Rebane's Ruminations

About

November 2026
S M T W T F S
1234567
891011121314
15161718192021
22232425262728
2930  

ARCHIVES

OUR LINKS

YubaNet
White House Blog
Watts Up With That?
The Union
Sierra Thread
RL “Bob” Crabb
Barry Pruett Blog

  • A Nation Risk Averse – Scared, Cowering, and Compliant

    George Rebane

    In the middle of the 20th century we lived in a world filled with ‘unconquered’ infectious diseases that were both life threatening and life limiting.  Everything from measles to polio lurked in places unknown.  And, of course, we had the rates of mortality and morbidity to show for it.  Nevertheless, life went on in full recognition of the hidden dangers laying in wait.  None of us thought of shutting down the country and cowering in our homes until someone somewhere in authority would make the dangers go away.

    The 1918 Spanish flu pandemic killed 50M worldwide and somewhere well above half million Americans died of the disease.  But life not only went on, it thrived in the years after WW1 with the country’s economy growing while people were still coming down with the virus and other maladies.  Little to no mention of the disease made the news nor required special government dispensations affecting the entire population.  The flu was there, it would stay for a while, and then it would go away – meanwhile try not to get sick.

    The same happened later in the century when we weathered the ‘Asian flu’ in 1957 – over 110,000 deaths in the US and 1M worldwide.  And then there came the ‘Hong Kong flu’, another Asian flu in 1968 – 100,000 deaths in the US and 1.1M worldwide.  From the NIH we learn that “within the past one hundred years, four pandemics have resulted from the emergence of a novel influenza strain for which humans possessed little or no immunity: the H1N1 Spanish flu (1918), the H2N2 Asian flu (1957), the H3N2 Hong Kong flu (1968), and the H1N1 swine flu (2009).”  They summarize these pandemics in the following table.

    C19predecessors

    And then there were others like the avian or ‘bird flu’ which killed 70,000 Americans; and even more – it’s all very confusing.  But the bottom line is that people didn’t lose jobs, companies didn’t go out of business, the fed and state governments didn’t go autocratic, no one panicked, life went on.

    (more…)

    Posted at

    in

    , , , , ,
    7 comments on A Nation Risk Averse – Scared, Cowering, and Compliant

  • Hunker Down Diary – 23apr20 (updated)

    George Rebane

    We are now in HD47 and watching how the national lockdown has slowly turned from a health safety policy to yet another political match between the Left and the Trump administration.  These days we do a lot of reading about C19, recognizing new data on the extent of existing herd immunity, greatly lowered death rates, and contagion numbers a bit higher than the annual flu, in addition to the curves already being flattened.  And therefore, by our lights it’s long-past time to end the lockdown; at least start a rapid phased loosening of commerce that’s based on regional factors.

    It is clear which side wants maximum misery and economic disruption/destruction in these months leading up to the election.  The party with no policy but continuing criticism of those fighting the pandemic is working wonders to rend the country during this global pandemic.

    In the meantime, we note that Placerville has already appealed to Gov Newsom about pulling back on his ‘one size fits all’ statewide C19 proscriptions so favored by socialists.  Placerville correctly argues that it is a low-density rural town which does not compare with LA and the other metro areas of the state.  Meanwhile, our own county and city governments continue to meekly toe the lockdown line, making not a discernible peep to Sacramento as to the growing insanity and hardship of practicing the statewide policy in these foothills.  The correct way forward here is to let the shops and public spaces open, and then deal with any jackboot responses from state bureaucrats – always better to ask for forgiveness than permission.  What the hell can they do to us anyway as other states and regions of similar descriptions are already going on with their lives?

