Watch Those Tenses

"This is a great success story." "Federal government rose to the challenge."  Jared Kushner (April 29, 2020)

It was the first game of the intramural hoops season. Our lineup, featuring four 5'11" guys and one 5'9" dude, stepped into our spots on each side of the foul line. We, members of the branch campus cross-country team, had battled the faculty team tooth-and-nail, but we found ourselves down five with 30 seconds left. The faculty captain, also the coach of the branch campus basketball team, was at the foul line to shoot one-and-one. He turned to me and nodded. "You know," he said, "you guys are going to win some games."

He bounced the ball twice, took his foul shot, and missed. I secured the rebound, dribbled the length of the floor, pulled up at the opposition foul line, and hit a jumper. As the faculty tried to inbound, our best player, George, stole the pass and made an incredibly difficult running one-hander over a 6'5" guy. We were down one. The faculty again tried to inbound. George stole the ball again and made another running one-hander from about 12 feet. The faculty launched a wayward 25-footer as the horn sounded. I turned to the faculty captain and said, "Yeah, you were right. We might win some games."

One thing I have learned from a lifetime of sports betting is that you've gotta watch your tenses. Putting ongoing events in past tense has no magical effect on the events themselves. Perceiving, reporting, and discussing ongoing events as if they have finished does not make them finis. Events tend to not be impressed by the fact that you use past tense. One can use whatever tense one prefers over and over, and still those pesky ongoing events pay you no mind. It's as if they don't care what you think or what you say or what absurd spin you try to impose. Events just go about their business of being events.

Jared Kushner's Fox interview yesterday was grotesque. He looked like Mr. Sardonicus on uppers. His attempt to impose a past tense on the pandemic will go down in history as either self-deluded hubris or cynical sadism, depending on whether he is actually perceived as believing what he said.


April 30, 2020
Bob Dietz

Innumeracy Lunacy

"Right now we are heading to 50,000 and according to the projection we will end up with 60,000 by the end of the pandemic."  President Donald Trump (April 20, 2020)


Today, April 29, we passed 60,000 deaths.

On April 21st, in my entry Innumeracy, I explained that the 60K projection was "mythic" and "a mirage." Well we didn't even make it to the end of April. We didn't cap at 60,000 deaths. We didn't make it to August 4th. We certainly didn't make it to "the end of the pandemic," as the president said.

On Monday, April 27th, we received an update from the University of Washington model. Now they are projecting 74,000 deaths.

Hmm. Well, I'll say it once again. I'm going to go out on a limb here. I realize that a poor professional gambler has no business refuting the University of Washington and the White House, but I'm pretty damned sure we're being massaged with nonsense. Maybe I'm wrong, and deaths will plummet, stopping cold, and all will be well with the world. But who's kidding who? The model estimate is pure hokum.

What is going on here? Why are we being fed numbers like this? First, allow me to explain the editorial process. We are being given numbers from the most optimistic of all available models. Then we are being given the very low end of the range of projection from the rosiest model. It's statistical bullshit.

As I said March 26 in Approval Numbers:  Psych 101, the way to get high approval numbers is to (1) tell people what they want to hear, (2) express as optimistic a view as possible, and (3) create a sense of faux control by assigning numbers and dates, even if it's all just blowing smoke.

Every news source that relies on ad revenue is now stuck in a Catch 22. If you give people a sense of the reality to come, if you explain that we are in month two of a two-year process, nobody will want to watch you. People are frustrated, they are depressed, they are scared. Presenting reality to viewers is not going to sell tickets. Why do you think alternative projection models aren't all over the news cycle, given the horrific inaccuracy of the U of W go-to model?

Americans need to hear the truth, whether we can handle it or not. Without honest information, we cannot plan what to do with our lives. The total death projection is now an alleged 74,000. Did they confuse the end of the pandemic with the end of May? I watched the model spokesperson on CNN Monday. Nonverbally, he reminded me of a used car salesman who just realized he had been trying to sell a car to another used car salesman. He was now just going through the motions. Verbally, he avoided attaching dates to the projection.

The projection, as I said, is now 74,000 for the pandemic. That number is laughable. How stupid do they think we are?


April 29, 2020
Bob Dietz

Would You Believe It Was Sarcasm?

The president has evidently watched a lot of the old Get Smart TV series.

Don Adams as Maxwell Smart, when trapped in an ugly predicament, would try to make everything okay by bluffing the arch-villain. He'd usually say something like, "Right now, this building is surrounded by an army of CONTROL agents in Sherman tanks." The villain would respond with, "I find that very hard to believe." Smart would then respond with, "Errrr, would you believe a meter maid and two mean beagles?" And on it would go.

Today the president tweeted something about journalists needing to return their "Noble" Prizes. He also said he'd be contacting the "Noble" committee to complain. A few hours later, after people poked fun at him for conflating Pulitzer Prizes with Nobel Prizes and the misspelling of Noble/Nobel, the president deleted the tweets. He then claimed, for the second time in four days, that his presumed errors were just sarcasm.To which the villains in the media will say, once again, "I still find that hard to believe."

So I am left with trying to frame the key observations regarding today's tweets. Here they are.

1) The president does not use editors, even when he doesn't necessarily know anything about that which he's tweeting or discussing. Nobody checks to make sure he didn't put an enormous boner on paper. This smacks of such spoiled hubris, I don't really know what to make of it. It does suggest that the origin of his beefs with the press lies in the president never fact checking himself and understanding that the press fact checks everything.

2) When confronted with something of which he is unsure, he doesn't even bother to google the topic.

3) Taken together, these impulsive habits reveal someone either (a) too emotional to take the time to fact check or get a correct spelling or (b) someone who thinks/knows the readers won't care if he gets everything wrong.

Circle back to the "bleach and bright light" press briefing last week. Superficially, the core problem seems to be, as Dr. Birx said to cover the president's ass, that he processes new information out loud to audiences. If you look deeper, however, this isn't the crux of the issue.

