Tag: covid

Categories
general freedom too much government

No Transplants for the Unvaxxed

organ transplant, socialized medicine, Covid

Because of a rare but dangerous side effect, heart inflammation, Scandinavian countries are now discouraging the use of the Moderna vaccine in younger people.

We’ve seen other reports of severe illness and even death because of, or at least soon after, COVID-19 vaccinations. But we’re assured that serious side effects are so rare and the vaccines so effective that the wisdom of getting vaccinated is self-evident.

But what’s more evident? They’re forcing you. 

If you’re “vaccine-hesitant” for any reason — even if you’ve already got immunity because of a COVID-19 infection — too bad. A public-private partnership to mandate vaccination is already costing many people their jobs.

Now it’s costing people a chance for a kidney.

So ordains University of Colorado Hospital, whose Kidney Transplant Coordinator, Katie Harmann, tells Leilani Lutali that she “will be removed from the kidney transplant list” until she is vaccinated.

Note that the opportunity is not being withdrawn because the prospective recipient is sick with COVID-19 and therefore is about to kick the bucket anyway. The hospital is treating the patient’s assessment of her own risk as irrelevant.

Lutali says, “I feel like I’m being coerced into not being able to wait and see [whether the vaccine is the right thing to do], and that I have to take the shot if I want this life-saving transplant.”

This is the reality of rationed care in a largely socialist medical system.

And this is what Democrats lust for, even demand; and it is what they are working mightily to ensure — that our current messy, mixed healthcare system will soon become even more bureaucratic and restrictive.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

PDF for printing

See all recent commentary
(simplified and organized)
See recent popular posts

Categories
First Amendment rights social media

The Death of “Mind Your Business”

Covid, obituary, Twitter, social media, censorship

“Twitter is now censoring obituaries.”

That was the tweet of Sean Davis (@seanmdav) summing up (perhaps just a tad hyperbolically) the latest social media attempt at what might best be called “official spin.” 

Ben Domenech (@bdomenech) asked “Who @Twitter thought it was okay to say an OBITUARY is misleading?” But Mr. Domenech tweeted without any exaggeration.

The obituary in question appeared in The Oregonian. The basic information that so vexed Twitter? It appeared in the first paragraph of a grieving family’s sad marking of the death of Jessica Berg Wilson, who “passed away unexpectedly Sept. 7, 2021 from COVID-19 Vaccine-Induced Thrombotic Thrombocytopenia (VITT) surrounded by her loving family. Jessica was an exceptionally healthy and vibrant 37-year-old young mother with no underlying health conditions.”

FoxNews summarizes the social media giant’s warning on Kelly Bee’s (@ke11ybender) original tweet as follows: “Twitter labeled the tweet ‘misleading,’ and provided information on ‘why health officials consider COVID-19 vaccines safe for most people.’”

How gratuitous. Jessica Berg Wilson is not “most people.” 

She was one person. 

The malady in question, Thrombotic Thrombocytopenia, has to do with clotting in the body’s smaller blood vessels. The “Vaccine-induced” in the obituary is very pointed, and probably only a theory, as they say, but it doesn’t look like a bad theory: at least one doctor has identified micro-clotting as a problem that the mRNA vaccines can cause.

News of these cases has been suppressed, apparently in the cause of universal vaccination. Twitter dutifully adds its weight.

Adjudicating medical claims is none of Twitter’s business. Social media companies are ruining their own industry. Ask why. 

Demand answers.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

PDF for printing

See all recent commentary
(simplified and organized)
See recent popular posts

Categories
by Paul Jacob video

Watch: La-di-da? No, La-la.

This weekend’s podcast has a video version, like usual. But the visual treatment is . . . not like usual. Check it out:

The innovations here were not made for reasons of artistic yearning, but out of necessity. That being said, much is said in this outing of This Week in Common Sense, and whether you watch or just listen (on SoundCloud or your favorite pod catcher), we are pretty sure you will get something out of it.

Categories
First Amendment rights ideological culture media and media people

Unmasking the Mask Debate

Covid, mask, UV light, disinfectant

Sometimes things are complicated.

Many factors matter when deciding whether it makes sense to wear a mask to fend off infection. Let alone whether it’s okay to compel others to do so.

Now add another question: whether it is ever okay to deliberately suppress discussion of these subjects.

I’ve talked about all this before. But on those occasions I could not yet point you to a lengthy Heartland Institute post by James Agresti on “Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Masks, and the Deadly Falsehoods Surrounding Them.”

Once disparaged as ineffectual except maybe for hospital workers, the power of masking up was later drastically oversold by policy makers.

Agresti aggregates evidence indicating that COVID-19 is spread mainly by fine aerosols that can stay aloft a long time and easily penetrate most masks. But the evidence for mostly aerosol rather than big-droplet transmission was ignored or downplayed by the WHO and CDC for over a year.

Agresti also argues that trials of the effectiveness of masks in preventing infection are “inconclusive” with respect to N95 masks in clinical settings. And that these studies show no statistically significant benefits for any masks in “community settings.”

