In her latest article in The Atlantic, Brown University Professor Emily Oster is arguing that we should just forgive and forget, and in classic gaslighting form, wants to pretend that it's because no one had any idea of what was going on.

Masks

[Outdoor mask wearing and social distancing] precautions were totally misguided. In April 2020, no one got the coronavirus from passing someone else hiking. Outdoor transmission was vanishingly rare. Our cloth masks made out of old bandanas wouldn’t have done anything, anyway. But the thing is: We didn’t know.

Yes, we did. We most certainly did know that masking of healthy people in the community was pointless. Tony Fauci told us. The Surgeon General told us. The NEJM, WHO and many, many others all told us some version of "healthy people wearing masks in public is unnecessary." But even if you want to use ignorance as the reason to force masks on everyone (which is the opposite of what should be required to employ such a draconian measure), the case data told us very quickly that the masks weren't having the desired effect, and yet the mask mandates largely persisted for another year (and in some places still haven't been lifted). At that point ignorance is no longer a valid excuse.

School Closing

But in spring and summer 2020, we had only glimmers of information. Reasonable people—people who cared about children and teachers—advocated on both sides of the reopening debate.

Glimmers of information? We had plenty of data from multiple countries plus our own. Sweden never closed their schools. Denmark, Finland and others quickly reopened after a short close. We knew definitively that children were at an exceptionally low risk from COVID and that the schools that stayed open had not seen cases/deaths/etc to be worse overall than countries who had closed their schools. But despite having such strong scientific data, the debate to open schools in the fall was met with heavy resistance, largely from administrators and teachers who had been acting as if COVID was basically Ebola.

Vaccines

When the vaccines came out, we lacked definitive data on the relative efficacies of the Johnson & Johnson shot versus the mRNA options from Pfizer and Moderna. The mRNA vaccines have won out. But at the time, many people in public health were either neutral or expressed a J&J preference. This misstep wasn’t nefarious. It was the result of uncertainty.

That the efficacy battle between vax structures was the only vax mention in the article and not the overall efficacy of the mRNA shot in preventing illness/transmission, or any mention of vax mandates and the fact that people were fired from their jobs over a personal medical decision is extremely telling. Prof Oster wants us to move on, but we still can't get those in power to admit that they based their decision on misinformation spread from the highest positions of power.

Misinformation

Remember when the public-health community had to spend a lot of time and resources urging Americans not to inject themselves with bleach? That was bad. Misinformation was, and remains, a huge problem. But most errors were made by people who were working in earnest for the good of society.

It's incredibly interesting that of all the examples of misinformation that were available she chose the example that was a political smear tactic employed by the mainstream media against President Trump. That was certainly not done "for the good of society."

People who were right

The people who got it right, for whatever reason, may want to gloat. Those who got it wrong, for whatever reason, may feel defensive and retrench into a position that doesn’t accord with the facts. All of this gloating and defensiveness continues to gobble up a lot of social energy and to drive the culture wars, especially on the internet. These discussions are heated, unpleasant and, ultimately, unproductive. In the face of so much uncertainty, getting something right had a hefty element of luck.

The culture wars she's concerned about were started by people who acted with such conviction and belief they were so correct (if you attack me, you're really attacking science) that anyone who disagreed with them didn't deserve to speak. In a shock to no one who understood what was happening, it was also those people that turned out to be the most wrong on the most things. Also, the argument that there was a great deal of luck involved in being right ignores that this wasn't our first run in with a respiratory pandemic; it wasn't labeled SARS-CoV2 for nothing. Countries already had respiratory viral pandemic plans that laid out the scientific and data-backed approaches, but rather than follow those plans many countries instead threw them in the dumpster and went full-on authoritarian.

And let's not forget how authoritarian these people went and were willing to go. A short 9 months ago Rasmussen reported that Democratic voters supported the following COVID policies (emphasis mine):

• Fines for the unvaccinated: 42% percent would favor a proposal for federal or state governments to fine Americans who choose not to get a COVID-19 vaccine.
• House arrest: 59% would favor a government policy requiring that citizens remain confined to their homes at all times, except for emergencies, if they refuse to get a COVID-19 vaccine.
• Imprisonment for questioning the vaccine: 48% think federal and state governments should be able to fine or imprison individuals who publicly question the efficacy of the existing COVID-19 vaccines on social media, television, radio, or in online or digital publications.
• Forced quarantine: 45% would favor governments requiring citizens to temporarily live in designated facilities or locations if they refuse to get a COVID-19 vaccine.
• Stripping people of their children: 29% would support temporarily removing parents’ custody of their children if parents refuse to take the COVID-19 vaccine. That’s much more than twice the level of support in the rest of the electorate – 7% of Republicans and 11% of unaffiliated voters – for such a policy.

Justice must be served

You realize what you supported was wrong and terribly destructive to millions of people and that's why you're asking for mercy now, but your entire missive is one long "it wasn't our fault, we were only doing what we were told!", and we've already heard that one before.

It didn't work then, and it won't work now.

Prof Oster, you want those who were demonized, mocked, attacked, punished, fired, ostracized, deplatformed, silenced, shouted down, and in general treated like absolute shit to just forget it all happened and move on while you haven't even offered any apology or taken a modicum of responsibility for the devastation you caused. It's why your plea for mercy is falling on deaf ears.

Would you be willing to do what you're asking of us if the roles were reversed?

Not a chance.

