Tuesday, May 12, 2020



Are Endless Lockdowns the Result of Malice or Stupidity?

In a harrowing article for PJ Media, Dennis Prager argues that the COVID-19 global lockdown is “possibly, the worst mistake the world has ever made,” leading to a mortality rate eclipsing anything the virus could have delivered. Widespread famine in Third World Countries and extreme poverty across the globe are now imminent, “all because of the lockdowns, not the virus.” A study released on May 4 by the nonprofit research institute Just Facts confirms Prager’s argument, concluding that “the total loss of life from all societal responses to this disease is likely to be more than 90 times greater than prevented by the lockdowns.”

Despair, anxiety, bankruptcies, suicide, reduced productivity, diminishment of life expectancy as well as “quality of life,” and postponement of elective surgeries (just one example of undoubted millions: my wife’s mother is going blind but corrective treatment has been put off indefinitely) are some of the consequences of the great “flattening.”

When one factors in the economic costs and attendant suffering, the effect is almost too staggering to contemplate. How could our leaders have committed such a blunder? Prager is at pains to clarify that the economic catastrophe we are undergoing globally should be attributed not to evil intentions but primarily to rank incompetence. He is obviously invoking “Hanlon’s razor” that advises us: “Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.”

Prager writes: “The lockdown is a mistake; the Holocaust, slavery, communism, fascism, etc., were evils. Massive mistakes are made by arrogant fools; massive evils are committed by evil people.” I suspect the razor applies to many government leaders who simply did everything wrong and then doubled down on their error rather than admit mortal fallibility. They were stupid—and too proud to acknowledge their mistake. They ensured that the remedy would be worse than the disease, but they cannot be blamed for malice aforethought.

The same acquittal would not apply to the denizens of the hard left, whether in government or the media, who are certainly actuated by malice and, quite possibly, by evil. Many government officials—whether national, state or local—may prolong the lockdown to enforce their hold on power, entailing the consequent reduction of a free and prosperous citizenry to a debased condition as wards of the State, a tactic dear to leftist administrations.

In any event, the motives of our political and media elites are as suspect as their credulity; it is no surprise that they readily adopted the false Coronavirus models and statistical projections of a charlatan like British science guy Neil Ferguson, with the result of near-universal social and economic calamity. “Ferguson’s self-centered attitude is all over the place,” writes Bryan Preston, “reflecting both an elitism and rank ignorance of economics and consequences.” Ferguson’s “track record is terrible,” his predictive models in the past skewed by several orders of magnitude.

Rather piquantly but not entirely unexpectedly, Ferguson was later found to have violated his own lockdown directives, receiving visits from his married mistress. This seems to be a progressivist habit; one recalls Illinois governor and lockdown fiend J. B. Pritzker whose wife traveled to the family property in Florida despite Pritzker’s rigid stay-at-home order. Malice or stupidity? As a billionaire and heir to the Hyatt hotel chain, Pritzker can afford both.

Meanwhile, as was to be anticipated, our medical “experts,” who have been consistently wrong à la Ferguson, are now predicting two and three succeeding waves of the pandemic, which will keep us in limbo for up to the next eighteen months—by which time we will no longer have a recognizable world and the casualty count from our moribund economies will exceed numerical probability. The media will persist in stirring up hysteria and our run-of-the-mill leaders will continue to flinch before lurid hypotheticals while at the same time consolidating their power over the truly huddled masses. Malice or stupidity? Whichever, it represents a godsend for the political left and progressivists everywhere.

Prager is right. There is really no option, if we wish to survive and preserve our democratic liberties, but to adopt sane preventive measures, rely on herd immunity, as in Sweden, and return to our trades and professions. We must recognize malice or stupidity where we see it, whether among our partisan leaders, failing politicians, media pontiffs or medical soothsayers. The alternative does not bear thinking.

SOURCE 






Joe Biden meets his comeuppance

Bettina Arndt: newsletter@bettinaarndt.com.au

Exciting news. This week the Trump administration finally pushed through their new Title IX rules for adjudication of rape on campus, introducing more due process rights for the accused.

