A youngster at a zoo throws a peanut at a middle sized monkey, who grabs it. Happily.
A bigger monkey comes by, hits the middle monkey, and takes the peanut. Middle monkey is sad, sees a smaller monkey, and goes and beats it.
The Martian born orphan starts laughing - finally understanding other people.
(recollection of Heinlein's Stranger in a Strange Land)
We're all victims, all middle monkeys at some points in our lives. Many of us, most of us, are able to not beat up those with less power - but there's a desire to do so.
Curtis Yarvin, I think has a long, long, long essay tying Progressivism to Puritanism. If you consider that Puritanism is all about purifying Christianity from the impurities of Catholicism, things start to link up.
That idea came from a book: Albion's Seed by David Hackett Fischer. The book basically argues that four English colonies culturally map pretty strongly to four different areas of England where the colonists came from, and those four colonies had an outsized influence on American culture going forward. One of the conclusions is that modern progressivism comes from Puritanism.
Scott Alexander's review of the book I think did a little bit to rehabilitate the popular image of Puritans. It's not all dour fun-hating! There is a lot of bold inventiveness!
Hopefully David Hackett Fischer, a history professor, passes Dave's "alt-right" litmus test.
alt-right, alt-left ... who cares. Freddie is way out far reaching alt-left even to the point of being a modern-day Marxist, yet is somehow still in human form. (that was sarcasm).
These are labels are used to dehumanize people, censor them, remove their words. In today's world, Joe Rogan, a Bernie supporter gets labeled as alt-right!
If it turns out Freddie is a tankie who worships gulags, yes I will stop reading him. Of course, not every Marxist is and I’m sure you know that.
Here is a piece written by Yarvin. I don’t have to “dehumanize” him to show he’s messed up. His problem with fascism is that it won’t work in America today, not that it is a bad thing.
Expecting people not to be monarchists, literal fascists, or supporters of dictatorship before endorsing their ideas is a pretty low bar as far as purity tests go, and I’m happy to perform that test.
Do you not know the core foundation of Marxism is violent overthrow, followed by installation of ComIntern (Communist International) i.e. dictatorship ... of the entire world?
Do you not understand, every form of Marxism ever, punishes even minor dissenters with the Gulag? Solzhenitsyn went to the Gulag for reading a letter from a friend who questioned the wisdom of Jozef Stalin, "for reading a letter." This was a private letter mind you, not a published work.
Is there functionally any difference between the various forms of dictatorship, be it Monarchy, Fascism, or Marxism? Mussolini by the way had been the editor of the Socialist magazine in Italy. Mussolini wasn't of capitalist stock, his Fascist party wasn't of capitalist stock, Mussolini was a man of the Socialist side, (right/left has different meanings in Europe). Mussolini's Socialist party split from the main Socialist party over the question of Internationalism.
Look; I’m a left-libertarian. I’m very anti-Marxist in terms of my theories of economics and how to achieve change. I am very aware of how many horrible dictatorships it has produced.
At the end of the day though, most Marxists just want a classless society where everyone has their needs met. This is inherently a good thing. Again, I disagree vehemently with parts of their analysis and even more there method of achieving things, but it is a noble goal.
All fascists want an authoritarian nation state controlling every aspect of our lives, almost exclusively on racial lines, punishing the “bad people” with some combination of extermination, imprisonment, torture or banishment. These are stated goals of fascists.
Again, unless Freddie comes out as a tankie I believe he has the best of intentions. I have no reason not to think so from his writing. Yarvin on the other hand is openly sympathetic to the goals of fascism, and as such admits to being a hateful sociopath. There couldn’t be a more stark difference.
Brilliant and concise summation of the current (and lamentable!) state of affairs, Mr. deBoer. Here's to hoping the Orthodox Branch Covidians read your thoughtful and incisive missive and take your exceedingly wise words to heart!
There have always been people who worship at the alter of panic, stirring up drama and mayhem in their personal lives. Big, impactful events like this allow them to go public without shame. Plus it gives cover to people who don't foment drama in their personal lives, but who really love watching The Bachelor, to indulge in public drama and panic. I grow weary.
I would argue that the COVID dead enders have not lost altogether and still control the institutions.
The fact is that there was never any empiric rationale for NPIs since vaccines became widely available nearly a year ago.
But hysterics aligning with institutional prerogatives led to the public health governance we got from the CDC, NIH, and state and local DOHs.
The frail and incompetent institutions (along with ersatz elites) needed to *provide safety* to justify their existence and we have had a never ending show of COVID public health theater.
This has deranged many people and led to fully lost years for both children and adults.
The reason that policy has changed and things have loosened up is not because the institutions set themselves right of their own accord. It was because they were politically, and appropriately,
bullied into it.
So, while things seem to be going in the right direction, they could certainly regress with the next wave. And we now know clearly that we cannot count on basic competence from institutions even as it relates to their core missions. We have decided to make everything political, so everything is political.
Now that we have and have tested the tech for remote work and school, people who want or need to be cautious ought to be given the opportunity without resistance or hectoring. There is a small contingent for whom caution still makes sense. But everything else can just go on.
Even before the pandemic, folks at my company (software) already had some fully-remote employees and some people were talking about how to make things as "equitable" as possible for the fully-remote. It's clear that a cultural divide between those who work in the office and those who work from home is practically inevitable unless serious steps are taken to prevent it.
Unfortunately, the proposals all seem right out of Harrison Bergeron, e.g. making everybody in a meeting interact via webcam and headset, even if only 1 person out of 10 isn't right there in the room, or explicitly favoring technical discussions in e-mail or on Slack rather than around the whiteboard or watercooler. I really would like to fall back on the "you know what you're getting into when you take a job in another city/choose to continue working from home even after the pandemic is over" principle. If you're on a good team, they should make sure you're kept in the loop even if a lot of productive idea exchange and socialization happens face-to-face.
In young companies, it all ready has. But a lot of old-school managers will force their employees in for no reason, and I don't think "the market" will solve that. We don't live in a world of perfect competition
One thing I was grateful for at the start of the pandemic is that I had been full-time remote for years, so my sense of normalcy wasn't as impacted by COVID as some of my friends, who indeed did suffer. And over the past two years I've seen that some people really, really like/need the office. It would be great if employers recognized that and went to a hybrid model where you could work where you want.
I’m one who needs the office. Working from home for a year was deeply destructive to my mental health. There are six people in our office and only me and one other seem to have any interest in being back in the office at all on any kind of regular basis. I’m the only one I know of in my organization of around 50 who went back to the office immediately upon being allowed and has no interest in returning to WFH except on a rare basis. I appreciate how much the flexibility and lack of a commute has helped people, and know many of my circumstances are rare - I usually walk to work but my drive is less than 10 minutes, for example. But it still sucks, always working alone, communicating exclusively over a badly-organized mix of Teams and Zoom and email, barely able to pay attention to meetings, unable to stick my head into an office to quickly answer a question. Intellectually I know a hybrid model would be great for people with families and/or long commutes, cut down on traffic and exhaust fumes, remove some of the office’s dumb arbitrary barriers to productivity. Emotionally I’m skirting the edges of wondering if I can even stay in my field long-term if it looks like I’m going to be struggling to focus in Zoom meetings for the rest of my career.
Yeah I can see remote work being a huge boon if you have kids and now don't have to commute. Or if you live in a great neighborhood where all your needs for socializing are met. But I think many do not fall into those categories.
OTOH, I think the true highest risk group, after vaccination, represents a tiny proportion of the population. There are many who believe they are unsafe because they are deranged or don't understand statistics. There are also many who prefer to have things as they are during COVID and would not like to ever go back to the classroom or workplace again.
So, I while I am generally supportive it will be necessary to scrutinize claims to some degree.
If people who don't really need to be that cautious still indulge in it I frankly don't care as long as life can be available to the rest of us. That's their right.
Teacher/school staffing is certainly a problem. Our district schools are open but they publicized and expanded the preexisting online only public school option last year. I def think teachers need to think of themselves as essential public servants on par with police and firefighters. If that's a problem, I guess they can look for an online teaching job.
