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Here’s what we were told: An August motorcycle rally in Sturgis, South Dakota, helped spread COVID-19 to more than a quarter-million Americans, making it the root of about 20 percent of all new coronavirus cases in the U.S. last month. So said a new white paper from the IZA Institute of Labor Economics, at least. And national news outlets ran with it.

“Sturgis Motorcycle Rally was ‘superspreading event’ that cost public health $12.2 billion,” tweeted The Hill.

“The Sturgis Motorcycle Rally held in South Dakota last month may have caused 250,000 new coronavirus cases,” said NBC News.

“The Sturgis Motorcycle Rally represents a situation where many of the ‘worst-case scenarios’ for superspreading occurred simultaneously,” the researchers write in the new paper, titled “The Contagion Externality of a Superspreading Event: The Sturgis Motorcycle Rally and COVID-19.”

Not so fast. Let’s take a look at what they actually tracked and what’s mere speculation.

According to South Dakota health officials, 124 new cases in the state—including one fatal case—were directly linked to the rally. Overall, COVID-19 cases linked to the Sturgis rally were reported in 11 states as of September 2, to a tune of at least 260 new cases, according to The Washington Post.

There very well may be more cases that have been linked to the early August event, but so far, that’s only 260 confirmed cases—about 0.1 percent of the number the IZA paper offers.

To get to the astronomical number of cases allegedly spread because of the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally, the researchers analyzed “anonymized cellphone data to track the smartphone pings from non-residents and movement of those before and after the event,” notes Newsweek. “The study then linked those who attended and traveled back to their home states, and compared changes in coronavirus trends after the rally’s conclusion.”

Essentially, the researchers assumed that new cases in areas where people went post-rally must have been spread by those rally attendees, despite there being no particular evidence that this was the case. The paper, which has not been peer-reviewed, also failed to account for simultaneous happenings—like schools in South Dakota reopening, among other things—that could have contributed to coronavirus spread in some of the studied areas.

The researchers also assumed a $46,000 treatment price for each person infected to calculate the $12.2 billion public health cost of the event—but this figure would only make sense if every person had a severe case requiring hospitalization.

The results of the IZA paper “do not align with what we know,” South Dakota epidemiologist Joshua Clayton said at a Tuesday news briefing.

The IZA paper “isn’t science; it’s fiction,” Gov. Kristi Noem (R) said.

It’s also good election-time propaganda, apparently. Despite the dubious nature of the IZA study, a range of Democratic consultants and cheerleaders have been using it to condemn President Donald Trump.

BREAKING: That Sturgis motorcycle event that should’ve never happened is now linked to an estimated 250,000 cases and it could cost us all up to $12 billion. Vote out Trump and every anti-mask, virus-loving lap dog Republican. This election, and the next. And the next. And so on.

— Scott Dworkin (@funder) September 8, 2020

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FREE MINDS

Yet another piece of GOP stunt legislation takes aim at social media and Section 230.

Today, Senate Republicans offered another stupid, stupid, politically backwards, and stupid bill, that would amend #Section230 to change how platforms moderate content. The “Online Freedom and Viewpoint Diversity Act” — nice title. Let’s see…. 1/11 https://t.co/2pLj4hXcql

— Tarleton Gillespie (@TarletonG) September 9, 2020

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FREE MARKETS

Regulation alert:

It's striking that's there's almost no national media coverage of how tomorrow's FDA deadline is going to change vaping in the US. One gets the impression that not many reporters ostensibly covering the topic actually talk much to producers and consumers. https://t.co/GcHcOny4Cd

— Jacob Grier (@jacobgrier) September 8, 2020

See also: How the FDA Is Saving the Cigarette.

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QUICK HITS

• The Trump administration is reportedly planning to announce more troop withdrawals from Iraq and Afghanistan:

NEWS: White House will tomorrow announce further troop reductions from Iraq, per a Trump administration official. And further Afghanistan troop reductions coming in a few days.

— Jennifer Jacobs (@JenniferJJacobs) September 9, 2020

• No, the government didn’t rescue dozens of sex-trafficked children from a double-wide trailer in Georgia.
• Juneau paves the way for marijuana bars:

BREAKING: The City of Juneau just passed the first in the nation permit for onsite consumption of cannabis.

— Jess Mears (@jess4liberty) September 9, 2020

• The Academy Awards is revising its Oscar eligibility criteria for Best Picture:

Change starts now. We've announced new representation and inclusion standards for Best Picture eligibility, beginning with the 96th #Oscars. Read more here: https://t.co/qdxtlZIVKb pic.twitter.com/hR6c2jb5LM

— The Academy (@TheAcademy) September 9, 2020

• Department of “War Is Peace”:

Well, they gave it to President Obama and he left office as the first two-term president in U.S. history to have been at war every single day of his presidency. https://t.co/ZHxcNtjrdD

— Kat Murti (@KatMurti) September 9, 2020

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Republican election attorney Benjamin Ginsberg spent his career helping Republican candidates get elected. As part of those efforts, he was on the lookout for voter fraud. As he details in a Washington Post op-ed, such fraud is very hard to find.

