Category Archives: Science

UPDATE III (5/7/021): NEW COLUMN: Killing Liberty: Could Vaccine Resisters Be WACO’d?

Constitution, COVID-19, Ethics, Individual Rights, Science

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NEW COLUMN is “Killing Liberty: Could Vaccine Resisters Be WACO’d?” It is currently on WND.COM, The Unz Review, (slightly abridged) on Townhall.com, CNSNew.com, and American Greatness.

Excerpt:

Because of the natural mutation the clever little RNA strand undergoes—it is clear to anyone with a critical mind that the Covid vaccines will go the way of the flu vaccines: An annual affair if one chooses to make it so.

Choice, alas, is quickly becoming a quaint concept in Covid-compliant America.

Vaccine Passports

The possibility of a vaccine passport, a “certification of vaccination that reduces public-health restrictions for their carriers,” has been floated. Unfinessed, it amounts to, “Your Papers, bitte!”

While Fox’s Tucker Carlson did term the idea an Orwellian one—it took civil libertarian Glenn Greenwald, the odd-man-out among the authoritarian Left, to place the concept of a vaccine passport in proper perspective.

The popular TV host (and perhaps the only good thing on Fox News) had asked Greenwald if he felt a vaccine passport “would work to convince more Americans to get vaccinated.”

Judging a policy by its positive outcomes for the collective, rather than by whether it violates individual rights is utilitarianism. It is the rule among politicians and pundits.

“It doesn’t work”: How often have you heard those words used to describe grave rights violations? As if using coercion to decrease “vaccine hesitancy”—is ever a good reason for coercing vaccination! As if employing coercion to decrease “vaccine hesitancy” is ever an appropriate use of State or corporate power!

The Benthamite utilitarian calculus is thus rightly associated with a collectivist, central-planner’s impetus.

The Founding Fathers, conversely, held a Blackstonian view of the law as a bulwark against government abuses. Their take has since been supplanted by the notion of the law as an implement of government, to be utilized by all-knowing rulers for the “greater good.”
To his great credit, Sean Hannity did advance a rights-based argument against the vaccine-passport outrage: the individual right to privacy.

It fell, however, to Mr. Greenwald to take note of the three different ways in which the passports constitute a draconian invasion:

…Number one, coercing citizens to put a substance into their body that they don’t want in their body, a pretty grave invasion of bodily autonomy, one of the most fundamental rights we have. Secondly, gathering a new database that can track people in terms of their health, that can easily be expanded as government programs often do into a whole variety of other uses, and then thirdly, … restricting people’s movement. Freedom of movement is one of the most fundamental rights we have. It’s actually guaranteed in the Constitution.  …

Herd immunity will be arrived at eventually, stressed Greenwald. So, “why is it necessary to stigmatize [those choosing not to vaccinate] and create a caste system?”

Enter U.S. Sen. John Kennedy, a Republican with a highly-contrived Southern act and overwrought cracks.

The visibly disappointed Mr. Hannity was expecting an erudite, rights-based objection from the senator representing Louisiana. On the matter of vaccine compliance through coercion, Kennedy only dimmed the debate. To the question about vaccine passports, Kennedy answered with a non sequitur:

A vaccine passport would be “terribly unethical,” Kennedy croaked, and not because it would threaten an individual’s dominion over his body, but because, “Everybody does not yet have access to the vaccine.” …

… READ ON. NEW COLUMN is “Killing Liberty: Could Vaccine Resisters Be WACO’d?” It is currently on WND.COM, The Unz Review, (slightly abridged) on Townhall.com,  CNSNew.com, and American Greatness.

UPDATED I (4/9):

Related, via David Vance: The Media (British and American) has become a “real and present menace” for refusing to critically and honestly report on Covid vaccines.

AND:

“22-year-old Israeli girl dies after 2nd shot of vaccine.”

UPDATE II (4/12):

Jake • 2 days ago:

“It’s all about the money. Huge profits for the vaccine companies and with no liability of those companies. What a business model! Meanwhile no one tells people what they can do either to prevent Covid-19 or to treat it effectively if you do get it. Why the secrecy?

This is what works:… along with vitamin D and zinc; and if you are not obese, are fit and have no heart or lung issues, you will be fine.

The hysteria by the media and medical bureaucrats is criminal.

I’m actually a real doctor, graduated in 1973. You obviously are ignorant about virology and transmissibility. I practice overseas, not in America. The American system is so wedded to these unproven, experimental injections. You have no idea about enhanced autoimmune response or anaphylaxis that is occurring at the moment.”

UPDATE III (5/7/021): Masks outdoors?

 

Before COVID Cartel, Scientific Skepticism Of Messenger-RNA Technology Voiced, EXPECTED

Business, COVID-19, Healthcare, Propaganda, Pseudoscience, Science, The State

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*trials of mRNA vaccines for infectious diseases were somewhat modest, leading to cautious expectations.
*blood coagulation and pathological thrombus.
* local and systemic inflammation.
*autoimmunity issues.
*edema

From a peer-reviewed journal article, published in January 2018, I scatter below for your edification a candid, matter-of-fact documentation of known reservation about the mRNA vaccines, intended for healthy individuals.

Clearly, “science” was freer as recently as 2018, in credible medical journals, and prior to the consolidation of a consensus around the SARS-CoV-2 vaccines, a consensus driven by the COVID cartel.

“…… extracellular RNA promoted blood coagulation and pathological thrombus formation… the paradoxical effects of innate immune sensing on different formats of mRNA vaccines are incompletely understood.

“… recently published results from two clinical trials of mRNA vaccines for infectious diseases were somewhat modest, leading to more cautious expectations about the translation of preclinical success to the clinic… .”

