RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/12/the-vaccine-storys-heroes-do-not-fit-the-liberal-narrative/

When it came to solving the crisis, progressive policies took a back seat to the institutions and forces that actually got the job done.

A ssuming that the COVID-19 vaccines work, their development will be the biggest, most high-profile public-health success story since the polio vaccine in the 1950s. A weary world has waited many trying months for this. Yet in the media’s coverage, there are a lot of mixed messages about how this happened — because the story is not one that fits comfortably with liberal narratives. Consider the big, splashy New York Times story by six reporters (Sharon LaFraniere, Katie Thomas, Noah Weiland, David Gelles, Sheryl Gay Stolberg, and Denise Grady) on the Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna vaccines, and the Stat story by Damian Garde and Jonathan Saltzman on the technology behind them. When you dig into the details, the heroes are largely (1) big American pharmaceutical corporations, (2) the Trump administration, and (3) the U.S. military. The lessons to be drawn support the conservative view of government, business, and their proper roles and relationships.

The tension is obvious early in the Times story, when it announces its intended theme: “In an era of polarized politics, science was able to break down barriers between government, countries and industry to produce one of the few pieces of good news in a year of suffering and division.” This is not supported by the facts. “Science” did not produce a vaccine, in the sense of a Jonas Salk figure having a “eureka!” moment in a laboratory some time in 2020. The Times does not bother introducing us to any of the individual researchers who actually developed the vaccine. Nor does it illustrate the breaking of barriers between countries, except by big business. The facts are more stubborn.

In fact, as the Stat story illustrates, the core concept of making messenger RNA (or mRNA) synthetically and using it to produce vaccines has been kicking around for three decades, and the crucial breakthrough came in 2005. While there were still some daunting scientific hurdles to overcome, the broader problem facing synthetic mRNA was its risky, experimental nature; only a change in the economics and available resources would make it economically viable to invest in scaling up a major trial of an mRNA-based vaccine to see if it would work.

www.swtotd.blogspot.com

Those who are hoping that a Biden Administration will rid of us the division and prejudice that have characterized the last four years, and return us to some halcyon period, are mistaken. Mainstream media will no longer be in attack mode nor will late-night television hosts, so the temperature may appear to abate. But the causes for the dysfunction we have felt do not lie with Mr. Trump but are a consequence of attempts to alter the culture that has made us a success.
The word culture stems from the Latin “colere,” to cultivate, nurture and grow. It encompasses many aspects of our lives, like music, art and literature, as well as ethnicities, religion and race. But when I write of culture, I refer to family, traditions like church and patriotism, and qualities like honor, manners, respect, humility, tolerance – universal values, acquired over time and required for civil behavior. They are expressed in axioms like the Golden Rule, the Ten Commandments and turning the other cheek.

The United States has faults, but its good qualities outshine its bad. As a nation of courageous and independent individuals, we are unafraid to speak of past and present evils, like slavery and bigotry. We should, as well, be as quick to acknowledge our accomplishments: A Constitutional government “of the people, by the people, for the people,” comprised of laws, not men; our system of free-market capitalism, which has done more to eradicate poverty than any system of state redistribution; educational opportunities not available to most of the world – two thirds of Americans between the ages of 18 and 22 are in college. To believe that race is systemic is to be seduced by accusations of white guilt and to disbelieve facts; a Pew Research survey found that 91% of Americans either shrug off or applaud interracial marriage. We are the most desired nation for migrants, with 21% naming the U.S., in a study done by the World Economic Forum in 2017. (Germany was second with six percent.)

As a nation, we are blessed with natural resources and favorable climate, but they alone do not account for our success. The crucible has been a culture that valued aspiration, risk-taking, hard work and self-reliance. It was a culture, based on a Judeo-Christian heritage, enmeshed in the traditional family and traditional values. Our universities were designed to allow the intellectually gifted to expand their minds, explore and debate ideas, to learn the “hows” and “whys” of thinking, not what to think. Students were challenged, not coddled. The concept of “safe places,” or the idea that the classroom was a place to claim victimhood and air grievances were alien to those who saw their role as imparting knowledge, to form better citizens, to help the Country grow and prosper.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/adamandrzejewski/2020/12/03/why-america-is-in-trou

Since 2004, twenty large federal agencies have admitted to disbursing an astonishing $2.25 trillion in improper payments.

Last year, these improper payments totaled $175 billion – that’s about $15 billion per month, $500 million per day, and $1 million a minute.

But what exactly is an improper payment?

