July, 2020, Part 10, Political Class Insanity: How Government Cannot Count When It Comes To The Coronavirus, Chapter 3

It is the beginning of another month which means it is time again to review the latest political class insanity from the American political class. Each month it takes us multiple posts to cover the wasteful spending, incompetent government organizations and employees, government programs that usually make a problem worse than resolving it, inane and idiotic politician comments, etc.

To review past posts on this insanity and idiocy, just click on the first few posts in each month listed to the right of this page. After reviewing just a handful of these insanity posts we think you will agree that we are currently being served by the worst set of American politicians ever to hold office in our entire history.

1) Today we will still be focusing on the coronavirus. Not because it has sickened and killed so many people around the world but because it illustrates the pure incompetence of government and the politicians that operate that government and their inability to simply be able to count effectively. You cannot solve a problem unless you understand the reality of the problem and almost always the reality of a problem is determined by the data and numbers that describe the problem. 

But if you cannot even collect that data and numbers correctly then your ability to solve a problem is almost nil. You are basing any solutions on faulty data and premises and only pure luck will ever get you to the right solution, as we pointed out in our previous post:

• A man in Tennessee was classified as a positively tested coronavirus person even though he had NEVER taken a coronavirus test.
• Multiple virus testing labs in Florida were found to have over counted the number of virus cases by up to ten fold.
• In Colorado, a man was classified as a virus death even though subsequent medical analysis showed he clearly died from acute alcohol poisoning, not the virus.
• We also cited other cases in Colorado where nursing home patients were classified as virus deaths but more testing showed that the virus had nothing to do with their deaths.
• In Connecticut, the board of health found that in a sample of 140 cases that they had classified as positives after testing was really comprised of 50 true positive cases and 90 false positive cases, i.e. 90 out of 140 who were told they had the virus really didn't have it.

But it is not just the states who screw up virus statistics and tracking, apparently according to the United Patriots News website on July 20, 2020, the Federal government’s CDC also screwed up royally when it comes to counting accurately:

• The CDC admitted that it had mistakenly co-mingled two different sets of virus deaths when complaining the statistics for the virus which screwed up the overall counting of the number of people who had the virus.
• According to the article: “The Centers for Disease Control fused the data of genetic tests that spot individuals who were infected, by utilizing a process known as P.C.R., Polymerase Chain Reaction, with results from serology testing, which searches for antibodies in the blood— the antibody testing is used to determine if people were previously infected.”
• So, they were mixing together a group of people who were recently infected with the virus with other people who already had the virus which obviously screws up the statistics of how many people recently tested for the virus.
• Jennifer Nuzzo, an epidemiologist at Johns Hopkins University was not happy about this seemingly simple screwup: “Reporting both serology and viral tests under the same category is not appropriate, as these two types of tests are very different and tell us different things.”

Great, another government agency that does not know how to count. The obvious outcome is that it may be that the number of infections is over counted since the initial CDC policy was to combine those being tested to see if they were currently infected with those that may have already had the virus and were counted back then in the other test i.e. some people were counted twice as new infections when they should have been counted once as a new infection and once as someone who once had the virus.

2) James Barrett, writing for the Daily Wire website back in May, described the opinion of a Stanford University expert who felt that the country was severely overreacting to the virus:

