UK Voters Smarter Than Government. Millions were cutting virus spread BEFORE lockdown.

Your government likes to get out in front of a parade, to preen with power and trumpet virtue. Data from Great Britain show voters were smarter than the government.  Without fines or force, they had cut 80% of their travel on shared public transport and 25% of their private car travel.  This makes sense, more sense than blanket rules.  Telling everyone to stay home does not.  The free market of ideas works.

This is not aberrant, not a data meteor from outer space.  Did you know that literacy was rising rapidly BEFORE it became government policy.  I used to think we owed it to our government.

From: "The Cultural Origins of Popular Literacy in England"

"In the absence of externally provided schools, indigenously supported settings were responsible for the creation and transmission of popular literacy.  Thus, over several centuries, the literate popular culture of England largely made itself."  

And this detail from the same passage:

Pottinger of the US DNI addresses Chinese citizens directly in Mandarin. One of the most remarkable speeches I have ever heard.

Matt Pottinger (deputy head of the DNI) delivered this remarkable speech in Mandarin a couple days ago, building on his study of Chinese history before the Communists took over.  He calls for Chinese populism to recognize their home grown yearning for government for the people, not just for the elites.  He starts with the May 4th Movement of 1919 and ends today.   Although I'm linking to the English transcript, you are going to want to listen to the video with english subtitles to understand how powerful it is.

The leaders of the May 4th Movement gave decisive input to the UN's Declaration of Universal Human Rights.  They also led the change from an elite Chinese that no common people spoke to one that the governed actually spoke and understood.     Pottinger updates the story with Dr Li who was suppressed for reporting the Wuhan virus and with Hong Kong peaceful demonstrations.

"One final thought, from a U.S. perspective: Hu Shih famously preferred solving concrete problems to wallowing in abstract political theory. But let me break his rule against discussing “isms” to ask whether China today would benefit from a little less nationalism and a little more populism. Democratic populism is less about left versus right than top versus bottom. It’s about reminding a few that they need the consent of many to govern. When a privileged few grow too remote and self-interested, populism is what pulls them back or pitches them overboard. It has a kinetic energy. It fueled the Brexit vote of 2015 and President Trump’s election in 2016. It moved the founder of your university to pen a declaration of independence in 1776. It is an admonition to the powerful of this country to remember who they’re supposed to work for: America first.
Wasn’t a similar idea beating in the heart of the May Fourth Movement, too? Weren’t Hu Shih’s language reforms a declaration of war against aristocratic pretension? Weren’t they a broadside against the Confucian power structure that enforced conformity over free thought? Wasn’t the goal to achieve citizen-centric government in China, and not replace one regime-centric model with another one? The world will wait for the Chinese people to furnish the answers."

Lead taken from a reference in "American Thought Leaders" Jan Jekeliek interview of  Steve Yates

Social Distancing stopped being federal policy April 30

Did you know that the President's order mandating social distancing of six feet has expired, as of April 30th.   He did not renew the order.   The next moves are up to governors as is fitting in a federation.

As I recall, the distancing stuff started in my neighborhood before rules were declared. It arrived at first by bits and pieces, a shopkeeper here, a citizen there.   Then politicians found cover at the front of the safest parade.  Once there, the sceptre is raised, the fasces shaken but this isn't leadership.   "Safe" is soon going to be on the other side of the ledger.  Queue up hypocrisy but welcome it too.  "Hypocrisy is the tribute vice pays to virtue".

UK And US Trade Talks Are Not A Side Show

Fast tracked negotiations for a free trade agreement were announced today, May 5.

The economies are linked in a big way already.  From the announcement:

The United States and the United Kingdom are the first and fifth largest economies in the world, respectively. Total two-way trade between the two countries is already worth about $269 billion a year. Each country is the other’s largest source of foreign direct investment, with about $1 trillion invested in each other’s economies. Every day, around one million Americans go to work for UK firms, while around one million Britons go to work for American firms.

