Shot in the Dark

Bent

Everybody who was an expert on the Emoluments Clause a while back, is now an expert on epidemiology. Can’t tell you how many people earnestly explained to me how they’re helping “bend the curve” and I should, too.
Which curve? There are two. One is the number of people who have contracted the Corona Virus. That’s the number breathlessly repeated on the news but really, it’s a meaningless number. It’s like asking: “How many Americans had a cold last Winter?” The answer is “All of them” but nobody cares because nobody died from it. In fact, we WANT every American to get the virus, and recover, to build “herd immunity.”
The number we care about is: “How many Americans died from the Corona Virus?” and that’s only meaningful if we have something to compare it to. That’s the curve we’re trying to bend down, so fewer people die. But how many is few enough?

In 2019, influenza killed 50,000 Americans, mostly children and elderly with chronic health problems. The plain old everyday flu. Nobody batted an eye. 50,000 out of 300,000,000 is nothing to get excited about.
In 2019, abortions were down – only 16,500 per week. Last week, Planned Parenthood of Minnesota – one of the state’s largest abortion providers – was still open for business.
COVID-19 has killed about 300 Americans.

For this, we shut down the entire nation? How far down must the curve be bent?
Joe Doakes

Another curve I, and a lot of Americans, keep in mind; how many people in our lives are susceptible to lung problems?

It’s a pretty fair number in my family. That’s a curve I want to keep to zero. And so I’m acting accordingly, as best I can.

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Mitch Berg

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36 responses to “Bent”

  1. Joe Doakes Avatar
    Joe Doakes

    Mitch, after I mailed you this note, I found a column on Powerline claiming the reason Minnesota has too few hospital beds is the same reason we have too few lane-miles in the Twin Cities. Politicians refused to let anyone build them. Can that possibly be true?

    We know the Met Council blocked new highways intending to force people onto trains and busses (where the virus is spread more efficiently). That’s consistent with holding the MUSA line to force urbanization and dense growth – it’s part of the Progressive mantra.

    Now, I learn that Minnesota used to have a “Certificate of Need” process where a hospital was required to prove to the state that more beds were needed, before they could be licensed and built. The CON process was replaced with a simple moratorium. No more hospital beds. Because if we let you build them, then people will demand to use them, which will drive up the cost of medical care. Greater Supply = Higher Price (in the medical world, according to regulators, although nowhere else in economics).

    Any SITD readers know if this is correct? Because if so – if the reason we had to put the entire statue under martial-law-lite is because the Experts painted us into this corner – then I think it’s time to stock up on torches and pitchforks.

  2. Dave Thul Avatar
    Dave Thul

    After all we’ve been through in the last two weeks, Joe still thinks there is no difference between Covid-19 and the common flu, I’d like to know what hospital is Joe volunteering at?

    And since he thinks we are under ‘martial law-lite’ in Minnesota, I’d like to know when and where Joe will be organizing a protest to demonstrate the injustice?

  3. Hoping to recover 25% losses any day now Swiftee Avatar
    Hoping to recover 25% losses any day now Swiftee

    Everybody who was an expert on the Emoluments Clause a while back, is now an expert on epidemiology.

    Right. And they’re also the same people who ran to Walmart and bought 500 rolls of flippin’ toilet paper.

    Dave Thul wieghs in: “And since he thinks we are under ‘martial law-lite’ in Minnesota…”

    ” According to the Supreme Court, the term martial law carries no precise meaning (Duncan v. Kahanamoku, 327 U.S. 304, 66 S. Ct. 606, 90 L. Ed. 688 [1946]). However, most declarations of martial law have some common features.

    Certain civil liberties may be suspended, such as the right to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures, freedom of association, and freedom of movement.”

