March 26, 2020

Oxford Dumps the World Health Organization Data

Timothy Birdnow

Oxford University - hardly a citadel of radical right-wing thinking - has stopped using World Health Organization data for Coronavirus reporting because it is untrustworthy and biased.

From the article:

Our World in Data, an online publication based at the University of Oxford, announced on Tuesday that it had stopped relying on World Health Organization (WHO) data for its models, citing errors and other factors.

The group’s founder, Max Roser, said researchers are now using data from the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control.

Until March 18 we relied on the World Health Organization (WHO) as our source. We aimed to rely on the WHO as they are the international agency with the mandate to provide official estimates on the pandemic. The WHO reports this data for each single day and they can be found here at the WHO’s site.

Since March 18 it became unfortunately impossible to rely on the WHO data to understand how the pandemic is developing over time. With Situation Report 58 the WHO shifted the reporting cutoff time from 0900 CET to 0000 CET. This means that comparability is compromised because there is an overlap between these two WHO data publications (Situation Reports 57 and 58).

Additionally we found many errors in the data published by the WHO when we went through all the daily Situation Reports. We immediately notified the WHO and are in close contact with the WHO’s team to correct the errors that we pointed out to them.

WHO, an agency of the United Nations, is responsible for international public health. Recent reports suggest US intelligence agencies relied heavily on WHO in its national assessment of the COVID-19 threat.

The errors and inconsistencies, which Our World in Data documented in a separate report, include discrepancies from nearly a dozen situation reports filed by WHO between February 5 and March 16. Our World in Data researchers said the way WHO was handling the errors was also a problem

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The King's Speech - and Lies from the Media

Timothy Birdnow

On Facebook I had a disagreement with a forwarded post by one George Whitten. He stated:

Here are egregious, and connected, examples of misinformation, and also of lying, and distorting in connection with our current Covid 19 affliction.

First, Trump extravagantly touts chloroquine as a "game changer” for the virus, and says that it had been "approved.”

Second, according to ABC news: "When asked if the drug was promising Friday, Fauci, standing next to Trump, said ‘the answer is no’ because ‘the evidence you’re talking about … is anecdotal evidence.’
‘The information that you’re referring to specifically is antecdotal,’ he added. ‘It was not done in a controlled clinical trial. So you really can’t make any definitive statement about it.’”

As I see it both Trump, and Fauci, were not only at cross purposes, but overreacting from different perspectives. Trump, as a layman, went further than he should have done, possibly encouraging false hopes, and Fauci, overreacted by failing to recognize the value of anecdotal evidence coming from medical professionals on the front line of treatment.

So much for the misinformation. Now we come to the distortions and lies.

The Gardian runs this headline (widely linked on the internet): "Arizona man dies after taking coronavirus 'cure' Trump touted with false claims.” And, of course, it turns out that the man did not take the drug that Trump touted, but fish tank cleaner that someone on Fox News had said contained the same thing as the drug.

So, as it turns out, Trump was more optimistic than the evidence at the time warranted, and used loose language. Fauci was overly pessimistic, and used overly tight language, and The Gardian formulated a lying headline which is being heard around the world.

I replied:

George S. Whitten is wrong on a fundamental point.

Trump is often misquoted by the media when he speaks and then accused of undercutting his people. For instance, Trump was quoted as saying chloroquine was "a game changer" and that it had been tested and approved. Trump did not say it was a game changer - he said it COULD BE a game changer. That is a world of difference. In fact, here is the quote:

"And I think it's going to be very exciting. I think it could be a game changer. And maybe not. Maybe not, but I think it could be, based on what I see, it could be a game changer. Very powerful, they’re very powerful,"


https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/trump-announces-potential-game-changer-drugs-treat-covid19/story?id=69693560


It HAS gone through tests overseas and it IS approved for medical treatments. Trump never said the FDA approved it for this treatment or that it had been tested here. But the media picks and chooses bits and pieces to make him look bad.

