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Service Quality and Reputation
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Category Archives: government fraud spending collusion
Mac Isaac’s lawyer, Brian Della Rocca, confirmed to the Delaware News Journal that Mac Isaac had closed the shop, but did not say whether his client had left town. He did claim that his client had received death threats. Della Rocca told the Journal that his office had communicated with Wilmington FBI agents and Delaware’s Assistant United States Attorney Leslie Wolf about the situation, saying, “I’ve been in touch with federal law enforcement, yes.” More here.
National Legal and Policy Center filed a 12-page complaint with the Department of Justice demanding an investigation of Hunter Biden, the Truman National Security Project, and the University of Pennsylvania and its Penn Biden Center, to determine whether they are in compliance with the Foreign Agents Registration Act for engaging in political activities on behalf of Burisma and Chinese interests.
NLPC’s complaint draws upon recent press reports that disclose incriminating emails and text messages on Hunter Biden’s laptop computer which is in the hands of the FBI and statements against Hunter and his father by Tony Bobulinski, Hunter’s partner on Burisma, the Ukrainian oil company. Bobulinski was recently interviewed by the FBI in a criminal investigation into activities that most likely involve money laundering, tax evasion, wire fraud, and other crimes, and implicates his uncle James Biden, and his father, Joe Biden.
The complaint cites one such text message on May 1, 2017 by Hunter to Bobulinski regarding their Chinese energy client, CEFC, “We don’t want to have to register as foreign agents. . . which is much more expansive than people who should know choose not to know.” In another email, April 17, 2015 Burisma’s Vadym Pozharski thanks Hunter for arranging a meeting with his father, who was then Vice President.
Hunter served as a board member until 2019 on the liberal Truman National Security Project along with the Sally Painter, COO of Blue Star Strategies, a lobby firm retained by Burisma to promote its interests before the State Department. The Truman Project, which endorsed Kamala Harris in 2016 for her Senate race, failed to note on its 2017 tax filing that Hunter and Painter had a business relationship with each other through Burisma.
Finally, NLPC demands that DOJ investigate the source of over $22 million in anonymous donations from China to the University of Pennsylvania and its Penn Biden Center that may have been earmarked to promote Chinese interests and thus trigger registration as foreign agent.
“The evidence uncovered so far is only the tip of the iceberg and more is coming out every day,” said NLPC Chairman Peter Flaherty. “The Justice Department and the FBI must conduct a prompt investigation of NLPC’s complaint and bring appropriate enforcement actions, whether for FARA violations or other illegal conduct,” said Paul Kamenar, NLPC’s counsel who drafted the complaint.
Gotta wonder based on the text of the Executive Order if John Ratcliffe at ODNI is working the case as introduced by Sidney Powell regarding SmartMatic.
Anyway…
Many have said the United States needs election reform. The last time there was real reform was in 2002 and with the launch of the U.S. Election Assistance Commission. This commission operates in cadence with the Help America Vote Act. Did you know about that Federal law and it is under the authority of the Department of Justice? Nor did I until I found myself in a rabbit hole yesterday.There is a LOT here so it may get confusing but it will put much of what the press conference was about yesterday and in context by Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell.
The Election Assistance Commission (EAC) supports state and local election officials in their efforts to ensure accessible, accurate. and secure elections. EAC develops guidance to meet the Help America Vote Act requirements, adopts voluntary voting system guidelines, and serves as a national clearinghouse of information on election administration. EAC also accredits testing laboratories and certifies voting systems, as well as audits the use of Help America Vote Act funds.
Further, at least 2 former members of the EAC went on later to join the Board of Directors for SmartMatic, the software in question hosted on Dominion machines.
Gracia Hillman, who served as a commissioner and chairman of the U.S. Election Assistance Commission (2003-2010); and
Gracia Hillman served as commissioner on the U.S. Election Assistance Commission (EAC) from 2003 to 2010, and as chairman. During her career, she also served as Vice President for External Affairs at Howard University, Senior Coordinator for International Women’s Issues at the U.S. Department of State, President and CEO of WorldSpace Foundation, and Executive Director of the League of Women Voters of the U.S., the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation and the National Coalition on Black Voter Participation.
Ms. Hillman has provided leadership as an officer and director of numerous nonprofit boards of directors and government commissions. She has represented the United States government before the United Nations, Organization of American States and Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe.
