Health Care Costs and Covid

Biden says coronavirus’ impact on health system hasn’t changed his mind on single-payer What will change a lot of minds: the 40% increase in premiums projected for next year as the insurance companies recapitalize to pay for everything the providers bill for keeping up with the virus (Aetna CEO’s comments during a conference call with investors). Think $25,000/year for a family plan is bad? Next year it...

The numbers behind the lockdown

The statistics I’ve seen have the Covid-19 death rate for people under 55 at about 0.8%, or about 4x higher than the seasonal flu. Not so bad. Except that 75% of the US population is under 55. That’s 245 million people. If they all got the virus in a two-month period that is 1,960,000 deaths. Divide that number in half if you think only half the population gets it. Divide it in half again. And again, just...

The Problem Considering 5G Claims

The real problem is that human physiology is the most complicated thing in the known universe. Multiply that times 9 billion variants and it gets really hard to prove anything. So people make hypotheses, test ideas, and create conceptual frameworks for approaching the overwhelming complexity (ayurvedic medicine, Chinese medicine, homeopathy, western materialistic medicine, anthroposophic medicine, shamanism, etc.). They run...

Common Sense on Covid and the Death Rate

There are many facts and opinions swirling around about the virus, the response, and everything in between. There is a lot of virus-denialism that appears more rooted in wishful thinking than a considerations of the facts. The wisdom of shutting down the economy is questioned; a quite legitimate issue in a democracy. And the very nature of the virus is up for grabs. Unfortunately so much of the commentary and quick-takes...

Smart People and Covid Conspiracies

Scientist with 4 Degrees from MIT Warns ‘Deep State’ Using Coronavirus Fear-Mongering To Suppress Dissent There was an interesting article a few years back about why really smart people were far more likely to fall for absurd conspiracy theories. Something about always being the smartest person in the room make you think you can understand other areas of expertise while skipping all the parts about learning the...

Corona Statistics and Minimizing

99% of Those Who Died From Virus Had Other Illness, Italy Says Several people on social media were posting this link to argue that the virus is no big deal and every one is overreacting. My response: Yes, all that the virus does is bring death forward. But when it does that for 15 to 20% of everyone over 70, and does it all in the same month, that becomes a very big problem. It has a 1% death rate even among perfectly...

Response to Corona Conspiracy Video

How Dr. Wolfgang Wodarg sees the current Corona pandemic The above links to a viral video people were posting on social media. My response: I watched it. It is five days old and showing its age. He makes some very good points, but you only have to look at what is happening in Italy (and Spain and France) to realize that he can be both right and wrong. Right about a baseline persistence of corona viruses in general, but wrong...

On 5G and Electrosmog

What if electricity is just a symptom, a reflection of what we are doing with our consciousness, of where our attention is flowing? And what if much of the malignant influences attributed to the presence and spread of electricity and electromagnetic radiation around the globe were in fact attributable to what we are doing with our thoughts and our actions? Isn’t the tendency to make the presence of electricity and RF...

Did Rudolf Steiner write the “We Must Eradic...

The following verse, usually attributed to Rudolf Steiner, has been has been very popular lately. Steiner wrote a lot of verses for many different purposes. But this one is not one one of them. The first part is a versification of a paragraph from a 1910 lecture. The second part is demonstrably pseudoepigraphical. More on that below. (For those wondering, pseudoepigraphical means “falsely attributed”; it is a...

Tangled Timelines in Steiner’s Autobiography

In his autobiography Steiner talks about meeting Nietzsche in 1896, and appears to say that this meeting influenced a book he wrote in 1895. What’s going on? I just re-read the chapter in German, and I’m going to judge it as ambiguous. Steiner spends three pages talking about how he experienced Nietzsche. But it is clear that he means through Nietzsche’s writing, because Steiner says as much. But he talks...