Author Archives: Dana Pico

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The HuffPo is biting the dust

While I have often noted that print newspapers are 18th century technology, the contraction of media outlets isn’t restricted to print.

BuzzFeed Announces Deep Cuts To HuffPost Staff After Acquisition

BuzzFeed acquired HuffPost from Verizon Media in February.

By Sara Boboltz | March 9, 2021 | 12:31 PM EST

BuzzFeed announced layoffs for the HuffPost newsroom on Tuesday, three weeks after acquiring HuffPost from Verizon Media in February.

Hillary Frey, the site’s executive editor, and Louise Roug, the executive editor for international, will be departing in the restructuring effort.

HuffPost Canada will also shutter operations later this month.

A deal between BuzzFeed, HuffPost and Verizon Media was first made public in November. Verizon Media stated at the time that BuzzFeed and HuffPost would operate as “separate, distinct news organizations” with their own websites and editorial staff while BuzzFeed CEO Jonah Peretti led the combined company.

Translation: Verizon Media lied to them!

The HuffPost Union, organized as part of the Writers Guild of America, East, slammed the restructuring effort in a statement:

Today, we learned that 33 of our colleagues — nearly 30% of our unit — will be laid off. We are devastated and infuriated, particularly after an exhausting year of covering a pandemic and working from home. This is also happening less than a month after HuffPost was acquired by BuzzFeed. We never got a fair shot to prove our worth. These layoffs reiterate the importance of forming a union and advocating for our colleagues. We are glad that we are protected by a collective bargaining agreement and that our colleagues will receive severance. Our union will continue fighting to make HuffPost a more just and equitable workplace, including pushing for clear and accountable commitments to hiring and promoting more people of color and for transparency around pay equity.

It really is just so exhausting working from home! 🙂 It means that you have to make your own coffee in the morning rather than having a $7.25 per hour clerk at 7/Eleven doing it for you.

Now let me be clear here: I don’t like seeing anyone losing his job, but let’s be honest here: the HuffPost was as #woke and biased a ‘publication’ as any around. There was no special reporting there, and nothing you can see on their website front page is not available elsewhere — frequently with better writing — for free. And given the contempt the media have for working class men and women in ‘flyover country,’ it’s difficult not to feel some schadenfreude.

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Police Commissioner Danielle Outlaw is really just the fall guy (fall gal?). The real problem is Mayor Jim Kenney

March 8th is the 67th day of the year. As of March 8th last year (which was actually the 68th day, 2020 being a leap year), the City of Brotherly Love had seen 67 homicides, or 0.985 killings per day. It was also the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States, just before the lockdowns — you remember, 15 days to flatten the curve? — and the school closures and millions of people being thrown out of work.

But on the 67th day of 2021, 89 souls were sent early to their eternal rewards in Philadelphia’s mean streets, 1.328 per day. Doing a little math here, it should take only eight more days, until March 16th, for Philly to reach 100 homicides.

On the 8th, The Philadelphia Inquirer published an OpEd defense of Police Commissioner Danielle Outlaw:

Danielle Outlaw put in an untenable position by Kenney administration

In order to ensure the overall safety of Philadelphia’s citizens and their neighborhoods, emergency management in Philadelphia County should be immediately reassessed.

by Joseph Certaine | March 8, 2021

Amid calls last month for Police Commissioner Danielle Outlaw to tender her resignation for mishandling the response to summer protests following the death of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police, it’s important to consider that she is not the only person at fault here.

Commissioner Outlaw, who had only been on the job for a few months when the protests began, was put in an untenable position by this administration. From my view, as a former managing director, the Kenney administration allowed the new police commissioner to handle large-scale protests without some of the best practices and institutional knowledge that previously determined how the city handled crisis situations.

At that paragraph break, the Inquirer included the boldfaced blurb:

» READ MORE: Danielle Outlaw’s failure should push Kenney to ask for her resignation — but she didn’t fail alone | Editorial

Police Commissioner Danielle Outlaw.

Well, of course the editors did that! But, as we noted previously, the editors want to punish the puppet, not the puppet master. The editors love them some Democrats, and endorsed Mayor Jim Kenney for re-election in the 2019 primaries, and if they endorsed a different candidate, Anthony Williams, for the Democratic nomination in 2015, it was still a close choice for them between Messrs Williams and Kenney.

