Well, this is what a lot of us are hoping to see:
[Open full post]The SARS-CoV-2 variant Omicron is leading to the end of the worldwide pandemic, Denmark’s chief epidemiologist predicted, meaning “we will have our normal lives back in two months.”
Tyra Grove Krause said on Danish TV 2 that a new study from Denmark’s State Serum Institute found that the risk of winding up in the hospital with Omicron is half that seen with the previous Delta variant. She also said that like the emergence of the variant in South Africa, cases will rise, then quickly fall.
“I think we will have that in the next two months, and then I hope the infection will start to subside and we get our normal lives back,” she said on Monday, according to the Daily Mail.
Robert Wiblin gets to the economics of student debt cancelation in a dead-on way with this comment:
Cancelling student debt is good but we could do more.
The government should also tax non-college grads in order to fund a $5,000 annual gift for all college grads as a way to show appreciation for how smart and productive we are.
As Glenn Reynolds quips, Wiblin is making a funny, but his proposal could very well find its way into the Democrats’ platform.
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As a follow-up to Tolly Taylor’s sea-level scare addressed in this space yesterday, WPRI handed editorial control over Democrat Senator from Rhode Island Sheldon Whitehouse, whom the reporter permits to claim without context that Rhode Island will see nine to 12 feet of sea level rise by the end of this century.
Seriously, don’t the managers over at WPRI feel as if they have any responsibility to ensure their airwaves are used to inform Rhode Islanders, rather than propagandize them? Maybe the Target 12 news team should do an investigation into whether Whitehouse has any financial interests in promoting a carbon tax campaign that has him envisioning the construction of dikes to hold back the flood.
Taylor makes zero attempt to contextualize Whitehouse’s claim in even the most basic way, with no outside experts needed for substantiation. All one has to do is spend 10 minutes tracing the claim back to its source:
- The map WPRI shows (used as the featured image of this post) comes directly from a slide titled, “Rhode Island Archipelago,” from Whitehouse’s propaganda presentation. The blue area reflects 10 feet of vertical sea level rise, while the teal brings the height up to 12 feet.
- Whitehouse justifies these estimates with reference to what “our Coastal Resources Management Council now predicts.” This is a lie. As misleading as its press release might be, the CRMC is careful to note that this is a “worst-case scenario,” and that it, the CRMC, is adding 0.3 to 1 meter (about 1 to 3 feet) to the research of its source for regional consideration.
- CRMC’s source, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), brings the context into even sharper focus. Table 5 of NOAA’s report doesn’t even label this as a “worst case” scenario. To NOAA, this is the “Extreme” scenario, which is what you get when even “High” isn’t scary enough. The “Intermediate” scenario is a little over three feet, and the “Low” scenario is about a single foot.
One could say, therefore, that Senator Whitehouse is an “extremist,” because he claims that the tippety top of the highest projection for which researchers (who are potentially motivated by funding and politics) can find any basis whatsoever is what “our Coastal Resources Management Council now predicts.” And one of Rhode Islanders’ major sources of news simply passes that along.
Frankly, this is malpractice, and the organization is getting to the point of fraud in claiming that it is news.
Target 12’s online title for this article is, “RI homeowners already suffering due to sea-level rise, Sen. Whitehouse says.” The casual skimmer of headlines might think this is an environmental claim, but it’s actually financial:
Whitehouse said when banks across the state consider a new 30-year mortgage, for instance, they’re starting to take into account what the property may look like at the end of that period. And for some houses, especially those along the coast, Rhode Island’s STORMTOOLS website shows many properties may be underwater.
Perhaps some enterprising lawyer should start a file of such clippings. If intentionally (or, at least, recklessly) misleading claims by the Senator Whitehouse and WPRI are leading banks to impose unreasonable costs on Rhode Islanders, perhaps they should be held liable.
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Well, this is no surprise:
“Remote learning poses a challenge for children’s behavioral health and functioning,” study co-author Emily Hanno told UPI in an email.
“This aligns with what we know about how stress and disruption affect children’s behavior,” said Hanno, a post-doctoral researcher at the Harvard Graduate School of Education in Cambridge, Mass.
