PS: To Mr. Hail and Mr. Smith about Paul Craig Roberts. I used to like that guy's writing. As a real Constitutionalist, he had something to write about this or that egregious overreach of government every week. It was getting a little boring, but I appreciated the guy.

He's become a Socialist. As I wrote in this post:

https://www.peakstupidity.com/index.php?post=1383

Paul Craig Roberts is dead to me.

I'm not surprised he's a pro-panicker, as he's just become stupid in his old age.

PS:Good morning to you Mr. Hail...

Perhaps if PCR was 40 he'd be on the anti-panic side of the divide.(?)

Perhaps because of his age he is justifiably fearful.(?)

Difficult to know when so many tests are faulty leading to so much junk data. Also difficult to know because hospitals are being paid to goose the numbers.

I haven't run "the numbers" in awhile, but here goes...

According to the Georgia Department of Public Health there have been 31,150 confirmed cases in Georgia resulting in 1,328 deaths. Mr. Roberts and I both live in North Georgia.

31,150/10,500,000 = 0.00296666666667 = a little less than three tenths of one percent or twenty nine hundredths of one percent. Or 296 per 100,000.

1,328/10,500,000 = 0.000126476190476 = twelve thousandths of one percent. Or 12 per 100,000.

These numbers are not indicative of an epidemic.

Even if this were the black plague or truly at epidemic levels I do not see how panicking could possibly be of any help to the situation.

Hope you have a nice day.

PS --

Re: Adam Smith

"I first learned of Ron Unz when I was reading Paul Craig Roberts website. Too bad the coronafear turned Mr. Roberts crazy."

PCR is not the only one who came out strongly on the pro-Panic side. One can say it his age, but I wonder if he were 40 instead of 80, what one would attribute his Corona position to?

PS:

https://www.schallaburg.at/en/exhibition/masterpieces/miniature-violin/image/

PS: Good afternoon Mr. Moderator,

Right winger, left winger, I'm pretty sure those words have been bastardized beyond useful meaning.
Their only remaining utility seems to be to divide and conquer. Go team red! Go team Blue!

For example “left wingers” used to believe in free speech and used to be anti-war.
“Right wingers” used to believe in balanced budgets and fiscal responsibility.

Oh how times have changed. Ron Paul makes sense to me too.

I've only had one message from Ron Unz...

https://www.unz.com/estriker/jewish-brilliance-synthetic-like-zirconia/#comment-3636135

Pretty sure he doesn't like me either.

Fun fact. I was reading Peak Stupidity long before I ever heard of Ron Unz or his website.

I first learned of Ron Unz when I was reading Paul Craig Roberts website. Too bad the coronafear turned Mr. Roberts crazy.

Admittedly it was the unz comment section that got me into commenting and not just reading the articles. Interestingly the first few comments Adam Smith made at unz are not mine. Guess it's a glitch in his “software”.

Before that any commenting I did was just a quick one off comment I would leave at some random site that I would likely never see again.

Maybe Ron needs to smoke a fatty.

PS: Mr. Blanc, just as in Illinois with Chicago, it is the big city Detroit that has the voters that put in these people. Demographically, we are getting to even if every decent American had a clue, we'll still get outvoted by masses of newcomers. That's when you've lost your country - thanks Senator Hart, and yes, dumb Michigan voters!

Urbando - great anecdote! We LUV LUV LUV anecdotes here. You were whom I had in mind about comments saying mask usage is going up (along with rubber gloves all day long, whatever).

Bill H - all good questions about the confusion. Do most people really know how viruses work? Can they ever really be wiped out? I don't know. Epidemiologists should understand this, but this Fauci guy seems like nothing but a political animal.

Adam - Ron Unz does not like me. Apparently, one must believe in his conspiracy theories or he is a right-winger. Personally, I don't mind being a right-winger if it's the RIGHT KIND of right-winger. Barry Goldwater/Ron Paul supporters? Yes, count me in! I may quarantine myself off his site just for a week, as I think the owner is truly deranged. Whatever meds they got him on, they need to do the opposite.

