Tea at Trianon: A Flawed Covid Study and the Amish

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Sunday, August 16, 2026

A Flawed Covid Study and the Amish

From Sharyl's Substack:

A study was published entitled: “Closed but Not Protected: Excess Deaths Among the Amish and Mennonites During the COVID-19 Pandemic.” It appeared in the Journal of Religion and Health on June 11, 2021.
But I noticed serious flaws with the study and decided to challenge it. Among the problems I saw:
For their study population, the researchers grouped together a sample of Mennonite and Amish— even though Mennonites typically followed CDC guidelines while the Amish did not.
They excluded the largest Amish population in the US in Lancaster, the one that was actually the subject of the news reports.
And their study headline was at odds with what their own data showed: even with their skewed sample, the Amish fared no worse than the rest of the US for not having shut down.
After examining the study, I tried to get further information to determine if corrections were warranted. Among other things, I wanted to know:
Who were the peer reviewers who had signed off on a deeply flawed study?
What did the actually study notes and data show about why the most obvious study sample population was excluded?
What were some of the internal communications before and after publication?
With scientific studies, all the data is supposed to be available for public review and replication for obvious reasons. Studies aren’t considered scientifically valid without this kind of transparency. And. in many cases, we actually own the data because our tax money paid for the study—or some of it— or pays the salaries of some of the people involved.
But in this case, as with other with other times I’ve pursued study information, the scientific establishment found a way to exempt itself from the common sense oversight guidelines. (Read more.)