Author Archives: Dana Pico

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Bidenflation!

We need Gerald Ford’s “Whip Inflation Now” buttons!

On May 10th, we noted in Forbes telling us that the high inflation rate might not drop as quickly as some had forecast:

Inflation May Fall Slower Than Expected

by Chuck Jones | Monday, May 9, 2022 | 8:45 AM EDT

The rapid rise in inflation is causing the Federal Reserve to aggressively raise interest rates along with deleveraging its $8.9 trillion balance sheet. This has thrown stocks into correction territory or bear markets. Two of the major reasons for the increase in inflation have been the upsurge in demand coming out of the pandemic and supply chain issues.

April’s CPI estimate will be announced Wednesday before the stock markets open. Expectations are for the all items rate to drop from 8.5% to 8.1%. To hit 8.1% the month-to-month inflation rate will have to fall from 2.3% in January, 2.6% in February and 3.8% in March to no more than 1.25% to hit the expected number.

“Expectations,” were not met. Not only did the May inflation rate not drop to 8.1%, not only did it not even remain steady, but the rate rose slightly, to 8.6%.

Energy prices rose 32% on an annualized basis in March. In April Gasoline and Diesel prices were fairly flat, which will help lead to a lower inflation increase since they comprise about 4% of the inflation CPI Index and were up 48.2% year-over-year in March. However, natural gas prices increased in April, which will somewhat offset gasoline’s impact.

Well, guess what actually happened. From The Wall Street Journal:

U.S. Inflation Hits New Four-Decade High of 9.1%

Prices up broadly across the economy, with gasoline far outpacing other categories

by Gabriel T Rubin | Wednesday, July 13, 2022 | 12:08 PM EDT

U.S. consumer inflation rose last month from the year before at the highest rate in more than four decades, as prices climbed throughout the economy.

The consumer-price index rose 9.1% in the 12 months ended in June, the fastest pace since November 1981, the Labor Department said on Wednesday. The June increase also eclipsed May’s 8.6% rate, which led Federal Reserve officials to shift to a faster pace of benchmark interest-rate increases in its campaign to bring down inflation.

The report likely keeps the Fed on track to raise its benchmark interest rate by 0.75 percentage point at its meeting later this month. Stocks dropped and bond yields jumped following the inflation report.

Core prices, which exclude volatile food and energy components, increased by 5.9% in June from a year earlier, slightly less than May’s 6.0% gain, the Labor Department said.

There’s more at the original, but as I’ve asked before: why are “volatile food and energy components” excluded from the core inflation rate. Food and energy, in the form of gasoline and utility bills, have to be purchased every month, often several times a month. You see it when you fill your gasoline tank, and you see it when you go to the grocery store, and you see it when you get your electric and natural gas bills. Economics reporter for The New York Times noted that:

Gas prices rose 11.2% in June alone, and are up nearly 60% from a year earlier. Grocery prices were up 1% in June (a bit slower than in May) and were up 12.2% from a year earlier.

And:

One big reason “core” inflation accelerated in June: Rents rose 0.8% in June, the fastest one-month gain since 1986. “Owner’s equivalent rent,” the BLS’s (confusing) way of accounting for owner-occupied housing, is also picking up. Over the past three months, rents have risen at an annual rate of 8.2%. (Owner’s equivalent rent rising at 7.3% rate.) That’s especially worrying because rents don’t tend to turn around quickly.

You know what has happened? Virtually every single projection of the economic “experts,” or at least the great majority of them, has been wrong.

Back to the Journal:

Despite June’s inflation reading, economists point to recent developments that could subdue price pressures in the coming months.

Investor expectations of slowing economic growth world-wide have led to a decline in commodity prices in recent weeks, including for oil, copper, wheat and corn, after those prices rose sharply following the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Retailers have warned of the need to discount goods, especially apparel and home goods, that are out of sync with customer preferences as spending shifts to services and away from goods, and consumers spend down elevated savings.

“There’s a pretty serious recession fear affecting a broad range of asset prices,” said Laura Rosner-Warburton, senior economist at MacroPolicy Perspectives.

Retailers’ ability to shed unwanted inventory could test whether pricing is returning to prepandemic patterns, Ms. Rosner-Warburton said. Some retailers, such as Target, have already said they are planning big discounts. Others with robust warehouse capacity, such as Walmart Inc., could be more likely to hold on to their excess inventory, analysts say.

The first guesstimate of second quarter Gross Domestic Product figures is scheduled to be released on Thursday, July 28th, with a second, supposedly more refined guesstimate on THursday, August 25th. GDP decreased by 1.6% in the first quarter — the initial guesstimate was -1.4% — so if the figures show any negative reading at all, we will officially be in a recession. The second quarter already being over, there’s no time to change things.

I’m old enough to remember the last heavy inflation cycle, 1974-1982, and, after years of President Ford’s Whip Inflation Now buttons, and President Carter’s “malaise,” inflation was tamed the old-fashioned way: with a deep recession.

This isn’t 1982: inflation is not (yet) being accompanied by serious unemployment, but that’s in part due to people who should be working or looking for jobs still being paid, with phony money, not to work.

