COVID overview Part II: liberty and risk

The New Neo Posted on by

[NOTE: Part I can be found here.]

If someone – say, Howard Hughes (to take one obvious example) – wants to become an eccentric isolate in an attempt to protect himself against disease or other mishap, I may think he’s misguided or even crazy. But it’s his right to live that way. However, if he began to demand that other people live that way, and if he tried to enforce that, then he would be a tyrant.

The current politicians and health officials who have been setting up the COVID rules are saying that they are necessary to protect us. Protect us from what? Measures that might be justified for some titanic plague that is about to kill half the population are not necessarily justified for COVID. But where should the line be drawn? I recall that in the early days of COVID some politicians were saying “one death is too many!”, which is compassionate-sounding but if actually carried out would put us all in Hughes-like isolation, with society grinding to a halt.

But isn’t that not so very far from what actually happened, and for way too long? And did the measures really help at all? It’s not at all clear that they did, and even if they did help somewhat, many many people believe the price was way too high. Very early in the COVID pandemic – mid-March of 2020 – I wrote a post on the subject. I think it holds up pretty well for the most part. Here are a few excerpts:

I grew up, as the somewhat-older author of this essay “Say Your Prayers and Take Your Chances: Remembering the 1957 Asian flu pandemic” did, in an era when nearly all children got a series of diseases that are now mostly distant memories. The vast majority of us survived quite nicely, unlike in previous eras:

“Before the Modern Revolution child mortality was very high in all societies that we have knowledge of – a quarter of all children died in the first year of life, almost half died before reaching the end of puberty.”

Royalty was not immune; look at the record of the children of Peter the Great, for example. It’s horrific. It’s also one of many reasons people tried to have as many children as possible, although a lot of women died in childbirth or shortly after. Another terrible risk that was common in prior eras.

It was much much better when I was growing up. But still, in a few short years and while I was a toddler I had measles, mumps, German measles (is that racist?), and chicken pox, and that’s just what I remember. Polio was rather common, too, although a vaccine was developed when I was in grade school; I remember what a big big deal that was, and what a hero Salk was considered to be.

My only cousin had measles encephalitis when I was about two, and died a few years later of complications from it. I remember his death very very well, and his disabilities too. That’s the sort of thing that makes a deep impression on a child. My mother told me later that, when I had contracted measles not all that long after my cousin had them, she sweated it out because the risks were very clear to her. Another couple who were good friends of my parents had lost a child from measles even before I was born, and I heard about that periodically, too.

No one had to impress on me the seriousness of measles. I knew. And polio? We saw the photos of all those kids in the iron lungs, and we saw children walking around with braces on their legs.

But that personal knowledge is gone, along with those diseases and many others…It’s a wonderful thing that the incidence of most of those diseases has been remarkably reduced. Wonderful, fabulous, a great reduction in human suffering. But there’s been a cost, too, and it’s the increasing fragility of our psyches’ ability to withstand and endure even the prospect of an increase in disease and mortality that mirrors what my generation experienced.

[Why didn’t we close down more during the 1957 Asian flu pandemic?]…[W]e would have had to have closed down shop indefinitely. There were so many illnesses around all the time that there was no way to escape. You might say we were fatalistic, you might say we were resigned, you might say we were stupid, you might say we assumed the risk, or you might say we understood that the drawbacks of that sort of reaction were immense as well.

Of course, I wasn’t around in 1918. I wasn’t around when smallpox and tuberculosis or the Black Death killed far far more of the people on earth than any of the plagues of my lifetime have come close to killing. I cannot even imagine how terrible those things were; I don’t even want to imagine. And I doubt that people took them in stride at all. And I think a good part of the dread and fear now is that in the back of our minds – or for some people, even the front of our minds – we know that such catastrophes are still possible. Human beings know they are intensely vulnerable.

But COVID-19 is not shaping up to be that sort of event, and there’s no reason to think it will be. However, although many measures are prudent – handwashing, increased testing, hospital preparedness, some measure of social distancing at least for a while – the degree of fear I see and hear is far greater than anything I can recall in my lifetime around a medical event.

And now I’ll add a couple of things to that previous post. The first is that COVID was already heavily politicized even back in March of 2020 when I wrote it. But COVID went on to become politicized even beyond what I had expected or perceived at the time.

