Politifact Lie of the Year.

I haven't done one of these in a few years, mainly because the election of Donald Trump has resulted in an almost constant stream of pants on fire level lies coming out of the liar-in-chief.    One of the effects of this is that Politifact only has a hard time choosing among Trump and his allies lies for the the worst of the year, and none of the D's minor lies or misstatements rises even close to competing.


2019: Trump's repeated false claim that the whistleblower got Trump's Ukraine call almost completely wrong
2018: Online smear machine tries to take down Parkland high school students
2017: Trump's repeated false assertions that Russian election interference is a "made up story"
2016: Fake News
2015: Trump's campaign lies
2014: The Ebola Scare.
2013: If you like your health care you can keep it.  (Had this been expressed "If you like your qualifying health care, you can keep it" it would have been true: the plans that were closed by ACA were fraudulent in some way.   In 2008, they had rated this same statement as true)
2012: Romney/Ryan completely false claims that Jeep was moving its factory to China
2011: Democrat's completely true statement that Republicans voted to end medicare as we know it.
2010: Republican's absurdly false claims that the ACA is a government takeover of healthcare.
2009: Republican's dangerously false claims about death panels.
 

Coronovirus Statistics

As I write this (18Mar2020) the deaths from the Novel Coronavirus have risen to just under 9000 worldwide, 150 in the US.  China appears to be the only country that has a declining number of new cases, after draconian measures sharply reduced the spread of the disease.  They so far have had just under 81,000 cases, nearly 70,000 of them have recovered.
 
The incubation period is between 2 and 14 days, with a peak between 3 and 7.  The disease itself seems to last about 2 weeks if symptoms are mild, 3-6 weeks if they're severe.   Severe cases seem to become severe about one week from the onset of symptoms.  The cause of death seems mostly to be hypoxia (shortness of breath: can't get enough oxygen into the blood), either from the disease itself or from opportunistic infections, mostly pneumonia.

The symptoms start out with malaise, muscle pain and low-grade fever, sharpening to higher fever and a dry cough.  Oddly, very few cases seem to have a runny nose, sneezing or sore throat.  The patients that do have these symptoms seem to have simultaneously had a cold or some other issue.

The death rate for previously healthy patients is under 1%.   Heart disease, Diabetes, Chronic Respiratory disease, Hypertension and Cancer multiply the death rate by 7-14x.

The worst case scenario I've seen is that we will need nearly 1 million medical ventilators at the peak of the crisis.  There are presently about 160K, about 100K of them obsolete but could be used in an emergency.  The problem is not just the disease itself.   The US loses about 2.8M people a year.  The top causes are Heart disease (650K), Cancer (600K) Accidents (170K),  Chronic Respiratory diseases (160K), Stroke (146K).  Normally, something like a million people a year require a ventilator--about 60K at a time.  If at the peak of the crisis, we need 150K ventilators, we will only lose 30K of them.  A terrible catastrophe, but small on the scale of heart disease and so forth.  It's obviously cold comfort if one of them is someone you cared about.   If, at the peak of the crisis, we need 500K ventilators, we will lose nearly 400K.  A great many of them will be people who never had coronavirus at all, but did have a life threatening condition that required medical assistance and/or ventilation. 

The appallingly terrible response by the Trump administration has made the problem much worse than it needed to be. China sprang into action very aggressively and used many tools which are not really available in the US.  China may manage to keep its deaths under 5,000.   While they've only had about 3000 deaths so far, Italians are dying at over 450 a day and it's unlikely this will slow down for some time.  They have 35K cases and had 4200 new ones today.  Extrapolating the curve looks like 30-50K deaths.   The US is much bigger and our response has been in many ways worse.

e.g.: Trump poo poohed the problem and did literally nothing for over a month.
The original tests provided by the CDC were defective and there are still far too few tests available.   This cost us a month or more.
He fired the team of advisors that would have been the most useful in 2018--apparently because they were warning him that something like this might happen.
He's given a very mixed message on the border controls, such as announcing that all trips from Europe except the UK (where he owns resorts) would be cancelled, triggering panic travel, massively overwhelming the medical checks for re-entry.  If any one of those people actually did have the disease, there are now a thousand new vectors, and sure enough, New York and California, which previously hadn't had many cases, immediately because major centers.   If you're going to close the border, close it completely and immediately.   Better yet: leave the border open, and be prepared to maintain distancing while you're doing your entry checks on what would be normal travel levels.  He got this exactly backwards.

