Author Archives: Dana Pico

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Fear is the Mind-killer

We had previously noted the OpEd column by Alison McCook in The Philadelphia Inquirer on the 14th. Miss McCook said:

I have spent the last 20-plus years as a science journalist. I believe in the vaccines, and that the CDC’s new advice is likely supported by the latest data. I believe in Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s top infectious disease expert, who says he feels good about the CDC’s new decision and wants people to feel like we are approaching “normality.” But Thursday’s announcement from the CDC has filled me with fear.

Well, the Inquirer isn’t letting up on the fear-mongering!

Help, I’m still anxious about getting COVID-19 even though I’m vaccinated.

That anxiety? It’s totally natural, experts say, and there are ways to start managing, and conquering, it now.

By Grace Dickinson | May 14, 2021

Once you’re fully vaccinated, it’s safe to start resuming activities like traveling and having friends over for dinner, says the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). As of recently, you can ditch your mask in most settings, too.

These are moments many of us have dreamed about for over a year. And yet, now that they’re finally here, you may be finding yourself having trouble shaking off the fear of getting COVID-19. That anxiety? It’s totally natural, experts say, and there are ways to start managing, and conquering, it now.

The fear is natural.

We’ve spent months training ourselves to be cautious and avoid anything that could put ourselves at risk of getting COVID-19. While getting vaccinated significantly reduces that risk, vaccines aren’t an overnight cure for anxiety. Nor can they do the work to reverse all that training, says Usama Bilal, an assistant professor in the urban health collaborative and the department of epidemiology and biostatistics at Drexel University.

“I still wear a mask outdoors half the time, even though I know that’s something I can stop doing,” says Bilal. “We’ve just experienced the worst pandemic in a century, and it’s both normal and OK for people to take the time they need to transition back to normal.”

If you’ve lost a loved one to COVID-19 or are part of a community that’s been disproportionately impacted, the transition may take longer. “I’d expect post-vaccine fear to be more prominent particularly for communities of color, and in a very valid way,” says Rachel Talley, an assistant professor of clinical psychiatry at the University of Pennsylvania. “No matter who you are, feelings are not something to be judged. We’ve collectively, as a world, went through a traumatic experience, and a pandemic that we’re not truly over yet.”

At least that article is about how people can overcome their fear, but in claiming that “the fear is natural” the article normalizes the fearmongering which drove so many people into becoming sheeple!

On the 17th, columnist Elizabeth Wellington wrote “No, you shouldn’t ask for someone’s vaccination status. Here’s what to do instead,” making suggestions on how to get the answers you want without having to ask that very rude question. It feeds into the media-generated and Twitter-disseminated meme that it’s dangerous for fully vaccinated people to dispense with masks because no one can know if the next unmasked guy is vaccinated or not.

And on Wednesday?

The CDC says vaccinated people can unmask. But don’t feel pressured to let your guard down. | Expert Opinion

If you feel confused and worried about changing recommendations, you are not alone. A visit with your PCP is a good place to start.

by Jeffrey Millstein, For The Inquirer | May 19, 2021

For many, the recent news from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) that fully vaccinated people can unmask and discontinue social distancing in most public places is a cause for celebration. However, that was not so for a patient I saw shortly after the May 13 announcement.

“Since I’m fully vaccinated, I know that if I do get COVID, it will probably be very mild,” he said. “But I don’t want to get COVID at all.”

He went on to express his frustration with the new CDC guidelines, which he feels will put him at greater risk because he suffers from chronic lung disease. In the past, even mild, non-COVID infections have caused his disease to flare enough to land him in the hospital. He also fears scorn from family and friends if he chooses to continue masking, or that people will assume he is unvaccinated if he wears a mask.

I said that I understood his concern, and that he should certainly continue to wear a mask in public if he feels less vulnerable doing so. We discussed the science behind the new recommendations, and the hope that it may inspire more people who have been hesitant to receive a COVID vaccination. The vaccines show excellent protection for all prevalent virus variants up to at least six months; firm data beyond that point are still lacking because it’s a new vaccine.

As always, there’s more at the original, but it all works out the same: if you are afraid, your fear is justified.

Fear is how we got to this point in the first place. The government wanted everybody afraid, to use fear to get the American people to accept the illegal and unconstitutional restrictions on our constitutional rights, as being just so necessary, don’t you know. When governors across the country ordered churches closed, churches and bishops went right along with it. When a couple of churches ignored Governor Andy Beshear’s (D-KY) order, he sent the Kentucky State Police to record license plates and vehicle identification numbers on vehicles in church parking lots, on Easter Sunday! Two federal judges ruled against the Governor, allowing churches to reopen, but they did not rule until May 8, 2020.

It wasn’t just last year: purportedly Catholic President Biden’s CDC wanted us to miss services this Easter as well!

Easter Sunday was April 4th, yet within five weeks the CDC were saying that ‘fully vaccinated’ people could go without masks in public.

