There's No Exit Plan, And It's Probably By Design

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 masks, no distance, just old-time public decorum. By contrast, at the US national level, brows are furrowing over the need for vaccine passports:

Millions of people are being vaccinated against the coronavirus every day. While that’s undoubtedly good news, this growing share of the population with COVID-19 immunity creates a conundrum for decision makers as they plan a gradual reopening of the country. On one hand, there are costs to asking vaccinated people to endure the isolation of lockdowns when they face little risk from the virus. On the other, lifting restrictions to accommodate them would put unvaccinated people in danger.

Wait a moment. This whole "conundrum" assumes a static situation where uniform lockdown controls are in place. In reality, even in the strictest places like California, people can have a beer, if only outdoors and if only with the number of seats in the bar reduced. Next month, it'll be indoors, and that's for everyone, not just the vaccinated. If the trend continues, as it almost certainly will, more and more people will be vaccinated, the statistics will keep improving, risks for everyone will be reduced (as they're reducng now), and the crisis will be effectively over long before the bureaucrats develop their passport policy and distribute said passports. I used to get in trouble as an undergraduate for asking questions like this in class.

Any attempt to "solve" a passport "problem" will just creaate a new problem and extend the existing one, which is probably what the lizard people who run the planet want.

I'm waiting to see this discussion enter the national debate, but I guess I shouldn't hold my breath. But somebody needs to start asking, for instance, why the statistics are the same for states like Texas and Florida who've said "we're done", vis-a-vis the states that are taking months and months to distinguish relaxation for tasting rooms that don't serve food vs tasting rooms that do, and whether passport holders should get better treatment in them than others.

I think things are moving way too fast for the COVID policymakers.

Overtaken By Events?

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 tier designations are intricate. For reasons not explained, LA County had to remain below target numbers for only two weeks to move from the most restrictive purple tier to the less restrictive red tier, where it sits now -- except that its numbers have been improving so rapidly that it's eligible for the yet less restrictive orange tier, or would be, except it now needs to wait three weeks to get there, not two.

I got a haircut last week. The barber shops reopened in February, when Newsom relaxed the holiday lockdown. The rules for a haircut are super-intricate. Mask. Procedure for moving elastic ear bands while cutting around ears. Only one customer per chair in the room, no waiting inside. Chair elaborately sanitized between uses. Customer temperature taken at the door. I asked the barber if there was any relaxation between life in the purple tier and life in the red tier. He said no, and probably not in the orange tier, either. But he was careful in his responses not to imply there was anything unnecessary about anything. You can figure out why.

I checked. LA County, although it currently qualifies for the orange tier, must still wait until next month for it to take effect. Here in part is what a "looser" tier still involves:

• Gatherings: Indoor gatherings strongly discouraged, allowed with modifications. No more than three households.
• Limited services: Open with modifications. [I don't know what these are.]
• Outdoor playgrounds and outdoor recreational facilities: Open with modifications.
• Hair salons and barbershops: Open indoors with modifications. [My barber is probably right, no change.]
• All retail: Open indoors with modifications.
• Shopping centers: Closed common areas. Reduced capacity food court.
• Personal care services: Open indoors with modifications.
• Museums, zoos and aquariums: Open indoors with modifications. Indoor activities max 50% capacity.
• Places of worship: Open indoors with modifications. Max 50% capacity.
• Movie theaters: Open indoors with modifications. Max 50% capacity or 200 people, whichever is fewer.
• Hotels and lodging: Open with modifications. Fitness centers can open with 25% capacity.
• Gyms and fitness centers: Open indoors with modifications. Max 25% capacity. This includes climbing walls and indoor pools.
• Restaurants: Open indoors with modifications. Max 50% capacity or 200 people, whichever is fewer.

