Author Archives: Dana Pico

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Fear is the mind killer * Updated! *

We have previously noted how fear is being used to control the population. The government has been spreading fear, and one young lady has given us a very thorough demonstration of how well it has worked:

She posted a series of ten tweets in the thread, which I’ve quoted and linked below, to save space. I have also condensed her two paragraph tweets into single paragraphs.

  1. First tweet: I’m a vaccinated anaesthetist and this is how I shop for my family.
  2. Second tweet: Preparation is key. If possible, I go at quieter times or click and collect if I’m organised. If I need to go in, I have my respirator mask, sanitiser, a list, and the bags which I always forgot pre-pandemic.
  3. Third tweet: Current rules are that maximum one person per household can go each day. We minimise this as much as possible. Either my hubby or I go. Never together. No kids.
  4. Fourth tweet: Once parked I put on my respirator. I’m in healthcare so have a stock of self-purchased N95’s in the car. I take a moment to ensure that it is fitted correctly. No leaks.
  5. Fifth tweet: At the entrance I check in using the QR code the furtherest away from the front door. I sanitise my hands. Big smile with my eyes and thank you to the greeter.
  6. Sixth tweet: Once inside, it’s a race. I assume I have covid. I assume everyone else has covid. I shop with laser sharp focus. No browsing. I avoid crowded aisles. Keep distant. Get only what I need, touch only what is necessary. I don’t squeeze every avocado to see which is ripe….
  7. Seventh tweet: Once I have everything, I pay via self-service usually at the end one if free. I get outta there ASAP. Smile and thank the attendant. Sanitise on exit. Check out via the app. A long shop is 15 mins, usually 7.
  8. Eighth tweet: So why do I do this? Am I outta my mind? I didn’t care about germs before the pandemic. Well, in my job we are all about risk minimisation. I want to protect myself, my family, my patients and my colleagues. I don’t need to spend ages faffing about in there.
  9. Ninth tweet: I don’t want to bring covid into my hospitals. I want to do all I can as an individual to minimise risk. Also, if the supermarket ends up being an exposure site, I don’t want contact tracers to need to trace me and my contacts.
  10. Tenth tweet: Kudos to all the folk doing the right thing, and those working frontline in our supermarkets.

Note that these were tweeted on Saturday, July 24, 2021, not sometime during the summer of 2020.

Of course, everything she has said her husband and she are doing is perfectly legal, and they have every legal right to take the precautions she has mentioned. But this is the second summer — although it’s winter for her, in Australia and New Zealand — of COVID-19, and at some point people have to return to being the social animals that we are.

_____________________________________
Update: 10:03 PM EDT

Naturally, I notified the original tweet author, but it seems that she didn’t like it. When I tried to bring up the tweets again this evening, I got:

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We can’t have a solar park there; it’ll shut down the drive-in theater!

You can’t have your solar park when it’s going to drive out a drive in theater!

When I spotted this on The Philadelphia Inquirer’s website, I was tempted to just forward it to William Teach, since this is more his kind of story than mine. But one photo in there prompted me to use it myself.

Joe Farruggio, the owner of the land that the Mahoning Drive-In sits on, says he believes Greenskies was unfairly bullied away from its plan to build a solar farm on the four-acre property. Photo by Steven M Falk, Philadelphia Inquirer Staff Photographer

Judging by that photo, maybe Greyskies would have been a better name than Greenskies! 🙂

Here’s the story:

A beloved Poconos drive-in theater was set to become a solar-panel farm. Then the fans stepped in.

Hundreds of die-hard fans of the Mahoning Drive-In banded together to convince a green-energy company to withdraw its plan.

By Vinny Vella | July 25, 2021

Virgil Cardamone couldn’t sleep July 13. He obsessed over how to relay the message that everything he and his friends had built over the last six years on a grassy lot in rural Carbon County was in jeopardy.

The next morning, it dawned on him: He would, as he put it “tear his heart open” in a smartphone video broadcast over social media, pleading with hundreds of the regulars at the Mahoning Drive-In to help save the institution.

In the six-minute video, Cardamone laid out the scenario: A green-energy company out of Connecticut had paid to option the land the theater sat on for a solar-panel farm. The local zoning board was going to vote in a few weeks, and the 38-year-old was rallying fans of ‘80s classics, forgotten B-movies, and films everywhere to plead with Greenskies Clean Energy LLC to change its mind.

“The drive-in will never die,” Cardamone said in his sign-off, flicking tears out of his eyes with his thumb. “Mark my words.”

