RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://brownstone.org/author/vinay-prasad/

Vinay Prasad MD MPH is a hematologist-oncologist and Associate Professor in the Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics at the University of California San Francisco. He runs the VKPrasad lab at UCSF, which studies cancer drugs, health policy, clinical trials and better decision making. He is author of over 300 academic articles, and the books Ending Medical Reversal (2015), and Malignant (2020).

I recently came across two tweets that caught my eye.

Here is the first one from the CDC director:

And here is the second one, from a couple months back:

Together they got me thinking. What do they have in common? What do they tell us about the state of the public communication of science?

Let’s start with the one by Dr. Walensky. I don’t know how to put this politely, but it is a lie, and a truly unbelievable one at that.

First, of all, if it were true, it would mean that masking was more effective that the J&J vaccine (implausible). Second of all, we have actual cluster RCT data from Bangladesh showing a 11% (relative risk reduction). This occurred in a massive trial where masks were provided for free and encouraged. Even here, only surgical masks worked, and cloth did not, and had no where near this effect size. The idea that masks could reduce the chance of infection by 80% is simply untrue, implausible, and cannot be supported by any reliable data.

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2021/11/07/batya_ungar-sargon_media_narrative_about_critical_race_theory_is_a_way_to_avoid_talking_about_class.html

Newsweek’s Batya Ungar-Sargon, author of Bad News: How Woke Media Is Undermining Democracy, speaks with CNN’s “Reliable Sources” about how the media covered the Virginia gubernatorial election.

“We are hiding a class divide in America,” she said. “We are hiding disgusting levels of income inequality in America. We are hiding the total dispossession of the working class of all races by focusing on a very highly specialized academic language about race.”

“The media’s response to Youngkin’s victory is literally the reason he won.”

“Glenn Youngkin managed to flip majority Black districts, he managed to get about 50 percent of Latino voters, are all of those people white supremacists? Of course, they’re not. They’re people who are worried about, number one: the economy.”

“Number two: schooling. It is such a self-own to tell people who are worried about the economy that that is white supremacy, right? You are essentially criminalizing the views of working-class Americans, and you saw the same thing with the conversation around critical race theory, right?” she told CNN’s Brian Stelter. “You saw all these pundits saying these people don’t know what ‘critical race theory’ is. That is not a political statement. it is a class statement. [You’re saying] they are not educated enough to be opposed to ‘critical race theory,’ how dare they oppose it?”

https://conservativebrief.com/pelosi-descends-54057/

Concern Mounts After Pelosi Descends Into Incoherent Rambling Carmine Sabia

Is there a glitch in the Matrix? And if there is can someone explain what House Speaker and California Rep. Nancy Pelosi is saying?

The House Speaker gave her weekly press conference this week, which started as normal, but by the end she was stammering and making no sense.

As she was speaking on passing President Joe Biden’s “Build Back Better” agenda the press conference delved into an incoherent mess.

We grabbed the transcript from the Speaker’s website to make some kind of sense of what she was saying, or at least get the words she was saying.

“The other thing that we’re getting or – we’re sending stuff over to the Senate.  Most of the product that we’ve done is – except now we may have added in the last hour or so – and some of what we added is Senate, to the bill, like hearing.  Bernie doesn’t like hearing – excuse me – Bernie loves hearing.  Manchin doesn’t want hearing in the bill and all that stuff.  So, some is Senate-oriented, and then we have the family/medical leave.  We figured if they’re putting things in, then we can put something in, even if Manchin doesn’t like it,” the Speaker said.

“So, we are getting some Byrd and privilege.  I think mostly we’re getting privilege scrub because privilege scrub is deadly to a bill.  Byrd?  Well, it’s important.  You have to take it out, but a privilege violation can take you out.  So, we’re, again, getting that as we go along as well.  But when we pass a bill, then they will see it in its aggregate and make some –,” she said.

