Biden on Biden: "He's a lying, dog-faced pony soldier"
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“I don’t remember saying masks weren’t necessary, and if anyone did, it was that other guy I’ve seen around here — or maybe it was Corn Pop”
There will be no dissent from the approved, official government line
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and for god’s sake, don’t question the election
And that’s just a sampling from last week’s suppressions.
A year late and three-trillion-dollars short
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CDC now admits that there’s a difference between dying with COVId and dying of Covid.
The Chinese Fu was certainly a bad thing and killed a lot of people, but how many non-COVID deaths were attributed to it, and how much of our national shutdown was baed on those numbers? Everyone who died with COVID bugs in their system was counted as a flu “victim”, including people who died in motorcycle accidents, emphysema, heart attacks, dementia, and falling from ladders. We’ll never know, because the CDC and state health authorities won’t tell us — they used the inflated figures to spread panic among the public, because it served their purpose.
Until now. The new goal is to persuade people to get vaccinated, so now our masters are admitting what has been known along: the numbers were cooked.
Next up, the millions of “cases” detected, numbers used to continue the lockdown and mask mandates. As far back as last August, even the NYT was reporting that the tests used to detect the virus were using a cycle threshold (amplification) of 40, when anything above 30X (24X, actually) was bogus: 85-90% of COVID positive results are actually showing historical artifacts of RNA, not an actual, live virus. Turns out, if you amplify something trillions of times, instead of millions, you’re going to detect a lot of meaningless, harmless traces of virus.
Red State explained the flaws of our testing process back in November. Well worth reading.
The bits of genetic material whose amount is being amplified ARE NOT viruses. They’re just small segments of inert genetic material found inside a virus’s shell. The PCR test doesn’t detect “live” viruses, at best it only detects their “dead remains.”
2. The detection of viral remains involves massively amplifying the amount in the original sample by running it through successive PCR cycles. And nothing about the PCR test itself will tell you if there was actually any “live” virus in the original sample.
…. As we saw in the previous entry, they also failed to mention that, since any test will have a false positive rate, mass testing will mean that an alarming number of bogus COVID-19 cases will continue to be reported every single day from now til eternity even after the virus has run its course, creating an illusory pandemic that never goes away.
And here’s a brief summary on the subject, put out by Yale Medical:
Standard tests diagnose large numbers of people carrying insignificant amounts of virus.
Most are not likely to be contagious. If Ct >33, virus not grown in culture.
A cycle threshold >35 is too sensitive.
A more reasonable cutoff is Ct 30-35 or even Ct <30.
In NY state lab, 50% of recent positives had Ct >35.
In MA, 85-90% of positives in July had Ct >30.
Cycle threshold is never included in the results sent to clinicians.
Again, all this has been known for at least 10 months, and almost certainly longer than that, but the high, fake case counts have enabled politics and health “authorities” to keep the country shutdown, and the money flowing. We’ve been had, and the deception, though being slowly brought to light by a few courageous governors continues. Question for the future: will the “disappearance” of the garden variety flu this year due to masking, or because flu cases were labeled of Chinese origin and assigned to the COVID count? Given the health system’s track record, I’m guessing the latter.
Interesting article in The Washington Examiner
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The Pandemic is Over. Not the Chinese Flu itself, but the emergency, and we should resume our normal lives. It’s well worth reading in its entirety, but I found its conclusion particularly striking:
How to get over a pandemic
Which raises the question: How do we reverse the learned behavior of fear, especially if it’s still reinforced by some elites? If you look at the lockdowners — the federal and local health authorities and the few remaining media cheerleaders — you can see a fear in their eyes right now.
CDC Director Rochelle Walensky lost her cool before the Senate Health Committee when GOP Sen. Susan Collins questioned her on the onerous rules on summer camps that require children to wear masks all day, every day, outdoors, for instance. Walensky fired back: “We now have 38,000 new infections on average per day. Last May 11, it was 24,000, and we sent a lot of kids home, and camps were closed.”