    Minneapolis’ mayor said “I expect 100% compliance by Minneapolis residents and visitors with the governor’s stay-at-home order.” This is not optional. This is not a half measure. This is a mandate, and I expect it to be followed for the sake of our great city,”

    I guess you’ll get a ticket if you decide to leave your home without your travel permit; that’s called losing freedom of movement where I come from. And what happens if you refuse to sign the ticket, or to appear before a judge to plead your case? You will be taken into custody through force of arms.

    Martial law light? Yes sir; in all respects. What we have experienced in the past two weeks, is the biggest manufactured panic in the history of mankind. Joe is not quite right to say this corona virus is the same as seasonal flu; it’s a different strain, we didn’t crash the global economy, we didn’t suspend the US Constitution and we didn’t add $2 trillion dollars to our already huge national debt last flu season, so yeah, completely different.

    How’s your TP supply holding up, Dave?

  4. bikebubba Avatar
    bikebubba

    One big objection I have to comparing the “Kung Flu” to the regular versions is that COVID-19 is still on its upswing, and the others have played out. It’s like comparing a child to an adult, really. The reason we’re very concerned about this is because, according to a friend of mine who’s a pathologist at Mayo (and fairly close colleague to the epidemiologists there), COVID-19 is pretty much in the “sweet spot” of lethality and communicability. It’s lethal enough to be dangerous, but not so lethal that it plays itself out by killing people too quickly, and when people get in each others’ faces (e.g. cruise ships, choir meetings, kids’ Bible gatherings), it spreads like wildfire.

    Yes, it’s not the Spanish flu or even avian flu….yet. But let’s not confuse the fact that previous anti-disease efforts have worked with the notion that COVID-19 doesn’t pose a special hazard.

  5. golfdoc50 Avatar
    golfdoc50

    JD: the CON story is accurate. When I first started practice, Fairview wanted to build a hospital in Burnsville to serve Dakota County and south suburbs. After a lot of pressure was applied, they were able to get Fairview Ridges built. It opened in 1984 (ironically.) The CON process clamped down hard after that. Many hospitals closed: Lutheran Deaconess, Metropolitan Medical Center, Eitel Hospital, Miller Hospital are several I can recall.

  6. jdm Avatar
    jdm

    golfdoc (or JD), what is the purpose of the CON? Even if only the ostensible purpose? I mean, I don’t understand why it would take a lot of pressure to build a hospital – and especially in Dakota county.

  7. jdm Avatar
    jdm

    bike, it would seem to me that “[t]he reason we’re very concerned about this” is primarily that we don’t know much about the “kung-flu”. Yet.

    I mean, you mention the its communicability, but that did not seem to be the case on that Diamond Princess cruise ship. On the other hand, from that one single incident out in Washington, a choir decided to go ahead with a rehearsal and now dozens of members have COVID-19 and two are dead. That is a huge variability that without knowing the details, makes no sense.

    And that, to me, is what is fueling the panic-demic – it being repeatedly lit by our friends in the MSM.

  8. Hoping to recover 25% losses any day now Swiftee Avatar
    Hoping to recover 25% losses any day now Swiftee

    BB, The H2N2 strain that caused the 1957 pandemic also lived in sweet spot” of lethality and communicability. When the dust settled in 1958, the bug was responsible for about 60,000 in the US. It was like the 2009 pandemic in that it petered out, but then came back. About 40,000 occurred in the summer and fall of ’57, 20,000 in the winter of ’58.

    Again, there was no panic, no lock downs, no financial crash.

  9. Hoping to recover 25% losses any day now Swiftee Avatar
    Hoping to recover 25% losses any day now Swiftee

    Personally, I blame the internet for the dempanic. The lever pullers could not have achieved such wide spread panic in a short time if not for instantaneous information transfer. Oh, and speaking of the unintended consequences of the electronic revolution, here’s something we knew was coming:
    “Cell phone data reveals which California counties are not socially distancing” Oh yeah, they’re keeping tabs on you.

  10. Joe Doakes Avatar
    Joe Doakes

    “COVID-19 is worse than the flu. Therefore, we must have a quarantine, so nobody gets it.”

