Get to Work, America

Silverfiddle Rant!

Colorado's lockdown is lifted today, although there are still limits. Montana, Minnesota and Tennessee are also relaxing restrictions.

All eyes will be on the "dangerous" and "irresponsible" states of Georgia and Florida:  Trump-haters are rubbing their little hands together and preparing their schadenfreude snark as they eagerly await rising infections and death counts.

Hysterical Democrats are calling those refusing to cower in their homes ignorant MAGA hicks and selfish a-holes for wanting to get out in the sunshine and get back to work, although there is no scientific connection between people basking in the sunshine and breathing fresh air in Florida and people dying in New York City. Indeed, there is scant statistical correlation between lockdowns and Conronavirus cases.

Politicians like the mayor of El Lay state it more politely:

"We can't let one weekend reverse a month of work that you have invested in."

That's a nice piece of Sunk Cost Fallacy that resonates with the human mind (as many fallacies do), and it only makes sense if we're holding out until the cavalry can come riding over the hill to save us, but that's not going to happen. A vaccine is problematic due to the nature of the virus, and in the best of circumstances will take years. There is no imminent fix for this. We are not eradicating Covid-19.  It will remain on this earth until it finds no more hosts to attach itself to.

My answer to the good mayor is...

We’re not saving lives—we’re deferring deaths  

The experts tell us we have "flattened the curve," but given the poor quality of data and the multiple revisions downward of morbidity and mortality rates, how do they know?  Sure, a little logic and reason tells us the number of infections and deaths would most likely have been higher if we had done nothing, but which actions worked to slow the rate of infection? Cowering in our homes?  Washing our hands? Quarantining the sick and the vulnerable? Masks?  Keeping our distance?

Edward Ziegler thinks we'll be fully reopened soon, and not because of successes in contact tracing* (which is an "impossible" pipe dream that could metastasize into one more massive federal jobs program), testing, and vaccines.  He says delays and failures in these touted saviors will give us no choice but to Keep Calm and  Press On.

What say you?

* - When you're a Silicon Valley robber baron, every solution looks like an app.

LINKS:

Good Tracking Resource: KFF State Data and Trends
Experts worry quarantine fatigue is starting
Andrew Sullivan:  We can't go on like this much longer
Many Failures combined to unleash death toll on Italy

Musical Interlude

Enjoy "Stayin' Inside" - Coronavirus Bee Gees Parody:

Takes me back to my disco dancing days. Yes, I got up and danced to this!

What Say You? (a Silverfiddle Rant)

Picture courtesy of our Semper Fi friend Mustang

Paging Lord Acton!

Times of crisis bring out the petty dictator in too many government types:

Under what imperious conception of governance does Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer believe it is within her power to unilaterally ban garden stores from selling fruit or vegetable plants and seeds?

What business is it of Vermont or Howard County, Ind., to dictate that Walmart, Costco, or Target stop selling “non-essential” items, such as electronics or clothing? Vermont has 628 cases of coronavirus as of this writing. Is that the magic number authorizing the governor to ban people from buying seeds for their gardens?

There is no reason to close “public” parks, where Americans can maintain social distance while getting some air or space for their mental and physical well-being — or maybe see a grandchild from afar. In California, surfers, who stay far away from each other, are banned from going in the water.

Elsewhere, hikers are banned from roaming the millions of acres in national parks. Millions of lower-income and urban-dwelling Americans don’t have the luxury of backyards, and there is absolutely no reason to inhibit their movement, either. (Coronavirus Authoritarianism is Getting out of Hand)

A better way going forward--instead of local tyrants picking winners and losers and putting people under house arrest--would be to allow any business to open that can operate within health and hygiene guidelines.  Restaurants could space tables further apart and clean tables and chairs with disinfectant before seating the next party.

And for heaven's sake, stop taking away people's God-given freedom to roam outside and enjoy fresh air and sunshine!

Data Does Not Support Extended Lockdowns

Scott W. Atlas, MD, former chief of neuroradiology at Stanford University Medical Center presents five facts to counter the hysteria and panic being fomented by the Infotainment Media Complex and craven politicians:

Fact 1: The overwhelming majority of people do not have any significant risk of dying from COVID-19. The recent Stanford University antibody study now estimates that the fatality rate if infected is likely 0.1 to 0.2 percent, a risk far lower than previous World Health Organization estimates that were 20 to 30 times higher and that motivated isolation policies.

Fact 2: Protecting older, at-risk people eliminates hospital overcrowding. Even for people ages 65 to 74, only 1.7 percent were hospitalized.

Fact 3: Vital population immunity is prevented by total isolation policies, prolonging the problem.

Fact 4: People are dying because other medical care is not getting done due to hypothetical projections.

Fact 5: We have a clearly defined population at risk who can be protected with targeted measures.

See Also:  The Deadly Cost of Extended Shutdown Orders

Finally, some good news for those of us streaming movies...

Despite unprecedented internet usage, FCC’s Carr says Internet Speed Up 70% Since Repeal of Net Neutrality

Have a good weekend!

Herd Mentality Defeats Herd Immunity

Silverfiddle Rant!

In February, experts were hoping we could contain and eradicate Covid-19, just like we did with SARS in 2003, but even at that time, many were worrying that it was already too late, and that now appears to be the case.
The virus may never be “under control” until we reach herd immunity.



