Race hustling run amuck

Vincent J. Curtis

30 Apr 21

RE: Racist backlash to city’s racist vaccination effort condemned.  Headline (almost!) in today’s Hamilton Spectator.

Ameil Joseph would like to have me arrested.  I spotted Joseph as a racy-racist con man, and wasn’t afraid to say so in writing.  I noticed that Joseph personally profits from the race industry, and therefore has a vested interest in stoking racial antagonisms.  Joseph is is an associate professor of social work at McMaster University, and he wouldn’t have this job but for the fact that he’s black.  My observation of these and other facts Joseph believes “should be documented as a hate incident in Hamilton because that’s exactly what it is.”

Since the new police chief is supposed to re-direct the force to the policing of hate and thought crimes like in the U.K., Joseph puts a target on me.  In London the other day, a Christian pastor was arrested for the hate crime of saying that marriage was between a man and a woman.  A member of the public reported him for making homophobic  remarks.  Catholics, take note; you’re next.

A Polish immigrant can arrange for a vaccination himself, but the members of BIPOC community have to rely on Dr. Joseph to get theirs.  It’s racist to observe that, and it’s racist to observe the personal interest of Dr. Joseph in that arrangement.  And racist people need to be subjected to lawfare and arrest.

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In case you doubt me concerning Dr. Joseph’s unseriousness as an academic, I offer you his Research Interests and Academic background below.  His interest in critical race theory and other weird progressive obsessions are dead giveaways.

Research & Supervisory Interests

I am interested in working with contributions from the perspectives of critical mental health, postcolonial theory, critical race theory, and critical disability studies, to study the historical production of ideas about difference, normalcy, sexuality, eugenics, race, ability and mental “illness” as they cohere, diverge, interdepend and perform within policy, law and practice. My projects have looked at issues of social justice, violence, ethics, confluence, historiography and social work using complimentary theoretical and methodological frameworks to engage respectfully with the complexities of our human condition. I come to this work with over a decade of experience in the mental health field, in supportive housing, settlement, crisis respite, forensic assertive community treatment, community-based early intervention, and governance settings.

Education

• Ph.D., York University, School of Social Work, 2014
• M.SW., Wilfrid Laurier University, LSH Faculty of Social Work, 2007
• Diploma in Social Work, Renison University College, 2004
• B.A. (Psych), University of Waterloo, 2003

 

 

 

Unscientific lockdowns: a scientific analysis

Vincent J. Curtis

28 Apr 21

With Ontario, now Nova Scotia, and prospectively Manitoba locking down, staying-at-home, and otherwise keeping people indoors, it make me wonder if the so-called Public Health professionals even read the latest scientific literature.

A recent paper comes from M.I.T., authored by two real applied mathematicians who are experts at mathematically modelling.  These guys weren’t doctors playing mathematician, they are the real deal. (They are Martin Z. Bazant and John W.M. Bush, authors of “A guideline to limit indoor airborne transmission of COVID-19” PNAS April 27, 2021 118(17) e2018995118; https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2018995118)

Their model of transmission relies on an enclosed volume, otherwise known as “a room,” in which someone is putting virus into the room at a rate r.  In the room with the virus generator are other people of susceptibility s, and are breathing at rate b.  They assume that the virus is almost immediately dispersed evenly throughout the room.  The question they ask is: how long does it take for the uninfected people to breathe in enough virus for them to become infected, given their particular susceptibility?

What is immediately obvious is that people outdoors can never breathe in enough virus to become infected because the virus gets dispersed, and the only pathway of transmission outdoors is for an infected person to make a big sneeze directly into the face of the uninfected person.  Hence, there need be no limits on outdoor gatherings, activities, or a requirement for masking.

Other things become rapidly obvious.  One is that it takes time to get exposed enough to get infected.  If the room is large, like in a church or a big box store, that infected person is going to have to breathe a lot to fill the room with virus.  Ventilation air- exchange with the outdoors - and air filtration tend to defeat the build-up of the virus within the room.  If the uninfected aren’t breathing heavily, the time required to inhale enough virus to overcome their susceptibility is longer than if they’re breathing deeply and heavily.  Social distancing doesn’t matter, except to avoid being sneezed directly upon, because the virus disperses rapidly throughout the room, and so one’s exposure to virus is the same whether one is six feet or sixty feet away from the virus generator.  Lastly, it doesn’t matter how many people are in the room with the generator, just so long as none of them are in the room too long.

