CORONA---Immunity Deniers

          There is endless speculation about immunity now.  Has New York achieved immunity?  Has Italy?  The UK?  Sweden?

          Well, of course they’re immune.  There is no other reason that Rona fatalities are almost non-existent in these communities, which once reported hundreds of deaths per day.  There is no other explanation for the fact that all the ventilators are in storage closets.  Yet the same voices (the ones that have been wrong all along), dominate the airwaves.  “Immunity only exists when 80% of the people have survived the pandemic, or 50%, or 20%, or whatever, whatever!”

          Sorry, immunity deniers.  When the death toll drops to the floor and the people who test positive don’t actually get sick, it’s over.  It’s a fact.  The population has become immune, or perhaps was largely immune from the get-go, even if your theories will not admit the possibility.

          There are obvious explanations for what has occurred, and they make the politics of immunity denial and the politics of Rona even more absurd than they have been up until now.

          Take Andrew Cuomo, for example, who has now written a book about what a great leader he has proven to be despite his state having the second highest COVID death rate in America.  (Only New Jersey is worse.)  While it is true that deaths in NY are in single digits now, part of the reason is that he sacrificed all of his most vulnerable people, the 85-year-olds with co-morbidities, by shutting them up in nursing homes with other infectious 85-year-olds.  In New York, thanks to Cuomo, there’s nobody left for the virus to kill.  Good job, Andrew!  Governor Murphy, in New Jersey, did the same thing, with the same results.  It’s one way to immunity---the hard way---but it worked all right.  New York and New Jersey are certainly two of the places where the pandemic is dunzo.

          Other areas, including many US states and most of Europe, have also arrived at the end of their pandemic even though they didn’t kill off all their old people.  And that’s because this coronavirus was never “novel.”  One of the most terrifying bogeymen of those who demanded lockdowns and mask laws was that this “novel” virus would sweep through a completely helpless population and kill millions.  (This was one of the assumptions made by the computer modelers who predicted two million deaths in the U.S.)  And yet, none of that happened.  When this is all over, there might be 25% of Americans who will have tested positive (or would have tested positive), a tiny percentage of whom would die.  The rest, the other 75% or so, when faced with the virus, responded to it with an immune reaction.  Sure, COVID-19 was a “new” virus, sort of, but it had to be related to earlier viruses because there are just too many people who didn’t get it, and didn’t get sick, and didn’t die.  Immunity that had developed to earlier coronaviruses was sufficient to protect MOST people from COVID-19.  There is no other possibility.

          This should have been obvious the moment we discovered that children rarely got the Rona and, except for the rare and anomalous immune-compromised child, never died from it.  While the tiniest babies may be vulnerable to various infections, little kids start acquiring immunities from a very early age.  That’s why they generally have snot running down their noses from the age of two onward.  They are fighting various coronaviruses and developing antibodies to them.  That’s why, once we learned children were not at risk from COVID-19, we should have realized this virus was not “novel,” and that most healthy humans could mount a defense to it.  With that realization, imposing a lockdown of schools, businesses, culture, sports, and virtually all public life became the equivalent to nuking the city of Philadelphia in order to suppress an infestation of spotted lantern flies.

          But, of course, the lockdowns had already been imposed, and stopping them would have meant that those who imposed them would have had to admit their error.  That is something they couldn’t do.  It is something they still can’t do, even though there is now no possible justification for the restrictions we have had to endure for five months.

          On Monday, 8-17, in Manhattan, there were 34 new cases of the Rona, and no deaths among the 1.6 million residents.  Yet the streets remain empty, the theaters are closed, the city is dead.  Why?  If now is not the time to remove the masks, open the taprooms and high-five your neighbors, when will it be?

          In Philadelphia, with a population about the same as Manhattan’s, the numbers are slightly higher, but comparable.  There is about one fatality reported per day, with possibly a hundred new cases, and the city remains shut down.  There is no sign that the restrictions will ever be lifted.  There is no stated criterion for when people will be permitted to attend a Phillies game or when children will be allowed to go to school.  No one will say what has to happen before restaurants will open.

          Because there are cases, you see.  There is even a rising number of cases in some areas, and this “casedemic” is the reason all freedom and economic life must remain shut down.  The deaths have stopped, the new Rona victims don’t really get sick, the population is clearly immune, but there’s all these new cases, you see, and we’re about to be overwhelmed again, right?

          Well, no.  The new cases being reported are a natural outgrowth of the massive number of tests that are now being administered.  In addition, these now include a large percentage of PCR tests, which can register as positive when the debris of dead virus (the nucleic acid) is detected.  In other words, many of these new positive tests are likely NOT actual infections.  And even the people with real infections among this casedemic are not becoming seriously sick, and are not showing up in hospitals.

