This Is The Most Fun Way To Make Your Life Awesome (Pandemic Edition) - Barking Up The Wrong Tree
This Is The Most Fun Way To Make Your Life Awesome (Pandemic Edition) It was 1962, the girls wouldn’t stop laughing and nobody knew why. And even stranger, the laughter was spreading. Like a virus. This was at an all-girls school in Kashasha, Tanzania. A few students had started laughing and they couldn't stop. And this inexplicable behavior spread from girl to girl until 95 of the 159 students were affected. After 6 weeks the school had to close because of it. But that didn't stop the laughter. It had already spread to a neighboring village, Nshamba. 217 more girls afflicted. And then it spread to Bukoba, “infecting” 48 more girls. All told this “outbreak” lasted 18 months, closed 14 schools, and affected over 1000 children. Sound crazy? It's true. While certainly uncommon, this kind of thing is not unheard of. During the Middle Ages there were outbreaks of "choreomania" – uncontrollable, infectious dancing that spread throughout Europe sometimes affecting tens of thousands of people at a time. And, no, I’m not making that up either. Viruses aren't the only things that spread through networks of people. Attitudes and behaviors do too. Yale professor Nicholas Christakis, MD, PhD, MPH, has studied how this works. A network can perpetuate anything in it: not just fads, fashion, and trends, but happiness, unhappiness, kindness and cruelty can also spread like a disease. When I spoke to Nicholas, here's what he told me: We’ve shown that altruistic behavior ripples through networks and so does meanness. Networks will magnify whatever they are seeded with. They will magnify Ebola and fascism and unhappiness and violence, but also they will magnify love and altruism and happiness and information. A happy friend increases the likelihood of you being happy by 9%. An unhappy friend means a 7% decrease. Yes, happiness is more contagious than unhappiness. It’s the scientific version of karma. With the effect spanning out three degrees, there’s a good chance making a small effort to make friends happier will flow back to you. Nicholas found that if a friend became happy in the past six months there’s a 45% chance your happiness will increase. Neato, huh? Hold that thought, I've got a second story for you: Julius Wagner-Jauregg won a Nobel Prize in 1927 for "pyrotherapy." Other than having the coolest name in all of medicine, pyrotherapy would go on to save tens of thousands of lives. This was before antibiotics, when syphilis was a scourge. There was no cure for it. But there was a cure for malaria. Here's the thing: the bacterium that causes syphilis really doesn't like heat. Meanwhile, malaria causes high fevers. So Wagner-Jauregg deliberately infected syphilis patients with malaria. The high fever killed the syphilis. Then you treat the malaria. Patient recovers from both. Triple word score. Clever stories. But what's this all mean? A network can spread a virus -- but it can also spread happiness, help, gratitude and optimism. You can use one infection to fight another. "Fight fire with fire." So what if we start our own "pandemic" and use it to fight the current one? It's just a metaphor but that's okay; I recently had my poetic license renewed at the DMV. Look, I’m in no way suggesting that spreading happiness and kindness right now is magically going to kill COVID-19. And I do not want to make light of something so serious. But we need to stay positive, optimistic and hopeful to keep fighting this. We need to help each other. We need to protect our health, but to do that we have to protect our mental health, our spirit and soul to stay resilient. Our ancestors didn’t climb their way to the top of the food chain to have their spirits broken by a few rogue strands of debatably-alive RNA. We're not giving up hope. Humanity is not just going to crawl back into the primordial slime and close the door behind us. We can't let this get us down or tear us apart. So let’s start our own pandemic of positive emotions to keep our spirits strong for the battle ahead. We’ll fight fire with fire. We’ll spread connection, help, gratitude and optimism. And we'll win. Ready to get infectious? 1) Spread Connection 70% of your happiness comes from your relationships with other people. Via The 100 Simple Secrets of Happy People: Contrary to the belief that happiness is hard to explain, or that it depends on having great wealth, researchers have identified the core factors in a happy life. The primary components are number of friends, closeness of friends, closeness of family, and relationships with co-workers and neighbors. Together these features explain about 70 percent of personal happiness. – Murray and Peacock 1996 But with social distancing, some of us now have zero people around us. (Even yours truly lives alone.) And extended time without social contact is bad. Very bad. From The Village Effect: How Face-to-Face Contact Can Make Us Healthier and Happier: Even months after they were released, MRIs of prisoners of war in the former Yugoslavia showed the gravest neurological damage in those prisoners who had been locked in solitary confinement. “Without sustained social interaction, the human brain may become as impaired as one that has incurred a traumatic head injury,” Gawande concludes. Loneliness is the equivalent of being punched in the face. And that, dear reader, is not a metaphor. Your stress response to both — the increase in your body’s cortisol level — is the same. From Lost Connections: Uncovering the Real Causes of Depression – and the Unexpected Solutions: Feeling lonely, it