The Unz Review • An Alternative Media Selection$
A Collection of Interesting, Important, and Controversial Perspectives Largely Excluded from the American Mainstream Media
 TeasersiSteve Blog
AP: Covid Caused Turmoil in Chicago That Cost Mayor Lightfoot Re-Election

Bookmark Toggle AllToCAdd to LibraryRemove from Library • B
Show CommentNext New CommentNext New ReplyRead More
ReplyAgree/Disagree/Etc. More... This Commenter This Thread Hide Thread Display All Comments
AgreeDisagreeThanksLOLTroll
These buttons register your public Agreement, Disagreement, Thanks, LOL, or Troll with the selected comment. They are ONLY available to recent, frequent commenters who have saved their Name+Email using the 'Remember My Information' checkbox, and may also ONLY be used three times during any eight hour period.
Ignore Commenter Follow Commenter
Search Text Case Sensitive  Exact Words  Include Comments
List of Bookmarks

Who can forget Chicago’s Covid Riots on the weekend after George Floyd died … of covid, I guess.

 
Hide 113 CommentsLeave a Comment
Commenters to Ignore...to FollowEndorsed Only
Trim Comments?
  1. Ahem, GF was murdered by covid.

  2. Today’s WSJ editorial:

    Mayor Lightfoot blamed race and gender bias for her loss, but it’s hard to pin that on a city that voted for her overwhelmingly four years ago. In 2019 she swept all 50 city wards because she campaigned as a feisty outsider who would challenge the Chicago machine. Once in office she lost her way when she focused on progressive identity politics rather than solving the city’s problems. She finished with a humiliating 17% of the vote, as of Wednesday’s tallies.

    • Replies: @Barnard
    @Renard

    Isn't the second place finisher to Lightfoot arguably to her left on a lot of issues? Is the media support for her related to her ability to check more intersectional boxes? 17% is really bad for an incumbent. She should have tried to save face and not run and then blame all the problems on her successor.

  3. What a terrible disease COVID is. It turned millions of progressive Democrats into racist, misogynist, homophobes.

    • Agree: Inquiring Mind
    • Replies: @J.Ross
    @NJ Transit Commuter

    THIS IS MAGA COUNTRY

    , @AnotherDad
    @NJ Transit Commuter


    What a terrible disease COVID is. It turned millions of progressive Democrats into racist, misogynist, homophobes.
     
    I'm starting to like it better.
  4. Recall that what killed Second City Cop Blog (for years, the best blog online) was exposing the “party room” scam which allowed diners at a restaurant owned by a powerful alderman to ignore lockdown restrictions.

    • Replies: @JimDandy
    @J.Ross

    I didn't know that.

    Replies: @J.Ross

    , @Female in FL
    @J.Ross

    Good point, but when he exposed the teacher who lived outside the city, that union came after him.
    Expose on Chief Eddie and the bj was another good one.
    Modern Heretic is greatly missed as well.

    Replies: @Adam Smith

  5. @NJ Transit Commuter
    What a terrible disease COVID is. It turned millions of progressive Democrats into racist, misogynist, homophobes.

    Replies: @J.Ross, @AnotherDad

    THIS IS MAGA COUNTRY

  6. The Chicago Sun Times’ analysis is that Lightfoot was dealt a bad hand (Covid and Floyd) but that bad hand was not what did her in. Rather, it was this: She got elected because she was pugilistic, but once in office, “My way or the highway,” her style, was not the way to govern in Chicago. She relished destroying people, rather than working with them, which was what she failed to do.

    https://chicago.suntimes.com/elections/2023/2/28/23614274/analysis-mayor-lori-lightfoot-second-term-vallas-johnson-garcia-wilson-buckner-king-sawyer-green

    • Replies: @Renard
    @SafeNow

    https://www.mediaite.com/news/chicagos-mayor-a-woman-apparently-told-staff-i-have-the-biggest-dick-in-chicago/

    This is the woman who vowed never to take another question from a white reporter. Because white reporters were getting too damn uppity.

    , @Paleo Liberal
    @SafeNow

    I once saw an interesting analysis of LBJ in a self help book. Admittedly an old one.

    LBJ was well known as being one is the most effective Senate Majority Leaders the US has ever had. There was a misconception that he bullied and “arm twisted “ the other Democrats into following him. In reality there was far more carrot than stick. If a senator wanted a pork bill for his state, LBJ would gladly push it through, usually combined with items to benefit other senators. The “arm twisting” was simply that everyone owed LBJ tons of favors, and nobody wanted the favors to end.

    LBJ could be stubborn and domineering at times, especially when he was President, but Lightfoot appears to have only noticed LBJ’s big stick and not the carrots.

    Replies: @John Burns, Gettysburg Partisan, @Muggles

  7. Did Lori Lightfoot always look like the comic book character Groot? I recall she was a beautiful bouncy light-skinned long frizzy-haired black girl like you see on the cable TV flyers until her nasty bout with the evil Flu Manchu. What couldn’t that Pandemic do?!

    Speaking of the Covid, now even Ann Coulter’s stealing my material! From her latest column:

    Contrary to hysterical warnings in 2020 that “people you know” will die from COVID and “it’s definitely not just the flu,” I still don’t know anyone who knows anyone who died from COVID. For most people, it was “just the flu.”

    Likewise.

    • Agree: Verymuchalive
    • Replies: @Verymuchalive
    @Achmed E. Newman

    The nearest I got to that was a friend of my sister's, whose father spent a fortnight in hospital, including time on a ventilator. He is in his seventies and had been hospitalised for bouts of pneumonia in the past. So no big surprise. He made a full recovery and is very much alive ( pun intended ).

    In all the COVID brouhaha, I don't recall any UR columnist or blogger claiming they knew someone who had died of it, not even the President of the Board himself, Ron. The same goes for commenters. Kind of odd for a dangerous worlwide pandemic !

    Replies: @Brutusale, @John Johnson, @Anon, @Art Deco

    , @Rob
    @Achmed E. Newman

    I don’t know anyone who died of it, but I know someone who said it took her six months to get back to normal after she got COVID for a second time.

    Never heard anyone say that about the flu.

    Replies: @Joe Joe, @Brutusale

    , @JR Ewing
    @Achmed E. Newman

    I personally know two people who died from it. Both were rather large overweight diabetic Hispanic men, which seems to be the primary risk profile here in Texas.

    I also caught Delta myself in the summer of 21 and spent a week in the hospital. It was one of the worst illnesses I’ve ever experienced and took me more than two months to fully recover. I literally could not breathe at times. Definitely more than “just the flu”.

    However, all of that can be true and it still be the case that the entire episode was exaggerated and exploited for political purposes, which is exactly what happened. People have been getting sick since the dawn of recorded time, and with modern medicine this was fairly easy to treat and deal with.

    The way our hyper partisan society and its government over reacted to this virus was shameful.

    Ben Shapiro had an insightful column earlier this week about how partisanship corrupted the Covid narrative and caused most of the trouble.

    Replies: @Wokechoke, @Bill Jones

    , @Paleo Liberal
    @Achmed E. Newman

    The death rate in the US for unvaccinated patients is estimated at about 1.5%, and for vaccinated patients about 0.13%.

    OTOH, a large number of deaths in the pre-vax days were in old age homes in NY.

    In comparison, at my mother’s retirement home the death rate has been about 1%. Meaning 100 people got COVID and one died. The person who died caught it in a hospital.

    Meanwhile one of my mother’s closest friends just got COVID while in hospice care. This is his second time for COVID, and of course the probability of death is somewhat different, sad to say.

    Replies: @The Anti-Gnostic

    , @Jack D
    @Achmed E. Newman

    I do know someone who died of Covid before the vax was available but he was (literally) 100 years old.

    OTOH, he was sorta OK before he got Covid (not totally gone mentally or physically but not anywhere close to 100% either) and without it I think he would have made it at least a couple of years more.

    , @Almost Missouri
    @Achmed E. Newman

    Likewise.

    Anybody wanna follow this up with:

    Have any of the "people you know" been injured/killed by the mRNA "vaccine"?

    In my case, I still don't know anyone, but I note that most of the vaccine takers I know also got covid anyway. Most of the covid avoiders I know also avoided the vaccine. So at the very least, the vaccine is mostly a scam.

    Replies: @Jack D, @John Johnson

    , @kaganovitch
    @Achmed E. Newman

    While I doubt my experience is typical of the average American, I personally know 7 guys under 60(none under 45) who died of Covid. By “know” I mean I would say hello if I met them on the street. Two of them were good friends. Also the wife of a second cousin of mine. If you count over 70 deaths in which Covid is indicated but not certain, I knew twice as many. I should note that by Haredi standards, I’m on the autistic side of the Sociability curve, so I doubt my experience is untypical for the Haredi community. I should note that after summer of 2020, I don't know anyone who died of Covid.

    , @Anon
    @Achmed E. Newman

    I know someone who died of COVID: a woman who lived in my condominium building, in Dec 2021. Yes, after the vaccines were available.

    I do not know if she took the vaccine. I interacted with her in Dec 2021, when I got COVID too. No idea if I got it from her, or if she got it from me.

    The argument, I don’t know any one died from so-and-so, is really a bad argument, it holds no water in the statistical way of thinking.

    Replies: @JR Ewing, @Female in FL

    , @AnotherDad
    @Achmed E. Newman


    Contrary to hysterical warnings in 2020 that “people you know” will die from COVID and “it’s definitely not just the flu,” I still don’t know anyone who knows anyone who died from COVID. For most people, it was “just the flu.”
     
    Really, we're going to rewind this stupid shit again?

    Ann is a valuable lady, who managed to grow from just conservative crank, to understanding the primacy of the immigration issue. She does useful work now. And since--obviously--for most people it is indeed "just the flu", this certainly isn't as stupid as her "Amanda Knox did it" nonsense.

    US deaths had been slowly bumping up around 50 or 60k each year during the teens (from the mid to high 2 millions) and then suddenly jumped up by half a million in 2020. And remained there in 2021. Covid has killed over a million Americans. Ann might legitimately not know anyone--but certainly she has many friends and neighbors who do. (Some people just can't "do math".)

    The relevant issue in debunking the hysteria, was not that a bunch of people did not die. It was "who died". Basically it was a bunch of old people (or sick, health compromised or very overweight/diabetic people). Covid mostly just did an early harvest of old people. (The one person I know--my uncle, a terrific guy--was, frankly "due". Zero QALYs lost. His wife--also in her early 90s--got it and survived ... then died a year later. That's what old people do--they die.)

    Furthermore ... we knew all this from the get go! Broken record since March 2020--but we knew what this was going to be like from the moment the Diamond Princess docked. 700 people tested as infected. A couple 80 year oldish geezers quickly died. A bunch went to the hospital. Over the next few weeks a total of 14 passengers--all over 60, ended up dead. Not a single one of the--much younger--crew died.

    In other words: A serious hiccup in life-expectancy, but no threat to civilization.

    Some things can indeed be real and serious, but still not very important. Covid was one of those things.

    There was never any need to do any of this nonsense of "lockdowns", of shuttering businesses. Simple advice we could have/should have had:
    -- if you're sick--stay the #*@% home
    -- be extra careful associating with oldfolks; be absolutely sure you aren't sick and haven't been exposed
    -- oldsters and immunocompromised, be especially careful in your socializing
    -- lose weight
    -- take your vitamin D and zinc
    -- avoid indoor heavy breathing situations
    -- move more socializing outside--skip the club and go to the beach, the park, go golfing, hiking, paddling, camping
    -- great time for young couple to get hitched, spend time together making babies ... to replace the great seniors we're going to lose


    A big problem is that a lot of people have lost touch with the basic rhythm of life. That there's a natural order and civilization depends on upholding--and ideally strengthening--that order: You grow up learning to be a productive citizen. You work. (Criminals sent to jail.) You find a mate and get married. Young women--yes, they have to be young and women--have babies. You work some more. You raise your kids to be productive citizens to replace yourself and carry on your nation, your civilization after you. (Foreigners not required or desired.) You get old. You make fun of your kids, getting grief from their kids. You die.

    It is good, rewarding, beautiful.

    Replies: @Jack D, @Achmed E. Newman

    , @Cato
    @Achmed E. Newman

    My next-door neighbor died of COVID. She was white, but appeared to have American Indian ancestry (common in our city), and I suspect that that was why she was vulnerable. My sisters tell me that my old friend from our hometown died of COVID, but I don't remember him, so maybe that doesn't count as the death of someone I know. So one, maybe two, out of the hundreds of people I know.

    Replies: @Achmed E. Newman

  8. @SafeNow
    The Chicago Sun Times’ analysis is that Lightfoot was dealt a bad hand (Covid and Floyd) but that bad hand was not what did her in. Rather, it was this: She got elected because she was pugilistic, but once in office, “My way or the highway,” her style, was not the way to govern in Chicago. She relished destroying people, rather than working with them, which was what she failed to do.

    https://chicago.suntimes.com/elections/2023/2/28/23614274/analysis-mayor-lori-lightfoot-second-term-vallas-johnson-garcia-wilson-buckner-king-sawyer-green

    Replies: @Renard, @Paleo Liberal

    https://www.mediaite.com/news/chicagos-mayor-a-woman-apparently-told-staff-i-have-the-biggest-dick-in-chicago/

    This is the woman who vowed never to take another question from a white reporter. Because white reporters were getting too damn uppity.

  9. And why did all this ‘covid turmoil’ not occur in any other similar Western countries?

  10. @Achmed E. Newman
    Did Lori Lightfoot always look like the comic book character Groot? I recall she was a beautiful bouncy light-skinned long frizzy-haired black girl like you see on the cable TV flyers until her nasty bout with the evil Flu Manchu. What couldn't that Pandemic do?!

    Speaking of the Covid, now even Ann Coulter's stealing my material! From her latest column:

    Contrary to hysterical warnings in 2020 that “people you know” will die from COVID and “it’s definitely not just the flu,” I still don’t know anyone who knows anyone who died from COVID. For most people, it was “just the flu.”
     
    Likewise.

    Replies: @Verymuchalive, @Rob, @JR Ewing, @Paleo Liberal, @Jack D, @Almost Missouri, @kaganovitch, @Anon, @AnotherDad, @Cato

    The nearest I got to that was a friend of my sister’s, whose father spent a fortnight in hospital, including time on a ventilator. He is in his seventies and had been hospitalised for bouts of pneumonia in the past. So no big surprise. He made a full recovery and is very much alive ( pun intended ).

    In all the COVID brouhaha, I don’t recall any UR columnist or blogger claiming they knew someone who had died of it, not even the President of the Board himself, Ron. The same goes for commenters. Kind of odd for a dangerous worlwide pandemic !

    • Agree: Achmed E. Newman
    • Replies: @Brutusale
    @Verymuchalive

    He's a tough bastard to survive the vent. The girlfriend estimated that her hospital lost about 75% of the Covid vent patients.

    A 93-year old second cousin of my late mother is the only Covid victim I know.

    , @John Johnson
    @Verymuchalive

    In all the COVID brouhaha, I don’t recall any UR columnist or blogger claiming they knew someone who had died of it, not even the President of the Board himself, Ron. The same goes for commenters.

    I know someone indirectly.

    54 year old who couldn't get a refund on his cruise and decided to go in the peak of it.

    , @Anon
    @Verymuchalive

    I dk anyone who died of covid. There was a guy in the news a while back who died after falling into a vat of boiling metal.
    I didn't know him, but, I thought,one hell of an exit.
    That's how I want to go.

    Replies: @Verymuchalive, @Achmed E. Newman

    , @Art Deco
    @Verymuchalive

    I knew someone who died of it.

  11. @Achmed E. Newman
    Did Lori Lightfoot always look like the comic book character Groot? I recall she was a beautiful bouncy light-skinned long frizzy-haired black girl like you see on the cable TV flyers until her nasty bout with the evil Flu Manchu. What couldn't that Pandemic do?!

    Speaking of the Covid, now even Ann Coulter's stealing my material! From her latest column:

    Contrary to hysterical warnings in 2020 that “people you know” will die from COVID and “it’s definitely not just the flu,” I still don’t know anyone who knows anyone who died from COVID. For most people, it was “just the flu.”
     
    Likewise.

    Replies: @Verymuchalive, @Rob, @JR Ewing, @Paleo Liberal, @Jack D, @Almost Missouri, @kaganovitch, @Anon, @AnotherDad, @Cato

    I don’t know anyone who died of it, but I know someone who said it took her six months to get back to normal after she got COVID for a second time.

    Never heard anyone say that about the flu.

    • Replies: @Joe Joe
    @Rob

    there was a recent study that concluded that only women get "long covid" ;-)

    Replies: @Achmed E. Newman

    , @Brutusale
    @Rob

    Your mileage may vary, obviously, but after having Covid Delta two years ago, I found the Strain A flu this year much worse.

  12. Her defeat is a sign of the turmoil in American cities following the COVID-19 pandemic.

    A spot of editorialising from the Associated Press there. Why not “her defeat is a sign of what a lousy mayor she’s been?”

    • Agree: p38ace
    • Replies: @The Germ Theory of Disease
    @Joe S.Walker

    "Her defeat is a sign of the turmoil in American cities following the COVID-19 pandemic."

    And their blithe, confident insertion of a nonsensical and questionable opinion masquerading as a fact is a sign of why both I and half the country do not trust or believe anything the MSM has to say.

    , @anon
    @Joe S.Walker

    "Her defeat is a sign of the reaction voters make to the consequences of lack of control of black criminality". Fixed it for 'em.

  13. Mayor Lightfoot

    Speaking of missing links,

    https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/01/science/dna-hunter-gatherers-europe.html

    MATTER

    Ancient DNA Reveals History of Hunter-Gatherers in Europe

    Looking at DNA gleaned from ancient remains, researchers identified at least eight previously unknown populations of early Europeans.

