Nothing to say. But I’m tired of scrolling down through all the comments. So this is a new open thread. 🙂
912 thoughts on “Open Thread…”
Comments are closed.
Nothing to say. But I’m tired of scrolling down through all the comments. So this is a new open thread. 🙂
Comments are closed.
Hope you had a nice Labor Day. Greetings from Portland where the skies are cloudy and grey.
It’s 9/11, and consequently I’m thinking the following:
In mythology, the second labor of Hercules was to slay the Lernaean Hydra. What made the task of heroic difficulty was the obstacle that for every head of the creature severed, two would grow back. In legend Hercules accomplished his task by searing each decapitated neck with fire to prevent the monster from regenerating heads.
We haven’t puzzled out how to do this. Al-Qaeda still exists under Zawahiri’s leadership, although Al-Qaeda is a shell of its former self. ISIS still exists, and may be regaining power. Nearly twenty years after the 9/11 attacks and we still don’t know how to put down the hydra once and for all.
I don’t know how to do it either. Makes me glad I’m not a general or a political leader. Maybe some problems are really hard to solve.
Shrug.
ISIS was defeated by any realistic definition, at least as far as them being able to and having the will to launch sustained attacks against the West as they once did. Jihadist ideology is no doubt still alive, but will likely stay in a less volatile form until the current generation forgets what actually happens when you pick a fight with the West and start killing their citizens. Syria will take decades to rebuild and almost nobody is lining up to help the effort.
.
Although many are fanatical in nature, I don’t see them as being morons incapable of learning from experience. The lesson being nothing good happens for your world domination dreams when you invite the US military to camp out in your backyard for a decade or two. The entire experience can’t be seen as a win for the US necessarily either, unless you compare it against alternate realities were Sadam was left in place, got the bomb, etc. The military goals were achieved, the political goals are a gray area, much of this depends on the next decade or two and how people behave. Was deterrence successful?
We have had police and prisons for a long time, but we still have criminals. That does not mean that we should give up fighting crime. It just means that the best we can do is to limit it by a combination of deterrence and separating criminals from society.
.
As Tom says, jihadist ideology can’t be stamped out. The best that can be hoped for is to minimize the number of people acting on that ideology and to do so in a manner that does not aid the recruitment of jihadists. It is only a hydra if the second part of that is forgotten. So terrorist acts must have severe consequences for the terrorists and harm to others must be minimized, if not avoided all together. Other than that, we should avoid scratching the mosquito bites.
.
So take out Al Qaeda and the Taliban, but don’t stay in Afghanistan any longer than needed. Don’t invade Iraq or destabilize Libya. Take out ISIS, but don’t stay in Syria. Take out Soleimani, but be careful to spare civilians and don’t start a war with Iran.
.
Sadly, most of the foreign policy “experts” and denizens of the Pentagon don’t understand that. At least we have a President who gets it.
Fair enough.
There has been a recent flap about cycle number and false positives in Wuhan virus PCR tests. I just found some brief posts that greatly clarify the issue.
https://healthy-skeptic.com/2020/09/10/pcr-testing-chart/
https://healthy-skeptic.com/2020/09/12/another-nice-graph-on-cycle-number-and-positivity/
https://healthy-skeptic.com/2020/09/13/another-quick-word-on-pcr-testing/
The short version is that PCR detects virus fragments rather than viable virus. A viral culture detects viable virus. Comparing the two shows that anything more than 30 PCR cycles will lead to many positives where there is no viable virus. They are not so much false positives as meaningless positives. Many states have been using 35-40 cycles.
.
Actually, there could be a lot of false positives. Does anyone know if the labs doing PCR tests do field blanks?
France (10K cases per day), Spain (12K per day), and the UK (3K per day) are in major second waves now and still on the increase.
.
Interestingly they still have way fewer deaths this time around for the same number of cases. Over 10x lower deaths. Hard to explain, perhaps age of infected, case under counts in the first wave, death lag hasn’t hit yet, etc. This will be highlighted by US media once they all agree on how this is Trump’s fault somehow, ha ha.
.
India is at 100K cases per day and still climbing. This exceeds the peak US rate. Brazil is past their peak if you can trust their numbers.
If I were on the jury I would not believe, based on what evidence we have seen in the press so far, that the cops intentionally killed Floyd. So that takes care of one count of murder (in my opinion).
The cops were following the procedure they were taught to follow. That takes care of the manslaughter count. I know Steve thinks the cops should never do this – but I think the cops are supposed to do what they are taught. If what they are taught is wrong – well that is a different issue, and not the cops fault (in my opinion).
Sure – the video looks bad. But the real question is what will the ME say when put on the stand and asked “Are you certain Floyd wouldn’t have died but for the restraint?” I don’t know how the ME could answer except to say – No, he might have died even if not restrained. That is reasonable doubt right there.
Or they could ask – did the knee on the neck kill Floyd? I don’t think it did – I don’t think the knee on the neck was the proximate cause of death. They might ask if restrained, but without the knee on the neck – would Floyd still have died. I say they can get the ME to say probably he would have died. It was his struggling, no matter how restrained that caused his heart attack.
I really don’t see these cops getting any prison time – I think they will be acquitted. Then there will be riots and looting.
RickA,
“I really don’t see these cops getting any prison time – I think they will be acquitted.”
.
I suggest you don’t bet any money on that being the outcome. The two trainees probably will not get any jail time. The second experienced officer? Some time, but probably not a lot. Chauvin?
He is toast; decades.
“Interestingly they still have way fewer deaths this time around for the same number of cases”
I would go with locked-down nursing homes, the elderly being very frightened and cautious, plus improvements to case-management in nursing. I know people think you must have a miracle drug or treatment to make a difference (and there are a lot of new treatments out there too) but I also think the experience gained from nursing a large no. of cases first time around is invaluable. Works for ebola or cholera. https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(17)31795-6/fulltext
Phil,
I think there are potentially many factors that might be related to lower deaths.
* As you noticed, treatments are improving. There may be no magic bullet, but things like steroids and so on have helps. Basically, doctors are no longer just totally clueless as they naturally were when this diesease first hit. They can now do things that tend to help.
* They are better protecting nursing homes.
* The virus is hitting a younger demographic. So fewer deaths there.
* LOTS of people have heard of vitamin D. I suspect tons are now at least taking a multi vitamin. There is evidence it works– that might be helping. (Or not. But I bet it helps a little at least for people who were otherwise D deficient.)
* Mask and people self distancing may be helping and in particular when exposures occur, they may result in lower initial doses during exposure. Dose/response is a “thing” with many poisons and disease. So this might be helping.
.
It”s probably generally just better to get sick *after* the doctors have learned what factors make things better or worse.
Phil,
“ I would go with locked-down nursing homes, the elderly being very frightened and cautiousâ€
.
That sounds to me a lot like different age people are being infected now compared to the first peak in cases and deaths.
.
A 5 to 10 fold reduction in fatalities per case is not likely due to a single cause, but to me, improved treatment seems the least important, unless it turns out the widespread use of hydroxy chloroquine with antibiotic and zinc supplements is extremely effective. But even suggesting that would be very non-PC in the age of OMB.
.
The rate of death is orders of magnitude higher for very elderly people than for much younger people; that seems to me the obvious explanation for the drop in fatalities per case. Old people have weak immune systems, but most have enough awareness of their personal risk to avoid exposure to covid-19. The opposite is true of young people…. they know their personal risk of death is minimal.
Steve says “Chauvin?
He is toast; decades.”
I will take that bet. I am willing to wager all my quatloos that Chauvin gets acquitted on all the counts (the others also).
How’d you come by quatloos?!?
RickA,
You wisely avoid betting money on that outcome. Quatloos, like carbon emissions credits in Europe, were given out free to participants in betting pools. Maybe before the trial starts next year, Lucia will be kind enough to distribute quatloos for a betting pool.
.
Of course, if there is open civil war after the November election when California, New York and Washington refuse to accept Trump’s re-election and try leave the Union, the trial may have to be postponed.
So how do you feel about Trump feeling he is entitled to a 3rd term? Start of GOP hegemony? That is what everyone wants right?
Phil Scadden (Comment #190227): “So how do you feel about Trump feeling he is entitled to a 3rd term?”
.
???????????????????????????
mark bofill:
Well, I would have to check with lucia – but she used to run a monthly betting pool on the temperature increase each month. I think I have a few quatloos left on the ledger from that fun time. Since we are betting here – I figure I can wager my quatloos (assuming I have any left).
SteveF:
If imaginary money isn’t your cup of tea, I would be willing to engage in a gentleman’s wager of – say – $10.00 USD. If I lose, I would be happy to return for ritual abasement and freely admit I was wrong (and mail you your winnings).
Mike M. https://www.fox13news.com/news/trump-claims-the-only-way-hell-lose-is-if-election-is-rigged-says-he-should-be-able-to-run-for-3rd-term
https://www.forbes.com/sites/andrewsolender/2020/09/13/trump-says-he-will-negotiate-third-term-because-hes-entitled-to-it/#4d1ebb80287c
Fake news? Reuters have a recording.
I guess that would help the case to get himself carved into Mt Rushmore.
Phil,
He was joking with a crowd of supporters at a campaign rally…. and trying to make lefty heads explode. Those at the rally got the joke. The reporter didn’t. If you listen to the recording, you will hear the people in the crown laughing.
RickA,
That would be unlawful. How about the loser sends a donation to the charity of the winner’s choice?
SteveF:
Sure – that is a good idea.
Who wins for a hung jury? Unless one of the sides really botch the jury selection process that’s the most likely outcome.
Andrew P,
That depends on what happens after a hung jury. If there is a re-trial, then it is a push. If the prosecution declines a re-trial, then Chauvin goes free. I think declining a re-trial is very unlikely. Could happen if there were 3 or 4 hung juries in a row. But by then Chauvin would have already been in jail for a few years. I suspect MN would also prosecute on tax fraud in parallel.
Phil,
Your comment reminded me of something a US reporter named Selena Zito noted before the 2016 election when lefty heads were exploding about Trump’s many bombastic statements: “Trump’s supporters take him seriously, not literally.†Many of Trump’s opponents, including 90% of the MSM, do exactly the opposite, of course.
Phil Scadden (Comment #190235): “Fake news?”
.
Yes, fake news.
At previous rallies, Trump has joked about a 3rd term, 4th term, 5th term, then made fun of how the media were going to react. Sounds like this time he did not bother to tell the media that the reason the crowd was laughing is that they got the joke, so the media did not realize he was joking. Or maybe just didn’t care. Also, he used the joke to make a point about how the Deep State attempted to cripple his first term.
AndrewP,
I think who it’s a “win” for depends on point of view. It might be a win for no one. It’s not really a “loss”.
From the POV of “going to jail”, or legal penalties, the defendant wins from a hung jury. He could be retried however. If he is, the win could turn into a “loss” and the 2nd trial is expensive.
.
From the POV of public opinion… hung jury is probably a draw. Honestly though, I think the jury verdict in this trial may not make a huge difference to public opinion. Those who think the evidence says guilty of murder will still think so and point out that juries are often biased toward police. Those who think he’s not guilty will point out that in this case the bias might have been the other way around.
.
Those who think he is evil and wicked for the actions on the video will still think so. Those who think such actions are justified for whatever reason will still think so.
.
As for other unintended consequences: a not-guilty or hung jury mighttrigger more riots somewhere. (Though the energy for those may be burned out by then.) A guilty one probably won’t trigger riots. If riots happen a hung jury could be a big loss for the small business owners in whatever town the riots take place.
.
So… we’ll see.
.
But I think in terms of the major consequence of a guilty verdict which is ‘going to prison’, a hung jury is a “win” for the defendant.
MikeM
yeah… I think what people who mock “fake news” don’t grasp is the term doesn’t mean an incident didn’t happen at all. Rather, the reporting is distorted in a way that changes the entire meaning of the event.
.
Trump joking that he deserves a 3rd term with his audience laughing is not the same as him saying it seriously. Sure…. jokes can sometimes actually be communicating a real intention. But the often don’t. Reporters not reporting the context that it was a joke said to a laughing audience, followed by a discussion of a lesson in the provisions of the US constitution, is a big distortion.
.
Of course a “fake check” could report that he did say that. So accurate. And a “fact check” would report that it’s true the constitution forbids that. But the news is, essentially, fake.
.
Having said that: Trump says a lot of stupid things. So even people who don’t absolutely hate him and don’t think he’s the 2nd coming of Hitler will tend to assume it’s the way the reporter wrote it up.
.
This is not neutral news reporting. Reporters should know it. Editors should know it. When supposedly “serious” news outlets report that way, they end up losing credibility. That is to say: they put themselves in the same boat as Trump. People don’t take the words out of his mouth or from their pens seriously.
The latest. Cops shoot crazy guy with knife yesterday. Bricks thrown, windows smashed, tear gas, the usual.
https://www.nationalreview.com/news/riots-erupt-in-lancaster-after-police-shoot-man-wielding-knife/
.
There is body cam so we can see the cop tried to run away from crazy guy with knife before shooting. Not sure what the expected outcome of this situation is supposed to be.
https://twitter.com/PhillyNewsGuy/status/1305337868366249989
.
The riots are happening before any information is even known. It’s nuts.
Tom Scharf,
“The riots are happening before any information is even known. It’s nuts.”
.
Sure, but the rioting is being enabled by distorted reporting and by consistent refusal of local officeholders to deal with the rioters promptly and forcefully, and to vigorously prosecute those who are involved in property destruction, violence, and looting. Plenty of blame to go around.
.
The worst part is the rioting and shameful media support for people who assault police only make this kind of foolish behavior more likely…. “They won’t shoot me, it would make them look bad on TV.” Note to criminals: if you attack someone who is carrying a gun, you are asking to die…. and you very often will.
SteveF (Comment #190310): “Sure, but the rioting is being enabled by distorted reporting and by consistent refusal of local officeholders to deal with the rioters promptly and forcefully, and to vigorously prosecute those who are involved in property destruction, violence, and looting.”
