vxbush 7/22/2021 6:06:36 AM

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In yesterday's morning thread: 

In #44 Kosh's Shadow said: I go by the Jerusalem Post articles, as Israel is way ahead of keeping track. One article on how the Israeli statistics are being misused, “Does the vaccine reduce the risk of getting infected and getting severe disease? The answer to both questions is yes – the vaccine reduces the risk of getting infected and it significantly reduces the risk of developing severe disease,” Leshem said. Data shared by Prof. Eran Segal, a computational biologist with the Weizmann Institute of Science who advises the government, showed that in this wave versus the previous wave, only between 1.2% and 1.6% of infected people are developing severe disease, compared to between 3.9% and 4.3%. When looking at the older population, in this wave between 4.8% and 6.8% of people over the age of 60 are developing severe disease, compared to 28.1% and 31%.

Part of me wonders, though, if this is a result of us better treating the illness or the vaccine. We have radically changed how we treat patients with the disease. So what could appear to be a result of the vaccine--and might be--might also be a result of the better methods we now have for treating the disease. 

But for today--Good morning, folks. 

Kosh's Shadow 7/22/2021 6:12:34 AM

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Reply to vxbush in 1:

I believe they are comparing current results with vaccinated vs unvaccinated.

vxbush 7/22/2021 6:21:43 AM

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In #2 Kosh's Shadow said: I believe they are comparing current results with vaccinated vs unvaccinated.

Do you have a handy link to that JPost article? I'd like to read the whole thing. 

vxbush 7/22/2021 6:37:17 AM

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In #3 vxbush said: Do you have a handy link to that JPost article? I'd like to read the whole thing. 

Never mind--I got it from yesterday's thread.

vxbush 7/22/2021 7:02:28 AM

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lucius septimius 7/22/2021 7:28:13 AM

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Reply to vxbush in 5:

What is the key?  

JCM 7/22/2021 8:15:56 AM

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buzzsawmonkey 7/22/2021 8:27:44 AM

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Reply to JCM in 7:

I've been re-reading John Dos Passos' book "The Best Times," a series of reminiscences mostly about his experiences in WWI and his travels and experiences in the '20s and early '30s.

He recounts a trip through the still-forming Soviet Union during the transition period between Lenin's death and Stalin's consolidation of power.  One of his traveling companions during one leg of the journey was a student who had done very well in school, but he was scheduled to go up before a "committee" for review because he had "the wrong class origins,"  and it was therefore unlikely that he would be permitted to engage in the career/work for which he'd been training.

Dos Passos notes that he later heard this young man committed suicide rather than face the committee.

As I was reading this, it struck me how very similar---well, let's say identical---the concept of a committee determining your worth and your future on the basis of your having "proper class origins" is to the current wokies determining your worth, your fate, and your future on the basis of your race and where that, and other factors such as sex and sexual orientation or preference rank on this week's Woke & Victim List.

Occasional Reader 7/22/2021 8:30:33 AM

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Occasional Reader 7/22/2021 8:32:01 AM

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And for lunch, here is some word salad:

https://twitchy.com/brettt-3136/2021/07/21/uncomfortable-to-watch-heres-a-taste-of-president-bidens-town-hall-with-don-lemon/

JCM 7/22/2021 8:35:21 AM

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Reply to buzzsawmonkey in 8:

That touches on what I consider the core evil of socialism / communism.

The individual has no intrinsic value. A person's value is only derived in utility to the state. Part of that value is the arbitrary utility of race at the moment. 

vxbush 7/22/2021 8:37:34 AM

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In #6 lucius septimius said: What is the key?  

Ah, rats. I thought that was part of it. 

Red: Ages 65+

Blue: Ages 50-64

Aqua: Ages 18-49

JCM 7/22/2021 8:41:35 AM

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Reply to lucius septimius in 6:

You find yourself in a dark hallway, there is a door at the end of the hall with a key hole........

