Loose

It annoys me when writers are carefree with their words.  As Mark Twain pointed out: “The difference between the almost right word and the right word is really a large matter. ’tis the difference between the lightning bug and the lightning.”


This article 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.”

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

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,

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.

Joe Doakes

Most journalists – including some NPR “science correspondents” – can’t discern cause and effect, or correlation and causation, much less the finer points of science.

33 thoughts on “Loose

  1. “can’t discern cause and effect, or correlation and causation, much less the finer points of science. “

    they don’t have to — its not in their job description — they are here to tell uswhat to think about science, not to help us understand science.

  2. I get the point, JD, and agree. It is instructive to read the article and understand just why restaurants are so vulnerable to meddling by politicians.

  3. As with everything America has done in regard to Covid-19, it has been inept and incompetent.

    But we are excellent at pretending.

  4. Still waiting on those policy suggestions that are not inept and incompetent. One might think someone is pretending to be adept and competent.

  5. So you have no ideas or suggestions of what could be or could’ve been done better.

  6. Donald Trump brings back cancelled television program, “Virus Briefing With Donald Trump And Friends,” in which he discusses his own genius, his high television ratings, and his unique medical theories before a live audience of government toadies. https://mobile.twitter.com/DPRK_News

    I have a joke about Person, Woman, Man, Camera, TV but the president stole it from me.

  7. I assert Emery Incognito is not a person, it is a placeholder. It is merely a place for the Communist Chinese Army’s propaganda brigade to sow discord and division amongst Americans in aid of Joe Biden’s election campaign, a billion dollar dark money in-kind contribution. Any of dozens of alleged English speakers post to it.

    Which explains why their posts are cut-and-paste pieces that bear no relation to the topic under discussion, never answer questions, and routinely fail the Turing Test. Bots and slaves and telemarketers don’t think for themselves, they say what they’re told to say.

    Prove me wrong.
    .

  8. The President’s failure to advocate forcefully for masks ranks as the most straightforward failure of leadership in my lifetime.

    Buffoonery. But the best buffoonery at least.

  9. It was serious enough that senators were dumping stocks back in January. If Trump bothered to read or hear the daily intel brief he’s supposed to be paying attention to, he knew. And since he knew, his entire reaction has been about minimizing the public image problem.

    For political purposes, Trump continued to listen to his economic advisors instead of medical experts until the virus was widespread.

    Trump was completely unprepared and unfit to handle this national emergency. Who knew?

  10. ^^^ Which explains why their posts are cut-and-paste pieces that bear no relation to the topic under discussion, never answer questions, and routinely fail the Turing Test. Bots and slaves and telemarketers don’t think for themselves, they say what they’re told to say.

  11. “The President’s failure to advocate for masks…” How so? I’ve seen numerous experts arguing both sides of that issue, so it’s obviously not cut and dried. If they work, why do some states let criminals out of jail?

  12. jdm on July 27, 2020 at 3:40 pm said:
    But Terry

    Exactly.

    Berg has asserted, rightly, that this blog is his property. But it is the people that come back, day after day to read and comment that make it a success.

    I’ve been a daily reader and commentator since the day SITD started. I know many of the commentors personally; Mitxh and I are personally acquainted, and I consider him a friend. But I’m officially boycotting SiTD starting Now.

    I’m all for free speech, and enjoy taking on leftist reprobates as much as anyone. But the moist, pale, legless creature calling itself “Emery” has crossed my line not once, not twice, but 3 times now.

    Forget the fact that he is engaging in *exactly and precisely* the same behavior that got DG booted. This piece of shit has crossed *my* line. He’s done and written things that would have earned him an ass beating if he had the balls to do them in my presence.

    First, he mocked my wife from the safety of his keyboard.

    Second, he mocked the death of Joe Doakes brother.

    And now he has made a pathetic, but authentic attempt to doxx MP.

    That’s 3 strikes in my book, I’m not here to have leftist’s wipe their asses on me, or my friends, but evidently Mitch is not impressed. My control of who stays and goes around here is limited to 1 person; me. And I’m out.

    MP, I have your email. I’ll contact you before I travel North next time; I owe you beers!

  13. This is why I left last time but decided to come back to test the water again. And I see not much changed in respect to Mitch allowing troll bots, as is proven on this thread, to threadjack and derail on-topic discussion. Mitch, this IS your blog, but you are hardly in control.

  14. Well, Emery, you clown.

    Since even the “expert”, your hero Dr. FAUXci, followed the lies told by the Chinese and was saying early on that “there was nothing to worry about with the virus” and “you don’t need to wear a mask” to “you should wear one” to “masks are largely symbolic” to “wear one”, then after he throws out the first pitch at a baseball game, he’s caught sitting in the stands, between two people, without a mask on. He lied again saying that he was taking a drink, but had no drink in his hand! Don’t even get me started on his lies about HCQ. We saw that whole lie debunked AGAIN yesterday with a cadre of front line doctors testifying that it does work and that the whole covid response was bunk.
    Finally, the admission and proof that the number of cases and deaths from the virus, are being inflated, by stuff like this:

    https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2020/07/not-tested-600000-accidentally-told-covid-19/

    So we can remove 600,000, as well as many more, “cases” from the totals immediately.

