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  • Ruminations – 20apr20

    George Rebane

    “We are all in this together.”  Who make up the “we”?  What defines the “this”?  Porter Stansberry makes a very compelling cast that this assertion by the governments and their loyal lackies is the Big Lie of today (here)  – we are not all in this together, and the ‘this’ is different for all of us who live in various regions of the country. Its main purpose is to convince good-hearted people to overlook the realities of the C19 epidemic and follow the ever more invasive and pervasive dicta of the authorities who laying in command and control procedures that will survive the end of the epidemic by decades.  What’s happening now that we’re hunkering down is training us to accept a whole slew of new constraints on the liberties that our Constitution guarantees.  Again, harbinger Numero Uno is when they come for our guns.

    The Great Divide confirmed more than ever.  Cohesive nation-states have always come together and shown their fundamental unity when confronting an external threat or national emergency.  America has been a posterchild of such unity since the War Between the States (erroneously still called the Civil War).  No more.  As we have been observing now for over a decade, the divisions between us today are unfathomable and too large to overcome.  Nowhere is this demonstrated with greater unambiguity than in our response to the C19 pandemic.  Here in this election year, one party is doing its best to heal the nation and return to normalcy, while the evil party is doing everything possible to extend the human misery, bring longterm destruction to our economy, and blame America under the current administration for any and all ills across the world.  Their goal is to bring the US to its knees as the disease abates, in order to present the global collective a fundamentally transformed nation that is weak, compliant, and chastened.

    Under ‘Autocracy Rising’ we are getting reports of new egregious behaviors by our LE cadres as they start imitating Stasi tactics across the land during this pandemic.  One Florida student who caught C19-type symptoms on a high school band trip and recovered, posted her experience on Instagram.  The school became enraged and sicked the local cops on her.  These showed up at her residence and threatened to “start taking people to jail” for “disorderly conduct” unless she immediately removed her post, which she did.  Later it was pointed out that our Constitution makes no “pandemic exception” for denying 1A rights.  Sign of the times – bend over and spread ‘em. (more here)

    More on Autocracy Rising – NYC mayor and its Stasi’s Oberführer Bill de Blasio is now exhorting New Yorkers to report social distancing infractions by neighbors to the authorities (here). He wants the citizen snitch to take a picture of the scofflaws, and send it immediately to the police so that “we can get help there to fix the problem.”  Gotta love them Dems – give ‘em an inch, and they’ll take … .

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  • C19 – a rose by any other name would …

    ‘For yourself, never seek justice, only mercy.’ Coach Dick Beedy

    George Rebane

    The pathogen causing today’s worldwide pandemic is referred to by many labels – novel coronavirus, Covid-19, 2019-nCoV, SARS-CoV-2, Wuhan virus, CCP virus, China virus, … .  The politically correct don’t want to attach a “stigmatizing” name to anything that may gore the reputation of one of their champions in today’s ongoing ideological narrative that propagandizes and defends their vision of a brave new world, so the WHO selected Covid-19 as its official name to the virus.

    My own penchant for labels favors those that have the fewest readily-available characters, eschewing all unnecessary delimiters (which are also characters), and that unambiguously identify that which is labeled.  As a bleeding edge techie all my life, I’ve enjoyed the pleasure of giving new names to countless things just discovered, invented, developed, … that never had a name, let alone a short spiffy name or a distinguishing TLA (three letter acronym).

    After reviewing the plethora of labels for our current dastardly ‘bug’, I said what the hell, and referred to it simply as C19 in these pages – writing or speaking elsewhere, I pick a more communicative label from the above list.  Nevertheless, I have been taken to task here by one of our more tightly-wound, assiduous intellects, and longtime readers with a technical background.  His point is not so much that RR readers would misunderstand, as it is that C19 doesn’t accurately and repeatedly focus blame on the country, ideology, and political party to blame for loosing this dreadful disease on the world, nor is it the technically correct label for the virus.

    He has a point worth considering on the ‘blame’ component of his criticism – screw the technically correct part.  Since I am a dedicated anti-communist, anti-collectivist ideologue of established repute (I suspect it’s in my double-helix), I should take every opportunity to dun the dastardly sumbiches of the CCP when writing about C19.  After all, the CCP lays uncontested claim to operating history’s biggest murder machine on mankind, having killed hundreds of millions of people, and making life a misery for more hundreds of millions.

