I had my first Mask Nazi encounter this week and I’m as giddy as a teenage girl at a boy band show. I was in a grocery store in a county where the health department already said they weren’t going to enforce the idiot governess’s mandate in private businesses. Nonetheless, nearly everyone in the store had their talismasks in place to show the world how dutiful, moral, and obedient they are. A late middle-aged woman wearing at least two of them came up to me and started in.
MN: You’re not wearing a mask!
Me: (glancing downward as if to look) No, apparently not.
MN: Put your mask on!
Me: No, thank you.
MN: (louder) It’s the law! Don’t you have any regard for safety???
Me: I appreciate your concern.
MN: You need to put a mask on!
Me: I appreciate your concern.
MN: SO YOU WANT TO MAKE EVERYONE AROUND YOU SICK AND MAYBE DIE???
Me: I appreciate your concern. And I’m glad that you’re free to wear one. Please do what makes you feel comfortable. (small smile)
MN: I AM NOT COMFORTABLE WITH YOU WALKING AROUND WITHOUT A MASK!
Me: I appreciate your concern.
MN: I’m getting the manager!!!! (Stalks off with that perfect line trailing behind)
And then nothing happened. Other than the massive snowstorm.
Birthdays today are rather slim pickings (no, it’s not his birthday) but nonetheless include the inventor of our favorite weapon; a perennial loser; a maker of really crappy cars including the infamous Deux Chevaux; a guy who never got a dinner; the inspiration for SugarFree, except the wife-killing part; the greatest non-juiced slugger; the King of Procedurals; an actually legal Alien; and a pioneer of the mockumentary genre.
With that… Links.
Next, air drop of pallets of cash as is the Team Blue tradition.
We love the common man… at a distance.
Making this shit about race instead of about raw State power is a guarantee it will never change.
Old Guy Music is almost on point. Think “A Hard Snow” instead. Still, cool cover, and covers of Dylan are always better than Dylan.
SO YOU WANT TO MAKE EVERYONE AROUND YOU SICK AND MAYBE DIE???
Weeeelll, not everybody.
We’re off to a good start today.
I’m coming around to the idea
I’d settle for 10%.
Good interface, OM. I’m surprised that anyone even raises their eyebrows anymore. Give the lady credit for being hardcore ignorant though.
“Doggone it, we was shootin’ for ‘insurrection’!”/Canadian trucker
The Honkening will continue.
Their police chief equated it to it so….not that far off
Corrected for accuracy.
Doug Ford is a sorry sack of shit. His drug addicted brother was smarter, funnier, and better at his job.
Crackheads get shit done.
There’s still hope for Hunter then, right?
Im going to guess that he’s been into the world of heroin and opiates too much to be effective at anything.
An ex of mine (OG-2X-OG) was a self-reformed former coke user but at the time, a weed enthusiast. She would get frustrated at her weed guy cause he could never give her a definite time to collect the goods. She’d hang up the phone and say “fuckin’ burners….all they do is lay on the couch. My coke dealer would be at my house before I even ended the call. They work fast.”
Drug dealers in general aren’t the most reliable folks. Or so I’ve heard.
They surrender?
“More than 50 avalanches were recorded in Tyrol region within 48 hours following days of heavy snowfall.”
Is that a lot? It sounds like a lot.
Greta nods in solemn agreement.
Watching two strong advocates that government sucks propelled into the ears and eyes of Canadians and Americans is really awesome.
Good job Gordie and viva
https://mobile.twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1489794991308345345?cxt=HHwWgsC40dep6KwpAAAA
Heh.
Definitely the least evil megabillionaire.
Certainly the most entertaining.
I fear for what the Left will do to destroy him personally and financially.
At least since John McAffe was murdered. Which I guess kinda answers your question there…
Now I’m bummed.
Making that about state power and not race means the problem might get meaningfully addressed and the divisive grift might stop so don’t hold your breath.
Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton nod vigorously in agreement.
Judicial logic
A state judge in Virginia on Friday issued a temporary restraining order blocking Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s executive order making masking in school’s optional.
In her ruling, Arlington County Circuit Court Judge Louise M. DiMatteo found the seven school districts that had sued to block the order were “likely to succeed” with their argument that Youngkin did not have the authority to overrule the local school boards.
The school districts filed suit last month, contending that Youngkin’s Jan. 15 order allowing parents to decide if their children wear masks in public schools despite district mask requirements was “a clear violation of the School Boards’ constitutional rights and responsibilities.” They also contended making the masking optional would make their universal masking policy to combat the spread of Covid-19 “ineffective.”
WTF? School boards have Constitutional rights?
And- let’s see some hard evidence of that “effectiveness” plz.
Fucking judges and their “Because Mommy says!” clause.
Judicial robes should be synonymous with dunce caps.
WTF? School boards have Constitutional rights?
who knows…..haven’t read it
that’s kinda the point of virus theater: it has revealed the various ways that offices have undue power over us
for me it’s simple: education is none of the state’s business; close the schools, return the taxes, problems solved
Yes, granted by those Public Heath Commissioners you voted for. Do keep up.
It’s become an occupation
Better than being a professional politician.
So this is the weekend Go Fund Me died? I cant imagine pissing off 1/2 the country good for your business model.
How is this not fraud? People donated money for one cause, it will be used for something else. That sounds like fraud.
Update: https://mobile.twitter.com/gofundme/status/1489870510057877505
Too late, GFM, too late.
Yeah maybe their seat-of-the-pants business model of “we’ll donate your money to whoever the fuck we feel like” wasn’t the smartest decision.
