This Week in Guano
Every Day We Stray Further From Sanity
This has been an interesting week(ish) for batshit news.
Come, take a seat, grab your popcorn, and lend me an ear as I weave a tale of science fails, and one gloriously terrible attempt to finally clean up all of our harmful language.
Jiggity-Jab Yourself ‘Fore You Wreck Yourself
The American Journal of Medicine really wants us to know about a correlation between car crashes and jab hesitancy. They admit it’s not quite causal, but they do have a theory of just what’s going on here. Turns out, if you don’t trust the jab, that means you’re a certain kind of person. Oh, you know the kind, one of those people, who don’t trust authority or rules, believes in natural protection and a higher power, or is just a fan of that disgusting ol’ freedom.
Freedom. Not Even Once.
They were one Trump campaign-run away from coming right out and calling the jab hesitant, “deplorables.”
And these deplorables are just plum irresponsible, don’tcha know?
Afterward, they go into the plausible ramifications of their own study, all but saying, “It would be a real shame if insurance companies discriminated against you for not walking lock-step with the authorities…”
This is, of course, absolute horse shit. The study is littered with clever omissions, statistical trickery, and blatant bias. Dr. John Campbell did an excellent job covering how far it misses the mark of science, but here are some standouts in a nutshell:
Their data isn’t public, so I guess we just gotta take their word for it. Science doesn’t need to be independently verified, you silly!
They don’t just include drivers. Being Anti-Vax makes you more dangerous, even if you’re a pedestrian or passenger: Only the deplorables are dumb enough to get hit by someone else or ride passenger in a car that’s going to crash…or be crashed into. Duh.
They only did the study for a month, and likewise only considered someone vaxxed if they were at least two weeks in after their second jab. So even if you were already in the process of getting it, tough shit, you’re an Anti-Vaxxer now. Better start polishing your trump NFT, fascist!
They omit deaths at the scene. So if you just happened to “Die Suddenly” *cough* we shouldn’t count your case or even wonder about your vax status. Nothing to see here!
Oh, and never mind that you needed a jab for public transportation during the study period. I mean, sure, that makes the jab hesitant far more likely to drive, and therefore be in an auto accident, but who wants to consider pesky details like that?
Obviously, this is far from an exhaustive coverage, and there are more technical demonstrations of the paper’s failings, but I got more news to cover. Gotta keep this ball rolling.
Speaking of jabs…
What’s in a Name?
In this new post-truth era, it’s really not so surprising that we see people playing fast and loose with language (oh, I’ll be coming back to this).
Yet, despite the CDC conveniently changing the meaning of vaccination to include just about any damn thing under the sun (including Vitamin D), people still expect inoculation to, at the very least, somewhat prevent infection.
I mean, in what clown world would we consider a jab that makes you more likely to get the virus a vaccine?
Unrelated, but did you hear about how a Cleveland study accidentally discovered that the jabs make you more likely to get infected with each subsequent shot?
Now that is one deplorable chart.
Hey, maybe that was just a fluke. It’s not like there is another study showing the same thi—
Oh, well, shit.
Wait, does this mean the virus can be a vaccine now too?
The world truly is becoming more inclusive.
But, Linda, listen, all’s not lost! They also found that those without the jabs were at higher risk of “all cause deaths,” which is everything from a bullet wound to ass cancer, so according to the study’s authors, that means they’re still worth getting!
…
Huh. So, is the best way to protect yourself from a car crash a Covid jab after all?
Honestly, I dunno.
Unlike Fauci, I’m not “The Science(™).”
Whatever that means…
A Karen By Any Other…
Maybe the public health officials are really onto something. Maybe we’ve been using language all wrong, all along. Most people don’t realize just how many common terms and phrases are rooted in historic prejudice.
To combat this egregious stain on the human experience, Stanford University’s IT department published a list of bad words and their suggestions for replacement. This previously public information was promptly mocked so hard they hid it behind a paywall, but not before Robby Soave, over at Reason, managed to get a good read of it.
So, what kind of harmful words are we talking about here? Did we finally realize “People of Color” is just a roundabout way of saying “Colored People,” and should just start calling them “Not-Whites?”
Well, obviously not that, it’d expose certain agendas. But how about “Karens?” Is it time we recognize its racist and sexist undertones and opt for something more sensitive, like “Demanding or Entitled White Women?”
Well…yeah, as it turns out.
While that example was the standout for Robby (you should absolutely read his piece after this, it’s pure gold), what got me were the benign examples that could only really be harmful if you’re more sensitive than a child, such as “take a stab at it.”
“No Billy, I meant at your math test, not your Karen teacher!”
And while we’re taking all this time thinking about women, minorities, and totem poles, we really must think of our equestrian brethren when we say such painful things like, “beating a dead horse.”
Wait, that sounds familiar…
Oh, right.
Gotta love when the Woke overlap with PETA.
