Before You Panic

Ok, so the inevitable happened. The Trumps have tested positive for the virus. The sky is falling. Biden has won the election, the Democrats will take over America and all is lost. STOP! There’s another, more likely outcome. The President and his wife remain asymptomatic or have only mild symptoms, or get sick and recover quickly, and will prove:

1.            That testing positive is not a death sentence, even with co-morbidities.

2.            That even if sick, one can continue working and being productive.

3.            If they remain asymptomatic, we can perhaps put to rest the notion that a positive test equals a “case”, i.e. one will automatically become terribly ill. (I suspect if you tested the air in your local grocery store you’d find that the store itself is a case!!!)

4.            The courage and positive mental attitude he will exhibit will reveal true leadership qualities that will rally the entire world around Trump and his administration much as it did for Boris Johnson, who recovered even though he got very sick.

5.            The Lefts’ histrionics will further expose their treasonous attempts to seize power and fundamentally transform our country thus causing a backlash that will INCREASE the margin of victory for the GOP rather than diminish it.

Big screen tv’s should be placed at the rallies Trump planned to attend. I’ll bet even MORE people will show up to demonstrate their support. He will stream live from the White House and the response will generate a political antibody that will crush the whining, sniveling, cowardly and nefarious antics of his opponents.

You heard it from me first. Hang in there America, the Leftist Hydra’s life is about to be extinguished.

Observations on Last Night’s ‘Debate’

So Trump has been compelled to move from counter-puncher to puncher, from defense to offense. He really has no choice. The stakes are too high. Inarticulate and as much of a blunt object as he is, his principles are right, his cause just, and the fight real.

I have to admit that If I had been vilified, excoriated, politically assaulted and lied about continuously for four years I too would have thrown the BS flag at the first sign of repeated falsehoods, distortions, accusations and deflections. One of the Left’s most cherished tactics is to saturate the air with so much crap that there’s not enough time to respond to it all. They just throw stuff against the wall with such force and variety that it overwhelms any possible response, particularly if it is delivered in one unending stream for a full two minutes. Even using shorthand, the list of defensive replies is too long to state in the subsequent two minutes. So Trump could not have waited a full two minutes for the onslaught to end before unpacking and responding to all the lies and distortions coming from Biden’s mouth. And it would be impossible for any rational comeback to be formulated and delivered in the subsequent two minutes. So Trump did Trump. He threw the bs flag as each lie and distortion left Biden’s mouth, not waiting for the verbal diarrhea to stop.

Last night was an embarrassment for our nation. I wish the civility and diction exhibited in the Reagan-Mondale, or better, the Lincoln-Douglas debates could have had been present. The Chinese, Russians, Venezuelans, Iranians, Palestinians all loved what they saw and no doubt their media will be filled today with “see, we told you so’s” as THEY vilify our constitutional republic form of government. I don’t care. The fact that these two men could stand there and speak they way they did is in and of itself worth defending.

But it’s not Trump who brought our politics into the gutter, but the left who have “resisted” and tried to “fundamentally transform” our nation, barring NOTHING to gain power. Trump has always been a counter-puncher. At this moment, he MUST go on the offensive if he is to save this country from the leftist onslaught. Is it all disgusting? Yes, but the Democrats are the ones who made it so and now that it is a street fight for the soul of our country, thank God there’s a street thug like Trump who will stand up for it.

Their Real Strategy

Been away for a week hiking in the mountains. With a fresh head I’ve returned home and caught up on all the latest Leftist shenanigans. I am increasingly convinced their strategy of fomenting as much chaos as possible in connection with both the confirmation of Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court as well as the election is deliberate and calculated.

I believe what the Left really wants is to create so much doubt about the results that either: a) should Biden miraculously win on election night, they will immediately stop counting votes and declare him the winner or b) when he gets shellacked on election night, they will declare Biden victorious anyway, ensure that additional ballots miraculously materialize to make it so, and in the meantime start promoting a Biden 100 days plan, publicize his cabinet picks, etc. so as to make it seem a fait accompli.

The whole process now already stinks and the BS flag needs to be thrown well in advance of November 3rd. What the Supreme Court should REALLY do is rule that citizens must show up at a polling place on election day, or submit an AUTHENTICATED election ballot well in advance such that it arrives by election day. NO OTHER BALLOTS should be permitted, except, perhaps, for legitimate and authenticated ballots submitted by U.S. Military personnel or expatriates serving abroad.

Aside from the occasional moron wearing a mask on the trail (I even saw a dog with a mask…maybe it was a fashion statement?), the leaves were turning, the air was cool, clear and pure and there was no cell or internet service so I guess I missed some events in the continuing soap opera. But even though every election is billed as “the most consequential in our lifetime”, this upcoming one is certainly a notch above the last one, and THAT one took the prize!