A way out

You and everyone like you that supported this destruction are owed everything that's coming to you and more. However, if you are truly in search of mercy, here's one option: Resign.

You and every politician, bureaucrat and individual in a position of authority step down and be replaced by someone who spoke the truth and was punished for it. Those individuals are more likely to make sure this never happens again.

That's better than you deserve.

Remember when they banned alcohol and people stopped consuming alcohol?

Remember when they banned drugs and then people stopped consuming those drugs?

No?

Yeah, me neither.

Why are Guns Treated Differently?

When a drunk driver causes a car crash and kills the occupants (almost 32 per day, 12,000 per year) in the other vehicle, the immediate response from people isn't to go after beer and car manufacturers to hold them responsible or to look to increase the legal drinking age or ban certain kinds of alcohol.

In 2019, more than 200,000 teen drivers were injured and more than 1,500 died in car crashes. No calls to increase the driving age or restrict cars in any way.

According to the FBI, from 2015 to 2019 an average of 315 people each year were killed with a rifle. For context, 450 people were killed with a blunt object (clubs, hammers, etc.), 670 with hands and feet, and 1,550 with knives. I have yet to hear any calls to institute background checks and a waiting period to buy a hammer from Home Depot or a knife from Walmart.

I do not say any of this to downplay the murders at schools in Newtown, Parkland and, most recently, Uvalde. Those were horrific acts perpetrated by very sick individuals, but why are we only looking at the tools people used when it comes to shootings but not other kinds of deaths?

There are No Easy Answers

People want quick and easy solutions to problems but those don't exist here, though politicians are giving it their best. President Biden is pushing (again) for a number of changes to gun laws, including an "assault weapons" ban, magazine capacity ban, and others. There has been no evidence presented that any of his desired changes would have prevented any of these tragedies. And what about the secondary effects of passing these laws – creating felons out of tens of millions of lawful gun owners, virtually overnight? Apparently, they don't matter.

It's also more than a little hypocritical for politicians like Beto O'Rouke to argue that people who own AR-15's shouldn't be able to keep them while members of Congress and other employees of the government are protected by those same arms. "Protection for me, but not for thee," it would seem, something Charlie Rangel came right out and said a few years ago while he was a member of Congress.

I'm not going to get into the hypocrisy of people who only want the police to have guns while simultaneously supporting organizations like BLM that are looking to defund/restrict the police... most don't make the connection and even when you point it out they simply can't handle the cognitive dissonance. I'm also not going to get into the positive actions of gun owners, like the numerous times guns have been used to prevent murders, even though that is an argument in favor of reducing firearm regulations and increased gun ownership.

A Bridge Solution

We protect our President, members of Congress, other politicians, and all the buildings they occupy, with guns. When there were threats made against Supreme Court Justices recently after a draft decision was leaked the Justices received armed security. Many private businesses also employ armed security. But we protect our schools with a sign that says "Gun Free Zone," and when someone with a gun ignores that sign we call other people with guns who have no duty to protect then we say "sorry, that's the best we can do" and count the bodies? I find that unacceptable.

When terrorists used planes as weapons we didn't go after Boeing or Airbus, we hardened the planes and added armed security. You want to have less shootings at schools? The only way you're going to be able to do that is to make them less appealing targets. Make them harder to enter and employ someone whose job it is to protect that school in the event of an emergency.

There are about 100,000 K-12 schools in the USA. We are printing and sending $40B to Ukraine to support them in their (our) war with Russia. Perhaps rather than waste it on a war we shouldn't be involved in we could have given each school $400,000 to help them secure their buildings.

We need to determine why these kids are making these awful decisions, absolutely, but that seems to be something that will take much longer to determine, if we even can. In the meantime, it seems to me there's only 1 real path forward, if the goal truly is to reduce incidences of these events and not just to push a political agenda.

Abortion has been a polarizing topic in this country for at least 50 years, and the recent leak of a draft opinion from the Supreme Court overturning Roe v Wade hasn't changed that, nor can it. And while abortion is murder and morally abhorrent, banning it is the wrong move.

At Conception

From the moment of conception, a biological process has been put into motion that will, in the normal course, result in the birth of another human in 9 months. Permitting abortion at any point after this is creating an arbitrary line (what's the difference between a 90-day old fetus and the same fetus at 89 days?), and to terminate that pregnancy is to terminate a human life. Everywhere else we would call that murder, and in some circumstances a more grotesque and horrifying murder that if committed by one adult to another would have them labeled a monster. Deep down everyone in this debate knows this to be true despite abortion advocates attempts to dismiss it.

However.

That doesn't necessarily mean it should be made illegal.

State Intervention

Because if you're going to call abortion murder and advocate the State make it illegal, then in order to remain consistent there are a number of other things that must also happen. You would need to scrutinize or restrict the purchase of certain medications, like misoprostol, or even pennyroyal tea that can be used to induce an abortion. The police would need to investigate deaths of the unborn to determine if a crime was committed. Every miscarriage or stillbirth would need to be investigated, and if it were to be determined that the cause of death was intentional, then everyone involved, from the (previously) pregnant woman to any doctors, nurses and their employers, would need to be charged with a crime. Abortions stemming from rape or incest would no longer be allowed. The only permissible exception would be in defense of the mother's life, and those instances are incredibly rare.

Are those anti-abortionists ready to take their position all the way to its logical conclusion? Not that I've seen to this point. So that means it's only murder sometimes... which is exactly what many abortion advocates argue.

