Have you read "The People, No" by Thomas Frank? It's about the history of anti-populism, and it's great and... it will lower your expectations about our side of the spectrum!
I have one simple test: does it piss off both liberals and conservatives? If so then it is probably a good idea.
WRT the climate debate I can't help but feel that the whole thing is just stupid Americans being stupid Americans. Maybe twenty years ago I was watching Bill Maher on Politically Incorrect. One of his guests was a climatologist who pointed out that emissions in the West were steady or falling. The source of all the growth in emissions was the developing world. He wondered when Americans would figure out that they were completely irrelevant to the issue of global warming.
Guess what? It still hasn't happened. There isn't a side worth taking in the climate change debate because both sides are dominated by ideologues.
New Coke pissed off everyone, so I wouldn't rely on that formula.
Also, just because our emissions are decreasing and others' are increasing, how does that make us irrelevant? If anything it means we have to decrease more and faster to make up for them.
Towards what end? If the goal is completely offsetting the carbon emissions from the developing world that is simply not possible. There are a billion people in China and a billion people in India versus a billion combined in the US and Europe. As the developing world moves from bicycles to cars their carbon footprint is going to increase tremendously.
So if completely offsetting new emissions is impossible what's the goal? Keeping total emissions below the threshold the IPCC believes will trigger 2 degrees C of warming? That's not possible either.
Physics doesn't care where the carbon came from. It's not like every molecule of CO2 has "Made in China" or "Made in the USA" stamped on it.
OK, this is not a rhetorical question: Do you believe the whole enterprise is hopeless, so we might as well not do anything? Like, we'll all die tomorrow, so why waste time on it? That makes sense if it's true. Me, I think it's hopeless and we're screwed and circling the drain, but I would prefer to circle it more slowly if possible, so might as well do what we can.
I think that even if humanity did nothing it would be unpleasant for a lot of people but not fatal.
The point is of course that humanity can do something, but doing something means understanding the problem and what solutions will work versus what is essentially masturbation. There are billions of people out there who want cars and electricity. Nothing is going to stop them.
If it's really a serious issue then geoengineering is the way to go. And short of that there is plenty humanity can do in terms of mitigation and adaptation.
Speaking only for myself, I am not sure how how effective anything EXCEPT vaccination has been, and I grew up with multiple mandated vaccinations and have always regarded vaccination to be an unambiguously good thing. I don't give it a second thought.
I'm just saying, I really truly don't feel like it is a bad thing if people are losing their jobs over vaccine refusal. If you think you've identified the psychological underpinning of people's reactions, that's not it for me!
The unemployment numbers are a lie because labor force participation is way, way down. Some three million fewer workers now compared to the start of the pandemic.
My personal worry is that many of the people who are part of "The Great Resignation" are going to ground in the face of the pandemic, choosing to exit the economy either permanently or long term. A shortage of workers is driving wage increases. Normally that would be a good (or at least neutral) phenomenon, but now with inflation rates already at levels not seen for decades I worry about anything that could contribute to the death spiral of higher wages driving high inflation which drives higher wages and so on.
So vaccine mandates in my viewpoint are probably a lousy idea.
Of course the road to Hell is paved with good intentions. But there is a parallel side track and the street sign there is "Do something!"
A couple of observations:
1. Omicron is probably less serious than the original strain but 90% of the people who contracted the original strain were either completely asymptomatic or suffered from symptoms no more serious than a cold or the flu. I remember reading about one of the original patients who introduced the virus to Italy from China: she felt cold during a business meeting, grabbed a sweater and that was the extent of her symptoms. The issue has always been that a small minority of people are vulnerable while for the vast majority it is indeed just the flu. The drive to portray the virus as a threat to the population in general has distorted our thinking about acceptable remedies for ameliorating the effects of the pandemic.
2. A lot of the government responses last year, including lockdowns, were panic driven. Now with the benefit of hindsight we are reexamining whether or not they were justified. The problem is that the question has attained culture war significance. Pushing for lockdowns now is a means for arguing that lockdowns were a good idea a year ago.
3. The lasting effects of the pandemic have been corrosive to social trust, especially in authority. I think that "Trust the science" has probably been irreparably tarnished.
The only thing I'd ask you to do is engage with the arguments that people are making rather than the arguments that you think they are making. I have literally not seen a single person advocate for a "strict lockdown" a la 2020 during this latest wave - certainly not public officials or anyone in a position to implement them - and yet here you spend paragraphs arguing against something that has a 0% chance of happening in the coming months. I have not seen a single educator advocate going back to "remote learning" in the same way that we did in 2020, and yet you spent an entire post railing against its evils.
There may be some people on Twitter who are arguing for those things. And lots of schools are going to close on a very temporary basis because teachers have a nasty aversion to working while sick (even if it's "mild") - but other than that, you are fighting a battle that you have already won.
I think "did lockdowns work" or "did remote learning do more harm than good" are very interesting arguments and you'd get a lot of serious engagement on those topics! But note the past tense on those questions - we really are not going back to those things any time soon. Take the W, Freddie.
"I have literally not seen a single person advocate for a "strict lockdown""
I have. See how easy that is? And also, I don't believe that you haven't.
"I have not seen a single educator advocate going back to "remote learning" in the same way that we did in 2020, and yet you spent an entire post railing against its evils."
One of the five biggest public school districts in the country is forcing exactly that outcome right now.
If you think that CTU is arguing for going back to remote learning long-term ("the same way we did in 2020"), I don't know what I can do for you! In any case that situation is also a worthy discussion on its own, and I still don't think that it fits into the dichotomy that you've set up with your writing here.
They're proposing that the entire district go remote if the city's positivity rate is 10% and increasing--and they want to lower the threshold for closing individual schools too. It might not be continuous remote learning, but schools would be closed a lot under the CTU's proposal.
I started to write an article in my head about what we should have in place for schools for the next go round, whether in COVID or otherwise:
1) Have, on hand, with a real distribution plan, a supply of high quality masks enough to cover all students and teachers for, say, a month (3? 5?). These should be kept on hand more or less indefinitely, for distribution during a pandemic wave.
2) For the next year, at least, have a supply of appropriate tests on order/pre-order/reserve, whatever to *guarantee* their availability within, say, a month of a new wave appearing on the horizon.
3) Have a plan, on hand, for how to test students and teachers returning from a break, that everyone understands ahead of time.
4) Have an aggressive short and long term plan to improve ventilation in schools, up to and including complete reconstruction when necessary (and in this case the reconstruction is probably necessary for many reasons, just hasn't been done). Make people aware that this is actually happening.
5) Have overall plans for how to handle the next wave that won't literally change completely at the moment the next wave arrives. Don't teach and maintain safety plans which are only used when the situation is almost completely safe anyhow and are discarded the minute the situation changes.
6) Add a week to the end of Christmas break in next year's school calendar, just in case.
(sorry, I'm adding more as I remember them).
7) Once COVID vaccines have regular non-emergency approval, make them mandatory for students to the same extent other vaccines are in your state.
8) Make it clear that all students will be tested periodically active pandemic diseases, or at least make it opt-out rather than opt-in.
People may ask, "Why didn't schools have this anyhow, especially with the fountain of money thrown at the problem?" The problem is not *teachers*, I can tell you that. Our district administration spent the entire summer of 2020 planning for everything except how to manage a rapidly changing pandemic.
Exactly to all of this. There are some very specific things that people like students would like us to do, and they are not complicated, and we should do them, instead of what we are doing right now, which is not doing any of them. Such as the Oakland students petition: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1l99O8o3jdDEWmHGbvedl0AoSGP6bdIeqWtw_YkzOPSM/edit
My comment is not even so much about controlling this wave, but preparedness for safe schools going forward. Schools have an obligation of care toward our students. We have an obligation to prepare and provide a safe environment. What if we do none of these things and in one, two or three years there's a less transmissible variant that's more dangerous to younger people? Wouldn't you want to be ready for that? Or is what we've learned that transmission of infectious diseases is actually impossible to stop?
You don't seem to be aware that COVID is not the first infectious disease to come along. We have stopped many, controlled many, cured and treated many and have far more powerful tools to do so than ever before.
Freddie what if Covid mortality goes above 50%? I agree with you based on present facts but something worse is likely in coming decades. Are you assuming we’ll be prepared?
