Sunday, March 19, 2023

Adverse Reactions from vaccines

Two days ago, MP Andrew Bridgen gave a passionate speech in the British Parliament about the harm caused by COVID-19 vaccines and made statistical claims that a person was more likely to be harmed by the vaccines than the disease they are trying to prevent.  This speech was followed by a rebuttal from another Member of Parliament.

The speech was replayed on Dr. John Campbell's Youtube channel.  The comment section from his video was at least a hundred to one in support of the anti-vaccine position.  I tried to add my own comments, but they were apparently deleted, twice.

There is a big misunderstanding about what is meant by Adverse Events and the systems in place to report them.  If you get a vaccine and then die in an auto accident, that doesn't mean that one event caused the other.  People are claiming that thousands of people have been killed by the COVID vaccine because they assume that all adverse events were induced by vaccination.  However, if you give the vaccine to hundreds of millions of people, some of them were going to have adverse events regardless of whether they were vaccinated or not.  This is especially true of the elderly and people living in nursing homes.

I have looked at several peer-reviewed scientific studies on the safety of mRNA vaccines.  The vaccines are not completely risk-free, but the rate of adverse events attributable to the vaccine is very low.  The rate of myocarditis is about 1 in 50,000.  Roughly 90% of these cases were mild and easily treatable.  According to one study, you were about a thousand times more likely to get myocarditis from the COVID-19 disease than you were from the vaccine.

A study claimed that the rate of excess deaths from the COVID-19 vaccine is about 1 in a million.  Such a low number might be considered random noise.  This is roughly the same chance of you being hit by lightning this year.  In your lifetime, you have a 1 in 93 chance of dying in an automobile accident.

The data actually shows that you are significantly less likely to die if you are vaccinated.  This is the bottom line when it comes to vaccine safety.

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/united-states-rates-of-covid-19-deaths-by-vaccination-status?country=~All+ages

Sunday, March 12, 2023

11106 Southmost Blvd - Google Maps

I tried to find the southernmost area of Texas available on Google Street View.  I was curious as to what it would look like.  I found a border fence.  I expected the fence to be right on the border, but it is not.  The Rio Grande is on the border. 

https://www.google.com/maps/@25.8615366,-97.3771361,3a,90y,44.53h,97.14t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sHXo5hjQlvIVfyr4zrVu4pw!2e0!7i16384!8i8192

As much as I favor a border wall, the fence is an ominous-looking sight. 

Saturday, March 11, 2023

Going Forward

I have reached an age where I might only have 20 years left.  Possibly much less if I develop a major health problem.  If I try to live healthy, then I might live another 30 years or even longer.  Regardless, everybody comes to a point in their life where the road ahead looks shorter than the road behind. Eventually, that road is short enough that no matter how distant, the end is still in view.  This has a way of focussing the mind that wasn't there before.

This causes me to be pretty contemplative about what it all means.  I define my own life in terms of the things that I find valuable, and I'm not worried about any of the choices that I have made.

However, I look at humanity and I feel that in many ways we are worse off.  We face many crises.  In the worst-case scenario, we could get into another World War, with the possible use of nuclear weapons.  Or disease could rear its ugly head again and the next pandemic could be far worse.

However, I think that the more likely danger is financial.  Our government is so far in debt that we are rapidly going bankrupt, and this is a disaster from which we may never recover.  Other countries have serious financial problems as well.  Meanwhile, the cost of everything like housing, medicine, and education are becoming too much for people to afford.

I am very concerned about how divided we are.  We can't agree on basic facts.  It used to be that this country had certain founding principles that everyone agreed on, such as free speech.  However, there is no longer any common ground.  It used to be that no matter how much people disagreed, there still was respect for each other as fellow citizens.  Now your opinion can cost you your job, your safety, and maybe even your life.

Objective truth no longer exists.  People don't even try.  We are in a post-truth age where people believe whatever sounds good, and then claim that their belief is scientific.  Either the human race has become much more delusional, or it was never very rational to begin with.

I consider it my birthright to live in a free country.  Unfortunately, the world now is very different from the one I was born in.  We have long abandoned any notion of constitutional government with limits on its power.  Where this will lead us I don't know, but probably not someplace good.

Conservatives MUST Support Trans Youth If....

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/CYcJ0ZR8MvY

​John Coffey
28 seconds ago
What a load of crap. When was a child I had no clue about anything.


I don't support people's delusion that they are something that they are not. If I were to surgically alter myself to look like a dog, that would not make me a dog, no matter how much I wanted to be a dog.

This is all about forcing people to accept BS as a way of politically dividing the country. You can't force me to lie about your gender.

What Should You Do If Your Country Is Invaded? [Shorts]

https://youtube.com/shorts/uGdWMUgfiL8?feature=share

Scammers are now using AI to sound like family members. It’s working. - The Washington Post

Thursday, March 9, 2023

Tucker Carlson: Here is the truth


I would really like to trust Tucker Carlsen, but I can't.   He repeatedly engages in conspiracy theories.  His modus operandi is to spin partial truths to outrageous levels and then claim that there is a conspiracy to hide the truth.

The events of January 6th were terrible and by definition an insurrection.  People on the right who I would normally respect have tried to spin this as a peaceful protest.  Maybe for some, but it took a violent riot to break into the capital.

Tuesday, March 7, 2023

A day in the life of a childless man!

COVID Numbers are down





The COVID numbers were somewhat steady for months, but have turned downward.  We have gone from about 500 deaths per day, which seemed significant to me, to only about a hundred.

I was at the Columbus, Indiana hospital yesterday when they dropped their mask mandate.

Does this mean the Pandemic is over?  Not for some people, but the rate of the disease doesn't seem very threatening right now.

