Articles of Note

I'm going to conclude my March blog entries with a quick mention of three articles that everyone should read, regardless of science training.

1) The first is a paper from The Journal of Pediatrics. Published March 25, the title is "Persistent Cardiac MRI Findings in a Cohort of Adolescents with post COVID-19 mRNA vaccine myopericarditis." The lead author is Jenna Schauer, MD. This paper follows a small group of adolescents at Seattle Children's Hospital. They suffered severe myocarditis issues after their second dose of Pfizer mRNA vaccine. Three to eight months later, some damage had resolved, and some had not. One particular category of damage, in fact, showed no evidence of resolving at all. 

This is one of those papers that, as I read it, put a knot in my stomach, almost like a scene from a horror movie. It was a quiet, ominous paper. I hope it turns out to be a freakish anomaly, but I doubt that's the case. The paper unnerved me. Everyone should take a look at it.

2) My second recommendation is a "step back and smell the coffee" paper, an essay published March 16 in The British Medical Journal, which has been around for 180 years. The title is "The illusion of evidence based medicine," and lead authors are Jon Jureidini and Leemon B. McHenry. The paper tackles the academic, capitalistic, and cultural problems with medical research. 

I've read a number of papers touching on these topics in academia in general, but when these massive structural flaws in integrity take place in medicine during a pandemic, the consequences become real, dire, and ubiquitous, affecting literally everyone. It's one thing for a self-fulfilling and self-enriching academia to grift regarding the inconsequential. It's another when profiteering sets the agenda with billions of lives at stake. This paper is a warning to wake up to the corruption and hypocrisy defining medical regulation and academia itself. 

3) My third recommendation, after the truly frightening ramifications of the first two, is somewhat lighter in tone. It's Carol Tavris' "You Can't Say That" in last month's Volume 26, Number 4 of The Skeptic. Those who follow me know I'm not an advocate of wokespeak, and Tavris does a fine job of pointing out the drawbacks of wokeness in writing. I've been a fan of Tavris for a long, long time. It's an entertaining read.

That's it for today. I'll be tackling more Covid-centric articles next month. Some even scarier studies have been published and, horror movie or not, we owe it to ourselves to take a look.

Bob Dietz

March 31, 2022

 

Will Smith: Racist!

 "You can take the boy out of The Badlands, but you can't take The Badlands out of the man."

I'm happy to welcome Academy Award winner Will Smith to my racist inner circle. Who knew Will Smith was racist? Certainly not me.

I was a fan of Smith back in his youth, when he was a rapper and television star. I am, however, no aficionado. Regarding his film career, I haven't been that thrilled. I've never read a Smith biography, and really, it's never been on my bucket list. People have told me that Smith was great in Ali, but I was a Muhammad Ali fan as a teen, and I'm hesitant to watch a film with an actor portraying him. Ali is the only athlete whose autograph I wanted. He did his banking in my little hometown, and we watched several of his training sessions about 15 miles down the road in Deer Lake. I have no compulsion to see Smith as Ali.

As I was saying, it's good to know that Will Smith is racist, just like me. I'll get to why in a minute. First, though, I want to mention that I knew nothing about what had occurred during the Oscar broadcast until I read a Stephen A. Smith tweet about the slap heard round the world. It's rare that I agree with the declarative hyperbole of Stephen A, but in this case, I think he pretty much nailed it. A black man can't do that shit to another black man live on national television. 

Will Smith's actions reinforce almost every American black male stereotype. Oversensitivity to "your mama" words, lack of behavioral discipline, toxic masculine fixation on being "disrespected," whatever that is. You can take the Negro out of The Badlands, basically, but you can't pry The Badlands out of the Negro, even when he's getting the greatest honor of his life. It's the entire panoply of black man stereotypes on display. Every white dude watching the slap clips is thinking, "So this is how these black guys kill each other all the time. At least he didn't have a gun." Really, speaking for all of us racist white folks, I can tell you that's what went through all of our minds (I'm telepathic like that).

Mitigating Joke?

I'm neither here nor there on the alleged cruelty of Chris Rock's "GI Jane 2" joke. Rock preceded it by saying, "Jada, I love you." Really, I'm not weeping over the horrors of another human being losing their hair due to a medical condition. Hundreds of thousands of people go bald due to chemo. I'm bald. I don't weep over that, either. Kojak, Michael Jordan, Sinead O'Connor, and Jason Statham are all more or less bald. There are more important things to weep about. 