Heh, people were disputing charges on their credit cards instead of directly asking for refunds which entails a charge to the recipient apparently. They’re doing the right thing in order to save money, a perfectly legitimate reason of course, not because they’ve realized the error of their ways.
???
A disputed charge usually costs the retailer a fixed amount. I think in their case it’s about $15.
They were getting killed with the fees.
It costs them like a bounced check on each transaction. Also, it raises the retailers discount rate (the % fee paid to the CC company by the retailer on each transaction) and could possibly lead to cancellation of credit card acceptance if charge backs are too big a proportion of transactions. You want to avoid charge backs.
I imagine in their TOS they have some CYA clause that allows them to redirect funds under certain circumstances and those certain circumstances include because ‘we want to’.
Dunno, here is one of the LawTuber folks going through the TOS and has some questions
https://twitter.com/HoegLaw/status/1489835922900275200
IANAL, but I couldn’t find any reference to redirecting funds in their TOS either.
From what I can tell, they are pinning it on their “cant use GoFundMe for violence” but the problem is, that isn’t the stated or intended goal of the fund and they admitted that to the Freedom Convoy they believed them to be a peaceful protest.
My guess is some young woke lawyer pulled the trigger and now the senior team is cleaning up their mess.
The courts will put practical limitations on stuff like that. The TOS could say “any money you pay us is for the service of curating a list of approved causes. Any money donated by us to a cause you specify is purely incidental and has no relation to your payment.” No court is ever going to let that play out (unless it’s FICA and SS).
Woke/broke…
I think this was a case of most people not knowing any alternatives exist. Now millions have been made aware of givesendgo as a non-woke counterpart.
lolwut
The Guardian in action, folks.
‘”mountain lions are not especially comfortable on land zoned for single family homes,”
That must be the reason I never see them.
‘
In our survey of 1000 cougars, 45% preferred to spend time in single family homes. 42% preferred to spend time in two story apartments, and 3% ate the pollster.
I love science, thanks ttt.
99.9% preferred to spend time in singles bars.
Happy birthday Bad Henry
Clear, concise communication
The agency also addressed the distinction between people admitted for COVID-19 and those diagnosed with COVID-19 after admission.
“Approximately 20 percent of SARS-CoV-2 admissions during early Omicron predominance were likely for reasons other than COVID-19, a proportion even higher among young and vaccinated adults. Given high rates of SARS-CoV-2 community transmission, this is not unexpected,” the CDC said.
One-third of patients classified as having been admitted for COVID-19 received no COVID-19–directed therapies.
“However, the pandemic health care burden is not limited to hospitalizations for symptomatic COVID-19,” the CDC noted in the study. “Even patients with positive SARS-CoV-2 test results admitted for non-COVID-19 conditions require isolation rooms and use of personal protective equipment and might transmit infection to health care workers, exacerbating staff shortages.”
Yeah, okay.
Stay strong America, we’ll whip this thing yet. Isolate!
Generally, I’ve always held that a virus is gonna virus with only so much we can do. But there are hard differences across the country….some places hit thrice as hard as others, and it does strike me that there are ranges of effect, and I think I have some great prejudices that explain it all.
NY, NJ, CT, MA got hit early before there was much time to adapt behaviors like hiding in the basement for five years
NC, WI, MN, CO, NE are the normies, the kind of people who limit themselves to one pizza per day and other healthful choices
NH, VT, UT, WA, AK, HI are naturally isolated and have seen a slower attack
CA is weird as fuck and cannot be explained in rhyme nor data.
The rest of us fit into your average deplorable flyover hillbilly types marrying our sisters and getting covid from undercooked pork products.
Minnesoda avoided the 70K deaths that the models predicted because of the wise and benevolent leadership of King Walz!
It had nothing to do with the people. We were helpless without the government telling us what to do.
lutefisk: almost as effective as drinking your own urine
Yes, but the booster mandates would incite a rebellion
NH, VT, UT, WA, AK, HI are naturally isolated and have seen a slower attack
In the Before Times, there was a shit-ton of cross-border traffic between NH and MA. People in southern NH commuting to the Boston area for work, and people from MA going to NH for tax free shopping. Even now during this insanity, there is still a good-bit of cross-border traffic except the people coming north are coming north for not just tax-free shopping, but normality.
yeah, I was just being silly, of course
here in TN we have more border than most states with interesting affects: figure, for example, that a good fourth of medical reports from MEM are actually MS or AR natives; same for CHA with SC and GA patients
also mitigates sales tax, a critical consideration for a state with no income tax: you can’t crank the governor’s cut on tobaccy, hooch, or gasoline without teaching half the state to top off when they’re across the line twice a week
How is this not fraud? People donated money for one cause, it will be used for something else. That sounds like fraud.
Letitia James will be on that like white on rice. Just give her a few months to investigate.
Let’s be honest. More “housing” in cougar territory means more pets and children
A cougar’s gotta eat.
Or more satisfied teenage boys.
“A cougar’s gotta eat”
Paging Winston’s mom…
Powerline,
https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2022/02/the-week-in-pictures-media-meltdown-edition-2.php
I’m changing the labels in my service shop next week.
https://i2.wp.com/www.powerlineblog.com/ed-assets/2022/02/Screen-Shot-2022-01-31-at-7.48.52-AM.png
Looks like McAfee’s body is still on ice in Spain and they’re having trouble getting it brought back to the US:
https://www.zerohedge.com/medical/software-pioneer-john-mcafees-body-still-prison-morgue-freezer-spain-over-7-months-after
He’s more interesting in death than his detractors were in life.
Even dead, still the best choice for next libertarian presidential candidate.