This is not what I thought would happen.  COVID is very good at both spreading and mutating, and given the number of people who aren't fully vaccinated, I thought that we would be dealing with this for many years.

I used to watch "Physics Girl" on Youtube.  Her Long COVID has become so severe that it has become life-threatening.  This is from an infection that she had eight months ago.



The origin of COVID: Did people or nature open Pandora’s box at Wuhan? - Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists

Monday, March 6, 2023

School board: Resign or be Arrested

On Sun, Mar 5, 2023 at 7:15 PM Albert wrote:
>
> https://youtube.com/shorts/qPEVM6A2xEw?feature=share

You know the saying, "Trust, but verify?"

The video gives the impression that child pornography is given to children.

It is helpful to have context.   The book in question is

https://www.amazon.com/642-Tiny-Things-Write-About/dp/1452142173

Mayor Craig Shubert made the statement during Monday night's board of education meeting after multiple parents complained about the content of some writing prompts contained in a book called "642 Things to Write About" provided to high school students who are taking a college credit course called Writing in the Liberal Arts II.

The book contains prompts such as, "write a sermon for a beloved preacher who has been caught in a sex scandal," "describe your favorite part of a man's body using only verbs," "choose how you will die," and "write an X-rated Disney scenario," according to Cleveland.com.

Other prompts asked students to "write a sex scene you wouldn't show your mom" and then "rewrite the sex scene from above into one that you'd let your mom read." It also asked students to drink a beer and "write about the taste" and to list what television shows would be on their DVR list if they were serial killers.

The book also contained less provocative prompts such as describing the worst Thanksgiving dish or writing about the perfect day as an astronaut.

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/essentially-child-pornography-ohio-mayor-asks-school-board-resign-over-n1279277

Summit County Prosecutor Sherri Bevan Walsh Tuesday released her decision, along with a blistering rebuke of the mayor in a six-page report detailing her office's investigation into the false claim and the scores of threats against school board members that followed.

The report concluded that the book — which contains no pictures, drawings or graphics — is not pornographic.

https://www.beaconjournal.com/story/news/2021/11/16/prosecutor-hudson-mayor-craig-shubert-school-board-no-charges-642-things-to-write-about-book/6401620001/

The school's principal, Brian Wilch, said at the board meeting that the school learned about the prompts last Friday.

"We did not exercise due diligence when we reviewed this resource and as a result, we overlooked several writing prompts among the 642 that are not appropriate for our high school audience," he said at the meeting.

"We feel terrible. At no time were any of these inappropriate prompts selected or discussed but still they were there and they were viewable and you can't unsee them. So for this oversight, we did issue an apology today to our students' parents."

The principal said the school is in the process of collecting the book from students.


This almost looks like a political stunt, but I am not saying that it is.

In my opinion, high school students taking college-level courses are probably mature enough to deal with a book that has some text inappropriate for their age level.  The teachers could even point out that some parts are inappropriate and are not part of their assignments.

Of course, there may be better books.

--
Best wishes,

John Coffey

http://www.entertainmentjourney.com

Thursday, March 2, 2023

Prelude to War

The Late Bronze Age Collapse was a widespread economic crisis from about 1200 to 1150 BC.  It happened because many countries ranging from Lybia and Egypt to the eastern Mediterranean were dependent upon trade with each other and war broke out disrupting that trade.

World War I may have been the most pointless war ever. A combination of an arms race between nations, conflicts in the Balkans, and military alliances created a situation where war was inevitable. Then the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand set off a conflict between Austria and Serbia. Other nations felt compelled to join because of their alliances. The war ended after 4 years and around 17 million military deaths.

Disease and war go hand in hand. Roughly two-thirds of the 620,000 military deaths from the American Civil War were due to disease. The Spanish Flu that killed an estimated 50 million people worldwide was spread by soldiers traveling between the World War I battlefields and their home countries.  The devastation from the disease was so great that it is partially responsible for ending the war.

We could be on the precipice of another world war.  China has made its intentions toward Taiwan clear, while the U.S. has promised to help defend Taiwan.  China has been very aggressive in violating the territorial waters of its neighbors by claiming ownership of the South China Sea and building artificial islands there and putting military bases on those islands.  China has also been aggressive in its economic alliances with other countries, often forcing them into deals favorable to China.  They will offer loans, and when countries can't pay back the loans, China will take over small parts of the countries such as vital seaports as part of a loan restructuring.

Meanwhile, Russia has invaded Ukraine, suspends participation in the last remaining nuclear treaty with the United States, and threatened to use nuclear weapons.  Putin has claimed part of Ukraine as Russian territory and has promised to use nuclear weapons to defend that territory.  The United States has given Ukraine $75 billion in assistance, making the United States a participant in the war.  Nine other countries are also giving aid to Ukraine.  

As a result of all this, China and Russia have increased their military and economic trade with each other.  Iran is also helping Russia.

Putin has claimed repeatedly that he is willing to negotiate an end to the war, requiring territorial concessions by Ukraine, but reportedly the United States has urged Ukraine to reject any agreement and fight on.

Russia's invasion was partially sparked by Ukrainian wishes to join NATO.  Russia was unwilling to tolerate a potentially hostile NATO in its backyard.  However, such an alliance was not in any way imminent.  It would have been a long way off.  I also think that Ukraine should have the right to form alliances for its own protection.

As much as I think that the Russian invasion of Ukraine is wrong, I don't believe that the war in Ukraine is in the national interest of the United States.  We are spending our treasure, and risking a possible World War if not a nuclear conflict over a country that is known for its corruption and human rights abuses.  I believe that Ukraine should have the right to defend its territory, but the country has very little impact on the United States.

