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.

Was My Paper on Flu Vaccine Studies a “Hot Potato” for Editors?

Ithink the answer is “yes,” but here is the story for you to judge.

Each year the CDC publishes estimates of the effectiveness of the flu vaccine in the previous season. Reported by several networks, these estimates are based on a research design that is called a test-negative case-control study.

Over the years, the various authors have shared a similar analytical strategy: Early respiratory events were considered differently from later respiratory events (on the assumption that no effect is expected until immunity is built up). “Early” has typically been within two weeks post-vaccination.

Several months ago, I realized that this special handling of early events is a source of bias called “immortal time.” To expose the bias, I used causal diagrams, formally called “directed acyclic graphs (DAGs).” DAGs were introduced in landmark publications from the 1990s and are widely recognized in epidemiology as a methodological tool.

I wrote a short paper with a scary title: “Immortal time bias in test-negative studies of the flu vaccine.” I illustrated the bias by two simple DAGs that encoded the analytical approaches as described in those CDC-associated studies. The paper may be summarized in three bullet points:

  • Immortal time is an overlooked bias in test-negative, case-control studies of the flu vaccine.
  • The causal structure corresponds to misclassification bias or selection bias, depending on how early events were handled.
  • The bias can be avoided by considering all events and estimating built-up vaccine effectiveness by consecutive post-vaccination days.

I submitted the paper sequentially to three respected epidemiology journals. Surprisingly, the editor-in-chief of each journal rejected the paper within one week using boilerplate text. It was not sent for peer review. Why?

There are three possible reasons:

  1. The message was not sufficiently important.
  2. The paper was poorly written.
  3. Soliciting peer review was not needed. The editor decided that the bias did not exist. 

I can quickly eliminate the first reason. Exposing entrenched bias in studies of the annual flu vaccine is of utmost importance. I didn’t need to compete with any “more important” papers.

Was it poorly written? I have published many scientific papers and two books. I am not a newcomer to epidemiology and even served as an associate editor for one of the three journals. So, that was not the reason.

Keep reading

Immigrant-Owned Grocery Stores Now SUING Mamdani Over City-Owned Stores With Unfair Advantage

Zohran Mamdani’s plan to build city-owned grocery stores in New York has now launched a lawsuit.

Immigrant owned grocery stores are banding together to fight Mamdani’s plan because they know that the city owned stores will have an advantage that they can’t compete with.

If the city owned stores can sell the same products at a much cheaper price with no worries about paying taxes, the privately owned stores will eventually go out of business.

New York Post reports:

Immigrant grocers sue Mamdani over government-owned supermarkets, liken plan to Walmart coming to NYC

Immigrant grocers and bodegas sued Mayor Zohran Mamdani over his plan to open five government-owned supermarkets — likening his plans to the devastating competitive threat that would be posed by Walmart coming to New York City.

The Multicultural Business Coalition, which is comprised of 50 chambers of commerce representing ethnically diverse businesses, filed two lawsuits in New York state court on Monday — one of them a seven-page class-action on behalf of “hundreds” of store owners who are “members of groups historically discriminated against.”

The class-action alleges that the business owners’ civil rights will be violated if the municipal stores are allowed to open, according to court papers.

The second suit — a 13-page filing in New York state Supreme Court — claims that the government-owned stores would present problems similar to those posed by Walmart, which has attempted several times to enter the Big Apple without success.

For years, the Arkansas-based discounter has faced fierce opposition from New York politicians, with legislators and labor unions claiming small businesses would be decimated by the retail giant.

The municipal grocery stores “have pledged to sell food items 30% below the market-rate, a rate that rivals or exceeds Walmart discounts,” according to the second filing.

Keep reading

Central Banking: The Scourge of Civilization

Apple builds and sells iPhones. I happen to own one of the older models, for the same reason I own a last-legs older model car. What if Apple could skip the build part and sell only the phone? The money saved would be an enormous boost to its bottom line. And if Apple passed the savings onto customers I could conceivably afford to upgrade.