Where are the grownups?

Such a shock it was to drop off my son at UVic.  I looked around and asked out loud, "What are all these kids doing walking around without their mothers?"  More sobering is to realize the kids I went to school with are running the country now. 

Kurt Vonnegut was there first.
It's bad and it's good.
Matters you saw neglected in your youth are now
public policy.  "Environment" and   "Recycling".
It's also good that big change can come in one generation.
This can sustain your hopes for the future.

N95 masks do less than you think. Viral load matters.

Viral load matters.   Social-distancing and masks aren't absolutes, for crying out loud.  They cut back the number of copies you receive of the COVID-19 bat flu virus.   After four months, here finally is something that recognizes degrees of threat instead of absolutes.  Astonishingly, the authour had to piece together the evidence from older sources and common sense instead of from shiny new research.  The topic has been ignored in the press and not touted by experts with mikes.  We need better data.

Initial viral load seems likely to have a large impact on severity of Covid-19 infection. If we believe this, we should take this seriously, and evaluate both general policy and personal behavior differently in light of this information. We should also do our best to confirm or deny this hypothesis as soon as possible.

The failure to collect more and better information about Covid-19 has been atrocious, shameful, expensive and deadly.

What can those masks do?  Less than you imagine.  The bat virus is about 125 billionths of a meter across.  The highest-rated hospital-grade N95 masks stop 95% of  the particles that are 300 billionths of an inch across.  And only if properly fitted.  In other words, you can expect about one in twenty to get through.  Those virus copies mostly aren't floating around like little no-seeums on their own but are in much larger water droplets breathed, sneezed and coughed, about 3000 droplets per cough.   A realistic goal of a mask is to stop fine spray getting up your nose. to reduce incoming viral load.  And to protect others from the same, but then you shouldn't be that close to them in the first place.       If the virus you fear is in your neighbourhood, you'll probably pick up some copies.  That's with or without social distancing and with or without a mask.  But you can reduce the viral load.

Light load of wind (virus)

More from the article:

Mostly we’re not collecting any data at all that isn’t massively biased.
The more I think about the Covid-19 situation, the more I think the highest leverage thing most people reading this can do is to find ways to get our hands on better data.

Heavy load of wind (virus)

Antarctica Ice Changes: 16 years of satellite mapping show it's complicated

Most of Antarctica has had slight gains in ice over the last 16 years but a small area in the west by the Amundsen sea has had major ice loss, over fifteen feet in some places.   Why there?  Will this detail be reported in the popular press?    Watts Up With That reprints material from the long term NASA ICESat-2 mission map.    First indications are that floating ice that was buttressing the adjacent glaciers has been breaking off, allowing accelerated motion towards the sea.

Economic Lockdown is a Giant Boo Boo. Who can save face now?

Worldwide Lockdown beats previous follies like Tulipmania and the South Sea Bubble.  What's missing is data in our inbox to evaluate the lockdown costs, a lockdown which has been called "The Greatest Mistake In History".   A quote for that:

Michael Levitt, professor of structural biology at Stanford Medical School and winner of the 2013 Nobel Prize in chemistry, recently stated, “There is no doubt in my mind that when we come to look back on this, the damage done by lockdown will exceed any saving of lives by a huge factor.”

One side of the balance sheet is trumpeted while the costs in economic ruin are currently "de-platformed".  It's like the joke about a SWAT team chasing terrorists who run into a department store.  The team locks into place around the shop next door, "because it has fewer exits".   The workplace and its diseases are more complex than the lockdown narrative.  People with a badge of office and a received narrative have launched a simplistic experiment in economic destruction.  They don't know what will happen.  They hope it will make them look good and lives will be saved.   Looking good trumps saving lives.

