Author: VD

The medical vector

If you don’t want to catch Covid-19, stay out of the hospitals and doctor’s offices:

This virus is not being spread the way we’re told.

Social distancing is close to worthless.

NY’s data makes this quite clear.  So does Florida’s.

Both slammed the door; SE Florida and NYC.

The bend should be evident in one viral generation time.  The new case rate should collapse in two viral generation times.  If Community Transmission via bars, restaurants and “social interaction” was more than 2/3rds of the total the effective R0 would go under 1.0 and community transmission would collapse.  If it was half then R0 would be 1.5 and we’d have transmission approximately equal to a bad seasonal flu.

IF you actually bent the curve.

These measures did not bend it to any material degree.  Enough time has passed to know this is true; at most they have lengthened a “turn time” by one day (in other words, R3.0 to R2.5.)  That’s effectively nothing!

Why not?

It’s being spread in the medical environment — specifically, in the hospitals — not, in the main, on the beach or in the bar.

When Singapore and South Korea figured out that if as a medical provider you wash your damn hands before and after, without exception, every potential contact with an infected person or surface even if you didn’t have a mask on for 30 minutes during casual conversations with others (e.g. neither of you is hacking) transmission to and between their medical providers stopped.

Note — even if you didn’t have a mask on and were not social distancing in the work environment, which of course is impossible if you’re working with others in a hospital, you didn’t get infected.

And guess what immediately happened after that?  Their national case rate stabilized and fell.

The hypothesis that fits the facts is that a material part of transmission is actually happening in the hospital with the medical providers spreading it through the community both directly and indirectly.

Keep in mind that this was posted by Denninger back in March. And now, the death rate in Singapore is one in 1,896 cases, compared to one in 29 cases in the USA and one in 25 worldwide.

The myth of a free nation

The Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave has become the Land of the Fearful and the Home of the Censored:

A new Cato national survey finds that self‐​censorship is on the rise in the United States. Nearly two-thirds—62{4e01b0bc4ab012654d0c5016d8cbf558644ab2e53259aa2c40b66b3b20e8967d}—of Americans say the political climate these days prevents them from saying things they believe because others might find them offensive. The share of Americans who self‐​censor has risen several points since 2017 when 58{4e01b0bc4ab012654d0c5016d8cbf558644ab2e53259aa2c40b66b3b20e8967d} of Americans agreed with this statement.

These fears cross partisan lines. Majorities of Democrats (52{4e01b0bc4ab012654d0c5016d8cbf558644ab2e53259aa2c40b66b3b20e8967d}), independents (59{4e01b0bc4ab012654d0c5016d8cbf558644ab2e53259aa2c40b66b3b20e8967d}) and Republicans (77{4e01b0bc4ab012654d0c5016d8cbf558644ab2e53259aa2c40b66b3b20e8967d}) all agree they have political opinions they are afraid to share.

That’s what happens when your rulers criminalize excessive noticing. Or, as is increasingly the case, any noticing of anything. Remember, those who are inverted always fear that which is true, so they demand your assent to their lies for their own protection.

Americans are no longer free and they cannot reasonably be described as a free nation. Not when you can lose your job, be banned from education, fined, and jailed for doing nothing more than simply questioning the Promethean narrative.

At least we have a good idea

How the USA is going to come to an end by 2033:

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, from the podium at the Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum in Yorba Linda, California, laid out in no uncertain terms what the administration wanted to do and how it planned to go about accomplishing its ambitious aims.

America, the secretary of state said, has effectively ditched five decades of “engagement” policy and is now embracing a policy now out of favor across the American policy establishment: regime change.

Formally, the State Department still “engages” China, Pompeo said, but “simply to demand fairness and reciprocity.” Gone are the days when American diplomats engaged China to support the Communist Party. Too often in the past, U.S. presidents rescued Chinese communism, three times—Nixon in 1972, Bush in 1989, and Clinton in 1999—in particular.

More importantly, Pompeo said there would be a new form of engagement. “We must also engage and empower the Chinese people—a dynamic, freedom-loving people who are completely distinct from the Chinese Communist Party,” he said. “That begins with in-person diplomacy.”

This is a spectacularly disastrous policy and it is coming straight from the neocon imperialists. (I note that on the same page as the linked article, there is featured a cover of an issue of National Interest entitled “The Case for Kissinger”.) After all, “regime change” has worked so well in Southeast Asia for the last sixty years, right? It’s hard to know where to even start criticizing this policy because no part of it makes any sense at all. Pompeo may have produced the single most idiotic speech related to diplomacy and war of which I’ve ever heard.

