Maggie's Farm

We are a commune of inquiring, skeptical, politically centrist, capitalist, anglophile, traditionalist New England Yankee humans, humanoids, and animals with many interests beyond and above politics. Each of us has had a high-school education (or GED), but all had ADD so didn't pay attention very well, especially the dogs. Each one of us does "try my best to be just like I am," and none of us enjoys working for others, including for Maggie, from whom we receive neither a nickel nor a dime. Freedom from nags, cranks, government, do-gooders, control-freaks and idiots is all that we ask for.

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Monday, April 27. 2020

Monday morning links

 How Does a Harvard Professor Think It’s ‘Authoritarian’ to Allow Parents to Teach Their Kids?


 George Will’s “conservatism”


 129 Media Mistakes in the Trump Era: The Definitive List


 Mexico all but empties official migrant centers in bid to contain coronavirus


WSJ:  The Bearer of Good Coronavirus News - Stanford scientist John Ioannidis finds himself under attack for questioning the prevailing wisdom about lockdowns.


 Lockdown is Destroying Food Supply Chain


 Science says: It’s time to start easing the lockdowns


VDH:  About Those Press Conferences


 “This Is a Rigged System!” – 22 Million Americans Laid Off Due to Government Lockdown Orders — But Government Employees Keep Getting Paid!


 Media Malpractice Week at Legal Insurrection


Kling:  What I have come to believe


Sullivan:  We Can’t Go on Like This Much Longer


 WHY JOE BIDEN’S AMERICA LOVES A LOCKDOWN


 A CNN journalist pens a fascinating insight into the left’s dystopian worldview


Sheesh. Needs an antidepressant 


 NBC’s Chuck Todd Touts A ‘Good Thing About This Economic Crisis’: ‘Clean Air’ And ‘Good Views’


Not even a bad joke 


 The coronavirus won’t defeat the city that never sleeps


 De Blasio Appoints Wife Head Of Coronavirus Racial Inequality Task Force, Despite Prior Questions


Brilliant! He never quits finding her high-paid gummint jobs



Mapping the Mortality Maze: How Deadly Is COVID-19? Recent studies on fatality rates and infection rates provide enough information to decide when and how to reopen America.


 Another blow dealt to public faith in scientific models


Models are not facts 


 Pompeo blasts 'wildly soft' Obama-Biden coddling of Beijing: 'Allowed China to walk all over us'


A Tale of Two Scandals - Who was more credibly accused, Joe Biden or Brett Kavanaugh? It’s complicated


 A Federal Bailout Won’t Fix States’ Finances


 Is China Going To "Win" In The Corona-Crisis?


 A China-U.S. Cold War?


Posted by Bird Dog in Hot News & Misc. Short Subjects at 07:00 | Comments (19) | Trackbacks (0)

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One problem with state bailouts is it rewards fiscal irresponsibility and punishes those states who did not do stupid things. It is the new welfare and just like the old welfare it will make the problem worse and create a new "needy" welfare group of states who will then never become self sufficient and responsible. End all welfare, end all subsidies and bailouts and get the U.S. out of the UN and the UN out of the U.S.
#1 Saul on 2020-04-27 10:35 (Reply)
I'd quite agree. The problem with Federal policy, generally, as well as with the states and cities, to the extent they've been federalised, is that it tends to mitigate and protect irresponsibility. In at least some cases, it actually promotes this.
#1.1 Phil, Jr. on 2020-04-27 16:29 (Reply)
Total deaths from Covid-19 have doubled three times since April 3rd. That is on average the death total doubled every 8 days. Do we still think this is the same as the seasonal flu?
#2 Anon on 2020-04-27 11:14 (Reply)
No. More infectious.
#2.1 BD on 2020-04-27 11:16 (Reply)
QUOTE:
Total deaths from Covid-19 have doubled three times since April 3rd. That is on average the death total doubled every 8 days. Do we still think this is the same as the seasonal flu?

I don't know? What is number of flu deaths as a function of time for a really bad year of seasonal flu? That would allow a doubling time estimate for comparison.