I moved away from what Vinny Vella, the article author, called “tourist darling Jim Thorpe” on July 1, 2017, roughly ten miles from the Mahoning Drive-In, and back to the Bluegrass State, but I’d certainly passed the place, on state route 443, many times. While my wife had taken our kids to see a few movies there, I hadn’t gone myself. Still, it was a local-to-me story; we lived in Jim Thorpe for fifteen years!

Two days and hundreds of emails, Facebook posts, and phone calls later, he posted a second video, announcing, almost in disbelief, that the grassroots campaign had been successful. Greenskies had agreed to pull their plan, and the theater’s landlord had expressed a willingness to sell the four-acre property to Cardamone and his business partners.

“To have the whole entire culture rise up and let them know how much it means to them, for me, I feel this business is invincible, even with all the madness going on,” Cardamone said in an interview last week. “This place is an escape for people, and it’s a celebration of a simpler time.”

So, the drive-in has been saved, at least for now.

I’m not sure just how much electricity a four-acre solar park would generate. The Nesquehoning Solar Park, off of state route 54 between Nesquehoning and Lake Hauto, for which I supplied some, but not all, of the concrete during its construction, covers, according to its website, 100 acres, and “will generate enough electricity to power 1,450 homes.” At the same efficiency, a four-acre solar park would power roughly 58 homes.

Regardless of that, some drive-in and old film buffs have managed to save the Mahoning Drive-In. What, I have to ask, will the global warming climate change emergency activists say about that? One thing is certain: in the push for ‘renewable’ energy sources, primarily solar and wind power, a lot of acreage is going to have to be taken up for solar panels and windmills, and there will always be pushback from those who don’t want the land used that way, and who object to having their scenic views taken up.

As it happens, we have more than four acres on the farm, and good, sunny, southwestern exposure; it would be perfect for a solar farm. But our best view is to the southwest as well, and there’s no way Mrs Pico would ever consent to spoil it with solar panels.

Photo taken on June 17th, while baling our second crop of hay for the season. The near tree line begins the downslope to the Kentucky River.

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Why don’t neoconservatives, who support American-style liberty and democracy abroad, support liberty at home?

When commenting on Patterico’s Pontifications, I am styled “The libertarian, but not Libertarian, Dana”, since one of his main writers is named Dana.

The site host was previously a Republican, and certainly a conservative, but he left the GOP when Donald Trump started to make headway toward the 2016 Republican presidential nomination, and became one of the #NeverTrumpers. His dislike of our 45th President has been apparent from the start, and he wanted Mr Trump not just impeached, but removed from office.

Patterico has been vocal in advocating that people get vaccinated against COVID-19, and I agree: they should. But this I did not expect from him:

I have previously noted how neoconservatives Max Boot and Bill Kristol, upset that not as many people as they believe should have have freely chosen to take the COVID-19 vaccines, have urged making vaccination mandatory.

When Patterico tweeted:

We may get to a point where the big debate becomes: why on Earth didn’t we institute more coercive measures on the unvaccinated in July 2021, when we could have stopped COVID before it mutated beyond the vaccines’ capacity to immunize people against it?

he has not precisely stated, as Messrs Boot and Kristol have, that he believes that vaccination should be mandatory, but one wonders: just what does he mean by “more coercive measures”?

A clue, I suppose, comes from his retweet from Allahpundit, who referenced yet another #NeverTrumper, David Frum, and his article in The Atlantic:

    Vaccinated America Has Had Enough

    In the United States, this pandemic could be almost over by now. The reasons it’s still going are pretty clear.

    By David Frum | July 23, 2021

    In the United States, this pandemic could’ve been over by now, and certainly would’ve been by Labor Day. If the pace of vaccination through the summer had been anything like the pace in April and May, the country would be nearing herd immunity. With most adults immunized, new and more infectious coronavirus variants would have nowhere to spread. Life could return nearly to normal.

The article title itself practically drips with contempt: “Vaccinated America has had enough.” With that, the distinguished Mr Frum, an urbanite who lives in Washington, DC, and Wellington, Ontario, tells his readers that “vaccinated America” and he are just better than the riff-raff who have decided against it.

    Experts list many reasons for the vaccine slump, but one big reason stands out: vaccine resistance among conservative, evangelical, and rural Americans. Pro-Trump America has decided that vaccine refusal is a statement of identity and a test of loyalty.