Hypocrites Everywhere

Abortion advocates make silly arguments like "a fetus isn't human" (sounding eerily similar to advocates for human slavery) or "the fetus is a leech" (completely ignoring the in most cases it was the woman's previous choices that put the fetus there), and claim "my body, my choice" while also being the same people wailing for things like COVID vaccine mandates.

Meanwhile, those who advocate for State involvement in preventing abortion will be the first in line of teeth gnashers screaming "my body, my choice" when it comes to COVID mandates yet see no qualms with the State forcing a woman to carry an unwanted child.

Neither side has principles, they just want the gun of government to be pointed at people they disagree with.

No Hope for Success

There is no question that there is an overwhelming moral basis for restricting abortion; clearly the unborn are the most innocent among us, and killing the innocent is about as wrong as it gets. That said, there has to be a practical way to enforce a ban, and as far as I can tell the level of government intervention needed to enforce an abortion ban is antithetical to a free society. It is unfortunately a murder the government simply can't get involved in without almost invariably making things worse than they already are.

Reality sucks sometimes, and that's as close to a resolution as there can realistically be on this topic.

If you're paying attention to the mainstream corporate press, you'll see glimpses of the Biden Administration trying to set up a path to move on from COVID. For example, after getting beaten by the Supreme Court on the OSHA COVID jab, rather than lobby Congress to pass a law granting OSHA the necessary authority, they have dropped the topic entirely.

The Administration sees the polling. People are sick and tired of COVID and the various restrictions. The mainstream is (finally) starting to join the rest of us in seeing the folly of these restrictions. When "Cloth masks are little more than facial decorations" shows up on CNN, you know public opinion is changing. And when the people complaining about the restrictions are people who were previously their biggest proponents, it doesn't take a genius to see that being associated with those restrictions is a political losing battle.

Here's how I see this going down. Omicron has already peaked in most, if not all, US States, so the status quo will likely be in place for another 4-6 weeks or so until we get to spring. Then when COVID really slows down because of the warmer weather, the Biden Administration will declare victory and trot out President Biden to tell us how he promised he would win the war against COVID and that he has – that COVID now is nothing more than a virus like the flu and we can all resume normal life. They will urge remaining governors to remove all restrictions. They'll have Fauci, Walensky and all the other doomer talking heads make the media rounds telling everyone how it's all safe now and how the President took decisive action that resulted in victory over COVID. It'll be a complete lie, but it will be the lie they spread.

Remember 2 weeks to flatten the curve...? At this point that statement of locking down and heavily restricting our normal behavior for the "common good" to make sure the hospitals have time to prepare for the influx of COVID patients feels like it was said in an alternate reality. After all, that statement came nearly 80 weeks ago.

So what's the problem? Why hasn't life returned to normal? It appears that at some point the goal of politicians changed from accepting that COVID will do its thing and run its course to needing to get to COVID-zero. In other words the goal has become defeating this virus. Sorry to burst anyone's bubble, but based on what we're seeing today that simply isn't going to happen.

A Shot, not a Vaccine

You've never in your life ever heard of someone being vaccinated for polio and still catching polio. That's because vaccines are (at or near) 100% effective. Each year Big Pharma produces a flu shot and then we find out how effective it is against that year's most prevalent strain. It's always significantly less than 100%. That's why it's always called a flu shot and not flu vaccine. And since it's less than 100% protective against influenza, influenza continues to mutate and spread, in both those who have and have not gotten the shot. There's no thought that we'll defeat the flu, and we've learned to accept it and move on. The same goes for COVID. The "vaccine" is less than 100% effective so we're going to have to learn to accept COVID is part of us now and move on.

Hesitancy

There are a lot of people in this country that have not gotten the COVID shot. Yes, some of those people who haven't gotten the vaccine are doing so because they believe it causes autism or they're just anti-vaccine in general, but there are plenty more who are hesitant to get the shot for less radical reasons, a couple of which include:

1. They already had COVID. A vaccine is intended to mimic the virus to produce an immune response without actually conferring the illness. Therefore getting the actual illness is as good, if not better, than the shot. No one has ever said that if you get the flu you should still get the flu shot after, yet there is absolutely little to no value given to those who've recovered from COVID.
2. They don't trust the government. If you've never heard of it, look up the Tuskegee Experiment. The CDC experimented on 400 black people (lying to them about the nature of the study) for 40 years tracking the effects of untreated syphilis, even after a treatment became available. With COVID, the government has changed the story and moved the goalposts so many times it's difficult to take anything they say seriously. I can't say I blame anyone who isn't getting this shot because they feel something is off here. There's never been something pushed this hard for a respiratory virus that has a greater than 99.5% chance of recovery for those under 70.

My Body, My Choice and the Mandate

The same people that say a woman shouldn't have the government dictate what happens with her reproductive organs are more than happy to support the idea that the government should require you get jabbed with a COVID shot. Of course it was only a bit less than a year ago when President-elect Biden said he wouldn't make COVID shots mandatory, and only 2 months since his Press Secretary said such mandates were not the role of the Federal Government, but, of course, none of that matters anymore.

But since we know the virus spreads even amongst the jabbed, who is actually being protected with the shot? In reality, the only beneficiary is the recipient. If this were about public health, this should be about getting people out of their homes and exercising and eating healthy, not forcing them inside onto their couches, ordering fast food from GrubHub and binging Netflix, since it is the comparatively unhealthy that tend to suffer worst from this virus.

