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Home » What we’ve learned so far

What we’ve learned so far

The New Neo Posted on by

Not meant to be an inclusive list. And by “we,” I certainly don’t mean everyone.

(1) China is a bad actor.
(2) Trump was right about China.
(3) Borders are important.
(4) Trump was right about borders.
(5) We need to be more self-sufficient in the manufacture of vital goods.
(6) Trump was right about #5.
(7) Even in a crisis, the press’s top priority is to criticize Trump and the GOP.
(8) Trump was right about #7.

Theoretically at least, a person can dislike Trump intensely and disagree with most of his politics, but the things on the above list would seem to me to be self-evident. So one might think that just about everyone would notice them. WRONG!

Comments

What we’ve learned so far — 52 Comments

  1. Also, Yamiche (gesundheit!) Alcindor is assho. . . but then this is a constant, hence, not news.

  2. “Theoretically at least, a person can dislike Trump intensely and disagree with most of his politics…”

    I’ve tried to use something similar to this phrasing talking about Palin, but as soon as I point out the essence of distilled venom directed at her, I’m instantly a Palin groupy. So good luck trying to change someone’s mind about Orangeman.

  6. I have noticrd, over the years, that hate is a major force, in the Left’s view of the world.

  7. I’ve come to the conclusion that just looking at this objectively, most of the media activist complex is the enemy.
    They’ve been this way since the Tet Offensive.
    If they pulled this shit during the Civil War, WWI or WWII they would have been thrown in jail.

  9. Bill Serra, remember what Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman is attributed with saying: “If I had my choice, I would kill every reporter in the world, but I am sure we would be getting reports from hell before breakfast.” And this one: “I hate newspapermen. They come into camp and pick up their camp rumors and print them as facts. I regard them as spies, which, in truth, they are.”

  12. The media on the left has become so ridiculous and I seriously think they all own a portrait like Dorian Gray in their attic. Hopefully, history will remember this period of time as the years of lies and hate. For some it is fashionable to hate Trump and for others it is to find this emotional behaviour preposterous.

  16. Trum, due to his alliance connections and Q Anon, already knew something like this would happen. They were making some slow preparations. In fact, many thought that they would pull the plug on the Deep State as early as 2016-2017 but… well, things happen according to the timing of the heavens, not of man’s decree.

  17. We also know that a lot of people can look at what’s actually happening in Italy, Spain, New York, and New Jersey and then run around on Twitter like William Wallace-wannabes screaming “FREEEEEEEEEEDOOOOOMMMM!!!”

    Mike

  18. This is such a good list that we should all be demanding More Lists from Neo on a regular basis.

  23. We also know that a lot of people can look at what’s actually happening in Italy, Spain, New York, and New Jersey and then run around on Twitter like William Wallace-wannabes screaming “FREEEEEEEEEEDOOOOOMMMM!!!”

    And we can look at Sweden and wonder what our loss of liberty is actually achieving.

    It strikes me as bizarre that the proof we need to lock down more is that the places that have locked down the most are the ones coping worst.

    If you want to prove to me that lock-downs work well, then you should show me the places where the lock-down is working and compare it to the places which are being ravaged because they aren’t locked down. I’m not seeing that.

  24. So now the White House ‘experts’ say the death toll will be between 100,000 and 240,000 deaths and the next two weeks will see the peak.

    I will leave it to the others here to break these numbers down but it seems to me that this doesn’t make a lot a sense. We’ve been in lockdown for about two weeks now yet the peak won’t come for two more weeks? I thought the incubation was about 14 days? So we’ve done all this for two weeks and what have we accomplished?

    And we currently stand at like 4,000 deaths now and if it is going to peak in the next couple weeks with those totals we should be seeing days with much higher daily totals than our current grand total right?

    As I said I’m not into the whole math of this but that seems odd to me. Again what has the lockdown and SD got us?