I understand the desire to stand up to bullies and injustice.  However, going to war against a nuclear power, and a possible psychopath with his finger on the nuclear button should give us pause.  We could have negotiated a settlement months ago, and no matter how unjust it may seem, we should still do so.

Nobody suspected that Pearl Harbor would happen until it did.  The same thing could be said about 9-11.  It would only take one incident for events to spiral out of control, and we could find ourselves in a war that would cost tens of millions of lives.

We could be especially vulnerable to an EMP attack which would disable everything electrical that is not specially shielded. It wouldn't take much to send us back to the stone age.

Wednesday, March 1, 2023

The HORRIFYING Hunt of the Bison

The Gin Craze

The Case for Defending Scott Adams


I think that Scott Adams went too far.

Scott Adams



I would love for Scott Adams to be able to redeem himself, but I don't think he is helping himself. He comes off as fringe.

People are only watching because Scott Adams is a great satirist who made a great comic strip. However, he overestimates his importance and his ability to hold an audience. He sees himself as a spokesman over controversial issues, but his meandering rants are at least partially sleep-inducing. I think that he will find himself rapidly becoming less relevant. The more people talk about race, the more we build walls between people. I agree with Morgan Freeman who said that we should stop talking about it.  

Some Blacks have said worse things about Whites. I think that the best thing Scott Adams could do is to claim that he was engaging in Satire and that people didn't get the joke.

He doesn't think that he made a mistake.  He should acknowledge that he did something wrong.

Monday, February 27, 2023

Re: "Dilbert" Comic Strip BANNED Because of What Creator Scott Adams Said



It isn't helpful to further sow division.

The "I love White People" shirt the YouTuber is selling is a big disappointment because it is something the KKK would say. It is definitely coming across as racist.

I would rather say that I love all people, or all lives matter.

Sunday, February 26, 2023

Human Trafficking vs Human Smuggling

I find this interesting...

"If a smuggler brings an illegal immigrant over at a non-designated point of entry, they are liable to pay a fine, be imprisoned for up to 10 years, or both. However, this is for a single smuggled immigrant. The punishment can multiply. In addition, the following consequences can occur:

If a person is seriously injured or put into jeopardizing situations, the prison sentence rises to up to 20 years
If the smuggling results in death, the imprisonment can increase the number of years to life in prison."

https://www.lawfirm1.com/removal-proceedings/immigrant-smuggling/

https://www.ice.gov/sites/default/files/documents/Report/2017/CSReport-13-1.pdf

Friday, February 24, 2023

Vaccines prevent the spread of COVID-19

 A sore spot for me is the claim made by every single conservative talk show host that the vaccines do not stop the spread of COVID-19 and that we were lied to when the government said that they would.  This claim is based on testimony by Janine Small to the European Union who said that they did not have time in their initial testing to determine if the vaccines stop the spread of the disease.  However, those studies have since been done.   I have found studies showing that the vaccines reduce the spread of COVID-19.  It also makes sense that if you reduce infection then you also reduce spread.  This logic is almost irrefutable, so it would be perfectly proper for the government to make this claim.

United States: COVID-19 weekly death rate by vaccination status, All ages

Wednesday, February 22, 2023

ChatGPT Generated Fictional Podcast with A.I Joe Rogan & Jordan Peterson

Once again we get an AI generated script and computer generated voices.

https://youtu.be/sVThCuT8j0A

Is this what the future holds? We might be watching our favorite actors, some long dead, simulated, with a never ending stream of AI created content. You could have Tom Hanks on TV 24/7, and the shows never repeat.

"In the next hour, Tom Hanks, Jimmy Stewart, and Charlie Chaplain take their air car on a grand tour of New Detroit. "

Best wishes,

John Coffey

Sunday, February 19, 2023

Maps That Will Change How You See The World - Part 8

Jordan Peterson Lawsuit Update

Chick-fil-A Identity Politics

The left makes a mountain out of a molehill.  It advances its agenda by claiming victimhood.  As I understand it, the original owner of Chick-Fil-A donated money to religious organizations that he agreed with, which just happened to have some anti-gay positions.  This is a long way from saying that the donations were made for the suppression of gay people.  For this original sin, the left wants to keep punishing Chick-Fil-A forever no matter what changes they make.

Most people on the right are very tolerant and accepting people.  I don't see anyone who is actively promoting an anti-gay agenda. Not a soul.  If they exist, they are a small minority.  I'm here in conservative Indiana, and most people just want to live and let live.

I once ran my chess club at a Chick-Fil-A.  The people there were nice and eager to please.  I happened to like the food, although I haven't compared it to other fast-food chicken.

The left will attack you just for not being woke enough.  If you don't actively support their position, then that makes you a racist, homophobe, or whatever.  This is a divide-and-conquer strategy, and when you point out how outrageous they are being then they attack you as bigoted for disagreeing with them.

It is ironic that at 7:20 he accuses the right of being the ones with a chip on their shoulders.

It is shameful that he would accuse the right of defending slavery.  Remind me, which political party supported slavery?

After such an over-the-top unjust slander of good, well-intentioned people, that I am done with this channel.

How Hard Is It to Not Buy a Video Game?



John Coffey
0 seconds ago

Calling people bigots for their biologically realistic point of view that men cannot women and vice-versa, is just unfair.  We have a different point of view that doesn't go along with some people's fantasies.  I am all for letting people live their lives until it starts imposing on the rest of us.  Suddenly I have to be careful about what pronouns I use.  People want to force me to lie to protect their feelings.  

I think that it is equally unfair to threaten people's livelihood if they don't agree.  Jordan Peterson first became famous when his job was threatened over forced speech codes.  And it is still happening to him.  They want to take away his license.

