mailman,
Thanks, that was an enjoyable read. I only hovered over "tyrannical measures" to confirm that it was, as expected, referring to Australia.

There was some weaseling from Wallace-Wells:

... the data set is imperfect and is not adjusted for demographics

mandates may matter somewhat less than social behavior

On the first, facts are facts. Yes, it might be reasonable to adjust for age, but how many other wiggles are you going to give for income, housing density, job classification, ... the adjustments end up making facts no better than a model. The second quote shows how far such wiggling might run if you're going to count social behaviour as a factor.

(I remember TinyCO2 running the social behaviour line: that Sweden was doing better because its people were far more adult than the British. Talk about clutching at straws!)

One other quote, this time from Francois Balloux:

What the 'Swedish model' really suggests is that pandemic mitigation measures can be effectively deployed in a respectful, largely non-coercive way.

seems very diplomatically worded. Rather than praise for Sweden, let's see the rest of the west get a proper bollocking for their collective insanity/power-intoxication.

All the same, the NYT taking a backwards step is good news. Maybe, one day, it'll publish an article declaring that lockdowns didn't work, and never could. Won't hold my breath for that day.

The recent John Young article at Judith Curry's gives a few other examples where the NYT (and others) might like to backtrack. Well worth reading.

And on global warming, the Tom Nelson Podcast with Tom Shula is a physicist's tale of how the greenhouse effect is way overstated, and easily trumped by other factors, especially convection. It's probably the sun that's warming the earth, and definitely not CO2.

Only a sketch of his story. I was doing other things as I listened. Will listen again.

Interesting article. Apparently not everyone died in Sweden due to their less stringent lockdown policies used by the rest of the world (and are now "benefitting" from a severe lack of suddenly and unexpected when it comes to people dying).

https://fee.org/articles/the-new-york-times-stunning-confession-on-sweden-s-pandemic-response/

Also, anyone know what happened to all the deep diving of Fergussons Chinese Flu modelling from back in the day?

Oops; forgot about Kennedy.

He looks a bit younger and greener in that clip. If he were to turn his COVID-sceptical mind to the climate question he might spot some similar patterns. That's a big "if" though. The question to ask him is You tell us not to trust COVID experts, but that we should trust climate experts. How are we to decide which experts can be trusted.

tomo,
In computer terms, I suppose Shukman has simply moved from being a server-side connection to client-side, but still passing the same propaganda to the same outlets.

Matt Taibbi interview was good. He does hide his age pretty well! The show prompted me to seek out Taibbi's Rolling Stone article Obama's Big Sellout (a not very well scanned pdf file). Quite a good read, and refreshing to see a reporter in this century willing to do a story against "his side".

I suppose an optimistic view of today's world is that, yes, the universities and media have been captured after the "long march", but good educators and reporters haven't disappeared, they have gone independent/underground on the internet. In time, networks will form and the old institutions will be irrelevant.

... nice to hope.

Canada's public health "experts" must surely be the worst in the world.

tomo,
I'm afraid you're right about the state of the US administration, but it's going to take a lot of torpedoes to find anyone good.

The Brett Weinstein interview was good. Not much to disagree with in there, though I think he might reconsider his definition of "leftist" and "conservative". He appears to see them diametrically opposite — maybe a lot of people do — with lefties all for progress and conservatives all for stasis. To me a better definition is lefties favour egalite (equality and fairness) and conservatives go for fraternite (family values and order). It's anything but a simple push pull (especially with us liberte lovers hauling in our own direction).

You're right about mouse telomere thing. That's the first I had heard about it only being lab mice with the long telomeres. Appalling to think that they may indeed have been specially selected to be far hardier than we are so that most new drugs will make it through initial safety tests.

Apologies for the poor proofreading lately. Sometimes they slip by because I don't bother with the specs, but yesterday's "face" for "fake" got past even with them.