Speaking of which, I'm assuming that the last sentence of paragraph 4 should read "...one that we failed if we did *NOT* exist in a permanent state of anxiety and read"? (Sorry if someone already mentioned this—don't mean to nitpick, just trying to be helpful)
Pretty much agree with you all the way here, Freddie, except that I think the expansions of tech/surveillance power that are being justified by both the realities of COVID and the extremes of the COVID mentality are far from trivial...even though - as you say about 9/11 - that's where we were headed anyway.
I have friends moving out of NYS because of covid hysteria, and other friends thinking about it.
The tide is turning, I see more and more liberals getting sick of it. But there is a set of people that are clinging to COVID theater like someone who is drowning, and many of those people just happen to be people who enjoy the authority that comes with executing COVID regulations. I'm not just talking about public health bureaucrats, but even my church where people are dying to keep the mask mandate going after it was declared unconstitutional.
'We're not back to normal yet. Put your mask over your nose,' I screamed at the Uber Eats delivery guy from the window as he placed food on my doorstep.
A tangent to your article, but your writing always pops out to me with sentences like "The purpose of these vaccines is to allow us to go about the work of being human beings.".... This sentiment is often too rare on the left** who can be too singularly obsessed with being the bomb throwers, the destroyers. "The world is shit, we destroy it before we can fix it." But like that great character Strelnikov in Dr Zhivago, they are the last people I would ask to create anything I would want to live in.
** I am Gen-X and it was alive and well back in the 80s/90s too when I was in university.
"so many are resigned to the idea that the system cannot be reformed from inside. But they are also not so deluded as to think that armed revolution could possibly succeed."
This describes me to a T but rather than allowing myself to sink into the pathologies you've described, I've disengaged from electoral politics (why follow if change isn't possible and it only makes me angry) and invested in preparing a world that maybe my children's children can change. I spend my time and effort building a union at my workplace and building solidarity and good will with other unions in my area. I am working towards a project that I will never see come to fruition, and that's ok.
I engage with the goal of making things a tiny bit better within the existing system (or at least, preventing it from getting worse). So I find myself writing a check to the ex-CIA moderate Democrat who flipped my district, and despondently voting for whatever awful candidate won the presidential primary.
So even though I’m a socialist, my political behavior is often indistinguishable from a normie Democrat because I don’t believe radical change will ever happen. It’s another form of giving up, I guess, but still clinging to the idea that something could make a small difference somewhere.
I still show up and vote for basically every election but I've disengaged from the daily spectacle of electoral politics. Yea, sure, the ex-CIA (which I don't think is a thing, nobody is "ex" CIA) Democrat is marginally better than the Republican running but I don't emotionally invest in voting. Its literally like 0.1% of my political work in a given year.
Strong unions though I do genuinely believe can change the world. Strong unions can force Democrats to be better in ways that actually matter. Strong unions actually change the political landscape. So that's where my efforts are going.
Here in California, the strongest union is the prison guards ... they actually change the political landscape. But probably not in a good way; what's good for the prison guards probably isn't good for the people overall.
Because the anti-union sentiment seems to be anti union for everyone except cops and prison guards, so its not surprising that the prison guards are the strongest around. A more robust labor movement in other sectors would offer much needed balance to that influence. That isn't a reason to abandon labor organizing but rather to redouble our efforts.
If you seriously believe that prison guard and police unions have more political power and influence than teacher's unions in America, I invite you to buy one of the many bridges I have on offer.
I would really like for you to pick any major city in the US and compare and contrast the educational requirements to get hired and the pay, both starting and over time, for teachers versus cops there and come back and tell me who has more political power.
Radical Change ... we could radically change the old system into a new system ... then what? Things will be broken for a while, we'll tune this, revamp that ... at the end of the day, we'll still have a "system". Some people will work well with the new system and others will not. The thing is, its still the same ol' people doing the same ol' things; but today they're under a new banner—new and improved. The same ol' people who couldn't work in the old system still won't work in the new system, the same ol' politicians are in the same ol' offices, but today they're wearing a different colored tie.
... how on Earth is trade-unionism supposed to constitute "giving up"? Organizing your own workplace is the absolute best thing you can do to build worker power in the long run, far more than voting in an election where the labor movement has no representative.
I meant giving up in the sense of letting go of the need to see significant change in my own lifetime. It might happen, it might not, but I know the work I need to be doing and that is enough for me.
The debate seems to lie at the center of the left/right debate.
You have some guy who is born healthy, tall, good looking, personable, conscientious with an IQ of 145 they are going to do very well. All of those traits being almost entirely genetic.
Then you have someone else who is born sickly, short, ugly, disagreeable, lazy and stupid. Again, all traits that are almost entirely genetic.
How much does one owe the other?
The same holds true with COVID. How much should the smart and healthy inconvenience themselves to save the stupid and sickly?
I don't think anyone claims it's almost all genetic. Khan said IQ is >50% (edited) heritable, IIRC. Not sure about about rest, but I imagine it's similar (except height)
Are you sure about that? The consensus opinion for almost all human characteristics is that they are a mix of both nature and nurture. Anybody who believes that IQ, or height, is dependent solely on genetics or environment is out of the mainstream.
Thankfully the omicron wave seems to be receding fast, but at its peak thousands of people were dying from COVID-19 every day. Transmission rates, hospitalizations, and deaths were higher than any any previous point.
I agree that the online liberal scolds can be exhausting, but come on. Increased vigilance seems to have been warranted over the last couple of months.
Yes, but the absolute number of deaths was incredibly high because of the higher rate of transmission.
[Edit] From PBS on Jan. 28:
"Omicron, the highly contagious coronavirus variant sweeping across the country, is driving the daily American death toll higher than during last fall’s delta wave, with deaths likely to keep rising for days or even weeks.
"The seven-day rolling average for daily new COVID-19 deaths in the U.S. has been climbing since mid-November, reaching 2,267 on Thursday and surpassing a September peak of 2,100 when delta was the dominant variant.
"Now omicron is estimated to account for nearly all the virus circulating in the nation. And even though it causes less severe disease for most people, the fact that it is more transmissible means more people are falling ill and dying."
This is the issue. My state, Washington, has had more restrictions than nearly everywhere in the US. We’re highly vaxxed, mandatory masks, my kids are tested in school 3x a week. Right now we have the 2nd highest case rate in the country and our hospitals are full. My whole vaxxed family had Covid this month. 33% of the students at my children’s school have tested positive since January 1. Exactly what is it that you think we should be doing?
Thank you for this comment. We are in WA as well and had the exact same experience. I read your post and wondered if maybe I had written it.
For us, both adults and our 12 year old daughter got Covid. Newly vaccinated 8yo and unvaccinated 4 year old never caught it. The school rules have been awful the daughter with Covid only missed 3 days of school. The daughter without it had to be out 15 days THEN get a negative test before she could return.
I just don’t know when masks will ever go away in our district. I finally see some national news articles about ending masking in schools, but they always frame it as safety vs mental health. No articles every really acknowledge that masks AS ACTUALLY WORN BY KIDS just don’t do that much.
For education, meet the teachers unions demands. More testing, better masks, better ventilation, better pay for substitute teachers. And short term remote learning if necessary. Don't fuel a narrative that the teachers are being unreasonable when it's obviously just another in a long history of attacking teachers unions.
Empower other workers to make their own demands. Service workers have to go along with reopening because they need food to live. They don't even get sick leave.
What are those? To work from home for ever? How did the teachers unions become arbiters of what is appropriate public health policy?
The teachers unions are not being reasonable.
They are cancerous and what they did during the pandemic was a disgrace, matched only by the incompetence and, at times, malevolence of our public health elite.
My kids’ school has a brand new ventilation system. Masks are required. They test every child 3x a week. They have 3ft mandatory distancing in the classrooms and 6ft outside of it. They require quarantines for close contacts. 33% positive just this month.
Daily deaths are not overall deaths, though. According to this, the CDC is reporting that the absolute number of deaths is LOWER than in the Delta wave.