The truth is that after decades of looking for illegal voting, there’s no proof of widespread fraud. At most, there are isolated incidents — by both Democrats and Republicans. Elections are not rigged. Absentee ballots use the same process as mail-in ballots — different states use different labels for the same process.

The Trump 2016 campaign, of which I was not a part, could produce no hard evidence of systemic fraud. Trump established a Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity in 2017 to expose all the fraud he maintains permeates our elections. He named the most vociferous hunters of Democratic election fraud to run the commission. It disbanded without finding anything.

The Heritage Foundation Election Fraud Database has compiled every instance of any kind of voter fraud it could find since 1982. It contains 1,296 incidents, a minuscule percentage of the votes cast. A study of results in three states where all voters are mailed actual ballots, a practice at the apex of the president’s outrage, found just 372 possible cases of illegal voting of 14.6 million cast in the 2016 and 2018 general elections — 0.0025 percent.

If anything, Ginsberg goes easy on those who make broad election fraud allegations.

When Kris Kobach was Kansas Secretary of State, he pushed election law reforms premised on the need to root out election fraud and, in particular, prevent voting by non-citizens.  When these restrictions were challenged in court, his case crumbled.  Given the opportunity to present evidence and expert testimony, Kobach was unable to substantiate his fears of stolen elections. Kobach was eventually held in contempt and sanctioned by the court.

The evidence of widespread election fraud is woefully thin. When it happens, it may effect local races (where the total vote counts are much smaller). It is impossible to prove election fraud is not happening, as it is impossible to prove a negative. (To those convinced we have a problem, the lack of evidence only shows that those stealing elections are even more devious than we thought!) While election administration in parts of the country may be rickety and inefficient, there is no reason to think national elections are compromised, let alone that the Presidential race could be stolen.

That said, when efforts to subvert election laws are uncovered, they should be prosecuted aggressively. Election law violations should be taken seriously. With that in mind, here’s more from Ginsberg’s op-ed:

Legions of Republican lawyers have searched in vain over four decades for fraudulent double voting. At long last, they have a blatant example of a major politician urging his supporters to illegally vote twice.

The only hitch is that the candidate is President Trump.

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9/9/2017: Justice Neil Gorsuch takes oath.

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Forget Marx vs. Mises. You want to get a spirited debate going, ask pretty much anyone over the age of 8: Should kids still be taught cursive writing?

I posted this question to Facebook, and for the next hour or two, every time I checked in someone was busy typing a response. Which, I think, proves my side of the argument: These folks weren’t penning flowing notes on scented paper. They were using the most dominant method of written communication today: keyboarding. When most of your life will be spent tapping keys, why bother to learn two different ways of writing with a pen or pencil?

Because it is super-important historically, physically, psychologically, therapeutically, and cognitively—that’s why, said the pro-cursive folks. And as I talked to teachers, therapists, and education gurus, it started to seem to this cursive-challenged gal that perhaps they have a point.

One of script’s biggest benefits, they said, is that because the letters are strung together, it makes reading and comprehending easier (yes, even though books are rendered in print).

“First graders who learned to write in cursive received higher scores in reading words and in spelling than a comparable group who learned to write in manuscript,” reported researchers in Academic Therapy in 1976. This could be because when a kid isn’t lifting his pencil all the time, the linked letters provide “kinesthetic feedback about the shape of the words as a whole, which is absent in manuscript writing.”

The gains can go beyond mere reading and spelling to processing whole thoughts. “Kids that write in cursive don’t just form words more easily, they also write better sentences,” claim the folks at Scholastic.

Is it possible we’ve been so focused on print that—like a toddler’s lowercase bs and ds—we got it all backward? At many Montessori schools, that is the belief. There, kids learn cursive as early as age 3—before they learn print, says Jesse McCarthy, host of The Montessori Education Podcast. Then, using a “movable alphabet” of script letters, “you’ll have a 4-year-old on the ground and they’re basically writing sentences.”

Barbie Levin, an occupational therapist in public and private schools, told me she has seen cursive work almost as therapy for some kids with coordination problems, learning disorders, or cognitive limitations that make it hard for them to learn how to print. “When a fourth grader is referred to me with poor handwriting,” says Levin, “I can’t unravel the handwriting habits of five years. But if it’s within their capabilities…I teach them cursive. It’s a fresh start, instead of harping on something they’ve given up on, and they are learning rather than unlearning. Also, they feel motivated because even ‘the smart kids’ (who they’ve been unfavorably comparing themselves to for years) don’t know how.” Once her kids get the hang of script, she says, they often do better not just at classwork but even at things like tying shoes and buttoning buttons. It’s a win all around.

