Category: Coronaplague

Why doesn’t the raging plague in Maskachusetts cause doubt among the true believers in Faucism?

by philg

This post generally falls into the category of “Are humans in charge of SARS-CoV-2 infections or is the virus in charge?” One of the principal heresies of this blog, since March 2020, is the assertion that SARS-CoV-2 would be in charge of how many humans it infects. I’m wondering if Maskachusetts, which has proceeded under the assumption that humans are in charge, definitively answers the question.

Massachusetts has everything going for it in terms of COVID-19-protection. The population is untainted by Trump supporters, holds a lot of degrees (highly credentialed if not always educated), and is meekly compliant with whatever #Science tells them to do. 95 percent of the subjects, age 12+, have experienced the sacrament of vaccination. Almost any kind of indoor gathering, including attending what’s left of the public schools, requires that everyone wear a multi-layer mask (some private schools are now requiring N95 masks for all-day wear by those aged 2 and over, contrary to “expert” advice in August: “Kids do not need N95, KN95 masks at school amid COVID-19 surge, experts say” (Good Morning America)). Marijuana, which we are informed cures most diseases and is therefore “essential”, has by governor’s order been available at all times since March 2020. Colleges sent students home weeks ago and aren’t inviting them back until February. Unless Karen decides to go on vacation, therefore, Massachusetts is an island guided by Science (capitalized, like “God”).

What does “the curve” look like among this science-following stoned-as-necessary population? NYT:

An uneducated person who was not familiar with nor following The Science might think that the recent trend in cases actually has a steeper slope than prior to universal vaccination. In other words, vaccinating 95 percent of the eligible population has no effect on infection and transmission and, if anything, to the extent that it is causal, actually accelerates the spread. But the faith in forced vaccination remains as powerful as ever. Question for today: Why? Isn’t the example of Massachusetts sufficient to convince even those who put blind faith in Science that vaccines don’t prevent infection/transmission?

(Maybe we can blame the 5 percent? So far Maskachusetts has nearly 1.2 million “cases”. Those are lab-confirmed, so the total cases is probably closer to 2.5 million. Most of the cases seem to have occurred after the vaccines were authorized for emergency use. 5 percent of the population is 350,000. Unless the unvaccinated are getting COVID-19 over and over and over, there simply aren’t enough of these Yankee Deplorables to generate the case numbers reported in the NYT.)

From a reader comment recently, “Belgian scientific base in Antarctica engulfed by Covid-19 despite strict measures”:

Two-thirds of the staff currently based in the Princess Elisabeth Polar Station in Antarctica have been infected with Covid-19, even though very strict health measures were put in place.

“All those present have received two doses of vaccine, and one person has even received a booster shot,” said Alain Hubert, the station’s executive operator and head of security measures.

All staff members preparing to depart to the station had to undergo a PCR test in Belgium two hours before leaving for South Africa, take a PCR test five days after their arrival in Cape Town, where they also had to quarantine for ten days. Another test was required when leaving Cape Town for Antarctica and another PCR test had to be undergone five days after arrival.

These are folks who follow the Science so closely that they actually have jobs in Science! And yet, despite not letting any Untouchables into their pristine vaccinated and PCR-tested environment, they are all plagued now.

This is not to say that the vaccines aren’t potentially useful for the old/vulnerable in terms of preventing hospitalization and/or death. But given the above examples, shouldn’t a person of ordinary intelligence doubt the idea that forced universal vaccination will reduce infection/transmission and therefore the breeding of mutations? My quick survey of righteous friends says that the answer is “no”. Their faith is stronger than ever. But none has a coherent explanation of the Maskachusetts “curve”.

Related:

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The unvaccinated can upgrade their image by consuming meth and heroin?

by philg

The self-described “progressive” who wrote San Fransicko thinks that one reason homelessness in California is so persistent is that individuals are not held accountable for their choices, e.g., to consume drugs.

Until the early 1980s, many people described the homeless as “bums,” “hobos,” and “vagrants” who chose their lifestyle and were undeserving of help. “It was advocates who coined the phrase, ‘homeless,’” said the University of Pennsylvania’s Dennis Culhane. “They’re the ones who thought ‘homeless’ would be a soft, fluffy term for the public to be sympathetic to.” The term was used as a way to advocate for public subsidies for housing. “The anti-homelessness movement chose the term ‘homelessness,’” wrote Gowan, “as opposed to ‘transient,’ ‘indigent,’ etc., for its implication that the biggest difference between the homeless and the housed was their lack of shelter.”

