Reason Riot

15/06/2022

Red Flag Laws are the new establishment Republican darling. In theory, it lets law enforcement take a dangerous person’s guns before they commit a crime. Sounds nice, right? It would be truly wonderful to feel like we are preventing atrocities that appear predicable after the fact, like when a family member reports them as a danger to others. Except that’s the point: they usually haven’t yet committed any crime. That’s why tips to the FBI or Sheriff often happen beforehand, but they can’t do anything. Red Flag Laws presume guilt for a period of time during which a person’s rights are suspended until they are proven innocent or the time elapses. Everyone wants to prevent mass shootings and reduce gun suicides — there is no debate over that goal. But Red Flag Laws would run all liberal western justice through a wood chipper by doing what Donald Trump said: “take the guns first, go through due process second.” When we erode due process for one right we don’t like, we also erode it for all rights we do. What if it was a country where government could “shut the churches/news outlets/businesses first, go through due process second”? What if it was “torture suspects first, go through due process later”? What if it was “imprison first, prove guilt later”? That’s what we’re talking about. That’s not an answer, though we badly want one.

03/05/2022

Tom Woods' newsletter today has this nugget:
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According to Edward Lazarus, who clerked for Roe's author, Justice Harry Blackmun:

As a matter of constitutional interpretation and judicial method, Roe borders on the indefensible. I say this as someone utterly committed to the right to choose, as someone who believes such a right has grounding elsewhere in the Constitution instead of where Roe placed it, and as someone who loved Roe's author like a grandfather. . . . .

What, exactly, is the problem with Roe? The problem, I believe, is that it has little connection to the Constitutional right it purportedly interpreted. A constitutional right to privacy broad enough to include abortion has no meaningful foundation in constitutional text, history, or precedent. ...

The proof of Roe's failings comes not from the writings of those unsympathetic to women's rights, but from the decision itself and the friends who have tried to sustain it. Justice Blackmun's opinion provides essentially no reasoning in support of its holding. And in the almost 30 years since Roe's announcement, no one has produced a convincing defense of Roe on its own terms.

Even Yale's Harold Koh, who clerked for Blackmun, was reduced to saying: "I'd rather have Blackmun, who uses the wrong reasoning in Roe to get to the right results, and let other people figure out the right reasoning."

08/03/2022

08/03/2022

🤔🤔🤔

07/03/2022

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.pbs.org/newshour/amp/health/florida-to-recommend-against-covid-vaccines-for-healthy-kids

02/03/2022

After just a month or so.

New York health officials found the effectiveness of Pfizer's vaccine versus Covid plummeted from 68% to 12% for children ages 5 to 11 during the omicron surge.

27/02/2022

Don’t scroll away. Yes, it’s SNL, but this is actually funny satire.

A group of friends discuss mask mandates, vaccines and COVID over dinner.Saturday Night Live. Stream now on Peacock: https://pck.tv/3uQxh4qSubscribe to SNL: ...

24/02/2022

23/02/2022

23/02/2022

19/02/2022

Suddenly it's important to not shame those who get covid, or to assume they were careless, says boosted and double-masked surgeon general who happens to have covid.

US Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy announced Friday that he has tested positive for Covid-19.

18/02/2022

The Washington Post wants you to believe that California is the first state with a plan for a return to normal. Back in reality, Florida — along with most of the country — decided to live with it 18 months ago. https://apple.news/A0oMk_v1oRU6w0s3iy6Lvqw

17/02/2022

The grift is coming to an end. Where’s the accountability for the companies that gave them billions?

Amazon has kicked Black Lives Matter off of its charity fundraising platform AmazonSmile after the parent organization has experienced growing scrutiny in recent weeks regarding its finances.

16/02/2022

Nailed it.