• John P.A. Ioannidis is the co-director of Stanford’s Meta-Research Innovation Center and is a professor of medicine, biomedical data, statistics, and epidemiology and population health.
• His analysis back in May suggested that the reaction to the virus could be “a fiasco in the making” since the country was making big decisions on “utterly unreliable data.”
• His conclusion is that the country is severely overreacting to the virus: “The current coronavirus disease, Covid-19, has been called a once-in-a-century pandemic. But it may also be a once-in-a-century evidence fiasco.”
• Furthermore: “Draconian countermeasures have been adopted in many countries. If the pandemic dissipates — either on its own or because of these measures — short-term extreme social distancing and lockdowns may be bearable. How long, though, should measures like these be continued if the pandemic churns across the globe unabated? How can policymakers tell if they are doing more good than harm?”
• He believes that based on the bad data available, most countries have taken extreme measures way out of proportion to what is needed and will cause much more damage than good.
• He believes that a lot of the statistics are bad because the testing bias misses many, many healthy people that if they were included in the testing process, the fatality and infection rate of the virus would fall dramatically.
• Ioannidis did an in-depth study of the Diamond Princess cruise ship, an early victim of the virus where 7 out of 700 people on the ship died from the virus.
• This provided him a closed environment where he could study the entire population in detail and analyze the results in this closed system.
• His conclusions are based on the ship’s infection and fatality rate once adjusted for the age of those on the ship.
• Rather than go through his entire analysis here, the bottom line is that the fatality rate from the coronavirus is estimated by him to be statistically ranging from .05% to 1% which would be less than the death rate of many seasonal flu outbreaks.
• If true, he makes the analogy that we shut down the world economy because an ordinary house cat was attacking an elephant.

So, we have one expert in California who actually did some real live analysis based on a closed system and concluded that the extent of the virus’s potency is likely grossly overestimated. And we have a wing of the Federal government who mistakenly double counted and misclassified test results which likely overestimated the reach and potency of the virus. 

Combine these results with the discussions from the previous two posts and we can make a strong case that we have done a lot of economic damage to this country for no good reason because the government and the politicians that operate it simply do not know how to count. Insanity.

Our book, "Love My Country, Loathe My Government - Fifty First Steps To Restoring Our Freedom And Destroying The American Political Class" is now available at:

https://www.amazon.com/Walter-Bruno-Korschek/e/B002KYU08Q/ref=dbs_a_mng_rwt_scns_share

Please visit the following sites for freedom:


http://www.reason.com
http://www.cato.org
http://www.bankruptingamerica.org
http://www.conventionofstates.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w

July, 2020, Part 9,Political Class Insanity: How Government Cannot Count When It Comes To The Coronavirus, Chapter 2

It is the beginning of another month which means it is time again to review the latest political class insanity from the American political class. Each month it takes us multiple posts to cover the wasteful spending, incompetent government organizations and employees, government programs that usually make a problem worse than resolving it, inane and idiotic politician comments, etc.

To review past posts on this insanity and idiocy, just click on the first few posts in each month listed to the right of this page. After reviewing just a handful of these insanity posts we think you will agree that we are currently being served by the worst set of American politicians ever to hold office in our entire history.

1) Today we will still be focusing on the coronavirus. Not because it has sickened and killed so many people around the world but because it illustrates the pure incompetence of government and the politicians that operate that government and their inability to simply be able to count effectively. You cannot solve a problem unless you understand the reality of the problem and almost always the reality of a problem is determined by the data and numbers that describe the problem. 

But if you cannot even collect that data and numbers correctly then your ability to solve a problem is almost nil. You are basing any solutions on faulty data and premises and only pure luck will ever get you to the right solution, as we pointed out in our previous post:

• A man in Tennessee was classified as a positively tested coronavirus person even though he had NEVER taken a coronavirus test.
• Multiple virus testing labs in Florida were found to have over counted the number of virus cases by up to ten fold.
• In Colorado, a man was classified as a virus death even though subsequent medical analysis showed he clearly died from acute alcohol poisoning, not the virus.
• We also cited other cases in Colorado where nursing home patients were classified as virus deaths but more testing showed that the virus had nothing to do with their deaths.

But it is not just state government and state politicians who cannot accurately count the actual number of virus deaths, that inability to accurately count may have been established by the Federal government back in the spring:

• Dr. Deborah Birx is the response coordinator for the White House coronavirus task force so she is a very important person in the fight against the virus in the country.
• But back in April, she stated that the Federal government was going to classify the death of any American who had the virus as a death caused by the virus regardless of any underlying, pre-existing medical condition that may have actually been the cause of the death.
• So, if I understand the good doctor correctly, if someone had stage four liver cancer and contracted the virus in the final days of their lives after a losing battle against the liver cancer, the Federal government somehow decided to classify that as a death caused by the virus.
• I think her words verify my conclusion and example: “There are other countries that if you had a pre-existing condition, and let’s say the virus caused you to go to the ICU [intensive care unit] and then have a heart or kidney problem, some countries are recording that as a heart issue or a kidney issue and not a COVID-19 death."