Maybe it's a really sensitive subject in the Smith/Pinkett household. Point taken. I'll try to not spend much time, as Hunter S. Thompson famously wrote, admiring the shape of their skulls. 

Why is Will Smith Racist?

I think that he's racist (and welcome to my club) because his response was tailored to a black man saying something, rather than tailored to what was said. I'm concurring with Stephen A's initial tweet here.

If Ricky Gervais makes that joke, does Will Smith go on stage and slap him? It's possible, but I doubt it. If an older white Academy member is on stage and says the same thing, does Will Smith rush to the defense? I think not. 

I believe that Smith behaved like a classic Badlands bully. Black on black lights the emotional fuse, and because it's black on black, Smith allowed himself to respond with violence. What was worse, he went with a very, if you'll pardon the word, Blackish response. He bitch slapped Chris Rock. Now I don't claim to speak for all white dudes with short fuses, but in general we don't utilize the bitch slap against other men. We put up our dukes. Man-to-man white guy bitch slapping, and correct me if I'm wrong, is very, very rare. Bitch slapping is something one does to women (that's why it's called bitch slapping), children, and the help.

My point here is that Will Smith's haughtiness played into this. He decided that Chris Rock was "the help."

Luke Cage

It just so happened, with Disney making Netflix Marvel shows available with Disney+, that I'm in the middle of watching Season One of Luke Cage. Luke Cage was one of Marvel's first black heroes, and the show deals with his adventures in Harlem. Luke Cage is actually my favorite of the Marvel Netflix series. Something occurred to me as I watched the slapping clip. 

Will Smith has pretty much gone through life as the reality equivalent of Luke Cage. He's good-looking, a black man's hero, saying and doing the right things while staying authentic to his roots and without appearing overly spoiled, arrogant, or narcissistic. Will Smith, to take the Cage analogy further, has been bulletproof. That all changed last night.

The Cultural Argument

With Will Smith's son tweeting, "That's how we roll," I just shook my head at the juvenility of it all. The pushback against my head-shaking, I presume, will be that non-black folks have little to no right to judge the cultural mores of Badlands blacks thrust into a situation on an Academy Awards broadcast. It's an anthropological argument. Black males settle frictions in ways beyond the ken of alleged civilized white men, and they should be left alone to demonstrate their 2022 blackness. 

Well, I get the argument, and I don't necessarily disagree. I'm neutral on cultural arguments like these. So if Chris Rock's philanthropist ex, Malaak, would have had an issue with the bitch slap and walks up to Will Smith's table and puts a shiv in his eye, I maintain my neutrality. The Academy show would have better ratings in perpetuity, and Smith could finally replace Samuel L. Jackson as Nick Fury.

Will Smith Questions

Well, of course we have the question of what would have happened if a white actor had bitch slapped a black comedian. Standing ovation five minutes later? Uhhh, where can I get a bet down on that?

Now, as to the haughtiness of the act. Will Smith employed a bitch slap as it was a safe thing to do given Chris Rock's size and Will Smith's status. Picture, if you will, instead of Chris Rock delivering the GI Jane line, The Rock delivering it. Think Will Smith would have, in the heat of the moment, walked onto the stage and bitch slapped Dwayne Johnson?  

Am I calling Will Smith a bully or a coward? No, not at all. I'm just suggesting that he employed selective bravery.

Conclusion

Will Smith bitch slapped a comedian, is announced as a winner, then tears up and blathers about God, love, and family. And gets a standing ovation for it. You gotta love America. Last night checked all the boxes.

Arrogance. Check. Unnecessary violence. Check. Appeals to God and family as reasons for the violence. Check. Standing ovation for the appeals to God and family regarding the violence. Check. Just another night of family entertainment. 

Decadent spoiled behavior. Decadent spoiled responses to the spoiled behavior. And a display of racism from the most celebrated actor in the country.

Bob Dietz

March 28, 2022

Propaganda Files: The Allegheny, the Ohio, and the Monongahela

"When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth."

Sherlock Holmes, The Sign of the Four

                                                                                                      

                                                                                                              

Back when Frank Gifford, Don Meredith, and Howard Cosell brought football to America each Monday night, Steeler home games were the source of a particular phrase from the broadcast booth. Pittsburgh's Three Rivers Stadium, Cosell would intone, stood at the confluence of the Allegheny, Monongahela, and Ohio rivers. 