Occasional Reader 7/22/2021 8:44:34 AM

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In #5 vxbush said: Current breakdown of the "pandemic":

No need for the scare quotes, in my opinion. Has it been oversold by the left for political reasons? Yes. But it is very much a pandemic. I personally know six people who have died from it. As far as I can recall, I cannot say that about any other communicable disease; certainly not within the space of a year and a half.

Kosh's Shadow 7/22/2021 8:49:23 AM

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Reply to buzzsawmonkey in 8:

Tabletmag has for a while had articles on how Wokeism takes Marxism and replaces class with "race".

JCM 7/22/2021 8:50:33 AM

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Pennsylvania decertifies county's voting machines after 2020 audit

July 21 (Reuters) - Pennsylvania's top election official has decertified the voting equipment of a rural county that participated in an audit of the 2020 election requested by a Republican state lawmaker and staunch ally of former President Donald Trump.

vxbush 7/22/2021 9:01:09 AM

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In #14 Occasional Reader said: No need for the scare quotes, in my opinion. Has it been oversold by the left for political reasons? Yes. But it is very much a pandemic. I personally know six people who have died from it. As far as I can recall, I cannot say that about any other communicable disease; certainly not within the space of a year and a half.

My experience is completely different. I know only one person who died from it, and not someone I know well. There also seems to be a big difference in the outbreak between northern states and southern states and between dense cities and rural areas. 

lucius septimius 7/22/2021 9:22:10 AM

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Reply to Kosh's Shadow in 15:

I've been saying that for years, but does anybody listen?

lucius septimius 7/22/2021 9:24:05 AM

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In #14 Occasional Reader said: As far as I can recall, I cannot say that about any other communicable disease; certainly not within the space of a year and a half.

I would agree with that, though of the two people I know who died, had been obese since high school and the other one was a serious alcoholic.

JCM 7/22/2021 9:27:31 AM

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Reply to Occasional Reader in 14:

I was a pandemic. By the pre-covid methodologies the pandemic ended a year ago.

Not to diminish the loses you experience for covid unlike previous outbreaks they conflated died "with" and died "from". I was so bad in WA State if a person died and they had tested positive for covid in the previous 120 days they counted it as covid. When they got caught WA had to revise numbers down, and media stopped reporting numbers just saying "cases are up" without any quanity.

JCM 7/22/2021 9:28:30 AM

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Alice in Dairyland 7/22/2021 9:32:48 AM

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althouse.blogspot.com/2021/07/if-cash-were-replaced-with-digital

Does this mean all the cash I have stored under my bed in old shoe boxes is going to be worthless now?  I see us having no freedoms at all in this New World.  I really don't want to live this way.

Occasional Reader 7/22/2021 9:33:59 AM

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In #17 vxbush said: My experience is completely different. I know only one person who died from it, and not someone I know well. There also seems to be a big difference in the outbreak between northern states and southern states and between dense cities and rural areas. 

To be clear, none of the people I’m referring to were close friends or family, thank goodness. But they’re all people I knew, “first degree of separation”, to some extent. Two of them were in the Washington DC area, the other four in other countries.

vxbush 7/22/2021 9:41:42 AM

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In #22 Alice in Dairyland said: Does this mean all the cash I have stored under my bed in old shoe boxes is going to be worthless now?  I see us having no freedoms at all in this New World.  I really don't want to live this way.

Having the ability to track every dollar is another sign of more control. I'll be interested to see if there is any interest in using one form of currency across the globe, and if it's going to be a bitcoin derivative. That would be problematic, I think, simply based on the computational needs to confirm purchase/balance. 

Kosh's Shadow 7/22/2021 9:44:05 AM

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Reply to vxbush in 24:

BTW, despite the claims, bitcoins are traceable. Israel intercepted some bitcoin wallets meant for Hamas and Hizballah terrorists.

buzzsawmonkey 7/22/2021 9:49:39 AM

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Reply to Alice in Dairyland in 22:

Reply to vxbush in 24:

Hell, I still think the MTA was wrong to get rid of the tokens and replace them, first with Metrocards, and now with some payment thing for which you either tap the turnstile with or swipe with your credit card, or use your cell phone to call up the turnstile.  

