In her Wall Street Journal column Peggy Noonan, remarks on the recall of San Francisco’s district attorney, the agitation among Republican senators at the prospect of reform in gun control, and the young men arrested for attempted murder of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh as bellwethers of the national mood:
Don’t they know what time it is? This is a nation in all kinds of crises. You can’t let your theories and abstractions have sway at such a moment, you have to let common sense step in.
The lesson of this political moment: Don’t be radical, don’t be extreme. Our country is a tea kettle on high flame, at full boil. Wherever possible let the steam out, be part of a steady steam release before the kettle blows.
A century ago in his novel, The Sun Also Rises, Ernest Hemingway famously described how you go bankrupt: “gradually then suddenly”. The same is true of boiling water. It heats gradually and boils suddenly. In physics it’s called a “change of state”.
There are an enormous number of forces adding heat today. They include immigration, political polarization, the enormous growth in wealth of the ultra-rich while ordinary wages progress much more slowly, COVID-19, inflation, social media, and Russia’s war against Ukraine just to name a few. We’ve been seeing bubbles rising for some time now. Barack Obama’s election to the presidency—one bubble. Donald Trump’s election to the presidency—another bubble. The bubbles are coming with increasing frequency now. The breaching of the Capitol on January 6, 2021, the riots following George Floyd’s murder, mass shootings, 20% of Generation Z self-identifying as LGBTQ, and on and on—bubble, bubble, bubble, bubble.
Maybe you’re certain that this will pass. We’ve had unrest in the past and greater unrest at that. The difference between a change of state in physics and a society boiling over is that changes of state in physics are reversible.
Gradually then suddenly.
Events always appear to be smaller in the rear view mirror.
20%?
I lived in KCMO in 1972 and television news reported that 25% of men in the city were homosexuals.
Easy to believe if you cruised Memorial Park on a weekend,
gays spread out blankets and congregated in the thousands, doubt that they were all local.
Gallup reported 20% of Generation Z self-identify as LGBTQ.
Its the media. A lot of what you suggest are just symptoms. The media make tons of money making up stuff and now there is no common source of info or data that is acceptable, mostly by the right I would add. Just as an example, since i do medicine for a living, the only acceptable data for this on the right consisted of “some nurse said”, “some doctor said”, non peer reviewed stuff in the pre-publish journals, uncontrolled, small, retrospective numbers published by individual providers. No one, absolutely no one would practice medicine with those as their primary sources. The sad part here is that jan will never understand this but Drew actually has the background to understand why those sources are not good but will still defend them.
This isn’t the first time a progressive who was too radical was recalled. Is there any instance of someone on the right losing office for being too radical? Doubt it. Dont really know if it is possible.
Steve
Just out of curiosity if PD is reading, is attempted murder the correct charge. If am waking along then call the police and tell them I am thinking about robbing Target, do they arrest me for attempt robbery? Is thinking about murder different? Is there just not an appropriate charge and this is as close as you can get?
Steve
Yes, they’re symptoms but where we differ is that I think they’re symptoms of an actual underlying condition and you do not seem to.
” No one, absolutely no one would practice medicine with those as their primary sources”
The sheer arrogance of this statement, insinuating the thousands of highly credentialed physicians, medical researchers, scientists who dissent from the cadre of mainstream, mediocre doctors, and choose instead to openly, honestly challenge the abuses and failures of the medical industry’s vaccination agenda, are automatically considered unworthy primary sources of treatment by people such as “Steve!”
