How’s everyone’s weekend going?
Thanks for spending a portion of your Sunday with the Six.
Let’s get right to it.
MOVING ON WITHOUT FORGETTING
The Apple News headline read: “CDC Comes Out with New Covid Recommendations.”
I thought, ‘really? Is this necessary?’
When I opened the article, it affirmed suspicions.
The CDC, in early 2024, is finally labeling the Covid virus as basically equal to that of the flu. Feeling sick? Stay home (or not). Have faith in Americans to exert common sense in their daily lives.
Thank you, CDC, for crabbily telling us what we’ve known for years.
The fact our country’s Center For Disease Control issued updated guidelines on Covid doesn’t really matter. Other than those who willfully attach to the Diseased State or are forced to by employment, no one cares.
The question becomes what should we still care about as it pertains to Covid?
That’s simple. Getting to the truth. Who knew what and when.
We are four years removed from the initial panic of 2020. The Red Scare-like run to the grocery stores. School and business lockdowns. Politicians and other public institution leaders defaulting to Zero Covid, a horrendously reckless decision. The mainstream narrative of if we all do the "right" things for some indefinite period of time, how the virus will be "defeated" in some way, was a fairy tale. Permanently crushing the virus was never possible. The virus is here for good. A co-existence strategy from the outset would have been much less harmful.
Some of us knew that then, how the harm being done by negligent response mechanisms was far worse than any virus.
Now, as more information continues to trickle out, the public inquiries well under way, we are learning just how ill-judged and corrupt decision makers were in compounding the crisis.
The House of Representatives has its task force. It’s limited in scope, but recent hearings were revelatory and the subcommittee continues to issue subpoenas. Billions of dollars were stolen from an ill-conceived relief fund.
A new documentary made by independent film makers reveals how Deborah Birx, the Trump-appointed health advisor, played a significant role in many of the disastrous public health mandates at the initial outset of Covid in 2020.
(After viewing the doc, Birx’s mild mea culpa should come as no surprise.)
And there’s the loss of careers over vaccine mandates, vaccine-related injury and deaths, resulting in a rise in the public’s skepticism over legitimate vaccines. I’m not a medical expert but how else do you explain the measles outbreak?
None of it’s good and there will likely never be a full accounting. Most who sided with mandates and authoritarian policy would prefer we forget about the whole thing as to not be reminded of how wrong they were. The tiresome “there’s no way they could have known” argument carries no credibility. Leaders willfully ignored data early on that showed children were not vulnerable. Rather than raise objections, they fell in line with the Covid Cartel. The intellectual dishonesty remains shameful to this day.
Most of my personal triggers are still directed towards those in power: the politicians, public health and education administrators, school board members, the decision makers most conscious of what they were doing. No amnesty for these people. I never really cared if a private citizen wore a mask or took the jab except when they turned around and told me I should do the same and if not, fuck my freedoms. That was a hill worth fighting for. We won that fight as personal freedoms are foundational to our democracy. But struggles linger, just in a different context.
Other than spotting the occasional masked nutter at the store or airport, Covid is largely out of our daily worldview. We as a society have moved on and we should.
But how we counter those in charge escaping responsibility is by continuing to get to the bottom of what happened.
Just as our public institutions were diligent to scarcity of reason in 2020, we must now, four years later, be equally vigilant in pursuit of truth.
Let’s proceed with the Six.
1. Why Big Blue Cities Are Getting Tougher On Crime.
We’re in an election year and one indicator is a party’s walk back of bad policies. Big cities like New York and San Francisco realize how voters prefer personal safety over progressive reform. So leaders are warming to anti-crime initiatives. Before we credit Dems with a change of tune, let’s understand many of these measures are politically-motivated. Via Politico: “Blue cities are pushing these harsher policies even as crime has ticked down significantly nationwide…it’s the perception of increased crime that is driving many of these changes as Republicans continue to pillory Democrats as weak on law enforcement in the run-up to the presidential election.”
2. Inside The Fight Against School Vaping.
As teens have switched off cigarettes, they’ve flipped to vapes, which have more diverse odors and unique refuse. Schools are trying to stop kids from vaping at school and enforcement requires an investment in technology and hounds, as this piece via the Associated Press explains. Some counties are buying trained dogs that undergo 160 hours of coaching to detect nicotine and THC, which sounds like more interesting canine employment than say, therapy puppy. Other schools are spending $1K a pop on vape detection sensors. These developments make us nostalgic for the more innocent Motley Crue-inspired “Smokin’ In The Boys Room” days.
3. My Father Was Murdered: A Daughter’s Search For Truth.
We continue the Six’s True Crime series with a story from the U.K. Tracy King was twelve when her father was murdered in his Birmingham (England) neighborhood by a group of local boys, but when she reinvestigates his death in adulthood she finds that the version she had been told by police was fiction. “My childlike notion of heroes and baddies, good and evil, had to dissolve,” King writes, “to be replaced with a complex, messy, sudden insight into who my dad was when he wasn’t being my brilliant father.” A compelling read from The Guardian.
4. Recruiting Costs Drive Big College Sports Spending.
College sports money mag Sportico looks at the athletic department finances of 91 public universities that compete in the FBS (Division 1) tier of the NCAA. What it found was how schools have ratcheted up their spending in the wake of a decision to enable college athletes to sell their names, images and likenesses. All told, total athletic department expenditures increased 13 percent from the 2021-22 season to the 2022-23 season, which just so happened to follow the introduction of the NIL policy. Fueling that growth was recruiting, which saw spending increase 24 percent over the same period. It’s most acute in football, which saw spending for recruiting increase 32 percent over the course of the period. Expect more and more spending in the coming years as player compensation rights expand.
A journalist pens personal essay on two years spent as a hostage. While in Syria in 2012, Theo Padnos was captured by a group of “amateur terrorists.” War hymns played in the background at all times. From the piece via the Persuasion newsletter: “We couldn’t leave those rooms and we couldn’t talk to one another. A peek at our daily calendars would have shown solitary darkness in the morning, followed by shouting at midday, followed by outbreaks of terror at night.”
6. Bees Vs. Man.
The crack research staff at the Six discovered a new study of wild bee colonies that estimates there are between 200 million and 300 million wild honeybee colonies worldwide. The same survey estimates there are 3.5 trillion (trillion!) individual honey bees on the planet, making them outnumber us humans about 440 to 1. Sure, there are environmental benefits to having so many bees but imagine if they morphed into the body of man. As this vintage John Belushi-era SNL skit shows, we wouldn’t stand a chance. Enjoy.
Thanks for reading everybody and have a great rest of your weekend.
Have a suggestion for The Sunday Six? Send email to jonjkerr@gmail.com.
Great roundup of articles! And thanks for covid comments- I will never cease to be stunned and furious at what transpired during those years. Insanity reigned.
Thanks for commenting, Amy. Our daily lives are no longer impacted but four years later and there's little to no accountability for the reckless decisions. I don't think we'll ever get what's deserved.