One need not be a statistician or epidemiologist to see the number games Walensky is playing there. Last May 11, those 24,000 infections were from fewer than 400,000 tests. This May 11’s 38,000 cases are from about 1 million tests. And this year, most U.S. adults are vaccinated, meaning they are at extremely low risk even if children catch it, and all children 12 and over will be able to get a shot by summer vacation anyway. Yet Walensky suggested that the current environment is more dangerous than last year’s.
That’s absurd, and its implication is clear: No matter how good things get, the CDC won’t admit anything is safe as long as the politics dictate it declare everything dangerous. Maybe the CDC just wants to preserve power. Maybe the Biden administration is afraid of making life difficult for the teachers unions that are still keeping schools closed. Maybe, at best, Joe Biden simply wants a great, dramatic July 4 reopening announcement for which he can take credit.
Nobody should be shocked that CDC guidance might be ungrounded in science. This same CDC advised against masks last year but still refuses to admit that outdoor masks are unnecessary and didn't admit that masking vaccinated people was pointless. The agency’s guidance on outdoor spread is that “less than 10%” of all cases were contracted outdoors, while it knows that the real number is far less than 1%.
Half of America has been walking down sidewalks, playing baseball, waiting for their kids in the school parking lot wearing a mask that provides nobody any protection, and the CDC found it important to keep that practice going.
The Biden administration’s insistence until May 13 that fully vaccinated officials wear masks showed that the White House was unwilling to loosen restrictions that serve no purpose. And it was unwilling to learn a lesson.
But we all need to learn many lessons from these last 14 months: Teachers unions are not on the side of school kids; employees should stay home when feeling sick; new viruses don’t always behave like old viruses; federal approval of testing technology needs to be faster.
The most important lesson is that public health authorities can no more be trusted with great power than anyone else.
While lockdowners will retort that masks are no big deal, or scream “500,000 dead!” to belittle the social, economic, and moral costs of the lockdowns, the biggest danger we face right now is allowing restrictions to go on any longer than needed.
States, cities, counties, and the CDC are using emergency powers to restrict our freedom. At times throughout the past year, there may have been serious gains from these government actions. At least, the government closures seemed in line with the mood of much of the country.
But if a government keeps its emergency powers indefinitely, it becomes a tyranny. Free people cannot allow these powers to outlive the emergency. We also cannot wait on the coronavirus to go away. We certainly cannot wait on the CDC to declare the emergency over.
Americans are a self-governing people. It’s up to us — not Biden, Walensky, or Fauci — to step outside, toss our masks in the trash, and declare this whole thing over.
This is rich
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Largest nurses’ union rips CDC’s new mask guidelines
The country’s largest nurses’ union is blasting the CDC over its latest recommended easing of mask restrictions — claiming the move “threatens the lives of patients, nurses and other frontline workers.”
“Now is not the time to relax protective measures, and we are outraged that the CDC has done just that while we are still in the midst of the deadliest pandemic in a century,” said registered nurse Bonnie Castillo, president of National Nurses United, which says it represents more than 170,000 members.
Half of those 170,000 nurses refuse to be vaccinated, which, so far as I’m concerned, is their business, but to couple that obstinance with a demand that the rest of us wear paper masks so that they’ll feel safe is obnoxious. Vaxx up, mask up, or shut up.
An unexpected bonus to the current "wear 'em if you want to" mask policy
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Ah, springtime in new york!
It makes it easier to spot the neurotic crazy women
She’s been fully vaccinated for three weeks, but Francesca, a 46-year-old professor, does not plan to abandon the face mask that she’s come to view as a kind of “invisibility cloak” just yet.
“Maybe it’s because I’m a New Yorker or maybe it’s because I always feel like I have to present my best self to the world, but it has been such a relief to feel anonymous,” she said. “It’s like having a force field around me that says ‘don’t see me’.”
Francesca is not alone. After more than a year of the coronavirus pandemic, some people – especially some women – are reluctant to give up the pieces of cloth that serve as a potent symbol of our changed reality.