The authors assigned a filtration factor for masks, and found that wearing good quality masks may have a dramatic effect in reducing transmission indoors

When you start putting realistic values to the many parameters, quantitative guidelines can be, and were, developed that minimize the inconvenience of lockdown restrictions. The guidelines are published in chart form, and there is an on-line app for the convenience of those not inclined to make detailed calculations.

The authors considered two case studies: the classroom and the elder care facility.  With a typical American classroom designed for an occupancy of 19 students and their teacher, a modest risk tolerance, with and without masks, the authors found a safe time of 1.2 hours after an infected person entered the room with natural ventilation, and 7.2 hours with mechanical ventilation.  With moderately effective cloth masks these times increased to 8 and 80 hours respectively.  Hence, if daily classroom time is 6 hours, a class wearing masks with adequate room ventilation would be safe for longer than the recovery time for COVID-19 (7 to 14 days.).  School transmissions would be rare.  The authors assume a quiet classroom with only speaking going on and no vigorous activity.

Using standard elder care guidelines of New York State, and accounting for the great susceptibility of older people to COVID, the authors found a great difference between natural and mechanical ventilation.  With natural ventilation, an uninfected elder person could get infected within 3 to 17 minutes after an infected person entered their standard room, but it took at least 18 minutes with mechanical ventilation.  In short, mask wearing and once-through mechanical ventilation is indicated in standard elder care facilities.

The authors claim that standard surgical masks can extend the critical exposure time by a factor of 400 to 10,000; while hybrid fabric cloth face masks can extend it by 6 to 100 times.  Even single layer cloth masks can extend critical exposure time by 1.5 to 6 times.  The authors deprecated the six foot rule, arguing that a plume of infected breath extends far beyond six feet.  Masking, on the other hand, blocks large infected droplets and redirects the breath plume sideways and upwards.  Hence, masking indoors is preferable to a six foot distance.  That said, masking obviates the need to reduce occupancy in large rooms with decent ventilation where a person won’t spend multiple hours.

The M.I.T.  study is the opposite of fear-mongering.  It offers a serious, scientific basis for its recommendation, and some of these are at variance with off-handed repetitions of previously failed lockdown measures.  In particular, prolonged forced stays in apartment buildings and hotels with certain ventilation characteristics can actually increase transmission, as happened in Wuhan, China.

Likewise, there was no need for the brutal shutdown of Adamson’s BBQ in Toronto last December, given the ventilation of the serving area and the short time customers spent indoors.

This study ought to inform Canada’s public health officials on lockdowns, or at least their political masters.

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Cruisin' for a bruisin'

Vincent J. Curtis

28 Apr 21

RE: No consent, no land sales, Haudenosaunee say.  A news article in the Hamilton Spectator of this date.

For the sake of brevity and clarity, I’ll refer to the Haudenosaunee as the Iroquois or Mohawk Indians.

It is a matter of history that the Iroquois never permanently occupied the Hamilton area, and the incantation of abasement that opens city council meetings affirms that fact.  In 1785, in return for their loyalty to the Crown during the American Revolution, the Iroquois were given the Haldimand Tract as a place to live in in peace, unmolested by America.  The original grant was defined as six miles on either side of the Grand River from source to mouth.  Hamilton does not lie within that boundary.

The claim by certain people, who claim the status of hereditary chief or clan mother, that they collectively will exert a veto authority over land use in Hamilton on account of their ancestral association with it is lacking in authenticity.  The Gage and Hamilton families have a stronger claim.

Plainly, a gang of aboriginal thugs is running an extortion racket.  Money may not be sole object; it may also be to establish precedents for future extensions of their pretend authority.

What can the city government do about it?  The police force is going to be policing hate, and will be unavailable to deal with an occupation.  Unless, that is, non-aboriginals decide to deal with the matter privately, in which case the police will rush to the aid of the occupiers – as occurred in Caledonia with the OPP in respect of Foxgate and Douglas Creek..

A word from the Mayor, which included the phrase, “won’t be tolerated,” might be useful in this matter.

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Capturing the police for progressivism

Vincent J. Curtis

27 Apr 21

RE: Combatting hate a top priority for next police chief

It is often remarked that everything in the U.K. is policed except crime.  That’s because the police there spend an inordinate amount of time policing thought and speech - when they aren’t oppressing the civil rights of ordinary Britons in other ways.  Tradition crime is rising because police aren’t paying attention to it.  Their minds are elsewhere.