Shipping McAfee’s body back to the United States could probably qualify as drug trafficing.
ACLU- Defenders of Freedom
The American Civil Liberties Union announced this morning that it’s pushing eight Iowa school districts to reinstate their mask mandates.
In Central Iowa, the ACLU says it sent letters to the Ankeny and Johnston school districts. School boards in both of those districts dropped mask mandates in recent months. The school districts have one week to respond to the ACLU before further legal action may be taken.
The plaintiffs represented by the ACLU say masks are needed in schools to protect children with disabilities.
Working hard to defend the right of the few to limit the freedom of the many.
*sinister cackling*
Yesss yeeeesssss, channel your hate! Strike them down! Fight it out to the death!
Are they not allowed to wear a mask if they want to wear one? No? Well what’s the problem then?
Who had been steered further from their founding principles than the ACLU?
It’s pretty consistent to their founding principles. It was just that period in their middle age when they were reasonable.
I don’t think they’ve moved all that much
Thanks. I think I, like many people, still think of them as defending Nazi’s right to free speech on principle, but that may have just been a high point.
I think they started out more principled (if still biased), but have seen an erosion of that principle over the past couple decades. I think they were the mirror image of what IJ is now.
IJ and the FIRE are the two groups that get my money these days.
Just a friendly reminder that the Institute for Justice is available as a charity on Smile.Amazon.com.
If you use Amazon, they’ll send a small amount of any money spent to the charity of your choice (but only if you buy from the smile. subdomain or opt-in inside their app).
Yabbut… Apparently they treat their employees badly.
(er, Amazon, not IJ. The lass on the IJ podcast has quite some vocal fry: ugh.)
Already have the FIRE as my Amazon Smile charity
the ACLU wiki page doesn’t have any controversies paragraphs
I obviously took crazy pills this morning instead of quercetin.
“Civil liberties” = “forcing kids to wear masks”
Honk honk.
Wait. The ACLU is trying to trample the individual rights of those poor school boards?
What is the over/under on the same ACLU legal team arguing in a Virginia court that school boards cannot be told what to do and then jumping on a flight to Des Moines to argue that school boards have no rights and must follow the edicts of public health officials?
https://nypost.com/2022/02/04/seven-russians-die-dozens-poisoned-after-drinking-battery-fluid/
Yikes.
Hopefully they were vaccinated.
masks
this could have been prevented
Not sure about vaccinated, but they were certainly piste-offed.
when government is out of the areas of life it should have no charter in, then 90% of access lawsuits simply go away
Silicone Saturday understands that bridge is better than chess.
https://archive.fo/eIgl5
I LOL’d
https://twitter.com/Aaaannieway/status/1489662929561657352
Expect an influx of people…
https://twitter.com/GhostOfGord/status/1489952969474953220?s=20&t=3yeTrXOWn62wwbjFismogw
Go get em Gordilocks!
??????????
?????
?????
Oh dear.
So many Tulpas will need to be told to fuck off…
I’m going to start prepping a new site for all the cranks on here to flee to once they get alarmed by the success of the site and all the new converts.
I for one will be enraged if the Honey Harvest is full of Canuck truckers slurping up all of Kinnath’s mead. THAT IS FOR ME!
Jimblitarians.com? If you need I have some perfectly good logos you could use.
*mumbles mumble bullshit contest mumble mumble**
Just don’t get between the local HHers and Kinnath’s potion. That’s a recipe for serious trouble, even if your mother is a trucker.
If they’re all Canucks, shouldn’t that be something more like “Sod off, eh?”
No doot aboot it.
Sod’s too Limey-ish
Maybe “Take off,
hoserTulpae?”A song to mark the occasion!
🙂
The apocalypse is upon us
When conservatives fight one another over God and country, my general reaction is — have at it, and where’s the popcorn?
But the recent recall election in Shasta County that pitted a Republican ex-police chief against a far-right faction backed by a local militia is different. It’s a wake-up call ahead of the 2022 midterms that elections can go very wrong, even in liberal California.
What happened in Redding should be a big, blinking warning light to what’s left of the mainstream Republican Party, and to us all that we have an obligation as Californians to protect elections across the state, not just the ones in our backyard.
The far right has made it clear that it hopes to target and drive out elected officials in places where their small numbers have outsized power with the right mix of discontent, propaganda and money. If those officials are replaced by ones willing to put ideology ahead of rules and democracy, we are going to end up with actual election fraud (not the conspiracy sort), school curriculums straight out of the 1950s, and perhaps even sheriffs and district attorneys more interested in power than law.
On the surface, this may look like democracy, but know it for what it is: the stirrings of totalitarian rule by people I don’t like. Bullies. Wrongthinkers. Cisgender patriarchal heterosexuals.
Scum. The worst of the worst.
And yet nothing was wrong with Antifa seizing whole city blocks of Seattle by force.
These people are probably going to get what they want, blood in the streets. I just hope it will be mostly theirs.
They keep pushing the term “far right” in hopes that it will scare leftists and moderates, counting on the near-certain fact that those groups will never question what the label means, or especially who decided to apply it.
Rule number one: Do not engage the opposition in factual debate, ever.
Rule number two: Label the opposition as hateful and evil.
Rule number three: When it fails, double down.
That whole column is a cesspool of projection.
They are incapable of self-reflection. They’re always right, they’re never wrong because their intentions are to usher in utopia. Arrogance is their primary virtue.
How about letting those far right loonballs have their own state? They could name it after the third President and keep to themselves and not bother the goodthinkful persxns of California. No, can’t have that, they would fail miserably and be way too poor. We can’t let them do that, it’s for their own good that they have to remain.