If you are scratching your head and wondering what you just read do not worry, it is not you. We are baffled too but we assume she was talking about Medicare coverage for hearing aids.

https://amgreatness.com/2021/11/06/conspiracy-theory-or-conspiracy-in-fact/

Something to keep in mind about January 6 is when the Soothsayer came to warn Caesar about the Ides of March, he wasn’t warning about a conspiracy theory. He was warning about a conspiracy in fact.

Last week, Fox Nation aired “Patriot Purge,” Tucker Carlson’s three-part series on the January 6 protest in Washington, D.C. No sooner had the program been announced than the regime media went nuts. The former conservative Anne Applebaum, writing for The Atlantic, said it was a “sinister” piece of anti-American propaganda. NPR described it as an “off the rails” “conspiracy theory.” CNN said that it promulgated a “false narrative” that was “politically, historically and logically confused.” 

Translation: Carlson disputes the accepted narrative according to which the protest at the Capitol was an “insurrection” aimed at undermining “our democracy.” Ergo Carlson must be wrong. Cue the heated rhetoric and wheel out that all-purpose epithet “conspiracy theorist.” 

As a side note, I have always wondered why people of a certain ilk believe that uttering the phrase “conspiracy theory” or charging someone with being a “conspiracy theorist” disposes of any argument. George Orwell noted that the term “fascist” had been rendered nearly meaningless by its promiscuous application to all manner of things or people one didn’t like. “Conspiracy theory” is on even shakier ground, because in addition to make-believe conspiracies, the world is full of plenty of real conspiracies about which one needn’t theorize but simply observe and describe. 

When the Soothsayer came to warn Caesar about the Ides of March, he wasn’t warning about a conspiracy theory. He was warning about a conspiracy in fact, something that Caesar came to appreciate personally when the fateful day rolled around. Caesar to the Soothsayer: “The ides of March are come.” Soothsayer: “Ay, Caesar; but not gone.”

https://thehill.com/opinion/judiciary/580391-durhams-latest-indictment-more-lines-drawn-to-clintons-campaign

“To my good friend … A Great Democrat.” Those words written to a Russian figure in Moscow, inside a copy of a Hillary Clinton autobiography, may be the defining line of special counsel John Durham’s investigation. The message reportedly was written by Charles Dolan, a close Clinton adviser and campaign regular whom news reports identify as the mysterious “PR-Executive 1” in the latest Durham indictment, this time of Igor Danchenko.

Danchenko, 43, was a key figure in the compilation of the infamous Steele dossier that led to the now discredited investigation of alleged collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russian government during the 2016 presidential race. But Danchenko, a Russian emigre living in the U.S., seems unlikely to be the Durham investigation’s apex defendant. In fact, Durham describes him at points more like a shill than a spy, an “investigator” who was fed what to report by Clinton operatives such as Dolan.

Durham is known as a methodical, apolitical and unrelenting prosecutor. Thus far, his work seems to betray a belief that the FBI got played by the Clinton campaign to investigate the Trump team. The question is whether Durham really wants to indict just the figurative tail if he can get the whole dog — a question that now may weigh heavily on a number of Washington figures, just as it did following Durham’s indictment in September of Clinton campaign lawyer Michael Sussmann.

Danchenko’s indictment on five counts of lying to the FBI serves two obvious purposes. First, these counts — with a possible five years in prison on each — are enough to concentrate the mind of any defendant about possibly flipping for the prosecution. Second, indicting Danchenko “hoists the wretch” for potential targets to see and consider that there but for the grace of God — and Durham — go they.

The background details of Durham’s three indictments so far have assembled an impressive list of “great Democrats” who contributed directly or indirectly to the creation of the Russia collusion scandal. Indeed, the collusion case increasingly is taking on a type of “Murder on the Orient Express” feel, in which all of the suspects may turn out to be culprits. While the statute of limitations may protect some, Durham has shown that he can use the crime of lying to federal investigators (18 U.S.C. 1001) as a handy alternative. Targets must admit to prior misconduct or face a new charge.