          There are places in the world, like the Southern Hemisphere, where COVID continues to kill.  There are even some areas of the U.S., in the West and the South, where the curve of fatalities is just now heading downward.  But much of the world, including all of Europe, has passed through the curve and is now immune.  Pennsylvania and the other northeastern Atlantic states are done as well.

          There has never been any sense or science behind the lockdowns and the mask edicts, but now there is no longer even an argument for them.    Whatever is happening in Philly right now, and most of America, does not fit any reasonable definition of "pandemic" or "epidemic." 

Copyright2020MichaelKubacki

Update:  Philadelphia announced on August 19 that some indoor dining at restaurants would be permitted 20 days hence, sort of, if we behave ourselves.  Here are the rules.

Indoor Dining Update: Health Commissioner Dr. Thomas Farley announced today that the City will permit indoor dining to resume effective September 8, 2020, the day after Labor Day. Indoor dining will be permitted under specific restrictions that are largely consistent with indoor dining restrictions statewide.

The City’s new indoor dining restrictions include, but will not be limited to, the following:

• Restaurants cannot be filled to more than 25 percent capacity.
• No more than four diners per table.
• Tables must be arranged so that diners at separate tables are at least six feet apart or have an impermeable barrier between them.
• Servers must wear both masks and face shields for additional protection.
• No bar service. Alcohol can be served only for on-premises consumption when in the same transaction as a meal.
• Last call for all indoor dining orders will be at 11 p.m. and establishments will be required to be closed for service by midnight.
• Restaurants must install physical barriers such as sneeze guards or partitions in restaurant kitchens and at cash registers, host stands, and food pick up areas where maintaining physical distance of at least six feet is difficult.
• Restaurants must screen every employee for symptoms before every shift and prevent them from remaining on-site if they have cough, shortness of breath, fever, chills, muscle pain, or new loss of taste or smell.

Restaurant owners are also being urged to increase ventilation in their establishments to further decrease the risk of transmission. “We are announcing this change now in order to give restaurant operators sufficient time to prepare,” said Dr. Farley. “However, we move forward with an abundance of caution. Between now and September 8, should we witness an increase in the rate of COVID-19 case counts in Philadelphia, we will reconsider whether this change is still viable.”

THIS & THAT XI

          So some teams might play 47 games and other teams might play 58 games or 52 games?  I love that part.  I also love the way the league-wide schedule seems to change every day.  Somewhere in September, I think there's a team that has to play 4 doubleheaders in 6 days,  Hey, let's play ten!  Then there's the utterly amoral, random nature of the scheduling and re-scheduling.  The Phillies had a week off without having a single player test positive, just because they played a team that bought chicken wings at a strip club, or something.  And when the infected, though not actually sick, Marlins had to take that quarantined bus ride from Philly back to Miami, I couldn't help imagining the entire bus getting lost and vanishing in an eerie fog approaching Zabriskie Point in California.

          And there's yet another ghost team---the exiled Toronto Blue Jays, banned from their homeland by Prime Minister Justin Blackface.  If they win the AL, will we play the World Freaking Series in a minor league ballpark in Buffalo???

          Then, of course, there's the guys (the "Phandemic Krew"), who stand outside the gates at Phillies games chanting and setting off airhorns to annoy the visiting teams, and who succeeded so thoroughly that Yankee Manager Aaron Boone complained to the umpires about them.  "Sorry, Mr. Boone," he was told, "we don't have any jurisdiction out there."

          This might turn out to be my favorite baseball season of all time.

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         Department of Oddball German Words That Express a Complex Emotional State.  "Sturmfrei" (literal translation:"storm-free"), is the feeling of being home alone because parents, roommates, etc., are gone for the day, or the weekend, or whatever. 

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          I’m far from an insider, but I get the sense there is increasing pressure among Democrats to replace Biden at the top of the ticket.  They seem confident they can win the White House, but Biden’s obvious flaws are a growing concern.

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          European pop music is the most lifeless drivel in the entire world of music, and it has not improved for at least fifty years.  The primary reason for this is the Eurovision Song Contest, of which there have now been 64 editions, The quest to construct the “perfect” Europop tune and win the prize for God and country has created a musical mini-industry so devoid of emotion, intellect, and innovation that no one other than a Eurovision junkie would ever listen to it.

          The degenerate nature of the process is illustrated by the sad fact that the best song ever produced by the Eurovision contest is still “Waterloo” by ABBA.

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          You know how “Make-a-Size” paper towels come with extra perforations so you can tear off a smaller towel or a larger one, depending on your need?

          Why don’t they do that with toilet paper?

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          “Despite their ubiquity and pivotal role in the haptic experience of architecture, door handles remain oddly under-documented.”

          --- Edwin Heathcote

               Points of Contact---A Short History of Door Handles

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          “For as long as there have been doors, there have been door handles.”

          ---Ditto

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          In the search for an upside to the legal requirement that I wear a mask for (almost) the entire time I am at work, there is this:  after a snack or a lunch, there is no longer any need to wipe the food off my face.  I just slip the mask back on and go back to work.  I only have to clean off the grease and jelly and crumbs once a day.  Saves a lot of time.

