Dear FERAL Reserve: Stop Hiking Interest Rates!

We at the TSAP have of course been advocating raising interest rates a while ago.  But now the FERAL Reserve seems to be overdoing it, to the point of further scaring already-jittery investors, and they need to tone it down a notch or ten, or they will risk creating a very nasty recession (or worse, stagflation or even a depression).  Inflation is still high but cooling off now, and keeping interest rates too high to for too long will ultimately do more harm than good.  Interest rates are a razor-sharp, double-edged sword, and to fight inflation any hikes need to be short, sharp, and early to be effective.  But they delayed it too long, didn't do it enough when it was needed, and now that the economy is in a technical recession, they want to keep hiking rates even more, in addition to quantitative tightening as well.

As Rodger Malcolm Mitchell notes, raising interest rates to cure inflation is often times the wrong medicine for the job.  Case in point, right now in fact.  Inflations are ultimately caused by shortages, and governments need to address the shortages to get to the root of the problem.  Neither taxes nor spending cuts nor interest rate hikes will do the trick.  Ironically, as Mitchell notes, solving shortages can often require MORE federal government spending to specifically incentivize more production of the things in short supply (oil, natural gas, energy in general, foodstuffs, computer chips, labor, etc.).  The government can purchase those things at a premium, and then sell or give those things away at a loss.  Two birds, one stone.  Problem solved.  Next.

Meanwhile, the Fed really needs to stop hiking interest rates, stop threatening to do so, taper off their quantitative tightening, and actually be ready to start cutting interest rates soon as well.

So what are we waiting for?

(NOTE:  Endorsement of some of Rodger Malcolm Mitchell's ideas, or the ideas of any third party for that matter, does not automatically imply endorsement of all of his ideas.)

Dear Elon Musk: Stop Denying Overpopulation!

Elon Musk is a real man of genius, a real-life Tony Stark in fact.  He is also, at least in theory, environmentally conscious as well.  He knows that climate change is a real and urgent problem, while fossil fuels need to be phased out in favor of renewable energy.  And he has long opposed lockdowns before it was cool to do so, and also supports freedom of speech as well.  So far, so good.  

But like many geniuses, he does unfortunately have a massive and glaring blind spot as well.  Not only does he deny the fact that world overpopulation (of humans) is a problem at all, but he literally thinks the biggest problem the world will face is...too FEW people.  Or at least, too few people to realize his ultimate dream of...wait for it...colonizing Mars.  Yes, he actually went on the record saying that.  

This idea is egregiously wrong on SO many levels:

• The Earth is FINITE, and only a fool or an economist (same difference) would believe that infinite growth on a finite world is possible or desirable.
• Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of the cancer cell, as Edward Abbey famously said.  Which eventually kills its host, by the way.
• We are already LONG past any reasonable measure of sustainability, and in severe overshoot in terms of carrying capacity and ecological footprint. 
• If everyone in the world lived like the average European, we would need 2 to 3 Earths worth of resources in the long term.  If everyone lived like the average American, we would need a whopping 6 or 7 Earths.  And if everyone lived like Elon Musk, with his five six kids, 120 hour workweeks, and centibillionaire lifestyle, we would probably need at least a thousand Earths!
• Even if everyone lived in an ecovillage, we would still need at least 1.5 Earths, if not more.
• Even with the very best technological breakthroughs that one could ever possibly imagine, that is still not a free lunch in terms of resources and material throughput.  Sooner or later, something's gotta give.
• Thus, if we want everyone on Earth to have anything even remotely close to a decent standard of living (since, you know, condemning billions of people to extreme poverty, suffering, and premature death would be cruel and inhumane), we need to SHRINK the population, or else Mother Nature will brutally shrink it for us.  Not just stop growing, but actually SHRINK down to no more than 2 to 3 billion people (and 150-200 million Americans).  
• Rightsizing the world population is the most truly pro-life thing one could do.
• And last but not least, before we even THINK about colonizing other planets, let's stop messing up the one we currently have!  There really is no "Planet B" for the foreseeable future, if ever.

Fortunately, we can shrink the population ethically and voluntarily using the two most effective methods: 1) female empowerment, and 2) poverty reduction.  Those goals are good for their own sake as well.  And make birth control freely and readily available as well.  No coercion needed.  Problem solved.

But first, we need to completely dispense with the histrionic fears of population decline and the utterly specious, outmoded, and outdated notion that "everybody must procreate".  It is truly maladaptive and insane to maintain this idea any longer.  Honestly, overpopulation deniers are worse than the climate change deniers, and innumeracy is worse than illiteracy.  Denying at least one of the root causes of a problem (along with many other problems too) is by definition worse than denying the consequences.

Jared A. Brock wrote an excellent article about this topic, and you can read it here.

Let the planetary healing begin!

P.S.  If Musk or any other billionaires are still worried that the peasants aren't procreating to their liking, maybe they should literally put their money where their mouth is.  These days, it now costs a whopping $300,000 (up from $250,000 just a couple years ago) to raise even just ONE child from birth to age 18, and that sizeable sum doesn't even begin to include college costs or anything beyond that either.  If they still insist, millions of Millennial and Generation Z current and prospective parents would be glad to send them the bill for that.  Noblesse oblige, right?

About That Lancet Study

The latest Lancet study that supposedly found a modestly increased risk of dementia, psychosis, and other neurological and psychiatric disorders up to two years after a Covid diagnosis is all over the news now.  But as with most mainstream Covid studies, there is much less than meets the eye here yet again.

For starters, the study only compared people who had Covid listed in their medical record with those who had other respiratory infections instead, which would inherently exclude the vast majority of infections that were either asymptomatic or too mild to even see a doctor about.  Especially for Omicron and its subvariants, as another study found that most people who were infected with Omicron (i.e. confirmed by antibody testing later) weren't even aware that they had it at all.  Which honestly is not even the least bit surprising for a variant that typically does not exceed the "I have a cold" threshold in terms of symptoms.  And if anything, the antibody testing is underinclusive, not overinclusive.

Additionally, most of the effect sizes found in the Lancet study for most of the neuropsychiatric sequelae studied were either transient and/or not radically different than for other respiratory infections, especially for children but also for adults as well.  And confidence intervals were fairly wide for many of the endpoints studied as well.

Finally, as much as the mainstream media likes to claim it does, it does NOT really exonerate the gene therapy injections misnamed "vaccines" either.  At best, not nearly enough time has gone by to do so.  Meanwhile, evidence the risks and lack of durable benefits of the jabs continues to mount as we speak.

