What Have You Learned, Grasshopper?

If you weren't around in the early 1970s, you may not get the title reference. It comes from the iconic TV series "Kung Fu," starring David Carradine. Carradine's character is an orphan growing up in a monastery in (appropriately) China, where he learns the ancient martial art of Kung Fu from his mentor, Master Po, who nicknames the lad "Grasshopper." As Po teaches the boy various life lessons, he asks the question in this post's title.

What the Curmudgeon is applying this question to is the pandemic, and the Grasshopper in question is his audience in the collective. Sixteen months after this fiasco first hit our radar, and now that it is in the rear-view mirror (and if you think it's not, you clearly don't look at the data, you only watch liberal news sources; the seven-day average of daily new cases in the U.S. as of this writing is the lowest since March 28, 2020, when most of us still didn't know what this virus was called, we just knew we couldn't find toilet paper) - now that the mask theatre is over in all sane places, now that businesses are fully open in all sane places (and even California and New York, for crying out loud), now that the vast majority of Americans are no longer staying at home, now that leisure travel has normalized - what have we learned?

Before I set forth my take on the key lessons learned from the pandemic, let me lay out a few caveats, less I offend (though I surely will, assuming there's anyone left who reads this blog who hasn't unfriended my alter ego on Facebook). Every death from this virus has been a tragedy, and if you've lost a loved one or a friend, I'm sorry for your loss. If you were ill from it, I'm sorry for that too, and I hope you're healthy now. I'm going to put forth some numbers as pure data points, but I recognize that every number represents a human life. So does the number of people who die from suicide (I lost a loved one to that cause of death in 2020). So does the number of black kids killed by gang violence, which you don't hear about in the media, because cops didn't kill them. So does the number of people killed by drunk drivers. So does the number of people who overdose on fentanyl smuggled across our southern border, which has increased dramatically this year. So does the number of kids who die of the flu every year. You get the idea. Death is tragic, regardless the cause.

Also - if wearing a mask makes, or has made, you feel safer, that's okay with me. If you're vaccinated, or plan to be in the near future, that's your choice. I'm not making any judgements about any choices anyone makes, or has made, about this pandemic. Hey, early on, I was looking for masks when there were none to be found, and we had a grocery-sanitizing routine that would rival surgery prep. Then we started looking at data. But not everyone does, and not everyone follows the same sources of information, and that's okay. So whatever your view, whatever your choice, you do you. But let me do me. And please, instead of just swallowing whatever CNN or Joe Biden or Tony Fauci says - look at some actual numbers, in their proper context. That's what this post is intended to provide. Don't agree? That's okay.

Having gotten that out of the way, herewith are the Curmudgeon's lessons from the SARS-Cov2 pandemic. Warning: it's a long read, 20 minutes or so, with a lot of data. That's good; data supports facts. You won't find data behind propaganda. But don't worry, the takeaways are numbered, so feel free to read a few at a time, then come back for more.

1. 1984 arrived about 36 years late. This lesson hit close to home: Every EC post related to the virus from the Spring of 2020 that my alter ego shared to Facebook showed up in his Memories this year as "Content Not Available" - meaning that the Zuckerbergians censored it. The Curmudgeon takes pride in the fact that he is viewed as a threat by the Orwellian Zuckmeister, because that is proof that the Curmudgeon speaks the truth. Big Brother Zuck leaves his fellow propagandists alone.

2. Everyone's an expert, and most Americans are gullible. Chiropractors posted Youtube videos proclaiming expertise about virology. An enterprising young woman without a medical degree created a Facebook profile titled "Your Local Epidemiologist" and used it as a platform to parrot every precious word that Tony Fauci uttered. And otherwise smart people lapped that stuff up like it was etched by the Almighty on stone tablets brought down from Mount Sinai by Moses himself, and they helped it spread across social media like a California wildfire. Oh, and all my Facebook friends jumped from being constitutional scholars to being epidemiologists faster than SARS-Cov2 can jump from a maskless sneezer to the poor mouth-breather crossing his path.

3. The pangolin is innocent. We can pretty much put the myth that this thing leapt from an animal to a human to bed. The earliest infected humans, we now know, worked in the Wuhan lab where this thing was likely engineered. Well, not engineered exactly, but modified from bat viruses to adapt readily to humans - supercharged, we now know from Wuhan Tony's emails, to be highly infectious to humans. And those early cases showed a virus that had already adapted to human transmission.

Not so with SARS and MERS, which were naturally transmitted from animals to humans. Those viruses took time to adapt to humans as they spread. SARS-Cov2 was already adapted. In a lab. As a result of gain-of-function research. Funded by a U.S. agency. Led by Dr. Anthony Fauci.

4. And, having followed that chain of events, we know that the Father of COVID-19, as it is also known - the Engineer of SARS-Cov2 - was then put in charge of managing the response to the pandemic unleashed by a mistake in the lab that he enabled to develop it. Is that wise? Or is it allowing the leader of the inmates to run the asylum? Fauci engaged in experimentation using human subjects of the kind not seen since Tuskegee or the Third Reich, except Fauci didn't discriminate against blacks or Jews. He enabled the engineering of a virus that he knew could be unleashed upon the entire world.

5. To further our criticism of Dr. Fauci, he has offered up more flip-flops than a Ron-Jon's surf shop in a Florida beach town. But more importantly, he has lied - repeatedly. His biggest lies were about the virus's origins, and about the effectiveness of masks. Let's address the latter as a separate lesson learned.

6. Masks. Don't. Work. Early on in the pandemic, having noted on a trip to Hawaii just prior to this thing breaking wide open that a number of Asian travelers were wearing masks, the Curmudgeon asked a friend whether masks are effective. At the time, Fauci et. al. were saying they weren't needed, because they don't work. But the Curmudgeon had to wonder if these Asian travelers were on to something, because after all, the virus - and so many other viruses - was born in their backyard.

The Curmudgeon's friend is a wicked smart retired veterinarian who, prior to working for a multinational pharma company as a research vet (studying, among other things, coronaviruses and vaccines), was in private practice for nearly two decades, during which time he performed numerous surgeries. This was his response regarding the purpose of masks:

"We wore masks in surgery to keep a sterile field sterile. And what we were worried about was bacteria, not viruses. Bacteria are boulders; viruses are pebbles. A virus would pass right through a mask."

This is precisely what Tony Fauci told a colleague in an email who had asked him, in February 2020, whether she should wear a mask on a trip. On an airplane. Where you're still required to wear a mask. Even though the air filtration is better than in a restaurant. Where you're no longer required to wear a mask. But I digress. Fauci told his colleague that masks would be ineffective against a virus due to the small size of the droplets, which would pass right through the mask.

Fauci was "confronted" with the flip-flop between that early position and his later position that masks are the most effective defense against transmission of the virus - and, indeed, that "it's just common sense" (so much for "the science") that two masks are even more effective. ("Confronted" is in quotes because the questions actually came from a Fauci-friendly reporter from a left-leaning news outlet, the only sources to which Fauci will grant interviews.) His response?

He said that the science changed, and that "we now know things we didn't know then." Well, no sir. The science, as it pertains to the size of a virus, has not changed at all. Are SARS-Cov2 droplets suddenly the size of bacteria? Nope. The change that he and other "experts" have referred to is the "discovery" that asymptomatic people cant transmit the virus. That has diddly-boo to do with the size of virus droplets. But just as importantly, this is a coronavirus. So is the common cold. We've always known that an asymptomatic person can transmit the common cold, or the flu, or any other virus. As many as 50% of flu infections come from asymptomatic people. We know this. If this is news to you, turn in your doctor card. Be sure and dust off the Cracker Jack crumbs first.

