Month: October 2021

Over last weekend while visiting my daughter and her kids, we went to a high-school football game. I did not make any connection between a football game in an outdoor stadium and Covid. I did not wear a mask while sitting in the stands. Was I right or was I wrong?

Now granted we were not packed in like sardines at the high school game, but the more pertinent issue is the Covid risk of attending outdoor sporting events while sitting shoulder to shoulder, packed in the stands.

So now almost eight weeks into the college football season, what has happened? Are Covid cases spiking? What about the MLB playoffs? Has there been any Covid spread related to these packed baseball stadiums? 

Pro-football? Anything?

What does the “Doctor of Doom,” Dr. Fauci say on this issue?

“I don’t think it’s smart,” he told CNN last month. “Outdoors is always better than indoors, but even when you have such a congregate setting of people close together, first you should be vaccinated. And when you do have congregate settings, particularly indoors, you should be wearing a mask.”

Fauci wasn’t alone, of course. MSNBC host Joy Reid, looking at the crowds, told Fauci during an interview that she “thought COVID is about to have a feast.”

“I thought the same thing. I think it’s really unfortunate,” he replied.

From Townhall:

“But NBC fact-checked those concerns, pointing out over the weekend that fears about packed football stadiums being super-spreader events “never happened.”

“For weeks, crowds in the tens of thousands, mostly unmasked, have sat side-by-side now cheering on their teams at the halfway point of the season,” said NBC reporter Shaquille Brewster. “All while doctors warned of games becoming potential super-spreader events. A frightening prospect at the time with hospitals already on the brink.”

Data paint a different picture, however, after increased vaccinations and higher natural immunity.

“Covid cases, hospitalizations and deaths now all down nationwide,” Brewster said. “Cases are now in steep decline in every college football state across the south, including Florida, where hospitalizations fell 64 percent last month, even as some 90,000 fans packed the [University of Florida] Gators’ stadium.”

Last month, Outkick founder Clay Travis also pointed out that packed stadiums haven’t led to surges in Covid-19 cases.

“There’s been a 35% decline in Georgia, 32% decline in South Carolina, 30% decline in Mississippi, 22% decline in Arkansas, 23% in Alabama, 9% in Texas. Every single SEC state where millions of people have gone to college football games has not led to a feast of COVID as Doctor Fauci predicted,” Travis said, reports Fox News.

Could it be that the esteemed “Doctor of Doom” is wrong … again ?

10/21/21

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I am sure you remember that the “Let’s Go Brandon” craze came after an NBC NASCAR reporter told the audience and winning driver Brandon Brown that the crowd was chanting “Let’s Go Brandon” on October 2instead of what they were actually chanting, “F**k Joe Biden.”

In recent weeks — and thanks to a broadcaster’s feeble attempt to save face for President Biden — chants of “Let’s go Brandon” have become a popular occurrence at sporting events, concerts, and in everyday commentary. 

This past weekend both chants could be heard at colleges across the country, with some even going so far as to make signs instead of chanting.

It seems the fad even made it into the emails of federal employees in Canada. Based on the Canadian government’s alleged dictate, it seems some federal employees were adding “Let’s go Brandon” to their government email signatures!

“Specifically, the use of the wording “Let’s Go Brandon” and any variation thereof under any circumstance is banned by the Canadian Public Service.”

Actually the real chant, not the “let’s go Brandon” version has also gone international – in Rome Protestors Chant F**K Joe Biden Outside U.S. Embassy.

Besides being north of the border and international, a song based on the anti-Biden chant “Let’s Go Brandon!” has soared up the charts and now sits at No. 1 on the iTunes hip-hop chart.

Rapper Loza Alexander sings the tune, aptly titled “Let’s Go Brandon.” “In the song’s choruses, a voice repeatedly chants the iconic anti-Biden mantra and is immediately followed by a sample of a crowd chanting the original line, the more rough-and-ready ‘F*ck Joe Biden,’” writes The Post-Millennial.

“Alexander can be seen in the video wearing a red MAGA-style hat with white lettering on it which reads ‘Make Music Great Again’ and rapping about how many Americans are experiencing regret and how he feels vindicated due to the poor performance of the Biden administration,” the site said.

I wonder if the NFL blockheads and the NBA mugwumps will next be taking up this song before their games … and will they be standing, sitting, or kneeling when it is sung.

