So, Which Is It?

An unintended consequence of the 2020 electoral cycle is that it's put full responsibility for handling the COVID crisis in the hands of Democrats. This is another parallel I see with 1976, where Democrats took over in the face of worsening inflatoin and a fuel crisis and were incapable of handling them, which led to a Reagan landslide in 1980.

This morning's headline is that Chicago Mayor Lightfoot is "seeking to reopen Chicago’s bars and restaurants for indoor service as soon as possible". The public rationale is that alllowing indoor drinking and dining will provide a "safer outlet" for people who will otherwise, apparently, make their hookups elsewhere. I assume that's what's meant by "cut down on underground parties where attendees do not social distance or wear masks".

I suspect the real reason is that the city can't tax underground parties. I think Gov Cuomo was slightly more ingenuous when he said, “we are looking at months of shutdowns and the economic, mental and spiritual hardships they bring. We need to act now." I think it's starting to sink in that even with a Democrat congress and executive in Washington, there's no way any federal bailout can remedy the tax deficit the blue states and cities have brought on themselves.

In a move that hasn't been generally reported, Pennsylvania allowed a three=wek ban on all indoor dining to expire on January 4. This in itself is unusual, since California has simply renewed an equivalent three-week ban on even outdoor dining, with no relaxation in sight.

However, restrictions on alcohol in Pennsylvania (served only with meals, none after 11 PM, all visible drinks removed after midnight) continue. As seems to be the case with COVID curfews, this appears to be intended in practice to discourage fornication -- you'd better have your hookups arranged before 11, and you've gotta buy them dinner.

Well, as long as we get the tax money, we can still do something about the fornication as well, huh?

The problem for Mayor Lightfoot specirically is that she's up against "scientific" targets Pritzger has imposed on the state, and neither Chicago nor Cook County is anywhere near them. The targets -- under 6% testing positivity rate, for instance -- have been as a practical matter unattainable. Similar tasrgets in California have all but the most rural parts of the state locked down.

The difficulty is that all such targets are simply decrees, never passed by a legislature and never negotiated through any political process. Normally, lobbying groups for restaurants, food service unions, and others would have a chance to balance their interests against public health. This isn't happening here.

In effect, those who petition for redress must approach the emperor, or at best gain the ear of the emperor's mother, or possibly Cardinal Schmidlap. Clearly this is what's beginning to happen here, but it's all now intramural, with Trump out of the picture and Fauci ascendant. I would imagine someone is going to have to come to Fauci with an offer he can't refuse, and maybe then he'll let Cuomo reopen "safely". I assue "safely" means in a way that responsibly limits above all the opportunities for fornication among the plebs.

Good luck. I don't think this is going to work.

Global Mask Pushback?

The photo above is from a January 4 anti-mask protest at the Westfield Century City mall, where protesters caused disturbances in variouis stores at the upscale venue in the Beverly Hils-West Los Angeles area. Videos of the event went viral, although it doesn't appear that large numbers were involved. Nevertheless, just yesterday the Hollywood Reporter belatedly covered it:

Amid the last gasps and bellows of the Trump presidency, it seems no place is immune to recent spikes in outgoing MAGA madness — not even deeply blue Los Angeles County. Over the past few weeks, numerous sites across the city have been converted into ideological battlegrounds pitting maskless, Trump-supporting agitators against, well, everyone else, even as more than 7,000 people are hospitalized for COVID-19 around the L.A. area and ambulances are being told not to bring in patients unlikely to survive.

. . . But the ugliest event has to be the action that occurred at Westfield Century City on Jan. 4. As seen in videos posted to social media, a dozen or so provocateurs converged at the mall for seemingly one purpose: to openly defy and verbally ridicule the mask-wearing mandates that nearly every private business in L.A. has been following for the past several months. Participants — several of whom were wearing MAGA paraphernalia — can be seen browsing the aisles of stores as they shout down anyone who requests that they put on a mask.