Back to the size of virus droplets. Given the fact that they didn't change, there are only two possibilities (this is a logic problem, kids). Either Fauci was wrong from the get when he said masks are ineffective against transmission of viruses due to the small size of the droplets, in which case he shouldn't be a doctor in the first place; or, when he subsequently began saying that masks are effective, he began lying. Either/or. There is no option C. And I do think he's qualified to be a doctor, frighteningly. (So was Josef Mengele, but we didn't put him in charge of cleaning up the experiments he created.) So the conclusion is that he lied. And he's been lying ever since. A lot.

7. The shutdowns were unnecessary and ineffective. Look at the data. U.S. cases fell from mid-July 2020 to mid-September, when most of America was open for business. Cases peaked in early January, and fell precipitously after that, in spite of the fact that the vaccine rollout hadn't hit 50% until just recently. What else changed in early January? After the election results were in, testing cycle thresholds were dropped nationwide, resulting in a very sharp drop in the reporting of false positive results. Hmmm. More on that later.

8. The follow-on effects of the shutdowns will be with us for a while, and are evidence that the "experts" who thought the shutdowns were necessary and a good idea are a bunch of dumbasses. Lumber prices. Gas prices. Labor shortages. Travel logjams. Inflation. A housing bubble. Chicken shortages, for crying out loud.

9. For the vast majority of us, there is little, if any, reason to get vaccinated. This is a simple matter of statistics. For the average American, you have about a 10% chance of getting the virus. However, statistically speaking, the overwhelmingly greatest factor influencing transmission (not mortality; more on that later) is population density. So, for a guy like me living in the Kansas City metro vs. NYC, my odds are a bit lower. And, as a white male, my odds are lower still, closer to about 6%. That means I have a 94% chance of not contracting the virus. Given that we now know the vaccines' efficacy rate is only about 90%, not the 94% originally hyped, I'm better off taking my chances. Even if we just take the average one-in-ten odds of getting the virus, it's a statistical push. So if there is any chance whatsoever of complications from the vaccine, there's no point in running the risk. Especially since, given my age and lack of significant co-morbidities, I have at least a 98% chance of surviving the virus if I contract it. If I were 85 and had multiple co-morbidities, the math would be different.

Now, I'm not a conspiracy theorist when it comes to the current vaccines against this virus. I don't see them as "experimental." I do know that they do not have full FDA approval though; they only have emergency use authorization. I also know that the mRNA technology is unproven, and the long-term effects in terms of auto-immune impact are unknown - and that means just that, they're unknown. Those effects could be nothing. Or they could be significant. It's too soon to know. I also know that the adverse reactions to this vaccine are a statistical anomaly, but at the same time they are undoubtedly being under-reported, and if any other vaccine had this many adverse reactions reported, it would have been pulled off the market by now. There is ample evidentiary precedent for this.

Bottom line: I am not in the conspiracy theory camp regarding these vaccines, nor am I an anti-vaxxer in general (I get the flu vaccine every year, because I'm around my grandkids, who are at-risk when it comes to the flu, whereas I'm not around anyone who's in the SARS-Cov2 at-risk population). But I do know statistics, and I know my odds are the same with the vaccine or without it. So as long as there are any question marks about it, I'm waiting. When there are traditional vaccines available that have full FDA approval, I'll be more likely to sign up.

It makes even less sense to me to vaccinate kids. The mortality rate among those aged 0-17 is infinitesimally small: less than .0005%. Yet the CDC is now studying an alarmingly high incidence of myocarditis among young people who've been vaccinated. Now, only 275 cases have been reported in the U.S. But that's between about three and 30 times the number expected. And in Israel, where this side effect first showed up, a number of kids have died. Again, any other vaccine - especially without full FDA approval - would be pulled off the market with an incidence rate of a potentially fatal side effect that high.

Now, some news reports are screeching about how new "variants" (a word that should be scrubbed from the English language, as its only purpose is to scare people who don't know any better) are more dangerous to kids. Really? Then show me the data. Show me how cases among kids are increasing. Show me how deaths among kids are increasing. You can't. Because they're not. There have been zero COVID deaths among those aged 0-17 years in the month of June, 2021. But there's been at least one death from myocarditis following the vaccine.

Some reporting has indicated that, for most of these cases, the condition clears up within a few months. But I wouldn't want my kid to have heart inflammation for several months as a result of a vaccine intended to prevent an illness that, for the overwhelming majority of kids (like more than 99.99%), will not only not affect them for four months, they probably won't even know they have it, and it won't affect them for a minute. Having said all that, it's every individual's - and parent's - choice. So if you've vaccinated your kid, or plan to, you do you. I assume you can weigh the risk-reward for yourself.

10. This thing has been massively overblown. It's no more than a bad flu season. Sorry, fearmongers; the truth is in the data. If you plot a graph of excess mortality per capita in the U.S. by year, 2020 looks a lot like the 1968 and 1957 influenza pandemics. (There were no shutdowns for either of those. No one wore masks. They were both viruses. Asymptomatic people could transmit them.) The 2020 pandemic gets compared to the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic. Not. Even. Close. Excess mortality per capita that year was a huge spike compared to 2020, 1968 and 1957.

Remember, we're talking per capita here, which you have to do for comparative purposes. Populations grow. Let's break down the numbers for comparison.

2020 SARS-Cov2 pandemic: 34,259,904 U.S. cases, 613,388 U.S. deaths, total U.S. population 372,817,890 (as of this writing). That's 10.3% cases per capita, .19% of the population died *with* the virus (more on that later), and a CFR (case fatality rate) of 1.8%, about half the number we were originally presented with in early 2020. We'll talk about age (and co-morbidities) in more detail later, but most of the deaths were among those aged 65 and older.

1968 flu pandemic: 100,000 U.S. deaths, total U.S. population 200,700,000. That's .05% of the population. However, most of the deaths were among those over 65 years of age, as was the case with SARS-Cov2. And in 1968, Americans in that age cohort represented less than 10% of the population, vs. 16.5% of the population in 2020, thanks to the aging Boomers. So, adjusting for population distribution, 2.75% of the 65+ population died of the flu in 1968, vs. 3.6% of this virus in 2020. Pretty close.

1957 flu pandemic: 116,000 U.S. deaths, total U.S. population 172,000,000. That's .07% of the population. However, in 1957, less than 9% of the population was over the age of 65. So again adjusting for population distribution, 3.7% of the 65+ population died of the flu in 1957, vs. 3.6% of SARS-Cov2 in 2020.

That's right: the 1957 flu pandemic was deadlier on a per capita basis, adjusted for population distribution, than the COVID pandemic. Yet no masks, no shutdowns. Now, you may say "what about people younger than 65?" Two answers: first, the flu is far deadlier for kids than SARS-Cov2, so a flu pandemic is going to be more deadly, in general, for those younger than 65. (We'll talk later about why, then, most of the people who died in the flu pandemics were over 65.)

Second - keep reading.

11. If you're under the age of 60 and have no serious co-morbidities, this thing wasn't even a bad flu season. Consider that 83% of U.S. deaths presented with at least one co-morbidity. That's more than 500,000 of the 600,000 reported U.S. deaths. No co-morbidities? COVID only took about 100,000 people.

Patients over the age of 60 accounted for less than 18% of COVID diagnoses, but more than 69% of COVID deaths. Patients over the age of 69 accounted for less than 5% of diagnoses, but more than 42% of deaths. About 80% of total U.S. deaths were among those aged 65 and older. That's nearly 500,000 of the 600,000 U.S. deaths. Combine those two factors, and the virus probably took about the same number of lives as the flu in an average year - 35,000 or so.

