Articles by Herschel Smith

Science.

In the first big research scandal of the COVID-19 era, The Lancet and The New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) today retracted two high-profile papers after a company declined to make the underlying data for both available for an independent audit, following questions being raised about the research. The Lancet paper, which claimed an antimalarial drug touted by President Donald Trump for treatment of COVID-19 could cause serious harm without helping patients, had had a global impact, halting trials of one of the drugs by the World Health Organization (WHO) and others.

Three authors on the Lancet paper requested the retraction, after initiating an independent review of the raw hospital patient data summarized and provided by Surgisphere, a small Chicago-based company operated by Sapan Desai, the fourth author of the study. Desai had previously said he and his co-authors—cardiac surgeon Mandeep Mehra of Harvard University and Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Frank Ruschitzka of University Hospital Zürich, and Amit Patel, an adjunct faculty member at the University of Utah—were getting such an audit of the data, but the agreement apparently fell apart.

[ … ]

NEJM published only a short statement from the paper’s authors, which included Mehra, Patel, and Desai, as well as SreyRam Kuy of Baylor College of Medicine and Timothy Henry of Christ Hospital in Cincinnati. “Because all the authors were not granted access to the raw data and the raw data could not be made available to a third-party auditor, we are unable to validate the primary data sources underlying our article,” they wrote, with apology. By including Desai, the note perplexingly suggests he has no access to the raw data generated by his own company.

The link title is tongue-in-cheek.  There is nothing scientific about what’s going on, and this is certainly not the “first big research scandal of the Covid-19 era.”  The entire thing has been a research scandal, and the retracted study is no more scientific than the claim that masks are effective.  What kind of a “researcher” doesn’t validate the models and conclusions from the raw data?

No one to date has even approached what I said I need to conclude that wearing a mask is a good and necessary protective against a virus.  No one has even proposed such a study.

Link. [I cannot make WordPress accept the embed code, so go to the link]

But that’s not the way the international media reported it.  Consider this headline: “Vigilante residents wield their rifles as they block their street in Florida to guard against looters.”  Here is the URL.

The video of the guarding residents was filmed by a family in a passing car.

They are seen driving past them before using a roundabout to drive back the other way.

The group, who number at least 12, are standing next to their cars and some are holding rifles.

One man is wearing a military-style helmet, combat boots and pants and is holding a rifle.

As the family pass the residents, an older woman in the car says, ‘he has a gun in the black shirt’ as she refers to the man in the helmet.

A girl in the car then adds: ‘This is in Belleview.’

As she turns the car back around, the older woman then says: ‘Look at all these white people. Look at them with their guns.’

Although it isn’t clear from the video, she claims a teenage boy is also standing with a gun.

‘Look at that little boy, he’s a young man with a gun. He’s like 16,’ she says.

Vigilantes, they are.  Bad people, according to the media.  She’s too ignorant of American history to know that the vast majority of the fighters at King’s Mountain were under the age of 18.  The “Over Mountain” men were primarily boys.  Their families had to bring in the crops and do chores.  So to families singing hymns through the streets as the left on horseback, they left for an arduous journey over many days and nights to meet up with the loyalists at King’s Mountain and win what might be the most decisive battle of the war of independence, because it demonstrated to Cornwallis that his reliance on loyalists to win his war was mistaken.   But there’s more.

In Indiana, peaceful protesters demonstrating against police brutality and racism following the death of George Floyd were met with vigilante locals who were armed with weapons.

[ … ]

Video taken on Saturday in Valparaiso and posted to Twitter shows a line of protesters marching — as homeowners stand guard along a white picket fence nearby.

The tweet said the protesters were walking back to their cars along a bike trail, as advised by police “because of the amount of people standing by the street with their bats and guns.”

Vigilantes.  They used that word again.

So the thugs who throw bricks, break windows, block streets, liter the roadways, beat people over the head with boards and shoot people, are “peaceful protesters.”  The peaceful citizens who want to protect family, home and hearth, are “vigilantes.”  The vigilantes should wait on protection from the cops and National Guard troops who are taking a knee all around the country.

Light is darkness and darkness is light.  So claims the evil one.

Actually, seeing these pictures of patriot citizens holding rifles and ready to defend home and hearth makes me more confident in the trajectory of America at the moment.

America has been stomped out of its slumber and some of it, at least, seems ready for self defense against the communists.  They meet the definition of militia in the truest sense of the word and concept expressed by the founders, who opposed a standing army.

“Practice Things Like an Eye Gouge, it Takes Very Little Pressure to Injure Someone’s Eyes.”  Swell folks, they are.

I’ll tell you what though.  That boy had better not go back around those people.  His life will be in danger if he does.

So says the experts.

LONDON (Reuters) – Keeping at least one metre apart and wearing face masks and eye protection are the best ways to cut the risk of COVID-19 infection, according to the largest review to date of studies on coronavirus disease transmission.

In a review that pooled evidence from 172 studies in 16 countries, researchers found frequent handwashing and good hygiene are also critical – though even all those measures combined can not give full protection.

The findings, published in The Lancet journal on Monday, will help guide governments and health agencies, some of whom have given conflicting advice on measures, largely because of limited information about COVID-19.

“Our findings are the first to synthesise all direct information on COVID-19, SARS, and MERS, and provide the currently best available evidence on the optimum use of these common and simple interventions to help ‘flatten the curve’”, said Holger Schünemann from McMaster University in Canada, who co-led the research.

Current evidence suggests COVID-19 is most commonly spread by droplets, especially when people cough, and infects by entering through the eyes, nose and mouth, either directly or via contaminated surfaces.