In the meantime. evidence of vaccine malfeasance by Pfizer, either manipulating or excluding real data from their abbreviated and incomplete clinical trials, is pouring out of court-ordered documents Pfizer and the FDA wanted sealed for 75 years. Stats are revealing a 1000% increase in the deaths of young and otherwise healthy athletes. Insurance actuaries are reporting a recent surge in “all cause” deaths, equaling 40% more than normal. Disabilities are also increasing 10% from a previous stable 5- year baseline. Still births are on the rise post vaccine, as are Infant deaths from drinking vaccinated mother’s milk being reported in Scotland and Canada. Micro clots in the lower extremities have become a more common source for pain recently seen by medical practitioners. In fact there are 9 single spaced pages of vaccine injuries cropping up, augmented by well over a million incidents cited in the underreported documentation done via VAERS Consequently, Doctors, from all over the world, are now calling for these vaccines to be pulled, as the CDC and FDA doubles down on recommending young infants to be needlessly and horrifically jabbed. People, though, are becoming more aware of how uninformed they have been about these experimental vaccines, rejecting them, resulting in millions of doses being discarded.
You are challenging anything with stuff that says “I think or I saw”. You publish it. People who practice medicine solely based upon anecdote are shunned by everyone. (I said you wouldn’t understand this and I was right.)
” you do not seem to.”
I do. We have real problems but a lot of our problems are created by the media and think tanks who get paid lots of money to keep people angry and divided.
Steve
Steve, points I’ve made have been a mix of some anecdotal, but mostly data-based as reported in many physician interviews, lectures, panels of experts, epidemiologists who are experienced and knowledgeable about virus replication, spread. The physicians, IMO, who have the most credibility are those actively engaged in and working towards how to successfully treat COVID and it’s subsequent variants. However, most of the medical establishment, advising this country on COVID and what policies, protocols and remedies to enforce, are far afield from being hands on, having ongoing contact with both COVID patients and the disease itself. IOW, I would go to Drs Richard Urso, Byram Bridle, Brian Tyson any day, for their patient-oriented, open-minded treatment of COVID, over Fauci and others who have conflicted pharma interests or are too intimidated by AMA suppression.
“I said you wouldn’t understand this and I was right.”
Like I said, “arrogant,” adding immodest too. You may be medically savvy, but are hampered in freely thinking about the full menu of treatments due to having a fixed ideology.
Blow me, steve. You are the King of citing sources you like, and summarily dismissing those you don’t. No matter their cred. How’s the childhood masking issue going?
You have repeatedly been wrong on covid as things have progressed. You followed the party line, not science, as it evolved. Fauci has been thrown under the bus, steve, and no one trusts the CDC, except maybe you.
As for other issues, can you give me even one notion as to why Joe Biden would be a good president? And how has it worked out?
Joe is an incompetent CEO. It was obvious to anyone with a brain going in. Trump was an asshole. Most presidents are. But things worked. Joe is so totally out of his degree of competency that he has been reduced to a finger pointing clown.
Jan, Drew, you folks scare the crap out of me!
” You are the King of citing sources you like, and summarily dismissing those you don’t. ”
Again, this is what I do for a living. I don’t read just read stuff pasted on to my favorite blog somewhere. I cite the sources that have been vetted by others, including people whose expertise is a lot stronger. The stuff I dismiss I always explain why I dismiss. It is usually pretty obvious and if you weren’t stuck in your bubble you would acknowledge it. If your daughter developed cancer and the “specialist” you went to said I dont read the cancer literature at all but I get my advice from people who said they followed this routine for 20 people and it worked (and you would know nothing about those 20 people) I think you would walk out.
Sorry jan. Most of your evidence consists of someone said something, not published literature. You just accept what they say becasue they have a title. There is no way to evaluate those claims you cite and they are at odds with published literature where you can evaluate claims. All studies have weaknesses and you need to be able to see those. The actual literature you do manage to cite is usually pretty awful. I suspect you took little math and no statistics so you dont have the ability to evaluate them so you believe them because they come from a source you believe and it confirms your beliefs. You also have not been reading medical literature for 35 years so you dont know sites or researchers that have had issues in the past and you dont have the pathophysiology or pharmacology to have any idea if the claims in a study are plausible or not.
“You have repeatedly been wrong on covid as things have progressed.”
Wrong about what? Dont confuse me with others. I dont actually do predictions a lot but follow literature.