The real problems are twofold. First, according to multi-sourced reports, President Trump rarely attends the daily task force meetings in the situation room. For whatever reason, he sits in on the meetings about once a week. The task force reportedly doesn't mind this, as they get more accomplished without him there, but it leaves the president woefully underinformed considering that he is the primary briefing speaker most days. Second, his absence from those meetings necessitates a short pre-briefing verbal cram session where they inform President Trump of the topics of the day. The president thus gets new information verbally before stepping to the podium.

Basically, the president doesn't really read, has neither the patience or concentration to attend every task force situation room session, and gets a pre-briefing immediately before the start of the actual briefing. He then goes out on stage and attempts to wing it.

This is a slovenly, lazy way to communicate crucial information to the American public. Expecting to inform and impress a national audience while blindly winging it is both incredibly arrogant and unbelievably stupid. Then, when he spews the inevitable blunder, similar to Smart's "army of CONTROL agents in Sherman tanks," the president's fallback is, "Would you believe it was sarcasm?"

Dr. Birx, playing the role of Barbara Feldon's Agent 99, is trying her best to thwart KAYOS while also maintaining the president's competency cover. Tough jobs. Meanwhile, all of America's fate lies in the hands of a man who, day by day, makes Maxwell Smart look increasingly, well, smart.


April 26, 2020
Bob Dietz

Public Service Announcement

Do Not Drink Bleach! Do Not Pour Bleach Into Your Orifices! Do Not Inject Bleach!


My mother explained the hazards of drinking bleach when I was about six. She said that it could kill me. I'm proud to say that I have followed my mother's advice for the last 56 years and have not ingested any bleach.

My father had a bad run-in with bleach when I was about 10. He mixed bleach and ammonia while cleaning the bathrub. My dad rarely cleaned the bathtub and had no real idea what he was doing. He wound up in the hospital, hallucinating a third-person perspective from the ceiling of the room. I have learned from my father's example and clean bathtubs only when absolutely necessary.

To the topic at hand, yesterday's "bleach and bright light" task force briefing. I am not going to pile on President Trump. The guy is 73 years old, trying to play a role for which he is miserably equipped. He knows New York real estate. He pretty much intellectually whiffed at everything else until his presidential run. He was about as prepared for a pandemic as either of my grandfathers would have been at 73. My paternal grandfather was a milkman; my maternal grandfather was an anthracite coal miner. They were smart men. They knew their businesses, but weren't really expert at anything else. They would have been as lost as President Trump. The advantages my grandfathers had were that neither was presumptuous. They knew what they didn't know, and they weren't motivated to fake it.

In some ways, I understand what President Trump is experiencing. My last term at Penn State as an English major, I needed one additional credit of English, and there were no one-credit English offerings. I suckered my advisor into approving an ENG 400 exit course, which he assumed was English. It was, however, a job prep course for people graduating in engineering. I had absolutely no idea what anyone was talking about in any of the classes, but I kept my mouth shut, wrote the required job application cover letters and inquiries, and got an A. Had I actually volunteered to ever answer a question in class, I would have been dead meat and probably tossed from the course. The president's problem is that he hasn't learned to keep his mouth shut.

That brings us to the core issues with the president's social history. How does any man go through adult life without anyone telling him that he has no idea what he's talking about? What kind of weird insular psychological existence is that? And does President Trump understand that he's in a bizarre narcissistic social cocoon?

In my business, I am wrong more than 43% of the time regarding things I really care about (mainly because my money is at stake). On not-so-rare occasions, I am horribly wrong. It's true that I once won 17 consecutive games in a public contest. But it's also true that I've lost eight in a row and nine out of 10 quite a few times. What must it be like to have people acknowledge your 17 in a row, and never give you grief for any of the losing-eight-straight? After 50 years of nobody in your immediate orbit highlighting your losses, what does that do to you? Do you come to believe the terrible mistakes didn't really happen? How do you get to know what you don't know?

So no, I'm not going to pile on the president for his sudden love of bleach. In fact, I'll leave you with my version of a gentle song.


(To the tune of "The Bitch is Back," and with serious apologies to Sir Elton John)

I was corona-fied as #45,
Caught the bug cause
China spit in my eye.
Times are changin',
Though the rich stay fat,
But the fever will not get you
If you bleach your back, oh, oh, oh.

Open Georgia Friday,
That's all right.
Friday night steakhouse,
Sick by Saturday night.
I can bleach you all
At your social do's.
I get high in the evening
Sniffin' chloroquine, too, oh, oh, oh.

Use the bleach, use the bleach,
Have it as a snack.
I'm stone cold sober, an unfortunate fact.
Use the bleach, use the bleach,
Cause I'm smarter than you.
It's the reason I say
The things that I do, oh, oh, oh.


April 24, 2020
Bob Dietz

Great Minds Think Alike

After I wrote yesterday's blog entry, an odd thing happened. The president decided that he agreed with me. I had argued that Georgia re-opening tomorrow (Friday) is way too early and very dangerous. At yesterday's task force briefing, the president said exactly that. Wow. Who woulda thunk it?

As yesterday's briefing unfolded, I realized another very strange thing. All of the folks who castigated me for being anti-Georgia-opening and called me a libtard, coward, and un-American were faced with the awful reality that President Donald Trump publicly agreed with me. If my blog entry had made me a cowardly libtard, what did that make the president?

This was truly a fascinating and unusual real-time study in cognitive dissonance and how individuals deal with it. People assumed that my anti-Georgia opening spiel would be at odds with their president "chomping at the bit" to re-open. They not only had to come full stop, they had to swivel their minds 180 degrees in very turbulent waters.

I intend to tackle the whole cognitive dissonance angle somewhere down the road while discussing why people cling to this president, but after yesterday's weirdness, I felt as if I should at least broach the subject.


A Fixed Faith

Trumpism, I think, is more of a faith than a political persuasion. Sit ardent MAGA folks down and ask them, in all seriousness, "What policy position by the president would result in his losing your support?" Then reach into your pocket and start your stopwatch. There will be a long, interminable pause. The kind of pause that tells you (1) they haven't considered such a thing, (2) they have absolutely no idea what those deal-breaker policies might be, and (3) their loyalty to the president is a matter of faith, not facts.

