Friday, May 8, 2020

Observe your Philosopher-Kings in action, and despair

The central conceit of progressivism is the dream that really smart public servants can conceive of and implement optimal public policy.  The problem is simple - who are you going to believe, Progressives or your lyin' eyes?

"Smart" public policy for the Kung Flu doesn't include shutting cemeteries:
Nobody on the inside is at risk to either transmit or receive the disease.  And anyway, by definition they are all six feet away even if you are indelicate enough to stand right on them.
Tim is much kinder to them than I would be, but he's much more of a gentleman than I.  But he was also an ER doctor, and so there is a clarity to his thinking that our Governmental Overlords could use a heapin' helping of:
The vehicle gate on the other end of the cemetery was naturally open so this the sort of response to the Current Unpleasantness that grates because it is ineffectual as well as petty and lazy.
We have top men creating public policy.  Top.  Men.

7 comments:

Glen Filthie said...

It drives me nuts, these idiots that claim that the lockdowns worked. By their reasoning the virus spreads in hair salons, in the parks, on the beaches, and in the playgrounds... but not in Walmart, Costco or Ukranian Tire...

Aesop said...

No, Glen, but I see you're never at a loss to misexplain the obvious.
When everything else but Walmart and Costco are closed, lockdowns work.

"Work" doesn't mean the spread is 0%.
It means it's slowed to a glacial pace, compared to say, NYFC, where they may as well have passed a requirement to French-kiss strangers and lick the handrails in the subway, because it wouldn't have improved on viral propagation there by much over what they got anyways.

When you posit a false dilemma from the get-go, the only thing you mine is fallacy.

In most of the U.S., the spread has been contained at a couple of percent in cities, and a fractional percent in the hinterboonies.
That was largely the entire point. A 20% infection rate, as NYFC obtained, was the only place where health care was on the verge of crashing - exactly as predicted. With cities, as with people, there's always at least one Gilligan.

Total days the Subway there was closed: 0.
Top. Men.

The problem isn't that the government cannot behave intelligently.
It's that it will not, generally ever, unless dragged there by the hair, kicking and screaming; or unless bureaucratic laziness and inertia overcome their normally rapacious glee at effing other people over. Anything else is accidental, unless firmly supervised. And the commoners are as lazy as their would-be overlords, so that happens but rarely as well.

This is why wiser men declared Sloth as one of the Seven Deadly Sins.

In fact, were someone to make them government agencies (or ministries where you are), pride, greed, wrath, envy, lust, gluttony, and sloth would pretty much describe 98% of every government activity, and an even higher rate of so-called "civil" servants, since Hammurabic times, at least.

Government employment should be a prison sentence, the first rule being that anyone who applied was de facto unfit for the job, and banned from it for life.
It should be awarded as a prison sentence, with a 200% annual turnover rate of people who can't wait to get out of it, ideally by making the wages lower than the lowest unemployment compensation, far below minimum wage, with no benefits whatsoever, and the working conditions less favorable than swamp work on Devil's Island. Putting actual adders and crocodiles in the halls of government buildings would be an excellent start, because neither recognizes any professional courtesy to their fellow reptilian bureaucrats.

LSP said...

The phrase "goat rodeo" springs to mind.

Glen Filthie said...

“ When everything else but Walmart and Costco are closed, lockdowns work.”

Well no they don’t Aesop. Anyone that says so doesn’t understand the math or the way pandemics exponentially propagate. I don’t expect an intellectually honest debate out of you, so Out of deference to our esteemed blog hosts I’m not going to argue with you... but I will take bets if you want to put money where your mouth is...

By your logic, when the lockdowns lift - this supposedly deadly disease will reassert itself and reignite the pandemic. I’m saying that it won’t, because it’s just the flu and not the horrible killer that you and the other hysterics have made it out to be. Already I am proving correct, right in your back yard. In California, you morons let the prisoners out so they wouldn’t contract the pox, to make room for quarantine breakers that didn’t. All you have to show for it is a surge in violent crime, and no cases from those that were jailed. (And none amongst all the killers and rapists you let out). Other states are easing the restrictions with no ill effects whatsoever.

Yannow what? I won’t take your money. It would be unsporting, I have an unfair advantage. As for me I’m fed up with it, and with you, to be honest. If some internet idiot wants to believe in junk science there’s nothing I can do about it. Fill your boots.

Tacitus said...

In fairness the cemetery is a private entity and can make its own decisions be they good/bad/silly. In small town America I often have a beverage (ok, its usually two) with one of the directors so I was having a bit of fun.

The larger question still applies.....how much of what we are doing to prevent death from covid actually makes any logical sense?

Yesterday I saw the first real crack in support for lockdown. It was a sign, displayed with a bit of discretion, that said THRIFT SALE. Thrift sales (or garage sales, jumble sales, boot sales, depends on geography) are a bedrock institution around here. Someone has gambled that the SWAT team is not gonna come in and shut them down. Others are watching. They've got their signs ready.

T.Wolter

Aesop said...

Letting prisoners out was and is stupid, anywhere it was done. Not only because of the recidivism problem, but also because they're at the lowest risk, because they're the demographic least affected by this virus. They were let go because socialists in charge are always softheaded idiots.

But yes, ending the lockdown will surge this back up, and it already is, particularly in L.A., where people are almost as stupid and self-centered as people from NYFC. (The fact that many of the dumbest ones in L.A. are NYFC transplants forms no small part of the reason this is so.)

This was never a mythological pandemic, and the impending second wave won't be either, but people living in denial can't be argued out of it with facts and logic, because they didn't use facts and logic to get there in the first place.

Remember that when the death tolls spike up again, because you wanted the economy open. There's bright ways to do that, and stupid ones, but although most people are morons, they deserve a chance to prove otherwise. The problem, like with drunk drivers, is all the other folks they kill with a stupid grin on their faces, before the problem becomes so obvious even to the thickest clots in the crowd can see it.

Eainsdad said...

The death tolls for this, Aesop, may be higher than they have been for influenza. But that will undoubtedly be because people were locked in their homes and unable to get out and get fresh air and exercise and sunlight to help them generate Vitamin D and stimulate their immune systems.
It will also undoubtedly be because Socialist Overlord in charge of NYS made old folks homes take in COVID 19 sufferers instead of using the designated field hospitals and military assets provided.
It will also be because the lockdown protocols prevented the normal process of herd immunity locking away the virus from vulnerable hosts.
It will also be because the WHO told people not to wear masks for weeks.
If all of the above stupid situations had not been created by people shrieking about how deadly this issue might be, we might have had a simply second flu season and this would all be over.
In the meantime, we have a huge number of businesses closed. Closed forever.
We have a huge number of unemployed. They are currently being paid more to sit on their asses and watch television than they were to actually go out and work. This will not stimulate them to go out and get a job when businesses start to open back up.
All of this stupidity caused by the shutdown may just trigger wars when the total cost becomes known. It may cause major wars.
Millions may die from the shutdown simply because Socialist politicians grandstanded and tried to get rid of the Bad Orange Man.

Millions more than the virus will prove to have killed.
Especially given that corrupt officials are calling any death that may have been in the same galactic quadrant as someone with COVID 19 a death from coronavirus. Gunshot wounds to the head notwithstanding.

You have a bias. You have an illogical bias. You show this with your insults and your shrieking psychotic attitude about any individual fact that shows the doom porn that you are consuming in copious quantities to be false. Get a grip. It is disturbing to watch. It is disturbing to read.
You have been recommended as a top notch blogger in the past.
You are slipping.