Federal law defines the term as “payments made by the government to the wrong person, in the wrong amount, or for the wrong reason.”

When people or companies receive incorrect payments, it erodes trust and hinders the government’s ability to finance everything from defense to health care.

Recently, our auditors at OpenTheBooks.com published a 24-page oversight report analyzing why, how, and where federal agencies wasted our tax dollars last year.

Here are the top 10 takeaways regarding improper and mistaken payments by the 20 largest federal agencies in 2019:

1. Total Mistakes: $175 billion in estimated improper payments reported by the 20 largest federal agencies, averaging $14.6 billion per month – Total (FY2004-FY2019): $2.25 trillion

https://issuesinsights.com/2020/12/03/shocking-disparities-in-covid-19-attitudes-and-behaviors/

It should be obvious by now that the adoption of measures to prevent the spread of coronavirus SARS-CoV-2, which causes COVID-19, has become politicized. Consider the presidential campaigns: President Donald Trump held large indoor rallies with mostly mask-less supporters, while President-elect Joe Biden seemed to have a mask sutured to his face and spent much of the campaign in isolation.

Gallup surveys published in November show that partisanship remains the most significant driver of the public’s perceptions of the COVID-19 pandemic and its behaviors in response to it. A majority of Republicans think the best thing for healthy people is to live their lives normally, while most Democrats and independents think sheltering at home is advisable to avoid contracting or spreading the virus. Similarly, Republicans are the most likely to say their lives have somewhat (59%) or completely (8%) gotten back to what they were before COVID-19.

This disparity is unfortunate, because it has never been truer that “we’re all in this together,” or more obvious that we need to rev up our efforts to minimize the probability of spreading COVID-19 infections, if we are “to return to normal activities.” A key metric, the percentage of positive tests for the virus, is currently unacceptably high – the seven-day average is currently over 9%, while the target is to keep it under 3%. 

A high percentage of positive tests means there is significant community spread of the virus, which makes effective testing, tracing, and isolation difficult, if not impossible. Moreover, the seven-day average of daily new cases has been increasing sharply over the past six weeks, and is currently approximately 160,000 per day (see figure below). These are ominous signs as we approach the winter months, with people often congregating indoors in poorly ventilated spaces.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2020/12/02/durham-special-counsel-give-biden-problems-column/3793099001/

Over the last few months, Democrats appeared to be laying the foundation to scuttle the Durham investigation as well as any investigation into the Hunter Biden influence peddling scheme. House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) denounced the Durham investigation as “tainted” and “political.” On the campaign trail, Biden himself dismissed the “investigation of the investigators.” Over in the Senate, Democrats joined in the mantra with Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., and others denouncing the continued investigations. 

By converting Durham into a special counsel, Barr makes it harder to fire him. It is not uncommon for presidents to replace all U.S. Attorneys with political allies. Durham however is now a Special Counsel and his replacement or the termination of his investigation would be viewed as an obstructive act. Indeed, when Trump even suggested such a course of action, he was accused of obstruction by a host of Democratic politicians and legal experts. 

Biden’s choice for AG:Biden needs attorney general with integrity, proven record on civil rights

The appointment also makes a public report more likely. While Durham already secured a conviction, prosecutors do not ordinarily prepare reports. Special counsels do.  Moreover, with the Mueller report, virtually every Democratic leader demanded that the report be released with no or few redactions. The Trump administration waived most executive privileges and released most of the report except for grand jury information. Even that was not enough for figures like Speaker Nancy Pelosi: “I have said, and I’ll say again, no thank you, Mr. Attorney General, we do not need your interpretation, show us the report and we can draw our own conclusions.” House Judiciary Committee Chair Jerry Nadler demanded the release of the “full and complete Mueller report, without redactions, as well as access to the underlying evidence.” The Durham appointment will now force Democrats to answer why they do not support the same public release of the report so that voters can “draw our own conclusions.”

https://www.aier.org/article/fragile-and-unsustainable-lies/

Many times throughout history, policymakers have doubled down on their own mistakes, refusing to believe that they were wrong or hoping that somehow doing the wrong thing twice or thrice would somehow make things right. Then it all came crashing down at once and the rulers lost their minds, and sometimes their necks or heads.

Economic, governance, and social systems often rely on each other in ways not readily discerned by narrow technocrats. When one crumbles, the others fall in rapid succession while all the putative experts express surprise. Look at the way that the U.S.S.R, one of the world’s two “super” powers, fell apart in the late 1980s when it lost enough feathers from its peacock tail in Afghanistan that its lies about the superiority of its command economy became obvious even to its own systematically deluded subjects.

