Pandemic Panic Ponders

Haven't posted as much as I might, for a variety of reasons.

For one thing Bobbi and the guys at Powerline are tracking my thoughts pretty closely, and probably more eloquently than I could.

When it comes to science, I have found Spin, Strangeness, Charm and Watts Up With That? to be excellent sources; the former, especially, posts daily (if not more often) on news reports put of Europe, translated into English, with clear explanations of the science and medicine involved, with a minimum of hysteria.


OldNFO published this meme yesterday:

There is a lot we still don't know about SARS-CoV2 and COVID19. A lot of that gets lost in the squabbling surrounding it.

How virulent is it? What simple countermeasures are effective? Are the asymptomatic contagious? are there risk factors beyond the obvious?

If you find yourself hoping people die because they identify it as coming from China, then you're an idiot and I don't care for your opinion. If you screeched because the president shut down air travel from China and then kept screeching that he was overreacting, and pivoted immediately to he wasn't doing enough then you're an idiot and I don't care what your opinion is.

It is my opinion that after a 2 or 3 week lockdown we could have started re-opening with precautions, and we would be a lot better off, because people would still be working, the economy wouldn't be tanking, and, based on the experience in certain places that did not go full "Stay in your homes or else" mode, the disease "profile" would look little different.

I am not an epidemiologist. I admit I could be wrong. But when you look into the backgrounds of the "experts", there's a lot to question there.

The Brit that claimed the USA would have 2,000,000 deaths  was not only grossly mistaken, but he was responsible for several past public health related over-reactions on the part of Her Majesty's Government. (Not to mention having his married lover visit him from across town after publicly scolding Brits to stay indoors...)

Several years ago Dr Fauci responded to legislation banning certain virological research by funneling money to... a Chinese lab in Wuhan China. (I can actually follow the reasoning here. The research involved testing certain mutations to viruses to study responses. and treatments, so the research was important. But...)

As for government reaction...

Releasing felons from prison and arresting law abiding citizens for going outside? No wonder they want 100% mail-in ballots!

Do You Want The Boogaloo? Because This is How You Get The Boogaloo (Updated)

(Links added to comments.)

First: If  you don't understand what is meant by The Boogaloo, well... I guess you can look it up on The Urban Dictionary.

Having said that...

In View From The Porch: People are getting edgy... Tamara excerpted a key 'graph from the rather lengthy post The COVID-19 Boogaloo Opus - Handwaving Freakoutery at Medium.

So then I see the following Tweet:

"The drones, donated by DJI, a Chinese company, have gone to 43 agencies in 22 states, all to help enforce social distancing rules."

US using Chinese drones to spy on and lecture Americans about a virus caused by communist China

Oh, and DJI "may be sending data to China" pic.twitter.com/LqH6VzonzH

— Elizabeth Harrington (@LizRNC) April 17, 2020

 Which of course, prompted a revival of the age-old questions

• Drone: Rifle or Shotgun?

and

• What Caliber for Drone?  

As infuriating as the implementation of technology in service of Big Government nannyism is,
Law enforcement is using drones to shout at people for violating social distancing.
the really bizarre thing about this story, as @LizRNC points out in her tweet above, is that these are DJI drones, a product of Communist China.

And an Internet search for the keywords "chinese drones law enforcement" will return dozens ( a conservative estimate) of articles referring to the US Government banning the use of drones from Communist China because of the predilection of the commies to have their tech phone home to the mother ship with details we'd rather the commies not have.

Seriously, what kind of an idiot elected official can be so tone-deaf in the face of Communist China's obvious responsibility for the current global pandemic and think "Hey, I know! We'll use ChiCom spy technology to nag people!" is a good idea.

Allegedly, these drones do not have the ability to transmit or record video.

Sure.

Winnie The Flu says so.

EDIT to add: And then there's this crap:

How do you report places that aren’t enforcing social distancing? It’s simple: just snap a photo and text it to 311-692. #AskMyMayor pic.twitter.com/WQdCcVf1Rl

— Mayor Bill de Blasio (@NYCMayor) April 18, 2020

Note: See comments for some links to news reporting on the subject. Also, statements re: No Video are probably meant to be "no recording of video or taking of photos."

