One minor shout-out to former Minnesapolis mayor R.T. Rybak; to date, he is the only DFL politician to come on the Northern Alliance. We had a great discussion. You don’t have to throw plates at each other to have a good debate.

But you can sure throw facts at each other:

I mean, if one has never worked in the private sector, one might think re-opening a long-closed restaurant is a matter of unlocking the doors, logging into the stove and getting avocado onto toast.

Not about getting food in stock, even without supply chain problems, or getting staff to come to a downtown that’s gotten very human-unfriendly, on top of expensive to park in and tangibly less pleasant to take the bus or train to, when employment options in much more amenable, affordable places are also available.

And there’s a real sense – at least, among people who pay attention to the DFL – that the current relaxation of Covid hypochondria is tied mostly to mid-term polling ,and when the “gnu” or “omega” variants come out in mid-November everything will get shut down in yet another frothing, unproductive, business-shredding panic, leaving those “Re-opened” restaurants giving their food away so it doesn’t rot in the freezer. Again.

He does realize his party caused this, right?

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

Covid is over: you know it and so do I. Democrats want to frighten the public long enough to steal a few more seats through mail-in voting this Fall, but can they fool the headline-reading low-information voters that long? Maybe. Maybe Lesko Brandon can bribe the World Health Organization to continue the pandemic until right after the election. That would be ideal.

Even so, Covid rules must end someday. Democrats’ entire political appeal is grounded in the moral superiority of people being Special. You like to dress up and play sex games? You’re Special. Society should not only accept you, society should Celebrate you. What’s that, you’re so mentally unstable that you need to bring your emotional support hippopotamus on the bus? No problem; you’re Special. Other passengers should budge up to make room. You’re afraid your children might die of Covid from an unvaxxed person? Darn right, kids are Special; we’re going to mandate masks, social distance, vaccines and punish the non-compliant as long as it takes for everyone to be perfectly safe.

Democrats can’t suddenly tell all those Special people to grow up and get a life. It’d be political suicide.

And then there are the immune-compromised, the Type I diabetics, the asthmatics. Covid could kill you so that makes you Special? Yeah, you’re right, it does, that’s a legitimate complaint. But society needs to move on, needs to learn to live with Covid and not under perpetual mask-and-vaccine requirements. How can Democrats sell that to all the Special people who make up their base?

Maybe it won’t be as hard as I think. Cindy Sheehan had absolute moral authority until one day, she didn’t. The media dropped her faster than a Black school shooter. Maybe it’ll happen to all the Mask Karens?

Joe Doakes

My prediction: the Mascists, having just gone through a conflict that is The closest their generation and social class will get to storming Omaha B each or breaking the siege of Khe Sanh, Will resent the loss of the best two years of their lives, and the sudden disassociation with their bands of Karens. There will be a wave of what used to be called the “readjustment blues” back in the 1970s, but which has always attended people who come back from war.

Because that’s about how these people see themselves, and this situation.

I “joke” that Covid restrictions and states of emergency are on the ropes in states where Democrats are polling badly in the mid-terms.

I supposed that it’s a logical corollary that in states where Democrats don’t need to worry about mid-terrms, they don’t have to care.

Exhibit M:

Maybe it’s just to forestall refugees from Canada…

On the one hand, official hypochondria along with privileged lawlessness is polling very badly for the DFL this fall. So the vaccine mandates (and the whole “public safety is a privilege” thing) have got to go.

On the other hand, if DFLers abandon hypochondria, the Karen vote (social, not ethnic) will rebel.

So the mayors chose the middle path: end the useless mandate, keep the useless masks.

After Vietnam, the “physically healthy but psychologically ravaged veteran became part of the American storybook.

Eventually, it turned a spotlight – or at least a flashlight – on the damage veterans of all wars had, but had never really talked about.

I bring that up to set the stage for what may become a far greater psychic plague: PCSD.

Post Covic Stress Syndrome.

Like this…er, person:

Now that “Science!” has intersected with politics – specifically, pre-mid-term polling – and “blue’ governments are dropping restrictions faster than Jacob Frey dropping fashion shoots, look for these veterans of the pestilence to feel just as traumatized and abandoned as John Rambo at the end of First Blood.

David Strom, writing on Facebook, sums up what I’ve been wanting/trying to say for much of this past 23 months:

Follow the science is a bullshit phrase, not because science itself is bullshit, but because science at best can only provide input and data on what are not scientific questions.