See also here, here, and here as well for further evidence that Long Covid is typically not radically worse than Long Flu, and why Long Lockdown and Long Jab Injury are far worse things to fear.  And as we noted previously, the masks probably don't help matters much either, and likely make things worse.

Thus, there is literally no valid scientific reason to treat Covid any differently than the flu now, if there ever really was.  It is endemic now, and for practical purposes it really is no worse now. Case closed.

China's On The Dark Side Of The Moon, And Not In A Good Way

The People's Republic of China, aka Communist China or simply China, is skating on extremely thin ice now, and numerous cracks and fissures are forming all over the place.  From the Covid pandemic that they had unleashed on the world, to their failed but never-ending Zero Covid strategy and its rolling lockdowns, to their (not coincidentally) ultra-low and still plummeting birthrates, to their utterly tarnished world image now, to their massive Evergrande debt crisis, housing bubble crisis, and thus incipient financial crisis that would make 2008 look like a walk in the park, their once-buoyant but now sclerotic and increasingly moribund economy (if not society too) now stands on the precipice of truly epic collapse.  The ruling CCP is quickly losing clout each day, and civil unrest is only growing.  Meanwhile, their biggest ally, Russia, is now a pariah state bogged down in the quagmire of their own making in Ukraine, and North Korea is, well, North Korea.  If they did decide to foolishly invade Taiwan, that would of course only accelerate their collapse.  But even if they don't, they are still bound to collapse soon.  First gradually, then suddenly, as Ernest Hemingway would say. 

See you on the dark side of the moon....

Of course, being the second largest economy in the world, when China sneezes, the rest of the world catches much more than a cold.  Thus, a global financial crisis looks likely.  Hopefully the contagion will only be metaphorical this time around.

With Little Fanfare, The Pandemic Is Officially Over In America

As reported recently, as of August 11, 2022, after two and a half years, the pandemic is now officially over in terms of its social end.  The CDC, quietly and subtly of course so as to retain what's left of what little credibility they still have, changed their of official guidelines in regards to the now-endemic Covid to be much closer to treating it like the common flu:

And most notably of all, their new guidance no longer differentiates at all between vaccinated and unvaccinated individuals anymore.  They must have finally and very belatedly realized that the whole narrative has collapsed faster than formerly healthy young athletes on the field after being injected with the jabs.  Great, now if only the feds would also finally lift the bizarrely still-existing ban on unvaccinated people from entering the country, and let the legendary Novak "No-vax" Djokovic play over here.

Of course, their latest guidelines are not entirely the same as they are for common flu yet, in that they still unscientifically recommend that any known exposed individuals and those who test positive wear a mask for ten days to ostensibly protect others, but otherwise they had taken the very largest step yet towards true 2019 normal.  No more quarantines of exposed individuals, no more antisocial distancing in general, no more obsessive mass testing, no more contact tracing in general, and no more differentiation based on vaccination status.  Thus, any further steps towards that goal will therefore be that much easier to take from now on as a result. 

Regardless of anything though, no matter how much they try to gaslight and hoover us all about what happened, we must NEVER forget.  Seriously, we must NEVER, EVER allow the horrors of the past two and a half years to happen again.  Like, ever.

UPDATE:  A deeper dive into this stunning reversal of the CDC can be found here, courtesy of the Brownstone Institute.  Certainly worth a read.  The CDC's MMWR of August 11, 2022 apparently really "buried the lede" in regards to their about-face.

When "#DisbandTheCDC" is now trending on Twitter and elsewhere, it's pretty obvious that the Overton window has now finally snapped back with a vengeance after being forced too far under false pretenses in the direction of totalitarianism and Lysenkoism.  Action, meet equal and opposite reaction.  The technocrats are now clearly recognized as being on the wrong side of history, their recent and futile face-saving attempts notwithstanding.

SEPTEMBER UPDATE:  On September 18, 2022, President Biden officially announced that the pandemic is over.  Can you say, "ipse dixit"?

Latest Mask Study Reaches A New Low (Which We Didn't Even Think Was Possible At This Point)

Just when you thought that The Science (TM) couldn't get any lower, it reached a new low today.  The latest pro-mask study, a preprint which has yet to even be peer-reviewed (though will probably be pal-reviewed at some point), is a classic example of cherry-picked junk science not even worth the paper it is printed on.

The ever-insightful Ian Miller of Unmasked does an excellent job of taking it down here.  In a nutshell, the so-called "systematic review" study took 1732 mask studies, and only looked at a whopping....13 of them.  That is less than 1% of all of the studies done to date, so why did they disregard over 99% of the evidence that they found?  Probably because it wasn't exactly flattering to the pro-mask side, that's why.  And the 13 studies they did include, with a combined sample size of only 243 people, of course yielded implausibly (and laughably) high estimates of mask effectiveness.  This clearly has "cherry picking" written all over it.

And that's before we even get into the obvious fatal flaws in at least some if not all of those 13 studies (lack of generalizability, not done in real world conditions, no comparison group, and of course small sample size).  Also, all studies after July 2020 (!) were arbitrarily excluded, because reasons.  This is apparently what passes for The Science (TM) these days, and it has gotten increasingly desperate now as the narrative has thoroughly collapsed by now.  We are now seeing naked Lysenkoism without so much as even the pretense of scientific integrity anymore.

We recently noted how the same Ian Miller so thoroughly debunks, debones, slices, dices, and juliennes the pro-mask arguments, and lays waste to their utterly scorched remains for good.  And check out the latest new study from Josh Stevenson about masks for kids as well, likely the very best one yet.  Spoiler alert:  masks STILL don't work.

A recent Australian study confirmed via experiment that surgical masks (and by extension, cloth masks as well) are utterly useless against aerosolized viruses, as are even N95s unless they are properly fit-tested and NO mistakes are made.  The latter, of course, does NOT apply to the general population, as Germany unfortunately learned the hard way when their general N95 mandate failed so spectacularly to contain or control their Covid outbreak.

Masks didn't work in 1918, and they clearly didn't work in 2020 or 2021 either.  So anyone who thinks they will somehow work in 2022 or beyond, clearly has their head in an anatomically impossible position.  Doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results is a functional definition of either insanity or Lysenkoism (same difference).