Beware Politicians with No Skin in The Game

Our erudite friend Farmer is fond of reminding us that having skin in the game affects decision-making. Denver's Maoist city council proves his point with their latest proclamation, where they demonstrate their compassion and generosity (with other people's money, of course).

“No Coloradan or small business who is unable to pay through no fault of their own should be required to pay rent during this health emergency, nor should they accumulate debt or interest for unpaid rent,” according to the proclamation

Once Again, Government is Caught Unprepared

I don't want witch hunts and guillotines, but our standing bureaucracies were caught unprepared, and made tragic mistakes launching wide-scale testing.  We need to learn the right lessons from this and restructure hierarchies and processes, and empower those good, smart people to move quickly and take risks.

But the problems go far broader and deeper than what a president does. Lack of planning and preparation contribute, but so too does bureaucratic inertia as well as fear among career officials of taking risks. Turnover in personnel robs government of historical knowledge and expertise. The process of policymaking-on-the-fly is less robust than it once was. Politics, too, gets in the way.  (Once Again, Government is Caught Unprepared)

Filter the Experts

We're getting a taste of what a world run by monomaniacal experts looks like

Experts can be guilty of being monomaniacs, interested only in the thing they are studying. That’s understandable, of course, because many of these things are hard to comprehend. And having put so much effort into their work, it’s also not unexpected, and very human, that most experts put a lot of weight on their conclusions and are convinced of their importance.

That’s exactly why, when scientists call for their findings to be implemented by government, we need politicians and civil servants to moderate their enthusiasm, examine contrary views and express appropriate scepticism. And, in short, judiciously weigh all the other factors that come to bear on any given set of conclusions. 
(Where is the vigorous debate?)

Supermodels

WHO initially suggested a case fatality rate (CFR) of 3.4 per cent ... A paper from Imperial on 10 February suggested CFR of 0.9 per cent, a more recent one on 30 March 0.66 per cent... Recent data from a German town suggest a CFR of 0.37 per cent, having found an actual infection rate in the town of about 15 per cent. (Where is the vigorous debate?)

US models are faring no better...

A widely followed model for projecting Covid-19 deaths in the U.S. is producing results that have been bouncing up and down like an unpredictable fever, and now epidemiologists are criticizing it as flawed and misleading for both the public and policy makers.

“That the IHME model keeps changing is evidence of its lack of reliability as a predictive tool,” said epidemiologist Ruth Etzioni of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center, who has served on a search committee for IHME. “That it is being used for policy decisions and its results interpreted wrongly is a travesty unfolding before our eyes.”  (Stat News)

See also:

Good article on modeling: Disease modelers gaze into their computers to see the future of Covid-19, and it isn’t good

Covid-19 Tracker

America's Press

By Sam Huntington

The American news media began in 1729 with an entertaining press written and produced by Ben Franklin. Its focus was satire and matters of interest (he thought) to the public. A few years later, William Cosby, governor of New York, hauled John Zinger into court accusing him of seditious libel. His attorney successfully argued that newspapers should be free to criticize government so long as the accusations were true. It was this case that led the founders to consider “freedom of the press.”

Back then, it was supposed that the people had an inalienable right to know what government was up to. Of course, in explaining what the government was up to there was considerable license for the writer’s point of view, which we may assume was a viewpoint shared by the publisher.

Public assassination in the press began early in our history. Politicians soon learned how to manipulate the press for their own purposes. If we think the Steele Dossier is a disgrace, read how Thomas Jefferson anonymously conspired to hatchet his boss, President George Washington. Jefferson’s cabal made scurrilous claims, none of which were true. The dye was cast, however. News media became politicized and it has been that way ever since.

Is this problem getting worse? Considering the continual effort to mislead readers and listeners, I’d have to answer in the affirmative. The news is not only too often “fake,” lies and distortions frequently end up re-transmitted on such social platforms as Twitter, Face Book, a plethora of truly bizarre blogs, and YouTube. This would not be a problem if Americans were capable of sifting through bull feces to discover the facts. Critical thinking, however, is not one of the American public’s strong suits.

Independent research takes time; no one has time for it. The consequences of this are serious. Public apathy is an automatic win for politicians, who we might observe are inveterate liars. People who accept lies as truth become easily led sheep, easy marks for political wolves. People who become rabid enablers of dishonest press and their political masters harm themselves, their loved ones, their communities, and the nation.

How much faith or confidence can one have in a loved one who is a prolific liar? Now substitute the words “loved one” with “member of the press.” There you go, America. Here’s your sign.

Morality Plays

Silverfiddle Rant!

We’ve now witnessed local and state governments issue decrees about what people can and cannot buy in stores, arrest parents playing with their children in public parks, yank people off public buses at random, remove basketball rims along with private property, ticket churchgoers, and in one case try—and fail—to chase down a lone runner on an empty beach. All of this, we’re told, is for our own good. (John Davidson, The Federalist)

The Infotainment Media Complex fans the flames of hysteria with headlines like this:

South Dakota’s governor resisted ordering people to stay home!!!
Now it has one of the nation’s largest coronavirus hot spots!!!

After ordering all of us to cower in our homes, they add insult to injury by subjecting us to cheap morality tales:

Backward rightwing governor of a state full of backward rightwing Trump voters ignored Science and refused to order everyone under house arrest, and look what happened! South Dakota is a Hot Spot!