Cosell always told it like it was, league preferences be damned, while rarely adhering to the broadcast mores requiring a sixth-grade-or-less vocabulary. 

Today, I'm witness to another confluence, this one devoted to NOT telling it like it is. This past week, three narrative threads have come together in an unlikely confluence, a mixing and broadening of simultaneous propaganda unlike any that I've experienced in my American life.

The Rivers 

In one week, the mainstream media has managed to publicize and therefore promote the usual "Ivermectin Bad" academic papers while ignoring any "Ivermectin Good" studies. The Wall Street Journal even ran a feature on a Canadian paper that has yet to be published. The study, of course, has a negative Ivermectin thrust. I've been steadfastly neutral on Ivermectin, but I recognize media bias when I see it, especially bias this blatant. Meanwhile, any "vaccine caveat" studies fail to see the mainstream news cycle light of day. And massive problems with the VAERS system are never broached, much less discussed. One-way propaganda spin has never been more obvious because cracks in vaccine efficacy and safety have now been uncovered by researchers but under-covered by the media. 

The second propaganda river is obliquely related to Covid-19 reporting. This is the sudden publicizing of U.S.-funded biolabs in Ukraine, allegedly 26 in all, containing dangerous weaponizable (if not already weaponized) pathogens. One day we all woke to find out that the United States has been funding biolabs near the Russian border since 2005, ostensibly to make safe former Soviet pathogen labs. Seventeen years later, the U.S. is still at it. I discussed this topic earlier this month in both "Rubio and Nuland" entries.

Third, we have confirmation that the Hunter Biden laptop and emails were real. Not being a fan of either Trump or Joe Biden, I hadn't paid much attention to this back in 2020. My only interest now is that the story was labeled as disinformation two years ago, so it's another example of a single-minded mainstream media engaging in a muscular kind of censorship, in this case immediately before an American election.

One River to Rule Them All

Those three rivers in Pittsburgh don't just meet, they mix, and the Allegheny and Monongahela actually become the Ohio. So it is with these three evidences of propaganda. They're not really separate issues with individual provenances. They're all roiling together in media space, with propaganda canals in place so info doesn't overflow into broader public view at undesirable times. 

With these three topics juxtaposed right now, they provide truly damning evidence of the institutional frameworks in place to manipulate, direct, and limit public attention. American tax dollars have helped make possible this house of mirrors. And it doesn't appear to have an exit.

"One river to rule them all,

One river to find them.

One river to bring them all and in the darkness bind them."

Bob Dietz

March 26, 2022

A Tale of Four Studies

I promised to report back regarding media coverage of several Covid-19 related stories. I'll lay this out short and sweet.

Anyone can do the same quick media survey I just did today. It will take 20 minutes, and it's well worth the 20 minutes because it demonstrates some very odd elements of current American media coverage. You may as well research the lessons yourself; the lessons are likely to stay with you longer than if you just read my blather. 

The Studies

1) The first study is a January 25 JAMA publication that indicates myocarditis rates in recently vaccinated young males are more than a hundred times the normal rate. Given that the study uses American VAERS data, which seems more-than-prone to underreporting, it is a vaccine-caveat kind of result. Matthew Oster, Davis Shay, and John Su are the primary authors.

2) The second study was published February 18 in JAMA. The authors are Steven Chee Loon Lin, Chee Peng, Kim Hey Tay, et al. The study found no differences in disease progression between control groups and groups receiving five-day Ivermectin treatment. I discuss the study in a little more depth in my February 28 "A Tale of Two Studies." The study, conducted in Malaysia, calls into question Ivermectin effectiveness.

3) The third study comes from Brazil. Lucy Kerr is the lead author. It's a clinician-driven study, with those kinds of built-in drawbacks, but it indicates that Ivermectin has prophylactic value for preventing severe disease and death.

4) The fourth study has, interestingly, not yet been published but has found its way into mainstream reportage. McMaster University in Ontario reported that patients at risk for severe disease derived no benefit from three days of Ivermectin administered after they had sought treatment. 

Media Survey

We therefore had three Ivermectin-related studies, two showing no benefits and one showing benefits. Plus we had one study demonstrating vaccine dangers. So how did media searches highlight these studies, if at all? 

1) A CNN search yielded no report on the myocarditis study. It did, however, pop a February 18 piece immediately after the Malaysian negative Ivermectin study was published. And no mention of the positive Ivermectin study.

