Outrage Repeat?

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One of the less fortunate results in the wake of the Great Recession was the failure for any business leader to suffer any great sanctions. From the bankers and insurance companies, such as AiG, they got their TARP funds, performed a little reform within, and carried on, unless they were bought out. A glaring exception was Lehman Brothers, which no one bought out and died, as if a single exception.

And Americans were not pleased. This is not how capitalism is supposed to function, in the minds of most folks. The strong survive and the weak and foolish go under.

So I’m very interested to find out in the coming days, months, and years how the apparent rescue of Boeing, victim of its own foolishness in the case of the 737 Max tragedies, and then joining in the general corporate suffering brought on by the COVID-19 outbreak. Here’s WaPo:

Lawmakers have inserted in the Senate’s $2 trillion stimulus package a little-noticed provision aimed at providing billions of dollars in emergency assistance to Boeing, the aerospace giant already under fire for deadly safety lapses in its commercial jets, three people with knowledge of the internal deliberations said.

The Senate package includes a $17 billion federal loan program for businesses deemed “critical to maintaining national security.” The provision does not mention Boeing by name but was crafted largely for the company’s benefit, two of the people said. Other firms could also receive a share of the money, one of the people said. The people spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive internal deliberations.

The carve-out is separate from the $58 billion the Senate package is providing in loans for cargo and passenger airlines, as well as the $425 billion in loans it is allocating to help firms, states and cities hurt by the current downturn. Congressional aides cautioned that the Senate bill was still going through last-minute revisions and could change.

I was particularly appalled at this:

In a Tuesday interview on Fox, Boeing chief executive Dave Calhoun said he would not be willing to give the government an equity stake in the company in exchange for a bailout, implying the company would only accept assistance on its own terms. President Trump has said he would support the idea, suggested by his economic adviser, of taking an equity stake in companies that receive assistance in the package.

“If they force it, we just look at all the other options, and we’ve got plenty of them,” Calhoun said.

I think that’s an elitist attitude, and I note that former UN Ambassador Nikki Haley has resigned from the board for even considering taking this opportunity. But Boeing also has the ear of President Trump:

“Probably I would have considered [Boeing] the greatest company in the world prior to a year ago. Now they get hit 15 different ways,” Trump said in a March 17 news conference, alluding to problems with the now-grounded 737 Max jetliner. “It was coming along well, and then all or a sudden this hits,” Trump said. “So we’ll be helping Boeing.”

And since they don’t mention the loan terms, you can guess they’ll be very favorable.

This is crony capitalism at it’s worst, and should provoke public outrage. However, we’re all distracted by the outbreak, the yelling about the old should sacrifice themselves for the good of the Republican Party, and all that goes along with it, so I suspect Boeing will get the money for far better terms than the TARP recipients.

And will we be outraged by TARP? We were last time, but this time it’s easier to point at COVID-19 as a natural disaster, even if it’s been ill-managed by both the Chinese and the Americans.

Belated Movie Reviews

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Sarah Winchester’s residence as it is today.

Winchester (2018) is a vapid little horror movie built on the more substantial bedrock of the story of Sarah Winchester, widow of the heir to the Winchester fortune and 50% of the Winchester Repeating Arms Company. She lived during the late 1800s to 1922; she lost her husband and only child to disease, and thereafter built what is today known as the Winchester Mystery House in San Jose, CA, a veritable museum of Winchester’s life. We’ve visited it and, liking houses that have housed oddballs, had a ball, as Mrs. Winchester was quite the superstitious lady. A house on which construction proceeded 24/7 (or she’ll die!) makes for quite the collage.

However, this movie aspires to take us from this reality to the next, from life to the dead, and it really just flounders about. It’s not the cast’s fault: led by Dame Helen Mirren, they give it their best shot. The problem lies in a story which attempts to use Mrs. Winchester’s superstitious nature to launch into a paranormal horror story about her supposed guilty conscience about all the deaths caused by the rifles produced by her late husband’s company, and that leads to the ghosts of the slain arriving for a noisy little buffet dinner made of her soul.

But perhaps I jest.

There’s very little to find compelling, from the widowed psychologist devoted to rationalism until he isn’t, to Winchesters, Sarah, her niece Marian and her family, and a museum-worthy collection of Winchester rifles, all running around trying to round up all these ghosts, including that bloodthirsty one …

Yeah. I’m sure this appeals to some temperaments, but it’s just a little too silly for me.

But if you’re considering visiting the Winchester Mystery House, this might give you a taste of how the structure may have been before God’s hammer fell on it. Well, someone’s, anyways. It was damaged in the 1906 San Francisco Earthquake, and some of it has never been rebuilt.

But it’s fun. If you get a chance, go see the house. Don’t bother with the movie.

He Says Bad Things, But Can He Do Bad Things?

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Yesterday, the President upset various professionals with this statement:

I would to have it open by Easter. I will — I will tell you that right now. I would love to have that — it’s such an important day for other reasons, but I’ll make it an important day for this too. I would love to have the country opened up and just raring to go by Easter. [whitehouse.gov[1]]

He thinks the near-term is a bright future; meanwhile, his own Surgeon General has suggested that this week may see a horrific uptick in infection counts. The various governors have protested:

Governors across the nation on Tuesday rejected President Donald Trump’s new accelerated timeline for reopening the U.S. economy, as they continued to impose more restrictions on travel and public life in an attempt to curb the spread of the coronavirus.

The dismissal of Trump’s mid-April timeframe for a national reopening came from Republicans and Democrats, from leaders struggling to manage hot spots of the outbreak and those still bracing for the worst. Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan, the head of the National Governors Association and a Republican, called the messaging confusing since most leaders are still focused on enforcing the restrictions, not easing them. He accused the White House of running on a schedule made of some “imaginary clock.” [AP]

I think Governor Hogan should call on the RNC to unilaterally upend the primary results for the GOP and declare Trump unqualified and unacceptable, but that’s just me being a drama queen.

So can President Trump “reopen” the country the week of Easter? Here’s Professor Chesney on Lawfare:

2. No, the president cannot simply order state and local officials to change their policies

Here we have issues that fall under the headings of both federalism and separation of powers. Let’s start with federalism.

Most readers will appreciate this already, but it needs to be said: Our constitutional order has a federal structure, meaning that (a) federal powers are supreme, yes, but limited in scope and (b) the state governments are independent entities, not mere subordinate layers under and within the federal government (that is, the federal-state relationship is not similar to the way that counties and cities are subordinate layers under the state governments).

