RUTHFULLY YOURS

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We are told we live in an era of science. Neil deGrasse Tyson wrote, “the good thing about science is that it’s true, whether or not you believe in it.” But is that really so? Does not science change as new evidence is gathered? Statisticians use models to justify their findings. Yet models are only as good as their inputs. The epidemiologists’ models we have seen regarding COVID-19 have changed markedly over the past few weeks. In mid-March, Imperial College in London predicted 2.2 million deaths in the U.S., with no mitigation. By the first of April, modelers at Oxford saw that number drop to a range of 100,000 to 240,000, with some mitigation. Now the estimate is 60,000. A University of Virginia model shows COVID-19 will peak this summer, while Health Metrics Evaluation at the University of Washington suggests the virus will “peter out” in May. Models make assumptions about, among other factors, human behavior, the measurement of which is an art? What is a person to believe?

If we are to base our beliefs about COVID-19 on the basis of “evidence,” it is unsurprising that confusion abounds. We presume, with strong reason, that it came from the city of Wuhan in Hubei Province, China, but whether from a live bat sold for human consumption at a wet market or the Wuhan Center for Disease Control has never been made clear. We are told coronavirus is highly contagious. Ten days ago, the Los Alamos National Laboratory published an article in which they claimed that the transmission rate for COVID-19 is between 4.7 and 6.6. For comparison purposes, the seasonal flu, the transmission rate is 1.3. (The transmission rate is also referred to as the regeneration rate, or the R0.) At the midpoint, 5.7, over ten rounds, one person could infect 36 million people. The chief epidemiologist at the Chinese Centers for Disease Control in Beijing puts the transmission rate at between 1.0 and 5.0. At the midpoint of 2.5, and after ten rounds, one individual could infect 9,538 people.  Which are we to believe?

https://amgreatness.com/2020/04/16/the-tyranny-of-scientism-and-the-subversion-of-science/

Let’s not pretend we’re being guided by “science.” It’s tyranny disguised as the common good to rationalize authoritarian tactics employed by politicians like Phil Murphy and his like-minded colleagues. And too many Americans are falling for it, no questions asked.

In an interview with Tucker Carlson on Wednesday, New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy unintentionally defined this critical moment in America’s history. “We weren’t thinking of the Bill of Rights when we did this,” he explained about his draconian decrees, including a ban on religious gatherings, to fight coronavirus. “First of all, we looked at the data and the science and it says people have to stay away from each other.”

Murphy’s comments undoubtedly buoyed the egos of academic “experts” across the country. A leading politician boasted, without the slightest sense of remorse, that his fidelity to the almighty deity of “science” prevailed over protecting the rights of his state’s citizens.

The first 10 amendments to the Constitution? Meh. The six-foot distancing rule concocted by a handful of careerist bureaucrats in Washington? Bow and scrape.

“Science” is a one-word cudgel wielded by dishonest elected officials, journalists, and yes, scientists, to force us to conform to their political whims; this is particularly true of climate change. The Democratic Party, we are assured, is the “party of science.” Democratic lawmakers and candidates routinely promise that they “believe in science.” The idea that humans are the main (or sole) drivers of global warming is “settled science.”

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/04/relinquishing-personal-responsibility-warm-embrace-katie-hopkins/

“Get your bloody heads up! Get your heads up! Hopkins, you have a face that could melt glass, but I still want to see it – get your head up now!”

The Academy Sergeant Major at Sandhurst drilled this into us pretty hard. As the military knows well, if heads drop bodies do too, so they demand you keep your head up so the men you are leading will look to you and know it will be OK, that you have your eyes on the horizon.

But right now who knows what OK looks like? Like many others, my first concern is for my elderly parents and what would happen if they caught this thing. It’s all very well me being bolshy for my own health, but my heart is glass in their hands, waiting to be dropped.

When we do get our heads up, the faithful horizon is a blur, our path ahead is a jumble of unknowns and all the signposts, once so clear, seem to have been taken down.

Even the biggest billboard, the Presidential Election November 2020, is a little wonky with talk of a postal vote. Countless dates in our diaries – speeches and rallies, events to mobilize voters and bring in undecideds – have all moved from confirmed to pending, as if our email router had gone down. Such dates were our handrail to steady us through life.

It’s not just politically that we are untethered, but personally too. School end-of-term dates are meaningless when the term will not even begin. There are no exams for my teens to force their concentration. My eldest’s birthday surprise was cancelled by the venue, and our booked vacation now feels strangely wrong in a time of eternal holiday. These things were a gravity of our own making that kept our feet on the floor.

But the thing that has really kicked the legs from out underneath me is the willingness of the majority to swallow “news” as if they were hungry for more fear to amplify the panic, and to use it to make others more anxious. Why do people insist on sharing the worst of it by WhatsApp like cats bringing in their bird kill?

https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/04/coronavirus-racial-disparities-rhetoric-of-racism/

The virus has affected different groups at different rates, but the reasons are more complicated than the media are letting on.