    Non sequitur tacked on end article:

    Ludovic Orlando, a molecular archaeologist at Paul Sabatier University in France who was not involved in the new research, said that it was a milestone in the study of early humans. “I was really blown away,” he said.

    “We cannot develop a Eurocentric vision of the past,” Dr. Orlando said.

  14. @J.Ross
    Recall that what killed Second City Cop Blog (for years, the best blog online) was exposing the "party room" scam which allowed diners at a restaurant owned by a powerful alderman to ignore lockdown restrictions.

    Replies: @JimDandy, @Female in FL

    I didn’t know that.

    • Replies: @J.Ross
    @JimDandy

    This was when restaurants were allowed to become carryout counters. You go to the cash register, ostensibly to pick up a phoned-in order. Either you declare you are with the party or the cashier inquires if you are. You are escorted to the "party," in the "party room," which is in this case the entire restaurant. You then enjoy a normal pre-lockdown diner experience with menus and ketchup bottles.

    Replies: @JimDandy

  15. @Joe S.Walker

    Her defeat is a sign of the turmoil in American cities following the COVID-19 pandemic.
     
    A spot of editorialising from the Associated Press there. Why not "her defeat is a sign of what a lousy mayor she's been?"

    Replies: @The Germ Theory of Disease, @anon

    “Her defeat is a sign of the turmoil in American cities following the COVID-19 pandemic.”

    And their blithe, confident insertion of a nonsensical and questionable opinion masquerading as a fact is a sign of why both I and half the country do not trust or believe anything the MSM has to say.

  16. You can totally be murdered by racist police and die of Covid at the same time. I wish people could get past their petty political differences and enjoy the best of both worlds. What is not possible is being a black criminal and dying of a drug overdose while being arrested by a multiracial group of white supremacist police.

    • LOL: J.Ross
  17. @Achmed E. Newman
    Did Lori Lightfoot always look like the comic book character Groot? I recall she was a beautiful bouncy light-skinned long frizzy-haired black girl like you see on the cable TV flyers until her nasty bout with the evil Flu Manchu. What couldn't that Pandemic do?!

    Speaking of the Covid, now even Ann Coulter's stealing my material! From her latest column:

    Contrary to hysterical warnings in 2020 that “people you know” will die from COVID and “it’s definitely not just the flu,” I still don’t know anyone who knows anyone who died from COVID. For most people, it was “just the flu.”
     
    Likewise.

    Replies: @Verymuchalive, @Rob, @JR Ewing, @Paleo Liberal, @Jack D, @Almost Missouri, @kaganovitch, @Anon, @AnotherDad, @Cato

    I personally know two people who died from it. Both were rather large overweight diabetic Hispanic men, which seems to be the primary risk profile here in Texas.

    I also caught Delta myself in the summer of 21 and spent a week in the hospital. It was one of the worst illnesses I’ve ever experienced and took me more than two months to fully recover. I literally could not breathe at times. Definitely more than “just the flu”.

    However, all of that can be true and it still be the case that the entire episode was exaggerated and exploited for political purposes, which is exactly what happened. People have been getting sick since the dawn of recorded time, and with modern medicine this was fairly easy to treat and deal with.

    The way our hyper partisan society and its government over reacted to this virus was shameful.

    Ben Shapiro had an insightful column earlier this week about how partisanship corrupted the Covid narrative and caused most of the trouble.

    • Thanks: Captain Tripps
    • Replies: @Wokechoke
    @JR Ewing

    Agreed with everything you said until the Shapiro drop, Why did you ruin good bit of prose?

    Replies: @JR Ewing

    , @Bill Jones
    @JR Ewing


    Ben Shapiro had an insightful column
     
    Thanks for the laugh. We need more satire.
  18. I accidentally clicked through to the AP tweet. If, like me, you are pessimistic about American society, I suspect you will find the commenters’ revolt on that extremely invigorating.

  19. @J.Ross
    Recall that what killed Second City Cop Blog (for years, the best blog online) was exposing the "party room" scam which allowed diners at a restaurant owned by a powerful alderman to ignore lockdown restrictions.

    Replies: @JimDandy, @Female in FL

    Good point, but when he exposed the teacher who lived outside the city, that union came after him.
    Expose on Chief Eddie and the bj was another good one.
    Modern Heretic is greatly missed as well.

    • Agree: Adam Smith
    • Replies: @Adam Smith
    @Female in FL

    I too miss Modern Heretic. I like his writing style.
    Sometimes I go to archive.org to read some of his old stuff...

    Modern Heretic Archive

    (Does anyone know if he's still blogging or where I can read his new stuff?)
    (Perhaps on Tor?)

    Replies: @Female in FL

  20. I have shared before but last spring I was in Chicago and was treated to an unprovoked anti-Lightfoot rant by my Uber driver, a 33 year year old black guy whose diatribe sounded like a Sun-Times editorial. He repeatedly said she had to go and he didn’t know anyone who thought she was doing a good job.

    Obviously this hateful bigot didn’t understand that Mayor Lori was dealing with nearly uncontrollable side effects from the Covid pandemic and should have been more sympathetic.

  21. Sad. Lightfoot’s political career appears to be over.

    All she has left now is her good looks…

    • Agree: Muggles
  22. @Rob
    @Achmed E. Newman

    I don’t know anyone who died of it, but I know someone who said it took her six months to get back to normal after she got COVID for a second time.

    Never heard anyone say that about the flu.

    Replies: @Joe Joe, @Brutusale

    there was a recent study that concluded that only women get “long covid” 😉

    • Thanks: JR Ewing
    • Replies: @Achmed E. Newman
    @Joe Joe

    That's been proven to be false, Joe. The BLS statistics say that Long Covid almost solely affects those wage earners, male or female, who are low on paid sick leave.

    - (NOT) Art Deco

    (Emoticons, people! Emoticons all around!)

  23. @JimDandy
    @J.Ross

    I didn't know that.

    Replies: @J.Ross

    This was when restaurants were allowed to become carryout counters. You go to the cash register, ostensibly to pick up a phoned-in order. Either you declare you are with the party or the cashier inquires if you are. You are escorted to the “party,” in the “party room,” which is in this case the entire restaurant. You then enjoy a normal pre-lockdown diner experience with menus and ketchup bottles.

    • Replies: @JimDandy
    @J.Ross

    Yeah, I don't remember the connection with SCC. Did they blow the whistle on Ann Sather?

    Replies: @J.Ross

  24. @JR Ewing
    @Achmed E. Newman

    I personally know two people who died from it. Both were rather large overweight diabetic Hispanic men, which seems to be the primary risk profile here in Texas.

    I also caught Delta myself in the summer of 21 and spent a week in the hospital. It was one of the worst illnesses I’ve ever experienced and took me more than two months to fully recover. I literally could not breathe at times. Definitely more than “just the flu”.

    However, all of that can be true and it still be the case that the entire episode was exaggerated and exploited for political purposes, which is exactly what happened. People have been getting sick since the dawn of recorded time, and with modern medicine this was fairly easy to treat and deal with.

    The way our hyper partisan society and its government over reacted to this virus was shameful.

    Ben Shapiro had an insightful column earlier this week about how partisanship corrupted the Covid narrative and caused most of the trouble.

    Replies: @Wokechoke, @Bill Jones

    Agreed with everything you said until the Shapiro drop, Why did you ruin good bit of prose?

    • LOL: JR Ewing
    • Replies: @JR Ewing
    @Wokechoke

    LOL - Even a blond squirrel finds a nut every now and then.

  25. Question: how was Chicago founded?

    Answer: a group of New Yorkers got together and said” we love the crime, pollution, and racism, but it just isn’t cold enough here!”.

    So if you are mayor of Chicago, do you have to live in Chicago?

    • Replies: @Hibernian
    @theMann

    Chicago was founded in the 1830's by New Yorkers and New Englanders who wanted to get rich.

  26. I read through a few comments. No one is defending her. Not a one.

  27. I guess the covid virus has mutated into a monster that performs arson, mugging, looting, rioting, carjacking, smash’n’grabs, etc etc. How could anyone win a re-election under those circumstances?

  28. @Joe S.Walker

    Her defeat is a sign of the turmoil in American cities following the COVID-19 pandemic.
     
    A spot of editorialising from the Associated Press there. Why not "her defeat is a sign of what a lousy mayor she's been?"

    Replies: @The Germ Theory of Disease, @anon

    “Her defeat is a sign of the reaction voters make to the consequences of lack of control of black criminality”. Fixed it for ’em.

  29. Or perhaps she was a lousy mayor and miserable human being. And nobody wanted to look at her ugliness nor hear her grating voice every day for another 4 years.

    • Agree: Jim Christian
  30. I look forward to the next AP tweet: “Politician losing election is a sign democracy is broken.”

    • Replies: @Almost Missouri
    @Wilkey

    If you consider all the populism-is-breaking-Our-Democracy stuff they've already published, we're already there.

  31. Dear God,

    Please make it stop.

  32. @SafeNow
    The Chicago Sun Times’ analysis is that Lightfoot was dealt a bad hand (Covid and Floyd) but that bad hand was not what did her in. Rather, it was this: She got elected because she was pugilistic, but once in office, “My way or the highway,” her style, was not the way to govern in Chicago. She relished destroying people, rather than working with them, which was what she failed to do.

    https://chicago.suntimes.com/elections/2023/2/28/23614274/analysis-mayor-lori-lightfoot-second-term-vallas-johnson-garcia-wilson-buckner-king-sawyer-green

    Replies: @Renard, @Paleo Liberal

    I once saw an interesting analysis of LBJ in a self help book. Admittedly an old one.

    LBJ was well known as being one is the most effective Senate Majority Leaders the US has ever had. There was a misconception that he bullied and “arm twisted “ the other Democrats into following him. In reality there was far more carrot than stick. If a senator wanted a pork bill for his state, LBJ would gladly push it through, usually combined with items to benefit other senators. The “arm twisting” was simply that everyone owed LBJ tons of favors, and nobody wanted the favors to end.

    LBJ could be stubborn and domineering at times, especially when he was President, but Lightfoot appears to have only noticed LBJ’s big stick and not the carrots.

    • Replies: @John Burns, Gettysburg Partisan
    @Paleo Liberal

    Always annoying to see the iSteve comments full of any kind of kind words for Lyndon Johnson.

    The old praise for Johnson as Majority Leader shows how far the American people have strayed from a proper understanding of politics in general and the American political system in particular.

    Under Johnson, the US Senate (perhaps permanently) abdicated its constitutional responsibility for prudent legislating in favor of "management" - that is, management of the country's most precious resources on behalf of corrupt factionalists like Lyndon Johnson.

    Channeling an attitude so Soviet that even FDR might blanche a bit, Johnson once said the "most dynamic" ("dynamic" is never a word a real American wishes to see in government) responsibility of government is the "prevention of waste - waste of resources, waste of lives, or waste of opportunity." Here he shows his concept of government, which is unrestrained by basic law, and all-knowing, all-seeing, all-taking. A government that implicitly denies and resists - since it has the "dynamic" power to define, identify, and act to prevent "waste" (whatever that means) - the rights and duties of property and liberty in favor of authoritarianism. Little wonder that civil society here began to be destroyed most ruthlessly under this man's rule.

    In contempt for traditions of past Majority Leaders, Johnson retained SIX other committee chairmanships: Democrat Policy, Steering, Armed Services, Air and Space, and Appropriations, giving him a dictatorial control of the Senate. His philosophy as majority leader was to limit debate to the greatest degree possible, because Johnson had nothing but scorn for James Madison's dictum that, in the Senate, "legislation was to be considered with more coolness, with more system and with more wisdom than" the House. Not so with Johnson and his assembly-line system. His "unanimous agreement" really meant limited and perfunctory debate; no intelligent reasoning; the omission of record calls so the public wouldn't know who voted which way; the approval of omnibus legislation without reference to its import.

    The Senate rules of 1946, which allowed Robert Taft to stop conscription of strikers, would never be permitted under the tyrant Johnson.

    Foreign policy especially shows the evil of Johnson's style. When the President, Eisenhower, took authority upon himself to possibly take us into war in Lebanon without constitutionally-mandated Congressional authority, Johnson merely begged the Senate to be "united" behind the President. No wonder this body did nothing to stop Johnson's Vietnam affairs.

    By destroying the deliberation, Lyndon Johnson destroyed the necessary purpose for which our Founders created the US Congress. He was indeed "effective" - effective in shoving America perhaps permanently away from elected legislative vigilance to rule by unwatched, often unknown apparatchiks and petty tyrants like Johnson himself.

    It must be remembered, finally, that all historical republics that fell, fell because of men like Johnson, who "effectively" castrated the legislatures.

    And, finally, LBJ had plenty of "sticks." Do not pretend otherwise on the basis of an obscure "self-help" book.

    , @Muggles
    @Paleo Liberal


    Lightfoot appears to have only noticed LBJ’s big stick and not the carrots.
     
    Well, Lightfoot didn't arrange to murder her predecessor to take office.

    On the other hand, LBJ was prettier.
  33. @Achmed E. Newman
    Did Lori Lightfoot always look like the comic book character Groot? I recall she was a beautiful bouncy light-skinned long frizzy-haired black girl like you see on the cable TV flyers until her nasty bout with the evil Flu Manchu. What couldn't that Pandemic do?!

    Speaking of the Covid, now even Ann Coulter's stealing my material! From her latest column:

    Contrary to hysterical warnings in 2020 that “people you know” will die from COVID and “it’s definitely not just the flu,” I still don’t know anyone who knows anyone who died from COVID. For most people, it was “just the flu.”
     
    Likewise.

    Replies: @Verymuchalive, @Rob, @JR Ewing, @Paleo Liberal, @Jack D, @Almost Missouri, @kaganovitch, @Anon, @AnotherDad, @Cato

    The death rate in the US for unvaccinated patients is estimated at about 1.5%, and for vaccinated patients about 0.13%.

    OTOH, a large number of deaths in the pre-vax days were in old age homes in NY.

    In comparison, at my mother’s retirement home the death rate has been about 1%. Meaning 100 people got COVID and one died. The person who died caught it in a hospital.

    Meanwhile one of my mother’s closest friends just got COVID while in hospice care. This is his second time for COVID, and of course the probability of death is somewhat different, sad to say.

    • Replies: @The Anti-Gnostic
    @Paleo Liberal

    Meanwhile one of my mother’s closest friends just got COVID while in hospice care. This is his second time for COVID, and of course the probability of death is somewhat different, sad to say.

    That is an odd way to put it. Your mom's friend is already in hospice care. He is dying, period, from geriatric failure-to-thrive and co-morbidities, including an opportunistic respiratory virus known as COVID. But I have no doubt his cause of death will be listed as COVID.

  34. Whatever ideological bias the AP tweet reveals, it confirms most starkly one of Steve’s themes: no one remembers anything anymore.

    Almost thirty years ago, Rudy Giuliani won a rematch with Democratic New York City Mayor David Dinkins, whose sole term in office had been marked by rising crime and a sense that the city was effectively out of control. Dinkins had mishandled several racially-tinged incidents — anyone else remember the Korean grocery on Church Avenue, near the D train stop, where a boycott by blacks nearly put the place out of business after shoplifting allegations against a black customer? — and was perceived as biased in favor of his own people, at the expense of everyone else.

    Sound familiar? No one at the Associated Press thought so.

    • Agree: kaganovitch
    • Replies: @Paleo Liberal
    @Gary in Gramercy

    Nobody ever remembers anything.

    I am visiting relatives in another state and I explained to them why, although Obama won Wisconsin handily in 2012, the Democrats lost the 2014 gubernatorial election and the 2016 presidential election.

    Quite simple. In 2012 the Obama campaign reached out to white blue collar workers. More white collar men voted for Obama than Romney. In 2014 and 2016 the Democrats ignored blue collar white men. Things didn’t go as well. Imagine that.

    , @Jack D
    @Gary in Gramercy

    The AP writer probably wasn't even born yet when that happened, so how are they supposed to "remember" it?

    2nd, certain categories ("white racism", "Covid caused turmoil") are permissible and other categories ("black racism", "BLM caused turmoil") are impermissible. They are not a thing and even saying that they are a thing is itself evidence of white racism.

    Last night I read a couple of self-pitying interviews with Lightfoot written before the election, when she and the reporter were both still hoping that she would win but you could tell that they both knew that she wasn't. The idea that the white racists dun her in (which was her theory) was ridiculous because not only did the white guy finish ahead of her but also another black guy. By the time she was done, Lightfoot had managed to alienate EVERYONE in Chicago and had no friends. She alienated blacks and whites, teachers and police, left and right, etc.

    , @njguy73
    @Gary in Gramercy


    Dinkins had mishandled several racially-tinged incidents — anyone else remember the Korean grocery on Church Avenue, near the D train stop, where a boycott by blacks nearly put the place out of business after shoplifting allegations against a black customer? — and was perceived as biased in favor of his own people, at the expense of everyone else.
     
    Two words: Crown. Heights.

    Replies: @Gary in Gramercy

  35. So are rapists just liberals who don’t “prioritize” protecting the line women draw across their labia?

  36. @Paleo Liberal
    @Achmed E. Newman

    The death rate in the US for unvaccinated patients is estimated at about 1.5%, and for vaccinated patients about 0.13%.

    OTOH, a large number of deaths in the pre-vax days were in old age homes in NY.

    In comparison, at my mother’s retirement home the death rate has been about 1%. Meaning 100 people got COVID and one died. The person who died caught it in a hospital.

    Meanwhile one of my mother’s closest friends just got COVID while in hospice care. This is his second time for COVID, and of course the probability of death is somewhat different, sad to say.

    Replies: @The Anti-Gnostic

    Meanwhile one of my mother’s closest friends just got COVID while in hospice care. This is his second time for COVID, and of course the probability of death is somewhat different, sad to say.

    That is an odd way to put it. Your mom’s friend is already in hospice care. He is dying, period, from geriatric failure-to-thrive and co-morbidities, including an opportunistic respiratory virus known as COVID. But I have no doubt his cause of death will be listed as COVID.

