'Twas the Night Before New Year's

‘Twas the Night Before New Year’s, Twenty-Twenty-One,

And all of us hoped the New Year would be one

That would help us leave Two-Thousand-Twenty behind,

And not be a year that would feel so unkind.

 

But we would not soon forget Twenty-Twenty –

You want a year full of events? We had plenty.

The year started off in the usual way,

With most of us living our lives day-to-day.

 

While in Washington, in a show of overreach,

House Democrats had cast a vote to impeach.

Never mind that they hadn’t the grounds or the cause,

That didn’t dissuade them, did not give them pause

 

No, they had determined they must make a stand

Against their arch-enemy, Bad Orange Man.

Predictably, when all the votes had been tallied,

They called to impeach. But the Senate then rallied,

 

And, finding Schiff’s arguments lacking a bit,

Rendered their votes on the case to acquit.

Congress thus spent the first month of the year

Wasting their time (which they’re best at, I fear).

 

Then came a new month, and the Super Bowl,

Would the Chiefs fin’lly achieve their loftiest goal?

It had been 50 long years since Len Dawson’s team

Had helped Kansas Citians realize their dream

 

Of winning the Big One, of wearing the crown;

Would this team repeat, or would they let us down?

The Niners appeared impossible to beat –

Could Andy Reid’s team really pull off this feat?

 

The path had been arduous, testing our mettle,

We came from behind time and again to settle

The score in the playoffs, so we felt prepared

Our confidence high, and our faith unimpaired.

 

In the Big Game, we were trailing once more,

But saved the fourth quarter to rally and score

Three more touchdowns. And so, from down 20 to 10,

The Chiefs emerged victorious in the end.

 

The town, how it rallied! We held a parade,

So happy our Champions all of us made!

The euphoria felt it would last the whole year –

But March Twenty-Twenty would dash our good cheer.

 

For out of Wuhan, a Chinese province,

Would come a new virus, one that would evince

Reactions of fear, reactions of dread,

Reactions of “Don’t believe what the news said.”

 

Did it start in a lab? Or in a meat stall?

Did a guy eat a raw bat, and unleash it all?

However it started, it began to spread

As the media helped to fill people with dread.

 

A nationwide shutdown was soon in the works,

Championed by Drs. Fauci and Birx.

“Flatten the curve!” was the cry of the day,

But, once accomplished, that goal soon gave way

 

To making sure no one, the young or the old,

Would become infected (with even a cold).

So, locked in our houses, with masks on our faces,

We had to stay home from our favorite places.

 

The rules were confusing; the guidance, it varied –

“Why the inconsistency?” many queried.

While others were happy to follow along;

If the CDC says it, it just can’t be wrong.

 

Mask or no mask? Three feet distant, or six?

Should I fear surface contact? The signals were mixed.

Is it safe to eat indoors? Safer outside?

Safe to go for a walk? In an airplane to ride?

 

Should restaurants open at half-full, or less?

Can we go to the gym? It was anyone’s guess.

Does it spread more in churches? In bars or salons?

There were myriad answers for how this thing spawns.

 

We soon learned the safest place; really, the best

Place to be – in a large crowd, a “peaceful” protest.

For the virus can’t spread when you fight for a cause,

Especially if it means getting your paws

 

On a new pair of Nikes, a big-screen TV,

An X-box, and maybe a new game or three.

And maybe the virus is killed by the smoke

Of businesses set on fire by the woke.

 

Amid all the madness, the lack of all reason,

We found ourselves in a strange election season.

One candidate campaigned, the other was hidin’,

As President Trump faced off against Joe Biden.

 

The polls, they misled us, the media suppressed,

While Facebook and Twitter did their very best

To make sure the messaging all remained skewed,

Giving their side the edge in the media feud.

 

Then the rules were all changed for the way people vote

(The virus was blamed – oh, we must stay remote!)

And the votes, they kept coming, in every swing state,

‘Til they put VP Biden on top of the slate.

 

The courts washed their hands like old Pilate of yore,

And it looked like Bad Orange Man would lead no more.

But you didn’t see protests, you didn’t see looting,

The lighting of fires, the litter, polluting,

 

No, life would go on for those opposed to Joe,

Resolved to make the best of where the winds blow.

(The woke say our “privilege” makes us feel this way;

But we’re just grown-ups, at the end of the day.)

 

And as the year closes, a “miracle’s” come true:

A vaccine is out! And not just one, but two!

As the President promised, the end is at hand,

And the grip of the ‘rona will soon leave our land.

 

(We’re now also testing, so the ratios will fall,

As state governments keep misleading us all

Into thinking those rates were as dire as they told us,

Believing we’d buy the BS that they sold us.)

 

So be not discouraged, and be of good cheer,

And let’s focus on making the coming year

Our best ever. For, through it all, we are blessed,

So yes, Twenty-Twenty-One can be our best.

 

Just remember: it matters not what job you hold,

You are essential. So be brave and bold.

Live your life freely in this coming year,

Lest you lose a year of it living in fear.

 

My sincere wish for all, young or old, near or far,

Is a prosperous New Year, whomever you are,

For prosperity, see, isn’t measured in gold,

Nor is it measured in what you can hold.

 

It’s measured in memories, measured in love,

So my wish for all is you have plenty of

The things that make life joyful, full of good cheer,

The things that can make for a wonderful year!

What's In a Name?

 In my last post, I noted that anyone who's 85 years old with multiple co-morbidities (morbid obesity, untreated hypertension, diabetes, COPD, etc.) ought not to buy unripe bananas. A friend of mine shared the post, and one of his friends commented that what I said was "cavalier."

Actually, I believe the use of that word, in that context, was cavalier, so let's unpack it.

Webster's definition of the word includes, "lacking proper concern." When it comes to mortality - from the virus or anything else - nothing could be further from the truth, as it applies to me. Anyone who knows me well would confirm that. I care deeply for those susceptible to any illness, to those with any frailty. I care for the least of these, in any regard.

This was my point, and I use it as it relates to me. I'm 62 years old. I'm overweight. I have hypertension, controlled by medication. My diet is less than optimal. My exercise regimen is regular, but not as consistent as I'd like.

I'm a football fan. In the game of life, I'm in the fourth quarter. I'd like to think that it just started, but the reality is that the difference between money and time is that we always know how much money we have, but we never know how much time we have. I could be past the two-minute warning, for all I know.

When I'm 85 - in other words, when I've spent another roughly 37% of the time I've already spent on this earth - I expect to be counting every day God gives me as a blessing to be richly savored. I won't have high confidence that I'll see 86, or 87, or 90, or 98 (as my Grandma did), or 100 (as one of my great uncles did). Each birthday celebration will be a "phew - thank you, God!" moment.

