pluralistic | The zombie economy shambles on. Obama's loan-shark bailout and the
eviction crisis let the architects of subprime buy up whole towns' worth
of homes and turn them into hugely profitable slums: high-rent,
low-quality deathtraps.
Wall St landlords package rents from subprime rentals into bonds,
backed by the loan-shark's guarantee: arm-breakers will evict the shit
out of anyone who stops paying.
America-a land where eviction was once a rarity-now faces an eviction epidemic.
The foreclosure crisis was only possible because Wall St and the
courts collaborated to streamline the historically complicated and
time-consuming process of taking away someone's home. Same goes for the
eviction epidemic.
It's a simple equation: the more loan-sharks spend on arm-breakers, the lower the expected profits.
Improvements to arm-breaking processes – cost-savings on traditional
coercion or innovative new forms of terror – are powerful engines for
unlocking new debt markets.
When innovation calls, tech answers. Our devices are increasingly
"smart," and inside every smart device is a potential arm-breaker.
Digital arm-breakers have been around since the first DRM systems, but
they really took off in 2008.
That's when subprime car loans boomed. People who lost everything in
the GFC still needed to get to work, and thanks to chronic US
underinvestment in transit, that means owning a car. So loan-sharks and
tech teamed up to deliver a new lost-cost, high-efficiency arm-breaker.
They leveraged the nation's mature wireless network to install
cellular killswitches in cars. You could extend an unrepayable loan to a
desperate person, and use an unmutable second stereo system to bombard
them with earsplitting overdue notices.
Within a decade, the bond-market for payments from subprime car
drivers was edging up on $1T; not because borrowers didn't default, but
because they defaulted later, and the car could be easily re-leased to
another desperate person.
The zombie economy shambled on. Tech built undeletable, always-on
kill-switches, lo-jacks, and spyware into an ever-expanding
constellation of devices, like laptops.
Rent-to-own subprime laptops were the epicenter of innovation in
digital arm-breaking. Laptops shipped with spyware for covert operation
of cameras and mic and access ot files.
That went beyond repoing a laptop! Lenders could make and share covert sex-tapes of their customers!
They spied on children, plundered MP3 collections, stole passwords,
read email. It was beyond the wildest dreams of analog loan-sharks.
NYTimes | America’s most powerful people have a problem. They can’t admit that they’re powerful.
Take
Andrew Cuomo. On a recent call with reporters, the embattled Mr. Cuomo
insisted that he was “not part of the political club.” The assertion was
confounding because Mr. Cuomo is in his third term as governor of New
York — a position his father also held for three terms. Mr. Cuomo has
also served as state attorney general and as secretary of the Department
of Housing and Urban Development.
Or
think of Avril Haines, the director of national intelligence. After her
appointment was announced, Ms. Haines declared, “I have never shied away
from speaking truth to power.” That is a curious way of describing a
meteoric career that includes stints at exclusive universities, a
prestigious judicial clerkship and important jobs in foreign policy and
intelligence before her appointment to a cabinet-level office overseeing
a budget of more than $60 billion.
This
sort of false advertising isn’t limited to Democrats. Senator Josh
Hawley of Missouri, for instance, has embraced an image as a populist
crusader against a distant “political class.” He does not emphasize his
father’s career as a banker, his studies at Stanford and Yale Law
School, or his work as clerk to prominent judges, including Chief
Justice John Roberts. The merits of Mr. Hawley’s positions are open to
debate. But his membership in the same elite that he rails against is
not.
And it’s not only politicians.
Business figures love to present themselves as “disrupters” of stagnant
industries. But the origins of the idea are anything but rebellious.
Popularized by a Harvard
professor and promoted by a veritable industry of consultants, it has
been embraced by some of the richest and most highly credentialed people
in the world.
Examples could be multiplied, but these cases are enough to show that
the problem of insiders pretending to be outsiders cuts across party,
gender and field. The question is why.
Part of the explanation is strategic. An outsider pose is appealing
because it allows powerful people to distance themselves from the
consequences of their decisions. When things go well, they are happy to
take credit. When they go badly, it’s useful to blame an incompetent,
hostile establishment for thwarting their good intentions or visionary
plans.
FREEP | State health officials say 246 fully vaccinated Michiganders contracted coronavirus from January to March, and three have died.
"These
are individuals who have had a positive test 14 or more days after the
last dose in the vaccine series," said Lynn Sutfin, a spokesperson for
the state health department.
Some of the 246
people may ultimately be excluded from the state's tally of vaccine
breakthrough cases because they may have had earlier coronavirus
infections and still tested positive two weeks post immunization.
"These
cases are undergoing further review to determine if they meet other
(Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) criteria for determination
of potential breakthrough, including the absence of a positive antigen
or PCR test less than 45 days prior to the post-vaccination positive
test," Sutfin said.
Although so-called vaccine
breakthrough cases are rare, and all three COVID-19 vaccines on the
market are considered highly effective with efficacy rates ranging from
72% for Johnson & Johnson's vaccine to 94% and 95% for Moderna's and
Pfizer's, respectively, it can happen.
"While it is significantly less likely, it is still possible to contract
the virus after being vaccinated," Sutfin said. "Studies indicate that
even if vaccinated people do become ill, they are far less likely to
experience severe illness requiring hospitalization or resulting in
death.
"But the possibility of infection and further
transmission is why we continue to encourage Michiganders to take
precautions while out in public, including wearing masks, washing hands
and social distancing, even after receiving the vaccine until more
Michiganders have been able to be vaccinated."
Hospitalization
data for 129 of the fully vaccinated cases is incomplete, Sutfin said.
But for the 117 people for whom hospitalization records are known, 11
were hospitalized.
"A number of these are new cases that have been
reported ... as a result of a positive test, but local health
departments are either early in their investigation or have yet to begin
their case investigation," Sutfin said.
The
three fully vaccinated people who died, Sutfin said, were all ages 65
and older. Two of them were within three weeks of full vaccination.
nakedcapitalism | My worst nightmare concerns are starting to come true and the media
will not be able to hide this for much longer. Today, I am not concerned
about the SCIENCE of medicine – I am concerned about the ART of
medicine.
The ART can best be summarized as encouraging patients to do the
right thing for THEM. With regard to COVID 19, that would be to meet the
patient at whatever level they are and find ways to encourage social
distancing rules, masking and to correctly guide them on vaccine choice.
It would also include encouraging them to be engaged in the healthiest
behaviors possible during this time of crisis. Eat well, exercise, sleep
and de-stress.
The ART is often much more important to a physician’s medical
outcomes than the SCIENCE – something our society and our medical
establishment has long ago forgotten. ART requires as a foundation
explicit trust and honesty between a patient and the physician. There is
no other way.
Yves, I appreciated your post the other day on the Christian
Nationalism aspect of COVID 19. I made a comment on the post about this
not just being an Evangelical problem. I even suggested in the comment
that there could be issues brewing among Roman Catholics, based on what I
had been hearing as a physician.