I’m not some fancy economics professional, and don’t have a PhD to my name. BUt it seems to me that things are going to get worse before they get better. The fer-mongers are attempting to scare us with dire warnings about the BA.5 Omicron sub-variant, and while those warnings are not being taken too seriously by the public in general, there’s at least the possibility that the warnings will be reasonably accurate. The Fed has been raising interest rates in an attempt to depress consumer demand, to fight inflation, but if they foul that up, such interest rate hikes could hasten a recession. Ukraine, the breadbasket of Europe, has seen its wheat crop and exports devastated by the war, and the economic restrictions put on Russian gas and oil, though they haven’t hurt Russia yet, could really mess things up in Europe, especially when winter arrives.

My wife is more worried about the economy than I am, and she’s pretty smart — smart enough to have married me, anyway! — but I am concerned enough. Perhaps it’s unfair to place all of the blame on President Biden, but hey, you know that he’ll take the credit for any good news; we might as well lay the responsibility for bad news at his stinky feet.

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73-year-old man murdered by teens in Philly The Inquirer wants to keep teen offenders out of the adult court system

Surprisingly enough, The Philadelphia Inquirer actually reported, albeit briefly, on two murders in the city yesterday.

Two people were killed and eight others wounded in separate shootings around Philadelphia on Monday, police said.

Just after 3 p.m., an unidentified man believed to be in his late 30s was outside on the 2700 block of North Broad Street when he was shot 13 times, police said.

The man was taken by medics to Temple University Hospital, where he was pronounced dead. Police said a person was in custody but released no further information on the case.

Around 1:30 a.m., a 36-year-old man was fatally shot in the head outside on the 3800 block of North 9th Street in Hunting Park. The man, who was not identified, was pronounced dead at the scene by medics. Police reported no arrests.

Note that the Philadelphia Police press releases identified the races of the victims, but the Inky scrubbed that part.

This was a bigger crime story in Philly:

Brothers, ages 10 and 14, surrender to Philly police in traffic cone beating death of 73-year-old man

James Lambert Jr. was crossing Cecil B. Moore Avenue near 21st Street when a group of juveniles attacked him. Another North Philly woman said she was attacked a month earlier at the same intersection.

by Robert Moran and Oona Goodin-Smith | Monday, July 11, 2022

Two brothers — ages 10 and 14 — have surrendered to police for questioning by homicide detectives as “persons of interest” in a fatal attack on a 73-year-old man last month in North Philadelphia, police said.

No charges have been filed as police continue to investigate the June 24 assault of James Lambert Jr., who was crossing Cecil B. Moore Avenue near 21st Street just before 2:40 a.m. when a group of juveniles assailed him. In a surveillance video, one of the participants can be seen knocking him to the sidewalk with a traffic cone.

Police say seven juveniles were involved.

While Lambert remained on the sidewalk, a girl can be seen in the video picking up the traffic cone and throwing it at Lambert, who then appears to stagger down Cecil B. Moore, followed by the girl, who retrieves the traffic cone and throws it at him again. She is wearing a bright pink long-sleeved sweater, with matching pool slide sandals. White-framed sunglasses are propped on top of her head.

As many as seven youths had gathered by that point. Video shows them talking before leaving the area.

Lambert suffered head injuries and died the next day, police said.

The photo of Mr Lambert is from a tweet embedded in the Inquirer story.

You know what wasn’t mentioned in the Inky? The Philadelphia Police released a video of the attack on Mr Lambert, including the descriptions shown on the right. But when the Inky reported on the story — which, to be fair, did include a link to the video — “four Black male and three Black female teen offenders” became “four males and three females”.

I might not have written about this story, save for one OpEd that was also in the Inquirer, still on the website main page, while the story about the two brats surrendering has been pushed back to the crime page:

Pennsylvania needs to stop prosecuting children as adults

This legislation will reduce recidivism, control costs, make our communities safer, and allow all young people the opportunity to grow.

by Camera Bartolotta and Anthony H. Williams | Monday, July 11, 2022

Imagine only seeing the sun for one hour a day while crammed into a 6-by-8-foot cell. Now imagine that you are only 16 years old, yet to be found guilty, and you are spending your days in an adult jail when you should be in school or spending time with your family. This is the reality of many children charged as adults through “direct file.”

Really? Imagine that you are 73-year-old James Lambert, walking alone, with the help of a cane,[1]The released video obscures the cane, but if you look at the published photo of Mr Lambert, you’ll see the handle of a walking cane. at 2:38 in the morning, and you’ll never see the sun again.

And am I really supposed to believe that, following the high-profile murder of Mr Lambert by teenagers, the Inquirer’s editors didn’t deliberately decide to print this OpEd with keeping these cretins out of the adult system in mind?

Direct file, or “statutory exclusion,” is a provision where kids under 18 are automatically prosecuted as adults for certain offenses, without the chance of a review by a juvenile court judge. This practice often forces the youth to be held in adult jails before trial and, if found guilty, adult prisons. And it doesn’t affect all children equally — according to the Pennsylvania Juvenile Justice Task Force’s findings, 56% of kids convicted as adults are Black boys, even though they make up just 7% of Pennsylvania’s youth population. This disparity is even starker than the disproportionate treatment that Black youth face in other parts of the justice system.

Whenever I see numbers like those, I always finish the article, and you know what I never see? There is never, ever, even the slightest hint that perhaps, just perhaps, if “56% of kids convicted as adults are Black boys, even though they make up just 7% of Pennsylvania’s youth population,” somewhere around 56% of crimes committed by minors which wind up in adult courts are committed by black boys.

