Ordinary World: Ides of March Edition
Ordinary World for Monday, March 15th, 2021.
[OW1]
More problems with no good answers at the US-Mexico border:
In a border area that has suffered from ongoing covid-19 outbreaks, advocates for immigrants and ICE are at odds over the agency’s treatment of infected detainees. Advocates and county officials say they had no idea ICE was dropping detainees with covid off at the bus stop, while ICE says it is the agency’s protocol to notify local authorities ahead of time.
While the advocates agree that detainees with diagnosed with covid-19 should be released from detention so they can seek better medical care, failing to coordinate those transfers with health officials and nonprofits is a danger to public health, they said.
“It’s reprehensible,” said Jules Kramer, chief of operations at the Minority Humanitarian Foundation, a nonprofit that aids migrants and refugees on both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border. “It’s a threat to public safety. It’s a threat to our asylum seekers. It’s a threat to the people on the ground helping. It’s absolutely unforgivable.”
ICE officials said in a statement that the medical staff at the Imperial Regional Detention Facility, where they were monitoring 12 active covid-19 cases as of late last week, tests people for the virus before they are released, and counsels them on federal health guidelines such as wearing personal protective equipment and quarantining.
Biden will deploy FEMA to care for teenagers and children crossing border in record numbers
“U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement is firmly committed to the health and welfare of all those in its custody,” spokeswoman Paige Hughes said in a statement. “In these particular instances, ICE had no legal authority to continue detention for the individuals referenced.”
“In addition, the individual’s sponsor, should they have one, and the Imperial County public health officials are notified,” she added. The agency would not say who it notified.
Imperial County officials gave a different account, saying ICE did not notify them they were releasing people with covid-19.
“The unknown release of COVID positive nonresidents of the County is definitely a concern for the health of our community, but in recognizing that these individuals are in need of humanitarian aid, the County of Imperial took action,” Rebecca Terrazas-Baxter, the county’s intergovernmental relations director, said in a statement.
County officials picked up the men in Calexico and took them to quarantine at its Department of Social Services, she said. But she said the county has “limited capacity” and will need help from the federal government if they continue to release detainees with covid. “It is imperative for increased communication and support from the federal government,” she said.
[OW2]
Over at The Atlantic, Mark Bowden details the current problems facing a Special Forces-reliant military right now by detailing the history of how US SOCOM, JSOC, and special forces evolved in the first place:
SOCOM was so active during Obama’s tenure—in addition to the large deployments in the Middle East, there were smaller units in Niger, Chad, Mali, South Korea, the Philippines, Colombia, El Salvador, Peru, and dozens of other countries—that the Pentagon was leery of opening major new fronts. When al-Shabaab, the militant Islamist group in Somalia, showed signs of mounting strength, there was some worry that Obama might want to go in heavy. Thomas was in the room when Pentagon commanders laid out the options, expecting the president to expand the mission. At the conclusion of the briefing, he recalled, Obama made two points: “One, ‘We don’t know enough about the problem.’ And two, ‘Maybe the best thing we can do is mow the grass’ ”—meaning, manage the problem around its edges, quietly. SOCOM gave him the option of mowing the grass, at least for a time.
Special Ops forces are popular for two reasons, McChrystal explained: “One, because they’re sexy, and two, because they are viewed as a way to do things on the cheap, meaning you could send 10 brave people in to do a job instead of 100,000 soldiers, which has political costs and casualties.” The reality, he went on, is that the nonsexy parts of Special Ops are the ones that may have more lasting impact. Killing or capturing a murderous foe appeals to a sense of justice and provides momentary satisfaction, but eliminating a terrorist leader is not victory. It is, in Obama’s words, just mowing the grass.
As Obama explained when I spoke with him after the bin Laden mission: “Ultimately, none of this stuff works if we’re not partnering effectively with other countries, if we’re not engaging in smart diplomacy, if we’re not trying to change our image in the Muslim world to reduce recruits” to extremism. The targeting engine itself, he said, “is not an end-all, be-all. I’m sure glad we have it, though.”
There is a risk in being admired by those in charge. During Thomas’s tenure as SOCOM commander, from 2016 to 2019, the scope of his responsibility grew at a pace he calls “frantic.” New tasks were given to his already swollen organization, grafted on like afterthoughts, even as Obama’s successor as president made several dramatic troop reductions or withdrawals, notably in Syria and Afghanistan. Donald Trump’s words and policies were unpredictable, but SOCOM’s mission continued to enlarge.
[OW3]
It is inevitable that taxes are going up, now we are just negotiating the particulars…
While the White House has rejected an outright wealth tax, as proposed by progressive Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren, the administration’s current thinking does target the wealthy.
