Goober Nuisance and Burgermeister Meisterburger, Separated at Birth?

Today our Goober published the latest of his Burgermeister rules, in this case those pertaining to Holiday Gatherings.  Just like his predecessor Burgermeister Meisterburger (see the historical documentary Santa Claus is Comin to Town), Burgermeister Goober Nuisance has promulgated his latest stupidity.  In this case his "mandatory guidance for private gatherings during the Holiday season" (or as local TV station KUSI calls it on their website: California releases crazy mandatory guidance for private gatherings this Holiday season).

They really are crazy.  Here are my nominees for his top (bottom?) ten rules:

#10: Gatherings that include more than 3 households are prohibited. This includes everyone present, including hosts and guests.  

#9: A gathering of no more than three households is permitted in a public park or other outdoor space, even if unrelated gatherings of other groups up to three households are also occurring in the same park or other outdoor space.  If multiple such gatherings are occurring, mixing between group gatherings is not allowed.

#8: The host should collect names of all attendees and contact information in case contact tracing is needed later.

#7: All gatherings must be held outside. 

#6: Attendees may go inside to use restrooms as long as the restrooms are frequently sanitized.

#5: Seating must provide at least 6 feet of distance (in all directions—front-to-back and side-to-side) between different households.

#4: People at gatherings may remove their face coverings briefly to eat or drink as long as they stay at least 6 feet away from everyone outside their own household, and put their face covering back on as soon as they are done with the activity.

#3: Gatherings should be two hours or less.

#2: As much as possible, any food or beverages at outdoor gatherings must be in single-serve disposable containers.

And 

#1: singing, chanting, and shouting are strongly discouraged, but if they occur, People who are singing or chanting are strongly encouraged to do so quietly (at or below the volume of a normal speaking voice).

Mrs Ohioan and I were talking about these and she said it all reminded her of the Burgermeister Meisterburger rules in the aforementioned story.  First Burgermeister Meisterburger outlaws toys, then the children of Sombertown are given toys by Kris Kringle, then we see him...

Burgermeister: Ah, a perfect day.  Everybody is glum.  Ah, see? All the little children are playing with their toys. [Sputters] Playing with their toys?! Stop... in the name of the law! You brats are under arrest! Take them away.

That's our Goober.  I wish I could say that's a parody of our Goober, but read the rules.  He IS the Burgermeister Meisterburger come to life. But he should be careful.  Remember how the story ends...

They kind of died off and fell out of power. And by and by, the good people realized how silly the Meisterburger laws were.  Well, everybody had a wonderful laugh and then forgot all about them.

That is the hoped for future here in California.  The day our Goober is long forgotten and we can laugh about it. 

This is the Ultimate Proof That Our Goober is a Lying Liar

I've always suggested that our Goober is a liar (since he's a politician, and a San Francisco politician on top of that, it's hardly a surprise that he would be).  Yesterday I added that he's unscientific as well.  The ultimate proof of these claims came late yesterday.

Yesterday San Diego County released our weekly Tuesday update to our case rate per 100,000 as 7.9.  Then the state did their voodoo and reported our county's adjusted case rate per 100,000 as 7.1.  Now I can't say exactly how they do that voodoo (see my previous explanation/rant here), but I can say that I can not figure it out and I'm really pretty good at simple (even not-so-simple) math.  

Well yesterday our lying liar of a Goober topped himself.  Seems that even they can't compute it 'right'.  Why do I claim this?  Because I looked up the data from the state CoViD website (go to here, then scroll to the bottom and click on San Diego county on the map).  But you won't see the 7.1 for San Diego County I saw yesterday at about 2 PM.  Nope.  Late yesterday they 'recalculated' the number and now it's 7.0.  That leaves San Diego in the 'red' tier instead of taking our first step towards the 'purple' tier.

I assume they have some spreadsheet somewhere where they just put the raw numbers in and it automatically updates the final adjusted numbers (that's sure what I would do).  Seriously, are they really trying to tell us that they are unable to calculate the adjustment?  But they want us to believe that we should base our entire economy on it?  I think the phrase is "C'mon man".  Well I for one don't believe it.  I believe that Goober Nuisance had them adjust the adjustment to get us back to red, because he knows that San Diego County has become a hot bed for flat out defiance (and the law suits that would accompany it).  This he does not want to face.

As a complete aside, but worth noting the state website, in a moment of biblical irony, has been named as "The Blueprint for a Safer Economy".  Speechless.  I'm simply freaking speechless.  

One other mildly terrifying thing worth noting. If you go the state website and click on San Diego County you might also not that below the adjusted adjusted case rate per 100,000, they report not only San Diego's positivity rate of 3.3%, but they also report "Health equity quartile positivity rate" of 5.5%.  This I had never heard of.  Guess what, there are tier implications of this number too!  They are sufficiently byzantine that I won't even try to explain it here, just go the website and read it for yourself.  I'm sure our oh-so-woke Goober is using this as a tool to force additional SJW actions on our state.  Heck the website says 

"The purpose of this metric is to ensure California reopens its economy safely by reducing disease transmission in all communities."

Seems clear to me that it will be just another way to keep strangling the economy.

Oh, and speaking of strangling the economy, yesterday the Goober finally announced how we go about opening all the theme parks and attractions that Southern California is known for (Disneyland, California Adventure, Knotts Berry Farm, Universal Studios Hollywood, Sea World, Lego Land, bus/tram rides at the San Diego Zoo/Safari Park, etc., etc., etc.).  It's easy.  All we have to do is get to the yellow tier, which is completely impossible for just about any realistic future in a county the size of San Diego (or Orange, or LA, or really any county with a theme park) without a vaccine.  But once we do those parks can all open at 25% capacity.  Yay!  25% capacity!  Any bets on how long it will take for those parks to 1) layoff every employee, and 2) file for Chapter 11 (or equivalent)? I want before the end of 2020 in the pool.

