http;//www.Californiacontrarian.com

Rwanda is a place that has done quite well thus far with its stats on the Covid pandemic. In fact I would go so far as to say that the stats from this country are incredibly good. The population of this country is 13 million and has registered only a little over 4800 cases, and only 29 deaths. This translates into only 0.03% of the population that has had the disease, and of those with the virus only about a 6% mortality rate. (Compare this to Sweden where 9.1% of the population has had the disease, and of those with the virus a remarkably similar 6.3% have died. In the U.S. about 2.7% of the population has had the disease and 2.8% of those with the disease have died.)

If we look solely at the percent of the population that has had the disease, this country, Rwanda (0.03%), is doing dramatically better than Sweden (9.1%). Rwanda is also apparently doing much better than the US (2.7%). At this point perhaps you are wondering why the US can’t come close to Rwanda’s numbers  concerning how many people have come down with the disease. Should we in the US be doing something different, perhaps more in line with whatever they are doing. In other words, should the US be paying attention to The Beach Boys . . .”Help Me, Rwanda?”

The following is some data that tells the general approach to Covid in Rwanda (from the Wall Street Journal):

This tiny Central African country is implementing one of that continent’s most aggressive coronavirus strategy, which is based on a tightly enforced lockdown and other restrictions that have led to the arrests of more than 70,000 of its citizens for corona-virus related infractions. This has alarmed human rights activists. Most of those arrested have been detained in sport’s stadiums -spending nights listening to public health announcements over loud speakers under the watch of armed guards. Some have reported being beaten or raped while in custody. Failure to wear a mask carries a fine of $26, and violating the mask ordinance more than twice carries a penalty of up to a year in jail. As far as group gatherings of >5 people, drones are used to report infractions. Virus testing is done at random at city intersections, and there are 10,000 workers who trace contacts.

So, in general, it sounds like if you take away many of our assumed freedoms, our country too could achieve much better Covid stats, but in contrast to The Beach Boys, there would not be “Good Vibrations,” and “It Wouldn’t Be Nice!”

Right away, let me say that I cannot divulge my inside source. If I did I would never again be able to provide my readers with stuff from inside our governor’s office . . . unfiltered!

What I am going to relate is what happened last week in a private meeting in California’s Governor’s office. Now I cannot pretend that what you will read is verbatim, because it isn’t verbatim, as this meeting was not recorded.

What was originally designed to be a free-flowing exchange of ideas, started off in the wrong direction when Governor Gavin Newsom (GN) complained that “this upcoming presidential election is getting all of the attention. I haven’t seen my name in the headlines in any of the major newspapers for weeks. This cannot go on!”

Unidentified aide: “Indeed we all agree, and we do not like it either, sir. Perhaps you should come out with a statement or a new position on one of the problems that we have in our state?”

GN : “I am not aware that we have any significant problems here in California that cannot be fixed by further lockdowns.”

Aide: We are all cognizant that the brilliant color coded tier system that you and Dr. Ghaly pulled out of thin air is working wonderfully to quiet the statewide discontent with your vacillating coronavirus non-plan. We agree with you that as long as no one can really understand that you have no real long term plan, we, err . . . you will continue to look brilliant. I am glad to see that the ‘first partner’ is nodding her head in agreement. Good.

GN: We must have some other issues here in California that will allow me to get one day’s worth of headlines.

Aide: Well we do have a few minor issues that could probably be addressed. How about the increased unemployment that is a big issue recently?

GN: Everyone knows that this problem will eventually go away once we get a vaccine. Anything else?

Aide: As you are aware, we have an exploding state deficit.

GN : Not really news. I’ll just plan to raise taxes. 

Aide: What about the homeless problem? At the start of 2020 we had at least 150,000 homeless here in California. The number represented about a quarter of all the homeless in the entire country. The Covid induced lockdowns and the emptying out of the prisons certainly has increased that number. Since polling has consistently identified this as the state’s number one problem, perhaps you could make a statement on that.

GN: Not a good idea as I have no ideas on how to improve this situation..

Aide: What about the state’s housing shortage?

GN: Again NAC (not a clue).

Aide: How about the continuing wildfires?

GN: I would prefer not to focus on anything that’s a downer like smoke, ash, uncleared forests, etc. 

Aide: Perhaps you need a fresh new liberal idea. Something that will probably “hit the fan” well after you have left office.

GN: A wonderful thought! Something that will not have to kick in until after my eight years in the Oval Office. I’ve got it. By executive order I am going to ban all new gasoline automobiles after . . . pick a date. How about 2035! That’s perfect. Certainly the ignorant voters in California will not be able to comprehend the probable economic devastation that this will cause, but if I say the magic words, “global warming,” they will all just nod and acquiesce. 

