Almost two years and mountains of data later, and our Top Men can't tell the difference.

The difference between "with" and "from" when it comes to coronavirus deaths, that is.

Because, in various important contexts, starting with treatment, dying with Covid-19 is a critically-different phenomenon than dying from Covid-19. 

At the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, that distinction is still unknown for some reason:

Two years into the COVID-19 pandemic, the CDC still hasn’t set up a system to distinguish causation from correlation, [CDC Director Dr. Rochelle] Walensky admits.

* * *

The CDC’s data reporting website makes no such distinction at all. It’s not a case of waiting a few weeks for their “death registry” to catch up. All of its data on admissions and deaths are entirely correlative and always has been. The causation data simply doesn’t exist, and it never did.

This is important for more than just deaths when it comes to public policy, but let’s start there. The failure of the CDC to impose reporting requirements for degree of causation in deaths correlated to a COVID-19 diagnosis has left us completely unable to gauge risk and craft public policy with Omicron. We know from hard data that Omicron is far more transmissible than earlier variants, but we have no idea how dangerous it is otherwise. And even if we have that eventually with Omicron, we don’t have comparative data from other variants. My friend John Hinderaker at Power Line has done some fine work in using excess-mortality rates to determine actual risk in the pandemic, but this is only a secondary measure that is less reliable than the kind of measures the CDC should have had in place by mid-summer of 2020.

However, this failure has a broader impact than just on reported deaths. The lack of causation data on hospital admissions prompted a major media hysteria last month when COVID-correlated pediatric admissions suddenly jumped. Reporters jumped to the conclusion that Omicron had turned potentially deadly for children — even while no one could point to an Omicron-caused death in the entire world.

Some might say we have systemic problems at the CDC (and FDA, while we are at it).

Some would be correct. 

The pandemic's other death toll.

The head of OneAmerica insurance said the death rate is up a stunning 40% from pre-pandemic levels among working-age people.

“We are seeing, right now, the highest death rates we have seen in the history of this business – not just at OneAmerica,” the company’s CEO Scott Davison said during an online news conference this week. “The data is consistent across every player in that business.”

OneAmerica is a $100 billion insurance company that has had its headquarters in Indianapolis since 1877. The company has approximately 2,400 employees and sells life insurance, including group life insurance to employers in the state.

Davison said the increase in deaths represents “huge, huge numbers,” and that’s it’s not elderly people who are dying, but “primarily working-age people 18 to 64” who are the employees of companies that have group life insurance plans through OneAmerica.

“And what we saw just in third quarter, we’re seeing it continue into fourth quarter, is that death rates are up 40% over what they were pre-pandemic,” he said.

“Just to give you an idea of how bad that is, a three-sigma or a one-in-200-year catastrophe would be 10% increase over pre-pandemic,” he said. “So 40% is just unheard of.”

The full story, stemming from a conference held in Indiana, can be found here.

The cascade effects of this thing, including the policies pushed during it, are going to be with us for years. And the idea of a Truth and Reconciliation Commission for governmental actions during the pandemic grows more sensible by the hour.

 

The root of the Catholic Church's endless crisis? Lying to itself.

Amongst the too-many pieces of unsolicited advice I give my children is to not lie to themselves, either. Once falsehood becomes one of your mental navigation tools, you are headed to shipwreck.

Lying always takes a toll on you. Even if no one else sees it and there are no immediate repercussions.

But when it becomes institutionalized? 

It wrecks other people's lives, too. No matter how much you would like to pretend otherwise.

Which brings me to this Pillar story about the hellish priest from Cleveland, Robert McWilliams, whom the federal authorities have thankfully locked away for life.

When a federal judge decided this month on a prison sentence for Fr. Robert McWilliams — convicted of child abuse, child pornography, and child trafficking — she had two versions of past events from which to choose.

In the account of McWilliams’ lawyer, the priest needed help, therapeutic treatment, to address the “demons from his childhood” which influenced the heinous crimes of his adult life.

The “demons” were not specified, but since a prosecutor’s memo spent several pages discussing the correlation between suffering abuse and committing it, it’s reasonable to presume that’s what McWilliam’s attorney was getting at.

But the prosecutor argued that McWilliams was not “corralled into a crime by a series of unfortunate life circumstances.” Instead, her assessment was blunt: McWilliams was “cruel,” “calculating,” and a “sociopath.”

The judge who sentenced McWilliams to life in federal prison seemed to align with the prosecution.

But whether McWilliams is more like an unfeeling Hannibal Lecter or instead a damaged, criminally unmoored Buffalo Bill, both accounts leave the Diocese of Cleveland in a difficult position.

Either its seminary was unable to weed out a sociopath ordained a priest just five years ago, or it was unable to realize that a deranged and unstable trauma victim was unsuitable for priestly ministry. 

That is the sort of horror that makes honest people and institutions take stock and make changes.

So what is the response of the leadership of the Cleveland diocese to their ordination of Buffalo Lecter?

Seminary screening is not perfect, nor is it foolproof. But when the system is beaten, most observers would expect a thorough postmortem — the kind that results in a clearly articulated set of changes, and a public commitment to follow through on them.