UPDATE:  Looks like masks may be even worse than we thought.  From the Foegen Effect to the various questionable chemicals and microplastics in the masks (as well as in the Covid tests and disinfectants too), these things may very well be exacerbating, perpetuating, or even causing Long Covid as well (to say nothing of the jabs).  Plus there is also the issue of bacteria and mold growing on the masks, as well as impaired O2/CO2 exchange.  An excellent article that makes such a case can be found here.  For all of the times that the TSAP had ever foolishly advocated masks to any extent back in 2020 before belatedly changing our stance, we certainly do apologize.

2023 UPDATE:  Still further evidence against masks, especially for kids, can be found here as well.

What To Do Now? Hindsight is 2020

As the fearmongers are trying to dial up the fear factor over Covid once again, this time over the new BA.5 Omicron subvariant, most sane people two and a half years in would be tempted to respond to all this with a resounding (yawn).  But clearly we must still remain on guard--against tyranny, that is.  That may sound like we are boxing ghosts or strawmen, but we must never, EVER forget just how the easily March 2020 madness started, and how easily it is to slip back into it if we so foolishly allow it.  We simply cannot meet tyranny or insanity in the middle, and if we give them an inch they take a mile every time.  We must oppose them from the very first new or reimposed restriction, mandate, or the slightest attempt at coercion, period.  And we must counteract fearmongering with honesty and truth.

One restriction clearly leads to another, until We the People finally push back.  In March 2020, under the influence of 24/7 fearmongering, it started with "reasonable" sounding restrictions, which quickly got tighter by the day.  Lockdowns, closures, and the milder versions thereof that precededed it, led to mask mandates ostensibly as a way to avoid having to go back to lockdown.  But the places that imposed mask mandates were in fact the places that were MORE likely to return to second and even third lockdowns later.  And both mask mandates and the threat of lockdowns and closures independently and synergistically led to the vaccine mandates and passports that followed.  And all of it was for naught, as many studies and even the most casual glance at excess death rates have shown globally.

In fact, a very strong case can be made that doing nothing, or rather adopting the time-honored "flu strategy," would have been better than what was done.  At best, all that the restrictions did (or could do) was delay the inevitable, drag it out, and make it far more painful than it had to be, at very great social, economic, and health cost.  Once the virus was already "in the wild" in early 2020 in much of the world, if not even earlier, the "therapeutic window" for restrictive NPIs was permanently closed.  Notably, many countries, including the USA, UK, Australia, NZ, and others, all had pandemic playbooks that explicitly did NOT include and even discouraged these sorts of largely unprecedented restrictions, even if we were to face another "Category 5" pandemic like the infamous 1918 one.  Such playbooks were actually based on hard science, that is, what we have learned empirically (often the hard way) over the past couple of centuries.  But then suddenly in mid-March 2020, the powers that be had panicked and threw the wisdom of the ages out the window like so much garbage, and as they say, the rest is history.

Fortunately, most people simply don't have the appetite for more restrictions now.  Not only are people tired of it all, but also they see things like inflation, crime, the economy, etc. as being far more salient concerns than the virus today.  But that is not something we can automatically take for granted either.  Hindsight is 2020, in more ways than one.

P.S.  Apparently "flurona", or co-infection of flu and coronavirus, doesn't exactly seem to be the threat the fearmongers claim it is either.  New research finds that an influenza virus infection actually somewhat mitigates a Covid infection if the flu infection occurs first, and co-infection with both viruses does not seem to make the combo worse.  So as our old frenemy inevitably returns, that is one less thing to fear.

Oh, and you're probably wondering why the phrase "protect the vulnerable" was not anywhere in this article.  That is because that once-noble phrase, which would normally go without saying in a civilized society, has sadly become a meaningless platitude once it had been thoroughly appropriated by the lockdown and mask zealots, who twisted it into making the perfect the enemy of the (reasonably) good.  And it had become a very handy excuse for not only draconian restrictions, but also cruelty and callousness towards the very same vulnerable people they claimed to "protect", often at the expense of other vulnerable people in other ways as well.

Ruh Roh. What Hath The Technocrats Wrought? (Children of Men Edition)

You may want to sit down and take a deep breath before reading this.  Seriously.

As the ever-insightful Igor Chudov has recently reported, in several diverse countries from Hungary to Taiwan to Germany to Switzerland to the UK to Sweden to Japan and many others, including some US states too, birthrates plummeted by double-digit percentages in the first quarter (or two) of 2022 relative to the same time last year.  This is not a trend, this is an event!  And that unusually steep drop in births did not begin until about nine months after those novel experimental gene therapy jabs misnamed "vaccines" were rolled out en masse to young people of childbearing age.  Funny how that works.  But I'm sure it is all just a "coincidence", right?  Move along, nothing to see here folks....

Riiiiiiiight.

Was it the lockdowns that caused it?  No, since there was no similar drop in 2020 or 2021, and notably Sweden experienced the same drop without any lockdowns.  Was it the virus itself, or its sequelae?  No, since Taiwan was practically free of the virus for the most part until April 2022, and yet they still saw birthrates drop as well.  Was it 5G, maybe?  No, since Taiwan and many other countries have been using 5G for years now, again with no sudden drop in births until 2022.  Was it climate change, perhaps?  Global warming is by definition global, so why does this trend only really seem to be noticeable in highly-jabbed areas rather than everywhere in the world?

And indeed, while birthrates have been gradually declining for years or even decades now in most of the world, this is a much, much steeper drop that cannot be explained by any of the usual suspects.

Looks like all of those VAERS reports of menstrual irregularities and even fetal abnormalities (!) correlating with the jabs were quite real after all, and the tip of a much larger iceberg.  And fellas beware, the reproductive effects are most likely NOT confined to only one gender either.  When many people last year would half-jokingly say, "clean sperm is the new Bitcoin" or something to that effect, that may not have been very far off from the truth, unfortunately.  (The recent epic Bitcoin crash notwithstanding, of course.)

Let's hope that this is just a short-term blip, because if it's not, this is literally Children of Men territory, and it will NOT end well for humanity at all.  Yes, we know the Earth is overpopulated and in severe ecological overshoot.  But if this current disturbing trend lacks an "off" button, and continues irreversibly, it will clearly do far more harm than good in the long run.

Moral of the story:  Mother Nature apparently does NOT like to be effed with!  Too bad people end up having to learn that the hard way sometimes.

UPDATE:  The Swiss Doctor offers an alternative explanation, namely that marriage rates plummeted in many countries in 2020 (and even into 2021) due to Covid and the restrictions on gatherings (since even Sweden had restrictions on large gatherings), and thus a large number of (mainly first) births may have simply been postponed as a result of weddings being postponed.  Let's hope that is the case.  However, the Swiss Doctor also cautions that this does not necessarily explain all of the observed drop in births.  Thus, the jabs are not really exonerated just yet.