The White House is expected to propose a suite of tax increases, mostly mirroring Biden’s 2020 campaign proposals, according to four people familiar with the discussions.
The tax hikes included in any broader infrastructure and jobs package are likely to include repealing portions of President Donald Trump’s 2017 tax law that benefit corporations and wealthy individuals, as well as making other changes to make the tax code more progressive, said the people familiar with the plan.
The following are among proposals currently planned or under consideration, according to the people, who asked not to be named as the discussions are private:
Raising the corporate tax rate to 28% from 21%Paring back tax preferences for so-called pass-through businesses, such as limited-liability companies or partnershipsRaising the income tax rate on individuals earning more than $400,000Expanding the estate tax’s reachA higher capital-gains tax rate for individuals earning at least $1 million annually. (Biden on the campaign trail proposed applying income-tax rates, which would be higher)
An independent analysis of the Biden campaign tax plan done by the Tax Policy Center estimated it would raise $2.1 trillion over a decade, though the administration’s plan is likely to be smaller. Bianchi earlier this month wrote that congressional Democrats might agree to $500 billion.
The overall program has yet to be unveiled, with analysts penciling in $2 trillion to $4 trillion. No date has yet been set for an announcement, though the White House said the plan would follow the signing of the Covid-19 relief bill.
An outstanding question for Democrats is which parts of the package need to be funded, amid debate over whether infrastructure ultimately pays for itself — especially given current borrowing costs, which remain historically low. Efforts to make the expanded child tax credit in the pandemic-aid bill permanent — something with a price tag estimated at more than $1 trillion over a decade — could be harder to sell if pitched as entirely debt-financed.
[OW4]
Now THAT is an obituary:
William Donaldson lived by the seat of his pants – which were often cast aside, for his abundant good humour, the ultimate aphrodisiac, brought him more than a dalliance with the actor Sarah Miles and the singer Carly Simon. They were among the many who did not become one of his three wives.
Brought up in a huge house in Sunningdale, Berkshire, Donaldson was given a 12-bore shotgun at the age of 11 by his father, who owned a shipping line. “Since it was as big as I was, its kick when I let it off lifted me 20 yards backwards into a ditch,” he recalled. A more formative experience was persuading his parents to take him, when he was a Winchester College schoolboy, to the Folies Bergère.
He did his national service in the navy, spending much of his shore leave with his friend, the future playwright Julian Mitchell, who insisted that they visit as many art galleries as possible. Not that this precluded Donaldson from losing his virginity to a Parisian prostitute.
He was reading English at Magdalene College, Cambridge, in the early 1950s when his father died, leaving him, suddenly, very rich (his mother had died in a car crash two years earlier). He was soon spending his inheritance, supporting student literary magazines, such as those in which the work of the young Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath appeared.
Upon his graduation, Donaldson became part of the Princess Margaret crowd, and moved into theatrical production. This period included a first, if brief, marriage, to Sonia Avory in 1957, and the birth of his only child, Charlie. His footloose spirit then garnered a succession of affairs, including Miles.
Professionally, his most notable theatrical venture was as co-producer (with Donald Albery) of Beyond The Fringe (1960), from which they each took £2,000 a week – to the consternation of the cast, Peter Cook, Dudley Moore, Alan Bennett and Jonathan Miller, who were on £75 each. He also produced JP Donleavy’s The Ginger Man (1959) and Spike Milligan’s The Bed-Sitting Room (1963) .
Even so, Donaldson’s fortune ebbed, a trend not helped by having to finance Dylan’s appearance at Cook’s Soho club, the Establishment (according to Donaldson, his friend, the music producer George Martin, turned down the singer’s tape). Music continued to play a part in Donaldson’s life when, two days after leaving Miles in the mid-1960s, he took up with Carly Simon – “the answer to any sane man’s prayers; funny, quick, erotic, extravagantly talented”.
Nor did his sexual whirlwind stop when he married the actor Claire Gordon in 1968, their house becoming a quintessential 1960s stop-over. As he later recalled: “Sex, whether in company or not, has been the only department in life in which I have demanded from anyone taking part the very highest standards of seriousness.”
In 1971, Donaldson went to Ibiza. Down to £2,000, he spent it on a glass-bottomed boat. Back in London, he lived at a friend’s brothel off the Fulham Road, which inspired his first novel, Both The Ladies And The Gentlemen (1977). Then, by the decade’s end, and married to Cherry Hatrick, came The Henry Root Letters, which netted him some £100,000.
[OW5]
Most agree the unemployment system is amess. What to do about it, however….