The outbreak happened at a meat packing plant, not a rogue roadside tavern in an unincorporated part of the state, and the outbreak is attributed to insufficient Personal Protective Equipment at a job site where people work cheek by jowl. No Stay at Home order would have prevented that. New York put in place a very stringent Stay at Home order, but NYC is a glowing red hot spot.

Related to this is the disturbing trend of people snitching on neighbors taking a walk outdoors, and screaming about how people not quarantining in place in rural Nebraska are going kill us all. People in the hinterlands of Trump Country taking walks outside are not endangering the nation. Businesses like packing plants that don't check workers' temperatures and provide PPE and other precautions will cause a hot spot, and that needs to be addressed, harshly.

The same people accusing Donald Trump of being a dictator are enraged that he has not dictated a uniform nationwide house arrest. They see different rules enforced in different ways around the nation and they scream like toddlers in a daycare center because another group of kids got cookies and they didn’t.

Check out where South Dakota is on the Coronavirus - US dashboard.

Humor For These Times — And Musical Interlude

(For politics, please scroll down)

One of my Facebook finds:

Not the case for those accustomed to homeschooling.

For example, a few weeks in my homeschool literature class online, we read aloud from and discussed Chapters 1-2 of Charles Dickens's novel Hard Times and Robert Frost's poem "Death of the Hired Man." We also went over some writing assignments, those completed and those due in a few weeks.

In other words, class as usual!

Yes, I prefer in-person teaching.  But I am adjusting to using Google Hangouts, FaceTime, Skype, and Zoom — even though I find using these platforms for 1-2 hours quite exhausting, probably because I can't move around much. Nevertheless, I see that I will have to use these platforms well into the future, possibly until there is a vaccine for the Ripley (COVID-19).

Now, for some weekend relaxation....

Claude Debussy's Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun:

[about the above piece, which is a tone poem]

Bonus video, the goals of which are to evoke tranquility and meditation:

Piano music of Claude Debussy for relaxation, reading and studying, with impressionist paintings of Monet, Manet, Van Gogh... 

 List of compositions:
 0:00-4:50, Arabesque No_. 1
4:53-10:16, Clair de Lune
10:21-13:40, Footprints in the Snow
13:43-16:05, Maid With The Flaxen Hair
16:09-20:33, Reverie 
 20:38- 24:53 La soiree dans Grenade

Recommended Reading

See How Epidemics of the Past Changed the Way Americans Lived: Past public health crises inspired innovations in infrastructure, education, fundraising and civic debate, dated April 1, 2020 and published at Smithsonian Magazine.


Remember...

"Never Let a Crisis Go To Waste"

Silverfiddle Rant!

Big Government has ordered everyone to stay in their homes and has promulgated a gargantuan $2 trillion emergency spending bill.  These ukases have snapped the frayed ties that had moored us to reality and time-tested principles. We are in dangerous waters, and politicians, tastemakers and thought leaders of all stripes are preaching nostrums that just months ago would have gotten them laughed off the mainstream public stage. Doctrinaire leftists are also roaring back, eager to see if their unbalanced old ideas can gain traction in this new unbalanced environment.

Politico has assembled mini-essays from “more than 30 smart, macro thinkers” on what the outcomes from our corona virus experience will look like. This vapid, illogical quote sums up the entire project:

“It’s clear that in a crisis, the rules don’t apply—which makes you wonder why they are rules in the first place.”

Many of the missives are innocuous, giddy pie-in-the-sky platitudes heard in late-night college sophomore dorm discussions, but the underlying themes throughout include enforced solidarity and uniformity, obeisance to a leviathan government of infallible experts who will replace our fallible personal judgements, and an enforced end to those horrible old fashioned cultural practices that are not just stupid and un-scientific, but endanger us all.

There is also a common thread--squirming worm-like throughout--that names enemies of the Brave New Project: Donald Trump, petroleum industry, automobiles, eating meat, capitalism, privatized health care, personal liberty and autonomy, limited federal government.

A Brave New World

The authors envision a post-corona Brave New Future where government provides free college, free money, free health care and free child care, but for me their writings conjured scenes from a dystopian hellscape, everyone cossetted in their own sterile bubbles, peering out at fellow humans through plastic lenses and internet cameras while government instructions blare from social media outlets.

 Where the authors see an opportunity to force us all to eat soylent green (for our own good, of course) I see a totalitarian dystopia, sterilized of personal agency and genuine human love. I execrate almost all of the proposals in this article, except for improvements in medical care coverage and giving workers more resources to take care of themselves and their families, and I believe these goals can be accomplished without more government bureaucracy. Unfortunately, Republicans are not up to the herculean task of crafting intellectual and practical arguments against more big government.

Lost in all this is the fact that markets and freedom did not fail us—Big Government did

Please read the article and tell us what you think. Below I list a few of the best essays, the worst, and which ones I think are most likely to happen.

The Best

* The rise of telemedicine. Ezekiel J. Emanuel
* Regulatory barriers to online tools will fall. Katherine Mangu-Ward
* Congress can finally go virtual. Ethan Zuckerman
* Stronger domestic supply chains. Todd N. Tucker, Dambisa Moyo

Most Frightening

* Government becomes Big Pharma. Steph Sterling

The "brilliant thought leader" fails to realize that the private sector is not charged with planning for and fighting pandemics, government are, and they have largely failed. South Korea is an example of how a free market democratic nation successfully fights a pandemic.