This thing is a killer, alright - if you're old. Especially if you have co-morbidities, which elderly folks are more likely to have.

12. There actually have not been 600,000 U.S. deaths from the virus. Let's say you had a co-morbidity like heart disease. You get the virus, and die of a heart attack. They list the virus as the cause of death, and note that you died "with" COVID. But you died from a heart attack, something to which you were pre-disposed. The flu could have brought on a heart attack. Running up the stairs could have. Deaths were overstated due to this - which by the way, was an intentional change in cause of death reporting methodology at the outset of the pandemic. Previously, primary cause of death was listed as the thing the deceased died from. At the beginning of the pandemic, the CDC changed the reporting methodology to call cause of death COVID if the deceased had the virus at the time of death, even if death was caused by something else.

Also, the CARES Act included a subsidy for hospitals for each COVID death in their facility. Makes sense, right? Takes care of the front line. Well, I personally know of one hospital whose practice it was to move all actively dying patients to the COVID wing - even those who had tested negative immediately before. Think this abuse was isolated? Don't be naive. There was an incentive, and there was no monitoring, no accountability. So we have no idea to what extent SARS-Cov2 deaths have been overstated. But we can be sure they have been.

13. The most important statistic to scientists and medical professionals is not the CFR, or case fatality rate, it's the IFR, or infection fatality rate. That's the number of deaths divided by the number of people infected, rather than reported cases. Why is that important? Because people may get infected, but are asymptomatic, and never get tested. If we go by the CFR, we over-estimate how deadly a disease actually is. The IFR is the true measure of lethality.

The only way we'll ever get to the IFR is if every person in the world gets an antibody test. That should be the focus, not trying to get every person in the world vaccinated. Once we know how many people have antibodies, we'll come closer to knowing how many people were infected. Then, we'll have our denominator. And then, if we divide deaths from the virus by that denominator, we'll probably find that for people without co-morbidities, the IFR is no greater than that of influenza.

14. The other important reason to have everyone tested for antibodies is that we might find we're already at herd immunity. But the CDC doesn't want you to look at it that way. While their website still defines herd immunity in terms of those who have been infected plus those who have been vaccinated, the Director has publicly stated that herd immunity refers only to immunity through vaccination. Health officials have never applied this definition before.

We don't even have reliable case numbers, and that's not just because we don't know about all the early asymptomatic infections (or symptomatic, but untested, infections). China was hiding this thing early on, and suppressing their numbers. So was Russia. Then, as testing became widespread, there was a desire for political reasons to overstate the case numbers. (Had the pandemic not occurred during an election year, the whole thing would have looked quite different. But then, maybe it's no coincidence that it occurred during an election year.)

So the testing cycle thresholds were manipulated higher. Here's how the PCR test works. It detects bits of the virus in the sample taken. The test is run over a number of cycles, and each cycle has a chance of detecting more bits of the virus. The more cycles you run, the more likely you'll detect a bit of the virus. But -

At some point, you may start detecting dead virus cells. In other words, the subject may have had the virus, but it's no longer active, so they can't spread it. They've recovered. It's no longer an active case. They were one of those early asymptomatic infections. So counting them as an active case is a false positive. One epidemiologist (a qualified one) said that a cycle threshold above 35 would produce too many false positives. (Fauci himself later said the same thing.) The same epidemiologist said that using a cycle threshold of 40 or above would overstate cases by a significant number. She used the analogy of finding a hair from a serial killer's head in a room full of people six months after the killer left, and determining that he's still a threat to the people in the room.

On November 13 - after the election - the CDC updated its FAQs to include information on the effect of cycle thresholds on test results. Only this year, the WHO released guidance on cycle thresholds, and many states began quietly reducing theirs. Kansas, for example, had been using a cycle threshold of 42. In early January, it dropped its threshold to 35. Other states that had had high thresholds, and then dropped them in January, included New York, California, and North Carolina. All three are in the top 10 among U.S. states in reported SARS-Cov2 cases.

So we don't know the number of cases, we don't know the number of infections, and we don't know the number of deaths caused by the virus. (I suppose if those high-cycle tests were picking up dead virus cells in people who had been infected and didn't know it, maybe that gets us closer to total infections. But the best measure is still to get everyone an antibody test.)

The bottom line, though, in terms of herd immunity, is this: let's say the case count is accurate. So 10% of the population has immunity through infection. We know that some number above that has been infected and didn't know it, and they have immunity too. (I know the "experts" are saying that they may not, but they did with every other virus known to man, including every other coronavirus, so their fearmongering has no scientific foundation. There is no evidence to support it.) And, reportedly one has about 60-70% immunity from having at least one dose of vaccine, and over 52% of the population have had that. So we're somewhere north of 62% immunity.

More importantly, 92% of those over 65 have had one shot, and 80% of that population have been fully vaccinated. That's the population the vaccination effort should have been focused on. The rest of us should be getting antibody tests.

15. Back to the flu for a minute. If the flu is more deadly for kids than other illnesses, why were most of the deaths in the 1957 and 1968 flu pandemics among those aged 65 and older? Because most of the deaths from all causes in 1957 and 1968 were among those aged 65 and older. Why? Because most of the deaths in any year are among those aged 65 and older. We're born, we grow up, we age, we get old, we die. The older we get, the nearer death we are. Ask any actuary.

Read the next paragraph slowly. Read it carefully. Read it more than once. Think hard about what it means, about what it says about all the fear-mongering and bad reporting and false Faucisms and stupid political mandates we've suffered through over the last 16 months.

You know what the average age of COVID deaths is? Eighty-six. You know what the average age of deaths in the U.S. in any given year is? Eighty-six.

So, Grasshopper - what have you learned?

I have to say that what I've learned simply confirms - with hard data, and words we now know came from Herr Fauci himself - what I already believed, or at least suspected. You see, when the government and media and public health officials (who are part of the government) start to get all ginned up about something, my BS meter tends to bury the needle in the red. And the needle's been bent for a little over a year now.

A Lesson in Supply-Side Economics, in Two Graphs

 In this post, the Curmudgeon will get down to brass tacks. Many of his detractors claim that supply-side economics (which they call "trickle-down" economics) does not work. Of course, they are wrong. The reason they are wrong is that they miss the point that supply-side economics only provides "trickle-down" benefits to those willing to work for them. They would prefer a Keynesian world of "hand-me-down" economics, where the government gives them everything they need (or, more accurately, want). But, as President Gerald Ford wisely said, if the government is big enough to give you everything you want, it is big enough to take away everything you have.

There is no better real-world illustration of the contrast between supply-side and Keynesian economics than today's labor market. One couldn't write a better textbook case study. In fact, the Curmudgeon will present this illustration using just two graphs of recent labor market data.

The first graph below is the JOLTS Index, which measures total non-farm job openings. The most recent data point is as of April 2021. That number is an all-time record, smashing all previous records, as what Larry Kudlow calls the "Reopening Vaccinated Trumpian Super-V Recovery" has resulted in a massive wave of business re-openings, and even new openings, as Americans who suffered through more than a year of unnecessary shut-downs are yearning to once again be free, and are dining out, shopping, traveling ... living.

Now, one could perhaps surmise from this that businesses are just re-opening so fast that there simply aren't enough available warm bodies to fill the available jobs. Anecdotally, anyone who dines out has seen the ubiquitous help wanted signs. You've probably even seen signs, as I have, noting that hours and/or seating is limited due to a lack of staff. Yes, these same small businesses who suffered under unnecessary and unconstitutional government closures of their businesses and restrictions on their seating capacity are now facing the same conditions due to a lack of workers.

