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These were the first words on my rejection letter from Peter & Shooter Publishers a little over a year ago. As some of may know, I have taken an interest in writing in my retirement, but I have learned that this can be an expensive hobby. Before embarking on the gigantic time-sink of writing a novel, I decided to ask my editor for his opinion. He then forwarded my outline to someone he knows in the publishing business. It actually did not take very long for my rejection letter to come in the mail on January 4, 2020..

What was it about you ask? In fact I saved my outline, as you never know what the future will bring. What follows is a short summary of my outline:

-A popular President was gliding along to his re-election to a second term. The opposing political party was not adverse to trying anything. In fact one of their higher-ups was overheard saying, “Nothing is off the table. We will do anything to defeat this President. Nothing is too low. Nothing is too dishonest. The end, getting rid of this guy, justifies the means . . . justifies anything!”

-The fact that he was gaining popularity doing in the so-called battleground states, and despite the fact that his rallies were drawing exorbitant peaceful crowds, didn’t stop his enemies from nominating a milk-toast candidate who campaigned very little. 

-They were growing desperate, and so basically they stole the election using a combination of unlawful methods in the battleground states.

-The liberals were in charge in these ill-gotten battleground states, and so the local challenges went nowhere. The Supreme Court then ducked the issue entirely.

-On the day of the electoral vote, there was a planned huge rally in the Capitol in support of the President. The crowd was infiltrated with Antifa and far leftists masquerading as the President’s supporters. When the unruly crowd broke through the obvious weak security (the mayor of  Washington D.C. had refused additional Federal Security assistance), the press was quick to jump on the bandwagon and blame the President for everything. 

-Because the opposition was worried that the present President might run again in four years, they again tried to use impeachment and then Article 25 to get the President out of office despite the fact that he only had two weeks left in office.

Although I thought that my story was interesting, Peter and Shooter Publishing said that it was too far out and unbelievable, and so “Sorry, Charlie.”

No, this is not about an actual military conflict, but rather about the worldwide battle against Covid, and the ethics of triage. In major battlefield situations the wounded must be triaged. Decisions have to be made concerning the ultimate viability of an individual and the necessary allocation of resources, especially time. 

For example, consider that severely wounded soldier, ‘A,’ needed urgent surgery and this surgery would tie up two surgeons each for four hours with the estimated chance for survival of 20% with surgery and 0% without immediate surgery. Compare that to the wounded soldiers, B,C,D, and E in the same medical tent who also needed surgery. If their surgery was done expeditiously by a single surgeon, their individual chances of survival would be 75% with surgery, and 25% without surgery. Who should get the immediate surgery(s)? This decision making process is called ‘triage,’ or a determination of priority in order to increase the number of survivors. 

In this day, fortunately triage decisions are needed only very rarely. However, with this Covid pandemic, this has already started to change. The limited resource with Covid does not involve the surgeon’s allocation of time, but rather the allocation of other resources, namely the availability of ICU beds, and the number of ICU nurses needed to adequately care for these very ill patients. In some places there are no further available ICU beds and ICU nurses taking care of these patients are already stretched too thin – taking care of up to three critically ill patients, instead of one or two.

Methodist Hospital in L.A. County has already formed a committee whose responsibility is to triage patients as to the priority of ICU bed allocation. On this committee there is a physician, a community member, a bioethicist specialist, and a spiritual care provider. One  of the major issues with Covid ICU care is the length of time that these individuals can often need to remain in the ICU . . . sometimes upwards to two weeks. As a practical matter this sort of committee needs to consider the factor of limited turnover of these ICU beds when making a determination as to which Covid patients then get the very limited number of available ICU beds.

If there is only one available  ICU bed, do you give it to a critically ill elderly Covid patient with Alzheimer’s and an O2 sat of 80%,  (a normal O2 sat is >93%), or to a 65 year old with an O2 sat of 90%? To many, this triage decision would be easy, but most of these Covid triage decisions will be a lot tougher, as once an individual is in ICU on a ventilator, it will very difficult to to take him/her off the ventilator.