Additionally, if the virus still spreads amongst the jabbed, then the mandate to get a shot is pointless; the entire purpose of the mandate was based on the claim that the shots could prevent transmission, and if everyone got the jab then we'd eliminate the virus.

By the way, interesting side note. USPS workers and all of Congress and their staff are exempt from the mandate. Another example of "rules for thee but for me."

Power and Control

So if the shot doesn't help protect anyone else other than the recipient and it's not about public health, what is the mandate about? This mandate is yet another way for the government to exercise control over your lives for the benefit of some big corporation. Like the PATRIOT Act and the War on Drugs, this is another step towards total control over your lives, and both major parties are in full support.

Like I've said before, these restrictions and these behaviors will last as long as we put up with it. Noncompliance is the only way out, and we need a lot of it.

If you've followed me on Twitter for any length of time, you'll know I'm no fan of mask mandates, or masking in general, yet this is the first time I'm really writing about them in detail.

Masking has become like a religion. I doubt many (most?) people who fervently wears masks actually know whether or not they reduce the spread of COVID, but I also doubt those people care. It's not about efficacy for them, it's about virtue signaling.

For those who wear them because they believe what they've been told by their government overlords, here's the unfortunate reality: masks worn by healthy people in the community are a waste of time because they don't help with the spread of COVID-19. How did I arrive at that conclusion? I followed the science and the data, plain and simple.

Out of Nowhere and Unsupported

The CDC's April 3rd 2020 recommendation for people to wear masks came completely out of left field. After all, less than 45 days prior both the Surgeon General and Anthony Fauci made very public statements saying people shouldn't be wearing masks.

Even after the CDC made its recommendation, organizations like the NE Journal of Medicine, CIDRAP, WHO, Center for Evidence-Based Medicine at Oxford, and even a study published in the CDC's own journal all indicated that there was no real scientific basis for the recommendation of mask-wearing by otherwise healthy people in a community setting. But as we all know, recommendations became requirements, and here we are almost 18 months later.

Safety Theater

While the mandates are irritating, what's even worse is the hypocrisy by those same people who lecture us from their positions of power and authority that it's our fault people are dying and the pandemic is continuing because we're not vigilant with mask use. Oh really? Many of those same people couldn't be bothered to follow their own rules. Fauci wore his mask only while the camera was on. One DOJ official wore his mask just for the 15ft trip to the podium. CA Governor Gavin Newsom had an indoor dinner for lobbyists and then lied about it while CA was under strict gathering limitations, and the mayor of Austin urged Texans to stay home while he went on vacation to Mexico. Those are just a few of the many, many examples that exist. If COVID-19 was as dangerous as these people want you to believe and if mask wearing was as critical to the fight as they claim, then there's no way you'd catch these – or any – politicians 0r bureaucrats breaking protocol. The reality is the politicians and officials who were making the rules knew they were largely, if not exclusively, for show.

Where's the Science?

There have been a couple observational studies done in labs and with mannequins claiming to suggest that wearing a mask helps contain the spread of COVID. The government appears to have largely relied on those kinds of studies in support of their decree that masks work. Unfortunately for them, weak observational studies do not trump Randomized Control Trials, the gold standard for medical research. There have been a number of RCT's over the last 15 years all testing the effectiveness of surgical masks. A 2006 study found the benefits from mask wearing were "not statistically significant." This 2010 study "did not identify any trend in the results suggesting effectiveness of facemasks." Another 2010 study concluded "no additional benefit was observed when facemask was added to hand hygiene by comparison with hand hygiene alone." A study from 2011 found "transmission was not reduced by interventions to promote hand washing and face mask use." This study from 2012 found "masks alone did not provide a benefit," and finally, a study from 2020 found that the difference in outcomes between masked and unmasked individuals "was not statistically significant."

But what about the effectiveness of cloth masks? Michael Osterholm, a Biden COVID advisor was on CNN earlier this month and stated unequivocally "we know today that many of the face cloth coverings that people wear are not very effective in reducing any of the virus movement in or out."

If surgical masks basically don't do anything and cloth masks are even worse, what about N95 masks? N95s haven't been recommended or mandated yet, but I wouldn't be surprised if they are at some point. What does the science say about their efficacy? I couldn't find any RCT's specifically testing N95s, but the 5 observational studies I was able to find suggested they weren't any better than surgical masks.

Real World Data

Now, let's put aside all those studies and the associated arguments over methodology and interpretation of results for a moment and consider that we've all been a part of a 1.5 year global study on the effectiveness of masks in limiting the spread of COVID. And what are the results? Masks are an abject failure. That is the only rational conclusion you can come to after looking at the overwhelming data painstakingly curated by Ian, published on his substack.

If, despite all evidence to the contrary, you still think masks work, feel free to take the COVID Charts Quiz. There you can attempt to point out on various graphs when mandates were put into practice, how those States/Countries performed and so on. If you're so confident in masks you should be able to crush the quiz.

Why?

Honestly, I don't know why the CDC recommended masks in April of 2020. They did so in stark contrast to the conventional wisdom at the time and without any new scientific data to back it up. On top of that they've had multiple opportunities to walk back their position and reaccept the science, something I assumed they were doing in my last post, and they haven't. I turned out to be very wrong there.

There are many conspiracy theories regarding masks, all of which could be possible, but I think it's more out of incompetence and precedent. They changed guidance because they were being pressured, either from within or without, to issue some kind of behavior recommendation and they figured masks were as good a recommendation as any, and now that they have, they're stuck with it. It's up to us, the citizens to stand up and simply not comply. When enough people do that, the government will be forced to drop the charade.

