4/25/2020-2 Clorox and Lysol Tirade (Warning: excessive profanity)

 Yeah, he talks too goddamned much sometimes. What he said wasn't articulated very well. But he didn't say to inject Clorox or Lysol into sick people's veins or lungs. He never said that at all.

You disagree? You're saying that he DID say that? And that's your story and you're sticking to it? Well, then one of three things is true of you, which is it?

1. You are a piece of shit partisan asshole who puts your politics at the top of your moral truth hierarchy, if indeed you have one.
2. You are a stupid motherfucker who lets the partisan assholes you vote for and watch on television make all your decisions and value judgements for you. You're too fucking stupid to think for yourself. And you vote, which is a shame, because you're too fucking stupid to handle such a complex task. Luckily, there are piece of shit partisan assholes.
3. You are a lazy stupid motherfucking douchebag who hears what the stupid motherfuckers and piece of shit partisan assholes are saying, and you go with that because you're too fucking lazy to think for yourself. Better to let some piece of shit or stupid motherfucker think for you than to think for yourself.

 

So, if you're still holding fast to the lie that Trump said to inject Lysol or Clorox, do me a favor: try and think for yourself or get the fuck out of my life.

4/25/2020 Small Businesses in Crisis

My buddy Dale and I do a lot of fishing down here in Charlotte County, FL. And since Dale grew up here, he first moved here in 1960, he knows a lot about the area. And one of the more interesting things about our forays to fishing holes north, south, east and west, is sometimes Dale will give a running commentary on what used to be here, what used to be there, and how he and his childhood buddies caught snakes or fish or created mischief here, there, and everywhere. And in the course of that ongoing commentary, I can't tell you how many times he pointed to someplace and said, "Used to be a pet store over there, but after (Hurricane) Charlie they never opened back up." "Used to be a trailer park over there, but after Charlie, they never came back," etc., etc. Almost always, it was some small mom and pop kind of business. The hurricane's toll, and the cost of bringing the business back just weren't worth it.

I think there's a common misconception about small businesses. While many entrepreneurs are successful and become wealthy, most toil and labor at their life's love: a family business either inherited or started themselves, and barely make ends meet plus a little Christmas or vacation money. The businesses I'm writing about survive on the margin, making ends meet by working long hours, employing family, and cutting corners wherever and whenever they can. When the hurricane set them back, perhaps their insurance would cover much of the physical structure and maybe even some lost or damaged goods. That is, the ones who could afford 'good' insurance. But what insurance wouldn't cover, is revenues lost for months, or maybe even a year, because store or shop traffic would be down in the hurricane's aftermath. After assessing the cost and effort it would take to get it back to just the old 'getting by' standard, they decided it just wasn't worth it.

A lot of small businesses in the US today are in a similar situation. Except this time it's not Hurrican Charlie and Port Charlotte, FL that's a concern. It's the CCP Virus and every small business in our country that was operating on a razor thin profit margin before the shutdowns that is at risk. Every day, week, and month that the economy in their states and towns remain closed, the tally of businesses that will close will continuously rise. Small, vibrant mom and pop places in every corner of small town USA will close by the tens, hundreds, and thousands. I guarantee you it's happening already. There are businesses whose owners perhaps had been thinking of closing, but hadn't come all the way to that point, who've crossed that threshold already, and won't be back. The number will only grow, and the longer we stay 'closed', will grow exponentially.

I read this morning that the Virginia Governor said some of the restrictions could last two years. An untold multitude of small businesses won't make it through May, 2020, let alone to April, 2022. Yes, there is a cost to opening too soon because of the virus. But let there be no doubt, there is a cost to opening too late, too.