Have You Kippled Lately?

Kipling Society homepage

Anent my second most recent post:
Poems - The Sons of Martha

The Sons of Martha

THE Sons of Mary seldom bother, for they have inherited that good part;
But the Sons of Martha favour their Mother of the careful soul and the troubled heart.
And because she lost her temper once, and because she was rude to the Lord her Guest,
Her Sons must wait upon Mary's Sons, world without end, reprieve, or rest.

It is their care in all the ages to take the buffet and cushion the shock.
It is their care that the gear engages; it is their care that the switches lock.
It is their care that the wheels run truly; it is their care to embark and entrain,
Tally, transport, and deliver duly the Sons of Mary by land and main.

They say to mountains, " Be ye removèd" They say to the lesser floods " Be dry."
Under their rods are the rocks reprovèd - they are not afraid of that which is high.
Then do the hill tops shake to the summit - then is the bed of the deep laid bare,
That the Sons of Mary may overcome it, pleasantly sleeping and unaware.

 The rest of the poem, as well as notes on the text, sources, references, etc.,  at the link.

This one is a perennial favorite in some corners of the blogosphere: Poems - 'The Gods of the Copybook Headings'

I Feel Dumber

I haven't been blogging as much about Pandemic Panic as I might have been because I found that Bobbi has been doing a good job of explaining some issues that my own thoughts were, shall we say, less than fully developed.

F'r instance, in Week Two Of Taking It Seriously, fresh off the Intertubes, she discusses the supply chain.

Which was timely, because I happened to get up a little early today, and walked in on Mrs. Drang while she was waking up and feeding cats and watching morning TV.

Where the talking heads were interrogating the Surgeon General of the United States about why in the world the President's Phone and Pen cannot just magically make millions of surgical masks and nitrile gloves appear in hospitals and clinics. "But it's been days since the Defense Production Act was 'invoked', why are there still shortages of Personal Protective Equipment?"

Oy.

I am not a logisitician, I did not stay at a Holiday In express last night, I do not play a logistician on TV...

...But I spent 20 years on the Army, and, as a Marine General said "Amateurs talk about tactics, but Professionals study logistics." (Quotes on logistics on this page go back to the American Revolution.)

Just because the President has authorized the DPA, does not mean that suddenly the factories are cranking these things out 24/7.

Assuming that the factories aren't already running 24/7, they have to find trained staff to run three shifts. They have to find the material. The material has to get to the factory. Workers have to be paid among other Human Resources actions, they have to be fed, the facilities have to be maintained, and kept secure.

And the finished product has to get to warehouses, or in some cases directly to the consumer. Which means trucks, mostly, which have to be maintained and fueled, and the drivers fed and paid and...

You can surge some of that. If you have trained personnel, facilities, and materials available you can go to an emergency schedule while the bean counters and paper shufflers sort out the details.

(Did I ever mention that during college I worked a couple of summers on an assembly line at one of the Big 3?)

If you have a facility that can be repurposed -- you make widgets and now there's a need for framastans -- it takes time to retool, and to ensure your staff know how to make a framastan. The assembly lines at Big 3, Inc., used to shut down for one or two weeks in the summer tor retool for the new model year of the same car model the plant had been making for years!  (One year they all shut down all the plants at the same time. Glad I was in Korea by that time...)

Watching these idiots talk to people about things that may as well be magical to them makes me feel like my IQ has declined to their level.

Which may be unfair, they're just flailing around with concepts they haven't ever had to deal with, or knew existed.  Food just appears in the store. The mechanic mutters incantations and my car works.

Grasshoppers. Grasshoppers, all of them.

***

 About those shortages of PPE. Interesting article: Los Angeles Times and Bloomberg News: Federal stockpile of N95 masks was depleted under Obama and never restocked.

Now, that sort of implies that Obama just shrugged and said "Never mind", which is highly unlikely. I'm guessing that line items in budges for the re-stocking of mundane things like surgical masks and gloves got cut because no one involved really believed they would be necessary, and anyway, there were more important things to spend the money on.