A family get-together on a California Beach led to discussions on a variety of subjects. Coming from Arizona, Utah, and Georgia and being in California, we had wide-ranging dialogue.
Whereas Los Angeles demands mask-wearing indoors, we had utter confusion about where to wear a mask in San Diego County. The hotel office required them but seemingly not needed anywhere else. Paying a dollar more a gallon for gas brings home California is a different place. Curtailed services at the hotel and some restaurants pointed to a severe labor shortage. We knew we weren’t in Arizona anymore.
The conversation touched on how Arizona was coping with the massive increase in migrants illegally crossing the border. We shared the problem wasn’t anywhere near the crisis on the Texas border, but that could change. Blocking the Texas border would shift the migrants to our frontier. Of particular concern is the high Covid infection rate among the transients.
With the grandkids heading back to school, the effect of the Delta variant is on everyone’s mind. Only one of the them is vaccinated. The rest are too young. Our grandchild in Atlanta attends a private school, and the others are in public school Park City, Utah. Neither place is likely to shut down, but masks and other actions are possible. Atlanta is a worry in any case.
The prevalence of crime in Atlanta is a significant concern. While our kid’s neighborhood has been safe, crime is growing across the City. Less policing is taking its toll. Once the police feel unsupported, cops retire, and good recruits are hard to come by. It’s no secret the mayor and others have thrown them under the bus. As a result, the upscale Buckhead neighborhood is in the process of splitting from Atlanta. If it leaves, the City’s tax base will be devastated. This action, in turn, means higher taxes or fewer services, or both.
Returning to Phoenix, we got the news the U.S. Department of Justice is opening a probe of our Police Department. In all the decades we’ve lived in the City, we have had nothing but excellent city services. Police and Fire are prompt, courteous, and efficient. Yet, no one spoke up for the cops. Not the Chief of Police or the Mayor. Just a few out-of-power city council members. Are we about to join Atlanta and so many other cities with rising crime leading to a decline in livability?
I wonder how many extended families are having these conversations? If they aren’t, maybe they should. It was great to get out and be together, but unfortunately, problems still are part of our lives.
July 29 strongly confirms Biden is hell-bent on destroying the recovery. His tool of choice is ineptitude. As I’ve pointed out, on Inauguration Day, the new president was the beneficiary of rapidly increasing injections of amazingly effective Covid vaccines. An already growing economy could only go into overdrive with the spreading Immunity. Momentum was in place to carry us forward with zero input from the Biden team. All Biden had to do was sit back and enjoy the ride. Later in the year, when the memory of the Trump administration had faded, he could take credit for the good times. In any case, a good economy always helps the incumbent Administration.
Instead of preparing a carrot and stick program to overcome the vaccine reluctance the UK had experienced, the Administration has sent mixed messages from the J & J vaccine to the current mask advisories. This confusion is playing havoc with people’s ability to plan for the future. These puzzling missives are spilling into our economy.
The government reported the economy grew at 6.4% rather than the expected 8.4%—quite a miss. Further, unemployment claims rose by a surprising amount. A growing fear of the Delta variant has contributed to investment and hiring hesitancy.
The Administration’s almost $2 billion Covid stimuli extending generous unemployment insurance and adding childcare payments with no work requirement has kept many from returning to work. Lack of workers restricts supply. All that money is floating around, goosing demand while we aren’t producing goods. We already have supply dislocations coming out of the pandemic. All this has led to the classic scenario “too much money chasing too few goos,” for inflation.
Misreading or ignoring of data led to the present disappointments and threatened further damage. It is essential to get out ahead of the fear and confusion. When the trepidation comes from the top, it gets quickly out of hand. On ABC New York, they are looking at the possibility of 4,000 deaths a day in the fall. This prediction is wildly improbable. How can I say this? It’s because I look at what is happening. India, where the Delta Variant originated, had a big spike. The UK, which is a few weeks ahead of us in vaccinations, has significantly increased cases. However, both have topped out::
Instead of growing out of control, the virus appears to be running out of potential victims. Shots in the arm and natural Immunity have narrowed its opportunities. Is this going to happen here? Very likely.