On May 13th 2021 the CDC changed its guidance regarding the behavior of vaccinated people, with it effectively killing COVID and returning to where they started.

How it Started

Beginning with their guidance issued last year, on April 3rd 2020, the CDC adopted a position that stood in stark contrast to both the consensus of the scientific community along with years of their own prior guidance: They claimed surgical and cloth masks help slow the spread of respiratory viruses like COVID-19, and they recommended people wear them in community settings. That recommendation stood, even increasing to a recommendation of double masking on February 10th 2021. All this in spite of mountains of evidence, both from the US and around the world, that masks have no measurable effect on the trajectory of COVID.

The Backlash

Unsurprisingly there was a massive backlash against the CDC's new recommendations from the very Twitter snowflakes who have been screaming "SCIENCE!!!" for the last 14 months. They claimed the CDC was acting irrationally, that not enough people have been vaccinated, that people would lie about their vaccine status, that cases will spike, and so on. Ironically, of course, none of these people had any logical or scientific reasoning behind these claims (except maybe the honesty part), but they made the claims nonetheless.

The CDC had to know this backlash would come. They also had to know the most popular criticism-positioned-as-a-question would be "but how do we know who's vaccinated?", because with HIPAA and without COVID passports, there is no way to know for certain if someone were being honest about their vaccination status. At the same time the CDC was also very aware that no State that had removed mask mandates and other nonpharmaceutical interventions had seen a spike in cases.

The Reality and the Opportunity

The CDC couldn't avoid reality forever. While they understood people would be upset with the change in guidance, they had put themselves in this indefensible position by claiming masks mattered while having no data to support that position and no way to answer for all the data that supported the other side. If the CDC truly believed masks did the things they had claimed for the last year, there's no way they should have recommended their removal.

Instead, the CDC took advantage of an opportunity to return to their pre-2020 position on masking in community settings and get back on the correct side of the science. Given what we've all seen in States that have removed mandates, they know that cases will continue their downward trend. It was an expert political play to fix a mistake without having to admit it by an organization that's supposed to be about science, not politics. Kudos to the CDC. Better late than never.

Despite cases being down in States that have opened up (Florida, Texas, Mississippi, Georgia, etc), our resident King of the Shifting Goal Posts is still saying we're not ready to move on. In fact, Fauci is still claiming we won't be close to normal until next Mother's Day, 2022. 2 weeks to flatten the curve becomes 2 years!

The fact is, and has always been, that the restrictions we face in States that refuse to acknowledge their interventions have had no measurable effect on the trajectory of the virus (and come at a tremendous social and economic cost) only remain as long as people are willing to tolerate them.

Fortunately, in some areas the tide is starting to turn. If you look at Michigan specifically, last month when there was a big spike, their governor resisted calls to go back into a lockdown despite cases being at a point where a few months prior she did issue another lockdown. What changed? In my view it would seem public opinion has changed, even if only slightly. Whitmer is a politician, after all, and priority #1 of a politician is to get re-elected. If she's not reinstituting lockdowns, despite the circumstances being equivalent, chances are it's because she feels she no longer has the same level of public support.

Even here in the northeast, which has been hit harder than many other areas of the country I'm starting to see the proverbial "cracks in the armor." More people are walking around without masks on outside, and that's now extending even to people walking into our offices, as if the Dept of Health mandates didn't exist. I love it!

If we want life to return to normal, we are going to just have to start acting like it. If we look to and wait for the politicians to act first, it'll never happen. They'll continue to find new excuses to keep us locked down and masked up forever. After all, if COVID hysteria goes away, so does the relevance of all the doomer scientists, most of all Fauci, and that's the last thing they want.

I cannot believe these people gave Trump and his supporters more ammunition. In a slap across the face to tens-of-millions of Trump supporters, Donald Trump himself, and anyone who believes we deserve honest and fair elections, TIME Magazine just published a story in which the people interviewed admit that they rigged the 2020 election to ensure a Trump defeat.  From the article:

This is the inside story of the conspiracy to save the 2020 election, based on access to the group’s inner workings, never-before-seen documents and interviews with dozens of those involved from across the political spectrum. It is the story of an unprecedented, creative and determined campaign whose success also reveals how close the nation came to disaster. “Every attempt to interfere with the proper outcome of the election was defeated,” says Ian Bassin, co-founder of Protect Democracy, a nonpartisan rule-of-law advocacy group. “But it’s massively important for the country to understand that it didn’t happen accidentally. The system didn’t work magically. Democracy is not self-executing.”

That’s why the participants want the secret history of the 2020 election told, even though it sounds like a paranoid fever dream–a well-funded cabal of powerful people, ranging across industries and ideologies, working together behind the scenes to influence perceptions, change rules and laws, steer media coverage and control the flow of information. They were not rigging the election; they were fortifying it. And they believe the public needs to understand the system’s fragility in order to ensure that democracy in America endures.

These people admit they secretly changed the rules, directed media coverage and controlled the flow of information in order to ensure the "proper" outcome. So what they're trying to say is they subverted democracy in secret in order to save democracy? That kind of heavy spin is found throughout the article.