Fear! As Frank Herbert wrote in Dune, fear is the mind-killer, and fear was what the government used to get people to comply. Fear will always be used when a government wants to force you to do something unnatural, something you would not be inclined to do. Fear must be resisted, fear must be fought.

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Larry Krasner wins Democratic nomination for District Attorney of Philadelphia

In 2003, then Prime Minister Arial Sharon proposed that Israel completely withdraw from the Gaza Strip, a proposal which became official Israeli government policy, and, in February of 2005, the Knesset approved the Disengagement Plan Implementation Law. The Jewish settlers who refused to leave were forcibly evacuated by the Israeli Defence Force. Though Israel still provided utilities to Gaza, the Palestinians living therein had the opportunity to make of the land what they would.

Gaza is resource-poor, but it does have some of the best beaches on the Mediterranean Sea. The Palestinians could have, had they so chosen, built a tremendous beach resort nation, which would attract hundreds of thousands of European vacationers, and their euros, and created a reasonably prosperous and peaceful ‘country,’ one which could have been the model for a peaceful Palestinian state.

Instead, they elected the Hamas terrorist group as their government, and Hamas turned Gaza into just another terrorist base, occasionally firing rockets into Israel. The current troubles are the result of just more of that.

There aren’t that many fighters in Hamas, but the ‘civilian’ population of Gaza provide them with what they need: food, clothing, shelter and hiding place from the IDF. While Hamas are the ones who start the troubles, the much larger civilian population are responsible for enabling Hamas to do so. They have reaped what they have sown.

And it looks like Philadelphia wants to emulate Gaza!

Philly DA Larry Krasner beats primary challenger Carlos Vega by wide margin in closely watched race

Krasner’s primary win puts a second four-year term easily in reach after he campaigned on his record of criminal justice reform.

by Chris Brennan and Sean Collins Walsh | Wednesday, May 19, 2021

Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner easily defeated Democratic primary challenger Carlos Vega on Tuesday, taking a giant step toward winning a second term after campaigning on his record of criminal justice reform.

The Associated Press projected Krasner as the winner over Vega late Tuesday night. With 22% of the projected votes counted, Krasner held a wide advantage, 65% to 35%. In a city where Democrats outnumber Republicans seven to one, Krasner is now very likely to win November’s general election. He won the 2017 general election with 75% of the vote.

“Four years ago we promised reform and a focus on serious crime,” Krasner told supporters at a Center City hotel Tuesday night. “We kept those promises. And this time they put us back in office for what we have done. Not ideas, not promises, but realities.”

Krasner, 60, was a defense and civil rights lawyer for three decades, with a long record of suing the Philadelphia police before he was elected as a reformer in 2017. That victory helped propel him to the forefront of a new crop of progressive prosecutors across the country, a reform movement that was tested this election in Philadelphia by rising violent crime.

According to the Philadelphia Police Department’s Current Crime Statistics page, 198 people have been murdered in the City of Brotherly Love so far this year, a 40.43% increase over the same date last year, and last year ended with 499 homicides, just one short of the record set in 1990, the height of the crack cocaine wars. Philadelphia is on track for over 520 murders in 2021.

Well, the voters in Philly have spoken! They have chosen a ‘prosecutor’ who is softer-than-soft on crime, and who has made more people in the city victims of crime. Like the voters in Gaza, who chose Hamas terrorists to run their territory, the voters in Philadelphia have chosen their own form of terrorism, and now they get to live with the results. They have reaped what hey have sown.

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Journolism: The Brown Daily Herald decides to hide the truth.

The Brown Daily Herald is the student newspaper for Brown University, a hoitiest of the toitiest Ivy League college, founded in 1764 as the College in the English Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, and is the seventh oldest college in the United States. Highly selective, Brown accepts only the best of the best, or president’s daughters, and even they can get kicked out for poor academic performance.

So it was with some amusement that I read this, with a hat tip to my good friend Hube:

Editors’ note: Changing deadnames and pronouns

By 131th Editorial Board[1]Editors’ Notes are written by The Herald’s 131st editorial board: Kayla Guo ’22.5, Henry Dawson ’22.5, Li Goldstein ’22, Emilija Sagaityte ’22, Kate Ok ’22, Emily Teng ’22 and Kamran … Continue reading | Monday, May 17, 2021

In order to respect individuals’ current and lived identities, The Herald has adopted a new policy regarding requests from transgender or nonbinary individuals to replace their deadname and/or change their pronouns featured in previously published work on The Herald’s website. Upon receiving such a request, The Herald will make the gender-affirming changes online in a timely manner and without a correction or editor’s note marking the change.

It is normal journalistic procedure to note corrections made to articles, so the Herald is telling readers that it will not abide by what the journalism students are (supposedly) being taught by their professors.[2]The 131th Editorial Board members, being in their late teens and early twenties, may never have heard of JournoList, from which I have taken the word ‘journolism.’