As of Easter Sunday, there are now multiple videos being widely
circulated and they all speak to the issue better than I could ever type
out in a comment. I have been seeing this problem slowly brewing for
weeks and it has largely been completely ignored by our mainstream
media.
I will state for the record officially today – the public health
authorities have lost the narrative. They apparently have also lost
their minds. If they think this type of behavior on the most Holy Days
of the Church is not going to go unnoticed – they have rocks for brains.
This kind of thuggishness is not going to help their cause in any way;
rather, it will make these people dig in more. And trust me – as of this
Easter Sunday AM – they are digging in. Bunker-style. A clarion call
has gone out and it could not be more clear. And I am talking about
Roman Catholics – not my Evangelical family – they went off the
reservation long ago. Now even my Orthodox friends have taken notice.
As I have been stating over the past few days – the authorities have
repeatedly allowed discredited, hypocritical and lying Hoohahs to be
their voice in the national media. Outside of our big blue cities and
states – NO ONE AMONG MY PATIENTS COULD GIVE A RAT’S ASS WHAT THESE
PEOPLE HAVE TO SAY ANYMORE ABOUT THIS PANDEMIC. I hear this refrain
constantly every day. The lying, dissembling, crying, misstatements,
backtracking and hypocrisy have taken their final toll. If they are not
careful, they will soon be public enemy #1.
We have made many errors as a society in the past 12 months, but
probably the most important mistake is hardly ever mentioned. One which
our forbears in public health, like my father, worked to eradicate for
decades. It is very simple – national “one-size-fits-all” narratives and
plans in public health do not now nor have they ever worked. Never
have. Never will.
lockdownskeptics | Now that we are allowed to meet up in groups of six outside their
homes, Matt Hancock is warning us not to do anything foolish, like hug
one another or breach the two metre rule. “Do it safely,” he tweeted.
“Don’t blow it now”.
But in fact, the people who shouldn’t “blow it” are Boris Johnson,
Sir Patrick Vallance, Chris Whitty and, yes, Matt Hancock. That is the
view of Martin Kulldorff, Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical
School, biostatistician and epidemiologist at the Brigham and Women’s
Hospital, Massachusetts, and co-author of the Great Barrington
Declaration.
Professor Kulldorff has told the UK Government and its scientific
advisors exactly who they should be listening to and why if they want to
save lives – and it doesn’t include vaccinating the entire population,
including children. He said this on Twitter on March 15th – “Thinking
that everyone must be vaccinated is as scientifically flawed as thinking
that nobody should. Covid vaccines are important for older high-risk
people and their care-takes. Those with prior natural infection do not
need it. Nor children.” – and Twitter attached a health warning to his
Tweet: “This tweet is misleading. Learn why health officials recommend a
vaccine for most people.” Because, of course, a 22 year-old graduate in
Whiteness Studies sitting in Twitter’s HQ in Silicon Valley knows much
more about infectious diseases than a Harvard professor of medicine.
Speaking to me in an exclusive interview for Lockdown Sceptics, Kulldorff said:
That warning was rather silly.
When making unscientific claims, media often refer to ‘health officials’
or ‘health experts’ without naming those experts. I challenge Twitter
to name vaccine epidemiologists who think that everyone must get the
Covid vaccine, including children and those with immunity from prior
infection.
Equally strange, they even concur with my tweet when
they say “most people” rather than “all people”. Right now, children are
clearly not part of “most people”, since a Covid vaccine has not yet
been approved for them and we know nothing about efficacy or potential
adverse reaction in children. Since most children are asymptomatic or
only mildly symptomatic, it will be hard to show that the vaccine can
reduce symptoms, hospitalisations or mortality in children, requiring a
large sample size in countries that still has considerable disease
spread.
I have worked with vaccines for a couple of decades, but
Twitter clearly thinks that scientific discussions about these things
are dangerous. Maybe social media is dangerous to those in power. I do
hope that social media is dangerous to the lockdowns that have done so
much damage to public health during this past year. The enormous
collateral public health damage, which is being documented by Collateral Global,
is something that we will continue to to live with, and die with, for
many years to come. It truly is a public health tragedy of epic
proportions.
The catastrophic impact of the lockdowns on public health has been
exacerbated by headlines and adverts striking the fear of god into
millions, making them less likely to seek medical help for non-Covid
diseases.
thehill | Republicans are seizing on the intensifying debate over coronavirus
vaccination passports as part of their strategy for recapturing control
of Congress in 2022.
In interviews and conversations with The
Hill, GOP strategists and operatives acknowledged the growing eagerness
among Americans to be vaccinated against COVID-19. But many are also
betting that emerging debates about so-called vaccine passports will
help them play on voters’ fears of government overreach and privacy
violations.
The idea of vaccine passports has gained increasing
attention in recent weeks as eligibility for COVID-19 vaccinations has
rapidly expanded and Americans begin to see glints of a post-pandemic
normal on the horizon. The White House has indicated that it will issue
basic guidelines for such programs, though it has also said that it has
no plans to create a centralized, federal requirement.
Still, some of the country’s most prominent conservatives have begun
to latch on to the emerging possibility of vaccine passports or
certificates, seeing such proposals as an extension of their campaign to
rally the GOP base in opposition to coronavirus-related restrictions
like lockdown orders and mask mandates.
“It’s a political winner,”
Ford O’Connell, a Florida-based Republican strategist, said. “They look
at it as an all-out assault on personal freedoms and the Constitution,
but also, it’s about protecting the average, ordinary Floridian who
wants to live their regular day-to-day lives.”
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis
is among the Republicans who have come out early against the proposals.
He criticized the idea of vaccine passports at a press conference
Monday, calling it “unacceptable” for local governments or businesses to
require proof of vaccination for people to “participate in normal
society.”
On Friday, he signed an executive order banning any
future vaccine certificate requirements in Florida, and called on the
GOP-controlled state legislature to draft a bill to enshrine such a
policy into law.
Republicans are hoping that their early efforts
to define vaccine passports as a symbol of government overreach will
help counter what Democrats see as their most powerful political weapon
in the 2022 midterms: their efforts to combat the coronavirus pandemic
and the resulting economic crisis.
Democrats are hoping that a
massive $1.9 trillion stimulus package signed into law last month, along
with a sweeping proposal to overhaul the nation’s infrastructure, will
help them stave off the typical electoral shellacking that a new
president’s party typically sees in the first midterms following his
inauguration.
BMJ |The critical issue is not the effect
that vaccine passports might have on people in general. If one wants to
increase take-up, it is the effect on those individuals and communities
who harbour doubts about vaccination which matters.
Based on hard experience, such
communities (ethnic minorities in particular) have reason to question
whether medical and governmental authorities treat their needs as a
priority and this historical distrust provides a framework for
interpreting contemporary pandemic policies.
[18] Members of these communities are more attuned to the possibility
that such policies (including vaccination) are something done to them rather than done for
them by authorities who are not of them but against them. Moreover,
there are plenty of anti-vaxxers aiming to promote this view by arguing
that covid measures are not a matter of public health, but of social
control by a hostile elite. [19]
The reality, and even the rumour, of vaccine passports for core
activities serves to give substance to these fears and to give traction
to the anti-vaxxers. Passports can be seen as confirming the perception
that vaccination is a measure of compulsion imposed upon the community.
