36. The Basket
3.23.2023 The best of Rational Ground, Team Reality and many others...
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Note: I read a lot of Substacks each day. The Basket is intended to be a collection of the money quotes from the best of what I read. My goal is that you enjoy this service because it saves you time and quickly informs you. And my hope is that you find one or two articles that you click into because you want more.What you can find in this collection (these are my headlines, not the authors’):
Managing Tech With Your Kids by Show Me The Data
No Impact on Test Positivity by Dr. Peter McCullough
Europe: Vax Fatality Rate ~.35% By André Redert, PhD
Dowd: Two Compelling Data Sets by The Vigilant Fox
Reactive Oxygen Species & Rapid Aging by Walter M Chesnut
FOIA’d CDC VAERS Reports From General Dynamics by Josh Guetzkow
Survival Bias In Vax Statistics by Norman Fenton
Crisis Calls For Insane Measures by Katherine Watt
Gates’ Pandemic Wargames by eugyppius
Secession Act 3? by Bill Rice Jr.
2015 Hillary Campaign Email by John Leake
Nothing To See Here by Brian Mowrey
Frieden’s Foibles by Bret Swanson
Two Options: Depression Or Hyperinflation by el gato malo
Decentralized Authoritarianism by Mark Changizi
Don’t Hide, Fight by Peter and Ginger Breggin
Healthy User Bias (HUB) by Mathew Crawford
Seasonality Of Excess Mortality by Igor Chudov
Nature Picked Sides And Lost Trust by Vinay Prasad
25%, Not 8%, Unvaxxed by Dr. Peter McCullough
Managing Tech With Your Kids by Show Me The Data
She found a way, and she learned how to do it at school, on her school computer. Sick to my stomach we found secret accounts and went through her history, she had been exposed to pornography through the school computer and accessing smutty books through the school library app. She had been looking at smut during her study hall and reading the filth at our kitchen table, telling us she was ‘doing homework. It had been going on for 5 months.
After my initial shock had worn off, I was able to console her. She was relieved. We let her know she’s still a good person, and that this is not her fault. This was the fault of evil men and women that target children.
After discovering the pornography we did the least intuitive thing- we got her an iPhone. At the time she had a Gabb phone. No way to access the internet. Also, it was impossible to listen to music on it or audiobooks. We realized we needed to not just protect her from evil, but teach her tools and skills on how to fight it.
Let your children know it’s not that you don’t trust them- it’s that you don’t trust other people.
Zero social media. None. Nothing- again, my device, my internet my rules.
No Impact on Test Positivity by Dr. Peter McCullough
There has never been any randomized, prospective, double-blind placebo controlled trial of COVID-19 vaccines in any group demonstrating clinical benefit defined as reductions in hospitalization and death. Among pregnant women, COVID-19 vaccination is category X, meaning it should not be given.
The interesting finding in the Jorgensen paper, not mentioned by the authors is in the Table. As you can see, primary series and boosters had no statistically significant impact in test positivity among the mothers. This means the intervention was completely useless and had no laboratory or clinical benefit reported.
Europe: Vax Fatality Rate ~.35% By André Redert, PhD.
This report investigates short-term causal vaccine-mortality interactions during booster campaigns in 2022 in 30 European countries (population ~530M).
sewer-viral-particle experiments suggested vaccination induces covid-infections and/or reactivates latent viral reservoirs.
VFR results are:
0.13% (0.05%-0.21%) in The Netherlands
and
0.35% (0.15%-0.55%) in Europe
SUBSTANTIALLY TRANSCENDING COVID IFR
Dowd: Two Compelling Data Sets by The Vigilant Fox
The Society of Actuaries Group Life Policy Holder Data
Group Life policyholders (employed with well-paying jobs) suffered 40% excess mortality, whereas the general population experienced 32% excess mortality — an 8% difference.
“I blame the vaccines and mandates,” declared Edward Dowd.
The U.S Bureau of Statistics Disability Data
It wasn’t until 2021 that the disability numbers took a significant turn for the worse — increasing by 10%.
“Of those 3.2 million people that were added, 1.7 million are employed. When you look at the disability rate increases, employed went up 31%; the general US population went up 9%,” reported Edward Dowd.
