Once More Unto Covid and Schools

“What matters the most is proper ventilation, ”

Where is Hugh and NR, screw the ventilation, quickly rush vaccine approval and shoot the vaccine into the little rascals — big profit for the Big Pharma — mission accomplished, nothing to see here–

Anyway, someone claimed here in comments that American don’t even like their children, so who care, die and jab away…

“But I guess we’re just going to keep doing Covid the stupidest, longest and most inhumane way we can.”

That’s the plan, no plan. We need a national response that recognizes that we can’t get back to business as usual for a long time, perhaps ever. Instead we have a bunch of homicidal governors and state legislatures that have taken a know-nothing, let ‘er rip approach and others who hope the virus will oblige their opening up and starting in class school again. As for Congress, it’s working hard or will be after the House’s only taking a seven week “August” vacation and the Senate a mere 5 1/2 weeks off. I mean with all the crises the country is facing, how can they take such short vacations. They really must care.

Meh. I think these “mathematical simulations” are garbage.

Consider, e.g., the “medium immunity” curves, and look at the difference between orange “no masks, but testing occurs” and green “universal masks, no testing”.

So, putting on a mask cuts your infections by 50%, even if you abandon testing…. In “mathematical simulation” world, anyway.

Since the $1 surgical masks are garbage compared to an N95, we should expect a much more dramatic effect from requiring children to wear N95 masks. Since you already dropped infections by 50%, we can reasonably hope that requiring N95 masks would drop infections by 80%, 90%, ….

So, if we believe these “mathematical simulations”, why aren’t we requiring N95 masks on the kiddies? In fact, if we believe these “mathematical’ simulations”, why don’t they just go ahead and simulate N95 masks? What’s the problem?

Another obvious points is that you’d want to correct your infection rate estimate with real data. It’d be hard to get clean data on the masking side, because masking incidence will vary where it’s not required. But surely these clever “mathematical simulation” gurus can model as a function of X% masked. OTOH, testing/no testing is basically binary at the school policy level, so comparing a mathematical model with real data is comparatively easier.

Another absurdity is talking about testing, but nothing about the details of how positive testing students are handled. An obvious guess is that simulated students quarantine at home for X days until they’re no longer contagious. But I can’t be sure, and if the goal is propaganda, they would blunt it’s effectiveness by speling out the details.

And by the way, no discussion of opening schools during COVID (at least in America) can be complete without talking about stuff like this:

https://www.metrotimes.com/news-hits/archives/2021/08/19/nazi-salute-insults-hurled-at-ruckus-birmingham-schools-meeting-over-mask-mandate

This was a Board of Education meeting in Birmingham, Michigan. Many anti-maskers were in attendance, and one of them said this:

If God wanted us to cover our mouth and nose, he would have made us that way.

This was said by a woman wearing glasses, by the way. Also featured at the meeting was a man flashing the Nazi salute, and three people saying “Heil Hitler.” At a school board meeting about protecting children from a deadly disease.

This is the modern American right-wing.

Here’s a funny video showing visually the great (actually, ridiculous) efficacy of various types of masks to block aerosols. This joker, a Dr. Ted Noel, inhales from a vaper, covers his face with a mask, then exhales. Unlike covid-laden aerosols, the vaping aerosols are quite obvious.

https://videopress.com/v/4egEyh2b

Hilarity ensues.

Why should you care about such a video?

Because, Virginia, the virus spreads primarily via aerosol. If it spread primarily through droplets, then I’d expect the cheap $1 surgical masks to work much better.

From “Viral Load of SARS-CoV-2 in Respiratory Aerosols Emitted by COVID-19 Patients while Breathing, Talking, and Singing”

Overall, fine aerosols constituted 85% of the viral load detected in our study.

Having said that, studies showing that N95 masks are only marginally better than lesser masks suggest that even professionals don’t maintain the right seal. (I’m thinking of “Effectiveness of N95 respirators versus surgical masks against influenza: A systematic review and meta-analysis”, but I don’t know is this is relevant because I don’t know if the main means of spread of influenza is also aerosols.)

Much more on masks at

https://childrenshealthdefense.org/the-science-of-masks/

One can readily see lack of STEM education in the country.

N95 have to filter out 95 percent of particles 0.3 um (300nm) in size by the NIOSH definition and tests. What is the size of SARS-CoV2 particles — estimates range between 0.05 um (50nM) to 0.12 μm (120nm) for the core spherical particle in diameter. Check and mate N95, right? Not so fast. Individual viral particles have no way of escaping our mouth or nose. The virus is covered in fat with protein sticking through this fat (the spikes add additional ~10-20nm to diameter if we count them). Further, viral particles are not floating alone singularly. They are coming out of your cells and are siting in your mouth or nose in saliva, lung fluid (pleural) and/or nasal discharge. Then small amounts of these body fluids with viral particles in them become airborne. Some of these particles are too large and immediately fall down, others (1-5um) are smaller and can linger in the air. Good science has found that “the minimum size of a respiratory particle that can contain SARS-CoV-2 is calculated to be approximately 4.7 μm.”

4.7um is 15.7 times larger than 0.3 um

Properly worn N95 are highly effective against COVID. Or put it in another way, N95 are virtually impenetrable to ALL present and future variants of the virus and can dramatically reduce transmission of the virus from individual to individual and thus force the virus to become milder.