What follows from this? The federal government cannot commandeer the machinery of the state governments (or, by extension, of local governments). That is, the federal government cannot coerce the states into taking actions to suit federal policy preference. See, e.g., New York v. United States and Printz v. United States. And so, the federal government cannot compel state and local officials to promulgate different rules on social distancing and the like.

And the Executive has no authority, constitutionally or statutorily, to override State officials.

So what should we expect? Chesney suggests a lot of pressure from Trump, both directly and via his base. Governor Walz of Minnesota just put in place a shelter in place order to last two weeks, so it doesn’t seem likely we’ll be back in full economic production mode by Easter.

But we may be mourning our dead. I hope not, though – supposedly, Minnesota is doing quite well at staying away from each other.

1 If you haven’t seen or read an entire news conference with Trump, this one is fairly salutary in its incoherentness. Give it a read.

Just Like A Fox News Viewer

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I’ve theorized, supported by observations offered over the years by analysts and, hey, Fox News viewers themselves, that Fox News is popular because it offers news and, more importantly, analysis that makes those viewers happy. Not informed (as Bruce Bartlett will tell you), but happy.

And that’s just what came to mind when I read this:

Conservatives close to Trump and numerous administration officials have been circulating an article by Richard A. Epstein of the Hoover Institution, titled “Coronavirus Perspective,” that plays down the extent of the spread and the threat. The article, published last week, had predicted that deaths would peak at 500, the milestone surpassed Monday. [WaPo]

It sounds to me like these conservatives found an article by some respected scholar that was far more comforting than the analyses offered by epidemiologists and other experts and decided that it was the right one.

But that level of analysis isn’t fair. The name, Richard Epstein, rings a faint and garbled bell for me, so I looked him up, thinking maybe he’s a distinguished epidemiologist with a different take on things. Yeah?

Richard Allen Epstein (born April 17, 1943) is an American legal scholar known for his writings on subjects such as torts, contracts, property rights, law and economics, classical liberalism, and libertarianism. Epstein is currently the Laurence A. Tisch Professor of Law and director of the Classical Liberal Institute at New York University, the Peter and Kirsten Bedford Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, and the James Parker Hall Distinguished Service Professor of Law emeritus and a senior lecturer at the University of Chicago. [Wikipedia]

Guess not. Just another lawyer getting outside of his field. Now, I’ll be scrupulous and note that his article now includes an addendum. First, the paragraph over which he feels some regret:

From this available data, it seems more probable than not that the total number of cases world-wide will peak out at well under 1 million, with the total number of deaths at under 50,000 (up about eightfold). In the United States, if the total death toll increases at about the same rate, the current 67 deaths should reach about 5000 [this number was 500, I surmise, in the original publication of the article – HAW] (or twn [sic] percent of my estimated world total, which may also turn out to be low). [See correction & addendum at the end of this essay.]

And the addendum:

That estimate is ten times greater than the 500 number I erroneously put in the initial draft of the essay, and it, too, could prove somewhat optimistic. But any possible error rate in this revised projection should be kept in perspective. The current U.S. death toll stands at 592 as of noon on March 24, 2020, out of about 47,000 cases. So my adjusted figure, however tweaked, remains both far lower, and I believe far more accurate, than the common claim that there could be a million dead in the U.S. from well over 150 million coronavirus cases before the epidemic runs its course.

But I add that out of politeness only; I see little reason to take a lawyer’s estimate of an epidemiology problem’s effect over an expert in the field, at least not until the lawyer has built up some credit in the field.

But while looking over his paper – and, I confess, as he doesn’t seem to have bona fides, I lost interest and wandered off – it did occur to me that all of the curve graphs really need an enhancement, and maybe one of my readers has run across it. Let’s take this example:

First, get rid of the blue area.

Next, add in a line reflective of how the death rate will change as we run out of hospital beds. Maybe the rate goes from 1% to 3%, I dunno.

Now add in other occupants of those beds: critical car accident victims, gunshot victims, flu victims, severe asthma suffers, etc etc. See how those lines change as we suddenly run out of hospital beds.

I think it’s a mistake to graph the anticipated costs of COVID-19 in isolation, because hospital beds, while not being perfectly fungible, are, to some extent, interchangeable; the same holds true for medical personnel. We should put those graphs up, all estimates, of course, just to bring home to people who don’t want to take this too seriously, how themselves and their relatives becoming ill not only impacts other COVID-19 sufferers, but other patients who need a hospital bed.

Good graphs can mostly be improved. Here’s my favorite visual display of data ever.

Embodying Individualism’s Mindset, Ctd

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Concerning the Senate chamber’s denizens, a reader asks:

Are there enough GOP Senators out of chamber for the Democrats to ram some stuff through, if they can get it on the floor past McC?

Not that I’ve heard. My understanding is that the Senate is down five Republicans: Rand, Lee, Romney, Cruz, Gardner, and Scott. I see that’s six. That suggests the currently able to vote members are 47-45-2, with Pence casting any deciding votes necessary.

It makes me laugh to think of another Republican going down and suddenly Schumer is the Majority Leader, though. Maybe that’d require two. I think some forehead veins would be popping.

And then maybe a deliberate exposure of Democratic Senators to the virus by some rogue Republican staffer. Wow, this could get messy. Reminds me of the old brutal wars that wiped out chunks of the Roman Senate that Turchin related.

Word Of The Day

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Anosmia:

The term anosmia means lack of the sense of smell. It may also refer to a decreased sense of smell. Ageusia, a companion word, refers to a lack of taste sensation. Patients who actually have anosmia may complain wrongly of ageusia, although they retain the ability to distinguish salt, sweet, sour, and bitter—humans’ only taste sensations. [The Free Dictionary]

Noted in “Losing sense of smell may be a hidden symptom of coronavirus, doctors warn,” Michael Brice-Saddler, WaPo:

But a team of British ear, nose and throat doctors on Friday raised the possibility of a new indicator of the coronavirus, one they say has been observed globally, even in patients who are otherwise asymptomatic: anosmia, a condition that causes the loss of sense of smell. In a statement, they warned that adults experiencing recent anosmia could be unknown carriers of covid-19, and urged them to consider self-isolation.