Science is a branch of knowledge seeking. It is not equipped to provide answers to what are in fact judgment calls. Public policy is at its root about making judgement calls–weighing risks and rewards, costs and benefits, and of course balancing competing rights and goods.

And in fact, no actual scientist believes that the scientific method is, in and of itself, superior to the other methods of seeking knowledge: history, logic, math, philosophy, and so on . They’re all just different tools to similar ends.

Science can help us better understand risks and rewards (when done well, with good data, and the right questions), but it can’t help us weigh those and come up with a “right” answer. If you have ever had a difficult conversation with a doctor you understand this. Doctors give you information upon which you make medical decisions, but in the end they ask you what you want to do based upon your own set of values.

When somebody tells you to “follow the science” they aren’t just making claims about what the science say (and in many cases it isn’t clear), but also to accept their values about how to weigh the costs and benefits.

Consider this extreme example of how important values are in making judgements about behavior (not a public policy example):

Alex Honnold is the world’s best “free solo” climber, and is admired by millions for his skill and grace. He is also, by any measure that values survival above all else, utterly insane. This is true of extreme athletes in general.

Science can tell us nothing about whether what he is doing is admirable or is just off his rocker, but if you watch any interview of him he seems perfectly rational–he just values preservation of his own life as less important than the things he gets from performing his craft.

It’s no different for a ballet dancer or football player, who both sacrifice their body and endure horrible pain to create their art/sport. They balance the risks and rewards based upon their own judgement of what is important. And obviously the answers vary by what individuals value most.

I’m going to emphasize this next bit:

Public policy exists in that same realm, although on a different scale. And public policy in a pluralistic society means that decisions about such matters are made with an eye to balancing the judgments of millions of people and finding artful compromises that garner enough support to be maintained. It’s why we have elections.

“Follow the science” is nothing more than a bullshit way to tarnish the values of people who have different visions of the good society. Science doesn’t speak to values and morals. Ask Josef Mengele. Science is just one of several means to get knowledge. A useful way. But no scientist can use it to tell you whether Monet is a great artist or not.

And yet we have bred a generation and change that believes science…

…no, conclusions given by people in real or rhetorial lab coats = morality.

I’m not sure there’s scientific evidence of any of these – but if someone gave me a seven figure government grant, I’m sure I could come up with some.

School Kids “Walking Out Of Class” Is Not Spontaneous: Big Left must be trying to get people to the polls in nine months; the headlines are again full of stories of teenagers “walking out of school” to “protest” “causes”.

Amazingly, there were news cameras waiting right there as they walked out of school, carrying their professionally printed signs!

Those are some pretty motivated, well-funded, well-organized high school kids!

There are, of course, exceptions.

Mascists, Lockdown Fanboys/Fangirls Will Exhibit Deep Psychological Issues When Crisis Fades: The people hectoring you about your mask at Target are having the time of their lives right now. Feeling that they’re saving lives by badgering people about masks, virtue-signalling their vaxx status, and demanding we stay the locked-down course are living out their version of fighting an existential threat – sort of like their grandfathers landing on Utah Beach, only with DoorDash bringing them Oaxacan tacos, left “safely” on their doorsteps.

And like many of those veterans, when the crisis is over, so will end The Best Years Of Their Lives.

I”m picturing a movie in ten years about the readjustment blues and trauma that “veterans” of the pandemic will feel – sort of like Coming Home, only with DoorDash bringing Oaxacan tacos.

A friend of the blog emails

Love this:

This is what sliding into authoritarianism looks like.

During the American revolution, it’s pretty likely a thin majority of the population thought living under the British was juuuust fine.

…neither Spotify nor at least some current research need him around anyhow.

I’ll meet Mayor Frey halfway.

He’s supposed to be Minneapolis’s top cheerleader. It’s part of his job to blow smoke up the world’s collective nethers about the city.

So when he went on social media after about a week of his bizarrely illogical and unscientific vaccine mandate to say everything was hunky dory:

…it wasn’t in and of itself a surprise. Cheerleading the city, and their own policies even moreso, is part of a mayor’s job description.

Of course, the stats aren’t nearly as sanguine. Minneapolis table reservation via “Open Table” are off by…

…ahem…

…two thirds:

Now, it’s entirely possible the Mayor’s phone is flooded with photos of full restaurants. The number of choices in Minneapolis has plummeted. Literally, every place in Minneapolis where I used to do social events has disappeared in the past 20 months.