So the differences in the various "tiers" are largely semantic, but the problem now becomes that whatever the differences, they'll be changing each month. The list above is just a summary -- the protocols for each type of activity are actually thousands of words. And it's still red light-green light. There's a yellow tier after the orange, and it still has lots of detailed controls. So far in California, there's no procedure for taking any county enterely out of the COVID tiers. Any total relaxation will still be off in the indefinite future, with no published plan for how this will take place,

Some states have actually just done away with this, or have effectively begun to bypass it. The effect of vaccinations, combined with herd immunity that the experts have pooh-poohed but seems likely to happen, will likely overtake blue-state lockdown schemes much more quickly than anyone has anticipated. In every case, these controls have been imposed by governors' executive orders. This incudes California. Newsom, facing a recall, needs to sit down with his handlers and figure out how to back himself out of this situation

The question continues to be why, with such huge disparities now among US states in restrictions vs an overall improving statistical outcome, any state maintains restrictions when states like Texas continue to improve without them.

Minnesota Ends Church Capacity Restrictions -- But Maintains The Six Foot Rule

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 church attendance are never constitutionally okay," he added. "Governor Walz’s requirements on churches even included criminal penalties for noncompliance with his dictates. What? Were Minnesota courts going to put all the pastors in jail for church attendance during a pandemic?"

Two things strike me about this. The first, and the best news, is that in the US, the system has been working, however slowly, to maintain natural rights protections provided in the Constitution. Governors like Walz, Newsom, and Cuomo who attempt to violate these natural rights are clearly subject to both political and legal remedies. The result has been that in the US, there have been almost no large-scale anti-lockdown demonstrations,, which have become increasingly common in Canada, the UK, and Europe, and absent a vigorous tradition of insistence on natural rights, have been pretty much feckless in those places.

The other thing that strikes me, though, is how pusillanimous the response of the US authorities has been to each reestablishment of natural-rights protection. Minnesota drops any capacity limitations on churches, but it insists on keeping social distancing requirements, no matter the shaky basis on which these have been imposed, and no matter the bleak outlook for their continuance.

A quick web serch shows that safety-sign vendors have many products available now to warn churchgoers of the need to observe the distances. These are, of course, products offered for sale by businesses, and the churches are free to buy them or not. But I assume that if those who sold them thought there wasn't a market, they wouldn't sell these things. Their tone is remarkably forbidding and stentorian. Somebody thinks it's a good idea to frighten churchgoers into martial law style regimentation. Surely someone can come up with a more welcoming, less reproving sign.

I note, in fact, that public health authorities have been very reluctant to surrender any tiny part of their emergency powers. The remarkably rapid improvement of COVID numbers in Los Angeles somehow does not make the health director happy, and relaxations of the regime are micromanaged in incredible detail:

The seven-day average number of daily cases by episode date continues to decrease, and as of March 14 is under 500 new cases per day. . . . While the majority of the L.A. County population has not yet been vaccinated, the increasing rate of vaccination likely is beginning to reduce transmission.

. . . Public Health made additional modifications to the Health Officer Order. The revised Order was issued on March 19, and took effect on March 20, with the following changes:

• Breweries, Wineries and Craft Distilleries that do not provide a meal may open for outdoor service only with certain restrictions, including:

  • All guests must have reservations;

  • Guests are limited to a 90-minute time limit for their visit;

  • Guests must be seated at tables before they place their order, and are not permitted to stand or congregate with others;

  • And hours are limited with service for on-site consumption closing by 8:00 pm.

It doesn't end there, the regulations go on and on -- in a situation where the news is steadily improving and the need for such a regime is steadily disappearing. In California, the decline in COVID numbers is resulting in counties entering looser and looser restriction tiers in a matter of weeks for each phase -- with the result that these ridiculously detailed circumscriptions will likely be moot in a few weeks time.

Still the the bureaucrats push on. But every sign is that we're entering the "morning after" phase of a moral panic. Let's pray for the time to arrive when all these artifacts are simply a historical curiosity.

Dr Fauci Mansplains

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 told that six feet is what "the science" says we need to maintain. It is simply no surprise any more to see public sidewalks, at least in California, with six-foot calibrations painted on them. Stores, banks, vending machines, supermarkets, and now vaccination clinics, all have variations on footprints, figures with arrows, and so forth painted on the floor reminding people to maintain six feet of social distance. It will be years before these wear away.