When confronted with lies-as-cheerleading or sudden unexpected pivots of position (China, Kemp, Stormy), they don't really allow what's transpired in front of their eyes to affect their worldview. They simply shoehorn what they've experienced into the crystallized storylines of their faith.

For a good 30-something percent of the American public, science has become the enemy because it  contradicts the daily feel-good reality script the president imposes on the task force briefings. The president's supporters want to believe more than Fox Mulder, and science is in the way. So they ignore the science. This is, as Leon Festinger explored many years ago, what one should expect. In the years since Festinger's initial research, cognitive dissonance theory has been subsumed into other subfields. I have a feeling, though, that in the decades ahead, it's going to be dusted off when discussing this presidency.


Friday's Reality Show

Tomorrow, Gov. Brian Kemp re-opens Georgia without the presidential support he presumed he had 48 hours ago. This turn of events actually isn't all that surprising. The president's penchant for treating each day as a reality show episode should have prepped us for the episode-ending surprise. The assumed apprentice favorite is told he is to be fired, and we go on to the next installment. Same Trump time, same Trump channel.


April 23, 2020
Bob Dietz

Dying for a Massage

If Brian Kemp, Bill Lee, and Donald Trump all tell you that it's safe to go back in the water, it's time to get a bigger boat.


Guidelines be damned. It's full death ahead. Governors Kemp of Georgia, Lee of Tennessee, and McMaster of South Carolina, fine Republicans who would all look at home in The Cattleman's Club, are going to ignore coronavirus task force guidelines for re-opening, and will get their businesses cranking. Some business owners will re-open as early as Friday, April 24th. Others will get the American way of life back on track May 1st.

None of these states fit the re-opening statistical protocols, and I have yet to read or see an epidemiologist who thinks that this is a good idea. I can't imagine what the rest of the world thinks of the United States.

Where to begin? Well, let's try a quote from Georgia's Gov. Brian Kemp, who learned about asymptomatic transmission (he claimed) on April 1st, "The private sector is going to have to convince the public that it's safe to come back into their businesses." How is this supposed to work, exactly? What are the business owners supposed to do to sweet talk customers into their stores? Post flip cards in their windows, "Just -4- virus customer deaths this month?"

The main flaw with Kemp's approach goes something like this. The COVID-19 pandemic is beyond the life experiences and expertise of virtually every business owner and Georgia resident. So your plan is to rely on people making sound judgements regarding existential threats with which they have zero experience or expertise. And there is really no state or federal mechanism in place to "safety test" businesses. Customers will just have to figure it out for themselves. Meanwhile, the Georgia governor says that he was unaware of asymptomatic transmission until April 1st. Clearly he himself would not be qualified to design or maintain a safe business. He wouldn't even be qualified to be a responsible customer. But somehow, through people dying by going to various places and engaging in dangerous activities, folks will eventually figure out what is or is not safe. That, in a nutshell, is the Georgia plan.

Barbershops, massage parlors, gyms, and nail salons will be among the first to open. The plan, therefore, is not only to open, but to have businesses where physical distancing is impossible to lead the way. Meanwhile, confirmed cases and virus deaths have been rising in the state (right on cue after Easter), but Kemp is determined to have individual freedoms extricated from the manacles of science. Maybe he's another dude for whom, "Jesus is the vaccine."

Tennessee, which a month ago was ranked 49th in virus preparedness, is also ready to open for business. As a Tennessee resident, I'd like to report that traffic in the Tri-Cities area is back to pre-pandemic levels already, and it's Wednesday, April 21st. I believe what will happen, now that dates for re-opening have been announced, is that residents of all of these states will jump the gun on the opening dates and engage in risky behavior days early, since there won't be enforcement of much of anything and any stigma is now absent.

This is going to be a literal unmitigated disaster. How can anyone expect civilians to behave correctly, in their best self-interest, when they are immersed in a situation with which they have absolutely no experience? Not only do the individual residents of Georgia, Tennessee, and South Carolina have no experience with anything like this, but neither do their family members or local civic and religious leaders. Kemp's decision is akin to dumping his constituents on the Normandy beach without so much as basic training, and then expecting them to make all of the proper decisions. Or maybe, conversely, the frontline service workers most at risk are just considered chum --  expendable minimum-wagers who will get the economy revived for the rest of us.

Of course, city mayors in these states are pushing back. The urban areas feature higher population densities, which means more transmission opportunities and inevitable spikes. The urban centers also feature more people of color, who may not appreciate their role as chum.


April 22, 2020
Bob Dietz

Innumeracy

"Right now we are heading to 50,000 and according to the projections we will end up with 60,000 by the end of the pandemic."  President Donald Trump (April 20, 2020)


I have read and re-read that quote a dozen times. I have tried to determine if maybe the president meant "the end of April" instead of "the end of the pandemic." I believe he actually meant to say "the end of the pandemic."

I can't get my head around this statement or why he would say it. Perhaps he thought his audience was deaf or unable to grasp the intricacies of a calendar. Long shot explanations, perhaps, but better than the alternative, which is that the president feels it is perfectly fine to tell absurd lies about this pandemic's cost in lives.

Does he feel it necessary to just invent far fetched hokum for a television audience or is this what he considers his "cheerleading" role? Why would anyone step to the podium and dispense obvious nonsense on national television? He didn't have to volunteer these numbers. Nobody forced him to say it. He just decided, for whatever reason, that Americans needed to hear this. In retrospect, when the pandemic is finally held at bay (perhaps two years from now), his prediction yesterday will stand  as brazen delusion or cynical nonchalant lying.


The Model (Singular)

For the last 10 days or so, the front-and-center model has been the University of Washington's version. Evidently the White House has adopted this particular model as its de rigueur projection. The model is convenient in two respects. It artificially truncates the "end of the pandemic" to August 4th, and it projects the lowest number of deaths up until August 4th.