Exhibit 1: Now, the CDC is saying openlly…

…things that got people suspended from social media, and ostracized by Big Karen, six short months ago.

Science!

A group of restauranteurs and bar owners are taking the Frey regime to court over the city’s bizarre, unscientific vaxx mandate:

Plaintiffs in the complaint filed in Hennepin County Fourth Judicial Court Thursday include Bright Red Group, LLC (owners of Smack Shack), 90’s Minneapolis, LLC (The Gay 90’s), PJ. Hafiz Club Management, Inc. (Sneaky Pete’s), Urban entertainment, LLC (Wild Greg’s Saloon), Urban Forage, LLC (Urban Forage), and MikLin Enterprises, Inc. (Jimmy John’s) and I & E Inc. (Bunkers Music Bar & Grill).

According to the complaint, the emergency resolution “is calculated and purposed to attempt to prod the general public toward vaccination… Minneapolis bars and restaurants are being used as pawns to further Mayor Frey’s agenda of pushing for and convincing the public to get vaccinated. Whether the end being sought is noble, the scheme is forcing restaurants and bars to lose additional patrons and business that have already been reduced over the past two years and incur new costs and burdens to enforce the requirements.”

When I saw the original mandate, I wondered – so some 20-something 110 pound female hostess encounters someone without a vaxx card who wants to eat anyway. Then what?

Does the restaurant call the cops?

Even if there’s some response on their part, they’ll show up long after the customers have ordered, eaten and left.

What is it exactly that the Frey regime expects restaurants to do under color of his mandate?

A friend of the blog emails:

Rise Bagel Company has decided to not have to make a choice of who they serve. They are now closed to indoor dining, open for take out. Their business, their choice. All customers treated equally. Shouldn’t be any controversy.

But, yet there is- people who like the vaccine mandate are somehow mad that Rise Bagel Company is closed to indoor dining. Read the comments on the Facebook-people are upset that this business isn’t doing the least bit to keep people safe. But, what? Isn’t closing down to indoor dining even safer? I’ve heard there are quite a few others doing the same thing, whether out of protest or lack of staffing.

They can only except people closing down for the right reasons.

No, that’s not hyperbole:

I suspect “Rise Bagels” couldn’t be happier to lose this person’s business.

But the point remains – this isn’t about infection control.

Just control.

…when saying this sort of thing would get you a 12 hour time-out on Twitter.

“Science changes!”

Yep. It changes into things that used to get you ostracized.

See: Galileo.

“Government is all the things we do together – stupidly and ineffectively”.

Government is ponderous and brittle. People, when acting in enlightened self-interest, usually make the right call.

My favorite example: before 9/11, the official guidance for people in skyscraper offices in case of a major emergency was to wait for official instructions. The powers that be assumed that people would be a panicky mob, there’d be stampedes in the stairwells, and more people would die from the panic than from the disaster, since humans are (to officialdom) like longhorns in a thunderstorm.

Of course, on 9/11, the normies ignored the instructions to stay in their cubes – and, more importantly, they self-organized an evacuation that got just about everyone below the points of impact out of the Twin Towers that morning. Another epic self-organization led to the more or less organic appearance of the greatest maritime evacuation since Dunkirk, as boats, official and private, carried people across the Hudson and East Rivers, without any need for official guidance.

Government learned nothing from this, of course; one of the first rule of public health crisis communications is to try to convince people of one or both of two things; “you’re going to die a horrible death if you dbn’t follow directions”,, or “your children are going to die a horrible death if you don’t follow directions”.

Doesn’t sound very confident in human intelligence, does it?

People can be breathtakingly stupid – but enlightened self-interest is a powerful force for good.

It’s by no means a rare trait.

I talked about this article in “Commentary” last weekend on the show – “Elite Panic vs. the Resilient Populace” by James Meigs.

It’s about the gulf between the panicky official response to the Anchorage Earthquake of 1964 – the strongest earthquake in North American history – and the calm, purposeful response of the normies, who organized themselves much more effectively than the local authorities did.

The officlals assumed that the populace would panic:

Almost as soon as the shaking stopped, city officials began worrying about how the populace would respond. With every shop window broken, would looters ransack the local merchants? Would citizens panic at the sight of the dead or wounded? Police quickly deputized a group of volunteers—some of them freshly emerged from those Fourth Avenue bars—as ad hoc officers. The men put on armbands with the word police emblazoned in lipstick—a few were even issued firearms—and off they went to protect the city from the inevitable post-disaster crime wave.

