Invitation to a Beheading

So here's a hypothesis: a lot of the difference between how COVID is dealt with in the US and how it's dealt with in Canada (and the rest of the developed world) is a result of the fact that governments are not responsible for hospitals in the US like they are in Canada. In Canada, health care is one of the provinces' two main businesses, along with education. The people who run hospitals in Ontario lean more or less directly on the provincial government and are technically public servants of the province. If Ontario hospitals are in crisis, the Ontario government is in crisis. This I assume--am I wrong?--is not the case in the US: if the people who run hospitals in, say, the state of New York (which still has a higher per capita daily infection rate than Ontario does, and way higher per capita daily death rate) think their hospitals are in crisis, that isn't automatically the problem of the New York state government. Naturally the New York state government might take an interest in it, but it's an interest that it can balance against competing interests. The Ontario government, on the other hand, has only one other interest--education--generally taken to be legitimately competing at anything like the same level with its interest in the public health care system. And the way things have played out have gone to show that in the public mind, the interests of health care absolutely and completely trump the interests of education. This does not create, but it does heighten, the problem that "listen to the experts" means listen to the experts on what COVID, specifically, is going to do, whose #1 interest is specifically in what it is going to do to the health care system, and whose most basic particular interest in that lies in what it's going to do to hospitals. (The way "public health" has fallen so completely under the sway of the-COVID-the-whole-COVID-and-nothing-but-the-COVID when the staggering costs of lockdown-type COVID-mitigation strategies in terms of the kinds of things public health people have been calling "social determinants of health" in the last couple of decades--which were expressed in a lot of public health response to the BLM protests of 2020 (and which I heard a bit of coming out of public health people last September, before it was completely overwhelmed, about the importance of getting kids back in school [ETA: and I guess maybe a bit of this is spontaneously emerging in the public consciousness in Ontario in the backlash against the provincial government's do-all-the-wrong-things-but-moreso response to our third wave here])--is pretty ... striking. If you ask me.)

Another hypothesis, which would explain a lot of the difference between American and Canadian public attitudes toward COVID right now: Americans by and large would not take it as given, like Canadians seem to be currently assumed to do, that if every patient who shows up at a hospital is not guaranteed the best care the hospital is normally able to provide, then the hospital is in crisis (and therefore the jurisdiction it serves has arrived at its "worst-case scenario").

I have been meaning to say for months and months that I find it astounding that I had heard literally no one suggest (but then the Ontario government did last week) that we ought to immediately begin expanding ICU capacity so that the system has much greater "surge capacity". This seems an obvious solution to a problem that, at root, hinges on the fact that ICUs in Ontario can--it turns out--handle around a thousand people (not a thousand extra people due to an emergency, a thousand people altogether) at any given time out of a population of nearly fifteen million. Of course, the province wants the hospital system to run efficiently. Slack capacity is inefficient--until you need it, and then lack of slack capacity makes your entire society extremely fucking inefficient.

Anyway, thankfully I can write all this here, because almost no one will read it here, which means that almost no one will take me to be making points I don't mean to make, as opposed to the ones I do mean to make, whatever those might be. [ETA: I saw on twitter a while ago some guy addressing the question why he bothers writing a blog when only a few hundred people read it. One thing you learn about a lot on twitter is how vastly different other people's expectations of and for themselves are from your own. Or at least I do, but then I learn about that pretty much everywhere I look, so.] [ETA 2: if you really want to hear something that might make you think I'm making a point I don't mean to make, let me tell you this: as of a couple of months ago, every resident who had ever tested positive for COVID at my father's old folks home and had subsequently died, including people who had been officially counted as "recovered" from COVID, was counted as a COVID death. I have no idea what exactly that might mean, because I have no idea what the baseline death rate in that place is. But I was ... struck by that.]

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Currently under my porch: 0.6. Currently at Belmont Lake: 1. High there today: 7.9, at midnight. If it is not snowing now it will be soon, which will make tomorrow the second "can you believe it's snowing again!" day of the spring so far. U Waterloo first-time-to-20-degrees contest ended April 8 this year, breaking the string of three straight years it ended in May; that's the earliest it has ended since 2012, when it ended on March 16.