First of all, kiss the 60K fatality projections of this model goodbye, as they were based on stay-at-home and social distancing through the (artificial) August 4th end date. The super-capitalists have jumped the gun and will re-open businesses in some of the worst possible states in a few days. Second, that 60K number did not account for Easter transmission surges, protest transmission bursts, and the overall inanity of a good chunk of the American public.

Sixty thousand was mythic the entire time. The virus isn't going on vacation August 4th. That date was just a MacGuffin. It's true that I'm going out on a prediction limb here. Who am I, a poor, ignorant professional gambler, to argue against President Trump and the University of Washington? It's possible that the fatality figures will drop off a cliff and a miracle occurs. But no, realistically, that is not what's going to happen. That 60K figure was a mirage. And our reality is a long arduous trek.


April 21, 2020
Bob Dietz

Patriotic Terrorists or Terroristic Patriots?

Back on March 17, the FBI's New York office alerted law enforcement agencies around the country that white nationalists had decided upon a new terrorist strategy. ABC News quoted the FBI memo, "Members of extremist groups are encouraging one another to spread the virus, if contracted, through bodily fluids and personal interaction."

Now it's April 20th, and President Trump has affirmed his support via twitter for stop-the-lockdown rallies in Michigan, Colorado, Kentucky, and Pennsylvania. These rallies, almost entirely white, feature Trump supporters who ignore social distancing, gather in large crowds, and do the same things that the FBI accused terrorists of planning a month ago. Ignore social distancing. Check. Recruit large crowds. Check. Yell and chant loudly, spreading virus. Check. Most not wearing face masks. Check.

So I guess I'm having trouble with labels here. Was the FBI warning law enforcement about patriotic terrorists? Was President Trump publicly supporting "responsible" but terroristic patriots? Should I be able to tell them apart?

A month, I suppose, must be a long, long time for Americans blessed with various stages of amnesia. Attempted murder in March becomes the latest flavor of freedom in April. Amazing, really, what the fog of pandemic has done.

I lived two blocks from today's Harrisburg (PA) anti-lockdown rally. Harrisburg, with just 50,000 people, really isn't a very big place, so a few hundred terrorists can make quite an impression on those tight streets surrounding the capitol building. Oh, wait. Those were "demonstrators." Sorry. But be patient. Maybe it'll be back to "terrorists" in May after an outbreak or two. Tough to tell these days without a scorecard or a DeVos mailing list.

My favorite part of today's Harrisburg terrorism was the big green truck with the signage, "Jesus is my vaccine." Evidently stupidity wasn't the disease.


April 20, 2020
Bob Dietz

Coach Class Life -- Part Two

I've flown first class five or six times in my life. The first couple of times, back in the halcyon days of air travel, I was asked if I wanted to travel in first simply because there were empty seats. I dressed respectably while flying, and I'm sure that was a contributing factor to the offers. The other couple of times I've flown first, it was either because I was using air miles and no coach was available or because first class on a particular route was just a few miles more than coach.

I mention this handful of first class excursions as a segue into something I started noticing about 20 years ago, namely that coach seating began to suffer serious shrinkage. The seats on all airlines became tighter, smaller, and with less legroom, even as Americans got larger, topping out at our current 37% obesity. It was a bad combination. I got increasingly older and less lithe, and the seats kept diminishing. At one point in my youth, I could sit comfortably folded up like a huge praying mantis. Now I creak and adjust myself like a veritable tin woodsman. I'm about to make a point that is obvious but never clearly stated by anyone. People don't bring it up. The airlines fail to mention it, too. Being crammed in coach, especially bottom-dwelling, middle-seat coach, is more dangerous than flying first class. And as we get older, the danger increases.

Sure, the airline magazines mention that we should stretch in our seats, do some in-seat exercises, and take the occasional aisle walk, but nowhere does it actually state that sitting in these narrow-ass coach seats is riskier than sprawling in first class. Flight attendants don't even include exercise suggestions in their pre-flight safety spiels. Yet blood clots and deep vein thrombosis are real potential consequences, and the cheap seats increase the risk of these consequences.

Not only does first class provide drinks and comfort; it provides a healthier, safer trip. But that's not spelled out. I find it fascinating that the safety disparity between coach and first never gets mentioned. I can imagine some lovely ad, "Why let coach kill you when you can live in first class?" An anthropologist friend says that this may be an example of one of western culture's sacred little secrets that every adult implicitly knows but hardly anyone ever mentions. The class disparity between coach and first isn't just about food and drink; it's about space and personal safety. It is, he explains, not something one mentions in polite company. As in, "Hey, look at those DVT suckers back in coach!"

Those decades-old musings on the potential costs of flying coach prepped me for some of the cause-and-effects of the 2020 pandemic. Of course the poor are disproportionately at risk. Of course people of color are disproportionately infected, disproportionately dying, and disproportionately passing it on to friends and family. And of course plutocrats expect them to return to work at pre-pandemic wages while shouldering pandemic risks.

Minorities and the poor are all overrepresented in the 10 most common American occupations:  retail salespersons, cashiers, food prep and servers, office clerks, registered nurses, waiters and waitresses, customer service representatives, laborers, secretaries, and janitors. Not only must virtually all of them interface with the public in a high-volume way, they are (RNs excepted) among the worst compensated. Daily, they will run the gauntlet of facing both a large number of people who might be infected and huge total virus loads.

In addition, when they go home, they and their families are forced to share smaller spaces, which also increases the likelihood of shared contagion. People of color command less square footage per capita at home than the American average. That has become a big, lethal deal.

All of these elements and consequences of the virus equation are obvious. These 10 most common occupations make the American economy run, and they are all being asked to return to work under high risk conditions not experienced by the people living first class.

In terms of the probability of getting the virus, transmitting it to family and friends, and possibly dying, the cost of coach class living is higher than it's ever been. During this pandemic, American inequality has become a vehicle for illness and death. This has always been true, but now it's center stage in the middle of the virus spotlight. Now we not only know, but we cannot hide from it.

If the U.S. economy is opened back up before testing and contact tracing are ubiquitous and enabled, frontline service workers will pay the most severe price. "Risked their lives for minimum wage" will be their epitaph.