Embodying Individualism’s Mindset

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There’s been a fufuraw over Senator Paul Rand’s (R-KY) behavior. He was given the test for infection by SARS-CoV-2, the virus behind the COVID-19 disease, on March 16, and then carried on with his life as a US Senator as if nothing was wrong.

A week later, the test came back positive. For an entire week, a US Senator, working at the S capitol, has potentially been exposing other denizens[1] of the US Capitol to SARS-CoV-2, depending on when an infected person begins producing and shedding viruses.

The Senator’s defense?

“Given that my wife and I had traveled extensively during the weeks prior to COVID-19 social distancing practices,” he said, “and that I am at a higher risk for serious complications from the virus due to having part of my lung removed seven months ago, I took a COVID-19 test when I arrived in D.C. last Monday. I felt that it was highly unlikely that I was positive since I have had no symptoms of the illness, nor have I had contact with anyone who has either tested positive for the virus or been sick.”

Which all sounds very reasonable. I accepted it for a couple of hours, but it bugged me. So think about it.

What is quarantining all about? It’s not about self-care. It won’t make the person in quarantine healthier! It’s about caring, by not exposing, the other members of society! When Senator Rand confused the priority of his own personal desires with the judgment of epidemiologists world wide, he committed an increasingly common amateur mistake on the right, the belief that their opinion is better than the experts.

That’s fine when it’s your backfiring car you’re trying to fix.

That’s inexcusable when it comes to a potentially terminal virus for which there’s neither cure nor vaccine as yet. By not quarantining after taking the test, he’s negated most of the worth of that test.

It’s not surprising in the least that he refuses to take any responsibility for this mistake, as we see above and in this limp defense:

His office defends Paul’s decision by saying he left the Senate after realizing he tested positive. “As soon as he got the results, he left the building,” the office said.

Oh boy, leaving who knows how many Senators in deep shit? Several GOP Senators who were in Rand’s vicinity immediately, much to their credit, went into self-quarantine for two weeks, and since they’re in quarantine, they can’t vote. We can at least applaud Senators Lee (R-UT) and Romney (R-UT) for demonstrating proper leadership in this time of health crisis.

This massive lapse of judgment on Senator Rand’s part is the reason I’m calling for his immediate apology and resignation from the Senate. We need competent Americans in our leadership, not someone who doesn’t understand the purpose of quarantining.

1 At one time, I would have used denizen without any further thought: a colorful but merely whimsical noun. However, given Republican hostility to government, it seems hospitable to use such a word for my conservative readers, make them feel at home, as it were, by suggesting a concordance of sentiment. Truth be told, though, I recognize these denizens as actually fellow Americans, dedicated to our betterment through their service via government.

And the Hell Hounds Are Let Loose

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Lest you were concerned that the COVID-19 – and rest assured your home-bound author is more than a little tired of writing on the topic – had not stirred up the crazies, here’s one that made me laugh.

Put simply: Only an irresponsible sentimentalist imagines we can live in a world without triage. We must never do evil that good might come. On this point St. Paul is clear. But we often must decide which good we can and should do, a decision that nearly always requires not doing another good, not binding a different wound, not saving a different life.

There is a demonic side to the sentimentalism of saving lives at any cost. Satan rules a kingdom in which the ultimate power of death is announced morning, noon, and night. But Satan cannot rule directly. God alone has the power of life and death, and thus Satan can only rule indirectly. He must rely on our fear of death.

In our simple-minded picture of things, we imagine a powerful fear of death arises because of the brutal deeds of cruel dictators and bloodthirsty executioners. But in truth, Satan prefers sentimental humanists. We resent the hard boot of oppression on our necks, and given a chance, most will resist. How much better, therefore, to spread fear of death under moralistic pretexts.

This is what is happening in New York as I write. The media maintain a drumbeat of warnings. And the message is not just that you or I might end up in an overloaded emergency room gasping for air. We are more often reminded that we can communicate the virus to others and cause their deaths. [‘SAY “NO” TO DEATH’S DOMINION,’ R. R. Reno, First Things]

I particularly liked this paragraph:

We, by contrast, are collectively required to cower in fear—fear that we’ll die redoubled by the fear that we’ll cause others to die. We are stripped of whatever courage we might be capable of. Were I to host a small dinner party tonight, wanting to resist the paranoia and hysteria, I would be denounced. Yesterday, Governor Cuomo saw young people playing basketball in a New York City park. “It has to stop and it has to stop now,” he commanded. Everyone must live under death’s dominion.

Yes, I’ve been stripped of the courage to cause someone else’s death – if I were to be infected but not yet showing symptoms myself.

I’ll tell you what, this guy has mastered writing a literary line, but not how to think. I shan’t speculate why, as long time readers will already know my thoughts on the matter.

But my source for this rampage about accepting what God is inflicting on us, the indefatigable Erick Erickson (yes, he’s still sending me mail), pops this dude’s pretensions better than I:

Sounds fine until you realize he is advocating death for about a million people just so he can get back to the office. That’s the thing all these preening jackasses who hate being stuck with their families are missing on this. And you’ll have to forgive me, but I put the ignorance as intelligence columnists in the category of rank jackassery here. …

Look, if you want to go back to work and claim we need to get on with our lives, please go first to your local hospital and talk to the doctors and nurses who are seeing first hand what’s happening. But this rank jackassery with a healthy dose of contrarianism where you pretend it is demonic to stop the spread of a virus is just a bit too much for me.

Yes, the cure should not be worse than the disease. But the cure is sitting on your couch, so shut the hell up.

It’s almost worth the mail for that nice take down. But the cure is sitting on your couch, so shut the hell up. Very nice. I might even give that a standing-O at a public discussion.

And then ask him why he embraces President “16,000 lies and counting” Trump. I’m such an ass in my fantasies.

Another Nitwit Heard From

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Texas Lt. Governor Dan Patrick speaks out in favor of sacrifice for …

Dan Patrick, Texas’ Republican lieutenant governor, on Monday night suggested that he and other grandparents would be willing to risk their health and even lives in order for the United States to “get back to work” amid the coronavirus pandemic.

“Those of us who are 70 plus, we’ll take care of ourselves. But don’t sacrifice the country,” Patrick said on Fox News’ “Tucker Carlson Tonight.”

Patrick, who said he will turn 70 next week, said that he did not fear COVID-19, but feared that stay-at-home orders and economic upheaval would destroy the American way of life.