“And what’s even worse is those not in labor force — those are people who could work and are willing to work — their disability rate only went up 4%. Those are the people who got fired for not taking the jab or refused to take the jab and quit.”
Reactive Oxygen Species & Rapid Aging by Walter M Chesnut
What do these elevated levels of ROS mean? AGING. Rapid Aging.
As the above figure demonstrates, the Spike Protein is producing excessive levels of ROS post-vaccination. The same paper shows that those who were unvaccinated and without COVID infection had ROS levels of .885. Post vaccination, as you may observe, the ROS levels are sustained at TWICE baseline.
FOIA’d CDC VAERS Reports From General Dynamics by Josh Guetzkow
they hired and were training an additional 200 staffers to handle the backlog and process 25,000 reports per week
the information provided in the full reports is very often not coded well. So for example, if myocarditis is mentioned in the report text, it has to be coded in order to count as a myocarditis adverse event using on-line VAERS analysis tools such as the CDC’s WONDER or MedAlerts. Here they are relying on the manufacturers to do a thorough and accurate job coding the reports.
Many reports to VAERS come from the manufacturers who are required to report AEs reported to them to VAERS, many of which come from foreign countries. Here they decided to accept the MedDRA coding of reports performed by the manufacturers instead of coding them themselves. So basically letting Pfizer and Moderna and Johnson & Johnson decide how to categorize the AE reports they were receiving
Survival Bias In Vax Statistics by Norman Fenton
all of the graphs shown there, such as this one for the USA, are subject to survival bias (one of the tell-tale signs of survivor bias is that the overestimation of the unvaccinated mortality rate will be highest during the time when large numbers of people are still being vaccinated and lowest during periods when there are few new vaccinations)
If you see a study claiming much higher mortality rates of the 'never vaccinated' versus the 'ever vaccinated' you need to be sure it's not just a statistical illusion due to survivor bias.
a person who first gets vaccinated 6 months into a one year study and lives until the end of the year will be counted as 6 months never vaccinated and 6 months ever vaccinated.
The ONS data on deaths by covid vaccine status uses person years to avoid this kind of survivor bias (although there are other biases not avoided in the ONS data as explained here). However, most studies and reports comparing mortality rates of vaccinated and unvaccinated (whether it is for covid deaths or all-cause deaths) fail to make the adjustment and are therefore overestimating the mortality rate of the unvaccinated while underestimating the mortality rate of the vaccinated.
Crisis Calls For Insane Measures by Katherine Watt
The Overton window is another version of the 1967 CIA Nurnad Memo, the conspiracy to discredit ‘conspiracy theories.’
Both are preemptive thought-stopping tactics.
They narrow of the range of publicly-thinkable, publicly-discussible problems.
They keep the field clear for complex criminal enterprises to continue.
the coup is complete.
Enemies foreign and domestic are already in power, occupying offices including HHS Secretary (Xavier Becerra) and Defense Secretary (Lloyd Austin).
It’s not about stopping an invasion and occupation.
It’s about kicking the invaders out and bringing the occupation to an end.
It's about restoring rightful government, which is currently in covert-exile, held as covert-hostages, to power
Anything less radical than seemingly-insane responses are disproportionate to the crisis.
Gates’ Pandemic Wargames by eugyppius
Bill Gates proposed expanding the World Health Organisation with a division of pandemic shock troops called the Global Epidemic Response and Mobilisation team, or GERM. He envisioned a crack unit of 3,000 diversely talented technocrats who could be airdropped into a developing outbreak anywhere in the world and handle everything from subverting local human rights to sequencing random genomes.
He was also very emphatic that he wanted more pandemic wargames
there is literally no universe in which obsessing about viruses and wargaming outbreaks will ensure a pandemic-free future.
Pandemics are social constructs, which we will into being via our ridiculous safetyist policy choices, and the more we make viruses an object of media spectacle and cultural anxiety, the more we leave ourselves open to a bleak pandemicised future of one virus scare after the other.
Secession Act 3? by Bill Rice Jr.
Personally, I doubt Secession Act 3 will happen.