Why? Did that many people die during the pandemic? Well, given that the trend level of the JOLTS Index was about 7 million prior to the pandemic, and the most recent reading tops 9 million, I hardly think that 2 million worker gap lines up with the 600,000 or so American lives lost to the virus - especially since more than half those lives lost were over the age of 75, so they probably wouldn't be working anyway. In fact, 78% were over the age of 65.

Is it just that population growth has failed to keep up with economic growth? Well, that wouldn't line up with consumption data, and we've seen no signs of that previously. But to rule that out definitively, let's look at the second graph.

The graph below shows Continued Claims for Unemployment Benefits. As the Curmudgeon explained early in the pandemic, when the media insisted on misrepresenting the cumulative total of weekly initial claims as the total number of people unemployed at any given time, Continued Claims does, in fact, represent just that: the number of people who are still filing for benefits in a given week. As an economy recovers, that number should fall, as more and more displaced workers fall off the unemployment insurance rolls and go back to work, especially if job openings are abundant - 

Unless ... the government, in its unending and limitless stupidity, has provided enhanced unemployment benefits, and has stubbornly failed to withdraw those enhancements even as the economy has fully recovered, providing people with a disincentive to work. Don't believe that's what's happening? Check out the graph, and do the math.

The trend level of Continued Claims, prior to the pandemic, was about 1.7 million, during the strongest labor market in most of our lifetimes, thanks to low taxes, deregulation ... but I digress. Note that the recent trend has been dead-flat since March. Why? Re-read the previous paragraph.

Now, look at what the recent trend level is. About 3.8 million. What's the difference between that and the pre-pandemic trend level? Unless my math is wrong, it's just over 2 million.

And - what was the difference between the trend level of job openings pre-pandemic, and the April 2021 record?

I'll let you take it from here.

To Your Health!

Sure, I'll raise a glass to your health. Somebody should be willing to, because you can bet Anthony Fauci and Rochelle Walensky (the new CDC Director, in case you didn't know) aren't going to. Think they're interested in your health? Think again.

See, their covid protocols have nothing to do with health, and they haven't since the 14th day of flattening the curve - if they ever did at all. Want proof? Here you go.

Fauci and Walensky want you to get vaccinated, then still wear a mask (or two), only gather with other people who have been vaccinated, even then only in small numbers and only outdoors. (Why? Are they finally admitting that the virus isn't transmitted outdoors?) They've criticized large gatherings like the Sturgis motorcycle rally, fans at NFL games, the Texas Rangers' home opener at 100% capacity, Spring Break, the resumption of travel - even though none of those things has been tied to a remotely significant outbreak. They warn us of going to restaurants, bars, even church.

"Well gee, it sure sounds like they're concerned with our health," you say. Yeah? Then why are they okay with hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants crossing our southern border from countries whose case counts are not declining? Packed in caravans, many of them without masks, not only outdoors but crammed into trucks and buses? The vast majority of whom are not being tested at the border? For the small numbers who are, exhibiting infection rates more than seven times those of the U.S.? Then being dispersed into the general population in U.S. communities, and allowed to board public transportation to travel freely throughout the U.S.? Or crammed into detention centers at 700% of capacity, or more?

If Fauci and Walensky cared one whit about public health, they'd be screaming bloody murder about this. But it's not about health. It's about politics. A few days ago, Fauci was asked about the situation at the border, and why he wasn't saying anything about it. His answer? "I have nothing to do with the border." Well, if he cared about Americans' - or these immigrants' - health, he'd have everything to do with the border. (Fitting that he did a bang-up Pontius Pilate impersonation right around Good Friday.)

Still not convinced? Remember all the teachers who are scared to death of the virus, so much so that even though the CDC has said it's safe to go back to in-person learning, they insist on staying home, damaging - perhaps irreparably - the educations of millions of American kids? Well, in San Diego, a number of them are volunteering - that's right, volunteering, to go back into the classroom to teach those same immigrant kids who crossed the border illegally. So they're not afraid of being in the classroom with a bunch of untested kids who traveled and were detained in those kinds of conditions, from countries with high infection rates and poor health care, but they're deathly afraid of being in the classroom with a bunch of American kids who've been stuck at home for a year, whose parents have probably been vaccinated. Why? Because it's not about their health concerns. It's about their politics. Teaching those immigrant kids is woke. Teaching their own students is not.

Finally, there's this: many in the medical profession, and pretty much all in the media, are outright lying to you. This one, I proved myself. A few mornings ago I was listening to a national news anchor interview Dr. Michael Osterholm, an epidemiologist and Director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota, and - wait for it - a member of Joe Biden's COVID-19 Advisory Board. In other words, a doctor-cum-political hack, just like Fauci.

During the interview, the news anchor pointed out that in another recent interview, Walensky spoke of "the recurring feeling I have of impending doom." So much for "follow the science;" let's just go with our gut feelings, our baseless fears. Osterholm applauded her for her "honesty," and said the U.S. is the only country that's seeing a rise in new cases due to "this new variant" (referring to the B.1.1.7 variant, which has been known in the U.S. since early January, so it's hardly "new").

As is my wont, I decided to look at the data. And what did I find?

Daily new cases in the U.S. have been absolutely flat since the middle of February. Oh, but not only did he lie about the U.S. trend, he lied when he said we're the only country that has seen cases rise recently. I did a quick review of the trend in a few other countries with high case counts. Several are seeing sharp increases, to record levels.

(By the way, the media don't care about public health, either: the news anchor failed to question Osterholm's misrepresentation of the data. He either didn't know, or didn't care, that his interviewee was lying.)

Osterholm has since been making the rounds warning of the "fourth wave" or "surge" or "spike" we're experiencing. Why would he lie? First, because most won't fact-check him, and second, because it will justify not only maintaining restrictions, but spending massive sums of money on things the administration claims are related to covid, but in fact are not.

If it were about health, medical professionals would be telling us the truth, and citing the actual data. (We in Kansas have seen, on numerous occasions, how our own state health director manipulated data to attempt to convince us that masks are effective in reducing transmission.)

If it were about health, teachers would either get their butts back in the classroom, or wouldn't volunteer to teach immigrant kids in person, particularly given the conditions they traveled and were housed in and their relative infection rates. (Note: this is not a condemnation of all teachers. I know many who are back in the classroom, willingly, and many more who long to be.)

And if it were about health, the two people at the head of the spear would be focused on the human health crisis at our southern border, instead of washing their hands of it.

So get together with your friends, take off that mask, and have that drink - to your health!

Free ... to Choose

Today's post will focus on three intertwined concepts: logic, freedom, and choice. But first, let me explain why I'm writing this.

I recently posted an article to a social media group page about the resumption of cruising by Royal Caribbean. The cruise line is bypassing the CDC's restrictions by sailing out of non-U.S. ports in Bermuda and the Bahamas for Caribbean itineraries. However, RCL is requiring that all adult passengers be vaccinated against covid.

Judging from the reactions and comments, the fact that RCL is raising its middle finger at the CDC was well-received by most members of the group, which was formed in opposition to government mandates imposed in response to the pandemic. However, some members took umbrage at RCL's vaccine requirement. (IMHO, all cruise lines will be requiring vaccinations for adult passengers when they resume cruising, because if they don't, there's not a port in the world that will accept their ships. So blame those governments, not the cruise lines, who have to meet government requirements to remain in business.) One commenter, in defense of her ire, made this statement:

"Freedom with conditions isn't freedom."

That statement sounds good and right and noble and patriotic. I support fully the idealism on which it is based. But unfortunately, it falls flat as a logical statement. Which is why I want to begin with a discussion of logic, before we delve into freedom and choice.

