"Ticked-Off Vic" (opens in separate window)

the coronavirus experts were wrong

friday, october 30th, 2020

The problem isn’t just the China Virus. It’s that we adopted the China Model to fight it.

Public health experts adopted China’s draconian lockdowns without knowing how well they really worked and in a country that, fortunately, lacks the power to truly enforce them.

[FULL TITLE: "The Coronavirus Experts Were Wrong, Now They Need Scapegoats: Now, It’s not about fighting the virus, but punishing political and cultural enemies".]

China’s deceptiveness and lack of transparency meant that we did not know how well anything that the Communist dictatorship did to battle the virus that it spawned actually worked. Despite that, our public health experts, and those of most free countries, adopted the China Model.

We don’t know how well the China Model worked for the People’s Republic of China, but it failed in every free country that tried it. Lockdowns eventually gave way to reopenings and new waves of infection. This was always going to happen because not even the more socialist European countries have the police state or the compliant populations of a Communist dictatorship.

Desperate, the public health experts adopted China’s compulsive mask wearing, a cultural practice that predates the virus, as if wearing a few flimsy scraps of fiber would fix everything.

It hadn’t and it didn’t.

But by then the public health experts and the media that had touted them were moving fully into the scapegoat portion of the crisis. The China Model had failed, all that was left was shifting the blame to more conservative and traditional populations, and away from the cultural elites.

In New York City that meant falsely blaming Chassidic Jews for the second wave. From Maine to San Francisco, Democrat leaders and their media blamed conservative Christian gatherings. Their national counterparts loudly blamed President Trump for not wearing a mask all the time.

A New York Times headline captured the cynical broad spectrum cultural scapegoating with, "N.Y.C. Threatens Orthodox Jewish Areas on Virus, but Trump’s Impact Is Seen."

The uncomfortable truth was that the lockdowns had failed economically, socially, and medically.

Even blue states and cities were no longer able to carry the impossible economic burden much longer. The Black Lives Matter riots and the onset of summer broke the #StayHome taboos, and medically, the lockdowns had been useless efforts to meet a fake crisis of hospital overflows.

America, like too many other countries, put the experts in charge and they failed. Miserably.

Democrats claimed that they were superior because they were “listening to the science”. They weren’t listening to the science, which is not an oracle and does not give interviews. Instead, they were obeying a class of officials, some of them whom weren’t even medical professionals, who impressed elected officials and the public with statistical sleight of hand. And little else.

The entire lockdown to testing to reopening pipeline that we adopted wholesale was a typical bureaucratic and corporate exercise, complete with the illusion of metrics and goals, that suffered from all the typical problems of bureaucracy, academia, and corporate culture.

The system that determines reopenings and closings is an echo chamber that measures its own functioning while having little to do with the real world. Testing has become a cargo cult exercise that confuses the map with the world, and the virus with the spreadsheet. It gamifies fighting the pandemic while dragging entire countries into an imaginary world based on its invented rules.

When the media reports a rise or decrease in positive tests, it’s treated as if it’s an assessment of the virus, rather than an incomplete data point that measures its own measurements.

The daily coronavirus reports have become the equivalent of Soviet harvest reports. They sound impressive, mean absolutely nothing, and are the pet obsession of a bureaucracy that not only has no understanding of the problem, but its grip on power has made it the problem.

The smarter medical professionals understand that the theories have failed, while the administrators who put the theories into practice confused their system with science. The politicians listen to the administrators and when they tell us to trust the science, they mean the bureaucracy. The medical professionals can’t and won’t backtrack now. It’s too late.

The best and brightest spent the worst part of a year shuffling rationales like a gambler’s trick deck, wrecked the economy, and sent tens of thousands of infected patients into nursing homes to infect the residents, accounting for at least a third of the national coronavirus death toll.

Like most national leadership disasters, it was a combination of misjudgement, understandable mistakes, tragic errors, and acts of incomprehensible stupidity or unmitigated evil.

A lot of people are dead, a lot more are out of work, and the problem is far from solved. Someone will have to be blamed and they certainly don’t want it to be themselves.

The lockdown and the rule of the public health experts has become too big to fail.

Mistakes were made, as the saying goes. Projections were built based on bad and incomplete data. Everyone followed the path of least resistance by doing what China had done. And everyone in the system, from the experts to the administrators to the politicians to the media, is complicit. That makes the massive error the world has been living under too big to fail.

