Jts5665

At this point, it’s no longer news that The Experts™ have lied to the public about masks.

It’s been proven time and time again that masks and the mandates enacted by terrified politicians do not work.

And yet, the inaccuracies spread by “experts” and their allies in the media have permanently taken hold for a significant portion of the population. 

For example, Taylor Lorenz, Washington Post writer and excellent avatar for the modern (young? middle aged?) urban progressive, remains committed to following their ideology no matter the evidence. She’s continually provided an example of how far down the rabbit hole susceptible people have gone:

https://twitter.com/ianmsc/status/1535674565593944064?s=21&t=VVi3_1I-YYFcI7O4zenZJw

https://twitter.com/levinejonathan/status/1535687324067061760?s=21&t=VVi3_1I-YYFcI7O4zenZJw

At its heart, the debate around masks revolves around ideology.

For years, “experts” decried the importance of masking, quite literally laughing at suggestions that they would make a significant difference:

https://twitter.com/johndefeo/status/1535986137839374341?s=21&t=VVi3_1I-YYFcI7O4zenZJw

Ideology and groupthink has become so important and pervasive among “experts” that they easily abandoned their previously stated positions in order to conform to what’s expected of them politically.

When there was no pressure or tribalism connected to behavioral interventions, “experts” were honest about masking. 

Now it’s consistently been the opposite. And additional research confirms their pre-tribalism assertions were correct. Far from “The Science,” changing, their post-COVID actions can be explained by political signaling and lying to suit their needs.

Fortunately, intellectually honest researchers are continually striving to combat the dangerous, pernicious misinformation from “experts” that masks work and should become a permanent part of life moving forward.

One of the largest and most comprehensive examinations on masking was released recently, covering most of Europe.

And importantly, it didn’t look at just mask mandates, it looked at mask usage.

It’s often repeated by the defenders of the new mask faith that comparing outcomes in different locations based on mandates isn’t sufficient, because mandates don’t necessarily mean people are complying.

One should expect the arguments from the pro-mask zealots is that measuring outcomes based on mandates isn’t enough, because mandates don’t mean people are complying.

That argument has never made much sense, as anyone who’s lived in a major city during the past few years would tell you. 

Walk into a store in New York, San Francisco or Los Angeles without a mask during a mandate and there will most assuredly be enforcement. There may have been the possibility of remaining maskless at certain businesses at certain times, but as Los Angeles County public health determined, more than 95% of people were complying with their mandate as late as December 2021.

Of course, within a few weeks of this awe inspiring release, cases in LA had obliterated all previous records, rising more than 20x higher than in December 2021 when the 95% compliance was measured.

There is undeniable evidence that compliance has proven to be utterly irrelevant.

But it’s reassuring to have a now peer-reviewed study to refer to when dealing with those who refuse to accept reality.

The study goals explain what the researcher was hoping to accomplish with his examination:

This analysis aimed to verify whether mask usage was correlated with COVID-19 morbidity and mortality. Daily data on COVID-19 cases and deaths and on mask usage were obtained for all European countries. The rationale behind the choice of European countries for comparison was fourfold: (1) availability and reliability of data; (2) a relative population homogeneity and shared history of epidemics (comparing countries from different continents may bring too many confounding factors); (3) similar age stratification and access to health assistance; and (4) divergent masking policies and different percentages of mask usage among the different populations, despite the fact that the entire continent was undergoing an outburst of COVID-19 at the time period analysed in this study.

In the absence of further randomized controlled trials on masking, after the two which once again showed that masks do not work, the comparisons presented here are the best method to measure the potential efficacy of an intervention in similar populations.

The researcher correctly identifies that many of the studies conducted in 2020, often referred to in desperate attempts to justify masking, are subject to the biases of early outbreaks when seasonality played a major role in controlling outbreaks in the Northeastern United States: 

However, these studies were restricted to the summer and early autumn of 2020. From March 2020 onwards, country after country instituted some form of mask mandate or recommendation. The stringency of these measures varied among the different countries and they, therefore, resulted in different proportions of mask compliance, ranging from 5% to 95% [8]. Such heterogeneity in mask usage among neighbouring countries provided an ideal opportunity to test the effect of this non-pharmaceutical intervention on the progression of a strong COVID-19 outburst.

We’ll get into the details shortly, but the conclusion gives a fantastic overview of the results:

While no cause-effect conclusions could be inferred from this observational analysis, the lack of negative correlations between mask usage and COVID-19 cases and deaths suggest that the widespread use of masks at a time when an effective intervention was most needed, i.e., during the strong 2020-2021 autumn-winter peak, was not able to reduce COVID-19 transmission. Moreover, the moderate positive correlation between mask usage and deaths in Western Europe also suggests that the universal use of masks may have had harmful unintended consequences.

Emphasis added.

Not only was there no benefit, but there was a disturbingly positive correlation between mask usage and reported COVID deaths in Western Europe.

More mask usage correlated to more COVID deaths.

As he states, that does not imply causation, but the fact that this is even possible is a direct repudiation of Fauci, Walensky and the rest of the “expert” industrial complex claiming that masks are “science” or that we “know they work.”

If masks were effective, this would be impossible. Full stop.

There may be claims about variables, other factors, demographics — it doesn't matter. This would not happen if masks worked.

Remember, this isn’t just about mandates, it’s measuring compliance. It’s irrefutable that the more people wore masks, the worse the results. 