April 19, 2020
Bob Dietz

Trump as Role Model

In my March 18 entry, "The Problem with Trump," I argued that the primary negative of Trump as president was his unfortunate significance as a role model. More than any policy decisions or plutocratic power grabs, his presence on the world stage as a role model to a billion children was the worst of all Trump presidency effects. I also argued that relying on a man with little behavioral discipline to spearhead a period of unprecedented communal discipline was a really bad idea.

Here we are, one month later, and President Trump's lack of any semblance of behavioral discipline has been center stage. He is told there is no solid hydroxychloroquine evidence; he promotes the drug anyway. He is told that mask-wearing is a good idea; he refuses to wear a mask. He frames daily press conferences as if they were Days of Our Lives episodes with villains and heroes. He is confronted with his own embarrassing predictions; he attacks the people who remember what he said.

He behaves like most stereotypical villains facing Bruce Willis, Sylvester Stallone, or Clint Eastwood for the last 30 years, but lacks the behavioral discipline of the more formidable ones.


Consequences

Trump as role model has come home to roost. Protesters in Michigan on Wednesday and Kentucky on Thursday appear to have as much behavioral discipline as the president. A few weeks of stay-at-home to save lives is evidently more than these Americans can stomach. I'm not sure how they'd handle the London Blitz. And then today, Friday, the president tweets "Liberate" to various states with an unbelievable disregard for virus or violence consequences.

Americans may be, quite frankly, too addicted to their consumerism to manage this pandemic optimally. Italians, Spaniards, South Koreans -- all locked down with solid no-nonsense measures and responsible, mature populations. Americans, not so much. For us, the "freedoms" of heading to Wal-Mart, drinking beer at the local sports bars, and sitting down in McDonald's are evidently too powerful to resist. The synergy between a civilian populace lacking behavioral discipline and a president woefully deficient in same is undeniable.

Maybe all of this was inevitable. In 2020, the lack of a mandatory military/civilian service probably plays a role. Americans distrust experts and something called a "deep state" because they manage lifetimes without interacting much with either. As such, any expertise that lies outside of our own life experiences is considered both alien and unwanted. If the president doesn't read, why should I? If the president can quote "hunches" and "being a genius" as rationale for his decisions, why should I put in hundreds of hours of research? If the president can point to his own temple as the source of his expertise on virtually every subject, why shouldn't everyone? These are the issues with Trump as role model.

Other nations must look at Americans and roll their collective eyes. Homeowners in the United States have the second most average floor space per person, behind only Australia. France, Japan, the UK, and Italy, for example, all have about half the per capita square footage of American homeowners. Yet Americans find staying at home a terrible hardship.

The amplifying effect of a consumerism-addicted, undisciplined populace led by an undisciplined mirror image is going to be a major problem going forward. Because a good chunk of Americans refuse to recognize expertise and instead follow a caricatured echo of themselves, the foundation will be laid for second, third, and fourth waves of this pandemic.


April 17, 2020
Bob Dietz

Coach Class Life -- Part One

"In the choice between our way of life as Americans and the loss of life -- of American lives -- we have to always choose the latter." Rep. Trey Hollingworth, R-Ind.


Call me cynical, but I have serious doubts about the intestinal fortitude of those who stand next to General Pickett on the back line and blow "Charge!" on their bugles while everyone else marches up Cemetery Hill.

I've always wondered about "our way of life as Americans" as mentioned by Hollingsworth. Is that a real thing? Has somebody actually pinned it down? Is it a singular "way of life?" Or are there plural "ways of life" instead? Seems like the latter to me, but I'm strictly street-level cannon fodder. I'm not a one-percenter like General, I mean Representative, Hollingsworth.

The United States being primarily a service economy these days, I decided to tally up the folks most likely to charge up our COVID-19 version of Cemetery Hill. Somehow, I don't think one of the wealthiest men in Congress gets to experience "our American way of life" quite like our 10 most common professions. In descending order, they are retail salespersons, cashiers, food prep and servers, office clerks, registered nurses, waiters and waitresses, customer service reps, laborers, secretaries, and janitors. All exposed to dozens, if not hundreds, of different people each and every workday. Forced by their jobs into close interactions with folks whose virus statuses are unknown. The RNs, of course, are immersed in the riskiest environments of all. In reality, these 10 most common occupations are the people living "our American way of life."

Take the RNs out of the top 10 most common jobs, and you are looking at median income significantly below the American average. In fact, the bottom 40% of employed Americans have median incomes no higher than $20,000.

But let's put them back to work so the American economy can power back up and make their lives worthwhile, eh? Better to sacrifice 20,000 of the people earning $20,000 than to have the working class sitting safely at home. Does anyone really think that Hollingsworth and his ilk would put any of their immediate families on the front lines of this service economy right now? For $20,000 a year?

Trumpeting "Charge!" from the safety of a luxury box makes these super-capitalists nothing more than hypocrites and cowards.


April 15, 2020
Bob Dietz

Day Before Easter: News and Notes

I've always been under the impression that faith requires commitment.

When James Randi discussed psychics and faith healers in his seminal works, "Flimflam" and "The Faith Healers," he repeatedly pointed out how con men do their best to not commit to any specific prediction or outcome. They say one thing, but cover their predictive asses by saying something else.

Take Reverend Tony Spell of the Apostolic Tabernacle Church near Baton Rouge, for example. Reporting that he expects a crowd of 2,000 for Sunday's Easter service, he said two very interesting things during two different interviews this week. He told Reuters Friday, "Satan and a virus will not stop us. God will shield us from all harm and sickness." Then, while talking to TMZ, he said, "True Christians do not mind dying. Like any zealot or like any pure religious person, death looks to them like a welcome friend."

Now, am I the only one who noticed that he seems to have bet both heads and tails here? First, he proclaims that God will shield his congregation from harm and sickness. Then he says, well, if not, it's okay because true Christians don't mind dying. Yeah, he's pretty much covered his bases.

