YALE MANDATES COVID BOOSTER FOR STUDENTS, NOT STAFF: If you plan to attend the Spring semester in New Haven as a student, you must get the latest Covid booster. But not to worry, according to Campus Reform’s William Biagini, if you are a faculty member or staff employee because the mandate applies only to students.
On October 23, an online poll on Covid controls and vaccines was published on news.com.au with some intriguing results. Conducted over one day, the survey attracted more than 42,000 votes for every question and more than 50,000 for some. Although the scale of the responses is impressive, the results show that the respondents were highly unrepresentative of the general population.
Official data from the health department show that nationwide, 95.2 percent of over-16s had received at least two doses of a Covid vaccine as of November 2, 72.2 percent were triple-vaccinated, and 41.7 percent had received four doses. But in the online survey, the percentages were 62, 26 and 16 for two, three and four shots, respectively.
Clearly, therefore, the site’s readership is not representative of the population and the survey attracted a disproportionate share of the Covid vaccine-hesitant.
Even with that caveat, some of the results are striking. “An overwhelming majority” are no longer concerned about Covid and do not wear masks in public. Half said they had caught Covid, with 6 percent getting it more than once. Around 37 percent said they were unvaccinated. Over two-thirds said the governments’ pandemic response had been too heavy-handed, 25 percent said the leaders had done the best they could, and 8 percent thought Australia had handled the pandemic as well as any other country.
Most strikingly of all, only 35 percent of the 45,000 vaccinated respondents in the poll said they would make the same decision again, while not a single unvaccinated person expressed regret for the decision.
The rest of this article provides clues as to why many people feel this way. I first look at the latest weekly data from New South Wales (NSW) Health covering the week of October 23–29, highlighting four major disconnects between two critical claims in support of the official narrative and what their own data show.
Claims (p. 2)
“COVID-19 vaccines are very effective in preventing the severe impacts of infections with the virus.”
“Over 95 percent of people aged 16 and over in NSW have received two doses of a COVID-19 vaccine.”
Data (p. 4)
Not a single Covid-19 patient in NSW for the week – not one – who was admitted to hospital, or was admitted to ICU, or died, was unvaccinated: exactly 0 percent on all three metrics.
Every single one of the Covid-19 patients in NSW for the week, whose vaccination status was known, who was admitted to hospital, or was admitted to ICU, or died, was at least double-vaccinated: 100 percent on all three metrics.
Eight of the 15 Covid-related deaths – 53.3 percent – had received four or more doses of the Covid vaccine. As of November 2, the share of NSW residents eligible for four doses of the vaccine (30+ years old) to have received them was 43.3 percent. Thus, compared to their population, the four-dosed are over-represented by 23.1 percent in the Covid-related mortality in this reporting week. However, it’s surely reasonable to say that it’s almost certain that neither of the two who died with their vaccination status not known would have been four-dosed. If so, the share of the quadruple-vaccinated deaths drops halfway closer to their population share.
Not a single person whose death with Covid-19 in NSW was recorded in this week was under 50 years old.
Questions
Can you spot the gap/inconsistency/cognitive dissonance (pick your own preferred descriptor) between the claims that seek to bolster the highly effective vaccines slogan, and the data?
What do you think the chances are that if consulted, “fact-checkers” will judge this to be “misleading,” “lacking context,” and perhaps even “dangerous?” No doubt they could also find a couple of ‘useful idiots’ to provide a helpful quote or two.
Of course, one weekly report cannot possibly have anything to say about trend lines. Figures 1 and 2 cover more than five months of NSW data. They cast serious doubts on claims of vaccine effectiveness with regard to hospital admissions, ICU admissions and even deaths. The claims of trials-based efficacy were hugely exaggerated by using relative rather than the more honest absolute risk reduction, while ignoring the age-stratified number needed to be vaccinated in order to prevent one hospitalization or death.
Because of the long-term harms caused by the fear narrative and the severity of the coercion employed to encourage multiple rounds of vaccine and booster take-up, governments really do need to subject vaccine regulators and public health bureaucrats to serious scrutiny. Otherwise, they will continue to suffer from falling trust in public institutions.
At the individual level, vaccines may still offer some protection to the elderly, especially to people with serious underlying health conditions. But with the known and suspected risks of side-effects in the short and medium terms, the as yet unknown long-term safety profiles, and rising numbers with natural immunity from infection, the decision really is best left to individuals after full discussion with their doctors.
The latter must not just be free, but must be encouraged to go over the balance of benefits and harms for their patients in order to get their informed consent.
Figure 3 shows that Covid-related deaths in NSW (including those with unknown vaccination status) have dropped from a peak of 200 in the first week of August to just 17 in the final week of October.
Fearing the onset of relevance deprivation syndrome should the country conclude the pandemic is over and time to move on, or rather move back to pre-Covid normality, some experts are inevitably issuing grim warnings about newer, dangerously infectious variants that will come ashore over the Southern Hemisphere’s autumn and winter.
Finally, Figure 3 also suggests that perhaps Australia should join the Scandinavian countries and Florida and drop booster recommendations for healthy people under 50 or 60 years old.
