Quotulatiousness

March 11, 2021

Women’s Vote Leads to Bolshevism and Welfare | B2W: ZEITGEIST! I E.13 – Harvest 1921

Filed under: Health, History, Politics, USA — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

TimeGhost History
Published 10 Mar 2021

This season not only marks the birth of the American welfare state, but it will also see women make great strides towards universal suffrage. But as you can imagine, none of these things come without significant opposition.

Join us on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/TimeGhostHistory​

Hosted by: Indy Neidell
Written by: Francis van Berkel
Director: Astrid Deinhard
Producers: Astrid Deinhard and Spartacus Olsson
Executive Producers: Astrid Deinhard, Indy Neidell, Spartacus Olsson, Bodo Rittenauer
Creative Producer: Maria Kyhle
Post-Production Director: Wieke Kapteijns
Research by: Francis van Berkel
Edited by: Michał Zbojna
Sound design: Marek Kamiński

Colorizations:
Daniel Weiss – https://www.facebook.com/TheYankeeCol…​
Mikołaj Uchman
Klimbim

Sources:
Some images from the Library of Congress

Icons from The Noun Project:
Birth by Adrien Coquet
dead by AomAm
mother by Fahmihorizon
United States Capitol by József Balázs-Hegedüs
noun_House of Representatives
House of Representatives Full by Sarah Lawrence

Soundtracks from Epidemic Sound:
“Epic Adventure Theme 3” – Håkan Eriksson
“You’re Trouble” – Rich in Rags
“I’d Rather Be Alone” – Franz Gordon
“Redefine” – Megan Wofford
“Age Of Men” – Jo Wandrini

Archive by Screenocean/Reuters https://www.screenocean.com​.

A TimeGhost chronological documentary produced by OnLion Entertainment GmbH.

From the comments:

TimeGhost History
2 days ago
America has so far been a pretty big topic in this season, and it again takes center stage in this episode. Considering its monumental role in twentieth-century history, this is only natural. Still, we like to give an international history as possible, so it’s exciting to also introduce Sweden here. It is a small country but historically significant for a number of reasons. It is a pioneer in social democracy, a country that has consistently stayed neutral in world affairs since 1814, and last but not least, the home of Indy Neidell.

January 2, 2021

Victor Davis Hanson’s 2020 review

Filed under: Government, Health, History, Media, USA — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

I’m not normally prone to weak puns, but I think it’s not unfair to call 2020 an Anus horribilis rather than an Annus horribilis, because the last twelve months have been utter ass:

The year 2020 is now commonly dubbed the annus horribilis — “the horrible year.” The last 10 months certainly have been awful.

But then so was 1968, when both Martin Luther King Jr. and Bobby Kennedy were assassinated. The Tet Offensive escalated the Vietnam War and tore America apart. Race and anti-war riots rocked our major cities. Protesters fought with police at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago. A new influenza virus, H3N2 (the “Hong Kong flu”), killed some 100,000 Americans.

But an even worse 2020 saw the COVID-19 outbreak reach global pandemic proportions by March. Chinese officials mislead the world about the origins of the disease — without apologies.

Authorities here in the U.S. were sometimes contradictory in declaring quarantines either effective or superfluous. Masks were discouraged and then mandated. Researchers initially did not know how exactly the virus spread, only that it could be lethal to those over 65 or with comorbidities.

Initial forecasts of 1 million to 2 million Americans dying from the virus unduly panicked the population. But earlier assurances that the death toll wouldn’t reach 100,000 falsely reassured them.

[…]

For the first time in American history, given the lockdowns and the cold-weather viral resurgence, there was neither a traditional Thanksgiving nor Christmas for many people.

Yet amid the death, destruction and dissension, history will show that America did not fall apart.

In remarkable fashion, researchers created a viable and safe COVID-19 vaccine in less than a year — a feat earlier described as impossible by experts.

The nation went into recession but avoided the forecasted depression. This was partly because America in early 2020 was booming by historical standards, and partly because the Trump administration and Congress quickly infused some $4 trillion of liquidity into the inert economy.

For all the charges and counter-charges of voter fraud and Trump being a sore loser, President-elect Joe Biden will eventually take office. And Donald Trump will leave it.