Today was the 365th day in a row that I have reported my bird sightings on ebird. I think I missed the day before this streak started because I made one last run to the public water tap in Coe Hill. (It would've been interrupted on one of the days I visited my father in the hospital at the end of the summer, but B. was determined to save the streak and took me to Marie Curtis park in Etobicoke as the sun was going down.) At that time we had no firm reason not to believe COVID spread from surfaces, and I thought it might be the end of self-serve gas stations. Now it seems kind of miraculous that there were never any hand-sanitizing rules at gas stations (while we're still doing a great job of stamping on any toehold the flu might get by sanitizing the hell out of other things ... say what you will about the effectiveness of our COVID strategies at dealing with COVID, they've been a resounding success at keeping anyone from getting the flu)--you're still supposed to stick your hand in a plastic bag to use the tap in Coe Hill. On my current streak I have added 45 new species to my lifetime list, bringing me to a total of 104. Today I counted my first phoebe of the year. The robins, vultures, red-winged blackbirds, and maybe-Compton's-tortoiseshell butterflies showed up a few days ago, red-shouldered hawks a bit longer ago than that, crows a bit longer again. Purple finches and red-breasted nuthatches could show up any day now.

Today's bible reading was Nehemaiah, which is a twin of the immediately-preceding book of Ezra; both are about the return of the Jews to Judah, to rebuild the temple, after seventy years of exile in Babylon. Ezra and Nehemaiah are notable for their xenophobia: Ezra concludes with Ezra making Jewish men get rid of their non-Jewish wives, and their children by their non-Jewish wives. Near the end of Nehemaiah it's determined that all "foreigners" are to be excluded from "Israel". Both "foreigner" and "Israel" are funny concepts here. It strikes me again and again how the Israelites are foreigners in their own land--and as part of that, how the Babylonian exile is a return to the place Abraham originally came from. And the "Israel" that "foreigners" are to be excluded from is a people, not a state--Judah is still part of the Babylonian empire; Nehemaiah is its governor at the pleasure of the king of Babylon. It struck me this time around how the relationship between the state and the religion of its people is completely different from what it was in the descriptions of the Israelite kingdoms. In those, there is no daylight between the religion of the king and the religion of the people. If the king goes astray, the people go astray (in such a goes-without-saying way that it seems like the relationship is logical rather than causal). If the king comes back to God, the people come back to God. But foreigners, non-Hebrews, were never excluded from the kingdoms, despite God's pronouncements that they should be, and they always mingled with the Israelite people. In the kingdoms you had a pluralist people in a non-pluralist state; in post-exilic Judah you have a non-pluralist people in a pluralist state.

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Currently under my porch: 7. Currently at Belmont Lake: 1.8, which, that's an awfully big gap there. High there today: 19.3. High of 17.6 at Peterborough airport today, 0.4 45 minutes ago at midnight, huh. Small chance of the UW first-time-to-20-degrees contest ending on Thursday, it looks like.

It has been a long wait, to be sure, for the next lesson from Professor C.'s School of Armchair Economics; good news, it is here! And it is a big one, by which I mean that it is a small one, by which I mean that it is a foundational axiom of Professor C.'s School of Armchair Economics, namely: where a state controls its own fiat currency, there is no functional difference between (1) the state taxing you $x and (2) the state causing $x to come into being to be used for its own purposes while ordering you to take the same amount of your money and set it on fire.

Consequently: where the state controls its own fiat currency, taxation is ultimately not a means by which the state raises funds, but rather a means by which the state attempts to achieve (a) a desired amount of money in circulation, and (b) a desired distribution of money.

And yes, it is Lent, and I am reading the bible again, you are correct! I have decided that what I am doing is the biblegateway.com 90^H^H 88-day program, of which I will do the first 46 days in Lent + the six Sundays of Lententide, and the last 42 days in Advent +, uh, the two weeks before Advent, i.e., starting about a week after the great feast of NaDruWriNi. Maybe I will say some things about it, I don't know, I am real busy, doing whatever in the world it is I am doing.

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Currently under my porch: -0.7. Currently at Belmont Lake: -1.4. High there today: 2.5.

So ... the 2016 election was rigged against your guy, but he was so massively popular he won anyway. The 2020 election was rigged so much worse, despite your guy's having had four years as president to do something about it, that he officially lost. That seems to mean your guy is awfully ineffectual.

I mean, what do all those Trumpers (who I see via Rod Dreher) who like him because he's willing to fight as dirty as the Democrats make of this? Do they accept that his claiming that he lost because the Democrats fought dirty and he didn't is fighting dirty? (Just how many Trumpers are committed to some QAnon-style narrative about what he's really up to, for which what he appears to be up to is always only a cover?) How does this mesh with (a disjoint set of?) Trumpers' liking him because he isn't hypocritical, but is straightforwardly and unashamedly an asshole?