In just a few weeks Americans will have the chance to either vote for what is Right, or what is Left. Left no longer means liberal – there’s nothing wrong with true liberals. Today’s Left, however, is so antithetical to everything that made America the greatest nation in the history of the world, no self-respecting, self-reliant, self-determinant, self-responsible citizen of our nation should even consider voting for Leftists in November. Say what you will about Trump and the Republican Party, at least they’re not completely insane like the woke, defund-the-police, anti-Christian/Religion, let-the-government-solve-all-my-problems, hyper-hypocritical, projecting Leftist idiots also on the ballot!

Now ask me how I REALLY feel about the new Democrat party.

I Have a Dream

With credit and apologies to Martin Luther King, I have my own dream of what could be. In a sense, what follows is MY version of a Utopian society…not the Dystopian society the Left is pushing.

I dream of an America that stands together, (including for our National Anthem!) as it once did during the Second World War. People from all walks of life, from every background, color, creed, faith, national origin are ALL proud to be American, grateful for the opportunity and freedom we have, bonded together through citizenship in a democratic republic we all believe in and cherish, and where educated, grammatically proper and syntactically correct American English is the national language.

I watched the movie “Miracle” the other night, the story of the 1980 U.S. Olympic hockey team’s beating of the unbeatable Russian hockey team and our gold medal win. The period leading up to that triumph was a time of great trouble: the winding up of the Vietnam War, Watergate, the Iranian hostage crisis, the welfare state was growing like gangbusters, the rapid breakdown of traditional families and a continuation of what occurred in the 60’s – a growing fracture between Left and Right.

At that moment, in that hockey rink in Lake Placid, NY, all of America was united irrespective of where we stood on the ideological, political, or societal spectra. Oh that we could bottle and distribute that patriotism and pride today! The same pride we all felt as we heard the words, “That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.”

I dream of an America with leaders who uplift, who inspire, who seek the betterment of all our citizens and who assert with dignity and nobility America’s rightful role in the world as the “beacon on the hill”. In my lifetime, I’ve watched and listened to a slew of presidents, political, religious, academic, military and business “leaders” pontificate and (with apologies now to Shakespeare) “strut and fret their hour upon the stage” telling tales like idiots, “full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.” Sometimes the rhetoric resonated with enough people that it became, (to use a modern term), a “meme”, and our nation’s course was altered accordingly. Sometimes it just drifted away on the wind and was “heard no more.” Today our politics is more than ever gutter politics. Both the Left and the Right are talking down and at one another rather than with one another. The public, at least those who bother, are watching this “s-show” and shaking their heads, rolling their eyes and asking themselves, “can’t we do better than this?” I hasten to add, as I often do, however, that while both sides participate in these deplorable political antics, you’d have to be willfully blind or just plain stupid to not see that the Left has deepened and putrefied the gutter beyond anything the Right or any grade-school educated person could ever have imagined!

I dream of an America where children are once again taught about its greatness, about its Judeo-Christian roots and underpinnings, about the sacrifices and struggles of those who, imperfect though they were, united together to build this nation and establish it as the greatest engine of freedom, peace and prosperity the world has ever known. Those lessons we learned in grade school about the founding and early history of America, about 2+2 being 4, not 5 (“but Johnny, that was a good try and I’m so glad you feel empowered to give that answer”), those trophies that we received because we WON, not because we showed up, are not QUAINT! They’re an accounting of what made America great (.sic) not to be trampled upon with New Math, 1619 projects, multicultural and globalist, anti-national revisions to history, and poisonous, Leftist, “nobody should have any more than anyone else”, dystopian idiocy.

I dream of an America where traditional views of right and wrong are once again firmly established in our practices, laws, regulations and politics, where principles of equal opportunity rather than equal outcomes are engendered and manifest, where we don’t compromise, alter or eliminate these principles and harm and offend the vast majority of our people because some minority professes to be victimized by their application. One can argue that there is no black and white, but the Leftists would have you believe that there are no standards…that each and every one of us ought to be the arbiter of what is good, what is evil, what is right and what is wrong. Peaceful marches and protests (ones that don’t disrupt commerce, travel and the lives of those who are not involved) are RIGHT. Riots, looting, assault, battery, disturbance of the peace even… are WRONG. The taking of responsibility, restraint and continence are RIGHT. Infanticide and abortion as contraception is WRONG! Practicing and exhibiting manners is RIGHT. Anything goes is WRONG.

I dream of an America where our legal system is purged of distortion and justice is meted out with equanimity and without political bias, where laws are respected, and people understand and expect to abide by them not from fear of judgement and penalty, but because they’re just and benefit all of us. We were taught as kids to respect police officers, firemen, heck, even “our elders”! Today the Left wishes to destroy respect for just about anything! Weaponized law, weaponized politics, weaponized regulations…all these were started and have been fomented by the “it’s all about me” Leftists who were the hippies of the 60’s, the losers who sought to “tune in, turn on and drop out” and who now form the core of what is known as “the Deep State”. How could the Left use the law to persecute (some might say destroy the lives of) its opponents while allowing its own scandalous, obvious and disgusting violations of law go unpunished?