    Do we need some new voices beyond our current gods of science who are busy driving us off the cliff with a president under their spell?

  25. SCOTTtheBADGER on March 31, 2020 at 4:49 pm said:
    “I have noticrd, over the years, that hate is a major force, in the Left’s view of the world.”

    Of course. Watch Bernie. He hates deeply and passionately. And seems to hate damn near everyone.

    Consider how much hatred goes into the rampant slanders of racism, sexism, fascism, Nazism, etc. And not just the continual accusations, but also the actual policies enacted by liberals. They really believe the worst about the average American. They hate. Hatred animates them. Hatred of others is the source of their self-esteem. We know they tend to be unhappy on average. It is in the hatred of others and their unwarranted belief in their superiority that they seek to salvage something of happiness.

    Deplorables. Bitter Clingers. Racist, sexist, fascist, white supremacist. Their slanders are dripping with hatred.

  26. Griffin:

    I had those same thoughts then I realized what some doctors do (maybe a lot) is tell you how close you are to death and then when it doesn’t happen — you are so grateful!

  27. If all this isn’t enough we now have localities across the country (and UK) setting up snitch lines for citizens to report on each other for all kinds of ‘offensives’ against the state ordered crackdown.

    The lack of widespread pushback against the all out attacks on our civil liberties may be the scariest part of all this. History tells us that once government does something extreme once it is much easier and more likely they will do it again.

    Stasi?

  29. Griffin,

    That is what is meant by “flattening the curve”. The same numbers are going to get critically sick, but not all at once. This is how we avoid overwhelming the healthcare resources. If we can’t treat all of the critically ill, more people die.

  30. Chester Draws:

    You will not find that proof and I’ll tell you why: nations don’t lock down when they don’t have a problem to begin with. The lockdown is reactive and usually doesn’t happen till things are going in the wrong direction.

    There is tremendous variety in the amount of COVID each country is facing, and that variation occurs already before the lockdown or shelter in place or whatever you want to call it.

    And then once the shelter orders are given, there is a time lag. First there’s at least two weeks or more before you see, not fewer infections, but a reduction in the rate of new infections. This can also vary because it depends in part on the number of tests done (do you test mild cases, too, for example?). And it’s only a couple of weeks after that that the death rates start going down, but obviously not the death numbers, which can only rise and never fall.

    If the media emphasizes death numbers and not rates of climb, it’s harder to see the change.

  31. neo,

    ‘Not peak infections; peak deaths’

    So there are tens of thousands near death right now to peak in the next two weeks? That doesn’t make sense because there are currently around 100,000 total cases in the US and I believe that includes the dead, the cured, the mild, the asymptomatic, etc.

    Where are all the very sick that are going to reach peak death in the next two weeks?

  32. The article by John Hinderaker at Powerline that just went up about these models being used for policy is very good.

    One of our gods of science Dr. Birx has ping ponged back and forth in the last week from criticizing the extreme models to now apparently making the extreme model national policy.

    They don’t know, they don’t know, they don’t know but we are making massive life altering decisions like they do.

  33. Griffin:

    What are you referring to?

    I never said tens of thousands would die in the next two weeks.

    Actually, although I certainly haven’t listened to all the predictions, I don’t see anyone saying that would happen. Are you talking about the US?

    If you’re talking about predictions like the one that said 100,000 people will die, that doesn’t involve the next 2 weeks. I’m pretty sure that’s for the year.

    By the way, “peak” doesn’t involve the total number of deaths or cases. It involves the rate of growth, which is predicted to slow after that.

  34. neo,

    But they specifically said it was going to peak in the next two weeks so if that is new infections then that would certainly lead to lots of additional deaths if this is going to be the peak.

    We are at about 4,000 so if this is going to be the peak shouldn’t there be lots and lots of deaths the next few weeks?