    “So what? If I get it, I’ll just go to the hospital.”

    “No, there aren’t enough hospitals.”

    “Why aren’t there enough hospitals?”

    “We wouldn’t let them build more. Hospital building ended 35 years ago.”

    “Why not let them build hospitals?”

    “Because then people would want to use the new hospitals, but poor people wouldn’t be able to pay for them, so the state would have to pay for poor people to use those new hospitals. And then we couldn’t afford a train. That’s why there aren’t enough hospitals so that’s why you have to stay home.”

    As insane as it sounds, this apparently is the way the State of Minnesota sees it.

    Dave Thul, if I’m wrong on the facts, please correct THE FACTS. Name-calling I can get anywhere, I don’t need you for that.

  11. Emery Avatar
    Emery

    Some 3,000 people died on 9/11. Don’t recall this logic being used.

    Remember when the US didn’t have 20% of all the cases of Covid-19 in the world.

    Remember when Trump had two months to prepare a federal response and wasted it by claiming he had everything under control.

  12. Joe Doakes Avatar
    Joe Doakes

    Squirrel, Emery.

    Politicians painted us into this corner, by refusing to let people build hospitals.

    ___True
    ___False

    Pick one.

  13. jdm Avatar
    jdm

    Because then people would want to use the new hospitals, but poor people wouldn’t be able to pay for them, so the state would have to pay for poor people to use those new hospitals. And then we couldn’t afford […]

    So this is the reasoning behind the CON?

    BTW, a brand new hospital was built just a few years ago in Maple Grove.

  14. Emery Avatar
    Emery

    JD: Strange considering Trump said he knew it was a pandemic from the beginning.

  15. Joe Doakes Avatar
    Joe Doakes

    The reasoning behind the Certificate of Need process was to limit the number of hospital beds, but it wasn’t effective enough so it was replaced with a moratorium on building hospital beds.

    Here’s a briefing given to the Minnesota Senate in 2018 explaining why the change was needed and celebrating that we’ve lost nearly 1,000 hospital beds under the new program.

    https://www.senate.mn/committees/2017-2018/3095_Committee_on_Health_and_Human_Services_Finance_and_Policy/MDH%20-%20Hospital%20Moratorium%20and%20PIR.pdf

    And here’s the moratorium statute.
    https://www.revisor.mn.gov/statutes/cite/144.551

    And here’s an article from 2018 affirming the reason for the moratorium is to limit the number of beds. It’s basically taxicab medallions for hospital beds.

    https://www.startribune.com/regions-puts-a-spotlight-on-patients-in-hospital-s-bid-for-more-beds/480392373/

    The moratorium is real. The motivation is to prevent Minnesota from having too many hospital beds. Minnesota politicians enacted these laws. Now they claim the only way to avoid overwhelming the few remaining beds is to put the entire state under house arrest subject to $1,000 fine.

  16. bikebubba Avatar
    bikebubba

    jdm, given that cruise ships typically have over ten different decks, three or more different classes of passengers, and accompanying staff to handle all this, is it a surprise that not everybody gets the disease on a week long cruise? The big ships these days basically have several different neighborhoods that really don’t come together, so the fact that only 10-20% of people get infected seems congruent with that.

    Most recent example of this blowing up in a hurry that I can think of is a choir rehearsal that resulted in about 45 people becoming infected (two of them dying), and a children’s church event where 34 became infected in the course of a couple of hours (one dying so far). So just because “not everybody” becomes infected doesn’t mean it’s not especially virulent.

    Regarding H2N2 in 1957, are we willing to bury the population-adjusted figure of 1.2 million people? If we say “just let it play out”, that’s the ballpark estimate. For Spanish flu, close to 2 million. Are we willing to double the mortuary business for the year? Can Batesville Casket keep up?

  17. Mammuthus Primigenius Avatar
    Mammuthus Primigenius

    BB, you may be over-generalizing because you can’t see all the data.
    How many choirs met without spreading covid-19 to its members? How many of these negative samples had one or more choir members with the covid-19 virus?