    In the ‘don’t let a crisis go to waste’ department, we note that California has now issued a new set of guidelines to start statewide death panels in healthcare facilities like clinics and hospitals.  People will be scored based on age and health to determine their priority/access to healthcare.  The whole process is sold on the basis of “life-cycle considerations” to allocate treatment resources.  The idea being that older folks have already had enough enjoyment out of life, and since the younger ones haven’t, scores based on age should be used in allocating limited care.  There is no provision in these guidelines for other factors like the social contributions that many older people continue to provide their communities. (more here)

    I think such an allocation policy has been done informally on a case-by-case basis for years, and I see nothing wrong with that practice.  But bureaucratized formalization is a giant step toward bringing the state into the middle of intimate doctor-patient relationships, and a notch away from new requirements for healthcare professionals having to request permission before providing this or that type of care, and then reporting what was provided and its aftermath.  As most of us know, once this kind of command/control starts, it is almost impossible to walk back.  And within the greater embrace of encroaching socialism, in America it has already started.

    In the 23apr20 WSJ Dan Henninger writes a compelling column – ‘How We’ll Live With Coronavirus’ – wherein he argues that human nature will trump egregious lockdown policies, and people will learn to live with C19 as just another disease that needs to be recognized and dealt with in the daily round, much as we did with all the other dreaded diseases before we eventually conquered them.  Extended cowering has never been a prominent part of how people behave – save perhaps under the tender mercies of a KGB or Stasi.

    [update] Newsom’s 6-point plan to lift lockdown was released about a week ago – I forgot to mention it above.  On the face of it, his plan ranges somewhere between cynical and insane.  For openers, most of its provisions are either unattainable or will only come to pass in the far future.  You can review them here.  His message to the state’s idiots is a warning that the dependers on relaxing the shutdown would hang on “science, not politics”.  Now that is one the largest cartloads of bullcrap any politician has delivered in a long time.  Of course his decision will depend on politics – the current delay in opening up already confirms it.  The many considerations that will go into his actual decision will be munged over only in the political arena, and science will enter in only for CYA purposes to camouflage some more partisan and self-serving factor that cannot be revealed to the public.

    The whole thing reeks of the usual subterfuge used to cover the socialists’ perpetual campaign to remove citizens’ rights and freedoms.  I’m reminded of the ongoing 2A battle that cites ‘gun violence’ as its raison d’etre.  There the Left has been diligent in constructively abrogating our 2A rights.  How?  By not being able to directly confiscate our firearms, they instead continue to pass collateral laws and regulations which make their purchase, possession, storage, transport, use, and purchase of related equipments (e.g. ammo for openers) between difficult to illegal.  This approach works wonderfully with those in the land grouped under the ‘myth of the rational voter’ (cf. Bryan Caplan).

    Posted at

    in

    , ,
    26 comments on Hunker Down Diary – 23apr20 (updated)

  • The Great Divide – A Solution RFP

    'The goal of socialism is communism.'  Vladimir Lenin

    George Rebane

    This is another request for proposal to our leftwing fellow citizens to offer a solution to the irreparable Great Divide which has been instituted over the last 50 years in America, and continues to be widened daily.  Our Left and Right citizenry no longer shares a common history, values, mores, facts, humor, logic, ethics, science, economics, culture, national future, …, unto even our language for which the Left now has its own new lexicon, semantics, and proscribed usages. 

    These pages give ample evidence, over a decade’s worth now amplified by the national emergency, that there is absolutely no common ground left between us upon which to meet.  We on the Right have recognized this for some time, and many essays have lamented this state of affairs.  We on the Right have also proposed, pursued, and continue to pursue solutions, all with a common basis that calls for various forms of orderly separation between the two ideologically riven peoples that results in a physical and political division of two more culturally cohesive populations.  The Left has ignored the problem almost in its entirety, and continues in its own way to understand the schism as arising from a primitive belief system that burdens a minor cohort of ignorant and evil Americans, beliefs that now should belong in the dustbin of history.

    To date, the Left’s only semblance of a solution conforms to and seeks to repeat the 'solutions' of past collectivist regimes – identify, control, punish, and re-educate the remnants.  The Left wants neither a physical nor a political separation.  The Right’s view of the Left mostly mirrors theirs, and proposes solutions that hew to those exercised by our forebears and Founders.

