Another thing I wonder is why so many people are so incredibly bad at risk assessment?

I take risks but I always understand to the best of my abilities exactly what risk I am taking, what risks I am foisting on others, what the consequences will be if I fail, and what the benefits will be if the risk pays off.

Habits of an old trader, I guess.

But it’s not even hard. If you don’t concede to basic reality, of course, this will never help you. And most people seem to have very little connection to reality: half the people in this country don’t believe masks work despite not understanding anything about them, think the Covid-19 pandemic is a hoax, believe in extensive election fraud and that seditionist insurrectionists were just some lost tourists taking an unscheduled tour of the Capitol in full battle rattle.

It’s impossible to assess risk if your reality has been Fox News-ed into dipshit-ville. So half the country is a lost cause.

But what about the rest? What explains their complete mispricing of risk even by their own measures? Writing a book called Risk and the Real World is probably pointless because you can’t make people smarter, only angrier. Alas.

The Chinese Communist Party’s Global Lockdown Fraud.

I think this article is overstating its case in most areas (and about PCR testing, it’s nearly completely wrong), but about lockdowns I agree with most of it.

Remember, lockdowns were about flattening the curve to avoid overwhelming hospitals early — they were never intended (and in most places could not work as) a complete solution to the pandemic.

Not transmitting the virus matters, but mental stability, overall societal health and freedom matters too. Thus, extended lockdowns are bad policy and should’ve abated as other mitigation measures came to the fore: universal masking, better ventilation everywhere, more outdoor activities, testing and tracing, and state-sponsored quarantine of the infected or those suspected to be infected.

We did none of those things and thus one must ask why did we not? Is it just that our society is incapable of any concerted action? Yes, that’s part of it but the larger overarching impetus is that lockdowns massively benefit the rich and entrenched corporations. That is the number one reason for their absurd continuance past all excuses of efficacy and reason.

My personal guess is 90% or more of the decline in cases post-March had nothing to do with lockdowns and everything to do with warming weather, exposure to sunlight leading to increased Vitamin D production, higher temperatures and better ventilation due to spring/summer clement weather conditions. Most transmission, naturally, occurs in the home.

By the way, Taiwan had “no stringent restrictions on movement and no local or national lockdown” and has had among the lowest case rates and fatality rates in the world.

Lockdowns are, mostly, bunk policy and we should halt them immediately and move on to better ideas.

I know I am not the first one to say this, but there are a lot of very well credentialed people in tech worrying what would happen if internet giants collectively de-platformed a group who isn't right wing, while totally erasing the fact that it already happened to sex workers.

— Lesley Carhart (@hacks4pancakes) January 12, 2021

Absolutely no one cares about sex workers, though. Liberals are ridiculous prudes who are extremely terrified of sex. They largely deeply detest sex workers. The right is of course no better (but seems to be less vindictive about it for some reason that I have yet to figure out).

In my early life particularly, some of my closest friends and confidantes were or had been sex workers, but that shouldn’t have to be the case for someone to have empathy for anyone in that field.

But most people…just don’t seem to have that capability.