.
True, but it is more than that. Burn Loot Murder is a very well funded organization, having received massive corporate donations. Where does the money go? A big portion seems to be used to pay professional rioters. That is how they can be in the streets of Portland day after day for months on end. That is how they can show up hither and yon at the drop of a hat.
–
The only information needed to start a riot is that there is an opportunity to start a riot.
You’re on a jury. You think Chauvin is probably guilty of at least manslaughter but the prosecution has not proven beyond a reasonable doubt. You know the media has asked for the names of the jury members. Are you going to vote to acquit knowing it will result in riots and perhaps them coming after you personally?
Mike M,
Violence and anarchy have always been the preferred means of the extreme left to disrupt and undermine any existing government. The extreme left considers all existing non-communist government to be inherently illegitimate, so any means to bring about its destruction is justified, no mater the cost in lives and wealth.
The ‘professional rioters’ of today are no different from the anarchists and communists of the late 19 and early 20th centuries in the USA. The only way to stop them is to put them in prison for their criminal acts. Much of the MSM and politicians in many Democrat controlled cities and states are too sympathetic to the rioters’ goals (revolutionary political change in the USA) to do what has to be done to stop the destruction. Truth is: they don’t really want the destruction to stop; they accept the destruction and violence because they think it will keep Trump from being re-elected, and lead to complete control of Congress by the left.
.
What seems lost on Democrats is that the extreme left is never satisfied, and always ends up turning on those who are any less extremely left than themselves.
“Are you going to vote to acquit knowing it will result in riots and perhaps them coming after you personally?”
.
Sounds like a rhetorical question. Do you have your own answer?
MikeN
I agree with SteveF this sounds rhetorical. I can still answer for myself: Under those circumstances, I vote to acquit.
.
Mind you, if I were put on the jury, I would tell Jim to make sure our insurance is up to date and find an out of state apartment that allows cats well before the verdict was expected. So, basically as soon as I was put on the jury. Then he could be in the apartment on the day of the jury verdict.
.
We’d do this before the evidence was even in. It wouldn’t stop riots but it could provide a measure of protection for Jim, the cats and me.
lucia (Comment #190324): “if I were put on the jury, I would tell Jim to make sure our insurance is up to date and find an out of state apartment”.
.
Not an option for at least 90% of the population. If Chauvin is to get a fair trial, a change of venue is essential.
Mike M,
“Fair”, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder. I doubt there will be a change in venue.
Mike M.
I agree it’s not an option for most people.
.
I don’t see how my strategy of moving to protect myself argues for change in venue. Riot can happen anywhere. Organized rioters could travel to the court house.
.
Perhaps the possibility of rioters argues for having extra policing in place the day of the verdict. The could bring in MN state troopers. This would probably be especially important if the change the venue to some smaller town or city in MN which could easily be overwhelmed by rioters.
.
That said: I suspect they will likely change venue. Chauvin’s defense will likely ask for it; I suspect a judge will get it. I’m not sure why the prosecution would object.
Haha! Looks like SteveF and I may need to bet quatloos on whether there’s a change in venue! 🙂
Burn Loot Murder?
It’s Murder, Loot, THEN burn. Not much loot if you burn first.
Concerning the origin of the virus, there’s this paper claiming it was produced in a lab.
Caveat: I don’t have the knowledge to assess the veracity of the claim.
Lucia,
“I’m not sure why the prosecution would object.”
.
Moving to a distant venue might not produce “a jury of his peers”, which I guess is the whole point for the defense to want to change the venue. Judges in Minnesota are elected (6 year terms); the elections are nominally non-partisan, roughly in the same sense that BLM and Antifa are non-partisan. I doubt any judge in Minneapolis who would like to be re-elected is going to agree to a change in venue. I don’t have any quatloos to bet.
HaroldW,
“I don’t have the knowledge to assess the veracity of the claim.”
.
Neither do I. But if I were the lead author (Li-Meng Yan), I would be worried about retaliation (including potential assassination) from the CCP.
Ed Forbs,
It is Burn the police stations, Loot the retail stores, and Murder anyone who tries to stop you.
Victor Davis Hanson provides a devastating take down of Biden, The Great and Powerful: https://amgreatness.com/2020/09/13/biden-the-great-and-powerful/
SteveF,
Fair enough. I guess we’ll see!
Thanks for the link, HaroldW (Comment #190337). It looks like the lead author is the Hong Kong virologist who fled to the U.S. last spring, saying that she feared for her life in China: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Li-Meng_Yan
.
Haven’t read the paper yet. The Chan paper provided very strong evidence for a lab origin, but was *very* cautious about saying that is what happened. That is partly respectable scientists acting like respectable scientists and being very cautious about conclusions. Scientists don’t hype conclusions unless they are politicized or desperate for notoriety. Or if they have nothing left to lose, as might be the case with Yan. On the other hand, Chan is a promising post-doc who does not need powerful enemies if she wants to continue her career in science.
Lucia, one of the more annoying things about this site to me is the posts that end with ‘not rhetorical’. I posted before that people were ignoring this aspect when evaluating what a jury would do, but I was asking a question there. I don’t have an answer myself. It is easy to say I would go with what I think is the right vote, but then I wouldn’t actually be in that situation. Right now, I don’t think Chauvin committed the crime, so the premise of my question wouldn’t apply to me.
The proper form of my question was to ask what do you think a juror who believed this would do, but I was too lazy to overwrite the ‘you’s.
I’m trying to figure out how the hybrid school schedules work.
The basic idea is they are enforcing 6′ social distancing.
The classrooms are fairly small, so this produces a maximum class size of half the normal size. The school will not have many excess classroom space, so to adjust, they bring in kids just two days a week.
However, does this require you have 100% of teachers? In my district, only half of teachers opted to come into school to teach. I think this would make the hybrid impossible, that you are know back where you started.
That’s ok Mike. I get it. It did look rhethorical…. But I answered it because it could be answered. As you can see– even I see the problem. I would have to think about it before coming to the point of a verdict. You could very well then ask: And what if you goofed and didn’t think to do that in advance? My answer would be… uhh…. dunno.
.
On the other hand: What if the jurors somehow don’t imagine their verdict might trigger riots? As obvious as it might seem, the possibility might not occur to them. So we really don’t know what pressures the jury will feel.
.
I’ve never been called for jury duty, fwiw.
MikeN,
I have no idea how schools are managing to enforce social distancing!!!!.
.
I have no idea what they are doing with teachers– who shows, who doesn’t. I’m definitely mystified with how “hybrid” works.
.
My brothers-in-law live across the street from an elementary school in Wheaton. They say grades up to whatever 10 year olds are in are 100% in person. Other ages are 100% online.
.
They think the reason for in person below 10 years old is otherwise parents need to hire babysitters or stay home. Older than that it’s legal to have your kid stay at home without a babysitter.
.
I have NO idea how you get kindergarteners to keep masks on, or stay 6 feet apart. That said: I notice the kid at the end of the block is VERY good about staying far from people. So maybe it’s not that hard to train some to keep them apart! 🙂
I have been called for jury duty once. Received a letter at college the day I was heading home for summer. I think I committed a crime in throwing it away.
lucia:
Having never been called for jury duty, you will appreciate this story about my wife’s jury duty experience.
Hennepin county (Minneapolis courthouse). Product liability case.
The judge asks the entire jury panel – has anybody here ever had math beyond high school? My wife raises her hand (she is a mechanical engineer who went to law school and is a patent attorney).
Has anybody in the panel taken calculus? She raises her hand.
Is anybody in the panel an engineer? She raises her hand.
Is anybody on the panel a lawyer? She raises her hand.
The judge says – young lady you can stop raising your hand now – there is no way you will be selected for this jury. Everybody laughs. My wife did not get on that jury (or any jury that week – lawyers often get struck from the jury pool for each case).
True and funny story.
So depending on the type of case – your background and advanced math knowledge can work to prevent you from being seated on a jury.
It is a week of very boring time, spent driving downtown, getting paid a very low per diem and then not getting selected (at least for my wife).
None of that story applies to the Chauvin case (Lawyers for sure will get struck – nobody wants a lawyer in the jury room during a murder case).
RickA,
Well.. I’m not a lawyer.
I thought you would find the math stuff funny (grin).
I’ve been called for jury duty many times but have only served on two. One when I was 19 years old (civil trial in state court) and one when I was about 40 (criminal trial in federal court).
I was booted once from a trial in Denver, can’t even recall what the case was. The first day we all filled out questionnaires to facilitate the voir dire process. I suspected I was on the chopping block when the defense attorney started his speech thanking everyone for their time and how important the civic duty was, whether one was a homemaker or a geophysical engineer. Sure enough, after I was interviewed I was struck from the jury.
Oh yeah, the federal trial was for bringing drugs across state lines. I learned what “making a federal case” out of something truly is.
I read the Yan, et.al. paper. It’s pretty devastating to the natural origin theory of SARS-CoV-2. It includes a blueprint for the creation of the virus and states that a lot of recently published sequences of similar coronaviruses are bogus. The authors say they will publish a separate article documenting this assertion.
RickA,
I’ve been called a few times. Never got on a jury. Waste of time.
Mostly the cases were were personal injury, and the plaintiffs were not interested in anyone who might be cool and rational about injuries suffered.
.
The last time I was called I had a already paid for a very expensive overseas flight to work as a consultant, so when asked if any potential jurors believed they should not be on the jury (a complicated auto accident case with claims of reckless driving and inadequate traffic signs), I raised my hand…. then approached the bench. “Your honor, I am self employed and have already made overseas travel commitments for technical consulting work next week. Sitting on this jury would cost me several thousand dollars of lost earnings. I also lost my younger brother in a car accident, and that could influence my evaluation.”
.
He seemed quite unhappy, but said “OK I will dismiss you, but do not tell the other potential jurors why.”
.
I moved to another state the next year and have never been called since.
DeWitt,
It would not surprise me at all if the virus came from the Wuhan virology lab… most likely some sloppy work caused a researcher to become infected, and they infected others outside the lab. Proving that will be impossible, of course. Modifying viruses to be MORE pathogenic seems to me about as crazy as any research could possibly be.
RickA
I do.
My dad, a blue collar tradesman, was a jury chairman once. He said that it was quite easy to influence the rest of the jury just by speaking up and expressing a clear opinion. So I am not surprised that lawyers are leery of expertise that might be used to sway the jury.
Li-Meng Yan, the lead author of the paper HaroldW linked to, will be interviewed on Tucker Carlson’s show tomorrow evening.
hey, jury trials are supposed to be trial by your peers – ie of the stupid by the stupid 🙂
We follow British practice where lawyers have next to no information (job, name), cant ask questions and have to make snap judgements as juror walks forward as they cant get names beforehand. Plus only allowed 4 rejections each. Anecdotally, teachers are frequently rejected. I can see advantages of US system, but, hey, empanelling a juror doesnt take much time.
I have only been called once. I thought scientist, rape trial, dressed wierd, that I would be sure to be challenged (my wife who is also scientist has been called 3 times and never made it to door), but no I ended up with a week in court.
We really only have juries for criminal cases (the exception being defamation).
My kids are finally getting phased into going back to school live. My youngest (13) is enjoying it. The older one hasn’t switched yet but will start next week. Smaller class sizes, since some (half-ish) of the kids have elected to stay virtual. Should be interesting.
Phil,
There is a limit to the number of jurors an attorney can dismiss w/o cause. I don’t know what that limit is nor whether it varies from state to state or if it’s different for federal courts vs. state courts.
.
I don’t know if there is a limit with cause.
.
My husband was called to a jury once and was empanelled for a day. He heard two cases! (Speedy trials!!!!!) One was ‘resisting arrest’, one was drunk driving. (I don’t know why or how these were in the same court. But I guess drunk driving isn’t in traffic court.)
mark,
Tutoring demands is up. . .
I’ve been called to jury duty several (four? five?) times. Never served, though. At least once I showed up, was told that all the cases which might have required a jury had been settled, and we were all told we were done. [With a wink-wink comment that our employers would be told that we had appeared for jury duty, but not told that we were dismissed at 9 am.] Twice sat in the waiting room all day, but never called to a courtroom.
Only once I managed to get into a courtroom. I was assigned #16. After some questions addressed to the entire set of potential jurors — e.g., are you, or a member of your family, a police officer? — jurors were brought forward to the lawyers & the judge one by one, starting with #1. Eight of the first 11 were sent to the jury box (jury of 6, plus two alternates); the judge must have dismissed the others for cause. Then 3 of the 8 in the jury box were dismissed — those must have been peremptory challenges. They continued with #12, #13, etc. and re-filled the jury box with #15. So close!
Looking online, this source says that in MA, a lawyer is allowed 2 peremptory challenges for a 6-person jury. [With additional peremptory challenges if there are alternate jurors & the crime carries a potential life imprisonment penalty.]
And on a different topic — this is an open thread, after all — here is an interesting article on the topic of “systemic racism”.
My takeaway quotation:
DeWitt Payne (Comment #190358): “I read the Yan, et.al. paper. It’s pretty devastating to the natural origin theory of SARS-CoV-2.”
.
I found that to be a frustrating paper. They write in the abstract
And then in the summary of part 1:
But they never clearly summarize what those “biological characteristics” are. Instead, one is left to extract from the text, which is a mass of detail. After reading the text, I could guess at what the important points are, but I don’t have the expertise to have any confidence in my guesses.
.
It is the opposite of the Chan paper, which clearly lays out the evidence, but is super careful about the conclusions. In my experience such papers are to be trusted, whereas papers like Yan et al. should be treated with suspicion.
Mike M.,
One of the points in the Yan paper that I thought was convincing was that the ability of SARS-CoV-2 to infect multiple organs is not something one would expect from a naturally occurring zoonotic virus. It’s simply too good at what it does.
Also it’s something of a first draft. I suspect a reviewer would raise your point and the conclusion section would be modified.
DeWitt Payne (Comment #190410): “One of the points in the Yan paper that I thought was convincing was that the ability of SARS-CoV-2 to infect multiple organs is not something one would expect from a naturally occurring zoonotic virus.”
