When lies become obligatory
I began blogging sixteen years ago, and almost from the start I would hear from people – privately, in emails – about how they had to maintain a false front in their jobs about their conservatism in order to maintain their employment. These notes would come from around the world. But at the time, they centered on two fields: academia and the arts.
That was then. Now it’s spread to many if not most fields. At this point I don’t have to explain how widespread cancel culture has become, and how dangerous. Orwell was insightful and prescient in his Newspeak dictionary, because thoughtcrime is now punished harshly in nearly all walks of life, and the list of possible offenses is enormous.
Thoughtcrime can also reach back in time, as this article points out:
It’s no longer enough to be ideologically pure by current standards. One must always have held the proper beliefs. Of course, such tortuous moral standards can only lead to lying. In a recent paper titled “Keeping Your Mouth Shut: Spiraling Self-Censorship in the United States,” political scientists James L. Gibson and Joseph L. Sutherland reveal that self-censorship among Americans has soared. In the 1950s, at the height of McCarthyism, 13.4 percent of Americans reported that they “felt less free to speak their mind than they used to.” In 1987, the figure reached 20 percent. By 2019, 40 percent of Americans reported that they did not feel free to speak their minds.
This isn’t a partisan issue. “The percentage of Democrats who are worried about speaking their mind is just about identical to the percentage of Republicans who self-censor: 39 and 40 percent, respectively,” Gibson and Sutherland report.
The article doesn’t mention it, but I will point out that it is indeed a partisan issue in one sense: it is largely the left that engenders the fear. In other words, people on the right are punished by the left for violations of thought and speech, but people on the left are also punished by the left for not being quite leftist and PC enough.
The article goes on to describe a situation in which far more people disagree with PC thought than are willing to say it publicly, and therefore the conformity grows despite the fact that most people are actually against it but are unwilling to risk speaking up. People become used to lying, and wary of telling the truth except to the most trusted of friends and family – and maybe not even to them.
This is one of the hallmarks of totalitarian states, and we are fast approaching this situation. Perhaps we have already reached it.
Progressive rejoicing over the sadistic punishment of the innocent by the powerful totalitarianism of the left is demonstrated once again (as though any further proof were needed) by the despicable elevation of a relatively unimportant story about a young girl’s persecution by a fellow student into a national obsession. The NYT gleefully reported how a sociopathic and vengeful former classmate at the high school once attended by Mimi Groves had saved a three-second clip of her chanting the words, when she was fifteen, from a rap “song” (containing a locution forbidden to whites) in jubilation; he released the clip three years later solely in order to destroy her dream of attending the University of Tennessee, which behaved as atrociously as The Grey Harridan and the young man in question.
I certainly maintain a ‘false front’ in my profession, although I am fortunate to work in an office where politics and related issues are rarely discussed. Almost certainly, 75-80% of my colleagues are somewhere on the left, but most of hold themselves to an older standard of avoiding politics and religion as topics of casual discussion in a work environment. I very much appreciate that.
However, I’ve worked in prior offices where liberal/leftist diatribes were quite common; it was beyond exhausting and I would do my best to stay quiet and avoid the discussion.
This may no longer be an easy option. We have seen the left pushing beyond mere censorship (whether official or de facto) into compelled speech. After all, ‘silence is violence’. A day will come where most of us will be forced to be ‘Green Grocers’ or face consequences. Indeed it already has arrived in certain quarters.
I honestly don’t know how I will respond when that day arrives for me.
I would go one step forward and assume a decent proportion of that “39% of Democrats” who worried about speaking their minds are actually conservatives who lied about their affiliation to those conducting this study out of fear. I, for one, made sure I was registered as a Democrat before this election, knowing that President Biden/Harris would be looking to destroy all Republicans after their victory.
I am ordering Harris Ranch beef before the woke kill off all the cows and make us eat only fungi, crickets and green sludge.
I suggest you get as much animal protein as you can secure now, before it is outlawed along with guns and ammunition by the new misadministration.
j e:
Yes, I read that story in several venues, and it is chilling. The people I blame the most for it, however, are the craven, cowardly university administrators. Almost every university in the US is utterly lost. And they are the ones teaching our supposedly best and brightest. No wonder we’re in the state we’re in. I’ve been worried about this for decades.
From a Facebook page of a longtime friend I watched a screed from some leftist on why national polls are so often wrong. His conclusion was that Republicans lie. “Republicans lie! This is what they do!” All I could think while watching this was no, we lie because we’re afraid to voice our opinions.
I never imagined the world George Orwell wrote about in “1984” would happen in America.
We can hope a critical mass of people will stop apologizing and start objecting.