Which reminds me, back when the sexual assault allegations against Joe Biden were sort of a thing, I was meaning to write something about how there's an argument to be made that Joe Biden is a better person if he denies the allegations, even if they're true--supposing that he denies them because he is so ashamed of what he did, that what he did is so contrary to his self-image, that he can't admit, even to himself, that he did it. (And I think of Jimmy Gator saying "I don't know" when his wife asks if he touched their daughter. "You should know better!") There is a different kind of argument to be made that it's better for him to deny the allegations, even if they're true, supposing that his admitting to the allegations would destroy him as an ethical role model--i.e., Artie Ziff would have a point, if he wasn't such a dweeb. (This to me is the bottom line about Donald Trump: the president of the United States is possibly the most important ethical role model in the world. You just can't have someone who is openly an ethical monster in that position. Ethical monsters can be president only if they are hypocrites.) I'm not saying that these reasons are persuasive, separately or together (or together with the more obvious, less interesting, utilitarian reason (something like which seems certainly to have motivated the refusal, in many quarters, to take the allegations seriously): the risks of harms being done if Biden effectively disqualified himself from the presidency ethically prohibit him from doing so), only that there is something to them.

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Currently under my porch: 7.1. Currently at Belmont Lake: 7.1, huh. High there today: 11.2. Back on the upswing of the roller coaster. Some snow on the ground a couple of days ago, which seemed like the first snow of the fall, but there was snow on the ground three weeks ago already.

I'm kinda surprised how much worse for wear Punchy is looking. But then I think, a Halloween jack-o-lantern, you only have that burning a couple of hours, and its face is starting to sink in by the time the too-old teenagers show up, isn't it? And Punchy, his brain stem is only like two inches above teh flame, so whaddya expect? That was my one pumpk,in this year. no Hubbard squash: all succumbed to the squash vine borers. So it's a good thing there was no Coe hill Fair this year, eh--kinda like 1994, when the Blue Jays had turned into pumpkins and got a free extra year as defending champs. Anyway, I'm kinda frustrated that I'm so goddamned sleepy. I was dozing in my chair here for half an hour or so before I went out to piss on the property line. I have so much to tell you. Compañero. You make a dark line, and you make a light line, and together, it's a good line. I'm glad we made it back here. See you next year.

maybe I should just complain about Doctor Who

or nostalgize about the second season of Capaldi

or seomthing

(I realized a few months ago that Capaldi is absolutely my favourite Doctor. Fora long time I thought it was a tie between him and Tennant, but it is totally Capaldi. I mean, just for that one season. But ahat one season is everything.)

Well, Raven Conspiracy red wine has gotten me nowhere this time, chum, so it's time to break out the big guns: on to the Writer's Tears, redux, which B. gto me to celebrate the acceptance of the groundhog poem, I think, and which I squirreled away, fittingly enough, for just this contingency. It is as delicuous as I remember. But I think maybe I won't drink 2/3 of the bottle this time.

This is Punchy McPunchface. He will be the muse of NaDruWriNi.

So I woke up yesterday morning, sat up, looked out the window, and I shit you not, across the lake, above the northeastern shore, I saw a line, flying north to south, of seven trumpeter swans.

The last time I saw seven trumpeter swans at Wollaston Lake was the first Tuesday after November 1 (how completely I'd forgotten that 1-in-7 caveat) of November, 2016.

OK, I do not know for an absolute fact that the huge white birds I saw yesterday were trumpeter swans; they were too far away to ID visually, and I couldn't hear them because I was inside and they were across the lake. They could've been mute swans. Maybe they were snow geese. Either way.

Of course, in Canada, we watch this, and we're like, we get this all pretty much done within half an hour of the polls closing, with nothing but pencils and paper and telephones--what is wrong with you people down there? But then I think how, having been a poll worker myself in the last federal election, having seen how that operates, uh ... the quickness and easiness of our electoral process appears to rest on a foundation of faith in the good will and integrity of an army of basically unvetted workers which, in the US, would be absolutely laughable. But I dunno, maybe it actually rests on that there, too, and it really is so incredibly much slower and more cumbersome down there for no good reason at all.

Anyway, the long winter of the last week is over, spring has sprung, and it's about time to head back to the cottage for:



--the "let me tell you what it took to get back here for this!" edition.

On the Democrat's-chance-in-Wyoming that anyone reading this isn't already familiar, the_siobhan's How to NaDruWriNi is here.

See you there!

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Currently under my porch: 15.3. Currently at Belmont Lake: 15.3.