Aide: I will notify the press that you will be making a statement at one p.m.

Is anybody other than myself tired of the incessant coronavirus headlines? . . .  most of which are of the “woe is us” variety. To be honest, I no longer care that over the last week the death rate for our county went from two to five. I also no longer care that the case rate went up to 230 per day because testing has ramped up, or that the case positivity rate went from 4.2% to 3.9%.

Today however, one particular headline caught my attention:

“Coronavirus cases rising in U.S. children.” (should not a surprise to any rational person); 

For the same article, the sub-headline was:

“Increase tied to schools reopening and other activities” (duh . . . ya think?) 

The article goes on with a bunch of basically useless statistics, which state the obvious . . . kids can get Covid. The stats also demonstrate another obvious . . . while most kids have little if any symptoms, kids can die from Covid. There have been 625,000 youth cases, up to age 20, with 109 deaths. (The 0.017% chance of a youth dying is not mentioned.)

Some infectious disease specialist commented that ”some families will be grieving for a long time.” Again, a family will grieve if a child dies (not news) however kids need to return to school, and this is a pandemic.

I would have preferred the headline for this same article to read:

Good news; kids are going back to school and risk is extremely low”

Being a realist, I understand that it will be quite a long time until there is a Covid headline something like this and not of the “woe is us” variety.

Well we have now gotten past our first debate.

Who won ?

From my perspective, Joe Biden won! Well actually Joe Biden won parts of this debate. Namely, Joe Biden won the name-calling sweepstakes . . . . “racist!”; “Clown”; “come-on, man!”; “shut-up, man!”

Joe Biden also won the “refusing to answer the question” part of the debate. Mr. Biden, would go along with ending the Senate filibuster? . . . . . . Silence, followed by more silence,

Mr. Biden, would you go along with packing the Supreme Court? . . . . . Silence, followed by more silence.

Mr. Biden, are they any law enforcement organizations that are backing your candidacy? . . . . Silence, followed by more silence.

Mr. Biden, did you and Bernie Sanders agree to a manifesto? . . . . Silence, followed by more silence.

However, one facet that Joe Biden clearly won was the “looking into the camera sweepstakes.” This must have been something that the Biden advisers emphasized to Joe over and over. He must have been listening, as he clearly won this part of the debate. When he was in a situation where he did either did not want to answer or did not know the answer to a question, he looked directly into the camera and then did some heart-to-heart soft talking to the camera.

Who learned the most from this debate? The runaway winner here . . . Joe Biden! I think Joe learned that it was a mistake, a big mistake to try to attack  Donald Trump’s family. I would guess that he won’t try that again.

9/30/20

Right from the git-go I need to ask your indulgence as I do not speak “teacher-talk.” Hopefully, I will be able to convey my point clearly enough without actually knowing the finer points of “teacher-talk.”

At the beginning of each school year the students get tested, and the they are again tested at the end of the year. This is done basically to measure the progress that has been made over the course of the school year. These results can be applied to each individual student and they can be used to access the progress of a certain class of students, e.g. Ms. Collins’s  third grade at the  Juan school. Did this particular third grade class learn as much as the third grade class of Mr. Juan at the Collins school? Also how much did this year’s third grade learn compared to the third grade of the previous year either in the same school, or even statewide.

For those schools that have been in session (mostly online), the results are in for the tests that are given at the beginning of each school year. Granted I cannot pretend to know these results for the entire state, but I do know the results from a middle class neighborhood school in a major California city. You can look at these results in one of a number of ways, depending on whether you are an optimist, a pessimist, a teacher, or “an all-knowing official.”

To cut to the chase – the evaluation of students across the board in grades 1-6 shows that in comparison to past years at the same school, the students are starting off the present school year substantially behind where they have been in past years, undoubtedly due to finishing the last three months of school last year on Zoom instead of back in the classroom.

-For the optimist, this means that there is a high ceiling. Because the students are way behind where they should be, the amount of progress that can be achieved over the upcoming school year is close to unlimited.

-For the pessimist, this means that because the students are starting off from a big deficit, it is likely that they will not catch up . . . ever!

-For the teacher, this means that unless something changes very soon, these students not only will not catch up over the course of the year, but in fact will fall progressively behind. Why? “Elementary(excuse the pun), my dear Watson.” With distance learning even the good teachers are able to cover significantly less than can be achieved in person. With teachers who are less than average, the upcoming year’s learning deficit will only increase in their classes. Keep in mind that I am referring here to the results in a typical middle-class neighborhood school. Most everybody realizes, for a variety of different reasons, that the worse the neighborhood, the larger this deficit will become.