.
I found that unconvincing. That just means that the Wuhan virus causes a systemic infection, like the flu, ebola, and mono. Even rhinovirus can cause a systemic infection: https://www.epainassist.com/infections/rhinovirus-infection-or-common-cold.
.
Why would a virus cause only a localized infection? One reason would be that it can only bind to certain types of cells. The Wuhan virus binds to ACE2 receptors which are found in pretty much all cells in the body. Or a viral infection might be localized because the body can keep it out of the bloodstream. Most, if not all, people have no natural resistance to the Wuhan virus, so no effective way to keep it out of the bloodstream. It has been speculated that immunity, whether from a vaccine or a prior infection, might only have the effect of keeping the infection localized to the upper respiratory tract.
HaroldW,
The whole idea of systemic racism causing differences in life outcomes (education, employment, wealth, etc.) is so plainly crazy that it beggars belief. Jews represent a tiny fraction of the US population, and have been subjected to blatant historical prejudice, even in the USA, but everywhere (not just in the USA) have significantly better life outcomes than non-Jews. Asians have been subjected to even greater levels of discrimination in the USA (and are are STILL subjected to clear discrimination in school admission), yet even though they represent a very small fraction of the US population, they have even better average life outcomes than both Jews and non-Jews.
.
If one assumes as a bedrock principle that all differences in outcome are caused by prejudice, then how can those two small minorities be so successful? The answer is: prejudice has nothing to do with it. Those groups tend to more often do the things that lead to greater success: study, save, delay gratification, invest rather than spend, etc. West Africans who emigrate to the USA are far more successful on average than native born African-Americans. That can’t be because of the color of their skin, but rather because they do the things that lead to success!
.
To paraphrase Shakespeare: “The fault, dear Brutus, lies not in prejudice, but in culture.”
lucia (Comment #190351)
Lucia, I think you brothers-in-law probably have the current Wheaton public school system attendance correct. I believe the elementary school goes to grade 5. For elementary schooling the in-person schooling is by parent choice 73% while 27% opted for virtual schooling. The secondary schools are in virtual mode until late September when a decision is scheduled be made about in-person.
The 2 week tally for Covid-19 for the Wheaton-Warrenville District 200 elementary schools:
Students Sent Home Requiring an Alternative Diagnosis or Negative Test: 75
Students Quarantined Due to Close Contact Outside of School: 42
Certified Staff Quarantining Due to Close Contact Outside of School: 10
Confirmed Positive COVID-19 Cases: Students: 2 (Family Members) Staff: 1
I see the Wheaton-Warrenville High School tennis court near me has many girls practicing tennis. I also see, when doing my daily walk, large clusters of young girls of high school age running together with no social distancing. The young kids in the neighborhoods by me play together without social distancing. That is the same as I saw in July when I visited my family in MN.
I am fairly sure that St. Francis High school near me is back to in-person schooling as are many or most of the area private schools. Public schools appear to be having troubles deciding what to do and how to implement in-person schooling with the Covid-19 threat.
I thought that Trump had taken political speech a step or two further into the nonsensical, but Biden and Harris have changed my mind. Biden calling Trump the arsonist president in blaming him for the wildfires in CA is just a recent example. Obama, like most politicians, made nonsensical statements but was clever enough to make those statements sound authoritative. I suppose like all things bad in the US today the degradation of political discourse can be blamed on the bad orange man.
I was called for jury duty several times and only got to the questioning stage once and was selected for a federal jury where the government brought a case against United Airlines concerning the handling of ticket discounts. United presented a case that took as I recall more than a week to complete. It was primarily carried out in the judge’s chambers and with the jury in the jury room. The government failed to deliver a case which made the jury’s decision one of default. After the verdict was delivered the jury was invited into the judge’s chambers where we could ask him questions about the trial. When I asked about the government’s failure to make their case the judge said that the government might have wanted to appeal the verdict to a different court and make their case there.
I was younger then but struck with how young all the lawyers involved in the case looked.
The best parallel for systemic racism to think about is the prejudice against conservatives in academia. After enough of one group takes over they tend to self select in an accelerating fashion and hoard all the goods for their in group favorites. This is not a perfect comparison so no need to pick it apart. It is just an attempt to understand how a system can work against a group with very little overt individual prejudice evident. Easily measurable disparate outcomes. Not saying I’m buying in to all the tales of systemic racism but this is the way to think about it.
.
There are no rules against conservatives in academia and most people in academia will profess no bias. Yet the informal collective system makes it clear that they aren’t welcome and the edges in the group are openly prejudiced in informal settings. Potential academic conservatives would do better to consider an alternate career path.
.
If you spend time in China or Japan you feel like you stand out, part of this is real as people are noticing something different, and some of it is just paranoia in your head. If an equally qualified conservative gets overlooked in academia for a job, it is very easy for him to blame bias when it may have just been a coin flip.
.
If you read the comments in the NYT when this liberal tilt in academia is brought up, you get a lot of college level composed comments saying effectively that conservatives are just stupid and aren’t critical thinkers, so it is conservatives that self select.
.
The two sides have a great deal of cognitive dissonance when these two situations are compared.
.
How would you fix systemic racism? How you would fix liberal bias in academia? Affirmative action for conservative academics? No easy answers, but the first step is by recognizing it is a problem and getting the hoarding group to begin to change their ways. I think it is a generational problem and will take decades to overcome.
.
It is possible that there is no need to “fix†it at all if all the internal group bias is removed and the other side actually does self select themselves out for cultural reasons.
Steve,
I wholeheartedly agree.
However, insofar as policy has an impact on what people do, policy could be said to contribute to ‘systemic racism’. The great irony of this in my view lies in the welfare system.
If people want antiracist policies al-la Kendi, they ought to vote against the welfare state, at least as it stands right now.
.
[Edit: However, be it noted for the record that I think Kendi is full of cheese whiz anyway and I don’t subscribe to his ideas in the first place.]
In a strange intersection of these two issues it is now required that all academic applications be accompanied by statements of equity by applicants and people are eliminated on that basis before their other credentials are examined. This is outright ideological purity testing and is … ummmm … deplorable IMO. This is the kind of stuff that must be removed.
.
Berkeley Weeded Out Job Applicants Who Didn’t Propose Specific Plans To Advance Diversity
https://reason.com/2020/02/03/university-of-california-diversity-initiative-berkeley/
.
Berkeley Guidelines for Applicants Writing Statements
https://ofew.berkeley.edu/guidelines-applicants-writing-statements
.
“If one assumes as a bedrock principle that all differences in outcome are caused by prejudice, then how can those two small minorities be so successful? ”
.
Because the minorities have the power even though they are outnumbered. They do this through self selection and in group bias. How do graduates of elites universities maintain such a stranglehold of power on DC and Wall Street? The people who graduate from those places get power, then recruit from those places because they believe they are the best candidates.
.
Maybe they are actually the best candidates and the meritocratic system is working just as it should. Groups get lazy and soon enough nobody from State U. is even recruited.
.
Things go haywire though when the elite hoard entrance to these elite universities by secret handshakes (lacrosse anyone?), expensive private schools, and sometimes outright fraud.
.
A meritocratic system, or one based on competence, is not something that needs eliminated, it is the abuse and corruption of that system that needs to be constantly monitored because it is a near certainty that groups will attempt to hoard access. It’s the way human brains are wired. The smarter and more powerful these hoarding groups are, the more insidious the hoarding will become. Parents creating feel good foundations for their children to “run” for resume building is something that normal people don’t even think about.
mark bofill (Comment #190417)
Maintaining a group of people dependent on the government and voting for those politicians that group thinks it depends upon is called plantation politics where it thrives in the inner cities. Those politicians are in no hurry to see these groups of people become independent of the government and by proxy them.
As long as those dependent groups feel that those people who say I am from the government and I am here to help you are their friends and advocates this form of racism will survive and not be recognized for what it really is. It is a form of racism when the groups that are more dependent are of a common race even though these politicians would work their plantation politics on any race given the opportunity.
I think Scientific American got mentioned within the last while here. They’ve come out and endorsed Joe Biden.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/scientific-american-endorses-joe-biden/
Heh.
Kenneth,
Just so.
Tom Scharf,
“Because the minorities have the power even though they are outnumbered.”
.
Utter rubbish. Asians (5.3% of the population, and many of those first and second generation of very modest means) do not control the levers of power in the USA. Yet they are extremely successful compared to all other identifiable groups.
.
Any suggestion that Jews (~2% of the population) control levers of power sounds to me a lot like the justifications offered for pogroms during WWII. More rubbish. The simplest explanation is the best: Cultural issues dominate all else when it comes to lifetime outcomes. Ask Thomas Sowell.
Kenneth, by any chance was your case someone made a mistake and posted $100 instead of $1000 for a new international route?
United used 9/11 as an excuse to cancel this route and as compensation gave everyone free round trip domestic tickets.
Lucia, the details vary from district to district. Massachusetts is using 3 feet social distancing to avoid the problem of not enough class space.
My question was with the assumption that every student opted into the hybrid 2 day a week plan, but only half the teachers do. Does the math still work out, or are you back where you started with half the students per classroom and half the teachers?
Tom Scharf (Comment #190419): “A meritocratic system, or one based on competence, is not something that needs eliminated, it is the abuse and corruption of that system that needs to be constantly monitored because it is a near certainty that groups will attempt to hoard access.”
.
Sure. What we have is a “meritocratic” system based on credentials with the insiders controlling access to the credentials. How do you base a system on actual competence? The only way I can see is to permit supervisors to hire based on their best judgement. But that leads to demands that hiring be objective, which leads to hiring based on credentials, which brings us back to where we are. Meritocracy would seem to contain the seeds of its own corruption.
I’m not claiming Jews or Asians are using nefarious group bias, I’m claiming that minorities of people can maintain control over a majority in some instances and that these cases should be examined for bias, just as majority bias needs to be examined.
.
The burden of proof should be on the people claiming bias, and the group that is being accused should be transparent about their operations (college entrance committee?).
.
Group culture is a big deal and is the likeliest explanation in most cases IMO.
.
An interesting case is golf. Meritocratic as can be imagined, but only people with enough means to join country clubs and provide expensive instruction from an early age generally rise to the highest level. There aren’t many golf courses in the hood and very few professional golfers of limited means. Is this a problem that needs remedied? I doubt it.
.
However I was watching a YouTube video and a woman Asian touring professional in Malaysia was told she could only play from the woman’s tees on a fancy course. That kind of stuff can be fixed.
Tom Scharf,
“….but only people with enough means to join country clubs and provide expensive instruction from an early age generally rise to the highest level. ”
.
You mean like Lee Trevino?
.
That country club lifestyle sure treated Trevino awfully well.
How about Walter Hagen? Or Gary Player:
.
Yup, that sounds exactly like a privileged country club childhood.
.
Then there’s Tiger:
Once again, a rich country club upbringing, if I ever heard of one. .
On the other hand, it could be that golf, like most professional sports, really is mostly meritocratic. Just like most of life.
Ironically we have credentialism partly because IQ tests were mostly banned by the SC for hiring, but requiring a college degree passes SC muster. We now have college degree gate keeping for the majority of high paying jobs in which a company could train an individual with good ability to do without a degree.
.
Why is a person who can easily demonstrate competence in coding isolated from a large segment of the job market? Academia is hoarding access to high paying jobs and has been increasing costs way over the inflationary rate for decades … because they can, there isn’t any competition for gate keeping.
SteveF:
.
gen·er·al·ly
/ˈjen(ə)rəlē/
adverb
1.
in most cases; usually.
Tom Scharf,
.
wrong
/rôNG/
adjective
1.
not correct or true; incorrect.
LOL
.
lol
/läl,elÅˈel/
1.
Laugh out loud.
SteveF,
Wrt to Lee Trevino, Gary Player and Tiger Woods and golf: Can you say anecdotal? There will always be exceptions and exceptional individuals. That does not prove that Tom Scharf was wrong.
MikeN (Comment #190424)
MikeN, this case was tried before 9/11 in the Chicago Federal Building by the US District Court. I was trying to recall the judges name as he was good friend of my neighbor who was Judge Woodward and father of Bob Woodward.
DeWitt,
My observation is that talented golfers (as in many other sports activities) excel, very often in spite of disadvantageous circumstances. Dominican baseball players don’t have wealth or influence; but they do have talent, they do work very hard, and they disproportionately succeed.
.
Just as in every other part of life. Yes, if you are born into the best possible environment, that makes a measure of success more likely, but remember what got the conversation started: Are more Asians successful because they are rich, connected, and have access to the best schools and tutors? No, more Asians are successful because they do the things which most often lead to success: study, work diligently, be prudent, invest, etc. These are the things which have allowed people of all backgrounds, races, and creeds to succeed in the USA.
.
What I object to is the suggestion that identifiable groups (like Asians, Jews, or for that matter Italians, or Indians) are more successful because their racial or ethnic group discriminates against those outside their group to allow their success. IMHO, that suggestion is pure rubbish and completely contrary to observation.
SteveF (Comment #190436): “My observation is that talented golfers (as in many other sports activities) excel, very often in spite of disadvantageous circumstances. Dominican baseball players don’t have wealth or influence; but they do have talent, they do work very hard, and they disproportionately succeed.”
.
But baseball can be played in an open field with minimal equipment. Golf requires access to courses; simply not available to most really poor kids. Trevino used to sneak onto a nearby country club course, then got a job as a caddy. Not an option for an inner city kid. Player had some hard luck, but I don’t know about being poor. Woods definitely had a middle class background, his father was an officer who retired with the rank of Lt. Colonel.
.
I am sure that lots of tour pros were not rich growing up, but I doubt that many were not at least middle class.
They bring up golfers from low socioeconomic backgrounds because they are rare, not because they are common. Almost every single recent PGA golfer was a competitive junior golfer first. Cameron Champ didn’t start until he was 15 but ended up spending $30K/year in junior golf. You will be spending thousands per year for * access * to junior golf, not like baseball, football, basketball, soccer.