I dream of an America:

                Where the rights and thoughtful, not shrill views of all are tolerated but where unlawful and aberrant behavior is not!

                Where ALL lives matter!

                Where faith is restored in FAITH!

                Where we can earn an honest day’s wage for an honest day’s work.

                Where government isn’t the source of philanthropy but individuals, families and communities look after one another.

                Where technology, systems and artificial intelligence don’t substitute for people communicating directly with one another, where human beings answer the customer service 800 number, speak English and are empowered to solve problems rather than belch canned scripts like “I’m sorry you’re having a problem with…I’m here to help with that.” And where REAL intelligence in REAL humans deliver REAL results, and where parents “just say no” to 10 year olds demanding their own iPhones.

                Where drugs, alcohol, pornography, social media and other addictions are dealt with head-on, not excused, tolerated and talked about endlessly.

                Where the real racism and bias inherent in the hypocritical Left’s actions are exposed and expunged so that real fairness of opportunity can prevail.

                Where men can once again be men and are not automatically accused of being misogynists; where women don’t feel they have to act like men (and behave like misandrists!) and where it’s ok for traditional roles of bread-winning and child-rearing to prevail again.

                Where shame is felt for shameful behavior.

                Where government no longer tries to engineer social justice through housing mandates, but allows communities to form freely and the pick-winners-and-losers-robin-hood-taking-from-Peter-to-buy-the-vote-of-Paul no longer takes place.

                Where the rights of those who seek to obey the laws, focus on caring for themselves and their families, and work hard to be contributing members of society are not permitted to be trampled by the obnoxious, repugnant behavior or those who break the laws and seek to impinge on or take from others what is not rightfully theirs, and who do so with impunity.

                Where honest capitalism is not denigrated but celebrated, but where crony capitalism is rooted out, exposed and eliminated.

                Where limousine liberals and people who have no idea of what real suffering is remove their hypocritical, self-righteous, virtue-signaling signs from their lawns and instead, take a weed whacker to the overgrown grass and mess by the side of the road.

                Where our schools teach kids reading, writing and arithmetic again instead of indoctrinating them in multicultural, gender-confused, anti-American drivel.

                Where the term “marriage” is returned to its religious definition, but where the ability of same-sex partners to enjoy the same legal rights as married couples is codified in our laws and where LGBTQ militants no longer try to shove their preferences and ideology down others’ throats.

                Where our military and law enforcement, as well as all other public service occupations are purged of incompetents and bad apples, our churches and the Boy Scouts are purged of pedophiles, our colleges are purged of socialists and marxists.

                Where we can calm down, lower the speed and decibel level of our lives, aspire to be good and do good, do what is right, and actually “all get along”.

The COVID Scam

This week the CDC finally admitted that of the ~180,000 “murdered by Donald Trump” (to quote the Left), 6% (or about 11,000 if my arithmetic is right) died from the virus. Everyone else had, on average, 2.6 additional conditions which caused their death. I’m not making this up. See this link for the details, but here’s a screen grab of the actual statement, buried down in the reams of data and analysis prepared by the back-room gnomes who routinely take invalid, faulty or made-up data and turn it into pretty graphs and multi-colored reports that makes it all so official and appear authoritative.

Here’s the significance of the CDC admission. Of the 180,000 who have died, 11,000 died FROM the virus. The rest died WITH the virus. That’s a HUGE distinction!

Even these 6% and 2.6 numbers are questionable, but the admission that the virus, while it may have hastened their demise, hasn’t killed all those people also corroborates what people resistant to televised or printed nonsense and the ability to think critically, or even those with just common sense, have concluded and been saying for months now!

In a previous post I pointed out that today EVERYTHING is political, and polarized between Left and Right. The Left wants the virus to be seen to be as bad as possible so they can both blame the current administration and set things up so government can ultimately “save” everyone, once they’re fully in control. The Right, while of course trying to shape the narrative in their favor, nevertheless seek to put things into perspective…into a positive, hopeful light, because they actually care about us and the country.

There are some principles that transcend politics, however. Included among them is, “Follow the money.”

Here’s the simple truth. The healthcare system is largely based on a system that has a physician or medical institution provide care and be reimbursed either by the government (Medicare, Medicaid, etc.), by health insurance companies or by individual patients, or some combination of the above (each a “Payer”). Medical provider revenues (and profits) are maximized by playing what I’ve long called the “coding game”. When a medical provider submits its “invoice” to the Payer it assigns both diagnosis as well as procedure “codes” to their bill. These codes dictate, in most cases, how much reimbursement the provider receives.

Is it any wonder that the reimbursement for treatment of an infectious disease during a pandemic would be higher than for an upper-respiratory infection or even the flu? It should be obvious that it is in the healthcare provider’s best economic interest to code treatment or treatments such that they maximize reimbursement. The dirty little secret is that providers, when given an option to code treatment for a patient dying of emphysema or COVID treatment will opt for the latter, or include both. Why? Because even though it was the chronic obstructive pulmonary disease that killed the patient, reimbursement for treatment of COVID is higher.