Where would the phones come from? From a bookkeeping entry, of course.

Unfortunately, Apple’s customers are very demanding and want the real things, so the build operations will have to stay. Perhaps their executives looked upon another business and envied their ability to sell loans without drawing down their savings. Customer with good credit wants a loan? Create the amount with a few taps on a keyboard and send him on his way.

The customer will spend his newly-acquired money, thus keeping people employed. Since he has good credit, he will be able to make monthly payments, and the lender, the bank, will normally apply his payments to extinguish the loan, with the interest being the bank’s profit. Everyone’s happy and the economy keeps expanding until it busts.

Experts will diagnose the bust. The usual fiends will get blamed. Government will step in to cure the problem its monetary and banking interventions helped create. The economy will slowly recover and continue on the same path as before, meaning banks will continue extending credit from ether rather than savings.

How did this racket get started? It’s complicated. That’s one reason it works—the crime doesn’t exist if enough people don’t see it.

Gold and silver coins have long served as money, until more recent times. For government, gold became an economic culprit during the Great Depression, as explained by JM Bullion,

The Great Depression officially began on October 28, 1929, when the Dow Jones Industrial Average lost 13% of its value in a single day. The following day, it dropped an additional 12%, and in a matter of weeks, it was worth half as much as before.

In response, consumer confidence plummeted, and people began withdrawing their money from banks as quickly as possible. Banks, which work with reserves and don’t keep much of their deposits on hand, began closing their doors. (emphasis added)

Bank-created money was disappearing, and prices fell accordingly. Let’s expand on this.

The Federal Reserve Act of 1913 required the Fed to hold gold equal to only 40 percent of the currency it issued. By adjusting interest rates, the Fed could increase or decrease its stock of gold. Higher interest rates shifted “gold from the pockets of the public (both here and abroad) to the vaults of Federal Reserve district and member banks.” Conversely, lower rates drove gold from the Fed’s “coffers into the hands of the public both at home and overseas.”

Keep reading

WHAT? Zohran Mamdani OPPOSES Efforts of Brooklyn Democratic Party to PACK Their Executive Committee With More Voting Members

Every time we turn around these days, there is another Democrat calling to pack the U.S. Supreme Court. They think this is a perfectly reasonable way to make the court more leftist.

Apparently, they don’t like it when this tactic is used against them.

In Brooklyn, the Democratic Party is trying to pack their executive committee because they want more voting members. And yet, Mayor Mamdani opposes this move, claiming that it subverts the will of the people. Oh really?

FOX News reports:

Mamdani jumps into Democratic Party feud, alleging boss seeking to subvert ‘will of voters’

New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani is opposing a last-minute push to overhaul Brooklyn Democratic Party rules, arguing the proposed changes would undermine voters after reformers made gains in the June primary.

“I very much oppose these proposed changes, by the current Brooklyn Democratic Party chair,” Mamdani said. “I oppose them because they are an attempt to circumnavigate the will of voters.”

The proposals from Brooklyn Democratic Party chair Rodneyse Bichotte Hermelyn would add more than two dozen voting members to the party’s executive committee, which will choose the party chair this fall, after a slate of reformers won 22 district leader seats in the June primary, according to the City Reporter.

The newly elected district leaders will not take their seats until the fall, and Bichotte Hermelyn and her supporters still hold a majority as current district leaders prepare to vote on the proposed changes Tuesday night, according to the outlet.

Bichotte Hermelyn has described the changes as an effort to broaden participation in the party.

“We want to create a perception of inclusiveness,” she told NY1. In a video released by the Brooklyn Democratic organization, she said the proposals would “expand leadership” and “expand representation.”

Keep reading

Once China’s Richest Man, Evergrande Founder Hui Ka Yan Gets Life In Prison — And The Property Crisis Rolls On

Hui Ka Yan, the founder and once richest man in China of property developer China Evergrande Group, has been sentenced to life in prison for fraud and bribery in one of the biggest corporate collapses in history.

