It is well-established law that a policy which appears to be
race-neutral, but which has a disproportionately large adverse impact on
racial minorities, is a form of racial discrimination.

Governor Walz’ Stay Home order, which ordered the closure of
non-essential businesses, has resulted in nearly half-a-million
Minnesotans losing their jobs, 25% of them racial minorities as opposed
to only 12% Whites.

The Stay Home order is a form of disparate impact racial discrimination.

Governor Walz is a racist.

Republicans in the state House tried to end the Stay Home order.
Democrats blocked their efforts.  Twice.

Minnesota Democrats are racist.

Why isn’t anybody talking about this?

Joe Doakes

Rhetorical question, right?

C-list “celebrity” Patton Oswalt’s profound wisdom was on display over the weekend:

Anne Frank spent 2 years hiding in an attic and we’ve been home for just over a month with Netflix, food delivery & video games and there are people risking viral death by storming state capital buildings & screaming, “Open Fuddruckers!”

— Patton Oswalt (@pattonoswalt) April 18, 2020

I’m going to screenshoot that for the day when an economic collapse (heaven forefend) leaves C-list “celebrities” like Oswalt tossed out of their Los Angeles condominiums, and looking for dishwashing jobs at Fuddruckers.

If they can find one.

If Trump wins this fall, this tweet will be a good chunk of the reason why.

So the assumption that’s driven a lot of the models regarding the spread of Covid so far has involved the idea that transmission might be “Aerosol” – that the virus might hang suspended in the air for a period of time, until it latches onto a passing human, who might inadvertently ingest it into vulnerable tissue via the nose or mouth.

But what if it’s transmitted most readily by something less persistent, and more predicatable?

Amazing study, supporting droplet (rather than aerosol) as key means of transmission. One asymptomatic person infected 10 (out of 91) at restaurant—but *only* if they were in direct line of air pushed by the A/C. (Aerosol would have infected others, too). https://t.co/j8VXjnWtlN pic.twitter.com/w8yNENCT6M

— zeynep tufekci (@zeynep) April 18, 2020

Note to “Progressive” readers Those are actual scientists.

My hunch – since this theory impugns population density and the “Blue” urban lifestyle to which so much of our chattering class subscribes, it’ll be downplayed.

Hard.

Governor Walz extended the Stay Home order again. But this time, he
specifically invites the Legislature to step up. That’s the right thing
to do, they should be involved. They should be weighing costs versus
benefits.

Now, who will be the first legislator to introduce a resolution to
terminate/modify the order?

Joe Doakes

New House GOP Caucus? It’s your time to shine.

(Although in a practical sense it’s gonna have to be the Senate).

As Minnesotans – among whom Covid has taken a fairly minimal toll, in population-wide terms – start to protest the economic toll of government’s response, New Yorkers, who’ve suffered relatively terribly, may be showing the real end-game of the government’s shutdowns – ignoring the whole thing and seeing to their own survival, medically and econmically:

On my “essential walks” which I take daily to the grocery or the bodega, I traverse an overpass above the Brooklyn Queens Expressway. For the past month traffic has been spare, an emergency vehicle here and there, not much more. That too has changed. While it has not returned to the soul crushing bumper-to-bumper standstill that makes the BQE infamous, the number of cars coursing to and from Staten Island has built up everyday.

What is important and telling about the differences in people’s behavior this week is that no city or state government policies have actually changed. The people of New York themselves, and from accounts across the country in other places as well, have simply decided to loosen the guidelines for themselves. We tend to think of the idea of the government existing through the consent of the governed as being about elections, but it is about more than that, the successful lockdown of New York City was not enforced as much as it was consented to.

This phenomenon is something that New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo seems to understand. Cuomo was asked during one of his daily press conferences this week if he is worried that his steady stream of good news about the number of deaths stabilizing instead of increasing and the decrease in coronavirus cases and hospitalizations could give New Yorkers a false sense of security. His answer was basically that he has to tell citizens the truth or he loses his credibility.

Ninety years ago, Prohibition was basically a dead issue by the time Congress got around to repealing the 18th Amendment.

I can easily see that happening with some of the more draconian government responses.

Indeed – being ignored may be the best that some executive pols can hope for.

I went online to watch Governor Walz March 25 video explaining why the
Stay Home order was required. I think it’s useful to remember why we
started down this road.

In the video, Governor Walz explained that if we did nothing, upwards of
74,000 Minnesotans of all ages would die, from 6 months to 90 years
old. It was already too late to “flatten the curve;” testing didn’t get
started early enough. All we could do was push the peak out, delay it
until we could get ready for the surge of Covid-19 cases that the
computer model predicted was coming. If we did nothing, the surge would
hit in 6 weeks (May 8th). If we did nothing, 2.4 million Minnesotans
would be infected, 85% of them mildly, 15% requiring hospitalization,
and 5% requiring ICU care.