The left thinks that it is about diversity and inclusion, but it is not true when it comes to diversity of opinion. The left thinks that having a different opinion is harming others. If you disagree with them then they will literally try to ruin you. They want you to go away and die. You don't have the right to speak nor do you have the right to earn a living.

I've known for some time that Steve Shives has some different political opinions than I do, but that doesn't mean that I stop watching his videos.  For the most part, I like his videos.

I suggest reading what J.K. Rowling wrote about Her Reasons for Speaking out on Sex and Gender Issues.  I would include a link here but it would probably be deleted by the spam filter.


P.S.  https://www.jkrowling.com/opinions/j-k-rowling-writes-about-her-reasons-for-speaking-out-on-sex-and-gender-issues/

Friday, February 17, 2023

Why Honey Badgers Don't Fear God or Lions



Many people have a naive view of wild animals.  They are not pets and will try to hurt you if they can.  To most animals, you look like food.

Even most herbivores will kill and eat small animals if given the chance.  

Having This Mindset Is Key To Success | David Goggins

Thursday, February 16, 2023

Brain injury after vaccination




John Coffey  0 seconds ago:

There is no evidence that the spike proteins were generated locally or caused the inflammation. You would have to show a significant number of excess cases after vaccination. 

I found another study showing COVID causing the same symptoms.

It is not clear to me that the vaccine causes an excess number of these cases. There is an assumed causality that is not proven.

The U.S. Government statistics show a much lower overall death rate among the vaccinated.

The quoted study concludes with ...  

"Neurological manifestations following the SARS-CoV-2 vaccination have been reported, and although they are few in number, healthcare professionals should be alert to their presentation as a high vigilance and rapid response to these events are the need of the hour. Further investigations are required to establish a definitive causal association with the currently recommended vaccines. Until then, the benefit of protection against COVID-19 for both individuals and society is far greater than the hypothesized risk of these adverse events."

Wednesday, February 15, 2023

How The Iroquois Nation Inspired the US Revolution

Illegal immigration to the United States

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illegal_immigration_to_the_United_States#Countries_of_origin

I heard a radio talk show host express concern about "hundreds of thousands" of Chinese illegal immigrants in the United States.  Although small compared to the total, one has to wonder why they are coming here illegally.

I think that we should welcome people escaping tyranny with open arms.  However, if one out of a thousand of those who came here illegally did so for the purpose of espionage, then we could have hundreds of spies in our country.  Maybe it is one out of ten thousand.

The reason why the world is so divided in 2023... 🌎 #shorts

https://youtube.com/shorts/rdrNFNG-rww?feature=share


Best wishes,

John Coffey

Our Phones Are Full of Sh%t

Saturday, February 11, 2023

The Models Are OK, the Predictions Are Wrong | Dr. Judith Curry. Climate

Disney turns Luke Skywalker into an LGBTQ+ character | News | westernstandard.news

Luke Skywalker is listed on the "LGBTQ+ individuals" page of the Star Wars fan encyclopedia Wookieepedia.

https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Category:LGBTQ%2B_individuals

The reason Skywalker is now LGBTQ+ comes from "a recent short story by activist writer Sam Maggs," according to Bounding Into Comics.

In a 2016 Vanity Fair article, JJ Abrams said that Star Wars needed more non-straight characters.

Mark Hamill, the actor who portrayed Skywalker, suggested in the Vanity Fair story that Skywalker "of course" is gay.

"Fans are writing and ask all these questions, 'I'm bullied in school ... I'm afraid to come out,'" said Hamill.

"They say to me, 'Could Luke be gay?' I'd say it is meant to be interpreted by the viewer ... If you think Luke is gay, of course, he is. You should not be ashamed of it. Judge Luke by his character, not by who he loves."

https://www.westernstandard.news/news/disney-turns-luke-skywalker-into-an-lgbtq-character/article_f3664f6a-a949-11ed-8b27-57687608b00d.html

You Were Right!

Arrested for a social media post | Konstantin Kisin

The NEW Women - Ricky Gervais

https://youtube.com/shorts/JST1u0CmncM?feature=share

Friday, February 10, 2023

Yes, masks reduce the risk of spreading COVID, despite a review saying they don't

An updated Cochrane Review published last week is the latest to suggest face masks don't work in the community.

However there are problems with the review's methodology and its underpinning assumptions about transmission.

An RCT comparing occasional versus continuous use of respirators in health care workers showed N95 respirators and surgical masks were equally ineffective when only worn occasionally by hospital workers. They had to wear them all the time at work to be protected.

We also combined only apples and apples in a meta-analysis of two RCTs conducted in exactly the same way and measuring the same interventions and outcomes. We found N95 respirators provide significant protection against respiratory infections when surgical masks did not, even against infections assumed to be "droplet spread".

https://theconversation.com/yes-masks-reduce-the-risk-of-spreading-covid-despite-a-review-saying-they-dont-198992

Wednesday, February 8, 2023

What is the price of tea in Indiana?



This used to be a $2 box of tea. Apparently, Walmart is either out of stock or not carrying it anymore, so instead offers an expensive 3rd party seller.

I see that I can get it from Kroger for $4.19, or a case of 6 from Amazon for about $20.

Saturday, February 4, 2023

Classic Stossel: The Biggest Freeloaders

I Misunderstood the Greenhouse Effect. Here's How It Works.



John Coffey:
I thought that actual Greenhouses prevent convection, which is different than CO2 which absorbs and re-emits infrared photons.

 I heard that convection is an important part of how our atmosphere loses heat.

I also had heard that the infrared photon knocks an electron to a higher orbital, and then 3 nanoseconds later the electron falls back down to the lower orbital and re-emits an infrared photon.  The net effect is to scatter the photons in a random direction since quantum physics acts somewhat randomly.

