AUSSIES CLOSED BORDERS: RESULT, COVID DEATHS AT RATE OF ANNUAL FLU!

 Aussies in closed down “fortress Australia”  experienced only a small fraction of the mortality rates of other “western” nations whose mortality rates were 10 to 16 times higher.  Aussies deaths rates due to Covid were down to level of common flu in USA! 

Today, February 21, 2022, Australia, the only nation which has a whole continent to itself,  opened its borders to foreign and domestic tourists after nearly two years (since March 2020)  of being closed. Its first incoming Quantas flight with tourists from LA landed early this morning at Sydney airport.    

Aside from closing its borders to foreigners (even top tennis players who would not submit to vaccinations), Australians were subjected to one of the world’s toughest lockdowns, space restrictions, mask rules, vaccination mandates, and other government impositions which restricted personal freedoms during the pandemic.  

It worked for them.  Though Australians experienced high incidences of covid infections at times, particularly with the Omicron variant, their mortality rates were among the lowest in the world. 

While covid mortality in western “advanced” nations averaged about 2000 deaths per million population, mortality per million population in Australia was recently reported as only 174 per million. That is close  to the USA rate of death due to the common flu (124/mil pop).   Based on the fact that Australia has very similar demographics, culture, obesity levels, diabetes incidence, comorbidities, levels of urbanization, medical health care and technological sophistication as other western nations, their outstanding  low rate of mortality is very  impressive.  

It is noteworthy that the UK recently reported 2370  Covid deaths per million population, or nearly 14 times the Aussie death toll, while  in the USA  the Covid death rate of 2765 per million was 16 times that of the land of Oz.  Other  western European nations averaged above or close to 2000 deaths per million population or more than ten times the Australian rate.  

The Australian experience of closing borders to foreign visitors, masking, and vaccination mandates worked.  It may not be over yet, but we should take stock of recent successes and failures at this point. With that in mind, let’s hope that we never have to experience a pandemic like this one again, but if we do…remember that for every one  mortality in locked down fortress Australia there were between 10 to 16 unnecessary deaths in the UK and USA and other western nations.  In those impacted nations, had their more timid leaders followed the more rigorous Aussie rules,  many millions of lives may have been saved. 

CHINA: LOW COVID MORTALITY RATE

CHINA: DOING SOMETHING RIGHT IN CONTROLLING COVID MORTALITY?

CHINA: LOW MORTALITY FROM COVID! 

Interesting fact: Covid mortality is so low in China that in  terms of unit population,  more people die of the annual flu in the USA (40 x more) than died of Covid in China.  Why?  

The common annual flu in the USA causes about 43,000 deaths annually (based on average figures from CDC for 2019).  In terms of mortality per unit population that is equal to about (43000/350,000,000 = 0.00012278 x1,000,000 = 123) or @ 123 deaths/million population per year from flu).  

As a consequence of the recent Covid 19 pandemic, Covid 19 and its variants caused the deaths of well over 800,000 US citizens.  The USA Covid 19 annual rate of mortality per unit population (assuming 400,000 deaths per year) is well over 1100 deaths  per million population per year.  (Note. The USA rate of mortality for the pandemic as a whole is close to 3000 per million, with Bulgaria and Brazil even higher) 

USA Flu deaths = 123/million population  per year

USA Covid 19 annual deaths = 1100/million population per year 

What is remarkable are the very high USA rates of Covid mortality (well above the approximate annual 1000 deaths per million population) rate.  In comparison China (and several other Asian nations) have reported  very low mortality rates, some well below 100 deaths per million population.  China in particular, with rates in the single digits, has reported one of the lowest mortality rates per unit population in the world.  

PRC (China): Covid mortality per million population = 3.4 (for pandemic)

Japan: Covid mortality per million population = 125 (for pandemic)

USA: Covid mortality per million population per year  = 1100

Thus, the Japanese rate of death per unit population is only a small fraction of of the USA Covid death rate. In fact, the death rate due to Covid 19 in Japan is comparable to the death rate of the annual flu in the USA.