I’m not clear if Governor Walz meant 5% of the whole 2.4 million =
120,000 people in ICU; or 5% of the 15% who are hospitalized = 18,000 in
ICU. Either way, we only had 235 ICU beds at the time of the first
order. We didn’t have enough ICU beds, ventilators, masks to care for
that many ICU patients. Thousands would die, untreated.

If Minnesotans heeded his order to Stay Home, we would slow the spread
of the infection. 2.4 million were still going to get it, but not right
away. That gave us time to prepare for the ICU surge. With Stay Home
in place, the ICU surge would be delayed until late May or June. By
then, we’d be ready for the 120,000 (or 18,000) ICU patients. We’d
convert arenas, stadiums, motels, into temporary hospitals providing as
many as 1,000 ICU beds. Still had to work on getting ventilators and
masks, etc., but if we had enough time to prepare, we’d save lives.
Governor Walz asked for two weeks to delay the surge so we would have
time to prepare. That’s why the original order lasted two weeks.

I went online to watch Governor Walz video explaining the extension of
the Stay Home order. He said we were making progress. The infection
curve was pretty much flat. That’s good because it buys us time to
prepare for the surge, and there is a surge of hospitalizations coming.
We’re going to need a MINIMUM of 3,000 ICU beds starting in mid-May,
could last into July, could need more beds.

Current ICU bed capacity at the time of the extension was 1,000 but we
can double it in 24 hours, triple it in 72 hours. Another 3,000 beds
coming online in alternate facilities but not for Covid patients, those
are for displaced patients from other hospitalizations. According to
the model, we now have plenty of ICU beds but we’re still facing a
shortage of ventilators. We have 2,500, we need 3,000, we have none in
reserve, they’re all in use. They’re on back-order. Minnesotans need
to stay home to delay the hospitalization surge until the back-ordered
ventilators arrive. And there’s still a shortage of masks. Supply
chain disrupted world-wide. Minnesotans need to stay home to delay the
hospitalization surge until mask supply arrives.

The Governor assured us the experts were constantly updating the model.
Ro increased from 2.4 to 4.0 (formerly, we thought each infected person
transmitted it to 2.4 people, now it’s assumed to be 4 people, spreads
much faster than thought). Hospitalization severity and length of stay
also adjusted (didn’t say up or down). If we drop restrictions, the
surge of hospitalizations comes rushing toward us and we’re not ready.
Thousands will die. Stay Home to save lives.

My thoughts:

The plan originally was sold on the basis that this virus attacked
everybody, babies to elderly, we’re all equally at risk of dying from
it. Data from around the world (and around Minnesota) suggest that’s
not true. This virus attacks the same people as every other influenza
virus – seniors and those with a compromised immune system. The
scariest basis for the order, is gone.

The plan originally was sold on the basis that a two week delay would
suffice, we’d have time to prepare for the surge of cases. Because the
whole thing depends on a surge of cases slamming our hospitals in a few
weeks. The Governor’s models confidently proved it would happen, we
were going to get slammed, it was only a matter of time. Except . . .
Dr. Fauci of the CDC now says he expects this to be similar to a bad flu
season, maybe 60,000 dead nationwide. And nobody else is seeing a
surge. If there’s no surge coming, then the entire basis for the order
is gone.

Assuming the surge hits as planned in May, Governor Walz says we’ll need
3,000 ICU beds and we’re ready for that, but still not enough
ventilators or masks. No word on why that’s such a problem. If the My
Pillow guy can make masks, why can’t Minnesota figure out a way to
acquire them? Can’t we ask idled machine shops and metal workers and
backyard mechanics to cobble up machines? We only need a couple of
thousand more ventilators – how hard can it be? I’m guessing the
Governor means “FDA certified and approved” which, obviously, takes time
and raises the cost. How many patients would say, “Oh, no, don’t treat
me wearing that un-certified mask, leave me to die.” Can’t we by-pass
the certification process for this world-ending emergency?

The plan was sold on the basis that we’d be saving lives. The math
doesn’t work for me. Assuming the best numbers, if 18,000 will need ICU
beds but we only have 3,000, then when the surge hits we’re still short
thousands of ICU beds so all of those people are going to die. By my
math, the Stay Home saves 2,765 lives (the difference between 235 ICU
beds before and 3,000 ICU beds after). And who are those people? Based
on experience to date, they’re nursing home patients with preexisting
conditions who are going to die soon, anyway.