The second is that the whipping up of fear has continued longer than I imagined it would. I actually thought that a few months after Biden was inaugurated the authorities would be declaring COVID vanquished by Biden and company. But that hasn’t happened, and in fact things are clamping down again.

Which brings us back to the idea that the whole thing has been too valuable politically (I listed some reasons why in Part I) – although going on and on could backfire and perhaps is even already backfiring. But still, it’s already served a political purpose. Over the course of the COVID pandemic enormous numbers of people have already become more risk-averse and more comfortable with all sorts of restrictions that would have seemed like way much too much only a couple of years ago. This obviously serves the political needs of the left.

Liberty has been one of the casualties of the pandemic.

Update on the Haitian president’s assassination

The New Neo Posted on by

I fully expected some of Haiti’s assassinated president Moise’s security guards to be implicated in his killing, and that seems to be the case:

One of Moïse’s top security officials was placed under arrest Tuesday on suspicion of involvement.

But I have to say I didn’t see this coming:

Haitian police leveled new accusations against a former Supreme Court judge who is on the lam in connection with the assassination of President Jovenel Moïse.

Wendelle Coq-Thelot allegedly met with Colombian mercenaries who are accused of murdering the leader, police said Friday.

An arrest warrant was issued for Coq-Thelot earlier this week, but the former judge has not been located by authorities. She had been ousted by Moïse in February amid fears she was planning a coup against him.

Colombian hitmen and Haitian-Americans arrested in connection with the slaying told investigators they had met with Coq-Thelot before the raid, which plunged the West’s poorest country further into chaos.

So, a female ex-Supreme Court judge is the primary suspect for ordering the hit. Chaos, indeed.

And of course, who knows whether any of these people are guilty, or just scapegoats? Why would anyone trust the investigation system to be fair?

[NOTE: I first wrote about Moise’s assassination in this post on July 7th.]

Lawsuit in Minnesota against CRT

The New Neo Posted on by

More backlash:

A law firm has taken legal action on behalf of Minnesotans opposed to critical race theory (CRT) who argue that they’ve become victims of bullying and retaliation for speaking out against what they say is a divisive and discriminatory philosophy…

One UMLC client, Dr. Tara Gustilo, a Filipino American doctor who was chairwoman of obstetrics and gynecology at Hennepin Healthcare System (HHS), was “demoted essentially because of her polite opposition to the Critical Race Theory that’s saturating her organization,” Seaton said in a statement.

“I see a racist and divisive ideology of race essentialism taking over our nation and my institution,” Gustilo said. “Further, there seems to be this growing intolerance for people with different opinions or ideas and it seems that this tribalistic ideology is fostering that kind of intolerance.”

In her EEOC complaint, Gustilo alleged that HHS “engaged in discriminatory and retaliatory behavior by demoting me on the basis of race due to my refusal, as a person of color, to subscribe to Critical Race Theory and the views of the Black Lives Matter movement and even admitting that such refusal served as the ‘trigger’ for my demotion.”

Other UMLC clients made similar allegations, with a Native American man claiming that his employer forced him to retire early due to his opposition to CRT…

I like the phrase used by Dr. Gustilo: “race essentialism.”

Those two plaintiffs are especially interesting because their treatment is another example of the fact that people who are members of ethnic minorities are expected by the left to toe the leftist line on race and if they don’t do so they lose any favored status the left might otherwise have given them. A “person of color” who refuses to support the CRT program is a special enemy to the left:

I’m glad they’re fighting back, and I hope more people do the same.

And in a case that William Jacobson of Legal Insurrection writes about in this post today, 5th Circuit Judge James C. Ho (nominated by Donald Trump) opined as follows on the subject of disparate impact:

Congress enacted Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to prohibit intentional racial discrimination—not to restrict neutral policies untainted by racial intent that happen to lead to racially disproportionate outcomes. See 42 U.S.C. § 2000d; Alexander v. Sandoval, 532 U.S. 275, 280–81 (2001) (“[§ 2000d] prohibits only intentional discrimination,” not “activities that have a disparate impact on racial groups”).