I think the answer is still the same as it ever was: it’s very unlikely you’re going to get seriously ill from COVID but vaccination will reduce that chance even further. And the vast majority of adults are already vaccinated. Meanwhile, Omicron is going to push us into a large number of people getting infected or reinfected (especially children, who are at ultra low risk), leading to a very large population of people with natural or hybrid immunity — ie, the durable kinds.
Yes, there will be some additional deaths. There will be forever. That isn’t going away. But overall this is all very good news.
Additional deaths that could be prevented by common sense precautions, advocating for which gets you accused of being a covid panicker who wants there to be a pandemic
There's *plenty* of empiric rationale for, for instance, avoiding risky behaviors like going to bars and restaurants and otherwise wearing masks in public.
Even if you think temporary remote learning is the worst thing ever (never heard this about snow days), increased testing, quality masks, better ventilation all have empiric rationale. The cost is using federal funds on that instead of increased overtime for cops or whatever other dumb shit the cities are doing with them now.
Tell me about your "common sense precautions" that get deaths to zero.
Sure, we could all do more. Let's seal ourselves in our houses and have food delivered by people in hazmat suits. Don't you want to reduce additional deaths???
Of course you do. But you also want to go grocery shopping. So you say, but I go grocery shopping in a mask! Fine. That's YOUR risk assessment. That's YOUR decision about where to draw the line between additional protection and getting on with your life. But somewhere, you do draw a line. Somewhere, you do say, "Well, I COULD do more. But I don't want to."
Other people draw that line somewhere else, and that allows you to feel superior. That's fine -- but at some point the rest of us have to stop caring about that little drama. Because, in your heart, you know the additional gains are trivial. Vaccination was the big winner, and we did it! And the holdouts are overwhelmingly hurting themselves. So... we're gonna get on with our lives.
Ah yes, the age old “common sense”. The statement most likely to precede a suggested course of action that is rooted in gut feeling rather than empiricism or logic. What would your additional precautions be, what data shows their efficacy, and what trade offs do they have? That’s what I want to hear.
"Researchers at the CDC still warn that the amount of deaths being caused by the virus is still worrisome, and that Americans should get vaccinated and take other basic precautions."
I am happy to wear a mask anywhere people ask me to. I don't want people to feel scared. But you know... especially with Omicron, I think it's largely disease security theater. I was in Los Angeles not too long ago and went to get my hair cut because I was vaccinated and therefore not overly worried. Everyone was wearing masks everywhere -- even outside, where the risk is absurdly low. We were supposed to wear masks in the barber shop, too -- until we sat down in the chair, at which point we could remove them. (So, obviously, very serious business, that mask-wearing.)
I took my mask off and sat down in the chair. And the barber, a young man, started talking, and it came out that he was not vaccinated. He was very scared of Covid, but he just couldn't make himself go get the shot. Before we go down a rabbit hole, based on a lot of other clues, I feel sure this guy was not a right-winger. He just... didn't want to get vaccinated.
Well... what more can I do for that guy? Not get a haircut? Then I'm just denying him a chance to make a living. And sure -- we're both taking a risk when I take my mask off. But... it's not a very BIG risk. This isn't the Black Death. It's bad for some people (and the unusually vulnerable should, by all means, take precautions), but mostly it's quite survivable, and there are vaccines available that mean the vast majority of us will be fine, even if we get it. If someone chooses not to get the vaccine, and/or wants to keep their business open... why should I bring my life to a halt to avert some very tiny risk to them?
At some point, we have to accept that at low risk levels, different people will make different decisions. Literally everyone alive is taking some risks of transmitting Covid -- and yet we like to lord OUR precautions over the person taking one precaution less. That is, I think, what Freddie is getting at.
As I've said, I haven't been in a permanent state of hysteria since 2020. I got vaccinated and resumed normal life until a couple of months ago, when half the people I know got sick all at once and local cases reached their highest point ever. I plan to resume normal life again once this wave subsides.
In real life, I don't hector anyone or disparage anyone else's choices (short of trying to convince my brother to get vaccinated, which he has so far refused).
I guess when I'm trying to push back against is the idea that the *only* reasons anyone might be more careful than "not at all" is because of hysteria, or virtue signalling, or to get a gold star from teacher, or because they have a hard-on for telling people what to do. There is still an ongoing pandemic. People are getting still sick and dying. At times, there are *practical reasons* to do things like wearing masks and postponing birthday parties.
I think at the very minimum, indoor mask mandates are wise. If there were more political will, restrictions on indoor dining would probably be smart as well, but that would require more government stimulus and probably isn't going to happen.
So "Wear a mask, stick to take-out, and try to avoid crowds for a while" doesn't seem like a huge ask during acute surges in cases.
We've already nearly killed our restaurants. I don't think it would have been wise to throttle them even harder . . to what end? In a futile effort to stop the spread of an unstoppable variant that mostly only hurts people who refused to get vaccinated?
People have imagined masks were more effective than they really were (or were even claimed to be) from the beginning, because it was something visible they could grab onto. Against omicron, we know they're essentially useless unless they're N95s...which most people don't have access to (or won't until it's too late). So honestly, what's the point? Ratchet up the national culture war another few notches so that we save some tiny number of lives on the margin, in a country of 320 million?
N95's are widely available now. They are very effective when worn correctly, which is not that hard to do. The gubmint should be providing these free in large quantities, and wearing instructions should be all over all media.
It's a neverending source of shock to me how many people ostensibly on my side want to boost health insurance profits. This is often supported with "well, smokers have to pay more" which, cool, glad to see you already hate people in lower socio-economic brackets (as smoking correlates cleanly with education and income).
The well is deep for how far insurance companies are going to be able to go on this one. Obviously fat people should have to pay more for all healthcare. So should drinkers. Gay men with HIV are engaging in risky behavior so why not help out Blue Cross Blue Shield here? You have an unexpected pregnancy due to unprotected sex? Why should that cost a United Healthcare exec? It was your choice! And have you seen the new Mercedes E class?
If people think that health insurance and hospitals - two of the most voracious money hungry industries we have - are going to be content not digging out more profit they're nuts. The fact that this would disproportionately harm Blacks is completely ignored, because I guess putting a Black woman on the Supreme Court makes up for denying them Healthcare.
Those people falling ill and dying are nearly all unvaccinated adults. There is little the rest of us can do to protect them against Omicron. Huge surges occurred in areas with mask mandates. Given that they could easily protect themselves with a free vaccine, I do not accept the "need" for major restrictions. We haven't been able to attend a function at my kids' schools in 2 years. They are told not to talk to each other at lunch. I have to teach wearing a mask at my university despite mandated boosters, testing, and very low COVID rates. Job candidates are not allowed to interview in person. Yet we can go to a bar or restaurant unmasked.
Wear masks and avoid crowds! It's not rocket science!
Speaking for myself, after I got vaccinated last spring the pandemic essentially ended for me. I ate at restaurants, went bar hopping, attended house parties and baseball games and concerts, you name it. I ran errands without a mask. When omicron hit, I mostly stopped doing all of that. (Big exception: My wife and I took a pre-planned trip to the Virgin Islands for New Year's — yeah, I'm a hypocrite.)
Now that the positivity rates where I live are dipping back below 10%, I plan to start doing all of those things again.
My kid had COVID and was totally asymptomatic. It was diagnosed on screening.
My wife recalls having a mild headache a week before, her only symptom, and was positive too.
It's extraordinarily infectious. Unless you are eliminating social contact completely and wearing a fit N95 at all times indoors in public and with other people your NPI is unlikely to have anything more than a marginal effect. And even then - with Omicron it is possible there is no effect at all.
The only NPI that seems to work is police enforced lockdowns.
COVID theater seeks to make infection a morality play, which it is not. It seeks to give us an illusion of control, which we do not have.
I saw some speculation about Omicron. Not exactly comforting, but even without lab leaks I think natural selection would probably be sufficient to produce new variants.
