Tag: Musings

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I was looking at the VAERS database the other day

I’ve been watching VAERS for a while. Not just over COVID but I’ve been curious for a long time if the Anti-Vax movement had a leg to stand on.

I’m still undecided about the Anti-Vaxxers in general.

I noticed something interesting in the charts located here.

In the conservative media there’s been a lot of talk about adverse reactions to the COVID vaccine and the VAERS database does tend to back up their allegations. Bear in mind this is only one data source and there may be contributing factors such as other comorbidities.

It is, and always has been that the sudden rise in death wasn’t necessarily only the COVID vaccine. It’s possible that the deaths might be associated with the vaccine triggering a cascade of issues that resulted in the patient’s death. This is very much in the vein of the CDC and others revising their COVID cause of death statistics.

In both situations, if the patient had diabetes and perhaps pneumonia then it’s possible that having COVID contributed to the patient’s death but was not the sole reason they died. Likewise a patient getting the vaccine may have died after getting it, but the vaccine is not necessarily the sole reason they died.

It pays to keep that in mind when looking at the data.

To get a clear cause / effect relationship you need to exclude everyone who had comorbidities or some other pre-existing condition. Only then, can you reasonably draw some conclusion as to whether the vaccine is dangerous. If the preponderance of deaths due to adverse reactions were in an otherwise healthy population, that should raise a red flag.

The overall numbers of deaths isn’t my point. What caught my attention was that the number of “Vaccine Related” deaths is dropping.

If, as the Anti-Vaxers say, the COVID vaccine is universally bad and dangerous, I wouldn’t expect to see the numbers dropping off.

Thinking about it. I came up with three hypotheses.

1 The really vulnerable population has died off. That’s gruesome to think about, but doesn’t exclude it from the realm of possibility.

2 Fewer people are taking the COVID vaccines. If those people who were never going to take the vaccine in the first place are still not taking it, and the population that ran to get the vaccine have already had it, then the numbers wold start to fall pretty much due to reason #1.

3 People are giving up on reporting adverse reactions because they’ve come to the belief that the government won’t listen anyway and therefore it’s pointless to report anything.

As I said, these are only hypotheses. Like all hypotheses they can only be proven or disproven. The science, (A.K.A. Truth,) of the situation doesn’t care if it hurts my feelings. Since I’m not a “Scientist” my hypotheses are pretty much not going to matter in the least.

However, this little exercise might give some of you insight into the workings of my mind. I’m dogmatic to be sure, but there’s a part of me that’s always asking, “Are you sure?”

It’s the “Are you sure?” That makes me go back and reevaluate.

While I may think the traditional Anti-Vaxxers are incorrect in their declaration that all vaccines are bad, I keep looking at their data and determine for myself if I agree.

I suppose it’s along the same lines as watching Ancient Aliens. I find that sometimes there are points they make, that clearly can’t be explained away with our current knowledge of ancient civilizations. There are items, stories or customs that don’t seem to make sense.

In those situations in my mind I relegate the Ancient Aliens “proof” to anomalous items. A kind of a TBD pending further research. I don’t believe that every odd shaped stone, pot, or weird custom is proof of alien contact.

For all we know, 4000 years ago an apprentice craftsman did something weird and the Master craftsman said, “Run with that, you’ll find out why it won’t work for yourself,” The apprentice may have put the item on their workbench as a reminder not to get too wild with innovation.

I myself have done this. I’d hate to think that 4000 years hence, a cult of some sort rose up around one of my failures.

Anecdotal evidence in my mind isn’t evidence. It’s an observed situation that deserves further inquiry. That’s why I reevaluate the Anti-Vaxxers data from time to time. That’s why I’ve been interested in all the COVID issues. That’s why I have always liked science in general. I like testing the anecdotal against the provable.

I like being able to convert anecdotes into demonstrated facts, or disprove anecdotal evidence as an odd coincidence.

The latter is more interesting. You can have a repeatable event, that anecdotally looks like proof but when you really look at it, you discover that what appeared to be a clear cause / effect relationship was dependent on a bunch of conditions that weren’t obviously related.

The puzzling part of that kind of discovery is the most fun to figure out. Then again, I like puzzles so it’s probably just me.

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Been giving thought to stuff that pisses me off.

I know, you’re thinking, “Another one of those posts! Next!”

