Progressive media bought and paid for.

Vincent J. Curtis

27 Apr 20

Certain tactics used by progressives have become a sign of guilt.  The question was put, whether or to what degree Dr. Theresa Tam worked on behalf of the People’s Republic of China in respect of the world response to the coronavirus pandemic.  Significantly, progressives did not begin their defense of Dr. Tam with the word “no.”

Instead, they began with the predictable cry of “racist!” and then proceeded to change the subject.  The original question was changed to why won’t members of the Conservative party condemn their leadership candidate for his evident racism?  Not finding enough Conservatives to do so, progressives conclude effectively that the party is full of people of defective and unacceptable character.

The CBC released a story that Heritage Minister Steve Guilbeault was going to find emergency support money for newspapers out of a general business Covid-19 wage subsidy, in addition to a $595 million subsidy promised nearly two years ago.  Is it unjournalistic to ask whether the Federal subsidies played a role in the editorial shilling for the Liberal government?

We do know that Dr. Tam serves on the WHO Covid-19 committee, and that committee was thoroughly compromised by China.  That committee downplayed in mid-February the contagiousness of the coronavirus, on the basis of China’s official say-so.  We also know that Dr. Tam claimed that ordinary people shouldn’t use surgical masks for protection because they were ineffective, and, besides, people might hurt themselves.  This was at a time when Canada was shipping sixteen tonnes of medical PPE to China to help them cope with the crisis.

Is it fair to ask whether and to what degree Dr. Tam’s race played a role in her actions that manifestly supported official China?  It is certainly worth asking her why she did certain things when she did – if she will answer you.  One might also observe that she is turning into a shill for the Liberal party herself.

Meanwhile, the progressive defense of Dr. Tam by newspapers leaves them open to the charge of being bought and paid for by the Liberal government.
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Eat Your Vegetables

Vincent J. Curtis

25 Apr 20

Nothing gives a frisson of satisfaction like delivering a statement of moral certitude.  “Racism is evil,” “Stigmatizing language is hurtful,” “Safety first,” and “We must save every life we can – from Covid-19.”

The last statement is the dominant moral certitude of the day, and is obviously silly.  We can’t disregard all the deaths that are caused by the extreme measures that were undertaken for the sake of this certitude, as if these other deaths were mundane, less meaningful, less important.  So important it is to uphold this certitude that a person who dies with Covid-19 is deemed to have died from it by the health care system.  Co-morbidities don’t count.  We’ll readily destroy our economy for the sake of this certitude.

One problem with moral certitudes is that they tend to justify totalitarian measures, since nothing that upholds the certitude can itself be wrong.

Hence, when people protest at Queen’s Park the loss of their civil rights and jobs, Premier Ford is moved to accuse them of being “selfish, irresponsible, reckless, yahoos, lawbreakers, putting themselves and others in jeopardy, and they should be better than that.”  Imagine being called selfish for asserting your civil rights and for protesting the loss of your job, but that’s what moral certitude can do.

We know that sunlight, warm air, and a breeze will quickly disperse and kill the coronavirus, so young and healthy people protesting in the open air in daylight means that, as a matter of fact, they weren’t reckless, irresponsible, or putting themselves and others in jeopardy.  But with moral certitude, matters of facts don’t matter.

The pandemic of fear wafting around the coronavirus created the moral certitude that “we must save every life we can – from Covid-19,” and this in turn has released a thrilling inner totalitarian in a lot of people.  This can’t end soon enough.

Meanwhile, eat your vegetables – or else!
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The Nova Scotia Mass Shooting

Vincent J. Curtis

25 Apr 20

The RCMP have released few details about the mass shooting in Nova Scotia, which tells me there are embarrassing things they don’t want to become known too soon.  But there are some things we do know that can’t or haven’t been hidden.

The first is that all the gun control measures enacted in response to the École Polytichnique shootings of 1989 utterly failed.  Failed!  The shooter had no firearms permits, yet managed to acquire several long guns and at least one handgun without them.  All but one of the guns were traced to the United States.  We can be sure that no “assault-style” rifle was involved, because if one were the Trudeau government would be making that fact widely known.  Imagine that, twenty-two people shot over a period of thirteen hours, and no “assault-style” rifle was used.

The myth that the police will protect you was also exploded.  In rural Canada, police are at best forty-five minutes away, so if there is an active shooter in your rural area, you are on your own.  Disarming people in rural Canada on the grounds that you don’t need a firearm and, besides, the police will protect you, simply won’t wash anymore.

A gun confiscation would not have stopped the shooter because the police didn’t know he had any to confiscate.