Most Likely to Happen

* Expect a political uprising. Cathy O’Neil

But like any revolution, it will play out in wild and unpredictable ways, not how she predicts
* Stronger domestic supply chains. Todd N. Tucker, Dambisa Moyo
* A hunger for diversion. Mary Frances Berry

What say you?

Resurrection Day 2020

Christ the Lord Is Risen Today:

Lyrics (Charles Wesley, 1739):

Christ the Lord is ris’n today, Alleluia!
Sons of men and angels say, Alleluia!
Raise your joys and triumphs high, Alleluia!
Sing, ye heav’ns, and earth, reply, Alleluia!

Lives again our glorious King, Alleluia!
Where, O death, is now thy sting? Alleluia!
Once He died our souls to save, Alleluia!
Where thy victory, O grave? Alleluia!

Love’s redeeming work is done, Alleluia!
Fought the fight, the battle won, Alleluia!
Death in vain forbids His rise, Alleluia!
Christ hath opened paradise, Alleluia!

Soar we now where Christ hath led, Alleluia!
Foll’wing our exalted Head, Alleluia!
Made like Him, like Him we rise, Alleluia!
Ours the cross, the grave, the skies, Alleluia!

Hail the Lord of earth and heaven, Alleluia!
Praise to Thee by both be given, Alleluia!
Thee we greet triumphant now, Alleluia!
Hail the Resurrection, thou, Alleluia!

King of glory, Soul of bliss, Alleluia!
Everlasting life is this, Alleluia!
Thee to know, Thy pow’r to prove, Alleluia!
Thus to sing, and thus to love, Alleluia!

Be blest.

Good Friday 2020

El Greco's Christ Carrying the Cross

From John Chapter 19 (KJV):

Then Pilate therefore took Jesus, and scourged Him.  And the soldiers platted a crown of thorns, and put it on His head, and they put on Him a purple robe...

...Pilate saith unto them, "Take ye Him, and crucify Him."...

...And they took Jesus, and led Him away. And He bearing His cross went forth into a place called the place of a skull, which is called in the Hebrew Golgotha: where they crucified Him, and two other with Him, on either side one, and Jesus in the midst.

And Pilate wrote a title, and put it on the cross. And the writing was, JESUS OF NAZARETH THE KING OF THE JEWS. This title then read many of the Jews: for the place where Jesus was crucified was nigh to the city: and it was written in Hebrew, and Greek, and Latin.  Then said the chief priests of the Jews to Pilate, "Write not, The King of the Jews; but that he said, I am King of the Jews."  Pilate answered, "What I have written I have written."

Then the soldiers, when they had crucified Jesus, took His garments, and made four parts, to every soldier a part; and also His coat: now the coat was without seam, woven from the top throughout.  They said therefore among themselves, "Let us not rend it, but cast lots for it, whose it shall be": that the Scripture might be fulfilled, which saith, "They parted My raiment among them, and for My vesture they did cast lots." These things therefore the soldiers did.

Now there stood by the cross of Jesus His mother, and His mother’s sister, Mary the wife of Cleophas, and Mary Magdalene.  When Jesus therefore saw His mother, and the disciple standing by, whom He loved, He saith unto His mother, "Woman, behold thy son!"  Then saith He to the disciple, "Behold thy mother!" And from that hour that disciple took her unto His own home.

After this, Jesus knowing that all things were now accomplished, that the Scripture might be fulfilled, saith, "I thirst. " Now there was set a vessel full of vinegar: and they filled a sponge with vinegar, and put it upon hyssop, and put it to His mouth.  When Jesus therefore had received the vinegar, He said, "It is finished": and He bowed His head, and gave up the ghost....

...Now in the place where He was crucified there was a garden; and in the garden a new sepulchre, wherein was never man yet laid.  There laid they Jesus therefore because of the Jews’ preparation day; for the sepulchre was nigh at hand.

From Handel's Messiah (Isaiah 53:4-5, KJV)

What Government Health Care Looks Like

Silverfiddle Rant!

Headlines:

Obama Admin didn't Replenish N95 Mask Stockpile

Trump Admin Wasted Months



We have government agencies that--regardless of president or party--are charged with carrying out plans and policies crafted by congress and signed by the president. Clearly, our government was caught flat-footed by the Wuhan Virus, first and foremost thanks to the the lying Chinese Communist Party, abetted in their face-saving lies by the World Health Organization.

Still, that excuse only goes so far. Our government is supposed to have plans and stockpiles for such events.  Like most catastrophes, the after-action reporting on this debacle will have many factors that played out in a horrible comedy of errors.

Please read this:

Inside the coronavirus testing failure: Alarm and dismay among the scientists who sought to help

Here are the lowlights from this tale of frustration, told by scientists and doctors at clinics, labs and hospitals attempting to navigate the US government's Soviet-era style bureaucracy:

"We have the skills and resources as a community but we are collectively paralyzed by a bloated bureaucratic/administrative process," Marc Couturier, medical director at academic laboratory ARUP in Utah, wrote to other microbiologists on Feb. 27 after weeks of mounting frustration.