POTUS is not a CEO. You do understand that? I can hire and fire at will, accepting the fallout. I can unilaterally set policies, again accepting fallout. Maybe you can also. Not POTUS.
Steve
” Jan, Drew, you folks scare the crap out of me!”
Yes, open-mindedness, common sense and truth-telling are scary to those having none of those attributes.
If you actually engaged in any of that it would not be scary. Instead you cite the unsubstantiated claims of others and studies so bad first year med students, after they have had their stats course, can easily see their problems.
Drew said this “not science, as it evolved”
I have actually passed on a fair bit of detail about how the science has evolved. Stuff that people wouldn’t necessarily understand following popular press. How we actually did try all of the drugs we supposedly never tried, but we found they didnt work. How we did improve treatments and reduce death rates. How vaccines were so effective at reducing deaths. How the covid is actually transmitted and why masks work. (Though I think PD framed it best. They arent force fields they just reduce risk.)
Steve
“ There is no way to evaluate those claims you cite and they are at odds with published literature where you can evaluate claims.”
I better understand how you evaluate science. Published, peer-reviewed pieces are the only relevant and authenticated sources you give credence to.
However, across the ages innovation, new improved ideas, discoveries have not come from stayed literature parroting intellectually approved positions or static statistical analysis, especially if it originates from the government. Rather, people taking the road less traveled, daring to leave the comfort zone of conforming mediocre thinking, exploring different pathways updating the old and pressing on with the new is where real societal advancement has been made. Furthermore, hands-on work gives current data and experiential knowledge. Immersing oneself in the field of medical practice is far more revealing than standing down, believing and relying on what someone else wrote, proclaiming to be valid – usually with a government-approved grant to ease their research. Fauci, for instance, has been known to be a peevish tyrant, selectively giving monies to cronies and those who saw science as he saw it. And, how many times has he been blatantly wrong? Similar to him, you seem to double down on old disproven evidence, disputing and maligning those clearly demonstrating the flaws and failures of a vaccine having no long-lasting efficacy, only lots of side effects.
” How we actually did try all of the drugs we supposedly never tried, but we found they didnt work. How we did improve treatments and reduce death rates. How vaccines were so effective at reducing deaths. How the covid is actually transmitted and why masks work. (Though I think PD framed it best. They arent force fields they just reduce risk.)”
Anti-virals were tried earlier and did work. However, soon thereafter roadblocks were constructed making them impossible to get. Those doctors who did prescribe them were threatened to be delicensed should they continue to do so. Then there were studies printed by Lancet which were deliberately skewed and false, forcing Lancet to remove and disavow the study. Even though it is still difficult to access anti virals in most states here, other countries and some states have made them available, resulting in giving people a viable, inexpensive treatment for COVID.
Deaths were reduced not necessarily by vaccines, but by collecting more accurate data, not misusing ventilators, and treating patients earlier. Case numbers also decreased by changing the cycle thresholds of PCR testing,
which were already having a 93% false-positive average.
Vaccines earlier ameliorated symptoms. However, simce they are leaky vaccines there is relatively little protection from getting the virus or transmitting it to others. In fact it’s becoming more common for those who have had 2 shots and 2 boosters to be coming down with COVID. In Israel, the U.K. it is the vaccinated getting sick, rather than those who passed on becoming vaccinated. In fact these days I fell “safer,” as do others like me, being in the company of the unvaccinated.
There are many studies continuing to surface showing that common masking is futile in having any protective value. Lab studies have been done exhibiting how many bacteria are harbored inside used masks that can contribute to health problems like rashes, let alone the obstruction to breathing leading to headaches. Then there are the many emotional and social problems children are having from constantly masking. However, these issues are sidelined by the media and vaccine scientists who praise and encourage one course of action only – vaccination-masking.
I have low hopes that this will add to the discussion, but I’ll post it anyway:
https://piercello.substack.com/p/reason-in-the-age-of-disinformation
Key graf:
“Classical Rationality cannot create consensus. That is not within its persuasive power.