-For the “all-knowing officials”, they say, “trust in us, as we know what is best for everyone,” as they cover their eyes, their ears, and their mouth in succession with both hands, because they are promulgating something they know is morally wrong. However, behind their poker faces, they know that the present policy of distance learning will only make things progressively and dramatically worse for inner city kids. 

Are they thinking . . . “too bad for you, inner city kids; que sera, sera!”

Here are the latest CDC Covid mortality stats:

In case you missed the Fri. nite (9/25/20) news dump from CDC, here are latest survival rates for people who test positive (a tiny fraction to begin with):

age 0-19: 99.997%.

age 20-49: 99.98%.

age 50-69: 99.5%

age 70+: 94.6%.

WTF? After looking at these stats I am confused. The government has basically mandated keeping schools closed, and if a school opens, and heaven forbid one of the students or one of the teachers happens to test positive, all hell breaks loose. The commonest scenario . . . the school is closed to in-person learning. But one should ask, “Why?” If kids less than 19 have a risk of dying that is 0.003%, why in the name of  xxxx (pick your own personal god) are we still keeping kids either at home or learning on line, as opposed to learning in person? The mortality stats for children are worse with influenza, but I do not recall reading about the closing of schools because of the flu! In polite society this would be called “total nonsense.”

Next let’s look at teachers. In 2011-2012 in the US the average age of teachers is 42.4 years(the median age [half above, and half below] is 42 years.) The percent of teachers in the 20-50 years old age group in the US is over 69%, which translates to a mortality risk of 0.02% for over 2/3 of teachers. This also means that on 31% of teachers in the US  are more than 50 years old, and in the age group 50-70, the risk of dying is only 0.5%. I will grant that some teachers are living with elderly parents, some of whom have predisposing risk factors. Only to this group, and those teachers > 50 with risk factors, can I understand a reticence to teach in a live classroom . . .otherwise this whole keep schools closed is “horse-pucky !” 

Speaking of total B.S, today I drove by my local park, and the playgrounds still have the yellow crime scene tape so that young kids cannot use either the swings or the slides(again to appreciate the absurdity of this, look at the risk stats for young children). This is made-up hocus-pocus by someone who is supposed to know best! Nonsense! One of my young granddaughters goes to daycare where their are about ten little children in a relatively small room. How is it that these young children can be inside without masks, but cannot play outside in a playground. Poppy-cock.

I have run out of ways to describe any of this lunacy in nice terms, so I invite you all to call out these idiots using any terms you choose.

“I got started out of an HBCU, Delaware State. Now, I don’t want to hear anything negative about Delaware State. They’re my folks.”

This was spoken by Joe Biden in Nov., 2019, while speaking to group at a black high school in South Carolina. For those not aware, HBCU refers to “Historically Black Colleges and Universities.” In other words Mr. Biden is telling this black audience that DSU is “my folks.” Only one problem, Joe Biden was never a student at DSU.

Hmmm! 

Could it be that Mr. Biden slipped DSU into his speech that day because his campaign was circling the drain, and he needed something to energize the crowd. If he did not win South Carolina, his run at the Democratic nomination was over.

From my perspective there are only two possibilities here:

Either Joe Biden deliberately lied about attending DSU, or he was confused about where he attended college . . . DSU or University of Delaware (not a HBCU). How does one forget where one attended college?

The more compelling problem here is that he is running for President. 

If he resorts to lying because it is convenient … not good for a President! On the other hand, if Mr. Biden cannot remember where he went to college … not good for a President!

The other problem here is that this is far from the first time that Sleepy Joe has “misspoke”. . . in other words this is not the first time that he has either lied or forgotten . . . either of which is not good for a President!

On 9/20/20 there was a long article in our local paper concerning Covid and local college students going back to college. The article was pretty well written but like most local articles contains a lot of the “emotional code words” meant to elicit fear and concern from the typical reader.( e.g. the title read, “Can UCSD Avoid Crisis Like That Seen at SDSU?) As best I can tell there isn’t a crisis at SDSU. SDSU has hundreds, approaching a thousand of positive Covid tests, mostly in minimally symptomatic or symptomatic students. To me a ‘crisis’ would be: “millions of people lose their jobs because of lockdowns” or “Covid is killing 10% of people infected” . . . Now that’s a crisis. Hundreds of asymptomatic or minimally symptomatic students at SDSU is not a crisis.