Smoke is soot or amorphous carbon produced by incomplete burning and is not human aerosol coming from your mouth. Liquid sticks to dry masks much better than dry carbon particles. No comparison between soot and wet aerosols.

I have seen somewhere a ‘genius’ claim that if we can smell perfume through a mask then the mask does not work — S T U P I D. Perfumes and alcohols are single chemical molecules. Viral aerosols are giant aggregates of thousands of large molecules — no comparison.

It looks like the anti-maskers/pro-Covid forces have lost the arguments but are winning the battles and the war. They seem to be much more vocal, adaptable, belligerent and feisty if you will. And of course they get plenty of press and social media attention for all their yelling and foolishness.

Of course, they have a faction of the ruling class on their side and are being manipulated by them masterfully. Note all the Gish-galloping right here in the commentariat. When one thing gets tired and doesn’t draw attention like it used to (think hydroxychloroquine) just move on to something else, another Magic Bullet (N95s for example) and keep doing it no matter what.

Meanwhile the virus proliferates, which is by now obviously the goal. Has been all along. As I’ve said, the virus isn’t killing enough of us fast enough to satisfy our overlords, so the plan — such as it is — is to make it spread more and more, and (hopefully for the ruling class) make it more and more virulent.

Spread mass confusion and distrust, foster lots and lots of “alternatives” to the standard public health mitigations (ie: vaccines, masks, social distancing, personal cleanliness, proper ventilation, limiting gatherings, etc.) and insist that whatever is done is wrong or against God or a violation of Freedom. And keep right on doing it, knowing that social media, if no other, will keep spreading the insanity. It is, as they say, Zuck’s business model.

A significant majority recognize the bullshit but can’t seem to stop it. A significant minority sees an opportunity to “win” at whatever cost to others and themselves, and it seems that nothing matters more.

Kids are now assigned the role of vectors, and once they are fully infected, soon I guess, it’s over. All that will remain is the clean up.

It isn’t just the US where this is happening. Far from it.

With reluctance, I started back subbing yesterday at a transition (18 to 22 year old special ed) class in Santa Rosa California. I was greeted by staff and students who needed me to explain very basic Covid protocols. Not going back. Many teachers can’t make that choice. There is a Facebook group called Teachers Against Dying.

There are lots of interesting videos of covid freedom dyers suddenly realizing what their dying will mean for themselves and their families. It’s strange how quickly a staunch blind faith warrior withers into a crying child when the grim reaper shows up.

I wonder why these people always seem to target the wrong stuff. Freedom, ‘Because I cant breathe”, government controlling Nazis… Why not just target their skepticism towards big pharma? It’s almost like they need to virtue signal above all else.

Che, “chaos creates cash” was a mantra of the worst of my gig economy cohorts. Doing ones work to the best of ones abilities was insanity to them. Everything important was about acquiring the wealth and power by any means neccessary, and the easy path never involved hard work. I left that business when their kind and their culture came to power-dominate the ones with integrity. I suspect actual profit motives behind all this astroturfing.

Che,

You’re privileging inadequately tested vaccines that have already failed to deliver on their initial promises (just as their skeptics predicted over a year ago) over basic public safety measures like n95 and ventilation? And vaccinated people should just trust that it’s good enough and stop wearing masks? And also ignore anyone who complains serious side effects from their vaccinations? Seriously?

“Believe science” has truly descended to magical thinking on par with “COVID is fake” and homeopathic “medicine”.

The wackery mutates right along with the virus. So we have herd immunity types, ‘covid is a hoax’-ers, freedumbers, anti-maskers, anti-vaxxers, maskers-only. De Santis recently threw natural immunity into the mix. Covid aside, maybe there’s something funny in the water all these people are drinking. Think of all the pseudo-scientifical conspiracies they could weave out of that.

Hugh,
Don’t forget vaccine fanatics, the most virulent of them all.

Tap water is horrible, but this is not the water, it is simple incompetence of our leadership compounded by unwillingness to step aside when proven incompetent (when they say “oops, we are surprised”).

Public health protocols and general pandemic responses are very well established and have been for more than a century. This is fundamental to understanding how to proceed and acting responsibly on that understanding. It does not require reinventing the wheel or a raft of likely ineffective alternative treatments or phony cures.

Sorry to say, the CDC and NIH have largely blown their credibility with absurd political backflips and futile attempts to sooth the savage beasts of naysayers. It started with Fauci and The Scarf Woman blathering nonsense and listening silently to nonsense to keep the Orange Man Bad from having another public tantrum. I’ve never been a fan of Fauci’s going back to his craptastic failures during the HIV-AIDS crisis. Back then his actions — more especially non-actions — were clearly politically motivated, and they resulted in hundreds of thousands dead. We’ve been seeing the same thing from him throughout the current pandemic, and I don’t think he’ll change his spots. But in the meantime, he and the other institutional health appointees are (in between nonsensical blatherings) telling the truth about basic public health and pandemic protocols and responses.

Get vaccinated, wear a mask indoors — outdoors too if you’re particularly vulnerable and you’re around other people — wash your hands, maintain social distance, be alert and vigilant, get tested periodically and definitely if you have symptoms, self-isolate if you are positive.

There’s no mystery about any of this.