The cost of providing this end-of-life care is incredible. 375,000
Minnesotans have applied for unemployment. Our unemployment rate is
over 11%. And those are only the people who qualify. Small business
owners, restaurant owners, landlords, independent contractors,
commissioned sales – they don’t get unemployment. The Governor says
that with Minnesota’s generous unemployment benefits coupled with the
federal $600, many people actually will make as much or more then they
did before. I’ll believe that when I see it.

Point is, we’re shutting down the entire state for months, costing
millions, destroying wealth and lives and careers, turning citizens
against each other, betting a surge is coming and that we’ll be able to
buy a short end-of-life extension for a few thousand old folks. That
might be a wise public policy trade-off, or it might not. But it’s
something that ought to be debated in public, with the costs and
benefits weighed, not decided unilaterally and continued indefinitely.

I call on the Legislature to hold public hearings on whether to continue
the state of emergency, or to end it.

Joe Doakes

When Norway – as top-down communitarian a state as there is, which had a hard, sharp attack of Covid and a sharper reaction to seeing Italy and Spain’s agony, and closed down hard (and suffered more deaths than Minnesota, so far, with a similar population) – is moving to lift its lockdown now, even given their immense savings and the ability it gives them to ride out crises, that should tell us something.

Epidemics and other disasters come and go

But the worst side-effects of the Covid epidemic are going to be with us for years.

This was the Raleigh NC Police’s response to a protest against the government’s shutdown restrictions:

And if the people allow this attitude to continue, then they – we – will deserve what follows.

The First Amendment isn’t more important than the broad concept of “order” – but it is certainly more important than the Raleigh PD treats it in this case.

Someone needs to get hauled into court, but good.

The ACLU has been showing some signs of paying attention to actual civil liberties again during this crisis. Here’s hoping.

This is weird – I keep finding these modifications but they’re not
mentioned in the media.

Attention Subjects!

His Royal Highness, Timothy Walz the First, proclaims a modification of
Executive Order 20-20 requiring Minnesotans to Stay Home.

It has come to Our attention that some of Our subjects are in flagrant
disregard of Our proclamations.  In one such instance, the violator
behaved in a loud, obnoxious, and boisterous manner which aroused anger,
alarm and resentment in the Royal Officers who were bravely attempting
to enforce Our order.  This behavior undermines the legitimate authority
of the Crown and threatens public safety.  Effective immediately, no
subject shall express disagreement with any of Our orders, on pain of
immediate and indefinite confinement.  As to such persons, the right of
habeas corpus is suspended for the duration of the emergency.

Our Attorney General has confirmed that Abraham Lincoln himself set the
precedent for this modification, and that it does not infringe the free
speech rights of Minnesotans.  Subjects remain free to express agreement
with Our orders in any form they like: in word, in writing, in artwork
or interpretive dance, even poetry.  The only restriction is on Hate
Speech, which is defined as any speech We hate, and which all decent
subjects should hate, too.

Thank you for your attention.

HRH Timothy Walz the First

Just thought you ought to know.

Joe Doakes

I’m sure I’m not the only one that can imagine Keith Ellison re-purposing the Sedition Act…

This just came out from the State of Wisconsin:

Because glass, apparently, isn’t virus-proof.

No. It’s because while science is vital, government bureaucracy is all the things we do together, stupidly.

It’s a steroetype of “blue” America – at least, the “elite” version of it that gets (and makes) the headlines – that liberty, at least the kind that involves something other than waving one’s genitals about and dunking crucifixes in urine – terrifies them.

Stereotypes exist for a reason. Blue Amerca’s official vision is that liberty is a scary thing. Of course, this vision is broadcast by an “elite” that thinks they stand to benefit from living in a society where an elite – including them, natch – makes the trains run on time.

Which is why as calls from the hinterland to open up the economy get louder, you can expect to see a lot more of this sort of thing, equating those calls with scary backwoods guys with un-oiled bears and lots of guns.

Bonus steroetype: why did the New York Times put scare quotes around “liberty” in the headline?

Who but Donald Trump could make Gavin Newsom a firebreathing states-rights federalist?

Democrat senators – including Amy Klobuchar – push for direct federal subsidies of local newspapers:

The senators wrote that “local journalism has been providing communities answers to critical questions, including information on where to get locally tested, hospital capacity, road closures, essential business hours of operation, and shelter-in-place orders.” Recent media reports indicate that local news organizations, especially newspapers, are “slashing staff and publishing less frequently as the already-battered businesses try to weather the COVID-19 storm.” According to the letter, some “local papers and local broadcasters have lost even more of the advertising revenue they rely on from these businesses” due to the coronavirus pandemic.