The CDC "experts" cited in the link above came up with this. Since last spring, there's been a concursus bonorum that we need to maintain six feet of social distance and wear masks -- indeed, better two masks at once. All of a sudden, the "experts" (their word, not mine) conducted a study, and "under certain circumstances', three feet is OK. But if you think about it, unless you're on a crowded subway or something, three feet is just comfortable distance any time, pandemic or no.

It's called "personal space", and if someone gets closer, they have to have a reason to invade it. At least, back in the day. So basically, after a year of crazy, some experts actually conducted a study that said if people observe ordinary public decorum, rather than arbitrarily doubling comfortable social distance, that's just as good in stopping the spread.

In other words, Dr Fauci just said, taking many, many extra words to say it, that someone finally did "the science" and discovered six feet of social distance wasn't needed. "Under certain circumstances". Baloney.

I'm not the only one to see this. According to this story, former FDA Commissioner Dr. Scott Gottlieb said on CNN Friday,

This six-foot distancing requirement has probably been the single costliest mitigation tactic that we've employed in response to COVID... and it really wasn't based on clear science... we should have readjucated this much earlier.

All those sidewalk calibrations and floor stickers? Never mind.

But notice that Dr Fauci is warning us not to go overboard. The CDC will be reevaluating all this, but they've got to chew every bite 29 times before they swallow. When will they finish their tests?

Soon.

More COVID Conundrums

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 severity of lockdowns and prevalence of COVID infections, with the least restrictive regimes showing a decline in cases just as much as the most restrictive, like California.

Meanwhile, a Canadian visitor informs me that all worship services of any size in British Columbia have been completely banned, indoor or outdoor, since November. Religious services have been limited to ten attendees in Ontario’s “grey” zones, of which Toronto remains one, but recent lobbying efforts spearheaded by the Cardinal Archbishop of Toronto have led to the regulations being changed to allow 15% of venue’s capacity to attend a religious service.

In the US, while it took the Supreme Court to do this, indoor worship services are allowed up to 25% building capacity in areas where they were previously forbidden -- but other states now impose no restrictions at all. Notwithstandng, US cases are declining everywhere.

Also in the US, as far as I can tell, there's little public resistance to vaccines. In Europe, a substantial component of anti-lockdown protests is also anti-vax. The attitude in LA is basically gimme the darn shot, let's get on with things! The Archdiocese of Los Angeles announced that the vaccine is moral and Catholics should get it. While some groups, including African-Americans, seem reluctant to get vaccinated, this may derive from historical suspicion of medical experiments conducted on minorities -- but there is very little public resistance.

The big puzzle continues to be why COVID measures have become so disparate worldwide and in the US, but it appears that even the strictest US regimes are less severe than those in many other countries, while statistics in the US continue to improve. So far, there's been little apparent interest in studies that might examine this -- probably because the medical and philanthropic establishment that funds such studies would not like the potential result.

It suggests to me that, even as COVID restrictions have infringed unnecessarily on natural rights, constitutional protections, and the threat of retaliation at the ballot box, have continued to be more effective in the US than elsewhere.

Kinsman's Resignation As Bishop

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 resignation, dated July 1, 1919, to the presiding bishop. This was published as a brief pamphlet in the UK in 1929 as The Failure of Anglicanism and is available on line here. In general, he summarizes positions in the 1919 letter that in later years he explains in much greater detail in Salve Mater and Reveries of a Hermit.

To the Right Reverend Daniel Sylvester Tuttle, D.D., D.C.L., LL.D., Presiding Bishop of the Protestant Episcopal Church.:

MY DEAR PRESIDING BISHOP

I hereby present through you to the House of Bishops the resignation of my jurisdiction as Bishop of the Diocese of Delaware.

