Boots & Sabers

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Tag: Coronavirus

Mandates Fuel Distrust in Government

by | 0715, 14 Dec 2121 | , | 37 Comments

One could argue, and I would, that distrust of government is a fundamental characteristic of a free people. Our entire American system of government was designed to diffuse power and assumes that all people are corruptible.

Only 19% of Europeans include their government among their most trusted sources of reliable information on Covid-19 vaccines, according to a survey conducted in May 2021 by the European Barometer, a collection of cross-country public opinion surveys conducted regularly on behalf of the EU’s institutions.

[…]

Essentially, people who trust institutions need no convincing in the face of a pandemic; people who don’t are unlikely to be influenced at all.
[…]
Sophie Tissier, who organizes protests against Covid-19 restrictions and vaccines in France, says that these protests have created a new political force that is radical but goes beyond party political lines.
She says her group seeks to “create a citizens’ opposition which is beyond electoral considerations and much more like a watchdog that sits outside the world of politics to be able to tell it: ‘Look here, you are no longer protecting our rights, you are no longer protecting our rights under the law.'”
[…]
In other words, forced vaccination might push people into vaccination centers but it will also drive some of them to the streets, confirming and further fueling their deeply held suspicion of “the system.”

We must not be ruled by fear

by | 1941, 4 Dec 2121 | , , | 7 Comments

Here is my full column that ran earlier this week in the Washington County Daily News.

As Americans returned to the festive Thanksgiving celebrations that many forewent last year for fear of the dreaded virus, a new threat rose across the Atlantic. The newly dubbed omicron variant of COVID19 has aggressively swept through southern Africa and has made beachheads in Asia, Europe, and North America. It will only be a matter of time before we find it in America.

 

While we are still learning about the omicron variant, we have learned that the short- and long-term consequences of overreacting to a virus are incredibly damaging. The stock market, as a leading economic indicator, has already begun factoring in more destructive public policy responses to omicron. We must do all we can to prevent more reactionary and damaging public policies.

 

What we know about omicron is developing quickly. It seems to spread much faster than the original virus — similar to the delta variant. It does not appear to be more deadly than the original version of the virus out of China. We do not yet know if the current vaccines will do much good against it, but natural immunity seems to be as strong as ever. We also know that attempts to keep it out of America are futile. It is a highly transmissible virus and will find a way to burn through available hosts.

 

What we absolutely know for certain is that shutting down our economy, shuttering schools, and abandoning normalcy has been devastating to our society. We are still reeling from disastrous public policy decisions and the willingness of people to subserviate everything to the cause of virus mitigation.

 

With the thought that we must prevent people from being close to other people to prevent the spread of the virus, we allowed our government to close businesses. This act forced many people out of work and businesses into bankruptcy. We also allowed our government to force people to stay in their homes and in the futile hope that the virus would pass us by.

 

In hindsight, such actions did very little to stem the spread of the virus. The spread of the virus in states and cities that had draconian lockdowns differs little from those that were more liberal with their policies. The economic statistics and personal toll from the places with more aggressive lockdowns are heart-rending. We must not be ruled by fear and allow our government to force us to lock down again.

 

In response to the fact that the government forced people out of work and businesses into insolvency, our federal and state governments overreacted with poorly thought-out welfare schemes. This, coupled with the nation’s socialists seizing the opportunity to advance their unpopular agenda under the cover of pandemic relief, has launched a bevy of destructive programs and unleashed the scourge of high inflation that we have not seen in a generation. We must not be ruled by fear and allow our politicians to “fix” the problems they created.

 

The shutdown of our government schools will harm our children and our society for a generation. The evidence from private schools that remained mostly open versus schools that shut their doors shows that denying children education had little to no impact on stemming the virus. It did, however, have a cataclysmic impact on the children’s education. Recent school report card data in Wisconsin shows a dramatic decline in educational performance even after they lowered the standards. Those are months and years of education that our children will never get back. We must not be ruled by fear and shut down our schools.

 

For both adults and children, the negative impact of shutdowns and lock-outs on mental health has been horrendous. Suicides, drug addiction, depression, anxiety, and other mental health issues have increased dramatically since our government began overreacting to COVID-19. We must not be ruled by fear and force people into isolation.

 

In conjunction with the societal deconstructing pro-crime insurgency of antifa and others, our public policy responses to COVID-19 have precipitated an explosion in crime — particularly violent crime. With less employment, more addiction, and defunded police departments, criminals have more freedom to wreak havoc than they have in decades. One could argue that the lengthy court delays in Milwaukee due to closing courts contributed to keeping the alleged Waukesha Christmas Parade killer on the streets well after he should have been imprisoned for previous crimes. We must not be ruled by fear and prevent speedy and judicial enforcement of the law. Finally, last year we allowed our government officials to completely abandon our electoral system for fear of the virus. We spent centuries crafting an electoral framework to allow free and fair elections where laws were made in the light of day by elected officials. We threw all of that in the garbage last November and allowed government officials to make up the rules as they went along. We must not be ruled by fear and abandon self-governance.

 

COVID-19, of any variant, is something to take seriously. Please take the time to wash your hands, avoid unnecessary contact, stay home if you are sick, get vaccinated if you choose, and take other reasonable steps to keep yourself and your loved ones from getting ill. But we must not be ruled by fear and give up our way of life. The virus is here to stay in one form or another. We must get on with living.

We must not be ruled by fear

by | 0739, 30 Nov 2121 | , , , , | 14 Comments

My column for the Washington County Daily News is online and in print. Here’s a taste:

While we are still learning about the omicron variant, we have learned that the short- and long-term consequences of overreacting to a virus are incredibly damaging. The stock market, as a leading economic indicator, has already begun factoring in more destructive public policy responses to omicron. We must do all we can to prevent more reactionary and damaging public policies.

 

[…]

 

In conjunction with the societal deconstructing pro-crime insurgency of antifa and others, our public policy responses to COVID-19 have precipitated an explosion in crime — particularly violent crime. With less employment, more addiction, and defunded police departments, criminals have more freedom to wreak havoc than they have in decades. One could argue that the lengthy court delays in Milwaukee due to closing courts contributed to keeping the alleged Waukesha Christmas Parade killer on the streets well after he should have been imprisoned for previous crimes. We must not be ruled by fear and prevent speedy and judicial enforcement of the law. Finally, last year we allowed our government officials to completely abandon our electoral system for fear of the virus. We spent centuries crafting an electoral framework to allow free and fair elections where laws were made in the light of day by elected officials. We threw all of that in the garbage last November and allowed government officials to make up the rules as they went along. We must not be ruled by fear and abandon self-governance.

 

COVID-19, of any variant, is something to take seriously. Please take the time to wash your hands, avoid unnecessary contact, stay home if you are sick, get vaccinated if you choose, and take other reasonable steps to keep yourself and your loved ones from getting ill. But we must not be ruled by fear and give up our way of life. The virus is here to stay in one form or another. We must get on with living.

Vaccinated Are Dying

by | 1858, 12 Nov 2121 | | 53 Comments

Again, the real value of the vaccine appears to be that it lessens the severity if you are infected.

More than 2,500 fully vaccinated over 50s have died from COVID-19 in the past month in England, new data shows.

 

In a report published by the UK Health Security Agency analysis revealed 2,683 fully vaccinated over 50s have died within 28 days of positive COVID test in the last four weeks.

 

Some 511 unvaccinated people died in the last four weeks of COVID-19.

 

The figures reflect the fact that the vast majority in this age group has had at least two COVID vaccines.

 

Death rates among the unvaccinated are significantly higher.

 

For people aged over 80, the unvaccinated have a death rate of 125.4 per 100,000 compared to the vaccinated 54.9 per 100,000 in the past four weeks.

 

For 70-79 the gap is even wider, with the unvaccinated death rate at 103.8 per 100,000 compared to 16.2 for the vaccinated.

Aaron Rodgers is human after all

by | 0805, 12 Nov 2121 | , | 9 Comments

Here is my full column that ran in the Washington County Daily News earlier this week:

Aaron Rodgers has always had an independent streak. It is a character trait that has made him one of football’s greats on any given Sunday and made people scratch their heads at his unconventional grooming choices. In hindsight, it seems obvious that Rodgers would chart his own course to protect himself from COVID-19.

 

The bones of the story are rather dry. Rodgers did not want to take a COVID-19 vaccine and chose a homeopathic protocol to boost his immune system instead. He has subsequently come down with COVID-19. Our collective experience shows that he could have just as easily contracted COVID-19 if he had been vaccinated, but the revelation that he is unvaccinated has invited scrutiny.

 

The flesh of the story is full of depth and nuance that bring to the surface the entire national conversation regarding vaccines, mandates, health care autonomy, natural rights, responsibility, privacy, and honesty. While the confines of this column will not allow us to explore the entire body, let us pick at a few scabs together. Thankfully, Rodgers took the time to wax expansively about the issue on “The Pat McAfee Show.” His explanation was like one of his expert fourth-quarter game-winning drives — aggressive, thoughtful, creative, layered, and difficult to counter. In his interview, he spoke truths that many Americans know, but are fearful of expressing for fear of a repressive response from the government/ media/Big Pharma/Big Tech medical totalitarians. First, many of the rules that government and businesses have enacted in response to the pandemic are idiotic. They defy logic, ignore the science of how viruses spread and disregard our actual experience or results of these rules. Many of the rules are designed to allow people to demonstrate the virtue of subservience to authority and shame those who think independently. Making a speaker wear a mask at a podium when everyone else is vaccinated and unmasked “makes no sense,” as Rodgers said. It makes even less sense when we know that vaccinated people are spreading and becoming infected with COVID almost as easily as the unvaccinated. Our national experience is that the greatest value of the vaccines seems to be in lessening the severity of an infection — not preventing the spread of it.

 

Second, “health is not a one-size-fits-all” proposition, said Rodgers. Doctors have known this for centuries and there are entire health care practices built around leveraging knowledge and technology to deliver personalized health care. The human body is an intensely complex creation. To think that there is one treatment or drug that is universally effective and necessary defies centuries of learning. In Rodgers’ case, he claims to be allergic to two of the vaccines and considered the risk of negative effects of the vaccines to be greater than the risk of a healthy young man getting a virus that is statistically less dangerous to him than driving to work every day.

 

Third, Rodgers asserted his freedom as a thinking American to make a choice for himself based on the information he chose to consume. He made a health care decision for himself that would have been a private choice as recently as two years ago. He thinks that health care decisions should be private, and up until the pandemic melted privacy laws, it would have been. While some may make the case that Rodgers’ case is different because he is a public figure, consider that our federal government has just enacted a mandate for tens of millions of Americans that will force Americans to disclose their medical status on pain of pauperism.

Which brings us to the very definition of freedom. What is it? Are Americans still free in the age of COVID? Freedom is the broad latitude to exercise one’s natural rights without restraint. It is the ability to speak one’s mind without punishment. It is the power to decide what medical treatments to receive, if any, without coercion. That is not to say that freedom can be exercised without criticism, but that nobody — especially one’s government — can wield coercive power to stifle the exercise of one’s rights.

 

We cannot be said to live in a state of freedom when we cannot express opinions to make our own health care decisions without being penalized by our government whether that government is acting directly or reaching through our employers with the fist of regulation. We do not have freedom if we are only permitted to speak, pray or receive health care that is approved by our new pharmacratic overlords.

 

At its core, freedom means that people can speak and make personal medical decisions even if they are self-destructive, kooky, or just plain stupid. Whether you agree with Rodgers’ decision about his health care choices, it is his choice to make. In a different era, we allowed our government to exercise power over us only when there was heat created by the friction of opposing freedoms grating against each other. We no longer live in that era. Now we live in an era where we allow our government to wield direct and indirect power to regulate our personal medical decisions and silence speech that does not conform with the current government-approved canon. Rodgers has said that his thoughts on the pandemic will make the left cancel him and the right champion him. Perhaps, but for me, his thoughts humanize him because he is an American who has the same rights as the rest of us. He is frustrated and angry about the increasingly heavy boot of oppression that is suffocating our liberty with the garrote of public health policy.

Aaron Rodgers is human after all

by | 0752, 9 Nov 2121 | , , | 40 Comments

My column for the Washington County Daily News is online and in print. Here’s a slice:

We cannot be said to live in a state of freedom when we cannot express opinions to make our own health care decisions without being penalized by our government whether that government is acting directly or reaching through our employers with the fist of regulation. We do not have freedom if we are only permitted to speak, pray or receive health care that is approved by our new pharmacratic overlords.

 

At its core, freedom means that people can speak and make personal medical decisions even if they are self-destructive, kooky, or just plain stupid. Whether you agree with Rodgers’ decision about his health care choices, it is his choice to make. In a different era, we allowed our government to exercise power over us only when there was heat created by the friction of opposing freedoms grating against each other. We no longer live in that era. Now we live in an era where we allow our government to wield direct and indirect power to regulate our personal medical decisions and silence speech that does not conform with the current government-approved canon. Rodgers has said that his thoughts on the pandemic will make the left cancel him and the right champion him. Perhaps, but for me, his thoughts humanize him because he is an American who has the same rights as the rest of us. He is frustrated and angry about the increasingly heavy boot of oppression that is suffocating our liberty with the garrote of public health policy.

Psaki Has the ‘Vid

by | 1805, 31 Oct 2121 | | 46 Comments

I’m beginning to think that the vaccines aren’t very effective at preventing the spread of COVID. There may be other reasons to get one.

White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki revealed on Sunday evening she had tested positive for COVID-19 after deciding not to travel with President Biden to the G20 summit in Rome because members of her family had already received positive tests.

 

Psaki, 42, who has had two doses of vaccine, said she was last in contact with the president on Tuesday, and the two sat more than 6 feet apart while wearing masks.

It wasn’t that long ago that people were being shamed for getting COVID as if it was a moral failing.

Fauci Defends Funding of Wuhan Lab

by | 0745, 26 May 2121 | | 21 Comments

Just like his ever-changing guidance on masks and other mitigation topics, Fauci’s story about whether he was complicit in funding this research has changed multiple times. It has been clear for months (at least) that Fauci is a liar. He is also incompetent, but let’s just start with liar. Why is anyone even listening to him anymore? And why are the taxpayers still paying him when he has proven to be incompetent and a liar?

WASHINGTON — With questions persisting about the origins of the coronavirus pandemic, Dr. Anthony Fauci, a top science adviser to the Biden administration, defended having previously helped fund research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, a Chinese laboratory where some believe the pathogen known as SARS-CoV-2 originated sometime in 2019, possibly as the result of an accident.

 

“You gotta go where the action is,” Fauci explained on Tuesday, as he faced questions about the increasingly popular lab-origin theory from Republicans during testimony before a subcommittee of the House Appropriations Committee.

 

The action, in this case, was SARS-CoV-1, a coronavirus that originated in bats in the Chinese province of Guangdong in 2002 and then jumped to humans. A total of 8,096 people around the world would become infected with the disease known as SARS, the first pandemic of the 21st century, not to mention the first of a globalized human civilization where ease of travel between densely populated urban centers presented a severe challenge for epidemiologists.

Evers Vetoes COVID Compromise Bill

by | 1902, 5 Feb 2121 | | 1 Comment

Evers gonna Evers.

In the hours after Wisconsin lawmakers Friday afternoon passed the state’s first bill to address COVID-19 since April, Gov. Tony Evers vetoed it.

 

The bill, which has ping-ponged between both chambers of the Legislature over the last month as lawmakers made changes to the plan, finally came to rest at Evers’ desk — but the version that made it there was one the Democratic executive said Republicans “knew I wouldn’t sign.”

 

[…]

 

But Assembly Speaker Robin Vos and Senate Majority Leader Devin LeMaieu slammed Evers’ decision in a joint statement, countering that “it appears Governor Evers cares more about his own power than the people of Wisconsin.”

That’s about right. I’ve bolded the two key provisions that Evers doesn’t want.

In its current form, the bill would have prevented health officials from barring gatherings in places of worship, given the Legislature oversight of the distribution of federal funds that are allocated to Wisconsin related to combating COVID-19, not allowed employers and health officials to require vaccinations against the virus and provide liability protection for businesses and others tied to COVID-related claims.

It would also have covered COVID vaccinations under the SeniorCare program for elderly individuals; allowed the Legislature’s powerful budget panel to transfer up to $100 million in certain appropriations for COVID expenses; and broaden open enrollment options for students seeking in-person education, among a host of other things.

 

Legislature must end Evers’ arbitrary rule

by | 0624, 3 Feb 2121 | | 4 Comments

Here is my full column that ran in the Washington County Daily News yesterday.

The Legislature had belatedly awoken from their slumber to take action to reassert our representative form of government by ending Governor Tony Evers’ latest emergency declaration. While much of the media is aping the rhetoric from the Democrats that it is an effort to end the mask mandate, it is about much more than that. It is about our very system of government and whether or not we will live under a representative government that reflects the consent of the people or under the arbitrary power of a single man.

 

When the pandemic began, we were beset with incorrect information that projected the deaths of tens of millions of Americans if the government did not act immediately. While those projections proved to be incorrect, in the moment the threat justified the use of an emergency declaration to take immediate steps to mitigate the effects of the pandemic. An emergency declaration is a legal provision that allows the governor to make immediate decisions and react quickly in the case of a natural or man-made disaster. Emergency declarations are not intended to be permanent, but simply a tool to allow immediate action until the Legislature can convene and develop a response in the normal course of representative government as prescribed by our state Constitution. We are now almost 10 months into a series of emergency declarations under which our representative republic has been suspended and laws are being written and enforced on the authority of a single man living in a mansion on Lake Mendota. Under these emergency declarations, Governor Evers has closed businesses, changed election laws, suspended civil liberties to assemble, forbidden people to leave their homes, suspended accountability rules for education and other government bodies, and doled out tens of millions of dollars to individuals and businesses without any oversight. And, yes, Evers has ordered all Wisconsinites to wear masks.

 

The Legislature has now had time to meet to develop and pass legislation to respond to the ongoing health concern of COVID-19 and yet Governor Evers continues to issue emergency declarations and govern as if he is imparted with that divine knowledge and right that our previous rulers assumed. The fact that the governor disagrees with the policy choices of the Legislature in response to COVID-19 is not a reason to abandon representative government. Nor should the citizens of Wisconsin surrender our civil liberties to the arbitrary will of a single man.

 

These principles are rooted in the very foundation of our nation and our state. Our system of government was established under the principles that all people are created equal and that we are all equally flawed. We are humans, after all, and imbued with all of the passion, bigotry, avarice, jealousy, ignorance, stupidity, as well as love, compassion, honor, nobility, intelligence, and kindness that is the natural human condition. We are all a swirling mess of contradictions and subject to following our worst instincts.

 

If we are all equal, and all equally flawed, then why would any human surrender his or her natural rights and liberty to the arbitrary will of another? But since such surrender is necessary for the protection of individual rights, we establish governments as the least worst option to protect those individual rights. Those governments were established to reflect the will of the people through representation so that no single man or woman would ever have arbitrary power over another, but only wield power through the consent of the governed.

 

That is why our government is structured to have three coequal branches and an elaborate system of checks and balances to keep any branch from ruling supreme. That is why it takes the consent of two branches of government, the legislative and the executive, to pass a law. That is why citizens can appeal to the judicial branch if they think their rights were violated by a law enacted and enforced by the other two branches. Our government is specifically constructed so that it is difficult to wield power over the governed without their consent being obtained through multiple sources.

 

All of this representative government is thrown away when we allow our governor simply to bypass it through endless emergency declarations. Wisconsin is currently living under the rule of one man and will be so until the Legislature reestablishes normal order and representative government. This is about our right to govern ourselves under the constructs of our state Constitution or abandon it for the arbitrary rule of the governor. This is about our very liberty. And no, it is not about the masks.

Jay Weber is reporting this morning that after more analysis, the Assembly Republicans has determined that the repeal bill passed by the Senate has some flaws. The Assembly will be writing a different version and then, after passing, they will need to go into the reconciliation process with the Senate.

What is telling to me about all of that is that in all of the time that these emergency orders have been in place and the legislature was in stasis for most of last year, nobody worked on this. Nobody did the homework, wrote drafts of bills, discussed the strategy, debated the process, or anything else. It appears that the legislative Republicans truly did sit on their duffs all year and just now started to put some work into protecting our rights. This is despite repeated sternly-worded press releases and public statements last year that they were very concerned for our rights and our businesses. That is truly disappointing.

Well, they are off their duffs now, but all of the bluster and activity means nothing if they don’t accomplish anything. They need to get this done.

Bureaucracy Shifts From Slow to Stop

by | 2011, 2 Feb 2121 | | 4 Comments

If you thought that the Evers Administration couldn’t be any slower in making decisions in this emergency, they are suspending work.

MADISON – The state advisory panel recommending when Wisconsin residents should get the COVID-19 vaccine is pausing work while the Evers administration gathers more information on how President Joe Biden’s vaccine strategy will affect the state.

 

The hiatus, which could last weeks, also comes while the distribution of vaccine doses is ramping up; it will likely take months to provide shots to everyone already eligible.

 

Wisconsin is in the middle of distributing vaccine doses to residents in the first and second phase of the state’s rollout, which includes frontline workers, teachers and people over the age of 65 — more than 1 million people.

Vaccinating Wisconsin

by | 0609, 26 Jan 2121 | | 0 Comments

My column for the Washington County Daily News is online and in print. Since I hammered on Evers for his poor administration of the vaccine rollout last week, I thought it behooved me to offer a few ways to improve it.

Last week this column was highly critical of Governor Tony Evers’ administration’s utter incompetence in managing the administration of the COVID-19 vaccine. Another week has passed, and Wisconsin has dropped from 40th to 43rd of the 50 states in the number of doses administered per 100,000 citizens. An old boss once told me to never bring him a problem without at least one solution, so here are a few suggestions that Governor Evers could do to improve his failing administration.

 

First, Governor Evers needs to take ownership of the decision-making process. Just last Wednesday, the state vaccine advisory subcommittee voted to approve which Wisconsinites will be included in Phase 1B – the second group of Wisconsinites who will be eligible to receive the vaccine. Now that the subcommittee has approved it, the full committee will need to review the plan. If the full committee decides that they want to modify the eligibility, then it will go back to the subcommittee for more work. If the full committee votes to approve Phase 1B, then the subcommittee and full committee will begin work on Phase 1C and eventually Phase 2. The vaccine has been available for almost seven weeks and Wisconsin still has not decided who will be in the second wave. That is entirely too slow. If this is truly an emergency, then Governor Evers needs to act like it. Governor Evers should get into a room with the committee, advisers, and other important stakeholders and not leave until all of the phases are determined. These are decisions that can, and should, be made in an afternoon.

 

[…]

 

Third, the overriding focus of vaccine distribution and administration should be to put needles into as many arms as possible. It is an emergency, right? In an emergency, speed of execution is more important than accuracy. As General George S. Patton famously quipped, “a good plan violently executed now is better than a perfect plan executed next week.”

 

That means that while clinics should prioritize the distribution according to the 1A, 1B, etc. phases, the first priority should be to empty the refrigerators of vaccines as quickly as possible. Ideally, the time between when a clinic receives an order of doses and when they are out and need to order more should be less than 48 hours. It is better for a vaccine to go into the arm of someone in Phase 1C instead of sitting in storage for two days.

What is a COVID Death?

by | 0847, 31 Dec 2020 | | 13 Comments

This tragic story helps illustrate the issue with COVID death statistics:

Louisiana Rep.-elect Luke Letlow, who died while battling COVID-19, suffered a heart attack following a procedure, a hospital official said.

 

The 41-year-old was receiving treatment in the intensive care unit at Ochsner LSU Health in Shreveport when he died Tuesday, the Monroe News-Star reported.

 

LSU Health Shreveport Chancellor G.E. Ghali confirmed Letlow underwent an operation related to the virus and later went into cardiac arrest.

 

“It’s devastating to our entire team,” Ghali told the paper, adding that he “had no underlying conditions.”

We all saw the headlines when they came out. Things like, “Congressman-elect dies of COVID-19” and “Rising Republican Dies of COVID-19.” But was it?

We do not know the specifics of why he was undergoing heart surgery. They say it was related to his COVID illness, but how? What were they actually doing? And given the shock of the doctors, it seems that they did not think it was a high-risk surgery. Clearly it was the heart attack that killed him, but is the underlying COVID the real culprit? What a bit fat guy dies of a heart attack or diabetes, do we say that he was killed by obesity? No, so why label COVID as the problem here? If someone has a heart attack while driving and is decapitated in the crash, what killed her? It gets complicated. An argument could be made either way by rational people.

In the case of COVID, however, we have defaulted to classifying ANY death where COVID is present as a “COVID” death. We see the stats where this is happening. COVID deaths are increasing while it looks like we have virtually cured many other previously-deadly ailments. People who were shot, drowned, had heart attacks, strokes, etc. are all mixed in with the COVID death statistics. Sometimes, they are called a COVID death even if they do not have a firm diagnosis but the person had “COVID-like symptoms.” There is a distinct preference to label deaths as being caused by COVID if the slimmest of connection can be found.

The question is… why? Why have officials all across the country chosen to default to COVID when declaring the cause of death.

Hint… follow the money… follow the power.

Evers fights for more government with COVID-19 bill

by | 0824, 31 Dec 2020 | | 1 Comment

Here is my full column that ran in the Washington County Daily News this week. Thankfully, this bill is still dead.

Gov. Tony Evers is urging the Republican leadership of the Legislature to pass his self-styled “compromise” bill addressing the ongoing health concern precipitated by COVID-19. Setting aside, for a moment, that Evers’ bill is not a compromise (hint: compromise bills are rarely announced by only one side) and that Evers has actually taken the Legislature to court over the legality of bills passed in a so-called “lame duck” session, let us examine the priorities of the governor during the ongoing health concern.

 

Evers’ bill consists of 17 provisions. Seven of the provisions are designed to expand government and/or reduce the government’s accountability to the people. Eight of them would make waste, corruption, and graft easier with taxpayer money. And two of them are regulatory overreaches that will wreak havoc on citizens and the economy.

 

Given Evers’ background as an educrat, it is not surprising that his bill begins with the absolution of the government education establishment from the strictures of accountability. Under his bill, government schools would not be required to administer pupil assessments and the State Department of Public Instruction would not be required to publish the annual school and school district accountability report for the 2020-2021 school year. Evers seeks to remove any evidence of just how much government education failed the children of Wisconsin this school year.

 

Ominously, Evers seeks to allow any state entity to waive in-person requirements until June 30, 2021, “if enforcing the requirement would increase the public health risk.” You will take note of the fact that no objective standard is given for what constitutes an increase to the public health risk. While this may impact things like court proceedings, Evers’ likely target it to waive in-person requirements to obtain official state photo identification and the spring elections. With this provision in law, Evers could provide a massive gateway for illegal aliens to obtain official photo identification and force the upcoming elections to be conducted 100% by mail.

 

The bill also seeks to funnel unemployment insurance payments into the hands of people who do not need it. It would permanently allow people who are receiving federal Social Security disability payments to also receive unemployment payments. Under current law, someone who is receiving money because they cannot work due to a disability is not eligible for unemployment payments because they are already being compensated for not working. The bill would also completely waive the requirement to seek work in order to receive unemployment payments until July 3, 2021. Wisconsin’s unemployment rate is at 5% and employers are again struggling to find workers. Anyone who is able and willing to work can find a job. Evers should focus his attention on fixing the unemployment payment backlog that his administration has allowed to languish for the previous nine months.

