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Normalcy in US projected by second quarter — if no new mutations arise.

Coronavirus (COVID-19) Vaccinations – Statistics and Research

In our Data Explorer you can see our COVID-19 vaccination data — you can also visualize the latest data on confirmed cases, deaths, and testing.

When will the COVID-19 pandemic end?

McKinsey’s evolving perspectives on when will the COVID-19 pandemic end in the United States updated to examine how timing will vary around the world.

Transition toward normalcy in the United States remains most likely in the second quarter of 2021 and herd immunity in the third and fourth quarters, but the emergence of new strains and a slow start to vaccine rollout raise real risks to both timelines.

There’s information in these scenes but what is it? That we’ve turned the corner, are not in Kansas any more, or is this the new normal? I wrote on January 12 that: “I suspect significantly fewer are going to tune in, if not in America then at least in the rest of the world, not in protest or partisan pique but because the magic’s gone from Washington DC.”

Washington deserted after inauguration despite widespread fears of more violent riots

Joe Biden took the oath of office in the backdrop of an empty city, with Washington void of the crowds that usually flock to the capital on Inauguration Day.

Joe Biden became the 46th US president on Wednesday in a barricaded city, guarded by more than 25,000 troops and emptied of the spectators who usually throng to the quadrennial ritual.

The security precautions, along with a coronavirus pandemic that has prompted many to avoid public gatherings, left city streets largely empty.

“It’s, frankly, painful to see this, the whole city shut down,” former Republican Senator Jeff Flake told reporters as he arrived at the Capitol.

Biden promised a return to ‘normalcy,’ but it’s clear that’s not happening anytime soon.

Joe Biden ran for president as the moderate Democrat, the familiar face who wasn’t going to defund the police or steer the country headlong into socialism.

Suppose They Held an Inauguration and Nobody Came?

Commentary The increasingly fascistic American left is setting a trap for the rest of their fellow citizens—often termed …

Whenever a politician issues a call for unity two serious questions immediately arise:

1. unity in exchange for what?
2. who are the parties to the agreement?

Where existing political parties represent the great majority of the public “unity” can be achieved by coalition government, bipartisan agreement or other similar consensus mechanisms. However where parties have been abandoned by the general public, either a new party or a rebel alliance must be brought into the negotiations for discussions to proceed.

In an insurgency one of the principle obstacles to “unity” talks is the inchoate nature of the parties. Recall that many WW2 resistance groups were badly fragmented and remained so for years. Even governments can be badly divided. The Axis never formed a cohesive strategic or political front. The Allies did but only because opposition to Hitler held it together. Once Germany collapsed the Alliance fell apart.

Beside “who” there is the paramount question of “what”. Unity requires concession, horse trading and the deferment of irreconcilable differences. Without concessions the call for unity is a demand for surrender

But the price of unity is inevitably too high for the activists on both sides because while they pay lip service to unity what they really want is subjugation. As a practical matter unity is impossible when ideologues rule. In the immortal words of the Batman movie:

Alfred Pennyworth : You crossed the line first, sir. You squeezed them, you hammered them to the point of desperation. And in their desperation, they turned to a man they didn’t fully understand.

Bruce Wayne : Criminals aren’t complicated, Alfred. Just have to figure out what he’s after.

Alfred Pennyworth : With respect Master Wayne, perhaps this is a man that you don’t fully understand, either. A long time ago, I was in Burma. My friends and I were working for the local government. They were trying to buy the loyalty of tribal leaders by bribing them with precious stones. But their caravans were being raided in a forest north of Rangoon by a bandit. So, we went looking for the stones. But in six months, we never met anybody who traded with him. One day, I saw a child playing with a ruby the size of a tangerine. The bandit had been throwing them away.

Bruce Wayne : So why steal them?

Alfred Pennyworth : Well, because he thought it was good sport. Because some men aren’t looking for anything logical, like money. They can’t be bought, bullied, reasoned, or negotiated with. Some men just want to watch the world burn.

The script returns to its central place in governance as Biden’s speeches are written by committee. But is he speaking through the committee or vice versa? Is it Milli Vanilli or Cyrano de Bergerac?

Writing a speech for Biden can be hell. And that was before the inaugural.

There is a heightened urgency to Biden’s inaugural speech, as he confronts multiple crises and seeks to bridge a deep political divide.

Biden has grown comfortable with chief speech writer Vinay Reddy and senior adviser Mike Donilon, who have helped him thread his narratives in a simple, grounded way. The president-elect has also leaned on Tony Blinken, his secretary of state designate, to help with the speech writing process. Incoming chief of staff Ron Klain is in the mix as well….