Then I got to thinking, Reverend Spell is one of those laying-on-of-hands dudes. He thinks that he can help the sick by laying his hands on them. Now, correct me if I'm wrong, but if a faith healer's entire congregation gets together during a pandemic, isn't that great for repeat business? Seems like an ideal business model. I can't be the only person who picked up on this getting-them-sick-then-healing-them business model, but who knows? Sometimes we professional gamblers have an eye for the obvious.

Meanwhile, in the realm of the rational, Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear has decided that anyone attending Easter services in person at churches will have their license plates recorded. They will then be charged with misdemeanors and given quarantine notices. I salute the governor. There is something profoundly illogical about celebrating someone coming back from the dead while putting others' lives at risk.

Finally, the "Red Dawn" emails have taken center stage, courtesy of The New York Times. Well, of course something like this is on record. If a poor professional gambler with nary a biological credential to his name understood the scoop as it unfolded, how could leading epidemiologists and cross-discipline luminaries be in the dark?


April 11, 2020
Bob Dietz

COVID19: Easter Ironies

Easter is upon us. Italy, which knows a little something about hard-core Christianity, has banned church gatherings. Muslim countries, including hard-hit Iran, have closed mosques to prayer services. The United States, now number one in confirmed cases and deaths, has decided to be different. Half of these decidedly un-United States are allowing church services as long as the churches follow "CDC guidelines." And that may be an undercount, as some states who are officially against church gatherings are either not penalizing offenders or simply looking the other way. It is Easter and all that.

The irony of celebrating a resurrection by killing people seems to be lost on some U.S. Christians. Many of the worst transmission events during this pandemic have been religious services. So why would any rational society allow them? Why not mandate that all church services be online? Are there reasons behind the madness?

Let's examine some contributing factors:

1) Need for routine. As described in previous entries, humans under duress retreat to routinized behaviors. Southern evangelicals consider church-going a core routine. Instead of initiating novel behaviors for a novel threat, they hold onto core routines, thereby putting themselves at physical risk. They risk their lives for a faux sense of control.

2) Consequences from "somewhere else" are disregarded as evidence. A prayer meeting in Iran gets ignored as an ominous trace event because, well, it's in Iran and they're Muslims. A funeral in New York is ignored because, well, they're Jewish and it's in New York. A major transmission church service in Kentucky is ignored by border state Tennessee because? Evidently because it occurred beyond Tennessee's border. Kentucky, having suffered that church event, has been much more strident in recommending cessation of in-person services than Tennessee.

3) Christians are conveniently ignoring asymptomatic transmission issues because either they don't care or they are woefully uninformed, which would put them in company with Georgia Governor Brian Kemp, who said he had just learned about asymptomatic transmission before his April 1st press conference.

4) Christians are also ignoring churches as really bad transmission zones. Enclosed spaces with people shouting or singing are particularly virulent environments in terms of both difficulty maintaining spacing and potential virus load exposure. Six feet is a long distance between people, effectively reducing the number who should be in a church by at least half. Does anyone expect churches to turn people away so that CDC instructions can maintained?

5) Americans aren't used to following communal guidelines. Millions of Christians may attend church services Sunday. They have every right to risk their own lives celebrating a resurrection. They should not, however, have the right to become infected during the services, then leave church and infect people beyond their congregations. That isn't religion; it's reckless selfishness.


Probabilistic Certainties

Hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, will physically attend church services Sunday. It's probabilistic but certain that, barring a miracle, many will fall ill because they attended. It's probabilistic but certain that some will die.

Those who become infected because they attended Easter services will infect others. Some of those others will become sick. Some will die.

So Americans know these facts, beyond a doubt, as they walk in the church doors Sunday. But because there will be no smoking gun pointing directly at individuals saying, "You made this person sick," the church-going Christians don't care. At least not enough to skip Easter at church. With no chain of direct responsibility for illness and death, people can walk away arguing that they did nothing wrong.

Americans tend to think that outcomes framed probabilistically don't apply to the self. Nothing that happens communally is necessarily shouldered by individuals. Communal behavior, however, has consequences. In this case, the communal behavior of physically attending Easter services will get people killed. Individuals, however, will refuse to perceive themselves as part of the whole that caused the deaths.


Questions

How are spring breakers ignoring social distancing protocols any more stupid or irresponsible than Christians physically attending Easter services?

We know people will get the virus because of the Easter services. We know some will die. We know that congregants who get the virus at the services will transmit the disease to people outside of the churches. Health care workers must then deal with these victims. And American culture will have to pay the bills.

Yelling "Fire!" in a crowded movie theater is against the law because people can be hurt. Preaching to a congregation on Easter Sunday is going to get people sick, and it's going to get people killed. Why is it legal? Intent shouldn't matter when consequences are crystal clear. Ignorance is no excuse.


Pontius Pilate Among us

This is the first time in my American life where I can point to Christians and say, "They're going to kill people, and they know it." It is a sobering jolt. I've always thought that Christianity was about helping others.

The federal government has managed a neat trick here. By not instituting any legal oversight of the churches on Easter, the feds have essentially pulled a Pontius Pilate, washing their hands of the consequences.

Too frightened to upset the two-thirds of Americans who are Christians, they washed their hands and placed them cleanly behind their backs. But let's not kid ourselves. The federal government, the priests, the ministers, and everyone who catches the virus at a church Sunday and transmits it -- they will all have blood on their hands.


April 9, 2020
Bob Dietz

"I'm a Social Scientist!"

"I'm a social scientist. I have a PhD. And I understand how to read statistical studies."  Peter Navarro


Let me get this straight. An economist has decided that he's qualified to have a medical opinion on COVID-19 treatments. Wow. I'm impressed. The only thing better than a doctorate in social science must be a stay at a Holiday Inn Express.

Hoo boy. Where to begin? Okay, let me start by saying that I am now going to have to treat most of my friends and acquaintances with much more respect. I'd say that out of my 20 closest compadres, a dozen have PhDs in social science. I guess that now makes them medical experts. That really surprises me, as quite a few are dumbasses. And it's a shame that my late wife, who had two social science doctorates, isn't here to help with medical advice, too. At least she was a demographer and forensic anthropologist, so she'd have more sense regarding what's going on than, say, an economist.