The gun control regime is burdensome, even to the bureaucracy that runs it.  With a mass shooting in Canada once every thirty years or so, gun control procedures are empty, bureaucratic exercises of no urgency or importance and serve only to entrap the law-abiding.

The last point is obvious to most Americans, and this is that twenty-two people died for lack of shooting back.  If gun ownership were not so heavily discouraged in Canada, the shooter might have been startled, deterred, and even stopped by a few flying back at him.  But the shooter knew he was going after the unarmed, and so was taking no risks.

The RCMP found him by pure luck, and the tactical team likely gave him little time to consider his options.
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The Greatest Good for the Greatest Number

Vincent J. Curtis

23 Apr 20

When did we forget that the rule is the greatest good for the greatest number?

If there’s one thing that’s forgotten in this Covid crisis, it’s that people continue to die from other causes.  In Canada, about 250,000 people are going to die this year from all causes: cancer, heart disease, pneumonia, diabetes, Alzheimer’s, suicide, etc.  As of April 23^rd, there were roughly 40,000 known cases and 2,000 deaths from Covid-19.  What we have learned is that in most cases the person who died of coronavirus already had a health problem.

Recent studies in California indicate that our count of cases may be low by a factor of fifty to eighty.  The infection is so minor that most people aren’t aware that they had it.  These results, if valid, mean that the virus is wildly more contagious than we thought, and also far less deadly.  The consequences of this is that containment measures aren’t availing, and we are farther along the “herd immunity” curve than previously thought.

Eventually, the extreme mitigation measures will be lifted having done little for public health beyond delay the development of “herd immunity.”  That is the fear, that releasing people from containment will cause a new surge in cases.  Well, duh!  Until half or more of the population have developed anti-bodies for the virus, a second outbreak will almost certainly occur.  We need less containment.

Will less containment result in more deaths?  Likely, but we’re in the middle of a pandemic, so get over it.  Narcissistic moralizing and virtue-signaling about “saving every life we can - from coronavirus” are getting in the way of sensible resolution of the crisis.  The rule is the greatest good for the greatest number.  If 10,000 people die, coronavirus might crack the top ten causes of death in Canada this year, and maybe not if you assign the cause of death to the morbidity the person already had before they contracted the virus.  We may get there anyway, just slowly.

It is now becoming clear that we are destroying our economy and ruining public finances out of a moralistic myopia.  In the midst of a pandemic, you have to expect an uptick in annual mortality.  You can’t stop it.  It won’t go away until “herd immunity” is developed, hard as that is to achieve.  To get there, we have let the herd loose and have it run the minefield, expecting thing will get ugly before they get better.

But we can’t stay locked up where we are.
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Old Socialists Like Pavlov's Dog

Vincent J. Curtis

22 Apr 20

Desperate for editorial variety in the midst of a government imposed shutdown, the Hamilton Peoples’ Daily turned to a retirement home evacuee for a diatribe.  The old geezer wheezed and sputtered about the wickedness of capitalism, as he has with reliable tediousness for the last fifty-five years.

Senility hasn’t improved the product.  The implication of anti-capitalism is the new and improved version of scientific socialism, such as that practiced in Communist China, North Korea, or Venezuela.  The Wuhan virus pandemic (as it is called in the People’s Republic, except in Mandarin), however, has made aware even the dullest among us of the true nature of socialist paradises, which has to make you wonder where on the evolutionary scale today’s fan-boys of socialism really are.

An allowance needs to be made for the innocence of childhood – even if it is a second childhood we’re speaking of.  We were assured that Canada had the gratitude of China, but on April 20, China sent home empty two cargo aircraft that had been dispatched from Canada to pick up needed medical supplies.  Young Justin excused the incident as a logistical mishap, but these kinds of mistakes don’t happen by accident in communist countries.

It will be a stick in the eye to the socialist geezers when Trumpian capitalist America finds the cure and the vaccine for the disease released from a communist Chinese bio-lab, just as America is conjuring a tidal wave of medical supplies seemingly out of nowhere.
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Scofflaws promote herd immunity

Vincent J. Curtis

20 Apr 20

Our so-called experts continue to demonstrate how thin and lacking in experience that expertise is.  During the Spanish flu pandemic of 1918, doctors found that open-air hospitals tended to have better outcomes.  They believed it was due to the better air circulation that rapidly dispersed harmful aerosols and to the disinfecting action of the sun.  The health benefits of being in open air and enjoying the sunshine haven’t been repealed just because today’s expert in epidemiology never learned about it.

