Category: Harsh But True

Growing Concern Vaccine Heart Damage in Adolescents May be Permanent.
Hong Kong study finds 58 percent of COVID-19 vaccine myocarditis confirmed by MRI not resolved at one year

Almost every day the news brings another story of a young person dying of cardiac arrest. It is a sickening realization that COVID-19 vaccine-induced myocarditis could leave a zone of scar in the heart, risking the chance of ventricular tachycardia, ventricular fibrillation, and cardiac arrest at any time. Recently Hulscher, et al. have conclusively shown by autopsy that COVID-19 vaccine-induced myocarditis can be fatal.

Now a Hong Kong study by Yu and colleagues have found that of young persons who had heart damage confirmed by MRI [magnetic resonance imaging] and who underwent a second scan one year later, 58 percent had residual abnormalities suggesting a scar could be forming in the heart muscle.

Forty adolescents, mean age of 15, mostly boys, were evaluated. It was notable that 73 percent had no cardiac symptoms, so without an evaluation, the parents would have had no idea their child was suffering heart damage from the COVID-19 vaccine. Approximately 18 percent of cases initially had reduced left ventricular ejection fraction indicating they were at risk for the development of heart failure.

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Study Shows Gun Laws Don’t Matter, Race Does

33 people were shot over the weekend in Chicago. Urban gangland violence like that is what real “mass shootings” look like and finally a Journal of the American Medical Association paper addressed the problem by shifting the blame to something it calls “structural racism”.

The JAMA paper, which was quickly picked up by CNN as “Structural Racism may Contribute to Mass Shootings” and by Bloomberg as “Mass Shootings Disproportionately Victimize Black Americans”, acknowledged what conservatives have been saying about gun violence.

“There was no discernible association noted in this study between gun laws and MSEs [mass shootings] with other studies showing similar findings,” it noted.

The issue wasn’t gun laws, it was race. “The study found that in areas with higher black populations, mass shootings are likelier to occur compared to communities with higher white populations,” CNN reported. “The findings disrupt the nation’s image of mass shootings, which has been shaped by tragedies like the Las Vegas festival shooting and Sandy Hook in which most of the victims were not black,” Bloomberg added.

Faced with an immovable statistical object and the unstoppable force of equity, the JAMA paper blames the whole thing on structural racism. The study correlates urban areas and neighborhoods with high concentrations of single-parent households” to mass shootings. It then demonstrates that “structural racism” must be at fault because of “the percentage of the population that is black.” Black people in the study are interchangeable with racism.

Such is the state of woke medical science which tries to fix racism with more racism. The study never comes up with any plausible explanation of how structural racism causes people to shoot each other. At one point it claims that “racial residential segregation practices are predictive of various types of shootings” in a country where segregation had been abolished since 1964.

The study’s definition of segregation is so senseless that it lists majority black cities like Detroit, a 77% black city, as being 73% segregated, and Baltimore, a 62% black city, as being 64% segregated. A city with a strong black majority and black leaders is racially segregated and its people are suffering from “structural racism”. That’s why there are so many mass shootings.

But if segregation is the issue then why does Atlanta, which had actual segregation, have only 18 mass shootings, while Chicago has 141? Southern cities show up as less segregated and less violent in the paper’s data. A history of segregation is clearly not the issue. This isn’t about the past, whether it’s the historical revisionism of the 1619 Project, or any other.

If segregation were the issue, crime would have been far higher during segregation than after it.

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Suspension of Disbelief
Experts and the Power of Self-Deception

Recently, a friend fretted about what she perceived to be the dismal state of the world, based on the pronouncements of “experts” but, anticipating my response, added, “But you tend to dismiss ‘experts.’” I said she misjudged my sentiments, and that:

“I don’t dismiss experts. I simply don’t worship them. I don’t wish to grant them authoritarian power. And, out of a sense of risk-aversion and a knowledge of history, I want them kept on short leashes. As I wrote sometime back, science is a fine expert witness and a bloody dangerous judge.”