turned out, caused your cortisol levels to absolutely soar—as much as some of the most disturbing things that can ever happen to you. Becoming acutely lonely, the experiment found, was as stressful as experiencing a physical attack. It’s worth repeating. Being deeply lonely seemed to cause as much stress as being punched by a stranger. We may be quarantined and cut off from others to varying degrees, but this doesn't mean we need to be lonely. Sound weird? It's not. Stick with me. Ever felt lonely in a crowd or lonely at a party? Yeah. The late John Cacioppo was the leading expert on loneliness. He said feeling lonely isn't caused by the mere absence of people. We feel lonely because we're not sharing with others, not connecting with them. That's why you can be surrounded by people and still experience loneliness. So reach out. Our new pandemic of positivity needs to spread that feeling of connection far and wide. Send a text. Pick up the phone. Do a video call. Smoke signals and semaphore. Whatever. Just let people know you care and are thinking about them. Have any of your relationships fallen dormant? Time for a reboot. Estranged from anyone? The force majeure clause has just been engaged. Reconnect. You know how good it feels to be connected to others? Research does. It feels pretty close to an extra $76,856 a year: So, an individual who only sees his or her friends or relatives less than once a month to never at all would require around an extra £63,000 a year to be just as satisfied with life as an individual who sees his or her friends or relatives on most days. Reach out and tell people you're thinking of them. We have the most powerful communication tools ever known to man at our fingertips, for free, 24/7. COVID-19 needs face-to-face contact to spread. Our pandemic of positivity doesn't. We have the advantage. (To learn more about how to make friends as an adult, click here.) Just connecting with others is huge. But our pandemic can do more to "fight fire with fire" and mitigate that other one... 2) Spread Help Ask people if they need anything. Others might need a little more than well wishes right now. Everybody should be doing this. Everybody. Yes, even selfish people. Because being a little selfless can actually be the best way to be selfish. As University of Pennsylvania professor Martin Seligman, one of the leading experts on happiness, explains in his book, Flourish: ...we scientists have found that doing a kindness produces the single most reliable momentary increase in well-being of any exercise we have tested. And what if you're not only selfish but you're also a narcissistic braggart? No problem at all. I encourage you to tell others about how much you're helping and get credit for it. Yes, really. When people see others helping, they're more likely to help. Infect others with the altruistic spirit. Altruism is deeply wired into us as mammals. Even rats (yes, rats) believe in paying it forward. From The Price of Altruism: A recent study in rats showed that the more a rat benefits from the altruism of a stranger rat, the more he will later act benevolently towards stranger rats himself. And on the flip side, if you need help, don't be afraid to ask for it right now. Most of us (well, the non-selfish, not narcissistic ones) never want to be a burden to others but research shows we vastly underestimate how willing others are to lend a hand: A series of studies tested whether people underestimate the likelihood that others will comply with their direct requests for help. In the first 3 studies, people underestimated by as much as 50% the likelihood that others would agree to a direct request for help, across a range of requests occurring in both experimental and natural field settings. Spread help. Spread word that you're helping to encourage others to help. And ask for help where you need it. Keep the lines of communication flowing so that we can all be getting what we need right now. (To learn the two-word morning ritual that will make you happy all day, click here.) So what can we spread that makes us all happier -- while also strengthening the bonds of a relationship? 3) Spread Gratitude Gratitude is the undisputed heavyweight champ of happiness. What’s the research say? Can’t be more clear than this: ...the more a person is inclined to gratitude, the less likely he or she is to be depressed, anxious, lonely, envious, or neurotic. I know, some are saying there is very little to be grateful for right now. Maybe that's true, maybe it's not but guess what? Doesn’t matter. You don’t have to find anything. It’s the searching that counts, says UCLA neuroscientist Alex Korb. Via The Upward Spiral: It’s not finding gratitude that matters most; it’s remembering to look in the first place. Remembering to be grateful is a form of emotional intelligence. One study found that it actually affected neuron density in both the ventromedial and lateral prefrontal cortex. These density changes suggest that as emotional intelligence increases, the neurons in these areas become more efficient. With higher emotional intelligence, it simply takes less effort to be grateful. Spread the gratitude. Sending a thank you text is an awesome way to make two people happy and spread our pandemic of positivity. Harvard happiness researcher Shawn Achor has tested this -- and it works. Here’s Shawn: The simplest thing you can do is a two-minute email praising or thanking one person that you know. We’ve done this at Facebook, at US Foods, we’ve done this at Microsoft. We had them write a two-minute email praising or thanking one person they know, and a different person each day