First, the Chinese people are no more freedom-loving than the Afghans, the Iraqis, or the Vietnamese. Their dynamism is irrelevant, and as suspect as the purported “natural conservatism” of Hispanics. Second, the Chinese government is not the business of the American people. Third, this is an acknowledgement of a new cold war, not between the United States and China as it appears on the surface, but between the Jewish and Chinese nations. Pompeo is speaking for his neocon masters and the USA, its people, and its military, are being utilized as a weapon against China.

Fourth, there is no shortage of in-person diplomacy available with the four million Han who now reside in the United States. If I had to bet on regime change, I’d bet on the larger country successfully invading the smaller one being the party to impose it.

It will be interesting to see if the President stands by these assertions about his administration or if he begins moving to jettison Pompeo as he has previously ejected other neocon puppets working for him. Because while the USA can win a trade war with China, it is likely to lose any other kind of war with it, and given the neocons’ failure to force regime change on Syria and Venezuela, it is very hard to imagine they will be more successful with China.

And fifth, Pompeo said “It’s time for free nations to act.” But Americans are not a free nation.

So much for those “waivers”

Patreon’s new Terms of Use are completely dead on arrival.

Dispute resolution
To summarize: If you have a problem please talk to us, but you are limited in how you can resolve disputes. You waive your right to trial by jury and your right to participate in a class action proceeding.

Except you don’t, because you can’t. Not in Patreon’s legal jurisdiction of California, anyhow. First, you simply cannot waive your right to trial by jury except for a small number of specific reasons, which basically amount to “not showing up for the trial” and “not paying the court’s filing fee”, so any contractual agreement to preemptively waive your right to trial by jury is unenforceable according to both the California legislature and the California Supreme Court.

The California Supreme Court has ruled that a contractual agreement to waive the right to a jury trial, entered into prior to any dispute between the contracting parties, is unenforceable under the California Constitution and Section 631 of the California Code of Civil Procedure (the Code).
– citation summary of Grafton Partners v. Superior Court, 36 Cal.4th 944 (Cal. 2005)

“In Grafton Partners L.P. v. Sup.Ct., 36 Cal. 4th 944, 957-61 (2005), the California Supreme Court held that pre-dispute jury waivers are unenforceable as a matter of law under the California Constitution and state contract law.”
– Pallen Martial Arts, LLC v. Shir Martial Arts, LLC, No. 13-cv-05898-JST (N.D. Cal. May 23, 2014)

Nor can you waive your right to participate in a class action proceeding, so long as the class action takes place in court and not in arbitration.

In Discover Bank, the California Supreme Court applied this framework to class-action waivers in arbitration agreements and held as follows:

“[W]hen the waiver is found in a consumer contract of adhesion in a setting in which disputes between the contracting parties predictably involve small amounts of damages, and when it is alleged that the party with the superior bargaining power has carried out a scheme to deliberately cheat large numbers of consumers out of individually small sums of money, then … the waiver becomes in practice the exemption of the party ‘from responsibility for [its] own fraud, or willful injury to the person or property of another.’ Under these circumstances, such waivers are unconscionable under California law and should not be enforced.” Id., at 162, 30 Cal.Rptr.3d 76, 113 P.3d, at 1110 (quoting Cal. Civ.Code Ann. § 1668 ).

California courts have frequently applied this rule to find arbitration agreements unconscionable. See, e.g., Cohen v. DirecTV, Inc ., 142 Cal.App.4th 1442, 1451–1453, 48 Cal.Rptr.3d 813, 819–821 (2006) ; Klussman v. Cross Country

Despite Discover Bank, you can, however, waive your right to a class action arbitration, since the conflict between California law and the Federal Arbitration Act caused the California Supreme Court to distinguish between class action litigation and class action arbitration in AT&T Mobility LLC v. Concepcion, 563 U.S. 333 (2011).

Can you spell “deceptive practices”? I knew you could….

Color me dubious

UNCW professor Mike Adams died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound, according to a news release from the New Hanover County Sheriff’s Office. 

Detectives began their investigation in partnership with the medical examiner and it was ascertained that Mr. Adams committed suicide with a single gunshot wound to the head,” the news release stated.

No one else was in the home at the time of the incident and no foul play is suspected, the sheriff’s office says.

