Hey Hey! They're The Monkeys

Tough times for the Johns Hopkins Econ department after their COVID "study" was released...

We could continue to beat this study not only to death, but until all that remained of it were sub-molecular dead-horse particles.

And dollars to donuts, I read 60 more pages of it than 99.99% of those linking to it online in the last couple of weeks.

We would note that with nearly 19,000 studies, them only finding 34 worth the bother points out that 99% of everything in any study is crap.

If we note that they were able to focus on 1,084 before selecting the 34 finalists, the crap ratio drops to only 97%.

It's not impressing us much.

We could observe, as they do themselves on Page 8, that they excluded all studies that relied on artificial models (Globull Warmists and Climate Changeophiles, call your office) as being all hogwash, because "the results from these studies are determined by model assumptions and calibrations".

Proving that the Econ Department at Johns-Hopkins isn't quite as bright as the Art Department, what with sculpture being around for almost 35,000 years, or what any kindergartener knows: when you control the Plah-Doh, you can make it into anything you want.

We could note that this is exactly what they did anyways, by defining "lockdowns" as virtually anything the government does other than vaccines, or propaganda campaigns, thus they have beggared the English language to the point of insensibility. When everything is a lockdown, nothing is.

We could note that government merely instituting a lockdown is no more a measure of anything than laws are a measure of compliance with them. By that recockulous standard - looking at decrees rather than compliance, which is the exact way they look at these "anything-is-a-lockdown" measures - neither the laws against homicide in Chicago, nor speeding laws anywhere, "work". This is utterly asinine.

We could note that the main reason that the 34 studies they selected show no effect was because they selected studies that cancelled each other's results out, thus allowing any "meta"-study's authors the same prerogatives as kids in any arts and crafts class. Creation as an academic endeavor has a place, but not when it's research data and results.

We could even look at just the 34 cherry-picked studies, and note that among them, they rely on non-peer-reviewed working papers for 1/3rd of them, co-mix studies from the US and multiple other countries, early in the pandemic from late in the pandemic, and that their overall methodology between studies isn't just apples-to-oranges fallacious, but literally trying to compare all the pieces of a fruit salad to each other, as if they were all the same thing, when in fact they are anything but that.

This is therefore nothing but a Shit Stew, composed by mixing the dung of every animal in not just the barnyard, but in the entire zoo, and then trying to sell it to you as sausage. Bon apetít!

But as we had already warned you of this truth from the outset, we choose not to belabor the point any further.

The great pity is that, just in case these economists had any actual economic expertise on offer, they could have performed something truly useful, but letting us know exactly how much economic damage (something far closer to their bailiwick than medical efficacy, of which they know Jack and Shit), was done by dragging out mostly half-assed lockdowns beyond Memorial Day 2020, when it was clear that the only thing they were doing was crashing - first as collateral damage, and ultimately by express design - the greatest economy in US history, while setting the stage for the eventual bloodless presidential coup, in return for nothing useful to most of America, except Emperor Poopypants and his minions.

No points for guessing why they didn't bother to do that. They'd have been kicked out of academia faster than Drs. Stantz, Venkman, and Spengler, and with none of the comedic aftermath.

The Accidental Utility Of Shovelled Bullsh*t

So other than sprinkling it on the rose bushes, what further use can be made of this study?

Plenty, we assure you.

Soviet and Eastern European ex-pats with long experience frequently relate that even in the cover-to-cover non-stop lies of communist house organs like Pravda and Izvestia, the diligent reader could always infallibly discern multiple truths.

Chiefest among them: Who and/or what are they telling me to hate? 

Why is that useful?

Because one may then know the enemies of The Official Narrative. And exactly as in an old Afghani proverb, "The enemy of my enemy is my ally".

So despite the manifest flaw-holes in this "study" being big enough to drive an entire solar system through, blindfolded, what does it tell us may be true? There are numerous possibilities.

1) The Emperor is butt-ass naked. Most obviously, this may the first of many ham-fisted attempts to walk back a two-year epic policy disasterpiece. Midterm elections are coming on like a freight train, and vote theft which works on a national scale isn't nearly as effective in 468 or so individual elections for Congress and the Senate, never mind a host of state offices. Lincoln's observation on how many people you can fool, and how often, is about to come home to roost at the DNC.

2) Shitstorm Inbound Which tells us: 

a) they're weaker, politically, and in terms of national vote-fraud organization, than the 2020 presidential election fraud portended

b)  they're about to have their political asses handed to them, and be shat on from a great height, and

c) they know it.

Losing the Senate would be bad for them. No SCOTUS picks, no ambassadors, no higher-level bureaucratic flunkies, no bills passed whatsoever, etc. (No new vice presidents confirmed, either, nota bene, which leaves them stuck with Sen. Kneepads indefinitely, and Gropey Dopey's Ultimate Freshness Date expiration is approaching at supersonic speed, because biology.) 

Losing the House as well would be a calamity. Yertle is not likely to return to being the Senate Majority Leader in that eventuality, and Kevin McCarthy, the presumptive new Speaker and long-time pro-Trump ally, is not likely to do anything but send the Left into new fits of apoplexy.

And no, you still aren't voting your way out of this, but if all you're going to do, when thrown to the lions, is to resolve to taste bad, a great help to that strategy is crapping in the lion's mouth on the way down.

3) Get In Zee Boxcars, Jüden! Given the absolutely ass-tastic but purposeful conflation of anything anywhere as a "lockdown", they may be telegraphing the desire to re-institute total lockdowns, Australian-style (which is to say gestapo-style). "True lockdowns have never been tried. This time, it'll be different." Pay attention if totalitarians inadvertently or outright tell you something like this. They usually mean it.

4) Mega Vaxx Attacks The "study" rather pointedly only looked at non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs). So what? That means they could be setting the stage for MORE VAXX! BIGGER! FASTER! HARDER!!! NO EXCEPTIONS EVAR!!!!! And after that? See #3, above.

They could also just be a bunch of pointy-headed academic idiot savants, without the savant component, and simply so full of shit and incompetence, they don't know what they don't know.

Or, anything from 1 to 4, above could be true.

Worst of all, 5) All Of The Above.

Quo Vadis?

What that means for you and me, is that this isn't the beginning of the end, but it's the end of the beginning. There's a long, awful slog still ahead, and we may be nowhere near the bottom, and the long, hard crawl to try and get back to anything anyone living remembers as "normal". But their Plan A has totally gone to shit, as both the Canadian Uprising, and most of Europe shit-canning any COVID-related restrictions, underlines in red Sharpie.

Stay frosty, and double down on BFYTW.

Nothing else will work. And you may be backing it up Rittenhouse-style at any point in the exercise. Which will probably be a feature, not a bug.

Gooooooooooo, Team Fucktard!