Scott Lincicome’s criticism of Wells King’s and Dan Vaughn’s purported demonstration of the success of the voluntary export restraints (VERs) that Pres. Reagan unwisely pressured Japanese automakers to adopt in 1981 is devastating (Letters, November 7). In contrast, King’s response to Lincicome’s criticism is as lame as is King’s and Vaughn’s fallacy-filled original essay.
Overlook King’s commission of the post hoc, ergo propter hoc fallacy. Focus instead on his continued sidestepping of the fundamental criticism of protectionism, namely, even if – indeed, especially if – it successfully buoys some particular industries, protectionism necessarily imposes larger costs on the rest of the home-country economy.
Protectionism’s harm to consumers is obvious. Having to pay more to buy the outputs of ‘successfully’ protected firms, consumers must reduce their purchases of other goods and services or reduce their savings. To grasp this economic reality is to realize also the harm that protectionism inflicts on other home-country firms and workers. Every input that protectionism diverts into protected firms is an input diverted away from other productive uses. Non-protected firms thus have less access to raw materials, tools, intermediate goods, and labor. Their outputs fall. Further, because workers in non-protected firms have fewer or lower-quality tools and inputs with which to work, these workers’ productivity falls. And falling productivity means falling wages.
Looking only at the alleged ‘success’ of protected firms and then confidently concluding that protectionism is a boon to the entire country, King reasons as would an apologist for successful thieves – an apologist who points to the thieves’ bustling business in larceny, and to the thieves’ high ‘earnings,’ and then confidently concludes that thievery is a boon to the entire country.
Sincerely,
Donald J. Boudreaux
Professor of Economics
and
Martha and Nelson Getchell Chair for the Study of Free Market Capitalism at the Mercatus Center
George Mason University
Fairfax, VA 22030
WELL, GOOD: Turkey Bitchslaps Russia. “Basically Ukraine managed to hit (but not sink) some Russian warships in Sevastopol harbor with some waterborne drones, and Putin threw a hissy fit, declaring the Ukrainian grain export deal was off. Turkey promptly went “No it isn’t” and said exports would continue with Turkish flags on the grain ships in question, causing Russia to back down and rejoin the deal pretty much immediately.”
Photo courtesy of Andrew Stickelman (4zSqHtIx8H8-unsplash).
A new 27-Cent Colorado Retail Delivery Fee Adds Up Quickly
The Colorado State Legislature in 2021 passed Senate Bill 21-260, a nearly $5.4 transportation bill that tackles several large items at the same time including fixing and expanding highways and boosting various transit projects.
Included in the new law are six new road-user fees that are projected to raise billions of dollars — and will affect most people in the state — all while maneuvering around state fiscal roadblocks, like TABOR (Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights), that would have required going to voters to pass tax increases.
“TABOR’s restrictions in the Constitution do not apply to what is called ‘“fees,’” said Jeffery Zax, Professor and Associate Chair of Undergraduate Studies at the University of Colorado-Boulder. “When the government can charge a specific fee for a service that is outside the restrictions that TABOR imposes, so it is possible for the government to provide some services where it is reimbursed directly.”
Colorado Retail Delivery Fee Requirements
The new fees include a Retail Delivery fee, which is a 27-cent delivery fee that will apply to orders — including those made online — for goods and most other items subject to sales tax, including restaurant food. The retail delivery fee is remitted to the Colorado Department of Revenue.
Others include:
Electric Motor Vehicle Registration Fees
Gasoline and Diesel Fuel Fees
Passenger Ride Fees
Road Usage Fees
Short-Term Vehicle Rental Fees
“It was part of a comprehensive transportation sustainability legislation in Senate Bill 21-260 that was passed in the 2021 Legislative session,” said Josh Pens, Director of Tax Policy for the Colorado Department of Revenue. “It did a number of things, but as far as the Department of Revenue is concerned, it created new fees for us to administer including the Retail Delivery Fee, which is expected to produce (about) $150 million in revenue every fiscal year.”
Look Out For the 27-cent Fee on Your Deliveries
Effective July 1, the state of Colorado started imposing a retail delivery fee on all deliveries by motor vehicle to a location in Colorado, even if the delivery originates in a different state.
The retailer or marketplace facilitator that collects sales tax on taxable items delivered in Colorado is liable to collect and remit the retail delivery fee. Therefore, if a third-party delivery service handles 100 percent of a business’s deliveries and collects and remits the sales tax on all those deliveries, that business will not be liable to collect and remit the retail delivery fee.
Retail Deliver Fee Coincides with Sales Tax Return
The retail delivery fee is due at the same time as sales tax returns. Returns are generally filed on a monthly basis and must be filed on or before the 20th day of the month following each reporting period. Retailers permitted to file state sales tax returns on a quarterly, annual, or another basis will file the retail delivery fee return on the same schedule.
The retail delivery fee will be reported and paid on a new return, Form DR 1786. The retail delivery fee is collected state-wide, does not need to be separated by jurisdiction, and is calculated per sale. The retail delivery fee is made up of six different fees.
Retailers that make retail deliveries must show the total of the fees on the receipt or invoice as one item called “retail delivery fees.”.