Stress caused by “disrupted, uncertain and shifting routines” can impact a child’s ability to “interact positively with others and manage their emotions and behavior,” she said.
This is on top of demonstrably worse educational outcomes. Time to stop the abuse.
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Judge Denise Casper of the U.S. First Circuit Court of Appeals made an important point while dismissing an appeal by Providence students seeking to assert a right to more-extensive civics education in public schools:
Citing earlier cases, the First Circuit said no other court suggested teaching a specific subject was required by the constitution, save, perhaps, basic literacy — reading and writing. The Sixth Circuit recently looked at an education case, Casper wrote, where it determined literacy is vital for a student to have a chance at grasping political and economic opportunities. Furthermore, a lack of civics education, Casper wrote, does not prevent a student from participating “in a functioning democracy.”
Citing the limited resources at the disposal of most teachers and myriad demands upon the education system, Casper wrote: “We do not doubt the importance of the civics curriculum proffered by the Students and their amici, but we also do not doubt the importance of reading, science and math, both for providing a basic education and for preparing students to succeed in higher education and the workforce.”
By elevating the question to subjects that are logically prior to civics, Casper’s ruling implies a question: Why aren’t these students in court over the state’s abysmal failure to teach them reading, math, and science? And public education in the state is an abysmal failure.
Perhaps the reason is that a broad argument that the system is failing at what it is presumably trying to do would implicate powerful, progressive special interest groups like the teacher unions.
Astute observers will notice a peculiar disconnect in the current lawsuit. Students who filed a lawsuit over civics education proved by doing so that they have learned some advanced lessons about how our civic system works. At most, they can complain that they had to learn what they know from progressive activist groups rather than in the classroom, which might, itself, be a good argument for a revamped civics curriculum if it weren’t so certain that progressive activist groups would craft that, too.
The involvement of those activists, however deleterious it might be to the students and to our community, does partially solve the mystery of why the students chose this subject over which to sue. After all, for what better outcome could progressives hope than to produce a generation of illiterate and innumerate activists who don’t understand how the natural world works but can game the political and legal systems?
Featured image by Maick Maciel on Unsplash.
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Jill Colvin’s Associated Press “article” about the hiccup Republican Senator Ted Cruz from Texas had with the Republican base over a comment related to January 6 may be the single best example I’ve seen of the mainstream media’s new approach. It’s truly “the party line.” For decades, conservatives have been bashing establishment news organizations by comparing them to the Communist press in the Soviet Union, or Pravda, but it’s now an entirely accurate description.
Colvin starts with the wholly subjective description of Cruz as having “desperation written on his face” as Tucker Carlson grilled him for calling January 6, 2021, a “terrorist attack.” She doesn’t label Cruz as a “conservative Republican” or “right-wing Senator,” or anything like that. Rather, he’s a “conservative ideologue.” And he’s not “walking back” his comment, much less “moderating it”; rather, he’s “capitulat[ing] to outrage from the Republican Party’s far right flank.”
Along the way, Colvin makes sure to mention that Republican Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene from Georgia “was recently barred from Twitter,” as if that represents the ruling of an objective academic organization or something by some reasonable process.
The “reporter” endeavors to justify Cruz’s characterization of the incident as “terrorism,” using the FBI’s glossary. Then, rather than find a conservative academic to articulate a contrary view, Colvin relies on the much-maligned Carlson, who (she notes gratuitously) “has promoted the racist ‘Replacement Theory’ that elites are trying to replace majority white populations with nonwhite immigrants.” She doesn’t bother to explain his points or do any work establishing that the argument is actually “racist,” but why should she? The Party doesn’t require evidence of such accusations; they’re considered true on their face because they’re politically useful.
Colvin even goes so far as to explain away the observation of Republicans (whom she does not name) that none of the rioters have been charged with treason, sedition, or anything that would justify claims of “insurrection” or even “terrorism.” “Those charges,” she writes, “are extremely rare,” and prosecutors “may be reluctant to bring them because of their legal complexity.” See, it has nothing to do with the fact that the charges would be outlandish and prove decisively that her Party is slandering her fellow Americans.
So there it is: A “journalist” has been deployed in defense of an important talking point in the Party line, and no rhetorical trick is off the table, to the point of excusing the Party for failing to prove its case in a court of law because doing so is “complex.”
