The CDC is run by idiots

I trust them on the science. When they say being vaccinated means you’re pretty safe and don’t need a mask in most circumstances, I believe them. When they say we can loosen social distancing requirements outdoors, I’ll believe them, and the studies do support that. But you have to know by now that this pandemic has a psychological, sociological, and political dimension that you also have to recognize, and they have to know that their advice has ramifications. Our idiot conservative democrat governor has to know that too, but do they care? No. Our state mask mandate has been dismissed, thanks to the short-sighted recommendations of the CDC. This is only going to encourage the worst elements in the state.

Case in point: our local grocery store, Willie’s Super-Valu of Morris, Minnesota.

When the seriousness of the pandemic began to hit us all, they dragged their heels on implementing even the most basic preventive policies. For months, they were carefree, few of the workers wore masks, and almost none of the customers did. It was so disgracefully bad that we gave up and started shopping 40 minutes away. They finally did put up signs requiring masks in the store, but it was too late — we have lost all trust in the store. I go there only reluctantly, and when absolutely necessary, like today. I’ve been car-less for almost a month while my wife was off spending all her time with our granddaughter, and the pantry was bare. She’s going back this week so I’ve just this weekend to stock up again, and I made the mistake of going to Willie’s.

The instant the governor ended the mandate, the signs all went away. None of the workers are masked anymore, and very few of the customers. The kaffeeklatsches have resumed, with people stopping in the middle of aisles to gossip with other residents. We are back to “normal”, I guess, but the pandemic isn’t over, and the CDC recommendations are about people who have been vaccinated…that is, about half the population. This is a politically conservative area, so I have no confidence that any of the people in that store have been following prior recommendations, or have been vaccinated, or at all responsible in protecting the health of the community. I sure as hell don’t trust the owners of the store.

So here we are again, with the local Trump-loving citizens of this town showing their asses and being irresponsible.

I’m going to have to continue occasionally visiting Willie’s — it’s basically the only major grocery store in walking distance — when my wife takes the car again, but as soon as she gets back home again for good, they have lost my business. It’s a shame, too, that a place that has the silly slogan “Home of the People-Lovers” should so reliably betray their community.

Name and shame

Would you buy a cancer cure from this man?

Social media are a cesspool — it’s not so much “social” as it is “manipulative commercial/capitalist propaganda media”. It’s a net of a thousand lies, and Facebook and Google are its eager, willing enablers. It wouldn’t take much to improve it, but they won’t, because they make too much money off frauds and lyin’ politicians.

For example, would you believe that 65% of all the vaccine lies are driven by just 12 people? You can read all the details, but I believe it — there are people who are really good at wielding the megaphone of the internet, and have no other skills or learning at all, and they have an outsized influence. Here are the Disinformation Dozen:

  1. Joseph Mercola
  2. Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.
  3. Ty and Charlene Bollinger
  4. Sherri Tenpenny
  5. Rizza Islam
  6. Rashid Buttar
  7. Erin Elizabeth
  8. Sayer Ji
  9. Kelly Brogan
  10. Christiane Northrup
  11. Ben Tapper
  12. Kevin Jenkins

These are the people responsible for most of the memes and assorted garbage that’s poisoning minds all over the world. Mercola, for instance, has a huge and profitable quack empire, selling supplements and snake oil, and giving away lies for free. In the complete analysis, it goes through each of the twelve and states whether they have active accounts on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram…would you believe that Mercola, who has been a notorious quack for decades, is active on all three? He doesn’t get any pushback at all, despite peddling cancer cures that don’t work, as well as claiming that COVID-19 doesn’t exist, but if it does, you can treat it with hydrogen peroxide. He’s been getting filthy rich off this nonsense, which explains why his accounts weren’t instantly yanked.

Kennedy is also active on Facebook and Twitter, but at least he was banned on Instagram.

The Bollingers: active on all three. They’re anti-vaxxers who claim the vaccine kills children.

Tenpenny claims masks don’t help and suffocate wearers. She was banned on Facebook, but still trumpets her noise on Twitter and Instagram.

Islam claims to have beat COVID-19 with chicken soup. Banned from Facebook, still lying on the other media.

Buttar claims that the vaccine will sterilize you. Still active on all three.

Elizabeth claims vaccines are part of a conspiracy theory to make everyone sick. Still active on all three.

Ji claims that the vaccines killed more people than the disease. He’s been kicked off Twitter and Instagram, but is still on Facebook — he runs a snake oil store.

Brogan partners with Ji, and has been booted from Facebook but still babbles on Twitter and Instagram. Nice synergy — between the two of them, they’ve got the big three covered.

Northrup is one of those hydroxychloroquine promoters. Still active on all three.

Tapper is a chiropractor, anti-vaxxer and anti-masker who says stupid things like “There is a total lack of evidence that viruses can live outside the body” — which makes no sense and is not even wrong. Still active on all three.

Jenkins seems to be riding Kennedy’s coattails. Still active on all three.