China’s  death rate for Covid is even lower.  The PRC’s mortality rate for Covid is only a tiny fraction (1/3 of one percent) of the USA Covid  death rate.   Even compared to our death rate from the common flu, China’s Covid mortality of 3.4 per million is only (3.4/123 = 2.8% or) @ 3% of our annual flu mortality rate.  That is: ( 123/ 2.8 = 43.9) or @ forty four times more people die of flu in the USA annually  than died of Covid in China. 

China must be doing something right in controlling Covid mortality.   We should give them credit for their efforts in this matter, and examine more closely the causes for this interesting disparity. 

ADAMS PULLS RACE CARD ON PRESS CORPS

ADAMS IN ALBANY, WHINES,  USES RACE EXCUSE

IS ALBANY ADAMS’ AFGHANISTAN?  

Yesterday, February 15, 2022  NYC Mayor Eric Adams returned from his “hat in hand” trip to Albany where he had gone to seek desperately needed help on bail reform legislation essential to control  the surging crime wave in New York City.  Sadly,  his  trip was a failure.  But he created an Biden-like Afghanistan disaster at his presser then next day, by pulling the race card on the reporters.  Irked by the critical newspaper headlines, the Mayor blamed “white reporters and editors”,….. “who don’t look like me” …and charged that the press saw him and the city crime wave only through a white “prism”.  

Adams traveled to Albany where  he sat down with NY state leaders hoping to modify the state’s so-called “bail reform” laws which now permit violent repeat offenders to go right back onto the street and commit further even more heinous crimes.  With recent statistics on crime in NYC  surging out of control (39% up in January, 41% up in February so far) and mostly from repeat offenders,  his trip was seen by fearful New Yorkers as a sign of hope. But those in Albany apparently see NY City crime (using Mayor Adams’ metaphor) through a black “prism” and offered  Adams no help. 

When the Mayor’s efforts in Albany were revealed, his rebuke by Albany legislators was dutifully reported in the local press.  Even the Daily News, which tends to “look the other way”  when Democrats “screw up”, gave “ hizzzonor” disappointing front page headlines in big, bold letters.  Irked by the widely negative reporting, the mayor,  who left his tough talk, earthy aphorisms, braggadocio  and “manspalinin’ ” back in City Hall when he traveled to Albany, where he fell into line as a loyal and obedient  Democrat.   Adams claimed his trip north was a collegial  “success” with  (according  to him) a  “black”mayor, sitting down for useful dialogue with (in his own words), other black colleagues such as NY State  Senate majority leader , and the NY State Assembly leader.  Perhaps there was a great deal of self congratulations going on, but that did not constitute “success” for the City the new mayor now heads. 

But Adams did not sway the Albany leaders,  and in effect, they sent the Mayor home with a pat on the back and a note pinned on to his lapel which read: “Tell your ‘mommy’ we are “holding the line” on bail reform”.  The Mayor’s “good friend” in the Governor’s mansion,  added insult to that injury by adding  a “PS” ro his lapel note indicating that she had   “no plans” to put bail reform on the legislative agenda this session.  

Back at City Hall, facing only the often friendly and compliant  NY press, the Mayor’s sharp tongue, and tough-guy routine returned.  There, confronting press members he whinged and whined about “white reporters and editors” who were “writing things (about him) and seeing things only through their (white) prisms”.   

Mayor Adams doesn’t get it. There are no “black” or “white prisms” with violent crime—only suffering human beings.   Ask the family of Christina Yuma Lee, a 35 year old Asian business executive who was found stabbed to death in her China Town apartment, allegedly by a career criminal who followed her to her door and forced his way into her building.  This perpetrator  had been arrested seven times in five years, and each time the system returned him to the street to prey on other victims.  

Those in Albany who it seems can only see crime (using the Mayor’s own metaphor) through the “black prism” are the real problem. (And after Albany we are now not so certain just where our Mayor stands.) 

At his press meeting Mayor Adams revealed how well he can bully, threaten, and push around the weak and compliant City press corps.  One thinks that, if while in Albany, rather than a cozy chat with colleagues of similar backgrounds , he had confronted these legislators with some of that same passion and anger he directed at the press, he may have come home a conquering hero,  rather than a loser who is, only after a mere month in office,  looking weak and uncertain. Let’s hope this is not his “Afghanistan” moment. 