This policy is intended to respect transgender and nonbinary individuals. We will not include an editor’s note announcing the gender-affirming change(s) made in response to such a request because we believe such a note would risk outing the individual and causing harm. Because the information included in the article was accurate at the time of publishing, we do not feel this raises questions about transparency or accountability.

What does that even mean? If “the information included in the article was accurate” at the time of publication,[3]Note that I have corrected their grammar. Journalism students should not have such poor grammar. then it was accurate, and this editorial change is one which makes the article inaccurate. If “the information included in the article was accurate” at the time of publication, then declining to note such is the opposite of “transparency or accountability.” Accountability means taking responsibility for one’s actions; the Editorial Board are deliberately refusing accountability.

How, I have to ask, does changing a story, without issuing a notice of correction, avoid “outing the individual and causing harm”? Clearly, if the person in question identified as one sex at the time the story was written, and another later on, that story has gone deep into the archives. Almost no one would see the old story unless he were searching for it, and a search for Cindy Brown is not going to result in a story about Carl Brown. The Editorial Board are sacrificing journalistic integrity for no reason at all.

We think this policy reflects both our commitment to accuracy and our ethical obligation to minimize harm. We are eager to see how other newsrooms, both our student peers and at professional news organizations, address this and similar questions in the coming months and years.

As we have noted concerning the Lexington Herald-Leader’s and McClatchy’s (apparent) policies in general, withholding information is both a deliberate inaccuracy and can promote actual harm.

Journalists have a self-assumed duty to the truth; what the Editorial Board are doing is to deliberately obscure the truth. If John Smith was publicly identifying as John Smith at the time of the news story, it becomes wholly inaccurate to change his name to Jane Smith just because he has decided that he is a she now. The news story was about the situation at the time, and includes how other people saw and reacted to John Smith, not Jane Smith.

A great truth of which the Editorial Board may be unaware: people react differently to males and females, and this is part of the news.

One would hope that “how other newsrooms, both our student peers and at professional news organizations, address this and similar questions in the coming months and years,” is to address such issues is by doing something really radical, like telling the truth. The Editorial Board of The Brown Daily Herald have apparently decided that telling the truth is far less important than being #woke and trendy.

References

References
↑1 Editors’ Notes are written by The Herald’s 131st editorial board: Kayla Guo ’22.5, Henry Dawson ’22.5, Li Goldstein ’22, Emilija Sagaityte ’22, Kate Ok ’22, Emily Teng ’22 and Kamran King ’22
↑2 The 131th Editorial Board members, being in their late teens and early twenties, may never have heard of JournoList, from which I have taken the word ‘journolism.’
↑3 Note that I have corrected their grammar. Journalism students should not have such poor grammar.
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Journolism: The Philadelphia Inquirer uncritically pushes transgenderism

When The Philadelphia Inquirer fired accepted the resignation of Executive Editor Stan Wischnowski due to pressure from the #woke staffers over his article title “Buildings Matter, Too,” it seems as though the last of the adults left the newspaper. Senior Editor Gabriel Escobar certainly hasn’t shown any leadership, nor has Charlotte Sutton, Assistant Managing Editor, Health, Business & Built Environment, if they let this kind of drivel be published:

These Penn State students are tackling the issue of period poverty on their own campus

A campus-wide survey found 13% of students who menstruate have skipped class or work because they didn’t have access to period products at Penn State.

By Bethany Ao | May 18, 2021

Last fall, when Jess Strait became president of a Penn State club focused on eliminating stigma associated with menstruation, one of her goals was to find out how period poverty — the inability to afford sanitary products — was affecting her fellow classmates.

Inspired by the work of No More Secrets, a Mount Airy nonprofit that delivers menstrual care packages around Philadelphia, Strait, a 20-year-old rising senior, and her team at the Days for Girls club drafted a short survey of 10 open-ended questions about menstruation. What they found shocked them.

Of the approximately 500 students surveyed, 13% have skipped class or work because they didn’t have the products they need.

If you apply that rate to the entire student body, Strait said, “that should be at least 2,500 undergraduates who are missing classes and not getting the most of their education because they don’t have period products.”

I’ve seen stories like this for years, and yes, I’m male, but as a man who has lived with a woman for 49 years, and the father of daughters, I’ve seen how women adapt to the fact that they have periods, and learn to carry “period products” with them as their cycles near menstruation.

I get it: sometimes women do get caught by surprise when it comes to their periods. Miss Ao’s article has to do with the availability of “period products” on campus, and the claim that some women are unable to afford them. I have no comments about such things.

But what got me about the article was the verbiage used. This paragraph illustrates it:

A study by researchers at George Mason University’s College of Health and Human Services published in February found that one in 10 college students who menstruate reported chronic period poverty, which means that they struggled to pay for basic products each month. And 14% had trouble paying for menstrual products within the last year.