Of course there was no positive benefit to mask usage in terms of reducing cases either.

The correlation chart makes it clear how completely useless masks were during the surge of fall and winter 2020-2021:

It just doesn’t matter. 

And this is just 2020-2021! It doesn’t account for the emergence of the Delta or Omicron variants with enhanced transmissibility.

The correlation coefficient chart also highlights the absence of any clear correlation between mask usage and cases in different parts of Europe:

The strongest correlation was mask usage and deaths in Western Europe.

---

The Data

Visualizing the data differently also shows how ineffective masking was throughout the continent:

The lowest death rates, visible as the black dots towards the bottom left of the chart, are from the areas with the least amount of surveyed mask wearing.

It’s the same story with case rates; there’s simply zero connection between mask usage and cases reported.

Placing mask usage rates on a map of Europe and comparing the same map with death rates also creates a stark image of the disconnect between masking and outcomes.

Several other highlights from the dataset:

• The lowest death rate in Europe was in Norway, which had the third lowest mask compliance at 29%
• The highest death rate was the Czech Republic, famous for the USA Today article praising their mask usage and how their “remarkable progress” was the “lifesaving lesson”
• Spain had the highest compliance at 95% and ranked in the middle of the pack
• Portugal had the eighth highest death rate with the third most mask wearing 
• Italy was thirteenth in mortality with the second highest mask usage
• Hungary was second in death rate despite the sixth highest mask compliance

Everywhere you look, there’s either no benefit or a correlation with negative outcomes. The Czech Republic had the highest case rate. Finland and Norway had the lowest case rates with some of the lowest masking rates. Denmark had the seventh fewest cases with the second lowest mask compliance.

It's useless.

---

This study was conducted with the intent of attempting to confirm or contradict older studies claiming benefits from masking or mask mandates from spring 2020. 

The results were unequivocal that mask wearing rates made no difference to outcomes, whether it be cases or deaths. Yet this doesn’t cover the Omicron/seasonal surge of 2021-2022 when the numbers worsened, regardless of mask wearing.

No matter the region, no matter the compliance level, there is zero benefit, and oftentimes the results are profoundly negative.

Actual science had always confirmed that mask do not work to stop the transmission of respiratory viruses.

Experts, the media and politicians around the world panicked and inflicted masking on the population anyway. We did the experiment, we tried masks everywhere. And every bit of available evidence continues to confirm that they do not work.

There has been observational evidence, comparisons and charts, and now it’s confirmed in published studies.

Masks don’t work. And jurisdictions and school districts continuing to enforce masking based on misinformation and fear are engaging in disgraceful theater. “Experts” continuing to push permanent masking are either dangerous, incompetent, or intellectually dishonest.

No matter how hard they keep trying, all the evidence shows that no matter how many people wear masks, they truly accomplish nothing.

Reprinted from the author's Substack.

You really can’t make this stuff up. You gotta watch this video… it’s only 2 minutes. And it will be a key piece of evidence in my next move which you’ll learn about shortly.

In a nutshell, Pfizer admits in court to fraud, but says it isn’t fraud because the government was in on it. I bet you never heard that defense before.

DISPATCHES FROM THE LAPTOP FROM HELL: Listen: The moment Hunter Biden says his father will do anything he tells him to.

Hunter Biden recorded himself boasting that his father will adopt political positions at his command, footage obtained from a copy of his abandoned laptop shows.

“He’ll talk about anything that I want him to, that he believes in,” Biden said in reference to his father, Joe Biden, in the Dec. 3, 2018, recording. “If I say it’s important to me, then he will work a way in which to make it a part of his platform. My dad respects me more than he respects anyone in the world, and I know that to be certain, so it’s not going to be about whether it affects his politics.”

“All those fears you think that I have of people not liking me or that I don’t love myself … I don’t fear that. You know why I don’t fear that? Because the man I most admire in the world, that god to me, thinks I’m a god,” Hunter Biden added in the 77-minute recording, which was taped about five months before Joe Biden launched his successful 2020 presidential campaign in late April 2019. “And my brother did, too. And the three of us, it was literally — I had the support to know I can do anything.”

Exit question: “Is Hunter Biden calling the shots in the White House? Someone is. Joe Biden has many times intimated that he is not the one who is doing so and that he knows this. ”

Related: Joe Biden issues official proclamation ahead of World Elder Abuse Awareness Day and the jokes write themselves.

ANNALS OF LEFTIST AUTOPHAGY: Elephant in the Zoom: Meltdowns Have Brought Progressive Advocacy Groups to a Standstill at a Critical Moment in World History.

In the eyes of group leaders dealing with similar moments, staff were ignoring the mission and focusing only on themselves, using a moment of public awakening to smuggle through standard grievances cloaked in the language of social justice. Often, as was the case at Guttmacher, they played into the very dynamics they were fighting against, directing their complaints at leaders of color. Guttmacher was run at the time, and still is today, by an Afro Latina woman, Dr. Herminia Palacio. “The most zealous ones at my organization when it comes to race are white,” said one Black executive director at a different organization, asking for anonymity so as not to provoke a response from that staff.

These starkly divergent views would produce dramatic schisms throughout the progressive world in the coming year. At Guttmacher, this process would rip the organization apart. Boonstra, unlike many managers at the time, didn’t sugarcoat how she felt about the staff’s response to the killing.