for 21 days in a row. That’s it. What we find is this dramatically increases their social connection which is the greatest predictor of happiness we have in organizations. And don't forget about the people you might be quarantined with. Right now some of us are participating in a 24/7 involuntary reality show with our spouses that can put a strain on any partnership. So don't forget to show them some gratitude too. Research by Eli Finkel at Northwestern shows when even just one of you feels gratitude, both of you are more satisfied with the relationship. How’s that for a bargain? I know, people often mumble a perfunctory "thanks" and it doesn't mean much, right? True. That's why it's important to dig deep and really feel grateful for what your spouse or partner has done. Research shows it's not the words that count -- it really is that feeling: ...results indicate that one’s felt and expressed gratitude both significantly relate to one’s own marital satisfaction. Cross-partner analyses indicate that the individual’s felt gratitude also predicts the spouse’s satisfaction, whereas surprisingly his or her expressed gratitude does not. (To learn how to use gratitude to make yourself happier, click here.) What can we spread that not only makes us all happier but increases grit and even makes us luckier? 4) Spread Optimism Research shows being optimistic increases happiness, health, resilience and even luck. (Yes, luck -- because optimism boosts openness which leads to new opportunities that don't happen when you say no to everything.) Some will say there's a danger in being overly optimistic, that we could go full pollyanna and not take problems seriously. And you know what? They're right. We need to be careful with optimism so that we don't neglect serious concerns. Penn professor Martin Seligman has a method to help you strike the balance: Whenever you’re unsure if optimism is the right way to handle something ask yourself: “What’s the cost of being wrong here?” Via Learned Optimism: The fundamental guideline for not deploying optimism is to ask what the cost of failure is in the particular situation. If the cost of failure is high, optimism is the wrong strategy. The pilot in the cockpit deciding whether to de-ice the plane one more time, the partygoer deciding whether to drive home after drinking, the frustrated spouse deciding whether to start an affair that, should it come to light, would break up the marriage should not use optimism. Here the costs of failure are, respectively, death, an auto accident, and a divorce. Using techniques that minimize those costs is inappropriate. On the other hand, if the cost of failure is low, use optimism. For instance, if you're having serious illness symptoms, don't be optimistic that they'll clear up on their own and avoid medical care. But if the cost of being wrong is just a minor feeling of disappointment that things didn't go your way, right now it's better to stay positive. And spread that positivity. The resilience-boosting effects of optimism are so strong the US military implemented a plan to teach optimistic thinking to soldiers. And we could all use a little extra resilience right now. What's the best way to keep others' spirits high? Make'em laugh. Humor provides a powerful buffer against stress and fear. Via Nerve: Poise Under Pressure, Serenity Under Stress, and the Brave New Science of Fear and Cool: “Humor is about playing with ideas and concepts,” said Martin, who teaches at the University of Western Ontario. “So whenever we see something as funny; we’re looking at it from a different perspective. When people are trapped in a stressful situation and feeling overwhelmed, they’re stuck in one way of thinking: 'This is terrible. I’ve got to get out of here.' But if you can take a humorous perspective, then by definition you’re looking at it differently — you’re breaking out of that rigid mind-set.” Right now hugs aren't an option so send laughs. What's that inside joke or funny memory that never fails to make you and your friend laugh? Send a text reminding them about it. Your friends will appreciate it. Smiling gives the brain as much pleasure as 2000 bars of chocolate. Via Smile: The Astonishing Powers of a Simple Act: Abundant research on facial feedback shows that smiling feels great. A group of researchers in the UK working with Hewlett-Packard Development Company, tried to quantify and make sense of what all this brain activity meant. They used an electromagnetic brain scan machine and heart rate monitor to establish “mood-boosting values” for various brain stimuli… Depending on whose smile you see, the researchers found that one smile can be as pleasurable and stimulating as up to 2,000 bars of chocolate! Happiness, health, resilience and luck are all much needed right now. So spread the optimism. This is part of your new "happiness hygiene" protocol. And then go wash your hands. Yes, again. (To learn how to be more optimistic, click here.) Okay, we've covered a lot. Time to round it up. And we'll also learn what science says is the question that best predicts whether you will be alive and happy at age 80... Sum Up This is how we can start a pandemic of positivity: Spread Connection: Just let people know you're thinking of them and they are meaningful to you. Spread Help: Offer help where you can and ask for it if you need it. Spread Gratitude: Say thanks. And really feel it. Spread Optimism: If the cost of being wrong is low, let yourself believe things will turn out right. So what does Penn professor Martin Seligman say is the magic question that best predicts if you'll be alive and happy at age 80?