I t’s hard not to notice the effort to place racism against black Americans at the center of the coronavirus story. In pursuit of its 1619 Project thesis, the New York Times has featured much coverage on the subject. In a front-page April 8 article titled, “Black Americans Bear the Brunt as Deaths Climb,” it highlighted black deaths in a number of cities. On an MSNBC telecast, Nikole Hannah-Jones, the project’s coordinator, claimed, “It’s not surprising that black Americans are bearing the brunt of coronavirus.”

While it is unquestionable that black Americans have been disproportionately adversely affected, it is uncalled for to claim that they bear the brunt. Outside of urban central cities, white Americans account for an overwhelming share of deaths. For example, 30 percent of New York State deaths are outside of New York City. Among these, 60 percent have been white, while 17 percent have been black. In New York City, blacks make up 28 percent of coronavirus deaths, but all those over 65 years old compose over 70 percent. Indeed, nationally, senior citizens continue to bear the brunt of deaths.

Nor are black Americans the most affected by the economic effects of coronavirus. Immigrant communities bear much more of the economic impact of the lockdown. Latinos own 2.5 times as many businesses with paid employees as black Americans. Though only one-third of the black population, Asians own nearly five times as many businesses. And yet the national media has followed the Times’ lead. 60 Minutes and then Forbes highlighted the plight of the black owner of the Harlem restaurant Melba’s. Obviously this business and its pain are real, but using its singular struggles to try to make a broader point is misleading.

https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/qed/2020/04/roger-kimball-coronavirus-new-york/

This is supposed to be a New York letter, but since New York is closed for business, I am “sheltering in place” in a semi-secure undisclosed location wondering how long this nationwide wave of hysteria will last. As I write, Australia has but 61 deaths attributed to the new coronavirus that China bequeathed to the world, courtesy of a biological research laboratory in Wuhan. The United States has had about 20,000, nearly half in and around New York City.

That may seem like a lot, but let’s put that number in perspective. In the first place, the annual fatality rate in the US for the seasonal flu is anywhere from 25,000 to 80,000. Second, it is by no
means clear whether those 20,000 fatalities really count people who died from the effects the new virus (pneumonia, mostly) or merely people who, already serious ill with something else, died having also been infected by the virus. Fully 99 per cent of those who died in Italy had serious co-morbidities. Nearly 50 had multiple co-morbidities. Moreover most of those who become seriously ill are over 80. Many are over 90. It puts me in mind of the list Muriel Spark includes in her novel Memento Mori minuting the cause of death of various characters. “Lettie Colston . . . comminuted fractures of the skull; Godfrey Colston, hypostatic pneumonia; Charmian Colston, uremia; Jean Taylor, myocardial degeneration; Tempest Sidebottome, carcinoma of the cervix;” etc., etc.

This whole charade got going in earnest around Ash Wednesday, whose central ritual comes with the admonition that “Memento, homo, quiapulvis es et in pulverem reverteris.” Nevertheless, about a month ago the country began shutting down. Restaurants and bars were forced to close. So were schools and colleges. All “non-essential” businesses were shuttered. After a couple of weeks 3.6 million people had filed for unemployment benefits. Another week, and another 6 million had filed. As I write, the number is 16 million. In a month. Sixteen million people suddenly discovered that whatever their livelihoods were, they were deemed “non-essential” by other people whose putatively “essential” job is determining what is essential and what is not. Why is it, one wonders, that the bureaucrats who get to say what is and what isn’t essential
never seem to find their own endeavors declared “non-essential”?

People who know about radar and sonar often speak about the difference between “noise” and “signal.” You are trying to track that missile, plane, submarine, or whatever, and you need to be able to distinguish clearly between the signal the object of interest is sending back to you and the noise that accompanies that signal. Sometimes, some of the noise is deliberate, generated by people interested in keeping secret the location and movement of the object.

https://www.nysun.com/editorials/the-governors-mutiny/91093/

President Trump clearly overstated the case when he asserted that the president’s authority in the current crisis is “total.” The fact is that the Constitution doesn’t grant total authority to any branch of the government. It looks, though, at least to us, as if Mr. Trump was set off by news that some states were entering into regional compacts to plan the reopening of their economies.

If that is what set Mr. Trump off, it’s easy to see why. Mr. Trump and all other officers and legislators and judges of the federal and state governments are bound by oath to the Constitution. Yet that same parchment absolutely forbids the states, without the consent of Congress, from entering into “any agreement or compact with another state”

That is American bedrock. It’s right up there with the prohibition on states granting titles of nobility, say, or keeping ships of war in time of peace. One doesn’t have to be a Civil War buff to see that states forming compacts or agreements with other states smacks of a challenge to federal authority, no matter how un-total a president’s authority might be.

https://amgreatness.com/2020/04/14/politicizing-the-demographic-disparities-in-death-rates-from-coronavirus/

If progressive politicians have their way, the premier healthcare system and the heroic healthcare workers who are saving so many lives will themselves become victims of the legacy of the Coronavirus in the continued march to single-payer healthcare.

Although African Americans constitute just 13.4 percent of the U.S. population, they account for more than 42 percent of all COVID-19 deaths. African Americans are our “sickest sick” with the virus as they comprise more than 33 percent of all those hospitalized with Coronavirus.

