Baffled European

Category: RFK

  • Beyond Dunning-Kruger

    “Britain has had enough of experts,” said Michael Gove in 2016. As a Brexiter, he was aware that his team were getting trounced on both generalities and details when it came to the EU. None of them knew what they were talking about and this was a way to neutralise knowledge and competence in the campaign.

    Unfortunately for everybody, Brexit won and this clutch of self-proclaimed anti-experts set about implementing a prize they never expected to win. “Britain has had enough of exports” became reality as UK trade suddenly permanently dropped as a result of these useless fools.

    This brings me on to RFK, oh good. “Trusting the experts is not a feature of either science or democracy,” was the outpouring from what is left of his brain. It echoes Gove’s comment, but takes the ignorance and stupidity to new levels. I guess everything is bigger in the land of opportunity.

    It strikes me that this goes beyond the Dunning-Kruger effect, the well-known result describing the fact that incompetent people tend to overestimate their own competence at a given task. It’s not merely that RFK overestimates his own competence, he also underestimates the competence of everybody else.

    I don’t know if this is a real effect or something that can be tested. However, in the interests of science, democracy as well, I think he should urgently undergo some psychological evaluation. Preferably in a padded cell with a big lock on the door.

  • Nonsense summary

    There’s been an outbreak of e-coli in Florida caused by people drinking raw milk. More cancellations of vaccine and other medical research as well.

    Nebraska is suffering a deep recession, with a 6% contraction in the economy this year so far.

    The Ford Motor Company posted a loss in Q2 of this year. They blame the tariffs, which are expected to cost the company $2billion this year.

    The price of everything is going up, except for eggs. These tariffs are biting.

    Bad weather and people are losing their homes and livelihoods because of storm damage. FEMA shrugs and ignores this. People need to pull themselves up by the bootstraps. Small government is the future.

    Except when it comes to racism. The immigration mania continues, there’s no way to stop it now.

    Amazingly, the Epstein stuff is still going on. Epstein’s greatest friend has not been able to shake away the story and people are asking questions.

    I’ve been away from this blog for the last month. I simply haven’t had the patience or enthusiasm to follow the experiment going on over in the USA. It’s not that it takes that much time, just that it is greater than zero and therefore more than I’m prepared to waste on watching a convicted fraudster steal hundreds of millions from his adoring followers. It’s all variations on illegal and inhumane stuff. They are inventive, but it gets to be too much.

  • Health don’t care

    The Big Beautiful Bill for the US budget is making its way through committee. The latest indicators suggest a $1trillion cut to Medicaid and Medicare. There’s going to be an awful lot of people who suddenly find themselves without healthcare.

    It’s needed to pay for the even bigger tax cut for billionaires, naturally, and also for the estimated $170billion they want to waste on their immigration policy.

    Where will the remains of the money for healthcare go? RFK has given us a couple of pointers.

    He wants people to have “wearables”, that is smart monitors to record exercise and heart rate etc. His dream is that every USAian will carry a wearable for their health. As a bonus, these devices will record all sorts of personal information and act as a marker for the precise location of the wearer. I guess you either submit to government surveillance, or no healthcare.

    He’s been shipping out Medicare functions to a company called United Healthcare, which is currently under investigation for fraudulent use of such funds. All the anti-corruption agencies will be gone soon, so that won’t be a problem any more.

    And to no surprise, no money will be spent on vaccines. But we know this and the whole charade of the anti-vaxxers. RFK believes stuff that is 100% not true. Unfortunately, he is the one in charge, and there is nothing that can shift him.

  • A touch of the vapours

    Miasma theory. I’ve got to hand it to RFK, he is creative. With hindsight, we were warned. A few weeks ago, he was advocating raw milk in a tasting session. There are cranks and quacks who reject Pasteur’s germ theory, I know that, but I never dreamed that this would ever form the basis of US healthcare. And yet here we are.

    The idea is that rotting organic matter produces bad smells and vapours which are the cause of disease. This is wrong, but it does have some utility – they are coincidentally the source of germs, so getting rid of the vapours will also get rid of the germs. It doesn’t go any further than that, but it is a good start.

    Typically, RFK doesn’t even seem to understand that part of it. His focus is on nutrition and the idea that illnesses are caused by a poor diet and food additives. Measles can be cured with vitamin A. Medicine is all a con pushed by Big Pharma. He thinks sugar is a poison, but isn’t going to do anything about it. HIV does not cause AIDS. Cancer is caused by 5G masts. I thought they caused covid, but what do I know? He’s not doing anything at any rate.

    It’s all so bizarre. He rejects all the stuff that works. He replaces them with discredited nonsense, but then does nothing. What is going on?

  • Make America Dishonest Again

    With his long history of medical lunacy, there were question marks over RFK when he was appointed. In order to be confirmed by the Senate, he promised he would not change the CDC vaccine advisory panel. This is a group of independent doctors and practitioners who provide expert advice on the subject. RFK sacked them all a couple of days ago.

    Much outrage about him breaking his promise, threats of impeachement, etc. It won’t make any difference, just another data point in his anti-science stance. Not to mention the fundamental dishonesty of the entire regime.

