Archive for April, 2020

Corona virus questions

Posted: April 14, 2020 by chrisharper in Uncategorized
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By Christopher Harper

Despite all of the information swirling around about Covid-19, I still have a bunch of unanswered questions.

Why were the models so wrong? 

In the space of about a week starting April 2, two revisions on April 5 and 8 have utterly discredited the model produced by the University of Washington’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation. Just days ago, the estimates called for the likelihood of 100,000 deaths, with as many as 240,000 a real possibility. On April 8, the projected cumulative deaths were slashed to about 60,000, with the upper range again cut to about 126,000. In less than a week, the model proved to be off by more than 33 percent.

Remember when the Imperial College of London “experts” said there might be more than two million dead in the United States?

Why can’t news organizations do the simple math necessary to tell the true story of the virus?

The overall infection rate and death rate do not accurately show the nature of the pandemic. In order to compare apples to apples, you divide the number of those infected or dead by the total population of the country.

That shows that the United States is doing a good job when compared with other countries. But an accurate view of the pandemic wouldn’t fit the meme that Trump has been doing a bad job.

Why did New York City experience such a high rate of infection?

Other cities had high incidents of the disease but nothing to compare with New York. At first, it was thought that the virus had come from China. Now it appears that the virus affecting New York and New Jersey was a mutation from Europe. At first, it seemed that the outbreak had started in New Rochelle in the suburbs, but the minority and Hasidic Jewish communities were hard hit. It would be worthwhile to trace the path of the virus in the New York metropolitan area.

Why did Los Angeles have such a low rate of infection?

The rate was much lower than in many parts of the country. Perhaps the dependence on driving and a lack of a public transit system actually helps in a pandemic.

Why did the developing world have such a low rate of infection?

As one Australian newspaper put it: “How does a palm-fringed lagoon in Fiji or New Caledonia sound or perhaps a dive resort in Papua New Guinea, a beachfront hotel in East Timor? The more adventurous might like to try Latvia, Slovakia, Vietnam, or Kuwait. If there weren’t travel bans, of course.”

Why did Germany, which clamped down early, have such a low rate of infection like Sweden, which did virtually nothing? 

Other questions have obvious answers: stupidity.

Why does anyone think the data from China is accurate?

Why did some states close liquor stores?

Why was it all right to use Middle Eastern Respiratory Syndrome in 2012 while the Wuhan Virus was racist?

The Corona Apocalypse Trap

Posted: April 14, 2020 by datechguy in Uncategorized

Pray do not fill your letters with rubbish about this European War. Its final issue is, no doubt, important, but that is a matter for the High Command. I am not in the least interested in knowing how many people in England have been killed by bombs. In what state of mind they died, I can learn from the office at this end. That they were going to die sometime, I knew already. Please keep your mind on your work,

Screwtape Letter 24

One of the things I’ve noticed a lot of, which is something that others might not have, have been Christians looking at this entire Corona Virus thing as either a judgement of God or an attack by the devil.

It worth reminding everyone of these remarks by Christ on the subject:

At that time some people who were present there told him about the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mingled with the blood of their sacrifices.   He said to them in reply, “Do you think that because these Galileans suffered in this way they were greater sinners than all other Galileans?  By no means! But I tell you, if you do not repent, you will all perish as they did!

Or those eighteen people who were killed when the tower at Siloam fell on them  – do you think they were more guilty than everyone else who lived in Jerusalem?  By no means! But I tell you, if you do not repent, you will all perish as they did!“

Luke 13:1-5

The #1 cause of death among humans is life. Once you are connived and alive you are doomed to die. People keep panicking over death but every person who reads this will die, but so will every person who doesn’t.

The corona virus stuff only matters in terms of heaven and hell in terms of how it affects individual souls. C.S. Lewis elaborates on this further in Screwtape 28:

When I told you not to fill your letters with rubbish about the war, I meant, of course, that I did not want to have your rather infantile rhapsodies about the death of men and the destruction of cities. In so far as the war really concerns the spiritual state of the patient, I naturally want full reports. And on this aspect you seem singularly obtuse. Thus you tell me !with glee that there is reason to expect heavy air raids on the town where the creature lives. This is a crying example of something I have complained about already – your readiness to forget the main point in your immediate enjoyment of human suffering. Do you not know that bombs kill men? Or do you not realise that the patient’s death, at this moment, is precisely what we want to avoid?