    But then again, I’m also a somewhat lazy sumbich, especially when in the white heat of laying down some thoughts on the keyboard.  So for the time being at least, I will go on using C19 in these pages, and, without prejudice, continue suffering the subsequent slings and arrows that may still come my way.

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  • What is the purpose of testing???

    George Rebane

    This may be the most definitive evidence that dumbth is the established order of the day in America.  Everyone has been screaming about testing, and continues that to this minute.  But no one has told us why test – what kind of metric is testing supposed to provide to public policy makers, and how will it be used to support those policies.  I would think that this would be something that we would be briefed on instead of hearing from one side that there are not enough tests, and the other citing the numbers of tests that have been administered and shipped.

    The dumbest thing I hear from the daily briefings is that we have now given over 3 million infection tests – really!!?  BFD!  What the hell are you going to do with the results of 3 million infection tests, results obtained willy-nilly from all over the country over the last 5-6 weeks?  I don’t hear the Drs Fauci or Birx telling us jack about how the test results will be used.  And what should be even more amazing – but is not – is that our crack journalists, double dummies all, have never thought to even consider asking for the purpose of testing.

    Some silly shit answer like, ‘well, it’ll tell the healthcare people if the tested person has C19’ – so what?!  If the sumbich already feels poorly with C19 symptoms, it isn’t the test that’s going to get him admitted into a clinic or hospital.  And if he isn’t symptomatic, then it’s pure happenstance that a serendipitous test of unknown reliability tests positive, and he’s then advised to get off the streets, and wait until his symptoms appear before he bothers anyone.

    And then some other worthy will explain to the peanut gallery that we need testing to find out the extent of the pandemic and identify new C19 hot spots early.  Does anyone at NIH or CDC have a clue about the kind of testing program required – its extent, frequency, and duration – for that??  We hope that someone there passed a stats class somewhere in their career, but today they sure as hell don’t act like it. 

    Infection testing needs to be conducted continuously on random samples drawn from critical target populations – remember, infection tests are snapshots the results of which can and do change overnight.  To be fair, Dr Fauci last night finally acknowledged that neither the US nor any other country has the ability to do the kind of infection testing for early identification of hot spots.  And don’t get me started again on factoring in test reliabilities into any kind of a non-existent organized testing program; no one has even made a peep about that. 

    Immunity (antibody/antigen) testing gives time-dependent enduring results that tells us the extent of herd immunity that may already exist in a target population.  However, Dr Birx also finally admitted that today’s immunity test reliabilities are so bad that it’s futile to use them with any confidence to determine the recovered share of target populations.  When and if such tests become reliable, at that point if the recovered share is sufficiently high, then even ‘lives over profits’ policy makers can start staging back-to-work policies.  And if the recovered population grows too slowly, then that advises that the target population is hunkering down too hard, and we again need to loosen things up a mite to start making progress against C19.

    But in the meantime, what in hell is going on out there with our political leaders and their teams of so-called ‘experts’??  Given what we can and cannot do in the testing field, the known attributes of C19, and the general dynamics of virulent epidemics, it’s past time to start a programmed loosening up of America’s commerce.

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  • Scattershots – 15apr20 (updated 18apr20)

    George Rebane

    For a progressive the content value of delivered messages depend only on the correct credentials of the messenger. 

    Autocracy rising.  Granted that all the federal and state hunker-down mandates have taken a big bite out of our civil liberties (here and here), we witness and read daily of people being stopped, harrassed, arrested, and even handcuffed for engaging in non-infectious activities like walking in the woods, surfing alone, riding a bike, driving a car, … .  Given their head to control and dictate, government workers are becoming more autocratic, hubristic, and commanding in their relations with regular citizens.  Don’t get me wrong, they were no paragons of helpful knowledge and assistance in the best of times, but now we get regular reports of everyone from law enforcement people to clerks behind counters beginning to act like the caricature authorities of tyrannies like the USSR, East Germany, Red China, Iran, Cuba, … .  In such behaviors these bureaucrats have predictably wrapped themselves in the mantle of inflexible machines executing pre-programmed and unwavering dicta from on high.  I recently ran into that on an call to our Rood Center on an administrative manner.  The response between now and then was markedly different.  And it’s all being helped by the legions of naïfs who continue to repeat the mantra, ‘It can’t happen here, cause we’re Mericans.’