Rip Up the Unemployment System and Start Again by Jacob Silverman
A New York State history of America’s unemployment system shows a struggle between federal and state authorities ever since U.I.’s introduction in 1935. The underlying problem was one that hampers attempts to establish ambitious social programs today: “It was feared that a federal system could be declared unconstitutional due to its possible encroachment on states’ rights.” A compromise was established: federal guidelines with state administration and determination of benefits. That has had consequences that still reverberate. Between the states and various U.S. territories, we now have 53 different patchwork technical systems, unnavigable bureaucracies, restrictive eligibility criteria, and most importantly, meager benefits.
“The more space we give states, unfortunately, the more there’s been a race to the bottom,” said Elaine Weiss, director of policy at the National Academy of Social Insurance, contrasting U.I. with Social Security, a popular federally administered program.
Last year, a Labor Department report found that U.I. trust funds, which receive money from payroll taxes, had been underfunded in about two dozen states. A refusal to update technology and hire more staff has left these programs struggling to process a record number of claims. The problem is one of ideology and budgetary priorities, reflecting a country in which military planners receive more than they ask for while governments are far more parsimonious toward valuable—and popular—social programs. With proposals like a $15 minimum wage and Medicare for All finding more support, there exists “a serious conflict between public opinion—what people want policy to be—and policymaking,” said Weiss. That call for more federal economic support may become impossible for some politicians to ignore, especially as programs like the Cares Act prove that simply giving people money can make a huge difference in alleviating poverty, means testing and targeting be damned. The success of that government stimulus has also led to calls from politicians like Ron Wyden and Rashida Tlaib for regular monthly payments throughout the crisis or even for a universal basic income.
As of now, a cruel, punitive attitude—along with a heaping of systemic racism—defines our approach to unemployment. As Weiss pointed out, policymakers stigmatize unemployment precisely in order to push through unpopular policies based on an ideology of austerity and deprivation. Under President Trump and a Mitch McConnell–led Congress, Republican leaders repeatedly tried to slash federal unemployment benefits, while their Democratic opponents lobbied for continuation of $600 weekly federal payments. Negotiations over a second stimulus package failed last year, in part, because of Republican disputes regarding how to phase out—not expand—federal unemployment benefits. Then–Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin led the charge, insisting that sending out onetime $600 checks would do more than regular payments. “It wouldn’t be fair to use taxpayer dollars to pay more people to sit home,” the millionaire film producer told Fox News.
[OW6]
If it sounds familiar, it’s because we’ve heard it before…
Joe Biden Is ‘Impervious’ to Comedy, Claims WaPo Columnist By Kyle Smith
Quite a claim from Richard Zoglin in the Washington Post:
A sense of unease is starting to build. . . . The first crisis of the Biden Administration could be looming. America may have a president, the first in generations, who is impervious to impressionists . . . Biden, so far, has been impregnable. The voice is too bland and devoid of obvious quirks, and beyond the occasional ‘C’mon, man,’ his conversational manner too muted and self-effacing to give the parodists much to work with. . . . Biden’s pleasantly boring presidency has been a welcome return to normalcy – but hardly great material for parody.
This column ran the very same day Biden forgot the name of his own secretary of defense and couldn’t even remember what to call the Defense Department itself, calling it “that outfit over there.” Biden has for many years exhibited a tendency for lying, bullying, weirdly aggressive yet pathetic deluded-old-man boasting, sniffing women’s hair and cuddling them to the point where they start blinking out S.O.S. signals, and making all sorts of cringe-inducing comments about race. Oh, and if you were in the joke-manufacturing industry, you might also find giggles in the fact that Biden has tightened his skin so many times that his face looks like Jason Voorhees’s hockey mask, his hair plugs are 100 percent rayon, and watching him try to get through a sentence is like observing a blind drunk trying to navigate his way through a mine field. Also he is 135 years old. If his minders let him talk to reporters for any length of time, he’d surely tell them all about how he used to wear onions on his belt (which was the style at the time).
It’s one heckuva coincidence that the last time a Democrat was president, a leading comedy expert claimed it was impossible to make fun of him, too. Jim Downey, the longtime SNL writer who specialized in political sketches, changed his tune slightly when speaking of Barack Obama, who was such a monument to perfection that Downey spoke of him in hushed tones of trembling reverence: “If I had to describe Obama as a comedy project, I would say, ‘Degree of difficulty, 10 point 10. It’s like being a rock climber looking up at a thousand-foot-high face of solid obsidian, polished and oiled,” Downey says. “There’s not a single thing to grab onto — certainly not a flaw or hook that you can caricature.” Actually, there was quite a lot to grab onto!
[OW7]
How Covid-19 Supercharged a Foster System Crisis by Michelle Chen
Lot of talk how disruptions to school has affect children, but the disruption to those without stable homes is even worse:
Right now, there are more than 400,000 children in foster care in the United States and, like Cook, many of those kids’ parents have been struggling to navigate family courts and social-service bureaucracies upended by the pandemic.