The last thing the devil wants is a person dying in a state of grace. The death of a person in a state of grace is a loss for the Devil and a gain for that person because if one dies in a state of grace they avoid hell forever. A long life that ends in an eternity in Hell is not a net plus.

Furthermore to obsess on the actual or supposed sins of other and cause us to take our eyes off the state of our own sins. There is a reason why Pride is the 1st of the deadly sins.

In other words rather than worrying about if this Corona Wuhan CCP Virus pandemic is God’s judgement on anybody else, let’s try to do God’s will today.

An awful lot of people who are serving their fellow man in this crisis seem to be doing that, and I suspect that fact is a disaster for the forces of darkness.

Report from Louisiana: Passing Time

Posted: April 13, 2020 by Pat Austin in Uncategorized
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By:  Pat Austin

SHREVEPORT – Because COVID-19 was not enough drama, tornadoes ripped through the South on Easter Sunday, leaving 19 dead at last count. The band of storms had been anticipated and talked about for days and days before the event; they blew up over Texas over the weekend and rolled into Louisiana around dawn, moving on across the southern states throughout the day. Seems like it happens here every Easter.

Like the rest of the nation, we remain sheltered in place, although people interpret that with various degrees of fidelity. Grocery stores, WalMart, and garden centers remain quite crowded. Some stores around here are limiting the number of folks allowed inside at one time, but not all of them.

The tone of the quarantine seems to be changing; more and more people are calling for businesses to reopen. The initial fear of the pandemic seems to be easing and now people want their liberties back. Personally, I’ve cleaned out every closet, pantry, and drawer, scrubbed the baseboards, polished the furniture, weeded every flower bed, brushed the dog, and eaten a gallon of BlueBell Ice Cream (Cookie Dough Overload). I’ve gained five pounds. I’m thinking of taking up yoga; those yoga pants are really comfortable.

I’ve met more people in my neighborhood than I have in the thirty years I’ve lived here – from six feet part, of course. I have one across-the-street neighbor who doesn’t come outside much but pops open his front door every day, looks around, waves, then goes back inside. My next-door neighbor fires up his blower and blows his driveway every single day, at least once. Sometimes more than once. I spend a lot of time watching the dog a couple of doors down dig holes in his front yard, tail happily wagging. There’s another guy across the street who sits in his big picture window every day, just watching the neighborhood. He waves when you look over there. There’s neighborhood bar at the end of my street and I can see the owner sitting outside alone on the deck sipping a beer and watching traffic.  Lots and lots of people are walking; with gyms closed, people are trying to get their exercise any way they can.

I can not fathom the economic toll this is all going to have. I totally understand all of the worry and angst about the economy and it’s going to take a far better mind than mine to figure out how we come back from this, but I know one thing: we will. There’s no other option. We will.

Once we all get back to work, we will be doing the Monday morning quarterback routine on how all of this has been handled and there will be blame, fault, and second guessing all around. It will be a political mess. I hope that as Americans we will be able to pull together instead of apart, and get ourselves back on track to prosperity, and I hope we do it with kindness and a new appreciation for what we have.

Pat Austin blogs at And So it Goes in Shreveport and is the author of Cane River Bohemia: Cammie Henry and her Circle at Melrose Plantation. Follow her on Instagram @patbecker25 and Twitter @paustin110.

Jon Tron vs Goop, Proving Christ, 9/11 vs Corona, Biden vs Trump, and nothing Newsworthy here: Under the Fedora

Posted: April 13, 2020 by datechguy in Always look at the bright side of Trump, American Success Stories, catholic, Church doctrine, crime, culture, elections, fun, News/opinion, podcast, politics, primaries
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On Easter Sunday my son put on a video of the Internet comedian JonTron with his latest takedown of Gwenith Paltrow and her Goop people.

It was a hilarious takedown of what’s pretty much a bunch of people being grifted. There is a reason why he has 6.6 mil followers

The funniest thing about this? I’ll wager the vast majority of the people featured in this video would consider belief in Christianity foolishness.