    “Bernie’s an American original”, embellished Barack Obama during his announced support for his former VP Joe Biden.  Calling Sanders a “man who has devoted his life to giving voice to working people’s hopes”, Obama kind of goes off the rails because the record of all of Sanders’ proposed policies would have reduced the number of jobs available to working people, grown government, and made those same working people de facto wards of the state.  An ‘American original’ indeed; Obama’s intellect has never embraced history (among other pursuits), so he doesn’t realize that Comrade Bernie is nothing but a clone of old school Moscow.

    (more…)

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  • Sandbox – 14apr20

    [While I'm much in favor of opening up the economy sooner than later, I can't understand the Trump/Cuomo pissing match now going on (here).  The President is all wet in asserting that it is only he who gets "to call the shots" on opening up the country.  The country was not 'closed' on the basis of some federal imperative, and so it does not stand that it awaits the President's removal of such a non-existent imperative.  In the meanwhile, the governors are in charge of lawful public intercourse in their states.  As usual, Trump is burning  up political capital better put to use elsewhere, and the lamestream is eating it up.  gjr]

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  • The Second Wave of Covid-19 (updated 15apr20)

    George Rebane

    [A rewrite of this piece for broader audiences – ‘The big decision and the second wave’ – appeared in the 18apr20 online and print editions of The Union.]

    As we start to turn the corner on the initial wave of C19 infections sweeping the land, people are already talking about the second wave and what it may look like after we carefully restart the economy.  I did some noodling with Epidyne about what a second wave might look like as it takes another cut at us in California.  Our state is thought to have had a large TBD fraction of people who already became immune last fall and early this year through asymptomatic infections.  This is plausible from what we now know about the 2019 timeline of the Wuhan virus.

    This assumption goes a long way to explaining why California’s infection, morbidity, and mortality numbers are so low, especially since we are one of the major Asia gateways into the US.  The bottom line here is that we in our state already had developed a high level of herd immunity (q.v.) when the real C19 hit the country in early February of this year.

    I ran a number of scenarios of a second wave using the latest CDC max reproduction rate of 2.6 which gets whittled down as herd immunity grows.  And everyone now says that the Germans have calculated the most accurate death rate of 0.4% of the infected for developed country healthcare systems.  Using these numbers on California’s 40M population, and letting the immunity fraction from the first wave vary from 0% (no one became immune) as an unrealistic bookend, to 50%, which most epidemiologists now think is closer to truth, I generated the infected population curves shown below.

    C19secondWavePlots2

    The Epidyne model (here) illustrates the highly non-linear nature of epidemic spread experienced in populations with various levels of herd immunity.  We see the impact of the disease weakening as the percent immune increases in a fairly orderly way with little change in the second wave’s onset and its duration.  This begins to markedly change as the immune percentage passes 30%.  Then we see the curves flattening out with a delayed onset and a longer duration.  Keep in mind that the infected cohort is made up of the asymptomatic, pre-symptomatic, and those requiring professional medical attention.  The latter comprising of about 10% of the infected according to the latest figures.  It is also from this cohort that we derive the mortality numbers.

    The table below shows the maximum infected, the maximum hospital load, and the number deceased for the second wave as a function of the initial percent immune.

    C19secondWaveData

    From the graph above we see that the duration of the wave for the lower immunities is about 2.5 months, and for immunities above 40% the epidemic’s onset is later, of lower intensity, and lasts about 3 to 3.5 months.

    We must also note that the above numbers don’t reflect any imposition of a second statewide quarantine.  Were we to take a more reasoned look at what kind of second wave we would have, I would agree with those who calculate that California’s immunity percentage would be very close to 50% coming out of the first wave that includes the cohort of pre-first wave immunities.  Of course, if a second widespread quarantine is imposed that impacted proportionately the uninfected vulnerable and immune populations, then the intensity curves would all be lower and also more spread out.

    Important in all this policy making is the ability to conduct immunity (antibody/antigen) testing on random samples from the state.  I have extensively discussed testing previously (here and here), and also introduced readers to Epidyne (here).  And when all is said and done on running these numbers, it sure looks like we should be ready soon to loosen the reins on our economy, and then not be too apprehensive about the so-called second wave – it will be quite manageable.