The apparently odd notion that many of Philadelphia’s problems stem from Philadelphia’s poor leadership does not seem to have occurred to them. The apparently even odder notion that many of Philadelphia’s problems stem from Philadelphia’s leaderships leftist policies, well, they couldn’t say that, or they’d get another revolt among the #woke in their newsroom.[1]Apparently the idea of firing the forty employees who called out sick in protest, even though the inquirer could replace them all, within a day, from smaller newspapers across the country, is another … Continue reading

Mr Certaine continued, further down:

Why is it that the Kenney administration was not prepared for the uprising that occurred after George Floyd’s murder? Why aren’t questions being asked about preparedness in general? Why is the Fire Commissioner appointed as County Emergency Management Coordinator?

Why? I can answer that question, but the #woke won’t like it. The Kenney administration was not prepared because Mayor Kenney and his minions are far more concerned about leftist political positions than they are with protecting the city and its people.

The last Republican mayor of Philadelphia left office left office on January 7, 1952. Harry Truman was President at the time, and the last two Mayors, Mr Kenney and Michael Nutter, hadn’t been born yet! The City Council is controlled by Democrats, and the labor unions, and that has been the situation for decades. If the policies of the Democrats, if the policies of the liberals actually worked, Philadelphia ought to be an urban paradise, because the wicked ol’ reich-wing conservatives haven’t had any power to obstruct them.

Philadelphia is a disaster zone, a man-made disaster zone, and that’s not going to change anytime soon, because the voters of the city keep electing people who want to make the disaster even worse. Commissioner Outlaw is a convenient fall guy (fall gal?), but she’s still just a puppet.

References

References
↑1 Apparently the idea of firing the forty employees who called out sick in protest, even though the inquirer could replace them all, within a day, from smaller newspapers across the country, is another apparently odd notion which never occurred to the editors. The idea of telling the Special Snowflakes™ to buck up and do their jobs, or they’d find someone who would, that, too, never seemed to happen.
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Capitol Police request a two-month extension of National Guard deployment

Well, of course they did!

Capitol Police request extension of National Guard to protect Congress

By Dan Lamothe | March 4, 2021 | 9:15 PM EST

The U.S. Capitol Police have requested a 60-day extension of some of the 5,200 National Guard members activated in the District in response to security threats and the Jan. 6 assault on Congress, opening the door to a military presence in the nation’s capital into spring, defense officials said Thursday.

Acting chief Yogananda Pittman submitted the request to the Defense Department for an extension, the Capitol Police said in a statement on Thursday evening, without saying for how long.

You know what was known by Thursday evening? By Thursday evening, we knew that the alleged plot by purported militants to assault and breach the Capitol that day never happened.

The inauguration? That passed peacefully, without incident. The impeachment trial? Nothing happened.

The ‘new’ date for the assault which never happened is, supposedly, March 20th.

Now, did the attack not happen because of the troops and precautions, as the left will claim, or did it not happen because it was never a real threat in the first place?

The current National Guard mission ends on March 12th; the proposed extension would take the mission well into May.

At what point will the left decide that we do not want to have our nation’s capital looking like that of a banana republic?

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When you tolerate tyranny, you will get more tyranny When you accept tyrants, you will get more tyrants.

Governor Andy Beshear (D-KY)

If Governor Andy Beshear (D-KY) had asked Kentuckians to wear face masks to slow the spread of COVID-19, I would have willingly complied. Had Mr Beshear, seeing that the General Assembly passed new laws to rein in his claimed ’emergency’ executive authority, gone along with the new state laws, and asked the state legislature to approve extensions of his executive orders, I wouldn’t be writing this column. Had the Governor tried to work out his differences with the legislature, as Franklin Circuit Judge Phillip Shepherd asked him to do, I wouldn’t be so upseet.

Instead, the Governor responded, “See you in court,” showing his utter contempt for democracy.

Am I upset? Hell, yes, I am, totally pissed off, actually shaking in rage.

Beshear: KY won’t repeal its mask mandate anytime soon. 28 new COVID-19 deaths.

By Alex Acquisto | March 4, 2021 | 4:42 PM EST | Updated: March 4, 2021 | 5:28 PM EST

Reiterating that Kentucky will not be repealing its mask mandate anytime soon, Gov. Andy Beshear announced 1,068 new cases of COVID-19 in Kentucky on Thursday, as well as 28 virus-related deaths.