And it should also be obvious that hospitals, seeking to net as much helicoptered money as the Federal government has doled out as they can, will benefit from jacking up their COVID numbers as well. It’s no wonder therefore, that we’re told that ~180,000 have been killed by the virus!

Follow the money.

Turn off the news. Stop listening to the “experts”. Use common sense. Don’t cough in other peoples’ faces and don’t let them cough in yours. Don’t let the Left destroy our country. Vote them out this November.

No More Mister Nice Guy

Got home late Wednesday and turned on the third night of the Republican Convention coverage. Watching the live feed from C-Span I was struck, as many have already pointed out, by the high production values of the broadcast (that’s a synonym for stagecraft, which in turn is media-speak for the skills and techniques used in the enhancement of motion picture or television productions). For grins and giggles I flipped over to first, MSNBC, then CNN to see what they were saying.

I wanted to throw up. The sniveling, the dismissiveness, the mischaracterizations, the “don’t listen to them, look at this shiny object over here” deception, the projection of everything the Left has been saying and doing onto the RNC speakers…it was infuriating.

Whether or not you thought the administration of the oath of citizenship the night before or the speech given by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo from Jerusalem were theater, for the Leftists to cry and gnash their teeth that these were “political stunts” made me yell at the screen, “You are the MASTERS of political stunts…you ought to know!” Please see Exhibits A, B, C and D: the spying on the Trump campaign, the Russia collusion hoax, the pathetic and treasonous impeachment nonsense, and the Kavanaugh character assassination, just to cite a few premier examples of the Left’s political stunt production!

I relished the thought that for once, the GOP had taken the gloves off and started to fight fire with fire. I also thought…”You can dish it out Democrats, but you just can’t take it can you?”

It was as if I was standing on the side of the path leading down to the gates of Hell, watching with revulsion a hydra with all but its last head severed, writhing back and forth as flames surrounded it and it strained against an invisible force pushing it back down into its black hole in the earth. The Left is that hydra, and while it may not be completely dead after November 3rd, it will, I predict, be wringing its claws and licking its wounds for a long time into the future.

I recently had a conversation with a Brit living here in the U.S. who, though a conservative, finds the demagoguery and mud-slinging of the current campaigns detestable, or in her words, “bad form”. “Why”, she asked, “can’t the politicians simply state what they have done or will do, how it will benefit their constituents, and avoid all the trash-talking?” “Why won’t the GOP take the High Road.”

I calmly explained that the Republican Party has been taking the High Road for 40 years plus years. But though using reason, logic, espousing patriotism, traditional values and motivated largely by wanting to do what is right for this country, the GOP has fallen further and further behind the Left in the court of public opinion. The Left’s production values, in recasting their deceit, hypocrisy and antipathy towards the values and principles that made the United States great as something GOOD rather than the evil it actually is, has brainwashed, warped the thinking of and created a false reality that is bought only by the holier-than-thou-the-rules-don’t-apply-to-me-cocktails-in-hand Hollywood, Tech-land and Wall Street elites, the naive snowflakes of Gen Z, the permanently dependent, the self-made losers and victims looking for the next free Obama-phone. In recent years they have numbered just about half of the population, unbelievably. Trump, bull-in-a-china-shop disrupter, New York real-estate thug, street-fighter and counter-puncher, who, like the Democrats, doesn’t care what people think of him personally, was precisely the kind of candidate in 2016 who could take on and defeat the Leftist/Clinton machine.

In 2020, I explained, the Left having had their butts handed to them in 2016 and learned something from it, have pulled out all the stops…in fact, they will stop at NOTHING, to try to avoid their writhing, thrashing, wailing, burning retreat into the black place from which they emanated.

Civility, decorum, good manners, understatement, “rising above it all” be damned. The Right has to fight and if that means descending into the muck with the Left and throwing the BS flag whenever they spout garbage so be it. The future for our kids and grand kids was at stake in 2016. We won that battle, but the stakes are even greater in 2020.

So the answer to the question as to why the GOP can’t take the High Road this time is embodied in the coffee cup quip…

“No more mister nice guy!”

Their Platform is Chaos

Who but limousine liberals unaffected by government policy either through exemption (e.g. Leftist politicians) or due to inoculating wealth (e.g. Hollywood celebrities or tech tycoons)… the intellectually indolent, the perpetual victims, the “low information voters” as Rush Limbaugh calls them (a euphemism for illiterate or cerebrally lazy people easily swayed by demagoguery), the race-baiters or the grievance acolytes… could possibly support the Democrats in 2020?

Really, no-one who has any self-respect – who cares about principles such as meritocracy, excellence, achievement, probity, self-reliance, self-determination, traditional sexual identification, traditional education, traditional family structure, that life (or at least the potential of life) begins at conception, that there is a God (or at a minimum a set of eternal rules of right and wrong that are immutable and transcend all generations)…could support the Democrats in 2020!