For this analysis, an international research team conducted a systematic review of 172 studies assessing distance measures, face masks and eye protection to prevent transmission of three diseases caused by coronaviruses – COVID-19, SARS and MERS.

The researchers noted that the findings, while comprehensive, have some limitations for the current pandemic since most of the evidence came from studies of SARS and MERS.

Ooo … I’m askeerd, hold me Uncle Bob!

Since I’ve gone on record saying that I don’t believe them without certain studies being performed in a certain manner with certain credentialed professionals, am I now so beaten down by the academic bureaucrats that I retract my position?

Then there’s this.

They found, however, that physical distancing of at least 1 metre lowers risk of COVID-19 transmission, and that a distance of 2 metres could be more effective. Masks and protective eye coverings may also add protective benefits, though the evidence for that was less clear cut, they added.

Yea, it’s less clear cut because not a damn thing has been done to prove it.

I repeat myself.

I won’t believe any of your models or data until [at least] the following has been done.  Assemble an interdisciplinary team of experts, in fields such as industrial hygiene, air filtration engineering, physics, chemistry, and medicine.  Formulate hypotheses on the distribution of particle sizes (there isn’t one particle size, there is a distribution, and it may be a normal distribution, or it may not, it may be a right skewed distribution, or it may be a left skewed distribution); back up your hypothesis with experimental data; assemble a panel of experts to test filters of various types, from cotton, to N95, to HEPA filters, on those particle sizes; report the results; next, do the same with the [possibly] polar composition of viruses and their travelling companion water molecules or other particles, and report results; results shall at least include and consider (a) trajectory, (b) evaporation, (c) re-evolution of particles and viruses into the air stream, (d) and where the collection of particles occurs.

Determine, based on this team’s judgment, whether there is an unhealthy buildup of viruses on the masks you have tested, both for the patient and the worker (or any passerby).  Include in this analysis not only SARS-CoV-2 viruses, but other pathogens as well.  Specifically include in your analysis the buildup and concentration of Legionella bacteria, what we found to be so problematic at the Bellevue-Stratford Hotel when the HVAC engineers directed intake air flow over the top of the condensate discharge from the evaporator units.  Masks collect moisture.

Considering the whole of the findings of this investigation, perform a probabilistic risk analysis for various populations wearing masks under various conditions (including people who have a low oxygen saturation level anyway).  After coming to agreement between the entirety of the committee of experts, prepare a formal report under the authority of a professional engineer’s seal and signature.  Publish all mathematical models, data and test results for peer review.  I want this seal because the researchers have nothing to lose if the contents are wrong.  A professional engineer has his reputation and livelihood to lose.

Only then are you doing science.  Only then will I believe anything you have to say.

Nothing has changed, and no one to date has done anything even remotely approaching real science on this matter.  Everything thus far has been fake.  I do science.  I know fake science when I see it.

No, not for the riots, the broken windows, the shootings, the beatings, the theft of property, the bricks that were thrown, the clogging of streets, the litter in the roadways, the unnecessary fires, the overtime we will all have to pay for government workers, and on the list goes.  I’ll send you the itemized bill.  It will be long and large.

But I do have to say that I’ve noticed what others have.  Gun sales are at record levels.

More than 1.7 million firearms were sold in the U.S. last month, up 80 percent compared to last May. That follows a 71 percent surge in April to just under 1.8 million sold, and just under two million guns were sold in March.

Some perspective: The all-time record, following the Sandy Hook massacre and President Obama’s address vowing to make a major push for more gun control, was two million guns sold in January 2013. This chart shows a general trend upward for years. In September 2001, gun sales were only about 750,000, and that was a month when sales surged.

So we’re looking at just a hair under record gun sales for each of the last three months, totaling about 5.5 million firearms sold in 90 days. Presumably June gun sales will also be robust.

Oh, I assure you they will be.  Sales are big somewhere near enough to me, and when I go down to my local Academy Sports somewhere in Gaston County, while there are the various shoppers buying odds and ends – coolers, chairs, and so forth – the main clientele are folks like me headed to the guns and ammo section because we know when the trucks come in.  We know.  Online sales are only so good.  We must supplement.

Whites and blacks are there together, and no one is fighting.  I’ve had many a discussion with black folk wanting protection from the thugs.  The thugs.  You know who they are.  The brown shirts.  Or in this case, the black shirts.  They are white, they are black.  But they are all communists.

Sure enough, it may not come to that and it may only involve fists and such.  But if it does, suburban and rural America is more than ready.

My own chairman of the board of county commissioners recently wrote an article in a local paper and said “You can take my guns out of my cold, dead hands.”  That was right before we became a 2A sanctuary county.

I’ve tried, my colleague gun bloggers have tried, and Lord knows, we’ve tried so hard.  But we haven’t really been as successful as we’d like.

Enter, Antifa.  You created memes.  You made a hero out of folks who disarm you.  You outed your sponsors, you showed what it takes to stop you, and you showed just how bad you are.

I’ve known it all along, me and my readers, the fact that the police aren’t there to protect us.  We knew it from Warren v. D.C. and Castle Rock v. Gonzalez.

But now America knows it viscerally, existentially.  They know it for real, in terms of home, hearth and family.

Congratulations!  You did what I could never have achieved.

For that, I thank you.

News from Alaska.

Well, I don’t think he did everything right.  I’d be carrying a large bore handgun.

I have written the AP reporter who authored this report and asked her what weapon was used and what caliber.

She wrote back immediately and stated that she didn’t know, but gave me the contact information of the plant.  I have contacted them with these same questions.

If I get a response I’ll let you know.  Both I and Dean Weingarten would be very interested in that information.

Link.

Baseball bats.

Not so sure that’s really a good idea.  I’d want a gun.