This is the dawning of the Age of the Putz

Filed under: Government, Health, Liberty — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

At least, that’s how David Warren sees it:

“Covid 19 Masks” by baldeaglebluff is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0

… the spirit of Resolution has been dying in our society, and that is among the principal reasons that our public life has been down-trending. It is what we may call the Age of the Putz, using the term with its full Yiddish vigour, yet in English where we may say it in the presence of women and children. Yes, it means stupid, foolish, worthless, idle and so forth. But as I understand, at the fulcrum, it means “easy to swing around.” It means being led by one’s rope, as it were. A putz (understandably confused with a schmuck, or a nebbish) does what he has been told by the authorities, and oddly like the brave, he does not hesitate. But this is because he can’t endure pain. He can be agreeable, yet without charm. (Reader warning: my Yiddish may be defective.)

This would be acceptable, in the sense that there is nothing we can do about a putz — he has already surrendered — but a line must be drawn somewhere, if only for our own edification. This is where, in current jargon, we cross over from a putz, to a Karen. In my apartment building alone, there must be a dozen who have made this “transition.”

They are the ones who think they will die, if you’ve forgotten your bat-muzzle, or threaten to step within seventy inches of them, in an elevator. They may appear to be making a threat, by the shrieks of complaint they utter, but really it is only fear. It is, to be plain, the opposite of Resolution. The authorities, taking them for putzes, have easily instilled the “public health” terror, with “science” they have made up, and may yank them here or there as they want.

Could I make videos, I would record a snide little number that composed itself in my head, last May (when we were only two months into “fifteen days to flatten the curve”). It was entitled, “You’re Going To Kill People!” The dance component was a variation on the hippie-days twist, in which Walmart shoppers try to stay two feet clear of each other, while looting modest consumer durables.

December 27, 2020

Moderna’s Wuhan Coronavirus vaccine was developed nearly a year ago

Filed under: Bureaucracy, Government, Health — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

Philip Steele explains why Moderna’s vaccine was not made available until very recently, despite having been developed only days after the genetic code for the virus was published:

Few people realize that the Moderna vaccine against COVID-19 — which the FDA has finally declared “highly effective,” and which is now being distributed to Americans — has actually been available for nearly a year.

But the government wouldn’t let you take it.

The vaccine, a triumph of medical science known as mRNA-1273, was designed in a single weekend, just two days after Chinese researchers published the virus’s genetic code on January 11, 2020.

For the entire duration of the pandemic, while hundreds of thousands died and the world economy was decimated by lockdowns, this highly effective vaccine has been available.

But you, and all the people who died, were prohibited by the government from taking it.

There are some who claim that the FDA “saves lives” by putting the brakes on medical innovation with their requirements for years-long, and often decades-long, billion-dollar medical trial procedures.

Missing here is the obvious counterpoint — How many lives did the FDA sacrifice to disease in the meantime?

In the case of COVID-19 we know the answer: more than 300,000 deaths so far in the United States and counting.

December 21, 2020

Boris “Ebenezer” Johnson cancels Christmas

Filed under: Britain, Government, Health, Science — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

What is it with British PMs and political U-turns?

So Christmas is cancelled. The neo-Cromwellian edict has been issued. The thing that Boris Johnson said would be “inhuman” just a few days ago has now been done. For the first time in centuries people in vast swathes of England – London and the South East – will be forbidden by law from celebrating Christmas together. The government’s promise of five days’ relief from the stifling, atomising, soul-destroying lockdown of everyday life has been snatched away from us. It’s too risky, the experts say; the disease will spread and cause great harm. You know what else will cause great harm? This cruel, disproportionate cancellation of Christmas; this decree against family festivities and human engagement.

This evening Boris Johnson executed the most disturbing u-turn of his premiership: he scrapped the planned relaxation of lockdown rules for Christmas. He commanded that London and the South East will be propelled into Tier 4, yet another Kafkaesque category of authoritarianism dreamt up by our increasingly technocratic rulers. This means no household mixing, including on Christmas Day. That’s millions of planned get-togethers, family celebrations, cancelled with the swipe of a bureaucrat’s pen. Other areas outside of London are luckier: Boris has graciously granted them one day off from the lockdown rules, on Christmas Day, when they may mix with people from other households. They will no doubt give praise to their benevolent protectors for such festive if fleeting charity.