A possible concern could be that some mRNA-based vaccine platforms induce potent type I interferon responses, which have been associated not only with inflammation but also potentially with autoimmunity167,168. Thus, identification of individuals at an increased risk of autoimmune reactions before mRNA vaccination may allow reasonable precautions to be taken.

I think I distilled the main concerns. But do READ:

“mRNA vaccines — a new era in vaccinology,” Norbert Pardi, Michael J. Hogan, Frederick W. Porter & Drew Weissman, Nature Reviews Drug Discovery volume 17, pages261–279 (2018)

*Credit to artist here.

MATH: The Problem With Conservatives? They Run From Racial Reality

Affirmative Action, Ancient History, Conservatism, Education, Intelligence, Race, Racism, Reason, Science, The West

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The problem with math is that it can be—how shall we put it?—mean to certain minorities. The problem with conservatives? They run from such racial realities.

Math as racist is not a new angle in the war for egalitarianism in aptitude.

Some people can do math well; others less so. Still others not at all. There are aggregate discrepancies between the sexes and between the races in the facility with mathematics.

(There has been a link to the work of La Griffe du Lion, on the ilanamercer.com Resources page (Junk Science category), since the website’s inception. His explosive work was allowed back then.)

These days, however, kids are being taught that, given enough Kale, care and instruction from formative figures—everyone has a chance at achieving a similar aptitude. “You can do anything you put your mind to,” goes the parental and pedagogic refrain.

No wonder anger rises among the less proficient when reality bites and puts the lie to the fiction of an egalitarian distribution of talent.

If some fail miserably in certain fields, why, the deficit is said to be not in the child but in the “system,” the teacher, the topic, or the particular discipline.

And if patterns of failure correlate with racial groupings; voila! It’s systemic. See, “‘Systemic Racism’ Or Systemic Rubbish?” Video included (for those who, unlike me, do not prefer text).

Anti-white activists—let us call them what they are, please—are now claiming math is a white supremacist discipline, not least because it is also an objective science with right or wrong answers. There is no relativism to it; no, “Hey Johnny, that’s an interesting answer, why don’t you try that new equation in the next bridge you design?”

Trust conservatives to never cop to the fact that complex math was the invention of Westerners. Oh, no!

As is the wont of conservatives, they apologize for any white involvement in such greatness as is math.

Tucker Carlson’s guest takes the tired conservative tack. Denounce and deprecate Western achievement:

“Math is not a white discipline, how absurd,” says Tucker’s guest.

Okay, Miss obsequious.

More advanced mathematics can be traced to ancient Greece over 2,500 years ago. Ancient mathematician Pythagoras had questions about the sides of a right triangle. His questioning, research, and testing led to a basic understanding of triangles we still study today, known as the Pythagorean Theorem.
Most experts agree that it was around this time (2,500 years ago) in ancient Greece that mathematics first became an organized science.

If it’s me, I’m owning it.

Beginning in the 6th century BC with the Pythagoreans, with Greek mathematics the Ancient Greeks began a systematic study of mathematics as a subject in its own right. Around 300 BC, Euclid introduced the axiomatic method still used in mathematics today, consisting of definition, axiom, theorem, and proof.

Wikipedia.

Next, Miss Millennial parrots the exhausted cliche about “the soft bigotry of lowered expectations,” namely the “myth” that students of color can’t achieve to standards, and therefore the standards must be lowered.

Both host and guest feel safe in their sanctimony, ignoring the well-established and enduring “racial achievement gap in the United States” in mathematics.

 

UPDATED (2/22): NTSB, so nerdy and white.

 

Love Donald, By All Means, But Why DIE FOR THE GUY?!

COVID-19, Democrats, Donald Trump, Healthcare, Reason, Republicans, Science

One wonders if there is a difference in COVID infection rates between Trump opponents and his supporters.

The Economist: “…a third of Americans who had voted for Mr Trump said they thought covid-19 was either a minor problem nationwide or not a problem at all. A recent Gallup poll showed that 94% of Democrats say they always or very often wear a mask when outside their homes compared with 46% of Republicans (and 68% of independents).”

… evidence suggests that younger adults are behind the latest surge in the virus. In Floridathe median age of covid-19 patients has dropped from 65 to near 40. Third, there is usually a lag of several weeks between a patient contracting the illness and when the patient’s death is reported to state authorities. Fourth, doctors seem to have become better at treating severe cases of covid-19, reducing the death rate even for those who must be hospitalised.

Given the rise in cases, however, it seems unlikely that the death rate will remain stagnant for much longer. Deaths for patients infected weeks ago will probably start to pile up. Some morgues in Arizona and Texas are running out of capacity and are already seeking refrigerated trucks, just as those in New York City did months ago. Uncontrolled community transmission among young people is likely to result in a spread in nursing homes, where a large share of fatalities occurs among the more vulnerable elderly. Should hospital capacity become strained, as appears to be the case in Houston, the quality of care could deteriorate and result in increased deaths as well.

Denial has not proved to be a particularly effective virus-suppression strategy. When polled by YouGov last week, a third of Americans who had voted for Mr Trump said they thought covid-19 was either a minor problem nationwide or not a problem at all. A recent Gallup poll showed that 94% of Democrats say they always or very often wear a mask when outside their homes compared with 46% of Republicans (and 68% of independents). To many voters, worry about the virus transmuted into coded disapproval of the president; mask-wearing is seen as a talisman of deranged coastal liberalism.

MORE: “Covid deaths v cases:America is in the midst of an extraordinary surge of covid-19. Will the gap between cases and deaths persist?“

*Image courtesy the Economist