Monday, September 21, 2020

#COVID-19 Who's line is it, anyway? Episode 3 - How do you define essential?

I first posted this last September. Many closures happened since then.

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Who’s Line Is It Anyway? was/is a television show first hosted by Drew Carey. The show’s ensemble cast was gifted at improv humor.

Drew’s favorite line was something like:

“Welcome to the show where everything’s made up, and the points don’t matter.”

Several parts of the United States’ response to the current pandemic remind me of that line. Today I focus on one such situation:

Episode 3: Actually two lines…

During the course of the “pandemic,” two descriptors were used as excuses to wreak havoc on society as a whole.

Essential and non-essential

Essential businesses, jobs, and surgeries were allowed to continue with little, if any, disruption.
Non-essential iterations of those same categories were shut down, some of them for months.

There are problems with this abuse of power by our governmental agencies at all levels.

First Line

No surgery is essential. All surgery is elective.

Several types of surgery are performed so often that they seem essential. If any surgery was genuinely essential,

every human being

would require that surgery to live.

There is no such surgery.

Some surgeries listed as non-essential are probably considered that by most people.

Plastic surgery might sound like a non-essential procedure until you consider that many plastic surgeries are not for the perceived enhancement or refinement of a healthy body.
Amputees and burn victims usually require several to many surgeries to increase, improve, or allow physical activities.

Postponing cancer surgeries or other surgeries intended to improve the condition of patients led to dire consequences for many.

However, as unfeeling as this sounds, even if a person died as a result of postponed surgery, that doesn’t mean the surgery was essential.
Every human life ends in physical death.

When a government decides who deserves immediate surgery and who can wait, they far overstep their boundaries.

Second line

No job is non-essential. Every job is critically important to someone.

If a person’s job provides money for her/his family to live, how can that job be considered non-essential?
To that person, her/his job is essential to living as a productive member of society.

Imagine your job was declared non-essential and you were laid off or your business was shut down. (I apologize to those reading this who don't have to imagine that situation.)

What does that imply?

More importantly, what was shown to be the reality of such arbitrary designations. According to a YELP survey

60% of businesses that shut down in the US from the start of the pandemic as of August 31 won't be reopening, Yelp said Wednesday.
As of 31 August, 163,735 US businesses have shut down, a 23% rise since mid-July.
Yelp said the restaurant industry was most heavily affected with closures totaling 32,109 as of August 31.
Fortune magazine reported 100,000 small businesses shut down permanently by September 28, 2020.

Not a single one of those businesses considered itself non-essential...

BECAUSE THEY WEREN'T NON-ESSENTIAL,

AND NOW LIVES AND COMMUNITIES

ARE CHANGED FOREVER.

Sadly, “Welcome to the show where everything’s made up…” fits governmental ignorance and arrogance in their treatment of both this week’s lines perfectly.

Even sadder, the points did matter in these cases.

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Monday, September 14, 2020

#COVID-19 Who's line is it, anyway? Episode 2-Geography

Who’s Line Is It Anyway? was/is a television show first hosted by Drew Carey. The show’s ensemble cast were all gifted at improve humor.

Drew’s favorite line was something like:

“Welcome to the show where everything’s made up, and the points don’t matter.”

Several parts of the United States’ response to the current pandemic remind me of that line. Today I focus on one such situation:

Episode 2: Geography?

I use California as the source for many of my examples because I live in that realm of unreality.

Recently, California’s governor unveiled a new, color-coded four-tier program to track state-wide progress in the COVID-19 pandemic by new cases and positive tests for the virus.

Purple, or Tier 1, indicates that the virus is widespread in the county — with more than seven cases per 100,000 residents or more than 8% of test results reported positive over seven days. Red (Tier 2) indicates “substantial” spread of the virus, while orange (Tier 3) indicates “moderate” spread, and yellow (Tier 4) indicates “minimal” spread of the virus in the county.

If one of the two metrics is higher than the other, the state will assign the county to the color associated with the highest rating. For example, if a county reports six cases per 100,000, but a 9% positivity rate, it will be rated purple.

https://edsource.org/2020/quick-guide-what-californias-color-coded-county-tracking-system-means-for-schools/639357

I couldn’t find a rationale for the amounts of new cases or the percentage of positive tests that led to those values. I wasn’t surprised by that.

“Welcome to the show where everything’s made up…”

ASIDE

Riverside County is purple.

(County’s Status Map as of 9/8/20) - Map will update

Palm Springs is in Riverside County. The city’s demographics do not match the majority of the county, and their demographic has high numbers.
Imperial County is directly south of Riverside County. Imperial County has high numbers, too. People crossing the border from Mexico to find diagnosis and treatment for COVID-19 overwhelmed their medical facilities. Many patients were relocated from Imperial County to Riverside County.

These situations ensure that Riverside will be purple for a long time. But the vast majority of the county is nothing like the inclusive data reflects.