.
Golf is an expensive sport. You can make it cheaper in a number of ways (used clubs, junior memberships, crappy public courses, etc.). You don’t lose 3 soccer balls each during a match.
.
Believe me I am cheap and it still costs me thousands of dollars a year to play golf. $50/month membership for $11/round and free range balls. That’s dirt cheap because FL is thankfully overbuilt for golf. Given that I also occasionally play on some other courses, I am reminded by my accountant (wife) that I exceed $300/month on a regular basis. You want to support a competitive junior golfer, I don’t know what that numbers is, but it is scary.
.
If you don’t think golf isn’t elitist then checkout the commercials during a golf tournament and golf magazines. It isn’t Budweiser and pickup trucks.
.
It’s more popular for older people because it is less demanding physically. But like other sports if you want to be at the highest level you need to start early, and that requires your parents to be of means. Example: Access to a launch monitor is a big deal for development now.
I agree that cultural is major determinant of “success”, which is bad news because culture is extremely hard to change. However, despite all the exceptions people love to bring up, rich people tend to have rich parents, poor people tend to have poor parents. There is no easier path to wealth than to inherit it. Basing policy around what happens to exceptional people seems a very poor guide to success, and more commonly is just an excuse to not do anything (“its their fault they are poor, they should have worked harder”). By comparison, I would note that death duties in the UK in late 19th- and especially early 20th century were an extremely effective instrument for changing rural land-holding – just an extremely unpopular one with the very rich (and powerful)
People generally want success in the culture they are part of. If that is gang-land culture, then they will play for success in that. A common cry in educational circles here is the desire for Maori to have success in the Maori world – but without ending up in poor housing and with terrible health outcomes. The cultural negotiations are complex and dont yield to simplistic solutions as far as I can see.
However, I dont see an impovished underclass as a desirable part of the world, and I think it is downright dangerous to civil society if the that underclass has markers like race or religion (think northern Ireland). Developing policy to change that is a good thing to do. Working out what an effective policy to do that looks like is hard. I’ve seen Left and Right both produce good and bad policies. To my eyes, bad policy = ideological driven. Good policy = pragmatism, evaluation and a willingness to change when indicators dont change as expected.
A fair account of my golf expenses, I’m probably pretty low on the cost scale but play often and play all year around in FL.
.
Membership: $50 / month
Green fees: $11.77/month x 12 = $140 / month
Alternate course fees: $100 / month
.
Balls: $250 / year
Shoes: $100 / year
Walking cart: $160 / (4 years?)
Golf Shirts x 5: $150 (collars, hot climate)
Golf pants x 4: $140
Hat: $75 (big ugly wide brim)
Bag: $200 / 4 years
.
Clubs, kind of all over the place.
Irons, used, 5 years old: $300
Wedges, new: $400
Driver, 3W, 5 years old used: $275
Hybrids, used and new: $225
Putter, used 4 years old: $100
.
Accessories:
Laser range finder, new: $400
Gloves: $40 / year
Thermoses for drink: $50 (no drink cost on the course)
Umbrella: $30
Range costs: Free with membership
YouTube instruction: Free
Mental counseling: Needed
Phil
Yep.
.
Unfortunately lots of policy is ideologically driven.
Phil,
“However, despite all the exceptions people love to bring up, rich people tend to have rich parents, poor people tend to have poor parents.â€
.
Sure, but how much is due to learned cultural values and how much is from actually inheriting wealth or other material advantage? The inheritance of greatest value is a culture consistent with success. Certainly the children of poor immigrants from places like Vietnam and China are not inheriting wealth, but are generally exposed to cultural values which are more consistent with success, and more successful they are.
.
I completely agree that changing culture is extremely difficult, and that people tend to define success in context to their cultural values. And that, of course, is why the problem is so intractable. What is not going to help narrow the gap in income, wealth, and other measures is branding people as racists who plainly are not. That way lies chaos… or worse.
Phil Scadden (Comment #190442): “However, despite all the exceptions people love to bring up, rich people tend to have rich parents, poor people tend to have poor parents.”
.
There is a tendency toward that, as there should be. But it is not as overwhelming as might be thought. Using 20 year old data for the USA, the chances of a child ending up in the same income quintile as the parents were, from highest income to lowest:
1 41%
2 27%
3 22%
4 24%
5 41%
So there is some significant stickiness on either end, but it is hardly determinative.
The biggest predictor of a kid’s success is not family income. It is whether he grows up in a two parent family. That is something that gets passed on from one generation to the next.
Li-Meng Yan just told Tucker Carlson that the release of the Wuhan virus from the lab was *not* an accident; it was intentional. Wow. She implied that, in addition to the genomic evidence, she has inside information from personal scientific contacts in China.
.
Accidental release is not really remarkable. Intentional release is an extraordinary claim that will require extraordinary evidence.
That is about as vague as you can get on race policy. In my book the problem of race is and primarily has been government control and government induced.
1. Slavery was government sanctioned.
2. Jim Crow laws were government enforced.
3. Unions were given special powers and privileges by government and were able to keep minorities out of higher paying jobs.
4. The welfare state has made some minorities dependent on the government and made the family less important. The welfare state has probably done more harm to weaken Black families than Jim Crow did.
https://thefederalistpapers.org/us/thomas-sowell-destroys-welfare-state-one-sentence
5. Minimum wage laws affect more the employment opportunities of those minorities seeking lower paying part time or starting jobs.
6. The government operated public school system has failed some minorities more than other groups. Some minorities want to get involved in their children’s education with more choices for their education but are increasingly being denied that opportunity by teacher’s unions and inner city politicians.
7. More of some minorities are incarcerated by the government for petty crimes such as drug laws that have made illegal drug trafficking in the inner cities a war zone with many related drug gang shootings and murders.
Getting government out of peoples’ lives appear to be the best and most accessible way to start changing a culture.
Sadly two-parent families are also strongly culture driven. Particularly the things that shape poor single mothers. Lots of hand-ringing, effective change, not so much at least here.
20 year data is nice, but there is evidence that social mobility in US is declining.
https://www.pnas.org/content/117/1/251
http://jhr.uwpress.org/content/43/1/139.refs
https://www.brookings.edu/research/thirteen-economic-facts-about-social-mobility-and-the-role-of-education/
Outcome of poor immigrants is interesting. Mostly we see poor immigrants/refugee to NZ highly motivated to “make it” and their children do better. Doesnt seem to univerisal however (France).
Phil Scadden,
IIRC the majority of poor immigrants/refugees to France are Muslim. Don’t know about NZ. Culture again.
Kenneth, it seems countries that sit highest in the social mobility stakes tend to be places with the government is anything but out of the way in people lives.
I dont really get the US race issues but in terms of getting people out of poverty I think there certainly is role for government but it is lots of measures across a broad swathe of areas. Things that so far seem to be producing positive indicators:
– High resourcing of schools in low socio-economic area. Schools and school-community interaction have a huge role to play.
– Free health care for children.
– free school breakfast/lunches in lowest schools.
– addiction and budgeting services.
– targeted policing of gangs, particularly around recruitment and finance
– community policing unit in problem areas
– prison reform, especially around mental health, addiction, education and gang dispersal
– labour retraining and second-chance schooling (especially for single mothers)
– youth development programmes (but needs a strong oversight to identify working programmes)
– resourcing of community-specific, community-driven development programmes (again with strong oversight).
Probably more if I looked over social-development performance indices, but that off the top of head.I can think of others that are NZ-specific
Obviously with any kind of government investments, these need to be outcome driven, transparent, and monitored.
NZ immigrants are mostly Pacifika, Asian and Australian. Refugees are increasingly muslim. I dont know enough about France to comment with any confidence but I do remember the comments on “how to make a terrorist” being critical of France for dropping refugees in outer suburbs and then excluding them from society. We help with refugee settlement (as volunteers) and keen to make sure we dont go down that road.
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(19)30044-3/fulltext
Kenneth, absolutely some very specific NZ issues to tackle, but I would dispute that there are not effective solutions making a difference(not helped by a lot of very ineffective ones that are not). The specific data can be found here: https://www.health.govt.nz/system/files/documents/publications/health-and-independence-report-2017-v2.pdf. I will leave it to you to decide whether it supports that rather editorial statement.
Issues associated with colonization take generations to repair, but I think the Treaty of Waitangi settlement process is taking some pretty serious steps. Media review here. https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/105477615/do-treaty-of-waitangi-settlements-lead-to-better-social-outcomes-and-should-they
I would also note that the policy suggestions above are not necessarily applied within NZ by any stretch of the imagination; may only be done in trials if at all. I am also looking at successful strategies from predominantly european countries as well. They are things I think NZ should adopt or adopt more widely.
Although my list of government actions detrimental to minorities and their cultures was not intended to be exhaustive, I should have added government licensing as another impediment to the economic improvement of the poor and minorities.
https://ij.org/walter-williams-explains-licensing-hurts-poor-minorities/
Medrxiv has an article that estimates the IFR versus age:
ASSESSING THE AGE SPECIFICITY OF INFECTION FATALITY RATES FOR COVID-19: SYSTEMATIC REVIEW, META-ANALYSIS, AND PUBLIC POLICY IMPLICATIONS
.
The money plot shows the IFR is an almost perfectly exponential function that rises with age. They estimate the IFR passes 1% very close to 65 years, reaches 13% by about age 85, and is well under 0.1% at age 45. Age alone accounts for 90% of the variance in IFR across multiple countries and regions.
.
My only criticism of the study is that they use only seropositivity as a measure of asymptomatic (or nearly asymptomatic) past infection, while multiple recent studies have suggested that many people with known exposure and no symptomatic illness (eg same household members of symptomatic cases) never generate measurable antibodies, but do have clear T-cell mediated resistance. So it seems to me their IFR estimates represent an upper plausible bound, and that the actual IFR is lower on average by a factor of about 2 to 3. Still, the take-home message is clear: covid-19 is a significant danger only to the elderly, and those are the people who need to avoid exposure. The authors (bravely I think) come right out and say efforts should focus on protecting the elderly from exposure….. not at all PC.
In order for individuals or groups to discriminate without economic consequences to themselves requires the coercive powers of government. That has been a factor in historical union based discrimination.
https://www.stltoday.com/opinion/columnists/unions-ignore-long-history-of-excluding-minorities-from-jobs/article_ef58bccd-f04a-5172-8dbd-18b8ee5eb9e2.html
SteveF (Comment #190477)
I am wondering whether the r squared you quoted from the article (which I have not read) for age versus Covid-19 infection resulting in deaths takes into consideration comorbidity increasing with age. In other words what are the expected outcomes for a person 85 in good to excellent health who is infected with Covid-19?
I like your age designation as year 85% which I can only assume means that that person has lived 85% of their life expectancy. What better way of reminding that we are all mortal beings.
Kenneth,
I agree completely: the coercive power of government is one of the principle reasons, secondary only to cultural factors, why poor people have difficulty improving their economic lot. Licensing requirements are the simplest and clearest example, and they are insidious in their consequences. For example, licensing of hair salons and barber shops (and the many associated regulations!) not only inhibit poor people from entering competition, they force other poor people (and not so poor people as well) to pay more for hair care than they otherwise would…. a double whammy of economic damage for the poor.
Kenneth,
“age 85%†was a typo, now fixed…. it is simply age 85. There is no consideration of co-morbidities in the article. Certainly at every age the presence/absence of co-morbidities changes the IFR. Of course co-morbidities rise with age, so that certainly explains a portion of increasing IFR with age.
WSJ Editorial Today:
.
“Unfortunately this is not working for America. Here’s an inverse example. It has been three weeks since Minnesota prosecutors released a toxicology report suggesting the primary contributor to George Floyd’s death was a fentanyl overdose. This news remains unreported by most outlets, likely because it would seem to give comfort to supporters of the police.
This is a terrible miscalculation. Put yourself in the position of Minnesota’s Democratic attorney general. If it becomes necessary to abandon or downgrade the murder charges to avoid a court defeat, the state would benefit from the public understanding why this might be advisable.
If the state proceeds on murder charges and a jury acquits, Minnesota and the nation would benefit from the public having known long in advance why such an outcome was possible.”
.
I’d have to agree to this. This should be up for significant debate. I don’t doubt that the media would eventually decide a possible OD wasn’t enough to override the video, but the complete dismissal of this seems to indicate narrative over fact finding. The new objectivity at work.
“The new objectivity at work.â€
.
Not really new objectivity, just the same old Orwellian objectivity the MSM has embraced for a while..
“Truth over facts”, with the caveat that truth is now a malleable concept depending on POV or “my truth” which need have no basis in fact or even in personal experience.
I recent (Molecular Biology, 29 August, 2020), randomized blind clinical study from Spain indicates that high oral doses of the biologically active form of vitamin D (commercial name: Calcitrol) when given to people hospitalized for covid-19 pneumonia dramatically reduced progression of the illness. It was a small study, but was blind and randomized; neither the patients nor treating physicians knew who had received the active vitamin D. Of the 50 patients who got Calcitrol, only one required transfer to the ICU (but later recovered), while 13 of 26 patients who did not receive Calcitrol ended up in the ICU, and two of the 13 died. The study has gaudy p-values, as you would expect from those outcomes. I found it quite a remarkable study.
SteveF,
I hope Trump can keep his mouth shut about this.
DeWitt,
“I hope Trump can keep his mouth shut about this.”
.
Yes, but I sure hope clinicians take note and act quickly.
The official approved Google facts, ha ha:
.
“Does vitamin D protect against COVID-19?
There is some evidence to suggest that vitamin D might help protect against becoming infected with, and developing serious symptoms of, COVID-19. We know, for example, that people with low vitamin D levels may be more susceptible to upper respiratory tract infections. One meta-analysis found that people who took vitamin D supplements, particularly those who had low vitamin D levels, were less likely to develop acute respiratory tract infections than those who didn’t.