When Covid-19 shuttered schools and grounded kids and parents at home, many child welfare authorities feared surging rates of abuse and neglect. One study looking at the first months of the coronavirus outbreak in New York City cited a dip in reports as evidence of the danger that teachers—who, as “mandatory reporters,” are legally obligated to report any suspected child abuse—could no longer look out for signs of abuse or neglect. Reports of child maltreatment in New York City dropped 51 percent in the spring of last year compared to the same period in 2019.
California, Illinois, Florida, and other states saw similar declines in reported child abuse along with a slew of news stories about how they might indicate rampant, undetected abuse.
Advocates for parents in marginalized communities, however, say the alarms raised about hidden abuse reflect ingrained biases in child protective services, too eager to remove kids from their homes and drag parents to court in the name of saving children.
This Past Week At Ordinary Times:
Game of Thrones: Everyone in Westeros is Gonna Die by Kristin Devine
The Night King may be gone, the war may be over, but the forces of death have only just begun to stalk Westeros.
Saturday Spins: The Many Shades of Blonde on Blonde by Christopher Bradley
To make the double feature work, I will do my typical track by track, but do a little comparison between the two Blonde on Blonde albums.
Who Mourns for the GOP? by Dennis Sanders
You can’t leave the GOP to its own devices, not in a two-party system. Why the fate of the GOP matters to American democracy.
Independence Day Speech: President Biden Version, Not Bill Pullman by Andrew Donaldson
The president’s “this Independence Day” Covid address is getting reaction. In other words, the line and imagery worked as intended.
Growing up in the System by John McCumber
There are still too many people of my experience trying to apply their “the system” to today’s problems and today’s jobs.
Justice, Bail, and Bigo Behaving Badly by Em Carpenter
The judge called Richard “Bigo” Barnett “brazen, entitled, and dangerous.” What would I tell Mr. Richard Barnett if he were my client?
The Two Year Chit: A Filibuster Suggestion by Burt Likko
What might be done to mitigate the contra-democratic effect the peculiar tradition of filibuster has in the Senate? Burt Likko has an idea.
Sunday Morning! “How Proust Can Change Your Life” BBC2 by Rufus
I’m feeling a bit under the weather this week, so I think I will let Ralph Fiennes and the BBC fill in for me with “How Proust Can Change Your Life”
Saturday Morning Gaming: Digging In The Back Catalog by Jaybird
Going back and digging out games that I had intended to beat, but never, did with Hand of Fate and Ruiner
OT Contributor Network: John McCumber Talks ZZ Top
Ordinary Time Contributor John McCumber joined Keith Conrad on his “The Greatest Story Ever Podcast” talk about driving ZZ Top.
OT Contributor Network: Dennis Sanders’ Polite Company Podcast
Ordinary Times contributor Dennis Sanders podcast, Polite Company, has a new episode entitled “We Have Some Healing to Do”
Game of Thrones: Ready, Willing, and Ableism by Kristin Devine
The eyeroller disdainfully says “Game of Thrones is just show!” But problematic beliefs like ableism are like belly buttons, we all got em.
Sunday Morning! “The Prisoner” by Marcel Proust by Rufus F.
The Prisoner by Marcel Proust’s depiction of doomed and obsessive sexual jealousy is not nearly as bleak as I remembered. It’s tragic, but it’s a light tragedy.
What is the Goal of Vaccine Discourse? by Eric Medlin
The goal of vaccine discourse should be to share information that will push as many people as possible to legally obtain the vaccine.
Cancellation, Culture, and Copyright by Daniel Takash
What separates the Dr. Seuss incident from more recent cancellations is that it has turned into a discussion of copyright terms
Wednesday Writs: Chief Justice Roberts All By Himself by Em Carpenter
Chief Justice Roberts finds the majority’s decision to be an unwise expansion on the power and purview of federal courts
They are Newton’s Laws of Motion by Vikram Bath
It seems like students should at least be told that others refer to them as Newton’s laws of motion even as they chose to refer to them differently.
Mini-Throughput: Rubin Observatory Edition by Michael Siegel
This amazing feat of engineering is going to make a huge number of breakthroughs on some of the outstanding problems in astrophysics.
Saturday Morning Gaming: On Replaying the Campaign and On Not Bothering To by JayBird
Marvel’s Avengers just announced that they will Implement New Game+…I didn’t know they hadn’t.