    • Thanks: Bill Jones
  37. @Gary in Gramercy
    Whatever ideological bias the AP tweet reveals, it confirms most starkly one of Steve's themes: no one remembers anything anymore.

    Almost thirty years ago, Rudy Giuliani won a rematch with Democratic New York City Mayor David Dinkins, whose sole term in office had been marked by rising crime and a sense that the city was effectively out of control. Dinkins had mishandled several racially-tinged incidents -- anyone else remember the Korean grocery on Church Avenue, near the D train stop, where a boycott by blacks nearly put the place out of business after shoplifting allegations against a black customer? -- and was perceived as biased in favor of his own people, at the expense of everyone else.

    Sound familiar? No one at the Associated Press thought so.

    Replies: @Paleo Liberal, @Jack D, @njguy73

    Nobody ever remembers anything.

    I am visiting relatives in another state and I explained to them why, although Obama won Wisconsin handily in 2012, the Democrats lost the 2014 gubernatorial election and the 2016 presidential election.

    Quite simple. In 2012 the Obama campaign reached out to white blue collar workers. More white collar men voted for Obama than Romney. In 2014 and 2016 the Democrats ignored blue collar white men. Things didn’t go as well. Imagine that.

  38. I cannot be the first to notice that Lori Lightfoot’s eyes are so big, it takes her all day to blink.

  39. @Achmed E. Newman
    Did Lori Lightfoot always look like the comic book character Groot? I recall she was a beautiful bouncy light-skinned long frizzy-haired black girl like you see on the cable TV flyers until her nasty bout with the evil Flu Manchu. What couldn't that Pandemic do?!

    Speaking of the Covid, now even Ann Coulter's stealing my material! From her latest column:

    Contrary to hysterical warnings in 2020 that “people you know” will die from COVID and “it’s definitely not just the flu,” I still don’t know anyone who knows anyone who died from COVID. For most people, it was “just the flu.”
     
    Likewise.

    Replies: @Verymuchalive, @Rob, @JR Ewing, @Paleo Liberal, @Jack D, @Almost Missouri, @kaganovitch, @Anon, @AnotherDad, @Cato

    I do know someone who died of Covid before the vax was available but he was (literally) 100 years old.

    OTOH, he was sorta OK before he got Covid (not totally gone mentally or physically but not anywhere close to 100% either) and without it I think he would have made it at least a couple of years more.

  40. @Verymuchalive
    @Achmed E. Newman

    The nearest I got to that was a friend of my sister's, whose father spent a fortnight in hospital, including time on a ventilator. He is in his seventies and had been hospitalised for bouts of pneumonia in the past. So no big surprise. He made a full recovery and is very much alive ( pun intended ).

    In all the COVID brouhaha, I don't recall any UR columnist or blogger claiming they knew someone who had died of it, not even the President of the Board himself, Ron. The same goes for commenters. Kind of odd for a dangerous worlwide pandemic !

    Replies: @Brutusale, @John Johnson, @Anon, @Art Deco

    He’s a tough bastard to survive the vent. The girlfriend estimated that her hospital lost about 75% of the Covid vent patients.

    A 93-year old second cousin of my late mother is the only Covid victim I know.

    • Thanks: Verymuchalive
  41. @Rob
    @Achmed E. Newman

    I don’t know anyone who died of it, but I know someone who said it took her six months to get back to normal after she got COVID for a second time.

    Never heard anyone say that about the flu.

    Replies: @Joe Joe, @Brutusale

    Your mileage may vary, obviously, but after having Covid Delta two years ago, I found the Strain A flu this year much worse.

  42. COVID-19 and variants are the Universal Explanation for failures by the Comrades in office.

    They take no responsibility for their failed policies.

    “The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, But in ourselves…” Shakespeare, Julius Caesar

    (Just more dead White Male logic, to be ignored, nowadays…)

  43. @Gary in Gramercy
    Whatever ideological bias the AP tweet reveals, it confirms most starkly one of Steve's themes: no one remembers anything anymore.

    Almost thirty years ago, Rudy Giuliani won a rematch with Democratic New York City Mayor David Dinkins, whose sole term in office had been marked by rising crime and a sense that the city was effectively out of control. Dinkins had mishandled several racially-tinged incidents -- anyone else remember the Korean grocery on Church Avenue, near the D train stop, where a boycott by blacks nearly put the place out of business after shoplifting allegations against a black customer? -- and was perceived as biased in favor of his own people, at the expense of everyone else.

    Sound familiar? No one at the Associated Press thought so.

    Replies: @Paleo Liberal, @Jack D, @njguy73

    The AP writer probably wasn’t even born yet when that happened, so how are they supposed to “remember” it?

    2nd, certain categories (“white racism”, “Covid caused turmoil”) are permissible and other categories (“black racism”, “BLM caused turmoil”) are impermissible. They are not a thing and even saying that they are a thing is itself evidence of white racism.

    Last night I read a couple of self-pitying interviews with Lightfoot written before the election, when she and the reporter were both still hoping that she would win but you could tell that they both knew that she wasn’t. The idea that the white racists dun her in (which was her theory) was ridiculous because not only did the white guy finish ahead of her but also another black guy. By the time she was done, Lightfoot had managed to alienate EVERYONE in Chicago and had no friends. She alienated blacks and whites, teachers and police, left and right, etc.

  44. @Paleo Liberal
    @SafeNow

    I once saw an interesting analysis of LBJ in a self help book. Admittedly an old one.

    LBJ was well known as being one is the most effective Senate Majority Leaders the US has ever had. There was a misconception that he bullied and “arm twisted “ the other Democrats into following him. In reality there was far more carrot than stick. If a senator wanted a pork bill for his state, LBJ would gladly push it through, usually combined with items to benefit other senators. The “arm twisting” was simply that everyone owed LBJ tons of favors, and nobody wanted the favors to end.

    LBJ could be stubborn and domineering at times, especially when he was President, but Lightfoot appears to have only noticed LBJ’s big stick and not the carrots.

    Replies: @John Burns, Gettysburg Partisan, @Muggles

    Always annoying to see the iSteve comments full of any kind of kind words for Lyndon Johnson.

    The old praise for Johnson as Majority Leader shows how far the American people have strayed from a proper understanding of politics in general and the American political system in particular.

    Under Johnson, the US Senate (perhaps permanently) abdicated its constitutional responsibility for prudent legislating in favor of “management” – that is, management of the country’s most precious resources on behalf of corrupt factionalists like Lyndon Johnson.

    Channeling an attitude so Soviet that even FDR might blanche a bit, Johnson once said the “most dynamic” (“dynamic” is never a word a real American wishes to see in government) responsibility of government is the “prevention of waste – waste of resources, waste of lives, or waste of opportunity.” Here he shows his concept of government, which is unrestrained by basic law, and all-knowing, all-seeing, all-taking. A government that implicitly denies and resists – since it has the “dynamic” power to define, identify, and act to prevent “waste” (whatever that means) – the rights and duties of property and liberty in favor of authoritarianism. Little wonder that civil society here began to be destroyed most ruthlessly under this man’s rule.

    In contempt for traditions of past Majority Leaders, Johnson retained SIX other committee chairmanships: Democrat Policy, Steering, Armed Services, Air and Space, and Appropriations, giving him a dictatorial control of the Senate. His philosophy as majority leader was to limit debate to the greatest degree possible, because Johnson had nothing but scorn for James Madison’s dictum that, in the Senate, “legislation was to be considered with more coolness, with more system and with more wisdom than” the House. Not so with Johnson and his assembly-line system. His “unanimous agreement” really meant limited and perfunctory debate; no intelligent reasoning; the omission of record calls so the public wouldn’t know who voted which way; the approval of omnibus legislation without reference to its import.

    The Senate rules of 1946, which allowed Robert Taft to stop conscription of strikers, would never be permitted under the tyrant Johnson.

    Foreign policy especially shows the evil of Johnson’s style. When the President, Eisenhower, took authority upon himself to possibly take us into war in Lebanon without constitutionally-mandated Congressional authority, Johnson merely begged the Senate to be “united” behind the President. No wonder this body did nothing to stop Johnson’s Vietnam affairs.

    By destroying the deliberation, Lyndon Johnson destroyed the necessary purpose for which our Founders created the US Congress. He was indeed “effective” – effective in shoving America perhaps permanently away from elected legislative vigilance to rule by unwatched, often unknown apparatchiks and petty tyrants like Johnson himself.

    It must be remembered, finally, that all historical republics that fell, fell because of men like Johnson, who “effectively” castrated the legislatures.

    And, finally, LBJ had plenty of “sticks.” Do not pretend otherwise on the basis of an obscure “self-help” book.

    • Thanks: Almost Missouri
  45. when she was elected last time didn’t she get the fewest votes of any mayor in like 100 years? or something like that. she ran against another african lesbian, leaving the voters in Chicago the least interesting election in city history. with those two choices, nobody cared and nobody voted. SOMEBODY had to win, so Beetlejuice it was.

    any mediocre candidate could beat her easily, which is what happened next time around.

    the only takeaway here is that the US has declined so steeply that a nonsense midget clown person could become mayor of one of the biggest cities. that’s a step beyond having hard leftists and outright communists in charge. we’ve had stuff like that for decades. this lady was total genetic detritus. short, stupid, ugly, homosexual, annoying. a charisma void so deep it could make Jeb Bush seem interesting.

    the kind of person who never even sees daylight in a real, functional country. they spend 50 years shuffling papers in some back office. how does such a bottom of the barrel loser come to be your leader? then again, we now have John Fetterman, so deliberately scraping the bottom of the barrel seems to be the trajectory here.

    • Agree: Mark G., Art Deco
  46. @Achmed E. Newman
    Did Lori Lightfoot always look like the comic book character Groot? I recall she was a beautiful bouncy light-skinned long frizzy-haired black girl like you see on the cable TV flyers until her nasty bout with the evil Flu Manchu. What couldn't that Pandemic do?!

    Speaking of the Covid, now even Ann Coulter's stealing my material! From her latest column:

    Contrary to hysterical warnings in 2020 that “people you know” will die from COVID and “it’s definitely not just the flu,” I still don’t know anyone who knows anyone who died from COVID. For most people, it was “just the flu.”
     
    Likewise.

    Replies: @Verymuchalive, @Rob, @JR Ewing, @Paleo Liberal, @Jack D, @Almost Missouri, @kaganovitch, @Anon, @AnotherDad, @Cato

    Likewise.

    Anybody wanna follow this up with:

    Have any of the “people you know” been injured/killed by the mRNA “vaccine”?

    In my case, I still don’t know anyone, but I note that most of the vaccine takers I know also got covid anyway. Most of the covid avoiders I know also avoided the vaccine. So at the very least, the vaccine is mostly a scam.

    • Replies: @Jack D
    @Almost Missouri


    I note that most of the vaccine takers I know also got covid anyway. Most of the covid avoiders I know also avoided the vaccine. So at the very least, the vaccine is mostly a scam.
     
    Personal anecdote is not really the way to go in science. From what I understand of the studies, while the vaccine does not totally prevent Covid infection, it does reduce the severity and the risk of hospitalization and death greatly. You have know way of knowing how sick the vaccine takers would have been if they were unvaccinated and became infected. Calling something that reduces the mortality rate from Covid from 1.5% to 0.13% "a scam" is a bit much.

    Replies: @Almost Missouri

    , @John Johnson
    @Almost Missouri

    In my case, I still don’t know anyone, but I note that most of the vaccine takers I know also got covid anyway. Most of the covid avoiders I know also avoided the vaccine. So at the very least, the vaccine is mostly a scam.

    That is how the flu vaccine works. It doesn't prevent you from getting it. It reduces the severity and drastically reduces the odds of a hospital stay.

    Most of the fatalities since the COVID vaccine release have been in the unvaccinated. That is a globally consistent pattern. So not a scam when anti-vaxxers have recanted after being hooked up to a breathing machine.

    But I really don't care if anyone gets the vaccine at this point. The latest variant is pretty light and the vulnerable anti-vaxxers can't be killed twice. If you want to cough out a week long case of COVID then go ahead. Have at it. Stick it to the man.

    Replies: @Anonymous

  47. @JR Ewing
    @Achmed E. Newman

    I personally know two people who died from it. Both were rather large overweight diabetic Hispanic men, which seems to be the primary risk profile here in Texas.

    I also caught Delta myself in the summer of 21 and spent a week in the hospital. It was one of the worst illnesses I’ve ever experienced and took me more than two months to fully recover. I literally could not breathe at times. Definitely more than “just the flu”.

    However, all of that can be true and it still be the case that the entire episode was exaggerated and exploited for political purposes, which is exactly what happened. People have been getting sick since the dawn of recorded time, and with modern medicine this was fairly easy to treat and deal with.

    The way our hyper partisan society and its government over reacted to this virus was shameful.

    Ben Shapiro had an insightful column earlier this week about how partisanship corrupted the Covid narrative and caused most of the trouble.

    Replies: @Wokechoke, @Bill Jones

    Ben Shapiro had an insightful column

    Thanks for the laugh. We need more satire.

  48. @Renard
    Today's WSJ editorial:

    Mayor Lightfoot blamed race and gender bias for her loss, but it’s hard to pin that on a city that voted for her overwhelmingly four years ago. In 2019 she swept all 50 city wards because she campaigned as a feisty outsider who would challenge the Chicago machine. Once in office she lost her way when she focused on progressive identity politics rather than solving the city’s problems. She finished with a humiliating 17% of the vote, as of Wednesday’s tallies.
     

    Replies: @Barnard

    Isn’t the second place finisher to Lightfoot arguably to her left on a lot of issues? Is the media support for her related to her ability to check more intersectional boxes? 17% is really bad for an incumbent. She should have tried to save face and not run and then blame all the problems on her successor.

  49. @Almost Missouri
    @Achmed E. Newman

    Likewise.

    Anybody wanna follow this up with:

    Have any of the "people you know" been injured/killed by the mRNA "vaccine"?

    In my case, I still don't know anyone, but I note that most of the vaccine takers I know also got covid anyway. Most of the covid avoiders I know also avoided the vaccine. So at the very least, the vaccine is mostly a scam.

    Replies: @Jack D, @John Johnson

    I note that most of the vaccine takers I know also got covid anyway. Most of the covid avoiders I know also avoided the vaccine. So at the very least, the vaccine is mostly a scam.

    Personal anecdote is not really the way to go in science. From what I understand of the studies, while the vaccine does not totally prevent Covid infection, it does reduce the severity and the risk of hospitalization and death greatly. You have know way of knowing how sick the vaccine takers would have been if they were unvaccinated and became infected. Calling something that reduces the mortality rate from Covid from 1.5% to 0.13% “a scam” is a bit much.

    • Agree: Paleo Liberal
    • Thanks: Johann Ricke
    • Replies: @Almost Missouri
    @Jack D


    while the vaccine does not totally prevent Covid infection, it does reduce the severity and the risk of hospitalization and death greatly
     
    Dude, that's from about the midpoint of Big Pharma's humiliating climbdown from their original "95% effective" claim. Update firmware.

    https://i.postimg.cc/5tSSGRDh/Vaccine-deterioration.jpg

    You have no way of knowing how sick the vaccine takers would have been if they were unvaccinated and became infected.
     
    Similarly, you have no way of knowing what chronic conditions you are letting yourself in for with a vaccination, as averred in my above-linked comment.

    Replies: @John Johnson, @Jack D

  50. @Female in FL
    @J.Ross

    Good point, but when he exposed the teacher who lived outside the city, that union came after him.
    Expose on Chief Eddie and the bj was another good one.
    Modern Heretic is greatly missed as well.

    Replies: @Adam Smith

    I too miss Modern Heretic. I like his writing style.
    Sometimes I go to archive.org to read some of his old stuff…

    Modern Heretic Archive

    (Does anyone know if he’s still blogging or where I can read his new stuff?)
    (Perhaps on Tor?)

    • Replies: @Female in FL
    @Adam Smith

    Lol, I do the same! Last one I revisited was about a negro drinking booze under an aqueduct, hilarious. That guy has talent few people possess.
    If anyone knows where he resurfaced, I beg of you, let me know.

  51. Who can forget Chicago’s Covid Riots on the weekend after George Floyd died … of covid, I guess.

    When all is said and done , History will record that Derek Chauvin deliberately released Covid19 from the Wuhan lab. All your narratives are belonging to us!

  52. @NJ Transit Commuter
    What a terrible disease COVID is. It turned millions of progressive Democrats into racist, misogynist, homophobes.

    Replies: @J.Ross, @AnotherDad

    What a terrible disease COVID is. It turned millions of progressive Democrats into racist, misogynist, homophobes.

    I’m starting to like it better.

  53. @Verymuchalive
    @Achmed E. Newman

    The nearest I got to that was a friend of my sister's, whose father spent a fortnight in hospital, including time on a ventilator. He is in his seventies and had been hospitalised for bouts of pneumonia in the past. So no big surprise. He made a full recovery and is very much alive ( pun intended ).

    In all the COVID brouhaha, I don't recall any UR columnist or blogger claiming they knew someone who had died of it, not even the President of the Board himself, Ron. The same goes for commenters. Kind of odd for a dangerous worlwide pandemic !

    Replies: @Brutusale, @John Johnson, @Anon, @Art Deco

    In all the COVID brouhaha, I don’t recall any UR columnist or blogger claiming they knew someone who had died of it, not even the President of the Board himself, Ron. The same goes for commenters.

    I know someone indirectly.

    54 year old who couldn’t get a refund on his cruise and decided to go in the peak of it.

  54. @Achmed E. Newman
    Did Lori Lightfoot always look like the comic book character Groot? I recall she was a beautiful bouncy light-skinned long frizzy-haired black girl like you see on the cable TV flyers until her nasty bout with the evil Flu Manchu. What couldn't that Pandemic do?!

