Viral Stats

                                                             Viral Stats

One element of the Virus is how little we know about it. This has led to a remarkable acceptance of the most draconian measures because the possibilities, when broad, inspire fear and allow the implementation of any perceived solution. We are willing to kill a malaria-bearing mosquito with anything, even a hammer.

So far, about 79% of recorded Covid-19 deaths are among people age 65 and over, while people under age 35 account for just 1% of known deaths from the disease. Nearly a third of Covid-19 deaths has hit people who are at least 85 years old, death-certificate data from about 188,000 deaths, the latest available, show.

This elderly population was affected substantially in the springtime, when significant outbreaks hammered northeastern states like New York, New Jersey and Massachusetts and spread through nursing homes. Deaths connected to long-term-care facilities recently topped 81,000 and have consistently made up about 40% of all U.S. Covid-19 deaths, according to a Wall Street Journal tally of state and federal data.

Research suggests the virus kills about 0.6% of people it infects, but estimates vary widely and the rate varies significantly by age. This is far less than the death rate from other serious but less-widespread coronavirus infections—SARS and MERS, also known as Middle East respiratory syndrome—but about six times as deadly as the seasonal flu.

Changing the Field and Moving the Goalposts

 

                                    Changing the Field and Moving the Goalposts

    Institutions are the hardware of a culture.  And they evolve. The importance of institutions to any society is proved by the efforts that revolutionaries and tyrants go to destroy them. But they are not time capsules of historical knowledge, captured in hermetically sealed batons to be passed on. They are surprisingly vulnerable, especially to violence.

    A new threat is the universal application of disinformation, a technique that Goebbels could only dream of. The new social media allows for the dissemination of accuracy-free information that can do more damage than "blood libel" rumors. And it can happen fast.

    The police, who have always been "heroes" in the country, are now suddenly villains.

    The Supreme Court is crucial for applying the constitutional context for laws and executive action. Yet if you are unhappy with that definition, change it. Just put more people on the court and turn it into the legislative branch. 

    Don't like the idea of a Republic? Change it. It sounds very aristocratic anyway.

    Want to rewrite how universities work so they are uniform and directional, not reflective? O.K. Do it. Rewrite the requirements and throw out the people who object.

    If you have no regard for what you are starting with, change is surprisingly easy in this modern world. And it's a lot less messy than guillotines.

New Chess

 

                                                            

                                                 New Chess

Magnus Carlsen “privatizes” chess competition, naming the major tournament after himself, setting all of the rules, and becoming the residual claimant on the income stream.

He reshapes the entire format into a seven set, four months-long series of shorter tournaments, consisting of multiple games per day, 15 minutes per player per game, with increment. It seems most chess fans find this new format far more exciting and watchable than the last two world championship matches, which have featured 22 slow draws and only two decisive games (with the title decided by rapid tiebreakers in each case — why not just head to the rapids?).

Magnus won all but one of the “sets” or mini-tournaments, along the way regularly dispatching the game’s top players at an astonishing pace, often tossing them aside like mere rag dolls. Even the #2 and #3 rated players — Caruana and Ding Liren — stood little chance against his onslaught. Carlsen kept on winning these mini-tournaments against fields of ten players, typically all at a world class level.

A Final Four then led to a 38-game, seven-day showdown between Carlsen and Hikaru Nakamura, not decided until the very last set of moves yesterday. Note that at the more rapid pace Nakamura may well be a better player than Carlsen and is perhaps the only real challenge to him (at slower classical speeds Nakamura would be in the top twenty but is not at the very top of the rankings).

Nonetheless Carlsen prevailed. Nakamura had the upper hand in terms of initiative, but in the final five-minute tie-breaking round, Carlsen needed to pull out 1.5 of the last 2 points, which indeed he did. He drew by constructing an impregnable fortress against Nakamura’s Queen, and in the final “sudden death Armageddon” round a draw is equivalent to a victory for Black.

Along the way, at the same time, Magnus participated in Fantasy Football, competing against millions, at times holding the #1 slot and finishing #11 in what is a very competitive and demanding endeavor. (from somewhere)

Abuse by the "Haves"

                                 Abuse by the "Haves"

The San Francisco Chronicle reports that after a surprise inspection, the city’s health department has ordered Japanese fine dining spot Hashiri to take down the fine dining domes that have made it internationally famous.

Hashiri opted to erect three plastic garden igloos on the sidewalk and reopened for dinner on August 5. The structures, which cost $1,400 apiece, immediately generated controversy, as the restaurant, which caters to the ultra-rich, happens to be located in an area where people experiencing homelessness congregate. Experiencing homelessness.

“Mint Plaza is a phenomenal space, it’s just sometimes the crowd is not too favorable,” Matsuura said to the Chronicle. “There are people who come by and spit, yell, stick their hands in people’s food, discharging fecal matter right by where people are trying to eat. It’s really sad, and it’s really hard for us to operate around that.”

The restaurant began receiving hate mail prior to the surprise inspection, which Matsuura suspects was the result of anonymous complaints to the Department of Public Health. The domes were ordered removed “due to the enclosed nature of the structure, which may not allow for adequate airflow,” per the inspection report.