Because he was so depressed about being paid more than $500k to go and do whatever he wanted? I am… skeptical.

RIP Laurie Bluedorn

Laurie Bluedorn, a great champion of homeschooling and the author of the highly influential instructional book Teaching the Trivium: Christian Homeschooling in a Classical Style, died this morning. She was a model of the defender of Christian civilization that we would all do well to aspire to be.

Requiescat in pace.

You can’t fix convergence

A reader emails about Wikipedia’s new code of conduct:

There is a big SJW convergence step happening on Wikipedia right now. They are trying to impose an universal code of conduct on all Wikimedia projects to be more “inclusive” and target “harassment”. Aka the same old bullshit as always. Only this time it would target something as big as all of the Wikipedias in all of their languages (another hilariously hypocritical example of SJW imposing their standards on different peoples and cultures, btw). The new code would be retroactive as well, apparently, so already closed cases could be opened again.

In the meantime they are also setting up an interim “case review committee“, just to be able to start doing this shit as fast as possible:

They are clearly trying to close this process as fast as possible, even doing it during summer when a lot of users are enjoying their holidays. I wonder if something could be done to stop it or limit its effect. Maybe some users that have been on Wikipedia for a while could work on it somehow. I don’t know if you have any ideas about that.

Why would we want to stop it? We’ve already provided everyone with the ideal alternative. People have got to learn to stop crying, stop complaining, and stop trying to fix the enemy and simply start making use of the existing alternatives instead.

Trump will take Minnesota

As well as a number of other states that no one expects him to win:

Let’s say Donald Trump fails to sweep the Rust Belt states in 2020. His chances of winning Ohio, where he swamped Hillary Clinton by 9 points in 2016, are still great. But without Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania, where Trump won by smaller margins four years ago, the president might well lose reelection.

In 2016, Trump had a 68 electoral-vote margin over Clinton — 304 to 236. Take away the combined 44 electoral votes from those three states, and Trump falls short of the needed 270 votes by 10.

With Trump trailing most of the Democratic candidates in the Rust Belt by double digits in recent polling, liberals seem gleeful about their chances of victory in 2020. But this optimism assumes Trump cannot expand the electoral map elsewhere.

In fact, he can. Thanks to the success of Trump’s policies and other fortuitous developments, several other blue-trending states are certain to be in play in 2020.

Of these, none is more important than Minnesota. Its 10 electoral votes alone could offset a possible Rust Belt loss. The mainstream media has barely covered Trump’s remarkable gains in Minnesota, a state that historically is the bluest of the blue.

How blue? Even during the Reagan landslide victories of 1980 and 1984, the Gopher State remained a bastion of New Deal liberalism and economic populism. In fact, the last time the GOP captured Minnesota was during Richard Nixon’s reelection campaign in 1972, nearly a half-century ago.

Yet Trump, with his own brand of populism, nearly captured the state in 2016. He carried 78 of the state’s 87 counties, double the number carried by President Barack Obama in 2012. Overall, the margin between Trump and Hillary Clinton was a mere 1.5 percent — just 44,000 votes — the weakest Democratic tilt in decades.

I knew Trump would win Minnesota in 2020 back in 2016. But the riots and the burning of the Lake and Hiawatha neighborhood sealed the deal. That was too much even for the nicest Scandihoovian cucks and karens.

They’re at it again

Patreon changes its terms for the second time in less than three weeks.

Dispute resolution

To summarize: If you have a problem please talk to us, but you are limited in how you can resolve disputes. You waive your right to trial by jury and your right to participate in a class action proceeding.

We encourage you to contact us if you have an issue. If a dispute does arise out of these terms or related to your use of Patreon, and it cannot be resolved after you talk with us, then it must be resolved by arbitration. This arbitration must be administered by JAMS under the JAMS Streamlined Arbitration Rules and Procedures, except as expressly provided below. Judgment on the arbitration may be entered in any court with jurisdiction. Arbitrations may only take place on an individual basis. No class arbitrations or other other grouping of parties is allowed. By agreeing to these terms you are waiving your right to trial by jury or to participate in a class action or representative proceeding; we are also waiving these rights.

For creators and patrons who are consumers, we also follow the JAMS Policy on Consumer Arbitrations Pursuant to Pre-Dispute Clauses Minimum Standards of Procedural Fairness for consumer arbitrations done under these terms. For the purpose of an arbitration subject to the consumer standards, if any portion of these terms do not follow that standard, that portion is severed from these terms.