It matters a great deal how many viruses a person was initially infected with to the progress of symptoms.  It matters whether the person was inoculated with a hundred, a thousand, or a million viruses initially.  A million virus inoculation can begin to produce a health crisis before the body’s immune system can detect and respond effectively.  With a hundred or a thousand virus inoculation, the virus must pass through several generations of multiplication in the body to reach the million virus threshold.  This time of negligible to modest health effects gives the body’s immune system the chance to detect and respond with the antibodies that kill the virus before a serious health crisis ensues.

Modest infection is how “herd immunity” develops, and is why scoffing at the “laws” outside in the sunshine interacting with other people while enjoying the pleasant breeze ought to be encouraged.

Until “herd immunity” is developed this virus won’t be overcome, and keeping people locked indoors and the economy shutdown prevents the development of “herd immunity.”
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Progressivism and Covid 19

Vincent J. Cutis

18 Apr 20

Much of progressivism can be summarized in two concepts: rule by experts and the moral equivalent of war.  The Covid crisis has provided the opportunity for both.

What we have learned about rule by expert is that you have to pick the right expert.  Each expert can be thought of as a hammer who sees the problem as his or her nail.  The Covid crisis has introduced the expert in epidemiology, and their primary technique is the quarantine.  The voices of other medical experts are suppressed.  All other medical procedures are suppressed for the sake of the quarantine.  Stopping deaths from the epidemic take precedence over all else, including deaths caused by the quarantine itself.  Those other deaths don’t count.

Experts in economics are also suppressed, except for contriving measures to support the quarantine.  The economy can be flattened, but all economists are needed for is to explode the Federal deficit and have the Bank of Canada print money, all to support the quarantine.

There are examples of the moral equivalent of war being applied by genuine non-experts, like the Governor of Michigan, Gretchen Whitmer.  She decided that selling paint and garden seeds would undermine the quarantine, and would therefore be banned.  You can’t have joint replacement surgery in Michigan, but you can have an abortion.  So the Governor decreed.  And when 10,000 people drove to the state capital to protest from their cars these arbitrary and capricious measures, the Governor accused them of spreading the disease.  Should her State Attorney-General and Lieutenant-Governor stage a coup d’état, having over-ridden her State constitution, Whitmer wouldn’t have a legal case to argue.

The Covid crisis has exposed all the weaknesses of progressivism.  First, you have to pick the right expert.  Second, the myopia of the expert you pick can create problems that make their cure worse than the disease.  Only one expert at a time can rule, and a non-expert needs to decide which expert holds the sceptre.  The moral equivalent of war gives even charlatans practically unlimited power – power that is not always aimed accurately at the public good.

The progressive mind-set enabled constitutionally protected civil rights to be destroyed easily and with impunity.  The repercussions of this season-long trial of full progressivism will be felt for a decade or more, so great were the economic measures employed to support it.

One hopes the people have learned their lesson, and when the cry goes up that the virus has returned, the people say, “tough!”
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Theresa Tam: Saint or Dictator?

Vincent J. Curtis

16 Apr 20

Before the media grants sainthood or dictatorial powers upon Dr. Theresa Tam, there are a few things the public ought to know.  First, epidemics are her specialty.  She’s a hammer and we are the nails.  Second, Dr. Tam is myopic in her view on the coronavirus to the exclusion of all else, and she has not been scientific in her public health assessments.

Dr. Tam will be ever remembered for her slogan, “we can’t save every life, but we must save every life we can.”  This is not a scientific statement, it is virtue-signaling of the highest order.  As a public health official, Dr. Tam knows there are other causes of death besides coronavirus.  Among these are causes related to anxiety, such as suicide and drug addiction.  Poverty is a remote cause of death, as the Hamilton Spectator’s Code Red series pointed out.  And medical conditions left untreated because the health system is focussed so heavily on preventing the spread of the coronavirus, will become rising causes of death.

A public health official who bases her decisions on science would regard deaths from these other causes as every bit significant as those caused by the coronavirus.  She would be looking to strike a balance for an overall optimum, not focussing exclusively on measures directed to the attainment of one outcome to the disregard of all the rest.  A public health official, based on science, would recognize that a bad hand has been dealt, would expect rising mortality, would speak frankly about minimizing all risks holistically, not excluding all others for the sake of just the most newsworthy (which happens to be her speciality), and would refrain from moralizing rhetoric.


Dr. Tam is a woman of colour who speaks in progressive platitudes, and so it’s no wonder Canada’s media hang on her every over-rated word.
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Bait and Switch

Vincent J. Curtis

14 Apr 20

The shutdown of Canada’s economy and the unconstitutional and unlawful imposition of quarantine measures on all Canadians were predicted on the belief that the coronavirus pandemic would overwhelm our health care system.  Now that we are at or past the peak of cases, the goal has switched.  We aren’t trying to save the health care system anymore, we are trying to “save lives” and eradicate the virus altogether by maintaining quarantine and other extreme mitigation measures.