4/24/2020 The Morning Papers Quick Hitters

I woke up a little earlier than usual today. For no special reason, I was just up and decided to make my coffee and muffin and go through my morning papers. After I read the sports page stories of interest, I started working through the news and opinion sections. I found myself underlining bits and pieces of the various articles on the CCP Virus and it's devastating impact on life in the USA in 2020. I underlined so much, thinking that I'd use the excerpts in my blog today, that it got to be way too much. So, rather than posting the excerpts, I'll just make some bullet point "quick hitter" observations:

• Way more people have been exposed to the virus than had been previously thought. In New York City, more than 20% of people tested positive for Covid-19 antibodies. That equates to 1.8 million New Yorkers. Similar testing in both Santa Clara and Los Angeles, CA yielded similar results. This is telling. This stuff was around BEFORE we knew it. It's more contagious than we thought it was. Lastly, as a percentage of people infected, the mortality rate is just a little higher than it is for the annual influenza epidemic, WAY lower than the rates early models and strategies were predicated on.
• This virus targets old people. Half of all fatalities in New York were over 75. 95% were over 50.
• Nursing homes are the most dangerous place as far as catching the virus goes. There were 3500+ deaths in nursing homes so far in New York State.
• Nearly all (94%) coronavirus hospitalizations had other underlying ailments. Surprisingly, asthma was only present in 9%. High blood pressure (57%), obesity (42%), and diabetes (34%) were the biggest, and were cited as being present in many of the fatalities.
• New York City accounts for 16% of all CCP Virus cases in the USA, and 32% of all CCP Virus fatalities in the USA.
• New York City has 141,754 (53%) CCP Virus cases in New York State (263,460), but has 98% (15,411) of the total fatalities (15,740). There is either something very fishy about those numbers or.... no, there IS something fishy about those numbers. 
• 1/4 of New York City's 8.6 million could go hungry as a result of the pandemic. New York has 500,000 newly unemployed people, many of them primary breadwinners.
• 26.4 million Americans are out of work due to the CCP virus, with 4.4 million new claims were made for unemployment.

What's it all mean? Well, first off, as a raw number, it doesn't change the number of fatalities. A more accurate accounting of those fatalities would, in my opinion, but I didn't see that addressed in the papers specifically. How do I think a more accurate accounting would change things? As I have opined before, there is a big difference between someone dying WITH the virus and someone FROM the virus. The number being used to count CCP Virus deaths is tainted, as it is a WITH number, not a FROM number. Federal aid and reimbursement policy has incentivized hospitals inflating the death count. Also, at least in New York, a good number of the deaths attributed to the virus were not attributed based on tests, but rather it was based on symptoms. I don't see how those can be counted and assumed to have validity. But be those built in inaccuracies as they are, the real raw number is still what it is. In other words, a number is a number, regardless of what percentage of other larger numbers it computes to be. This stuff can and will kill you, being old and or having other illnesses moves you way up the list.

In many ways, this is a New York problem more so than anyplace else. Or I should say, it is a much bigger problem in New York. Why? Think subways, buses, elevators, ferry boats, crowded crosswalks, and large apartment buildings. Chances are where you live you don't come into near the amount of contact with other people that New Yorkers do. Not even close.

We are barrelling toward a new Great Depression because of the jobs lost from this pandemic. The worldwide economy is taking a beating. So is ours. Our government, in trying to help has amassed debt upon debt and we're in a hole that will already be hard to dig ourselves out of. In my opinion, the sooner we start to climb out of this hole, the better.

How do we start to climb out of this?

• Option 1 is to do nothing, to wait for cures and for a vaccine. Option 1 will just continue the digging. I can't endorse option 1.
• Option 2 is to lift all restrictions, let life return to normal. I don't know that there are many proponents of this option, but I think it's stupid. Sure, we will see the herd immunity we hear discussed soonest, but at a higher cost in lives lost.
• Option 3, targeted measures, is the answer. Keep social distancing rules and guidelines in place. Carefully determine what activities can and which can't take place while following whatever restrictions are deemed necessary and sensible. Make decisions on local, city, and state levels on what restrictions make sense. New York isn't Florida and Florida isn't Wyoming, and Wyoming isn't Ohio, etc. And New York City isn't Syracuse, or Cooperstown, or Watertown, or Elmira, NY, either. Whoever is using the analogy of peeing in just one end of the pool, please stop. People in Montana don't need to lose their businesses and their life savings because New York City has subways, buses, elevators and crowded crosswalks. On the other hand, people in New York City may need to endure restrictions for some longer period of time just due to the nature of life there. Continue to protect and isolate older Americans and Americans with illnesses that put them at high risk.