This clause does not limit either party’s ability to file an action in a court with jurisdiction to seek injunctive or other equitable relief for disputes relating to intellectual property, proprietary data or to enforce this dispute resolution clause, including your agreement not to assert claims related to the suspension or termination of another person’s account. In any such action, the court rather than an arbitrator must decide whether such a claim is arbitrable and must decide whether the party is entitled to the requested injunctive or other equitable relief.

This is rapidly threatening to move beyond comedy into farce… they just keep digging the hole deeper. Remember, these are the legal geniuses who, in the full knowledge that they had waived their right to participate in a group action, filed not one, but TWO group actions.

They also don’t seem to grasp that the relevant terms are those at the time that the event concerned took place, not when the legal action is taken. Also, they appear to have completely blown off their duty to notify their users of these changes, so if you’re a Patreon user, be sure to keep your notification emails from them and note how many days after the effective date it is.

It’s more than a bit strange how they keep trying to defend their deceptive practices by engaging in more of them. But it should be entirely clear to everyone at this point that if you’re desperately trying to change the rules again and again, you’re obviously not winning the game.

How to deal with a hit piece

Clay Travis follows Owen Benjamin’s lead in dealing with a Daily Beast hitpiece:

“OutKick recently added Dr. David Chao as a staff writer. Did you ask about the medical lawsuits and six-figure settlements, probations, accusations of “gross negligence” and malpractice, and/or the DUIs prior to hiring him? In the blog post announcing his arrival, why is this information omitted? Did Dr. Chao or someone representing him ask you or anyone at OutKick to exclude that information? Do you feel it’s relevant for your readers to have this information when reading his content?”

Dr. Chao is a licensed doctor in California. Given that he’s licensed to operate on people in this country, I felt comfortable with him writing for an opinion website.

Furthermore, he’s been profiled as an NFL injury expert in the New York Times recently, written for the San Diego Tribune for years prior to joining Outkick, and is cited as an NFL injury expert, thanks to his tenure as team physician of the San Diego Chargers, throughout the Internet.

He’s not remotely controversial.

We believe in the first amendment on this site, writers don’t tell other writers what they can and can’t say. And writers certainly don’t tell the owners of this site what we can and can’t say either.

“Jason Whitlock wrote a column describing Jaden McNeil as a “martyr” who was targeted for tweeting “politically incorrect” jokes about George Floyd. Jaden McNeil is a member of the openly racist “Groyper” movement. He also promotes, works with and praises white nationalists. How and why was this information left out and did you personally edit the column? Are all of the articles on OutKick edited or are staffers allowed to post stories on the site without review?”

I asked Whitlock to respond to this question since the writer didn’t email him directly, but asked me to comment on his column. Enjoy his response.

“Karen, I honestly find this line of questioning racist and emblematic of the systemic racism practiced by busybodies in the white alt-left movement. Let me translate what you just did: “Clay, Mr. White Folks, your negro writer is out of control and published an opinion that upstanding white people disagree with. Discipline and control your negro or we will.”

Karen, I’m a PARTNER at Outkick. Clay is not my overseer. He is my partner. All due respect to Clay, but I am the most accomplished journalist at Outkick. You could argue I’m the most accomplished sports journalist in America.

I’m offended you reached out to Clay and Dr. Chao directly with questions about their work, but in typical Karen fashion chose to report me to Mr. White Folks. Did you question Kansas State president Richard Myers for not mentioning Jaden McNeil’s alleged affiliation to white nationalists in Mr. Myers’ public critique of McNeil? Like 99.99 percent of America, I’ve never heard of the Groyper movement. When I was in college I was attracted to and attended events put on by the Nation of Islam, an organized and well-known black nationalist group.

Kids experiment with dumb shit. Karen, I am the wrong negro for you to be f–king with. Go sit down.”

Of course, this preemptive exposure response is only recommended for those with sizeable audiences. What is different about this sort of hit piece than the usual media inquiry is that it is usually going to be written whether you respond to the individual writing it or not, so preemptive exposure is an opportunity to both undermine the hit piece in advance as well as highlight the elements that the hit piece’s author obviously intends to omit.

It will be interesting to see if the Outkick piece, like the Big Bear piece, fails to run after being preemptively exposed.

The very best strategy, of course, is to refer the inquiry to my media relations expert, Pax Dickonson.