Granted, Trump is not a fellow with careful speech; it's one of his endearing features on the campaign trail - he speaks like a regular guy. I agree he often puts his foot in his mouth as a result. But it must be pointed out that much of this is not his fault, but the fault of the media who still think he is an illegitimate President and want to bring him down.

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Padding the Numbers in Italy

Timothy Birdnow

Here is something interesting; only 12% of "Covid 19 deaths" in Italy actually lists the Wuhan virus as cause of death.

From the article:

The way Italy registers deaths explains their increased coronavirus case/fatality ratio, according to one expert and a report from Italy’s National Institute of Health (ISS).

Citing this report (in English here), Professor Walter Ricciardi, scientific adviser to Italy’s minister of health said:

"The way in which we code deaths in our country is very generous in the sense that all the people who die in hospitals with the coronavirus are deemed to be dying of the coronavirus […] On re-evaluation by the National Institute of Health, only 12 per cent of death certificates have shown a direct causality from coronavirus, while 88 per cent of patients who have died have at least one pre-morbidity – many had two or three,”

This has been reported widely, it was even in The Telegraph, and yet no one seems to be engaging with it.

The president of the Italian Civil Protection Service actually went out of his way to remind people of the nature of Italy’s fatality figures in a morning briefing on 20/03:

I want you to remember these people died WITH the coronavirus and not FROM the coronavirus”

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Wu Flu May Be Flying

Timothy Birdnow

Wuflu may be on the way out.

This courtesy of Tomer D. Tamarkin

The UK government’s top medical advice panel has announced that COVID-19 is no longer a serious public health hazard. As of March 19th The Advisory Committee on Dangerous Pathogens (ACDP) has posted online their EXPERT opinion that COVID-19 should no longer be classified as an HCID.
In January the grave assessment of the ACDP committee prompted unprecedented action in peacetime by a British Prime Minister. Boris Johnson’s government thereafter scaled up the national response on COVID-19 and almost shutdown the economy by imposing ‘house arrest’ of all citizens.
But as events unfolded and the pathogen is now proven to be far less deadly than ACDP predicted, the committee has formally downgraded their original bleak assessment.
The new ACDP statement appears on the UK Government’s official website for anyone to view at

https://www.gov.uk/guidance/high-consequence-infectious-diseases-hcid

Status of COVID-19
As of 19 March 2020, COVID-19 is no longer considered to be a high consequence infectious diseases (HCID) in the UK.

The 4 nations public health HCID group made an interim recommendation in January 2020 to classify COVID-19 as an HCID. This was based on consideration of the UK HCID criteria about the virus and the disease with information available during the early stages of the outbreak. Now that more is known about COVID-19, the public health bodies in the UK have reviewed the most up to date information about COVID-19 against the UK HCID criteria. They have determined that several features have now changed; in particular, more information is available about mortality rates (low overall), and there is now greater clinical awareness and a specific and sensitive laboratory test, the availability of which continues to increase.

The Advisory Committee on Dangerous Pathogens (ACDP) is also of the opinion that COVID-19 should no longer be classified as an HCID.

The need to have a national, coordinated response remains, but this is being met by the government’s COVID-19 response.

Cases of COVID-19 are no longer managed by HCID treatment centres only. All healthcare workers managing possible and confirmed cases should follow the updated national infection and prevention (IPC) guidance for COVID-19, which supersedes all previous IPC guidance for COVID-19. This guidance includes instructions about different personal protective equipment (PPE) ensembles that are appropriate for different clinical scenarios.

Definition of HCID
In the UK, a high consequence infectious disease (HCID) is defined according to the following criteria:

acute infectious disease
typically has a high case-fatality rate
may not have effective prophylaxis or treatment
often difficult to recognise and detect rapidly
ability to spread in the community and within healthcare settings
requires an enhanced individual, population and system response to ensure it is managed effectively, efficiently and safely More on link posted above.

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March 25, 2020

So when did we all become such pansies?

Dana Mathewson

The estimable Jack Cashill takes us to task -- rightly, I think -- in this sports-related column.