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Great Madness The best book on the subject is Extraordinary Popular Delusions and The Madness of Crowds: All Volumes - Complete and Unabridged. My assessment of this is that we are at the end of the secular progressive cult. The ending of cults is always difficult since it requires the complete overhauling of the individual's belief system. The best book on that subject is When Prophecy Fails. The Wiki has a helpful cliff notes style analysis of the book in a single page: Wiki - When Prophecy Fails. If you do not have time to read the book, please read the Wiki. This state of cognitive dissonance is where we find the entire progressive left. Whether it be global climate alarmism, environmentalism, political leftism, feminism, or anything else, the progressives movement is at the place where their prophecies are failing. The adherents have much invested in these beliefs. The loud media talking heads have their credibility and their incomes on the line. Many of the people have their reputations and prestige on the line. These are important aspects of the individual and are things these believers will not give up easily. So, they do not give them up and they hold to them even when obviously wrong. They develop defense mechanisms to thwart the difficulties of cognitive dissonance with statements like, "I live in a post-truthy world." As if saying "post-truthy" somehow creates a world where truth does not matter. Much of this takes me back to Dan Rather and his fabricated story about Bush, which ended up being touted as "fake but true" by the leftist adherents of the progressive cult. The papers were fake, but they were not true, they could not be both. The progressive movement has entered its agonal breathing stage. It is not long for this world but the adherents can still do real and lasting damage. We live in fraught times where the enemy is those possessed by a malignant cognitive dissonance disorder which has led them to believe dangerous nonsense. Authored by The Zman, "Has the world gone mad? It certainly seems that way to some of us. Even the most cynical never imagined the government shutting down the country for fear of a virus, but it has suddenly become the new normal. The cynical, if they thought of it at all, would have thought the opposite. Instead of a great lock down, the response would have been for the beautiful people to insulate themselves from harm, while abandoning the rest of us to the plague. Instead, we have all gone mad together. Not everyone has got the fever, that is this panic fever, not the one caused by the Chinese coronavirus. Our world is now firmly divided into two camps. There are those fully invested in the great panic over the virus and there are those who look at the other camp, gobsmacked by what appears to be a general madness. Those in panic look at the rest of us the same way preppers look at normal people. They just assume the gods will strike us down for doubting the virus. Of course, the people in the skeptic camp could be the ones suffering from some form of madness that prevents them from seeing the threat. The trouble is, the great plague is not exactly lighting up the scoreboard. America has tested over 600,000 people suspected of having the virus. Over 500,000 tested negative. Of the positives, 12,000 needed hospital care. In a country of over 320 million people with 200,000 empty hospital beds at any one time, that’s not much of a crisis. Yet, despite the numbers, formerly sober-minded people continue to carry on as if there are bodies in the streets. Steve Sailer, a man not known for excitability, is calling this virus a great adversary of the human race. Greg Cochran has completely lost his marbles over this thing. Geneticist and HBD enthusiast Razib Khan is in hiding, convinced the end times are upon us. In fact, the whole HBD community is a click away from fleeing to Antarctica to wait out the end of civilization. Of course, part of the panic, a symptom of that particular virus, is a set of abracadabra phrases that have become so common they seem like something from a secret society, understood only by the initiates. The duller sorts chant about “exponential growth” while others talk about “the hospitals being overwhelmed.” That’s why we have to “flatten the curve” and “slow the spread.” These incantations are to chase away doubt and reinforce the belief that people are dying in the streets. The dying in the streets bit is not much of an exaggeration. A popular bit of folklore now among the panicked is some version of the anonymous ER doctor or nurse relaying how they are overwhelmed and letting people die in the hallways. This urban legend turned up in China, Washington, Italy, New York and now New Orleans. Formerly sensible people now pass these whoppers around on-line, never bothering to think that maybe they are being fed a just-so story by people seeking attention. One emerging aspect to the madness is the moral dimension. The Human Biodiversity (HBD) crowd seems to have been hardest hit. They spend a lot of time contemplating nature and their fellow man’s refusal to respect it. Part of what is driving them now is a sense that nature is going to finally exact some revenge. In other words, this panic is part of a strange revenge fantasy, where they are finally vindicated by biological reality. This sudden sense of moral purpose has made them immune to reason. Another aspect to this general panic, unrelated to the virus itself, is a different type of revenge fantasy. Many people are cheering the collapse of the economy and civil life on the mistaken belief that what emerges from the rubble will have them at the top of the social hierarchy. This is a phenomenon shared across the political spectrum. It seems to be most popular with young people unhappy with the status quo and far too caught up in purge fantasies to be reached with facts and reason. Probably the most salient aspect to this panic is the role of women. As has been noted too many times to count, the West is now a gynocracy. It is not a