A Look Back

It's interesting, now, to look back at all the things that occurred during election season using the lens of this article and see what was actually happening. Remember the NY Post Hunter Biden story that Twitter and Facebook prevented from being shared on their platforms? At the time there were many people who were upset, claiming the social media companies were engaging in selective censorship. The response from those social media platforms was that there was no conspiracy, they were simply enforcing their Terms of Service. According to this article there absolutely was a conspiracy, and these platforms intentionally censored a true story as part of a coordinated effort to control the flow of information to help ensure the "correct" outcome of the election. In addition to the treatment of the NY Post article there were countless other voices, all critical of Joe Biden, who had their videos demonetized on YouTube, had their Facebook pages restricted or taken down, and/or had their Twitter accounts shut off.

The article goes on to explain all sorts of additional details regarding Zoom strategy meetings, legal briefings, meetings with tech execs and so on. It truly is an eye opening explanation of what it actually takes to rig an election. It's crazy stuff. It's also not really what I want to discuss in this post. What's of more interest to me is why the article might have been published.

The 'Why'

Logically, this article should never have been published. These people just admitted to rigging an election! Even if you are happy with the outcome, I would hope the admission of tampering with one of this country's most cherished institutions would give people pause. Also, given the number of times they talk about doing things in secret you would think the people involved would be ashamed of their actions. Quite the contrary, these people believe they are heroes who saved us from four more years of Trump. But even if these people believe themselves to be heroes, it's generally frowned upon to discuss things like rigging an election publicly. Why? Because you're going to make the people who voted for the other guy really pissed off because they're going to think they were cheated. And based on this article, it's clear Trump was definitely cheated, if not out of a victory then at least out of a fair shot. So why did it get published? I think it's because the ruling class wants to get out in front of the coming conflict.

The Coming Conflict

There were some statistical anomalies and super shady things that remain unexplained in this election. Given what these people were willing to publicly admit to in the article, the idea that they also pushed the envelope into illegal territory has gained far more credibility now, and it's very possible that more and more evidence will come out such that it will be impossible to claim Biden legitimately won this election.

Here's what I see at that point: Half the country will have legit standing to claim their preferred candidate was cheated, and the Congress will do nothing about it for (at least) 2 reasons:

1. Republicans weren't unanimously behind Trump, so they're happy (secretly or otherwise) he's out and wouldn't be thrilled about Trump's return
2. There's nothing in the Constitution that accounts for this so there would be a paralyzing fight over what to do and how to do it

What citizens will see is a Congress full of people who more or less don't care that the sitting President was illegitimately elected, which will almost guarantee protests and riots, potentially on a very large scale.

The ruling class sees this coming. They've planned for what may end up being this country's second Civil War.

War on Terror

I've said many times over the years (though I can't recall if I've ever written about it) that a war on things like ideas or emotions are perfect for those who desire endless conflict because it's easy to move the goalposts and expand or change the targets. What started out as a war against Al-Qaeda has morphed countless times to the point that I would expect your average American couldn't tell you who we are fighting right now in our War on Terror.

So what happens when you've pissed of a not-so-insignificant portion of the American public, which also happens to be the side of the political spectrum that has a great love for the Second Amendment? You do things like build a wall (oh the irony) around certain government buildings and redefine what it means to be a terrorist. They completed the former and are already working on the latter:

When riots start popping up Government officials will label these angry Americans as domestic terrorists and will engage with the tech industry to cut them off at the knees. They'll have their communications shut down, their homes raided and bank accounts seized. If they can't get people to comply willingly they will achieve compliance through fear. The US Gov is already the largest terrorist organization on Earth, they just haven't openly turned it on US citizens.

In my opinion, we will look back at the 2020 election as the moment in which all of that changed.

This is Part 2 of a 2-part series on the events at the Capitol building on January 6th, 2021. In Part 1 I talked about the double standard of the treatment of those who rioted at the Capitol vs those who rioted in the streets. In this post I want to talk about what those events might mean for us as individuals going forward.

A Fraudulent Victory

I'm of the belief that there's a certain amount of fraud that occurs every election; the system simply isn't secure enough to prevent it. In most elections it probably doesn't amount to a whole lot. This election was not like most elections. It appears in this election there were statistical impossibilities and evidence of shady things that could equal fraud on a scale we had never seen before, but President Trump and his team of lawyers overpromised and underdelivered time and time again when it came to presenting evidence of fraud that, to many people, he became nothing more than a narcissist that cried wolf.

To his core supporters though, their President was screwed. They bought in 100% when he told them this election was stolen. They were on the Trump train then and they still are now. To them, President Biden is corrupt, his family is corrupt and the politicians who enable Biden and the system that allowed this to happen are corrupt as well.

Their Line was Crossed

I don't think the Capitol protesters were there just because of the election. In their minds, the stolen election was just another in a string of abuses. The corporate press, Democrats, and even some Republicans, had spent since the moment he was elected attempting to delegitimize and undermine Trump's victory and his entire administration. Stealing the 2020 election was a line in the sand and the ruling elite just crossed it. So they marched on the Capitol building to voice their displeasure, which unsurprisingly lead to a riot.

Culture War

You may not realize it until it happens, but everyone has a line. Everyone has something that will trigger them to say "enough is enough" and cause them to take action. We are in the midst of a massive culture war. The left is trying to silence anyone with a dissenting viewpoint. For somewhere around 800 people, their line was the unproven allegations of election fraud. Where's your line?

I fully expect during Biden's 4 year term there to be a major push for more gun restrictions. There'll be some kind of "assault weapon" ban (which is nothing more than a ban on scary looking, black guns), magazine limits, and at least the proposal for some kind of gun registry. 2A folks, where is your line?