I think "no public health measures ever again" versus "permanent restrictions" is a false dichotomy.
We just got a bunch of snow in the northeast, and most towns issued a temporary street parking ban. The bans will be lifted when the snow is gone. More bans will be issued when it snows more. Everyone understands this, and no one crows about how it's a slippery slope to permanent parking bans.
Bookings at NYC restaurants are down over 60% compared to pre-pandemic levels. I'm guessing the rest of the industry is in a similar position. You are of course free to take whatever precautions you feel are necessary but I think that the effect of on again/off again lockdowns in perpetuity is going to wreak havoc on society at large.
Vegas only up 1%? That's shocking to me, but it might be because tourist restaurants have fallen white locals ones have increased. Then again, I can't recall the last time I made a reservation at any place I've eaten.
You didn't like my other link, so here are some more:
“We now have evidence from a randomized, controlled trial that mask promotion increases the use of face coverings and prevents the spread of COVID-19,” said Stephen Luby, MD, professor of medicine at Stanford. “This is the gold standard for evaluating public health interventions. Importantly, this approach was designed be scalable in lower- and middle-income countries struggling to get or distribute vaccines against the virus.”
This systematic review and meta-analysis suggests that several personal protective and social measures, including handwashing, mask wearing, and physical distancing are associated with reductions in the incidence covid-19. https://www.bmj.com/content/375/bmj-2021-068302
In fairness, other studies and analyses have showed the opposite! We can both cherry-pick research to meet our conclusions.
Terrific article, especially the comparison with 9/11, when fear hijacked so many people’s brains and caused them to be senselessly cruel to each other. Here’s a story—see if it sounds familiar:
Shortly after 9/11, I flew home with my son, who was a very active toddler at the time. He weighed about 30 pounds, and his car seat (required by the airline) was an additional 30 pounds. We finally got to the gate, where I set down the heavy seat with relief. I unstrapped my son and started to follow him around as he raced around the gate area.
A gate agent started screaming (literally screaming) at me. How could I leave that car seat just sitting there?! It could be full of explosives! I pointed out that it had been through security, and had been x-rayed by the TSA, but to no avail. The gate agent told me that I could 1. Tie down my son in the seat, 2. Follow my son but carry the seat with me at all times, or 3. Leave the seat with a trusted person. When I protested that I was on my own, a kind lady nearby offered to watch the seat.
“You don’t know her!” yelled the gate agent. “She could be a terrorist!” The kind lady rolled her eyes, and then in a bright voice said to me, “Hey! It’s me! Your old friend from high school! I haven’t seen you in so long! Let me watch the seat for you, FRIEND!” I thanked her and started to head off after my son, who had been squirming in my arms during this conversation. The gate agent was enraged. She actually said, “Well, if the seat blows up, it will be your fault.”
The moral of the story, then and now, is that we cooler heads need to start speaking up when we hear people express these insane, outsized fears. The car seat did not carry explosives. My toddler and I were not terrorists. And if you’ve been vaccinated, Covid won’t hurt you. Heck, my parents’ octogenarian friends all have Covid, including a couple of very frail folks. Their symptoms? A sore throat and runny nose.
That story is bananas, and I totally remember that era. Thank god for eye-rolling kind people who help us all to stay minimally sane.
Here in Italy, where the peak has passed and hospitals are doing absolutely fine, there's a blanket outdoor mask mandate and you literally can go *almost nowhere* without showing your vax pass. In pharmacies, starting tomorrow, you can enter without one but then are only permitted to purchase *certain essential items* while the vaccinated (*within the past 6 months* because they've decided that the shots "expire" after that) can buy whatever they want. And everyone is just... going along with it. Utterly baffling.
Yikes! I’m in Switzerland, where thankfully we have never been required to wear masks outdoors. But I just noticed that my brand-spanking-new Covid Zertifikat, hard-won with a booster and all the attendant side-effects last week, is, like Italy’s only good for six months. What happens in six months?! Can I not go anywhere?! So frustrating!
I'd think Switzerland (like Denmark & other more functioning democracies) will have sensibly retired the whole thing by then? Until very recently they were making noises about a 4th shot here (we don't do "sensible" much), but it seems like the EMA's "uh, we don't know if that's such a hot idea" announcement thankfully put a chill on that for now.
Wait seriously? The EU country I live in won't even offer a fourth shot yet, and I got my booster almost four months ago. I guess Italy's out of my plans for this year!
I suppose there's no connection between "hospitals are doing absolutely fine" and "you literally can go *almost nowhere* without showing your vax pass".
There's *absolutely* a connection to people being vaccinated. There's absolutely *no* connection to demanding proof of that at every public doorway in the country. We were at 75ish% adults (over 12) vaccinated when the pass was put into effect -- people over 60, 70, 80 & 90 were already at 85%, 89%, 92% & 95%. Now we're at almost 90% (12+). What magic effect do you imagine policing people up to 10 times a day is having?
At this point, 'Woke hysteria' is definitely a rightist thing.
I'm the absence of any mass politics, a lot of the "the left" is just people with super low conscientiousness.
A youngster at a zoo throws a peanut at a middle sized monkey, who grabs it. Happily.
A bigger monkey comes by, hits the middle monkey, and takes the peanut. Middle monkey is sad, sees a smaller monkey, and goes and beats it.
The Martian born orphan starts laughing - finally understanding other people.
(recollection of Heinlein's Stranger in a Strange Land)
We're all victims, all middle monkeys at some points in our lives. Many of us, most of us, are able to not beat up those with less power - but there's a desire to do so.
Curtis Yarvin, I think has a long, long, long essay tying Progressivism to Puritanism. If you consider that Puritanism is all about purifying Christianity from the impurities of Catholicism, things start to link up.
Not sure why it double posted so I deleted.
Curtis Yarvin is a literal monarchist and wants us to have a dictatorship. He started the neoreactionary movement.
Him and all of his fascist alt right buddies can fuck off.
He may have a point here, but not even a remotely reliable source to quote from.
That idea came from a book: Albion's Seed by David Hackett Fischer. The book basically argues that four English colonies culturally map pretty strongly to four different areas of England where the colonists came from, and those four colonies had an outsized influence on American culture going forward. One of the conclusions is that modern progressivism comes from Puritanism.
Scott Alexander's review of the book I think did a little bit to rehabilitate the popular image of Puritans. It's not all dour fun-hating! There is a lot of bold inventiveness!
Hopefully David Hackett Fischer, a history professor, passes Dave's "alt-right" litmus test.
Then quote the history professor. Not the guy who’s openly pushing for a dictatorship.
And you read Freddie, backer of a dictatorship of the proletariat?
alt-right, alt-left ... who cares. Freddie is way out far reaching alt-left even to the point of being a modern-day Marxist, yet is somehow still in human form. (that was sarcasm).
These are labels are used to dehumanize people, censor them, remove their words. In today's world, Joe Rogan, a Bernie supporter gets labeled as alt-right!
If it turns out Freddie is a tankie who worships gulags, yes I will stop reading him. Of course, not every Marxist is and I’m sure you know that.
Here is a piece written by Yarvin. I don’t have to “dehumanize” him to show he’s messed up. His problem with fascism is that it won’t work in America today, not that it is a bad thing.
https://graymirror.substack.com/p/monarchism-and-fascism-today
Expecting people not to be monarchists, literal fascists, or supporters of dictatorship before endorsing their ideas is a pretty low bar as far as purity tests go, and I’m happy to perform that test.
Do you not know the core foundation of Marxism is violent overthrow, followed by installation of ComIntern (Communist International) i.e. dictatorship ... of the entire world?
Do you not understand, every form of Marxism ever, punishes even minor dissenters with the Gulag? Solzhenitsyn went to the Gulag for reading a letter from a friend who questioned the wisdom of Jozef Stalin, "for reading a letter." This was a private letter mind you, not a published work.