Epidemiologists liked to talk about "Virus X" before Covid came along. One requirement was a relatively low infection fatality rate. Something that kills half of the people who catch it would burn itself out almost immediately.
I've heard this before, but I'm not sure I understand. The black plague killed a third of Europe. Is that not possible today because of modern medical technology?
The Black Plague hit somewhere between 30%-75% mortality rate, and there were isolated plagues that likely hit higher (as well as diseases like rabies that do have 100% mortality rates). But the evolutionary pressure for disease is generally going to select for less-lethal variants: a disease optimally wants to infect as many hosts as possible before either its host dies or it's destroyed by its host. If the average infection passes on less than one time, then obviously the disease is going to die out. If it passes on to only one host, then it's neither growing nor dying. If it passes on to more than one host, it's growing.
Being deadly is a risky gamble (remember that diseases gain no advantage from killing their hosts). Some diseases, like rabies or HIV, have persisted despite their deadliness because they have an extremely long incubation period. But for most diseases, being deadly just means you're risking your host dying before you've had the chance to spread as much as you can. It's sub-optimal.
Between that and modern medicine and sanitation practices, the chance of a disease that's both extremely deadly and extremely infectious is low. Not impossible, but low.
I mean, there's a lot we could we could be doing that's not a Chinese-style authoritarian nightmare. I've been reading yourlocalepidemiologist.substack.com which strikes me as a reasonable and dispassionate look at the data, with some recommendations.
For instance, in her most recent post she states that the case/hospitalization decoupling is less pronounced in the U.S. than either Denmark or the U.K., likely owing to our lower vaccination rate.
One thing I'd like to see us talk about more is ventilation. I remember reading something from a few months ago which made the argument that with the technology available to us now, we could make indoor air quality the 21st century equivalent of the 19th century sanitation push, with a resultant reduction or elimination of many airborne respiratory diseases.
This was incredible. Thanks. Also the little tidbit about omicron was a shocker. I tested positive yesterday after being a do-everything-right person (I feel ok. Like a heavy cold) and I’m quarantining in my bedroom with the window open, but I’m kind of like, my three kids and husband are sitting ducks. This is probably useless.
My family seems to have gotten through my wife's COVID last week unscathed, we caught it very early -- no symptoms and very faint line on the rapid test(s). Or maybe I'll be sick tomorrow!
actually, you should want your family to get Omicron (rather than later variants); it's essentially a free vaccine. everyone is getting covid eventually ...
Just zero chance of that happening in a country the size of the United States with our bizarre politics and our culture of independence/noncompliance/insert other term here. Simply not feasible.
Went to Vietnam. Same, if not even more restrictive experience. Had a blackout in my hotel room and had to fix the fuses myself since the staff are not allowed to come in for any reason.
I think the ventilation discussion is one worth having, but it's also not something I think can rapidly be put in place--there's a lot of retrofitting, at times expensive, to be done, and it's already difficult to find skilled laborers. It also clashes with energy efficiency goals and isn't practical at all times in all climates (I say as it's -20F with windchill where I'm at right now).
Worth having, definitely. But more of a long-term goal than immediate relief.
All the money that went to schools and businesses could/should have been directed towards improving indoor ventilation but most did surface cleaning instead. Or, created outdoor classrooms or dining, which are fine for places that don’t go below 60 degrees in the winter time.
But, here we are. I suspect most of our efforts were geared towards doing what we could “in the moment”, which is how humanity seems to deal with all of its long-term, multi -faceted problems. We wear ourselves out in mighty bursts of short term angst, and then sink back into exhausted complacency until the next crisis hits.
Perhaps the elite’s anxiety could be directed at longer term efforts, such as how do we want to prepare now for the next pandemic, which we all know will come. What have we learned from this catastrophe that we can apply to the next?
Perhaps we need to recognize our different levels of response to such crises could be a gift, not a detriment. Those inclined to perpetual panic can be assigned the task of working together on long-term problem solutions, while those more able to live in the moment keep society going in the short- term!
I don't know what the magic number for X is, but here's how I view it. Maybe X is like 10
If there's another one in >X years, everything from this one will be forgotten. If there's another one in <= X years, there will be no appetite for any response and it will spread naturally regardless the damage. I don't see any scenario where we "learn from" this one.
More to the point, it seems quite likely that improvements to ventilation will be entirely forgotten, despite the multitude of benefits beyond just COVID. Also, it isn't just bringing in fresh air. Systematic filtration helps too!
I mean, several businesses around me boast about the COVID-scrubbing fancy HVAC systems they've installed, and during the summer every business I went to had every window/door open that they could.
But retrofitting everything is also a decades-long undertaking, and I don't really see a way around that.
This is something I encountered a lot when talking about opening schools. I mentioned keeping windows open, and the response was "but not every building has windows that open!" and this was meant "checkmate, every school has to be closed!"
If we had gotten through 1% of the schools each month, we'd have 24% of them done by now. And lots of the schools were completely fine as is.
And for those that can't retrofit, we can drop in a portable air filter. HEPA filters have been in stock for a long time.
Now, maybe someone will complain that if we'd tried we'd have run out and they'd be as hard to get as tests are today. But there is some kind of learned helpless that says "look for any excuse not to try." And "we might have only solved the problem for half the people, therefore it would be a failure, so we better not even try" justifies doing nothing in their heads.
But what's the goal? If you accept that everyone is going to contract Covid as part of the process of achieving endemicity then all you care about is making sure that process is slow and gradual. If the goal is just to slow down the process of infecting the entire population, rather than shutting down the virus entirely, then how much money are you will to invest towards that end?
Before, the general goal was to "make the schools safe" and having good ventilation is the way to do it. Until Omicron, there was the possibility of keeping lots of people just uninfected.
Now, IHME says about 50% of Americans will get infected by the Omicron wave, which will peak probably in less than 10 days. "Lockdowns" can do little to change the overall population-level effects.
So this is it, we're ripping off the band-aid, like it or not.
Yes, but there is a spectrum to improve air quality ...maybe not whole HVAC units, but making sure windows can open and shut is a game changer.
Yes, it is difficult to find skilled labor. I had a few that needed to be added and went to Lowes and bought them.Called several businesses and couldn't schedule the installation. So I went to a construction site where there was a crew doing outdoor work. I talked to the foreman and asked if when it rained and the men couldn't work outside could they come and put in some windows for me? It rained the next day, 3 fellows showed up and install done. Maybe helped I wore my husband's UBC pin when I made the request.
My office was open last summer & fall for those who wanted to work from there. (Post vaccine but pre-omicron). The few kids in the office (I'm 50+) really didn't seem to understand why I kept my office window open almost all the time. Ventilation is something people left & right seem ignorant about here. It's nuts.
There *are* ways to contain outbreaks though. China provided the blueprint. They've had fewer than 5,000 deaths this entire time! They're at the point where they can contain outbreaks without needing to lock down! Most of their cases are mild or asymptomatic because they catch them so quickly.
I agree with the thrust of your article, but I don't view covid as some kind of irresistible force. The US (and most of the western world) is too calcified to mobilize the necessary response but it's not impossible. We're just... not doing any of those things.
I think there is a lot of justified skepticism with regards to the Chinese numbers.
Plus the measures they took are frankly unacceptable to people used to living in liberal Western democracies. For example, removing the sick from their homes and forcibly confining them inside camps until they test negative.
Absent reliable numbers from China it's not possible to say how effective their measures were. It would be a real disappointment if the US tried to implement Chinese style lockdowns and saw no reduction in the curve for excess mortalities.
I think it's disingenuous to completely dismiss China's numbers. Several Western journals and the WHO have regarded their domestic efforts as effective. Here's an overview from the Lancet in 2020:
There are a lot of interesting differences between China and the US (for instance, there are fewer nursing homes in China) that we could use to refine our own pandemic response.
Let's presume that the US is somehow able to implement a Chinese style lockdown and shut off transmission.
Delta originated in India and was imported. Omicron originated in South Africa and was imported. China has closed its borders. How does the US prevent reintroduction from abroad? Shut down international travel?
"Educated liberals are mad at them, but they don’t have many anti-vaxxers in their orbit" — Don't most people have ongoing protracted wars with family members over vaccination status, active disinformation, and family health and the elderly? I guess I assumed this was more universal an experience from the people I talk to than perhaps it is.