matriarchy, as women have stopped bearing children and stopped caring about children. Look around and you see childless women in positions of authority all over the West. In fact, these are women who reached their status by rejecting every aspect of womanhood. The West is now a world run by middle-aged childless women. Anyone who has been around women in a crisis has observed a strange phenomenon among childless adult females. Some switch gets flipped in a crisis where their protective instincts get misdirected at the adults in the room. This part of their nature was never allowed to mature in the raising of children, so it comes bursting forth in an incoherent desire to help when their help is not needed. They become like mother ducks loudly herding the brood to safety. For a society run by such women, every crisis is met with demands that everyone shelter in place. Notice how over the last few decades that public officials no longer call for volunteers or tell people to pitch in and work together. Such independent action violates the frightened female’s sense of duty to her brood. Instead, mild weather events now close the schools and force people to work from home. This virus scare is every middle-aged women’s Hunger Games moment. Mass panics are a known phenomenon. The general panic that took place in France between July 22 and August 6 1789 is known as The Great Fear. It was a period of rural unrest, driven by both a grain shortage and rumors of an aristocrats’ “famine plot” to starve the peasants. The exact reason for this panic is in dispute. Ergotism is a favorite reason for those with a certain sense of humor, but most historians consider it one of the primary causes of the French Revolution. At some point, the bloom comes off this lock-down rose once people start to feel the real cost of listening to madmen. People will remember that the same folks who swore Boris and Natasha had used their mind control devise to install Trump in the White House are the many of the same people peddling this panic. Necessity will force a lot of people to stop going along with what they have suspected from the start is nothing more than a mass panic. Soon, this all comes to an end. Like the Great Fear, the Great Madness will leave a mark, or at least it should leave a mark on our society. You never can be sure about these things, as the West seems to be unusually immune to learning from these events. Two centuries ago The Great Fear meant the end of the feudal order and eventually a revolution. It was not the sole cause of the revolution, maybe not the main cause. It was certainly an example of how the old order was no longer able to maintain order. It is too soon to know what this panic means for us. Perhaps it further undermines the legitimacy of the system and the people that profit from it. Perhaps it sets off social changes that slowly transform our society in ways we have yet to imagine. Maybe the fever breaks and this event, like the Russian hoax, gets forgotten. Given what most likely awaits on the other side of the lock-down, it is hard to imagine this great madness being forgotten. There’s always a price to be paid for following madmen." The End of New York
The city was a mistake from the beginning. It took us a long time to figure that out and a lot of bodies. Downing Street says China faces a 'reckoning' over the coronavirus
The next few years will see America and probably the West turning away from China as a primary producer and assembler of products, particularly important products like drugs. The US media is also done for the same reasons, lies, and fake news. The Democratic Party may be able to pull this one out, but it looks bleak. The party has let lying anti-Americans like Pelosi and Schumer run the show for too long. Even bumbling Chance the Gardener, er, Joe Biden will not save the party now. While the Dems pray for a miracle, the rest of America will do what we do during crises, come together, put our shoulders to the wheel and move the nation, the economy, and ourselves forward to achieve the goals necessary. New York dad locks son out of home after he returns from spring break
Make sure you tell him to "grow up." He needs to hear that from the father. Billionaire David Geffen draws fury for 'tone-deaf' Instagram post
Undoubtedly, the Sun would not rise if David Geffen got the Wuhan flu. The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas Are Setting Up a Generation for Failure The book is excellent. I've donated many thousands of dollars to FIRE. FIRE's mission statement: "FIRE’s mission is to defend and sustain the individual rights of students and faculty members at America’s colleges and universities. These rights include freedom of speech, freedom of association, due process, legal equality, religious liberty, and sanctity of conscience — the essential qualities of liberty." The progressives live in a post-truth world where their dystopian emotional fantasies rule. This is tragic, particularly at a time like this when we really should have the sage counsel of a second party. That cannot happen because the people who comprise the second party have lost their minds to TDS. The Mysterious Rise, Fall and ... Rise of Joe Biden