    [update]  So what all should policy makers actually consider as they wrestle with the decision of when and how to reopen the economy?  Items definitely to include involve and understanding of the scenarios I have illustrated above regarding second wave infections.  (We assume they have access to spread models at least as powerful as Epidyne.)  But before that, one needs to take a measure of the situation in answering the question, what is and/or should be the immunity level in the target population I’m considering opening up.  From above we saw that the immunity level should be somewhere north of 40% so that herd immunity can kick in and reduce the severity of the second wave after we have again started doing business in the land.

    That decision will again involve another round of testing a random sample drawn from such a population.  This time the test will be for the presence of immunizing antibodies/antigens, and these tests will also have their own levels reliability expressed in their sensitivities and specificities.  More formally these are respectively the probabilities of test positive given the presence of the ‘antis’, here P+. and test positive when no ‘antis’ are present, here P–.  I explained the whole process here, for those needing a review.

    The remainder of this update has a couple of squigglies in it that makes it easier to read from this pdf – Download SecondWaveUpdate 

    [15apr20 update]  The Epidyne second wave results shown above are now beginning to be described by prominent contagious disease experts and epidemiologists in interviews and columns that forebode ill if C19 returns to a population with a still WIP herd immunity.  They are now doing some Monday morning quarterbacking on the governments’ policies of people quarantining, sequestering themselves at home, and social distancing on their infrequent forays to gather their necessaries (more here). Their arguments about “unintended consequences”, of course, make sense.  All epidemics burn themselves out primarily through the beneficial action of herd immunity among the survivors of the disease (else they just kill everyone infected).  But herd immunity is inhibited by premature and too comprehensive and longlasting quarantines.  This means that once the people are ‘released’, any residual contagious agents will necessarily reinfect and start the disease cycle all over again.  I have illustrated that with the Epidyne spread model, generating a number of epidemic return scenarios as a function of various levels of herd immunity being in place when society was opened up again.

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  • Documentary on the origin of the CCP virus

    George Rebane

    A reader sent me an interesting piece in the Epoch Times, an independent non-partisan news outfit rapidly gaining a reputation for their no-nonsense reporting.  They have put some effort into assembling a detailed documentary video on the origin of C19, aka CCP virus, aka Covid-19, aka (longer and more detailed labels).  The information presented in this documentary (here) is definitely explosive if some other name news outfit or organization confirms their findings.  I was impressed that respected syndicated columnist and China expert Gordon Chang lends his name to this documentary.  Those who on a reasonable basis reject the evidence presented in this somewhat exhaustive journalistic enterprise, then have a lot of counter evidence to present.  American Thinker picks up on this story here.

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  • A Place for Everything and Everything in its Place

    [This was submitted by reader and Nevada County resident Don Bessee.  It is posted as received. gjr]

    Don Bessee

    Commercial activity in Residentially Zoned neighborhoods is fundamentally in conflict with their land use protections that everyone agreed to when they signed their title papers that included mandated disclosures.

    There are allowed things like piano lessons and day care and there are limits on the traffic those produce in your neighborhood that are meant to protect your peace and personal space.

    There is a concept that your home is your castle, but I would submit that your home is your place to relax and enjoy the fact we live in a pine forest and the joy that brings to us all. Avian joys as well as the critters wandering around who are not threatened by us. Ticks notwithstanding.  A tranquil island of peace in a sea of turbulence if you will.

    For some reason the County is considering an assault on our homeowner’s rights by expanding COMMERCIAL activity in peaceful residentially zoned neighborhoods.

    They are still looking to abuse the neighborhoods again by trying to repeal or grossly modify the OUTDOOR EVEN ORDIANCE that became necessary to protect our neighborhood from folks that didn’t care about your block’s peace or your property values. It was all about the Benjamin’s for those abusers.

    Some years ago there were people who disrespected their neighborhoods to grab a quick buck and endangered their Fire Evacuation routes in spite of their zoning not allowing their commercial party plans. It was the Road Association Folks who were having their pockets picked for road maintenance to support 1 properties commercial parties that led the way from across the county to stop it with the outdoor event ordinance.

