I’ve been reading a bit lately. Recent books:
Agent Zero by Jack Mars
This is by a NYT bestselling author, which is a mystery. No,
the plot is not a mystery, it’s the author’s bestseller status. Imagine a combination
of Perils of Pauline, where every few minutes the lead character miraculously
escapes gruesome death, and How Not to Conduct Espionage. Every detail of
espionage is simply wrong.
No one uses his real name at home and a single cover
identity for all covert or clandestine operations. That’s a guaranteed short
career. Every operation requires its own cover name and legend, tailored to the
needs of the source. If he doesn’t like Americans, you need to be a Bolivian or
a Finn. If the source wants to feel as though he is of high interest, you need
to know how to pronounce the names of the important people you’re supposedly
briefing. If he is introverted, you probably should be, too. Or extraverted.
This list could go on forever.
The safe houses are a joke. They simply don’t work that way.
The same with cash. It may be advantageous for the source to believe money is
of no concern to you; it’s of significant concern to the multiple layers of
oversight imposed on your work. If you’re three cents off on your cash account,
you’re chained to the railings until you can fix it.
Torture is the least reliable method of interrogation, but
seems to be the only one with which the author has any familiarity. The more
brutal the interrogator, the less reliable the information.
Perhaps the greatest fallacy is the world-famous spy. There
are none. If you’re world famous you’ll probably get your sources killed. If to
all outward appearance you are insignificant and inoffensive, the man nobody
notices, you can operate at will. If you feel a need to brag about your work,
you’re in the wrong profession.
The characters are two-dimensional cardboard cutouts with
all the depth of an inebriated Valley Girl and all the empathy of a shark. The
action scenes could have been found in a first grader’s “How I spent my summer being
potty-trained and saving the world.”
Unreported Truths about COVID-19 and Lockdown, by Alex
Berenson.
This non-fiction book is, to me, astounding. It’s quite
short, full of science and logical deduction. I also felt as though I was
reading my own autobiography. When we first became aware of a novel
coronavirus, we knew several things. It’s a member of a family of viruses that
cause the common cold, and usually results in respiratory infection. It’s
almost certainly contagious and passed from human to human. Unless this is from
another galaxy, it’s near certain that the worst thing to do is to lock people
indoors. Transmission is rarer out doors because droplets are dispersed by
breeze, and sunlight works against viruses.
We could predict that the most vulnerable would be the
elderly, those with chronic heart, lung or kidney disease, and the immune-compromised.
If we quarantined the most vulnerable and got them outdoors regularly, things
should be tolerable. A lockdown is not a quarantine. The latter requires
strictly limiting contact with the patient and banning anyone not in full
protective gear.
Early information was covered in red flags. The Chinese,
then the World Health Organization, assured us that it could not be transmitted
human-to-human. If so, why did Taiwan close its borders on January 1 at great
cost and difficulty? The Imperial College of London, using information provided
by the World Health Organization, created a pandemic model that made no sense.
It predicted 3.5% infection fatality rate, and that herd immunity couldn’t be
achieved at levels below 70%. The two worst pandemics in history, the Black
Plague and the Spanish Flu, never achieved more than 30 to 50% before herd
immunity was achieved. And, the fatality rate was either much too high or much
too low. There was no precedent in history of that level of infection fatality
in a coronavirus.
Still, governments around the world relied on the model to
make policy. They locked people down into their homes, the worst option. They
ordered everyone to stop working. They provided no special protection to the
most vulnerable. In the US, there was no science at all behind what a state
permitted and what it didn’t. The closest estimate I could make was that
activities that benefitted governors’ constituencies economically were “essential,”
while those that favored a governor’s opponent were “not essential.”
Using epidemeological data from past widespread coronavirus,
rhinovirus and influenza respiratory illnesses, I created a crude model that
predicted an infection fatality rate of 0.35%, a full order of magnitude below
the vaunted Imperial College model. I couldn’t share the information widely,
because both Facebook and Youtube took down all content that disagreed with
WHO, and labeled it false.
We never needed to crater the global economy. And we denied
knowing what we already knew. There is a second volume promised; I plan to be
at the front of the line.
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