Vitamin D may protect against COVID-19 in two ways. First, it may help boost our bodies’ natural defense against viruses and bacteria. Second, it may help prevent an exaggerated inflammatory response, which has been shown to contribute to severe illness in some people with COVID-19.”
.
That’s the case with a lot of vitamins, they help people who are deficient, but provide little benefit to those who aren’t deficient.
.
Yes, Trump touting this would cause the media to reflexively say “Trump says sunshine cures covid!”. Oh wait…
.
Fact check: Trump dangerously suggests sunlight and ingesting disinfectants could help cure coronavirus
https://www.cnn.com/2020/04/23/politics/fact-check-coronavirus-briefing-april-23/index.html
I’m being saturated with political ads in FL already. About 3:1 in Biden’s favor. If I watch TV for an hour I will see 4 or 5 ads. Really tiresome, many repeats. Mute button found.
Tom Scharf,
“That’s the case with a lot of vitamins, they help people who are deficient, but provide little benefit to those who aren’t deficient.”
.
The study did not use vitamin D (which is biologically inactive), but rather the biologically active form, which is normally formed from a two-step chemical conversion of inactive vitamin D. Taking more inactive vitamin D (or playing more golf in the sunshine) does little to raise the level of active vitamin D, since its concentration is internally regulated, at least so long as you have normal inactive Vitamin D levels. The study boosted the normal level of active vitamin D, independent of whether or not the patient had pre-existing “normal” levels of vitamin D.
.
Of note is that there is a gradual decline in active vitamin D level of about 50% with age: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3782116/#:~:text=Aging%20affects%20the%20formation%20of,in%20part%20by%20secondary%20hyperparathyroidism.
SteveF,
I saw that calcitrol study. I patted myself on the back for having started taking my multi-vitamin that provides 250% RDA for vitamin D. Obviously we still don’t know if it helps pre-infection or during early stages. But… well…. I figured this is something that can’t hurt.
.
I realize this isn’t what they were given in the study, but I still figure it can’t hurt.
.
Well… many people are a little low on Vitamin D. So the “as long” part may not apply to them.
.
Another thing I started taking owing to rumors (but no real evidence) it “might” help is melatonin. I read the rumors, then read up on it. It seems to help sleep in some instances and is rumored to help with deep sleep in some instances. (The main instances are for jet lag and as you get older, your body makes less, which might be related to older people having more trouble sleeping.) So lots of people have been taking this pre-Covid.
.
After starting to take that I noticed I now frequently have vivid dreams like I did when I was younger. I googled and evidently that’s frequently reported. So it may not help with the Covid, but I’ve decided I’ll keep taking that! (In the past, I was not big supplement taker. I took none.)
.
Anyway: If you used to have lots of dreams and want them back, give melatonin a try. I’m taking it before bed.
Melatonin can definitely help for sleep. I’ve used it a few times. I think you can build up a tolerance quickly if you take it often though.
Lucia,
I have plenty of vivid dreams without taking melatonin; not sure I want more vivid. I do sleep less soundly than 20 years ago, but that doesn’t bother me much. I took it a few times for Eastward bound jet lag (USA to Europe or the Middle East). Not sure it helped much.
When I was first married and for a long time after, I used to tell Jim all my weird dreams. Then…. didn’t have them. They are back!!
.
I can’t say I actually missed them. But many were pretty amusing. They are rarely scary or angry or anything like that. Just weird.
Nicotine patches do it too. Like Lucia, while I never particularly cared one way or another, sometimes I thought they were somewhat entertaining. Sometimes I’d also feel somewhat less well rested when I had vivid dreams, so on the balance I try to avoid them.
If I have a series of crazy dreams I wake up mentally exhausted sometimes.
Tom Scharf quoting WSJ editorial. “Put yourself in the position of Minnesota’s Democratic attorney general.[Keith Ellison] If it becomes necessary to abandon or downgrade the murder charges to avoid a court defeat, the state would benefit from the public understanding why this might be advisable.”
The WSJ and many others make the mistake of thinking that regular legal procedures will guide Ellison who is a hard Leftist ideologue who, for example, believes in open borders. I can assure you that at least 80% of his decision making will be political. He will be Kamala Harris on steroids, using every dirty trick and short-cut that he can find.
For a comparable example, one can look to former AG Eric Holder who released the racist emails of the Ferguson police department on the same day as he released the DOJ report on Officer Wilson who killed Michael Brown in self-defense and was 100% innocent of making any racist remarks or having done anything wrong in shooting Michael Brown, who had grabbed for the officer’s gun. Holder intentionally released the reports on the same day in order to smear the officer and give some credence to those who mistakenly thought that Michael Brown was unjustly shot. Even today some people paint Brown as a victim. (For instance, Greg Poppovich [sp] who recently claimed that Brown was shot in the back)
JD Ohio (Comment #190519)
Big Ten Football is back in October. What does this do to the ratings that will eventual determine the teams who play for the National Championship?
Contact tracing in Nashville showed that construction sites and nursing homes were big places for Wuhan virus transmission but bars and restaurant were not. So city officials covered up the results.
https://fox17.com/news/local/covid-19-emails-from-nashville-mayors-office-show-disturbing-revelation
JD Ohio,
If they can portray a knife-wielding psycho (well bipolar anyway) as a victim of police brutality, then Michael Brown is easy. And I too have seen people refer to Brown’s shooting as a crime.
DeWitt,
I once had a salesman in North America with that same name (Michael Browne). He decided about 10 years ago that he would rather teach people how to pilot sail boats than sell laboratory instruments. Now he runs a small sailing school, and splits his time between the USA and the Virgin Islands, and takes students in small groups (4 or 5) sailing between the Virgin Islands and the States… navigating by sextant and compass.
.
He was not black.
KF Re: College Football Championship– The committee is supposed to pick the 4 best teams. I could envision a really good team that only plays 6 games (against some highly rated opponents) getting in. Obviously, a very fluid situation in uncharted territory.
Almost on cue with respect to my opinion that Minnesota AG cannot be trusted, a federal judge in SDNY excoriates SDNY prosecutors in a 42 page opinion:
….
“Government has made countless belated disclosures of arguably (and, in one instance, admittedly) exculpatory evidence. For some pieces of evidence, the Government provides plausible explanations for its late disclosure. For others, it provides no explanation at all. And when the Court pressed for more information about one of these failures, the Government made a misrepresentation to the Court.”
******
over six years after the first of these state email search warrants was issued, the Government now informs the Court—and Mr. Sadr—that in fact federal investigators were mining the state search-warrant returns for federal crimes without authorization of a warrant. Dkt. No. 354 at 6, 16. The Government confesses that “early on in the DANY investigation, the FBI had had DANY personnel search email data in general support of at least one witness interview, and that the FBI was investigating federal crimes rather than the state-law offenses at issue in the warrants,” contrary to arguments [the Government] made during suppression litigation.” https://twitter.com/ClimateAudit/status/1306671935342870528
JD Ohio (Comment #190549): “Almost on cue with respect to my opinion that Minnesota AG cannot be trusted, a federal judge in SDNY excoriates SDNY prosecutors”
.
Indeed. Such bad behavior by federal prosecutors and the FBI is old news. Those are supposedly disinterested public servants. Whereas Ellison is a highly partisan ideologue. He can’t be trusted to tell you the time of day.
What is the purpose of the Wuhan virus vaccine? I would say that it is to prevent people from dying from the virus. So how many deaths will need to be prevented in the vaccine trials for the vaccine to be deemed safe and effective? What would you think is a reasonable minimum?
.
How about zero. Is zero good enough? Fauci says it is: “He added that researchers need to see about 150 infections occur in a vaccine trial for it to be deemed safe and effective.”
https://www.foxnews.com/health/fauci-bet-effective-safe-coronavirus-vaccine-november-december
Mike M,
“How about zero. Is zero good enough? Fauci says it is: “He added that researchers need to see about 150 infections occur in a vaccine trial for it to be deemed safe and effective.â€
.
Complicated. It depends on the expected CFR, and on the number of cases. The CFR depends (exponentially!) on the age of the people who get the illness, so if the vaccine is not 100% effective in eliminating all symptomatic infection, but does reduce deaths, then evaluation of effectiveness will depend on the age of the people who get symptomatic infection. None of the places which now have extremely low rates of symptomatic illness would be suitable for testing the vaccine, since it might then be difficult to get meaningful data. Places with substantial rates of infection, but very low rates of death (for example, Spain), are probably also not suitable to testing a vaccine, since the CFR is already very low (no doubt due to the age of the people who are catching the virus, and maybe also due to improved treatments like active vitamin D).
.
Placebo controlled tests would eliminate most of the problems, but these are deemed unethical…. so evaluating vaccines will be complicated.
SteveF (Comment #190577): “Placebo controlled tests would eliminate most of the problems, but these are deemed unethical”
.
I don’t understand that statement. Half the people in the trials are getting the vaccine, half are getting a placebo. The 150 infections that Fauci referred to would be in the placebo group.
.
SteveF: “It depends on the expected CFR, and on the number of cases. The CFR depends (exponentially!) on the age of the people who get the illness”.
.
No, it depends on the IFR. That is maybe 0.3%. So for a random sample from the population, 150 infections would mean about 0.5 deaths. But it is not a random sample. Back when the Moderna trial started, I read that they were only testing it on people in a certain age range without preexisting conditions. I just tried to confirm that, and it is not true for the trial as a whole; perhaps that restriction just applied to the first people to get the vaccine. So it is not as bad as I thought. Still, the risk profile is not likely to be the same as for the general public.
Mike M,
I could be mistaken, but I am pretty sure the vaccine trials are not planned to be pacebo controlled. If you have other information, please let me know.
.
I don’t know anything about age selection in proposed trials. Once again, do you have some reference?
I just realized the site I’ve been using to track hospitalizations has some more information. I can calculate how many admitted each day, the percent of positive cases who are hospitalized, and how many are released daily.
Question, with this information, can I calculate or estimate time of stay in hospital, either for admitted or released?
After a Biden townhall, CNN’s Oliver Darcy wrote a defense of not fact-checking Biden since Trump lies so much it makes it necessary for Trump.
Another tweeted:
Biden is implicitly fact checking Trump by…uttering many consecutive coherent sentences, which Trump has repeatedly said Biden cannot do.
Ten days till the first debate. I expect Biden to have his head on straight (or as straight as it gets). I’ve also been listening to Trump interviews and been reminded that the President is no paragon of clear and coherent speech himself. So I do not expect a Biden slaughter, at least not in that way / with Biden exhibiting cognitive problems.
Still ought to be fun though!
SteveF,
You are mistaken. A friend of mine is in one of the vaccine trials and they are placebo controlled. IIRC, the placebo group is half the size of the vaccine group. They had two injections and will have their blood tested for antibodies five times over the course of the trial. The check points are at 51, 102 and 153 infections in the placebo group with 153 being the end point. However, the effectiveness part of the trial could be ended sooner depending on the relative number of infections in the vaccine group at each check point.
The only way a vaccine trial wouldn’t be placebo controlled is if the vaccine group were purposely exposed to the virus. But that can’t be done. For a disease, it can be different. For example, the Keytruda trial for late stage melanoma wasn’t placebo controlled because the outcome of no treatment was well known and it wouldn’t have been ethical to offer no treatment when you’re reasonably certain that the drug you’re testing will have some benefit.
SteveF (Comment #190581): “I could be mistaken, but I am pretty sure the vaccine trials are not planned to be pacebo controlled. If you have other information, please let me know.
.
Placebos are SOP in vaccine trials and these are no exception:
https://www.nytimes.com/article/covid-vaccine-a-b.html
“Finally, in Phase 3 trials, scientists give the vaccine to tens of thousands of people and a placebo to tens of thousands of others.”
And any number of other source.
.
SteveF: “I don’t know anything about age selection in proposed trials.”
.
The only age restriction is over 18.
Once the placebo group hits it target number of infections, then the effectiveness of the vaccine is calculated by how many infections the vaccine group has accumulated. The FDA says 50% minimum.
.
I read they were being careful with enrolling a lot of older people due to their chances of death in the placebo group. Obviously their chances are equivalent to not being in a vaccine trial but I suppose they might engage in more risky behavior if they think they might have a vaccine. In theory the placebo group could be calculated from the background rate of infection but as we all know bad incentives and statistics often result in questionable math.
In climate related news, I’m calling the minimum for Arctic Sea ice in 2020 at 3.573 Mm² (seven day moving average). That’s the second lowest on record after 2012 at 3.201m². Global sea ice has been running about the same as the last few years because Antarctic Sea ice has been running above average lately. The doom and gloom curve fitters were predicting zero Arctic Sea ice at some point in 2013. So much for totally empirical models.
DeWitt Payne (Comment #190588): “The check points are at 51, 102 and 153 infections in the placebo group with 153 being the end point.”
.
Thanks DeWitt. It is good to have definite numbers. Do you know how they will determine number of infections? From the antibodies? Regular PCR tests? Reported symptoms, confirmed by PCR?
Mike M,
” Do you know how they will determine number of infections? From the antibodies? Regular PCR tests? Reported symptoms, confirmed by PCR?”
.
Sure hope it is not just developing antibodies among the placebo group…. it appears lots of mild infections never generate measurable circulating antibodies.
Mike M.,
I was operating on what I remembered my friend saying. I found some recent articles that go into more detail. According to Reuters, Pfizer’s first check point will be at 32 total infections in ~29,000 participants with half placebo. The FDA standard is 50% more effective than the placebo, so for equal numbers in the placebo and vaccine group you need more than 76.9% of the infections to be in the control group to be sure you’re above 50%. Reuters says that means no more than six in the vaccine group, but my calculation says 7. Then again, maybe Reuters inverted the digits in the percentage and it’s actually 79.6%.
I haven’t found how they determine infection status, but it can’t be antibodies since the vaccine is supposed to produce antibodies. Since they’re collecting several blood samples, my guess would be PCR for the virus in the blood samples. I’ll ask.
Why isn’t it 2/3 infections in the control group for example 100 for placebo, 50 for vaccine?