So have barber shops, mechanics, tobacco stores, comic book shops and every other small business in every other small non-metro town in the states affected by the draconian shutdowns.

None of them, as an industry, earns their keep by serving as the Democratic Party’s PR firm.

Hence, Public Broadcasting “qualified” for $75 million of the 2.2 trillion in Covid bailout money, while most small businesses are waiting for their allotted handouts; none of them participated in burying a single story about a single Democrat.  What use are they?

Just came across this announcement, haven’t seen it in the media yet:

Attention citizens. Governor Walz has announced a modification of
Executive Order 20 – 20, requiring Minnesotans to Stay Home.

Our computer model indicates the people most likely to catch the
Covid-19 virus and use precious hospital resources, have an existing
co-morbidity, specifically, obesity. In order to reduce the likelihood
of overwhelming our hospitals with Covid-19 patients, we must reduce
obesity.

Effective immediately, all Minnesotans whose body mass index is greater
than 29 are hereby declared “obese” and must immediately go on a diet.
Health care providers will be required to forward medical records to the
state for analysis and classification. No person may sell, lend or give
high-fat, high-calorie foods to individuals categorized as obese.
People attempting to eat fattening sweet foods will be arrested and
jailed, where the diet can be enforced.

If you suspect your neighbor is obese and may be hoarding high-fat,
high-calorie foods, call the tip-line. Police will be dispatched to
search their home for prohibited foods and you may be eligible for a reward.

We realize this is an extreme measure, but we’re an extreme situation.
We appreciate your help.

Governor Walz

Just thought you’d want to know.

Joe Doakes

On the one hand, the warning signs are there for Covid as with so many other diseases realted to obesity. I’m feeling pretty good about losing 80 pounds this last couple years.

On the other hand – today’s joke is tomorrow’s policy, when it comes to progressive governance.

We’re into month two of the “State of Emergency” in Minnesota.

Let’s stipulate in advance – government does have emergency powers, and should have them, at least as a broad concept. One of government’s few genuinely legitimate roles is to exert its power to react to things that are beyond the power of the individual, or (rarely, at least in theory) subsidiary levels of government; invasions, natural disasters and, yeah, epidemics. We can argue the “should government have emergency power” question if you’d like, but it’s pretty much the status quo.

One of the obligations of a free people – and especially of a free people that wants to stay that way – is to push back when government overreaches. Not just in emergencies (although that’s the subject today), but always, on every facet of liberty. Conservatism holds that order and liberty exist in a constant state of tension; without order (or health) prosperity is impossible; without health, freedom is academic (subsistence farmers don’t have time to petition for redress of grievances); without freedom, order is onerous and, let’s be honest, prosperity is most likely concentrated among those keeping the order.

Government power, like a handgun, is a necessary tool in extreme circumstances. And like any necessary tool, free people need to make sure that the newbie isn’t sweeping people at the firing range with her hand on the trigger, and that goverment isn’t getting drunk and profligate with its use, or abuse of power.

And I think we can make a pretty solid case that Governor Walz’s emergency declaration does exactly that.

First – Covid clearly is an emergency. There is a valid public health reason to treat it as more than just the flu. But the record shows different states taking very different approaches to the emergency, and with very different results; New York State went full-on Mussolini, but between having one of the most densely populated cities in the country and being run by bungling clowns like Bill DiBlasio, it didn’t work; California also went full-on tyrant, but it seems to be working. Other states went the other way; in the Dakotas and the rural west, it seems to be working out fairly well, while in Louisiana and Florida, the libertarian approach (combined with a lot of ill-advised, Italian-style revelry in the face of the threat) didn’t pan out so well.

Minnesota has trended more authoritarian. I get the rationale. But let’s be honest – even if you ignore the ham-handedness of the administration’s management of information (of which more later in the week), it’s fair to say the Governor and his Administration have clobbered civil liberties while reacting to the crisis – in many cases, wrongly.

So lets put together a list of the usurpations:

Life and Liberty

• While the movement restrictions in Minnesota are fairly benign so far – serving more as a muted threat than an active clampdown – the idea of telling people not to go to their lake cabin (i.e., trying to prevent people from moving temporarily from a place of high desnsity and greater vulnerability to someplace safer) is an intrusion. And Mayor Frey’s active use of the police to curtail traffic isn’t just a muted threat.
• The ability to visit family, especially in hospitals and nursing homes. To be fair, in many cases this is a private response to the epidemic – it’s why I can’t see my mother, notwithstanding the fact that her husband of nearly 30 years just died – but it’s driven by the response to government regulations and the litigiousness that government regulators have promoted.
• We’re paying for a lot of government “services” of dubious value in the best of times, that we’re not getting at all today.