✔️ whatever single-digit proposition that was
That one wanted to split up California in five states. I think that’s a bit much but I would absolutely love to see a State of Jefferson. I’d buy property in the north state in a heartbeat if I thought a split would realistically happen, love it up there.
+1 violet fingertip
See also death penalty, rent control…
“It’s that thing,” said Chamberlain. “If you say something long enough and often enough, people will believe it.”
That’s our best weapon, and they’re trying to turn it against us. That’s not fair.
Moty said he’s done with politics, looking a little shell-shocked, especially for an ex-cop. But he’s not going quietly, because he’s mad, and worried. And the rest of us should be, too.
“If they can take someone with my experience and education and reputation and twist it all around backwards,” he said, “then they can do this to anybody.”
*Brett Kavanaugh nods in background*
If those dirty peasants can look me right in the eye and refuse to bow and scrape, you can bet it won’t be long before they start mocking people with Ivy League degrees!!
China is determined to make the Berlin 1936 Olympics look like a cordial diplomatic outreach.
https://apnews.com/article/winter-olympics-quarantine-hotels-e2d2ffc60d9800cf1951cc3eaed323cb
I won’t watch it. I’m not going to support that crap.
And I love to watch curling.
Not watching a single second. Fuck da CCP.
A substitute?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ollqyPwg1
“Inspiring words from a man who knows how to ski.”
Gosh, I never could have seen such a clusterfuck coming.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/entertainment/entertainment-celebrity/octomum-mandy-allwood-dies-aged-56/ar-AATtrEL?li=BBorjTa&ocid=mailsignout
I thought it was the other Octomom, but this is Octomum. Its like we are in a DC vs Marvel battle with England at times.
ah: that makes more sense
I’m amazed that the American Octomom ended up with a healthy and seemingly happy brood.
Glad her kids are healthy and happy. One of them is “severely autistic” and probably won’t be able to live on his own, one’s on the spectrum and probably will be able to, and all the rest are doing great.
They are 13 y.o. now, but this article is from when they were 11.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/15/style/octomom-kids-2018.html
The media has launched an all out attack on Joe Togan, digging up episodes where he uses the “N word” etc. Of course his use of the N word was to discuss the use of the N word, but the MSM is hoping people just read the headlines.
They are really that desperate—they have to shut down Joe freaking Rogan to maintain control of public discourse.
Problem is, Rogan is making all the wrong moves since they opened up that front.
???
There is a market opportunity for anti-cancel culture PR.
Yeah but like people who still talk to cops, they won’t listen when the PR is “shut the fuck up and never apologize”
The single largest advertisement buying segment in traditional media is pharmaceuticals.
That’s all this is about. Pfizer said “Go after Rogan.” So they did.
The talking heads are just cheap whores.
Yeah the dude has fuckyou money. He needs to start acting like it.
The fact that he’s groveling about it is pretty pathetic. What a wimp. I’m
out on Joe Rogan.
Meh; stoner.
I couldnt believe what I was hearing him say in his video after the Neil Young thing. So soft. So apologetic.
If they succeed in shutting him down, then there is pretty much nothing they cant do.
At this point the only thing that can succeed in shutting down Rogan is himself. He may just accomplish that if he keeps this shit up. A middle finger by him would only increase his audience at this point. Let’s see which route he chooses.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/crime/aurora-colorado-church-shooting-one-person-killed-and-2-wounded-in-shooting-inside-a-church-police-say/ar-AATux8N?ocid=mailsignout&li=BBnb7Kz
first you couldn’t go to a movie……………..
That whole column is a cesspool of projection.
Does a fish know it’s swimming?
They are really that desperate—they have to shut down Joe freaking Rogan to maintain control of public discourse.
Who would listen to Rogan when there are credible legitimate news sources out there like Rachel Maddow and Joe Scarborough? It doesn’t make sense. He must be silenced.
Gonna start non-compliance on Sunday. Good thing I’m so purty.
Go get em Festus!
Good luck!
Good thing you have that OnlyFans gig as backup.
#Hankhill
Give ’em hell!
And givesendgo.com is down.
Coincidence?
They might not have the capacity that they have been hit with.
Nevermind. Working now.
#fakenews
I think not!
Can’t handle the traffic, apparently. So, good news/bad news for them.
They really should reach out to A CDN, stat.
Hah, and just like that, I get a Cloudflare page from givesendgo.com. So they’re working on it.
It has been up and down all night. They’re getting more traffic in a day than they usually get in a month.
GSG sends a shot across GFM’s bow
Not that I trust Poso, but he is claiming it is a DDOS attack
Wouldn’t shock me. They said last night that they expected an uptick in DDoS and that it was a cost of doing business in this space.
Someone should open up a GoFundMe to help expand server capacity of GiveSendGo
LOL
We love the common man… at a distance. = look no one wants the poors in their back yard. Just move em to poorville or something.
Mother Sauces in a 2 Michelin Stars French Restaurant with Giuliano Sperandio – Le Taillevent **
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L7l8tXyzul8
SCIENCE! marches on
The School District of Philadelphia released new mask guidelines Wednesday encouraging students to wear a cloth mask over a surgical mask, according to its website.
“Cloth masks alone are no longer considered to be effective protection against the spread of coronavirus,” according to the updated protocols, which list three types of masking in order of preference.
The document states that the most favorable option is “a three-ply disposable surgical mask supplied by the district, with the addition of a cloth mask.”
A three-ply disposable mask worn alone comes in second place and a properly fitted KN-95 mask in third.