Or, perhaps, they have decided that they just don’t trust government very much. Such used to be commonplace among conservatives. Actually, it’s pretty commonplace among liberals as well . . . when conservatives are in power. Conservative states have been tightening up election security, but the left see that not as insuring against election fraud, but as trying to prevent some citizens from voting at all. And the left certainly distrusted government during President Trump’s four years in office!

Naturally, I cannot quote all of Mr Frum’s article; that would violate Fair Use standards. Suffice it to say that he spends the next three paragraphs telling us of all of the evils and sorrows the vaccine hesitant and conservative politicians have spread throughout conservative states.

    Reading about the fates of people who refused the vaccine is sorrowful. But as summer camp and travel plans are disrupted—as local authorities reimpose mask mandates that could have been laid aside forever—many in the vaccinated majority must be thinking: Yes, I’m very sorry that so many of the unvaccinated are suffering the consequences of their bad decisions. I’m also very sorry that the responsible rest of us are suffering the consequences of their bad decisions.

There it is again: Mr Frum is telling his readers that he is just so much smarter than those with reservations, that those who have not been willing to take the vaccine are irresponsible. As I have pointed out previously, insulting people, telling them that they are stupid, might not be the best approach to get them to buy what you are trying to sell.

    As cases uptick again, as people who have done the right thing face the consequences of other people doing the wrong thing, the question occurs: Does Biden’s America have a breaking point? Biden’s America produces 70 percent of the country’s wealth—and then sees that wealth transferred to support Trump’s America. Which is fine; that’s what citizens of one nation do for one another. Something else they do for one another: take rational health-care precautions during a pandemic. That reciprocal part of the bargain is not being upheld.

And here I thought that Mr Frum was supposed to be a conservative! Now he’s using the leftist argument that the liberals support conservatives. Well, Philadelphia might seem more productive, with its inflated prices for everything, and their 2020 voting pattern (81.44% for Mr Biden vis a vis 17.90% for President Trump), than Estill County, Kentucky, where I live, (77.98% for Mr Trump, 20.72% for Mr Biden) but we sure don’t kill each other the way they do in the City of Brotherly Love! We don’t have to surround our homes with iron bars to keep the criminals out!

    Can governments lawfully require more public-health cooperation from their populations? They regularly do, for other causes. More than a dozen conservative states have legislated drug testing for people who seek cash welfare. It is bizarre that Florida and other states would put such an onus on the poorest people in society—while allowing other people to impose a much more intimate and immediate harm on everybody else. The federal government could use its regulatory and spending powers to encourage vaccination in the same way that Ron DeSantis has used his executive powers to discourage it. The Biden administration could require proof of vaccination to fly or to travel by interstate train or bus. It could mandate that federal contractors demonstrate that their workforces are vaccinated. It could condition federal student loans on proof of vaccination. Those measures might or might not be wise policy: Inducements are usually more effective at changing individual behavior than penalties are. But they would be feasible and legal—and they would spread the message about what people ought to do, in the same way that sanctions against drunk driving, cheating on taxes, and unjust discrimination in the workplace do.

Mr Frum, like Patterico, is an attorney, and just loves him some ways of forcing people to comply. No, he didn’t say, “Make the vaccines mandatory,” but wants to try to regulate the non-compliant into poverty. And Mr Frum wonders why some people wouldn’t trust the government!

    In the end, the unvaccinated person himself or herself has decided to inflict a preventable and unjustifiable harm upon family, friends, neighbors, community, country, and planet.

And here we see the urbanist liberal argument again: that those who are doing nothing wrong — say, by owning a firearm even if they have never shot anyone — simply by living their lives as they see fit, are still guilty, guilty, guilty! of hurting other people. Mr Frum does not, and cannot, know whether any particular unvaccinated person has contracted the virus and then spread it to “family, friends, neighbors, community, country, and planet.” He simply assumes that all are guilty. Yet, at least here in the Bluegrass State, the Fayette County Health Department, in the Commonwealth’s second largest city, reported that 24.3% of all new COVID cases in July were “breakthrough” cases, instances in which vaccinated people still contracted the virus.

I look at people like David Frum and Max Boot and Bill Kristol, neoconservatives who supported American intervention to bring American-style liberty and democracy to places which were not liberal Western democracies,[1]Mr Frum was a speechwriter and assistant to the younger President Bush in 2001 and 2002, in the lead-up to the invasion of Iraq. yet don’t seem to support liberty here at home.