[OW2] tired: “charter schools are really good, we’ll just mandate that all schools be charter schools and therefore all schools will be really good!”
wired: “SOCOM is really good, we’ll just mandate that every soldier be SOCOM and therefore all soldiers will be really good…”Report
[OW6] Well. We heard for years about how Bernie Wouldn’t’ve Won, about how Defeating Trump Was The Point, about how the only thing that mattered was Electability. And now we’ve got bland mush-paste in office, President Grandpaw, a man who was chosen because he was the very image of soft soothing safety, and people are realizing that they’ll have to make that work for the next twenty-two months until he can resign For Health Reasons and Kamala Harris can take over.
So. Gotta work together on this one, gotta go along to get along, and a big part of that is making sure there aren’t any good jokes for the…deplorables, let’s say, to avoid the swear filter, but we need to make sure there are no good memes for the deplorables to latch onto.Report
What’s so absurd about this is that there are *OBVIOUS* lines of comedic attack.
For example, just re-tell the Corn Pop story! Now that you’ve re-told it, invent new characters!
Remember when Biden said “if you don’t vote for me, you ain’t black”? Start with the Dave Chappelle Racial Draft sketch and do a heavy rewrite and have Biden sort people appropriately! (Wait, Jaybird, wouldn’t that be plagiarism? HAVE I GOT GOOD NEWS FOR YOU!!!)
Retell the story about the black kids playing with his leg hair. Have the point of the sketch not be Biden, though. Have it be CNN or MSNBC anchors in the background doing nothing but reaction shots as he tells the story. Have the punchline be them pivoting to the story that “comedians can’t come up with anything”.Report
Speaking of Comedy, here’s Dana Carvey.
Report
Our last two presidents were narcissists. They’re easy to make fun of, both because of their pretentions and because of the natural joy in poking fun at someone who thinks he doesn’t deserve it. How do you make fun of someone whose present dominant trait is his frailty? Biden used to be nearly as over-inflated as Obama or Trump, but in a very defensive way (which isn’t particularly funny); now you barely even see a glimpse of that. He’s just sad.Report
Sounds like a great chance for you to become rich and famous with your Biden act. I mean if the mean people won’t give you what you deserve then make it. If only there were ANY, ANY DO TOU HEAR ME… Conservative media figures this could be done for you.Report
OW6 – Zoglin seems simply ignorant of the landscape. Colbert does a solid Joe Biden character, and he seems in fact to be having more fun with it than any of his Trump stuff, especially down the stretch. The Comedy Industry as a whole seemed to be really weary of Trump, even before the pandemic hit.
part of the problem is that for most of our lifetimes, the go to schtick for politician mockery was to make up stuff that sounded like it could be them, but exaggerated, and was not actually them. e.g. all of Dana Carvey’s manerisms of Bush senior, and up to and including “I can see Russia from my house” for Sarah Palin.
but the go to thing for Trump was to merely replay exactly what Trump said or did, because it was impossible to exaggerate. which got old by Spring *2017*. It’s telling that dialed-in impressions of Trump only really started going viral last fall, after literally decades of material to work with.
eta – this makes me remember that thing the Onion went thru a little over a year ago where they basically apologized for their Diamond Joe character, because it made him ‘cool’ and the onion folks didn’t want Biden to be President.Report
Yeah, that story was surreal as hell. And it’s flipped around to being even more surreal after the election. (If you’ve never read the story, check it out.)Report
But of course we don’t make fun of Presidents to make fun of Presidents… we make fun of policies of which the Presidents are avatars. So, as Andrew pointed out in the gloss on the quotation… there are a thousand vectors from which you can goof on Biden; if only we could find one thing with which we disagreed. Or, risk that disagreeing with one thing might bring all the other things down. We can’t risk it. Comedy was never about risks… it was always about policy.Report
If there’s a hot take that’s actually somewhat true, is that Amalgamated Comedy Method Enterprises, Inc will be comfortable making fun of Biden the way they never were and never did with Obama.Report
When did that shift take place? In my recollection, it was with Bush II. Liberals didn’t tease him, they hated him. Around the same time, conservatives began to revere Reagan with his passing.Report
Sometimes you get to do both… hate the policies and hate the man.
But sure, if you’d like to open up space for the idea that there’s a ‘momento mori’ sort of humor that might have existed in the hey day of Johnny Carson… I’ll allow it.
But that’s maybe the change you’re asking about… when did we shift from reminding our politicians that they are mortal and therefore mockable to comedy being part of the policy arm of the Arc of History? And moving from the Arc of History to simply backing a single party? That’s a move that accelerated throughout my lifetime… starting in the 70’s and reaching a highpoint(?) today where it is too dangerous to the project to even remind our politicians (of the right party) that they are mortal and therefore mockable.Report
Yeah. I have clear memories of presidential satire all my life. Something changed in the early 2000’s. A lot of things hit at once and destabilized the sense of togetherness that is a requirement for good-natured ribbing.Report
I’ve always said that you can only really satirize something you love… once you stop loving it? The satire falls flat.