    So I am again soliciting from our leftwing readers to provide or point to a clear assessment of today’s ideological landscape in America, and methods to remedy the Great Divide in an orderly and non-violent manner, with a description of what such a fundamentally transformed America would then look like.  To give our opposites a firm set of starting blocks from which to launch such a proposal, I refer them to The Communist Manifesto (1848) by Marx and Engels, and The Progressive Manifesto (2003) by Anthony Giddens.

    Surely someone of our local Left has a communicable vision of the America that they and theirs labor daily to bring about.  I will post for discussion on RR all such proposals under their authors' bylines.  Thank you.

    Posted at

    in

    5 comments on The Great Divide – A Solution RFP

  • Local Launch of Left’s New Covid-19 Narrative

    George Rebane

    The country’s Democrats are in a wholesale, smelly-sweat panic about the upcoming election – in reality a progressives’ pandemic.  They have wound up with an unelectable presidential candidate-in-waiting.  No one knows this better about Bumblebrain Biden than the DNC and its congressional leadership.  What to do?

    The obvious answer – now that all the other years-long forays against Trump have not only come up empty, but also left the party’s faithful with maximum egg-on-face as November approaches  – is to loosen their lamestream lackeys along with its local acolytes with a new narrative about the causus belli du jour, and how President Trump mishandled the country’s C19 response, thereby causing thousands of additional deaths.

    (more…)

    Posted at

    in

    , , , ,
    26 comments on Local Launch of Left’s New Covid-19 Narrative

  • A long-languished letter

    [Way back when, before C19 conquered the media, I was taken to task in its lead 13mar20 column by a Union reader about my views on the electoral college and democracy.  I submitted the following rebuttal which became a coronavirus casualty.  Its posting here is for the record, and an acknowledgement that not all my submissions get published.  So there.  gjr]

    An Electoral College dialogue continued

    Mr Dick Sciaroni wrote ‘Electoral College reform – it’s up to us’ in the 13mar20 Union, a measured and civil response to my 7mar20 Union column, ‘Democracy Destroys the Electoral College’, wherein he concludes with, “Is it time to reform the Electoral College system? Perhaps. It’s up to all of us, the citizens, to decide. That means dialogue, not diatribe.”  However, a more careful read of what I wrote would reveal that nowhere did I oppose a national dialogue on the continued utility of the Electoral College in the governance of our republic.  What I do oppose is the current approach to its sub-rosa and de facto elimination through the little known National Popular Vote Interstate Compact.

    Mr Sciaroni writes, “The Founders’ decision how they should choose a president should have no overriding claim on 21st century America such that we cannot change it. After all, we are talking about our government. It’s ours. Why can’t we change it?”  In this he implies that I oppose any such change.  I don’t, but I do oppose what’s going on now.  The NPVIC is intended to surreptitiously sidestep a national dialogue, and most certainly subvert a constitutional process, through the leftwing mainstream media’s daily diatribes that call for a precipitous elimination of the Electoral College.  I highly doubt that more than one in a hundred Americans are aware of the NPVIC’s existence, its role in eliminating our EC, and current progress toward that goal – all happening without the national dialogue which Mr Sciaroni and I would welcome. 

    In his piece, nowhere did Mr Sciaroni acknowledge that my arguments were directed against imposing governance by direct democracy on large diverse populations, in accord with our Framers.  Instead he did repeat the Left’s talking points that the configuration of the EC by our Framers was a devious stratagem to keep wealthy white men in power, and therefore is now a dated construct of our government that needs major overhaul, and perhaps removal altogether.

    And his main point about the pervasive role of money in our elections ignores recent evidence that undermines his arguments.  In 2016 Hillary outspent Trump by far, in the current election Steyer, Bloomberg, and Bernie have all outspent our former VP Biden, and most certainly President Trump.  Yes, modern campaigns demand more funding to get out the message, but the evidence at hand is that it still continues to be the message, not the money that shapes the voters’ preferences.  In sum, such evidence should weigh heavily to counter Mr Sciaroni’s “final analysis” wherein he maintains that “the downside of the Electoral College is that it works hand-in-glove with moneyed interests to give a small number of people – not surprisingly, white males – access to the presidency of a country in which they are the decided minority.”  By all means, let us all talk about this.