The carpenters, electricians and auto mechanics I know have been at work since the pandemic began. I'm from the working class so went right along.
The only people I know who seem to be having protected wars over vaccination status are the "work from home people with steady cash flow" from government or universities.
After June 2020 I began to see my family. I attended outdoor events. The schools received a lot of $$ for mediation of HVAC etc. They reopened w/o masks in August 2020 and have been open every day with testing but no shut-downs.
People giving in to so much fear amplify because so many are all getting paid to work from home and have time to hand-wring on public social media platforms. They are a small group reading each other and thinking it is everyone. I know it is a community by community response, and an individual response, but my life has been close to the way it was pre-Covid.
Every day before the pandemic I did a risky thing--I got in my vehicle and drove somewhere. Isn't anyone who drives a car a person with a high tolerance for risk?
I think the evidence in favor of 2020-style "lockdowns" is a little stronger than you're giving credit for here.
From Nov. 2020 in Nature: "We showed that the most effective measures include closing and restricting most places where people gather in smaller or larger numbers for extended periods of time (businesses, bars, schools and so on)." https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-020-01009-0
Another one: "Early-onset lockdown with gradual deconfinement allowed shortening the SARS-CoV-2 epidemic and reducing contaminations. Lockdown should be considered as an effective public health intervention to halt epidemic progression." https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7806254/
(Aside from the research, there's been a great deal of anecdotes flying around lately of restaurant workers on the job while actively sick with COVID because they don't get paid sick leave.)
So, in terms of "what more can we be doing," it seems like "closing bars and restaurants for a few weeks and providing economic support to businesses and workers to get them through it" is a pretty reasonable ask.
How is it "just a few weeks"? The nature of epidemics is that once the lockdown is lifted they resurge. At that point you need another lockdown of a few weeks to "flatten the curve", and the another and another and another...
I am going to commit heresy and suggest that vaccines have changed exactly zero with regards to how society should approach the pandemic.
First, unfortunately, it does not appear that vaccines have an appreciable effect on limiting transmission. This is especially true of omicron. That moves vaccines out of the category of a means for protecting society at large to a measure for individual protection.
But the virus has always been primarily a threat only for vulnerable populations--those with diabetes, the obese, etc.--rather than the public at large. For the elderly and those with comorbidities I think getting vaccinated is a very good idea. But for everyone else for whom the risk is negligible it is probably superfluous.
So in that sense nothing has changed. The general public can largely proceed with life as normal while those subgroups that are at risk should take extra precautions. I call this position the "modified Swedish" because it is what Sweden wished it had done when originally faced with the pandemic: lock down rest homes and group living settings while letting the rest of the country do the work of keeping society running.
I think mandating businesses to be vaccinated is fine. You can't "grab & stab" but you can insist that people who are in and around other people be vaccinated. And you can't deny that with more vaccination there'd be less death. Period.
At the end of the day that means an IFR that is probably in the range of 0.2% to 0.6% compared to 0.1% or so for influenza. And that was before the introduction of steroid therapies that drastically reduced fatality rates.
This seems a good time to disambiguate between absolute and relative risk.
The absolute risk of dying from COVID is very small. For the non-elderly, the chance of dying of COVID is extremely small, ranging from .001% of infections being deadly in young children to .1% in the middle-aged. It then rises sharply, until the 80+ crowd have a 10% chance of death from infection. (All numbers will probably turn out to be wrong given the newness of the science, but it's what the estimates are that I could find).
Men are about twice as likely to die from COVID as women. That still means that an otherwise-healthy middle-aged man only has a .2% chance of death. Their relative risk is double that of women, but their absolute risk remains very small.
I don't know what other conditions raise risk by, but let's assume Condition X raises the risk of death by COVID by 15 times (this is roughly the amount that smoking increases risk of lung cancer). Your middle-aged man still has a death risk of only 3%--97% of middle-aged men with Condition X will survive COVID.
There are degrees of severity of COVID-19 infection between "you are totally fine" and "you are dead," though. COVID-19 doesn't snap its fingers like Thanos and dissolve an unlucky few into the ether.
No, but I would guess the absolute risk of long-term issues is similarly low, though not as low as the chance of death. The broader point was just to point out that even a group that has a greater relative risk of issues from COVID still has a small absolute risk of issues for basically everything except age.
For me, it made sense to take precautions until we had a vaccine because most of us interact with older people. It's not just about personal risk when young people can infect their parents and grandparents (or those with other risk factors).
The idea that vulnerable groups can take precautions while the rest of us ignore it just doesn't work in practice. Nursing home workers need staff, many grandparents watch their grandkids... we all mix and interact with each other.
So for me, the vaccine made a huge difference. It means my parents are protected, so we can all return to normal without putting them at risk.
Check out my comment above. A study out of Denmark a few days ago showed a correlation between vaccination and contracting Omicron. In other words being vaccinated actually makes you more likely to contract Omicron, not less.
Now this is probably behavioral--it is likely that the vaccinated are filled with a false sense of security compared to the unvaxed and they are out eating at restaurants, shopping, etc. in settings where they are more likely to be exposed. But based on this I would guess that the current batch of vaccines don't offer a lot of protection against contracting Omicron.
The issue has always been this: widespread vaccination just confers a competitive advantage on vaccine escaping strains. And since coronaviruses mutate rapidly it is likely that there will no shortage of vaccine escaping strains.
Very true. One thing I've been wondering about for some time now is the Russian vaccine. I wondered aloud last year if it wasn't the best vaccine available: developed the "old fashioned" way utilizing an attenuated or killed virus, it was the first vaccine out of the gate. Plus it was a single shot with better than 90% effectiveness. Are the Russians doing better with Omicron now as a consequence I wonder?
Although the other factor is how quickly the virus mutates. There is no universal vaccine against the flu, for example.
For now and hopefully for the future. I would note however that Zeynep Tufekci just had an article in the NY Times where she pointed out that Omicron being a) vaccine escaping and b) less dangerous is just pure dumb luck. There's no guarantee that the next vaccine escaping strain won't be as virulent, or more so, than Delta.
If it does get to that point with any luck the antiviral therapies will be out and widely adopted. But that doesn't disqualify my point that vaccines are probably overrated in terms of a solution for dealing with the pandemic.
But if that the happens were fucked regardless, right? I don't mean to be a nihilist, but at some point the hypotheticals get so bad that you end up in the same place - panicking is no use.
I agree. At the end of the day 90% of the people who caught the original strain were either completely asymptomatic or suffered from minor symptoms comparable to the cold or the flu. It's hardly a death sentence so conceding that a) everyone is probably going to get infected and b) it's out of our hands shouldn't drive anyone to despair.
Omicron is so infectious that lockdowns are useless.
People should take individual protections if they don't want to be part of the 50% of Americans who are going to be infected, and I encourage that, but society-wide there's no real way of stopping it.
I wouldn't consider obese people to be in the "vulnerable" population, in this article you can see a estimated hazard ratio for various factors (fig 3): https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-2521-4
Obesity is about the same difference between male and female, the table makes it clear that the biggest risk factor by a long shot is really age.
"I ask you to consider the possibility that from the beginning, the only solutions were solutions brought to us by medical technology."
I think this might be true for climate change as well (though you can cross out the word medical, obviously). I don't see the world stopping for that either. I just don't buy that we see a world with dramatically reduced consumption.
From what I recall China has already built so many coal powered plants that just using them for the duration of their normal life span will easily raise carbon levels past the IPCC's drop dead threshold. You'd have to convince them to decommission a bunch of power plants that they just built and replace them with nuclear reactors. That is a proposition so expensive as to be impossible I think.
Because the atmosphere doesn't care about the country of origin for carbon emissions. Regardless of how much the West cuts China, India and the rest of the developing world will put enough additional carbon into the atmosphere to overwhelm any reductions that the first world makes.
Freddie had a great post on this in 2019 called "We're not fixing climate change." It's true and everyone knows it, but hardly anyone says it out loud.
Like you said, similarly, there was never any hope of eradicating covid because humans were never going to lock down to the extent that would be necessary. I struggled with it for a while--this idea that we COULD stop covid, but people aren't cooperating. But I had to accept that nothing anyone says will stop people from working, mixing, socializing -- we're not capable of stopping the spread through behavior whether I like it or not.
"It's true and everyone knows it, but hardly anyone says it out loud."