If every item in a retail sale is exempt from sales tax, the delivery is also exempt from the retail delivery fee. However, if one or more items in the transaction is subject to sales tax, the retail delivery fee is due. Each sale for delivery is considered a single “retail delivery” regardless of how many shipments are needed to deliver the items purchased.
As a courtesy, on July 1, retailers with an active sales tax account, a retailer license, and any sales tax liability reported after Jan. 1, 2021, were automatically registered for a retail delivery fee account. Open out-of-state retailers or retailers’ user account holders were also automatically registered. There is no license required or registration fee due.
Pens said the DOR does not have any particular insights on how the retail delivery fee impacts businesses of different sizes.
“The fee is imposed upon the purchaser, so the retailer’s role is to collect the fee and pay it over to the state,” he said. “As such, the impacts are going to be driven primarily by the costs of collection and return preparation.”
States Look at Revenue Alternatives
Zax said states like Colorado are having to find new ways to generate revenue.
“The way governments ordinarily work is they provide services that are available to many or all of the citizens, and they pay for it with taxation,” he said. “What that means is the link between who pays and who receives can be broken by the government, and that is often a good thing because the government wants, in part, to provide services for people who are in need, and that is going to be funded by people who have fewer needs and more resources. Increasingly the state government has to turn towards fees in order to fund specific services because it is not able to raise the taxes that people might be willing to pay to get these services. Fees are limited in how they can be used because they have to be used to fund the services for which the fees are charged.”
Let’s put a bounty on errors. If there are no takers, we’ll raise the bounties over time.
At a minimum, we’ll incentivize a lot of people who think we are misinformation spreaders to read these books and show the world that we are wrong.
To qualify
An error means you found something that is a material error of fact in what was presented. So if the book says “they never tested vaccine XX against a placebo” and you find a document proving it was tested against a placebo, you win the current reward for that book. It’s that easy.
So the book must state a material fact and that fact must be shown to be untrue to claim the reward.
Only the first person to discover the error will be paid.
The Turtles team wants to focus ONLY on Chapter 1, so only errata in Chapter 1 are eligible. Chapter 1 is a quick read. For RFK’s The Real Anthony Fauci, all 250,000 words are eligible.
To enter your submission
Send 1 Solana (SOL) token to this address: 9BBhGEfAMSHg8Mxyb4x67VKMhyomJ3MAPa9mqXtaP8xZ
Make your submission to the Contact me page explaining what you found. Include the following:
The SOL transaction ID from Step #1
A description of the bug
Whether I can publish your identity to give you credit for success
The SOL address to send the reward if you win
The Solana fee is a de minimis entry fee (it’s about $30) and does four important things:
It establishes that you are serious about your submission. We simply cannot afford the time to look at entries which are not serious.
It makes a public record of your entry
It creates a timestamp of your entry in the event of disputes
It insulates me from having to pay PayPal a $2,500 per payment penalty which they wanted to assess on anyone who in their sole opinion violates their terms of service.
Note:
Pretty much anyone who does crypto can help you make the transfer if you are not crypto literate. If you are using Ledger Live to send the Solana, you can populate a “memo” field with your name, book, and page # which then creates a public record of your entry, e.g., “Steve Kirsch, Fauci, 234.”
Someone could front run your entry fee by looking for blockchain transactions and then front running you on the Contact me form. This is unlikely since there will be a “double claim” in my database and it will be easy to assess who sent the funds. So this means there is no incentive to game the system.
The entry fee is non-refundable and covers our costs of reviewing your submission.
Modifications
If the system is abused, I reserve the right to increase the entry fee at any time.
Similarly, I reserve the right to change these terms at any time. So the timestamp of your entry as proven on the blockchain is public proof of the terms in existence at the time of the submission.
Judging your submission
I will send your submission to 2 or more experts of my choosing to evaluate.
If the experts believe you are correct, you win the reward amount which will be sent to you at a crypto address of your choosing. Otherwise, you forfeit the fee.
I will have 30 days to evaluate your submission. If you don’t hear back from me in 30 days, it should be considered a “I disagree” response.
Disputes
You can dispute my decision by requesting JAMS arbitration.
Both sides are allowed to dismiss up to 2 judges from an ordered list presented by JAMS (or other mutually agreeable ADR service). So the first mutually agreeable judge will judge the case.
The parties split the arbitration fee.
The loser agrees to reimburse the winner for the arbitration expenses.
The arbitrator could decide it is a draw in which case both sides split the cost.
This creates an incentive to settle and ensures that only serious cases would go to arbitration. It provides a neutral way to settle disputes that favors the person with the stronger case.
Duplicate submissions
If someone has already submitted the same erratum ahead of you, I’ll fully refund your entry fee. You can avoid this by checking the current submissions list at the end of this article.
Modifications to these terms
I tried to keep this as simple as possible, but I’m open to negotiating these terms.
Reward amounts
As of Nov 7, 1:48 PM PST:
The Real Anthony Fauci: $200 per erratum anywhere in the book.
Turtles All the Way Down: $1,000 per erratum. Only the first chapter is eligible.
Current submissions
The first submission came in just hours after I posted the reward.