This woman shows what telling the truth looks like. Her composure in the face of lunacy is wonderful. And her point is so obvious it shouldn’t require explanation. She is not sick.
https://iotwreport.com/woman-says-she-is-done-with/?utm_source=feedly&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=woman-says-she-is-done-with
“I’m a healthy person. I’m not crazy.”
One of the replies is very ominous: “How do you know that you’re healthy?”
Go Galt.
“Political correctness is communist propaganda writ small.
In my study of communist societies, I came to the conclusion that the purpose of communist propaganda was not to persuade or convince, not to inform, but to humiliate; and therefore, the less it corresponded to reality the better.
When people are forced to remain silent when they are being told the most obvious lies, or even worse when they are forced to repeat the lies themselves, they lose once and for all their sense of probity. To assent to obvious lies is in some small way to become evil oneself. One’s standing to resist anything is thus eroded, and even destroyed. A society of emasculated liars is easy to control. I think if you examine political correctness, it has the same effect and is intended to.”
Theodore Dalrymple
Rufus T. Firefly (5:38 pm) quotes a shopper, “I’m a healthy person. I’m not crazy.”
Near as I can determine, all the evidence for there being no asymptomatic spread of the covid-19 virus is a very recent study of 10 million people coming out of . . . wait for it . . . China. Wuhan, China at that.
So, when did anything coming out of [Communist] *China* become trustworthy??
Hey, there’s a big, beautiful bridge in Brooklyn NY that I’d *love* to sell ya . . .
The TV show “The Orville” had a great take on this in its episode, “Majority Rule”.
MJR
Well you are right not to trust Xi and his news networks and I do not trust Fauchi and his networks. I don’t trust King Jay, Katherine the Grate (OR), Emperor Nuisance, nor Wretched Whitmer (aka the Forehead), nor any of their unelected minions in their various health departments. Nor do I trust their models or data regarding mortality and hospital usage. But you be you.
I don’t know….there are just so many elections where the parties achieve almost equal votes. It feels almost like a genetic phenomenon. A binary event with two alleles: one tries to conserve and sees the world as a happy place. Let’s keep it going as is. The other tries to change and convert the world into a perfect place. And these two alleles are expressed at different times in life. As one gets older the conservative one is ascendant. During youth we are more driven by the risk-taking genes. Let’s make life a nirvana, a belle époque.
But when you look at the integrated area under the curves it feels that the conservative and liberal urges are about equal. It’s only natural that the risk-taking ebullient genes are going to yap more and that the conservative genes are going to stay quiet. Besides, we conservatives are never quite sure we are correct.
There are people who express no political facets. They are so much into having fun and living that to misdirect the brain otherwise seems sinful. I have a son who surfs under the Golden Gate Bridge at night in a wet suit in the middle of winter. Talk politics to him and he looks distantly away as if bored.
MJR:
Who are you going to trust?
https://redstate.com/streiff/2020/12/29/asymptomatic-spread-covid-unlikely-n301404
Because, Science!
@je
I dunno… Frankly I think that knowingly learning and uttering *any* rap / hip hop ‘lyrics’ should be grounds for defenestration. Such people have no business being anywhere near a university — not even as groundsmen, janitors, or scullery maids.
om (6:21 pm) and (6:32 pm),
D#mn hard to know who or what to trust.
Ms. M J R has in the past gotten on me for not trusting this or that or whatever, but more recently, she’s just plain given up on me in that regard. “You’re so-o-o *cynical*.”
(But that way I end up neither disappointed nor embarrassed.)
NOTE — om’s Red State source mentions two recent studies, and I was afraid I’d have to amend what I wrote earlier about “all the evidence for there being no asymptomatic spread of the covid-19 virus is a very recent study . . . .”
But looking over the second study mentioned in the Red State source, I see almost nothing about asymptotic transmission therein. From the second study Abstract . . .
BEGIN PASTE
Importance Crowded indoor environments, such as households, are high-risk settings for the transmission of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2).
Objectives To examine evidence for household transmission of SARS-CoV-2, disaggregated by several covariates, and to compare it with other coronaviruses.
Data Source PubMed, searched through October 19, 2020. Search terms included SARS-CoV-2 or COVID-19 with secondary attack rate, household, close contacts, contact transmission, contact attack rate, or family transmission.
END PASTE
It does briefly mention asymptotic transmission: “Household secondary attack rates were increased from symptomatic index cases (18.0%; 95% CI, 14.2%-22.1%) than from asymptomatic index cases (0.7%; 95% CI, 0%-4.9%), . . .”, but my reading of it is that it’s referring to transmission by members of the same household. From the end of the second study Abstract . . .