“I’m here to talk about George Floyd and the other African American men who have been beaten up by society,” she told her staff, not “workplace problems.” Boonstra told them she was “disappointed,” that they were being “self-centered.” The staff was appalled enough by the exchange to relay it to Prism.

The human resources department and board of directors, in consultation with outside counsel, were brought in to investigate complaints that flowed from the meeting, including accusations that certain staff members had been tokenized, promoted, and then demoted on the basis of race. The resulting report was unsatisfying to many of the staff.

Perhaps satisfying the staff isn’t the key to an effective organization. Plus:

For progressive movement organizations, 2021 promised to be the year they turned power into policy, with a Democratic trifecta and the Biden administration broadcasting a bold vision of “transformational change.” . . .

And then, sometime in the summer, the forward momentum stalled, and many of the progressive gains lapsed or were reversed. Instead of fueling a groundswell of public support to reinvigorate the party’s ambitious agenda, most of the foundation-backed organizations that make up the backbone of the party’s ideological infrastructure were still spending their time locked in virtual retreats, Slack wars, and healing sessions, grappling with tensions over hierarchy, patriarchy, race, gender, and power.

“So much energy has been devoted to the internal strife and internal bullshit that it’s had a real impact on the ability for groups to deliver,” said one organization leader who departed his position. “It’s been huge, particularly over the last year and a half or so, the ability for groups to focus on their mission, whether it’s reproductive justice, or jobs, or fighting climate change.”

Woke white people are annoying, stupid, and frequently vicious. Fortunately they’re also usually self-destructive and incompetent. But ultimately, this is just Trump exercising a magical power to destroy his enemies via their own ideology:

Sooner or later, each interview for this story landed on the election of Trump in 2016 as a catalyst. Whatever internal tension had been pulling at the seams of organizations in the years prior, Trump’s shock victory sharpened the focus of activists and regular people alike. The institutional progressive world based in Washington, D.C., reacted slowly, shell-shocked and unsure of its place, but people outside those institutions raced ahead of them. A period of mourning turned into fierce determination to resist. Spontaneous women’s marches were called in scores of cities, drawing as many as 5 million people, a shocking display of force. (Their collapse in a heap of identitarian recriminations is its own parable for this moment.)

Heh. Richly deserved.

IT’S NOT JUST THE WAPO AND THE GRAY LADY: How Meltdowns Brought Progressive Groups to a Standstill.

Executive directors across the space said they too have tried to organize their hiring process to filter out the most disruptive potential staff. “I’m now at a point where the first thing I wonder about a job applicant is, ‘How likely is this person to blow up my organization from the inside?’” said one, echoing a refrain heard repeatedly during interviews for this story. (One executive director noted that their group’s high-profile association with a figure considered in social justice spaces to be problematic had gone from a burden to a boon, as the man now serves as an accidental screen, filtering out activists who’d be most likely to focus their energy on internal fights rather than the organization’s mission.)

Another leader said the strife has become so destructive that it feels like an op. “I’m not saying it’s a right-wing plot, because we are incredibly good at doing ourselves in, but — if you tried — you couldn’t conceive of a better right-wing plot to paralyze progressive leaders by catalyzing the existing culture where internal turmoil and microcampaigns are mistaken for strategic advancement of social impact for the millions of people depending on these organizations to stave off the crushing injustices coming our way,” said another longtime organization head. “Progressive leaders cannot do anything but fight inside the orgs, thereby rendering the orgs completely toothless for the external battles in play. … Everyone is scared, and fear creates the inaction that the right wing needs to succeed in cementing a deeply unpopular agenda.”

During the 2020 presidential campaign, as entry-level staffers for Sanders repeatedly agitated over internal dynamics, despite having already formed a staff union, the senator issued a directive to his campaign leadership: “Stop hiring activists.” Instead, Sanders implored, according to multiple campaign sources, the campaign should focus on bringing on people interested first and foremost in doing the job they’re hired to do.

The reckoning has coincided with an awakened and belated appreciation for diversity in the upper ranks of progressive organizations. The mid-2010s saw an influx of women into top roles for the first time, many of them white, followed more recently by a slew of Black and brown leaders at most major organizations. One compared the collision of the belated respect for Black leaders and the upswell of turmoil inside institutions with the “hollow prize” thesis. The most common example of the hollow prize is the victory in the 1970s and ’80s of Black mayors across the country, just as cities were being hollowed out and disempowered. Or, for instance, salaries in the medical field collapsed just as women began graduating into the field.

“I just got the keys and y’all are gonna come after me on this shit?” one executive director who said he felt like a version of those ’70s-era mayors told The Intercept. “‘It’s white supremacy culture! It’s urgent!’ No motherfucker, it’s Election Day. We can’t move that day. Just do your job or go somewhere else.”

Found via John Sexton, who writes:

There’s so much more to say about this but for now I’d just recommend reading all of it. Also, I have to give the Intercept credit for publishing this and Ryan Grim especially deserves credit for reporting on something that really is red meat for people like me who’ve been arguing for years that woke culture was a destructive force that was sweeping its way through society. I think this article represents the death of the kind of leftist denialism that was put forward for years by people like Alex Pareene and many others. For a long time they treated conservative claims about woke extremism on campus as either unfounded or exaggerated. Now that it’s eating their own institutions alive I think it’s clear they were wrong and we were right.