Earlier this week, Republican governors in Texas and Mississippi lifted coronavirus restrictions, repealing their states’ mask mandates and reopening businesses to full capacity. Kentucky will not do that, Beshear said.

“We’re going to continue to lose people until we’re fully out of the woods and everybody is vaccinated,” he said in a live update. “That’s the reason we’re not going to do what Texas or Mississippi has done. Those decisions will increase casualties when we just have maybe even a matter of months to go.”

Well, f(ornicate) him!

The Governor claims that the public support him on this, and keeps producing polls which say so. But, in the only poll that counts, the one on election day, the Republicans who ran against his dictatorial decrees were rewarded with 14 additional seats in the state House of Representatives, and two additional seats, out of only 19 up for election, in the state Senate. At every step along the way, Governor Beshear has excluded the state legislature:

Beshear was asked at Friday’s (July 10, 2020 — Editor) news conference on COVID-19 why he has not included the legislature in coming up with his orders. He said many state lawmakers refuse to wear masks and noted that 26 legislators in Mississippi have tested positive for the virus.

Translation: the General Assembly might not do exactly what I want them to do, so I’ll just go around them!

And here I thought that it was supposed to be the evil reich-wing Donald Trump who was the fascist! From the Encyclopedia Britannica:

Although fascist parties and movements differed significantly from one another, they had many characteristics in common, including extreme militaristic nationalism, contempt for electoral democracy and political and cultural liberalism, a belief in natural social hierarchy and the rule of elites, and the desire to create a Volksgemeinschaft (German: “people’s community”), in which individual interests would be subordinated to the good of the nation.

A contempt for electoral democracy?  Yup, that’s there, showing utter contempt for the legislators elected by the people of the Commonwealth of Kentucky. Individual interests and rights subordinated to what the Governor defines as the good of the state?  Yup, that’s there, too.  He even makes his propagandistic appeals as his Twitter feed is full of things like #TogetherKy and #TeamKentucky.

Of course, our Governor’s motives are good ones, right? That’s what Judge Shepherd said, when he granted Mr Beshear’s motion for a temporary injunction and partially stayed the effectiveness of three new laws the legislature approved, overriding the Governor’s veto.

The judge said all parties in the case “are acting in good faith to address public policy challenges of the utmost importance” but “the governor has made a strong case that the legislation, in its current form, is likely to undermine or even cripple, the effectiveness of public health measures necessary to protect the lives and health of Kentuckians from the COVID-19 pandemic.”

So, dictatorship is just fine as long as it’s a benevolent dictatorship.

Rachel Kleinfeld, a senior associate with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, wrote:

Viktor Yanukovych is the kind of dictator we love to hate. A kleptocrat who chose a bribe from Russia over his people’s future in the EU. A thug who sent other thugs to beat up protesters, until he was finally ousted by his own people. A man who left his country bankrupt while pictures of his palatial estate and private zoo are broadcast around the world. We vilify dictators like this. And, yet, there remains a dream, for far too many development experts, business people and others around the globe that a strong leader with authoritarian powers is needed to move poor countries into the developed world.

I am watching Ukraine implode from a West Africa nation where corruption is perceived to be growing, development is stalled and the economy is heading downhill. From high-level government appointees to members of civil society, I hear: “What we need is a benevolent dictator. … ” The sentiment is generally followed by praise for Paul Kagame, who has created a remarkably clean and efficient Rwanda after that country’s genocide, or Lee Kuan Yew, the “father of Singapore,” who corralled government corruption and thrust his nation into the first world.

The desire for benevolent dictatorship is not confined to developing nations. I hear it even more often from America’s business community and those working on international development – often accompanied by praise for China’s ability to “get things done.” The problem is that the entire 20th century seems to have produced at most one largely benevolent dictator and one efficient but increasingly repressive leader, both in tiny countries.

Meanwhile, we have seen scores of Yanukovych-like kleptocrats, Pinochet-style military dictatorships that torture dissenters in secret prisons and “disappear” those who disagree, and North Korean-style totalitarians whose gulags and concentration camps starve and murder hundreds of thousands or even millions of their countrymen.

Occasionally, dictators begin benevolently and grow worse. The world is littered with Kwame Nkrumahs, Fidel Castros and Robert Mugabes who rose to power with great popularity, built their nations, then turned their people’s hopes to ash through corruption, personality cults and violence. One Lee Kuan Yew and a Kagame teetering from benevolence toward repression, versus every other dictatorship of the 20th century? Those are not odds to bet your country on.