PS: Mr. Ganderson - "coeds" sound sexy at first read. Hey, we saw 4 cuties in shorts at the coffee shop the other day - no masks, riding together in the car, of course. If one gets the COVID-one-niner ... all for one, and one for all!

I've also seen some young women traveling through the airport who were definitely too pretty to wear masks, and they weren't.

PS: To Robert:

1) He's a younger cat, so he can scramble if need be. I think it's nasty, and my wife says it'll shorten his life, but what do they eat/drink outside anyway? Cats and dogs have some pretty strong digestive systems. Haha, on the middle-of-the-night part. We have thought about that.

2) Where the heck is #2?

3) That's kinda weird then, yeah. It's good you didn't mind. Some people would freak, like the guy in my scooter story from last week or so.

On the mask ratio: I agree with those here that say it's growing. At the grocery, it's over 50% now, but I may count in my head next time. Outside on the neighborhood streets - less than 10%. At the area with the closed bars, some open stores and coffee shops that must serve to the outside still: 25% or so.

What would you say about the ages of people wearing them? (I'm asking this to all reading here.)

PS: To Robert - I had to take that first line out. I've never edited stuff out of comments on purpose (did a few by accident way back 2 1/2 years ago during SPAM problems.) I know that I link myself up the other way from the unz site, but I'd rather just not have it go both ways. It sounds capricious and maybe not helpful, but I think it is helpful just a bit.

Sorry about that, and you can just say Mr. Mod. Mr. Moderator, PS what-have-you. If I'm able later to make the commenting system a little better (I promise - no real info. needed still!) then maybe I can have reply-to's, as on unz.

PS:

- - REDACTED - -

1. Although I prefer dogs (proper dogs --- large enough and with flatter noses, such that 'youths' will cross the street when you take them [the dog] for a walk) I have had more cats than dogs. They are much easier when you live in an apartment, and have to travel occasionally.

Cats can be trained, but one must limit one's ambitions and use proper re-enforcement. A couple of ounces of chopped chicken liver, left out to ripen for a day or so, is a powerful reward. Retribution must also be swift and strong --- remember, a young cat has a good bit of bounce in respect to walls.

Also, do you keep the toilet seat up? An older cat can fall in, and not be able to get out. If you stumble into the bathroom in the middle of the night, and don't turn on the light, this can be quite a surprise.

3. The older gentleman was less than a foot from me. This is much closer than normal white social distances. Even closer than Puerto Rican distances, and they were the closest, touchiest group I ever worked with.

Ganderson:

'Tilted Arc' is quite something! I keep getting Serra, Serrano, and Christo mixed up. For instance, I had thought that Serra was the guy that killed a lady when one of his umbrellas got loose.

Mr. 46 (or is it Blanc?):

Thank you. I tried to look up the distinction between Modern and Postmodern art, and you seem to be correct, but I really couldn't understand what I was reading. Emphasis on process vs. product perhaps? Whatever that means. One of the few things I know, is that I don't know Bupkis. Is there some simple help for us Philistines?

All:

What is the mask wearing percentage where you are? It is still only a little above 50% here. Mask wearing skews slightly older, female, and (oddly) tattooed.

PS: I haven't read all the way through the comments yet (boy, that is NICE to be able to say). Thank you all for reading and chiming in, especially the latter which allows me to know you are reading ... in lieu of a test.

I wrote to add this anecdote (after reading Mr. Ganderson's comment): I was staying out of town and broke down and headed from a hotel to the fast-food joint on foot. (There's only 2 places anywhere near.) Keep in mind that in the past, at home, I had gotten in stand-offs with Wendy's for going through the drive-through on my bicycle.