 If the City and Adams are to survive,  the Mayor must forget about who is looking through what “prisms”, black, white, or rose tinted.  Adams was elected by a big plurality as the mayor,  not of any ethnic or racial group, but of the entire, turbulent and troubled City. As a candidate  he promised to control rampant crime—- the existential issue for this City.  Now is the time to do just that .  We all go down together, if he fails. 

 

BIDEN IN NYC TO IGNORE CRIMEWAVE —AND CONFUSE IT WITH “GUN-WAVE”.

 President Biden comes to NYC talking “gun violence” rather than “lawlessness” to attempt to obfuscate and diffuse the surging crime wave in the City. He is not here to help city residents , Asian, black, brown and white, beset by surging crime, but only to help himself and his falling poll numbers. Don’t expect any improvement in the City’s lawlessness and crime wave. 

Instead of facing up to the real crime problem  Biden comes to give his many detractors  the impression he is “doing something”.  Sadly Biden’s “doin’ somethin’ ” is comparable to a surgeon attending a patient with a blood/spurting femoral artery who ignores the wound, but prescribes a diuretic to control hypertension to stop the bleeding. 

Mayor Adams will be right there along side of Biden.  He is excellent with the bell toned rhetoric…but he will also mouth the phony  “gun violence” ploy along with the “big guy”. Perhaps it’s the game he must play, but as a police officer he must know it will not solve his crime problem. 

Guns have been a problem in NY since the 1950s or earlier.  Too many guns are not new a new problem.  Past mayors faced with the same “gun problem” knew how to control crime as well as criminals.  Not today. 

In the past,  illegal guns mostly stayed in the drawer, the closet, or among dust balls under the bed. Taking a gun out onto the street was to risk arrest and a stiff jail sentence. On the street a peace officer might notice that bulge in a jacket or hip pocket and conduct a “stop and frisk”. Today there are no officers on patrol,  and if one is there they would studiously ignore any “tell tale” bulges knowing how fruitless and dangerous such an encounter might be.  It’s  a free for all for the criminals on the streets.  We do not need “gun control”, we need control of the “perps” that use guns. 

Furthermore, “gun control” will not address the underlying culture of violence and lawlessness. The city and our nation has espoused a new and dangerous (not to say deadly) excuse for or analysis of criminality.  The dangerous idea that criminals are the “victims” of society. And as victims of imagined inequity they are only “taking back” what they are “owed”.  This new Orwellian age philosophy has infected the thinking and decision making of the politicians and “elites”.  

This pernicious idea is the underlying cause of the present crime wave.   It must be addressed and refuted as a fallacy before  real change and improvement can occur.  

The philosophy of “victimhood” is the reason one billion dollars has been cut from the city police force budget.  It is the direct cause of the unprecedented ambush attacks on police.  It is why  recruitment is at a low ebb. Why the police are demoralized, demeaned as criminals rather than the often heroic crime fighters that they are.  It’s political effects can be seen in in the election of  DA s and prosecutors who do not prosecute crimes. 

It’s economic effects can be seen also in the darkened stores, middle class flight, fear to travel on the subways, businesses moving out of town, and resulting poverty and falling tax revenues ….and ultimate dystopia!

The phony rhetoric you will hear today from Biden and Adams about “gun control” will not stem the tide of physical attacks on the subway, or of being pushed to the subway tracks, or being slashed by crazed knife-wielders, or will it address the jumping of turnstiles, the rapes, the robbery, panhandling, constant pilfering from stores, as well as the smash and grab mobs which terrorize shop owners and the public. On the streets autos and trucks speed, park illegally and run red lights all manner of crime has increased in this city.  The politicians  will promise some “pie in the sky “ reforms…(like Biden’s fatuous, empty, ineffective plans to stem the tide of illegal immigrants on our southern border by sending our VP Harris with billions of dollars to Honduras and Nicaragua to encourage  the migrants to stay home.) 