LOL! “(C)ollege students who menstruate”? Wouldn’t they be known as women?

Oops, that’s what got J K Rowling in such trouble.

Miss Ao did use some unwoke language in places, the very next paragraph using the word “woman” thrice, but it wasn’t too much further down that she wrote “At Penn State, the Days for Girls club conducted their own survey of more than 500 students who menstruate.” How incredibly unwoke that organization must be, using the term “Girls”, and thus excluding the “men who menstruate” from their membership and services!

“That was something that had been under our radar before this semester,” (Miss Strait) said. “In the free response questions we had several students who don’t identify as women and sometimes in their bathrooms there wasn’t a trash can, at all. They might have to carry a product with them to dispose of later. The fact that those communities are kind of being put at risk … was really alarming to us.”

The article went on to note that Indiana University supplies free “period products” in all public bathrooms, including men’s bathrooms, but, alas! some colleges do not.

Let me be clear on this: people who menstruate are women, are female. No male has ever had, or ever will have, a period, because menstruation is a biological function limited to females. We can forgive Miss Ao for reporting that Miss Strait was concerned about female “students who don’t identify as women,” because that’s Miss Strait’s belief, not the reporter’s. But Miss Ao uncritically used the term “students who menstruate” in paragraphs which were no quotations of someone else, and that is something which pushes the cockamamie agenda that girls can be boys and boys can be girls.

A real editor would have ‘blue penciled’ that, but there is little evidence that The Philadelphia Inquirer has any real editors anymore.

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Killadelphia

Shockingly enough, this story was listed on The Philadelphia Inquirer’s website main page, at least as of 8:15 PM on Sunday, May 16th. The screen grab from the Inquirer’s main page was from the first column on the left hand side. A bigger blurb was located further down. As much as I have criticized the paper for not having these stories where they are easily found, I believe in giving credit where credit is due.

15 shot, 8 stabbed: Philly’s toll from another violent weekend

At least 23 people were injured — one fatally — from guns and knives in the city from Friday night into Sunday night. The toll was expected to grow.

by Diane Mastrull | May 16, 2021

At least 23 people were injured — one fatally — from guns and knives during another violent weekend in Philadelphia.

According to police reports covering Friday night into Sunday night, 15 people had been shot and eight stabbed, including one man at a city jail. The toll was expected to grow.

Officials have been at a loss to explain the surge in gun violence that has the city on track to exceed the all-time high in homicides recorded in 1990 — 500. It finished last year one shy of that record. As of the end of last week, the total was just over 190, up nearly 40% over last year at this time.

The weekend contributed at least one more to that tally. At 9:48 p.m. Saturday, a 31-year-old man was shot in the head on the 7400 block of Fayette Street in East Mount Airy. He was pronounced dead at the scene. No arrests had been made.

The article was published sometime around 5:00 PM; the article simply said it was published “three hours ago” when I opened it up, which is how the Inquirer does things, but it isn’t exactly the most professional way to do things. So there was plenty more weekend time for the gang-bangers to fire off a few more shots.

But man, the gang-bangers are lousy shots. They shot 15 people, but only one has died? I can’t imagine that they were shooting just to wound. We noted previously that the previous weekend, Philadelphia Police recovered 121 shell casings, but ‘only’ hit 25 people, killing ‘only’ seven of them.

 

The above was written Sunday evening, because I wanted to see the Monday morning statistics. The Philadelphia Police Department’s Current Crime Statistics page reports that there have been 196 homicides in the City of Brotherly Love as of 11:59 PM EDT on Sunday, May 16th. The previous figure was 190, as of the end of Thursday, May 13th.

196 homicides in 136 days works out to 1.44 per day, on pace for 526 for the year. In 2020, the total was ‘just’ 140 killings, in 137 days — 2020 was a leap year — and 121 on the same date in 2019, fewer than one a day. Killings are up an even 40.0% over last year, and 61.98% over the same date in 2019, buy hey, Philly’s voters are poised to re-elect District Attorney Larry Krasner, whose softer-than-soft-on-crime regime has helped lead to this!

Homicides in Philadelphia are up 78.18% from the same time in Mr Krasner’s first year in office, 2018. If the good people of Philadelphia re-elect him, they’ll have no one to blame but themselves.

As of 8:56 AM EDT, the Inquirer story referenced above is still shown on the Inquirer’s website main page, and has not been updated.

 

Updated: 5:15 PM EDT.

In Philadelphia, 30 people were shot or stabbed over the weekend, two fatally

As of Monday afternoon, police had not made an arrest in any of the shooting incidents that took place between Friday and early Monday morning.

by Anna Orso | May 17, 2021 | 4:58 PM EDT

The unrelenting surge of violence in Philadelphia continued over the weekend, leaving 30 victims shot or stabbed — two of them fatally — and some community advocates anxious about what the summer months may bring.