Flashback: Is Safetyism Destroying a Generation?

NEVER UNDERESTIMATE JOE’S ABILITY TO, WELL, YOU KNOW: Get ready for the catastrophic DEF shortage. “DEF is the acronym for Diesel Exhaust Fluid. Every diesel truck that has been made since 2010 is required to use it. It’s a product made of 67% urea (made from natural gas) and 33% de-ionized water. DEF is kept in a separate tank in the truck and the trucks using it will not start unless the DEF system is working properly. There are regulators inside the engine that mix DEF with the diesel exhaust to reduce diesel emissions. That’s the purpose of DEF. . . . So: US urea imports are falling, US DEF imports are falling. And US domestic manufacture of DEF is likewise falling and may very quickly turn critical. But what about consumer sales? How will that be affected? Let’s connect some dots. Here is dot one, Flying J and the Union Pacific railroad. . . . Remember that the trucks will not run if their DEF tanks run dry. DEF is sold through the same pumps at fuel stations as diesel fuel is. If a driver cannot fill both tanks, he can only park the truck.”

Bottom line: “Unless the nation’s truckers can refill with Diesel Exhaust Fluid, the trucks will stop. Literally. DEF production is about to crater and the country’s largest truck-fueling company, Flying J, has been directed by Union Pacific railroad to decrease its DEF-receiving shipments by 50 percent or be 100 percent embargoed. Unless resolved, this demand may cause countless thousands of 18-wheelers to be force-parked very soon, perhaps starting this month. That would be a very, very terrible event, because according to the federal Bureau of Transportation Statistics, the trucking industry transports almost three-quarter of all goods shipped in the country. Union Pacific’s largest two shareholders are Vanguard and BlackRock. Vanguard’s largest shareholder is BlackRock. BlackRock’s key figure for strategy and policy is Tom Donilon, President Obama’s former National Security Advisor. Donilon’s wife, daughter, and brother work at the Biden White House. There is no wand to be waved to make the DEF shortage simply disappear. But doing nothing is both reprehensible and indefensible. There is no one better positioned to bring this looming catastrophe to the front burner than two men and two women named Donilon. Yet nothing is exactly what is being done. Why? Well, draw your own conclusions.”

UPDATE: A Knoxville friend writes: “Ha, Rural King literally had pallets of 2.5 gallon DEF containers in their stores. $6.99, then $9.99. Now none. Same at Walmart. Tractor Supply etc. All of the newer ag equipment, tractor’s, combines etc require DEF. Talk about food shortages!”

We just need a hack so it’ll run without it. But EPA will probably block this. I liked it better when Atlas Shrugged was just a novel.

ANOTHER UPDATE: They were warned this was coming 6 months ago: The DEF Shortage – As Prices Rise, Supply Challenges Continue.

A TRILLION HERE AND A TRILLION THERE…: China’s High Speed Rail Network Is A Trillion Dollar Debt Sinkhole. “China’s high speed rail network is a giant, unprofitable sinkhole of $1.8 TRILLION worth of debt.”

CRISIS BY DESIGN: Rash wolf policy already wrecking ranches.

Range riders are present overnight but it’s an expense he won’t be able to continue indefinitely. Right now, they’re on the dime of wolf-advocate groups but he doesn’t expect that to last and with five of the six damage claims unpaid and $5 diesel fuel, it doesn’t pencil. The most recent kill, he said, was while range riders were in the area. The wild burros that were gifted to Gittleson in the hopes that they would serve as guardians are, he said, able to noisily signal danger but certainly don’t fight off wolves.

The bottom line, he said, is that non-lethal hazing methods are ineffective if the wolves don’t have a fear of the use of lethal methods. The wolf pack is emboldened and unafraid. Without lethal methods, the next generation will learn to kill livestock and on and on until there is a large number of problem wolves across a large area. All of this, of course, playing out prior to the first released wolf ever hitting the ground.

The misguided ballot initiative, one that left the hands of actual experts tied, flung wide open the door to out-of-state activist groups and their cash. The state-level protection of wolves has taken more tools out of the management toolbox. It has become, and will continue to be, urban and suburban voters drowning out the votes of the rural areas that actually have to deal with the fallout.

The prevailing urban attitude is: “What do those dumb hicks know about anything important?”

We know where your food comes from, for starters.

I recently gave a lecture to 70 primary care physicians here in Stockholm, titled “should the patient really get the drug?”. The lecture seemed to generate quite a bit of cognitive dissonance among some in the audience, based on the somewhat aggressive discussion that followed the lecture, which suggests to me that much of what I was saying was stuff they had literally never been … Read more

The post Should the patient really get the drug? appeared first on Sebastian Rushworth M.D..

THE BUREAUCRACY STRIKES: FAA requires SpaceX to make environmental changes to Starbase in Texas. “The Federal Aviation Administration on Monday said SpaceX will be required to make more than 75 changes to the orbital launch program at its Starbase launch site in Texas after determining there would be some environmental impacts to the surrounding area. Elon Musk’s SpaceX must obtain either an experimental permit or a vehicle operator license from the FAA for Starship and Super Heavy launch operations from the Boca Chica facility. . . . The FAA decision Monday was made as part of a required environmental review as a part of that process and the agency noted that fulfilling the environmental changes necessary as described by the review would not guarantee that it would issue the permit.”