Mass youth hospitalizations, COVID-induced diabetes, and other myths from the brave new world of science as political propaganda

14/02/2022

14/02/2022

Watch for a lot more of this blame-shifting tactic as Democrats pivot to rollbacks of their policies prior to mid-term elections under a “mission accomplished” banner. Did the pandemic really prevent cancer screenings? No. Lockdowns did, then mandates piled on. Governors ordered hospitals in many states like California to turn away all non-emergency care for months. People with everything from treatable early-stage cancer to heart attacks stayed home because hospitals either turned them away or fear made them defer care. One survey found 40% of Americans deferred medical care during that time, thanks to lockdowns and the fear they induced. Empty hospital systems like Mayo Clinic furloughed tens of thousands of staff. Then Biden’s vaccine mandates led to hundreds of thousands of experience medical staff being fired during a long-standing shortage.

Central planning made a bad virus massively more destructive in every sense.

https://apple.news/AgTXcjOK4T7eyylwyk7Dm3g

07/02/2022

Big prospective observational study in a city in Brazil finds ~70% reduction in hospitalizations and deaths, ~50% reduction in infection risk from taking prophylactic ivermectin. Not randomized and controlled, but the design seems pretty solid. If a placebo effect can do that, sign me up for sugar pills. (V)

Background: Ivermectin has demonstrated different mechanisms of action that potentially protect from both coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) infection and COVID-19-related comorbidities. Based on the studies suggesting efficacy in prophylaxis combined with the known safety profile of ivermectin, a....

06/02/2022

WORLD

02/02/2022

Lockdowns did not reduce covid deaths and may have actually increased them, according to a Johns Hopkins study.

Lockdowns during the first COVID-19 wave in the spring of 2020 only reduced COVID-19 mortality by .2% in the U.S. and Europe, according to a Johns Hopkins University meta-analysis of several studies.

01/02/2022

Studies finding mask efficacy are often staggeringly poor quality science, like self-reported surveys. Here Prasad breaks down one such survey that’s been getting a lot of air time because it allegedly found evidence masking toddlers reduced daycare closures. The reality is much different…

(V)

Vinay Prasad, MD MPH; Physician & Associate Professor Google Scholar: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=ym4rwk0AAAAJ&hl=enSubstack: https://vinaypras...

30/01/2022

Governments will continue the pandemic until the until the people refuse to go along.

26/01/2022

Guess which of these cities prohibits vaccine mandates.

https://twitter.com/NateSilver538/status/1486089132095029255?s=20

25/01/2022

Wage rises are driving inflation and the sun revolves around the earth, suggests Goldman Sachs.

(V)

Jan Hatzius says the pace of wage increases in the U.S. needs to slow down, as inflation heats up and becomes a central focus for the Fed and markets alike.

25/01/2022

Time to wind down the long con, signals Pfizer board member and ex-FDA chief. After two years of victimizing the poor with these destructive policies, the economic chaos they created is finally hitting elites as the stock market is tanking, supply chains are busted, and the Fed must raise rates to rein in runaway inflation. Therefore, it’s now time for them to denounce “divisive” policies they designed and proclaim a new national healing commence.

25/01/2022

Good journalists: “There’s a variant.”
Bad journalists: “Should we be worried at all?”
Awful journalists: “HOW worried should we be?”

25/01/2022

The push for universal pre-k is just tax funding of bad babysitting. Randomized and controlled study here:

https://twitter.com/DeAngelisCorey/status/1485947679955894277?t=08MERTtJPxi9gRfk093Efg&s=19

25/01/2022

When staring at empty shelves this winter, remember that up to 20% of all cross-border truck drivers are being fired due to mandates that do nothing to stop spread.

A convoy of truckers started their march from Vancouver on Sunday to the Canadian capital city of Ottawa protesting the government's COVID-19 vaccine mandate for truckers, which the industry says would create driver shortages and fuel inflation.

24/01/2022

Wow, USA Today published this? Maybe the tide of covidiocy is turning.

No resource, not even masks, is more vital to public health than the credibility of leaders who in a crisis must ask people to do unpopular things.

23/01/2022

Bill Maher is pushing back against blindly following the advice of Anthony Fauci and other doctors amid the coronavirus pandemic, saying, “Don’t sit there in your white coat and tell me 'just do what we say.' ”