Experts are ordinary human beings, with all the fallibilities that come with membership in our species. Like everyone else, experts sometimes suppress truth and disseminate falsehoods for self-preservation or personal gain. Sometimes, they do so in service to some larger cause. Experts, short on time or resources, may cut corners, publishing information they hope is correct, while knowing it may not be. In all these situations, the expert knows his or her information is or may be false.

More interesting, more likely, and more dangerous are those situations where the expert sincerely believes his or her falsehoods to be correct, owing to the lure of self-deception. Paul Simon’s “The Boxer” sings:

“I have squandered my resistance
For a pocketful of mumbles
Such are promises
All lies and jest
Still a man hears what he wants to hear
And disregards the rest”

I don’t “dismiss” experts but am wary of their tendency to squander their resistance, hearing what they wish to hear and disregarding the rest. Such is the sway that the still small voice of self-deception holds over all of us. And that voice is not muted by a doctorate or academic chair. In Duck Soup (1933), Chico Marx asks Margaret Dumont, “Who ya gonna believe? Me, or your own eyes?” I know enough history (and enough experts) to know that one’s own eyes are often at a distinct disadvantage versus a thing devoutly to be wished.

Self-deception can be conspiratorial, communal, or solitary and can be remarkably persistent. Self-deceived expertise is extraordinarily dangerous when issued blank-check authority by governmental or religious authorities. In Bastiat’s Window, “1,600 Years of Medical Hubris” explored the groupthink that ossified Western medicine between the 2nd and 19th centuries, plus the collectively reinforced misinformation that impeded the proper treatment of autism, ulcers, and prion-borne diseases in the 20th century. In “When Sterilization Was Dogma,”

Ted Balaker

and I discussed groupthink, eugenics, and contemporary challenges. “Gloomy Saints and Wandering Virtues” recounted how Alexander Graham Bell dispensed nonsense about the heritability of deafness—contradicted by the genetic histories of his mother and his wife.

To illustrate the powers of self-deception, I’ll offer three stories:

  1. Anna Anderson, who successfully impersonated Russia’s Grand Duchess Anastasia for over 60 years,
  2. Harry Houdini, who persuaded thousands of viewers that he could make an elephant vanish from an open stage, and
  3. Scottie Ferguson, the fictional detective in Hitchcock’s Vertigo, who blindly missed the true connection between two women with whom he was destructively in love.

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BLUF
If we’ve learned anything from the pandemic and earlier disasters, we ought to be doing precisely the opposite by enacting new limits on government power during emergencies. Americans need what Swedes have enjoyed: legal protection against autocrats posing as saviors.

Lockdowns: the Self-Inflicted Disaster: Governments’ use of the pandemic to claim sweeping new emergency powers has had destructive effects

Long before Covid struck, economists detected a deadly pattern in the impact of natural disasters: if the executive branch of government used the emergency to claim sweeping new powers over the citizenry, more people died than would have if government powers had remained constrained. It’s now clear that the Covid pandemic is the deadliest confirmation yet of that pattern.

Governments around the world seized unprecedented powers during the pandemic. The result was an unprecedented disaster, as recently demonstrated by two exhaustive analyses of the lockdowns’ impact in the United States and Europe. Both reports conclude that the lockdowns made little or no difference in the Covid death toll. But the lockdowns did lead to deaths from other causes during the pandemic, particularly among young and middle-aged people, and those fatalities will continue to mount in the future.

“Most likely lockdowns represent the biggest policy mistake in modern times,” says Lars Jonung of Lund University in Sweden, a coauthor of one of the new reports. He and two fellow economists, Steve Hanke from Johns Hopkins University and Jonas Herby of the Center for Political Studies in Copenhagen, sifted through nearly 20,000 studies for their book, Did Lockdowns Work?, published in June by the Institute for Economic Affairs (IEA) in London. After combining results from the most rigorous studies analyzing fatality rates and the stringency of lockdowns in various states and nations, they estimate that the average lockdown in the United States and Europe during the spring of 2020 reduced Covid mortality by just 3.2 percent. That translates to some 4,000 avoided deaths in the United States—a negligible result compared with the toll from the ordinary flu, which annually kills nearly 40,000 Americans.