Copyright2020MichaelKubacki  

THE ONE GUY TRUMP CAN'T BEAT

          During the 2016 and 2020 elections, there have been hundreds of national polls taken on Trump vs. everybody---Abrams, Bennet, Bloomberg, Booker, Bullock, Buttigieg, Castro, Clinton, Cuomo, De Blasio, Delaney, Gabbard, Gillibrand, Harris, Hickenlooper, Inslee, Klobuchar, Messen, O’Rourke, Patrick, Ryan, Sanders, Sestak, Steyer, Warren, Williamson, Young.  And that’s just the Democrats.

          Trump didn’t always win these polls, of course.  He is losing national polls to Biden now, but he has beaten Biden as well.  Hillary certainly won a lot of national polls against him, though Trump had some wins against her too.

          But there is one character Trump has never been able to beat.  Donald is probably 0 - 22, or something.  Just in this cycle, there was an October 3, 2019 poll by the PPP organization which had Trump losing 52 – 41.  Then there were three major polls in March, 2020.  First, on March 3, NBC/WSJ had Trump losing 48 – 41.  Two days later, Hill/Harris reported a 46 – 39 margin.  Then on March 7, the POLITICO Morning Consult had Trump losing 44 – 36 to this seemingly invincible foe.

          OK.  Enough.  Who is it that Trump has never beaten?  It’s the “Generic Democrat.”  Pollsters run these polls when everybody knows who one of the candidates is but the other candidate is undecided.  In early 2012, for example, before Romney won the nomination, there were polls of Barack Obama vs. “Generic Republican.”

          The reason Trump loses these contests is not hard to figure out.  A lot of people don’t like him, though that is not as big a problem as it may seem at first glance.  Many people who didn’t like him actually voted for him in 2016 because they viewed the alternative, Hillary, as being even more loathsome than he is.  It is a lot easier to run against a real opponent than against a fantasy because a real opponent is going to have flaws.  There are lots of actual Democrats Trump can beat.

          A “Generic Democrat,” however, is pretty much whoever the voter wants it to be.  Combine the sweeping vision of FDR with the aristocratic polish and loveable family of JFK, the piety of Jimmy Carter, the feel-your-pain empathy of Bill Clinton….  Well, now you’re talking.  Leave Hillary out of the picture entirely.  LBJ as well.  A “Generic Democrat” is a pretty attractive candidate.  Every Democrat would vote for him.  I might vote for him myself.

          And that’s who the Democrats, through a bizarre concatenation of circumstances, are nominating to run against Trump.  Somehow, they have managed to create a “Generic Democrat” and get him on the ballot.

          The one thing we all know about Joe Biden is that, should he be elected, he will NOT be president.  He’s just not capable of it.  He may be able to have an important-looking state dinner with Angela Merkel and he might ceremonially sign his name to an executive order somebody else writes, or place a Medal of Honor around a soldier’s neck, but he will never be permitted to formulate a foreign policy or craft legislation or send troops into combat or make a deal with Putin.  And everybody knows it.

          Every nation has a “head of state” and a “head of government.”  In the UK, for example, the Queen is the head of state and the PM is the head of government, and this division of the ceremonial and the political is common around the world.  In the United States, however, the two are combined in a single person called the President.  At least, that is the way it has been up until now.  If Biden is elected, that will change.  He will be the head of state and some as-yet-unnamed person or committee will govern.

          The genius of the Democratic strategy here is we are not being told who will be the actual president, the political leader.  It may be the vice president, whoever that turns out to be, though that seems increasingly unlikely.  Since Joe remains tucked away in his Bat Cave, we know very little of his campaign and who is running the show. What we see is his wife, and a group of anonymous campaign staffers, and a steady stream of politicians from every corner of the leftish spectrum.  He’s been endorsed by Jimmy Buffett, Angela Davis, Jesse Jackson, Billy Jean King, Megan Rapinoe, Mark Cuban and dozens of others.  Then there’s the “Biden-Sanders Task Force” that is meeting to draft the party platform.  Bernie loves Joe now.  Everybody loves Joe, now that we know he will never be the real president.

          The American public is thus being permitted to believe whatever it wishes about who the next president will be.  Some combination of Pelosi and Schumer and Hillary?  Maybe.  A committee of Bernie and Jill Biden and their love child?  Well, that’s possible too.  Stacie Abrams?  Why not?  The only thing we do know is that if Biden is elected, the next president WILL NOT be Trump, and for most Democrats, that’s all they need in order to vote for Joe.

          It’s a brilliant strategy in its way, and very much a “when-life-gives-you-lemons” solution to array of political problems that would normally doom a campaign:

1)  An epidemic that prevents much traditional campaigning,

2)  A candidate about whom no one has ever been very enthusiastic,

3)  A candidate who will not be able to govern if elected,

4)  A candidate with little in the way of a discernable political philosophy.