Hopefully this brings to an end the recent shameful history of male students being denied basic legal protections when facing campus sexual misconduct allegations. It’s clever timing from Education Secretary Betsy de Vos, with no students on campuses to mount noisy demonstrations and feminist lawyers confined to Zoom meetings to plot their next moves.  

Within hours of the new regime being announced, Democrat presidential hopeful Joe Biden declared he would reverse these changes if he becomes president.

The hypocrisy of the man. Biden’s presidential campaign may well come unstuck over allegations that he sexually assaulted a former aide, Tara Reade, and indulged in inappropriate touching of a string of women – charges Biden strenuously denies. He’s passionately arguing the voting public should give him the benefit of the doubt, to presume his innocence.

But few American politicians have done more to undermine the presumption of innocence in sexual assault claims than Biden. As KC Johnson, author of The Campus Rape Frenzy, has put it, ‘Perhaps no major American political figure has so consistently championed the erosion of due process of those accused of sexual misconduct’.

As this recent spiked-online.com article on “the shameless hypocrisy of Joe Biden” explains, Biden was a key player in the Obama move to require publicly funded universities to enforce the unfair Title IX regulations, openly declaring he was using the campuses for social engineering of these feminist policies. “We need a fundamental change in our culture. And the quickest way to change culture is to change it on [the] campuses of America.’

In her recent politico.com article, Emily Yoffe explains that  “Joe Biden created the culture he is a target of” –by encouraging the Obama administration “to expand the definition of sexual violence to include compliments, or the kind of touching—often unasked for, and sometimes unwelcome—that Biden has engaged in for years.”

Yoffe adds, “There is an irony at work here: Biden helped to make possible a world in which long-ago and trivial accusations can upend one’s reputation and career.”

Here’s the man who declared:  “Drunk sex is rape, is rape, is rape.” Listen to this excellent spiked-online podcast :

https://www.spiked-online.com/podcast-episode/neil-fergusons-staggering-hypocrisy/.  (Start at 13.37)

It is hardly surprising that many are watching Biden getting his comeuppance with considerable glee. Not least the battered universities which have taken the financial hit from losing the majority of over 400 civil actions taken over the failure to protect legal rights of accused students. And there is the huge costs of paying for the army of HR campus bureaucrats to administer the now discredited tribunal system.

Via email






Why the Wuhan Lab Coronavirus Release Story Refuses to Die

Rarely mentioned is that the Wuhan laboratory is China's major biosafety facility for dealing with viral challenges.  That alone arouses suspicions

U.S. and U.K intelligence agencies are carefully examining cell phone data that might show a shutdown in October of the high-security area of the Wuhan lab where bat coronaviruses were being studied.

Some analysts believe that this evidence suggests a “hazardous event” occurred at the lab right around the time that the coronavirus was first seen in Wuhan.

U.S. intelligence can’t confirm whether the lab was shut down during that time or not, and have been silent about any reason it might have happened if it did.

But the report, compiled using publicly available cellphone data, explains why it’s not so nutty to think that something very bad happened at the lab in Wuhan where the specific bat coronavirus that later was able to make the leap to infect humans, was being studied.

New York Post:

The report, obtained by the NBC News Verification unit in London, shows no cellphone activity at the Wuhan Institute of Virology between Oct. 7 and Oct. 24, 2019 and says there may have been a “hazardous event” sometime between Oct. 6 and 11. But there is no hard proof either of a shutdown or that the virus mistakenly leaked from the lab.

Were there evidence of a lab shutdown, it would bolster theories alluded to by the Trump Administration and some scientists that the novel coronavirus accidentally came from the lab. Many scientists, as well as the World Health Organization, remain skeptical of the lab theory and still believe it came from the wet market in Wuhan.

It’s good to be skeptical. The burden of proof is on those making this very serious charge. But the media is allowing their anti-Trump hysteria to get in the way of what could be the most explosive story of the age and the biggest coverup in history.

Telegraph:

Experts urged caution over the report, suggesting it may be based on only limited commercially available mobile phone data, and that there could be other reasons for varying levels of phone usage.

However, the document could be what Donald Trump was referring to when the president recently said he had seen evidence giving him a “high degree of confidence” the pandemic began accidentally at the Wuhan laboratory.

