March 2020

THE FIASCO WIDENS … (POSTED 3/31/20)

   What makes this all a fiasco is that various governors and mayors keep calling for more and more “stay at home” or “shelter in place” orders – when there are no such things available. If a prepared national shut down had been set up you would have the following:

   1) A situation where the only people not in shutdown would be:   

1. a) the national guardsman who would mobilize the lockdown
2. b) law enforcement personnel and
3. c) a skeleton crew of utilities workers to make sure that the utilities would stay up and running – for the locked down population.

   2) From the above: only about 5% of the people in the area would remain in a somewhat exposed state (the people mentioned above) while

   3) The other 95% of the people in the area would remain under full lockdown and have no meaningful exposure until the virus could be starved out and die accordingly

  But … because they keep insisting on ordering more people to, somehow, lock themselves down – and to be left to their own devices on how to somehow accomplish such a feat – you have the following:

   1) There have to be “essential businesses” so they can fend for themselves at getting their own provisions. Thus, about 50 to 60 percent of the population still has to show up for the daily shifts, interact with strangers and etc. and still be subjected to a full exposure to the virus. And this includes some of the high risk pool of people who might work at one of these ‘essential’ businesses. Has anyone thought to check if these businesses might employ 65 and older people – exactly the ones you don’t want exposed?

   2) The other 30 to 40 percent of the population still has to keep bobbing in and out of social contacts (at the essential businesses to maintain their provisions). And, thus, they will still retain at least some exposure to the virus rather than having none and

   3) It is out of this half baked arrangement that we are supposed to shut down an entire society well enough to kill off a virus with the level of contagiousness that this one has?

   Thus, I will stick with the points made from my previous virus updates. The entire focus should have been a triage operation where the limited resources were used to shelter the vulnerable more thoroughly – and let there be a short surge in people getting sick – but with a lesser amount of people actually dying.

   And once, as has been noted before, if you got more effective measures mobilized, you could do the isolation campaign effectively – under the conditions that would prevail at the beginning of this blurb. Thus, you might even wind up, over the long term, with even less illnesses as well as deaths.

   But, at the present, all we are getting is more and more declarations of half-baked measures at a more and more astronomical cost. The President has been taken advantage of:

      1) he received lousy advice

      2) he received enormous emotional pressures to attempt to save everyone all at once (in a way that would have to prove utterly chaotic) and

      3) he is now on the hook for an endless number of multi-trillion dollar bailouts – to relieve the problems that other people are free to keep causing (with more and more of these half-baked measures.)

   I got it wrong in my previous statement; the President has not been taken advantage of. He has been totally suckered.

WHILE WE ARE STILL MINUS ENOUGH MREs … (POSTED 3/29/20)

   A quick note: MREs stands for Meals Ready to Eat and are designed (primarily) for our military.

   So … for the moment (at least) we are minus our MRE stockpile. And, unfortunately, the Prez is being pressured to do a lot of the wrong things and … is not getting the type of advice he needs to do the right ones. Look back, for example, at my 3/05/20 post on the coronavirus.

  It mentioned the 3,142 most important government agencies that would have to be at the center of the fight. It was my first serious blurb on the virus and is, still, the most relevant. For now we know that 50% of all the virus transmission has come out of just 10 counties in America.

   If the CDC had made the Countrys’ County Health Departments their main focus we might well have stopped the problems. Now, granted, we can’t turn back the clock. So, I will introduce Going-Forward-Solution #1: a strategic quarantine of these 10 counties.

   Going-Forward-Solution #1): The first of the new ways forward (to reopen the country): you can not cross any county line (in either direction) EXCEPT under the following circumstances:

1. a) You are hauling commercial cargo AND you do not roll down your window or get out of your vehicle – except at truck stops along the way if you are a long haul trucker.
2. b) Now that we have a more enhanced testing ability: you may go back to using public transportation systems to go past county lines. IF you are tested first before getting on a plane, train or sailing vessel. AND you are tested after exiting a plane, train or sailing vessel on your return to your point of origin.

   These two sets of restrictions will do little economic damages and should have been instituted at the County levels from the earliest times of the outbreak. It may well be a good idea to make this a national set of restrictions. At a minimum, they must be a part of a strategic quarantine for the Top Ten – the counties that have done 1/2 of all the transmissions of the disease for the whole country.

   Going-Forward-Solution #2) STOP even trying to protect the entire country: it is not possible because we did not (and still do not) have the necessary preparations in place. We are doing the #1 No-No of all times: THE DIFFUSION OF LIMITED RESOURCES or to use a medical term: we are in a triage situation while still trying to help everyone. MEDICAL RULE NUMBER ONE: YOU DO NOT DO THAT!