But get ready NYC,  Joe Biden is coming and he is prepared to give out other useless cures like a diuretic or ACE inhibitor pill to a bleeding patient! 

Don’t let him get away with it. 

DEMEANING THE NON-COLLEGE VOTER

 Today, January 31, 2022, I read with annoyance in:  “The Hill”, “Biden is right, the GOP is on the wrong side of history” by Juan Willams.  Willams’ opinion piece states his racially divisive position right out front,  pointing out that the GOP is a “white people’s  party, since 83% are white”.  As if characterizing people only by the color of their skin can determine in some way how they think or vote…Come on Juan!   

In an attempt to bolster this weak and dangerous argument Williams adds: “It is also the party that wins the support of the majority of non-college educated whites (57%) and of rural southerners (60%).”   According to Juan Willams, the Democrats (must be much “better”) since they “have a majority support of women and white college graduates”.   Williams casts his slurs all around ..apparently he does not like southerners, whites and non-college educated.  But it is these non-college educated voters that these Democrats are always picking on as somehow unworthy (not smart enough?) to vote. As if Willams he was capable of deciding what was best or “good” decisions for these other free and independent citizens regarding the nation’s foreign or domestic policy.  Willams identifies himself as one of the ideologues and “wanna be” elites with that non sequitur. 

But let us evaluate these too often Democrat lauded “college educated” voters. 

When I was a college student way back in the last century…the intellectual and academic ideal was  for college students and the truly educated to courageously and persistently question all authority and to embrace what we called “critical thinking”.  That intellectual goal and academic value seems to be totally missing  today in the “modern” university. 

Today’s  academic institution is a  place which seems to be fanatically obsessed with: denying or revising or inventing history, name changing,  book burning, statue toppling- iconoclasm, imposing non-gender pronouns, as well as diversity, inclusiveness and indoctrination—all activities which encourage and insist on rigid regimentation. Conformity to an ideology, and lock-step thinking is the rule rather than open free inquiry.  Today, the college educated may simply be those more likely to have been brainwashed, indoctrinated or re-educated and stamped out as robotic rigid ideologues,  than their high school buddies they left at home when they went off to “Uni”.  

Back in those halcyon days of the last century when the Cold War raged beyond our secure borders, college students would have characterized the regimentation and lack of free speech experienced in today’s university as Soviet or Communist China style “brainwashing” or indoctrination.  We were free thinkers then. 

Encyclopedia Britannica on “Brainwashing”: The term refers to a form of political indoctrination or ideological remolding:   “The technique of brainwashing typically involves isolation from former associates and sources of information , an exacting regimen requiring obedience and humility, with strong social, pressures and rewards for cooperation and punishment for failure (such as)… social ostracism and criticism for non cooperation.” 

How does it happen? Today a high school student who enters their freshman year at one of our many colleges and universities has first and foremost affirmed  their willingness to be mentally indoctrinated, since they have actually made  the conscious decision, often with great effort and cost to others,  to make this step into this particular college or university.  When they arrive they are desperate for acceptance by their peers and by those faculty and upper classmates whom they view as their academic or intellectual  “betters”.    So right off they are primed for indoctrination. And what do they get?  Just like in a Chinese water torture or re-education camp, they are isolated from friends and family at home, and are relegated to an academic setting in which they must humble themselves in front of purveyors of “new” ideas and the great  “fonts of wisdom”. They must obey and accept the political and social nostrums of those in power in this new setting, or be punished for failing to regurgitate the “facts” of their hard-line ideologue “masters” who lecture them and who  promote and insist that they conform to the “font of wisdoms’s  “truth” which is the only “truth”. It must be constantly restated and regurgitated  just as it was set out.    

These cadres of complicit and malleable inductees are faced with severe punishment in the form of social ostracism, and worse, if they fail to fall in line.   While on the other hand, the fully compliant and cooperative  “re-educated” cadres are rewarded with a flood of “benefits” in the form of grades and  other valuable encomia if they do.  

