When Feelings (and apparently Justices) Don't Need Facts

I have a few questions about the vaccine mandate that no one seems to be able to answer.  The mandate makes little sense to me, because of these questions.

If those who want to be vaccinated, are vaccinated, and the vaccines effectively protect against serious illness and death in most cases, then what is the compelling interest in forcing the vaccine on people who don't want it?  

We now know (despite previous statements to the contrary) that the COVID-19 vaccine does not prevent a person from catching and spreading the virus.  If you need proof of that, look to major sports in the US.  Despite the vast majority of players being vaccinated, COVID has spread like wildfire through the ranks of the NBA, NFL and NHL.  It got so bad in the NFL that they changed their policies. So, if a vaccinated person can spread and catch the virus, how exactly does the mandate protect anyone?  

Does the mandate violate equal protection under the law by requiring vaccine mandates for business with 100 employees, but not those with 97?  Are employees of smaller businesses less important than those of larger businesses?  As far as I know, most OSHA safety regulations for a certain type of business apply whether the business has 10 employees or 1,000.  Except for this one.  If the compelling interest is that it's OSHA's job to protect employees from unsafe conditions, they appear to only want to help the employees of big business. 

I think those questions need to be answered.

I like to follow cases in the Supreme Court.  I had a compelling interest to follow the challenge to the vaccine mandate.  I was taken aback by the falsehoods promoted by men and women who are supposed to be smarter than the average person.  I am the average person, and I know:

1) Hospitals are not crowded with seriously ill COVID patients.  The are crowded with seriously scared patients.  People who need a test because they were exposed, even though they show no symptoms.  People with mild cold symptoms.  People who are positive but show no symptoms.  People who are suffering mental health issues, either brought on or made worse by two years of COVID panic and isolation.  People with other medical issues who put off treatment out of fear of catching COVID.

2) Justice Breyer said that there were 750 million new cases the day before arguments.  Now, he never said that was in the US alone, which would be impossible, since there aren't 750 million people in the US.  However, the worldwide total on January 6, the day before the hearing, the total of new positive cases was at 2.5 million.  Breyer over counted the new cases by a magnitude of over 20.  

3) Justice Sotomayor said we had 100,000 children seriously ill with COVID, many of them on ventilators.  We haven't had 100,000 children seriously ill with COVID in the almost 2 years of the pandemic.  Currently we have about 5,000 hospitalized with COVID, but not necessarily because of COVID.  They are often hospitalized for another reason and because most hospitals test all inpatients, they may be positive, but that's not the reason they are in the hospital.  5,000 and 100,000 are different numbers..by a lot.

4) Justice Sotomayor said Omicron is as deadly as Delta, and I'm pretty sure, outside of Allhapundit of HotAir fame, she is the only person saying this.  

It's hard to argue a case before Justices with such a woeful lack of knowledge about the subject they are arguing. 

The fact is, if you didn't know by now, everyone is going to get some variant of COVID.  The vaccines do no prevent a person from getting COVID, although if you look at certain populations, they seem really surprised they caught COVID despite getting vaccinated and boosted and wearing masks and not gathering and.... A virus has one job, to replicate and infect as many people as possible.  It doesn't care if you wear a mask, if you stay six feet away from everyone, if you live in your basement, and if you get the needle every four months.  It's going to mutate to do it's job if it has to, and that means the formula for the vaccine was outdated the day they released it to the public.  By the time they formulate a booster that protects against Omicron, the virus will have mutated to whatever Greek letter comes next.  

It's time we get on with the business of living our life, and it's more than time that we stop shaming people who don't follow the ever changing government edicts, because frankly they haven't done much to instill confidence.  

As Andy Dufresne says in Shawshank Redemptiong 

"Get busy living or get busy dying."

I, for one, want to live.

Small Bites End of Year Edition - Sports, COVID and Idiocy in 2021

 So, as it's Christmas Season, I work 4 days a week and spend the other three on schoolwork, and I can guarantee, unless something juicy happens that demands a full blog, this will be my last Small Bites of the year.  I really hope to do better next year.  My apologies.