One last observation: I see people in the paper blaming the Mayor, others blaming the Governor. On social media and in the mainstream media many blaming the President. It's a goddamned virus people. If you want to blame, blame the Communist Chinese who hid, lied, and jeopardized the world with it by doing so.

Time for Option 3! Sooner, not later.

4/23/2020 Hindsight is 20/20

As time passes, as we learn that more and more of our previous assumptions were incorrect, we need to constantly reassess where we are at NOT according to the plans made based on those old assumptions, but rather, based on revised plans that take into account new facts as they become known. One of my fears in the midst of all this, is that pride gets in the way of making new, proper decisions. What I mean is that if the right answer from last week isn't right now based on new information, our leaders can't allow criticism for last weeks decisions, which were presumably based on the best information available at the time, prevent us from making a course correction now based on the new information now on hand. The link below is to a Politico article which points to CCP Virus deaths weeks before what we've been assuming to have been the first.

Politico Article 

If the timeline turns out to have been wrong, which appears to be the case, then they need to go back to the starting point and make all the appropriate adjustments to the timeline based on the update. Similarly, if the fatality rate is wrong by major proportions, which the two recent antigen/antibody studies in California seem to indicate is true, then those adjustments to the modeling also need to be made. And once the models are corrected and adjusted, everything we're doing and not doing, because some of us damned sure aren't doing a lot of stuff, needs to be adjusted if needed, too.

Early Covid-19 Timeline. Complete?

Is it time to start some openings on a careful and selective basis? I believe it is. The closures, the social distancing, etc. were never about keeping a lid on the virus until is was wiped out. It was to protect hospital and medical capacities, so the people and resources weren't to be overwhelmed, The curve WAS flattened, hospitals are running well UNDER capacity across the country. They didn't run out of ventilators, beds, etc., as was feared. I know that some of you fear reopening our economy, and there is some validity to your fears. Those fears have to be balanced against the potentially irreparable harm already done to our economy and the devastation to the economy sure to come if the closure of our economy and the worldwide economy are held in check for an extended period of time. I believe if you're waiting for a vaccine before you'll support reopening the economy, you may be well intended, but we'll be in full on economic ruin by the time we have one. And if you're waiting for a point in time when there will be no more deaths due to the CCP Virus, you're waiting for a someday that is NEVER coming. Never, not in a million years, it just ain't happening. Sorry.

One last thought on reopening: it's not an easy decision. If things are reopened too fast in certain locations, there are possibly dire health consequences. On the other hand, keeping people at home in that same place or others will have severe social and economic consequences. As I said in another forum the other day, New York and New Jersey aren't Wyoming and Montana. Iowa isn't Florida, or California, or Illinois, either. I'll leave you with this rhetorical question I heard posed the other day: we closed Wyoming and Montana because of a devastating health crisis in New York and New Jersey. Do you really think if the epicenter of the crisis was Wyoming and Montana that New York and New Jersey, the New York City metropolitan area, would have been closed if the crisis wasn't there, but was out there in the mountain west? I don't. What's right for one state, city, or region may not be right someplace else.

What we learn tomorrow may undermine everything we think we know today. Hindsight is 20/20. I hope our leaders learn as we go and aren't hampered by pride to change or reverse course.

4/20/2017-2 Unpopular Take - Too Much Trump at the Briefings

I like chocolate ice cream. No lie. But I don't eat it three times a day and four times on weekends. Too much of a good thing becomes a not such a good thing.