It seems other countries got their logic and counting right: just because someone who died had the virus, doesn't mean that the virus killed them. But for some godforsaken reason, in this country the Federal government says that anyone who dies who has the virus is to be counted as a virus victim, not a cancer, kidney, or other malady victim. 

As a result, we may have a significant over count of the number of deaths in this country caused by the virus which resulted in drastic economic pain and suffering which may not have been necessary because the Federal government did not know how to count. Insanity.

2) This inability to count is finally showing up in opinion polls as Americans begin to doubt what all levels of government are telling them about the virus:

• An Axios/Ipsos poll recently asked a sample of Americans the following question: “Do you believe the actual number of Americans dying from the coronavirus is more, less, or about the same as the number of deaths that have been reported?”
• The poll found that about one out three of those polled think the actual virus death toll is lower than what is being reported.
• 31% of those polled said the death toll from the virus is less, 31% said it is about what is reported and 37% said it is more than what is being reported.
• So in round figures about one third say it is under reported, one third say it is over reported and one third say it is correctly reported, you cannot be much more divided as a nation than that.
• Republicans are much more doubtful of the reported results with 58% of those polled thinking the death toll reported is too high and only 16% saying it is higher than what is reported. 
• Democrats go the other way with 61% saying the reported death rates are too low and only 9% believing that the death toll is lower than what is being reported.
• Again, you cannot be much more divided than that.

The more troubling aspect from the total responses is that those who think the death toll is less has gone up eight percentage points from the poll conducted just two months which would indicate there is growing doubt that the death rate is that high.

Again, if we cannot agree on the numbers and the true scope of the issue, then it is doubtful we will agree on a proposed remedy. All because government and politicians cannot even count.

3) In addition to the state by state cases we have talked about and their serious counting flaws, it turns out that there may be a more basic problem with the whole testing process across the country:

• Department of Health scientists in Connecticut found that a virus test being used widely across the country is causing false positives, i.e. the test results are saying that a tested person has the virus when they really do not.
• The test is made and distributed by Thermo Fisher Scientific.
• In Connecticut they found that out of 144 positive virus tests they looked at between July 15 and July 17, 90 of the 144 were really false positives, a totally unacceptable rate for a medical test of any sort.
• The saddest part of this failure is that patients who were falsely thought to have the virus in nursing homes may have been moved into areas of residents who actually had the virus which means that healthy nursing home patients were unnecessarily and possibly fatally exposed to the virus for no good reason because of the faulty test.

So, bad testing procedures, bad counting procedures, and growing doubt that anyone in the government or politics has a clue to what is really going on. Lord help us, please save us from the “experts” who apparently have no clue themselves.

Our book, "Love My Country, Loathe My Government - Fifty First Steps To Restoring Our Freedom And Destroying The American Political Class" is now available at:

https://www.amazon.com/Walter-Bruno-Korschek/e/B002KYU08Q/ref=dbs_a_mng_rwt_scns_share

Please visit the following sites for freedom:


http://www.reason.com
http://www.cato.org
http://www.bankruptingamerica.org
http://www.conventionofstates.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w

July, 2020, Part 8, Political Class Insanity: How The Government Cannot Count When It Comes To the Coronavirus, Chapter 1

It is the beginning of another month which means it is time again to review the latest political class insanity from the American political class. Each month it takes us multiple posts to cover the wasteful spending, incompetent government organizations and employees, government programs that usually make a problem worse than resolving it, inane and idiotic politician comments, etc.

To review past posts on this insanity and idiocy, just click on the first few posts in each month listed to the right of this page. After reviewing just a handful of these insanity posts we think you will agree that we are currently being served by the worst set of American politicians ever to hold office in our entire history.