Hui Ka Yan, the chairman of Evergrande Property Services, was found guilty of fraud by a Chinese court on Thursday and sentenced to life in prison, along with a number of other defendants, including his two sons. Xu Tenghe and Xu Zhijian were also found guilty of crimes committed as part of the business dealings of their father.

He was arrested in 2023 while abroad after he had pleaded guilty in April 2023 to multiple counts brought against him as the former chairman of the now-bankrupt property developer including dishonesty offenses and the misuse of funds. He was at one stage the world’s richest man and was the number one ranked person in China’s rich list, compiled by China’s rich list magazine Fortune China, which ranked individuals by their estimated net worth.

Evergrande became the symbol of China’s massive property market financed by massive amounts of debt that eventually collapsed under the weight of Beijing’s tighter leverage rules. Its highly publicized default in 2021 triggered a massive systemic crisis in China’s entire property sector and got the attention of investors worldwide, from Hong Kong to New York.

The liquidation of Evergrande Group’s Hong Kong incorporated entity was ordered by a Hong Kong court in early 2024. As a consequence, Evergrande Group was delisted from the Hong Kong Stock Exchange. In the meantime, the Chinese mainland regulators and liquidators are trying to recover the large amounts of dividends and assets, which were distributed to Hui Ka Yan and his family members during the boom years.

In other news, China’s onshore bankruptcy proceedings against the mainland entity of Evergrande’s Hong Kong listed subsidiary have been launched this week and will complicate recovery for international creditors.

The severe sentence handed down to Hui Ka Yan, once China’s richest man, will be seen as a warning to the rest of the country’s business leaders that they will be held accountable for the debts that have so destabilized the economy. The developers are responsible for the mess left by Evergrande’s collapse, and for the hundreds of thousands of homebuyers left in the lurch – many still waiting in their half-finished apartments for the homes they had paid for in full.

China’s real estate market, once accounting for some 25% of China’s total GDP, continues to be a drag on the country’s broader economy with no end in sight to the downturn in home prices in major cities. China is prioritizing accountability over bailouts in the sector, believing that by putting the worst perpetrators of the crisis behind bars, they can restore confidence in the property market.

Keep reading

WNBA Says Former NBA Stars Enes Kanter Freedom and Royce White Are Ineligible After They Announce They ‘Identify as Women’ and Enter Draft

The WNBA has ruled that former NBA players Enes Kanter Freedom and Royce White are ineligible to enter the league’s draft or play in the women’s circuit after both men announced they identify as women and formally declared for the 2027 draft.

The league has reportedly dismissed the moves as publicity stunts intended to mock the organization.

According to reports from Front Office Sports, the WNBA stated it “is not going to give oxygen to efforts designed to mock the league or use this topic to demean and marginalize others” and “will not allow outside pressure or manufactured controversy to dictate league processes.”

The collective bargaining agreement specifies that only women are eligible, though it contains no further language defining sex or gender identity.

Kanter Freedom and White decided to put those rules to the test by claiming they suddenly decided they identify as women.

Keep reading

Fauci may be charged in spite of his pardon

It appears that Fauci’s right-hand man may have just given the DoJ the jailhouse keys. All they need to do is measure Anthony for his orange jumpsuit. No, I’m not hallucinating. “Let me tell you a little story about a man named…”

It is now very clear that Saint Anthony sent money to Wuhan to finance the manufacture of the COVID-19 virus. He used cut-outs at the EcoHealth Alliance and the University of North Carolina. He later conspired with others in the virology field to publish an op-ed in the professional literature denying any serious possibility of the virus having been engineered.

His buddies at Pfizer and Moderna buried adverse data. He helped to push the idea that there was no alternative treatment for this supposedly lethal disease, and that the “vaccine” was “safe and effective.” He helped with persecuting medical professionals who dared to challenge his authority and use that horse dewormer. Finally, he made his dangerous drug, Remdesivir, the drug of choice for treating hospitalized COVID patients, because royalties lined his pocket.