I'm not sure how big this movement is. Certaiinly ordinary citizens, like it or not, wear masks as required, and generally they aren't allowed into stores or churches without them anyhow. In LA, masks are effectively universal. However, that the Hollywood Reporter should be bashing anti-maskers a week after a fairly small protest suggests the media elites are nervous. Maybe they should be. People aren't happy about moving goalposts and indefinite lockdowns, especially when civil authorities appear to be slow-walking vaccine distribution.

In the UK, HSBC Bank has threatened to close accounts of customers who refuse to wear masks in its branches.

HSBC bank has told its customers that wearing masks inside its branches is mandatory and those who refuse could see their accounts closed.

The warning comes as a further 1,234 deaths from Covid-19 were recorded in a single day.

It's notable that both the Hollywood Reporter and the UK press cover the issue of masks with hysterical references to death counts, although the question remains if masks are in fact near universal -- which in fact they are -- and lockdown rules are draconian -- we must assume that any customer in a UK HSBC branch is now there due only to direst exigency -- the death rates continue to spike.

Why hasnb't media anywhere begun to ask this question?

And why are the UK powers that be nervous enough to threaten anyone who thinks of entering premises maskless? The January 6 US Capitol riot seems to have focused the Hollywood Reporter's mind on what could happen if the political authorities don't find a better solution to the COVID crisis.

Global Hysteria Update

In another update to the story of how much worse the COVID hysteria is outside the US, the video above from Montreal YouTuber David Freiheit of the Viva Frei channel outlines arrests and fines being imposed on Quebec citizens for violating an 8 PM - 5 AM COVID curfew. What interests me is that, as in the UK, local law enforcement is doing this.

In the US, both police unions and police command structures have been near unanimous in announcing they enforce legislatively enacted statutes, not temporary executive orders or health regulations. As a result, governors have had to call on resurces under their direct control, such as state highway patrols, and health departments have had to rely on food inspectors, to do enforcement of COVID orders, which limits their reach.

The next question is one that I don't see asked seriouisly very often. which is what effect a curfew is intended to have on the pandemic. The germs presumably spread 24/7, and people are less active at night anyhow, since they aren't racoons. The speculation I see is that it's meant to limit people going to bars. If so, I assume this is actually a disguised ban on fornication, which goes along with a disguised implicit ban on most liturgy in churches, which is also near universal.

Well, if you close the churches, how else can you control fornication? Seems reasonable to me.

But I'm less concerned with the "ain't it awful" part of the story than the question of why this is happening. If governments feel they have to control both liturgy and fornication, which it's hard to avoid thinking, then we're talking about a superstitious response to what's in effect an invisible crisis. And let's face it, the bogeyman isn't COVID.

The US Congress is focused on impeaching Trump after he's left office. We must assume this is a substitute for what, up to modern times, would be the headsman's block. Ths was prefigured by the Kathy Griffin meme at the tme of his election. But given its intent as cearly expressed by advocates of the move, it's meant specifically to end his public career, which strikes me as not an impeachment, which is constitutional (and would be if he were still in office), but a bill of attainder, which is not. But whatever becomes of that particular action, it's limited to the US and a particular figure, Donald Trump. But since Trump will be out of office before any impeachment move can be made to remove him, this stikes me as an action as superstitious as banning fornication or controlling liturgy.

But again, this superstitious panic is a worldwide phenomenon, and as I've covred it here, it's worse at least in Canada and the UK. It says something for US institutions that at least so far, there've been no $1500 fines for being out after 8 PM here.

What's the source of the panic? It can't be COVID, that's an invisible cover for another invisible enemy.

Cuomo: "We will have nothing left to open"?

There were lots of headlines yesterday over an Andrew Cuomo tweet, which incorporated remarks in his New York State of the State address.

Gov. Andrew Cuomo called for the economy to reopen following strict lockdowns in New York that crippled businesses.

“We simply cannot stay closed until the vaccine hits critical mass. The cost is too high. We will have nothing left to open. We must reopen the economy, but we must do it smartly and safely,” he tweeted Monday morning.