In fact, as Igor Chudov reports later, in ultra-jabbed Germany, not only births, but even abortions are down too.  That means that even accidental pregnancies are down as well as purposeful ones, so it's not simply due to people choosing to delay or avoid procreation.  Really makes you wonder!

SEPTEMBER UPDATE:  The drop in births seems to be persisting per the latest data, at least in England.  Why don't we just call it what it is--infertility.

In A World Of Lysenkos, Be A Zelenko

We at the TSAP are saddened to hear that the legendary Dr. Vladimir Zev Zelenko has passed away from his four year battle with cancer today, at the age of 48.  He was truly a beacon of light shining in a world of darkness during the pandemic.  A real mensch indeed if there ever was one.

Dr. Zelenko famously devised an early treatment protocol, which later evolved into prophylaxis as well, against Covid all the way back in March 2020.  Originally consisting of zinc, HCQ, and azithromycin, this treatment really seemed to work wonders for one high-risk patient after another, keeping them alive and out of the hospital.  Later he added a recommendation for Ivermectin to the protocol as well, and he also devised an OTC nutritional supplement for general use called Z-Stack consisting of zinc, quercetin, Vitamin C, and Vitamin D, that is GMP and Kosher certified.  There is even a children's version now, and also a new detox version apparently designed with the jabbed in mind.

It bears repeating:  MARCH 2020.  April at the very latest.  Read that again.  Let that sink in.

If the powers that be had actually heeded his advice, instead of ignoring, censoring, and vilifying him, countless lives would have been saved (hundreds of thousands in the USA alone), hospitals would not have gotten anywhere even remotely close to overwhelmed, and even the slightest hint of lockdowns, closures, mask mandates, and related restrictions would have been summarily laughed out of existence as the utterly harebrained ideas that they were.  As for those novel experimental gene therapies misnamed "vaccines" that the powers that be have been pushing on the masses?   Well, Zelenko himself had some rather choice and colorful words to say about those!  He was certainly no fan.  And with the successful Zelenko protocol in place, the jabs would most likely have not so much have even gotten off the ground, being rejected as superfluous at best and far too risky to chance.  (And a fortiori for children!)

In fact, true natural herd immunity would have been reached much sooner, and much more safely as well if such sage advice was actually followed.  As it clearly had in Zelenko's very own hometown of Kiryas Joel, NY, who famously did everything "wrong" per the "experts".  Instead of the infamous lockdowns, high excess deaths, and then followed by the seemingly endless cycle of boosters, variants, and reinfections that continue to plague heavily-jabbed communities, states and countries to this day.

But NO, the powers that be not only censored and even banned the centerpiece of the Zelenko protocol in some places, they even had the GALL to try to fallaciously taint it in people's minds as "guilt by association" with Trump.  Never mind that the jabs that those same powers later came to obsess over, especially Moderna, were also developed under that very same president as well (Operation Warp Speed, anyone?).  And they knew that if anyone tried to seriously debate Zelenko himself, they would lose, so as time went on the mainstream media wouldn't even mention him at all, and would immediately pivot to Trump whenever the subject of HCQ came up.

Note as well that another legend, Dr. Dmitry Kats, independently devised his own Niacin-based protocol around the very same time.  Either way, hindsight is quite literally 2020.  March 2020, to be precise.

In a world of Lysenkos, be a Zelenko.  May he rest in peace.

Roe v. Wade Has Fallen

Well, after nearly half a century, it actually happened:  the landmark Roe v. Wade decision has officially fallen.  Today the US Supreme Court struck it down completely.  Forced-birther Republicans are thus now emboldened to further ban or restrict abortion at the state level, as several states have already done recently.  That is, women's hard-won reproductive rights are now in grave danger, and this goes WAY beyond abortion.  Undoubtedly, birth control and things like that will be next on the chopping block, and so on, and thus we are just a few steps away from Margaret Atwood's worst nightmare.  In fact, Clarence Thomas himself implied as much, actually saying the quiet part out loud.

Add to this the fact that the recent lockdown-induced "recession" (more like depression) has actually hit women harder than men and set back women's progress by decades by dumping even more unpaid work on them at home, and the future looks even worse still.

Democrats in Congress are still looking to pass a bill that would codify Roe v. Wade into federal law, superseding the abortion bans in any state that attempts such bans.  But alas, success in that regard is far from guaranteed.

We at the TSAP are pro-choice, and hereby condemn this travesty in the strongest possible terms. 

The Root Cause Of All Economic Woes Of The Past Half-Century: "Financialization" Of The Economy

The year was 1971, just over half a century ago.  The utterly costly (in both lives and money) and protracted Vietnam War was gradually winding down but still raging, inflation was getting out of control, and the Bretton-Woods system of an international (fool's) gold standard and fixed currency exchange rates was rapidly collapsing on itself due to rampant cheating and attrition.  On August 15, 1971, President Richard M. Nixon decided to effectively suspend the gold standard, first temporarily, though it would soon become permanent by 1973.  And by 1975, any nominal and vestigial links between gold and the dollar had been severed completely.   

Since this "Nixon Shock" of 1971, the money creation capability of the federal government and the Federal Reserve were no longer constrained by gold or anything else (except the remaining arcane and archaic rules of Congress left over from the defunct gold standard, and thus no longer make any sense).  Thus, Congress could really create as much money as they wanted from then on, and the Fed could create as much as Congress would allow them to.   The money supply had clearly exploded exponentially since then, and a fortiori after 2008 and 2020.  

So where did nearly all of those newly-created dollars go?

Wall Street, of course.  The result?  A perpetually yawning chasm between the financial sector (which grew exponentially along with the money supply) relative to the real, physical economy (which has basically stagnated and hollowed-out ever since).  That absolute and relative advantage was then weaponized against the bottom 99% of Americans, as the financial sector is dominated by the top 1% and especially the top 0.01%.  Extreme inequality and very much harm followed.  Decades of utterly remarkable progress against poverty stalled and even reversed somewhat.  And that, ladies and gentlemen, is the real root of all economic woes of the past half-century.

Prior to 1971, the financial sector moved largely in lockstep with the rest of the economy.  And not coincidentally, prior to 1973, wages grew largely in lockstep with labor productivity as well.  But ever since then, both have seen an ever-widening divergence, to the detriment of the greater working class.  While the oligarchs literally laughed all the way to the bank.  And that was clearly no accident, but rather by design.