Here is a list of paid entries (Book, page number):
Fauci book winning submissions
Page 194 On page 194, RFK Jr states incorrectly that "Belgian health officials acknowledged that the current vaccines cannot stop COVID, nor protect Belgium’s citizens." I followed the citation and what it actually said there was "As RTBF acknowledges, in the face of the Delta variant, current vaccination is far from sufficient to protect the population." So I can see how this could have been misunderstood by RFK Jr's team. I then followed the citation there to verify my hunch, and indeed, the original source is quoting RBTF as saying that the current vaccination *rate* is too low to protect the population but that the vaccine is highly effective at preventing deaths. So basically RFK's take is completely wrong here. The original article can be read behind the paywall here.
Page 525 340% should be 240% (the RR was 3.36). It took us about 5 minutes to review. Proof of payment
By James D. Agresti
November 4, 2022
Overview
Based on a misunderstanding of new FBI data, NewsNation is reporting that 14,677 murders occurred in the U.S. during 2021, a supposedly large decline from 2020. In reality, that figure is far from complete, and comprehensive records from death certificates show that about 24,493 people were murdered in 2021. This is about:
1,000 more murders than in 2020.
6,000 more murders than in 2019.
10,000 more murders than NewsNation reported.
Murders have become so common over the past two years that if the murder rate remains at the 2021 level, one out of every 179 people in the U.S. will eventually be murdered. Yet, certain politicians and media outlets are downplaying this bloodshed, while others are blaming it on Covid—a claim at odds with the facts.
A major source of confusion about this issue is the FBI, which is releasing fragmentary and inaccessible data on murders and other crimes. The FBI is part of the U.S. Department of Justice, which is under the authority of President Biden.
Burying Crime Data
In 2021, the year Joe Biden became president, the FBI began making it far more difficult to access national estimates of murders and other crimes. The agency did this by dramatically changing the manner in which it reports such data.
Every year for more than eight decades, the FBI has published a report titled “Crime in the United States” which contains national crime estimates for the previous year. Before 2021, the FBI published this report with a simple overview page containing links like “Violent Crime,” “Property Crime,” and “Homicide.” These led to webpages with clear summaries and straightforward datasets for such crimes.
Since 2021, the FBI has published those reports only via a “Crime Data Explorer” which contains a maze of vaguely worded links, drop down menus, and acronyms. To locate the FBI’s estimate of murders for 2021 with this system, readers must:
scroll to a section of the webpage titled “Explore by Location and Dataset: State participation depicts current year.”
click on a dropdown menu under a header named “Dataset” and select the menu item that says “NIBRS Estimation Data,” which leads to another webpage.
scroll to a section of the webpage called “NIBRS Estimation Viewer” and read the report that contains the data via a file viewer that sometimes fails to display the report or click on a link that says “Download NIBRS Trend Analysis Report.” [5/22/23: The FBI has now removed the report from this location, so Just Facts has posted it here.]
Nevertheless, the FBI claims that its Crime Data Explorer enables “law enforcement and the general public to more easily use and understand the massive amounts” of crime data it collects. Belying that statement, Google shows that only five news outlets have reported the fact that the FBI’s 2021 estimate for murders ranges from 21,300 to 24,600. Moreover, two of the outlets obtained these figures from two of the other outlets, not from the FBI. The sole place where the FBI reveals these figures is in the above-mentioned buried report.
So where did NewsNation obtain the much lower figure of 14,677 murders in 2021? From an easy-to-access webpage on the FBI’s Crime Data Explorer. Specifically, NewsNation linked to a page that can be accessed by clicking the first prominent link on the home page of the Crime Data Explorer and then clicking on “Expanded Homicide Data.” This leads to a webpage with a chart showing 14,677 murders in 2021, a large decline from 2020, just as NewsNation reported:
The FBI’s webpage contains two notes above the chart indicating that it shows incomplete data, but these caveats may not have been direct enough for NewsNation to fully grasp them:
“In 2021, the FBI expanded homicide crime statistics for the nation are based on 11,794 of 18,806 law enforcement agencies in the country that year who elected to submit an expanded homicide report.”
“2021 Expanded Homicide Data includes fewer homicides due to an overall decrease in participation from agencies that are not yet reporting via NIBRS.”
The fact that this incomplete data can be accessed so easily may have also led NewsNation to assume it was complete.
Supposedly, “No One Knows”
Compounding the confusion, the FBI switched to a new crime measurement system in 2021 which is leading journalists to report that there is no way to know if murders increased from 2020 to 2021. This new system is reliant upon electronic submissions from local and state law enforcement agencies, and many of them are not using it yet.
Non-reporting agencies cover 35% of the U.S. population, including the nation’s largest cities—New York and Los Angeles. Thus, the FBI explains that its crime estimates for 2021 are based on a “complex estimation process to account for unreported data” to “bridge this gap.”
That is why the FBI’s murder estimate for 2021 ranges from 21,300 to 24,600, an enormous uncertainty of 3,300 murders. Without quantifying this margin of error, the FBI issued a press release in October 2022 that provides a mid-point estimate for murders near the bottom of the release. There, the FBI states that:
“the estimated number of murders increased from 22,000 in 2020 to 22,900 in 2021.”
“it is important to note that these estimated trends are not considered statistically significant” by the FBI’s “estimation methods.”
“the nonsignificant nature of the observed trends is why, despite these described changes, the overall message is that crime remained consistent.”