Looks like the same is coming to Hamilton.  The call is for the next chief to prioritize hate crime and to eliminate racism and racist from the police force.  (The suggestion by the Mayor and Chairman of the Police Commission that racism is a problem on the Hamilton Police force, I’m sure, is just great for the morale of the force.  Members of the force today were all born after the civil rights crisis of the 1960s in the U.S.  The evils of racism were driven into them from childhood, yet it is maintained that they are racists and stained with “white supremacism.”  You can’t win.)

Hate crimes are few in Hamilton, and thelarge plurality of them occur against Jews.  But it is hate crime allegedly committed against the BIPOC and the LGBTQ+ communities that are the focus of the hate crime suppression campaign.  The progressive nature of the victimology here was emphasized when Mayor Fred Eisenberger pointed to protests “engineered by hate groups” and the need of the chief to be “alive to issues of racism in the city.”

In other words, particular groups are to be targeted for police thuggery, but not others.  Hamilton police is to become the P.C. police.

I happen to believe that BLM is a hate group; they hate humanity.  The professional LGBTQ+ community hates the society that they are different from.  But because of clever virtue signalling, BLM and LGBTQ+ are high on the victimhood hierarchy.  I’m sure the Muslims are there somewhere, but the Jews, the most common victim of real hate crime, are nowhere.

If the new chief is a true believer, crime can only go up, as it is in America and the U.K.  Having failed to defund the police, the next turn is to convert the police into the muscle of progressivism.

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$77 Billion is cheap insurance

Vincent J. Curtis

26 Apr 21

RE: Should Canada spend $77 Billion on new fighter jets? Hamilton Spectator op-ed of today’s date.

The article proves the Spectator’s commitment to free speech.  It doesn’t matter how inane the contention, it’ll get published if the author has credentials.

The contention by Bianca Mugyenyi, director of the Canadian Foreign Policy Institute, is that Canada should not spend $77 Billion on new fighter jets but instead should spend it on some “socially useful endeavors.”  Strangely, her list of touchy-feely endeavors did not include any foreign policy initiative.

The figure $77 Billion was arrived at by adding to the $18 Billion or so capital cost a further $59 Billion in operating costs – estimated by the No Fighter Jets Coalition, by the way.  Let’s assume that’s true.  Since the jets will be operating for forty years, $77 Billion divided by forty is less than $2 Billion a year.  Cheap insurance by any measure.

How much is securing Canada’s sovereignty over the high Arctic worth to you?  Against both Russia and America?

If France had mobilized in 1936 upon Hitler’s occupation of the Rhineland, he would have been overthrown, and World War II avoided.  Was it worth saving the cost of mobilization?

Canada maintains a capable military as a deterrence against war, and as a fire brigade should a small one break out.  Anyone familiar with foreign policy knows that military power is what counts in the world.  Soft-power is bunkum.

Madam director is out of touch with mainstream foreign policy.

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BIPOC Community leaders call their followers stupid

Vincent J. Curtis

26 Apr 21

RE: Vaccine took too long to get to racialized groups.  Hamilton Spectator of today’s date.

While I can’t think of anyone more deserving of criticism than Big Bureaucratic Medicine in Hamilton and Ontario generally, the attacks made on Public Health Hamilton are jaw-dropping.  The leaders of the Black, racialized, and Indigenous communities regard their groups as composed of stupid people.  People too stupid to arrange for a vaccination themselves.

A Polish immigrant is expected to arrange for his own vaccination, but members of the BIPOC, some of who have been in Canada for generations, need special help, as esteemed by their leadership.

The criticism levelled by these community “leaders” boils down to Public Health Hamilton not validating their leadership position by arranging through them a mass vaccination of members of their communities.

It makes sense to vaccinate in priority of need.  First, the elderly, and then those in “hotspots.”  But why should a segment of society get priority on the basis of skin colour rather than risk?  The game afoot here is to cement the current leadership in their positions by having vaccinations delivered on a special, prioritized basis, and because that isn’t happening, the leaders are squawking.  And making it look like members of their communities are dependent on them for vaccination, being incapable of arranging for it themselves, as members of the non-BIPOC community are expected to.

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New MIT guidelines on indoor airborne transmission

Vincent J. Curtis

24 Apr 21

A new peer-reviewed study released by M.I.T. professors and published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences provides great insight into the spread and the control of spread of COVID-19.

The paper is entitled, “A guideline to limit indoor airborne transmission of COVID-19.”