About a week ago a medical colleague and I sent a letter to the editor concerning the prudence of having an Advanced Medical Directive. Those who do not want to be on a ventilator because of Covid can avoid the ventilator by having an Advanced Medical Directive, and I would recommend that everyone have one. It would be a tragedy if an ICU bed was filled by someone who did not want to be there, while someone else died because no ICU bed was available.

FYI: this letter was not deemed important enough to publish!

On 12/13/20, I wrote a blog titled “If Not This, Then What?” 

It had to do with why isn’t the Supreme Court getting involved in the 2020 election controversy?

When I went to bed late on the evening of 11/3/20, President Trump had a comfortable lead, but when I woke up the following morning, it was a totally different story. What happened? There are multiple suggestions as to what happened. Multiple accusations. In the days that followed, there were multiple examples of very suspicious behavior in multiple states. Of course multiple accusations do not necessarily translate into multiple transgressions. Some were probably true and some were probably not true.

The gist of my commentary back on 12/13 was that because any outcome would be very contentious, an impartial arbiter was going to be necessary. Because there were basically innumerable  accusations of wrong doing, and outright law breaking, who was going to decide if there was some serious lying and cheating? Who was going to have to be that impartial arbiter? Was the outcome of the election fraudulent?

As I said clearly back on 12/13, the Supreme Court was going to have to be involved, but the Supreme Court ducked. In one of the most contentious elections ever, the Supreme Court chickened out. There is no other polite way to say this . . . the Supreme Court led by the Chief Justice was a coward. 

Rumor has it that Chief Justice John Roberts was overheard screaming at his colleagues that getting involved would lead to riots in the streets, and then possibly more softly, “we don’t want that, do we?” So they basically sat on the sideline when the American people were pleading for them to get in the game.

The learned nine basically decided, “We can’t have riots in the streets!” 

Well today in Washington, D.C., Mr. Roberts, there were riots in the streets surrounding the Capitol. There were hundreds of thousands there who felt that the election was fraudulent. Where were the arbiters? Perhaps home sitting on their hands chanting, “Hear no evil; see no evil; speak no evil . . . don’t look at us!” Mr. Roberts are your hands still blue from sitting on them for weeks? Do you feel any guilt about what happened today? Why is your mouth and the mouths of your eight colleagues still proudly shut.

Now I do not condone the violence that occurred at the Capitol today, but come on . . . Why did the nine learned Justices not see this coming? Millions of Americans think that this election was stolen by the Dems. For years to come close to fifty percent of Americans will not trust the results of elections, and a lot of them will forever refer to 2020 as the year that the Robert’s Rules of Order turned into the Robert’s Rules of Disorder because of a lack of a spine(s).

Some of you may remember Limbo Rock by Chubby Checker in  1962. It’s chorus went like this:

Limbo lower now

Limbo lower now

How low can you go?

I was reminded of this song as the California Supreme Court (CSC) reached the bottom of the barrel this past week when on 12/28/20 it decided that “non-violent” sex offenders may be eligible for the early parole. Former Gov. Jerry Brown, who championed the 2014 initiative (Proposition 57) as a way to reduce prison populations and costs by speeding up chances for parole, has repeatedly said he and other proponents never intended for it to cover sex offenders.

However, the CSC and its Chief Justice said otherwise. 

“How low can you go?”

“The initiative’s language provides no indication that the voters intended to allow the (Corrections) Department to create a wholesale exclusion from parole consideration based on an inimate’s sex offense convictions when the inmate was convicted of a nonviolent felony,” wrote Chief Justice Tani Cantil-Sakauye in the unanimous decision.

So, is Proposition 57 and the ruling by CSC just another example of:

-another poorly written initiative . . . written by Democrats

-the far left nature of the California Supreme Court, 

-the dumbness of California voters who voted to retain Justice Sakauye in  2010 and voted ‘yes’ on 57 many years ago.

I believe that this most recent decision is probably an example of all three. 

Because I did not really know anything about Chief Justice Sakauye, I was hesitant to throw stones specifically at her . . . until this morning when I read about her request that “court employees and judicial officers be included as a priority in the plan” of vaccine priority. Actually although just about everyone is championing to get their particular group moved up on the vaccine priority list, her three page letter to Gov. Newsom included parts that complimented him on his leadership over the past tumultuous year. 

