The House Democrats unveiled their tax plan to (partially fund) their $3.5 trillion human infrastructure plan on Monday.

The tax proposal is estimated to raise $2.1 trillion in taxes over the next 10 years.

However, this is before the Democrats gives away $1.2 trillion in tax credits to other taxpayers for housing subsidies, child care, energy and other tax credits. That means the total net revenue gained over the next decade is only $871 billion.

As I predicted might happen a month ago, part of the money is to extend the current expanded refundable child tax credit through 2025 which was scheduled to be in place for only 2021 as a Covid relief measure.

The child tax credit is supposed to revert to a $2,000 annual amount in 2022. Let's see if that happens. It is never easy taking money away from anyone. That is especially true in an election year.

Let's put those tax increase dollars in context.

The Democrats want to increase spending by $3.5 trillion.

The federal government is already facing a $3 trillion budget deficit for the current fiscal year ending September.

This proposed tax increase is the largest in several decades and yet it does not come close to matching the proposed spending increase.

Beyond that, the tax increase only covers less than 10% of the annual current deficit spending of the United States!

Isn't it great to know that we are being guided by government leaders who want to insure we are on a sound financial platform for the future of those children that they claim to care so much about?

The Democrats are saying that their proposal would target rich corporations and individuals for the new revenue.

This would include raising the top individual tax rate to 39.6%. In addition, those with incomes above $5 million would be subjected to an additional surcharge of 3%. Capital gains rates would also increase from 20% to 25%.

CNBC reporter Robert Frank highlights what the top combined federal, state and local tax rates would be in some large population centers if the Democrat proposal becomes law.

I hope the voters in New York, California and New Jersey are not surprised by this. Large majorities in those places voted for Biden and the Democrats. They are getting what they voted for.

% of vote for Biden in 2020.

NYC   76%

CA      64%

NJ      57%

It makes you wonder how many "rich" people will be left in these areas after all is said and done?

The Democrats are also proposing to raise the corporate tax rate from 21% to 25% and cut the estate tax exemption in half.

As bad as this may seem, the tax proposal is actually much less severe than Joe Biden's proposal.

The Wall Street Journal put this simplified chart together to compare current law, Biden's proposal and the House Democrat proposal.

Source; The Wall Street Journal

It is important to remember, that unlike most other countries, corporations in the United States also typically bear corporate state taxes as well.

Adding in the average state taxes brings the current U.S. tax rate to 25.7%. This means that the Democrat proposal really would raise the corporate levy to 30% when you compare it to other countries around the world.

For perspective, below are the 2021 corporate tax rates for other countries that the United States competes with economically or strategically.

Ireland                   12.5%

United Kingdom   19%

Russia                     20%

Switzerland            21.2%

Sweden                   22%

China                      25%

Canada                   26.7%

Korea                      27.5%

Japan                      29.7%

Germany                29.9%

In effect, the Democrat proposal would take the United States from about the middle of the pack in corporate taxes to again having one of the highest corporate tax rates in the world.

I understand that it is popular to dump on the rich. It is easy to argue that they should pay more. 

Of course, it doesn't seem to matter how much the "rich" pay. It is never enough as far as the liberals are concerned. There never seems to be an amount that is considered "fair".

Liberals also never seem to make the connection that the "rich" they demonize are the ones who risk their money and capital in creating jobs and opportunities for everyone else. Nothing happens in a free market economy unless those "rich" have the incentive to part with their money.

I am old enough to remember previous plans to "tax the rich."

In the 1990's, an excise tax was placed on luxury items such as expensive cars, private planes, yachts, jewelry and furs. It was intended to "tax the rich".

However, within a year of enactment, yacht sales had fallen by 86%.  An estimated 25,000 workers in boat building lost their jobs.  Sales of planes, jewelry, furs and luxury cars also suffered. Revenues from the tax came nowhere close to matching what was  projected.

The law was repealed less than three years later as thousands of workers lost their jobs in these industries. What happened? Instead of paying the tax the rich just stopped buying expensive cars, boats, aircraft, furs and jewelry. The tax did not hurt the rich. It did result in thousands of workers losing their jobs who made and sold these things to the rich.

The little revenue that was raised was more than offset by the taxes that disappeared as a result of the lost wages and the unemployment benefits that had to be paid to the workers who paid the price with their jobs.

It is the "rich" who also fund most of the philanthropic causes in the country. 55% of the charitable deductions claimed on 2018 tax returns were from those earning more than $1 million. according the IRS Statistics on Income. (2018 is the most recent year that data is available).

For example, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City had its annual Met Gala fundraiser last night.

Tickets to the event were $35,000 each and tables ranged from $200,000-$300,000.

I guess it was just the perfect event for Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to make a political statement with her dress for the evening.

A "Tax the Rich" dress at an event that has nothing but rich people attending?

Very classy.

Credit: CNN, Getty Images

Of course, AOC wanted to make it clear that she did not attend because she was "rich" She only attended because she was invited as an elected official and is a dedicated PUBLIC SERVANT.

AOC is worried about haters but she shows up with a dress telling everyone there that they need to pay more in taxes? 

Making a political statement at a fundraiser is an example of the civility that we are told is missing in society today?

I guess it would also be fine to have a woman show up in a "Choose Life" dress at a Planned Parenthood fundraiser or in a "Send Them Home" dress at a fundraiser for illegal immigrants. 

If you think this fashion statement is questionable consider what Kim Kardashian West wore to the Met Gala.

Credit: CNN, Getty Images

The theme of the Gala was "In America: A Lexicon of Fashion".

It is unclear to me where in the lexicon of American fashion this fits in?

Is she angling to be the next Bat Woman?

Is she showing solidarity with women now oppressed in Afghanistan by the Taliban?

Is she modeling a new look for personal protective equipment for the next phase of the pandemic?

What we saw at the Met Gala might be evidence that all rich people have cents in their bank account but that does not mean they all have common sense.

The reality is that most people with money got it because they have some sense and they keep their money by not doing something stupid with it. Most are not going to sit back and do nothing if someone wants to take it.

We saw it in the 1990's.

They might decide to buy a lake house and a small board rather than a luxury yacht. 

They might decide their wife does need a diamond necklace or fur for her birthday. Take her to Italy instead.

They might decide they don't need to risk their money on a new business when they will share more than half of the profits with the government.

They might decide they don't need to live in New York City or San Francisco. Miami or Austin will be just fine.

The fact is that when politicians put a target on the rich it is usually everyone else that gets hit.

The great economist Walter E. Williams explained why unintended consequences are so common when the "rich" are targeted in these tax raising schemes such as the luxury tax of the 1990's.

Congress repealed the luxury tax in 1993 after realizing it was a job killer and raised little net revenue. Why did congressional dreams of greater revenues turn into a nightmare? Kennedy, Mitchell and their congressional colleagues simply assumed that the rich would act the same after the imposition of the luxury tax as they did before and that the only difference would be more money in the government's coffers. Like most politicians then and now, they had what economists call a zero-elasticity vision of the world, a fancy way of saying they believed that people do not respond to price changes. People always respond to price changes. The only debatable issue is how much and over what period.

History may not repeat but it surely rhymes.

Joe Biden has announced that he is ordering the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) to develop a rule that will require all employers with 100 or more employees to have all of their workers vaccinated or undergo weekly Covid-19 tests.

The rule would impact over 80 million private sector workers.

Let's take a look at the legal foundation that Biden is attempting to use to support this vaccine mandate in order to assess it legality and constitutionality.

What is OSHA? This article explains.

OSHA is a federal agency that was created with the Occupational Safety and Health Act of 1970 to ensure safe and healthy conditions for workers. The act, signed by President Richard Nixon, aimed to ensure that employers provide workers with an environment that is “free from recognized hazards to safety and health, such as exposure to toxic chemicals, excessive noise levels, mechanical dangers, heat or cold stress, or unsanitary conditions,” according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s site.

Biden has ordered OSHA to act on the vaccine mandate presumably by using its "Emergency Temporary Standards" authority. OSHA lays out what that authority is on its website.

Under certain limited conditions, OSHA is authorized to set emergency temporary standards that take effect immediately and are in effect until superseded by a permanent standard. OSHA must determine that workers are in grave danger due to exposure to toxic substances or agents determined to be toxic or physically harmful or to new hazards and that an emergency standard is needed to protect them. Then, OSHA publishes the emergency temporary standard in the Federal Register, where it also serves as a proposed permanent standard. It is then subject to the usual procedure for adopting a permanent standard except that a final ruling should be made within six months. The validity of an emergency temporary standard may be challenged in an appropriate U.S. Court of Appeals.

Note that this provision is only to be used under "certain limited conditions", it must be an "emergency temporary standard" and OSHA must determine that workers are in "grave danger".

Considering we are 18 months into the Covid-19 pandemic it seems that using OSHA here is quite a stretch.

In particular, arguing that workers are in "grave danger" now after living and working with Covid-19 for 18 months (and with vaccines available for over 9 months) seems far fetched.

For context, here is a CDC chart that shows deaths by age from Covid from January 1, 2020 to September 8, 2021 for every age from 20 to 85+.

Covid Deaths by Age, 1/1/20-9/8/21 Source: https://data.cdc.gov/NCHS/Provisional-COVID-19-Death-Counts-by-Age-in-Years-/3apk-4u4f/data

How many workers are there who are 85 years or older? If they are working, how many are unvaccinated?

For perspective, here is a chart that compares Covid deaths to all deaths for those ages 64+. These are people who are not generally in the workforce and yet Covid deaths are still a mere fraction of deaths from other causes. In most cases, the numbers are not even visible in the chart.

Covid Deaths vs. All Deaths by Age (64-85+), 1/1/20-9/8/21 Source: https://data.cdc.gov/NCHS/Provisional-COVID-19-Death-Counts-by-Age-in-Years-/3apk-4u4f/data

The reality is that there have been more Covid deaths in those 85 years of age and over than all of the deaths for those 67 years and under since the beginning of the pandemic.

Is this a situation of "grave danger" to workers?

What makes even less sense is arguing that VACCINATED workers are in grave danger because of unvaccinated workers.

If the vaccine is as protective as Biden, Fauci, the FDA and CDC argue why would any worker who is vaccinated be in grave danger of a co-worker who is unvaccinated? 

Take a step back and consider why this is being done.

Is this being done because the vaccines work...or because they don't work...for their intended purpose of preventing disease?

If they were working as intended why would you need to protect the vaccinated from the unvaccinated?

How well are the vaccinations working?

No one was vaccinated last year.

74% of the U.S. population eligible for the Covid vaccines has now received at least one dose. 93% of the age 65+ population has received at least one dose.

Almost two-thirds of the eligible population is fully vaccinated as this chart from the CDC shows.

This should have resulted in a massive success in taming the virus based on what we were told.

What has been the actual result?

There are currently 4 times as many cases and two times as many deaths from Covid right now as there were at this time last year.

This is justification for mandating vaccinations for everyone?

Those who argue that the vaccine mandate is constitutional typically point to the U.S. Supreme Court case of Jacobson v. Massachusetts which was decided in 1905.

In this case Massachusetts had passed a law allowing cities to require residents to be vaccinated against smallpox. The city of Cambridge adopted such an ordinance. The ordinance required that all adults over the age of 21 be vaccinated or be fined the sum of five dollars.

Jacobson was a Swedish immigrant who had been vaccinated against smallpox as a child in Sweden and had suffered an adverse reaction. His son also had experienced an adverse reaction when he was vaccinated. This was the basis for the refusal of Jacobson to comply.

Jacobson challenged the Massachusetts law claiming that his 14th Amendment rights had been violated.

There are several distinctions between the Jacobson case and what we see today with the potential Covid vaccine mandates.

First, the Supreme Court was ruling on a state law mandate. Further, that state law only authorized cities to pass a vaccine mandate within that state. That case did not involve a broad national mandate. It was localized and targeted. 

Second, smallpox has a much different risk profile than Covid. Smallpox had a case fatality rate of up to 30%. 

The overall case fatality rate (CFR) for Covid-19 right now in the United States (for all ages) is 1% according to World in Data..

I have seen other estimates that put it as high as 1.5%.

However, that number is heavily tilted upwards due to the mortality risk of those over age 85 where the CFR is over 10%. A large portion of the working age population is well below 1% and a significant number is close to .1%.

As this chart points out, the risk of death from Covid for those under age 40 is less than the risk of dying in an auto accident.

Source: https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.04.09.21255193v1.full

For another perspective, here are California's reported confirmed cases and Covid deaths by age through September 8. This works out to a CFR of 1.5% overall (66,257 deaths/4,322,361 cases).

1.5% is a long way from 30%. 

The CFR for the working age population of .5% is a VERY LONG way from the 30% CFR of smallpox.

Cases and Deaths Associated with Covid-19 by Age Group in California Source: https://www.cdph.ca.gov/Programs/CID/DCDC/Pages/COVID-19/COVID-19-Cases-by-Age-Group.aspx

Finally, we have the penalty for non-compliance with the mandate.

In Jacobson, the penalty was a one-time fine of $5.

Biden, through the OSHA rule and the federal employee and contractor mandate, is suggesting that employees are being threatened with termination of their jobs and their loss of their livelihood.

Let's put that in context.

A $5 fine in 1905 inflated into 2021 dollars would be equivalent to $155.12 today.

If Jacobson is such persuasive precedent why is there not just a fine rather than threaten someone's job?

Source: https://www.in2013dollars.com/us/inflation/1905?amount=5

It doesn't seem that the vaccine mandate penalty proposed by Biden is exactly proportional with what the penalty was in Jacobson.