US officials in recent weeks have said that fully vaccinated Americans can go outdoors without a face mask, except in big crowds. But while Tucker Carlson on Fox News frames continued mask-wearing as child abuse, Emma Green in the Atlantic portrays liberals who remain very concerned about Covid as anti-science, and various pundits toss around accusations of “irrationality” or pandemic “addiction”, some people told the Guardian that they simply prefer wearing their face masks in public. It has nothing to do with being pro-science or anti-science, liberal or conservative, they said. Instead, it’s about the fact that there are more things that can hurt them than viruses, including the aggressive or unwelcome attention of other people – or even any attention at all.
“I don’t want to feel the pressure of smiling at people to make sure everyone knows I’m ‘friendly’ and ‘likable.’ It’s almost like taking away the male gaze. There’s freedom in taking that power back.”
“It’s a common consensus among my co-workers that we prefer not having customers see our faces. Oftentimes when a customer is being rude or saying off-color political things, I’m not allowed to grimace or ‘make a face’ because that will set them off. With a mask, I don’t have to smile at them or worry about keeping a neutral face. I have had customers get very upset when I don’t smile at them. I deal with anti-maskers constantly at work. They have threatened to hurt me, tried to get me fired, thrown things at me and yelled ‘f*** you’ in my face. If wearing a mask in the park separates me from them, I’m cool with that.”
“I appreciated that I felt a bit more anonymous in a mask and more gender ambiguous. After lockdown ended, it was confronting to go out and be exposed to all that offhand racism, sexism and misgendering from strangers again … Sometimes when I’m just going out to grab takeaway, I’ve enjoyed keeping the mask on even though it’s not really necessary here now.”
For Elizabeth, a 46-year-old tutor living near Atlanta, Georgia, the mask has accomplished for her social anxiety what years of therapy and medication have not: allowing her to feel comfortable while out in the world.
“I’m short and fat and if I don’t moisturize compulsively, my face is constantly flaking,” she said. “It’s easy to feel like I’m surrounded by mocking, disapproving eyes … Nothing has shielded me from the feeling of vulnerability like a mask has.”
The sense of privacy that masks can provide in public is somewhat offset by the scrutiny some remote workers now feel when they’re at home, but working.
Hartley Miller, a 33-year-old tech worker in San Francisco, said that the past year of constant, camera-on Zoom calls has seriously exacerbated her body dysmorphia, a mental health condition that involves obsessive thinking about a perceived flaw in one’s appearance.
“I just stare at that little box with my face in it and pick apart my appearance,” she said, noting that her distress is affecting her job performance. “My double chin seems six times larger, my eye bags are too deep of a purple, etc … Even when there’s a heatwave and my apartment is close to 90 degrees, I’ll wear a turtleneck that I can pull up. I pack on thick makeup that makes my skin peel.”
Going out in public with a black surgical mask that covers her chin and sunglasses that cover her eye bags provides Miller with an escape from that sense of scrutiny.
“I 10,000% plan on wearing it for the foreseeable future,” she said. “After a full work day of worrying and not being able to focus on my actual job, it just feels nice to blend in. Simply put, I’m sick of being perceived.”
Whoo, boy.
Not that I was planning a visit there anytime soon, but ...
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Two of New York’s Finest come a cropper
Two of the four black teen subway slashers arrested
A teenage suspect was arraigned early Sunday for his alleged role in a string of brutal subway slashings across Manhattan — in what prosecutors said was a gang initiation ritual.
The 16-year-old was charged with first degree assault, robbery and criminal possession of a weapon and held on $50,000 bail.
“The People have information that the defendant’s violent crime spree on innocent New Yorkers was part of a gang initiation,” Manhattan Assistant District Attorney Katherine Byrns told the court.
“This defendant and his cohorts entered the subway station at 53rd street and Lexington avenue and robbed multiple individuals along the 6 train line.
“This defendant slashed one individual in the face, while one of his separately charged defendants screamed, ‘Do it again,'” at Union Square, the prosecutor said.
The random rampage continued as the unnamed minor and his accomplices continued riding downtown, and beat up a man that was sleeping on the train at Astor Place, and slashed his friend, prosecutors said.
Another man was slashed in the face at Brooklyn Bridge station, the court heard. In that attack, the defendant is accused of robbing the victim.