A couple of weeks ago the Wall Street Journal editorialized that President Trump should cut back his participation in the Coronavirus Task Force's Daily Briefings. They weren't wrong. He goes on and on for far too long. It gets redundant, monotonous, and boring, all at the same time. A paying audience would be checking their watches: 'What time is dinner?' A politician who's become boring to one of even his strongest supporters has a problem. If you ask me, he should participate no more than twice a week: maybe on Wednesdays and Sundays, or something like that. And I'd make the Wednesday briefing technical in nature and take reporter's questions. If it lasts two hours to get through the questions, so be it. On Sunday, I'd make it more of a conversation with the American people about how they're doing, with the focus on providing reassurance and encouragement.

That's what I think. Sue me.

4/20/2017: The Conspiracy, AKA The Coup d'état

Reading a piece by John Solomon this morning, especially as it is titled:  "Newly declassified evidence casts doubt on Obama intel assessment about Russia’s election intentions" got me thinking, 'Where and how does President Obama fit into all of this?' But as a primer, first, I suggest you read the piece, and then, know that I do believe that there was at least at some level, a conspiracy to impact the 2016 Presidential Election by damaging candidate Donald Trump, AND to undermine both President Elect Donald Trump and President Donald Trump, an American coup d'état. Who are the conspirators, and why hasn't anyone been indicted yet? Here's a link to the Solomon piece: Just The News - John Solomon.

The Russians meddled in the 2016 election. Don't be a douchebag and presume that because I believe there was a coup attempt that I am in denial of that fact. They meddled. It's most likely, in my opinion, that they played it both ways, trying to help President Trump AND trying to help Hillary Clinton. Why would they try to help both? Because their goal wasn't to see either elected, their goal was to sew discord and discontent. They succeeded.

John Brennan, Obama CIA Chief might as well have been KGB

 Chief.

So who were the conspirators in the coup? I feel certain John Brennan is one of them. As head of the CIA under President Obama, consumed by his own power and deluded sense of righteousness, Brennan is a scumbag who in the past voted for the Communist Party candidate for POTUS. I believe he was the primary conspirator.

The other conspirators?: Hillary Clinton. James Clapper. James Comey. Andrew McCabe. Peter Strzok, Lisa Page, Sallie Yates, Bruce Ohr, Nellie Ohr, and a half dozen, up to maybe a dozen more. Whether or not the conspirators ever pay for their deeds is debatable, if not highly doubtful. The swamp protects its own. These pieces of shit are the swamp's apex predators. Drunk on power and self-importance, the rest of the swamp grovels for scumbags like these people. They'll cover for them in hope of winning favor and receiving favors once these corrupt bastards return to their 'rightful' places at the seat of power.

Hillary Clinton - Paid for phony dossier: Clinton Campaign paid Perkins Coie LLP who in turn paid Fusion GPS, which hired Christopher Steele who produced the Steele Dossier

James Clapper - Sold the Trump Russia collusion hoax on the TV news circuit.

James Comey - Tried to blackmail Trump with phony dossier allegations.

 The media are co-conspirators, too. Select reporters, producers, and executives at ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, MSNBC, the NY Times, Washington Post and others facilitated the coup by airing partisan propaganda and calling every suspicion and question about the coup d'état a conspiracy theory and calling the questioners "tin foil hat conspiracy nuts".

President Obama.

What about President Obama? Wasn't he a conspirator? Personally, I don't think so. I think Obama was fed the same line of bullshit about Trump, Papadopoulus, Page, and the rest that the press was. Just like Bush and the WMD in Iraq controversy, and like Trump is taking advice on Coronavirus, I think Obama trusted his intel and in this case his law enforcement people, who told them they had stuff on Trump and Trump associates. But I do not believe, until I see or hear evidence otherwise, that in a smoke filled room, late at night, President Obama gave the green light to a coup d'état. Sorry, I don't. When Brennan, Comey, Clapper, Yates, and the rest told him they were investigating these guys' ties to the Russians, I think like ANY other president would have done, he said, "OK, see what you find. Keep me informed", or words to that effect.