"For most of early 2019, Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden -- the declared custodian of liberalism who would continue the Obama glory years -- seemed unstoppable. He led all other rivals for months. Biden seemed above the fray. Many Democrats saw the pre-debate and pre-election race for the nomination as more of a Biden coronation than a contest. In the summer and fall debates of 2019, Biden was occasionally confused about dates, places, names, and facts. In public appearances, he often seemed grouchy or dazed. Biden was once faulted for being too handsy in his interactions with women; now he was being criticized for losing his temper and insulting people during campaign stops. Biden dived in the polls. Democratic candidates such as Cory Booker, Pete Buttigieg, Julian Castro, Kirsten Gillibrand, Kamala Harris, Amy Klobuchar, and Elizabeth Warren had all wounded the septuagenarian Biden, portraying him as too moderate and out of touch with contemporary green and diversity issues. Meanwhile, rival Bernie Sanders in the new year took over the lead in the polls. He focused on evil corporations, an unfair America and a rigged system. His populism drew crowds even as his socialism terrified the Democratic Party establishment. By early 2020, Sanders was feared to be unstoppable. Multibillionaire former New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg jumped into the race with a storm of endorsements and paid ads. Bloomberg was supposed to save the Democratic Party from Sanders' socialism in the wake of Biden's implosion. Then the unanticipated happened. Sanders began praising Cuba and other Marxist countries, thereby confirming criticism that he really was too soft on communism. Bloomberg entered his first two debates and performed dismally. Almost overnight, he nullified his $500 million investment in a radio, television, social media, and mailing campaign. But Biden just stayed Ol' Joe Biden -- occasional bewilderment, gaffes and all. As others sank in the polls, Biden seemed a known quantity in comparison. Joe Biden Is NOT a 'Return to Normalcy' Candidate Other events lined up in Biden's favor. The primaries headed to the South and West, where there were more moderate voters. On Super Tuesday, Biden was seen as less risky than Sanders and won a majority of delegates. Bloomberg dropped out of the race, as did Biden's younger rivals -- and most of them endorsed Biden. At no time did Biden cease his bloopers or embarrassing moments of forgetfulness and confusion. The field changed, not Biden himself. After Super Tuesday, Biden was, by process of elimination, suddenly the front-runner again in one of the more amazing comebacks in primary history. Democrats may have dodged the Sanders socialist bullet and united the party behind Biden, but how will Biden beat Trump? Biden's threefold strategy is obvious. First, Biden will copy the Bloomberg playbook and avoid campaign appearances as much as possible, instead relying on ads, endorsements, and the occasional short, teleprompter-aided speech. Biden also will name administration officials in advance and use a dozen or so of them as surrogates and anti-Trump attack dogs on the campaign trail. The subtext will be that the abstract idea of Biden is preferable to the concrete reality of hearing him speak or seeing him in action. Second, Biden's running mate, with a wink and a nod, will be sold as the likely future president sooner than later. Diversity candidates who did not run effective campaigns and dropped out of the race now have a chance to be revived as Biden's running mate -- with a real shot to be president or at least to have a more influential role than past vice presidents. Such a running mate could help Biden win over the base. And he or she could solve the Democratic Party's embarrassing dilemma of damning white privilege while ending up with two elderly white men as finalists for the nomination. Third, no one knows the trajectory of the coronavirus, but the economic damage it is inflicting on the economy is already considerable. Democratic strategists are demagoguing it in a way that seems analogous to the freak storm Katrina, which wrecked the second term of George W. Bush, or the 2008 financial meltdown, which ruined the Republican brand and, with it, the candidacy of John McCain. In 2020 we will hear a lot from candidate Biden -- but less frequently will we see him in person, speaking to or mixing with crowds. His running mate will be advertised as the future of the Democratic Party, with the subtext of soon becoming president. And the 24/7 message won't be collusion or impeachment, but the coronavirus. There are problems with all of these strategies. But for now, the Democratic Party has gone from ruin in late February to hope in late March -- even as gaffe-prone Joe Biden just stayed the same all along. Victor Davis Hanson is a classicist and historian at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, and the author of "The Second World Wars: How the First Global Conflict Was Fought and Won," from Basic Books." As I have said for a while, the Wuhan flu is shockingly overblown based on what we know now3/28/2020 COVID-19, the Elephant, and the House Cat - American Greatness My thoughts on this are fairly simple. The value to American and the World of going into Wuhan flu induced panic and hermitery will not be in the lives it saves vis-a-vis Wuhan flu, but in the lives, these actions saved vis-a-vis the seasonal flu, a far more deadly scourge. We've fallen for the panic. The media fell more than the rest of us because the media, which are mostly leftist progressives, wanted to find something to bring down President Trump, and Wuhan flu looked like a possibility. Instead the media has brought down themselves and the World's economy. Nice play, Bozos. "Here’s something special: a headline in The Economist that speaks the truth: “In Europe, and around the world, governments are getting tougher.” You betcha. Last week, I wrote with contempt about San Francisco’s mayor who had just announced she would “legally prohibit residents from leaving their homes except to meet basic needs.” “Well,” I thought, “It’s California, what do you expect?” But now several other states, including New York, Connecticut, and Illinois, have issued “shelter-in-place” orders. They closed all “nonessential” businesses (nonessential to whom? To the people who work there?) and are throwing their weight around in other ways. Restaurants: closed, except for take-out and delivery. Gymnasiums: closed. Museums: closed. Concert halls: closed. Public fraternization: essentially prohibited. Why? Because of the biggest threat to mankind that the world has ever seen: the COVID-19 virus, also know as the Chinese flu, which to date has killed—are you ready—276 people in the United States, almost all of them over 80, almost all with serious co-morbidities. Two-hundred-and-seventy-six people! And yes, that frightening number