Beyond that, says retired elementary school teacher Michele Yokell, who was teaching an after-school class in cursive right up until COVID-19 hit, script “is part of our history—our heritage.” You don’t want kids squinting at the Constitution as if it’s in cuneiform.

Yet despite all these boons, cursive seems to be going the way of the IBM Selectric—and for the same reason. While script may wire the brain, connect to history, and come more naturally to many kids, digital print is winning.

Cursive is not required by the Common Core curriculum, though a few states have mandated it. And a survey of handwriting teachers by Zaner-Bloser, a cursive textbook publisher, found that only 37 percent of them write exclusively in script. Another 8 percent write only in print, while most—55 percent—use a print/script mashup.

As do I. But 99 percent of my writing time involves a keyboard. So, sure, give kids a chance to learn script if print is tough for them, or if they want to research anything older than Betty Crocker recipes. Or maybe teach script and skip print. But teaching two ways to write the same letters when a third way—tap tap tap—is the real skill everyone needs? That seems as wacky as writing a capital Q that looks like a 2.

 

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Police in Miner’s Rest, Australia, arrested Zoe Buhler for attempting to organize a protest of a lockdown imposed in the state of Victoria, which officials claim is necessary to reduce the spread of coronavirus. She has been charged with incitement, and police say they are prepared to arrest others who defy government orders. Under the coronavirus restrictions people may gather outdoors outside their homes with only one other person from their household, and in the metro Melbourne area people may leave their homes only to shop for food or other essential items, for medical care, exercise or certain permitted work.

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“I’m more anti-China than you!” 

That’s a new theme of this election.

Joe Biden says, “We will never again be at the mercy of China!” Donald Trump replies, “China would own our country if Joe Biden got elected!”

It’s strange to hear competition, because just a few administrations ago, presidents were eager to celebrate China. “A future of greater trade and growth and human dignity is possible!” said George W. Bush. Bill Clinton praised China’s “positive change” and “great progress.” 

What changed? That’s the subject of my new video.

Presidents Clinton and Bush were excited about China because its dictators had finally opened up China’s economy. They got rid of price controls, broke up collective farms, allowed foreign investment and privatized state-run business. China, suddenly, prospered.

“People were so happy to finally see China being set on this path,” says Melissa Chen, who reports on China for the Spectator. The reforms “lifted hundreds of millions of people out of poverty for the very first time.”

Then, three years ago, Xi Jinping got himself named president for life. 

He cracked down on speech, even jokes. After someone noted his resemblance to Winnie the Pooh, all mentions of the character were deleted from China’s internet.

I had thought the internet couldn’t be censored. Bill Clinton said it would be like “trying to nail Jell-O to the wall.”

“The Chinese figured out how to nail Jell-O to the wall,” says Chen. “They built an almost perfectly walled-in internet.”

China does this by employing a million censors. They block Google, Facebook, Twitter and most Western news media. A few computer-savvy Chinese citizens use forbidden apps to get around the censorship, but most don’t get to see the same internet that we see.

People caught accessing banned sites are punished. Police may barge into your home, threaten your family or just restrict your choices. 

“You can’t make doctor’s appointments,” explains Chen. “You can’t travel… they’ll block you from buying a train ticket or a plane ticket.”

Life is far worse for religious minorities such as the Muslim Uighurs. The government is waging cultural genocide against them. 

About a million Uighurs are locked up in “reeducation” camps, “sometimes for years,” says Chen. “Their family never hears back from them.”

China won’t allow reporters near the camps, but drone footage shows rows of blindfolded people with their heads shaved and their hands tied behind their backs. 

Radio Free Asia adds that China’s “reeducation” methods even include having Chinese men replace the Uighur men in families. They “come in and live with a family (and) sleep in the same bed as the wife,” says Chen.

In short, today’s China is, once again, a vicious communist dictatorship.

So, I’m amazed to watch American protesters and hear them say, “America is the world’s biggest problem.”

Even a recent New York Times editorial board member wrote that it was difficult to know whether the United States is “better, worse, or the same” as China.

That equivalence is “bonkers,” replies Chen. “There should be no doubt about the moral equivalence between the two countries.”

For one thing, we Americans are free to criticize our government.

“You can hold up a sign at a protest, saying, ‘Screw Donald Trump; the United States sucks!'” explains Chen. “You cannot do anything remotely similar in China.”

People in Hong Kong tried. Millions attended protests, often waving American flags. Chen says it shows they “have a hankering for American values. They crave this freedom that we take for granted.”

Now they, too, have been silenced by China’s government.

The American protesters who carry “democratic socialism” banners and wave Communist flags (Soviet Communists used to call people like them “useful idiots”) should know what people in Hong Kong know: Socialism leads to real government oppression.

“Why would Americans want this?” asks Chen. “Why would they be waving these Communist flags, wanting socialism?”

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