There’s a big difference between prohibiting racial discrimination and endorsing disparate impact theory. See, e.g., William N. Eskridge, Jr., Dynamic Statutory Interpretation 78 (1994) (disparate impact is “a significant leap away from” intentional racial discrimination). It’s the difference between securing equality of opportunity regardless of race and guaranteeing equality of outcome based on race. It’s the difference between color blindness and critical race theory…

Prohibiting racial discrimination means we must be blind to race. Disparate impact theory requires the opposite: It forces us to look at race—to check for racial imbalance and then decide what steps must be taken to advance some people at the expense of others based on their race. But racial balancing is, of course, “patently unconstitutional.” Parents Involved in Cmty. Schs. v. Seattle Sch. Dist. No. 1, 551 U.S. 701, 723 (2007). Accordingly, “serious constitutional questions . . . might arise” if “[disparate impact] liability were imposed based solely on a showing of a statistical disparity.” Tex. Dep’t of Hous. & Cmty. Affs. v. Inclusive Cmtys. Project, Inc., 576 U.S. 519, 540 (2015). See also Ricci v. DeStefano, 557 U.S.557, 594–96 (2009) (Scalia, J., concurring) (same).

Disparate impact and CRT are not the same thing, but they rest on similar foundations and both are similar in that they constitute discrimination masquerading under the guise of non-discrimination. CRT’s entry into the workplace and public school system has energized many people who were previously unaware of the insidious and pernicious way in which these doctrines can and will be applied.

Open thread 8/2/21

The New Neo Posted on by

I bring you – Ozzy Man reviewing Horse Girl.

As one YouTube commenter wrote: “This is amazing and disturbing at the same time.”

And in the words of another: “I don’t think I’ve ever been so impressed by such a useless skill!”

Emotion in music

The New Neo Posted on by

Among my drafts I have an enormous number of fragmented ones about the connection between music and emotion. It’s not something I really understand, but I keep trying to write about it nonetheless. I think some people are immune to that connection or at least less likely to be affected emotionally by music. But I certainly always have found music emotional, and some music far more emotional than other music.

By “emotional” I don’t mean a unitary thing, either. Happy, sad, excited, nostalgic, regretful, calm – those are just a few of the emotions music can stir. And I also have noticed that some music is what might be called Apollonian and some Dionysian, and that this distinction is present across and within many genres.

This isn’t going to be the definitive post on any of this. But it’s perhaps a short introduction to what I hope may become a series.

I know that there are a bunch of videos at YouTube in which Oliver Sacks explores some of these issues. Here’s one that I found quite intriguing (I haven’t watched most of them yet):

Apparently the brain knows.

Which brings us to the Bee Gees – doesn’t everything? I came across the following reaction video yesterday to their song “More Than a Woman.” I’ve cued up a small part of it in which the two music-loving Georgian brothers (not the US Georgia; the other one) discuss their reactions to the song and to the Bee Gees in general:

They’re not alone in that reaction. There is a set of people who react emotionally in this way to the Bee Gees (I’ve heard some people liken them to a pleasant drug), just as there’s a set who react as Sacks did to Bach. It’s not everyone, of course, but both groups are sizeable.

And there’s some overlap between the groups. Me, for example. I react that way to certain pieces by Bach and to certain songs by the Bee Gees – which may seem odd but hey, that’s the way it is for me. Some day I may try to explain it, but for now I’ll merely note it.

January 6th and seeing the shape of the stork

The New Neo Posted on by

Commenter “J.J.” writes:

When the incursion into the Capitol occurred, it just didn’t make sense to me. The Trump rally was going to be yuuge. The security should have been massive. The National Guard was offered and refused. The security arrangements were not much more than for a normal day in D.C.

From the start, the actual events of January 6th were surrounded with much confusion and the incident was obviously being used for political gain. As time went on, many of the initial “facts” were refuted (for example, the supposed killing of Officer Sicknick), and other obvious questions were never answered. I asked some of those basic questions back on January 7, only one day after the incursion, and most of them have yet to be answered with any clarity. Here’s the list:

(1) How many people actually gained entrance to the Capitol, and who were they?

(2) Why was Ashli Babbitt killed?

(3) How violent were the protesters? Did any have weapons, and were they using them on police?

(4) What did police do to stop them from gaining access to the Capitol?