The authors are Martin Z. Bazant and John W.H. Bush, the former being professor of chemical engineering and applied mathematics, and the latter a professor of applied mathematics.  They applied what an engineer might recognize as the “stirred-flow tank reactor” model to the spread of the virus indoors, and the general results are therefore not surprising, given an element of dynamism to that model.

The results show that if locked in a room, no matter how large, with a contagious person, it is only a matter of time before an uninfected person takes in enough of the virus to become infected themselves.  Social distancing doesn’t matter, except as avoidance of being sneezed on.  Ordinary masking doesn’t help much if the time factor is indefinite.  Social distancing outdoors makes almost no sense, and that doing so with masks on is “kind of crazy.”  Ventilation slows the build-up of virus concentration in the room air.

The study shows why many lockdown measures are either useless or counterproductive, and there is no reason whatsoever to ban outdoors activities.  Problems arise when people are forced to stay indoors for prolonged periods of time in the presence of contagious persons.

The study provides guidelines that can be used by authorities inclined to employ lockdown measures.

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The lab mice are revolting

Vincent J. Curtis

22 Apr 21

RE: Surgical mask study draws ethics complaint.  Hamilton Spectator news article of today’s date. 

If the Spectator had published my August 1^st, 2020, article “The Futility of Masking” none of the ethics complaint would come as a surprise to readers.  The ethics complaint comes from people who recognize a politically motivated “scientific study” when they see one.

The idea being complained of is to show that surgical masks provide somewhere between seventy and ninety percent of the effectiveness of an N95 respirator against COVID transmission.  The methodology is sheer bunkum and the results would have no real-world significance.  But somebody wants a study to hang a contention on, and the lab mice are objecting.

“There is ample research to support the transmission of COVID-19 through aerosols that can be spread through the air and inhaled, requiring respirators as the minimal line of safety protection for at-risk workers.”  Exactly as I contended last year in the debate over masking mandates, and by aerosols I included the virus as a dry dust.  I contended that a false sense of security would be imparted by wearing ineffective masks, and studies in the U.S. have shown that eighty percent of people catching COVID said they wore masks “all the time.”

Unfortunately, Premier Ford’s doctor-advisors haven’t figured this out, and are trying stay-at-home orders for the third time.  They should instead have been focussing on indoors air quality, and encouraging outdoors activities with allowances for social distancing.  But no, they wouldn’t listen to people with experience in industrial hygiene.

Oh, well.

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Banks on Earth Day

Vincent J. Curtis

21 Apr 21

RE:  Canadian banks: stop stalling climate action

RE:  Stop propping up fossil fuel producers

An op-ed and a letter to the editor obviously coordinated for effect on Earth Day, a cultish day of worship that takes place tomorrow.  The Hannon Times was in full People’s Daily mode today.

The founder of GASP reports that Canada’s top five banks have in the last five years lent over $500 Billion dollars to the fossil fuel industry, as if this were a bad thing.  She did not say how the banks were to replace the income earned from these loans if they weren’t made.  Many retirement funds and individual retirement investment plans include Canadian banks in their portfolios.  It simply isn’t a matter of the banks taking a hit by not lending to Big Oil, it’s really the people who count on the banks earning money that are taking the hit for moral posturing.

A writer from ordinarily sensible Dundas wants us to pressure Canadian banks not to fund future fossil fuel developments.  That’s a shot at Alberta and Saskatchewan, but never mind.  Bank loans form only a small part of the funding for energy development projects, most of the money comes from internally generated revenue and the sale of bonds and stocks.

If it came to it, Big Oil could easily create their own bank in Canada, or make use of the banks of friendly provincial governments, to the detriment of Canada’s big national banks.  Moral posturing gains you nothing.

These criticisms come from people unaware that the food they eat is planted, cultivated, harvested, processed,, and delivered to their supermarket by fossil fuel powered trucks and equipment.  They travel by fossil fuel, and live in homes heated by natural gas.

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Making the case for free-market healthcare

Vincent J. Curtis

20 Apr 21

RE: ‘We’re going to collapse this system’ warns Ontario nurse (CBC News story of 20 Apr 21)

The case for a free-market healthcare system is being made every day, in the failure of the present, government-run system; and in the heavy-handed uses of lawfare to try to control the spread.

A free-market healthcare system would look upon a pandemic as a bonanza.  It’s an opportunity to make money.  The pandemic would get treated but not at the cost of failing to treat cancer and heart disease.  The best medical brains would be looking for ways to expand capacity to meet the need.  But in Canada, we get griping about overwork and fitting the patients into the limits of the system, a system cast in concrete.  A system in qhich the government has a vested interest in lying about.