Of course, it just not the worker who is being threatened in this proposal by Biden but OSHA is threatening all employers with a $14,000 fine for every violation involving each employee in which it does not enforce the mandate.

This employer penalty does not exactly seem proportional with the precedent of Jacobson either.

You can make up your own mind but none of this looks constitutional to me.

That is not to say that there might be times when our government would have the authority to infringe on individual rights for the greater good. It is a question of balance.

However, if this is such a time, and this Covid vaccine mandate is used as precedent for some other mandate or restriction on freedom in the future, I dare say there will not be much left of individual rights in the United States of America. 

If there is any doubt that all of this is a blatant attempt to subvert the U.S. Constitution consider the fact that Ron Klain, Biden's Chief of Staff, approvingly retweeted this tweet on Twitter shortly after the OSHA end-run was announced.

I guess he wanted the world to know how "clever" he was in planning all of this. After all, we know that Joe Biden was not capable of doing this by himself.

The problem is that it is an admission that the White House is trying to subvert the Constitution and individual constitutional protections because that is what they are trying to "work-around".

This may prove problematic when the mandate is challenged in court.

Source: https://townhall.com/tipsheet/katiepavlich/2021/09/10/law-professor-points-out-how-bidens-chief-of-staff-may-have-already-blown-the-vaccine-mandate-n2595688?117

George Washington University Law Professor Jonathan Turley, who also happens to be a Democrat, noticed (the retweet) and is explaining how Klain just created a headache for the administration.

"In the law, it is called an admission against interest or an out-of-court statement by a party that, when uttered, is against the party’s pecuniary, proprietary, or penal interests. In politics, it is called just dumb. White House chief of staff Ronald Klain offered a doozy this week when he admitted that the announced use of the authority of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) for a vaccine mandate was a mere 'work around' of the constitutional limit imposed on the federal government," Turley writes on his website. "The problem is that the thing being 'worked around' is the Constitution. Courts will now be asked to ignore the admission and uphold a self-admitted evasion of constitutional protections."

The sad reality is that Biden, Klain and others who are doing this don't care whether what they are doing is constitutional or not.

Their plan is to just use their power to bully employers and Americans to get vaccinated no matter the facts, the data, the science, the law or the Constitution.

They realize they are in so deep with their Covid narrative that there is no return.

They told everyone that if they got vaccinated they could get rid of their masks and return to a normal life. 74% of eligible Americans believed that and did get vaccinated only to see cases quadruple and deaths doubled compared to a year ago.

They are making a bet to see if they can get a few more vaccinated and hope the numbers will come down (which they definitely will at some point with or without the vaccine) so they can claim that their actions made the difference.

They don't care about any harm they cause. Their only objective is to increase the vaccination rate by a few percentage points. 

Here is another Ron Klain tweet from a couple of days ago citing the vaccine mandate at the Veteran's Administration for frontline healthcare workers at VA hospitals that was announced seven weeks ago. 

He is bragging because they moved the fully vaccinated number from 77% to 82% in two months? 

Five points? Really? What exactly is the point?

Is five percentage points worth the disruption, dissension, division and the denigration of constitutional rights that these mandates cause?

Biden, Klain and the Democrats also need something to turn the discussion away from the failure of the Afghanistan withdrawal.

They would rather have their opposition, the media and the news cycle focused on something else.

We ARE in "grave danger".

However, it is not as a result of Covid-19.

It is because of the authoritarian and totalitarian attitudes that have taken control in the country.

Of course, anytime I hear about "grave danger" I cannot help but think of these lines from the movie, "A Few Good Men" starring Tom Cruise and Jack Nicholson.

Source: http://www.subzin.com/quotes/M11625f12c/A+Few+Good+Men/Grave+danger%3F

If there is a time that we need a few good men (and women) it is now.

It just seems exceedingly difficult to find them.

I have written before about the alarming number of confirmed Covid cases on college campuses which have mandated vaccinations for students, faculty and staff.

Duke University mandated the vaccine for all returning students in the Fall. It announced that it would terminate any employee who was not vaccinated by October 1 and that employee would never be allowed to work at Duke in the future.

When school started this Fall 98% of students were vaccinated. 92% of all employees were.

Since classes began students have been required to wear masks indoors and outdoors on campus. There is no indoor dining. Tents have been erected around campus for student meals.

Despite this, Covid cases at Duke are much higher than they were last year when no one was vaccinated.

Through September 6, Duke has had 736 positive cases since August when it started tracking cases for the Fall semester.

Source: https://coronavirus.duke.edu/covid-testing/

For the entire Fall semester last year of August 2-November 20 Duke had 241 cases when no one was vaccinated.

Source: https://coronavirus.duke.edu/covid-testing-old/fall-2020-duke-covid-testing-tracker/

We see a similar situation at Cornell University. 

Cornell has 95% of its students, faculty and staff vaccinated.

Last year between September 1 and September 7 Cornell reported 62 positive cases of Covid.

Source: https://covid.cornell.edu/testing/dashboard/

This year Cornell reported 180 for the same period---three times the number last year when no one was vaccinated.

Source: https://covid.cornell.edu/testing/dashboard/

I thought I would compare these results with three colleges that at this time last year were dealing with huge Covid case surges to see how they are doing this year.

Last year the University of Georgia had 1,417 Covid cases reported in the first week of September.

This year Georgia had 91.

Interestingly, there has been a Covid outbreak among the University of Georgia football team and staff in the last week. All of the cases were among those who had been vaccinated. Head Coach Kirby Smart said this spike in cases was higher than it was anytime in the last year and a half for his team

Source: https://www.msn.com/en-us/sports/ncaafb/georgia-football-coach-says-team-has-covid-19-spike-despite-high-vaccination-rate/ar-AAObRGh

During a teleconference with reporters Monday, Smart said three or four players will miss Saturday's game against the University of Alabama-Birmingham due to the coronavirus.

"For us, we're at our highest spike. And people are talking about vaccinations - well, these are people that are vaccinated. We're talking about breakthroughs, and so that concerns you not only for the players on your team that are unvaccinated, that are playing and not playing, because we want everybody to be safe," Smart said.

Last month, Smart said 90 percent of the team's players, staff members and coaches have been vaccinated against the virus, according to ESPN.

The University of Alabama had 2,378 Covid cases in the first three weeks of the Fall Semester in 2020 among students, faculty and staff.

In the first three weeks this year Alabama has had 416.

Alabama has a vaccination rate of 60% among its students.

My undergraduate alma mater, Miami University, had 1,084 Covid cases at this time last year despite the fact they were not even conducting in-person classes. However, many students were living in off campus housing and socializing when not doing online classes.

This year there are 88 cases (77 students and 11 staff) thru September 6, 2021 with in person classes and students living on campus.

Despite this, Miami is going to mandate vaccinations for the Second Semester  for all students, faculty and staff. Employees who are not vaccinated will be terminated. Students will not be allowed to enroll for the Winter Semester.

Is anyone else curious about what we are seeing in the data?

The colleges with low cases last year and vaccine mandates this year are seeing an explosion of cases right now.

The colleges with high cases last year and no vaccine mandates this year are seeing only a fraction of the cases they saw last year.

What is going on?

Could it be that natural infection has conveyed a much higher degree of immunity and protection against transmission to the community than the vaccines have?

Is this not similar to what we are seeing in comparing the experience of Sweden and Israel?

Sweden did no hard lockdowns, did not employ strict mask mandates and kept their schools open. They focused their efforts on protecting the most vulnerable. Israel did the opposite.

Israel also was a world leader in vaccinating its population. It is already well into distributing booster shots to its population.

Sweden was slower in rolling out vaccines but is now very close to Israel's numbers without considering the boosters.

Sweden was hit pretty hard in two separate earlier waves. However, Sweden has almost no cases of Covid right now while Israel is rising.

More importantly, Sweden has had almost no Covid deaths for the last two months while Israel has seen a sharp increase over the same time period.

Sweden may just be lucky right now and will soon see a seasonality surge as the weather turns colder in that country.

Israel may find its cases going the other way due to more seasonable temperatures in that country.

However, could it be possible that higher natural immunity in the colleges that bore the greatest brunt of the pandemic last year is keeping cases down this year much better than the vaccines are doing?

That may also be the reason that Sweden is faring better than Israel right now.

If you want one more mystery consider this one.

Mongolia was one of the few countries on the face of the earth that had almost no Covid cases for a year into the pandemic.

This chart shows cumulative cases from January 22, 2020 to February 1, 2021.

You can barely see Mongolia at the bottom of the graph.

In February, 2021 Mongolia started vaccinating its population. It has now vaccinated more people than most countries in the world.

Since then, Mongolia has gone from among the nations with the lowest incidence of Covid in the world to where it is now seeing more Covid cases than anywhere else in the world.

Almost all of these cases have arisen after they started the mass vaccination of their population.

There is only one country that is having an almost identical experience right now.

Israel.

What is going on?

How could any of this occur if the vaccines were truly preventing disease and the transmission of the virus?

After seeing this data how do we know that the vaccines are not somehow facilitating the spread of the virus and the development of new variants?

Now consider that the President of the United States wants to mandate that almost every American must be vaccinated and he is going to put the POWER of the federal government (and the dollars it controls) to make sure it happens. 

Where in any of the data above does it suggest that this strategy is the best move now to curb the pandemic?

If this is supported by the SCIENCE why does the DATA not support the science?

If we only had someone who could answer the questions I pose in these pages!

I first heard about the drug Ivermectin a little over a year ago in my research and reading about Covid.

It was a story out of Australia about a doctor in that country who stated that his work indicated that a triple therapy of Ivermectin, zinc and Doxycycline were all approved, available and cost-effective therapeutics that could be used to treat Covid effectively.

This is what Dr. Thomas Borody said about the use of Ivermectin and the other drugs in August of last year.

 "We have a therapy that can fight COVID-19. The medications have been around for 50 years, they are cheap, FDA and TGA approved and have an outstanding safety profile. Why are we just waiting around for a vaccine? To save lives we should be using whatever is safe and available right now. We could lead the world in this fight.

"Australia has some of the best medical and science people in the world -indeed the Ivermectin connection was first discovered by Dr. Kylie Wagstaff's team at Monash University in April. How long do we need to wait before Australian politicians get behind Australian medical science and use 'war room' tactics with safe and approved medications.

Bear in mind that Borody is no ordinary physician and researcher. He is famous for developing the cure for peptic ulcers using a triple antibiotic therapy that is used the world over and has been estimated to save countless lives and millions of dollars in health care costs.

I filed the name Ivermectin away as I had not seen it mentioned in any reports from U.S. doctors at the time.

In my research I found that Ivermectin is a drug typically used to treat parasitic tropical infections such as river blindness. There is also an animal version that is typically prescribed for the treatment of worms in animals.

The drug has been so successful in humans that the discoverers of the drug received the Nobel Prize for Physiology and Medicine in 2015. It was the first time in over six decades the award was given for the treatment of an infectious disease.

Over the succeeding months I began to see more mentions of Ivermectin being used successfully by U.S. physicians. It did not get the publicity that Hydroxychloroquine received but it was steadily  gaining adherents based on my reading and research.

Ivermectin started to get a lot of attention when Dr. Pierre Kory testified before a U.S. Senate committee last December where he made this statement.

"Mountains of data have emerged from many centers and countries around the world showing the miraculous effectiveness of ivermectin, it basically obliterates transmission of this virus. If you take it, you will not get sick."

Kory is not some doctor on the fringes of the medical community either. From 2015-2020 he was an Associate Professor of Medicine at the University of Wisconsin and Critical Care Service Chief, Medical Director, Trauma and Life Support Center at the University of Wisconsin Hospital and Clinics, Madison, WI. Since the Covid pandemic struck he has dedicated himself to treating critically ill Covid patients in New York City, Greenville, SC and Milwaukee, WI. 

A week after Kory testified to the Senate Committee the U.S. FDA (coincidentally?)  issued a statement that people should not take Ivermectin to prevent or treat Covid. The FDA stated that some lab studies had been conducted with the drug but additional testing was necessary to determine whether it was appropriate to use against Covid.

I might note that this statement was made almost nine months ago and there is no word on that additional testing. Why?

The Covid vaccines were conceived, developed, tested and fully deployed in less time.

Ivermectin has been on pharmacy shelves for decades. Almost 4 billion doses have been administered in that time around the world. It is generally considered one of the safest drugs in use today. 

The FDA can approve a completely new and unique vaccine and attest to its safety and efficacy in "preventing" Covid in under nine months but it can't perform tests on Ivermectin in treating Covid in over nine months?

I don't know if Ivermectin is as effective as Drs. Kory, Borody and hundreds of other doctors around the world claim it is.

It just seems that we are owed some truth and honesty about it rather than dismissing it out of hand with no real effort to study it comprehensively.

If you have been paying attention there is a full-fledged effort recently underway to completely discredit and damage Ivermectin and the doctors who have spoken out in favor of its usage.

If you don't believe that, consider this tweet that was actually published by the FDA.

Apparently the FDA has forgotten that it approved the use of Ivermectin for human use back in 1996.

The CDC also recommends that all refugees from the Middle East, Asia, Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean should take Ivermectin as presumptive therapy for intestinal parasites after they arrive in the United States.

This sounds like it would apply to all of the Afghan refugees coming into the country as well as all of the illegal immigrants flooding our Southern border right now.

Source: https://www.cdc.gov/immigrantrefugeehealth/guidelines/overseas-guidelines.html

 

Ivermectin is safe for refugees but not for anyone else?