Here we go again. Across our media, the return of the pandemic is getting big play. The Delta variant has pushed our two-week average cases up an astounding 170%. Everyone put on a mask, especially that two yr-old super-spreader. Prepare for new lockdowns before we are overwhelmed. Without everyone getting vaccinated, Covid will get completely out of hand. Even the vaccinated are testing positive. The unvaccinated are terrible people, putting us all at risk. For our safety, we have to mandate everyone gets the shot.
I started writing about Covid 19 on 3/20/2020. The posts comprise my series on Covid 19. If you haven’t read them already, take a look. I think you’ll find I’m pretty right on. On this basis, let me try to put our present circumstances in perspective.
The increase in cases sounds terrifying until you realize the prior low figures we achieved. In any case, infections don’t mean much unless they do significant damage. While we have rising Covid rates, deaths and hospitalizations have hardly risen. I include these charts again to illustrate the actual situation:
99% of the recent Covid deaths were unvaccinated. That means if you have a shot, you’re rarely going to be hospitalized and die. We see the same decoupling between cases and deaths in the other high vaccination countries, U.K. and Israel. During the cold and flu season, we don’t stop living.
In my post “Can we afford Another 100 Days,” I expressed fear over our sharply declining vaccinations. To get to the reluctant after the first rush, Israel, the leading vaccinator, anticipated a decline and used a carrot and stick approach. They were ready with programs such as the Green Pass. Instead of using their experience, the Biden administration undertook actions that could only discourage people from getting shots.
The downturn in vaccinations was simultaneous with the pulling of the J & J vaccine. We repeated the E.U.’s gross error with the AstraGenica vaccine instead of learning from their experience. The administration further confused people with mixed messages. Telling prospective shot takers they’ll be able to return to everyday life while you are wearing one or, in some cases, two masks made no sense. Yet, the president, vice-president, Speaker of the House, and, of course, chief medical spokesman, Dr. Fauci, all were guilty of continuing to wear masks after vaccination, often outdoors.
Making things worse, the Biden allied Mainstream Media plays up every adverse vaccine event. Even though severe breakthrough infections or bad reactions are statistically rare, the news makes it appear they’re far more prevalent. The administration should make it clear to the media that they’ll provide spokespeople to put things properly, hopefully before the stories appear. Otherwise, these stories amount to misinformation.
In the past, I’ve pointed to the lack of effective government by the Biden administration. In posts such as The Dog Ate Biden’s Homework” and Can We Afford Another Hundred Days I spelled out the shortcomings. Clueless on Operation Warp Speed, the Administration pumps out checks so people can stay home rather than going to work. In a rapidly growing economy flush with savings, the last thing we need is a massive increase in demand. Without workers, supply catching up pushed further in the future. The result is a 5+% rise in inflation.
An overrun Southern Border directly results from not anticipating the effect of reversing the Trumps Administration’s border arrangements.
A world-class vaccination program is crashing through confused messaging. Warp Speed promised control of the pandemic by the end of spring in the U.S., but the next step is worldwide control. The Biden administration has been late in ordering shots to distribute abroad. Confusion as to actual need has led us to a point where millions of doses are about to expire. Dr. Marty Makary asks why we aren’t shipping them to our Canadian and Mexican neighbors?
The Trump administration got off to a somewhat rocky start, but Trump was an outsider with no government experience. Biden has been in government for decades. He knew all the players. Biden should’ve known who to hire for a smooth-running operation. Yet, the Administration continues to fumble.
Trump had set a date for us to leave Afghanistan, and the Biden signed on to complete the withdrawal. One could argue whether this is a good policy, but both concluded it was time to leave our longest war. However, there is a right and wrong way to do things. Abandoning our most significant base in the middle of the night without a proper turnover to our Afghan Allies did nothing to instill confidence in us or the Afghan military. The Afghan government is now losing vast stretches of territory and may collapse in the not too distant future.
Spring is over, and Summer is here. Here in Phoenix, it’s already been north of 115 for a while. In January, I predicted the Pandemic would fade by the end of spring, and life would be back to near normal. Given the Warp Speed vaccines in the pipeline and the number of people already naturally immune, this wasn’t bold; simple math applied to what is widely known made it a solid bet. Unfortunately, the Biden Administration and some Democratic Governors were the only ones caught with their pants down. Aiming for a hundred million vaccine doses in arms at the end of their first hundred days when we were already on a much higher pace shows how out of touch they were. As I pointed out, this is an administration that can’t be bothered with homework.
