Grim's Hall

Western Swing V

And for those interested, Gringo dropped an article on the history of the steel guitar.

Always With the Negative Waves

So there was a slight sword practice mishap tonight. Nothing serious, although I expect I’ll feel it tomorrow.

I told a female friend the story and she was like, "There's a scary pandemic that will probably sicken you if you go to the hospital, and you're fighting with swords on wet ground?"

And I'm like, "Yeah, after riding motorcycles all day."

Statistics

It'd be nice if we had better evidence, writes a statistician.

Some worry that the 68 deaths from Covid-19 in the U.S. as of March 16 will increase exponentially to 680, 6,800, 68,000, 680,000 … along with similar catastrophic patterns around the globe. Is that a realistic scenario, or bad science fiction? How can we tell at what point such a curve might stop?

The most valuable piece of information for answering those questions would be to know the current prevalence of the infection in a random sample of a population and to repeat this exercise at regular time intervals to estimate the incidence of new infections. Sadly, that’s information we don’t have....

One of the bottom lines is that we don’t know how long social distancing measures and lockdowns can be maintained without major consequences to the economy, society, and mental health. Unpredictable evolutions may ensue, including financial crisis, unrest, civil strife, war, and a meltdown of the social fabric. At a minimum, we need unbiased prevalence and incidence data for the evolving infectious load to guide decision-making.

In the most pessimistic scenario, which I do not espouse, if the new coronavirus infects 60% of the global population and 1% of the infected people die, that will translate into more than 40 million deaths globally, matching the 1918 influenza pandemic.

The vast majority of this hecatomb would be people with limited life expectancies. That’s in contrast to 1918, when many young people died.

One can only hope that, much like in 1918, life will continue. Conversely, with lockdowns of months, if not years, life largely stops, short-term and long-term consequences are entirely unknown, and billions, not just millions, of lives may be eventually at stake.

A Pretty Day in the Spring

Western Swing IV

Still more of the feel-good genre, with thanks to brother Gringo.

(This one I usually hear Willie Nelson do, but obviously he was following Wills' lead.)

(I do love a steel guitar.)

Did I mention bad regulation?

Nevada's governor has decided it's best if his state doesn't try chloroquine. No need to let doctors have any discretion. Three guesses which party.

Adapt and overcome

I heard the President say the other day that, although he's activated the Defense Production Act, he hasn't had to use it. So far no manufacturer has said "no." Ford steps up to help manufacture ventilators, using car parts.

Deregulation and safety

Bad regulations can kill people just as thoroughly as Wild-West unregulation.

The Last Most Hated President, and Merle Haggard

On the 17th of March, of whatever year that was. 1973 if the description is accurate.

Because It's An Emergency

You know, when you put it this way, it does seem like an odd approach....

Western Swing III

Tom's contribution. Gringo has a bunch more, which we'll get to tomorrow.

Pelosi caves

As Powerline observes:

One can only imagine how bad the Democrats’ polling must have been to cause such a hasty retreat. The Democrats had no one behind them except their most extremist supporters, like the New York Times.

He's not doing nothing

Good summary.

Western Swing II

Here's a series of videos from a Western Swing concert.

The Tide Pod President

The President said chloroquine was a promising enough treatment that, considering how widely used it had been for 70 years, was worth trying in hospitals by doctors. Its limited side effects have been studied for a long time, so we're not going to kill anyone with it, whereas it might help some people who otherwise look extremely likely to die.

Therefore if a couple in Arizona saw him on TV, noticed that their aquarium cleaner had a similar active ingredient, and ate from 10-20x the maximum recommended experimental dose (news articles have been talking about max 500mg, whereas they each swallowed a teaspoon, which is nearly 5 grams or 4000 mg), clearly President Trump killed them with false hope.

The product was clearly labeled not for human consumption. They chose a dose out of the clear blue sky. They weren't even sick. But the press is: very sick. This is a culture that will remove useful--even life-saving--products from the public sphere if unsupervised children of any age might hurt themselves by wildly misusing it.

France went into lockdown on March 17. The administrative state immediately generated an array of bureaucratic forms: a certificate to leave your house to walk the dog or go shopping; a certificate justifying your attendance at work rather than working from home. These certificates are to be carried on your person at all times and produced on demand by the authorities. As of this morning ‘confinement’ is being notched up again. Village and municipal food markets are to shut; leaving your house for shopping or exercise is limited to one hour and can take place no more than one kilometer from your home. The time of departure from your house is to be indicated on a certificate. Any infringement is to be punished by a minimum fine of €135 ($145), which rises to €1,500 ($1,615) for repeat offenders.

Our own experience is mostly that the right response to this business is to eliminate layers of government rather than adding them. Bureaucracy isn't helping, and it isn't helpful.

Effective presentation

I'm too disgusted to comment further.