In Cleveland, seminary administrators have said thus far that the McWilliams saga hasn’t really suggested to them any particular changes they ought to make. That prompted one victim of McWilliams to suggest last week those administrators need, as it were, to take “their heads out of their asses.”

If a seminary doesn’t see an evaluative failure in the ordination of a sociopath, some Catholics have asked, what certitude can be had that McWilliams is the only one to graduate from the place? If there aren’t specific failures to recognize and to change, is it reasonable to conclude the failures are systemic, and the changes must be, too? 

But a thorough, impartial investigation might turn up blameworthy clerics. 

Worse, it could upset the leadership's equilibrium, cause it to question itself and tell it that real penance and reform are necessary.

Better to just maintain the self-deception that everything is basically fine.

We are an Easter People.

Forward in Hope. 

Your Preferred Tuneful Whistle Past the Graveyard.

Despite the blaring klaxons, closing parishes and all the other evidence to the contrary.

"I Have Been Through This Before."

Ann Bauer, mother of an autistic son who died at 28, writes a long, heartbreaking piece about how unquestioning obedience to experts and their well-meaning hypotheses can ruin lives. A snippet, and you need to read it all.

That’s what county social workers saw when they were called to assess Andrew, following his meltdown at our public library. A tiny house, a fraying marriage, two depleted parents in cheap clothes. It was winter on the Iron Range, where advances in psychology took some time to travel. The experts—a stoic North Country man-and-woman team—decided we were the cause.

They questioned us separately and casually brought up the idea of temporary foster care. We protested and were told we could keep the boys but only if we submitted to frequent visits and attended parenting classes twice weekly, which we gladly did.

While we were being taught how to impose consequences and establish routine, Andrew and his brother were taken to a child care room where teachers helped them sing, play, and socialize. At first Andrew seemed to improve, brightening and even talking a bit, but then he regressed again, a pattern we’d see repeat on a loop for the rest of his life.

When an older relative came to visit us in spring she took one look at my 4-year-old sitting in the corner, staring at his hand. “You’ve ruined that beautiful child,” she said, her face tense with fury. “You and your careless life. Ruined him. Aren’t you ashamed?”

We eventually moved to Minneapolis, where treatments were supposedly more advanced. At 5, Andrew was diagnosed with autism and enrolled in a program that involved rocking boards, chewy toys and roughing his skin with surgical brushes three times a day.

We blamed ourselves for our son’s problems and most of the new theories did, too. His autism was because we’d had him vaccinated. Because we fed him wheat or dairy or corn. Because we hadn’t employed a team of workers to have constant “floor time” with him (the so-called Son Rise cure) or apply behavioral techniques according to the Lovaas method, beloved not only by late ’90s autism parents but also by conversion therapy folks.

Each new wave was certain: The approaches to autism that had come before were barbaric and uninformed, but this most recent breakthrough was the one clear truth. Science had spoken. Over and over for a dozen years.

We were heartbroken each time a treatment failed—and guilty because without fail, someone would insist we hadn’t tried hard enough. Sure, we’d gone gluten-free, but had we cleansed with hyperbaric oxygen? Behavioral training worked, but only if you did it 18 hours a day. Why hadn’t we taken a second mortgage and flown to the Catskills for a workshop at the Son-Rise Institute?

Just shy of his 36th birthday my then-husband gave in and began drinking in earnest. He lost his job and grew dark and silent. One day he apologized, hugged us all, got in his truck, and drove away.

Accountability is entirely absent from the assessment of our educated "gurus," the bureaucracies that enable them and their joint records of failure. Once a credentialed hero is raised on a pedestal, attempts to point out all manner of quackery--and worse--are ignored or shouted down. 

This is why my sympathy for skepticism and good people who buy into conspiracy theories never vanishes entirely. Given the bad examples of our institutions, it's understandable why people would buy in.

Thanks to Amy Welborn for the find.

Why not let him stay on leave for the rest of the Adminstration?

Much Outrage! at our Transportation Secretary being on extended family leave during our transportation crisis.

Me?

I think it's just as well.

Is there a non-cognitively-impaired watcher of the political scene who thinks the former Mayor of South Bend was selected for the post because of his transportation background and experience?

"Pothole Pete"? 

Of course not. He was picked because he was a loyal campaigner and he checked a demographic box. He has nothing to add to the solution of the problem--unless pouring some additional sidewalks would help.

Though, to be fair, he likes trains--and we're certainly having problems with those, too. 

But then again, so do I, and I even had a set of operable toy ones, complete with Exciting Electrocution Effect!

I will pre-emptively decline the nomination.

To end the digression, I don't have the slightest problem with him being on extended leave. It leaves the long-term civil service professionals in charge.

The part we should be focusing on is that the long-term professionals don't have any answers, either.

And that's the part that worries me.

 

"The new windows should help. The new windows should help. The new windows should help....."

Ah, just in time for Christmas: winter heating bills going through the metaphorical roof.

Especially here in the Midwest.