Words are powerful. The word “homeless” not only makes us think of housing, it also makes us not think of mental illness, drugs, and disaffiliation. The word directs our attention to things perceived as outside of a person’s control, such as the high cost of housing, and away from things perceived as in their control, such as working, parenting, and staying sober.

The news media have framed homelessness as poverty since the 1980s. “It hasn’t been this bad since the Great Depression,” claimed KQED, San Francisco’s main public broadcaster, in 1983. “Yet the stock market is booming. Venture capitalists are making millions of dollars overnight in Silicon Valley video games. For a few, it’s the best of times. For many more, it’s the worst.”

It was a grossly misleading statement. The poor farming families like the Okies who fled to the Bay Area in 1933 were utterly unlike the crack-, heroin-, and alcohol-abusing single homeless men of San Francisco in 1983. The two groups were homeless for completely different reasons and needed completely different things to improve their lives. As for unemployment, it declined dramatically, from nearly 10 percent in 1982, the year when the national news media started to heavily cover homelessness, to just over 5 percent in 1989.

Arresting and prosecuting the homeless for things like defecating in public, injecting fentanyl publicly, and living on the sidewalk is unethical, say a growing number of progressive political candidates and elected officials, because the people doing those things are victims of racism, poverty, and trauma. When he ran for office in 2018, San Francisco district attorney Chesa Boudin announced, “We will not prosecute cases involving quality-of-life crimes. Crimes such as public camping, offering or soliciting sex, public urination, blocking a sidewalk, etc., should not and will not be prosecuted.”68 Enforcing the law contributes to further victimization, says Boudin. “Jails do nothing to treat the root cause of crime,” read his campaign platform. In early 2020 Boudin said, “There are people who are harmed by the addiction crisis in this city, by open-air drug use and drug sales.” But, he added, “those are technically victimless crimes.”

(Living and working in Berkeley, the author may be unfamiliar with the fact that the U.S. actually does have a political party out there for people who think as he does, i.e., that people who use a lot of meth and heroin may have made affirmative choices to use a lot of meth and heroin.)

Is there any class of individuals whose behavior is so outside of cultural norms that progressives are willing to blame them? Let’s look at the official newspaper of the progressive faith. “Doctors and Nurses Are ‘Living in a Constant Crisis’ as Covid Fills Hospitals and Omicron Looms” (New York Times, 12/17/2021). The article itself doesn’t contain anything new or interesting. The NYT reports that Covid is raging in the parts of the U.S. that have the highest vaccination rate. And the reader comments are consistent with this:

The urgent care center on my street has a line snaking around the entire block right now. In Manhattan, in a zip code with vaccination rates in the 85-ish percentile.

Summary of the core article: The folks who collect 20 percent of GDP aren’t happy about having to work extra hard for two Covid waves per year in any given state. What is important for today’s topic is the sentiment expressed in numerous comments. Examples:

I know it sounds cruel, but we need to have a discussion about denying the willfully unvaccinated medical care for Covid – they are keeping it around, helping it mutate and taking up valuable resources that can go to those in real need, to say nothing of destroying our medical systems.

Let the unvaccinated die.

If a person has refused vaccination and a booster, they should NOT be allowed to a hospital. Let Fox News set up Covid-19 hospitals to care for those it continues to mislead for its own profit.

The unvaccinated are destroying our health care system. Time for drastic and draconian steps. If you want to be admitted to a hospital, please provide proof of vaccination. Otherwise you can have a bed at a field hospital that has been set up an an old warehouse, where you will have a bed and a bedpan and no guarantee that anyone will be checking on you.

It may sound cruel, but in all absolute fairness to medical personnel here, people who refuse vaccination and who contract Covid should be treated as attempted suicides. They should be triaged separately and placed in heated tents in available fields or parking lots and treated there by a volunteer or military medical auxiliary, so that hospital personnel can go about their normal duties of handling sane ER cases, strokes, heart surgeries, able to heal those who want and need healing, allowing medical personnel to be preserved themselves from extreme PTSD. If the non-vaxxer patients complain of primitive conditions, they should be reminded of their own primitive behavior in refusing vaccination, when help was available all around them. The medical profession in this country should not be destroyed because of selfish, insane and deliberately suicidal people.