The Anchorage officials weren’t being unusually paranoid. At the time, most experts believed any major disaster would cause “a mass outbreak of hysterical neurosis among the civilian population,” as social scientist Richard M. Titmuss had put it some years earlier. Shocked by carnage and desperate for food and shelter, people would “behave like frightened and unsatisfied children.” Only firm control by powerful authorities could keep the lid on such dangerous situations….Disaster researchers call this phenomenon “elite panic.” When authorities believe their own citizens will become dangerous, they begin to focus on controlling the public, rather than on addressing the disaster itself. They clamp down on information, restrict freedom of movement, and devote unnecessary energy to enforcing laws they assume are about to be broken. These strategies don’t just waste resources, one study notes; they also “undermine the public’s capacity for resilient behaviors.” In other words, nervous officials can actively impede the ordinary people trying to help themselves and their neighbors.

This led the authorities to devote far more effort to controlling crowds that tryint to rescue people trapped in buildings.

Sound familiar?

In the meantime, the normies organized themselves, and did what needed to be done:

Cars were buried in debris. One station wagon had been crushed almost flat by a concrete slab; Chance could hear a woman’s voice coming from inside. A crowd of people was trying to save her, clawing at the slab. Then a man stepped forward to organize the effort. Somehow, two tow trucks were located; they were able to split the slab partially in two. Another man climbed into the breech with a cutting torch—a cutting torch!—and carved a hole in the vehicle’s roof. The woman was pulled free, gravely injured but alive. She would survive. [Anchorage TV reporter Genie] Chance later marveled that all the people involved in the operation were mere passersby—impromptu volunteers. And yet they functioned as a team. Though she didn’t know it at the time, this dynamic was being replicated all over the city.

Officialdom was, in the meantime ,paralyzed by the collapse of its assumptions:

[Psychologist] Enrico Quarantelli, the leader of [a team of academics that flew to Anchorage to study the response], was particularly interested in Anchorage’s small Civil Defense office. It should have been in charge of search and rescue, but, Quarantelli noted, had quickly become bogged down over questions of bureaucratic protocol. Of course, Bill Davis’s amateur mountaineers had taken over that function almost immediately. Quarantelli used the term “emergent groups” to describe teams of self-organized volunteers like Davis’s searchers. He didn’t miss the irony that the agency created to protect civilians soon became an obstacle that this emergent group of rescuers had to work around. And, far from being a hindrance to trained first responders, those gangs of citizens turned out to be an indispensable resource.

It’s not a new phenomenon at all:

Disaster researchers call this phenomenon “elite panic.” When authorities believe their own citizens will become dangerous, they begin to focus on controlling the public, rather than on addressing the disaster itself. They clamp down on information, restrict freedom of movement, and devote unnecessary energy to enforcing laws they assume are about to be broken. These strategies don’t just waste resources, one study notes; they also “undermine the public’s capacity for resilient behaviors.” In other words, nervous officials can actively impede the ordinary people trying to help themselves and their neighbors.

I urge you to read the entire piece.

I urge you to read the whole thing – in particular, the article’s focus on the importance of getting reliable, trustworthy information to the population:

 Fear of public panic remains common today. Disaster literature bulges with examples—from Hurricane Katrina, to the 2011 Japan tsunami, to the current coronavirus pandemic—in which officials suppressed information, or passed along misinformation, out of concern over an unruly populace…One symptom of elite panic is the belief that too much information, or the wrong kind of information, will send citizens reeling. After the 2011 tsunami knocked out Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, officials gave a series of confusing briefings. To many, they seemed to be downplaying the amount of radiation released in the accident. In the end, the radiation risks turned out to be much lower than feared, resulting in no civilian deaths. But, by then, the traumatized public had lost faith in any official statements. As one team of researchers notes, any “perceived lack of information provision increases public anxiety and distrust.”

Similar example. the Bengal Famine of 1942, where British/Indian authorities clamped down on information, causing the rumor mill to take over, leading to food hoarding and bureacratic – dare we say, “elite” – panic, leading to two million starvataion deaths, in a place with plenty of food.