And I care deeply about that. So no one should believe that my comment was in any way related to lacking proper concern. I'm concerned deeply, and I will continue to be, for my own and others' mortality, long after this virus is but a faded memory, which it will be, sooner than you think (unless you allow the media to keep it front and center in your life, in which case, I can only feel sorry for you).

Here's the thing: when it comes to "covid," I have a choice. I can risk losing the 62nd year of my life, or I can risk losing the 85th year of my life. If this thing is still around - or if it, or something like it, comes back - when I'm 85, I'd rather lose that year to it than this year. This year, I'm still relatively young. I'm still relatively vital. I can still work out at the gym, I can still take my dogs on a brisk walk, I can still enjoy my grandkids. At 85, my grandkids will be out of college, maybe married. I doubt I'll belong to a gym. I may be in a care facility.

So I'm not going to stay home this year, and I haven't. My wife has taken six trips with me, more than she has any other year in quite a long while. I've lived life. I've dined out, gone to church, met with friends and family, taken my dogs to the park, flown, gone to the store, and traveled; all since the virus scared everybody into their basements.

And when I am 85, if this or another virus comes along - if I am in a care facility, I hope my family will respect my wishes, and force the facility to allow me out to be with them. I'd rather risk infection, from any disease, no matter its consequences, in order to be in community with those I love, however briefly, than risk dying after many months of not being able to see them, hug them, hold them.

So do I lack proper concern? On the contrary; I am very concerned. When I say that, at 85 and with multiple co-morbidities, I would not buy unripe bananas, it is not a trite statement. It is a testament to how I wish to live my life: as if every day is precious. As if, whatever my age, I won't take an expiration date for granted. That I won't buy a package of meat that expires in ten days taking for granted that I'll be around to enjoy it.

If I can manage to live my life like that - well, I'll have lived a life well-lived.

The Day We Turned the Corner

I wanted to post this so that, when things are completely back to normal (and yes, Dr. Fauci, they will be), and covid is but a fading memory, we’ll all remember the day we turned the corner and began to put it behind us.

But first, a few inconvenient facts.

I know of a person whose relative was dying. While in the hospital, the relative was tested for the viru$, and the test result was negative. When the relative entered the phase of actively dying, hospital officials informed the family that they were going to move her into the covid wing. The family asked why, since her test was negative, and were told, “We move everyone who’s dying into the covid wing.”

Fortunately, this family pushed back. Another relative was traveling to be with her in her final days, and he wouldn’t have been able to see her if she was in isolation in the covid wing. So they insisted she not be moved, and she wasn’t. How many families would not push back, would just follow the direction of the hospital authorities?

This is an actual story, from a reliable source who has no motivation to make it up. It happened. “Ah,” you say, “but it’s just one person.” Pay attention: “We move everyone who’s dying into the covid wing.” Everyone. You know how many people die every day, in any given hospital in the U.S.? You know how many hospitals are doing this?

And why move them into the covid wing? So that it can be classified as a covid death. And that puts the $ in viru$, because the CARES Act provides a 20% premium for Medicare payments to hospitals for covid patients.

Now, numerous online “fact-checking” sources (all with a liberal bias) have asserted that there is no evidence that covid numbers are being inflated for the purposes of hospitals cashing in on that premium. But they admit the premium is there, and that is undeniably an incentive. So if those numbers aren’t being inflated …

Why is a hospital moving every dying patient into the covid wing, even if they have a negative test result?

This points to an overstatement of mortality due to the viru$. Lest you doubt that, recall that the state of Colorado had to adjust their death count downward several months ago, as attending physicians’ diagnoses of cause of death (COD) differed from what state officials recorded. How big was the adjustment?

Twenty-five percent. And Colorado is just one state.

Even the CDC has acknowledged that in only 6% of cases, covid was the only COD factor listed. Six. Percent. In other words, only about 15,000 deaths.

Now, the CDC is clear that this doesn’t mean that the viru$ wasn’t a contributing factor in all those other deaths, and I’m not suggesting that, either. It may have accelerated death in someone that was teetering on the brink anyway, due to age, co-morbidities, or some combination thereof. We do know that the vast majority of deaths in Italy last spring, for example, were patients age 85 or older with multiple co-morbidities. The kind of people who shouldn’t be buying unripe bananas anyway. Whose death could be accelerated by the flu or a sinus infection.

I’m just very suspicious of the actual, covid-caused death count, based on this and other information.

Enough about mortality. On to reported cases, and positivity rates.

I now know of three instances – having occurred in two different places, hours apart – where the people involved signed up to get a PCR test for the virus, provided their contact information, and went to the test site. Once there, they found the line was more than an hour long, so they left. Went home or back to work. Didn’t get tested. And –

Were later notified that they had tested positive.

I have relayed this to other people that I know, and they have also heard of some such instances from people they know. Trustworthy sources who have no incentive to make up such things. (I’m tempted myself to sign up to get tested and not show up, just to see how prevalent this is. If I do, I’ll record the whole thing.)

Isn’t it interesting that there are no anecdotal stories of someone signing up for a test, showing up, and going home because the line is too long, then receiving notification of a negative test result?

Elon Musk, of Tesla fame (the car, not the rock band), recently tweeted that he received four of the rapid covid tests (not the PCR). Same day. Same nurse. Same facility. Same machine producing the results. And –

Two positive. Two negative.

The point of these stories is that the tests are woefully unreliable. And the process is apparently skewed to report more positive results. Even for people who never got tested, but provided their contact information so that they could be notified of a positive result.

The testing problems don’t end there. The most widely-used test, the PCR test, amplifies genetic matter from the virus in cycles. The fewer cycles required, the greater the amount of virus, or the viral load, in the subject. The greater the viral load, the more likely the subject is contagious. But –

By running a larger number of cycles, the test results in finding more genetic matter. Why is this significant? Because, over a larger number of cycles, the test may find dead fragments of the virus in people that were previously infected and didn’t know they had it, but still remain in their body. These dead fragments are incapable of infecting anyone else – in other words …

Run enough cycles, and you’ll get more positive results, but the people testing positive are not at all contagious.

According to the NY Times: “In three sets of testing data that include cycle thresholds, compiled by officials in Massachusetts, New York and Nevada, up to 90 percent of people testing positive carried barely any virus.”

That’s three different locations. Three studies. And this was published in the very left-leaning NY Times.

A Harvard epidemiologist said it’s like finding a hair from a serial killer’s head in a room weeks after that person was there, and concluding that the killer must still be in the room, and is thus a threat.

How many cycles are enough, and what constitutes too many? A University of California-Riverside virologist has said that any test with a cycle threshold above 35 is too sensitive – in other words, run more than 35 cycles, and you’ll get too many false positives; positive readings from people who can’t infect anyone. She went on: “I’m shocked that people would think that 40 could represent a positive.” She suggests a cycle threshold of 30-35. The Harvard epidemiologist would set it at 30 or less.