Is the Crossfire Hurricane shit ever finally going to hit the fan? I don't know. I hope so. I ain't holding my breath. I do hope that Carter Page and George Papdopoulis win big legal settlements. I hope Lt Gen Michael Flynn is exonerated and sues the shit out of these bastards. And I hope President Trump pardons Roger Stone. I'm not sure how I feel about Paul Manafort or Michael Cohen. Frankly, I don't give a shit how their futures play out.

4/17/2020 Finding the Sweet Spot

There is no perfect "sweet spot". Taking the financial consequences out of it, we can't calculate exactly how many more will die FROM COVID-19 if we are to lift the restrictions completely today, or if we do a phased approach, do one or the other of the preceding in a month, two months, three months or six, nor if we keep the restrictions in place 18 or more months while we wait for a vaccine. We won't really know which of those is the "perfect" choice until scientists are writing the epilogue to this story.

 

 

The economy is a different story. The longer we wait, the worse it will be. Period. There are no variables that crop up and make it better for the economy to wait 3, 6, 9, 12, or 18 months and then open it up.

I support a phased approach for relaxing restrictions. Those of us who can stay at home, we should continue to do that to the extent possible until things look different. Those of you who need to get back to work to save your businesses and your careers, you need to be able to do so as soon as reasonably possible. But when you do, you surely need to protect yourself and to be careful not to endanger your loved ones should you catch this stuff so that you don't unknowingly bring it home and spread it to someone who is far more vulnerable to its effects than you may be yourself. Remember, your contacts have contacts. This stuff leapfrogs from person to person to person invisibly.

No matter what your local city, town or county, your state, and the federal government decides, second guessers will have a field day: "They should have waited longer!" "They waited too long!" "This should have opened sooner!" "That should have stayed closed longer!" Friends, there is no perfect sweet spot. One of the burdens of leadership, be it local, state, and federal, is bearing the burden of criticism for decisions, I get that. I simply encourage you, as you think critically in this, is to focus on WHAT you think is right more than WHO you think is right. And be honest with yourself, if your WHAT'S right is severely influenced by WHO you think is right (or wrong), I suggest you learn to think for yourself, because your "sheeple act" is getting old.

4/16/2020 The Ever Improving CCP Virus Worst Case Scenario

As the worst case scenario number of hospitalizations and deaths from the CCP virus steadily and continually declines, it calls into question the wisdom of destroying the world's economy. The shutdowns always were and still are primarily intended to protect our hospitals and medical personnel from being completely overwhelmed and overcome my multitudes of sick and dying people. Well, it has worked. I personally believe the closures and social distancing guidelines were well intended. I think people vilifying Drs. Fauci and Birx, the President, and anyone else in this country for their efforts up till now are off target.

Be that as it may, we are rapidly approaching a point of even deeper and irreparable harm to our economy and way of life. We need desperately to open our economy back up as soon as we can. Two more weeks until the end of April, and if the trend continues as far as projections and corrections of the models based on improved data assumptions, I suggest a phased approach to opening for business.

Older people, like me and older, and people with various co-morbidities (co-morbidity is a word that I've unfortunately learned during this pandemic) need to continue social distancing and isolating, maybe for a month, two months, even three months longer. Time will tell what the right amount of time is. But schools, stores, restaurants, places of worship, and all manner and sort of other places of business and social activity need to begin to open their doors soon, or they may remain shuttered forever. I'm advocating a phased approach. Maybe we go back to half the shutdowns we have now for a month, then a quarter for a month or two more, I don't know the right percentages or timing. I'm just illustrating a phased approach. And when you do go back to work, shopping, church, etc., you can't go hang out with grandma and grandpa until they're clear of the risk of infection. That part sucks, but it is going to have to be that way in a phased approach.

It's getting to be that time. Thus far everything we've done has been, again in my humble opinion, in good faith and based on avoiding worst case scenarios that were projected at the time decisions were made. But as the hospital ships, makeshift and temporary hospitals, ventilators and other medical equipment, etc., are used in much lower quantities than was feared necessary and for which provisions were made, it becomes a building block to get back to "business as usual", whatever the new usual will turn out to be when this is over.