BEGIN PASTE
Conclusions and Relevance The findings of this study suggest that given that individuals with suspected or confirmed infections are being referred to isolate at home, households will continue to be a significant venue for transmission of SARS-CoV-2.
END PASTE
I’m a bit hard pressed to find support for “no asymptotic transmission” in that additional study. So what I’m left with is still the Wuhan, China study. Bah-humbug.
Your mileage may vary.
Asymptomatic transmission would be strange for respiratory viruses. Pre-symptomatic, that is, the day or so before symptoms become apparent, I could believe, but not people who never show any signs of illness.
M J R, as I recall, you have a very valid reason to be worried about this virus. What I might be willing to risk, you ought not.
The fault in the three-second hip-hop imitation clip is with the administration of the U. of Tenn. Fifteen-year-olds are easily influenced by trends and sometimes do dumb things. A clear disavowal of the behavior would have been more than sufficient, along with a promise that such language would not be used any more.
The other problem is that this kind of language, and worse, is often found in rap “music.”
The SSRN paper notes, it is agnostic on whether this phenomenon is good or bad, but ultimately deems it bad at the end.
Self censorship is good if you have a family and friends of mixed ideologies and notions. That, according to the paper, appears to be more of a driving factor than anything else, along with level of education.
Instead of driving family and friends apart, self censorship can lead to revealing what brings us together.
“thoughtcrime is now punished harshly in nearly all walks of life, and the list of possible offenses is enormous.” neo
Indeed and therein lies the poison pill that the left has swallowed. They have and are making it impossible to disagree without gravely unjust consequences. They are eviscerating the rule of law. They have and are making identity politics the determinate of opportunity. They have disenfranchised more than half of American citizens and, intend to make that disenfranchisement permanent. They are making the very act of just petitioning for redress of grievance, an illegal offense. They are making self-defense itself a criminal offense.
All of that shall bear the fruit of rebellion.
John F. Kennedy had the right of it; “Those who make peaceful resolution of differences impossible, make violent resolution of differences inevitable.”
Edward,
The outlawing of guns and ammunition by the new misadministration would prove to be the fatalist of mistakes.
They are defunding the police, outlawing misdemeanor crimes. Enacting regulations that the poor and mentally ‘challenged’ cannot be charged with non-violent crimes.
Suggesting that 18-26 yr olds get a pass on ‘minor’ crimes.
While gun purchases have skyrocketed.
Only the ideologically blind fail to connect societal cause to individual conclusion of a predictable outcome.
I’m retired. I can’t be fired. I can play villains in action flicks. So I don’t bother to hide my views. As a matter of courtesy, I don’t start arguments. But my circumstances allow me to participate.
I”m fortunate. Any group which might throw me out doesn’t interest me in the first place.
But I can sympathize with those whose circumstances depend on being vague.
Now, what if conservatives got into a position of power. Would we feel okay firing liberals?
Maybe we need to overcome such scruples.
“Almost every university in the US is utterly lost.” neo
Indeed. They have exchanged education for indoctrination and that indoctrination is a direct threat to the Constitution and its foundational principles. That is quite simply treason by any other name.
JFM,
It’s also willfully blind projection.
Art+Deco,
We are far past the point of verbal and written objection. Such “objection” now carries the consequence of “cancelation” of the objector’s livelihood.
Rufus T. Firefly,
“One of the replies is very ominous: “How do you know that you’re healthy?”
Fear is not receptive to rational persuasion. She can cite a now available mountain of evidence that the response by authorities is vastly overblown and actually counter productive. Show that the media has maliciously fomented unreasoning fear in the public. None of that will be of any help in the face of those who have drunk the medical authorities kool-aid.
JohnTyler,
Dalrymple has the right of it, at least as far as that assertion goes but when people’s backs are forced up against the wall, when humiliation forces people to their knees, anger at the injustice strengthens spines. An example would be the reaction the Nazi’s created in Warsaw’s Jewish ghettos. Only this time the people being humiliated and forced upon their knees have the guns.
The activist left mistakes adherence to the rule of law for weakness and a lack of will. They see it as an unwillingness to defend core beliefs and imagine that their perceptions are reality based. They’re in for the rudest of awakenings.
M J R,
“when did anything coming out of [Communist] *China* become trustworthy?”
True, they’re ideologues who readily lie to forward their agenda and the ChiComs can easily manufacture a study to ‘find’ whatever they wish.
That said, wouldn’t announcing that a ‘study’ had revealed that the asymtomatic DO spread the virus fit their agenda to shut down the West better? Why counteract that agenda?
dnaxy,
Rather than age being the prime determinate, I think it more a willingness to accept reality. One side consists of those who accept the flaws in human nature and life’s inherent “inequality in blessings”. The other side seeks to make life and society as nearly perfect as possible but regards reality as an “inconvenient truth” best ignored. I have long thought that the inability or unwillingness to accept reality is grounded in the juvenile protest, “that’s not fair!” and have concluded it to be a case of arrested intellectual-emotional development that prevents the individual’s full maturation.