10/20/21

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From the Wall Street Journal: 

“Is inflation still “transitory,” as the Federal Reserve and White House like to say? Not if you’ve been visiting the grocery store, gas pump, online retailer, or anywhere else across the U.S. economy. The Labor Department said the consumer price index rose 0.4% in September, up from 0.3% in August. This means the price level has increased 5.4% in the last 12 months and 6.5% on an annual basis so far in 2021. This is the largest year-over-year increase since 2008, and the details in the report add to the evidence that inflation is likely to be persistent.”

From Breitbart:

“Food prices jumped 0.9 percent for the month, with food at home rising 1.2 percent. Compared with a year ago, food at home costs 4.5 percent more. The Department of Labor helpfully notes that prices are up in all 12 of its grocery store categories.

It’s no wonder that the New York Fed’s survey of consumers showed inflation expectations hitting a new record high. Consumers expect higher inflation because they are seeing it with their own eyes and feeling it in their lightening wallets. It’s not just grocery stores, of course. The prices of clothes, shoes, furniture, appliances, and cars all have seen serious rises year over year.”

However, brace yourself as this transitoriness” is about to get worse.

If you thought inflation was a problem this summer and fall, just wait until you try heating your home this winter.

At least, that appears to be the warning from the U.S. Energy Information Administration in its new Winter Fuels Outlook report released on 10/13/21.

Americans can expect their home heating bills to jump significantly over the winter months compared to last year, the EIA reported — with some citizens possibly paying 54% more.

(Natural gas users can expect to spend about a third more than they did in 2020-21, while electricity users will see a 6% bump. Those using heating oil should expect to pay more than 40% more, and propane users will really get the shaft, with estimates projecting a 54% hike in heating prices.) 

The Department of Labor issued its twin inflation reports, known as the Consumer Price Index and the Producer Price Index, this week. They both showed the prices of many popular holiday gifts have shot up over the past twelve months.

• Toys, games, and children’s vehicles: + 5.8 percent.
• Sporting and athletic goods: +12.0 percent.
• Sports vehicles including bicycles: +8.9 percent.
• Televisions: +12.9 percent.
• Pets and pet supplies: +4.2 percent.
• Home electronic equipment: +6.4 percent.
• Home appliances: 5.0 percent.
• Major appliances: 9.7 percent.
• Cameras and photographic equipment: +6.9 percent.
• Computers and smart home assistants: +8.5 percent.

From Breitbart:

“The economy is supply-constrained and likely to remain so for the foreseeable future. We had Atlanta Fed President Raphael Bostic declare that the supply chain “bottlenecks” were probably going to stick around, and therefore inflation was unlikely to be transitory.”

Hmmm! … “unlikely to be transitory!” Perhaps a new definition of the word!

10/19/21

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By this time most of us who pay attention know that President Joe Biden considers himself to be a “devout Catholic.” He proclaims his “devoutness” even though seemingly he does whatever he can to promote abortion. As far as I am concerned everyone can have their own attitude toward abortion. Certainly there are Catholics that are pro-abortion, while most devout Catholics that I am aware of are anti-abortion.

However, to me, there is a big difference between being a Catholic who personally is in favor of abortion, and being a Catholic who goes out of his way to push abortion. And with this last statement one has a honed-in view of Joe Biden, but again, as is often the case with Joe, it’s worse that that. Let’s look at some of the things that he has said in the past.

1974 interview with Washingtonian:

“I don’t like the Supreme Court decision on abortion. I think it went too far. I don’t think that a woman has the sole right to say what should happen to her body,” Biden said during the interview.

(Sounds pretty devout.)

In a 1977 letter to Delaware constituents:

“The 1977 fiscal year appropriations bill prohibits the use of federal funds to pay for abortions ‘…unless the life of the mother is in danger.’ This is the position which I have consisted supported.”

(His devoutness persists.)

2006 interview with Texas Monthly:

“I’m a little bit of an odd man out in my party,” Biden said. “I do not vote for funding for abortion. I voted against partial birth abortion—to limit it.”

He continued, “I do not view abortion as a choice and a right. I think it’s always a tragedy, and I think that it should be rare and safe, and I think we should be focusing on how to limit the number of abortions.”

(“rare and safe” … still sounds devout.)

But as we all know with politicians, even with “devout politicians,” their views may change as they attempt to get elected.

2019 Planned Parenthood Speech:

“It should be the law,” Biden said, in regard to the Roe v. Wade decision.

(Oops! A big drop on the “devoutness” scale.)

