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From the New York Times news section, an article about childbirths in 21st Century California that treats the demographics of the state as much the same as Alabama in 1950: black and white. This is a classic example of how the NYT buries counter-Narrative facts until deep into the article.
For a wealthy country, the United States is a dangerous place to be a newborn. But it is not equally risky for all babies.
New data from California shows that, for every 100,000 births, 173 of the babies born to the richest white mothers die before their first birthday.
350 babies born to the poorest white mothers die.
437 babies born to the richest Black mothers die.
653 babies born to the poorest Black mothers die.
Childbirth Is Deadlier for Black Families Even When They’re Rich, Expansive Study Finds
By Claire Cain Miller, Sarah Kliff and Larry Buchanan
Produced by Larry Buchanan and Shannon Lin
Feb. 12, 2023In the United States, the richest mothers and their newborns are the most likely to survive the year after childbirth — except when the family is Black, according to a groundbreaking new study of two million California births. The richest Black mothers and their babies are twice as likely to die as the richest white mothers and their babies.
… But this study is novel because it’s the first of its size to show how the risks of childbirth vary by both race and parental income, and how Black families, regardless of their socioeconomic status, are disproportionately affected. …
The study, published last month by the National Bureau of Economic Research, includes nearly all the infants born to first-time mothers from 2007 to 2016 in California, the state with the most annual births. For the first time, it combines income tax data with birth, death and hospitalization records and demographic data from the Census Bureau and the Social Security Administration, while protecting identities.
The kind of research pioneered by Harvard economist Raj Chetty.
That approach also reveals that premature infants born to poor parents are more likely to die than those born into the richest families. Yet there is one group that doesn’t gain the same protection from being rich, the study finds: Black mothers and babies.
“It suggests that the well-documented Black–white gap in infant and maternal health that’s been discussed a lot in recent years is not just explained by differences in economic circumstances,” said Maya Rossin-Slater, an economist studying health policy at Stanford and an author of the study. “It suggests it’s much more structural.”…
Perhaps unexpectedly, babies born to the richest 20 percent of families are the least healthy, the study finds. They are more likely to be born premature and at a low birth weight, two key risk factors for medical complications early in life. This is because their mothers are more likely to be older and to have twins (which are more common with the use of fertility treatments), the researchers found.
But even with those early risk factors, these babies are the most likely to survive both their first month and first year of life.
A similar pattern emerged when it came to the health of the parents themselves: Rich and poor mothers were equally likely to have high-risk pregnancies, but the poor mothers were three times as likely to die — even within the same hospitals. Rich women’s pregnancies “are not only the riskiest, but also the most protected,” the paper’s authors wrote. …
Money Protects White Mothers and Babies. It Doesn’t Protect Black Ones.
The researchers found that maternal mortality rates were just as high among the highest-income Black women as among low-income white women. Infant mortality rates between the two groups were also similar.
The babies born to the richest Black women (the top tenth of earners) tended to have more risk factors, including being born premature or underweight, than those born to the richest white mothers — and more than those born to the poorest white mothers. It’s evidence that the harm to Black mothers and their babies, regardless of socioeconomic status, begins before childbirth.
“As a Black infant, you’re starting off with worse health, even those born into these wealthy families,” said Sarah Miller, a health economist at the University of Michigan. …
Finally, in the 17th paragraph,
Black mothers and babies had worse outcomes than those who were Hispanic, Asian or white in all the health measures the researchers looked at…
From March of Dimes:
Of all live births in California during 2018-2020 (average), 46.1% were Hispanic, 28.8% were white, 5.6% were black, 0.4% were American Indian/Alaska Native and 15.9% were Asian/Pacific Islander.
Then the New York Times runs a graph showing the four races after its earlier graph showed just black and white:
Asians have the lowest infant mortality rates of all, and Hispanics are quite good.
… The new study demonstrates that disparities are not explained by income, age, marital status or country of birth. Rather, by showing that even rich Black mothers and babies have a disproportionately higher risk of death, the data suggests broader forces at play in the lives of Black mothers, Professor Rossin-Slater said.
“It’s not race, it’s racism,” said Tiffany L. Green, an economist focused on public health and obstetrics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “The data are quite clear that this isn’t about biology.
Huh?
That’s basically backward logic: We’ve shown that all the Nurture factors don’t account for the gap, so that proves that Nature doesn’t matter.
Of course, there are nurture factors that aren’t mentioned, such as obesity (age 20-39 black women average 20 pounds heavier than white women, who are slightly taller) and venereal diseases.
It’s also possible that blacks evolved slightly differently. For example, the obstetrician’s rule of thumb is that pregnancies last 40 weeks, except among blacks where the duration is 39 weeks. Not surprisingly, black babies are born slightly lighter on average.
One possibility is that blacks evolved to be faster runners with narrower pelvic girdles, which causes pregnancies to last slightly less. But that’s just a SWAG.
This is about the environments where we live, where we work, where we play, where we sleep.”
There is clear evidence that Black patients experience racism in health care settings. In childbirth, mothers are treated differently and given different access to interventions. Black infants are more likely to survive if their doctors are Black.
That’s because black doctors on average aren’t as good as other doctors, so black doctors get the easy cases and call in white and Asian specialists to deal with the hard cases.
English
Arabic
Chinese (Simplified)
Dutch
French
German
Hebrew
Hindi
Italian
Japanese
Korean
Persian
Polish
Portuguese
Russian
Spanish
Swedish
Turkish
Vietnamese
OT: Homeless camps inside Chicago O’Hare airport:
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11752429/Filthy-homeless-encampment-set-INSIDE-Chicagos-OHare-Airport.html
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11752429/Filthy-homeless-encampment-set-INSIDE-Chicagos-OHare-Airport.htmlReplies: @Inverness, @tyrone
Airplanes themselves are next, and i can hardly wait!
Speaking of things that won’t be mentioned, there’s also stupidity. Which also isn’t uniformly distributed (though we’re now supposed to pretend otherwise).
And which also actually has profound implications for all sorts of outcomes, and “disparate impacts.”
Though we’re now supposed to pretend otherwise.
PS: the richest “white” people in Calif are extremely rich.
“Of course, there are nurture factors that aren’t mentioned, such as obesity (age 20-39 black women average 20 pounds heavier than white women, who are slightly taller) and venereal diseases.”