For his speeches, Biden receives advice — solicited and unsolicited — from a wide cast of luminaries, which in the past has included historian Jon Meacham. It was not entirely clear among aides if Meacham contributed to the drafting of the inauguration speech, though a source familiar with the process said he had consulted on the process.

On some speechwriter’s tomb the words may be inscribed. “How obvious it is now–the gift you gave him. All those letters, they were you… All those beautiful powerful words, they were you!.. The voice from the shadows, that was you…” Roxanne”

Cyrano’s ‘to be your own man speech’.

A finding that Covid was caused by a lab accident would be devastating to the health bureaucracy and pharma.

The World Needs a Real Investigation Into the Origins of Covid-19

A team of WHO researchers has arrived in China but won’t investigate the possibility that the coronavirus originated in a lab.

The world needs an inquiry that considers not just natural origins but the possibility that SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes Covid-19, escaped from a laboratory. The WHO team, however, plans to build on reports by Chinese scientists rather than mount an independent investigation.

US Scientist Who Led Charge Against COVID Lab Leak Theory Admits He Was Trying To Protect Chinese Scientists

The U.S. scientist behind an effort to stymie debate on the possibility that COVID-19 accidentally escaped a lab said he did so to protect Chinese scientists.

Dr. Peter Daszak, the president of the New York-based EcoHealth Alliance, orchestrated a statement published in The Lancet medical journal in February, prior to any serious research on the origins of COVID-19, condemning “conspiracy theories” that suggest the virus doesn’t have a natural origin.

The possibility cannot be entertained. From a strategic point of view a lab accident would be similar to an accidental nuclear strike during the Cold War, a scenario explored in the 1964 movie Fail Safe. The priority would be containment.

If someone — hypothetically — had definite proof Covid resulted from a researcher’s error it would be a biotech Chernobyl.

2 Guard members made extremist statements about inauguration

WASHINGTON (AP) — Twelve U.S. National Guard members have been removed from securing President-elect Joe Biden’s inauguration after vetting by the FBI, including two who made extremist statements…

Two other U.S. officials told The Associated Press that all 12 were found to have ties with right-wing militia groups or posted extremist views online. The officials, a senior intelligence official and an Army official briefed on the matter, did not say which fringe groups the Guard members belonged to or what unit they served in. The officials were not authorized to speak publicly and spoke to The AP on condition of anonymity. The officials told the AP they had all been removed because of “security liabilities.”

The Global World got away from the 5 Year Planners. Don’t worry. They’ll “build back better”. Instead of being chastened the lesson they seemed to have learned is their power did not extend far enough. By planning to extend their sphere into biotechnology, social networks and climate engineering all will be fixed.

Panel finds world not prepared for COVID-19; China, WHO acted too slowly

The world was not prepared to battle the coronavirus, an independent World Health Organization panel said in an interim report that details failures made by the international community in its fight against the disease.

There are two, possibly three themes in this thoughtful email from a friend, who because of his public character, I’ve reproduced anonymously though with his permission. The email’s main points are:

1. The world is in the midst of a paradigm shift comparable to the industrial or perhaps agricultural revolution;
2. America and perhaps the West is in a crisis of political liberty that has resulted in a ‘house divided’ situation.
3. These issues have to be resolved politically or the current order risks collapse.

While I am glad that at least some people in wider public life are willing to think outside conventional platitudes I cannot help but agree with the closing sentence: “My sense is that our current politicians and elites are more Robespierre than Ben Franklin.” If America is truly headed for a civil war it does so without any obvious Lincolns.

For most of human history the organizational construct of society was a small elite ruling people as chattel. At the time of Founding Fathers 70% of humanity was either serfs or slaves. The organizational principle of the American republic was based on two principles, individual liberty and government legitimacy based on the consent of the governed, as Lincoln said of the people, by the people and for the people. This idea proved highly popular and delivered economic prosperity, social mobility, human rights and stability, obviously not perfectly but better then any other society had or has ever done.

Whenever the natural tendency of power concentration raised its head in our history, we have found a way to resist it and stay true to our founding principles. The Founding Fathers gave the world, and America is a microcosm of the world, a wonderful gift. Are we up to the task of keeping it and passing it on to future generations or will it end with us.

As far as I’m concerned the jury is out.