Speaking of Christianity there was a great piece at Hillfaith linked by Instapundit with six proofs of the resurrection several of which I never thought of such as

The first witnesses to the empty tomb and the living Jesus were women: It’s a sad reality, but women only counted as half as reliable witnesses as men. So the fact all four of the Gospels present women as the first witnesses to the Risen Jesus is a strong indicator Matthew, Mark, Luke and John reported the facts, not what they thought would be the most credible claims

I should have thought of this myself but my favorite proof of the accuracy of scripture is one I used many years ago at my 1st personal blog:

Now lets look at the evidence. I am going to lean on Will Durant:

He first cites Josephus circa 93 AD and points out that the praise given to Jesus by a person out to please both Jews and Romans is a tad suspect but the big gun comes from a 1st man named Thallus.

Lets Jump to the Gospel of Matthew briefly:

From noon onward, darkness came over the whole land until three in the afternoon. And about three o’clock Jesus cried out in a loud voice, “Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani?” which means, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” Some of the bystanders who heard it said, “This one is calling for Elijah.” Immediately one of them ran to get a sponge; he soaked it in wine, and putting it on a reed, gave it to him to drink. But the rest said, “Wait, let us see if Elijah comes to save him.” But Jesus cried out again in a loud voice, and gave up his spirit. Matt 27:45-50

Now Thallus the pagan isn’t going to put up with this. About 50 AD he states that the darkness is a purely natural phenomenon and just a coincidence.

Durant put this argument in its modern perspective:

the argument took the existence of Christ for granted. The denial of that existence seems never to have occurred even to the bitterest gentile or Jewish opponents of nascent Christianity.

And remember that particular fragment to the best of our knowledge predates the Gospel of Matthew that it unintentionally collaborates by two decades. The pagan provides the proof. Talk about working in mysterious ways.

You should really read the whole thing;

There are many candidates for some of the lamest arguments on twitter but this one is big

https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

The answer to this is so obvious that it was almost a waste of time to tweet it.

https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

Of course there is the possibility that this is a lab virus released accidentally in that case there is a murder to be upset at, but I’m sure he’d consider that racist.

As I mentioned during my midnight livestream podcast (available here) had a lot of fun with people insisting that Trump is a fool and this corona virus conferences are hurting him who are oddly not willing to bet $500 bucks and give me points to back up their beliefs. Apparently “experts” and those who don’t even like try know why:

Wallace noted, “In all of our [Fox News] polls for months, Biden had an 8-9 point lead, and that’s now gone. It’s dead even.” He continued:

It seems to me as this virus goes on, that instead of this being a choice between the president and Joe Biden, as a lot of elections are, I think that this election is going to end up being a referendum on President Trump and the handling of the coronavirus.

As we get into September and October after Labor Day, I think people are going to make a judgment, and they’ll understand, the president didn’t create the virus, so I think they’re going to be fair-minded about it. Do they think he handled the health crisis well? Do they think he handled the economic crisis well?

If they do, I don’t see how he gets beat. If they don’t, I don’t see how he could win.

And that’s not even taking into account that the polls have been undercounting Trump supporters from day 1

Finally, in a time of social distancing here is a story that surprised me:

 Around 400 people were at a party at an East Bakersfield apartment complex when dozens of shots rang out, wounding six people early Saturday morning, according to the Kern County Sheriff’s Office.

Based on evidenced recovered at the scene, KCSO says, it appears at least one partygoer fired back at the suspects in a white sedan that fled the scene. Officials said nearly 100 empty shell casings of multiple calibers were recovered at the scene in the 3500 block of Pioneer Drive.

Even at a time of social distancing 400 at a party in an apartment complex is a lot. You would think that a story like this during social distancing time would be front page news everywhere but I suspect it will not be because of this line:

The suspects were only described by deputies as four black males, in a white sedan.

Now I could be wrong, we might see this as a lead everywhere and see the Governor of California condemn the lack of social distancing here, but I suspect I’d have a harder time finding a taker for a $10 bet on this than I have for the Biden election one.

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