks off for the sake of photos reveals their obliviousness to the obscene disparity all around them. I think revolutions have been started for less.

Thursday blend: no time edition

Happy Thursday! 

I haven't posted anything all week but I have been working on something I hope to post within a few days. Between work, my nascent side-hustle, family, life-stuff (all the little things we need to do that add up) and the dwindling but precious hours and minutes I increasingly need to sleep and rest, I have very little time for this blog, unfortunately.

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Leftists Upset As Business Refuses To Discriminate

Experts Warn That If Children Between The Ages Of 5-11 Aren’t Vaccinated Then Pfizer Executives Won’t Get Their Sales Bonuses

Americans Still Trapped In Afghanistan Told By Washington Post To Lower Expectations


Liberal Parent Trying To Figure Out How To Cheer For His Son Brandon

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Trump launches his own social media platform, calling it TRUTH Social


Illinois hospital systems losing hundreds of workers because of COVID-19 vaccine mandates


Senate Republicans Block Voting Rights Bill, Leaving Its Fate in Doubt. I have not read the bill yet, but here is the full text.

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Here's a twitter thread on a small piece of the supply chain issues (click the tweet to view the whole thread):

 

Here is what I learned. Please keep in mind this is one team’s perspective. But perspective is important. I didn’t get into any “who is at fault” discussions, I just listened to them and what they had to say and what they were seeing. So here we go… 1/ https://t.co/EMtw5LTqwF

— Nathan Strang (@NavyStrang) October 20, 2021

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Last but not least,

The list of major Biden administration failures

• The Del Rio Haitian border crisis.
• Don't forget Afghanistan.
• Unity. Biden may be the Great Divider. Every president fails on this, but we should start holding them responsible.
• TBA 

(Forever) covid surveillance

I'm increasingly a fan of Michael Tracey's work. He seems to be a center-left journalist with a hint of a libertarian streak.

His latest is solid gold. I want to quote everything and put <strong> and <em> tags around all of it. But I cannot, so here's a taste. Read the whole thing.

Vaccination was never the gateway to normalcy it was presented to be, and the only option is apparently to instate “Permanent Emergency” protocols with no cognizable “off-ramp” in sight, as a Duke University “expert” helpfully conceded this week. Reneging on these prior assurances is portrayed as some inherently unavoidable fait accompli, rather than a conscious policy choice undertaken to the exclusion of other vastly more sensible options. Choosing another option would mean re-assessing the underlying logic of constantly surveilling a 99% vaccinated population of healthy young adults with these increasingly dubious “tests,” and gathering their private data so as to opine about the permissibility of their social activities.

Thursday blend: labor shortage edition

Happy Thursday!

James Bond To Stay Male, Will Be Played By Elliot Page

DISGUSTING: Disrespectful Football Player Kneels During Traditional 'F Joe Biden' Chant

Leftists Deeply Afraid Things Could Go Back To Normal

“Normal is like the worst thing ever,” said Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the world’s smartest socialist. “Normal is systemic racism and inequality and people telling me the math doesn’t add up on all my plans—even though I didn’t do any math.”

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An observation: I went to the doctor's office recently to have some blood drawn for labs. I checked in, walked in the little blood lab room, sat in the chair, turned my head the other way, felt some pain, and I'm assuming they drew some blood. But I have no idea if something was injected or drawn, or if the needle was even clean--it happened pretty quick. That's our new normal. We go where we're told, and technicians poke you and inject or draw fluids (if you're lucky an actual nurse might do it, doctors don't have time for that).

I think it's good to question "normal" sometimes. At least be more aware and ask questions. It's like I was on autopilot the other day. It's not just about medical stuff, it's everything. All the little fees and taxes we typically no longer question, or any minor annoyance that is suspiciously easier in which to accede rather than to challenge. I'll try to be more aware and at least slightly skeptical of "normal" things.

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There's apparently a labor shortage. I have kind of been vaguely aware of this the past several months, but it's getting more pronounced lately. And according to this article, it's still hard to find work despite the labor shortage:

Erica Groshen, senior economics advisor at the Cornell University School of Industrial and Labor Relations and the former commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, told Insider that employers may not be working rapidly to actually fill the record number of job openings.