We can’t underestimate the threat. In a world of robotics and AI what role will limited educated people play? Are they really needed? At a minimum they can be warehoused in their smart city homes, paid a basic income stipend, amused by Netflix and Play-station, and have their meatless food delivered to them. We’re potentially going back to the age of the Pharos with a small elite and masses of laborers and slaves. With technology to enable it. Today we’re closer to 1984 than any other time in our history. And in which direction are we further moving? Dark Winter anybody?

I do believe if the American Republic falls we will turn the world into many competing feudal states under local warlords, not a unified utopian global government. Without a global policeman to enforce accepted rules, it’s every group for itself. There is no stability without either consensus or coercion.

The key question to me is not so much what is to come but rather what do we do to get our civilization back on the right track for individual liberty and prosperity.

Here’s my position on the current US political situation:

A nation divided cannot stand. History teaches us that unresolved internal divisions lead to disaster. There are two ways to get to a national consensus. One is through debate, reason and compromise, the Founding Father way. The other is orthodoxy enforced by coercion, the Jacobin and Bolshevik Soviet method. My sense is that our current politicians and elites are more Robespierre than Ben Franklin.

Where’s the send button?

A world that’s been locked down, surveilled, censored, deplatformed and purged must be wondering how much more progress it can stand. A whole lot more probably. People have no idea how defective they are deemed to be. If you didn’t know how virtuous it was you might get the wrong idea.

Pentagon Accelerates Efforts to Root Out Far-Right Extremism in the Ranks

The nation’s military has a history of downplaying white nationalism and right-wing activism, but the siege of the Capitol has created a new urgency for dealing with them.

WASHINGTON — The Pentagon is intensifying efforts to identify and combat white supremacy and other far-right extremism in its ranks as federal investigators seek to determine how many military personnel and veterans joined the violent assault on the Capitol. …

The F.B.I. investigation into the Capitol siege, still in its very early stages, has identified at least six suspects with military links out of the more than 100 people who have been taken into federal custody or the larger number still under investigation.

Insider Attacks Feared

FBI vetting Guard troops in DC amid fears of insider attack

WASHINGTON (AP) — U.S. defense officials say they are worried about an insider attack or other threat from service members involved in securing President-elect Joe Biden’s inauguration, prompting…

WASHINGTON (AP) — U.S. defense officials say they are worried about an insider attack or other threat from service members involved in securing President-elect Joe Biden’s inauguration, prompting the FBI to vet all of the 25,000 National Guard troops coming into Washington for the event.

Related: How Will Biden’s Pentagon Handle Extreme Right-Wing Media?

How Will Biden’s Pentagon Handle Extreme Right-Wing Media?

The Capitol riot was just the latest tell for propaganda outlets masquerading as newsrooms.

More specifically, the Biden administration’s communications teams will have to decide whether employees of extreme right-wing media outlets should be welcomed as journalists into the U.S. military’s massive headquarters. Should these actors receive credentialled press badges granting 24/7 access to the building, seats in its briefing room, desks to work at in the resident press bullpen, coveted seats on the defense secretary’s plane in the traveling press corps to visit troops at military bases worldwide, and interviews with service secretaries and the Joint Chiefs of Staff?

“This is exactly the kind of question that needs to be asked right now,” said one former Obama administration spokesperson, who could only speak on background due to their current employer’s restrictions. “I do believe that incoming communicators need to have a conversation among themselves about how they’re going to operate in this new landscape.”

No laughing matter.

Uncle Roger comedian deletes video with China critic

Nigel Ng, who is known for his food videos, said he had not known his guest’s political views.

Climate actions planned for first day. They include a raft of environmental policies to be enacted on the first day of his presidency, including re-joining the Paris climate accord.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/biden-keystone-xl-1.5877038

When the Lives of Others is a movie about you.

New at the Belmont Club

The Great Digital Escape

Your soul is for sale

Did you know you can back up your social media data?

datatransferproject.dev

The Data Transfer Project was launched in 2018 to create an open-source, service-to-service data portability platform so that all individuals across the web could easily move their data between online service providers whenever they want.

The Data Transfer Project was launched in 2018 to create an open-source, service-to-service data portability platform so that all individuals across the web could easily move their data between online service providers whenever they want.

The contributors to the Data Transfer Project believe portability and interoperability are central to innovation. Making it easier for individuals to choose among services facilitates competition, empowers individuals to try new services and enables them to choose the offering that best suits their needs.

1. Here’s a use case link for Facebook.
2. The equivalent link for Twitter.

Data To Go: An FTC Workshop on Data Portability

The official website of the Federal Trade Commission, protecting America’s consumers for over 100 years.