So how many cycles are typically used? North Carolina uses 37. New York uses 40. In my home state of Kansas, neither the Governor’s office nor the health department will disclose the threshold, but it’s said to be 42. (And why won’t they disclose it? This is the same state that suppresses other key viru$-related data, and whose health director has used data mining and graphic sleight-of-hand to mislead people regarding the efficacy of mask use in preventing viral spread.)

At a threshold of 35 vs. 40, these experts estimate that 63-90% of positives would be negative. So if we apply that to the recent nationwide one-day record of 185,000 cases reported, that means the actual positive case count would be just 18,000-68,000.

Another problem that the Harvard epidemiologist noted is the CDC’s recommendation that only symptomatic people be tested. He noted that this really tells us nothing about the infection rate, because someone with symptoms is already more likely to test positive. Why, you may ask, is this a problem, since they’re testing positive with symptoms?

It’s a problem because it drives the positivity rate, which is the rate of positive test results divided by the number of tests administered. And the positivity rate is being used as a key gating criterion for opening or keeping open schools and colleges, in places like my home state of Kansas. Why use this metric? It wasn’t used early on. It’s another example of moving the goalposts to manipulate the score.

Think about the factors that influence the positivity rate higher, that we’ve just discussed:

·        You only test people who are likely positive anyway

·        You use a cycle threshold that produces an estimated 63-90% false positives

·        You report positive results from people whose information you have, but whom you’ve never tested

Combining these factors, can we conclude anything other than that the positivity rate is vastly overstated?

Finally, I’m a data guy, so let’s look at some data. Below is a graph using CDC data on total deaths per million population, monthly, going back to 1900. This captures the 1918, 1957-58, and 1968 influenza pandemics. Note that the data shows total deaths, including those illnesses, as well as the viru$ through August of this year.

Now, the current pandemic has been compared to the 1918 flu outbreak. We’ve frequently heard, “There’s been nothing like this for 100 years.” Well, the graph puts the lie to that notion. This year looks a lot like the 1968 flu outbreak, and is an order of magnitude lower than 1918. I’ll circle back to 1968 momentarily, but first, let’s look at those three previous 20^th-century flu pandemics compared to the current one. We’ll go in reverse chronological order, citing U.S. data only. The sources are the CDC and the U.S. census.

·        2020: 251,000 deaths, 331 million population = 758 deaths/million (we know that about half the deaths have been people 75 and older; 75% had co-morbidities; and 86% were 75 or older and had co-morbidities)

·        1968: 100,000 deaths (most over the age of 65, according to CDC), 200 million population = 500 deaths/million

·        1957-58: 116,000 deaths, 172 million population = 674 deaths/million

·        1918: 675,000 deaths, 103 million population = 6,553 deaths/million

From those numbers, this pandemic looks a lot more like the ones in the ‘50s and ‘60s than 1918. This year’s numbers are only 12% higher than ’57-58, compared with 1918’s, which were nearly nine times higher than 2020.

Back to 1968. I can speak to this, because I was alive then, unlike those earlier flu outbreaks (I was born in November of ’58, but that outbreak was over by then, and I don’t remember much about the first two months of my life anyway).

I clearly remember the day JFK was assassinated, in 1963. I was five years old. I came home from school and my Mom was crying. I asked her why, and she told me that President Kennedy had been killed. I remember wondering how she knew him, since she was crying over his death. Hey, come on, I was only five.

I remember the Civil Rights movement, from Dr. King’s “I Have a Dream” speech in 1963, through the tumultuous times leading up to the 1965 Act.

I remember Dr. King’s assassination in 1968 – the same year of the flu outbreak. I remember where I was when I heard about it. Same with Bobby Kennedy’s assassination later that year.

I remember all of these significant events that occurred when I was between the ages of five and ten years old. They received heavy news coverage. (I remember other things from my own life that occurred during those years, let you think my memories are biased by recorded history.) But, you know what?

I don’t remember one single thing about the 1968 flu pandemic. Maybe I had it. Maybe someone else in my family did. Heck, maybe we all had it. But I don’t remember it. It wasn’t prominent in the news. (Of course, back then we just had the three non-cable networks, the news cycle wasn’t 24/7, and the news was merely reported, not opined upon. The facts were reported, not distorted, and the opining was left to us.)

You think there’s one 10-year-old kid today who won’t remember 2020 like I remember JFK’s assassination? If you believe that, look at the ceiling – someone painted “gullible” on it.

The numbers from that year look a lot like the numbers from this year. Yet it was a non-story. No shutdowns. No isolation. No masks.

So that was a fairly lengthy critique of COD reporting, testing, positivity rates, and covid data relative to other pandemics. The point of this post was supposed to be related to the date we turned the corner. If you’re still with me, I’ll present my prognostication.

January 20, 2021.

Sometime thereafter, states like Kansas and North Carolina and New York and Massachusetts and Nevada will quietly, and without transparency, reduce their cycle thresholds to a realistic level, and the number of positive test results will immediately fall.

The CDC will begin recommending that everyone be tested, including the asymptomatic, and that plus the reduced cycle threshold will result in a plummeting positivity rate.

Nobody who signs up for a test, but doesn’t get one, will be notified of a test result.

The 20% Medicare premium for covid cases will be eliminated, and COD reporting will become more accurate. Covid wards will empty. The mortality rate will drop.

The news media will cover nothing but how cases, positivity, and the death rate are dropping like stones.

The Pelosis and DeBlasios of the world will resume encouraging people to get out and live their lives.

The economy will be allowed to fully re-open in every state, and unemployment will return to February 2020 levels. The stock market will hit record highs.

Schools will fully re-open for in-person learning, and failure rates will decline.

And everyone who believed all the fear-mongering, will also believe the success attribution.

You see, all of the things I noted above can be easily manipulated to make a situation appear worse than it is, to make people fearful, to justify finger-pointing and blame-laying.

And all of those things can be just as easily manipulated to make a situation appear to have rapidly and dramatically improved, to allay the fears of the fearful, and to justify grand-standing and credit-taking.

Aloha, Hawaii

In 1999, I was asked to deliver an economic outlook to a group of credit unions in Hawaii. My daughter was in third grade, and it had been her dream to go there, so we took her out of school that October and made it a family trip. We weren’t sure if or when we’d go back, so in addition to visiting Oahu, where my presentation was, we visited Maui and Kauai. It immediately became our favorite destination. Besides being indescribably beautiful, the Hawaiian people are warm and welcoming in a way most of us haven’t experienced.

I found out that it was an annual conference, and that it featured an economic outlook each year, so I made sure that I did a *great* job. Sure enough, I got invited back, and we all went each year through 2004. After that, the organization that sponsored the event was merged out of existence, but by that time our daughter was at a point in school where taking her out of class for ten days or so in October wasn’t really possible. However, we were able to really immerse ourselves in the aloha spirit, and we visited each of the major islands at least once.