There is always the implied, but usually unspoken, argument that if there is a ‘racial disparity’ in arrests, prosecutions, convictions, or incarcerations, it simply must be the result of racism; there is never the consideration that such ‘racial disparities’ are a reflection of a ‘racial disparity’ in who actually commits crimes.

Me? I’m 69-years-old and retired, so I can’t be ‘cancelled’, which means I can actually write the very politically incorrect truth. If I were an Inquirer reporter, and I had the temerity to write something like that, I’d have the security guard, ready to escort me out the door, watching me as I emptied out my desk, while Executive Editor and Senior Vice President Gabriel Escobar stood nearby, tapping his foot, smugly happy for having fired me, while murmurs, and possible jeers, sounded across the newsroom. In journolism,[2]The spelling ‘journolist’ or ‘journolism’ comes from JournoList, an email list of 400 influential and politically liberal journalists, the exposure of which called into question their … Continue reading the truth shall set you free . . . from your job.

Stan Wischnowski was unavailable for comment.

Was the attack on Mr Lambert perhaps an isolated incident?

About a month before Lambert was killed, a 53-year-old woman from North Philadelphia said she, too, was ambushed at 21st and Cecil B. Moore.

Watching the video of the attack on 73-year-old Lambert on the news, the woman said she thought it “could have been me.”

The woman, who spoke to The Inquirer on the condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation, said she was walking on 21st Street toward the subway on her way to an overnight nursing shift in late May when she spotted a group of young teenage girls on the street.

One of the teens — whom the woman said she recognized from the video of the attack on Lambert — asked her for a dollar. When she did not give them money, the woman said the teens began to swear at her. One threw a brick at her chest, and slammed a metal dolly on her back, leaving deep bruises. Startled, the woman said she threw her cup of hot coffee at the group and ran, phoning her family. . . . .

She said she didn’t contact the police initially about the attack, but called on Friday after hearing about Lambert’s death.

We have previously noted the difference between crimes of evidence and crimes of reporting. If a man rapes a woman on the streets of Philadelphia, as far as the police are concerned, if it wasn’t reported, it didn’t happen. It is commonly assumed that most rapes go unreported, with some guesstimates being as high as 90% not reported. Crimes like robbery might go unreported if the victims do not trust the police or think it will do any good, or are fearful of revenge by the criminals. When your city is stuck with a District Attorney like Mr Krasner, who doesn’t believe in prosecuting criminals, or sentencing them harshly when they are prosecuted and convicted, what reason is there to report that you were robbed?

To the Philly police, the assault on the 53-year-old woman, by at least one of the murderers, murderers!, of Mr Lambert, never happened in late May, because she got away and didn’t report it, or didn’t report it until she saw the video of Mr Lambert’s murder.

Why? Well, she feared retaliation, she said. Whether her assault was caught on camera we do not know, but there was nothing the police could do about a crime that, to them, never happened.

And so we get back to state Senators Bartolotta’s and Williams'[3]Camera Bartolotta is a Republican state senator. She represents Beaver, Greene, and Washington Counties. Anthony H. Williams is a Democratic state senator. He represents parts of Philadelphia and … Continue reading OpEd. They don’t want minors charged with serious crimes to be tried in adult courts. But if the 14-year-old who turned himself in for Mr Lambert’s murder is tried as a juvenile, he will be out of whatever juvenile institution they put him in when he turns 18, and his record, for murder!, will be sealed. It will be as though it never happened.

But James Lambert will still be stone-cold graveyard dead.

States do not put juveniles into the adult system for littering or out-of-control horseplay, or racing unregistered dirt bikes down city streets; they go into the adult system for really serious crimes. The senators tell us that they only want to change the system, and that juvenile offenders can still be sent into the adult system if their crimes are really heinous, but they want a juvenile court judge to take that decision. Thanks, but no thanks: we need to treat crime harshly, not so much for deterrence — which doesn’t seem to work anyway — but to get these miscreants off the streets!

References

References
↑1 The released video obscures the cane, but if you look at the published photo of Mr Lambert, you’ll see the handle of a walking cane.
↑2 The spelling ‘journolist’ or ‘journolism’ comes from JournoList, an email list of 400 influential and politically liberal journalists, the exposure of which called into question their objectivity. I use the term ‘journolism’ frequently when writing about media bias.
↑3 Camera Bartolotta is a Republican state senator. She represents Beaver, Greene, and Washington Counties. Anthony H. Williams is a Democratic state senator. He represents parts of Philadelphia and Delaware County.
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Why should we trust the credentialed media if they won’t check their own stories?

There was a time, not so long ago, that if you had an argument with someone over a particular point, and if you could find in The New York Times material which supported your point, that was it, you won the argument.

The First Street Journal has been very critical of the reporting of the credentialed media, concentrating on The Philadelphia Inquirer and its censorship of stories which don’t line up with its political positions, but we have not been alone. On Independence Day, Robert Stacy McCain, an actual professional journalist — my brief time with the Kentucky Kernel hardly counts as professional — noted that the viral story about the 10-year-old girl who had to travel from Ohio to Indiana to get an abortion wasn’t passing the smell test:

A Story Too Good to Check?

July 4, 2022 | 28 Comments

This headline appeared Friday in the Columbus Dispatch:

 

As Ohio restricts abortions, 10-year-old girl travels to Indiana for procedure

On Monday three days after the Supreme Court issued its groundbreaking decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, Dr. Caitlin Bernard, an Indianapolis obstetrician-gynecologist, took a call from a colleague, a child abuse doctor in Ohio.

