Quick Jots: February 2023

Large metastudy on masks by the Cochrane Library
#covid-19
A metastudy by the Cochrane Library looked at randomized controlled tests for surgical masks and found that "wearing masks in the community probably makes little or no difference to the outcome of influenza-like illness". This was not surprising, as Rational Ground had come to this conclusion by collating COVID numbers with the New York Times mask surveys way back in 2020. The Cochrane Library also looked at N95 respirators and interestingly found that the results are similar to surgical masks, which surprised me, though they say they are very uncertain of these results. It also mentioned that hand hygiene has been shown to have a 14% reduction in infection spread.

The authors ultimately concluded that several issues with studies prevent them from making firm conclusions. As corporate media eagerly caveated, if they did even bother to report on it, that the review was stated with "low confidence". This is, however, the largest known study of real-world randomized control tests on masks, with a sample size in the hundreds of thousands, across the world, giving it the highest confidence of any study to date, even if it is low. Given the likeliness, even if without a very high confidence level, that masks don't have much of an effect, this should cast a very negative light on mask mandates. Even if the test was completely inconclusive, it should make politicians that advocated for mask mandates and those that shouted down or banned from social media any dissent from these mandates, run and hide in shame, if they are capable of shame. If you want to take away basic freedoms, you better have pretty solid proof and not just fear-mongering and the same incredibly flawed lab studies the CDC and the NYT kept pointing to. Some people are waiting for their apologies.

Ohio train wreck
#regulations
A major train wreck in East Palestine, Ohio had its toxic chemicals released by authorities to prevent an explosion. The chemicals spread and they conducted a controlled burn that resulted in dead fish in creeks as well as dying pets. The EPA said the air and water are safe. Er...Okay.

Immediately, fingers pointed at the relaxing of regulations that caused a wheel bearing to overheat, with cries for regulations to be implemented. Like clockwork, a report from safety officials suggests the regulations would have done nothing to prevent the crash. Additionally, the repealed regulation would not have applied to the train in question, anyway, since the regulation applied only to those classified as "high hazard flammable trains", which the crashed train was not.

Mike Pompeo grew up libertarian???
#mikepompeo #notlibertarian
Well, this is hilarious. In an interview with the great John Stossel, Mike Pompeo claimed he grew up libertarian. The guy that praised NSA spying on Americans, attacked Julian Assange for releasing documents that reveal government wrongdoing, opposed ending torture in secret prisons like Guantanamo, that Edward Snowden should be given the death penalty, and supported the war genocide in Yemen. Yeah, that asshole said, "The idea of less government power being better for the American people is something that is very near and dear to my heart." I hope Pompeo recovers from his multiple personality disorder soon.

You fund disinformation indexes that spread disinformation
#freespeech
Apparently, the US State Department funds the Global Disinformation Index, a British organization that attempts to determine which news organizations spread disinformation. This organization released a report that criticizes Reason Magazine for being in the top 10 "riskiest online news outlets", despite the publication receiving a perfect score from NewsGuard, and high factual reporting from Media Bias Fact Check stating that it has a clean fact check record and proper sourcing. As one may have noticed, I rely on Reason fairly heavily since they tend to be very accurate and seems to have one of the best track records out there. The GDI is confused in its criticism of Reason, as they state Reason does not source authorship (have they even looked at one article? all authors are stated and have bios), fact-checking processes (sources are frequently cited with in-line links), and lacks policies to prevent disinformation in the comments section (yeah, it's a comments section, you morons). Looking at the GDI's list of the 10 riskiest, it's just a list of right-leaning to right-wing news outlets, with Reason as the sole exception, being a libertarian outlet. Yeah, I'm sure there was no bias in making that list. Then looking at its 10 best list, it contains BuzzFeed News, whose major claim to fame was getting their Trump perjury "scoop" fantastically wrong, and HuffPo, a glorified blog. Maybe the GDI should look inwards for disinformation as they listed Anme Applebaum as a GDI advisor when she hadn't had contact with GDI for years (what's that about sourcing authorship, again?), and blacklisted sites that spread COVID lab-leak theory, which is gaining more and more ground (see below).

Lab leak theory
#freespeech #covid-19
In another blow to those that call people that talk about the lab leak theory racist (for some unknown reason), the US Department of Energy has concluded, albeit with "low confidence" that the likely origin of COVID was due to a lab leak at a Chinese Communist Party lab. Did it? Who the hell knows. Thanks to the CCP who covered up and denied investigations for over a year before conducting a joint investigation with the WHO that has been known to often act as a puppet of China during the pandemic, we may never know for sure. But what this does prove is that the censorious idea of not allowing people to not even talk about a certain theory is anti-intellectual, anti-science, and dangerous. Those that pushed for censoring the theory or at least dismissing it as a conspiracy theory, like the New York Times, the Washington Post, CNN, MSNBC, PolitiFact, Facebook, the Global Disinformation Index, NPR...the list is far too long and it includes all the "respected" news outlets. These outlets and platforms are not likely to pause on much introspection or alter their epistemology to avoid such disastrous outcomes. Ground.News, following the news, released a timeline of the news stories since 2020 along with its bias indicator. Even Proximal Origin, the paper that expressly favors a natural origin theory, has come under scrutiny after emails were released following a FOIA lawsuit.

Libertarian Party of California Convention
#libertarianparty
The Libertarian Party of California underwent its Mises Caucus takeover. The Mises Caucus won every single possible seat and I believe only one seat on the Executive Committee is held by a non-caucus member. It was a weird start with the original hotel becoming untenable due to construction. The first order was to convene at the hotel and vote to move the convention to the new hotel. The Mises Caucus gathered a bunch of people at the original hotel in case the non-caucus people tried something and the non-caucus people gathered there to stop what they thought the Mises Caucus would try - to unseat the sitting Chair (this was not the MC's plan). The outgoing Treasurer in his report stated huge predicted losses for the convention, but the convention ended up netting a few thousand dollars in the positive. It was supposed to be a wildly contentious convention, but it actually wasn't nearly as bad as I thought it would be. Some tempers flared, but it definitely didn't get New Hampshired. The relative calm made me happy but some of the private actions, which I will not discuss here, especially since I'm very friendly to both sides, made me incredibly sad.