And once people begin to regard vaccines as compulsory then the evidence
suggests that this produces anger and reduces willingness to get
vaccinated. [20]
All in all, there are reasons to
conclude that vaccine passports for basic activities may actually
undermine vaccine rollout by disincentivising the very populations who
most need incentivising. Closer inspection of the Israeli “green pass”
scheme serves to reinforce this message. The evidence for passes
increasing vaccination uptake is weak, while suspicions of compulsion
and reports of people barred from workplaces for not being vaccinated
have “resulted in antagonism and increased distrust among individuals
who were already concerned about infringement on citizens’ rights”.
[21] By contrast, what has proved successful in Israel are basic
measures of community engagement: involving trusted community leaders,
taking mobile vaccination units into communities, bringing along medical
experts who can answer any questions, and providing food and drink to
those who attend, has proved successful in Israel. [22]
To conclude: there are many good
reasons to reject any passport scheme which makes everyday social
participation dependent on vaccination. There are arguments on the
grounds of liberties, of equalities, and of practicalities. However,
even some of the grounds used to support them (i.e. vaccine take-up) may
be another reason to oppose them. At a point in the pandemic where
increased engagement is critical, both in order to overcome doubts about
vaccination, and to enhance the pandemic response more generally, the mere possibility of vaccine passports threatens to alienate marginalised communities still further. [23,24]
So, let’s stop discussing the use of
vaccine passports as a criterion for basic social and economic
participation. This is an idea with few redeeming features and even
talking about introducing them may be enough to do damage.
architectsforsocialhousing | I want to start our awakening from the sleep of reason by looking at
the social practices of the coronavirus crisis [to] correct the
conspiracy theory of an elite with their hands … on the gears of
history. Let’s [instead] look at the machine of history. We all know its
name, and despite all the renewed predictions of its death it hasn’t
gone away. On the contrary, it’s just going through a revolution … but
its name is still the same. Capitalism.
Marx was right. When the material productive forces of society come
into conflict with existing relations of production — its property
relations — a period of social revolution begins. ‘With the change of
the economic foundations’, he wrote, ‘the
entire immense superstructure is more or less rapidly transformed.’ The
expansion into new markets of the neoliberal capitalism that has
dominated Western democracies for 40 years no longer has to accommodate
liberal democracy. What we are undergoing — what we are colluding in
producing — are the new political, legal and social forms for a
multinational biosecurity state. And no elite, no matter how powerful,
is in control of it for the simple reason that, despite immensely
powerful international organisations increasingly divorced from and
opposed to democratic process, capitalism is a dynamic process that
develops by conflict and contradiction.
Capitalism has a grip on the world the like of which it has never had
before, and as it faces the long-heralded limits to [its] expansion it
is developing new forms and powers to extend that grip further over the
world’s diminishing resources. But there is no single government or
corporation ruling the globe, no secret society whose members sit on
every cabinet and board.
The US Government is the greatest military power the world has ever
seen, and the United Nations has long been superseded by far more
unaccountable coalitions of state and corporate powers whose activities
are largely secret and getting more so. And the power of technology to
monitor and control the world’s populations is expanding at an
exponential rate in both breadth and depth. But the world is not a
single, supra-political block.
There is no invisible hand of the market-god ruling over us, for good
or for evil; there are only devils competing for his crown. The world
undergoing this revolution in capitalism remains a conflict whose
battleground, now and for the immediate future, is the coronavirus
crisis. What makes that conflict new for Western democracies is that the
war being waged is a civil one, of governments against their own
people, rather than against other countries.
By looking at how this civil war is being waged, therefore, we can begin to understand to what ends it is being fought.
CTH | Consider if you will, the backdrop of current U.S. politics; the
influence of Wall Street and the multinationals who align with
globalism; the reality of K-Street lobbyists writing the physical
legislation that politicians sell to Americans; and then overlay what
you are witnessing as those same multinationals now attack the
foundation of our constitutional republic. All of this is CORPORATISM, a continuum that people were ignoring for decades… Now, thankfully, there is a new awakening.
In these economic endeavors President Trump was disrupting decades
of financial schemes established to use the U.S. as a host for their
endeavors. President Trump was confronting multinational corporations
and the global constructs of economic systems that were put in place to
the detriment of the host (USA) ie YOU. There are trillions at stake; it is all about the economics; everything else is chaff and countermeasures.
The road to a “service-driven economy” is paved with a great
disparity between financial classes. The wealth gap is directly related
to the inability of the middle-class to thrive.
Elite financial interests, including those within Washington DC, gain
wealth and power, the U.S. workforce is reduced to servitude,
“service”, of their affluent needs.
The destruction of the U.S. industrial and manufacturing base is
EXACTLY WHY the middle class has struggled, and exactly why the wealth
gap exploded in the past 30 years.
Behind this dynamic we find the international corporate and financial
interests who are inherently at risk from President Trump’s
“America-First” economic and trade platform. Believe it or not,
President Trump is up against an entire world economic establishment.
When we understand how trade works in the modern era we understand
why the agents within the system are so adamantly opposed to U.S.
President Trump.
♦The biggest lie in modern economics, willingly spread and maintained by corporate media, is that a system of global markets still exists.
It doesn’t.
Every element of global economic trade is controlled and exploited by
massive institutions, multinational banks and multinational
corporations. Institutions like the World Trade Organization (WTO) and
World Bank control trillions of dollars in economic activity.
Underneath that economic activity there are people who hold the
reigns of power over the outcomes. These individuals and groups are the
stakeholders in direct opposition to principles of America-First
national economics. Collectively known as “The Big Club”.
The modern financial constructs of these entities have been
established over the course of the past three decades. When you
understand how they manipulate the economic system of individual nations
you begin to understand why they are so fundamentally opposed to
President Trump.
In the Western World, separate from communist control perspectives
(ie. China), “Global markets” are a modern myth; nothing more than a
talking point meant to keep people satiated with sound bites they might
find familiar. Global markets have been destroyed over the past three
decades by multinational corporations who control the products formerly contained within global markets.
The same is true for “Commodities Markets”. The multinational trade
and economic system, run by corporations and multinational banks, now
controls the product outputs of independent nations. The free market
economic system has been usurped by entities who create what is best
described as ‘controlled markets’.
U.S. President Trump understood what had taken place. He used
economic leverage as part of a broader national security policy; and to
understand who opposes President Trump specifically because of the
economic leverage he creates, it becomes important to understand the
objectives of the global and financial elite who run and operate the
institutions. The Big Club.
Understanding how trillions of trade dollars influence geopolitical
policy we begin to understand the three-decade global financial
construct they seek to retain and protect.
That is, global financial exploitation of national markets.
nbcnews | Republicans and corporate America are on the outs.