There’s a lot more in that January 7 post, including this:

It is very curious that this security breach was successful. Surely, with such a large crowd, it should have been anticipated that a splinter group of more radical people might break off and try something like this, and the security forces should have been prepared…

There also are reports (I don’t know if they’re true) that some Capitol police enabled the demonstrators: “Capitol Police were not armed in riot gear to begin with, as law enforcement on crowd control duty have been at almost every large protest against police brutality in D.C. in recent months. When the mob breached the guardrails, the building was locked down, yes. Tear-gas canisters were shot, and yes, some police inside the chambers drew their guns. But others tried to “let them do their thing,” according to the New York Times. Videos also emerged of some police personnel opening up the barricades and taking selfies with the intruders once they were inside the building.”

We still know far less about this than we should, and far less than the government knows. Just to take two obvious examples: we still don’t know the name of the officer who killed Ashli Babbitt and the exact circumstances, and there still has been no release of the enormous numbers of surveillance videos of the entire demonstration.

But even without that information, now we can better see the shape and pattern of the event. It’s far from clear, but it’s more clear, and we know much more about the possibility of previous FBI involvement with and possible incitement of some of the groups that were involved. That’s an especially awful aspect of the whole thing, but knowing about it affords a conceptual satisfaction that comes from getting more pieces of the puzzle.

I’ve already written about the Whitmer kidnapping plot, the FBI, and what it means for January 6th. But here’s an article that connects a few more dots. An excerpt:

The problem is not that we’re going to find out that the January 6 case is going to be full of FBI agents and informants, just like the Whitmer kidnapping case. The problem is we are starting to understand this is standard procedure for counterterrorism. This is a 20-year-old charade the FBI brass has been pulling.

Actually, it’s much older than 20 years. But let’s just say it’s very old.

There’s something satisfying about seeing a possible bigger picture, even if that picture is an ugly one. It reminds me of something written by Isak Dinesen, explained here:

In a vignette entitled “The Roads of Life”, the author remembers a story she used to hear as a child, where a man hears a terrible noise and goes out in the night to investigate, falls in ditches and goes through all sorts of problems. As his trajectory of pain is described, the storyteller also draws a little map detailing all his troubles.

The punch line is that, the next morning, the man wakes up and sees a stork. This is also the shape that the map has made—the images on the map end up combining to create a picture of a stork. Coincidence? We think not. The Baroness uses the image of the man falling and getting up, over and over again, in order to make the stork’s feet, to comfort herself in times of trouble.

Here’s a quote from Dinesen:

The tight place, the dark pit in which I am now lying, of what bird is it the talon? When the design of my life is completed, shall I, shall other people see a stork?
—Isak Dinesen, Out of Africa

In this case it may be a vile stork, but now at least we believe we can see its shape better.

COVID overview Part I: trying to make sense of the whole “masks for the vaccinated” thing

The New Neo Posted on by

[NOTE: This is the first part of a planned 2-parter.]

First of all, we have the politics of the COVID response:

(1) Authorities like to be authoritarian and order people around. So there is psychological satisfaction from it.

(2) It gets the population used to taking orders from authorities, which is also useful – for the authorities.

(3) COVID-fear has been very good to the Democrats in the political sense, and they want that to continue. In particular, they are hoping to use it to justify the same sort of looser rules on voting protocols that helped them win in 2020.

(4) It has the potential to further the divisions and hatred in the country, which I believe the left sees as a plus.

But what of the logic behind these newer restrictions, in the non-political sense? You may think there is no such logic, but I don’t agree. It may be a logic that’s hard to follow, and like me you may disagree with some of the reasoning behind it. But a logic is there, and I’ll take a stab at a list of its basic premises:

(1) People should get vaccinated because vaccination is highly protective against COVID.

(2) But even vaccination is only 90 to 95 percent protective, and we don’t know for how long.

(3) That means that some vaccinated people will inevitably be getting COVID. As the vaccination rate increases (and it’s already fairly high now), the number of vaccinated people getting COVID will increase, or at least the percentage of vaccinated vs. unvaccinated people getting COVID or merely testing positive for COVID will increase.

(4) Many of these vaccinated people testing positive will be asymptomatic.

(5) There is beginning to be some evidence that with the Delta variant – although not the previous variants – some unvaccinated-but-COVID-positive people (with or without symptoms) are shedding a lot of virus. That evidence is far from clear, but it concerns us because it means that vaccinated people may have COVID and not know it and might be contagious to others, both vaccinated and unvaccinated.

