Correspondence and Coherence blog

[Peter]

Who was that masked man? It's everybody and not just "The Lone Ranger."

An article posted on the WWW today talked about ICU beds in Florida not being available in five Counties. It mentioned the high positivity rate. What is the positivity rate?

“The positivity rate is the daily percentage of people testing positive for COVID-19 in relation to the total number of people tested that day.”

So it doesn’t mean 20 percent of all the people in any location have the disease. Only 20 percent who might be feeling bad . . . or curious . . . are tested . . . and that percent is of those people who tested positive. I think the word is used as a scare tactic.

Locally, as I have mentioned a school janitor and his wife, 15 life guards, and employees at several restaurants tested positive for Covid-19 and the restaurants are closed. I haven’t heard if any of the 15 or so teachers exposed to the janitor have come down with it. On TV a local man was filmed from the hospital saying, “I thought I was going to die.” That is scary.

Marty McFly. Back from the future. Errr? And blade runner back with needed medical supplies.      

[Jon Letendre]

Frankly I think we have entertained the irrational and fear-frozen among us for way too long.

It is time to take life back. No more forced face diapers and closed schools.

The frightened can stay indoors indefinitely if they want, but they have no right to shut the rest of our lives down and we are not going to take it much longer.

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

11 hours ago, Jon Letendre said:

Frankly I think we have entertained the irrational and fear-frozen among us for way too long.

It is time to take life back. No more forced face diapers and closed schools.

The frightened can stay indoors indefinitely if they want, but they have no right to shut the rest of our lives down and we are not going to take it much longer.

Hear hear!

Michael

[merjet]

Coronavirus - how deadly?

Coronavirus -- about the numbers

 

[merjet]

Coronavirus – a safety analogy

[anthony]

That's all right for the rational behavior of those at most risk. To continue the analogy: don't presume on others' rationality (good driving). I was taught driving to treat everyone else on the roads as blind fools with no respect for their own lives, let alone others, aka, defensive driving.

So one primarily takes care of one's self and one's closest - and  - it is safer for those in the high risk bracket to assume everyone out there has been infected with Covid (- is a bad driver). Stay clear, keep your following distance. But has the known road death and injury toll prevented anyone from getting into a car most days? Life must go on and the risk is universally accepted.

But if auto travel were banned outright (total lockdown of roads) for 'our good', a society and economy and life grinds to a halt. Those good drivers with well-maintained vehicles (i.e. young and/or healthy people at very low risk) should not be penalized their freedom of mobility and activity for the sake of other drivers' vulnerability (unroadworthy cars, old age, poor reactions, or bad eyesight, etc.) and who shouldn't even be on the roads, for their own safety.

In short, while one would not wish to infect anyone else, and will considerately respect any rules set by property owners, nobody has the "right" to not be inadvertently infected by the virus.

[merjet]

Coronavirus - drug news

[merjet]

Coronavirus – clinical trials #1

Coronavirus – clinical trials #2
 

[merjet]

Coronavirus – clinical trials #3

Coronavirus – clinical trials #4

[merjet]

Website about Wokeness  Edit: Link fixed. Thanks, William. 

[william.scherk]

4 hours ago, merjet said:

Website about Wokeness

URL is blank, link turns back on this page. Link to Merlin''s blog posting: https://merjet46.blogspot.com/2020/08/website-about-wokeness.html

See also:

 

Edited August 10, 2020 by william.scherk
Added links

[merjet]

Thanks, William. One of the authors, Lindsay, also write the articles linked in my Website About Wokeness blog-post.  Pluckrose also co-authored with Lindsay the book Cynical Theories. The article "Academic Grievance Studies and the Corruption of Scholarship" is also on the New Discourses website.

[merjet]

Coronavirus - how much infected?
 

[merjet]

The stock market and the economy

[Peter]

DOW 27,930 at 1:17pm EST. I think school openings will be good . . . and bad for the market. Good because kids get educated, and parents can work. Bad because kids will get Covid with no or few symptoms and pass it on the Teacher, Parents, Grandparents, etc. Here in  Worcester County, MD it will be the usual three tiered approach. Teachers with preexisting conditions are not happy about a total reopening, as of yet.

I see California is seriously considering a "wealth tax" for the first time. Will they cry when the Hollywood types move out of state?  

[ThatGuy]

25 minutes ago, Peter said:

DOW 27,930 at 1:17pm EST. I think school openings will be good . . . and bad for the market. Good because kids get educated, and parents can work. Bad because kids will get Covid with no or few symptoms and pass it on the Teacher, Parents, Grandparents, etc.

We can't lock down forever; going to have to suck it up, sooner or later...

[Jon Letendre]

 

 

 

[merjet]

Aristotle on the Common Sense

[merjet]

Goodyear incoherence

Coronavirus - convalescent plasma

 

[Peter]

Merlin quoted: “The evidence for convalescent plasma relies on more than a dozen observational studies and clinical trials that don’t meet the randomized placebo standard.” end quote

Keep up the good work but I may sit that test out. I will focus on, and wait for, news of a tested vaccine. I get flu shots from Walgreens or CVS pharmacies usually so when they have it? Here is an interesting quote about relevancy. Peter

Near the beginning of Arthur Conan Doyle's “A Study in Scarlet”, Sherlock Holmes, after being told of the Copernican theory and the composition of the solar system, said: "Now that I know it I shall do my best to forget it ... I consider that a man's brain originally is like a little empty attic, and you have to stock it with such furniture as you choose.  A fool takes in all the lumber of every sort that he comes across, so that the knowledge which might be useful to him gets crowded out, or at best is jumbled up with a lot of other things, so that he has a difficulty in laying his hands upon it.  Now the skillful workman is very careful indeed as to what he takes into his brain-attic.  He will have nothing but the tools which may help him in doing his work, but of these he has a large assortment, and all in the most perfect order.  It is a mistake to think that that little room has elastic walls and can distend to any extent.  Depend upon it there comes a time when for every addition of knowledge you forget something that you knew before.  It is of the highest importance, therefore, not to have useless facts elbowing out the purposeful ones."