“The defendant’s violence did not end there,” Byrns said. “After transferring to the D train, this defendant, and his separately charged co-defendants, approach a sleeping passenger, attempt to take his backpack — and when the victim refused to relinquish his stolen property, this defendant stabbed him in the orbital with a kitchen knife. The same knife used in the two earlier attacks.
“As a result of this defendant’s brazen conduct, the victim lost one of his eyes”
Uh oh, sounds kind of serious, don’t it? Maybe this punk out to be taken off the streets? Nah, don’t worry. The judge, while seemingly a bit disturbed by the defendant’s conduct, still reduced the defendant’s bail, no doubt because of the able work of the slasher’s PD:
The suspect’s Legal Aid attorney, Aaron Horth, begged the court for leniency.
“My client is 16 years old, he is in school full time at a specialized school in Hawthorne, NY. He has no criminal record and very strong family structure,” the lawyer said.
Judge Michael Gaffey ordered the defendant held on $50,000 bail, down from the prosecution’s request of $500,000 bail or $1 million bond.
“I have looked at certain factors … considered very seriously your age, and presumption of release of a person your age … based on the case currently before the court, the court does feel you pose a risk of flight to avoid prosecution,” Gaffey said.
“I have determined that the least restrictive condition … is bail.”
It’s hard to believe that Mr. Foster hadn’t seen the error of his ways after enduring a catch and release event just months ago:
The teen had also been collared on January 13 on first-degree robbery charges for an alleged knifepoint mugging and stabbing of a cyclist. He was released without bail at the time.
I mean, what’s a stabbing, when the liberty of a pleasant young man is at stake?
This time, the judge did require bail, somehow resisting the piteous appeals of Foster’s mouthpiece, attorney Patricia Wright, who pleaded to Judge James Burke for leniency, insisting “there are no injuries caused by [Foster’s] involvement.” It’s understandable that Judge Burke might disagree with attorney Wright’s assessment that an eyeball plucked out by knife tip was not an “injury”, but how could he resist the rest of her heartrending depiction of this fine example of young manhood?
“He has a 3-year-old daughter. He graduated high school. Track and field, played football,” Wright said. “He was released on supervised release. He has a history of perfect attendance with his cases. Monetary bail is not necessary.”
The judge must be one of those racists I’ve been reading about; here’s a gentleman who had the initiative to impregnate a girl ( person?) at 14, and was a full-fledged baby-daddy at 15. Surely that, and his participating in track before “graduating” high school demonstrates a character well deserving of being put back on the street (it’s true that Mr. Foster’s attorney made no mention of her client supporting that love child, but isn’t that really society’s responsibility?)
Whatever COVID left standing in NYC will be destroyed by the new crime wave. Or at least, I wouldn’t want to live or work there.
UPDATE: Gee, are they out on bail already? Three more subway attacks this morning.
And not just by the city’s beloved maniacs.
Pelosi doubles down on masks
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Decrees that Representatives must continue to wear them on the House floor.
Pelosi (D-Calif.) pointed toward a lingering number of unvaccinated House members as part of the decision to keep mask rules in place on the House floor. Pelosi said last month that roughly a quarter of legislators have yet to receive a coronavirus vaccine and noted: “We cannot require someone to be vaccinated.”
“It’s about control,” House Minority Whip Steve Scalise (R-La.) told Fox News host Laura Ingraham on Thursday evening. “She wants to control the House.”
In fact, Pelosi and the Goon Squad want to control the people, not just the scrum in the Capitol. And until Pelosi, or someone, can explain why vaccinated people should wear masks when the CDC has (finally) admitted that vaccinated people “neither get nor carry” Chinese Flu bugs*, I’m going with Scallisi’s take: it’s all about control.
And if she can do it to elected representatives, wait til she turns her attention to the rest of the country.
*And this bit, too:
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s guidance is unmistakable: “Anyone who is fully vaccinated can participate in indoor and outdoor activities — large or small — without wearing a mask or physically distancing,” CDC chief Rochelle Walensky declared Thursday. She said the agency would soon revisit its recommendations for schools and other settings.