2) MSNBC searches revealed no report on the myocarditis study. There was a feature on the negative published Ivermectin study. And no mention of the positive Ivermectin study. The results were therefore identical to CNN.

3) Plugging into searches of The New York Times yielded no mention of the myocarditis study, no mention of the positive Ivermectin study, but a piece regarding the negative published Ivermectin study. The only myocarditis results are from 2021 and 2020 articles. 

4) A survey of USA Today showed no mention of the myocarditis study, no mention of the positive Ivermectin study, and no specific mention of the negative Ivermectin study. There was, however, a February 2 piece examining why doctors continue to prescribe Ivermectin.

5) Curiously, the Wall Street Journal ran a feature on the McMaster Ivermectin study before the study was published. A search for myocarditis yielded years-old articles, similar to The New York Times  results.

Conclusion

For a decade, I had rolled my eyes at the labels "mainstream media" or "corporate media." CNN, MSNBC, the NYTimes, the Washington Post -- I mean, c'mon, there's no grand interlocking editorial board, right? Right? Bottom line:  my days as a journalism major may have buffered my cynicism and made me late to the conspiratorial party. These patterns of media presentation cannot simply be accidental. In some ways, I've been an idiot.

My first tip-off that something really, really wasn't right was an August 24, 2021 CNN television piece about Ivermectin. It broke every Journalism 101 rule and damned near every rule of logical argument. It was a mess. I watched it in wonderment. How had such a thing made it onto the air at an alleged science-based network? I'm neither here nor there on Ivermectin, but this piece, a lengthy televised spectacle, was a complete and biased wreck. 

I grew up, as I say, with Walter Cronkite. Unfortunately, the journalism I knew is dead, and Lazarus it ain't.

Bob Dietz

March25, 2022

First Round Hoops

Since two teams with no business in the tournament are currently in progress, I decided to check in with some further hoops thoughts. 

Iowa State, an 11 seed which was outscored 200-145 its last three games, leads coach-less LSU 24-19 at the half. Pat Forde's March 12 Sports Illustrated piece on former coach Will "the Bagman" Wade and the mess that is LSU deserves a read, so give it a look. It took the NCAA three years to actually have anything to say about the ubiquitous LSU paying of recruits and family members. LSU, in the meantime, paid Wade millions of dollars to keep the slimeball gravy train going until the hammer fell. 

Houston

I mentioned in previous entries that the 28-5 Houston Cougars, with three losses by a total of five points, were hosed in the seedings. The committee assigned them a five seed while two of the more respected power ratings, the BPI and Pomeroy, had Houston as the second and fifth best team respectively. 

Not only did Houston get a bad seeding, they were also placed in a bracket featuring a "Tarkanian gauntlet," so named for how the NCAA routinely tried to mine UNLV's path in the tournament. Houston's bracket features the second, third, fifth, and 15th best teams, according to the BPI. Houston was therefore screwed multiple ways.

Oddsmakers versus Committee

And finally, two games in the first round featured a disagreement between the committee and Las Vegas sports books. Las Vegas made two lower seeds, Michigan and Memphis, favored. The oddsmakers were correct in both cases, and the committee was wrong. That's usually the way these disparities play out.

Bob Dietz

March 18, 2022

More Seed Smoking

As I mentioned in the previous entry, the 28-5 Houston Cougars are a five seed, courtesy of the NCAA Tournament Selection Committee. The BPI, contrastingly, has Houston rated as the second-best team in the country. The 2022 Pomeroy College Basketball Rating (KenPom) has them as the fifth best team. That's fifth best team overall, not a fifth seed.

The committee's raison d'etre is writing checks to brand names and "power" conferences. That's what they do. I want to point out some of the obvious problems with the current Committee-as-Boss-Hogg format. 

Simulations

The first obvious element I want to make clear is that the committee has access to the same simulation programs that USA Today and other news outlets employ and discuss in their pre-tournament feature articles. Games-as-seeded are run through the program 100,000 times or more, and the programs spit out probabilities for who is how likely to win, given the seedings. 

The committee has the ability to work backwards. They can decide what array of probabilities they prefer. Then they can experiment with various seedings and brackets so as to arrive at the array most likely to give them what they want. Houston as a five seed for example, seriously decreases Houston's chances as compared to a two seed.

Make no mistake. The committee has the ability to employ the same programs that simulate the tournament. That information can help them manipulate seedings to achieve what they want.

