As Glenn Reynolds points out, November 2nd was the last day you could report this without being labeled a conspiracist

You voted, but for whom?

USA Today, Nov. 2, 2020: Will Your Vote Be Counted? Computer Experts Sound Warnings On America’s Voting Machines

Millions of voters going to the polls Tuesday will cast their ballots on machines blasted as unreliable and inaccurate for two decades by computer scientists from Princeton University to Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.

Toyed with by white-hat hackers and targeted for scathing reviews from secretaries of state in California and Ohio, Direct Recording Electronic voting systems, or DREs, have startled Illinois voters by flashing the word "Republican" at the top of a ballot and forgotten what day it was in South Carolina. They were questioned in the disappearance of 12,000 votes in Bernalillo County, New Mexico, in 2002 and 18,000 votes in Sarasota County, Florida, in 2006.

“Antiquated, seriously flawed and vulnerable to failure, breach, contamination and attack,” U.S. District Judge Amy Totenberg wrote of Georgia's aging DRE system before ordering the state to replace it in 2019. 

“No one is using a computer they purchased in the 1990s,” said Warren Stewart, senior editor and data specialist for Verified Voting, a nonprofit advocacy group tracking election systems. But voters in more than 300 counties and 12,000 precincts will be casting ballots using DRE technology already aging in the 1990s, when flash drives were bleeding-edge tech and Netscape Navigator was the next new thing.

DREs aren't the only problematic voting systems. As late as July, more than 1,200 jurisdictions were planning to count absentees on scanners so old they are no longer manufactured, and it's not clear how many, if any, updated their equipment since then.

New technology also has its share of criticism. Internet voting has been roundly panned by computer experts citing wide-open opportunities for hacking. Georgia's replacement system for DREs had been rejected by Texas and is the subject of a court battle over accuracy.

(-Snip)

“The whole community of computer scientists is mystified why election officials will not listen to experts about technology but will listen to the vendors (selling and maintaining it),” said Duncan Buell, a professor of computer science and engineering at the University of South Carolina who examined that state's system.

Reynolds has been arguing for paper ballots for at least as long as I’ve been reading him, which was in 2001. Now, or at least until this year’s election results were tallied, “experts” finally agree:

Paper is new gold standard for voting 

DRE systems have been manufactured by different companies, and just as with any digital product, all have revised and upgraded their DREs over the years. Security patches have been added and machinery locks strengthened. Critics, though, have never been convinced that the technology can be brought to the accuracy and security standards an election demands. 

To start with, the new gold standard for voting is paper.

Voters hand-marking their own paper ballots can verify their selection before the vote is counted by a machine. If the election is close or challenged, or if software fails, a paper ballot can be used to audit results. In 2018, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine declared that elections should be using human-readable paper ballots by this year – and voting equipment without such ballots should be removed as soon as possible.

Without paper, the voter is completely dependent on the machine technology to count accurately. The vast majority of DREs flunk the paper test, according to data collected by Verified Voting. 

“The real problem with DREs is that you cannot recover (vote results), even if you are lucky enough to detect that there is an error or it has been tampered with,” said Marian Schneider, former president of Verified Voting.

Through November 2nd, concerns about inaccurate vote counting and outright fraud used Georgia’s 𝚕̷𝚘̷𝚜̷𝚒̷𝚗̷𝚐̷ 𝚌̷𝚊̷𝚗̷𝚍̷𝚒̷𝚍̷𝚊̷𝚝̷𝚎̷ Governor Stacey Abrams to illustrate the point, as this article does. That concern ended on November 3rd.

A four-year war, and they won

“Fact-Check”. NBC, May 12, 2020: Coronavirus vaccine could come this year, Trump says. Experts say he needs ' ‘miracle’ to be right.

By Jane C. Timm

President Donald Trump has suggested multiple times that a coronavirus vaccine could come within months, an accelerated timeline that prominent health experts and veteran vaccine developers say is unlikely absent a miracle.

"We're looking to get it by the end of the year if we can, maybe before," Trump said Friday during in a Rose Garden event centered on his administration's efforts to fast-track a vaccine.

“Vaccine work is looking VERY promising, before end of year,” Trump tweeted on Thursday.

“I think we’re going to have a vaccine by the end of the year,” he told reporters later in the day.

But experts say that the development, testing and production of a vaccine for the public is still at least 12 to 18 months off, and that anything less would be a medical miracle.

Big-Tech expert says Google’s manipulations shifted at least 6 million votes to Biden

And

Trump would have won 311 Electoral College votes if the media weren’t biased.