And when this is over, even though I know this won't happen, I urge that we stop fighting each other: red states vs. blue, rural vs. urban, left vs. right, GOP vs. Dems, Trump vs. the press, etc., and instead we work together to address the things we've learned. I would start with 1) limiting our dependence on China for medical supplies, medicines, food, and technology, especially military technology, and 2) codifying who has what authority and what are the responsibilities at the federal, state, and local levels. I don't believe establishing and standing up a bloated bureaucracy to wait for the next pandemic, which could hopefully be a decade or more off, is the right answer. But neither do I advocate a short memory span inspired "head in the sand" approach, either.

One last thought: how can we ever get things right when we're more interested in who's right than we are in what's right? What's right right about now is for us to keep our spirits up, help our neighbors, and as the data becomes more accurate, to open the US for business when and where we can.

Have a great day, friends! Stay safe. You CAN still catch this stuff if you're not careful. God bless.

4/2/2020 Post: Testing, Testing, and More Testing

President Trump Shows Covid-19 Testing Device at Recent Presser

In the big scheme of things, I understand how things transpired, so I get the reasons "why", but I do believe that we'd have been better off had we started testing sooner. I don't think it would surely have changed too much, but had we started a week or so sooner, we'd have started our hated social distancing a week sooner. And, yes, everyone hates it, but it's still the right play right now. Under the Trump Administration, the US is testing like crazy now, testing 100,000+ people per day. Surely at some point we're caught up with the slow start. But, on the subject of testing, I think we still have a long way to go. I don't think 100,000 a day is enough.

First, there are still many people complaining of symptoms NOT being tested. I don't know how many more than 100,000 per day we'd need to test to meet that need, so without any basis other than a WAG (Wild Ass Guess), I'll say that needs to increase to 150,000 or even to 200,000. Call it 175,000 as a split the difference.

New Rutgers Machine Can Process Thousands of Tests Per Day

The second place we need more testing is recurrent tests for medical personnel. Doctors, nurses, EMTs, and other front-line medical care givers should be tested on some kind of a recurring interval: once a week, every 10 days, two weeks, or monthly. I don't know what's right, but these awesome caregivers are facing the virus in patients day in, and day out, oftentimes for long hours without breaks. We need to protect these people AND their patients by more widespread monitoring than what we have in place now. Is 50,000 tests a day enough? Just another WAG, but whether it's 50,000 or 100,000 additional tests per day, we should have widespread testing of our medica personnel. Let's call it 50,000.

And lastly, we need random testing of the population, across the country. We need to monitor and identify the virus as it hides in and amongst us in the population. If you're going to ask us to shelter in place, and order us the "stay at home", it's tough on morale, it's even tougher on the economy. We need, BADLY, to get people back to work as soon as we can. If we were doing enough random testing, nationwide and tallied and reported by locality, perhaps we can begin loosening restrictions by location. I don't know how many tests would need to be administered daily to identify where the virus is, and in what numbers it is found there, but enough random tests to paint a statistically valid model. And I don't know that we need to do this daily, every other day, or even weekly. That's for the statisticians. So, for my last WAG, I'll call it another 25,000 per day.

Drive Through Covid-19 Testing Site

I'm not overly critical of the slow start to testing. And I am not underselling the magnitude of the effort it took to bring us to where we are now, testing 100,000 people a day. I'm just saying it doesn't seem to me to be enough. We need enough so every symptomatic person is tested, our medical front line people are given recurrent tests, and we need widespread random testing of our at large population. When I add my three guesses together, that's an additional 250,000 tests above and beyond the 100,000, an increase by a magnitude of 2.5 above and beyond what we're doing now. So yeah, they've done a bang-up job getting caught up and back on track. But it's not enough.

Is it ever enough? Will it ever be enough? Smarter people than me will figure it out.

Testing 1,2,3....