          Running “Generic Democrat” for president has never been tried before, but we’ve never been in this situation before.  And it might work.

Copyright2020MichaelKubacki  

CORONA---The Masquerade

          On July 1, Pennsylvania’s Rachel Levine published an “Order of the Secretary of the Pennsylvania Department of Health Requiring Universal Face Coverings.”  This is merely the latest, of course.  For ninety days, everyone inside a building presenting a prescription or getting an oil change or purchasing a banana had to wear a mask, as well as the people who filled the prescription or changed the oil or sold the banana.  But that wasn’t enough.  Now if there’s some chance you might come closer than six feet from somebody outside, on a running track or at a farmers market or pushing your child on a swing, you are required to wear a mask as well.

          Why?  Well, there’s not a lot of explanation for that.  We’re all just supposed to know it because it is pounded home to us on every newscast and in every newspaper.  “Wear your mask!  It’s the smart thing to do!  We’re all in this together!”  Etc.

 

          Ms. Levine, however, in her thousand-word ukase, offers us this: “See https://www.//www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/prevent-getting-sick/cloth-face-cover-guidance.html#recent-studies.  When used in public settings, face coverings will work to reduce the spread of COVID-19 in the Commonwealth.”  At this CDC site, there are nineteen academic, medical-journal type studies listed.  This is the proof that Rachel Levine’s Order is based on something.  You know--- the science.

          So I went there, and first of all, it was not easy.  The address of the CDC site is not hyperlinked in the Order, and since it was published as a PDF file, I also couldn’t figure out how to copy and paste the address.  (My browser?  My ineptitude?)  What I had to do was manually type the more than 100 characters of the address into my search engine, and of course, I made a couple of mistakes before I got it right.  Now, I am not claiming this is part of some grand conspiracy among Rachel Levine, Anthony Fauci and the Illuminati, but the point is that one is never encouraged to look behind the curtain, to assess the “science” on your own.

          At the website, some of the nineteen studies have links embedded, and others do not.  It is possible, however, to track down the studies and read them.  I did so, though I only had to go beyond the abstracts on a couple of them.  One must assume that neither Rachel Levine nor Governor Wolf ever read the damn things, because if they had, they would be embarrassed to claim they offer any support for her statement that, “When used in public settings, face coverings will work to reduce the spread of COVID-19 in the Commonwealth.”

          A dozen do not even mention masking.  They deal with two issues that were much discussed early on in the pandemic but which nobody argues about today.  First was the question whether direct human-to-human transmission was even possible.  This was only an issue because the Chinese authorities initially lied about it and said there was no direct transmission.  The second question was whether asymptomatic or minimally-symptomatic people can transmit the ‘rona; there is no longer much question that this is possible.

          The other studies on the CDC site at least mention masking in some context.  A few deal with the efficacy of surgical masks worn by professional care workers in hospitals (e.g, “Effectiveness of selected surgical masks in arresting vegetative cells and endospores when worn by simulated contagious patients” by Green, Davidson, Panlilio et al., 2012).  Others speculate on what materials (cotton, silk, etc.) might be most effective in masks worn by the general public.  (e.g, “Testing the efficacy of homemade masks: would they protect in an influenza pandemic?” by Davies, Giri, Kafatos, Walker, Bennett, 2013).

          But literally none of these studies offer any support for Rachel Levine’s claim that “When used in public settings, face coverings will work to reduce the spread of COVID-19 in the Commonwealth.”

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          But there was one recent study of public mask-wearing that has gotten considerable attention for its conclusion that face covering is effective in preventing infection.  It was not on Levine’s (or the CDC’s) list.  This is the much-discussed “Identifying airborne transmission as the dominant route for the spread of COVID-19” that was presented in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences on May 16.

          I read it.  I’m not an epidemiologist (but neither are the authors---they’re chemists and climate scientists), and I can't say it was easy, and maybe I even misunderstood some of it, but I do have some observations about the methodology and the geographical areas the researchers decided to study.

 

          So let's start with the areas chosen for study---Italy, NY and Wuhan.  I will grant you that every place that has taken a serious hit from COVID has had a different experience from every other place that has been hit hard, but is it possible to come up with three places LESS typical of the pandemic experience than Italy, NY and Wuhan?  Italy has the oldest population in Europe (second oldest in the world), and a dreadful national health service, and as a result, had a very unpleasant experience with the virus.  New York is unique for its lunatic Governor who ordered the state's nursing homes to take in COVID patients discharged from hospitals but still infectious, so they could infect thousands of otherwise healthy (though vulnerable) elderly people.  Then he sneakily undercounted the nursing home deaths.  Then he blamed Trump for it all.  In general, if you remove the 14,000 or 15,000 Cuomo-inflicted nursing home deaths from New York's numbers, the state did not have an unusually lethal experience.  Also, of course, mask-wearing had exactly nothing to do with Cuomo’s nursing home holocaust.