There is an obvious question here: Who is at fault and who should be restricted? One gets the feeling that the law will go after whoever takes them seriously and will ignore an offender who does not. The criminalization of restaurants and their customers requires a very special prism.

 

Forgotten

                                                                    Forgotten

Studies show silver diamine fluoride stops decay in 60 to 70 percent of cases with one application. A second application six months later boosts the treatment’s long-term effectiveness to more than 90 percent.

In addition to killing cavity-causing bacteria, the treatment hardens tooth structure, desensitizes the tooth and even stops new cavities from forming. Applying the liquid on the exposed root surfaces of older adults once a year is “a simple, inexpensive, and effective way” to prevent cavities, a 2018 study concluded. 

This has been around for 100 years and used in Europe for decades.

Scurvy was “cured” as early as 1497, when Vasco de Gama’s crew discovered the power of citrus…but this cure was repeatedly lost, forgotten, rediscovered, misconstrued, confused, and just generally messed around with for hundreds of years, despite being a leading killer of seafarers and other explorers. By the 1870s the “citrus cure” was discredited, and for nearly sixty years, scurvy — despite being cured, with scientific research to back it up — continued killing people, including men on Scott’s 1911 expedition to the South Pole. This went on until vitamin C was finally isolated in 1932 during research on guinea pigs.

And, of course, Roman concrete. They mixed lime and volcanic ash and, after packing the mixture into wooden molds, they submerged it all in seawater. The saltwater then set off a chemical reaction–it hydrated the lime in such a way as to make it react with the ash, which ultimately formed an incredibly sturdy, solid bond.

Solutions, all in plain sight.

Heritage and its Evils

                                                   Heritage and its Evils    

A recent article in the WSJ said:

As civilization from the Renaissance forward has drawn on knowledge of the classical liberal world, the association of classical forms with an illegitimate order has long been a central tenet of antiliberal ideology. “Racism” and “whiteness” have now been added to these accusations in an attempt to undermine the country’s classical foundations. For example, “the primacy of Western (Greek, Roman) and Judeo-Christian tradition” is now considered one of the “aspects and assumptions of whiteness,” according to the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture. Similarly, earlier this year, after the Trump administration proposed a classical mandate for the design of new Federal buildings in keeping with Washington’s classical vernacular, critics denounced the style as one that “dredges up images of antebellum America.”

It ended, 

“Every statue and street and building has been renamed, every date has been altered. And the process is continuing day by day and minute by minute.” So George Orwell wrote in “1984.” “History has stopped. Nothing exists except an endless present in which the Party is always right.”

This, it seems, is the endpoint of all dissections, the identification of a separateness among the many, a singularity of antecedents which, when identified, can be either celebrated or diminished in this new tyranny of the weak. 

Such a view of life makes things so much easier to control. 

Sunday/Political Dogma

 

                                         Sunday/Political Dogma

Trump has nominated Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court. All Supreme Court nominations bring out the worst in American politics and this one will be particularly bad because Ms. Barrett's opponents will, as they did with Bork, have to publicly oppose quality.

Like Bork, no one objects to the nominee's credentials. She is simply a fine mind, the caliber of Scalia. Her scholastic and academic background is impeccable, her judicial decisions logical, forceful, and often groundbreaking. Nor does anyone object to her personally; who could not admire a successful woman who has adopted two Haitian children? Who could not feel for the mother of a Down's child? No, the antipathy toward Ms. Barrett is deep and white-hot. Ms. Barrett is not just opposed, she is despised--for her beliefs. In the United States of America, a candidate for a court is despised because she reveres the American Constitution.

No one will admit this, of course. There will be a Stalin-like sham trial over her judicial decisions that will be presented not as judicial, but as religious. As the esteemed Diane Feinstein slurred in her appointment hearing for the 7th Court, "the dogma lives loudly within you.” Ms. Barrett, you see, is a Catholic.
"The dogma within" distorts her. She is not just an accomplished American citizen, she is some other twisted creature.

Already the internet cries are out. Girls are calling each other with new contraceptive plans. Barrett will certainly attack The Pill, perhaps an IUD should be considered. That might get each girl through a four-year term. The ancient suggestion the Pope might be packing his bags to take up residence in the Chambers might be next.

This, of course, is theater. There are already five Catholics on the Court: Sonia Sotomayor, Chief Justice John Roberts, Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas and Brett Kavanaugh. There has not been, as yet, a gynecologic revolution. The point is not her Catholicism, it is her strict application of the Constitution. And that must be fought in any way possible.

The attacks on this woman will be much worse than those on Kavanaugh because she, like Bork, has a deep, abiding quality; she is a woman of substance. And that translates into influence. Her opponents do not oppose her because they are simply bigots, they oppose her because she embodies all of the standards of individualism and freedom that stand in the way of the power they crave. Already they are meeting in boardrooms and conferences, testing focus groups and ad men, planning, and coordinating. Even though the Press is in thrall, they know they will have to be better than Kennedy was with Bork.

She will have to have a lot within her to withstand the viciousness that is coming.