The insurance companies would be doing their best to prevent people from suffering from COVID.  One instrument is insurance premiums, which would go up on people most at risk and who required hospitalization.  Insurance companies would look for real mitigation measures, not fake signs of compliance like worthless masks.  Insurance companies would have focussed on those over eighty years in March and April of 2020, and let the young and healthy develop herd immunity, before the onset of the second and third wave.

We would not have had government imposed lockdowns and lawfare mandates like fining people for using the Hamilton Mountain stairs for exercise.  Government would have no financial or political interest in the matter.

Socialized medicine brings many costs, and loss of freedom is a big one.

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Ontario Extends Stay-at-Home Order: The idiots in charge

Vincent J. Curtis

16 Apr 21

When a Canadian returns home from a well-earned sunny vacation, the Federal government obliges that individual to quarantine for fourteen days, regardless of a negative COVID test and whether or not the person has been vaccinated or has recovered from the disease.  Yes, it’s stupid, but never mind.

Fourteen days gives a person recently infected a ninety-five percent chance not just of developing symptoms but of actually recovering from an infection.  Hence, when the Ontario government imposes a four week stay-at-home order they are imposing a quarantine of double the necessary time upon a population that is already greater than 99.9 percent uninfected.  The extension of the stay-at-home order by a third quarantine period raises the question of whether the idiots in charge know what they’re doing, or if they are suffering from an acute lack of imagination and taking it out on us.

The verdict sides with both options.  In January, the Stanford University Medical Center released a scholarly study of lockdown measures around the world and concluded that they do nothing to slow the spread of the virus.  Ontario’s doctors are implicitly admitting that this is so because despite stay-at-home orders etc., the situation remains out of their control.  By now, you’d think that repeated failure might clue them in that their methods aren’t working, but that would be to admit they didn’t know what they were doing going back to March, 2020.

They can’t exempt the vaccinated and the recovered from controls.  And they can’t answer why.

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Race hustling in overdrive

Vincent J. Curtis

15 Apr 21

RE: Anti-Asian Racism: This ends now.  An op-ed published in today’s Hamilton Spectator by Anna Zhang.  Zhang is a law student in Ontario.

The shooting in Atlanta of nine people in and around three massage parlors has set off an explosion of race hustling.  These days, there is no better thing to be than a victim, and being Asian, in particular Chinses, is the favorite victim de jure.  The article by Anna Zhang fits perfectly into the “white supremacist anti-Asian racist” narrative  too well not to print.

The Atlanta shooter, Robert Aaron Long, shot nine people in his rampage: two whites, one Hispanic, and six Asian women, four of whom were Korean.  All except the Hispanic man worked in the massage parlors.  Long claimed to be a sex addict, and he shot up these massage parlors as his means of eliminating temptation.  Long admitted to the murders –a death penalty offense in Georgia - but denied any racial motivation.  There is nothing here to suggest white supremacism is at play here; quite the opposite.

But that doesn’t stop the race hustling.

Speaking of verified anti-Asian racism, it is most prevalent in two places: in Ivy League universities and the Black community.  Ivy League universities have been caught repeatedly denying admission to qualified Asian students in favor of less qualified Black students.  The Black community has fostered violence against Asians going back to the 1980s in New York (Al Sharpton!), the 1992 Los Angeles riots targeted Korean-owned businesses, etc. Black-on-Asian violence is endemic throughout America.

Zhang’s unverifiable stories smack of a Duke lacrosse fantasy.

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The wish is parent to the thought

Vincent J. Curtis

13 Apr 21

 

RE: Canada’s greenhouse gas emissions rise slightly in 2019.

RE: The party is over for Canadian conservatives.  Reports in the Hamilton Spectator of 13 Apr 21. 

Just a usual day at the office for climate change propagandists.  But a few observations.

In ‘greenhouse gas emissions,’ an erroneous statement appears as follows, ”Once in the atmosphere, carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases trap heat, which causes climate change.”  It should read, “Greenhouse gases – primarily water vapor, but including carbon dioxide – trap heat, which keeps the earth warm at night.”

Climate change is a complex phenomenon and the presence or absence of CO2 in the atmosphere is but one small factor.  Water vapor is by far the predominant “greenhouse gas,” and its lack in the atmosphere explains why deserts get so cold at night.