          Finally, there's Wuhan, where the researchers dutifully report the official Chinese government numbers of 4600 deaths, and then conclude that the swift imposition of mask protocols in China, along with the general acceptance of mask-wearing among the Chinese, was responsible for the extremely low numbers of Wuhan fatalities.

          Question.  Have you read any other study of the COVID experience that accepts Chinese government case numbers and fatalities and uses them to draw rational, scientific conclusions?  No?  Well, I haven't either.  Maybe you remember the stories about the numbers of urns delivered to funeral homes in Wuhan, or the various accounts of health-care workers (some of whom were never heard from again).  Guo Wengui, the exiled Chinese businessman and whistle-blower, estimated the death toll in Wuhan was 50,000, based on his information from crematoriums.  Other estimates from those on the scene are of a similar magnitude.

          Italy, NY and Wuhan.  Are these the places you would have chosen if you were seeking to draw some general conclusions about what typical governments or the health-care establishment did effectively?

          Another troubling issue was related to their methodology, specifically the (unstated, undiscussed) assumption that the only factors in the spread of the virus and the number of cases were the government edicts regarding masks, distancing, etc.   In other words, they assume the nature of the virus itself had no role in the matter.  Nowhere do they even acknowledge the number of studies (probably in double-digits by now), reporting on the pattern of infections and cases that was common from country to country.  With minor variations, there's six weeks of build-up to a peak that lasts about two weeks, and then the number of cases declines rather sharply.  This has happened everywhere, and it is not possible that these researchers are unaware of the studies, yet they ignored them.  To them, the only thing that mattered was when mask-wearing rules were imposed, regardless of where in the ten-week pattern the rules were issued.

          In terms of the number of cases to be expected in coming weeks, nothing is more important than how far along a state or country is in this ten-week pattern.  If a mask edict is imposed in Week 2, cases will continue to spike for another six weeks and the mask edict will appear to have no effect.  If the edict is promulgated in Week 8, however, mask-wearing will appear to have “broken” the pandemic because the number of new cases is about to fall precipitously.  In either case, the masks would have nothing to do with it.  In Week 8 of the ten-week pattern, if an Order were issued demanding that people wear underwear on their heads, it would appear to have a miraculous effect because the number of cases is about to fall anyway.  Underwear on the head?  Who knew??

          This type of selective “science,” ignoring important and well-known factors in the spread of cases in the interest of reaching a desired conclusion, is indefensible.  Maybe masks have an effect.  Maybe distancing does, and other restrictions.  I can accept that if it's true.  But the failure of these researchers to even acknowledge the epidemiological playing field on which they are working is hard to forgive.

          Next, the climate scientists here base their conclusions on an assumption that mask orders are black-and-white matters, so they measure infections and deaths before and after critical dates like NY's imposition of mask-wearing on April 17 or Italy's on April 6.  But the distinction between NY on April 17 and Pennsylvania on April 17 (or Sweden on April 17) is anything but a bright line.  In Pennsylvania, EVERYONE in a store, or engaged in a food-related transaction, has been required to wear a mask since March 16.  Is that so different from Italy or NY, or even China?  People in Sweden wear masks though they may not be required to.  Yet, for these researchers, the measuring begins and ends on the dates of certain particular government edicts even though the edicts really cannot logically be used to differentiate one place from another.

          So based on all their assumptions, the authors conclude (spoiler alert!), that wearing masks is the reason Wuhan and NY had such an easy and carefree COVID experience.  No kidding.  They really think New York and Wuhan did a great job, and they assert that the mask edicts were a central aspect of the success of those two governments.  I do not share their conclusions.  In fact, I LOL’ed when I got to that part of the study, and that’s something I rarely do when I read a peer-reviewed medical article in an academic journal.

          The response of actual epidemiologists to this paper has not been kind, and there have been demands that the PNAS withdraw it from their prestigious publication.  For one thing, nobody takes China's official numbers seriously.  In addition, nobody except propagandists views China's behavior during the pandemic to be especially admirable.  Finally, there is another reason to withdraw the study, though no one will mention it.  The first four authors of this study praising China’s brilliant response to the pandemic are Renyi Chang, Yixin Li, Annie L. Zhang, and Yuan Wang.

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          I could perform this same sort of comic autopsy on any number of recent academic articles on mask-wearing that rely on unsupportable assumptions and often appear to grow more out of political beliefs than an honest desire to answer a scientific question.  Another that has gotten some attention is “The Case for Universal Cloth Mask Policies to Increase the Supply of Medical Masks for Health Workers,” published April 6 by Abaluck, Christaki, Forman, and a bunch of other Yalies.  They simply assume the effectiveness of masks worn by the general public, citing a number of studies as proof, but which prove no such thing.  Their contribution to the debate is apparently their ability to monetize the benefits, concluding that each John Q. Public who routinely wears a mask while filling his tank or shopping at Costco translates to a societal boon of $3,000 to $6,000 (a “conservative” figure, they assure us).