The FBI published a similarly worded crime summary in the same month, buried in an accordion menu of its Crime Data Explorer.
As a result of this uncertainty, news outlets that have managed to find the FBI’s homicide estimates for 2021 have made statements like these:
“Good luck figuring out what happened with crime in 2021.” Vox
In reality, however, we do know that murders rose because there is a more reliable source for this data than the FBI.
Murder Data and Trends
The broadest measure of homicides in the U.S. is death certificates, which are commonly completed by medical examiners or coroners. As explained by the Department of Justice in a 2014 report, death certificates provide “more accurate homicide trends at the national level than” FBI data because:
the reporting of death certificates is “mandatory,” while the FBI relies on “voluntary” reports “from individual law enforcement agencies that are compiled monthly by state-level agencies.”
death certificates include homicides that “occur in federal jurisdictions,” while the FBI rarely counts “homicides occurring in federal prisons, on military bases, and on Indian reservations.”
death certificates include homicides caused by the deliberate “crashing of a motor vehicle, but this category generally accounts for less than 100 deaths per year.”
The report concludes that the death certificates “consistently” show “a higher number and rate of homicides in the United States compared” to the FBI data, “likely due to the differences in coverage and scope and the voluntary versus mandatory nature of the data collection as described above.”
The FBI tries to account for incomplete coverage by estimating the number of murders that aren’t reported to the FBI, but over the past decades, this process has yielded about 1,500–2,700 less murders per year than homicides listed on death certificates:
On the other hand, death certificates tend to overcount murders because they include justifiable homicides by civilians acting in self-defense, which are not murders. Such cases amounted to about 2.5% of homicides in 2015–2019.
Death certificates also include some justifiable homicides by police, even though these are supposed to be coded as “legal intervention deaths,” not as homicides. A study of 16 states during 2005–2012 suggests that such miscoded cases accounted for roughly 1.7% of homicides.
If the two rates above are currently applicable to the nation as a whole, the actual number of murders is about 4.2% less than the number of homicides recorded on death certificates.
Homicide counts from death certificates are published by the CDC via two online data extraction portals. Both of these report 24,576 homicides in 2020, but they don’t yet present data for 2021. However, another CDC portal provides provisional homicide rates through 2021, reporting 7.5 homicides per 100,000 people in 2020 and 7.8 in 2021. Combining these three figures yields 25,559 homicides in 2021.
Removing justifiable homicides to obtain an estimate of actual murders, about 24,493 people were murdered in 2021. This is about 1,000 more murders than in 2020, a 5% increase on top of a 28% increase the year before that.
To provide a sense of scale for this bloodshed, one out of every 179 people in the U.S. will eventually be slain if murders remain at the same rate as 2021.
Even in previous years when murders were much less common, the lifetime likelihood of murder was so shocking to some people that they sent repeated emails to Just Facts insisting it was wrong. Yet, the methodology used by Just Facts to compute this figure was developed by a licensed actuary, double-checked by a Ph.D. mathematician, and triple-checked by a Ph.D. biostatistician.
In other words, the numbers are correct, but some people’s perception of the problem is disconnected from reality. Beyond NewsNation, others who have recently downplayed the severity of crime in the U.S. include but are not limited to President Biden, Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Joy Behar of ABC’s The View, and the New York Times (Hat Tip: Tim Graham).
All of those individuals and organizations are proponents of the notion that the U.S. doesn’t have a severe crime problem but is simply too hard on crime. Hence, they argue that reducing arrests, eliminating bail, and lessening jail terms will make America more just without making it less safe.
That agenda has been rapidly advanced by the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement since the death of George Floyd in May 2020, and murders have soared. In 2021, the U.S. murder rate was even worse than in 2001 when America was attacked by terrorists who slaughtered 2,977 people:
Historical FBI data that stretches back to 1960 shows that the current murder rate is still far below the U.S. murder peak of 1980. Still, the rapid increases since 2019 translate to 11,000 more lost lives, including 5,000 more in 2020 and 6,000 more in 2021.
Because correlation does not prove causation, one cannot assume the BLM movement is the cause of these increased murders. However, other facts detailed below reveal that this is a distinct possibility—and far more likely than the common journalistic explanations for this carnage.
What’s Causing The Bloodshed?
Many media outlets have implied or explicitly reported that the massive increase in murders over the past two years is largely due to the Covid-19 pandemic. A small sample includes the New York Times, Politico, Axios, CBS News, and CNN. This claim, however, is at odds with two key facts.
First, it is based on the childish notion that correlation proves causation, a fallacy that high schoolers are taught to avoid. This is because the occurrence of two events in the same year can be a mere coincidence or caused by numerous other factors. A failure to recognize this reality is a common feature of junk science and political propaganda. In the words of an academic textbook about analyzing data:
Association is not the same as causation. This issue is a persistent problem in empirical analysis in the social sciences. Often the investigator will plot two variables and use the tight relationship obtained to draw absolutely ridiculous or completely erroneous conclusions. Because we so often confuse association and causation, it is extremely easy to be convinced that a tight relationship between two variables means that one is causing the other. This is simply not true.