And it’s certainly no coincidence that the drug companies delayed their success with vaccines until 3-days after the election.

No one seems to stay here long, but it does sell quickly

71 Glenville Road, $3.495 million, has a contract after just 56 days. It sold in 18 days in 2017 for the same price, and in 49 days in 2016 for $3.150.

Great White Fathers (and Mothers)

Al Dente sends along this video of white liberals and their views of the playful, ignorant darkies under their care and protection.

Finally, a politician with the guts to reduce the number of "essential activities"

And waiting at the remaining stores is safe?

New Mexico governor closes grocery stores

Who had a governor is going to shut down grocery stores due to the pandemic on their 2020 coronavirus bingo card? If you did, stamp that square. The governor of New Mexico is shutting down grocery stores in her state over COVID-19 testing results.

Four positive tests within two weeks and the store is to shut for two weeks. Why four cases and not three, or five? Because it sounds science-y.

The closures include two Walmarts in Albuquerque and one in Santa Fe, an Albertson’s in Roswell, a Smiths Food & Drug Center in Albuquerque and New Mexico Food Distribution Center in Albuquerque. There is already an order in place that limits capacity at all stores.

The state’s environment department has published a complete list of businesses that have been closed due to employees testing positive for COVID-19, as well as a watch list, and FAQ about the watch list.

Access to purchase food is now limited because of another order issued by the governor requiring capacity limitations at all stores. New Mexicans are now waiting outside, standing in line for up to two hours, local news reports indicate, which the governor’s office has disputed.

“Disputed” as follows:

The governor’s office issued a statement to KOB4 News TV, saying, “There is no community in the state of New Mexico where COVID-19 closures have closed off all (emphasis added) food and water or medicine options for any community or group of people. Every single community where the virus is forcing closures has alternate stores, alternate resources.

Heh heh heh; come on, boy

The Eyeliner Kid threatens Trump supporters, and the response is not quite a universal quaking-in-the-boots

Neutral reporting on CT COVID states

The CT Mirror provides statistics from our state health department with explanations of what those statistics are and are not measuring, but with no editorializing.

There’s so much known and unknown about this plague that a calm, hysteria-free presentation of some numbers is refreshing and useful. It’s a resource, not the whole answer, but welcome for all that.

The CT Mirror is an (intentionally) non-profit project run by real journalists. I’ve been subscribing to its news feed for a year or so now and found it an excellent source for news of Hartford politics. There’s a request for donations at the bottom of its home page (no beseeching emails, thank goodness) and today I’m finally going to respond to that request, because we need objective reporting more than ever.

Heartening news from our compassionate west coast

Actual photo — would the Bee lie to you?

Governor frees all drug dealers to make room for families caught celebrating Thanksgiving

SALEM, OR—To prepare for the influx of Thanksgiving rulebreakers, Oregon Governor Kate Brown has ordered all drug dealers to be freed from prison to make room for all the families who violate COVID restrictions. 

"Drugs are legal now anyway," said Governor Brown. "I hereby pardon all drug offenders currently doing time in Oregon prisons. I can do that right? Whatever -- I'm doing it. The real menaces to society are the families who try to gather with their loved ones to share food and give thanks. These violent science-deniers must be stopped!"

According to sources, Oregon State Police have been ordered to go door to door and round up all families trying to celebrate Thanksgiving. Any person or persons not found alone on a couch crying into a clamshell container of take-out food will be arrested on the spot.

Governor Brown has assured the public that this zero-tolerance policy will do something "very important and science-y" to stop the spread of bad sicknesses. 

But if it saves just one life ....

Fairfax teachers on strike

In Fairfax, Virginia, the number of failing students has nearly doubled, thanks to online learning,

Fairfax is the largest school district in the state of Virginia. A recent demographic survey concluded Fairfax was the 7th richest county in the United States with a poverty rate about half that of the national average. If you’re living in Fairfax, you’re probably doing pretty well.

But data from Fairfax schools shows that the switch to online learning has not been good for students. The rate of failure is up substantially for all groups but especially for Middle School students:

Between the last academic year and this one, which for most students is taking place remotely, the percentage of F’s earned by middle school and high school students jumped from 6 percent of all grades to 11 percent — representing an overall increase of 83 percent from 2019 to 2020. Younger students were more seriously affected than older ones: Middle-schoolers reported an overall 300 percent increase in F’s, while high-schoolers reported a 50 percent increase…

Comparing grades achieved in past years to grades this year showed that the drop in good grades is significant and unprecedented. The likelihood of passing an English class decreased by 40 percent this year for all students, according to the analysis, while the likelihood of passing mathematics decreased by 30 percent.