When our daughter graduated high school, we asked her where she wanted to go to celebrate, and without hesitation she picked Hawaii, so we went to Maui again. In 2016, I had a two-week work gig in Honolulu, and my wife went with me, and later that year, we took a cruise from Vancouver to Hawaii that visited each of the major islands. Then last year, being a Hilton Diamond member, I received an offer for a great deal to visit the Big Island and attend a timeshare presentation. I have no intention of purchasing a timeshare, but the deal was too good to pass up.

We were going to go last September but had to postpone the trip. So we went in late February and early March to coincide with our anniversary. We returned home just when the realities of COVID were starting to hit home, but we didn’t experience any of that in Hawaii.

Hawaii ranks 46th among all states and D.C. in COVID cases per capita. It ranks 50th in deaths per capita. Only Wyoming and Alaska have the same or lower deaths per capita, and Hawaii’s population density is far greater than either of those states.

However, Hawaii’s governor, David Ige, issued the strictest lockdown order of any of the 50 states. Ige issued an order that requires all visitors to Hawaii to self-quarantine for 14 days. The requirement restricts visitors to their hotel rooms, and they can only leave their rooms for medical reasons. You can’t pick up food. You have to pay to have it delivered, or order room service (but most hotels aren’t doing room service at this time). Two weeks of paying for room service? Yeah, that’s in everybody’s budget.

Visitors that want to go to more than one island have to self-quarantine for 14 days on the first island before they can board their connecting flight, then self-quarantine for 14 days upon arrival at the second island. So if you wanted to visit Maui, but the only flight you could get had a connection in Honolulu, you’d have to spend 30 days flying and sitting in your hotel room before you could enjoy your vacation.

Ige tried to make hotels issue single-use key cards that would only work when visitors first check in, then call the police if they ask for a replacement card. The police can fine people or make them fly home immediately for breaking the quarantine. Ige’s order continues through October 15. After that, if you have a negative COVID test within 72 hours before arriving in Hawaii, you don’t have to self-quarantine – unless, again, you’re visiting more than one island. For some inexplicable reason, the self-quarantine order applies to all inter-island travel, even after the COVID test option kicks in.

But now, the state has become a full-on police state, and Ige is channeling Stalin. The state police have created a team of special agents to knock on hotel room doors of suspected offenders – sort of a group of malevolent Socialist Santa Clauses, checking to see who’s naughty or nice. But in this nightmarish Christmas, the nice get to stay put in their hotel rooms, while the naughty pay a fine or get sent home, or both.

Where do these agents get their information? The “Kapu Breakers.” This is a group of Hawaiian citizens who report people who may be breaking quarantine. They may be hotel workers, restaurant workers, cab drivers, etc. Check out their Facebook page, Hawaii Quarantine Kapu Breakers. It’s a closed group, but they do list their rules. Among them:

“Do NOT approach, do NOT confront or go after a QB. If you approach, confront or go after a QB (quarantine breaker) you will be reported to authorities. We do NOT allow vigilantism. We work closely with law enforcement. DON't ruin our relationship by being a vigilante.”

“NO SCREENSHOTS POSTED ELSEWHERE WITHOUT PERMISSION. Our work can be potentially dangerous. Any screen shots that identify the group or members risks our safety. Do NOT post any names of any quarantine breakers elsewhere. You will tip them off and they will go dark to avoid being arrested.”

“DONT NAME MAKE ANY RACIAL COMMENTS, SLURS OR POSTS. Any expletives in front of racial descriptions is NOT allowed. Nazi, F**king Haole are NOT allowed or any other racial descriptions. Race is irrelevant to breaking quarantine and can get us into trouble.”

(All spelling, punctuation and grammatical errors belong to this group of geniuses.)

What’s a Haole, you ask? It’s a slur some native Hawaiians use to describe non-native Hawaiians, especially white people.

And it’s the height of irony that a group of people who rat out their fellow citizens to special agents of the state police would call anyone else a Nazi.

A few more statistics. Hawaii is heavily dependent on tourism, which accounts for 21% of state GDP. Its unemployment rate currently sits at 12.5%, third-highest in the nation. So these people are literally biting the hand that feeds them, and their fellow Hawaiians.

I never thought I’d live to see what I’d only read about in history books, and novels like 1984, but here we are. Welcome to the Left’s America (Ige is, not surprisingly, a Democrat, and the state has voted blue in all but two Presidential elections).

When Ige first laid out his extreme mandates, I blamed him, and felt sorry for the people of Hawaii. I still do feel sorry for the ones who aren’t a part of these groups (Hawaii Quarantine Kapu Breakers has 6,500 members, and Maui has its own Facebook group with just over 500 members, so these Stalinist “good citizens” only represent less than half of one percent of the state’s population. (For a further bit of irony, this group that “works closely with law enforcement” is probably in favor of defunding the police.)

Because these groups represent such a small number of Hawaiians, I won’t say that, after this whole grand social experiment created by COVID is over - meaning no travel restrictions, no masks, a different governor, etc. - I wouldn’t go back to Hawaii.

But I will say that I’m very glad we went this year, because this “f**ing Haole” also won’t say that it won’t be his last trip there.

"Are You a Good Wizard, or a Bad Wizard?"

The Wizard of Oz is a classic of American literature, and one of the most beloved movies of all time. The film, which is the most-watched in history, was based on the novel by L. Frank Baum. Baum's story carried a theme of being satisfied with what you have, and realizing how blessed you really are. It's a fanciful tale, and it set the bar for cinematography when it was made. The beginning and end are set in my native Kansas, and were filmed in black and white (likely a swipe at flyover country, but hey, what's new?). But the middle is filmed in glorious, vivid color, and the setting is a fanciful land watched over by a wise Wizard, who rules with benevolence and offers his subjects hope. The Great and Powerful Oz, as he's known, turns out to be a sham, nothing more than a huckster hiding behind a curtain, pulling levers and throwing switches to make things appear differently than they really are. But he truly is benevolent - he was thrust into power by the people of this magical land who revered this outsider. The power got to him, so he ran with it. But in a well-intentioned way.

Fast-forward to 2020 ("Do we have to?" you ask). There's a new Wizard here in the Land of Oz, one that is entirely different from Baum's Wizard - decidedly less benign, drunk on power, pulling mathematical levers and throwing graphical switches to make things appear differently than they are, not in a well-intentioned way, but to exert control. And rather than offering the subjects hope, this Wizard seeks to crush it.

The new Wizard of Oz is not one person, but rather an archetype. The new Wizard is Gov. Laura Kelly and her Kansas Department of Health and Environment (KDHE), led by Dr. Lee Norman.