Yes, you heard that right . . . the same Chief Justice who thought that some sexual deviants should be eligible for early parole was in my way of thinking, sucking up to Newsom by complimenting him on a job well done!  

A job well done!!?? 

I would ask Justice Sakauye,                                                                             “How low can you go?”

Gee, I wonder if she has signed the Newsom recall petition yet?

Have the lunatics taken over the asylum?

For those of you not familiar with this idiom, it is used in a situation in which those in charge are incapable of handling their responsibilities, and should rather be put under scrutiny themselves.

It is said have originated in a 1919 remark by Richard A. Rowland about the founding of United Artists. Perhaps an allusion to the short story by Edgar Allan Poe, The System of Doctor Tarr and Professor Fether, first published 1845.

Here the asylum is the House of Representatives. Have the lunatics taken over?  I think that the answer is “yes,” if the opening session is any indication.

From the Washington Times:

The 117th Congress kicked off with a fresh controversy Sunday when the Democrat delivering the opening prayer concluded by saying “amen,” and then added “a-woman.”

Rep. Emanuel Cleaver, Missouri Democrat, ended his prayer “in the name of the monotheistic god,” then added what sounded like “Brahma,” before finishing with “and god known by many names by many different faiths. Amen and a-woman.”

Huh!?

Critics, led by Republican lawmakers, were quick to point out that “amen” means “so be it,” and does not refer to the male gender, while “a-woman” doesn’t mean anything.

But the lunatics(House Democrats), led by Nancy Pelosi, didn’t stop there.

From Townhall:

If that wasn’t bad enough, House Democrats have revealed their new, “future-focused” rules, which include the following: “In clause 8(c)(3) of rule XXIII, gendered terms, such as ‘father, mother, son, daughter, brother, sister, uncle, aunt, first cousin, nephew, niece, husband, wife, father-in-law, mother-in-law, son-in-law, daughter-in-law, brother-in-law, sister-in-law, stepfather, stepmother, stepson, stepdaughter, stepbrother, stepsister, half brother, half sister, grandson, or granddaughter’ will be removed.

In their place, terms such as ‘parent, child, sibling, parent’s sibling, first cousin, sibling’s child, spouse, parent-in-law, child-in-law, sibling-in-law, stepparent, stepchild, stepsibling, half-sibling, or grandchild’ will be used, instead.

Is this Saturday Night Live?

The really scary part is that this comedy is from the first day!

Are we actually paying them to be nonsensical?

A particular highlight of the new rules is this: “The Office of the Whistleblower Ombudsman, for instance, is renamed in the rules to the ‘Office of the Whistleblower Ombuds.’”

The best response was that of the House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy who tweeted, “This is stupid.

“Signed,

“- A father, son, and brother.”

Well said. 

Stupid it is. Lunatics they are, and the House of Representatives is an asylum!

Is it possible that lockdowns do more harm than good? 

“No way . . . Nonsense,” you say. Now granted I am a contrarian, but whatever we are doing does not seem to be working as far as Covid is concerned. Tracking of Covid cases are not identifying outdoor dining, gyms, and hair salons/ barbershops as likely sources of exposure, and yet “those that know best” continue to lockdown these businesses even though the evidence suggests otherwise.

What about locking down the populace in general? Again “those in the know” say that these lockdowns can only be beneficial. My response, “Not so fast, kimosabe.” 

With lockdowns there is a lack of sun exposure. Is it possible that forcing individuals to stay inside can be decreasing their Vitamin D levels? “Those in the know” might respond, “Yes, that is possible, but so what? What does one’s Vitamin D level have you do with Covid?”

Dr. John Campbell in England has some interesting observations in his videos on Youtube concerning Vitamin D and Covid. 

First of all, Vitamin D is an immuno-modulator. It is necessary for both innate and adaptive immunity, and it suppresses excess pro-inflammatory cytokines which can be very detrimental in Covid patients. Also there is a relationship between decreased Vitamin D levels and high blood pressure, diabetes, cancer, and cardiovascular disease. Notice that I did not say a cause-effect relationship, but a relationship nonetheless. Isn’t it interesting that patients with coincident high blood pressure, diabetes, cancer, and cardiovascular disease all have increased mortality with Covid.