The Pursuit of Prosperity

Here, the DFL’s disdain for business and private property rears its head, above and beyond any actual response to the epidemic.

• The right to transact business is clearly subject to arbitrary, and in some cases seemingly capricious, interference. Small businesses are shut down (as big ones, and business with more, better lobbyists remain open), in many cases without regard to the business’ actual susceptibility to the virus (lawn services? Landscapers? They’re pretty socially distant to begin with). Arbitrarily shutting down businesses regardless of their own instincts for self-preservation, ingenuity and ability to achieve some resiliency against the epidemic (like all the small grocery stores turning their lanes into one-way thorofares) qualifies as a taking in my book. Classic example – liquor stores are “essential”, but vape and smoke shops aren’t. It’s best that your vices not be politically unfashionable.
• The assignment of “essential” status was clearly utterly politicized.
• While it seems an act of charity, and might even be justifiable, barring all evictions and foreclosures is certainly an arbitrary taking without some sort of compensation. The idea that
• Contracts are pretty much irrelevant – business are foreclosed by decree, in many cases, from fulfilling them, and the courts are closed for purposes of arbitrating the results.

Government Transparency

• The Administration is making huge, life-altering decisions about the economy based on a model that seems to be giving very different results than most other models, and whose proprietors are keeping secret for the most paternalistic of reasons: “On Friday, [State health economist Stefan] Gildemeister said he had concerns that models that let anyone use them might be “irresponsible” because “it allows folks to make assumptions that aren’t very realistic ones.” While “transparency” isn’t necessarily a constitutional issue, the idea that state bureaucrats treat the math and code that they created on our dime like something they have to prorect from a bunch of drooling savages should make every freedom-loving citizen hot under the collar, and ready to vote a whole lot of scoundrels out of office in seven months or so.
• The legislature, already prone as it is to operating as a “star chamber” with the Governor, Speaker, and the two Majority Leaders, has gotten even less transparent than before; online gatherings (kept just below legal “quorum” status) have been substituting for public committee meetings; policy is being made completely absent public scrutiny.
• The governor’s “press only” press conference Friday – if that doesn’t bother you, what does?

First Amendment

• The banning of group gatherings of all kinds – as opposed to pushing for voluntary enforcement of containment and distancing – pretty much forswears all protest against government overreach.
• The enforced closing of places of worship – as opposed to strongly suggesting people wear masks, stay at home if sick, and observe spacing between family groups in services – is a clear violation of freedom of religion.
• While closing places of worship by decree is onerous, many churches – including my own – closed voluntarily. But there are aspects to faith – Sacraments like Last Rites, Baptism and Confession, for Catholics, and there are many others in other faiths – that must be done in person, and where remote exercise is banned as a matter of doctrine. I’ve been informed of cases where priests have been barred from hospitals; no avenues left open for the administration of such Sacraments, whether through prudent adaptations (priests in masks and PPE, isolation rooms, whatever) or not. One administrative size fits all, whether talking about an ad agency or a church. This – not just the closing down, but the forbidding of any adaptation – has to be a clear violation of the First Amendment.
• Freedom of assembly? Do I even need to say it?
• Along with that – the right to petition for the redress of grievances, private or public, is pretty much toast until the courts decide to start meeting again.

Second Amendment

• Many counties are curtailing the ability to apply for, or renew, carry and purchase permits.
• The operation of the ranges necessary for taking permit training is pretty much shut down.
• Thanks to a law passed by a bipartisan majority in 2015, government in Minnesota can’t confiscate guns, or shut down gun stores unless literally every other business in the state is closed, due to a state of emergency. This was an admirable bit of foresight – it doesn’t take a vivid imagination to see Jacob Frey, Melvin Carter and Kim Norton (frothing anti-gun ninny mayor of Rochester) sending their cops door to door in times like this. More on this later.

Fourth Amendment

• The presence of anonymous “snitch lines” – and especially “hate crime” lines, may not have led to any Fourth Amendment perversions of probable cause yet – but don’t bet against it.

Fifth Amendment

• With the courts pretty much closed your right to a speedy trial by an impartial jury is pretty much toast for the duration.
• And the closing down of the Judicial Branch offices give defense attorneys – who, unlike prosecutors, have no online access to Judicial Branch records – a serious disadvantage in prepping for cases for when they can get to trial.

Privacy

• Government is using your cell data to track the effectiveness of social distancing. While we’re assured that government and the big cell providers they’re in bed with aren’t mis-using that data, we all know that’s only as safe as the government’s least ethical employee.

Got more (specific to Minnesota, for now)? Leave ’em in the comments, please.