    Speaking of the Covid, now even Ann Coulter's stealing my material! From her latest column:

    Contrary to hysterical warnings in 2020 that “people you know” will die from COVID and “it’s definitely not just the flu,” I still don’t know anyone who knows anyone who died from COVID. For most people, it was “just the flu.”
     
    Likewise.

    Replies: @Verymuchalive, @Rob, @JR Ewing, @Paleo Liberal, @Jack D, @Almost Missouri, @kaganovitch, @Anon, @AnotherDad, @Cato

    While I doubt my experience is typical of the average American, I personally know 7 guys under 60(none under 45) who died of Covid. By “know” I mean I would say hello if I met them on the street. Two of them were good friends. Also the wife of a second cousin of mine. If you count over 70 deaths in which Covid is indicated but not certain, I knew twice as many. I should note that by Haredi standards, I’m on the autistic side of the Sociability curve, so I doubt my experience is untypical for the Haredi community. I should note that after summer of 2020, I don’t know anyone who died of Covid.

  55. Ha Ha!
    I read your latest post, about focus on the exceptions instead of the obvious most common first.
    Instead of an article about how big city mayors are falling like flies, we get an love letter to LightWeight. Just a victim of circumstance.

    Can’t see the forest for the trees is a thing.

  56. @Jack D
    @Almost Missouri


    I note that most of the vaccine takers I know also got covid anyway. Most of the covid avoiders I know also avoided the vaccine. So at the very least, the vaccine is mostly a scam.
     
    Personal anecdote is not really the way to go in science. From what I understand of the studies, while the vaccine does not totally prevent Covid infection, it does reduce the severity and the risk of hospitalization and death greatly. You have know way of knowing how sick the vaccine takers would have been if they were unvaccinated and became infected. Calling something that reduces the mortality rate from Covid from 1.5% to 0.13% "a scam" is a bit much.

    Replies: @Almost Missouri

    while the vaccine does not totally prevent Covid infection, it does reduce the severity and the risk of hospitalization and death greatly

    Dude, that’s from about the midpoint of Big Pharma’s humiliating climbdown from their original “95% effective” claim. Update firmware.

    You have no way of knowing how sick the vaccine takers would have been if they were unvaccinated and became infected.

    Similarly, you have no way of knowing what chronic conditions you are letting yourself in for with a vaccination, as averred in my above-linked comment.

    • Replies: @John Johnson
    @Almost Missouri

    Anti-vaxx leader Marc Bernier told us that natural cures will beat COVID.

    He was 100% certain and is now dead.

    A third anti-vaccine conservative radio host dies of COVID-19
    https://nypost.com/2021/08/30/conservative-radio-host-marc-bernier-dies-of-covid-19/

    Similarly, you have no way of knowing what chronic conditions you are letting yourself in for with a vaccination, as averred in my above-linked comment.

    There are anti-vaxxers with lifelong disabilities from wrecking their organs. Being on a ventilator for months can be the equivalent of a lifetime of smoking.

    It actually isn't natural for an obese Fox News watcher to have a machine do his breathing while he is an induced coma.

    But congrats on being an anti-vaxxer that made it through the death wave. Meatloaf not so much.

    Replies: @Female in FL, @Almost Missouri

    , @Jack D
    @Almost Missouri

    Funny cartoons are not the same thing as scientific publications. I'll show you mine, now you show me yours:

    https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(22)01656-7/fulltext

    People long ago made up their minds about this. About 97.1% of the U.S. population over 16 has gotten at least one dose of the Covid vaccine. A 1% risk of death is high but not enormous - it's not like skydiving without a parachute. If going from 1% to 0.1% doesn't impress you or you think that there are other unknown risks that have not been documented, that's your business. The whole excitement about the vaccines seems to be ovah. Do what you want.

    Replies: @The Germ Theory of Disease, @quewin, @Almost Missouri, @Mikeew

  57. @Almost Missouri
    @Achmed E. Newman

    Likewise.

    Anybody wanna follow this up with:

    Have any of the "people you know" been injured/killed by the mRNA "vaccine"?

    In my case, I still don't know anyone, but I note that most of the vaccine takers I know also got covid anyway. Most of the covid avoiders I know also avoided the vaccine. So at the very least, the vaccine is mostly a scam.

    Replies: @Jack D, @John Johnson

    In my case, I still don’t know anyone, but I note that most of the vaccine takers I know also got covid anyway. Most of the covid avoiders I know also avoided the vaccine. So at the very least, the vaccine is mostly a scam.

    That is how the flu vaccine works. It doesn’t prevent you from getting it. It reduces the severity and drastically reduces the odds of a hospital stay.

    Most of the fatalities since the COVID vaccine release have been in the unvaccinated. That is a globally consistent pattern. So not a scam when anti-vaxxers have recanted after being hooked up to a breathing machine.

    But I really don’t care if anyone gets the vaccine at this point. The latest variant is pretty light and the vulnerable anti-vaxxers can’t be killed twice. If you want to cough out a week long case of COVID then go ahead. Have at it. Stick it to the man.

    • Thanks: Inquiring Mind
    • Replies: @Anonymous
    @John Johnson

    This is government/big pharma talking points.

    https://expose-news.com/2023/02/28/uk-gov-confirms-triple-vaccinated-account-92perrcent-covid-deaths-2022/

  58. @Almost Missouri
    @Jack D


    while the vaccine does not totally prevent Covid infection, it does reduce the severity and the risk of hospitalization and death greatly
     
    Dude, that's from about the midpoint of Big Pharma's humiliating climbdown from their original "95% effective" claim. Update firmware.

    https://i.postimg.cc/5tSSGRDh/Vaccine-deterioration.jpg

    You have no way of knowing how sick the vaccine takers would have been if they were unvaccinated and became infected.
     
    Similarly, you have no way of knowing what chronic conditions you are letting yourself in for with a vaccination, as averred in my above-linked comment.

    Replies: @John Johnson, @Jack D

    Anti-vaxx leader Marc Bernier told us that natural cures will beat COVID.

    He was 100% certain and is now dead.

    A third anti-vaccine conservative radio host dies of COVID-19
    https://nypost.com/2021/08/30/conservative-radio-host-marc-bernier-dies-of-covid-19/

    Similarly, you have no way of knowing what chronic conditions you are letting yourself in for with a vaccination, as averred in my above-linked comment.

    There are anti-vaxxers with lifelong disabilities from wrecking their organs. Being on a ventilator for months can be the equivalent of a lifetime of smoking.

    It actually isn’t natural for an obese Fox News watcher to have a machine do his breathing while he is an induced coma.

    But congrats on being an anti-vaxxer that made it through the death wave. Meatloaf not so much.

    • Replies: @Female in FL
    @John Johnson

    Bernier made the mistake of going to the hospital. They put him on a ventilator and that was the end of him.

    Replies: @John Johnson

    , @Almost Missouri
    @John Johnson


    Anti-vaxx leader Marc Bernier told us that natural cures will beat COVID.

    He was 100% certain and is now dead.

    [etc.]
     
    Your brother-in-jab-fetishism Jack sez that "anecdote is not really the way to go in science", so maybe take it up with him.



    But if that's your preferred mode...

    https://i.postimg.cc/MGfqSTF2/Young-heart-attacks.png



    https://i.postimg.cc/26N0Z6pB/Covid-vaccination.jpg

    Replies: @John Johnson

  59. Perhaps it was a Covid shot and not illegal drugs they caused George Floyd to collapse!
    lll

  60. Anon[189] • Disclaimer says:
    @Achmed E. Newman
    Did Lori Lightfoot always look like the comic book character Groot? I recall she was a beautiful bouncy light-skinned long frizzy-haired black girl like you see on the cable TV flyers until her nasty bout with the evil Flu Manchu. What couldn't that Pandemic do?!

    Speaking of the Covid, now even Ann Coulter's stealing my material! From her latest column:

    Contrary to hysterical warnings in 2020 that “people you know” will die from COVID and “it’s definitely not just the flu,” I still don’t know anyone who knows anyone who died from COVID. For most people, it was “just the flu.”
     
    Likewise.

    Replies: @Verymuchalive, @Rob, @JR Ewing, @Paleo Liberal, @Jack D, @Almost Missouri, @kaganovitch, @Anon, @AnotherDad, @Cato

    I know someone who died of COVID: a woman who lived in my condominium building, in Dec 2021. Yes, after the vaccines were available.

    I do not know if she took the vaccine. I interacted with her in Dec 2021, when I got COVID too. No idea if I got it from her, or if she got it from me.

    The argument, I don’t know any one died from so-and-so, is really a bad argument, it holds no water in the statistical way of thinking.

    • Replies: @JR Ewing
    @Anon


    The argument, I don’t know any one died from so-and-so, is really a bad argument, it holds no water in the statistical way of thinking.
     
    Right, but there is a similar argument to be made that is actually germane, and that one is, "Not enough people died, or even became ill, to disrupt society and the economy. And most people never noticed any negative effects,"

    In other words, your local convenience store wasn't forced to shut down because they didn't have enough workers to stay open. Nor was the grocery store, nor was the drug store, nor was any other businesses.

    There were plenty of business that went bankrupt because they weren't allowed to open, but the "pandemic" wasn't so disruptive that the economy cratered. The economy cratered because the government(s) shut everything down for a few weeks.

    , @Female in FL
    @Anon

    I live in a gated community on a golf course. I don’t golf. The women's league made it mandatory that everyone get the shot as well as boosters. A 62 year old woman golfer, in great shape, came home one day feeling tired. She never woke up.

  61. Every adverse election outcome now gets lazily attributed to the pandemic [sic] just like every biological phenomenon is lazily attributed to evolution.

    I love also the way people so breezily and so en passant, as it were if you will, invoke “the pandemic” [sic] when it’s utterly irrelevant to the matter at hand, viz: “It was during the pandemic when I bought a new car.” Wut lol!

  62. @Achmed E. Newman
    Did Lori Lightfoot always look like the comic book character Groot? I recall she was a beautiful bouncy light-skinned long frizzy-haired black girl like you see on the cable TV flyers until her nasty bout with the evil Flu Manchu. What couldn't that Pandemic do?!

    Speaking of the Covid, now even Ann Coulter's stealing my material! From her latest column:

    Contrary to hysterical warnings in 2020 that “people you know” will die from COVID and “it’s definitely not just the flu,” I still don’t know anyone who knows anyone who died from COVID. For most people, it was “just the flu.”
     
    Likewise.

    Replies: @Verymuchalive, @Rob, @JR Ewing, @Paleo Liberal, @Jack D, @Almost Missouri, @kaganovitch, @Anon, @AnotherDad, @Cato

    Contrary to hysterical warnings in 2020 that “people you know” will die from COVID and “it’s definitely not just the flu,” I still don’t know anyone who knows anyone who died from COVID. For most people, it was “just the flu.”

    Really, we’re going to rewind this stupid shit again?

    Ann is a valuable lady, who managed to grow from just conservative crank, to understanding the primacy of the immigration issue. She does useful work now. And since–obviously–for most people it is indeed “just the flu”, this certainly isn’t as stupid as her “Amanda Knox did it” nonsense.

    US deaths had been slowly bumping up around 50 or 60k each year during the teens (from the mid to high 2 millions) and then suddenly jumped up by half a million in 2020. And remained there in 2021. Covid has killed over a million Americans. Ann might legitimately not know anyone–but certainly she has many friends and neighbors who do. (Some people just can’t “do math”.)

    The relevant issue in debunking the hysteria, was not that a bunch of people did not die. It was “who died”. Basically it was a bunch of old people (or sick, health compromised or very overweight/diabetic people). Covid mostly just did an early harvest of old people. (The one person I know–my uncle, a terrific guy–was, frankly “due”. Zero QALYs lost. His wife–also in her early 90s–got it and survived … then died a year later. That’s what old people do–they die.)

    Furthermore … we knew all this from the get go! Broken record since March 2020–but we knew what this was going to be like from the moment the Diamond Princess docked. 700 people tested as infected. A couple 80 year oldish geezers quickly died. A bunch went to the hospital. Over the next few weeks a total of 14 passengers–all over 60, ended up dead. Not a single one of the–much younger–crew died.

    In other words: A serious hiccup in life-expectancy, but no threat to civilization.

    Some things can indeed be real and serious, but still not very important. Covid was one of those things.

    There was never any need to do any of this nonsense of “lockdowns”, of shuttering businesses. Simple advice we could have/should have had:
    — if you’re sick–stay the #*@% home
    — be extra careful associating with oldfolks; be absolutely sure you aren’t sick and haven’t been exposed
    — oldsters and immunocompromised, be especially careful in your socializing
    — lose weight
    — take your vitamin D and zinc
    — avoid indoor heavy breathing situations
    — move more socializing outside–skip the club and go to the beach, the park, go golfing, hiking, paddling, camping
    — great time for young couple to get hitched, spend time together making babies … to replace the great seniors we’re going to lose

    A big problem is that a lot of people have lost touch with the basic rhythm of life. That there’s a natural order and civilization depends on upholding–and ideally strengthening–that order: You grow up learning to be a productive citizen. You work. (Criminals sent to jail.) You find a mate and get married. Young women–yes, they have to be young and women–have babies. You work some more. You raise your kids to be productive citizens to replace yourself and carry on your nation, your civilization after you. (Foreigners not required or desired.) You get old. You make fun of your kids, getting grief from their kids. You die.

    It is good, rewarding, beautiful.

    • Thanks: Cato
    • Replies: @Jack D
    @AnotherDad

    If it had been ONLY old white people, then it would have been hunky dory, no lockdowns, no forced vaccinations, none of the bullshit. In fact it would have been Leftists screaming NOT to kill our whole economy for the sake of old white Trump voters. And pre-Covid anti-vaxxers used to be hippy-dippy Leftist type folks.

    BUT the test of virtue in all things now is "how does it affect minorities?" Aside from the old white people category, the other group that was most at risk was overweight blacks and Hispanics, many of whom were diabetic. There were even a few (obese) black teens who died of it and became poster boys. THAT is ultimately what drove the Covid hysteria.

    https://www.cnn.com/2020/06/19/health/teen-death-coronavirus-wellness-partner/index.html

    https://media.cnn.com/api/v1/images/stellar/prod/200615143833-01-teen-death-coronavirus-wellness-partner.jpg?q=x_0,y_0,h_1406,w_2498,c_fill/h_270,w_480

    Our society is so polarized today that it's almost a coin flip - whatever one side likes, the other side DOESN'T like. As crazy as it sounds, it could have easily turned out the other way with anti-vax being a Leftist cause.

    Replies: @Almost Missouri, @Mark G.

    , @Achmed E. Newman
    @AnotherDad


    Really, we’re going to rewind this stupid shit again?
     
    Fuckin' A, we'd better, till people realize what they did wrong!

    I thank the repliers here for their stories, and I have no reason to doubt any one of them. Commenter MBlanc46 on my blog (sometimes here too) mentioned someone he knows who died from this virus. If I count on-line-only friends/acquaintances, I should back off of the last phrase, but read carefully what Ann Coulter and I have said.


    I still don’t know anyone who knows anyone who died from COVID. For most people, it was “just the flu.”
     
    The last phrase squares the number that is for most people in the multiple hundreds if not the low thousands, based on average # of friends/acquaintances.

    For Anon-#189, yes this most certainly holds water. I don't live in some special bubble-town or something. It was the same PanicFest here. Yet, nobody I know KNOWS anyone who died from this. I.e., it wasn't the freaking Black Death 2.0! Now, I'll read "nobody said it was", but yes, many of you all ACTED like it was. None of that Totalitarian bullshit that you people were just fine with was OK with me, even had this been the Black Death 2.0. (My family would have hunkered down on our own until the last package of Raman Noodles was cooked up on the unleaded-gas-burning Coleman stove. We still wouldn't need directions from some arrogant asshole like Tony Fauci.)

    I was onto this scam from mid-March of '20. My wife didn't get better till early that summer and not completely well till the end of the summer. (No, not from the Flu Manchu, from the PanicFest.) As I recall, you, AD, were in the thick of it, as are some others I could mention. It's not good for the country for you to be wrong about this kind of thing - that's why we DO need to learn from what "happened" (how the population was duped and taken advantage of, is what it that should be).

    So, all the rest of your comment that I totally agree with, well, it'll mean nothing next time the Globalists running the Feral Gov't here decide to take advantage of the many dupes again on some other pretext.

    Replies: @John Johnson

  63. @AnotherDad
    @Achmed E. Newman


    Contrary to hysterical warnings in 2020 that “people you know” will die from COVID and “it’s definitely not just the flu,” I still don’t know anyone who knows anyone who died from COVID. For most people, it was “just the flu.”
     
    Really, we're going to rewind this stupid shit again?

    Ann is a valuable lady, who managed to grow from just conservative crank, to understanding the primacy of the immigration issue. She does useful work now. And since--obviously--for most people it is indeed "just the flu", this certainly isn't as stupid as her "Amanda Knox did it" nonsense.

    US deaths had been slowly bumping up around 50 or 60k each year during the teens (from the mid to high 2 millions) and then suddenly jumped up by half a million in 2020. And remained there in 2021. Covid has killed over a million Americans. Ann might legitimately not know anyone--but certainly she has many friends and neighbors who do. (Some people just can't "do math".)

    The relevant issue in debunking the hysteria, was not that a bunch of people did not die. It was "who died". Basically it was a bunch of old people (or sick, health compromised or very overweight/diabetic people). Covid mostly just did an early harvest of old people. (The one person I know--my uncle, a terrific guy--was, frankly "due". Zero QALYs lost. His wife--also in her early 90s--got it and survived ... then died a year later. That's what old people do--they die.)

    Furthermore ... we knew all this from the get go! Broken record since March 2020--but we knew what this was going to be like from the moment the Diamond Princess docked. 700 people tested as infected. A couple 80 year oldish geezers quickly died. A bunch went to the hospital. Over the next few weeks a total of 14 passengers--all over 60, ended up dead. Not a single one of the--much younger--crew died.

