In The Shadow Of Mt Hollywood

Whatever the eventual outcome of Trump's legal efforts -- and they don't look good at all -- the biggest issue for most of 2020 was the most egregiouis human rights violation in recent times, the worldwide COVID lockdown, a phenomenon that's continuing to do incalculable economic, emotional, and psychological damage but has been feckless to control the disease. There's simply been no proportionate payoff to the human sacrifices that people have rendered in most countries -- the disease is if anything more prevalent now than it was in March, though it's much less fatal -- but my guess is that with the new year, the authorities, seeing no effective remedy, will simply try to reimpose exactly the same lockdowns as last spring, with the same effect. Trump, and Trumpism, were irrelevant to this problem. If Trump had been re-elected by a landslide, we'd still be facing the Cuomos, the Newsoms, the Whitmers, the Wolfs, the Boris Johnsons, the Doug Fords,with exact...

Now and then, my wife and I go up to Solvang, a Danish-themed tourist town north of Santa Barbara. It does a lot of Christmas business, while the temperate climate there has always allowed outdoor dining and beer drinking. Gov Newsom's order last weekend to shut down outdoor dining over most of the state threatened the town's existence, so its city council promptly voted to except itself from the ban and requested that local law enforcement not enforce it, which of course California sheriffs have generally announced they will not do. There's another particular twist to Solvang's situation, because Newsom added an entirely new level of regional COVID enforcement based on hospital ICU capacity, over and above an existing county-level color-coded enforcement based on COVID statistics. The problem is that Santa Barbara County, where Solvang is, has been lumped into a new Southern California region for ICU capacity. Santa Barbara, Ventura, and San Luis Obispo...

Via the New York Post , The US topped 15 million cases of COVID-19 this week, but that number is likely exponentially higher — by as much as seven times, a top Centers for Disease Control and Prevention official said Thursday. . . . “The total estimated number of infections is likely two to seven times greater than reported cases,” [CDC Suit Aron] Hall said, adding that the evidence was based on seroprevalence surveys and models. So let's take this official's highest estimate, that the number of infections is as much as seven times greater than the 15 million reported. I brought up my calculator and found that 7 times 15 million is 105,000,000, Later, the same article says there have been 289,000 deaths to date. So I divided 289,000 by 15,000,000 and got a case fatality rate of 0.0027 of 1%. If 105 million people have been infected in the CDC's worst case scenario, but only 289,000 have died, then we definitely don't have mass graves in public parks the way they sa...

Last week I covered Los Angeles Superior Court Judge James Chalfant's instruction to the Los Angeles County health department to return to his courtroom December 8 to provide actual research on the reasons to ban outdoor dining as a COVID lockdown measure. On Tuesday, this didn't go well for the county. The judge had little sympathy for the county's arguments and sided with the [plaintff, the California Restaurant Association]. At one point, Chalfant said the county's arguments about being unable to confirm a link between outdoor dining and coronavirus might have flown early in the pandemic but not anymore. "I am shocked that in nine months, [government officials] have not looked seriously at outdoor dining," Chalfant said. "I am not laying this at the county's feet but that is a failure of government." . . . Attorneys for the plaintiffs claimed the outdoor dining ban would do little or nothing to stop the rising tide of corona...

On December 2 , Joe Biden announced there may be 250,000 further deaths due to COVID between 'now and January'. Now, Joe has had a history of adding a zero here and there to his estimates, but this one was widely published without challenge, and at least 250,000 isn't 250,000,000. But is even this number remotely reasonable? It took eight months, between March and the end of October, for the US to reach a total of 250,000 COVID deaths. And keep in mind that health authorities throughout this time have repeated that COVID deaths are calculated as any death in which the decedent tested positive for COVID, whatever the underlying cause. Someone killed in a skydiving accident would be a COVID death if he tested positive. Someone who died in a hospice from terminal cancer would be a COVID death that way. On December 5, there were 2,190 COVID deaths that day in the US. which seems to be generally consistent with the totals in recent weeks. (The numbers jump around in the ...

On November 25, the US Supreme Court ordered a preliminary injunction in Roman Catholic Diocese of Brooklyn v. Cuomo , holding that New York may not enforce 10- or 25-person congregation-size limits on certain Catholic churches and Orthodox synagogues, pending further Supreme Court litigation. On December 3, the justices sent the dispute between the Harvest Rock International Ministry and California Gov. Gavin Newsom back to the 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals to further consider the case in light of its Movember 23 ruling. However, as one commentator put it , this effectively changes nothing for California churches. Vacating the district court decision leaves the Governor's order in full effect. Another two or three full months could elapse before this case gets back to the Supreme Court. Harvest Rock remains subject to the very regime they sought emergency relief on. This punt leaves the church in a very difficult place. In response, on December 3, Lawyers for a ...

Over the weekend, I found out about a fourth megachurch in Southern California that's been holding indoor services without social distance since the summer. This is Awaken Church in San Diego County . Last week, San Diego County health authorities issued advisories warning that the three campuses of the church had had a COVID "outbreak". According to the church's pastor, Jurgen Matthesius. the county was anything but transparent. According to the link, Matthesius said the advisory didn’t inform the church how many people tested positive as part of the outbreak, or even who they were. Awaken Church later found out it was just three people. Pastor Matthesius said 2,800 people call the Balboa campus “home,” and that he doesn’t know how just three people can constitute an outbreak at his church. Another version differs, but not by much: As of Thursday, the three church outbreaks constitute 65 COVID-19 cases. Whether it's three cases at one cam...