A new study from the National Bureau of Economic Research, cited in The Australian and in a New York Times op-ed, reveals over 170,000 non-Covid excess deaths among young Americans in 2020 and 2021, most likely attributable to measures implemented to combat the coronavirus—i.e., deaths by lockdown.

The Economist puts the number even higher, at 199,000. This rate of non-Covid excess deaths among young people holds constant across European Union countries that employed strict lockdown measures, but disappears for Sweden, which did not employ such measures.

According to the NBER study:

Summing our estimates across causes and age groups, we estimate 171,000 excess non-Covid deaths through the end of 2021 plus 72,000 unmeasured Covid deaths. The Economist has assembled national-level mortality data from around the world and obtains a similar U.S. estimate, which is 199,000 (including any unmeasured Covid) or about 60 persons per 100,000 population (Global Change Data Lab 2022). For the European Union as a whole, the estimate is near-identical at 64 non-Covid excess deaths per 100K. In contrast, the estimate for Sweden is -33, meaning that non-Covid causes of death were somewhat low during the pandemic. We suspect that some of the international differences are due to the standard used to designate a death as Covid, but perhaps also Sweden’s result is related to minimizing the disruption of its citizen’s normal lifestyles.

Hauntingly, the results of the NBER and Economist studies are a near-perfect match of the simple calculations of lockdown deaths performed in my book, Snake Oil.

As the New York Times notes euphemistically: “The rate of death from all causes for younger adults has risen by a bigger percentage than has the rate of death from all causes for old people.” It’s nice of the New York Times to finally print this fact, but they would appear to be, euphemistically, a day late and a dollar short—the “dollar” in this case being 200,000 young American lives.

State policies that allow children to access so-called gender-affirming care without parental consent have created a significant increase in suicides, according to a new Heritage Foundation study.

The Heritage study released Monday found that 2020 saw 1.6 more suicides per 100,000 residents ages 12 to 23 in states that allow minors access to puberty blockers and other gender-reassignment procedures without parental consent. (The Daily Signal is Heritage’s multimedia news organization.)

Jay Greene, a Heritage research fellow in education, found little evidence that such procedures prevent suicide. In fact, they may be fueling an increase in suicide among young people, the study finds.

A common argument of those in favor of so-called gender-affirming care is that such medical procedures prevent suicide. 

Gender transition advocate Sarah Harte, for instance, said that “laws and systems barring gender-affirming health care will contribute to higher rates of significant mental health problems, including deaths by suicide.”

When Alabama passed legislation making gender-transition procedures and “treatments” illegal to perform on children, then-White House press secretary Jen Psaki said that the new law would interfere with “lifesaving health care.”

The Biden administration threatened states with a warning that they may be in violation of civil rights law if they put limitations on “gender-affirming care,” which includes hormone treatment, puberty blockers, social affirmation, and surgery.

“Every major medical association agrees that gender-affirming health care is a best practice and, potentially, lifesaving,” Psaki told reporters.

But the evidence from what Psaki called “every major medical association” is weak. With the transformation of so many institutions into ideological enforcers of causes extremely important to the left, is this a surprise?

Greene’s research found that studies on the issue of gender transition and suicide have been badly flawed. It also found a link between minors receiving puberty blockers without parental consent and a much higher suicide rate.

You can read the report here.

“The average state suicide rate in this age group between 1999 and 2020 was 11.1, making an additional 1.6 suicides per 100,000 an increase of 14% in the suicide rate,” Greene writes.

The suicide numbers were obtained from the National Center for Injury Prevention and Control at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

“If making it easier for minors to access puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones is protective against suicide, one should expect the frequency of youth suicide to be lower in states that have a provision allowing minors to get these drugs without parental consent,” Greene writes.

In other words, we should see a divergence toward fewer suicides in states that allowed puberty blockers and other gender hormone treatments after they became available in the United States after 2010.

But the divergence went the other way.

“Starting in 2010, when puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones became widely available, elevated suicide rates in states where minors can more easily access those medical interventions became observable,” Greene writes.

The Heritage study did not find a similar increase in suicide among young adults who would not have been affected by the states’ hormone drug policies.

According to the study, the gap in the suicide rate continues to get larger between states that put limits on access to these treatments and those that don’t. This trend began as soon as the hormone treatments became widely available:

This increase in suicide rates in states where it is easier for minors to access puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones increased at almost the same time, and to the same degree, as those interventions became available. Using Google Trends results for the terms associated with those medical interventions as a proxy for their availability shows that increased suicide rates in states with easier access almost perfectly track the prevalence of those terms.

With so much debate among Americans over transgenderism, the conversation has been contained and controlled by much of the media, Big Tech, and countless other big institutions. They’ve suppressed any opinion or evidence that contradicts the narrative that gender transitioning is an unalloyed good that is opposed only by bigots.

This messaging seems to have created a dramatic increase in young people and children who claim to be transgender.

Liberal talk show host and comedian Bill Maher recently commented that transgenderism for children has become an epidemic. Maher suggested that the spike in cases of children taking puberty blockers and transitioning is connected to explicit cultural messaging.

One recent poll suggested a huge increase in those who identify as trans in just the last few years, with most—43%—young adults and teenagers. Since 2017, according to the Heritage report, the number of young people identifying as transgender has doubled.

