Debt Rattle September 28 2020
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If “Mortality rates were not appreciably above normal” then it was the flu. The same one we’ve had for 102 years before now. So if we have a “flu”, then clearly it indicates *exactly nothing*.
Why? Because you would have made the exact same allegation and conclusion 102 times in a row, and been wrong 100% of the time. A century wrong. Wrong. Wrong. Wrong. Wrong. Wrong. Wrong. 96 more times.
Right now, the ‘Rona IS the same deadliness as Influenza. So that ALSO tells us *exactly nothing.* Barring the media lather-of-lying, if we lately discover it’s only as deadly as the 2015 flu season, then there is no “COVID” at all. It’s just one of the many strains of flu we always have and non-doctors completely ignore. As well they should.
So why would we possibly think that, just like the last 102 years running — not to mention the 1,000 before 1918 — we would just suddenly have a 2nd wave that kills 220 million people equivalent? I’m not saying it’s not possible: it’s ALWAYS possible. Spontaneous ebola and Kennel Cough is always possible, I’m saying there is no scientific or data reason to think this year is any different.
https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/death-taxes-and-covid-19-things-cannot-be-avoidedFacts. Statistics. Not emotional. Bored already. Can’t we get a disaster up in here I can panic over? I’m bored of having all these human rights. Shut up and take my money.
@ Mr. House
Crossed for what? Apparently you think I have outcome expectations when I’m just watching another clusterfuck. As I watch it, I sometimes point out factual errors when it is possible. What I said about a second wave is true to epidemic patterns. If you don’t “crush” it the first time with a no-holds barred lockdown of sufficient range and duration, a second wave is almost guaranteed, and they sometimes prove much worse than the first one. Not awlays, but the contagion structure of epidemics leans toward worse.
Why do some seem to expect, hopefully, for things to get worse? Confirmation bias is part of it. Discomfort with ambiguity is also part. Technically, it’s no different than wishing or believing the virus isn’t as bad as some seem to imply. Both attempt to predict the future, which is folly. Both tend to choose data that supports their view while excluding other data.
One guy’s list of stats says the virus is a piffle. Masks don’t work. Lockdowns are political opportunism. Another guy’s list says the virus is a major threat. Only masks and lockdowns can hold the virus back. Neither side knows for sure. At least the latter camp bases their attitude on known simple patterns of epidemics. This camp also tends to have less political ideology in their rationale. It places more trust in government actions than I do, but at least it doesn’t automatically assume that conspiracy theory is the only model through which to view this thing. I don’t want my doctor treating me according to his political views. Politics naturally intrude onto epidemics because they require concerted action to deal with them. But this does not politicize the virus nor legitimise government action or lack there of. Nor does it legitimise dismissing the potential threat of covid due to political beliefs.
“There are more things, Horatio, etc…”
Unintended consequences
Will the political add comparing Trump’s taxes with blue collar workers make people hate the rich for giving themselves all kinds of tax breaks?
@madamski
“At least the latter camp bases their attitude on known simple patterns of epidemics. This camp also tends to have less political ideology in their rationale. It places more trust in government actions than I do, but at least it doesn’t automatically assume that conspiracy theory is the only model through which to view this thing.”
I see things almost exactly the opposite. An intervention isn’t apolitical simply because it’s done in the name of “science”. The scientism is just rationale – the true measure is the social consequence.
Our social and political status quo is habeus corpus and individual freedom from compulsion, except where agreed via the legislative process.
Lockdowns, compulsory mask wearing etc are inherently political actions because they overturn the status quo. I’m not implying they can never be justified, but to declare those apolitical, yet resistance to those is political because it’s rooted in personal views.. well, that’s upside down.@ Mr. House
“I find it funny and strange that people are almost hoping something like that happens.”
Confirmation bias has a mind of its own: that of its owner.
@ Huskynut
I didn’t say support for intervention by a government is apolitical. That would be a tidy oxymoron. Kind of fun taking it out of my mouth after you stuck it in there. Kinky fun. I’m saying this view doesn’t see the pandemic itself as a political thing. It doesn’t see covid as a political hoax or conspiracy. It may see government reactions to covid as political opportunism or not, but it doesn’t see covid itself as a political thing. It sees it as a virus. It may see it this way through tunnel-vision blinders. Belive everything CNN/FOX/WaPo/NYT tell them. Even believe CDC/WHO/Fauci.
