Mike Cernovich

An admixture of mindset and media

You are here: Home / Archives for Mike Cernovich

Mike Cernovich

CNN Caught in a Hoax about Trump, Google, and Coronavirus

By Leave a Comment

“Google says it’s not publishing a national-scale coronavirus site,” is a headline Jake Tapper of CNN posted to his over 2.3 million Twitter followers. The headline was based on “a knowledgeable source.”

CNN had to completely change its headline to the exact opposite.

The headline now reads: “Google will partner with US government to develop a nationwide coronavirus website, company says.”

 

You can see what happens when you click on CNN’s original story.

 

CNN was recently forced to settle a lawsuit involving a fake story it published about Nick Sandmann of Covington High School.

CNN has a long history of blowing stories, big and small.

CNN Fails Multiple Fact Checks

 

 

 

Joe Biden – Is it Cognitive Decline or a Stutter?

By Leave a Comment

Has Joe Biden lost more than a step and gone into full-scale cognitive decline. Or can his recent speaking mishaps, which grow daily, be explained by a childhood stuttering challenge Biden overcame?

This is an interesting question because there are decades worth of video of Joe Biden. Has Biden stuttered during these speeches? Has his lost his train of thought?

I’ve spent a lot of time watching these videos for telltale signs of his stutter. Because the media narrative shifted recently, didn’t it?

You can see how media narratives shift by looking at Google trends.

Biden was Vice President for 8 years, where he gave hundreds of speeches and talks. No one during his 8 years in office wondered, “Does this guy stutter?”

But as Biden’s flubs were more noticeable, his team needed a media response. The Atlantic’s John Hendrickson was ready to provide cover fire.

What Joe Biden Can’t Bring Himself to Say His verbal stumbles have voters worried about his mental fitness.

Maybe they’d be more understanding if they knew he’s still fighting a stutter.

This article’s thesis was faulty from the onset, as Biden himself had given speeches to groups that seek to properly help those who stutter. (You can watch those speeches below.)

Let’s look back and see what the media was saying about Joe Biden’s stutter before his speeches became a rambling mess.

“Biden plops down in his seat and flashes The Smile, which comes and goes as steadily as a blinking light. He leans forward as if to confide a secret. His voice is somewhat nasal and he often speaks from the side of his mouth, with no trace of the stutter he had as a child.” – Washington Post, JOE BIDEN THE POLITICS OF BELIEF, 1987.

That quote is from an article in 1987. Joe Biden was an impressive figure in 1987, as you can hear in this video.

No one said much about Joe Biden’s stutter because it wasn’t an issue.

Watch this video of Joe Biden discussing his stutter. From 2016.

Compare this video to any contemporary footage of Biden.

Here is a 2008 speech by Joe Biden about his stutter.

Compare this video to any footage of Biden from 2020.

 

We’re all supposed to pretend like we don’t have parents and haven’t ever had to have the “Do we take away the car keys” conversation with siblings.

Watch this video. This isn’t a stutter.

 

How to Think about Coronavirus

By 7 Comments

America just held a nationwide IQ test. Did you notice it?

Everyone who has said about coronavirus that, “It’s just the flu,” failed the IQ test. As did those who claim discussing coronavirus is “spreading panic.”

They are engaging in what Scott Adams calls Loserthink. Read his book here.

Low probability of certain death = “Freakout” is Rational.

You will almost certainly not die from the coronavirus.

If the coronavirus contagion and death rates are accurate, between one and three million Americans could die.

When you have a low risk of a pandemic with a death count exceeding the total number of Americans who died in World War II, you take precautions.

Reasonable minds can differ as to what those precautions are.

But if you’re not thinking about coronavirus in terms of fat tail risk, you’re not even allowed to be part of the conversation.

  • “Tail risk is the additional risk of an asset or portfolio of assets moving more than 3 standard deviations from its current price, above the risk of a normal distribution. … Tail risk is sometimes defined less strictly, as merely the risk (or probability) of rare events.”

You will almost certainly not die from the coronavirus. Do you buy some extra food / water?

Your car will almost certainly not be stolen. Do you lock it?

Your house will almost certainly never burn down in a fire. Do you have fire insurance?

Why it’s better to panic early: Nassim Nicholas Taleb & Yaneer Bar-Yam

https://youtu.be/e2Kga5HeAqk

“But 60,000 people die from the flu each year!”

Yes, and this is terrible.

I had no idea that seasonal flu deaths were that high. Did you? (Don’t lie. I bet you didn’t.)

Rather than use, “but 60,000 die from the flu,” as some sort of repudiation of coronavirus risk, isn’t the answer that we should care more about the flu.

You’re not checkmating anyone with that stat. You sound like an idiot. Or someone who is glib about human death.

If we as a society can prevent more people from dying of the flu, let’s have that conversation.

Math is hard.