The time to stop accepting people that don’t believe in modern medicine, i.e. vaccines, was 6 months ago.

(from Boston!) Unvaccinated Covid patients can have tent hospitals with their family members taking care of them.

When doing triage, the unvaccinated should go to the bottom of the list! It’s time for insurance companies to refuse to cover treatment for unvaccinated Covid patients, (unless they have a real legitimate reason; not religious, which is almost nobody)

No vaccine should mean no hospital care, no insurance coverage for Covid, and no access to public places.

Stop treating the unvaccinated and send them home. They cannot be allowed to continue on this path of destruction.

Stop admitting the unvaccinated for covid-related care, with an obvious exception for those who couldn’t get the shot for true medical reasons.

(from California) in my world it would look like this: field hospitals in tents with bare bones amenities and treatments for the unvaxxed. Pay the doctors and nurses and facilities staffing these places an inflated rate to compensate for the horrors of it all. Allow hospitals to return to normal, and reserve in-hospital care, vents, etc. for those who are vaccinated.

(response to the above) I’d gladly tell their relatives why: Your husband [dad, son, uncle, brother, or whomever] is in this parking lot Covid facility — probably dying and responsible gif the full cost of treatment — away from responsible patients because he refused to behave like an adult, get vaccinated and wear a mask. This was your husband’s choice.

(Minneapolis) Hospitals need to require people to be vaccinated before entry. No vaccination, no hospital.

(Oregon) Why is it a “ choice “ to remain unvaccinated and be fully responsible the strain and toll on our health care workers , not to mention the financial strain and millions of dollars that have been spent in an effort to keep these people alive . … Why can’t we refuse to treat those who make that choice .

(Separately, some brave commenters pointed out that the hospital staff pictured taking care of COVID patients were not wearing PPE that might be effective against an aerosol virus:

It’s alarming to me that none of the staff pictured are wearing n95’s or eye wear while taking care of these patients.

)

How can the unvaccinated shield themselves from blame by progressives and, if present trends toward increased government power continue, internment in Protection Camps? What could an unvaccinated Deplorable do that would make him/her/zir/them immune to criticism and demands to live somewhere other than where he/she/ze/they has chosen to live? The unvaccinated must start taking meth and heroin!

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Protected by masks on a 100-percent full flight

by philg

Readers may recall that I’ve been an advocate for preventing airlines from selling middle seats during coronapanic, rather than relying on masks to block the spread of germs (see Coronavirus will breathe life into my two-thirds-full airline idea? (3/23/2020) and Science proves that I’m right: airlines should leave the middle seat empty (4/16/2021)).

As I type this, a friend is on a 100-percent packed flight back to Boston from a ski vacation. He’s never been especially concerned about COVID-19, so his voluntary leisure travel does not make him a hypocrite (see If at least 50 percent of us are Covid-righteous, how did hotels and flights fill up with leisure travelers?).

Here are his instant messages, enabled by Delta’s WiFi ($5 fee):

  • A woman next to me on the plane has been sneezing into her mask for 4 hours now. She takes it off, blows her nose profusely and puts it back on.
  • The man across from me is coughing all the time.
  • You can hear people sniffling.
  • I can identify at least four different people sniffling one after the other.
  • It is a COVID symphony
  • String quartet maybe
  • The cello just took off his mask and blew his nose
  • Somebody just sounded like he snorted a quart of snot and then coughed five times loudly
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Safe way to celebrate New Year’s Eve: watch Contagion

by philg

Contagion, by the brilliant director Steven Soderbergh, leaves HBO Max tonight. Most of the friends who scolded me for lack of coronapanic orthodoxy and weak adherence to Faucism are still in their crowded vacation destinations, often in foreign countries where they can harvest exotic variant SARS-CoV-2. I know that, by contrast, readers of this blog follow the science and therefore will be home, and certainly wouldn’t wish to participate in a New Year’s Eve superspreader event such as a party without adequate vaccine papers checks, let me suggest watching the movie!