As stated in the article: “Across the USA, as reported by the NYT, more than 88,000 college students and faculty have tested positive for the virus since the pandemic began, with at least 60 deaths. (For us non-math individuals that is a morality of 0.072% . . . which by any standard is drastically low.)

What is the actual student and faculty risk from Covid? 

[The following is from a N.Y. Post article written by Dr. Scott Atlas:

“Science tells us that young adults are at extremely low risk for serious illness or death from COVID-19. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data shows that only 0.2 percent of deaths have been in those under age 25.

That’s fewer than 400 deaths in a country of 330 million. That’s also fewer than the 407 from influenza, 4,685 from accidents, 6,759 from suicides and 5,540 from homicides reported in the latest National Vital Statistics report from the CDC.”

(A Stanford epidemiologist John Ioannidis recently summed up what the entire world’s data consistently demonstrate: The risk for children and young adults dying from the novel coronavirus is “almost zero.”)

Again from Dr.Atlas:

“We are already seeing the negative effects of students not attending school. Almost three-fourths of those aged 18 to 24 reported at least one mental-health symptom by the end of June. A quarter of that age group contemplated suicide in the previous 30 days.”

He continues, “Even most university faculty aren’t at significant risk; two-thirds of them are under 55; only 13 percent are over 65.”]

Back to the recent SDUT article:

“UCSD will have approximately 11,000 graduate and undergraduate students who will live in campus housing.” There is going to be an aggressive campaign of testing and quarantining students as needed on the UCSD campus. That sort of aggressive approach will work . . . for a while, but most are well aware that you can only keep the genie in the bottle for so long. In the fall and winter when students have had enough of being locked down, what do you suppose is going to happen. Certainly students will escape the confines of the campus, and they will figure out how to have parties outside of the purview of the watchful “student ambassadors.”

My question is what is going to be the plan then? What is the endgame here? If the present plan works, in a few months, there will still be many thousands of students on campus . . . the vast majority without immunity. When these students finally make their way out into the surrounding community, what happens then? If one is not in a nursing home or is not a health care professional, there will not be an available vaccine until well into 2021. Sticking a finger in the dike now may well work now, but when things get worse, what is the endgame plan?

Interestingly, I did not see this addressed in this long article. My suspicion is that there is no realistic endgame plan . . . Hmmm!

I think that it is logical to assume that one of the purposes of schools is to teach logical thinking. Many of the subjects taught in school depend on logic. Obviously math is all about logic, but so is spelling . . . e.g. if the letter B has a certain sound, then the word, “bib” must be spelled thusly. Likewise, when the bell rings, it means that the class period is over . . . “the bell has just rung, therefore this class has ended.”

Because one of the purposes of school is to teach logical thinking, one would think that teachers should think logically, and by extension that school principals, and school superintendents should also be adept at logical thinking. (So far, this seems logical to me.)

Now let’s examine if this expectation of assumed logical thinking by educators is, in fact, the case. For the most part I think that this is the case, and so when there is an apparent glaring exception, it stands out. 

The case in point occurred in Louisiana where during distance learning on Zoom, a fourth grader was “going to school on Zoom in his bedroom. He moved a B-B gun on the floor away from the hands of a younger sibling who had wandered into his room. (To me this sounds like the logical thing to do.) However in the process of moving this B-B gun to safety, it was now on the Zoom screen. . . . “Horrors!” (Again to me the logical thing to do in this situation would be to tell Ka Mouri Harrison, the 4th grader, to please move the B-B gun to a safer place. “We will pause for a minute while you do that. You don’t have to worry that you are going to miss anything.”)

Apparently, the teacher, let’s call her Karen, was offended by the sight of the B-B gun and reported this to the principal, let’s call him Ken, who then reported this egregious offense to the school superintendent. The result of all of this “a lot to do about nothing” . . . Ka Mouri was suspended and threatened with expulsion! 

To me this is an example of those who are supposed to be teaching logical thinking in schools going off the deep end. Certainly no one would condone bringing a real gun or even a B-B gun to a real school, but Zoom is not a real school, and Ka Mouri was physically in his own home. If Karen was offended and thus reported this “transgression” to Ken. . . . “come on Ken, we expect at least a modicum of logical thinking from a school principal. Use your head, and prove that you were promoted to your position because of some logical reason!”

Finally, now Louisiana’s Attorney General is launching an investigation into the school district’s handling of the matter. He said he was alarmed by what he called multiple violations of the state and federal constitutions but also “blatant government overreach by the school system.”