"They may say, 'Well, we have an opening and we have it listed,' but they may not be rushing to fill it if they're not sure how the pandemic is playing out in their area," Groshen said. "So they may leave the posting up, but not be rushing."

The supply chain industry is having a particularly rough time with it. If you're in that industry, now is a good time to ask for a raise and/or change companies for the increased pay the industry rarely gives.

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There may be a government shutdown. Good. Save us some money, and propose something much more reasonable than a $3.5 trillion bill. 

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Twitter seems to think (or hope) that Dog the bounty hunter will find Brian Laundrie before the FBI finds him.

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Last but not least,

The list of major Biden administration failures

• The Del Rio Haitian border crisis.
• Don't forget Afghanistan.
• TBA

Thinking out loud about lockdowns

I'm short on time as always, so just imagine I said something clever and wrote beautifully compelling and logical segues between each point [I might edit this later when I have time].

First some tweets and news:

@ScottAdamsSays

Having successfully avoided a catastrophic Collapse of the healthcare system due to Covid. Logically, we’re pivoting to crash the system with Covid mandates.

Snatching defeat from the jaws of victory https://t.co/vIDjrtzgbC

— Adam (@AdamDopamine) September 27, 2021

Here's the story:

As New York prepares to enforce its COVID-19 vaccination deadline on Monday, Governor Kathy Hochul said a state emergency declaration and other options, including calling in health care workers from the National Guard, are on the table to address any potential hospital staffing shortages.

"I am monitoring the staffing situation closely and we have a plan to increase our health care workforce and help alleviate the burdens on our hospitals and other health care facilities," Hochul said in a statement.

Then read this from Michael Tracey, about a somewhat extreme example which may portend where things are headed, or at least where many want them to go:

The thing of broader societal consequence is that Connecticut College now serves as a miniature test case for what happens when a framework of “permanent crisis” is allowed to persist, long past the point of there being any meaningful “crisis” at hand.

Many commemorations of the 9/11 anniversary this year rightly noted the extreme overreaction the attacks engendered: especially the string of failed military interventions and the erection of a massive surveillance state. All of this was eagerly egged on by a suite of enterprising financial interests which profited handsomely from the frenzied climate of that time. The resulting erosion of civil liberties never hurt their bottom lines; after all, they’re the ones producing technologies to erode them with maximum efficiency.

Do we really suppose that the vested interests which have likewise found such a lucrative market opening with COVID — notably the “endless testing” industry, including the elaborate “surveillance testing” regime that Connecticut College students must submit to — are just going to wind down their operations voluntarily? “Time to call it a day, folks?” Or is the bureaucratic/financial momentum of these initiatives going to assure that they effectively become permanent fixtures of daily life? (I’ve been doing some reporting on the “testing industrial complex,” which is undergoing a post-9/11 style renaissance as we speak, so be on the lookout for that soon. Subscribe, etc.)

Lest anyone find it peculiar that I am devoting so much attention to the goings-on at a fairly obscure liberal arts college in Connecticut, after the Friday article’s publication, I received the following message:

I’m an administrator at a small liberal arts college in Massachusetts and part of their COVID response team. I fear our college would do the same as Connecticut College if our cases increase. We’re already testing students twice per week despite a 95%+ vaccination rate. I’m one of a handful of voices in our group trying to be a voice of reason but am outnumbered. I’m going to share your Substack column with our COVID team in the hopes it will make at least some members come around to the side of reason. It breaks my heart to see college students, who should be having one of the best experiences of their lives, treated like prisoners.

One thing that has me very concerned about the Connecticut College situation is that college administrators are generally obsessed with following the example that other colleges set. There is a profound fear of being seen as an outlier. Our COVID response team has already received an email from the leader of the team asking if we would be ready to implement the Connecticut College plan if our COVID cases continue to rise.