We’re in the high-point of sarcasm, which is the low-point of satire.Report
I wonder what shifted more: the teasing or our collective response to the teasing?
I’m 37 so I barely remember the Clinton days and only kinda/sorta remember the Bush II days.
My impression is once upon a time a Late Night host could tease the President and everyone — regardless of party — could laugh along. Or at most say, “Bah humbug!”
Now, it seems, a Late Night host teases the President and one side immediately takes to the intertubes to send viral videos of how “DEVASTATING!!!!!” it was while the other side takes to the intertubes to talk about how said Late Night host is a traitor.
(Of course, this is focused on Intertubes dialogue, which is probably not representative of the population as a whole.)Report
I’m 60 and can say there was never such a time.
Sure, some Presidents were more controversial than others; Like, Nixon was hated with every bit as much venom as Clinton, while Ford and Bush the senior were generally regarded as harmless.
But the norm has been periodic cycles of vicious partisan rancor.
Only a few days before his visit to Dallas, the local Birch Society distributed a poster of Kennedy titled “WANTED FOR TREASON”.
https://slate.com/human-interest/2013/11/jfk-assassination-flyer-distributed-in-dallas-by-edwin-walker-s-group-before-his-visit.htmlReport
The story goes that in Dalls PT-109 was advertised as “See the Japanese almost get Kennedy!”Report
The only person who really hated Bush Senior was Ross Perot, and he dealt with it by running for President himself, splitting the Republican ticket, and getting Bill Clinton elected, which ultimately resulted in the 9/11 attacks.Report
I was a tch too young when Clinton got elected to remember but I’m told that the right hated him with the fury of a thousand suns for ending the Reagan run. Certainly, I recall the angry incredulity liberals met Bush II’s election with but in their defense the manner in which he won was rather a squeaker and Bush II did end up being a bad president for the country and a flat out disastrous one for conservativism. So Clinton then?Report
W may have won fair and square but we’ll never know because a 5-4 majority thought counting the vote risked electing.a Democrat.Report
OW7:
CPS typically has way too much subjective criteria for abuse. Even if most of that subjective judgement gets filtered out in court, that whole process is emotionally and financially draining on parents.Report
“What is the goal of vaccine research” is one of those irritating things.
I’m sure you all remember the “MASKS DON’T WORK” discourse from this time last year. They have to be N95! If they’re not N95, they’re useless! THEY MIGHT BE WORSE THAN USELESS! Wash your hands! Wash your groceries!
And now, of course, we know that you need to wear a mask and the fact that people keep bringing up what people thought at the time without taking the context of what they were saying into context is really problematic.
The vaccine discourse is pretty awful because the authorities want two things that are in tension.
1. We want to get back to normal as quickly as possible
2. A 90% reduction in Covid-19 deaths means that we’ve still got 10% of Covid-19 deaths and we’d probably be happiest with 2% Covid-19 deaths
The various numbers I’ve seen online seem to indicate that something approaching herd immunity kicks in right around the population getting to 37-39% vaccination. That’s what happened in Israel, anyway. They tracked rate of vaccination with rabbinical funerals scheduled and, right around 37-39%, they fell off a cliff.
The problem is that people tend to be toggled 1 or 0 and so when they ask “when can we have a wedding again?” they mean “when can everything go back to normal as if covid does not exist at all again” and what they mean by *THAT* is “when can we have a large group gathering with everyone we know and have it *GUARANTEED* that the only reason someone died is the gender reveal party?”
And the answer to *THAT* is probably somewhere around 99.44% vaccination.
So I’d say that it’s probably likely that we can do outdoor gatherings again if everybody mostly socially distances and mostly wears masks and can avoid hugging and making out even if you’re under 37% for the vaccinated guest list.
If the guest list has achieved 40% vaccination, you can probably get away with maskless gatherings outdoors (don’t make out with anybody who is not already in your pod).
When can we probably have something like a wedding reception, inside, and have it be guaranteed that nobody dies because of it?
I don’t know. Guaranteed is a strong word. And that’s the problem.
When is it likely? If I had to guess, I’d say somewhere around 50% (and that goes higher if people follow the “are you feeling under the weather”, “do you have a temperature” protocols like when they go to work).
And people want to know if they can go back to normal without a crazy lawyer guy wearing a Death costume standing in front of their building when the authorities are looking at risk profiles and trying to figure out how to get r from “exponential growth” to “linear growth”.