Starting from Scratch

The Pomeroy Ratings start from scratch each season. That's the only way true sport should be managed. No suppositions, no assumptions based on five stars, four stars, and one star. Teams earn their ratings. No alleged "eyeball tests," which usually turn out to be more auditory (how often have I heard this team's name on ESPN?) than visual.

In a sport like college basketball, with five players on the court and massive year-to-year turnover of personnel, Q-score television notoriety has no business influencing seeding or who squeezes into the tournament.

Conclusion

When a five seed like Houston is a shorter futures price than all of the four seeds but UCLA, well, Houston, we have a problem. Las Vegas sports books exist because they know who can do what to whom. A decadent committee not putting up its own money is strictly amateur hour compared to the sports books.

There are several ways this will get cleaned up. The committee can give up its kangaroo court nonsense and hand the reins over to pure power ratings like Pomeroy or to the sports books. Another way would be for a team or conference to sue the committee back into the Stone Age.

Bob Dietz

March 17, 2022

Sports: Smoking the Seeds -- 2022

Until about eight years ago, I annually wrote a "Smoking the Seeds" piece discussing the routine rigging and unfair manipulation of brackets by the NCAA tournament committee. The committee's transgressions, however, became so blatant as the seasons passed that there wasn't much that I could add to what had already been said.

I had written about Missouri State, with an RPI in the low 30's, being frozen out back when RPI was the committee mantra. I wrote about undefeated Wichita State being placed in a "Tarkanian bracket" -- so named for how the NCAA tried to screw his UNLV squads with bracket brutality. I've bitched and complained for decades. One year it's too many marginal Big East teams being shoe-horned into the tournament. The next year, and also this one, it's too many Big 10 teams getting jammed into the brackets. 

It's always the same themes as to who gets squeezed out or screwed via seeding. It's the San Diego States, the Wichita States, and Murray States of the world. And the teams getting their butts kissed are always brand names having marginal years. Whether the jargon is RPI, BPI, or Quadrant-mania, the story repeats itself. The faces on the committee may change slightly year to year, but the illegal monopoly remains the same.

2022

One of my friends commented that televised shots of the tournament committee at work looked like dinner with the Republican National Committee. All old white guys deciding the fate of hundreds of black athletes and coaches. 

This year, for some reason, the Big 10 became fashionable, and all manner of borderline-straddling teams from the conference were anointed. Indiana, Rutgers, and Michigan, all of whom I presumed needed at least one additional win for consideration, made it. Using the old RPI ratings, which were committee gospel for more than a decade, Michigan was 49, Ohio State 54, Indiana 70, and Rutgers 91. Wow.

Using the more moderne (and yes, the spelling is sarcasm) BPI, Michigan was 27, Indiana 31, and Rutgers 76. The BPI would also have Wisconsin as a seven seed. The Badgers are a three. Houston, they of the 28-5 record, lost three games by a total of five points to Wisconsin, Alabama, and SMU. They were also spanked twice by Memphis. Houston got a five seed. According to BPI, they are the second best team in the country.

None of this, however, is any news to those who coached San Diego State or Wichita State these last decades. It's a brand name monopoly, and it's actually gotten worse these last few years. The NCAA doesn't like writing checks unless those checks are going to teams with good Q (and I don't mean Quadrant) scores.

My Faves

When I saw Iowa State as an 11 seed, I gagged. Iowa F***ing State? The Cyclones lost their last three games 53-36, 75-68, and 72-41. All those white guys on the committee must be patting each other on the back. The state of Iowa is 91.3% white. Just sayin'. If white is right, the Cyclones should have been given a top seed. Why only an 11? 

On the flip side, SMU had some clunkers, but nothing like that three-game closing stretch by Iowa State. I think that SMU got the short end.

Conclusion

About 10 years ago, there was a push to exclude teams with sub-.500 conference records from the tournament. That would have solved some of the unfairness. It would also have minimized the possibility that the committee could really screw up the tournament by badly misjudging any single conference. Had that rule been in effect this year, TCU (8-10 conference), Iowa F***ing State (7-11), and Indiana (9-11) would be in the NIT. But no, the committee executed their routine monopolistic cash grab for the brand name conferences. 

It's only going to get worse and worse until somebody takes the gathering of white dudes to court. 

Bob Dietz

March 16, 2022 

Propaganda Files: Rubio and Nuland (Part Two)

Rubio:  "Does Ukraine have chemical or biological weapons?"