Are there any studies that show a relationship between Vitamin D and Covid? If we are talking about randomized, prospective, controlled trials  – as made famous by Dr. Fauci, – not that I am aware of. However, there are studies than do demonstrate an association between low Vitamin D levels and poor outcomes with Covid. In one study 82% of hospitalized Covid patients had low Vitamin D levels compared to 47% in community controls. In another study, Covid patients with normal Vitamin D levels (> 30 ng/ml) had less clinical severity, less mortality, and lower CRP levels compared to those with low Vitamin D levels. 

Also with Covid, Blacks and Hispanics have a significantly poorer outcome when contracting Covid. In a study out of Arizona Blacks had a 55% incidence of a low Vitamin D level and Hispanics had a 37.6 incidence, whereas the Vitamin D level was low in only 23% of whites. Could these low levels explain why Blacks and Hispanics have fourfold higher rate of Covid hospitalization compared to whites?

Okay so maybe there is some sort of association with Vitamin D and Covid, but what does this have to do with lockdowns? 

In study published in Nature involving 6524 patients in 152 countries when the UV Index was increased, the number of new Covid cases as well as the case fatality rate was less. In other words the amount of sunshine appeared to be inversely related to the number of new Covid cases as well as the Covid case fatality rate. Hmmm.

What’s the basic difference to individuals between a non-sunny day and staying inside, locked down, when considering the Vitamin D an individual gets from UV light. In other words is it possible that locking down individuals deprives them of sun exposure, and thus decreases their Vitamin D levels in a detrimental way?

Something to think about?

FYI: For what it’s worth, Dr. John Campbell takes 2000 units of oral supplemental Vitamin D every day, and the older author of this blog takes 4000 units daily.

From Gallup:

“Americans are most likely to name President Donald Trump and Michelle Obama as most admired man and woman in 2020.”

When I first read this I was only mildly surprised. Actually I was surprised that M.O. made this list as I can’t think of anything that she has done to warrant being admired. Wait! She did inspire a school lunch menu that none of the children liked. Ridiculous. Of course, her husband, B.O. won the Nobel Peace Prize by just breathing room air back in 2009. . . . Even more ridiculous! (When one thinks about it, B.O. actually should have won the “Antithesis of Peace” Prize for the eight years he was in office.)

The fact that Donald Trump won as the most admired man came as no surprise to me, and contrary to B.O., if the Nobel Peace Prize is to be based on merit this year, he should also easily win that award for his gigantic strides in establishing peace treaties between four Moslem in the Mideast and Israel.

However, as I read further along this list, I realized just how ridiculous this “most admired” award is. Number two on the list is Barack Obama, and even more ridiculous is that number three is . . . Joe Biden. Now if there was a “time spent hiding in the basement award,” Sleepy Joe would easily win hands down, and this would probably be the only time, I would ever vote for him.

Hard as it is to imagine this gets even more ridiculous as LeBron James polled in at number nine, and the most ridiculous of all is that Kamala Harris polled in at number two on the female side. On down the list on the female side, there are such stellar names as Hillary Clinton, A.O.C., and Greta Thunberg . . . OMG. Ridiculousness personified!

At this point I came to the conclusion that either

1. Americans in general (other than Republicans, who overwhelmingly chose Trump) are basically dumb.
2. This poll over-sampled Californians.
3. Americans with any sense do not answer the telephone when a random and unknown number is calling.

But there is some saving grace in this telephone survey.

In addition to the public figures named by Americans, 11% name a relative or friend as the man they admire most. Obviously, strong work to those who were polled in red states.