Photons are force-carrying particles.  They carry electromagnetic force.  In order for the temperature to increase, there would have to be a gain of kinetic energy because heat is the motion of molecules.  Does the vibration of the molecule convert electromagnetic force to kinetic energy?   So I am wondering what percentage of the infrared photons gets converted to kinetic energy, and what percentage gets re-emitted?

Friday, February 3, 2023

Illegal In the US, Legal In the World

COVID vaccines slash risk of spreading Omicron — and so does previous infection

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JgrMzvasrm8&t=1100s

"Decreases in transmission of the delta variant were greater after two BNT162b2 vaccinations"

"The team found that among individuals with COVID-19, those who received at least one vaccine shot were 24% less likely to infect close contacts"


"This study confirms that COVID-19 vaccination reduces the risk of delta variant infection and also accelerates viral clearance in the context of the delta variant. However, this study unfortunately also highlights that the vaccine effect on reducing transmission is minimal in the context of delta variant circulation. These findings have immediate public health implications. Higher vaccination coverage rates need to be achieved because indirect protection from vaccinated to unvaccinated people remains suboptimal."

"Pfizer vax did reduce transmission of early variants"

"Researchers in the United Kingdom reported in a February observational study that Pfizer's vaccine helped cut transmission of the alpha and delta variants."


"Scientific studies show that the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine reduces transmission"

"However, when booster vaccine doses reduce the risk of infection (as shown in the study by Spitzer et al2), then these boosters will also prevent transmission. As with all infectious diseases, the pathogen is required to cause the disease, and SARS-CoV-2 infection is the sine qua non for COVID-19. Prevention of infection results in prevention of potential onward transmission from all individuals who are spared the infection."

"New research suggests COVID-19 vaccines can slow the spread of disease, even with Omicron"

"Early data suggest infections in fully vaccinated persons are more commonly observed with the Delta variant than with other SARS-CoV-2 variants. However, data show fully vaccinated persons are less likely than unvaccinated persons to acquire SARS-CoV-2, and infections with the Delta variant in fully vaccinated persons are associated with less severe clinical outcomes. Infections with the Delta variant in vaccinated persons potentially have reduced transmissibility than infections in unvaccinated persons, although additional studies are needed."

"Instead, it's the principle that the UKHSA identified above: if you don't get infected in the first place thanks to a vaccine, you can't spread it. Once you're infected, you still can"

Thursday, February 2, 2023

This Is the Single Most Important Moment in TV History

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Kkox1kG0hY

The third episode of The Last of Us features a side story about a gay couple who survive the zombie apocalypse.   For this reason, Ben Shapiro hates it.  It does have the problem of being a big detour from the first couple of episodes.

I disagree that it has no relationship to the story because the couple does interact with the main characters.  There was an episode like this in the first season of The Bad Batch where the main characters only have a brief appearance, and it was one of the best episodes of the season.  Also, an episode of The Book of Boba Fet was controversial for not having the main character in it.

Why Are American Health Care Costs So High?

Third-party payers constitute most of the healthcare.  Reportedly, around 60% of healthcare is paid for by the government.  The problem is there is very little free market competition.  Nobody knows how much their healthcare costs, or if there might be a cheaper option.

One solution would be medical savings accounts with price competition.

Dumbest Thing Whoopi Has Ever Said

The 'gift of God' that has poisoned American kids for 100 years

Wednesday, February 1, 2023

“Objectivity Has Got To Go”: News Leaders Call for the End of Objective Journalism – JONATHAN TURLEY

Ted Glasser, insisted that journalism needed to "free itself from this notion of objectivity to develop a sense of social justice." He rejected the notion that journalism is based on objectivity and said that he views "journalists as activists because journalism at its best — and indeed history at its best — is all about morality."  Thus, "Journalists need to be overt and candid advocates for social justice, and it's hard to do that under the constraints of objectivity."

https://jonathanturley.org/2023/02/01/objectivity-has-got-to-go-news-leaders-call-for-end-of-objective-journalism/comment-page-1/

Significant Events

Until recently, the most significant thing to happen in my lifetime was 9-11.   It had a profound effect on this country and its foreign policy, and it also had a profound effect on me because I went to work for a defense contractor.  It also temporarily brought Americans together to fight a common enemy.

In terms of the number of people affected, 9-11 is small potatoes compared to the COVID-19 pandemic.  There have been 675 million cases worldwide, with 6.76 million deaths.  In the United States, there have been 104 million cases with 1.1 million deaths.  Roughly 1 out of every 300 Americans has been killed by COVID-19.  However, when it comes to fighting the disease, this common enemy did not bring us together but made us more divided.

Perhaps the most important thing in the world right now is that we don't get into a nuclear war with Russia or China or any other potential adversary.  Since this is not likely to happen, I'm not too worried about it.

So the second most important thing in the world is how we handle the COVID-19 pandemic both personally and in terms of public policy.  The actions we take could save or cost lives.  

Most people today see the pandemic in the rearview mirror.  The public seems very lax.  People stopped wearing masks.  President Biden has declared May 11th the end of the COVID emergency.  However, I think that it could be naive to think that COVID is over.  We currently have around 500 deaths per day.  New mutations keep popping up and some of these might not be so bad, but there is always the potential for a new deadly strain to arise.  The XBB 1.5 variant is so infectious there is a possibility that everyone will get it, and it has killed 1,600 New Yorkers since December 1st.

I suspect that we will be fighting COVID for the rest of our lives.

Almost nobody has time to read scientific literature.  This is one reason we pay politicians to make policy so that we don't have to sort through all the details ourselves.  And most people are fine with that.  However, only 68% of the U.S. population is fully vaccinated, with around 21% having never been vaccinated.