That caution may be well-founded.

Daily Mail:

A US official who has looked at the document told NBC News that the report’s data ‘looks really weak to me and some of the conclusions don’t make sense.’

US officials also said that US intelligence agencies had previously received other reports based on publicly-available cellphone and satellite data, also suggesting that there had been a shutdown at the lab.

But, those agencies later decided that the reports were ‘inconclusive’ after being unable to confirm the shutdown based on reviews of overhead imagry and their own data.

The investigation is just beginning. The agencies have reams of data on the lab, including intercepts and satellite imagery to go through from October. They may yet find evidence to confirm the theory of an accidental release or debunk it.

But the media has already made up its mind; Trump is pushing this story to deflect attention from his administration’s response to the pandemic. Never mind that it might be true. Don’t bother to investigate it. Just jump to your own conclusion and go from there.

Can you imagine if the media devoted the same amount of resources to look into a Wuhan lab-coronavirus pandemic connection that they devoted to the Trump-Russia collusion story?

We’d have the answer in no time.

SOURCE 






Federal Court Overturns Kentucky Ban on In-Person Church Services

A federal judge in Kentuck has overturned Governor Andy Beshear’s ban on mass gatherings as it relates to in-person church services. The ruling clears the way for churchgoers to attend services on Sunday.

U.S. District Judge Gregory F. Van Tatenhove issued a temporary restraining order against the governor’s rule after two other federal judges upheld the ban as constitutional. The order will allow services at “any in-person religious service which adheres to applicable social distancing and hygiene guidelines.”

Associated Press:

The federal judge’s order in the Tabernacle Baptist Church case said Beshear had “an honest motive” in wanting to safeguard Kentuckians’ health and lives, but didn’t provide “a compelling reason for using his authority to limit a citizen’s right to freely exercise something we value greatly — the right of every American to follow their conscience on matters related to religion.”

Tabernacle had broadcast services on Facebook and held drive-in services, but the substitutes offered “cold comfort,” according to the opinion. The opinion went on to say that Tabernacle alleged irreparable injury and was likely to succeed on the merits of its federal constitutional claim, as the defendants didn’t “dispute the challenged orders place a burden on the free exercise of religion in Kentucky.”

Van Tatenhove was eloquent in his defense of religious liberty.

“The Constitution will endure. It would be easy to put it on the shelf in times like this, to be pulled down and dusted off when more convenient,” Van Tatenhove’s opinion read. “But that is not our tradition. Its enduring quality requires that it be respected even when it is hard.”

His opinion says Kentucky’s attorney general urged the court to apply the injunction statewide, and since the executive order challenged didn’t solely apply to Tabernacle, the injunction granted would also have a similar scope.

“Both rulings affirm that the law prohibits the government from treating houses of worship differently than secular activities during this pandemic,” Republican Attorney General Daniel Cameron said in a statement.

Those who don’t want to risk exposure will stay home; those who want to worship will go to church. Citizens in Kentucky will now have the choice and not have it made for them by the state. The government is being forced by the courts to treated Kentuckians like adults, and not helpless children.

Favorable court opinions have been few and far between during the pandemic as courts generally recognize the authority of the state to override constitutional rights. Perhaps now that governors are reopening, the need to sue in order to exercise religious freedom will no longer be necessary.

SOURCE 

******************************

Political correctness is most pervasive in universities and colleges but I rarely report the  incidents concerned here as I have a separate blog for educational matters.

American "liberals" often deny being Leftists and say that they are very different from the Communist rulers of  other countries.  The only real difference, however, is how much power they have.  In America, their power is limited by democracy.  To see what they WOULD be like with more power, look at where they ARE already  very powerful: in America's educational system -- particularly in the universities and colleges.  They show there the same respect for free-speech and political diversity that Stalin did:  None.  So look to the colleges to see  what the whole country would be like if "liberals" had their way.  It would be a dictatorship.

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, GREENIE WATCH,   EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS and  DISSECTING LEFTISM.   My Home Pages are here or   here or   here.  Email me (John Ray) here.  Email me (John Ray) here

************************************



No comments: