Actuarial review of climate change modeling

Comprehensive UK study

Keeping up with COVID

Pandemic mitigation collaborative

COVID and normalization of neo eugenics

Let them die

eugenic philosophy is alive and well in the twenty-first century. Nowhere has this been more apparent than in our response to the current public health crisis. The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed the viral nature of eugenic philosophy, which has continued to guide U.S. treatment of the captive and vulnerable for over 100 years. The long tail of eugenics informs our choices over those we institutionalize, detain, and sequester in long-term care and group homes.

Although we stopped formally espousing eugenics – a set of beliefs and practices focused on culling the “unfit” to improve humanity’s breeding stock – after its embrace by Nazi powers, its philosophy has continued to thrive. Despite the horrors of the Tuskegee Institute syphilis experiment, our medical community routinely conducts human medical experiments on those who are unable to fully consent, such as nursing home inhabitants, patients in mental institutions and disabled residents of long-term care homes. The recent allegations of sterilizing immigrant women at the border without their consent or knowledge is simply the latest example of American eugenics programs attempting to halt the reproductive abilities of the poor, the disabled and those convicted of crimes.

At the height of the spring COVID crisis, for example, New York State directed hospitals to release still contagious COVID-19 patients from hospitals into nursing homes in order to open hospital beds, thereby infecting vulnerable residents. In addition, both federal and state governments simply failed to provide proper PPE and sanitation supplies to nursing homes, long-term care homes and institutions for individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities, putting numerous high-risk individuals in jeopardy of contracting and becoming seriously ill with the coronavirus.

Moreover, a few states have experimented on patients by trying unproven COVID-19 treatments on nursing home residents without proper consent. A Pennsylvania veteran’s home prescribed hydroxychloroquine to residents, whether they tested positive for the virus or not. The veterans’ home neither obtained informed consent from the patients or even told their families. A Texas nursing home did likewise, proceeding without informed consent or proper safety protocols. Experimenting with unproven medical treatment on non-consenting patients violates every protocol on the ethical performance of medical experimentation.

It should be no surprise that our response to COVID-19 uses this familiar blueprint with predictable consequences for the captive and vulnerable who are pushed to the side, ignored or sacrificed for the “greater good.” We have largely abandoned those populations living in long-term care homes, disregarding or making worse the rising toll of illness and death in nursing homes and long-term care homes.  And we have almost entirely ignored the needs of the individuals in psychiatric institutions and the people living in facilities for IDD.

Corporate b*llsh*t

Rhetorical devices

• The simplest strategy is outright denial. Cigarettes don’t cause cancer. Global warming isn’t happening. 
• The Free Market Knows Best. claimed that the problem would be solved without regulation because addressing the problem would be in the interests of the private sector.
• It’s Not Our Fault, It’s Your Fault. Purdue Pharma, in an internal strategy memo, laid out its plan to blame addicts for the deadly effects of the company’s products. In fact, to the company, they weren’t even “addicts,” but should be referred to instead as “abusers.” 
• It’s a Job Killer. “Nice economy you have there, it would be a shame if anything were to happen to it.”
• progressive reforms only “hurt the people they’re trying to help.” 

COVID pandemic is not over

She has receipts…

What would the world look like if the pandemic never ended, if Covid was causing widespread, long-term illness, and if all this was being covered up by the government?

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The pandemic is not over. Basically everything you have been led to believe about the virus is a lie. Covid is more dangerous, more transmissible, and more out of control than everyone in power is telling you. We are not back to normal. We are in freefall.

We were lied to at every step of the way. First we were told not to panic and to stay six feet apart. We were told not to panic, ordered by the surgeon general not to buy up face masks, which we were assured we wouldn’t need. Then, we were told to only wear masks if sick or caring for someone with symptoms. When we were all finally told to wear masks in April 2020, we were given bad information about which masks could keep us safe. Cloth and surgical masks do not protect against aerosols (respirators do). And we were told by the people in power these flimsy masks would keep us safe. This was a lie.

John Snow project   on the deterioration of “ public health “

While some are better than others, no national or regional government is making serious efforts towards infection prevention and control, and it seems likely this laissez-faire policy will continue for the foreseeable future. The social, political, and economic movements that worked to achieve this mass infection environment can rejoice at their success.

Those schooled in public health, immunology or working on the front line of healthcare provision know we face an uncertain future, and are aware the implications of recent events stretch far beyond SARS-CoV-2. The shifts that have taken place in attitudes and public health policy will likely damage a key pillar that forms the basis of modern civilized society, one that was built over the last two centuries; the expectation of a largely uninterrupted upwards trajectory of ever-improving health and quality of life, largely driven by the reduction and elimination of infectious diseases that plagued humankind for thousands of years. In the last three years, that trajectory has reversed.

The view from Canada

Although many Canadians act as though the pandemic has ended, the airborne virus that causes COVID-19 continues to evolve at an amazing pace with devastating consequences for both individuals and the public at large.

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research now confirms that infections can even leave some people more vulnerable to reinfection. 

How to parse business news stories

From TKer

changes in many metrics can be interpreted as a negative development regardless of the direction of the change. For example, a rising saving rate is arguably bad because it reflects an increasingly cautious consumer that is pulling back from spending. But a falling saving rate is also arguably bad because it reflects an increasingly irresponsible consumer who is spending beyond their means.

The truth is that all of these interpretations carry some theoretical weight.

So the question becomes: How does one decide between the positive interpretation versus the negative interpretation?