COVID-19: January? TRY to keep up.

The CDC now says SARS-CoV-2 may have been spreading slowly in the US in late January.

The first U.S. cases of nontravel–related COVID-19 were confirmed on February 26 and 28, 2020, suggesting that community transmission was occurring by late February.

This is — among other reasons — is why I do not consider the CDC to be a good source for data. Aside from the fact that nation-wide outbreaks occurred that were too widespread and early to be consistent with a mere late January slow spread, we know that there were nontravel-related illnesses well before that.

• Ohio: Yes, Ohio, far from Washington. Antibody testing found a case dating as early as January 7. Patients in five counties spread across the state.
• Washington: Two days after Christmas last year; December 27. Nontravel. That’s when she went symptomatic. Exposure had to be a week or two before that, meaning it was spreading mid-December.

Yes, we know that SARS-CoV-2 was widespread in the US by late last year. Three months before the gov noticed, and decided to use it as an excuse for a totalitarian police state.

Do try to keep up, CDC. Here’s a collection of links to case studies indicating extensive — and mostly harmless — exposure long before the lockdowns.

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JPFO Steps In It

When the wonderful Aaron Zelman passed away, Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership fell upon hard times. The directors chose to sell it to someone they thought could keep it going. To the dismay of several members and workers, they chose to pass JPFO on to Alan Gottlieb.

Dismay, because Aaron — and a great many of us — regarded Gottlieb as a compromiser who is actually a danger to Second Amendment-protected human/civil rights.
Recently, JPFO ran a column by Richard Douglas, “How Do We Solve Gun Related Violence Without Sacrificing Our Rights?”. My reaction to that piece appearing on the JPFO site was:

“With JPFO publishing this utter BS, we can slip a generator drive belt around Aaron Zelman’s body and power the entire state of Wisconsin.”

Some have wondered why I objected to the column. Allow me to explain.

There are several problems, starting with endorsement of the Kansas City experiment (and the Project Exile it was testing). That included preemptive, no-cause intimidation visits and no-cause stop&frisks. People were being arrested for firearm possession, not for committing real crimes with firearms. The experiment was flawed anyway, since the starting demographics of the test and control beats were dissimilar, and they didn’t examine changing demographics.

Then the guy equates industry development of automotive technology to CDC sociological research, and concludes that inventing better brakes means the CDC should study “causes” gun violence. If the CDC did all the research into car crashes, they’d still be ignoring the young male demographic that the insurance and car rental industries already know are the main problem, while testing for the influence of existential angst on middle-aged women drivers, and banning automotive tech innovation.

He buys into the view that the Dickey Amendment shut down research. It didn’t even shut down CDC research; they just didn’t publish findings that didn’t support the anti-rights agenda.

Statistically speaking, we already know where “gun” violence occurs, who is doing it, to whom, when, and why. The only “research” needed for the overall problem is a field test: arrest, convict, and imprison; for real crimes against real people. Compare that to catch&release (ie- Chicago) and see which process lowers crime.

Outliers like public mass shootings unrelated to trafficking and gangs, or terrorism, may be worthy of actual study. I suggest looking for ways to spot problems without turning us into a totalitarian surveillance state. And since the state will always have an interest in expanding its power, that’s an automatic argument against having the state do the research.

From working with Aaron, I think he would have agreed with my assessment, and he would have seen this as more of why he disapproved of Gottlieb. The only way Aaron would have published that column would have been as a “know your enemy” warning.

Others, including David Codrea, also expressed outrage.

” JPFO founder Aaron Zelman strongly opposed such edicts:”

>

In the face of such criticism, JPFO appears to be backpedaling.

“It was a “guest opinion” piece, and, as JPFO sees it for what it is, and appreciates your reaction (along with your other work), there’s an official JPFO statement on the way for “the rest of the story,” as JPFO sees this particular subject matter. Thank you. All the best.”

If the Vichy JPFO disagreed with Douglas, and meant this as an opposition piece, they should have noted it at the time; not waited until they were criticized over it. Compare that to censorship of pro-2A writers by Gottlieb.

The forthcoming “official JPFO statement” should be interesting.

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About that so-called ban on gun research

Victim-disarming gun controllers like to claim that Congress banned gun research by the CDC back in 1996.

Those of us living in this universe know that’s a lie. Research was never banned. What was banned was anti-gun activism, using governmen t funds to promote unconstitutional gun people control. The funds they lost were the reasearch funds the CDC diverted from research to gun control promotion. Immorally and possibly illegally.

Government-funded “gun violence” research marched on. The NIH, just for one example, rather routinely funds gun research to the tune of hundreds of thousands of dollars per year; some years a lot more.

But about CDC research that the anti-rights crowd would have you believe ended 22 years ago…

What Do CDC’s Surveys Say About the Frequency of Defensive Gun Uses?
In 1996, 1997, and 1998, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) conducted large-scale national surveys asking about defensive gun use (DGU). They never released the findings, or even acknowledged they had studied the topic. I obtained the unpublished raw data and computed the prevalence of DGU. CDC’s findings indicated that an average of 2.46 million U.S. adults used a gun for self-defense in each of the years from 1996 through 1998 – almost exactly confirming the estimate for 1992 of Kleck and Gertz (1995). Possible reasons for CDC’s suppression of these findings are discussed.

Just in case any of my readers are public school victims, 1997 and 1998 are after 1996. And in the paper you’ll find cites for year 2000 gun research funded by the CDC.

The CDC didn’t end research. They just ended publication when the results didn’t fit the “guns are bad and no one uses them defensively so ban ’em” narrative.

Even better, their research validated Kleck’s earlier work on defensive gun use numbers. That was really inconvenient.

“2.46 million U.S. adults used a gun for self-defense in each of the years from 1996 through 1998.”

The CDC knew. And suppressed the data.

Parse that…

Clear guidance from Dr. Tom Frieden, director for the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC):
“The first is, if you’re a member of the traveling public and are healthy, should you be worried that you might have gotten it by sitting next to someone? And the answer is no.

“Second, if you are sick and you may have Ebola, should you get on a bus? And the answer to that is also no. You might become ill, you might have a problem that exposes someone around you.”

…and try to resist the urge to raze the CDC, sow salt on the ruins, and nuke it from orbit just to be sure.