1) Today we will be focusing on the coronavirus. Not because it has sickened and killed so many people around the world but because it illustrates the pure incompetence of government and the politicians that operate that government and their inability to simply be able to count effectively. You cannot solve a problem unless you understand the reality of the problem and almost always the reality of a problem is determined by the data and numbers that describe the problem. 

But if you cannot even collect that data and numbers correctly then your ability to solve a problem is almost nil. You are basing any solutions on faulty data and premises and only pure luck will ever get you to the right solution.

Consider the case of this poor guy in Tennessee:

• According to Amanda Prestifiacomo, writing for the Daily Caller website, Brock Ballou lives in Nashville, Tennessee.
• Unfortunately he received a call from the state of Tennessee that notified him that he had tested positive for the coronavirus.
• The problem is he has never taken any kind of test for the virus but somehow got counted and classified as a positive test for it.
• Now, he had expected to be contacted by the state since he had come in contact with a coworker who had tested positive for the virus.
• The state worker who called insisted multiple times that he was a positive case despite his insistence he had never been tested so how could he be positive: “She specifically said – I’m looking at it right here – you tested positive – this is a follow up call to see how your symptoms are.”
• In addition: “I’m 100 percent sure that’s what she said, she was looking right at it, she told me I’m in the system – looking right at it that you’re showing positive.”
• But it did not end there since Mr. Ballou continued to receive calls from the state in subsequent days checking on his symptoms.
• The local news station investigating his claims verified that all of the phone numbers that called him are indeed connected to the state’s board of health entity.

So, what do we have here? A single isolated computer error or data entry error or systemic reporting problems that significantly over count the actual number of cases? Whatever the truth is, the many, many instances of idiocy like this bring into doubt the whole validity of the coronavirus numbers and the drastic steps the country was forced to take, steps that have not been necessary if the numbers are inflated.

2) Following up on this Tennessee problem, recall that we have previously reported on the bogus numbers that were surfacing down here in Florida:

• Many testing labs in Florida reported that 100% of everyone who walked in their doors and were tested for the virus tested positive, a highly unlikely outcome for even a single testing center never mind multiple testing centers.
• In addition, some labs reported positive rates that were less than 100% but which were still unrealistically high such as the Orlando Veteran’s Medical Center which reported a positive rate of 76%.
• Follow analysis showed that the actual positive rate there was only a fraction of that 76%, only 6%, an initial over count that was 13 times higher than reality.
• The positive rate at Orlando Health was thought to be a whopping 98% but follow analysis showed it to be on tenth that rate, just under 10%.

Again, you cannot solve a problem unless you know what and how big the problem is and in Tennessee and Florida, we may not know what we think we know, that the infection rate may be far lower than the political class and government is telling us.

3) But the east coast is not the only source of bad virus numbers:

• A Colorado man recently died, his death attributed to the coronavirus.
• However, follow up analysis shows that he died of alcohol poisoning, he had actually drunk himself to death, a reality that had nothing to do with the virus.
• David Aaro of Fox News reported that Sebastian Yellow, age 35, was found dead on May 4 and his death was initially attributed to the virus.
• However, the county coroner followed up and found out that he actually died because his blood alcohol test was at a whopping .55 which led to acute alcohol poisoning.
• The .55 level is about seven times higher than what the state of Colorado considers being intoxicated.
• While Yellow did have the virus in his blood, the coroner concluded that it had nothing to do with his death.
• Which was consistent with other cases in Colorado where three nursing home deaths were initially attributed to the virus but follow up medical analysis found that the virus had nothing to do with their deaths.
• But this should not surprise anyone since the Colorado Board of Health basically says that if anyone has a positive test for the virus and then dies, the cause of death is officially considered the virus: "We classify a death as confirmed when there was a case who had a positive SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19) laboratory test and then died. We also classify some deaths as probable." 
• The Board Of Health also went on to say that: “We will also count a death as a COVID-19 death when there is no known positive laboratory test but the death certificate lists 'COVID-19' as a cause of death."
• If I read that last statement correctly, even if there is no proof that a deceased person in the state actually had the virus, they will count the death as a result of the virus simply because the death certificate, without any proof, says it was a virus death.