Even that small effect may be an overestimate, to judge from the other report, published in February by the Paragon Health Institute. The authors, all former economic advisers to the White House, are Joel Zinberg and Brian Blaise of the institute, Eric Sun of Stanford, and Casey Mulligan of the University of Chicago. They analyzed the rates of Covid mortality and of overall excess mortality (the number of deaths above normal from all causes) in the 50 states and the District of Columbia. They adjusted for the relative vulnerability of each state’s population by factoring in the age distribution (older people were more vulnerable) and the prevalence of obesity and diabetes (which increased the risk from Covid). Then they compared the mortality rates over the first two years of the pandemic with the stringency of each state’s policies (as measured on a widely used Oxford University index that tracked business and school closures, stay-at-home requirements, mandates for masks and vaccines, and other restrictions).

The researchers found no statistically significant effect from the restrictions. The mortality rates in states with stringent policies were not significantly different from those in less restrictive states. Two of the largest states, California and Florida, fared the same—their mortality rates both stood at the national average—despite California’s lengthy lockdowns and Florida’s early reopening. New York, with a mortality rate worse than average despite ranking first in the nation in the stringency of its policies, fared the same as the least restrictive state, South Dakota.

Meantime, the lockdowns did have other significant effects on health. Rates of smoking, drinking, and obesity increased. The number of excess deaths from non-Covid causes in the U.S. rose by nearly 100,000 annually due to extra deaths from stroke, heart attack, diabetes, obesity, drug overdoses, alcohol-induced causes, homicide, and traffic accidents. Many of these excess deaths, which occurred disproportionately among working-age adults, were presumably related to the lockdowns’ disruptions in people’s lives and in medical treatments. The delays in screening for heart disease and cancer will continue to have a deadly impact in the years ahead.

So will the economic and social consequences of the lockdowns, which showed up clearly in the Paragon Health Institute comparison of states’ performance. The researchers found that states with the more stringent pandemic restrictions had worse declines in economic output and higher rates of unemployment, and that children in those states lost more days of in-person schooling. These disruptions contributed to a substantial increase in domestic migration, the Paragon researchers found, as people escaped from the more restrictive states and moved to states with less stringent policies.

The lockdowns were the most radical experiment in the history of public health, implemented without evidence that they would work. (In fact, before Covid, officials at the Centers for Disease Control and other nations’ health agencies had specifically advised against lockdowns in their plans for dealing with a pandemic.) The experiment was promoted by computer modelers who projected that 2 million Americans would die by the end of the summer in 2020 unless governments mandated lockdowns, which they estimated would reduce mortality by 80 percent or more. Both estimates turned out to be absurdly wrong—and so was the modelers’ assumption that government mandates were the only way to change people’s behavior.

“Studies early in the pandemic assumed that without lockdowns everyone would be infected because people wouldn’t make any voluntary changes in their behavior,” says Herby, a coauthor of the IEA report. . “But in fact the voluntary social distancing and other changes in behavior had a huge impact, much larger than the lockdowns.” He points to Sweden, where elderly people drastically reduced their shopping and other activities outside the home without being ordered to do so. By avoiding lockdowns and school closures, Sweden fared as well or better than the rest of Europe in preventing Covid deaths while allowing younger people to go on with their lives. It also suffered less social and economic damage: while more people were dying from non-Covid causes in the U.S. and the rest of Europe, that rate of excess mortality declined in Sweden.

Swedes avoided lockdowns partly because of the wisdom of their public-health leaders, and partly because of a provision in the Swedish constitution guaranteeing freedom of movement to citizens. Constraining the power of government officials improved Sweden’s ability to cope with Covid. That lesson applies to other emergencies, too, according to Christian Bjørnskov, a Danish economist who has compared casualty rates in natural disasters around the world.

Bjørnskov and a German colleague, Stefan Voigt, have found that fewer people die from natural disasters in countries with laws that restrict the power of national leaders during an emergency. If leaders are unconstrained—if they can suspend people’s personal and economic liberties—then the disruptions hinder people’s voluntary efforts to deal with the disaster. After a hurricane, for instance, local officials and citizens will normally aid their stricken neighbors, but they’re less inclined to act if the national government takes charge by suspending property rights to commandeer boats, vehicles, and other local resources. “Civil society is more likely to help if the authorities are not allowed to run roughshod over private citizens,” Bjørnskov says. “It is also much more likely that the authorities will misuse their emergency powers for their own uses, diverting resources toward purposes that have nothing to do with the emergency. They increase spending and regulation, and it takes longer for the country to get back to normal.”