 

Evers is also sure to take care of the state bureaucracy. His “COVID relief” bill would allow state government employees to take their annual leave even if they have not completed the required six-month probationary period. Evers would lavish additional funding on the Department of Health Services and the Department of Administration while expanding their powers. The DOA would be given arbitrary discretion to shift money around to fund unemployment payments and DHS would be given a grand mandate to operate COVID testing and treatment facilities in perpetuity. The Department of Revenue gets a nod too with the arbitrary discretion to distribute grants to small businesses. The arbitrary discretion of any government official is an invitation for corruption.

 

Most shockingly, Evers would completely prohibit any foreclosures or evictions until July 1, 2021. He would do so without providing any relief for the thousands of property owners, big and small, who would be forced to completely pay for the housing for people unable, or unwilling, to pay their mortgage or rent. Should this provision go into effect, it will force a wave of bankruptcies for small- and medium property owners and force the prices up for people who do pay their bills. While one might be willing to grant Governor Evers credit for trying to stick up for struggling families, this measure is so breathtakingly stupid and destructive that no such credit can be issued.

 

Governor Evers’ bill is a mishmash of bad ideas interspersed with measures clearly designed to unshackle the state bureaucracy. Its only redeeming quality is that it will never pass. True to his character, Governor Evers announced this bill after a series of insincere discussions with the legislative leadership designed to give him the cover of having negotiated something. He did so while giving the Legislature a ridiculous deadline of less than two weeks during the holiday season to pass it. Thankfully, the legislative leadership has signaled that they will not be bullied by a duplicitous governor offering nothing but a list of destructive decrees.

 

The fact that Governor Evers is devoid of good ideas does not release the legislative Republicans from their duty to convene and pass meaningful legislation to help Wisconsinites who continue to feel the impact of COVID-19 and our government overreaction to it. They should start with universal school choice to allow families to escape government schools that failed so badly during this time, liability protections for employers, and prohibit state taxpayers from paying to bail out local governments that enforced more restrictive COVID-19 measures that crippled their own local economies.

States Prioritize Vaccine Rollout

by | 1859, 30 Dec 2020 | | 2 Comments

Interesting

Florida, Texas and Ohio are among the Republican-led states forgoing federal vaccination guidelines to prioritize the elderly ahead of frontline workers.

 

While medical workers and residents and staffers of long term care facilities are being prioritized for vaccines in virtually every state, local leaders are split on who gets the vaccine next.

 

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidelines say under the second tier of vaccinations grocery store employees, transit workers, and other frontline staffers should receive the shot at the same time as those who are 75 and older.

 

But in Florida, Texas, and Ohio shots are being offered to the elderly first and frontline workers are asked to wait.

 

‘We are not going to put young, healthy workers ahead of our elderly, vulnerable population,’ Florida’s Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis said Saturday, allowing people 65 years and older to jump ahead of essential workers.

I can see both sides. On the one hand, prioritizing the higher risk groups first makes the most sense to reduce the death count as quickly as possible. On the other hand, prioritizing frontline workers first gets those industries back to work faster. Given those considerations, I’d prioritize the most vulnerable first.

Evers fights for more government with COVID-19 bill

by | 0727, 29 Dec 2020 | | 3 Comments

My column for the Washington County Daily News is online and in print. I dig into Evers’ COVID bill a little. Here’s a part:

Gov. Tony Evers is urging the Republican leadership of the Legislature to pass his self-styled “compromise” bill addressing the ongoing health concern precipitated by COVID-19. Setting aside, for a moment, that Evers’ bill is not a compromise (hint: compromise bills are rarely announced by only one side) and that Evers has actually taken the Legislature to court over the legality of bills passed in a socalled “lame duck” session, let us examine the priorities of the governor during the ongoing health concern.

 

Evers’ bill consists of 17 provisions. Seven of the provisions are designed to expand government and/or reduce the government’s accountability to the people. Eight of them would make waste, corruption, and graft easier with taxpayer money. And two of them are regulatory overreaches that will wreak havoc on citizens and the economy.

COVID Surge?

by | 1021, 23 Dec 2020 | | 22 Comments

Do you believe this?

An alarming new red wave map shows that the vast majority of the United States is currently one huge COVID-19 hotspot – as the country recorded its second deadliest day of the COVID-19 pandemic with 3,400 deaths and President-elect Joe Biden warned the ‘darkest days’ are still ahead.