What Peter Navarro, I'm sorry, Dr. Peter Navarro said is a howl to anybody with a doctorate not obtained from classifieds in the back of Popular Mechanics. It is just a flat-out hoot. It's the rough equivalent of claiming that your baker can fix your car because he's capable of reading Street Rods magazine. It's like your obstetrician volunteering to do your brain surgery.

I'm going to buy my social science PhD friends T-shirts that say, "I'm a social scientist. Ask ME!"

Now, here's the thing. It's possible that Navarro is oozing hubris out of his pores and actually believes his opinion should count. Hubris is undoubtedly a personal quality that the president occasionally conflates with expertise. But I don't really buy it. Navarro must know how clownish he sounds to anyone with a PhD. He cannot be that self-unaware.

So what's the deal? The obvious conclusion is that what he said is aimed directly at people without doctorates, people who wouldn't realize how out-in-left-field he sounds. That's gotta be his target audience.

So why? His schtick is (and will be going forward) to undermine the medical experts, highlighting this or that hope in bright yellow. He provides wing man cover for the president's "hunches" and "common sense," and fodder for the super-capitalists who want to relax social distancing post haste. It's a cynical public relations move, and it puts Dr. Anthony Fauci in the position of having to decide if he can do more good on the virus task force or by quitting it and getting his voice out in other ways.

Despite his howling hubris, however, there is clearly a silver lining for Dr. Peter Navarro when this is all over. He's the absolute perfect spokesman for Holiday Inn Express.


April 6, 2020
Bob Dietz

Control Issues

Under experimental conditions, Americans consistently overestimate their degree of control in situations. The overestimate their influence and their effects on outcomes. In fact, they often perceive control when there is actually none. The U.S. culture, in addition, relies on the idea of meritocracy to prop up an exaggerated sense of one's personal effect on life. The culture papers over the difference between achieved and ascribed, preferring to label everything as indicative of achievement.

Americans aren't used to perceiving themselves as helpless, as unable to significantly affect the context in which they spend their days. Almost every aspect of our lives employs scorecards that enhance that sense of moment to moment achievement. Hourly wage earners exist in a milieu that emphasizes an accumulation of measurable effects. Working x number of hours measures y income, which translates into z goods and services. Our continual effect on our lives, at least vis-a-vis capitalism, is easy to perceive. What happens when something like a pandemic swoops in and undercuts this overstuffed perception of control?

When an existential threat emerges, for most of us the illusion of control is shattered. When unemployment rockets upwards, even those who prefer to hold onto that illusion of employment-as-control are forced to recalibrate their minds.

So what can we expect? As discussed in previous entries, people under duress tend to retreat to routine. Instead of tackling novel situations by ingesting new information and plotting new strategies, they tighten up their behaviors into established rigid patterns. Instead of abiding by stay-at-home orders, which are novel to them, they are motivated to mindlessly do the things they've spent their lives doing and that have made them feel good, a la the zombies heading to the shopping malls in 1978's Dawn of the Dead.


Expectations

The stay-at-home orders should have some predictable effects. When most animals are forced into limited square footage, hormonal and behavioral consequences ensue. What I expect to happen is that Americans will try to re-establish a perception of control. Upticks in domestic violence will presumably be one consequence. Gun and ammo sales should skyrocket. Most will justify this as a means to protect household resources, but the underlying and more potent reason will be to create a tangential but visceral sense of control. People know intellectually that stockpiling weaponry isn't going to slow down a virus, but they'll be driven to do it anyway.

Inability to attend religious services in person will increase the sense of loss of control, so many religious services will still be stubbornly attended. Conspiracy theories of all kinds should flourish, as conspiracies are a way of establishing a sense of understanding and control. People who ignored the pandemic warnings in January and February will be highly motivated to invent villains and scapegoats because the realization that they were responsible for their own lack of preparedness, illness, or death will be too much to process.

The need for routine will drive many to fashion and promulgate a super-capitalism argument: get back to work, those who die are necessary sacrifices, save the economy at all costs. These super-capitalists will obsess about returning to "economic normalcy," and the worse things get, the louder their drumbeats will become. They will demand that their routines be returned to them.

The main problem with all of this is that Americans, stripped of their sense of safety and control by a virus, will balk against strict governmental instructions because to do so would be an additional surrender of personal control. If people, however, are not able to put aside their need for what has always been a largely illusory control of their lives, they will pay for that illusion with not only their own lives, but the lives of those around them.


April 4, 2020
Bob Dietz

The Mystery of Governor Kemp

Inspector Gregory:  "Is there any other point to which you would wish to draw my attention?"

Holmes:  "To the curious incident of what the Georgia governor had known."

Gregory:  "The governor of Georgia said he'd known nothing."

Holmes:  "That is the curious incident."


Just when I thought a day of COVID-19 might go by without anyone saying anything abominably stupid, Gov. Brian Kemp of Georgia decided to finally enact a stay-at-home order because in the last 24 hours, he said, he had learned of the virus' asymptomatic transmission, which he labeled a "game changer."

In my March 14 opening entry regarding coronavirus, I mentioned that asymptomatic transmission was finally being given its due in terms of causing a big chunk of transmissions. The only way to explain transmission rates in Italy and Iran seemed either asymptomatic transmission or that the virus was airborne. So what is one to make of today's proclamation by Gov. Kemp that he had just learned about asymptomatic transmission?

I considered some theories as to why the governor might not know this. Theory number one was that he had just awakened from a two-week oxycodone bender. Theory number two was that he had been busy fighting Thanos in an alternate timeline.

I just do not get it. Was he somehow the last name on President Trump's rolodex, and nobody gave him the "Ummm, you should probably shut it down, dude," until today? Was he waiting for the NRA to give him the okay? I mean, what the hell? Did no one around Gov. Kemp tell him how tone deaf and uninformed he sounded?

Watching the governor's press conference explaining the stay-at-home, I have to assume he's either lying through his teeth or stunningly incompetent. Asymptomatic transmission has been in the news, a lot, for three full weeks. Has Gov. Kemp not engaged medical experts in conversation the entire time?