Nuland: "Uh, Ukraine has, uh, bio (pause) logical research facilities which in fact we are now quite concerned Russian troops, Russian forces, may be seeking to, uh, gain control of, so we are working with the Ukrainians on how they can prevent any of these research materials from falling into the hands of Russian forces should they approach."

Florida Senator Marco Rubio, having been presented with that answer from Undersecretary of State Victoria Nuland, could have asked any of a bevy of obvious follow-up questions:

1) Are there toxic pathogens at these facilities that can be weaponized?

2) How many facilities are there?

3) How long have these facilities been operating?

4) Did the U.S. help fund these facilities? If so, how are they funded?

5) Were any Americans working at these facilities?

6) Do we have similar labs in other European countries? If not, why in Ukraine?

Instead of asking any of these obvious questions screaming to be asked, Rubio interrupted Nuland with:

"I'm sure you're aware that Russian propaganda groups are already putting out there all kinds of   information about how they've uncovered a plot by Ukrainians to release biological weapons in the country and, with NATO's coordination. If there's a biological or chemical incident or attack inside of Ukraine, is there any doubt in your mind that 100 percent it would be the Russians that would be behind it?"

That was Rubio's interruption. His questioning had veered off the intended road, so he interrupted with a rhetorical leading question. He took it the whole nine yards by asking for a "100 percent" certainty. Just ridiculous.

Responses

Well, today Mitt Romney called Tulsi Gabbard "treasonous" because Gabbard pointed out that there are 26 U.S.-funded biolabs in Ukraine, some of which have dangerous pathogens. I guess it doesn't take much to commit treason these days.

Pushback on the biolabs reporting has been interesting. For example, mainstream media has decided that labeling the labs "secret" demonstrates the falsity of the story. The labs aren't technically secret, although one could argue that if 99% of Americans didn't know about them, the labs were effectively if not definitionally "secret."

The 2005 agreement between the U.S. and Ukraine (for the U.S. to provide assistance to safely handle former Soviet labs in Ukraine) was plastered in most biolab stories. I do have a question, though. Since it's been 17 years, how long does it take to render such labs safe and not requiring American help? I guess that's a rhetorical question on my part.

One of my favorite quotes comes from Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines, who said,

"There may be damage done or theft and they may in fact misuse some of the material that's there that is not intended for weapon purposes but nevertheless could be used in dangerous ways."

In other words, white hats versus black hats determines the label to place on pathogens. Maybe Haines worked for a tobacco company in her youth. Or the NRA. 

Ukraine's President Zelensky said,

"And no chemical or any other weapons of mass destruction were developed on my land."

I would feel better had Zelensky simply said that no weapons of mass destruction were in Ukraine. Instead, he opted for none having been "developed" in Ukraine.

So the 99.99% of Americans who didn't know U.S.-backed biolabs were in Ukraine woke up one day to discover that there are biolabs everywhere, and we wouldn't have learned this except for the Russkies and the Chinese. Yeah, that's where we are these days.

Russian Fairy Tales

The Russians are pushing their own propaganda, of course, but a lot of their stuff is so out there that it belongs in a "bleach speech." For example, they claim biolabs were genetically targeting Russians as opposed to Ukrainians. I'd love to know how the U.S. was supposed to pull that off. Putin's seen the last Bond film, No Time to Die, way too many times. 

And then there are allegedly drones dropping infected birds (which is an interesting idea, I must admit, unless they're dropping turkeys) and all kinds of crazy Man from U.N.C.L.E. plotlines out there in Russian propaganda land. The Russian tales are semi-nonsensical, but the Americans fumbling around trying to explain biolabs in an obvious potential war zone is just idiotic. 

Conclusion

The Rubio/Nuland exchange was on C-SPAN, so there was no hiding it. However, the exchange in full, or even the parts I've quoted in the last two entries, did not make it onto CNN or MSNBC. Instead, it got a mention here and a line there. 

I suspect Americans are backed into a corner. One or more of those labs may already have been compromised. If I had to guess, my inclination is to think that could have already happened, so the blame game is rolling. The Rubio/Nuland exchange may have been preemptive foreshadowing for a disaster that's already in progress. 

Bob Dietz

March 15, 2022

 

Propaganda Files: Rubio and Nuland (Part One)

I really had no intention of commenting, even obliquely, on the Russia/Ukraine war. The only things I know about geopolitics come from watching clips of Ian Bremmer, and the only reason I follow Bremmer is because he co-wrote a book with a guy I once coached in basketball. In other words, I know nothing.

