Should Professional Athletes be More Worried about Coronavirus or Lightning?

Posted on by July 5, 2020

Znamya Truda, a Russian professional soccer team, has announced that Ivan Zaborovsky, a goalkeeper for the team, went to intensive care after being struck by lightning during training.

People being seriously harmed or killed by lightning strikes is rare. In America, the United States government’s National Weather Service relays that, in the ten years of 2009 through 2018, there were an average of 27 deaths and 243 estimated injuries each year from lightning countrywide. While the risk of an individual being struck by lightning is real, it is also quite small. The National Weather Service lays out the likelihood as follows: a one in 1,222,000 chance of being struck by lightning in a given year and a one in 15,300 chance of being struck in one’s lifetime.

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When Spouting Coronavirus Idiocy Helps the Bottom Line

Posted on by July 2, 2020

Here we are months into the coronavirus scare when it has become obvious that coronavirus for most people poses little to no threat. Yet, we see businesses and other entities repeatedly trumpeting the danger of coronavirus as if each and every person should view the disease as the Grim Reaper hovering over one’s shoulder.

Of course, these entities will also trumpet their responses to coronavirus, including in many instances requiring people to wear masks that have no clear net benefit in protecting against coronavirus transmission but do have clear negative health consequences.

It is coronavirus idiocy on display.

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It Could Be Worse: Presidential Candidate Joe Biden Wants a National Mask Mandate

Posted on by June 26, 2020

It is bad enough that many people across America are living, working, and visiting in places where state or local governments have mandated that people wear masks or, instead, have mandated that businesses mandate that people wear masks when they go about their daily activities away from home. The masks are mandated in the name of countering coronavirus even though there is no clear evidence they create a net reduction in coronavirus transmission from person to person and there is plenty of reason to believe they impair health.

Further, what people wear or do not wear on their faces is none of governments’ business to control. Will governments next mandate we wear big bubbles around us to protect us?

While the current mask mandates are terrible, things could be worse. There could be a countrywide mask mandate. Presumptive Democratic Party presidential nominee Joe Biden, in a Thursday interview with Ken Rice at KDKA-TV of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, declared that, if he were president, he would support just that. Said Biden, “I would do everything in my possible [sic] to make it required that people had to wear masks in public.”

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President Donald Trump’s ‘Racist Joke’

Posted on by June 24, 2020

“Trump Made a Racist Joke in a Phoenix Megachurch and the Crowd Went Wild.” That is the title of a Wednesday The Intercept article by Robert Mackey. Sounds like a major story that could sink President Donald Trump’s chance of reelection, heh? However, it is clear from the first paragraph of the article that what happened at Trump’s Tuesday speech is very different from what the article title suggests. Trump told a pun that played on his contention that coronavirus originated in China and a form of fighting associated with China, and many people in the audience seemed to like the pun. That’s all.

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‘Stay Home Stay Safe’ … Say What?

Posted on by June 23, 2020

Near the top at a Dallas County, Texas government COVID-19 web page, just below a link people can click on to find out about a “job opportunity” in the county’s new “contact tracing” surveillance program begun in the name of countering coronavirus, there is a chart titled “TODAY’S COVID-19 RISK LEVEL.” Lit up is the highest risk level on the chart, appearing on a red background: “STAY HOME STAY SAFE.” You can see other governments across America promoting a similar message of fear at their similar web pages.

Say what?

Here we are over three months into the American coronavirus scare whipped up by people in the media and government. And this scare was preceded by months of sensational reporting in America on coronavirus overseas and the authoritarian government actions taken there in the name of countering coronavirus. Over all this time, it has increasingly become evident that coronavirus is much more like the flu viruses that Americans routinely deal with in its danger instead of being the super-killer disease originally advertised. It has also become clear that the threat of serious illness and death from coronavirus is largely concentrated among elderly people and people who already have major health problems. Thus, we see the large percentage of coronavirus attributed deaths — increased by government mandates — in nursing homes while professional athletes who have coronavirus tend to have no or minor sickness. Also, children seem to be at nearly zero risk of great harm or death from coronavirus.

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‘Pro-liberty’ Texas Governor Greg Abbott Supports Governments Ordering Businesses to Order People to Wear Masks

Posted on by June 19, 2020

Texas Governor Greg Abbot, in an April 27 executive order concerning coronavirus, declared: “Individuals are encouraged to wear appropriate face coverings, but no jurisdiction can impose a civil or criminal penalty for failure to wear a face covering.” This executive order provision stopped in their tracks local governments that sought to enforce mask mandates as part of their coronavirus crackdowns.

Because of his stand against mask mandates, Abbott gained praise for defending liberty. But, on Wednesday, Abbot turned his back on liberty when, in a KWTX-TV of Waco, Texas interview, he endorsed local governments ordering stores and other businesses to require people at the businesses to wear masks.

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Neighborhood Residents Use Bolt Cutters to Open New York City Playground Shut Down in Coronavirus Crackdown

Posted on by June 16, 2020

Daniel McAdams has written about police on two occasions backing down in their efforts to stop children of a group of families from using playgrounds in Texas that had been designated off limits in the coronavirus crackdown. In those instances, parents discussed the restriction with police, and once with a vice mayor as well, with the police ultimately assenting to the use of the playgrounds. In the Brooklyn borough of New York City, the effort to ensure kids can use the Middleton Playground has played out differently. Catarina Moura and John Annese report at the New York Daily News that people have at least 26 times — the latest on Monday — cut off locks and chains that, in the name of countering coronavirus, have been used to prevent people from accessing a playground.

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Saying No to the ‘New Normal’

Posted on by June 14, 2020

Sometimes a video can communicate important political ideas very well and quickly. That is the case with the two-minute video “No New Normal” at the Essential People YouTube page.

Starting off, it seems as if the video, like many others, is promoting that people make all sorts of sacrifices, changing their lives drastically and painfully, to counter coronavirus. Then, the video takes a quick turn, harshly criticizing the coronavirus crackdown and the “new normal” of dystopian restrictions on human actions that people in government and media often assert must persist. At the same time, the video denounces Bill Gates who has been a prominent backer of the crackdown and promoter of the “new normal.”

The video also provides a haunting visual demonstration of the dehumanizing nature of the masks and other face coverings that some governments and businesses are mandating people wear.

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Welcome to College, Now Wear Your Mask

Posted on by June 12, 2020

When students at two prominent Texas state government universities — the University of Texas at Austin and Texas A&M — return to the universities’ campuses in the fall semester, after being booted in the spring semester due to purported worries about coronavirus, they will find the experience much different than it has been in years past. To put it simply, new rules imposed in the name of countering coronavirus will make being a student at these universities suckier.

Take, for example, new mask mandates announced by the presidents of both universities this week.

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