Hours after the Supreme Court action, the Buckeye state had outlawed any abortion after six weeks. Now this doctor had a 10-year-old patient in the office who was six weeks and three days pregnant.

Could Bernard help? . . .

This story has since been repeated all over the place (e.g., “‘A tragic situation’: Governor discusses pregnant 10-year-old with CNN host”), but having read through the original story twice with an editor’s eye, my question is: Where’s the comment from police?

Even if you’re willing to take Dr. Caitlin Bernard’s word for the basic claim — while some 10-year-olds are physically capable of getting pregnant, such cases are very rare — you’ve left the reader knowing nothing about the most basic elements of the story: What Ohio city did this happen in? Do authorities have a suspect in custody? Or is the public still in danger from the child rapist responsible for this atrocity?

The extreme youth of the alleged victim is what made the headline so shocking, and I actually checked the National Institutes of Health to make sure I wasn’t alone in finding this highly unusual. The media age of menarche (i.e., onset of menstruation, generally taken as meaning when a female becomes physically capable of pregnancy) in the United States is 11.9, about three months earlier than in the 1990s. About 10% of females reach menarche by age 10. Precocious puberty is slightly correlated with earlier sexual activity — the median age of first intercourse is 15.4 for girls reaching menache by age 10, compared to 16.6 for girls reaching menarche at age 14 or older. In general, blacks and Hispanics reach menarche earlier than white girls, but the differences are not dramatic.

There’s more at Mr McCain’s original, which should be read, but, to put it briefly, Mr McCain did his research. I do not know how fast he works in sourcing his stuff, but if I had done the research he included in the rest of his article, I could have gotten it done in under two hours.

Then, four days later, Mr McCain once again wrote on the story , this time noting that President Biden had used the tale for propaganda purposes.

Megan Fox of PJ Media had been on the case, and she noted that The Washington Post finally started checking out the story:

A one-source story about a 10-year-old and an abortion goes viral

Analysis by Glenn Kessler | Saturday, July 9, 2022 | 3:00 AM EDT

“This isn’t some imagined horror. It is already happening. Just last week, it was reported that a 10-year-old girl was a rape victim — 10 years old — and she was forced to have to travel out of state to Indiana to seek to terminate the pregnancy and maybe save her life.” — President Biden, remarks during signing of executive order on abortion access, July 8

This is the account of a one-source story that quickly went viral around the world — and into the talking points of the president.

The Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade, which had guaranteed a right to abortion, has led a number of states to quickly impose new laws to restrict or limit abortions. Ohio was one of the first, imposing a ban on abortions after six weeks of pregnancy, with no exceptions for rape and incest.

On July 1, the Indianapolis Star, also known as the IndyStar, published an article, written by the newspaper’s medical writer, about how women seeking abortions had begun traveling from Ohio to Indiana, where less restrictive abortion laws were still in place. “Patients head to Indiana for abortion services as other states restrict care,” the article was headlined.

That was a benign headline. But it was the anecdotal beginning that caught the attention of other news organizations. The article said that three days after the June 24 court ruling, an Indianapolis obstetrician-gynecologist, Caitlan Bernard, who performs abortions, received a call from “a child abuse doctor” in Ohio who had a 10-year-old patient who was six weeks and three days pregnant. Unable to obtain an abortion in Ohio, “the girl soon was on her way to Indiana to Bernard’s care,” the Star reported.

Personally, I regard an abortionist as, at the very least, a special pleader in a case like this, and an untrustworthy source.

The only source cited for the anecdote was Bernard. She’s on the record, but there is no indication that the newspaper made other attempts to confirm her account. The story’s lead reporter, Shari Rudavsky, did not respond to a query asking whether additional sourcing was obtained. A Gannett spokeswoman provided a comment from Bro Krift, the newspaper’s executive editor: “The facts and sourcing about people crossing state lines into Indiana, including the 10-year-old girl, for abortions are clear. We have no additional comment at this time.”

The story quickly caught fire, becoming a headline in newspapers around the world. News organizations increasingly “aggregate” — or repackage — reporting from elsewhere if it appears of interest to readers. So Bernard remained the only source — and other news organizations did not follow up to confirm her account.

There’s more at the original, and if you cannot get past the Post’s paywall, here is an archived copy.

A lot has been made of the obvious question that, if a 10-year-old girl became pregnant, someone had to have sexual intercourse with her.

Under Ohio law, a physician, as a mandated reporter under Ohio Revised Code 2151.421, would be required to report any case of known or suspected physical, sexual or emotional abuse or neglect of a child to their local child welfare or law enforcement agency. So Bernard’s colleague would have had to make such a report to law enforcement at the same time he or she contacted Bernard. Presumably then a criminal case would have been opened.

Also read: Robert Stacy McCain: ‘Not a Whisper Anywhere’: Abortion Story About 10-Year-Old Ohio Girl Looking More and More Like a Complete Hoax

A 10-year-old girl cannot legally consent to sexual intercourse, or any form of sexual contact. Our minds tend to default to picturing the slavering, evil step-father, or ‘funny’ uncle, or someone who visited Jeffrey Epstein’s private island. But when significantly underaged girls get pregnant, it is usually by a similarly underaged boy. If this 10-year-old girl actually existed — while I have my doubts, it cannot be discounted as obviously untrue — she may well have been impregnated by an 11-year-old boy, and let’s face it: we aren’t going to throw an 11-year-old boy in jail for copulating with a 10-year-old girl.