There is no doubt that Governor Beshear is personally popular in the Bluegrass State. He has been right out in front, on television almost every day, with his soothing words and handsome, non-threatening visage. The Governor wrote:

This is a war. We have lost more Kentuckians to COVID-19 than in battles during World War I, World War II and Vietnam combined.

That’s true enough, but there is one very stark difference: those Kentuckians who gave their lives on the battlefield were fighting, and dying, for democracy, for liberty, and not for dictatorship and despotism. Regardless of how benevolent Mr Beshear and his sycophants think he has been, irrespective of how necessary they have thought the Governor’s actions to be, they were, and are, still fundamentally and morally wrong, still an assault on our syste4m of government, far more than the 800 or so rioters in the Capitol kerfuffle, because the Governor has, so far, gotten away with his despotism.

Patriotic Kentuckians must do everything we can to fight Governor Beshear, we must do everything we can to frustrate his taking away of our rights. We must demonstrate, we must protest, we must obstruct his edicts, and we must never, ever accept anything less than liberty.

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The huge disconnect between the government and the governed Wealthy Justin Trudeau is so worried about #ClimateChange that he'd freeze Canadians

Our great neighbor to the north, the second largest country in the world by area, has had what we Americans would consider a very liberal government. Canadians have restrictions on speech imposed upon them, and all sorts of laws and regulations of which American ‘progressives’ can only dream about.

One of the liberal policies imposed on Canadians by their government is a ‘carbon’ tax to discourage fossil fuel consumption. But, as the term neighbor to the north implies, the climate is somewhat cooler up there, and downright cold in the winter. From the Toronto Sun:

Carbon tax punishes Canadians for staying warm

Kris Sims| March 4, 2021

Cold enough for ya?

All of Canada’s capitals were below the freezing mark during the latest cold snap.

Even Victoria had its ploughs pressed into service as snow smothered the cherry blossoms. Edmonton was at -34 C (-29º F), Regina dipped to -39 C (-38º F), and call-the-army Toronto hit -13 C (9º F). The Maritimes shivered through -14 C (7º F) and something called “ice fog.”

Without natural gas, propane and furnace oil, millions of Canadians would have been freezing in the dark.

Those silly Canucks use the metric system; conversions to Fahrenheit in the article by me.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is jacking up the carbon tax over the next nine years which will punish Canadians for the grave sin of wanting to stay warm.

As one of the writers of the federal carbon tax legislation recently explained on the TV show Counterpoint, Trudeau’s carbon tax is meant to “punish the poor behaviour of using fossil fuels.”

At $30/tonne, natural gas currently carries a federal carbon tax punishment of 5.8 cents per cubic metre, the tax on propane is 4.6 cents per litre and furnace oil is taxed at 8 cents per litre.

What will life be like when Trudeau increases the carbon tax to $170 per ton?

The article continues to tell people what life will be like once that carbon tax has been increased, and I’ll skip over that part, because quoting the whole thing would be copyright infringement, but you can follow the link to see the numbers for yourself.

Those counting on carbon tax rebates to magically put more money back in their pockets should take heed of the British Columbia carbon tax example on which the federal program was based. Rebates in B.C. evaporate when a two person working family hits an income $59,000 per year, far below the provincial average.

The carbon tax advocates in the United States have pushed rebates for the poor, but obvious questions arise:

  • What documentation and filings will be required to get such rebates; and
  • How frequently will such rebates be paid

Without documentation, how will the government know to whom and how much the rebates should be sent? Would the government impose some sort of quarterly tax filings on lower-income people?

If the rebates are paid quarterly, how much good does that do for people living paycheck-to-paycheck?

Carbon tax cheerleaders, typically the well insulated and academic political set, say Canadians should simply go electric instead of using oil, natural gas and propane to stay warm. The fact is electric heat is not affordable for many households and our power grids don’t have the juice to both heat our homes and charge our electric vehicles.

Electric systems can fail. In January of 2018, an ice storm that the Weather Channel called Winter Storm Hunter knocked out sparktricity to our humble abode. Being January, it was rather cold out, as you might expect.[1]As much as the Weather Channel tried, the idea of naming winter storms never caught on beyond their network

The power was out for 4½ days. My wife went to stay with our daughters, in Lexington, but I had to stay at home, to take care of the critters. By the last day, it was down to 38º F — that’s 3 C to the Canadians! — inside the house.