Data portability refers to the ability of consumers to move data – such as, emails, contacts, calendars, financial information, health information, favorites, friends or content posted on social media – from one service to another or to themselves. In addition to providing benefits to consumers, data portability may benefit competition by allowing new entrants to access data they otherwise would not have so that they can grow competing platforms and services. At the same time, there may be challenges to implementing or requiring data portability. For example, data that consumers want to port may include information about others, such as friends’ photos and comments. How should this data be treated? How can the data be transferred securely? Who has responsibility for ensuring that data portability is technically feasible? Does mandatory data access or data sharing affect companies’ incentives to invest in data-driven products and services?

Of course the question becomes: where do I move my data and what for? Enter the emerging world of personal data services which allow you to store your data under encryption and let you control access and potentially sell your data to who you choose.

Moving your data to yourself is a whole level more radical than moving it to another platform belonging to someone else.

He Created the Web. Now He’s Out to Remake the Digital World.

Tim Berners-Lee wants to put people in control of their personal data. He has technology and a start-up pursuing that goal. Can he succeed?

George Spix and I had roughly the same idea in the book “Open Curtains”. Data ownership is a potentially a big political issue. The fact that Berners-Lee and startups have taken it up means it’s finally gotten traction.

Books:  Open Curtains by George Spix and Richard Fernandez

Back in 1988 Bill Moyers was recalling Lyndon Johnson explaining how to keep whites poor by encouraging them to look down on “colored men”.

During the motorcade, he spotted some ugly racial epithets scrawled on signs. Late that night in the hotel, when the local dignitaries had finished the last bottles of bourbon and branch water and departed, he started talking about those signs. “I’ll tell you what’s at the bottom of it,” he said. “If you can convince the lowest white man he’s better than the best colored man, he won’t notice you’re picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he’ll empty his pockets for you.”

Today, as Rana Dasgupta argues in Harper’s, the Western middle class including those with gender studies and critical theory degrees — especially them — are the new unemployables, made redundant by cheap Chinese and robotic labor. The only way to make the destitute Woke feel good about themselves is to let them look down on the Deplorables.

[Essay] The Silenced Majority, By Rana Dasgupta | Harper’s Magazine

Can America still afford democracy?

the system can no longer afford Western production, and even America’s poor are dependent on the subsidy of cheap Asian labor to maintain their precarious consumer status. Along with debt, of course. U.S. consumers have incurred nearly $1 trillion in credit card debt, $1.5 trillion in student loans, another $1.3 trillion in auto debt, and almost $10 trillion in mortgages.

All this, however, is nothing but turbulent preface. Current efforts to disentangle wealth from the American population are even more radical. Triumphant robotic capitalism employs new technologies to automate and commodify work so that the political defeat of the bottom 50 percent can be extended to the bottom 90 percent.

Many mid-level jobs have already been rendered obsolete in sectors such as architecture, law, accountancy, teaching, and medicine (and many more salaries, therefore, have been absorbed as corporate wealth). This is a stunning volte-face for the middle classes, who are still inclined to believe that the system exists to serve them, and so entertain the hope that it will create the same number of high-paying jobs as were destroyed. But there is no basis for such hope. The prospect of large corporations run by owner-strategists without human management is not far off and, as state subsidies are simultaneously withdrawn, the middle classes will be unable to pass their savings, property, and status on to their children. Their erstwhile social and political standing will follow that of the West’s steelworkers, shipbuilders, and coal miners. The coming evacuation may cause American capitalism to collapse. But that will not discourage the catastrophe elite, which is fascinated by its own death drive (working out how to survive death is a notorious Silicon Valley hobby).

The process has been expedited by the coronavirus lockdowns, which have migrated social and economic processes to digital platforms more quickly than anyone could have anticipated—and supplied useful legitimation along the way.

It’s a good thing Washington is immune to Chinese influence.

China Using ‘Cognitive Warfare’ Against Taiwan, Observers Say

A Taipei think tank and observers in Taiwan say China is trying to influence residents with “cognitive warfare,” hoping to reverse opposition to Beijing’s desired takeover of Taiwan so it can be accomplished without having to go to war. Taiwanese attitudes have been drifting away from the mainland,…

“Its ultimate goal is to control what’s between the ears. That is, your brain or how you think, which [Beijing] hopes leads to a change of behavior,” Tzeng Yi-suo, director of the cybersecurity division at the government-funded Institute of National Defense and Security Research in Taipei, told VOA.