I am personally angry with the anti-vax crowd because they seem to only think about themselves.  There are some very small risks associated with the vaccines, so many people assume that if they are young and healthy that they are better off not getting vaccinated.  These assumptions may not be correct, since many young healthy people also have died from COVID-19.  However, the reason for my consternation is that the anti-vax crowd seems to not care at all about people like my elderly mother whose health issues would make her extremely vulnerable to COVID.  If a person chooses not to be vaccinated, then they are choosing to likely spread COVID to someone else, because the R factor of the Omicron variant is 3.4.  In the past, anything with an R factor of 1 or higher was considered serious.

I like to say that the anti-vax crowd cherry-picks their data, but that is being generous.  For the most part, they don't look at data.  They see statements on social media, Youtube, and fringe conspiracy-theory websites made by very questionable people, and they believe in some of the most absurd positions as if they were gospel.  I have spent 2 years fighting vaccine misinformation on the Internet, but I give up because apparently, you can't reason with irrational people.

I see claims every day that I know have been debunked by at least one scientific study.  The most recent one is that the mRNA vaccines don't stop the spread of the disease.  There are studies that say otherwise.  

Some commentators who I would normally respect think that the government has been lying to us this whole time.  They are calling for the prosecution of government officials for their "COVID lies".

What the data currently shows is that there is much lower overall mortality for people who have been vaccinated.  There is a small health risk with the vaccines, but COVID-19 is no ordinary disease.  It attacks every organ in the body.  The health complications from COVID are far more dangerous than the vaccines.

--
Best wishes,

John Coffey

Sunday, January 29, 2023

Re: Crypto: The World’s Greatest Scam

When I posted this to Facebook, someone I know got into a real huff, saying that I don't understand how incredible the technology is.  We went back and forth a bit, but today I wrote this:

There is something about this that I don't understand or my understanding is faulty. The blockchain is essentially a ledger entry stating that you own something distributed over a large number of computers. Instead of a few computers being involved, say at the stock exchange and your broker, a large number of computers have to hold this information, consuming power. You get buzzwords like decentralized, distributed, and public, but how is that better than a centralized ledger?

And since this is largely unregulated, you are dependent upon the goodwill of many actors. We have already seen multiple frauds related to cryptocurrency.

Here I am questioning the value of blockchain, and maybe it does have a value on a technical level that I don't understand, as opposed to before where I was questioning the value of the assets like Bitcoin which I think have no intrinsic value.



On Tue, Jan 24, 2023 at 9:42 PM John  wrote:
I think that the title says it all.  

Forty years ago people thought that antiques were a profitable investment.  It was driven by a high demand for antiques, so people started looking at antiques as an investment.  This was based on the "bigger fool theory", which was that you would buy the item solely as an investment, possibly paying more than its intrinsic value, and you hoped that there was a bigger fool out there who would pay you more money for it.  The problem is that somebody is left holding the bag when demand goes down.  This is a characteristic of many financial bubbles, the first of which started with tulips.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tulip_mania

The problem with crypto-anything is that it doesn't have an intrinsic value and the value is only driven by hype.  As long as the hype continues, you can make money.  But crypto doesn't have a use case that justifies its existence.  Instead of being a useful alternate currency, it has turned into a get-rich-quick scheme.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ORdWE_ffirg


Thursday, January 26, 2023

Bill Maher goes NUCLEAR on COVID Tyranny

https://youtube.com/shorts/0MXPmTdfIkI?feature=share

I agree about mandates. I disagree about vaccine hesitancy in the midst of a deadly worldwide pandemic.

If this were smallpox, with a death rate 30 times higher, how many people would be opposed to the vaccine? But when it is your family member who dies from COVID-19, the death is no less significant.

Best wishes,

John Coffey

Tuesday, January 24, 2023

Vaccines



I tried really hard to convince one of my friends in Utah about vaccines, but he will have none of it. He told me that he doesn't believe in any vaccine. Therefore, I told him I don't want to waste any more of my time and will stop bugging him about it.

Unfortunately, he is not a lone case. I have several friends who are opposed to the COVID-19 vaccines. Only 68% of the U.S. population is fully vaccinated against COVID-19.

I could have asked him what he would do if a rabid animal bit him?  There is only one cure, and it is a vaccine. Otherwise, it is certain death.

Why is it that Polio and Smallpox are no longer a problem?

--

Crypto: The World’s Greatest Scam

I think that the title says it all.  

Forty years ago people thought that antiques were a profitable investment.  It was driven by a high demand for antiques, so people started looking at antiques as an investment.  This was based on the "bigger fool theory", which was that you would buy the item solely as an investment, possibly paying more than its intrinsic value, and you hoped that there was a bigger fool out there who would pay you more money for it.  The problem is that somebody is left holding the bag when demand goes down.  This is a characteristic of many financial bubbles, the first of which started with tulips.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tulip_mania

The problem with crypto-anything is that it doesn't have an intrinsic value and the value is only driven by hype.  As long as the hype continues, you can make money.  But crypto doesn't have a use case that justifies its existence.  Instead of being a useful alternate currency, it has turned into a get-rich-quick scheme.

Monday, January 23, 2023

I totally forgot that happened during 9/11 !! | JRE #1929 with Louis C.K.

https://youtu.be/niZpfOalvJM

Vaccines Will Not Produce Worse Variants | Science | AAAS

'And past antibodies, there's the whole T-cell system - those T cells are looking to recognize human cells that have been attacked by the virus, whereupon they move in to kill them off before they can break open like a piñata and release a big pile of new viral particles. They are primed for this task by having pieces of viral proteins presented to them by other immune cells, and these T cells become specifically sensitized to the appearance of these in the future - these pieces get taken to the surface of infected cells by the MHC glycoproteins where the T cells can detect them. So you can see that in all of these cases, the key is protein surface recognition, which tells you how viruses can work their way around to evading such attacks. They have to change their surface proteins in such a way that they can still function, but that defeats that antibody/T-cell binding that the immune system has settled in on.