And you know, the abuse and neglect negro babies are subject to by their ill-equipped-for-responsibility mothers and part time fathers.
Just imagine how happy and contented they would be in AFRICA….where they belong.
all the footwear and boomboxes ……and all the white whores that seek to be involuted,
and invalidated and NO RACISM !!!!
and ball players…..OMG, WTF….LOL !!!!
Think about it
It’s kind of remarkable that, for the richest whites, nearly two hundred newborns are still lost.
Not all babies are equal--including equally healthy and fit. A bunch of them get a bad roll of the genetic dice and not all of those are spontaneously aborted. Traditional infant mortality was way too high because of conditions--filth, pathogens, malnourishment (mother and child), disease. But these infant mortality rates are all below 1%, well below what the US averaged when I was a kid.
I would guess too many of these babies who have deleterious mutations (especially older mothers and fathers) are being saved by technological interventions, and in the process we are building up mutational load in the population. The saving is fine, but then a society needs to counter that with an explicit eugenic program.Replies: @Jack D
Tay-Sachs?
Every one of the childbirth death of mother disparity studies I’ve dug into boils down to the fact that back women in there US, in Africa, and in the Dominican Republic, are disproportionately subject to preeclampsia. It sure sounds like something genetic to me.
As for low birth weight, white women’s pelvises, on average, permit a larger maximum head size to pass through than black woman’s (and Asian larger yet). On the other hand, post-delivery black babies develop faster. This stuff is somewhat Rushtonian, so nobody wants to talk about it. Except guys like this:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2593128/
I’m glad the NYT article mentioned the “deliberately having IV twins is not a good idea” truth. Twins lose IQ and have lung, heart, and other problems. What does ChatGPT say to something like, “Do twins have lower intelligence and more health problems than singletons? Should women consider earlier childbirth and less use of IVF to avoid such problems?”
As for low birth weight, white women’s pelvises, on average, permit a larger maximum head size to pass through than black woman’s (and Asian larger yet). On the other hand, post-delivery black babies develop faster. This stuff is somewhat Rushtonian, so nobody wants to talk about it. Except guys like this:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2593128/
I’m glad the NYT article mentioned the “deliberately having IV twins is not a good idea” truth. Twins lose IQ and have lung, heart, and other problems. What does ChatGPT say to something like, “Do twins have lower intelligence and more health problems than singletons? Should women consider earlier childbirth and less use of IVF to avoid such problems?”Replies: @Steve Sailer
Yeah, it’s likely pretty much r/K selection.
However, "nurture" does play a significant role and there is a Flynn effect-like rise for East Asians. For example: https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/KOR/south-korea/infant-mortality-rate
In the aftermath of the Korean War, the infant morality rate in South Korea in 1950 was almost 200 deaths (!) per 1,000 live births. Today it is about 1.8 per 1,000 births, more than a 100-fold decline in the infant mortality rate, and on par with upscale whites in the U.S.Replies: @Gabe Ruth
Skimming the Merck Manual on it, and that's likely to have an American/Western/developed world context, it's not good for the women who get it, but it's got a huge spectrum going all the way to almost certain death for the mothers without treatment.
In the "Moderate-risk factors" before "Sociodemographic characteristics (African American race, low socioeconomic status)" we have "Maternal age ≥ 35" and "Body mass index > 30." After includes "Personal history factors (eg, previous infants with low birth weight or small for gestational age...." Those look consistent with r/K selection, and I want more fine grained detail.Replies: @Anon
You may need to revisit this comment.
https://notpoliticallycorrect.me/2017/06/24/rk-selection-theory-a-response-to-rushton/Replies: @EddieSpaghetti
1) Disparity when mothers of equal intelligence are compared.
2) disparity when fathers equally prone to violence are compared
The study leaves out the black kids who fail to survive abortions. Really, stand outside an abortion clinic in the South and you will see lots of blacks and some low class whites. Not sure where the college girls go.
Somewhat related:
Anglicans angry at same-sex blessings question Justin Welby’s ‘fitness to lead’
Surprise! A church founded on fake divorce now founders on fake marriage.
Stupidity, drugs, STDs and diabetes before “systemic racism”.
That IS really something how they leave out births of 63% – nearly two thirds – of the State, till, as you mention, much later down in the article. Do you think that their mindsets are really in the 1960s, with red-lining and poor Emmitt Till only a few years ago? Or, do you think they purposely fixate on blackety-black because of job security reasons?
Whoa, whoa… hold it right there, hoss. That was awful close to being critical of Feminism. They can have it all, and there’s nothing different about easily having babies in your late 30s than when you’re young, hot, and fertile. Saying otherwise is Obsplaining.
There are three separate problems.
First, observational studies are hard because, as Steve points out, there are always confounders. Unless someone can think of a way to do RTC, (unlikely) observation is all we have.
Second, is confirmation bias . Science is supposed to help us overcome such problems. Scientists are people, and will work really really hard to validate their ideas. Often they are very creative. The only check on this is someone on the other side, similarly inventive shooting down wrong ideas.
This brings us to three, the unspeakable. If you cannot challenge ideas, then there isn’t any science going on. If we want to help black parents, then we need to tolerate the uncomfortable thoughts that might lead to an actionable solution.
It may very well be that, given identical, environmental factors, longevity and infant mortality both pan out as Asians first, then Hispanics, then whites, and then blacks, purely based on “nature” or genetics.
However, “nurture” does play a significant role and there is a Flynn effect-like rise for East Asians. For example: https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/KOR/south-korea/infant-mortality-rate
In the aftermath of the Korean War, the infant morality rate in South Korea in 1950 was almost 200 deaths (!) per 1,000 live births. Today it is about 1.8 per 1,000 births, more than a 100-fold decline in the infant mortality rate, and on par with upscale whites in the U.S.
Calvin Coolidge's 16 year old son died from an infected blister he got playing tennis. Hard to imagine how much we take for granted.
Infant mortality used to be measured in deaths per 1000 live births; now it’s per 100,000. I wonder if the index was changed because single digit numbers didn’t sound scary enough. One might suppose that the medical establishment would be loud and proud of its achievements, but healthcare doesn’t quite work like that.
