George Rebane
Those words from Speaker Pelosi summarized her three most important aspects of the pandemic legislation now going through Congress. But once more I believe that the lady misses the point here. Testing will do demonstrably little to stop or even slow down the inevitable and incipient explosion of Covid19 infections in the land. The emphasis of governments at all levels now should be to facilitate manufacture and distribution of life’s necessaries and healthcare equipment/supplies to treat the daily growing cohort of the infected requiring medical treatment.
A couple of useful definitions for discussing the pandemic – ‘asymptomatic’ means “showing no evidence of disease”, and ‘pre-symptomatic’ means having been infected but not yet showing symptoms.
The pandemic will stop only after 1) all have been infected (meaning it never stopped), or 2) it dies out since no more infections and the lucky infected have survived and are no longer infectious. The best and fastest way to achieve the latter without inevitably overstressing our healthcare system is to self-quarantine and STAY AT HOME. The head fed expert on infectious diseases, Dr Anthony Fauci, reinforced this prescription again today when he advised everyone to maximize the time they can “stay at home” (here).
A lot of bullcrap about how the virus is transmitted still pollutes the media channels. Dr Michael Osterholm, director of University of Minnesota’s Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy, gives some extremely important and cogent advice about Covid19 transmission (here) the main takeaways from which are –
- The virus survives for several days on surfaces, depending on the material and its environment.
- The virus is readily transmitted via the aerosols (exhalations, sneezes, coughs, …) from infected people. And the scariest part is that in the air the virus can survive for a matter of hours.
- Pre-symptomatic people can infect others. Just because you are asymptomatic does not guarantee that you are not pre-symptomatic.
- Available masks do little to nothing to stop your breathing the viral aerosol.
- No anti-Covid19 vaccine will be available in time to stop the coming national spike in infections.
- The only way to stop the spread is maximum social distancing, i.e. self-quarantine yourself, stay at home.
- Our medical infrastructure is woefully inadequate to cope with what is coming; the spike in infections will overwhelm it. We will wind up triaging like the Italians and others are doing now.
So getting back to testing, and how that affects each of us. I’ve prepared a little flowchart that most people (most certainly the astute RR readers) can understand. It shows clearly how your being tested for the virus is essentially immaterial as to what you should really do in any event.
In the meantime, our Democrats and lamestream media along with international news outlets like the leftwing Economist, continue to lambast President Trump. They blame everything from starting the pandemic, through not having the country’s healthcare system prepared and waiting (no nation has achieved this even now), to securing America’s borders as evidence of his “mismanaging” this national emergency. In the mean time all the EU countries are sealing their own borders and many have already shut down all walk-in businesses and imposed national quarantines. Any idiot should know that one obvious way the infections will continue to increase is through infectious people uncontrollably crossing borders. But apparently not.
And finally, I want to make the point that this pandemic may turn into a large-scale emergency for all of us (recall that’s an emergency when 911 calls are not answered). But however it ends, we will have a national dialogue that will result in new policies calling for major changes in our preparedness for such future catastrophes which will surely pay us another visit. A discussion of what these may be, I will reserve for a future commentary and comment stream.
[16mar20 update] It’s worth continuing to pay attention to the Dems’ Big Lie programs. Most noteworthy now is the continuing lie that we would have done a better job fighting the coronavirus had we already implemented a nationalized healthcare system like Bernie’s ‘Medicare for All’. If anyone cares to look at how the countries with nationalized healthcare are doing in this pandemic, they would quickly be disabused of any such thing.
The other part of last night’s comedy debate was Bumblebrain’s ongoing claims that somehow he was in the crucial heart of policy making and implementation in the Obama administration. Listening to him talk, ol’ Bumble was right in the middle of all that was happening. If anyone cares to check the record, they quickly discover that the man was one watering short of a potted plant during the entire eight years. VP Biden was trotted out to stand behind Obama during photo ops, dignitary dinners, and other ceremonial occasions, mostly to allay rumors of his early demise. Oh yes, he was allowed to attend certain meetings as long as he kept his mouth shut. So you know Bernie has to bite his tongue when, like last night, Bumblebrain claimed to be the “steady hand” that quashed the ebola epidemic and kept it from our shores.
Now, as with Trump’s bravado, I would not count as ‘lies’ these outlandish claims of accomplishment. But it would be refreshing to hear a progressive see such a common thread that knits together all politicians.
And also, do you note that like socialists, they don’t want to call attention to China’s autocratic mismanagement of when the Wuhan virus epidemic started? No mention is made of its genesis in China or Wuhan because such attributions would be “racist”. The lamestream, of course, fell into line immediately. For them and theirs, President Trump is a much more believable cause of all that’s bad about the Covid19 pandemic.
[17mar20 update] Sierra Nevada Memorial Hospital sent out a notice to their foundation members (of which Jo Ann and I are) regarding their new drive-through testing program. They also direct you to the county's coronavirus information website is here.
Drive-through Covid-19 testing now at SNMH
Sierra Nevada Memorial Hospital will begin drive-through Covid-19 testing from 3:00-6:00 p.m. on Tuesday and Wednesday (3/17 & 3/18).