That's not so easy, because (for one thing) there are an enormous number of different antibodies involved (and an enormous number of T-cell recognition proteins). There are any number of ways to bind to a given protein target, and the adaptive immune system's whole function is to be ready for all kinds of targets and to hit them in all kinds of ways. And there's that constraint mentioned above: the virus still has to be able to function! Losing the entire Spike protein or mutating it completely beyond recognition would definitely evade vaccine-induced immunity, but it would also definitely produce a coronavirus that couldn't infect human cells in the way it's completely evolved to do. Coming up with a completely new infection route is (mutationally) extremely costly and complex, and not something that can be done "on the fly". Various coronaviruses use different human cell surface proteins to do their attack, but these have gradually developed and diverged over evolutionary time (hundreds of thousands, or millions of years) through untold numbers of tiny steps.

But it can be done, in principle. And as with everything in evolution, if it gets done at all, it'll get done by similarly untold numbers of individual mutants, and mutants on top of those mutants, until something appears that can both avoid being inactivated by the immune response and still infect cells and reproduce. There is no guarantee that such a virus can exist, and there is no guarantee that it can't. Evaluating the number of possibilies is frankly beyond computation - we didn't, for example, see the details of the Delta variant coming, and if you'd given someone that exact sequence last year, there's no guarantee that they would have been able to predict how much more infectious it would be.

The more chances you give the coronavirus to reproduce, the more mutations it will explore. Its proofreading system for reproduction is pretty good but not perfect, and that's where the mutations come from. It's a numbers game all the way. The virus is not thinking about how to evade vaccine-induced immunity; it's throwing stuff randomly against every available wall in every available direction, and whatever sticks gets a chance to go on throwing some more. Remember, an unvaccinated person is still mounting an antibody defense against the virus - they're just having to do it from scratch, rather than having a pre-primed leg up like someone who's been vaccinated. The longer these infections go on inside human bodies, the more bets the virus gets to put down on the table. The good news is that so far, there is not much evidence that the virus is doing much evasion inside a given person during the course of normal infection.

So one key way to cut down on the odds of a nasty mutant popping up is to just keep the virus from reproducing so much. Cut down on the number of people it infects. When it does infect people, cut down on the amount of time it spends reproducing inside the body. These countermeasures are exactly what a mass vaccination program does. Fewer people get infected in the first place, and when they do get infected, their disease course tends in the great majority of cases to be shorter and milder. A nasty variant is almost certainly going to come up by accident, so let's not have so many accidents going on constantly around the clock, around the world.
...
a true vaccine-evading mutant is going to need a set of several mutations (off the existing variants) all at the same time. The vaccine-induced immune response looks like it's knocking down a lot of these intermediate-step mutations before they can keep on throwing off subsequent mutations on top of the first ones. These pathways are choked off before they can even get explored, and this "evolutionary smothering" is something that you don't see so dramatically when you're doing those in vitro experiments with specifically targeted small molecules mentioned at the top of this post. A broad antibody and T-cell response is a different thing altogether.

There is, then, every reason at both the population and individual level to expect that vaccination will strongly decrease the chances of a more dangerous coronavirus strain taking hold. If we'd had them earlier and were able to deploy them quickly and widely enough, we never would have seen the Delta variant in the first place. If we keep deploying them now, we will keep worse variants from even being able to form. Anyone who tells you that vaccines will make things worse is at best deeply misinformed and at worst lying to you for profit.'

https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/vaccines-will-not-produce-worse-variants

Saturday, January 21, 2023

Comments on Climate Change

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KNwcWe85Wnc

In addition to the stuff I usually write, I wrote the following...

The "Climate Realists" often get a bad rap and are made into straw men.  Almost nobody is denying that the average atmospheric temperature is going up nor that we are the cause.  However, there is a great deal more to this story.  It is important to note how fast the temperature is changing, and what the best solutions are to remedy this.

I seriously question the impartiality of the IPCC.  They are a government organization that is paid billions so they should try to be objective in how they arrive at their conclusions.  However, they refused to hire anyone who did not already believe in catastrophic man-made warming.  This is coming to the conclusion first, and then providing the evidence for it, rather than allowing the evidence to guide them impartially.  They also successfully demanded that scientific publications like Nature censor contrary opinions.  The former head of the IPCC, who got kicked out for sexual harassment, stated that anthropogenic catastrophic warming was his "religion", showing a complete lack of objectivity.  One-third of the people hired at the IPCC are members of an environmental lobbying organization, which for a government-paid organization is a complete conflict of interest.

Gas stove fumes and broken public health discourse

Before anyone is bothered by a political topic, let me say that this guy tries to be middle of the road, possibly slightly left of center by my standards.  He tries really hard to examine all sides of the issue, and I think he does a really thorough job here.


I'm personally not fond of gas stoves because I don't like having an open flame in my home.  My house came with a gas stove and I use it.

Some people were joking, and they really just meant this as a joke and it shouldn't be taken too seriously, "You can have my gas stove when you pry it from my cold dead fingers."

Politicians trying to control time...

Friday, January 20, 2023

This is pure EVIL. 😡 - YouTube

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/NrSbVdhw_Sk



If you search Google over what country Shell Oil is from, you get the United States, but Shell is a subsidiary of Shell PLC, a company from The Netherlands, which apparently has a headquarters in London.  It was Shell PLC that was causing all the problems in Nigeria.

From what I can tell, it is more of an international company.