When the author of “the party’s over” says “the reality of climate change is not up for debate” it means he wins in his own mind by violence, not by conclusive, or even persuasive evidence.  His insinuation that the CPC really ‘does not understand climate change’ is the self-flattery of a weak mind.  The author fails to understand the significance, or lack thereof, of 1.5 percent, or of the fact the China is building the equivalent of Ontario’s entire power output in coal-fired power each year.  The belief that Canada can do anything about world CO2 emissions is silly Toronto Liberal talk.

The CPC will remain politically dominant in Western Canada and the Liberals will remain irrelevant because the Liberals are untrustworthy on energy and other issues.

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Free Markets never fail

Vincent J. Curtis

10 Apr 21

RE: Free Market failed Canada on pharmaceutical development.  An op-ed piece written by Gabriel Deveaux and published in the Hamilton Spectator 10 Apr 21.  Ms Deveaux is a master’s candidate in Public Health studies at Memorial University of Newfoundland.

It’s not unusual today for a student of Public Health to opine on matters of economics, thinking that their budding credential in one field grants them credibility in another.  Such explains the outburst from Gabriel Deveaux, who advances the Marxian idea that the “free market” failed Canada - in the realm of vaccines.  She holds out Connaught Labs, when it was owned by the University of Toronto, as the market ideal to be recreated.

Ms Deveaux is probably too young to remember the discrediting that Marxism received after the collapse of the Soviet Union and the Tiananmen Square massacre.  The internal contradictions of Marxism caused the economies governed under its rules to collapse.  Like a cancer thought to be excised, Marxism is experiencing a great resurgence these days in North America.

Economics exists in the presence of scarcity, and the characteristic of man to look after himself first.  We call the buying and selling of goods and services activities of “the market,” and a free market exists in the absence of factors external to the parties involved in the transaction.  Politics can impose factors which distort “the market”, and we say governments distort “the free market,” but a free market is a principle and an idea that doesn’t fail or succeed.  The “free market” is not a thing that physically exists, like a farmer’s market. 

In economics, there are no solutions, only trade-offs.  The trade-off for cheap drugs in Canada is no original research, and the trade-off for no tort protection for vaccine manufacturers is no manufacturing of vaccines.  Such are the economic consequences of political decisions made by Pierre Trudeau in, oh, 1974.  And mendicant agencies that produce nothing and can produce nothing of political advantage to the governing party is going to find itself eventually cut off from the public teat, with the money going to something that does benefit the benefactor.  This too is an economic trade-off.

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The Gospel according to the media

Vincent J. Curtis

8 Apr 21

RE: Ford pandemic spin wearing thin.  Hamilton Spectator editorial of 8 Apr 21.

Jesus spoke in parables; the media speak in narratives.  The editorial observed that the media narrative for the third wave stay-at-home order was that Ford should have acted six days sooner.  The media was echoing unnamed experts who were saying that a hard lockdown was essential even to “put a dent” into the third wave.

And there was the usual blah-blah about humbug projections.  (Statisticians aren’t allowed to practice medicine; why are doctors taken seriously when they play statistician, or actuary?)

What has escaped the attention of the media is that empirical analysis of lockdowns show that they don’t work.  That analysis was released in January.  Statisticians last year said that the virus was too contagious for lockdown measures to work.  In the first two lockdowns, no one can point to an effect the lockdown had on the case curve, which looks typical instead of misshapen.  And now we’re faced with something more contagious than the original, meaning lockdowns will be ineffective in control, again.

The media’s unnamed croakers admit as much: they say a harder lockdown is needed just to put a dent in the cases curve.

The parable of the women and the lamps is applicable here.  The wise women brought an extra store of oil.  In the year since the pandemic began, we heard nothing about adding ICU and ventilator capacity to the health care system.  Saving the system was last year’s objective; but the system, it seems, did nothing to save itself the next time round, which is now here.

Forget about lockdowns.  Fire the incompetents who brought us to this pass, and focus on getting the vaccines out.

P.S.  The celebration yesterday of 3M’s new N95 production line was an inter alia admission that cloth masks were just a pacifier, an alternative to sucking one’s thumb while real protection was being got ready.

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Let’s not get it done

Vincent J. Curtis

23 Dec 20

"We're looking at systems that are designed to meet the future threats," he said.

"It's easy to build a ship right now with the current systems that are integrated, and just say 'let's get it done,' but that's not how the military works. We have got to think of the future."

If you want to know why Defense Procurement of major systems are so expensive and so delayed, all you have to do is reflect upon what Minister of National Defense Harjit Sajjan was quoted as saying.