How big is this study to be able to get 150 infections?
If it is 10,000 people, with half in control group, it would take 8 months to get to 150 infections, given that there are currently 40,000 new cases per day.
NPR has discovered Europe’s second covid wave.
https://www.npr.org/2020/09/17/914103938/-a-very-serious-situation-who-says-coronavirus-cases-are-rising-in-europe-again
.
“Where the pandemic goes from here is in our hands. … We have fought it back before, and we can fight back again,” he said.”
.
Yes, it’s a heroic fight against a natural disaster for the Europeans. No hysterical accusations of immoral politicians, they are merely a victim of circumstances. No questioning of every reopening move, no pondering whether those shutdowns were worth it. No academics proving blood on the hands of the government with their incredibly accurate modeling exercises. These poor Europeans. Those Sturgis people though, they deserve what they get.
MikeN,
More than 29,000. Small number statistics. If it’s 100 and 50 then you only have 50% confidence that the true percentage is greater than or equal to 50%. I’m sure there’s a lookup table somewhere that gives the percentages but I’m not in the mood to find it right now. It will be more than 100 and less than 50, though, probably something close to 120 and 30.
Participants were not just from the US and are not randomly sampled from the entire population. There are also study locations in Argentina, Brazil and Turkey.
The complete list of study centers can be found here:
https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT04368728
I assume that active not recruiting means that they have already found a sufficient number of participants. I haven’t checked, but I’m betting these are, or were, locations with high infection rates.
Tom Scharf,
No second wave in Sweden so far. The WSJ has a similar piece with the opposite conclusion, no more nationwide lockdowns.
NYT: Even as Cases Rise, Europe Is Learning to Live With the Coronavirus
Protections like wearing masks, which have proved divisive in the United States, are now widespread on the continent, helping people get on with their lives with calculated risk.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/15/world/europe/coronavirus-europe.html
.
“In the early days of the pandemic, President Emmanuel Macron exhorted the French to wage “war†against the coronavirus. Today, his message is to “learn how to live with the virus.â€
.
Imagine the NYT responding to Trump saying that. They praise the Europeans for wearing masks but provide a picture of a Paris bar with nobody wearing masks, ha ha. Either they are wearing masks and having an outbreak anyway or they aren’t and that may be expanding the outbreak. It’s delusional coverage.
Tom,
I read the article about cases in Europe.
Yep. Not “divisive” because no one gets bent out of shape if no one is wearing them. 🙂
Here in the People’s Republic of Massachusetts, not wearing a mask in public is strictly forbidden (and in fact unlawful and subject to civil penalty). Any attempt to enter a bank, store, pharmacy, etc without a mask will be blocked (physically blocked… they have guards at the doors). Of course, you can only enter a restaurant with a mask, but eat your dinner without a mask. It’s all bonkers, all the time. I just wish everyone would calm down quite a bit.
Cases in Europe have risen sharply, but for the most part, deaths remain very low. It is more difficult to justify draconian regulations when almost nobody is dying from the virus.
MikeM
I think not getting so sick I need to be hospitalized would be sufficient as a “purpose”. Heck, not getting so sick I have to be at home a full week would be sufficient “purpose”.
Lucia,
“I think not getting so sick I need to be hospitalized would be sufficient as a “purposeâ€. Heck, not getting so sick I have to be at home a full week would be sufficient “purposeâ€.”
.
Sure, which is mostly why people bother to get flu vaccinations. The risk of death, or even serious illness, for those under 65 (and especially without any comorbidities) is low enough that it is hard to get very worked up about. The elderly… which, sadly, I am becoming day by day… are a different story; an effective vaccine will be hugely beneficial to that cohort.
lucia (Comment #190617): “I think not getting so sick I need to be hospitalized would be sufficient as a “purposeâ€.”
.
Fair enough. But they very likely aren’t going to have enough cases for that purpose.
.
lucia: “Heck, not getting so sick I have to be at home a full week would be sufficient “purposeâ€.”
.
No, that would not be close to sufficient as a purpose for a rushed emergency use authorization.
Justice Ginsberg has died from complications of pancreatic cancer, age 87.
.
I can only imagine the lefty rage when Trump places a conservative on the court to replace her. Assuming that happens, even mealy-mouth Roberts will not stop the unraveling of the many unlawful ‘Supreme Court laws’ promulgated since Roe v Wade. I can hear the loud head explosions on the left now.
MikeM,
Perhaps they won’t have enough infections to be able to complete phase III trials. But I think infections should be sufficient, and if the death rate is low, there should be many more infections than deaths.
.
There still may not be enough, but I think that’s the way to run the trail: Do statistics based on infections.
.
Is this a law or a regulation? (Real question.) If it is, that’s just wrong, It should be sufficient to do the statistics based on infections.
.
Not getting infected means I don’t need to stay at home recovering, and I’m not contagious putting others at risk. I should think not getting infected vs. getting infected should be fine for a trial.
Do you guys think McConnell will try to push someone through before the election?
mark bofill: Yes.
Lucia,
Well, McConnell has said he would. No vacancy left unfilled, or something to that effect.
Will Collins, Murkowski, Grassley, and Romney vote for the nominee, maybe is another relevant question.
He will push. Whether he will get it past the goal post… dunno.
.
Appointment to SCOTUS is a political process. It’s designed that way in the constitution. We’ll here lots of words about principles, just as we did with Merrick Garland’s nomination by Obama. But in the end: it’s a political process. That’s a feature. Not a bug.
McConnell has publicly announced this.
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/mcconnell-supreme-court-nominee-vote-floor
lucia (Comment #190629): “There still may not be enough, but I think that’s the way to run the trail: Do statistics based on infections.”
.
The problem with that is that the infection is not what puts people in the hospital or cemetery. That is due to a dysfunctional immune reaction to the infection. The vaccine might work fine for those not susceptible to that reaction and not work, or even make things worse, for those who are susceptible.
Well I heard 1,000,000 liberal heads exploding in DC all the way in FL and decided to check the news…
.
This is going to be a circus among circuses. It might actually help Trump because there will be no dirty trick left untried by the left on this one. The unnamed nominee has already been declared racist and sexist. After what they put Kavanaugh through nobody expects anything less. Because of Kavanaugh there will be little patience from the public for endless investigations and stalling. Grab the popcorn and prepare for carnage.
.
Got to give Ginsberg credit, she tried so hard to hang on.
Mike M
I don’t see how this is a problem.
.
The goal of a vaccine is to prevent an infection. If it prevents infection, it is “effective”. If it’s ineffective, then it’s ineffective.
.
The other issue is whether it’s safe. That gets looked at too. But we shouldn’t (and don’t ) need to confuse “safe” vs “effective”.
.
As far as I’m concerned: if it prevents me from getting an infection it’s a useful vaccine. It might not be perfect but it’s useful for me. I don’t see any reason why a vaccine that prevents me from being infected should not be released merely because it might turn out that it might not work for someone else. We would certainly still want to find ways to protect that other hypothetical person who– for some reason– might still get infected. But I don’t see any reason what the vaccine not working for the should block me from getting protection. That’s just silly.
Note the real deadline is Jan, not Nov. What you try to accomplish before Nov is a political decision. No doubt McConnell will throw the left endless rope to hang themselves with if they want.
I think it’s a problem if I’m seriously sick from covid and wondering if I’m going to die because it has no proven treatment. It’s a problem if I’m not seriously sick from covid but manage to give it to my wife or father and it ends up killing them.
If Republicans lose the election and put in a nominee in December, then Democrats will be justified in expanding the Supreme Court.
McConnell will push for appointment before Election Day.
Trump won in 2016 because of the Supreme Court and he knows it.
lucia (Comment #190640): “The goal of a vaccine is to prevent an infection.”
.
No, the goal of a vaccine is to prevent a specific disease. So far as I can tell, vaccines don’t prevent infection; they prime the immune system so that it responds quickly and strongly enough to the infection that the infection is crushed before is causes disease.
In the case of the Wuhan virus, the disease we need to prevent is the dysfunctional immune response:
https://www.the-scientist.com/news-opinion/the-immune-hallmarks-of-severe-covid-19-67937
Since we don’t understand what cause the dysfunctional immune response, it is not obvious that a vaccine will prevent it. Maybe it will, maybe it won’t. Only testing can tell.
Trump needs to nominate a qualified woman… the bogus charges of the nominee having been a teen-age serial rapist would then be more entertaining.
MikeM
Oh. I think you’re just making up this rule. It could be either/or or both. In the case of Covid, preventing infection does prevent disease.
.
It is true that some people who are infected don’t get the disease. But they are contagious. So they can infect someone else who then gets the disease. A vaccine that prevents or reduces the likelihood of contagion by the infected also prevents disease.
.
It seems to me you want it to be more difficult for us to accept a vaccine. Or to discourage acceptance. Is my impression correct?
SteveF–
Politically he may need to nominate a woman. Of course we saw with Kimba Wood’s nomination for attorney general that people can dream up all sorts of reasons to criticize a woman. (Her sin was hiring an undocumented nanny when it was illegal to do so. The main reason a man would not have been criticized for this is … his wife would have usually been the one hiring the nanny. OR in the era, he might have had a stay at home wife.)
.
But for current Democrats, it really will look bad to criticize a woman for things that they would quite obviously never criticize a man for.
Powerline blog suggests Trump may nominate Amy Barrett. I don’t know anything about her yet.
I think Trump will nominate Amy Coney Barrett for SCOTUS. The Senate approved her for the Court of Appeals three years ago, with several Democrats voting in favor. The Dems tried and failed to take her down then, so it looks like she can take their best shot.
.
Speed in getting RBG replaced is essential, since by the end of the year SCOTUS might be deciding the fate of our democracy.
Kimba Wood was not derailed for hiring an illegal nanny. She was derailed for hiring an illegal nanny after Zoe Baird was derailed for hiring an illegal nanny. If she had been the first nominee, I think she would have been confirmed, because the details of her situation were a little different.
Sounds like your theory is that she both was and was not derailed for hiring an illegal nanny.
.
Both were derailed for hiring illegal nanny’s. That it might have worked out differently if she’d been nominated first doesn’t change the fact that hiring a nanny was the cause for her being derailed.
lucia (Comment #190668): “I think you’re just making up this rule.”
.
Nope: https://www.britannica.com/science/vaccine
.
lucia: “In the case of Covid, preventing infection does prevent disease.”
.
I think that is a tautology since the disease requires an infection. But preventing a disease is not the same thing as preventing infection: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infection
There is definitely a risk of semantic confusion here. In the terminology of a SEIR model, a person who has been ‘exposed’ has actually been infected, while the ‘I’ refers to ‘infectious’, i.e., capable of infecting others. Normally, ‘exposed’ means subjected to the risk of infection.
.
An immune system response is a ‘reaction of host tissue to the infectious agent’, so an immune system response implies infection.
.
Vaccines work by enabling a secondary immune response to an infection https://microbeonline.com/differences-between-primary-secondary-immune-response/
.
Most sources that talk about secondary immune response refer to ‘exposure’ or ‘contact’ rather than ‘infection’. I am not trying to start an argument about terminology. I am just trying to establish terminology for the sake of clearer discussion since I don’t know exactly what lucia means by ‘infection’.
lucia (Comment #190668): “It seems to me you want it to be more difficult for us to accept a vaccine. Or to discourage acceptance. Is my impression correct?”
.
Nope. I am just worried about another massive expert-led cock-up.
We may or may not have achieved herd immunity. But we have definitely achieved herd stupidity. The stampede to a vaccine might end up taking us off a cliff.
I would think that the object of a vaccine is to create herd immunity without having to risk catching the disease. That means to me that an exposed person who has had the vaccine does not become infectious.
From what I understand about the Pfizer trial, they are not scheduling blood testing often enough to diagnose truly asymptomatic infection. They will do a nasal swab test on anyone in the trial who exhibits any symptoms. The participants have been given nasal swab kits as well as blood sample kits so they don’t need to leave home to be tested in the event of developing symptoms. They will be interviewed frequently.
DeWitt Payne (Comment #190683): “I would think that the object of a vaccine is to create herd immunity without having to risk catching the disease. That means to me that an exposed person who has had the vaccine does not become infectious.”
.
Yes, that would be a vaild public health objective. But it is not the objective for individuals or even always for public health. It is not effective with influenza and serves no purpose for a shingles vaccine.
.
It is not at all clear that will work for the Wuhan virus, or if it is even the objective. The vaccine may be approved with a rather low efficacy. It may not last long. It might drive the virus out of the blood stream but not prevent mild upper respiratory infections that can lead to transmission. We don’t know and won’t know for at least a year, if not longer.
Mike M
I don’t see any “stampede” to a vaccine. I don’t know how quibbling about whether “the” purpose is avoiding infection, avoiding disease or creating herd immunity would create a vaccine.
.
Provided it is proven safe, I very much want and would take a vaccine that did any of the of the following
* prevented me from becoming infected.
* prevented me from developing illness even if I happened to get infected.
* prevented me from dying if I get infected and ill.
* reduced the number of people I give illness should I become infected. (That is: make me less infectious)
* increased the number of “not susceptible” in the populations whether or not we have already achieved herd immunity and whether or not we ever achieve herd immunity.
.
I see any of these goals as valid reasons to want a vaccine to become available.
.
I also want the vaccine available to others if it achieves any of the above.
.
Obviously, I don’t want to take a vaccine that makes me sick. But that doesn’t seem to be the issue you are focusing on. You seem to be trying to decide which “benefit” is THE benefit for a vaccine and wanting to suggest that if the vaccine doesn’t achieve that benefit, then it’s somehow not useful. But any of the above benefits are in my opinion benefits that make the vaccine valuable provided it’s safe
MIke M
.
I don’t know what “low efficacy” means. But I would take a vaccine that reduced my chance of getting infected by as little as 25%. Every estimate suggests the vaccine will work better than that. I think reducing chance a exposed vaccinnated person getting infected by 25% would be sufficient reason to approve a vaccine.
.
