Respecting Authority

As the Deity is my witness, I swear that certain of our elected officials at the state and municipal level are holding a contest to see who can be the most petty, obnoxious, contradictory, and unreasonably dictatorial boot stamping on a human face in the wake of the Wuhan coronavirus. (Yes and I will call it the Wuhan coronavirus, or maybe even the Chinese Commie Crud; I owe nothing to the Chinese Communist Party, nor do I expect to sell books in China, so bite me, Premier “Winnie the Poo” Xi, you and your running-dog lackeys in the American media.)

Lets’ see Governor Gretchen “Karen” Witmer was making a strong showing for most of the last few weeks; stupid and illogical orders as to what was essential and what was not; yea, even to the point of roping off aisles in general-purpose stores. You could go to the store, look at the merchandise which was sitting right there, in plain sight … but because Governor “Karen” had ruled, in her inexplicable wisdom, that certain items were not essential … you could not purchase them. You could, in fact, order them through the store website … but you could not actually pick up the item and schlep it to the cashier yourself. Governor “Karen” also, in her infinite wisdom, decided that the same quarantine/isolation practices that were marginally appropriate for the Big City in her state were also appropriate for the far-distant rural counties, where one might have to actually arrange for someone with the Wuhan coronavirus to come and cough on you. Governor “Karen” also claimed to see Nazi and Confederate banners at public protests objecting to her idiotic policies. So, not only stupid and illogical … but delusional. If she was auditioning for a spot as the Dem VP-nominee, I suspect that she has bombed the audition. (But one never knows. Like idiocy, there seems to be an infinite and boundless supply of delusions of competence on the part of our current political leadership in blue states.)

Read more

“The Pandemic Panic Panic”

Some interesting thoughts from Roger J. Brown.

More thoughts here.

Worth reading.

Consistent Group Membership for Epidemic Control

This paper argues that having a mutually-consistent and reasonably small network of contacts can help in controlling coronavirus spread…for example, if a group of 7 people work together and also socialize together, they are better-off from a potential infection standpoint than if individuals in the group are socializing with different, and frequently changing, sets of people.

Somewhat related:  the Federal Aviation Administration is taking steps to limit the spread of coronavirus in air traffic control facilities:

Each air traffic control facility is establishing separate teams of controllers that will stay together throughout the duty week. Each crew will contain the same employees, limiting the possibility of cross-exposure to COVID-19 that would come through normal shift rotations. If a person on one team gets sick, the only people who would be exposed are the other people on that team.

So, presumably, if one member of a team gets sick, all the team members would go home until they can get tested and found coronavirus free, and a new team will be swapped in to support operational needs. Not sure how large these teams are: in a control tower for a medium-sized airport, a team might consist of all the people working on a particular shift, but for a large facility like Potomac Approach or Kansas City Center, I imagine that the teams must comprise only subsets of the total workforce; probably people who work in close proximity to one another.

“Insanity Blooms in Wisconsin”

Robert Prost emails:

The Republican dominated legislature in Wisconsin is suing Governor Evers to end his lockdown of the state. Evers’ authority to mandate a shutdown ends May 11 but he wrote lockdown orders that extend until May 26.
Perhaps feeling the pressure, the Governor has pulled a very old trick announcing a program that does the opposite of what its name would imply.
The governor proudly announced the “Badger Bounce-Back Plan” to reopen the state. So Evers is using “science” to free us all. Not exactly.
The state cannot be fully reopened until all three phases of the Plan can be completed. The state remains in lockdown until the step 1 criterion is fully met.
Here is that criterion:
“Downward trajectory of influenza-like illnesses (ILI) reported within a 14-day period.”
Source: https://www.dhs.wisconsin.gov/covid-19/prepare.htm
 
Huh? From my years of experience in a major teaching hospital, I would hazard a guess that virtually 50% of all patients who show up at the ER have some symptoms in common with influenza cough, sore throat, fever, runny nose…
Step 1 criteria are unlikely to ever be met, allowing the governor to hold the state hostage to his dictatorial whims for as long as he likes.
If the state supreme court cannot halt this madness, I fear the state will fall prey to the socialists.

Previous emails from Robert Prost:

“A Fresh Perspective on the Covid-19 Numbers” Part 2

“A Fresh Perspective on the Covid-19 Numbers”

Law, Interpretation, Code, Checks

Many people in government–including President Trump and several Congresspeople–have expressed dismay about the ‘stimulus’ checks sent to organizations such as Harvard University and Shake Shack.  I haven’t observed much curiosity, though, about why these checks got sent out in the first place.

Was the CARES act so written as to require money to be sent to such organization?  I haven’t read through this very large document, but here it is if anyone feels inspired to do so.

Was the language of the law so ambiguous that it was interpreted by the detailed implementers as requiring such funding, even though that was not Congressional intent?

Was it simply a matter of a coding error in a program that had to be written or modified very hastily in order to send out millions of checks?

I’m curious about the lack of curiosity re this matter.