By imposing measures to save the health care system and then changing the goal to “saving lives” and eradicating the virus, the public health experts and the politicians who slavishly follow them have engaged in a bait and switch.  The health care system is now ready to cope with the remains of the pandemic, but the economy and people remain under lockdown.  The question remains, why?

Life is not without risk, and the remains of the pandemic amount to nothing more than a seasonal flu, the risks of which we accept as an ordinary fact of life.

No government order can override our Charter Rights under Section 2(c) and (d)  to peaceful assembly and association.  No Quarantine Act can override those Rights either, and none grants the authority of government to quarantine healthy people, to say nothing of the vast mass of the people.

The public health officials have had their moment, and now they are starting to take advantage of it.  It is time for our elected politicians to take back their powers and end this unconstitutional, unlawful, and extreme mitigation measures immediately.
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Quarantine Measures Violate Charter Rights

Vincent J. Curtis

11 Apr 20

The Charter of Rights and Freedoms, Sections 2(a) and (c), guarantee freedom of religion and the right to peaceful assembly.  On the face of it, Christian faiths ought to be able to celebrate Easter with regular assemblies in churches.  The Charter can be overridden with the Notwithstanding Clause, but no such clause appears in Canada’s Quarantine Act.

A reading of the Quarantine Act makes it clear that the Act was not intended for a quarantining of the entire nation.  It speaks of places of quarantine, and of the requirement of people entering Canada at ports of entry to present themselves to a “screening officer.”  Above all, the people who are subject to quarantined are those who are, or could be, sick.  There is no power granted for mass quarantining of healthy people.

Political leaders in times of crisis can certainly ask for cooperation and unity, but invoking authorities they don’t possess and passing laws or by-laws to enforce an unlawful quarantine on healthy people undermines the rule of law.

H.L. Mencken wrote, “The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with and endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.”  We can see the force of his statement in the reaction to the pandemic.
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In midst of crisis, Trudeau hides behind Tam

Vincent J. Curtis

9 Apr 20

Nobody expects a drama teacher or a journalist to be conversant with distribution functions.  After watching Canada’s Chief Public Health Officer, Dr. Theresa Tam, inform the media of expected progress of the CONID-19 pandemic, I’m not sure she understands them either.

For example, Dr. Tam showed three distribution curves of different scenarios.  These curves strongly resembled bell curves, or Gaussian distributions.  A Gaussian distribution has three variables: one we can identify as time, and the others are expectation value and standard deviation.  Dr. Tam did not clearly explain that the standard deviations, and times at which the expectation values occurred were even more speculative than the expectation values themselves were.

The expectation values of infection cases were merely scenarios – what if 1 to 10 percent (an order of magnitude, BTW), 25 to 50 percent (another huge range), or 70 to 80 percent of the population were infected.  But no explanation was given about time of maximum, or standard deviation.  These variables were picked out for illustration purposes only, and were not based on real data.  These curves were models all right, but they unmoored from reality.  They served as impressive looking hand-waves that made wild guesses look impressive.

Another chart showed that Canada began strong mitigation measures well before the number of cases appeared above zero on the graph.  The question then arises, how could transmission from practically no one to tens of thousands occur in the face of strong isolation measures that began March 10^th?  And, given that an isolation of 14 days is sufficient to prove infection or not, how can infection continue to spread according to her graphs over multiple fortnights in the face of strong mitigation?

Another problem with Tam’s presentation was her estimate of deaths.  How were her numbers arrived at?  She used a morbidity ratio of 2.2 % for the April 16 estimate, but 1.17 % for 80 percent of the population getting infected.  Morbidity is not the same across each demographic, so how was the morbidity rate estimated and total number of deaths calculated?

Dr. Tam scared the hell out of the journalists but did so, not with data, but on the weight of her authority and with the aid of graphs that did nothing but illustrate scenarios.  The actual data, of cases since March1st, is pretty thin, and the plot shows a curve levelling off on April 14^th, with precisely 22,580 cases and 500 deaths.  What if this is the actual scenario?

Dr. Tam used a common trick of giving very precise numbers to bolster credibility.  She “forecasted”  22,580 to 31,850 cases by April 16, when she ought to have said 27,000 plus or minus 4,000, or from 23,000 to 32,000.  This still gives the estimate of 500 to 700 deaths.  One has to wonder if Dr. Tam really understood that trickery to impress - giving falsely precise numbers -  was at work in her presentation.