“No one reached out to me and said, ‘As a senior citizen, are you willing to take a chance on your survival in exchange for keeping the America that America loves for its children and grandchildren?’ And if that is the exchange, I’m all in,” Patrick said. [NBC News]

The “American way of life?” Really?

Or is it the recognition that a devastated economy in which the incompetence of the Trump Administration shines like a fireworks display bodes ill for the Republican Party in the November elections?

There’s a lot wrong here. The easy stuff is to point out that age is not a great proxy for identifying those who are especially at risk from this virus, and, in fact, Patrick is basically calling on everyone in ill health to put their lives on the line for the Republican Party’s political fortunes.

But it’s also shockingly short-term thinking. COVID-19 is not guaranteed to be a one-off event. Paint that on the back of your eyelids, folks. I would be delighted if the biologists or virologists came up with the breakthrough that would permit them to ascertain how to create safe and effective vaccines and cures for viruses in hours or days, but in the meantime, the only responsible course of action is to prepare for a repetition of this event. It may not be a coronavirus, it may take different forms, but it’s only prudent to assume it’ll occur again.

So, using Lt. Governor Patrick’s reasoning, who’ll be the next group to be sacrificed? What if the next pandemic is akin to the Spanish Flu, which victimized the young and healthy in a particularly gruesome death? All set to toss them into the shredder, Lt. Governor?

You may be wondering about the incompetency of this particular political specimen. Keeping in mind my constant and annoying harping on the toxicity of team politics (epitomized by the aphorism that, at election time, Republicans fall into line …), and the slightly more recent observation that the Republican Party is built on religious tenets, such as Abortion is evil, and the best way to climb to the top of the heap is not through demonstrated competency and ability to “work across the aisle,” but by determined clinging to those tenets, I found this entry in Wikipedia revealing:

Patrick opposes abortion and supported Texas’ “Mandatory Ultrasound Bill”, a bill signed into law in May 2011 by Governor Perry, which requires women seeking abortion to have a sonogram of the fetus taken at least twenty-four hours before the abortion is performed.

Patrick opposes abortion in cases of incest and rape. In January 2014, when he was asked about exceptions to outlawing abortion, Patrick said, “The only exception would be if the life of the mother was truly in danger…but that is rare.”

An abortion absolutist. Yep, that’ll demonstrate he’s an appropriate choice for higher office. It doesn’t matter if he’s in earnest or a hypocrite on the subject, or how competent of a leader he may be; the point is that he’s just demonstrated public incompetency in the matter of public health. It’d be fine if he had queried the experts on taking such a position and was rebuffed; I don’t expect anyone to get these things straight on their own.

But to take it public?

No, welcome to the tail-end of Republican team politics, where competency and coherent thought is not just second to allegiance to the religious tenets of the Party, never to be questioned or breached, but does not even exist.

This is what we have to look forward to if the Republicans are reelected in November. I’m an independent, not a Democrat, so if you’re an independent voter as well, take this to heart.

Today’s Tragedy, Tomorrow’s Politics, Ctd

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I was amused to run across someone screaming about the left weaponizing the COVID-19 pandemic, as if he’d never had a civics lesson in his life. Then I ran across this story from the weekend, which rather drives the hypocrisy of the entire debate right in to the nines:

Ohio’s attorney general has ordered clinics to halt many abortions under a new statewide measure to conserve health-care resources amid the coronavirus pandemic, going against the urgings of many medical professionals.

Officials in Washington state and Massachusetts have clarified that similar orders pausing elective surgeries do not apply to abortions, and several national medical associations earlier this week advised against canceling or delaying the procedures — a key part of “comprehensive health care,” they said — because of the coronavirus outbreak. But Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost (R) on Friday and Saturday ordered several facilities, about which he said the Health Department has received complaints, to stop their “nonessential” abortions.

As clinics say they will proceed undeterred, the fight over what constitutes essential care in Ohio could be the first of many as more states heed the U.S. government’s calls for hospitals to suspend unneeded operations and as doctors and nurses warn they’re running out of masks, gowns and drugs. [WaPo]

What, are there so many abortions in Ohio that their use of medical supplies is draining Ohio hospitals of critical supplies?

No, abortions may be optional to those who don’t want them, but for those who want them, they’re a need.

Weaponization, indeed.

Quack-In-Chief

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I see that the skeptics movement, sub-section quack-chasers, is going to have to create a new sub-category for the damage that can be done by consulting with quacks:

Not In This Issue, though. The next issue, maybe.

These days, Plaquenil is better known by its generic name, hydroxychloroquine. It is the medication Trump has been hyping as a potential treatment for the novel coronavirus, even though it is not approved for this use and there is scant medical evidence so far that it works to treat the virus.

Trump’s push to use hydroxychloroquine to treat COVID-19 has triggered a run on the drug. Healthy people are stocking up just in case they come down with the disease. That has left lupus patients like Valdez and those with rheumatoid arthritis suddenly confronting a lack of medication that safeguards them, and not only from the effects of those conditions. If they were required to take stronger drugs to suppress their immune systems, it could render them susceptible to more serious consequences should they get COVID-19. [ProPublica]

I had never expected that I’d be typing Quack-In-Chief, and yet here we are. Now legitimate consumers of a medication are at risk because the President indulged in unjustified speculations, all in service of his political career. Endangering his own constituents.

This is appalling. It should be grounds to impeach him all over again, but I suppose that’s out of the question. Hopefully he’ll be on the short end of the Nixon-McGovern stick in November.

This Is The Start, Not The Finale

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NPR reports that at least one judge finds GOP shenanigans in Wisconsin to be unacceptable.

A judge has struck down the laws that Wisconsin Republicans passed in December’s lame-duck session of the state’s Legislature, restoring powers to Democratic Gov. Tony Evers, if only temporarily.

A county judge ruled on Thursday that all of the laws and appointments passed by legislators were unlawful because they met in what’s known as an “extraordinary session,” which isn’t explicitly allowed under the state’s constitution.

Evers seized on the decision almost immediately, calling on the Wisconsin Department of Justice, led by Democratic Attorney General Josh Kaul, to withdraw the state from a lawsuit that seeks to overturn the Affordable Care Act.

“As the governor has requested, please take whatever steps are necessary to remove Wisconsin from Texas v. United States,” wrote Evers’ chief legal counsel, Ryan Nilsestuen, in an email to the Department of Justice shortly after the ruling was released.

Evers and Kaul campaigned on leaving the case, but one of the lame-duck laws has prevented them from following through on their pledge.