How does Classical Rationality persuade? By mapping the unsuspected extent of an ALREADY EXISTING consensus, as indicated by the presence of a mutually accepted Standard of Evidence.
And the rules of Classical Rationality don’t tell you how to find one, do they?”
Thanks, Dave.
“Anti-virals were tried earlier and did work.”
No one ever published any data showing they work. We all talk to each other and no one found that they worked.
Yes, Lancet had some bad studies. You dont generally find me citing Lancet though I do occasionally. They have more variability that you see in most major journals. Of course the number of retractions in Lancet and other major journals is minuscule compared to the number of fraudulent and poorly done studies supporting drugs like HCQ.
“Those doctors who did prescribe them were threatened to be delicensed should they continue to do so. ”
Cant speak for rest of the country but we are still allowed to use HCQ if a pt requests it. We tell them it doesn’t work but they can have it if they want. We did the same with Ivermectin up until a few months ago.
“Then there are the many emotional and social problems children are having from constantly masking.”
Have any studies?
“Published, peer-reviewed pieces are the only relevant and authenticated sources you give credence to.”
Close but no cigar. If it is a large enough study and the methods look good on first pass then I read the paper in detail. If I think it a good study I give it credence. Those are also almost always coming from peer reviewed studies. There have been a couple the pre published pieces I cited but I always do that by noting it is a single study and not peer reviewed so it should not be taken as definitive, maybe only as meriting future studies.
“Deaths were reduced not necessarily by vaccines, but by collecting more accurate data, not misusing ventilators, and treating patients earlier.”
Nope, it was the vaccines. Collecting data did not change anything and you are clueless, really clueless (embarrassingly) about ventilators so not much use going over them again.
Steve
Steve, I recall you early on citing Lancet as one of those highly qualified publications – you have been surprisingly quiet about them, of late.
Just because your small area of medical practice might be more flexible about the usage of anti virals (bravo), it doesn’t mean that the vast majority of hospitals, pharmacists throughout the country act the same way. Here in CA people resort to getting these drugs from other countries. Hospitals refuse to give them, even upon patient request. Instead, they push remdesivir, which is expensive, hard on your liver and kidneys, and generally ineffective. Families in other states have had to get court orders to force a hospital into compliance. Other families have flown loved ones out to another hospital just to be treated with anti virals. The over 17,000 doctors belonging to an international alliance of doctors and scientists found such threats and intimidation to be so menacing that they specifically addressed this issue in a recent 10 Point proclamation COVID treatment plan.
Also, for someone who embraces data so much I find it incongruous that you don’t question the erratic data collecting done by the CDC. Or, for that matter, wonder why pfizer has been accused of tampering with their data, disappearing some of their trial members, doing shoddy safety tests etc.
Finally, when other vaccines had only a handful of deaths or problems, they were immediately pulled from the market. The mRNA vaccines have been plagued by high numbers of deaths and vaccine injuries in VAERS, which many say only:accounts for a mere fraction of total injuries and deaths that happen because of taking the vaccine.
As far as ventilators are concerned, it became common knowledge their over and mis-usage became an abuse of the machine which killed rather than saved lives.
Below is a site with a great compilation of articles discussing masking, the social emotional problems of children because of the lengthy guidance they had to endure, and much more. Many opinions totally counter yours, making such an introduction to other POVs and studies a more diverse experience for your head.
https://brownstone.org/articles/
Looked through a number of recent Brownstone articles. Have read the site in the past and it looks like nothing has changed. They have a huge number of citations, many of which are legit, then they throw in the bad ones to tip the argument in their favor, hoping no one will read them or at least not someone used to reading data. Just one example out of many.
They cite an Israeli study claiming that after they started vaccinating the number of calls to their EMS centers about cardiovascular problems in the 16-39 y/o group increased by 25%, which sounds bad and that is the headline on the study. But when you read the details you find that the actual number of interventions, people needing treatment in that age group took a big leap (about 50%) in 2020 and stayed the same after the vaccinations started. Sao the number of people needing medical care did nit increase with the start fo vaccinations, just the number of phone calls. Given that it was a new vaccine and myocarditis was a known concern I think it makes sense that there were more phone calls.