Jordan Peterson RESPONDS To His Retrainment

Bill Maher Speaks The Truth About Slavery

Meme the Left Day of - YouTube

Our Offer to Steven Crowder

This is an interesting soap opera between The Daily Wire and Stephen Crowder, both of which are prominent conservative streamers.  Although reportedly they were on friendly terms, Stephen Crowder took offense to an offer made by The Daily Wire to join their company and publicized their presumably confidential negotiations in an attack video.  

I don't see how The Daily Wire is at fault here.  If Crowder didn't like their offer then that should have been the end of it, or he could have tried to negotiate a better deal.

I think that even highly successful people let emotion cloud their reason, if not more so because they are highly successful.  Ego gets in the way.


A few years ago, Youtube streamers were on the fringe of media.  Now they are endorsing products in national ad campaigns.  I watch more Youtube than any other media or streaming service.

Facts That Can Save Your Life - Part 7

Newly discovered Fauci emails say COVID looked potentially 'engineered'

Wednesday, January 18, 2023

Toby Young | This House Believes Woke Culture Has Gone Too Far - 3/8 | Oxford Union - YouTube


Critical Race Theory emerged around 1960 as an offshoot of Critical Marxism Theory.  Inherent in its doctrine is the idea that contrary opinions are a form of violence and should not be tolerated.

Comedian Leaves Oxford Union SPEECHLESS


I do not believe that Climate Change is a serious problem.  It is a minor problem exaggerated.  It might not be a problem at all. 

The IPCC tends to use the worst-case scenario in its predictions.  One-third of the people on the IPCC are members of an environmental lobbying organization.  There is also a big difference between the IPCC report and the summary report written by and for politicians.

Tuesday, January 17, 2023

Tucker Carlson: This is very serious

This is a beyond-absurd conspiracy theory tying together different events like it was proof of anything.  The logic is so thin it is almost nonexistent.  I cannot watch Tucker Carlson anymore.  This is unfortunate because I used to like him.  When his wacko theory is proven false, will he apologize for misleading the American people?  

What concerns me is that I have friends who grab onto conspiracy theories like they are gospel.

Joe Rogan & Peter Zeihan discuss EV's

Monday, January 16, 2023

US Safety Agency to Consider Ban on Gas Stoves Amid Health Fears - Bloomberg

"A federal agency says a ban on gas stoves is on the table amid rising concern about harmful indoor air pollutants emitted by the appliances."

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-01-09/us-safety-agency-to-consider-ban-on-gas-stoves-amid-health-fears

'Then a member of that five-person commission suggested to Bloomberg News in a story this week that a ban on new gas stoves could be one of many options to be pursued in the future. But the member, Biden nominee Richard Trumka Jr., had previously failed to get his fellow commissioners to support even regulating stoves, as POLITICO's E&E News reported Tuesday. Instead, the commission plans to gather "public input" on stoves' health hazards and possible solutions.

"I am not looking to ban gas stoves and the CPSC has no proceeding to do so," Chair Alexander Hoehn-Saric later said in a statement.

By then, though, the issue had escalated to culture-war level.'


There is a pattern that I see repeated so often that it must be deliberate:  An outrageous idea becomes public.  There is a huge backlash.  Then the political left claims that we didn't understand and they never wanted to do what they previously said that they wanted to do.

Friday, January 13, 2023

Laughable Video from World Economic Forum Head on How to Gain Trust

Climate Science: What Does it Say? | Dr. Richard Lindzen

The Issue of Optimal Deprivation

The Most AWFUL Woman

CDC identifies possible 'safety concern' for certain people receiving COVID vaccines | Fox News

"Rapid-response investigation of the signal in the VSD raised a question of whether people 65 and older who have received the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 Vaccine, Bivalent were more likely to have an ischemic stroke in the 21 days following vaccination compared with days 22-44 following vaccination."

In a statement to Fox News Digital, a spokesperson for Pfizer said, "Pfizer and BioNTech have been made aware of limited reports of ischemic stroke that have been observed in the CDC Vaccine Safety DataLink (VSD) database in people 65 and older following vaccination with the Omicron BA.4/BA.5-adapted bivalent COVID-19 Vaccine by Pfizer and BioNTech."

The agency also said that the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) managed by CDC and FDA has not seen an increase in reporting of ischemic strokes following the updated (bivalent) vaccine.

"Neither Pfizer and BioNTech nor the CDC or the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) have observed similar findings across numerous other monitoring systems in the U.S. and globally and there is no evidence to conclude that ischemic stroke is associated with the use of the companies' COVID-19 vaccines," the spokesperson continued. 

"Compared to published incidence rates of ischemic stroke in this older population, the companies to date have observed a lower number of reported ischemic strokes following the vaccination with the Omicron BA.4/BA.5-adapted bivalent vaccine. The CDC continues to recommend vaccination with the Pfizer-BioNTech Omicron BA.4/BA.5-adapted bivalent COVID-19 vaccine for all authorized ages and indications."

Thursday, January 12, 2023

Bill Maher Makes Neil deGrasse Tyson Go Silent with His COVID Rant

sleeping position prevents dementia

---------- Forwarded message ---------
From: Larry 

Sleeping on your side is generally considered the healthiest sleeping position — this is because it gives good support for your spine, while also minimizing acid reflux.  

On Thu, Jan 12, 2023 at 9:52 AM Larry wrote:

Sleeping in a certain position helps lower the risk of dementia, studies have found.

Sleep expert Narwan Amini said: "Sleeping on your side has been found to be the most beneficial position for your brain, with the position helping your brain to clear out interstitial waste faster than other positions.

"This leads to multiple benefits including potentially reducing the risk of developing neurological diseases such as Parkinson's or Alzheimer's."

The sleeping position that slashes your risk of developing dementia (nypost.com)