Is there functionally any difference between the various forms of dictatorship, be it Monarchy, Fascism, or Marxism? Mussolini by the way had been the editor of the Socialist magazine in Italy. Mussolini wasn't of capitalist stock, his Fascist party wasn't of capitalist stock, Mussolini was a man of the Socialist side, (right/left has different meanings in Europe). Mussolini's Socialist party split from the main Socialist party over the question of Internationalism.
Look; I’m a left-libertarian. I’m very anti-Marxist in terms of my theories of economics and how to achieve change. I am very aware of how many horrible dictatorships it has produced.
At the end of the day though, most Marxists just want a classless society where everyone has their needs met. This is inherently a good thing. Again, I disagree vehemently with parts of their analysis and even more there method of achieving things, but it is a noble goal.
All fascists want an authoritarian nation state controlling every aspect of our lives, almost exclusively on racial lines, punishing the “bad people” with some combination of extermination, imprisonment, torture or banishment. These are stated goals of fascists.
Again, unless Freddie comes out as a tankie I believe he has the best of intentions. I have no reason not to think so from his writing. Yarvin on the other hand is openly sympathetic to the goals of fascism, and as such admits to being a hateful sociopath. There couldn’t be a more stark difference.
> Yarvin, I think has a long, long, long essay
yes
Brilliant and concise summation of the current (and lamentable!) state of affairs, Mr. deBoer. Here's to hoping the Orthodox Branch Covidians read your thoughtful and incisive missive and take your exceedingly wise words to heart!
There have always been people who worship at the alter of panic, stirring up drama and mayhem in their personal lives. Big, impactful events like this allow them to go public without shame. Plus it gives cover to people who don't foment drama in their personal lives, but who really love watching The Bachelor, to indulge in public drama and panic. I grow weary.
Great piece, once again.
I would argue that the COVID dead enders have not lost altogether and still control the institutions.
The fact is that there was never any empiric rationale for NPIs since vaccines became widely available nearly a year ago.
But hysterics aligning with institutional prerogatives led to the public health governance we got from the CDC, NIH, and state and local DOHs.
The frail and incompetent institutions (along with ersatz elites) needed to *provide safety* to justify their existence and we have had a never ending show of COVID public health theater.
This has deranged many people and led to fully lost years for both children and adults.
The reason that policy has changed and things have loosened up is not because the institutions set themselves right of their own accord. It was because they were politically, and appropriately,
bullied into it.
So, while things seem to be going in the right direction, they could certainly regress with the next wave. And we now know clearly that we cannot count on basic competence from institutions even as it relates to their core missions. We have decided to make everything political, so everything is political.
Now that we have and have tested the tech for remote work and school, people who want or need to be cautious ought to be given the opportunity without resistance or hectoring. There is a small contingent for whom caution still makes sense. But everything else can just go on.
There's no reason to ever return to offices.
Edit: I mean FORCED TO. It's fine to let the employees in if they want.
Bad workplaces are gonna bad workplace. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
It certainly can, but again, bad workplaces. I've been fully remote for years and I've never felt like my career has suffered.
link?
Even before the pandemic, folks at my company (software) already had some fully-remote employees and some people were talking about how to make things as "equitable" as possible for the fully-remote. It's clear that a cultural divide between those who work in the office and those who work from home is practically inevitable unless serious steps are taken to prevent it.
Unfortunately, the proposals all seem right out of Harrison Bergeron, e.g. making everybody in a meeting interact via webcam and headset, even if only 1 person out of 10 isn't right there in the room, or explicitly favoring technical discussions in e-mail or on Slack rather than around the whiteboard or watercooler. I really would like to fall back on the "you know what you're getting into when you take a job in another city/choose to continue working from home even after the pandemic is over" principle. If you're on a good team, they should make sure you're kept in the loop even if a lot of productive idea exchange and socialization happens face-to-face.
Schools?
I mean white collar office jobs.
Sure. Do you think the market will solve that? Reduced costs for businesses and employ preferences will drive change?
In young companies, it all ready has. But a lot of old-school managers will force their employees in for no reason, and I don't think "the market" will solve that. We don't live in a world of perfect competition
One thing I was grateful for at the start of the pandemic is that I had been full-time remote for years, so my sense of normalcy wasn't as impacted by COVID as some of my friends, who indeed did suffer. And over the past two years I've seen that some people really, really like/need the office. It would be great if employers recognized that and went to a hybrid model where you could work where you want.
I’m one who needs the office. Working from home for a year was deeply destructive to my mental health. There are six people in our office and only me and one other seem to have any interest in being back in the office at all on any kind of regular basis. I’m the only one I know of in my organization of around 50 who went back to the office immediately upon being allowed and has no interest in returning to WFH except on a rare basis. I appreciate how much the flexibility and lack of a commute has helped people, and know many of my circumstances are rare - I usually walk to work but my drive is less than 10 minutes, for example. But it still sucks, always working alone, communicating exclusively over a badly-organized mix of Teams and Zoom and email, barely able to pay attention to meetings, unable to stick my head into an office to quickly answer a question. Intellectually I know a hybrid model would be great for people with families and/or long commutes, cut down on traffic and exhaust fumes, remove some of the office’s dumb arbitrary barriers to productivity. Emotionally I’m skirting the edges of wondering if I can even stay in my field long-term if it looks like I’m going to be struggling to focus in Zoom meetings for the rest of my career.
I think a fair number of people are getting sick of staring at the same four walls.
Yeah I can see remote work being a huge boon if you have kids and now don't have to commute. Or if you live in a great neighborhood where all your needs for socializing are met. But I think many do not fall into those categories.
I got a dog. I'm never going back to the office.
Don’t wanna brag, but I have 28 total walls.
Damn. I'd heard you were doing well, but I didn't know you were doing THAT well
I ambivalent about this.
To some degree I agree with you.
OTOH, I think the true highest risk group, after vaccination, represents a tiny proportion of the population. There are many who believe they are unsafe because they are deranged or don't understand statistics. There are also many who prefer to have things as they are during COVID and would not like to ever go back to the classroom or workplace again.
So, I while I am generally supportive it will be necessary to scrutinize claims to some degree.
If people who don't really need to be that cautious still indulge in it I frankly don't care as long as life can be available to the rest of us. That's their right.
I think there are some externalities though. If teachers don't come back to work, etc.
Teacher/school staffing is certainly a problem. Our district schools are open but they publicized and expanded the preexisting online only public school option last year. I def think teachers need to think of themselves as essential public servants on par with police and firefighters. If that's a problem, I guess they can look for an online teaching job.
Totally agree - one of the most disappointing aspects of the pandemic was teachers not thinking of themselves in those terms.
"The fact is that there was never any empiric rationale for NPIs since vaccines became widely available nearly a year ago."
The rational was to protect the stupid/paranoid who refused to be vaccinated.
Copy editor hopefully starts next week 😤
Who's the lucky winner? Reveal in the next AMA?
thakn god
Speaking of which, I'm assuming that the last sentence of paragraph 4 should read "...one that we failed if we did *NOT* exist in a permanent state of anxiety and read"? (Sorry if someone already mentioned this—don't mean to nitpick, just trying to be helpful)
I love how this blog and Slow Boring analyzed a similar problem in their own way today. Great stuff from both.
Pretty much agree with you all the way here, Freddie, except that I think the expansions of tech/surveillance power that are being justified by both the realities of COVID and the extremes of the COVID mentality are far from trivial...even though - as you say about 9/11 - that's where we were headed anyway.
I have friends moving out of NYS because of covid hysteria, and other friends thinking about it.
The tide is turning, I see more and more liberals getting sick of it. But there is a set of people that are clinging to COVID theater like someone who is drowning, and many of those people just happen to be people who enjoy the authority that comes with executing COVID regulations. I'm not just talking about public health bureaucrats, but even my church where people are dying to keep the mask mandate going after it was declared unconstitutional.
'We're not back to normal yet. Put your mask over your nose,' I screamed at the Uber Eats delivery guy from the window as he placed food on my doorstep.
> Was not wearing N95 mask in car. No tip.
