About a year ago, I explored the notion that Republican-led states (known for being more relaxed in the area of Covid restrictions) were experiencing a higher rate of Covid-19 deaths than Democrat-led states (known for being more stringent in the area of Covid restrictions). Specifically, I wanted to see if there was a correlation between the severity of a state’s Covid restrictions and their death rate. I found that there was not. Some of the strictest states had higher death rates, and some of the freest states had lower death rates.
A lot has changed since last July, and now that the pandemic is essentially over, I wanted to re-run the data and see how the states fared at the end of the day. This time, I added an additional data set to the mix. We know that the majority of Covid deaths occurred in elderly populations, so states with a higher percentage of elderly people would be expected to have a higher death rate than states with lower percentages of elderly populations. Is that true to experience?
Based on my research, if you have been infected with COVID-19, there is no good reason for you to get vaccinated. Getting Covid provides you with a natural immunity to future reinfections that is thousands of times more effective than the immunity conferred by the vaccines. Also, the vaccines fare no better than natural immunity at preventing the transmission of Covid. Let me explain.
Texas is on a roll! First, Texas reported 
The telltale sign of fascism is the silencing of dissent. If you don’t agree with the fascists’ point of view, you will be de-platformed, cancelled, fired, imprisoned, or killed. Which side of the ideological aisle is engaging in fascism these days? Here’s a clue: It’s not the Right. While we haven’t seen the Left imprisoning or killing anyone in this country yet, given enough time, and given enough power, it will happen. It’s already happening in other countries, and we can see the same trajectory in our own.
The latest scare being proffered by the media is that it isn’t safe to be an Asian in America. Headlines everywhere read “Asian hate crime is up 150%.”
If you haven’t heard of the 
We’re living in a time when people tend to isolate themselves intellectually. Not only do they not take it upon themselves to search out viewpoints that differ from their own, but they actually shun people who do not agree with them. We see this all the time on social media. You post something that person X does not agree with. Rather than reading what you have to say and starting a dialogue regarding your differences in hopes of helping each other discover the truth, person X ignores the post, or worse yet, unfriends you.
If you listen to the media, you would think that Republican states are experiencing the highest percentage of Covid-19 deaths, and that this is because Republican governors were not severe enough in their lockdowns or because they lifted lockdown restrictions too early. States like Georgia, Florida, and Texas have routinely been accused of botching the handling of the pandemic and causing unnecessary death.
Diversity is not a value. Diversity just is. We don’t value diversity for diversity’s sake, but for what that diversity provides us. For example, we value diversity in food because we enjoy eating different kinds of food. We value diversity of clothing styles because we like to express ourselves in different ways, and we think it would be wrong to make everyone wear the same kind of clothes or eat the exact same food. But there are some examples of diversity that should not be valued or “celebrated.” We should not celebrate diversity in moral views, particularly when some of those moral views entail gross immorality. The British did not celebrate the diversity of Indians when they burned their widows on the funeral pyre. They forcibly ended that barbarism. We should not celebrate diversity in how women’s genitalia is treated – celebrating those who mutilate women’s genitalia alongside those who do not. We should not celebrate the diversity of killing one’s own daughter after she is raped to preserve the honor of the family. Not all ideas are of equal value. We celebrate the diversity of people, but not the diversity of ideas. Bad ideas should be fought against – first by persuasion, but if that fails, in some cases we must fight those ideas by force.
Thinking to Believe 