QUOTE:
Deaths
COVID-19: Approximately 206,811 deaths reported worldwide; 54,877 deaths in the U.S., as of Apr. 27, 2020.*

Flu: 291,000 to 646,000 deaths worldwide; 12,000 to 61,000 deaths in the U.S. per year.

The above is from Johns Hopkins.

It unfortunately looks like we'll hit 61,000 coronavirus deaths, but what fraction of those are from coronavirus and what fraction are with coronavirus?

The crazy things associated with the virus (hypoxia-like symptoms, for example) are scary, but one has to wonder if we'd see similar oddities were we to put last year's "seasonal flu" deaths under the severe microscope this year's coronavirus deaths (either "from" or "with") have been.

But if it ends up that about 60,000 actually died from COVID-19, then, yes, the death toll would be comparable to seasonal flu given the Johns Hopkins numbers. And irrespective of scary doubling times.

And the causal linkage between lockdown and mortality is still up for debate.

It will be interesting to see how the data shake out once the dust settles, though with the politics of it all ("Cut your CO2 emissions or you'll kill everyone" seamlessly morphed into "Stay inside for a long time or you'll kill everyone") keeps me from holding my breath.

The cost-benefit aspect of the lockdown - challenging as it is - is something that will have to be confronted (either formally or informally, the latter via folks saying "F-you") sooner or later, like it or not.
#2.2 Bill Carson on 2020-04-27 12:02 (Reply)
All good points. Flu season is typically Oct through May, with Feb-Apr being the heavy months; COVID season is April - so far.

But there is no doubt that society must re-open for business in order to remain whole enough to recover from the shutdown.

Economic Recession is the Rock.
COVID is the Scissors.
Paper is your face mask.
#2.2.1 Aggie on 2020-04-27 12:25 (Reply)
On needs to be cautious about extrapolating exponential growth rates. Statistically they are almost always an artifact of a state change. Even in the case of a disease with a low overall fatality rate, if a lot of people get it at about the same time, the death rate, even if small, will appear to statistically soar.

**********
I am certain that governments (we've seen the equivalent of a mass panic among people played out at the government level) are by now so universally committed to this action with political capital, that none would dare back off and admit even in inkling of a mistake. No politician could afford it. No government (even the authoritarian ones) could afford it.

They're in too deep to back out now.
#2.3 jay on 2020-04-27 13:21 (Reply)
"Do we still think this is the same as the seasonal flu?"

Ten times more infectious, ten times more deadly. They talk about that somewhere here:

We Asked The World’s Leading Vaccine Expert About COVID-19 Vaccine

This is worth watching.

(Dr. Jerome Kim, Director General, International Vaccine Institute in Seoul, Korea--he's an American who got his M.D. from Yale Medical School and is also a professor there among other things. At one point, he worked under both Redfield and Birx. He is also known for his research on HIV/AIDS .)
#2.4 Jim on 2020-04-27 14:25 (Reply)
Total deaths from Covid-19 have doubled three times since April 3rd. That is on average the death total doubled every 8 days. Do we still think this is the same as the seasonal flu?

And it's STILL not as bad as you predicted time and time again.

Maybe it's time to admit you were wrong or shut up. I'd suggest both.
#2.5 jimg on 2020-04-27 17:11 (Reply)
Quiet weekend in SE Texas... drove 'round parts of Mont. County, and it seemed (at a glance) to be near open. People out and about, stores open (even those supposed to be "take out"), and surprising levels of traffic.
The 3 neighbors (2 nurses/1 Admin) are back to work at their respective hospitals today as well, and our volunteer coord. is updating a schedule for us (yay!).
FWIW, the total number of patients at TMC continues to decline, and there seems to be a bit of an oddity - the testing sites north of The Grand Parkway are reporting numbers lower than their listed capacity - which means either they can't process the number of tests, or there aren't enough people actually getting tested...
#3 anon a mouse on 2020-04-27 11:27 (Reply)
How Does a Harvard Professor Think It’s ‘Authoritarian’ to Allow Parents to Teach Their Kids? He's a Harvard Professor! He be NUTS!!!1111!!!!!!

George Will’s “conservatism”: I am not convinced.

We Can’t Go on Like This Much Longer: It's NYC. It's time, well, past time, to leave that hive of villiany and pestilence.