I've had my senior, half-price Metrocard swallowed by the machines twice while trying to put money on it, and had to wait weeks for it to be replaced (token clerks no longer take money in the NY system, and cannot open the cash machines or get them to disgorge a swallowed card); also had $20 swallowed by the machine, which the MTA refunded by check a few weeks later.

The notion of taking out a credit card, or waving your cell phone around, in the increasingly crime-ridden subway, and the idea of making a mere fare transaction something hackable, since it's going through the ether, is NUTS.  And those are the GOOD features---i.e., that presumes all this flossy technology, theirs and yours, is actually working as it's supposed to.  

Mechanical is better than electronic, because it does not require electricity to function.  Never buy anything that doesn't have a manual override.

buzzsawmonkey 7/22/2021 9:51:15 AM

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In #25 Kosh's Shadow said: bitcoins

How do you buy a newspaper at the corner stand, or a bunch of bananas at the greengrocer's, with bitcoin?

vxbush 7/22/2021 9:55:18 AM

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In #26 buzzsawmonkey said: Mechanical is better than electronic, because it does not require electricity to function.  Never buy anything that doesn't have a manual override.

That is almost impossible to do in some industries because of the digital revolution. 

vxbush 7/22/2021 9:56:12 AM

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In #27 buzzsawmonkey said: How do you buy a newspaper at the corner stand, or a bunch of bananas at the greengrocer's, with bitcoin?

Borrowing from an old commercial--"One day, you will."

buzzsawmonkey 7/22/2021 9:59:07 AM

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In #29 vxbush said: Borrowing from an old commercial--"One day, you will."

God forbid.  For one thing, a dollar is divided into cents; are there little bitty bitcoin bits?

buzzsawmonkey 7/22/2021 10:02:25 AM

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In #28 vxbush said: That is almost impossible to do in some industries because of the digital revolution. 

True---I was going somewhere a few weeks ago with my cousin, and he said that there were something like 150 mini-computers in his car, spatial sensors and this and that.  He didn't put the gas cap on quite right when filling up a few months back, he said, and the whole car went slightly haywire because the computerette in the gas cap wasn't functioning properly.  

I think I'll seek out a vintage Volvo or something else pre-computer age when my current jalopy collapses.  At least it'll have no-draft windows.

Alice in Dairyland 7/22/2021 10:09:33 AM

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In #26 buzzsawmonkey said: Mechanical is better than electronic

Like voting machines?  To those who say it would take too long to get the results, it's been over eight months and even though the election was certified, we still don't really know the actual results of the vote count.

buzzsawmonkey 7/22/2021 10:29:52 AM

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Reply to Alice in Dairyland in 32:

Mechanical voting machines could be jiggered, of course---what machine can't?---but it is my impression that the jiggering is easier to detect.  

I certainly know that I felt a lot more confident that my vote was being tallied when I ka-chunked that lever over to open up the curtains than I do with any of the machines they use now.

vxbush 7/22/2021 10:36:30 AM

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In #30 buzzsawmonkey said: God forbid.  For one thing, a dollar is divided into cents; are there little bitty bitcoin bits?

Actually, yes. Look up satoshi. 

Kosh's Shadow 7/22/2021 10:48:26 AM

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Reply to buzzsawmonkey in 33:

Years ago, IEEE developed standards for voting machines. I don't think any of them meet the standards. One was that a machine print out the votes a voter cast so he could verify them, and that would serve for manual verification.

At least where I vote, a scanner counts paper ballots, and thus its counts can be verified. Ones where you vote purely on a machine cannot be verified.

My town used to use this, and we'd be one of the last to report.