The violence, including a quadruple shooting and three double shootings, was concentrated in North and West Philadelphia and touched Kensington and Frankford. Victims were injured on the street, at bars, and inside homes and stores.

As of Monday afternoon, police had not made an arrest in any of the shooting incidents that took place between Friday and early Monday morning.

So, twenty-one shooting incidents, and nobody saw nothin’, huh?

Among the 21 shooting victims was Darryl Cromwell, 57, of the 2700 block of Germantown Avenue, who police said was shot inside a North Philadelphia home in the wee hours of the morning Saturday. He was transported to Temple University Hospital and died six hours later.

And on Saturday night just after 10 p.m., police said, Charles Campbell, 31, of the 3000 block of North 10th Street, died of a gunshot wound on the 7400 block of Fayette Street in East Mount Airy.

Well, at least the Inquirer named the victims; that doesn’t often happens. Of course, I have to ask: how did the city suffer only two fatalities over the weekend, yet the homicide total, as noted above, increased by six?

Still, at least this story was referenced on the website main page, something that hasn’t happened very often in the past. Perhaps someone at the Inquirer has paid a bit of attention?

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Toldjah so!

We had previously noted that the Lone Star State, which had dropped its mandatory mask order on March 10th, was doing better than a lot of states which had those orders!

The so-called ‘experts’ all told us that the masks just had to be worn, but the empirical evidence, the real world results, have not borne that out.

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LOL! Journolism strikes again at the Lexington Herald-Leader!

And here I wondered if the Lexington Herald-Leader ever paid any attention to my articles!

I noted, on April 23rd, that the Lexington Herald-Leader does not like posting photographs of accused criminals, even when those suspects are still at large and publishing the photo might help the police capture him. But the paper surprised me when they did publish such a photograph:

Kentucky man allegedly tried to kidnap 3-year-old boy, offered $1,000 to buy him

By Bill Estep | April 23, 2021 | 9:41 AM EDT

Ronnie L. Helton was charged in April 2021 with attempting to kidnap a child. Whitley County Detention Center. Photo copied to my site from the Herald-Leader.

A Kentucky man who allegedly tried to kidnap a 3-year-old boy as he played in the yard has been charged in federal court.

A grand jury indicted Ronnie L. Helton, of Corbin, Thursday on one charged of attempted kidnapping.

Helton, 73, was arrested on state charges hours after an April 7 incident in Corbin in which a woman named Kristy Baker told police a man had tried to take her grandchild.

Baker said the boy was playing on a trailer sitting next to a fence around her yard when a man parked across the street and walked over to the child, according to the citation in the case.

The photo of the suspect was posted on the Herald-Leader’s website in the original article; I saved that photo to my computer and my website. I notified, via Twitter, the Herald-Leader of my article, and my point:

Peter Baniak, notified in the tweet as @pbaniak, is the Editor of the newspaper.

Well, I had reason to check on the newspaper’s original article again today, and shazamm!, at least as of 5:36 PM EDT on Sunday, May 16, 2021, the mugshot of the suspect has disappeared. I did a Google search, to see if perhaps the charges had been dropped against Mr Helton, but found nothing to indicate that. Many other media outlets still had the suspect’s mugshot on their websites, but the Herald-Leader took it off of their site, and had done so rather recently.

This leads to a few obvious questions:

  • Why did the Herald-Leader post the suspect’s mugshot in the first place, when they had been previously declining to post police mugshots, including one of a suspect at large, one which the publication just might have aided the Lexington Police Department in his apprehension?
  • Who took the decision to publish this one suspect’s mugshot, despite the fact that the paper apparently did not do so normally?
  • Is the Herald-Leader’s apparent policy the newspaper’s own, or was this dictated by McClatchy?
  • Why did the paper wait at least several days to remove the mugshot after being notified of the departure from normal procedure?
  • Why, since the mugshot was available for several days, did the paper decide lately to remove it?

We have previously noted the newspaper’s editorial positions, and just how out-of-touch the editors are with their readership in central and eastern Kentucky.

The Herald-Leader is not the only media source in central and eastern Kentucky. In my previous articles on the newspaper’s declining to publish mugshots, I was usually able to get the photos from the websites of other Lexington media outlets. Those outlets, normally television stations, which are visually oriented, more complete information to their viewers than the newspaper is to its readers.[1]My subscription is digital only; I live so far out in the sticks that physical delivery of the print newspaper is not available.

Perhaps the editors of the newspaper have no choice; perhaps this was dictated to them by McClatchy. But the newspaper has transformed journalism into journolism, withholding information from its readers, for whatever reasons it has. This is not a good look.

References

References
↑1 My subscription is digital only; I live so far out in the sticks that physical delivery of the print newspaper is not available.
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If you’re scared, say you’re scared!