Imagine if even a fraction of all that newly created-out-of-thin-air money since 1971 was rained down upon We the People directly instead of Wall Street and the big banks.  How different would America, and indeed the world, be today?  If that doesn't make you feel RIPPED OFF, check your pulse 'cause you might be dead!

The cure for this disease is indeed very, very simple.  All it takes is a simple Act of Congress to 1) scrap the remaining arcane and archaic rules that prevent Overt Congressional Financing, 2) implement Overt Congressional Financing, and then 3) use it to benefit We the People instead of the oligarchy.  UBI, Medicare For All, expanded Social Security, free college, debt cancellation, Green New Deal, oh my! Basically, the entire progressive economic agenda and more can be paid by the federal government for without any borrowing or taxes unless Congress wants to.  

That is the real logical conclusion of Monetary Sovereignty:  when a government issues it's own currency, by definition it has infinite money, which is constrained only by the laws that the government passes.  Time to end the Big Lie and act like it for once.

(And no, going back on the gold standard now would be a dumb idea, as that would only lead to artificial scarcity of money.)

As for inflation, that can be cured by 1) raising interest rates (in the short term), and 2) counterintuitive as it sounds, increased federal spending to cure shortages by incentivizing increased production of goods and services that are experiencing shortages (food, energy, labor, computer chips, etc.) in the longer-term.  Problem solved.  Next.

(And of course, stop creating shortages via supply chain problems due to lockdowns!)

So what are we waiting for?

UPDATE:  We would be remiss if we did not also enumerate the more proximal causes in addition the more distal root cause of financialization.  Those include:  

• Legalization of usury (lifting of federal 12% usury cap on interest rates) (1978)
• Union-busting re-legitimized by Reagan against the PATCO strike, which made an example of them for the private sector going forward (1981)
• Legalization of stock buybacks (1982)
• General deregulation and tax cuts for the ultra-rich and corporations (1980s)
• General deregulation of big banks and Wall Street (1980s)
• Shrinking the social safety net by stealth, letting it lag behind inflation (1970s through 1990s))
• NAFTA (1994)
• Shrinking the social safety net again via welfare deform (1996)
• Repeal of Glass-Steagall Act, the firewall between commercial banks and investment banks (1999)
• China joining the WTO as a "most favored nation" (2001)
• More tax cuts for the rich (2001-2003)
• NOT learning the lessons of 2008, particularly the moral hazard created by the Wall Street bailouts (2008-2009)
• Offshoring/outsourcing of manufacturing jobs (ongoing)
• Pandemic relief money disproportionately going to, and benefitting, Wall Street much more than Main Street (2020-2021)
• And of course, the lockdowns which, when combined with the above, constituted the largest wealth transfer in history, from the poor and middle class to the ultra-rich and Wall Street, both nationally and globally (2020-2021)

Shout It From The Rooftops: LOCKDOWNS KILL!

LOCKDOWNS KILL.  We have always known from the get-go that collateral damage, up to and including excess deaths, would occur from lockdowns.  From delayed and denied medical treatment to missed cancer screenings to poverty and hunger to suicides to drug overdoses to violence to simply dying of loneliness and isolation, and so on, these brute-force blunt instruments are known to intrinsically inflict serious harm by design, and cannot ever be made "safe" in any meaningful sense no matter HOW many trillions of dollars (or pounds, euros, yuan, yen, rupees, bitcoin, etc.) you happen to throw at these problems.  Of course, poorer and/or more unequal societies generally experience the very worst outcomes of all, but even the very wealthiest and relatively equal societies still cannot be completely spared such consequences for very long either.

But now for the first time we can actually roughly quantify the magnitude of the short- and medium-term collateral deaths that occur.  In the USA, a new study the National Bureau of Economic Research found that lockdowns and related restrictions killed at LEAST a whopping 170,000 Americans, based on the number of non-Covid deaths among younger Americans in 2020-2021.  The Economist puts the number even higher at just under 200,000 deaths, and the NBER finds proportionally similar numbers in stricter European countries as well (but notably NOT Sweden, who famously eschewed lockdowns and most types of mandates).  And having already established long ago that lockdowns don't really save any significant number of lives in the long run, this makes lockdowns all pain and no gain.  And the zealots who pushed these tyrannical policies, especially those who did so persistently in the face of mounting harm, have a LOT of blood on their hands!

Of course, those excess deaths include an unknown number of jab injury deaths as well from 2021 onwards.  But either way, the numbers are NOT flattering to the lockdown zealots OR the jab zealots for that matter.  And longer-term effects still remain unclear, though they are most likely NOT good at all.

And just like the Covid zealots themselves luurrrve to remind us all ad nauseam, deaths are merely the tip of a very large iceberg of overall harm.

And keep in mind that even "soft" or "organic" lockdowns (and ubiquitous masking) via social pressure are far from harmless either, at least when they drag on long enough.  Just ask Japan.  Their suicide rate, after two decades of impressive progress in reducing it, unfortunately spiked once again in 2020 and remained elevated through 2021.  Looks like antisocial distancing is still, well, antisocial, even when it is not formally mandated by the state.  That said, Japan's all-cause excess death rate was still ultimately better on balance than nearly every single "hard" lockdown country in the world.

Seriously, this was all a grave mistake that must NEVER, EVER be repeated.  Like, ever.

UPDATE:  Now even the UN admits that lockdowns killed hundreds of thousands of children globally.  Yes, really.  Let that sink in.  Lockdowns clearly took far more lives (and especially life years) then they saved on balance.  And it goes way beyond deaths too, as children's education, mental health, physical fitness, and overall development have also deteriorated as well, with associated long-term consequences that we will all have to reckon with at some point.  All this to very temporarily delay the inevitable at best.  In other words, we effectively destroyed a generation for nothing.  Will that generation, and future generations, ever forgive us?

Oh, and just in case you thought that lockdowns were still needed to prevent hospitals from being overrun in the short term, not only is there no hard evidence of lockdowns having had any such benefit in that regard compared to the Swedish no-lockdown strategy, but we also see that artificial scarcity from state-imposed policies was the real problem all along.

And next time someone says the "kids are resilient" platitude, be sure to show them this.

Further Evidence That Lockdowns, Closures, Masks, Vaccine Mandates, and NPIs Were Worse Than Useless

Still more evidence just keeps on piling up, from New York to Taiwan to Australia to Cornell University, that lockdowns, closures, masks, vaccine mandates, and NPIs have been utterly useless or worse than useless, as the ever-insightful Ian Miller (author of Unmasked) has noted recently.   It is so bleeding obvious now that no sane person can possibly deny it any longer.  Of course, as the old adage goes, people tend to go mad in crowds, but only recover one by one.