After blah-blahing with the usual, we get this:
Note well the only force suggested is racism. The Times, being a political publication, along with the science they report on, no other force can be countenanced.
Can only hope we maintain a world where other factors can be considered.
Not looking at the general health of mothers prior, during and after pregnancy is massive (and no doubt deliberate) hole in this study. Black women have significantly higher rates of obesity at all levels and 3x at the top quintile of income than white women, and with that comes a bunch of other comorbidities like diabetes, hypertension, eclampsia just to name a few. Also, perhaps the much higher likelihood of having a man in the house to help provide and care for mom and baby is a factor but mustn’t consider that!
This is similar to studies that show blacks are turned down for mortgages than whites without ever mentioning credit scores or higher default rates at similar income levels.
The word the good doctor is looking for there is ‘phlogiston’.
Another reason for the high black infant mortality rate is maternal indifference. The kid is typically just a bigger welfare check and they often end up abused or killed by the baby daddy or mamma’ s latest squeeze. Everyone around them lives the same way and they think it’s normal, so the cycle continues.
The truth is the neglect of the black mothers , most of whom living exclusively on welfare, spending their time on their smartphones, and letting the child totally dehydrated.
That was pretty shocking, the fact that fertility treatments (which I assumed to be pretty rare) would show up in the statistics. But not as shocking as this:
Breaking science News – Redlining is causing wildlife to die and migrate away from black neighborhoods 75 years later!
https://www.npr.org/transcripts/1144991186
It’s two orders of magnitude less than the historical norm.
What happens when there isn’t a NYT article with the crucial lede buried in the last few paragraphs for a boomer blogger to dig into, like a square of apple cobbler at the back of his big boy TV dinner? Does he then just simply ignore it even if the fate of the world could literally hang on it to instead snark some more about the same old tired celebrity award show drama bullsh!t like some non-gay Mr. Blackwell?
Biggest non-surprise of the year – yep, our own gangster government blew up the Nordstream pipeline and had it all planned out half a year before the Russian invasion of Ukraine so spare me the f’ing “Putin should learn to respect international borders” crocodile tears BS:
Putin has made no secret that he regards his real enemy as NATO and not just Ukraine. The goal of this war is not just to "denazify" Ukraine but to make the world safe for autocrats like him (which is why his only allies are other autocrats).
The US OTOH, has openly declared economic warfare on Russia. We have tried to choke off Russia's oil trade and its financing for this war as much as possible. Shutting down NordStream one way or another is consistent with this goal.
Putin, on the third hand, does not dare to commence open warfare on NATO because #1 he fears nuclear war, which would cause the demise of his own sweet ass and #2 because he knows that Russia would be badly beaten in any conventional war with NATO.
Putin I assume has read Hersch's article and yet he has not declared war (or a "special operation") on the US, not because he wouldn't like to but because he doesn't dare.
As for the timing, the US has plans for a lot of things. I'm sure we have plans to nuke Beijing too, but that doesn't mean that we would ever nuke Beijing unless they nuked Washington first. If we DIDN'T have contingency plans, that would be unpardonable neglect on the part of our military.
The fact that we (assuming the story is even true) had contingency plans for blowing up NordStream does not somehow give Russia some moral upper hand. I'm pretty sure that if Putin had not attacked Ukraine these contingency plans (assuming they even existed) would have remained on the shelf with a lot of other plans.
Putin thought that the West was soft. He FAFOed. Even worse, he only observed half of Lenin's maxim (all of modern Russia can be viewed as a sort of half-assed USSR) : "You probe with bayonets: if you find mush, you push. If you find steel, you withdraw.” Putin found steel but he refuses to recognize it.Replies: @kaganovitch, @vinteuil
Note this isn’t about still-births but about death before age 1. I’d want to know how many of these deaths come from shaking, neglect, bad diet, etc.
Stanford was studying the relevant structures over 100 years ago. Check the files in the psychology department.
The CV includes the usual exhausting whirl of activities of the striving but non-original academic includes interesting items, such as:
* Founded and organized annual mentoring workshop for women and non-binary PhD students in economics and economics-adjacent fields: “Successfully Navigating Your Economics PhD”
* Grant Reviewer for:
• National Institutes of Health
Research on Community Level Interventions for Firearm and Related Violence, Injury
and Mortality Prevention (CLIF-VP) Special Emphasis Panel (SEP)
https://web.stanford.edu/~mrossin/RossinSlater_CV.pdf
“Older”? They’re pushing the envelope! And not only are the mothers older, the fathers are often much older. Sperm, like eggs, deteriorates with age. How many of these problem births are IVF?
Let’s not even touch “egg donation”. That’s probably a tiny fraction of the total, anyway.
I didn’t go back and look real hard, but it didn’t seem clear what they were comparing. The article is written (and the conclusions are stated) as if they are comparing births by race among those at the same income level and finding that, within that group, there is racial disparity, thus racism. But the actual comparison of richest whites and richest blacks may still be between groups with different income levels, thus not supporting the conclusions offered. If the second case is true, the article is intentionally misleading. Color me shocked.
Wonder if they looked at abortion history.
It’s nearly 200 per 100,000 births. California has less than 500k births per year, 30% white, top 20% income, that works out to about 50 deaths out of 30k. Which still isn’t nothing.
Actually not. Rather it is amazing that society has managed–for good or ill–to push infant mortality that low.
Not all babies are equal–including equally healthy and fit. A bunch of them get a bad roll of the genetic dice and not all of those are spontaneously aborted. Traditional infant mortality was way too high because of conditions–filth, pathogens, malnourishment (mother and child), disease. But these infant mortality rates are all below 1%, well below what the US averaged when I was a kid.
I would guess too many of these babies who have deleterious mutations (especially older mothers and fathers) are being saved by technological interventions, and in the process we are building up mutational load in the population. The saving is fine, but then a society needs to counter that with an explicit eugenic program.
However, "nurture" does play a significant role and there is a Flynn effect-like rise for East Asians. For example: https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/KOR/south-korea/infant-mortality-rate
In the aftermath of the Korean War, the infant morality rate in South Korea in 1950 was almost 200 deaths (!) per 1,000 live births. Today it is about 1.8 per 1,000 births, more than a 100-fold decline in the infant mortality rate, and on par with upscale whites in the U.S.Replies: @Gabe Ruth
20% infant mortality sounded like the end of a civilization to me, but I just looked it up and it’s right. Under 5 mortality was at 50% in 1900, and they weren’t an outlier globally. China was similar, even Germany was in the same ballpark. Semmelweiss died in 1865, looking at the actual infant mortality you see his effect clearly.