    In other words: A serious hiccup in life-expectancy, but no threat to civilization.

    Some things can indeed be real and serious, but still not very important. Covid was one of those things.

    There was never any need to do any of this nonsense of "lockdowns", of shuttering businesses. Simple advice we could have/should have had:
    -- if you're sick--stay the #*@% home
    -- be extra careful associating with oldfolks; be absolutely sure you aren't sick and haven't been exposed
    -- oldsters and immunocompromised, be especially careful in your socializing
    -- lose weight
    -- take your vitamin D and zinc
    -- avoid indoor heavy breathing situations
    -- move more socializing outside--skip the club and go to the beach, the park, go golfing, hiking, paddling, camping
    -- great time for young couple to get hitched, spend time together making babies ... to replace the great seniors we're going to lose


    A big problem is that a lot of people have lost touch with the basic rhythm of life. That there's a natural order and civilization depends on upholding--and ideally strengthening--that order: You grow up learning to be a productive citizen. You work. (Criminals sent to jail.) You find a mate and get married. Young women--yes, they have to be young and women--have babies. You work some more. You raise your kids to be productive citizens to replace yourself and carry on your nation, your civilization after you. (Foreigners not required or desired.) You get old. You make fun of your kids, getting grief from their kids. You die.

    It is good, rewarding, beautiful.

    Replies: @Jack D, @Achmed E. Newman

    If it had been ONLY old white people, then it would have been hunky dory, no lockdowns, no forced vaccinations, none of the bullshit. In fact it would have been Leftists screaming NOT to kill our whole economy for the sake of old white Trump voters. And pre-Covid anti-vaxxers used to be hippy-dippy Leftist type folks.

    BUT the test of virtue in all things now is “how does it affect minorities?” Aside from the old white people category, the other group that was most at risk was overweight blacks and Hispanics, many of whom were diabetic. There were even a few (obese) black teens who died of it and became poster boys. THAT is ultimately what drove the Covid hysteria.

    https://www.cnn.com/2020/06/19/health/teen-death-coronavirus-wellness-partner/index.html

    https://media.cnn.com/api/v1/images/stellar/prod/200615143833-01-teen-death-coronavirus-wellness-partner.jpg?q=x_0,y_0,h_1406,w_2498,c_fill/h_270,w_480

    Our society is so polarized today that it’s almost a coin flip – whatever one side likes, the other side DOESN’T like. As crazy as it sounds, it could have easily turned out the other way with anti-vax being a Leftist cause.

    • Replies: @Almost Missouri
    @Jack D


    Our society is so polarized today that it’s almost a coin flip – whatever one side likes, the other side DOESN’T like. As crazy as it sounds, it could have easily turned out the other way with anti-vax being a Leftist cause.
     
    In early 2022 it was the other way: lefties saying they would never take the Trump vaccine. You can probably still find some of their old tweets if they haven't gone back and deleted them.

    BUT the test of virtue in all things now is “how does it affect minorities?” ... THAT is ultimately what drove the Covid hysteria.
     
    I don't know why it flipped to the way it is now, but that's as good a theory as any I guess.

    For myself, I was vax-skeptical then and have remained so. I don't care what the political coalitions are.
    , @Mark G.
    @Jack D


    Our society is so polarized today that it’s almost a coin flip – whatever one side likes, the other side DOESN’T like. As crazy as it sounds, it could have easily turned out the other way with anti-vax being a Leftist cause.
     
    There were old rightwing radio talk show hosts who died from the disease who would have survived it if they had gotten vaccinated but didn't because they saw it as a liberal thing. These same people 10 years earlier might have been making fun of anyone who headed down to the hippie health food store to buy organic food and nutritional supplements so they could avoid the products of big pharma and big agriculture. There were 20-year-old liberals who ran out and got the shot and now are getting the boosters even though they don't really need them because they identify anti-vax with conservative.

    There were only a few people, like Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who stayed consistently on one side. He was a liberal who stayed anti-vax. I was consistent. Instead of a one size fits all approach, I've always thought something may be good for some people but bad for others. I'm in my sixties and when people my age I knew got the Covid vaccine, I never said a word against it.

    Replies: @Anonymous

  64. @Almost Missouri
    @Jack D


    while the vaccine does not totally prevent Covid infection, it does reduce the severity and the risk of hospitalization and death greatly
     
    Dude, that's from about the midpoint of Big Pharma's humiliating climbdown from their original "95% effective" claim. Update firmware.

    https://i.postimg.cc/5tSSGRDh/Vaccine-deterioration.jpg

    You have no way of knowing how sick the vaccine takers would have been if they were unvaccinated and became infected.
     
    Similarly, you have no way of knowing what chronic conditions you are letting yourself in for with a vaccination, as averred in my above-linked comment.

    Replies: @John Johnson, @Jack D

    Funny cartoons are not the same thing as scientific publications. I’ll show you mine, now you show me yours:

    https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(22)01656-7/fulltext

    People long ago made up their minds about this. About 97.1% of the U.S. population over 16 has gotten at least one dose of the Covid vaccine. A 1% risk of death is high but not enormous – it’s not like skydiving without a parachute. If going from 1% to 0.1% doesn’t impress you or you think that there are other unknown risks that have not been documented, that’s your business. The whole excitement about the vaccines seems to be ovah. Do what you want.

    • Replies: @The Germ Theory of Disease
    @Jack D

    Unfortunately, we live in a time when scientific publications are increasingly turning into funny cartoons.

    All over the place, science is being politicized and weaponized. Confucius famously said, "The righteous man is not [someone's] tool." Increasingly, science is being used as someone's tool.

    Come on, take a little walk with me baby,
    And tell me who do you trust.

    Replies: @Gary in Gramercy

    , @quewin
    @Jack D

    I’m not trying to pick a fight, and I don’t like being “that guy,” but where does that 97.1% come from?

    (I find it hard to believe that I’m part of only 2.9% of the US near-adult population that didn’t get a single shot.)

    Replies: @Jack D

    , @Almost Missouri
    @Jack D


    I’ll show you mine, now you show me yours
     
    Vax exacerbates rheumatism. n= 1,617

    https://www.worldscientific.com/doi/10.1142/S2661341723500013

    Vax exacerbates cardiac problems. n = 284,592

    https://www.nature.com/articles/s44161-022-00177-8

    Enjoy.

    As you say, "people long ago made up their minds about this", so I don't expect you or anyone else to read them.

    Funny cartoons are not the same thing as scientific publications.
     
    If you recall the genesis of this thread, it was trading personal anecdotes, so it was definitely science-optional. In any case my experience having posted many scientific studies in the past that no one reads them except for maybe res and one or two others. Ridicule memes if you like, but people actually read them. And at this point The Science™ has so catastrophically cashed in its credibility chips that there is probably more truth in a well-crafted meme than in the latest gurglings of the moribund Science-Industrial logrolling Complex.
    , @Mikeew
    @Jack D

    According to statista the actual number of at least one Vax in the USA is 81.2 percent.

  65. @Jack D
    @Almost Missouri

    Funny cartoons are not the same thing as scientific publications. I'll show you mine, now you show me yours:

    https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(22)01656-7/fulltext

    People long ago made up their minds about this. About 97.1% of the U.S. population over 16 has gotten at least one dose of the Covid vaccine. A 1% risk of death is high but not enormous - it's not like skydiving without a parachute. If going from 1% to 0.1% doesn't impress you or you think that there are other unknown risks that have not been documented, that's your business. The whole excitement about the vaccines seems to be ovah. Do what you want.

    Replies: @The Germ Theory of Disease, @quewin, @Almost Missouri, @Mikeew

    Unfortunately, we live in a time when scientific publications are increasingly turning into funny cartoons.

    All over the place, science is being politicized and weaponized. Confucius famously said, “The righteous man is not [someone’s] tool.” Increasingly, science is being used as someone’s tool.

    Come on, take a little walk with me baby,
    And tell me who do you trust.

    • Replies: @Gary in Gramercy
    @The Germ Theory of Disease

    https://youtu.be/XhFIMrXAoAU

    Secret Handshake Question: what does this record have in common with "Moulty" by the Barbarians?

  66. @Verymuchalive
    @Achmed E. Newman

    The nearest I got to that was a friend of my sister's, whose father spent a fortnight in hospital, including time on a ventilator. He is in his seventies and had been hospitalised for bouts of pneumonia in the past. So no big surprise. He made a full recovery and is very much alive ( pun intended ).

    In all the COVID brouhaha, I don't recall any UR columnist or blogger claiming they knew someone who had died of it, not even the President of the Board himself, Ron. The same goes for commenters. Kind of odd for a dangerous worlwide pandemic !

    Replies: @Brutusale, @John Johnson, @Anon, @Art Deco

    I dk anyone who died of covid. There was a guy in the news a while back who died after falling into a vat of boiling metal.
    I didn’t know him, but, I thought,one hell of an exit.
    That’s how I want to go.

    • Replies: @Verymuchalive
    @Anon

    There was a guy in the news a while back who died after falling into a vat of boiling metal.

    He died of heavy metal. Lemmy, eat your heart out ! ( wherever you are )

    Replies: @Joe Stalin

    , @Achmed E. Newman
    @Anon

    What's the death certificate read?

    Doctor's report: "The deceased had tested positive for the Covid-19 2 hours before falling into the vat. Cause of death, Covid-19."

  67. @The Germ Theory of Disease
    @Jack D

    Unfortunately, we live in a time when scientific publications are increasingly turning into funny cartoons.

    All over the place, science is being politicized and weaponized. Confucius famously said, "The righteous man is not [someone's] tool." Increasingly, science is being used as someone's tool.

    Come on, take a little walk with me baby,
    And tell me who do you trust.

    Replies: @Gary in Gramercy

    Secret Handshake Question: what does this record have in common with “Moulty” by the Barbarians?

  68. @Paleo Liberal
    @SafeNow

    I once saw an interesting analysis of LBJ in a self help book. Admittedly an old one.

    LBJ was well known as being one is the most effective Senate Majority Leaders the US has ever had. There was a misconception that he bullied and “arm twisted “ the other Democrats into following him. In reality there was far more carrot than stick. If a senator wanted a pork bill for his state, LBJ would gladly push it through, usually combined with items to benefit other senators. The “arm twisting” was simply that everyone owed LBJ tons of favors, and nobody wanted the favors to end.

    LBJ could be stubborn and domineering at times, especially when he was President, but Lightfoot appears to have only noticed LBJ’s big stick and not the carrots.

    Replies: @John Burns, Gettysburg Partisan, @Muggles

    Lightfoot appears to have only noticed LBJ’s big stick and not the carrots.

    Well, Lightfoot didn’t arrange to murder her predecessor to take office.

    On the other hand, LBJ was prettier.

    • LOL: Achmed E. Newman
  69. What I’ve heard from old friends still in the Chicago area is she was fairly despised, even among Blacks.

  70. Anonymous[328] • Disclaimer says:
    @John Johnson
    @Almost Missouri

    In my case, I still don’t know anyone, but I note that most of the vaccine takers I know also got covid anyway. Most of the covid avoiders I know also avoided the vaccine. So at the very least, the vaccine is mostly a scam.

    That is how the flu vaccine works. It doesn't prevent you from getting it. It reduces the severity and drastically reduces the odds of a hospital stay.

    Most of the fatalities since the COVID vaccine release have been in the unvaccinated. That is a globally consistent pattern. So not a scam when anti-vaxxers have recanted after being hooked up to a breathing machine.

    But I really don't care if anyone gets the vaccine at this point. The latest variant is pretty light and the vulnerable anti-vaxxers can't be killed twice. If you want to cough out a week long case of COVID then go ahead. Have at it. Stick it to the man.

    Replies: @Anonymous

  71. @Wokechoke
    @JR Ewing

    Agreed with everything you said until the Shapiro drop, Why did you ruin good bit of prose?

    Replies: @JR Ewing

    LOL – Even a blond squirrel finds a nut every now and then.

  72. @Jack D
    @Almost Missouri

    Funny cartoons are not the same thing as scientific publications. I'll show you mine, now you show me yours:

    https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(22)01656-7/fulltext

    People long ago made up their minds about this. About 97.1% of the U.S. population over 16 has gotten at least one dose of the Covid vaccine. A 1% risk of death is high but not enormous - it's not like skydiving without a parachute. If going from 1% to 0.1% doesn't impress you or you think that there are other unknown risks that have not been documented, that's your business. The whole excitement about the vaccines seems to be ovah. Do what you want.

    Replies: @The Germ Theory of Disease, @quewin, @Almost Missouri, @Mikeew

    I’m not trying to pick a fight, and I don’t like being “that guy,” but where does that 97.1% come from?

    (I find it hard to believe that I’m part of only 2.9% of the US near-adult population that didn’t get a single shot.)

    • Replies: @Jack D
    @quewin

    The CDC.

    https://dig.abclocal.go.com/ccg/interactives/us-vaccine-tracker/vax_us_cdc.html

  73. @Anon
    @Achmed E. Newman

    I know someone who died of COVID: a woman who lived in my condominium building, in Dec 2021. Yes, after the vaccines were available.

    I do not know if she took the vaccine. I interacted with her in Dec 2021, when I got COVID too. No idea if I got it from her, or if she got it from me.

    The argument, I don’t know any one died from so-and-so, is really a bad argument, it holds no water in the statistical way of thinking.

    Replies: @JR Ewing, @Female in FL

    The argument, I don’t know any one died from so-and-so, is really a bad argument, it holds no water in the statistical way of thinking.

    Right, but there is a similar argument to be made that is actually germane, and that one is, “Not enough people died, or even became ill, to disrupt society and the economy. And most people never noticed any negative effects,”

    In other words, your local convenience store wasn’t forced to shut down because they didn’t have enough workers to stay open. Nor was the grocery store, nor was the drug store, nor was any other businesses.

    There were plenty of business that went bankrupt because they weren’t allowed to open, but the “pandemic” wasn’t so disruptive that the economy cratered. The economy cratered because the government(s) shut everything down for a few weeks.

    • Agree: Mark G.
  74. @Adam Smith
    @Female in FL

    I too miss Modern Heretic. I like his writing style.
    Sometimes I go to archive.org to read some of his old stuff...

    Modern Heretic Archive

    (Does anyone know if he's still blogging or where I can read his new stuff?)
    (Perhaps on Tor?)

    Replies: @Female in FL

    Lol, I do the same! Last one I revisited was about a negro drinking booze under an aqueduct, hilarious. That guy has talent few people possess.
    If anyone knows where he resurfaced, I beg of you, let me know.

    • Agree: Adam Smith
  75. @John Johnson
    @Almost Missouri

    Anti-vaxx leader Marc Bernier told us that natural cures will beat COVID.

    He was 100% certain and is now dead.

    A third anti-vaccine conservative radio host dies of COVID-19
    https://nypost.com/2021/08/30/conservative-radio-host-marc-bernier-dies-of-covid-19/

    Similarly, you have no way of knowing what chronic conditions you are letting yourself in for with a vaccination, as averred in my above-linked comment.

    There are anti-vaxxers with lifelong disabilities from wrecking their organs. Being on a ventilator for months can be the equivalent of a lifetime of smoking.

    It actually isn't natural for an obese Fox News watcher to have a machine do his breathing while he is an induced coma.

    But congrats on being an anti-vaxxer that made it through the death wave. Meatloaf not so much.

    Replies: @Female in FL, @Almost Missouri

    Bernier made the mistake of going to the hospital. They put him on a ventilator and that was the end of him.

    • Replies: @John Johnson
    @Female in FL

    Bernier made the mistake of going to the hospital. They put him on a ventilator and that was the end of him.

    They only put you on a ventilator as a last resort. It means your lungs are shutting down.

    Most of the time you don't come out of it. The virus destroys your lungs and the machine can't save you. Hospitals don't want to put anyone on a ventilator. It's extremely expensive and ties up staff.

    Thankfully the newer variants don't infect the lungs as deeply and most of this is in the past.

    But we still have obese conservatives ending up in the hospital because they believe that not getting the vaccine is the safer option. They read some scare story about extremely rare myocarditis even though it was observed in young men and normally clears within 2 weeks. Of course the scare stories don't mention any of those details.

    mRNA vaccines are here to stay. The next gen flu vaccines will be mRNA and they will be more effective because they can be updated quicker.

    I'd have more respect for the anti-vaxx movement if they acknowledged that some vulnerable groups are better off getting the vaccine. But before they were even released the anti-vaxxers decreed them to not work or be poison for everyone. To this day the anti-vaxxers can't agree on if the vaccines work or not. It shows that their movement is largely emotional and not based on data. It's in fact still accepted within the anti-vaxx movement to decree that the virus doesn't exist. That underscores how it is really an emotionally driven alliance.

    Replies: @Anon

  76. @Anon
    @Achmed E. Newman

    I know someone who died of COVID: a woman who lived in my condominium building, in Dec 2021. Yes, after the vaccines were available.

    I do not know if she took the vaccine. I interacted with her in Dec 2021, when I got COVID too. No idea if I got it from her, or if she got it from me.

    The argument, I don’t know any one died from so-and-so, is really a bad argument, it holds no water in the statistical way of thinking.

    Replies: @JR Ewing, @Female in FL

    I live in a gated community on a golf course. I don’t golf. The women’s league made it mandatory that everyone get the shot as well as boosters. A 62 year old woman golfer, in great shape, came home one day feeling tired. She never woke up.

  77. This was one of my favorite Lori Lightfoot moments, when she walked up with a camera crew and very condescendingly told some “youths” to go home and quit playing basketball in the park. It did not go over very well for her. The patronizing and smug leftism just oozes out.

    The conversation did not go over very well for her.

  78. @Wilkey
    I look forward to the next AP tweet: “Politician losing election is a sign democracy is broken.”

    Replies: @Almost Missouri

    If you consider all the populism-is-breaking-Our-Democracy stuff they’ve already published, we’re already there.

