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.