Stephen Levitt actually argued this is Freakenomics like 15 years ago of whenever that book is from. He talks about it on Econ Talk. He said that he got a lot of pushback from people saying he doesn't care about climate change etc. But he does care, he just wants to be realistic
Sadly, I think COVID has answered the question: “are societies capable of deploying collective action to solve a widespread problem like climate change?” I get why people are leery of geo-engineering but given this trial run I think we should be pumping way more research money into that because it sure looks like it may be our only hope.
This! I still consider myself a progressive liberal on most topics. But the list of topics that my more activist friends think we can solve but we actually can't is almost endless. Racism, sexism, transphobia, poverty, etc. etc. When I point out the progress we've made on these issues or even the realistic notion that none of these plagues will be eradicated in our lifetimes, I'm branded as a right winger. It's insanity.
Honestly, I'm not sure that we can solve racism, people will likely always hate the outgroup. Sexism might be a tough one too given the millennia of tradition behind that.
But we've made massive leaps in forms of transphobia -- a decade ago I think most people had no clue non-binary people even existed, hell even most non-binary people probably didn't. I feel like we could probably solve this one.
And poverty, well, depends on the scale of the problem I suppose, I don't think lithium miners will be making middle-class US wages any time soon, but considering that's literally just "give people money" I'm not optimistic that it will happen, but y'know, all it would take is one spiritual awakening for the right billionaire.
Agreed on mostly all of this. You can never get to zero on any of these problems. Doesn't mean we shouldn't aim high. And I do NOT mean these issues should be ignored. We just have to be realistic and pragmatic about our goals.
This is why I became a Yang fan. At the debates he was asked who to do about Climate Change. He flippantly said "Move to higher ground". Stupid comment politically, but probably the best actual advice long term.
Great post. I agree there is a huge emotional component. Anxious people want everyone else to validate their emotional state.
On Friday, Twitter was full of people saying Rochelle Walensky wants them to die. I looked it up, and (in a conversation about vaccine effectiveness) she said, “The overwhelming number of death, over 75%, occurred in people who had at least 4 comorbidities, so really these are people who were unwell to begin with. And yes, really encouraging news in the context of Omicron…”
People called it “eugenics” and got thousands of likes. The hashtag #MyDisabledLifeIsWorthy went viral throughout the weekend.
I imagine most of them are perfectly aware that Walensky did not say “it’s encouraging that disabled people are dying, because they’re unworthy and also fuck them.” But countless strangers responded with agreement and sympathy, which is what they wanted I guess.
I’m a hypochondriac with anxiety, so I’ve been on the side of lockdowns and restrictions until recent months. I believe it was sensible to isolate until we had a vaccine. But evidence shows: 1) Vaccines are effective, 2) Children under 5 almost never get serious cases, 3) We’re all going to get Omicron no matter what we do. So I’ve softened in my views because of those realities.
I understand why many people are stuck, though – it’s hard to shepherd people through different stages of the pandemic, even with perfect messaging. People who spent two years desperately trying not to get covid still think that’s the goal, even though it’s no longer possible (Omicron) or necessary (vaccines). It's hard to think clearly about things like a "great but not perfect vaccine" after feeling afraid for so long.
People on Twitter always think they win by taking something in the worst faith possible. In school, I learned principal of charity - which is when you do just the opposite.
That's because the variants are less lethal. The vaccines wear off pretty quickly and in the long run are less useful than the immunity offered by having had the virus
There is no guarantee that the next variant won't be more lethal, more infectious and more vaccine resistant. That's why an endemic virus is dangerous.
So our terrible citizenship of ignorance, education resistance, and cocky rebellion so reminds me of a pouty three year old.
I've come to dislike the term "validate." What does it mean exactly? Because I believe one should accept their emotions and admit them, but that doesn't mean one gets to act on all emotions. When did that become true? Its obviously not a good way to live.
In the clinical psych world, where the usage escaped from, validating emotions just means acknowledging them. If someone is expressing frustration and you say something like "I see this experience has been frustrating for you," that's providing validation. The purpose is to meet the need that many people have in many situations to know that how they are feeling is understood by others. It doesn't imply agreement with the assessments or beliefs the person is having at the time, and it definitely doesn't mean encouraging them to act on their emotions. The purpose may be quite the opposite--to diffuse some of the intensity of the emotion so the person can more easily chose not to act on the emotion, or come to reassess their thinking around the situation. You might say "I would also be really upset if someone parked in my parking spot!" as part of an effort to eventually dissuade someone from bashing in the windshield of the offending car with a bat--because part of the reason they want to bash in the windshield is to express their anger, and if you help them express it or show them their emotion has been understood, that need decreases.
Emotions don't have inherent content, and can't really be wrong or right. Moreover, we have very little direct control over them. That's the sense in which they are "valid"--they're real, they cause real experiences, and they're to be reckoned with and handled rather than argued with or judged. I don't think this understanding has been retained very much in common parlance. I also have little idea what is intended when I see "such and such is valid" in the wild. However, the common rhetorical move "Look, I get that you are feeling such a way, but I disagree with the recommendation you are providing based on that feeling" is what validation actually looks like.
I get it. I also agree that this isn't how its working in the wild. If you have a feeling and you are just expressing it over and over and seeking endless "validation", at some point you are treating the world as an emotional dumpster, and that seems more like an action.
I always wondered if while vaccine mandates couldn't (and shouldn't) be enforced, they were a group of people who, while not religiously anti-vax, would decide to get the vaccines as a result. I do know a few people like this either because they didn't "get around to it" or they were like Scarlett O'Hara, waiting to be invited to dinner but got the vaccine once they heard there was a mandate. Perhaps that could justify the mandates even if they couldn't be enforced but don't have any real facts (besides some people I know) to justify this.
Have you read "The People, No" by Thomas Frank? It's about the history of anti-populism, and it's great and... it will lower your expectations about our side of the spectrum!
I have one simple test: does it piss off both liberals and conservatives? If so then it is probably a good idea.
WRT the climate debate I can't help but feel that the whole thing is just stupid Americans being stupid Americans. Maybe twenty years ago I was watching Bill Maher on Politically Incorrect. One of his guests was a climatologist who pointed out that emissions in the West were steady or falling. The source of all the growth in emissions was the developing world. He wondered when Americans would figure out that they were completely irrelevant to the issue of global warming.
Guess what? It still hasn't happened. There isn't a side worth taking in the climate change debate because both sides are dominated by ideologues.
New Coke pissed off everyone, so I wouldn't rely on that formula.
Also, just because our emissions are decreasing and others' are increasing, how does that make us irrelevant? If anything it means we have to decrease more and faster to make up for them.
Towards what end? If the goal is completely offsetting the carbon emissions from the developing world that is simply not possible. There are a billion people in China and a billion people in India versus a billion combined in the US and Europe. As the developing world moves from bicycles to cars their carbon footprint is going to increase tremendously.
So if completely offsetting new emissions is impossible what's the goal? Keeping total emissions below the threshold the IPCC believes will trigger 2 degrees C of warming? That's not possible either.
Physics doesn't care where the carbon came from. It's not like every molecule of CO2 has "Made in China" or "Made in the USA" stamped on it.
OK, this is not a rhetorical question: Do you believe the whole enterprise is hopeless, so we might as well not do anything? Like, we'll all die tomorrow, so why waste time on it? That makes sense if it's true. Me, I think it's hopeless and we're screwed and circling the drain, but I would prefer to circle it more slowly if possible, so might as well do what we can.
I think that even if humanity did nothing it would be unpleasant for a lot of people but not fatal.
The point is of course that humanity can do something, but doing something means understanding the problem and what solutions will work versus what is essentially masturbation. There are billions of people out there who want cars and electricity. Nothing is going to stop them.
If it's really a serious issue then geoengineering is the way to go. And short of that there is plenty humanity can do in terms of mitigation and adaptation.
Speaking only for myself, I am not sure how how effective anything EXCEPT vaccination has been, and I grew up with multiple mandated vaccinations and have always regarded vaccination to be an unambiguously good thing. I don't give it a second thought.
I'm just saying, I really truly don't feel like it is a bad thing if people are losing their jobs over vaccine refusal. If you think you've identified the psychological underpinning of people's reactions, that's not it for me!
The unemployment numbers are a lie because labor force participation is way, way down. Some three million fewer workers now compared to the start of the pandemic.