  79. @Jack D
    @AnotherDad

    If it had been ONLY old white people, then it would have been hunky dory, no lockdowns, no forced vaccinations, none of the bullshit. In fact it would have been Leftists screaming NOT to kill our whole economy for the sake of old white Trump voters. And pre-Covid anti-vaxxers used to be hippy-dippy Leftist type folks.

    BUT the test of virtue in all things now is "how does it affect minorities?" Aside from the old white people category, the other group that was most at risk was overweight blacks and Hispanics, many of whom were diabetic. There were even a few (obese) black teens who died of it and became poster boys. THAT is ultimately what drove the Covid hysteria.

    https://www.cnn.com/2020/06/19/health/teen-death-coronavirus-wellness-partner/index.html

    https://media.cnn.com/api/v1/images/stellar/prod/200615143833-01-teen-death-coronavirus-wellness-partner.jpg?q=x_0,y_0,h_1406,w_2498,c_fill/h_270,w_480

    Our society is so polarized today that it's almost a coin flip - whatever one side likes, the other side DOESN'T like. As crazy as it sounds, it could have easily turned out the other way with anti-vax being a Leftist cause.

    Replies: @Almost Missouri, @Mark G.

    Our society is so polarized today that it’s almost a coin flip – whatever one side likes, the other side DOESN’T like. As crazy as it sounds, it could have easily turned out the other way with anti-vax being a Leftist cause.

    In early 2022 it was the other way: lefties saying they would never take the Trump vaccine. You can probably still find some of their old tweets if they haven’t gone back and deleted them.

    BUT the test of virtue in all things now is “how does it affect minorities?” … THAT is ultimately what drove the Covid hysteria.

    I don’t know why it flipped to the way it is now, but that’s as good a theory as any I guess.

    For myself, I was vax-skeptical then and have remained so. I don’t care what the political coalitions are.

  80. @Jack D
    @Almost Missouri

    Funny cartoons are not the same thing as scientific publications. I'll show you mine, now you show me yours:

    https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(22)01656-7/fulltext

    People long ago made up their minds about this. About 97.1% of the U.S. population over 16 has gotten at least one dose of the Covid vaccine. A 1% risk of death is high but not enormous - it's not like skydiving without a parachute. If going from 1% to 0.1% doesn't impress you or you think that there are other unknown risks that have not been documented, that's your business. The whole excitement about the vaccines seems to be ovah. Do what you want.

    Replies: @The Germ Theory of Disease, @quewin, @Almost Missouri, @Mikeew

    I’ll show you mine, now you show me yours

    Vax exacerbates rheumatism. n= 1,617

    https://www.worldscientific.com/doi/10.1142/S2661341723500013

    Vax exacerbates cardiac problems. n = 284,592

    https://www.nature.com/articles/s44161-022-00177-8

    Enjoy.

    As you say, “people long ago made up their minds about this”, so I don’t expect you or anyone else to read them.

    Funny cartoons are not the same thing as scientific publications.

    If you recall the genesis of this thread, it was trading personal anecdotes, so it was definitely science-optional. In any case my experience having posted many scientific studies in the past that no one reads them except for maybe res and one or two others. Ridicule memes if you like, but people actually read them. And at this point The Science™ has so catastrophically cashed in its credibility chips that there is probably more truth in a well-crafted meme than in the latest gurglings of the moribund Science-Industrial logrolling Complex.

  81. Mayor Lightfoot’s orders to CPD to deescalate during the GF riots led directly to the destruction of Chicago’s businesses.

    Contrast that to the Old Democrat Mayor Richard J. Daley.

    She could have kept the schools open instead of bowing to the Chicago Teachers Union, kept the restraurants open, said no to mask mandates to keep the economy going.

    Her arrogance did her in.

    • Agree: Mark G.
  82. @Jack D
    @AnotherDad

    If it had been ONLY old white people, then it would have been hunky dory, no lockdowns, no forced vaccinations, none of the bullshit. In fact it would have been Leftists screaming NOT to kill our whole economy for the sake of old white Trump voters. And pre-Covid anti-vaxxers used to be hippy-dippy Leftist type folks.

    BUT the test of virtue in all things now is "how does it affect minorities?" Aside from the old white people category, the other group that was most at risk was overweight blacks and Hispanics, many of whom were diabetic. There were even a few (obese) black teens who died of it and became poster boys. THAT is ultimately what drove the Covid hysteria.

    https://www.cnn.com/2020/06/19/health/teen-death-coronavirus-wellness-partner/index.html

    https://media.cnn.com/api/v1/images/stellar/prod/200615143833-01-teen-death-coronavirus-wellness-partner.jpg?q=x_0,y_0,h_1406,w_2498,c_fill/h_270,w_480

    Our society is so polarized today that it's almost a coin flip - whatever one side likes, the other side DOESN'T like. As crazy as it sounds, it could have easily turned out the other way with anti-vax being a Leftist cause.

    Replies: @Almost Missouri, @Mark G.

    Our society is so polarized today that it’s almost a coin flip – whatever one side likes, the other side DOESN’T like. As crazy as it sounds, it could have easily turned out the other way with anti-vax being a Leftist cause.

    There were old rightwing radio talk show hosts who died from the disease who would have survived it if they had gotten vaccinated but didn’t because they saw it as a liberal thing. These same people 10 years earlier might have been making fun of anyone who headed down to the hippie health food store to buy organic food and nutritional supplements so they could avoid the products of big pharma and big agriculture. There were 20-year-old liberals who ran out and got the shot and now are getting the boosters even though they don’t really need them because they identify anti-vax with conservative.

    There were only a few people, like Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who stayed consistently on one side. He was a liberal who stayed anti-vax. I was consistent. Instead of a one size fits all approach, I’ve always thought something may be good for some people but bad for others. I’m in my sixties and when people my age I knew got the Covid vaccine, I never said a word against it.

    • Replies: @Anonymous
    @Mark G.

    Yes, it was the same with masks. When Trump said he wasn't going to wear one, immediately all liberals on social media uploaded profile pics of themselves wearing masks. It became a blue-team tribal marker.

  83. @Jack D
    @Almost Missouri

    Funny cartoons are not the same thing as scientific publications. I'll show you mine, now you show me yours:

    https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(22)01656-7/fulltext

    People long ago made up their minds about this. About 97.1% of the U.S. population over 16 has gotten at least one dose of the Covid vaccine. A 1% risk of death is high but not enormous - it's not like skydiving without a parachute. If going from 1% to 0.1% doesn't impress you or you think that there are other unknown risks that have not been documented, that's your business. The whole excitement about the vaccines seems to be ovah. Do what you want.

    Replies: @The Germ Theory of Disease, @quewin, @Almost Missouri, @Mikeew

    According to statista the actual number of at least one Vax in the USA is 81.2 percent.

  84. “Polling also showed that Garcia enjoyed heavy support from Latino voters, while a plurality of white voters backed Vallas and a plurality of black voters backed Lightfoot.”

    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2023_Chicago_mayoral_election#Campaign

    • Replies: @Flip
    @Reg Cæsar

    The Mexicans are going to vote for the white guy. They don’t get along with blacks.

  85. Anonymous[192] • Disclaimer says:
    @Mark G.
    @Jack D


    Our society is so polarized today that it’s almost a coin flip – whatever one side likes, the other side DOESN’T like. As crazy as it sounds, it could have easily turned out the other way with anti-vax being a Leftist cause.
     
    There were old rightwing radio talk show hosts who died from the disease who would have survived it if they had gotten vaccinated but didn't because they saw it as a liberal thing. These same people 10 years earlier might have been making fun of anyone who headed down to the hippie health food store to buy organic food and nutritional supplements so they could avoid the products of big pharma and big agriculture. There were 20-year-old liberals who ran out and got the shot and now are getting the boosters even though they don't really need them because they identify anti-vax with conservative.

    There were only a few people, like Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who stayed consistently on one side. He was a liberal who stayed anti-vax. I was consistent. Instead of a one size fits all approach, I've always thought something may be good for some people but bad for others. I'm in my sixties and when people my age I knew got the Covid vaccine, I never said a word against it.

    Replies: @Anonymous

    Yes, it was the same with masks. When Trump said he wasn’t going to wear one, immediately all liberals on social media uploaded profile pics of themselves wearing masks. It became a blue-team tribal marker.

    • Agree: Mark G.
  86. @Anon
    @Verymuchalive

    I dk anyone who died of covid. There was a guy in the news a while back who died after falling into a vat of boiling metal.
    I didn't know him, but, I thought,one hell of an exit.
    That's how I want to go.

    Replies: @Verymuchalive, @Achmed E. Newman

    There was a guy in the news a while back who died after falling into a vat of boiling metal.

    He died of heavy metal. Lemmy, eat your heart out ! ( wherever you are )

    • Replies: @Joe Stalin
    @Verymuchalive

    Joke in Charlie Chan movie:

    Man who falls in vat of molten glass makes spectacle of himself.

  87. @Reg Cæsar
    "Polling also showed that Garcia enjoyed heavy support from Latino voters, while a plurality of white voters backed Vallas and a plurality of black voters backed Lightfoot."

    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2023_Chicago_mayoral_election#Campaign


    https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/c0/2023_Chicago_mayoral_first_round_election_results_map_by_precinct.svg/481px-2023_Chicago_mayoral_first_round_election_results_map_by_precinct.svg.png



    https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CQrNClPUYAA3NVh.jpg

    Replies: @Flip

    The Mexicans are going to vote for the white guy. They don’t get along with blacks.

  88. @AnotherDad
    @Achmed E. Newman


    Contrary to hysterical warnings in 2020 that “people you know” will die from COVID and “it’s definitely not just the flu,” I still don’t know anyone who knows anyone who died from COVID. For most people, it was “just the flu.”
     
    Really, we're going to rewind this stupid shit again?

    Ann is a valuable lady, who managed to grow from just conservative crank, to understanding the primacy of the immigration issue. She does useful work now. And since--obviously--for most people it is indeed "just the flu", this certainly isn't as stupid as her "Amanda Knox did it" nonsense.

    US deaths had been slowly bumping up around 50 or 60k each year during the teens (from the mid to high 2 millions) and then suddenly jumped up by half a million in 2020. And remained there in 2021. Covid has killed over a million Americans. Ann might legitimately not know anyone--but certainly she has many friends and neighbors who do. (Some people just can't "do math".)

    The relevant issue in debunking the hysteria, was not that a bunch of people did not die. It was "who died". Basically it was a bunch of old people (or sick, health compromised or very overweight/diabetic people). Covid mostly just did an early harvest of old people. (The one person I know--my uncle, a terrific guy--was, frankly "due". Zero QALYs lost. His wife--also in her early 90s--got it and survived ... then died a year later. That's what old people do--they die.)

    Furthermore ... we knew all this from the get go! Broken record since March 2020--but we knew what this was going to be like from the moment the Diamond Princess docked. 700 people tested as infected. A couple 80 year oldish geezers quickly died. A bunch went to the hospital. Over the next few weeks a total of 14 passengers--all over 60, ended up dead. Not a single one of the--much younger--crew died.

    In other words: A serious hiccup in life-expectancy, but no threat to civilization.

    Some things can indeed be real and serious, but still not very important. Covid was one of those things.

    There was never any need to do any of this nonsense of "lockdowns", of shuttering businesses. Simple advice we could have/should have had:
    -- if you're sick--stay the #*@% home
    -- be extra careful associating with oldfolks; be absolutely sure you aren't sick and haven't been exposed
    -- oldsters and immunocompromised, be especially careful in your socializing
    -- lose weight
    -- take your vitamin D and zinc
    -- avoid indoor heavy breathing situations
    -- move more socializing outside--skip the club and go to the beach, the park, go golfing, hiking, paddling, camping
    -- great time for young couple to get hitched, spend time together making babies ... to replace the great seniors we're going to lose


    A big problem is that a lot of people have lost touch with the basic rhythm of life. That there's a natural order and civilization depends on upholding--and ideally strengthening--that order: You grow up learning to be a productive citizen. You work. (Criminals sent to jail.) You find a mate and get married. Young women--yes, they have to be young and women--have babies. You work some more. You raise your kids to be productive citizens to replace yourself and carry on your nation, your civilization after you. (Foreigners not required or desired.) You get old. You make fun of your kids, getting grief from their kids. You die.

    It is good, rewarding, beautiful.

    Replies: @Jack D, @Achmed E. Newman

    Really, we’re going to rewind this stupid shit again?

    Fuckin’ A, we’d better, till people realize what they did wrong!

    I thank the repliers here for their stories, and I have no reason to doubt any one of them. Commenter MBlanc46 on my blog (sometimes here too) mentioned someone he knows who died from this virus. If I count on-line-only friends/acquaintances, I should back off of the last phrase, but read carefully what Ann Coulter and I have said.

    I still don’t know anyone who knows anyone who died from COVID. For most people, it was “just the flu.”

    The last phrase squares the number that is for most people in the multiple hundreds if not the low thousands, based on average # of friends/acquaintances.

    For Anon-#189, yes this most certainly holds water. I don’t live in some special bubble-town or something. It was the same PanicFest here. Yet, nobody I know KNOWS anyone who died from this. I.e., it wasn’t the freaking Black Death 2.0! Now, I’ll read “nobody said it was”, but yes, many of you all ACTED like it was. None of that Totalitarian bullshit that you people were just fine with was OK with me, even had this been the Black Death 2.0. (My family would have hunkered down on our own until the last package of Raman Noodles was cooked up on the unleaded-gas-burning Coleman stove. We still wouldn’t need directions from some arrogant asshole like Tony Fauci.)

    I was onto this scam from mid-March of ’20. My wife didn’t get better till early that summer and not completely well till the end of the summer. (No, not from the Flu Manchu, from the PanicFest.) As I recall, you, AD, were in the thick of it, as are some others I could mention. It’s not good for the country for you to be wrong about this kind of thing – that’s why we DO need to learn from what “happened” (how the population was duped and taken advantage of, is what it that should be).

    So, all the rest of your comment that I totally agree with, well, it’ll mean nothing next time the Globalists running the Feral Gov’t here decide to take advantage of the many dupes again on some other pretext.

    • Replies: @John Johnson
    @Achmed E. Newman

    I was onto this scam from mid-March of ’20.

    What exactly do you think is the scam? Do you think the backlog at morgues across the nation was all a conspiracy? Those are mostly family owned. You would have to argue that hundreds of family owned businesses were lying.

    Coronavirus Toll: NYC's Cremation Backlog Blamed For Overwhelmed Funeral Homes, Dozens Of Found Corpses
    https://www.cbsnews.com/newyork/news/coronavirus-toll-nycs-cremation-backlog-blamed-for-overwhelmed-funeral-homes-dozens-of-found-corpses/

    You can find an article like that from every single state.

    Bodies inside refrigerator trucks were not being faked. This was a horrible virus and the only scam is in the origin. The media scammed the public into thinking a proper investigation had taken place.

    Replies: @Achmed E. Newman

  89. @Joe Joe
    @Rob

    there was a recent study that concluded that only women get "long covid" ;-)

    Replies: @Achmed E. Newman

    That’s been proven to be false, Joe. The BLS statistics say that Long Covid almost solely affects those wage earners, male or female, who are low on paid sick leave.

    – (NOT) Art Deco

    (Emoticons, people! Emoticons all around!)

    • LOL: Joe Joe
  90. @Anon
    @Verymuchalive

    I dk anyone who died of covid. There was a guy in the news a while back who died after falling into a vat of boiling metal.
    I didn't know him, but, I thought,one hell of an exit.
    That's how I want to go.

    Replies: @Verymuchalive, @Achmed E. Newman

    What’s the death certificate read?

    Doctor’s report: “The deceased had tested positive for the Covid-19 2 hours before falling into the vat. Cause of death, Covid-19.”

  91. @Verymuchalive
    @Achmed E. Newman

    The nearest I got to that was a friend of my sister's, whose father spent a fortnight in hospital, including time on a ventilator. He is in his seventies and had been hospitalised for bouts of pneumonia in the past. So no big surprise. He made a full recovery and is very much alive ( pun intended ).

    In all the COVID brouhaha, I don't recall any UR columnist or blogger claiming they knew someone who had died of it, not even the President of the Board himself, Ron. The same goes for commenters. Kind of odd for a dangerous worlwide pandemic !

    Replies: @Brutusale, @John Johnson, @Anon, @Art Deco

    I knew someone who died of it.

  92. @quewin
    @Jack D

    I’m not trying to pick a fight, and I don’t like being “that guy,” but where does that 97.1% come from?

    (I find it hard to believe that I’m part of only 2.9% of the US near-adult population that didn’t get a single shot.)

    Replies: @Jack D

  93. @Verymuchalive
    @Anon

    There was a guy in the news a while back who died after falling into a vat of boiling metal.

    He died of heavy metal. Lemmy, eat your heart out ! ( wherever you are )

    Replies: @Joe Stalin

    Joke in Charlie Chan movie:

    Man who falls in vat of molten glass makes spectacle of himself.

    • LOL: Verymuchalive
  94. @J.Ross
    @JimDandy

    This was when restaurants were allowed to become carryout counters. You go to the cash register, ostensibly to pick up a phoned-in order. Either you declare you are with the party or the cashier inquires if you are. You are escorted to the "party," in the "party room," which is in this case the entire restaurant. You then enjoy a normal pre-lockdown diner experience with menus and ketchup bottles.

    Replies: @JimDandy

    Yeah, I don’t remember the connection with SCC. Did they blow the whistle on Ann Sather?

    • Replies: @J.Ross
    @JimDandy

    It was discussed there, then posted, then dinosaur media did a story on it.
    I don't think there were any consequences for the superspreader.
    >try to look it up
    >come across story about a politician getting shot at an Ann Sather.

  95. Lightfoot is a spiteful mutant.

  96. @Female in FL
    @John Johnson

    Bernier made the mistake of going to the hospital. They put him on a ventilator and that was the end of him.