As a kid, I was the victim – and beneficiary – of a malady I remember as the "Asian flu." Without hesitation, I can trace the onset of this illness to early October 1957, when I was 9 years old.

I remember the date specifically because I followed baseball. I grew up as Dodger fan in a metropolitan area with three choices, all of them viable. The New York Giants had won the World Series in 1954, the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1955 and the New York Yankees in 1956.

The Yankees had also won in 1947, 1949, 1950, 1951, 1952 and 1953. I might have been a Yankee fan save for the fact that when I came of age, my older brother informed me that the Yankees were already "taken." They were "his" team.

Like my brother, Yankee fans were insufferable. On occasion, they would roam the neighborhood in bands searching out apostates. We Dodger fans were few: little brothers, "colored kids," left-handers and other misfits. We came to dread these mini-pogroms and detest the Yankees and their fans.

I remember the date of my Asian flu malady so precisely because it coincided with the 1957 World Series. At the time, these games were played only in the daytime.

I used the word "beneficiary" above because I, unlike my friends, got to watch the Series from the comfort of the living room couch.

The Asian flu was a happy memory for me. It was especially happy because the underdog Milwaukee Braves came from behind to beat the Yankees four games to three, the final victory a shutout at Yankee Stadium.

I did not know the word "schadenfreude" then, but I certainly knew the concept. I was not too ill to glory in my brother's misery.

Although my teachers were surely suspicious of the timing, there was no doubting my illness. Our family doctor made a house call. My temperature crested at 104 degrees.

I remember the number well because it gave me bragging rights. The Asian flu struck many children in my neighborhood. After the fact, we compared our temperatures the way we would our batting averages.

I was the envy of my fellow baseball fans. Not only did my illness strike during the World Series, but at 104 I also topped their paltry 102s and 103s.

For me this all seemed providential as I was a generally healthy kid. I would not miss another day of school for the next four years and would win the school's perfect attendance award at graduation in a landslide.

It's great, folks, every bit, and you'll find the rest of it here https://www.wnd.com/2020/03/become-pansies/ worth the read! I can identify with those days! Go read it! Really!

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The COVID Revolution

Timothy Birdnow

Daren Jonescu has some great observations about the "crisis" and the "stimulus" at his website.

See it here.

From the essay:

Let’s clarify the situation you are witnessing (assuming you are not hiding your head under a pillow, as you probably should be) just a little further: The U.S. Federal Government is responding preemptively to an economic "crisis” that has not yet proved to be particularly crisis-like — it is less than two weeks old, after all — except in public perception, which perception the government itself has played a large role in fostering.

In other words, the government has manufactured a crisis, or a prospective crisis, and is now "responding” to that manufactured crisis by stealing two trillion dollars from the American people, or rather from their children, in order to ameliorate economic hardships which, if they do in fact occur, will have been largely the direct result of the government’s unwillingness to stand up for common sense, the rule of law, and the principle of liberty when it counted, i.e., when the corporate media was doing everything in its power to make blood money from the American people by fomenting mass panic over a virus that has shown itself to be far less catastrophic than some had initially feared.

What is being stimulated by this stimulus package, then, is mostly the following:

  • The artificially-induced perception of a dire emergency;
  • The sense that a normal social problem, such as a new virus, requires and warrants massive and "unprecedented” government intervention;
  • The ever-expanding national debt, which entraps Americans forever on the steep mountain of confiscatory taxation, in a Sisyphean climb to the unreachable goal of solvency;
  • Metastasizing government paternalism.

It’s classic progressivism: Government creates a problem, or makes a small one exponentially worse; government then insists that the only way to correct this growing problem is by enlarging the government; and the new powers and expenses created by this alleged government solution — which will prove, after the fact, to have solved nothing — will become entrenched in the national budget and psyche in perpetuity.

And bear in mind all of this new spending will become the next budget's baseline. So government will continue to spend far more money.

If I wanted to bring down the United States I couldn't think of a better way to do so.