None of this is news. Even the release of his diary by Senator Rand Paul isn’t news. But the guilty plea by Dr. David Morens is the news that the drive-by media won’t report. “Who is David Morens?” you ask. Morens was “Senior Advisor” to the short Minister of Propaganda at the NIAID during all this activity. His key action was to act as a conduit for “behind-the-scenes shenanigans” that ran around FOIA requirements.

Fauci told the House Oversight Committee under oath in 2024 (covered by the autopen pardon) that he’d never deleted an official record, never obstructed a FOIA request, and never touched anything related to the Wuhan lab or the virus’s origins. These lies were hidden by running emails through Morens’ personal email, so they didn’t appear to be “official records.” But it’s virtually certain that Fauci was part of this back-channel activity. And he continued to parrot the “safe and effective” line in interviews after the final cutoff date for his pardon.

On June 3, 2025, in an interview with Boston’s WBUR, he insisted that any reporting that he was involved with creating the virus in any way was an “untruth” and “severe intimidation” of scientists at government agencies. This is a continuation of the fraudulent story he had been spinning since ascending the White House podium early in 2020. And it was part of a collaborative effort with multiple parties. There’s a word for this: conspiracy.

Conspiracy is a new legal universe. Under the law, it’s not like theft, which happens at a point in time. Rather, it is a continuing offense. Under the most favorable circumstances, the clock starts to run at the time of the last overt act. For Fauci, that’s at least the WBUR interview. And now we can see a reasonable premise for him pleading the Fifth in front of the Senate. He’s on the hook for federal conspiracy charges until at least June of 2030. If the conspiracy led to deaths, it may be construed as a capital offense, and no statute of limitations exists. Saint Fauci would be on the hook forever.

It’s my studied opinion, supported by a vast number of studies of excess mortality, post-mortem exams, and “turbo” cancers after the mass mRNA poisoning, that Anthony Fauci was a key participant in a massive conspiracy that led to uncountable numbers of unlawful deaths. His participation in public fora where the “safe and effective” message was promoted means that the conspiracy continued after the last effective date of his pardon, assuming that it is valid. There is only one legitimate path forward. The DoJ must seek an indictment, conviction, and involuntary change of address for this evil malefactor. Anything less is a mockery of our principles.

Keep reading

SICK: Radical Michigan Senate Candidate Abdul El-Sayed Justifies Transgender Mutilation of Kids by Comparing It to Circumcision — Asks Jesse Watters About His Private Part on National TV

Michigan voters received another disturbing preview Monday night of what far-left Democrat Abdul El-Sayed would bring to the United States Senate.

During an appearance on Fox News’ “Jesse Watters Primetime,” El-Sayed defended keeping the government out of transgender medical procedures involving children, and then bizarrely compared those procedures to circumcision.

In El-Sayed’s twisted logic, parents allowing their sons to be circumcised is somehow comparable to authorizing life-altering transgender procedures on children.

Watters immediately rejected the outrageous comparison.

El-Sayed then accused Watters and conservatives of being “selective” because they oppose transgender procedures for minors while not demanding a government ban on circumcision.

Jesse Watters: Sex changes for minors — do you support that?

Abdul El-Sayed: Look, you know, I remember having great conversations with my conservative friends about right-to-try legislation — the idea that the government shouldn’t tell you what kind of healthcare you should have. I just think the government shouldn’t tell you what kind of healthcare you should have. And if you’re a minor, it is between your doctor and your parents.

Jesse Watters: You want to try on kids?

Abdul El-Sayed: Now, if you disagree with that — if you disagree with that, if you disagree that healthcare decisions need to be made by a doctor, their parents, and a patient — then I just think we agree to disagree.

Abdul El-Sayed: But, you know, you want to put government inside a clinic or hospital selectively.

Jesse Watters: So, Abdul, you’re a doctor, right?

Abdul El-Sayed: I am.

Keep reading

US set for largest mass visa revocation in history targeting up to 200,000 foreigners, officials say

The Trump administration is preparing to revoke the business and tourism visas of up to 200,000 foreigners who have applied for or are currently seeking asylum status in the United States. If it happens, the move would be the largest single mass revocation of visas in U.S. history and would likely face legal challenges.

Unless challenged or revised, the State Department is expected to announce in the coming weeks the revocation of so-called B1 and B2 visas issued between 2016 and 2026 whose holders have sought asylum or are now seeking asylum, according to State Department documents obtained by The Associated Press and two U.S. officials. The action will be taken in coordination with the Department of Homeland Security.

“We are coordinating with DHS to identify and revoke the nonimmigrant visas of foreigners who have come to the United States claiming to be short-term visitors, but then file for asylum to stay here permanently,” said State Department spokesman Tommy Pigott.

He declined to comment on the number of visas that might be revoked, saying “as the process will be ongoing, the number of revocations remains dynamic and will be done on a rolling basis.”

The revocations would not necessarily result in their immediate deportation, the officials said. Most of those with asylum cases currently pending would be recategorized but would lose their status as business or tourism travelers, according to the officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the revocations are not final yet.

Keep reading

Shapiro Tries To Arm Pennsylvania Health Bureaucrats With Warrantless Entry Powers And Forced Vaccine Databases — Voters Already Said No Once

Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro is pursuing autocratic powers for public health that Pennsylvania voters removed five years ago, and he is doing it behind the scenes through regulations not legislation.

A 502-page proposal for modifications to the Pennsylvania health code, published on August 8, grants the Pennsylvania Department of Health vast new powers to enter premises without warrants, access medical records without consent, direct a statewide vaccine data system, impose masking mandates during an outbreak, as well as masking mandates in an effort of “prevention” for any “condition” the department has determined warrants an intervention.

It is important to digest the implications of this. The proposed regulations define “condition” to mean “noninfectious medical ailment or other health-related event”. That gives far reaching powers to the department of health in the guise of public health.

“The administration’s draft rules on masks and infectious diseases are deeply troubling,” said Pennsylvania lawmaker Michele Brooks. “These include standards that establish ‘rule by fiat’ for the imposition of masking, distancing, and virtually any other disease control measures; a state vaccine registry with mandatory reporting; the power to control attendance at funerals; and the broadest powers to track and collect private health information and to enter private property.”

Pennsylvanians know where this goes. Former Governor Tom Wolf instituted some of the most draconian COVID-19 lockdown orders in the U.S. from March 2020 to June 2021. Shapiro, then Attorney General, issued the mandates, and in defense of the state’s school mask mandate, called concerned parents “self-centered” in a 2021 filing to the Pennsylvania Supreme Court.

The Supreme Court ultimately handed down a judgment against Shapiro, ruling the Department of Health acted outside of its authority. However, the Court did write that the Department of Health had the ability to change its own rules. Shapiro seems to have taken this to heart.

In May 2021, Pennsylvanians passed a constitutional amendment constraining governors’ emergency powers to three weeks. Shapiro’s regulatory maneuver is designed to circumvent this democratic outcome entirely, granting a permanent, non-emergency power to a department he controls.

Randall Wenger, chief counsel of the Independence Law Center, fearful that health care workers will be allowed to access schools and interrogate children in private, said that parents deserve the right to care for their children as they see fit. “These regulations allow a bureaucrat to go into a school to meet with a child without parents’ knowledge and telling the school officials that they can’t even interfere with this. That’s unconscionable,” Wenger told The Daily Wire.

Shapiro comes from the Democrat buzz saw of presidential candidates and is potentially running in 2028. What he is doing in Pennsylvania is not public health — it is building a system of surveillance and compliance to be used nationwide. Pennsylvania did not vote for this system. Shapiro is doing it anyway, and whether the legislative branch steps in tells us how much the voters value the limits to power they voted for this year.

Keep reading