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	??

There is Always Something New, at the Zoo

Shortly after moving to San Diego, Mrs Ohioan and I joined, have remained, members of the San Diego Zoological Society.  We've gone to the 'World Famous San Diego Zoo' (and the Safari Park) more times than we can count.  First we went there with our kids.  Then just the two of us.  Now its back to with the kids, but with the bonus of going and with their kids, too.  I can't tell you how often we've turned to each other at the Zoo and said, "I've never seen THAT before.  Well, there's always something new to see at the Zoo."  Today was no exception, except that it wasn't so much something new to see, as it was something new to hear.

Enjoy. 

Llamas vocalizing

The Ignored 86,000 - RIP

It would be an understatement to say that I've been watching the CoViD-19 case and death data, it's more like obsessing over it.  But this past Friday (in order to write a comment over on KT's blog), I actually did a quick analysis of then current CDC data for 'excess deaths' during the CoViD-19 epidemic.   To be blunt I was shocked to find out the excess deaths added up to 251,257 (for the time period March 25 - August 11).  I was shocked because the total deaths attributed to CoViD-19 (again by CDC) on the last day covered by that data was only 165,148 [NOTE: I actually quoted 201,000 over on KT's blog, but I had not taken into account that the excess death data wasn't through September 16, but more than 5 weeks sooner on Aug 11!].  That's why I'm saying that there are over 86,000 excess deaths that are unaccounted for.  That my friends is more than 34% of the total excess.

What has caused all these deaths, and why is no one talking about them?

In my comment I suggested that the causes might be 

"the unintended consequence of the lockdowns/economic strangulation (suicide, domestic abuse, or maybe even people not being able/willing to get proper medical care for other conditions jump to my mind as possibilities)."

So over the last couple of days I have searched obsessively for any data to try to figure out if any or all of these causes might explain such a large number of deaths.  Let's take them one at a time.

For suicides the latest data I could find on the CDC site was through 2017 (worthless!).  I did manage to find a couple of data points.  In an online article they state that

"The spike in suicides in Cook County is especially pronounced in the Black community, which has already seen 58 suicides this year, according to the medical examiner’s office. That outpaces 56 from all of 2019 and 33 during the same time period last year."

 and

"In June, Fresno reported 17 suicide deaths in one month, the highest number in almost three years and up from 10 in June 2019."

Those work out to 'excesses'  of 75% and 70%, respectively.  Of course they are ridiculously small to be used for any kind of extrapolation, but if we do, we'd expect a rise of something like 0.75*47,000*0.5 (the 47,000 is suicides last year, and the 0.5 is to account for the data only covering about a half year), which works out to about 17,600.  While that's a big number, it would only explain about 20% of the excess deaths.

For domestic abuse I could not find any hard numbers of fatalities.  There have been numbers for increases in things like calls reporting domestic abuse, inquiries to safe homes, and the like that range from 20% to 50%, with a almost unbelievable 150% rise in "visits to the refuge website" (see here).  Although these are despicable results, it turns out that the estimate of annual deaths is only 1,000 - 1,600.  So unless the numbers have grown far more than any reasonable estimate this simply can't account for more than 3,000 'excess' deaths.

Trying to assign a number of current deaths from the third possible cause, deferred medical care, is hopeless.  There was a nice study in the Lancet which attempted to figure out haw many people would die prematurely over the next five years and the total years of life lost (YLL) would be in England.  The data are distressing to say the least.  Bottom line, they think that a good estimate of total YLL is about 60,000.  That's for England (population 56 million).  We can (completely without justification) say that projects to 350 million years of life lost here in the US.

So it is currently impossible for me to explain the 86,000 excess deaths reported by the CDC which are over and above the CoViD-19 excess deaths.  Nonetheless I do believe that there truly are nearly 86,000 people who have died in the US, who should not have died, and whose deaths must be attributed to the pernicious unintended consequence of the lockdowns.  Further, the lockdowns have been held on so long (in blue states), that truly long lasting economic consequences are going to cause these unintended consequences to last far beyond whenever the lockdowns finally end (if they end?).  

It is my belief that the 'cure' has become worse than the disease, and that the time is past to end the lockdowns.

The Democrats Won't Be Happy Until All Private Enterprise Is Destroyed

I know that title seems like a rather inflammatory and extreme position to take, but I can't figure out how else to explain what is currently going on here in the "Golden State".  I've made my case that the Goober wants our economy destroyed by CoViD-19 repeatedly (actually one could quite reasonably say I've made this point to excess).  But that is hardly the only anti-business action taken recently.

Many of you will have heard about the Union backed anti-business new law, generally referred to as AB5.  That bill originally made it impossible for anyone but doctors and lawyers to generally be an independent contractor, unless you are also registered as a "business".  This of course would require that the business also hold a CA Business License (and of course pay the state annually for that right).  The point of it wasn't to make people become independent business, but rather to make it impossible for businesses like Uber and Lyft to "exploit" their drivers (or so they claimed).  This was based on the (faulty) assumption that the drivers want to be full time employees, when in fact most of the drivers just want to have a small side-hustle to make a few extra bucks.  In truth it was clearly intended to make it possible to Unionize the drivers (and then, of course, get those kick-backs campaign contributions).  So far the app-based companies have gotten an injunction to stop enforcement of this, but it ends on Oct 1.  They've also put a proposition (#22) on the ballot to make the law not apply to these companies.  In the meantime, the legislature has passed all sorts of extra 'exceptions' to the law (like musicians, party planners, etc., etc., etc.), but not the app-based companies in what is clear admission that they have no intention to ever give them a break, but want to reduce the support for the Proposition.  So here's my prediction: Uber and Lyft will cease operations in CA as of Oct 1.  This will be done to bring home to many Californians the realities of the issue.  Nonetheless the sheepeople (Democrat voters) will kill the Proposition, Uber and Lyft will never come back to CA (and lots of other app-based services will stay away), and CA will be left in the past.  If by some miracle, the Proposition passes, then the Democrat Attorney Generalissimo will sue, and our liberal judges will rule the Proposition is Unconstitutional (which in CA is code for "the left doesn't like it, but even though the people do, we'll throw it out.  So much for our lip-service to democracy".

The other big thing our wonderful Democrat controlled legislature has passed is a huge tax on businesses. Well it is huge if you think doubling the tax to add another 11G$ is huge when the current state budget is 222G$ (i.e., a 5% increase in their confiscation of earned income redistribution of ill-gotten money).  But this isn't a general increase, and it hasn't gone into effect, yet.  See it is an attempt to whittle away at Prop 13, by only raising the property tax on businesses (which includes apartments, so take heed you non-home owners).  It might also apply to residential property if used for business purposes (all those folks who are working from home, take heed as well).  For it to take effect it has to be passed as a Proposition (#15 on the Nov ballot).  They expect (and so do I) that a majority of the people will stupidly vote for it, since they will think 'it doesn't apply to me, only to businesses'.  Of course what they won't have thought of is either of the already mentioned risks, nor will they consider the fact that if you raise the property tax on businesses one of two things will happen.  Either 1) the businesses will pass on the increased costs to the people (and the voters will be paying it), or 2) the businesses will go out of business (and that carries a cost to the consumer/voter as well).  I really hope I'm wrong on this one and the Proposition fails, but I won't be holding my breath.

Three Raspberries for All the Other San Diego County Supervisors

So San Diego County Supervisor Jim Desmond did indeed make his motion yesterday (see my previous post).  It did not pass or fail.  Nope.  Not one of the other four Supervisors was even willing to second the motion so it died aborning.  Well, I at least will remember your total cowardice.  As long as I'm typing I may as well say a couple other things.  