  There are two categories of people to deal with: those with a high probability of death from the virus vs. those who have only a high probability of getting sick (but not dying). We must overhaul the entire strategy: double down hard on only those most vulnerable to death. In short, we must shift our approach so that we will allow a lot more people to get sick while insuring that a lot less people will actually die.

   And, in a sort of grim way, getting sick is good if you are not susceptible to actually dying. The more the population becomes this way the faster the virus will burn itself out. But, what about category two: those less vulnerable to dying? Aren’t there some possible protections available?

1. a) We look at the facts as laid out above: we rely on their own natural protection to save them from actually dying.
2. b) Re-opening does not necessarily have to re-open a mass infection anyway. By strategic quarantines of certain areas, most of the country may not suffer at all. Plus, people are much smarter now about how not to get sick. Those of us in Category #2 can add to our natural protection, even after going back to a relative ‘normal’, just by relying on forewarned is forearmed.
3. c) The ‘smarter’ classes need to allow us to both walk and chew bubble gum at the same time. It is possible to do both controlled studies on hopeful therapies and cures – while still allowing their mass use so long as they don’t violate the Do No Harm rule. None of the following items has any significant chance of doing harm while still, maybe, doing good:
4. i) Hydroxyl Choroquine (and other similar antiviral/anti-inflammatory medicines) that are still proven safe while MAYBE also being effective for an off label use.
5. ii) Plasma therapies using existing antibodies from people who have recovered and, possibly controversial,

     iii) Immunotherapy. People may well flinch at getting oneself deliberately infected but that is what a large number of successful vaccines ultimately do: a weakened strain is used to ‘infect’ you. But because of it’s weakened nature you get the best of both possible worlds. You get to have your antibodies get produced without having to actually get sick. Also, with our modern scientific abilities to open up microscopic entities and manipulate them it might not be that difficult to produce this situation: using a less harmless strain of a virus to get antibodies produced against a more harmful one.

   The main point though: there are some things that are a medical judgment. However, there are other things that are, ultimately, a value judgment – and even if it might have medical ramifications. The philosophy of “What the hell do you have to lose?” is a value judgment. And there is nothing about a doctor that gives him a superiority at value judgments.

   They have superior medical judgments but they do not have superior value judgments. Whipping an epidemic involves both types of judgments. So don’t assume that every doctor is smarter than you are, and at every single thing so that you must do only what they tell you to do – rather than to think for yourself also.

   Going-Forward-Solution #3) We can still start the mobilizations needed for the recommendations of the next blurb below, “With Enough MREs” that was posted on 3/19/2020. Eventually, we would start with the #1 worst of the worst 10 counties for a campaign of rolling isolations. After the first of the 10 is set up well enough (and you have enough mobilization in place) you might then start on numbers 2 thru 10 – without, necessarily,  having to wait for the full three weeks for #1 to finish its’ full course.

   Sorry if  this ‘quickie’ blurb has, actually, been rather lengthy. So … if you have not read the 3/19/20 blurb below read it now so you will understand what an MRE-based isolation campaign refers to. Also, I will try to do more regular (and shorter?) blurbs on this subject as events develop. Stay safe and good bye for now!

WITH ENOUGH MREs … (POSTED 3/19/20)

   Our situation (with the coronavirus) seems complicated but first a background story. In my last managers job: I wound up butting heads over a basic philosophical difference. The company had a new high level management that was utterly stuck on themselves – and on how much smarter they were than every other person on the planet.

   (Yes, elitist snobbery is alive and well in the corporate world too. Sadly, this is also what they were basing their new direction on to a, presumably, more superior way. Spoiler alert: it didn’t happen like that).

   My position was diametrically the opposite: do things in such a dumbed down, mega-simplified format that it would NOT be possible for it to NOT work. And … once you have something that is not possible for it to not work – then what are the odds that it WILL work? Pretty good, I would think.

   This is also the right approach, for not just the current epidemic, but for every other possible one as well. For what is the one and only airtight way to beat every possible epidemic? Starting with the simple (and the theoretical) for now: keep everyone isolated from each other until the disease runs its’ course. In this way, no current sufferer will ever be able to pass it on to another person. Thus, once it has run its’ course, the epidemic expires with it.

   There are nuances here but, for now, I present the central building block of the air tight epidemic defense: 21 billion MREs at the expense of only 63 billion dollars. This would create enough MREs, to shelter-in-place, the entire U.S. population for the full run of the current disease (and most other diseases also). Now the nuances:

  You would not have to do the entire country all at once. And, in all probability, you might never need to do the whole country at all. There would need to be rolling isolation campaigns.

   They would be preceded by the national guard getting the MREs distributed first, then the isolation/shutdown next. Also, for the next epidemic, we could set up staging areas to help the distribution process. (In another news blurb, posted on 3/05/20, I pointed out that there are 687 federal courthouses spread throughout the country.)