Dr. Tam was relentless in her virtue-signalling and her insistence that we keep the country shut down.  The curves, she said, showed “critical outcomes, resulting in DEATH.  These STARK numbers tell us we MUST do everything we can NOW to remain in that best case scenario, to stay in the lower range, WITH STRONG EPIDEMIC CONTROLS.  Our collective effort, DESPITE ALL THE HARDSHIP AND COSTS, is CRITICAL as we MUST minimize the population infected IN ORDER TO KEEP DEATH, admissions, and hospitalizations AS LOW AS POSSIBLE.  The resolve and the level of effort of all Canadians from our health care workers on the front lines to public health authorities to all Canadians who are practicing physical distancing will ultimately determine if we remain in this best case scenario and ensure that our health system can cope.  WE CANNOT PREVENT EVERY DEATH, BUT WE MUST PREVENT EVERY DEATH THAT WE CAN!”

I think history is going to show that we destroyed our economy for next to nothing.  But no one is going to blame Dr. Tam that her moralistic insistence on mitigation destroyed the economy because the economy is not her lane.  No one will blame Mr. Trudeau for not getting a second opinion.  Anyhow, the evidence is there that Dr. Tam is making wild guesses at the cost of our economy, and that the Prime Minister is content to let strong women run the country with him as the titular head.
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Time to End Excessive Mitigation

Vincent J. Curtis

8 Apr 20

There are a whole lot of alleged experts croaking about keeping these extreme quarantine measures in place for months, or even years.  We seem to have forgotten why extreme quarantine was put into place, and that was to prevent overwhelming the health care system.

The health care system lacked the ICU beds and ventilators to accommodate all the cases we were told to expect – back in early March.  We had to flatten the curve because a sharp peak of cases would overwhelm the system.

We are now into the third successive 14-day quarantine period, and the number of cases and number of fatal cases are far below the apocalyptic figures presented at the beginning of the crisis.

Thanks to the wonders of capitalism, we will soon be overwhelmed with medical PPE and ventilators.  The need for mass quarantine will be over by the end of April because the curves are already flattening, and we will have the gear to tackle a re-emergence of the virus in a second wave should it occur.  In addition, the promising drug treatments will be confirmed soon as well.

It is important that we maintain perspective, and not get fearmongered by well-intentioned medical professionals.  They’re hammers, we’re nails, and the only economy they’re responsible for is their own.  Life is never without risks, and an easily treatable flu-like coronavirus will soon be simply another one.

We ought to start refocussing our mitigation efforts on the few who are at serious risk, and leave everyone else free get back to normal lives.  Extending extreme mitigation beyond the end of April ought to be viewed with extreme skepticism.
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Shameless Left accuses Trump of doing what they're doing.

Vincent J. Curtis

6 Apr 20


The Associated Depressed is full of opinionated pips these days.  In an opinion piece headlined, "Trump using pandemic to push braoder agenda" writer Aamer Madhani, a name I’d expect to see in the credits of “Leave it to Beaver”, implied (what's the AP doing issuing signed opinion pieces?) that Trump is illicitly using the pandemic crisis to push his agenda.  Those items are: to bring back the entertainment tax deduction, for tightening the border, and for a protectionist tariff policy.  “Never let a crisis go to waste” is the ‘old adage’ Trump is allegedly following.

That 'old adage' was coined by Rahm Emanuel in 2009 while Barack Obama’s Chief of Staff, said in reference to the financial crisis of that day.  It was most recently invoked by Rep. Jim Clyburn (D-GA) and Queen Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) who tried but failed to stuff the Green New Deal and other Democrat hobby-horses into the first pandemic financial relief bill in March.  Whatever the Left accuse you of doing, they are doing precisely that themselves.

Trump campaigned not on protectionism but on America First, by which he meant that the United States could not afford to have vital industries shipped to China and to need China for supply of crucial goods.  What we have seen is that Trump’s industrial policy and strong border policy are being amply justified in the face of this crisis.

The business of the return of the entertainment tax deduction comes from a businessman’s experience of the repeal of the deduction, and Trump suggested it as a means of stimulating the restaurant business when the crisis is over.

The hate-Trump media have learned nothing.
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Are we losing perspective amid crisis?

Vincent J. Curtis

5 Apr 20

The Ontario government released grim sounding figures concerning the number of deaths that could occur in the province as a result of the coronavirus pandemic.  The numbers quoted were between three and fifteen thousand dead over the next eighteen to twenty-four months.

What was not given was perspective.  How many people will die over that time frame from all causes – cancer, heart attack, car accidents, and plain old age?  With a population of nine million, let’s assume that the number of people that die per year from all causes is 100,000.  That means that roughly 150,000 to 200,000 Ontarians will die from all causes over the coronavirus time frame.  The lower end of the coronavirus estimate amounts to a rounding error in the Ontario total.  The higher end places an upward nudge in the overall number.