A CNN journalist pens a fascinating insight into the left's dystopian worldview: I am SO not bummed for him. His son, yes. What a dork.
#4 Sam L. on 2020-04-27 12:31 (Reply)
Clean air and good views....and the dystopian NWO zombie class is led by oligarch money and media morons.

Federal bailout won't fix states finances....but a federal veterinarian could fix the crazy governors.

Fixed it....authoritarian Harvard professor on homeschooling parents.
#5 indyjonesouthere on 2020-04-27 13:53 (Reply)
‘Good Thing About This Economic Crisis’...cheap gas, light traffic and no wait at the nursing home.
#6 TurboSaab on 2020-04-27 13:58 (Reply)
The coronavirus won’t defeat the city that never sleeps

I wonder. Outside a hospital or home of ill person, 70% of the super spreader events were social, work, or religious group events. The transmission is most likely from prolonged, close-range, face-to-face conversation. You can add in yelling, singing, loud talking (over noise), which are all significant spittle maker activities.

There is also some evidence of aerosol transmission in tight poorly ventilated spaces from small particle virus lingering for a time, an hour or so, for prolonged breathing in.

NYC thrives on prolonged, close-range, face-to-face conversations in noisy environments, or in business meetings. Getting in each others faces is the stereotype for the New York city denizen.

We won't broach the super-spreader mass transit systems so popular with Progressives
#7 JK Brown on 2020-04-27 14:02 (Reply)
While I have some problems with the transit/density argument, I'm quite sure the Progs will be fine with it. This is the sort of thing that lands itself to convenient anecdotes, trite hash tags and rocket-propelled memes, all of which they're quite adept at, particularly when the reward is the opportunity to talk it to death in perpetuity.

As for me, noting that not all large cities are similarly bad, I might be looking at other pathologies such as the irresponsible and destructive behaviours the city government tends to protect, particularly since the epicenter of the problem is in Queens, as opposed to Manhattan and Brooklyn. Then I remember that Mikey banned large sodas, so it must be the case that New York has no other pathologies.
#7.1 Phil, Jr. on 2020-04-27 16:40 (Reply)
Horowitz: Where is the authority of a governor to suspend all civil rights indefinitely?

QUOTE:
Through all the important questions about science, we are failing to ask the most salient public policy question: What authority does a governor or county official have to suspend all personal liberty and property rights of even healthy individuals and business owners indefinitely without due process? The answer is, of course, that absolutely no such authority exists.

There is no greater right than the ability to move freely without restriction. We’ve never experienced a time in our 400 years on this continent, even under King George, when the movement of the entire people of a state was restricted this severely for this long, especially without due process. While the people who form a society give up certain powers in order to empower a government to protect public safety, this core freedom has never been ceded.

John Locke explained the origin of this liberty as follows: “To understand political power right, and derive it from its original, we must consider, what state all men are naturally in, and that is, a state of perfect freedom to order their actions, and dispose of their possessions and persons, as they think fit within the bounds of the law of nature, without asking leave, or depending upon the will of any other man.”

https://www.conservativereview.com/news/horowitz-authority-governor-suspend-civil-rights-indefinitely/
#8 feeblemind on 2020-04-27 14:06 (Reply)
‘Bleeding cash’: Airbus warns of deeper job cuts with ‘survival at stake’

QUOTE:
The aerospace giant said this month it would reduce narrow-body jet production by a third to 40 jets a month. It also issued targets for wide-body jets, with cuts of up to 42 percent compared with previously published rates.

“In other words, in just a couple of weeks we have lost roughly one-third of our business,” Faury wrote in the letter, which was seen by Bloomberg. “And, frankly, that’s not even the worst-case scenario we could face.”

https://www.rt.com/business/486973-airbus-job-cuts-survival-coronavirus/
#9 feeblemind on 2020-04-27 14:12 (Reply)
Ionnidis under attack for questioning the prevailing wisdom about lockdowns...

That happens just the same way in reverse.
#10 Assistant Village Idiot on 2020-04-27 15:14 (Reply)
Dr. Ionnidis has been attacked ever since he studied second hand smoke and pronounced it harmless. The lefties will never forgive him.
#11 Ray on 2020-04-27 17:27 (Reply)

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