Think of that when you remember the Minnesota Department of Health’s refusal to divulge the mathematical model by which it predicted tens of thousands of Covid deaths by July 2020i, as a best case, because “people might reach different resujlts”.

Declan Leary, on Muriel Bowser’s vaccine mandate in the District of Columbia – which isn’t all that different from the ones going into “effect” in Minneapolis and Saint Paul

It is all the more concerning given the precedent we risk setting if we tolerate the vaccine mandates. As a number of conservatives have warned repeatedly these last few months, even begrudging compliance with irrational diktats issued by the Covidcrats gives the ruling class valuable strategic ground. Moving forward, we can only expect our government to become less sensible and more immoderate if we refuse to push back now. As TAC’s

Helen Andrews wrote last week, “Once Americans get accustomed to scanning a QR code every time they enter a building, there is no limit to the surveillance and nudges that can be built on top of it.”

So I don’t know what to do here. I could easily comply; I have proof of the jab ready to go right on my phone. I need to show it if I want any part in so much of what makes city life good, worth living even under the rule of a Muriel Bowser and with a not insignificant risk of getting shot on a given day. (This latter point, by the way, calls into question the sincerity of the mayor’s interest in preserving the lives of citizens.) But I am far from convinced that the benefits of compliance—just like the benefits of enforcement—will really outweigh the costs.

I’m in about the same boat:  I’ve had the J&J vaccine (chosen because it was alleged to be best at preventing hospitalization, which given that I had OG Covid in the spring of 2020 was my only actual concern).   I could play the game.

But I am not going to.

Dear Saint Paul bars and restaurants,

I get it. You’re between a rock and a hard place. Many of you know how stupid the mayor’s vaccine mandate is – someone who got the Pfizer vaccine a year ago can come into your establishment, hacking their brains out and contagious as can be, while someone with natural immunity a month old is kept out. And your employees have no vaccine mandate, even though they’re the ones who will be standing around the place for hours at a time – which, the science shows, is where the real risk comes from.

And it’s not like I don’t take this pandemic seriously. I’ve got very vulnerable relatives. I’ve had Covid, donated all kinds of convalescent plasma, been vaccinated, and take all the care necessary. I’m not laughing this whole thing off.

But even the CDC and other public health authorities are starting to admit that vaccine mandates and lockdowns are completely counterproductive, that masks are about as useful at public health as aluminum foil pants, that eventually everyone is going to get Omicron, and that the right approach is likely going to be to protect the vulnerable, but go on living our lives.

Which is the exact opposite of the approach the Mayor is taking with this idiot mandate.

So I’ll tell you what.

If you agree with the mandate? Feel free to make your sentiments public. My response should be obvious by this point. You needn’t worry about making room for me.

If you want to go along with the mandate because you have to, that’s fine. I won’t be patronizing your establishment for the duration. I get the bind you’re in, but at some point people have to say enough is enough. Feel free to tell the mayor, the Chamber of Commerce, and all the other people who support this idiot policy I said so. Do you want me to help you put pressure on them? I’m there. And I hope we can get together when the crazy is over.

If you don’t want to go along with the policy, but you need to be discreet? Pass the word around – under the table, discreetly, obviously. I will do my best to be there, and bring friends. I get it, you don’t want to be made an example of like the places that stayed open last year. “Test cases are for other people”, in public health as in self-defense. I’m not going to ask you to be a hero. But pass the word; I will do my best to make it worthwhile.

Enough is enough.

When I was a kid, working at small-town radio stations in North Dakota, my favorite part of the job was working during tornado and severe thunderstorm warnings.

Which seems counterintuitive, perhaps – but there was something about the crackle and buzz of imporance, of purpose, in the air; the increasingly urgent National Weather service bulletins, the terse phone calls from the cops and sherif, that far more than overcame the whole “there’s a tornado coming!” thing.

And as a tall, gawky, greasy-haired, uncoordinated kid with little apparent athletic talent in a town that idolized the basketball team, it didn’t hurt that I knew, all over town, people were listening.

To me.

Of course, when the warning was over, I and the rest of Stutsman and Foster Counties went back to normal life. I didn’t keep telling people to stay in their basements when the front had passed and the warning was over. Because much as I enjoyed knowing that people were paying attention (and, more important, that I could deliver what they were tuning in for, with style), there were other things in life, and I didn’t need the state of crisis to keep giving me value.

A lot of people out there today can’t say that.