There’s a lot more, and this whole story has been inflated into a huge propaganda piece, as though evil reich-wing Republicans would force this 10-year-old to carry the baby to term. The average size for a 10-year-old girl in the United States is between 50 and 59 inches tall, the midpoint of that range being 4’6″, with an average weight of around 79 lb. It would be extremely difficult for such a girl to be able to carry a baby to full term, and such a girl would qualify for an abortion under life of the mother exceptions; a real pregnancy would probably kill her.

But, at least for me, the real story is that, despite the protestations of Nina Jankowicz, who was going to become our Minister of Truth, before evil reich-wingers derailed that, the credentialed media’s unblemished record of telling the truth isn’t quite as unblemished as they’d like you to believe.[1]Nina Jankowocz being interviewed by CNN’s Brian Stelter on ‘disinformation’ is about as laughable as things can get. The wheels started creaking when CBS News was caught using ‘unverified’ forged documents in an attempt to swing the 2004 presidential election to Senator John Kerry (D-MA), and was caught at it by the blog Powerline, and since then the ‘discrepancies’ between credentialed media stories and what actually happened have been catalogued hundreds of times over.

I have a simple rule: if a story seems to convenient to be true, start checking around; it just might not be true.

References

References
↑1 Nina Jankowocz being interviewed by CNN’s Brian Stelter on ‘disinformation’ is about as laughable as things can get.
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Irresponsible journolism from the Lexington Herald-Leader

No, that’s not a typo in the title: the spelling of ‘journolism’ comes from JournoList, an email list of 400 influential and politically liberal journalists, the exposure of which called into question their objectivity. I use the term ‘journolism’ frequently when writing about media bias.

What my, sadly late, best friend used to call the Lexington Herald-Liberal published a story this morning on an escaped prisoner from an addiction-treatment center.

Prison inmate is at-large after escaping custody in Lexington, police say

by Christopher Leach | Monday, July 11, 2022 |10:20 AM EDT

Authorities across Kentucky are searching for an inmate who escaped custody on Saturday.

According to Kentucky State Police, David Lewis, who was staying at the Hope Center’s recovery residence in Lexington, removed his ankle monitor and walked away from the facility at approximately 1 p.m. Saturday. Trooper Josh Satterly with state police confirmed at 9:15 a.m. Monday that Lewis is still at-large.

Lewis, originally an inmate at the Blackburn Correctional Complex off Spurr Road in Lexington, was last seen wearing blue jeans and a white sleeveless shirt, according to state police. He was also carrying a black trash bag of personal belongings.

Read more here.

The Herald-Leader‘s story continued to tell us that Mr Lewis is 5’5″ tall, weighs 145 lb, and has black hair and brown eyes. Mr Lewis turns 42 years old this coming Saturday, and was, on May 6, 2020, sentenced to five years in prison. But what the newspaper didn’t do was publish his photo! If the Herald-Leader is going to inform readers that they can call State Police Post 12 at 502-227-2221, or a local police agency, if they have any information as to Mr Lewis’ whereabouts, why wouldn’t they publish his picture, in case a reader happens to see him out on the street?

We have mentioned the McClatchy Mugshot Policy many times before, but that policy does allow for exceptions, if approved by the editor. Wouldn’t an escaped prisoner, in this case a man already convicted, not just someone accused of a crime and awaiting trial, and apparently addicted to drugs, merit that exception?

Did editor Pete Baniak decide that no, the newspaper wouldn’t help locate Mr Lewis? Did article author Christopher Leach not even ask him if the photo could be used? I found it easily enough; Mr Leach could have as well.

This is just irresponsible on the part of the Lexington newspaper!

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Will the next set of #COVID19 restrictions come on November 9th?

As we noted on Saturday, the Editorial Board of The Washington Post do not think that we have been scared of COVID-19 enough. That was an editorial; here comes what passes for a straight news story:

As the BA.5 variant spreads, the risk of coronavirus reinfection grows

By Joel Achenbach | Sunday, July 10, 2022 | 6:00 AM EDT

America has decided the pandemic is over. The coronavirus has other ideas.

The latest omicron offshoot, BA.5, has quickly become dominant in the United States, and thanks to its elusiveness when encountering the human immune system, is driving a wave of cases across the country.

The Post illustrated the article with a photo captioned, “Commuters board the subway in New York, which still requires masks on trains and indoor stations.” There were very few people in the photo visibly wearing masks.

The size of that wave is unclear because most people are testing at home or not testing at all. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in the past week has reported a little more than 100,000 new cases a day on average. But infectious-disease experts know that wildly underestimates the true number, which may be as many as a million, said Eric Topol, a professor at Scripps Research who closely tracks pandemic trends.

They know that it “wildly underestimates” the true number? How do they know this?

Many of the at-home COVID tests use your cell phone to read the test data, though apparently not all of them do. I’m waiting for the government to mandate that tests using a smartphone require the phone to send the test results to the government, and to pull from the market at-home tests which do not require a smartphone.

Is that paranoid? Perhaps a little, but the left have shown no concern at all for people’s privacy when it comes to the virus, and a fascistic bent toward requiring people to get vaccinated and wear masks.