“For anyone to conclude that a student’s home is now school property because of connectivity through video conferencing is absurd. It is ludicrous for this All-American kid to be punished for taking responsible actions just as it is for his parents to be accused of neglect.”

Hopefully “logic” will win out in Louisiana.

The present Democratic proposal for the Supreme Court sounds suspiciously like what I proposed many years ago. When I wrote this, there was no political animus or political strategy involved, whereas now the Dems are proposing this “new idea” because, and only because, now and in the foreseeable future, their back is against the wall. Is their present proposal, just plagiarism?

I wrote and posted the following over two years ago:

The Supreme Court; Should It Be Like Roulette? 

As it stands now the makeup of the Supreme Court is pure luck, just like roulette. At present, the past three presidents, Barack Obama, George W.Bush, and Bill Clinton, have each nominated two and President Trump is on the verge of nominating his second Justice. This recent equality as far as presidential Supreme Court nominees, however is pure happenstance. 

Here we are in the middle of another mudslinging, downright disgusting process of the approval of a Supreme Court Justice. Why is this process so nasty? Why do some senators go out of their way to insult and belittle the nominee? Why do some even go so far as to insult the religious faith of the nominee? Is this just politics as usual? Of course the thinly veiled attacks on the nominee’s reputation do play well with the senator’s base, but is that all that is behind it? No, obviously not, as the nomination and the subsequent vote to accept the nominee has dramatic effects for decades to come because the appointment to Supreme Court is a lifetime appointment. Other than judges are there any other lifetime positions? If there are please let me know. Other than retiring like Justice Kennedy recently did, the Supreme Court is a lifetime position, and so the political stakes are exceptionally high . . . perhaps too high! 

Why does this have to be a lifetime appointment? The answer is that’s what’s in the Constitution. That’s what the designers figured would keep the justices free from political pressures for if they didn’t have to worry about their future, they would more likely be fair and just in their decisions. But that was then and this is now! There is one major difference between the 1770s and 2018. Life expectancy! In the latter part of the 18th century, the average life expectancy was 36 years, and in the early 1800s it rose to 37 years. That is far cry from today’s life expectancy. In 2007, the average life expectancy at birth for persons born in the United States was 77.9 years, an increase of 1.1 years from 2000 and an increase of 0.2 years from 2006, and by 2050 the average life expectancy is predicted to increase to 80 for men, and 83-85 for women.

In 1790 the average age of a Supreme Court Justice at retirement was about 62 years, whereas in 2010 it was about 77 years. Call me crazy, but I doubt that this is what the framers of the Constitution envisioned. 

Personally, I think that Kennedy’s decision to retire was the right decision. After all he was 81 years old! Since there is no mandatory retirement age, there have been 

justices that did not retire till 90! Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is now 85 years old – four yearsthan older Kennedy, and five years past the average retirement age.

Personally, if I have a case going before the highest court in the land, I do not want a bunch of octogenarians deciding it, and that is why I am recommending the following “rotating mandatory retirement” for Supreme Court justices. I propose that one year and three years after each presidential election, the justice that has been on the Court the longest would be forced to retire.Since there are nine Supreme Court justices, each would serve as a Supreme Court Justice for an average of 18 years, and I think that is plenty long.

Let’s use Justice Ginsberg as an example. She took her seat on the Supreme Court in August 1993 after a nomination from Bill Clinton, and her present the tenure is three years shorter than the average tenure. With my plan, she would have retired in 2011, and Justice Kennedy who was appointed in 1987 would have retired in 2005. 

There are two caveats to this plan. No single president could appoint more than three justices. If a president was elected for two terms (8 years in office), he would appoint only three justices – one at the end of the first and third year of his first term, and one at the end of his third year of his second term. Likewise if a justice died, the president would then have to nominate a new justice, even though it was not on the usual two year-four year cycle, but again each president could only nominate a total of three justices maximum. The bickering about Justice Scalia’s replacement would have been avoided since according to this plan, then President Obama would have already nominated his three justices, and so he would have maxed out.This plan would also avoid picking Supreme Court nominees based on age, as all would serve 18 years.  Before his decision, President Trump’s three leading potential nominees were all around 50, and so they could realistically serve for approximately 30 years as a Supreme Court Justice. That’s too long!

7/10/18

With the Dems now in serious long term trouble, of course they are going to want to change the rules. Even though I am chuckling on the inside because of the apparent desperation of the Democrats, I still think my 2018 innovative idea for the Court has some merit. In view of the present day scenario, perhaps it could only be implemented in 2050!

9/26/20