The health officials used a surprisingly long period, eighteen to twenty-four months.  How long do they really expect this thing to run, given the extreme quarantine conditions we are subjected to?  How long will those conditions remain given the time frame of two years?

Self-isolation is supposed to put the bug out of business in short order.  If we are going back to work in a month to six weeks, when are most of these deaths supposed to happen, surely not after June?  If so, why are we shut down now?

I’m getting the feeling that no one has a real grasp of the overall situation, or of what to do.  The economy is suspended, but it can’t remain so for long.  Nobody is talking about selective quarantining of seniors and those with lung problems – who are notably at risk of fatal infection.  On the other hand, children under eighteen years are practically unaffected by the coronavirus.  Can’t they, with exceptions, go back to school soon?

It could be that the extreme quarantine measures are a panicked over-reaction.  Of course the medical professionals want a mass quarantine.  They get still get paid and they’re not out of work.  The only economy they’re responsible for is their own.

We have a bunch of hammers each looking at the problem as if it were his nail.  What we need is a generalist who is able to say that a certain level of risk must be expected in this life, and allow the province to return to a form of normal.

Cue the virtue signallers.
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Amid crisis Progressives contemplate their navels.

Vincent J. Curtis

4 Apr 2020

The Hannon Times continues to push an progressive mindset in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic.  On April 3^rd, it ran no fewer than four articles that amount to nothing but idle speculation, the daily editorial, and articles by Craig Wallace, Jennifer Good (a professor at Brock University in St. Catharines), and a signed piece by AP writer Cara Anna.  Wallace thinks we need to go backwards in time, Good thinks that climate change is bad, The Time’s editorial provides evidence that Good needs to rethink her position, and the AP proves that it does know what the word “existential” means.

Craig Wallace, an author of misanthropic novels, believes that this COVID-19 crisis shows we need to return to the society of 1970, when tax rates were high and social welfare generous.  He left out of his analysis that churches were much fuller then, debt levels were much lower, the Vietnam War had just crested, and Canada went through the FLQ crisis.  There is no going back.

Jennifer Good is another one of those Arts majors who thinks her expertise in popular culture, film, and communication qualifies her to opine with the weight of an expert on climate change.  Her opinion is that climate change is bad too.

The Times’ own editorial hit on something that ought to ring a bell with climate alarmists, the mathematical model.  The mathematics of modelling pandemics is good, and all that is needed for projections to be accurate is for the right data to be plugged into the variables.  But in climate modelling, the math is not good, in part because the modelers don’t know all the variables, never mind having good data to plug into the variables they know.

Accurate modelling of the pandemic is problematic because the data can change so rapidly.  Accurate modelling of climate is plain hopeless by comparison - its projections cannot be even as reliable as those of pandemic modelling.

All the climate alarmists have are models, and those models have over-estimated actual temperature measurements for the last twenty years.  Perhaps this experience with pandemic modelling will make the public more skeptical of the catastrophic projections of the climate alarmists.

If the article by Cara Anna of the Associated Depressed shows anything (Africa faces an existential threat) it is that she doesn’t understand what the word “existential” means, nor do any of the experts she quotes.

Demographically, Africa is a young and rapidly growing continent.  It is riddled with malaria.  Both these conditions, youth and malaria, have been found to be barriers to fatalities due to coronavirus infection.  In addition, because of the poor health care in Africa, people who are alive don’t tend to have underlying lung conditions, which are what tend to make a coronavirus infection especially lethal.  In short, the conditions required to render the African population vulnerable to a near extinction – which is what an “existential” threat is - simply don’t obtain.

The article’s proposition that, in the coronavirus, Africa faces an “existential” threat is arrant nonsense.

Perhaps the Times, in the absence of other news, have nothing else to do but offer navel contemplation.
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Botao Xioa paper: The possible origins of the coronavirus

Vincent J. Curtis

2 Apr 2020

Just in case this disappears from other places on the internet.:




The possible origins of 2019-nCoV coronavirus
Botao Xiao1,2* and Lei Xiao3

1 Joint International Research Laboratory of Synthetic Biology and Medicine, School
of Biology and Biological Engineering, South China University of Technology,
Guangzhou 510006, China 
2 School of Physics, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan
430074, China
3 Tian You Hospital, Wuhan University of Science and Technology, Wuhan 430064,
China