There are lots of other terrible problems.  I rank the new coronavirus as only 3rd or 4th on the list, although its pressing and immediate.   The most pressing, immediate problems is that we must remove Donald Trump and his toadies from power as soon as possible.   I think when the accounting is done, Trump will have killed over a million Americans.


https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/#countries

The Spectrum

Here's the way I see the present economic spectrum

Communist:
  There hasn't ever been a communist with national political creds in the United States. The nearest is probably the Wobblys (IWW) of the John Reed era or Longshore chief Harry Bridges.  There have been numerous small communes that were somewhat successful over the years, but they are imbeded in the larger culture.  By Communist, I mean that most or all of the means of production is owned and controlled by "the people", meaning the state.  Whether this state is democratic, authoritarian or something else is a separate issue, although the large ones have all been authoritarian.  Significant free enterprise is not allowed although there may be small businesses with government licenses.

Socialist:
 There have been a few socialist politicians with national credibility.  The most important was probably Eugene Debs. Most of the present national people who call themselves socialists really are Democratic Socialists.  By Socialist, I mean that a sizable share of the means of production is owned by the state, but significant free enterprise is allowed although with regulation.  Again, whether the state is democratic, authoritarian or something else is a separate issue.

Democratic Socialist:
  Most successful countries over the last century have been Democratic Socialists.  Major US leadership figures include Franklin Roosevelt, Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, and arguably, Abraham Lincoln.   By Democratic Socialism, I mean that the majority of the means of production is free enterprise, but a significant amount are operated by the government or at least strongly regulated.  Usually these are those industries that have been in some sort of market failure. The associate government is democratic or republican.

Capitalist:
   Most successful countries have passed through a capitalist phase.  By capitalist, I mean that the vast majority of the means of production is individually owned, there is little regulation, and there are few industries in market failure.  It is inherently an unstable circumstance: businesses will try to grow and dominate markets, and without limits, some will succeed and drive the others out.  It also tends to breed various labor abuses, including chattel slavery, wage slavery, debt slavery.  The capitalist era in the US ended with the rise of  "the guilded age" after the civil war.  Most "businesses" were family farms and most industries were small and isolated enough that there was no monopoly.  Interestingly some of the most successful were substantially sponsored by the government, e.g. the Springfield Armory.

  Those that profited most, and those who see only the opportunity to maximize profit and not the collateral damage of capitalism and the unique circumstances that make it possible are always trying to "revert" to capitalism.  Capitalism is highly transitional and can only thrive while there are literally hundreds of businesses in each market: enough to allow true competition and natural selection.

Oligarchist:
  What happens when a capitalist society fails to deal with market failure.  Individual businesses grow so large and powerful that they dominate their markets--often with tacit or explicit collusion from their competitors.  Before long they can afford to buy any regulation they may face.  Sometimes growth is for the good, but more often, the giant prioritizes profit over providing good service or decent wages.

Laissez Faire:
  There has never been a successful Laissez Faire society.  There are two failure modes: Chile and several others gave it a try but it went so badly they needed to put down near constant rebellions with extreme force, including secret disappearances.   The other way tends to last longer: it's called A Dark Age.  The tools of civil society break down--banditry is rampant and there is little or no distinction between bandits and police.  There is no rule of law. There are people who claim to advocate Laissez Faire.  They're profoundly ignorant.

There's also a political axis.  How leaders are selected and replaced, what powers they have, how they respond to popular opinion, etc.

Authoritarian:
   Leaders grab power by force, are free to do anything they want including manipulate the selection process.  They invariably are subject to frequent coups d'etat, especially after a previous leader dies.  There is usually extensive manipulation of media to quell almost constant grumbling from the powerless.  How the economy works, whether there is rule of law or not, etc., are separate issues.