There is much that is disturbing about Boris’s decree. It is being justified on the basis that a new strain of Covid-19 is spreading in the South East and seems more contagious than earlier strains. That is certainly something we should be aware of. But Boris also declared that there is no evidence that this new strain has led to “increased mortality”. So what is going on here? Surely before enacting the drastic, almost unprecedented measure of preventing millions of people from celebrating Christmas together the government should offer up clearer evidence of the significant social harms that would allegedly spring from such celebrations? The political and media elites go on and on about “evidence-based policy”, except when it comes to locking people down. Then it’s all “Yeh, go ahead, better safe than sorry”.

December 6, 2020

“As ever, our Liberal friends prefer to be judged by their pure intentions rather than their rather tattered record”

Filed under: Cancon, Government, Health, Politics — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

The good folks at The Line suggest that we monsters in the peanut gallery stop hurting poor Little Potato’s feeeeeeeeeelings:

Typical image search results for “Justin Trudeau socks”

What we can say is that supporters of our current government continue to insist that the prime minister and his cabinet be granted a level of benefit of the doubt that they simply have not earned. Declarations that the Liberals have botched the vaccine rollout are premature, but they are not preposterous. As ever, our Liberal friends prefer to be judged by their pure intentions rather than their rather tattered record. We at The Line have known enough true Grits in our time to believe that this isn’t an act. Liberals really do believe that so long as they mean well, they should be forgiven their failures. Indeed, the failures should be forgiven and forgotten.

And boy, can they get testy when someone declines to do them the courtesy of treating this five of a government like a nine. They’ll shriek about Harper and Ford and Kenney and American-style whatever, they’ll argue in bad faith, they’ll demand an audit of Andrew Scheer’s household expenses, they’ll shut parliament down in the middle of a national emergency to spare the boss from embarrassing questions about his latest ethical flub. In short, they’ll do anything to avoid admitting that this Liberal government has blown more than enough high-profile issues to have forfeited any right to be bummed out when someone dares wonder if they’ll do any better on vaccines.

Over the last five years, the Liberals have failed to hit their own targets on balancing the budget and cleaning up Indigenous water supplies. They failed to hit Harper’s targets on carbon reduction, failed to win a UN seat, failed to deliver promised military procurements, failed on electoral reform, failed to improve our decrepit transparency system, and failed to notice any number of outrageous policies and proposals so long as they were proffered en français, in which case they couldn’t avert their eyes fast enough.

We could go on, but the point is made. And they’ve done it all after daring to talk in their opening days of deliverology, a term that’s now a political punchline thanks to how badly Trudeau and the Gang failed to live up to the hype of their own managerial jargon.

The problem with all this failure is far bigger than the sum of its various sad parts. A government that routinely writes cheques its competence can’t cash may be in a hurry to forgive itself, but not all Canadians are as fond of Justin Trudeau as Justin Trudeau clearly is. A proven track record of failure by the state erodes public confidence in the state, and the sneering contempt Liberals have for anyone who notices the failure doesn’t help. We find it absolutely amazing how many Liberals (rightly!) decry the rise of populism without ever seeming to ponder for a New York minute what role their own manifest mediocrity has played in fuelling it. So we’ll kindly hear no more from the Liberals about the know-nothing idiocy of the woke left and the destructive buffoonery of the nationalist right until they stop doing such a shabby job with the goddamned centre.

December 5, 2020

The “new normal” will, by definition not be “normal”

Filed under: Britain, Bureaucracy, Health — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

At Spiked, Brendan O’Neill cries “Down with the New Normal!”

“Covid 19 Masks” by baldeaglebluff is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0

Few phrases inspire more horror in me than “the new normal”. It is falling from the lips of public-health experts and lockdown-loving commentators everywhere. Forget the “old normal” of going maskless into the streets, or ramming yourself into a crowd of thirsty punters at the bar in a pub, or taking a lover without constantly worrying that he or she might make you ill with his or her breath. Such reckless libertinism was for the old world, apparently, the era BC (Before Covid). We are all now heading into the New Normal, a brave new world of forever social-distancing being built for us by a benevolent bureaucracy that simply wants to protect us from disease.

Everywhere you turn there is talk of the new normal. Out will go bare faces, hand-shaking, hugs and sweaty crowds, and in will come masks, elbow-bumping, and sitting six feet away from everyone else at concerts and shows. Bye bye, mosh pits. Yes, even when the vaccine comes, which is when many of us hoped we would see our freedoms restored, the uber-cautious habits we have developed during the Covid crisis should continue, experts say. Jonathan Van-Tam, England’s deputy chief medical officer, said this week that these “habits”, including face-covering, should continue for “many years”. Better safe than sorry, eh?