Second, there isn’t even a correlation between the Covid-19 pandemic and murders. This is evidenced by:
a study in the journal Crime Science, which found that despite over one million reported Covid cases and 80,000 Covid-related deaths in the U.S. during the first two months of the pandemic, “there were no significant changes in the frequency of serious assaults in public” or “serious assaults in residences.”
murder rates in England, which actually declined in 2020 and 2021, even though the nation is demographically similar to the U.S. and had slightly higher Covid death rates throughout this period.
a study published by the University of California Press, which documents that the recent rise of murders does not accord chronologically or geographically with the onset of the pandemic.
In stark contrast, the same study found that the timing of the 2020 murder surge in multiple major U.S. cities can be pinpointed to “the death of George Floyd” and the “subsequent antipolice protests,” which “likely led to declines in law enforcement.” Floyd died on May 25, 2020, but the pandemic began more than two months earlier on March 11.
The study’s author, criminal law professor Paul G. Cassell, summarizes the evidence as follows:
“Social science research can rarely provide unequivocal answers to complex criminal justice issues,” but “my view is that the best available evidence points to de-policing as the dominant (but not necessarily exclusive) factor in the ongoing surge in gun violence.”
“While these estimates are stated in the cold precision of an economic calculation, it must be remembered that behind these grim numbers lies a tremendous toll in human suffering—lives lost, futures destroyed, and families left grieving.”
Similar results have been found by other studies which have examined murder increases in the wake of analogous events like the protests and riots that occurred over the police killing of Michael Brown in 2015.
One of the most telling of these studies was conducted by Ph.D. sociologist Richard Rosenfeld, former president of the American Society of Criminology. An article in The Guardian explains the implications:
For nearly a year, Richard Rosenfeld’s research on crime trends has been used to debunk the existence of a “Ferguson effect,” a suggested link between protests over police killings of black Americans and an increase in crime and murder. Now, the St. Louis criminologist says, a deeper analysis of the increase in homicides in 2015 has convinced him that “some version” of the Ferguson effect may be real.
Looking at data from 56 large cities across the country, Rosenfeld found a 17% increase in homicide in 2015. Much of that increase came from only 10 cities, which saw an average 33% increase in homicide. …
“The only explanation that gets the timing right is a version of the Ferguson effect,” Rosenfeld said. Now, he said, that’s his “leading hypothesis.”
Another common explanation for the murder increase is recent rises in gun sales, but this notion doesn’t hold water. Cassel’s study examined this possibility and found that the increases in firearm purchases don’t accord with the murder surges in time or place. He also notes that:
the United States already has a huge number of firearms in private hands—about 400 million by some measures. Against this backdrop, a recent increase of 2 million gun sales (about 0.5% of the total) seems like a poor candidate for explaining sudden and dramatic changes in homicides.
Summary
Murders in the United States have soared by 34% over the past few years—growing from about 18,342 victims in 2019 to 24,493 in 2021. Yet, certain Democratic politicians and media outlets are downplaying this problem.
If the murder rate remains at the 2021 level, one out of every 179 people in the U.S. will eventually be murdered.
As murders have skyrocketed, the FBI has made it far more difficult to access its national estimates of murders and other crimes. The FBI has also switched to a new crime measurement system which currently has a large degree of uncertainty. As such, FBI data cannot resolve whether murders rose or fell from 2020 to 2021.
For decades, the FBI has undercounted murders, while death certificates have overcounted them. Starting with data from death certificates and removing justifiable homicides provides a more reliable estimate of murders.
Identifying the cause (or causes) of the recent rise in murders is complicated by the fact that correlation does not prove causation. Paying no heed to this reality, many media outlets have pinned the blame on Covid-19 and gun sales. However, the data are more consistent with the possibility that the BLM movement is responsible.
Sooo, it looks like the Democrats in Florida have been cheating and stealing elections FOR DECADES according to a whistleblower account within the Democratic Party of Florida.
ANN ALTHOUSE ON DEMOCRATS SUFFERING FROM “ELECTION DREAD:” “There wouldn’t be so much dread if the Democrats hadn’t spent the last 2 years using their narrow majority so aggressively. They set an example, and you’re afraid to see that example followed. If the situation were reversed, wouldn’t you be saying it’s payback time?”
The left wants feudalism, and Elon’s giving them capitalism. Which is their worst nightmare because under capitalism, it is necessary to produce something of value.
We have been discussing how Democratic leaders like Hillary Clinton called on foreign countries to pass censorship laws to prevent Elon Musk from restoring free speech protections on Twitter. The EU has responded aggressively to warn Musk not to allow greater free speech or face crippling fines and even potential criminal enforcement. After years of using censorship-by-surrogates in social media companies, Democratic leaders seem to have rediscovered good old-fashioned state censorship.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D., Mass.) declared Musk’s pledge to restore free speech values on social media as threatening Democracy itself. She has promised that “there are going to be rules” to block such changes. She is not alone. Former President Obama has declared “regulation has to be part of the answer” to disinformation.
For her part, Hillary Clinton is looking to Europe to fill the vacuum and called upon her European counterparts to pass a massive censorship law to “bolster global democracy before it’s too late.”
New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern recently repeated this call for global censorship at the United Nations to the applause of diplomats and media alike.