Here, there was no other way but the drive-through, and the young (white) lady was very nice about it. "Sure" I got behind the last of 4 cars, walked behind a pretty new sports car, and stayed right on in it though the window to pay and get that FFF (fast-food fix). I really kept my head on a swivel, as I know how drivers are with their smart phones.

I look back and remember that it was for liability reasons that Wendy's gave me a hard time on the bike, or at least, they were the reasons behind the rule the employees were supposed to follow. You DO have to watch out. I ask this: what are were my chances of getting bowled over by some driver surfing the web and then gunning it just due to a peripheral glance up at the car he's following vs. my getting the Kung Flu by going inside to eat, and then dying? Hell, how about dying from food poisoning due to old Mayo ("I told them to hold the freakin' mayo!" could be on the headstone)

Oh, nobody in their cars and neither 2 girls I could see inside the FF place had a mask one. Neither did this walk-through guy.

PS Two days ago I developed a hankering for some of those crackahs with dried fruit that Trader Joe's sells. I got in the car, drove 25 minutes, and pulled into the shopping center containing TJs. I first thought "my God, there's a line outside the liquor store" but soon realized it was 40 people standing 8 feet apart, wearing masks and gloves, queuing to get into Trader Joe's.

So I crossed the line and went into the liquor store and bought bourbon. Then I went into the big grocery store adjacent and bought a few things. I was the only one without a mask. It has felt progressively weirder to shop for food from week to week. The social conditioning/compliance is getting worse here, not relaxing as I might expect.

PS I have a lot of Michigan connections. My paternal grandfather was born in Flint. The ashes of my father and a couple of half-brothers are interred in Michigan (or whatever they did with the ashes). I still have half-siblings and nieces and nephews and grand-nieces and grand-nephews in Michigan. As sympathetic as I am with Michiganders, they’ve brought this on themselves. Though not yet as completely Dem as Illinois, they elect a lot of Dems, including this Widmer thing. Years ago they elected Phil Hart of the Hart-Celler Immigration Act of 1965. Actions have consequences and Michiganders are now experiencing some of those consequences. Robert: The pile of branches are not Modern art, they are Postmodern art.

PS: Hey Bill H,

Most of the tests are known to be junk. Lots of false positives and false negatives, and the tests are easily contaminated. Do the tests even differentiate between SARS-CoV-2 and other corona viruses? Can the test tell the difference between a corona virus and a flu virus?

I heard somewhere that if you had the trivalent flu vaccine anytime in the last 10 years you are most likely to test positive for COVID-19 on the PCR test.

The more I learn about Our Invisible Enemy™, the more I think she is mostly a hoax, except for maybe Wuhan and Iran, where I think some deep state actor did release a form of corona virus to get this panicparty started.

I believe the real reason for the ubiquitous testing is to collect DNA from as many people as possible.

For some reason they are hell bent on collecting DNA from everyone.

https://www.aclu.org/other/newborn-dna-banking

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/california-biobank-dna-babies-who-has-access/

https://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/24/opinion/collect-dna-samples-even-when-its-just-a-misdemeanor.html

https://www.ncsl.org/Documents/cj/ArresteeDNALaws.pdf

In Virginia they take DNA from people for 14 different misdemeanors including "driving without a license".

https://www.aclu.org/blog/privacy-technology/medical-and-genetic-privacy/proposal-expand-mandatory-dna-collection

Don't worry though, the courts have found that the forcible collection of your DNA without your consent is not a violation of your 4th, 5th or 14th amendment rights.

https://scholarship.law.cornell.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1022&context=cjlpp

PS Isn't is awesome how the media will promote, and people will swallow, whatever the "authority" pronounces?

"Testing" is the latest mantra. We can come out of lockdown when we have sufficient testing. Why? Well, they don't bother to explain that.

What do you do if a person tests negative? The do not have, and never have had the virus. You cannot let him run around in public, he may catch the virus and then spread it.