    The wedding planners who did not want to pay their way were incredibly aggressive against the neighborhoods in the committee that developed the ordinance with rhetoric that did not stand up to the actual wedding license activity record. Then Chair Beason bought their own industrial journal to refute the spin and hyperbole! I believe the video is still available.

    Then Chair of the Board Beason and Supervisor Anderson were on that committee with me that included department heads, County Council,  both sides of the issue as well as Fire,  Law Enforcement to speak to the reality on the ground and the very real fire threat to Neighborhoods as well as Environmental Health issues.

    Code has no presence on Friday afternoon to Monday to protect you and they knew it.  That’s why we need the Sheriff to protect the neighborhoods peace on the weekends.

    Recently I was being lobbied with the line that the hospitality industry was crushed by the heartless Outdoor Event Ordinance.

    Yet again the facts do not support the narrative no matter who is repeating the tired narratives.

    The numbers tell the story as they always do.

    Weddings are a trackable metric with the license data just like they were the last time around.

    The average number of wedding licenses issued in Nevada County over the last 5 years was 453.

    In 2015 there 435 licenses issued.

    In 2016 there were 480 wedding licenses and that was very near the highest ever.

    In 2017 there were 465 licenses issued.

    In 2018 there were 432 licenses issued.

    In 2019 there were 457 wedding licenses issued in Nevada County.

    If you live in LOP or lake WW you might think its not your issue because of your CC& R’s that won’t allow a property to do that there.

    The real financial threat my friends is that they want to do for profit events that will not generate new business but just cannibalize the business of those venues that have to pay a ton to support their commercial infrastructure in the properly zoned areas such as country clubs and event centers.

    The idea to double the allowable events to 8 from 4 in your neighborhood is intolerable.

    1 Saturday event in your neighborhood means trucks moving in on Friday to setup then departing, the event and all the cars of the attendees in and out, then another caravan to breakdown on Sunday.

    Does that sound like something you want 8 times a year in your neighborhood?

    The Ag tourism project portion of this proposal looks totally viable and appropriate.

    If you live in a R1 or RA neighborhood then you are threatened by this erosion of your established rights as a homeowner. If you live in WW or LOP the financial stability of your country club/restaurant is at risk.

    Tell your supervisors what you think of this assault on neighborhood rights.

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  • He is Risen!

    HeIsRisen

    George Rebane

    Hearing that strong assertion, the Christian answers joyfully, ‘He is risen indeed!’

    For us, Christmas is the promise, and Easter its fulfillment.  The summation of all Christianity is Christ’s covenant in the promised transcendence of Man, all concentrated into one simple declaration – ‘He is risen!’  Without this, our faith is a fraud; with it, Christianity promises Man to become an unending part of God’s love of all Creation.

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  • Hunker Down Diary – 11apr20 (updated 12apr20)

    George Rebane

    Today is HD35 for the Rebanes.  And all things considered on our ridge top overlooking Deer Creek Canyon and the Central Valley, we are doing well.  We’ve gone out twice now for groceries and haven’t even come close to hitting our ‘large scale emergency’ stash.  We continue to meet online with our respective organizations, and there has been plenty of time for books and projects.  Most of you have caught a whiff of my squiggly pushing projects, specifically in epidemic spread modeling and testing.  Playing different scenarios through these models has been both revealing and educational (I’ll share some of these in the by and by.)  

    I am a dyed-in-the-wool numbers guy and confirm daily that people who don’t know the numbers on any given issue, don’t know what they’re talking about.  And knowing the numbers is just the start on the road to understanding anything in the public arena – then you run into things like different utilities to support decisions, and various collections of knowledge shared by decision makers.  What is most frustrating to me is how little our government bureaucrats know what is going on, and what it takes to gather such knowledge.

    The medical industry has never impressed me, quite the opposite.  They are primarily good-hearted technicians and journeymen operating in the dark, trying to follow dated rules and regulations while suffering through the usual human frustrations and weaknesses.  As covered elsewhere, their mistakes cause around 200,000 deaths annually.  The only hope to make that industry more beneficial to society is to allow its practitioners to have more freedom to devise and apply better methods for healing, and allow entrepreneurs easier access to bring the fruits of their labors to bear on the sick and suffering.  Instead, we appear to be going exactly in the opposite direction both by bumbling and on misguided purpose – half of us want to supersize regulatory control and apply central one-size-for-all planning.

    (more…)

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