I have sympathy with Fauci when he says that he doesn’t want to name a date for when we can have weddings again… because if we have 1000 weddings, he’s thinking “okay, the question is whether 23 of them will be superspreader events, whether 17 of them will be, whether 10 of them will be, or whether 3 of them will be… and I’d prefer *NONE* of them to be” and most folks are thinking “only 977 will be perfectly safe events out of 1000? I like those odds!”Report
I have to assume that everyone knows that we’re going to live with ‘that virulent strain’ of flu that has higher mortality than the ordinary strains – which are still lethal (two of my uncles died in 2019 from ‘the flu’)… but after vaccinations the risk will be acceptable. Still, an unfortunate fact of the human condition… but not something we’re going to ‘eradicate’. Right? Everyone knows that, yes?
… and, as the kids say, LOL
“when can we have a large group gathering with everyone we know and have it *GUARANTEED* that the only reason someone died is the gender reveal party?”Report
I admit that I am a little suspicious of the fact that “masks don’t work” from experts coincided with the period with the worst shortages of PPE for medical workers.Report
That, at least, could be spun by saying “they were lying in order to protect our medical professionals”.
I mean, it’s a trick that only works once but, hey, if you’re in a global pandemic, you need that trick to work very, very badly.
I mean, I’m not saying I *AGREE* with it, but I think I understand it enough to be able to defend it if I had to without making a strawman out of it.
The problem now is that there is some seriously effed up messaging about vaccines as well. Can vaccinated people hang out in each others’ homes? Can they hug? Well… the officials don’t want to come down one way or the other on that. Can a couple of vaccinated people visit a couple of unvaccinated people if both of the unvaccinated people are in each other’s pod? Well… the officials don’t want to come down on the wrong side of that question either…
Whether or not it’s fair, the message that getting the vaccine may not change anything for what you can do a couple weeks after you get it sends a message that “Vaccines Don’t Matter”.
And “Vaccines Don’t Matter” sounds a *LOT* like “Masks Don’t Work”.
And we already hammered out that that’s a trick that only works once.Report
But the people who know what they’re talking about aren’t saying, “vaccines don’t matter.” They’re saying, “the covid vaccine doesn’t work the way you wish it did.” People (wrongly) expected that the vaccine would make them quickly immune so they couldn’t get infected and couldn’t be contagious, so they could behave as they chose because what they did wouldn’t affect anyone. Few vaccines do. People refuse to learn from the repeated examples the measles virus and vaccine give us from time to time.Report
But the message should be something like “you have to wait at least two weeks to get back out there, still masked up and you shouldn’t go out unmasked until six weeks after the second shot because of how immunology works.”
Just something like “six weeks after 60% of the population IN YOUR AREA NOT OF THE COUNTRY IN YOUR AREA gets their second shot, you should be free to go to Chili’s again on a date with someone of unknown vaccination status, so long as you have had your shot” would be soooooooo much freakin’ better than “well, we don’t want to get nailed down”.Report
Oh really? Like this:
https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/vaccines/fully-vaccinated.htmlReport
I don’t see advice about going to Chili’s in there.
I don’t see advice about going to catch a ballgame in there.
Like, if Derek Chauvin is found not guilty of 2nd Degree Murder and there’s a hung jury for the 3rd Degree Murder charge and several hundred friends of mine and I want to go up to Pearl Street in Boulder and express our displeasure, is that something that would be considered risky for Covid-19 or not?Report
Generalizing…
Killing my sister-in-law is an acceptable price for me to eat at Chili’s rather than in the car or park; killing her is an acceptable price to see the damned minor league baseball team in person; or to make the protest in Boulder. And if I’d just waited two more f*cking months so another 100-120M people including my SIL had shots, she didn’t have to die.
It is clear that in two months things will be better.Report
So what should the message be?
“We, as a society, have a responsibility to maintain the quarantine just a little longer until we hit X% and then we can (insert event here) again.”
I am down with having different X%s for different events.
A BBQ in a friend’s backyard is different from a game night in their basement is different from going to a baseball game in an open stadium is different from going to the movies.
But if we don’t have those X%s for those events, it’s going to cause a problem. Yes, I understand that vaccines don’t work the way we want them to.
But it remains the case that Whether or not it’s fair, the message that getting the vaccine may not change anything for what you can do a couple weeks after you get it sends a message that “Vaccines Don’t Matter”.
And “Vaccines Don’t Matter” sounds a *LOT* like “Masks Don’t Work”.
And I’m down with saying X needs to be 45 for a BBQ, 52 for a game night, 60 for a ball game, and 70 for a concert.
Or, heck, give me some numbers.
But failure of the authorities to provide these numbers is a failure on the level of “3 weeks to slow the spread” and “Masks Don’t Work”.
Without those numbers, people will just up and go. “Hey, I got my 2nd shot. And it’s been 15 days. We’re going to Texas Road House!”
