The Limits of Efficacy

Social distancing is the new term we have all learned, but sheltering in place is the activity that is having the greatest effect on society. Social distancing is a pain in the neck when you’re in line at the market. Keeping six feet between each person can make the check out line run halfway to the back of the store if we all follow the rules. But being shut in is a different story. People aren’t just isolated. Too many are now either unemployed or underemployed. Unemployment insurance and the government’s supplement won’t cover the wage gap, nor will whatever federal largess is planned keep most small businesses afloat. Somehow the Boeings and the Raytheons will do just fine. I know keeping the population sheltering in place works, but reality says that after about two months, the population is going to come out. People will be nearly broke, half crazy, and ready to riot. They will know their jobs are gone. Proprietors will know their businesses are finished. We may have rioting or at least excess crime. While that may be a good excuse for the gun control crowd to get to work, it won't be good for the country overall.

We might as well face the fact that we will have to open up the country by the beginning of June, whether it's the best thing to do or not. The people telling us otherwise are scientists with paychecks who understand the epidemiology but not the psychology. The result will be (I assume) infection spread. So, (in the words of Lenin) "what is to be done." The answer is to plan on an industrial scale to the medical fallout for the consequences. I assume this means testing nearly the entire population. It means much more, but our country is no longer the scientific giant it once was. Science means respect for facts, and a significant segment of the population no longer respects facts they don't like.

I think the alternative to my idea is widespread social unrest fueled by both being shut in and incitement by the lunatic media. Just a thought, but sometimes you have to look at more than just the science, and plan ahead for doing something that appears ill advised.

The Virus Chronicles (continued)

03 April 2020

Jared Kushner is a Fool, an Idiot, and a Buffoon

The fact that he is rich is strictly an accident of birth, and of course marriage. After weeks of rumors that son in law Jared was heading a second, off the books, secret anti COVID-19 Task Force, The Boy himself appeared on stage with the President yesterday for what I've come to think of as the Five O'clock Follies, that ever elongating press circus in which President Trump generally insists on hogging center stage as the nation's faux chief epidemiologist.

Apparently Boy Jared, having failed as Middle East Peace Maker (I'm not sure he can be faulted for that, except for having taken on the job at all) is now chief national medical logistician. He and the Vice President insisted that Boy Jared reports everything right to the Vice President, hence his mixed government/industry task force is not a parallel organization to that of the Vice's, and is definitely not a secret. How could it be — The Boy was right out in front of all those reporters.

Our new Chief National Medical Logistician had this to say to those complaining in state governments, and to the ungrateful hospital treatment centers of our country: “The notion of the federal stockpile was it’s supposed to be our stockpile,” he said, “It’s not supposed to be state stockpiles that they then use.” Apparently if the federal government happens to need a bunch of ventilators or masks, it can hop over and get 'em from the stockpile, but don't you states try to get your grubby hands on them. Order yer own! We bought these with our money. Boy Jared is unfamiliar with FDR's analogy of the garden hose from Lend Lease days. If your neighbor's house is afire, and you have a garden hose all hooked up, you don't negotiate a price on the hose, you pick it up and put out the fire, lest it spread to your house as well. Anyway, HHS had stated that the Strategic Stockpile's purpose is to supplement state and local supplies in times of emergency.

It could be that Young Jared was out getting measured for his first silver sippi-cup on the day that Sesame Street aired the sharing episode. More likely, he was just reflexively insisting on the administration's perfection. ('It was a perfect call, a perfect letter, a perfect stockpile, &c.')

In the few minutes since I began writing this very piece, and since Boy Jared's unfortunate encounter with truth, the HHS website has been magically revised to reflect the stockpile's mission as being more in conformance with Kushner's statement. It's a clear 1984-ish revision of the documentation to conform to the desired facts. Technically, this turns Jared Kushner from an idiot to a seer. Kushner also noted that states shouldn't be calling the feds for more ventilators before they need them, simply to stockpile them “just in case.” “Call when you need them,” he advised. Boy Jared may not have learnt at Famous Medical Logistician School that ventilators are a critical care item. By the time you need them, it's too late to go out and procure them. That wrinkle may not have been covered in Pandemics 101.

The Virus Chronicles (continued),

02 April 2020

Well, well, I here tell the whole US Navy fleet has been ordered to sea in an effort to avoid the plague, er, virus. It did take quite a while. Two or three days ago the USS Theodore Roosevelt, an aircraft carrier staffed with about 5500 sailors, requested a port call and near evacuation to get its Coronavirus problem under control. Apparently that captain lost it. When you're CO of such a strategic asset, you need a unique strength of psyche.

If fortune favors the brave, and innovation is critical to carrying the modern fight, our fully joint qualified warriors dithered for about three weeks too long. I can just see those heavily career conscious flag officers stealing side glances at each other, wondering who will blink first on the one good idea that should be intuitively obvious to the most casual observer — if you send sailors home every night, they are going to mix with a sick population. The yardbirds they see during the day will be an additional sick population. Going to sea is self isolation, eh? By the time ships get back to port, most of the gear will be wrung out, too, and lots of ship handling practice will have been done.

The President's acolytes spent the day praising chloroquinine, the big idea he got from somewhere (he's “a believer, smart guy, &c.”). An acolyte who will go unnamed assured his morning listeners that if the President hadn't pushed this idea thousands would die. The data will prove nothing; President Trump knows how to jump on either side of an issue quick like a bunny. No one can catch Fred Trump's little boy in a lie.