Failure, literally getting an F, is just one measure of what is happening. But it’s clear that a large percentage of students are underperforming in both math and English compared to previous years, even if they aren’t failing outright:

It also showed that student achievement is seriously off-track in mathematics and English, the two course subjects studied, from what would have been expected based on past performance. According to the analysis, 35 percent of all Fairfax students are underperforming in math and 39 percent are underperforming in English.

—snip

Overall, students who were considered excellent students in previous years probably continue to be excellent students. But those who struggled in previous years are doing much worse in online classes: “Historically low-performing students are seeing an explosion of C’s, D’s and F’s this semester, the analysis states, far more than would have been expected based on their pattern of achievement in past years.”

The Post report focuses a lot of attention on the declines of non-native speakers and children with disabilities but the most striking statistic to me was the 300% increase in failure among Middle School students. That’s a huge jump and it means that a lot of kids are not going to be prepared to transition successfully into high school. Fairfax is trying to adjust, adding catch-up classes but it’s hard to believe that’s going to make up for a year of declines like this.

What’s really worrisome is the bigger picture. Fairfax County is one of the most well-off counties in the U.S. and is generally considered to have an excellent school system. If failure rates are doubling there, what is happening in more average counties across the country? It’s a safe bet that things are even worse in many school districts that don’t have the same top teachers or the same resources at home.

But not to worry, Fairfax is on the job:

Fairfax schools have developed a new curriculum to address the problem:

Teachers in Virginia's largest school district have developed a new "anti-racist" and "culturally responsible" curriculum that will be available to students as early as this fall.

Social studies teachers from Fairfax County collaborated with other Virginia public school teachers to revamp their history curriculum, using a framework from Teaching Tolerance, the educational arm of the liberal nonprofit Southern Poverty Law Center. The new curriculum encourages students to "examine materials, events, and institutions critically attending to power, position, and bias" and will be available for use in 3rd, 4th, 6th, 7th, and 11th-grade classrooms.

Colleen Eddy, Fairfax County Public Schools social studies coordinator, said the new curriculum addresses the "overrepresentation of white and Eurocentric history" and the lack of "diverse perspectives" in education. Eddy singled out the district's U.S. history courses in particular, for which she says African-American history "deserves a truer and fuller account."

Teaching Tolerance’s list of "Essential Knowledge" for third through fifth-grade students includes teaching that "the United States was founded on protecting the interests of white, Christian men who owned property." It also says slavery was foundational to the growth of the U.S. economy and the country’s founding documents were created to protect the institution of slavery.

If there’s ever a day of reckoning where the enemies of this country are held accountable for harms done, and I suspect that day will never come, teachers should be right in front.

Like a lot of scientific discoveries

Serendipity

UPDATE: (a reader informs me that many don’t know that Alexander Fleming's discovery of penicillin was sparked by his accidentally leaving open a laboratory window that allowed the penicillin spores inside the lab, where they infected a Petrie dish, and so, he says, this reference is too obscure. Not for FWIW readers, surely! But just in case, this explanation).

Oxford Coronavirus vaccine hit 90% effective rate because of dosing error.

The Oxford University and AstraZeneca vaccine trials reached 90% efficacy by accident thanks to the “serendipity” of an error that led to some participants receiving half doses, it has emerged.

On Monday scientists revealed that the Oxford vaccine had an overall efficacy of 70%, but could be around 90% effective when administered as a half dose followed by a full dose a month later.

“The reason we had the half dose is serendipity,” said Mene Pangalos, executive vice-president of biopharmaceuticals research and development at AstraZeneca.

When university researchers were distributing the vaccine at the end of April, around the start of Oxford and AstraZeneca’s partnership, they noticed expected side effects such as fatigue, headaches or arm aches were milder than expected.

“So we went back and checked … and we found out that they had underpredicted the dose of the vaccine by half,” said Pangalos.

Instead of restarting the trial, he said researchers decided to continue with the half dose and administer the full dose booster shot at the scheduled time.

About 3,000 people were given the half dose and then a full dose four weeks later, with data showing 90% were protected. In the larger group, who were given two full doses also four weeks apart, efficacy was 62%

…..

Prof Sarah Gilbert from Oxford University, who led the research, said: “It could be that by giving a small amount of the vaccine to start with and following up with a big amount, that’s a better way of kicking the immune system into action and giving us the strongest immune response and the most effective immune response.”.