On the kids and masks I got tired of reading. They claimed Chinese kids were dying because of masks. Turns out 2 teens died while running with masks on. Sudden death for teens during athletics is a very well known issue if you know the medical literature. We in the US have a few kids die every year suddenly while playing football. From that should we conclude football helmets cause death? The families of neither of these two kids consented to autopsy but there is no physiologic reason to think a mask would harm them and frankly it is shocking that only 2 kids have dies spontaneously. Either China doesnt report them like we do or masks may be protective.
The sources cited on masks causing mental health issues are mostly sources talking about lockdowns. The ones claiming they cause mental health issues are all opinions of some “experts”, no studies. The ones claiming issues with oxygenation and CO2 retention are mostly just unsubstantiated claims. Physiology labs have tested athletes at high levels of exercise and O2Sats and ETCO2 remain unchanged. Runners did report increased dyspnea and minute ventilation did decrease suggesting some combination of increased work of breathing and psychological factors. IOW it was a bit odd that there were no changes in Sats or ET with the dyspnea.
At any rate, since this stuff is important to me professionally, this is all just talking points for you, I try to keep track of this stuff although I am retiring soon and it is getting harder to find the time to read everything so I could miss something, but then I am surrounded by hundreds of people who are devoted to following and understanding this stuff so I use them for confirmation.
Steve
First….I give you credit for reading and responding to the Brownstone link.
Second….my comments and concerns regarding masking is that they do little to foil breathing in or exhaling out a smaller-sized virus – one that can easily transverse a filtration system primarily useful for larger- sized bacteria. Comparisons made, regarding which areas had higher cases of virus, vs those with lower numbers, also indicated there was virtually no difference in the masking practices. IOW, masking did not factor in decreasing or increasing the numbers who became sick with the virus.
The emotional, social implications of masking really haven’t made it to any large studies you would like to cite. Rather, there have been articles and individual interviews released by child psychologists who have noted a significant increase of child referrals because of delayed verbal skills and social problems due to their faces and faces around them being covered up. Infants and young children get many of their social cues from the facial expressions of others. This is a fact. And, after 2 years of being incarcerated in a faceless environment there are bound to be reversals in the quality of social interactions, and the acquisition of emotional/social growth dependent on or associated with normalized social interactions.
A more generalized observation of mine is that these vaccines, and many of the unnecessary protocols public health officials mandated for people to follow, have been around a mere 2 years. To bless them as safe and proper is simply a rush to judgment, as side effects often are initially ignored, are refuted by the medical establishment , or don’t even emerge for years. Look at Vioxx as an example of how long it took to finally admit the hazards of taking this drug. While vaccine injuries are being down-played today, there continue to be unexplained deaths of young, vigorous people here, in Australia, and other countries around the world, since this vaccine entered the market on an emergency use provision only, in order to reduce accountability reprisals.
” This is a fact.”
If it is a fact then it will show up in data. Most cities reported fewer referrals for speech issues during the pandemic. This might be due to fewer regular visits but it could also be due to more time around parents. It is pretty well accepted that kids develop most of their speech skills from their parents. We also have lots of visually impaired kids and they seem to learn to speak just fine.
Viruses mostly hang around in clumps, not all individual viruses. When they do hang out in very small groups they arent viable for very long. They are viable longer in bigger groups where they have some liquid so they dont dry out, but that means masks catch some of them. Also remember that masks are not 2 dimensional, they have depth. So what we saw in lab studies is that masks actually do stop clinically significant virus transmission, just not all of it (depending upon mask material). Finally, I believe you are thinking of this in a one hit context like people used to think about cancer ie just one virus can lead to infection. Its pretty clear that you need a significant viral load to become infected and how bad you become infected is at least partially related to viral load.
Steve