(6) Masking indoors offers at least some protection against the transmission of COVID.

(7) Therefore asking vaccinated people to mask indoors makes sense.

There are many points along the way where you might disagree with the premise or premises and think the authorities are either lying or mistaken or both. But I think I’ve correctly stated the reasoning of many of the people who support this and who are not merely political operatives using COVID for political reasons.

But there are other underlying issues in the COVID response debate that aren’t just political, although they definitely impact on politics. They are deeper, broader, and more philosophical, and they have to do with liberty and risk. Liberty involves risk, but even without liberty there is no way to eliminate risk. The basic question is how far one is willing to go to reduce risk – or for the illusion of reducing risk – and who is allowed to make the decision, the individual or the state, and under what conditions.

That will be discussed in Part II.

[ADDENDUM: I want to reiterate – in case there is any misunderstanding – that these are not my premises. I am trying to explain the premises under which some people are operating. The first list contains the premises of the political activists who are into the politics of it, and the second list contains the premises of some people who are more sincere and less political about it (such as many of my friends).]

John Hayward talks about double standards, January 6th, and Congressional elitism

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Bookworm provides the details of Hayward’s Twitter thread on the Congressional hearings about the events of January 6th. Here’s some of what Hayward wrote, but I suggest reading the whole thing (at Bookworm’s, where it’s easier to follow):

The 1/6 rioters should be treated with the same severity as Black Lives Matter rioters. Since that is not remotely possible, all else is political theater and raw exercises of power, and I am weary of pretenses to the contrary.

I’m weary of our ruling class sending the message that your home, business, and personal safety are at the mercy of violent Demcorat-approved grievance groups, but don’t you DARE do anything that makes the aristocracy in D.C. uncomfortable.

I’m tired of hearing the Abolish the Police Party demand limitless scrutiny and aggressive defunding of the police who protect the rest of us, but unquestioning support and increased funding for the police who protect THEM. Why not protect the Capitol with social workers, huh?

There are Democrat-controlled parts of the country where theft has literally been decriminalized, and not just during Democrat-approved riots. You have to stand and watch helplessly while your business is looted every day. But the rules are different for THEIR place of business.

Much more at the link.

Speaking of double standards, it’s all explainable if you understand that these people have fully embraced the old “ends justify the means” mentality. And the more intellectually-inclined among them have cloaked it in neo-Marxist power-struggle reasoning combined with postmodern philosophy that says there is no truth and no objectivity, so the only standard for behavior is to argue for whatever benefits your group’s attaining power.

Sometimes the argument will be A, sometimes it will be not-A. But any contradiction is an illusion, because it’s all good if it helps you attain the power that is the only coin of the realm.

And speaking of science: the study on which the CDC based its new mask recommendations

The New Neo Posted on by

There’s some news about the study that purports to explain why the CDC changed its mask recommendations to saying that even vaccinated people need to wear masks indoors in higher-COVID areas. Here’s a link to the actual study results.

I noticed a couple of interesting things on reading it. The first is that it’s a single study set in Barnstable County, Massachusetts after a series of July 4th holiday celebrations that drew many people to outside and inside venues in order to celebrate. The second is that almost all the COVID patients were male, and the median age was 42. That struck me as atypical (especially the huge male skew). But knowing the Cape somewhat it doesn’t take but a moment to realize that Barnstable County is dominated by Provincetown, which in turn is highly gay-friendly and has long been a center of gay culture. So of course the population there for the holidays is going to be heavily male and perhaps younger than typical in most towns. This may not matter at all in terms of the study’s results, but it’s a somewhat atypical population and that should be noted.

This is of interest:

The findings in this report are subject to at least four limitations. First, data from this report are insufficient to draw conclusions about the effectiveness of COVID-19 vaccines against SARS-CoV-2, including the Delta variant, during this outbreak. As population-level vaccination coverage increases, vaccinated persons are likely to represent a larger proportion of COVID-19 cases. Second, asymptomatic breakthrough infections might be underrepresented because of detection bias. Third, demographics of cases likely reflect those of attendees at the public gatherings, as events were marketed to adult male participants; further study is underway to identify other population characteristics among cases, such as additional demographic characteristics and underlying health conditions including immunocompromising conditions…Finally, Ct values obtained with SARS-CoV-2 qualitative RT-PCR diagnostic tests might provide a crude correlation to the amount of virus present in a sample and can also be affected by factors other than viral load.††† Although the assay used in this investigation was not validated to provide quantitative results, there was no significant difference between the Ct values of samples collected from breakthrough cases and the other cases. This might mean that the viral load of vaccinated and unvaccinated persons infected with SARS-CoV-2 is also similar. However, microbiological studies are required to confirm these findings.