The map data, which is included in the latest community report from the White House COVID-19 Task Force, tracks areas of concern on a county level across the country based on recent cases and testing history.

It shows that every state currently has counties that fall into the ‘sustained hotspot’ category, which means the task force classifies them as communities that have a high number of cases and may be at an even higher risk of overwhelming their local hospitals.

Increasingly, I don’t. With the clear lax behavior of people supposedly “in the know” and personal observation, I just don’t buy the hype. Then you get stories like this:

According to the video, Jensen and Franson looked at 2,800 “death certificate data points” and found that 800 of them did not have COVID-19 listed as the underlying cause of death, but were still counted as COVID-19 deaths. That means, Jensen said, that those 800 people may have died with COVID-19, but not of COVID-19.

“That would mean that we’ve had the number inflated by 40%,” said Jensen, who explained that the “key diagnosis on a death certificate is the UCOD,” which stands for underlying cause of death.

In one case, a person who was ejected from a vehicle and died was “counted as a COVID death” because the virus was in his system, Franson claimed.

“I have other examples where COVID isn’t the underlying cause of death. We have a fall. Another example we have a fresh water drowning. We have dementia. We have a stroke and multi-organ failure,” she said.

The two lawmakers concluded their video, which has been viewed more than 200,000 times on Facebook, by expressing support for an audit of the data.

We are in a pandemic of an aggressive virus, but the numbers being put out are massively misleading. We have also failed as a society to put those numbers into perspective. Everything in life is about weighing the consequences and making compromises. We have failed to do that with our response to COVID-19.

Wisconsin COVID19 Cases Are Down 50% Since Recent Peak

by | 2226, 17 Dec 2020 | | 12 Comments

Huh… no Thanksgiving spike? Just like no election spike… no Independence Day spike… no Labor Day spike… it’s almost as if the virus doesn’t really give a crap what we do.

New daily COVID-19 cases are down 50% from their peak a month ago in Wisconsin, according to state Department of Health Services data.

And contact tracers can again handle their daily caseloads after being overwhelmed in October and November, DHS Secretary-designee Andrea Palm said in a news conference.

Side Effects from the Vaccine

by | 1936, 13 Dec 2020 | , | 12 Comments

The news feed is starting to fill up with examples of people having adverse effects from the Coronavirus vaccines and some are using it as a reason to eschew getting it.

Last week, two health-care workers in the United Kingdom who were among the first batch of people to get the vaccine after it was authorized developed anaphylaxis, a severe allergic response.

Both were known to have a history of severe allergic reactions, and both were treated and recovered. A third person reportedly suffered a rapid heartbeat. British authorities issued new guidance saying people with a history of anaphylaxis should consult with their doctor before taking the vaccine. Researchers do not know what substance in the vaccine formula triggered the severe allergic response.

“When you make a decision to launch a vaccine like this, it’s not because you know everything,” said Paul Offit, a pediatrician and vaccine expert at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and member of a Food and Drug Administration advisory panel that endorsed the vaccine Thursday. But, he added, “I think we know enough.”

Of course there will be side effects. And of course they will be different for different people. Humans are complex organisms and the injection or ingestion of any substance will have varying effects.

Demands of 100% safety are not reasonable? That various vaccines will likely help a lot of people avoid getting COVID-19. It will also likely hurt and kill a few people. There are risks. There are also risks if you don’t get the vaccine, and those risks are also different for different people. It is up to each of us to weigh the risks and make the best decision we can.

As for me, I’ve already had it, so I don’t need the vaccine. I’ve been naturally inoculated. Some of y’all might want to think about getting the vaccine when it is available. Some of y’all might be young and healthy and decide that it is not worth the risk because there is a 99.9% survival rate from COVID-19 for your demographic.

Make good choices!

WHO: Lockdowns Make “Poor People and Awful Lot Poorer”

by | 1233, 11 Oct 2020 | , | 7 Comments

Some of us have been saying this for going on eight months now.

The World Health Organisation has backflipped on its original COVID-19 stance after calling for world leaders to stop locking down their countries and economies.

Dr. David Nabarro from the WHO appealed to world leaders yesterday, telling them to stop “using lockdowns as your primary control method” of the coronavirus.

He also claimed that the only thing lockdowns achieved was poverty – with no mention of the potential lives saved.

“Lockdowns just have one consequence that you must never ever belittle, and that is making poor people an awful lot poorer,” he said.

“We in the World Health Organisation do not advocate lockdowns as the primary means of control of this virus,” Dr Nabarro told The Spectator.

“The only time we believe a lockdown is justified is to buy you time to reorganise, regroup, rebalance your resources, protect your health workers who are exhausted, but by and large, we’d rather not do it.”

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