A scientist named Greninger describes trying to submit his test for government approval:

Greninger channeled his energy into the paperwork problem, spending more than 100 hours filling out forms and collecting information needed for the application, he told The Post. But when he finally submitted the material, an FDA official told him the agency could not accept it - because he had emailed it.

"We received your email and attachments regarding the UW 2019-nCoV assay pre-EUA," an FDA official wrote on Feb. 20. "However, we have not received the official submission through DCC."

"What is the DCC?" Greninger wrote back.

"The Document Control Center," came the reply.

"What is the Document Control Center?"

Greninger then learned about another requirement. Under FDA rules, he was supposed to digitally copy the electronic documents he had emailed to the FDA, burn the copies onto a disk and mail the hard disk to an office in suburban District of Columbia.

Greninger shared his exasperation in a Feb. 20 email to a colleague: "repeat after me, emergency."

Please read the article and give us your thoughts.

Mull This Over....(With Addendum)

[source]

The video at THIS LINK with the title "‘We Should Never Let Someone Like That Run This Country’: Tucker Carlson Says Dr. Fauci’s Advice Could Lead To ‘National Suicide.’"

I couldn't embed the video, so you must go to the link to watch it.

Additional material, by Midnight Rider of Infidel Bloggers Alliance, dated April 4, 2020: A MESSAGE FROM THE BUNKER: 274,000 Americans infected with Covid Out of 330,000,000 Americans total = .08% --- Not .08 or 8% but 8 one hundredths of one percent.

You might find the comments to the above interesting, too. In those comments, I expressed my own concerns about the definition of the term "recovery":

Mr. AOW is "recovered" from his stroke of 2009. His recovery looks like this: basically paralyzed on his left side (he was left handed), hospital bed in the living room, bedside potty in the living room, needs help with just about every ADL you can think of, totally disabled.

Would you call the above a real recovery?

Addendum below the fold: inside intensive care unit at University College Hospital in London (8 minute video):

Musical Interlude

(For politics, please scroll down)

"Great Is Thy Faithfulness," an American Christian hymn dating from 1923, has a special place in my heart, in part because it was the hymn requested by my paternal Uncle John to be used as the congregational hymn at his memorial service, held years ago when he perished from Alzheimer's Disease:


More hymns performed by Blue Rock Mennonite Youth HERE.

A Break For Beauty

(For politics, please scroll down. New post published on April 2)

Rainbow here in Northern Virginia on April 1. Photo courtesy of NextDoor Online Neighborhood:

Neo-Flagellants

Silverfiddle Rant!

There is something profoundly ugly in this. Monbiot and other greens seem to view Covid-19 as a disaster that will have an upside: it might roll back the Enlightenment-era belief that humankind can exercise dominion over nature and remind us that actually we are at nature’s mercy. They hope this disaster will restore nature’s power over the humanised world.  - Brendan O'Neill, Spiked On-line

"This is positively Biblical. Gaia is God in this scenario, coming to punish us for our sins."

Brendan O'Neill nails the Greens who are screaming like a pack of 19th Century Millenarians that the end is nigh. It disturbs me to see the tastemakers and thought leaders express a nostalgia for the bad old days and craving a need for sacrifice.

"This is a new moment,” said Jon Meacham, a historian and author of The Soul of America. “Prolonged sacrifice isn’t something we’ve been asked to do, really, since World War II,” Meacham said.”

Here's another example:

“We used to tax in times of crisis. Now we don’t,” Zelizer said. “We asked people to ration in times of crisis. Now we don’t. We asked people to serve in times of crisis. Now we don’t. So this is a sea change. The thing is, Americans might not have a choice.”

The Infotainment Media Complex collective has been displaying signs of repressed guilt for a long time. Purges, cleanses, public shaming, struggle sessions, and virtue signalling...

Their consciences must be filthy, and all the ambien in the world cannot silence the rusty chains rattling in the dark night of their blinkered souls.

Marginally Related:  Virus causes surge in WW II references, but is it merited?

Recommended Reading

See The unbearable pettiness of the Washington press corps at American Thinker, dated March 30, 2020. Excerpt below the fold:

R.I.P., My Dear Friend Patricia (May 6, 1954-March 29, 2020). Hymn Added.

(For politics, please scroll down.  Active thread one post down)

Patricia here on our wheelchair ramp in 2010.

My dear friend Patricia (former blogger The Merry Widow) went Home to the Lord suddenly on March 29, of an apparent heart attack in the emergency room.

Warren's words when he heard the sad news: "If anybody was right with God, it was Patricia."

Her last three posts on Facebook, the second two from the ER:

A Great Awakening?

Silverfiddle Rant!

Could a rogue virus lead to a grand creative moment in America’s history? Will Americans, shaken by the reality of a risky universe, rediscover the God who proclaimed himself sovereign over every catastrophe?
-- Robert Nicholson


"Thy Kingdom Come"

I have been praying for another great awakening for quite some time, and I'm confident my prayers join those of hundreds of millions of other people of faith, so this article caught my eye: A Coronavirus Great Awakening?

America has experienced three or four Great Awakenings. Are we due for another one? What would it look like? What preachers or churches would lead it?

A physics PhD and deep thinker I used to work for opined last week that this could lead to a new wave of intellectual ferment and new ideas and inventions, just as the black plague of the Middle Ages did.  I'm not that steeped in history, but he averred that the plague forced people to shutter themselves away and spend a lot of time with their thoughts, and that led to many wonderful new ideas that ended up ushering in the Enlightenment. I'm thinking, "yeah, but those people didn't have Netflix, social media and internet porn..."