These twelve people are all using Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram to spread misinformation, and are doing it with very little complaint from the social media companies. Ban them. Ban them now. I know another dozen will just rise up to take their place, but if they just had real policies against medical quackery that they actually enforced, they could quickly ban those, too.

It’s kind of obvious that the idea of policies that inhibit active fraud on social media are considered a joke by Google and Facebook.

You can guess how I spent my first free morning

Of course I went spidering. Found some lovely Steatoda borealis living contentedly in peace and harmony in a crowded colony, so of course I kidnapped a few. You’ll have to sign up for Patreon or ogle them for free on my Instagram, but it’s worth it. S. borealis is a deep reddish purple, nearly black (the male is mostly black), with subtle reddish markings on the abdomen, quite nice.

The pandemic is not over, stop acting like it is

I’m seeing a lot of slack in my little town: I’m vaccinated, but I still wear a mask in public and shy away from getting within 2 meters of anyone, but apparently a lot of the locals think the pandemic is over and have stopped bothering. It doesn’t help that we have idiots everywhere who claim without evidence that masks and vaccines are bad things that violate their rights.

So look at this ninny virtue-signaling to his fellow ignorati.

Just wear the mask, guy.

And then there’s the new conspiracy theory going around: getting vaccinated turns you into a plague rat.

A conspiracy ripping through the anti-vax world may finally drive some anti-maskers to do the unthinkable: wear a mask and keep their distance.

The conspiracy—which comes in several shapes and sizes—more or less says the vaccinated will “shed” certain proteins onto the unvaccinated who will then suffer adverse effects. The main worry is the “shedding” will cause irregular menstruation, infertility, and miscarriages. The entirely baseless idea is a key cog in a larger conspiracy that COVID-19 was a ploy to depopulate the world, and the vaccine is what will cull the masses.

Experts say the conspiracy is born from a fundamental misunderstanding of how vaccines work.

There has to be a limit to the absurdity, doesn’t there? First they bumble about claiming that a disease that has killed a half million people in the US doesn’t exist, and now they’re claiming that a disease that doesn’t exist and can’t exist is going to make everyone sterile. And they’re led by pseudo-intellectuals who have figured out that anything that causes fear will make them rich and famous.

There’s this guy named Jay Bhattacharya, whose claim to fame is that he is one of the authors of the Great Barrington Declaration, that infantile libertarian whine that we ought to ignore all of epidemiology so that people will start spending money at businesses again. Back in January, he wrote this:

This is rather like Elon Musk claiming we’d have “zero new cases” by April…of 2020. Why does anyone listen to these wankers?

Do read this great debunking of Bhattacharya, but I think this is the most appropriate dismissal of his (and Musk’s) claims:

Twenty-five million cases and a quarter million dead is a pretty strong argument that you should just ignore these evil people…or arrest them.

I was visited by an angel this morning

She was a very tiny angel. As I was making coffee, she slowly descended on a silken thread to float in front of my face. She was minuscule, little more than a dust mote, almost invisible.

She whispered an important message to me, though.

“We are all of us tiny and insignificant in an immense world. Most likely I would have descended before someone who wouldn’t even notice me. If I were noticed by a person, they most likely would destroy me. By purest chance, though, I have appeared before one of the few people who would be delighted to see me.”

“Remember your place in the universe, that you are both a victim and agent of fate, and be kind.”

Then she was nice enough to let me snap a few blurry photos before I released her back into the house. She was the first Steatoda triangulosa of the spring, you know.

Sigh of relief

I shackled myself to the computer today, and I can now report that every assignment, lab report, exam, and term paper for all three of my courses have been read and evaluated and scores entered into my Canvas class page.

I have a few more trivial things to do: I have to download everything into my laptop spreadsheet, because Canvas is too stupid to do normalization and important things like dropping the lowest exam score, as I told my genetics students I would do. I am, however, too brain-dead to do that right now, especially since the Evil Cat decided to deny me many hours of sleep last night. So I’ll do the finicky grade massaging tomorrow morning, and then submit all the grades to the registrar, and be done with this hellish academic year.

OK, so tonight I plan to veg out to something stupid on Netflix or whatever. I’ll have to see what’s available, and it better be really stupid, because I may pass out in the middle of it.

Mousehunt

The goddamn cat decided to go on a goddamn mousehunt at 1am last night. She is no good at it. A mousehunt to her is an opportunity to torture a small helpless creature for a few hours. She finds a mouse, pounces on it, and then lets the terrified beast free to pounce on it again, and again, and again. Last night she played this game going around in circles about my bed, pouncing and jumping and thumping and growling and squeaking until I leapt up screaming, chasing the cat with a broom, trying to break this goddamn cycle and get her out of the room.

There were echoes of similarities with the movie, Mousehunt. I was the Nathan Lane character. If you’ve seen the movie, you know you never want to see yourself in any of the humans.

I could also see hints of myself in the Christopher Walken character, except last night I was doing a lot of futile yelling. Yeah, Nathan Lane.