Althouse: At the Monday Night Cafe...

October 12, 2020

At the Monday Night Cafe...

... talk about anything.

37 comments:

mandrewa said...: The left has worn us out and we are all so tired of hearing about the claim that Trump was colluding with the Russians that no one much is interested in the detailed and ever increasing evidence that the whole thing was a conspiracy constructed by federal agencies within the Obama administration in the middle of the last election to delegitimize Trump.

But I don't think these two Greeks have spent the last four years listening to the nonsense and therefore their reaction to it all is kind of entertaining.

See The Duran: Handwritten Brennan notes reveal Obama was targeting Trump and trapping Hillary; 10/12/20, 10:23 PM
mandrewa said...: Cold fusion is back. Sort of. It's now called lattice confinement fusion and a breakthrough happened a few months ago that may be important.

See this text: NASA: Lattice Confinement Fusion

See this video: NASA: Nuclear Fusion Reactions in Deuterated Metals

See this interview: Neil Hughes: NASA Detects Lattice Confinement Fusion; 10/12/20, 10:25 PM
mandrewa said...: It's not the same as the sun rising on Lake Mendota, but still these photographs of the Falcon 9 flying in front of the rising sun in Florida are pretty amazing:

SpaceX Falcon 9 Solar Transit; 10/12/20, 10:28 PM
Joe Smith said...: 'Journalists' are the most corrupt of any profession in the country today, politicians included.

They rarely bother to ask Biden about packing the court.

What they should be doing is asking Harris if she'll pack the court.

If he wins he's out in a year or less...; 10/12/20, 10:33 PM
mockturtle said...: Regarding the recent discussion of Lang Lang's Goldberg Variations by Bach, I bought it online and listened to it today. This package comes with both the studio recording and a live performance recording [Deutsche Grammaphon] on four CDs. The live performance is 'muchly' better! ;-) While not my very favorite performance of this work, it is nonetheless delightfully inspired and beautifully performed. I think JSB would be pleased.; 10/12/20, 10:43 PM
narciso said...: From across the pond

https://m.youtube.com/watch?feature=youtu.be&v=tInLlsPdZO0; 10/12/20, 10:47 PM
Ingachuck'stoothlessARM said...: ·POTUS tonight:

>demonstrated a clear vision for the next 4 years.

> Had big energy.

> Knew what state he was in.

> Knew what office he’s running for.

> Called Sen. Romney by his name, not by his religion.

...5 things Biden couldn’t do today!

per @JasonMillerinDC; 10/12/20, 11:18 PM
Milwaukie guy said...: So, I've been thinking about the possibility of the people electing a senile old shithead, who the Speaker of the House is already wargaming a 25th Amendment maneuver. All hail the Kamala-toe Harris administration.

Besides small stuff like bending over for China or banning fracking, the "Democrats" are talking about AR-15 model rifle confiscation, packing the Supreme Court and f*cking with the Electoral College, a foundation of our republic. Any one of these three could lead to civil war.

As I want to avoid a second civil war, I'm trying to join Proud Boys. For a short 2 minute video about what Proud Boys are, check this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SKnNGGf40t0

I understand they're a little hard to get in touch with and there is a vetting period to make sure you're not an asshole.

If I'm successful, I will report back to the Althouse discussion group.; 10/13/20, 1:26 AM
Milwaukie guy said...: I just figured it out. I have applied for Proud Boy membership. They will be the kernel of the Constitutionalist militia. Vote for Trump and prepare for the Harris social-fascist regime.

Proud Boys is an international organization. Think globally and act locally.; 10/13/20, 2:12 AM
Jaq said...: Once again Instapundit is publishing misleading shit. I think he has Stockholm Syndrome from his mouth breathing commenters. “Lasting immunity” of four months. We already knew this and people have already caught it twice and it’s only been around for a year. Same experience that we have had with cold causing coronaviruses. Good luck with your herd immunity projects.

On the other hand, Sweden is doing markedly better than the UK, which backed off it’s “let it burn” policies once the bodies started piling up. Vermont is maybe one of the safest states, and I am wondering if it’s cultural, since Vermont looks a lot like Sweden. The states that got hard hit in the summer were heavily Hispanic, like Florida, Texas, and California. Sweden has the highest percentage of single-person households in the world. Hispanic culture is far more focused on extended family living together. Still it seems pretty clear that Sweden skyrocketed exponentially the first time, and this second curve is more shallow. It could be due to voluntary measures that people weren’t taking the first time, or it could be that the virus hit in peak flu season.