The news hit today the Brown/Raiders, Seahawks/Ram and Eagles/Team Formerly Known as the Redskins games will be rescheduled.  Anyone who thought the NFL was going to let any games be forfeited is taking some really good drugs.  At no point, and especially during playoff races, did the NFL ever have any intention of a game not getting played.  Also, their policy was specific in that it related to unvaccinated players, and not vaccinated players, and most of the 100 players currently in COVID protocols are vaccinated.  Apparently, the NFL is the number one proving ground for the idea, promoted not just by fringe "anti-vaxxers" that vaccinated people can contract and spread COVID.   If you want to throw that one out, look at the NHL, who has put three teams out of action until Christmas.  Or the NBA, who cancelled several games this week due to huge COVID outbreaks, almost all of them among the vaccinated.  It's so bad for the Brooklyn Nets that they activated the controversial unvaccinated Kyrie Irving, because their vaccinated players are in COVID protocols.  The irony is delicious.  Maybe it shouldn't be, but it's been clear, since late summer, that new variants of COVID are able to break through the protection the vaccines offer.  Despite protestations to the contrary, there is such a thing is natural immunity, and it may very well be as robust as the vaccines.  We don't really know, because in this country we won't do the studies to actually find out.  Israel did, but we don't pay attention to that science.  Regardless, I find this whole situation incredibly amusing.  If that makes me a bad person so be it.  I don't think it does.

Everyone is so wrapped up in COVID panic, that they are drowning out the voices in the wilderness who are talking about all the bad things that happened because of how we chose to deal with COVID.  We know that children are generally not susceptible to serious illness from COVID.  We know that schools are not superspreaders for the disease.  And yet we kept vast swaths of kids out of school for more than a year and subjected them to substandard education.  We took away their ability to socialize, to see people laugh, to hang out with their friends.  The effects of that will plague them long into the future.  In the short term, they are showing up in ERs in droves and not with COVID.  With mental health issues that no child should have.  Suicides are up, attempted suicides are up.  Mental health units are overwhelmed and have no beds available.  Drug use and abuse, along with overdoses are magnitudes higher.  Also astronomically high is the incidence of heart attack and stroke, which happens when people forgo medical treatment for more than a year due to fear.  Hospitals are closing, after losing billions of dollars when hospitals were basically only operating as emergency wards.  People are living in abject fear of a virus that has a 98% survival rate.  They test positive and show up in the ER, even if they have mild symptoms, or none at all.  It's crazy, and it's a public health failure on the highest level.  The cure is far worse than the disease.  Walk a mile in my shoes, or my husband's shoes, and you will see a far different picture than the media and the politicians portray. 

Meanwhile, while so many people are acting like Chicken Little when it comes to Omicron, little factoids are lost in the shuffle.  After the mess in Afghanistan in August, the State Department told us only about 200 Americans were left behind.  Last week, a small detail was released and no one even knew it happened.  That State Department said they had exfiltrated 900 Americans since then.  Apparently, their numbers were bull, but we knew that didn't we?  With all the evidence in major sports, our *President is still saying that vaccinated people can't spread COVID.  They keep acting like inflation isn't a big deal (tell that to my gas and grocery bill), and have spent months blaming everything and everyone that isn't them for the horrible side effects of their own policies.  

In short, 2021 was barely any better than 2020, and 2022 could be worse.  All things being equal, 81 million Americans voted for this.  Apparently many of them are regretting that, but I have little to no sympathy for them.  You get what you ask for.  

As for me and mine, we will not lay down and die so the elites can live in their utopia where they rule and everyone worships the ground they walk on.  It's more likely, if that happens, we will feel more like North Koreans than say, the workers paradise that these people claim they can bring about.  Either way, I won't back down.  I hope some of you will do the same.