No, the vaccines currently available are not sterilizing, they do not confer immunity, and their effectiveness wanes at some uncertain point. For people like me, they may provide only modest or no protection at all. I know this. I got vaccinated anyway. For me and most people, there is no harm in doing so. I also follow the other protocols. It’s not difficult, and following basic public health measures can confer protection that for me and people like me the vaccine may not. Quite a few of those in my situation simply avoid any contact with others at all, and that’s too bad. But they’re not sure what else to do, and sadly, they aren’t getting very good advice from the professionals.

For most people, the current vaccines mitigate against the worst effects of the disease. and help decrease the spread. This is the best we have available right now. The vaccine doesn’t protect everyone, and apparently doesn’t completely protect anyone from catching the virus. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t get vaccinated or that other measures shouldn’t be taken.

Treatments have improved since last year, but they are still inadequate. Medical science is playing catch up, and probably will for the foreseeable future in part because profit motives continue to drive practice. And, too, it’s clear to me that our rulers simply don’t want to control the pandemic more than minimally — primarily to protect themselves.

Anti-vaxxers, anti-maskers, anti-public healthers, and so on live to spread fear, uncertainty and doubt, even though many of them are unaware that that’s what they are doing. Many believe sincerely in their righteousness in the face of the Tyranny of Evil or whatever it is they feel they must fight against even unto death. Many have no concern for others — whether due to their own natures or because they’ve been successfully manipulated. Doesn’t matter. The point is they have become convinced that their feelings matter more than anything else in the whole wide world, fuck everyone else, hard and twice on Sundays. It’s entirely a matter of ME, not YOU.

OK then. That’s where we are, and getting out of this situation is going to take a long time and many more tragedies.

Sad.

Hugh, don’t push your mischaracterization and misrepresentation on me –
I am for a comprehensive approach as outlined above.

You are – on the hand – a rabid vaccinator without sense or purpose.

> Despite all the squealing, not going back to school won’t cripple kids for life

School lockdowns are ok you say, heh?

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/24/us/politics/student-suicides-nevada-coronavirus.html

“The youngest student Dr. Jara has lost to suicide was 9.”

Lockdowns are working, right? Did it work for the 9-year old child who was driven to suicide?

Ian mentioned that opening schools will kill grandma and grandpa. Well, I wonder how the grandma and grandpa of the 9-years dead child are feeling. They better be happy that they are safe, because their grandchild died for it.

I would like Ian to spell out how long this “keep schools locked down” policy is supposed to last? Until covid is eradicated? Well covid will never be eradicated. 10 years from now it will still be here. 20 years from now it will still be here. So basically schools will be shut down forever?

Learning by zoom is a total joke. Last year, something like 1/3 of students never checked in. Let that sink in, 1/3 of students learned exactly 0 during entire year. But I guess denying education will not cripple kids for life.

Also, no discussion of how “opening schools is catastrophic” is honest without explaining e.g. how Sweden avoided this supposed catastrophe, or private schools in the US (in the US, public schools shut down, but many private schools stayed open) – I must have missed the news about private-school students families dropping dead from covid like flies.

I recall Ian posting that suicide rates actually went down amongst kids during COVID. Which shouldn’t surprise anyone who actually remember attending school.

Hugh isn’t an honest disputant. He doesn’t argue on facts or logic, and immediately jumped to incredibly ugly (racist, classist, ableist) ad hominems and strawmen arguments whenever someone questions his world view. As problematic as I find some the others here (even PS), I think they are coming from an honest understanding of the world as they see it, even if it’s reprehensible and wrong from my perspective. I think Hugh is something different.

I think Hugh should be kept around to show the ugliness under the “believe science” veneer of the PMC. It demands utter unquestioning deference or else you’re an unperson. Remember that for your IRL interactions with the PMC and act accordingly.

I would be terrified of sending my children back to school, especially in areas with low vaccination rates and no masks and testing. There is a school district in my area that is not mandating masks. Some of the parents were on the local news rightfully outraged. I believe among those parents who can afford a nearby private school that enforces masks will be pulling their children out of the public school system. I feel sorry for the babies and children caught up in this stupidity, as well as parents who do care but are in a district that does not have a mask mandate nor offers the option of remote learning. Parents with common sense and money will be keeping their kids remote or sending them to private schools that offer smaller classroom sizes, proper ventilation, and enforce masks. Unfortunately, not everyone will have those options.

> I recall Ian posting that suicide rates actually went down amongst kids during COVID. Which shouldn’t surprise anyone who actually remember attending school.

Oh yeah? You don’t believe the CDC?

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/youth-suicide-attempts-soared-during-pandemic-cdc-report-says-n1270463

https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2021/02/02/962060105/child-psychiatrists-warn-that-the-pandemic-may-be-driving-up-kids-suicide-risk

oh, and . . . . those countries whose National Ruling Classes don’t want to sacrifice a portion of their populations to the Overclass goal of “killing 7 billion people over the next century and making it look like an accident” . . . will adopt public health approaches within their borders designed to slow and contain the virus.

If they are seriously serious, they will at some point institute permanent travel bans against countries which don’t adopt the same public health approaches which they are adopting. If you see these countries armor-plating themselves against the shrinkage of world trade which that could cause, then you can guess that these countries are getting ready to seal themselves off from the Typhoid Let-er-Rip countries.