You may have been witness to or participated in the mind-numbing twitter debates about whether to lockdown or not to lockdown, what is excessive and what is merely prudent, etc. Honestly, I go back and forth, but I find myself more often favoring individual freedom (even though I have the cutest little nephew who is immunocompromised, and several high-risk relatives). Those who are at-risk and/or afraid can and should take extra precautions. It's the same with any other behavior, like driving. We take risks, some of them quite deadly, every single day. 

We have stopped thinking about a lot of those risks, and left the crass, but necessary cost-benefit analyses of what a human life is worth to somebody else. Somebody we probably don't know, who we didn't vote for, and who is rarely scrutinized for their valuation of a human life. And we mostly sleep comfortably with that fact we choose not to think about.

This reminded me of a clip of Milton Friedman, arguing with a college student:

We are in the midst of a public mass cost-benefit analyses of covid-19 policies. Weighing the risks versus freedom. This is a very messy and mostly decentralized process, with a lot of misinformation, changing guidelines, a mutating virus, a lot of public fear and exasperation--resulting in this mess we find ourselves in.

Then I started thinking about politics. What group is the most politically powerful? Conspiracy theories aside, that would undoubtedly be the elderly. They are the wealthiest, the most likely to vote, and likely the most at-risk group from this virus. Follow the money, follow the votes, follow the politician's survival instincts... you get the idea.

Whether explicitly or not, I posit that a major (if not the chief) contributing factor to prolonged and excessive policy reactions to covid, be it lockdowns, mask/vaccine mandates, school closures, distancing requirements, indoor activity restrictions, is that the elderly do not want to take any chances.

And there's little we can do about it, short of forming an unrealistically new, larger, politician-donating voting bloc and powerful lobby groups of younger people opposed to excessive covid policies. Or start a revolution.

Since both parties have large swaths of elderly constituents, don't expect either of them to step up. We'll get lip-service and a few politicians serving that niche, but I am highly doubtful things will change until the elderly feel much safer and the vast majority of voters are fed up with these policies. And there's always the risk we normalize and ingrain them: forever-pandemic society. Time will tell.

Thursday blend: calling in sick

I've been feeling weird and rather sick the last three days. It's been hovering at this odd threshold of do I work or stay in bed? Maybe I should see a doctor, but maybe I shouldn't, am I just being a baby? It's not that bad, but it kind of is. Maybe I just need to rest. But I'm well enough to work from home, mostly. And back and forth.

So the blog has been and will suffer for the time being.

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Here's a thing: The ongoing Nicki Minaj Covid/Twitter/Swollen balls saga.

And RIP Norm MacDonald. I really liked him and wish there was more of him in movies, comedy shows, etc.

Biden's Overreach

Biden, by decree, bypassing Congress, is mandating vaccinations or weekly testing for all companies with more than 100 employees and all federal employees. I think most people probably should get vaccinated. I do not think it should be forced on them, or given the "choice" to submit to weekly tests, the vaccine, or be fired.

I understand in the face of rising cases of Covid & increased pressure on hospitals, the need to do something is palpable. It's just that we're not that kind of country. You can't force everyone to get a shot--at least not anymore. And if you try, not only will you almost certainly fail in your goal, the damage it will cost just to try won't be negligible.

What happened to not legislating by executive order and "we're a democracy, we need consensus"?

But we're going to try any way. One more ratchet click toward authoritarianism:

The White House is compelling businesses with more than 100 employees to require their workers be vaccinated against the novel coronavirus or subjected to weekly testing. Companies that ignore the policy could face penalties of up to $14,000 for each violation, according to a senior administration official. Also, companies would be required to give workers paid time off to get the vaccine.

The employer mandates, which the White House estimates could reach as many as 80 million people, or two-thirds of U.S. workers, would be the most extensive government intervention into private companies and employer practices since the pandemic began.

Maybe people will #Resist. 

I am vaccinated. But my medical information is none of my employer's nor the federal government's business. I may get fired for behaving in accordance with that belief.

Don't forget Afghanistan. It's one shitshow after another.

Daily Mud's Razor

Never ascribe to coincidence that which is adequately explained by government incompetence.