We also had someone who claimed he was an emergency room physician in Oklahoma who said that gunshot victims could not get treated at the hospitals he served at because there were too many cases of people overdosing on Ivermectin.

This story went viral and was covered by hundreds of media outlets including Rachel Maddow and Rolling Stone.

The only problem was the main hospital which the doctor referenced stated that they had no cases of Ivermectin overdoses and no one was being denied care. The doctor who made the claim also had not worked at the hospital in over two months.

Source: https://www.zerohedge.com/covid-19/rolling-stone-horse-dewormer-hit-piece-debunked-after-hospital-says-no-ivermectin?fbclid=IwAR2I6iQ3ExaC4NBiDDk9I3uEITkc4BKiqdOnYQYrXAiBHxlDbpiiuJ3QAi8

The AP also published a story claiming that 70% of the calls to the Mississippi Poison Control hotline were from people who had ingested Ivermectin. It turns out the actual number was 2%,

For context, consider that there are over 100,000 calls each year to Poison Control centers in the United States with concerns regarding Tylenol that results in 56,000 annual ER visits and 500 deaths. When has that ever been reported in a breathless AP story?

It makes you wonder if something else is at play?

Do stories like this just get published by coincidence?

If you want an excellent read about the doctors who believe in the efficacy and safety of Ivermectin in treating Covid I highly recommend reading this article by Michael Capuzzo.

The article appeared in Mountain Home which is a magazine that Capuzzo and his wife own. Don't let the fact that this article appeared in a relatively unknown regional magazine fool you. Capuzzo is a 4-time Pulitzer prize-nominated reporter with the Philadelphia Inquirer who is a graduate of Northwestern University. The article is well-written and well researched. Warning-it is long---about 10,000 words.

Source: https://www.mountainhomemag.com/2021/05/01/356270/the-drug-that-cracked-covid

If Capuzzo and the doctors he profiles in the article are correct, why isn't Ivermectin our first line of defense against Covid?

For those who don't want to read the entire article let me provide you with a few quotes.

Dr. Paul Marik an endowed professor at the Eastern Virginia Medical School and a world-renowned clinician-researcher who is the second most published critical care doctor in history with more than 500 peer-reviewed papers. 

Marik, along with Kory, have been the leading advocates for Ivermectin use in the United States.

If it was universally distributed at a dose that costs ten American cents in India and about the cost of a Big Mac in the United States, he said, Ivermectin would save countless lives, crush variants, eliminate the need for endless big pharma booster shots, and end the pandemic all over the world.

Now they had discovered another treatment, even more powerful, that could save the world.

It might be argued that Fauci has now endorsed monoclonal antibody treatments but this curiously was only done after the FDA approval of the Pfizer vaccine a few weeks ago.

One of the international Covid doctors who supports the use of Ivermectin may have explained it better than anyone. 

The doctors promoting Ivermectin are too close to affecting the most sensitive organ on humans--the wallet.

In Argentina, Professor and doctor Hector Carvallo, whose prophylactic studies are renowned by other researchers, says all his scientific documentation for Ivermectin is quickly scrubbed from the Internet. “I am afraid,” he wrote to Marik and his colleagues, “we have affected the most sensitive organ on humans: the wallet...”

What is the truth about Ivermectin?

Is it useless as a treatment for Covid? That is why my doctor told me.

Is it dangerous? My doctor told me he would not prescribe it because if I died after using it he could get sued.

Or is it just a threat to someone's wallet? 

If Ivermectin works would there be as much demand for the vaccines? For the boosters?  

It almost assuredly would change the entire risk/benefit profile in taking the vaccine for millions of people.

It most definitely would decimate the argument for vaccine mandates.

This is the way some look at the truth about Ivermectin on Twitter.

Is it just a coincidence as well that Merck and Pfizer are both working on anti-viral drugs that are very similar to the formulation of Ivermectin but would probably cost about $3,000 per dose compared to the $2 cost for Ivermectin which is a generic medicine not under patent.

Is Ivermectin getting too close to that most sensitive of all organs?

What do we make of the fact that in Africa there is a sharp division in countries that use Ivermectin regularly to treat parasitic infections versus those that don't?

Is this just a coincidence?

What about this?

Here are the results of two states in India that implemented a mass Ivermectin home program.

Source: https://covid19criticalcare.com/ivermectin-in-covid-19/epidemiologic-analyses-on-covid19-and-ivermectin/

Source: https://covid19criticalcare.com/ivermectin-in-covid-19/epidemiologic-analyses-on-covid19-and-ivermectin/

And this?

This chart shows the experience in Peru which was using Ivermectin treatment aggressively until a new President came into office and put restrictions on its use.

Source: https://covid19criticalcare.com/ivermectin-in-covid-19/epidemiologic-analyses-on-covid19-and-ivermectin/

They may all be mere coincidences.

Ivermectin may have nothing to do with the results since there are a lot of factors in the rise and fall of cases and deaths with Covid.

It also might be a coincidence when we hear about the success patients have had after being treated with Ivermectin. The argument is made that they might have gotten better anyway. There are too many confounding factors to make a definitive statement. That very well could be true.

However, the same could be true of all the testimonials I am hearing these days about people who have contracted Covid after being vaccinated. How often do I hear "thankfully they were vaccinated or it would have been much worse"? How do we really know that? Who is to say they would not have a mild case or recovered without the vaccine? Millions did in the year before vaccines were available.

Like many things about Covid, I don't know.

Unfortunately, too many others think they know, when they don't, but they persist in telling us they KNOW ALL.

With Ivermectin, as with many other things involving Covid, most of us are left not knowing what to believe.

I saw a recent quote from Friedrich Von Hayek which summarizes my thoughts pretty well on Ivermectin and a lot of other things right now.

I prefer true but imperfect knowledge, even if it leaves much undetermined and unpredictable, to a pretense of exact knowledge that is likely to be false.

                                                  -Friedrich Von Hayek, Nobel Prize lecture, 1974

May truth (whatever it may be) prevail in the end.

The arrival of the fall hurricane season is always accompanied by claims that these violent storms are unprecedented and are the result of man-made climate change.

So it was over the last week as Hurricane Ida hit the Louisiana Gulf Coast and swept up through the Northeast.

Source: https://www.npr.org/2021/08/30/1032442544/how-climate-change-is-fueling-hurricanes-like-ida

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2021/09/02/world/ida-climate-change-floods-rain-intl/index.html

Never mind that if you look at the data regarding hurricane activity over the years it does not support the contention that hurricanes are increasing in number or strength.

For example, it seems that Louisiana is always bearing the brunt of hurricanes each year.

The data actually shows that hurricane activity has slightly declined over the course of the last 170 years according to Dr. Roy Spencer who is a climatologist and former NASA scientist who writes about climate issues.

This chart uses data from the official NOAA National Hurricane Center (NHC) statistics and specifically looks at Louisiana.

Source: https://www.drroyspencer.com/2020/08/even-with-laura-louisiana-hurricanes-have-not-increased-since-1851/

The same is true for hurricanes generally. They are not getting worse. However, the damage they do is worse. Spencer explains.

Source: https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/tornadoes/202013

I wrote about this last April in a blog post titled "Tornado Watch".

Before you believe that tornado activity is trending up, bear in mind that tornado reporting is much better today than it was 30, 40 or 50 years ago. Nothing occurs on the face of our earth today that is not reported and chronicled. It was not always that way. In years past, many smaller tornadoes were never recorded as they meandered harmlessly across a Kansas field.

The advent of Doppler radar in the early 1990's made it possible to document every tornado no matter how small. The fact is that most tornadoes are category f0 or f1 and they comprise 80% of all tornadoes.

A better perspective in comparing tornado activity over the years is to focus on those storms that are rated f3+ to f5+ on the Fujita scale. These are the tornadoes that cause the most severe damage and would clearly have been captured in previous statistics.  

This data indicates that tornado activity is actually less severe in the United States today than it was previously and has actually been trending downwards in recent years. For example, 2018 had the lowest number of f3+ tornadoes since the NOAA started publishing tornado activity in 1954.

Data from NOAA indicates that F3+ tornadoes have decreased in number in the last thirty years compared to the 1954-1985 period.

Source: Source: https://www.aei.org/carpe-diem/inconvenient-weather-fact-for-earth-day-the-frequency-of-violent-tornadoes-fell-to-a-record-low-in-2018/

This is another chart that plots EF3+ tornadoes from 2005-2020.

Source: http://www.atmo.arizona.edu/students/courselinks/fall16/atmo336s2/lectures/sec2/tornadoes.html

Source: https://www.nifc.gov/fire-information/nfn

 

Source: https://twitter.com/Tony__Heller/status/1433782601580310534/photo/1

Source: https://twitter.com/dlacalle_IA/status/1432764565129994248

Source: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/frsc.2021.696381/full?utm_source=fweb&utm_medium=nblog&utm_campaign=ba-sci-frsc-keeping-track-of-greenhouse-gas-emission-reduction-progress-and-targets-in-167-cities-worldwide

Source: https://e360.yale.edu/features/despite-pledges-to-cut-emissions-china-goes-on-a-coal-spree

Source: https://www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-will-china-build-hundreds-of-new-coal-plants-in-the-2020s

A total of 247 gigawatts of coal power is now in planning or development, nearly six times Germany’s entire coal-fired capacity. China has also proposed additional new coal plants that, if built, would generate 73.5 gigawatts of power, more than five times the 13.9 gigawatts proposed in the rest of the world combined. Last year, Chinese provinces granted construction approval to 47 gigawatts of coal power projects, more than three times the capacity permitted in 2019.

Source: https://ourworldindata.org/covid-deaths

It is hard to believe that September is already here.

September is also the month that I have the best chance of wishing you "Happy Birthday" and being right.

A study of all births in the United States between 1994 and 2014 showed that September was the most popular birth month.

In fact, September has nine of the top ten birthdays for the entire  year. Those nine days are actually all between September 9 and September 20.

If you turn back the clock 40 weeks you can also determine that mid-December would also be a popular period for conceptions to occur. Is it the cold weather or the holiday mood?

Source: https://www.rd.com/article/september-popular-birth-month/

The least common days to be born are all holidays: December 25 is the least common followed by January 1, December 24 and July 4. This suggests to me that nature has been overriden by either a doctor who has other plans for the holiday or a family who does not like the idea of having their child's birthday overshadowed by other events.

Notice in the chart above the spike in births on December 28, 29 and 30? That might suggest some tax planning is also in play as well.

That might be true even more so in 2021 with a $3,600 refundable tax credit available for every child age 5 and under. Will there be any children born in the first week of January, 2022?

What about the most popular birthdays in other countries?

Let's look at Australia in the Southern Hemisphere.

December is in their summer season. July is in their winter. You might expect a different pattern on births if seasonality is a driving factor.

Curiously, the most popular birthday in Australia is September 17. September 23, 24 and October 1 are also in the top 5. It might suggest that the feelings of the holiday season has more influence than climate in conception.

Source: https://thenewdaily.com.au/news/national/2021/06/27/most-least-common-birthdays/

The least popular birthdays in Australia are December 25 and December 26 (Boxing Day which is a holiday in Australia).

Note that there is no surge in births in Australia in the last week of the year. No strong tax incentive?

You can also see that February, March, April do have a fairly high percentage of the most popular birthdays in Australia. Backing up nine months gives us May, June, July which are cooler climes Downunder. In fact, April 8 is the second most popular birthday and the only one in the Top 5 that does not correspond to conception in the holiday season.

In the United Kingdom September is also the most popular birthday month according to a study of all births from 1995-2017.

The five most popular birthday are all in late September in this order.

September 26

September 25

September 24

September 27

September 30

Nine months before? Christmas and Boxing Day (December 26).

Despite the differences in the charts above, the numerical differences between the most popular birthdays and least popular are not as great as you might be led to believe.

For example in the UK, the most popular day, September 26, sees an average of 1,974 births in the average year. There were still 1,422 births on Christmas Day. 

The same is true in the U.S. and Australia. You generally will only see a variation of 20%-25% between the most popular and least common birthdays. Nature still is (mostly) in control.

Happy Birthday no matter when the big day is!

Let's go back in time with a time traveler.

It is September 1, 2020.

Americans are weary of the Covid pandemic that has gripped the United States for the last six months.

They have had to deal with lockdowns, job losses, lost incomes, school closures and mask mandates.

The 7-day rolling average of new cases is 42,892.

That is somewhat encouraging because six weeks earlier it had been nearly 70,000.

Deaths are averaging 960 over the last seven days but they were running above 2,000 per day during most of April when the virus was running rampant in New York and New Jersey.

There is hope that things are improving.

After all, the CDC Director Robert Redfield told us in mid-July that if everyone wore masks we would have Covid under control in 4-8 weeks.

We have to be very close to getting this under control based on what he told us.

We are also are being told by President Trump that Covid vaccines are on the way and will be ready to distribute before the end of the year. Trump says that they might actually be ready by November 3--election day.

However, Trump's Democrat opponents in the November elections are sowing doubts on whether the vaccines will be ready and whether they will be safe.

2020 Democratic vice presidential nominee Kamala Harris this weekend overtly undermined any COVID-19 vaccine rolled out by the Trump administration in the fall. She told CNN Sunday she didn't "trust" the White House incumbent.

"I will not take his word for it," the California senator said. "He's looking at an election coming up in less than 60 days, and he's grasping to get whatever he can to pretend he has been a leader on this issue when he is not."

Joe Biden would go on to say this about what he was going to do to solve the Covid pandemic in the last Presidential debate on October 23, 2020.