    Replies: @John Johnson

    Bernier made the mistake of going to the hospital. They put him on a ventilator and that was the end of him.

    They only put you on a ventilator as a last resort. It means your lungs are shutting down.

    Most of the time you don’t come out of it. The virus destroys your lungs and the machine can’t save you. Hospitals don’t want to put anyone on a ventilator. It’s extremely expensive and ties up staff.

    Thankfully the newer variants don’t infect the lungs as deeply and most of this is in the past.

    But we still have obese conservatives ending up in the hospital because they believe that not getting the vaccine is the safer option. They read some scare story about extremely rare myocarditis even though it was observed in young men and normally clears within 2 weeks. Of course the scare stories don’t mention any of those details.

    mRNA vaccines are here to stay. The next gen flu vaccines will be mRNA and they will be more effective because they can be updated quicker.

    I’d have more respect for the anti-vaxx movement if they acknowledged that some vulnerable groups are better off getting the vaccine. But before they were even released the anti-vaxxers decreed them to not work or be poison for everyone. To this day the anti-vaxxers can’t agree on if the vaccines work or not. It shows that their movement is largely emotional and not based on data. It’s in fact still accepted within the anti-vaxx movement to decree that the virus doesn’t exist. That underscores how it is really an emotionally driven alliance.

    • Replies: @Anon
    @John Johnson


    I’d have more respect for the anti-vaxx movement if they acknowledged that some vulnerable groups are better off getting the vaccine. But before they were even released the anti-vaxxers decreed them to not work or be poison for everyone.
     
    Yes, and the other side are just as bad, insisting vaccines are for everyone, no exceptions or qualifications.

    This is just how politics works in the U.S. and certain other countries, mainly in NW Europe. People making grand declarations of principle that are universal for all people everywhere for all time.

    Not being from this culture-area myself, I always have a question when I see someone making such a declaration.

    Vaccines are bad! For whom? Masks are good! For whom? Immigration is bad! For whom? Freedom of speech is good! For whom? Guns are bad! For whom? Abortion is good! For whom? Milk is unhealthy! For whom? Going to college is good! For whom? Columbus was bad! For whom?

    Many, many such examples.

  97. @Achmed E. Newman
    @AnotherDad


    Really, we’re going to rewind this stupid shit again?
     
    Fuckin' A, we'd better, till people realize what they did wrong!

    I thank the repliers here for their stories, and I have no reason to doubt any one of them. Commenter MBlanc46 on my blog (sometimes here too) mentioned someone he knows who died from this virus. If I count on-line-only friends/acquaintances, I should back off of the last phrase, but read carefully what Ann Coulter and I have said.


    I still don’t know anyone who knows anyone who died from COVID. For most people, it was “just the flu.”
     
    The last phrase squares the number that is for most people in the multiple hundreds if not the low thousands, based on average # of friends/acquaintances.

    For Anon-#189, yes this most certainly holds water. I don't live in some special bubble-town or something. It was the same PanicFest here. Yet, nobody I know KNOWS anyone who died from this. I.e., it wasn't the freaking Black Death 2.0! Now, I'll read "nobody said it was", but yes, many of you all ACTED like it was. None of that Totalitarian bullshit that you people were just fine with was OK with me, even had this been the Black Death 2.0. (My family would have hunkered down on our own until the last package of Raman Noodles was cooked up on the unleaded-gas-burning Coleman stove. We still wouldn't need directions from some arrogant asshole like Tony Fauci.)

    I was onto this scam from mid-March of '20. My wife didn't get better till early that summer and not completely well till the end of the summer. (No, not from the Flu Manchu, from the PanicFest.) As I recall, you, AD, were in the thick of it, as are some others I could mention. It's not good for the country for you to be wrong about this kind of thing - that's why we DO need to learn from what "happened" (how the population was duped and taken advantage of, is what it that should be).

    So, all the rest of your comment that I totally agree with, well, it'll mean nothing next time the Globalists running the Feral Gov't here decide to take advantage of the many dupes again on some other pretext.

    Replies: @John Johnson

    I was onto this scam from mid-March of ’20.

    What exactly do you think is the scam? Do you think the backlog at morgues across the nation was all a conspiracy? Those are mostly family owned. You would have to argue that hundreds of family owned businesses were lying.

    Coronavirus Toll: NYC’s Cremation Backlog Blamed For Overwhelmed Funeral Homes, Dozens Of Found Corpses
    https://www.cbsnews.com/newyork/news/coronavirus-toll-nycs-cremation-backlog-blamed-for-overwhelmed-funeral-homes-dozens-of-found-corpses/

    You can find an article like that from every single state.

    Bodies inside refrigerator trucks were not being faked. This was a horrible virus and the only scam is in the origin. The media scammed the public into thinking a proper investigation had taken place.

    • Replies: @Achmed E. Newman
    @John Johnson

    What's the scam? Your asking that after 3 years shows that you haven't learned a thing on this subject. No, the origin is NOT the scam. The use of the Chapel Hill, NC and Wuhan, China labs to do the "gain-of-function" work that created this virus was in the open. Its escape from the lab in China could be easily foreseen. That's not the scam.

    The scam is that a bad flu year, especially bad on the old and obese, was turned into something nobody had seen before, an excuse to dictate widespread closings of businesses, to dictate people's whereabouts, to dictate people wear breath-inhibiting masks on their faces, and finally, an attempt to dictate the entire population's intake of an experimental gene therapy "vaccine". That's a Royal Scam, that would not have been able to have been run, had there not be so many willing, ignorant dupes around.

    I have no idea about those overflowing morgues, Mr. Johnson. That wasn't the case where I live, and I'm not about to believe the Lyin' Press after all my experiences with that crowd.

    Replies: @John Johnson

  98. @John Johnson
    @Almost Missouri

    Anti-vaxx leader Marc Bernier told us that natural cures will beat COVID.

    He was 100% certain and is now dead.

    A third anti-vaccine conservative radio host dies of COVID-19
    https://nypost.com/2021/08/30/conservative-radio-host-marc-bernier-dies-of-covid-19/

    Similarly, you have no way of knowing what chronic conditions you are letting yourself in for with a vaccination, as averred in my above-linked comment.

    There are anti-vaxxers with lifelong disabilities from wrecking their organs. Being on a ventilator for months can be the equivalent of a lifetime of smoking.

    It actually isn't natural for an obese Fox News watcher to have a machine do his breathing while he is an induced coma.

    But congrats on being an anti-vaxxer that made it through the death wave. Meatloaf not so much.

    Replies: @Female in FL, @Almost Missouri

    Anti-vaxx leader Marc Bernier told us that natural cures will beat COVID.

    He was 100% certain and is now dead.

    [etc.]

    Your brother-in-jab-fetishism Jack sez that “anecdote is not really the way to go in science”, so maybe take it up with him.

    But if that’s your preferred mode…

    • Replies: @John Johnson
    @Almost Missouri

    I don't base my opinions on what some Democrats say.

    The Pfizer CEO and Gates aren't quoted in that picture as saying you won't get it.

    So kind of a dumb picture.

    The flu vaccine doesn't prevent you from getting it. It reduces the severity and saves thousands of lives per year. Is it a scam?

    Replies: @Almost Missouri

  99. @Achmed E. Newman
    Did Lori Lightfoot always look like the comic book character Groot? I recall she was a beautiful bouncy light-skinned long frizzy-haired black girl like you see on the cable TV flyers until her nasty bout with the evil Flu Manchu. What couldn't that Pandemic do?!

    Speaking of the Covid, now even Ann Coulter's stealing my material! From her latest column:

    Contrary to hysterical warnings in 2020 that “people you know” will die from COVID and “it’s definitely not just the flu,” I still don’t know anyone who knows anyone who died from COVID. For most people, it was “just the flu.”
     
    Likewise.

    Replies: @Verymuchalive, @Rob, @JR Ewing, @Paleo Liberal, @Jack D, @Almost Missouri, @kaganovitch, @Anon, @AnotherDad, @Cato

    My next-door neighbor died of COVID. She was white, but appeared to have American Indian ancestry (common in our city), and I suspect that that was why she was vulnerable. My sisters tell me that my old friend from our hometown died of COVID, but I don’t remember him, so maybe that doesn’t count as the death of someone I know. So one, maybe two, out of the hundreds of people I know.

    • Replies: @Achmed E. Newman
    @Cato

    Thanks, Cato. Yes, that 2nd does count as someone who someone you know, knows. For me, in meatspace (heh!), I don't know anyone who knows anyone who died from this.

  100. @Cato
    @Achmed E. Newman

    My next-door neighbor died of COVID. She was white, but appeared to have American Indian ancestry (common in our city), and I suspect that that was why she was vulnerable. My sisters tell me that my old friend from our hometown died of COVID, but I don't remember him, so maybe that doesn't count as the death of someone I know. So one, maybe two, out of the hundreds of people I know.

    Replies: @Achmed E. Newman

    Thanks, Cato. Yes, that 2nd does count as someone who someone you know, knows. For me, in meatspace (heh!), I don’t know anyone who knows anyone who died from this.

  101. @JimDandy
    @J.Ross

    Yeah, I don't remember the connection with SCC. Did they blow the whistle on Ann Sather?

    Replies: @J.Ross

    It was discussed there, then posted, then dinosaur media did a story on it.
    I don’t think there were any consequences for the superspreader.
    >try to look it up
    >come across story about a politician getting shot at an Ann Sather.

    • LOL: JimDandy
  102. @John Johnson
    @Achmed E. Newman

    I was onto this scam from mid-March of ’20.

    What exactly do you think is the scam? Do you think the backlog at morgues across the nation was all a conspiracy? Those are mostly family owned. You would have to argue that hundreds of family owned businesses were lying.

    Coronavirus Toll: NYC's Cremation Backlog Blamed For Overwhelmed Funeral Homes, Dozens Of Found Corpses
    https://www.cbsnews.com/newyork/news/coronavirus-toll-nycs-cremation-backlog-blamed-for-overwhelmed-funeral-homes-dozens-of-found-corpses/

    You can find an article like that from every single state.

    Bodies inside refrigerator trucks were not being faked. This was a horrible virus and the only scam is in the origin. The media scammed the public into thinking a proper investigation had taken place.

    Replies: @Achmed E. Newman

    What’s the scam? Your asking that after 3 years shows that you haven’t learned a thing on this subject. No, the origin is NOT the scam. The use of the Chapel Hill, NC and Wuhan, China labs to do the “gain-of-function” work that created this virus was in the open. Its escape from the lab in China could be easily foreseen. That’s not the scam.

    The scam is that a bad flu year, especially bad on the old and obese, was turned into something nobody had seen before, an excuse to dictate widespread closings of businesses, to dictate people’s whereabouts, to dictate people wear breath-inhibiting masks on their faces, and finally, an attempt to dictate the entire population’s intake of an experimental gene therapy “vaccine”. That’s a Royal Scam, that would not have been able to have been run, had there not be so many willing, ignorant dupes around.

    I have no idea about those overflowing morgues, Mr. Johnson. That wasn’t the case where I live, and I’m not about to believe the Lyin’ Press after all my experiences with that crowd.

    • Replies: @John Johnson
    @Achmed E. Newman

    I have no idea about those overflowing morgues, Mr. Johnson. That wasn’t the case where I live, and I’m not about to believe the Lyin’ Press after all my experiences with that crowd.

    What is exactly is the difference between:
    1. Assuming everything in the press is true
    2. Assuming everything in the press is false

    In both cases you are shutting down your mind.

    You can't rely on the mainstream media to tell you the truth but you if are just selecting what you want to hear from a handful of bloggers then you aren't engaging in critical thinking.

    The Texas National Guard was actually called in because El Paso had so many bodies:
    https://www.news.com.au/lifestyle/health/health-problems/national-guard-called-in-as-texas-morgues-overflow-with-bodies/news-story/b85a6eccbf5ea49217a72228b4c1105b

    Do you just decide such events are false because they are in the media? If the mainstream media reports that a parade happened do you just decree that the press must be lying?

    The scam is that a bad flu year, especially bad on the old and obese, was turned into something nobody had seen before

    A bad flu year? Why don't you tell us which flu year was comparable to 2020 COVID-19 fatalities and hospitalizations. In the past 100 years.

    Do you acknowledge that COVID is not the same as the flu virus?

    Replies: @The Germ Theory of Disease, @Achmed E. Newman

  103. Anon[112] • Disclaimer says:
    @John Johnson
    @Female in FL

    Bernier made the mistake of going to the hospital. They put him on a ventilator and that was the end of him.

    They only put you on a ventilator as a last resort. It means your lungs are shutting down.

    Most of the time you don't come out of it. The virus destroys your lungs and the machine can't save you. Hospitals don't want to put anyone on a ventilator. It's extremely expensive and ties up staff.

    Thankfully the newer variants don't infect the lungs as deeply and most of this is in the past.

    But we still have obese conservatives ending up in the hospital because they believe that not getting the vaccine is the safer option. They read some scare story about extremely rare myocarditis even though it was observed in young men and normally clears within 2 weeks. Of course the scare stories don't mention any of those details.

    mRNA vaccines are here to stay. The next gen flu vaccines will be mRNA and they will be more effective because they can be updated quicker.

    I'd have more respect for the anti-vaxx movement if they acknowledged that some vulnerable groups are better off getting the vaccine. But before they were even released the anti-vaxxers decreed them to not work or be poison for everyone. To this day the anti-vaxxers can't agree on if the vaccines work or not. It shows that their movement is largely emotional and not based on data. It's in fact still accepted within the anti-vaxx movement to decree that the virus doesn't exist. That underscores how it is really an emotionally driven alliance.

    Replies: @Anon

    I’d have more respect for the anti-vaxx movement if they acknowledged that some vulnerable groups are better off getting the vaccine. But before they were even released the anti-vaxxers decreed them to not work or be poison for everyone.

    Yes, and the other side are just as bad, insisting vaccines are for everyone, no exceptions or qualifications.

    This is just how politics works in the U.S. and certain other countries, mainly in NW Europe. People making grand declarations of principle that are universal for all people everywhere for all time.

    Not being from this culture-area myself, I always have a question when I see someone making such a declaration.

    Vaccines are bad! For whom? Masks are good! For whom? Immigration is bad! For whom? Freedom of speech is good! For whom? Guns are bad! For whom? Abortion is good! For whom? Milk is unhealthy! For whom? Going to college is good! For whom? Columbus was bad! For whom?

    Many, many such examples.

  104. @Almost Missouri
    @John Johnson


    Anti-vaxx leader Marc Bernier told us that natural cures will beat COVID.

    He was 100% certain and is now dead.

    [etc.]
     
    Your brother-in-jab-fetishism Jack sez that "anecdote is not really the way to go in science", so maybe take it up with him.



    But if that's your preferred mode...

    https://i.postimg.cc/MGfqSTF2/Young-heart-attacks.png



    https://i.postimg.cc/26N0Z6pB/Covid-vaccination.jpg

    Replies: @John Johnson

    I don’t base my opinions on what some Democrats say.

    The Pfizer CEO and Gates aren’t quoted in that picture as saying you won’t get it.

    So kind of a dumb picture.

    The flu vaccine doesn’t prevent you from getting it. It reduces the severity and saves thousands of lives per year. Is it a scam?

    • Replies: @Almost Missouri
    @John Johnson


    The flu vaccine doesn’t prevent you from getting it. It reduces the severity and saves thousands of lives per year. Is it a scam?
     
    Mostly. Flu vaccines, vaccines, and indeed most of the modern pharmacopeia, all work the same way: you can trade a short term benefit for a long-term disadvantage. Don't like the headache you have tonight? Take a paracetamol and trade headache relief tonight for a bit of liver damage later. Is that a good trade? Tastes vary.

    When you suppress your immune response (as with a vaccine) to get out of a short term hazard, you may succeed but at the cost of creating a long term vulnerability since you just affirmative-actioned your immune system through its last crisis. So next time you're either going to need double-affirmative-action or else you'll double take it on the chin. Is that a good trade? If you're near the end of your life anyway (i.e., you have no long term to worry about) then maybe yeah. If you're young and vigorous, then not so much.

    There are other circumstances where a vaccine may make sense. If you are an Animal Control Officer who may be dealing with rabid critters, getting a rabies vaccination is prudent because whatever the long term downside of the vaccine is, the short (and long) term downside of rabies is death. So that one's kind of a no-brainer. But most vaccines for most people most of the time are of pretty ambiguous benefit. Except for for the manufacturer. For them the benefit is clear and present. Fortunately for them they have the power of the state to compel you to cooperate in benefitting them.
  105. @Achmed E. Newman
    @John Johnson

    What's the scam? Your asking that after 3 years shows that you haven't learned a thing on this subject. No, the origin is NOT the scam. The use of the Chapel Hill, NC and Wuhan, China labs to do the "gain-of-function" work that created this virus was in the open. Its escape from the lab in China could be easily foreseen. That's not the scam.

    The scam is that a bad flu year, especially bad on the old and obese, was turned into something nobody had seen before, an excuse to dictate widespread closings of businesses, to dictate people's whereabouts, to dictate people wear breath-inhibiting masks on their faces, and finally, an attempt to dictate the entire population's intake of an experimental gene therapy "vaccine". That's a Royal Scam, that would not have been able to have been run, had there not be so many willing, ignorant dupes around.

    I have no idea about those overflowing morgues, Mr. Johnson. That wasn't the case where I live, and I'm not about to believe the Lyin' Press after all my experiences with that crowd.

    Replies: @John Johnson

    I have no idea about those overflowing morgues, Mr. Johnson. That wasn’t the case where I live, and I’m not about to believe the Lyin’ Press after all my experiences with that crowd.

    What is exactly is the difference between:
    1. Assuming everything in the press is true
    2. Assuming everything in the press is false

    In both cases you are shutting down your mind.