In the past week alone, American Airlines and computer company Dell came out strongly against
GOP-led bills that place restrictions on voting in their home base of
Texas. South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem, a rising star in Republican Party,
continued to take heat for nixing a bill
that would have imposed a ban on transgender athletes in sports, citing
the potential impact on her state's bottom line. And conservatives
spent days bashing "vaccine passports" some businesses think are needed
to return to normal.
"Boycott
baseball and all of the woke companies that are interfering with Free
and Fair Elections," former President Donald Trump said in a statement.
"Are you listening Coke, Delta, and all!"
"Why are we
still listening to these woke corporate hypocrites on taxes, regulations
& anti-trust?" Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., tweeted.
Such
public dust-ups between businesses and members of the GOP are becoming
more frequent, though the divide — possibly one of the most
consequential in U.S. politics and society — is years in the making. The
shift is the product of a Republican Party increasingly driven by
"culture war" issues that animate a base invigorated by Trump and
corporate powerhouses that are under more pressure than ever to align
themselves with the left on voting rights, LGBTQ rights and anti-racist
efforts.
The result is a fraying in relations between a
GOP that has for years advocated for the kinds of libertarian economic
policies that have widely benefited these businesses and companies that
are using their might to help advance racial and social justice causes.
"We
have long thought and still think of the big institutional drivers of
this culture war as more in academia, the arts, the media, and corporate
America has mostly sat it out until recently," retiring Sen. Pat
Toomey, R-Pa., told NBC News in an interview. He added that while he
does not think of corporate America "as the biggest player yet,"
companies coming off the sidelines "can change the dynamic."
off-guardian | Asymptomatic false-positive diagnosis is unforgivable, but one
without testing for other common causes is even worse. Misdiagnosing
what would have been death from old age or some other usual event with
an asymptomatic false-positive Covid test is falsifying the cause of
death and is literally criminal. Natural deaths seem no longer a thing.
Bad science, shoddy medicine, central directives to certify COVID-19
where there is any doubt, and poor data gathering mean the crime is
perfect.
Tossing a coin is far more diagnostically accurate than community
Covid PCR testing on well persons. Ideally, there should have been a
parallel influenza test for each Covid test. My experience of patients’
hospital discharge letters reveals not one influenza test result was
recorded.
Our police, who under their own oath should police the criminal
common law with our consent are now acting like the vigilantes of
commerce. They enforce unnatural statutory law, regulations and
guidelines. Where does that leave non-commercial, natural human
interests? They tackle unmasked, healthy people as if they were
undetonated bombs.
Since when did the spread of a cold or flulike illness become a
crime? Since when did a well person become a potential suspect? The
police never used to become involved in the politesse of a cough, fever
or cold.
In 2019 it used to be a badge of honour to keep coming, sniffling
into the office. Now it seems a crime against humanity. I am waiting for
the first bona fide coryzal assault case, where the brain-washed
magistrate will accept that the victim reasonably apprehended a harm
from a defendant’s sniffle.
What material difference is there between terrorists and the actions of the WHO, Gates and our government?
Well, those three seem like mere terrorists, but not also another’s freedom fighter. Our government preach of how ‘hateful extremists exploit the pandemic,’ but there is no mention of themselves. Moreover, it is the questioning norm which is smeared as terrorists. What if the vaccines are killing more than Covid. Do we convict Drs. Whitty and Fauci for crimes against humanity?
In stark contrast to my first patient, I speak with my last patient, she is socioeconomically vulnerable.
In March 2020 she complained of a lump in her throat. Her urgent scan
was cancelled due to ‘Covid measures’. In February 2021 she complained
of multiple lumps in her throat and difficulty swallowing.
This is the mountain of disease concealed under the magic carpet of
Covid. Coronavirus Regulations-sponsored NHS medical negligence is often
grossly negligent, bordering on criminal.
The game is to keep the patient away and out of your zone of accountability. Like hands-free patient ping-pong.
One might conclude life on earth is impossible without Big Pharma. It
has moulded the world in its own vision. The vaccine passport is
likewise an inappropriate response. Particularly when viewed through the
lens of another continuously, unpredictably mutating, elderly-targeting
respiratory virus. Would anyone else find the prospect of a flu vaccine
passport troubling?
When Gates becomes America’s biggest owner of farmland one has
confirmatory triangulation that Mother Nature is no longer boss. Most of
us only need basic sanitation, an active life, family love and a
natural diet to remain well.
slate | The
second reason shame has been criticized is that many have conflated
shame’s worth as a tool with the norms some use shame to try to uphold.
The shame that accompanies sexually transmitted infections, for example,
has more to do with the problematic norms around sex that remain in our
society then shame itself. The shame that accompanies illness more
broadly has to do with the problematic norm that assumes, falsely, that
we will all remain able-bodied and healthy and that if we do not, it is
linked to some form of moral or behavioral failing. In both cases, the
shame isn’t the problem—the norms are. Instead of throwing out shame,
we should be more conscious of how we use it.
In
spite of the current uproar against it, Americans do routinely use
shame as a tool, quietly and comfortably. “We shame poor people all of
the time,” said Phuong Luong, a certified financial planner and educator
at Just Wealth (and also a friend). In her role as a financial planner,
Luong, has helped low-income people access public services. “If you’ve
ever gone into an office to apply for public benefits like welfare or
food stamps, it can be a really demeaning and stressful experience,” she
said. “The quality, tone, and respect in customer service between a
private service and a public service is so different. And I think we
make poor people jump through so many hoops to show effort and to show
motivation, to get what they need.” It’s as if the process was designed to evoke shame.
But
shame can work positively as a tool with people or institutions when
the thing happening is in fact worth punishing, and other forms of
punishment are out of reach. “In a system where formal punishment is
missing, that’s when the informal mechanisms step in,” said Jacquet. You
can, for example, incarcerate an individual but, “it’s much more
difficult, almost impossible to take away the liberty of an entire group
like Exxon Mobil,” she explained. You can, however, shame them as climate activists do when they troll oil companies on Twitter. It’s about depriving these companies of their social license and reputation, which, in many cases, they worked very hard to create.
On
the individual level, Jacquet points to the policies that some states
have publishing the names of residents who owe a significant sum in
taxes—in California, it’s more than $100,000; in Wisconsin, it’s $5,000, but those on the top 100 list all currently owe more than $400,000—as
another example of effective shaming. The late taxpayers are given
letters in advance of the list’s publication, with the expectation that
the threat of exposure will get them to pony up (or at least enter into a
repayment plan)—and it often does. When the state of Wisconsin launched its tax-shaming program in 2006,
it thought it would recoup $1.5 million in its first year of operation;
the state ultimately collected 15 times that in that year.
sciencebasedmedicine | As much as I used to admire him, since the pandemic hit John
Ioannidis has consistently disappointed me to an extreme degree. In the
last year, my disappointment with Prof. Ioannidis has gotten to the
point where it’s hard for me to avoid lumping him with the COVID-19
minimizers/deniers like those who published and continue to promote the Great Barrington Declaration,
one of whom was his co-author on his infamous Santa Clara
seroprevalence study. The Great Barrington Declaration, boiled down to
its essence, asserted that COVID-19 is not dangerous to the vast
majority of the population, leading to its writers and signatories to
conclude that governments should, in essence, let SARS-CoV-2, the
coronavirus that causes the disease, run rampant through the population
in order to achieve “natural herd immunity”, while putting in place
measures designed to protect only those viewed as “at risk”, such as the
elderly and those with significant co-morbidities. (Note that, at the
time the Declaration was published, there was as yet no safe and
effective vaccine against COVID-19, while now there are at least four.)
