Month: May 2020

Galewood townhome, site of viral party, hosted smaller gathering a month earlier – Chicago Sun-Times

Young host used his mother’s house for both parties. She’s a Chi Fire Dept. paramedic, knew nothing of the earlier party, in March.

The 2nd, in April, “was a memorial to two friends who were victims of gun violence,” he said. He explained further:

“I knew the seriousness of COVID-19, but I didn’t take it as seriously because it wasn’t attacking my peers. It wasn’t killing people around me or my friends or my family, but gun violence is,” Wright said.

“That’s one thing that’s killing us that we know all too real. I have to watch my back around the city all the time. That’s what’s killing the young people, the millennials in my community.”

The enemy within. Not impressed by COVID, under siege by his peers. Mother’s house in a largely white ‘hood, where party-ers felt safe. This is a demoralized community.

Excellent reportage by star reporter Spielman.

Dr. Fauci here, since Hector was a pup . . .

This is how a survivor talks. You say this, you leave a tiny opening, knowing the game and how it’s done.

In March 2020, Fauci praised the work of the WHO and their chairman, Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, saying: “Tedros is really an outstanding person … I mean, obviously, over the years anyone who says that the WHO has not had problems has not been watching the WHO. But I think under his leadership they’ve done very well.”

It works. He’s been in Washington a long time. Since 1968. Knows the ropes.

Governor: ‘No other way’ to curb coronavirus than to stay the course on stay-at-home restrictions

He’s our expert, but really? No other way? 

We are asked to swallow a lot, are we not?

The old joke hanging on barber shop walls — “If you’re so smart, why ain’t you rich?” can be turned around for Gov-P.

Has he heard about the Swedish fellow, who says:

UK policy on lockdown and other European countries are not evidence-based.

The correct policy is to protect the old and the frail only.

This will eventually lead to herd immunity as a “by-product.”

The initial UK response, before the “180 degree U-turn”, was better.

The Imperial College paper was “not very good” and he has never seen an unpublished paper have so much policy impact.

The paper was very much too pessimistic.

Any such models are a dubious basis for public policy anyway.

The flattening of the curve is due to the most vulnerable dying first as much as the lockdown.

The results will eventually be similar for all countries.

Covid-19 is a “mild disease” and similar to the flu, and it was the novelty of the disease that scared people.

The actual fatality rate of Covid-19 is the region of 0.1%.

At least 50% of the population of both the UK and Sweden will be shown to have already had the disease when mass antibody testing becomes available.

Shocking stuff, eh? Already mulled completely by Gov-P? Really?

The Crisis Experts are Themselves the Crisis

Do the math.

Assuming there’s a 2020 NFL season and Anthony Fauci attends a Washington Redskins game, it’s not unreasonable to suggest that Fauci will be the smartest individual at the stadium. Some say his intelligence is formidable.

At the same time, Fauci’s mental capacity will be very small relative to the combined intelligence of every fan cheering (one can hope!) at FedEx Field. Whether 50,000 are in attendance or there’s a full-house of 82,000 (maybe the Dallas Cowboys are in town), one brilliant mind is no match for the collective wisdom of the masses. Their combined knowledge puts them at a major advantage against one, or for that matter, many.

Times there are when the smartest guy or gal in the world should take a break. Scratch that. When their judgment should be considered just one of the possibilities before us and our governmental leaders.

via  AIER

. . . where this idea is pursued at length.

Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot Warns Stay-At-Home Violators: ‘We Will Take You To Jail, Period’

She should calm down.

Following reports of half a dozen parties being held around the Chicago area this weekend, Mayor Lori Lightfoot issued a sinister warning to stay-at-home violators: “We will take you to jail, period.”

She then proceeded to yell at a small group of teens who were hanging out in a parking lot across the street. It was a moment that brilliantly captured the collapse of common sense among government officials trying to enforce an extreme and increasingly unreasonable form of social distancing.

It isn’t easy to be mayor of Chicago. She should take a break?

via Reason.com

Perspective: There were 83,780 Flu-Pneumonia Deaths in US this Season — So far Only 4,059 Coronavirus Deaths in US this Year

Good advice?

The international community is currently experiencing the worst global panic in modern history.

Entire economies, including the US economy, are in complete free-fall over the coronavirus pandemic and panic.

It is always good to pause and look at the actual data and not the ever-changing “models” the “experts” continue to throw at us.

It would seem so.

Fear fear itself, said FDR in one emergency

Prevent it any which way, another had said in one before that.

Jeremy Hunt, author of “Influenza: The Hundred-Year Hunt to Cure the Deadliest Disease in History”, has written: “If the terrible influenza pandemic of 1918 and the current coronavirus outbreak share one feature, it is this: People are terribly afraid.”

Hunt quotes Chicago’s 1918 public health commissioner, who said, commenting on the questionable value of wearing a mask, “It is our duty to keep the people from fear. Worry kills more people than the epidemic. For my part, let them wear a rabbit’s foot on a gold watch chain if it will help them to get rid of fear.”

Rabbit’s foot on chain would be less trouble, for that matter.