FASTER, PLEASE: The End Is Near. No, Seriously.

At what point do we accept our illness-or-death risk? That’s not a collective decision. It’s an individual one.

I’m already eating at the bar at my corner beer-and-burger joint again.

On the other hand, I’m not willing to fly to India just now. Not as much out of fear of Covid but because, if I happened to have, say, a heart attack, I clearly would be unable to get a hospital bed or an oxygen mask.

Perception of risk is everything. Consider this: about 3 million Americans die each year. (TW//: We all have to die of something.)

In most years, we shuffle off this mortal coil due to, in this order: heart disease, cancer, accidents, COPD, stroke, Alzheimer’s, diabetes, kidney failure, flu/pneumonia and suicide.

Last year, despite all the ink spilled on it, Covid-19 was our leading cause of death only in some weeks. I vividly remember when it first hit № 1: it was on April 7. Nonetheless, it still ended 2020 at just № 3, after heart disease and cancer.

This year, because the January-February surge was so bad, it will probably be № 3 once more. But never again after that. Too much immunity, not enough kindling left for another firestorm.

However, please note: with the exception of Alzheimers and freak accidents like lightning strikes, almost all those top 10 causes of death are abetted by risks some of us long ago rationally (or semi-rationally) decided to accept: smoking, drinking, overeating, driving, kissing, chainsaw-juggling and so on.

It’s Don McNeil, so read the whole thing. Just think, if Dean Baquet had any control over his young staffers, McNeil would still be reporting on COVID for the New York Times, instead of:

SPACE: With Artemis Accords on the table, South Korea, U.S. to widen cooperation in space exploration, security.

AN EPIDEMIOLOGIST CONFIRMS THAT THE CDC DIRECTOR MISREPRESENTED HER STUDY OF OUTDOOR COVID-19 TRANSMISSION.

Flashback: The Suicide of Expertise.

BIDEN’S ATF NOMINEE WANTS TO BAN ‘ASSAULT WEAPONS’ AND HIS DEFINITION IS TERRIFYINGLY BROAD…

Related: USA Today Prepares Fact-Challenged Hit Piece On Gun Industry Ahead Of ATF Director Nomination Hearing.

INTRODUCING THE NYT’S POSTMODERN WALTER DURANTY: New York Times health reporter: Wuhan lab leak coronavirus theory has ‘racist roots,’ isn’t ‘plausible.’

UPDATE (From Ed): ‘Someone got a phone call:’ NYT COVID reporter who thinks someday we might admit the racist roots of the lab leak theory explains again why she deleted her tweets.

(Updated and bumped.)

SYSTEMIC RACISM: Biden’s overtly anti-white COVID rescue plan won’t survive in court.

MARK JUDGE: The Great COVID Lockdown Film? George Clooney’s 2002 ‘Solaris.’

I D0N’T THINK IT’S ANY MORE ABOUT FREE SPEECH THAN REFUSING TENURE TO MICHAEL BELLESILES WOULD BE: A Culture of Free Speech Protects Everyone: The journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones appears to be a victim of viewpoint discrimination. Academic freedom needs a vigorous defense—and not just at UNC. “But to an ideologically diverse group of critics, the 1619 Project was marred by multiple factual errors, damning revelations from a fact-checker, and obfuscatory stealth edits that many friendly to its thesis overlooked or waved away by focusing exclusively on the dumbest criticism of the project (most prominently, demagogic attacks by then-President Donald Trump).”

There is viewpoint discrimination in every part of nearly every university today, enormously in favor of leftist views. Hannah-Jones is the beneficiary of viewpoint discrimination in being hired for work of a quality that no right-leaning candidate would be hired for.

Related: Correcting 1619’s Falsehoods About the American Founding.

Slavery “was nothing new to the New World,” Mr. Wood writes. “It was an institution familiar to many native societies in both North and South America. These populations had been enslaving one another, as far as we can tell, from time immemorial.” Local Indians captured and enslaved European would-be conquistadors and traded them from tribe to tribe, Mr. Wood notes. “The year 1492 changed the world, but not by introducing slavery to the Americas. Slavery was already here.”

Mr. Magness’s book examines the 1619 Project’s assertion that slave labor powered the U.S. economy, an argument that rests on “dubious statistical claims and shoddy research practices,” which have been refuted empirically in peer-reviewed journals. “The thrust of these exaggerations is to recast slavery as a distinctly capitalist enterprise, which, in turn, services the 1619 Project’s political message,” Mr. Magness writes. “The worthy historical task of documenting the horrors of American slavery has been cynically repurposed into an ideological attack on free-market capitalism.”