I gave the example of Minnesota’s gun rights movement’s successful drive to foreclose government’s ability to confiscate firearms and abrogate the 2nd Amendment during crises. Gun Rights groups in Minnesota are big, well-organized, and badly funded (you can sure help out) but make up for it in volunteer action and the justice of our cause.

The lesson, though? Minnesotans need to get together in the same way to put stronger guard rails on the other excesses of government emergency power we’re seeing.

Joe Doakes from Como Park tries his hand at one of my patented dramatizations (c):

Mitch Berg is walking through Menards, looking in vain for dust masks so he can sand the Sheetrock repairs where he was banging his head against the wall after reading Penigma’s email, when he sees Avery Liberelle wearing a giant hula hoop hung from strings over her shoulders.  He tries to slip into the nuts and bolts aisle, but she sees him.
Avery:  Merg!
Berg: Uh, hi Avery.  What’s with the hoop?
Avery: It’s my social distancing perimeter. Why aren’t you wearing yours? 
Berg: Uh . . .
Avery (darkly): Everyone should wear one. My aunt died of Covid-19: so they said.

Berg: (clicks his tongue sympathetically)!!!

Avery: (in the same tragic tone) But it’s my belief they done the old woman in.

Berg: (puzzled) Done her in?

Avery: Y-e-e-e-es, Lord love you! Why should she die of Covid-19? She come through diphtheria right enough the month before. I saw her with my own eyes. Fairly blue with it, she was. They all thought she was dead; but my father he kept ladling gin down her throat til she came to so sudden that she bit the bowl off the spoon.

Berg: (startled) Dear me!

Avery: (piling up the indictment) What call would a woman with that strength in her have to die of the bat flu? And what become of her new straw hat that should have come to me? Somebody pinched it; and what I say is, them as pinched it done her in.

Berg: (to Avery, horrified) You surely don’t believe that your aunt was killed?

Avery: Do I not! Them in that nursing home would have killed her for a hat-pin, let alone a hat.

Berg: But it can’t have been right for your father to pour spirits down her throat like that. It might have killed her.

Avery: Not her. Gin was mother’s milk to her. Besides, he’d poured so much down his own throat that he knew the good of it. (To Berg, who is in convulsions of suppressed laughter) Here! what are you sniggering at?  Science denier!  (Avery stomps off, knocking things off the shelves with her hoop).
End Scene
Joe Doakes

It’s barely fiction, to be honest.

Last week, it was Governor Walz’s snitch line, urging MInnesotans to rat out people violating the nebulous and ill-defined shutdown restrictions.

This week? The “insta-hatecrime line!”:

When this epidemic is over, we’re going to have to have a serious discussion about civil liberty.

The CDC advises people over 60 to avoid crowds, stay home to avoid the virus.
If all of us old people are going to be sitting around in our bathrobes, self-quarantined, Netflix should bust out the good stuff. 

Pajama party!

Joe Doakes

Sometimes I wonder if kids today would know what to make of Warner Brothers cartoons…

Like all plagues, Covid19 is a problem everywhere, for everyone.

But like most plagues, you need hosts for a plague to spread – and cities are to viruses what a Super Walmart is to humans; vast collections of everything they need to survive.

Plagues don’t care about their victims’ politics – but cities are stuffed full of people for whom politics matters an awful lot. And so most cities are simultaneously a) blue, and b) suffering disproportionally from the Covid plague.

And it’s hard to escape the fact – as, indeed, not a few blue-city dwellers are realizing – that high density and a transit-centered lifestyle make cities susceptible to epidemics.

But you just can’t tell the “evidence based, science-centered” crowd the utterly obvious without expecting a political retort.

I’ve been seeing stories, here and there, for a few weeks now: “JUST YOU WAIT! RED STATES ARE EVEN MOOOOOORE VULNERABLE! THEY’RE OLD AND FAT AND GO TO CHURCH AND THINK HOPES AND TEH PRAYERS ARE A SOLUTION!”

And yeah, Covid’s been filtering out into the square states; people are dying in Montana and North Dakota and other sparsely populated places. But in a sparsely populated area, not full of five-floor apartments and filthy buses and bars full of people jammed into each other’s laps, the death rate – probably the only rate we can trust, since the numbers are relatively hard – is trailing the big, blue cities by quite a bit so far.

(The concomitant effect, in the long term? In a phenomenon first noticed during the CIvil War, soldiers from urban areas tended to be less susceptible to the diseases that ravaged the Union winter camps, the cholera and typhus and other bugs that killed many more soldiers than bullets or artillery, than their rural comrades; the New York and Massachusetts units had developed at least some herd immunity. Expect a certain amount of that in the next year and a half or so).