Van-Tam isn’t alone. Many experts and commentators are predicting, and even welcoming, a decline in social engagement and physical contact as we head into the new normal. “The Coronavirus killed the handshake and the hug — what will replace them?”, asks Time magazine, blissfully unaware of how mad it sounds. “Hugs, high fives, fist bumps, back pats [and] shoulder squeezes” could all disappear after 2020, Time predicts. And it talked to one of many experts who thinks that’s no bad thing. Dr Mark Sklansky, an American cardiologist, told Time he has always hated hand-shaking. “Hands are warm, they’re wet, and we know that they transmit disease very well”, he said. But where “being anti-handshake was fringe thinking” in the past — !! — it is now increasingly common to be handshakephobic, says the wise doctor. Put your wet, diseased paws away, everyone.

And the new normalists are not letting the imminent rolling-out of the vaccine puncture their dreams of a world without clammy handshakes and other forms of sickness-spreading human contact. People expecting to be “back to normal by spring” are “expecting too much” of the vaccine, said a British microbiologist a couple of weeks ago. Even with a vaccine, “we will not be returning to the old normal”, decrees the Lancet. No, apparently “physical distancing and hand hygiene must continue indefinitely”. Maybe these doom-mongers are keen on physical distancing because they know a lot of people would probably like to give them a clout for their miserabilism?

November 28, 2020

Showdown at the O.K. BBQ joint

Filed under: Business, Cancon, Government, Health, Law — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

Toronto police reacted with overwhelming force to a rebellion centred on a small business in Etobicoke, intending to overawe any more potential lockdown opponents on Thursday. Jay Currie is of the “worse before better” school on this particular flare-up of public sentiment:

Well over 100 Toronto police officers and at least ten horses shut down Adamson’s BBQ today. They arrested the proprietor for “trespass” on his own property.

His sin was, of course, opening when Toronto is under “lockdown”. And then opening again and then, today, getting around the changed locks on his premises and opening again.

Now there will be plenty of people who will say, “Well, it’s the law and necessary if we are going to ‘stop the spread'”. But I suspect there will be a strong minority who will say, “Lockdowns don’t work and Costco is in full operation a block away.” Have at it, my interest is in the show of force.

For the City of Toronto and the Province of Ontario, Adamson’s was a point of rebellion which had to be crushed. At any cost. If Adamson’s was able to open the entire pandemic lockdown regime would collapse. So out came 100+ cops and the horses. (I was surprised there was not a tactical vehicle or two.)

Given that there were all of about a hundred people at the BBQ spot today this was more than sufficient force to ensure Adamson’s would not be able to open. No doubt Mayor Tory and Premier Ford are pretty sure the job is done. Adam Skelly, the owner, is cooling his heels in custody pending a bail hearing. (If that hearing goes as I expect, there will be compliance conditions attached to his bail, namely no re-opening.)

Big government relies upon the general complacency of its citizens. A couple of hundred people showing up to a BBQ joint can be handled with a large police presence. A couple of thousand? Much more difficult. 20,000, not a chance.

I keep saying to my very worried wife, “Worse before better.” Which means that before there is any chance that reason, moderation and good government is restored, things have to get a lot worse. On the left, groups like BLM and Antifa work very hard to create martyrs for their narrative. So far with limited success. Adam Skelly may have set in motion the process which will make him a living martyr for common sense and a degree of justice.

As of Friday morning the GoFundMe campaign for Skelly had reached $130,000 (I’m expecting it to be shut down for “reasons” any time soon … but it was still online and accepting donations when I checked at 10am).

November 27, 2020

Is clean water too much to ask for in a first world nation?

Filed under: Bureaucracy, Cancon, Government, Health — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

Ted Campbell explains how he would resolve the TWENTY-FIVE YEAR OLD PROBLEM in the Neskantaga First Nation in northern Ontario, which is one of the many First Nation public health issues the federal government has been promising to address for years:

A few weeks ago I was horrified to read about the 25 year long water problems that continue to plague the Neskantaga First Nation in North-Western Ontario ~ yes you read that right: it’s been 25 years since these Canadians have had clean, potable water! I begged the government to Do Something! and I offered one concrete idea based upon by near certain knowledge of what the Canadian Armed Forces can and have done for people overseas. One of my readers, a retired colonel in our Military Engineering branch confirmed that what I suggested was doable.