On the other hand, a person who has had the virus still has to wear a mask and stay six feet away from everyone. Why? Well, because we don't know how effective immunity is or how long it lasts.

Then why bother to test? Everyone who is tested has to behave the same regardless of test results, so what is the testing doing for you?

Further, if we don't know how effective immunity is and how long it lasts, the "herd immunity" is a myth. It does not exist, and the lockdown is permanent, so why are we even talking about testing in order to determine when to lift it? We aren't going to lift it because there is no immunity and if we lift the lockdown everyone will die.

The whole program is absurdity piled upon absurdity.

PS Perhaps a ray of hope? There were two mask-less, attractive coeds in the local supermarket yesterday! Coeds!

On the other hand enforcement of government diktats seems to be increasing as the threat diminishes. Beaches closed, CVS not allowing entrance w/o a mask, etc.

As for art- modern art, painting, architecture, orchestral music is largely done for other painters, architect, and musicians. Actually probably not musicians so much as composers. It’s about “look how transgressive I can be. See “Tilted Arc” by well-know POS Richard Serra.

Also, since so much funding of the arts comes from either the government or quasi- governmental entities, there’s no one donor with the stones to say “Jesus, that sucks. I ain’t paying for that!” Artists intimidate their patrons by copping the attitude “You Philistine! How dare you presume to judge my creations.”

PS: None of that is very off-topic, Robert, and your comments are nothing if not always entertaining! Thank you.

1) There's a great scene in Seinfeld in which George bought a piece of modern art from Jerry's girlfriend ("put me down for some of that art", or was that another episode?). They couldn't tell whether they had it upside-down or not. Then Kramer accidentally sneezed on it, then smeared the snot out a bit, as if he were the artiste. Hilarious.

Training cats? We don't even bother serving ours water in his bowl anymore. The toilet bowl is for water, and he's done talking about it.

2) That'll be a hoot with the spice in the mask. You don't know the meaning of Social Distancing till you go to the store after eating a 1/2 jar of garlic.

3) The old guy might have been forgetful of the whole thing. He wore the mask, probably as you guess, to avoid lying or being berated constantly, but it's hard to keep remembering to not act normal. I have myself. I also run into lots of people who, whether out of defiance, forgetfulness, or just ignorance of what's going on, who act completely as we did before the Kung Flu.

PS:

Both parts of this comment are somewhat off-topic. My apologies.

1. My mother has had a long standing theory about modern art. One award winning art thing that we used to drive past was essentially just a pile of branches. "The poor man, he must have never been allowed to make a mess as a child."

Perhaps She Who Must Be Obeyed, never had a dog or cat that she
a. could bond with, or
b. train to do her will;
or perhaps she just failed at both.

(And cats can be trained to do [or not do] a few things --- come, sit, stay, don't knock over the bong --- if the motivation is good enough.)

2. Since I have been repeatedly told that the PLAGUE has returned, I have finally gotten around to ordering a proper Plague Mask so that I can finally get around to doing my part by wearing a mask. I will be sure to be extra safe and stuff the nose with garlic, pepper, and other aromatic spices.

3. The resistance is growing, but it may not be enough. I was at the local grocery store today.

3a. There is an older sign, 'Due to the Governors orders, only one member of the household is allowed to shop at a time.' A newer sign, 'Due to the Governors orders, only one member of the household is allowed to enter the store at a time.' The newest sign, 'Due to the Governors orders, if more then one member of the household enters at a time, they will be asked to leave, and re-enter one at a time.'

3b. There was a very elderly, but healthy looking, gentleman, wearing both a mask and gloves. However, while waiting in line, he came within a foot of me, and kept this distance throughout the line and my checkout. I guess, without any proper evidence, that his grand-daughter insisted on his wearing this get-up (HE WAS VULNERABLE!), but he objected. To keep household peace, and avoid lying if questioned, he wore the get up. To satisfy himself that he was still free, he blatantly violated the Prime Directive of Social Distancing.