(And, remember, that “Fauci says to cancel New Year’s Eve parties, as millions struggle for normalcy nearly two years into pandemic” (Fox, 12/27): “But when you’re talking about a New Year’s Eve party, we have 30, 40, 50 people celebrating. You do not know the status of their vaccination, I would recommend strongly stay away from that this year.”)

Though both are zoonotic, there are some differences in the movie disease compared to COVID-19. The movie disease doesn’t seem to spread as well as a pure aerosol, but rather is best transmitted via surface contact. The movie disease has a death rate of about 30% for previously healthy children and young adults, i.e., lining up pretty well with what my friends who read the New York Times and listen to NPR believe.

The movie should have been required viewing for all Americans in March 2020. People would have learned what #Science believed at the time about COVID-19, i.e., that it was spread by fomites and that it was critical to understand R0. The movie depicts shortages, mostly peaceful activities by citizens (i.e., looting) and, contrary to what happened with COVID-19, health care workers abandoning their jobs.

The movie also shows citizens resigning themselves to a yearlong lockdown in order to avoid the 30% chance of death.

The movie shows an alternative medicine fad, roughly analogous to what we saw with ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine. It misses the “often in error, never in doubt” phenomenon that we’ve seen from regular medicine with COVID-19. Doctors, especially CDC doctors, are essentially infallible and advice informed by #Science never has to be revised.

*** SPOILER ALERT *** There are some anachronisms from our point of view. The film was made in 2011, when identifying as Black or as a “woman” (as the term was understood then) was sufficient for being a brilliant scientist. There was no need to also be part of the 2SLGBTQQIA+ community. Despite not being 2SLGBTQQIA+ (and, in fact, although there are sexual relationships referred to, I don’t think that there are any 2SLGBTQQIA+ characters), the brilliant female scientist is sufficiently brilliant to develop a one-and-done vaccine. *** END OF SPOILER ***

To everyone who will be safely at home watching TV: Happy New Year!

To everyone who will be attending parties: We’ll see you in Hell!

Related…

“Delta and Omicron are coming to your party”: Authorities ask Illinois citizens to vaccinate and mask up” (Illinois News Live):

As New Year’s Eve approached, Ejike told everyone to expect uninvited guests from their gathering: Delta and Omicron, a variant of the virus that is currently prevalent in the state. The word Omicron seems less deadly, especially given that Delta is still a prevalent strain in Illinois, isn’t a reason for people to relax, Ezike said. ..

“Omicron and Delta are coming to your party, so you need to think twice,” said Governor JB Pritzker. “People obviously should pay special attention.

What does the expert on a disease that attacks the obese look like? Here’s Governor Pritzker:

A view from the front:

Let’s check “the curve” for Illinois:

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Covid epidemic among air traffic controllers in Orlando

by philg

Numerous COVID-righteous friends have reported problems getting to vacation destinations this year. Dr. Fauci apparently told them to cram themselves onto 100-percent-full airliners and then congregate with others in hotels, restaurants, ski lifts, etc. Many of these plans for #StoppingTheSpread were thwarted when airlines canceled Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, and Christmas-New Year’s Week flights. The airlines’ explanations were generally centered around pilots and flight attendants being sick with COVID-19 and my friends accepted these explanations uncritically.

It did not occur to them, in other words, that a junior airline pilot who had been scheduled to work on Christmas Eve or Christmas Day would instead find it convenient to say “I have been in close contact with someone who tested positive for COVID-19” or “I tested positive for COVID-19 using a home kit” and then be home for the holidays rather than alone in a far-away Hilton Garden Inn.

Today I happened to be flying around Florida. Orlando Approach was refusing to provide any services to VFR (visual flight rules), saying that they were understaffed due to people being out with Covid. IFR flights, other than flights to MCO and other airports within the Orlando Class B airspace, were being routed down the west coast of Florida. Jacksonville Center, Daytona Approach, Palm Beach Approach, Miami Center, et al. were up and running normally.