Source: https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/biden-says-he-would-shut-down-the-virus-not-the-country-during-the-final-presidential-debate/ar-BB1ajnhw

Biden said it was in large part Trump's fault that we had high cases from Covid that made the lockdowns necessary. Trump had been inept in his handling of Covid. Biden had a "plan."

"It's his ineptitude that caused the country to have to shut down in large part," 

Biden says he has the answers on Covid.

Fast forward to September 1, 2021.

Biden has been elected.

The Covid vaccines (three in total authorized in the United States) began to be distributed in December.

174 million people have been fully vaccinated. 205 million have received at least one dose.

61% of those eligible (age 12+) have received both doses. 74% have received at least one dose.

92% of those age 65+ have received at least one dose.

Source: https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#vaccinations_vacc-total-admin-rate-total

Trump appointees at the CDC, HHS and the FDA have all been replaced with Biden appointees.

Dr. Anthony Fauci is still the leading "expert" on our Covid response.

Think for a second if you were told a year ago that all of these things would occur by September 1, 2021 and you were asked to predict where we would be in the pandemic.

Would anyone believe that we would be where we are today?

Assume as well that on September 1, 2020 that the time traveler went on to tell you exactly what was going to be the situation on September 1, 2021 with Covid cases and deaths.

The 7-day rolling average of cases is 158,270---that is over 3.5x higher than it was last year. That is also higher than cases were on January 30, 2021, 10 days after Biden took office, at the height of the winter surge. Just as troubling is the fact that daily cases rose from 13,381 on June 15, 2021 to 158,709 on August 30---almost 12x higher in 10 weeks.

The 7-day average of deaths is 1,075. It has now been higher than it was last year for seven consecutive days. Even worse, last year deaths were declining at this time of year. This year deaths are climbing.

Wouldn't that cause anyone to ask a few questions back on September 1, 2020?

Perhaps Joe Biden is promising things he can't deliver?

Perhaps Donald Trump is not quite as bad as we are being told?

Perhaps a mass vaccination program is not a great idea? How could we vaccinate over 200 million people and cases are up 3.5x a year from now?

Perhaps Dr. Fauci doesn't really deserve to be in the position he is in?

Based on the facts and data, these are all fair and legitimate questions.

I can understand why someone who was told these things a year ago by the Time Traveler might not believe that they would come true. Something must have gotten messed up in the translation when they came through the time barrier. It is counter to everything we have been led to believe by the experts.

However, we don't have to rely on a time traveler to predict these things.

We know right now that the facts above are all TRUE. We have seen them occur right in front of our eyes.

Why then are so many just blindly ignoring the facts right in front of them and doubling down on the same policies?

Why are so many demanding mandates?

Why are so many pushing for vaccine passports for people to be allowed to do almost anything?

Why are we beginning 3rd booster shots (never subjected to clinical testing and identical to the original vaccines) and declaring that you will not be considered fully vaccinated if you don't do so?

Where are those who look at the actual data and suggest that we might want to take a step back and assess our assumptions?

Where are those who might have some doubts that the path we are on is wrong?

We already have a glimpse of how the 3rd booster shots are working so far in Israel. No need for a time traveler to report.

Cases on Monday, August 30 (10,947) were the highest on any day since the pandemic began. Its daily cases per capita are now over double that of the United States.

Source: https://ourworldindata.org/covid-cases

Israel is one of the most vaccinated countries in the world. It is also the first country to start booster shots. Israel has already administered boosters to 60% of the population over age 60 since July 31. 2 million out of 9 million in the country have already received the booster 

How is it going so far?

Here is another graph of cases in Israel that also shows the various mask mandates that have been instituted during the pandemic.

I had to chuckle when I saw what someone did with this graph on Twitter when they flipped it over.

Isn't this more like what you would have expected with mask mandates, vaccine mandates and booster shots after 19 months of the pandemic?

Source: https://twitter.com/justSome1_222/status/1432406760644661255

It seems we have gotten the reverse outcome that would have been predicted a year ago.

I cited the Covid statistics involving Duke University in a blog post last week.

At that time, Duke already had more cases this year than in the entire Fall Semester last year.

It has gotten worse in the last week despite the fact that all students were required to be fully vaccinated in order to attend Duke this Fall.

92% of Duke faculty and staff are also fully vaccinated,

These are the cases at Duke so far this year since August 2, 2021.

Source: https://coronavirus.duke.edu/covid-testing/ as of 8/29/21

These were the cases at Duke for the entire Fall semester last year (almost four months).

Positive cases are already 3x higher in less than a month this year compared to what they were in four months last year.

Source: https://coronavirus.duke.edu/covid-testing-old/fall-2020-duke-covid-testing-tracker/

One report stated that only 8 of the cases were in someone that was unvaccinated.

The university, which instituted a Covid vaccine requirement for students earlier this year, said 98% of all students are fully immunized. Just eight people involved in the outbreak are unvaccinated and a majority are asymptomatic, the statement said.

What is Duke doing about the rise in cases?

Everyone on campus has to wear a mask indoors and outdoors.

There will be no indoor dining.

Duke employees must be vaccinated by October 1 or they will be fired and be ineligible to be hired by Duke in the future.

Source: https://www.newsobserver.com/news/local/education/article253835668.html

Consider the facts and the solution.

Assuming the report above is accurate, 98.7% of the cases at Duke are in those who are vaccinated. They clearly are the ones spreading the virus.

However, Duke is going to fire those who are not vaccinated?

I had to chuckle as well at this quote from the Duke University statement announcing the new restrictions and the policy that will result in firing any employees who do not get vaccinated.

“We want to be clear: the problem is not our people, the problem is COVID-19,” the statement said. “Our Duke community has been extraordinarily united and resilient in fighting, and adapting to, this pandemic over the last 19 months.”

They have no problem with "our people" but they are going to fire any of their people who don't do exactly as they mandate?

In what universe does any of this make any sense at all?

Are we in a time warp in which all facts, reason and logic is totally missing?

The Time Traveler is very confused.

How about you?

There has been nothing that has exemplified the crazy world we live in today better than the increases in the value of used cars.

Prices have fallen slightly recently but are still up 40% compared to two years ago.

Manheim Used Vehicle Value Index, Mid-August, 2021 Source: https://publish.manheim.com/content/dam/consulting/ManheimUsedVehicleValueIndex-LineGraph.png

It is almost as if we are living in Cuba where a 1957 Chevrolet still commands top dollar and not because it is a vintage collectible.

Source: https://cuba.tritthart.net/chevrolet-1957-1.html

You just don't have a lot of other options in Cuba if you don't want to walk or ride a bicycle.

The Cuban Communist government did not allow any imports of American cars or parts from 1959 to 2016.

That ban has been relaxed but it is still prohibitively expensive to buy a new car in Cuba as this story on Cuba's "classic cars" explains.

New car imports are still highly regulated, and the pricing makes purchasing a car unrealistic for most Cuban locals. The state still has a monopoly on Cuban car sales, which means prices are high. A Peugeot 508 which typically retails at $29,000, costs a whopping $262,000 in Cuba. With the average Cuban citizen earning around $20 a month, it is unlikely that new imported cars are going to be part of a buying boom.

 $262,000 for a Peugeot?

Bernie Sanders and AOC say they want to make the United States more like Cuba?

We haven’t seen any official estimates, but our back of the envelope guess would be that about 50% of the automobiles on the road in Cuba in 2014 were American cars from the late 40s to 1959. The rest of automobiles we saw were Russian Ladas, French Peugeots or Citroens, Fiats, or cheap models of Japanese and Korean cars.

Prices of used cars has gotten so bad that the price of a year old car is approaching the price of a new car. That is, if you can find a new vehicle.

Source: https://www.cars.com/articles/amid-inventory-shortage-used-car-prices-are-closing-in-on-new-439033/

In June, the median price for a used one-year old car was selling at 94.7% of the price for a new car at Cars.com dealers.

In 2019, a one-year vehicle was typically selling for 77% of the price of the new car.

Based on reports I have seen, it is not unusual for someone with a two-year old car to be able to get the same price for their used car today as they paid for it new. 

What is causing this?

It appears to be a classic case of supply and demand.

The supply of new cars has been depressed by manufacturing cutbacks as well microchip shortages coming from China and the Far East.

Dealers only have about 1/3 the number of new cars in inventory as they did two years ago.

At the same time, the car rental companies who traditionally supplied a lot of vehicles to the used car market, drastically cut their inventories during the lockdown months of the pandemic. This has now led to high auto rental prices as well as fewer cars going to the used car market.

It is estimated that Ford has fully manufactured 50,000-60,000 Ford 150 pickup that are lacking the necessary microchips that are necessary to send them to dealerships.

A number of these are parked in Kentucky near where they were manufactured in Louisville.

Originally, Ford expected it would be short about 200,000 to 400,000 trucks in 2021. Now, it looks like that figure will explode to 1.1 million vehicles. 

This problem is not limited to the United States.

In the United Kingdom, car production in July was the lowest it has been since 1956!

That might explain this recent ad in London for a "slightly used" 2 year old Range Rover.

Source: https://twitter.com/litcapital/status/1428823576447225858/photo/1

At the same time that the supply of vehicles is lacking in the United States, reports are that there are plenty of pickups, trucks and humvees not to mention Blackhawk helicopters, night vision equipment and assault rifles that just became available.

Source: The Sunday Times

I saw one report that it adds up to $85 billion.

Let's out the number in context---it is ten times the annual defense budget of Pakistan.

The Taliban now also have more Blackhawk helicopters than 85% of the countries in the world.

I thought 2020 was crazy.

2021 is starting to make last year look like a walk in the park.

Let's hope we all won't be walking soon from the combination of car prices, gas prices and $85 billion of our military hardware in the hands of a bunch of crazy terrorists.

After I finished writing my blog post today word came out of Kabul regarding the tragic deaths of 13 U.S.military personnel along with at least 18 other wounded service casualties in Afghanistan. 

In light of the import of the events that have transpired I am doing something I have never done before at BeeLine---I am posting two articles within 24 hours.

These brave soldiers were there dealing with the evacuation of American citizens and Afghan allies who were stranded in the country following Joe Biden's abrupt withdrawal plans from the country.

It comes as little surprise. In fact, it was all so predictable.

It was predictable observing Biden during the campaign last year. 

I wrote this in September, 2020 in a blog post title "How Worried Should We Be About Joe Biden?"

As an American, it is deeply troubling if we have a candidate for President who may be in a condition of cognitive decline. This is especially true given the enormous challenges our nation faces right now. If there was ever a time when this country needed strong and determined leadership it is in 2020.

In this election every American is literally putting their life, livelihood, liberty and the legacy of the country on the line with their vote. 

That is an awfully big bet to make on a 78 year old man who seems to have trouble  knowing the difference between 200 and 200 million in a country of 328 million people.

Joe Biden did not have a very impressive record at making smart strategic decisions when he was on top of his game. It was predictable that he would be even worse when he was past his prime.

Every American is now dealing with the reality of what might very well be the single biggest strategic misstep in the nation's history.

It has also resulted in one of the most embarrassing episodes to the reputation of the United States spanning over two centuries.

Every President makes misjudgments and mistakes.

However, the Afghanistan debacle is such a multi-dimensional disaster it is hard to grasp all of the negative ramifications.

We have effectively surrendered a nation to terrorists who do not observe the most basic tenets of human rights or any rights for women.

That nation is now controlled by terrorists who we went to war with 20 years ago which cost us the blood of over 2,300 American deaths and almost 21,000 wounded in action. In total, 775,000 American service men and women served at one time in Afghanistan.

We abandoned advanced military bases, supplies and materials that are now in the hands of the terrorists and will undoubtedly be used against Americans at some point.

We stranded thousands and thousands of Americans in the country as well as tens of thousands of American allies who helped us over the last 20 years. It is still not clear if we are going to stay long enough to get them out. How long will it be before any Americans left will be taken as hostages with the Taliban or other terrorists demanding ransom?

We needed to bring in double the force to evacuate people in the country that we had in the country before the decision was made to withdraw.

We have emboldened every terrorist in the world with our weakness and our fecklessness to our allies.

We completely surprised our NATO allies with our withdrawal execution without consultation beforehand seriously undermining their trust in the USA.

We have provided China with an open invitation to access all of Afghanistan's natural resources and rare earth minerals.

We have allowed Afghanistan to become a future central point for terror plots against the United States and the West by radical Islamists.

We took more deaths today than in the last 20 months in Afghanistan. It also is the deadliest day for military forces in over a decade. 

To make matters worse, for much of the day we heard nothing from Joe Biden who is supposed to be our leader and Commander in Chief.

It was so predictable.

It is so sad that the American people, and especially our brave service people, are paying the price now for those election results from last November.

It is not just the poor decision making. 

It is not even clear who is making the decisions and why Joe Biden is missing in action most of the time in answering questions and taking responsibility for what is going on.

A sampling from Twitter on reactions to a very, very bad day.

Consider as well this CBS/YouGov poll from a week ago in which 74% of Americans thought that the removal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan had gone "very badly" or "somewhat badly".

When I saw this poll earlier this week I wondered who the 5% werr who thought it was going "very well"?

I wonder if they changed their views today?

You now know what I meant when I wrote that every American was putting their life, livelihood, liberty and legacy on the line with their vote last November.

It is so predictable.

I only pray that we are all strong enough to survive what comes next. 

Many colleges and universities instituted mandates that all students and staff were required to be fully vaccinated against Covid before the Fall semester began.

For example, here is the vaccination policy for the University of Virginia for the 2021/2022 academic year.