    He released a report two weeks ago for his Make America Healthy Again project. Within hours, it was obvious the report was AI generated. Non-existent references, inaccurate sources, misrepresentation of actual papers, the usual AI stuff. There were even a few tags from OpenAI left in there. Nobody could be bothered to remove them before publication. It doesn’t matter.

    What’s the point? Do they believe AI is accurate? Quite possible. They are not in any position to judge the content, they have no idea.

    But really, it’s a cargo cult. We all know the routine: the government commissions an expert report and then acts on its recommendations. We also know the flaws in this, but there is at least some connection to reality. RFK is going through the motions, keeping up appearances, but on the basis of total garbage.

    Further reports on autism and trans will follow soon.

  • RFK again, oh no

    RFK is a reliable source of lunacy and pseudoscience. Trouble is, it’s all a constant drip-drip-drip of stupidity. Every day, he comes up with something new and it just blurs together. So many small things that add up, it’s difficult to make a big issue out of each individual point.

    Take the development of a new vaccine. Moderna received a government grant last year to develop a new mRNA vaccine against pandemic flu viruses, including possible crossovers from avian flu. Early trials are looking positive and the company wants to continue work.

    RFK has stopped the funding with a set of standard anti-vaxx nonsense. OK. He’s wrong, he’s delusional, we know that. But this is at least consistent. We would expect him to do this, it fits the pattern.

    Now we get to a second story about an outbreak of avian flu in Canada. A flock of 400 ostriches are infected and are due to be culled to prevent the disease from spreading. RFK wants to “save” these birds by bringing them into the USA to “study” and “test” them.

    Let’s get this straight. RFK wants to import avian flu and incubate it. At the same time, he’s going to prevent development of a cure for the disease, should it make the jump to humans.

    Words fail me. He’s so irresponsible, so reckless. Fortunately for everybody, the Canadian authorities are unlikely to play along. They are sensible.

  • Cancer in the USA

    Joe Biden has cancer. From the announcement, it sounds pretty terminal, so all we can do is hope that his final days are happy and peaceful.

    His successor responded to the news with a crude and paranoid tirade on Truth Social. I know these people despise empathy, but this is just plain bad manners.

    On the whole, cancer is not quite the death senstence it was 30 years ago. It’s a serious matter, but treatment and management has improved enormously. Literally millions of people are still alive as a result of the advances in medical science.

    Further improvements are now unlikely. RFK has cut billions from the cancer research budget and he doesn’t care. “It’s going to hurt,” he boasts. The arrogance of the truly clueless who happens to be in charge.

    A third of government spending for cancer research has been cancelled. Thousands of researchers sacked. Websites containing clinical data and other information have been shut down. Combined with the attacks on the pharmaceutical industry, RFK is destroying medical research in the USA.

    He wants to concentrate on “chronic illness”, which appears to be code for “nutrition and supplements”. This is the line taken by Casey Means, the nomination for Surgeon General. She runs a wellness company, is an anti-vaxxer and a loyal supporter of the president. The usual, basically.

    On top of this, massive cuts are coming to Medicaid. I don’t see how US medicine and health can survive these amateurs.

  • Dividing by zero

    RFK has been talking about autism again. It’s pretty clear he has no idea what he’s talking about. This should make it easy for the study he has set up to establish definitively the link between vaccination and autism: if you don’t understand either the cause or the effect, it’s not hard to find a connection.

    It is all a bit offensive though and does give the suspicion he’s looking to find some useless eaters that he can remove from the population to strengthen the stock. He will be helped in this aim with the new autism registry to track USAians with autism. This will be set up as part of the research he is conducting.

    They are consistent. They invest enormous amounts of energy identifying people who do not fit their ideal: blacks, latinos, gays, transes, women, etc – and then they discriminate against them. Now they’ve got another group that they can identify, then demonise and dehumanise. Followed by persecution. This seems to be their policy on every single issue.

    On one level, I suppose it’s a reaction to the diversity policies of the past. If one side celebrates diversity, there needs to be another side that punishes it, right? At its root is just the same old racist mentality, dividing people into arbitrary groups and rating them. All the while keeping themselves at the top of the pile.

    When you get the basics so wrong, everything else follows.

  • Did they lobotomise RFK as well?

    April is Sexual Assault Awareness Month in the USA. To mark the occasion, RFK has disbanded all the agencies working on prevention of sexual violence. All that remains are a few people to answer the phone and say they can’t do anything. Trade Unionists: beware of Labor Day.

    This falls under sacking people who are “DEI appointments”, a catch all for racism, sexism, transphobia, etc, which seems to be an acceptable term in polite society and the press. From the people sacked under this rule, about 20% have been rehired. RFK claims this is all part of the plan. Sorry, but what management strategy is this? How is it part of an efficiency drive?

    Whatever. RFK says it is all to do with the Deep State which has captured agencies. Does he really believe this stuff? Probably. He talks endless nonsense about the damage caused by vaccines and “environmental toxins”. His solution is nutrition quackery, but declines to do anything about it. Everybody has a choice about their health, he reckons. If they die, it’s their fault. Why should he do anything about it?

    Maybe the most unhinged idea is that people were healthier when he was a child than they are now. This is such patent rubbish he must only say it to waste people’s time refuting it. But maybe he genuinely believes there was an idyll when he was a child and all in the world was well? Is he really trying to recreate this?