Pondering

Get ready for another lockdown. The warning signs are everywhere.

Oh, another round of hypocrisy from our esteemed Governor here in California.

Warning signs

About a week ago, the state of California announced when school resumes this summer, all school children will be required to wear a mask during the entire school day. Vaccination status is irrelevant. Past infection is irrelevant. The exquisitely low infection rate among children is irrelevant. The infinitesimal fatality rate it is irrelevant.

Over the past weekend the state of California and federal Department of Veteran Affairs announced they will require all employees to prove they are vaccinated or get tested weekly and show a negative result.

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More of the recent reports describing the damage from the lockdowns:

• Alameda County rolled back death count from coronavirus, having overcounted by one third.
• Looks like coronavirus was loose in the U.S. before the first cases were reported.
• Suicide attempts by teens increased during the lockdowns.
• Economic shutdown hurt poor people worse than rich people.

6/6/21 – The Last Refuge – If Sunlight Continues, Expect More of This – Alameda County, California, Significantly Lowers Covid Death Toll After Review of Records – There are plenty of reports around, I will not link to them, of public health people counting people who died “with” Covid as if they had died “from” Covid. There is a massive difference.

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There is a constant stream of reports covering new studies and analyses which indicate steps taken during the pandemic had minimal or perhaps no impact on halting the spread of the disease but caused severe side effects. I cannot possibly summarize more than a small portion of the articles I am reading. Here are a few:

• Plexiglas shields might increase infections.
• Kid’s facemasks had lots of horrible bugs that could cause all sorts of sickness (but none of them were Covid).
• Study can’t find any benefit from shelter-in-place orders to reduce the spread of infections.

6/16/21 – Behind the Black – New studies: Plexiglas does nothing; masks carry diseases; lockdowns destroyed 40% of all small businesses – Article has discussion of the following three reports pointing to problems from the shutdown. Referenced articles include:

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There is a hint, a whiff in the air, of a strong pushback emerging against the destruction caused by politicians and public health officials during the pandemic.

Everyone knows about the recall effort underway attempting to remove California Governor Gavin Newsom from office.

Did you know there are lots of other recall efforts in the state?

Did you know over a dozen state legislatures are moving towards placing limits and restraints on the currently unlimited and unrestrained power of public health agencies to destroy at will?

Perhaps, just perhaps, we may see some accountability for the widespread destruction caused by a host of elected officials and unelected bureaucrats responsible for public health care issues.

Two articles point toward the emerging pushback:

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We are finally getting back to normal next Tuesday. Mostly. Sort of. Certain mask requirements will stay in place on June 15, 2021. Importantly, the emergency is not over and all of the emergency orders issued in the last year stay in place for another few months.

It also means public health officials and the governor can reinstate any restrictions they want or impose new restrictions they want and can do so anytime they want.

The good news portion of changes on June 15 is the four level color-coded system is gone. No more of the purple, red, orange, and yellow grading based on arbitrary numerical targets (which as we have seen the state can unilaterally shift as desired). The stay-at-home orders will officially end.

Best part of the good news is the capacity limits and physical distancing requirements are gone.

Now on to the remaining and new restrictions.

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Even though all the statistics in all the locations I’m tracking are showing a decline from the peak counts in the range of 95% to 98%, we urgently need to pay attention to constantly emerging reports of the destruction caused by government edicts.

This two-day series is mentioning only a minor fraction of the articles in recent weeks describing the devastation.

Today’s post will discuss:

• Severe damage has been caused, only in part yet still a big part, by the inability to comprehend there are tradeoffs in every decision that has ever been made. This applies even more so to the pandemic.  As another wag pointed out: there are no solutions, only tradeoffs.
• Yet another research analysis shows lockdowns had minimal impact on death rates yet caused extensive unemployment.

Saturday’s post described:

• Destructive and death-causing policies continued even after evidence emerged that policies were causing harm. Liberty has been shredded.  Financial damage is widespread.
• Educational, psychological, and social damage to children has been severe. It will take a horribly long time for kids to recover.