Small Bites, Edition Five

 I know, I've been MIA for awhile.  Life gets crazy, you know?  I've actually discovered a better way to keep this blog going, so we'll see if that works.

I've decided not to delve into the Afghanistan situation (I was going to say "debacle", but I'm trying not to come out swinging...all the time.)  First, it would take more than a paragraph, and second, my tear ducts simply can't take a rehashing of that event, when there are others here that will give them plenty of a workout.

I'm not a big fan of Bob Woodward.  Frankly, I think the man has been churning out the book equivalent of tabloid magazines for years in hopes of reclaiming his Watergate glory.  Since his expose of that coverup, there isn't a President he hasn't tried to take down, and each time he claims it's far worse than Watergate.  It's not just Republicans either.  He's tried to nail them all.  Give him time, and he'll have some sordid tale about Joe Biden too.  I say all that, because I have been largely skeptical of his claims that General Mark Milley did what Mr. Woodward says he did.  Until General Milley himself didn't deny that he did it, only stated that what he did was well within his rights.  Say what?  Unless your head is buried under a rock, you know by now that our Allies, our actual Allies, felt completely blindsided by the way the US withdrew from Afghanistan. You would think, if General Milley really thinks he was within his rights to gather military leaders to by pass a sitting President, and if he thinks he was within his rights to contact his counterpart in China (not exactly an ally) and give assurances that he would warn him if we chose to attack, he might have considered calling our allies and letting them in on our withdrawal plan.  Apparently he didn't.  As other news stories have shown, our own *President tried to convince the Afghani President to paint a better face on the actions of the Taliban whether it was "true or not."   General Milley didn't seem all that concerned that our *President was bold faced lying to the American public about what was really happening.  No, he was worried about Donald Trump starting a nuclear war, a completely unfounded worry.  I humbly suggest it might be time for General Milley to retire, possibly to a military prison.

Do you know what the FBI was doing in 2015 and 2016?  We know what they weren't doing.  They clearly weren't arresting Larry Nassar for multiple instances of sexual assault with multiple minors.  This does not, in any way, absolve USA Gymnastics and the USOPC.  There are a lot of people walking around free who deserve to be in jail.  The rub here, is that maybe they would be if the FBI hadn't sat on claims that a rampant pedophile was on the loose and had been given access by these very organizations to a full compliment of victims.  Instead, for 17 long months, they didn't do a damn thing.  Honestly, if the stories are true, that they were offered jobs and benefits by USAG and USOPC, it's frightening that FBI agents can be bribed to allow a prolific child predator to go free.   The FBI director at the time was James Comey.  That guy so many people trusted on the fairy tale of Russian Collusion.  Yeah... he should hide under a rock too.  Do yourself a favor. The next time you think the FBI has any integrity, go watch the Senate Hearing with Simone Biles, McKayla Maroney, Maggie Nichols and Ally Raisman.  That should cure that delusion.

I saw an article this weekend about a transgender female who competed in MMA.  He/She completely annihilated the biological female he/she was facing.  This is bad enough.  What was worse was finding out that he/she had served 6 years in the US Special forces, a division of the armed forces that, until very recently, was the province of men.  We are watching women's sports become obsolete as we allow more and more biological males to compete as women.  It's simple.  Get a female hairstyle, get some boob implants, cut off your penis and be given a fake vagina, and you can now, legally, beat up on a women.  No amount of hormones changes basic biological facts, you know that thing called science that everyone wants to follow, unless of course it's the science of biological gender.  We don't want to follow that science.  I remember a time when a man knocking around a woman was a crime, one that could cost you everything, including your career.  Ray Rice remembers too.

Last, I came across a nice little tidbit this morning.  It appears that Facebook (I know, you are laughing before I even say it, but it's not funny....at all), anyway, they apparently hid internal company studies that show instagram increases mental issues in young girls.  Young females who spend time on instagram are more likely to have an eating disorder, suffer depression and anxiety and even commit suicide.  And Facebook knew this, even while telling everyone that their social media platforms are doing nothing of the sort.  It shouldn't really be a surprise, considering I also discovered this past week that Facebook has a small group of untouchables.  People on their platform that can say and do pretty much anything, even if it violates the community standards that keep landing us peons in facebook jail.  Those people are celebrities, big corporations who subscribe to Facebook groupthink, and politicians of the same persuasion as Facebook.  Yeah, really not surprising.