They are literally rejecting fundamental aspects of both human nature and foundational principles that govern the external reality within which we all exist. These people are not insane, as they know right from wrong but they have rejected a sanity which rests upon acceptance of reality.
Making them unfit to govern and incapable of wisely electing their representatives.
The embrace of collectivist ideologies like socialism and communism by these immature individuals is because those ideologies promise to make the world ‘more fair’.
Tthose who embrace collectivist ideologies are willfully blind to thier inherent, obvious and historically demonstrated flaws that make them unsustainable without resorting to tyranny.
Finally, your son’s boredom with politics will end when he’s forbidden to surf, at all. He’ll be ‘enlisted’ to work where his betters determine he can be best used.
Kate (7:16 pm) said, “M J R, as I recall, you have a very valid reason to be worried about this virus. What I might be willing to risk, you ought not.”
Kate, thanks so much for remembering me in this way. Yes, I have that special situation, but I at least like to fancy that I’m approaching issues like this with appropriate objectivity. But I readily concede that yes, I have skin in the game: I do follow covid stuff fairly closely, and Ms. M J R fills in any gaps that I miss. Anyway, whatever the Wuhan study may or may not say is, for me, an irrelevancy.
You tell me, “asymptomatic transmission would be strange for respiratory viruses. Pre-symptomatic, that is, the day or so before symptoms become apparent, I could believe, but not people who never show any signs of illness.”
I am the polar opposite of well-versed in this sort of area, and I definitely appreciate your insight. Thanks for this; see ya!
Now that we’ve veered over into the covid area, I’d like to share an experience from just a couple of hours ago, when I picked up my car from servicing. Their setup is that there are two clear plastic panels behind which the provider slips papers for me to sign, as in many banks (and lines, if any, form facing the clear plastic panels, with customers suitably masked and distanced). There’s about two feet of unprotected space between the clear plastic panels. For both the auto dropoff and the auto pickup, the provider dealt with me, not behind one of the two panels, but directly using the two unprotected feet between the two panels. We both were masked, but no way we had six feet of distance between us.
Life in Gov’nuh Newsom’s California — and I’ll bet in a lot of other places, too.
M J R had asked, “when did anything coming out of [Communist] *China* become trustworthy?”
Geoffrey Britain (9:31 pm) replied, “true, they’re ideologues who readily lie to forward their agenda and the ChiComs can easily manufacture a study to ‘find’ whatever they wish. That said, wouldn’t announcing that a ‘study’ had revealed that the asymtomatic DO spread the virus fit their agenda to shut down the West better? Why counteract that agenda?”
Fair point, but it seems to me that P.R. is governing the day here. To insist that there is no asymptomatic spread after all, makes the ChiComs look good — or at least better, or not as bad, given what they’ve foisted on the world. I think there’s a lot of resentment stewing out there.
Also, they may have to be cautious about shutting down the west, as they’re still dependent on the west as customers. But you certainly make a good point here.
Lynchings and Witch-Trials, Technology-Enhanced:
https://chicagoboyz.net/archives/55505.html
Geoffrey Britain on December 29, 2020 at 9:31 pm, in response to dnaxy: “… I think it more a willingness to accept reality. One side consists of those who accept the flaws in human nature and life’s inherent “inequality in blessings”. The other side seeks to make life and society as nearly perfect as possible but regards reality as an “inconvenient truth” best ignored…. ” [and etc.] . I believe you have made this and related points before, but there do merit repetition.
And of course are related to Thomas Sowell’s discussion of human nature in his Conflict of Visions.
In regards to resisting social cancellation and the PC juggernaut when it might impact your employment: at some point everyone asks “what have you done for me … lately!?” Customers/clients of market (and government) providers; providers (employers/self employed) of their employees; and employees of their employers.
If an employer does not value and respect the contributions of his employees, he is and should be in trouble. Why did he hire such failed souls in the first place?
Comment has been made before, but the university alumni need to inform these cowardly administrators that no further contributions will be forthcoming unless and until they grow a spine for responsible control over their institutions. And when the reputation of such institutions declines, as is the case for many of them now, that will also impact the employability of recent and prior graduates (or at least should impact such employability).
In the end I have to hope that a focus on acquiring green will override a focus on the flaws of blue vs. red. The 30 years war and other ideological conflicts throughout history suggest I may be naïve.
