It’s time we stop congratulating ourselves for taking away respectable professional opportunities from kids. Their lives have been utterly wrecked during this pandemic response. A slight consolation would be to celebrate when the kids want to work, earning money, feeling valuable, and finding some meaning beyond mere compliance with schoolmasters and bureaucrats.
Reading the New York Times has always required a decoder ring. What this editorial tells me is that the ruling class that did this to this country and the world knows that it is on the losing side of history. They are scrambling fast to dial it back while preserving what they can of their dignity and credibility, both of which are mostly shot.
Vaccination is effective at preventing the vaccinated from suffering serious consequences from Covid. (And children naturally are at virtually no risk from Covid.) Therefore, those of your patrons who choose not to be vaccinated personally bear the costs of their choice without imposing any costs on those of your patrons who are vaccinated. So your requirement of vaccination is pointless.
A Letter to Send to Venues that Exclude the Unvaccinated Read More
On social media, the “right answer” is the moralizing one. Vaccines are good. People who don’t get them are bad. We should fire bad people, etc. etc.. This narrative bores me as it is superficial and not very rigorous.
While wearing a mask, I feel anonymous and inhuman. Few people are willing to approach me for conversation, compounding the difficulties I already face due to my disabilities. My disabilities made people nervous about including me in activities because they were afraid to approach.
Where is Russia going and why has it embraced such dubious, civilization-transforming COVID measures, in near-lockstep with its so-called Western rivals?
This is the moment in which we find ourselves: a ruling class terrified of being found out, called out, and held accountable, and therefore incentivized to generate an endless series of excuses, scapegoats, and distractions (“You need another shot!”).
Who Will Be Held Responsible for this Devastation? Read More
There is much to dislike in Spiegelhalter and Masters’ book on the plague year, but considering the partisan and authoritarian nonsense, garbage advice, and terrible statistical blunders we’ve grown used to, the book comes across as fairly balanced. They have some clear blind spots (vaccines, effectiveness of lockdowns, Vitamin D) but there are much worse things to read than Covid by Numbers.
Blinded by a Blizzard of Numbers: A Review of Spiegelhalter and Masters Read More
Whenever applied, the precautionary principle needs to be challenged and stand scrutiny, to help us make decisions when there is uncertainty, and the situation is in flux as is typical in a pandemic. These alternatives emphasize seeking new facts, being rigorously honest about the evidence, being open to being wrong, adjusting our actions as we come to understand more, and communicating with trust, not fear.
The children should live normally, free, and if exposed to SARS-CoV-2 we can rest assured that in the vast majority of cases, they will have no to only mild symptoms while at the same time developing naturally acquired immunity, and harmlessly; an immunity that is definitely superior to that which might be caused by a vaccine.
Sweden and Germany: No Deaths In Children Due to Covid Read More
Most people who choose to remain unvaccinated – like myself – do so not because we want to spread the virus to others or are against vaccinations in general, but because we have natural immunity and/or serious, data-driven questions about this particular vaccine. The moral case for choice, and against vaccine mandates, is as clear as day and as absolute as any case for good and against evil could ever be.
It’s essential we debrief on the harm we caused – the epidemiological harm we simply displaced and converted to economic harm that, at the end of the chain, has caused equally real people to suffer and die at higher rates than they would’ve had we acted differently. It’s irresponsible and unscientific to suppress discussions on the inconvenient truth that our response to the pandemic likely indirectly killed people.
Why Were They So Obtuse about the Terrible Harms They Would Inflict? Read More