          There’s just not much there.  There is speculation that masks prevent infection, and there is plenty of scolding, particularly from those who are deeply invested politically in forcing the public to wear masks.  But “science?”  There’s nothing really.  A fair summary would be that there seems little reason to think wearing masks does any great harm, though there is also some disagreement about that.  Some believe that wearing a mask for an extended period and rebreathing one’s own exhaled air is unhealthy, though there are no studies supporting that either.  Also, Surgeon General Jerome Adams said on March 2, 2020 that the public should not wear masks because some people would wear them incorrectly and increase the spread of the infection.  (A reminder: as recently as March, the WHO, the CDC and the U.S. Surgeon General each recommended that the general public not wear masks.  All recently changed their official positions.)

          Which leaves us, finally, with the argument we increasingly hear from our bureaucrats and politicians and cable-news geniuses:  "Wear a mask! Why not? It’s not going to kill you, and maybe it will help.  We’re all in this together!”

          We might just as well pass a law saying everyone has to wear garlic around their necks because, well, that’s not going to hurt us either, right?  The point is that we are either a society that is governed by logic and reason and science or we’re not, and if we are not, why not?  I’m still kind of fond of the Enlightenment.  I’m committed to reason.  I thought we all were, or at least were supposed to be.

          Besides, I’m not trying to order anyone NOT to wear masks.  Wear them everywhere.  Enjoy yourself.  Wear them until they develop that vaccine you’ve been praying for.  However, “it can’t hurt much” is hardly a justification for a universal, significant intrusion of indefinite duration upon my personal space and the rights I am guaranteed under American law.  For that, you need a bit more.  You need something, anyway, especially when the authorities issuing these orders have been so consistently wrong in their public health pronouncements.  So why don’t you decide what’s best for you, and I’ll decide what’s best for me.  That way, we can both be right.

Copyright2020MichaelKubacki

CORONA---Play Ball

          By now, you may have seen some of the health and safety rules Major League Baseball has proposed for the re-opening of the sport, though I forgive you if you haven’t seen all the new rules because there are 67 pages of them (and that was only the initial draft).

          There will be no fans allowed in the ballpark, of course, because that would presumably convert it into a slaughterhouse.  Players not actually in the game would occupy some of the seats in the stands, though they would have to wear masks and remain six feet apart at all times.  Players in the dugout would be wearing masks as well; face coverings could be removed only when a player enters the field of play.

          There will be no hugs or fist-bumps or high-fives or trash-talking to the first baseman after you lace a single to left.  Also no spitting---hence no tobacco and no sunflower seeds.

          Players and their families will get Covid testing several times a week and players will have their temperatures taken several times each day.  Players will only be permitted to eat at their hotels and will not be permitted to visit other restaurants or bars.  Also, no one will be allowed in players’ hotel rooms except for family members.  (Sorry, girls!)

          Play ball!

          And then there’s my plan:

          First of all, because the start of the season has been delayed, there will be a shorter season---82 games starting early July should do it.  Baseball stadiums will be open to fans who wish to buy tickets, and if the capacity of the stadium is 42,312, then 42,312 tickets may potentially be sold.  As a fan, you may wear a mask if you wish.  You may also attempt to distance yourself from other fans.  Good luck.  Hot dogs and sodas and beer and turkey legs and sushi and popcorn will be sold.  Around the 7^th inning, guys will stand in line in the men’s room six inches apart, desperately waiting to pee.

          Players will play baseball in the usual fashion, including fist bumps, pats on the butt, high-fives, spitting and (when warranted), brawls and fist-fights.  Managers and umpires desiring further discussion of a ruling on the field will stand two inches apart and express their views forcefully while raining droplets of spittle on each other’s faces.  Any player who wishes to get a coronavirus test is welcome to do so but is not required to.  Players can live wherever they wish, eat and drink wherever they wish, and screw whomever they wish.

          Players will be paid pro-rata for the number of games played.  Any player or coach or hot-dog vendor or valet-parking guy who refuses to play because of health concerns may sit out the season and will suffer no punishment for doing so, though he will not be paid.  If a player does this, his contract and years of service record will simply be suspended until next Spring.

          In the event a state or city government imposes restrictions on a team in its home stadium (masks, limiting crowd size, etc.), team owners may find an alternate venue for their home games (maybe a minor league park in another state?), or they may forfeit the games, which will count as losses on the team’s record.

          And what would happen?  Well, baseball would happen.  And nothing else.  If you’re 86 years old and have cancer, don’t go to the ballpark.  Otherwise, Covid is over.

