Author: HP McLovincraft

Seeker of rabbit holes. Pessimist. Libertine. Contrarian. Your huckleberry. Possibly true tales of sanity-blasting horror also known as abject reality. Prepare yourself. Veteran of a thousand psychic wars. I have seen the fnords. Deplatformed on Tumblr and Twitter.

Mask Mandates Seem to Make CCP Virus Infection Rates Climb, Study Says

Protective-mask mandates aimed at combating the spread of the CCP virus that causes the disease COVID-19 appear to promote its spread, according to a report from RationalGround.com, a clearinghouse of COVID-19 data trends that’s run by a grassroots group of data analysts, computer scientists, and actuaries.

Researchers examined cases covering a 229-day period running from May 1 through Dec. 15 and compared the days in which state governments had imposed mask mandates and the days when they hadn’t.

In states with a mandate in effect, there were 9,605,256 confirmed COVID-19 cases, which works out to an average of 27 cases per 100,000 people per day. When states didn’t have a statewide order—including states that never had mandates, coupled with the period of time masking states didn’t have the mandate in place—there were 5,781,716 cases, averaging 17 cases per 100,000 people per day.

In other words, protective-mask mandates have a poor track record so far in fighting the coronavirus. States with mandates in place produced an average of 10 more reported infections per 100,000 people per day than states without mandates.

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The Threat of Authoritarianism in the U.S. is Very Real, and Has Nothing To Do With Trump

Asserting that Donald Trump is a fascist-like dictator threatening the previously sturdy foundations of U.S. democracy has been a virtual requirement over the last four years to obtain entrance to cable news Green Rooms, sinecures as mainstream newspaper columnists, and popularity in faculty lounges. Yet it has proven to be a preposterous farce.

In 2020 alone, Trump had two perfectly crafted opportunities to seize authoritarian power — a global health pandemic and sprawling protests and sustained riots throughout American cities — and yet did virtually nothing to exploit those opportunities. Actual would-be despots such as Hungary’s Viktor Orbán quickly seized on the virus to declare martial law, while even prior U.S. presidents, to say nothing of foreign tyrants, have used the pretext of much less civil unrest than what we saw this summer to deploy the military in the streets to pacify their own citizenry.

But early in the pandemic, Trump was criticized, especially by Democrats, for failing to assert the draconian powers he had, such as commandeering the means of industrial production under the Defense Production Act of 1950, invoked by Truman to force industry to produce materials needed for the Korean War. In March, The Washington Post reported that “Governors, Democrats in Congress and some Senate Republicans have been urging Trump for at least a week to invoke the act, and his potential 2020 opponent, Joe Biden, came out in favor of it, too,” yet “Trump [gave] a variety of reasons for not doing so.” Rejecting demands to exploit a public health pandemic to assert extraordinary powers is not exactly what one expects from a striving dictator.

A similar dynamic prevailed during the sustained protests and riots that erupted after the killing of George Floyd. While conservatives such as Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AK), in his controversial New York Times op-ed, urged the mass deployment of the military to quell the protesters, and while Trump threatened to deploy them if governors failed to pacify the riots, Trump failed to order anything more than a few isolated, symbolic gestures such as having troops use tear gas to clear out protesters from Lafayette Park for his now-notorious walk to a church, provoking harsh criticism from the right, including Fox News, for failing to use more aggressive force to restore order.

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Last man to share jail cell with Jeffrey Epstein died last month of COVID

The last man to share a cell with Jeffrey Epstein died last month in a Bronx apartment after catching coronavirus at a jail for cooperating witnesses.

Efrain “Stone” Reyes, 51, was found dead in bed on Nov. 27 at his mother’s apartment, the NYPD confirmed. In August 2019 he shared a cell with Epstein, only to be transferred to the privately-run Queens Detention Facility the day before the accused sex trafficker hanged himself, according to his family and Bureau of Prisons records.

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Moderna COVID-19 vaccine may cause side effects for those with cosmetic facial fillers: FDA

People with cosmetic facial fillers could experience swelling and inflammation with one of the coronavirus vaccines, the FDA advisory committee noted.

According to the committee, several trial participants with fillers have already experienced side effects. A California-based dermatologist said the reaction was immunological, ABC7 reported on Thursday.

“Your immune system which causes inflammation is revved up when you get a vaccine, that’s how it’s supposed to work,” said Dr. Shirley Chi, who noted the side effects were easily treated by medical personnel.

“So it makes sense that you would see an immune response in certain areas where they see some substance that is not a naturally occurring substance in your body.”

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IRS Plans a 50% Ramp-Up in Audits of Small Businesses Next Year

The Internal Revenue Service is planning to ramp up audits of smaller businesses and their investors by about 50% next year, following years of persistently low examination rates, an agency official said Tuesday.

The result could be a surge in audits of companies ranging from mom-and-pop retail stores and technology startups to investment funds that have historically faced only infrequent checks thanks to the time and effort required at the IRS.

“The IRS is focusing our efforts to increase compliance activity in this area of not only partnerships, but also investor returns related to pass-throughs,” De Lon Harris, the IRS deputy commissioner of examination for small businesses, said at an American Institute of Certified Public Accountants event. For 2021 “we are planning for 50% more than we had in the previous year.”

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‘Super Gonorrhea’ is spreading like wildfire thanks to COVID-19

2020 hasn’t been kind to anyone, but it’s almost over. Unfortunately, if you find yourself with a case of “Super Gonnorhea” you might feel the effects of this terrible year for an extended period of time. Doctors are now warning of the increasing spread of the antibiotic-resistant strain of STI, and they’re blaming the coronavirus pandemic for helping it gain momentum.

According to a report from The Sun, the problem has gotten so bad that the World Health Organization has taken notice. The issue is that as the coronavirus pandemic was ongoing, many clinics and hospitals used antibiotics in the treatment of patients and to prevent the cross-infection of hospitalized individuals. That overuse of antibiotics has given a boost to antibiotic-resistant gonorrhea, according to WHO.

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