Watson replied, "But the Solar System!"

And Holmes cried: "What the deuce is it to me? ... You say that we go round the sun.  If we went round the moon it would not make a pennyworth of difference to me or to my work."

[merjet]

17 minutes ago, Peter said:

Merlin quoted: “The evidence for convalescent plasma relies on more than a dozen observational studies and clinical trials that don’t meet the randomized placebo standard.” end quote

Keep up the good work but I may sit that test out. I will focus on, and wait for, news of a tested vaccine.

The plasma is for people already sickened by the virus and even hospitalized.  A vaccine is to avoid becoming sick.

[Peter]

7 minutes ago, merjet said:

The plasma is for people already sickened by the virus. A vaccine is to avoid becoming sick.

Thanks. I missed that key point . . . again. Yet, could that plasma also sub for a vaccine? I think many younger people congregate "to get covid, and what the hell, get over it and never have to worry about it again." What does anyone think about Sweden's herd immunity policy? Is it still a viable alternative, if you are looking at "the big picture" and care about the elderly and infirm but . . .  Peter     

Notes. From: Ellen Lewit To: atlantis Subject: Re: ATL: Re:  Evil ideas Date: Tue, 02 May 2000 14:36:58 -0400 Regarding evil ideas: Perhaps a better formulation of this is that there are ideas which if not corrected are dangerous and lead to terrible consequences.

To act on this kind of an idea is evil and dangerous.  To continue to hold it is dangerous to all - especially the one who believes it or worse becomes obsessed by it. But the idea itself is not evil, ideas do not have volition only people do. To think something is not evil if one is thinking or at least trying to deal with the truth.  Ideas become dangerous when unquestioned and acted on. I think that the somewhat related concepts of truth, moral judgment and danger need to be mapped out in these cases.  Otherwise, people will not want to think about disturbing ideas and will end up blaming the wrong persons or being taken in by those who will use them for evil ends.

Most of those who allowed Nazi Germany to grow or an American police state to develop are not necessarily evil, they often have not thought out the consequences of what they perceive to be impotent stupid ideas or they do not believe that the seemingly small cases can fester and poison a strong society if not exposed and sometimes fought.  Later, they are appalled and have to live with the lost chance to combat the things that harmed them and others.

Today is Holocaust Remembrance day.  There were several TV shows dealing with the Nazis over the past few weeks, some showed the devastation that was not restricted to the camps but also wrecked in the memories and lives of Germans who helped Nazism along or did less than they now feel they should have to fight it.  The painful last scene of Shindler's List where the man who saved many was devastated at the knowledge he could have done more was all too real.  Some ideas are very dangerous.

If no one protests the lack of due process or the strong arm tactics of those who would take Elian by force or break into homes looking for drugs or confiscate property once an arrest is made before a conviction, then when we live in a police state we will feel the same way.  Those last two examples made Janet Reno's break in, in Miami possible.

In the end, bad systems do tend to die out, but who wants to live through their death struggles when a better option is possible? Ellen Lewit

At 10:31 AM 05/02/2000 -0700, you wrote: In a message dated 5/1/00 10:42:42 PM US Mountain Standard Time, BBfromM@aol.com writes: I completely reject--as did Ayn Rand, though she was not consistent about it--the concept that there are evil ideas.

Where did Rand reject the concept that there are evil ideas?  I would say that Hitler's ideas are certainly evil, since they were the underlying cause of the Holocaust.  If he hadn't held those ideas -- or something very much like them -- then he would not have murdered six million Jews.  Our beliefs, after all, are the cause or our actions.

Didn't Rand believe that ideas were of paramount importance, that evil ideas have evil consequences, and that to fight these evil consequences, one must fight the ideas underlying them?  Isn't that one reason that philosophy is so important and so relevant?  I believe Peikoff makes this point in his book _The Ominous Parallels_.

Now, of course, the fact that one holds a false idea that has evil consequences does not mean that one holds it evasively and dishonestly, if that is what is meant by "evil ideas".  But it also doesn't follow that there is no such thing as evasion or intellectual dishonesty.  I doubt very much that the evil perpetrated by Hitler or Stalin was due to innocent errors of knowledge. So, I have to disagree with Barbara when she says that there are no evil ideas.  I think there are. Bill

[merjet]

4 minutes ago, Peter said:

Thanks. I missed that key point . . . again. Yet, could that plasma also sub for a vaccine?

Maybe. However, I would expect a huge supply problem. The plasma is from people who already had Covid-19 and recovered. That's a small count. The count of people wanting a vaccine is probably very large.  

[Peter]

Merlin wrote: “The count of people wanting a vaccine is probably very large.”  

Too bad we can’t call on Michael Clarke Duncan (1957–2012) who played John Coffey in "The Green Mile." In my version of the movie John Coffey could breath-out the antibodies to everyone within a mile.   Peter

Notes: Duncan took security jobs while in Los Angeles while trying to get some acting work in commercials. During this time, he worked as a bodyguard for celebrities Will Smith, Martin Lawrence, Jamie Foxx, LL Cool J, and The Notorious B.I.G., all the while doing bit parts in television and films. When rapper Notorious B.I.G. was killed in 1997, Duncan quit the personal-protection business.^[7]

[Ellen Stuttle]

4 hours ago, Peter said:

Yet, could that plasma also sub for a vaccine?

Plasma wouldn't produce immunity.  Possibly (?) it could give a person a jump start in combating the virus if the person became infected.

Ellen