Now I read, in a report by Campbell Clark in the Globe and Mail, that the main problems are a combination of political over-promising and bureaucratic ineptitude. I am going to blame Justin Trudeau for pretty much all of the political over-promising: he made it a centrepiece of his 2015 election campaign and then totally failed to follow through. He has to wear at least a large part of the bureaucratic ineptitude, too, because he’s been prime minister of Canada for over five years. He’s failed, again.
OK, I can hear you saying: if you’re so smart how would you fix things?

For a start I would stick with the outlines of my earlier proposal: I would ask the Army to help, right now, using existing technology. We would declare this a disaster ~ and if Canadians going without clean water for 25 years doesn’t qualify as a disaster then I don’t know what does ~ and send the Canadian Armed Forces’ Disaster Assistance Response Team (the DART) to the Neskantaga First Nation and tell them to fix whatever needs fixing ~ using the Indigenous Services department’s budget. When they finished there we would buy them a new water purification system and send them the next First Nation that has a water disaster on its hands. People overseas will have to wait or we’ll have to build a second DART.

Next I would ask the Army and the Canadian manufacturers of water purification systems to work together with First Nations corporations, like Matawa First Nations Management, to develop (at the Indigenous Services department’s expense) concrete, workable plans to install, operate and maintain, over their complete life-cycle, water purification and waste disposal systems and the electrical power and the power and water distribution systems necessary to support them.

After this long, it may not be that the government can’t deliver these services, it might be that the government has deliberately chosen not to deliver.

November 12, 2020

Puritans let no pandemic go to waste

Filed under: Britain, Government, Health — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

In Spiked, Annabel Denham illustrates how the ongoing Wuhan Coronavirus pandemic has enabled and encouraged nanny state thinking:

Not actually the official symbol of Britain’s National Health Services … probably.

Over the course of the past seven months, we have seen every indulgence come under fire for its supposed role not just in transmitting coronavirus but also in causing any excess deaths. Cast your mind back to the start of the crisis, when the World Health Organisation launched its #HealthyAtHome campaign, advising us to shun butter and sugary drinks, despite there being little evidence such a move would serve to limit the spread or impact of Covid-19.

Then there was the dismally weak Chinese study, which found smokers were more likely to become seriously ill from Covid, which was warmly received by the public-health establishment. It handed them their smoking gun, until it became clear smokers were significantly less likely to actually contract the disease in the first place.

Now we have the destruction of the pub industry. First there was the 10pm curfew, imposed with little regard for the fact that it would encourage house parties held in far less safe environments than heavily regulated pubs or restaurants. Advocates seemed to gloss over the evidence suggesting that less than five per cent of infected individuals contacted by NHS Test and Trace had been in close contact with another person in a hospitality venue. Then there was the clampdown on households mixing, Scotland’s first minister Nicola Sturgeon’s indoor booze ban, and the bizarre insistence that pubs in Tier 2 could only serve alcohol if food was dished out at the same time.

This pandemic has triggered renewed fervour among nanny-state obsessives – no more so than among those determined to take down the food industry. You can bet that with hospitalisations and deaths on the rise again, there will be a commensurate increase in one-sided agitprop from celebrity supporters like Henry Dimbleby or Jamie Oliver. Just last month the latter called on the government to market water – yes, water – to young people as more attractive than soft drinks and proposed an “eat well to stay well” scheme modelled on the government’s Eat Out to Help Out initiative. Meanwhile, this week the government announced that advertising junk foods like sausage rolls and fish fingers would be banned online.

If the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result, then the public-health lobby’s mental wellbeing is surely in doubt. According to a collection of essays by Dolly Theis, long-term advocate of anti-obesity measures, 700 policies have been proposed in Britain over the past 30 years. In reality, these are the same policies renewed, repackaged and ramped up by fanatical single-issue pressure groups, the sort who claim obesity is an epidemic when hundreds of thousands are dying by Covid’s hand.

October 30, 2020

Cancelling Halloween? I thought the Grinch only worked Christmas…

Filed under: Cancon, Government, Health — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

At The Line, Jen Gerson argues against cancelling the Halloween trick-or-treat candy hoarding:

“SHA Halloween ‘trick or treat’” by U.S. Army Garrison Japan is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

Look, I can empathize with the impulse to do something, DO ANYTHING, to stem the concerning growth of COVID-19 cases. But if you were to craft a low-risk family holiday that offered a psychologically necessary reprieve from the joyless grind of the last year, you couldn’t do much better than trick-or-treating.