Of course, as many noted, it is not possible to protect the vulnerable
if COVID-19 is rampaging unchecked throughout the rest of the
population. Also, as I noted when I wrote about it, the Great Barrington Declaration was the product of the American Institute for Economic Research,
a right-wing, climate science-denying think tank, which recruited three
ideologically—shall we say?—amenable scientists to sign on as authors
of the declaration, which was basically, as I put it,
“eugenics-adjacent” and full of misinformation and half-truths.
Moreover, I’m not the only one who’s now soured on Prof. Ioannidis. For example, Scientific American columnist John Horgan, someone with whom both Steve Novella and I have had disagreements based on his downplaying of skepticism in medicine with respect to homeopathy:
Optimism has also distorted my view of the coronavirus. Last March, I
took heart from warnings by Stanford epidemiologist John Ioannidis that
we might be overestimating the deadliness of the virus and hence
overreacting to it. He predicted that the U.S. death toll might reach
only 10,000 people, lower than the average annual toll of seasonal flu. I
wanted Ioannidis to be right, and his analysis seemed plausible to me,
but his prediction turned out to be wrong by more than an order of
magnitude.
Horgan didn’t go quite far enough in his criticisms for my taste, but such is life.
Then there’s Alex Rubinstein:
“What a weird turn to see John Ioannidis pushing one of sloppiest
studies in the deluge of Covid-19 papers,” Alex Rubinsteyn, an assistant
professor of computational medicine and genetics at the University of
North Carolina School of Medicine, wrote on Twitter. “If he weren’t an
author I would expect [the study] to show up in one of his talks as a
particularly potent cocktail of bad research practices.”
Then, of course, there are all the scientists on Twitter criticizing
Prof. Ioannidis. In fairness, one has to acknowledge that there are
things Prof. Ioannidis has argued that have some merit. His estimates of
IFR were closer to the mark than some of the very high estimates early
in the pandemic, but they were still off considerably in the other
direction. He was not wrong about the poor quality of so much of the
data and research on COVID-19; it’s just, in an amazing feat of lacking
self-awareness, he himself contributed to it as well.
This brings me back to that discussion of Ioannidis’ paper claiming
that the NIH is too conservative and that only conservative, “safe”
science is funded. It was more than that, though. He claimed that the
scientists on NIH study sections were no better than scientists not on
NIH study sections. Before I get to that, though, I note that Ioannidis’
cardinal sin since the pandemic started is not to have been wrong, even
repeatedly so. It’s been his extreme arrogance:
Instead, Ioannidis sounded sure of himself. He was right; the others had
it wrong. He called out other research teams by name—Johns Hopkins,
Imperial College London—to berate their findings as “astronomically
wrong,” and “constantly dialed back to match reality.” Here he was,
about to come out with an exciting and important finding—if he were
right, it could change almost everything about how we deal with this
virus—and he seemed unworried by the possibility that something might be
amiss with the project.
If anyone should understand how the pressure to contribute to the
science of the crisis might lead to flawed work and exaggerated claims,
it ought to be Ioannidis, arguably the world’s most famous
epidemiologist. Who knows? Perhaps like so many of us, he’s just
stressed out by the whole damned thing. Maybe he’s just off his game.
The article from which this quote came dates back to May 2020. Now,
eleven months later with the benefit of hindsight, I don’t think you can
say that Ioannidis was “off his game”. With his attack on a graduate
student, he’s continued to double down and, in fact, has even gone
further than Freedman had previously described. That is what brings me
back to my previous discussion
of his article about those “safe” scientists at the NIH, with a funding
process that he’d characterized as “conformity” and “mediocrity”. I
wrote this over eight years ago:
In the end, as much as I admire Ioannidis, I think he’s off-base here.
It’s not that I don’t agree that the NIH should try to find ways to fund
more innovative research. However, Ioannidis’ approach to quantifying
the problem seems to suffer from flaws in its very conception. In light
of that, I can’t resist revisiting the discussion in my last post on the
question of riskiness versus safety in research, and that’s a simple
question: What’s the evidence that funding more risky research will
result in better research and more treatments? We have lots of anecdotes
of scientists whose ideas were later found to be validated and
potentially game-changing who couldn’t get NIH funding, but how often
does this really happen? As I’ve pointed out before, the vast
majority of “wild” ideas are considered “wild” precisely because they
are new and there is little good support for them. Once evidence
accumulates to support them, they are no longer considered quite so
“wild.” We know today that the scientists whose anecdotes of woe
describing the depredations of the NIH were indeed onto something. How
many more proposed ideas that seemed innovative at the time but
ultimately went nowhere?
And my conclusion:
However, the assumption underlying Ioannidis’s analysis seems to be that
there must be “bolts out of the blue” discovered by brilliant brave
maverick scientists. It’s all very Randian at its heart. However,
science is a collaborative enterprise, in which each scientist builds
incrementally on the work of his or her predecessors. Bolts out of the
blue are a good thing, but we can’t count on them, nor has anyone
demonstrated that they are more likely to occur if the NIH funds
“riskier research.” It’s equally likely that the end result would be a
lot more dud research.
Maybe the problem with Prof. Ioannidis was there all along, and I
just didn’t see it until the pandemic amplified it for all to see. He
seems, dating back at least to 2012, have had the belief that
conventional science is too “safe” and “conformist,” perhaps with a bit
of a self-image of himself as being the “brave maverick doctor” or iconoclast. Maybe that’s why, during the pandemic, he was so easily drawn to being a “rebel” or a “contrarian,” whose findings bucked the existing consensus, and maybe that’s why he can’t give that up. After all, it’s happened to greater scientists than he.
Moreover, Prof. Ioannidis seems to be an excellent cautionary tale at
how being a critic doesn’t necessarily mean that you can do what’s being
criticized that well. He’s very good at finding the flaws in studies,
but his studies during the pandemic demonstrate that, when designing
studies of his own, he’s prone to every bias and flaw that he criticizes
in others.
In any event, I should go back and read some of Prof. Ioannidis’ old
work in light of what I know about him now, with the realization that
the pandemic has done me a favor. I wonder what I might find.
nakedcapitalism | Yves here. I’m running this post with its original headline, although
the article doesn’t make terribly clear what “Christian nationalism”
is. The author defines is at extreme evangelism but I’m at a loss to
understand what makes that “nationalism”. The reason I am running this
article is that it discusses an specific issue that IM Doc mentioned
back in early February.