I had a conversation the other day with my Board-certified internist during my annual physical exam who, when asked for his opinion on the Wuhan Virus pandemic, started to recite the scripts of WHO, CDC, AMA, Johns Hopkins, and other canned platitudes. Little did he know at first that I spent several years running an early intervention healthcare company based on epidemiological research. When I began to confront him, gently mind you as he was about to check my prostate, with the emerging evidence that the Wuhan plague/pandemic is no worse than a bad flu and cited evidence of how faulty is so much of the data on which decisions are being made and regulations being promulgated, did he start to back off and admit that “we just don’t know.”

I was going to let him off the hook until he said, “I’m concerned, however, about the Second Wave.” At that, I asked him the question, “What is the metric that will allow kids to go back to school normally, that will allow us to stop wearing face diapers, that will signal an end to the crisis?” I was gratified that he conceded that should the Democrats prevail in the coming election, everything will all be over beginning November 4th, not because he’ll vote Republican, but because it was an admission that most of what underpins the rhetoric and discourse is political.  I then ran down the list of disastrous economic and societal consequences the government response at all levels has wrought and then, fortunately, found common ground with him as we delved into a cost-benefit discussion and both agreed that rational decision making and critical thinking was sorely needed.

My half hour session went an hour. A nurse had to bang on the door of the exam room to remind my Doc he had another patient waiting.

As I left the office I got to wondering about how it is that a highly-educated, highly-skilled physician could be persuaded to lazily rely on and spout institutional pablum. I concluded that the damage caused to all our institutions: medical, educational, social, religious, economic, even family structures has created so much chaos that even the smartest among us are overwhelmed by the tsunami of, frankly, BS that has invaded every facet of our lives. Out of sheer enervation even the strongest of us have had to pause from the fight to catch our breath. Meanwhile, the ability of the Left to sew chaos through outright deceit, lies, projection (especially projection) and carpet-bombing with idiocy has continued unabated. The megaphone in the hands of the Leftist media, regrettably, doesn’t take much electrical power.

This is precisely what the Left wants to do. Create so much chaos that only THEY can fix things. Only THEY will be able to unravel the mess…so long as they are granted unlimited power to do so. For that is their goal…POWER! I didn’t used to believe it. I thought there were Democrats who were classic liberals, who believed in the American way of life but wanted to ensure that we looked after those who truly were less fortunate, were REAL victims… No more. Now the Democrats just lust for power as they arrogantly, absurdly believe that if they control everything and everyone they’ll move us all toward their utopian fantasy. That fantasy is the stuff of socialism/communism and while they know it’s a fantasy, it isn’t about actually creating a utopia. It’s about POWER, the thing Leftist politicians must have much as water or oxygen.

We must shake off our weariness and continue to fight to expose the Left’s dysfunctional, delusional, adolescent enchantment with and pipe-dream of utopia and their deplorable thirst for power.

In a small way, having that extended conversation with my doctor made me feel like I was able to get off a few rounds in that fight.

Tactics of the Left

John Hawkins is one of my favorite conservative authors. In an essay penned back in October 2017 he listed, presciently, how the Left was then destroying and would in the future destroy our culture. With full credit and attribution to Hawkins, who’s full essay is available on Town Hall, here’s a summary:

First, to quote his introduction (Note: I’ve replaced the term “Liberalism with “Leftism, “Liberals” with “Leftists”:

There was a time when we used to be a nation that pushed freedom, responsibility, decency, patriotism and hard work. Some of us still believe in those things, but because of Leftism, much more destructive values have seeped into our culture like toxic waste. There are many ways that Leftists have degraded our culture, but these are the worst of the worst.”

And here’s his list:

1.            The Politicization of Everything.

2.            Political Correctness.

3.            Victimhood.

4.            Leftist Feminism.

5.            Tribalism.

6.            “Non-Judgmentalism”.

Today, one has only to open one’s eyes and ears to see these weapons on display. I would add to his list:

7.            Atheism. While I believe that the only Being in the universe who can prove to you whether He exists or not is God, faith is a very individual thing. By way of contrast, Atheism is a collective imposition of an ideology that doesn’t just eschew faith, but condemns and seeks to eradicate it. It’s obvious that the Left, by seeking to destroy faith, is seeking to replace God with its own brand of religion.

8.            Saturation. The Left seeks to dominate the airwaves in every form and in every medium so as to crowd out, squash, eradicate any dissent.

9.            Falsehood. “Creative Misrepresentation” is the euphemism that Leftist intellectuals use to describe the outright lying and deception used to advance their poisonous ideology. This should be obvious to any paying-attention individual.

10.          Projection. Have you ever noticed that the Left screams at the top of their lungs accusations at the Right that represent precisely what the Left is doing? There is no end to the hypocrisy and deceit they will use to achieve their ends.

11.          Hijacking the Vocabulary. “Choice”, “Social Justice”, “Democratic Socialism”, “Extremism”, “Investment (a.k.a. ‘taxation and spending’), “Science”, “Fair Share”, “The Wealthy”, “Balance”, “Liberal”, “Progressive”, “Racist”, “Undocumented Immigrant”, “Domestic Terrorist”, “Universal Background Checks”, “Assault Rifle”, “Diversity”, “Inclusion”, “Affirmative Action”, “Globalism”, “Climate Change”, “Resistance”, “Human Rights”, “Tolerance”, etc. All of these terms and countless others have been utilized, twisted, turned into Orwell’s Doublespeak, used as euphemisms or been completely destroyed and replaced by the Left.

12.          Revising History. The 1619 Project, the tearing down of historical figure statues, Howard Zinn, the vilification and attempted discrediting of historical leaders like the Founding Fathers…need I say more?

I expect if I thought about it long enough I could expand this list considerably. No matter. My readers know exactly what I’m talking about anyway, and could similarly add to it. The key is to fight, advance and not retreat in the face of these Leftist tactics.

We must pick our battles, yes, but not shun the fight.

On Propaganda

The other day an organization I’d never heard of before was brought to my attention. It is a Swiss-based think tank named Swiss Policy Research Institute (SPRI). It describes itself as “an independent, nonpartisan and nonprofit research group investigating geopolitical propaganda in Swiss and international media”. They can be found at https://swprs.org, and I highly recommend a visit to their site and reading some or all of their essays.

Among their recent studies are several dedicated to the COVID pandemic. For several months now I’ve been calming friends and acquaintances with what I’d call common sense analysis of the numbers and proven facts about the disease. The bottom line has been that the Wuhan Virus is no worse than a bad flu. The only difference is that individuals with compromised health and/or immune systems are at greater risk to contracting it and their bodies’ response to COVID when coupled with their existing medical conditions can become overwhelmed and hasten their demise. SPRI has documented precisely the same conclusion. I reproduce here with due acknowledgment and credit, their most recent research. Links are to supporting data and corroboration.

  1. According to the latest immunological and serological studies, the overall lethality of Covid-19 (IFR) is about 0.1% and thus in the range of a strong seasonal influenza (flu).
  2. In countries like the US, the UK, and also Sweden (without a lockdown), overall mortality since the beginning of the year is in the range of a strong influenza season; in countries like Germany, Austria and Switzerland, overall mortality is in the range of a mild influenza season.
  3. Even in global “hotspots”, the risk of death for the general population of school and working age is typically in the range of a daily car ride to work. The risk was initially overestimated because many people with only mild or no symptoms were not taken into account.
  4. Up to 80% of all test-positive persons remain symptom-free. Even among 70-79 year olds, about 60% remain symptom-free. Over 95% of all persons develop at most moderate symptoms.
  5. Up to 60% of all persons may already have a certain cellular background immunity to Covid-19 due to contact with previous coronaviruses (i.e. common cold viruses). The initial assumption that there was no immunity against Covid-19 was not correct.
  6. The median age of the deceased in most countries (including Italy) is over 80 years (e.g. 86 years in Sweden) and only about 4% of the deceased had no serious preconditions. The age and risk profile of deaths thus essentially corresponds to normal mortality.
  7. In many countries, up to two thirds of all extra deaths occurred in nursing homes, which do not benefit from a general lockdown. Moreover, in many cases it is not clear whether these people really died from Covid19 or from weeks of extreme stress and isolation.
  8. Up to 30% of all additional deaths may have been caused not by Covid19, but by the effects of the lockdown, panic and fear. For example, the treatment of heart attacks and strokes decreased by up to 60% because many patients no longer dared to go to hospital.
  9. Even in so-called “Covid19 deaths” it is often not clear whether they died from or with coronavirus (i.e. from underlying diseases) or if they were counted as “presumed cases” and not tested at all. However, official figures usually do not reflect this distinction.
  10. Many media reports of young and healthy people dying from Covid19 turned out to be false: many of these young people either did not die from Covid19, they had already been seriously ill (e.g. from undiagnosed leukemia), or they were in fact 109 instead of 9 years old. The claimed increase in Kawasaki disease in children also turned out to be false.
  11. Strong increases in regional mortality can occur if there is a collapse in the care of the elderly and sick as a result of infection or panic, or if there are additional risk factors such as severe air pollution. Questionable regulations for dealing with the deceased sometimes led to additional bottlenecks in funeral or cremation services.
  12. In countries such as Italy and Spain, and to some extent the UK and the US, hospital overloads due to strong flu waves are not unusual. Moreover, this year up to 15% of health care workers were put into quarantine, even if they developed no symptoms.
  13. The often shown exponential curves of “corona cases” are misleading, as the number of tests also increased exponentially. In most countries, the ratio of positive tests to tests overall (i.e. the positive rate) remained constant at 5% to 25% or increased only slightly. In many countries, the peak of the spread was already reached well before the lockdown.
  14. Countries without curfews and contact bans, such as Japan, South Korea, Belarus or Sweden, have not experienced a more negative course of events than other countries. Sweden was even praised by the WHO and now benefits from higher immunity compared to lockdown countries.
  15. The fear of a shortage of ventilators was unjustified. According to lung specialists, the invasive ventilation (intubation) of Covid19 patients, which is partly done out of fear of spreading the virus, is in fact often counterproductive and damaging to the lungs.
  16. Contrary to original assumptions, various studies have shown that there is no evidence of the virus spreading through aerosols (i.e. tiny particles floating in the air) or through smear infections (e.g. on door handles or smartphones). The main modes of transmission are direct contact and droplets produced when coughing or sneezing.
  17. There is also no scientific evidence for the effectiveness of face masks in healthy or asymptomatic individuals. On the contrary, experts warn that such masks interfere with normal breathing and may become “germ carriers”. Leading doctors called them a “media hype” and “ridiculous”.
  18. Many clinics in Europe and the US remained strongly underutilized or almost empty during the Covid19 peak and in some cases had to send staff home. Millions of surgeries and therapies were cancelled, including many cancer screenings and organ transplants.
  19. Several media were caught trying to dramatize the situation in hospitals, sometimes even with manipulative images and videos. In general, the unprofessional reporting of many media maximized fear and panic in the population.
  20. The virus test kits used internationally are prone to errors and can produce false positive and false negative results. Moreover, the official virus test was not clinically validated due to time pressure and may sometimes react positive to other coronaviruses.
  21. Numerous internationally renowned experts in the fields of virology, immunology and epidemiology consider the measures taken to be counterproductive and recommend rapid natural immunization of the general population and protection of risk groups.
  22. At no time was there a medical reason for the closure of schools, as the risk of disease and transmission in children is extremely low. There is also no medical reason for small classes, masks or ‘social distancing’ rules in schools.
  23. The claim that only (severe) Covid-19 but not influenza may cause venous thrombosis and pulmonary (lung) embolism is not true, as it has been known for 50 years that severe influenza greatly increases the risk of thrombosis and embolism, too.
  24. Several medical experts described express coronavirus vaccines as unnecessary or even dangerous. Indeed, the vaccine against the so-called swine flu of 2009, for example, led to sometimes severe neurological damage and lawsuits in the millions. In the testing of new coronavirus vaccines, too, serious complications and failures have already occurred.
  25. A global influenza or corona pandemic can indeed extend over several seasons, but many studies of a “second wave” are based on very unrealistic assumptions, such as a constant risk of illness and death across all age groups.
  26. Several nurses, e.g. in New York City, described an oftentimes fatal medical mis­manage­ment of Covid patients due to questionable financial incentives or inappropriate medical protocols.
  27. The number of people suffering from unemployment, depressions and domestic violence as a result of the measures has reached historic record values. Several experts predict that the measures will claim far more lives than the virus itself. According to the UN 1.6 billion people around the world are at immediate risk of losing their livelihood.
  28. NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden warned that the “corona crisis” will be used for the permanent expansion of global surveillance. Renowned virologist Pablo Goldschmidt spoke of a “global media terror” and “totalitarian measures”. Leading British virologist Professor John Oxford spoke of a “media epidemic”.
  29. More than 600 scientists have warned of an “unprecedented surveillance of society” through problematic apps for “contact tracing”. In some countries, such “contact tracing” is carried out directly by the secret service. In several parts of the world, the population is being monitored by drones and facing serious police overreach during lockdowns.
  30. A 2019 WHO study on public health measures against pandemic influenza found that from a medical perspective, “contact tracing” is “not recommended in any circumstances”. Nevertheless, contact tracing apps have already become partially mandatory in several countries.

I don’t agree with all of their conclusions, but I urge readers to read their work and judge for themselves whether the pandemic is evidence of an apocalypse as much of the media would have you believe (remember, “if it bleeds it leads”) or evidence of propaganda and mass delusion.

Stay well.

Below Average Government Policy

Government policy is based on averages. But there is no such thing as average…it’s an arithmetic concept, not a practical one. Average is intended to describe “tendency”, not reality. When a small group of outliers skews an average in one direction the picture painted by the data can be highly misleading. Let’s say there’s a small town where the average household income is $50,000 per year. If Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates and Warren Buffett were to move into the town and average household income recalculated, the average wouldn’t be very representative would it?

Government policy is also based on categorizations. – putting groups into neat boxes. But this also distorts reality. For example, the government’s definition of a ‘small business”, causes a 5 employee hair salon to be lumped together with a 500 employee manufacturing firm and be subjected to the same lockdown order. Policies that are intended to make people safe or ensure economic survival in a factory aren’t going to adequately or correctly help the hair salon, yet that’s the way government regulations are applied and assistance is apportioned. Makes for poor policy with obvious results like protests and defiance!