 

It appears Anthony Fauci did lie about coronavirus gain-of-function research at, and the United States taxpayer funds that went to the Wuhan lab in China.

I'm going to go out on a limb and suggest that the Covid-19 virus originated in that Wuhan lab. Similar to Occam and Hanlon's razors, I think the more probable and obvious explanation is government incompetence. Not only is this China's major fuckup, but the United States helped pay for it. Two 21st century superpowers and they can't even keep a virus contained. 

Who's genius idea was it to not only experiment on/create new deadly viruses, but to do so in a massive population center? I bet this person happens to be very wealthy too.

If it weren't for individuals' resilience and resourcefulness, and humankind's uncanny ability to fail upwards, I would say the world is doomed.

"NEWLY RELEASED documents provide details of US-funded research on..coronaviruses at the Wuhan Institute of Virology..The Intercept has obtained more than 900 pages of documents detailing..work of..EcoHealth Alliance..at the Chinese lab.."https://t.co/n3OkFAq3kM

— Richard H. Ebright (@R_H_Ebright) September 7, 2021

Unrest in the FDA

This Biden administration is going swimmingly:

FDA officials are scrambling to collect and analyze data that clearly demonstrate the boosters' benefits before the administration’s Sept. 20 deadline for rolling them out to most adults. Many outside experts, and some within the agency, see uncomfortable similarities between the Biden team's top-down booster plan and former President Donald Trump's attempts to goad FDA into accelerating its initial authorization process for Covid-19 vaccines and push through unproven virus treatments. 

On Tuesday, two top FDA vaccine regulators resigned — a decision that one former official said was rooted in anger over the agency’s lack of autonomy in the booster planning so far.

I don't find this shocking or even all that interesting. But I will say I'm happy to rub it in the faces of the other side, since these are the rules by which we play. It's not so much partisanship as it is a zeal for facilitating cognitive dissonance and karma in response to ideological hubris. Tomato tomahto.

Australians have a right to protest

Every human has that right. They just have to claim and defend it.

The lock-downs and draconian measures taking place in New South Wales in particular and Australia in general are beyond absurd. I honestly don't know how the people tolerate it, nor how the tyrants have enough temerity to attempt it. Covid isn't going away any time soon and ridding the populace of their pesky freedoms indefinitely will not only amount to a significant loss of mental & economic well-being, but it is a recipe for potentially more death and destruction than the disease itself--especially if the government keeps overreacting. 

Dear Australians, if you want to support the protests, but are not able to attend, take a few hints from the BLM protesters (remember when protesting, arson, & rioting was more acceptable?):

Jail/court support: Getting arrested can be scary and exhausting; many groups often organize moral and material support for those who’ve been arrested. See if people are gathering outside the jails or courthouses to show support for protesters while they’re in, or after they come out...

Food: Can you get food to the protest area? (Don’t automatically send pizzas, though— try to find out what’s needed first.) Sometimes religious organizations who support social justice and/or who are nearby where the protest is happening will house food operations, for example.

Childcare: Do you know people who would like to go to or work on a protest, but need help taking care of their kids? Or does one of the organizing groups have a volunteer opportunity with kids?...

Get organized and support each other. Just don't let instigators make you look bad, or trespass in the nation's capitol. 

It's nice to see they're not all tyrants down under:

Thursday blend: ugh

Happy Thursday. The news isn't great today, so I'll throw in some lighter stuff. 

 

The WaPo is doing damage control for Biden: The Biden administration has given 9 justifications for the slow evacuation of Afghan allies.

The CIA doesn't like Biden making them look bad. I trust the CIA about as much as I trust Biden. You helped elect him. Own it.

 

Covid is forever. As school starts again, more stories about kids spreading it and getting long Covid. I still think mandating masks for kids is wrong, and home, online and alternative schooling should be made much easier.

 

T-Mobile was hacked. 48.6 million people had data stolen

:Some of the data accessed did include customers’ first and last names, date of birth, SSN, and driver’s license/ID information for a subset of current and former postpay customers and prospective T-Mobile customers." 

