THE DELTA IN STUPIDITY

THE DELTA IN STUPIDITY

BY SCOTT JOHNSON IN BIDEN ADMINISTRATION, CORONAVIRUS, MEDIA

The Delta variant of the novel Coronavirus has delivered a tremendous opportunity for Democratic officeholders and public health authorities to feed their will to power. The Democratic officeholders have also seized the moment to replay the freestyle stupidity that carried us through the epidemic. Here are four columns that shed light on dark corners.

• Jacob Sullom, Reason: “The Biden Administration Continues to Exaggerate the Risk Posed by COVID-19 Breakthrough Infections While Slamming the Press for Doing the Same Thing.” Is the Biden crew evil or stupid? I’m going with stupid.

• Martin Kulldorf & Jay Bhattacharya, Spiked: “The smear campaign against the Great Barrington Declaration.” Two of the three authors of The Great Barrington Declaration reflect on what happened after they “argued for a ‘focused protection’ pandemic strategy. We called for better protection of older and other high-risk people, while arguing that children should be allowed to go to school and young adults should be free to live more normal lives.”

Quotable quote: “We Great Barrington Declaration authors failed to sway any politicians, except Florida governor Ron DeSantis.”

• Kevin Roche, Star Tribune: “Learn the right lessons from the COVID response.” Writing in mid-July, Kevin addressed the Delta variant as it has played out in Great Britain: “The Public Health England, where delta has been the dominant strain for a number of weeks, publishes a regular technical bulletin on all variants of concern. The most recent of those shows that delta has a lower hospitalization and death rate than did the prior predominant strain, alpha or B117, and that its transmissibility is roughly the same as alpha.”

• Kevin Roche, Healthy Skeptic: “Cumulative Look at the Epidemic, July 30.”

Kevin presents nine graphs of Minnesota data that belie “what the knucklehead experts tell you is happening.” He asks: “How could anyone not see that this epidemic is only a big problem for the very old[?] Amazingly bifurcated. Proportion of events that each age group accounts for, just what you would expect given the earlier slides.”

Given the vaccination rate among the old — according to the data compiled by the Mayo Clinic, about 90 percent of those over 65 have received at least one dose — the problem for the old has been mitigated. We have to resume our normal lives and learn to live with the virus.

I think these pieces provide an antidote to stupidity. Overcoming the will to power remains the ineradicable problem.

https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2021/08/the-delta-in-stupidity.php