Vulnerable hardest hit

It occurs to a Guardian pundit that, just as COVID-19 hurts the vulnerable the most, so does the lockdown.  Duh.  Everything harms the vulnerable the most; that's what "vulnerable" means.

It doesn't necessarily follow, as the writer argues, that "vulnerable" is best defined as his favorite SJW categories:

This pandemic is an X-ray, exposing the racial and class inequalities of our society.

It's fair enough to note that people without safety margins of all kinds are far more likely to be swallowed up in severe disruptions. COVID-19, however, is unusual in its extreme focus on the elderly, which, unfortunately for the Guardian, can't easily be shoehorned into the SJW worldview. No amount of Marxist thinking will solve the problem of a disease whose median age of case fatality is around 80, or whose deadly impact falls in over 99% of cases on a group comprise of the elderly and/or those with fairly severe medical challenges. At most, the carnage in nursing homes might make us want to re-think how we warehouse the elderly of all races and classes.

You can make a class argument out of the disparity in certain kinds of illnesses, especially those related to obesity (such as heart disease and diabetes), but the argument isn't as persuasive as a lot of people seem to think. When you have to blame "food deserts" for obesity among people who supposedly are too poor to eat, you're really reaching.

Turns out I'm a guy

I know, these studies are about averages and can't be expected to apply to every individual, as I'm always saying.  But everything on the man list rings bells with me, while I can barely hear the siren song from the woman list--though most of the latter began to have more appeal to me after the age of about 60:

Vanderbilt University psychologists, studying middle-aged men and women who were high achievers in math, having an IQ of 140+, received quite different responses from males and females to statements about preferences: Men emphasized freedom of expression and ideas, merit pay, a full-time career, invention, taking risks, working with things, lots of money, stating facts in the face of resistance. Women emphasized part-time careers, for a limited time, working no more than 40 hours a week, flexibility in work schedule, friendships, community service, socializing, and community.

Beethoven on a 15 String Harp Guitar

We haven't had much music lately. Here are some lovely pieces on an unusual instrument.

Siberian Unicorns

An interesting beast that I had not heard of before.

Created Equal on PBS Tomorrow

The documentary Created Equal: Clarence Thomas in His Own Words will be showing and streaming on PBS May 18 at 9 EST / 8 CDT.

I saw this in the theater when it came out and really loved it. It is a biography of Thomas, but as the title implies, he does a lot of the talking himself.




Although the whole documentary was interesting, one of my favorite parts was seeing then-Senator Biden try to spar with Thomas during the confirmation hearings. It was comical.

Reynard

A neighbor has been feeding a gray fox, or perhaps I should say a vixen.  We saw her taking food from the neighbor's hand.  She comes every evening.

Gray foxes can climb trees as readily as a cat.  We have few if any red foxes here.

Killed by Bureaucracy

They were taught all through their educations and careers that the most important thing was not to discriminate. So when the moment came when the most important thing of all was to discriminate....

Epidemiologist Knut Wittkowski: Open Up & Forget the Whole Thing

A contrarian view from the 20-year head of the Biostatistics, Epidemiology, and Research Design at The Rockefeller University’s Center for Clinical and Translational Science.  One might even say a curmudgeonly view.

"You're no friend of this court!"

I'm so old, I can remember when federal courts didn't think it was a good idea to troll for issue advocacy in the form of amicus briefs.

Some of you may recognize my title from a Heinlein novel.  He had a good grasp of the law, and liked to set up vignettes in which an honest judge lost patience with conspiracies and courtroom shenanigans, especially when officious intermeddlers were shown the door.  In the scene I'm remembering, an oily legal hanger-on type is asked to explain his presence at a trial, and answers, "Who, me?  Amicus curiae, Your Honor."

The Costly Failure to Update Sky-Is-Falling Predictions

Sean Trende over at RCP has a very good article looking at coronavirus predictions that didn't pan out and the social cost of the failure of experts and media sources to acknowledge and update their reporting.

As part of this, he covers predictions on the re-opening of several states, including Florida, Georgia, and Wisconsin, and how they were wrong.

It's a good one-stop page for showing people the facts of the case as well as how predictions were wrong, and would be useful for arguing for opening up. I'll be sending the link to people I know, so thought I'd share.

David Reaboi on America

As part of an interview he's given, some thoughts on America:

America’s weakest national security link is our disunity. We’re no longer in agreement about the most fundamental questions underpinning the regime—including who we see as allies and who we consider adversaries on the world stage. While there was always an insistent and vocal part of the American Left that agitated for our enemies during the Cold War, the mainstream debate consisted of how best to deal with the Soviet Union as an evil rival.... [But now] I don’t think another nation in history has been so thoroughly despised by its own elite class. Now, because these are our society’s elites, they have the power to change the character of the country, to finally wrest it from both the traditions of its founding and the citizens who still believe in those traditions. And they’ve largely done that; they’re just now trying to neutralize the last holdouts. That struggle is the disunity we’re seeing....