I would be willing to take a vaccine once a month. People who take insulin take multiple shots a day. So I don’t see “not last long” as a problem. So I think protecting someone for a month is sufficient reason for making a vaccine useful.
.
I would take a vaccine that prevented me from dying or having symptoms even if it turned out it did diddly squat for reducing how infectious I became. In that case, other people could decide whether they want to take it or not. But I think merely preventing people from dying or reducing their symptoms is a sufficient reason for permitting it.
.
Of course we don’t know what the results of tests will be. But I don’t think it makes any sense to treat all the sufficient conditions as necessary conditions.
lucia (Comment #190699): “I see any of these goals as valid reasons to want a vaccine to become available.”
.
I agree.
.
lucia: “I also want the vaccine available to others if it achieves any of the above.”
.
I agree.
.
lucia: “Obviously, I don’t want to take a vaccine that makes me sick.”
.
Me too. But I also don’t want a vaccine that will make the illness worse if I do get sick. I’d be surprised if you would want such a vaccine. That is my concern.
.
lucia: “But that doesn’t seem to be the issue you are focusing on.”
.
Wrong. That is exactly my concern.
.
lucia: “But any of the above benefits are in my opinion benefits that make the vaccine valuable provided it’s safe”.
.
I agree. The key words are provided it’s safe. You seem to think that an emergency use authorization proves that it is safe. Not so. Even full FDA approval does not guarantee that it is safe. Plenty of approved drugs have been withdrawn because of a lack of safety and at least some ineffective drugs remain on the market. There is no way that acetaminophen could get approved knowing what we now know about it.
.
The requirements for safety and effectiveness should be even higher if the vaccine is going to be made mandatory. If you think there is no danger of that, then you have not been paying attention.
Mike M
I also wouldn’t want that. I don’t think that’s at all likely.
.
I know it has nothing to do with debating whether THE “goal” or”purpose” of the vacinne is to prevent infection, prevent illness, create herd immunity and so on.
.
Sure. But that has nothing to with with whether THE “goal” or “purpose” of the vacinne is to prevent infection, prevent illness, create herd immunity and so on.
.
Whether the vacinne appears safe is evaluated during all phases of testing. It continues to be evaluated.
Sure. I doubt it will be made mandatory. I don’t know why you think it might. Suggesting I might not be paying attention isn’t evidence that it is likely to be made mandatory.
.
I think there won’t even be enough vaccine until 2021. I think any attempt to enforce any provision to make it mandatory will be blocked by courts for a long time.
.
But if your concern has been that it might be made mandatory, I think it would make sense to bring that up early rather than spend time trying to introduce the idea that THE only legitimate goal of a vaccine would be “Whatever one of the possible valid ones you happen to favor” and sounding you like exclude the others.
MikeM
I haven’t said “emergency use authorization” proves something is safe. I don’t know why you think I think it proves that. I agree that full FDA approval doesn’t guarantee it’s safe.
.
Practically nothing in life is guaranteed to be safe. So I don’t look for such guarantees. I merely look to evidence it is “sufficiently” safe, and that is balanced against the benefit.
.
I don’t sky dive, btw. Nor do I bungee jump.
Here is a really good, but very long and detailed, post on the question of a lab origin of the Wuhan virus:
https://medium.com/@yurideigin/lab-made-cov2-genealogy-through-the-lens-of-gain-of-function-research-f96dd7413748
The author set out to kill off the nonsense of a lab origin. And failed. His summary:
The article was posted in April, before Alina Chan’s work and long before Yan’s report. But it really helped me understand much of what Yan was saying.
I marvel at the way the author dismisses the whole notion at the start of the article, although by the end as Mike says he concludes that it’s possible.
Biological warfare has been around for a long time (yes, including viral weapons). The U.S. had a bioweapons program for awhile, until Nixon ended it in 1969 because he thought bioweapons unreliable (and one can certainly argue that they are). There’s nothing fringe or crazy about it. I sometimes wonder what world the people who scoff at these facts inhabit.
mark,
I also don’t know why someone would dismiss the notion as utter nonsense initially. It would be one thing to think it improbable, but nonsense? No.
.
Remember the “anthrax” scare– with anthrax being sent around? Anthrax is a potentially effective bio weapon. There was a lab in Ames Iowa working on making different strains.
.
Bio-labs do work on modifying viruses, bacteria, fungus and spores for various reasons. Stuff getting out has been known to happen in different ways. So the idea is not inherently nonsense.
.
It would have been different to say that there was no strong evidence back in March or April. (There was some circumstancial evidence– proximity to a lab.) It also reasonable to say that’s just the sort of speculation that pops up on it’s own. And it’s reasonable to say given both those things you really, really doubt it.
.
But “nonsense”? That’s the sort of word you use for theories like “Martian’s flew here on a UFO and sprinkled it in China.”. It isn’t nonsense. It’s may not be true.
mark bofill (Comment #190733): “I marvel at the way the author dismisses the whole notion at the start of the article … There’s nothing fringe or crazy about it. I sometimes wonder what world the people who scoff at these facts inhabit.”
.
People do not like to think about the unthinkable; it is much easier to just dismiss it. My guess is that most people in the U.S. dismiss the idea that the riots are part of an organized plot to overthrow the government. They probably regard as crazy the claim that the Democrats are planning to steal the election by stuffing ballot boxes, let alone that they are contemplating insurrection if they lose.
.
A corollary is that people also want to be able to trust in their government and the experts. If the people in charge are incompetent or working against the public interest, well that is very scary.Therefore, it can not be and those who insist it so must just be deplorable Trump voters. So they accept all the repressive public health measures foisted on us, even as evidence accumulates that the people behind those measures don’t know what they are doing.
Lagao would be the smarter political choice over Barrett. She was confirmed 80-15 to the federal court of appeals last year, which is more democratic support than most of Trumps nominees.
It’ll be interesting to see who benefits more from delaying the vote till next year. I’m not sure that the likely anti-trump turn out for the democrats can get any higher. It might be in Trumps best interest to for it to be still in the air. Some disillusioned republicans might turn out though for the court nominee.
Andrew P
They can vote after the election.
Lucia,
Yup. ‘Improbable’ and ‘crazy’ are very different things.
.
Mike,
I largely agree with what you said. Part of what makes talking about the riots being part of an organized plot to overthrow the government or Democrats planning voter fraud tricky is the slipperiness of generalizing about large numbers of people. The extremes of ‘all’ or ‘none’ are so improbable that they cross the border into ‘crazy’ in my view. What I mean is that it’s insanely unlikely IMO that all of the riots or rioters were part of an organized plot to overthrow the government. But in such a large nation of hundreds of millions, it’s also insanely unlikely that none of the riots or rioters were part of an organized plot to overthrow the government. The same with Democrats and voter fraud (and Republicans and voter fraud, for that matter). The trick IMO is to figure out what elements dominate. Hard to do.
Replacing RBG might have to wait till after the elections, depending on where various Republican senators stand. Collins and Murkowski are likely to vote no; they’ve both come out recently to say so. McDonnell can lose only three votes and still have Pence break the tie for the win, so two further defections torpedoes the effort.
Cory Gardner dodged the question about how he’d vote on this. Who knows what Romney will do [Edit: There are other potential defectors].
It ought to be interesting though.
lucia (Comment #190740): “They can vote after the election.”
.
I expect that is what will happen. Recent history is about 7 weeks from nomination to the start of hearings, then 3 weeks to confirmation. That would put the start of hearings the week after the election and the vote just after Thanksgiving.
.
Collins has said that she opposes voting before the election but has no problem with the process starting. So she and others can say they are opposed to a lame duck confirmation without having to actually put their money where their mouth is until after the election. If Trump wins, the seat gets filled promptly. If not, those Senators will have a tough choice to make, but can do so without immediate electoral consequences. The big problem would be if the election results are in dispute.
The Hill mentions something I wasn’t aware of that can change the calculation about whether or not to wait to install a replacement after the elections:
Andrew P (Comment #190739): “Lagao would be the smarter political choice over Barrett. She was confirmed 80-15 to the federal court of appeals last year, which is more democratic support than most of Trumps nominees.”
.
That is irrelevant. Whomever Trump nominates will be demonized by the Democrats. The only people who will notice a difference between Lagoa and Barrett will be the ardent conservatives, especially the anti-abortion activists. They will much prefer Barrett. From bitter experience, they know what happens when Republican presidents nominate compromise candidates.
The Russians had an accidental weaponized anthrax release
.
Sverdlovsk anthrax leak
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sverdlovsk_anthrax_leak
.
“On 2 April 1979, spores of anthrax were accidentally released from a Soviet military research facility near the city of Sverdlovsk, Russia (now Yekaterinburg). The ensuing outbreak of the disease resulted in approximately 100 deaths, although the exact number of victims remains unknown. The cause of the outbreak was denied for years by the Soviet authorities, which blamed the deaths on consumption of tainted meat from the area, and subcutaneous exposure due to butchers handling the tainted meat. All medical records of the victims were removed to hide serious violations of the Biological Weapons Convention that had come in effect in 1975. The accident is sometimes referred to as “biological Chernobyl”
Delaying the nomination only helps the dems, from a potential deadlock on the SC in case of election “irregularities” to increasing Dem turnout. Republicans who refuse to do what is necessary out of some principle of honor are just fools. Assuming they actually have any principles, they are refusing the chance to actually have them represented where it really counts, and instead offering the chance to people who have vowed to remove them. The Dems would not hesitate, as they have already proven in the past.
Performative wokeness continues to be a goldmine of comedy.
.
Princeton puts out the usual self flagellating and virtue signaling statement about it’s racist past and continuing systemic racism. Yawn. Turns out that being racist is against the law if one wants to receive federal funding, and these cases are pretty easy to prove if it is self admitted, ha ha.
.
Princeton faces federal inquiry after acknowledging racism
The Trump administration has opened an investigation into racial bias at Princeton University
https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/wireStory/princeton-faces-federal-inquiry-acknowledging-racism-73098823
.
“The Trump administration has opened an investigation into racial bias at Princeton University, saying that the school’s recent acknowledgment of racism on campus amounts to a “shocking†and “serious†admission of discrimination.”
.
Priceless. Kudos to those involved for this angle of attack. I can’t think of a better use of my taxpayer funds.
Tom Scharf,
I had about the Princeton situation. Oh… the… irony.
.
They should have stuck to apologizing for the past. That’s what most schools do. No doubt they are now going to be explaining that, no their system is not racist, systemically or otherwise.
.
They’ll also be asked to explain what parts of the “system” they suspected were racist, and then asked why they haven’t fixed those parts of the “system”.
Here is some good news: https://www.pewresearch.org/science/2020/09/17/u-s-public-now-divided-over-whether-to-get-covid-19-vaccine/
Americans are evenly split on whether they would get a vaccine if available today. Nearly 80% think the process is being rushed, without adequate regard to safety.
That is good news since it reduces the pressure to ignore safety concerns and reduces the chances of having the vaccine shoved down our throats. Together they reduce both the chances of a disaster and the possible magnitude of a disaster.
Mike M,
Yes, whoever Trump nominates to replace Ginsberg, they will be attacked by Democrats and the MSM (…but I repeat myself). But there are differences in political cost to the Democrats for their inevitably shrill opposition; opposing Barrett will cost the Democrats little, but opposing Lagoa, especially after many of them supported her for the Court of Appeals, could well cost them Hispanic votes in Florida, Arizona, and elsewhere.
.
She is certainly less likely than Barrett to vote to directly reverse Roe, but the truth is reversing Roe is broadly unpopular, and opposed even by many Republicans. Trump’s legal team needs to interview her and sound out her positions, of course, but it looks to me like she may be a better political choice than Barrett.
Mike M,
” Together they reduce both the chances of a disaster and the possible magnitude of a disaster.”
.
I am really not concerned bout this; that risk seems to me tiny. Of course, I doubt it is going to make much difference in the States, because by the time the vaccine becomes broadly available, in most places very few people will be dying of covid-19.
Lucia,
I think the Princeton situation is ironic, but not terribly. The truth is most colleges and universities, and certainly the Ivy’s, have been practicing blatant racial discrimination for a very long time. For at least 40 years they have consistently admitted less academically qualified students base strictly on race/ethnicity. That they are hoisted on their own petard is ironic and more than a bit funny, but their long term, systemic, racial discrimination is not funny at all.
Polio, smallpox, heard of them lately? No? That’s funny, I wonder why.
.
If you don’t want a vaccine * after * being duly informed of the risks and rewards, then don’t.take.the.vaccine. After all the optimal situation is everyone else takes it and you don’t. You benefit from herd immunity and take no risk.
Tom Scharf,
Yup.
As a Democrat, I mourn Ginsberg’s passing. As someone passionately interested in the future as it will be defined by this election, a couple of notes.
Democrats can campaign on the simple fact that the Senate will obsess over the judicial nomination but cannot spend time on a coronavirus relief package.
Trump will miss the opportunity to use a future SC choice as a motivator for get out the vote. He’ll already have done what many voted for him to do.
Republicans can campaign on why a coronavirus relief package requires the addition of removing voting protections.
.
The Dems will not only lose future SC choice as a motivator to get out the vote for a lame duck candidate, but the media and party supported extremists will continue to terrorize the general populace, pushing more moderates away.
.
You should watch Tim Pool on YouTube, Thom. It’s not too late to correct your glasses prescription.
Justice Ginsburg’s death has spiked Act Blue donations dramatically.
Thomas
It’s Pelosi who is blocking the package.
People who are motivated to vote for him to appoint SC justices know any one of the other justices could die or retire in 4 years. Beyer is 82. This could just remind them of that fact.
Mark bofill,
The spike in act blue donations doesn’t surprise me. I think Democrat voters are now very aware of the importance of SCOTUS. RGB was an icon. She truly did make a difference on something I value– equal rights for women.
.
Of course we are going to hear a lot of rhetoric surrounding the nominations. We always do. The appointment process is set up to be a political process which generates lots of hot air. It’s gotten more viscious lately– but it’s always been political.