——-
“We are simply following the guidelines from the public health experts who obviously know best how we can stay safe to continue to have in-person learning available to our students, which is the best way for our children to learn,” a School District of Philadelphia spokesperson told FOX29.
Why not three masks? Why not an underwater rebreathing apparatus?
masks are discriminating against people with glasses. at leas mine fog up like crazy, despite whatever tricks you learn on the internet to help.
Preach, brother.
Speccy solidarność!
Utter horseshit. What I can’t figure out, is why they are saying even properly fitted KN-95s suck worse than double-masking.
If you click through, it’s an order of preference, not effectiveness. Probably their own effectiveness vs comfort vs being able to social signal with their cloth mask slogans matrix.
I thought for a minute you were calling for an underwear breathing apparatus.
OFFS.
We’re saved!
The America Competes Act passed 222-210, largely along party lines.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said the bill “will ensure that America is preeminent in manufacturing, innovation and economic strength and can outcompete any nation.”
The bill has a number of provisions, including $52 billion to make chips, $45 billion to improve supply chains for critical items and $160 billion for scientific research and innovation.
House Science Committee Chair Eddie Bernice Johnson, D-Texas, told NPR that a major federal infusion in research is badly overdue — especially to help the U.S. go toe-to-toe with China.
With the omniscient guidance of the federal government to direct those investments, we can’t lose.
i mean it would be a shame to let all that budget surplus go to waste… I am sure much science will be researched and innovated
if I had a hammer, I’d wonder where the nails went
America First! Make America Great Again!
Thandiwe Newton has said she wants to “apologise every day to darker-skinned actresses” for not representing them.
https://twitter.com/SkyNews/status/1489270957592117250
grovel more it will keep you relevant
Hallie Berry is doing just FINE.
Speaking of the War on Global Warming…
Should we expect a White House victory lap in the next few days?
I don’t know global warming seems to be winning round here there was barely any winter and zero snow this year. Today it was 12C and sunny
Lunch
https://photos.app.goo.gl/vdsLsv3FkVstxXWk9
Hullo, Lunch. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MuWwCUXGzWE
wut
https://www.thesun.co.uk/dear-deidre/7419667/pregnant-after-party-group-sex/
Marie Stopes clinic or adoption.
do people really fuck randos without a condom? that is why Britain was, pre cov, the number one exporter of STDs I assume.
looks like China’s coach for women’s hockey is due for some re-education
US surpasses 900,000 COVID-19 deaths now leads the world
The United States inflates the death toll to excuse becoming more authoritarian. The established authoritarian regimes deflate the death tolls to maintain control. At what point do we end up at that phase?
It’s amazing how many Americans have died of covid and i don’t know a single one.
I do. I’ve pronounced several dead. Just because you don’t know anybody doesn’t mean it isn’t happening.
Covid is a real thing and it actually does kill people. Yes, there’s room for discussion whether the official numbers have been inflated or manipulated for political ends, but the death toll is much closer to the official number than it is to zero.
I’m not claiming covid isn’t real, but I am definitely suspicious of the gaudy numbers.
^^
I know of a few people who have died. All but one were culled in their 70s or 80s. The one was sad, but it was unclear whether it was covid or a vaccine injury that did him in. IIRC, he had a stroke while in the hospital for breathing issues that started shortly after he got the booster.
Anyone have an explanation for the US leading the world (or second place) in per capita deaths then? obesity? what would be different?
See my post below. We really don’t. We are considerably better than our closest competitor.
And of course I forgot to add the punchline. I have no doubt that people have had their lives shortened because of this. However, I think if we were able to observe a parallel universe where covid never existed, we’d find that 600k or 700k of the 900k covid deaths would be dead or on death’s doorstep in the parallel universe, too.
The US has got to be one of the fattest countries in the world. While places like Tonga and Samoa likely have us beat, their populations could fit in a smallish town here.
Understandably.
The United States is quite a bit larger in terms of population than most other developed countries and has higher rates of covid risk factors so it’s difficult to get a fair comparison. It’s very difficult to trust the data from India and China. India has a terrible health infrastructure and it’s likely the death toll there is severely underreported for that reason. China has an authoritarian dictatorship and it’s likely the death toll there is much higher than the official numbers because the CCP has no interest in facts that inconveniently make the regime look bad.
If you compare the United States to the whole of the European Union it’s a somewhat better comparison. Europe has 445 million people. The United States has 330 million (these are round numbers, to be sure). Europe has States with better infrastructure and health care delivery systems, as does the United States. The total number of official covid deaths in Europe so far is just over 2 million. The United States has just passed 900,000 official deaths. Europe has .0045 deaths per capita from covid since the dawn of the pandemic. The U.S. has .0027 deaths per capita, 40% less than the supposedly so much awesomer European healthcare system, despite our considerably higher rate of obesity, which is the number one risk factor for death from covid.
I don’t hear anybody talking about that, but they should be. Despite how awful it’s been, we’ve done considerably better than our nearest comparable.
Nice points
Covid is a real thing and it actually does kill people. Yes, there’s room for discussion whether the official numbers have been inflated or manipulated for political ends, but the death toll is much closer to the official number than it is to zero.
No one would have even been aware of Covid beyond an especially deadly flu season for the elderly except for the hysterical response from the government. I get that as an ER physician you see a wildly disproportionate segment of the American population that is especially susceptible to Covid. Covid is a non-entity though to the general population. The Pfizer trial reported two Covid deaths out 22,000 non-vaccinated Americans over six months. That’s a statistical blip and lower than the cardiac death rate among vaccinated participants during the same time span.