Paul DeGregorio served as commissioner of the U.S. Election Assistance Commission (EAC) from 2003 to 2007, and during his tenure at the EAC served as chairman. At the EAC, Mr. DeGregorio oversaw federal election reform, such as the implementation of the Help America Vote Act and the establishment of the first federal certification of voting systems.
So, this HAVA law is funded and appears to operate with an estimated $500 million for 2020. That being the case, it is also then assigned an Inspector General to investigate compliance at the State and Federal level. (I have not found any IG reports however)
State by state funding for 2020 is:
Okay, got it. Now exactly how are those funds allocated, spent and who approves that at the Federal and State level? Help figure that out.
So, remember that Cares Act that was passed by Congress and signed into law with President Trump’s signature? Well, if the HAVA law was already there, why was there a supplemental annex to the Cares Act? Was it just due to the pandemic? Go here and click around to see what you can fully determine.
The HAVA Election Security Funds were appropriated in 2018 and 2020. The two HAVA Election Security Fund appropriations, authorized under Title I Section 101 of the Help America Vote Act (HAVA) of 2002, mark the first new appropriations for HAVA grants since FY2010. This funding provides states with additional resources to secure and improve election systems.
The Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2018 included $380 million in grants, made available to states to improve the administration of elections for Federal office, including to enhance technology and make certain election security improvements.
Then the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2020 authorized an additional $425 million in new Help America Vote Act (HAVA) funds.
It should also be noted that SmartMatic has several U.S. patents and there have been several lawsuits regarding the use of the patent(s) where the system can or cannot be sold across the world. ES&S and Dominion have essentially the whole voting market in the United States. ProPublica, a left leaning government accountability organization did a large summary in 2019 on voting irregularities across the US and it is an interesting read.
Trying to sort out the voting systems, hardware and software is crazy. Here is some help for you such that you can work your own answers to questions you may have. There is much much more for sure, but this summary is merely a tip sheet for the reader.
The nation’s three largest voting machine manufacturing vendors — Election Systems & Software (ES&S), Dominion Voting Systems, and Hart InterCivic — have all publicly acknowledged that they place modems in some of their vote tabulators and scanners.
While the vendors claim that their “firewalls” protect computers from outside interference, many of the nation’s leading technical experts say this claim is bogus.
“Once a hacker starts talking to a voting machine through the modem,” says Princeton University Computer Science professor Andrew Appel, “they can hack the software and make it cheat in future elections.” It’s as straightforward as that.
So, what can we do?
“We should be unplugging all of these machines from the internet,” says Kevin Skoglund, the computer scientist who led the 10-expert investigatory team. This means keeping elections technologies disconnected all the time, including on election night.
“We cannot make our computers perfectly secure,” says Andrew Appel. “What we should do is remove all of the unnecessary, hackable pathways, such as modems. We should not connect our voting machines directly to the computer networks. That is just inviting trouble.” More here.
We begin with more details by Sidney Powell (General Flynn’s lawyer and part of the Trump legal team).
The we have this summary from American Oversight, which is a very left leaning group of lawyers but they too have concerns regarding Georgia’s overhaul of the state voting systems.
In July 2019, Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger announced that the state had awarded a $107 million contract to manufacturer Dominion Voting Systems to replace existing voting machines with a new “verified paper ballot system.” As reported by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, both Dominion and the state’s former elections company, Election Systems & Software, had connections with Gov. Brian Kemp’s administration. Dominion lobbyist Jared Thomas had been a longtime political and campaign aide to Kemp, who previously served as secretary of state, and another lobbyist, Barry Herron, had worked for Diebold Election Systems, which had originally sold Georgia its electronic voting machines.
Georgia voters had complained about malfunctioning voting machines after the November 2018 midterm elections, even filing a lawsuit aimed at overhauling the state’s election system, including the electronic machines. But critics worry that the new electronic ballot-printing devices from Dominion won’t be much better, contending that hand-marked paper ballots remain the most secure voting method. In fact, the new devices were given a test run in six Georgia counties during the November 2019 election, and ran into a number of issues. And records we’ve already obtained showed that voter check-in devices used “1234” as their default password — an “exceptionally weak security measure.” (State officials have said the passwords have been changed.)
Elsewhere in the state, voters reported long lines and ballot issues, and concerns remain about the hidden costs of the new voting system, the state’s planned purge of 300,000 names from its voter rolls, and security weaknesses in voting equipment. With the 2020 elections looming and the security of U.S. voting systems less than certain, American Oversight is investigating state officials’ communications with Dominion Voting Systems and its subcontractor KnowInk, and is requesting records that could shed light on how the state is working to ensure secure and accurate elections.