“If this spike in trans children is all natural, why is it regional?” Maher asked rhetorically on his late-night show. “Either Ohio is shaming them or California is creating them.”

It appears that this social contagion not only is spreading rapidly but, as the Heritage report finds, causing direct and permanent harm to children at an accelerated rate.

Have an opinion about this article? To sound off, please email letters@DailySignal.com and we’ll consider publishing your edited remarks in our regular “We Hear You” feature. Remember to include the URL or headline of the article plus your name and town and/or state. 

The post Study Connects Jump in Youth Suicide With Transgender Treatments, Lack of Parental Consent appeared first on The Daily Signal.

Research of the Week

84% diabetes remission using an app.

The vast majority of “grains” fed to livestock are inedible to humans.

The Lipid Energy Model.

Fasting is well-tolerated and helpful in type 2 diabetics.

Could low-dose arsenic exposure be hormetic?

The combo of high fat and high fructose is particularly bad for glucose tolerance.

New Primal Kitchen Podcasts

Primal Kitchen Podcast: Becoming Unstoppable with Bethany Hamilton

Primal Health Coach Radio: Kayleigh Christina and Danielle Gronich

Media, Schmedia

New Zealand plans on counting (and charging farmers for) cow and sheep burps.

Nice coverage of a different path to weight loss than counting calories.

Interesting Blog Posts

Why wasn’t the steam engine invented earlier?

What’s American cheese, really?

Social Notes

Carnivore cereal.

Same.

It’s true.

Everything Else

Is Beyond Meat even more of a scam than we already knew?

Avoiding artificial fragrances is a no-brainer.

Things I’m Up to and Interested In

The son also rises: Despite being discriminated against and having their estates taken, the grandchildren of China’s pre-revolution elite are doing very well for themselves.

I believe it: School shooting drills do little to increase safety but increase depression and mental unwellness.

Interesting study underway: What effect will exogenous ketones have in colon cancer patients?

Love the language here: Plant-based food stocks lack sustainable finance.

Interesting research: The origin of the chicken.

Question I’m Asking

How is inflation treating you?

Recipe Corner

• Air fryer salmon with sriracha honey glaze.
• Meatballs in creamy tomato sauce.

Time Capsule

One year ago (Jun 4 – Jun 10)

• Sprinting, Jumping, Losing Body Fat, and Cultivating Gratitude —What it’s all about.
• Revisiting Sunscreen —All about sunblock.

Comment of the Week

“Re: dealing with food price rises… buying fewer of the “treats” that we really don’t need. Otherwise, doing what we’ve been doing. Eating up the cow we bought in November. Eating the eggs that our ducks lay. Eating greens most of the year from the garden or our attached greenhouse. Saving money elsewhere by heating with wood that we cut and split and powering the AC with solar panels on hot days. Yes, we are lucky but we made some of our luck.”

-“We made some of our luck”: exactly!

The post New and Noteworthy: What I Read This Week—Edition 181 appeared first on Mark's Daily Apple.

COLORADO: From transportation agency to state’s urban planner: CDOT’s new mission is to micromanage your life.

Over the last few years, the Colorado Department of Transportation (CDOT) has had a habit of playing fast and loose with taxpayer money, and setting their own priorities regardless of what those of Coloradans might be. In part, they’re able to get away with this because CDOT’s governing body, the Colorado Transportation Commission, is appointed entirely by the governor, with the approval of the state Senate.

In 2019, an audit found that “Budget-to-actuals analysis cannot be performed for nearly $1.3 billion — about 80 percent — of the department’s approved budget…” This resulted in precisely none of the commissioners overseeing CDOT tendering their resignations. Now, the state auditor is looking into possible favoritism toward an out-of-state contracting company. The commissioners have lost control of the department.

Now, the commissioners also appear to have lost touch with the citizens whose money they’re spending.

This past December, they voted to adopt a rule that could end up redirecting billions of dollars from roads and highways toward inefficient boutique “green” transit. It would also encourage denser housing, thus limiting people’s ability to buy single-family homes. The new rule even manages to work “equity” into the mix, echoing questionable arguments made by Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg.

#DefundEverything, it’s all been weaponized.

WHAT’S IN THE BAG: The List of Gear Kavanaugh’s Would-Be Assassin Was Carrying Is Terrifying.

COLORADO: Thousands of Democrats are changing their voter registration in Lauren Boebert’s district ahead of the primary.

Thousands of voters have recently left the Democratic Party in Western Colorado — some as part of a grassroots effort to defeat Republican Congresswoman Lauren Boebert in her upcoming primary election.

Among them is Steven Hallenborg of Montrose.

“Well, I’m a lifelong Democrat, and now I’m unaffiliated,” he said. Because he changed his affiliation, he now can vote against Boebert in the June 28 Republican primary.

For the last few years, Colorado’s “open primary” system has allowed unaffiliated voters to participate in either party’s primary elections. That means voters like Hallenborg can weigh in on Boebert’s primary run — without actually joining the Republican Party.

“It’s very unfortunate what’s going on in this state. So, I mean, she has to go,” Hallenborg said in an interview at a Democratic event. Voters who oppose Boebert have one other option, Republican state Sen. Don Coram, in the June 28 primary.

Open primaries are a joke and wide-open for abuse.