The 1619 Project is not an intellectual exercise in search of truth. It’s a political exercise in search of power. More scholars could and should be calling out this false history, but let’s be grateful to the ones who have risen to the occasion.

Indeed.

HOW DUMB DO DEMOCRATS THINK AMERICANS ARE? THIS DUMB: Democrats’ Message of the Day: Crime Surge is Due to Firearm Sales, Lack of Gun Control.

I’M TIRED OF RACISM MASQUERADING AS ANTIRACISM: “Lockheed Martin the nation’s largest defense contractor, sent key executives to a three-day white male reeducation camp in order to deconstruct their ‘white male culture’ and atone for their ‘white male privilege.'”

SpaceX, on the other hand, wants its managers to manage well and make hardware that works.

Related: The Woke-Industrial Complex.

NOW OUT FROM INSTA-CO-BLOGGER GAIL HERIOT: A Dubious Expediency: How Race Preferences Damage Higher Education.

It’s already a #1 new release!

THE KOREANS ARE CATCHING UP: Tested: 2021 Genesis G80 3.5T vs. Mercedes-Benz E450 4Matic.

HE SHALL TAKE CARE THAT THE LAWS BE FAITHFULLY EXECUTED: Shocking New Data Shows Joe Biden Has Practically Abolished ICE. “After years of the left demanding the abolishment of ICE, they may have gotten their wish, if not technically, at least practically. Deportations dropped to under 3,000 total last month. That’s the lowest number on record for an agency that ostensibly exists to enforce immigration laws.”

WHILE ITS COMPETITORS LAUNCH LAWSUITS: SpaceX launches 60 Starlink satellites from Florida.

“SCIENCE IS REAL” — OR IS IT? The ‘Replication Crisis’ Could Be Worse Than We Thought, New Analysis Reveals.

WELL, HUFFPO: HuffPost’s White House correspondent is really arguing that the Capitol riot was “1,000% worse” than 9/11.

KRUISER: Media Pathetically Creates a Biden We All Know Isn’t There.

With George W. Bush, journalists lied a lot and kept reminding people that he was stupid. Barack Obama came along and they giggled like ditzy school girls who spent their nights writing prom fantasies about him in their feelings journals. With Trump they lied about everything and attacked like vicious, rabid animals. Then they’d go off whimpering about the fact that Trump supporters hated them.

Joe Biden presents challenges to the journo hacks the likes of which they’ve never encountered.

Read the whole thing.

BUMMER: Aerion Halts Work on AS2 Supersonic Business Jet: Despite heavyweight industry partners and an $11 billion backlog, Aerion could not raise additional capital.

THE LOCKDOWN CURE WAS ALWAYS WORSE THAN THE WUHAN DISEASE: Children’s Hospital Colorado declares ‘state of emergency’ for pediatric mental health.

RIP: Former GOP Sen. John Warner, who was once married to Elizabeth Taylor, dead at 94.

OFF-GRID SOLAR’S Killer App.

BEN SHAPIRO: China Isn’t Winning. The West Is Forfeiting.

It now seems highly credible that COVID-19 originated inside a Chinese state laboratory — and that China knew about it as early as November. In mid-January, the World Health Organization reported, based on Chinese information, that “Preliminary investigations conducted by the Chinese authorities have found no clear evidence of human-to-human transmission of the novel #coronavirus.”

China censured its own Dr. Li Wenliang for attempting to spread the news of COVID-19’s danger. It took until the end of January for China to lock down Wuhan.

We’ll never know the answers to those questions, because the same WHO that covered for China in the early days of the pandemic is responsible for investigating Chinese malfeasance today.

And President Biden’s administration seems happy to keep it that way. Asked about whether America would lead an independent investigation into COVID-19’s Chinese origins, White House press secretary Jen Psaki stated, “We have repeatedly called for the WHO to support an expert-driven evaluation of the pandemic’s origins that is free from interference and politicization.”

Who could have seen this coming last year?

MARXISM, STRAIGHT UP: Biden Admin Allows BLM flags to Fly on Federal Buildings.

Monday: BLM Founder Says ‘Revolution’ Will Not Be Through Ballot Box, Calls U.S. Flag ‘Symbol Of Hate.’

I’M CONCERNED ABOUT AN EARTH-SHATTERING KABOOM: New study shines light on hazards of Earth’s largest volcano.