   Now, yes, you would also have to be aware that once you lift the local shutdown – and then reopen the area – there is the threat of people from other areas coming in. And these people may not have had their own areas isolated yet. But competent epidemiologists can walk one through the nuances – while these Current News! items are only meant to be short blurbs.

   The central point is that you can readily defeat any and all possible epidemics if you have a sufficient amount of MREs. And that this is a much cheaper tactic and a much thorougher one also – though there are some economic nuances. Example: a local (but universalized) isolation campaign does not have to damage the economy that much. For, while there will be no income coming in, there will also be fewer outlays as well.

  Are you a worker? You have no income for the 3 weeks but you can also have no outlays as well. If the epidemics’ economics plan just focuses on rent/mortagages and utilities – for a temporary cover period – then you won’t need to make any money during those three weeks. And the MREs will keep you fed for your food.

   Are you a business owner? You also have no income during the 3 weeks but you also have fewer outlays – you don’t have to pay wages. Like the workers, if the epidemics’ economics plan just focuses on rent/mortgages and utilities – for a temporary cover period – then you won’t need to make any money during those three weeks.

   Again, we can talk nuances. But the general economic concept is that you have the local economy simply become dormant for the short interlude.  Thus, I feel it can all be simplified by just going back to the title of this blurb. If you will just give me enough MREs then I can save the world! 

CULTURE WATCH I – LET US CHOOSE OUR OWN AMERICAN IDOLS, PLEASE? (POSTED 3/17/20)

   It can be challenging: carrying a regular column about the popular culture – and relating it to our views on traditional living. Maybe a ground rule will help where we make an important differentiation. We are NOT at odds with individuals who happen to practice any type of ‘alternative’ lifestyles. But we ARE (severely) at odds with the people who are trying to orchestrate these ‘alternative’ lifestyles onto all the rest of us. This latest ‘orchestration’ effort involves a popular program that I have always liked: The American Idol.

   But first: there is a back story here. The American Idol show used to have it exactly right. It involved nothing, either pro or con, in regards to any lifestyle issues (or any other issues for that matter either). There was nothing either pro or anti abortion, pro or anti gay liberation or very much of any pro or anti at any significant issue. And this is what I believe in for the entertainment industry: it is their job to do “Let me entertain you” rather “Let me tell you (and your children) how they should think”. I favor entertainment just doing entertaining and staying out of the “tell you how to think” business.

   However … it turned out that the demographics of the American Idol show usually resulted in a straight/somewhat religious/All-American Boy or Girl type often being the winner. There was no one pushing anything one way or the other – it merely worked out this way on a somewhat regular basis. So … at some point, this became unacceptable to the Cultural Elite/Cultural Diversity types. Beginning at two seasons back from the present one, they pressured the shows’ producers into going down their Culturally Diverse rabbit hole with them.

   Obviously, the first thing that will happen is that one of the contestants will be set up to act as the official Gay Liberation Advocate for the season. Next, other types of performers were given the axe, not for a failure to perform, but for a failure to make a culturally diverse outcome. Up until then, every season had always had a fair mix of everything. And, for that matter, Clay Akins and Adam Lambert turned out to practice homosexual lifestyles – but it was strictly a private matter and was not an in-your-face advocacy effort on behalf of “THE CAUSE”.

   But not anymore. The new Culturally Diverse look began with a lesbian named Destiny for the second season back. Next, it was a Jeremiah Lloyd Harmon for last season – where his every single appearance revolved (exhaustively and one-dimensionally) around his homosexual lifestyle rather just having him perform.

   The shows’ judges were then pressured to boost these candidates as much as possible. And (maybe) were even pressured to reserve a ‘save’ for Harmon in the last season. And what about this season? When this season came around I was waiting to see if this was, indeed, a pattern – and it is. The most recent American Idol presentation just introduced the new Gay Liberation Advocate to be this season’s candidate for this task.

   But the Lord still controls all (and we still have some controlling ability also) so not to worry. Modern technology has the ability to do an Enhanced Block – one where you don’t have to block an entire show but merely the parts of it that go into the “tell you how to think” mode – while retaining the rest of the show to watch. It is not out yet but we still have what I would call a Manual Blocker.

   I always record my shows before watching them. I then use my “Fast Forward” button as my manual blocker – I just go through the “tell you how to think” parts without watching them. And for that reason – I just need some down time for diversion not to be told how to think.

   Now, I have no ill will against Destiny, Harmon or even the latest chosen delegate for the Gay Lobby. My “ill will” (such as it) is just against being told how to think by the entertainment industry. That is not their calling – and is the proper preserve for parents and parenting. Their “assistance” is not needed. What say you?

P.S.