And even though we are discussing different subcultures in America,
we might as well be talking about different countries. One of the
lessons I learned by virtue of deciding to see the world on the McKinsey
plan, was that virtually without exception, US companies entering a
foreign market would royally screw things up. Even if they’d managed to
hire good managers from the new market, the top brass would reject
recommended changes to the product or branding to cater to local tastes:
“They can’t possibly want that! Of course they’ll prefer our superior
dog food!” They almost always had to fail before they’d listen to how
the locals thought about things and understand why they wanted what they
wanted.
I had sent a link from the Ghion Journal, which was and is pretty up in arms about the Covid vaccines, as an example of vaccine alarmism in the black community.
IM Doc said then that he was hearing a lot of reports from doctors in
his network in big cities of vaccine hesitancy among blacks and if
anything more so among Latinos at that point. But he was the first to
alert me to opposition among conservative Christians, beyond those based
on the mistaken belief that fetal cells had somehow been used in
vaccine development (true in a very strained sense with the J&J
vaccine). From his e-mail:
We are seeing all this rage and rush to get vaccinated
right now. It is easy to assume there is widespread demand. That is not
true…. And then the fun will begin. If you think the anti-mask,
anti-lockdown people have been ridiculed and shamed – you have not seen
anything yet. I know my Big Pharma and it is obvious they have a
stranglehold on our agencies and politicians. They have gotten so used
to complete acquiescence that they are becoming supremely
over-confident. Trust me, if they think they will get away with forced
vaccination of kids for school, they have no idea what they are stepping
in. Also, I can think of no quicker way to bankruptcy for airlines and
cruise companies then to demand a vaccine passport. They will instantly
cut their customer base by 30-40%.
It is not just blacks and Latinos. Our medical and public health
elites have their head so far up their ass that they are missing
critical cultural and religious issues going on all over this country
with regard to the vaccine. For example, my oh so Protestant family
members and all their friends back home have zero intention of taking
this vaccine. All the talk of vaccine passports and vaccine cards to get
in and out of stores and restaurants and events have convinced them
that this is the first manifestation of the long anticipated Mark of the
Beast. To take the Mark of the Beast is a certain trip to Hell for
Eternity….And because of our elites’ complete bungling insensitivity,
they have already completely and permanently alienated these people.
Again, this is being preached from their pulpits, and no amount of
coercion or threats is going to work. I grew up in that environment. I
know what I am talking about. They will starve to death before they take
The Mark of the Beast.
I have no idea how large this population is. IM Doc gave an estimate
for rural America and the South that struck me as high, having lived in
the rural upper Midwest, Oregon, and spent a lot of time in Maine. But
the point is this is a cohort that is not trivial in size, and its
existence has finally gotten the attention of some in the officialdom,
too late in the game for them to change course. You’ll see the
out-of-touch recommendation in the piece:
…faith leaders can guide their followers and use their
pulpits to encourage parishioners that the vaccine is safe and in line
with religious doctrines.
That could work with concerns that are based on misinformation, but
not ones based on views that see social control/surveillance as evil.
There’s no way of prettying up the more heavy-handed schemes to get
citizens to take the shot.
And IM Doc, then as now, argued that the bureaucrats have done a
terrible job with general practitioners by failing to give the
information needed to give honest answers and “best available data”
assessments of outcomes and risks:
And again, I will remind you – as a primary care
physician I have been tasked with educating patients about these
vaccines. I have little if any information about safety. I have zero
information on how these vaccines will help death or hospitalizations. I
have zero information on how long the immunity will last. I have zero
credible and often wildly disparate information about whether it will
work on these variants, which are now this month’s panic porn topic on
the news. I have very educated patients who come to ask questions all
day every day. I will not lie to them, nor will I smile and pass out
happy horse shit like so many of my colleagues seem to be doing. The
medical elites have put the normal PCPs of this country in a very
difficult if not impossible situation.
I hope and pray that all goes well. I, like everyone else, want this
to be over. However, if something goes majorly wrong with this gamble,
God help us.
CTH |There
is so much in this soundbite from Dr Leana Wen (Public Health Policy,
George Washington University) it is difficult to encapsulate.
When
they show you who they are, believe them. In this soundbite Dr. Wen is
apoplectic that people might realize there is no need for a vaccination
because everything is open and there is no crisis. She frets that
American people will enjoy their freedoms without vaccination. Just
watch and listen to the priority in her soundbite.
The
blind-spot exposure of their ideology is a weakness of the totalitarian
mind. They spend so much time in an echo-chamber they cannot fathom the
insanity of what they are espousing. To them it just seems like the
typical conversation they have all the time, because they never face
anyone challenging them.
“We
have a very narrow window to tie reopening policy to vaccination status
because if everything is reopened, then what’s the carrot going to be…
How are we going to incentivize people to actually get the vaccine… So
that’s why I think the CDC & the Biden admin need to come out a lot
bolder & say “if you’re vaccinated, you can do all these
things…here are all the freedoms that you have, because otherwise people
are going to go out and enjoy these freedoms ANYWAY.”
nymag | Though
the study is an impressive piece of evidence of the effectiveness of
the Moderna and Pfizer vaccines, some public-health experts pushed back
on Walensky’s pandemic-changing takeaway. “There cannot be any daylight
between what the research shows — really impressive but incomplete
protection — and how it is described,” Dr. Peter Bach, director of the
Center for Health Policy and Outcomes at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer
Center, told the New York Times on
Thursday. “This opens the door to the skeptics who think the government
is sugarcoating the science,” Bach added, “and completely undermines
any remaining argument why people should keep wearing masks after being
vaccinated.”
Even
the Centers for Disease Control hedged on Walensky’s claims. “Dr.
Walensky spoke broadly during this interview,” a CDC spokesperson told
the Times. “It’s possible that some people who are fully
vaccinated could get Covid-19. The evidence isn’t clear whether they can
spread the virus to others. We are continuing to evaluate the
evidence.”
More
than 142 million doses of the Moderna and Pfizer vaccines have been
administered in the U.S. as of March 30, according to the CDC.
The third vaccine currently on the American market is a single-dose
shot made by Johnson & Johnson, which was shown to be 66 percent
effective in thwarting moderate to severe COVID-19-related illness.
WaPo | Across
the Charles River in Boston, where the smallpox outbreak had begun, the
board of health chairman wasn’t so mild. Samuel Durgin had offered free
vaccinations to hundreds of thousands of residents, but when that
failed to stem the tide of infected patients, he enlisted “virus squads”
— gangs of policemen and medical officials who held down and forced
people, often homeless men, to be vaccinated, according to the New England Journal of Medicine. One man was beaten so badly by police that after he was vaccinated he had to get stitches for a wound to his head.
Durgin
had also publicly challenged any anti-vaccine individuals to come with
him to the island where sick patients were isolated and treated. One,
Immanuel Pfeiffer, accepted. He nearly died of smallpox. Many were
angered that Durgin let Pfeiffer back into the community before he fell
ill, where he could have ignited another outbreak, but Durgin thought
the headlines — “Anti-vaccinationist May Not Live,” “Chairman Durgin
Comes Up Smiling” — were worth the risk, according to the New England
journal.