If you are symptomatic and meet criteria for testing, Nevada County residents should call their primary care doctor. If the doctor agrees that an individual needs to be tested, the doctor can fax an order to the hospital.
Sierra Nevada Memorial Hospital will call the patient to set up an appointment drive-through time. Please do not attempt to go to the testing drive-through without a previously set-up appointment.
[18mar20 update] New epidemic model revealed. It turns out that the epidemic spread model that’s currently most trusted and used by policy makers in various countries is from the epidemic modeling group at Imperial College. (here, here, and here) Note the (lack of) emphasis put on testing as a policy tool to affect infection and mortality rates.
Common malaria drug prevents and fights Covid19. That is claimed in a report announced on Anthony Watts website (here) that was authored in league with Stanford University School of Medicine, National Academy of Sciences, among others, and published in several respected journals. This, of course, would be the best news yet to salve the pandemic until a vaccine arrives. In the meantime, Dr Rebane advises that you reconsider a gin and tonic as your afternoon preventative; after all, it is made with tonic water. (H/T to reader) The summary of the report follows –
Recent guidelines from South Korea and China report that chloroquine is an effective antiviral therapeutic treatment against Coronavirus Disease 2019. Use of chloroquine (tablets) is showing favorable outcomes in humans infected with Coronavirus including faster time to recovery and shorter hospital stay. US CDC research shows that chloroquine also has strong potential as a prophylactic (preventative) measure against coronavirus in the lab, while we wait for a vaccine to be developed. Chloroquine is an inexpensive, globally available drug that has been in widespread human use since 1945 against malaria, autoimmune and various other conditions.
[23mar20 update] The reliability of Covid19 tests now reported should give most of us pause. We are told that existing tests catch about 60% of people infected with the virus, and they test positive from 3% to 50% of those who are not infected. So what’s the utility of giving a test to an asymptomatic walk-in American? Well, the good Rev Bayes can help us out (more here).
[Trigger warning: some mild-mannered math ahead.]
Scattershots – 3dec20 (updated 8dec20)
George Rebane
SCOTUS finally ruled against Gov Cuomo on the religious freedom case. The 26nov20 NYT reported, “The Supreme Court late Wednesday night barred restrictions on religious services in New York that Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo had imposed to combat the coronavirus. … The vote was 5 to 4, with Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and the court’s three liberal members in dissent. The order was the first in which the court’s newest member, Justice Amy Coney Barrett, played a decisive role.” (more here) Justice Barrett was the crucial vote for the 5-4 majority, with Chief Justice Roberts (the court’s new ‘swing vote’) going limp again and voting with the liberals. Justice Gorsuch wrote the excellent majority ruling (here) wherein he states, “It is time — past time — to make plain that, while the pandemic poses many grave challenges, there is no world in which the Constitution tolerates color-coded executive edicts that reopen liquor stores and bike shops but shutter churches, synagogues and mosques,”
‘This is why Yuja Wang is Wonder Woman’. Ms Wang is unquestionably one of the greatest piano virtuosi to come along in many a year. Take a listen to a five minute sampling of what this woman can do with a piano – truly a celebration and vindication of western culture and how it has contributed to the shaping of global cultures.
‘Big Companies Urge Biden, Congress to Address Climate Change’ - Amazon, Citigroup, Ford and others support a U.S. return to the Paris accords from which Trump withdrew. Well, whouda thought? (more here) With the advent of the Biden administration we are going to see a return of corporatism on steroids. Cash rich corporatists have always been lobbyists and supporters for all kinds of new regulations and fees that can be levied on their respective industries and business sectors. We recall that a corporatist is a big corporation that can no longer effectively compete in free markets without some kind of government support. Increasing costs for their smaller competitors and raising the barriers to entry for newcomers is always best achieved by established corporatists who can pay off legislators and regulators to do their assigned duties – all for the benefit of the consumer, of course. These are the naïfs who ultimately will get it in the shorts, and pay for the whole thing. (In case we have some new readers here, please recall that corporations pay no taxes or fees; they just pass those costs on to their customers. But that’s a whole ‘nother story.)
[4dec20 update] Cutting the unemployment bonus again proved that the Left doesn’t do economics. Writing unemployed low-wage workers checks with an added $600 bonus was supposed give the economy a boost and lower unemployment according to progressive economists like the socialist sage Paul Krugman. Wrong again. Workers got paid more for not working and the economy didn’t go anywhere. When President Trump had to compromise eliminating the bonus to just lowering it to $300, then, lo and behold, unemployment plummeted and the economic growth set decades-long records. As the song says, ‘When will they ever learn?’