References

References
↑1 Mr Frum was a speechwriter and assistant to the younger President Bush in 2001 and 2002, in the lead-up to the invasion of Iraq.
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The Philadelphia Inquirer proves my point

We have said, umpteen times, that The Philadelphia Inquirer doesn’t really care about homicides in the City of Brotherly Love unless the victim is an innocent, a ‘somebody,’ or a cute little white girl.

    Two young athletes were fatally shot this week, leaving West Philadelphia school communities shattered: ‘This can’t be normal’

    “This can’t be normal, this can’t be accepted,” a Boys’ Latin football coach said he told his players. “You have a victim, but you also have a family behind them that are left to pick up the pieces.”

    By Anna Orso | Friday, July 23, 2021

    It had been just a few weeks since K.J. Johnson got his driver’s license. He picked up friends, including his childhood pal Tommie Frazier, and headed to play basketball on Wednesday, a sunny afternoon in West Philly.

    The ride ended in tragedy. Johnson, 16, and Frazier, 18, were fatally shot just after noon while seated in a car on the 200 block of North 56th Street in West Philadelphia, after unidentified gunmen fired into the vehicle. Another 16-year-old was wounded by the bullets fired in broad daylight near a day care and a bus stop.

    As of Friday, no one had been arrested and homicide investigators were still searching for video and witnesses. Police said they found 17 shell casings at the scene.

There’s plenty more at the original, but it all boils down to the same thing we’ve written about before: the victims were good high school athletes, the victims were somebodies.

A previous story noted that:

    The shooting happened at 12:10 p.m. on the 200 block of North 56th Street, when unidentified gunmen opened fire on the teens as they sat in a car, said Deputy Commissioner Benjamin Naish.

    Two males, ages 16 and 18 — whom police did not identify — were pronounced dead at Penn Presbyterian Medical Center after each was struck several times. The other teen, a 16-year-old boy, was taken to Lankenau Medical Center in stable condition, police said.

Seated in a car, each struck several times, and the police recovered 17 shell casings at the scene. This wasn’t random; these victims were deliberately targeted.

Was Mr McCain telling me that I’ve been too much of a broken record on Philadelphia murders? 🙂

Next came another story:

    He ‘didn’t deserve to die this way,’ says family of the 22-year-old killed outside Pat’s Steaks

    Police have charged a Reading man with murder in connection with the killing of David Padro Jr., a 22-year-old from Camden.

    by Anna Orso and Mensah M. Dean | Updated: July 23, 2021

    David Padro Sr. expected to spend this weekend like he did the last one: surrounded by family and hanging out by his pool in South Jersey with his 22-year-old son.

    Instead, he’s planning his son’s funeral.

    David Padro Jr., 22, was fatally shot early Thursday morning in South Philadelphia outside Pat’s King of Steaks, the famed cheesesteak joint where he had stopped for a bite. His father said Padro, of Camden, was in Philadelphia with his girlfriend to go to a nightclub when they stopped to eat and an argument broke out among patrons.

    Then, police say, Paul C. Burkert, a 36-year-old from Reading, pulled a gun. Padro was shot in the shoulder and abdomen and transferred to Thomas Jefferson University Hospital, where he was pronounced dead shortly after 1 a.m. Police said Burkert fled the scene and then turned himself in to National Park Police at Independence Mall.

Burkert faces murder and weapons charges. Court records show he pleaded guilty to a felony drug charge in Berks County in 2019 and was prohibited from possessing a firearm. No attorney for him was listed in court records Friday.

Gee, a convicted druggie, probably a drug dealer, carrying a handgun while out to buy a cheesesteak. He may have been from Reading, but that was real Philadelphia of him!

The Inquirer reported that, despite previous rumors that it was an altercation between Eagles and Giants fans, it was an altercation over a parking space. A photo accompanying the story shows just how crowded Philly’s narrow streets are in that area.

But both cases show what the Inquirer does. They pick some unusual aspect, high school basketball players, or out-or-towners who didn’t know each other, while the typical murders, one bad guy shooting another bad guy, get ignored, and they get mostly ignored because the city doesn’t want to face the real problem: it’s not guns, but a culture which says it’s perfectly reasonable to pull out your Glock and blast someone else.

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No jail term will ever be long enough

As we have noted so many times previously, the Lexington Herald-Leader follows the McClatchy Mugshot Policy and does not print the photos of accused criminals.

    Lexington teen accused of attacking his mom is charged in shooting that blinded child

    By Jeremy Chisenhall | July 22, 2021 | 11:19 AM | Updated: July 22, 2021 | 4:27 PM

    Michael Lemond. Photo: Fayette County Detention Center.

