In The Shadow Of Mt Hollywood

Following California's declaration of a public health emergency for monkeypox yesterday, Los Angeles County, not to be outdone, declared a monkeypox emergency of its own . L.A. County Board of Supervisors Chair Holly J. Mitchell introduced a proclamation declaring a local emergency over the rising cases of monkeypox. The action, which the board unanimously ratified, is an effort to bolster the county’s response to the outbreak. The day before, California declared a state of emergency because of the virus. . . . Monkeypox cases in L.A. County rose to 423 on Tuesday, up more than 80% from a week prior, according to the county health department’s count of confirmed and probable cases. The majority of cases have been confirmed in men who identify as part of the LGBTQ community, county data show. This comes only days after the county backed down on its threat to reimpose indoor COVID masking, which considering the county's standing as one of the most lockdown-friendly jurisd...

Yesterday, I ran into an unintentionally revealing quote from Dr Scott Gottlieb , former commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration and regular COVID talking head: “Now if monkeypox ‌gains a permanent foothold in the U‌nited States and becomes an endemic virus that joins our circulating repertoire of pathogens, it will be one of the worst public health failures in modern times not only because of the pain and peril of the disease but also because it was so avoidable,” Gottlieb wrote in a recent opinion-editorial for the New York Times. “Our lapses extend beyond political decision making to the agencies tasked with protecting us from these threats.” Gottlieb, who now serves on Pfizer’s Board of Directors and is a partner at the venture capital firm New Enterprise Associates, also judged that the U.S. government’s missteps in tackling monkeypox are similar to its failures to combat the coronavirus. “Our country’s response to monkeypox ‌‌has been plagued by the same shortcomin...

On Saturday, I asked in part whether elite environmental policies, which call for systematic reduction of agriculture due to climate change, will be applied to Ukraine once the current war is settled. In that case, Ukraine will have a dilemma. Historically it's faced reductionist threats from both east and west; Putin's current goal is to eliminate Ukraine as a national entity and, as a practial matter, to exterminate some proportion of its population. This is no different from Stalin's and Hitler's agendas. Will the agenda of the elitist West be little different, just driven in the name of environmentalism instead of nationalism? Another question in a different part of the world suggests elite agendas are running up against legitimate national interests elsewhere. A trend that's been taking place since the 1990s has been the corporate integration of the Canadian, US, and Mexican rail network, which has been to the most direct advantage of Mexico and its poorer ar...

I came up with that a few days ago, but little did I realize how quickly events would reinforce the perception : President Joe Biden announced Saturday that he would return to isolation after testing positive again for coronavirus. “Folks, today I tested positive for COVID again,” Biden wrote on social media Saturday afternoon. . . . The president’s physician, Dr. Kevin O’Connor, said in a letter to the public the reoccurrence of the virus was “rebound COVID,” something that takes place with some patients treated with PAXLOVID. Think about the manifold ramifications that emanate from this succinct announcement. First, the big guy has been fully vaxxed, and his masking, if not fully consistent, has been in general supererogatory. Second, a week ago, I quoted Dr Birx, who if not the pope of COVID is at least an influential cardinal: So that's why I'm saying even if you're vaccinated and boosted, if you're unvaccinated right now, the key is testing and Paxlovi...

A couple of stories at the aggregators this morning reminded me that they don't just want us to drive electric cars. In Scientific American , In the U.S., people eat more protein than they need to. And though it might not be bad for human health, this excess does pose a problem for the country’s waterways. The nation’s wastewater is laden with the leftovers from protein digestion: nitrogen compounds that can feed toxic algal blooms and pollute the air and drinking water. This source of nitrogen pollution even rivals that from fertilizers washed off of fields growing food crops, new research suggests. Well, they sure know about nitrogen pollution in the Netherlands and the EU, huh? Dutch government proposals for tackling nitrogen emissions indicate a radical cut in livestock - they estimate 11,200 farms will have to close and another 17,600 farmers will have to significantly reduce their livestock. Other proposals include a reduction in intensive farming and the conversio...

I remember people claiming back in the initial days of COVID lockdowns that stay-at-home orders weren't so much intended as a public health measure but were actually a dry run to see how well they'd work for climate change "emergencies". But if you think about it, climate change is simply a cat's paw for something else as well, just as COVID has been. The real question is whether, irrespective of the specific excuse, the unelected administrative state can impose supralegal measures on the population at large. After more than two years of COVID controls, the answer appears to be only so far. As I noted on Wednesday, LA County was considering reimposing an indoor mask mandate, but it appears that strong behind-the-scenes opposition has headed this off : Los Angeles County will not be reimposing an indoor mask mandate for now after COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations appear to be trending downward, and the region may soon move back into the “medium” community...

On Sunday and Monday, I posted on Pope Francis moving Opus Dei from the supervision of the Vatican Dicastery for Bishops to the Dicastery for the Clergy, with commentary from a knowledgeable reader on how this reflects on the Vatican's overall interest in accountability. One issue arising from this move is the suspicion among Catholic traditionalists that Pope Francis opposes conservative movements in the Church, although my own view as a convert to Catholicism is that if for no other reason, it would be silly to become a Catholic on one hand while on the other insisting that the pope has things all wrong. Catholics current or potential have lots of options available that don't carry that contradiction, including any number that might potentially ease their consciences by claiming to be Catholic in some way or another. In any case, another Vatican move in recent days will stir this pot again. One of my last posts on the old blog covered a notice from the Australian ordi...