Why Dana Milbank is a Fool

The Washington Post's well know columnist Dana Milbank showed himself a fool today with a column stating that Republicans were warned about the pending dangers of the Coronavirus, yet they persisted in defending the President. By now Milbank should know that Republicans will defend the President to the death, even if he kills several small children in public with his bare hands, then consumes them. Milbank wasted valuable space in one of the nation's major newspapers stating the obvious, instead of saying something important. In so doing, he showed the real nature of the bankruptcy of the mainstream press.

Apparently we will be treated to millions of words stating the obvious for the next several months.

Sherlock Self Isolates

The black form arose silently from the floor onto my lap. In spite of her full grown-cat weight, Sherlock's touch was so gentle that I hardly felt her land. She walked back and forth a few times to get her bearings, then began rubbing the top of her head on my leg. Sherlock stopped rubbing, lay down on my lap, and looked up at me, purring and batting those deep green eyes up into mine.

“What?” Silence, as she rubbed adoringly against my leg, occasionally glancing sideways at me. She wouldn't talk to me while Rose was in the room. Sherlock can talk, but only to me. She only speaks when we're alone. She rolled halfway over to look at Rose, then back over to me. Sitting up, she rubbed my cheek, then lay down for a rest.

Rose left for the kitchen. The black tail swished, then Sherlock sat up to nuzzle my right cheek. “There's no monitor in here, Gary,” she whispered. “What about a video? The one with the nuthatch and the squirrel.” “I've been at that monitor all day, Sherlock.” “You don't need to sit there with me, Gary. Just start the video. I'll sit in your chair and watch it.” It was a pleading purr. “That never works, Sherlock. Either Emily chases you out, or you lose focus and run off.” “It'll be different this time. You'll see.” “OK,” I said, and off we went to my computer, where all good cat videos were bookmarked. That is what computers are for.

The Virus Chronicles (continued)

31 March 2020

It occurred to me that the best thing the press could do would be to attend the President's daily briefing, listen respectfully, then ask no questions. Afterall, there are no more questions that need answering; the President just likes the attention. The Atlantic has broken the code with their COVID-19—free reading list (a fine list it is, too).

It's hard to believe, but there are still hard core conservatives and conspiracy theorists who think the Corona virus is a hoax, no worse than the flu. They think they are supporting the President. Jerry Falwell, Jr, in Lynchburg, Virginia comes to mind, and Jon Rappoport, writing from Moscow, who is certain lots of those COVID-19 deaths are just pneumonia.

In the absence of hard news at this point (1340 EDT), I offer a CORONA Haiku (what else would shut-in poet offer?).

Laid low by Covid,
A nation cow'rs, leaderless,
As Trump basks daily.

The Virus Chronicles (continued)

30 March 2020

The President figured out that his threat to quarantine New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut were illegal. Rather than back down, the Narcissist in Chief just quietly made it a suggestion. We really are slipping into third world country status.
The word is out that the US tried to develop an advanced lightweight respirator about ten years ago. The small firm that had the contract made a prototype, then got swallowed up by Medtronic, who got bought by a leveraged buyout group. That was the end of that. US industrial might is a thing of the past. Now we just have schmucks who chase money around, feeding off the carcass of a once great manufacturing state. Sometimes I think we should be herding the Henry Kravises into camps and making them dig trenches with their fingernails. Then we should be holding guns to the heads of our legislators until the leveraged buyout is outlawed.
A friend sat in his yard recently with a neighbor. It turns out the neighbor had been to New York. Now the friend is self isolating, and his neighbor is in extremis. It's a story told again and again.
This afternoon our governor mandated that all Virginians stay in their homes unless they are doing vital business. Vital business includes food shopping, pet care, elderly care, exercise such as running, golf, and fishing. Somehow, when Governor Blackface speaks, he sounds like someone who doesn't belong in the governor's office. The President's radio acolytes are outraged at the restrictions.
The President's love affair the unproven drug chloroquinine continues. Today, at the five o'clock follies, one of his acolytes stated that the US has ordered over two million doses from two producers, even though we still don't know if it works on COVID-19.

Passover with My Wife, Rabbi Rose

My wife, Rabbi Rose Lyn Jacob, is used to making a Seder t least one night, and spending the other, perhaps, with her brother. In this year of the plague, the world is turned upside down, and she has responded, as she often does, in verse:

With Passover just around the corner...I turned to one of my most trusted doctors, Dr. Seuss. The good doctor (of blessed memory) gave me these words to share on social distancing during Passover:

I do not want you in my house

I do not want you or your spouse

I do not wish to eat with you
At Seder one or Seder two!

Don't get me wrong, I think you're nice
But the CDC gave out this advice,
"Ten Plagues are enough, you don't need one more
Turn Elijah away if he shows up at your  door"

This year's only guests: Father, mother, sister, brother. NEXT YEAR in Jerusalem! We will say to each other.
From now on at each Seder, this story we'll tell,
Of how God saved his people with a squirt of PURELL!

She is a fabulous cook, so I answered her:

Sorta brilliant!

Sorta cool!

I think you are,

A poetic Jewel.
I like you lots,

Like how you cook,

I'd eat your food,

Even in a nook.

I love your food,

How much would I eat?

Why I'd eat lotsa,

Even with matzoh!