I admit it: when I see the name “Topol,” I think of Reb Tevye from Fiddler on the Roof. Orthodox Jewish men traditionally use the honorific Reb to honor their ancestors. Click to enlarge.

Antibodies from vaccines and previous coronavirus infections offer limited protection against BA.5, leading Topol to call it “the worst version of the virus that we’ve seen.”

“The worst version of the virus that we’ve seen”? Well, that’s what the headline on last Thursday’s Post editorial called it, but somehow, someway, this “worst version” has yet to result in significantly more hospitalizations.

Other experts point out that, despite being hit by multiple rounds of ever-more-contagious omicron subvariants, the country has not yet seen a dramatic spike in hospitalizations. About 38,000 people were hospitalized nationally with covid as of Friday, according to data compiled by The Washington Post. That figure has been steadily rising since early March, but remains far below the record 162,000 patients hospitalized with covid in mid-January. The average daily death toll on Friday stood at 329 and has not changed significantly over the past two months.

Let’s do the math: 38,000 ÷ 162,000 = 0.2345679012345679, or 23.46%, slightly less than ¼ of the number of the less contagious BA.1 Omicron variant that was primarily seen last January.

Restrictions and mandates are long gone. Air travel is nearly back to pre-pandemic levels. Political leaders aren’t talking about the virus — it’s virtually a nonissue on the campaign trail. Most people are done with masking, social distancing and the pandemic generally. They’re taking their chances with the virus.

Well, of course. Both Republican and Democratic candidates know that the public are fed up with the restrictions, and have been for a long time now. With the restrictions gone, Republicans have no issue against which to campaign, and the last thing that the Democrats want is to have the voters thinking that they’ll try to reimpose them. I linked that photo of New Yorkers boarding the train; despite the stated restrictions, even liberal New Yorkers aren’t obeying them.

So, what are the credentialed media trying to do here? They know as well as the politicians that the public will simply not obey a reimposition of restrictions, but the media aren’t running for election; they simply have to make certain that their stories don’t negatively affect Democratic candidates in an election that’s just four months away.

But they are setting it up, just in case BA.5 does turn out to be as bad as Dr Topol might have you believe, because if the urban Democrats — it won’t be Republicans, anywhere — try to reimpose restrictions, they’ll have some cover from a media which will say, “See, we told you so!”

Perhaps the next set of restrictions will come on November 9th?

This article was from The Washington Post, but The Philadelphia Inquirer published it as well, and we’ve seen how Philly’s city government, wholly dominated by liberal Democrats, has been very willing to put restrictions on people, though they had to drop the last mandate due to politics.

I don’t expect the Democrats trying to reimpose mandates soon, because the election is approaching, but I will never underestimate their desire to control your life.

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I love a green lawn!

This might be a post more suited for The Pirate’s Cove, and I did notify William Teach about the article, but with my nice, brilliantly green lawn, and the whole farm, I just had to write something!

The Suburban Lawn Will Never Be the Same

Homeowners from Las Vegas to Sydney are swapping real grass for artificial turf as climate change forever alters what a normal yard looks and smells like.

By Brian Eckhouse and Siobhan Wagner | Friday, July 8, 2022

The lawn part of the farm. I planted all of the trees myself, and did the brick sidewalk as well.

Judy Dunn moved to her home in the Las Vegas suburbs from Washington state in late 1998, when there was little concern about water levels at nearby lakes. Dunn could nurture the verdant lawn of her dreams in a valley of cacti and sand that developers had recast as an oasis. But then a drought arrived and never left, and now local agencies are fining more residents for wasting water.

For Dunn, the final straw arrived last summer. Lake Mead, historically America’s largest reservoir, plunged to its lowest level since 1937 and the first-ever water cuts were ordered on a Colorado River system that benefits about 40 million people including Dunn. “If we don’t start saving water, we’re not going to have any,” says the 76-year-old.

So, Dunn opted to install an artificial lawn, a choice being made by more and more residents of Southern Nevada—one of the many places that’s getting drier as the planet warms. For some, it’s the cash-for-grass rebates being offered by local water agencies. For others, it’s the realization that the classic lawn is increasingly unsustainable in a time of megadrought. And then there are the residents coaxed into the shift by the water notices or fines.

Well, Las Vegas is in, you know, the desert, with average daily high temperatures reaching 95º F from June 3rd through September 16th, and 105º on July 13th. You move to Vegas, and you get the desert, and desert weather, and desert rainfall.

Beyond the drainage ditch and its too-high weeds is the corn field, another brilliant green part of the farm

For water suppliers worldwide, climate change is raising the stakes. Italy in July declared a state of emergency as water levels in its largest river dropped to the lowest in 70 years. The US Southwest is suffering through the worst drought in over a century. Within the next 30 years, droughts may impact three quarters of the world’s population. While plastic turf poses its own climate challenges, it’s increasingly seen as a viable alternative to real green yards that devour precious water. . . . .

A couple of decades ago, artificial turf was often a thin carpet atop a hard surface—rough on the knees as well as the eyes. Athletes playing on it complained that it wore their legs out. But as the product improved, so did homeowners’ interest. From the US to the UK, artificial grass retailers have seen sales tick up during pandemic lockdowns, when housebound property owners put their money toward home improvements. Indeed, Google Trends shows a worldwide surge in searches for “artificial grass” during the middle of 2020.