Covid has brought out a strain in a small, but socially prominent, group of people that find their self-worth in crying “Crisis!”.

Not just the media – it’s a given that they will make hay out of crises; pandemics and riots make them more relevant, just as tornados made Mitch Berg’s patter more important to more people than the usual diet of local sports and Rupert Holmes records that occupied most of my time on those stations.

No – it’s regular, workadaddy, hugamommy, usually but not always left-of-center types, for whom being the harbinger brings meaning to life.

And it’s to them that so much of Big Public Health’s narrative is aimed.

Great Twitter thread on the subject:

They – on social media, in the checkout line at Target, or in the comment section here – remind me. of the kids who ran to the teacher when someone stepped out of line when talking from the classroom to the water fountain. They got their sense of personal value from enforcing rules on others – whatever the rules, however niggling and petty and useless – back then, as now.

It’s the toxic corollary to “we’re all in this together”: the unstated “…and I’m not gonna let you forget about it!”.

Remember in the 1980s, when some “conservative” fundies rejoiced at the deaths of AIDS patients.

It was a pretty depraved stance. Everyone knows that.

Someone tell the fairly irredeemable LA Times drone Michael Hiltzik – who has reprised that particular bit of human depravity by declaring “Mocking some anti-vaxxers’ deaths is necessary“.

Helpfully, he adds “My exception applies to those who have actively undermined public health for the sake of an ideology and a culture war”.

I’m not going to extensively pull-quote the column – which is full of the sort of “two weeks to stop the virus” cheerleading that seems to have come from a CDC press release in April 2020, or from someone who thinks Gavin Newsom is on the right track.

That’s not especially remarkable.

Remarkable? Humanity is secondary to progs like Hiltzik:

It may be ghoulish to celebrate or exult in the deaths of vaccine opponents. And it may be proper to express sympathy and solicitude to those they leave behind.

But mockery is not necessarily the wrong reaction to those who publicly mocked anti-COVID measures and encouraged others to follow suit, before they perished of the disease the dangers of which they belittled…There may be no other way to make sure that the lessons of these teachable moments are heard.

Actually, there is another way: : stop politicizing public health. Stop spreading distrust of “the Trump Vaccine” during the elections, and then turn around and claim credit for it. Stop making “sowing controllable panic” the default setting for public health messaging. Stop being whores for the Democrats, if you’re the media.

Of course, this is more about them than – and their needs to find a scapegoat for their frustrations – than the unvaccinated.

But let’s not pretend this – mocking and giggling about opponents, on whatever issue, that die unfortunate deaths – is anything but the default setting for ghouls like Hiltzik. After watching people like him giggle and guffaw over the deaths of Tony Snow, Antonin Scalia and Rush Limbaugh, and hoot and holler for the death of Steve Scaliise, it’s a stretch to assume they have any other setting.

Sort of like guffawing about dead AIDS patents, only apparently acceptable.

To: Mayors Carter and Frey
From: Mitch Berg, Irascible Peasant
Re: Your Hostages

Mayors,

You just announced your new and, if I may be frank, moronic Covid restrictions:

Let’s make sure we’re clear here.

I had the OG Covid, way back in 2020. Back before it got easy to catch and less virulent.

I’ve donated convalescent plasma. As much as I could, in fact.

Got vaccinated – not out of any ideological drive, but because I’ve got some exceptionally vulnerable relatives.

Pretty sure I just got over Omicron.

I’ve been contributing to herd immunity since most of you, my “Karen” neighbors, were hiding in your basement and dunking your food in rubbing alcohol before eating it. I am likely the immunologically safest person you will meet anytime soon.

And I will not be spending one dollar in Minneapolis or Saint Paul until this is over. And if I get completely out of the habit of spending in Saint Paul?

Oh, no.

Bear in mind – I’ve been trying to spend more money in harried Saint Paul establishments over the past 20 months; I’ve tried to help my neighbors out.

No more. You people voted for these hamsters. You all can go down with the ship.

Not another dime.

Joe Doakes from Como parks emails:Joe Doakes from Como parks emails:

Hospitals are bringing in foreigners to do the nursing work Americans won’t do.

The article implies the reason for the nursing shortage is that American nurses are tired from working so hard taking care of Covid patients. They’re quitting in exhaustion. Apparently, they will never recover, never return to work, therefore we must replace them with nurses brought in from overseas. Foreign nurses are much more durable, more resilient, I guess. They aren’t quitters. They’re willing to work.