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/uk/

Once again in the UK it looks like a *lot* of cases were missed the first time that they are catching now due to adequate testing, based on looking at the deaths stat, which is just starting to climb even though daily new cases seems to tower above last spring.; 10/13/20, 4:52 AM
Jaq said...: People say that Norway had so many fewer deaths than Sweden only because Sweden had more old people, so this implies that the number of people under 60 who died should have been roughly the same. I can’t find age breakdowns of deaths for those two countries though.; 10/13/20, 5:06 AM
Jaq said...: OK, I listed my hypothesis above, and just read the “Dry Tinder” paper out of the American Enterprise Institute.

Per the paper and it’s own sources, Sweden has twice the population of Norway. The number of people under 70 who died in Sweden was roughly 575 (hard to read the graph precisely, as it looked on the graph as if nobody under 50 died in Sweden, but that could just be that the area was too small to click on.)

The number of under seventy deaths in Norway was 37, and yes a few of them were under 50, so Sweden’s number is likely higher than I gave above.

Double Norway’s number of under 70 deaths to 74, then compare to 575 under 70 deaths in Sweden and tell me that the “dry tinder” theory holds up. I am not saying that we should be locked down. I don’t believe that, but the lockdown in Norway, and mask mandates for public transport, people having to give names and addresses when eating in restaurants for contact tracing purposes, obviously worked. I am a big believer in honest argument, and I think the lockdowns are a real burden, and maybe go against all human nature, but the argument against them is not that they don’t work. The WHO position on lockdowns is also that their harm outweighs the good that they do. This is a judgement call, not a question for “science” or even statistics.; 10/13/20, 5:38 AM
Rusty said...: Gosh, Tim. Why is the WHO saying that lockdowns don't work and neither do masks most of the time. Could it be that the accepted wisdom of my betters-like you- are, for the most part, full of shit? FWIW "cases" does not mean deaths. More testing. More cases. But by all means run around and panic. It's amusing. Lastly. Vermont, except for the landscape, does not resemble Sweden. Either in culture or population.; 10/13/20, 5:57 AM
Jaq said...: The other thing about that AEI paper is it’s use of “pretzel logic.” In arguing that shutdowns don’t work, it claims that Sweden was already so infected with the virus because of the popularity there of skiing in the Italian Alps that it was already too late to lockdown there. This has nothing to do with the question of whether lockdowns worked, since Sweden’s do nothing policy was applied in plenty of time.

We see Sweden’s Covid catastrophe very clearly, the rise starting at about March 12. But the deaths during the ensuing 18 days were largely baked into the cake. We see clearly that Sweden was already in deep trouble on March 12; stricter lockdown measures would not have changed the past.

The whole paper reeks of rationalization, and it kind of disappoints me in people that so many took it so seriously.; 10/13/20, 6:01 AM
Jaq said...: Here is a good one from Kate at SDA

http://www.smalldeadanimals.com/index.php/2020/10/13/when-the-fbi-does-it-that-means-that-its-not-illegal-181/; 10/13/20, 6:18 AM
Lewis Wetzel said...: "I don’t believe that, but the lockdown in Norway, and mask mandates for public transport, people having to give names and addresses when eating in restaurants for contact tracing purposes, obviously worked."

I don't think it is obvious at all. Correlation is not causation. Sweden is not Norway. You have not accounted for all of the variables.; 10/13/20, 6:27 AM
iowan2 said...: Tim, the argument against lockdowns is the scientists told us it would not prevent cases or deaths. Flatten the curve.
We know the vulnerable population. As of today, not a breath is used to protect the vulnerable. The only conclusion reached, Dems what to destroy economies to cause the most pain to the most people, blame it on President Trump and regain power...for the sake of power. Sure not the betterment of the people. Dems destroy people.; 10/13/20, 6:56 AM
Mr. Forward said...: Mrs. Forward and I have been invited to a Halloween party. Masks required. We are going as Biden‘s basement. I am the furnace and she is a very shapely water heater.; 10/13/20, 7:32 AM
jaydub said...: TIV is trying way too hard, but recovering one's credibility after all the covidiot name calling, Stalinist lockdown advocacy and over-the-top arrogance by him and Karen B, he has a monumental task. Don't tell him it's not going to work. I think we can all use the entertainment.; 10/13/20, 7:58 AM
AllenS said...: If you test positive for the Chinese Communist Lung Infection, and are not sick, and won't get sick, which is what is happening to the majority of people, why isn't that a bigger issue? You'd would certainly think it should be, but the obvious reason is to do whatever it takes to bring down Trump.; 10/13/20, 7:59 AM
mockturtle said...: The US is China's bitch. I'm only beginning to see how every facet of our economy is dependent on the ChiComs. Even if we mine our own resources they must be shipped to China for conversion into the products we need to build things in our own factories, including those of our defense industry. This is sad.; 10/13/20, 8:28 AM
Big Mike said...: @tim, every woman who dies of breast cancer because doctors are doing telemedicine, every person who becauseof the lockdowns should be on your conscience, and would be if only you had one.; 10/13/20, 8:30 AM
Fernandinande said...: City Journal:

