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Wall Street Journal columnist Jason Riley asks “When is the Republican Party going to declare war on teachers unions? [2]” A slice:
The move is long overdue, and the pandemic offers Republicans the perfect opportunity to explain to voters how the unions’ ironclad control over public education does grave harm to children. We’ve known from the earliest days of the virus that youngsters are the least likely to catch it or spread it to others. We also know that many low-income parents struggle with home schooling and need to go back to work. Distance learning exacerbates racial and economic achievement gaps and takes a heavy psychological toll on kids. Union leaders couldn’t care less.
California, which is the most populous state and currently has the lowest per capita Covid rate in the country, also has the highest percentage of school districts that remain entirely virtual. Teachers unions have used the pandemic to demand more money and more-generous benefits. They know that millions of Americans can’t return to work if kids can’t return to schools. For parents it’s a dilemma, but unions see it as leverage. The United Teachers of Los Angeles requested free child care for its members as a condition for returning to the classroom. Union clout is the main reason that California’s percentage of all-virtual school districts is more than three times the national average.
An exposé published in Sunday’s New York Post shows how diligently teachers unions have been working to capitalize on our misery. “In the days before the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released their much-anticipated school-reopening guidelines on Feb. 12, the American Federation of Teachers launched a full-court press to shape the final document and slow the full-reopening of schools,” the Post reported. “The lobbying paid off. In at least two instances, language ‘suggestions’ offered by the union were adopted nearly verbatim into the final text of the CDC document.”
Alastair Cavendish decries the disappearance of dissent, and he documents its morphology [3]. A slice:
If everyone ignores it, nothing happened anyway.
The simplest way to deal with dissent is simply to pretend it isn’t there. After all, if there had been significant anti-lockdown protests involving tens of thousands of people in central London, the BBC, CNN and every other mainstream media outlet would have reported these events, would they not? Their lack of interest, therefore, shows that there really wasn’t a story here at all.
Say that it was just a few cranks.
This is where photography comes into its own. Find a few stragglers to make it look as though the entire protest consisted of five people and a dog. Seek out the two or three placards about conspiracy theories, ignoring the thousands that make cogent criticisms of lockdown or vaccine passports. Ensure that Piers Corbyn, or someone who looks like him, features prominently.
Say that the protesters were violent.
You might need to employ a bit of latitude here. Find any violent altercation that happened in London on the same day as the march and tack it on to the end of your footage. Or send in some masked thugs masquerading as protesters. This is what the Chinese government does, and Chinese tactics for social control are terribly fashionable these days.
Cameron English reports on the CDC’s unscientific counsel regarding vaccinated individuals [4]. A slice:
Despite this mounting evidence that the approved shots greatly reduce the risk of transmission, the CDC maintains that [5] “We are still learning how well vaccines prevent you from spreading the virus that causes COVID-19 to others, even if you do not have symptoms.” Like so much information circulating online these days, this is technically true but unhelpful. The pandemic is just over a year old; “we are still learning” about every aspect of SARS-COV-2, and we will be for years to come.
But the CDC wants it both ways. The agency emphasizes the safety and efficacy of the shots and urges you to get them to “protect people around you [6],” then tries to deny people the incentives that would encourage additional vaccine uptake. It’s another example of the confused messaging [7] that has undermined public trust in the scientific establishment over the last year. Vaccine expert Dr. Ben Locwin [8] laid bare the obvious flaw in this reasoning in an email. We’ll give him the last word:
Keeping unnecessary mask and distance restrictions – on the immunized – is the exact WRONG messaging, and erodes the public national vaccine campaign. It’s pandering, and it’s scientific nonsense. After being fully immunized, it’s as safe for those people as it’s ever going to get.
This past Thursday evening I was a guest in Zach Weissmueller’s Hayek Hangout. Here’s the recording of our 90-minute-long discussion [9]. (I thank Zach for the invitation.)
TANSTAFPFC (There Ain’t No Such Thing As Free Protection From Covid.) [10]
I repeat: TANSTAFPFC [11]. A slice:
The X-ray revealed that cancer had eaten into Joy’s hip and femur. A major operation followed. Nick was utterly distraught on behalf of his wife of 46 years. “Is it surprising that we are both bitter and traumatised? This, Allison, is the truth of what happens when Covid is all that matters. If I hear Matt Hancock say once more that GP and hospital services are looking after all those who need the NHS, I will scream. If I hear him boasting that GPs can now provide the same service through telephone contact, I will throw something at the TV.
“The truth is very different. Our GP actually admitted that he was horrified how my wife had deteriorated when he eventually saw her in person! The cancer that was not diagnosed because our GPs would not see patients face-to-face has spread, not just to Joy’s bones, but into her brain. She is too weak to commence the full cancer treatment. Joy is fearful and frightened while I cannot contemplate life without her. Turning the NHS into the National Covid Service has caused my wife and I endless pain and suffering.”
The CDC’s new cruise ship guidelines for a proposed reopening “test period” are absolutely insane. They want to force passengers to wear wristbands that track their social contacts and signal an alarm if they commit “social distancing infractions.”
https://www.cdc.gov/…/covid19-operations-manual-cso.html