Until Next Time....

Science! Or Not

How do you raise a gender neutral child? That's the question I find myself asking today, as I read news that the American Medical Association wants to remove the sex designation from the public section of birth certificates. Ten states allow you to designate your child as "X" on their birth certificate.  My assumption is that is done so that parents can't be accused of misgendering their child, and can allow their child to decide, at some point, which sex they wish to be.  The other 40 don't allow that, but a full 48 states will allow you to change your gender when you discover whether you want to be a boy, a girl, or something else.  I'm not sure what that something else is, but let's go with it for now.  But still, I ask myself, how to you raise a gender neutral child?  What name do you give them?  What clothes do you dress them in?  What toys do you buy them?  What if by the age of 5 they still don't know what gender they are?  How do handle going to school when the vast majority of their peers are either boys or girls, but Mommy and Daddy never told them if they're a boy or a girl?  

Biological sex is fixed.  I know that's not a popular thing to say these days, but it is a scientific fact, except in the rare cases of intersex people.   Your biological sex is determined at conception.  You either have two X chromosomes or a X and a Y chromosome.  Those chromosomes determine your biological sex.  When I say this, please understand I am not discounting those who suffer from Gender Dysphoria or Gender Identity Disorder.  GID is a real thing, with real causes, and real ramifications, physical and psychological.  There are people who feel like they are one gender and trapped in the body of the opposite biological sex.  Notice how I did that?  Gender and biological sex are not the same thing. 

That's where all this is leading me.  If biological sex is a fixed scientific fact, and it is, then how do you raise a gender neutral child, or to be more precise, how can you possible think that's an okay thing to do?  It's as if that child is already starting out on the wrong foot, so to speak.  The highest figure for people who have GID is one out of every 20,000.  That means that 19,999 children born will identify their gender with their biological sex.  If you declare your child gender neutral, there is a very good chance they will spend some of their most formative year being denied the ability to be who they really are, to use the transgender movement's own words.  Do you really think you are doing your child a favor?  

In order to make life easier on your child, if by some chance they are the 1 in the 20,000, you are making your child's life infinitely harder if the are the 1 in 19,999.  Despite what some doctors say, I don't believe a 2 year old or even a 5 year old have any idea what gender they are, outside of how they are raised.  My daughter spent 18 months thinking she was a dinosaur.  It didn't make her a dinosaur.  She liked dolls, but she also really loved hot wheels.  Neither of my girls wear dresses unless they absolutely have to... weddings, funerals.  That's about it. They are more comfortable in a jeans and a t-shirt.  Does that make them a boy?

So I get back to, how do you raise a gender neutral child? What I really am asking is how do you raise a gender neutral child who isn't screwed up for life, because mom and dad decided to jump on some politically correct train that says if you label your child a girl or a boy you are damaging them.  People with GID suffer, and you not labeling them won't change that.  You can't change their sex before they are born, you can't even change it immediately after they are born.  It's those physical characteristics that cause psychological problems, and no matter what you do, you can't change that.  So give your child a bloody gender and stop damaging them.

Amy Branches Off

 As anyone who reads this space knows, I generally stay in the political realm.  I have been known to branch off occasionally into football, but that's usually still connected in some way to politics.  Today I want to take a minute to focus on another sport that is as closely followed by people in my house as football.... gymnastics.