Noe that he is President his “devoutness” seems to be continuing to go in the opposite direction, as he is doing everything he can to promote abortion, as he just opened up federal funding from the Title X program to clinics that refer for abortions. (Under the Trump administration, such clinics also had to be physically and financially separate from facilities that performed abortions.)

(Now he sounds like the antithesis of devout!)

But it gets worse as he just appointed an ambassador to the Vatican. Who? you might ask. Well of course it had to be another devout Catholic!

He appointed Joe Donnelly , an ex-politician, who was one of the last House Democratic holdouts who abandoned their opposition to abortion and voted for the bill on its final passage of the Affordable Care Act in 2010.

(He sounds like he is in the same devout category as Biden.)

I guess that this is Biden’s way of “sticking a finger in the eye” of Pope Francis.

10/18/21

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One of my friends who is a self-acclaimed conservative was somewhat surprisingly anti-Trump. When I queried him as to why, although his answer was a bit unclear, it had something to do with the way he handled Covid. I thought about telling him that we were in the midst of a pandemic, but then I realized that if his anti-Trump Covid reasoning did not really involve Trump’s handling of the pandemic, it would have possibly been related to his “mean tweeting.”

Certainly in retrospect, it was unlikely that Donald Trump could have stopped the pandemic, but to anti-Trumpers the pandemic alone was a reason to dislike President Trump.

The Leftist mainstream media just like my “conservative” friend blamed him for the disease’s arrival on American shores, even though he acted IMMEDIATELY when the US got its first reported case.

They said he didn’t do enough to stop it, accusing him of sitting idly by while Americans died, and so during the debates, Joe Biden just had to spit out a few of these numbers, putting the focus on the negatives of Trump’s response rather than point out the positive.

It was a hit job, really, coordinated by the Biden campaign and the Leftist media.

I’m assuming that my anti-Trump friend voted for Biden, as he said, “I’d never vote for Trump.”

On 10/30/2020 Joe Biden tweeted:

I’m not going to shut down the economy.

I’m going to shut down the virus.

I’m not going to shut down the country.

For emphasis, let me point out that Joe Biden has been in office now for almost nine months, and what he promised concerning the pandemic has not occurred.

From Freedom Wire:

And while the media is suddenly staying silent about negative COVID numbers, the latest ones show just how badly Biden has performed in “shutting down the virus.”

Under Joe Biden’s watch, which began in January 2021, more people have died of COVID than all of 2020.

According to data by John Hopkins University, as reported by ABC News, “More than 353,000 COVID-19 deaths have been reported since Jan 1st, compared with 352,000 COVID-19 deaths in the first 10 months of the pandemic. Over the last month, the U.S. has reported more than 47,000 deaths.”

The fact that Biden has done a worse job than Trump on his worst day may be why the narrative has shifted to blaming “the unvaccinated” instead of the man in charge.

Doesn’t seem right, does it?

If you’re going to blame ONE man for COVID deaths, then stick to your guns, media. If 2020’s death count was Trump’s fault, then 2021’s is Biden’s … tit-for-tat. 

Does he and other “Never-Trumpers” ever have “buyer’s remorse?” 

10/16/21

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Picture the old time GP groggily answering the phone at midnight. He listens intently, and finally says, “take two aspirin and call my office in the morning if you’re not feeling better.” Back then in its infancy, aspirin or ASA, was a multipurpose miracle drug.

As time went on it was discovered that aspirin had blood thinning properties because of its effect on platelets. Over the years a myriad of cardiac patients were placed on aspirin either secondarily after a cardiac event or primarily as prophylaxis in individuals with multiple risk factors for heart disease. Aspirin had evolved into a major player on the every day medical stage.

However popular ASA had become in the realm of cardiac disease, the latest use of aspirin is likely to win aspirin at least an Oscar nomination.

From BlazeNews:

New research from George Washington University has determined that treating COVID patients with aspirin reduced the risk of severe illness by nearly half.

The report noted that an aspirin regimen in more than 400 COVID-19 patients in hospitals across the United States cut the need for ventilation by 44%, slashed ICU admission by 43%, and reduced overall in-hospital mortality rates by 47%.

This isn’t the only study professing the possible benefits of aspirin in COVID patients. Earlier in October, Medical Express reported that researchers from the University of Minnesota and Basel University in Switzerland came to the same conclusion.

The researchers’ findings were published in Lancet’s Open Access eClinical Medicine and revealed that patients on blood thinners before getting COVID were admitted less often to the hospital despite being older and having more chronic medical conditions than their peers. The findings also revealed that blood thinners — whether started before or after COVID-19 infection — reduced death by nearly half.