After allegations emerged that called into questioned the integrity of voting machines produced by Dominion Voting Systems, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA)—part of the Department of Homeland Security—issued a statement on Nov. 12 disputing the allegations, saying “the November 3rd election was the most secure in American history.”
What the agency failed to disclose, however, is that Dominion Voting Systems is a member of CISA’s Election Infrastructure Sector Coordinating Council, one of two entities that authored the statement put out by CISA.
A screenshot taken on Nov. 16, 2020, of the Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Agency website shows the members of the Sector Coordinating Council. (Screenshot/The Epoch Times)
In addition, Smartmatic, a separate voting machine company that has been the subject of additional concerns, is also a member.
The agency did not immediately respond to a request for comment on whether Dominion and Smartmatic had input or were otherwise involved in CISA’s Nov. 12 statement.
The joint statement on the integrity of the Nov. 3 election was issued by the Executive Committee of the Election Infrastructure Government Coordinating Council (GCC), an Executive Committee representing a coalition of certain state & local government officials and government agencies, and the Election Infrastructure Sector Coordinating Council (SCC), a coalition primarily composed of voting system manufacturers that also includes Democracy Works, an organization which promotes the use of technology to increase voter participation.
The statement claims, “There is no evidence that any voting system deleted or lost votes, changed votes, or was in any way compromised.”
“While we know there are many unfounded claims and opportunities for misinformation about the process of our elections, we can assure you we have the utmost confidence in the security and integrity of our elections, and you should too,” says the statement.
Some of the allegations surrounding the integrity of the presidential election, including by President Donald Trump’s legal team, have been focused on the voting systems provided by Dominion, and to a lesser extent, Smartmatic. Both Dominion and Smartmatic have dismissed concerns over their systems.
Both companies are listed as members of CISA’s Sector Coordinating Council and appear to be actively involved as they are named as “Organizing Members” of the SCC. Among the key objectives of the SCC is to “serve as the primary liaison between the election subsector and federal, state, and local agencies, including the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), concerning private election subsector security and emergency preparedness issues.”
The Charter states the primary mission of the Council is to “advance the physical security, cyber security, and emergency preparedness of the nation’s election infrastructure, in accordance with existing U.S. law. This mission will be accomplished through voluntary actions of the infrastructure owners and operators represented in the Council.”
CISA’s Reliance on Commercial Vendors
CISA says that it “works to ensure the physical security and cybersecurity of the systems and assets that supports the Nation’s elections,” including voter registration databases, IT infrastructure and systems to manage elections (including counting, auditing, and validating election results), voting systems, storage facilities for voting system infrastructure, and polling places including early voting locations.
In effect, CISA appears to act as something of an interface between commercial vendors and state & local governments.
“CISA is committed to working collaboratively with those on the front lines of elections—state and local governments, election officials, federal partners, and vendors—to manage risks to the Nation’s election infrastructure,” the agency states on its website.
As CISA notes, they do not have direct oversight or responsibility for the administration of our nation’s elections as that responsibility lies with state and local governments.
“Ultimate responsibility for administering the Nation’s elections rests with state and local governments, CISA offers a variety of free services to help states ensure both the physical security and cybersecurity of their elections infrastructure,” the agency writes on its website.
Dominion Using CISA to Deny Allegations
On Nov. 12, this publication published an article detailing a number of concerns raised about the integrity of Dominion Voting Systems in a sworn Aug. 24 declaration from Harri Hursti, a poll watcher and acknowledged expert on electronic voting security.
Hursti’s observations were made during the June 9 statewide primary election in Georgia and the runoff elections on Aug. 11, 2020, and centered primarily, although not exclusively, around the Dominion systems and equipment.
Hursti summarized his findings as follows:
“The scanner and tabulation software settings being employed to determine which votes to count on hand marked paper ballots are likely causing clearly intentioned votes not to be counted”
“The voting system is being operated in Fulton County in a manner that escalates the security risk to an extreme level.”
“Voters are not reviewing their BMD [Ballot Marking Devices] printed ballots, which causes BMD generated results to be un-auditable due to the untrustworthy audit trail.”
As part of the article, we reached out to Dominion Voting Systems for comment on Nov. 11 about the allegations contained in Hursti’s sworn statement, to which the company did not respond. Our article was published on the morning of Nov. 12. That afternoon CISA published its statement denying any problems with the voting systems.
