Archive for 2020

OPEN THREAD: Nobody’s perfect, not even a perfect stranger.

POLITICO REPORTS OBAMA LESS THAN ENTHUSIASTIC FOR BIDEN’S CANDIDACY: “Don’t underestimate Joe’s ability to f**k things up.”

Oh, no need to worry about that, Barry — I don’t think anyone in America underestimates Biden’s ability to f**k things up in all sorts of ways.

YOU HAVE NO IDEA HOW BIG IS THE SOROS NETWORK: But Capital Research Center’s Hayden Ludwig does.

MICHAEL WALSH: Atop the Magic Mountain, ‘The Great Reset.’

In case you’re curious about what the international Left has in store for you, and just how much they despise you, freedom, personal liberty, capitalism (even though, like George Soros, they’re all “capitalists”), you could do worse than to cast your eyes in the direction of the little town of Davos, high in the Swiss Alps.

Read the whole thing.

IT’S AS IF SHE’S A PHONEY WHO’LL SAY ANYTHING TO GET AHEAD:

Oh, wait, she admits that:

MORE ON VITAMIN D3 AND THE CHINESE CORONAVIRUS. “For each standard-deviation increase in serum 25-hydroxy-Vitamin D, the risk of a severe outcome was reduced eightfold, and the risk of a critical outcome was reduced 20-fold.”

You should be maintaining a healthy level of Vitamin D anyway, so this is a no-brainer.

What’s more, this isn’t a new finding:

Evidence that Vitamin D supplementation could reduce risk of influenza and COVID-19 infections and deaths (Grant et al., Nutrients, April 2, 2020) found that “through several mechanisms, vitamin D can reduce risk of infections. Those mechanisms include inducing cathelicidins and defensins that can lower viral replication rates and reducing concentrations of pro-inflammatory cytokines that produce the inflammation that injures the lining of the lungs, leading to pneumonia, as well as increasing concentrations of anti-inflammatory cytokines.”

So why haven’t public health authorities been loudly recommending D supplements since the beginning?

More here.

K-12 IMPLOSION UPDATE: From inclusive pods to learning hubs.

The wealthy are hiring teachers or tutors to staff “pandemic pods,” while middle-class families are sharing homeschooling duties or hiring non-teachers (lots of young people are out of work) to supervise children’s remote learning and play.

Are parent-created pods unfair to families who lack the time, money, space and education for DIY schooling? Nonprofits — and sometimes cities or school districts — are creating small-group alternatives, often providing child care and supervised remote learning.

Life is unfair. Public schools are unfair to students capable of independent thought.

CONSERVING CONSERVATISM MOST CONSERVATIVELY: “Peggy Noonan joined the crowd turning on George W. Bush in what I thought was (in Noonan’s case) a grossly unfair manner in 2008. It wasn’t just unfair, it was cowardly…Now a reader writes to point out that Noonan has returned to the mode of her 2008 Obama love in “The Rise of Kamala Harris.” Subhead: ‘The daughter of East Bay professors grew up to become an excellent performer of politics.’ The column has elicited thousands of critical comments. They almost make the column worth reading. Here are four.”

GOVERNMENT CREDIBILITY WAS IN THE DUMPSTER BEFORE COVID: But what will it be when pandemic restrictions are finally lifted or simply ignored on a wholesale basis? Good question posed by Jeffrey Tucker, writing for the American Institute for Economic Research (AIER).

Among much else, Tucker offers this observation:

“In 2006, the great epidemiologist Donald Henderson warned that if government pursued coercive measures to control a virus, the result would be a ‘loss of confidence in government to manage the crisis.’ The reason is that the measures do not work. Further, the attempt to make them work turns a manageable crisis into a catastrophe. Prophetic.”

 

LIVES ARE AT STAKE: Out of the way, FDA. It’s hard to say which agency has been more incompetent and destructive in this pandemic: The FDA or the CDC. Both have been dreadful, and should suffer dramatic changes in response.