(If perchance I had been asked this question by Gallup, I would have chosen my son and my three sons-in-law, as work ethic and success in raising a family are what I admire most)

When anyone plays a game of chance knowing the odds is oftentimes helpful. For instance in Texas Hold ‘Em, if there is only one card left (“the river”), we don’t know if that ‘8’ that we need to fill an inside straight will appear. However, if one knows that catching an inside straight has about an 11:1-12:1 chance of success, then perhaps it would not be wise to bet the farm that ‘8’ will appear “on the river” to fill that inside straight. Certainly it might happen. We don’t know, but the odds are against it. Likewise, catching a ‘heart’ “on the river” to complete a flush is not 11-12:1, but rather more like 5:1. Will that heart come? We don’t know, but we do know the probability of that happening. Therefore, betting on completing that flush is much more likely to be successful compared to betting on filling that inside straight. Without bringing in the Texas Hold ‘Em concept of “pot odds,” this is merely an example of basic probability.

No matter the situation the laws of probability do not change. It doesn’t matter if the subject is poker or herd immunity. 

What is herd immunity? 

The general idea behind herd immunity is that in a population where many people are immune, a disease can’t take hold and grow into an epidemic, thereby protecting people who aren’t immune. The population (perhaps unfortunately called a herd ) protects vulnerable individuals.

So how many people in a population need to be immune to have herd immunity?

This can actually be figured out mathematically. 

Warning: What follows is not meant to be understood by us mere mortals.

The following is based on a chapter from the book Understanding numbers by the Plus Editors Rachel Thomasand Marianne Freiberger.

Skipping all of the intermediate steps, to achieve herd immunity we need to make sure that at least a proportion of 

 of the population is immune. For an 

of 2.5, the higher end of the estimates for COVID-19, this means that we need to get at least a proportion of 

 of the population immune. This translates to at least 60%. In other words, 60% of the population needs to be immune to this virus in order to achieve herd immunity to this virus.

How do we do this? Well, ideally we would do it by vaccinating at least 60% of the population. In the absence of a vaccine, we can hope that this level of immunity will be achieved naturally, by people becoming sick and then becoming immune. 

So far this appears to be relatively straight forward, however then we get the “we don’t know crowd” involved.

When the logical question of: “Should People Who Had the Virus Defer Vaccination?”. . .  the common sense answer is “Yes.” Since at the present time and for the foreseeable future there will not be enough vaccine to vaccinate everybody, it makes common sense to say, “Those who have already have the virus are probably immune, and so should at least go to the rear of the line. If one asks the experts how long the immunity to Covid will continue to last after an infection, the various answers will involve a lot of  “we don’t know.” For example, Deborah Fuller, a vaccinoligist at University of Washington, said, “we don’t know how durable natural immunity is.” Come on, Ms. Fuller, of course we don’t know how long the natural immunity lasts, as Covid has only been with us for about ten months. When someone, like Ms. Fuller says something like that, she should be asked, “Do we know how long the immunity to the vaccine will last?” . . . “Err, really, we don’t know as the vaccine has also been around for only a relatively short period of time.”

The following is from an article in Health:

“To be clear, most experts do think an initial infection from the coronavirus, called SARS-CoV-2, will grant people immunity to the virus for some amount of time. That is generally the case with acute infections from other viruses, including other coronaviruses.”

Ah, a common sense statement. Yes, we do not know how long immunity to a native Covid infection lasts, but if we use common sense, we can assume that it will last for some unknown amount of time. So far, so good. Then would it not make sense to defer the vaccination of those who have already have had a documented Covid infection till some later date (perhaps never, depending on what happens with the the immunity of these individuals in the future.) If these already infected individuals do not get the vaccine now, then others who have not had Covid, can be vaccinated instead. Doing this will make the achievement of herd immunity occur more quickly, and that will be for the benefit of everybody.

On of my favorite songs is “While My Guitar Gently Weeps.” This is for a number of reasons . . . it is a Beatle song written by George Harrison, and it has a great melody. (The version with Eric Clapton on guitar is especially awesome, as Clapton is the best.) Often I do not spend a lot of time interpreting lyrics, but recently I looked up the lyrics of this song. Rumor has it that George had accepted a challenge to compose a song with two random words chosen from a dictionary … and so apparently “gentle” and “weep” were the words chosen.

When I looked up the lyrics I saw some verses that struck me as unusually prescient in light of the recent presidential election. 