San Diego County is indeed on the precipice of going to purple and having our Goober order all our business to close indoor activities except the essential ones like marijuana dispensaries and the government gyms in San Francisco (see story here - just another example of the politicians and the "rules for thee, but not for me" shown by SF politicians, aka: Nancy "Hairdo" Pelosi, Kamela "Biden's a Trojan Horse" Harris, and, of course Goober Nuisance).  We find ourselves there because the 18-22 year old students of SDSU came back to campus and did what 18-22 year olds do at SDSU: party.  Today "party" = "spread CoViD".  So unsurprisingly the case rate has gone up, from 5.8, to 6.9, and now to 7.9 (all are per 100,000 SD County residents).  I have already ranted about how hopelessly complicated the calculation of this number is, but I will nonetheless complain that I do not see how our rates could have gone up for the last three weeks.  Our County has released "the numbers of cases by episode date", but only as a graph. I took my best try to determine the three numbers for the last three weeks (actually weeks 3, 2, and 1 full week ago).  I simply can't get the ratios needed to match the reported relative case rates (and I took my time to read the data off the plot and actually allowed the weekly totals to run over every possible periods of one consecutive weeks - it just won't work).  I know that must be due to the Goober's team doing their adjustments (i.e.doing the voodoo they do).  Still it is frustrating to be completely at the mercy of such indefensible numeric manipulation.

What will happen if we get to purple?  Will our deaths suddenly jump?  Nope. look at the data I have below in Table 1 for my predictions for weekly death totals and the actuals (especially look at the actuals).  There simply hasn't been a growth expected and there hasn't been any growth in the actuals.  Why?  Because (as I've said before) the case growth is in the young people (40 and under, with all of it in the 10-30 range for the recent SDSU driven increase).  These folks simply die at such a low rate that it would take a growth in their case rates of at least an order of magnitude to see a real blip up in the deaths. 

But one thing that will happen if we go purple is that many businesses (particularly the restaurants) will face the dilemma of either violating the orders, or closing for good.  See this story - it's long but worth a listen.  

_________________

Table 1.  Predictions and results through last week (week ending  09/12/2020) 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	??

Three Cheers for Jim Desmond, San Diego County Supervisor for District 5 (R.)

Jim Desmond has proposed to the San Diego County (SDC) Board of Supervisors that we in SDC no longer enforce the State's CoViD-19 rules.  He is doing this because he has realized (quite some time ago) that the rules and procedures the state has implemented are crazy AND unreasonable.  (To hear it in his words, rather than my interpretation go here.)

Supervisor Desmond understands that the hospitalizations are down, ICU cases are down, and the supply of PPE for the medical workers is doing great.  These were, after all, the reasons we were given to lockdown in the first place, but are completely ignored by our Goober.  Supervisor Desmond understands that the Goober's "case adjustment factor" is completely indefensible.  Supervisor Desmond understands that if we force business to re-re-close, many will never get to re-re-open.  Supervisor Desmond understands that the risks are greatly reduced versus the early days of the 'pandemic'.  [Compare: Over the period April 13-30, there were 1,781 new cases and 84 deaths (4.7%).  Over the same time period August 13-30, there were 4,539 cases, but only 60 deaths (1.3%).  This is due to the excess cases today being in the very young, a decline in the absolute numbers of cases in the very old, and (presumably) better treatments.]  Supervisor Desmond understands that the existing 4-tier system will NEVER let us get to full opening of the economy (no matter how many "re-'s" end up in front of it).  And Supervisor Desmond understands that the recent rise in the case rate is due entirely to the students at SDSU (all of which are in the 10-30 age groups and have virtually no risk of death).  

I really hope our supervisors agree to this act of civil disobedience.  It would be, in my mind, exactly like our state telling the Federal government to pound sand on illegal immigration, or marijuana laws.  And it is about time that our petty little tyrant Goober Nuisance gets force fed a great big "stick-it-up-your-@$$" burger.