Have you been praying more?  Reading the Bible? Developing intellectual theories or coming up with a new invention?  If the government ordered you to stay in your home, what have you been doing to occupy your time?

At the Casa Silverfiddle, we have been praying and reading the Bible more.  The kids are doing schoolwork, bracelet-making, origami and playing music. I've been playing a lot of banjo, slowing down and focusing on good technique, and knocking the rust of the old fiddle, reacquainting myself with all the fiddle tunes I used to know.

What say you?


Related Links:
The Comprehensive Timeline of China’s COVID-19 Lies

Pandemic Brings Out the Best and the Worst in the Media

Voices From The Past

Please take a few minutes to watch the two short videos below:





Below is the most-watched YouTube documentary on the topic of the 1918 Spanish Flu epidemic — if you have time to watch (over 4 million views):


Now for my family's own stories.......


My father's younger sister, about age 7, died of "the aftereffects of the flu." Something like the 1990 film Awakenings? Full movie HERE at YouTube, albeit poor quality.  I highly recommend the film! It is available via Amazon Prime Video.

Dad occasionally spoke of what happened when his sister died: "The undertaker embalmed Chrissie at the house — and dumped the blood behind the barn."  The funeral service and burial were private.  The influenza didn't stop until everything was shut down: schools, funerals, churches, etc.  And the government refused to believe that something terrible was happening with Americans' health.  Until, that is, bodies began piling up on the sidewalks and in the streets of Washington, D.C.

My maternal grandmother (1898-1981) had a robust immune system. It fell to her to take care of her brother Walter, who brought influenza to their remote location in the mountains of East Tennessee when he was discharged from the US Army, fell ill himself, and gave the flu to his brother-in-law Fred, my grandmother's husband.  My grandmother sent her two children, one born in 1916 and the other in 1918 to her parents' farm and took care of Walter and Fred.

My grandmother related the story of those days in this way: "I got almost no sleep.  I went back and forth between the river for cold water and the menfolks' foreheads.  They were out of their heads with fever.  My sister brought food, called to me, and set the food down about 25 feet from the house; I fetched the food from there.  I don't remember how long all this went on.  Seemed like forever.  But Walter and Fred got well, and life went back to normal."

I asked Wawa how she stood those weeks of hard work as a nurse.  Her response: "Life isn't about what you want to do.  Life is about what you have to do."  She also told me of a particular safely measure she used: teetotaler though she was, she gargled in moonshine morning and evening.  And she swallowed that moonshine, too.

Bringing us back to today....A view of the front lines of this grim war against Coronavirus (dated March 23, 2020): The Growing Chaos Inside New York’s Hospitals.

And one more thing...in the immortal words of Gilda Radner:

Hecatombs

Silverfiddle Rant!

Life is all about trade-offs. If government action causes our economy to take a trillion dollar hit, with the goal of saving one million lives, that is one million dollars per human life saved.  One trillion dollars gone, and a shriveled economy now one trillion dollars less able to power the nation back to health.

Our economic engine is our strength to power through this, with technology, scientific breakthroughs, and everyday activity that produces wealth, but government has thrown the switch and the machine is now running on two cylinders.  It would be smarter and cheaper to take extraordinary measures to isolate and protect the vulnerable, while allowing the rest of us to get on with generating wealth by working and consuming, so we can fund the medical breakthroughs to beat this and prepare for future pandemics.

Below are excerpts from the WSJ article, WSJ - Rethinking the Coronavirus Shutdown.  The article is now hidden behind a paywall, which is why I have reposted whole paragraphs.

Thank you, CDC and public health officials.  We have learned much, and we have helped slow the disease by putting your lessons into practice:

The vast social-distancing project of the last 10 days or so has been necessary and has done much good. Warnings about large gatherings of more than 10 people and limiting access to nursing homes will save lives. The public has received a crucial education in hygiene and disease prevention, and even young people may get the message. With any luck, this behavior change will reduce the coronavirus spread enough that our hospitals won’t be overwhelmed with patients. Anthony Fauci, Scott Gottlieb and other disease experts are buying crucial time for government and private industry to marshal resources against the virus.

 At what cost?

In a normal recession the U.S. loses about 5% of national output over the course of a year or so. In this case we may lose that much, or twice as much, in a month.

The initial shutdown was supposed to last two weeks.  Let's adjust and try to do things smarter...

That will surely include strict measures to isolate and protect the most vulnerable—our elderly and those with underlying medical problems. This should not become a debate over how many lives to sacrifice against how many lost jobs we can tolerate.

But no society can safeguard public health for long at the cost of its overall economic health. 

 Even America’s resources to fight a viral plague aren’t limitless—and they will become more limited by the day as individuals lose jobs, businesses close, and American prosperity gives way to poverty.

America urgently needs a pandemic strategy that is more economically and socially sustainable than the current national lockdown.

Related:

Dear Congress: I’m A Small Business Owner. Here’s What My Business Needs To Survive

Hysteria & Panic: Counting the Cost

Silverfiddle Rant!