I’ve heard this meme, if you’re scared, say you’re scared, for a long time, and it was the first thing that popped into my mind when I saw this column in The Philadelphia Inquirer:

The CDC’s new mask rules promise freedom. But to me they mean fear. | Opinion

I’m sorry to say, I don’t trust people to follow these guidelines safely.

by Alison McCook, For the Inquirer | May 14, 2021

Alison McCook, from her Twitter profile.

On Thursday, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) made a surprise announcement: Anyone who is fully vaccinated can now stop masking and social distancing, including often indoors.

Though many public health experts had said they thought we would need masks when indoors with strangers for at least another year, the nation’s health protection agency has declared that anyone who received the last dose of their COVID-19 vaccine at least two weeks ago can start living life the way they did before this god-awful thing began. Soon after, Pennsylvania followed suit.

To many people, this is a happy surprise: Freedom! Faces! Parties!

Not me.

I have spent the last 20-plus years as a science journalist. I believe in the vaccines, and that the CDC’s new advice is likely supported by the latest data. I believe in Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s top infectious disease expert, who says he feels good about the CDC’s new decision and wants people to feel like we are approaching “normality.” But Thursday’s announcement from the CDC has filled me with fear.

Fear is a horrible emotion, and people are afraid to admit to fear; there’s a definite stigma associated with it. The Inquirer even illustrated the column with a photo of the Rocky statue outside the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and the fictitious Rocky Balboa, played by Sylvester Stallone, is supposed to be an icon of fearlessness. We previously noted the Inquirer’s profile of murdered teenager, and basketball player, Quamir Mitchell, and how his coach, Adrian Burke said of him, “He wasn’t scared of anything.” That’s the kind of thing people want said of them.

But I have to give some credit to Alison McCook, the column author. Given the stigma that is associated with fear, it does take some courage to say, in public, that she was “filled . . . with fear.”

Miss McCook is vaccinated against COVID-19, but, under the definition that to be “fully vaccinated,” one must be 14 days past his final dose, she won’t be fully vaccinated for another nine days, on May 25th, a day she stated she has marked on her calendar.

She does have her reasons. Miss McCook has a seven-year-old daughter, one too young to qualify for a vaccine yet. The Food and Drug Administration authorized, on May 10th, use of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 Vaccine for children 12 to 15 years of age.[1]CNN noted that “Five states — Alabama, Iowa, North Carolina, Oregon and Tennessee — either allow some ages in that group to consent for themselves or leave requirements up to … Continue reading

But her greatest fear, her “biggest concern,” is that she simply does not trust that other people will obey the CDC guidelines, and wear masks if they have not been vaccinated. How, she asked, could she know that the person who comes close to her indoors, without a mask, is really one of the vaccinated?

That’s a fear expressed by a whole bunch of people, as we have noted previously. Jill Filipovic McCormick wants you to have to carry some form of #VaccinePassport, and President Biden tried to order people to either get vaccinated or wear a mask, something that might have been better received if he had asked rather than ordered. Given that he has no authority in this matter — the various mask mandates were all issued by state governments, not the feds — all that he can do is shout impotently. The New York Times reported that:

In the informal survey, 80 percent (of epidemiol;ogists) said they thought Americans would need to wear masks in public indoor places for at least another year. Just 5 percent said people would no longer need to wear masks indoors by this summer. In large crowds outdoors, like at a concert or protest, 88 percent of the epidemiologists said it was necessary even for fully vaccinated people to wear masks. “Unless the vaccination rates increase to 80 or 90 percent over the next few months, we should wear masks in large public indoor settings,” said Vivian Towe, a program officer at the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute.

The real problem is that too many in government, the CDC, the Democratic governors, and the political left, all used COVID-19 to stoke fear, to stoke fear to gain authoritarian control. Miss McCook’s fear is real, but it is a fear stoked by attempts to sensationalize this virus for fear’s sake, and for control. We shut down our economy, threw twenty million people out of work, restricted people’s to their homes, closed schools and churches, and millions and millions of Americans went along with it, all because of fear. Miss McCook lost her father, not to the virus itself, but because of the unreasoning fear of the virus, as the nursing home in which he was living was shut down to all visitors.

That fear struck her, and it struck her seven-year-old daughter as well:

 

For some reason, the drive-thru line at the donut shop took forever, and we inched forward for 25 minutes before it was our turn. As I approached the window with the employee handing over orders, my daughter spoke with alarm from the backseat: “Mom, he’s not wearing a mask!” Surely she must be wrong, I thought to myself.

Nope.

As I pulled up to the drive-thru window, the 20-something employee handed us her donut, smiled, and told us to have a nice day. She was right: He had no mask. It wasn’t pulled under his nose or chin, or hanging by its loop from his ear. It was totally absent. (But what if he has a medical reason for not wearing a mask? Yeah, not likely. )

I was stunned. I hadn’t seen a stranger’s teeth up close for months. Unsure what to do, I grabbed the donut bag and sped off, throwing it into the front seat and telling my daughter she couldn’t eat it.