Most Americans - after decades of dumbing down and perhaps not the brightest generations our nation has produced - are probably too afraid to abandon the sterling leaders who so ably protected them from a killer virus, leaders who let some citizens keep some freedoms.
If and when one group of citizens does file for a national divorce, future historians will have little difficulty identifying the ultimate cause: People in the seceding states concluded their leaders were hopelessly obtuse and that they they had to leave to save themselves from the consequences of being led by the terminally stupid.
2015 Hillary Campaign Email by John Leake
As the memo makes clear, the DNC wanted to elevate Donald Trump’s candidacy in order to lead the Republican Party astray—that is, too far to the right to be palatable for moderate, independent voters. Though this “Pied Piper” strategy backfired in 2016, it appears that some Democratic Party strategists might have resurrected it with their latest political stunt—to have Trump arrested for his purportedly illegal accounting of the hush money he paid to Stormy Daniels in 2016.
Resurrecting the sordid Stormy Daniels affair reintroduces the distaste that many moderate, independent voters feel for Trump while simultaneously firing up his base and its dedication to advancing Trump as the 2024 Republican Party candidate.
Nothing To See Here by Brian Mowrey
nothing seems remarkable about these breathlessly reported discoveries beyond the antagonism on display between the zoonati, GISAID, and the world at large which has turned its back on natural origin (more below).
The claims made by The Atlantic’s Katherine Wu of animal and viral genes being on the “same swab” apparently do not refer to the three samples which were successfully sequenced by Gao, et al.
Instead, there just happen to be various types of mammalian DNA on various PCR positive samples; as there would surely be on many PCR negative samples taken at the same site.
No mammalian “finger-prints” were found on the most important three samples, those which produced sequences for the virus.
Frieden’s Foibles by Bret Swanson
Frieden says all the intrusive mandates limited deaths, especially in Canada and Israel, which he says skillfully “used masking and selective closures (based on accurate, real-time data) just before a wave hit.”
But he doesn’t mention that Sweden’s conspicuous refusal to close up shop or force masking resulted the very lowest excess mortality in Europe. In other words, Sweden didn’t do the things Frieden lauds yet achieved the best results.
Frieden’s audacious assertions of lockdown benefits are matched by his equally egregious failure to address their enormous costs.
Frieden mentions forgone health care but doesn’t tie it to lockdowns. It just happened.
He does criticize school closures but doesn’t include them in any cost-benefit analysis. He totally ignores lockdown effects on his own stated key metric of excess mortality.
One of Frieden’s biggest failures is to distinguish outcomes for different age groups. Deaths of 20 year old students or 40 year old mothers hit differently than 95 year olds.
Two Options: Depression Or Hyperinflation by el gato malo
why are we suddenly so prone to social media driven bank fears and even runs?
because the banks are black boxes and the central banks and treasury departments have become outright chaos agents.
and no one has any idea how to analyze it or predict it.
these banking crises are caused again and again by governments screwing up banks though ill conceived or outright insane policy.
instead of learning “banks should lend based on credit quality” the smooth brains up at treasury now want ESG and DEI lending. because that’ll definitely work better this time.
there is basically no practice on earth more assured of ending in tears than letting people do dumb things with impunity.
this kind of action is all in the hands of an opaque cabal of possibly qualified (but probably not) regulators that have painted themselves into an epic no win corner where raising rates will threaten the banking system and cutting them will just add fuel to fires yet to come.
eventually you reach the point where the can can be kicked no further down the road. we can argue about when that is, but there is always a point and at that point you get either:
hyperinflation
or
depression
and that’s the list.
Decentralized Authoritarianism by Mark Changizi
I am looking to scientifically understand the complex emergent forces that lead to such totalitarian situations we experienced, where it wasn’t just some small cadre of culpable people directing the evil, but a billion people on the street demanding it, and enforcing the edicts.
THAT is the same stuff we see in all the great democides. Just different icing each time.
It’s not mere authoritarianism. It’s decentralized authoritarianism, which is totalitarianism.
To solve these events we have to actually explain how human societies get into that state. THAT involves understanding collective hysteria and complex emergent and evolutionary forces.