EU censors have assured Democratic leaders that they will not allow free speech to break out on Twitter regardless of the wishes of its owner and customers.
One of the most anti-free speech figures in the West, EU’s Internal Market Commissioner Thierry Breton has been raising the alarm that Twitter users might be able to read uncensored material or hear unauthorized views.
Breton himself threatened that Twitter must “fly by [the European Union’s] rules” in censoring views deemed misleading or harmful by EU bureaucrats. Breton has been moving publicly to warn Musk not to try to reintroduce protections that go beyond the tolerance of the EU for free speech. Musk is planning to meet with the EU censors and has conceded that he may not be able resist such mandatory censorship rules.
Breton has made no secret that he views free speech as a danger coming from the United States that needs to be walled off from the Internet. He previously declared that, with the DSA, the EU is now able to prevent the Internet from again becoming a place for largely unregulated free speech, which he referred to as the “Wild West” period of the Internet.
It is a telling reference because the EU views free speech itself as an existential danger. They reject the notion of free speech as its own protection where good speech can overcome bad speech. That is viewed as the “Wild West.”
Many of us are far more fearful of global censors than some whack job spewing hateful thoughts from his basement. That is why I have described myself as an Internet Originalist:
The alternative is “internet originalism” — no censorship. If social media companies returned to their original roles, there would be no slippery slope of political bias or opportunism; they would assume the same status as telephone companies. We do not need companies to protect us from harmful or “misleading” thoughts. The solution to bad speech is more speech, not approved speech.
If Pelosi demanded that Verizon or Sprint interrupt calls to stop people saying false or misleading things, the public would be outraged. Twitter serves the same communicative function between consenting parties; it simply allows thousands of people to participate in such digital exchanges. Those people do not sign up to exchange thoughts only to have Dorsey or some other internet overlords monitor their conversations and “protect” them from errant or harmful thoughts.
The danger of the rising levels of censorship is far greater than the dangers of such absurd claims of the law or science — or in this case both. What we can do is to maximize the free discourse and expression on the Internet to allow free speech itself to be the ultimate disinfectant of disinformation.
No one reads the Twitter fact checks. That’s what they rely upon, anyway. Which is why they are able to cite such openly ludicrous information in the face of serious voter fraud allegations. On Wednesday, nationally syndicated radio personality Jesse Kelly alleged: “PRO TIP: If your state cannot count every vote on election night, there’s cheating in your state. Entire nations count their votes on Election Day. If you can’t, it’s because you don’t want to.” Almost immediately, Kelly’s tweet was restricted, unable to be shared, and branded with a “Misleading” label. So I clicked it, to find out what,
IRONICALLY, IT COMES FROM A VACCINE: Poliovirus that paralyzed unvaccinated NY man in July is still spreading. “Most adults and children in the US are vaccinated against polio. Since 2000, the country has relied on inactivated polio vaccine (IPV), which is given in three doses before the age of 24 months, with a fourth shot between the ages of 4 and 6. Just the first three doses are 99 percent to 100 percent effective at preventing paralytic disease, though, and vaccination coverage rates report the percentage of 2-year-olds that have followed the recommended vaccination schedule for the first three shots. But, in pockets of low vaccination, such as those in several counties in New York, poliovirus—in this case, a revertant virus derived from an oral vaccine used abroad that transmitted among unvaccinated people—can continue spreading. In the CDC’s new study out today, health officials sifted through sewage surveillance data to see where and how extensive that spread is.”
Tom Shimabukuro is one of the top people in charge of safety of the COVID vaccines. When you notify him of proof of an adverse event, he’ll instruct the staff to cut you off.
Executive summary
The CDC doesn’t care about safety. If you find proof of a serious adverse event, they cut off all communications with you, no matter how compelling your evidence is.
It is your responsibility to notify the world of adverse events. The CDC’s responsibility is to push the jab, not protect the public.
Introduction
More than 10,000 Americans have reported tinnitus as a possible side effect of the COVID-19 vaccine, and many are questioning why the FDA and CDC are not taking a deeper look into their claims about hearing problems.
Now we know why thanks to a FOIA request revealing an internal email.
He’s a federal government employee from New Mexico, and he said he developed tinnitus, along with tingling of the face and headaches, shortly after receiving his first COVID-19 vaccine shot in January.
He then did extensive research and proved the vaccine caused it.
When he tried to notify the CDC, his email was forwarded to Dr. Tom Shimabukuro who at the time (June 2021) was was one of the top people responsible for vaccine safety monitoring at the CDC at that time (he’s now been reassigned to monkeypox presumably so he has plausible deniability of adverse events).
Tom is a very prominent CDC scientist. He testifies at the ACIP meetings, he is the first author on important vaccine safety papers (like this one on pregnancy and COVID vaccines published in the NEJM), etc. He’s right up there with John Su at the top of the vaccine scientific food chain at the CDC. Tom
Here’s the response that Shimabukuro wrote when Edmonds tried to present his safety data about tinnitus to the CDC: “Thank him for his email and cut him off.”
Edmonds learned about this email recently as a result of a FOIA request:
Here’s the full email so you can see the context. Edmonds found “pairs” in the same household developing tinnitus at the same time after getting the vaccine. This is a black swan event. He found 7 black swans. That’s impossible if the vaccines aren’t causing tinnitus.