will rise. It will be 400, 500 before you know it. Maybe when all is said and done, we’ll see 1,000-1,200 identified who have died from complications that can be traced to this respiratory illness. Meanwhile, somewhere between 22,000 and more than 50,000 people have died from the seasonal flu in the United States this year. Why is there no panic about that? The Wuhan virus is a bad bug. But far more lethal than the “pandemic”—it sounds so much scarier to say “pandemic” than “epidemic,” even if the term is not justified—far more lethal, I say, are two other “P” words: panic and passivity. Unfettered Exhibitions of Insanity One of the two best pieces I have read about this extraordinary, wealth-destroying episode was written by the Stanford epidemiologist John P.A. Ioannidis. We are making decisions without reliable data, Ioannidis warns. There is still much we do not know about the lethality of the Chinese virus, he acknowledges, and “reasonable estimates for the case fatality ratio in the general U.S. population vary from 0.05% to 1%.” With every passing day, however, the evidence suggests that we will wind up on the lower end of that spectrum. “A population-wide case fatality rate of 0.05%,” he points out, “is lower than seasonal influenza.” The kicker: If that is the true rate, locking down the world with potentially tremendous social and financial consequences may be totally irrational. It’s like an elephant being attacked by a house cat. Frustrated and trying to avoid the cat, the elephant accidentally jumps off a cliff and dies. Is the market the elephant? The panic, the hysteria, the mob mentality that has swept over the country is an amazing and disheartening thing to witness. Unfettered exhibitions of insanity are always disquieting. But even more alarming is the twofold dialectic operating in tandem with the panic. I mean the sheep-like passivity of the public, on the one hand, and the eager exercise, at every level, of state power on the other. Governors, mayors, city councilmen, and neighborhood watch captains are dusting off their Gauleiter uniforms as they compete with each other to issue the most sweeping prohibitions against the liberty of their charges. And the media just eggs them on. Scribe after wretched scribe laments the fact that Western countries are not as “organized” and “single-minded” as China was in dealing with the “crisis.” I put scare quotes around “crisis” because this threat is less medical than characterological. Perhaps the single best overview of what I like to call Wuhanomania is a long post by Aaron Ginn called “Evidence over hysteria—COVID-19.” (I call it that in homage to Charles Mackay’s classic description of Tulipomania in Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds.) Ginn’s essay is partly about data—what the real numbers and the real dangers of the virus are—and partly about despotism: its distinct and troubling rise as the virus makes its utterly predictable way up and then down the bell curve described more than a 150 years ago by the British epidemiologist William Farr. Just a few salient bits of data. How easy is it to catch the Wuhan flu? Not as easy as the scaremongers in the media—and, alas, as many policymakers—would have you believe. A study issued by WHO on how the Chinese responded to the virus is one of the most exhaustive studies yet published. The results, Ginn points out, “show that COVID-19 doesn’t spread as easily as we first thought or the media had us believe.” The boldface of the next bit is in the original: “According to their report if you come in contact with someone who tests positive for COVID-19 you have a 1–5% chance of catching it as well. The variability is large because the infection is based on the type of contact and how long.” Bottom line: “The majority of viral infections come from prolonged exposures in confined spaces with other infected individuals.” Then why is your kid’s baseball practice canceled? Well, might you ask. Ginn quotes Dr. Paul Auwaerter, the clinical director for the Division of Infectious Diseases at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. “If you have a COVID-19 patient in your household, your risk of developing the infection is about 10% . . . . If you were casually exposed to the virus in the workplace (e.g., you were not locked up in the conference room for six hours with someone who was infected [like a hospital]), your chance of infection is about 0.5%.” How do you spell “negligible”? From Data to Despotism Ginn goes on to point out that 93 percent of people who get tested because they think they have the virus turn out not to have it. He also notes that, as testing increases, so will the total numbers of cases reported. But both the fatality rate and “the severity case mix” will fall. We’re told by the media and some policy spokesman that COVID-19 “Is not just like the flu.” But the more data we have, the less plausible (and more alarmist) that claim looks. It is about at this point in the discussion that people start shouting “Italy! Oh my God, what about what’s happening in Italy?” But the situation in Italy is vastly different from the situation in the United States. For one thing, Ginn notes, “99% of all deaths” in Italy “had an underlying pathology. Only 0.8% had no underlying condition.” Then, too, Northern Italy, where the disease first sprouted, had been overrun by people from China who carried the virus with them." Sidebar: We also need to understand that the disease is a viral respiratory disease that will be exacerbated by anything which cause prolonged lung damage. In Wuhan that would include smoking and shockingly bad air pollution. What does that have to do with Italy? Italians, until just recently smoked alot, and the people in Northern Italy were heavy smokers. In addition, Northern Italy has the worst air pollution problem in all of Western Europe. We should expect to see bad outcomes with Wuhan flu wherever air pollution and smoking have been bad for a long time. PM10 interpolated maps "It is at this point that Ginn pivots from data to despotism by way of damage.