Engineer Liz Specht did what engineers do – MATH!

Our hospitals aren’t prepared to handle the number of patients who catch coronavirus.

Read Specht’s entire thread on Twitter.

Here are some highlights:

  • The US has about 2.8 hospital beds per 1000 people. With a population of 330M, this is ~1M beds. At any given time, 65% of those beds are already occupied. That leaves about 330k beds available nationwide (perhaps a bit fewer this time of year with regular flu season, etc). 7/n
  • By this estimate, by about May 8th, all open hospital beds in the US will be filled. (This says nothing, of course, about whether these beds are suitable for isolation of patients with a highly infectious virus.) 9/n
  • Importantly, I cannot stress this enough: even if I’m wrong – even VERY wrong – about core assumptions like % of severe cases or current case #, it only changes the timeline by days or weeks. This is how exponential growth in an immunologically naïve population works. 22/n

Ms. Specht assumes a closed system, so her numbers are likely on the high side.

But she is also creating a starting point of how to think about the coronavirus.

“It’s just the flu, bro,” is f-cking moronic. Shut the f-ck up. You don’t know anything.

Any rational discussion of coronavirus looks at the worst-case numbers / secondary effects of millions of sick Americans.

And then you start using an OODA loop / find ways to open the system.

1. Observation. How many cases of coronavirus are there? Where are these cases originating? Who Is getting sick? How many are dying?

2. Orientation. Are the number of cases of coronavirus increasing? Then what? Are they increasing? Now what?

3. Decision making. Make a rational decision based on what you’re observation and how you’re orientating yourself based on these observations.

4. Action. This is where leadership matters.

Solutions to a Coronavirus Crisis.

We need “right to try” laws.

We need virtual doctor visits.

We need some form of “doctors lite.”

You don’t need an MD and $500,000 in medical school debt along with 4 years of a residency to treat patients with coronavirus.

We need vision and leadership.

https://twitter.com/ScottAdamsSays/status/1236373223828148224

If your contribution to the coronavirus discussion is some form of “It’s only flu,” please go away. You’re not helping.

Let the adults figure out what to do next.

And please don’t rely on media outlets to understand the math.

 

Coronavirus is Trump’s Katrina

By 8 Comments

“Brownie, you’re doing a heck of a job,” were among George W. Bush’s most famous last words. (Remember Mission Accomplished?) Trump risks pulling a Katrina with his messaging on Coronavirus.

  • “The Coronavirus is very much under control in the USA. We are in contact with everyone and all relevant countries. CDC & World Health have been working hard and very smart. Stock Market starting to look very good to me!” – Trump, Feb. 24
  • “Low Ratings Fake News MSDNC (Comcast) & @CNN are doing everything possible to make the Caronavirus look as bad as possible, including panicking markets, if possible. Likewise their incompetent Do Nothing Democrat comrades are all talk, no action. USA in great shape!” – Trump, Feb. 26.

At best Coronavirus is “only” like the flu. I put only in quotes because man a lot of people talking about coronavirus are moronic and glib. When people say that Coronavirus is only like the flu, I wonder if they’ve ever had a 104 degree temperature.

The flu is awful, and in the 2018-2019 flu season, 61,200 people died. Are we prepared for an additional 60,000+ to die from a new strain of flu?

How many Americans might die due to Coronavirus?

61,200 people died of the flu in 2018-2019 flu season.

The death rate from coronavirus is 10-20 times that of the flu.

There will be 600,000+ American deaths if coronavirus spreads like the flu. That’s more than all American deaths in WWII.

Some estimates, coronavirus has a 40-70% contagion rate. I hope that number lowers!

If early estimates are accurate, as many as 1.5 to 5 million Americans could die from the Coronavirus.

How to Avoid Causing a Panic While Telling the Truth

The early estimated of coronavirus could be wrong. Maybe coronavirus wont’ spread. Maybe it’s not as deadly as early estimated show.

Maybe!

But which side of the messaging bet would you take?

Tell people everything is OK, and then the world collapses.

Tell people to be prepared (here’s a guide) and that you’re ON IT!

Coronavirus was a slam dunk for Trump,

“This is why we need border security and domestic manufacturing!”

Instead, Democrats are taking the high ground on trade, with Elizabeth Warren tweeting: “We should be taking action right now to mitigate the supply chain impacts of the outbreak. The government should be helping American manufacturers find alternative sources for parts and production and helping American exporters find new purchasers.”

Instead he tweeted some Bush / “heckuva job” b.s. Coronavirus is Trump’s Katrina.

Trump’s great strengths include pretending he never said something that he did say, so people will forget all of this.

Unless coronavirus hits as hard as some very smart people think, in which case no one will ignore the millions of people overfilling hospital beds.

P.S. Here Is how to prepare for coronavirus.

Who is Mike Cernovich?