Well, never again, we said, and as part of our remodeling, we had propane installed into our previously all-electric house. Mrs Pico wanted a gas range, and we went ahead and added a gas hot water heater and propane fireplace.

Well, we just got hit by historic flooding, and while the electricity never went out, the flooding destroyed our electric HVAC system; it reached into the crawlspace, but not into the house itself. I tied the propane tank to a nearby tree, so that if it floated, at least it couldn’t float away! I had to turn off the propane at the tank at that point.[2]We were very lucky; about three more inches, and the record flood waters would have reached the wooden sills and floor joists

Well, it did float, and turned upside down. It was only through the goodness of the Lord that the supply line didn’t snap. As the flood waters receded, I was finally able to muscle the tank back upright, though sitting on the ground rather than the concrete blocks on which it originally sat. I checked the gas line, and tested it, and it was OK. Now, that propane fireplace is heating our house again. It was 30º F outside this morning, but the house is warm. We have an HVAC contractor coming by on Monday to give us an estimate, because, being completely inundated by muddy flood waters, the system is almost certainly destroyed. The point is simple: if we didn’t have the propane backup, we’d have no heat for perhaps weeks!

We live in Kentucky, and the normal highs and lows for this time of year are 50º and 32º F. What are they in Calgary or Whitehorse or Iqaluit?

Yes, I did spend one winter in Maine when I was a third grader, but that’s a long-ago, remote experience. Nevertheless, I seem to have a greater appreciation for what poorer Canadians, what people living outside of Ottawa and Toronto and Montreal have to go through in their lives than the Right Honourable Mr Trudeau, the son of former Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau. I do not know how an American who has never set foot in Canada can understand more about Canadians than a native son, but apparently I do.

Perhaps if the Prime Minister were to leave Ottawa and live out in the boondocks of Saskatchewan, where some off-gridders have to use propane to power their refrigerators, he might learn something about his own countrymen.

References

References
↑1 As much as the Weather Channel tried, the idea of naming winter storms never caught on beyond their network
↑2 We were very lucky; about three more inches, and the record flood waters would have reached the wooden sills and floor joists
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Impeach Franklin Circuit Judge Phillip Shepherd! He thinks the General Assembly doesn't matter

We knew that this bovine feces would happen!

Judge rules in Beshear’s favor, blocks laws limiting governor’s COVID-19 powers

By Jack Brammer | March 3, 2021 |3:31 PM EST

Franklin Circuit Judge and Authoritarian Enabler Phillip Shepherd. Photo: Kentucky Administrative Office of the Courts.

Franklin Circuit Judge Phillip Shepherd temporarily blocked Thursday three new laws that limit the governor’s powers to deal with emergencies like the coronavirus pandemic.

In a 23-page order that is a legal victory for Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear and a defeat for the Kentucky General Assembly, the judge granted Beshear’s motion for a temporary injunction and partially stayed the effectiveness of the three new laws the legislature approved earlier this year.

Besherar spokeswoman Crystal Staley said, “We appreciate the order. The ability to act and react quickly is necessary in our war against the ever-changing and mutating virus.

Apparently, according to Judge Shepherd, ‘need’ defines the Governor’s powers, not the General Assembly. What powers wouldn’t the Governor have, if he declares a state of emergency, under this kind of standard?

Shepherd said the court “is mindful that the challenged legislation seeks to address a legitimate problem of effective legislative oversight of the governor’s emergency powers in this extraordinary public health crisis” but “is also mindful that the governor and the secretary (Health and Family Services Secretary Eric Friedlander) are faced with the enormous challenge of effectively responding to a world-wide pandemic that has resulted in the deaths of thousands of Kentuckians and over 500,000 people in the United States.”

Republicans campaigned against the authoritarian use of power by Governor Beshear in last November’s elections, and the voters rewarded the GOP with 14 additional seats in the state House of Representatives, bringing their majority to 75-25, and 2 additional seats in the state Senate, bringing their majority to 30-8.[1]Only 19 of the 38 seats were up for election in the state Senate.

The judge said all parties in the case “are acting in good faith to address public policy challenges of the utmost importance” but “the governor has made a strong case that the legislation, in its current form, is likely to undermine or even cripple, the effectiveness of public health measures necessary to protect the lives and health of Kentuckians from the COVID-19 pandemic.”