“This is not Ebola, this is not sars, this is not some science fiction movie come to life. The hysteria here is way out of line with the actuality and the facts.” *

I surveyed the bare shelves, and my mind kept turning to the working poor with children who perhaps only have a narrow opportunity to shop once a week, elderly and disabled people for whom a trip to the grocery store is a herculean effort of pain and worry...

And they find the store stripped by panicked hordes of healthy, able-bodied people, most of whom could miss a few meals and it would do them some good.

"We have 30,000 traffic deaths every year!  We're ordering all vehicles off the roads to save those lives!"

Heather MacDonald asks if governments' abundance of caution is worth the cost in her article, Compared to What?

Even if my odds of dying from coronavirus should suddenly jump ten-thousand-fold, from the current rate of .000012 percent across the U.S. population all the way up to .12 percent, I’d happily take those odds over the destruction being wrought on the U.S. and global economy from this unbridled panic.

Stimulate What?

Federal, state and local government have crashed the economy by ordering businesses to close and throwing tens of millions out of work.  Now, they are borrowing trillions to bail out the economy they wrecked.

How in the hell are people supposed to stimulate the economy with fistfulls of government cash when government has shuttered all the businesses?

I don't need a thousand dollar check.  I am still working, thank God.

Could government actions have been a little more targeted?  Lasers instead of meat axes and sledge hammers?

Now that the economic wreckage from government panic is in the trillions, here are two actions governments should immediately take:

1.  Unemployment checks to those millions of workers the federal, state and local governments threw out of work

2.  Financial assistance to small business owners the federal, state and local governments ordered shut down

These payments are not socialism.  This is government providing a small remuneration for the harm they caused, and states should foot their part of financial responsibility.  It is easy to decree broad, sweeping mandates when you don't have to pay for the disastrous consequences.


Related:
States Can't Shut Down Non-Essential Businesses Without Harming Essential Ones

Musical Interlude

(For politics, please scroll down)

[about the above ballad, which tells a story and dates to as far back as 1670]

One set of lyrics:

"O, where are you going?" "To Scarborough fair,"
Savoury sage, rosemary, and thyme;
"Remember me to a lass who lives there,
For once she was a true love of mine.

"And tell her to make me a cambric shirt,
Savoury sage, rosemary, and thyme,
Without any seam or needlework,
And then she shall be a true love of mine.

"And tell her to wash it in yonder dry well,
Savoury sage, rosemary, and thyme,
Where no water sprung, nor a drop of rain fell,
And then she shall be a true love of mine."

Herd Immunity - MIT Answers Our Corona Virus Questions

Silverfiddle Rant!

MIT has a free website where they provide factual, non-sensational information about COVID-19:

Technology Review - Coronavirus

Below are a few excerpts:



What is herd immunity and can it stop the coronavirus?

There are basically three ways to stop the Covid-19 disease for good.

One involves extraordinary restrictions on free movement and assembly, as well as aggressive testing, to interrupt its transmission entirely. That may be impossible now that the virus is in over 100 countries.

The second is a vaccine that could protect everyone, but it still needs to be developed.

A third is potentially effective but horrible to consider: just wait until enough people get it.

If the virus keeps spreading, eventually so many people will have been infected and (if they survive) become immune that the outbreak will fizzle out on its own as the germ finds it harder and harder to find a susceptible host. This phenomenon is known as herd immunity.

See also:  Your Biggest Questions Answered

I also recommend A fiasco in the making? The essay has been targeted as too cavalier about the situation, but that is a mischaracterization.  The article is five days old now, a lifetime in this era of fast-paced events, but I recommend it because it is authored by a Stanford professor of medicine who performs a sober calculation of the math, considers various hypotheticals, and takes the position throughout that, based on current date, we just don't know.

Humor For These Days Of Toilet Paper Mania

(For serious politics, please scroll down)

We need a little laughter to stay sane.

From Bored Panda

Posted last week on my ritzy online neighborhood network and generating more than 112 comments, most enjoying the thread:

At 7:00pm, I will be tossing a single roll of toilet paper into the street directly outside of the...parking garage back exit. I will observe the ensuing battle from my balcony. If the spectacle is entertaining, I will raise my thumb. The victor will be then granted an additional two-ply roll. May the stars be aligned in your favor.

Over the course of several days, more information appeared, such as:

The Chinese Virus

Silverfiddle Rant!

Proof there is a God:

Despite our criminally stupid government, the nation yet endures.

China produces around 90% of our pharmaceuticals, holds near-monopoly on rare earth elements, and our dependence on them for food and everyday household items is disconcerting.

Why would supposedly responsible people in government, Democrats and Republicans, think its a good idea to hand so much power over us to a brutal communist dictatorship that has publicly stated its goal is to overtake us economically, militarily, and replace us as the dominant force on the globe?

From Project Syndicate:

The COVID-19 pandemic should be a wake-up call for a world that has accepted China’s lengthening shadow over global supply chains for far too long. Only by reducing China’s global economic influence – beginning in the pharmaceutical sector – can the world be kept safe from the country's political pathologies.

It is also clear the communist dictatorship plays by its own rules, and gets by with it:

If any other country had triggered such a far-reaching, deadly, and above all preventable crisis, it would now be a global pariah. But China, with its tremendous economic clout, has largely escaped censure. Nonetheless, it will take considerable effort for Xi’s regime to restore its standing at home and abroad.

Can you imagine Germany, Japan or other responsible nations performing such a dark passive aggressive threat disguised as hurt feelings?