Here’s the full tweet for more info:
Here are commentaries on Tom Shimabukuro’s work
From dailyclout.io, two excellent articles about Tom’s work:
I suffer from tinnitus. Know I know the origin. It’s likely that we all have the CDC to thank for our tinnitus.
Tinnitus is associated with other vaccines as well. You probably never made the connection.
Summary
If you discover an association between the COVID vaccines and an adverse event, it is your responsibility to let the public know. If you notify the CDC, they will ghost you.
That’s just the way it goes.
Too bad that just about every person in the mainstream medical community thinks this is not a problem (other than perhaps Vinay Prasad and a few others). None of them are going to complain about the lack of safety monitoring at the CDC because the CDC told them that the vaccines are “safe and effective.” So who needs safety monitoring?
Too bad nobody in Congress (other than Senator Ron Johnson) cares about this either. They all trust the CDC. So if Senator Johnson doesn’t get re-elected, it could be decades before there is someone in Congress who will investigate this.
Overview
Based on a misunderstanding of new FBI data, NewsNation is reporting that 14,677 murders occurred in the U.S. during 2021, a supposedly large decline from 2020. In reality, that figure is far from complete, and comprehensive records from death certificates show that about 24,493 people were murdered in 2021. This is about:
The FBI’s webpage contains two notes above the chart indicating that it shows incomplete data, but these caveats may not have been direct enough for NewsNation to fully grasp them:
On the other hand, death certificates tend to overcount murders because they include justifiable homicides by civilians acting in self-defense, which are not murders. Such cases amounted to about 2.5% of homicides in 2015–2019.
Death certificates also include some justifiable homicides by police, even though these are supposed to be coded as “legal intervention deaths,” not as homicides. A study of 16 states during 2005–2012 suggests that such miscoded cases accounted for roughly 1.7% of homicides.
If the two rates above are currently applicable to the nation as a whole, the actual number of murders is about 4.2% less than the number of homicides recorded on death certificates.
Homicide counts from death certificates are published by the CDC via two online data extraction portals. Both of these report 24,576 homicides in 2020, but they don’t yet present data for 2021. However, another CDC portal provides provisional homicide rates through 2021, reporting 7.5 homicides per 100,000 people in 2020 and 7.8 in 2021. Combining these three figures yields 25,559 homicides in 2021.
Removing justifiable homicides to obtain an estimate of actual murders, about 24,493 people were murdered in 2021. This is about 1,000 more murders than in 2020, a 5% increase on top of a 28% increase the year before that.
To provide a sense of scale for this bloodshed, one out of every 179 people in the U.S. will eventually be slain if murders remain at the same rate as 2021.
Even in previous years when murders were much less common, the lifetime likelihood of murder was so shocking to some people that they sent repeated emails to Just Facts insisting it was wrong. Yet, the methodology used by Just Facts to compute this figure was developed by a licensed actuary, double-checked by a Ph.D. mathematician, and triple-checked by a Ph.D. biostatistician.
In other words, the numbers are correct, but some people’s perception of the problem is disconnected from reality. Beyond NewsNation, others who have recently downplayed the severity of crime in the U.S. include but are not limited to President Biden, Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Joy Behar of ABC’s The View, and the New York Times (Hat Tip: Tim Graham).
All of those individuals and organizations are proponents of the notion that the U.S. doesn’t have a severe crime problem but is simply too hard on crime. Hence, they argue that reducing arrests, eliminating bail, and lessening jail terms will make America more just without making it less safe.
That agenda has been rapidly advanced by the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement since the death of George Floyd in May 2020, and murders have soared. In 2021, the U.S. murder rate was even worse than in 2001 when America was attacked by terrorists who slaughtered 2,977 people:
Historical FBI data that stretches back to 1960 shows that the current murder rate is still far below the U.S. murder peak of 1980. Still, the rapid increases since 2019 translate to 11,000 more lost lives, including 5,000 more in 2020 and 6,000 more in 2021.
Because correlation does not prove causation, one cannot assume the BLM movement is the cause of these increased murders. However, other facts detailed below reveal that this is a distinct possibility—and far more likely than the common journalistic explanations for this carnage.
What’s Causing The Bloodshed?
Many media outlets have implied or explicitly reported that the massive increase in murders over the past two years is largely due to the Covid-19 pandemic. A small sample includes the New York Times, Politico, Axios, CBS News, and CNN. This claim, however, is at odds with two key facts.
First, it is based on the childish notion that correlation proves causation, a fallacy that high schoolers are taught to avoid. This is because the occurrence of two events in the same year can be a mere coincidence or caused by numerous other factors. A failure to recognize this reality is a common feature of junk science and political propaganda. In the words of an academic textbook about analyzing data:
We have been discussing how Democratic leaders like Hillary Clinton called on foreign countries to pass censorship laws to prevent Elon Musk from restoring free speech protections on Twitter. The EU has responded aggressively to warn Musk not to allow greater free speech or face crippling fines and even potential criminal enforcement. After years of using censorship-by-surrogates in social media companies, Democratic leaders seem to have rediscovered good old-fashioned state censorship.