Some Thoughts On the CoViD-19 Situation and the Associated Science

Item 1: A Fairly Useless Study From the CDC

A recent scholarly article was pointed out to me (Thanks KT!) in which a small (but reasonably random) sample of people were observed to determine what kinds of activities, if any, correlated with increased likelihood of contracting CoViD-19, all cases and studies done over the period June 1 - June 29).  To cut to the rather dull chase, of the 10 activities studied, only going to a restaurant had a clearly higher correlation to disease contraction.  I would point out that given the time frame of the study and the known likely correlation between going to a restaurant and participating in the protests/riots (which was NOT included as an activity in the study), it remains impossible to directly claim that restaurants are an actual source of spread, but I would still accept their conclusion that

Exposures and activities where mask use and social distancing are difficult to maintain, including going to locations that offer on-site eating and drinking, might be important risk factors for SARS-CoV-2 infection. Implementing safe practices to reduce exposures to SARS-CoV-2 during on-site eating and drinking should be considered to protect customers, employees, and communities

If, as you read that, you uttered a silent "Well, Duh!", you are not alone.

Item 2: Our Goober Remains an Unscientific Petty Tyrant  

First, I will simply update the ongoing shut-out as now being Goober Nuisance: 0, Me: 15 (data at bottom of post).  That's the short way of saying that despite the ups and downs of the various actual and 'adjusted' (i.e., imaginary) case rates and the test positivity rates, there is simply no increase in deaths, here in San Diego County.  Note that nonetheless today our Case Rate number was declared as 7.1, so we are now over the number-of-doom (7.0) for a first week, and if we get assigned another number-of-doom above 7.0 next Tuesday, they will, at least attempt to, re-re-close San Diego County (although it is clear that there will be lawsuits and many peaceful protests in the guise of businesses and citizens - NOT subjects - defying the tyrant - it may well be the impetus for me to actually go to a restaurant for other than take-out).

Second, I recently realized that there is a crazy mismatch between the two metrics our Goober is using.  First a quick review to establish context.  The "Tier" a county ends up being assigned to is determined by where their metrics for "ADJUSTED Case Rate per 100,000" and "Testing Positivity Percentage" fall.  Each metrics establishes a Tier, and the overall Tier is the lower (worse) of the two.  Now I had originally thought that the two would be constructed so that each would produce a number such that, in general, they should put a county into the same Tier.  In fact San Diego County has been in the very top end of the Tier 2 numbers (flirting with Tier 1) for at least the last 5 weeks.  Meanwhile our positivity rate has been declining fairly steadily (with noise of course, but the trend is there) and is now down to 3.3%, making it below the mid-point of Tier 3.  (Note that number is the one reported for SDC by the state - the county numbers (which are a 14 day average) have been below 3.15 for every one of the last 21 consecutive days, so don't ask me how they calculate it).  I decided to look up the metrics for each and every county as reported by the state.  I can safely say that while there are 12 counties in the state's most restrictive Tier 1, there is not a single county that is in Tier 1 for the positivity rate.  Also, I see our Goober still has yet to allow anyone to be in the non-existent Green Tier 5, this despite the fact that two of the counties have case rates and positivity rates of zero (yes, 0).

Oh, and if you still might think our Goober is scientific, be sure to read Items 3 and 4, below.

Item 3: The Ignored 86,000 Has Become the Ignored 115,000

A quick recap of my post of Sept 20: The CDC has a webpage that currently reports the number of deaths, by age and week, for each week from week 1 of 2015 through week 42 of 2020 (approximately Oct 6), although as of my post of Sep 20, the data was only through about Aug 11.  Starting on week 13 (last week of March) and through Aug 11, there were 251,257 more deaths in 2020 than for the average of those weeks during 2015-2019, but the total of the CoViD deaths during that time was only 165,148, meaning that there 86,000 unaccounted for deaths.  Now with the data available through Oct 6, there are almost 115,000 more unaccounted for deaths (325,230 total - 210,232 CoViD = 114,998 unaccounted for).

I really don't understand it.  How can that many more deaths occur, and no one ask why?  Well, other than me, apparently.  Again, I just don't get it.

Item 4: The Great Barrington Declaration

Following a recent conference (in Great Barrington, MA - hence the name), the assembled infectious disease epidemiologists and public health scientists released this declaration. I will not summarize it.  You should read it for yourself (it isn't long).  This is one of those things that the MSM has simply ignored (except to quote others dismissing it as 'a dangerous fallacy').  It is something that everyone should read, and consider carefully (particularly in the context of Item 3 above) before they simply decide that we need to continue our current use of the blunt hammer of 'lockdowns' to try to control CoViD spread, while ignoring all other considerations.

_________________

Table 1.  Predictions and results for San Diego COunty CoViD-19 deaths through last week (week ending  10/17/2020) and my prediction for this week.

Week Ending	Prediction	Observed
7/04/2020	54	27
7/11/2020	49	35
7/18/2020	61	56
7/25/2020	51	55
8/01/2020	53	32
8/08/2020	44	29
8/15/2020	45	32
8/22/2020	31	34
8/29/2020	34	22
9/05/2020	32	25
9/12/2020	33	27
9/19/2020	29	26
9/26/2020	31	16
10/3/2020	29	27
10/10/2020	33	23
10/17/2020	34	27
10/24/2020	27	??