In The Shadow Of Mt Hollywood

The chart above shows the trend in COVID "cases" for California since the start of the pandemic. As I noted yesterday, the authorities' response to this remarkable reversal of the disease has been extremely timid and bureaucratic, with counties moving very slowly from "tier" to "tier", each move giving very minimal relaxation: this month indoor dining at 25% capacity, masks, and social distance; next month (maybe) 50%, masks, and social distance. The most the state plan envisions for many sectors, including restaurants and churches, is under the "yellow" tier at 50% capacity, masks, and social distance. There's no threshold in the plan for ever leaving yellow. I guess we'll just have to be grateful for the 50% they'll let us have. By comparison, here's the same data over the same period for Texas. Although the trend in California is even more favorable than Texas, Texas is the one to say "we're done". No mas...

Above is the PSA that's still being put out on Facebook this morning by the US Department of Health and Human Services. It may as well be from a year ago -- the message hasn't changed. But in the last couple of months, the big issue for COVID has been vaccines, and the suggestion, which I quoted yesterday from the LA County health department, is that with only 10% of the population vaccinated, the statistics are plummeting. The health department in its latet update says this: Today, the State released updated numbers; L.A. County's adjusted case rate dropped from 4.1 new cases per 100,000 people to 3.7 new cases per 100,000 people. The test positivity rate dropped from 2.0% to 1.8%. If the County continues to maintain current levels or declines in the case rate and test positivity rate, it is possible in early April for the County to move into the orange tier. The County needs to remain in the red tier for three weeks prior to be assigned to the orange tier. These t...

On the heels of Dr Fauci telegraphing that the CDC may soon revise its guidelines over social distancing comes news that Minnesota has dropped all capacity restrictions for houses of worship, while maintaining that same social distancing requirement. As one headline put it, "Dominoes are falling." "The dominoes are falling in favor of abolishing the states’ limitations on church attendance," Thomas More Society Special Counsel Erick Kaardal said in a statement. "Minnesota has abolished its church attendance limitations. Next, our plan is to similarly abolish all the other states’ remaining limitations on church attendance, which have been occurring nationwide." The Thomas More Society was involved in a lawsuit that challenged coronavirus-related restrictions on religious services in Minnesota. The state relented last week, ending capacity restrictions while maintaining social distancing requirements. . . . "State-imposed limits on chur...

A story over the weekend gave an insight into how Dr Fauci's mind works (as a guy I once knew would say, "But who would want to have that?"): Anthony Fauci, a world-respected figure during the coronavirus crisis, said experts at the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) were examining a Massachusetts study that found "no substantial difference" in COVID cases in schools observing six-foot and three-foot rules. Asked on CNN's "State of the Union" show whether that meant that a three-foot separation was sufficient, Fauci replied, "It does, indeed." "The CDC is very well aware that data are accumulating making it look more like three feet are OK under certain circumstances," Fauci added. While cautioning that the CDC was still weighing the data and conducting its own tests, he said its findings would come "soon." o be six feet of distance in the first place? But wait a moment. For the past year, we've been tol...

I see in this morning's news that yesterday there were protests across Europe and the UK against continued COVID lockdowns. A quick review of the situation indicates that, at least in the UK and Germany, some restrictions were briefly relaxed, but severe lockdowns have been reimposed in the UK, with the threat of the same in Germany. It's easy to be lulled by conditions in the US, where states like Texas, Florida, and Arizona have relaxed most or all restrictions, including mask requirements, while even in California, which has consistently been the strictest in the US, the lockdowns have eased, with indoor dining now resuming at 25% capacity in places like Los Angeles. On March 2, Texas lifted all COVID restrictions. More than two weeks later, cases there continue to decline, although the COVID moral entrepreneurs across the country insisted at the time that this was "reckless". US data continues to indicate that there is little correlation between sever...

A visitor found this brief note in the New York Times from May 1919 referring to news that was apparently generally known at the Episcopal Church annual meeting that Kinsman was planning to retire. (He was 50.) The most visible reason he gave for his wish to retire at that time was that he seemed unhappy with his role as bishop, but he also noted that there were "deeper reasons". It also appears that his father's health, which we may speculate based on remarks in Reveries of a Hermit must have been paralysis following a fairly recent stroke, was a secondary factor. I have a sense that oral history of how this event played out in the Episcopal Church at the time has been passed down, and I would be most interested to hear of any such accounts. The report suggests much of this was fairly well known and understood by Kinsman's colleagues at the time. However, Kinsman seems to have kept his main motivation for resigning confidential until his formal letter of resignati...

A few weeks ago I asked why Andrew Cuomo, of sll people, had suddenly fallen from grace amid MeToo allegations, most of them old and trivial, to the point that many New York Democrats have called for his resignation. That he ordered nursing homes to tale COVID patients. thereby spreading the disease among the most vulnerable, has been a distant also-ran in the case against him. But even there, similar allegations against Gov Whitmer of Michigan have gained little traction, much less than those against Cuomo. Why are the Democrats, enabled by media hysteria, eating their own? I've said here that Robert Barnes is among the most insightful commentators we now have. His difficulty is that he talks in two-hour YouTube interviews with several interlocutors, and the discussions are rambling and desultory, with no transcripts. I hope something can be done about this. The problem is that Barnes is a busy attorney, and I don't understand how he even takes so many hours out of his sched...