I'm not talking about logic in terms of, "Hey, that seems logical." That is most people's understanding of logic. One of my friends - at least, I hope he's still my friend - was upset by my assertion that masks are ineffective in controlling the transmission of the virus. He sent me an angry message in which he said, "It makes sense to me that if I cover two-thirds of the holes in my face, I'm less likely to get it or give it."

He got covid. I haven't.

But that's not the point of the example. The point of the example is that he believed that because his assertion made sense to him, was logical. It is not.

Logic is an academic discipline. Courses in logic are part of the philosophy curriculum. Logic is deeply rooted in math. One of the smartest guys I ever worked with was a logic professor at a major university, and now runs a very successful hedge fund that invests in complex and esoteric mortgage derivatives. To model the performance of those derivatives requires stochastic calculus.

Here's an example of a fairly simple logic puzzle (feel free to try to answer it in the comments when I post this link on Facebook):

You are at an unmarked intersection. In one direction lies the City of Lies, and in the opposite direction, the City of Truth. Citizens of the City of Lies always lie. Citizens of the City of Truth always tell the truth. A citizen of one of those cities - you don't know which - stands at the intersection. What question could you ask him to find your way to the City of Truth?

(Logic puzzles often relate to truth vs. lies, because those are binary opposites, hence the mathematical roots of logic. Also, since we'll be talking about freedom, choice, and government restrictions, lies vs. the truth seems apropos.)

Logic is the most appropriate discipline to apply to arguments like "freedom with conditions isn't freedom." Let's examine a world where we have freedom without conditions.

In that world, I am free to break into your house and steal your possessions. In response, you are free to break into my house and shoot me dead. Freedom of speech without conditions means that you can yell "Fire!" in a crowded theater without repercussions. Freedom of religion without conditions means that, if your chosen religion requires human sacrifice, you may freely practice it using your neighbors to appease your gods. You know the old saying: your right to punch me in the face ends at my nose. At a minimum, all of our rights are constrained by the equally valid rights of others.

It is clear, then, that true freedom without conditions would lead to chaos, lawlessness and anarchy. (We've seen examples of this in Portland, Seattle and Minneapolis.) We are a nation of laws - we have to be, in order to be civilized. But what are laws?

Laws are conditions upon freedom unfettered.

Now, a cruise line requiring proof of vaccination before embarking is not a law. A governor or unelected health official issuing a mask mandate is not a law, in spite of what that governor or health official thinks (whether such mandates are truly enforceable is a matter for the courts). They are, however, conditions upon our freedoms - to take a cruise, to walk into a store or restaurant or other business unmasked, to gather in large groups, etc.

There are countless examples of conditions upon our freedom that go far beyond this pandemic, and were in place well before it, one of which will be explored in examples below.

My response to the group member who made the assertion about freedom was this: "We all choose our freedoms. Don't be blind to that." I'm not convinced that she understood my meaning, and another group member asked me to explain, so I did. Then I decided to explore that statement further by writing this blog post.

Conditions on our freedoms present us with choices. Let's take Bob, a hypothetical person who adamantly opposes wearing a mask, and refuses to do so under any circumstances. Bob feels that going anywhere that requires him to wear one is a condition on his freedom, and that is unacceptable to him. He believes that by refusing to wear a mask, he is exercising full freedom, without conditions.

Is he?

Bob is not free to fly on an airplane, or go on a cruise. Bob is not free to shop in most grocery stores or big box stores, at least in the Kansas City metro where he lives. Bob is not free to enter many restaurants. He is not free to get a massage, or a haircut, or an annual physical, at least in most places. These are all freedoms that Bob has chosen to give up, in order to exercise his freedom to remain maskless. If he wants to travel, he must drive. If he wants to go to a store, or eat at a restaurant, or obtain other services, he has to find establishments that either don't require masks, or won't enforce their requirements. That's all well and good - but Bob may no longer have the freedom to shop, dine, or otherwise patronize the establishments he prefers. He has chosen to compromise on where he can go and what he can do in order to preserve his freedom to not wear a mask. He has accepted those conditions on his freedom, which is a key point.

By contrast, Brian also hates wearing a mask. Like Bob, he believes that masks are ineffective in preventing the spread of viruses. He bases this on credible medical opinion and on statistically valid studies. Brian wears a mask as little as he can get away with, so unlike Bob, he does occasionally wear a mask. Why, if he hates doing so and believes they are ineffective? Because he chooses other freedoms that he will not sacrifice - freedoms that Bob has chosen to sacrifice.

Brian has a client in Jacksonville that he still visits at least once a quarter. It is a full two days' drive from Brian's home to Jacksonville. Besides the fact that Brian hates long drives, that would add four days of unproductive travel time to each trip Brian makes to see that client. His schedule does not allow him to waste a couple of weeks a year driving unnecessarily, so he flies. This requires him to wear a mask on each flight and in the airport. (Only for a minimal amount of time; he does not wear one while the flight attendants are seated during taxi, takeoff, approach and landing, as they cannot see him, nor does he wear one during the flight as he is sipping water and nibbling almonds throughout. In the airport, he sits well away from other people and does not wear a mask. He has never been hassled.) He chooses to wear a mask for very brief periods of time to afford him the freedom to fly.

Brian also enjoys leisure travel. He recently flew to Cabo with his wife, to celebrate their 25th anniversary. They chose to celebrate this once-in-a-lifetime milestone the way they wanted, because they would never get that day back. And in order to have the freedom to do that, they accepted the condition of wearing a mask during travel, again for only minimal amounts of time. During an 11-day trip involving four flights, Brian wore a mask for about four hours total.

He and his wife also have the freedom to shop and dine wherever they choose, and they accept the condition of having to very briefly don a mask in some of those businesses, rather than losing that freedom of choice and being limited in where they can dine and shop, and potentially having to drive well out of their way to do so.

So you see, we choose our freedoms. Bob exercises his freedom to never wear a mask. In doing so, he chooses to give up other freedoms: flying, cruising, patronizing his favorite businesses, even taking care of his health by going to his regular doctor, who requires masks be worn.

Brian, on the other hand, chooses those other freedoms over the freedom to always be maskless. There is no judgment here regarding whether one freedom or set of freedoms is more important than the other. That is a decision that only the individual can make, for his or her own self. It's a matter of which freedoms you're willing to sacrifice, and which ones you're not, and that is different for each person.

But make no mistake, you are going to sacrifice some freedoms. You are going to accept conditions on the freedoms you ultimately choose to retain. You can't have it both ways. Don't kid yourself into believing that you're not choosing to give up one set of freedoms for another. There is no freedom without conditions in this covid world we've been forced to live in.

In fact, the same holds true irrespective of the virus. Brian lives in a nice house, in a nice neighborhood. It is convenient to his family's work, schools, doctors, dentist, vets, and a variety of dining, shopping and other places they frequent. Brian's neighborhood has an HOA. The HOA has restrictive covenants, which are conditions on Brian's freedoms as a homeowner. He cannot paint his house pink with orange polka-dots. He cannot build a massive shed in his back yard. He cannot buy a boat and an RV and park them on the street for the 50 weeks a year he's not using them.

Why would Brian accept those restrictions? Well, he chooses the freedom to live in a nice house, in a nice neighborhood, near all his chosen amenities. One of the benefits is that his property value is always appreciating. Part of the reason for that is that all of his neighbors are subject to the same covenants. So they can't paint their houses pink with orange polka-dots either, or park their RVs and boats on the street all the time (thank God).