My personal worry is that many of the people who are part of "The Great Resignation" are going to ground in the face of the pandemic, choosing to exit the economy either permanently or long term. A shortage of workers is driving wage increases. Normally that would be a good (or at least neutral) phenomenon, but now with inflation rates already at levels not seen for decades I worry about anything that could contribute to the death spiral of higher wages driving high inflation which drives higher wages and so on.
So vaccine mandates in my viewpoint are probably a lousy idea.
Of course the road to Hell is paved with good intentions. But there is a parallel side track and the street sign there is "Do something!"
A couple of observations:
1. Omicron is probably less serious than the original strain but 90% of the people who contracted the original strain were either completely asymptomatic or suffered from symptoms no more serious than a cold or the flu. I remember reading about one of the original patients who introduced the virus to Italy from China: she felt cold during a business meeting, grabbed a sweater and that was the extent of her symptoms. The issue has always been that a small minority of people are vulnerable while for the vast majority it is indeed just the flu. The drive to portray the virus as a threat to the population in general has distorted our thinking about acceptable remedies for ameliorating the effects of the pandemic.
2. A lot of the government responses last year, including lockdowns, were panic driven. Now with the benefit of hindsight we are reexamining whether or not they were justified. The problem is that the question has attained culture war significance. Pushing for lockdowns now is a means for arguing that lockdowns were a good idea a year ago.
3. The lasting effects of the pandemic have been corrosive to social trust, especially in authority. I think that "Trust the science" has probably been irreparably tarnished.
I'm sorry comments were off initially, it was in error. They're on now.
Eric Weinstein sent you back in time to correct that, didn't he?
The only thing I'd ask you to do is engage with the arguments that people are making rather than the arguments that you think they are making. I have literally not seen a single person advocate for a "strict lockdown" a la 2020 during this latest wave - certainly not public officials or anyone in a position to implement them - and yet here you spend paragraphs arguing against something that has a 0% chance of happening in the coming months. I have not seen a single educator advocate going back to "remote learning" in the same way that we did in 2020, and yet you spent an entire post railing against its evils.
There may be some people on Twitter who are arguing for those things. And lots of schools are going to close on a very temporary basis because teachers have a nasty aversion to working while sick (even if it's "mild") - but other than that, you are fighting a battle that you have already won.
I think "did lockdowns work" or "did remote learning do more harm than good" are very interesting arguments and you'd get a lot of serious engagement on those topics! But note the past tense on those questions - we really are not going back to those things any time soon. Take the W, Freddie.
"I have literally not seen a single person advocate for a "strict lockdown""
I have. See how easy that is? And also, I don't believe that you haven't.
"I have not seen a single educator advocate going back to "remote learning" in the same way that we did in 2020, and yet you spent an entire post railing against its evils."
One of the five biggest public school districts in the country is forcing exactly that outcome right now.
If you think that CTU is arguing for going back to remote learning long-term ("the same way we did in 2020"), I don't know what I can do for you! In any case that situation is also a worthy discussion on its own, and I still don't think that it fits into the dichotomy that you've set up with your writing here.
Were people advocating for a long-term lockdown back in 2020? My memory is that it was supposed to be brief.
My memory is that there was this vaccine development process that people were waiting to play out
Two weeks to flatten the curve!
They're proposing that the entire district go remote if the city's positivity rate is 10% and increasing--and they want to lower the threshold for closing individual schools too. It might not be continuous remote learning, but schools would be closed a lot under the CTU's proposal.
Chicago Teachers Union votes to defy in-person learning order and revert to remote learning: https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2022/01/05/chicago-teachers-union-classes-canceled-covid/
I started to write an article in my head about what we should have in place for schools for the next go round, whether in COVID or otherwise:
1) Have, on hand, with a real distribution plan, a supply of high quality masks enough to cover all students and teachers for, say, a month (3? 5?). These should be kept on hand more or less indefinitely, for distribution during a pandemic wave.
2) For the next year, at least, have a supply of appropriate tests on order/pre-order/reserve, whatever to *guarantee* their availability within, say, a month of a new wave appearing on the horizon.
3) Have a plan, on hand, for how to test students and teachers returning from a break, that everyone understands ahead of time.
4) Have an aggressive short and long term plan to improve ventilation in schools, up to and including complete reconstruction when necessary (and in this case the reconstruction is probably necessary for many reasons, just hasn't been done). Make people aware that this is actually happening.
5) Have overall plans for how to handle the next wave that won't literally change completely at the moment the next wave arrives. Don't teach and maintain safety plans which are only used when the situation is almost completely safe anyhow and are discarded the minute the situation changes.
6) Add a week to the end of Christmas break in next year's school calendar, just in case.
(sorry, I'm adding more as I remember them).
7) Once COVID vaccines have regular non-emergency approval, make them mandatory for students to the same extent other vaccines are in your state.
8) Make it clear that all students will be tested periodically active pandemic diseases, or at least make it opt-out rather than opt-in.
People may ask, "Why didn't schools have this anyhow, especially with the fountain of money thrown at the problem?" The problem is not *teachers*, I can tell you that. Our district administration spent the entire summer of 2020 planning for everything except how to manage a rapidly changing pandemic.
Exactly to all of this. There are some very specific things that people like students would like us to do, and they are not complicated, and we should do them, instead of what we are doing right now, which is not doing any of them. Such as the Oakland students petition: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1l99O8o3jdDEWmHGbvedl0AoSGP6bdIeqWtw_YkzOPSM/edit
Yes, in fact, I hadn't really read anything in detail about the CTU/CPS negotiations, but it turns out to be the same stuff -- the parts that could be implemented immediately, at least. https://chicago.suntimes.com/education/2022/1/8/22873428/cps-school-closed-ctu-covid-testing-negotiations-chicago-teachers-union
I don't recall negotiations for terms of a quick return occurring at the beginning of the pandemic.
I for one think the CTU is bargaining in good faith here.
To which I can only say oh, my god, I'm glad you're not running schools.
I also think your detailed list embodies Freddie's observation. You actually think this can be controlled.
My comment is not even so much about controlling this wave, but preparedness for safe schools going forward. Schools have an obligation of care toward our students. We have an obligation to prepare and provide a safe environment. What if we do none of these things and in one, two or three years there's a less transmissible variant that's more dangerous to younger people? Wouldn't you want to be ready for that? Or is what we've learned that transmission of infectious diseases is actually impossible to stop?
"Or is what we've learned that transmission of infectious diseases is actually impossible to stop?"
Probably. And good lord, how absurd.
"Let's ruin kids' lives now even though there's no need to, on the offchance that something worse comes along and we can be all ready."
You don't seem to be aware that COVID is not the first infectious disease to come along. We have stopped many, controlled many, cured and treated many and have far more powerful tools to do so than ever before.
"We demand KN95/N95 Masks in schools for every student
2x a week PCR and Rapid tests for everyone on campus
More outdoor spaces to eat safely when it rains"
Cosign.
Freddie what if Covid mortality goes above 50%? I agree with you based on present facts but something worse is likely in coming decades. Are you assuming we’ll be prepared?
Epidemiologists liked to talk about "Virus X" before Covid came along. One requirement was a relatively low infection fatality rate. Something that kills half of the people who catch it would burn itself out almost immediately.
I've heard this before, but I'm not sure I understand. The black plague killed a third of Europe. Is that not possible today because of modern medical technology?
The vector for the plague wasn't human to human transmission. Locking down humans but not rodents wasn't an option.
Ah, ok, that makes sense.
The Black Plague hit somewhere between 30%-75% mortality rate, and there were isolated plagues that likely hit higher (as well as diseases like rabies that do have 100% mortality rates). But the evolutionary pressure for disease is generally going to select for less-lethal variants: a disease optimally wants to infect as many hosts as possible before either its host dies or it's destroyed by its host. If the average infection passes on less than one time, then obviously the disease is going to die out. If it passes on to only one host, then it's neither growing nor dying. If it passes on to more than one host, it's growing.
Being deadly is a risky gamble (remember that diseases gain no advantage from killing their hosts). Some diseases, like rabies or HIV, have persisted despite their deadliness because they have an extremely long incubation period. But for most diseases, being deadly just means you're risking your host dying before you've had the chance to spread as much as you can. It's sub-optimal.