When it comes to the woman without the mask, the response of store staff is sheer lunacy. If her presence is a danger then shouldn’t the response be to leave her alone so she goes about her business as quickly as possible and leaves as quickly as possible? The longer staff interacts with her the more everyone is exposed. In Arizona (I don’t know about other states) there are medical, religious, and other exceptions to the mask mandate. The mandate is basically unenforceable – which is why this particular employee in what ever state this incident is occurring is not calling store security or the police.
R2L,
I have the gravest of confessions to make. Though I hold Thomas Sowell in the very highest of regard, I’ve only read perhaps a dozen of his columns and have never read any of his books.
My opinions have no doubt been influenced by he and others, including our host but in the main, I’ve thought long and hard about the issue of the left’s beliefs, motivations and agenda. So my conclusions are my own, though if Sowell and my views have much in common it is solely due to a shared desire to see a bit more clearly and deeply.
I continue to express that rationale, when I think it indicated because understanding those on the left’s motivations, of what drives them to act as they do… is I believe of great importance.
Sadly, tragically, the American hard core left are mortal enemies of America and of our Constitution’s foundational principles. As long as they believe they have a chance to succeed, they will not rest. Nor is there any depth to which they will not sink, no depravity too monstrous to be rationalized because they have fully invested themselves in the end they seek justifying whatever means are necessary.
Nor can you reason, negotiate or compromise with ideological fanaticism. Rather than seeing compromise as a win- win, they see it as a temporary step further toward their goal.
Given that reality, I take Sun Tzu’s admonition to heart;
“If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.” Sun Tzu, The Art of War
“Almost every university in the US is utterly lost.”
Isn’t that what Allan Bloom wrote in “Closing of the American Mind.” I believe he used the “surrender” as in “surrender to the radicals.” Everything afterwards is elaboration of what has already occurred fifty years ago.
The people who believed liberty, prosperity, rule of law, America were the best and right way forward also believed that their opponents would come around if confronted with the benefits.
Nope. Only a very small minority of people have ever believed in liberty, prosperity, and the rule of law. Most people want hierarchy, arbitrary rule, and wealth-by-theft. (Otherwise known as “socialism” today.)
When Goldwater was ridiculed for “extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice,” the game was up. The people no longer wanted liberty. And now they’re going to get what they wanted.
I just finished watching Chernobyl on TV. The Russian leaders in this movie sound just like “Progressives”. It took a hand full of people to force the truth out. In 1986 we never really knew how close we were to being wiped out because of the lies of the communists. Commies lied and people died.
I’m interested to know about any efforts to help Mimi Groves get a proper university education.
Comment has been made before, but the university alumni need to inform these cowardly administrators that no further contributions will be forthcoming unless and until they grow a spine for responsible control over their institutions.
About 2/3 of those enrolled in brick-and-mortar four year institutions are at those subsidiary to state governments. What have Republican state legislators done to repair things? In re private institutions, where have Republican legislators modified corporate law to require their boards be elected by alumni registered to vote in the state in question?
I am become Richard Aubrey
Geoffrey Britain at 8:49pm,
I agree with your reply to me, but that’s not what I was trying to indicate.
“How do you know that you’re healthy?”
Literally sounds like a line from, “1984” or the movie, “Gaslight.” The employee is looking right at the woman and can see there are no overt signs of any respiratory illness whatsoever. The customer is not coughing. Not sneezing. No runny nose. Yet the authorities have given the emloyee a list of rules to follow and she allows their edicts to supercede her own sensory perceptions.
“How do you know that you’re healthy?”
Like a sinner’s blackened soul or an impure heart, COVID can make one unclean with no discernible signs. Thankfully we have our leaders to tell us who to ostracize, and how to remove them from society.
I revealed to my older cousin the other day that I had voted for DJT. It caused no large fireworks, thankfully, not that I was expecting any, though our family (mostly) is traditionally Dem. It’s a little bit unfortunate that we don’t have some snappy term for this – coming out as “MAGAy” or something like that, though I don’t really like that one – just groping here. Someone will think of something better, I’m sure.
I think the response to COVID-19 is so overblown as be absurd. I can’t speak to what happened in NY, but where I live the mortality rate is right about .005%. I may be very risk accepting, but I see it as a small risk.
As to wearing masks, the stores I go into don’t belong to me. I put the wearing of masks in the same category as ‘No shoes, no shirt, no service’.
1984 scares the hell out of me. I read Orwell’s Animal Farm and 1984 in high school and again recently. I have made only one presidential campaign contribution and that was in 1972 to George McGovern. I became a conservative in 1984, did not vote for the flawed Trump in 2016, but did so in 2020 out of fear. China can do more harm than Russia. Heart disease and cancer is more deadly than covid-19. I could go on and on.