The single biggest crunch of the lockdown is social distancing, with two meters (an arbitrary number) for some and indoors only for others.  This is a sensible thing to consider but  not for blanket enforcement.  It has never been tested like this.  It's an experiment.  The latest information points to an unsuccessful experiment.  An input for that statement:

Julie Kelly at American Greatness: "The history of science, sadly, is littered with bad experiments gone horribly wrong. The Great Social Distancing Experiment of 2020, when it is over, will very likely be toward the top of that list."

She points out that a sensible experiment in "bending the curve" to avoid overloading ICU resources  isn't currently needed but the lockdown fever burns on.   The correlation is missing between how much many lives were manacled with lockdowns and how many people were ill.

The lockdown seems to be settling into a political question, not a health one.  Politicians see no easy way to back down with glory. 

You'd be crazy to base policy on the IHME model

The IHME predictions of virus death have been flopping up and down as modellers fiddle with knobs.  Hinderaker at Powerlineblog fills in some blanks.   Good public policy cannot be based on the IHME model.

The numbers change because the model changed, not because the state changed.
A core input is Social distancing but the math isn't explained and effectiveness isn't measured.
The model doesn't try to evaluate partial opening-up of states.

As Hinderaker points out, week by week the predictions of IHME change bizarrely.

Death predictions made week of...  April 11       April 15     April 22
                  South Dakota                 356              181             093
                  North Dakota                 369              032             356
                  Iowa                               743              618             365
                  Minnesota                      442              656             360

It's almost like a random walk. What madness has seized us that elevates modellers and governors  to the place they are today, telling us how to do our jobs and how to run our home life?  Somehow the "flatten the curve so hospital ICU's won't be overwhelmed" has morphed into:  "Disobey me and you'll be sorry."

COVID-19 death counts riddled with BS

New York death stats for one month are up about 25% over last  year.  But deaths for all other reasons are down 60%.  I call bullshit.  The counts are wrong and the reasons various.

Financial incentive. (More money, sometimes a lot more money)
No testing done.   (Early days, lots of places didn't have the tests or didn't bother.)
Ventilators have been killing people.
Decision to just call them all COVID-19  (NY funeral directors and ProjectVeritas)
They were dying of other stuff and also had flu symptoms
One patient with three tests was counted as three patients.
Hospitals don't agree how to treat COVID-19. Some ways let more people die.

There are troubling sides to the sickness and the bad is very bad.
But our stats are riddled with misinformation.

Chart source CDC stats, reported here.

Extravagant Nature - Cherry blossom sex

Nature is profligate (Annie Dillard). Cherry petals  here lie in heaps.  Not just a few thrifty expenditures to get DNA-rich pollen delivered but a confetti-laden celebration, tossed in beauty and forgotten.





And if you think those flowers beautiful, that's because you are part of the message.  They are meant to attract you, me and the bugs for sexual purposes.

Three Top Democrats Show Signs of Brain Damage. Party needs a refresh.

Why do top Democrats show signs of brain damage?  Hilary Clinton, Joe Biden and Nancy Pelosi.  Check the video clips if you have doubts.   This didn't use to be a problem.   If the Democrat operation was my company, I would worry about renewal.  People past their best-before date aren't getting moved on.  The top posts must not be for merit.

20 second clip of Joe Biden word salad here April 2020

here.

A

Excess Covid-19 deaths vary from zero to scary, depending on country: See chart detail

If you have a one-size-fits-all explanation for bat flu mortality, fix that by viewing the country chart below:  (Sourced here).

When are you grown up? The short answer is Never.

Auntie Nan, so the story goes, asked on her sixty fifth birthday: "Am I grown up yet?"  It's a good question.  Forty years later, I have the answer.
"No."
The fuel ages.
The fire does not.

The answer has competition.
- "Yes, if you have obtained the age of majority."
- "You are only as old as you feel".
- "Yes, but you will be raised from the dust of death to judgement at a later date".
- "It's Groundhog Day until you learn something useful.  That's karma"

The evidence of aging is plentiful.   As for growing, babies stop just over five feet tall and develop wrinkles with liver spots.  As for being an adult, the root meaning is "ripe" and is answered as soon as you can reproduce successfully.