Luckily, according to the US mobile carrier, the file stolen during the incident did not contain phone numbers, account numbers, PINs, passwords, or financial information belonging to current or prospective T-Mobile customers.

Luckily, you only had your identity stolen.

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Why everyone should attend college:

What's this about free frozen yogurt? I was ripped off.

Incredible: This Man Is 100% Ideologically Consistent And Also He Doesn't Have Any Friends: 

"Yeah, I have devoted my life to the study of political philosophy," said Anders to reporters. "I read a lot of books, so I guess you could say I really know what I'm talking about. I have never changed my mind on anything, ever. I refuse to be labelled by one political party. I'm too smart for that. My worldview defies labels due to it being so right all the time. And when you're always right, you never have to change your mind on anything."

There is something to be said for being consisent, and at the very least trying not to be a blind partisan hypocrite. But friends are nice too.

 

For many introverts, the pandemic was a blip on the radar, with a few positive side effects (like people bothering you less). I wish I could play games and surf the web all year, but if I could, I probably would:

click to enlarge

Thursday blend: everything's fine edition

Happy Thursday. According to all the smart people in the U.S., everything is fine (other than systemic 'isms, and anyone to the right of AOC)!

Kevin Drum on the three point five TRILLION dollar reconciliation bill:  

Deficit spending stimulates an economy in recession, but the reconciliation bill is supposed to be fully paid for. If that's really the case, then it will have no significant effect on the economy one way or the other. It's just a collection of new programs...

A trillion in taxes here, a trillion there, easy peasy, no problemo, totally paid for. That's definitely not a giant pill to swallow.

Maybe because it's not really fully paid for. Not if you count debt. And who counts debt? 

As flagged by the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, the reconciliation instructions for the spending bill allow for up to $1.75 trillion in borrowing.

“It is not possible to draft and score all of the expected policies prior to consideration of the budget resolution,” a Democratic memo explains. “Given that we will not have budgetary certainty for all of the expected policies prior to locking in the reconciliation instruction to the Finance Committee, the Budget Resolution will not require a specific level of revenue, outlay, or deficit amount in its reconciliation instruction.”

I guess when the Democrats say something, we have to update our textbooks, notify all the fact-checkers, and re-educate all the stubborn people, because it's as true as gravity. 

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What misinformation today will be true tomorrow? Something plaguing social media is their deplatforming and censorship of people and information, which turn out to be true a short time later (meaning the approved media outlets finally said the same thing). Remember the Hunter Biden laptop story? Remember the mask reversals? Remember the other mask reversals?

YouTube suspends Rand Paul's account for COVID-19 mask misinformation

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USAToday is really scared of Republicans, gerrymandering (as if it's solely a Republican phenomenon), and the new census data.

Delta variant is highly transmissible among vaccinated, but the vaccinated tend to fare better. I hope that news about faring better is true and remains true.

There is no border crisis. There is no border crisis.

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The battle for cryptocurrency control began with the failed cryptocurrency amendment. Both sides have an uphill climb:

The whole promise of DeFi is that it's not inside the system and not centralized. It’s designed to work without brokers or banks and to work without government setting the rules of the road. In other words, it’s designed to be difficult to monitor and regulate. So the fight we saw over the past week feels like little more than a trial run of a much bigger argument over what DeFi regulation should look like. It’s still not obvious that DeFi offers enough advantages to ordinary users to ever really take off. But if it does, the struggle to track, tax and regulate it will make the battle over Bitcoin miners filing 1099s look trivial.

Obama's 60th birthday

Quite the celebration. 475 people in attendance, most of which appeared to be maskless. Didn't our betters just recently advise everybody to start wearing masks again? 

As Glenn Reynold's says: I'll believe it's a crisis when the people who keep telling me it's a crisis start acting like it's a crisis. At least they took a Covid test:

Actor George Clooney, director Steven Spielberg and talk-show host Oprah Winfrey were among the 475 people who received invitations to the celebration, where the band Pearl Jam played and where all the invited guests had to undergo a Covid test before attending, according to US media.

