"But it depends on the results of the recount"
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New Haven Bob: “Victory is on its way!
Yale “expert” says COVID wave will peak at end of the year.
The good doctor is obviously expecting a Biden victory, because the pandemic will be declared officially over when the Man from Down Under is sworn in. If Trump prevails, we’ll keep hearing about it, for four more years.
Well, this took a while
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642 Lake Avenue, originally priced at $4.995 million in 2015 and currently listed at $2.450, has a contract. There’s almost nothing so wrong with a house in Greenwich that the proper price can’t fix.
Old Church contract
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250 Old Church Road, asking $2.895 million. It’s a great house, custom-built for the previous owners in 1990 and kept refreshed since then. Officially on the market for 176 days, but that includes the 3-month period from March-May when it was pulled amid the COVID shutdown.
Hilfiger flips
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His house at 30 John Street, listed at $47.5 million, is pending after 61-days on the market. When this listing was first mentioned, brother Anthony sent along the following reminiscence:
I just realized this property used to be the Joseph Hirshorn estate. That brings back memories of my junior year at GHS, when a number of students involved in the arts were selected, at Hirshorn's behest, by the arts faculty to take a tour of his sculpture collection. I think by then he had already donated everything to the people of the United States and was awaiting the completion of the building and grounds in Washington to hold them.
Anyway, I made the cut somehow and one November day drove up to the Hirshorn place in my Datsun pickup, accompanied by Mrs. Madugno, my music theory teacher. I was immediately impressed when, upon reaching the end of the long driveway, noticed Rodin's "Burgers of Calais" [some sort of riff on MacDonald’s? - ED] sitting in the middle of the turnaround.
I think we were separated into several manageable groups to take the tour, led, I assume, by various art experts, but I, and a few others, were fortunate enough to be taken around by Mr. Hirshorn himself, who was a most entertaining character. I still remember us all crowding into his wife Olga's bathroom and his pointing out a bunch of small objects on the tub: "Olga's bath toys!" he proudly told us, explaining they were carved and given to her by Picasso. All in all, an unforgettable day.
It's things like that which remind me how privileged we were to grow up in Greenwich, even if we later chose to live elsewhere.
It should be noted that when Antn’y speaks of “privilege”, he doesn’t necessarily mean white privilege — our little pickaninny was actually adopted by the family after he followed us home from Harlem, where my parents used to take us occasionally so that we’d learn that “the poor have their troubles, as well as the rich.”
Of course, growing up in Chateau Fontaine with its fleet of chauffeured Bentleys and unlimited personal American Express cards for each child probably did lead the little tyke to think that we were living a pleasant life, and we sheltered him from our own deep, personal angst, to protect him, and preserve his innocent gratitude. And it worked, obviously.
Having destroyed their restaurant and music scenes, Portlanders might just have well sat back and let market forces finish the job
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For sale: “As is”, and will stay as is
But not content to wait, last week Portland Maine residents voted for two ballot measures introduced by the Socialist Party of America that will raise the minimum wage to $18 per hour, and impose rent control throughout the city.
The measure caps rent increases at the rate of inflation, triples the required notice period to 90 days for landlords who wish to end tenancy for monthly renters without a lease, and creates a seven-member rental board made up of tenants and landlords – no more than three of the latter – appointed by the Portland City Council.
The board would have to approve any rent increases above the inflation rate plus any annual property tax increases, up to 10 percent in any given year, to cover repairs or major upgrades to the property.
Mike Lacourse of the Southern Maine Workers’ Center said the new measure will help make it so “more working people can build their lives in Portland without the constant threat of rising rents and lack of housing.”
The Maine Affordable Housing Coalition did not take a position on the rent-control proposal. Opponents who helped defeat a similar measure in 2017 by an even larger margin say the passage of Question D may actually lead to more regular rent increases, the deterioration of existing rental units and little new rental housing development.