Aristocracy:
  Leaders initially gain power by force but agree that replacement will be based on some predictable scheme, usually hereditary.  This tends to reduce the violence after a leader has died.   Again, the workings of the economy is separate.  Monarchy is a different name for the same thing.

Republic:
   Representatives gather and make decisions about what to do.  How the representatives are selected is based on various mechanisms--sometimes they're elected, sometimes they are land owners, Ancient Athens drew lots to decide who would lead, various other systems have been used.

Constitutional Monarchy:
   The same as a Republic but there is an aristocratic figurehead who may or may not have some power.

Democracy:
  The people vote on most things.  There have been no successful democracies larger than a few hundred voters.   All have either regressed in some way or have functionally been a republic.



Fascism is Authoritarian Oligarchy:  a dominant leader grabs and maintains power through alliance with monopolist or near monopolist businesses.  There are some stylistic things that usually accompany fascism: persecuted people who are supposedly the cause of all of these problems, state control of an extremely dishonest media, etc.  Technically, there are other ways to be Authoritarian Oligarchist, but fascism is the most common.

Chinese and Soviet Communism is Authoritarian Communism or Socialism.

There are several democratic socialist monarchies in western Europe: Holland, Sweden, etc.  Politically, these are republics but they retain a figurehead.  For example, functionally the German and Swedish political systems are pretty similar, but Sweden has a ceremonial king.  Saudi Arabia is an oligarchic aristocracy.  The US has regressed to its second oligarchic phase, having advanced to democratic socialism for most of the 20th century.   The current president has very, very strong authoritarian tendencies and we may go all the way to Fascism if we're not careful.

  

2020 Calendar

Wed 1 Jan      New Year's Day
Mon 20 Jan   Martin Luther King Day (Holiday)
Sat 25 Jan     Chinese New Year, begins year of the Rat, 4718
Sun 2 Feb      Groundhog's (midwinter) Day
Sun 2 Feb     Superbowl LIV, Miami, FL
Mon 17 Feb  Presidents Day (Holiday) 
Tue 25 Feb   Mardi Gras
Sun 8 Mar    Daylight Savings Time begins  
Fri 20 Mar  03:50UT (Thu19Mar 20:50PDT)  Spring Equinox
Wed 8 Apr     Passover begins at sundown
Sun 12 Apr      Easter
Thu 16 Apr      Passover ends at sundown
Thu 23 Apr  Ramadan begins
Sat 24 May       Ramadan ends 
Fri 1 May     May Day (midspring)
Mon 25 May  Memorial Day (Holiday) 
Sat 20 Jun    21:44UT (14:44PDT) Summer Solstice
Fri 3 Jul       Independence Day (Holiday)
Sat 1 Aug     Midsummer day   
Mon 7 Sep     Labor Day (Holiday)
Tue 22 Sep     13:31UT (08:31PDT) Autumn Equinox
Fri 18 Sep      Sundown Rosh Hashana begins year 5781
Sun 27 Sep       Sundown Yom Kippur
Mon 12 Oct    Columbus Day (Holiday for some people)
Sat 31 Oct     Hallowe'en
Sun 1 Nov      Mid autumn day
Sun 1 Nov      Daylight Savings Time ends 
Wed 11 Nov    Veterans Day  
Thu 26 Nov   Thanksgiving (Holiday)
Fri 27 Nov     Holiday
Thu 10 Dec     Sundown  Hannuka begins
Fri 18 Dec   Sundown, Hannuka ends
Mon 21 Dec    10:02UT (02:02PST) Winter Solstice 
Fri 25 Dec   Christmas (Holiday)



Days off work in bold

Astronomical and calendar events in italic

Single Payer?

I suspect, but don't know for sure, that private insurance can have no long term role in health care.   The only role they seem to serve is to be a middleman who takes a substantial cut in return for work that is really pretty trivial, and insulates providers from consumers in a way that prevents the free market from working.

Whether medical care should be completely nationalized or can be implemented by a mix of public and private hospitals and other providers isn't clear to me, but what is clear is that the present system is rife with gouging and prevents a sizable part of the population from getting health care.