That was certainly the case during the pandemic, as politicians went on budget-busting binges that showered money on special interests and pet projects that had nothing to do with Covid. To reward teachers’ unions for their support, politicians kept schools closed long after it was obvious that they could be safely reopened. The inflationary effects of the spending have slowed the economic recovery from the pandemic, and the school closures have set children back so far that many will never catch up. One estimate suggests that the average American student will earn 6 percent less over the course of a lifetime because of learning loss during the pandemic.

Predictably, the officials responsible for the damage are ignoring these consequences and seeking even more power in the future. CDC officials are planning to be more aggressive in the next pandemic, and the World Health Organization wants countries to sign a new pandemic treaty giving the WHO the authority of international law to order lockdowns and other measures.

If we’ve learned anything from the pandemic and earlier disasters, we ought to be doing precisely the opposite by enacting new limits on government power during emergencies. Americans need what Swedes have enjoyed: legal protection against autocrats posing as saviors.

The National Divorce has begun

MTG — Marjorie Taylor Greene — is taking some heat for proposing a national divorce. She divorced three days before Christmas after 27 years of marriage. Her tweets on dividing the nation into red and blue have riled up the left, which is always riled up about something. They live to be displeased.

She laid out her case in a lengthy tweet on Thursday.

“There is a failure for many to realize Americans are giving up because they are sick of the talking heads that just complain about all the problems and politicians that never fix anything, while the right just keeps taking the beatings and abuse from the left.

“Yes, the red California that gave us Reagan is gone and that was another time long ago. CA is now like a weird communist country.

“Yes, NY gave us Trump, but Trump left NY because of how bad and blue NY is and NY is so political and corrupt now they are actually trying to throw Trump in jail.

“Yes, VA flipped red with Youngkin but it was because parents were fed up with their school boards and a trans raped girls in the girls bathroom, but Loundon County is still unchanged, so really how red is VA?

“And Matt Gaetz is right when he says our government constantly cheats on its own people with foreign countries. Marriage counseling we all need.

“Reducing the power and size of the federal government and giving more to the states in order to protect ourselves and our kids from the abusive left is actually the bold action that needs to be taken in order for the left to be able to realize how insane and abusive they have become.

“Just like the prodigal son, once the left gets to truly live in their own filth they have created without us, then they will be able to realize the error of their ways.

“Until then, most of us don’t want to be forced to accept and live in their filthy abusive ways with them anymore.”

I like her description of California as a weird communist country. Fact-check: True. I am sure that Red China does not have junkies lining its streets in pup tents or men in drag running their nuclear program.

In stolen clothes no less.

The press would have you believe that she is nuts, but a divorce is an idea almost as old as the republic. Two centuries ago, New Englanders wanted to leave the union because Virginia dominated national politics.

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Trains carrying these carloads of chemicals run nationwide every day. There’s been no cause determined for this derailment, and likely one never will be.
And there’s two problems;
1, maintenance – actually the lack of it – which was a significant concern that nearly led to a rail worker’s strike, and
2, the lack of security and the easy target the rails are for anyone bent on mayhem.

The demoncrap goal is to criminalize all political opposition

His brain is acting like a computer with defective RAM.

Observation O’ The Day
Given how much editing NBC and its sister networks must do to get usable footage of Biden, that they allowed this to air could be a preview of how the networks will start treating him post-midterms. –Ed Driscoll

Awkward! Zoned-out Biden, 79, gives excruciating pause when MSNBC host asked if Jill wants him to run again in 2024 — before dodging question by saying First Lady thinks he’s doing ‘important work.’

 

Well, to be honest, in a ‘free country’, I’ve never thought that the police could prevent any crime. That requires an authoritarian Police State the likes of which would be on par with North Korea. The poor people who always believed this, were always wrong, and that’s what’s sad; they were delusional

Confidence in Law Enforcement to Prevent Mass Shootings Plummets

A new poll from Convention of States Action and the Trafalgar Group shows Americans no longer trust local and federal law enforcement to stop mass shootings. This outcome should be no surprise after a long string of mass shootings where law enforcement knew the perpetrator before the tragedy.