Between that and modern medicine and sanitation practices, the chance of a disease that's both extremely deadly and extremely infectious is low. Not impossible, but low.
Gary it's rude to answer a question with a question!
Also, mortality above 50%?!? What on earth? The country with the single highest mortality rate in the world is at 7.5%! https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/data/mortality
I guess Gary is talking about the plague from Station Eleven or something idk. (Good novel, terrible tv show, incidentally.)
I mean, there's a lot we could we could be doing that's not a Chinese-style authoritarian nightmare. I've been reading yourlocalepidemiologist.substack.com which strikes me as a reasonable and dispassionate look at the data, with some recommendations.
For instance, in her most recent post she states that the case/hospitalization decoupling is less pronounced in the U.S. than either Denmark or the U.K., likely owing to our lower vaccination rate.
One thing I'd like to see us talk about more is ventilation. I remember reading something from a few months ago which made the argument that with the technology available to us now, we could make indoor air quality the 21st century equivalent of the 19th century sanitation push, with a resultant reduction or elimination of many airborne respiratory diseases.
This was incredible. Thanks. Also the little tidbit about omicron was a shocker. I tested positive yesterday after being a do-everything-right person (I feel ok. Like a heavy cold) and I’m quarantining in my bedroom with the window open, but I’m kind of like, my three kids and husband are sitting ducks. This is probably useless.
My family seems to have gotten through my wife's COVID last week unscathed, we caught it very early -- no symptoms and very faint line on the rapid test(s). Or maybe I'll be sick tomorrow!
actually, you should want your family to get Omicron (rather than later variants); it's essentially a free vaccine. everyone is getting covid eventually ...
We've already gotten a free vaccine three times each, with less side effects than the "natural" one.
yeah that wasn't clear -- I have also been vaccinated, I just meant natural immunity has longer-lasting protection (from the studies I've seen)
Fewer side effects from the vaccine.
Also, if anything goes wrong while you get Omicron, the ICUs might be packed.
Just zero chance of that happening in a country the size of the United States with our bizarre politics and our culture of independence/noncompliance/insert other term here. Simply not feasible.
Thanks for posting, the article was fascinating
Went to Vietnam. Same, if not even more restrictive experience. Had a blackout in my hotel room and had to fix the fuses myself since the staff are not allowed to come in for any reason.
I think the ventilation discussion is one worth having, but it's also not something I think can rapidly be put in place--there's a lot of retrofitting, at times expensive, to be done, and it's already difficult to find skilled laborers. It also clashes with energy efficiency goals and isn't practical at all times in all climates (I say as it's -20F with windchill where I'm at right now).
Worth having, definitely. But more of a long-term goal than immediate relief.
Oh definitely! But we're not even really talking about it, which is disappointing.
Agreed. Ventillation always had more evidence for than masks and certainly way more than surface cleaning. But it seems like no effort was made there.
All the money that went to schools and businesses could/should have been directed towards improving indoor ventilation but most did surface cleaning instead. Or, created outdoor classrooms or dining, which are fine for places that don’t go below 60 degrees in the winter time.
But, here we are. I suspect most of our efforts were geared towards doing what we could “in the moment”, which is how humanity seems to deal with all of its long-term, multi -faceted problems. We wear ourselves out in mighty bursts of short term angst, and then sink back into exhausted complacency until the next crisis hits.
Perhaps the elite’s anxiety could be directed at longer term efforts, such as how do we want to prepare now for the next pandemic, which we all know will come. What have we learned from this catastrophe that we can apply to the next?
Perhaps we need to recognize our different levels of response to such crises could be a gift, not a detriment. Those inclined to perpetual panic can be assigned the task of working together on long-term problem solutions, while those more able to live in the moment keep society going in the short- term!
I don't know what the magic number for X is, but here's how I view it. Maybe X is like 10
If there's another one in >X years, everything from this one will be forgotten. If there's another one in <= X years, there will be no appetite for any response and it will spread naturally regardless the damage. I don't see any scenario where we "learn from" this one.
More to the point, it seems quite likely that improvements to ventilation will be entirely forgotten, despite the multitude of benefits beyond just COVID. Also, it isn't just bringing in fresh air. Systematic filtration helps too!
We had two years to work on this, but it was always "that's not immediate relief" so we kicked the can down the road.
I mean, several businesses around me boast about the COVID-scrubbing fancy HVAC systems they've installed, and during the summer every business I went to had every window/door open that they could.
But retrofitting everything is also a decades-long undertaking, and I don't really see a way around that.
It doesn't have to be "everything."
This is something I encountered a lot when talking about opening schools. I mentioned keeping windows open, and the response was "but not every building has windows that open!" and this was meant "checkmate, every school has to be closed!"
If we had gotten through 1% of the schools each month, we'd have 24% of them done by now. And lots of the schools were completely fine as is.
And for those that can't retrofit, we can drop in a portable air filter. HEPA filters have been in stock for a long time.
Now, maybe someone will complain that if we'd tried we'd have run out and they'd be as hard to get as tests are today. But there is some kind of learned helpless that says "look for any excuse not to try." And "we might have only solved the problem for half the people, therefore it would be a failure, so we better not even try" justifies doing nothing in their heads.
But what's the goal? If you accept that everyone is going to contract Covid as part of the process of achieving endemicity then all you care about is making sure that process is slow and gradual. If the goal is just to slow down the process of infecting the entire population, rather than shutting down the virus entirely, then how much money are you will to invest towards that end?
Slowing the process of infection so that hospitals aren’t overwhelmed seems reasonable to me.
Before, the general goal was to "make the schools safe" and having good ventilation is the way to do it. Until Omicron, there was the possibility of keeping lots of people just uninfected.
Now, IHME says about 50% of Americans will get infected by the Omicron wave, which will peak probably in less than 10 days. "Lockdowns" can do little to change the overall population-level effects.
So this is it, we're ripping off the band-aid, like it or not.
That's amazing. No businesses in Baltimore did that
Yes, but there is a spectrum to improve air quality ...maybe not whole HVAC units, but making sure windows can open and shut is a game changer.
Yes, it is difficult to find skilled labor. I had a few that needed to be added and went to Lowes and bought them.Called several businesses and couldn't schedule the installation. So I went to a construction site where there was a crew doing outdoor work. I talked to the foreman and asked if when it rained and the men couldn't work outside could they come and put in some windows for me? It rained the next day, 3 fellows showed up and install done. Maybe helped I wore my husband's UBC pin when I made the request.
What a smart idea! Taking advantage of the rain.
My office was open last summer & fall for those who wanted to work from there. (Post vaccine but pre-omicron). The few kids in the office (I'm 50+) really didn't seem to understand why I kept my office window open almost all the time. Ventilation is something people left & right seem ignorant about here. It's nuts.
Huge public investment in upgrading ventilation, I'm 100% on board with.
There *are* ways to contain outbreaks though. China provided the blueprint. They've had fewer than 5,000 deaths this entire time! They're at the point where they can contain outbreaks without needing to lock down! Most of their cases are mild or asymptomatic because they catch them so quickly.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_government_response_to_COVID-19
I agree with the thrust of your article, but I don't view covid as some kind of irresistible force. The US (and most of the western world) is too calcified to mobilize the necessary response but it's not impossible. We're just... not doing any of those things.
I think there is a lot of justified skepticism with regards to the Chinese numbers.
Plus the measures they took are frankly unacceptable to people used to living in liberal Western democracies. For example, removing the sick from their homes and forcibly confining them inside camps until they test negative.
If upholding certain societal values increases deaths by several orders of magntitude, I would question the utility of those values.
Absent reliable numbers from China it's not possible to say how effective their measures were. It would be a real disappointment if the US tried to implement Chinese style lockdowns and saw no reduction in the curve for excess mortalities.
I think it's disingenuous to completely dismiss China's numbers. Several Western journals and the WHO have regarded their domestic efforts as effective. Here's an overview from the Lancet in 2020:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7544475/
There are a lot of interesting differences between China and the US (for instance, there are fewer nursing homes in China) that we could use to refine our own pandemic response.
Let's presume that the US is somehow able to implement a Chinese style lockdown and shut off transmission.
Delta originated in India and was imported. Omicron originated in South Africa and was imported. China has closed its borders. How does the US prevent reintroduction from abroad? Shut down international travel?
We'd be on our 17th new variant by the time the Supreme Court heard the case.
