My daughters’ friend lost her father to COVID this week. 50-something, father of five children, two teens still at home . . . I am very aware of how serious this disease is. I have been urging people to take this seriously since it first came on the radar in early 2020, I have supported a wide range of public policy initiatives to mitigate the effects of the pandemic, and I am in favor of vaccination. I am myself vaccinated. My... Read more
Three things wrong with the announced COVID vaccine mandate, and a fourth I despise: No recognition that individuals who’ve already had COVID have immunity. No recognition that individuals who are vaccinated can still be infected and contagious. No recognition that the vaccines work. Seriously, y’all: I am fully vaccinated. I don’t need you to be vaccinated in order for me to be protected from serious disease.* The announced mandates are a punitive, coercive measure that is fake public health policy. It completely ignores the... Read more
PSA and then a personal update at the bottom, hope you are enjoying the holiday weekend. So here’s an interesting study on blood sugar (glucose) levels and COVID outcomes. Finding: We conclude that elevation in glucose levels can facilitate the progression of the disease through multiple mechanisms and can explain much of the differences in disease severity seen across the population. Super good news, if it holds up to further scrutiny, because getting your blood sugar down is much more... Read more
Gender Problems in Medieval Finland? In my goofing off today someone pointed me towards this study, “A Woman with a Sword? – Weapon Grave at Suontaka Vesitorninmäki, Finland”. The actual research is pretty interesting, if you can get past the tiresome obsession with desperate searches for ancient cultures that affirm contemporary gender ideology. The authors hypothesize the interred individual may have had Klinefelter syndrome. If you’d like to think up a genetic hypothesis of your own, here’s Wikimedia’s list of... Read more
Those of us who lean conservative have a knee-jerk tendency to ask, “Can anything good come out of California?” Hence a recent spate of gloating over the prospect of that state waking up New Year’s Day 2022 to a bleak, bacon-less dystopia caused by 2018’s Proposition 12 ballot initiative. If you aren’t familiar with the law, here are three articles that provide varying perspectives. If you only have time to read one, go with the piece from Civil Eats, as... Read more
Domenico and Melanie Bettinelli are high on my shortlist of people whose opinions I respect immensely, so I wanted to comment on Dom’s post today, “I Will Not Go Underground.” He provides important background to his comments: We have followed the general recommendations for keeping us safe from the coronavirus COVID-19: wearing masks in public before a vaccination, hand sanitizer, limiting trips out, and so on. In April of this year, Melanie and I got our vaccinations as soon as... Read more
NPR reports that the Biden administration is about to lay down vaccination requirements for federal employees: He is expected to announce that federal employees will need to confirm they are vaccinated — or face regular testing and be required to wear masks at all times while on the job. The federal government is one of the largest employers in the nation, and the move could spur private sector companies to take similar steps. Some already have. Reminder: The vaccines in... Read more
The stakes are high in return-to-school debates, because no matter what you do, there will be negative side effects. Life is dangerous. COVID-19 is dangerous, mitigation efforts bring dangers of their own, and let’s be honest: School’s been a mixed bag on the safety profile all along. Whether it’s gun violence or curriculum choices or you-name-it, our solution to date has been to host bitter feuds over The One Best Policy. It’s not just chasing after the wind, it’s going into... Read more
The Jerusalem Post has what I think is a helpful discussion of why two different studies of the Pfizer vaccine’s effectiveness show radically different results. Between this and the acknowledged reality of vaccine-breakthrough infections and post-COVID reinfections, I think what we need to recognize is that humans don’t, at this time, have the technology to eradicate COVID-19. What we have is the technology to radically reduce (not eliminate) the vulnerability of high-risk persons from a virus that is likely to remain... Read more
The Pillar reports this afternoon: . . . after a review of commercially available app signal data showed patterns of location-based hookup app use at more than 10 archdiocesan rectories and clerical residences during 2018, 2019, and 2020. There are 212 parishes in the Newark archdiocese. Assuming that “more than ten” is less than fifteen, that means between 4.7% and 7% of parishes in the diocese were affected. Let’s round conservatively to approximately 5%, and we can console the extremely aggravated... Read more
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