Hugh

> Sweden’s covid death rate was something like six times that of the other Nordics.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/1111779/coronavirus-death-rate-europe-by-country/

https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php?title=Weekly_death_statistics

While other Nordic countries are doing better, they are also more isolated. Iceland is doing best; I suppose it is easier if you are an isolated far-away island.

Sweden is right in the middle of European countries in terms of death rate. Nothing special about it. Unlike others, Sweden kept restrictions to minimum and schools open. I thought sky was supposed to fall when you do that.

Based on my recent visit to the Whole Paycheck, Greenwald’s contention is not supported. More in moderation for some reason.

I enjoyed Glenn Greenwald’s piece calling out liberal hypocrisy, specifically AOC at the Met Gala. She is so full of it and everything she does and says is performative wokeness. No one was looking up the tax code because of her custom made dress as she has claimed. She is and wants to remain part of the club hobnobbing with elites. She is another Obama in the making.

NR

> There’s a pretty thorough takedown of his bullshit here:
> https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2021/08/28/gree-a28.html

Sorry this article is ridiculous

> No doubt, closing schools has an impact on the education and socialization of children. With the allocation of the necessary resources, this impact can be minimized by ensuring that all children have access to high-quality remote learning and their parents are given the resources necessary to stay at home while non-essential production is shut down.

“high-quality remote learning” – well, now we are deep in fantasyland. We have had 18 months of remote learning, and it is totally substandard. Care to explain how the “high-quality remote learning” is different from what has been done the last 18 months?

> As a matter of fact, however, scientists have made clear that aggressive action, if implemented systematically, could stamp out the pandemic not in “two years,” but in two months.

Wow, so “aggressive action” will eliminate covid in two months? I want to get some of that stuff this guy is smoking.

Covid infects not just humans, but also several animal species. Even if you eliminate covid amongst humans it will still hide out in animal reservoirs. And will jump back into humans whenever it can. So you are going to jab all the cats and dogs, and bats in south China caves, etc.?

> Dr. Malgorzata Gasperowicz presented a model showing that COVID-19 could be eliminated in just two months through the combination of mass vaccination

This article is written on Aug 27, 2021. By that time it was perfectly clear that vaccines are non-sterilizing. After 6 months their effectiveness in terms of preventing infection is close to 0 (however, they are still quite effective in terms of preventing severe symptoms). So a non-sterilizing vaccine that loses effectiveness against the spread of covid is somehow supposed to eliminate covid. Is this the 7-th circle of the fantasyland?

Oh, you don’t think the vaccine loses effectiveness against preventing spread in 6 months? Then explain why they started handing out 3rd booster shots in Israel in July/August and they are already talking about the 4th booster shot. So the booster shots are just for fun?

@different clue

While I consider myself an unabashed “conspiracy theorist”, they have to strike me as plausible conspiracies. (I’m fine, BTW, with Michael Parenti’s preference for “conspiracy analysis”) My answer to “they want to kill all of us” conspiracies was “Well, what are they waiting for?”. IOW, I didn’t consider such theories plausible.

However, covid is somewhat different. I consider it much more plausible that the MOTU are aiming a population reduction.

The initial virus was engineered, but that doesn’t inform us as to whether it was released by accident, or not. There were lines of evidence, or at least arguments, pointing to a deliberate release, with origin in the US (not Wuhan). But it overall seemed foggy, to me.

According to Chris Martenson, the same sort of completely unnatural inserts seen in SARS-CoV-2 is seen in an additional part of the delta variant. Since it seems unlikely for there to have been two inadvertant releases, I’m going with the deliberate release conspiracy theory/conspiracy analysis.

The virus has an IFR that I would call low, even if it’s much worse than a typical flu.

So, if depopulation is the goal, it’s actually not all that effective (while getting rid of a lot of elderly retirees, who may be viewed as “useless eaters” by the perps).

So far….

Enter the vaccines… Short term, they decrease the fatality and serious disease rate. Then, in the case of Pfizer and (less so) Moderna, they fade into uselessness, requiring booster shots (which appear to work, in the short term; however, Israel is already talking about a 2nd booster)

It’s possible that, by factoring in the deaths caused by the vaccines, themselves, the death from covid amongst the vaccinated + deaths from vaccination exceeds the death rate of the unvaccinated, but that is sketchy. (I did such a calculation, projecting US vaccination fatality rates, as per whistleblower, onto Israel, and found no benefit to vaccination, even in the short term).

It’s the long term risk of ADE and forcing a higher rate of natural mutations that are, or should be, the biggest concern about the insufficiently tested vaccines. Additionally, others are pointing to potentially catastrophic prion, alzheimer’s and worsening micro-thrombotic dangers that are orthogonal to ADE and stimulated evolution of natural variants. Others include Richard Fleming.

Since we can’t get an open and transparent debate and unimpeded research and publication on no-brainers like early intervention, via dirt-cheap repurposed drugs, it should surprise nobody that the landscape for risk from ADE, prions, etc., is even more problematic.

I would say, though, that since ADE has been demonstrated in animals, I think if you’re doing a “conspiracy analysis” of using covid for depopulation, you really should focus on this, as it’s presumably more predictable. I can’t say I know a much about the subject; or have the background to comprehend the phenomenon and/or risk to humans; but it certainly strikes me have far, far greater potential to depopulate the Earth than covid, itself.

