Everyone going into any medical facility in Marin County and Santa Clara counties now has to have a mask. The diktat in Alameda, Sonoma, San Mateo, and Contra Costa counties only demand healthcare workers be masked up when there are around patients.
Two more articles describe the skyrocketing rate of chronic absenteeism in Minnesota and across the nation.
What could possibly be driving this? On twitter, Bethany S. Mandel (@bethanyshondark) said:
“We told the kids that school wasn’t essential. They listened.”
That’s about right. Schools were shuttered anywhere from six to eighteen months in most places around the country.
In terms of the so-called remote learning, there wasn’t much teaching going on. In one district near me in California, teaching time during the pandemic was 45 minutes in the morning and then 45 minutes in the afternoon. Class time was merely 90 minutes a day.
Yeah, our education leaders, political leaders, religious leaders, and public health leaders all said school wasn’t important. A whole bunch of kids got the message: school is optional.
I hope against hope that the allegedly educated educators someday will be held accountable for the destruction they willfully caused.
New reports describe widespread chronic absenteeism:
9/15/23 – Washington Examiner – Chronic absenteeism skyrockets in Minnesota public schools– Before the pandemic, chronic absenteeism in Minnesota public schools was 15%. That is the number of students who were missing 10 or more days in the school year.
…closed due to government violation of First Amendment. Image courtesy of Adobe Stock.
Santa Clara County in California has been putting pressure on Calvary Chapel San Jose for daring to hold worship services during the pandemic.
We now know the efforts to suppress Christian worship were a flagrant violation of the First Amendment, as determined by the Supreme Court in multiple rulings. See end of this discussion for list of posts describing the rebukes from the Supreme Court. (If you want to see the results when ideologues write feeble legal briefs, I heartily encourage you to read the dissents from the Supreme Court’s rulings.)
The county levied plenty of fines and a temporary injunction against the church. Previous article describing Calvary Chapel San Jose’s efforts to exercise their first amendment right to free expression of religion:
Since my post back in November 2020, we have learned the county was allegedly conducting surreptitious surveillance on the church during the pandemic. A neighboring church allegedly assisted with the surveillance. Fines issued by the county have been dismissed at the appellate level.
Now the church has filed suit against the county for their surveillance. They are standing up for the rights of all Christians to gather in worship.
This discussion is posted here on Nonprofit Update blog, as well as Outrun Change, because this affects the freedom of many in this audience.
By the way, if you see an above average amount of ridicule and sarcasm in this post, it is here in the hope that out-loud, belly laughter directed at officials will encourage said officials to reconsider their foolish ways. Supreme Court rulings don’t seem to have had that effect yet.
As our alleged experts in the so-called public health sector lay groundwork to impose another round of Covid restrictions, it might be worth paying attention to the research demonstrating ineffectiveness of the vaccinations.
In fact, looks like the bivalent booster is dangerous because it increases your risk of infection.
When the negatives outweigh the positives, it was not a good decision. Image courtesy of Adobe Stock.
The damage caused by government imposed Covid restrictions and lockdowns is beginning to be quantified.
The following pair of studies suggest restrictions caused far more deaths than lives saved. If this research holds after further study, government policies increased the number of deaths during the pandemic.
The economic, educational, medical, and social costs caused by the government lockdown during Covid are becoming more obvious. A flood of reports is describing the damage that is increasingly visible.
Hopefully this will be first in a series of posts describing government imposed destruction.
A few articles describing the devastation in education:
6/21/23 – Wall Street Journal – Pandemic Learning Slide Continues for 13-Year-Olds, Making Full Recovery Unlikely– The destruction of learning for a generation of students is becoming visible in test scores. The National Assessment of Educational Progress report for testing during the last half of 2022 shows the willful devastation imposed by the educational and political world.
Math scores for seventh and eighth graders dropped to the lowest point since 1990, while average reading scores only dropped to the lowest level since 2004. There is a loss of 32 years progress in math and 19 years progress in reading.
An unarmed LGM-30G Minuteman III intercontinental ballistic missile launches during an operational test Sep. 23, 2014, at Vandenberg Air Force Base. (U.S. Air Force photo/Joe Davila)
The 44th Strategic Missile Wing was decommissioned on July 4, 1994.
All of the Launch Facilities (LF) except one were decommissioned. All equipment was removed and the site was filled in. All of the Launch Control Facilities (LCF) were decommissioned except one.
On a recent trip to the Black Hills of South Dakota I noticed two fenced areas and quickly realized they had the configuration to be an LF. The fencing was in place but there was nothing visible above ground and there was no signage on the fence.
On the return trip I kept an eye out for those two sites, stopped, and took some pictures.
So many of my posts during the pandemic pointed out the elite in political, public health, entertainment, and media worlds flagrantly ignored the Covid restrictions they demanded we little people follow.