A tangent to your article, but your writing always pops out to me with sentences like "The purpose of these vaccines is to allow us to go about the work of being human beings.".... This sentiment is often too rare on the left** who can be too singularly obsessed with being the bomb throwers, the destroyers. "The world is shit, we destroy it before we can fix it." But like that great character Strelnikov in Dr Zhivago, they are the last people I would ask to create anything I would want to live in.
** I am Gen-X and it was alive and well back in the 80s/90s too when I was in university.
Great piece. And I am glad you have found a copy editor.
"so many are resigned to the idea that the system cannot be reformed from inside. But they are also not so deluded as to think that armed revolution could possibly succeed."
This describes me to a T but rather than allowing myself to sink into the pathologies you've described, I've disengaged from electoral politics (why follow if change isn't possible and it only makes me angry) and invested in preparing a world that maybe my children's children can change. I spend my time and effort building a union at my workplace and building solidarity and good will with other unions in my area. I am working towards a project that I will never see come to fruition, and that's ok.
I engage with the goal of making things a tiny bit better within the existing system (or at least, preventing it from getting worse). So I find myself writing a check to the ex-CIA moderate Democrat who flipped my district, and despondently voting for whatever awful candidate won the presidential primary.
So even though I’m a socialist, my political behavior is often indistinguishable from a normie Democrat because I don’t believe radical change will ever happen. It’s another form of giving up, I guess, but still clinging to the idea that something could make a small difference somewhere.
I still show up and vote for basically every election but I've disengaged from the daily spectacle of electoral politics. Yea, sure, the ex-CIA (which I don't think is a thing, nobody is "ex" CIA) Democrat is marginally better than the Republican running but I don't emotionally invest in voting. Its literally like 0.1% of my political work in a given year.
Strong unions though I do genuinely believe can change the world. Strong unions can force Democrats to be better in ways that actually matter. Strong unions actually change the political landscape. So that's where my efforts are going.
Here in California, the strongest union is the prison guards ... they actually change the political landscape. But probably not in a good way; what's good for the prison guards probably isn't good for the people overall.
Because the anti-union sentiment seems to be anti union for everyone except cops and prison guards, so its not surprising that the prison guards are the strongest around. A more robust labor movement in other sectors would offer much needed balance to that influence. That isn't a reason to abandon labor organizing but rather to redouble our efforts.
If you seriously believe that prison guard and police unions have more political power and influence than teacher's unions in America, I invite you to buy one of the many bridges I have on offer.
I would really like for you to pick any major city in the US and compare and contrast the educational requirements to get hired and the pay, both starting and over time, for teachers versus cops there and come back and tell me who has more political power.
Radical Change ... we could radically change the old system into a new system ... then what? Things will be broken for a while, we'll tune this, revamp that ... at the end of the day, we'll still have a "system". Some people will work well with the new system and others will not. The thing is, its still the same ol' people doing the same ol' things; but today they're under a new banner—new and improved. The same ol' people who couldn't work in the old system still won't work in the new system, the same ol' politicians are in the same ol' offices, but today they're wearing a different colored tie.
Rubbish. I like capitalism and liberal democracy way more than my ancestors liked feudalism and ghettoization.
... how on Earth is trade-unionism supposed to constitute "giving up"? Organizing your own workplace is the absolute best thing you can do to build worker power in the long run, far more than voting in an election where the labor movement has no representative.
I meant giving up in the sense of letting go of the need to see significant change in my own lifetime. It might happen, it might not, but I know the work I need to be doing and that is enough for me.
The debate seems to lie at the center of the left/right debate.
You have some guy who is born healthy, tall, good looking, personable, conscientious with an IQ of 145 they are going to do very well. All of those traits being almost entirely genetic.
Then you have someone else who is born sickly, short, ugly, disagreeable, lazy and stupid. Again, all traits that are almost entirely genetic.
How much does one owe the other?
The same holds true with COVID. How much should the smart and healthy inconvenience themselves to save the stupid and sickly?
The debate is the same as it always is.
I don't think anyone claims it's almost all genetic. Khan said IQ is >50% (edited) heritable, IIRC. Not sure about about rest, but I imagine it's similar (except height)
Freddie does. It’s all similarly heritable to height.
Are you sure about that? The consensus opinion for almost all human characteristics is that they are a mix of both nature and nurture. Anybody who believes that IQ, or height, is dependent solely on genetics or environment is out of the mainstream.
I didn’t say solely did I?
I guess I'm not sure what "Freddie does" means in the context of your post.
He wrote a book about it. You should check it out.
Thankfully the omicron wave seems to be receding fast, but at its peak thousands of people were dying from COVID-19 every day. Transmission rates, hospitalizations, and deaths were higher than any any previous point.
I agree that the online liberal scolds can be exhausting, but come on. Increased vigilance seems to have been warranted over the last couple of months.
The RATE of deaths per infection was much lower than Delta.
Yes, but the absolute number of deaths was incredibly high because of the higher rate of transmission.
[Edit] From PBS on Jan. 28:
"Omicron, the highly contagious coronavirus variant sweeping across the country, is driving the daily American death toll higher than during last fall’s delta wave, with deaths likely to keep rising for days or even weeks.
"The seven-day rolling average for daily new COVID-19 deaths in the U.S. has been climbing since mid-November, reaching 2,267 on Thursday and surpassing a September peak of 2,100 when delta was the dominant variant.
"Now omicron is estimated to account for nearly all the virus circulating in the nation. And even though it causes less severe disease for most people, the fact that it is more transmissible means more people are falling ill and dying."
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/health/omicron-has-caused-higher-increase-in-u-s-daily-death-count-than-delta-variant
Unsurprisingly, Freddie has no response to this.
There are hundreds of comments and I'm at the gym. Go ahead: what, specifically, do you want to DO?
This is the issue. My state, Washington, has had more restrictions than nearly everywhere in the US. We’re highly vaxxed, mandatory masks, my kids are tested in school 3x a week. Right now we have the 2nd highest case rate in the country and our hospitals are full. My whole vaxxed family had Covid this month. 33% of the students at my children’s school have tested positive since January 1. Exactly what is it that you think we should be doing?
Be better HL.
Clearly if you had been better your family would not have gotten COVID.
See how this works?
Thank you for this comment. We are in WA as well and had the exact same experience. I read your post and wondered if maybe I had written it.
For us, both adults and our 12 year old daughter got Covid. Newly vaccinated 8yo and unvaccinated 4 year old never caught it. The school rules have been awful the daughter with Covid only missed 3 days of school. The daughter without it had to be out 15 days THEN get a negative test before she could return.
I just don’t know when masks will ever go away in our district. I finally see some national news articles about ending masking in schools, but they always frame it as safety vs mental health. No articles every really acknowledge that masks AS ACTUALLY WORN BY KIDS just don’t do that much.
For education, meet the teachers unions demands. More testing, better masks, better ventilation, better pay for substitute teachers. And short term remote learning if necessary. Don't fuel a narrative that the teachers are being unreasonable when it's obviously just another in a long history of attacking teachers unions.
Empower other workers to make their own demands. Service workers have to go along with reopening because they need food to live. They don't even get sick leave.
'meet the teachers unions demands'?
What are those? To work from home for ever? How did the teachers unions become arbiters of what is appropriate public health policy?
The teachers unions are not being reasonable.
They are cancerous and what they did during the pandemic was a disgrace, matched only by the incompetence and, at times, malevolence of our public health elite.
My kids’ school has a brand new ventilation system. Masks are required. They test every child 3x a week. They have 3ft mandatory distancing in the classrooms and 6ft outside of it. They require quarantines for close contacts. 33% positive just this month.
Daily deaths are not overall deaths, though. According to this, the CDC is reporting that the absolute number of deaths is LOWER than in the Delta wave.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-10440889/amp/Covid-deaths-lower-Omicron-wave-Delta-wave-despite-400-increase-cases.html
I think the answer is still the same as it ever was: it’s very unlikely you’re going to get seriously ill from COVID but vaccination will reduce that chance even further. And the vast majority of adults are already vaccinated. Meanwhile, Omicron is going to push us into a large number of people getting infected or reinfected (especially children, who are at ultra low risk), leading to a very large population of people with natural or hybrid immunity — ie, the durable kinds.