    A Lexington teenager accused of punching and shooting his mother has been linked to a 2020 shooting that left a 5-year-old boy blind, according to police and new court records.

    Michael Lemond, 18, was charged with two counts of first-degree assault Wednesday after police accused him of firing the shots that struck 5-year-old Malakai Roberts and Roberts’ mother, Cacy Roberts. Malakai was permanently blinded by the shooting after one of the shots went through his head.

    The shooting happened around 2 a.m. on Dec. 21, according to police. The shots were fired from outside the Roberts’ home on Catera Trace. Malakai’s injuries were initially considered life-threatening. Four other people were in the home when the shooting occurred, police said at the time.

It seems that Mr Lemond is, allegedly, of course, not a very nice guy. He was already locked up at the time of these new charges, because he had (allegedly) punched and fired three shots at his own mother, on May 23rd. Police recovered three shell casings at the site.

Malakai Roberts was playing inside his own home, when a bullet came through from outside. The Herald-Leader doesn’t publish mugshots, because they might be harmful to the offenders, but, not to worry, young Mr Roberts will never see the mugshots of the men males responsible for shooting him, because he is permanently blind. When Mr Lemond gets out of jail, he will still be able to see.

    2nd Lexington teen charged in shooting that blinded a 5-year-old boy

    By Jeremy Chisenhall | July 23, 2021 | 7:13 AM

    Teyo Waite. Photo by Fayette County Detention Center.

    A second teenager has been charged with assault in a shooting that blinded a 5-year-old boy and injured his mother, according to Lexington police.

    Teyo Waite, 18, was arrested Thursday and charged with two counts of assault plus two counts of wanton endangerment, according to jail records. Police confirmed Waite was charged in connection a shooting on Catera Trace which blinded Malakai Roberts, who’s now 6. His mother, Cacy Roberts, was also shot. Other people were in the home at the time, according to arrest records.

    The shooting happened around 2 a.m. on Dec. 21, police said. It was one of several shootings that occurred. Malakai was blinded by a bullet that went through his temple and narrowly missed his brain, his family said.

    Malakai Roberts sat with his gifts on his 6th birthday. Roberts was permanently blinded when he was unexpectedly shot by someone outside his home on Dec. 21. Photo by Cacy Roberts.

    “You won’t find a more sweet kid than Malakai despite what he’s going through,” detective Cal Mattox previously told the Herald-Leader. Mattox, a Lexington police narcotics detective, wasn’t directly involved in the shooting investigation. But he helped launch a fundraiser for the family, which has raised more than $16,500.

    Police previously charged another 18-year-old, Michael Lemond, with the same crimes in the same shooting. Lemond was already in jail due to an unrelated arrest, which occurred in May.

If you can spare the money, I urge you to go ahead and make a donation to help young Mr Roberts. The GoFundMe site has, thus far, raised $16,890 for him, but it will never, ever, be able to replace what this young boy has lost. If Messrs Waite and Lemond are convicted for the blinding of Mr Roberts, I would suggest that they should get out of prison the day that Mr Roberts regains his sight.

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I’m surprised that the Usual Suspects aren’t already out protesting But, then again, the day is still young

An article not to be found on The Philadelphia Inquirer’s website main page:

    Man fatally shot by police in Kensington after allegedly firing at officers

    The shooting occurred on the 3000 block of North Water Street.

    By Robert Moran | July 22, 2021

    An unidentified man was fatally shot by police after he allegedly fired shots at two officers during a large neighborhood fight in the city’s Kensington section Thursday evening.

    The man, described as in his late 40s or early 50s, was shot in the shoulder and abdomen just before 6:30 p.m. on the 3000 block of North Water Street near Clearfield Street, said Chief Inspector Scott Small. The man was transported by police to Temple University Hospital, where he was pronounced dead at 7:30.

    The officers were undercover as part of a long-term narcotics investigation and were sitting inside an unmarked Nissan when the fight broke out, Small said. Some of the people involved in the fight jostled up against the unmarked vehicle and then the officers saw the man allegedly pull out a gun.

    Small said the officers got out of the vehicle and identified themselves as police. The man then allegedly fired at least two shots into the crowd and in the direction of the officers, who then returned fire.

North Water Street near Clearfield Street, Google Maps streetview.

There’s more at the original. I hope that the entire exchange was caught on tape, and I’m surprised that the Usual Suspects aren’t already out protesting.