The ruling also temporarily struck down 82 appointments that former Republican Gov. Scott Walker made during the waning days of his administration, all of which were confirmed by Republican state senators in the lame-duck session.

Note that this was a county judge. Often low-level judges get overturned or corrected. While the Wisconsin GOP was certainly dishonorable in its extraordinary session practice, I fear dishonorable isn’t a legal term.

And, yes, if the Democrats were to do something similar when thrust unexpectedly from power, I’d be equally disappointed.

Belated Movie Reviews

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Big hats: soup de jour!
(Don’t think “mutant bunny rabbit”! Oh, you just did.)

Lady of Burlesque (1943) is a surprisingly interesting whodunit mystery set at a burlesque house. The players are all in play: striptease ladies, comics, backstage crew, even the mobster who’s a little free with his fists. Adding to the interest is the fact that this movie derives from a novel written by famous strip tease queen Gypsy Rose Lee, so it’s reasonable to assume it’s truly reflective of backstage life as a member of a burlesque company.

Dixie Daisy is a new but leading member of the burlesque troop of the gentleman S. B. Foss, a woman ambitious for the next step up the ladder, and she works hard for her troupe. But when an injured diva returns, Dixie is sidelined.

And then the diva is murdered. Add in the diva’s abusive mobster boyfriend, and things get ugly, and just to sprinkle pepper on everything, one of the comics of the troupe is infatuated with Dixie – much to her aggravation.

A second body, though, really amps up the worries, and the troupe, wondering who has a hatchet to sharpen among them, has to decide if the show goes on or not, which leads to a finale that couldn’t be foreseen – but was some fun reaching.

The print we saw was a bit muddy, but not awful. The acting and staging was excellent, and if the pacing sometimes seemed a little off, it wasn’t terribly off-putting. We enjoyed that hour and a half more than we anticipated, and you might, too.

The Future And The Virus

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I don’t usually quote someone just to quote them, but conservative and rueful former Republican Max Boot really puts the, er, boot in on the Trump cultists:

One of the biggest, if unstated, reasons so many voters opted for Trump is simply because he is an entertaining showman. His unscripted rallies were so mesmerizing that he earned billions of dollars in free airtime. The underlying assumption was that the federal government is so unimportant that it could be handed over safely to a reality TV star who revels in “unpresidented” behavior.

This was the result of post-Cold War, post-9/11 complacency, with voters imagining that they could take peace and prosperity for granted. If the coronavirus should teach us anything, it is that governing is a deadly serious business. Electing a grown-up isn’t a luxury; it’s a matter of life and death. The price of “owning the libs” turns out to be far higher than even most Trump critics could have imagined.

I knew he would be a bad president — but even I didn’t expect him to be Herbert Hoover-level bad. In a way, you almost can’t blame Trump for his epic incompetence: He is who he is. He didn’t deceive anyone. I blame the voters who elected him — and the senators who refused to impeach him. They should have known better. Because they didn’t, we will all pay a fearful price. [WaPo]

Recently, a Trump voter rejoined my group at work after several years in another group, and when we razzed him about this admission, his excuse was that he wanted to wake up Washington. Not smiling, I said “16,000 lies, <name>,” and he just sort of melted. It’s a rare software engineer who can live on self-delusion, because reality tends to rear up and bop you on the nose too often.

Epidemiologist Michael Osterholm of the University of Minnesota was recently interviewed by the local newspaper StarTribune, and he is a top of the line consultant on matters such as this. I particularly liked this bit, as it’s an implicit commentary on the lack of leadership at the top of our Federal government:

[StarTribune]. So in terms of closures that we haven’t seen, should we expect regional quarantines or cities cordoned off? Is that coming?

[Osterholm]. We’ve got to change all this. I’m trying to change the discussion. We can’t keep this suppressed. We’ve got to find a way to thread this huge rope through a little tiny needle. I’ll be damned if I’m not going to try to do that. One of the messages we have to give is getting people back to the middle. We have to say, “What are we trying to accomplish here?” We don’t have a national goal. What’s our goal? Is it to prevent everybody from getting infected? Is it to prevent people from being in the hospital? Is it to keep the economy at least viable? We don’t have a goal. That’s one of the challenges at the national level. And I’m tired of hearing people say, “We’ll do everything even if we overreact.”

I don’t know what that means. And so one of the things I’m trying to drive … is saying we need to think about what we might see when we loosen up society again, knowing that transmission will occur.

[At that point], we make every effort to … protect those most vulnerable. And we continue to emphasize social distancing, all the things that happen there. We don’t want people to be isolated … [but we have to] keep the hospitals from being overrun. We keep doing that until we get a vaccine.

It won’t be perfect. Some people will get sick, some may die. But it’s a way to get us to a place where [we can live with COVID-19].

Q. When will we return to normalcy?

A. I have no pretenses about what will ultimately happen. I get asked this all the time. I say straight-faced [that] we will never ever go back to normal. We will have a new normal, just as airplane flights took on a new normal after 9/11. I think that’s where we can thread that rope, to try to get there. At the same time, we also want to do what we can to help people psychologically work through this. This is really tough.

I get asked multiple times a day by the media: Aren’t you afraid you’re going to panic everybody talking about what you talk about? My first reaction is: You know what? The only people to talk about panic are the media. Have you seen anybody out rioting in the streets or burning cars or hurting people? Have you even seen one fight that occurred in a store over the last roll of toilet paper? I haven’t seen that. People are really concerned. They’re scared … but they’re not panicking. They want straight talk. They just want you to tell it to them, what you know and what you don’t know.

We just need to tell the truth. I worry that the truth is being lost in the politics of the moment, and I must say that’s not true in Minnesota … . You know me well enough to know that I’m not a partisan. I am very impressed with [Minnesota Gov.] Tim Walz and how he was worked with the commissioner and the state Health Department and made an attempt to reach out. He’s talked to all the former governors. He’s communicated with both sides of the aisle. He’s been forthright about what they’re trying to do. And that’s what we need. We need the straight-talk express right now.

Q. Do you want to say anything more about where things are being lost in the politics of the moment?

A. I think at the White House — I know this will be taken by a segment of the Minnesota population as I’m being partisan. I’m not. You can’t go from “It’s not a problem” to “It’s war” in two weeks without everyone understanding how you got there and what it means. When [they said this week] that the government can go in and take over these companies and make sure everything you need is going to be produced … that couldn’t be farther from the truth. Couldn’t be farther.