Here's my strategy:

1:  Fix the PPACA.  The mandate is critical.  The regulatory constraints on what counts as acceptable insurance are critical.  There are lots of details that need to be polished.  The price of drugs needs to be brought under control.  The numerous areas where there is huge gouging need to be regulated. (e.g. MRI)  The medicaid expansion needs to be mandatory for all states and everybody needs to be eligible.   If you have a contagious disease, you need to seek treatment, whether you're legally here or not.  If you're afraid to go to the hospital because you might get deported, and you're sick, you are spreading disease.

2: A public option.  The insurance companis exist to make a profit, and in far too many cases, they're making the bulk of their money by gouging.  In addition, they are a major insulator between the provider and consumer, totally preventing any semblance of an effective free market.   A public option would be an insurance company with the resources of the government behind it.  When this has been tried before, it has been vastly more efficient than private companies.  I am pretty sure that the insurance companies will not be able to compete with a public option, but I'd be more than happy to be wrong about this.   In that case, the public option would simply be another option, which could help out in places where insurance doesn't reach for some reason.  But I'm pretty sure that won't happen, and the insurance companies will fight hard and dirty, by lobbying, bribery and outright cheating, to keep their perquisite.

3: After a few years of a public option, most of the insurance companies will be gone.  At this point, there will be three systems:  1: the various existing government systems, such as the VA and medicare.  2: the various existing employer based systems.  Most of the insurance based ones will have already been turned into versions of the public option by this point, but the self-insurance ones may still exist.  3: public option.    The employers and many employees will be seeking a way to rationalize this.   I suspect the best way to do it is Medicare for All:   Simply pay medical costs like any other government service.   This is by far the cheapest way to do it. 

None of this would ban private insurance.   If you want private insurance over and above medicare for some reason, you can do that.   More realistically, there are plenty of things the government shouldn't be paying for, such as optional cosmetic surgery, that will be paid for out of pocket, and that's fine.  Other concierge services would also be perfectly ok.

I'm ok with a nominal cost per visit.   One of the things that happens in government systems sometimes is that hypochondriacs and bored people often spend a lot of time with the doctor just to have someone to talk to.  To some degree, this is ok--hypochondria is sometimes a cover for some more serious underlying condition.   So charge a few dollars per visit, just to keep abuse to a minimum.  The provider may waive this fee at the behest of the doctor.

Unresolved Questions in Game of Thrones

With one last episode to go, Game of Thrones has left a bunch of big questions hanging.   A lot of this is spoiler, so if you haven't caught up to season 8 episode 5 yet and plan to, read no further.


Mass Extinctions.

Are the Children of the Forest gone?  Did the last one die saving Bran and Meera?  Or are there some more out there?

Giants?  Mance Rayder had apparently worked out an alliance between the Giants and the Free Folk.  Are there Giants who were not part of that and are still alive or were the last of them killed in the first battle of Winterfell, AKA the Battle of the Bastards?  We are led to think that WunWun was the last.

Wights, White Walkers and Night Kings?  Was there only one night king, and when he died, did all his descendants die too?

Now that The Wall has been breached, does that mean it will collapse away entirely?  Or is it still there?  If there are no magical enemies left, it seems like there's not much purpose to it.  Historically, Nights Watchers have done raids against the Free Folk and some Free Folk have done raids against northern villages and occasionally the back side of the wall itself.  As anyone knows, walls don't really keep anybody out, they just impede progress enough to make an active defense more practical.

The seasons have been screwed up for long enough that Westerosi don't know anything else--winters that last years, etc.  Is the magic that created the Night King and The Wall part of that?  In the end of episode 3, as Melisandre was walking off, day is dawning and the clouds that dominated the last few episodes are parting.

Dragons.  How do dragons reproduce?   Now that there's only one left, is it possible for Drogon to reproduce?   Did Dany's dragons produce any eggs?  (random theory:   Dragons lay eggs.  To fertilize those eggs, you need fire and the sacrifice of a human life per egg, and you may need a special "dragon" human such as Danerys or Aegon to participate.)  I think we've all assumed that Drogon was male but we don't actually know.  Perhaps he is, or perhaps one of the others laid eggs before their untimely demise.