The NY Post and RollingOut have the leaked photos (and one video). I didn't see a single person wearing a mask. I wonder if they asked the invitees for their "vaccine papers, please"?

If this was pre-China's negligent virus outbreak ("allegedly"), I honestly wouldn't care and would wish the not-very-good former president a happy 60th. But it's a Wokescold world today and the normies, the flyover neanderthals, and everyone not sufficiently signalling their wokeness is incessantly harangued about the impending doom of Covid, white-supremacy, racism, sexism, homophobia, etc. ad nauseam, because we're apparently not doing nearly enough about everything.

In a just world, the hypocrites would've lost any claim to influence and power long ago. While their words mean next to nothing to me, they still, somehow, manage to keep getting elected, and we have to keep eating their shit-sandwiches. But we don't have to pretend it's delicious. It's a fucking shit-sandwich.

Thursday blend: sundry edition

I am freaking tired today. In related news, it's Thursday.

From the Bee:

Man Surprised To Learn Babylon Bee Has Full Articles To Go With The Headlines

More:

The Babylon Bee Presents: The Leftist's Guide To Defending Critical Race Theory:

Objection: But wait, those last two are facts! Shouldn't we be teaching children facts?                 

Answer: Facts are white supremacy, you racist, fascist, homophobe! 

Remind this loon that facts and objectivity are simply constructs of whiteness. We teach whatever will help us reach the political goals we want; whether it's true or not is unimportant.

Covid stuff:

I honestly don't know enough nor care (even though I know I should) enough to sift through thousands of articles in a likely futile attempt to glean some helpful information about COVID variants. But here's an article written for a 5 year-old, and about as helpful as can be expected:

Lambda

The Lambda variant was first detected in Peru in December 2020 and is now spreading rapidly through South America. A lab study in Japan, which has not yet been peer reviewed, found that the Lambda variant could be more resistant to vaccines than the original strain of COVID and could be highly infectious. Another non-peer reviewed study from NYU researchers found that vaccines generally worked well against this variant.

 

Monopoly money:

How about we don't print another trillion as inflation soars?

A $1 trillion bipartisan infrastructure bill on Thursday faces its biggest test of this week's U.S. Senate debate when the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office delivers its judgment on whether the measure fulfills a promise of not adding to Washington's budget deficits. 

Cryptocurrency crackdown would raise tens of billions for infrastructure plan, analysis finds:

A proposal to crack down on cryptocurrency transactions could raise tens of billions of dollars for new infrastructure spending, as lawmakers advance a bipartisan plan.

Increasing reporting requirements on cryptocurrency transactions is expected to raise nearly $28 billion over the course of 10 years, according to an estimate released by The Joint Committee on Taxation on Monday.

The group projected that, collectively, the provisions in the bill would boost revenue by $51 billion over the same time period.

With any luck, this latest attempt at theft-by-government will be a little less retarded (and I will not apologize for using the R-word. Because the infrastructure bill is retarded, especially relating to cryptocurrency, and you need to lighten up):

A trio of senators on Wednesday introduced an amendment to the bipartisan infrastructure bill that would rewrite part of a section, setting up reporting requirements for cryptocurrency transactions.

Sens. Cynthia Lummis, Pat Toomey and Ron Wyden started working on an amendment after pointing to "unworkable" and "overly broad" language which they say would implement "broker" reporting requirements on people who are not really brokers.

These people, like the bitcoin miners who confirm transactions in the system, would not even be capable of satisfying the requirements in the bill, Toomey, R-Pa., said.

There should be a law, at least with respect to important and expensive bills, that pet project amendments cannot be added in.

😂😂🤣 pic.twitter.com/Fl1FtFKNT4

— Demetri Kofinas (@kofinas) August 4, 2021

At Instapundit: IF YOU LIKE YOUR VITAMIN D, YOU CAN KEEP YOUR VITAMIN D: While they scare you with “variants,” Congress wants to make dietary supplements prescription only.