My alter ego has posted several articles on social media outlining the statistical trickery plied by Dr. Norman to support his boss's policies regarding COVID. But the topic of this post warrants a deeper dive, hence we'll use the blog as our springboard. So we won't be talking about manipulating graph scales (which Norman has done), or mining data (which he's also done). We'll be talking about selectively changing metrics at the first sign of improvement in the old ones, so as to continue the exertion of control that the Wizard justifies by fomenting undue fear of the virus.

You may recall that, in the beginning, the metric was "flattening the curve." This meant not overwhelming the health care system. It had nothing to do with reducing cases. In fact, it had nothing to do with reducing deaths. The concept was that by stretching those cases and deaths out over a longer time period, we wouldn't overextend the capacity of our hospitals: beds, ICU beds, ventilators, and health care professionals.

Mission accomplished. We crushed that one. Kansas never came close to being overwhelmed. Total hospitalizations to date are a fraction of the total number of beds in the state, and remember that those hospitalizations have occurred over a period of six months. The number one location of clusters in the state was meatpacking plants - more than in correctional facilities and long-term care facilities. And whenever there was an outbreak at a meatpacking plant in western Kansas, there were ample doctors and nurses to dispatch from elsewhere in the state to deal with it. (I know, because I stayed in one of the extended stay hotels in one of those towns, and the desk clerk told me they had kept busy due to the health care workers staying there.)

So we flattened the curve - but wait. The Wizard was still reluctant to re-open the state economy. So gating criteria were established, based on rolling averages of new cases, hospitalizations, and deaths. Let's look at each of those in turn.

Overall, without looking at such metrics on a relative basis (cases and deaths per capita, hospitalizations vs. available resources), they are meaningless. Regarding deaths, first of all, the "flatten the curve" strategy was never about preventing deaths, remember? This is a virus. People are going to get sick. If they're already in poor health, they may die. But it ain't the plague. And second, daily new deaths in Kansas attributed (key word, with an asterisk after it, please) to COVID more than doubled from mid-August to mid-September, reaching 26 on September 16.

Twenty-six. That's .0009% of the Kansas population. Tragic for those lost and their families, but hardly sufficient criteria for determining whether businesses should be open or at what capacity, or whether someone can have a wedding with their full guest list. More people than that die each day in Kansas from cancer and heart disease, but the Wizard doesn't exert control over every Kansan's life to try to prevent those deaths. From the media, we hear, "Daily new deaths double in one month!" instead of "Daily new cases remain below .001% on peak day!"

As for hospitalizations, again, that was never an issue. And for many weeks, deaths were declining. So instead, the Wizard focused on new cases. Well, new cases did indeed rise after Kansas began re-opening. So hell-bent on maintaining control was the Governor that she even added a "Phase 1.5" to her phased re-opening plan. (Reminds me of the ineffective parenting ploy of telling your unruly kid that you're going to count to three to get them to stop doing something, and when you get to two, you start using fractions to allow the kid more time to misbehave before actually doing something about it.)

You know what else began increasing in Kansas about the time re-opening began?

Testing. Early on, Kansas was dead-last in testing per capita among all states. Today, it's "only" fifth from last. Regardless, increased testing is going to inevitably result in increased cases. For those who still don't believe this, consider that in places where testing has declined, so have cases. You accept that, so why can't you accept the converse? It doesn't mean that testing causes cases; let's not fall into the trap of confusing correlation with causation. What it does mean is that there have been more cases out there all along, since March, than we ever knew. Testing merely reveals them. And that means that this thing is a lot less deadly than all the malevolent Wizards would have you believe, because if the total deaths (known, but inflated by combining "died with COVID" with "died from COVID") were divided by the real number of total cases (which we'll never know), the mortality rate would be much, much lower than what's reported.

With much of the Kansas economy open (but with a mask mandate and remaining capacity limitations for some businesses), the Wizard needed a new target for exerting control. As Fall approached, that target became the schools. So a new phased plan was developed (Gov. Kelly loves her phases). And new criteria were established, chief among them being the "positivity rate." This is defined as the number of positive tests divided by the number of tests administered. Now, I could go after any of the other criteria, as they're all flawed. But let's focus on this one, because it's not just flawed, it's so statistically distorted that it means absolutely nothing.

First, while it's defined as the number of positive tests divided by the number of tests administered, that's not how the Wizard calculates it. It's being calculated as the total number of cases divided by the number of tests administered.

The first flaw in this methodology (besides the fact that it's not true to its definition) is that numerous people have been diagnosed on the basis of symptoms, and without a test being administered. They show up in the case count, but there's no positive test associated with it. (Don't believe me? I know one such person.) Is it possible to get such a diagnosis wrong? Could the symptoms actually be the flu?

Well, I had several of the COVID symptoms in early February, and I'd just spent a week on a cruise ship after spending the night in the port city, where a large festival was taking place with 100,000 attendees, so I was exposed to a lot of people. I might have thought later that I'd had COVID - except that, at the time, I tested positive for Influenza A. "Ah," you say, "but you're not a doctor. It's unlikely that a doctor would make such a mis-diagnosis."

Ya think? Let's set aside the fact that even the "experts" like Fauci still know precious little about this virus. My own doctor - who's been in practice for decades, and has treated infectious diseases both in the U.S. and at his clinic in Africa - also thought he had it in February. He had more of the symptoms than I did. He had an antibody test run (as did I, just to be sure) and it was negative (as was mine). So yes, mis-diagnoses do happen, especially for illnesses that have similar symptoms. It's why we test, whether for COVID or the flu.

The upshot of this is that total cases probably include some that were diagnosed on the basis of symptoms, and thus might not be actual COVID cases, thus they would tend to overstate the positivity rate.

A related issue that actually would result in a higher positivity rate is the fact that there are probably a lot of people walking around who have had COVID, dating back to March or even February, but never had symptoms and never got tested. "Aha!" you say, "that means the positivity rate is too high!"

High relative to what? What constitutes an acceptable positivity rate? The fact that there might be a large number of unreported cases out there (even the CDC has estimated that it may be as high as 2.5 times the number of reported cases) does speak to the infection rate. But, more importantly, it also shows that the hospitalization and death rates are far lower than what's reported. Thus this illness probably spreads more easily than we know, but it's far less deadly than we think, unless you're at high risk.

I could talk about the influence of false positives and false negatives in testing, but I won't waste time on that, because the impact would be relatively minor, and possibly offsetting.

But here's my real statistical issue with the positivity rate: it, like total cases, is a function of testing. There are two reasons for this. The first is that the lower the number of tests administered, the fewer cases you're likely to detect. But the second, and more important, is a function of who's being tested.

Have you been tested, even if you didn't have symptoms and hadn't been in contact with anyone who was infected? Would you be? Just for the sake of science, would you make an appointment or wait in line at a drive-thru testing site, and have a swab shoved halfway into your brain, if you felt perfectly fine? The vast majority of us would say, "No thanks."

So who's being tested?

People who have symptoms, or have been in contact with a person known to be infected.