With prices surging worldwide for heating oil, natural gas and other fuels, the U.S. government said Wednesday it expects households to see their heating bills jump as much as 54% compared to last winter.

Nearly half the homes in the U.S. use natural gas for heat, and they could pay an average $746 this winter, 30% more than a year ago. Those in the Midwest could get particularly pinched, with bills up an estimated 49%, and this could be the most expensive winter for natural-gas heated homes since 2008-2009.

The second-most used heating source for homes is electricity, making up 41% of the country, and those households could see a more modest 6% increase to $1,268. Homes using heating oil, which make up 4% of the country, could see a 43% increase — more than $500 — to $1,734. The sharpest increases are likely for homes that use propane, which account for 5% of U.S. households.

This last is critical, as propane is essential for the invisible rural poor--certainly in northern Michigan. And because the rural poor do not register at all in the national consciousness, there are looming threats to the propane supply courtesy of the State government. However, Justin Trudeau (!) may be able to rescue rural Michiganders.

Just another reason I'm glad my propane-reliant parents winter in an Arizona camper and not in the Great Lakes State.

 

Repeating this like a metronome: The Legion of "Christ" [sic] has no reason to exist.

Perhaps the most glaring error of papal governance during the reign of Benedict XVI was to let the Legion of Christ continue to exist.

Benedict was too good a theologian to recognize that such was not remotely defensible.

Actually, you don't need to be a good theologian--or, indeed, any kind of theologian--to know that an organization founded by a demonstrable satanic monster deserves to die, and instantly.

Take, for example, the Second Mile. It was a charitable endeavor serving underprivileged and at-risk youth founded by a godawful predatory beast named Jerry Sandusky. If you have the slightest interest in college football, you will know that Sandusky is a convicted serial child-rapist who got away with his crimes for decades while a treasured assistant coach at Penn State University. 

Here's the kicker: he met his rape victims through the foundation.

Now, from my limited research, it appears that--unlike the football program--the members of the foundation were genuinely unaware of Sandusky's monstrous crimes.

And yet, the charity recognized that it could not continue with the stain of Sandusky's founding and folded up shop as soon as legally possible.

Integrity--that's what it looks like.

Meanwhile, back in the Church of the Nicene Creed, Benedict was given proof that the founder of the Legion, Marcel Maciel, was a creature deserving of the darkest pits of Hell. His crimes defy easy summary, but Wikipedia takes a fair shot starting here.

Frankly, the idea that the leadership of the Legion was unaware that Maciel was a minion of Satan is too farfetched to be taken seriously.

And yet, Benedict's solution was to order Maciel into a life of penance (which he spurned, to his no-doubt-eternal regret) and to order a visitation, which culminated in an attempt to renew the order.

An order which still clearly venerates Nuestro Padre.

Here's the thing: think of an existing Catholic religious order whose founder was a spiritual rent in the fabric of basic human decency.

Go ahead--rack the brain, going through the entire two millenia. 

Aside from the wreck that appropriately calls itself Legion, there is not a single one.

The founder of a legitimate, God-inspired order has what is called a spiritual charism which his gathered followers emulate thenceforth. Think Saint Francis or Saint Dominic.

Whereas The Imitation of Maciel sounds like a bestseller in the bookstores of Dis. 

Probably is.

So, the Legion was left a religious order without a charism--and Benedict knew this. The response called for by this was obvious--suppress the order as invalid and scatter the people and assets to comparatively healthier orders who at least can boast of a Saint or two. 

But no, Benedict decided on a novelty: to invent a charism for the LCs instead. One is left with the distinct impression the Legion's size, assets and influence (think Bransfield's check writing) with fellow clerics made suppression impossible.

That decision was unprecedented, theologically-untenable, inexcusable and now self-evidently an utter failure, leaving a satanic fraud running through the veins of the Body of Christ.

One which continues to do its make-it-rain games for its "reformed" leadership.

In related news, it looks like the Vatican's joke of a legal system is going to let some connected grifters skate.

Meanwhile, low-asset and influence-impaired orders continue to get the inquisitorial treatment.

See the pattern?

It is indeed "a p__s-poor church for the poor."

A far more fitting rendering of the empty pontifical slogan.

[Hat tip to Tito for the find.]

One big corporation helps out another.

My friend Hilary White discovered that the official newspaper of the Italian bishops' conference is playing Chip Diller for that French film.

It's not even true in the mental reservation sense (teenagers vs. preteens), as it apparently features nudity involving the former.

Here's a Youtube review from the left-of-center "Shoe0nHead" with the extra-offensive close-ups covered over.

She absolutely destroys it.

Eleven year olds were coached to do and say these things.

Yet a paid flunky for the Catholic Church gives it a thumbs-up. 

Not a good mindset, given what we have learned of how Catholic children have been commodified by clerics.

By the way, I was going to try to embed Shoe0nHead's review....but since it contained evil Netflix's original promotional materials, I didn't want that showing up on my page.

But please watch her analysis--it's eviscerating.

And also note that Netflix thinks you're just a bunch of backwards prudes what love conspiracy theories if you object to their award-winning sexual exploitation of pre-teens. 

You don't need Netflix. You really don't.