If you look at the Google Maps street view of North Water Street, with Clearfield Street the intersection visible, you’re going to see a crime-ridden neighborhood. How do I know that? Even in this streetview of a racially integrated neighborhood, you can see at least six homes in which the owners have put themselves in jail, adding bars to the fronts of their houses to keep the bad guys out. Follow the link, and toggle through, and you’ll see plenty of others.

This is the part the Inquirer never points out. Yes, I know: the reporter, Robert Moran, doesn’t have this kind of investigation as part of his job, so I can’t blame him, but somebody, somebody! at the Inquirer ought to be out there, taking pictures and doing interviews on streets like this, an obviously poorer neighborhood, in which people are spending their too-few dollars on drugs — that’s why the police were conducting an undercover investigation there — and metal bars to keep their meager possessions safe from theft.

Perhaps the Inquirer might be asking, ‘Why, in a city in which jobs are going unfilled, are so many in this neighborhood poor?’ Perhaps the Inquirer might ask, ‘Why, in a neighborhood in which people are so obviously poor, are they wasting what money they do have on drugs?’

But the Inquirer won’t ask those questions, because the #woke editors and reporters already know the answers, and sure don’t want those answers made public.

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Andy Beshear will try to issue another odious mask mandate any day now

I told you so!

Governor Andy Beshear (D-KY) hasn’t tried to make masks mandatory again, but today’s “recommendations” certainly set the table for that.

The Governor’s new “recommendations” are:

  • All unvaccinated Kentuckians should wear masks indoors when not in their homes
  • Kentuckians at higher risk due to pre-existing conditions should wear masks indoors when not in their homes
  • Vaccinated Kentuckians in jobs with significant public exposure should consider wearing a mask at work
  • All unvaccinated Kentuckians, when eligible, should be vaccinated immediately

Mr Beshear is like any other American: under our First Amendment, he has the freedom of speech, and can recommend anything he wishes. But I do not trust him, nor do I trust the state Supreme Court and how they may rule on the Governor’s legal attempts to invalidate the restrictions on his emergency powers under KRS 39A passed by the General Assembly last February, and it’s all too easy to see Mr Beshear trying to turn his recommendations into orders.

Kentucky reporting new cases of COVID-19 at levels not seen since March

By Alex Acquisto | July 22, 2021 | 1:38 PM | Updated: 2:06 PM EDT

Kentucky is poised to report its fourth consecutive week of rising COVID-19 cases, the overwhelming majority of which are driven by unvaccinated people, Gov. Andy Beshear said Thursday.

“We believe that on Monday we are going to be in another week of increasing cases,” the governor said from the state Capitol. Cases began rising again in late June after two months of consecutive decline.

In Kentucky, where roughly half the state is at least partially vaccinated, over 95% of the more than 61,000 new coronavirus cases from March 1 to July 21 were among unvaccinated people, the governor announced. Likewise, 92% of the 3,100 coronavirus-related hospitalizations and 89% of the 447 people who died of coronavirus were either unvaccinated or only partially vaccinated.

OK, let’s stop right there. The vaccines didn’t even become available to people under 70 until the beginning of March, so when March and April are included, those numbers are wholly skewed. I’m in my upper sixties, and I was not able to get my first dose until April Fool’s Day, and my second until Cinco de Mayo. I would not have been considered “fully vaccinated” until 14 days after my second dose, which meant May 19th.

So, when the Governor tells us that “over 95% of the more than 61,000 new coronavirus cases from March 1 to July 21 were among unvaccinated people,” he is using a time frame in which most Kentuckians had the opportunity to be vaccinated. The percentage of the Commonwealth’s population which could have been vaccinated, especially “fully vaccinated,” during March and April was pretty small.

Note what the Herald-Leader had reported just two days earlier:

About one-fifth of the new COVID-19 cases in Lexington in July occurred in vaccinated people, according to new data from the Lexington-Fayette County Health Department.

Those so-called “breakthrough” cases had accounted for less than 1 percent of Lexington’s reported infections until the last few weeks. In May, less than 10 percent of the month’s cases were breakthrough infections. In June, that number increased to almost 15 percent.

This month, about 19.5 percent of all cases have been in people fully vaccinated against COVID-19, according to the health department.

Note, the report is that 19.5% were among people fully vaccinated. One wonders what the infection rate was for those who were only partially vaccinated.