Kaili Moore and her husband Ed live on the second floor of a West End building they bought nearly four years ago, and they rent out the other units. They have purchased two other buildings, fixed them up and rented them out.
“I think what’s hard about the referendum is that the intention is good,” Moore said. “We do have a housing problem in Portland.”
Moore, a licensed social worker who transitioned to property management, said she has seen both sides of the equation. She said Portland has old housing stock with many apartments that need updating after years of neglect.
“We’ll go in and fix them and raise the rent to a market-rate rent,” she said. “We’re not pricing things crazy high. We want to get good tenants, people who can afford to be there.”
If the new measure prevents Moore from asking for market-rate rents, she wondered, “how do we make nice places for people to live and still be fiscally responsible with it?”
In 1994, when one of the pioneers of the Portland revival opened its first coffee shop, commercial vacancy rates in the city stood at 40% but showing signs of life. Coffee by Design either signaled a burgeoning revival or spurred it, but either way, more coffee places soon, opened, restaurants followed, bookstores grew, and the music scene exploded. The more it grew, the more out-of-state young people were attracted, and they further fueled the expansion.
And that, in turn, produced a revival of the housing stock, with many beautiful, but run-down homes rescued from ruin and restored. The city was looking — is still looking — good.
And that’s been a great thing; grow or decline, there’s no stasis in urban America. Those Portland residents who think there is might travel two-hours north to Bangor or Skowhegan to see what failed cities look like — but the new arrivals are(were) young and, as the products of modern education, socialists, which they understand to mean that someone else will take care of them and give them what they want. They’re all woke, and 60% of them are renters, so rent-control is a no-brainer (this crowd of spoiled 20-30 somethings, known for demanding that their mommies come up to Portland and clean their rooms, might be, but aren’t, interested in this fun tidbit from the Democratic Socialists of America platform:
We don’t agree with the capitalist assumption that starvation or greed are the only reasons people work. People enjoy their work if it is meaningful and enhances their lives. They work out of a sense of responsibility to their community and society. Although a long-term goal of socialism is to eliminate all but the most enjoyable kinds of labor, we recognize that unappealing jobs will long remain. These tasks would be spread among as many people as possible rather than distributed on the basis of class, race, ethnicity, or gender, as they are under capitalism.
These useful idiots assume that they will be the ones in charge of assigning (others) the unpleasant jobs and won’t be changing bedpans and sweeping the streets themselves. Wait’ll they find out that their mother doesn’t live here anymore.)
Anyway, the point of all this ramble is just to note the demarcation between the revival of an aging port city and the start of its return to aging, deteriorating somnolence.
Next up: Newly-arrived urban Coloradans vote to reintroduce wolves into ranch and elk territory.
Evil, capitalist Portland landlords Kaili and Edward Moore will be forced to mend their wicked ways
(Photo credit: Gregory Ric)
Ask not for whom the Nazi bell tolls; it tolls for thee, sucker
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Not The Bee’s Joel Abbott:
What you just witnessed was a moderate Biden voter waking up to the brutal reality of what he just voted for. As BLM activists swept through Portland suburbs on election night, this homeowner pleaded with the mob to be peaceful.
"There's my Biden sign," the man said, desperately trying to show he's on their side. "Don't destroy anything. Be peaceful!"
The mob, of course, reacted to his pleas with hatred and profanity.
"Who do you think you are telling black people how to protest? You [flowerbedding] white [donkey] privilege old man!" replied one of the mob members.
"You ask for a peaceful protest. It's white supremacy!" yelled another.
"Asking people to be peaceful is white supremacy!" continued the mob's cry.
The homeowner then came down off his front porch and tried to reason with the crowd. They accused him of instigating and told him to go home.
A moment later, another man on the edge of the crowd finds himself targeted by the mob.
"I'm on your side!" he pleads.
"No you're not!" yelled a mostly peaceful woman in reply.
