Articles by Herschel Smith

News from the land of controllers.

Nearly 10% of asymptomatic Bostonians have coronavirus antibodies, and more than 2% of that same apparently healthy group actually currently has the virus, according to the results of a sampling study done in several Boston neighborhoods.

“In conclusion, approximately 1 in 10 residents in this study have developed antibodies and approximately 1 in 40 currently asymptomatic individuals are positive for COVID-19 and potentially infectious,” the city said in a news release Friday morning.

The study, by Boston, Massachusetts General Hospital and the Boston Public Health Commission, involved what the city says is a representative sample of asymptomatic Bostonians, testing 750 residents and city employees over the past couple of weeks in East Boston, Roslindale and Dorchester for COVID-19 and the antibodies that suggest that a person already had it — and is now potentially immune to reinfection.

Oh, I suspect way more than that have already been exposed, infected with it, shed it, and had no symptoms at all and didn’t even know they had it.

While I’m at it, I’ve seen reports that the U.S. military is planning to reject applicants who were at one time diagnosed as having had SARS-CoV-2.  So if someone has gotten it, shed it, never even knew they had it, and has the antibodies for it, the U.S. military plans on rejecting them.

That sounds profoundly stupid to me, but right in line with the stupidity I usually associate with the Department of Defense.

Telegraph.

The Covid-19 modelling that sent Britain into lockdown, shutting the economy and leaving millions unemployed, has been slammed by a series of experts.

Professor Neil Ferguson’s computer coding was derided as “totally unreliable” by leading figures, who warned it was “something you wouldn’t stake your life on”.

The model, credited with forcing the Government to make a U-turn and introduce a nationwide lockdown, is a “buggy mess that looks more like a bowl of angel hair pasta than a finely tuned piece of programming”, says David Richards, co-founder of British data technology company WANdisco.

“In our commercial reality, we would fire anyone for developing code like this and any business that relied on it to produce software for sale would likely go bust.”

More.  “The code on which they based their predictions would not pass a cursory review by a Ph.D. committee in computational epidemiology.”

You had one job and couldn’t do it because you suck.  I don’t suck at my job.

Shooting Illustrated.

The Arkansas State Police have entered into a contract with Berryville, AR, manufacturer Wilson Combat to supply the company’s 5.56 NATO chambered WC-15 patrol carbines. The agreement is for an initial delivery of 375 firearms with the future option of ordering an additional 600 units.

The law enforcement-grade patrol carbines feature Wilson Combat forged receivers and the company’s 14.7-inch match-grade stainless steel barrel. Rate of rifling is 1:8-inch. The guns also ship with Wilson Combat M-Lok handguards.

Other Wilson Combat parts used include its enhanced bolt-carrier group and Q-Comp muzzle device. The carbines are also equipped with the company’s hard-anodized aluminum, mil-spec back-up iron sights. They are windage and elevation adjustable, with A2-style posts up front. Windage adjustment is at the rear, where the user can also select between two apertures—.2 or .075 inch in diameter.

It sure is awesome that those Arkansas state cops will get the chance to use their new gear in more raids like this one.

I’m wondering what Arkansas taxpayers think about buying unnecessarily expensive rifles for their friends and community heroes.

Would that American pols had that much courage.

You know all of that celebration over Mitch McConnell pushing through Trump judges and how great that is?  Yea, calm yourself and grab your britches, fan bois.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is pushing forward with an amendment that would let the FBI collect records on Americans’ web-browsing and search histories without a warrant this week.

McConnell proposed the amendment as part of the renewal of the 2001 Patriot Act, The Daily Beast first reported. The Senate is voting on amendments this week.

The McConnell amendment would let Department of Justice officials — overseen by Attorney General Bill Barr — look through anyone’s browsing history without the approval of a judge if they deem the browsing history relevant to an investigation. It blocks the FBI from accessing the “content” of people’s web-browsing history but would let the FBI access records detailing which sites and search terms people entered.

The constitution is for big people, and doesn’t apply to you.  You’re a little person.  The law applies to you, not to the big people.  They get to do whatever they want.

Who says cops want to obey the constitution?

A division of the Maine State Police illegally gathered and handled personal data about Mainers, according to an employment discrimination lawsuit filed in federal court by a state trooper.

George Loder, 50, of Scarborough is suing the Maine Intelligence Analysis Center, and its supervisors, claiming he was demoted after he told his bosses that the center was collecting and maintaining data illegally, including information about people who had applied to buy guns from firearms dealers, those who legally protested and those who worked at a Maine international camp for Israeli and Arab teens. The center is responsible for sharing information with other law enforcement agencies.

The complaint does not say with which agencies the center may have shared the information other than the state police. It also does not say when the center began collecting it. Loder expressed his concerns to supervisors in November 2017.

Loder alleges that staff at the center illegally gathered and kept information gleaned from social media about people who legally protested in September 2018 against Central Maine Power Co.’s proposed transmission corridor stretching from the Quebec border to Lewiston.

State police maintain a database that can be searched to determine if a person is prohibited from purchasing a gun. Applications to purchase firearms are supposed to be destroyed after the sale is approved but the center stored that information in the database, the suit claims.

It’s almost as if they want to know everything about everybody, huh?  But the law is for little people.  You’re a little person and you have to obey it.  They don’t.

Word is getting out.  I told you this from the beginning, and if you believed me, you believed the truth from the beginning.  You can blame this mess on Anthony Fauci, Big Pharma, the NIH, the NIAID, Bill Gates, and Fort Detrick (among others).

As for the rampant desire to control others, that finds its basis in Genesis Chapter 3. The desire to control others is the signal pathology of the wicked.

As long as it’s 45 ACP that looks fine.  Of course, the pissy 10mm lovers are going to complain that they’re better.

Via WiscoDave

Sweden.

H. Sjödin et al: ‘Covid-19 health care demand and mortality in Sweden in response to non-pharmaceutical (NPIs) mitigation and suppression scenarios’, 7 April. The graph suggests critical care demand would peak above 16,000 patients per day by early May, and pre-pandemic intensive care unit capacity would be exceeded 30-fold.

Then came J. Gardner et al, ‘Intervention strategies against Covid-19 and their estimated impact on Swedish healthcare capacity’, 15 April.  It was an even more pessimistic assessment, showing a peak of over 20,000 patients by early May – with an ICU requirement around 40 times the actual capacity.

Sweden’s Public Health Agency rejected the models. It instead planned for a worst-case scenario that was much less pessimistic, suggesting a peak around 1,700 ICU patients in the middle of May. Still more than three times more than the pre-pandemic capacity. Sweden, almost alone in the world, refused to lock down. And here is how things eventually worked out.

The number of patients in ICU has been fairly stable around 500-550 since mid-April. This means that capacity was never exceeded. At this moment, when the models suggested that Sweden would have 30 to 40 patients fighting over every available ICU bed, there is spare capacity in beds, equipment and personnel of around 30 percent (partly as a result of a doubling of the pre-pandemic capacity).

No.

We can’t trust your models because all of your models suck.  They suck because the ones building the models suck.

I know science.  I do science every day.  This isn’t science.  I don’t suck at my job.