Bob, however, will not accept restrictive covenants. As a homeowner, nobody is going to tell him what he can and can't do with his own property (other than restrictions applied by the city and county in which he lives - conditions he has chosen to accept). And that is Bob's right. Unfortunately, it means that he has to sacrifice the freedom to live wherever he chooses. He cannot live in a neighborhood with an HOA. He may have to live in a run-down older neighborhood, where the property values are in decline, and it may not be safe. Or, he may have to buy a rural property, and drive long distances to his chosen amenities.

Look, I am as passionate about freedom as anyone. My Dad was a WWII vet whose unit liberated Dachau and ended the war by winning the Battle of Munich. I'm descended from the same Scottish clan that produced William Wallace of Braveheart fame, for crying out loud. But I also understand freedom in the context of logic, and I recognize that I must inevitably make choices regarding what freedoms I choose, and which ones I'll sacrifice in return.

Friends, we all make choices when it comes to our freedoms, because freedom without conditions is but a noble myth. And there should be no judgment in that, no right or wrong. What's the most important freedom or set of freedoms to you may not be the most important to me, and that's okay. We make our own choices - but there is no mistaking the undisputable truth that we do choose our freedoms. And thus our most important freedom may be the freedom to make those choices as we prefer.

Get Lost!

 Don't be offended. I'm not telling you to go away, vamos, scram, or any such thing. With all the talk over the past year about "following the science," I am warning you: attempt to follow the science, and you will only get lost. Because the "science" leads nowhere.

Witness the CDC's recent proclamation that grade school students can now safely sit only three feet apart, instead of the earlier six-foot distancing requirement. (Which has always been in conflict with the WHO's one-meter requirement. One meter is a little over three feet. Apparently the science differs depending on whether you're under the jurisdiction of the WHO or the CDC. Or maybe covid can jump six feet in the U.S., but only one meter in the rest of the world.)

Except now, it can only jump three feet in a grade school. But wait - that's just in the classroom. In common areas, the distancing requirement is still six feet. Apparently the virus can jump farther in a lunch room or a library than it can in a classroom.

Also, grade schools no longer have to have any kind of barrier between desks. Covid's ability to clear a Plexiglas shield has apparently been disproven. Fine - can banks and grocery stores remove their Plexiglas barriers now?

Of course, we've known all along, through the various closure requirements, that the "science" is more flexible than a carnival contortionist. Covid does not spread in large, crowded big box retail stores, although it does spread in other crowded places, like concerts. It does, however, spread in small mom-and-pop retailers. It doesn't spread in doctors' offices. But it does spread in hair and nail salons. It doesn't spread on naval vessels, but it does on cruise ships. It doesn't spread in government buildings, but it does in churches. It spreads like wildfire in bars and restaurants, even though there are no reported significant outbreaks stemming from one. And it especially spreads in bars after midnight, like the viral equivalent of the Mogwai from The Goonies. I guess you shouldn't get the virus wet, either.

Anyone who believes this new edict has anything remotely to do with science is probably still reaching under his or her pillow every morning, hoping against hope that finally, the Tooth Fairy remembered to show up, and is not only making good on all those lost teeth from childhood, but is paying interest to boot.

No, this has to do with available space. After much pushback from schools nationwide that they just can't reopen with six feet of separation due to space restrictions, and with the shiny new (but even more vapid) CDC Director wanting desperately to make her new boss look good and get schools open more than one day a week, the agency has changed the science. Poof. Just like that. The CDC didn't even try to justify the shift. No worries; the masses will believe it, because hey, it's the CDC. The CDC wouldn't lie to us. They're here to protect us.

Want more evidence that it's about space? Consider the maintenance of the six-foot requirement in common areas. Common areas are larger than classrooms. And in most schools, all kids aren't in the library or the lunch room or the gym at the same time. So space is less of a consideration.

If we know anything about this viru$, it's that there is no *&%$#@! science. Science is settled. But nothing about this thing is settled. Never has been. All we have are a bunch of theories. There's a theory that masks are effective as a mitigant. There's a theory that two masks are better than one. That the only path to herd immunity is mass vaccination. That new variants are far deadlier than the original strain. (Even the fatally flawed IHME model, which I debunked thoroughly and repeatedly last year, blows that one out of the water.)

So if you want to follow the science, be my guest. Don't blame me when you get so dizzy you fall on your arse.

Stimulus for Thought

 Let's take a look at the recent $1.9 trillion "stimulus" bill that was passed on a straight party-line vote (so much for "unity"). Let's ignore the fact that less than 10% of that staggering amount had anything to do with covid relief. Or that taxpayers in states that are fiscally responsible just paid off the accumulated budget deficits over the past two years of San Francisco and New York, without imposing any budgetary discipline on those two profligate cities. Heck, let's even overlook just the staggering size of that number to begin with: 1.9 trillion seconds is more than 60,000 years. And 60,000 years ago, the first pre-Neanderthals were just beginning to drag their knuckles across what is now the Australian outback. (They're now dragging their knuckles through the halls of Congress.)

No, let's talk about the necessity of further stimulus as relates to covid; the effectiveness of this particular package; and what would really be effective.

Let's first remember that covid did not cause a recession. Covid evoked a government response - for now let's say right or wrong - and the government response caused a recession. Some jurisdictions' totalitarian, unchecked executive mandates were more draconian than others, but nearly every state forced schools and businesses to close and put millions out of work. Even after they re-opened, they imposed restrictions on capacity and hours, and some very large jurisdictions had second shut-downs.

The initial actions took place in March 2020. In April, the U.S. unemployment rate shot up to 14.8%, by far the highest since the Great Depression (although unlike that period, last year's joblessness was concentrated in just a few sectors at the lower end of the income scale). Several states saw unemployment rates above 20%. More than 17 million people were put out of work. Initial jobless claims spiked to nearly seven million the first week of the shut-downs, and continued claims peaked at nearly 25 million in May, both far and away record numbers. U.S. GDP dropped by more than 30% in the second quarter, again the most on record.

In response, the government immediately passed the CARES Act, a $2.2 trillion relief package. The bill included $877 billion in aid for affected businesses, small and large; $340 billion for state and local governments, whose tax revenues would be decimated, but by their own actions; $154 billion for public health; and $560 billion for individuals. That latter amount included $260 billion in additional unemployment benefits, and $300 billion in direct payments to individuals earning less than a given threshold (I'll explain why the word "earning" is italicized later).

Late last year, after months of partisan stalling due to the looming election, Congress passed another round of direct payments to those same earners, totaling $920 billion (that amount also included funding for additional small business loans, vaccines, and unemployment benefits).

And now we have the $1.9 trillion package. There were other stimulus bills last year that did not include direct payments to individuals, totaling $716 billion. All tolled, the government has spent four trillion dollars of your money on covid relief. That's more than total U.S. public debt less than 30 years ago - so if you're 30 or older, it's more than the total public indebtedness was in your lifetime. And to put it further in perspective, 4 trillion seconds is more than 120,000 years ago, when the only living organism was primordial ooze (and there's still an abundance of that in Washington, too).

In all, prior to the latest bill, individuals earning up to the specified threshold (which has been the same for all three rounds of direct payments) received $1,800 each. Married couples received twice that. So our first question is this: is further stimulus really necessary?

Well, the U.S. unemployment rate is already back down to 6.2%. That's just above the post-WWII average, and roughly equal to the average from 2009 to early 2020, when the economy was expanding. Initial jobless claims are down by 90% from their peak, and continued claims are down by more than 80% (more on why ongoing claims aren't lower later). Most of the improvement in those numbers took place by the August - October timeframe, well before even the second round of direct stimulus payments. And GDP grew by a record 33% in the third quarter, more than offsetting the second quarter's decline, and ending the recession after just two quarters. That tied for the shortest recession in history.