During an April 8 press conference, Dr. Anthony Fauci revealed the significant racial disparities in hospitalizations and death rates from coronavirus and advised that “when all this is over . . . and we will get over coronavirus, there will still be health disparities, which we really do need to address in the African American community.”

While there had been no attempt to politicize the fact that males of all races and ethnicities are dying from COVID-19 at significantly higher rates than females, the racial disparity data has opened the floodgates of blame directed toward the Trump Administration. Not a single lawmaker has tried to claim that unequal access to healthcare is contributing to the disproportionate number of males who have died from Coronavirus, but lawmakers are already claiming that African Americans are dying because of our privatized health care system.

On March 27—long before the public release of the official racial disparity data—U.S. Senators Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), Cory Booker (D-N.J.), and Kamala Harris (D-Calif.), as well as U.S. Representatives Robin L. Kelly (D-Ill.) and Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass) demanded that the Department of Health and Human Services publicize racial data on coronavirus cases. The lawmakers knew that, as with all public health crises, the people who suffer the greatest casualties will be those with the greatest number of preexisting conditions.

https://amgreatness.com/2020/04/14/coronavirus-racial-disparities-miss-the-bigger-picture/

Public officials and activists are sounding the alarm about alleged racial disparities in the coronavirus death rate. New York City Public Advocate Jumaane Williams claimed last week that the city’s official responses to the virus have “clearly” discriminated against black and brown New Yorkers, as evidenced by fatality data. Blacks make up 22 percent of New York City’s population. As of April 6, they made up 27.5 percent of virus fatalities where the race of the deceased was recorded. (Such data were compiled in 63 percent of all cases.) White New Yorkers are about 33 percent of the city’s population. They made up 27.3 percent of virus fatalities where the race was recorded.

Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot said that the black fatality rate for coronavirus in her city—68 percent of all such fatalities—was “among the most shocking things” she had seen. Blacks are a little under one-third of the city’s population. “Those numbers take your breath away, they really do,” she said.

The chief equity officer of the American Medical Association invoked the “widely known history that American health institutions were designed to discriminate against blacks” as an explanation for the disparities.

The racialization of the coronavirus discourse is now pervasive. News outlets across the country are rushing to compile racial data on their local caseloads. President Donald Trump, Dr. Anthony Fauci, and Surgeon General Jerome Adams have all addressed the issue; questions about racial disparities are now an almost inevitable part of local or federal press briefings.

These black and Hispanic virus deaths are a tragedy, especially for the victims’ families and acquaintances. But many of the same politicians and race activists who are now so incensed by coronavirus deaths have been virtually silent for years about far greater disparities in black-white fatality rates: those that result from urban crime.

https://issuesinsights.com/2020/04/15/who-will-get-blamed-if-coronavirus-shutdown-turns-out-to-be-a-massive-overreaction/

As the Trump administration tries to figure out when to reopen the economy, and Democrats try to blame President Donald Trump for every coronavirus death, there’s another question lurking in the background. What if we learn that trillions of dollars in economic costs from the coronavirus shutdown bought us little or nothing in terms of public health?

As the disease progresses and our understanding of it increases, that possibility grows.

Consider these facts:

Death projections were wildly exaggerated. On March 16, epidemiologists at Imperial College London predicted that 2.2 million could die here if the country didn’t impose draconian lock-down orders. Even with those in place, it said, the deaths would likely top 1 million.

The White House later downgraded the death toll, but still predicted that as many as 200,000 could die. In late March, the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) at the University of Washington released a model that projected more than 80,000 deaths, assuming the U.S. maintained its lockdown, which prompted the Trump administration to extend the shutdown through April.

But within a week, that projection dropped to a little more than 60,000, as actual deaths started to come in much lower than expected. In the past week alone, the death toll has been 2,267 lower than the model initially forecast. That puts coronavirus deaths more in line with deaths attributed to a bad flu season.

Reports of overwhelmed health care were exaggerated. There was a steady stream of warnings that the coronavirus would overwhelm the U.S. health system.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/04/what-will-change-after-virus-crisis-bruce-thornton/

We’ve reached that point in the Wuhan pandemic when we start talking about how the world will change after the crisis passes. The impact on everything from the media to globalism is being reassessed, and prognostications about the future, both good and bad, are being promulgated. But those hoping for improvement are likely to be disappointed, just as those who said “this changes everything” were after the terrorist attacks on 9/ll. To quote Adam Smith, “there is a lot of ruin in a nation,” as stubborn inertia created by entrenched vested interests and received wisdom protect the status quo.

The media’s performance during the virus crisis has been par for the course in their unhinged zeal to damage the Trump administration, which has made the president’s attempt to handle the crisis even more difficult. From claims that Trump called the outbreak a “hoax,” to accusations that his comments about the efficacy of hydroxychloroquine were “snake oil,” the media have doubled, tripled, and quadrupled down on their usual repertoire of fake “facts,” anonymous leaks, bought-and-paid-for “experts,” dishonest editing, and outright lies––even to the point of impeding treatment that might save lives.