Those numbers as a goal will save lives. Failure to give them will cost them.Report
Ratfishing the truth will kill vastly more.Report
Let’s talk political orthodoxy and political compromise. Charles Blow writes about how bad Bill Clinton was: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/14/opinion/democrats-bill-clinton.html?action=click&module=Opinion&pgtype=Homepage
The problem is that DADT was progressive for the time especially compared to what the military normally did. The country was also much whiter, much older, and more reactionary culturally. The Crime bill was bad but passed with veto proof majorities. Clinton vetoed welfare reform three times.
But there is a certain kind of person in politics who insists the correct course of action is always militancy and holding the line. The truth is that the Democratic Party and UK Labour Party did spend a lot of time in political exile/wilderness and it took Clinton and Blair to bail them out.* This drives a lot of leftier types absolutely nuts** but “leftism can’t fail, it can only be failed” is just as bad as “conservatism can’t fail, it can only be failed.”
One of my political memories from being a teenager is how it was a thing in the 1990s for people to state “I’m a progressive not a liberal” because liberal was such a dirty word back then.
*Arguably federalism helped the Democrats here because they retained control of the House of Representatives from 1958-1994 and also controlled the Senate during this time except for 1981-1986.
**With the exception of Harkin who did not get much traction and Mario Cuomo who famously dithered, Clinton was the most liberal candidate in 1992 probably. Tsongas ran as a deficit hawk and Brown ran as a flat taxer (yet Joey Ramone campaigned for him). His first two years in office were spent running to the left of his Congress and he got his ass kicked for it in 1994. This seems to be memory holed by the further left.Report
Tangential to the comments about political humor and the good old days, its worth remembering that Bill Clinton was derided by the Republicans as a Marxist, and Hillarycare was going to result in the gulag.
That is to say, Clinton was the leftmost edge of the Overton Window, the most liberal candidate who could possibly have been elected nationwide.Report
That’s not true at all. Clinton campaigned as a DLC candidate. He may have sought to expand government at times, but he wasn’t “the leftmost edge of the Overton Window” and no one ever claimed that. (I guess if you want to say that Democrats believed they had to move more toward the center, then he represented something leftward, but that was hardly agreed upon at the time.)Report
You must not remember any of Rush Limbaugh’s programs, or the rise of the militia movement in response to Clinton, or how Clinton’s election spurred the careers of Newt Gingrich and the radical right or how Ruby Ridge and Waco are to this day, dogwhistles for the right wing.
Everything the Tea Party said about Obama, all the slogans and tropes and accusations of Marxism and gulags were identical to what we heard in the Clinton years.
For extra fun, read that Wanted For Treason poster of JFK they posted before his Dallas trip.
Half of the complaints were precursors to what was said about every Democratic President since then.Report
“That’s not True. Clinton campaigned as (X).”
“You must not remember what the Right Wing said!”
To what extent is what the Right Wing says about a president representative of the accuracy of what the president was?
What’s the proposition being argued?Report
Jaybird – To the extent we’re talking about how officials are perceived rather than how they govern, yes, the question of how the opposing half of the country perceives them is important. That said,
Chip – I remember Limbaugh’s show, et cetera, and I don’t consider any of those things parallels to what happened in the 2000’s.Report
Why on earth not? Did the left create an entire cottage industry in 2000 dedicated to fabricating crimes to ascribe to Bush II?Report
Building 7?Report
Remember when Keith Olbermann called Jenna Bush a dog?Report
Ruby Ridge happened during the GWHB administration. But in Right Wing Noise Machine world it was still Janet Reno’s fault.Report
lol
Clinton had more to do with 9/11 than Bush had to do with Ruby Ridge and Waco, hossReport
I think the issue with DADT is that LGBT rights made lightning fast progress from DADT and DOMA to legalized same-sex marriage in 2015. This might be an entire generation but it’s really fast by political-social change standards. This makes people believe that you could just do more than some pressure.Report
“The problem is that DADT was progressive for the time ”
uh-huh.
It was progressive for the time, but it was also touted as a huge success, as in “we’re done fighting this fight, we’ve won, we have Gay Rights In The Military now”. Like, we can go back and say “thirty years on it was more art-of-the-possible than a real progressive move”, but it really was not seen that way at the time, it really was seen as a major victory for equal rights.Report
Hope it works out well for you. Granddaughter #1’s school is in two buildings, K-6 in one and 7-12 in the other. They finished last year doing remote learning and were extremely unhappy with the K-6 results. For the fall, they spread out the desks, put up three-sided Lucite barriers on each desk, enforced masks, and every child got their temperature taken each morning. So far this year they’ve had two cases, one teacher and one kid, both of whom most likely got it outside of school.
They tried in-person for the 7-12 group, got an outbreak each time, and are teaching that lot remotely.Report