In a related essay from his site Daren has some great insights:

The easily predictable future results of this strategy: millions of people will lose their livelihoods and life savings; there will be a massive spike in suicides, as people collapse into despair over losing everything they have worked for; the legal precedents for unlimited government coercion, and the moral precedents for mass popular dependency on government redistribution, will be firmly entrenched in the social fabric of all hitherto semi-free nations; there will be a huge increase in looting and other property violations as people devoid of a moral compass compete for scarce necessities in an environment of general fear.

And I emphasize that all the above results are easily predictable, which is to say that any semi-rational adult can see them coming, which is to say that the power-players imposing this strategy are fully aware that their current actions will cause all of the above results, and that they have chosen to pursue this course with this understanding.

All this in reaction to a virus that has proved to be dangerous almost exclusively to the very old and weak, or other people with serious underlying health conditions.


Okay, the Virus that Ate a Civilization is spreading like wildfire — well, like a bad flu virus, actually — in spite of all government attempts to maintain the pretense that state-manufactured action plans can solve this problem (state-manufactured action plans having proved so effective in solving so many other societal problems over the centuries).

The current worldwide solution of preference: tear up the roots of individual liberty and representative government; destroy the global economy for the foreseeable future; encourage citizens to behave like selfish cowards towards their fellow men, in hysterical overreaction to a bad flu virus.

So I guess that leaves us with today’s operative global strategy: mass panic, susceptibility to mass manipulation, and cowering under the table hoping that our masters in the government will save us.

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U.S. Was Best Prepared Country in World for Coronavirus

Timothy Birdnow

US was more prepared for pandemic than any other country, Johns Hopkins study found

From El Zoro News:

The United States was ranked the best-prepared country in the world to handle a pandemic in late 2019 by the Nuclear Threat Initiative (NTI) and the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security (JHCHS) -- an assessment seemingly at odds with claims by Democrats that the Trump administration left the country vulnerable to the ongoing coronavirus outbreak.

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The Curve is Starting to Flatten

This from Dr. Roy Spencer:

While the number of new daily COVID-19 cases continues to increase, the rate of increase might be decreasing now.Fingers crossed.
Image may contain: text

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Democrat Christmas List and Coronavirus Aid

This from Willis Eschenbach:

Want to know why the US hasn't allocated $ for coronavirus? Here's what Nancy Pelosi and her co-criminals have added to the coronavirus funding bill, stalling it in Congress:

1. Increased fuel emission standards for airlines receiving funds and carbon offsets.

2. Payment for up to $10,000 in student loans/

3. Same-day voter registration, early voting, voting by mail, ballot harvesting.

4. Preserving collective bargaining powers for unions.

5. The expansion of wind and solar tax credits.

6. Requirements for people to collect federal and corporate gender and racial diversity data.

7. Post Office Bailout

8. Automatic extension of nonimmigrant visas.

9. Restricting colleges from providing information about citizenship status.

... and their perennial favorite ...

10. Money for Planned Parenthood to perform more abortions.

And that's just the main points, details below. People are DYING, and these mortarforking corkstacking Democrats want to hijack the money for abortions, illegals, and the climate?

Criminals fiddling while Rome burns. The virus deaths are on their heads. Pass the authorization for money for virus defense and deal with the rest later.

And all my Democrat friends ... you should be deeply, deeply ashamed of your Democrat members of Congress.

End

A Democrat reader spouted the usual bull:

This is essentially what happened to kill the Senate bill:
The poorest people in the country were offered $600-$1,200 a piece with conditions.

Corporations were offered half a trillion dollars with NO conditions. Democrats rightfully voted no.

1. I see nothing wrong with getting concessions in return for bailout payments.

2. College graduates are having particular difficulties in finding and keeping employment which puts them in danger of default. In other words, they need assistance just like the corporations do.

3. With quarantines and social distancing in place our democracy, which is dependent of fair elections, is in danger. Several primaries were postponed, which threaten the legitimacy of the November General Election.