  35. neo,

    Maybe I misinterpreted you. In your 10:19 comment you said:

    ‘Not peak infections; peak deaths’

    So that means if it’s going to peak the next couple weeks there has to many thousand very sick right now and I don’t see how that can be with numbers of infections they are reporting.

    Sorry if I missed your point.

  36. I learned something from another post today that seems to be parallel, being about learning things in the politisphere, but I think the author drew the wrong conclusion. (You can guess the substance from the title):
    https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/03/joe-biden-democrats-sexual-assault-they-never-learn/?utm_source=recirc-desktop&utm_medium=article&utm_campaign=river&utm_content=most-popular&utm_term=eighth

    The author (McLaughlin) details all the familiar sordid stories of the media/partisans screeching at Republicans and exempting Democrats for the same alleged behaviors (false for R and real for D).
    This is where the parallel takes hold:

    Lots of people on the right argued at the time that the “thou shalt not question Anita Hill” edict was an insane standard that would sting the Democrats at the next opportunity. Democrats, recklessly disregarding all these warnings, not only persisted in making the argument but also went ahead and nominated a notorious Lothario for president in 1992.

    He cites the latest examples:

    Boxed in by their own standards, Democratic senators actually read Avenatti’s nonsense into the Senate record during the hearings. Republicans and conservatives warned them that they would regret these standards the next time charges were leveled against one of their own. It didn’t take long, as two women came forward to publicly accuse Virginia lieutenant governor Justin Fairfax of rape in mid-2019. Fairfax is still in office, and he plans to run for governor, and his party may well fall in line behind him. Now an accusation has been raised against the party’s presumptive presidential nominee.

    He ends with this caution about supporting Biden : “Will Democrats learn their lesson this time? Don’t bet on it.”

    Thus pointing out the utter cluelessness of the punditocracy.
    The charges were “leveled against one of their own”, and nothing happened.

    The Democrats / Left DID learn their lesson, every single time: they are not held accountable for the behavior they impose on the Right, and they are not significantly challenged in the MSM for any of it.

    They are learning the same lesson in attacking President Trump, in attacking Evangelicals who are giving far more humanitarian succor than any of them are, and in attacking random nonentities on the internet: they never suffer any significant negative consequences.

    What you (the LIV public in general) reward, you get more of.

  37. We also have learned that some people never learn.

    https://dailycaller.com/2020/03/29/chinese-markets-reopen-bats-dogs-cats/

    China ordered that its wet-markets be shut down in January, after facts emerged suggesting that coronavirus was first transmitted to humans via bats and other live animals sold in the often filthy places of commerce, according to Business Insider. However, now that China says it’s beaten the virus, the markets seem to have resumed business as usual.
    “The markets have gone back to operating in exactly the same way as they did before coronavirus,” said a Daily Mail correspondent who observed the markets re-opening Dongguan. “The only difference is that security guards try to stop anyone taking pictures which would never have happened before.”

    Try this if you can stomach it.
    https://libertyunyielding.com/2020/03/31/some-of-the-er-delicacies-available-at-a-typical-wuhan-wet-market/

    They’ve also been not-learning for quite some time.
    https://dailycaller.com/2020/03/27/flashback-scientists-bats-chinese-wet-markets-pandemic-2013/

    Scientists warned that Chinese wet markets like the one in Wuhan could be a breeding ground for the next SARS-like pandemic — in 2013.
    …
    The warning came just over a decade after 2002’s deadly SARS outbreak, and Kupferschmidt cited a number of researchers and scientists who saw the potential for those viruses to not only infect humans but to spread globally once they had done so.

  38. You will not find that proof and I’ll tell you why: nations don’t lock down when they don’t have a problem to begin with. The lockdown is reactive and usually doesn’t happen till things are going in the wrong direction.

    Well, you’re wrong there. I’m in lock-down, and our whole country is, since before the first death. Lord knows what the reaction would be if there had been an actual crisis number of deaths.