The next day, Nov. 13, Dominion sent us an email titled “SETTING THE RECORD STRAIGHT: FACTS & RUMORS,” which cited the joint statement published by the GCC and SCC, of which Dominion is an organizing member.
A screenshot taken on Nov. 16, 2020, of the “Election Infrastructure Subsector Coordinating Council Charter,” dated Feb. 15, 2018, shows both Dominion Voting Systems and Smartmatic as organizing members. The Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Agency uses “EISCC” and “SCC” interchangeably to refer to the Sector Coordinating Council. (Screenshot/The Epoch Times)
Nowhere in its email did Dominion disclose that it had any affiliation with CISA, or was an active member of the SCC, one of the issuing councils. The email itself referenced the statement in third-party fashion:
“According to a Joint Statement by the federal government agency that oversees U.S. election security, the Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity, & Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA): ‘There is no evidence that any voting system deleted or lost votes, changed votes, or was in any way compromised.’ The government & private sector councils that support this mission called the 2020 election ‘the most secure in American history.’”
CISA did not respond to a request for comment by The Epoch Times about whether it has investigated the claims made in the Georgia lawsuit about Dominion.
Concerns Raised in Georgia Lawsuit
While it remains unclear whether CISA and the GCC/SCC have evaluated concerns raised in the Georgia lawsuit, their public statements categorically deny any problems with the systems.
However, in an Oct. 11 order just weeks prior to the presidential elections, U.S. District Judge Amy Totenberg agreed with the concerns associated with the new Dominion voting system, writing that the case presented “serious system security vulnerability and operational issues that may place Plaintiffs and other voters at risk of deprivation of their fundamental right to cast an effective vote that is accurately counted.”
Despite the court’s misgivings, Totenberg ruled against replacing the Dominion system right before the presidential election, noting that “Implementation of such a sudden systemic change under these circumstances cannot but cause voter confusion and some real measure of electoral disruption.”
Given the recent timing of Judge Totenberg’s order, it does not appear that any of these issues were addressed by Dominion, CISC, or any of its affiliated organizations or Councils, despite their later statements claiming there were no such issues.
Ever wonder about the tracking that Facebook uses to prioritize posts, block others or issue warnings? There are some good uses for selection institutions, corporations or agencies for sure….but we remain suspect of Facebook and all social media, and with good reason.
So, take a look at the tool Facebook uses and is exploited by others.
Meet CrowdTangle…
When it comes to poll testing used by politicians, CrowdTangle is generally the ‘go-to’ source.
CrowdTangle Search: The top trend graph will show how election or candidate keywords have performed on social over time. Meme search will help with text on image posts so you’ll have broader results from overall election keywords.
Lists: Set up lists for politicians, candidates, local officials, campaign staffers, political Facebook groups, political influencers and journalists. Set up a weekly digest (in our notifications section) for these lists to keep track of what everyone is saying.
Intelligence: See who’s driving more social interactions around their content. Compare candidates in races, political groups and more.
Live Displays: Create an election-themed Live Display to give your team a real-time, multi-platform view of what candidates are saying, what local and national publishers are saying about the candidates, to compare your coverage of the election to that of your competitors, and more.
Check out these Live Displays for these 2020 Elections:
How to do fan-outs to see how a piece of content is spreading. (Fan-outs are tactics investigators use when they’re trying to identify similar content that has made its way across social media networks.)
CrowdTangle is a public insights tool from Facebook that makes it easy to follow, analyze, and report on what’s happening with public content on social media.
What is CrowdTangle used for?
Organizations primarily use CrowdTangle to:
Follow. Easilyfollow public content across Facebook, Instagram and Reddit.
Analyze. Benchmark and compare performance of public accounts over time.
Report. Track referrals and find larger trends to understand how public content spreads on social media.
Some examples include:
Journalists using CrowdTangle Search to search across Facebook or Instagram for content relevant to their reporting.
Social media managers tracking their own account performance and comparing themselves to the competition in Intelligence.
TV producers broadcasting real-time streams of social posts related to breaking news events using Live Displays.
Fact-checkers identifying posts that contain misinformation.
Researchers analyzing trends across thousands of accounts over time and reporting on how information spreads.
You can also see specific examples within our case studies.
What data does CrowdTangle track?
CrowdTangle only tracks publicly available posts.
The kind of data CrowdTangle shares includes:
When something was posted.
