What Happened Today: February 3, 2022
The failure of lockdowns; ISIS leader killed; BLM’s finances
The Big Story
“Lockdowns have had little to no public health effects,” according to a new working paper by three economists at Johns Hopkins University that aggregates the results of 24 different scientific studies examining the effects of lockdowns during the first surge of COVID-19 in 2020.
Compared with lockdowns’ negligible health impacts, the paper’s authors conclude they imposed “enormous economic and social costs,” and that they were “ill-founded and should be rejected as a pandemic policy instrument.” When the first COVID surge hit the U.S. in March 2020, China was already going full bore on a “zero COVID” policy that entailed cordoning off cities with millions of people in military-enforced quarantines. At the time, some oft-cited models in the West predicted that policies limiting indoor gatherings, closing schools, and banning in-person religious services would reduce COVID19-related mortalities by as much as 98%, effectively matching the statistics being reported—though not verified—by the Chinese government. But the Hopkins study finds that such policies in fact only reduced the mortality rate by an average of 0.2% in the U.S. and Europe. While the study gives some credit to the closure of nonessential businesses, especially bars, for reducing COVID deaths by as much as 10%, it also finds that the forced closure of safe outdoor spaces, by pushing people to more hazardous indoor spaces, may have increased deaths.
A small minority of physicians, scientists, and epidemiologists, most notably the authors of the Great Barrington Declaration, came out as early opponents of lockdowns. In October of 2020, the declaration’s authors and signatories opposed lockdowns and proposed an alternative approach—one focused on protecting the most vulnerable while allowing the population to slowly reach herd immunity. Four days after the declaration was published, Dr. Francis Collins, then director of the National Institutes of Health, wrote to Dr. Anthony Fauci that the proposal from “the fringe epidemiologists” was “getting a lot of attention,” and necessitated a “quick and devastating published takedown of [the declaration’s] premises.” Those “fringe epidemiologists” (widely published professors from Harvard, Oxford, and Stanford) were also villainized and threatened by much of the media and medical establishment.
Read it here: https://nypost.com/2022/02/02/covid-lockdowns-had-very-little-effect-on-mortality-rate-study/
Today’s Back Pages: The Chaplains Who Went Down With the Ship
The Rest
→ The leader of the Islamic State (IS) was killed overnight Wednesday, according to U.S. officials, after he blew himself up as U.S. Special Operations forces closed in on his compound in Idlib province, a rebel-controlled area in northwestern Syria. A total of 13 people were found dead around the compound after the raid, including six children and four women, according to reports from civilian groups in Syria. “All casualties at the site were due to the acts of ISIS terrorists inside the residence,” a U.S. official said Thursday. No U.S. forces were killed in the raid, which was initially planned in December, Presiden Biden said in a statement on Thursday.
→ It’s gone from meta to worse for the beleaguered social media behemoth once known as Facebook, with the company losing more than $200 billion in value in the midst of its biggest stock plunge ever and “the biggest ever single-day drop in market capitalisation for any company,” according to the Financial Times. The bleeding started after Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg told investors that he expects the current quarter to see the worst growth in the company’s history. The problems Zuckerberg was trying to escape with his big pivot to the “metaverse”—stiff competition from TikTok, a massive loss in revenue caused by a change in Apple’s privacy policy, and the ever-looming threat of government regulation—just caught up to him.
→ Black Lives Matter, the $60 million organization widely regarded as synonymous with the premier social justice cause of the modern era, closed down all of its online fundraising efforts Wednesday afternoon, shortly after the attorneys general of California and Washington threatened the group with legal action over its failure to submit required financial disclosures for 2020.
And for more on BLMs finances, see this report from October 2020 by Scroll editor Sean Cooper: https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/warren-buffett-black-lives-matter
→ Ukraine wants military assistance from Israel, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said Wednesday. Ukraine was seeking “deepened defense cooperation … in particular related to air defense,” Kuleba told a reporter. Contrary to the projections coming from U.S. and European officials, Israel’s Foreign Minister Yair Lapid offered a less dire outlook Wednesday: “At the moment, the (Israeli) assessment is that we don’t see a violent confrontation soon. I also don’t think a world war is about to start there,” Lapid told Axios.
→ Surprising news about Fox News host Tucker Carlson: His show was the top-rated cable news show among Democrats aged 25-54 last October, according to the Nielsen ratings. Yes, Democrats. Data from Nielsen MRI Fusion shows that Fox News was the top choice for total-day viewership among self-identified Democrats in that age group, with 42% tuning into the right-wing news channel, compared with 33% of the same group of Democrats who preferred CNN and 25% who tuned into MSNBC.
→ Four men were arrested Tuesday on charges of distributing narcotics in connection to the fatal overdose of Michael K. Williams, the actor known for his intense portrayal of the character Omar in The Wire. A team of detectives in the New York police department believes that they’ve pinpointed the exact circumstances that led to Williams’ death. Video in police custody shows the moment after Williams walked up to a tenement building in the Williamsburg neighborhood of Brooklyn when he “handed something to a thin man in light blue pants after a brief verbal exchange.” Police believe that something was heroin laced with fentanyl and carfentanil.