In a moment I will describe conclusions by the British Parliament that former Prime Minister Boris Johnson was lying through his teeth when he spoke to them trying to rationalize away the weekly social events he held for his staff.
I’ve been wondering for two years why so many elitists were so flagrant in their covid violations. I have developed several hypothesis with increasing level of severe implications.
First possibility, all these folks are flaming hypocrites who believe they are above having to comply with the rules everyone else is forced to follow. They speak soberly of the dangers and risks of Covid along with the steps everyone must absolutely take to protect loved ones and neighbors. Yet they won’t lower themselves to follow those rules.
There are many things you could not say in public two or three years ago, all of which are now safe to say. Here is a starting point of the list of things you can now talk about in the open:
As I find articles to further develop the issues now say to say, I will have further discussion.
The virus came from a lab leak.
This was crazy talk three years ago but is slowly becoming accepted: the most likely place the COVID-19 virus came from was a Chinese research laboratory. Oh, by the way, said lab was funded in part by Dr. Fauci’s department.
There are many things you could not say in public two or three years ago, all of which are now safe to say. Here is a starting point of the list of things you can now talk about in the open:
A slow trickle of news reports are showing that lots of the crazy, coo-coo bird, nutzo, conspiracy theory wackiness you heard from your friends two or three years ago were actually correct. My friends deemed nuts by society who were saying these things were right.
Of the above five preventions, we have long known that #2 was not needed. We now know #1, #3, and #4 also had no value. Image courtesy of Adobe Stock.
There are many things you could not say in public two or three years ago, all of which are now safe to say. Here is a starting point of the list of things you can now talk about in the open:
Masks don’t work.
Natural immunity works. (next post)
The virus came from a lab leak. (upcoming post)
There is a disturbing pattern emerging, which further corrodes credibility of the entire public health sector.
A slow trickle of news reports are showing that lots of the crazy, coo-coo bird, nutzo, conspiracy theory wackiness from two or three years ago was actually correct. Turns out my wacko friends who were saying these things were right.
Masks don’t work.
Previously discussed this study as covered by a couple of other reports:
Article cites a study which analyzed 78 research reports, all of which were randomized control trials. Researchers say those little paper masks we were wearing for so long made little or no difference. They can find no evidence for positive impact.
How about those expensive N-95 masks? Same thing. No impact.
What about those studies which did show masks made a difference which were cited as proof positive that anyone who disagreed mask efficacy was a Neanderthal?
Reports are now surfacing there are far more people dying then we would expect now the pandemic is mostly behind us. This discussion will bring up merely two articles calling attention to this issue.
First article points out there are excess deaths after the pandemic has wound down. Second article points out there were excess deaths in California during the pandemic.
I suggest we need to look at government policies during the pandemic as the driving force behind the excess deaths.
Normally, one can look at the five-year average of deaths and make an estimate of the number of people who will die this year. It is called “excess deaths” when the actual deaths are above the five-year average.
Three years after the start of the pandemic there are significant excess deaths in countries with believable statistics available.
Article says there were 18% excess deaths in the first two years of the pandemic. Now that the deaths from Covid have dropped, the overall death rate should be back to the historical average.
Yet that is not what is happening.
Author points out that England and Wales were showing 1000 excess deaths weekly in 14 of the previous 15 weeks. None of those are from Covid.
Excess deaths are running in the 10% up to 20% level around the world.
Excess death rates are 8% in the US and 20% in Brazil.
There is a surge of articles denouncing pandemic policy along with emerging research showing the destruction caused by intentional government policy.
I have made note of many of these articles and hope to start discussing them.
In this post:
Metastudy of 78 randomized control experiments finds masks have no benefit.
Pro-mask is anti-science. Anti-mask is pro-science. (Pro-mask is actually a religion.)
Our political, public health, educational, and religious leaders have much to answer for.
2/10/23 – The Spectator – I’m pro science. That’s why I’m anti-mask– The former brand president at Levi Strauss was hounded out of her job because she had the audacity to ask, in a company that presumably doesn’t actually hire any toddlers, whether a mandatory mask for toddlers was harmful.
She was accused of being “anti-science.” Oh the horror! Off with her head!!
Research from the Cochran study, which will be discussed more later, analyzed 78 studies covering 1 million people. The conclusion?
All photos by James Ulvog taken on the U.S.S. Midway museum in San Diego, California.
Official records reported Capt. E. Royce Williams shot down one North Korean fighter on November 18, 1952. He was also credited with one “probable.” This was back during the Korean War. He was awarded Silver Star Medal at the time.
We now know there was far more to the story.
He actually shot down four fighters.
Oh yeah, they weren’t North Korean MiGs flown by North Koreans.
They were Soviet fighters. With Soviet markings. Stationed inside the USSR. Flown by Russian pilots.