There is no way to describe the disappointment we felt when they postponed the Tokyo Olympics to 2021. The Summer Olympics have been my favorite for most of my adult life.  I love volleyball and beach volleyball, swimming, diving, equestrian competition, and most of all, gymnastics.  Having followed gymnastics since Mary Lou won her gold medal in 1984, I am supremely aware of how hard the sport is, and how little the general public understands what it takes to be an Olympic Gymnast.  Thousands upon thousands of little girls join the sport with a dream, and at the end of the day, five are chosen.  That's it, five.  Imagine telling a class of college football draftees that only five of them would be chosen.  More, tell those high school and college players there is no life outside their sport.  They have to train at their sport for eight hours a day, six days a week, and even then, the odds of reaching their dream are closer to 0% then 100%.   It's hard, it's physically and mentally punishing.  So I know if I was disappointed, the athletes themselves must be devastated.  

I could go into the ridiculousness of the FIG, when they decided to shrink the teams from five to four and institute their crazy World Cup system that no one really understood.  Or how many American news sites put a bullseye on Jade Carey, who qualified through the World Cup and then had the audacity to get better and then start competing in the runup to trials. (In fairness, the World Cup system is jacked, and if you don't follow the sport all the time you would have no idea how it worked.  I doubt those only Olympic year gymnastics reporters have any clue, and frankly, it's really not their fault.)

Instead, I want to talk about USA Gymnastics.  Unless your head is buried under a rock, you know that the USAG suffered a real hit to it's reputation, credibility, and pocket when it was revealed that the long-time team doctor, Larry Nassar, was arrested for molesting hundreds of young gymnasts.  It's horrifying that this went on, and what's more horrifying is that it took Maggie Nichols to finally report it in June of 2015.  It doesn't say anything good about the organization or it's hundreds of member coaches that this was going on for decades before one girl had the guts to talk about it.  It puts a huge spotlight on the Karolyi's and USAG's decision to put them in charge.  Heck we all thought the worst part of gymnastics was the berating and driving young girls to eating disorders.  This is worse.  USAG failed to report sexual abuse of a minor in compliance with the law.  Steve Penny, the then president, Marta Karolyi, the then national team coordinator, and Maggie's coach.  They all broke the law.  According to USAG, and Michigan State University, Maggie Nichols was known as "Athlete A".   The Indy Star was, of course, chasing this down at the same time that Maggie was fighting her own battle.  Thank God they did. Without their tireless investigation and refusal to give up, I'm not sure Maggie's case would have gone anywhere. 

While USAG sat on the allegations for 5 months, they did report it to the FBI in 2015.  What happened next is such a travesty of justice, and one that has barely been mentioned.  The FBI sat on the information, for months.  Many, many months.  USAG actually had to contact the FBI 8 months after they reported it, because nothing was being done.  Eight months.  In which time it is alleged that somewhere between 40 and 70 girls and women were the victims of Larry Nassar's abuse. The FBI slow walked an investigation.  There are some allegations that Steve Penny was offering jobs with the USOC to the agents.  So what?  You are a law enforcement officer.  One of them was the Special Agent in Charge.  This was your job, and I don't care if he offered you Emperor of the World, these women and girls deserved better from the nation's top law enforcement agency.  I'll insert a little politics... maybe they were just too busy spying on then candidate Donald Trump to actually do their job.

USAG, USOC, and the University of Michigan don't deserve any credit.  The FBI failing to do their job does not exonerate those organizations for their own failures.  The most outspoken girls, I have discovered, are the ones who attained their dreams.  They are on the news and have profiles done about them, but until Netflix made Athlete A, no one knew how instrumental Maggie Nichols was, or what she sacrificed.  You see, Maggie should have been a 2016 Olympian.  She deserved to go.  We were told that Marta said she had to be able to do that harder vault to have any chance of making the team, a vault that 3 other girls chosen for that team could not and did not do.  I believe Maggie was left off the team because she threatened the reputation of the very person making the decision.  Maggie was sexually assaulted at the Karolyi's national team camp.  They knew, and they waited 5 months to report it.  They had files of girls abused by coaches that they never reported.  And so, she was shunted to the back of the pack, and her dream was done.  Maggie is the hero.  Not Aly Raisman, not Jaime Danszcher, McKayla Maroney, Gabby Douglas, or even Simone Biles.  Maggie.  The girl who gave up her dream so that in the future, many other girls will hopefully be saved a devastating, life-altering, horrific act.  Thank you, Maggie.  She did go on to have an amazingly successful collegiate career, becoming the NCAA All Around Champion in both 2018 and 2019. 