I don’t know if it’s still there, because the last time I saw it was the late 1980s, but Newport News Shipbuilding and Drydock Company had, outside their public office, which was not inside the shipyard’s gates, some integrally-colored green concrete where grass would have been expected, by their normal sidewalks! Of course, Newport News got plenty of rain, but this way, the shipyard didn’t have to maintain the grass!

Me? I live in the Bluegrass State, and I’ve got to love all of the rain we get!

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The Washington Post tells us that we are not fearful enough

As the propaganda-generated fear in America about COVID-19 has dramatically waned, the Editorial Board of The Washington Post want to ramp it up again:

The worst virus variant just arrived. The pandemic is not over.

by the Editorial Board | Thursday, July 7, 2022 | 1:58 PM EDT

The pandemic is a relentless race against Mother Nature. Waves of infection took millions of lives, and only highly effective vaccines prevented even more deaths. Now, the coronavirus is speeding up once again, mutating, evading immunity and still on the march. The arrival of subvariant BA.5 should be a reminder that the finish line in this race is nowhere to be seen.

What’s BA.5? This is the latest subvariant of omicron, which stormed the planet late last year and caused a huge wave of infection. As of now, BA.5 and a closely related variant, BA.4, account for about 70 percent of all infections in the United States, according to estimates by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, based in part on modeling. These two newcomers are easing out an earlier variant, BA.2.

The obscure names should not hide the punch of BA.5. Eric Topol, professor of molecular medicine at Scripps Research, says that BA.5 “is the worst version of the virus that we’ve seen.” He adds, “It takes immune escape, already extensive, to the next level, and, as a function of that, enhanced transmissibility,” well beyond earlier versions of omicron. There has not been a marked increase in hospitalizations and deaths, he reports, because there is so much immunity built up from the winter omicron wave. But there are aspects of this new variant very much worth keeping an eye on as the United States remains stuck at an uncomfortably high plateau of pandemic misery. And the new variants are driving a case surge in Europe.

At the core of the BA.5 difference is its biology. Evolution has given it more fitness, a term that incorporates its ability to transmit, grow and evade immunity; the variant shows “marked difference from all prior variants,” reports Dr. Topol. One way it does so is by evading the body’s immune system, and BA.4 and BA.5 together are “the most immune-evasive variants” seen in multiple studies to date.

As we have previously noted, this past winter, acting Food and Drug Administration head Commissioner Janet Woodcock told the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions committee that she expected that, eventually, almost everyone would contract the virus. Celebrity doctor Anthony Fauci said that COVID-19 would infect “just about everybody.” This was during the BA.1 variant’s primacy, and two months later, the American Medical Association warned that the then-new BA.2 subvariant could be “30% to 60% more transmissible” than BA.1. While playing Blondie’s One Way of Another, we noted that BA.4 and BA.5 are gonna get ya, get ya, get ya, get ya! Yale Medicine also said that BA.4 and BA.5 appear to be more transmissible.

But here comes the money line from the Editorial Board, five paragraphs down:

Whether BA.5 will lead to more severe disease isn’t clear yet. But knowing that the virus is spreading should reinforce the need for the familiar mitigation measures: high-quality face masks, better air filtration and ventilation, and avoiding exposure in crowded indoor spaces.

Translation: while no one yet knows if BA.4 and BA.5 will actually cause more serious symptoms, Our Betters want us to return to the fears of 2020. Yet, despite not knowing, the editorial headline declares it to be “the worst virus variant.”

Yale Medicine already stated:

The second question has been whether Omicron—and currently the BA.4 and BA.5 variants—is more likely than Delta or other variants to cause severe disease. While there is more to learn about BA.5, early data from South Africa has not shown a sharp rise in deaths from the subvariant. The original Omicron caused a record number of cases, but while it has also caused its share of hospitalizations and deaths, factors such as lengths of hospital stays, ICU admittance, and death have been “lower than during previous pandemic peaks,” according to a CDC report in January.

The CDC says the presence of severity of symptoms can be affected by vaccination, history of prior infection, and age and other health conditions.

Click to enlarge.

As the WaPo wants us to return to “high-quality face masks,” I will note here that for many, perhaps most, American men, including me, an N-95 face mask cannot be worn properly: a third of all American men always wear a beard, while another 27% say that they sometimes do.

It would seem that the Editorial Board want to control our facial hair as well. After all, it’s only us evil reich-wing conservatives who wear beards, right?

OK, OK, so I’m projecting here, but one thing is clear: the Editorial Board want more subservience to control — from the government? — by the population in general. As Glenn Greenwald said:

Fear is crucial for state authority. When the population is filled with it, they will acquiesce to virtually any power the government seeks to acquire in the name of keeping them safe. But when fear is lacking, citizens will crave liberty more than control, and that is when they question official claims and actions. When that starts to happen, when the public feels too secure, institutions of authority will reflexively find new ways to ensure they stay engulfed by fear and thus quiescent.

Mr Greenwald, certainly no conservative, was writing about the desire of governments for more security control, not the virus, but the same statement applies. And the Editorial Board, worried to death as they are that, Heaven forfend! the evil Republicans will win significant majorities in the November elections, want us all to be more subservient to the federal government.

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Killadelphia Last year saw a lull in the killings between July 9th and Labor Day; will the same happen this year?

It was one year ago today that we correctly projected the number of homicides in 2021 for Philadelphia, 562.

