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May 24, 2021Liked by Handwaving Freakoutery

I will forever wonder how much of the underreaction/over-reaction between February and the end of of 2020 was politically motivated as we are certainly not going to get a straight answer from anyone ever. The Floyd riots and subsequent protests made it abundantly clear that some causes were virtuous enough to supersede the dangers of covid while some ( the welfare of our entire economy and well being of our school children) were not. What is clear is that the government will be in no hurry to relinquish the expanded power ceded to it by the frightened public.

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May 24, 2021Liked by Handwaving Freakoutery

Minor quibble - I think the mask studies were referring to reductions of 0.5%-1.5% *per day*, which would theoretically compound into much larger reductions in spread.

But if that were the case, one would think it would be much easier to separate counties wearing masks from those not wearing masks without needing a bunch of fancy statistical tools.

Who knows.

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May 24, 2021Liked by Handwaving Freakoutery

re: Kotkin's Neo-Feudalism analysis: left-totalitarians regressing to anti-Enlightenment paradigms

I'm in the central valley of northern California (not SF, not LA), in a suburban area, "purple" voting, trending toward "blue'. The number of insane SJWs/ZOMGs is noticeable, but there is still a lot of pushback from independent-centrists and conservatives. The deepest pockets of infection that remain in in trailer trash neighborhoods, the very ones that Rush Limbaugh used to makes jokes about. Generally, low income, various races, lots of poor hispanics that live in small multigeneration houses that have "essential" workers at high risk.

Anyways, California returning to "normal" is pretty meaningless, IMO, given the pre-COVID plunge into abnormality (disruption of fragile "Blue church" stuff). Consider Joel Kotkin's analysis of the deep, complex problems in California that were exposed by (not CAUSED by) COVID:

https://www.chapman.edu/communication/_files/beyond-feudalism-web-sm.pdf

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deletedMay 24, 2021Liked by Handwaving Freakoutery
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