Meanwhile:

Thursday blend: to mask or not to mask

 So the CDC is now saying masks should be worn by the vaccinated. Or was it the other way around? No, the wheel was spun and the needle definitely landed on masks this time:

More than a day after issuing new guidance that vaccinated people should wear masks indoors – recommendations that are likely to affect millions of Americans in the form of private and public mask mandates – the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has yet to release the data behind its decision. ...

CDC Director Rochelle Walensky explained that the reason for the CDC's reversal on indoor masking for vaccinated people is because "in rare occasions, some vaccinated people infected with the delta variant after vaccination may be contagious and pass the virus to others."

For about a year now, we knew people could catch COVID more than once. For a few months now, we knew the vaccinated could still catch COVID. And we at least suspected they could still pass on the virus to others. And I don't want to get into the quagmire of discussing mask effectiveness, but I will say the general consensus of more or less trustworthy and honest people seems to suggest that masks at least help a little in preventing infected mask wearers from spreading it to others (N95 masks must surely be better, but your average person does not wear those).

But I do not see bodies piling up on the streets, and the one time I did visit my local ER during the height of the pandemic, it was virtually empty. My reality does not match the national hysteria.

Meanwhile, as the vaccine hesitant and skeptics are harassed and ridiculed by the president and the tolerant left, the vaccine is still pending approval from the FDA:

Though the FDA has yet to disclose a time line for when its work will be done, medical experts and sources familiar with the process tell CNN that full approval could come within the next couple of months. While that would amount to a record fast pace, the urgency is rising for a fully approved vaccine given the troubling surge in Covid cases sweeping the country.

 

PCR tests: I am leaning toward believing the CDC, but given the events and track record of the experts the past year and a half, I am skeptical. From the CDC:

After December 31, 2021, CDC will withdraw the request to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) of the CDC 2019-Novel Coronavirus (2019-nCoV) Real-Time RT-PCR Diagnostic Panel... CDC encourages laboratories to consider adoption of a multiplexed method that can facilitate detection and differentiation of SARS-CoV-2 and influenza viruses. 

That's a poor choice of words, which set social media on fire. And every government-approved media agency has been on damage control:

[T]he agency was encouraging labs to switch to tests that can also detect influenza at the same time, since it will “save both time and resources.”

But social media users misinterpreted and misrepresented the announcement. False claims circulated on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram that the CDC’s move meant the agency and the FDA had admitted PCR tests do not work. Some posts online falsely said the test was unable to differentiate between coronavirus and influenza, leading to inflated COVID-19 counts and depressed flu counts.

 

In other news, the 1/6 BigLie circus continues apace:

WATCH: It's all *grins* after the #January6th hearing for Democrats who choked up and teared up earlier.

Democrats smile, laugh, and shake hands after the "emotional" and "traumatic" hearing. See for yourself.🔻 pic.twitter.com/yml6bVZJX5

— Kyle Becker (@kylenabecker) July 27, 2021

In the same way jumping up and down is an attempt to move Earth out of its orbit around the sun. https://t.co/tReFVrkRqm

— Scott Adams (@ScottAdamsSays) July 28, 2021

Trust the science

Trust the science, trust the experts, trust the professionals... We've all heard some variation on this before. And when it comes to old, thoroughly explored and tested ideas, applications, phenomena, etc., it's usually pretty safe to trust the experts (most of the time).

But when it comes to the new stuff hardly anyone knows anything about, history suggests we should take a bit more time embracing the experts:

This is such a powerful meme but it's completely wrong. The Wright brothers & a century of airplane builders were engineers. Scientists first dismissed flight as impossible even after it happened, then made up a bunch of irrelevant equations to pretend to explain how it happened. https://t.co/6QYFuW0Wi4

— Saifedean.com (@saifedean) July 27, 2021

Read the whole thread. Saifedean provides example after example of the experts being quite wrong about new innovations.

