Briefly Noted: Covid, Culture, Politics

Yeah, I know—it’s pretty hard to separate those topics, and I won’t even try.

First off, Covid. There’s been a flood of information coming out, and we’re seeing the results in challenges to the Covid Regime. Most dramatically, the hypocrisy of the BoJo government in the UK—partying while the populace was oppressed and harassed—finally came home to roost, crapping on BoJo’s head. The result, of course, was that, in a bid to avoid a no-confidence vote, the UK’s Covid Regime was largely scrapped overnight. That has been followed in varying—but usually significant degrees—in other countries: Ireland, Czechia, France (!), Israel, and so on. Large demonstrations continue in Netherlands, Germany, and other places—the subject populations are catching on.

I’m not going to try to keep up with the flood of information—new studies confirming the effectiveness of Ivermectin, for example—because a lot of it isn’t actually news. However, Alex Berenson has an article today that’s a useful alert to the unreliability of Covid data in much of the US:

Why the "risk ratios" that supposedly prove vaccines offer 90 percent protection against deaths from Covid are a lie

Here are some key points from the longer article. Note that Berenson uses the correct term “vaccine failure” rather than the euphemistic “breakthrough.”

Kudos to the state of Massachusetts for being more honest about Covid vaccine failure than most blue states - or the Centers for Disease Control, which rolled out more nonsense numbers about vaccine effectiveness today.

Unlike most states, Massachusetts provides raw numbers for infections in vaccinated people, instead of hiding them and offering only “adjusted rate ratios” that claim to compare infection risks in the vaccinated and unvaccinated.

On Thursday, Massachusetts reported 85,000 infections, 900 hospitalizations and 170 deaths in vaccinated people for the week ended Jan. 15 - almost half of all Covid deaths over that period.

Even more importantly, Massachusetts also acknowledged those figures underestimate the real totals in the vaccinated because its reporting systems miscount some of them as unvaccinated.

I think we all know that there’s no reason in the world for rates to vary widely from state to state, but there’s also a continuing effort to kid/gaslight people into getting more and more injections. World data in countries that keep more reliable stats is catching up to reality:

In its weekly reports, the United Kingdom has said as many as 80 percent of its Covid deaths are in vaccinated people. In the last several days, New South Wales, the most populous state in Australia, has reported over 70 percent of its surging Covid deaths in the vaccinated.

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In contrast, the governor of New Jersey said yesterday that his state had only four deaths of vaccinated people in the last month, out of a total of 600 Covid deaths. That statement is only possible if human biology is radically different in New Jersey than everywhere else in the world. (Insert joke here.)

Now, on the legal front of the Covid Regime—and veering inevitably into politics and culture—many of you will have already read about or heard ripping Justice Sonia for here “ignorance”. That’s not name calling. It’s just a technically accurate characterization:

Bill Maher torches Sotomayor for botching COVID facts: 'That's really ignorant for a Supreme Court justice'

What I like about the Fox account is not only its inclusion of Bari Weiss’ forthright statement:

"We were told you get the vaccine, you get the vaccine and you get back to normal. And we haven't gotten back to normal. And it's ridiculous at this point. I know that so many of my liberal and progressive friends are with me on this and they do not want to say it out loud because they are scared to be called anti-vaxxed or to be called science denial or to be smeared as a Trumper.

"I'm sorry, but if you believe the science, you will look at the data that we did not have two years ago and you will find out that cloth masks do not do anything. You will realize that you can show your vaccine passport at a restaurant and still be asymptomatic in carrying Omicron. And you realize, most importantly, that this will be remembered by the younger generation as a catastrophic moral crime."

A catastrophic moral crime. Again, not overwrought rhetoric—just dispassionate analysis. And I don’t doubt for a moment that Weiss’ lib/prog friends know this—polling has consistently shown that the most educated are the most vax hesitant. Question: Where do we go to get some payback for a catastrophic moral crime? Will there be more accountability than there was after the last Wall St. bailout?

And that leads to what I consider to be Maher’s most pointed statement, in which he doubled down on Weiss:

Weiss: "There is misinformation and not just on podcasts and the internet. It's also on cable news. I think the biggest thing to me about the Democrats is … the Democrats are now comfortable with … [a] two-tiered system in which the haves get to go into a restaurant, laugh with their friends for hours and the people serving them are masked and wearing gloves. … I mean, this is, this is a look that is unbelievably detrimental to them."

Maher: "The people with, you know, the consulting jobs, whatever bulls--- they do, they get to say at home and order the food out and do s--- by Zoom and whereas the working-class people who are breathing their s----y air all day. It's going to create class resentment. I mean, it looks like the liberals are always suggesting sacrifices they themselves don't have to take part in."

Class resentment? Bring it on.

Now here’s a very specific article, but one with what could prove to be a very significant message:

Poll: Majority of Millennials, Gen Zers Want Limits on Abortion

What’s important here is that the data is derived from a liberal poll that is trying to put a happy face on Dem electoral prospects. Abortion is a complicated issue, but what I took from this article is that with hugely impactful issues confronting voters—crime, inflation, economic disruption, borders—younger people will not be turned off from Republicans simply on the basis of a given candidate’s pro-life views. This is an area where Trump broke new ground that may bear fruit. 

The last article is an unabashedly partisan take on what Mark Penn had to say to Maria Bartiromo about the Dem disconnect from reality. Whereas the Dem Penn urged Dems to “pivot,” the GOPer Jessica Curtis—noting all the same disconnects as Penn—urges Dems to “stay the course”:

Woke Is Broke and Costing Democrats

We are in the first month of 2022, and, from every sign, it appears my Democratic friends are determined to stick to their guns when it comes to both their agenda and how they intend to sell it. In other words, America has not heard the last of the Woke Police.

The 2021 elections, especially in Virginia, could have served as a wake-up call for Democrats. When Terry McAuliffe announced he thought parents should not be telling schools what to teach, the voters spoke loudly and clearly that they felt differently. Attempts to make Republican Glenn Youngkin into the Old Dominion’s version of Donald Trump fell flat as he scored a solid victory.

You might think that after the events of 2021, Democrats would be inclined to engage in some self-reflection. You would be wrong. How do we account for the largest increase in the inflation rate in a generation? President Biden has decided Sen. Elizabeth Warren has it right. Defying logic, gravity, and common sense, they have placed the blame on “meat conglomerates.” Why the cost of a steak would cause spikes in the cost of so many other items, including gasoline, is a carefully guarded secret. Why don’t Democrats in a position of leadership make clear they will not submit to viewpoints held by such a small percentage of the public?

On a whole host of other issues important to Americans, with Democrats in control of the White House and both chambers of Congress, there appears to be what can only be called a disconnect between the party and a significant majority of the public. Whether it is a leaky southern border, more deaths from COVID-19 in 2021 than in 2020 (despite the widespread availability of vaccines), the disaster that defines the withdrawal from Afghanistan, or dramatic and frightening increases in crime, Democrats cling to their outdated strategy of first blaming Donald Trump, and second labeling those who oppose their agenda and performance as enemies of democracy.

For Democrats and the leaders of the Woke Police, it is not merely a matter of conservatives and Republicans being wrong. Instead, they define the battle as being between truth and lies. Many liberals explicitly state that nothing less than punishment is justified.

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This combination of disconnection and arrogance has been prevalent in elite America – academia, the mainstream media, and the world of entertainment – for a long time. For the most part, it is a recent phenomenon in the world of politics.

How long Democrats will persist in claims that to disagree with them is to oppose democracy itself is an open question. As the leader of a national Republican organization, let me be the first to encourage them to stay the course.