4. I would need to see the details on this one.

5. This ensures employment in a vulnerable industry.

6. This one is puzzling.

7. One of the largest federal employers. Certainly as worthy as the airline industry.

8. I’d have to see the details but it maybe related to the need to lower travel.

9. Why should colleges be giving out this confidential information?

10. Most of Planned Parenthood’s budget is for health rather than abortions.

And I replied:

The poorest people in the country are the least injured by what has happened. They still receive their benefits and life is going on pretty much as always. The whole point of this is a BAILOUT not a stimulus. It's intended to help businesses survive while they are closed or have seriously cut back patronage. It is also supposed to aid those who have been laid off. But if there is no job to return to unemployment aid is rather less than useful. Democrats and others can whine all they wish about "big corporate" boogeymen all they want but in the end it is the big corporate boogeymen and the small businesses that are the core of our economy, and they have all been injured by government policy in this case. It can be seen as a kind of eminent domain taking without compensation. BTW the bill died because the Democrats refuse to help President Trump in any way, shape, or form and will not concede one inch on their demands. They are hostage takers, economic terrorists who would rather America suffer then the President and his party help the nation recover.

This is a bailout, not a stimulus. It is NOT to "help the worker" but to aid businesses in surviving the artificial crash caused by "shelter in place" and other government-mand

ated policies which are destroying these businesses. We want to aid the workers who have been put out of work temporarily, but the best way to do that is to see they have jobs to return to after this is over. It is NOT a stimulus or a welfare program. You clearly don't understand the difference. Second, President Trump said they were going to prosecute any corporate executive who misused the bailout funds as was done under TARP (and no doubt you supported Mr. Obama and his idiot scheme then.) If the tables were turned would you think Republican demands of a similar nature were "reasonable" as you now seem to think? If Republicans demanded the closure of Planned Parenthood in their bill, if they demanded that all polling places required picture i.d.'s, if they demanded you had to register to vote ninety days out, if they demanded opening Federal lands for oil drilling, if they demanded a border wall in return for funding TARP would you think that reasonable? You would be screaming bloody murder at that. This thing also gave the Democrats national vote harvesting and other ways to steal elections, I might add. That doesn't seem to bother you. But it would had the tables been turned. Willis Eschenbach is right; people are going to die from the economic downturn. The world economy may well collapse if we don't save the U.S. economy. I suppose that would suit your Democrat friends fine; they figure if it does they will be able to take back power. This is beyond despicable. Frankly, you either know that (which speaks volumes about you) or you don't (which speaks volumes again, but in a different way.)


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Coronavirus "Deniers"

Timothy Birdnow

Here are a number of medical professionals who think what is happening with this COVID-19 Whoflung pooh Wuhan Flu is crazy.

Here are a few samples

Dr Wolfgang Wodargis a German physician specialising in Pulmonology, politician and former chairman of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe. In 2009 he called for an inquiry into alleged conflicts of interest surrounding the EU response to the Swine Flu pandemic.

What he says:

Politicians are being courted by scientists…scientists who want to be important to get money for their institutions. Scientists who just swim along in the mainstream and want their part of it […] And what is missing right now is a rational way of looking at things.

We should be asking questions like "How did you find out this virus was dangerous?”, "How was it before?”, "Didn’t we have the same thing last year?”, "Is it even something new?”

That’s missing.

[,,,]

Dr Joel Kettners professor of Community Health Sciences and Surgery at Manitoba University, former Chief Public Health Officer for Manitoba province and Medical Director of the International Centre for Infectious Diseases.

What he says:

I have never seen anything like this, anything anywhere near like this. I’m not talking about the pandemic, because I’ve seen 30 of them, one every year. It is called influenza. And other respiratory illness viruses, we don’t always know what they are. But I’ve never seen this reaction, and I’m trying to understand why.

[…]

I worry about the message to the public, about the fear of coming into contact with people, being in the same space as people, shaking their hands, having meetings with people. I worry about many, many consequences related to that.

There are many others; read the whole article. Clearly the medical community has it's doubters.

Or should I call them deniers? That's what meteorologists and climatologists and other physical scientists are called when they disagree with Global Warming in any way.