RESIGNATION OF OFFICE

1 take this step with utmost regret, both as relinquishing a post assigned me by the Church to which 1 owe the greatest blessings of my life, and as sever ing my connection with the State of Delaware and its warm-hearted people, for whom during eleven years I have come to have an ever- deepening affection. The only post I could wish for myself is that of Bishop of Delaware. I resign it because I can no longer hold any post of authority in the Protestant Episcopal Church. Fuller experience which has come to me as Bishop and more thorough study of the history of our communion have forced me to abandon the interpretation of the Church's position which I held at the time of my consecration ; and 1 can adopt no other which would warrant mv continuance in office.

. . . The view of the Church's position which I have held, certainly the prevailing view in the House of . Bishops, is simply that the Episcopal Church, strong in its " appeal to antiquity," stands firmly for the doctrine of the Incarnation as contained in the Scriptures and the Creeds, and, by emphasis on its sacramental character, perpetuates the life of the Catholic Church. But I have ceased to believe and here I part company with the Bishops, and contradict my convictions and teaching in past years -that the actual facts bear out this contention. In spite of the greatest unwillingness, I have come to feel that the interpretation of the Anglican position which connects it chiefly with the Protestant Reformation is the one more consistent with its history viewed as a whole ; and that its dominant tendencies are increasingly identified with those currents of thought and development which are making away from the definiteness of the ancient Faith towards Unitarian vagueness. This would seem to me to be due not merely to local or temporary conditions but to certain informing principles always more or less apparent in Anglican history. To preserve balance and proportion of the truth, the Episcopal Churches have aimed at comprehension by compromise. I have come to believe that this habit of compromise involves increasing surrenders of truth, in spite of religious revivals aiming at stronger insistence on the ancient Faith.

But Kinsman also remarks in Reveries of a Hermit that he found his life as a bishop "wearing", and other remarks in Salve Mater suggest to me that a feature of the job he disliked was the need to reconcile the permanent divisions within Anglicanism as they manifested themselves in his diocese. The need to surrender truth to compromise, something I began to perceive as soon as I was confirmed as an Episcopalian, must have been an ever-increasing irritation. Certainly his writing after his retirement suggests he was happiest as a scholar of Church history and quite content to spend the rest of his life in seclusion.

Revisiting Cuomo's Difficulties

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 schedule for YouTube. He would not have the time to organize, write, and polish a written column.

But earlier this week, Barnes put out the best theory I've heard on Cuomo's sudden fall from grace -- he thinks both the Newsom recall effort in California and the get-Cuomo movement in New York are spnsored by the same person, Vice President Harris, who wants to knock out potential competition for a 2024 election (or possible re-election) run. This would explan why so many Democrats are on board with the Cuomo part. Barnes says Harris was the deep state's favored candidate in early 2020, but when her campaign quickly lost momentum, Plan B emerged to place her as Vice President, with Biden resigning to elevate her when convenient.

Barnes gives no particular source for these assertions, but they do dovetail with other popular assumptions, certainly including that Biden will need to withdraw sooner than later, and that Harris is already performing functions like head-of-state calls behind the scenes. But recent polling indicates that the New York electorate is not on board with get-Cuomo: the media has so far failed to make the full MeToo stick.

However, I think Barnes errs in effectively equating the Newsom recall movement with the Cuomo MeToo. Newsom himself is largely correct in saying that the recall movement is Trumpian, but it isn't just a creature of QAnon cultists and rabid right wingers. It began as grassroots, but it's received financial support from the natioinal Republican Party. It is, in fact, part of a strategy by Reps McCarthy and Nunes to rebuild the California Republican Party, which was destroyed by Arnold Schwarzenegger, a Hollywood media figure and a Kennedy by marriage who become Republican out of pure opportunism in the 2003 recall of Gray Davis.

Whatever the outcome of the Recall Newsom campaign in a fall 2021 election, it will force the Democrats to spend heavily, while it will build enthusiasm among Republicans while generating mailing and donor lists for 2022 and 2024. It will also be a testbed for new electoral strategies endorsed by McCarthy and Nunes aiming to beat the Democrats at their own game with techniques like ballot harvesting and running attractive minority candidates. This is simply not the same thing as the intramural effort to knock out Cuomo as a potential threat to Harris, which is only a short-range intramural strategy.