Obviously, both sides (more government intervention/less-to-no government intervention) take a political stance toward resistance to political implementation of their views on covid. Mask-wearers shame non-mask wearers et vice-versa because they both have political positions regarding political actions toward covid. But one side has a more covid-centered view of covid than the other, which tends to have a more politically centered view on covid. People stand where they sit.
Or simply put:
Do what the government says because the virus is bad.
vs
Don’t believe what the government says.Libs trust government more than cons. Government says covid bad, libs say covid bad.
Cons trust government less than libs. Government says covid, cons say covid not bad.Occam’s Razor prefers the lib position as a starting point. It has less entities. This is thesis. History demands we add some conservative reasoning because governments are proven reliably untrustworthy. This is counter-thesis. It adds the entity that maybe authority is wrong even though by definition it is supposed to be right. Then reality does what it wants. This is synthesis.
@madamski
I take your point, but again I disagree. Both sides are equally political
The Dems political response tends toward credulousness and naivete. That they have focussed more extensively on the scientific/medical aspects and averted their gaze from the political implications doesn’t make them less political
It’s not necessary to get into “conspiracy theory” that a hidden actor desires the the change to observe that the inevitable consequences of the action will manifest anyway. The Dems stick their fingers in their ears and pretend that the predictable consequences simply don’t exist.Take BLM – destroying neighbourhoods will predictably wreak havoc on those that live there. The left will destroy it anyway, whilst avoiding any discussion of the consequences. Willful, active blindness is a political action, even as it pretends to be actively occupied with just “the science”
When has authority been correct since the year 2000?
@ Mr House
When has authority been correct since the year 2000?
That’s a fair point, but I think the issue is more around the degree to which a lot of the left have outsourced their critical faculties to various groups.. the government included.
When I see polls on how many people still (often fervently) believe the Russiagate narrative, the consequences are clear. Those people stopped thinking and outsourced their belief system to the MSM (backed strongly by the Dems). That’s a political decision right there – to be become a passive proxy for whatever idiocy is regurgitated down the line.
The right of course does some of the same, and has the same blind proxy armies, but the left is conspicuously worse, and I speculate it has to do with the philosophies of endless victimhood, which have got more and more amplification in recent years.
The right might have it’s rednecks, but the heart of conservativism (small c) is personal responsibility, which includes the obligation to think. As the left has descended further into reflexive and extreme collectivism, large parts of it have simply stopped using their own brains.OPEN LETTER: Belgian Healthcare Workers Call for End to Lockdown:
“We, Belgian doctors and health professionals, wish to express our serious concern about the evolution of the situation in the recent months surrounding the outbreak of the SARS-CoV-2 virus.
We call on politicians to be independently and critically informed in the decision-making process and in the compulsory implementation of corona-measures. We ask for an open debate, where all experts are represented without any form of censorship.
After the initial panic surrounding covid-19, the objective facts now show a completely different picture – there is no medical justification for any emergency policy anymore..”
OPEN LETTER: Belgian Healthcare Workers Call for End to Lockdown
clearly pootin’s work
Just my own observation, but people who lean left generally really want to fit in with their peers. I live in the city and they try to shame you for not voting in this wonderful election with two candidates that don’t represent any of the views or policies i would support. When you argue that, they have nothing to say.
It goes beyond the dems, I think the majority of both parties are controlled by the intelligence agencies. Who plant fake stories in the MSM all the time.
> It goes beyond the dems, I think the majority of both parties are controlled by the intelligence agencies.
Yea, verily.. it’s just that the “Dem” half of the Doupoly were assigned with dismantling Civil Society, despite being
nominally the party of the People. That’s why they get my especial contempt..#CovidCon2020
@ Mr House
Just my own observation, but people who lean left generally really want to fit in with their peers. I live in the city and they try to shame you for not voting in this wonderful election with two candidates that don’t represent any of the views or policies i would support. When you argue that, they have nothing to say.