   A post-season update. It was the usual push and shove match where the producers, apparently, met some resistance. The judges allowed the Cultural Diversity cut to happen: only one of the All American Country Girl singers was allowed to go forward. But they refused to do it themselves – they forced another week to go by and had the country make the cut with a popular vote.

  They did the pro forma cut of the Kathy Lee Gifford-ish type of Gospel Girl singer that used to be allowed to go forward. But gave no explanation for it. Luke Bryan just got the maneuver out of the way as fast as possible – and with an obvious displeasure involved in his having to do so. But then there was the push back.

   The Designated Gay Advocate was ultimately cut, by the judges, rather than being allowed to go forward. And the show ended with a type of Revenge of Kathy Lee – the winner of the contest was, ultimately, a strong Gospel Girl type in her own right. And there was a twist: the ignominously cut Gospel Girl sang a Lauren Dagel song and then got the boot. But then Lauren Dagel was then brought back, by the winner, to perform a song with her!

   However … the pressure lobbies may ultimately have prevailed through their rule-or-ruin tactics. The show, after the back and forth resistance, was then (chronically) truncated into nothingness. I, personally, got little entertainment value from the last couple of weeks – where the show was given a bum’s rush off of the air in as fast a way as possible. But that is to be expected.

   Don’t be confused about what is happening around you. It is not the type of topic we will discuss in this column very much but the lootings and the lockdowns are more of the same. It has nothing to do with your health or legitimate protest. It is a case in point like the Culture Wars – it is either rule or ruin. If they can’t run the country they will gladly ruin it in the hopes of, somehow, inheriting what’s left over out of the ashes.

MY LATEST CONSPIRACY THEORY (POSTED 3/09/20)

   Welcome to my latest conspiracy theory – which may (or may not) be true. I am just saying be prepared for anything. I will start by articulating things that everyone else is afraid to say.

   One is that Joe Biden is the real deal mentally gone – from an age related ailment. I base this on my personal dealings I have had with people who have Alzheimer’s Dementia and other similar ailments. The way that they will carry a conversation, and act, is so glaringly similar to Biden’s problems – that I sincerely believe him to be clinically impaired. He does not have the physical capacity to serve as President.

   So … you have one candidate who is worse from being totally unable to function in Joe Biden. Then you have a candidate who would be better from being totally unable to function in a Bernard Sanders. His views and outlooks are so bad, as a functioning person, that we would be better off for him to not function at all – than to be the way he currently is.

   Thus, you have the first part of the ‘conspiracy’. Even though they are aware of Biden’s problems, they may still be using him simply to stop Sanders. But then what do they do about Biden?

   So what will the Dems, ultimately, do? This is why I say: be prepared for anything. I am (nearly) 100% certain that we have not heard the last from Mayor Pete and ‘Amiable’ Amy Klobuchar. At least one of the two of them is likely to be in a VP spot – and here is the second conspiracy part. Were the Dems successful at winning in 2020, then one of the two of them may wind up actually serving as Prez come election day – rather than Joe Biden.

   There are ways for this outcome to happen (and I am not suggesting murder) so don’t totally discount it. I have laid out (in my writing “The Confused Generation” in the DeNova Gallery) why Mayor Pete is not an appropriate candidate for higher office. I also have a full length article in the works on why ‘Amiable’ – or, actually, (non) Amiable Amy is also not fit for higher office. It will be out shortly as an article in the Rogue’s Gallery section in our “Welcome to the Library” Page.

   But for now, just be prepared for anything.

GOING VIRAL – AND IN A SERIOUS MANNER (POSTED 3/05/20)

   I come from the state with the worst outbreak (in fatalities), Washington State. There will certainly be no humor or satire today. The blurb will still be quick but I will attempt as much analysis value as possible in a short time. To begin:

   The Washington State outbreak highlights the most basic – and least talked about – aspect of fighting a national epidemic. It is that there are 3,142 primary government agencies that will have to lead the fight (and none of them have anything to do with Donald Trump). I refer to the fact that America has 3,142 counties in it – and each county is tasked its own crack team for public health issues. 

   This is the spot where the fight will be won or lost. Referring back to Washington State to illustrate the point: The disease epicenter of our state, at the present time, is one county. Thus, there is one county in America that is currently taking the main brunt of the disease (in fatalities) for the whole country. And all from a very tragic but localized situation.

   Since these blurbs are meant to be short, I will just throw out one shortcoming in our current crisis infrastructure. We have around 687 federal courthouses, spread around the country, that could serve as staging areas against a national epidemic or crisis. Their main purpose would, actually, be small but necessary.

   They would be there as a way to deal with the fact that we would need to have all 3,142 counties working at full capacity – and that the worst starting problem (in any crisis) will always be logistics. Hopefully, the 687 staging areas (spread all throughout the country) will help with the logistics of dealing with the 3,142 county governments – also spread all throughout the country. May the Lord watch over us.