But then came the March 8 live stream of Marco Rubio questioning Under Secretary of State Victoria Nuland in front of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. I was really hoping there was nothing to the Russia and China blather about U.S.-backed biolabs in Ukraine. Russia lies about everything, and China, God bless them, rarely tells the truth, so I was hunkered down amidst the 24/7 carnage reports from Ukraine, hoping that the U.S. hadn't really contributed to the Putin bullseye on Ukrainians' backs. 

Rubio: "Does Ukraine have chemical or biological weapons?"

Nuland: "Uh, Ukraine has, uh, bio (pause) logical research facilities which in fact are now quite concerned Russian troops, Russian forces, may be seeking to, uh, gain control of, so we are working with the Ukrainians on how they can prevent any of those research materials from falling into the hands of Russian forces should they approach."

Upon hearing that, I just shook my head. I seriously doubt that the U.S. is worried that the Russians will steal a couple of patents, so I guess that the old propaganda lens needs to come out of my pocket once again. Here we go.

The Honorable Victoria Nuland, as her placard said, is neocon royalty semi-famous for accidentally exposing that the U.S. was managing Ukrainian politics to a larger-than-expected extent back in 2014. I'm just rehashing Wikipedia here; I was familiar with Nuland only because she resigned from the State Department with the arrival of Trump, and then she commented quite a bit about it.

While Nuland was giving her response to Rubio, she started twirling her pen in her hands in an amazingly nervous manner. I can't believe that a career diplomat displayed that much nervousness on television. I thought maybe we'd have some writing-implement violence a la La Femme Nikita or the Joker in The Dark Knight. But no, Rubio was too far away for anyone but Daredevil's Bullseye.

Rubio/Nuland Line by Line

Well, what am I to surmise from Nuland's response? Let's go through the obvious.

1) First, if the answer to Rubio's query was a clear "no," she could simply have said "no." No, some say, means no. She didn't say no.

2)  She studiously avoided a definitionally symmetric response. By that I mean that she fielded a question about chemical and biological weapons and then provided an answer about "bio (pause) logical research facilities." So what does transforming one phrase into another phrase tell you?

3) It tells you that she's sensitive to legal responsibility here. She's worried about perjury or some such, so she responds with an answer that isn't a lie but isn't transparent. 

4) Because she used the word "facilities" -- plural -- it's clear to me that there is more than one such biolab. If there were one, she would have stated a singular.

The fact that Ukraine has multiple bioweapons labs slapped me in the face. I knew nothing about it. I wonder what percent of Americans knew about it. I've seen figures strewn about the internet saying there are 26 such labs. I have no idea if that's true.

Why Did Nuland Tell the Truth?

Well, if it's legal exposure she's worried about, that must mean there's some kind of reasonable evidentiary trail for these "research facilities" having produced and stored lethal toxins. Whether these toxins are in a weaponized state is largely irrelevant, as things like anthrax can be weaponized at a moment's notice. The anthrax killer from Maryland had no problem weaponizing "research facility" materials. 

My speculation is that there must be some serious evidence for these biolabs and what they were storing. Otherwise, Nuland would simply have lied. 

Since Nuland said the interesting part out loud, responses have been wide-ranging and interesting. Part Two will feature a survey of the reactions to this Rubio/Nuland interaction. We'll learn more based on who says what, and even Ukrainian President Zelensky had something to say.

Bob Dietz

March 12, 2022

 

Pink Elephants Fly, Ivermectin Works, and the CDC Tells the Truth

I learned a long time ago that if you search for confirmation in academic journals, eventually you'll find a study that will make your case for you. I've always said that if you look long and hard enough, you can "prove" that pink elephants not only exist, but that they fly. And every drug known to man works for some people some of the time. And occasionally the CDC will tell you what you need to know as opposed to what they need you to know. But I digress.

What is Expertise?

Expertise is being able to put any and all studies, even those whose results are dangling from each end of a bell curve, into some kind of overall context. Unfortunately for the human race, there aren't any humans really qualified to do that. So (1) we guess, and (2) we extrapolate, and (3) ideally we subordinate our need for answers to the realization that there are no immediate answers, and there may not be any for years to come. However, that #3 rarely happens in reality. Instead, money and pressure and the need to proceed (that's a Top Gun homage) propel us into drawing conclusions to fuel practical plans. These forced-choice practical plans often turn out to be horribly flawed. Proceeding isn't the same as understanding is the lesson rarely learned.