Calvin Coolidge’s 16 year old son died from an infected blister he got playing tennis. Hard to imagine how much we take for granted.
Nine-fold increase in babies being born with syphilis in Mississippi. Mississippi does not require prenatal testing for syphilis, and prenatal care is often delayed because Medicaid is not presumptive with pregnancy.
In 2016, eight babies in Mississippi were born and hospitalized with syphilis. In 2021, that number hit 106, according to data Dobbs shared based on health department and hospital discharge numbers. While syphilis cases in infants have gone up nationwide, Mississippi’s rate of increase is nearly five times the national average.
Racial reckoning or deterioration of public health services? Or a relatively small number of men dealing sperm and spirochetes? 71% of the affected babies were black.
https://mississippitoday.org/2023/02/14/mississippi-congenital-syphilis-babies/
Tay-Sachs is pretty much eliminated before birth, through pre-marital screening, pre-conception testing, IVF and pre-implantation selection, prenatal testing and abortion. It also.does not kill in the first year of life, but between 2 to 4 years.
In the superb movie “Being There,” Peter Sellers’ Chauncey Gardener, an extremely simple man, is treated with great admiration and respect – – made possible because he wears tailored suits. My advice to black women is to wear a blazer when interacting with OBGYNs. In fact, my advice to anyone interacting with the health-care system is to wear a sport coat or blazer.
Standard media practice of burying the lede. Headline and first part of story promotes the lie, truth is buried deeper in the story after people have stopped reading. The story could be more accurately headlined as: “Childbirth is deadlier for non-Asian families even when they’re rich”.
Much like “Racist educational system produces better outcomes for Asian children”.
I suppose we should be grateful that they are even condescending to print the truth at all, even if in the 38th paragraph of stories where you have to turn to page D14 to finish reading them. They’ll probably stop bothering to do even that.
Chetty is a number-crunching numbskull whose conclusions are always wrong. Statistics are only impressive until people realize that there’s a garbage-in garbage-out factor. Way more information is required to evaluate why these groups have differing rates of infant mortality. One big, important actual bit of numeric data Chetty overlooked was the mother’s age. A quality overlooked was source of family income because that relates to lifestyle. For instance, drug and alcohol use among those who get rich in the entertainment industry would certainly impact infant mortality. The caffeine and nicotine? addled might be very active but lacking in focus when doing work, another quality vs quantity matter for your consideration.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11752429/Filthy-homeless-encampment-set-INSIDE-Chicagos-OHare-Airport.htmlReplies: @Inverness, @tyrone
…….One way ticket to California …….Hey!, don’t blame me , that’s how we solve problems these days.
“It’s evidence that the harm to Black mothers and their babies, regardless of socioeconomic status, begins before childbirth.”
By far the biggest harm to black babies that occurs before childbirth is abortion. Indeed, the abortion rate for black women is about four times higher than for white women.
*Confraternity of Christian Doctrine, estd. 1562. I just called another commenter out for using a cryptic
acronyminitialism.Doubtful. 1st of all, there aren’t that many Jews to begin with, even as a % of rich whites. 2nd, genetic testing is now pretty much universal among Jews, esp. rich ones, so actual Tay-Sachs births are rare nowadays. Lastly, while Tay-Sachs will begin to show symptoms as early as 3 months, most of them make it past their 1st birthday. I’m hoping that this was a joke but if so it wasn’t very funny.
Not all babies are equal--including equally healthy and fit. A bunch of them get a bad roll of the genetic dice and not all of those are spontaneously aborted. Traditional infant mortality was way too high because of conditions--filth, pathogens, malnourishment (mother and child), disease. But these infant mortality rates are all below 1%, well below what the US averaged when I was a kid.
I would guess too many of these babies who have deleterious mutations (especially older mothers and fathers) are being saved by technological interventions, and in the process we are building up mutational load in the population. The saving is fine, but then a society needs to counter that with an explicit eugenic program.Replies: @Jack D
Another way of expressing 200/100,000 is that out of every 500 rich white babies born, 499 will celebrate their 1st birthday. And even for the most shiftless Negroes, 498 of them will still be around. This is nothing short of miraculous. If you could tell someone from the 19th century that that would be the infant mortality rate in a century, they wouldn’t have believed you. You might as well have told them that people would be flying to the moon.
Finally, someone who is willing to admit that biological differences are a thing. Oh, wait.
Structural? WTF is that supposed to mean? Maybe the structure of black women’s pelvises or something.
The fact is, black women have narrower pelvises and give birth earlier to smaller babies with smaller heads. The babies also develop faster post-birth and are well ahead of white and Asian babies in physical milestones at one year old. Blacks also have something like twice the rate of twins. This is all Rushton’s r-K hypothesis in action.
The final chart comparing black, white, Hispanic and Asian infant mortality could have come right out of Rushton’s r-K paper. (He has similar charts for various characteristics that always follow the same cline of black-white-Asian.)
But biology is verboten for NYT readers, who instead get medical misinformation about some mystery force of racism that causes black preemie babies.
Finally!
Some
good
news.
Life can get pretty depressing sometimes, so every bright spot helps.
Add this to the Russian offensive, and one might conclude that things are looking up.
;~)
I frankly don’t understand why this is a big deal even if it was true ( I still rate it as “not proven”).
Putin has made no secret that he regards his real enemy as NATO and not just Ukraine. The goal of this war is not just to “denazify” Ukraine but to make the world safe for autocrats like him (which is why his only allies are other autocrats).
The US OTOH, has openly declared economic warfare on Russia. We have tried to choke off Russia’s oil trade and its financing for this war as much as possible. Shutting down NordStream one way or another is consistent with this goal.
Putin, on the third hand, does not dare to commence open warfare on NATO because #1 he fears nuclear war, which would cause the demise of his own sweet ass and #2 because he knows that Russia would be badly beaten in any conventional war with NATO.