Bear with me. 

Implied Social Worthiness Scores.

The last company I worked for, was very concerned that I didn’t have active Twitter, Facebook, or LinkedIn accounts. They were also very concerned that I didn’t attend employer sponsored events such as going to the water park, dinners, or baseball games.

I asked them why my having or participating in those things mattered. 

They said It’s about being able to determine if our employees are engaged and happy with the workplace. 

I said that my happiness was dependent on my paycheck. I was there to do a job, I did the job and went home. As to the company events, I couldn’t participate and be a good employee. My schedule was 5am to 1pm Thursday through Monday. Their events typically started at 6pm on a weekend defined as Saturday and Sunday. Since I was usually in bed by 7:30 to 8:00PM, were I to attend their corporate events I would not be good at my job the next day due to tiredness.  As such I was behaving in a responsible way towards my employer.

I said regarding Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn. That I found these services to be a waste of time. I felt no need to broadcast minute by minute, the details of my personal or work life to the entire world. (This blog notwithstanding) Therefore if they were concerned about my speaking out of turn about the workplace or my employer, they had nothing to fear. I kept my opinions to myself or confined to a small select group of people that I interacted with in person.

This was not good enough. 

Because I wasn’t posting my life online for all to see, they were suspicious because there was no way for them to apply metrics about my life choices (Judgmental much?) I believe that they were trying to determine my social worth and obtain more leverage over me than a simple paycheck.

Eventually, after many annoying emails from HR and the Activities Committee, I conceded to creating a LinkedIn account. Upon which I would sometimes parrot the company announcements. Other than that, I didn’t post anything.

That wasn’t good enough. Now if I didn’t post something at least once a week I’d get an email from one of the two groups. Always such emails suggested posting something about my life and happiness. (Uh, nobody’s business but mine.)

While creating the LinkedIn account I thought, “This is a slippery slope and since they cajoled me into this, they’re going to apply more pressure for me to hand them a loaded gun in the form of information.”

This assumption was borne out when someone on the Activities Committee saw me getting out of a new car one morning. I had no sooner sat down at my desk, than there was an email suggesting that I post pictures of my “pretty” car on LinkedIn and use it as a first post to Twitter and Facebook too. The rationale was that everyone would love to see success and share in my happiness.

Frankly, that creeped me out on a number of levels.

Since I chose not to post it on LinkedIn, they did. With a picture clearly showing my license plate number. “Someone got a new car… Let’s all congratulate him”

I viewed this as an invasion of privacy. They seemed to view it as a corporate success story. Completely missing the rest of the story… 

My old car had been totaled and this was a logical replacement. I wouldn’t have gotten a new car, if my old one, which I loved, and was in fine working order, hadn’t been destroyed. The new car represented not success, but a major life setback, because my old car was completely paid for. The new car represented payments, tighter budgeting, and a loss of disposable income.

I let it go, they were being childish and I didn’t need to point that out. LinkedIn did it for me, deleting the post as a violation of their terms. This of course was before LinkedIn became part of Microsoft.

It is possible that my lack of compliance in the social media arena led directly to my not being on the “retain list” when the layoffs happened. There is no way to prove it, but I do wonder from time to time.

It always leads back to the same question for me. Why couldn’t they just let me be a good worker and do my job? All I wanted from them was a paycheck, medical insurance, and something productive to do. Why do so many companies these days feel that external activities are so dang important?

People who can’t take what you say at face value

I’m currently involved looking after a neighbors cat. There is a lot of other drama in this situation. I won’t bore you with the details.

There are a couple of points that are really annoying. The largest is the delivery of supplies for the cat.

To the person’s credit, they don’t feel that I shouldn’t incur costs for litter and food and I applaud that.

But I said in the beginning, “Don’t worry about this, you’re ill and we can settle up at a later date. If this is only for a few weeks.”

That apparently was not heard. Instead, the person has to schedule delivery of cat supplies from a market 2 miles away. You’d think that’s fine except that I’m at or near the market pretty frequently so it’s no big deal to go in to get what’s needed.

I was also serious about this only going on for a few weeks. We’re now at 5 or 6 weeks and there appears to be no plan for it to end. 

The problem with delivery is there’s a four hour window. So without thinking about it, this person has chained me to my home for half a day, watching for a delivery of stuff to appear on their doorstep. I know, they’re trying not to inconvenience me, but they’re doing a great job of that, in trying not to.

The other annoyance is that no matter what I say, the schedule is completely arbitrary. The person is 40 miles away and has zero idea what I’m planning to do or if I might plan to go do something to do with my life. They’re not intentionally trying to be selfish, but in that they’re succeeding mightily.

When I said don’t worry about it, I meant it. I told the person I’d keep receipts and we could just add it up whenever was convenient. They could write me a check and that would be all there was to it. It’s not like I can’t take 5 minutes while I’m in town to pick up a bag of cat food.

That would be far less inconvenience to me than having half my day shot to hell.

I just don’t understand why people refuse to acknowledge that you mean what you say. Is it that so many people don’t mean what they say?

Then there’s the gift as thank you for watching the cat. It will be alcohol, it’s always alcohol. That’s really nice, except that I don’t drink very much anymore. I still have an unopened bottle of Gentleman Jack from last year.

I don’t drink alone and am alone more than not.

In this particular situation, a better gift would be informing me that arrangements had been made for someone in their family to pick up the cat and look after it while the neighbor is laid up.

It would be much better for the cat and me.  As it is, the poor thing is alone too much and is craving attention. I’m spending at least an hour a day playing with and cuddling the poor creature. That’s an hour I’m not playing with my dog who also likes a lot of attention. By the time I add it up I’m spending at least 2 hours, often more, of my day tending to animals, and not doing stuff that I need to do.

It’s not that the critters aren’t deserving of attention and love, it’s that I need to reclaim my life. That being said, it’s not the fault of the animals wanting the attention that their respective humans agreed to give them when we brought them into our homes.

In the case of cats, I like cats. But after my last cat passed away, I found that I enjoyed not having to scoop litter boxes, deal with nasty fur balls, the smell of cat urine or canned cat food.

Perhaps, the cat thing wouldn’t be so trying if the person’s house was neat and clean. It’s not! The place is a disaster and I do my level best to not touch anything other than what is absolutely necessary. The place is a hazmat site waiting to be discovered and red tagged.  At least the stench of stale pot smoke has finally dissipated.

I’ve gotten in the habit of not eating breakfast before I go over there because I always feel like I’m going to vomit. When I come back, I’m not in the mood to eat. I guess the upside is that I’m saving money and losing weight.

Honestly 30 to 45 minutes is about all I can take. I’ve considered bringing the cat over to my house, and all that entails. I haven’t because I think my dog would decide to play with the cat and that wouldn’t end well for either of them. 

The cat is fully armed and not afraid to scratch or bite with little or no provocation.

Then there’s the issue that the dog likes being able to go in and out to the back yard which means the door is open. That wouldn’t work with the cat.

I’ve considered opening the windows at the neighbor’s house but that doesn’t work because the windows and screens are in such poor repair that I fear the cat would escape via one of them, never to be seen or heard from again.

I’m not even going to delve into the mess caused by the neighbor rerouting all their mail to my small PO Box but neglecting to tell me that they’d done so. That, at least was relatively easy to fix. I’m now getting my mail again!

In summary,

The road to hell is most definitely paved with good intentions.

Nice guys do in fact finish last.

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Beware the echo chamber…

After two years of more of less isolation, perhaps we’ve all fallen into our own personal echo chambers.

It’s not intentional. It’s simply what happens in isolation. There will be those who say we’ve not been isolated because we have the internet and the news, etc. But we have been isolated from people and friends who challenge our beliefs.

It’s the personal interactions, it’s the people we care about, our friends, family, etc. who add balance to our thoughts and opinions. Without those people challenging us, we fall into patterns where it’s far too easy to self validate what we think and as humans do, we assume that we’re right.

COVID has provided a perfect storm in this regard.

No matter how egalitarian we try to be in our news absorption we inevitably develop biases and preferred news sources. It could happen because those sources have pretty people, or entertaining pieces, or that they simply validate what we’re already thinking. Eventually we choose those sources that we’re comfortable with. Then we narrow our focus to only the comfortable.

Without discussion and interaction. Without people we respect and care about pushing back and saying, “Well this report here says thus and such,” it’s easy to create an echo chamber and not notice it.

I’m guilty… Are you?

That’s not about laying blame. None of us should feel threatened by this realization. It’s just a sign post that says, “Hey there, we need to do better.” None of us are perfect, but we all should at least aspire to keep walking that path and get as close as possible.

The problem with echo chambers is they feed division. Everyone walks around with their own entrenched beliefs and they defend them.

How many people have said, or been heard to say, “You are wrong and I don’t want to be friends anymore,”? Isn’t that the same as a dating profile saying “Republicans don’t contact me,”

That’s not healing, that’s not being open minded. It’s in the discussion of even closely held beliefs that validation, or error is uncovered. Sometimes neither validation or error is uncovered but the discussion provides enlightenment.

The enlightenment I’m talking about is understanding what drives the core belief. For example. Just because someone was tried for a crime and there was nothing uncovered in a trial that was legally actionable. It doesn’t mean there was nothing there in the first place. It may mean that someone was skating along the boundaries of the law and they were clever enough or lucky enough to stay just out of reach.

Al Capone is a good example. For years the FBI and other law enforcement knew Capone was in charge of a massive criminal organization. They could never actually pin anything on him directly. They didn’t have sufficient evidence and no matter how many times they arrested Capone, the case always fell apart. Until the IRS got involved. Then it was a whole new ball game.

Maybe, a way forward for all of us, is to have those uncomfortable discussions. But both parties really need to listen.

That’s the hard part, listening and divorcing yourself from your beliefs for a time. That way, you can get into the head of the other person thereby understanding the factual or not so factual underpinning of why they believe a certain way about something.

It doesn’t matter if you agree or not with their belief. What matters is that we all acknowledge that no-one is an idiot for thinking in a way we don’t agree with. It’s just that we each put “facts” together in some kind of order that makes it possible to cope with the world around us.

I’ve written in these pages that I personally think something was amiss in the most recent election. For that matter I could make a case that something has been amiss in elections going back decades.

When I’ve said that I thought the most recent election should be investigated. It wasn’t to depose Biden and install Trump. I honestly don’t care about which of the two is president.

I’m not even sure if constitutionally Biden could be removed at this point. I don’t even want to consider the chaos that removing a Biden Administration and installing a Trump Administration would cause. I guess I’m more of a, “Well, we’re here now, we just have to muddle through,” we have to do better next time. I don’t like Biden. I personally think he’s incompetent, but Harris is no better.

I as a voter, don’t like being placed in a situation where I feel that I have to choose the devil or the deep blue sea.

That doesn’t mean that I’m pro Trump. I personally think that he did some things that were beneficial for the country in the near term but I don’t have enough knowledge of politics to be able to project how those near term benefits play out over time. I’m willing to acknowledge that perhaps the folks who were screaming about his policies know, or knew something I missed.

When I say I think we should look at the elections, I’m saying that from a perspective of fixing what’s broken.

How do we change the system to make sure that the next election, everyone feels confident enough in the system that they believe the results represent the will of the electorate? I’d like for everyone to be able to comfortably say, “I didn’t like the result but that’s okay, because the system was fair and it works.“

I’d be willing to bet that average folks on both sides of the political gulf could get behind that. The politicians might not like it all that much, but the people they’re supposed to represent might like it a lot.

It hit me, that folks might not understand the nuance I’m talking about. I’d like to see a disassembly of the voting process to find the bugs and plug them. That would be a big task, and it would take representation from all parties, not just the big two. That’s also why I’m in the near term pro voter ID.

I’m not about preventing someone from casting their vote. I am about preventing someone from casting 20 votes. Yes, it would be inconvenient to have to present ID to obtain a ballot. but the benefit outweighs the inconvenience. God knows, I remember how slow it was to write a check and present ID in the grocery store line.

I’d like to see the next election, be clean. I’d like for there to be no margin for a candidate to do what Trump did this last election. We should remember that before Trump, there was Al Gore claiming the election irregularities.

Folks call it “The Big Lie”. I call it a warning sign. How about we figure out a way to eliminate the possibility of “The Big Lie” altogether? That seems like a worth while enterprise doesn’t it?

I’m amazed how many people have Trump living in their heads rent free. I’d prefer to push him into history and deal with what is in front of us. Yes, I acknowledge that Trump is living in my head rent free too. I try very hard to only let him have a cheap studio apartment with a leaky toilet. It’s hard to do because there’s so much media attention still focused on him.