It’s children (low risk), outdoors (low risk), in masks (low risk), engaging in the briefest possible social interactions (medium risk). Yet Canadians have received mixed advice about the tradition; some jurisdictions have cautioned parents to skip it. Gatineau has, reasonably, restricted Halloween parties, but permitted trick-or-treating with restrictions.

I’ve asked several doctors — The Line‘s personal panel of COVID-19 experts — to weigh in on Halloween. Their responses on trick-or-treating prohibitions ranged from: “(this is) extraordinarily dumb” and “I would write something about it but I wouldn’t be able to express myself without extreme profanity.” To “pretty safe” and “shouldn’t be cancelled” as long as reasonable precautions are enacted — like masking, distancing, and perhaps re-thinking trick-or-treating in apartment buildings. Leaving a bowl filled with candy on the porch, rather than opening the door for every little germy ghoul, is also a reasonable precaution.

One person expressed concern that trick-or-treating would inevitably lead to adult schmoozing — but this does not bear a resemblance to any version of this tradition that I have ever experienced. The purpose of trick-or-treating is to maximize the efficient collection of candy; any adult who dawdled or took a drink at a neighbour’s house would find himself deeply at odds with his screaming and fitful progeny. But then, I was somebody’s particularly terrible progeny.

Then there’s this piece of advice from Oregon, noted in the video above, in which a beclowned public health official advised against “trick or treat events because of the high risk of people crowding and people congregating in areas close together.”

If your memory has not yet blanked this absurdity out, it’s vaguely similar to the logic of Ottawa public health officials who last April advised against chatting over the fence with a neighbour because: “It kind of starts with that and then a couple more people add on and before you know it you have a parking lot party or a backyard party.”

(Ottawa walked that recommendation back shortly afterward.)

October 27, 2020

Conspiracy theories grow thanks to mistrust of public officials and media

Filed under: Government, Media, Politics, USA — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

It’s commonplace to say that such-and-such a conspiracy theory is merely an intellectual playground for the paranoid and the gullible, but conspiracy theories don’t spontaneously generate — at least not the ones that gain wide audiences. Daniel Miller looks at some of the reasons these theories become attractive and gain adherents:

QAnon alleged clues about the NYC bombing, 10 December 2017.
Wikimedia Commons.

In the wake of six months of mixed-messages and baffling government policies, following four years, if not twenty years, of mystifying imponderables, the concept of a “conspiracy theory” has recently reentered the lexicon of semi-criminalized thought.

In August The New York Times stigmatized anti-lockdown protesters in Berlin as a worrying admixture of “neo-Nazi groups, conspiracy theorists as well as Germans who said they were fed up with the restrictions” and similar language was used about the protesters in London, as social media companies began purging accounts linked to the QAnon conspiracy theory, which conjectures that the world is controlled by a secret global cabal of blood-drinking sex criminals.

Believing conspiracy theories, evidently, is a Bad Thing, but any concept capacious enough to incorporate both the tens, even hundreds of millions of people skeptical about the global political response to SARS-2, and the much smaller number entertaining more involved explanations demands a careful analysis.

Really the first question is who you can trust. One answer is the official authorities, as represented by the esteemed New York Times, but the news website which welcomed the 45th US President to office with three years of spurious coverage of what turned out to be the Russiagate hoax, before pivoting to the historical phantasmagoria of the 1619 Project, no longer strikes everyone as the impeccable source which revealed the existence of Saddam Hussein’s WMD stockpile and links to Al-Qaeda before the 2003 invasion of Iraq, or whose Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Walter Duranty discounted rumours of a 1933 famine in the Soviet Union as “an exaggeration or malignant propaganda.”

This leaves individuals only to their own wits and devices in the face of a puzzling world in which information is everywhere, much of it questionable, not all the facts are available, and many are ultra-politicized, and meanwhile, unknown agendas are being continually carried out.