Even so, left, right, and center, these are the news writers who brought us the kraken. The report in the link above says Cuomo "laid out a plan to stop the spread of the coronavirus while addressing the financial struggles in the state". Er, where? Based on my reading, the speech was nothing but a series of bromides aiming to make the right noises, but I saw absolutely no specifics.

Remember, all the lawsuits are plaintiff v Cuomo. As is the case with nearly every lockdown in nearly every state, the instigator is the governor's emergency orders. All that's needed to end or loosen a lockdown is for the governor to rescind or modify one or another emergency order. The health officials do his bidding.

What's missing from Cuomo's announcement is any specific order to end by any specific date. Anything other than that is just making noises. Meanwhile, according to the New York Times,

Across New York State, medical providers in recent weeks had the same story: They had been forced to throw out precious vaccine doses because of difficulties finding patients who matched precisely with the state’s strict vaccination guidelines — and the steep penalties they would face had they made a mistake.

On Saturday, state health officials responded to the outcry over discarded vaccines by again abruptly loosening guidelines as coronavirus cases continued to rise.

The story suggests there's a vague sense of urgency, but even there, there's no indication that any restriction will be lifted as any vaccination program becomes effective. According to CNN, this is a national problem.

Out of the more than 22 million doses of vaccine that have been distributed to hospitals and pharmacies so far in the United States, only about 6.7 million people have received their first dose, according to data from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

There's no one reason for the slow rollout or doses going unused; experts say it was never going to be easy to begin a mass vaccination campaign during a pandemic. It takes time to vaccinate and monitor large numbers of people, and some facilities are staggering staff vaccinations to avoid having too many health care workers out at once.

The supply and demand don't always line up. Some in the highest priority groups -- health care workers and and long-term care facility residents -- don't want the vaccine, or at least, not yet. At the same time, the American Medical Association on Friday said it was "concerned" that some health care workers not employed by hospitals or health care systems face difficulties accessing the vaccine.

So naturally, the news -- left, right, and cetner -- focuses on impeachment.

Global Hysteria

Just so as not to obsess over the idea of impeaching a US president after he's left office (when it seems to me the mature adult reaction would be more or less to say "good riddance, let's go on with life"), I draw your attention to the video above frm a UK YouTuber who discusses a case of UK police who've imposed a £200 fine on two ladies who took a walk and bought coffee while socially distanced.

The exact circumstances aren't clear, largely because I can't understand the accents of those speaking on the video, but it appears that a central issue is that the ladies are allowed to leave their homes only once a day for exercise, but the police had been watching them and appear to have detected that this is the second walk they've taken today.

In the US, thank a merciful Providence, law enforcement has made it clear that it does not see this type of activity within its responsibility, and generally US civil authorities haven't specified how often we're allowed to take a walk, although Mayor Garcetti has said walks must be of an essential character.

But let's not get too comfortable. Miya Ponsetto, the SoHo Karen who hysterically accosted a black teen in a hotel lobby thinking he'd stolen her phone, was arrested and brought back to New York from California to face an assortment of charges. Accounts suggest as many as four NYPD officers were detailed to do this.

But this leaves aside that big question I'm not going to spend a whole lot of time on: even if Trump's response to the election was ultimately erratic and even delusional, why not just keep an eye on the guy, get him focused on packing to leave, and help him to the helicopter Wednesday week?

It sounds as thuogh the US congress will instead be spending some weeks or months trying to remove him from office when he'll already be gone, except that even if the House predictably votes to impeach, it seems pretty remote that the Senate would vote to remove anyhow. This goes beyond kabuki. This is hysterical psychodrama.

Aristotelians look for causes. The received wisdom about moral panics is that they result from underlying social tension. Since early 2020, hysteria has been visible -- the run on toilet paper came the first week in March, before any lockdowns were imposed. This suggests to me that people sensed something was up even before then, and there was an instinctive expectation that there would be some type of counterproductive government decree no matter what -- and they'd better be ready.