Shameful.
Featured image by Eleven Photographs on Unsplash.
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I got myself in a little bit of trouble a few weeks back for expressing ideas like this, from Larry Alexander:
In general, blacks as a group are doing better than ever before materially. And for those who are not doing well, the cause is not the effects of slavery or Jim Crow. Nor is the cause racist bigotry, which, though some undoubtedly exists, is not a significant obstacle in blacks’ lives. Nor is it the vague culprit of “systemic racism.” …
The real impediment to the advancement of poor blacks – and everyone knows this, regardless of whether they admit it – is the cultural factors that have produced family disintegration, which in turn portends poor educational achievement, crime and poverty.
The guardians of the narrative are always on the lookout for heretics.
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Governor Dan McKee, along with the Rhode Island departments of health and education, implemented new guidelines for how schools handle COVID infections, yesterday. Employees and students who have been vaccinated and boosted (depending on age) do not have to quarantine, even if they had close contact with somebody who tested positive. Notably, the same applies to anybody who recovered from the virus within the prior three months. However, the most noteworthy part of the policy is this:
Students and staff without symptoms, who are identified as close contacts, and aren’t exempt from quarantine will be encouraged to follow the Monitor to Stay quarantine protocol, which allows students and staff to attend school in person and participate in school-related extracurricular activities during their quarantine period. In this case, they should – Conduct symptom screening and attest that they don’t have symptoms for 5 days; – Follow quarantine guidance when outside school, as well as updated CDC guidance about masking; and – Athletic programs should continue current testing programs for sports.
In short, “test to stay” has become “monitor to stay,” perhaps because the government is doing such a poor job keeping up with testing. Be that as it may, the state is slowly edging toward the common-sense way we’ve always handled minor-to-moderate illnesses. People who have reason to think that they’ve come in contact with an infection people should keep an eye out and address the illness if it emerges, including by taking steps to keep others from getting it.
This does not require a declared state of emergency, and it does not require a constant drumbeat of fear from the news media.
The longer this goes on, the more damage it does psychologically, educationally, and politically. A source tells me, for example that the Department of Health is not extending these loosened guidelines to private childcare facilities, despite the overlapping services. Obviously, this creates a competitive advantage for government-run pre-K.
That imbalance is merely a taste, however, of the many ways we’re sure to discover our community was distorted during this episode, and the odds are always to the benefit of people in government.
Featured image by Kelly Sikemmad on Unsplash.
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Rhode Island’s Department of Health claims that almost everybody listed as hospitalized with COVID is in the hospital at least partly because of COVID, but I keep seeing stories like this:
The majority of people hospitalized with COVID-19 in New Jersey were actually admitted for reasons other than COVID-19, officials said on Jan. 10.
Of the 6,075 people with COVID-19 and hospitalized in the state, just 2,963 were admitted for COVID-19, New Jersey Health Commissioner Judith Persichilli said during a briefing.
There are so many ways to shade the data, and Rhode Island’s long-term inability to manage its healthcare system is leading hospital to turn people away if they test positive for COVID but should probably be admitted for other reasons if those reasons aren’t “dire.” Both of those factors would increase the percentage who are in the hospital because of COVID, but not because the disease is particularly virulent around here.
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With the head of one of Rhode Island’s teachers unions saying “the responsible decision” is to shut schools and force students back into distance learning, his reasons are worth a look:
… the overwhelming number of cases, the inability to do meaningful contact tracing, the arctic temperatures we are expecting so windows cannot be opened, the insufficiency of supplies, etc. etc. …
Except for the number of cases, every one of these items is a matter of money — for government processes, for air filtration, for supplies — and Rhode Island has been sitting on a billion dollars of federal windfall.
Here’s the real problem: our governing class (including the heads of the teachers unions) thought COVID was just about done thanks to the vaccine, so all that money could be laundered into their pockets and those of their key supporters. Even though their calculation turned out to be wrong, they’re not willing to give up their dreams for the sake of something as unimportant as the education of our children.
If you’re of a mind to draw a longer-term lesson, this is essentially an amplified instance of the way Rhode Island government does business every year.
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