And school closures turned out to be even worse than we thought, per the latest evidence from Brazil, a country that famously eschewed lockdowns and most types of NPIs for the most part, but bizarrely had some of the longest school closures in the world, making it possible to readily tease out the costs and benefits of this one particular NPI.  One new study, which dovetails nicely with other studies in both rich and poor countries around the world, found that remote learning resulted in truly MASSIVE learning losses and increased dropout rates compared to in-person education.  And yet another Brazilian study found that it was ultimately all for naught, as the overall Covid death rates in communities who reopened schools earlier were not significantly different from those in communities who kept schools closed longer.  This was notably true even for high schools, which were once thought to be so much riskier than middle and elementary schools in terms of spreading the virus that even Sweden felt the need to close them during most of the first wave and again briefly at the very height of the second wave.  Thus, we can conclude that school closures at any age or grade level were basically all pain and no gain overall, at least for prolonged closures, and that remote learning simply does not work well.

(And of course there is plenty of evidence from the USA, UK, and elsewhere that not only are school closures exceedingly harmful to children, but also opening them encumbered with worse-than-useless dystopian restrictions like antisocial distancing and mask mandates is really not that much better either.)

In other news, study finds that water is wet, and that the sun rises in the east and sets in the west.

UPDATE:  Oh yeah, and about those jabs?  Well, those on balance also seem to be worse than useless as well for most people, and especially for kids.  Wonder no more where all those formerly rare but now ubiquitous reinfections are coming from these days.  That's not us just saying that, that is actually taken straight from Pf*zer's very own clinical trial of children under age 5.  Looks like Sweden, who never forced them on anyone and currently refuses to give these jabs to children under 12, and Florida, who also never forced them and currently refuses to purchase it for children under 5, are vindicated yet again.

And if you think Long Covid is bad, just wait till you hear about Long Lockdown and Long Jab Injury!  The data are piling up and increasingly showing exactly which side of the debate is on the right side of history.

As for efficacy, the Chinese inactivated whole virus vaccines (that is, actual vaccines) Sinovac and Sinopharm, really don't seem to be much better either, as evident in excess death rates in Chile, a country that largely preferred those ones at least three to one over the mRNA jabs.  And India's Covaxin, which is also made the same way as the Chinese ones, also seems to be quite lackluster as well.  Kinda like regular flu shots, in fact.  Same thing, different virus.

And once again, the ever-insightful Ian Miller thoroughly debunks, debones, slices, dices, and juliennes the pro-mask arguments, and lays waste to their utterly scorched remains for good.  And check out the latest new study from Josh Stevenson about masks for kids as well, likely the very best one yet.  Spoiler alert:  masks STILL don't work.

A recent Australian study confirmed via experiment that surgical masks (and by extension, cloth masks as well) are utterly useless against aerosolized viruses, as are even N95s unless they are properly fit-tested and NO mistakes are made.  The latter, of course, does NOT apply to the general population, as Germany unfortunately learned the hard way when their general N95 mandate failed so spectacularly to contain or control their Covid outbreak.

Are you listening, New Zealand?  Because the "clue phone" is ringing louder than ever now.

AUGUST UPDATE:  We see yet another strike against the jabs now.  As the late Bill Sardi predicted, it looks like the century-old BCG vaccine (against tuberculosis) does in fact seem to work at least as well against Covid as the gene therapy jabs do, according to the latest research.  And perhaps other unrelated diseases as well.  Not only because some of what is labeled as Covid is simply misdiagnosed TB or co-infection with both (which is likely true too, as also likely happened in 1918), but more likely due to the BCG's general effect on training the innate immune system to be more effective.  And it is indeed fascinating what they found.  Note as well that this same nonspecific "trained immunity" can also be promoted with beta-glucan supplements (from yeast) and/or thymus gland extract supplements as well, no jabs needed, which Bill Sardi also discussed.  

Perhaps they finally cracked the code of the holy grail that is a truly universal vaccine?

The Next Plandemic?

Just as the COVID-19 pandemic is basically over now as the virus and its descendents has transitioned to one degree or another of endemicity after reaching a level of functional herd immunity from mass infection (largely no thanks to the jabs!), no sooner does another potential one appear seemingly out of nowhere.  And that virus is.....MONKEYPOX! 

Monkeypox is mainly found in wild animals in parts of Africa where it is endemic at a low level, and related to smallpox but much milder and far less contagious between humans, hence it being quite rare in humans.  It generally requires VERY close contact to transmit it, and it is not known to spread in the absence of symptoms either.  But very recently there has been a rash (pun intended) of cases in several countries where it is not normally found among people with no history of travel to Africa, such as the UK, France, Spain, Portugal, Italy, Sweden, Australia, Canada, and now the USA.  The numbers remain quite small, less than 100 confirmed cases total and no deaths yet, but it is being closely monitored.

The ever-insightful Michael P. Senger (author of Snake Oil:  How Xi Jinping Shut Down The World) points out that, just like the COVID-19 pandemic was preceded by just a few months by a tabletop simulation of a SARS-like viral pandemic called "Event 201", so too was this monkeypox outbreak preceded just a year ago by another tabletop simulation of, and he quotes, a "global pandemic involving an unusual strain of monkeypox beginning in May 2022".  In fact, it takes place as beginning on May 15, 2022, accurate almost to the DAY.  Now, that is one eerie coincidence if there ever was one!  Or is it really a coincidence at all?  Things that really should make you go, hmmmm....

And Senger also points out that, at the center of both simulations is....George Fu Gao, director of the Chinese Center for Disease Control.  Yes, really.  And he and his colleagues have been awfully quiet lately.

But don't worry, they have plenty of vaccines ready now--smallpox vaccines to be exact, which supposedly also work on this related virus as well.  Bill Gates must be salivating like a Pavlov's dog as we speak!

Meanwhile, the NYC Health Department is currently a world outlier among public health agencies in recommending that people wear masks again (!) to protect against monkeypox.  Yes, really.  Not even the CDC is saying that, and there is really no hard evidence that masks work against monkeypox in the general population.  But that didn't stop NYC from advocating it, because reasons.  Or something. 