I know that surfaces are not a major source of transmission; it was probably safe for her to eat the donut. But I was angry — I had just been assaulted by a toothy smile, and I wanted her to know that was not okay.

Assaulted? Assaulted? Miss McCook described it in terms almost as though her daughter and she had just barely escaped being raped

So we drove another 15 minutes back towards our local donut shop that has no drive-thru, dodged the indoor diners and got her donut (no sprinkles).

There’s been a lot to be angry about over the last few months. And I’ve always been bothered by people who refused to take COVID restrictions seriously. But at this stage in the pandemic, anyone’s laissez-faire approach sends me into a blind rage. I’ve been seething about that drive-thru for days.

Fear, and rage. This is what the left have been sending out through our society, and this is what Miss McCook has absorbed, and what she has transmitted to her daughter.

I get why people don’t want to abide by the recommendations anymore — believe me. But we are SO CLOSE to putting the worst of this behind us. SO CLOSE, PEOPLE! And every unvaccinated person who throws away their mask, takes a trip without quarantining, or invites friends over for dinner because they’re lonely, is making all of this harder on the rest of us. I’m dying to do those things, too — but because they are doing it, I have to wait even longer before I can. It’s like I’m stuck forever in that drive-thru line, watching cars cut in front of me and move up to the window, while I’m in the same goddamned spot.

According to the New York Times, people in my area are considered to be at a “very high risk” of exposure to COVID-19 (hospitalizations are up 42%), meaning we should avoid nonessential travel. During the five days my kid was off school, more than 4,000 Americans died of COVID. And have you heard of Michigan?

Yeah, I’ve heard of Michigan, and I wrote about it, noting that in masked up, highly restricted Michigan has a population with a higher percentage of vaccinated people, and still more than thrice the rate of new COVID infections of Texas, which had dropped its mask mandate and most other restrictions two months earlier.

I checked in with some other people I know who are mustering up the energy to continue to take COVID seriously, and they are feeling the same white-hot rage at rule-breakers that I am. One unvaccinated parent who also spent spring break at home told me some of her co-workers had recently flown to Jamaica and England. “Have you screamed recently?” she asked. When I told her my kid is always around, she suggested I lock myself in the car. “It will take a few times to let it go,” she added.

I’ll try it. In the meantime, I hope everyone enjoyed their spring break. If you aren’t vaccinated and went somewhere great, please don’t tell me about it.

In Frank Herbert’s Dune, Paul Atreides used the “litany of fear” to conquer pain:

I must not fear.
Fear is the mind-killer.
Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration.
I will face my fear.
I will permit it to pass over me and through me.
And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path.
Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.

I do not know Miss McCook, never met her, and the odds that I’ve even passed her on the street are vanishingly small. And perhaps some will think I’ve been harsh on her in this, but I think not. I honor her honest statements, statements of fear and of rage, statements not many would have had the courage to admit.

But Miss McCook is a victim, a victim of the propaganda spread by the fearmongers of 2020, those who were genuinely afraid, and those who wanted to use COVID-19 to push a political agenda. Fearful is no way to live, and nothing that you want to teach your children.

References

References
↑1 CNN noted that “Five states — Alabama, Iowa, North Carolina, Oregon and Tennessee — either allow some ages in that group to consent for themselves or leave requirements up to individual vaccine providers.” The other states all require parental consent for the administration of vaccines.
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Killadelphia By cooperating with evil, the people of Philadelphia have brought evil upon themselves.

I’ve said it several times: to the editors of The Philadelphia Inquirer, killings in the city aren’t newsworthy unless the victim is a child, someone who was a ‘somebody,’ or a cute little white girl. We need to stop pretending that #BlackLivesMatter because in the City of Brotherly Love, it’s very apparent that they don’t.

So, I was somewhat surprised looking at the Inquirer’s website this morning and finding 4 wounded in West Philly shooting: The shooting happened on Market Street near 56th Street, and then this one:

2 teens shot in Harrowgate

The shooting happened on the 1900 block of East Wensley Street.

By Robert Moran | May 14, 2021

A police crime scene unit officer investigates a double shooting in the 1900 block of E. Wensley street in the 24th police district. Some 17 evidence makers lay on the street and sidewalk. Friday May 14, 2021. Steven M. Falk, Philadelphia Inquirer Staff Photographer. Click to enlarge.

Two teens were shot Friday night in the city’s Harrowgate section, police said.

The shooting happened around 6 p.m. on the 1900 block of East Wensley Street. An 18-year-old man was shot several times in the head and torso. He was taken by police to Temple University Hospital and was listed in extremely critical condition.

A 17-year-old male was shot in the left leg. He was taken by medics to Temple and was listed in stable condition.

Police reported no arrests and no other details were available.

That’s it; that’s the entire story. Normally, I don’t reproduce photos from the Inquirer, but this one is very germane to the story. It shows most of seventeen “evidence markers,” which normally means shell casings or bullets found at the scene.