The vaccines are supposed to help those who do contract the virus anyway by resulting in far less serious symptoms. If someone has been vaccinated, and he doesn’t feel sick, there’s really no reason for him to be tested, so, though we can’t prove a negative, it stands to reason that a smaller percentage of vaccinated than unvaccinated people get tested for COVID-19. It could well be that the percentage of vaccinated people who are infected with COVID anyway is significantly higher than anyone knows.

And why would a fully vaccinated person get tested unless it was absolutely necessary? From CNBC:

If a vaccinated person tests positive for Covid, through routine workplace testing, for example, “we don’t just let them go about their business and forget about the fact that they tested positive,” says Dr. Peter Katona, professor of medicine and public health at UCLA and chair of the Infection Control Working Group.

“With the understanding that you’re less of a problem than an unvaccinated [person], it doesn’t mean you let up on your protocol,” he says.

The most important thing to do after testing positive would be to isolate, meaning you stay away from people who are not sick, including others who are vaccinated, and monitor for Covid-related symptoms, Gonsenhauser says.

“You are going to have to isolate just as though you were not vaccinated for 10 days from the first symptoms that you recognize or from the time of your test…keeping yourself from being around other people until that period is up,” Gonsenhauser says.

You should avoid visiting any private or public areas or traveling during that 10-day period, according to the CDC.

In other words, if you are fully vaccinated and are not sick, getting tested can mean only one thing: more restrictions on your life!

And here comes what I said was coming:

The more contagious Delta variant is driving an increase in cases and the statewide positivity rate, which rose above 6% on Wednesday for the first time since late February. On Tuesday, the state reported 1,054 new cases of the virus — the highest single-day increase since March 11, Beshear said. On Wednesday, the state reported 963 new cases.

For the first time since he lifted the statewide mask mandate and repealed capacity restrictions in early June, Beshear said on Thursday that he will not shy away from reinstituting those rules if the spread of the virus continues to gain momentum.

“We’re not going to be afraid to make the tough decision if it’s merited,” he said, again noting that the solution to stemming spread is for more people to get vaccinated.

It is, I believe, the wiser choice for people to go ahead and get vaccinated; not only have I said that before, but my freely disclosed choice on the matter months ago ought to stand as testimony to that. And if someone believes that he ought to wear a face mask, I absolutely support his right to choose to do that.

But I am absolutely opposed to the government trying to mandate vaccination, or facemasks, or any of the restrictions on our individual rights that so many states imposed previously. COVID-19 may be deadly in a small percentage of cases, but it has already dealt a near-mortal blow to our rights as free people and as Americans.

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Neoconservatives want to fight for American-style freedom and democracy everywhere, but don’t seem to want Americans to have individual rights

If someone was asked to put names to a list of neoconservatives in the United States, Irving Kristol, Nathan Glazer, and Norman Podhoretz might come to mind. Irving Kristol was an editor and publisher who served as the managing editor of Commentary magazine, founded the now-defunct magazine The Public Interest, and was described by Jonah Goldberg as the “godfather of neoconservatism.” His son, William Kristol, founded the magazine The Weekly Standard, which quickly took hold to challenge National Review for primacy among conservative opinion journals.

The Weekly Standard failed because, as a fervent #NeverTrumper, Mr Kristol guided the journal into being all-Never Trump, all the time, while National Review, with plenty of Never Trumpers in its fold, still tried to allow pro-Trump articles in its pages and on its website. Mr Kristol (probably) realized that yes, Donald Trump was a factor in Republican politics, and yes, some conservatives really did like his views and his style, but The Weekly Standard was never going to tolerate the views of the riff-raff to pollute its pages and website!

We have already noted how neo-conservative Max Boot of The Washington Post wants to make vaccinations against COVID-19 mandatory. The Post’s other neocon, Jennifer Rubin, while I have not seen anything from her yet urging making vaccination mandatory, certainly wants to do everything that can be done to stifle opposing views. The Post also supports “vaccine passports.”

Now comes the younger Mr Kristol, who, like so many others, wants to force you to be vaccinated. Not trusting Mr Kristol not to delete that tweet, this is a screenshot of it, but the hyperlink will take you to the original. If it’s difficult to see, you can click on it to enlarge it.

Mr Kristol and the neoconservatives, frequently fairly liberal when it comes to domestic and social issues, very much wanted to spread the ideas of American-style freedom and democracy around the world. But I have to ask: when so many of them are now opposed to individual liberty and individual rights, just what does their commitment to American-style freedom and democracy mean? One of the most basic freedoms of all, the right to decide what you will put into your own body, is a freedom they would deny people who have decided differently than they have.

