RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://issuesinsights.com/2021/10/11/the-dire-implications-of-covid-19-vaccine-hesitancy/

The seven-day moving average for COVID-19 deaths in the United States is around 1,800, the same as in early December 2020, before any vaccines were authorized for emergency use. How is that possible, 10 months after safe and effective vaccines began to be administered? 

It’s due to a combination of three interrelated factors: the Delta variant’s increased transmissibility and virulence; the degree of immunity in the population, which is a function of both the efficacy and durability of the vaccines; and the decisions of individuals and policymakers. Peoples’ reluctance to get the COVID-19 vaccine – what’s known as “vaccine hesitancy” – has played a large role in the nation’s failure to reach herd immunity. As of Oct. 6 the U.S. population is only 56.4% fully vaccinated, which makes us 41st most vaccinated in the world, despite being the headquarters of vaccine development for all three FDA-approved vaccines.

Over the course of the pandemic, the goal of COVID-19 vaccine has evolved; originally it was intended to prevent symptomatic infections (the criterion for efficacy in the clinical trials). With widespread vaccination, we are now seeing so-called “breakthrough” infections (mostly mild) in vaccinees, but the vaccines have been highly effective at preventing hospitalizations and deaths.

Misinformation is rife and has its roots both in domestic political activism and insidious foreign propaganda. Much of the anti-vaccine sentiment is the product of what can only be described as an industry, the principal protagonists of which are an organized group of professional propagandists. As reported in the science journal Nature, they are people “running multi-million-dollar organizations, incorporated mainly in the United States, with as many as 60 staff each.”  Some of the most prolific were identified by the Center for Countering Digital Hate, which found that a small number of people, the “Disinformation Dozen,” produce 65% of the shares of anti-vaccine misinformation on social media platforms.

https://issuesinsights.com/2021/10/12/how-about-some-data-covid-19-transparency/

Since the early days of the pandemic, the public has been misled and misinformed, the goalposts pulled down and taken out of the stadium, and the data too often puzzling. Much of the country has lost confidence in politicians and public health officials. It’s important to know if those doubts are legitimate or misplaced.

One route to the truth would be a federal grand jury probe that would determine if the case and death counts have been inflated and not reflective of reality.

Would it be a witch hunt? A political sideshow? No. It would be a sober and justifiable inquiry. The nation deserves to know if a crisis was manufactured or real. If the numbers are accurate, then a probe will go a long way toward restoring confidence in our public health officials. If they’re not, then someone needs to be held accountable for the errors, negligence, or intentional deception that hurt so many and divided a country.

“​​Public health policy must be based upon accurate and independently verifiable data to optimize outcomes and strengthen the public’s trust in the people leading them through this crisis,” say a couple of Republican legislators in Oregon who are asking the U.S. attorney there for an “independent state and/or special federal grand jury investigation” of the data.

“The ability to definitively diagnose who is infectious,” they continue, “and distinguish them from who is not is paramount in assessing the situation and ensuring the people in immediate need receive the skilled care they deserve.”

More than 1,700 Oregonians and 53,000 in total have signed the lawmakers’ petition.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/partisan-science-antiscience-facts-misrepresentation-fauci-lancet-lab-leak-11633960740?mod=opinion_lead_pos5

Medieval thinkers pretending to infallibility often claimed to have received a direct revelation from God. Since the 19th century, secular thinkers have invoked science. As Anthony Fauci said in June, “a lot of what you’re seeing as attacks on me, quite frankly are attacks on science.”

One can often tell that an appeal to science is unwarranted without knowing anything about the science in question. If science is treated as a solid block, each part of which is as indubitable as all the others, then science has been misunderstood. Science always contains some propositions less firmly grounded than others: on the frontier, newly discovered, based on experiments not readily replicated.

Some parts of climate science have been tested countless times—like the greenhouse effect—but specific predictions about rising temperatures and their effects have often proved mistaken. Early last year we were treated to the delightful spectacle of Montana’s Glacier National Park removing signs that said its glaciers would be gone by 2020. Some scientific statements prove false; that’s how science works. Those who claim that to doubt any part of the consensus is to be “antiscience” or “a denier” are themselves being unscientific.

Science operates by a process of criticism. Scientists don’t experience divine revelations, they propose hypotheses that they and others test. This rigorous process of testing gives science the persuasiveness that mere journalism lacks. If a scientific periodical expels editors or peer reviewers because they don’t accept some prevailing theory, that process has been short-circuited. Those who call for such expulsions have missed the whole point of how science works. They are the true deniers, far more dangerous to science than a religious fundamentalist who believes the world is 6,000 years old.

https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2021/oct/10/revolt-of-the-masses-the-left-has-overplayed-its-h/

I think the left is realizing it has a tiger by the tail. The people are getting uppity.

Parents are assailing school boards over critical race theory and transgender madness. So much so that the Biden Justice Department is sending out the FBI to investigate whether, as the National School Boards Association bombastically charges, some parents are guilty of “domestic terrorism and hate crimes.”

Boy, it’s lucky for those BLM/Antifa rioters in 2020 that they refrained from badmouthing teachers and school officials while torching the cities. Their “peaceful protests” might have been investigated.

Meanwhile, former Democratic Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe, the Clinton bag man who is running again for his old job, stated, “I’m not going to let parents come into schools and actually take books out and make their own decisions.” He added, “I don’t think parents should be telling schools what they should teach.”

This stuff ticks off parents, and GOP candidate Glenn Youngkin is taking full advantage. He is running ads accurately depicting Mr. McAuliffe as an authoritarian, anti-parent elitist.

Republicans are looking to take back Virginia in November and Congress in 2022. Democrats in districts carried by former President Trump are as nervous as a hockey goalie playing without a face mask.

https://www.jns.org/opinion/cancel-culture-is-no-laughing-matter/

 Comedian Dave Chappell’s latest Netflix special, “The Closer,” is making the rounds but not for its hilarity. No, its high ratings can be attributed to the venom that it has elicited from the mainstream press and social media.

Nothing piques curiosity more than public outrage, after all. There’s no doubt, then, that a huge portion of viewers tuned in just to see what all the fuss was about.
As a longtime fan of the irreverent performer’s, I would have watched the show anyway. But many of my peers hadn’t paid the slightest attention to Chappelle until the scandal erupted. Once it did, they rushed to join in the conversation by seeing the program for themselves.

Chappelle was already Enemy No. 1 in LBGTQ circles for his “transphobia.” He’s been raked over the coals by feminists for his ostensible disdain for women. Some whites, as well, don’t take kindly to the veteran black comic’s persistent mockery of them.

But this time, his jokes about Jews have aroused serious ire. The anger stems from two main passages of the hour-and-a-quarter-long act.
He leads in to the first anti-Semitic sequence by talking about the COVID-19 pandemic by insulting other groups.
“I don’t want you to worry about me,” he begins. “I’m vaccinated; I got the Johnson & Johnson vaccine. I’ve got to admit, that’s probably the most n**gerish decision I’ve made in a long time. … I walk in to the doc like, ‘Give me the third best option; I’ll have what the homeless people are having.’”
He goes on to say that he actually contracted the virus, which made him feel “gross.”
“I haven’t felt dirty like that in a long time,” he says. “Last time I can remember feeling dirty like that, man, I must have been a little boy … being molested by a preacher. But don’t feel bad for me; I liked it.”
He then recounts having had to quarantine for 10 days. Left alone in his room, he says, he watched videos, many of which, “sadly, were of black people beating up Asians for no reason.”