But I’ve been expecting this phenomenon – let’s call it “Blue Fragility” – ever since New York City started getting hammered with the virus; blue-checks from the blue states trying to transfer some of the ugly to the red states:

The MSM have been in full-court press mode for the last two weeks in accusing President Trump, Fox News, and conservative media outlets of downplaying the Wuhan coronavirus until it was too late to contain it.

But another related talking point has emerged in recent days which involves the press relentlessly bashing red states for their allegedly slow response in comparison to blue states. In a nutshell, the reason they have supposedly been slower to put restrictions in place is that they are taking their cues from Trump, Fox, and Rush.

Axios CEO and co-founder Jim VandeHei is a notable example of a media figure who employed this strategy, and he did so in an interview last week on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” program. Here’s what he said:

What you’re seeing here, and this is a bigger problem for society, is information inequality,’ VandeHei said. ‘Like, why (did) Desantis do what he did? Why did Georgia wait so long? They were listening to President Trump. They were watching Fox News and listening to Rush Limbaugh. The information was there. In the information bubble, they were basically getting a lot of sort of noise and news pollution.

Not every blue-state talking head, of course:

Polling guru Nate Silver even took issue with those who were pitting red states against blue states when talking about response times:

People sure like to post things about how there are huge disparities between red states and blue states in social distancing… when if you look a the actual numbers the differences aren’t actually that big and may largely be explained by other variables (e.g. urbanization).

— Nate Silver (@NateSilver538) April 4, 2020

It’s almost like people who live in an area with 1/100th the population density may be able to get by with less strict measures.

— binge tweeter (@binge_tweeter) April 4, 2020

If what the government is saying is correct, the country still has several more weeks to go before the worst of this is over. So it remains to be seen where the next hot spots will be after New York City has reached its peak. In the meantime, instead of disproportionately attacking red states, the mainstream media should do the following things:

Like many of you, I’ve wandered past the toilet paper aisle, seen the Venezuelan-style devastation, and wondered “what the flaming hootie-hoo are people DOING with all the TP? Are they fixing to eat the stuff?”

Well, no. Hoarding isn’t the problem. A supply chain built on maximum efficiency and minimum reserve inventory – pretty close to “just in time”, in logistical terms – and a re-balancing of home and commercial sales (less TP at work, much much more at home) has left the toilet paper market way out of whack:

“If you’re looking for where all the toilet paper went, forget about people’s attics or hall closets. Think instead of all the toilet paper that normally goes to the commercial market — those office buildings, college campuses, Starbucks, and airports that are now either mostly empty or closed. That’s the toilet paper that’s suddenly going unused.
So why can’t we just send that toilet paper to Safeway or CVS? That’s where supply chains and distribution channels come in.
Not only is it not the same product, but it often doesn’t come from the same mills.
Talk to anyone in the industry, and they’ll tell you the toilet paper made for the commercial market is a fundamentally different product from the toilet paper you buy in the store. It comes in huge rolls, too big to fit on most home dispensers. The paper itself is thinner and more utilitarian. It comes individually wrapped and is shipped on huge pallets, rather than in brightly branded packs of six or 12.
“Not only is it not the same product, but it often doesn’t come from the same mills,” added Jim Luke, a professor of economics at Lansing Community College, who once worked as head of planning for a wholesale paper distributor. “So for instance, Procter & Gamble [which owns Charmin] is huge in the retail consumer market. But it doesn’t play in the institutional market at all.”

It’s sort of like the shortage of .22 Long Rifle ammunition in the early 2010s; accelerated purchasing threw the supply chain out of whack, and since production was inelastic, it stayed out of whack for a long, long time.

The whole piece is worth a read.

Minnesotans know from experience that computer models are not perfect predictors. Every winter, the weatherman tells us, “We’re tracking a storm out of the Rockies that could bring between 2 inches and 9 feet of snow, depending on which direction the storm tracks.” We don’t shut down schools and churches and businesses Just In Case the worst case cenario might arrive. We wait to see and adjust our plans as better data becomes available.

I wonder if the reason we’re cowed by the COVID computer models is because we’ve been indoctrinated to believe that people in white lab coats know more than we do, so we should suspend critical thinking and trust them implicitly? I suspect that’s why presenters in television commercials and the cosmetic saleswomen at Dayton’s wore lab coats.

When the storm fails to appear, the weatherman doesn’t claim to have saved all our lives with his storm advisory. We know that’s bunk. There was no storm, he was Chicken Little.

If the virus storm fails to appear, I doubt Governor Walz will be as humble.

Joe Doakes

Invoking “Science!” (without the including the data to allow critical thought and analysis by those equipped to do so) or its weasel cousin the “evidence-based” argument is certainly a form of logrolling.