“I don’t know how you were diverted

You were perverted too

I don’t know how you were inverted

No one alerted you”

Now granted I am not thrilled with our new President, but to me the country was “diverted” by Covid. Some in the critical states were obviously “perverted,” as there was a fair amount of skullduggery (a polite way of saying “cheating”). A lot of voters were apparently “inverted,” and switched from a guy whose personality they didn’t like (Trump)and “not alerted” that the incoming one may well prove to be incompetent (Biden).

Speaking of President Trump, the most recent headline involves him not signing the recently passed COVID Relief bill, which had been purposely stalled prior to the election by the Dems. It is amazing how much pork was in the bill that Trump just vetoed . . . Good for Trump.

With the risk of running too long, hold your breath and read about all the ridiculousness that is in it. 

From Townhall:

“It’s called the COVID relief bill but it has almost nothing to do with COVID,” President Trump explained in his address. “This bill contains $85.5 million for assistance to Cambodia; $134 million to Burma; $1.3 billion for Egypt and Egyptian military, which will go out and buy almost exclusively Russian military equipment; $25 million for democracy and gender programs in Pakistan; $505 million to Beliza, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua and Panama; $40 million for the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., which is not even open for business; $1 billion for the Smithsonian and an additional $154 million for the National Gallery of Art; … $7 million for reef fish management; $25 million to combat Asian carpe; $2.5 million to count the number of amberjack fish in the Gulf of Mexico, a provision to promote the breeding of fish in federal hatcheries; $3 million in poultry production technology; $2 million to study the impact of downed trees; $566 million for construction projects at the FBI.”

Trump also took issue with a measure in the bill that allows illegal aliens to receive up to $1,800 in stimulus checks, a combo of the first and second relief bills. 

“Despite all of this wasteful spending and much more, the $900 billion package provides hardworking taxpayers with only $600 each in relief pay,” the President explained. 

Once again I thank the Lord for Donald Trump

FYI: My original title for this piece was “Back to the Future,” but I thought that this present title was more of an eye-catcher, and much more appropriate for Christmas Eve.

Recently I received a book from Amazon. It was sitting on my doorstep in the usual Amazon packaging. Initially on feeling the package I did not know what it was, but then I thought, “oh yeah, it was probably the book we we giving for jólabókaflóō, a new local family Christmas tradition, based on a long standing Danish and Icelandic tradition. (FYI: From Google, Jólabókaflóð, or “Yule Book Flood,” originated during World War II when foreign imports were restricted, but paper was cheap. … While giving books is not unique to Iceland, the tradition of exchanging books on Christmas Eve and then spending the evening reading is becoming a cultural phenomenon.)

As I like to spend some time educating my readers in things that they could never know about without this blog, remember the word, “jólabókaflóð,” as you might be tested sometime in the future!

Anyway, I was wrong. It was not  the jólabókaflóð book that we had ordered. The book was “the DENIAL” by Ross Clark. But I did not order that book. Who could it have been from? (After reading the reviews on the back cover, I could guarantee that it was not a gift to me from the Sierra Club.) 

BTW: “Thank you, Steve.”

Once I started reading my personal jólabókaflóð book, I had a hard time putting it down. I even found myself preferentially picking it up over my latest Stephen King novel! Each night as I read it, I thought to myself, “this is Back to the Future, at least for California.” 

The setting for “the DENIAL” was England. Without spoiling it for you, Great Britain had morphed into not just a Green culture . . . rather an over the top, crazy Green culture. In addition there was roving blackouts which proved to be a major issue in the cold winter with persistently cloudy and sometime windless days . . . all heat was electric. All modes of transportation were electric, which meant that getting anywhere was completely unreliable during prolonged power outages. A farm animal was a big no-no because they produce a lot of methane, and so meat was extremely limited and rationed. Everybody had to keep personal records of their carbon consumption, and if mistakes were discovered during carbon audits, big fines and potential jail time. The cancel culture was over the top! Etc., etc. etc.

Now granted the book was written as satire, but here in California I think it merely presages our own Back to the Future . . . to me the only real question is how long have we got before the Dems turn California into an American version of “the DENIAL?”