          There have been no “second waves” or “hot spots” despite all the dire (almost gleeful), predictions about what would happen when people started going to restaurants and getting haircuts.  The lockdowns, it turns out, were pointless anyway---the pattern of new cases was the same everywhere, regardless of the level of restrictions imposed or not imposed.  The only reason mayors and governors are still trying to maintain their “Phase 2” restrictions or “Level Yellow” rules is that it would be embarrassing for them to admit the police-state tactics they attempted to enforce had zero effect on public health, and only hurt the millions who were locked up in their homes, unemployed.

          The latest proof that the restrictions were politically motivated from the beginning comes from the huge George Floyd demonstrations around the country that occurred over the past ten days.  Thousands gathered together, marching shoulder to shoulder in forty cities, many of them still “locked-down.”  And what are we told by our overlords?

          Well, according to Jennifer Nuzzo, an epidemiologist at Johns Hopkins, “In this moment the public health risks of not protesting to demand an end to systemic racism greatly exceed the harms of the virus.”  And she’s not the only one.  Tom Frieden, former CDC Director, has been scolding all of us for weeks about the dangers of a rushed re-opening, but now says the mass protests are fine.  Apparently, if we don’t fix all our racially racist racism by gathering ten thousand people together, the virus will hit us harder, or something.

          And then there’s Governor Tom Wolf of Pennsylvania, who has kept all our schools and restaurants and “non-essential” businesses closed for 2 ½ months, and is still doing so, but who marched in a massive Philadelphia protest this past weekend with significantly more than the 25 people permitted under current crowd-size restrictions.

          There’s just no possible excuse for the lockdowns and the masks and the six feet anymore, and yet the charade continues.

          So play ball, I say.  And what would happen?

          Well, I don’t know.  Nobody does.  That’s the thing about freedom and the spontaneous order that arises in a society when free people are each doing what they think is best for themselves and their families and their communities.  Since it’s not commanded from above, the result is usually a pleasant surprise.  I suspect almost all the players and coaches and valet-parking guys and hot-dog vendors will show up, and will be happy to be there.  I suspect the crowds will be small at first, and will consist primarily of people who never swallowed the fear-porn that has been dished out to us for breakfast, lunch, and dinner over the last three months, but the crowds will grow quickly as fans notice the outfielders are not keeling over in their death-throes.  And finally, a lot of fans in their sixties and up will probably stay home, at least until 2021.  We should trust them and their family members to make the wisest decisions about their personal health and safety, especially since the politicians and bureaucrats who have orchestrated this mini-police-state have repeatedly demonstrated, and continue to demonstrate, their complete incompetence.

Copyright2020MichaelKubacki   

CORONA---The Howling

          Today at work, I spent much of the day muttering to myself about the bastards who have shut down large swathes of America for no reason, and the other bastards (the ones I thought were on my side), doing nothing about it.  With the mask on, no one can hear.  If they could, they would probably be dragging me away.

          At this point, there can be no conceivable reason for further restrictions, and yet they remain in place.  The original rationale offered ten weeks ago for shutting schools and colleges, all sports and cultural events and churches, and throwing tens of millions out of work was always questionable, especially since no discussion of it was permitted.  “Flattening the curve,” they said---relieving pressure on our healthcare system before it could be overwhelmed by the ‘rona.  OK, well that didn’t happen, and not only did it not happen but we have learned that the shutdowns were never going to flatten anything anyway.  A number of studies from around the world have confirmed what some of us suspected from the beginning---curves don’t get flattened and the number of cases a particular area experiences follows the same pattern regardless of the level of government restrictions imposed or not imposed.  The lockdowns have served no public health function.  All they have done is impoverish the healthy and the innocent.

          The only rational course of action for our overlords now is a decree ending all shelter-in-place edicts and policed lockdowns, allowing free people to live their lives as they see fit, taking whatever precautions they deem appropriate for themselves and their families.

          There is no longer any justification for the restrictions; there is literally no public health argument that can fairly be made.  The patterns everywhere are the same, and there have been no “second waves” despite the apocalyptic warnings of all our “experts.”  Somehow, we all survived people in Georgia getting haircuts and tattoos.

          Yet not only do the autocrats and bullies who authored these policies continue to enforce them and even extend them, there is virtually no political conservative who will even argue with them.  At most, the quislings in Congress and the conservative media will try to nibble around the edges of this policing regimen.  “Well, maybe we should allow 25 people to assemble now, so long as they wear masks, of course.”  “Well, we can’t open restaurants, of course, but with the right disinfecting procedures, we ought to allow hair salons to reopen some time in August.”  “Well, OK, you can play baseball but no one can watch.  And no spitting!  And we’ll have to take everybody’s temperature before every game.”