"Many have taken it for granted that these differences [in Covid death rates between races] stem from poverty and racism, which force nonwhites into crowded housing and jobs with high disease exposure. ...
But a September 10 article in the Journal of the American Medical Association by three doctors at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York identified another possibility: racial differences in levels of TMPRRS2, a protein in cell membranes that many viruses, including coronaviruses, use to gain access to cells. The authors reported that in a sample of 305 patients at Mount Sinai, black patients had stronger expression of the gene that codes for TMPRRS2 in the tissue lining their nostrils than white, Asian, Hispanic, or mixed-race patients."

Many doctors want that information to be suppressed because it interferes with their false belief that a person's race is "socially constructed" and not determined by their genes.; 10/13/20, 8:41 AM
Ingachuck'stoothlessARM said...: Why CA Dems Suddenly Take Issue with Ballot Harvesting

https://townhall.com/tipsheet/bethbaumann/2020/10/12/hello-irony-ca-dems-are-upset-because-the-gop-is-partaking-in-ballot-harvesting-n2577932; 10/13/20, 8:49 AM
buwaya said...: "We see clearly that Sweden was already in deep trouble on March 12"

So was all of Western Europe, in deep trouble, on the same basis at the same time. But nearly everyone else locked down hard. Its not clear to me that on the whole lockdown was not an exercise in closing the barn doors.

We simply don't know enough about this thing to understand the effect its had on different communities, certainly not enough to predict anything, or to compare one policy over another. Is the diff between Stockholm and Oslo because Sweden did things differently than Norway, or is it a case of Milan vs Naples, or Madrid vs Sevilla?; 10/13/20, 9:03 AM
Ingachuck'stoothlessARM said...: “no incumbent who has received at least 75% of the primary vote has lost re-election. Donald Trump received 94% of the primary vote, which is the 4th highest all-time. Higher than Eisenhower, Nixon, Clinton, and Obama.”

“Three times in history America has faced a pandemic, recession, and civil unrest during an election year. The incumbent party is 3-0 in those elections,”

per townhall; 10/13/20, 9:03 AM
buwaya said...: "Many have taken it for granted that these differences [in Covid death rates between races] stem from poverty and racism, which force nonwhites into crowded housing and jobs with high disease exposure. ..."

If that was so then Covid should have absolutely massacred the population of Manila, as they are vastly poorer, much more crowded (they are #1! in pop density) and with unimaginable degrees of disease exposure.; 10/13/20, 9:06 AM
BUMBLE BEE said...: Worldwide stillbirths up %400 due to corona virus fears. Third trimester complications not addressed due to Covid-19 leading the stats. Tim seems uneducable. Hey, Vermont only has about 5K blacks statewide. There's a difference for ya!; 10/13/20, 9:26 AM
BUMBLE BEE said...: The definition of "cases" is crucial to accurate stats. Positive test, symptoms and illness = true case. Covid is dempanic porn.; 10/13/20, 9:28 AM
Lewis Wetzel said...: Why has Minnesota experienced 150% of Wisconsin's covid deaths? The two state's population, population density, ethnic makeup, education level, median income, are almost identical. Minnesota has a stricter social distancing/mask requirement than Wisconsin.; 10/13/20, 11:13 AM
Lewis Wetzel said...: Any theory that forced business closings, mandated social distancing and face covering requirements reduce the number of hospitalizations and deaths needs to account for the hard cases, not just the easy cases. We are after usable information, not playing gotcha games.
You have to take into account regionalism (the US death rate is small outside of a few states) as well as a nation's overall hospitalization and death rate.
You aren't allowed to just brush off information that does does not fit your thesis.; 10/13/20, 12:38 PM
madAsHell said...: There's noise in the local newspaper asking "Why is the state named for Washington?" "He had slaves."; 10/13/20, 1:42 PM
Jaq said...: I thought you were an engineer Big Mike and maybe had some modicum of an attention span. Nowhere in my post do I advocate for lockdowns. So no, those deaths, which are coming, are not going to lay on my conscience, I just pointed out that the paper from AEI was total crap. I am still against lockdowns, I am just not willing to lie to advance my point of view or be the victim of confirmation bias, if I can help it.; 10/13/20, 3:38 PM
Jaq said...: "You have not accounted for all of the variables.” Certainly true, but I have accounted for key variables that the AEI ignored because it harmed their case. Almost 10 times as many people under 70 died in Sweden compared to Norway when population size is taken into account, an order of magnitude difference. My main point was that the “Dry Tinder” argument is certainly complete bullshit. What do people under 70 have to do with “dry tinder”? Is Althouse ‘dry tinder’? to pick somebody you care about.