* Corresponding author: xiaob@scut.edu.cn
Tel / Fax: 86-20-3938-0631













The 2019-nCoV coronavirus has caused an epidemic of 28,060 laboratory-confirmed infections in human including 564 deaths in China by February 6, 2020. Two descriptions of the virus published on Nature this week indicated that the genome sequences from patients were 96% or 89% identical to the Bat CoV ZC45 coronavirus originally found in Rhinolophus affinis 1,2. It was critical to study where the pathogen came from and how it passed onto human. An article published on The Lancet reported that 41 people in Wuhan were found to have the acute respiratory syndrome and 27 of them had contact with Huanan Seafood Market 3. The 2019-nCoV was found in 33 out of 585 samples collected in the market after the outbreak. The market was suspicious to be the origin of the epidemic, and was shut down according to the rule of quarantine the source during an epidemic.  The bats carrying CoV ZC45 were originally found in Yunnan or Zhejiang province, both of which were more than 900 kilometers away from the seafood market. Bats were normally found to live in caves and trees. But the seafood market is in a densely-populated district of Wuhan, a metropolitan of ~15 million people. The probability was very low for the bats to fly to the market. According to municipal reports and the testimonies of 31 residents and 28 visitors, the bat was never a food source in the city, and no bat was traded in the market. There was possible natural recombination or intermediate host of the coronavirus, yet little proof has been reported.  Was there any other possible pathway? We screened the area around the seafood market and identified two laboratories conducting research on bat coronavirus. Within ~280 meters from the market, there was the Wuhan Center for Disease Control & Prevention (WHCDC) (Figure 1, from Baidu and Google maps). WHCDC hosted animals in laboratories for research purpose, one of which was specialized in pathogens collection and identification 46. In one of their studies, 155 bats including Rhinolophus affinis were captured in Hubei province, and other 450 bats were captured in Zhejiang province 4. The expert in collection was noted in the Author Contributions (JHT). Moreover, he was broadcasted for collecting viruses on nation-wide newspapers and websites in 2017 and 2019 7,8. He described that he was once by attacked by bats and the blood of a bat shot on his skin. He knew the extreme danger of the infection so he quarantined himself for 14 days 7. In another accident, he quarantined himself again because bats peed on him. He was once thrilled for capturing a bat carrying a live tick 8.  Surgery was performed on the caged animals and the tissue samples were collected for DNA and RNA extraction and sequencing 4, 5. The tissue samples and contaminated trashes were source of pathogens. They were only ~280 meters from the seafood market. The WHCDC was also adjacent to the Union Hospital (Figure 1, bottom) where the first group of doctors were infected during this epidemic. It is plausible that the virus leaked around and some of them contaminated the initial patients in this epidemic, though solid proofs are needed in future study.  The second laboratory was ~12 kilometers from the seafood market and belonged to Wuhan Institute of Virology, Chinese Academy of Sciences 1, 9, 10. This laboratory reported that the Chinese horseshoe bats were natural reservoirs for the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus (SARS-CoV) which caused the 2002-3 pandemic 9. The principle investigator participated in a project which generated a chimeric virus using
the SARS-CoV reverse genetics system, and reported the potential for human emergence 10. A direct speculation was that SARS-CoV or its derivative might leak from the laboratory. In summary, somebody was entangled with the evolution of 2019-nCoV coronavirus. In addition to origins of natural recombination and intermediate host, the killer coronavirus probably originated from a laboratory in Wuhan. Safety level may need to be reinforced in high risk biohazardous laboratories. Regulations may be taken to relocate these laboratories far away from city center and other densely populated places.


Contributors BX designed the comment and performed literature search. All authors performed data acquisition and analysis, collected documents, draw the figure, and wrote the papers.

Acknowledgements This work is supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (11772133, 11372116).

Declaration of interests All authors declare no competing interests.

References

1. Zhou P, Yang X-L, Wang X-G, et al. A pneumonia outbreak associated with a new coronavirus of probable bat origin. Nature 2020. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-020-2012-7. 2. Wu F, Zhao S, Yu B, et al. A new coronavirus associated with human respiratory disease in China. Nature 2020. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-020-2008-3. 3. Huang C, Wang Y, Li X, et al. Clinical features of patients infected with 2019 novel coronavirus in Wuhan, China. The Lancet 2019. https://doi.org/10.1016/S01406736(20)30183-5. 4. Guo WP, Lin XD, Wang W, et al. Phylogeny and origins of hantaviruses harbored by bats, insectivores, and rodents. PLoS pathogens 2013; 9(2): e1003159. 5. Lu M, Tian JH, Yu B, Guo WP, Holmes EC, Zhang YZ. Extensive diversity of rickettsiales bacteria in ticks from Wuhan, China. Ticks and tick-borne diseases 2017; 8(4): 574-80. 6. Shi M, Lin XD, Chen X, et al. The evolutionary history of vertebrate RNA viruses. Nature 2018; 556(7700): 197-202. 7. Tao P. Expert in Wuhan collected ten thousands animals: capture bats in mountain at night. Changjiang Times 2017. 8. Li QX, Zhanyao. Playing with elephant dung, fishing for sea bottom mud: the work that will change China's future. thepaper 2019. 9. Ge XY, Li JL, Yang XL, et al. Isolation and characterization of a bat SARS-like coronavirus that uses the ACE2 receptor. Nature 2013; 503(7477): 535-8. 10. Menachery VD, Yount BL, Jr., Debbink K, et al. A SARS-like cluster of circulating bat coronaviruses shows potential for human emergence. Nature medicine 2015; 21(12): 1508-13.