My viewpoint:
The fuel ages.
The fire does not.
It's a process.

In English, the fuel is named  "I".
We don't know the nature of fire.
It's okay not to know the answers
but a good question helps.

Chinese companies acting like there is no future for them

Credit exists when people trust long term.  No future, no investment.  Planting orchards and making 30 year loans only happen when people believe in the future.   What does it mean when Chinese companies send crap PPE and masks?   It means the future has turned dead to them.

The clip below is from France (Daily Mail) as nurses try on PPE from China recently.

Dumb guy in kitchen comes up with tips

FILL THE SINK WITH HOT SOAPY WATER WHEN YOU START THE MEAL, NOT AFTER.

Hot soapy is ready

How come nobody else seems to do this?  My fingers stay clean and I get to re-use my favourite knife, spatula,and  bowl at will.  ALSO  find a way to hang the hand towel on the outside of the sink cupboard,  When you need it, you need it.

POTATO IN THE MICROWAVE
In several minutes you can be frying thin chips of potato for breakfast. Slice up a raw potato into a bowl, add a drop of oil to reduce sticking and hit high for about 3 minutes. Transfer to the greasy pan.
Or, make mashed potatoes in moments.   Same routine.  Check with fork to see if the spuds are soft enough to take out of the microwave.

CORN ON THE COB A LA MICROWAVE.
How come almost nobody does this?   Leave the husk on and give one cob about two minutes. It's sweeter and crisper than boiled corn and way faster.  Also, it's cute and country to serve wrapped in green tassels and it stays very hot for about ten minutes.  When you peel the husk back, you get a handle to hold onto.  If it's not quite done, the kernels at that end will look a little white. If so, with the husk still on, give it a bit more time.

Peel when you eat

HAVE GARBAGE RIGHT BY THE SINK NOT UNDER THE SINK
This should be a no-brainer.  Especially for a composting pail where you have to put wet greasy things.  An even better solution is restaurant-style to have a hole in the counter (with an easy to clean rim) and a bag underneath.  One guy did a study and found the garbage was the most frequented spot in his kitchen so he made it central.  Just find something that looks nice.

BOWLS AND SPICES AND KNIVES  YOU USE ALL THE TIME: MOVE  THEM CLOSE.
Another no-brainer.  Never mind where they were kept before.   Get them on the wall above the sink, hanging from cupboards, in canisters by the stove.

CROCKERY YOU USE A LOT SHOULD BE CLOSE AND  ALL THE REST SHOULD NOT
That means you split the plates and cups and glasses into a few you use at every meal.  Put them on the handiest shelf.   Move all the rest further away.   Two cereal bowls on the bottom shelf, 10 up above. And so on.

USE A "SPROINGER".  PROPERLY CALLED A "SPRING WHISK".
If the spring is right, you can mash potatoes,  mix up the flour-sugar-salt stuff for baking, whisk eggs, get the jello dissolved.  I bought a couple new ones and threw them away because the spring was too soft except for eggs.  This old timer works great.

PUT DIFFERENT STUFF IN THE SAME PAN.
I watched a retired army cook do a steak and vegetable meal for three on a single 8 inch fry pan.  He had the meat hanging over the sides and kept it in rotation.   When I've got the main thing fried or whatever, I keep it to one side and add the frozen peas in a corner, and the leftover mashed in another and let it sit on low for a few minutes, often with the heat off, usually with a lid.   I wash fewer pans and it's all warm and ready to serve at the same time.

FREE SALAD VINAIGRETTE
Those sweet and crispy Yum Yum pickles have juice that is wasted.  It's a great vinaigrette.

TRY TEAK TONGS.
They don't scratch the Teflon pans.  Flip tomato slices, bacon, fried chicken, scallops and stir almost anything in place of a wooden spoon. Pinch a noodle to taste for doneness. Fetch pickle slices from a jar.  Rinse and re-use until supper is ready.