Who believes this rot?

If we’re worried about a nurse staffing shortage, maybe we shouldn’t be firing nurses during a pandemic for violating a vaccine mandate? Particularly not over a vaccine which doesn’t prevent the spread of an illness which is basically just a bad flu. Another example of the endless lack of Second Order Thinking in the Brandon administration.

Joe Doakes

Why, yes – it does seem a little bit like the right hand doesn’t know what stories the left-hand is telling.

If we consider the notion of “sanity“ as a continuum, with “very very sane“ on one end, and “not sane at all“ on the left, it’s pretty fair that our systems Covid fear mongering has driven this particular mother (and teacher) to the “left“ end of the scale:

An arrest warrant has been issued for a Houston-area mother whose teenage son was allegedly found in the trunk of her car at a COVID-19 drive-thru testing site on Friday…According to the charging documents, Beam told Gordon that her child was in the trunk because he had previously tested positive for COVID-19 and as a result, wanted to “prevent her from getting exposed to possible COVID” while driving him to get additional testing at the stadium.

Gordon told Beam that she “would not be receiving COVID testing until the child would be removed from the trunk of the vehicle and place[d] in the back seat of the vehicle.”

On the other end of the scale? This entire Twitter thread:

Sanity is pounding at the door.

And from inside the trunk, where applicable.

Scene 1: Fall, 2020.

Us:  “Eventually, Covid is going to be endemic.  We’ll never eliminate it.  Masks are public health theater.  Shutdowns will make things worse. Vaccines are great news, but let’s be cautious about the claims.   We need to protect the vulnerable, and learn to live with it.  Eventually, between herd immunity and mutation,  this is going to be just like the flu. 

Them:  Hah!  Just like the flu, he says!  Hundreds of thousands have died!  Masks are effective! IF we could only lock down for six weeks, we’d destroy the virus, just like the Germans!  Mask up, Minnesota!

Scene 2: Today.

Them: The experts say Covid is going to be with us for good. Masks maybe useless. The economy needs to breathe! Vaccines are really more like flu shots than smallpox or polio shots. This is going to be like the flu, eventually.

Us: Ummm…

Them: Becasue shut up.

(And SCENE).

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

This is the first worthwhile analysis of supply chain disruptions I’ve found. It’s worthwhile because it doesn’t focus on one tree (ships in port) but on the whole forest of supply chain issues, particularly the consequences of the abrupt shift in consumption due to Covid regulations. It’s another example of Second Order thinking.

Remember last year when Cub had no toilet paper? That’s because toilet paper in the office restroom is single-ply industrial grade on a huge roll, but toilet paper at home is two-ply softer grade. Toilet paper manufacturers know the normal office-versus-at-home percentages but when everybody shifted from working at the office to working at home, manufacturers weren’t prepared to instantly shift percentages and weren’t thrilled at incurring the expense because nobody knew how long lockdowns would last so they couldn’t calculate whether the shift would be worth the cost. It took months for the industry to catch up.

Everything in the supply chain works that way, including food. The author claims that pre-pandemic, 60% of all food in the US was eaten outside the home, at school and restaurants. How much during the lockdowns? Consider the consequence of shifting tomato sauce from Costco sized cans into Cub sized jars, if you can even obtain that many Cub sized jars because they’re made in Mexico where workers are quarantined for their own government’s lockdowns and the few jars they do make are shipped on boats sitting in ports waiting to unload containers.

The people who thought they could lock down the economy without consequences are the same people who figure they can shut down electric generating plants without consequences. There will always be toilet paper on the shelves and the lights will always come on when you flip the switch, right? They never seriously ask, “What could go wrong?” because they are too busy signaling their virtue to engage in second order thinking.

Joe Doakes

In the “progressive“ world, everything but political science is, in a practical sense, hypothetical.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

“SCIENCE! CNN finally admits cloth mask don’t stop Covid!”

The late stages of this pandemic have seen, and will see more, of what used to be as accepted as heresy by Big Karen quietly being proclaimed as gospel.

There’s been a steady stream: it’s not spread by surface contact; It’s spread by nontrivial contact in confined spaces; acquired immunity works.

And masks might be perfectly adequate personal infection control under the right circumstances, but they are a useless public health measure.

And I will be in particular gratified to see cloth masks recognized as better landfill than infection control.