What’s really going on? As with any speculative enterprise, the problem is to construct a plausible hypothesis by using various models to interpret limited data. There is no question that, at different moments in history, individuals and groups have worked together in secrecy to launch conspiratorial exploits and there is no obvious reason for thinking this practice has now totally ceased. “People of the same trade seldom meet together,” observed Adam Smith in 1776, “even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public.” Still, this is not in itself evidence of any specific plot happening now.

October 11, 2020

QotD: Britain’s National Health Service cult

Filed under: Britain, Bureaucracy, Government, Health, Quotations — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 01:00

The NHS has not served the nation well, if international comparison is the criterion by which it should be judged. For example, when the NHS was founded (when British healthcare was among the best rather than the worst in Europe) the population of France had a life expectancy six years lower than that of Britain; it is now two years higher. The health of the population in Spain improved more under Franco than that of the British under the NHS in the same years. Of course, there are determinants of life expectancy other than healthcare systems, but at the very least the comparisons do not suggest any particular virtue to the NHS.

Survival from many serious illnesses such as cancer, heart attacks and strokes is lower in Britain than in most European countries. Publicity is sometimes given to these statistics but they are not immediately apparent to patients or their relatives, and in any case the NHS is immune to criticism because its deficiencies are assumed to be departures from its essential goodness or the result of inadequate funding.

No number of scandals, such as that of Mid Staffs in which hundreds of patients were neglected to a degree that often defied belief, all in plain sight of a large bureaucracy supposedly devoted to ensuring the quality of patient care, can dent faith in the NHS. Staff committed, and management connived at, acts of cruelty that would have made Mrs Gamp blush. Mr Cameron’s government, anxious not to seem an enemy of the NHS, which would have been politically damaging, swept the scandal under the carpet.

A system whose justification for its nationalisation of healthcare was egalitarianism has failed even in the matter of equality. If anything, the difference between the health of the richest and poorest sections of the population has increased rather than decreased under the NHS.

The gap between the life expectancy of unskilled workers and that of the upper echelons, which had been stable for decades before the foundation of the NHS, began to widen afterwards and is now far wider than it ever was. Again, there are reasons for inequality in health other than the deficiencies of healthcare, the prevalence of smoking and obesity, for example; but if systems are to be judged by their effects, the NHS has failed in its initial goal.

Theodore Dalrymple, “Empire of conformists”, The Critic, 2020-04-29.

October 9, 2020

Speaking in code and public health

Filed under: Government, Health, Technology, USA — Tags: , , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

In The Line, Joshua Hind relates the tragedy that forced US emergency services to wean themselves off their many confusing (and sometimes conflicting) spoken codes and use plain language to help reduce tragic misunderstandings among different emergency response organizations:

“First responders on site of the Lac-Megantic train derailment” by TSBCanada is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

In the beginning, it was standardized, and the best-known codes, like “10-4,” were consistent from town to town or state to state. But it didn’t take long for newer codes to emerge, which often meant different things depending on where you were. Efforts to reorganize the codes every 20 years or so only compounded the problem. On a local level, in any one town, it wasn’t a problem. But when cops or firefighters from different towns had to work together it could lead to disaster.

In 1970, a particularly severe wildfire season in California killed 16 people in a 13-day period and laid bare the cost of bad interagency communication. The rat’s nest of codes, abbreviations, and jargon prevented firefighters from different towns from communicating with the speed and clarity a major disaster demands. To address the problem, the U.S. Forest Service created FIRESCOPE, the first complete system for organizing and managing major incidents. One of the primary principles of this new system was to “develop standard terminology.”

Despite this effort, which later went national and then international (the province of Ontario has its own version, the “Incident Management System”) coded language continued to proliferate. Nearly 30 years after FIRESCOPE was launched, on September 11th, incompatible technology, lack of protocols, and a refusal to harmonize terminology likely contributed to the deaths of 121 firefighters who were caught in the collapse of the North Tower because they either didn’t hear or couldn’t understand the warnings that the building was about to fail.

Which brings us back to 2006, and FEMA’s notice to first responders. After decades of asking agencies to stop using coded language, the federal government made funding contingent on compliance. “The use of plain language in emergency response is a matter of public safety,” the memo’s introduction read. “There simply is little or no room for misunderstanding in an emergency situation.” From that point forward, all interdepartmental communication would have to be un-coded. A fire would be called “fire.” A shooting would be “a shooting.” And if you needed help, you’d say “HELP!”