I disagree. We haven’t seen a viral pandemic with this sort of death rate for a hundred years so there’s no way nobody would have noticed, government or no. Also, the delta and omicron variants have been killing younger adults at a considerably higher rate than alpha did so it’s not confined to the elderly.
About 2.5 million people a year die in the United States, covid or no. Covid did result in excess deaths in 2020 and 2021, but you’re correct that it’s still a relatively small portion of the total annual deaths in the United States, trailing far behind cardiovascular disease (heart attacks and strokes), which kill around 900k-1million yearly.
I agree that the panic driven policies and media fear porn has made things much worse than they would have been, but it’s not nothing and not even close to just being a bad flu season.
Keep in mind that the initial Pfizer trials used healthy, non-elderly volunteers. It’s not really surprising that few of them died of alpha variant covid since alpha primarily killed the excluded from the study old people. The studies used to justify the EUA were absolute garbage.
When I said no one, I should have clarified that I meant an average person or family. It was going back to Urthona’s comment about not knowing anyone who has died. My point was that, if there was a media blackout, most Americans would be unaware of any threat from Covid because is a non-event for the vast majority of people.
Well, sure, but that’s true of nearly everything in the news.
The funny (not really) thing is that I personally know quite a few acquaintances who have had strokes, heart issues, or blood clot issues in the past few months. I just got an email from church yesterday to pray for another member who has had to go to the hospital to deal with blood clots in the lungs. The day before, I heard that the new pastor (early 40s) at our old church just had a stroke. Maybe it’s observer bias on my part…
Certainly, but everyone would most definitely be aware of a dangerous pandemic killing their family and friends off left and right, even with a media blackout. You wouldn’t need the media to talk about isolation, masks, or vaccines. I’m saying that most people wouldn’t even know Covid exists without the media announcing it. That is how little Covid affects the general population.
Covid did result in excess deaths in 2020 and 2021,
I’m sure it did. Dr. Rushworth looked at excess deaths and COVID deaths (mainly in Sweden, but he gets to the US toward the end):
I would agree with Rushworth that the massive lockdowns likely resulted in many more deaths than they prevented. I personally have seen quite a few patients that either did not or could not go to a doctor to see about that nagging pain, unexplained weight loss, or other issues that at the time were probably treatable, but by the time they got to me were past the point of salvage.
Let’s also not discount the massive surge in depression, sedentary habits, overeating, alcohol abuse, and so forth that happened, all of which probably led to a large number of deaths. I don’t know how you would demonstrate that empirically though.
I wish I had the time and energy to do a “back-of-the-napkin” breakdown of the excess deaths and claimed COVID deaths. The general trend is about a 1% increase in deaths a year, due to population increase and an aging population, so you should expect each year to have around 33 – 34,000 more deaths than the previous year. There’s also innumerable bunny holes/variables you can try to chase down. You also need to be somewhat cautious about the natural statistical noise in total deaths, etc. – when you are looking at sub-1% variations, you probably need to be using multi-year averages, but account for that general trend, etc. Cross-country comparisons are even more fraught, as they introduce a whole slew of variables.
There are also the mysterious declines in some causes of death during the pandemic, as well. “Dry tinder” that would have died anyway of something else? Misclassification? Who knows?
You mean that Pfizer trial they hid the results of?
Yes, that one. It was so poorly done that under any other circumstances it would have been regarded as just another drug company sponsored trial designed to win approval for a product.
That’s been one of the odd things about this pandemic: the unquestioning acceptance among previously critical scientists and clinicians of pharmaceutical company sourced studies and data. My theory is that we want there to be a solution so badly that we’ll ignore all the shortcomings.
It feels cultural and ego based to me. “Look at those rubes questioning our profession! We have training and schooling and degrees! We couldn’t possibly be wrong about this!”
You may very well be right. No question there’s been an enormous amount of hubris through this entire thing.
It was so poorly done that under any other circumstances it would have been regarded as just another drug company sponsored trial designed to win approval for a product.
That is the thing. I now know they do that all the time. I did not know that two years ago and I am fucking pissed. I am now on a follow train of physicians who claim their sole purpose in life is to get people off of prescription drugs. Pfuck Pfizer and anyone who supports them.
I did not know that two years ago and I am fucking pissed.
#metoo, and we’re not the only ones
Years ago I sat through a presentation on a new drug and its clinical trial results. The benefit of the new drug was incredibly small when you squinted at the data, but everyone was touting it as a huge success. Decades of Pharma cash, I believe, have warped the perceptions of the people involved in the drug approval process and allopathic medicine in general.
When government officials are able to steer taxpayer funds to “PRIVATE COMPANIES” for research and then profit from said steerage the system is fucking broke. I am talking mutherfuckers against the wall broke. People need to lose their fortunes and go to jail over what has happened the past two years.
My friend whom I took to the hospital in August is still in a rehab facility and still has a trach. She is, however, a kidney transplant recipient and I’m not sure how hard she works on her rehab or if that’s even something you can help control.
I should also say that another perfectly healthy (to my knowledge) friend died of COVID in a flash. Sick on Friday, ER on Saturday, dead on Sunday.
My two friends are my age.
I have heard an outsized number anecdotes where people my age (mid-50s), relatively healthy, going in a flash like that.
I’ve taken care of several. Honestly nobody really knows why some people have covid and it’s either no symptoms or a bad cold while others have an incredible inflammatory surge and die or are in the ICU for weeks. One would assume there has to be some sort of genetic or at least gene expression component but I haven’t seen anyone with a solid theory of why there is such a range of outcomes.