Someone famously pointed out that two quarters of declining GDP may technically be a recession, but for the family breadwinner out of work it’s a depression! It doesn’t matter to the mid 50’s manager whose job was eliminated in a “right-sizing” at the company he or she works for that unemployment is at 3.5%!

Permit me to rephrase an old saying:

“Government can help some of the people some of the time. It can help a tiny few people all of the time. But it can’t help the “average” person most of the time.”

In short, government and politicians’ reliance on data, statistics, numbers and all their associated manipulations is a very messy way to devise policy.

This is why the less government the better. The less government regulation the better And conversely, the more self-reliance, the better. The more self-regulation, the better.

Let’s consider for a moment what would happen in the absence of government mandated Wuhan Virus lockdowns. Reasonable, responsible and self-reliant individuals would protect themselves, sneeze and cough into their handkerchiefs or tissues, protect their elderly relatives by staying away from them, and no doubt wear masks and wash their hands frequently knowing there was an airborne, highly contagious, nasty bug around. People getting sick would call in sick, (“I’ve got the flu and don’t want to infect everyone around me!”) and as soon as they got better, would go back to work.

If you asked an epidemiologist whether there IS such a thing as a common cold, they’d respond by citing a laundry list of rhinoviruses and bacteria that cause “cold-like symptoms.” I urge you to read the description of the Common Cold on the Mayo Clinic website, here. And there’s no cure for it!

Now we’re finding out there are a lot of people who have had the Wuhan Virus, were either asymptomatic or had only mild, temporary symptoms…just like the common cold.

This is not to suggest that the Wuhan Virus is no worse than the common cold, nor diminish the severity of this bug for those with compromised immune systems, underlying risk factors, other ailments like chronic respiratory disease, etc. Of course people with these conditions are more vulnerable, and of course we need to take extra precautions with them. And of course they need to take extra precautions themselves!

Had the government simply warned us of the severity of the threat as data was received instead of fueling the “if it bleeds it leads” media crowd, I can’d help but suspect we’d all have been better off.

And, on a personal level, I happen to fit into the category of the more vulnerable. Would I have taken extra precautions as I am now without government megalomania? Yes. Would I have run to get tested when not having any symptoms? No. Is there a chance I’d have gotten sick. Yup.

But there’s a chance I might contract a severe case of the flu, bronchitis and then septicemia that I’d have to fight too. Or have a stroke. Or get hit by a car walking across the street.  Or contract Ebola. Or be shot by a crazed sniper. Or be hit by a meteor. Or be struck by lightening (er…well, I HAVE been struck by lightening but that’s another story…) That there’s a chance to get sick or die or be killed in any of a hundred ways doesn’t automatically mean the likelihood is greater.

If instead of displaying a graph showing the rising deaths from the Virus, we saw one that simultaneously displayed other deaths, Wuhan Virus, as horrible as it is, wouldn’t appear so horrible! Here are CDC’s numbers for 2017. I’ve added Wuhan VIrus to show where it stacks up. Oh, and by the way, let’s not forget that of the deaths attributed to the Virus, many were caused by underlying heart, metastatic, or chronic respiratory ailments exacerbated, no doubt, by the Virus.

Number of deaths for leading causes of death in 2017:

  • Heart disease: 647,457
  • Cancer: 599,108
  • Accidents (unintentional injuries): 169,936
  • Chronic lower respiratory diseases: 160,201
  • Stroke (cerebrovascular diseases): 146,383
  • Alzheimer’s disease: 121,404
  • Diabetes: 83,564
  • Wuhan Virus: 80,000+
  • Influenza and Pneumonia: 55,672
  • Nephritis, nephrotic syndrome and nephrosis: 50,633
  • Intentional self-harm (suicide): 47,173

    Source: CDC

As I’ve also noted often, EVERYTHING is political. Thus, it’s in the interests of Leftist politicians to report as many virus-related deaths as possible so as to support their case that the Trump administration is incompetent. That’s why Mayor Bill de Blasio of New York suddenly, one day a couple of weeks ago, increased the total of virus-related deaths by several thousand. He simply declared that any death that could remotely be associated either directly with the Wuhan Virus, or even indirectly, be counted as a virus-related death. Why? For the obvious reason stated above.

So, talk about shooting ourselves in the foot! We’re crippling our economy, causing immense emotional distress, and in just about every way doing exactly what our political, economic and military adversaries want us to do!

Hooray, therefore, for the protestors storming state capitols demanding the lifting of lockdown restrictions. Hooray for Shelley Luther, who stood up to a condescending, megalomaniacal judge. Hooray for the increasing number of law enforcement officers defying orders to arrest otherwise law abiding people defying lockdown orders. Hooray for the front line health care and other workers who  are choosing to help their fellow human beings. Hooray for the military and law enforcement of our country who are at risk every minute of every day while seeking to keep us safe. And finally, hooray for the AVERAGE (.sic) Americans who have had enough of this constant drone of gloom and doom and, despite risk, want to responsibly, thoughtfully and carefully return to living!