What’s different about Orlando, I wondered, that, compared to anywhere else in Florida, there should be so many more controllers felled by mighty SARS-CoV-2? Pravda shows that the “case rate” is actually higher in parts of Florida where ATC was up and running normally:

Then I reflected that kids are out of school this week while Disney World, Universal, SeaWorld, LEGOLAND, et al. are open. I wonder if we would find that holding an annual pass to a theme park, with no blackout dates, turned out to be a risk factor for calling in disabled from COVID-19 during the week between Christmas and New Year’s.

A couple of photos from our destination, beautiful Gainesville, Florida (well, the campus is beautiful anyway!):

It was 80 degrees and sunny. Three of the Navy guys were coming out of the FBO in full flight suits with all kinds of gear attached, preparing to get into their T-45 Goshawks. I was walking in from the Cirrus SR20 in gym shorts and a T shirt (don’t over-dress if your plane lacks A/C!). I asked “Why do you need more than this [indicating T shirt] to fly a plane?”

Related:

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Merry Christmas from the Central Planners

by philg

Merry Christmas to everyone!

Loyal readers will know that I love central planning (seen “Citizens for a Planned Economy,” the political group that I formed after watching the 2012 Presidential debate in which candidates from both parties promised federal intervention) and bureaucratically-managed coronapanic. Today, we celebrate the Christmas gifts of the Maskachusetts Pharaohs to the people, in particular the distribution of COVID-19 tests to “more than 100 municipalities with a larger proportion of families facing financial hardship”. These are characterized as “free” so, presumably, the people themselves will not have to pay for them via taxation.

My favorite part of the mass.gov page is the list of the impoverished towns that will receive “free” tests. Weston, Massachusetts is on the list. Back in 2019, the town had a median household income of $207,702 per year (Census; using pre-Biden dollars). What will the good burghers of Weston do with the test kits? After the Massachusetts Emergency Management Agency and Massachusetts National Guard drive away,

Each city or town will determine how best to distribute tests within their community, with an emphasis on increasing access for individuals and families who are facing financial hardship.

“Hospitals Scramble as Antibody Treatments Fail Against Omicron” (NYT, 12/21):

In New York, hospital administrators at NewYork-Presbyterian, N.Y.U. Langone and Mount Sinai all said in recent days that they would stop giving patients the two most commonly used antibody treatments, made by Eli Lilly and Regeneron, according to memos obtained by The Times and officials at the health systems.

Federal health officials plan to assess at the end of this week whether to pause shipments of the Eli Lilly and Regeneron products to individual states, based on how dominant Omicron becomes in different regions of the country, according to a senior administration official who spoke on condition of anonymity.

Already in high demand even before Omicron arose, the supply of sotrovimab is very limited for now. But the situation is likely to improve somewhat in the coming weeks. The Biden administration is in talks with GlaxoSmithKline about securing more doses to be delivered by early next year, the administration official said.

The central planners are getting you antibodies for Christmas, but it might be Christmas 2022…

Related:

  • Trouble in public health paradise… “Mass. Medical Society calls for statewide mask mandate for all indoor public settings” (Boston.com, 12/14): The president of the Massachusetts Medical Society is recommending that state officials require the use of masks in all indoor public settings, regardless of vaccination status, in the face of worrying COVID-19 trends in the commonwealth. The call to bring back an indoor mask mandate came a day after Gov. Charlie Baker said he has “no plans to bring back the statewide mask mandate,” despite the urging of health experts to do so. In recent weeks, Massachusetts has seen a sharp increase in COVID-19 infections and hospitalizations to levels that have not been seen since the surge last winter, prompting state officials to order hospitals facing capacity constraints to cut elective procedures by 50 percent. Some municipalities, including Boston, have since brought back indoor mask mandates in response to the COVID-19 trends seen in their local communities. Starting Monday, Salem is also requiring all individuals entering a public or municipal building to wear a face covering, regardless of their vaccination status.
  • Merry Christmas to Israelis who celebrate this holiday… “For a growing number of Jews in Israel, it’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas” (Times of Israel): You ask Yaeli Amir, a seven-year-old Jewish girl growing up in a rural town in Israel, what her favorite holiday is, and she won’t name any of the almost countless Jewish ones. Instead, she’ll say, without hesitation, “Christmas!” (Tisha B’Av is a tougher sell to 7-year-olds?)
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If at least 50 percent of us are Covid-righteous, how did hotels and flights fill up with leisure travelers?

by philg

From a reader:

Our usual Mexico hotels are sold out, so we decided on Florida instead. We are going to be [in Hollywood, Florida] Dec 20-27. If you are up for it we can grab coffee.