China vs India at the top of the world.

Nepal slips toward anarchy as India and China seek Himalayan edge

Protests erupt over parliament dissolution, raising COVID and economic risks

KATHMANDU — Nepalese Prime Minister K.P. Sharma Oli’s sudden dissolution of parliament in mid-December has triggered nationwide protests and political chaos, pushing the country to the brink of anarchy while giving India and China potential opportunities to enhance their Himalayan influence.

So argues David Goldman.

Money is information. But if facts are anything you want them to be then you can create money out of nothing. Truth and money goes from being rooted in reality to a deep fake.

So how can Bidenomics go bankrupt? It can happen if reality exists, if God is something you can’t rig.

https://pjmedia.com/spengler/2021/01/16/bidenonmics-will-bankrupt-us-n1389923

What better way to demonstrate virtue than by intimidating the unworthy.

Parler CEO John Matze and family go into hiding after death threats

The CEO of Parler, the conservative social media app, and his family have gone into hiding because of death threats and harassment, according to a new court filing. The documents, obtained by Fox N…

Parler, which is a favorite of Trump supporters, was booted off Apple and Google’s platforms after the Capitol riots and Amazon took it off its cloud hosting service, Amazon Web Services.

In response, Parler filed an antitrust lawsuit against Amazon. Amazon countersued, saying Parler’s suit had no valid legal basis and claiming Amazon employees had been threatened and harassed, Fox News reported.

Following last year’s efforts to ban Trump Administration officials from speaking on campus, Harvard University students are now circulating a petition that calls for revoking degrees from Trump supporters and aides who attended the elite Ivy League institution

The much more accurate term is “to unperson“, to create:

an individual who usually for political or ideological reasons is removed completely from recognition or consideration

What “cancel” does is unperson people. This is the opposite of an invented person or deep fake, an event or individual created entirely for the narrative. One of Winston Smith’s jobs in Orwell’s 1984 was to invent people.

“Suddenly there sprang into his mind, ready-made as it were, the image of a certain Comrade Ogilvy, who had recently died in battle, in heroic circumstances. . . . It was true that there was no such person as Comrade Ogilvy, but a few lines of print and a couple of faked photographs would soon bring him into existence.”

Who’s to say Ogilvy never existed? Or that so and so had such and such a law degree? If you follow the news closely you will notice how it continuously manufactures and deletes people and events from the spotlight. In the end it’s all the same to the Narrators. As Winston Smith noted:

“Within twenty years at most, he reflected, the huge and simple question ‘Was life better before the Revolution than it is now?’ would have ceased once and for all to be answerable.”

There are two forbidden questions in public discourse today.

1. The integrity of the 2020 elections;
2. The origin of the Covid virus.

John Hinderaker writes: “Democrats are making extraordinary efforts to suppress all discussion of whether Joe Biden actually won the 2020 presidential election. In fact, they go even farther: they want to suppress all discussion of the extent to which voter fraud occurred.”

Touching on the origins of the coronavirus is even more highly charged. A US State Department document put it this way:

For more than a year, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has systematically prevented a transparent and thorough investigation of the COVID-19 pandemic’s origin, choosing instead to devote enormous resources to deceit and disinformation. Nearly two million people have died. Their families deserve to know the truth. Only through transparency can we learn what caused this pandemic and how to prevent the next one.

The U.S. government does not know exactly where, when, or how the COVID-19 virus—known as SARS-CoV-2—was transmitted initially to humans. We have not determined whether the outbreak began through contact with infected animals or was the result of an accident at a laboratory in Wuhan, China.

The virus could have emerged naturally from human contact with infected animals, spreading in a pattern consistent with a natural epidemic. Alternatively, a laboratory accident could resemble a natural outbreak if the initial exposure included only a few individuals and was compounded by asymptomatic infection. Scientists in China have researched animal-derived coronaviruses under conditions that increased the risk for accidental and potentially unwitting exposure.

In a sense the stability of the status quo depends on these two questions not being answered. That is not because the truth is known to a certitude but precisely because it is not.

Books:  Last Stands: Why Men Fight When All Is Lost by Michael Walsh “A philosophical and spiritual defense of the premodern world, of the tragic view, of physical courage, and of masculinity and self-sacrifice in an age when those ancient virtues are too often caricatured and dismissed.” —Victor Davis Hanson

Unmasked: Inside Antifa’s Radical Plan to Destroy Democracy — Andy Ngo’s book on the “Idea” that burned cities and perhaps much else.