Still,
the outbreak continued to spread, and not just to Cambridge but also to
within two blocks of Jacobson’s home. So when Spencer returned and the
pastor still refused, he did what the law allowed him to do: He fined
Jacobson $5 (about $153 today).
Instead
of paying the fine, Jacobson and a handful of other vaccine refusers
appealed to a higher court, where they caught the attention and support
of anti-vaccination societies. Those societies provided Jacobson with
powerful attorneys, who argued the case all the way to the Supreme
Court.
There
had been a number of decisions in other state courts on compulsory
vaccination laws, and they were all over the map. Some upheld the laws,
some struck them down or placed limitations. Clearly, a national policy
was needed.
The
Supreme Court handed down its decision in February 1905; in a 7-2
opinion, Justice John Marshall Harlan — a former Kentucky enslaver who
fought for the Union in the Civil War and wrote a blistering dissent
against Plessy v. Ferguson — said public health could supersede individual rights:
“[T]he
liberty secured by the Constitution of the United States to every
person within its jurisdiction does not import an absolute right in each
person to be, at all times and in all circumstances, wholly free from
restraint. There are manifold restraints to which every person is
necessarily subject for the common good.”
While
the high court in Massachusetts had ruled in favor of the board of
health, it also made clear that “it is not in their power to vaccinate
[Jacobson] by force.” The Supreme Court didn’t contradict this, and in
fact, placed more safeguards, saying “common good” laws had to be
reasonable. That’s important, because “virus squads” weren’t limited to
Boston; immigrants in tenements were also forcibly vaccinated in New
York City, as were Black Americans in Kentucky.
By
the time of the Supreme Court’s decision, nearly three years after
Jacobson had first refused to be vaccinated, the smallpox outbreak in
Cambridge had died down and would never return. (Smallpox was declared
eradicated from the planet in 1979.)
The government began regulating the quality of vaccines, and in 1922, another Supreme Court case, Zucht v. King, specifically affirmed proof of vaccination laws for public schoolchildren.
Jacobson
paid his fine and went back to his mild-mannered life of preaching to
his flock. The anti-vaccine movement had only just begun.
theatlantic | Amazon’s straight-up aggression broke so much from these two common patterns that one Amazon engineer even submitted a support ticket,
concerned that the Amazon News Twitter account had been hacked. It’s
shocking to see a company act like an online troll instead.
It
shouldn’t be. In fact, it’s long past time that citizens stop
construing online brands, and the companies their messages represent, as
clever human interlocutors, be they catty or chatty. Which brings me
back to my theory: In a backwards way, and certainly unintentionally,
Amazon’s weird behavior is liberating us from the affliction of building
affable relationships with corporations. It’s a reminder that although
companies have basically become people in our lives, those people might
very well be assholes.
The law has preserved their right
to be so for some time. Over the past century, companies have been
transformed into private individuals, deserving protection from the
state. The Supreme Court’s 2010 ruling in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission
allowed corporations to spend unlimited funds on elections. The Court’s
opinion justified the decision on the grounds that limiting political
spending violates the First Amendment right to free speech. Citizens United
is the most recent victory for corporate personhood in the United
States, but that history goes back much further. In particular, the
Fourteenth Amendment, which guaranteed all citizens equal protection
under the law, became a mechanism for corporations to argue for their
rights as individuals. (Corporations had previously been treated as
institutions chartered by a state for the public good.)
It’s a convenient accident that the Citizens United
decision corresponded with the arrival of the consumer internet. By
2010, everyone was online, and in public too, on social-media services
such as Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Previously, companies could
speak only through formal messages on billboards; by mail, radio, or
television; or via media coverage of their actions. The web had shifted
that control a bit, but websites were still mostly marketing and service
portals. Social media and smartphones changed everything. They made
corporate speech functionally identical to human speech. Case law might
have given companies legal personhood, but the internet made
corporations feel like people.
It also allowed companies to behave like people.
As their social-media posts were woven into people’s feeds between
actual humans’ jokes, gripes, and celebrations, brands started talking
with customers directly. They offered support right inside people’s
favorite apps. They did favors, issued giveaways, and even raised money
for the downtrodden. Brands became #brands.
In 2018, I wrote about my personal experiences with this new kind of brand behavior for The Atlantic,
when Comcast sent me 10 pizzas after I dared them to on Twitter. By
then, brands had developed distinctive, humanlike personalities online:
Wendy’s cattiness countered Arby’s dorkiness, for example. Steak-umm had
become a kind of social-media hero, using the persona of a Rust Belt
underdog to opine on social and political topics of all stripes.
Back
then, I warned against growing too comfortable with these newly
seductive corporate relationships. The brands were not real human
friends, but neither were they faceless corporations anymore. That ennui
has deepened, and “Ugh, #brands” has become a more common sentiment
among people who might previously have found them charming. Now Amazon’s
social-media mutiny expresses the same disgust, but in a despicable corporate voice.
WaPo | These
non-passport passports won’t emerge as a mandate from the Oval Office
or Congress, and the biggest of Big Government won’t be tracking our
individual vaccination status, what we’ve done with our newfound
immunity or where we’ve done it. Mostly, private companies will want to
know whether we’re jabbed so that they can finally make as much money as
they used to with as little hazard as that used to involve.
But
public health guidelines permitting large indoor gatherings only among
the inoculated will inform some of those private companies’ decisions,
and creating scannable codes such as those New York just started pilotingwill
require some verification against state records. (The concerns about
equity, too, are real, as long as disenfranchised people get fewer shots
and own fewer smartphones.)
Similarly,
signing up will be a choice — but when everything fun in the world is
conditioned on that sign-up, the concept of choice turns fuzzy. This is
coercion. Yet coercion may be exactly what the doctor ordered for those
hesitant to face the needle but desperate to dance at a wedding.
None
of us know yet where, when and to whom we might be required to present
this handy-dandy credential, so people instead invent the scenarios that
either most enrage or most soothe them. Maybe we’re barred from
anywhere and everywhere, unable even to step into the grocery store for
tomorrow’s breakfast. Or maybe we’re only turned back from the punk show
where we had hoped to throw ourselves against thousands of strangers.
Vaccine
passports are the new masks. Depending on where you are, what you read
and how you vote, they are either the badge of the oppressor or the
brand borne by the righteous. They will either solve everything or
nothing. They are the new lockdown and the new quarantine: both terms we
continue to use for our current condition even though most of us are
only semi-isolated and fully free to romp where we please. No one cares
about the in-between. We want extremes, and where there aren’t any we
create them.
Vaccine
passports don’t even exist yet, but that won’t stop our riven country
from turning them into exactly what we’re always looking for: a reason
to get mad at the other guy.
NEJM | The public appears to be deeply divided on the
appropriateness of immunity privileges. Last summer, we elicited views
from a nationally representative panel.2 Support for certification programs based on positive tests for antibodies to Covid-19 was almost evenly split (see graph).