Danerys' descent into madness.

It seemed very quick and propelled by loss.  Veserion was killed by the Night King--what's more he was revived and used to bring down the wall, and fight effectively at Winterfell.  Not very long later--a ship ride from Eastwatch to Kings Landing and then back to Winterfell--a few weeks?--she loses Jorah, and Jon, having learned she's been his Aunt all along, withdraws from their relationship. She tries very hard to make friends with Sansa, and is rebuffed. The knife is twisted when Tormund and others praise Jon loudly, while Danerys did a lot of the same things and got no special love.  The last blows come when Missandei is killed right in front of her (and Grey Worm) and she learns that not only had Jon told his "sisters" (cousins, actually) and Sansa had told Tyrion, who immediately told Varys.

After Drogon, Varys was probably Danerys' most valuable ally, although the Unsullied and Dothraki surely deserve honorable mention.  Upon learning that Varys had spoken to Jon about his worries over her state of mind, she had him executed.  The right thing to have done would have been to offer more visible support.  The hardest to take was probably Jon, who while remaining completely loyal, had withdrawn from their personal relationship, which she made clear over and over was extremely important to her.

There was a moment when she'd destroyed Euron's fleet, the Golden Company, and all the new "scorpions" on the walls (and a section of the wall itself), when she could have attacked the tower of the Red Keep and had a great victory with almost no civilian casualties.  The Goldcloaks had surrendered to Jon when they realized that the dragon was on his side, but he'd played a minimal role in the battle.

Perhaps this was all part of a great urban renewal plan she had for Kings Landing, but it looked more like she'd caught the same disease her father had and was taking Misandei's final wish (Dracarys--Burn it!) to heart.

My prediction is that instead of killing Cersei as she'd planned, Arya, from whose POV we saw most of the destruction, will wind up killing Mad Queen Danerys instead.


What is it with battle plans?

In JRR Martin's 5 books of this series so far, he wrote a number of stories about large battles, and although a lot of the action was described by a POV character, most of it occurred off camera.  The battle of Highgarden was entirely off camera and Casterly Rock was shown in a highly condensed manner.  The first real dragon battle, where the slavers brought their ships to Mereen thinking they had all the marbles and not understanding what dragons could doo, was also mostly abstract.

The first big battle from "After" the books is Hardholm, where Jon takes Stannis' navy to pick up a bunch of freefolk, where they are trapped on a narrow beach.  The Night King makes a surprise attack and most of the freefolk are lost.  Although Jon (and all of us) saw the real power of the Night King for the first time (it still makes my skin crawl when I think of it).  This was a surprise attack, so I can't really fault the writers.

Stannis' arrogance led to him losing his beloved daughter and his entire army, by attacking when he wasn't ready and improperly defending from the Guerilla attacks from his opponents, and most importantly, thinking mumbo jumbo would help him.  Melisandre had powers, but any time she tried to use them to see beyond what was obvious to most of us, she got it wrong.

Next came the battle of the bastards.   By not telling Jon that the Knights of the Vale were on the way, Sansa killed thousands of Stark bannermen and freefolk, possibly including her little brother.  She may not have known how far out the Knights were, but she did know they could swing the battle, and a little stalling could have saved thousands of lives.  By the same token, Ramsey had Winterfell.  Why was he so desperate to have a battle in a field?  His archers could have picked off opponents for days with almost no losses--at least until the Knighs of the Vale showed up.

The most outrageous was the night battle of winterfell.    the right strategy would have been to fill the entire field with fire trenches and not light it until the undead were among them.   The Dothraki should have been kept to the sides to act as pincers should any undead try to make a flanking move.  The unsullied and other northmen should have stayed inside the castle, pelting the enemy with flaming or dragonglass arrows.  the dragons should have harried the undead from above, careful to stay out of range of the Night King and his magic ice spears.   Instead, the Dothraki did a bold frontal attack, which had little effect and killed lots of them.  (We were led to think most of them but apparently not).  The flaming trebuchet balls should have started long before the dothraki charged.