    (They now tell us that the government is intending to eradicate the virus in NZ. Quite how an export dependent country is meant to survive with no contact with the outside world for a year or two is beyond me! 8% of all NZ jobs are directly related to tourism, so we’re going to have unemployment of about 20% for several years if they go through with their plans.)

    All across America you have different states imposing different conditions at different stages. There will be plenty of evidence — eventually — that total lock-downs are not hugely helpful.

    And then once the shelter orders are given, there is a time lag.

    I know how the theory works. I don’t see how well it is working in practice though. Italy locked down ages ago, and the tail off has been agonisingly slow. Once they lift the restrictions, are they going to find that the disease just picks up where it left off, and their actions were largely in vain?

    Is a full lock-down the best way to keep the rate low — or would lesser restrictions that don’t cripple the economy be a better way to achieve the same result? Lesser restrictions that can be kept in place for several months, rather than a over-reaction that is so stringent that people will start to rebel?

  39. Griffin:

    Your question isn’t all that clear. But I’ll try to decipher it. You write:

    “We are at about 4,000 so if this is going to be the peak shouldn’t there be lots and lots of deaths the next few weeks?”

    Yes. But “lots and lots” doesn’t mean 100,000 or anything near it.

    I believe you are misinterpreting the “peak” they’re talking about. The total right now is 4,000, but this took many many weeks to come to pass. Let’s say, just for the sake of argument (these are not the real figures) that some weeks ago we had 300 deaths, the next week we had 450 deaths (an increase of 50% on the previous week), the next week we had 720 (an increase of 60% from the previous week), the next week we had 1188 (an increase of 65% over the previous week) and so on, where the rate of increase (percentage of cases more than the previous week) keeps getting higher each week. At some point that rate of increase over the last week starts getting lower, and then lower.

    The peak would be the week with the highest rate of growth.

    The number of people who’d ever been infected with COVID, however, as well as total number of deaths from COVID, would keep getting higher. They are additive and can never get smaller, and the prediction is that they will reach something between 100,000 and 200,000 for the year. But eventually the rate of growth could go way down.

  40. Neo put part of Rufus’s comment on her “I was thinking this” post, but the first paragraphs, which she omitted, are germane here: they explain how the media capitalizes on the power we grant by panicked responses to their cause of the day, no matter how irrational or destructive that cause may be.

    https://www.thenewneo.com/2020/03/30/covid-roundup/#comment-2486964

    Rufus T. Firefly on March 31, 2020 at 2:30 am said:
    A slight tangent from my previous comment, but we have had cross dressers and transvestites in our society forever. Wikipedia says it’s half of 1% of U.S. adults. Let’s go with that number.

    About 5 years ago there was a big media push to focus on this one half of one percent of our population and within months we had new laws mandating millions of dollars on bathroom construction. We had sporting and other events cancelled when legislatures didn’t react fast enough to address this new, extremely important thing the media was focused on that we had dealt with relatively calmly and effectively forever.

    Now the media knows it has a shiny, new toy

    The Media learned.

    Power corrupts; absolute power corrupts absolutely,
    Powerful people do not use force themselves, if they can influence the people who do.
    Power exerted in the unaccountable shadows (for instance, subtle misdirections on NPR), are hard to disinfect with the sunlight of elections.

    IMO, the reaction was so fast because of several things: the media had already made the government, and thus the populace, dance to its tunes on prior issues — and the response time kept getting shorter; they had remarkable success on LGBT issues and same sex marriage (based on their prior success covering up the true situation with HIV/AIDS and killing thousands of people because of it); and the Left knew exactly what laws they wanted enacted (I suspect there are digital file drawers full of their pet legislation waiting the next cause to hit the ground running).

  41. neo,

    Ok like I originally said the math of this is not my thing but to get to 100,000 to 240,000 (their stated range) from 4,000 in the next year (with a peak of some kind soon they say) we will need to see some big weekly increases that’s all I’m saying and we continuously hear that about 80% of all cases are relatively mild so that cuts down the pool of people to die.