    Once again though, make sure that you are first in line to get your “vaccination” so that Billy Gates and FAUXci can profit.

  15. When the people you need to support your argument behave like deranged conspiracy theorists your argument might be a deranged conspiracy theory.

  16. This is hardly conspiracy theory, except when deranged leftists say it is.

    https://beforeitsnews.com/eu/2020/07/nobody-needs-to-die-frontline-doctors-storm-d-c-claiming-thousands-of-doctors-are-being-silenced-on-facts-and-treatments-for-covid-2659258.html

    Apparently, FakeBook, TWITter and Google are now the thought and free speech police, because they have censored this video, but, by the time they did, it was top performing FakeBook post in the world yesterday afternoon, with 17 million views.

  17. Hydroxychloroquine — Recovery trial results finally out — and hopefully puts nail in coffin. Out of 4700 people randomized… HCQ did NOT lower Covid-19 mortality. It anything it was trending in wrong direction. ~ Eric Feigl-Ding Epidemiologist & Health Economist —
    FAS COVID Taskforce Steering Committee. COVID updates & analyses
    https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.07.15.20151852v1

  18. All,

    I value my comment section. Lots. As “Chopper” notes, my readers are why this blog has kept going years after most other blogs got abandoned.

    And I value commenters with different points of view – partly to avoid things becoming stale, and partly because I love watching, and learn much from, all the ways my regular readers – some of the smartest, sharpest people I’ve ever met (literally and/or virtually) flense most ‘progressive’ arguments.

    I honor requests for pseudonymity. And I tolerate a lot of abuse of my policy – as I did for years with the late, but now permanently-banned “Dog Gone”, whose identity I continue to conceal even after she flagrantly abused her familiarity with my own family. That – not her constant thread-jacking and pooping and running – was why she got banned, and will stay that way forever).

    That includes “Emery” and “Emery Incognito” – who I’m fairly certain are different people, although I’m not sure everyone believes this.

    Now, Chopper brought up a couple of allegations that, I’m sorry to say, I’m not familiar with – because there are stretches where I don’t spend nearly enough time reading the comment section. Mea Culpa – I’ve got a mom in memory care, lots of work to do, and things sometime slip.

    The third allegation – figuring out Mammuthus’ email address – is distasteful, but not really rocket surgery given the way this blog presents commenter info.

    Mocking the death of Joe Doakes’s brother – I missed this, but would welcome a pointer. If true – well, Emery, that’s kinda awful.

    Mocking commenters’ family members for whatever reason, when yours are concealed from the same abuse? Hello – 2007 called and wants its algae-brained pre-“cancel” leftyblogger cancel tactics back. Again – I’d appreciate a pointer before I do anything.

    Everyone – clean up your act. I’m not running some bullshit leftyblog or City Pages here.

  19. Hydroxychloroquine…

    …is not the subject of this thread.

    Have you considered starting your own blog?

  20. I felt it dovetailed into the BH429 conspiracy regarding Physicians being silenced because of their ‘unique’ and ‘unconventional’ Covid-19 theories.

  21. I’m not one of those who wants to hammer on Fauci or anyone else in this whole debacle, but I dare say we’d be arguing a bit less if those putting out the prognostications would have been a little more open about the confidence ranges of this kind of analysis and how they move around as human action changes the equation. If instead of “600k” or “1.2 million) or whatever, someone said “somewhere between 100k and 2 million with some adjustments for human action, sorry it’s not tighter but this kind of thing is tough to predict and here’s why”, I think the pushback would have been a lot less harsh.

  22. These days if you express the opinion that the epidemiologists have no idea how the virus spreads you will be “silenced.”
    What are the chances of getting covid-19 while shopping? Howabout while enjoying at an outdoor activity with people who are apparently healthy?
    The worst “elites” in world history are running this country. Worse than the Nazis. They are so stupid they don’t even know how stupid they are.

  23. It should be obvious that if the epidemiologists tell you that can expect anywhere from 60,000 to 2,000,000 deaths from covid-19, you can’t make public policy on their models. Good grief, it is like our political leaders failed kindergarten.

  24. MP, believe it or not, people do this all the time–it’s really the nature of the beast, where you’ve got a couple of early points and an exponential growth model. Get a little error on the first couple of points, your confidence ranges become huge.

    Where I differ with policy is in that the healthy are quarantined instead of the sick. Far more expensive and disruptive, how many people have died, or are going to die too young, because routine appointments were not completed?

  25. In regards to BH429’s comment in support of hydroxychloroquine

    Former FDA head Scott Gottlieb: “We can definitively say hydroxychloroquine doesn’t work”

    Former FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb, who served under President Trump, told MSNBC on Wednesday that hydroxychloroquine “definitively” does not work as a coronavirus treatment.
    https://www.axios.com/hydroxychloroquine-coronavirus-scott-gottlieb-trump-a7b60575-91db-4239-8c86-59b993c55358.html?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=organic&utm_content=1100

  26. Average US coronavirus deaths:

    Right now: 1,015 deaths per day
    5 days ago: 848 deaths per day
    10 days ago: 768 deaths per day
    15 days ago: 749 deaths per day
    20 days ago: 588 deaths per day

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.