There’s an essential question many friends and I ask, when discussing a potential ally: “Does he know what time it is?” That is, does one have the ability to be unsentimental and realistic in assessing our current situation. Does he understand the predicament we’re in, with a left that’s already marched through the institutions? Does he accept the impossibility or the extreme unlikelihood of “returning” to anything resembling even the America of the 1990s? I think that grappling with these questions is a prerequisite for more than leadership, going forward; it really should be the minimum of what makes someone a political voice worth hearing at this point.

I know Dave, who is something of a pessimist (as he would admit himself). That predisposition is worth keeping in mind when you ponder his thoughts. But he's also both a 'wise guy' and a smart guy, who definitely does 'know what time it is.' Watching the Flynn story, and the larger Trump/Russia story unfold, it is clear that the institutions of this nation have been turned against it. Perhaps that started during the Obama administration; perhaps that was the point of acceleration. I wonder how right he is that it just won't be possible to fix.

UNICEF: Expect 1.3 Million Child Deaths From Economic Shock

There’s no real reason to think that this model is any better than the climate models; it’s possibly no better than the coronavirus models, although the virus was novel and this problem is old. For what it’s worth, though, it is another consideration.

Why are you conservatives so obsessed with Russia-Russia-Russia-Russia-Russia?

Brian Stelter wonders.

A Debt Repaid

The Irish answer their history.

Oh Dear

“Open Memorandum to Barack Obama.”

Curiouser and Curiouser

Judge Sullivan has decided to appoint a retired judge to act as de facto prosecutor in the Flynn case, since the Department of Justice refuses to prosecute it. That is not just highly irregular, I think it's unheard of. I've certainly never heard of it being done, although sitting Federal judges have tremendous power.

It certainly will make the appeal interesting if Sullivan decides to sentence Flynn instead of accepting the recommendation to drop the charges.

UPDATE: Apparently he's also appointed a prosecutor to see if Flynn can be charged with perjury for entering a false guilty verdict. That, actually, might be the one crime of which Flynn is really guilty; although a lot of other people are guilty of coercing him and concealing it from the court, which doesn't seem to have sparked the judge's interest.

I'm beginning to think that it will be hard for Flynn to receive a fair trial, even at this late stage.

Arms and White Samite Update

I finally received copies of the paperback today. I am extremely disappointed in their quality. The formatting I spent a week trying to get right came out wrong nine ways from Sunday, and for some reason the cover has a pink rather than a white dress. It definitely isn't pink in the painting, not even a little, and was color-adjusted to match the white text (which did come out correctly).

So if any of you purchased a copy of the paperback, I apologize for the quality. I am pulling it off of Amazon as a physical book. I have no idea what happened, but the quality is too poor to ask anyone to spend money on it. Feel free to return it and ask for a refund, because these books are too badly made to be worth anything. You can read the same story on your Kindle.

Fake News Today

BB: California Police Attempt To Arrest Elon Musk's Holographic Decoy As Real Musk Escapes On Rocket To Mars

DB: Generals who failed to defeat Taliban explain how to kill a virus

TO: Damning Report Finds White House Ignored Skeletal Horsemen Galloping Through Sky As Early As January

Manhood and the Virus

We have all read that men are more likely to die than women from this virus (women hardest hit), but it turns out that low-testosterone men are more likely to die than men with high T levels. Exercise may be protective, although that's more along the lines of 'it usually is' than 'we know for sure that it is in this specific case.' Sunshine destroys the virus and your body uses it to protect you by producing Vitamin D, which is generally effective as an anti-viral.

Things are looking pretty good for weight-lifting motorcycle-riding men.

Nursing home carnage

At least, a nationwide tally of the nursing homes' share of COVID-19 deaths.  Powerline has been reporting for weeks that over 80% of the virus's deadly toll in Minnesota occurs in nursing homes, and that the median age of decedents has been steady for some time at about 82 years.  That percentage turns out to be high; most states are hovering more around the 50% mark.  I've read that the nationwide median age is in the high 70s, though information on that score is scarce.

The column for daily deaths is heartening, at least for some states, such as Texas, which seem to have cracked the code for opening the economy while concentrating protection on the most vulnerable elderly.  Nursing homes in the cluster of states near New York are still suffering badly.

Scrolling down the page at that same site will bring you to an economic report card for the 50 states, which demands a balance between the challenge of the local death rate and the speed of re-opening.  New York gets a "C," which might seem generous considering how locked down it remains, but it gets credit for having such a severe outbreak to contend with.  Texas gets a "B," despite its fairly benign lockdown and rapid re-opening, because its outbreak has not been severe enough to warrant more stringent measures.