The implication from these studies is that in the Covid pandemic setting, a multitude of lives could potentially be saved with more widespread use of aspirin.

10/15/21

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The question that comes up is: “Should I visit with my grandchildren?”

And then comes the following:

Does it matter if they are vaccinated or unvaccinated ?

Does it matter if I am vaccinated or unvaccinated ?

Does it matter how old they are ?

Does it matter how old I am ?

Basically this comes down to one’s mindset in playing the odds. If your modus operandi is to avoid taking even the tiniest of risk, then the obvious answer is to avoid everybody, including grandchildren, irrespective of their ages.

In my past I enjoyed playing poker, which is a game where odds are very important.(what are the odds of drawing to an inside straight? Is that better or worse than drawing to a four-flush? Etcetera.) In poker, if you consistently play the odds, you have a reasonable chance of winning. 

Might the question of, “should I visit my grandchildren,” come down to the odds. For the record, both my wife and I are fully vaccinated, and likewise all of my grandchildren are also vaccinated except for the 4 year old and the 6 year old.

From the New York Times:

Here are hospitalization rates by both age and vaccination status in King County, Wash., which includes Seattle and releases some of the country’s most detailed Covid data:

-0.41 hospitalizations per 100,000 people in those 65 and older (fully vaccinated)

-0.06 hospitalizations per 100,000 people in those ages 5-11 (unvaccinated)

-0.18 hospitalizations per 100,000 people in ages 12-15 (unvaccinated) 

-minuscule hospitalizations per 100,000 in those ages 12-17 (vaccinated)

Truth be told, I have detailed the odds of severe Covid in the pertinent age groups for the benefit of my hesitant older readers. Me? … I’m all-in with my grandchildren, no matter what the odds … in fact within the last two days, I have seen seven of them !

10/14/21

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As I predicted in a blog on 9/1/21 … “this is just the beginning.” Back then on 8/23/21, the mayor of Chicago mandated that all city employees must be vaccinated by 10/15/21 or loose their job. This mandate included all police officers, and at that time there was considerable resistance from the Fraternal Order of the Police. The October 15 deadline is almost here and I have not heard what the predicted outcome is going to be there.

Again like I said back on 9/1 … this was just the beginning of the battle of wills in multiple large cities that have issued a “be vaccinated or else” dictum. One of the cities that will potentially be hurt the most is Seattle,

the liberal city that still pursues defunding police. Seattle could lose a significant portion of its police force this month as officers who refuse to comply with a COVID-19 vaccine mandate risk termination.

From BlazeNews:

The mandate has put the Seattle Police Department in a bind because, according to KCPQ-TV, 292 sworn personnel have yet to submit proof of vaccination. To compound problems, Seattle PD spokesperson Sgt. Randy Huserik told KCPQ that an additional 111 officers were awaiting decision on exemption requests.

That means, if every exemption request is denied and the remaining officers do not submit proof they are fully vaccinated, the Seattle Police Department stands to lose over 400 sworn officers — or about 40% of the police force.

If that were to happen, Seattle would descend into chaos. The city has already lost more than 300 police officers since 2020 over “defund the police” and anti-police riots, KCPQ noted.

The mandated deadline in “The Emerald City” for the police officers to be vaccinated is 10/18/21.

There are multiple cities that possibly are going to find themselves in a real quagmire of self-imposed unlawfulness due to vaccine mandates. If chaos has to hit one or more of them, it would only be fitting that those cities who are sh..ting on their police, get hit the hardest. if that happens to The Emerald City, there will be no tears shed by this guy.

10/12/21

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For those who are consistent readers of my opinion pieces, you are aware that I have been very dubious of the supposed benefits of facemasks. To me it has always been about the theoretical benefit of facemask wearing in experiments versus the benefit of facemaks in the real world. All one has to do is to observe the way individuals actually wear facemasks in public to realize that a lot of people either wear them incorrectly or the facemask that an individual wears is far, far from adequate in providing anything close to an airtight seal.

Could it be that facemasks in certain situations provide a false sense of security to society in general? For a while it was “it’s okay to be out and about as long as everyone is wearing a facemask.” How well has that worked? 

Now to the real reason for this piece … could it be that Covid vaccinations are doing something similar to what I think masks have done?

Vaccination mandates are becoming commonplace, and they are increasing, but Covid has not disappeared. Could it be that Covid vaccinations are providing a false sense of security to the general public?

Two recent things that I have read make me wonder if widespread vaccinations could in fact be making things worse. 