Keep it Simple, Stupid is not the principle.  ‘Let’s get it done’ is wrongheaded in peacetime militaries.  Buying a ship that works, whose systems are integrated, whose costs, both capital and operating, are known and well documented – we can’t do that!

Sure, the Arleigh Burke class of missile destroyers, are bigger, faster, more powerful, longer ranging, and cheaper to buy than the Type 26 frigates still on the drawing board; but just going out and buying something in production that works?  Preposterous!  That’s not how the military works!  That’s not the Canadian way!  The good is the enemy of the perfect, and we want perfection!

At least, that’s not how a military under no pressure to perform and under considerable pressure to be invisible, works.

As for thinking about the future: the futures being thought about are those of the thinkers, the planners, the talkers themselves.  Actually doing something in the future?  We have to think about that!  “Humm,” they thought, stroking their chins, “we’d be out of a comfortable job and have to battle with the real world if we actually did something!”

Let’s talk about the future for a moment.  What power would the RCN be expected to operate against?  Germany is on our side now, so the U-boat menace is pretty much confined to Russia, if Vlad were so minded.  However, the United States Navy concerns itself a lot with Russia’s submarine threat.  Not much left for the RCN to do in that department.  The Type 26 is designed to be a close escort vessel for the UK’s new Queen Elizabeth class of aircraft carriers.  The frigate is designed to protect the carrier from submarines and provide a line of defense against anti-ship missiles and incoming enemy aircraft.  In addition, the Type 26 can deliver cruise missiles and anti-ship missiles of its own, adding punch to the carrier group.

But why is the RCN tying itself down to so limited a role and so expensive a ship?

China is getting aggressive, and the Pacific could turn into a theatre.  The Queen Elizabeths, by range and by fuel, are meant to work the North Atlantic, and frigates that escort them would be limited in range for the Indo-Pacific.  China’s belt and road policy means that China might own the port facilities where vessels dock in the Indo-Pacific region, so refueling could present security and other problems.

When Sajjan speaks of thinking about the future, insofar as he’s not just deflecting, he’s referring to electronic systems and combat systems on board the ship.  Ship technology is mature.  The USN is still acquiring Arleigh Burke class destroyers, which tells you something about how US navy brass sees the future.  There’s nothing but a little engineering that stands between Lockheed-Martin’s electronic warfare package for Canada’s frigates, and mounting the same gear in a more capable ship like a destroyer.

So far, the concern about the future bit has to do with electronics, not with hull design or weaponry.  But hulls built in Canada is what the frigate program is all about.  The electronics are American, the vertical launch systems are American, the engines and helicopters are British; the gun is German.  Canadian east coast expertise is supposed to integrate them, at $4 billion a pop.

Why do the evasions and excuses of the MND lead to suspicions of patronage rather than belief in a real step forward in capability?

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The Economics of Lockdowns

Vincent J. Curtis

2 Apr 21

An honest economist will tell you that there are no solutions – only trade-offs.  To get this, you give up that.  You may be willing to trade that ten dollars in your pocket for this item in the store, but not for twenty.  Being lighter that extra ten dollars makes the trade-off a bad one to you.  Imagine being forced by law to make that trade.

Lockdowns are about trade-offs also, many and complex.  One obvious trade-off is that in exchange for hardship on you there will be less hardship on the healthcare system.  Maybe.   (It is noteworthy that public sector doctors are forcing this exchange.)

Of course, if you can’t golf, exercise outdoors, gather outdoors, or watch a movie from your car, you can’t catch the virus from golfing, exercising outdoors, gathering outdoors, or watching a movie from your car.  But a trade-off comes in what you do instead of golfing, exercising outdoors, gathering outdoors, or watching a movie in a drive-in.  If that alternative activity is as likely or more likely to cause you to catch the virus, then that trade-off is no good.

To avoid catching the virus from someone else, you have to avoid breathing their air.  Being outdoors makes you less likely to breathe someone else’s air than indoors.  If the choice is between golfing outdoors with three others and watching golf on TV with the same three people in your apartment, then outdoors is the better deal.  If the choice is between watching a movie with your girlfriend at a drive-in or in your apartment, the virus-free air is at the country drive-in.  The same holds true eating at an outdoors restaurant instead of in your apartment.

If society is banned altogether, being confined in the same apartment building for days on end through forced inactivity is bad compared to activity outdoors, because in the apartment building you will eventually be breathing the same air as everyone else.