    I don’t know I’m just having a hard time seeing getting from 4,000 to 100,000-240,000 even in a year. Maybe something like 30,000 or so I can see. Then throw in that they can’t keep their stories straight from one minute to the next and I guess I don’t trust them to make these predictions.

    Anyway I’ll stay out of this because it’s pointless really.

  42. I seem to be obsessing about this “what the Democrats learned was that they get rewarded for manipulating news reports” – but I keep finding examples in odd places, and I am not the first to notice (LOL).

    https://pjmedia.com/instapundit/363218/
    Posted by Glenn Reynolds at 7:52 am
    After quoting from RICHARD BENEDETTO: An Epidemic of Media Partisanship.

    There was a sea change with Katrina, where they realized that if they all agreed on a narrative, even if it was false, and all stuck to it despite all criticism, they could swing an election. Since then, they’ve doubled down repeatedly, and every time you think they’ve bottomed out, they go lower. That they do this without concern for any collateral damage they might be doing to their audience or to the nation is particularly reprehensible. It’s no surprise that some call them enemies of the people.

  43. Chester Draws:

    Wow. That’s very strange. I was unaware of what was happening in New Zealand. I do my best, but don’t keep tabs on every country, just the major trends. New Zealand certainly is doing something different.

    I agree it will be very very hard to evaluate the effects of a lockdown vs. other approaches, mainly because there are so many variables and all countries are on different tracks anyway, right from the very start. It’s not like countries are identical twins except for lockdown vs. no lockdown.

    They are still trying to figure out whether in the 1918 pandemic one approach worked better than another, comparing different cities.

    Here in the US we are not technically in lockdown. Each state is different, but I don’t think any of them have what would be called a lockdown.

    Also, you write “Once they lift the restrictions, are they going to find that the disease just picks up where it left off, and their actions were largely in vain?” That is exactly the question I’ve been asking for quite some time. I haven’t found any answer yet. It would seem to be a very very important one. I think the idea they have is that we will continue social distancing and maybe wear masks and wash our hands a lot for the next year, and the rate will slow way down. Then there will be a vaccine. In the meantime, we also might find various effective treatments along the way. So the slowdown will not have been in vain.

    That’s the idea, anyway.

  44. Griffin:

    The key is rates of change. You can get to high numbers pretty easily. Let’s say the number of deaths right now is doubling every “x” number of days (I don’t the actual number right now). If the rate slows down, it will start doubling every x+1 number of days, then x+2 number of days, and so on (or it could slow down at a faster rate than that). But still, even if the rate is slowing down, it doesn’t suddenly drop to nothing. So you can get to pretty high numbers quite fast, actually, even if the rate is dropping.

  45. “..every time you think they’ve bottomed out, they go lower. ” – Reynolds

    That’s why Dante put so many circles in his Inferno — and he still doesn’t have enough.

  46. Regarding NZ, it’s clear that they were watching how things were unfoldeding around the globe, especially in Australia. Australia decided—no doubt after a period of waiting (and hoping)—to lock down Sunday (Mar. 29), while NZ decided on the move about a week earlier.

    Looking through some of the media reports:
    New Zealand—quarantining people entering the country (Sun., Mar. 15) –
    https://www.interest.co.nz/rural-news/104050/keith-woodford-analysis-decision-go-hard-and-early-requiring-everyone-entering-new
    Australia (Mon., Mar. 23) –
    https://www.newstalkzb.co.nz/on-air/heather-du-plessis-allan-drive/audio/oliver-perterson-coronavirus-cases-jump-in-australia-ahead-of-lockdown/
    New Zealand (Mon., Mar. 23) – govt. announced a country-wide lockdown “within 48 hours –
    http://www.looppng.com/global-news/new-zealand-goes-lockdown-90900
    Australia (Mon., Mar 30) –
    https://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/world/coronavirus-covid-19-australia-lockdown-gatherings-12588252
    Australia (Tue., Mar 31) –
    https://7news.com.au/lifestyle/health-wellbeing/coronavirus-in-australia-most-of-the-country-is-effectively-in-full-lockdown-as-state-governments-help-stop-the-spread-c-902028