Source: https://coronavirus.virginia.edu/vaccinations

The University of Virginia reported that 97% of its students were vaccinated before classes began.

Last week UVA announced that it had disenrolled 238 students for not complying with its vaccine requirement.

Source: https://www.pilotonline.com/news/education/vp-nw-disenroll-students-uva-20210819-m63bgxt2ubcgzbgemvet5owlai-story.html

 

Since there is so much talk about requiring vaccine mandates I thought I would check how those policies are working at some of these schools. 

This would seem to be a logical exercise to see how those early mandates are working before putting more mandates in place elsewhere.

How successful have these been been realizing that most students have only been back on campus for a week or two?

Let's look first at UVA.

Last year on August 24, UVA had 6 new cases. No one was vaccinated.

This year they have 15 new cases----a 150% increase. Almost everyone was fully vaccinated.

What about at Duke University which has also mandated vaccines for all students, faculty and staff?

Duke already has had 246 positive cases this month.

Source: https://coronavirus.duke.edu/covid-testing/

That is already a higher number of positive cases than Duke had in the entire Fall semester last year!

Source: https://coronavirus.duke.edu/covid-testing-old/fall-2020-duke-covid-testing-tracker/

Note as well the massive difference in testing numbers compared to the positive test results.

Rice University has had 32 positive cases on campus in the last two weeks where 99% of undergrad students and 92% of faculty and staff are vaccinated. Last year there were less than 10 positive cases at the same point in the semester---a 200% increase.

The positive cases at Rice were revised downwards by about half (to the number shown above) when it was discovered that a number of tests were false positives. The early reports caused Rice to announce they were shifting to all online classes for the first two weeks.

Source: https://abc13.com/rice-university-delays-classes-online-learning-virtual/10961995/

Those early tests showed a 2% positivity rate that caused the shift to online classes. The revised positivity rate is .44% but that is still almost double the .24% that Rice had for the Fall Semester a year ago.

The narrative we hear is that if everyone got vaccinated we would have no problems.

That is supposed to be "the science".

However, these are communities that have almost everyone fully vaccinated and yet cases are much higher than they were last year when no one was vaccinated.

Why? Why? Why?

I keep asking that question.

I also keep wondering how does it makes sense to mandate these vaccines when we look at the data we have?

I also am at a loss as to why a booster shot of the exact same vaccines that are producing these results is a good idea when there has been absolutely no clinical tests of the effects of a third shot administered  within one year to any human being?

I have been on the record in these pages stating that it was my fervent hope that the vaccines would be as safe and effective as advertised.

However, I have also been on record as stating that I will follow the data to see where it takes me.

The national numbers in the United States do not provide much comfort in that regard right now.

New cases (152K) are now the highest since January 29.

New deaths (920) are the highest since March 29.

How often were you told by the "experts" over the last couple of months that what we were seeing was "a pandemic of the unvaccinated" as cases started to climb?

Is that the case on college campuses that have mandated the vaccines and there are almost no one who is unvaccinated? 

What do you call what is happening at Duke, UVA and other schools?

At some point, someone has to admit the obvious.

This is now happening in Israel.

Israel's Covid czar, Dr. Salman Zarka, has admitted that we are in "uncharted territory".

He also came to his conclusion in the same way I have. He is following the data.

“I don’t want to frighten you,” coronavirus czar Dr. Salman Zarka told the Israeli parliament this week. “But this is the data. Unfortunately, the numbers don’t lie.”

The Daily Beast reports on what the data says in Israel as I have reported in these pages before.

The massive surge of COVID-19 infections in Israel, one of the most vaccinated countries on earth, is pointing to a complicated path ahead for America.

In June, there were several days with zero new COVID infections in Israel. The country launched its national vaccination campaign in December last year and has one of the highest vaccination rates in the world, with 80 percent of citizens above the age of 12 fully inoculated. COVID, most Israelis thought, had been defeated. 

Fast forward two months later: Israel reported 9,831 new diagnosed cases on Tuesday, a hairbreadth away from the worst daily figure ever recorded in the country—10,000—at the peak of the third wave. More than 350 people have died of the disease in the first three weeks of August. In a Sunday press conference, the directors of seven public hospitals announced that they could no longer admit any coronavirus patients. With 670 COVID-19 patients requiring critical care, their wards are overflowing and staff are at breaking point.

Duke. UVA, Rice. Israel.

At what point is it obvious to everyone that something is amiss?

The numbers don't lie.

How long will it be before Biden, Fauci, Walensky and others admit it as well?

The big news on Monday was the FDA approval of the Pfizer Covid vaccine.

The vaccine was approved and the FDA provided a license to Pfizer to manufacture the vaccine as specifically stated in the approval letter as follows.

Under this license, you are authorized to manufacture the product, COVID-19 Vaccine,mRNA, which is indicated for active immunization to prevent coronavirus disease 2019(COVID-19) caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2)in individuals 16 years of age and older. (emphasis added).

What I found interesting in this decision is how clearly this shows how politics is driving almost all of the decisions around Covid, rather than science.

Of course, that is not what we are told. We are told that science is behind every decision.

Let's look at the facts and start with the most important question.

Does the Pfizer vaccine "prevent coronavirus disease 2019 (Covid-19)"?

Let's look at evidence in Israel that has exclusively used the Pfizer vaccine and actually started its mass vaccination program before the United States.

78% of the population of Israel that is eligible to receive the vaccine have been fully vaccinated.

Does this look like evidence of a vaccine that PREVENTS Covid-19?

Compare as well Israel's death rate from confirmed Covid cases with some of its neighbors. Those neighboring countries have all fully vaccinated less than 10% of their populations.

Yes, those countries may not be counting Covid cases and deaths as accurately as Israel.

However, have we ever had a vaccine, where after it was administered to a large share of the population, cases went higher rather than declined?

It defies all known medical history not to mention common sense.

Israel has already started administering booster shot of the Pfizer vaccine to those over age 50.

They took that action after data showed that 90% of new infections are among the highly vaccinated group of those age 50+.

Counter to the narrative we hear in the news in the United States, severe disease in those who are older and fully vaccinated is rising on the same slope as the cases are.

Source: https://twitter.com/EricTopol/status/1429887609254268931/photo/1

A booster is going to fix this?

Again, when in medical history has any vaccine needed a booster after 6 or 8 months if it was working properly to prevent disease?

Some might point to flu vaccines which are typically annual shots. However, flu vaccines are reformulated every year into a new vaccine meant to target a predicted strain of the flu that is expected that year. Those are not booster shots.

The Pfizer booster shot is exactly the same formula that was given in the first two doses. It has not been reformulated to better target the Delta or any other variant.

In what sane world is the FDA approving a vaccine when it has already been admitted that it does not work as originally authorized?

Another important fact to consider in all of this is that the standard FDA protocol for clinical trials is a two year period of data collection and assessment of the vaccines. This approval is based on only six months of data.

There has never been a faster approval process in the history of the FDA.

Even worse, a normal trial maintains a control group of participants who took the placebo in the original trial so that longer-term implications of the vaccine can be assessed and studied.

In the case of the Pfizer (and other Covid vaccines) the FDA allowed the vaccine makers to "unblind" the placebo participants to be able to take the vaccine for "ethical" considerations.

You might also think that a federal agency like the FDA would not have such blatant conflicts of interest in the drug approval process as they do.

Is it any wonder that the FDA approval process was so fast?

The facts indicate that the Covid vaccines were going to be approved no matter what the data showed. Politics made sure of it.

If you doubt that consider the fact that a concern of the Pfizer and other Covid vaccines has been that they are causing heart issues such as myocarditis and pericarditis.

The FDA approval letter states that they don't have enough data and information to assess known serious risk of these issues with the vaccine.

Therefore, the FDA directs Pfizer in the approval letter to conduct more studies on this risk. However, look at how long it will be before the full risks are known.

There is a scientific reason why clinical trials and approvals are not rushed through in six months.

Another edition of Monday Meanderings. Short insights on a range of topics that I found interesting recently that might better contextualize what is happening in the world.

Joe Biden Sinking Faster and Faster 

I predicted a month ago that Joe Biden had a lot to worry about. His positive approval rating with voters was in large part dependent on the withdrawal from Afghanistan and his Covid response.

I stated at that time that I saw large storm clouds on the horizon that could cause his approval ratings to drop quickly.

That prediction has proven true.

Biden's net approval in the Real Clear Politics poll average has dropped almost 10 points in 30 days.

Source: https://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/other/president-biden-job-approval-7320.html

The RCP poll average is also undoubtedly overstating Biden's support today because several of the polls were taken before the Afghanistan withdrawal debacle.

The recent polls in the average show Biden net approval sinking another 3 to 5 points beyond what we see above.

For example, a Civiqs poll released on Thursday shows Biden -8 with his approval at just 42%.

What I found interesting in that poll was the breakdown by states.

In particular, look at Biden's net approval in some of the critical swing states.

Florida  -6

Georgia  -14

Michigan  -10

Ohio  -19

Pennsylvania  -9

Wisconsin -9

Even more troubling for Biden, look at some of the states that should be of no concern to a Democrat based on recent elections.

Connecticut +4

Illinois +3

Maine  -4

Minnesota  -1

New Hampshire  -6

New Mexico  -3

Oregon +2

Virginia  -9

Washington  +2

Why So Much Hatred For So Few?

There is so much anti-Semitism spewed by so many you would think there are at least a billion Jews oppressing people all over the world.

Do you know have many Jews there are in the world?

When a recent well known commentator was asked this question he answered one billion. He thought about it a minute and revised his number down to a more conservative 500 million.

The real answer?

15 million.

That is just 0.2% of the world population of 7.9 billion.

6.9 million live in Israel.

5.7 million in the United States.

Yes, 84% of all the Jewish people in the world live in either the United States and Israel.

There are just 1.3 million in Europe and 1.1 million in the rest of the world.

In 1939 the Jewish population in the world was 17 million.

It was 11 million in 1945.

How many Muslims are there in the world today?

1.9 billion.

Does that put things into a little better context?

Pregnancy One of The Leading Underlying Conditions for Covid Hospitalizations

We hear a lot about various underlying conditions related to those who are hospitalized with Covid.

The CDC actually tracks all of the underlying conditions for someone in the hospital with Covid on its Covid-Net website. This data source gathers hospitalization data from a surveillance network of hospitals in 100 large counties in 14 states across the country representing about 32 million people (10% of the population).

This surveillance system is the primary source for data on Covid cases related to all documented positive cases of Covid for patients in the hospital.

Below is the most recent chart from the CDC showing the underlying conditions associated with those positive cases for hospitalized Covid positive patients.

As we have heard, hypertension, obesity and metabolic disease are generally present in 50% or more of Covid positive patients.

The numbers in the chart are much higher than 100% when added together because many Covid positive cases have more than one underlying condition.

However, have you ever heard that PREGNANCY is an underlying condition in 30% of all Covid patients who have been hospitalized since the beginning of the pandemic through June 30, 2021?

Source: https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#covidnet-hospitalization-network as of 8/22/21

When I first saw this data (hat tip to @Jackson90771068 on Twitter) I thought it surely could not be right.

However, I checked the CDC website and this is their data.

It might be a mistake. However, if it is correct doesn't it say that there are a lot of truths about Covid that we have not been told? 

If this is true, it is saying that a large portion of what we have been told are Covid hospitalizations since the beginning of the pandemic were actually women admitted to the hospital to give birth and tested positive for Covid at that time without knowing they were sick.

What would the reaction of the American people be if when this is all over they find out that 30% of all of what we were told are Covid hospitalization during the pandemic were really women who just incidentally tested positive for Covid while in the hospital to give birth?

Granted, some of the hospitalizations might have been pregnant women who were sick from Covid and went to the ER and were admitted. Let's say that was 1/6 of them. That still leaves us with 25% who were not admitted to the hospital due to Covid. They were admitted to give birth.

Let's follow one of my rules on data and submit this data to the "smell test".

The CDC surveillance data represents about 10% of the population. It shows about 200,000 as having been hospitalized with Covid from March 1, 2020 to June 30, 2021.

That would equal about 2,000,000 hospitalizations from Covid for the total population.

That would suggest there have been 600,000 (2,000,000 x 30%) Covid cases with pregnancy with an underlying condition.

That sounds like a LOT.

However, over the same period, there were probably about 4.8 million births in the United States (calculated using rate of 300,000 births/month in 2020 x 16 months).

600,000 positive Covid tests among 5 million women who entered the hospital to give birth is only 12.5% of all pregnant women presenting at the hospital.

That does not sound far-fetched considering the CDC estimates that 50% of the 18-49 age group had been infected with Covid  as of the end of May, 2021.

This is again CDC data. 

Estimated Covid-19 Burden by Age Group Infections, Hospitalizations and Deaths Source: https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/cases-updates/burden.html

30% of Covid hospitalizations are attributed to an underlying condition of pregnancy?

I don't know whether to believe the CDC data or not.

However, is it any surprise that the CDC has lost so much credibility in all of this?

You might also notice in the CDC data table above that individuals age 65+ have accounted for only 10% of the cases but 80% of the deaths.

Those under age 50 have accounted for 72% of the cases and 9% of the deaths.

I am still trying to figure out how these numbers justify vaccine mandates all the way down to newborn babies (we aren't there yet but I don't know what is going to stop them from trying to do it). 

Never mind that based on the CDC data, a lot of those babies may have already gotten antibodies from their mother. 

After all, they were hospitalized for Covid!

The Unemployment Divide

Wherever I go I run into business owners who tell me their biggest challenge today is finding people to work.

