In The Shadow Of Mt Hollywood

The poor lady has spent her life up to now building the perfect resume to reach what must be the pinnacle of her profession -- CDC director -- only to have her arrival obscured in the blinding celebrity of Dr Fauci, an incompetent time serving bureaucrat 28 years her senior, an old white guy who can go on any Sunday talk he wants, Just the other week, he got to go on CNN with his retired sidekick Dr Birx to complain about the now-departed Trump. Dr Walensky had to watch it from home. In fact, Fauci has taken to contradicting his boss in public, while Dr Walensky doubles down on her prediction of a fourth surge: A more easily spread coronavirus variant first identified in England last year has now become the dominant strain in the U.S., the head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Wednesday. The variant, known as B.1.1.7, spread quickly across the United Kingdom and Ireland beginning last fall, with the more infectious version of the coronavirus thwarti...

I started following the Derek Chauvin trial without much interest or enthusiasm, but as I've heard from different bloggers and YouTube commentators, it's becoming clear that as details of Floyd's death in police custody come out in the courtroom environment, there's a great deal more to the story than the media presented ten months ago. And that brought to mind the recognition that last year's dumpster fire was driven both by COVID and l'affaire Floyd, and that in turn reminded me that the Floyd riots, stoked by media coverage, were an alliance of elite radicals and the Lumpenproletariat , a peculair mix. I would normally look to someone like Alan Dershowitz for commentary, but although I assume he's following the trial daily, he hasn't been commenting on it regularly. His take as of last week is below: As of then, he's mildly in favor of the defense strategy as it related to Floyd's girlfriend, who testified on Floyd's addiction, but ...

One thing I'm seeing in this phase of the pandemic is that, although California continues to have unnecessary COVID restrictions, its vaccination policy has been extremely effective. It turned the troubling late 2020 case surge completely around, to the point that LA County statistics are now equivalent to those of a year ago March, at the start of the pandemic . The changes come amid a 97% drop in the number of new coronavirus cases reported each day. The seven-day average of new cases is now slightly under 400 per day, compared to 14,200 daily new cases on Jan. 5, county public health Director Barbara Ferrer said in a news briefing. “This is similar to daily case numbers reported one year ago at the end of March, at the very beginning of the pandemic,” she said. This reflects a statewide policy of aggressively vaccinating the populations most likely to be infected, including those in long term care facilities, their staff, and zip codes with the lowest incomes. Althoug...

A week ago yesterday, Dr Rochelle Walensky, the CDC chief, made her teary prophecy of "impending doom" from a new wave of COVID. Almost on cue, as shown above, the New York statistics, which had been leading so-called national totals, peaked and appear to have resumed a decline. There's nothing new about this. The Imperial College model in March of last year predicted that, by October [2020], more than 500,000 people in Great Britain and 2 million people in the U.S. would die as a result of COVID-19. The model also predicted the United States could incur up to 1 million deaths even with “enhanced social distancing” guidelines, including “shielding the elderly.” Imperial’s modeling results influenced British Prime Minister Boris Johnson to impose a nationwide lockdown and influenced the White House as well. I don't mean to minimize the effects of the pandemic. On the other hand, at this point, we can be confident that COVID is neither the Black Deat...

I'm continuing to look at the COVID trends for individual US states, because it's plain that the claims of people like Drs Fauci and Walensky that there is a "national" surge in cases are highly misleading. Any national increase is actually driven by a minority of states whose patterns don't reflect those of most others. Michigan's case, shown above, is a good example. CNN reports Michigan reported 8,413 new Covid-19 cases on Saturday, bringing the state's total pandemic case count to 692,206, according to the state's health department. Saturday's daily case count is the highest the state has reported since December 7, when the reported case count was 9,350, state statistics show. Just eight weeks ago, state data showed the daily reported case count was as low as 563 cases. Michael Osterholm, director of the University of Minnesota Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy, said the Upper Midwest is beginning to see its fourt...

I must confess that, with a surname like Bruce, I have some Scots DNA, though it comes from a single great-grandfather who seems to have been an unpleasant guy who died young. Generally I don't take to that side of the family. But I once knew a Scots-Canadian professor who was extremely fond of a story about a Scotsman who would persuade himself to eat his oatmeal by promising himself that if he did, he could have shot of whiskey when he finished it. But once he finished the oatmeal, he'd tell himself, "Ha! I fooled ya!" He told this story so frequently, and with such loving attention to detail and accent, that I was convinced it reflected some deep part of his character, maybe Scots, maybe Canadian, maybe both. Anyhow, a Canadian visitor sent me a link to the Archdiocese of Vancouver, BC website that seems to reflect this side of what may be the Canadian character: As of March 29, all indoor worship has been suspended again. B.C. health officials...

While the Washington Examiner isn't quite legacy media, It's more Never Trump Republican, and I don't normally follow it. But yesterday I ran into a remarkably obtuse story on a supposed "new wave" of COVID by David Hogberg. Hogberg, I see, is a regular talking head and adjunct-freelance-whatever with a PhD in PoliSci. I spend about three hours a day writing and researching this blog, and I don't get paid a penny. I assume Hogberg supports himself with his variouis gigs and has convinced people he's an expert, with his PhD and all. But as a retired amateur, I'm a far better writer and researcher than Hogberg. Here's what he has to say about the current state of COVID play: The bad news is that the United States appears to be on the cusp of another wave of coronavirus infections. The good news is that hospitalizations and deaths may be much lower this time around. Daily confirmed cases had been dropping since January, when they reached a...