The embargo on honest discussion of any kind (in real life, in general company) makes things absolutely surreal. I keep asking my husband “Do you think most people simply didn’t notice the Russian Revolution?” He quotes me a meme: “If you were wondering how you would have reacted to the Nazis coming to power — now you know.”
In my family it doesn’t make sense to call either my mother or sister “leftist” — they aren’t political in the sense that they have never really thought about politics philosophically or participated practically. But my 60ish sister listens to NPR during waking hours — I think as a status thing. And my 90 year old mother, in her third decade of retirement, is tuned into MSNBC all day. Therefore they loath and detest Trump and Trump supporters. When we meet, we don’t discuss politics — but it is simply weird to have had a major election and no one says a thing! And it is peculiar that my mother, raised during WWII, still watches sports on tv, with absolutely no issue at the kneeling, the “Black National Anthem” etc. *She* was raised with Civics classes — and she had not commented at all on statues of George Washington and Thomas Jefferson being removed defaced or removed, not a word.
But the thing I think our discussions here miss is that it isn’t just the right to free speech that has gone. In the woke mentality, the dissenter has NO rights. Much worse things than revoked Twitter accounts are about to happen.
Covid of course might provide cover:
https://thefederalist.com/2020/12/30/we-cant-get-back-to-normal-if-people-think-spreading-covid-equals-murder/
From om and then M J R:
It does briefly mention asymptotic transmission: “Household secondary attack rates were increased from symptomatic index cases (18.0%; 95% CI, 14.2%-22.1%) than from asymptomatic index cases (0.7%; 95% CI, 0%-4.9%), . . .”
I’ve heard the number a couple times in the video news that the asymptomatic spread is about a factor of 4 less than symptomatic spread. Fox’s Dr. Marc Segal said it last night, though I’ve no idea what data he is referencing.
Interestingly, in the quote at top, if one takes the upper limits of the confidence intervals and ratios them we have 22.1/4.9 = 4.51. I wonder that is where Segal or others are obtaining the factor or 4. It isn’t a correct usage of confidence interval data. While those numbers and their ratios are possible they are at very low probability points.
What are the most probable data points? Those are the frontline numbers: 18% for symptomatic cases and 0.7% for asymptomatic cases. Ratio those two numbers we get 18/0.7 = 25.7. Just a tad different. So probably asymptomatic spread is 25 less likely than symptomatic spread according to that study.
Those who talk don’t know,
Those who know don’t talk.
Not many become hermits — after retiring I did — 11 years of hermitage have been ……
TommyJay (2:04 pm) concluded, “so probably asymptomatic spread is 25 [times] less likely than symptomatic spread according to that study.”
But “that study” concentrated on covid transmission by members of the same household.
As the conclusion (in the study’s Abstract) points out, “the findings of this study suggest that given that individuals with suspected or confirmed infections are being referred to isolate at home, households will continue to be a significant venue for transmission of SARS-CoV-2.”
The focus in that study was on members of the same household!
And consequently (I said it before (7:02 pm) and I’m happy to reiterate):
“I’m a bit hard pressed to find support for ‘no asymptotic transmission’ in that additional study.”
Notes:
1. Someone above said that the votes each election come out even. How do we know that? Election fraud has been around a long time and gets worse each time. Democrats have always cheated and now they have tools they never imagined even two decades. JFK stole 1960. Read his cousin’s book. Or Theodore White’s account of the celebrating Dem at the moment he knew Daley was going to get away with stealing Illinois. Or read about the Battle of Athens in 1946. Or Caro’s third volume on LBJ where the stealing of the 1948 senate seat was so brazen it shocked me. Or any of dozens of examples — college kids in Milwaukee giggling about riding around in the Dem bus from precinct to precinct voting all day long. Or the rich NY woman in Milwaukee caught bribing drunk, homeless people for their votes. As Krauthammer pointed out almost two decades ago, they think that conservatives are evil. So that justifies all the lying, slandering, cheating and stealing they do.
2. re: Dalrymple quote — see also Codevilla in 2018 discussing the Kavanaugh hearings (but regarding the elites abuse of us in general). “Making someone pretend that your patent lie is true may be the most humiliating of assertions of power.” We see it with BLM and claims of police brutality or systemic racism. We see it with claims of rape culture, sex assault on campus, or sex discrimination in pay and promotion. And now we are seeing it with the stolen election. We could call it gaslighting, but they don’t even care if they fool us. Per Codevilla it is more effective and powerful to blatantly cheat and make us swallow it. I think he’s clearly right.