From “Dr. Lee Merritt: In Animal Studies, After Being Injected With MRNA Technology, All Animals Died Upon Reinfection.”

In animal studies, after mRNA injections have been administered to cats, when the virus arrived once again into the body, it arrived like a Trojan Horse, undetected by the cats’ own immune system. The virus multiplied unchallenged and all animals involved in the experiment died from various causes.

Let me just point out. We have never made it through an animal study successfully for this type of virus.

Since many of the previously vaccinated came down with covid infections a 2nd time, in Israel, if it only took 1/2 year, and 1 round (of 2 doses, say) to develop catastrophic, depopulation-level-severity ADE in humans, we would have unambiguously seen it, already.

Why didn’t we? I don’t know I wish somebody would ask Malone, e.g. Or Luc Montagnier. (Or tell me, if they already have.) But note that domesticated cats have a lifespan of 12-15 years, so it’s possible their ‘ADE lag” is only 1/5 as long as a humans’, reflecting our relative lifespan.

Let’s do some low-investment spitballing. Let’s say the cats died after being re-infected after 6 months. If we naively extrapolate to humans, using the lifespan multiplier of 5, then we’re talking about 30 months, or 2 1/2 years. In 3 months, the mass vaccination program of Israel will hit 1 year old. AFAIK, a mass die-off of vaccinated individuals would ramp up, not just suddenly apear. If we assume 3 months, then the mass dieoff will begin in Israel around Nov. 2022.

Appealing to authority only works if the authority in question has not already repeatedly shown themselves to be selfish and callous incompetents who take no responsibility for their previous actions and utterances.

I don’t agree with his cost-benefit analysis of opening schools, but he’s right more often than he is wrong.

Maybe once upon a time this was true, but all he does these days is kiss the asses of right-wingers and parrot their positions and rhetoric so he can rake in big $$$.

HEPA filters aren’t pore filters. In a pore filter things smaller than the pore size pass through (unless accretion increases the filter efficiency by effectively reducing pore size). HEPA filter material is a tangled mass of electrostatically charged fibers. The design is to not allow a clear path through the filter, which forces particles to slow down and go around things. A particle passing close enough to or directly impacting a fiber is then stuck to it.

But the resistance that makes it an effective filter makes everything around it critical. You can have a HEPA air purifier or vacuum but if the seal around the filter isn’t super tight, then the bulk of the air will go around. Some air will get pushed through but how much is directly related to how leaky the seal is. Buying a HEPA product only guarantees that filter material is HEPA style, not that it actually works.

It’s pretty well accepted in the technical community that HEPA stops particles smaller than .3 um, the efficiency at smaller sizes goes down of course. But in my line of work where the effectiveness of respiratory protection is life and death (both acute and chronic), it’s also understood that no respiratory protection shy of SCBA stops everything. It’s why respirators have a protection factor rating and that number means that the contaminate concentration inside the mask is X times lower than whatever it is outside the mask.

For Covid masks do not, could not and aren’t proclaimed to stop all the virus either going out or coming in. It’s a numbers game about reducing concentrations in the breathing zone which betters the odds that you or others won’t get a whopping viral load, particularly in conjunction with other preventative measures such as distancing or even vaccination. I’m trying to decide whether this whole debate is ignorant or obtuse. There’s nothing new here. People like me deal with all the same concepts every day and there are rules that work. But with Covid you have to listen to people who don’t know how filters work tell you that they don’t. You have to listen to people get mad that a protective action isn’t 100% effective and then declare that if it isn’t it’s worthless.

Ventilation will never be a 100% solution to this either. But as with all contaminant control, engineering controls are the first step (assuming you cannot make the contaminate go away). It is so because they are independent of individual behavior. And if you can’t reduce concentrations to safe levels with just engineering controls, they greatly increase the effectiveness of personal protective equipment and/or administrative controls. Since the former only reduces concentrations and the latter is based on concentration/time with a goal of reducing the time of potential exposure.

But whatever some crank you saw on YouTube using a 4-gas meter incorrectly says is probably right and I’m probably wrong.

@metamars,

I am thinking of many little things adding up over a century or so. The seemingly accidental fostering of widespread antibiotic immunity in dangerous bacteria through the wild overuse of antibiotics with gay abandon.

The spreading of traces of Roundup throughout the mainstream food supply with the seemingly unintended consequence of killing of the beneficial microorganisms which make up the “gut flora” in order to set the stage for GI diseases.

many little things . . .

Greenwald has never hidden his libertarian leanings — and I’m from Europe where the libertarians are more anarcho-syndicalist, so I’m less than horrified by that label — but he’s right about this.

someofparts: ‘Since he had just bought a shiny new truck and did not want to miss payments and lose it, he crossed that picket line and told his co-workers that he would help them from the inside. They expressed their appreciation by blowing up the truck.’

I like it.

@Mark Pontin,

In America, libertarian generally means propertarian or moneytarian or both. And often (Ayn) Randroid.

Many years ago I went to a Presidential Wannabe debate between two minor candidates . . . Barry Commoner of the “Citizens Party” and somebody McBride of the Libertarian Party.

I remember somebody from the audience asking Mr. McBride what he would do about illegal immigration. The part of his reply which I remember was where he made a Freudian slip which showed his true political concern . . . . something like ” I think it is a great thing that so many people want to come to our great money . . .I mean country.” Fast save there . . . almost, Mr. McBride. It was clearly money which came first to mind and first to mouth for him.