Because of record low interest rates, auto sales and home sales are booming. Lenders are having record years, when they thought they'd be charging off massive amounts of loans. Home values are surging on the demand, leaving those who sell with more equity to spend.

Between Feb. 19 and Mar. 23, 2020, the S&P 500 plunged by 34%. It reached a new record high in August. Most recently, it is up 16% from the pre-shutdown high, and has recovered 76% from the Mar. 2020 low. The NASDAQ had more than doubled from last year's low, prior to its recent pull-back. Note that stock prices are a leading indicator of economic activity.

In conclusion, that "Super-V" recovery we were promised, materialized. Due to the unique, bottom-up nature of last year's recession, demand remained extant, so as things opened up, people resumed spending. In some cases, the pent-up demand resulted in an acceleration effect. Anecdotally, several local restaurants are seeing record sales due to dining rooms being open at 50% capacity, and take-out more than making up for the tables that are blocked. (Think about it: you can serve one table in about an hour or so, but you can pump out take-out orders as fast as you can prepare and package them.) More new restaurants have opened now than were closed. (I realize that has not been the experience in states with more draconian lockdowns.)

The recovery is in full swing. GDP growth for 2021 was forecast to be more than 5%, which is very strong, even before this last round of payments. Thus, we can conclude that further stimulus was unnecessary.

So why do it?

First, politicians love to spend money, because it isn't theirs, and they believe it makes them look magnanimous, like they actually care about any of us. And second, they're buying votes. But with the voters' money. So think of it as a forced campaign contribution, to candidates you'd never contribute to.

On to our second question, then: how effective will this "stimulus" be?

Herein lies the reason that I italicized the word "earning" above: if you were "earning" the same amount you were earning before the government shut everything down, you didn't need a stimulus payment. Of the first round of payments last March, a third was saved, a third was spent, and a third was used to pay down debt. If you saved your payment or used it to reduce debt, you didn't need it in the first place. You had enough to live on. And if you spent it on a new big-screen TV, or some other discretionary item, you didn't need it. Only if you spent it on necessities, because you'd lost your job or suffered a reduction in earnings, did you need your stimulus check as a direct result of the government response to covid.

So in other words, more than two-thirds of that first stimulus payment was squandered. Oh, you could argue that the one-third that was spent stimulated the economy, and you'd be right, up to a point. But you can't stimulate the sales of a business you've forced to close, no matter how much money you give its patrons.

As for the boost in unemployment benefits, that was indeed helpful. However, the Curmudgeon's First Rule of Perverse Incentives is that any incentive offered, unless very carefully structured, will create unintended consequences that will lead to bad behaviors that may offset the very benefits created by the incentive. We've seen this with executive bonuses many times, in many industries.

With unemployment benefits, the incentive may be not to go back to work. When things did open back up, many Americans were making more on unemployment than they would be working, so why work, and take a pay cut? This isn't laziness, it's sound economic decision-making. So the unemployment piece should never have been structured to provide extra income over and above that which was lost. It should be income replacement insurance, just like short-term disability insurance coverage. And that's why continued claims have not fallen as much as initial claims, in part.

As further evidence that the stimulus was misdirected, we can look at the Personal Saving Rate. It was 7.6% in Jan. 2020. It soared to a record 33.7% in April. (And by record, I mean about twice the previous record.) It declined to 13.4% by year-end. And it jumped back up to 20.5% in January, on the second round of stimulus (which was smaller than the first, so it makes sense that the spike would be lower).

So what can we expect from this third round? Well, the individual payments are larger than either of the first two rounds. However, they will go to fewer people, as the income cap phase-out was tightened considerably. So the total will be about 75% of the total for round one. Also, it's expected that, with higher gas prices, more than a third of this round will be spent. And, with higher interest rates, more than a third will be used to reduce debt, as credit card interest rates are increasing. But, with the saving rate already north of 20%, we'll likely see a spike to 30% or more again.

That is not in and of itself a bad thing. My own research on long-term cycles in the stock market indicates that long-term bull cycles (stock prices generally rising) begin when the saving rate is historically higher than average. Capital drives growth.

However, it is a clear indication that most of the stimulus was misdirected in terms of actually compensating Americans for what their federal, state and local governments have done to them in response to the pandemic.

So what would be more effective? When I was a CEO, I always told my employees that bringing problems to my attention had no value, because I could see the problems for myself. However, bringing me solutions was of high value. So herewith, I offer my solution:

OPEN THE HELL UP.

Open every restaurant, every movie theater, every bar. Don't limit capacity, and don't limit hours. Open churches for in-person worship. Allow as many fans to attend concerts and sporting events as want to buy tickets. Open cruises and other travel. Yes, people will still get sick. But people have always gotten sick. And people got covid even when things were shut down, even when they wore masks, even when they stayed home.

Many more people ate out, traveled, didn't wear masks, and never got sick. Remember, 30 million Americans have gotten covid. But 300 million Americans haven't. Life happens, and illness is part of life. Besides, between natural infection and vaccination, we're rapidly approaching herd immunity, if we're not already there. So don't condition it on vaccines or test results. Open. Up.

What created the perceived need for stimulus? Closing businesses down and placing restrictions on businesses and people. So what's the most stimulative thing that can be done? To re-open those businesses, and remove the restrictions. Anything else is a band-aid on a tumor.

A Tale of Two Vacations

This post reflects on two trips my wife and I took, one in 2020 and one in 2021. Both departed and returned home on nearly the exact same dates. Both were to very nice beach destinations. Both trips were wonderful. But the similarity ends there, in terms of the world we returned home to, and the world in which we were traveling. I thought readers might enjoy reflecting on the contrast, and thinking about how their own worlds are different now vs. a year ago.

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Early 2020 involved a lot of travel for my wife and me. First, we flew to Tampa and spent the night in late January. It was during the annual Gasparilla Festival, which attracts a few hundred thousand drunken pirate wannabes to the city for a weekend of carousing, a boat parade, and other activities. It's Tampa's Mardi Gras.

We stayed in the middle of it. Our hotel was crowded with people attending the festival. The lobby was packed. The elevators were full. Nobody was probably going out of their way to wash their hands more thoroughly, not touch their faces, or avoid other people. The only masks were pirate masks.

Then, we embarked on a cruise. We touched the usual surfaces, got food at the buffet, etc. (We've always been diligent about washing our hands. And I will not miss the demise of the cruise buffet. I've seen far too many people grab a food item with their grubby hands, look at it, and put it back.)

When we got home from the cruise, I was sick (that's never happened to me in the 20+ cruises I've taken - so much for the "floating petri dish" myth). I went to the doctor, and tested positive for ... influenza A. In spite of getting a flu shot the previous October. I do recognize that flu vaccines are based on the strain of flu that is expected, and sometimes the flu throws a curve ball, as it did last year. My case was very mild, probably due in part to the vaccine.

I then had several business trips in February: San Francisco, Tampa, Jacksonville and Austin. I followed my normal routine, even though there was some buzz about this coronavirus thing that originated in China. (Okay, I didn't make my usual sojourn into Chinatown when I was in San Francisco, but that's it.) I didn't worry about what I touched in the hotel or on the plane, but again, I washed my hands regularly, as always. And I had no qualms about dining out, no matter how crowded the restaurant. (I still don't.)

Then, my wife and I went to Hawaii in late February and early March. Same story there. We spent the night on the way out in Oakland, and on the way back in San Jose. In the Oakland airport, we did see some people - mostly Asian - wearing masks, but that's common there during any flu season. The flights were fairly full. Nothing was different in Hawaii (the state that would later have the most draconian lockdown and quarantine measures in the nation, in spite of the lowest case numbers in the nation). Restaurants were crowded, the hotels were at capacity.