I have heard it personally from a range of businesses---restaurants, retirement homes, grocery stores, lawn care companies, landscapers, manufacturers. The list is long.

Democrats almost universally refuse to acknowledge that the supplemental federal unemployment benefit provided in the Covid relief package has had anything to do with employers being able to find workers.

In fact, Joe Biden told a restaurant owner in Cincinnati last month who complained about his trouble in finding workers that he needed to pay more.

Federal Reserve Chairman Janet Yellen also stated that she didn't believe that the enhanced government unemployment benefits weren’t incentivizing people to not work.

Of course, won't it always be difficult to compete for labor if someone else (the government) is paying people not to work?

It also seems pretty obvious that most people choose leisure over work. They work because they need money for rent, food and other things. Not many will work when someone is paying for these and they can also have their leisure at the same time.

On the other hand, many Republican governors moved to end the benefit when they saw what it was doing to the labor market.

The evidence is starting to come in.

Look at this chart that shows unemployment rates comparing Republican (red) and Democrat (blue) states based on primary political representation (Governor, State House, State Senate). 

Credit: https://twitter.com/kerpen/status/1428723739512934409/photo/1

What about the trends in continued claims for unemployment over the last two months?

Credit: https://mishtalk.com/economics/what-if-everyone-actually-had-to-work-to-get-paid

Perhaps paying people to not work is not a good long-term idea.

To drive the point home we have actually reached a point in the United States that I don't think we have ever seen before.

In the most recent BLS labor report it was revealed that there are actually more job openings in the United States than there are those unemployed and looking for work.

Job Openings    10.1 million jobs

Unemployed       8.7 million people looking for work

Source: https://www.nbcnews.com/business/business-news/u-s-now-has-more-job-openings-any-time-history-n1276367

It all leads us to a unique question that Mike Shedlock of MishTalk.com recently asked that at one time was not such an unusual question.

Source: https://mishtalk.com/economics/what-if-everyone-actually-had-to-work-to-get-paid

What would the United States look like if that was the case?

Will we ever know?

We often hear that in any tax legislation that "the rich" benefit disproportionately.

They supposedly get most of the tax cuts.

Perhaps that is because they pay almost all of the taxes.

A new study from the Tax Policy Center of the Urban Institute and Brookings Institution (a liberal think tank) puts that claim into better context.

In 2020, 107 million households in the United States paid no income taxes. 

That is 61% of all the households in the United States.

A good percentage (over one-third) of those actually got refundable tax credits. That means they got a refund check from the U.S. Treasury even though they paid no income taxes during the year. 

There were only 69 million American households who paid any income tax in the United States in 2020 in a country with 330 million people and 176 million households.

Yes, it was a tough year for many Americans. Many lost their jobs early in the year. Many business owners and landlords saw their incomes decimated.

However, the trend of fewer and fewer Americans paying any income taxes has been going on for a long time.

The numbers below just take account of households that filed a tax return with the IRS. The number above takes into account all households. 

In 1969, only 13% of Americans did not pay any income tax who filed a tax return.

In 1980, that number was 21.3%

In 2000, it was 25.2%.

In 2017, it was 32.1%.

in 2020, it was 61% of all households that probably equates to just over 50% of taxpayer households.

In 2021, thanks to the new refundable child tax credit that provides $3,600 for every household with a child under age 6 and $3,000 for every child between age 6 and 17 it is estimated that 57% of households will pay no income tax.

Those payments are already being sent out on a monthly basis of $300/month and $250/month to every household with children beginning in July. 

A household with four children-ages 3, 5, 7 and 9 are getting $1,100 every month. The advance payments are only being paid for half the year. The remainder will be paid when the parent files their income tax return for the year.

Although it is called a "tax credit" it is paid even if there are no taxes owed for the year when the household files its tax return. 

Due to this provision, it is estimated that 70% of all families, and 84% of single parent households, will not pay any income tax in 2021.

The cost to the federal government for providing this money---$15 billion per month or $180 billion for the year.

The child tax credit is supposed to revert to a $2,000 annual amount in 2022. Let's see if that happens. It is never easy taking money away from anyone. That is especially true in an election year.

Who is paying the taxes?

Who is pulling the wagon?

The top 1% of income earners paid 40.1% of all federal individual income taxes in 2018 (the latest year in which the IRS has released data).

No, they didn't pay their fair share. They paid double their share of the income they earned. The top 1% reported 21% of the income but paid 40% of the tax.

The top 50% of income earners paid 97.1% of the total income taxes in 2018.

The bottom 50% paid 2.9%.

Source:https://taxfoundation.org/publications/latest-federal-income-tax-data/

In that 61% of all households paid zero income taxes in 2020 it is not hard to project that the top 1% in 2020 paid close to half of the tax tab and the top 50% had to have paid close to 99%.

Think about these numbers as we consider everything else we see going on today.

How is it possible for the United States to remain a representative democracy when half of the households in the country are not paying any taxes?

How can a nation survive if over half are taking and less than half are making ALL of it possible?

Great thinkers in the past have stated that it cannot be sustained.

We are getting dangerously close to determining whether they are right.

One of the key biological characteristics of the Covid-19 virus is the presence of spike proteins in their makeup. The spike proteins allow the virus to penetrate host cells and cause infection.

The current vaccines currently in use were developed by using spike proteins to enter your body in order for it to activate your immune system to build antibodies and kill the spike proteins introduced by the vaccines.

The theory is that the spike proteins introduced by the vaccines degrade over several weeks but your immune system has created antibodies in fighting the foreign spike protein  that remain to fight off any future infection if you are exposed to the Covid-19 virus in the future.

That is the way things are supposed to work with the spike proteins and the vaccines.

However, right now we seem to be seeing spikes everywhere you look that indicates something is not working as designed.

As I have written previously, all of the current Covid vaccines in use in the United States today were granted emergency use authorization based on the assertion that they PREVENTED Covid-19 disease.

As an example, here is the emergency use authorization review memorandum for the Moderna vaccine.

Source: https://www.fda.gov/media/144673/download

Note that the intended use was not to prevent severe disease. It was not intended to prevent hospitalizations. It was not intended to prevent deaths.

It was intended to prevent disease.

Isn't this what we have always expected a vaccine to do?

How successful have these vaccines been looking at that intended use?

Confirmed cases in the United States are up 1,000% in the last two months.

They are almost 3x higher than they were a year ago when no one was vaccinated.

This is despite the fact that 168 million Americans have been fully vaccinated (over half of the population of the United States).

We see similar patterns in other countries that have also had large mass vaccination efforts.

The UK and Israel have both vaccinated larger portions of their population than the United States.

Cases spiked in both countries despite the mass vaccination effort.

Vermont has the highest vaccination rate among the 50 states. 

85% of the state's age 12+ population has received at least one dose.

Source: https://www.healthvermont.gov/covid-19/vaccine/covid-19-vaccine-dashboard

What about cases in Vermont?

There were 561 new cases in Vermont in the week August 5-12, 2021.

Last year that number was 38 for the same week. That is a 1,376% increase.

Last year at this time one person was in the hospital with Covid in Vermont. This year for the same week 25 people are in the hospital. That is a 2,400% increase!

No one was vaccinated last year and there was one person in the hospital. There are now 25?

Think about that for a second.

Is the Delta variant that much more virulent?

Or has Covid gotten more virulent because of the vaccines and made it much more dangerous to both the vaccinated and unvaccinated? 

Is it something else we don't understand?

How can anyone look at this data and not question what is going on?

Something is amiss.

The narrative is that the people in the hospital are all unvaccinated. However, that falls short when you see the numbers from Vermont where almost everyone is vaccinated. Or Israel.

You see the same pattern in Oregon which is another of the most vaccinated states. 

70% of the age 18+ population has had at least one dose of the vaccine. 96% of the age 65+ population has had at least one dose.

This is the trend in cases in Oregon since the pandemic began.

There are more confirmed cases today than there have ever have been in Oregon. By a large margin.

This is a chart showing the percentage of hospital emergency department visits in Oregon in which Covid is the diagnosis comparing 2020 and 2021.

Assume someone was dropped from Mars and was asked the point on this chart in which vaccines were introduced to prevent Covid?

The Martian would have to think it was a trick question. In looking at the data the conclusion has to be that no effective vaccine has been introduced.

There have been 156 Covid deaths reported in Oregon in the last seven weeks.

Data in the shaded area is preliminary.

Source: https://public.tableau.com/app/profile/oregon.health.authority.covid.19/viz/OregonCOVID-19CaseDemographicsandDiseaseSeverityStatewide/DemographicData

78% of those deaths have been those age 60+. Just 3% have been in those age 29 or younger.

Considering the relative vaccination rates for these ages it just does not follow that all of the deaths right now are from the unvaccinated. It defies all logic, reason and mathematics.

Unfortunately, Oregon, like almost every other state, does not provide data breaking out cases, hospitalizations and deaths by vaccination status even though they provide demographic data on almost everything else. Therefore, I have to apply common sense rather than hard data to challenge the narrative.

It does not take much to conclude that there are a number of vaccinated people in Oregon in those death numbers.

The good news is that the death toll is still less than last year despite the rise of cases.

Is it the vaccine? I hope so. Is it better treatments? Is it because the current variant is not as lethal as is being portrayed. I don't know.

We see another spike of cases in Australia which seems to be locking down their population every other week.

New daily confirmed Covid cases in Australia Source: https://twitter.com/Birdyword/status/1427217759147073538/photo/1

Is it a coincidence that the spike has come just as Australia has ramped up its mass vaccination program?

I don't know but I do know more questions should be asked about why this is occurring.

The narrative we hear is that the case increases we are seeing is being driven by those who are unvaccinated.

However, this chart suggests that cases are actually spiking higher in the top 10 most vaccinated states compared to the 10 least vaccinated states comparing 2021 vs. 2020.

% YOY  Changes in Daily Cases: 2020 vs. 2021 Testing-adjusted to highest testing level per state 7-day moving average for both testing and positive case Source: https://twitter.com/Emily_Burns_V/status/1427409631748493315/photo/1

% YOY  Changes in Daily Cases: 2020 vs. 2021 Testing-adjusted to highest testing level per state 7-day moving average for both testing and positive case Source: https://twitter.com/Emily_Burns_V/status/1427409631748493315/photo/1

This can be explained partly by the fact that the current surge is centered in many states in the Sunbelt who had the same seasonal surge last year. As a result, they had a higher base of cases in 2020 in which to compare to 2021 in percentage terms.

However, at the same time, why are a lot of these northern states seeing such high spikes in cases in the middle of the summer when they saw little last year?

What is it going to look like in these states when their seasonal vulnerability is at its highest in the Fall/Winter?

For example, this chart shows how the Sunbelt states (Region 4-AL,FL, GA, KY, MS, NC, SC, TN) compares to the Midwest states (Region 5-IL, IN, OH, MI, MN, WI) on new daily cases over the last 500 days.

Can we expect even further spikes in Covid cases in states above the 37th parallel in the next few months?

There are more spikes at other places around the world right now in countries which we were told had avoided a surge in cases because everyone wore masks.

Look at Japan. 97% mask adherence.

Thailand. 93% mask compliance.

1,000,000% increase in cases compared to this time last year.

Japan and Thailand lagged in mass vaccinations compared to the United States, Israel and the UK.

Both countries did not really starting vaccinating large portions of their population until June.

Is it a coincidence that cases have surged in both countries within a month of the mass vaccination program?

Source: https://www.extension.purdue.edu/extmedia/ID/ID-507-w.pdf

Three weeks ago I wrote that it appeared to me that Joe Biden was sinking fast and he could soon sink even faster in the eyes of the American people.

Whoever is pulling the strings for Joe Biden must be getting a little nervous.

The American people are becoming increasingly uneasy and that usually portends trouble for the person in charge.

The biggest indicator is an ABC/IPSOS poll that was recently released that showed that only 45% of Americans are optimistic about where the country is headed over the next year. 55% are pessimistic.

In April, 64% were optimistic. That is a 19 point drop in three months.

I wrote at that time that Biden's advisers should be particularly worried in that I saw storm clouds rising on the horizon with the two issues that Biden had the highest marks---Covid response (63% approval) and the withdrawal from Afghanistan (55% approval).

I predicted that Biden could well go into a free fall if Covid cases continued to rise and/or Afghanistan is overtaken by turmoil, terrorists and the Taliban.

It is stunning how each has deteriorated so fast in the last 20 days.

It has been a steady diet of bad news on Covid since I wrote that post.

Cases have more than doubled in the last three weeks.

Cases are also more than double what they were last year at the same time when no one was vaccinated. 62% of the age 18+ U.S. population are fully vaccinated today. 72% have received at least one dose.

This has started raising more and more questions about the effectiveness of the vaccines to prevent Covid and the transmission of the virus in the United States and elsewhere.

This is not good news for Joe Biden.

However, the current Covid chaos is nothing compared to the upheaval that has swept over Afghanistan in the last three weeks and resulted in complete chaos that shook that nation's capital, Kabul, on Sunday as the Taliban invaded the city and overthrew the government.

Let's go back to July 8, 2021 (not even 6 weeks ago) and see what Joe Biden said about Afghanistan when questioned about the U.S. withdrawal plans.

Source: https://twitter.com/polarisnatsec/status/1426225950312837122

The following words are all taken from the official White House transcript.

I have a feeling that these words could end up in the History books summarizing the ineptitude of the Biden administration.

On whether a Taliban takeover of Afghanistan is inevitable.

On reports the intelligence community told Biden that the Afghan government would likely collapse after U.S. withdrawal.