Influenza has killed a lot of people, but the vast majority are the very young with incomplete immune systems, the elderly and infirm, and those who are immunocompromised for one reason or another. Covid kills a lot of old people, hardly any young people, and for some reason a considerable number of healthy people in their adult years. It’s a strange disease and I don’t think we are anywhere close to understanding it.
Sorry to hear that, Moj.
I can only speak anecdotally. I’ve known 6 adults officially diagnosed with Covid. 3 before a vaccine was available, 3 who were vaxxed. 1 hospitalization for less than 24 hrs, one of the vaxxed, a person who has been hospitalized an average of 2 times per year for the last decade. All survived. 2 diagnosed unvaccinated children, barely as bad as a cold.
The United States inflates the death toll to excuse becoming more authoritarian.
Weirdly, I take it as, the death toll shows their authoritarianism is a failure. At its stated goal, anyway.
“We put up with all this shit, and nearly a million people still died?”
I know one person who died of COVID, an acquaintance at most, who was kpushing 70 and, well, not thin.
Good morning, Old Man!
Sorry about your mask adventures. I almost feel sorry for the Karens. Two years of heavenly busybodying coming to an end.
Sad!
¡KAREN MUSTERING NOTICE!
Fall in with your attitudes sharpened (eyes Tundra 142-round full automatic ghost magazines)
ostonox
@ostonox
BREAKING: Twitch Streamer Hasan Piker buys $200,000 Porsche Taycan.
https://twitter.com/ostonox/status/1489758277714038785
damn socialism pays. But I guess he it is not his fault he is forced to adapt to the system
He can use it to go visit his BLM pal in her mansion.
$200, and he picks that color?
An incident involving a Dutch reporter in the middle of a live broadcast who was dragged away by Chinese security officials was an isolated event and will not affect foreign media’s reporting at the Beijing Games, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) said on Saturday.
The journalist, Sjoerd den Daas, was delivering his live report to public broadcaster NOS on Friday evening during the Games opening ceremony in the Chinese capital when security officials surrounded him and one forcefully dragged him away.
https://www.reuters.com/lifestyle/sports/dutch-reporter-on-air-incident-was-isolated-case-says-ioc-2022-02-05/
What was he saying?
McAfee didn’t kill himself.
my son posted that footage on his twitter
some quasi-English retort about FOLLOW RULES from some ostensibly ROC function nailed him back in reply which was promptly liked by ten bots
It was for health and safety, well and good. Carry on old boy.
And then nothing happened.
🙂
“It’s not a protest anymore. It’s become an occupation,” Ontario Premier Doug Ford said, according to The Associated Press. “It’s time for this to come to an end.”
Go fuck yourself.
Toronto police are blocking off neighborhoods in an attempt to stop the spin-off Freedom Convoy coming to Toronto.
but also for notable tech entrepreneurs including the Intuit co-founder Scott Cook and Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison. The latter modeled his 23-acre Woodside estate on a 16th-century Japanese imperial palace. The median home price in the town is $5.5m, and the median household income is more than $250,000. The landscape is scattered with sizable mansions and estates as well as sprawling ranches.
Ahh. The real reason for not allowing that type of new development in that area. Err… what OMWC said.
An avalanche has killed five people in the Austrian state of Tyrol on Friday, state police have said.
Five Covid deaths.
Old Man Music is good.
I’m sure I’m no good at statistics anymore, but how is the median home price 5.5 million while the median household income is 250 thousand?
It’s called credit, it’s like free money. Interest rates are near zero, you can be pre-approved for a loan with one quick swipe on our new app ReverseMortgageCreditSpaceShuttle TXT DICK to 515-233-6969.
Not all that long ago a median house there would have been a couple hundred grand. That stretch of land had some of the greatest gains in real estate value on the planet over the last four decades. Not all that far away from there my parents bought a house for 100k in 1981. It would be over 3 million today.
in Japan they’ll issue 100 year mortgages
Makes some sense there. Your entire family and all your descendents will live in it.
A “recent” innovation. Ignored in the summary, Japanese housebuilding is not designed to last long term. Forty years old and it will be either a total renovation or a tear down. After a hundred years, it will a millstone around the neck.
no doubt
FWIW, the crap that American houses are now made out of will be rotten well inside of a 30 year mortgage
You mean using styrofoam for cladding isnt the long term choice?
Also the people who own the houses don’t actually live there.
Another possible explanation is that a lot of people on the low end of the income scale don’t even own houses.
I don’t have the data or the answers, but it’s always important in these things to know where the data came from and then understand how and to what extent they are related.
median home price 5.5 million: that’s from tax records or proxies for tax records…it’s probably every house and meaningful, but nothing suggests it includes multi-family facilities; it would include houses whether the occupants are owners or renters
household income is 250 thousand: this is for income for people whose domicile of record is there without regard to how or where they actually make their money or even whether they really live there and would include lots of people who rent houses and probably even more who rent apartments
when drilling from opposite ends of similar cohorts, we can get a bunch of spurious correlations; the statistically valid approach is to define the cohort first and then find the data for that cohort second
A price to income ratio in the 20s won’t last long. As the inevitable turnover happens, either the prices will come back down to a supportable level or the income will go up to match. however, we’re in a housing bubble that is starting to dwarf 2008, so i don’t think that neighborhood is the only one in for a reckoning
“more than” $250,000. They probably have a stat category like 250k – 1mm that people there fall under.
Also, if they’ve held their properties there for any length of time, they may have benefitted from Blackrock recently buying up land.