So, in Colorado if you die from alcohol poisoning, there is a good chance you might be cited as a virus death. If you die in a nursing home, where you were likely placed there in the first place because of another health condition, you might be classified as a virus death. If there is no proof you have the virus but die anyway, you might still be classified as a virus death. 

As we stated up front, you cannot resolve any issue unless you have defined the parameters of that issue. And in the case of the coronavirus, many, many government entities and the politicians that oversee and operate those entities have shown again how incompetent they are at confronting and resolving any issue facing the country, When you cannot even accurately count, you cannot be expected to resolve any problems.

Unfortunately, the inability to count is not restricted to Tennessee, Florida, and Colorado as we will see in the followup posts in the next week or so.

Our book, "Love My Country, Loathe My Government - Fifty First Steps To Restoring Our Freedom And Destroying The American Political Class" is now available at:

https://www.amazon.com/Walter-Bruno-Korschek/e/B002KYU08Q/ref=dbs_a_mng_rwt_scns_share

Please visit the following sites for freedom:


http://www.reason.com
http://www.cato.org
http://www.bankruptingamerica.org
http://www.conventionofstates.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w

July, 2020, Part 7, Political Class Insanity: The Incredible Lack of Basic Math Skills Of Government, Politicians, and Ocasio-Cortez

It is the beginning of another month which means it is time again to review the latest political class insanity from the American political class. Each month it takes us multiple posts to cover the wasteful spending, incompetent government organizations and employees, government programs that usually make a problem worse than resolving it, inane and idiotic politician comments, etc.

To review past posts on this insanity and idiocy, just click on the first few posts in each month listed to the right of this page. After reviewing just a handful of these insanity posts we think you will agree that we are currently being served by the worst set of American politicians ever to hold office in our entire history.

1) As we have shown far too many times in this blog, American politicians have very little credibility on just about any topic. What they tell us very often is an outright lie, a shading of reality, or just plain ignorance on their part. Such is the case when it comes to informing the American public the true extent and reach of the coronavirus crisis as the following simple math and administrative foul ups point out:

• Fox 35 News in Orlando recently reported that a young man in his 20s, who was listed as a coronavirus victim, actually died from a motorcycle accident.
• This was part of a larger Fox 35 investigation that found massive errors in the Florida processes to county coronavirus cases.
• In more than one case, a testing site reported that all 83 of the people that were tested were found to have the virus, a very very unlikely outcome.
• One testing facility, Orlando Health, published statistics that showed that 98% of the people it tested for the virus actually had the virus but follow up investigations showed that the real rate was about 90% lower than the reported 98%.
• The Orlando Medical Center reported a positive rate of 76% but later admitted the actually positive rate was only 6%.
• Another research effort concluded that the Florida infection rate may be overstated by as much as 30%.
• In Virginia, it turns out that in that state the numbers being reported are the number of tests that are positive not the number of people that test positive. Thus, if someone went and had three tests done that were all positive, then the reported number would have been three, not one, distorting that state’s numbers.
• We have previously reported how it was shown in New York that it seemed when anyone died it was reported as a coronavirus death despite indications there were other causes of death.
• We have also previously reported on a California follow up autopsy study that found a high percentage of those reported as a virus deaths were not a virus death, that these unfortunate folks who passed away had the virus but the virus was not the cause of death.

As you can see, anything that the political class touches via government functions almost always gets screwed up. You cannot make wise and effective decisions if the data you are basing your decisions on are as screwed up as the virus counting processes. Insanity to begin shutting down the economy again when maybe the inability to count is the problem, not the virus.

2) We used to write a lot about the stupid and ignorant things that Congresswoman Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez would spout. For a while it was amusing to make fun of her ignorance and stupid rants. However, over time she just became a tedious drone, saying stuff that showed her lack of knowledge and real world experience and the fact that anyone who disagreed with her was almost always immediately classified as a racist or sexist by herself.