The Libertarians are about the Money, the Whole Money, and Nothing but the Money.

Glen Greenwald seem more and more to be auditioning for the “Christopher Hitchens” role . . . the reflexive contrarian. If the Good Ship Fox sinks, and he’s still on it, maybe he’ll go down with it.

In fact, from the remains of that blogspot “Unclaimed Territory:” ‘I was previously a constitutional law and civil rights litigator and am now a journalist. I am the author of three New York Times bestselling books — “How Would a Patriot Act” (a critique of Bush executive power theories), “Tragic Legacy” (documenting the Bush legacy), and With Liberty and Justice for Some (critiquing America’s two-tiered justice system and the collapse of the rule of law for its political and financial elites).’ Not exactly a libertarian calling card.

After 6 months their effectiveness in terms of preventing infection is close to 0

That’s a bold claim to make without any evidence to back it up.

In fact, we have data that shows that the vaccines do reduce risk of infection as well as serious infection:

Averaged weekly, age-standardized rates (events per 100,000 persons) were higher among persons not fully vaccinated than among fully vaccinated persons for reported cases (112.3 versus 10.1), hospitalizations (9.1 versus 0.7), and deaths (1.6 versus 0.1) during April 4–June 19,

Source: https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/70/wr/mm7037e1.htm?s_cid=mm7037e1_w

Now how much this protection wanes with time is still unknown, but to just state that it drops to 0 after 6 months simply isn’t supported by data.

mRNA vaccines don’t work

Well if nothing else Thomas is consistent. He consistently tells the most blatant, baldfaced lies about anything and everything under the sun.

“mRNA vaccines don’t work” is, of course, a lie. There is a mountain of data proving they work, anyone interested can start here and find much more data pretty easily:

https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/70/wr/mm7037e1.htm?s_cid=mm7037e1_w

But hey, what do I know? It’s not like I’m a licensed Medical Professional.

Actually Thomas, given how often and how consistently you’ve lied about any number of topics here, it honestly wouldn’t surprise me if you were lying about this too.

different clue: ‘In America, libertarian generally means propertarian or moneytarian or both. And often (Ayn) Randroid.’

I’m well aware.

These terms have different regional histories and meanings. ‘Liberal’ also originally meant something different in Europe and the UK particularly, till Franklin Roosevelt in the US promoted the term so as not to have his policies attacked as ‘socialist.’ Subsequently, the rest of the world increasingly has used the word ‘liberal’ meaning what Roosevelt meant.

Not surprisingly, ‘libertarian’ in the US also has an overlap with the neoliberal clique. Charles Koch — who’s one of the Mont Pelerin society’s earliest American members and who sponsored von Hayek to come over here — is also a libertarian.

I mention this because Koch has a line for interviewers these days where he tells people he’s a liberal — in the original 19th century sense.

Probably true. The original liberals were the Whig laissez-faire types in the 19th century UK, whose policies enabled the Great Famine in Ireland from 1845-52, during which perhaps 1 million people died, more than 2 million fled the country, and Ireland’s population was reduced by 20-25 percent.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Famine_(Ireland)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Famine_(Ireland)#Whig_government

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Famine_(Ireland)#Genocide_question

@ Hugh –

Like I say, the term ‘libertarian’ has a wider meaning and historical context than the ‘Ayn Randroid, moneytarian’ types have reduced it to in the US.

Greenwald’s earlier opposition to the Bush II administration’s constraints on civil liberties and free speech, and its surveillance programs, as well as his work as a litigation attorney doing pro bono First Amendment cases — including representing white supremacist Matthew Hale in Illinois and the neo-nazi National Alliance — are all in line with that wider, older libertarian tradition. As you say, Greenwald even wrote a paper for the Cato Institute — and it was promoting drug decriminalization in Portugal.

For that matter, Ed Snowden was also a libertarian at one time, voting for Ron Paul.

Indeed, there you go — Ron Paul! You may say he is/was as nutty as a fruitcake and naive to boot. But what he wasn’t was a moneytarian or anything less than a sincere idealist.

Much as it may offend your tribal political definitions of these things, there’s an area where folks like Noam Chomsky and Glenn Greenwald converge.

Mark Pontin, let’s see. Anyone who disagrees with you and your tribal definitions is a tribalist, –according to you. Got it. Ron Paul who like all good US libertarians believes the Fed is evil because he wants to go back to the gold standard is not a moneytarian but an idealist because –who knows you seem to be making it up as you go. Is it a sensitive spot for you? Do you identify as libertarian? Or with a sell-out like Glenn. Inquiring minds would like to know.

Don’t let the door hit your provincial British hrumph, hrumph on the way out. On this side of the pond, liberal and libertarian are distinct concepts. Modern American liberalism goes back to Wilson. It is elitist, doing for the ordinary citizen what elitists deem those citizens need whether they like it or not. Libertarianism takes a minimalist view of society and societal obligations and believes as long as they’ve got theirs the rest of us can, and should, go die in a ditch of our choosing.

If Greenwald had identified as a libertarian, he would have been treated as a kook precisely in those progressive circles he needed to establish himself. So he pitched his shtick in First Amendment terms and broadening the base, working with and making common cause with principled conservatives on specific issues. Over the years, living in Brazil, out of the mainstream, he simply hides it less now.