Figure 1. The Huanan Seafood Market is close to the WHCDC (from Baidu and Google maps

Approaching Victory 1945

Vincent J. Curtis

10 Feb 2019

April 1945, in the words of one regimental war diary, “which commenced with our push northward from our concentration area at the Rhine, was undoubtedly the most turbulent and widely travelled month the battalion had spent since leaving England.”

After the closure of the Falaise Gap on 21 Aug, 1944, the 2^nd Canadian Corps advanced to the River Seine and crossed it at Elbeuf and Rouen.  September saw the liberation of Dieppe, the investment of Dunkirk, and the liberation of Belgium’s Ostend and Bruges.

Stiffening German resistance required the 2^nd Canadian Corps to mount formal operations: Wellhit to capture Boulogne and Undergo to capture Calais and Cap Gris Nez.

October, 1944, saw the mounting of Operation Switchback to clear Belgium north of the Albert Canal and Operations Vitality and Infatuate to clear the South Beveland peninsula and Walcheren Island.

A phase of static operations commenced in November and compassed the period of the German counterattack known as the Battle of the Bulge.

The advance resumed in February, 1945, with Operation Veritable, the attack on the Reichwald Forest, and then Blockbuster, which comprehended the battle of the Hochwald Gap and the capture of Xanthan on the Rhine River, the traditional western border of Germany.

The 2^nd Canadian Corps pushed eastward into Germany near the border with the Netherlands, in the area known as Lower Saxony.  With the coming of April, the end of the war was in sight.  The Soviets were pushing westward from the Vistula River in Poland into pre-1939 German territory.  The Americans, spearheaded by General George Patton’s Third Army, was knifing eastward through the belly of the beast towards Prague, Czechoslovakia.

German resistance became sporadic: dangerous, unpredictable, and frustrating.  Some infantry units were experiencing four or five KIA/DW’s every day, along with half a dozen to a dozen wounded.  Most of these casualties were caused by sniper fire, artillery and mortars, and rockets known a “Moanin’ Minies”.  The occasional machine gun caught the unwary out in the open.  Although these daily losses seem small, after ten days to two weeks they add up.  A fully manned infantry battalion mustered only five hundred in those days, and infantry companies often fielded only fifty men.

Men began experiencing the “getting short” syndrome, first acknowledged in the Vietnam War.  (As a tour was coming to an end, men got very cautious and took no risks hoping not to get killed just before they came home.)  Patience with German resistance was wearing thin.  The war was clearly lost, PW’s were coming in every day, yet pockets of needlessly fierce resistance were encountered.

At Friesoythe, this impatience exploded.  The 4^th Canadian Armored Division, under the command Maj-Gen Chris Vokes, had to take this German town which was believed defended by about 200 paratroops.  The civilians had evacuated.  The Lake Superior Regiment assaulted the town on 13 April and were repulsed with two dead and nineteen wounded.  Next up were the Argyll & Sutherland Highlanders, under the command of Lt-Col Fred Wigle.  Since the LSRs had attacked from the west, Wigle decided to march at night around the town and attack at dawn from the east.

The plan worked beautifully, except that advancing companies missed a group of about fifty paratroops.  These Germans attacked the battalion tactical HQ, which was behind the advancing companies.  Wigle was killed, shot in the back by a sniper.  Lt Alan Earp (later OC, CD and HCol) was shot through the head, but survived.  The town was secured by mid-morning, but when the troops heard of the death of their CO, all hell broke loose.  An enraged Vokes, who commanded 1^st Div at Ortona against the German 1^st Parachute Division, ordered Friesoythe razed in reprisal of Wigel’s death.  The Argylls needed no encouragement.  Crocodiles (flame-throwing tanks) were brought in and burned down the town, the stone buildings were demolished, and the rubble used to rebuild roads that had been heavily cratered.

The end of April still didn’t herald the end of resistance.

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