3. The lies are constant and everywhere. Science is thoroughly compromised. They lied about AIDs, nutrition, 2d hand smoke, old growth forests, HCQ, Covid (epidemiology projections, cases, death counts), and so many different aspects of global warming it would take a week to list them all. The social sciences are worse than the physical sciences. Economics is a disaster. Every “study” the Left cites is bullshit. Always. Getting some corrupt, eager academic to put together a garbage study is easy and getting it published even easier. Every single left-wing talking point has such “studies”. All of them crap.
And the news media endorses and spreads the lies while social media censors and punishes non-conforming facts and opinions.
4. A friend last night said that it will all swing back to the center. I told him the people in Venezuela probably thought that. Or those in dozens of other places where power was stolen and used to consolidate the corrupt in control. Without fair elections, we just end up where McMinn County was in 1946 — under the thumb of a dictator who stole the election every two years. Stalin was right. All that matters is who counts the votes. Democrats are willing to lie, steal and cheat to maintain power. I expect they will steal every election for the rest of my life unless they are forced to stop. Key word — FORCE.
M J R,
No, I’m not looking for support for zero asymptomatic transmission, even though I know a Chinese study supposedly suggested this.
As is almost always the case with such things, asymptomatic transmission probably exists, but the important question is; how big is it?
Sure, a transmission study restricted to multiple occupants of a dwelling is not going to encompass all possibilities of transmission. But that restricted circumstance is an effective way to get relatively clean data without the chaos of studying transmission in supermarkets, restaurants and bars or other types. So I’d say it is a passable proxy for transmission in general. I’ve heard that some large fraction of all transmission is occurring in the home, but that could be wrong.
I echo stan:
“Stalin was right. All that matters is who counts the votes. Democrats are willing to lie, steal and cheat to maintain power. I expect they will steal every election for the rest of my life unless they are forced to stop. Key word — FORCE.”
We cannot convert them with a forced defeat either. So they cannot be allowed to survive as fellow citizens. With Leftists’ survival, all we do is relive the past, and see it resurrected.
The Union must come apart, partitioned like India in 1947. Leftists, acting as Muslims did then, must go to the Left Coast (excluding San Diego, since we need Pacific access); MN, WI and MI must join Canada; and New England should be limited to Maine, with the rest of the N.E. states purged into it without mercy. Finally, NYC can become a city-state, like Singapore.
And then we get to re-do the Constitution!
Stan,
“As Krauthammer pointed out almost two decades ago, they think that conservatives are evil. So that justifies all the lying, slandering, cheating and stealing they do.”
Deep down they know that conservatives are not evil. They tell themselves that because as you say, it “justifies all the lying, slandering, cheating and stealing they do.”
It’s a literally psychopathic projection.
“they will steal every election for the rest of my life unless they are forced to stop. Key word — FORCE.”
In all of history, no other means of stopping ideological fanatics has ever been found. Hard core progressives are fanatics and what validates that assertion is that there is nothing that they consider too depraved, that cannot be claimed to justify the end they seek.
““Anyone who clings to the historically untrue-and thoroughly immoral-doctrine that, ‘violence never settles anything’ I would advise to conjure the ghosts of Napoleon Bonaparte and the Duke of Wellington and let them debate it. The ghost of Hitler could referee, and the jury might well be the Dodo, the Great Auk and the Passenger Pigeon.
Violence, naked force, has settled more issues in history than has any other factor, and the contrary opinion is wishful thinking at its worst. Nations and peoples who forget this basic truth have always paid for it with their lives and freedoms.
War is not violence and killing, pure and simple; war is controlled violence, for a purpose. The purpose of war is to support your government’s decisions by force. The purpose is never to kill the enemy just to be killing him but to make him do what you want him to do. Not killing… but controlled and purposeful violence.”
Robert A. Heinlein
Cicero,
I strongly suspect that secession will result in an inability to resist Chinese communist ideological aggression. They mean to impose communism upon the world, as communism rests upon the ideological imperative to do so. As does, by its very nature, every totalitarian ideology.
Though it be a monstrous prospect, I see no other alternative to a Civil War followed by a host of consequences for those on the left, followed by an Article V Convention of the States that implements a host of reforms, to have even a chance of returning America to its founding principles.
IMO, the cultural, political and economic rot is far too deep and widespread for any other alternative. I deeply wish it were otherwise.
“‘America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we lose our freedom it will be because we destroyed ourselves.” Abraham Lincoln
TommyJay (7:10 pm), thanks for the response.
“As is almost always the case with such things, asymptomatic transmission probably exists, but the important question is; how big is it?”
Yes.
“Sure, a transmission study restricted to multiple occupants of a dwelling is not going to encompass all possibilities of transmission. But that restricted circumstance is an effective way to get relatively clean data without the chaos of studying transmission in supermarkets, restaurants and bars or other types.”