A Stanford University study of lockdowns released in January concluded that lockdown measures are ineffective for controlling the spread of the virus.  One reason is that a person who is prevented from doing one thing perceived as being hazardous may well end up doing something else that is as - or more - hazardous that simply isn’t perceived as being hazardous, such sitting alone in one’s apartment, breathing the building’s air.

The difference between outdoor activities with others and indoor sedentary, solitary existence boils down to differences in volume of air breathed in a given period, neglecting the health benefits of outdoor activity and society.  Outdoor air tends to be free of the virus, while indoors air is limited in supply, less likely to be virus-free, and breathed a lot more.  Hence, confinement of people indoors is, most of the time, bad as compared to activities outdoors.

Lockdowns aren’t about solutions, they’re a trade-off:  hardship on you in exchange for less hardship on the healthcare system.  Maybe.  Some of the measures are stupid, if not downright counter-productive.  This time of year, prevention of the spread of the virus ought to encourage being outdoors rather than forcing the opposite on people.

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Fat Dougie hates fitness and recreation

Vincent J. Curtis

2 Apr 21

RE: Ford’s Lockdown Restrictions

Doug Ford’s latest assault on science civil and liberties includes the following restrictions on activities outdoors:

-          Outdoor gatherings limited to five people, regardless of space available (raising the question, what if six people are present simultaneously in Buchanan Park?[a park in Hamilton of 33 acres]);

-          Funerals and weddings are not limited in size of a gathering provided proper spacing is maintained (what is “proper” spacing.  1 m [3 feet] is the “proper” distance in the EU.);

-          Salons and personal care services are closed, despite not a single contact tracing showing these are sources of spread;

-          Outdoor fitness classes are closed, regardless of spacing;

-          Outdoor restaurants services are closes, regardless of spacing;

-          All golf course are closed, regardless of space available and group size limited to four (and four is less than five);

-          Drive-in theatres are closed.

 

A scientific analysis of the above indicates that Fat Dougie has a hate on for fitness and recreation.  He dislikes people being entertained and happy.  But so far as science of prevention goes, there is nothing consistent or even sensible in these restrictions.

The aim is to avoid breathe another person’s air.  Being alone, outdoors, meets that aim.  Separation, outdoors, meets that aim; but these restrictions go absurdly beyond that aim.

There isn’t a single enterprising reporter to ask Ford where is the science in these restrictions?  Where are your studies showing that being cooped up in your apartment is better than exercising outdoors?  How will golfing alone, watching a movie alone, exercising alone, eating alone and outdoors spread a disease person to person?

How far separated do people have to be to be considered ‘alone’?

Stanford University concluded that heavy-handed lockdowns do nothing to halt the spread.  The W.H.O. recommend against lockdowns.

Where are their studies?  Waving one’s hand and saying “it’s obvious that if you don’t golf, you can’t get the virus while golfing.”  That golfer is going to be breathing somewhere else, and that somewhere else is more likely to cause him to breathe someone else’s air than on a golf course. 

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Torstar shilling for Ford?

Vincent J. Curtis

1 Apr 21

RE: Ontario locked down, again

Call me an April Fool, but for me, the most interesting aspect of Ford’s latest lockdown is the compliance of the press.  No political figure is allowed to question the wisdom of Ford’s lockdowns without withering criticism from Ford and from the press chorus.  (‘Follow the science!” “You want grandma to die!” etc.)  It can only be the press, therefore, who can ask the emperor about his nudity.

In January, the Stanford University released a study which concluded that lockdown measures don’t contain the virus.  The W.H.O. advises against lockdowns.  Yet no reporter dares ask Ford’s experts why are Stanford University and the W.H.O. wrong and they’re right?

Reporters could also ask which lockdown measures work best, and which have been found to be worthless?  Why were outdoor activities curtailed in previous lockdowns?  And if Ford’s advisors don’t have studies backing up their position on lockdowns, how can they be “following the science” as opposed to going back to the same old well?

Reporters could ask why those who have been infected and recovered and those who have been vaccinated, in other words, those with immunity, suffering the same restrictions as those who have no proven immunity?  Why should people get vaccinated, again, when there is no upside?

And what about those studies showing that cloth masks are useless, no matter how many worn at a time.

I suppose this is the year Torstar turned into a supine shill for Conservative Doug Ford, once condemned as being Ontario’s Donald Trump.  (If only!!)

Perhaps COVID causes mental as well as physical afflictions.

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