President Biden kindly allowed, if we were good, on the 4th of July maybe we could have a backyard B.B.Q. with a few vaccinated family or friends. On Father’s Day, the Phoenix Suns played before a sold-out crowd of over 16,000 with no mask or distance mandates. Joe seems quaint.
I also forecast the exposure of Dr. Fauci as a bureaucrat who rose past his capabilities. Instead of the dedicated public servant and the embodiment of “science,” the fawning media portrayed, we now see a man associated in a coverup of N.I.H. involvement with the lab in Wuhan, China. He or his friends rounded up many “scientists” to condemn the Lab Leak Theory when it always made more sense the “Wet Market” idea Fauci and friends adopted. These actions have now undermined our faith in Fauci and science in general.
As the Pandemic fades, we’ll have the inevitable after-action reports. After all, we don’t want to repeat a tragedy costing millions of lives. So where did Covid come from, why wasn’t the outbreak known sooner, why were we so unprepared, and did we have the correct responses? These are questions demanding answers.
Focus on the Pandemic will be maintained by its lingering effects. School children by the millions of lost at least a year of in-person schooling. The less well-off suffered the most. People lost their businesses and dreams. What will this mean in suicides and drug addiction? What policies resulted in the least bad results?
“Science” and media looked at in a far different light. The media almost uniformly supported the “wet market theory” and lengthy lockdowns. School closures are hardly questioned even in the face of data showing they should be open. As information becomes known, how will news outlets justify their dereliction? Everyone will know who in the press failed even to try to get the story right. Lining up with Fauci and friends has its costs. The summer rolls on.
The heat may be making the cancel culture front even wackier. “In the Heights,” Lin-Manuel Miranda’s play, now a movie in theaters, has been attacked for not prominently featuring more Blacks. Set in the Washington Heights area of New York City, known as the Little Dominican Republic, the story revolves around a storekeeper contemplating returning to his island Republic.
If the story is about a Dominican community, it’s fair to ask how Dominicans see themselves. Do they identify as black? 70% of Dominicans identify as multi-racial. 15% claim to be white. Only about 1 in 10 say they are black. The Heights mirror this racial breakdown. Not much of an argument for a large part of the cast being black. The mixed-race super-majority sounds like a thriving melting pot.
Yet Miranda was attacked online for the lack of prominent blacks in the movie. They then pounced on 89 years old Oscar winner Rita Moreno when she came to his defense. These demands are akin to insisting on whites cast in leading roles in “A Raisin in the Sun.”
Sadly both Miranda and Moreno asked for forgiveness. How crazy has this search for victims and oppressors become? Is it just easier to give in rather than stand up?
Abasement knows no bounds. My morning paper featured the headline “Kroger drops brand over labor allegations.” Did Muslim Uighurs make the products in Chinese detention camps? It turns out the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) is accusing Thai providers of Coconut Milk of using monkeys as forced labor. It’s hard to know the exact extent of monkey abuse as they cite no direct allegations from the monkeys. Are they not paid enough bananas? Somebody needs to interview the mistreated now.
Where will this end? Banning lamb chop sand wool over the long hours sheepdogs work? Next, prohibit those endless searches in the woods by truffle sniffing pigs. Of course, without the truffle gig, the pig’s future is probably pork chops. Have we thought this through?
Sounds silly until you realize Costco and Target joined Kroger in dropping the Chaokoh Products. Maybe this shows anti-Asian bias. Coconut milk is a vital ingredient in Thai cooking and Asian curries. Who is the victim here? Asians? We need to look into this. Where will the Monkeys find other employment? Will they ask the ultra pro-union Joe Biden for help in organizing?
I don’t expect any relief for my addled brain til fall. Maybe logic and common sense will return with the cooler weather, but I doubt it. At least stop picking on octogenarians such as Rita Moreno, you ageists.
We have finally stabilized our Covid vaccination rates, after the Biden Administration missteps. In any case, with growing Herd Immunity the pandemic continues to fade away. Much as this is a surprise to the Biden administration and Fauci & friends, real scientists such as Dr. Marty Makary forecast it. He predicted in the Wall Street Journal we would see Herd Immunity by the end of April. Roundly ridiculed, he has the last laugh. Thank goodness! I included these graphs so you could see the facts rather than absorbing media misinformation. You knew who was right and who was Fauci.
Detour on the Road 