Oh, so as long as the Governor is “acting in good faith,” he is exempt from legislative oversight?

The Judge stated that the Governor has been ‘adjusting’ his executive orders to be less restrictive as time passes, as current conditions warrant and public health concerns decrease, but that “the court believes those decisions should be made based on medical and scientific evidence, not on arbitrary deadlines imposed by statutes irrespective of the spread of the virus.” Since when does a judge have the authority to decide what motivates the legislature or whether the legislators have taken their decisions based on the right things?

The governor’s general counsel, Amy Cubbage, recently noted that the current executive orders dealing with COVID-19 would expire March 4 unless the legislature extends them or the court rules in Beshear’s favor.

Did the Governor ask the General Assembly to extend them? The Governor filed suit as soon as the General Assembly overrode his vetoes, but if he attempted to work with the legislature, as Judge Shepherd had “strongly urged” him to do, I found no story in the Lexington Herald-Leader telling us about it. All I could find was an article entitled “‘See you in court,’ Beshear tells legislative leaders on taking up his vetoes this week.”

One hopes that the legislature and Attorney General Daniel Cameron immediately appeal the decision to the state Court of Appeals, which has been friendlier to restraining our authoritarian Governor, but we can count on the Governor then taking it to the state Supreme Court which, though officially non-partisan is in practice controlled by Democrats.

It may be time for a little revolution!

References

References
↑1 Only 19 of the 38 seats were up for election in the state Senate.
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Nate to the rescue!

From what I used to call the Curious-Journal:

Beattyville one of many cities hit by flooding in Kentucky

35 Photos | March 2, 2021 | 3:14 PM EST

Search and rescue volunteer, Nate Lair, drives a boat through downtown Beattyville after heavy rains led to the Kentucky River flooding the town and breaking records last set in 1957. March 1, 2021
Alton Strupp / Louisville Courier-Journal

Note that Mr Lair is piloting that boat down one of the main streets in Beattyville. Last I knew, there wasn’t supposed to be deep water in the middle of the street.

My good friend — OK, OK, I’ve never actually met her! — Heather Long wrote a series about Beattyville, Kentucky, when she was still with CNN, a place called the “poorest white town in America” from 2008 to 2012. These floods are the last thing the people of Lee County and Beattyville need.

It’s been a few years now, but Beattyville is still poor . . . and the next county over from where I live. The Kentucky River has flooded my property as well, with water into the crawlspace, and, sadly, 3½ feet into my shop/garage, but it stayed in the concrete block foundation area, and didn’t get into the wooden sills, beams and floor joists of the house. I’m sure that my furnace, which is in the crawl space, is shot, but it was 20 to 25 years old. I may have to rip out and replace some of the insulation between the joists, but I can do that work myself. The main thing is: we didn’t lose our home, something too many people around here — and one is too many — can’t say. My thanks to William Teach for contributing articles to this site, because I wasn’t sure that I’d have sparktricity through all of this.

The river gauge closest to my house, in Ravenna, got stuck, and the last reading was from 5:30 PM yesterday. The water definitely got higher than the 38.11 feet registered then, cresting at my house at sometime around 10:00 this morning. It’s starting to recede now.

And it’s been neighbors helping neighbors. Steve, a guy as poor as a church mouse, brought me two electric heaters to use to warm the place up. Chad, a volunteer fireman, brought two kerosene heaters, one for my (only) neighbor and one for me. Since I now have the two electric heaters, I told David, the neighbor, to keep them both for now. Tomorrow, I’ll (probably) be helping David set his propane tank right.

Main Street in the city of Beattyville sits underwater following heavy rains which caused the Kentucky River to flood, Tuesday, March 3, 2021. Alex Slitz / Lexington Herald-Leader

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Our Betters believe COVID-19 restrictions are being eased too quickly

The vaccines are out, and some states are loosening their (mostly unconstitutional) restrictions, so naturally the left are worried:

The positive signs come with caveats. Though the national statistics have improved drastically since January, they have plateaued in the last week or so, and the United States is still reporting more than 65,000 new cases a day on average — comparable to the peak of last summer’s surge, according to a New York Times database. The country is still averaging about 2,000 deaths per day, though deaths are a lagging indicator because it can take weeks for patients to die.

More contagious variants of the virus are circulating in the country, with the potential to push case counts upward again. Testing has fallen 30 percent in recent weeks, leaving experts worried about how quickly new outbreaks will be known. And millions of Americans are still waiting to be vaccinated.