BRANDON GETS RESULTS! Biden ‘Jokes’ About Sending Political Opponents to Jail. The FBI Actually Does It the Very Next Morning. “Last night on Jimmy Kimmel’s show, Biden promised to throw his political opponents in jail. This morning, Biden’s FBI arrested a GOP candidate for governor in Michigan.”

A lot of the Corona data we’re fed is essentially meaningless propaganda, and it has obscured crucial patterns. Here, I want to look at the only metric that really matters, namely excess mortality, to make some basic points about what has happened to us since 2020, and what is happening now.

To date, the pandemicists have counted five or six waves of infection. If you ignore the case statistics, though, and look at nothing but European excess mortality, you see a totally different picture. Corona only has one deadly season a year, namely the winter, and no European country has seen more than two winter mortality spikes.

Beyond the no-signal countires, which had no excess deaths at all, there are two patterns for Eurozone Corona mortality. There are the early-outbreak countries, which saw their mortality spike after March 2020; and there are the late-outbreak countries, which skipped this wave and first saw significant Corona deaths in December 2020.

Let’s look first at the smaller, late-outbreak group, because it will clarify the basic dynamics.

Ideally, a Corona mortality wave would substantially exceed the deaths of the rough 2017/18 flu season, but for purposes of illustration we’ll grant my country’s extremely underwhelming experience with SARS-2 a pass here. There was no Spring 2020 wave at all. Corona first started killing Germans in the winter of 2020/21, and it started killing them again, despite the vaccines, in late Fall of 2021, before Omicron caused mortality to collapse in the course of December.

It’s definitely Omicron, and not the vaccines, that stopped the deaths. The same pattern exists in Austria, which is slightly less heavily vaccinated than Germany; and also in Hungary and Slovenia, which are substantially less vaccinated.

Hungary is interesting, because their winter wave was bipartite. They had a late Fall mortality spike, corresponding to the traditional coronavirus season peak, and then a separate early Spring spike, corresponding to the more traditional influenza peak:

This bipartite season is observed in the case statistics throughout Europe, but beyond Hungary, all-cause deaths tend to have a single wintertime apex centred either earlier in December, or later, towards the end of January. The precise timing of this peak can be important, as we’ll see below.

Now we turn to the much more common case, the early-outbreak countries. Sweden is archetypal here. They have a very similar vaccination rate and trajectory as Germany, but because the pandemic started earlier there, in Spring 2020, their whole experience is shifted one season to the left.

The Swedes had their first wave when nothing was happening in Germany, and they had their second wave when Germany had their first. And the crucial point is this: After that second wave, Sweden was done with the pandemic, vaccines or no vaccines. The Swedes went into Fall 2021 just as heavily vaccinated as Germany, but in Germany excess deaths started to rise again, while in Sweden they stayed flat.

In Europe, Corona kills people for two seasons, and then it becomes a nothingburger, no worse than seasonal influenza in a bad year. You see exactly the same picture in England – two mortality waves, and then it’s over:

And the same in Ireland …

… and in Belgium …

…and in Italy …

… and in Spain:

This leaves a few interesting outliers. Consider, for example, Portugal, which seems to have skipped both the Spring 2020 wave and the incipient pre-Omicron Winter 2021 wave. Do the heavily vaccinated Portuguese have Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna to thank for their one-wave pandemic?

No, they do not. It’s the seasonality that saved them. Portugal, like Spain and Ireland, has a later winter mortality peak than other countries, with deaths spiking not in December, but at the end of January. Portugal was set to see their second death wave at the end of January 2022, but by then Omicron had taken all the mortality out of SARS-2. Portugal got lucky.

The Netherlands and France are interesting for presenting a kind of intermediate phenomenon. Both had substantial mortality in spring 2020, followed by a distinctly muted winter 2020/21 wave, and so they saw some pre-Omicron spike in deaths:

Switzerland is another configuration of the same phenomenon, with a minimal Spring 2020 spike, followed by a Winter 2020 and an incipient Winter 2021 wave:

The pandemic will surely look different in the United States, or in the southern hemisphere. Particularly countries with extensive use of climatisation – which creates winter-like conditions in the late summer – will see different mortality patterns. In the Eurozone, though, this is how the Corona pandemic unfolded. In most countries, the two-wave mortality surge was over by the time the vaccines were rolled out; in central Europe, it was still raging, but it was Omicron and not the vaccines that stopped the deaths.

These people are trolling us. They have to be trolling us.

  POSTED BY STEVE DEACE   “I listen to your podcast and I follow @julie_kellyz. It’s every bit as bad as she describes. I am a husband and father who has zero criminal history…. And I am looking at years in prison AFTER I took a plea.   “You may ask why would people take […]

San Francisco District Attorney Chesa Boudin has been lionized by the press for years. He had the ultra-liberal resume for an ultra-liberal city. Boudin is the son of Weather Underground terrorists and  a former translator in Hugo Chávez’s presidential palace in Venezuela. Now, in a rare move, the voters of San Francisco have ousted Boudin in a rebuke not only to him but the failure of other leaders who have been downplaying or deflecting increasing crime in our major cities.

The San Francisco Chronicle, is reporting that 60 percent of the voters tossed out Boudin. The city has been plagued by violent crimes, daytime smash-and-grab crimes, shoplifting and property damage.

Boudin blamed “right-wing billionaires” for his defeat. It was an ironic criticism given his support from billionaire George Soros.