Don’t Hide, Fight by Peter and Ginger Breggin
There is nowhere on Earth that is beyond the reach of tyranny if the 21st Century predators gain global control.
We might not have won our freedom from a brutal king if Patrick Henry, Ben Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, or George Washington had decided to go West instead of gathering and forming a new union.
If we, the citizens of our countries, cannot be captured, tamed, and forced to comply, we can still turn back this oppression. We can turn the tide on tyranny.
If you set up a homestead, you are a sitting duck. There is a place for homesteads, as part of a life of protest with the larger community. It can nurture you while you resist. But a homestead anywhere cannot hide you.
Military units have been training in seek and destroy in some of the most isolated regions of the world for decades now. The tech to assist and the knowledge to trace, track, and capture or kill have been perfected.
Tyranny will not want a single example of a successful independent community.
We must resist, with every bit of fiber and determination we have, all the petty tyrannies of our lives. And we must resist together within our cultures, resisting the petty bureaucrats just following orders, be they physicians with vaccines or store owners asking for digital money. We must insist on using cash. Demand food without mRNA additives.
We do not need citizens scattering into the illusionary safety of the wilderness.
We need bigger and broader resistances around the world.
Healthy User Bias (HUB) by Mathew Crawford
The one on the left was based on real world data (late 2021, but far enough into the vaccine rollout to be robust) and seemed to show a mild negative trend in COVID-19 deaths. The other four are random simulations based on an assumption of 95% efficacy.
the illusion of effectiveness is also spurred by a series of vaccine mandates that engineer differences between the vaccinated and unvaccinated cohorts. Between the military vaccination program and vaccine mandates targeting students and corporate employees, a skew of vaccine uptake toward healthy users was assured. Since the VSD likely excludes most or all members of the active duty military, it may underestimate the HUB among young Americans.
Seasonality Of Excess Mortality by Igor Chudov
association between death rates and vaccinations, where paradoxically, higher vaccination coverage led to higher mortality.
excess mortality associated with Covid vaccines is mediated via transmissible illnesses such as Covid-19 or the flu, causing more deaths in Covid-vaccinated or boosted people.
there is more to the story than “vaccine spike protein slowly killing people.” There is something that causes excess death rates to jump up and down! Thus, I believe mortality is mediated by transmissible illnesses- Covid or the flu - but affects vaccinated people disproportionally.
I hope that this reduction in excess mortality will prove permanent. I am afraid, however, that it is temporary, and mortality will jump up again when the next wave of “Covid variants” or other mystery illnesses sickens people.
Nature Picked Sides And Lost Trust by Vinay Prasad
In 2020, Nature— a scientific journal— did something unusual. It actively endorsed a political candidate. On Oct 14, 2020, it endorsed Joe Biden.
Zhang conducted a randomized survey, where he presented readers (in 2021) with information about Nature’s endorsement of Biden (treated) or a placebo (aka irrelevant info), and surveyed participants.
Trump supporters lost trust in Nature a fair bit, while Biden supporters gained trust a little— aka Nature becomes seen as more partisan.
After the endorsement of Biden, Trump supporters were much less likely to seek vaccine info in Nature, and Biden supporters were v modestly more likely. In other words, the loss of trust cost them the ability to reach the audience of Trump supporters.
25%, Not 8%, Unvaxxed by Dr. Peter McCullough
The CDC has indicated on their website for months that 92% of adults have taken at least on shot of a COVID-19 vaccine. Yet a prior surveys Zogby and Rasmussen indicated that fraction may only be two thirds.
Now a recent, independent report from Northeastern University has found that the proportion of unvaccinated is not 8% but more like 25%.
If you like this, and have a tinfoil hat, you might like The Conspiracy Basket. Check it out!
And in case you missed it…
What I’ve learned in six months as a Substack writer. A couple lessons: Substack writers support one another; Substack itself is the biggest media story in years; people in “blue” states have been some my biggest supporters and I've learned a great deal that's not too funny from great sites like Clown Basket. Thanks for all the support!
https://billricejr.substack.com/p/what-ive-learned-in-6-months-on-substack