It was just yesterday that we noted that The Philadelphia Inquirer doesn’t seem to pay much notice to the murders of young black males in the City of Brotherly Love. I pointed out, in the footnote, that with 287 homicides in 188 days (as of 11:59 PM on July 7th) equaled 1.5266 homicides per day, projecting a total of 557 for the year.

Well, it looks like the city’s thugs realized that they weren’t quite meeting their quota, because after two straight days of the Philadelphia Police Department reporting only one homicide, the gang bangers caught up: the Current Crime Statistics page shows 291 killings as of 11:59 PM on July 8th. 291 ÷ 189 days in the year, = 1.5397 homicides per day, for a projected 562 for the year.

Then, guess what happened? Eight days later, we reported that the homicide rate had dropped slightly, to 1.5306 homicides per day, and the projection dropped down to 559.

It kept falling from there, and on Tuesday, September 7, 2021, we were able to report that there had been a real lull in killings in the City of Brotherly Love:

The Philadelphia Police Department reported that, as of 11:59 PM EDT on Labor Day, September 6th, there had been 363 homicides in the City of Brotherly Love so far this year. With 249 days of the year having elapsed, that gives Philly an average of 1.4578 murders a day, which would yield 532 murders for the entire year, if that average was maintained.

As we reported on July 9th, the city then had a rate of 1.5397 homicides per day, for a projected 562 for the year. Thus, even with the really, really bad part of the year in the statistics, the ‘projected’ homicide total for 2021 has dropped by thirty souls.

But there’s more. Over the last 1½ months, the murder rate has really dropped. There had been 314 homicides as of July 22nd, the 203rd day of the year. Since that time, 46 days ago, there have been ‘just’ 49 murders, a rate of 1.0652 per day. With 116 days left in 2021, if that rate were maintained, there would be ‘just’ 124 more killings, for a total of 487 for the year, 12 fewer than last year, and 13 fewer than 1990’s all time record of 500. If that number was the final one, it would be 75 fewer homicides than the math had projected just two months ago.

Which raises the obvious question: why has the homicide rate decreased? After all, mid-July through Labor Day is part of the long, hot summer, when killings seem to be at their peak. Did a really bad gang or two just get completely wiped out? Did a few gangs come up with a truce? Whatever happened, this ought to be a question real journalists would attempt to investigate.

The Philadelphia Police Department does not report the statistics on Saturdays, Sundays, and holidays, so we won’t get the numbers specifically for today, but only the aggregate totals for Friday, today, and Sunday on Monday morning. My question is: will we see a similar lull this year, as the hottest part of the summer is coming upon us? Just yesterday, I did the math: 280 homicides ÷ 188 days = 1.4894 per day, or a projected 543.62 murders for the year. Done a different way, dividing the number of murders this year, 280, by the same number on the same day as last year, 287, and then multiplying by 562, last year’s homicide total, I came up with a projected 548.29 killings. Either way, the city is looking at a homicide total in the 540-550 range.

The lull didn’t last in Philly. On September 24, 2021, the day before Thanksgiving, the city tied its all-time record of 500, set during the crack cocaine wars of 1990, pushing the rate back up to 1.5244 per day, for a projected 556.40 homicides for the year. After that, the rate kept slowly creeping up, and at the end of the year finished with 562, 1.5397 per day.

The lull? August of 2021 was not abnormally hot, with only 14 days in which the temperature reached or exceeded 90º F, and just three in which the temperature met or exceeded 95º. Beginning on July 9, 2021, from when the lull began, there were only 7 days in which the temperature reached or exceeded 90º, and 95º was never reached. Nighttime lows — and most homicides occur during the evening and nighttime hours — were in the low 70º range throughout the period.

From July 9th through the end of Labor Day, there were only 20 days with any rain recorded, only 4 of which saw rain exceeding 1 inch.

I do not know the reason for the mid-to-end of summer lull in homicides, but it’s difficult to attribute it to the weather.

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Killadelphia: City looking at between 540 and 550 murders this year Twelve people reported murdered over the last two days, and The Philadelphia Inquirer has exactly zero stories on them.

There are times I worry that I’m starting to sound like a broken record, but the City of Brotherly Love has become just appalling. It was just yesterday that I noted that Philadelphia had seen six homicides on Wednesday, July 6th, and all six were the murders of black males.

Well, the Philadelphia Police Department’s Current Crime Statistics page now reports another six killings, as of 11:59 PM EDT on Thursday, July 7th. The city’s Shooting Victims Database reports ‘only’ two homicides by firearms, with both victims being black males, in eight total shootings, with seven black victims, and one victim reported as being a white Hispanic male and, in the first time I have ever seen this in that database, one of the black males also reported as being Hispanic.

Mr Keeley’s math is wrong. As of 11:59 PM EDT on Thursday, June 30th, The Philly Police reported 257 homicides: 280 – 257 = 23. Nevertheless, this is mind boggling. Remember: twelve homicides were reported on two weekdays, not the weekend.

There may be some catch-up in the report, of people reported as seriously wounded several days ago, but if you thought that surely, surely! that even The Philadelphia Inquirer would have to have noticed, you’d have been wrong, or at least you would have been wrong at 12:03 PM EDT.

Now the math: 280 homicides ÷ 188 days = 1.4894 per day, or a projected 543.62 murders for the year. Done a different way, dividing the number of murders this year by the same number on the same day as last year, and then multiplying by 562, last year’s homicide total, I come up with a projected 548.29 killings. Either way, the city is looking at a homicide total in the 540-550 range.