Miscellaneous And Off Topic Subjects

[CGVT]

Crenshaw?

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[CGVT]

Dillon?

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[Hannibal]

Our government passes another stiimulus and the payments to families are about 20% of the $900 Billion price tag. Included in the “stimulus” is $10 MM for gender programs in Pakistan. Lindsey Graham was on Fox News enthusiastically defending it. You know it’s bad when both parties are patting themselves on the back for it.

The worst crisis of our lifetimes and they still can’t resist pissing away hundreds of billions of dollars on porky horseshit. And our nation’s leaders are proud of the work that they have done.

We’re approaching French Revolution levels of cluelessness, tone deafness, and irresponsibility here.

[Dr. Strangelove]

The wave of pardons has begun. George Papawhatsit no big surprise. Or the other guy connected to the Mueller investigation (No Rick Gates or Manafort though).

But then he pardons the two corrupt Congressmen who got taken down in 2018: Duncan Hunter and Chris Collins. One found guilty of insider trading, the other of using his campaign money like a personal slush fund, two of the swampiest crimes a Congressman can commit. But hey, they are Trump's personal friends, so of course they don't deserve a day in jail.

https://www.cnn.com/2020/12/22/polit...ons/index.html

[Dr. Strangelove]

[Cody_Russell]

Covid somehow hits Antarctica. Basically the plot of "The Thing", but COVID related and more rated "PG" instead of hard "R."

[Dr. Strangelove]

Our government passes another stiimulus and the payments to families are about 20% of the $900 Billion price tag. Included in the “stimulus” is $10 MM for gender programs in Pakistan. Lindsey Graham was on Fox News enthusiastically defending it. You know it’s bad when both parties are patting themselves on the back for it.

The worst crisis of our lifetimes and they still can’t resist pissing away hundreds of billions of dollars on porky horseshit. And our nation’s leaders are proud of the work that they have done.

We’re approaching French Revolution levels of cluelessness, tone deafness, and irresponsibility here.

We can all find a program we will probably hate in this thing but I did see it pointed out (and I wasn't clear about either) that the CR/omnibus spending bill and the covid relief bill all got rolled into one. Which was done with the administration's blessing to get everything passed in one vote.

Trump meanwhile just released a video saying he'll now veto the bill unless the $600 payment is raised to $2000/$4000 for a couple.

[froot loops]

Pork barrel projects are good in Congress. Too bad the bill wasn't in the 1.8 to 2.2 trillion dollar range that was being discussed in October, but that was probably a pipe dream. Trump ran a dismal reelection campaign and it would have been redeemed had he used his power of mean tweets to get a deal in the summer. I keep on hammering this point but it was there, the Democrats were pushing for a deal, the GOP may have gotten the trifecta.

I had a lot of French history courses in college and I can assure that congressional logrolling was not an issue for the monarchy or the various factions during the revolution. In fact had Louis XVI had the ability to make the money printer go Brrrr, he may have kept his head.

[Dr. Strangelove]

Incidentally, it's been known for a while that the stimulus was going to be for $600. Trump could have intervened at any time and demanded $2000. He didn't. This is theater performed solely for his own benefit.

In fact Brian Morgenstern, the deputy press secretary, was on Fox Business less than an hour before Trump's announcement and he was saying Trump would sign the legislation.

[Dr. Strangelove]

Pelosi is already saying $2000 sounds great. They can pass it before Christmas by unanimous consent, don't even need a vote. Your turn, Mitch!

[Jeff Buchanan]

On the positive side of COVID news:

Maybe all but a handful of states have downward trending new case numbers and rates but you have to look real hard to see or hear about that. I posted a couple of days ago my view that the biology of the virus plays a role in the rise, plateau and predictable decline of new case numbers. Viruses mutate. Some of the mutations are positive or improve the viruses survivability, some are neutral and some are negative. There have been upwards of 4000 mutations observed in SARS-CoV-2 since it was first identified by the Chinese over a year ago. Somewhere around 90% of them have been neutral or negative.

The NYT now has an ICU bed tracker that allows you to look at ICU bed availability by hospital and provides a state by state percentage of ICU beds occupied. Caveat on the accuracy and timeliness of reporting. Nonetheless, what it does is shoot down wild claims that hospitals are overwhelmed. I have no doubt medical staff are stressed and there's increased hospital census. That's life in the ER or ICU. Certainly, increasing case numbers produce the potential for higher admission rates but triage is improving to the point that fewer people who show up at the ER get admitted and those that do are both getting moved out faster or not progressing to ICU level care.

