Walz conveniently claiming progress and modifying the lockdown to allow indoor dining

I thought this would happen 3 weeks ago, but, whatevs.

https://www.startribune.com/gov-tim-walz-to-loosen-bar-and-restaurant-restrictions-amid-covid-pandemic-progress/600006755/

https://zingyskywaylunch.wordpress.com/2020/12/14/prediction-walz-will-conveniently-claim-progress-and-modify-the-lockdown-to-allow-indoor-dining/

The cultural and political right gets a lot of bad pub these days for being idiot misanthropes (… much of this is Trump related and well deserved). They are very obnoxious on the lockdowns as well, but the difference is I think that the rest of the temperamentally sound public is secretly on their side there. So the lockdowns can’t really go on.

And ya know, "the lockdowns" is just Walz’ ridiculous clutch to a restaurant / bar shutdown such that there is actually no other public health mechanism in effect to demonstrate the state is fighting COVID with some kind of quarantine action.

It’s response theater, it’s all performative.

Walz to churches: how about if I change the rules to exactly the way you were going to break them…

…then you’ll be in compliance, and we won’t have this spectacle of a large organization that Keith Ellison can’t suit flouting the rules.

https://www.startribune.com/minn-churches-can-open-at-25-occupancy/570721802/

#science.

I tellya, the Catholic conference is being much more magnanimous in victory than I would, such that they didn’t have to give an inch. But this is a more temperamentally solid crew than me, duh.

I have a big twitter reading habit these days, for better or for worse. The local "shelter in place till we have a vaccine crowd" there is ‘scared’, and pretty sure we’re going to have an infection spike that’s discernible among church goers.

I’d take that bet, as a matter of what perspective has a superior tactile feel for statistics and heuristics (my perspective is, end the lock downs…). There ain’t going to be a spike cohort that’s remotely the size of the old people that have been killed off in long term care facilities because COVID patients were admitted / treated.

Which is to say, churches can be opened, outdoor team sports can be opened.

Keith Ellison must be rarin’ to suit Catholic and Lutheran churches right now eh

For $25k a service. Cmon Keith, LFG…

https://www.startribune.com/minn-to-open-up-outdoor-dining/570634212/

Of course, that’s not thing that would happen. What a fucking joke, and thank you my homies, my ken, MN’s German Irish Catholics, for drawing a line on this bullshit.

Recall, I voted for Tim Walz. This was mostly as a rejection of MN-GOP misanthropy. I don’t regret that. I made some arguments for Walz in words here at the blog though, and unfortunately those words end up being an exercise in positive projection and self justification.

This is a non-leader, non-executive who has attained the governorship. JFC, Mark Dayton was a steelier personality.

Lets just breeze past most of pretenses of the ‘sciencey-ness’ that we get browbeaten with alright. Cuz Tim Walz and the inner clique have the brainpower to understand their strategy would include prudent, artful judgment calls that science doesn’t speak to in crafting a contagion stunting distancing / shelter regime. Truth, reality. 10 and 50 crowd counts are arbitrary and have no tether to ANY research.

If you’re the executive, you can edit some some ridiculousness out of whatever plan your obtuse, obnoxious Josh Lyman public policy staffer class comes up with so as to reduce public friction and increase public buy in. Ya know, such that you never really know if you’re saving lives on the margin, and as a matter of cosmic truth you’re probably not, and cuz you’re going to make up for that by killing a bunch of old people in care centers after you re-admit old COVID survivors from hospital stays (This is the crux of your death count, not the general public).

So he could allow church, and amateur sports, and quite a bit more restauranting. As a matter of … SCIENCE. IF he had the political instincts and personal cajones to thwart his political clique’s totalitarian and bureaucracy building instincts, just a teensy little bit.

So there’s that. On the whole, the Minnesota effort suffers from the false chauvinism for Minnesota exceptionalism and the aspiration by the local public policy class for a bunch of white papers 2 years down the line that say we managed it best (not gonna happen). Also suffers from an obtuse belief in models.

This is bullshit

Let me start by saying, I voted for Tim Walz and I am not a COVID denialist.  But…. shelter in place till 1st week of May? 6 weeks of no meaningful work and commerce for 3/8s of the people?

This is an exceedingly expensive way to mitigate whatever we are trying to mitigate. Especially such that sickness and fatalities was never going to approach the epidemiological models for here in the first place.

I cant describe whats going on here in clinical, psychological terms, because I don’t have the schooling or the knowledge there. But I discern something… and its that Tim Walz and the Democrats in the executive branch don’t have a permission structure where you tell the epidemiologists no, because of the way Dems have constructed their values / altruism / credibility hierarchy re people who wear lab coats.

This is whats “good” about DJT, such that he’d be different.

But I’m not voting for DJT, alright.

Walz deep

Tim Walz is in., for Guv. I like him, at least for his superficial attributes. He was doing real person shit through his 40’s. Also is German / Irish / Swede, which is like the world’s most perfect ethnic combination eh.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tim_Walz

Anyway… appealing candidate for the Dems.