ONE NEW RECIPE FOR THE WORLD:  MEATLESS BEEF STROGANOF.
You don't need the steak.  Just use your favourite recipe with the sour cream, mushrooms, onions, with broth, thickener, maybe Worcestershire sauce and dry mustard.   Same good taste.  When you bring the leftovers from the fridge, you can add steak later and it will taste fresh-made each time.  You won't be flustered having vegetarian guests.

GRIND THE GRUNGE IN THE SINK STRAINER.
A bristly scrub brush will break down the grungy bits in the sink strainer.  You don't have to grab the stuff with your pinkies and then rinse them and dry them.

MY QUALIFICATIONS AS A DUMB GUY IN THE KITCHEN ARE SECURE.
Although I've been cooking for ten years, I usually skip the apron, sometimes use the dishcloth to wipe up a spill on the floor, lick things I shouldn't, and have to be told when to change my shirt.

There may well be Democrats in Heaven

Some burns, some does not

Bat flu or COVID-19 is wildfire, consuming the results of decades of decisions to suppress risk and renewal, and the flames are uniquely tailored to our culture. The many survivors will populate the world going forward and their values will prevail. They survive because they survived, not because they were better or worse people. So of course, there will be some Democrats in heaven.

When wildfire races across the land, many creatures die in groups large and small. Others burrow underground. Some fly over top. The fast and strong do an end run. Clever mammals may build an asbestos suit or trap some breathable air below the surface of a lake. Heck, a few will watch safely from orbit. Those are the active players. Other survivors will just happen to be there: There will be lots of fish doing regular fin and gill stuff in deep water and they never notice a thing. Others will happen to be in a patch missed because the wind shifted for ten minutes. Virtue does not mean you will survive. Surviving means you survived.

We are experiencing a stress test of our culture.

Rapid change is upon us. Some of the dead-fall being burnt up is called over-regulation and some of the over-fliers are innovators. Big government is doing fine.

Ratchet effect: When the bat virus crisis is gone, government will keep its new fatness.

"The growth of government that attends national emergencies is not surrendered fully when the crisis ends. Instead, a ratchet effect operates whereby much of the crisis-borne growth of government becomes institutionalized in agencies and practices and, more important, in the dominant ideology of political elites and the general public."

This is quoted from Reason.com

Horgan and Boudreaux.

Death by expert. Do you want a virologist to tell you how to do your job and run your home?

Experts can kill you.   The write-up for Delaney's "A Plague of Experts" spells it out: 

"Danger derives ....from the ability of the expert to marshal the top-down legal authority and resources of government in the practice of their specialty."

We are living through such a hell with CORVID19.   The virus is invisible and there's nothing you or I can hear, smell, taste or measure to prove it's there or not and if we're avoiding it or not.  This is the perfect setup for global governance types to advance their top-down agendas to give voice to superior types of people like themselves.   "Trust me" is the mantra  (and I respect people who have studied and learned well their field).  "Trust me" is also the doorway that government loves best.  It didn't quite work for climate change but it is going like a house on fire for bat virus shutdown fear. You heard of the camel's nose under the tent.    With "Trust me", the camel gets to walk right in the front flap behind the experts who got you to open up. 

TRUST BUT VERIFY.
Puhleeze.

For an entertaining rant, see below for Sarah Hoyt's "A plague of credentialed experts" or from a few weeks earlier, "A plague of madness".

"The plague that has laid this country low, destroyed our economy and brought us to a place that no external enemy could have brought: this plague of experts. Or perhaps I should say “experts” since most of them have behind them only a long string of failed prognostications, followed by promotion within the “civil servant” echelons.  Yes, I am talking about Doctors Birx and Fauci. I’m already seeing people pointing fingers at the president and complaining that he’s relied too much on these “experts.”

What a way to go: Lab pups smother toddler

Too cute not to post.  As one Twitterer put it:  "When my time comes, this is how I want to go".
Golden labs bury this toddler in love and curiosity.