Yes, there will be some additional deaths. There will be forever. That isn’t going away. But overall this is all very good news.
Additional deaths that could be prevented by common sense precautions, advocating for which gets you accused of being a covid panicker who wants there to be a pandemic
The *common sense precautions* have no empiric rationale and come at a cost.
There's *plenty* of empiric rationale for, for instance, avoiding risky behaviors like going to bars and restaurants and otherwise wearing masks in public.
Even if you think temporary remote learning is the worst thing ever (never heard this about snow days), increased testing, quality masks, better ventilation all have empiric rationale. The cost is using federal funds on that instead of increased overtime for cops or whatever other dumb shit the cities are doing with them now.
In Canada, the teams are playing to empty stadiums. Seems insane to me, these people will just catch Omnicron somewhere else.
Tell me about your "common sense precautions" that get deaths to zero.
Sure, we could all do more. Let's seal ourselves in our houses and have food delivered by people in hazmat suits. Don't you want to reduce additional deaths???
Of course you do. But you also want to go grocery shopping. So you say, but I go grocery shopping in a mask! Fine. That's YOUR risk assessment. That's YOUR decision about where to draw the line between additional protection and getting on with your life. But somewhere, you do draw a line. Somewhere, you do say, "Well, I COULD do more. But I don't want to."
Other people draw that line somewhere else, and that allows you to feel superior. That's fine -- but at some point the rest of us have to stop caring about that little drama. Because, in your heart, you know the additional gains are trivial. Vaccination was the big winner, and we did it! And the holdouts are overwhelmingly hurting themselves. So... we're gonna get on with our lives.
Ah yes, the age old “common sense”. The statement most likely to precede a suggested course of action that is rooted in gut feeling rather than empiricism or logic. What would your additional precautions be, what data shows their efficacy, and what trade offs do they have? That’s what I want to hear.
"Researchers at the CDC still warn that the amount of deaths being caused by the virus is still worrisome, and that Americans should get vaccinated and take other basic precautions."
The CDC has disgraced itself and its advice should be ignored
"Check it out, the CDC says omicron is less deady!"
"Yeah, but they also said it's still very bad."
"Who cares what the CDC says?"
I think you'll find both Freddie and I have said we're pro-vaccine.
As for other precautions -- I think the evidence is thin ( https://cspicenter.org/blog/waronscience/lockdowns-econometrics-and-the-art-of-putting-lipstick-on-a-pig/ ) and there are real downsides, especially to things like social isolation and keeping kids out of school.
I am happy to wear a mask anywhere people ask me to. I don't want people to feel scared. But you know... especially with Omicron, I think it's largely disease security theater. I was in Los Angeles not too long ago and went to get my hair cut because I was vaccinated and therefore not overly worried. Everyone was wearing masks everywhere -- even outside, where the risk is absurdly low. We were supposed to wear masks in the barber shop, too -- until we sat down in the chair, at which point we could remove them. (So, obviously, very serious business, that mask-wearing.)
I took my mask off and sat down in the chair. And the barber, a young man, started talking, and it came out that he was not vaccinated. He was very scared of Covid, but he just couldn't make himself go get the shot. Before we go down a rabbit hole, based on a lot of other clues, I feel sure this guy was not a right-winger. He just... didn't want to get vaccinated.
Well... what more can I do for that guy? Not get a haircut? Then I'm just denying him a chance to make a living. And sure -- we're both taking a risk when I take my mask off. But... it's not a very BIG risk. This isn't the Black Death. It's bad for some people (and the unusually vulnerable should, by all means, take precautions), but mostly it's quite survivable, and there are vaccines available that mean the vast majority of us will be fine, even if we get it. If someone chooses not to get the vaccine, and/or wants to keep their business open... why should I bring my life to a halt to avert some very tiny risk to them?
At some point, we have to accept that at low risk levels, different people will make different decisions. Literally everyone alive is taking some risks of transmitting Covid -- and yet we like to lord OUR precautions over the person taking one precaution less. That is, I think, what Freddie is getting at.
As I've said, I haven't been in a permanent state of hysteria since 2020. I got vaccinated and resumed normal life until a couple of months ago, when half the people I know got sick all at once and local cases reached their highest point ever. I plan to resume normal life again once this wave subsides.
In real life, I don't hector anyone or disparage anyone else's choices (short of trying to convince my brother to get vaccinated, which he has so far refused).
I guess when I'm trying to push back against is the idea that the *only* reasons anyone might be more careful than "not at all" is because of hysteria, or virtue signalling, or to get a gold star from teacher, or because they have a hard-on for telling people what to do. There is still an ongoing pandemic. People are getting still sick and dying. At times, there are *practical reasons* to do things like wearing masks and postponing birthday parties.
What do you want to do, Peter?
I think at the very minimum, indoor mask mandates are wise. If there were more political will, restrictions on indoor dining would probably be smart as well, but that would require more government stimulus and probably isn't going to happen.
So "Wear a mask, stick to take-out, and try to avoid crowds for a while" doesn't seem like a huge ask during acute surges in cases.
We've already nearly killed our restaurants. I don't think it would have been wise to throttle them even harder . . to what end? In a futile effort to stop the spread of an unstoppable variant that mostly only hurts people who refused to get vaccinated?
Close gyms, close restaurants, close non-essential stores, close schools, close churches, close offices...
People have imagined masks were more effective than they really were (or were even claimed to be) from the beginning, because it was something visible they could grab onto. Against omicron, we know they're essentially useless unless they're N95s...which most people don't have access to (or won't until it's too late). So honestly, what's the point? Ratchet up the national culture war another few notches so that we save some tiny number of lives on the margin, in a country of 320 million?
N95's are widely available now. They are very effective when worn correctly, which is not that hard to do. The gubmint should be providing these free in large quantities, and wearing instructions should be all over all media.
Jesus Christ.
Higher ER/ ICU cost sharing for non-vaccinated seems justifiable.
What I dream of doing is far more UV lights:
https://www.fda.gov/medical-devices/coronavirus-covid-19-and-medical-devices/uv-lights-and-lamps-ultraviolet-c-radiation-disinfection-and-coronavirus
Every hospital entrance, plus at ER & ICU areas.
Every gov't office, every school.
2 years ago there was 'not enough ventilators" - Trump's team got on that and soon there were enough (so NYT stopped mentioning it).
We need 1000 x more UV lamps, or maybe 100,000.
Every restaurant and indoor meeting area with A/C or heating (isn't that just about all buildings?).
'Higher ER/ ICU cost sharing for non-vaccinated seems justifiable.'
The Left has become a cesspit.
You talkin' to me? You? Talkin' to me? I ain't the Left, nor a Dem. I do try to be honest and call'em as I see'em.
I had no idea you were a socialist. Good to know.
It's a neverending source of shock to me how many people ostensibly on my side want to boost health insurance profits. This is often supported with "well, smokers have to pay more" which, cool, glad to see you already hate people in lower socio-economic brackets (as smoking correlates cleanly with education and income).
The well is deep for how far insurance companies are going to be able to go on this one. Obviously fat people should have to pay more for all healthcare. So should drinkers. Gay men with HIV are engaging in risky behavior so why not help out Blue Cross Blue Shield here? You have an unexpected pregnancy due to unprotected sex? Why should that cost a United Healthcare exec? It was your choice! And have you seen the new Mercedes E class?
If people think that health insurance and hospitals - two of the most voracious money hungry industries we have - are going to be content not digging out more profit they're nuts. The fact that this would disproportionately harm Blacks is completely ignored, because I guess putting a Black woman on the Supreme Court makes up for denying them Healthcare.
Those people falling ill and dying are nearly all unvaccinated adults. There is little the rest of us can do to protect them against Omicron. Huge surges occurred in areas with mask mandates. Given that they could easily protect themselves with a free vaccine, I do not accept the "need" for major restrictions. We haven't been able to attend a function at my kids' schools in 2 years. They are told not to talk to each other at lunch. I have to teach wearing a mask at my university despite mandated boosters, testing, and very low COVID rates. Job candidates are not allowed to interview in person. Yet we can go to a bar or restaurant unmasked.