  18. Mammuthus Primigenius Avatar
    Mammuthus Primigenius

    The choir thing seems like a worst case scenario. Get a lot of old people together, have them crowd together and breathe a lot.

  19. Joe Doakes Avatar
    Joe Doakes

    I submitted a post with links to the moratorium statute; a handout given to the Minnesota Senate in 2018 explaining the reasoning; and a link to a Star Trib article that mentions Regions Hospital had to go to the Legislature for permission to expand. If my post clears quarantine, you can see the links for yourself.

    And Emery, Minnesota Democrats’ decision to limit hospital beds goes back decades. Your attempted snark fails.

  20. Hoping to recover 25% losses any day now Swiftee Avatar
    Hoping to recover 25% losses any day now Swiftee

    Regarding H2N2 in 1957, are we willing to bury the population-adjusted figure of 1.2 million people?

    Couple things make that unlikely, BB. First, people are being a lot more careful today than they could have been in ’57. There was no hand sanitizer, no face masks available to the general public. The country had not mobilized as it has today. Also, H2N2 killed young people, bat flu doesn’t seem to do that unless there is a serious pre-existing condition.

    But let’s say worse came to worse; 1.2 million die. To logically answer your question, we’d need accurate data on how many people will die directly, or indirectly during the prolonged depression we will surely have if we keep the economy shut down much beyond April. 1.2 million is a lot of people, but we need something to measure it against.

  21. jdm Avatar
    jdm

    Thanks, JD! I await the great Aksimet’s blessing on your comment.

    Bike, I already mentioned the choir thing. I was trying to contrast to two apparent ends of the spectrum; I guess I was unclear. I still assert, in my best Emery impersonation (aka without proof), that until the characteristics of this virus can be described (communicability, mortality, etc), there will continue to be panic-like actions. The malaria drug treatment looks like quite the game-changer, tho’.

  22. jdm Avatar
    jdm

    … ah, there it is.

    It’s basically taxicab medallions for hospital beds.

    That’s all you had to say.

  23. Night Writer Avatar
    Night Writer

    BB, The H2N2 strain that caused the 1957 pandemic also lived in sweet spot” of lethality and communicability. When the dust settled in 1958, the bug was responsible for about 60,000 in the US. It was like the 2009 pandemic in that it petered out, but then came back. About 40,000 occurred in the summer and fall of ’57, 20,000 in the winter of ’58.

    My mother was one of those who caught that ’57 flu – while she was pregnant with me! She’d already hemorrhaged once before that happened. Air Force docs put her on bed rest (at home) the last half of her pregnancy (shortened because I was a one-month preemie), but still figured she was going to lose the baby. Then they thought I wasn’t going to survive the first weekend after I was born. Oh well. I can say, however, that I’ve never had a flu shot, and only caught one version of any of the real flus that have come around since then.

  24. bosshoss429 Avatar
    bosshoss429

    Emery;

    Why is it just Trump’s fault that states as large as New York City didn’t prepare for these types of events? I mean, hell, with all of the propaganda ministers and Democrat apparatchiks like you, calling Trump a liar, predicting doom, gloom, and spreading fear and panic, it’s just mind boggling that the primarily Democrat run states are suddenly begging the feds to bail them out. And, we know how opposed you are to any bailouts. Then, as soon as AG Barr announces that people hoarding medical supplies will be in for a world of hurt, the SEIU goons “discover” a treasure trove of masks in a warehouse, due to their” tireless efforts to reach out to businesses”. Amazing stroke of good fortune, eh? Keep up the hypocrisy bozo.

  25. Emery Avatar
    Emery

    Over 3,100 people have died in the US from the coronavirus. Only 158 in South Korea, even though we both got our first positive case on the same day.