Journalisming at its best
The alleged involvement of women has touched a nerve in a country that has long struggled to address gender violence. Activists say the case demonstrates the scale of internalized misogyny in India, where women are taught to uphold patriarchal structures. They fear violence against women will worsen as support grows for right-wing extremist political groups that foster traditional, patriarchal values.
They obviously need a cultural revolution.
Ezra Levant at Rebel News linked this tweet as evidence of the first bit of violence at a trucker protest, which was directed at the trucker protesters.
Someone ran over a protester in Winnipeg.
Winnipeg?
But that is in Friendly Manitoba!
Where’s Jesse.in.MB for our Glib on the scene reporting?
True bravery.
https://www.dailystar.co.uk/love-sex/family-tried-force-arranged-marriage-26103843
Surely, viewing her work is a strike against the patriarchy.
Aussie protests are getting bigger
How much of a pain the ass is it for an east coast australian to drive to canberra i wonder? I assume there’s no road through the middle.
Random thought.
Sorry. West coast.
Looks like there’s a southern coastal motorway. Though I would never leave the quokkas: https://duckduckgo.com/?q=quokkas&t=h_&ia=images&iax=images
I was thinking Perth in my head which I believe to be the capital. And how much of a pain in the ass would it be to get truckers there.
Yes, Perth is the capital of Western Australia.
It’s a long drive from Perth to anywhere. I flew in and out of Perth when I was there. Three hours or so from Darwin, four or five to Sydney.
Australia is about the size of the lower 48 with the population of Texas.
I thought about going here while I was in Perth except I got sick. I cut back on a lot of things I had a planned. I didn’t do much beyond wander through some parks, tour the Perth Mint, and go have some fish and chips in Fremantle at the place with the Bon Scott statue.
I put Perth and Canberra into Google maps. 39 hour drive. All on paved roads; however, services might be sparse especially here. Oh, you also have state quarantine checkpoints (Federal quarantine service, but there are state/territorial-level equivalents with checkpoints at state/territorial borders) plus possible Covid restrictions on crossing state lines.
I also put Broome, WA in Google Maps. Broome is on the northwest coast of Australia. 59 hours, not all paved roads.
What the United States’ worldbeating plague-related death toll tells me is that we are (have been, for a long time) better than the rest of the world at keeping old sick people alive.
That shows what a failure our health care system is.
Call me “Daddy” during sex.
https://metro.co.uk/2022/02/05/woman-finds-out-her-dad-has-been-buying-her-nudes-on-onlyfans-16054130/
Oh, so now a father supporting his daughter’s choice to be an Independent Woman is bad? Quit being so old fashioned and Get Woke! Empower Women! Empower them good and hard!
Yabbut… Apparently [Amazon] treat their employees badly.
Everything I’ve heard is that they have the silicon valley corporate cult thing going pretty strong. Very woke, and not just nominally. They toss a ton of money into culture-destroying institutions and they are keen to take orders from FedGov.
I haven’t ordered from them in a couple of years, and even before I knew, only rarely.
We’re trying to de-amazon in the hopes of canceling when the next prime re-up comes around. It was a challenge at first (the first impulse is to pull up Amazon when we need something), but it’s getting better.
Walmart, though flawed themselves, is pretty prompt; ditto Costco. “Package for Bugs Bunny!”
-1 grammar rodeo
We’ve been using our Sam’s membership a bit, but if their last coupon book is an indication, they’re a couple cars back from Amazon on the woke train. Costco lost our business for being mask Nazis.
Amazon’s 3rd party partners are dropping the ball on deliveries. I had a package delivered to the wrong state a couple days ago. Who knows if I’ll ever get it.
A couple weeks ago I got a package after I got tired of waiting for it so I canceled. I haven’t looked at my credit statement but apparently I’m getting that one for free… I have no idea if the 3rd party got the text I sent them saying I got the package and don’t need a refund.
It’s here. Price for renewals goes up next month.
Unfortunately, it looks like someone may have crossed the border from Wisconsin. Hope all there pull through.
Expect this to be completely ignored by the media just like the last SUV incident, I’m sure.
That truck on the right is a Western Star, originally a brand of White (Cleveland OH) and built in Kelowna.
Daimler shut down Kelowna at some point after 2000 moving production to Portland OR and, eventually, some models to NC. The Kelowna plant stood idle for 15 years but was recently rescued: it’s a UHaul storage and rental center now.
Peterbilt/Kenworth still share production of small specialty trucks at Ste-Thérèse.
Alright, I threw some money at the truckers fund.
#HonkHonk
Which fund? I kicked in money to the lawyer fund through Rebel News.
I had my first Mask Nazi encounter this week ……
I made a store run this morning slightly hungover. Ok, I woke up half crocked and went to the store. I clucked at a woman wearing one of those chicken beak N95’s. I couldn’t help myself. BGAAAAAK!
License and registration….chicken fucker! BGAAAAK!
Chicken Ladies are notoriously horny.
?
Yeah those duckface masks are incredibly weird. Almost as weird as seeing people walk around outside with fucking masks on their faces.
Oblig: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FKss2pBYQ6Y
Pucker factor: 9/10.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-10461657/Boy-11-metal-hook-removed-penis-scrotum-freak-accident.html
Morning, Glibs.
I’m not sure if it was exhaustion, or if I’m simply getting accustomed to the mattress pad, but as far as I can tell, I slept through the night. That’s been a rare thing for a while at home, so I’m happy.
There are few things better than a solid sleep.
Mattress pad? are you saying you’re a bed wetter? You have rubber sheets? (even your giant arms can’t reach this far for a swipe gentle giant!)
I’ve never heard the term in such a context.
Since you have I’m guessing you’re projecting.