Behold the emerging legacy of the public health sector and our so-called political leaders:

4/19/21 – Wall Street Journal – An American Epidemic of “Covid Mania” – Op-ed by an associate professor of medicine at UCLA uses the phrase “Covid mania” as a catch-all for the loss of any semblance of risk assessment, elevation of Covid fear above every other factor, damaging the reputation of scientists and public health officials, and stating as an absolute certainty what was a mere hypothesis.

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Now that the economic and social shutdown rationalized by the pandemic is slowly fading away, we need to stay focused on the damages caused by intentional policies.

I have been citing a lot of coverage from the Wall Street Journal, but I am seeing the same issues covered by multiple other news outlets and a host of commentators.  There is massively more coverage of the devastation caused by the shutdown than I could possibly take time to write about.

Here is merely a tiny sample of recent reports. Today’s post describes:

• Destructive and death-causing policies continued even after evidence emerged that policies were causing harm. Liberty has been shredded.  Financial damage is widespread.
• Educational, psychological, and social damage to children has been severe. It will take a horribly long time for kids to recover.

Monday’s post will discuss:

• Severe damage has been caused, only in part but a big part, by the inability to comprehend there are tradeoffs in every decision that has ever been made, especially in terms of addressing the pandemic.  As another wag, whom I will not cite, pointed out: there are no solutions, only tradeoffs.
• Yet another research analysis shows lockdowns had minimal impact on death rates yet caused extensive unemployment.

3/11/21 – Wall Street Journal – Lessons of the Long Covid Year / Lockdowns made the pandemic suffering far worse than necessary –

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What does it look like from the customer side when businesses cannot find enough employees? My wife and I found out a few days ago.

After relaxing on Memorial Day, pondering the ultimate sacrifice by so many to provide the freedoms we enjoy, and exercising those freedoms, we decided to go out to eat. We went to Victoria Gardens, a large shopping center near our home.

Since the tradition for the day is cooking cheeseburgers on the grill but we don’t have a grill, we picked a ‘50s style café where we could get a cheeseburger and sweet potato fries. Yum!

Normally they would be open until 10 or 11 o’clock. Walking up to the restaurant we saw a paper sign taped to the door announcing they were only open until 8 PM.

Odd.

The door was locked. There were a few staff inside who appeared to be going through their end-of-day cleanup routine.

It was a few minutes after 6 p.m.

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Well, $2,150,000 to be precise.

The state negotiated a settlement to reimburse legal fees of $1,600,000 for religious discrimination efforts against South Bay United Pentecostal Church and $550,000 for religious discrimination efforts against Father Trevor Burfitt.

Both settlements also come with a permanent injunction forbidding the state from imposing religiously discriminatory rules on any houses of worship anywhere in the state anytime in the future.

If you recall, South Bay Pentecostal had to go to the United States Supreme Court three times, three times, before the state finally realized they were not allowed to engage in blatant, intentional, irreparable religious discrimination against people of faith.

Running total of legal fees

This is on top of a permanent injunction and $1,350,000 in legal fees to attorneys for Harvest Rock Church and Harvest International Ministry.

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Our freedom is under rapidly increasing assault by many politicians who think they are kings and queens appointed by divine right instead of having merely won a few more percentage points of the vote than their opponent in the last election.  In the last year public health officials at the federal, state, and county levels who lack self-awareness of how often they beclown themselves have joined in the efforts to shred our liberty.

As a result of these attacks, it is ever more important that on this Memorial Day we remember those who shed all their blood so that we may be free.

A ‘thank you’ from me is so trivial, yet that is all I have.

I will demonstrate my appreciation for freedom purchased by others by exercising freedom.

Yesterday I exercised my freedom of religion. Tomorrow I will exercise my economic freedom, also called pursuit of happiness, by running my business the way I choose.

I have posted variations of the following ideas several times before.  I will continue to make these points routinely.

