Archive for 2020
July 21, 2020
It’s not easy to gain necessary perspective from the article, but the story does link to a page featuring various statistics related to the virus. According to the Post’s data, per capita Covid-19 deaths in Florida, Texas and Arizona remain far below the levels in New York and New Jersey. In fact the Post website shows that per capita deaths in both New York and New Jersey are more than 10 times the number in Texas.
These encouraging data out of the Sun Belt suggest at least a few possibilities, along with many others. One possibility is that many more people in the Northeast had the virus in the spring than we realized, so the mortality rate is lower than many feared. Another is that doctors have learned to offer better treatment. Another is that Sun Belt governors have learned to prioritize the protection of the vulnerable elderly, rather than forcing them to live in nursing homes with Covid patients, as in the New York example.
Or maybe there are characteristics of the New York City area that made it uniquely vulnerable. Regardless, the good news is that, despite the absence of a vaccine, the virus is lately killing fewer people.
Speaking of good news, the Post story does actually contain some. “The rate of new, positive coronavirus cases has slightly declined in Arizona in recent days,” begins paragraph 41.
Much like democracy, sometimes the news can seem to die and be buried in the final throes of an extensive commentary.
Related: Andrew Cuomo’s Coronavirus Response Has Been a Failure: The media’s fawning interviews obscure the New York governor’s record. All the talk of Texas, Arizona, and Florida is just covering fire for a Democrat grandee who’s screwed the pooch.
GOP CONGRESSMAN SAYS IT’S TIME TO RE-OPEN THE CAPITOL TO PUBLIC: Rep. Rodney Davis (R-Ill) says Democrats aren’t planning to allow the public to resume visiting Capitol Hill before the November election. Davis says that ought to happen today. Also staff. And, most importantly, all representatives to be physically present in the House chamber when voting.
Davis is the ranking Republican on the House Administration Committee, which oversees the daily operations of the lower chamber and has oversight of federal elections.
DISPATCHES FROM THE EDUCATION APOCALYPSE: She called institutional racism a ‘myth.’ Syracuse won’t punish students threatening her, she claims. Critic predicts she’ll ‘get a bullet in the head for being racist.’
Your free speech is violence, but their violence is just free speech, to coin an Instaphrase.
PERHAPS WORKING OUTSIDE THE HOME INCREASES THE RISK OF PREMATURE BIRTHS: During Coronavirus Lockdowns, Some Doctors Wondered: Where Are the Preemies? Hospitals in several countries saw dips in premature births, which could be a starting point for future research.
SHOCKING NEWS FROM THE WORLD OF SCIENCE: Viagra doesn’t fix all sexual issues, study shows.
REVIEW: Greyhound. “It’s good but the book is great. . . . The Good Shepherd is a breathtaking, technically stunning, and daring piece of writing. And what makes it so exceptional are qualities that simply cannot be duplicated on film, despite the great respect screenwriter Hanks shows for the material and the meticulous re-creation of the conditions on board a destroyer during World War II. . . . What Forester achieves in The Good Shepherd is nothing less than an authoritative portrait of how America and the Allies won World War II, because they produced heroes who had no idea they were heroes. Hanks and his director, Aaron Schneider, do a formidable job of turning the details of the convoy’s crisis as described by Forester into something visual, dramatic, and gripping.”
I’ve got C.S. Forester’s The Good Shepherd, but I haven’t read it yet — I’m currently reading his The General, actually.
THIS IS GOOD NEWS, SINCE IT MEANS IT’S MUCH LESS LETHAL — OR EVEN DEBILITATING — THAN WE THOUGHT: Coronavirus Infections Far Exceed Reported Cases, CDC Estimates. Since this is based on antibodies, and we know that many infected/exposed people don’t develop antibodies, it’s probably still an underestimate.
WELL, IT SHOULD — IT’S A RACIST TEXT WHOSE ADOPTION DEMONSTRATES A HOSTILE RACIAL ENVIRONMENT FOR WHITE PEOPLE: Teaching Robin DiAngelo’s “White Fragility” Will Get You Sued.
NOTHIN’ LEFT TO LOSE: Tom Cotton Compares Portland Antifa to Confederate Rebels, Leftists Lose Their Minds.
THIS ISN’T ALL THAT NEW A DEVELOPMENT: Google Blacklists Conservative Websites.
Flashback to PJM’s Paula Bolyard in 2017: Report: Google Bias Against Leading Conservative Websites Is Real.
UNDERSEA: What Happened The One (and Only) Time Submarines Battled? “While hunting undersea enemies is one of the primary jobs of modern attack submarines, only one undersea sub engagement has ever taken place, under decidedly unique circumstances.”
HELL IN PORTLAND: Weeks of government-sanctioned mayhem in the Rose City.
There’s something peculiar going on when indiscriminate attacks on the national government, the only real locomotive that can haul us out of the third-world cloaca we’ve recently fashioned on the streets of our cities, are freely aired because they play to the vindictive public mood. On what could be called the philosophical plain, it’s a stance motivated by moral revulsion at something called systemic racism. At street level, it expresses itself in the nightly sight of hundreds of masked demonstrators, predominantly white and male, collecting in downtown Portland in order to pelt police with rocks and urinate on the steps of the courthouse. Mayor Wheeler has told us how sorry he is about this state of affairs, but at least he can solace himself by decamping to one of his three luxury homes bought with the proceeds of the family timber business and his own career as an executive at the same Bank of America that helped trigger the great economic meltdown of 2008.
Meanwhile, it’s been 56 days of hell, and counting, for America’s Rose City.
Read the whole thing.
THEY SELL FAILURE: “One might instead argue that this supposedly ‘white’ ‘obsession’ with ‘mechanical time’ – which is to say, basic foresight and punctuality – or just adulthood – has very little to do with oppressing the negro, as Mr Moore claims, and rather more to do with courtesy and treating other people as if they were real, just as real as you, and no more deserving of delays, frustration, or gratuitous disrespect. It seems to me that punctuality is not only about getting things done, about practicality and cooperation, but about getting over yourself. And presumably, Mr Moore – the one reducing black children to strange and otherly beings, unmoored by mere temporal concerns – would prefer his payments for this claptrap, aired to teachers and school administrators, to materialise promptly. Not, say, three weeks late. Or hey, whenever.”
Well yes – as Conquest’s First Law of Politics states, everyone is conservative about what he knows best.
HOW ABOUT THAT REALITY-BASED COMMUNITY? High School Teacher in Michigan Fired for Saying ‘Trump Is Our President’ on Social Media.
WHY IS HOLLYWOOD SUCH A CESSPIT OF ABUSE? Details Revealed In Lawsuit Claiming ‘X-Men’ Director Bryan Singer Raped A 17-Year-Old Boy.
MAYOR BANE HAS HIS PRIORITIES FOR GOTHAM CITY: As crime and murders skyrocket in NYC, mayor has 27 officers a day guarding Black Lives Matter “mural” [at Trump Tower] (op-ed).