Daily Archives: 11 August 2021

Sophistry

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That’s President Joe Biden’s (D) current argument regarding the Wuhan Virus and by extension the Delta variant of the virus.

The virus knows no boundaries. You can’t build a wall high enough to keep it out. There is no wall high enough or ocean wide enough to keep us safe from a vaccination in other—from the COVID-19 in other countries.
In fact, just like the original virus that caused COVID-19, the Delta variant came from abroad. As long as the virus continue to rage outside the United States, potentially more dangerous variants could arrive at our shores again.

There’s a hint there, but Biden—and his border czar-ette, co-President Kamala Harris (D) and his HHS (sort of) Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas—refuse to see it.

It’s true enough that neither high walls nor broad oceans (nor, perhaps, more localized masks) can protect us from the virus (I’ll elide the already low risk for the healthy among us aspect of protection).

On the other hand, Biden and his two cohorts have deliberately, with careful forethought, thrown open our borders, especially our southern one, to any and all comers, infected or not, criminal or not, smuggler or trafficker or not, vetted or not.

Overall, more than 1 million illegal immigrants have been apprehended at the US-Mexico border between October 2020 and June 2021.

Just from McAllen, TX:

As these temporarily admitted immigrants are released, the federal government does not test them for COVID-19 or provide assistance in contacting relatives or sponsors living in the United States to make arrangements for temporary housing.

And

Since mid-February of 2021 there have been over 7,000 confirmed COVID-19 positive immigrants released into the City of McAllen by CBP, including over 1,500 new cases in the past seven days [28 Jul-3 Aug].

Biden’s, et al., argument is a cynically offered sophistry. We can protect ourselves from the virus by protecting our nation from the carriers of the virus, those thousands of illegal aliens who are carriers. Against those carriers, walls are effective.

It’s time to finish the wall construction. It’s time to reestablish control over our borders. It’s time to reassert control over who comes into our nation.

It’s time to be a nation again.

“Coronavirus-Related Fatalities”

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That term or phrase, along with “coronavirus-linked deaths” get bandied about a lot. See, for instance:

…its [Sweden’s] population had a total of eight coronavirus-related deaths in July, or an average of 0.26 coronavirus-linked deaths a day.

And

…4 and 329 coronavirus-related daily fatalities in the UK and US….

This is not to pick on Just the News; most of the news outlets use those phrases. All of them also seem to use the phrases interchangeably with “coronavirus-caused fatalities.”

But what do those alternative phrases really mean?

Here are some examples of other meanings for the phrases, considering a patient with Condition X, the…coronavirus…is present in his body, and he dies:

  • Cause of death: Condition X, coronavirus present
  • Cause of death: Condition X, coronavirus contributory
  • Cause of death: coronavirus, Condition X contributory
  • Cause of death: coronavirus, Condition x present

Notice that: all of those outcomes are “coronavirus-related/linked.” However, only one of them is solely coronavirus-caused, which is the only meaning of the uncaveated phrase “coronavirus-related/linked” when used to mean “coronavirus-caused.” Even taking a looser meaning for a loosely used phrase, two of those alternatives clearly are not “coronavirus-caused.”

To the extent the news purveyors really are relying on interchangeability, they’re badly mistaken. They’re either wholly illogical and non-credible or very lazy in their word use and non-credible. Or both and non-credible.