There are only two choices left. Admit the magnitude of the mistake or find someone to blame.

The establishment that touted the experts is blaming its political and cultural enemies, the people it has been priming the public to see as strange, selfish, irrational, and dangerous. And also the very people who have been the loudest opponents of lockdown culture.

Given a choice between admitting the system was wrong or blaming the system’s failure on its critics, the establishment has followed the same pattern as every authoritarian leftist regime.

The lockdowns didn’t fail, they were failed by conservative Christians and Jews, by President Trump, by people who were too selfish to give up their lives, businesses, and religion for the greater good. And if only they had, the coronavirus would be gone and everything would be fine.

The China Model promised something that its proponents quickly knew it couldn’t deliver. Everything since then has been a scam to cover up the original quackery and hackery. The louder they blame critics and dissenters for the failure, the more obvious the coverup becomes.

Lockdown culture needs patsies to take the fall for why it didn’t work. Like every leftist social and economic experiment, its defenders are left to argue that it was never properly tried. If only it weren’t for Trump, and for the dissenters, for the Chassidic Jews in Brooklyn, for Christian weddings in San Francisco and Maine, for gyms, bars, and beaches, it would have worked.

Yet the simple truth is that the China Model hasn’t worked in any country that isn’t China.

It doesn’t matter who the leader or the ruling party are, whether the public wore or didn’t wear masks, the resurgence is not a political phenomenon, science doesn’t speak, and the virus doesn’t listen. But of all the countries in the world, America was especially ill-fitted to adopt an authoritarian public health model. The sheer size, openness, and diversity of the country makes us unique and should have made it abundantly obvious that no such system would work.

Anyone but an expert or administrator would have understood that these plans were doomed.

But what the system failed to accomplish in battling the virus, it made up for by providing the leadership that had enacted it with a wonderful opportunity to settle its political scores.

The lockdowns don’t exist anymore as a prophylactic policy, but as a political vendetta. The more people die, the more businesses are ruined, the more everyone suffers, the more vicious the vendetta grows as it hunts for scapegoats, political and religious, for the great error of terror.

Leftist regimes turn to political terror as their policies fail. When the idealism dies, and the theories fall apart, the organizers pursue misery for the sake of misery, using fear, deprivation, and hate to maintain their grip on power while crushing the political threats to their rule.

The rule of the experts isn’t fighting the virus. It has become the virus.

© Oct 15, 2020 Daniel Greenfield, "Frontpage Mag"

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A Day In The Life.

Up at 6:30a on Friday, it was already 64° outside – I had a couple smokes in the garage while the coffee brewed, did my DR (Type 1 Diabetic Routine - Blood Sugar Level Test and Sliding-Scale Novolog® Insulin Shot), applied the CBD Hemp Ointment to my neck and shoulder, had simple oatmeal for breakfast, and checked the weather and news.

Although my back/hips and legs were hurting, I drove to Weis Market, got a full small cart, checked-out in the self-service automated lanes, and had to sit on one of the benches on the way past the checkout lanes, before I hobbled to the Jeep, to unload the cart. Damn. I'm going to have to go see a Neurologist, someday soon.

Back home, I unloaded the bags of groceries, grabbed the heating pad, applied more CBD Ointment, and laid down on the couch, and slept. By 7p, I did the evening DR, had dinner, and watched the usual Fox News shows, and unpluhhed for the night.

Up at 5a on Saturday, from the lower back/hip pain, I took a hot shower, applied liberal amounts of the CBD Ointment, did the morning DR and made coffee and breakfast; then I hit the couch, again, and slept until 10a, with the heating pad. I slept much of the day, got up for dinner and my evening and nightly DRs, and called it Yankee Doodle for the night. The back/hip pain is zero, when I laying down.

I was up at 7a on Sunday to watch the FR-1 Portugal GP, but a rain delay pushed it back to 9-11a, so I grabbed a long, hot shower for my back, used the CBD Ointment, made coffee and oatmeal. Good race. Sherry stopped-by at 1:30p, and we had some hugs and kisses, I watched the end of the St Petersburg (FL) IndyCar Race, did the evening and nightly DRs, and went to bed,at 10p.

Monday at 8a was a cold 47°, so I fired-up the condo furnace to 77°, did the morning DR, had coffee and breakfast, and got the "CP Show" thread posted to FR, by 9. My back was hurting slightly, so I decided to stay-in where it was warm, use the heating pad, and get some sofa time.