Putin I assume has read Hersch’s article and yet he has not declared war (or a “special operation”) on the US, not because he wouldn’t like to but because he doesn’t dare.
As for the timing, the US has plans for a lot of things. I’m sure we have plans to nuke Beijing too, but that doesn’t mean that we would ever nuke Beijing unless they nuked Washington first. If we DIDN’T have contingency plans, that would be unpardonable neglect on the part of our military.
The fact that we (assuming the story is even true) had contingency plans for blowing up NordStream does not somehow give Russia some moral upper hand. I’m pretty sure that if Putin had not attacked Ukraine these contingency plans (assuming they even existed) would have remained on the shelf with a lot of other plans.
Putin thought that the West was soft. He FAFOed. Even worse, he only observed half of Lenin’s maxim (all of modern Russia can be viewed as a sort of half-assed USSR) : “You probe with bayonets: if you find mush, you push. If you find steel, you withdraw.” Putin found steel but he refuses to recognize it.
It's a big deal because, if true, it amounts to an act of war against a nuclear armed power. The fact that Putin considers NATO the "real enemy" is irrelevant. He didn't attack us, we attacked him. Disastrous miscalculations of what your opponent might do, featured prominently in the bloodbaths of the 20th century. It seems, at the very least, horribly irresponsible to take such risks when the ante has been upped with nuclear weapons.Replies: @Jack D
But what does Steve Sailer, who, once upon a time, really, truly tried to push back against the neocons think, now, about their latest adventure?
And what about the recent report about congenital syphilis in infants in Mississippi? Reported just this month.
https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/congenital-syphilis-symptoms-teeth-pictures-mississippi-b2282796.html
According to news reports 70% were cases involving black mothers/infants.
Someone might think this indicates cause/effect for black infant mortality, at least in one place.
Women usually know if they have syphilis (or should know) and there are treatments for unborn children in that situation. But evidently black females are far less likely to take any action than others.
Might this lack of “agency” or dangerous indifference be a factor in infant mortality overall? (Also this result involving newborns suggests an overall larger rate of STDs among blacks.)
With abundant resources devoted to prenatal care and education even in places like poor Mississippi, you have to consider the causes of racial disparities in infant mortality to be more than “systemic racism.”
Are black mothers/fathers not resonsible for the care of pregnant women and their unborn infants?
They are still reeling from the recent double whammy of redlining followed by the murder of Emmett Till. Their black bodies are tired.Replies: @Achmed E. Newman
It’s hard to bear healthy babies after nine months of drinking Night Train, smoking cannabis and rock cocaine, and getting your ass kicked down the stairs by the putative father. This is simply a negro fact of life throughout all of the black social strata and will get worse as more blacks seek out incompetent black MD’s graduated from woke medical schools. The silver lining is that there should be fewer blacks born who would murder us.
Anything in the Times about that murderous toxic plume floating this way? Or is that too newsy rather than sociology?
I’m not completely convinced by any of the reasons for higher black infant mortality. But I’m annoyed at the readiness to attribute these sort of discrepancies to racism. Racism, at least as these dimwits describe it, is unsolvable. Isn’t infant mortality a problem we want to solve? What if it’s a simple solution like the mother losing weight? Wouldn’t we want to know?
That’s indeed likely, see for example the quicker maturation from a slightly lower base, thus hip width probably isn’t quite as big an issue. But if we want to get into the medical weeds like Anon[319] and the preeclampsia thesis, we’d need more info.
Skimming the Merck Manual on it, and that’s likely to have an American/Western/developed world context, it’s not good for the women who get it, but it’s got a huge spectrum going all the way to almost certain death for the mothers without treatment.
In the “Moderate-risk factors” before “Sociodemographic characteristics (African American race, low socioeconomic status)” we have “Maternal age ≥ 35” and “Body mass index > 30.” After includes “Personal history factors (eg, previous infants with low birth weight or small for gestational age….” Those look consistent with r/K selection, and I want more fine grained detail.
Life style choices are paramount in survival. This includes pre-teen promiscuity.
And unlike whitey, the vast majority of blacks have access to free food and healthcare.
No excuse. No contrition.
In France same accusations, same denial of the reality, racism has been blamed for the higher death rate of black babies and children from gastroenteritis.
The truth is the neglect of the black mothers , most of whom living exclusively on welfare, spending their time on their smartphones, and letting the child totally dehydrated.
You are talking crazy here. Eugenics is only practiced by Nazis! NAZIS! Get out of here with your NAZI talking points you stinking NAZI!!!
Even the Klan never stooped that low. White progressives are something else indeed.
Somewhat related:
Anglicans angry at same-sex blessings question Justin Welby’s ‘fitness to lead’
Surprise! A church founded on fake divorce now founders on fake marriage.
They make up the difference, though. Their TFR is still higher.
In brighter news, our kids’ CCD* teacher welcomed her 15th grandchild this week, her youngest’s first child. Father is German and Italian, mother Spanish and Lebanese. They are the future.
*Confraternity of Christian Doctrine, estd. 1562. I just called another commenter out for using a cryptic
acronyminitialism.Insufferable entitled pathetic petulant perpetual victims never take any responsibility for anything. Here’s what u should do Tiffany L. Green, assistant professor of WOKE-ness at U of Wisconsin-Madison go home to anyone of your whitey free wakandan utopias in the dark continent far away from those “white debils”. BON VOYAGE!!!!
Putin has made no secret that he regards his real enemy as NATO and not just Ukraine. The goal of this war is not just to "denazify" Ukraine but to make the world safe for autocrats like him (which is why his only allies are other autocrats).
The US OTOH, has openly declared economic warfare on Russia. We have tried to choke off Russia's oil trade and its financing for this war as much as possible. Shutting down NordStream one way or another is consistent with this goal.
Putin, on the third hand, does not dare to commence open warfare on NATO because #1 he fears nuclear war, which would cause the demise of his own sweet ass and #2 because he knows that Russia would be badly beaten in any conventional war with NATO.
Putin I assume has read Hersch's article and yet he has not declared war (or a "special operation") on the US, not because he wouldn't like to but because he doesn't dare.
As for the timing, the US has plans for a lot of things. I'm sure we have plans to nuke Beijing too, but that doesn't mean that we would ever nuke Beijing unless they nuked Washington first. If we DIDN'T have contingency plans, that would be unpardonable neglect on the part of our military.