I know that’s a lot, but I think it’s significant. He’s clearly calling for better leadership, but I don’t think he’s going to get it. In general, he has experience and the communications style of someone who’s simply trying to tell us how things appear to be. We know with Trump, he’s always trying to spin things to his political advantage, and therefore he’s not trustworthy.

Osterholm may get it wrong, but he’s a helluva lot better than anyone out there who doesn’t have a degree in epidemiology.

Density Matters

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Kevin Drum is trying to prognosticate:

Right now, New York City is the canary in the coal mine. Whatever happens there over the next month is most likely what will happen to the rest of the country in the month or two after that. Even if we’re successful in flattening the curve a little bit, that won’t change the eventual rate of infection or the number of deaths. It just spreads it out a bit.

I’m not so sure. When it comes to the spreading of air-borne disease, density matters. And New York City is one of the most densely populated cities in the country. I expect the densely populated city centers of the country to see a higher rate of infections, and possibly death, than the more lightly populated cities and the rural areas.

And while it’s difficult to see silver linings, at least cities like New York have excellent hospital services, even if they’re likely to be overwhelmed – or already are. Our rural areas have become sadly notorious for their decaying medical care systems. The last thing they need is for the pandemic to his them, because they’ll swiftly begin losing patients who could have been saved.

But I guess we’ll see soon enough.

The 2020 Senate Campaign: Montana

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The first poll concerning the Montana Senate race has come in, and I’m pushing my count of Republican Senate reelection races to ten, as Public Policy Polling finds …

A new Public Policy Polling survey finds that races for U.S. Senate and House in Montana are both neck and neck. In the Senate race, Governor Steve Bullock [(D)] and Senator Steve Daines [(R)]are tied 47-47, with just 6% of voters undecided. In the House race, [Democrat] Kathleen Williams and [Republican]Matt Rosendale are tied 45-45, with 9% still undecided. Bullock and Williams both lead among independent voters, with an 8 point lead for Bullock (50-42) and a 12 point lead for Williams (51-39).

It’s fascinating that a state that I considered solid Republican, with Trump defeating Clinton by more than 20 points in 2016 (while Libertarian Gary Johnson picked up 5.64% of the vote, which I interpret as The conservatives beat the liberals by more than 25 points) now appears to be flirting with the idea of going Democratic. And just to add to the fun …

Susan Good Geise, a Republican county commissioner in Montana, told KTVH she’ll be the Libertarian Party’s new candidate in Montana’s U.S. Senate race – replacing a last-minute withdrawal.

Geise’s entry could change the dynamics of the race between Sen. Steve Daines (R) and Gov. Steve Bullock (D). [Political Wire]

My guess is that, if Geise gets any support, it’ll come from the Daines camp. My reason? Daines doesn’t seem to be an especially repulsive personality, so I think the Bullock support is sincere, rather than partially composed of Republicans Who Can’t Stand Daines. Libertarians tend to ally with the Republicans, so Geise may be the honorable alternative Libertarians will choose if the Republicans continue down their path of incompetent governance and repulsive personalities. They’re less likely to choose a Democrat, since the conservatives and libertarians still love their little fantasy that the Democrats are far-left socialists.

Still, the election is more than half a year away, which is plenty of time for any candidate to trip over their shoelaces.

Here’s A Potential Congressional Contribution

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From The Metro (UK):

An Italian hospital that ran out of life-saving equipment for coronavirus patients was saved by a ‘hero’ engineer who used cutting-edge technology to design oxygen valves within a matter of hours.

At least 10 lives were saved when technician Christian Fracassi came to the aid of an overwhelmed Brescia hospital that ran out of breathing tubes for an intensive care machine on Saturday.  Doctors raised the alarm after their regular supplier said they could not produce the valves on time – forcing them to come up with an alternative solution.

With the help of the editor of a local newspaper Giornale di Brescia and tech expert Massimo Temporelli, doctors launched a search for a 3D printer – a devise that produces three dimensional objects from computer designs.

Word soon reached Fracassi, a pharmaceutical company boss in possession of the coveted machine. He immediately brought his device to the hospital and, in just a few hours, redesigned and then produced the missing piece.

Now, despite the country battling an unprecedented health crisis, there is potential for a legal battle with local media reporting that the manufacturers of the valves are refusing to share their blue print for further production and could potentially sue for copyright breaches.

I would assume the same scenario could easily surface in the litigation-happy United States. Therefore, Congress should pass some legislation to cover such lifesavers:

If an action is taken in pursuit of the treatment of COVID-19 which would be considered to be in violation of copyright or trademark laws, the violation will be considered null and void, and no penalty will apply to all those in support of said action, so long as aberrational profits are not taken by those responsible.

I do believe I’ll be sending that on to my Congressional reps.

He Doesn’t Seem To Learn

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Erick Erickson promised last week that he’d not send any more emails to non-subscribers to his newsletter, and I sighed with relief. Aaaaaaaand … then he sent more emails. He thinks he’s doing a public service by conveying facts and opinion about the COVID-19 outbreak to non-subscribers, countering right-wing skepticism along the way. Maybe he’s right.

But he’s insisting on writing in political opinion, and I can’t help but laugh.

Senate Republicans have been spending like drunken sailors for several years. They have shown zero fiscal restraint. It is pretty damn impressive that as a virus sweeps across the nation, the private sector goes on lockdown, and the death toll rises that suddenly the GOP is interested in fiscal restraint.

As if he should be surprised. Erickson apparently has forgotten – or never accepted it occurred – the behavior of Congress, both wings, 2001-2007, when the Republicans held Congress and the Presidency, spent money like mad on all their pet projects, started two wars and refused to up taxes to pay for them, and generally behaved in a most irresponsible manner. The Party of Fiscal Responsibility became nothing more than a joke.

Here’s the thing – one incident, even a six year long incident, may be an aberration. Two, though, is a trend. Give the Republicans control of government and they turn into wastrels. Split control with the Democrats and they become fiscal hawks. We know the name for this behavior. It’s hypocrites.

But, worse yet, that trend means the Republican Party, and all those who adhere to it, are party to a toxic political culture. For all that Erickson likes to cite scripture and draw back in horror from liberals – his phrase from an earlier email, “baby-killers” – he doesn’t really seem to like to admit to the truth – that the Republicans’ behavior is congruent with a Party of hypocrisy, power-grubbers, and liars, all types of people who are ill-suited to being in the government of the United States.