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March 24, 2020

When you've got it, flaunt it

Dana Mathewson

I wonder if the eggs taste any better than if she'd delivered them in her Mercedes??


Martha Stewart delivered eggs in her Aston Martin during coronavirus outbreak


Martha Stewart has been moonlighting as a delivery driver during New York’s coronavirus closures, but of course, she’s doing it with a little more style than most.

The lifestyle guru posted a photo to Instagram on Sunday of her delivering eggs from her farm to a friend’s house in her 15-year-old Aston Martin DB9.

Now, a bit of disclosure here: I am not now, and never have been, a fan of Martha Stewart, and the fact that she finds the Aston a bit "hard to drive" due to its stick shift gets zero sympathy from me. Absolutely zero.

According to The Drive, she’s usually spotted in a Mercedes-GLS, and she notes in the post’s caption that the V12-powered Aston Martin has a manual transmission and is "not very easy to drive,” but sounds great. She also said she dropped the eggs off at the curb to maintain social distancing.

I think the Edsel wagon looks more her style.

Entire article here: https://www.foxnews.com/auto/martha-stewart-aston-martin-coronavirus I just realized (3/27/20) that I forgot to include the link when I originally posted this story. Not that most of you care, I'm sure.

Remember back when she was living at our expense in the slammer for insider trading? My wife and I lived in the area and used to drive past her "home" on our way to a large shopping mall in Danbury, CT. Probably should have stopped in to console her, but never did. Used to kid about it a lot, though.

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Shampoo

David Dickinson

I decided to think about something other than the Wu Flu so I want to talk about shampoo. I use Tresemme shampoo...

But wait, before I go on, just an observation. Besides pet food and cereal, I do believe there are more different shampoos than any other product. Now don't get me wrong, one of the wonderful things about the greatest country on earth is we have Variety! But how many different kinds of hair types are there?

Ya got your brittle hair, your oily hair, your dry hair, your short hair, your really long hair, your straight hair, your straightened hair, your curly hair, your kinky hair, your recently damaged beyond comprehension at the hair salon hair, your... Ok, ok, there are a lot of hairs out there.

Back to my shampoo, Tresemme. When I run low on shampoo I go to the store, go to the shampoo aisle with bottles as far as the eye can see, find the Tresemme section and then I'm faced with what I talked about, which type of shampoo works best with my hair? Well, they don't have shampoo for slowly but steadily disappearing hair, and for some reason they don't have a shampoo for "regular" hair, which is what I think of when I think of my hair, which frankly isn't that often.

And since I never think to check what type of Tresemme shampoo I purchased last time before leaving the house, I'm left to pick whatever one sounds the least bizarre or most normal. So this last time I settled for Tresemme's "Full Body All Day!" shampoo, I was particularly drawn to the little blurb on the bottle that said: 24 Hour VOLUME.

For someone with slowly but steadily disappearing hair, volume is a very attractive shampoo sales pitch.

So a few days later I cracked open the new bottle of shampoo as I was showering and dumped a blob into my hand but, what have we here? It's clear, the peapicking shampoo is clear! Tresemme shampoo has never been clear, it's always been white or at least opaque sort of, but definitely not clear.

The reason this is an issue is because I don't have an overhead light inside my shower so I can't really tell how much clear shampoo actually came out of the bottle. The first time I guessed right because my hair sudsed up real nice, no problem. But sure enough, the next day I got too much and when I put it into my hair I got enough suds to run a load of wash. But then the next time, you guessed it, I over-compensated and got too little, I couldn't get any suds hardly at all so I went for a bit more and, yeah, load of wash suds times two.

So I'm calling on the shampoo industry, put some kind of color in that shampoo!

Now, onto the glue they use in some packaging, in particular the inner bags in cereal boxes...

Just kidding.

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No Change in Carbon Dioxide in Atmosphere Despite Major Drop in Economic Activity

Timothy Birdnow

Dr. Roy Spencer recently analyzed data from Mona Lua and showed there has been no reduction in atmospheric carbon dioxide as of yet, despite a slowdown in world economic activity.