The mob then chased this second man down and stole his phone. The video ended with him promising to apologize (for his whiteness I would suppose) if the mob would only return his mobile device.
I know many such people who voted for Biden and have tried to be an ally of the BLM protests because they sincerely believe Trump is Hitler-adjacent. After all, the media has been pushing that narrative for four long years.
When the leftist mob shows up at your doorstep and devours you despite your professed support for their cause, that veil of lies quickly falls away.
Last week in Detroit, a black Trump supporter said it so very well:
"To all my white liberal friends in the cities and in the suburbs, you think if you put a Black Lives Matter sign on your lawn, that they won't run in your house. Do you know what happened in China during the cultural revolution? It's not about your character or what you do or what you believe. It's about your skin color or about what's between your legs or about the class you belong to. They gonna come get you. They might not come get you first, maybe they will, but they gonna come get you. So don't think your liberalism is going to come save you. It's a lie."
Welcome to the revolution.
Biden Wu Hu Flu Task Force shaping up as expected
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Dr. K being currently unavailable, a substitute has been found
Dr. Zeke Emanuel (yes, brother of Rahm), who four years ago said that 75 was the right time to leave this mortal coil for himself and any other lingerers, now says we have a moral duty to distribute any Kung Flu “equitably” to other countries.
Emanuel, who served as a key architect of the Affordable Care Act under the Obama administration, co-authored a paper in September in which he encouraged officials to follow the "Fair Priority Model," which calls for a "fair international distribution of vaccine," rather than what he and his co-authors characterized as "vaccine nationalism."
Emanuel and his co-authors argued against a proposal by the WHO to distribute vaccines globally at a rate proportional to each country's population, and dismissed the belief that high death toll could be avoided by providing vaccines to countries based on "the number of frontline health care workers, the proportion of population over 65, and the number of people with comorbidities."
The WHO proposal fails to consider the fact that death is not the only form of harm, Emanuel argued, and that prioritizing seniors at higher risk would mean sending a disproportionate amount of vaccines to wealthier countries, where average life expectancies tend to be longer.
Instead, Emanuel and his co-authors advocated for focusing on preventing premature death, the consequences of school and business closures and reducing general transmission of the virus.
Remember that President who called for an “America First” policy? Down the memory hole.
There’s an argument to be made that, with 200 million international visitors entering the country each year, we’re not going to stop COVID entirely until the rest of the world also develops an immunity. That’s an argument I’d listen to; an argument for rationing based on some sense of universal fairness and a desire to see that old people not be '“prioritized” from a man who sees no value in living past 75 anyway, isn’t.
As an aside, I personally share the good doctor’s opinion on the value of living past 75, but that’s just me; those who disagree, and are approaching Emanuel’s cut-off date might well be worried. Joe? You listening? Kamalla awaits.
It's like doomsday predictions for global warming: if it's real, why do "experts" have to lie about it?
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Run away!
THE’RE AT IT AGAIN:
CT: follow COVID rules or we’re going to lockdown again.
Daily COVID positivity tests reach nearly 7% [!!!!]
But here’s the dirty secret the Coronaporn scribes don’t want you to know: Most people testing positive for the disease aren’t contagious, and in fact, often were never infected to begin with.
As long ago as July, Saint Fauci admitted that a PCR test at 35 cycle or above was actually detecting only dead nucleotides “with only a minuscule possibility of replicating”. Worse, or better, depending on whether you hate Trump, these tests are scooping up remnants of antibodies that were produced by a previous coronavirus, like the common cold, but not COVID.
On August 29, the NYT reported that the tests were flawed and in fact, 90% of positive tests were false: “Your Coronavirus test was positive? Maybe it shouldn’t be”.
Your Coronavirus Test Is Positive. Maybe It Shouldn’t Be.