My response:

I don’t know how everything is sold out when 50 percent of the country says that they’re doing everything possible to avoid COVID-19. Why is there even a single Democrat on a by-definition-optional leisure flight?

Readers:

  1. We are informed by #Science that vaccines don’t prevent COVID-19 from spreading (not to be confused with the #Science that informed us that vaccines do prevent COVID-19 from spreading and would “end the global pandemic”).
  2. We are informed that, therefore, even a vaccinated group of people will generate new infections
  3. We are informed that more infections leads to more mutations
  4. We are informed by #Nature that, over an 8-week period, a group of people wearing masks and interacting has at least 89 percent of the chance of becoming infected with COVID-19 compared to an unmasked group (i.e., in the long run, both the unmasked group and masked group will both get infected)

In light of the above knowledge, why wouldn’t leisure trips, which inevitably mix humans and thus generate infections/mutations, be exclusively the province of the Deplorables? Deplorability afflicts less than half of the American public, according to our popular vote. Maybe airline flights can still be full if the airlines cut service. But how can the typical hotel be more than 50 percent occupied?

For Americans who follow science, COVID-19 is a serious enough problem that schools have to be closed, 3-year-olds must be forced to wear masks, etc. But the 50+ percent of us who follow science don’t think COVID-19 is a serious enough problem to refrain from crowding into a 100-percent-full flight to Mexico, crowding into airport lines on both ends, and crowding into a hotel restaurant for 7 nights?

[What happened with the coffee invitation? I scolded the reader for not following Fauci and reminded him/her/zir/them (the reader identified as a “man” the last time that we were together, but I don’t want to assume non-fluidity of gender ID) that every meeting between humans is another chance for SARS-CoV-2 to infect and mutate.]

“I’m vaccinated, boosted and have no health problems. I’m traveling for the holidays” (CNN, 12/21, by Jill Filipovic):

Now that vaccines are widely available in the United States, it’s especially frustrating that we are still held hostage to a pandemic fueled by the people who refuse to get vaccinated and by the policy choices of wealthy nations not to treat this pandemic like a global pandemic and vaccinate the world.

Like millions of people the world over, I’m taking a hard look at my own risk (including the risk I pose to others) and making careful choices about how and when to grab back some aspects of pre-Covid-19 life. Travel is often necessary for my job; it’s also one of my greatest joys and a requirement to see many of my loved ones, family members and closest friends.

I masked in the airport and on the plane and have avoided indoor gatherings and unmasked indoor activities since my arrival.

The top photo in the article shows people in a jammed airport. Most of them are wearing cloth masks, which CNN’s top medical expert (“former president of Planned Parenthood”) described as “little more than facial decorations” on 12/20. On 11/4, CNN reported that the righteously vaccinated are at least half as likely to get infected, and therefore support a mutation, as the vaccinated. As of 7/3/2021, it was “Unvaccinated people are ‘variant factories,’ infectious diseases expert says” (CNN), with the article pointing out that every infection (a phenomenon that we now know is common in the vaccinated) is an opportunity for the virus to have a mutation party: “‘All it takes is one mutation in one person,’ said Dr. Philip Landrigan, a pediatrician and immunologist at Boston College.”

So… if Mx. Filipovic has been reading CNN, he/she/ze/they should know that the only way for him/her/zir/them to #StopTheSpread is to #StayHomeSaveLives. Yet he/she/ze/they is traveling for leisure, thus inevitably incurring a dramatically higher risk of infection compared to if he/she/ze/they had stayed home.

Also, in Covid news, a Trump-hating friend in NYC just canceled his family’s luxury trip to the Caribbean. He felt moderately sick and, in any case, needed a negative PCR test result to enter the wife’s chosen beachy paradise. After $10 trillion in federal spending on coronapanic combined with the wise leadership of Cuomo and his girlfriends (New York State Department of Health budget comparable to Russia’s active duty military budget), the family’s best testing option was waiting in line in the cold for 3 hours on the Upper West Side. (His test came back positive, so that’s a ton of money down the drain. I still can’t figure out why so many people are willing to incur this kind of risk on both sides of an international trip.) As with Mx. Filipovic, though, I can’t figure out why he planned this trip in the first place. If he wants to support President Biden’s #science-driven approach to ending the global pandemic, why won’t he stay home?