I am just amazed at the buffoonery of our elected officials. I grew up in the era of moon launches and respect for science. That America appears long gone.

What must the rest of the world think?


April 2, 2020
Bob Dietz

The Man Who Wouldn't Cry Wolf

"We have it totally under control. It's one person coming in from China, and we have it under control. It's going to be just fine."   President Donald Trump (January 22)


I'm a layman. I handicap sporting events for a living. As far as superpowers go, I have the ability to read. That's about it. So I have to ask myself, how could I nail the COVID-19 timeline and projections so closely while the President of the United States of America could be so wrong? How is that even possible?


"We're going very substantially down, not up."  President Donald Trump (February 26)

I had one last flight to take in February, and I had read the reports coming from China. I wore disposable gloves, but as I made my way through both the Las Vegas and Charlotte airports, I realized how indefensible air travel was from the virus. It was literally impossible to feel safe. Every inch of surface and every cubic foot of air were potential infection sources crisscrossed by hundreds of people. Going through security, my bag and personal effects shared contact surfaces with every other person who chose that conveyor belt or plastic tray. This didn't even address the issue of being in the planes themselves.

Back at home on February 29, I read the international news. Even as a layman, when I saw the stunning infection explosions in Iran and Italy, I figured one of two things. Either the virus was airborne or asymptomatic transmission was happening a lot. If the latter, this meant that the fever screenings at airports, casinos, and banks was really all for naught.

My girlfriend and I knew what was coming, so we shut down our social lives, stockpiled what we needed, and began isolating mail and deliveries in the garage where they could be cleaned. We figured this stuff out for ourselves, days before it became nationwide protocol. Someone was wrong, either us or the president. We hoped it was us, but we didn't think so.

And now it's here, and I ask again, how could a layman be a month ahead of a president? How could that possibly ever happen? Frankly, I don't believe that it can. I think this was a case of people who knew keeping that reality from the American people for as long as they could. Now that reality has arrived.

Just because the man wouldn't cry wolf, however, should not have kept his followers from using their eyes. An NPR poll conducted March 14 and 15 yielded 40% of Republicans grading the virus as a serious threat and 54% saying the public was overreacting. Among Democrats,76% of those polled reported the virus as a serious threat.

The follow-up questions are fascinating and will be examined for generations to come. Evidence was in full view for anyone who could read, so who will Republicans blame for their faulty judgements? Fox News embarrassed itself for a month, to what end? And how does a president deal with his own words on camera repeatedly making light of the most devastating human event of this century? How does he maintain any credibility whatsoever?

For me personally, I've been amazed at the ability of people to actively ignore information bearing down on them like an avalanche. Are Americans so easily duped, or as Jack Nicholson's Colonel Nathan Jessup says, are they not able to handle the truth?

Over the last 40 years, one credo has served me particularly well in the world of gambling. I try to not believe anything I prefer to believe. Keeps me cynical. Keeps me self aware. Keeps me safe.


April 1, 2020
Bob Dietz

Sixty Days of Addiction

I'd seen it all before, of course -- presidents of companies, CFOs and other captains of industry, legislative leaders, world class athletes considered the best of the best. All show up in Las Vegas with plans, with systems, with great concentration, energy, and indomitable will. They come to conquer the games, to feed at the great cash trough in plain view, and to collect the respect and acknowledgement of further greatness that comes with that conquest.

They play negative EV games, using all of the skills and abilities that have made them the very definition of American success. They play negative EV games, the science of which has been crystalline and solved for decades. They challenge the math. And they lose.

The more they play, the more they lose. Panache doesn't help. Channeling James Bond doesn't work. Thoughts and prayers have no effect. The more they try, the more they lose. At home, they start with the small lies to friends and family. Lies they themselves almost believe because their checkbooks are barely dented, or they have separate secret stashes of funds. They tell lies about breaking even or losing just a little or bigger lies about winning this or that. In their minds, they compartmentalize the  results of one session from another, convincing themselves that maybe they aren't really lying.

The days pass. The math looms, intractable. Implacable. The science and the math and the models of risk of ruin sit there, facing them each time they play.  The will, the influence, the charm and experience that led these people to all of their worldly successes can't budge the math or the science or the charts. The reality of the situation cannot be seduced by their skills or reputations.

So these people lose more. Since they cannot affect the games, they turn their will and influence and seduction to the people at home. They hide the reality. They borrow, they lie, and still they play. They need to be a winner, but their financial straits start to slowly leak, oozing into view for those closest to them. The friends who notice are dismissed. The players take up with hosts who tell them what they want to hear. They surround themselves with enablers, who augment their lies.

And then, one day, the checkbook reads zero, and all that could be borrowed has been borrowed. The president of the company, the world famous athlete, their behaviors are laid bare by the stark reality of their gutted finances. By now, their families know that they have lied  and that they've been lying for a long time. So the business elite and former mega-rich athletes step to the public podium at long last and admit what they have done.

The math was always there to be seen, the statistical models of risk of ruin clearly laid out. But for whatever reasons, no matter the cost to themselves or others, they had wanted to play the game. The game of perceiving themselves as expert, as winners, as above the mere models of mortal man. As beyond the science of probability.

Addiction to hubris, to accolades, is a terrible thing. In gambling, it doesn't matter if your name is Barkley or Milch or Tose or Mickelson or Jordan or Bennett. The numbers do not care. If you play negative EV games, you lose. When science and math are ignored, when risk of ruin models take a back seat to hunches and "knowing a lot," that ignorance doesn't change the science, the math, or the models, and it doesn't detour the oncoming freight train known as reality.

For the last 60 days, the addictions of an American president have been on display. On Sunday, March 29, he was finally forced to come clean, admitting that his two-month take on reality had been seriously flawed. Hopeful adjectives finally stepped aside for the math and the models. Because some of us lost 60 days of preparation, the cost of this American president's addictions to hubris, self revelation, and applause will be enormously high.

He should have known his day of public reckoning would come. After all, he once owned casinos.


March 31, 2020
Bob Dietz