The fact that we (assuming the story is even true) had contingency plans for blowing up NordStream does not somehow give Russia some moral upper hand. I'm pretty sure that if Putin had not attacked Ukraine these contingency plans (assuming they even existed) would have remained on the shelf with a lot of other plans.
Putin thought that the West was soft. He FAFOed. Even worse, he only observed half of Lenin's maxim (all of modern Russia can be viewed as a sort of half-assed USSR) : "You probe with bayonets: if you find mush, you push. If you find steel, you withdraw.” Putin found steel but he refuses to recognize it.Replies: @kaganovitch, @vinteuil
I frankly don’t understand why this is a big deal even if it was true
It’s a big deal because, if true, it amounts to an act of war against a nuclear armed power. The fact that Putin considers NATO the “real enemy” is irrelevant. He didn’t attack us, we attacked him. Disastrous miscalculations of what your opponent might do, featured prominently in the bloodbaths of the 20th century. It seems, at the very least, horribly irresponsible to take such risks when the ante has been upped with nuclear weapons.
First, observational studies are hard because, as Steve points out, there are always confounders. Unless someone can think of a way to do RTC, (unlikely) observation is all we have.
Second, is confirmation bias . Science is supposed to help us overcome such problems. Scientists are people, and will work really really hard to validate their ideas. Often they are very creative. The only check on this is someone on the other side, similarly inventive shooting down wrong ideas.
This brings us to three, the unspeakable. If you cannot challenge ideas, then there isn't any science going on. If we want to help black parents, then we need to tolerate the uncomfortable thoughts that might lead to an actionable solution.Replies: @Legba
I hate uncomfortable thoughts. The black parents will have to get by without my help
One situation you see over and over : Moma goes out clubbing leave a house full of picaninnies who sometime in the wee hours burn the place down …….moma goes to prison of course ,at least in areas where the law is upheld.
It’s not only white racism, but it’s also climate change and to deny climate change is environmental racism very sad very sad
How much hope do you actually have that it was a joke rather than just an untreated case of Jews-on-the-Brain?
Speaking of Unz standards, I notice in the sidebar an Anglin headline which sounds like a classic, even for him:Now THAT's a terminal case of Jew-On-The-Brain.
I blame the scientific method
https://www.newsweek.com/smithsonian-race-guidelines-rational-thinking-hard-work-are-white-values-1518333#slideshow/1610610
Actually, it’s not any kind of remarkable, but asking why someone would say so when that someone can’t distinguish between “two hundred” and 200/100,000 is wasting brain cells on someone who doesn’t have any.
“Yeah, it’s likely pretty much r/K selection.”
You may need to revisit this comment.
https://notpoliticallycorrect.me/2017/06/24/rk-selection-theory-a-response-to-rushton/
It's a big deal because, if true, it amounts to an act of war against a nuclear armed power. The fact that Putin considers NATO the "real enemy" is irrelevant. He didn't attack us, we attacked him. Disastrous miscalculations of what your opponent might do, featured prominently in the bloodbaths of the 20th century. It seems, at the very least, horribly irresponsible to take such risks when the ante has been upped with nuclear weapons.Replies: @Jack D
Putin probably has AT LEAST as much intelligence on who blew up the Nordstreams as Seymour Hersch has (if he doesn’t, does that mean that Seymour Hersch is trying to provoke a nuclear war?Thanks a lot, Sy.) and presumably had it SOONER and from better sources than Hersch’s big scoop. And yet we know that he has not unleashed the missiles on Washington. And if he hasn’t done it yet, he probably won’t (not over this at least).
So here are the possibilities, so far:
1. The US did not attack the pipelines at all and Hersch is full of shit as he often is.
2. It was done at the instigation of the US but with plausible deniability by some 3rd party. Ukraine would be a good candidate because they are already at war with Russia and can’t be more at war than they already are. US munitions are already killing Russians and damaging Russian assets but they are being fired by Ukrainians and apparently that makes it ok under the unwritten ground rules of this war. Economic warfare is also ok per these rules so maybe blowing up a pipeline (which BTW is NOT on Russian territory or owned by the Russian government) is also OK.
3. The US did do this but it had good reason to believe (which has remained true so far at least) that Putin would not dare nuke the US as retaliation.
Calling this “an act of war” is an exaggeration. If Putin wanted to start a nuclear war with the US, he already has ample cause (not that he needs any cause). But Putin (at least so far – he continues to sit far away from strangers) loves his own tuchus too much to start a nuclear war over a pipe. Whether or not the Ukraine War is going to lead to nuclear war never hinged on this pipeline.
Fwiw, I think your possibility 1 to be most likely. The point is not if Putin 'wants' to start a nuclear war. World War 1 started without anyone wanting it to. Events sometimes take on a life of their own, so one should be cautious of what one sets in motion. Does our recent experience in Afghanistan lead you to believe that the "top men" in once and future swamp D.C. are particularly gifted at geopolitical game theory?Replies: @Jack D
Putin has made no secret that he regards his real enemy as NATO and not just Ukraine. The goal of this war is not just to "denazify" Ukraine but to make the world safe for autocrats like him (which is why his only allies are other autocrats).
The US OTOH, has openly declared economic warfare on Russia. We have tried to choke off Russia's oil trade and its financing for this war as much as possible. Shutting down NordStream one way or another is consistent with this goal.
Putin, on the third hand, does not dare to commence open warfare on NATO because #1 he fears nuclear war, which would cause the demise of his own sweet ass and #2 because he knows that Russia would be badly beaten in any conventional war with NATO.
Putin I assume has read Hersch's article and yet he has not declared war (or a "special operation") on the US, not because he wouldn't like to but because he doesn't dare.
As for the timing, the US has plans for a lot of things. I'm sure we have plans to nuke Beijing too, but that doesn't mean that we would ever nuke Beijing unless they nuked Washington first. If we DIDN'T have contingency plans, that would be unpardonable neglect on the part of our military.
The fact that we (assuming the story is even true) had contingency plans for blowing up NordStream does not somehow give Russia some moral upper hand. I'm pretty sure that if Putin had not attacked Ukraine these contingency plans (assuming they even existed) would have remained on the shelf with a lot of other plans.