Police, fire departments and paramedics slowly but surely got on board and started using some form of the incident management system which included plain language. As use of the system spread, other sectors, like large music festivals and other live events, began adopting the concepts to better synchronize public safety programs with the first responders who support them. Today it’s not unusual for producers, technicians and event security staff to attend training at the police college right next to fire captains and police officers.

Then COVID-19 happened, and we realized that no one had told Public Health.

September 30, 2020

The feds go trampling all over provincial responsibilities again

Filed under: Cancon, Government, Health, Law — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

Ted Campbell suggests that even a cursory reading of the constitution does not give the federal government the power to trespass (again) in what is clearly, legally, a provincial government area of responsibility:

“The Fathers of Confederation”
The original painting by Robert Harris (1884) was destroyed in the 1916 Parliament Building fire, and this image for the “Gallery of Canadian History” series of lithographs by Confederation Life Insurance Company is based on a photograph by James Ashfield (1885).
Libraries and Archives Canada item ID number 3013194. http://central.bac-lac.gc.ca/.redirect?app=fonandcol&id=3013194&lang=eng

[T]he Parliament of Canada should look to §91. Here is what the Constitution says are the areas of national government’s concern: The Public Debt and Property; The Regulation of Trade and Commerce; Unemployment insurance; The raising of Money by any Mode or System of Taxation; The borrowing of Money on the Public Credit; Postal Service; The Census and Statistics; Militia, Military and Naval Service, and Defence; The fixing of and providing for the Salaries and Allowances of Civil and other Officers of the Government of Canada; Beacons, Buoys, Lighthouses, and Sable Island; Navigation and Shipping; Quarantine and the Establishment and Maintenance of Marine Hospitals; Sea Coast and Inland Fisheries; Ferries between a Province and any British or Foreign Country or between Two Provinces; Currency and Coinage; Banking, Incorporation of Banks, and the Issue of Paper Money; Savings Banks; Weights and Measures; Bills of Exchange and Promissory Notes; Interest; Legal Tender; Bankruptcy and Insolvency; Patents of Invention and Discovery; Copyrights; Indians, and Lands reserved for the Indians; Naturalization and Aliens; Marriage and Divorce; The Criminal Law, except the Constitution of Courts of Criminal Jurisdiction, but including the Procedure in Criminal Matters; The Establishment, Maintenance, and Management of Penitentiaries; and Such Classes of Subjects as are expressly excepted in the Enumeration of the Classes of Subjects by this Act assigned exclusively to the Legislatures of the Provinces.

In that looooong list I can find more than adequate justifications for ministers and government departments that are responsible for: finance and revenue; industry, trade, and commerce; defence; foreign affairs; transport; fisheries and oceans; citizenship and immigration; health; and for independent agencies like the Bank of Canada, Canada Post and Statistics Canada. I cannot find anything that says we need a Minister for Women and Gender Equality, nor one for Diversity, Inclusion and Youth nor, especially, Ministers for Canadian Heritage and Middle Class Prosperity.

A lot of things have changed since 1867; the telegraph was still fairly new and innovative, a practical telephone wouldn’t be invented until ten years after confederation and the first useful long-haul radio transmission and reception, from Britain to Signal Hill in St John’s didn’t come until the dawn of the 20th century, thus ideas like the CBC, the Internet, Netflix, air traffic control and the North Warning System were far beyond the imagination of the men ~ they were pretty much all men, working in government, back in the 1860s, weren’t they? ~ who drafted the Canadian Constitution.

What was clear to them, based on the United States experiences, was that §90 to §95 which spell out “who does what to whom” were important to the functioning of a federal state, especially to one in which traditional provincial rights and diverse cultures were well established. Now, it is important to remember that in Canada’s long and rich history there were instances, especially during great wars, when the provinces agreed to federal intrusions into their areas of responsibility; this is not one long story of federal bullying. But what seems perfectly clear to me ~ and I suspect to e.g. John Horgan, Jason Kenney, Doug Ford, François Legault and the other premiers is that last week’s Throne Speech marks another major and quite unjustified federal assault on their jurisdictions. What’s happened, according to Manitoba Premier Brian Pallister, is that the provinces have all the health care delivery problems but, thanks, in some part, to tax decisions made in 1942, the feds have all the money. The solution is blindingly obvious: transfer tax “points” as some experts call them, to the provinces so that they, not Justin Trudeau, who have the problems of too few physicians, too few nurses and too few hospital beds also have the money to solve them.

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