"Educated liberals are mad at them, but they don’t have many anti-vaxxers in their orbit" — Don't most people have ongoing protracted wars with family members over vaccination status, active disinformation, and family health and the elderly? I guess I assumed this was more universal an experience from the people I talk to than perhaps it is.
FOLLOW the Carpenter. (no not that carpenter).
The carpenters, electricians and auto mechanics I know have been at work since the pandemic began. I'm from the working class so went right along.
The only people I know who seem to be having protected wars over vaccination status are the "work from home people with steady cash flow" from government or universities.
After June 2020 I began to see my family. I attended outdoor events. The schools received a lot of $$ for mediation of HVAC etc. They reopened w/o masks in August 2020 and have been open every day with testing but no shut-downs.
People giving in to so much fear amplify because so many are all getting paid to work from home and have time to hand-wring on public social media platforms. They are a small group reading each other and thinking it is everyone. I know it is a community by community response, and an individual response, but my life has been close to the way it was pre-Covid.
Every day before the pandemic I did a risky thing--I got in my vehicle and drove somewhere. Isn't anyone who drives a car a person with a high tolerance for risk?
I think the evidence in favor of 2020-style "lockdowns" is a little stronger than you're giving credit for here.
From Nov. 2020 in Nature: "We showed that the most effective measures include closing and restricting most places where people gather in smaller or larger numbers for extended periods of time (businesses, bars, schools and so on)." https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-020-01009-0
Another one: "Early-onset lockdown with gradual deconfinement allowed shortening the SARS-CoV-2 epidemic and reducing contaminations. Lockdown should be considered as an effective public health intervention to halt epidemic progression." https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7806254/
From The Lancet: "Lockdowns are an effective way of controlling the spread of COVID-19 in communities. Significant delays in lockdown cause a dramatic increase in the cumulative case counts." https://www.thelancet.com/journals/eclinm/article/PIIS2589-5370(21)00315-1/fulltext
More specifically, there's ample evidence that indoor bars and restaurants are significant sites of spread. See:
https://khn.org/news/deadly-mix-how-bars-are-fueling-covid-19-outbreaks/
https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2020/11/10/coronavirus-restaurants-gyms-hotels-risk/
https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/news-perspective/2020/09/more-evidence-points-bars-adding-covid-19-spread
(Aside from the research, there's been a great deal of anecdotes flying around lately of restaurant workers on the job while actively sick with COVID because they don't get paid sick leave.)
So, in terms of "what more can we be doing," it seems like "closing bars and restaurants for a few weeks and providing economic support to businesses and workers to get them through it" is a pretty reasonable ask.
How is it "just a few weeks"? The nature of epidemics is that once the lockdown is lifted they resurge. At that point you need another lockdown of a few weeks to "flatten the curve", and the another and another and another...
I am going to commit heresy and suggest that vaccines have changed exactly zero with regards to how society should approach the pandemic.
First, unfortunately, it does not appear that vaccines have an appreciable effect on limiting transmission. This is especially true of omicron. That moves vaccines out of the category of a means for protecting society at large to a measure for individual protection.
But the virus has always been primarily a threat only for vulnerable populations--those with diabetes, the obese, etc.--rather than the public at large. For the elderly and those with comorbidities I think getting vaccinated is a very good idea. But for everyone else for whom the risk is negligible it is probably superfluous.
So in that sense nothing has changed. The general public can largely proceed with life as normal while those subgroups that are at risk should take extra precautions. I call this position the "modified Swedish" because it is what Sweden wished it had done when originally faced with the pandemic: lock down rest homes and group living settings while letting the rest of the country do the work of keeping society running.
I don't like the mandates, but please elaborate on what you mean.
I think mandating businesses to be vaccinated is fine. You can't "grab & stab" but you can insist that people who are in and around other people be vaccinated. And you can't deny that with more vaccination there'd be less death. Period.
You want less people vaccinated? Why?
"In the United States, 6 out of 10 adults have a chronic disease that increases their risk of severe COVID-19. Also, 4 out of 10 people have two or more of these chronic conditions." https://www.healthline.com/health-news/60-percent-of-americans-have-underlying-condition-that-increases-covid19-risk
At the end of the day that means an IFR that is probably in the range of 0.2% to 0.6% compared to 0.1% or so for influenza. And that was before the introduction of steroid therapies that drastically reduced fatality rates.
This seems a good time to disambiguate between absolute and relative risk.
The absolute risk of dying from COVID is very small. For the non-elderly, the chance of dying of COVID is extremely small, ranging from .001% of infections being deadly in young children to .1% in the middle-aged. It then rises sharply, until the 80+ crowd have a 10% chance of death from infection. (All numbers will probably turn out to be wrong given the newness of the science, but it's what the estimates are that I could find).
Men are about twice as likely to die from COVID as women. That still means that an otherwise-healthy middle-aged man only has a .2% chance of death. Their relative risk is double that of women, but their absolute risk remains very small.
I don't know what other conditions raise risk by, but let's assume Condition X raises the risk of death by COVID by 15 times (this is roughly the amount that smoking increases risk of lung cancer). Your middle-aged man still has a death risk of only 3%--97% of middle-aged men with Condition X will survive COVID.
There are degrees of severity of COVID-19 infection between "you are totally fine" and "you are dead," though. COVID-19 doesn't snap its fingers like Thanos and dissolve an unlucky few into the ether.
No, but I would guess the absolute risk of long-term issues is similarly low, though not as low as the chance of death. The broader point was just to point out that even a group that has a greater relative risk of issues from COVID still has a small absolute risk of issues for basically everything except age.
For me, it made sense to take precautions until we had a vaccine because most of us interact with older people. It's not just about personal risk when young people can infect their parents and grandparents (or those with other risk factors).
The idea that vulnerable groups can take precautions while the rest of us ignore it just doesn't work in practice. Nursing home workers need staff, many grandparents watch their grandkids... we all mix and interact with each other.
So for me, the vaccine made a huge difference. It means my parents are protected, so we can all return to normal without putting them at risk.
Check out my comment above. A study out of Denmark a few days ago showed a correlation between vaccination and contracting Omicron. In other words being vaccinated actually makes you more likely to contract Omicron, not less.
Now this is probably behavioral--it is likely that the vaccinated are filled with a false sense of security compared to the unvaxed and they are out eating at restaurants, shopping, etc. in settings where they are more likely to be exposed. But based on this I would guess that the current batch of vaccines don't offer a lot of protection against contracting Omicron.
The issue has always been this: widespread vaccination just confers a competitive advantage on vaccine escaping strains. And since coronaviruses mutate rapidly it is likely that there will no shortage of vaccine escaping strains.
Very true. One thing I've been wondering about for some time now is the Russian vaccine. I wondered aloud last year if it wasn't the best vaccine available: developed the "old fashioned" way utilizing an attenuated or killed virus, it was the first vaccine out of the gate. Plus it was a single shot with better than 90% effectiveness. Are the Russians doing better with Omicron now as a consequence I wonder?
Although the other factor is how quickly the virus mutates. There is no universal vaccine against the flu, for example.
The vaccines do protect against hospitalization and death, though. That's what really matters.
For now and hopefully for the future. I would note however that Zeynep Tufekci just had an article in the NY Times where she pointed out that Omicron being a) vaccine escaping and b) less dangerous is just pure dumb luck. There's no guarantee that the next vaccine escaping strain won't be as virulent, or more so, than Delta.
If it does get to that point with any luck the antiviral therapies will be out and widely adopted. But that doesn't disqualify my point that vaccines are probably overrated in terms of a solution for dealing with the pandemic.
But if that the happens were fucked regardless, right? I don't mean to be a nihilist, but at some point the hypotheticals get so bad that you end up in the same place - panicking is no use.
I agree. At the end of the day 90% of the people who caught the original strain were either completely asymptomatic or suffered from minor symptoms comparable to the cold or the flu. It's hardly a death sentence so conceding that a) everyone is probably going to get infected and b) it's out of our hands shouldn't drive anyone to despair.
Omicron is so infectious that lockdowns are useless.
People should take individual protections if they don't want to be part of the 50% of Americans who are going to be infected, and I encourage that, but society-wide there's no real way of stopping it.
I wouldn't consider obese people to be in the "vulnerable" population, in this article you can see a estimated hazard ratio for various factors (fig 3): https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-2521-4
Obesity is about the same difference between male and female, the table makes it clear that the biggest risk factor by a long shot is really age.