Erickson should really ask himself how he can have such a flawed judgment that he embraces such an anti-intellectual position as calling abortion “baby-killing,” while tacitly endorsing the election of people who are so ill-suited to the task of running government that they’re actually damaging the United States.

And then trying to rationalize it all by labeling anyone who’s against Trump as having “Trump Derangement Syndrome,” while ignoring the documented fact of 16,000+ lies, prevarications, and unsupportable boasts in his idol of worship. Is this what Jesus approved?

Maybe it’s good that he’s trying to spread facts and thoughtfulness to a population of Americans who are known to be skeptical about official information, who think they can, with neither experience nor training, reason their way to their preferred outcome – “it’s all a hoax to damage Trump!”, to summarize a WaPo article I read today – but if he’s going to try to mix politics into it, even politics critical of his own Party, then he opens himself up to charges of guilt – and not just guilt by association.

The Problem Of Questionable Data, Ctd

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Regarding John Ioannidis my correspondent remarks …

Ioannidis is an interesting guy who has played a great part in the retraction of many medical research papers over the last 15 years. https://www.theatlantic.com/…/lies-damned-lies…/308269/

And that certainly puts him up a couple of points in my book, too. A quote from The Atlantic article:

That question has been central to Ioannidis’s career. He’s what’s known as a meta-researcher, and he’s become one of the world’s foremost experts on the credibility of medical research. He and his team have shown, again and again, and in many different ways, that much of what biomedical researchers conclude in published studies—conclusions that doctors keep in mind when they prescribe antibiotics or blood-pressure medication, or when they advise us to consume more fiber or less meat, or when they recommend surgery for heart disease or back pain—is misleading, exaggerated, and often flat-out wrong. He charges that as much as 90 percent of the published medical information that doctors rely on is flawed. His work has been widely accepted by the medical community; it has been published in the field’s top journals, where it is heavily cited; and he is a big draw at conferences. Given this exposure, and the fact that his work broadly targets everyone else’s work in medicine, as well as everything that physicians do and all the health advice we get, Ioannidis may be one of the most influential scientists alive. Yet for all his influence, he worries that the field of medical research is so pervasively flawed, and so riddled with conflicts of interest, that it might be chronically resistant to change—or even to publicly admitting that there’s a problem.

I still am bothered by the lack of nuance in the Stat article, but I’ll put it down to size constraints. And this won’t make him – or me – happy:

Health officials in New York City and Los Angeles County are signaling a change in local strategy when it comes to coronavirus testing, recommending that doctors avoid testing patients except in cases where a test result would significantly change the course of treatment.

A news release from the Los Angeles Department of Public Health this week advised doctors not to test those experiencing only mild respiratory symptoms unless “a diagnostic result will change clinical management or inform public health response.”

The recommendation reflects a “shifting from a strategy of case containment to slowing disease transmission and averting excess morbidity and mortality,” according to the statement.

The guidance said coronavirus testing at L.A. County public health labs will prioritized those with symptoms, health care workers, residents of long-term care facilities, paramedics and other high-risk situations. Others are encouraged to simply stay at home. [CNN]

This loss of information will make it harder to understand the virus & associated disease, from immediate infection to long term consequences. And there’s at least one article I’ve run across that suggests there are two variants at work here:

When Xiaolu Tang at Peking University in Beijing and colleagues studied the viral genome taken from 103 cases, they found common mutations at two locations on the genome. The team identified two types of the virus based on differences in the genome at these two regions: 72 were considered to be the “L-type” and 29 were classed “S-type”.

A separate analysis by the team suggests that the L-type was derived from the older S-type. The first strain is likely to have emerged around the time the virus jumped from animals to humans. The second emerged soon after that, says the team. Both are involved in the current global outbreak. The fact that the L-type is more prevalent suggests that it is “more aggressive” than the S-type, the team say.

“There do appear to be two different strains,” says Ravinder Kanda at Oxford Brookes University in the UK. “[The L-type] might be more aggressive in transmitting itself, but we have no idea yet how these underlying genetic changes will relate to disease severity,” she says. [NewScientist, 14 March 2020]

And if COVID-19 is dangerous and caused by either variant, the L-type might warrant more research in order to understand why it’s more aggressive in spreading, and what can be done to stop that.

I understand that the new limitations on ordering tests is warranted by our limitations on the quantity of tests available, but deliberately ignoring evidence – information – is deeply aggravating to everyone who lives on information.

The Problem Of Questionable Data, Ctd

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Just hours after I wondered about the data coming out of Africa with regard to the COVID-19 pandemic, I ran across this article in NewScientist (14 March 2020) which may provide some answers:

African countries are both vulnerable and potentially more resilient to the coronavirus. On the one hand, the population is much younger than in Europe and China. The median population age in the UK is 40.2 and in China it is 37, but this figure is 17.9 in Nigeria, Africa’s most populous country. “If you look at the statistics from China, the people that have worse prognosis are the older people, not necessarily the young,” says Stephen.

They also suggest at least some of the African nations are vigilant about incoming visitors.

I had also noted Russia’s small reported numbers. Its median age? 39.6, comparable to the UK & China. CNN has a report today on Russia’s small reported numbers, and it feels properly confusing, as Russia often can be:

“The director-general of WHO said ‘test, test, test,'” Dr. Melita Vujnovic, the World Health Organization’s representative in Russia, told CNN Thursday. “Well, Russia started that literally at the end of January.”

Vujnovic said Russia also took a broader set of measures in addition to testing.

“Testing and identification of cases, tracing contacts, isolation, these are all measures that WHO proposes and recommends, and they were in place all the time,” she said. “And the social distancing is the second component that really also started relatively early.”

Rospotrebnadzor, Russia’s state consumer watchdog, said Saturday that it had run more than 156,000 coronavirus tests in total. By comparison, according to CDC figures, the United States only picked up the pace in testing at the beginning of March, while Russia says it has been testing en masse since early February, including in airports, focusing on travelers from Iran, China, and South Korea. …

Anastasia Vasilyeva, a doctor for Russian opposition figure Alexey Navalny and leader of the Alliance of Doctors union, made headlines with a series of videos in which she claims the authorities are covering up real coronavirus numbers by using pneumonia and acute respiratory infection as a diagnosis.