We at the TSAP do NOT believe that this will actually become a real pandemic, rather, this outbreak will most likely fizzle out on its own as a mere flash in the pan.  But as the past two and a half years has so painfully shown us all, we must never, ever underestimate what sorts of evil machinations the global oligarchy is capable of, both in terms of deliberate or "accidental" release of natural or manmade bioweapons, as well as collateral damage from illiberal and totalitarian responses to same.

And all this just as the infamous WHO pandemic treaty is being revised in an increasingly illiberal direction and being actively debated as we speak....

Either way, whether it is a hoax, a real threat, somewhere in between, or some combination of both, this has the fingerprints of the oligarchy all over it.

No More Excess Deaths!

While we officially crossed the grim 1 million threshold for cumulative Covid deaths in the USA since the beginning of the pandemic just the other day (based on official CDC numbers of course, which count all deaths "with Covid" and not necessarily "from Covid"), we also reached another significant milestone at the same time that the mainstream media did not seem to acknowledge.  According to the CDC's own data, there have not been any excess all-cause deaths at all since the week of March 12, 2022, despite "cases" rising significantly since then (especially in the Northeast) for the past two months thanks to both seasonality and the BA.2 subvariants.  Of course, it can take several weeks for excess deaths to be fully counted, but this is the longest stretch of time since March 2020 that we have gone without excess deaths.  In fact, deaths are currently running below normal, as the proverbial ferryman already got more than his fair share of money by now.

So what does this all mean?   It means that the virus is currently endemic, and that the pandemic is essentially over now.  It is basically the new seasonal flu and the new common cold rolled into one.  In fact, just before the different-enough Omicron variant hit, actual influenza made a comeback already before being temporarily suppressed by Omicron's viral interference.  And with no new major variants detectable on the horizon (only subvariants and sub-subvariants), it is unlikely that the resulting endemic equilibrium will be disrupted enough to create another major death and hospitalization wave anytime soon.  Even if there is a "casedemic" wave from time to time, herd immunity will prevail overall.

It is thus no wonder that even some top FDA officials are now finally saying that Americans should treat Covid like the flu.  What we at Team Reality have already been saying for a while now, in other words.

Bottom line:  Covid is endemic, Zero Covid is a pipe dream, and lockdowns, masks, and NPIs are useless or worse than useless.  The vast, vast majority of Americans, including children, have already had the virus at least once by now.  We know how to treat it effectively, and the largely failed "vaccines" have been around and available more than long enough to know that they weren't exactly worth waiting for.  It is long past time to adopt the "flu strategy" and move on.

UPDATE:  We are still learning more and more about how lockdowns, masks, and NPIs have done far more harm than good, especially for children, and also that "immunity debt" is in fact a real thing after all.  All for naught.  Hindsight is indeed, well, 2020.  Future generations will all surely look back with absolute horror and disbelief at the conduct of our "leaders" and their sheeple followers over the past two years!

We at Team Reality hate to say we told you so, but....

(Fortunately, the unusual spike in non-Covid excess deaths (read: mostly jab deaths plus numerous collateral deaths from lockdowns, closures, and NPIs) in the second half of 2021 and into very early 2022 now seems to have also since receded by now as well, though alas the damage is already done.)

Meanwhile, in Australia....

And for any natural immunity deniers still out there, particularly as regards to Omicron, this rebuttal is just for you.  Seriously, just take the L and move on.

Why A Cashless Society Is A Terrible Idea That Must Be Resisted At All Costs

In recent months, there has been more and more talk about phasing out cash in favor of a purely digital currency, especially a central bank digital currency (CBDC).  While the idea does have its benefits, such as making banking maneuvers and electronic transactions of all kinds simpler and almost completely frictionless, there is nonetheless one major, outweighing, and inescapable design flaw to such an otherwise promising idea that should make any reasonably sane and liberty-loving society reject the idea absolutely.   So what is this fatal flaw?

In a nutshell:  a purely digital currency would be controlled completely by whoever is in power, which generally means the greater oligarchy of government, central banks, and of course the elite "shadow government" who runs both.  It can be turned on and off at will by whoever controls it, which means that your bank account, credit cards, and stuff like that would effectively be turned on and off at will by these same oligarchs and technocrats.  Next up would be social credit scoring, and so on.  All of this would be a very effective way to control We the People in ways that the dictators of old could not have ever dreamed of!  And without physical cash as an alternative, there is no way to get around such a scheme (especially once they ban cryptocurrencies next on their agenda).

That more than outweighs any potential benefits of CBDCs.  It is inherently totalitarian, and one need look no further than China to see its rotten fruits in action.  Or Canada, when they cracked down on the Freedom Convoy and froze the bank accounts of them and their supporters, for an earlier stage of this.  Imagine what they could have done if cash no longer existed!

For the record, the TSAP fully supports a Universal Basic Income (UBI), provided it really is done with NO strings attached.  Done properly, contrary to the naysayers it will increase the bargaining power of the working class and will actually reduce perverse incentives and dependence on the government compared to the utterly broken status quo.  But we will NEVER, EVER support a CBDC or anything else that leads to the elimination of physical cash, period.

The oligarchs may be able control We the People to one degree or another regardless of the monetary system in place.  But they cannot control us 100% as long as physical cash exists as an alternative to digital currency.  Once cash is gone, all bets really are off!

A cashless society is, at best, a solution in search of a problem.  At worst, it is a sure gateway to an unprecedented level of irreversible dystopian totalitarianism.  We ignore all of this at our own peril.

Will Roe v. Wade Be Overturned?

A recent leak from the US Supreme Court, which currently has a conservative majority, reveals that the nearly half-century old precedent of Roe v. Wade is likely to be overturned in the near future.  This, especially on the heels of one red state after another recently imposing more and more restrictions and bans on abortion, would be a disaster for women's reproductive rights, and slopes are FAR slipperier than they appear.  If a woman loses her reproductive rights, who knows what rights she can lose next?  This is one of the first of several steps towards Margaret Atwood's worst nightmare, at least in the red states.

This further drives home the point that we cannot afford to be complacent at all, even for major victories that were thought to be settled long ago.

If it does actually get overturned, women may want to go on a Lysistrata-style sex strike until either the SCOTUS reverses and restores Roe, and/or a federal law codifying Roe and/or a new constitutional amendment is passed guaranteeing reproductive rights to women.  Because otherwise, with the coming red wave (thanks in part to two years of the Democrats' self-sabotaging and illiberal Covid restrictions, and many years of silly performative wokeness), it really doesn't look very good at all.