Moreover, in contrast with views on many other pandemic-control
policies, the division of opinion on immunity passports cut across
ideological, racial, and socioeconomic lines. The survey was conducted
during an earlier phase of the pandemic and did not address
vaccination-acquired immunity explicitly, although more recent surveys
that have done so have also revealed deeply divided views.3
The
mixed views and range of competing arguments suggest that it would be
precipitous — and extremely unlikely in the United States — to adopt an
official government policy requiring widespread use of vaccine
passports. On the other hand, we believe the objections raised fall
short of justifying a ban on any and all uses of vaccine certification
(which some commentators have proposed). Access to vaccines is
increasing rapidly, with special efforts being made to reach
disadvantaged groups. Although better understanding is needed of the
nature and degree of immunity that vaccination confers, it seems clear
enough that risk — especially for severe disease — is dramatically
reduced. Mechanisms for reliable and accurate certification are
important. But development of such mechanisms is largely a technical
issue — one that some leading technology companies are addressing — and
it should not completely block an otherwise sensible policy. Finally,
requiring people who decline vaccination to bear some consequence for
their refusal seems only fair, especially if, collectively, such
hesitancy puts herd immunity out of reach.
Thus,
rejecting policy extremes — a broad mandatory public scheme or a
prohibition on all private uses of certification — is a relatively easy
call. But how should policymakers navigate the large and complex space
in between? What is either acceptable or optimal can vary substantially
by context. Two features of this landscape are particularly important
for evaluating the appropriateness of policy moves: the nature of
privileged activities and the identity of the regulator.
An
important starting point is distinguishing passports from mandates.
When government conditions participation in essential activities such as
work or education, certification essentially functions as a mandatory
vaccination program. The legal and ethical perils of a government
mandate for SARS-CoV-2 vaccines at this time have been well reviewed
elsewhere.4
Therefore, we focus here on policy uses of vaccine certification other
than having the government itself restrict physical access to essential
settings such as workplaces, schools, and health care institutions.
The
“passport” concept applies most obviously to travel. Federal and state
authorities currently impose quarantine requirements on people who cross
state or international borders. Most such policies do not make
exceptions for vaccinated travelers. However, some states are
considering doing so. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
recognizes vaccination as grounds for lifting quarantine for people
exposed to Covid-19 infection; and for travel from most countries, the
agency has recommended lifting restrictions on entrants who have
recovered from Covid-19.5 It seems only a matter of time before the same policies would apply to travelers who can show proof of completed vaccination.
In
taking the lead on vaccination-related travel policy, government can
start by establishing standards for reliable documentation of
vaccination. Such standards are likely to emerge relatively soon from
public–private partnerships in the travel sector, and then spread to
other settings.
Those other settings include social
and recreational gatherings. Here, the case for government control is
weaker, because frontline policy setting and implementation more
naturally fall to private actors. Allowing sports leagues, concert and
sporting venues, clubs, restaurants, and bars some latitude to set rules
that determine access on the basis of customers’ vaccination status
would be reasonable; doing so may also serve wider efforts to encourage
vaccine uptake. Although not in the driver’s seat, government will have
to help steer. Private actors need standards and bounds, including clear
directives barring uses of vaccine certification that constitute
unlawful discrimination. More generally, government can help to mitigate
inequities arising from private certification by boosting the supply
and distribution of vaccines and redoubling efforts to reach underserved
populations.
interfluidity | I think it makes perfect sense that liberalism has become a kind of
upper-class creed. So long as it is, liberalism is in peril, and should
be. There are illiberal currents on both the left and right that would
exploit popular dissatisfaction to remake society in ways that I would
very much dislike, whether by restoring a “traditional” hierarchy of
implicit caste, or by granting diverse professionals even more
prescriptive authority than they already have at the expense of liberty
for the less enlightened.
My strong preference is that we do neither of
these things, and instead restore the broad appeal of liberalism by
“leveling up”. We should ensure that everyone has the means to rely upon
some mix of the market and the state to see to their material welfare,
reducing the economic role of networks of personal reciprocity and
history. This would render the good parts of liberalism more broadly and
ethically accessible.
Reducing economic stratification makes liberal
proceduralism more credible pretty automatically. When economic and
institutional power are dispersed and broadly shared, no one has a
built-in edge, and aspirations of neutrality and fairness become
plausible. Once we view society less through a lens of domination and
oppression — because in a more materially equal society that will be a
less credible lens — it will become possible to agree on a common,
stable set of commercial and professional mores rather than extend
deference to myriad communities’ evolving sensibilities. It will be
practical for the broad public to learn and understand those common
mores, and so not be excluded or set apart from professional communities
by what come to seem like inscrutable courtly conventions.
There are undoubtedly tensions between liberalism and egalitarianism.
But they are yin to one another’s yang. Opposites in a sense, they must
be reconciled if either is to survive.
nakedcapitalism | Of so many tragedies to come out of the COVID-19 pandemic, one of the
saddest to me – and probably the one with the longest-reverberating
consequences – has been its wholesale discrediting of our health science
institutions.
Here we are, over a year into this pandemic, and we cannot get a
straight answer on whether or not this relatively cheap and safe drug
(ivermectin) saves human lives from COVID-19 or not. Worse, we can’t even seem to
properly investigate it. All questions bring hysterics, or
hardly-believable obfuscation, or (informed?) outrage, no matter what
authority we turn to. The fallout in my own life from watching all this
unfold has been… dramatic.
I don’t trust what the CDC says. I don’t trust what the WHO says. I
don’t trust what the FDA says. I don’t trust Pfizer and the rest of the
pharmaceutical companies any farther than I can throw them. I look with
suspicion on my own scientist acquaintances, wondering if they are really
following the data, or if they are clinging to a chosen worldview that
science in America still works, oh god it still works, oh god it hasn’t
been completely discredited, no it cannot be, my life work must have meant something, it must still work, it must still work….??
None of this means that ivermectin works–or for that matter, that it
doesn’t work. It means that I have realized, slowly and then
all-of-a-sudden, that I cannot know. Nor can any other layperson. We are
alone, our economy is collapsing in slow-motion, and our lives are at
stake. Or so we think! If we doubt so much, how much more should we
really be doubting? I believe, for what it’s worth, that COVID-19 is
real and that these experimental vaccines probably won’t kill us. At
least… not that many of us.
But I wonder now, in my darker moments, whether the claim of those
who don’t believe such things that refusing the vaccination is a
“Darwin’s test – pass it and survive” have grokked something that was
beyond me, in my previous worldview. How could it have come to this…?
And if I am feeling like this, how must people with less scientific background (I attended a science magnet school) be feeling about it all??
Will my children be safe from measles, etc in the years to come? I
have vaccinated them with the whole slate, and feel fine about that
choice, but will the fallout from this debacle mean the end of herd
immunity in America, as trust in the ‘health experts’ collapses into
dust? How can we get it back, then – at gunpoint? With all that would
imply… is it even worth such a high price…?
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sciencemag | This spring, after days of flulike symptoms and fever, a man
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