To combat aerosolized COVID-19, he recommends more extensive indoor use of UV disinfection systems.

Lots to talk about. Experts familiar with the research that Agresti canvasses often disagree. How about it, big-tech social-media firms. May we discuss?

Or must we stick to received dogma regardless of observations and logic?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

PDF for printing

mask1 / mask2

See all recent commentary
(simplified and organized)
See recent popular posts

Categories
Accountability too much government

[Not] Just Plain Bats

Covid, bat, gain of function, China, lab

It’s been several months since I’ve focused on Peter Daszak and the EcoHealth Alliance (EHA), which was funded by your tax dollars to “improve” upon viruses found in nature. 

The evidence for this has been out there for some time, but many avoid drawing any conclusion, finding it circumstantial. Or something.

Remember Daszak being caught organizing the open letter in The Lancet, proclaiming all talk of gain-of-function research as “conspiracy” theorizing and “dangerous”?

Well, now The Lancet is reported to be preparing to publish an article going so far as to say that “there is no direct support for the natural origin of SARS-CoV-2, and a laboratory-related accident is plausible.”

Meanwhile, my co-podcaster, on his LocoFoco Netcast, quotes Daszak’s own public boastings (from YouTube), effectively laying out EcoHealth Alliance’s gain-of-function research, talking of insertions of the spiked protein, and referencing to his colleagues in China.

And now another revelation, via science writer Matt Ridley. Specifically, Drastic Research reveals an earlier Daszak grant proposal to inject “deadly chimeric bat coronaviruses collected by the Wuhan Institute of Virology into humanised and ‘batified’ mice.”

This proposal — “named ‘DEFUSE’” — was not accepted by . . . oh, and this gets good . . . DARPA.

“In other words, a branch of the federal government had already judged aspects of EHA’s research . . . as falling under the definition of GOF [gain of function], only for [Health and Human Services] to approve similar work without P3CO review in 2018 and 2019,” the Drastic Research report summarizes.

So it was too iffy for the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, but hunky dory with our medical bureaucrats?

The story is more than just about bats, it’s about laboratory manipulation of existing viruses to create new viruses.

Which is, well, batty.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

PDF for printing

bat/Covid

See all recent commentary
(simplified and organized)
See recent popular posts

Categories
crime and punishment local leaders

Charges Dropped

Shannon Joy, arrest, School Board, Covid, protest

The best part of the story — not counting Shannon Joy’s pluck and defiance — is how promptly the prosecutor dropped the bogus charges of “criminal trespass” against her.

The Rochester mom and radio talk show host had been handcuffed while attending a Fairport school board meeting this August. Her dastardly deed consisted of wearing a mask wrong.

Joy figures that board members were sick and tired of her vocal criticism of their policies — she has a platform outside of board meetings — so, in collaboration with others, the board had staged her arrest with malice aforethought.

To supporters at the courthouse, Joy spoke of “bully tactics sometimes employed by school boards and superintendents who don’t want to hear from parents about their children’s education.”

The county’s policies about masks are less than uniform. PJMedia’s Megan Fox points out that in Monroe County and other nearby counties, people are not required to wear a mask “except in public schools, government buildings, and some doctors’ offices.”

Irony and hypocrisy were not eschewed by arresting officers. One cop teaming up to handcuff Shannon Joy was not wearing a mask. Another wore her own mask in the same under-the-chin fashion for which Joy was being hauled away. These officers did not, however, arrest themselves.

“How is this America?” Joy tweets above an arresting image of the arrest.

Well, it’s not the Mayberry America. It’s not the best America. But at least there was a refreshing return to common sense in her courtroom victory.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

PDF for printing

See all recent commentary
(simplified and organized)
See recent popular posts

Categories
folly general freedom media and media people

Where We Are Now

Covid, panic, hysteria, crazy

Two young people, a high school girl and a college man, have two very different COVID stories, but both reveal where we are right now in the pandemic.

“Abby Chenoweth was a healthy 16-year-old,” writes Emily Walker for MSN. “The Titusville teen took virtual school classes and wore a face mask when she left the house. Her mom said she didn’t have pre-existing conditions, and she didn’t go out often.”

The report goes on to focus on her horrific COVID case, and readers’ hearts go out to her. But that opening paragraph is bald-faced lie. 

Or at least a “white lie.” You decide.

You see, Abby Chenoweth is obese. She is obviously so in the photos provided by her mother. And not merely a “little bit” overweight.

Our hearts break all the same, but her obesity is a “pre-existing condition.” We knew early on that COVID can be devastating for the overweight.

The article does not once mention her corpulence. Were it not for the photos, readers wouldn’t have a clue. They would read Abby’s mother’s mask apologia at the end as an earnest and honest plea.

Next to Ms. Chenoweth’s harrowing story, and the see-through propaganda made out of it, 22-year-old Logan Hollar’s story is comic. The title delivers the punch line: “Rutgers student says he’s being stopped from taking virtual classes because he’s not vaccinated,” Karen Price Mueller’s piece summarizes.