Back to Episode 2

On 9/9/2020 in a sub-headline, front page, above the fold, the San Diego Union-Tribune reported “County now on brink of case rate that could put it back to lowest tier. [sic]” The article is about the impact of 400 positive tests at the San Diego State University campus.

There are currently about 2000 students going to classes on the main campus that covers 288 acres.

San Diego County covers 2,897,000 acres. SDSU makes up approximately .0001 percent of San Diego County’s physical size.
San Diego’s current population is between 3-4 million people. SDSU’s current on-campus population makes up approximately .0006 percent of the total population.

Including isolated population anomalies without consideration of their isolation…

sounds a lot like an improv theater move to me.

Until next week…

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Tuesday, September 8, 2020

#COVID-19 Who's line is it, anyway? Episode -Moving Targets

It's bad enough that much of the media reporting and decisions by government leadership during the pandemic is lacking in or completely devoid of sound scientific evidence. I've posted blogs in the past about

Who’s Line Is It Anyway? was/is a television show first hosted by Drew Carey. The show’s ensemble cast were all gifted at improve humor.

Drew’s favorite line was something like:

“Welcome to the show where everything’s made up, and the points don’t matter.”

Several parts of the United States’ response to the current pandemic remind me of that line. Today I focus on one such situation:

Episode 1: Moving Targets

When government intervention began, the most important statistic was DEATHS. Every day, media of all types printed the most recent death count for their area, the United States, and the world.

California’s governor was among the avalanche of leaders who shifted their daily focus from deaths by COVID-19 total cases of COVID-19 as their justification for their tyrannical acts early in the pandemic. As far as I can tell, the “number of cases” is still the reported target.

That sounds a lot like an improv theater move to me.

Predictions for death tolls leading to state governors being handed the role of dictator were bleak. Minnesota’s governor justified his tyranny by insisting in early April that as many as 36,000 inhabitants would die from the virus.

As of 9/7/2020 the TOTAL death count from COVID-19 in Minnesota was 13,764 with only thirty-three added that day.

“Welcome to the show where everything’s made up…” surely fits here.

Until next week…

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Tuesday, September 1, 2020

#COVID-19 What scientific studies show about the use of masks

#COVID-19 What scientific studies show about the use of masks
It's bad enough that much of the media reporting and decisions by government leadership during the pandemic is lacking in or completely devoid of sound scientific evidence. I've posted blogs in the past about

Today's post is about the way decisions are being made makes it seem like the primary goal of those in charge is instilling fear into their constituency. For the most part, it's fear motivating those constituents to blindly follow anti-constitutional mandates, ineffective procedures, and psychologically damaging limitations.

This blog focuses on mandatory mask-wearing.

Viruses can't be seen. Even with an electron microscope, images are not like those in a light microscope, the kind you used in schools. In a light microscope, you seen an inverted image made by light passing through a specimen or reflecting off the specimen.

The electron microscopes most often seen, including the one at the top of this page, generate images by coating the specimen with a substance, or substances, then exciting those substances and capturing the image transmitted or scanned. For more detail on electron microscopes, follow this link.

One analogy for the ineffectiveness of masks is putting up a chain-link fence to keep mosquitos off your property. The size of the openings in the fence are much larger than the largest mosquito. You can see that, so you'd never use that fencing material to stop mosquitos.

I did the math to illustrate how many virus particles can pass through the typical home-made cotton-cloth masks. It's hard to show as a visual. My best shot follows this paragraph.

If you use 100-thread count cotton cloth, each "square" caused by consecutive up/down threads and consecutive side-to-side threads is large enough to allow at least (rounded numbers) 2,500 columns of 2,500 virus particles to pass through.

And that's at every place the up/down crosses the side/side threads.

So what?

The links below take you to articles about masks and their benefit(s), if any.

Article 1 reports what is known in research as "a meta-analysis" of over forty articles on this topic published in academic journals.
Article 2 is only slightly documented in a different manner and a good read, too.

I begin my conclusion with a quote from each.

Article 1
“If you use only proper studies – randomized, controlled trials with verified outcomes – they all unambiguously say that there is no statistical evidence of a benefit in terms of reducing risk of getting a viral respiratory disease. They all say it.”

Article 2
By making mask-wearing recommendations and policies for the general public, or by expressly condoning the practice, governments have both ignored the scientific evidence and done the opposite of following the precautionary principle.

Mask articles

I don't wear a mask unless required by current state/city mandates and only then until I'm outside the store.
My personal opinion is that wearing masks is scaring more little children than the number of people they can ever protect from getting COVID-19.

Final comments

If you are a mask wearer, accept people like me, even if their reason isn't based on scientific evidence.

Understand that some people can't use masks for a variety of reasons.

If you aren't a mask wearer, shaming someone who's wearing a mask is bullying.

Don't do it. Some people have a variety of reasons for wearing it.

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