Now USAG's high performance coordinator is Tom Forster.  Tom is a different breed.  Still tough and demanding, but different.  He wants the best for those girls, but he also knows so many of them will never be an Olympic Champion.  There were some interesting rumblings when fan favorites (like Gabby Douglas had once been) were left off the National Team and not invited to Olympic Trials.  Tom really liked some of those girls, but in the end, only the best can go, and he chose the best.  So you are pissed that your favorite didn't get to go.  I was pissed in 2016 when they left Maggie off the team, and she wasn't my favorite. (I'm a GOAT fan all the way.) I still rooted for our girls to win.  You should too.  And you should be utterly thankful that the guy in charge isn't a Karolyi.  

There She Stands

 

It's the flag, the one that represents our country.  Some people still fly it in front of their homes.  Some people actually have them flying from their cars.  I remember a time nearly 20 years ago when everyone was flying them, carrying them... it was a different time.  When I look around today, I start to think it was a different place.

 "I am not going to stand up to show pride in a flag for a country that oppresses Black people and people of color." - Colin Kaepernick

That's where it really all started.  Yes, there were a few people here and there who burned flags or danced on them or whatever, but for the most part it was Colin, kneeling on a football field.  I could spend time going into his reasons for doing so - what he said they were and what I believe they were - but that's not necessary for this post.   Colin further explained that much of what he was protesting was police brutality.  White police officers shooting unarmed black men.  Half the problem with his supposed reason is that he was basing it on recent wide spread news media coverage of unarmed black men who were killed during police interactions.  Quite a few of those very covered stories turned out not to be as benign as they were billed.  Full disclosure:  Hands up, don't shoot never happened.  On average, about 10 unarmed black men are shot by the police every year.  You are far more likely to be killed by the police if you are white.  That's an inconvenient fact no one ever talks about.  All 10 of them MAY have been tragic.  Unarmed doesn't equal not dangerous.  However, we are literally upending our history for something that is more rare than death by lightning strike.

That's all the background I'm giving, because this post will be way too long if I start talking about systemic racism, Critical Race Theory, and the 1619 project.  The fact is, in this country, there are people who truly feel they are oppressed.  Maybe it's because oppression in our country, at least for the last 50 years, is not the way oppression is defined by a good portion of the rest of the world.  A few examples:

Go to Iran and start a public fight for women's equality issues.

Go to Saudi Arabia and fly a pride flag.

Go to Hong Kong and protest China.

Go to Russia and complain about Vladimir Putin.

I could keep going, but I don't think it's necessary.  Oppression, true oppression, isn't something most living US citizens can comprehend.  Oppression is a statue of some Confederate General, someone flying the Confederate flag, a person saying something someone disagrees with...shall I keep going?  Oppression in the US is about words and requires trigger warning.  Oppression in Russia is getting poisoned by the former KGB.  Oppression in China is re-education camps and slave labor.  Oppression in Saudi Arabia is a death sentence.  In Iran, the woman gets stoned for being raped, while her rapist walks free... by law.  I think I'm making my point, but maybe not.

This morning I woke up to the news that the citizens of Cuba are protesting their communist overlords, who have, not surprisingly, made living in Cuba pretty terrible.  (People don't try to swim the 90 miles to Florida for nothing.)  One of the articles I read had this picture posted:

 Amazing.  People in an oppressive country, are carrying an American flag.  Let's rewind to 2019:

Those people there are Hong Kong Citizens protesting the Chinese government with.... an American Flag.  