Full disclosure: I have been vaccinated myself, a choice I made freely, and I believe that others should take the same decision I did. While no vaccine is 100% without risk, the benefits of being vaccinated outweigh the risks. But I respect the right, and yes, “right” is precisely the word I mean to use, of other people to choose whether or not to take the vaccine. That’s a right that the neoconservatives don’t seem to want you to have.
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The Lexington Herald-Leader does not know how to win friends and influence people

In October of 1936, Dale Carnegie published the self-help book How to Win Friends and Influence People. In 2011, it was number 19 on Time Magazine’s list of the 100 most influential books. It is a book that Dr David Shafran has apparently not read.

    ‘Selfish or stupid.’ Rejecting COVID vaccine puts healthcare workers in real danger.

    By David Safran[1]At least as of 2:36 PM, the Herald-Leader spelled the author’s name ‘Safran’ at the beginning of the article, and ‘Shafran’ at the end. | July 21, 2021 | 10:42 AM | Updated: 11:04 AM EDT

    “If you can get the vaccine, and decide not to, then you’ve made your choice: Don’t ask for sympathy or money when you get sick”. Conservative columnist Bret Stephens offered that comment in the NY Times on July 19 as an alternative when referring to President Biden’s ill-received comment about people “killing America” by not getting the vaccine.

    Sounds great, and I agree to a point. But unfortunately, thanks to a federal regulation with the acronym EMTALA, which stands for Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act, the comment, like our president’s, is empty. The law was passed in 1986 with overwhelming bipartisan support and signed into law by President Reagan. It basically states if the hospital receives payments from Medicare, a person had a right to be seen, or from the other point of view, a doctor is forced to see and take care of a patient, whether or not they could pay the bills. Physicians learned to call EMTALA the Anti-Patient Dumping Act, as they could no longer refuse to see uninsured patients, or more likely “dump them” on a bigger hospital. Private hospitals got around the law by closing their emergency rooms.

    Now, with the environment of healthcare completely different, I would like to rename EMTALA the People’s Inherent right to Selfishness and Stupidity Act. As we are seeing in this country, when it comes to Covid, unvaccinated Americans are either for the most part selfish or stupid.

There’s more at the original, and even more in the last paragraph, but I ended my copying at the most important point. Dr Shafran specifically, and the Lexington Herald-Leader editorially, and Governor Andy Beshear (D-KY) generally speaking, are all trying to persuade Kentuckians who have not yet chosen to be vaccinated to go ahead and take one of the freely available COVID-19 vaccines. But perhaps, just perhaps, calling the people they are (purportedly) trying to persuade “stupid or selfish” might not be a method of which Mr Carnegie would have approved.

Of course, while Dr Shafran was very explicit in expressing his beliefs, Herald-Leader columnist Linda Blackford couldn’t contain her snarkiness:

    The political divide is no help, of course. Tuesday morning, (Louisville Courier-Journal) reporter Olivia Kraus noted that House Education Chair Regina Huff had deleted a tweet in which she compared Dr. Anthony Fauci’s vaccine advocacy to the Jonestown massacre. We used to be a nation of science. Now (as the world burns down around us) we let conservative news shows convince us that the vaccine is depositing microchips into our arms so Google can figure out what you had for breakfast, as though it didn’t already know this from your phone. One in five Americans believe the microchips, according to a new poll by The Economist and YouGov.com.

Mr Carnegie could sell ice water to Eskimos; I have my doubts that Dr Shafran or Mrs Blackford could sell ice water in Hell.

If you want to influence people, to persuade people to your position, the first thing you need to do is not be an [insert slang term for the rectum here.] You don’t need to be Max Boot, saying that the President should order people to get vaccinated, and that those who refuse should be cut off from all social life. You don’t need to be Jen Psaki, saying that the Biden Administration is working with Facebook to censor “misinformation,” or that if you are banned from one social media site, you should be banned from all. The American people don’t take well to censorship.

What you need to do is identify with people, to show them your concern and your respect for their thoughts, feelings and beliefs. You need to demonstrate an attitude that they’ve won if they bought what you are selling, not that you’ve won if they do. And you must show that you respect their choices, and their right to take those choices, even if you disagree with their decisions.

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↑1 At least as of 2:36 PM, the Herald-Leader spelled the author’s name ‘Safran’ at the beginning of the article, and ‘Shafran’ at the end.