Related:

From this week’s trip to Tampa and back, the Florida Air Museum’s catalog of terrible engineering ideas (Lockheed XFV, XF2Y Sea Dart supersonic seaplane):

The lifeboats on American Victory serve as a reminder that not every policy that appears effective will be effective:

Massive plastic Christmas Trees Of Color in Tampa:

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Grinch Olympics

by philg

Adults used to compete in trying to give as much as possible to children, bragging about sacrifices of time, effort, and money to ensure that children had a wonderful time and a bright future.

At least in Maskachusetts, things shifted in 2020. The state was a wide-open playground for adults, with “essential” liquor and marijuana stores open to record-breaking sales and Tinder receiving record usage. The bureaucratic grinches, however, came up with almost daily schemes for taking things away from children: schools (closed for over a year in Boston), playing with friends, after-school sports, playgrounds, freedom to breathe during sports (mask requirements both indoors and out), birthday parties with more than a handful of guests (illegal home gathering), etc.

Is it fair to say that adults are still competing in the Grinch Olympics? From “As Young Kids Get Vaccines, a ‘Huge Weight’ Is Lifted for Families” (NYT, 11/25/2021):

When the pandemic came for Georgia, Lauren Rymer had to make a snap choice: her mother’s safety or what she believed was best for her young child.

She locked down her family for the better part of last year, living with her mother, Sharon Mooneyhan, who has multiple sclerosis, and protecting her by keeping her son Jack, 5, out of kindergarten to avoid routine household exposure to Covid. “I didn’t want my mom to miss out on being with her only grandchild,” Ms. Rymer said.

So school was scrapped for mushroom hunts in the forest between her work Zoom calls, Legos and an intergenerational exploration of a backyard chicken coop. The upside was that she and her mother would not have to live in fear of a life-ending snuggle at bedtime.

But grandma had multiple sclerosis and that means instant death if infected with SARS-CoV-2, right? From the National MS Society:

Current evidence shows that simply having MS does not make you more likely to develop COVID-19 or to become severely ill or die from the infection than the general population.

Every parent claims to be altruistic, which conflicts with the conclusions of labor economist Claudia Goldin in “Parental Altruism and Self-Interest: Child Labor Among Late Nineteenth-Century American Families”:

Nonaltruistic behavior by parents was pervasive. Even among families with positive assets, child labor was common…

The labor market evidence suggests that parents were willing to accept large reductions in their own wages to secure employment in areas having abundant child labor opportunities. They were implicitly willing to sell the labor services of their children very cheaply, indeed at a rate that suggest they placed very little value on the foregone schooling (and future income) of their children. … Neither did they permit children to retain their earnings for future use. The children were simply worse off…

The empirical results suggest that parents did not have strong (economic) altruistic concerns for their children. … the family provided little in the way of offsetting physical asset transfers (in the form of gifts and bequests) to compensate children for their lost schooling and future earnings. The increased family income was apparently absorbed in higher current family consumption.

I.e., the parents wanted money to spend on themselves. (Modern edition: family court entrepreneurs will never accept money to be placed in trust for a child’s adult use, but instead want cash that the adult plaintiff can spend right now (in West Virginia, however, child support of more than $24,000 per year per child generally will go into a trust).)

Is it fair to say that the first two years of 14 days to flatten the curve have brought out the most Grinch-like behavior among American adults for at least the past 100 years?

Separately, Merry Christmas! Floridians go all-out decorating with winter-themed China-made outdoor items. Icicles, North Pole signs, snowflakes, snowmen, etc. are all on display as one walks around in shorts and a T-shirt in the 78-degree sunshine. Below is a rare example of a geographically appropriate Christmas display (the alligator), juxtaposed with what is typical (note You Know Who in the background behind the polar bear).

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Update on my friend with COVID-19

by philg

Today is the day that my friend, who woke up with a fever on Thursday, December 16, would have been tested for COVID-19 had he been willing to drive to Lynn (about a one-hour round trip).