Big tech will continue to censor dissenting views. There will be more groups and individuals deplatformed from Twitter, Youtube and others. In most cases you would expect competitors to pop up to fill that void, but as we saw with Parler, Apple and Google have a gated environment that will likely prevent a true, independent competitor from gaining traction, at least in the short term. 1A folks, where is your line?

The Next 4 Years

These next 4 years will be incredibly important. Not because of Joe Biden, I think his administration will be a culturally-amped up version of Obama with more war thrown in for good measure, but because it will set the stage for the next 25+ years of this country. The ruling class wants continued dominance and no threat to their positions of power. If the media and Big Tech attacks on dissenting views continue unabated, they will have get exactly what they want. The only real question is, will they cross your line?

Dr. Thomas Sowell was an enormous influence early on my road to becoming an anarcho-capitalist. This is a fantastic documentary on the intellectual giant and well worth the 1hr of your time.

The events of January 6th, 2021 will likely be a very significant event in this country's history. It had been a couple hundred years since the Capitol building in Washington, D.C. was stormed, and Trump has this unique ability to both inspire his supporters and anger his critics to ever-increasing levels. This combination has lead to transparently-biased reporting and hyperbolic analysis by members of the corporate media. This is part 1 of a 2 part series on the biased reporting of and the reaction of many to the events at the Capitol.

Treason!

If you believe most of the corporate media and political establishment, President Trump committed treason when he encouraged people to protest the certification of the election results outside the Capitol building in Washington, D.C. on January 6th.

Did Trump's speech amount to treason? Well, treason is the only crime actually defined in the Constitution:

Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort. No Person shall be convicted of Treason unless on the Testimony of two Witnesses to the same overt Act, or on Confession in open Court.

The citizens who were protesting at the Capitol chanting U-S-A and waving American flags could hardly be described as enemies of the country and Trump didn't provide them aid or comfort. Trump didn't call for his supporters to violently storm the Capitol building. Even if he did, Trump's actions do not rise to the level of treason.

It's one thing to be incorrect, as everyone who claims Trump committed treason is, but consistent. It's another thing to treat and report on very similar events very differently.

Black Lives Matter

You don't need to have a great memory to recall last summer's Black Lives Matter protests. There were occurrences all over the country, many of which became incredibly violent and lead to the looting and destruction of many businesses and government buildings, as well as numerous injuries and deaths. The reporting on those events, however, was remarkably different.

When Colin Kaepernick called for more violence in late May, instead of banning him from the platform, as he recently did to President Trump, Jack Dorsey donated $3million to Kaepernick's company.

When a BLM leader openly talks about burning down the White House, taking it to the senators and the Congress, and beating up cops in NYC and DC, we get nothing: no media talking head mentioning treason, no ban from Twitter or YouTube, and no politician condemning the advocation of violence.

When this guy, John Sullivan, openly threatened to "rip Trump out of that office" and "get that motherfucker," again, there were no condemnations from the media, and this guy's twitter account is still active. In fact, he was present at the Trump rally and was inside the Capitol during the riot.

Do you remember the "mostly peaceful" protests? Talk about doing everything you can to paint these events in the most positive light possible!

VP Kamala Harris said with glee that the protests/riots over the summer of 2020 would not stop, nor should they.

So when it came to months of protests and riots the media and lefty politicians offered nothing but praise, support and encouragement for the leaders and participants. When it came to the riot at the Capitol building, the purported leader is de-platformed, harshly criticized by virtually everyone in the corporate press, is facing another impeachment, and the participants are being called traitors.

Consistency

It seems like it's OK for private businesses to be burned, citizens injured and killed, and city buildings to be trashed, but as soon as a similar ire is pointed in the direction where the national politicians work, it's a totally different story. The double standard here should be plainly obvious. Last summer's riots were "justice" while last week's riot were "treason." I think a great deal of that had to do with who the targets were and why they were targets.

In part 2 I'm going to talk more about people's reactions to the reporting on the riot at the Capitol and what an interesting situation that creates for those who support it and those who don't.

Joe Rogan is probably the best interviewer in the US right now. I imagine that's a big reason why he has the most popular podcast in the country. I have a tough time making it through the 2-3hrs necessary for each of his podcasts, but every so often he interviews someone and it's so powerful you have to put in the time. Such is the case with his recent interview with Glenn Greenwald. Greenwald is most known for his reporting on Edward Snowden whistleblowing and the existence of massive, previously unknown surveillance programs in both the US and British governments.

People who know me and who read this blog, and/or follow me on Twitter know how much of a debt I feel we all, as American citizens, owe Edward Snowden. He is the definition of an American Hero. He literally risked his life and made an enormous sacrifice in exposing the illegal spying operations going on in the US Gov, and in return the US Gov has stranded him in Russia with little prospect of ever making a reasonable return home. Snowden has said on more than one occasion that he'd be more than willing to stand trial for what he did but he insisted that it must be a fair trial, and to date the US Gov has refused that condition.

I think Rogan's somewhat rhetorical question and Greenwald's response really highlights what a travesty this whole situation is and what has become of our nation (it starts around 19:40):

What is government? If government is a group of people that are allowed to do something that is absolutely been deemed illegal by the courts, and if you catch them doing this illegal thing and then report it, and everyone agrees that it's wrong, everyone agrees it's unconstitutional, but yet if they get you they will still put you in jail. Like, what the fuck is government?