The tragic school shooting in Uvalde, Texas, is the latest example. However, school officials and law enforcement were aware of the risks posed by the shooter in Parkland, Fla., and the other mass shooting tragedies since then. It seems the left’s preoccupation with social justice rather than criminal justice prevents law enforcement at all levels from taking proactive action to prevent violence. The social justice push ended stop and frisk in New York City and ensured red flag laws in Illinois and New York were useless.

These examples may explain why a majority of voters report they are not confident local authorities can prevent a mass shooting before it happens. Sixty-two percent of voters say they are not sure their local law enforcement or federal agents could identify and stop a violent person before they started a mass shooting. More than a quarter (26.9%) report they are not confident at all. Only 9.8% indicated they are very confident in their local authorities’ ability to prevent a mass shooting.

Uvalde officers not immediately and aggressively confronting the gunman in the elementary school was reminiscent of law enforcement failures in the Parkland shooting. “Americans watched in horror as an active shooter was permitted to rampage through a school while the police stood outside and did absolutely nothing. Over and over again, citizens are given the clear message that—when it comes to protecting loved ones—you’re on your own,”  said Mark Meckler, President of Convention of States Action.

Americans are painfully aware of the tragic results in these situations and believe in the “good guy with a gun” more than the gun grabbers would like. According to the poll, a plurality believes their fellow citizen with a firearm is the best protection for them and their family in a mass shooting situation. Almost 42% of voters believe that an armed citizen would be their best protection if they were caught in a mass shooting event. Local police retained the confidence of 25.1%, and 10.3% had the most faith in federal agents. Almost one-quarter said none of the above.

Results indicating how many respondents feel they will best protect themselves and their families would be an interesting supplement. Democrats appear the most fatalistic, with a plurality of 33.9% saying they do not trust anyone to protect them and their family in a mass shooting event. But, they are still the party pushing for strict gun control. Meanwhile, 70.4% of Republicans trust armed citizens the most, while only 16.8% and 1.6% trust local or federal law enforcement.

Yet, somehow, our leaders in Congress think more gun laws are the answer. The recent bi-partisan gun law does little to prevent these tragedies, especially in an environment where citizens are losing trust in law enforcement. “At the same time, we’re told guns are the problem, and we should give up our right to self-defense,” Meckler noted. “Voters are not stupid. They understand that responsible citizens offer the best means of protecting our schools, homes, and communities in this country. Pursuing such policies is not only bad politics, it puts all of us at risk.”

As if to prove the point made by a plurality of voters, an armed citizen stopped a mass shooter in a mall food court in Indiana yesterday. According to law enforcement, the gunman shot three people fatally and injured two Sunday evening before a good guy with a gun shot and killed him. The shooter entered the mall with a rifle and several magazines. Greenwood Police Dept. Chief Jim Ison said, “The real hero of the day is the citizen that was lawfully carrying a firearm in that food court and was able to stop the shooter almost as soon as he began.” The poll ended before reports of this shooting appeared in the news cycle.

A legally armed citizen recently thwarted another mass shooting in West Virginia. A woman used her pistol to shoot a man who had returned to a graduation party with a rifle. He had been in a verbal altercation with the partygoers earlier in the day. “This lady was carrying a lawful firearm,” Lt. Tony Hazelett of the Charleston Police Department said. “A law-abiding citizen who stopped the threat of probably 20 or 30 people getting killed. She engaged the threat and stopped it. She didn’t run from the threat. She engaged it preventing a mass casualty event here in Charleston.”

Examples like these may be why states like Texas, Georgia, and others are passing open and constitutional carry laws. Indiana Gov. Eric Holcomb signed constitutional carry in March of this year. As of July 1, no legal gun owner in Indiana is required to have a carry permit after passing the required background check. That law may have made all the difference for the Hoosiers in the mall on Sunday.

The evidence keeps pouring in showing the utter failure of all COVID mandates.