Why?  What do all these people, from other countries, see in our flag that our own citizens fail to see.  Recently a BLM Chapter in Utah declared the US Flag a Hate Symbol.  But in truly oppressive countries with truly oppressed people, they carry that flag as a symbol of something they want, something they crave, something for which they hope.  Frederick Douglass had that same hope, which he expressed in the same speech that leftists drag out on 4th of July.  You see Douglass new that a nation founded on the principles in the Declaration of Independence would (and did) shine a light on the injustice of slavery.  That the genius of the founders and the country they created would necessitate the end of slavery and eventually the equality (not equity) that the slaves craved.  That flag stands for hope.  It is a light to all the oppressed in the world.  We would do well to remember that.

When evil calls itself a martyr
When all your hopes come crashing down
Someone will pull her from the rubble
There she stands

We've seen her flying torn and tattered
We've seen her stand the test of time
And through it all the fools have fallen
There she stands

By the dawn's, early light
And through the fight. She stands

~Michael W Smith

Small Bites, Edition 4 (May 30, 2021)

I'm sitting here, at this moment, reading news headlines.

Nearly 1/3 of Americans have been vaccinated against COVID-19.  Dr. Marty Makary, Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, believes nearly half of all Americans have developed natural immunity to COVID-19.  Now some of those who had the virus also got vaccinated, so there is overlap that does not allow us to calculate the actual number of immune individuals in our country.  I believe I had COVID before they had a test, or even knew the disease existed.  With recent news of three researchers being hospitalized with COVID symptoms prior to the Chinese deciding to report on the virus, it is even more likely my belief is correct.  A recent study has found that even asymptomatic and those with mild symptoms have the same level of immunity as those vaccinated, and the studies propose that people who have been infected could continue to make antibodies or the rest of their life.  I am choosing not to get vaccinated.  That is my choice, and I will not allow anyone to bully me into getting vaccinated on the idea that I am a danger to others.  Vaccinated people are protected, according to the CDC.  They do not have to mask up in all but very specific circumstances.  Why? Because they are protected from the virus.  Those with natural immunity are also protected.  Those who either didn't have COVID or aren't vaccinated should take whatever precautions they feel necessary.   

OSHA has decided to avoid discouraging employers from encouraging or even mandating the vaccine, so they will no longer require employers who mandate the vaccine to report adverse effects as worker's compensation claims.  I'm trying to play this out in my head, but if you are injured or made sick by something you employer mandates that you do as part of retaining your employment, isn't that the definition of a worker's compensation claim?  Whether it's being vaccinated or driving a forklift shouldn't matter.  But, we need to jam vaccination down everyone's throat, so no, even if your employer makes your continued employment contingent on you getting vaccinated, they don't have to pay up should you miss work, be hospitalized or even die from their mandate.  This is not safety, it's asinine.

The University of Louisville did the first major study on the efficacy of mask mandates at stopping the spread of COVID.  Guess what they found?  Yep, you got it, mask mandates did not, in any way shape or form, regardless of the level of the outbreak, slow the spread of COVID.  Got that?  Mask mandates were nothing more than political theater.  They even say that, in a nice way.  The mandates provided a sense of solidarity and community, but as an effective medical protection, they were utterly useless.  Since mask mandates did indeed increase the level of mask wearing, but had little to no effect on the spread, you can extrapolate that masks themselves did little to stop the spread of COVID.  We had virtually no flu this season and people insisted that was because of masks, yet we had a huge winter spike in COVID, and that was because people weren't wearing the masks.  Common sense fails people, all the time.

Places all over the country are trying to hire employees but can't.  Some people (see common sense failing) are insisting that it's because employers aren't paying enough.  But most of the places around me are paying twice as much as minimum wage, sometimes even more.  See, when you pay people to stay home, they have no incentive to go to work, and some states allowed you to refuse to return to a job if you were scared of COVID.  They incentivized people to stay home.  Duh.

Yeah, today was all COVID all the time.  Sorry about that.  That other subjects on my list cannot be covered in one paragraph.

Until next time....