What do you mean increased vigilance?
What do you think could be meaningfully done to reduce infection of something this transmissible with high rates of asymptomatic spread?
'Things are bad, we must do this thing' is not an empiric rationale.
There's nothing to be done besides get vaccinated.
Wear masks and avoid crowds! It's not rocket science!
Speaking for myself, after I got vaccinated last spring the pandemic essentially ended for me. I ate at restaurants, went bar hopping, attended house parties and baseball games and concerts, you name it. I ran errands without a mask. When omicron hit, I mostly stopped doing all of that. (Big exception: My wife and I took a pre-planned trip to the Virgin Islands for New Year's — yeah, I'm a hypocrite.)
Now that the positivity rates where I live are dipping back below 10%, I plan to start doing all of those things again.
My kid had COVID and was totally asymptomatic. It was diagnosed on screening.
My wife recalls having a mild headache a week before, her only symptom, and was positive too.
It's extraordinarily infectious. Unless you are eliminating social contact completely and wearing a fit N95 at all times indoors in public and with other people your NPI is unlikely to have anything more than a marginal effect. And even then - with Omicron it is possible there is no effect at all.
The only NPI that seems to work is police enforced lockdowns.
COVID theater seeks to make infection a morality play, which it is not. It seeks to give us an illusion of control, which we do not have.
NPI?
The question is if it's just for a couple of months. A lot of reputable people think a new strain is almost an inevitability.
I saw some speculation about Omicron. Not exactly comforting, but even without lab leaks I think natural selection would probably be sufficient to produce new variants.
The newest variant of omicron is even further away on that chart. Is that yet another lab leak?
I think "no public health measures ever again" versus "permanent restrictions" is a false dichotomy.
We just got a bunch of snow in the northeast, and most towns issued a temporary street parking ban. The bans will be lifted when the snow is gone. More bans will be issued when it snows more. Everyone understands this, and no one crows about how it's a slippery slope to permanent parking bans.
Bookings at NYC restaurants are down over 60% compared to pre-pandemic levels. I'm guessing the rest of the industry is in a similar position. You are of course free to take whatever precautions you feel are necessary but I think that the effect of on again/off again lockdowns in perpetuity is going to wreak havoc on society at large.
Where did you get that data? Anecdotally, it seems like the opposite in Neveda
The 538 guy
https://twitter.com/NateSilver538/status/1486089132095029255
Vegas only up 1%? That's shocking to me, but it might be because tourist restaurants have fallen white locals ones have increased. Then again, I can't recall the last time I made a reservation at any place I've eaten.
Las Vegas is up 1% but look at Miami!
Then look at the rest of the country. Yeeeeeeesh.
Just because you institute a public health policy when something is present doesn't mean it's appropriate or efficacious.
Just because a public health policy seems like *common sense* doesn't mean it's appropriate or efficacious.
Just because a public health policy placates hysterics doesn't mean it's appropriate or efficacious.
Mask mandates, in particular, have been shown to be effective.
No, they haven't.
What are you referring to? The cluster RCT that showed a very modest benefit PRE VACCINATION?
You didn't like my other link, so here are some more:
“We now have evidence from a randomized, controlled trial that mask promotion increases the use of face coverings and prevents the spread of COVID-19,” said Stephen Luby, MD, professor of medicine at Stanford. “This is the gold standard for evaluating public health interventions. Importantly, this approach was designed be scalable in lower- and middle-income countries struggling to get or distribute vaccines against the virus.”
https://med.stanford.edu/news/all-news/2021/09/surgical-masks-covid-19.html
This systematic review and meta-analysis suggests that several personal protective and social measures, including handwashing, mask wearing, and physical distancing are associated with reductions in the incidence covid-19. https://www.bmj.com/content/375/bmj-2021-068302
In fairness, other studies and analyses have showed the opposite! We can both cherry-pick research to meet our conclusions.
Terrific article, especially the comparison with 9/11, when fear hijacked so many people’s brains and caused them to be senselessly cruel to each other. Here’s a story—see if it sounds familiar:
Shortly after 9/11, I flew home with my son, who was a very active toddler at the time. He weighed about 30 pounds, and his car seat (required by the airline) was an additional 30 pounds. We finally got to the gate, where I set down the heavy seat with relief. I unstrapped my son and started to follow him around as he raced around the gate area.
A gate agent started screaming (literally screaming) at me. How could I leave that car seat just sitting there?! It could be full of explosives! I pointed out that it had been through security, and had been x-rayed by the TSA, but to no avail. The gate agent told me that I could 1. Tie down my son in the seat, 2. Follow my son but carry the seat with me at all times, or 3. Leave the seat with a trusted person. When I protested that I was on my own, a kind lady nearby offered to watch the seat.
“You don’t know her!” yelled the gate agent. “She could be a terrorist!” The kind lady rolled her eyes, and then in a bright voice said to me, “Hey! It’s me! Your old friend from high school! I haven’t seen you in so long! Let me watch the seat for you, FRIEND!” I thanked her and started to head off after my son, who had been squirming in my arms during this conversation. The gate agent was enraged. She actually said, “Well, if the seat blows up, it will be your fault.”
The moral of the story, then and now, is that we cooler heads need to start speaking up when we hear people express these insane, outsized fears. The car seat did not carry explosives. My toddler and I were not terrorists. And if you’ve been vaccinated, Covid won’t hurt you. Heck, my parents’ octogenarian friends all have Covid, including a couple of very frail folks. Their symptoms? A sore throat and runny nose.
Oh god. I guess that’s a good rule of thumb. Just accept responsibility for if the car seat blows up 😂
Yup! You got me! It was all my fault.
That story is bananas, and I totally remember that era. Thank god for eye-rolling kind people who help us all to stay minimally sane.
Here in Italy, where the peak has passed and hospitals are doing absolutely fine, there's a blanket outdoor mask mandate and you literally can go *almost nowhere* without showing your vax pass. In pharmacies, starting tomorrow, you can enter without one but then are only permitted to purchase *certain essential items* while the vaccinated (*within the past 6 months* because they've decided that the shots "expire" after that) can buy whatever they want. And everyone is just... going along with it. Utterly baffling.
The unvaccinated don’t deserve to buy candy or gum.
Yes. The only answer to save us from the bad -isms is hermitism with a side of self flagellation.
Yeah, no it isn't.
Lol @ vaccinism
God, no! Dirty heathens! ;p
Yikes! I’m in Switzerland, where thankfully we have never been required to wear masks outdoors. But I just noticed that my brand-spanking-new Covid Zertifikat, hard-won with a booster and all the attendant side-effects last week, is, like Italy’s only good for six months. What happens in six months?! Can I not go anywhere?! So frustrating!
I'd think Switzerland (like Denmark & other more functioning democracies) will have sensibly retired the whole thing by then? Until very recently they were making noises about a 4th shot here (we don't do "sensible" much), but it seems like the EMA's "uh, we don't know if that's such a hot idea" announcement thankfully put a chill on that for now.
Wait seriously? The EU country I live in won't even offer a fourth shot yet, and I got my booster almost four months ago. I guess Italy's out of my plans for this year!
I suppose there's no connection between "hospitals are doing absolutely fine" and "you literally can go *almost nowhere* without showing your vax pass".
There's *absolutely* a connection to people being vaccinated. There's absolutely *no* connection to demanding proof of that at every public doorway in the country. We were at 75ish% adults (over 12) vaccinated when the pass was put into effect -- people over 60, 70, 80 & 90 were already at 85%, 89%, 92% & 95%. Now we're at almost 90% (12+). What magic effect do you imagine policing people up to 10 times a day is having?
"They took away all your rights just to coerce you into getting the shot, and it worked" is not a W my man
Exploding Carseats would be a great name for a punk band.
check out Carseat Headrest
A person given a taste of petty power