But that activity has been curtailed. According to a Physorg article:

"According to an analysis carried out for Carbon Brief, the lockdown and reduction in in China led to an estimated 25% reduction in CO2
emissions over four weeks."

So why no drop in atmospheric carbon dioxide? There has not even been a change in the rate of growth, which speaks volumes.

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NJ Gun Store Now Offering Home Delivery Of Ammunition

Dana Mathewson

I like it! All the gun stores in the state were ordered to close by the anti-gun Governor, of course. At least one of them has refused, or at least has not shut down operations.

A New Jersey gun store owner is now offering home delivery of ammunition to legal gun owners in the state, after Gov. Phil Murphy declared that gun stores and ranges must close, ending sales but not demand for firearms and ammunition. Derek Pitera, the owner of SC Arms in Spotswood, New Jersey, said the governor’s order will "put a hurt” on his business, and he was looking for a way to keep some generating some cash while supporting people’s rights to keep and bear arms as well when he stumbled on to the idea.

Pitera tells Bearing Arms that he was doing some research into the governor’s order, and realized that while "non-essential” brick and mortar stores have been ordered shut, online sales and deliveries are allowed to continue. Pitera says he and his employees can legally deliver ammunition to any resident with an FID card, and can conduct the sales without any person-to-person contact.

Even before the governor’s order to close his store, Pitera was practicing safe social distancing at his Spotswood, New Jersey location.

However, that wasn’t enough for New Jersey’s anti-gun governor, so now Pitera is getting the word on social media out about his new Uber for ammo delivery system.

"The response has been insane,” Pitera told Bearing Arms, and noted that he’s getting orders from across the state. Unlike your local pizza place, SC Arms will deliver anywhere in the state of New Jersey, though you may be paying a little bit more in delivery fees depending on how far they have to drive.

"We’re going to keep delivering until he run out of ammo,” declared Pitera, though he quickly noted that at the moment, he still has a constant resupply coming in, though quantities are limited because of the sky-high demand around the country. Pitera says he hasn’t heard of any issues with factories having to shut down because of the coronavirus, though he said he’s hearing rumblings within the industry that components are becoming a little more scarce to find domestically. At the moment, he says, production is still running full scale, it just can’t keep up with consumer demand.

Let's hope this catches on all over the country, at least where it's legal. Meanwhile, read about it here: https://bearingarms.com/cam-e/2020/03/23/nj-gun-store-home-delivery/

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Never Let a Crisis go to Waste

Timothy Birdnow

https://phys.org/news/2020-03-coronavirus-uk-basic-income-workers.html More proof much of this Coronavirus panic is aimed at promoting The Revolution.

From the Physorg article:

"The UK needs to embrace a for all, independent of labour market status, to make sure that these people feel secure enough to stay at home to avoid spreading the illness. The concept of a "" is hardly new—it has been discussed in academic circles for many years. Some consider the concept to date as far back as Thomas More's Utopia in 1516.

Now some MPs are calling for a universal basic to help deal with the crisis, and the Independent Workers of Great Britain union is taking legal action againstthe government to extend the wage guarantee to gig workers. But due to the different ways that the left and right view the economy, these calls are likely to fall on deaf ears."

What does this have to do with science, first off?  Why is it published at Physorg?

As Rahm Emmanuel said "never let a good crisis go to waste."

And here another article at that same site from Australia which calls for central planning let the Soviet Union.

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Nominalizing Newts

Timothy Birdnow

"She turned me into a newt"

"Into a newt?"

"Well I got better."

As climate change messes with temperature and precipitation, California newts suffer

They are trying to claim newts are getting smaller because California is warmer (and not because of fires or drought.) 

These people really have gotten screwy.

Posted by: Timothy Birdnow at 10:47 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 54 words, total size 1 kb.

Racist Voice Recognition Software

Timothy Birdnow

Racist!