One of her major shortcomings is her inability to do simple math. She once proposed that the top income tax rate for those earning over $10 million a year be raised to 70% to pay for the idiotic New Green Deal climate idiocy. Using publicly available IRS records we were able to show in just a few simple calculations that doing so would pay for only a tiny, tiny fraction of her proposed climate pipe dream, not the entire cost as she claimed.

Her abysmal math skills were recently on display again:

• She has joined the chorus of some New York state politicians that want to slap a wealth tax on the state’s 118 billionaires.
• This wealth tax would be used, according to these folks, to help support those that are suffering as a result of the coronavirus issue.
• This wealth tax would generate about $5.5 billion which sounds like a lot of money especially to someone like Ocasio-Coertez who has shown to have some very weak math skills.
• That means that on average, each millionaire would pay about $46.6 million as a result of this wealth tax.
• There are currently about 1.3 million New Yorkers who are unemployed and would be likely candidates for part of this $5.5 billion according to the wishes of Ocasio-Cortexz.
• But if we divide that $5.5 billion by the 1.3 million candidates for financial relief the average payout would be….$35.42, hardly enough to pay the rent, pay the mortgage, or buy a lot of groceries.

Do the math Congresswoman, or if you cannot do the math, have someone on your staff do the math before coming up with these ridiculous ideas. And the $35.42 is probably on the high side:

• The $35.42 assumes that the wealth tax could magically go to the 1.3 million without any government bureaucracy costs reducing that amount actually available.
• And no one, no matter how rich they are, is going to willingly write a check for $46 million and give it to the government.
• These billionaires have the ability to pick up and move to other states without any wealth tax, and probably move to states that do not have any income tax either such as Florida, before the state government could pass the wealth tax. 
• Think about it, even if they lived in a $10 million mansion, they would be better off selling that New York mansion at a steep discount in order to avoid paying $46.6 million in a wealth tax.
• In such a case, they would end up at least $36 million ahead of the game and Ocasio-Cortez nitwit wealth tax idea and would quite quickly get their money back by moving to a state with a smaller tax burden

Again, like most politicians. Ocasio-Cortez does not have the ability to come up with real solutions to the country’ problems so she comes up with stupid non-solutions like this. In fact, not only does she not have any problem solving abilities, she has very weak math skills.

3) In the past few posts we have discussed the reality that crime in NYC is up tremendously over the past weeks/months:

• The year to date NYC murder rate is up 27.1% compared to the same time period last year.
• The number of shooting incidents is up 53.5%.
• During the Fourth Of July weekend, 10 city residents were killed, up 130% from last year.
• On a single recent Monday in the city there were 18 shooting victims involved in 14 different shooting incidents.
• However, instances of petty larceny, the stealing of property with a value less than $1,000, is down 7.5% compared to last year.

Okay, so a simple analysis of these numbers would indicate that violent crime is way up this year in NYC while petty theft crimes are down. But somehow, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez lives in a different world when she views these statistics, assuming she even looked at the stats and the reality they portray:

• She contends that NYC crime is way up because people have to steal a loaf of bread to feed their families.
• Specifically: "Maybe this has to do with the fact that people aren't paying their rent and are scared to pay their rent and so they go out and they need to feed their child and they don't have money. They feel like they either need to shoplift some bread or go hungry."
• So all of the shootings and increased violence, all of the attacks on police officers in the city and the looting of stores that have nothing to do with bread are happening because people are hungry for a loaf of bread?

Shootings are up, violence crimes in the streets are up, petty theft is down, a category that probably involves stealing a loaf of bread, and this is the conclusion she comes to? Her lack of world experience and ignorance in the face of facts and reality is mind boggling.

That will do it for today: the incredible lack of math skills of politicians in general and Ocasio- Cortez in particular.

Our book, "Love My Country, Loathe My Government - Fifty First Steps To Restoring Our Freedom And Destroying The American Political Class" is now available at:

https://www.amazon.com/Walter-Bruno-Korschek/e/B002KYU08Q/ref=dbs_a_mng_rwt_scns_share

Please visit the following sites for freedom:


http://www.reason.com
http://www.cato.org
http://www.bankruptingamerica.org
http://www.conventionofstates.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w