As I discussed on my show on Saturday, I see potential good and potential immense bad coming from the Covid19 epidemic. It’s almost like one of those cartoon characters, with an angel sitting on one shoulder and a devil on the other, trying to convince the character of their next action.

Good Angel

On the one hand:

• Americans are tired of their thirty-day trial of communism. Yes, it’s a fake story from a poor copy of Babylon Bee, but they’re not wrong.  
• Maybe, just maybe, Americans are starting to bristle at blunt-force government power backed with epic incompetence. 
• Americans are realizing the depravity of the Chicom government.  WIth a little luck that’ll lead to a lot of  manufacturing coming home, or at least moving to better places. 
• Some liberals – the smart ones, anyway – are realizing the Second Amendment isn’t about hunting, that it’s not just for “fat angry old white men” (as a certain zaftig angry old white and lifetime-banned female commenter referred to them), and that pretty much everything their “leadership” is telling them about guns, and gun laws, is baked wind. 

The Bad Angel

• Progressive politicians are seeing an opportunity to exercise the Emanuel Commandment (“Never Waste a Crisis”), and they’re running with it. 
• For a brief moment, it seemed like identity politics might fall ill with coronavirus.  But not so much.  

Let’s all give the good angel a boost, shall we? 

It’s simple, it’s elegant, it’s brilliant:

Is “ICU bed” a technological term, a medical definition, or a billing code?

I’m beginning to wonder if it’s not something like: “In order to receive reimbursement at ICU rate, the facility must pass a Level Three inspection and be certified as having X equipment and Y level of dedicated staff holding Z certificates, and located in a licensed facility.”

If that’s the reason there’s a hard limit in ICU beds – Medicare reimbursement rules instead of medical treatment requirements – then the politicians better hope word never gets out to the people laid off under this fake-martial law, or the next shortage will be pitchforks and torches.

Joe Doakes

I suspect an awful lot of people will be looking for pitchforks and torches when the word gets out about the bureaucracy’s bungling.

If it ever gets out.

Fortunately, as Treacher notes, media’s job is to cover the important stories – with a pillow, until the struggling stops, if the story affects the Democrat establishment.

Governor Walz unveiled a Social Distancing Violators Stasi.

Er, I mean a Social Distancing Violators hotline.

I’m gonna report the Green Line.

Governor Walz explained that we must shut down Minnesota to avoid overwhelming our 235 ICU beds with Covid-19 patients.  Apparently, if the 236th patient showed up, we’d have no choice.  We’d wheel her to the parking lot and leave her to die – there’s simply no way to treat her without an ICU bed.
So why do we have a hard limit on ICU beds?  Why not get more of them?  This is a serious question that maybe some SITDers can answer: what does an ICU bed to treat Covid-19 require?
Not talking about Minnesota luxury standard where you put one ICU bed in a hospital with sandwich bar in the cafeteria, talking about what Hawkeye Pierce would do.  The governor is invoking martial law powers because fighting the virus is the equivalent of war.  So what would a battlefield ICU bed for Covid-19 need?
Let’s say I want to double the number of Covid-19 treatment beds available. Is there anything special about the bed, itself, or can we call Original Mattress Factory to deliver a couple hundred beds?  If the patients need to sit up to breathe, does the bed need electric tilt or could we call that pillow guy to bring us a few hundred of his fancy pillows to stuff behind them?  Space – we’ve got high school gyms sitting empty.  Dividers – call the cubicle people to slap up free-standing cubicle walls between beds.
Ventilator?  That’s a fancy word for fan.  Any leaf blower could push air into your lungs. Speed controller?  Dimmer switch.  Regulator valve?  SCUBA dive shop.  Fan, vacuum cleaner hose, mask, duct tape, let’s get creative.  A CPAP doesn’t push hard enough but is that because the fan isn’t strong enough, or because the software limits it?  Can we overclock the fan to blow harder? 
Not medical grade?  That woman in the parking lot is dying, does ‘medical grade’ really matter to her?  Besides, there’s a machine shop in North Branch making aluminium AR-15 parts on state-of-the-art computer-controlled milling machines.  Give them the software code for ventilator parts, offer them $10,000 per unit, I bet they could pound them out in a week.  
Trained personnel to staff the bed?  Rosie the Riveter learned a new job.  You saying college kids today can’t?  $50 an hour, you’re out of school anyway, sign up here.
Seriously – why is the existing number of ICU beds sufficient justification to impose martial law?  Why not just build more ICU beds?  
Joe Doakes

Seventy years ago, they figured out a way to build antisubmarine patrol boats in Shakopee. Submarines in Wisconsin.

We can figure this out – provided “figuring it out” is the real goal.

I’m not entirely sure it is, for everyone.