China’s leaders are publicly congratulating themselves for not limiting exports of medical supplies and APIs used to make medicines, vitamins, and vaccines. If China decided to ban such exports to the United States, the state-run news agency Xinhua recently noted, the US would be “plunged into a mighty sea of coronavirus.” China, the article implies, would be justified in taking such a step. It would simply be retaliating against “unkind” US measures taken after COVID-19’s emergence, such as restricting entry to the US by Chinese and foreigners who had visited China.

Isn’t the world lucky that China is not that petty?

What say you?

Just For Fun

(For politics, please scroll down)

Enjoy:

Have a great weekend.

Democrat Press Hoping for a Downturn

Silverfiddle Rant!

One of my favorite Three Stooges episodes opens with them working for a pest extermination company run by a hilarious, politically incorrect stereotype of a 1930's German immigrant.

He tells them to get out and get busy.  Moe protests and says, there's no work, "if they ain't got ants, they ain't got ants."

The German owner puffs himself up, "Zen you giff them ants, and mice, and cockroaches!  Now get busy!"

Sounds a lot like our Infotainment Media Complex, doesn't it?  "No bad news?  We'll give them bad news!"

Issue & Insights asks the question...
Anyone Notice That Trump’s Economy Keeps Beating Expectations?

All the smart kids and "experts" in the press have been talking recession since President Trump was elected.

Last August, the liberal “explanatory journalism” site Vox.com headlined an article “Why everybody’s worried about a recession again.”

In December 2018, the Washington Post ran a piece headlined: “A recession is coming, Trump will make it so much worse.”

That article reported that “virtually every independent forecaster foresees a slowdown once the sugar rush of Trump’s tax cuts wears off in the next year or so. And in a recent survey of economists by the Wall Street Journal, more than half predicted that we’d have a full-blown recession by 2020.”

Three days into 2017, PBS ran a column titled: “I’m predicting an economic recession in 2017. Are you ready?”

Around the same time, CBS Marketwatch posted an opinion piece warning that the “Next recession will hit during Trump’s first two years.”

Contrast that with coverage during the Obama years, when that president brought us the worst recovery on record, an accomplishment made more spectacular by the economic iron law that the harder the crash, the bigger the bounce.  The steepest part of the recovery curve comes early, then levels off. Economic growth under President Trump is remarkable for the fact that steep gains are coming eight years after the crash.

Here's how the press covered Obama's sputtering, uneven recovery, that saw millions of discouraged Americans leaving the workforce:

Then, the press was all about “green shoots” and economists kept predicting the economy was poised to lift off. Strong growth was “right around the corner,” they kept saying, and soon we’d see the fruits of Obama’s tax-and-spend-and-regulate economic policies. Yet actual results routinely come in “unexpectedly” worse. GDP growth was below forecast every single year Obama was in the White House.

Please go read the entire short article and tell us, What say you?

Corona Virus

Silverfiddle Rant!

Does this concern you?

U.S. officials worried about Chinese control of American drug supply

Commentary, predictions, gripes, complaints, suggestions and links welcome.

What say you?

"You won't know what hit you"

Silverfiddle Rant!

We touch on press bias quite a bit here, and awhile back our friend from across the pond Jez asked for examples. Chuck Schumer's red-faced, bellicose threat to two Supreme court justices provides us a simple case study.




What Senator Schumer, second most powerful Democrat in government, said:

"I want to tell you, Gorsuch; I want to tell you, Kavanaugh: You have released the whirlwind and you will pay the price," Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer roared Wednesday to a crowd of protesters angry over a Louisiana case before the court that threatens abortion rights. "You won't know what hit if you go forward with these awful decisions."

Chief Justice Roberts rebuked him in an official statement, and the press could not ignore it, so they dissembled and made excuses for him in a manner reminiscent of an abused housewife covering for her alcoholic husband to keep him out of trouble.  A press that casts every presidential utterance in the worst light possible, did double backbend whataboutisms for Schmucky.

They claimed Justice Kavanaugh issued the same threat at the end of his hearings. Here is what Kavanaugh said, after being publicly savaged, smeared and slandered:

“Since my nomination in July, there’s been a frenzy on the left to come up with something, anything, to block my confirmation,” he told Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee. “You sowed the wind for decades to come. I fear that the whole country will reap the whirlwind.”

Does that sound like a threat to you? Kavanaugh's lament for our nation is not even in the same category as Schumer's splenetic outburst.

Even those august news outlets that rightly condemn Schumer's comments cannot leave it at that. 

They must balance it off with a "Trump does it too:"

► He earned his own rebuke from Roberts in 2018 after labeling a federal jurist an "Obama judge" for ruling against the administration.

► As a candidate, Trump made bigoted remarks about a federal judge of Mexican heritage handling a fraud case over Trump University.

► Last month, the president criticized a judge overseeing the trial of Roger Stone, a longtime Trump friend.

► And last week, Trump called on two liberal Supreme Court justices to recuse themselves from "Trump-related" cases.

None of those examples come close to a threat.  His remarks against Judge Curiel were stupid, petty and un-American, but not menacing, especially coming from a candidate.  Asking judges to recuse themselves due to their blatant, open bias is also not a threat.

Our nation is ill-served by a Democrat Party-biased press that shovels us editorials and propaganda disguised as news.