          NO!  The only correct answer is NO!  Open up the gyms and the ballparks and the restaurants and the swimming pools and the schools.  NOW!  And if there are people who don’t want to go to a baseball stadium with fans in the seats, fine.  No one is forcing them to go.  No one ever forced them to go.  Remember? At first, there will be plenty of people who still isolate themselves, especially because of all the virus-terror that has been pounded into all of us over the past months, but gradually public venues will begin to fill up again as people re-evaluate the risks in a way that is realistic and appropriate for them.  It may be a while before an 86-year-old with a compromised immune system goes to a hockey game, but that’s OK.  That’s the way it should be.  In a free society, one size never fits all.

          Why is this happening?  Why are the restrictions still in place?  Why are ministers and gym owners being threatened with massive fines and imprisonment and property seizures?  Why must tens of millions be driven into penury and despair?

          Because this is not about the virus anymore.

          Corona was the reason in the beginning, I think, at least to some extent.  The initial justification of flattening the curve was plausible if you didn’t think too deeply about it, and we were not permitted to think about it even a little bit.  There was no public debate at all.  The policing regimen was just dropped upon us, suddenly, without warning.  It was an emergency, you see.

          In the beginning, besides the virus, there were other reasons motivating the bullies and other aspects of our culture that prevented us from seeing what was happening until it was too late.  The precautionary principle has apparently triumphed in America, for example, and none of us noticed.  We never really objected when the diving boards disappeared and the peanuts in school lunches were banned.  Now we don’t even laugh out loud when someone in power refers to the “infinite value of a single human life,” as a matter of public policy.  The unnoticed politicization of science that allows a lifelong bureaucrat like Fauci to rule the country is another culprit, though the fingerprints were there in the legions of “climate scientists” who all stopped doing science and started proposing laws and treaties.  Then there are the traditional American ideals of freedom and individual responsibility that the Left have always hated---what better way to undermine them than to show how easily an “emergency” permits them to be suspended, and perhaps, destroyed. 

          And now that the nation has been brought to its knees after two months of executive rule, there are other reasons.  Defeating Trump in November is the biggest one, which is why Democratic governors are the most determined to maintain and extend the restrictions, and inflict the most economic pain possible, for which Trump will be blamed.  Unlike the Russia scam and impeachment and the Ukrainian phone call, Trump never saw this one coming.  Six months ago, it was obvious to everyone that the only way Trump could be defeated would be if his booming economy collapsed.  It is odd, and ironic, and sad, that when the Left came up with a plan to destroy it, and his presidency, Trump did not merely step aside, he embraced the idea.

Copyright2020MichaelKubacki      

CORONA---The Conspiracies

1.  Bill Gates developed the virus because he wants to vaccinate the world’s population in order to implant microchips in everyone.

2.  The coronavirus would not normally be very dangerous to humans, but the continuing development of genetically-modified organisms weakens us and allows the virus to proliferate.  The problem is not really the virus itself; it’s the GMOs.

3.  There is no virus.  The sickness is coming from 5G radiofrequency communications now being deployed around the world.  Alternate version: there really is a virus but 5G destroys our immune systems and makes us vulnerable to it.

4.  George Soros developed the virus in order to crash the world economy and have Trump defeated in the November elections.

5.  The Trump Administration has had a vaccine for a year and all the Trump insiders have been vaccinated already.  The vaccine will be released to the world shortly before the election and will sweep Trump and the Republicans into office.

6.  The virus escaped from a UFO.

7.  “They” have unleashed the virus in order to eliminate paper money by scaring people about the germs it might have on it.

8.  The biggest roadblock for the imposition of socialized medicine around the world is the cost of caring for sick, elderly people.  COVID-19 is a pathogen that has been altered so it almost never attacks the young, only the old.  Once the elderly are culled, universal government-run healthcare will be instituted in every country.

9.  Elon Musk and other billionaires have dreamed of colonizing Mars for themselves and their descendants.  This is necessary because climate change will soon make the Earth uninhabitable.  The problem is that climate change is progressing too fast, so Musk and the other billionaires have decided to kill off two billion humans in order to slow the environmental damage to the Earth.  This will give them the time they need to complete their exodus.

10.  COVID-19 is a ruse designed to encourage widespread DNA testing of human beings so that anyone with alien genes can be identified. These hybrid humans will be eradicated because the Federation of Planets will not allow genetically-modified organisms to leave their home planet.  The Federation’s concern is that humankind is on the verge of space travel.

11. The virus was designed and released by the Chinese in order to tarnish Trump’s image and get their old buddy Joe Biden elected President in November.

12. The pandemic is a culling of humanity by the elites because the planet will be easier to rule with fewer people on it, especially if the remaining people are more docile and obedient.  Thus, the targets are primarily those in the freedom-loving working class.  This is why government workers and the highly-educated are allowed to keep their jobs and be relatively unaffected by the widespread economic destruction.

13. Aliens planted the virus on Earth as a doomsday device many millennia ago in order to eradicate mankind if it became necessary.  The aliens are alarmed by our progress in space exploration, so they are shutting down our species.

Copyright2020MichaelKubacki