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Post StratoCoronasphere Lounge Questions Here

Thursday, we will be doing the first StratoCoronaSphere Lounge show, and I will be answering members questions only

Bill Whittle The Stratosphere Lounge

From the Fastidiously-Organized Desk of Bill Whittle…

Hi everybody. Slow news week, huh?

First of all, on behalf of Scott, Steve, Shelley, Heather, and Mark, thank you for your continuing support throughout this emergency, and welcome to those new members who have joined us. 

I’ve been learning how to do The CoronaSphere Lounge as we go along, and I think the show is improving daily. I certainly have tried very hard to improvise as little as possible, and since I am trying to keep these as brief and on-point as I can, I haven’t had a chance to take many questions. 

But this Thursday, we will be doing the first StratoCoronaSphere Lounge show, and I will be answering members questions only… unless I somehow manage to cover them all, in which case I will go to Facebook. 

I’d love to hear your thoughts as well as questions, so please post them in the comments below this post. And thanks especially for the frequent and very kind emails regarding the Cold War: What We Saw series. 

See you Thursday night at 9ET / 6PT

Bill

29 replies on “Post StratoCoronasphere Lounge Questions Here”

Maybe I’ve missed the reporting…there’s so much of it…but I’m wondering why the MSM isn’t constantly blaring news that the revered “homeless” populations in LA and San Francisco aren’t dropping like flies on the poop-covered sidewalks (pun intended) as a result of the WuFlu. I mean, it is so deadly and contagious (I’ve read differently), why would this segment escape being ravaged and decimated?

It wouldn’t surprise me if draconian measures and unheard of sums of money aren’t being spent on this group because, after all, they add such value to our culture. No. They don’t. What they are is a valued virtue-signaling resource for the leftists in charge of those communities.

I guess my larger point is that this flu has been hyped out of proportion on almost every level. If this particular flu virus had never made it to the MSM, we would be none the wiser and just as healthy, except, of course, those of us who succumb to all the other variety of seasonal flus annually.

🤷🏼‍♀️

The left today is like the Bolsheviks, it’s all about the ideology, dammed be the people, especially those who do not share the same mindset – it really is that simple and to them the end justifies the means, It starts like this every time.

if conservatives don’t start getting into education and media, it won’t matter this country will be screwed long term – the educational system in particular needs and enema

Let’s go positive. How great is it that we live in a society that can afford to go through this economic disruption to avoid even worse human casualties?

Lots of inconsiderate people out there. “Governments” lock-down orders are a result of the failure of a significant number of people to comply with the strong “request” from officials to maintain social distance. Are people incorrectly hiding behind the 1st Amendment (peaceably gather), or are they just that stupid?

You’ve talked many times in glowing detail about the amazing bravery the badly out-gunned Americans displayed in the battle of Leyte Gulf
and said one day you’d either like to do a podcast or a movie about it.
So, what did you think of Daily Wire’s Brad Schaeffer’s series on the battle?
https://www.dailywire.com/author/brad-schaeffer
While I enjoyed it, to me it focused much more on a factual description of the battle as opposed to the incredible ballsy men who fought and won it. He only mentions the latter briefly in his final thoughts. Do you think you still want to tell that story in your own incomparable style?
Considering your Apollo and Cold War efforts were with the DW folks, and they already ran this, do you think they’d even be interested?

Many governments seem to be walking a fine line between waking up those that are not taking this seriously, young, libertarians & some on the left, and not triggering panic and a stampede among those already awake. Any ideas on how to reach the remaining sceptics.

Hi Bill! Enough about microscopic things, let’s talk about bigger things. The universe, for instance. There are some scientists who try to tell us that about 95% of its mass is “dark” matter that can neither be seen nor measured in any realistic way. This is how they explain the way the universe works. Other scientists say that the reason the universe acts the way it does is because there are still principles of space, time, matter, and energy that we just don’t understand yet and we don’t need “dark matter” to plaster over the gaps in our knowledge. What say you?

Biggest pet peeve: People who don’t pick up their dog’s poop in their yard, in public, and when they bring their dog to my yard. You have to walk around “land mines” everywhere.

I can and have eaten a whole 18 oz. jar of Marinated Artichoke Hearts.

Oops, I didn’t realize which page I’m on and that this question was for Bill tonight. I also forgot what the “chainlink” in the top right corner was for, please disregard Webmaster.

Since you wanted some non virus questions. Given the popularity of podcasts and audio books, do you think there’s a market for podcasts like old the old time radio shows? With actors playing the parts instead of a narrator reading a book.

How much weight should we give to the lung damage survivors may sustain, in addition to the fatality rate, in assessing when it will be “safe enough” to start lifting the quarantine? I’ve been eager for us to be able to get back to work and get our lifeblood, the economy, rolling again, but it’s occurred to me that there’s more to a comprehensive risk assessment than just considering the death rate as most seem to be doing so far. I haven’t found much conclusive information on this yet. Doctors in Hong Kong have reported cases of otherwise fully recovered patients with 20-30% reduction in lung function, but that’s based on a very small sample group (2 of 12 patients examined, out of 131 confirmed cases) and they caution that it’s too soon to know what the long-term effects will be. We may at best be able to estimate at this point based on experience with SARS and MERS which are in the same family. I expect severe cases will be most susceptible to whatever permanent damage is possible.

