{"id":74809,"date":"2020-07-27T05:43:06","date_gmt":"2020-07-27T10:43:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=74809"},"modified":"2020-07-27T05:47:07","modified_gmt":"2020-07-27T10:47:07","slug":"74809","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=74809","title":{"rendered":"Loose"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n\n

It annoys me when writers are carefree with their words.  As Mark Twain pointed out: \u201cThe difference between the almost right word and the right word is really a large matter. \u2019tis the difference between the lightning bug and the lightning.\u201d<\/p>


This article <\/a>starts out saying: “So when a crisis of the magnitude of the COVID-19 global pandemic forces restaurants to close, and their revenue drops to zero overnight, things get particularly dire.”<\/p>

Except it didn’t.  Covid was not the cause, Covid was the excuse.  Restaurants were closed by the government and remain closed to various degrees in various states because of politicians<\/p>

There is no evidence bar patrons in Wisconsin (wide open) are dying in greater numbers than Minnesota (some controls) or California (total ban).  Same virus, diffferent government, different revenue loss,<\/p>

Okay, it’s nit picking.  I get that.  But still, blaming your restaurant woes on a virus is a conceptual error.  It’s not the virus’ fault.  It’s the Governor’s fault.  And we must not forget that because there is always an excuse to take away your rights, if we’re willing to let them.<\/p>

Joe Doakes<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Most journalists – including some NPR “science correspondents” – can’t discern cause and effect<\/em>, or correlation and causation<\/em>, much less the finer points of science. <\/p>\n\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It annoys me when writers are carefree with their words.  As Mark Twain pointed out: \u201cThe difference between the almost right word and the right word is really a large matter. \u2019tis the difference between the lightning bug and the lightning.\u201d This article starts out saying: “So when a crisis of the magnitude of the COVID-19 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[416,4,49],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-74809","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-covid19","category-media","category-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74809","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=74809"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74809\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":74813,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74809\/revisions\/74813"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=74809"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=74809"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=74809"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}