Greenwald's response:

Not only that, not only is the person who exposes what are crimes – what courts have said are crimes – not only is that person punished as though they've done something wrong when in reality they are owed the gratitude of the entire country for stopping criminal spying by the government on our population domestically which is one of the primary preoccupations of the American Revolution! That was the founding was about – it was about the king not being able to send his goons into your house and into your neighborhoods and search through your papers unless they have a proven reason to do so approved by a court. That's what Snowden demonstrated and told all of us the government was doing to us, not to the terrorists, to all of us.

So, not only is it that he's been punished for having blown the whistle on criminality, when he deserves a parade down 5th avenue, what's so much worse is that the people who broke the law haven't paid any price. They don't have charges against them, in fact they remain in government. The thing that made Snowden finally commit, the straw that broke his back, as it where, was when James Clapper, President Obama's senior national security official, his Director of National Intelligence, went before the Senate and was asked explicitly 'does the US Government, does the NSA, collect dossiers and tons of information on millions of Americans?' and he looked at the senator who asked him that and said "no sir, not wittingly." That's a crime, that's a felony, just to lie to the Senate, let alone to do it. and not only was James Clapper never prosecuted, he was never fired, he served out his term as President Obama's senior national security official. And you know where he works now? he works at CNN disseminating the news to the American public after he got caught fucking lying about the most important question he's ever been asked. That's how you know you live in a country that, despite the façade of democracy, has gone very, very off course.

I found those 3 minutes incredibly powerful, and that's just within the first half hour! I could literally quote so many parts of that interview because it's nothing but gut punch after gut punch by Greenwald and Rogan who just lay waste to every topic they take on.

Please take the time and watch this interview. You won't be disappointed.

I've been a YouTubeTV subscriber for about 2 years. When I cut the cord 4 years ago I signed up with SlingTV, but then switched a couple years later when I saw that YouTube carried my local network stations. That was huge for me because for whatever reason I am unable to pick up my local channels despite using multiple types of antennas and screwing around with placement and all that. Oh, and YouTube had NESN, which was an added bonus. At the time it was about a $15/mo difference.

For the last year or so YouTubeTV has cost me $50/mo, however I received an email this week advising that the price is going up to $65/mo. That's a 30% price increase!

They also advertise how they have 85+ channels and unlimited DVR and yada, yada, yada but the reality is my house only watches about 10 channels with any level of consistency and has limited use of the DVR. Perhaps I'm an outlier and their market research is telling them differently, but I cut the cord to save money and simplify my life, not just to avoid a 2yr contract. Between an internet connection,  Netflix, and the increase in YouTube I'm only looking at $15/mo less than what I was paying to have a Cable TV subscription.

I think YouTube is beginning to forget why people cut the cord in the first place. I'm not going to pay $800/yr+ so I can watch a few channels, almost all of which are showing repeats anyway.

I see Philo has almost the same channel lineup for $20/mo.

Swiss Policy Research Center released their June meta-analysis update on COVID-19. Here are some of the highlights that I found most interesting:

On COVID-19 lethality:

Due to its rather low lethality, Covid-19 falls at most into level 2 of the five-level pandemic plan developed by the US health authorities. For this level, only the “voluntary isolation of sick people” is to be applied, while further measures such as face masks, school closings, distance rules, contact tracing, vaccinations and lockdowns of entire societies are not recommended.

Regarding contact tracing, a WHO study on influenza pandemics from 2019 also came to the conclusion that from a medical point of view this is “under no circumstances recommended”, since it is not expedient for easily communicable and generally mild respiratory diseases.

The role of nursing homes:

In the United States, at least 42% of all Covid19 deaths are accounted for by 0.6% of the population living in nursing homes. Nursing homes require targeted protection and do not benefit from a general lockdown of society as a whole.

On children and schools:

Numerous studies have now shown that children hardly get Covid19 and do not or hardly transmit the virus, which was already known from the 2003 SARS outbreak. There was therefore no medical reason for the closure of schools at any time.

On the effectiveness of masks:

Regardless of the comparatively low lethality of Covid19 in the general population (see above), there is still no scientific evidence for the effectiveness of masks in healthy and asymptomatic people in everyday life.

Two US professors and experts in respiratory and infection protection from the University of Illinois explain in an essay that respiratory masks have no effect in everyday life, neither as self-protection nor to protect third parties (so-called source control). The widespread use of masks didn’t prevent the outbreak in the Chinese city of Wuhan, either.

An article in the New England Journal of Medicine from May 2020 also comes to the conclusion that respiratory masks offer little or no protection in everyday life. The call for a mask requirement is described as an “irrational fear reflex”.

A May 2020 meta-study on pandemic influenza published by the U.S. CDC also found that respirators had no effect.

Vaccines against COVID-19:

However, many experts have pointed out that an express vaccine against the new coronavirus is not necessary or useful due to the overall low lethality (see above) and the already declining spread. The protection of risk groups, especially in nursing homes, could be much more targeted.

Some experts like the Swiss infectiologist Dr. Pietro Vernazza also pointed out that experience shows that the high-risk group in particular benefits the least from vaccination, since their immune system no longer reacts adequately to the vaccine.

Various experts have also pointed out the significant health risks of an express vaccine. In fact, vaccination against the so-called “swine flu” from 2009/2010, for example, led to sometimes severe neurological damage, particularly in children, and to claims for damages in the millions.