The usual diagnostic tests may simply be too sensitive and too slow to contain the spread of the virus
By Apoorva Mandavilli | The New York Times | August 29, 2020
THE NEW YORK TIMES -- Some of the nation’s leading public health experts are raising a new concern in the endless debate over coronavirus testing in the United States: The standard tests are diagnosing huge numbers of people who may be carrying relatively insignificant amounts of the virus.
Most of these people are not likely to be contagious, and identifying them may contribute to bottlenecks that prevent those who are contagious from being found in time. But researchers say the solution is not to test less, or to skip testing people without symptoms, as recently suggested by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Instead, new data underscore the need for more widespread use of rapid tests, even if they are less sensitive.
“The decision not to test asymptomatic people is just really backward,” said Dr. Michael Mina, an epidemiologist at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, referring to the C.D.C. recommendation.
“In fact, we should be ramping up testing of all different people,” he said, “but we have to do it through whole different mechanisms.”
In what may be a step in this direction, the Trump administration announced on Thursday that it would purchase 150 million rapid tests.
The most widely used diagnostic test for the new coronavirus, called a PCR test, provides a simple yes-no answer to the question of whether a patient is infected.
But similar PCR tests for other viruses do offer some sense of how contagious an infected patient may be: The results may include a rough estimate of the amount of virus in the patient’s body.
“We’ve been using one type of data for everything, and that is just plus or minus — that’s all,” Dr. Mina said. “We’re using that for clinical diagnostics, for public health, for policy decision-making.”
But yes-no isn’t good enough, he added. It’s the amount of virus that should dictate the infected patient’s next steps. “It’s really irresponsible, I think, to forgo the recognition that this is a quantitative issue,” Dr. Mina said.
The PCR test amplifies genetic matter from the virus in cycles; the fewer cycles required, the greater the amount of virus, or viral load, in the sample. The greater the viral load, the more likely the patient is to be contagious.
This number of amplification cycles needed to find the virus, called the cycle threshold, is never included in the results sent to doctors and coronavirus patients, although it could tell them how infectious the patients are.
In three sets of testing data that include cycle thresholds, compiled by officials in Massachusetts, New York and Nevada, up to 90 percent of people testing positive carried barely any virus, a review by The Times found.
On Thursday, the United States recorded 45,604 new coronavirus cases, according to a database maintained by The Times. If the rates of contagiousness in Massachusetts and New York were to apply nationwide, then perhaps only 4,500 of those people may actually need to isolate and submit to contact tracing.
One solution would be to adjust the cycle threshold used now to decide that a patient is infected. Most tests set the limit at 40, a few at 37. This means that you are positive for the coronavirus if the test process required up to 40 cycles, or 37, to detect the virus.
Tests with thresholds so high may detect not just live virus but also genetic fragments, leftovers from infection that pose no particular risk — akin to finding a hair in a room long after a person has left, Dr. Mina said.
Any test with a cycle threshold above 35 is too sensitive, agreed Juliet Morrison, a virologist at the University of California, Riverside. “I’m shocked that people would think that 40 could represent a positive,” she said.
A more reasonable cutoff would be 30 to 35, she added. Dr. Mina said he would set the figure at 30, or even less. Those changes would mean the amount of genetic material in a patient’s sample would have to be 100-fold to 1,000-fold that of the current standard for the test to return a positive result — at least, one worth acting on.
So why are health authorities and the press lying about this, why do they conflate positive COVID test results with active “COVID cases”? Control, for one: this flu is a formerly-powerless public health bureaucrat’s wet dream, one shared by certain governors and mayors. As for the press, one can certainly attribute much of its confusion to simple ignorance; next to teachers, is there a less-informed, lower IQ occupation? But you can’t rule out the possibility that some of these hysterics are whooping up the frenzy deliberately, with full knowledge of what they’re doing. For them, the explanation is Trump: watch for a revised test reporting system to be quietly implemented once the Biden Coronavirus Task Force is installed, and the number of actually infectious cases to magically plummet.