Yep, that fits what I observe as well. Thing is, roll back a few years and I saw eye to eye with the mainstream left.. consistently voted for left wing parties etc. I’ve changed a bit, for sure, but they’ve changed far more. Many of the journalists on the left who were staunchly against invading Iraq for instance are churning out columns of ever-decreasing merit or relevancy.
When I think about the trajectory from then till now, there was a period in the middle when social media took over, and many of them began grooming their public profiles rather than thinking too much. They often stopped challenging public narratives, and began parroting minor variances of whatever was the official lefty cause de jour. The same people, with demonstrably capable minds, became.. well, dross.
I’m sure commercial pressures were a significant part of it (Matt Taibbi’s recent article charts this well), but I’m not clear what pressure it takes to turn these people who had social consciences into mindless droids..
Now it seems that despite the excessive and overt virtually signalling of the majority of the left, it’s people on the right like Tucker Carlson, or Toby over at lockdownskeptics.org who are penning consistently excellent content with a social awareness.“I’ve changed a bit, for sure, but they’ve changed far more.”
Thats because the mask is coming off. They never believed what they espoused. Principles do not bend. Now you see them for who they truly are. Most people in this country believe in nothing but whatever makes their life easiest.
“A credibility trap is when the managerial functions of a society have been sufficiently compromised by corruption so that the leadership and the professional class cannot reform, or even honestly admit and address, the problems of the corrupted system without implicating a broad swath of a powerful elite, including themselves.
The moneyed interests and their enablers tolerate the corruption because they have profited from it, and would like to continue to do so. Discipline and silence is maintained by various forms of soft financial rewards and career and social coercion.”
Jessiescafeamerican or one man who hasn’t lost his head in the past twelve years
@ Huskynut
Never mind. When someone tells me that two political parties are equally political, it’s like they’re saying two science research companies are equally scientific. I can only swallow so many pointless tautologies a day.
But you promote my point: you insist on being political even as the central concept of this discussion remains the virus. If you want to see it through a primarily political lens, knock yourself out. Me, if I’m going to deal with a virus, I’ll deal with it as a virus first and ramifications second. (Which is not to say I ignore the ramifications of, say, lockdown or mandated masks. BUt ranifications are by nature secondary.) I’ll take vitamin D, etc. I’ll take careful concerned note how the virus in turns influences politics just as I note how politics influences the virus.
Before covid, it was the same thing with global warming. One side viewed GW primarily as a climate thing; the other viewed mostly through a lens of suspicion of the government. Never mind which side may have a better handle on GW. I have no desire to debate that shit. But it would be nice if we could keep phenomena separate from the politics its influences and is influenced by.
Now you’ve traipsed ideological mud all over my nice clean laboratory floor.
@ Bill7
OPEN LETTER: Belgian Healthcare Workers Call for End to Lockdown:
Thank you for bringing my attention to this letter which reflects my view as I have expressed in my comments on this website.
Again I thank you from the bottom of my heart. The article linked in comment is a must read for all
@madamski
Now you’ve traipsed ideological mud all over my nice clean laboratory floor.
Ha.. nice line, it cracked me up. 🙂Yes, in a world riven with politics (where politics I define as in the choices we make that affect the lives and outcomes of others, not whether a political party is implictly involved), I assert that political choice is implicit and inherent in almost all the choices we make, regardless of whether we see and own the political dimensions of those choices.
.. and to add (to the detriment of your laboratory floor).. there is no “science” as stand-alone being, to follow or to reject.
Best exemplar is the Scientific American which has morphed beyond recognition from a science-focussed publication to a politically-active medium.
In some ways that’s good, in that “scientific method” was always an affectation for many human beings involved in science. But regardless of any person’s ability to live it truly, it’s a loss when totems are torn down. They may be unachievable in practice, but their spirit animates. I do feel (at a gutteral level) that the tearing down of virtually all our totems is not an accident, but a deliberate (political) process of disorientation. But maybe it’s just coincidence that everything is coming to a head as it is..
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