Given all that, some experts worry that the reopenings are coming a bit too soon.

“We’re, hopefully, in between what I hope will be the last big wave, and the beginning of the period where I hope Covid will become very uncommon,” said Robert Horsburgh, an epidemiologist at the Boston University School of Public Health. “But we don’t know that. I’ve been advocating for us to just hang tight for four to six more weeks.”

The director of the C.D.C., Dr. Rochelle Walensky, said at the briefing on Monday that she was “really worried” about the rollbacks of restrictions in some states. She cautioned that with the decline in cases “stalling” and with variants spreading, “we stand to completely lose the hard-earned ground we have gained.”

And the plateauing case levels “must be taken extremely seriously,” Dr. Walensky warned at a briefing last week. She added: “I know people are tired; they want to get back to life, to normal. But we’re not there yet.”

There’s more at the link.

Let’s face it: disease control experts would like for us to wear face masks and practice social distancing for the rest of our lives. After COVID-19 is over — if it’s ever over — they’ll insist on masks every flu season.

CDC: COVID-19 Wiped Out the Flu Around the World This Year

Community mitigation measures halted the other pandemic here and abroad… but winter is coming

by Molly Walker, Associate Editor, MedPage Today September 17, 2020

Flu numbers in the U.S. were historically low during COVID-19 in the spring, with deep declines also occurring in the recently completed Southern Hemisphere flu season, CDC researchers found.

Influenza positivity rates in specimens tested (a standard metric of community flu activity) fell 98% in 2020 during March 1-May 16 relative to Sept 29, 2019-Feb. 29, 2020, plummeting from a median of 19.34% to 0.33%, reported Sonja Olsen, PhD, of the CDC in Atlanta, and colleagues.

Indeed, circulation of influenza in the U.S. hit historic lows in summer 2020, with a median of 0.20% positive tests from May 17-August 8 versus 1%-2% from 2017-2019, the authors wrote in the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report. A graph indicated that influenza positivity rates dropped off sharply, approaching zero by early April — a time that, in previous seasons, it hovered around 15%.

Olsen and colleagues noted they used March 1 as a benchmark because it was closest to when the U.S. declared COVID-19 a public health emergency, and when “widespread implementation” of community measures such as school closures, social distancing, and mask wearing started around the country.

Because influenza is less transmissible than SARS-CoV-2, these measures “likely contributed to a more substantial interruption in influenza transmission,” according to Olsen and colleagues. “Although causality cannot be inferred from these ecological comparisons, the consistent trends over time and place are compelling and biologically plausible.”

So, if the draconian measures imposed to reduce transmission of COVID-19 brought transmission of influenza to almost a halt, and we have allowed elected officials to impose those measures due to COVID-19 and get away with it, what is to prevent them from imposing the same restrictions every flu season? After all, we are being told, it worked, didn’t it?

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Maybe gun ownership isn’t the problem?

As always, I check the Philadelphia Police Department’s Current Crime Statistics page, and I found that the City of Brotherly Love had seen 77 homicides through the end of February, compared to ‘just’ 60 on February 28th last year. 2020 was in second place, all time, for Philadelphia, with 499 homicides, and it looks like the good people of Philly have taken beating the record of 500, set in 1992, as a personal challenge.

Then I came across this interesting map. You can click on it to double its size.

It seems that Philadelphia, with its population of 1,579,000 has a murder rate of 31.60 per 100,000 population, all in a state in which 37.1% of the people own firearms. Meanwhile, in Lexington, Kentucky, a city of 320,601 people, there were 34 homicides all of last year. That makes Lexington’s homicide rate 10.60 per 100,000 population, yet 42.4% of the people in the Commonwealth of Kentucky own firearms.

If the problem is too many guns, why is Philly thrice as dangerous as Lexington?

If you look at that map, you’ll see that some of the real murder capitals in our country — Chicago, Baltimore, St Louis and anyplace in New Jersey — are in states which have lower rates of firearms ownership.

How can that be?

The left seem to think that restricting the rights of people who have not committed any crimes will somehow reduce the violent crime rate, but the numbers don’t appear to bear that out. And while it could be argued that the map does not account for people who have firearms illegally, that completely undercuts any arguments that restricting legal gun ownership will reduce crime.

The only thing that will do is make crime victims more helpless.