It is worth taking in mind that San Francisco also recently ousted far left school board members who were accused of pursuing controversial policies in the public schools.

The recall of Boudin should be deeply concerning for Democrats who have pushed for these new DAs and “reimagining” criminal justice. The most concerned should be George Gascón who previously held the position in San Francisco. He was also accused of allowing crime to rise unabated and left the city — later running for Los Angeles District Attorney on the very same policies that led to his opposition in San Francisco.

 

MISINFORMATION DEFINED: DOES NOT FIT THE OFFICIAL NARRATIVE:  YouTube deletes Post interview with judge’s son who stormed Capitol, citing ‘misinformation’.

“JUSTICE” IN THE BLUE ZONES: A cab driver was beaten to death with a pipe and DA Chesa Boudin’s office treated it as an accidental death.

APPEASING THE GREEN LOBBY AT YOUR EXPENSE: Biden Administration Quietly Raised Amount of Ethanol Required in Summer Blend Gasoline from Ten Percent to Fifteen, Three Predictable Problems Will Surface Soon.

Her’s the third issue:

“Ethanol is a valuable source of octane in finished gasoline, but it is chemically different than petroleum gasoline and cannot be used in concentrations above 10 percent in small engines — like outboard boat motors, motorcycles, lawnmowers, generators or chain saws — or in any cars made before 2001. Complicating matters further, most cars on the road today still aren’t warrantied to run on gasoline with more than 10 percent ethanol. Retail stations also must have compatible infrastructure in order to sell gasoline with higher ethanol blends.” This issue is known within the industry as “The Blend Wall.”

Everything is going swimmingly.

It took a long time, but my study on masks has finally appeared in the prestigious journal Medicine. What is my study about?

It is about whether masks decrease case fatality from COVID-19 (because less viral material is transmitted) or increase it. Increase sounds illogical? Ask yourself if you would wear the mask of a Covid patient. You probably wouldn’t, otherwise you could become infected by inhaling the viruses he or she breathed into the mask.

My study, based on the U.S. state of Kansas, provides the answer: case mortality was significantly lower in counties without mandatory masks. Mandatory masking increased case mortality there by 85%. Even after factoring in the reduced number of cases due to masks, the numbers still remain 52% higher. Over 95% of this effect can only be attributed to COVID-19, so it is not CO₂, bacteria or fungi under the mask.

The reason for this is what I call the Foegen effect: deep re-inhalation of condensed droplets or pure virions which were trapped in the mask as droplets can worsen the prognosis. Each of these steps has been documented in the literature.

This effect has now even been demonstrated in animal models. Further studies in humans comparing mask versus helmet or nasal tube show the same result.

Two other, even larger evaluations show the same effect on the case fatality rate. A peer-reviewed study in the journal Cureus shows that there is no association between mask compliance and case numbers in Europe, but there is a statistically significant positive association between mask compliance and deaths. This means: more mask use, same number of cases, but more deaths.

A peer-reviewed study by Adjodah et. al. analyses the effect of mask mandates on cases and mortality (but not case fatality rate) in the USA on a pre-post-basis, and finds that after the lifting of a mask mandate, cases rise but mortality does not, which effectively means that lifting a mask mandate lowers the case fatality rate. Conversely, the implementation of a mask mandate increases case fatality rate.

My study is open access and you can find it here – the PDF version (available via the download button in the left bar) is particularly recommended for its helpful layout.

Republished from Daily Skeptic

WELCOME BACK, CARTER: Biden Administration Considers A Windfall Tax On Oil And Gas Profits.

RESPONDING TO THE NEED: F.I.R.E. Expands Beyond Campus to General Free Speech Defense. Well, the ACLU isn’t really doing that anymore, so . . .

More here.

Bravo for F.I.R.E., which together with NCLA is doing really great work.

IT’S COME TO THIS: Common Sense? CBS Urges U.S. Adopt Japan’s Occupation-Era Gun Control.

On Monday’s CBS Mornings, the network continued their series globetrotting for gun control laws. This time they left Europe and jetted over to Japan where senior foreign correspondent (and friend to the Iranian regime) Elizabeth Palmer touted their oppressive system where a citizen could wait a year or longer to get a gun license as authorities prod their lives and a gun shop owners need to get permission to buy ammo. All imposed on them during the post-WWII occupation.

* * * * * * * *

Palmer was absolutely giddy to note that the reason Japan had such strict gun control laws was because of the United States. “And how’s this for ironic? Japan owes its strict gun laws to America,” she mocked. “When the U.S. occupied Japan after World War II it disarmed the country.”

She even threw in a soundbite from an old documentary where the narrator proclaimed: “To the scrap heap went the guns.” Palmer conveniently omitted the part where the U.S. also banned Japan from having a military.

“Americans shaped the legislation that took firearms out of the hands of civilians, and to this day, that means getting hurt or killed by a gun in Japan is an extremely long shot,” she jabbed as she wrapped up the report.

Palmer is essentially praising the American confiscation of firearms for there to be a smoother occupation and pacification of a citizenry, the exact opposite of what the founders intended. And given the fact that the Democratic Roosevelt administration put Japanese-American citizens in internment camps, perhaps looking to that era for guidance is ill-advised.

As Glenn has written, “our elites are now promoting the kind of history one would impose on a conquered nation, to break its people’s spirit.” But they’ve rarely made the connection so obvious until now.