About the possibility of whether we will see the U.S. embassy in Kabul abandoned in much the same way it happened in Saigon, Vietnam with helicopters landing on the roof to ferry its employees out of the country.

August 15, 2021 in Kabul.

PHOTO 1: US diplomat evacuate US from embassy via helicopter as the #Taliban enter #Kabul from all sides. #Afghanistan (2021) Source: https://twitter.com/StefSimanowitz/status/1426846783267909633/photo/1

Vietnam in 1975.

PHOTO 2: US diplomat evacuate US from embassy via helicopter as the PAVN & Viet Cong capture of Saigon, Vietnam (1975) Source: https://twitter.com/StefSimanowitz/status/1426846783267909633/photo/1 This is very bad for Biden. This is very, very bad for the reputation of the United States of America and the security of the American people. The is very, very, very bad for the people of Afghanistan, most particularly the females in that country and anyone who assisted the United States efforts over the years. These tweets from Walid Phares say it better than I can. Consider as well this statement by Biden that he could not do anything to expedite the visa process for the Afghan translators who assisted the United States because the "law doesn't allow that to happen." The last I looked the law also does not allow over 1 million immigrants to cross our border illegally as they have over the last six months either. How bad is all of this? Consider what former General (and Director of the CIA) David Petraeus said about the situation (and this was before the government fell later in the day). Or consider what former Ambassador Ryan Crocker (to both Iraq and Afghanistan) said about the chaos in Kabul to The Washington Post. By the way, Crocker was appointed to be Ambassador of Afghanistan by President Obama. Biden's advisers also know this is very bad. You should expect to see some serious spin blaming Trump, DeSantis or anyone else they can hope to shift the blame to. As an example, here is Andrea Mitchell of NBC  seeming to repeat a narrative she got from the White House about a "peaceful transition" as American personnel are choppering off the roof of the embassy. I guess we will soon find out how peaceful those Taliban leaders are. We will also find out how peaceful the Taliban proves to be with all of the military hardware left behind by the United States to the Afghan forces that is now in their hands. Can Biden afford to allow that to happen? Will our planes have to go in to destroy the planes, missiles and war material left behind so it does end up in the hands of terrorists to use against Americans? Yes, it is chaos in Kabul. Yes, it is very, very, very bad for so many (except China and Russia).  I am reminded that Robert Gates (Secretary of Defense under Obama/Biden) once said this. It appears that Biden's record is still intact.

Many BeeLine readers ask how I got write about so many different topics?

They ask where I get my ideas on what to write about?

The truth is that I continually see an endless number of things to write about.

The challenge today is that I find it harder than ever to write about the things I see because so much is deluded or depressing. 

I often have to stop and ask "how is it possible that people believe this is good for their country, their fellow man or the world?"

It feels like we are witnessing a battle of good and evil right before our eyes

It often seems that there are those who want to take everything that we have built in our society and drive it over a cliff.

There is no better example than this story out of Oregon which recently passed a law that suspends the requirement that any high school student must show proficiency in math, writing and reading in order to graduate.

This bill was actually signed into law by Oregon's Governor Kate Brown last month.

The state of Oregon will no longer require its students to demonstrate proficiency in math, reading and writing in order to earn a high school diploma in a bid to bolster minority students.  

Gov. Kate Brown signed a bill late last month suspending the state's 'essential skills' requirement for graduation for the next three years while its Department of Education seeks alternative graduation requirements.

Governor Brown and the proponents of the measure argue that not requiring students to be proficient in reading, writing and arithmetic will benefit "Oregon’s black, Latino, Latina, Latinx, Indigenous, Asian, Pacific Islander, Tribal, and students of color".

"They don't test well."

Really?

Is it also not possible that they simply have not learned how to read, write and do arithmetic?

I guess the answer is that we don't want to know the answer.

Are these students really going to "benefit" by not knowing the basics of what is required to succeed in the real world?

It is almost impossible to comprehend the logic.

Why did slaveowners never want their slaves to learn to read and write?

Why does the Taliban refuse to allow women to be educated?

It is because without these basic skills you are beholden to a master. 

You are less able to think for yourself and have a desire for freedom.

You are totally dependent.

Oregon argues it is for only three years and (of course) blames the pandemic for which the suspension of this requirement began by administrative order before the Oregon legislature and Governor saw fit to make it law.

They have set a goal to find requirements that I guess will be "less racist" over the next three years.

As we start another school year (the third under the specter of Covid) I shudder to think of what the long-term effects will be of what we are doing to these young people.

Consider, for example, the reported grade averages in the city of Baltimore last year.

Source: https://komonews.com/news/nation-world/baltimore-city-schools-41-of-high-school-students-earn-below-10-gpa-07-15-2021

WBFF obtained a chart assembled by BCPS. The chart shows the average GPA for every high school in the city – freshman through senior. In the first three quarters of this past school year, according to the chart, 41% of all Baltimore City high school students, earned below a 1.0 GPA. In other words, nearly half of the 20,500 public high school students in Baltimore earned less than a D average.

What happens to the students who failed a course in Baltimore last year?

They are just moved on and up.

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2021/05/27/us/baltimore-schools-failing-grades/index.html

School officials don't want any students to feel like a failure or to believe any punitive action has been applied to them.

The district said the policy was adopted in recognition of the struggles students have faced during the coronavirus pandemic. Chief Academic Officer Joan Dabrowski said it's meant to "avoid the punitive approach of failing students," according to comments during Tuesday's board meeting.

"This is not about a failure, but it is about unfinished learning and giving multiple opportunities, multiple onramps for young people to complete that ... learning," Baltimore City Public Schools CEO Sonja Santelises said. 

It is just "unfinished learning".

How many students in Baltimore schools had "unfinished learning" in at least one class?

63% failed at least one class.

Sixty-three percent of middle and high school students are failing at least one class according to Baltimore City Public Schools -- that's nearly 25,000 students out of the nearly 40,000 sixth through twelfth graders in the district.

 If you think we have problems today just wait until this demographic is ready for the work force.

Will they ever ready for the workforce?

Will they ever understand accountability and responsibility when this is how our school and public officials are preparing them for the future?

Our children are another casualty of the woke culture we live in today that has only intensified under Covid.

It seems delusional and depressing for me to see what is going on. However, when we are consistently sacrificing our children it almost feels demonic.

How can any of this be in the best long-term interests of these children?

How can it be in the best interests of our society?

What lies ahead is not going to be in anybody's best interests.

We are being bombarded with stories right now about the "dangerous" Delta variant of Covid.

It is being blamed as the reason that the vaccines are not working as advertised.

It is being blamed as the reason that children in schools need to wear masks again.

It is said that it is particularly dangerous to the unvaccinated (most particularly unvaccinated children) who are also said to be the prime vectors for transmitting Delta.

There is data out there to support some of these assertions.

India, where the Delta variant is said to have originated, saw an explosion of cases beginning in mid-March. Prior to this outbreak India had been relatively untouched by the pandemic compared to many other countries.

The UK saw another surge in cases that was blamed on Delta that began in May.

The CDC has warned that the Delta variant is as contagious as chickenpox and may make people sicker than the original version of Covid.

Source: https://www.cnbc.com/2021/07/30/delta-cdc-warns-variant-is-as-contagious-as-chickenpox-may-make-people-sicker.html

Let's put that in context so that you understand how contagious chickenpox is.

This is how a pediatric infectious disease expert explains the contagiousness of chickenpox.

This delta variant is so much more contagious than the COVID we were seeing a year ago that it is becoming one of the most contagious viruses we have ever seen. It is almost as contagious as chickenpox. Chickenpox is so contagious, that if you had a patient sitting in a room with chickenpox, someone walking by in the hallway outside the room, with that door open, could catch it. That's how contagious it was -- just breathing the same air from an adjacent room.

That is really contagious. Forget about masks. Let's bring out the haz mat suits. If that is true we better have a vaccine which is very effective or it doesn't look like there is much hope that Delta will not eventually spread to everyone.

I take all of these claims seriously but I have also learned to do my own research and see where the data takes me.

The Delta variant clearly caused havoc in India but cases also declined as quickly in that country as they did on the upside. The entire cycle lasted about 90 days---45 days to peak, 45 days to level off.

Those cases also declined despite a very small number in that country being vaccinated. Today just 8% of the population in India has been fully vaccinated. It is 58% in the UK.

Based on everything we have been told, the UK should have done much better than India in dealing with Covid in general and Delta in particular.

UK has a less dense population than India. It has a more advanced health care system. It vaccinated a large proportion of its population

How do they compare on confirmed cases per capita?

How do they compare on deaths since the beginning of the pandemic?

The current surge in the United States is being blamed on the "dangerous" Delta variant. 

However, is it as dangerous as it is being portrayed or is Delta being used as a convenient excuse right now to obscure what increasingly look to be problems with the effectiveness of the Covid vaccines and the public health strategy we were told to follow from the beginning?

I don't know the answer to that question. It makes me uncomfortable even questioning whether the people who we should trust the most on this subject may be misleading us to protect their own reputations and maintain the narrative.

One of the most interesting research analyses I have come across in researching Covid over the last 18 months is a JAMA meta-analysis of 54 studies which examined the overall secondary household attack rate of people who had Covid.

In simple terms, these studies examined how many people in the same household became infected with Covid while living in that household with a symptomatic (or asymptomatic) Covid case.

To hear the CDC or media narrative you have to think it is close to 100% because of the "infectiousness" of Covid.

The actual number from the study. 17%.

That is right, less than 20% got sick with Covid living in the same house with someone with a Covid patient.

This number is a shock to almost everyone I share it with. Most don't believe it to be possible based on what they have heard in the media.

These people were living together, eating together, sharing the same bathroom facilities and, in some cases, sleeping together. Less than 1 in 5 got sick.

To add credibility to the 17% transmission rate in close quarters, that is also about the same infection rate that was found on the Diamond Princess and Teddy Roosevelt aircraft carrier early in the pandemic. Approximately 80% never got the virus despite being in very close contact with others on the ship.

The infection rate with someone who was asymptomatic? 0.7%.

I wrote about his earlier and its implications in a blog post in March titled "What About Asymptomatic Spread?".

If the attack rate is less than 1% involving asymptomatic cases in a household living arrangement, the attack rate for casual contacts involving asymptomatic cases has to be basically zero.

The key rationale for masking, distancing, and lockdowns is allegedly to protect public health from significant transmission from people who don’t show symptoms. If the contagiousness of people without symptoms is not a significant factor in the spread of Covid why have we wrecked the economy, our schools and everything else?

Why then, have we also seen the virus spread despite all of the social distancing, masks, school closures and everything else?

We are now being told all of our previous assumptions are out the window because we are dealing with a new and more dangerous variant. 

If you look at the case numbers you can easily be persuaded that is true.

Cases per million are actually more than double what they were at this time last year.

However, last year no one was vaccinated. This year, almost 60% of the population has received at least one dose of the vaccines.

As I have written before, how can we have the surge we are having if the vaccines are effective?

The narrative is that it is because of the Delta variant. It is more contagious. It is more dangerous. The vaccines were not designed to work against it. It is also the fault of those who are unvaccinated.

Is that true or is that a convenient excuse?

If there was no Delta variant to blame how would they explain the rise in cases right now?

The reality is that there are simply not enough unvaccinated people to fuel a surge of this magnitude  It defies logic and mathematics. You might have a bump but you could not possibly be at double last year's numbers.

It would either have to be the vaccines were not that effective to begin with or they are wearing off so quickly to be useless without continual boosters. 

Both of these would not be helpful to the narrative that has been developed.

Is Delta really that much more contagious? That seems to be the key point with Delta.

"It is almost as contagious as chickenpox".

I found a recent UK study published by Public Health England to be interesting in that regard in that it studied the secondary household attack rate from the Delta variant in that country during the recent surge in cases.

This study looked extensively at all of the Covid variants circulating in the UK since February, 2021.

This graph from the study gives you perspective on how Delta became the dominant variant in the UK beginning in May.

Source: https://dailysceptic.org/2021/08/06/devastating-new-data-from-phe-shows-vaccine-effectiveness-down-to-17-and-no-reduction-in-infectiousness-but-mortality-cut-by-77/

Where does that leave us who live in the United States?

The Sunbelt is in the middle of the same seasonal outbreak that occurred last Summer as the heat drives people inside to air conditioning and makes them more susceptible to the virus.

I would expect we are close to the peak in those states.

The narrative is that the surge in those states is due to low vaccination rates and Delta.

What is going to occur when the seasonality trend turns to the blue states in Northern climes? It will as the weather cools. 

That is going to be the real test of the vaccines and the narrative. 

In the next month we should also see if deaths are following cases up in the states that are seeing the surge right now. Deaths normally lag cases by about 30 days.

It may only be then that we find out whether Delta was really that infectious and dangerous or whether is it just a convenient excuse to keep the narrative alive that is centered so critically on vaccines as the only answer.

That includes doubling down even more on vaccine mandates as mounting evidence suggests they are woefully adequate for their intended purpose---to prevent infection and the transmission of disease.

The PHE study also found that there were limited difference in the infectiousness of those who were vaccinated and unvaccinated if they contracted Covid in that they showed similar viral loads (p.35). This clearly suggests that vaccinated people are spreading the virus. What exact purpose do "vaccine passports" serve then?

It still is very possible that the vaccines are effective in reducing severe illness and death. 

There is data to support that conclusion which includes the PHE briefing cited above. It showed a reduction in mortality due to the vaccines of 77%.

However, this would mean that these shots are really more akin to treatments than vaccines.