The long four year  indoctrination period is very effective.  The now close- minded,  fully indoctrinated and re-educated leave  university  believing they are now endowed with special powers of all encompassing knowledge.  They are unaware that they are just the  stamped out manufactured product, endowed with the righteousness of the religious fanatic, and the zeal of a terrorist and implanted with inner mental workings no different than any other Apple programmed product.  They are uni “bots”

These so called  newly “college educated” enter society where they actively proselytize among the “unbelievers”  and strive to set themselves above the masses where they rigidly conform to any new nostrums and policies directed from academia or the establishment  so as to continue to be considered as a “member in good standing” of the elite “intellectual class”.    

Today in these upside down Orwellian times, when wrong is right, old is new, and left is right, and in an academia where once truth reigned, freedom of thought and inquiry, questioning of truth and real science is shunned. Today the ivy covered halls and escutcheons emblazoned with mottos such as: “Veritas”, or “Scientia” stand for nothing.  Too often today’s  ¨modern¨ universities are shuttered elite enclaves, where free speech and open inquiry is limited. Where diversity of skin color, gender, and sexual orientation is championed, but diversity of ideas is discouraged or punished.  

On the other hand, in this Orwellian world, where “universities” have become “mono product factories”  venues where true free speech, questioning,  and critical thinking,  are now found  only where the common folk meet.  It seems to this observer that more true mental growth and real thinking occurs where young people learn from experience and trial and error in the machine shop, auto garage, factory floor, office common, farm yard, ranch-house, hairdresser’s shop and  barbershop. In these places men and women with “no college” can lean to actually think on their own, question authority and formulate their own valid opinions about national issues.  

So when the politicians and the pollsters continue to record which candidates the “college educated” supported in a vote, don’t put too much credence in the wisdom of the results .  The college educated and the related  “wanna be” intellectuals are today’s controlled, indoctrinated thinkers, part of a system that is sadly destined for the waste bin of history. 

Real intellectuals question everyone, think for themselves…and permit no one dictate to them. 

ON NYC CRIME WAVE AND STOP AND FRISK

 ON SURGING VIOLENCE IN NYC AND STOP AND FRISK

Stop and Frisk, racial profiling or criminal profiling? 

The fact is, hypocritical progressives welcome and adamantly support actual racial profiling, as used by Harvard, Yale and USC to open academic opportunities for minorities, but they fiercely oppose any profiling policy when it is used by the police to protect innocent civilians.

So sad for the new “tough on crime-talking” NY mayoral candidate Eric Adams who has been in office only a few weeks,  and now actually has to do something about out of control violence in New York City.  Adams has been faced with a wave of violence in his first few weeks in office.  Violence on the subways ( slashing, rapes, murder,  riders being pushed  in front of on coming trains), and on the streets and busy avenues where random daytime shootings, stray bullets kill children and adults,  and most recently the purposeful targeting of police with deadly ambushes. Violence has gone off the charts.   

Adam’s response has been a lot of campaign style rhetoric including a new “blue print” to attack gun violence.  But as an initial supporter, I’m not convinced yet he has the moxie to get the job done.  So I’m  sad to find Adams, only a few weeks into the job, emanating those faint but troubling signs that he may be  out of his depth. His “doing something” has been mostly  pie in the sky plans, blaming guns not perpetrators for crime, asking “help” from DC, and more campaign style rhetoric (although it’s polished and uplifting for the moment) but will do little to actually get the gun toting perps off the street.  But we all do know what should be done.

Like the Democrat’s  failed response to the southern border immigrant surge—-we all know how to fix the problem—but the “progressive” ideologues in powerful places prefer other outcomes. Adams who was a cop himself..knows this too.  But can he overcome their opposition?

Then too the problem today (after Deblasio) is bigger and more entrenched now than it was in the past. Even the illegal armament facing Adams’ police force are no longer simple  “six guns” or “Saturday Night Specials” but literal machine guns (such as the Glock .22/.45 cal with illegal rotary magazine)  that can spew forty lead rounds in as many seconds,  as well as military style assault weapons, like the AK47.  The former “tommy” gun weapon was what was used to kill rookie NYPD cop,  22 year old Jason Rivera, and critically wound officer Wilbert Mora. 