Putin thought that the West was soft. He FAFOed. Even worse, he only observed half of Lenin's maxim (all of modern Russia can be viewed as a sort of half-assed USSR) : "You probe with bayonets: if you find mush, you push. If you find steel, you withdraw.” Putin found steel but he refuses to recognize it.Replies: @kaganovitch, @vinteuil
Well, obviously, that’s what you, as an echt-neocon, would think.
But what does Steve Sailer, who, once upon a time, really, truly tried to push back against the neocons think, now, about their latest adventure?
>lying about what I said
Okay.
But imagine having all the money in the world and your baby still dies. Go ahead, because someone else already made you angry before you got here, arithmetically explain how that person technically doesn’t have literally “all the money in the world.”
I really don’t pay close tabs as what other here have said in the past (it amazes me that some people here remember (or do they keep notes or something?) thing that I said months or years ago) but my general impression is that SFG doesn’t have a particular bad case of Jew-on-the-Brain, at least by unz standards.
Speaking of Unz standards, I notice in the sidebar an Anglin headline which sounds like a classic, even for him:
Now THAT’s a terminal case of Jew-On-The-Brain.
EBTs and STDs: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/congenital-syphilis-treatment-mississippi-increase-rcna69381
And you know, the abuse and neglect negro babies are subject to by their ill-equipped-for-responsibility mothers and part time fathers.Replies: @Anon
Dat domestic violence.
It’s not really backwards logic, it’s absent any logic at all. Blank slate thinking is the only permissable thinking in academic social “science” in the current year.
https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/congenital-syphilis-symptoms-teeth-pictures-mississippi-b2282796.html
According to news reports 70% were cases involving black mothers/infants.
Someone might think this indicates cause/effect for black infant mortality, at least in one place.
Women usually know if they have syphilis (or should know) and there are treatments for unborn children in that situation. But evidently black females are far less likely to take any action than others.
Might this lack of "agency" or dangerous indifference be a factor in infant mortality overall? (Also this result involving newborns suggests an overall larger rate of STDs among blacks.)
With abundant resources devoted to prenatal care and education even in places like poor Mississippi, you have to consider the causes of racial disparities in infant mortality to be more than "systemic racism."
Are black mothers/fathers not resonsible for the care of pregnant women and their unborn infants?Replies: @Kylie
“Are black mothers/fathers not resonsible for the care of pregnant women and their unborn infants?”
They are still reeling from the recent double whammy of redlining followed by the murder of Emmett Till. Their black bodies are tired.
In all the time I've known you, I still don't know what you mean.
The AA stint at college didn't turn out like you planned.
The things they pass for knowledge I can't understand.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4dPRGfGmCmUAre you reelin' in the years,
Stowin' away the time?
Are you gatherin' up the tears?
Have you had enough of mine?
Two metrics missing:
1) Disparity when mothers of equal intelligence are compared.
2) disparity when fathers equally prone to violence are compared
All this faux concern about black babies when the black women abort their babies at 4 times the rate of white…see para 2098
Noteworthy that the BBC hasn’t gone down the Black capitalization route, As a public body, it’s more liable to scrutiny and it could prove too awkward – and mockery-inducing – for senior figures to have publicly justify it.
If Putin wanted to start a nuclear war with the US, he already has ample cause (not that he needs any cause). But Putin (at least so far – he continues to sit far away from strangers) loves his own tuchus too much to start a nuclear war over a pipe.
Fwiw, I think your possibility 1 to be most likely. The point is not if Putin ‘wants’ to start a nuclear war. World War 1 started without anyone wanting it to. Events sometimes take on a life of their own, so one should be cautious of what one sets in motion. Does our recent experience in Afghanistan lead you to believe that the “top men” in once and future swamp D.C. are particularly gifted at geopolitical game theory?
I think this has more to do with Russian weakness than with the brilliance of our calibration. If Putin thought that he could win WWIII he would have no hesitation to start it but he knows that he can't so he confines himself to grumbling.
Dunno bout that. The BBC is already unimaginably awkward and mockery-inducing as it is. If they were to be mocked from certain quarters, they wouldn’t even be capable of knowing it.
For each dindoo baby killed by this systemic racist regime 10 yts will be burned ala Waco Horror style…RaHoWa!!!
Your last paragraph hits home. I read a study by a black woman (of course) claiming to prove that more babies cared for by black pediatricians survived hospitalization than those cared for by white pediatricians. In a big teaching hospital like the ones in the study, every newborn is assigned to a staff pediatrician even the care is rendered by residents and students. Guess what? The sickest preemies all get staff neonatologists. Mainly white. The black pediatricians, while not incompetent, get the easy uncomplicated patients who would do well regardless of the staff doctor. This was not mentioned by the authors, and probably she didn’t think about it.
Fwiw, I think your possibility 1 to be most likely. The point is not if Putin 'wants' to start a nuclear war. World War 1 started without anyone wanting it to. Events sometimes take on a life of their own, so one should be cautious of what one sets in motion. Does our recent experience in Afghanistan lead you to believe that the "top men" in once and future swamp D.C. are particularly gifted at geopolitical game theory?Replies: @Jack D
Our “top men” are calibrating US policy every day. We’ll send the Ukrainians rockets that will shoot X miles but not Y miles. We’ll send tanks but not planes. Etc. So far it’s working in that WWIII has not started yet.
I think this has more to do with Russian weakness than with the brilliance of our calibration. If Putin thought that he could win WWIII he would have no hesitation to start it but he knows that he can’t so he confines himself to grumbling.
Don’t be unkind to Sailer’s Ukraine correspondent.
You may need to revisit this comment.
https://notpoliticallycorrect.me/2017/06/24/rk-selection-theory-a-response-to-rushton/Replies: @EddieSpaghetti
No one needs to revisit their comment on r/K selection. Instead, you need to revisit the source that you cited. Indeed, the authors of the drivel that you are trying to palm off as a scholarly source are clowns named “RaceRealist” and “Afrosapiens.”
So what exactly do you find fault with the information from the source I cited? Be specific.
“I read a study by a black woman (of course) claiming to prove [claims that are readily disproved by rather obvious observational stuff]. …This was not mentioned by the authors, and probably she didn’t think about it.”