UPDATE:  It should really go without saying, but we do NOT support, condone, or tolerate anyone vandalizing churches or places of worship of any kind, period.  That kind of behavior is grossly unethical, and also does nothing to address what governments are doing in regards to reproductive rights.  KNOCK IT OFF!

Also, here's another good piece exposing the rank hypocrisy of "pro-life" (anti-choice) zealots.

Surprise! New Study Finds Face Masks Are WORSE Than Useless

The ever-growing mountain of evidence can no longer be denied:  masks are literally worse than useless.  And a new study of European data confirms this by finding that higher rates of mask compliance had no statistically significant correlation with the number of Covid cases.  And worse, higher mask use was significantly correlated with MORE deaths.  

Reread that last sentence for a moment and let it sink in.  Indeed, more masks = MORE DEATHS.  (And more cases too, even if that was not statistically significant.)

This finding dovetails with the hypothesized Foegen Effect that was apparently observed in a recent German study that compared case fatality rates in various Kansas counties with different mask rules.  That is, face masks were hypothesized to backfire in terms of death rates by further concentrating and incubating the virus compared with no mask, as a result of repeatedly rebreathing the virus deeper into the lungs.  And the Kansas data bear that out, much like the new European data.  Only in the European data, there was no benefit in terms of reduced cases, while the Kansas data showed a modest reduction in cases, albeit with more deaths.  Thus, even the supposedly reduced cases in Kansas may have simply been an artifact of bias or residual or unmeasured confounding.  Either way, masks made it deadlier on balance, and perhaps even increased the likelihood of long-term sequelae in the survivors as well.

OOPS!  Maybe the powers that be should have thought of that before even recommending, let alone mandating, these worse than useless devices on the masses.  And maybe they should not have so casually tossed the wisdom of the ages out the window like so much garbage in their zeal to slake their overwhelming urge to panic.

And that's to say nothing of all the collateral harms of prolonged mask wearing as well, especially for kids (but really for all ages).  Those pushing mask mandates, and especially those who continued to do so despite mounting evidence against such illiberal and counterproductive measures, have a LOT to answer for (and a LOT of blood on their hands too).

The environment is also harmed as well by these ubiquitous "paper" (actually polypropylene plastic) masks.  Right now, there are more of these discarded non-biodegradable, single-use items in the oceans than there are jellyfish!  There is certainly nothing even remotely "green" about that at all.

If the True Spirit of America Party were to make a list of all of the biggest regrets we have ever had since our founding in 2009, our early and fairly brief advocacy of masks and mask mandates (albeit as an alternative to lockdowns) in the spring and early summer of 2020 would probably come in at #1, displacing our former foolish advocacy of fiscal austerity (and Austrian economics in general) prior to 2014 for the top spot on the list.  Done from a place of ignorance, we really should have listened to the past century worth of research that cast major doubt on (if not thoroughly debunked) the use of masks to stop airborne respiratory viruses of any kind.  The mosquito and chain-link fence analogy applies here.

The experts knew already that masks didn't work in 1918, and thus they were abandoned just a few months later in early 1919.  So why in the world did it take so much longer to realize that this time?

And to think that the mask mandates would only last a few weeks was naive at best.  The most important lesson of the past two years was that you cannot meet tyranny or insanity in the middle.  Give them an inch, and they take a mile every time.  Also, another lesson is that what appears to work in the lab, or at a small scale, does NOT necessarily work in the real world, especially on a large scale.  History has been made, all right.  Just not in a good way.

UPDATE:  A new editorial online at Yahoo! on May 6, 2022 now admits that there is no evidence that masks work.  For a mainstream editorial to say this shows that the Overton window has shifted dramatically in the past several months, in a very good way.

And yet another study confirms that masks lead to (re)breathing excessive and dangerous levels of CO2 (carbon dioxide) by the wearer.  Worse, the effect was larger in children than in adults.  In other news, study finds that water is wet and the sun rises in the east.

And for the love of all that is good, STOP MASKING TODDLERS YESTERDAY!  It's no wonder there has been a mysterious increase in disease in that group recently.  NYC Mayor Eric Adams, I'm looking at YOU!  

And once again, the ever-insightful Ian Miller thoroughly debunks, debones, slices, dices, and juliennes the pro-mask arguments, and lays waste to their utterly scorched remains for good.  And check out the latest new study from Josh Stevenson about masks for kids as well, likely the very best one yet.  Spoiler alert:  masks STILL don't work.

Turmeric May Be Effective Against Covid, Particularly Omicron

The latest addition to the already-known 20+ possible treatments and prophylactics against Covid (particularly Omicron in this case) is apparently curcumin, the bioactive phytochemical component of the spice turmeric.  This is not actually surprising given that we already know that curcumin acts as a protease inhibitor (which Pfizer's magic pill does too).  And now a new study fleshed this out further with an additional effect, finding that curcumin also binds to specific amino acids on the Omicron-mutant viral spike protein, more so than chloroquine does.  Read that last sentence once more and let it sink in.

This may be one of several reasons why India, who really got slammed by Delta last year, did not get hit anywhere near as hard by Omicron or any of its subvariants to date, despite (or perhaps even partly because of) low vaccination rates and almost no mRNA vaccines (which seem to be a magnet for Omicron) used there at all.  Turmeric is famously used quite ubiquitously in Indian cuisine.  As is black pepper, which contains piperine, a compound known to boost the effectiveness of turmeric in general.

So turmeric (and don't forget the black pepper and/or olive oil to boost it) is one more thing to add to one's spice rack and medicine chest.  It is certainly a LOT safer than Big Pharma's latest nostrums.  Ditto for resveratrol, quercetin, and fisetin as well.  But remember, as the late Bill Sardi warns, do use caution not to overdo turmeric supplements, many of which can be far more potent than most people realize.

A Pandemic Report Card Study

Well, there is now finally a study comparing the several states in their performance during the pandemic.  The paper can be found here.  It looks at health, economic, and educational outcomes, and then combines them into a composite score and then converts to letter grades A through F.  Covid death rates are adjusted for age and metabolic health, while excess all-cause deaths are adjusted for age.

The results?  Spoiler alert:  Free and open states like Utah, Florida, South Dakota, Nebraska, and Vermont each got an A overall while the most stringent states such like New York, New Jersey, New Mexico, California, Illinois, and Washington, DC each got an F overall.  And the middling states were, well, somewhere in the middle overall.

Like the song says, some will win, some will lose, and some are born to sing the blues.  And greater stringency only increases the odds of falling into the latter category.   The restrictions turned out to be not only useless, but actually worse than useless.