And with a helpful reminder from Scott Alexander way back in February, factor in the conscious and subconscious ulterior objectives, corruption, a very complex world, and it's amazing the experts get it right at all:

When the Director of the CDC asserts an opinion, she has to optimize for two things - being right, and keeping power. If she doesn't optimize for the second, she gets replaced as CDC Director by someone who does. That means she's trying to solve a harder problem than Zvi is, and it makes sense that sometimes, despite having more resources than Zvi, she does worse at it. 

The way I imagine this is that Zvi reads some papers on whether the coronavirus has airborne transmission, sees the direction they're leaning, and announces on his blog that it probably has airborne transmission. 

The Director of the CDC reads those same papers. But some important Senator says that if airborne transmission is announced, important industries in his state will go bankrupt. Citizens Against Lockdowns argues that the CDC already screwed up by stressing the later-proven-not-to-exist fomite-based transmission, ignoring the needs of ordinary people in favor of a bias towards imagining hypothetical transmission mechanisms that never materialize; some sympathetic Congressman tells the director that if she makes that same mistake a second time, she's out. One of the papers saying that airborne transmission is impossible comes from Stanford, and the Director owes the dean of Stanford's epidemiology department a favor for helping gather support for one of her policies once. So the Director puts out a press release saying the evidence is not quite strong enough to say airborne transmission definitely happens, and they'll review it further. 

I realize it doesn't sound like it, but I'm trying to excuse the CDC here. I'm not just saying they're corrupt. I'm saying they have to deal with the inevitable amount of corruption which it takes to be part of a democratic government, and they're handling it as well as they can under the circumstances.

With friends of democracy like Scott Alexander, who needs enemies? The lesson I got from Scott's post, was to be skeptical of expert opinions when said experts are in positions of power, when said opinions are for a large audience, and especially when you have an expert friend who disagrees with said opinion. You had me at hello, Scott.

Thursday blend: depressing edition

Politics aside, I honestly would rather have mean tweets and an egotistical cowboy prez than more of this:

Glad he cleared that up 🥴 pic.twitter.com/Ayy41PSdfj

— Rita Panahi (@RitaPanahi) July 22, 2021

If it weren't for double standards, they wouldn't have any:

Isn’t this you? https://t.co/23nhZnbqUN pic.twitter.com/t3s9LPrStW

— Kassy Dillon (@KassyDillon) July 21, 2021

This is satire, but you know it's not really:


I am going to have to wean myself off of Blizzard games. Should have done that years ago.
Activision Blizzard sued by state agency over alleged widespread discrimination:

The full lawsuit includes a lengthy list of violations of both sexual discrimination and sexual harassment statutes, including many that single out unnamed Activision Blizzard staffers, and they range from explicit to repugnant. The lawsuit describes one particularly extreme example of alleged harassment—and says the sufferer eventually took her own life.

I would like to see raw, unadulterated numbers of vaccinated and unvaccinated COVID infections and deaths. But that's probably a pipe dream, and even if you handed it to me on a silver platter, I wouldn't know if I could trust it.

• Pandemic goes on for the unvaccinated, Biden tells Trump-area town hall
• The vaccinated can still get COVID, can still pass it to others, can still get sick, and can still die from it. The news seems to indicate the delta variant is more catchable vs other variants for the vaccinated. Obviously for most, being vaccinated gives better chances.
• China Rejects WHO Proposal for Second Phase of Covid-19 Origins Probe.

The number of Americans seeking unemployment benefits rose last week from the lowest point of the pandemic, even as the job market appears to be rebounding on the strength of a reopened economy [aka unexpectedly].

Thursday blend

Haven't had and won't have much time this week, so here are some quick links:

Desperate For Ratings Boost, Brian Stelter Dons Orange Wig

JAMA. RCT. Gold standard. Masking children causes hypercapnia.

Conclusion: "children should not be forced to wear face masks."

Science.https://t.co/FGVgzx418o

— Phil Kerpen (@kerpen) June 30, 2021

This:

You should own your data. If it gets sold, you should get at least a tiny cut or the chance to opt out.

Companies are worth billions because they ride off your free (and often private) information.

— Grummz (@Grummz) June 30, 2021

Inventor of mRNA vaccine gets deplatformed for sharing the wrong science.