“I believe in science, I believe in vaccines,” cautions Mr. Hollar’s stepfather, “but I am highly confident that COVID-19 and variants do not travel through computer monitors by taking online classes.”

Do the professors and administrators at Rutgers know that?

COVID craziness seems more infectious than COVID itself.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

PDF for printing

Photo Credit: crazy person

See all recent commentary
(simplified and organized)
See recent popular posts

Categories
media and media people social media

Hidden Dissuader

Rumble, Dan Bongino

“It’s one thing to let people post UFO content about crop circles in Arkansas,” Ciaran O’Connor was quoted in a recent Washington Post article, talking about YouTube competitor Rumble. “It’s another to allow your platform to be used by someone claiming vaccines are actively harmful and that people should not take them based on conspiracies and misinformation.”

As a cited expert for the Post’s hit piece, O’Connor is the big gun, whom reporter Drew Harwell uses to conclude his vivisection of the upstart video platform: “There’s a duty of care and responsibility as your platform grows and scales up.”

After a year and a half of government lies and flip flops about the novel coronavirus and its treatments, coupled with Big Tech censorship, we must not allow O’Connor’s bald “vaccine” assertions to go unnoticed, but we have other fish to fry.

Sizzling on the platter? Ciaran The Expert.

Who is he?

Well, writes Harwell, O’Connor’s “an analyst with the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, a counter-extremism think tank in London that has worked with Google on a European fund targeting online hate speech.”

Rumble, claims O’Connor, has “become one of the main platforms for conspiracy communities and far-right communities in the U.S. and around the world.”

But let us consult one of those right-wingers, Rumble investor and online commentator Dan Bongino, to learn something more about this “Institute for Strategic Dialogue.”

Bongino points out that the institute gets its funding from various governments, including our own, as well as from Rumble’s competitors Facebook and YouTube. 

And several more subdivisions of YouTube’s parent company also support this critic of Rumble.

The Post, of course, disclosed none of that.

You know, cuz Journalism.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

PDF for printing

See all recent commentary
(simplified and organized)
See recent popular posts

Categories
folly international affairs

Done to the Dogs

shelter dog

It shouldn’t have happened.

Shire councils should not be killing dogs “to prevent volunteers at a Cobar-based animal shelter from travelling to pick up the animals.”

But that’s what happened. The Bourke Shire Council in the New South Wales region of Australia shot and killed several dogs, including a new mother, that were about to be picked up and taken to an animal shelter.

An Office of Local Government reported that the council did this “to protect its employees and community, including vulnerable Aboriginal populations, from the risk of COVID-19 transmission.”

We all know that shelters sometimes put down animals when the shelter cannot find a home for them.

This wasn’t that. The council’s action wasn’t a reluctant last resort. It was a first resort.

It was, the argument runs, about preventing volunteers from going from here to there in the ordinary course of their work, work that has not been discontinued for the duration of the pandemic.

The council’s action is an example of what happens when fear displaces common sense. The thwarted shelter volunteers, who love animals and volunteer precisely to prevent needless killing, are distressed. The Sydney Morning Herald reports that they had safety measures in place to deal with the pandemic while getting the dogs.

This isn’t the worst kind of thing going on in this world, obviously.

But you don’t have to be an animal rights activist to be appalled by the viciousness of the conduct. 

And it does serve as a marker for the callousness and crazed panic of politicians in the current crisis. What else might they do?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

PDF for printing

shelter dog

See all recent commentary
(simplified and organized)
See recent popular posts

Categories
local leaders

Political Intimidation Unmasked

mask, child, children, student

Last week, Illinois state regulators threatened Dr. Jeremy Henrichs with “personal and professional consequences,” specifically loss of his medical license, if he continued to oppose mandatory mask-wearing in schools.

Henrichs is a board of education member and a medical doctor.

He questioned the necessity of masks. Why? On the basis of his best medical judgment — and he is hardly alone in seeing good reasons to oppose mask mandates, especially for children. In response, the Illinois Department of Financial and Professional Regulation “has threatened my medical licensure unless I expressly support and enforce a mask mandate for all students.”

In his public protest, Henrichs added that it’s bad for democracy when people tolerate this kind of intimidation.

Fortunately, in this particular case the intimidation is not being tolerated, for state lawmakers called for hearings on the matter.

The agency that threatened Dr. Henrichs soon apologized, apparently ending the threat to him. (According to the letter of apology, though, the complaint won’t be formally closed until the Medical Disciplinary Board meets on September 1.)

In addition, the entire Mahomet-Seymour school board of which Henrichs is a member has signed an op-ed defending him.

Their op-ed argues that board members should be “free to express their opinions, debate with their colleagues . . . and vote their conscience without the threat of coercion. . . .”

So it’s looking good for Dr. Henrichs. But power-holders with censorious mentalities are still out there, eager to crack down on speech with which they disagree.

Whenever they can get away with it. 

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

PDF for printing

See all recent commentary
(simplified and organized)
See recent popular posts