    The NZ government concluded—almost a full week before Australia—that there was no point in half-measures especially since the virus had already arrived there.
    So let’s see if it makes a difference. Let’s hope it does.
    (Note, however, that there is a substantial difference in ordering—and enforcing—a lockdown in a country like NZ vs. a country like Australia. Note too, that what is meant by “lockdown may differ slightly, or more than slightly, from place to place, or even in the same place, but at different periods.)

  47. Reading the comments, I am shocked at poorly many are understanding the nature of the disease and the strategy of “flattening the curve”.

    Get this: We will (almost) ALL get the virus, eventually. The purpose of the actions taken was NOT to protect us from EVER getting the virus. They are in place to make sure that we don’t all get it at the same time. Also, the strength and symptoms of the disease attenuate over time, so among the ones who get it later there will be fewer deaths.

  48. Ymarsakar, Why you speak like Communist Infiltrator?

    If it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, acts like a duck….
    He is paid to be here… a professional troll…

  49. The news media learned because of Rathergate during the election campaign of 2004 and Eason Jordan that winter. The conservative blogosphere and readership was able to quickly identify Rather’s fraud and get the news to millions. From there it was picked up by conservative talk radio. Within one day, a huge number of Americans were aware of what was a legit story. The news media covered it like a legit story and Rather was toast.

    The same thing started in early 2005 with Eason Jordan and the news that CNN had censored itself in order to stay in good graces with a brutal dictator in Iraq (Saddam). At the time, several MSM “journalists” started questioning why they were participating in hurting their own. And a consensus formed that they would no longer join in covering news that originated from the conservative blogosphere or talk radio that hurt liberals. They were proud liberals and lefties. Covering news that helped the right was counter-productive to the cause. So they stopped. Because journalism.

    A couple of years later I remember Hindraker or Johnson at Powerline wondering why the conservative blogs no longer seemed to have any purchase in the MSM.

  50. Along those lines Stan, the big story in political news yesterday concerned the DOJIG issuing a report on findings of fraud and grave error in every single FISA application of the 24 (mostly selected at random) his office examined. We’ll be hearing very little of that in the MSM in the coming days as they have in Wuhan virus a near perfect cover for their machinations.

  51. sdferr,

    Since the deliberate and public rejection of any pretense of objectivity in 2005, the MSM has gotten ridiculous. The election of Obama was an obvious major ratchet of increasing partisanship. It continued to trend worse throughout his two terms. And then the next major ratchet for Trump in 2016 took it to previously unimagined depths of corruption and incompetence. The rate of decline has accelerated as Trump has played them like a violin. They’re wrecked now.

    Remember when the conventional wisdom was never to argue with those who buy ink by the barrel? Hard to go back to those times and imagine that any president could strengthen himself by taking on the news media with a frontal assault. Trump not only has done it, he’s succeeded spectacularly. The news media has no credibility any more. Republican and independent voters laugh at the news media. NY Times’ columnists have names which are punchlines — guaranteed to elicit laughter at Congressional town hall meetings. I think old farts my age still struggle to understand just how much the news media has destroyed itself. Incompetence and corrupt motives have completely ruined them. A majority of voters not only think they lie, they know they lie. And in 2020 the MSM proves it every day. Sometimes it seems they are even eager to do so.

  52. “Remember when the conventional wisdom was never to argue with those who buy ink by the barrel?” – stan

    Trump owns the barrel now.

    However, even if the majority of voters think they lie (polls show 44% don’t trust the news), the vast majority of Democrats apparently still believe the lies.

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