The dipshittery of the EU in halting all travel and transport between the continent and the UK has mostly ended. Of course, there's a mealy-mouthed explanation that elements of the closures and travel bans are still in place but the reality is that they aren't. That's because an actual risk v. cost assessment was undertaken ........ starving the UK was a likely outcome that would have outweighed lives saved or PH benefits attained. Duhhhhh.

There is still no hard evidence that the mutation in question actually confers increased transmissibility. The WHO has put out recommendations that it should be assumed and that countries finding this particular mutation conduct a risk assessment to determine steps to mitigate spread. If any single organization has been repeatedly wrong about assessing the extent, severity and risk of SARS-CoV-2 and recommending responses to the pandemic, it has been the WHO.

Either Trump or Biden will use the Defense Production Act of 1950 to boost production of Pfizer, Moderna and any follow-on vaccines to come very close to the 260 million doses that will cover most US citizens by mid-June at the latest.

[Dr. Strangelove]

Per Covid tracking there are only 7 states that have a rising number of cases right now. Everyone else is past-peak or has plateaued. Unfortunately, California, Texas, and Florida are 3 of the 7 states and they will drive up the national numbers for a while yet.

[Dr. Strangelove]

While Trump huffs and puffs, staffers at the White House got sent instructions on how to clean out their desks and return govt property. Some employees will start leaving Jan. 4

https://www.politico.com/news/2020/12/23/trump-administration-departure-instructions-450224

[iam416]

Per Covid tracking there are only 7 states that have a rising number of cases right now. Everyone else is past-peak or has plateaued. Unfortunately, California, Texas, and Florida are 3 of the 7 states and they will drive up the national numbers for a while yet.

Still waiting for hospitals to be "overrun" and people dying in waiting rooms.

[Jeff Buchanan]

Per Covid tracking there are only 7 states that have a rising number of cases right now. Everyone else is past-peak or has plateaued. Unfortunately, California, Texas, and Florida are 3 of the 7 states and they will drive up the national numbers for a while yet.

Some context and recent developments

In FL, it is correct that new case numbers did recently rise much like everywhere when the folks start congregating. But the trend in FL over the last 2 weeks is downward and R(t) values reflect that - still not below 1.0 (1.05 today) but headed that way. New infections are heavily concentrated in the under 40 age cohort (32%). Nothing new there. 65 and over 1/2 of that at (16%). That number has been ticking down. CFR among FL residents is under 1% (0.78). We know that as case numbers rise and deaths predictably decline with both improved care and vaccines, CFR is going to decline as a mater of the math.

As I've reported here, FL by Desantis' authority does not have a mask mandate. He has also prevented local county officials from restricting business activity or fining breakers of local rules - the ones that don't involve restrictions on business openings/hours, e.g., masks required for entry into and capacity limits on public, government, retail indoor spaces. Both Broward and Miami Dade counties announced on Monday that a curfew would be in effect from 1am to 5am starting December 24th and ending January 2nd. The order was challenged in Federal Court and the judge ruled it was illegal based on the Governor's Emergency orders.

Desantis takes a lot of heat for his pandemic response but he points to the data that does not demonstrate that there is a reduction in infections that occur in bars and restaurants when you reduce business hours. In fact, given restaurant and bar owner's efforts to keep patrons distanced and limit capacity and the impact of patrons behaving responsibly, South FL has not had untoward numbers of new cases attributable to these establishments. They aren't hotspots. This is despite media efforts to label them so and to make people think that's where new infections are coming from. The biggest problem in S. FL was and continues to be large private indoor congregate gatherings involving > 25 people where alcohol is being served. These include privately rented spaces and yard or block parties. Enforcement personnel have routinely been finding out about these, preemptively shutting them down and if there is assembly in groups > 30 indoors with alcohol being served, breaking them up.

Finally and as usual controversially, Desantis said yesterday that essential workers under 65 won't be put in front of the line of "the elderly" (typically > 65. It's not clear if that's what he means). This is contrary to recent Vaccine Panel Advisory Group recommendations that essential workers go to the front of the line regardless of age. When he was questioned about this in yesterdays press conference, he correctly and calmly responded, (paraphrase), the disease burden on essential workers under 65 is considerably less than the disease burden on over 65s. No further questions. My bet is a lot of this came from Teacher's Unions who have been scrambling to be designated essential workers in FL even though most of them are teaching remotely or in very carefully controlled classrooms if in-person learning is underway.

This kind of eminently correct thinking from Ron Desantis is what Ross Douthat wrote in the NYTs on Sunday that there is not enough of:

When we look back over the pandemic era, one of the signal failures will be the inability to acknowledge that many key decisions — from our vaccine policy to our lockdown strategy to our approach to businesses and schools — are fundamentally questions of statesmanship, involving not just the right principles or the right technical understanding of the problem but the prudential balancing of many competing goods.

Tips hat to Governor Desantis.