Read it again, slowly. Those people will be more likely to have COVID than those of us who are just walking around, feeling fine, not having a lot of contact with people other than our families. So of course the positivity rate among those tested will be higher. Yet still, the Kansas rate is just 11.3%. Think of it this way: that's 88.7% of the population that aren't positive for COVID, even if they have symptoms (less likely) or have been in contact with a positive case (more likely).

In samples of people that were tested without symptoms or contact with an infected person, the numbers are starkly different. At the Tour de France recently, 785 tests were administered to riders and team personnel. The riders had been racing for two weeks in close quarters, without masks, spittle and mucus flying (gross, but true). Sure, they took precautions before and after each stage, but are you telling me that COVID can only spread when you're hanging out talking to reporters, or getting a massage, and not while you're racing?

How many positives? Zero. Zilch. Nada. Positivity rate: 0.0%.

At a Johnson County, Kansas hospital, 7,500 pre-op patients were tested (you have to get a test before having a procedure done in a hospital, including giving birth). These were people without symptoms and without contact with an infected person. The positive rate? 0.6%. So while there may be a lot more people who have had it back in the early months of the pandemic, there don't seem to be a lot of asymptomatic people with it.

Beyond that, how does the math play into this metric in terms of the relationship between number of tests and positivity rate? The table and graph that appear at the end of this post break it down, but I'll summarize here.

• Rhode Island has done the most testing per capita of any state, having administered over 637,000 tests per 1 million population (1M). Its positive rate is 3.5%, which is below the Kansas threshold for fully re-opening schools.
• Alaska is second, having administered more than 578,000 tests/1M. Its positive rate is 1.6%.
• New York has tested over 504,000/1M population. Despite having been the epicenter of the virus in the U.S., with more deaths than any other state, and more than Texas and Florida combined (in spite of having a smaller population than either of those states), New York's positive rate is 4.9%, again below the Kansas threshold to re-open the schools.
• As noted before, Kansas has administered the fifth-lowest tests/1M of any state, at less than 163,000/1M. That's just over half the average of all states. Thus its positivity rate is the aforementioned 11.3%, which is in the "Remote Only" range of the state's recommended guidelines (fortunately for the kids, most school districts aren't following those guidelines entirely - more on that later).
• To illustrate the influence of testing on the positive rate, consider this: the average positive rate of the top 25 states in terms of tests/1M is 5.4%. (If you look at a line of best fit on the graph below, it follows the top 18, which have an average rate of 5.2%.) The average rate of the bottom 25 is 8.3% (again, a line of best fit would follow the bottom 18, which have an average rate of 9.8% - nearly twice the top 18). The distortion is clearly evident.

What if Kansas had tested more, going beyond just the symptomatic or in-contact individuals? You could argue that there might be 11.3% of those people that would test positive as well, but the evidence from random testing like the Tour de France or the hospital example would suggest that the marginal percentage would be nearer zero.

Using that quite reasonable assumption, if Kansas had tested at the national average rate of tests/1M, its positive rate would be just 6.2%. And if it had tested at 500,000 tests/1M, as the top three states listed above did, its positive rate would be just 3.6%.

To further put the positive rate in its proper place (the dustbin of mathematics), consider that Kansas' rate ranks eighth among all states (only one state out of the top 33 in testing has a positive rate above 10%). Yet, Kansas ranks 29th in cases/1M, and 42nd in deaths/1M. Hardly a hotspot.

As an aside, but related, for anyone who still believes the debunked "study" that used disconnected extrapolation to claim that the Sturgis motorcycle rally resulted in 260,000 infections, I must ask: are you that completely innumerate? If so, you shouldn't be trusted with money, among other things.

About 460,000 people attended the Sturgis rally. If that resulted in 260,000 infections, we have an infection rate of 57%. "Well," you say, "it was a super-spreader event, after all." Riiiight. As noted previously, the primary cluster sites in Kansas were meatpacking plants. Those resulted in about 3,500 cases, among workers and within those communities. Now, a precise per capita figure isn't possible, as we can't define the "capita" in question precisely. But if we just look at the populations of the two counties where those plants are concentrated, it's about 70,000. So the infection rate per capita from those clusters is probably about 5%. If you actually believe that Sturgis could have produced an infection rate 11 times that of those clusters - well, let's just say you'd better protect your fingers and toes, because you probably need them to be able to count. (The same people who still believe this also believe that no cases resulted from protests or riots.)

Finally, a word about remote learning: it's bad for the kids, bad for parents, and bad for most teachers. The kids don't like it, the parents don't like it, and most teachers don't like it. Anecdotally, every kid I know who was given a choice between in-person and remote learning chose the former. And in every case I know of where the choice was the latter, the parent made that choice, not the kid.

In the Kansas City area, on the first day of remote learning this school year, several districts experienced widespread technology issues so severe that kids couldn't even connect, and thus didn't really start "school" until the next day. (This makes a very strong case for school choice. In the private sector, we test technology before putting it into production.)

The lesson in all of this is that anytime the Wizard begins to speak, it's a safe bet that levers are being pulled and switches are being thrown behind the curtain, all in an effort to distort reality. Let's see the Wizard for the sham s/he is.

Things That Make Me Go "Hmmm ..."

 America is certainly not suffering from an irony deficiency these days. If irony could cure the 'rona, in fact, everyone would be back to work and unemployment would be under 3% again. Herewith, some things that make me go, "Hmmm ..."

We were told that if everyone wore a mask, everywhere in public, for just two weeks, the 'rona would disappear. (Even though many Asians have been wearing masks during flu season for years, and the flu hasn't gone anywhere - and that's with a vaccine.) My alter ego conducted a decidedly unscientific survey on Facebook recently regarding individuals' observation of mask-wearing in public places. While the sample size was admittedly small, all of the respondents were people who, for the most part, have been getting out and about since things re-opened in early May, so there were plenty of data points. Their observations?

Since the mask mandates went into effect (which varies by jurisdiction, but it's generally been a couple of months or more) - whether mandated by jurisdictions or by businesses - everyone has been wearing masks to grocery stores, big box retailers, small retailers, restaurants when not seated, financial institutions and service businesses like salons. Some people are wearing them when waiting to pick up food curbside, or when walking between their cars and stores or restaurants. As far as I know, pretty much all churches are requiring them for indoor worship. Sporting events that are open to fans require them. Airports and airlines require them. Hotels require them in public places. The only place that few people have been observed wearing them is when outdoors - walking, biking, etc.

So why is the 'rona still around? True, new cases are down, and all of the really meaningful numbers - new deaths, hospitalizations, ICU bed use, etc. - are very positive, and have been trending in the right direction for many weeks. (You may not be aware of these facts. The media doesn't report them.) "Ah," you say, "that just proves the masks work!"

No, it does not.