That then raises the question of whether it is ethical to subject so many people to the risks that may accompany those shots when the disease and its transmission is not being prevented. Shouldn't the focus then shift to other treatments that would be more targeted and carry less overall risks for the population?

Is Delta that dangerous?

Or is it possible that we face an even more dangerous threat right now that the CDC and the political class are so invested in their narrative than they are unwilling to veer from it at any cost.

The next few months may provide us with the elusive answer.

What was more dangerous?

Delta or what we were told to believe that simply was not true.

Addendum:

Below are some charts that show the history of chickenpox in the United States and the effects after a vaccine was first introduced in 1995.

This gives you some perspective as to what you would expect to see from a vaccine that was successfully preventing infection and the transmission of disease.

Notice that as vaccination percentages increased there was a corresponding reduction in cases.

Source: https://vaccines.procon.org/vaccine-histories-and-impact/varicella-chickenpox/

Source: https://vaccines.procon.org/vaccine-histories-and-impact/varicella-chickenpox/

By the time vaccination rates got to 60% cases had dropped by 80%.

Right now our vaccination rates are about 60% but cases are up 100% since this time last year.

My last edition of Monday Meanderings received some nice reviews from readers so I am posting another round.

Biden Sinking Even Faster Than I Thought?

Two weeks ago I wrote a blog post that Joe Biden appeared to be on the verge of sinking fast based on recent polling.

Another poll out last week by Rasmussen indicates that it might be much worse than I could have imagined.

The Rasmussen poll shows that only 48% approve of Biden's job performance.

What I found most interesting (and troubling for Biden) was looking at the cross-tabs in that poll.

What stood out in particular is the fact that Biden's approval with women is evaporating at levels that are hard to comprehend.

Exit polls from the 2020 election indicate that Biden would not have been elected without the female vote.

The CNN exit poll in 2020 showed that Biden got 57% of the women's vote. By contrast, Trump got 53% of the male vote.

Source: https://www.cnn.com/election/2020/exit-polls/president/national-results

The Rasmussen poll from last week shows Biden underwater with women 46%-52% (-6 points).

In other words, Biden has gone from +15 with women to -6 since the election.

Even worse for Biden, the poll shows that only 26% of women strongly approve while 44% strongly disapprove of his performance.

Only 32% of women in the poll stated they thought the United States was headed in the right direction.

Source: https://twitter.com/Rasmussen_Poll/status/1423982096251502597/photo/1

At the same time, Rasmussen shows that Biden has picked up support from men?

The poll also shows Biden's support among Blacks is also falling.

32% of Blacks strongly disapprove of Biden compared to 35% who strongly approve?

Biden received 87% of the Black vote in 2020.

The data on men and Blacks don't seem to add up and perhaps the poll is flawed somehow.

However, this trend may be interesting to keep an eye on.

If this polling is even partly true, Biden is in deep, deep trouble.

Vaccines Failing To Prevent Spread Of Covid

More troubling data this week from some of the the places in the United States that have the highest rate of vaccinations in their population.

It is hard to look at this data and believe that the vaccines are effective against preventing Covid right now.

85% of those eligible (age 12+) have received at least one dose of the vaccines in San Francisco. 78% are fully vaccinated.

Source: https://sf.gov/data/covid-19-vaccinations

85% of those age 65+ are fully vaccinated.

Source: https://sf.gov/data/covid-19-vaccinations

New cases are double what they were last year at this time in San Francisco despite almost 80% being fully vaccinated.

New Covid Cases in San Francisco Source: https://sf.gov/data/covid-19-cases-and-deaths

The good news is that we have not seen deaths following cases in San Francisco thus far. However, deaths are a lagging indicator and we probably need another month after this spike in cases to really believe we are better off than last year.

Source: https://sf.gov/data/covid-19-cases-and-deaths#more-information

Vaccines may very well be limiting severe illness and deaths. However, could it not also be due to better treatments and therapeutics?

Analyzing the data is never easy with Covid as there are so many moving parts. 

Hawaii also has one of the highest vaccination rates in the nation. 72% of the population has received at least one dose (3rd best in the nation). Hawaii also had some of the highest mask compliance rates. Hawaii is also not allowing anyone into the state unless they have a negative Covid test upon arrival.

It is not going real well for Hawaii right now.

New York Vaccine Passports

New York City is mandating vaccine passports for indoor dining, fitness and entertainment venues.

People who do not have proof of vaccination will not be able to work in or patronize these facilities.

I find it interesting that a vaccine ID is considered acceptable in that city but voter ID is considered racist.

This is especially true considering that only 31% of Blacks and 42% of Hispanics in New York City are fully vaccinated.

What is even more interesting is that recent reports indicate that about half of New York's city police and fire personnel have refused to be vaccinated.

Source: https://nypost.com/2021/07/27/less-than-half-of-staff-vaccinated-at-key-nyc-public-agencies-data/

My guess is that a substantial number of these first responders in New York City have already had Covid and simply do not see the need to take the vaccines (and the risks) with no clear benefit over their natural immunity.

Is Mayor DeBlasio going to block them from entering a diner to eat?

It gets more difficult to understand when you look at the numbers in San Francisco and Hawaii that have high vaccination rates and yet cases are going up. What exactly is the vaccine passport going to do?

All of this cannot be good for the future of New York City retail rental real estate which is already feeling the effects of Covid.

America's 10th Largest City Created in 2021

You may not have realized it but the United States has added the equivalent of its 10th largest city just with the number of illegal aliens that have been apprehended (and released) at the southern border so far this year.

1,110.000 have been encountered by U.S. Customs and Border Protection thus far this year. That is larger than the population of San Jose, California which is the 10th largest city in the United States.

It is also about the same number of LEGAL immigrants that are supposed to be allowed into the country based on the current immigration law.

Of course, the LAW is now a small detail that no one in Washington, D.C. seems to be concerned with anymore.

Source: https://www.newsweek.com/enough-people-crossed-border-2021-create-10th-largest-city-us-1615776

210,000 illegals were encountered at the border in July alone according to estimates calculated by the Associated Press (official numbers have not yet been released for July by CBP). This would be the highest monthly total in 21 years.

The official CBP numbers through June show the year-over-year changes.

By country of origin.

Honduras +604%

Guatemala, El Salvador +400%

Mexico +195%

Source:https://www.cbp.gov/newsroom/stats/southwest-land-border-encounters-by-component#wcm-survey-target-id

By demographic.

Unaccompanied minors +337%!

Source:https://www.cbp.gov/newsroom/stats/southwest-land-border-encounters-by-component#wcm-survey-target-id

It also should be kept in mind that these are the numbers of illegals that the CBP know about. How many others snuck into the country that they don't know about?

All of this poses a difficult question.

Which language do you advise your children or grandchildren to study in school looking to the future?

Spanish or Chinese?

Should I be concerned?

That is a question several people have asked me in recent days who have gotten the Covid vaccine.

It is a question that more and more people are asking in light of new data showing that the vaccines may not be as effective as they were promoted to be.

I have highlighted some of this data in these pages previously here, here and here.

As I have also written in these pages, any medical intervention has benefits...and risks.

Every time a medical intervention (tests, immunizations, prescription drugs, surgery) is undertaken you are taking a risk. That risk is generally worthwhile because it will make you better in the long run. However, you could end up in worse shape because of the intervention.

To better understand this, consider the research that shows that in every instance in which doctors have gone on strike around the world, death rates have stayed the same or gone down when the doctors were out. There has never been a study that shows the death rate has gone up. Think about that. When the doctors are not involved the death rate actually drops?

This is attributed to the fact that elective or non- emergency surgeries do not get done when doctors are on strike and a surprising amount of mortality occurs following these procedures. Death rates actually rise when elective surgeries begin again.

Source: https://www.cnet.com/health/99-of-covid-deaths-are-now-of-unvaccinated-people-experts-say/

Source: https://humanevents.com/2021/07/30/breaking-leaked-cdc-slides-call-for-universal-masks-reinstating-mitigation-strategies-vaccine-mandates-for-hcp-to-stop-delta-variant/

Source: https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/us/

Source: https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/us/

What do we hear Democrats talking about right now?

The need to spend trillions of dollars on "human infrastructure".

The need to continue the moratorium on rent and repayment of student loan debt.

The need to raise taxes on "the rich".

Of course, we have also seen inflation spike as a result of the infusion of printed money created by the Federal Reserve to cover the debt caused by trillions of dollars in stimulus and Covid-related spending over the last year.

The moratorium on evictions has gotten the most publicity in the last couple of days as the CDC imposed moratorium expired on July 31.

I am still at a loss as how anyone thought that a bunch of unelected bureaucrats at the CDC had the authority and power to decide that renters did not have to pay legally owed rent to their landlords in the first place?

How could something like that be done under our Constitution without it being voted on by our elected representatives?

The Supreme Court obviously agreed since it ruled in June that the CDC lacked the legal authority to do what it did.

However, in a sign of the times we live in, the Supreme Court did not rule that the CDC moratorium should be repealed retroactively. It merely ruled that the CDC did not have the authority to do it again once the current moratorium expired on July 31.

The Court stated that if it was going to be extended again it was the responsibility of Congress to pass a law to do it.

Nancy Pelosi tried to persuade the Democrat-controlled House to pass an extension but she could not find the votes before their August recess.

Source: https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/congress/congress-scrambles-extend-eviction-moratorium-saturday-expiration-n1275485

In another sign of the times, having failed to get the necessary votes, Nancy Pelosi then urged Joe Biden to just ignore the law, the Supreme Court and the Constitution, and extend the moratorium anyway.

In rare discord with his own party, Biden faced new pressure to act after House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and House Democratic leaders on Sunday urged the White House to extend the moratorium despite legal concerns.

To his credit, Biden stated he did not have that power.

Over the past year, the CDC extended the moratorium meant to help Americans struggling to pay rent during the pandemic three times. But the White House now says only Congress can extend the evictions freeze after the Supreme Court ruled in June that the CDC overstepped its authority when it created the policy.

However, that may not matter in the end. Recent reports indicate Biden may move ahead anyway with a revised program. So much for the rule of the law. It seems that this is a recurring pattern with Democrats. Look no further than enforcement of immigration law if you have any doubts about that.

If this is done it is another typical Democrat maneuver. If you don't like the law, just ignore it. If you later get slapped down by the courts, so what?

Can you imagine if a Republican said something like this?

Source: https://twitter.com/tomselliott/status/1422610289225256964

Of course, the moratorium does not forgive the renter of the rental payments. It merely gives them a limited reprieve. However, the longer the moratorium goes on it is obvious it will be harder for the renter to make up all the past due payments. We are now talking about a year of missed payments.

How many people are going to be in position to make up these rent payments?

Therefore, it clear that the end game here is to have the rent payments forgiven. In fact, Congress already included $46.5 billion for rental assistance in one of the earlier Covid relief packages for state and local governments to distribute for that purpose.

It is just another example of what could have been considered a well-meaning program that in the end will create another cycle of dependency that will undoubtedly do more harm than good.

It also shows no respect for the property rights of the landlords who are not being compensated and yet have bills to pay themselves--mortgage payments, property taxes, insurance, maintenance and the like.

I find it interesting that I have not seen where any government entity that has been willing to provide a moratorium on property taxes on any real estate subject to the renter's moratorium.

It is also interesting looking at the issues that the Democrats care most about are the same as those that  James Madison and the Founders described as "wicked and improper projects" in Federalist Paper #10.

In that Federalist Paper , Madison explained why the Founders established a representative republic form of government rather than a democracy or parliamentary system. 

The Founders understood that opposing political factions were the greatest potential threat to any government and that in many governments the only redress was violence.  They wanted to insure that factions could not wield power that would be dangerous to either the rights of other citizens or the common good.  What did they see as the most common and tangible source of faction?  The conflict between rich and poor. Here are the exact words from #10 published on November 22, 1787.

The most common and durable source of factions has been the various and unequal distribution of property. Those who hold and those who are without property have ever formed distinct interests in society. 

Where did they see the most danger for a majority to trample on the rights of a minority?  Taxation.

The apportionment of taxes on the various descriptions of property is an act which seems to require the most exact impartiality; yet there is, perhaps, no legislative act in which greater opportunity and temptation are given to a predominant party to trample on the rules of justice. Every shilling with which they overburden the inferior number, is a shilling saved to their own pockets. 

They understood that those that governed us had to be a cut above to balance and mediate these conflicting interests and put the public interest above any special interests.  However, they also knew that this was naive. A modern translation puts it this way.

Enlightened statesmen will not always be in power, and even if such mediation could happen, it would rarely take place with long-term interests in mind, since the immediate "here and now" interests of the party in power would most likely win the day at the expense of the rights of the other party, or the good of the whole.

Our Founding Fathers were one smart group.

It is as if they knew exactly how political games could be played to the detriment of individual rights and the long-term interests of the nation.

They also knew that there was little they could do to prevent factions from occurring.  That could only be done by limiting liberties or insuring every citizen has the same opinions, feelings and the same interests. Neither was acceptable to the Founders.  

They had no interest in preventing the causes, which is what Communist and Totalitarian governments do.  They focused on controlling the effects of factions.  Thus, they constructed a republican governmental framework with an ultimate goal of securing both the public good and private rights against the dangers of an oppressive majority faction. Everything in the Constitution was built on this foundational principle. 

Perhaps most applicable today is what Federalist #10 says in the second to last paragraph. 

There could not be a better example to show how far we have deviated from the path the Founders established and why they set up safeguards in the Constitution to protect the People. 

It reads as follows with the bold emphasis being mine: