Health and Medicine

NBC Asks “Why Should Americans Trust The CDC?” And The CDC Director’s Answer Proves That They Shouldn’t

/ Jack Marshall / 15 Comments

Thanks, Rochelle Walenski!

Apparently in the strange grip of a sudden compulsion to practice journalism, NBC’s Peter Alexander pressed CDC Director Walensky this week about the agency’s two years of contradictory explanations, directives and advice regarding the pandemic in its various forms. “Why should Americans trust the CDC?” he asked her.

Well obviously they can’t and shouldn’t, since the number of times what the CDC said one day was reversed another is beyond counting. The agency’s advice is untrustworthy, its messages are untrustworthy, its protocols and standards are untrustworthy and its leadership is untrustworthy. The question should be easy to answer for anyone who understands what “trust” means, and the answer is “They shouldn’t.”

Here was how Walensky replied:

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Mid-Day Ethics Break, 12/29/21: Alexa Goes Rogue

/ Jack Marshall / 29 Comments

I think I’m going to feature “Jingle Bells” here every day until New Years. Here’s a version by that infamous slavery fan, Nat King Cole:

December 29 is one of the bad ethics dates: the U.S. Cavalry massacred 146 Sioux men, women and children at Wounded Knee on the Pine Ridge reservation in South Dakota on this date in 1890. Seven Hundred and twenty years earlier, four knights murdered Archbishop Thomas Becket as he knelt in prayer in Canterbury Cathedral in England. According to legend, King Henry II of England never directly ordered the assassination, but expressed his desire to see someone ‘”rid” him of the “troublesome priest” to no one in particular, in an infamous outburst that was interpreted by the knights as an expression of royal will. In ethics, that episode is often used to demonstrate how leaders do not have to expressly order misconduct by subordinates to be responsible for it.

1. I promise: my last “I told you so” of the year. I’m sorry, but I occasionally have to yield to the urge to myself on the back for Ethics Alarms being ahead of the pack, as it often is. “West Side Story” is officially a bomb, despite progressive film reviewers calling it brilliant and the Oscars lining up to give it awards. What a surprise—Hispanic audiences didn’t want to watch self-conscious woke pandering in self-consciously sensitive new screenplay by Tony Kushner, English-speaking audiences didn’t want to sit through long, un-subtitled Spanish language dialogue Spielberg put in because, he said, he wanted to treat the two languages as “equal”—which they are not, in this country, and nobody needed to see a new version of a musical that wasn’t especially popular even back when normal people liked musicals. The New Yorker has an excellent review that covers most of the problem. Two years ago, I wrote,

There is going to be a new film version of “West Side Story,” apparently to have one that doesn’t involve casting Russian-Americans (Natalie Wood) and Greek-Americans (George Chakiris) as Puerto Ricans. Of course, it’s OK for a white character to undergo a gender and nationality change because shut-up. This is, I believe, a doomed project, much as the remakes of “Ben-Hur” and “The Ten Commandments” were doomed. Remaking a film that won ten Oscars is a fool’s errand. So is making any movie musical in an era when the genre is seen as silly and nerdy by a large proportion of the movie-going audience, especially one that requires watching ballet-dancing street gangs without giggling. Steven Spielberg, who accepted this challenge, must have lost his mind. Ah, but apparently wokeness, not art or profit, is the main goal.

Not for the first time, people could have saved a lot of money and embarrassment if they just read Ethics Alarms….

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Ethics Workout, “Get In Ethics Shape For 2022 Edition,” 12/27/21: No Pain, No Gain!

/ Jack Marshall / 22 Comments

1. On second thought, who needs work? The United States has been a nation that embraced work as a value and a mark of character as no other. Naturally, this core value has been under assault from the Left as part of its cultural overhaul strategy. The pandemic created an opining that has been brilliantly exploited politically, leading to a large part of the work force now unwilling to work. The Congressional Progressive Caucus, the biggest bloc of liberal lawmakers in Congress, has endorsed a bill proposed by Rep. Mark Takano, D-Calif., which would seek to implement a four-day workweek. Americans work far more than people in most other affluent countries, and we also produce more without using, as some countries do that I might mention, slave labor. But the work ethic is weakening.

The anti-work ethic is the goal on one of Reddit’s fastest growing sites — r/antiwork. The subreddit is “for those who want to end work, are curious about ending work, [and] want to get the most out of a work-free life.” It is up to 1.4 million members, ranking among the top subscribed-to subreddits.

Members discuss tactics workers can use to slack off, cheat, sabotage, and steal from their employers. You would learn there, for example, that April 15th is “Steal Something From Work Day.” [Pointer and source: Linking and Thinking on Education]

2. Observations on the Gallup Poll on public approval of Federal leaders (You can find the poll here).

  • Yes, I know, polls. But Gallup is straighter than most, and while the specific numbers should be ignored, the relative values are interesting.
  • The big finding, and what has been attracting all the headlines, is that Chief Justice John Roberts is way ahead of anyone else on the list, with a bipartisan 60-40 favorability split. This undercuts the pro-abortion strategy of warning that the Supreme Court can’t afford to make its decision on Roe v. Wade cases without considering the potential harm to the Court’s legitimacy. The Court seems to have the most trust of any of the branches, which means that it can (and should) be courageous if legal principles require.
  • Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell is second. How many Americans know who he is or what he does? 20%? Less? What is it they approve of?
  • Dr. Fauci is third at 52% approval, which shows you can fool a lot of the people all of the time.
  • Mitch McConnell is dead last, even behind Nancy Pelosi. Good.

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It’s An IIPTDXTTNMIAFB Video!

/ Jack Marshall / 20 Comments

I would have posted this Tik-Tok video earlier, but WordPress will only embed YouTube, and it took a while for that platform to keep down its gorge and include this offal. It has IIPTDXTTNMIAFB (“Imagine if President Trump did X that the news media is accepting from Biden.”) written all over it.

This desperate pro-vaccination PSA seems to have cornered the adjective “cringeworthy,” and teens are using that description as much as adults. The “Joe Byron” reference has to do with another viral video by the YouTube channel SideTalk, which features a bunch of weirdos from Coney Island referring to the President by that name.

Oh. How…clever. Apparently the target audience for a video featuring the Jonas Brothers acting like 10-year-olds are insulted that such an appeal would be regarded as persuasive, and recognize condescending pandering when they see it. The non-target audience is wondering what the President of the United States is doing lowering the stature his office by appearing with these clowns.

Now, just imagine the media reaction if Trump had been the guy with the camera instead of “Byron.” Look who this reality show phony gets to deal with a life and death catastrophe like a pandemic! Norms! Norms! Well, some norms really shouldn’t ever be destroyed…like the norm that Presidents don’t toss away their dignity on the likes of the Jonas Brothers.

___________________

Source: Rolling Stone

Comment Of The Day: “Ethics Villain: University Of California Prof. Michele Goodwin”

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

Racist science

What continues to amaze, as pro-abortion supporters and activists throw every conceivable argument they can come up with against the proverbial wall in hopes that one might stick,is how insubstantial, emotional and often intellectually dishonest those arguments are. As the Supreme Court deliberates, we are certain to hear and read many more, and I honestly can say that I am hoping for a legitimate and persuasive one to finally emerge.

What I fear we will get, however, as the arguments do not stick but slide off that wall like wet tissue, is more warnings, threats, insults and jeremiads, like Justice Sotomayor’s despicable “stench” question, which I translate as, “Aren’t you properly terrified that if we don’t just do as the pro-abortion machine demands rather than analyze a difficult problem objectively according to facts, law and ethics, people who have already made up their minds regardless of all of those will be furious?”

The “pro-choice” rhetoric increasingly reminds me of the arguments made by the slave-holding South as thoughtful abolitionists and the anti-slavery sentiment strengthened ten-fold by “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” began backing defenders of “the peculiar institution” into a corner. They primarily invoked invalid or dishonest arguments: “science” and “studies” claiming to prove that black people were not quite human (see above), and did not have the “necessities” (to quote poor Al Campanis a century later) to be free; slavery had been permitted so long that it constituted a betrayal to end it; a Supreme Court ruling had protected the practice, and the way of life that slavery’s practitioners enjoyed and benefited from immensely would be threatened if slavery were banned. These are all essentially the same arguments being advanced today to justify continuing to treat another group of vulnerable and exploited human beings as property and non-humans. The fetus doesn’t deserve human rights because it isn’t “viable” or “cognizent.” A right that has been part of the law for half a century should never be challenged. Roe v. Wade is to the unborn as Dred Scott was to slaves.

And, perhaps most of all, American women have thrived by treating developing babies as disposable by “choice.”

Here is Ryan Harkins’ Comment of the Day addressing the related argument, advanced by a law professor, that the right to kill the offspring of incest and rape is essential to the advancement and success of people like her.

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Ethics Quiz: Fat-Shaming Or Legitimate Criticism?

/ Jack Marshall / 34 Comments

Belgian health

That’s Maggie De Block, the Belgian Minister of Health from October 2014 to October 2020. She is currently serving as a member of the World Health Organization’s Pan-European Commission on Health and Sustainable Development.

For some reason her photograph came to the attention of social media over the weekend, and she is being made the target of considerable mockery (though she is being incorrectly labeled as Belgium’s current Minister of Health). At 59, she is estimated to weigh between 350 and 400 pounds.

Your Ethics Alarms Ethics Quiz to begin a busy week is…

Is it fair to criticize her for her weight when she is in a position involved with health promotion and policy?

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Abortion Wars: It’s The New York Times vs. The New York Times!

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

fetal development

Stockholm Syndrome liberal David Brooks, once the alleged conservative pundit in the Times far-left array, was in one of his “pox on both your houses” moods as he condemned what he claimed were equally unethical (my word, not his) arguments coming from the pro-and anti-abortion camps. “Many conservatives focus on the fetus to the exclusion of all else, ” he wrote. “A lot of the progressive commentary, on the other hand, won’t recognize the fetus at all.” False equivalency, David (and you know it). Since the fetus is the party that’s killed in an abortion, many conservatives and anti-abortion activists take the completely defensible and classic Kantian position that “deference to women who become pregnant in terrible circumstances” doesn’t and can’t justify taking a human life. On the other side of the divide, however, refusing to acknowledge the existence of a life at all is to deliberately rig the debate. And it isn’t “a lot” of the progressive commentary that tries to do this; it’s virtually all of it.

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What Is The Ethical Response To Marcus Lamb’s Ironic Death?

/ Jack Marshall / 31 Comments

Lamb

Marcus Lamb, the evangelical founder of the Texas-based Christian television network Daystar, died on November 30. In an example of extreme cosmic irony/justice/retribution/satire, the cause was a virulent case of infection from the Wuhan virus. The previously healthy (though he had diabetes) 64-year-old was unvaccinated, and indeed was a vocal antivaxxer. Lamb, his wife (they were a Jim and Tammy-style team) and other Daystar broadcasters have been opposing the pandemic vaccines, presumably influencing many of the more than 108 million households the network reaches via cable TV providers to do likelwise On May 10, for example, the Lambs claimed that the vaccines “killed your immune system.”

“We want to warn you, we want to help you, we want to give you an alternative,” Lamb said. The alternatives he recommended were ivermectin, budesonide and hydroxychloroquine, all drugs that have not been proven to be effective or safe in the treatment of the virus, and, naturally, prayer.

Well, as Old Lodgeskins memorably says in “Little Big Man,” “Sometimes the magic works, sometimes it doesn’t.”

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Is It Too Late To Call It “The Wuhan Virus” Or Better Yet, “The China Virus”?

/ Jack Marshall / 35 Comments

Coronavirus_H

I believe this issue should be settled in the context of the immortal words of Chinese dissident Paladin Cheng, who said, “Don’t trust China. China is asshole.”

There is no longer any serious dispute over where the pandemic came from, or why it spread so far and did so much damage before the world was able to respond in a timely fashion. Either the virus arose from the unsanitary, disease breeding Wuhan wet markets, or escaped from a Wuhan lab. Then China, we also now know, covered up the rampaging contagion, allowing it to travel via plane and other means to all corners of the globe.

Conclusion: China is accountable. China is liable. China is asshole.

Of course, we knew the latter even before the pandemic, but China is also profitable, which is why everyone from the NBA to Hollywood to Disney to Hunter Biden still want to avoid making certain that the public knows just how bad—evil, even—the Chinese government and culture is. I presume that after multiple mutations and other distractions, in five years or less most of the public won’t know or remember where the virus that we allowed to wreck the economy, society and culture came from. Where is “Covid,” anyway?

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A Second Introduction To “Thoughts On What An Ethical Solution To The Abortion Ethics Conflict Might Look Like, Part 2: A Solution”

/ Jack Marshall / Leave a comment

ViewsOnAbortion_v02_KA_1637005673621_hpEmbed_1x1_608

I decided that it was finally time to complete and post Part 2, having promised it way back in September. The impetus is two polls on the subject released today and yesterday. But having read the polls, I feel like a second introduction to Part 2 is necessary. (The first introduction, posted a day after Part I, is here.)

The first introduction closed, “Absent something that causes a tipping point in public opinion on the same level of influence as “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” [on the public’s perception of slavery] the approach to abortion I offer in Part 2 is, and will ever be, impossible.” The two polls purport to tell us what the public’s current perception of abortion is. At least, that’s how they are being presented in the news media, which, as we all know, is completely unbiased on this topic as well as others.

I’m joking. Most of the media is ignoring the second poll, by Marquette, which makes the Washington Post-ABC poll that is more positive toward abortion incoherent. The Marquette poll found that more of those polled favored a ban on abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy than opposed it. Survey respondents were asked if they would favor or oppose a ruling to “uphold a state law that (except in cases of medical emergencies or fetal abnormalities) bans abortions after the 15th week of pregnancy.” This is a direct reference to to Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which SCOTUS will hear oral argument regarding on December 1. The case turns on the constitutionally of a Mississippi law that bans most abortions after….. 15 weeks of pregnancy. Allowing the law would, if not overrule Roe v. Wade, significantly limit it. Yet 37% of those polled approved of a decision upholding such a law, while 32% opposed such a result. The remaining 30% said they didn’t know enough to make a decision.

In most polls on other topics, that group that pleads ignorance are apathetic slugs, but on this topic, maybe they are the wise ones. How many Americans really know what Dobbs is about, or even what Roe v. Wade really says? My guess is considerably less than 50%. Maybe less than 25%. 10%?

The Post-ABC poll that is being waved triumphantly in the public’s face is the one summarized in the diagram above (the data is here) and claims that large majorities of Americans “support maintaining Roe v. Wade, oppose states making it harder for abortion clinics to operate and see abortion primarily as a decision to be made by a woman and her doctor, not lawmakers.” How can that be the case if a majority also believes that woman and doctors should not be able to decide to abort an unborn baby after only 15 weeks?

It can’t.

What’s going on here?

Americans, except for small numbers of activists on both sides, haven’t thought carefully about the issues in abortion sufficiently to have an informed opinion about it. That’s what.

I would like to have the groups polled by Marquette and ABC/Washington Post pollsters asked if they have read Roe. What’s your guess: how many would say they have? 5%? Less? How many have thought about when a fetus should have the right to live? If they were shown a photo of a fetus at 8 months, would they support aborting it? Six months? Three?

Of those who say they support abortions in the case of rape or incest, and were asked why how a human is conceived should change its right to live, how many could answer intelligently? How many have thought about it? How many have the education and critical thinking skills to analyze the problem competently?

If you asked if a man who killed a woman who was three months pregnant should be prosecuted for killing one human being or two, what would the majority answer? If they answered “two” and then they were asked, “How can it be murder if an unborn child is killed by anyone else, but no crime if the killer is the mother?,” how many would mutter “Huminahumina”?

The vast, vast majority of Americans thinks about abortion so shallowly as to be ethically useless, simply following their peer groups, or joining one team of the other who band together under deliberately misleading labels: “pro-life,” which ignores on of the crucial interests in involved in abortion policy, and “pro-choice,” which ignores the other. Or they don’t think about abortion at all.

No political, legal or societal acceptable solution to the abortion ethics conflict is possible when the public remains this ignorant and apathetic. A condition precedent to any solution, therefore, is to bring about a dramatic shift in public consciousness and commitment—that tipping point I mentioned before. That’s what “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” did: it forced people who had never thought seriously about slavery and what it meant to think, and once they did, they opposed it.

Polls are easily manipulated and generally do more harm than good, but these two, taken together, show us a way out. The public needs something or someone who will make its members think about abortion and its issues, honestly and without the spin, obfuscation, emotionalism and bullshit. If a metaphorical slap in the face could be found for slavery, one can be made for abortion.

So getting to that slap is the first part of any solution.

Got it.

Now I’m finally ready to finish Part 2…