I’m reminded of the story about a drunk dude who lost his car keys somewhere in a dark alley, and he was found looking for the keys under a street light. “Is that where you think you lost your keys,” he was asked. “No,” he replied, “but I’m lookin’ for ’em where there’s plenty o’ light to see ’em!”
I think the household transmission study is what it is [duhh], but the real world is messy (as you well know), and it’s entirely possible that it’s just too darned messy to ever get a reasonable handle on a rate of asymptotic transmission. This household transmission study strikes me as too sanitized to arrive at that handle.
We both will continue to observe and reason . . .
M J R,
No offense, but it’s a virus, subject to biological parameters. It doesn’t have a conscience, or free will, or even a motive force. It is immobile and has to hitch a ride on a cell, in the bloodstream, or on air currents.
It survives for x amount of time in environment q, y amount of time in environment j…
Asymptomatic carriers typically expel z volume of aerosol particles at a rate of d per minute. Symptomatic carriers typically expel h volume of aerosol particles at a rate of f per minute…
COVID virus particulate is typically p nanometers in diameter and a mask of mesh i does u to particles of that size…
With the millions of positive cases and hundreds of thousands (?) of hospital admissions and hundreds of thousands of man hours of lab study on this thing this is all certainly known, or at least, knowable.
Rufus T. Firefly (10:25 pm) concludes, “with the millions of positive cases and hundreds of thousands (?) of hospital admissions and hundreds of thousands of man hours of lab study on this thing this is all certainly known, or at least, knowable.”
There’s a lot of unknown quantities in there: x, q, y, j, z, d, h, f, p, i, u.
In principle, given enough research-hours, possibly knowable. But once this situation is finally resolved, if it ever is, will those research-hours then be devoted (diverted?) to the next crisis? If so, will what’s “knowable” in principle end up being left to guesstimates from “experts”? — which is exactly where we are right now.
Anyway, thanks for sticking with this thread and responding. And no offense taken at all! (Medical / biological subject matter is one of my weak points.)
M J R,
I think most of this is known, but some medical professionals, politicians and journalists don’t like what is known, so it is obfuscated or muddled. The data indicate there is almost no risk of mortality or morbidity to the young (under 40) and healthy. Yet young and healthy are locked down and masked along with at risk groups.
What data supports that?
Total agreement with this last point (phrased as a question).
See you later!
We have not seen the other “Art” (uselessnothing?) posting here in a while. Am I mistaken?
TJ:
Artfldgr has been commenting much less frequently, but he has still been commenting.
I’m concerned that parker has been absent since late October, hope he is well.
“I’m concerned that parker has been absent since late October, hope he is well.” – om
I was relieved to see Artfldgr surface after a hiatus; perhaps parker will also.
Things are so crazy now, maybe it’s a good idea to take a break from time to time.
This is my “New Year’s Eve” card – may the coming year see us breaking out of the Venn Diagram of Dystopias!
https://i1.wp.com/www.powerlineblog.com/ed-assets/2020/12/image051.jpg?w=557&ssl=1
From David’s “Lynching and Witch-trials” (written in 2017)
“Can anyone doubt that, with the ideology of “progressivism” becoming increasingly intolerant, ever-larger numbers of people will be denied jobs, promotions, college admissions, based on opinions that they have expressed in a Facebook post or a blog post at some point in their lives?”
https://thefederalist.com/2020/12/29/the-new-york-times-using-its-reporting-resources-to-weaponize-teen-drama-is-a-scary-trend/
“At 15, Mimi Groves said the n-word word in an attempt to be ‘cool,’ and the video sat for years. It wasn’t until it was weaponized against her that anyone cared at all.”
From Nancy B’s comment – a good essay on personal responsibility versus government & socially coerced guilt-tripping:
https://thefederalist.com/2020/12/30/we-cant-get-back-to-normal-if-people-think-spreading-covid-equals-murder/
“…we must also return responsibility to individuals for their own wellbeing, understanding that sometimes tragedy strikes, and death and heartache are part of life. There is no “normal” until we do.”
It struck me that this conclusion is the crux of the battle between the Left and the Right, not only over Covid restrictions but everything else the author used as an example: it states the core of the conservative & religious position, which is diametrically opposite to the progressive & atheist/secularist position, which is that nothing they do has any consequences, especially negative ones; that tragedy should be non-existent in the world; and that their “heartaches” are always someone else’s fault. The death part is your fault too.
None of those progressive propositions are “normal” — that is, applicable to the situations of most people at most times in the history of the world. They are not the norm; they are not even in the far tail of the life-situations distribution.
They don’t even exist in some alternative-universe, because they are intrinsically impossible.
Re Artfldgr, thanks neo, all!