Dear Lord, I just can't take anymore of this political shit; I'm fed-up to here (holding my hand horizontal on my forehead). I hate it. 8 days to go and hopefully it'll be over, and the riots begin, and we can get to some shooting-the-leftist-enemies, done.

Way to go US Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett! President Trump! Senate Leader Mitch McConnell! Senator Lindsay Graham!

Okay, okay, I did watch the usual Fox News' "Martha", "Tucker", "Hannity" and "Laura" Shows until 11p, and called it a day.

Up at 8:15a on Tuesday, I scrambled to get my morning DR, Creamed Chipped Beef & Gravy Over Toast, w/ Peas, and coffee, CBD-5 applied, and get the "CP Show" daily thread posted to FR. at 43°, outside, I fired-up the furnace to 77°, and just relaxed, as the 2 places I needed to go are closed on Tuesday. Another day with nothing to do.

I got some very disconcerting test results from Wellspan's Stony Brook Lab, from 10/22/20: bad news about kidney function, compared to the January tests. After contacting 3 of my Drs, I'm waiting for replies. I watched the usual Fox News evening shows, and pulled the plug at 11p.

Here's much of everything you need to know about Biden's criminality, as seen of the "Tucker Carlson Show", Tuesday evening: Here and here and here and here and here. He's also a drug addict, alcoholic and child molester. WATCH THEM, and learn, if you don't already know, who and what the Biden Organized Crime Family is.

Awake at 5a, I drifted back to sleep until 8, got the "CP Show" thread posted to FR, did a couple errands and went to Wellspan's Stony Brook Lab for some blood work. I was on the phone with my Endocrinologist, Cardiologist and PCP for several hours until 11:30a, trying to get some clarification on recent diabetes and heart test results. Sucks to be me.

3 nights of rioting, looting and burning in "Filth-a-delphia"? SHOOT AND KILL ALL RIOTERS, LOOTERS and ARSONISTS! Let the "protestors" march, but when it gets out-of-control, KILL THEM!

After lunch, I grabbed a snooze on the couch, for a few hours, did a couple condo chores, and had dinner. I watched the usual Fox News' "Martha", "Tucker", "Hannity" and "Laura" Shows until around 11p, and called it a night.

Up at 6:30a on Thursday, I had the cleaning ladies coming-in at 8, so I did the usual routines, worked on a food shopping list, took the Jeep down to the dealer to get the tires pumped-up, due to the colder weather, and ran a "sample" over to Wellspan's Stony Brook Lab, nearby. Tropical Storm "Zeta" had already dump 3" of rain on us, and by 4p, was still doing so, with more to come overnight. After posting the daily "Rush Show" graphics to FR, I grabbed 3hrs of sleep on the LR couch.

For the rest of the day and evening, I did paperwork, shredding and filing, until after dinner, I watched the usual Fox News' "Martha", "Tucker", "Hannity" and "Laura" Shows until around 11p, and called it a week. Tomorrow starts a new week here in the "Journal", and I'm still trying to avoid as much of the political bullshit as I can, which is tough.

The Left’s Communist Revolution Doesn’t Care About Elections.

Kenosha, Wisconsin has been trashed. Minneapolis has been burned. Portland is still being ravaged. Black Lives Matter and Antifa continue to tear the heart out of once-great cities like Portland. A siege of the White House is being planned. Nationwide, violence has moved into suburban areas and residential neighborhoods. Groups of extremists are specifically targeting the residences of mayors, chiefs of police and other political enemies.

The establishment press continues to peddle the notion that what we are seeing across the nation is nothing more than “peaceful protest” designed to achieve change within the existing system. No doubt, even many people in the streets believe this. They think they are marching for more “humane” police forces, or reduced incarceration, or a few new social programs. They believe that, when the protests and riots are over, they will still live in the United States that they knew before, but it will just be a slightly better nation.

Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn't pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same, or one day we will spend our sunset years telling our children and our children's children what it was once like in the United States where men were free. Of course, people harbored the same delusions in 1959 Cuba and 1917 Russia. Even the foot soldiers of those revolutions likely believed they would still have the countries they grew up in, just with a brighter, more democratic future. They discovered far too late that at the heart of the movement in which they were caught up were hard men with very different ideas about the future. We cannot afford to repeat this naivety. We are not experiencing a wave of social unrest generated by injustice or police brutality. We are watching an insurrection in progress, one which uses police violence as a pretext, but which has as its goal the destruction of the existing social, economic and political order in the United States. Refuse Fascism is one of the primary umbrella organizations supporting Antifa demonstrations nationwide. Refuse Fascism is a creation of the Revolutionary Communist Party of the United States. If you watch footage of the chaos in our streets, you will quickly see signs linked to both groups. The leader of the so-called RevComs is Bob Avakian. Avakian is a lifelong revoutionary, who spent his youth with Students for a Democratic Society, a domestic extremist group active in the 1960’s and 1970’s. In 2016 Avakian’s RevComs and other leftist groups formed Refuse Fascism. Avakian is remarkably direct about about the goals of this movement. “Let’s get down to basics. We need a revolution. Anything else, in the final analysis, is bullshit,” he said recently. Avakian’s party is no less direct. It has published a proposed constitution for the New Socialist Republic in North America, which it hopes to establish. Some excerpts from it read as follows: “The New Socialist Republic in North America is…a form of dictatorship – the dictatorship of the proletariat…” “In accordance with this, the governing bodies and processes of this socialist state, at all levels, must be vehicles for the furtherance of the communist revolution…” “The armed forces, militia and other organs of public defense and security shall be under a system of overall leadership combining the central Executive Council and the Revolutionary Communist Party, with the Party having the ultimate leadership responsibility and role.” “The responsibility for the enforcement of the laws and the defense of the Constitution by the organs of public security resides with the Executive Council, with the overall and ultimate leadership of the Revolutionary Communist Party.” [RevCom.us] Behind the RevComs, Refuse Fascism and their allied organizations is a fundraising and financing apparatus that has been building inside this nation for decades. For instance, Refuse Fascism is partially funded by an organization called the Alliance for Global Justice. The Alliance for Global Justice originated in an organization called the Nicaragua Network, a group created to support the Marxist Sandinista regime in Nicaragua. The founders of the Alliance are both veterans of that effort and have strong ties to the Sandinistas. One of them, Chuck Kaufman, was also one of the founders of a group called A.N.S.W.E.R., an organization focused on ending U.S. “threats” against North Korea, Iran, Venezuela and Cuba and an end to the “colonial-style occupation in Palestine and in Haiti”. The Alliance for Global Justice, in turn, receives funding from a wide range of organizations. One of them is the Tides Foundation. You may have never heard the group, but its power is vast: It annual spending is measured in the hundreds of millions of dollars. Tides is generally credited with having pioneered anonymous “Dark Money” transactions for leftist organizations. “Structural racism” is a common theme in many Tides Foundation projects, as is the concept of “white privilege”. Other financiers of The Alliance for Global Justice include George Soros’s Open Society Foundation, the Arca Foundation (which also backs the Communist regime in Cuba), the New World Foundation (which sponsors radical leftists movements in El Salvador), and the Foundation for Deep Ecology, an extreme environmental group that sees humans as a plague on the Earth’s surface. More connections could easily be drawn, but the point is not the individual links. What matters is the big picture: The mobs wrecking our cities and terrorizing the public are not spontaneously organizing or self-funding. They are the manifestation of years of preparation, organization, and sponsorship from a vast network of foundations and front organizations. The groups sponsoring the 2020 rioters are hostile to the United States of America as it currently exists. They have long since made common cause with some of our most dangerous enemies. Now, what they want is not reform. Phrases like “Black Lives Matter” are a deliberate obfuscation, a time-honored tactic of radical left groups, used to make themselves and their goals seem less threatening. What these extremist groups really want is something much more profound. It is, as one leftist speaker recently put it, the “abolition” of the United States as we know it and its replacement with a Marxist state. That is why it is profoundly delusional to believe the riots of the past three months will end with the November election. They will not. Should President Trump win, his victory will immediately be declared invalid and illegitimate by the mob, and the level of violence will explode. If Biden wins, the people and groups tearing this nation apart will consider him their puppet and will accelerate their efforts at revolution. If Biden proves unwilling or unable to accommodate them, he will suffer the same fate as Portland mayor Ted Wheeler, who endures antifa harassment of his home as the price of failing to submit. This is not about reform. It is about revolution, and revolutions don’t care about elections.