The story was that masks would stop the spread of the virus. Not death if you caught it. Not the need to be hospitalized, or be in the ICU. Stopping the spread would have meant a significant decline in new cases.

"Ah," you say, "it's those college kids, gathering en masse at their frat parties!"

Please. That sounds like a Buddy Hackett stand-up routine: "These kids today ..." (If you weren't around in the '70s, look him up - he was a funny guy.) New weekly cases are highest among the 18-24 age cohort, so it's true that those parties are likely leading to a larger number of infections. But even among that age group, new weekly cases are much lower than they were in early July, and they've been generally falling since then. And we all know that the concern is that those darned kids will go home and visit grandma and grandpa, and hospitalizations, ICU bed use, and deaths will all spike, right?

You know which age cohort has the lowest number of new weekly cases? The under-18 crowd, followed very, very closely by those 65 and older. And new weekly cases have been declining sharply since July for all age groups. Plus hospitalizations, ICU bed use and deaths are falling, as noted above.

So the question remains: if widespread mask use could eradicate the virus in a short time, and their use has been widespread since May, why is it still around? Anybody who believes masks are the reason we're seeing declining cases now is either being disingenuous, or doesn't understand statistics, or both. And, they're the same people who are screaming that cases are spiking.

A related thing that makes me go, "Hmmm ..." is the Sturgis motorcycle rally. It happened the second week of August, and about 450,000 people converged on the little burg of Sturgis, SD (population 7,000). In other words, the rally increased the town's population by more than 64-fold. Hardly any of the bikers wore masks. The media warned in advance it would be a "super-spreader event."

So how many cases have been reported related to the rally? Less than 250, from ten states. The total cases from any one of those states represents a lower infection rate than the state's overall, pre-Sturgis infection rate. And 250 cases out of more than 450,000 people is about a .05% infection rate. Without masks. Hmmm ...

Maybe the Sturgis rally was actually a protest. After all, we know the virus doesn't spread during protests (or riots).

Probably the thing that has made me go, "Hmmm ..." the most in 2020 is the fact that, with every bit of positive data related to the virus, the goalposts get moved. No, the goalposts don't just get moved, they get replaced with new measures of a goal. We go from goalposts to soccer goals to billiards pockets to golf holes.

Herewith: Remember "flatten the curve?" The idea was to shut down the economy and become hermits, so that while the number of cases, hospitalizations and deaths would be the same as if we didn't, they would occur over a longer period of time. Thus the need for hospital rooms, ICU beds and ventilators would overwhelm the capacity of those resources, forcing doctors to pick and choose who gets those resources, and who dies without them, as they had to do in Spain and Italy.

I'm going to repeat, a little louder for the people in the back (or on the left): the acknowledgement was that the number of cases, hospitalizations and deaths would be the same as if we hadn't shut down. They would just occur over a longer period of time, so the curve would be flatter. It was never about preventing infections altogether. The keys were to wash your hands, cover your coughs and sneezes, and stay at home. (The first two should always be done, so that you don't spread colds, flu, norovirus and other nastiness, so remember that when the 'rona is finally behind us.)

Mission accomplished. We flattened the curve, albeit at a cost very dear, as we flattened a lot of businesses and retirement accounts, too. (We even flattened much of the health care system, as that sector shed millions of jobs, due in part to the cessation of elective procedures and preventive care - which is bearing, and will continue to bear, its own cost - and in part due to the very simple fact that we did not need all the health care workers we thought we'd need to respond to COVID, other than in the NYC metro. And that was due to mismanagement by leadership there.)

So, the time came to re-open. The White House Task Force's health care professionals established "gating criteria" to safely re-open, based on 14-day declining trends in symptoms and cases, as well as adequate critical care capacity and "robust" testing. (Note that the criteria related to symptoms were based on reported symptoms, and could include symptoms of influenza. Hmmm ...)

Many states began re-opening in early May. Cases began to rise everywhere, and continued to rise into July. However, so did testing. (It's curious: federal and jurisdictional health care officials release information that allows us to create handy graphs of new cases per day and new deaths per day, but we can't get data on new tests per day to plot against the cases. And they still aren't reporting confirmed recoveries, which would be useful to see overall and by age cohort. Hmmm and hmmm ...)

While cases rose from May through July, however, deaths declined (even in NYC, which had "won the war" against COVID, according to the ever-delusional and self-promoting Cuomo). And if cases continued to rise while deaths declined, that means that the mortality rate has continued to fall since states re-opened their economies. (That's another piece of data that health officials don't report as a time series.) Nationally, the mortality rate (deaths divided by reported cases, a flawed number in and of itself, as I've noted before) is about 3%. However, that's skewed by a number of states whose leadership mis-managed the response to the pandemic: NY, NJ, MA, IL, PA, MI ... I could go on. In most states, it's less than 2%, including many of the states that were criticized for their re-opening plans, such as FL. Here in KS, it's barely 1%.

Instead of reporting those trends, many states are justifying keeping things partly shut down, and mandating masks, at least until Nov. 4 (wink). How? They've come up with a new metric to replace the previous goalposts of hospital capacity, then cases:

The positivity rate.

This is the number of positive test results divided by the number of tests administered. It's being used by municipalities, schools, colleges and universities as a benchmark for when they shut things down or allow certain things.

Folks, if you took a statistics course in college, and can't immediately see the bias in this measure, demand your money back. I'll give you a quick lesson, and we can split the refunded tuition. Fair?

Who gets tested? Everybody? A random sample of the population at large? No. The statistically overwhelming majority (we're talking at least 99%) of people who get tested either a) present with symptoms, or b) have been in contact with someone who tested positive. In other words ...

They're more likely to have COVID than anyone not in one of those two categories. So of course more of them are going to test positive, hence a higher "positivity rate."

It means nothing.

"Ah," you say, "but some people are going to the free drive-thru test sites and getting tested just to be sure they don't have it." Really, my dear naif? Why would I do that, when I could test negative, and then get infected the very next week, and have to be tested again? Do you personally know a single soul who's done that? But for the sake of argument, let's say that a million Americans have done that. (That would be an unrealistically large number, but I'll humor the naive here.) That would be 1.1% of the total tests administered to date. Remember when I argued that at least 99% of those tested are symptomatic or have been exposed? There you have it.

In Kansas, the positivity rate, as reported, is 17.3%, and is being used by state health officials and the governor to scare the bejeebers out of the unwitting populace. (They've used some other statistical sleight-of-hand, too.) However, a Johnson County medical center conducted close to 8,000 tests to pre-operative patients who were required to be tested before admission, and found a positivity rate of 0.5%.

So now, schools are setting arbitrary numbers like a 5% positivity rate (why not 10%, or 3%, or 7.1264%?) as the criteria for re-opening. The statistic means nothing, and it totally ignores the extremely low severity rate of those positive tests, especially among the school-aged population.