Since March 2020 I have repeatedly written that the response to the Wuhan flu was an utter mindless panic that had little to do with the facts. Right off the bat, the facts, not the models, suggested the virus would resemble the flu most of all, a possible mortal threat to the sick and elderly but generally nothing more than a short sickness to the general population, with it being almost utterly harmless to the young.

Nothing that has happened since has really changed these early conclusions. I have compiled below a collection of recent studies and reports that illustrate what we have learned following the epidemic and the panic that accompanied it. Sadly, that panic did little to stop the virus, but it left us with destroyed businesses, a crushed economy, many uneducated and damaged children, and a broken Bill of Rights.

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Biological Sex Isn’t Up For Debate

Regardless of what the mainstream media and Democrats might want you to think, no one can change their biological sex, regardless of the hormones or surgical procedures that they might undertake to attempt to do so. We are at a moment in time where up is down and down is up, and it’s a dangerous precedent if we allow it to foment itself as a cultural norm and standard. If I were to die today and someone dug up my bones hundreds of years from now, they would know through well-defined science that my remains are those of a male. The same applies for women, and yet now we’re seeing a movement from a very small but vocal community attempting to convince the entire nation otherwise. Unfortunately, we’re slowly falling for it.

If a grown person who has gone through the hormonal ups and downs of puberty and is of sane mind wants to permanently alter themselves, that’s their business, and, frankly, I couldn’t care less, as long as their personal choices don’t infringe on my civil liberties. However, this fringe group of people is trying to force everyone to change their gender norms — norms that have been defined by years of science and civilization — to make some feel better about themselves. We must all object to such coercion.

Today, we’re literally being told that men can menstruate and have periods. We’re told that birthing people have babies, not women. We’re told that people are men, instead of men just being men. All of this is because of a pervasive movement in this country to undermine gender norms and to glorify the transgender community. Women have worked for over 100 years to get better pay and to accomplish groundbreaking achievements, only to have those things diminished by transgender women. Young girls and female athletes are now losing competitions against biological men who are competing against biological women because they have chosen to identify as a woman or girl. It no longer matters if a young girl or woman worked hard for her accomplishments in her given sport because it won’t be good enough to defeat a biological male who is naturally stronger and faster. Yet, we now live in a dystopian society where we’re supposed to believe that these new norms are OK. Well, they are not, and we must stand against them.

To be clear, opposing the idea of biological males who become trans women competing against biological women isn’t synonymous with being against people who are different or who are trans; again, that’s their choice or personal journey. However, what it does mean is standing against forcing the overwhelming majority of society to accept something that science tells us simply isn’t the case. We now live in a society where parents have to worry about their children learning about sexuality at young ages, something Florida just recently prohibited in recent legislation that “classroom instruction by school personnel or third parties on sexual orientation or gender identity may not occur in kindergarten through grade 3 or in a manner that is not age appropriate or developmentally appropriate for students in accordance with state standards.” I am hopeful that people are waking up and pushing back against this nonsense.

Cultural norms and standards are a definitive guide to our role in society and for a society’s continued success. Men and women are different, and that is OK! Nature has designed us that way for very specific reasons, and we shouldn’t ignore nor tamper with it. Yes, there is a fraction of the population that struggles with or is going through a gender identity crisis. That’s their personal journey, and I feel for their struggle. However, they lose my support the moment they begin to tramp on women’s rights or infiltrate our schools with gender discussions at inappropriate ages or attempt to redefine what it means to be a woman or man. These personal struggles are now infringing on the lives of everyone else, and we have a right to say something about it.

Why do these things matter, some might ask? Well, norms and structure matter because they define and regulate our society and help keep it civilized. They help us process and define things. They assign value and identity to things. Can they change over time? Yes, of course they can. But some things in particular that science has clearly defined, such as gender, are not up for debate.

No matter how much some may say that men have periods, a man can never have a menstrual cycle because this requires ovaries and a uterus, which biological males do NOT have. It doesn’t matter if some say birthing people because only women can have babies. These may be hard truths for some, but they are the reality, nevertheless. And there’s nothing that a single person can do to change science and reality.

I can guarantee with near metaphysical certitude that if you hear this on the MSM, it’ll be spun to appear as racist as possible.