    “But Emery — look at the map of the US next to map of Korea” ~ BH429

    South Korea has 1/6 the population of the US. But our number is still growing. 1/6 of 3000 is 500 which means our numbers are still higher than theirs.

  26. bikebubba Avatar
    bikebubba

    jdm, my take on the choir–I missed that you’d mentioned it, apologies–is that it, vs. the cruise ships (remember “King David’s Cruise Line” blog?), simply had people with their guard down in a much worse way, and interacting in a way that is impossible on a cruise ship. Thank God the examples of this appear to be few so far.

    And yes, I guess one could quibble over how many years of life are lost, who would have died soon anyways….but you’ve got to manage the optics, too. So my take is that I’m going to act as if it’s the 1957 or Spanish unless we start seeing evidence that it’s not. Proverbs 27:12 and all.

  27. Mammuthus Primigenius Avatar
    Mammuthus Primigenius

    Only if you include New York.
    Which means you are missing an important part of the equation, which is that the US is a much larger country than South Korea. What works in South Korea will not work in the US overall.

  28. Joe Doakes Avatar
    Joe Doakes

    3,000 dead in New York City does not justify martial law in New York Mills.

  29. Mammuthus Primigenius Avatar
    Mammuthus Primigenius

    New York & has more cases than the rest of the states by an order of magnitude. This is remarkable. It is difficult to imagine a national policy that would work for NY and where I live (Hawaii). Hawaii has 135 cases, no deaths. Not even any hospitalizations on my island. Honolulu is about halfway between New York and Sydney, Australia.

  30. Joe Doakes Avatar
    Joe Doakes

    jdm – I think the taxicab analogy is apt. Both are government licensing schemes intended to limit competition.

    In the taxicab world, when there aren’t enough cabs, consumers use Lyft and Uber. In the hospital world, when there aren’t enough beds, consumers are confined to quarters so we don’t use up the few remaining beds.

    Governor Walz cites two justifications for The Great Minnesota Go To Your Room. First, millions of people will get the virus so severely they’ll need ICU beds; and second, we don’t have enough medallioned ICU beds.

    Nobody knows if the first justification is correct, but the solution to the second problem is to ignore the medallion law. Any bed can be an COVID bed, if you add a ventilator and somebody to monitor it. Every hotel and motel can be instant hospitals. I can’t find a figure online, but how many beds do you think that adds? 1,000? More?

    But we don’t have enough ventilators or trained personnel!

    Not yet, because machines and people are also required to go through a licensing and certification process, administered by bureaucrats with checklists and no skin in the game. Whether you live or die, they get paid the same. Their pension is secure.

    Lockdown is NOT the only solution to a red tape problem. What will it take to get Governor Walz to consider other solutions?

  31. bosshoss429 Avatar
    bosshoss429

    You know, Emery, a few years ago, Glenn Beck wrote a book called “Arguing with Idiots”. I swear that I have to refer to that book every time you post one of your lying screeds.

  32. Emery Avatar
    Emery

    JD commented: “And Emery, Minnesota Democrats’ decision to limit hospital beds goes back decades. Your attempted snark fails.”

    You can trace that back to a law that passed in 1974. This was about a decade after Medicare and Medicaid had come into existence, and all of a sudden, the government had become a huge payer of health care bills.

    The theory there being that however many beds you have, hospitals, which are businesses, they will find a way to fill them. So policymakers identified that having all these hospital beds was probably driving up costs, because hospitals had strong financial incentives to keep those hospital beds full. So in 1974, they passed this law that
    essentially required hospitals to apply for permission to build beds. So if I wanted to build a 500-bed hospital in New York, I’d have to go to the state and say, here’s why I think there aren’t enough hospitals in this area and why I should be allowed to build this new hospital.

    It really limited the number of beds. We’ve shed about a half million hospital bed since 1974. I think that’s pretty telling.