So if I’m interpreting this correctly, the study didn’t directly measure viral load, but the researchers concluded from Ct values (see this for an explanation of what a Ct value is) that there might be a correlation with viral loads.

Note also point number three, which I’ll repeat here:

Third, demographics of cases likely reflect those of attendees at the public gatherings, as events were marketed to adult male participants; further study is underway to identify other population characteristics among cases, such as additional demographic characteristics and underlying health conditions including immunocompromising conditions.

They don’t say exactly what they’re talking about, but reading between the lines I infer that they are talking about gay men and the possibility of “immunocompromising conditions” such as AIDS, HIV, or medication for either of those things. None of this reflects on gay people themselves, but I question whether it’s wise to extrapolate from a single study at all, and certainly from one involving a particular demographic that is very possibly atypical in relevant ways such as immune status.

Other interesting findings include this: “Among persons with breakthrough infection, 274 (79%) reported signs or symptoms, with the most common being cough, headache, sore throat, myalgia, and fever” – in other words, basic flulike symptoms. Only five people were hospitalized (four of them vaccinated) and none died. So the hospitalization rate in a symptomatic population (which was almost certainly not everyone infected) was about one and a half percent among symptomatic breakthrough patients, which does not seem at all high. The death rate so far is zero.

It was always stated that between 5 and 10 percent of vaccinated people were vulnerable to getting COVID, depending on the type of immunization used. So these figures alone don’t seem to justify what the CDC is doing. It would be helpful to also know how many people attended the festivities, but all I’ve read is “thousands.” That covers a lot – could be a few thousand or hundreds of thousands. Without knowing that, we can’t know what the infection rate was among the unvaccinated or the vaccinated, and whether either was higher than expected or about what might be expected.

Queen Pelosi orders the Palace Guard to arrest visitors to the House side of the Capitol who don’t wear masks and refuse to leave

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Here’s the edict:

US Capitol Police officers will arrest visitors and staff members who refuse to comply with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s renewed COVID-19 mask mandate — heightening tensions with Republicans who call the mandate an unscientific power trip.

Police won’t arrest lawmakers or people on the Senate side of the Capitol, where masks are voluntary despite a resurgence of coronavirus cases linked to the Delta variant of the virus.

A bulletin for police says, “If a visitor or staff member fails to wear a mask after a request is made to do so, the visitor or staff shall be denied entry to the House Office Buildings or House-side of the U.S. Capitol. Any person who fails to either comply or leave the premises after being asked to do so would be subject to an arrest for Unlawful Entry.”

And what is the law that they are violating by refusing to wear a mask? There is no such statute. But they will be charged with “unlawful entry” under this DC law:

§ 22–3302. Unlawful entry on property.

(b) Any person who, without lawful authority, shall enter, or attempt to enter, any public building, or other property, or part of such building, or other property, against the will of the lawful occupant or of the person lawfully in charge thereof or his or her agent, or being therein or thereon, without lawful authority to remain therein or thereon shall refuse to quit the same on the demand of the lawful occupant, or of the person lawfully in charge thereof or his or her agent, shall be deemed guilty of a misdemeanor, and on conviction thereof shall be punished by a fine of not more than the amount set forth in § 22-3571.01, imprisonment for not more than 6 months, or both.

So apparently Nancy Pelosi – or whoever is “in charge” of the part of the building she’s talking about (the House) – can be ordered out as she wishes, and if that person refuses he or she can be charged with a misdemeanor and fined or even imprisoned. In other words, it’s misdemeanor trespassing, like the charge against so many of the January 6th people who entered the building peacefully that day but were tracked down later and arrested anyway.

Is Pelosi planning to hold the new offenders for many months without bail, like the January 6th accused?

Some “People’s House.” Note that the Senate isn’t doing this – so far.