The AEI paper is an embarrassment, and if I were an instructor and got it from one of my students, I would have given in a C, only because I am a nice guy. It’s full of crap, it’s almost as bad as that NEJM article from April 1 that said that masks were “symbolic."; 10/13/20, 3:48 PM
Jaq said...: "You aren't allowed to just brush off information that does does not fit your thesis.”

You mean like the AEI brushed off the fact that under 70 deaths were an order of magnitude higher in Sweden than Norway? I didn’t get paid to write that post, I don’t have interns to do research for me, my point is that the paper in question is worthless, for the exact reason that I quoted you giving above. Maybe you can dig up a paper that actually does make the point that lockdowns are completely ineffectual.

My personal point of view is that if Sweden should have done more in terms of protecting their elderly and in terms of mandating masks in public indoor spaces and mass transit situations, and public information campaigns on the importance of hand washing, etc, which all the evidence we have as of now say work. I think they got the lockdown part right, but they just blew off the whole thing as overblown.

Denmark is supposed to release the results of a large study on mask wearing, where thousands of people were randomly assigned to either wear masks whenever in public, or never wear them. If that study shows no effect for masks, or even negative effects, like some people here claim, I will change my mind. That’s what I do, I follow the evidence. Right now the evidence points one way though. But we will see, because the real world is a complex case.; 10/13/20, 3:57 PM
Lewis Wetzel said...: But, Tim In Vermont, where is your evidence that if Sweden had instituted a harsher lockdown lives would have been saved?
All I see is your opinion. My beliefs are also an opinion.
". . . in terms of mandating masks in public indoor spaces and mass transit situations, and public information campaigns on the importance of hand washing, etc, which all the evidence we have as of now say work."
Oh, no, no, no. "All of the evidence" says no such thing. And you should not confuse "public information campaigns" with mandates from the state.
I will look at your Danish study when it's results are real. In the meantime I say (correctly) that the "science" behind mask wearing is BS (why else would the Danes do the study?).
In Cali, they now have a PI campaign advising people who are dining out to replace and remove their masks between bites of food.
Really? So you are touching your face, what, thirty times or so during a meal? Lol.
If covid is as contagious and deadly as the epidemiologists say it is, people wouldn't go out to eat all. This is covid theater, and more people are realizing it.; 10/13/20, 6:48 PM
Lewis Wetzel said...: TIV, you may remember that back in April, when the Swedish death rate from covid was very high, the media portrayed Sweden as what happens when a nation does not lock down.
Then, when Sweden's death rate dropped below most of Europe, it was ignored. Today the Swedish death per million from covid is about 1/20th of that of the US.
Now were told that this relatively low death is peculiar to Sweden and can't be replicated in the US. There is no global lesson, here.
That is what I mean by selectively ignoring evidence that does not fit your thesis.
When the Swedes did not lock down & their death rate was high, that was an important lesson for other nations. When the Swedish death rate dropped below that of, say, Britain, then there was nothing to learn from it.
The intersection of epidemiology & social policy is a statistics game. It isn't science because you can't make a controlled, repeatable experiment.
When Fauci recommended lockdowns back in April he was just guessing. We were getting his opinion, not science. Same with Anders Tegnell's recommendation of no lockdown for Sweden.; 10/13/20, 7:01 PM