When NPR proved inadequate to prevent Americans from seeing the few feathers left in America’s peacock tail, as evidenced by the surprise victory of Trump and his MAGA messaging in 2016, mass media joined forces with various “progressive” elements to create a propaganda machine that puts the old clunky Soviet state media to shame. 

Precisely because it is ostensibly private and domestic, America’s mass media, tarnished as its reputation is becoming, retains more credibility than any state-run media ever possessed. Many pundits have noted how 2020 resembles 1984, except the propaganda so far has come from a political resistance movement backed by parts of the government (FBI, CDC) rather than “the” state per se. 

The phalanx of private media and sundry have convinced tens of millions of Americans that: 

we are better off imposing lockdowns that cause far more harm than the virus itself (and sundry cognates, like the virus is super serious and novel, spreads easily via asymptomatic people, yet is stopped by irrational policies like curfews, as if people won’t simply start drinking earlier!); 
the current president is somehow illegitimate (Russian election interference, Ukrainian quid pro quo); 
nation-altering Constitutional reforms are necessary (de facto elimination of the electoral college, creation of additional states, SCOTUS enlargement); 
calling all people of Euroamerican descent racist isn’t itself racist;
a virus can differentiate between good protests (pro-BLM and pro-Biden) and bad ones (anti-lockdown and pro-Trump);
the American people chose a candidate who essentially did not campaign or set forth a coherent policy platform over one who, for all his faults, was president when the economy finally palpably improved and made enough progress in the Middle East to be nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize.

https://www.aier.org/article/covid-misclassification-what-do-the-data-suggest/

According to Worldometer, U.S. deaths from Covid-19 were 272,254 as of 11/29/2020. What are “deaths from Covid-19?” One definition would be deaths where Covid-19 was the primary cause. An example would be a patient who has a positive polymerase chain reaction (PCR) test for the virus responsible for Covid-19 and a clinical picture of hypoxemia, bilateral pulmonary infiltrates on imaging, no obvious other cause, such as influenza or congestive heart failure (CHF), and who dies from progressive acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS).

 Another definition would be deaths where Covid-19 was a contributing cause but not necessarily the primary disease. An example would be a patient with diabetes or end-stage renal disease who develops an upper respiratory infection URI, has a positive PCR test, never recovers from the URI, deteriorates over many weeks to months and eventually dies. 

In this case the underlying cause of death was the diabetes or end-stage renal disease weakening the host defenses and the Covid-19 was the precipitating cause of acute illness and eventual death. Another definition would be a patient who dies, has a positive PCR test, but the Covid-19 clearly had nothing to do with the death. An example would be a trauma victim who had no respiratory symptoms prior to trauma and coincidentally has a positive PCR test. 

https://spectator.us/here-comes-president-joebama/

‘So you’re seeing a team develop that I have great confidence in,’ said former president Barack Obama this week when asked about Joe Biden’s incoming administration. Obama sounds a bit of a World King these days, but you can’t blame him for feeling chipper. He has his third book of memoirs out (he only writes about himself, it seems), he’s making millions through publishing and Netflix deals, his great nemesis Donald Trump appears finally to have been vanquished — and his gang is taking charge of Washington again.

Biden revealed a number of his cabinet ‘picks’ this week, and it’s a case of jobs for the old Obama boys and girls. Antony Blinken, deputy secretary of state under Obama, is to be the next secretary of state. John Kerry, the secretary of state under Obama, will be ‘climate envoy’. Janet L. Yellen, a chair of the Federal Reserve under Obama, will be secretary of the Treasury. Alejandro Mayorkas, deputy secretary of the Department of Homeland Security under Obama, will be secretary of homeland security. Avril Haines, deputy director of the CIA under Obama, will be director of national intelligence. Perhaps the freshest face is Jake Sullivan, the next national security adviser, who turns 44 this week. Yet even he was director of policy planning under Obama, as well as national security advisor to the then vice-president, Joe Biden.

In fact, the incoming Biden administration is arguably more Obamaish than the original Obama administration. In 2008, when Barack won the White House, he was a Washington neophyte who had to contend with the considerable power of the Clintons. His campaign chiefs could only stand aside and gripe as Hillary Clinton, the woman Obama had beaten to become the Democratic nominee, became secretary of state and pushed her allies into the best positions. This time, it’s the Biden campaign people grumbling as Team Obama swoops back in. ‘The Obama staffers are now cutting out the people who got Biden elected,’ an anonymous Biden staffer told Politico this week.