    George Rebane is a retired systems scientist in Nevada County who blogs on Rebane’s Ruminations.

    Posted at

    in

    , , ,
    28 comments on A long-languished letter

  • Sandbox – 21apr20

    [We will now witness the latest tsunami of lies from the demonic Dems as the country begins to loosen its C19 quarantine restrictions state by state, and region by region.  The lamestream’s central theme will be the amplification of ‘profits before people’ that will be carried out by rightwing gun nuts and bible thumpers according to the dictates of Wall Street and its evil corporations.  gjr]

    Posted at

    in

  • Testing to determine population fractions – extended (updated 23apr20)

    George Rebane

    In ‘Testing to determine population fractions’ I introduced the reliability aspect of tests for both infection and immunity.  This is still not a serious consideration brought up in the daily WH C19 briefings, and, of course, nothing of this level of complexity is covered in the media for various reasons ranging from the acumen of their ‘journalists’ to the media-perceived acumen of their audiences.  Here we are not deterred by such deficits.

    In the referenced post the strong point was made that it is not appropriate to take the uncorrected fraction of tests positive from a random sample, and apply that to the target population from which the sample was drawn.  The correction formula was derived and illustrated, along with how errors in the poorly known test sensitivities and specificities propagate into even the corrected estimates of target population fractions.  Since then I’ve done more work to graphically illustrate these mathematics in a visually accessible manner by introducing the population fraction correction surface on which these mathematical concepts can be illustrated for the non-technical reader.  The updated technical note that explains all this can be downloaded here – Download TN2004-2v200420  The figure below is a sample of the explained correction surface for a scenario in which 45% of the tested sample yielded positive test results.  Two tests of different reliability are shown in the figure, details in the technical note.

    TestCorrectionSurface

    [21apr20 update]  Tonight we hear from the FDA that more than 50 different immunity testing kits are being developed by the private sector, and submitted for regulatory approval by the agency along with corroborating data derived from the companies’ “self-validations”.  But the FDA’s report and subsequent questions from the nation’s top reporters sitting in the WH press room are woefully inadequate for any inquiring mind.  Not one word is said about what kind of test reliability data will be required, collected, and supplied from the self-validations.  (Readers who understand and care know that the seminal information about ANY test includes first and foremost its sensitivity and specificity numbers along with their error bounds.  Without those numbers, the rest is bullshit.)  And not one word is said or asked about what kind of testing is intended to support what kind of C19 response policies.  Again, the simple inclusion of the word ‘testing’ in the media blather is considered sufficient for a nation seen as consisting overwhelmingly of double dummies.

    [23apr20 update]  Bootstrapping parameters for a new test.  There may be times when we want to introduce into field use a new test for reasons having, perhaps, to do with cost, ease of application, rapid results turnaround, etc.  We want to get the new test online as quickly as possible, which requires that we also must quickly determine its performance parameters without having to go through the more lengthy and costly formal process.  Given the development in the above described TN2004-2, a method for bootstrapping such parameters for a new test is introduced in TN2004-3 which can be downloaded here –  Download TN2004-3v200425

    Posted at

    in

    , , ,
    6 comments on Testing to determine population fractions – extended (updated 23apr20)

  • 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 … .

    Posted at

    in

    , , , ,
    4 comments on Ruminations – 20apr20

  • 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.

    Posted at

    in

    ,
    22 comments on C19 – a rose by any other name would …

  • 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.

    Posted at

    in

    , , ,
    11 comments on What is the purpose of testing???

RR FUNDAMENTALS

About the Bastiat Triangle

Glossary & Semantics

A Conservetarian Credo

Commenting Rules

RECENT POSTS

RECENT COMMENTS

CATEGORIES

7 comments on A Nation Risk Averse – Scared, Cowering, and Compliant