The vaunted "Golden Company" did the same thing at Kings Landing, but Danerys had a much better strategic attack than the Night King's army.


Accuracy of Scorpions

The first shot we saw from a ship-mounted Scorpion/balista hit it's mark, and two more quickly did too.    Yet Danerys was able to fly straight in at a fleet of these things and destroy them at the start of the battle.  My theory?

Rhaegal was still recovering from injuries received at Winterfell (he did a rather spectacular faceplant) and may have been stiff.   They were almost home after their foray into the icy north and their attention wasn't where it should have been.  Once Rhaegal was hit, he was even less maneuverable and took too more arrows.  Drogon was healthy and probably stronger to start with, and was better able to dodge.    I think the ships got a lucky shot, and at the next contact, Drogon was all in...and succeeded.  That was really the only time the dragon had to do a frontal assault on a balista--when attacking the wall, they came from the back.

Valerian Steel Blades

I think there were five Valerian steel blades that were used in the Battle of Winterfell

The famous dagger, now owned by Arya.  It was visible in the last scene, along with her castle steel sword, Needle.

Heartsbane, which is the Tarly family sword.  Sam, the only living male Tarly, had little use for it so he let Jorah Mormont use it during the battle.   Jorah used it well and had it in hand when he was killed, so I imagine it went back to Sam.

Oathkeeper, which was reforged from the Stark family sword "Ice", was with Brienne of Tarth in Winterfell.

Widows Wail, the other part of Ice, was captured with Jamie when he tried to sneak across Targarian lines and was captured.   I imagine it's still with whoever took it from him.  (Jamie grabbed a random sword that he passed by as he rushed through burning King's Landing, looking for a way into the red keep, and this was the sword that he used to fight Euron).  Now that Jamie is presumed crushed to death under the collapsed keep, I imagine Danerys or Jon will give it to someone who has served them well.   (we don't actually know whether Jamie, Cersei or Euron are dead, or for that matter Sandor or Gregor or Qyburn, but probably.)

The Mormont family sword, Longclaw, was given to Jon Snow by Lord Commander Jeor Mormont.  Jon offered to give it back to Jorah Mormont but he refused.  Jon used it well in both the battle of Winterfell and in Kings Landing, and it was in his hand when we last saw him.

Breakthroughs vs Debugging

When considering an engineering project, there are three potential barriers to succeeding:

Political/Economic.  These are things like funding and NIMBYism.  A store that wouldn't mind having your train station across the street may be upset if it's so close it requires them to find another location.  Such considerations need either to be bought off or taken by eminent domain. Enough such problems may make it impossible to implement your project with the funding you have, but are solvable problems, at least in theory.

Debugging.  It's rare that the first design of anything very complicated succeeds.  Some debugging or redesign is nearly always necessary.  Oversights, mistakes, shortcomings, misunderstandings, etc., always occur. The engineering or construction time to fix it costs money and if there's not enough available, the project may fail, but if the problem is one of debugging, it is a solvable problem.

Breakthrough required.   Some ideas are simply contradictions of the laws of physics.  For example, a nineteenth century scientist likely thought that traveling to the stars was just a matter of going faster and applying more energy.  But in the early 20th century it was discovered that the speed of light is an absolute limit and that the energy required to get even close to it was impractical.  To get to the nearest star will take more than a human lifetime.  Unless some breakthrough, like Star Trek's "Space Warp" technology is discovered.  It's conceivable but nobody has even the first idea of how to do it.

So, for example, Hyperloop (transit in an evacuated tube near the speed of sound) does not require any breakthroughs to succeed, although there may be some.  All the technology required is fully understood, in at least a general way.  There may be some friction from politics and engineering, but with enough determination, they are all solvable.

A space elevator (a cable anchored to a geosynchronous satellite) is mostly straightforward engineering, except for one thing: the cable needs to be strong and light enough that it doesn't break under 22,000 miles of its own weight.  No fiber presently known can do this.  There are some breakthroughs on the horizon that might succeed (e.g. carbon nanotubes), but this is impossible until there is an actual breakthrough.