    There’s other things driving this. Certain procedures that used to require a few nights in a hospital have gotten faster and safer, so you don’t really need that. Medicines have gotten better, so certain things that used to be treated with surgery, you can treat with prescriptions. But at the core of this, we really have made this decision that we want to limit the number of hospital beds in the United States. And that might help hold down costs in a normal time, but then we get to a pandemic and all of a sudden it becomes a real constraint on our ability to treat a wave of sick patients.

    Hospitals operate at about 95% capacity during flu season. That means there isn’t a lot of slack in the system to surge up when you have a lot of patients who need care at once. Because hospitals are already generally so full, they just don’t have these empty beds sitting around for patients to use.

  33. Hoping to recover 25% losses any day now Swiftee Avatar
    Hoping to recover 25% losses any day now Swiftee

    “Hospitals operate at about 95% capacity during flu season.”

    Don’t know who you plagiarized that from dimwit, and I don’t really care, but you should get ypur money back.

  34. Joe Doakes Avatar
    Joe Doakes

    The analysis of WHY hospital beds are rationed, provided by Emery at 10:11, matches mine. The state didn’t want too many beds, because then people would use them, but poor people couldn’t pay for them, so the state would have to pay for the use of those hospital beds and that would rob the state of money for fun things. Agreed.

    What he missed is the word “medallioned.” There are X number of taxicab medallions issued by the city, so that’s all the official, licensed, taxicabs allowed to operate in the city. At one time, New York City taxicab medallion holders were demanding $100,000 for them, and getting it, because consumers had no other option. That changed with ride-share services like Lyft and Uber. Suddenly, consumers had lots of transportation choices.

    Minnesota only has X number of hospital bed medallions issued by the state, so that’s all the official, licensed, hospital beds allowed to accept patients in the sate. That’s the number Governor Walz cites as the hard limit on hospital beds that we must not allow the virus to overwhelm; hence, house arrest.

    But what if we didn’t accept the hard limit? What if we waived the medallion process for the pandemic? What if we turned every empty college dormitory and every motel into temporary field hospitals? Plenty of beds. Virtually no upper limit. Now, is house arrest the only option? Or could we consider less stringent measures since even with thousands of cases, we’d still have plenty of beds available? Not medallioned beds, true; but Grandma in the parking lot doesn’t care about that, does she?

    The only people who DO care are bureaucrats with pursed lips scowling at checklists and saying, “Well, that simply won’t do. That’s just TOTALLY UNACCEPTABLE.”

    To hell with them.

  35. bikebubba Avatar
    bikebubba

    The argument against using college dorms for COVID-19 is that most of them are heated using a central boiler, and reworking them to have isolated HVAC is going to be difficult. Not that it’s impossible, but that’s one challenge.

    Another option is that a lot of towns have abandoned schools they could use. Not just the ones they currently have and aren’t using due to the epidemic, but many school boards have decided that they’re not going to sell their old, unused school buildings, and just leave them to rot.

  36. Joe Doakes Avatar
    Joe Doakes

    Bikebubba, I’m not sure if isolated HVAC is required to treat this virus. Everything I’ve read says it’s not airborne, it’s transmitted by droplets, which is why you have to wipe things down and wash your hands. If that were so, dormitories could still be used.

    If isolated HVAC is required, then forget dorms but consider motels. Separate rooms, separate window air conditioners, lots of them along the old highways, the ones that linger after everybody else moved to the interstate. Google Bel-Aire Motor Inn in Albert Lea, Minnesota, and look at the photos. That’s the kind of place I’m talking about. Convert that to the temporary COVID field hospital – boom, just added 15 ICU treatment beds to a town that presently does not have an Intensive Care Unit – it was moved 30 miles away to Austin last year, due to budget cuts.

    I don’t pretend to be a medical expert. If there’s a medical reason why this idea won’t work, I’m willing to be educated. But if the only reason is bureaucratic rules designed for peacetime, then I’m impatient with pettifogging politicians pretending the hard ceiling on medallioned beds justifies state-wide house arrest.

    86 the regulations, liberate the state.

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