    You can’t rely on the mainstream media to tell you the truth but you if are just selecting what you want to hear from a handful of bloggers then you aren’t engaging in critical thinking.

    The Texas National Guard was actually called in because El Paso had so many bodies:
    https://www.news.com.au/lifestyle/health/health-problems/national-guard-called-in-as-texas-morgues-overflow-with-bodies/news-story/b85a6eccbf5ea49217a72228b4c1105b

    Do you just decide such events are false because they are in the media? If the mainstream media reports that a parade happened do you just decree that the press must be lying?

    The scam is that a bad flu year, especially bad on the old and obese, was turned into something nobody had seen before

    A bad flu year? Why don’t you tell us which flu year was comparable to 2020 COVID-19 fatalities and hospitalizations. In the past 100 years.

    Do you acknowledge that COVID is not the same as the flu virus?

    • Replies: @The Germ Theory of Disease
    @John Johnson

    "If the mainstream media reports that a parade happened do you just decree that the press must be lying?"

    Fair enough, but that isn't the issue. The actual problem as we observe it on the ground is that (metaphorically speaking), a parade happens, but the press does not report that "a parade happened". It reports that "a parade happened, and it was racist, and Donald Trump commented without evidence that parades are nice, and sources confirm that he meant racist ones."

    Replies: @John Johnson

    , @Achmed E. Newman
    @John Johnson

    Mr. Johnson, I agree that you have to chose wisely what media you get information from and be careful to not be sucked into a small information world with nothing but your own opinions in it. You probably should have chosen more wisely before picking that Australian (news.com.au) panic article from Nov. of '20 to learn about the situation on the other side of the world in Texas. Here's your first paragraph:


    Grim pictures show the reality of COVID-19’s unrelenting grip on America’s heartland where morgues are literally overflowing.
     
    Sheeeittt! That's your news source, buddy? Sounds like you were extremely bad in sifting out panic from news, which explains your comments over the last 3 years on this subject.

    Parades? Yeah, I'll believe a parade is scheduled if I read it most places. How about rallies? How about rallies against the Ukraine/Russia war* that happen right in Washington, FS, such as a 2 weeks ago today? Heard about that one, John? It wasn't well publicized in any major media, but it still happened.

    If something goes along with the narrative, it gets big press and maybe even a full Infotainment schedule, such as with the PanicFest. If it doesn't, it doesn't.


    Do you acknowledge that COVID is not the same as the flu virus?
     
    I'm no virologist, but I can believe that, yes. I compare it to the flu based on EFFECT. For most of the population of the US, this Kung Flu was a nothingburger. The PanicFest was quite the opposite of a nothingburger. I think you see this the completely opposite way.


    .


    * I'm not starting an argument on that here, BTW.

  106. @John Johnson
    @Achmed E. Newman

    I have no idea about those overflowing morgues, Mr. Johnson. That wasn’t the case where I live, and I’m not about to believe the Lyin’ Press after all my experiences with that crowd.

    What is exactly is the difference between:
    1. Assuming everything in the press is true
    2. Assuming everything in the press is false

    In both cases you are shutting down your mind.

    You can't rely on the mainstream media to tell you the truth but you if are just selecting what you want to hear from a handful of bloggers then you aren't engaging in critical thinking.

    The Texas National Guard was actually called in because El Paso had so many bodies:
    https://www.news.com.au/lifestyle/health/health-problems/national-guard-called-in-as-texas-morgues-overflow-with-bodies/news-story/b85a6eccbf5ea49217a72228b4c1105b

    Do you just decide such events are false because they are in the media? If the mainstream media reports that a parade happened do you just decree that the press must be lying?

    The scam is that a bad flu year, especially bad on the old and obese, was turned into something nobody had seen before

    A bad flu year? Why don't you tell us which flu year was comparable to 2020 COVID-19 fatalities and hospitalizations. In the past 100 years.

    Do you acknowledge that COVID is not the same as the flu virus?

    Replies: @The Germ Theory of Disease, @Achmed E. Newman

    “If the mainstream media reports that a parade happened do you just decree that the press must be lying?”

    Fair enough, but that isn’t the issue. The actual problem as we observe it on the ground is that (metaphorically speaking), a parade happens, but the press does not report that “a parade happened”. It reports that “a parade happened, and it was racist, and Donald Trump commented without evidence that parades are nice, and sources confirm that he meant racist ones.”

    • Replies: @John Johnson
    @The Germ Theory of Disease

    Fair enough, but that isn’t the issue. The actual problem as we observe it on the ground is that (metaphorically speaking), a parade happens, but the press does not report that “a parade happened”.

    Sometimes they report the news.

    Sometimes they spin.

    Sometimes it is a mixture.

    Applying critical thinking to the news requires exposing yourself to a variety of sources and trying to determine the truth in any form. Just because a source is from the MSM or outside of it doesn't mean it should be immediately accepted or discarded.

    I've had Putin supporters here take pride in only listening to MacGregor, Ritter, Whitney and a few other openly pro-Russian sources. That is no different than the dingbat liberal White woman who only watches CNN and tells herself that she keeps up with the news. It's in fact not technically possible for a small group of bloggers to cover a war. There is too much information. It is no different than trying to rely on a single blogger for the weather. It isn't technically feasible.

    Placing blind trust in any source leads to false assumptions. I was warning early in the last election that Trump wasn't doing well with independents. That was based on data from numerous polls that showed their support had dropped over the virus. I was told by Team Trump that I was just parroting MSM information. They ruled that an MSM poll can be ignored even if those same polls were showing strong independent support back when he ran against Hillary. How does this make sense? It doesn't but Team Trump became a largely emotional movement and had decided that all unwanted information can be ignored. Group think.

    Well exit polls showed that he did in fact lose independents over the virus. Group think in defiance of the MSM is not better than group think in support. Anti-liberalism cannot be inverse liberalism where everyone just decides that a few bloggers must be correct and everything in the MSM must be wrong. That isn't thinking and will lead to irrationality. Liberals can be irrational because they dominate the system. An anti-liberal movement would have to face reality and engage in critical thinking to determine the best possible steps forward. Mainstream conservatism has tried to defeat liberalism through a movement that embraces group think (Con Inc) and it has failed.....repeatedly. Classic Western/Greek logical thinking involves open debate of all possible realities. It doesn't involve selecting a few favored sources and going with them because it feels good.

    Replies: @Post-Postmodernist

  107. @The Germ Theory of Disease
    @John Johnson

    "If the mainstream media reports that a parade happened do you just decree that the press must be lying?"

    Fair enough, but that isn't the issue. The actual problem as we observe it on the ground is that (metaphorically speaking), a parade happens, but the press does not report that "a parade happened". It reports that "a parade happened, and it was racist, and Donald Trump commented without evidence that parades are nice, and sources confirm that he meant racist ones."

    Replies: @John Johnson

    Fair enough, but that isn’t the issue. The actual problem as we observe it on the ground is that (metaphorically speaking), a parade happens, but the press does not report that “a parade happened”.

    Sometimes they report the news.

    Sometimes they spin.

    Sometimes it is a mixture.

    Applying critical thinking to the news requires exposing yourself to a variety of sources and trying to determine the truth in any form. Just because a source is from the MSM or outside of it doesn’t mean it should be immediately accepted or discarded.

    I’ve had Putin supporters here take pride in only listening to MacGregor, Ritter, Whitney and a few other openly pro-Russian sources. That is no different than the dingbat liberal White woman who only watches CNN and tells herself that she keeps up with the news. It’s in fact not technically possible for a small group of bloggers to cover a war. There is too much information. It is no different than trying to rely on a single blogger for the weather. It isn’t technically feasible.

    Placing blind trust in any source leads to false assumptions. I was warning early in the last election that Trump wasn’t doing well with independents. That was based on data from numerous polls that showed their support had dropped over the virus. I was told by Team Trump that I was just parroting MSM information. They ruled that an MSM poll can be ignored even if those same polls were showing strong independent support back when he ran against Hillary. How does this make sense? It doesn’t but Team Trump became a largely emotional movement and had decided that all unwanted information can be ignored. Group think.

    Well exit polls showed that he did in fact lose independents over the virus. Group think in defiance of the MSM is not better than group think in support. Anti-liberalism cannot be inverse liberalism where everyone just decides that a few bloggers must be correct and everything in the MSM must be wrong. That isn’t thinking and will lead to irrationality. Liberals can be irrational because they dominate the system. An anti-liberal movement would have to face reality and engage in critical thinking to determine the best possible steps forward. Mainstream conservatism has tried to defeat liberalism through a movement that embraces group think (Con Inc) and it has failed…..repeatedly. Classic Western/Greek logical thinking involves open debate of all possible realities. It doesn’t involve selecting a few favored sources and going with them because it feels good.

    • Replies: @Post-Postmodernist
    @John Johnson


    Applying critical thinking to the news requires exposing yourself to a variety of sources and trying to determine the truth in any form. Just because a source is from the MSM or outside of it doesn’t mean it should be immediately accepted or discarded.
     
    These recent comments of yours are cogent and exhibit refreshingly uncommon sound thinking.
  108. @Gary in Gramercy
    Whatever ideological bias the AP tweet reveals, it confirms most starkly one of Steve's themes: no one remembers anything anymore.

    Almost thirty years ago, Rudy Giuliani won a rematch with Democratic New York City Mayor David Dinkins, whose sole term in office had been marked by rising crime and a sense that the city was effectively out of control. Dinkins had mishandled several racially-tinged incidents -- anyone else remember the Korean grocery on Church Avenue, near the D train stop, where a boycott by blacks nearly put the place out of business after shoplifting allegations against a black customer? -- and was perceived as biased in favor of his own people, at the expense of everyone else.

    Sound familiar? No one at the Associated Press thought so.

    Replies: @Paleo Liberal, @Jack D, @njguy73

    Dinkins had mishandled several racially-tinged incidents — anyone else remember the Korean grocery on Church Avenue, near the D train stop, where a boycott by blacks nearly put the place out of business after shoplifting allegations against a black customer? — and was perceived as biased in favor of his own people, at the expense of everyone else.

    Two words: Crown. Heights.

    • Replies: @Gary in Gramercy
    @njguy73

    Yeah, I realized I forgot that one -- too late, after I had already hit "publish." It's like making a list of the greatest power hitters in MLB history, and leaving out Babe Ruth.

  109. @theMann
    Question: how was Chicago founded?

    Answer: a group of New Yorkers got together and said" we love the crime, pollution, and racism, but it just isn't cold enough here!".

    So if you are mayor of Chicago, do you have to live in Chicago?

    Replies: @Hibernian

    Chicago was founded in the 1830’s by New Yorkers and New Englanders who wanted to get rich.

  110. @John Johnson
    @The Germ Theory of Disease

    Fair enough, but that isn’t the issue. The actual problem as we observe it on the ground is that (metaphorically speaking), a parade happens, but the press does not report that “a parade happened”.

    Sometimes they report the news.

    Sometimes they spin.

    Sometimes it is a mixture.

    Applying critical thinking to the news requires exposing yourself to a variety of sources and trying to determine the truth in any form. Just because a source is from the MSM or outside of it doesn't mean it should be immediately accepted or discarded.

    I've had Putin supporters here take pride in only listening to MacGregor, Ritter, Whitney and a few other openly pro-Russian sources. That is no different than the dingbat liberal White woman who only watches CNN and tells herself that she keeps up with the news. It's in fact not technically possible for a small group of bloggers to cover a war. There is too much information. It is no different than trying to rely on a single blogger for the weather. It isn't technically feasible.

    Placing blind trust in any source leads to false assumptions. I was warning early in the last election that Trump wasn't doing well with independents. That was based on data from numerous polls that showed their support had dropped over the virus. I was told by Team Trump that I was just parroting MSM information. They ruled that an MSM poll can be ignored even if those same polls were showing strong independent support back when he ran against Hillary. How does this make sense? It doesn't but Team Trump became a largely emotional movement and had decided that all unwanted information can be ignored. Group think.

    Well exit polls showed that he did in fact lose independents over the virus. Group think in defiance of the MSM is not better than group think in support. Anti-liberalism cannot be inverse liberalism where everyone just decides that a few bloggers must be correct and everything in the MSM must be wrong. That isn't thinking and will lead to irrationality. Liberals can be irrational because they dominate the system. An anti-liberal movement would have to face reality and engage in critical thinking to determine the best possible steps forward. Mainstream conservatism has tried to defeat liberalism through a movement that embraces group think (Con Inc) and it has failed.....repeatedly. Classic Western/Greek logical thinking involves open debate of all possible realities. It doesn't involve selecting a few favored sources and going with them because it feels good.

    Replies: @Post-Postmodernist

    Applying critical thinking to the news requires exposing yourself to a variety of sources and trying to determine the truth in any form. Just because a source is from the MSM or outside of it doesn’t mean it should be immediately accepted or discarded.

    These recent comments of yours are cogent and exhibit refreshingly uncommon sound thinking.

  111. @njguy73
    @Gary in Gramercy


    Dinkins had mishandled several racially-tinged incidents — anyone else remember the Korean grocery on Church Avenue, near the D train stop, where a boycott by blacks nearly put the place out of business after shoplifting allegations against a black customer? — and was perceived as biased in favor of his own people, at the expense of everyone else.
     
    Two words: Crown. Heights.

    Replies: @Gary in Gramercy

    Yeah, I realized I forgot that one — too late, after I had already hit “publish.” It’s like making a list of the greatest power hitters in MLB history, and leaving out Babe Ruth.

  112. @John Johnson
    @Almost Missouri

    I don't base my opinions on what some Democrats say.

    The Pfizer CEO and Gates aren't quoted in that picture as saying you won't get it.

    So kind of a dumb picture.

    The flu vaccine doesn't prevent you from getting it. It reduces the severity and saves thousands of lives per year. Is it a scam?

    Replies: @Almost Missouri

    The flu vaccine doesn’t prevent you from getting it. It reduces the severity and saves thousands of lives per year. Is it a scam?

    Mostly. Flu vaccines, vaccines, and indeed most of the modern pharmacopeia, all work the same way: you can trade a short term benefit for a long-term disadvantage. Don’t like the headache you have tonight? Take a paracetamol and trade headache relief tonight for a bit of liver damage later. Is that a good trade? Tastes vary.

    When you suppress your immune response (as with a vaccine) to get out of a short term hazard, you may succeed but at the cost of creating a long term vulnerability since you just affirmative-actioned your immune system through its last crisis. So next time you’re either going to need double-affirmative-action or else you’ll double take it on the chin. Is that a good trade? If you’re near the end of your life anyway (i.e., you have no long term to worry about) then maybe yeah. If you’re young and vigorous, then not so much.

    There are other circumstances where a vaccine may make sense. If you are an Animal Control Officer who may be dealing with rabid critters, getting a rabies vaccination is prudent because whatever the long term downside of the vaccine is, the short (and long) term downside of rabies is death. So that one’s kind of a no-brainer. But most vaccines for most people most of the time are of pretty ambiguous benefit. Except for for the manufacturer. For them the benefit is clear and present. Fortunately for them they have the power of the state to compel you to cooperate in benefitting them.

    • Agree: Achmed E. Newman
  113. @John Johnson
    @Achmed E. Newman

    I have no idea about those overflowing morgues, Mr. Johnson. That wasn’t the case where I live, and I’m not about to believe the Lyin’ Press after all my experiences with that crowd.

    What is exactly is the difference between:
    1. Assuming everything in the press is true
    2. Assuming everything in the press is false

    In both cases you are shutting down your mind.

    You can't rely on the mainstream media to tell you the truth but you if are just selecting what you want to hear from a handful of bloggers then you aren't engaging in critical thinking.

    The Texas National Guard was actually called in because El Paso had so many bodies:
    https://www.news.com.au/lifestyle/health/health-problems/national-guard-called-in-as-texas-morgues-overflow-with-bodies/news-story/b85a6eccbf5ea49217a72228b4c1105b

    Do you just decide such events are false because they are in the media? If the mainstream media reports that a parade happened do you just decree that the press must be lying?

    The scam is that a bad flu year, especially bad on the old and obese, was turned into something nobody had seen before

    A bad flu year? Why don't you tell us which flu year was comparable to 2020 COVID-19 fatalities and hospitalizations. In the past 100 years.

    Do you acknowledge that COVID is not the same as the flu virus?

    Replies: @The Germ Theory of Disease, @Achmed E. Newman

    Mr. Johnson, I agree that you have to chose wisely what media you get information from and be careful to not be sucked into a small information world with nothing but your own opinions in it. You probably should have chosen more wisely before picking that Australian (news.com.au) panic article from Nov. of ’20 to learn about the situation on the other side of the world in Texas. Here’s your first paragraph:

    Grim pictures show the reality of COVID-19’s unrelenting grip on America’s heartland where morgues are literally overflowing.

    Sheeeittt! That’s your news source, buddy? Sounds like you were extremely bad in sifting out panic from news, which explains your comments over the last 3 years on this subject.

    Parades? Yeah, I’ll believe a parade is scheduled if I read it most places. How about rallies? How about rallies against the Ukraine/Russia war* that happen right in Washington, FS, such as a 2 weeks ago today? Heard about that one, John? It wasn’t well publicized in any major media, but it still happened.

    If something goes along with the narrative, it gets big press and maybe even a full Infotainment schedule, such as with the PanicFest. If it doesn’t, it doesn’t.

    Do you acknowledge that COVID is not the same as the flu virus?

    I’m no virologist, but I can believe that, yes. I compare it to the flu based on EFFECT. For most of the population of the US, this Kung Flu was a nothingburger. The PanicFest was quite the opposite of a nothingburger. I think you see this the completely opposite way.

    .

    * I’m not starting an argument on that here, BTW.

Comments are closed.

Subscribe to All Steve Sailer Comments via RSS
PastClassics
The Shaping Event of Our Modern World
Analyzing the History of a Controversial Movement
The JFK Assassination and the 9/11 Attacks?