People aren't stupid. The underlying tensions were already there, and COVID just happened to come along at the right time. The deacon who gave the homily at yesterday's mass made a point I've been seeing for some time now: people thought 2020 would go away with the new year, but it hasn't. The underlying tensions are still there. You'd think, for instance, that with a COVID vaccine available, the civil authorities would be acting quickly to distribute it and plan for concurrent easing of restrictions.

No, they're slow-walking distribution and acting as though the lockdowns will just continue. Vaccine isn't the solution.

This is a global phenomenon, not limited to just the US, so Trump alone isn't the issue, and he's going away, but cearly he still needs to be exorcised. The Democrats won an election, but they're still unhappy.

Why?

More On Media, ER Use, And COVID

I had another e-mail from the visitor who commented on crowded emergency facilities a week or so ago, this time referring in particular to a CNN story that covered a hospital in Apple Valley, CA Rural hospital staff devastated by Covid-19 patients:

A couple things about this piece: Apple Valley is hardly rural; we are one of three large-sized cities in the high desert. We have three hospitals of varying sizes.

It's interesting that some people are arriving by foot -- there is a bus stop right by the ER. (Not to belittle their symptoms, but those sick must not be at death's door.)

In the "good ole days" the ER at St Mary's was overrun. I dislocated my shoulder 20+ years ago & had to wait three hours to be seen. (I speculate that is why St Mary's has instituted a new policy for pregnant women that come into the er. They are immediately whisked up to the OB ward to be seen instead of sitting amongst the er-ers. In fact, when I took a pregnant woman there last year, we passed people on gurneys in the hallways as we made our way to OB.)

It's interesting with the CRUSH of c-19, that there was time for a camera crew, interview, nurse & doc to take time to do this vignette.

Do the Nat'l Guard form up every day before heading into work? (There's a Guard unit bldg on the next block. I wonder why they don't take care of that there?)

. . . Isn't it interesting that some are calling 911 for transport to a hospital for a TEST?! UBER has got to be a cheaper alternative!

An ambulance ride costs thousands of dollars, usually not covered by medical. If you watch Live Reacue, you see that people are aware of this and choose their treatment options accordingly. Live RescLue, with three hours of real-time fire and EMT calls each week, has only very rarely covered a COVID-related call.

The only one I can think of, in Paterson, NJ, involved EMTs donning hazmat suits to enter an apartment to treat someone who was reported as having it, but the outcome was at best unclear. The chief on scene said he was proud of his unit's training in how to do this, but it's pretty much the on;y such respone the show has ever carried.

The previous e-mail from the visitor carried a report from medical relatives that people were jamming ERs due to having received only positive COVID tests. My wife sent me a press release from the LA County health departme that indirectly makes the same point:

You should seek immediate emergency medical attention if you, or a person you know, exhibits the following symptoms:

Trouble breathing

P>ersistent pain or pressure in the chest

New confusion

Inability to wake or stay awake

Bluish lips or face

If you, or a person you know develop these symptoms, go to an emergency room or call 911.

The very roundabout implication seems to be that if you don't have those symptoms, you don't need to go to the ER. This is just one example of the generally very poor public communication from the health authorities during the crisis. It's almost as though they benefit by having public misunderstanding stress the system.

The Plebs Must Be Punished

The situation is fluid, but the powers that be are effectively making sure last year's dumpster fire burns uninterrupted. As of today, Trump has 11 days left in office, and there's no indication that he'll order anyone to seize the White House to keep him inside. Yet, amid calls to invoke the 25th Amendment, there's apparently serious talk of a second impeachment. Just the process of debate on the House floor and scheduling a vote will presumably take enough time to make the whole thing moot come January 20.

This is kabuki and an apparent acknowledgement that the US Congress has nothung important to do. Pelosi's position seems to be just an extension of her tearing up of Trump's State of the Union message last winter. With close majorities in both houses following a contentious election, the majoity's position seems to be unified mostly around the position that the plebs must be punished for voting in some proportion for Trump.

This isn't leadership. There's currently a vacuum.