Both stories were by Robert Moran, who “covers breaking news at night in the Philadelphia region,” so yeah, shootings are going to be his beat. Neither of the stories was on the Inquirer’s website main page; I found them listed at the bottom of a main page article I opened.

And then I found another, which was also buried:

A 16-year-old fatally shot in Southwest Philly was weeks away from graduating high school

Quamir Mitchell was a senior at West Philadelphia High School, a standout basketball player, and something of a role model for younger teens in the neighborhood.

by Anna Orso and Chris Palmer | Updated May 14, 2021

The 16-year-old boy fatally shot near a Southwest Philadelphia basketball court Thursday night was a high school senior just weeks away from graduation, a standout basketball player, and something of a role model for younger teens in the neighborhood.

That’s how several people remembered Quamir Mitchell on Friday, the day after he was killed and a 13-year-old boy was wounded in a burst of gunfire near the Deritis Playground — a crime that police said remained something of a mystery in the early stages of the investigation.

Adrian Burke, Mitchell’s basketball coach at West Philadelphia High School, visited the crime scene Friday morning, on the 5600 block of Grays Avenue, to offer a prayer for Mitchell. Burke had known the teen for a decade, recalling his big heart, his love of basketball, his tendency to be “dressed to the nines.”

“He was phenomenal,” Burke said, tears pooling in his eyes. “Just a beautiful kid. He was so strong in his skin, and he knew who he was.”

There’s more at the original, but, like I said, the Inquirer provided more coverage because young Mr Mitchell was a “somebody.”

In a story we previously noted, on Monday, May 10th, the Inquirer did note the weekend’s violence in the city, which had one pretty bad paragraph:

The shootings claimed 25 victims in 14 incidents. The victims, 22 males and three females, ranged in age from 17 to 64, and detectives recovered 121 bullet shell casings, officials said.

That’s pretty bad: at least 121 shots fired, actually hitting ‘only’ 25 people, and killing ‘only’ seven of them. The Philadelphia gang bangers are some pretty lousy shots!

Homicide Capt. Jason Smith said some of the bloodshed was fueled by drug turf battles, arguments, robberies, and retaliation for previous killings — a motive police believe was behind three of the weekend killings.

Smith said investigators need the public’s help to solve the crimes — the arrest rate for slayings this year is just 46%.

“It’s up to the community,” he said. “It’s up to these individuals who are committing these acts of violence. They have to take a step back and say: ‘Wow. Is it really worth it? Are we going to continue going in this direction?’”

Smith asked anyone with information about the crimes to notify the police at 215-686-3334, 215-686-3335, or 215-686-TIPS. Tips can also be left at phillyunsolvedmurders.com, he said. Those who provide tips that lead to the arrest and conviction of a suspect will receive $20,000 from the city, officials said.

So far, no one has been arrested in any of the seven slayings and one man was arrested in one of the nonfatal shootings, said Vanore, who added that detectives are culling through video evidence from the various scenes.

An arrest warrant has been issued in one of the slayings, but the suspect remains at large.

Of course, the Inquirer did not print a photo of the suspect, which could help police find him, if someone in the neighborhood spots him and actually calls the cops, but it is possible that the police did not have a photo of the suspect to give to the newspaper.

There are plenty of people, plenty of people, in those neighborhoods who know who shot the victims, but who won’t ‘snitch,’ because they don’t trust the police, and don’t want to become victims themselves. The neighborhood enables these killings, this violence, by its participation in covering up for and hiding the thugs in their midst. With a District Attorney like Larry Krasner, who is trying to reduce ‘mass incarceration’ at a time when more people need to be incarcerated, it’s hard to blame them.

As of 11:59 PM EDT on Thursday, May 13th, the 133rd day of the year, 192 souls had been sent early to their eternal rewards in the City of Brotherly Love. That’s 1.44 people every day, putting Philadelphia on track for 527 homicides for 2021, which would blow 1990’s 500, and last years 499 out of the water. And yet, with all of that, the Inquirer’s Editorial Board actually endorsed Mr Krasner for re-election, saying, “A complex, relatively recent spike in gun violence isn’t a reason to return to the mass incarceration regime of yesteryear, but a challenge to do better.”

No, it’s most certainly a reason to start locking up the bad guys again. Bad guys in jail aren’t bad guys out on the street, committing more crimes.

Come time for the general election, the Editorial Board will, once again, endorse almost all Democrats, and the voters of the city will elect almost all Democrats, and that process will continue in 2022, 2023 and 2024. Philadelphia is a Hellhole, but it is a Hellhole created by the people living there. They are like the Palestinians living in Gaza, providing food, clothing, shelter and hiding places for Hamas, and then shocked, shocked! when Hamas shoot rockets against Israel, and then the Israeli Defence Force destroys their neighborhoods. By cooperating with evil, the people of Philadelphia have brought evil upon themselves.