Welcome to Insanity Wrap, your daily dose of the best of the worst. “Sweden was right; lockdowns were wrong” is today’s big crazy.
Before we get to the sordid details, a quick preview of today’s Wrap.
- ‘Come on, baby, light my fire’ is the new ‘Fill’er up!’
- White House stands by their disgraced man
- A reptilian twist on ‘stand your ground’ laws
And so much more.
Shall we begin?
This Is Not a Sane World, Exhibit #1,000,006
— Raebo (@Raebo6) June 4, 2021
There are preppers, there are panic-hoarders, and then there’s whatever this guy is.
Biden’s ’70s Show
Rick Moran has the full story, but as Insanity Wrap looks at the big numbers from today’s jobs report — which came in again under expectations — over the last two months we have a deficit of over 800,000 jobs.
That’s last month’s big miss of nearly three-quarters of a million jobs plus this month’s miss of about another 112,000 jobs.
Mostly because we’re still paying out over-generous unemployment benefits (with money we don’t have) to people who should never have been locked out of work (as you’ll see below in today’s big item).
What a mess.
The Craziest Person in the World (Today)
White House press sec praises Fauci as an ‘undeniable asset’ after bombshell email revelations
Insanity Wrap must nominate ourselves as today’s craziest person in the world.
The reason is simple: When we read earlier this week that the White House might be “Actively Discussing an Exit Strategy” for getting rid of celebrity medical spokesmodel Anthony “Doctor” Fauci, we were inclined to believe it.
Who, we thought, could possibly hang on to that Chinese-connected ghoul after those emails came out? Sure, Fauci would be eased out the door with all his accolades intact, because that’s the Washington way.
But his long march out of public life had to come.
Now we’re forced to presume that Presidentish Biden is going to stand by his man, at least for the foreseeable future.
We were crazy for ever thinking otherwise.
Previously On Insanity Wrap: Racist Cranes Taking Over Connecticut
Your Daily Dose of Mandated Unity
Google using the racial pride flag.
They believe being black is a sexuality now. https://t.co/HHgvDagW6p
— Secretary of Akkad (@AkkadSecretary) June 4, 2021
Insanity Wrap has made a decent living these past 19 years, mocking the most absurd news stories and newsmakers and news reporters.
But the Multibillion-Dollar Woke Corporate Intersectional Victimhood Olympics have so stymied even our ability to mock, that Monday’s Wrap might not be anything more than a video of us reading the Babylon Bee to our dogs.
While drinking a Bloody Mary, of course.
Crime of the Century of the Day
Florida man accused of killing iguana uses ‘stand your ground’ defense to try to get charge dropped
Chutzpah, thy name is Florida Man:
Patterson, who stands 6-foot-3, argued that the three-foot iguana had “viciously attacked” him and that he was immune from prosecution under Florida’s “stand your ground” law, which allows a person to use force against someone who poses an imminent threat.
Given just how invasive and prevalent Florida iguanas are, we’re taking Florida man’s side on this one — even though the judge didn’t.
And Now For a Brief Moment of Sanity
Senate Dems after parliamentarian decision: Go big!
Today’s brief moment of sanity comes to us via our Hot Air colleague Ed Morrissey, but these days being what they are, you have to squint to see it.
Here’s the setup:
Well, that’s certainly one strategy after the Senate parliamentarian all but killed reconciliation for Senate Democrats. As we’ll see shortly, though, it’s not exactly the most realistic. While Joe Biden bargains down the infrastructure proposal to $1 trillion, The Hill reports that some Senate Democrats think they should go the other direction — and expand it past the original $2.3 trillion ask.
Emphasis added. For added emphasis.
When Insanity Wrap’s Son the Younger was a wee tyke of five, he was infamous for doubling down on most anything.
“Dad, may I have Gummi Bears?”
“Not right now.”
“How about Gummi Bears and an apple and Fritos? The apple is healthy.”
The august Senate Dem caucus is a five-year-old desperate for candy and junk they shouldn’t have.
This brings us to the sanity portion of today’s show — and back to Ed Morrissey:
Just how do they plan on passing a bigger bill through reconciliation, though? That would require 50 votes to allow Kamala Harris to cast a tie-breaker. They only have 50 votes in their caucus now, but Joe Manchin’s one of them, and he has adamantly opposed (a) reconciliation as a dodge around filibusters, (b) any changes to filibuster rules, and (c) an infrastructure package without Republican buy-in.
Once again, Joe Manchin is one of just two Senate Democrats (the other is Kyrsten Sinema) sane enough to protect the Republic from their own greedy, grasping party.
And just how crazy is that?
Previously On Insanity Wrap: The Paranoid Were Right All Along About Fauci (And More)
Sweden Was Right: Here’s Another Damn Thing We Have to Be Concerned About
Not a shred of doubt: Sweden was right
Are we allowed to talk about raw data and sharp statistical analysis without Facebook shutting down our ability to share that information?
Let’s find out.
First up, Dr. Eyal Shahar is not some cranky internet rando. He’s Professor Emeritus of Public Health at the University of Arizona with an MD from Tel-Aviv University and an MPH in Epidemiology from the University of Minnesota.
Shahar has chosen to look at data by “flu year” rather than by calendar year, because the arbitrary December 31 endpoint doesn’t align with when the flu (including the Wuhan flu) makes its deadly rounds.
By flu year, the numbers look like so in Shahar’s lengthy Medium post:
Dr. Shahar explains:
Continuation of the line, which was fit by the statistical model, yields the following estimates: In 2018–2019 there was “mortality deficit” in Sweden of 300 per million people (-3.3%) whereas in 2019–2020, the pandemic year, there was excess mortality of 364 per million people (+4.1%). Excess mortality following mortality deficit, and vice versa, are well known and expected, as the main source of mortality is an elderly population with limited life expectancy. (The sequence “excess after deficit” is, of course, better than the reverse order.)
Assuming the excess mortality in 2019–2020 “fully balanced” the mortality deficit in the previous flu year, the true excess mortality in Sweden was less than 1% (about 700 deaths).
Did you get that?
Sweden, with no lockdowns or contact tracing or mask requirements, suffered about 700 more deaths than expected out of a population of ten million people — an excess mortality rate of not quite 1%.
It might be too much at this early date to extrapolate that the lockdowns caused America’s higher excess mortalities. There are clearly other factors at play, like our horrendous obesity rates and widespread vitamin D deficiency.
But it is for damn certain that the lockdowns “caused indescribable damage to society” as Shahar concluded, and that “Sweden’s statistics tell us, unequivocally, that in much of the world lives have been lost and livelihoods have been destroyed — in vain.”
“Will anyone, in any country, be held accountable?” Shahar asks.
Insanity Wrap can’t speak for you, gentle reader, but somehow these dry numbers and statistics have us worked up like a pack of angry villagers.
So who has the pitchforks and who has the torches?
One More Thing…
That’s a Wrap for today.
Come back Monday for another Insanity Wrap…
…assuming we make it that long.
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