Here’s a screen shot from last week when I logged into the Project Beacon site to see what was available at what is advertised as the highest capacity testing facility in Massachusetts (state-funded and organized by the best and brightest):

Results aren’t ready for 1-2 days, which means if he’d gotten his test today at 2:10 pm, he would have gone a full week from having symptoms to getting a test result.

(The beauty of Massachusetts is that people can go from spending hours in line at the Registry of Motor Vehicles to days waiting for an appointment at the government-organized COVID-19 testing facility and conclude “Our lives would be much better off if the size and role of government were expanded.”)

How’s the impatient patient doing? (instead of waiting for what would have been his test appointment today, he drove one hour round trip and to the closest CVS that had an at-home test kit in stock; he got a positive result the evening of 12/16)

From a previous post:

  • Day 1 of COVID for my friend: fever of 102 (chronicled in Why is it still almost impossible to schedule a COVID-19 test? (at least in Maskachusetts) Note that he had been feeling less than 100% for a few days prior, so this technically could have been considered Day 3)
  • Day 1, evening: temperature down to 100. [discussion about Regeneron]
  • Day 2, morning: Right now about 100F in each ear. Throat doesn’t hurt as much, coughing subsided. Although now that i wrote that it subsided i needed to cough. I can feel the vaccine working.
  • Day 2, afternoon: Gone. It was pretty much gone this morning.

To this we can add the following:

  • Day 3, morning: I am perfectly fine – just some snot in the nose. No temperature.
  • Me: Denial is one of the classic symptoms of Long COVID
  • Day 4, morning: A little congestion in the nose. Temperature completely normal: 98.4 in both ears.
  • Through today: still some lingering congestion, thus proving my Long Covid theory

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Vaccine papers checks in the Cradle of Liberty

by philg

From “MAYOR WALSH SIGNS EXECUTIVE ORDER ESTABLISHING GENDER NEUTRAL RESTROOMS IN CITY HALL” (boston.gov, 2016):

“Boston is well known as ‘The Cradle of Liberty,’ and for nearly 400 years Boston has led the way in providing equal human rights for all of its citizens. Over 5 years ago, on May 5, 2010, The Boston City Council passed a Unanimous Resolution In Support of An Act Relative to Gender-Based Discrimination and Hate Crimes (S. 1687/H.1728). Because the Massachusetts Legislature has still not passed this important Human Rights Bill, Boston Mayor Marty Walsh is today taking a very courageous and important action by making two restrooms in Boston City Hall Transgender Inclusive. …

Starting January 15, the vaccinated will be more equal than the unvaccinated in the cradle of liberty. From state-sponsored media (NPR/WGBH):

Boston mayor Michelle Wu announced Monday that the city will require proof of vaccination for indoor recreational activities and will tighten the vaccine mandate for city workers.

The moves are intended to tamp down the city’s winter surge of COVID-19 cases and the threat of the emerging omicron variant.

Beginning Jan. 15, people aged 12 and up looking to patronize venues like gyms, restaurants and museums will have to present proof of at least one vaccination dose for access. The following month, everyone aged 12 and up will need to present proof of vaccination through an app, a CDC vaccination card, or photo of a vaccination card, or other official immunization record.

Children ages 5-11 will be phased into the new requirements on a slightly extended schedule and won’t have to provide proof of first vaccination doses until March 1. Then, beginning in May, children will need to show proof of full vaccination.

“This is a response that is rooted in science and public health and we need to take every available action to protect our city’s residents, businesses and institutions,” Wu said of the testing elimination.

Where did the scientist learn #Science? According to Wikipedia, while majoring in economics as an undergrad. Where did the public health expert learn medicine? At law school. What about the paranoid conspiracy theories of the Deplorables that a cabal of elites are controlling every aspect of American life? Mx. Wu attended Harvard University for both bachelor’s and law school.

What does the manufacturer of the drug that will be required for children to leave the house say about this medicine? The label: “this unapproved product… which is not an FDA-approved vaccine.”

With 95 percent of subjects, age 12 and up, having received at least one shot, is SARS-CoV-2 giving up on life in the Cradle of Liberty? NYT:

Related:

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