One more thing that makes me go, "Hmmm ..." - people using nonsensical analogies as though they were iron-clad, pure common sense notions that should explain to anyone why they should agree to something. The best example is the ridiculous analogy that it took decades to mandate seat belts, and now they're the law and everyone wears them, thus no one who wears a seat belt should take issue with wearing a mask. This actually defies common sense.

First, there is no science that suggests that seat belts don't work. There is science - if you care to look for it and listen to it with an open mind - that suggests that masks are ineffective. Second, seat belts are the law, and there are probably people who wouldn't wear them if they weren't.

But where the analogy really breaks down is here: the argument is that you wear a mask not to protect yourself, but to protect others. It's the only morally right choice. It's ethical. It's compassionate. Even Jesus taught that we should wear masks, some churches tell us. However, seat belts are worn not to protect others, but to protect yourself. So, if we're using vehicles, here's the better analogy as it relates to protecting others out of a sense of selflessness.

Do you speed? Occasionally stray from your lane? Look at your phone while you're driving? If you do any of those things, you are endangering the lives of others. So if you do any of those things, fermez la bouche about masks, already.

Some other "Hmmm ..." moments:

• If Trump missed the boat on the virus, as Biden and now Cuomo (lmao on that one!) claim, why are cases, deaths, hospitalizations, and the mortality rate declining?
• If Biden has the answer to COVID, as he claimed in his DNC acceptance speech, why isn't he sharing it? Why is he using this valuable secret as a bargaining chip with voters? Isn't every death since his speech squarely on his shoulders?
• If the riots really are Trump's fault, why did the violence continue, and even ramp up, when Federal agents left places like Portland? And why aren't the riots happening on remotely the same scale, if at all, in red states and cities?
• If the polls are to be believed (hello, 2016?), and CNN and MSNBC are to be believed (hello, reality), and Biden really does have a lock on this thing, why do the Dems continue to throw widespread violence, false narratives, and conspiracy theories at Trump, hoping and praying for something that sticks?
• If Biden is the best choice for President, why can't anyone who's planning to vote for him articulate why, without mentioning Donald Trump? Even his own campaign is incapable of that. Oh, sure, they say "he has a plan" about this or about that. But when pressed (all too rarely) by the media to articulate it, they start invoking the "T-word."
• A reported 80% of voters believe that Biden won't live through a first term. Even more believe that he's not capable of making the decisions the office requires, regardless of how long he lives. That means that his choice of running mate should be someone palatable to American voters as the top of the ticket, since that person will likely be running the country, de facto or de jure, at some point within the next four years. So - why use demographic criteria to select somebody who couldn't get out of single digits in the Democrat primaries? Warren, Klobuchar and Mayor Pete all appealed more broadly to voters, and each of them ticked at least one woke identity politics box. When Harris dropped out, she was polling at 3.4%. The only way this pick makes sense is if we consider that the reason she was faring so poorly was because, as bloomberg.com reported, "she was unable to define herself ideologically and explain to voters what she stood for." That aligns perfectly with her running mate.

Your Hit Parade

(The title comes from a radio and TV show that aired before most of you were born.)

I didn't watch the Democrat National Convention. (And remember, folks, it's Democrat party, not Democratic. There's nothing remotely Democratic about today's Democrat party. They don't like democracy at all.)

It's not that I don't want to be informed. It's that I do. And I don't think there's much information that comes out of political party conventions.

I also don't watch the news much. Oh, I catch snippets here and there, but it's largely become so predictable that I can give the daily "news"cast as such:

"Blah blah blah Trump bad blah blah COVID blah blah blah mask blah blah Postal Service blah blah blah peaceful protests blah blah new cases blah blah blah storm troopers blah blah inland hurricane rips through Northern Iowa -"

Wait, you say - that last part has never been on the news. An inland hurricane really ripped through Northern Iowa??

It did. Google it. Maybe you'll get a hit on some local Cedar Rapids station that covered it. Assuming their power is back on.

Anyway, I did catch just enough snippets to garner the lowlights of the DNC. I herewith offer the Curmudgeon's quick hits on the convention.

• AOC only got 60 seconds. That speaks volumes about what the Dem rank and file think of her, and what letting her riff might have done to boost Trump's numbers. Yet CNN said that she proved in 60 seconds why she's "the future of the party." Maybe if the party in question needs a bartender. I'd have given her a whole hour. Talk about entertainment. Afterward, one pundit said she deserved more time because "she controls the House of Representatives, although she's not the most incandescent bulb in the intellectual chandelier."
• Ah, the Obamas. First we got Michelle, who said, "You know I hate politics." In the middle of a political speech. At a political convention. And then we got Barack, who reminded us all why Trump got elected in the first place.
• Bill Clinton basically lectured Trump on Oval Office decorum. *Ahem.* How is it that Bill Cosby is behind bars, and this guy is giving Dem convention speeches chastising the current President for how he conducts himself in the Oval Office? Was this meant to be humor? I hope so.
• Hillary was also in the lineup. (#irrelevant) I swear that woman is harder to get rid of than a cockroach infestation. And about as pleasant to have around.
• Andrew Cuomo (aka "Fredo's big brother") spent his time boasting about how well he did managing the COVID pandemic in New York. Yes, he really did. He said that the "European virus" was invading New York while President Trump was focused on China. (You know, that country where COVID originated.) And apparently that nasty "European virus" forced infected senior citizens back into their nursing homes where they could super-spread the little bug like a viral Gatling gun, and kill additional thousands of people. Keep repeating it, Godfather, and maybe someday you'll believe it yourself. Cuomo's biggest contribution to the COVID experience has been that now even us Midwesterners pronounce it "VEN-talatah."
• And then there was the man himself: Joe Biden. I'm glad his speech wasn't any longer than it was, because I have friends who are Democrats, and I'm quite certain that every Democrat was holding his or her breath the entire time Joe was reading - er, giving his speech. He didn't stammer, lose his train of thought, misstate where he was, or commit even one of the gaffes that have made him famous. For Biden, that alone is a mighty victory. And that's the problem with the concept of Joe as President: the bar is so low with this guy, what would get done? Getting through the oath of office without forgetting his name could turn out to be the greatest accomplishment of a Biden presidency.
• He apparently did say that he has the answers to COVID. So why isn't he sharing them now, instead of waiting until January? Unless he's lying, every death since his August 20 speech will rest squarely on his stooped shoulders.
• Perhaps the most telling observation: every speech was about Donald Trump. No one talked about what a great leader Joe Biden will be, not even Joe Biden. Nobody laid out Biden's policy prescriptions for America, not even Joe Biden. Barack Obama, his former boss, said nothing about how he relied on Joe as his strong #2, and how confident he is that Joe will be a great leader. AOC didn't even mention Joe Biden.

And this is what we're left with. Nobody in America supports Joe Biden for who he is. People only support him for who he is not. And that's hardly a recipe for success.