Experts Say the ‘Defund the Police’ Movement Led to a Massive Spike in Black Murders.

The immediate aftermath of the murder of George Floyd saw a dramatic increase in violent crime across the country. But the political movement Floyd’s death spawned — “Defund the Police” — ended up creating a massive spike in the murders of black people as law enforcement pulled back from policing black communities in what’s referred to as “The Ferguson Effect.”

The left sniffs at the Ferguson Effect because it, in essence, blames their coddling of violent protesters for the spike in crime. But given the anecdotal evidence from every large city about the reality of the effect —some police making a conscious effort not to get involved — it would seem that the Ferguson Effect can certainly be included among any causes for the increase in violent crime.

The year 2020 may have been unique because of the pandemic and conditions surrounding the lockdowns.

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Try this in Missouri  – and several other states besides, and odds are you’ll be taking another ride -straight to the morgue – because around here with our permitless carry laws, if it looks like a gun, someone is going to assume it’s a gun and TCOB.

Several People in Chula Vista Attacked by Airsoft Gun in Latest Social Media Challenge
CVPD says people are doing drive-by shootings with airsoft and Orbeez toy guns

Chula Vista Police said nine people have been attacked in what appears to be the latest social media challenge.

“It’s very stupid. This could have very tragic consequences,” warned CVPD Lt. Dan Peak.

He said they’ve received nine reports in the last year of Chula Vista residents being shot in a drive-by-style attack involving airsoft guns or toy guns that fire Orbeez balls. Orbeez are small colorful plastic pellets that expand when placed in water.

“It’s considered assault with a deadly weapon. So, these juveniles may think they’re doing a prank, the next thing you know they’re going to be in Juvenile Hall,” explained Peak.

“It was a very cowardly act,” said a Chula Vista man who asked to be identified as “Bogey”.

“Kids shouldn’t be going around pretending they’re doing drive-by shootings of people,” added Bogey.

The man said he and his wife were shot last Sunday near Eastlake by a group of teenagers or young men in a four-door car.

“Stops right next to us. We look. Instinctively as we start getting hit with something in the face and our body, we covered our face,” described Bogey with his hands over his face. “The fact that kids are doing this and thinking this is funny; it’s not a joke and there’s going to be consequences.”

Lt. Peak said the attacks appeared to be the latest challenge issued on social media platforms. He said CVPD has also received 41 calls in the last year from people witnessing similar attacks.

“There’s a lot of proud protective Momma Bears out there in Eastlake who, when they get you, you’re going to wish the police got you first,” warned Bogey. “If they’re old enough to drive and do this in cars, they’re old enough to comprehend this is not a joke and this is not okay.”

BLUF: Who is John Galt? Now we know.

Truck Drivers Are the Atlas that Finally Shrugged

Trucks lined up at the Blue Water Bridge that connects Port Huron, Michigan, and Sarnia, Canada, in Port Huron on February 10, 2022. - The Canadian trucker protest has temporarily sidelined a key auto industry transport route, adding stress to a North American car industry already pinched by low inventories …

Anyone familiar with my scribbling knows that I separate modern society into two categories: World Turners and The Useless.

Me? I’m no World Turner. I’m one of The Useless. What I mean is this: If everyone who does what I do for a living stopped doing it today, the world would keep right on turning. Society would roll along just fine without me and mine — maybe better. Sure, a few people might miss my musings, but only for a little while. And the same is true for anyone who makes a living spewing their half-assed opinions (especially Jonah Goldberg).

In fact, you could wipe society’s table clear of every writer, artist, actor, musician, professor, dancer, reporter, tastemaker, producer, influencer, teacher, lobbyist, politician, everyone on TV, everyone who doesn’t get their hands dirty, and our world would keep turning just fine. Would we miss things like the newest Marvel movie? Sure. Those things are the spice of a life as bountiful as ours. But that doesn’t change the fact that our world would keep right on turning.

Now try to live without the World Turners, those sneered at by America’s left-wing elite, by the CNNs and Morning Joes and NPR — the working class. Try to imagine your life without mechanics, farmers, coal miners, oil drillers,  plumbers, roofers, electricians, pest control, the people who stock the shelves, who make our steel, police our streets, put out our fires, pave our roads, dig our ditches, haul our garbage, and plow the snow. Within a month, our world stops turning. Within six months, welcome to dystopia. Within a year, we’re eating one another.