The type of post (video, image, text).
Which Page or public account it was posted from, or which public group it was posted to.
How many interactions (e.g. likes, reactions, comments, shares) or video views it received.
Which other public Pages or accounts shared it.
CrowdTangle doesn’t track:
Reach or impressions on a post.
Ephemeral content like stories.
Demographic information on users. CrowdTangle can tell you a particular post earned 1,000 likes, but it can’t tell you who liked it, where they are from or their age.
Paid or boosted posts. CrowdTangle doesn’t differentiate between paid or organic engagement.
Any data or posts from private accounts, or accounts that have put location or age restrictions on their content.
What accounts does CrowdTangle track?
CrowdTangle tracks influential public accounts and groups across Facebook, Instagram, and Reddit, including all verified users, profiles, and accounts like politicians, journalists, media and publishers, celebrities, sports teams, public figures and more. CrowdTangle also can track 7 days of public Twitter data via CrowdTangle Search and our Chrome Extension. CrowdTangle does not track any private accounts.
CrowdTangle’s database currently includes:
Facebook: 6M+ Facebook Pages, public Groups, and verified profiles. This includes all Facebook Pages with more than 100K likes (new Pages are added automatically via an API).
Instagram: 2M+ public Instagram accounts. This includes all accounts with more than 75K followers, as well as all verified accounts.
Reddit: ~20K+ of the most active subreddits. Built and maintained in partnership with Reddit.
You can see a table that summarizes the percentage of Facebook Pages active in the last 28 days that CrowdTangle tracks, updated monthly here.
Joe Biden has said he would lockdown the nation based on the science. Question is, what science? Virology experts hardly all agree on the threats and implications of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Michael Osterholm, an infectious-disease expert and one of the 13 members of Biden’s new coronavirus task force called for a national lockdown lasting four to six weeks to slow the rise of virus cases across the country. Read here in detail.
Then we have governors that are going to another round of lockdowns: California, New York, Michigan and Oregon and in various forms including just some cities like Chicago. Cancel the holidays they say….close businesses at 10pm, that is when the virus shows up. Yeesh….but let’s go deeper into critical thinking shall we?
The New England Journal of Medicine has published a study that goes to the heart of the issue of lockdowns. The question has always been whether and to what extent a lockdown, however extreme, is capable of suppressing the virus. If so, you can make an argument that at least lockdowns, despite their astronomical social and economic costs, achieve something. If not, nations of the world have embarked on a catastrophic experiment that has destroyed billions of lives, and all expectation of human rights and liberties, with no payoff at all.
AIER has long highlighted studies that show no gain in virus management from lockdowns. Even as early as April, a major data scientist said that this virus becomes endemic in 70 days after the first round of infection, regardless of policies. The largest global study of lockdowns compared with deaths as published in The Lancet found no association between coercive stringencies and deaths per million.
To test further might seem superfluous but, for whatever reason, governments all over the world, including in the US, still are under the impression that they can affect viral transmissions through a range of “nonpharmaceutical interventions” (NPIs) like mandatory masks, forced human separation, stay-at-home orders, bans of gatherings, business and school closures, and extreme travel restrictions. Nothing like this has been tried on this scale in the whole of human history, so one might suppose that policy makers have some basis for their confidence that these measures accomplish something.
A study conducted by Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in cooperation with the Naval Medical Research Center sought to test lockdownsm along with testing and isolation. In May, 3,143 new recruits to the Marines were given the option to participate in a study of frequent testing under extreme quarantine. The study was called CHARM, which stands for COVID-19 Health Action Response for Marines. Of the recruits asked, a total of 1,848 young people agreed to be guinea pigs in this experiment which involved “which included weekly qPCR testing and blood sampling for IgG antibody assessment.” In addition, the CHARM study volunteers who did test positively “on the day of enrollment (day 0) or on day 7 or day 14 were separated from their roommates and were placed in isolation.”
What did the recruits have to do? The study explains, and, as you will see, they faced an even more strict regime that has existed in civilian life in most places. All recruits, even those not in the CHARM group, did the following.