First in my 10/2/21 piece I commented on a recent study from UC Davis in which the viral load was no different in symptomatic versus asymptomatic individuals with a positive Covid test. Likewise there was no difference in the viral load in vaccinated versus non-vaccinated individuals – both groups with a positive Covid test. So does it make sense to mandate vaccinations if the viral loads in the vaccinated are the same as those in the non vaccinated? Could it be that limiting restaurants, theaters, etc. only to those who are vaccinated is actually just providing a false sense of security? “We are all safe here because we are all vaccinated.”

Second, as is now obvious to everyone, the vaccines are leaking, meaning that the further out from vaccination, the less effective the vaccines are.

For those unfamiliar with leaky vaccine syndrome, read this important 2015 PBS article about the leaky chicken vaccine for Marek’s disease. The article explains how a leaky chicken vaccine was able to make this devastating virus among chickens both more transmissible and more virulent, bucking the micro-evolutionary phenomenon that forces the two factors to work inversely.

The article explains how a leaky vaccine that only ameliorates symptoms for the vaccinated chickens allows the virus to become more virulent and spread more widely in live hosts. In the case of the Marek’s disease vaccine, it devastated all of the unvaccinated chickens who were innocent bystanders.

I can hear most of you thinking something along the lines of “chickens, smickens … be real! That was in chickens!”

But there are some strange presently unexplainable things happening.

Take Florida, for example: With a very high senior vaccination rate, especially in places like Miami, it had a 94% increase in deaths this August over last August.

Also Wales with 92% of adults vaccinated, is experiencing its worst outbreak ever. Wales has a mask mandate and 92% of everyone over 16 is at least partially vaccinated…so why are cases the highest they’ve ever been? The numbers of new cases there now surpassing the prior record which occurred during the mid December, 2020 peak.

From Blaze:

“A Harvard researcher could not find any correlation between vaccination rates and COVID case rates after examining 68 countries and 2,947 counties in the United States. “At the country-level, there appears to be no discernible relationship between percentage of population fully vaccinated and new COVID-19 cases in the last 7 days,” concluded the authors in the study published in the European Journal of Epidemiology. “In fact, the trend line suggests a marginally positive association such that countries with higher percentage of population fully vaccinated have higher COVID-19 cases per 1 million people.”

How many breakthrough cases are there in the U.S. ?

Curiously, the exact number of breakthrough cases, in fact, is not even known. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention stopped tracking that data in May. The agency has continued, however, to track hospitalizations and deaths among the fully vaccinated crowd.

I’ll conclude with the following: 

Could it be that those things that ‘those who know best’ tell us are beneficial … first masks and now mandatory vaccinations … are actually making the situation worse?

10/11/21

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For the most part I do not write about topics on which I do not know much about or topics in which I have little interest. This is in spite of me multiple times saying, “Here’s my opinion on something about which I know very little.” Two topics which fall into this category include global warming (which I do not think is man made), and the second amendment (as I do not own a gun). However I came across a very interesting case which will soon be heard in the Second Court of Appeals.

I found this case interesting because it included two topics that intersected with each other, namely illegal immigration and the right to possess a firearm. 

Here is a short version of the case from “Bearing Arms:”

Back in the summer of 2016, Jose Perez was walking in Brooklyn when he saw a gang beating up on a single individual with machetes. As Mr. Perez happened to have a gun in his hand, he fired shots into the air, and scared off the attackers. He then returned the gun to its owner.

Months later, Perez was arrested and charged with a federal crime — being an “alien in possession of a firearm.” He faced 10 years in federal prison and deportation.

His lawyers argued the federal law is unconstitutional because it strips people like Perez — millions of undocumented people with no prior criminal record — of Second Amendment rights. The government shot back that the amendment doesn’t apply to Perez because of his unlawful status in the country, and even if it did, the law is reasonable in achieving a government’s interest in controlling crime.

From my perspective there are two interesting facets to this story.

First: Mr. Perez actually used the gun for something good. Does this count for anything?

Second: Do non citizens have the same rights as citizens?

Perez’s attorneys are arguing that when Justice Antonin Scalia (the Heller decision) referred to individuals in general and not just American citizens when he said people had the right to keep and bear arms.(The problem is that Scalia said “citizens,” and not just individuals in general.)

After failing in the lower courts, the case now has the potential of ending in the U.S. Supreme Court, where it could have far-reaching implications for immigrant rights beyond gun possession, legal experts say.

10/10/21

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