Hi Bill! New member here, but I have been watching your content on YouTube for a while. My question is as follows.

Is there anything our President can do stop Congress from adding frivolous spending to the bills that are submitted? I looked into “line item vetoing,” but it seems that authority was deemed unconstitutional in the Supreme Court back in 1998 by a margin of 6-3. Would the President have the authority through executive order to force congress to streamline the bills that they vote on?

Love all of your content! Keep up the fight!

With Congress’ pandemic spending legislation, aren’t we creating perverse incentives that will kill the Republic? We’re watching The Tragedy of the Commons, writ large.

The government entity that inflicts a harm should bear the financial & electoral cost of making its victims whole. Uncle Sam didn’t shut the national economy down; 50 governors shut down 50 state economies. By offloading compensation onto 49 other States, any collectivist governor has much to gain and little to lose. Principled governors get no goodies, and must still pay for collectivist governors’ actions.

Not really a question but I think Trump has done a wonderful job. Not perfect obviously because no one is. I think the ability of like-minded “Steely eyed missile men” To communicate to each other through the Internet has been essential in passing down information and getting a grip on what this actually is and how it works and how to protect yourself and others. The main stream media and the far left have completely removed their mask for all to see what they are, and Trump has proven himself as a warrior general as well as a peace time economic powerhouse. God bless you Bill, God bless Trump, and God bless the United States of America.

Per the respirator you showed us on Tuesday, the govt. needs petitioning on incorporating a sort of “right to try” waiver form for when there are federal emergencies like this one. It should indemnify all parties when doctors use non-fda approved gizmos and medicines with the permission of the patient. Along with that, each instance could contribute to a database that would inform other doctors and patients of its efficacy. Am I being naive in suggesting this, because it shows I have very limited knowledge of medical laws?

I’ve been wondering about this myself. With all the heroic improvising going on, among hospital staff and people making homebrew masks and other protective gear to donate, I hope there will be enough common-sense seeing of risks in the context of this crisis that we won’t end up with a bunch of heriosm-discouraging lawsuits after it’s all over. Will a doctor who overloads a ventilator to 4-10x its rated capacity get sued for malpractice by the family of a patient using it who doesn’t survive? I certainly hope not, but I fear that’s the world/country we lived in before COVID-19 came along.

You’re both right. The real problem at the FDA is beyond red tape and bureaucracy. It’s a religious adherence to the doctrine that the double-blind (and peer-reviewed) study is the only valid way to remove bias, and removing bias is the only way to determine safe efficacy. Neither is true.

Why don’t we call the bloated Coronavirus tax redistribution bill what it is? State politicians stupidly cause a depression, so federal politicians take your money through taxation & borrowing, keep a cut for themselves & their friends, hand you a check, then tax that check.

How is this “helping?” If they want to help then they will get out of our way by cutting spending, cutting taxes, cutting regulations, and making it permanent.

[UPDATED below original question.]

Hi, Bill! A study released yesterday or today from the University of Oxford takes issue with the modeling initially promulgated by Imperial College London which predicted high death rates from Covid-19. The new study suggests that 50% of the UK’s population has already had it, and thus the death rate is actually very small. Would love to hear your take on this. Here’s a link to just one article about it: https://www.standard.co.uk/news/health/coronavirus-half-uk-population-oxford-university-study-finds-a4396721.html

UPDATED Thursday morning: article at DW claims that the author of the Imperial College study acknowledged his errors and radically revised his numbers this morning:

https://www.dailywire.com/news/epidemiologist-behind-highly-cited-coronavirus-model-admits-he-was-wrong-drastically-revises-model

The DW article highlights a long twitter thread discussing it by “Author and former New York Times reporter Alex Berenson.”

A few quotations:

“Ferguson [the author of the Imperial College study] thus dropped his prediction from 500,000 dead to 20,000 [in the U.K.].”

Discussing the Oxford study:

“[Oxford’s model] suggests that the virus has been invisibly spreading for at least a month earlier than suspected. . . . If [its] model is accurate, fewer than one in a thousand who’ve been infected with COVID-19 become sick enough to need hospitalization, leaving the vast majority with mild cases or free of symptoms.”

Quoting from Berenson’s Twitter thread [via the quotations in the DW article]:

“Essentially, what has happened is that estimates of the viruses transmissibility have increased — which implies that many more people have already gotten it than we realize — which in turn implies it is less dangerous.”

“Ferguson now predicts that the epidemic in the U.K. will peak and subside within ‘two to three weeks’ — last week’s paper said 18+ months of quarantine would be necessary,” the former reporter highlighted.

“One last point here: Ferguson gives the lockdown credit, which is *interesting* — the UK only began [its] lockdown 2 days ago, and the theory is that lockdowns take 2 weeks or more to work,” stressed Berenson. “Not surprisingly, this testimony has received no attention in the US — I found it only in UK papers. Team Apocalypse is not interested.”

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