Marc Andreessen, web browser pioneer and venture capitalist, years ago claimed that ‘software will eat the world’ (here). AI has now achieved the ability to automatically generate code for some very structured applications, and soon will become smart enough to write programs from only verbal instructions, thereby promising to make legions of programmers redundant. Some interpret this coming state of affairs with the claim that “Software Ate the World, and Soon It Will Write Itself”, going on to conclude that “developers are in short supply, but their products may acquire the capacity to replace them.” Well no, that’s not quite true. Most non-techies still believe that ‘line programmers’ create the wondrous systems that dazzle and deliver us. But learning to code in a programming language, and learning to conceive and design a system to do what has never been done are two different skill sets – the first any smart high schooler can accomplish, the second takes a bit more education in one of any number of specific fields. Bottom line, software is no more ‘eating the world’ than did movable type in days of yore – you still had to have something more to become an acknowledged wordsmith than what was needed to learn how to smith the words into print. In the same way today, it will take more from fewer to come up with novel things the software must do, than the larger number who can learn how to make the software do it. It’s the latter who should soon tremble.
Ever hear of ‘emotional support animals’? Well, they’re a couple of steps beyond ‘service dogs’ in what they apparently provide to their owners. And there’s more to be said about the portents of such critters, the humans they emotionally support, and the crumbling culture that now puts up with such nonsense. This morning we awoke to news of a passenger bringing his peacock into the passenger compartment of an airliner. Now those of you who know peacocks can readily conceive of the pandemonium that such an aggressive animal with non-existent toilet discipline will create attempting to come down the aisle and be confined to the middle seat. Today’s laws do not allow anyone to question the legitimate and beneficial purpose that such arbitrarily selected support animals satisfy for those emotionally short-changed. On that flight the pilot was astute enough not to take off with a cabin catastrophe in the making, but we were not told how the gathered authorities adjudicated the affair. From my semanticist’s perch, it is clear that our language has not evolved at a sufficient pace to provide adequate adjectives to describe the depths of insanity that today’s progressive ideology is inflicting on our society.
[5dec20 update] Check out the report on the anti-viral Ivermectin in 'Mismanaging Covid-19 ...'.
[6dec20 update] Andrew Cuomo – talk about scumbag politicians lying to the public. This political hack is one of the few in the nation to whom hundreds of Covid deaths can be directly attributed – recall his tragically misguided care facility diktat. Now he tells the country that Trump’s Operation Warp Speed had nothing to do with the early development, testing, and approval of C19 vaccines; the big pharmas would have developed it anyway since they’re only interested in profits. He believes his audience to be appropriately ignorant of what Warp Speed did to pave the path and lower the financial risk to the pharmas for them to put a very expensive full court press on their vaccine developments. We know from decades of data how long it would have taken doing the same ol’ same ol’. But that don’t make no never mind to another Democrat Big Liar telling people another Big Lie.
"Inside Every Progressive Is A Totalitarian Screaming To Get Out", David Horowitz here aligning with Rebane Doctrine.
[8dec20 update] Cringing capitalists and the great Cocoa Collusions. The cocoa growers of Ghana and Ivory Coast (61% of world supply) decided to collude and raise the price of cocoa by almost 20%, claiming to alleviate worker poverty. Naturally candy producers like Hershey and Mars don’t want to pay more for their prime ingredient, so they are working together trying to find ways to pay less for cocoa (what a concept!). In this crazy world of progressive pandemics, virtue signaling has become a de rigueur for both corporatists and cringing capitalists. Both Hershey and Mars are denying that they are trying to circumvent the ‘virtuous’ price increase, when instead they should counter with the free and open markets’ correct argument. They should tell the cocoa growers that producers also have an obligation to keep prices low for their customers whose financial welfare is no less important than that of the cocoa workers. Virtue signaling has become a particularly contagious and corrosive form of cringing for capitalists in the face of socialism’s global advance. (more here)
A new approach to ‘Why can’t we all just get along?’ In the 8dec20 Union, Mr Rob Cairns attempts to heal our divide by suggesting that, instead of attacking, we sit down with our opposites to have a “real conversation” with “them”. The conversation would launch with questions like ‘What’s important to you?’, ‘What are your concerns?’, ‘What are your fears?’, ‘What are your hopes?’, ‘What are your priorities?’. A laudable approach indeed, but one having little chance of success when considered in light of the now drastically different belief systems that today propel our polarization. RR has spent years revealing and dissecting our contending beliefs, and the record is here for all to see. When a leftist finally deigns to reveal his belief(s) and/or solutions to social problems, to rightists they range from the odious to patently unworkable. What such questions serve to divert from is an exploration of the meta-world views (i.e. ontologies) of the two discussants. Without understanding each other’s basic views of how ‘their world’ functions, the rest of the conversation quickly becomes moot since the participants cannot help but talk past each other. And the real problem, encountered in the attempt to explore ontologies, is that perhaps only a small share of people are capable of such productive pursuits. Alas.
Today's joke from Rush Limbaugh illustrates the above ontological differences. A capitalist sitting at a bar is sandwiched between Bernie Sanders and AOC while watching the news. They see a tense video of a man ready to jump from a tall building. The capitalist says, 'I have $10 that says he jumps.' Begrudgingly Sanders and AOC take him up on the bet. The man jumps to his death, and the capitalist collects his winnings. Then a moment later he says, 'I can't take your money, because I saw this report earlier on the news.' AOC responds with, 'That's OK, so did we, but we didn't think he'd do it again.'
Posted at 11:08 AM in Culture Comments, Current Affairs, Our Country, Our World | Permalink | Comments (16)
Reblog (0) | |