Get the full story here from the great Michael Daly: https://www.thedailybeast.com/how-the-nypd-cracked-the-michael-k-williams-overdose-case
→ Stronger than steel and lighter than plastic! A new material developed by MIT chemical engineers using a novel, two-dimensional polymerization process that “self-assembles into sheets, unlike all other polymers, which form one-dimensional, spaghetti-like chains.” The material, which is currently in the process of being patented, could be used in everything from structural engineering to mobile phones.
→ Here’s a fascinating thread on how the overdependence of American farms on nitrogen to fertilize crops has led to a situation where the country’s food supply is vulnerable to price fluctuations in the fertilizer.
Tablet’s religion correspondent Maggie Phillips on the origins of the military’s Four Chaplains Day
Today is Four Chaplains Day, declared by Congress in 1948 to commemorate the four military chaplains aboard the U.S. Army transport ship Dorchester who gave their lives trying to save their fellow soldiers aboard the sinking ship when, on Feb. 3, 1943, it was struck by a torpedo from a German submarine. The chaplains were Lt. Alexander Goode, a Reform Jewish rabbi; Lt. George Fox, a Methodist minister; Lt. Clark Poling, a Dutch Reformed pastor; and Lt. John Washington, a Roman Catholic priest. After rendering aid and encouragement to those trying to escape the sinking Dorchester, the four men were last seen praying and singing hymns, arms linked as the slanting former luxury steamer plunged downward into the North Atlantic.
The four men had been classmates at Harvard Chaplains School and were headed to their first assignment in Greenland. According to the U.S. Army Chaplain Corps’ account, Poling wrote to his father before the voyage, requesting his prayers: “Not for my safe return, that wouldn’t be fair. Just pray that I shall do my duty … never be a coward … and have the strength, courage and understanding of men. Just pray that I shall be adequate.”
Adequacy is one of those neutral concepts that acquires meaning in relation to external conditions. Called upon to place others’ lives before their own in the most exceptional conditions, the chaplains showed that adequate can be more than enough.
Tensions were high before the torpedo strike. The Dorchester’s captain, aware that the frigid waters known as Torpedo Junction were full of German submarines, had instructed all aboard to keep on their life jackets and outerwear.
Despite the captain’s directions, many of the men aboard “were still in their underwear,” when the strike occurred just after midnight, according to the Chaplain Corps account. After the ship’s electricity was taken out, the chaplains led disoriented passengers up through the darkness to the listing Dorchester’s deck. They encouraged calm, and helped tend to the wounded.
As the crew and passengers tried to escape the sinking ship, the chaplains handed out the spare life jackets on board. When those were gone, each of the four clergymen gave away his own. One survivor, Navy Petty Officer John J. Mahoney, recounted how when Rabbi Goode spotted him trying to return to his cabin to get his gloves, he urged Mahoney to take his. The sailor protested, but Goode assured him that he had two pairs. Mahoney later realized that the chaplain had no intention of making it out of the Dorchester alive.
The ship took on water rapidly. Life rafts floated away. For those who made it off the ship, the chances of survival in the icy waters got slimmer with every passing moment. Remaining lifeboats became overcrowded and capsized. Security precautions prevented sending up flares to engage the help of friendly vessels. Soon, there were no lifeboats left for those who remained aboard the Dorchester. “But there was more for the chaplains to do,” according to the Army account commemorating Four Chaplains Day. It describes the last sighting of the chaplains, standing together, leading their fellows in prayer. Less than a third of the 902 souls aboard the Dorchester survived.
Lts. Goode, Fox, Poling, and Washington were ineligible for the Medal of Honor, since the criteria requires heroism under fire. Instead, Congress authorized a Special Medal for Heroism, awarded posthumously in 1961 by President Eisenhower.
Today, Four Chaplains Day is a parochial observance, confined mostly to military social media, and American Legion chapters. Stained glass depictions can be found in various military chapels. Though the American military is a secular institution, it preserves elements of the heraldic traditions passed down from the armies of Medieval Europe, with its own versions of feast days and saints. “Go talk to the chaplain,” remains standard advice for a soldier who needs to get something off his or her chest, no matter their (or the chaplain’s) religious persuasion.
In another time and place, today might be called the Feast of the Four Chaplains. It might also be known more widely. By their example, these four men of faith can continue to offer solace and direction to the disoriented and afraid. Through them we can see how the dogged pursuit of adequacy, even in an act as small as giving up a pair of gloves on a cold night, is enough to make us equal to even the most difficult and fearsome tasks.
So glad I found this! I feel like I know what's going on while staying off social media
So the lockdowns only saved a measly ten thousand additional lives? How many lives did those economists save?