All recruits wore double-layered cloth masks at all times indoors and outdoors, except when sleeping or eating; practiced social distancing of at least 6 feet; were not allowed to leave campus; did not have access to personal electronics and other items that might contribute to surface transmission; and routinely washed their hands. They slept in double-occupancy rooms with sinks, ate in shared dining facilities, and used shared bathrooms. All recruits cleaned their rooms daily, sanitized bathrooms after each use with bleach wipes, and ate preplated meals in a dining hall that was cleaned with bleach after each platoon had eaten. Most instruction and exercises were conducted outdoors. All movement of recruits was supervised, and unidirectional flow was implemented, with designated building entry and exit points to minimize contact among persons. All recruits, regardless of participation in the study, underwent daily temperature and symptom screening. Six instructors who were assigned to each platoon worked in 8-hour shifts and enforced the quarantine measures. If recruits reported any signs or symptoms consistent with Covid-19, they reported to sick call, underwent rapid qPCR testing for SARS-CoV-2, and were placed in isolation pending the results of testing.
Instructors were also restricted to campus, were required to wear masks, were provided with preplated meals, and underwent daily temperature checks and symptom screening. Instructors who were assigned to a platoon in which a positive case was diagnosed underwent rapid qPCR testing for SARS-CoV-2, and, if the result was positive, the instructor was removed from duty. Recruits and instructors were prohibited from interacting with campus support staff, such as janitorial and food-service personnel. After each class completed quarantine, a deep bleach cleaning of surfaces was performed in the bathrooms, showers, bedrooms, and hallways in the dormitories, and the dormitory remained unoccupied for at least 72 hours before reoccupancy.
The reputation of Marine basic training is that it is tough going but this really does take it to another level. Also, this is an environment where those in charge do not mess around. There was surely close to 100% compliance, as compared with, for example, a typical college campus.
What were the results? The virus still spread, though 90% of those who tested positive were without symptoms. Incredibly, 2% of the CHARM recruits still contracted the virus, even if all but one remained asymptomatic. “Our study showed that in a group of predominantly young male military recruits, approximately 2% became positive for SARS-CoV-2, as determined by qPCR assay, during a 2-week, strictly enforced quarantine.”
And how does this compare to the control group that was not tested and not isolated in the case of a positive case?
Which is to say that the nonparticipants actually contracted the virus at a slightly lower rate than those who were under an extreme regime. Conversely, extreme enforcement of NPIs plus more frequent testing and isolation was associated with a greater degree of infection.
I’m grateful to Don Wolt for drawing my attention to this study, which, so far as I know, has received very little attention from any media source at all, despite having been published in the New England Journal of Medicine on November 11.
Here are four actual media headlines about the study that miss the point entirely:
CNN: “Many military Covid-19 cases are asymptomatic, studies show”
SciTech Daily: “Asymptomatic COVID-19 Transmission Revealed Through Study of 2,000 Marine Recruits”
ABC: “Broad study of Marine recruits shows limits of COVID-19 symptom screening”
US Navy: “Navy/Marine Corps COVID-19 Study Findings Published in New England Journal of Medicine”
No national news story that I have found highlighted the most important finding of all: extreme quarantine plus frequent testing and isolation among military recruits did nothing to stop the virus.
The study is important because of the social structure of control here. It’s one thing to observe no effects from national lockdowns. There are countless variables here that could be invoked as cautionary notes: demographics, population density, preexisting immunities, degree of compliance, and so on. But with this Marine study, you have a near homogeneous group based on age, health, and densities of living. And even here, you see confirmed what so many other studies have shown: lockdowns are pointlessly destructive. They do not manage the disease. They crush human liberty and produce astonishing costs, such as 5.53 million years of lost life from the closing of schools alone.
The lockdowners keep telling us to pay attention to the science. That’s what we are doing. When the results contradict their pro-compulsion narrative, they pretend that the studies do not exist and barrel ahead with their scary plans to disable all social functioning in the presence of a virus. Lockdowns are not science. They never have been. They are an experiment in social/political top-down management that is without precedent in cost to life and liberty.
[The earliest version of this article misstated the conditions of the control group. They were equally locked down with those who participated in the study. The difference between the two concerned testing frequency and the isolation response. This does not affect this article’s conclusion; indeed it strengthens it: even under extreme measures, the virus spread, and more so with the extra measure intended to control the virus. Nearly all infections were without symptoms.]
Mac Isaac’s lawyer, Brian Della Rocca, confirmed to the Delaware News Journal that Mac Isaac had closed the shop, but did not say whether his client had left town. He did claim that his client had received death threats. Della Rocca told the Journal that his office had communicated with Wilmington FBI agents and Delaware’s Assistant United States Attorney Leslie Wolf about the situation, saying, “I’ve been in touch with federal law enforcement, yes.” More here.