But even though these permissive circumstances have been left to fester over the last eight years by the previous  mayor,  the solutions are well known.  Hizzoner must  get his new administration to abandon the “no bail” policy, charge juveniles who carry weapons as if they were adults, and encourage elected AGs to actually prosecute crimes as laid out by the state legislature. They must go after “out of control” street gangs and the “smash and grab” mobs as well.  These policies—so far unmentioned by the Mayor—would go a long way to solve the problem.  But sadly  (like the effective southern border wall) these ideas are all adamantly opposed by the powerful entrenched ideologues of the left.   Then there is Stop and Frisk.

Stop and Frisk, is a proven way to gets the guns off the streets and lock up those thousands of gang members, mentally disturbed, street predators and thugs that illegally carry weapons and are likely to commit crime. Stop and Frisk saves lives but is most effective in the minority communities where the guns are. It saves young black lives where this violence is rife.  

But the powerful and many of the Mayor’s Democrat supporters characterize this workable and practical policy as evil “racial profiling”.  Even though candidate Adams actually supported the policy,  we now hear little of it in his plans.  While most police professionals and those in favor of practical and effective solutions support it as a means of reducing violent crime, saving lives, and characterize it only as a form of  “criminal” profiling, with no racial element.  

Stop and Frisk if implemented, can be one of the factors that saves the City from decline and a future as a Chicago-like dystopia.  

The fact is that so called  “progressives” welcome and adamantly support actual racial profiling as used used by Harvard, Yale and USC to open academic opportunities for minorities, but they fiercely oppose it when it is used by the police to protect innocent civilians (and yes heroic cops who put their lives on the line when they go to work each day). 

UKRAINE CRISIS: ANOTHER BIDEN -OBAMA DISASTER

 In 2014 the Obama Administration destabilized and “politically invaded” the  Ukraine. The dummies responsible for that foolish foreign policy imbroglio and ongoing disaster are still in office and are responsible for today’s “Ukraine Crisis: Jake Sullivan, Victoria Nuland ( of “F….k the EU” fame) and “atta boy”  Joe Biden are still at it.  Let’s not let them forget that they caused this mess. 

Rather than being punished for their stupidity, the  USA incompetents, who in 2014 undermined and unseated a pro-Russian, legitimately elected  Ukrainian President and installed their “own man” at Russia’s doorstep, are still in government.  What was the result of that failed disaster?  Vladimir Putin  took over Crimea, and carved out and destabilized  the Donbas region of Ukraine where the majority of citizens are either of Russian extraction or are sympathetic to Russia.  The on going conflict there has caused  tens of thousands  of deaths that are attributable to the above cited characters. 

Since then, rather than attempting to deescalate and solve  that problem, the “wizards” of Foggy Bottom and the White House have managed to create another Afghanistan-like disaster by continuing to press for expansion of NATO into the East, and antagonizing the Russians, for no conceivable good reason. What is the advantage to the USA?  No one can answer that.

While the rest of the world watched, in disbelief,  the formerly powerful USA, under the Biden Administration,  morphed into a flabby giant, more concerned with picking fuzz from its belly button than maintaining national vigor and strength.  While other nations and our national enemies elected strong virile leadership, we turned to the old and infirm. Our present leadership  is deeply immersed in issues like undermining  our energy sector so as to turn our nation “green”.  They are focused on the skin color, gender and sex preferences of our leadership, rather than their competence. They have inflated our currency, opened our borders to increase “diversity”,  defunded the police, emptied  the prisons, politicized education, instituted  “woke” policies, CRT, an BLM, while they generally weaken, destabilize, and  pauperize their own homeland in the name of “science” and socialist progressivism.  The emphasis and focus on  “belly button fuzz” issues in DC have not gone unnoticed in Beijing and Moscow, and in Europe too.  DC’s immersion on “belly fuzz” issues have clearly emboldened our enemies and frightened our allies. 

In regard to the Ukraine crisis the same impotent, incompetent characters are stumbling about with their fingers buried in a dark place of their anatomy wondering how to respond to the unfolding Ukraine crisis that they themselves created. 

Let’s not let them forget that they generated this unfolding fiasco….and impending disaster.