JCM 7/22/2021 10:53:20 AM

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Reply to buzzsawmonkey in 33:

The electro-optical scanners can be hacked, but it would be a re-wiring job. Easily detectable by having a lot of test ballots, with known results the machine results match the test batch. You'd quickly see which scan cell had an issue and visual see the re-wiring.

buzzsawmonkey 7/22/2021 10:54:29 AM

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Reply to Kosh's Shadow in 35:

Somebody, some years back, suggested that voting machines should be modeled on ATM machines; if an ATM can give you a receipt reporting on your transaction,  there's no reason why a voting machine can't.

JCM 7/22/2021 11:08:11 AM

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Reply to buzzsawmonkey in 37:

My suggestion is scanner at the polling place. Voter runs the ballot and gets as you say a receipt of how they voted. If they can accept the results and turn it in, or have the ballot spoiled and vote over. Once the voter accepted the ballot it is count as is. No voter intent, no interpretations. 

buzzsawmonkey 7/22/2021 11:22:25 AM

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It appears that NYT columnist Nicholas Kristof is considering running for Oregon's governorship. 

JCM 7/22/2021 11:55:13 AM

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Reply to buzzsawmonkey in 39:

Batshitcrazy what to replace yzarctihstab.

Kosh's Shadow 7/22/2021 1:36:35 PM

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JCM 7/22/2021 1:54:22 PM

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Reply to Kosh's Shadow in 41:

It certainly seems to.

buzzsawmonkey 7/22/2021 2:54:44 PM

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Reply to Kosh's Shadow in 41: Reply to JCM in 42:

The reflexive anti-Trump, anti-Republican, must-compel-vaccinations + covid-terror,  pro-CRT, hate-Jeff-Bezos (despite his being the Leftist owner of WaPo), demand-gun-confiscation herd mentality on Facebook is absolutely mind-boggling.

JCM 7/22/2021 3:10:58 PM

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Reply to buzzsawmonkey in 43:

Mass hysteria.

buzzsawmonkey 7/22/2021 3:33:54 PM

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Reply to JCM in 44:

Oh...I forgot "climate-change-global-warming-sustainable-energy."  Ooopsie.

JCM 7/22/2021 4:02:41 PM

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Reply to buzzsawmonkey in 45:

I think you had part of the answer yesterday, a "The "global warming/climate change/Gaia" cult is merely a throwback to primitive paganism."

I supports The Statist agenda for command and control.

I agree with an article I read a while back, it gives people's lives meaning, something larger than themselves to deal with. The WWII generation had that, the Cold War etc... I wore my mask during covid... I stayed inside for 6 months....

The status quo we have, had was boring... Jordon Peterson has something leftist seek chaos, conservations seek order. The trick is the balance. After the fall of the Soviet Union, we had so much safety, security and prosperity.... it was boring.

People seek meaning in a BIG ISSUE. The Statist use that, and Lysenkoistic science, and critical theory to tear it down because it is not a command and control system.

buzzsawmonkey 7/22/2021 4:17:13 PM

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In #46 JCM said: I agree with an article I read a while back, it gives people's lives meaning, something larger than themselves to deal with.

Today's kiddies grew up saturated in the tales of their parents' and grandparents' (maybe even great-grandparents') heroism and triumph over adversity.  The Civil Rights Movement!  Segregation, police clubs, water hoses, and violent police raids like the one that took out Black Panther leader Fred Hampton!   Vietnam War protests!  Chicago, 1968! The Weather Underground!  Yadda yadda yadda yadda.

So, what do the kiddies have? A flat plain of opportunity stretches away into the misty distance like an Yves Tanguy painting, and they are lost on the plain.  Their horizon is bounded only by their own vision, education, and skills, and---ill-educated as they are---they have little to none of these things.  

What could be more natural than that they manufacture bogus struggles to prove that they are heroes too?  Especially because it is so much easier to confront imaginary obstacles than to actually address genuine ones.

doppelganglander 7/22/2021 4:53:57 PM

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In #47 buzzsawmonkey said: Especially because it is so much easier to confront imaginary obstacles than to actually address genuine ones.

This.