In The Shadow Of Mt Hollywood

I posted yesteday about the imprecise language Drs Fauci and Walensky use in discussing COVID. In one sentence on last Sunday's talks, Dr Fauci used "infected" with two different meanings. Infected-a meant only that antibodies were detected in tests irrespective of symptoms. Infected-b meant someone "had" COVID, i.e., symptoms, like someone "has" cancer or the flu. This has been a basic problem with how COVID has been discussed from the start, and it's led to the widespread fear that a positive test is a death sentence. So this leads to another question that nobody really answers: what's the likelihood that someone who tests positive will develop symptoms at all? As of July 2020, this site published an official CDC estimate : Asymptomatic coronavirus carriers, or those who do not experience any symptoms, unknowingly contribute to the spread of COVID-19, infectious disease experts say. Now the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Pre...

I once had a friend who started out in blue-collar work at the phone company. His superiors saw that he had a lot of promise, and they sent him to courses to prepare him for supervisory and management jobs. Among them were courses in speaking and writing. I never thought he had problems with communication skills, but at minumum, it showed how important at least some corporations thought they were -- indeed, they'll likely now pay lip service to diversity and inclusion, but they'll still want people who can communicate effectively. The need for those leadership skills doesn't go away. So it's all the more intriguing that our public health authorities in the midst of a pandemic express themselves so poorly. Let's take Dr Fauci's appearance yesterday on Meet the Press . He answers a question from Chuck Todd with a remarkable tautology: CHUCK TODD: . . . How dangerous is this Delta variant for the vaccinated and the unvaccinated? DR. ANTHONY F...

This is part of what Jen Psaki said in a press briefing on Friday. A more complete account had this : "We are not going back. We are not turning back the clock," Press Secretary Jen Psaki told reporters. "This is not March 2020 or even January 2021," she added. "We're not going to lock down our economy or our schools because our country's in a much stronger place than when we took office." But the account continues with a more realistic caveat: The promise came as some teachers unions aligned with the Democratic Party call for the school year to begin with virtual classes, not in-classroom learning. Just this past week, of course, the administration reversed itself on the COVID eviction moratorium, so there's no assurance that any equivalent promise from Ms Psaki will have weight. The issue pretty clearly hinges on who's able to reach the senile regent and bamboozle or bully him into whatever policy they want. Meanwhile. the ...

The phenomenon of Drs Fauci and Walensky, with the surrounding cast of characters like Drs Baric, Collins, and Daszak. has fascinated me from the start. They're clearly members of the credentialed elite, unelected and unaccountable, in many ways impervious to the sorts of scrutiny to which even powerful politicians are subject. In the past two weeks, Dr Walensky has had editorial calls for her removal amid clear indications of public incompetence, but this is unlikely. It brings me back to Ferdinand Lundberg and the sense that such decisions are made by people largely unknown to us and well above our pay grade. If they're actually lizard-like humanoids, well, maybe so for all we know. (I realized the other day that the lizards in our back yard only speak Spanish, the way police dogs only understand German. I'm studying Spanish so I can talk to them.) In the last several weeks, I've run into two articles about Dr Walensky that nobody else seems to have noticed. Th...

California Gov Newsom is the second nationally prominent Democrat governor in danger of removal from office. His current predicament is an illustration of how the political environment is shifting. Last spring, the movement to recall Newsom looked like a long shot, although the signatures on the recall petition far exceeded the required minimum. The mid-July entry of Larry Elder, best known as a second-string Salem Radio talk show host with no electoral experience, immediately transformed the race. A July 23 poll, taken shortly after Elder won a court case to put him on the ballot, had 43% of likely voters in favor of recall . An August 3 poll put the number at 46% . By August 5, the number in favor of removal had risen to 51% , with only 40% in favor of retaining Newsom. Elder's entry into the race clearly focused public interest. But an August 4 debate among four Republican recall candidates, sponsored by behind-the-curve Salem Radio and moderated by NeverTrump Salem hos...

The current predicament for New York Gov Andrew Cuomo represents a remarkable reversal. As of late 2020, Cuomo was promoted, according to The New Republic , as “America’s governor,” a competent executive who had steered his state through a crisis and who, potentially, could be a Democratic presidential frontrunner in 2024 or 2028. In November, he received an Emmy : "The Governor's 111 daily briefings worked so well because he effectively created television shows, with characters, plot lines, and stories of success and failure," the academy's president and CEO, Bruce Paisner, explained in a statement announcing the decision. "People around the world tuned in to find out what was going on, and New York tough became a symbol of the determination to fight back." Although the nursing home COVID scandal was a slight impediment, it's had notiong like the impact of the current sexual harassment scandal that could potentially bring him down. As I've p...

So OK, Fr Hunwicke is canonically, and certainly represents himself as, a priest of the Roman Catholic Church. But leaving aside his near-exclusive focus on pre-Conciliar liturgy, let's look at a Church teaching he so far hasn't disputed, the Fruits of the Holy Spirit. Now, I'm a Catholic convert, but then, so is he. As far as I can tell, this is the Catholic position : In his letter to the Galatians, St. Paul lists the nine fruits of the Holy Spirit: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control (Gal 5:22-23). These fruits emanate or proceed from the Holy Spirit and reveal what the Holy Spirit is like. . . . The grace and power of the Holy Spirit give increase to these fruits. A confirmed person cooperates with this grace, and with growth in holiness, these fruits expand and intensify. We wpuld expect a Catholic priest to teach and even model these virtues. And this goes all the way back to St Paul, nothing novus ordo ab...