Che said that he had personal interaction with Greenwald and greensward behaved like garbage. I trust Che to state his honest opinion and it made me think less of Greenwald as a person. On the other hand, Greenwald’s most high profile activities were about exposing systemic government corruption and terrorism. Big stories that somehow nobody else could break. I’d celebrate those individual actions even if they were done by David Duke or Barack Obama or Dick Cheney (and I tthinkCheney is, amongst the living, the individual with the highest evilness quotient on the planet).

“This looks like mass-insanity to me, a crime of vast proportions. “

And against children, no less.

Yet the commentariat argues about vaccines, and the definitions of words, and how those definitions differ between nations. As if all the world is (or should be) made in the image of the US. And thank goodness it isn’t, not quite yet anyway. They are working on it.

This is a crime against the future, YOUR future, and you just keep caterwauling about your pet peeves. Do it all you want. It won’t change a thing.

Or, maybe this is all just nature’s way (with a lot of help from some particularly insane humans) to ensure the mess we humans have made never gets made again. As an experiment, humanity right now gets a failing grade. All that “in school” learning amounts to nothing when the proverbial is hitting the fan.

StewartM, I loved your comment: “Actually, I think getting off the peer-age segregated conveyor belt of life (which takes you from kindergarten to the nursing home) is a positively good thing. Our generation gap and generational politics are a direct consequence of walling off people into age-segregated groups.”

Breaking the cycles that keep business as usual in place should be priority.

As if all the world is (or should be) made in the image of the US. And thank goodness it isn’t, not quite yet anyway. They are working on it.

True. QAnon, like savoir faire, is everywhere now. QAnon is love American style.

Anybody got some Haldol for NL? He’s having another of his anti-vaxxer fits.

Here are the current death counts in the US by age from the CDC from January 2020 to today:

0-4 years 159
5-18 years 357
19-44 years 21,267
45-64 years 125,298
65-74 years 147,568
75 years and over 364,104
Total 658,753

Hmmm, interesting, now Hugh seems to claim that those who disagree with him have a metal disorder…. reminds me of something… Soviet Union, dissidents treated for mental illness…

Hugh’s mortality data by age group above seem to suggest that children (<18) do not really need vaccination, considering that vaccine itself carries a non-zero risk of heart complications: 0.07% vs non-zero difficult-to-estimate risk of the vaccine is a wash. For every clinical case of vaccine side-effects, there are likely many cases of subclinical disease side-effects. In other words, these kids will probably feel something like shortness of breath but brash it, and it will go away from a time but come back with age. Many diseases, including heart disease, start as a asymptomatic subclinical condition and then develop into a full-blown acute syndrome. Heart inflammation can easily lead to heart failure and a life-time of barely living. The vaccines do not really protect well from infection for a prolong period of time and therefore do not protect from loss of IQ that happens during even an asymptomatic infection. Why vaccinate children?

Hugh, NR, you want to give it a shot and argue here why we need to vaccinate children?

NR, you have been consistently wrong about the virus and the best means to fight it.

I have posted naught but actual studies with the actual data which you ignore. Also mRNA vaccines are the majority of vaccines being used the West, it is not dropping case levels, they have actually soared especially in Israel and making for worse outcomes. Dr. Chris Martenson has been good at gathering the data, explaining the science and following the evidence. He figured out quite early this was an accidental lab leak by simply looking at its gene code and finding inserts.

Frankly, the roll out of the mRNA vaccines was and will be catastrophic disastrous decision for all who took them as it opened them up to breakthrough strains it can’t by design counter-act. In fact, Chris Martenson’s compiling of the data, shows it does no better than a placebo.

Meanwhile Sweden which did nothing, actually handled the Pandemic best. Deaths are zero per 7 day average. US States that never locked down also handled the virus better because people weren’t crowded into fewer and fewer buildings to get food, and their stress levels didn’t rise. Being able to work also meant they were able to afford supplementary vitamins and exercised which improved their health. The better your starting health, the better your ability to fight off a virus or bacteria.

This basic fact escapes you as it doesn’t fit your narrative.

You know nothing about medicine and basic health. You politicized the virus and contributed to people dying and have blood on your hands. And you keep digging yourself deeper and deeper. A simple google search brings up data on vaccination rates and case rates. Places using mRNA vaccines have exploding case rates. Those not using them or using IVM/HCQ have low case loads and few if any deaths. Hell all the recent attempts to paint IVM as horse de-wormer failed quickly as one can simply pull the drug profile on it and look at publicly available data on its use.

Even the story about IVM overdoses keeping gunshot victims out of a hospital was swiftly debunked by the hospital itself which hasn’t treated a gunshot wound in 15 years and hasn’t had the doctor who made the claim on staff for months. All it took was one phone call.

So yeah, you’re spreading deadly misinformation and making my job harder. Thanks. For nothing.