Partial Information

Gamblers ply their trade by processing partial information and making decisions of significant personal import based on that partial information. I think we do it more often than anybody and better than anybody. Any wager made is a significant decision based on partial information. Any wager NOT made is a significant decision based on partial information. Wading through partial information that matters is what we do. 

In gambling, recognizing the significance of something isn't easy. For example, for every two-year stretch of games played by a college football team, there's generally at least one game that statistically makes no sense. A game where the team doesn't at all resemble the squad that plays the other 23 or 24 games of the two-year schedule. When faced with a result like that, a gambler must decide whether what he's just seen is an indication of a team's true profile or some 1 in 20 anomaly that, if you take too seriously, will handicap your handicapping going forward. Ignoring the result of what you've just seen, in essence ignoring the immediate reality, can be a road to ruin. Not defining an anomaly as such immediately after the anomaly, however, can put you on that same road.

As blackjack players say, all counts are partial counts. And as sports bettors say, you can't always know what you want. But sometimes you know what you need. Or maybe that was The Rolling Stones.

Latest Ivermectin Study

So now we have an Ivermectin study from Brazil that seems to offer unequivocal evidence that Ivermectin works as a prophylactic drug versus Covid. The study is "Ivermectin Prophylaxis Used for COVID-19:  A Citywide, Prospective, Observational Study of 223,128 Subjects Using Propensity Score Matching." Lucy Kerr is the lead author.

This study has solid numbers, both in terms of numbers of subjects and significance, but it also features the usual problems with these clinician-reporting studies. The study is observational; Ivermectin use prior to the study is unknown. The study has asymmetric population numbers for comparison. Researchers relied on study participants to self-report reality, always a dicey business. And there was no iron-willed monitoring to ensure that everyone in the study who received their Ivermectin actually took their Ivermectin. All true enough. 

A brief aside here. It seems to me that the folks who would disqualify this study due to self-reporting weaknesses are the same folks who think it's a great idea to rely on VAERS self-reporting for U.S. vaccine-caused illnesses and deaths. When you ask these people to call heads or tails, they invariably call "Yes!"

Here's the Deal

People who've followed the 200 entries of this blog know that I've been studiously neutral on Ivermectin. The only thing I've said is that the August 24, 2021 CNN report on Ivermectin was the worst example of journalism and science reporting I have ever seen on a news network. It failed basic rules of reporting, of logic, of argument, and of science. It was so hideous, literally every third line in the piece had a problem. But other than pointing out what a Journalism 101 fail that was, I've had nothing to say about Ivermectin at all. 

Since my gig in the "Propaganda Files" is evaluating reporting, not evaluating medical studies, I still have little to say. What I'm going to do is give mainstream media a week to digest the Kerr study, and then I'll report on their reporting. What I want to see is if CNN, MSNBC, The New York Times, USA Today, and others treat this study with the same coverage and gravitas as the JAMAS "Ivermectin Debunking" study mentioned in "A Tale of Two Studies."

Kerr's paper is much stronger than the Lim debunking paper, so the test will be whether it gets comparable or more impactful coverage. If anyone wants to bet on which paper gets more national press, email me at IntegritySports@aol.com. Call it partial information, but I have a hunch.

Bob Dietz

March 7, 2022

Myocarditis and VAERS Follow-Up

Rather than blather about the VAERS questionnaires, I'm going to recommend that readers view the February 12, 2022 YouTube podcast by Dr. John Campbell for a line-by-line guide to some of the issues with relying on self-reporting via VAERS. In this edition of his podcast, Campbell reviews the myocarditis study mentioned in my "Tale of Two Studies" entry.

Campbell is a retired nurse educator with a doctorate in online nursing education. He's very cautious in his YouTube statements so as to not run afoul of whatever is deemed in the public interest any given week. He takes flak from both the establishment and those who are declarative and shrill in their establishment criticism.

One of my takeaways from this particular podcast is that the VAERS criteria for defining someone as having myocarditis is extraordinarily high. In fact, more than 90% so designated were hospitalized, which I interpret as meaning that many, many people went unlabeled when they likely should have been. Another takeaway was the VAERS questionnaires being really unsuitable for civilians, who are assumed to be filling them out. 

This podcast is worth a listen. I highly recommend it. 

Bob Dietz

March 3, 2022