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The number I’ve seen is that it is estimated that the lockdowns prevented on average  0.2%  – that’s “Maybe Two (2) out of a Thousand” – deaths in comparison with just trusting people to do the right thing.
Sorry, that small of a number is statistical noise, which means that there is no evidence the lockdowns did anything but disrupt our entire economy and empower the tyrant authoritarians. Which, to be frank is the silver lining because they’re now exposed to the world for future action.

Johns Hopkins Analysis: ‘Lockdowns Should be Rejected Out of Hand.’

The aura of “expert” has lost its luster during Covid, as our supposedly bigger brains have been proved wrong repeatedly.

Two of these have been Ezekiel Emanuel and Anthony Fauci. Both were enthusiastic proponents of societal lockdowns as a means of preventing deaths and the spread of Covid. We now know from a Johns Hopkins blockbuster meta-analysis that “shutting it down,” in Donald Trump’s awkward phrase, did very little to prevent deaths.

It’s a long, arcane, and detailed analysis, and I can’t present every nuance or statistic here. But I think these are the primary takeaways. From the study:

Overall, we conclude that lockdowns are not an effective way of reducing mortality rates during a pandemic, at least not during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic. Our results are in line with the World Health Organization Writing Group (2006), who state, “Reports from the 1918 influenza pandemic indicate that social-distancing measures did not stop or appear to dramatically reduce transmission […]

In Edmonton, Canada, isolation and quarantine were instituted; public meetings were banned; schools, churches, colleges, theaters, and other public gathering places were closed; and business hours were restricted without obvious impact on the epidemic.” Our findings are also in line with Allen’s (2021) conclusion: “The most recent research has shown that lockdowns have had, at best, a marginal effect on the number of Covid 19 deaths.”

Why might that be?

Mandates only regulate a fraction of our potential contagious contacts and can hardly regulate nor enforce handwashing, coughing etiquette, distancing in supermarkets, etc. Countries like Denmark, Finland, and Norway that realized success in keeping COVID-19 mortality rates relatively low allowed people to go to work, use public transport, and meet privately at home during the first lockdown. In these countries, there were ample opportunities to legally meet with others.

Worse, the lockdowns caused tremendous harm:

Unintended consequences may play a larger role than recognized. We already pointed to the possible unintended consequence of SIPOs, which may isolate an infected person at home with his/her family where he/she risks infecting family members with a higher viral load, causing more severe illness. But often, lockdowns have limited peoples’ access to safe (outdoor) places such as beaches, parks, and zoos, or included outdoor mask mandates or strict outdoor gathering restrictions, pushing people to meet at less safe (indoor) places. Indeed, we do find some evidence that limiting gatherings was counterproductive and increased COVID-19 mortality

What lessons should be learned (my emphasis)?

The use of lockdowns is a unique feature of the COVID-19 pandemic. Lockdowns have not been used to such a large extent during any of the pandemics of the past century. However, lockdowns during the initial phase of the COVID-19 pandemic have had devastating effects. They have contributed to reducing economic activity, raising unemployment, reducing schooling, causing political unrest, contributing to domestic violence, and undermining liberal democracy. These costs to society must be compared to the benefits of lockdowns, which our meta-analysis has shown are marginal at best. Such a standard benefit-cost calculation leads to a strong conclusion: lockdowns should be rejected out of hand as a pandemic policy instrument.

To which I would add another: We can never squelch free discourse and debate on public-health issues again.

People who argued against the “scientific consensus” about the lockdowns were stifled, censored by Big Tech, denigrated by the media, and mocked by establishment scientists. That was essentially “anti-science.” The scientific method needs heterodox voices to speak freely if it is to function properly.

This subsequent look-back shows why. To a large degree, those with the officially disfavored views–such as the signers of the Great Barrington Declaration—were correct on this matter.

Will we learn the lesson? Yes, if our goal is to ably discern and apply the best policy options, which can be a messy process. No, if the point is to allow those in charge of institutional science to exert societal control.