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While touring the U.S.S. Midway Museum in San Diego early this month, I wore a “U.S. Air Force” ball cap with various stuff pinned to it, such as the rank I wore, a missile badge (“pocket rocket” for those who know), SAC logo, and a rectangular piece of metal that declares “Combat Crew.”

During the course of walking around, I got lots of glances and several comments of “thank you for your service.”

Also got some joshing comments from the retired Navy guys about them ‘allowing’ me on their ship. Since we were all on the same team back in the day, the kidding was pure fun.

I was on active duty for only four years and that was decades ago. I never got within 3,000 miles of hostile action. (Of course if the flag had gone up, I would have been radioactive dust at 20,000 feet altitude about 40 minutes later.)

As a result, I was uneasy for a long time when someone said “Thanks for your service.”

It took me a few years to get to get comfortable with those comments.

I now graciously and proudly accept those expressions of appreciation from my fellow Americans, but not because of what I did so long ago. 

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More research is emerging that suggests the answer is no, masks have not helped reduce spread of infection.

5/26/21 – Town hall – Masks Didn’t Slow Covid Spread: New Study – Study cited in the next paragraph calculates “mask mandates and use not associated with lower SARS-CoV-2 spread among US states.” In other words study finds there is no correlation between the level of mask use and infection rates. Their research does not support the idea that higher use of masks results in lower transmission rates.

5/18/21 – medRxiv – Mask mandate and use efficacy in state-level Covid-19 containment – Using proper statistical methodologies, study finds there is no difference in infection rates between states that mandated masks and states that did not require masks.

Infection rates are “comparable” for the states with early adoption of mas requirement and states with late adoption.

The research paper uses technical language, which is exactly what you would expect, so it is difficult to read. I will still quote the abstract, which says:

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Liberty Council, attorneys representing Harvest Rock Church and Harvest International Ministry, announced on 5/17/21 the permanent injunction against religious discrimination practiced by the State of California against places of worship:

CA Churches Permanently Quarantine Governor Newsom

Previous post discusses the permanent injunction. The above announcement provides more detail.

The wonderful news is summarized by Liberty Council:

“Under the settlement agreement, discriminatory restrictions on worship and religious gatherings may no longer be applied to churches and places of worship.”

For future reference, I will quote Liberty Council in their timeline of restrictions on religious worship. Their timeline, again quoting:

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People of faith gain another victory in California.

The U.S. District Court for the Central District of California has read the U.S. Constitution and a long string of Supreme Court rulings (any one of which should have long since been sufficiently clear to the State of California).

The court issued a permanent injunction against Gov. Newsom, and “all State officers, agents, employees, and all other persons in active concert or participation with him” prohibiting any of those individuals from engaging in ongoing religious discrimination against churches and other places of worship in the state of California.

I will guess that broad definition of who is covered by the permanent injunction would also include all county public health authorities.

The state’s behavior is so egregious that the court awarded $1,350,000 in legal fees to attorneys for Harvest Rock Church and Harvest International Ministry.

The harsh slap down of religious persecution includes permanent injunctions against, quoting the order:

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The bad news caused by the government imposed shut down of the economy keeps rolling in.

Merely a few recent articles:

• The “laptop class” did well, while the working class was delivering their stuff, taking on the risks of infection.
• Rents in New York City are in freefall.
• Record levels in discount off the posted tuition rate for private colleges, which is an indicator of collapsing demand and indicator of future financial distress.
• Millions are unemployed while companies can’t find enough workers.

5/20/21 – Glenn Reynolds at New York Post – The rich and powerful thrived as the rest of us suffered in the year of lockdowns – Fourteen months of the “two weeks to slow the spread” has shown that the rich and powerful did quite well while working class and poor folk suffered.

The laptop class was able to stay at home, fully employed with no loss of income. In fact, with no commuting costs and not eating out for lunch many in the laptop class were left better off.

They stayed home and the working class delivered their stuff.

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