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Thanksgiving is ON

What Gov. Newsom & top doctors really think of California's COVID restrictions. Thanksgiving alone is too much even for someone like me. I'm secular, I'm a loner, I don't keep in touch with many family members. But a family holiday alone ( alone together is nonsense) is too strange even for me. A month and a half in quarantine last spring was tolerable because I was ill and too tired to do much after work. Summer and fall, I rehabbed my garage. Now? I ruminate over the sort of things that get worse when they're picked at.  I spent my first Thanksgiving in Indiana with a friend and her family and subsequent ones with a few members from my meetup group. This year, I'll be at a cousin's house. The weather in Cleveland, where she lives, is supposed to dry--something of a Thanksgiving miracle.  Risks? I'm about as likely to die of COVID as I am to get shot in Indianapolis: a few chances in ten thousand, at most. I don't have risk factors like diabetes

South Dakota, Sweden are Failures--Compared to What?

The Badlands of South Dakota. An article today in The Spectator ( US and UK ) decries the lack of regulations in South Dakota to deal with the coronavirus, calling it a "failed experiment." The author compares South Dakota's response, or lack of it, to Sweden--and then calls Sweden a failure, too. From this, he concludes that lack of coronavirus regulation allows rampant spreading of the disease, and implies that strict regulation controls it. Does it really--and are those devil-may-care Swedes and South Dakotans about to drop like flies? Let's look at their numbers and compare them not to perfection, but to some places that have had strict regulations to get an idea how well the regulations might be working. The article doesn't specify which measures should be mandated, so let's assume lockdowns.  I'll avoid using out-of-the-way places and epicenters, since they would have low or high numbers no matter what they did. And since there's been so much v

Do Adults Need COVID Restrictions Anymore?

Five years ago when I was moving, I'd have gone to California if money had been no object: the natural beauty, the climate, and family there made it one of my favorite places. But Indiana, being far cheaper, became my new home--and I'm glad money was an object. Part of the reason is their overregulation. But t hose executive orders California's governor has been writing with regard to COVID--over 50 of them!--have been voided in court . The governor ignored the state's separation of powers, a tenet of our system of government that keeps power from being concentrated and keeps our government from being tyrannical--or at least stops it in progress.  Meanwhile, the mayor of Denver, my hometown, issued a 10 PM curfew punishable by fine . The mayor said it's not a curfew and it's not a law enforcement order. It's obviously a curfew enforced by law, and useless, too, as I know of no evidence that the virus is more likely to spread at night. Most gatherings there w