Robert Whittier

A former research scientist, now a full time educator past retirement age, my goal is to pay it forward by teaching how, not what to think, when others can’t.

[Robert Whittier @rfwhittier]

@RightScopee Elon has made the pie bigger. Stop pedaling envy and outrage. If you can learn from him how you might also make the pie bigger, some of that would flow to you.

[Hank Campbell @HankCampbell]

The number
of hours
we have
together is
actually not
so large.
Please linger
near the
door uncomfortably
instead of
just leaving.
Please forget
your scarf
in my
life and
come back
later for
it.
- Mikkio Harvey

[War Correspondent @warDaniel47]

🚨 JUST IN — IT’S OFFICIAL: US Senate unanimously BANS all senators from getting a single paycheck if the federal government is shutdown, filed by Sen. Kennedy

FINALLY! This should've already been the case 👏🏻

Don't give them a DIME if they defund TSA and other crucial agencies.

This is called FAIRNESS 🇺🇸

[Robert Whittier @rfwhittier]

@HankCampbell And we still have the little inner pocket that was put there to hold and protect pocket watches.

[Thomas Sowell Quotes @ThomasSowell]

Warren Buffett: "I can end the U.S. deficit problem in 5 minutes. Just pass a law that any time there's a deficit of more than 3% of GDP, all members of Congress are ineligible for re-election."

[Hank Campbell @HankCampbell]

Rob Schneider does not get enough credit for being woke.

[Hank Campbell @HankCampbell]

Some claim bipartisanship is over and blame their opposition but I am more optimistic. I remember one time during Trump's first term when Congress unanimously agreed on something.

So it can happen again.

[Robert Whittier @rfwhittier]

@WHLeavitt @LeaderJohnThune All the above

[Robert Whittier @rfwhittier]

@Mishi_2210 On my way to St. Ives, I met a man with seven wives…: same logic

[Robert Whittier @rfwhittier]

@RightPulseNewss 👍

[Robert Whittier @rfwhittier]

@ronsterd89 1980

[Jay Bhattacharya @DrJBhattacharya]

It's smart to be skeptical of scientific papers vetted and gate kept by editors with undeclared conflicts of interest, with advice from anonymous, unpublished peer reviews, with reviewers hand picked by the editors.

Independent replication is the better way.

[Robert Whittier @rfwhittier]

@WHLeavitt @LeaderJohnThune F, all the above

[Ann Coulter @AnnCoulter]

Does anybody have the video of Ashli Babbitt brandishing a gun?

[Mollie @MZHemingway]

@GovTimWalz What makes you the proudest -- that you have participated in the open borders regime? The rampant fraud your administration has overseen and participated in? The insurrection against police and our laws?

[Robert Whittier @rfwhittier]

There are certainly Minnesotans who believe in law and order, but were you one of them, Gov. Walz, you would not have abetted blatant public fraud, nor used rhetoric encouraging mob interference with law officers carrying out their duties.

[Governor Tim Walz @GovTimWalz]

Minnesota believes in law and order. We believe in peace. And we believe that Trump needs to pull his 3,000 untrained agents out of Minnesota before they kill another American in the street.

[Jay Bhattacharya @DrJBhattacharya]

I think this thread is posted in at least a simulacrum of good faith, so I'll give a substantive response.

It is obviously true that in the moment of crisis, leaders face tremendous pressure to do something dramatic to address the crisis, and often those decisions turn out, in retrospect, to be wrong.

In the case of the covid crisis, the problems were confounded by a determined unwillingness of scientific and public health leaders to respond to data -- in real time -- that showed that core assumptions underlying the lockdown strategy were wrong.

Here is a short list of facts about covid that undermined these leaders' core assumptions:
* covid is airborne,
* covid spreads asymptomatically,
* covid infection fatality rate << case fatality rate,
* covid has a sharp age gradient in its infection mortality risk,
* lockdowns cannot suppress covid spread or protect the vulnerable for long,
* lockdowns crush the lives and well-being of children, the poor, and the working class, and almost everyone other than the laptop class
* lockdowns cause a form of psychological terror that guarantee they could never last just two weeks

The WHO and public health leaders got all of these facts wrong in 2020, which I suppose is understandable.

What is not understandable is that these same leaders conducted "devastating takedowns" of even well-credentialed outside critics who pointed out that the WHO's core assumptions were incorrect, and accepted these assumptions as true even as overwhelming data to the contrary emerged in real time.

What is not understandable is the utter confidence that the WHO and public health leaders expressed in these ideas and lockdown policies to the public as the only way to protect the population, going so far as to call for censorship of contrary voices on social media and elsewhere.

The closest analogue I can think of is the set of "best and brightest" advisors who told Pres. LBJ that victory in the Vietnam War was just around the corner, based on a whole host of faulty information.

Leaders who come out of such situations having embraced such a litany of catastrophically failed ideas and policies have a few choices on how to handle the post-crisis era.

1) They can, in good faith, admit their failures and work to reform systems so the disaster never happens again. This would be best, though I would understand why the public would want a new set of leaders to design and implement the reforms. I personally am very happy to work with and learn from public health leaders who choose this option.

2) They can pretend to have done nothing wrong, clinging to power for as long as they can, hoping against hope that history will vindicate them, crushing public trust in the institutions they lead.

3) They can try to pretend they never recommended or adopted the catastrophically failed policies, hoping that the public has a short memory. This is the current strategy that the @WHO is taking.

4) They can appeal to the difficulty of the job of handling a crisis under considerable uncertainty, not in a spirit of reform, but rather as an excuse to avoid responsibility for their failed crisis management. This is the approach that Koopmans is taking in her thread.

I have very little sympathy for the covid crisis leaders who choose options 2, 3, or 4. Their job was to manage the uncertainty with wisdom and humanity, which they failed to do. They cannot, at this juncture, turn around and expect public sympathy because their job was hard, or expect the public to forget their failure. These leaders have destroyed public trust in public health, and should step aside as a new set of public health leaders works to fix the damage they caused.

[Kevin Bass @kevinnbass]

23% of all ICE arrests occur in Texas

2.2% occur in Minnesota

A 10-fold difference

Yet far more ICE-related violence is happening in Minnesota

Why? Because Democrats are promoting and provoking violence in Minnesota

Democrats do not hate violence

Violence is their goal

[Mollie @MZHemingway]

@GovTimWalz Your work of obstructing federal law enforcement has a growing body count. You are getting people killed by telling people to fight federal law enforcement in unlawful ways. Have you no sense of anything?