On an unrelated note, Richard Medhurst is killing it in this video, finding the humor in the absurdity of him, a person not in the US, working a company not in the US, just had all his work stolen by the US. Simply because he embarrasses them.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rSUi8xDaP9A&t=838s&ab_channel=RichardMedhurst

NR, even Pfizer says that you and your CDC are full of ****.
“In this evaluation, among individuals ≥16 years of age, BNT162b2 effectiveness against
SARS‑CoV-2 infection was only 39.0% (95% CI: 9.0%, 59.0%) and against symptomatic
COVID-19 was 40.5% (95% CI: 8.7%, 61.2%) between 20 June 2021 and 17 July 2021.
This was considerably lower than published effectiveness estimates from an earlier time
period. …. Further, effectiveness estimates from 20 June 2021 to 17 July 2021 showed that VE against SARS‑CoV‑2 infections and against symptomatic COVID-19 progressively declined as time-from-vaccine increased, with individuals ≥16 years of age vaccinated in January having only 16% effectiveness against symptomatic
COVID-19, which was not statistically significantly different from ZERO.” (my capitals for zero).

Read the whole report! https://www.fda.gov/media/152161/download

COVID deaths per million people:

Finland: 190
Norway: 155
Sweden: 1,429

let’s not stop, there:

Covid deaths per million in Israel: 760
Covid deaths per million in Uttar Pradesh: 114

According to a Jewish guy (presumably) that I met, yesterday, with an Israeli accent, Israel has ALREADY started with the 2nd booster doses.

Looking at Israel is both instructive and misleading. Instructive because they vaccinated early, and aggressively, so they are a peak into the near future of other countries. Misleading, because they used Pfizer, the weakest of the vaccines, while we in the US also used Moderna and J&J.

Kim Iverson covers the unfolding Israeli debacle, which should be paid attention to by not just vaccine fetishists, but everybody that used Pfizer. Indeed, since the government’s policies tend to be oriented to the dumbest common denominator, I wouldn’t be surprised if they try to foist boosters on everybody, as if they had all taken Pfizer. That should be easy to google, but I’m off to work.

See “Israel’s Alarming Data” on the Kim Iversen youtube channel.

Back in my childhood schools, teachers only stepped in when certain kids were being just a bit too overtly traumatized by bullying. Damned parents threatening to sue. Seems the socialization process involved training sociopaths about the correct ways to dominate others, ways which could be rationalized by society as “profitable”.

I wonder about the parts of our education where half the population winds up so obese and dependent on the many psychologically pushed addictions that millions of them get to die slowly. Yet we hear nary a peep about it from concerned commenters on these, or any other, threads.

NL: First of all, what you posted doesn’t contradict what I was saying. I was saying that mRNA vaccines work, and providing data that shows that. What you posted is more evidence that they do in fact work, just that efficacy might possibly wane with time, which is a different point entirely.

So first of all, thank you for posting more information debunking Thomas’s bullshit, and showing that COVID vaccines work.

Now, to the question of waning vaccine effectiveness over time, there is conflicting data on the subject. I don’t discount the Pfizer study saying effectiveness decreases, but another study was just released that also merits consideration:

https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(21)02046-8/fulltext

Current evidence does not, therefore, appear to show a need for boosting in the general population, in which efficacy against severe disease remains high. Even if humoral immunity appears to wane, reductions in neutralising antibody titre do not necessarily predict reductions in vaccine efficacy over time, and reductions in vaccine efficacy against mild disease do not necessarily predict reductions in the (typically higher) efficacy against severe disease. This effect could be because protection against severe disease is mediated not only by antibody responses, which might be relatively short lived for some vaccines, but also by memory responses and cell-mediated immunity, which are generally longer lived.
The ability of vaccines that present the antigens of earlier phases of the pandemic (rather than variant-specific antigens) to elicit humoral immune responses against currently circulating variants indicates that these variants have not yet evolved to the point at which they are likely to escape the memory immune responses induced by those vaccines.

More data is needed before conclusions can be drawn here.

Sorry, the first page of the Pfizer covid study looks like a Did not load correctly notice.

Pfizer’s argument is a third dose would increase antibody titers and so reduce the number of severe breakthrough infections as well as reduce the transmissibility of the virus from a vaccinated boostered individual. It does this in spite of its admitting that coverage even after two doses is still pretty good.

NR, “What you posted is more evidence that they do in fact work, just that efficacy might possibly wane with time, which is a different point entirely.”

Not ‘might possibly” by definitely and quickly. And how is it an entirely different point? You know why I wear an N95? You don’t. I wear it because I don’t know when the vaccine will stop being effective in me. 6 months is an average, in some people, it will work longer and in others, it will work for much less than 6 months. So, I have to have another means of protecting myself. I suggest you do the same if you are out at work or in public. You use the same words “work” and “effective”, but the meanings of the words changed since you first used them. Now the words mean: “for a short period of time with rapid onset of protection and rapid decline”.

In any event, seems to me that at this point you and Hugh are defending your Ego and whatever credibility that may have left and not necessarily arguing for benefits of the vaccines. I do not care to convince you in anything, I just picked an argument with you for the benefit and education of the reading public to show true efficacy of the vaccine and what kind people those who defend it are.

NR: “I’m saying: “We have conflicting data and recommendations…”

If you were really saying that, you would be like me – advising caution on vaccination and advocating a comprehensive approach, while the data are being sorted out and proper conclusions are made. Instead, you throw around your “work well and highly-effective”, as if indeed the case is closed.

I certainly do not care about what you are saying, because you have proven yourself to be incompetent and driven by Ego. Now are misrepresenting my position by “shouting” in capitals…