Automated speech recognition less accurate for blacks: study

The technology that powers the nation's leading automated speech recognition systems makes twice as many errors when interpreting words spoken by African Americans as when interpreting the same words spoken by whites, according to a new study by researchers at Stanford Engineering.

While the study focused exclusively on disparities between black and white Americans, similar problems could affect people who speak with regional and non-native-English accents, the researchers concluded.

If not addressed, this translational imbalance could have serious consequences for people's careers and even lives. Many companies now screen job applicants with automated online interviews that employ . Courts use the technology to help transcribe hearings. For people who can't use their hands, moreover, speech recognition is crucial for accessing computers.

The findings, published on March 23 in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, were based on tests of systems developed by Amazon, IBM, Google, Microsoft and Apple. The first four companies provide online speech recognition services for a fee, and the researchers ran their tests using those services. For the fifth, the researchers built a custom iOS application that ran tests using Apple's free speech recognition technology. The tests were conducted last spring, and the speech technologies may have been updated since then.

Doesn't this rather argue for better education? Instead of blaming the racist computers shouldn't we admit we aren't educating children properly?

Posted by: Timothy Birdnow at 10:39 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 248 words, total size 2 kb.

Ice Mass Gain in Antarctica

Timothy Birdnow

Looks like Antarctica is gaining ice mass.

https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/nasa-study-mass-gains-of-antarctic-ice-sheet-greater-than-losses?fbclid=IwAR3A5HEJsXpyuaSptBJeYdWkJV4WescOLBcyeBSJYqQjp3R4cXQFY0AwUUc

That Global Warming sure doesn't seem to work very well.

From the article:

''According to the new analysis of satellite data, the Antarctic ice sheet showed a net gain of 112 billion tons of ice a year from 1992 to 2001. That net gain slowed to 82 billion tons of ice per year between 2003 and 2008.''

Also, Antarctica just recorded it's coldest March temperature.

Strange; after a half century of ever-rising industrial emissions into the atmosphere we are seeing cold temperatures and ice gain. How could that be?

Posted by: Timothy Birdnow at 09:47 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 104 words, total size 1 kb.

The Witches

Timothy Birdnow

In honor of Nancy Pelosi, that evil S-F witch, I'm dusting this off from the archives:

The Witches:

In dead of night the witches creep
like spiders in a bed.
In dread delight their riches reap
from young girls they`ve misled.

With lies their Devils Plot unfurls;
cajoling with forked tongue
the Witches try to trick young girls
into murdering their young.

They claw inside scared mothers womb
the unborn child their feast.
Denied the covers of the tomb
forelorn, defiled, deceased!

Stoke the furnace hot with coals!
The unborn won`t be missed!
Pour out the bowls of children`s souls
Hells` scornful Eucharist!

Then take the head; the blood runs red!
While wet with death, the Coven
they bake their bread of children dead
in Margaret Sanger`s oven!

And they devise to hide the cries
of the myriad tiny souls
whose blood decries the Witches lies
while their bodies rot in holes!

Young mothers used and then discarded
are tossed aside, confused
while at great cost and broken-hearted
they stand alone, accused.

To snuff out life before a breath
In a land where evil`s good
is Satan`s manna; the Bread of Death.
They`re called "Planned Parenthood".

And in the night they find delight
in Sin which brings forth Life,
then out of sight those wolves may bite
and murder with a knife.

In cursing God do all abet;
no supplication do they pray,
while with a nod and small regret
the Nation turns away.

Posted by: Timothy Birdnow at 09:34 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 248 words, total size 2 kb.

Plotting the Plague

This from Willis Eschenbach:

I finally found some US state data, and made up a new plot for the US states. I kept the X and Y scales the same as in my other graph so that they can be compared. I also added an interesting calculation—IF the growth rates don't change, how long until the coronavirus deaths in each state hits the typical US flu death level, which is about 1,000 deaths per ten million population. Here's that graph.
No photo description available.

Posted by: Timothy Birdnow at 09:17 AM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
Post contains 83 words, total size 1 kb.

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