"I ask you to consider the possibility that from the beginning, the only solutions were solutions brought to us by medical technology."
I think this might be true for climate change as well (though you can cross out the word medical, obviously). I don't see the world stopping for that either. I just don't buy that we see a world with dramatically reduced consumption.
Nuke China. Perhaps that will deter India. Other than that I would agree with you that reducing consumption is probably not a practical solution.
From what I recall China has already built so many coal powered plants that just using them for the duration of their normal life span will easily raise carbon levels past the IPCC's drop dead threshold. You'd have to convince them to decommission a bunch of power plants that they just built and replace them with nuclear reactors. That is a proposition so expensive as to be impossible I think.
Because the atmosphere doesn't care about the country of origin for carbon emissions. Regardless of how much the West cuts China, India and the rest of the developing world will put enough additional carbon into the atmosphere to overwhelm any reductions that the first world makes.
I concur, although China is also commissioning modular nukes.
Hope they build them better than the ghost cities, tho.
Still too many rats in the box. (Earth, that is.)
Freddie had a great post on this in 2019 called "We're not fixing climate change." It's true and everyone knows it, but hardly anyone says it out loud.
Like you said, similarly, there was never any hope of eradicating covid because humans were never going to lock down to the extent that would be necessary. I struggled with it for a while--this idea that we COULD stop covid, but people aren't cooperating. But I had to accept that nothing anyone says will stop people from working, mixing, socializing -- we're not capable of stopping the spread through behavior whether I like it or not.
I can't find it. Was it on the old medium blog?
It's archived here: https://archive.fo/pvJVZ
"It's true and everyone knows it, but hardly anyone says it out loud."
Stephen Levitt actually argued this is Freakenomics like 15 years ago of whenever that book is from. He talks about it on Econ Talk. He said that he got a lot of pushback from people saying he doesn't care about climate change etc. But he does care, he just wants to be realistic
Sadly, I think COVID has answered the question: “are societies capable of deploying collective action to solve a widespread problem like climate change?” I get why people are leery of geo-engineering but given this trial run I think we should be pumping way more research money into that because it sure looks like it may be our only hope.
I'm not familiar with geo-engineering. got any good articles?
This isn’t bad: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_engineering
This is what "Don't Look Up" was poking fun at with it's climate analogy, right? Maybe that's why I kind of hated it.
I found Don't Look Up very affirming.
But, I've had my life, motorcycles, windsurfing kids and all.
Good luck, humanity. I was never a member.
I think western society isn't capable of it. China taking over as the new superpower isn't the worst fate for the world, admittedly.
This! I still consider myself a progressive liberal on most topics. But the list of topics that my more activist friends think we can solve but we actually can't is almost endless. Racism, sexism, transphobia, poverty, etc. etc. When I point out the progress we've made on these issues or even the realistic notion that none of these plagues will be eradicated in our lifetimes, I'm branded as a right winger. It's insanity.
Honestly, I'm not sure that we can solve racism, people will likely always hate the outgroup. Sexism might be a tough one too given the millennia of tradition behind that.
But we've made massive leaps in forms of transphobia -- a decade ago I think most people had no clue non-binary people even existed, hell even most non-binary people probably didn't. I feel like we could probably solve this one.
And poverty, well, depends on the scale of the problem I suppose, I don't think lithium miners will be making middle-class US wages any time soon, but considering that's literally just "give people money" I'm not optimistic that it will happen, but y'know, all it would take is one spiritual awakening for the right billionaire.
Agreed on mostly all of this. You can never get to zero on any of these problems. Doesn't mean we shouldn't aim high. And I do NOT mean these issues should be ignored. We just have to be realistic and pragmatic about our goals.
This is why I became a Yang fan. At the debates he was asked who to do about Climate Change. He flippantly said "Move to higher ground". Stupid comment politically, but probably the best actual advice long term.
From the research I've done, Michigan is touted as a good place to be long-term.
Yeah, a buddy said Chicago would be fine, but scorpions are gonna be a big problem someday
I very much agree and I hope this has shown up the folly of trying to asceticize society to solve major problems.
Great post. I agree there is a huge emotional component. Anxious people want everyone else to validate their emotional state.
On Friday, Twitter was full of people saying Rochelle Walensky wants them to die. I looked it up, and (in a conversation about vaccine effectiveness) she said, “The overwhelming number of death, over 75%, occurred in people who had at least 4 comorbidities, so really these are people who were unwell to begin with. And yes, really encouraging news in the context of Omicron…”
People called it “eugenics” and got thousands of likes. The hashtag #MyDisabledLifeIsWorthy went viral throughout the weekend.
I imagine most of them are perfectly aware that Walensky did not say “it’s encouraging that disabled people are dying, because they’re unworthy and also fuck them.” But countless strangers responded with agreement and sympathy, which is what they wanted I guess.
I’m a hypochondriac with anxiety, so I’ve been on the side of lockdowns and restrictions until recent months. I believe it was sensible to isolate until we had a vaccine. But evidence shows: 1) Vaccines are effective, 2) Children under 5 almost never get serious cases, 3) We’re all going to get Omicron no matter what we do. So I’ve softened in my views because of those realities.
I understand why many people are stuck, though – it’s hard to shepherd people through different stages of the pandemic, even with perfect messaging. People who spent two years desperately trying not to get covid still think that’s the goal, even though it’s no longer possible (Omicron) or necessary (vaccines). It's hard to think clearly about things like a "great but not perfect vaccine" after feeling afraid for so long.
People on Twitter always think they win by taking something in the worst faith possible. In school, I learned principal of charity - which is when you do just the opposite.
The percentage dying is much lower with vaccines.
That's because the variants are less lethal. The vaccines wear off pretty quickly and in the long run are less useful than the immunity offered by having had the virus
There is no guarantee that the next variant won't be more lethal, more infectious and more vaccine resistant. That's why an endemic virus is dangerous.
So our terrible citizenship of ignorance, education resistance, and cocky rebellion so reminds me of a pouty three year old.
Who's cruising for a fall down the stairs.
I love how every hashtag is designed to resist an existential threat
I've come to dislike the term "validate." What does it mean exactly? Because I believe one should accept their emotions and admit them, but that doesn't mean one gets to act on all emotions. When did that become true? Its obviously not a good way to live.
As in, "your feelings are valid." I have no idea what that sort of stuff means.
In the clinical psych world, where the usage escaped from, validating emotions just means acknowledging them. If someone is expressing frustration and you say something like "I see this experience has been frustrating for you," that's providing validation. The purpose is to meet the need that many people have in many situations to know that how they are feeling is understood by others. It doesn't imply agreement with the assessments or beliefs the person is having at the time, and it definitely doesn't mean encouraging them to act on their emotions. The purpose may be quite the opposite--to diffuse some of the intensity of the emotion so the person can more easily chose not to act on the emotion, or come to reassess their thinking around the situation. You might say "I would also be really upset if someone parked in my parking spot!" as part of an effort to eventually dissuade someone from bashing in the windshield of the offending car with a bat--because part of the reason they want to bash in the windshield is to express their anger, and if you help them express it or show them their emotion has been understood, that need decreases.
Emotions don't have inherent content, and can't really be wrong or right. Moreover, we have very little direct control over them. That's the sense in which they are "valid"--they're real, they cause real experiences, and they're to be reckoned with and handled rather than argued with or judged. I don't think this understanding has been retained very much in common parlance. I also have little idea what is intended when I see "such and such is valid" in the wild. However, the common rhetorical move "Look, I get that you are feeling such a way, but I disagree with the recommendation you are providing based on that feeling" is what validation actually looks like.
I get it. I also agree that this isn't how its working in the wild. If you have a feeling and you are just expressing it over and over and seeking endless "validation", at some point you are treating the world as an emotional dumpster, and that seems more like an action.
I always wondered if while vaccine mandates couldn't (and shouldn't) be enforced, they were a group of people who, while not religiously anti-vax, would decide to get the vaccines as a result. I do know a few people like this either because they didn't "get around to it" or they were like Scarlett O'Hara, waiting to be invited to dinner but got the vaccine once they heard there was a mandate. Perhaps that could justify the mandates even if they couldn't be enforced but don't have any real facts (besides some people I know) to justify this.