First the damage. “Local governments and politicians are inflicting massive harm and disruption with little evidence to support their draconian edicts.” This is true. So is this: Every local government is in a mimetic race to one-up each other in authoritarian city ordinances to show us who has more “abundance of caution.” Politicians are competing, not on more evidence or more COVID-19 cures but more caution. As unemployment rises and families feel unbearably burdened already, they feel pressure to “fix” the situation they created with even more radical and “creative” policy solutions. This only creates more problems and an even larger snowball effect. The first place to start is to stop killing the patient and focus on what works." Sidebar: Great politicians and leaders do what is necessary, no more, no less. Bad politicians and leaders try to turn a crisis into an opportunity, and they will attempt to use the crisis to consolidate power and disempower the people while transferring that power to an elite. "Here are some things that don’t work and militate against the Hippocratic oath, which applies in politics as much as in medicine: Shuttering the local economy. This irritates and depresses people and shoves a drainage pump into local businesses, bankrupting them by the scores and hundreds. The evidence, Ginn points out, is “overwhelming” that airborne or “aerosol” transmission is “not a threat.” In more and more places, you can’t go out to eat, you can’t go to the gym but “We don’t have significant examples of spreading through restaurants or gyms.” Hoarding. It’s silly. It’s counterproductive. It “demonstrates an irrational hysteria (stocking up on useless masks, trying to corner the market in toilet paper). But the hysteria, the fear, is ultimately being driven by governmental action, by fear of “what the government will do next.” Acute Political Passivity Which brings me to that minatory, nauseating phrase: “an abundance of caution.” Out of an “abundance of caution” we are going to close your schools, forbid you to travel, make you stay in your house, prevent you from socializing with your friends. “Let’s be frank,” Ginn says, with refreshing candor: “these acts are emotionally driven by fear, not evidence-based thinking in the process of destroying people’s lives overnight. While all of these decisions are made by elites isolated in their castles of power and ego, the shock is utterly devastating Main Street.” These days are precarious as Governors float the idea of martial law for not following “social distancing”, as well as they liked while they violate those same rules on national TV. Remember this tone is for a virus that has impacted 0.004% of our population. Imagine if this was a truly existential threat to our Republic. And this is where the threat of despotism comes in. The other side of the hysteria and panic that has swept like an emotional tsunami across the land is an even more worrisome phenomenon: an acute political passivity that is at the same time a failure of character. What is the fitting response to COVID-19, whereby “fitting” I mean worthy of citizens in a free society? First, practice good hygiene. Wash your hands. Take care about sneezing and coughing. Second, stay home if you feel ill. Be careful about shaking hands. Third, if you are older and have underlying health problems, isolate yourself from others until this episode passes. Those simple steps would have gone a long way in achieving what our masters are trying to achieve now with their draconian closures and interdictions, but without the huge costs. Ronald Reagan once observed that the nine scariest words in the English language were “I’m from the government and I’m here to help.” One can only speculate about what Reagan would have made of this gargantuan, Manhattan-Project-like mobilization of state power. “When this is all over,” Ginn writes, “look for massive confirmation bias and pyrrhic celebration by elites. There will be vain cheering in the halls of power as Main Street sits in pieces. Expect no apology, that would be political suicide. Rather, expect to be given a Jedi mind trick of “I’m the government and I helped.’” The political philosopher James Burnham once observed that civilizations tend to end not because they are invaded by an external enemy but from an inner collapse. They are not murdered; they commit suicide. The really scary thing about this latest health scare is not the disease but the unexpected depths of passivity it revealed." Sidebar: When this is over, we need to have a serious house cleaning, which must include the political sphere and the bureaucratic sphere. All of these need to be reevaluated and shaken to their cores. The government needs to figure out how to work with less than 12% of US GDP not the 18-20% it takes today. State governments need to have a similar reckoning. The bureaucrats need to figure out how to perform even more duties with less than 40% of the current government workforce. US Overtakes China As The Country With The Most COVID-19 Cases: Live Updates
The Chinese CCP lies about everything, from economics to how many died in a building collapse or a highspeed train wreck. The idea that they would not lie about this is silly. |
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