We didn't really notice that anything was different until we flew back to San Jose. We were the only people on the shuttle bus to our hotel. The driver said the restaurant was closed, and they'd laid off all but the most tenured staff, because the usually brisk convention business in Silicon Valley had dried up. The hotel was indeed like a ghost town.

On March 10, we returned home to Kansas City. The next day, I made a Target run. I was literally laughing out loud as I pushed the cart through the stores, incredulous at the behavior of the panic-driven hoarders. No soup. No beans. No canned tuna. Of course, no toilet paper, no facial tissues, no paper towels, no hand sanitizer, no wipes. I'm still trying to figure out how a respiratory virus can cause one to have to increase one's arse-wiping exponentially. I figured it would be short-lived.

I was wrong.

A few days later, I awoke at oh-dark-thirty, thinking only about what would happen if we ran out of toilet paper. I lay awake thinking of schemes - mostly illegal - to obtain some, should the stores remain out of stock. I decided to be at Wal-Mart when it opened, and try to find some. If they didn't have it - or even if they did - I'd run across the street to Target. Then hit the grocery store on the way home. But I had a back-up plan.

I have Diamond status with Hilton, as I stay at their properties when I travel for business (which I used to do a lot). They offer a digital key that lets you use your phone to open your room door, so you can bypass the front desk. I was going to take an empty suitcase to the nearby Hampton Inn (a Hilton property), walk past the front desk as though I had a room, walk to the elevator, go up a couple of floors, find a maid's cart, and fill the suitcase with TP while the maid wasn't looking. Hey, I said some of the schemes were illegal. I didn't tell my wife what I was contemplating - plausible deniability.

So I set out on my pre-dawn raid, hell-bent on coming home with toilet paper. Fortunately, Wal-Mart had some. They also had wipes, so I scored some canisters of those.

My grocery shopping routine was altered for months. It often took me three stops at different stores to find everything on my list. However, I view grocery shopping the way military leaders view missions. If it's on the list, I am by-God not coming home without it. Besides TP, flour and cream of mushroom soup turned out to be the greatest challenges. (Flour, because of all those first-time sourdough bread makers. What's up with that? Do you really need sourdough bread to survive?)

Every trip I made, I bought toilet paper, which by now was limited to one package per customer. But if I stopped at three stores and they all had it, I scored three packages. I'm no hoarder, but I do worry about the behavior of others. If they're inclined to try and buy up all of an item out of panic, I'm going to make sure that I'm well-stocked in that item. So I continued that buying behavior for a number of items that had been in short supply. Suffice it to say that I'm well-prepared for the next round of irrationality.

Over several months, shopping largely returned to normal, and shortages were once again virtually non-existent. But those few months felt like living in a third-world country - or one governed in a manner that none of us should hope for.

We continued to travel. Only my Jacksonville client had me keep making my regular quarterly visits, so I went there in May, August, November, and February 2021. I also went there for a board retreat in June, and my wife accompanied me, and we stayed a few extra days at a beach resort. She accompanied me again in November. And we took a couple of driving trips with our dogs. One of the advantages of the remote work model is that you can do it from anywhere, so we plan to make additional trips with the dogs without having to take time off work.

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March 1, 2021, was our 25th wedding anniversary. Our original plan was to make our first visit to Italy in late May and early June to commemorate the occasion. We booked three amazing properties for three days each: an apartment on Lake Como, a villa in Tuscany, and a home perched above the Amalfi Coast. We booked them after the pandemic began, thinking that by our travel dates, things would be back to normal.

As 2020 progressed into the fall, we concluded that travel to Europe for our dates was highly unlikely without a draconian quarantine requirement. We didn't want to wait until the last minute and cancel, running the risk that the property owners wouldn't be able to re-book our dates. So we canceled our plans. Instead, we decided to go to Los Cabos, Mexico. We had been twice before, and had stayed in the Hilton located between Cabo San Lucas (CSL) and San Jose del Cabo (SJD), using points to pay for the room. Mexico was open for business, and there were no restrictions on going there.

Rather than stay at the Hilton again - even though we were sitting on about a million Hilton points - we decided to try to find someplace special for this milestone celebration. And we did: a three-bedroom, three and a half bath villa with a pool and hot tub perched above the ocean, with expansive views. The villa is in a gated, off-the-grid solar community about 15 minutes east of SJD - well away from the night life and hustle of CSL, which is not our scene. It was perfect.

A few weeks before our trip, the CDC announced that anyone flying into the U.S. from abroad - including U.S. citizens - must show negative results of a covid test taken within three days of the return flight. We considered canceling. But we decided that we weren't going to let the CDC imprison us in our home over a covid test. We found that they did accept the less invasive and inexpensive rapid antigen test. So we began to try to figure out how we'd go about getting tested in Mexico.

Within two days of the CDC announcement, Mexico had mobilized resources to respond. The Los Cabos tourism website had a page with information on testing. Every hotel and timeshare resort had tests (free for guests), medical personnel to administer them, and the forms required by the CDC. The website also listed all hospitals and clinics that offered the tests, which tests they offered, the turnaround time for results, and contact information. U.S. states should be so organized, and they've had months to get there. Private enterprise will always get better results than government.

Traveling was different this time. Yes, masks are required at the airport, and onboard flights. But no one says anything if you're seated in the airport without one, especially if you're eating and/or drinking. The same is true on the planes, and the flight attendants are seated during taxi and takeoff, so they can't see who's wearing a mask and who isn't. So one could basically lower or remove one's mask as soon as the flight attendants sit down before takeoff, then pull out food and drink when they get up, sip and nibble until they sit down again, and then don the mask when the plane stops at the gate.

The flights were, for the most part, pretty full, and there were lots of people out and about in Cabo. The airports were busy. Travel is clearly coming back - especially in places like Mexico that are welcoming visitors.

Arrival in Mexico was the same as always, with an added form to fill out saying we didn't have symptoms, hadn't been in contact with a positive case - the usual.

The situation in Cabo was pretty similar to home. Masks are required until you're seated at restaurants. Some of them ask you to use hand sanitizer, and take your temperature. Masks are also required at the grocery store, but not in most shops. We took a sunset cruise, and had to wear them to board the boat and in the harbor, because hey, we all know that the 'rona spreads in harbors, but not on the open sea, nor on the dock.

Testing was a breeze. Without an appointment, we went to a local hospital where everyone we encountered spoke English. We were in and out in ten minutes, had our test results by email in less than two hours, and picked up the paper forms the next day. The whole thing cost less than $60.

We had to fill out an attestation that we'd been tested on the Southwest Airlines website, which was automatically entered into their system, so all we had to do at check-in was show the negative test result.

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Our Cabo trip was amazing, and it made us glad that Italy fell through. It was the best vacation of our lives, and we've had some incredible travels. The villa we rented was amazing. We'd wake up in the morning and step out on the terrace by the pool, and watch the whales play in the ocean. We ate at awesome restaurants, visited beautiful beaches, and saw indescribable sunrises and sunsets. I would not have traded this experience for anything. We will only have one 25th anniversary, and ours is a marriage worth celebrating.

Sure, we could have stayed home because we refused to wear masks for the little time we had to, or to get a test to be able to return to our own country. However, that would not have made us "free" - quite the opposite. We wouldn't have missed this trip for the world, and we weren't about to allow the CDC to imprison us at home with a two-inch by four-inch strip of cloth and a nasal swab.

Oh, and when we got back, I again went to the grocery store. This time, there was plenty of toilet paper, soup, tuna ... you name it. (But the basement's still stocked, just in case.)