“You see they said the first coronavirus patient that died, that the cause of death was thrombosis,” Vasilyeva told CNN. “That’s obvious, nobody dies from coronavirus itself, they die from the complications, so it’s very easy to manipulate this.”

Moscow health officials denied the accusation and said they were testing pneumonia patients for coronavirus. The WHO’s Dr. Vujnovic also was skeptical about Vasilyeva’s claim.

“If there was a hidden, unrecognized burden somewhere it would be seen in these [pneumonia] reports,” she said. “So I do not believe this is happening, which does not say that you might not see an increase of cases in the next period, because we have seen that in many countries.”

I have no idea what to make of this. Cover up? So competent they make us look like a clown herd?

Finally, a reader sends this link to a site named Stat, with which I’m unfamiliar. The article bemoans the general uncertainty of knowledge concerning COVID-19, but I have to wonder if they think the professionals at the CDC are dunces. Then I ran across this paragraph:

The one situation where an entire, closed population was tested was the Diamond Princess cruise ship and its quarantine passengers. The case fatality rate there was 1.0%, but this was a largely elderly population, in which the death rate from Covid-19 is much higher.

Perhaps the writer, John Ioannidis, is a victim of bad editing, or perhaps he doesn’t understand how to analyze the situation. Here’s the error as I see it: He’s taking age as a fundamental factor in determining risk.

It’s not.

Age is a proxy for making general statements about underlying health conditions. In general, the aged have less effective immune systems than do the young. But a proxy is always a step away from the fundamentals, and so when using a proxy, one must always view it with some slight suspicion, applying caveats of both qualitative and quantitative measures.

The health professionals have been at pains to emphasize that any sort of underlying health condition may put those who’ve contracted the virus at risk for a severe episode. These constitute the fundamental factors of the risk.

Taking Ioannidis’ paragraph as an example, once you realize age is a proxy, then you find a set of questions that need to be answered:

  • Are elderly cruise line passengers more or less likely to be as healthy as the median elderly person in the population? If it’s more healthy, then adjust the derived rates for severe and terminal episodes up; if it’s less healthy, then adjust the derived rates down. By derived, I mean the absolute rate for elderly persons, regardless of context.
  • How does the level of care delivered on a cruise ship compare to that at an average 1st world hospital? I’ve never taken a cruise, so I am clueless.
  • How did caring for infected cruise line passengers impact other non-infected hospitalized passengers?
  • How did the stress of being at sea, with limited resources, impact the recovery of infect passengers? In particular, the psychological stress of having home countries turn your ship away – a dreaded plague ship, as it were – must take a toll on patients of a certain range of temperaments.
  • Etc.

Some folks may view the cruise liner situation as an excellent isolated experiment, but I have my doubts that at least Ioannidis’ article understands the nuances of the situation, based on the toss-off nature of that paragraph. And I do get that precision to 15 decimal places is useless, but it would help to at least say, within a magnitude, how COVID-19 compares to the seasonal flu.

It’s Just Like the Soviets

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Watching the Trump Administration inevitably reminds me of the brutal Soviet government, which insistently saw everything through the lens of politics, even to the extent of attaching political officers to military units. Now, I’m not saying that’s literally happening here, not at all, but this Steve Benen report on Maddowblog concerning the upcoming release of employment figures, until now a source of joy for the Trump Administration, sent up red flags for me:

Ahead of the next report, which will be released next week, the Trump administration is reportedly asking states not to release their own preliminary tallies. The New York Times reported, “In an email sent Wednesday, the Labor Department instructed state officials to only ‘provide information using generalities to describe claims levels (very high, large increase)’ until the department releases the total number of national claims next Thursday.”

It’s not yet clear if state officials will go along.

It sure sounds to me like political management of what is simply a harsh reality.

Look, many readers will just shrug and claim a Democratic Administration would have done the same thing, and perhaps, under some hypothetical Democrats, it would have. But that’s just a form of the discredited argument called uh-whataboutism, which I find more and more reasons to ignore.

One of the lovely things about democracies is that, when properly run, people can learn to trust the government. This President personally has 16,000+ non-distinct lies, prevarications, and boasts to his name, and an Administrative record full of shame when it comes to foreign relations (migrant children in cages, extortion of foreign leaders, toadying to other foreign leaders), etc etc. Most Americans don’t trust him.

So when the Labor Department issues “instructions” to state officials, which I doubt it has any legal authority to do so, to hold back on details of their State’s employment situation, I have to think this is going to be all about the spin.

If Trump and his Administration had a record of honest dealing with the electorate, then we wouldn’t see this, and we wouldn’t have to consider whether or not we should simply disregard the upcoming release of the numbers as being possibly fallacious or whatever. We could simply say, Yes, it’s the COVID-19 response causing this, and it’s just some pain we’ll have to bear, and it’s good to see the Administration is trying to help those who’ve lost jobs.

Trump could have so easily spun it to his advantage in the upcoming elections. But, instead, he lies through his teeth constantly. This is what liars reap.

That Darn Climate Change Conspiracy, Ctd

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For those readers who had their hopes pinned on how the Earth circles the sun as explaining the warm up in temperatures, in particular based on this study in Scientific Reports, I have some bad news:

A prominent scientific journal has retracted a study claiming that climate change was due to solar cycles rather than human activity.

Last year, Scientific Reports came under fire for publishing a paper that researchers said made elementary mistakes about how Earth moves around the sun.

Today the journal, published by Nature Research, which also has Nature in its stable of titles, formally retracted the paper by a team at UK universities and an institution in Azerbaijan.

The withdrawn study had argued that the average global 1°C temperature rise since the pre-industrial period was due not to humanity’s greenhouse gas emissions but to the distance between Earth and the sun changing over time as the sun orbits the barycentre, the solar system’s centre of mass. In a statement today, Scientific Reports said that was inaccurate. …

“Solar system orbital dynamics is extremely well understood, and it wouldn’t have taken much for the authors to have checked if their claims about the significance of the motion of the sun around the solar system barycentre were indeed correct,” [Astronomy Professor Ken Rice at the University of Edinburgh, UK] says. [NewScientist, 14 March 2020]

Which casts shade on the rest of the paper. If you click on the link to the study, it’s prominently marked as RETRACTED.

And, yes, at least one of the authors is upset:

Valentina Zharkova at the University of Northumbria, one of the paper’s authors, says the retraction was unfair and the corrections made to the paper were minor.

Apparently, the experts disagreed and made a convincing case to the editors of Scientific Reports.