Imagine a black woman scholar not mentioning or even thinking about the obvious. Inconceivable! Is that a dumb oversight, or a professional requirement in order to qualify as a fierce Black Woman Writer?
Of course, if it really is true that black babies do better categorically when treated by black doctors, then that is a rather strong argument in favor of… segregation and apartheid.
Oops, she didn’t think of that, either.
Does the article reveal what the mothers and babies died of? Poor health or poor medical care might not be the most common causes. During the year after birth, the causes could be car accidents, criminal behavior, drug overdoses, neglect, and unrelated illness. A chart delineating the causes of death should accompany the article.
Some of the few black babies that fail to die are destined to be flying aircraft.
https://admiralcloudberg.medium.com/legacy-of-a-lie-the-crash-of-atlas-air-flight-3591-519a3a7bd6ec
As someone who had a lot of various animals as a kid and who still has a few, I’ve found that everything does better in its natural climate. It’s harder to keep exotic critters alive and healthy even when you do everything you’re supposed to. Stuff that’s local tends to do better even when you don’t do everything right. I’d expect people to be the same way and it not to have anything to do with racism. I’d expect blacks in Minnesota to have worse respiratory issues due to the extreme dry air in winter and have worse vitamin d problems, etc.
Maya is a member in good standing of her leftist guild. She has helpfully put her CV online so potential correspondents can assure themselves that they are not committing though-crime by communicating with her.
The CV includes the usual exhausting whirl of activities of the striving but non-original academic includes interesting items, such as:
* Founded and organized annual mentoring workshop for women and non-binary PhD students in economics and economics-adjacent fields: “Successfully Navigating Your Economics PhD”
* Grant Reviewer for:
• National Institutes of Health
Research on Community Level Interventions for Firearm and Related Violence, Injury
and Mortality Prevention (CLIF-VP) Special Emphasis Panel (SEP)
https://web.stanford.edu/~mrossin/RossinSlater_CV.pdf
Skimming the Merck Manual on it, and that's likely to have an American/Western/developed world context, it's not good for the women who get it, but it's got a huge spectrum going all the way to almost certain death for the mothers without treatment.
In the "Moderate-risk factors" before "Sociodemographic characteristics (African American race, low socioeconomic status)" we have "Maternal age ≥ 35" and "Body mass index > 30." After includes "Personal history factors (eg, previous infants with low birth weight or small for gestational age...." Those look consistent with r/K selection, and I want more fine grained detail.Replies: @Anon
The whole preeclampsia panic has given cover to obstetricians who want more regular work hours (more and more of which are women) to use mostly subjective diagnostic standards to recommend induced birth at 37 weeks, which nowadays is considered “full term.“ Full-term is actually 39 weeks to 41 weeks. Removing a baby from the womb an average of three weeks early has many negative effects, including on IQ (up to 2-1/2 points a week) and on heart and lung function. The March of Dimes has a “39 Weeks” campaign trying to counteract the spread of induced birth. This disproportionately affects white and Asian mothers, who rarely suffer from the dangerous kind of preeclampsia.
Thanks, very interesting.
Anyways, here is some important background information.
https://www.propublica.org/article/trusted-health-sites-spread-myths-about-preeclampsia-deadly-pregnancy-complication
—“There’s no question that delivery is often indicated, and sometimes quite urgently, to save the life of mother and/or baby,” Tsigas wrote. But, she added, “No provider should tell a patient that ‘the cure for preeclampsia is delivery.’’’ Instead, she said, delivery should be seen as a “critical treatment” along with other measures, such as medication to reduce blood pressure and magnesium sulfate to prevent seizures and strokes. Describing delivery as a cure “lets everybody off the hook. Moms, their partners and even the providers all stop paying attention to mom’s health concerns after she delivers her baby. … We need to continue to monitor mom until her blood pressure and other vital signs return to normal.”—
https://evidence.nihr.ac.uk/alert/planned-earlier-delivery-for-late-pre-eclampsia-may-be-better-for-mothers/
—This trial found that in women with late preterm pre-eclampsia, planned delivery reduces the chance of complications such as hypertension for the mother (65% versus 75% in the expectant management group). While their babies are more likely (42% versus 34%) to be admitted to the neonatal unit, there was not a significantly greater risk of morbidity. The results of this study of 900 women will aid the decision-making process for women with late pre-eclampsia and the healthcare professionals involved in their care.—
They are still reeling from the recent double whammy of redlining followed by the murder of Emmett Till. Their black bodies are tired.Replies: @Achmed E. Newman
LOL!
You’ve been telling me ’bout redlinin’ since you were seventeen.
In all the time I’ve known you, I still don’t know what you mean.
The AA stint at college didn’t turn out like you planned.
The things they pass for knowledge I can’t understand.
Are you reelin’ in the years,
Stowin’ away the time?
Are you gatherin’ up the tears?
Have you had enough of mine?
What evidence and context did Anony even offer that there is this “whole preeclampsia panic” that doctors are using as a pretext to line their pockets?
Anyways, here is some important background information.
https://www.propublica.org/article/trusted-health-sites-spread-myths-about-preeclampsia-deadly-pregnancy-complication
—“There’s no question that delivery is often indicated, and sometimes quite urgently, to save the life of mother and/or baby,” Tsigas wrote. But, she added, “No provider should tell a patient that ‘the cure for preeclampsia is delivery.’’’ Instead, she said, delivery should be seen as a “critical treatment” along with other measures, such as medication to reduce blood pressure and magnesium sulfate to prevent seizures and strokes. Describing delivery as a cure “lets everybody off the hook. Moms, their partners and even the providers all stop paying attention to mom’s health concerns after she delivers her baby. … We need to continue to monitor mom until her blood pressure and other vital signs return to normal.”—
https://evidence.nihr.ac.uk/alert/planned-earlier-delivery-for-late-pre-eclampsia-may-be-better-for-mothers/
—This trial found that in women with late preterm pre-eclampsia, planned delivery reduces the chance of complications such as hypertension for the mother (65% versus 75% in the expectant management group). While their babies are more likely (42% versus 34%) to be admitted to the neonatal unit, there was not a significantly greater risk of morbidity. The results of this study of 900 women will aid the decision-making process for women with late pre-eclampsia and the healthcare professionals involved in their care.—