.
But… the process is political. That’s a feature, not a bug.
Lucia,
Oh, I agree with you fully there. It’s not clear to me how it could be otherwise, although in some ways I lack imagination.
[Edit: Now that I try, I see that mechanisms could be setup that might be less political. Seniority among Federal judges, or a lottery among them; something like that.]
MIkeM
I haven’t seen any evidence anyone is ignoring safety concerns nor that anyone is trying to shove the vaccine down our throats. The article you cite provides zero evidence that pharmaceutical companies or the FDA are ignoring safety. It only shows that polls show that some people (like you) are “worrying”. That doesn’t mean their worry is founded.
.
I also don’t see a big chance of a “disaster”. OTOH, I don’t know what consequences you think constitute a “disaster”. I would not, for example, consider a slight temperature elevation that lasted 1 day a “disaster”. I would consider 2% of those vaccinated dying within a month of getting the vaccine a “disaster”. I think we can be pretty sure the latter would be noticed in the statistics.
.
Mark,
I do wish they were limited term appointments, not life. It could be a long term– say 20 years from the time of swearing in. Or they could do something funky like rounding so the stayed in 20 years + whatever time was needed to finish the next upcoming round of decisions. The president and senate could start work on nomination and approval of the next one who could start right after decisions for the year were rendered.
.
Of course some justices would still retire and some would die which would randomize the appointments and create uncertainty. I suspect most consider the judicial calendar when retiring though they can’t plan their deaths quite as effectively.
.
I don’t think this would make the process less political though. I might well make it more political because justices from party “X” wouldn’t make the mistake of planning on living forever to hold the seat. So some might retire after 18 years to give the president of “their” party a chance to make another appointment. OTOH: some already consider that when retiring.
.
It’s rumored RGB did plan to give Hilary a chance to nominate a justice. Then Hilary lost.
Lucia,
Yes. I’ve read expressions of anger here and there against Justice Ginsburg for not stepping down during Obama’s second term. Mother Jones for example.
.
[Edit: I think your idea of terms instead of lifelong appointment is interesting. ]
Mark bofill,
I’m not angry with her. I wouldn’t be angry even if I was gunning for a strongly liberal justice.
.
But I knew she was risking something she very much didn’t want. Given what she likely most wanted, she should have stepped down the 2nd or 3rd year of the Obama administration. But she may have wanted the “extra” of having the first woman president replace her. The Hilary lost.
.
She knew she was sick. People don’t want to accept they are mortal.
.
From what I have heard, what Ginsburg wanted was to serve on the court for as long as she was able. She loved doing it.
.
The idea of 20 year limits is intriguing. I decided to do a quick check on how long justices served by looking at how many died or retired in each 20 year period for the last century:
2000-2020 7
1980-2000 7
1960-1980 9
1940-1960 13
1920-1940 12
So for justices leaving the court in the last 40 years, the average length of service has been 9*20/7 = 26 years. For 1920-1960 it was just 14 years. Maybe justices staying healthy longer, maybe younger justices being appointed, maybe something else.
MikeM,
I picked 20 as something to limit the longest staying justices but it was arbitrary. I’d definitely go for more than 2 senate terms and figures: a little more than 3 senate terms.
.
The 20 year limit might also reduce the tendency for presidents to look for younger justices on the theory a 50 year old will last a lot longer than a 65 year old. Admittedly, even with a 20 year limit, the younger one will be more likely to last 20 years than the older one. But it puts a cap on a 50 year old potentially serving until they are 90 yo. I tend to think almost no one should be presiding after the age of 85. It’s arbitrary, but…. well… I’ve seen Alzheimers. I’ve also seen just less sharp than they used to be.
.
Of course, if everyone loves the justice, they could reappoint the judge. 🙂
Changing the Constitution, for SC appointment time, or anything else, is not simple…. I think the SC is going to be for life, now and for a long time.
SteveF,
Agreed. I just wish it were finite. Lifetime was a mistake. 🙂
This is interesting. It seems that a recent poll found that people were 2 to 1 in favor of filling a SCOTUS seat this year if one becomes vacant:
https://www.dailywire.com/news/solid-majority-of-americans-including-democrats-want-supreme-court-hearings-during-election-year-poll-finds
I am not sure about details. The link provided seems to be a dead end.
.
Addition: The results are at the link, but sort of buried. Not clear just what the question was.
I think lifetime appointments are inhuman. Face it, age and cognitive impairment go together (hey look t Biden 🙂 )
“But… the process is political. That’s a feature, not a bug.”
More evidence of a badly broken political system in my opinion. I doubt anyone knows or cares what that politics of supreme court judges are in parliamentary systems. They are chosen for record in impartially interpreting the law and in the very rare cases where asked to make judgement on political matters, then they are expected to make impartial judgements whatever their politics.
The fuss of appointments in US seems to imply that the appointers are deliberately expecting the judges to make politically biased judgements in favour the appointers party. A way to get circumvent majority opinion and impose the opinion on a minority??
Phil,
It was designed a political. The appointment is nominated by the chief executive– who is elected and so political. The appointment must be consented to by the Senate, a very political body. Do– political by design.
.
Being contentious and partisan isn’t required. But it was always political.
.
These days, the president and senate both do anticipate the justices will make decisions on matters where the law is often simply not clear. That’s the sort of case that makes it to the Supreme Court. So judicial philosophy in interpretation will affect outcome. The “biases” are sometimes questoins like how to figure out what freedom of speech means in context of a cake baker being told he must design and sell a cake with a message the baker thinks endorses of marriage between same sex individuals.
.
There is no clear law on this.
.
Those appointing do look for background endorsing clear law in an unbiased way. But that still leaves certain types of questions open.
Here’s an AP story “GOP senators confront past comments on Supreme Court vote”.
Naturally, people have also surfaced tweets and other quotations (from 2016, when the shoe was on the other foot) from Obama, Schumer, Warren, etc. saying that it is the Senate’s duty to fill the seat. They used the hashtag #DoYourJob.
So, news flash: Politicians’ positions are “flexible” based on which party stands to benefit.
HaroldW,
.
Of course. Both Dems and Repubs will explain why the situation is “different” from last time. Of course, it always is different. But really, in the end, it comes out to who the President is, who hold a majority in the Senate, how strong that majority is, the level risk associated with using power and what those in power want.
.
Last time, the Senate did not want to appoint Obama’s nominee and they figured they could risk what happened in the upcoming election. They could hold off and did.
.
This time… who knows what they will do. But I’m sure Trump will nominate and the senate will at least consider the nomination.
P.S. Lucia, I like the idea of fixed terms for SCOTUS. Would require an amendment…Said amendment could specify size of the Court to avoid packing (or threats to do so).
I’d support such an amendment.
(Maybe add time restrictions for nomination and confirmation as well.)
Harold–
I agree the amendment could also specify the number of seats on SCOTUS. Nine is a good number. If someone wanted larger… well… there are other numbers that might be good. But if it were to increase in size it would be best if they had provisions that said:
(1) The maximum number will rise to…. (oh..say 15.)
(2) One justice will be added every four years until we reach that number.
These means the extra positions would be spread over 4 Presidential terms. So it would tend to assure that the ‘motive’ for increasing isn’t changing the political balance of the body but that someone really thinks that 15 is a more reasonable number than the current 9.
To be fair, Mcconnell said that deferring consideration was appropriate for the final year *when the Presidency and Senate were of different parties.* Not the case here.
Still, he’s a politician…
Regarding expanding and packing the Supreme Court, Democrats act as if a Senate majority is a foregone conclusion to be counted on. Last I checked that was only about a 50/50 chance, according to the bookmakers. Shrug.
Any bets on the over/under on those who criticized Biden for limiting his VP pick to women, and who equally roast Trump for similar sentiment re SCOTUS?
I’m guessing around zero.
~grins~ Probably.
Phil Scadden (Comment #190783): “More evidence of a badly broken political system in my opinion.”
.
Indeed.
.
Phil Scadden: “I doubt anyone knows or cares what that politics of supreme court judges are in parliamentary systems. They are chosen for record in impartially interpreting the law and in the very rare cases where asked to make judgement on political matters, then they are expected to make impartial judgements whatever their politics.”
.
That is the ideal. Never achieved, but one can hope for a reasonable approximation. I think it used to be that way in the U.S., but then Earl Warren started to use the Court to legislate and it has been downhill since.
.
Canada seems to be on the same path. And maybe also the UK, with the blatantly political decision made by their new supreme court last September.
.
Phil Scadden: “The fuss of appointments in US seems to imply that the appointers are deliberately expecting the judges to make politically biased judgements in favour the appointers party.”
.
Right, except that it is more ideological than political.
.
Phil Scadden: “A way to get circumvent majority opinion and impose the opinion on a minority??”
.
I think you meant “of a minority”. Right again.
Well…
…are we not treading close to a legitimate function of the SC? Majority will (democracy) is all very well and good, but the Constitution provides the Bill of Rights that protects individuals regardless of opposing majority political consensus. Obviously.
One call call that ideological. Maybe it is in fact. But it’s legit; that’s part of what the SC has always been for. I think…
[I don’t think the lines are all that clear; law, politics, and ideology. There’s dependence in those systems..]
HaroldW (Comment #190792): “Any bets on the over/under on those who criticized Biden for limiting his VP pick to women, and who equally roast Trump for similar sentiment re SCOTUS?”
.
Sure. But the list of people qualified for the Supreme Court is much longer than that for president. And Trump already had his list, with some women very high on it.
.
Biden’s commitment would have been fine if the hard part was deciding between great candidates. But the hard part ended up being deciding on the least bad candidate. Not the least because the commitment was made 4 months before the decision and in the meantime the ground shifted, adding the extra requirement of a visible minority.
mark,
There is a big difference between protecting the rights of minorities and imposing the will of a minority.
Maybe.
Maybe not that much, when the minority will is to have their rights protected…
” But really, in the end, it comes out to who the President is, who hold a majority in the Senate”
Right. The only principle is whether you have the power. All the other talk is so much bulldust. I rather think that framers of your constitution aimed for higher than that.
When law is unclear and the court says so, then job of law makers is to make it clear. Your example was really weird. “Freedom of speech” to me right to hold and express opinion, especially opinions critical of government, without being chucked in jail. Especially for the press. Any right has limitations.
“It would not be in society’s interests to allow freedom of expression to become a licence irresponsibly to ignore or discount other rights and freedoms”
Lucia,
“ People don’t want to accept they are mortal.â€
.
Maybe some people. Not me.
Phil,
“ Any right has limitations.â€
.
I have no doubt you want to limit any ‘right’ which interferes with your desired policies. Here’s the thing: rights are never limited because they interfere with desired public policies. That is what makes them rights.
Color me skeptical. The framers weren’t starry eyed idealists, they were extremely shrewd politicians. I start predisposed to believe the Supreme Court is working out pretty much as envisioned.
Phil Scadden (Comment #190799): “The only principle is whether you have the power. All the other talk is so much bulldust. I rather think that framers of your constitution aimed for higher than that.”
.
Not that simple. The framers recognized that ideology, self-interest, and regional interest would always be factors. They were not so silly as to aim for higher than that. They took a clear eyed view of human nature and aimed for a system that would restrain the worst impulses and give national interest the best chance. A key part of that was to keep power divided.
.
The President nominates and the Senate confirms or does not confirm, as they prefer. They are under no obligation to defer to the President’s wishes and are under no obligation to refuse to exercise their power. So there was nothing wrong with what the Senate did in 2016 and will be nothing wrong with their confirming Trump’s pick now. The only problem I have is with the posturing blowhards on both sides pretending that they are operating in accord with some grand principle.
——-
p.s. – I found the rest of your post incomprehensible. No idea what you were talking about.
mark bofill (Comment #190802): “I start predisposed to believe the Supreme Court is working out pretty much as envisioned.”
.
I don’t think they ever expected the Court to have anything like the power they have now. That power has steadily accumulated for over 200 years. No way did they expect that.
Phil
I think they did…. and at the same time knew that things could get contentious. That’s why we have all sorts of “separations or power” and “advice and consent” type provisions. Whether things get contentious, partisan or not, it ultimately means negotiation.
In principle, yes. But there are problems:
(1) The constitution has quite a few general provisions that often get cloudy when actual day to day life happens. So, for example, we have “freedom of speech” and the right is very strong here. But the constitution doesn’t have rules that specify the extent to which minors might or might not be prevented from exercising that freedom in while in school. The clarifications we have have come through SCOTUS rulings.
(2) Lawmakers sometimes actually do make their legislation absolutely clear. But the law absolutely violates the constitution in some particular application. The Supreme court is generally the body that sets aside such unconstitutional laws. For example: in some states, states made it absolutely clear schools would be segregated. The Supreme court set aside that law as violating the constitution.
(3) Lawmakers themselves can’t easily change provisions in the US constitution. So they can’t really easily make a change to the 4th amendment (having to do with police searches and seizures) to discuss the precise limitations on how individual 21th century technologies can be used by police to “search” peoples “effects”. They often make laws that might seem clear but then cases come up, there is a dispute whether as applied in a circumstance, a search violates the 4th amendment. So the law could get set aside. (The lawmakers set out to make another law.)
Other problems come up.
I get this is in NZ’s constitution. But I would hardly say that sentence is an example of crystal clarity about where freedom of expression starts relative to which other rights or freedoms, nor where the line should be drawn.
.
For example: As applied to the cake-baker who didn’t want to use is own creative efforts to create a custom cake that communicates a celebratory message for the nuptuals of a same sex couple… does allowing him to refuse “licence irresponsibly to ignore or discount other rights and freedoms” to anything? The anything might be to purchase goods on the same basis as others. Or to have wedding celebration that is just as splendid as other couples? (The cake baker was evidently thought to be particularly talented and making spectacular custom cakes that adapt to the theme of the wedding?)
.
That’s the sort of question that eventually gets to the Supreme court. Obviously, each side puts the question from their POV. The cakebaker focuses on his freedom of speech (which includes the freedom not to speak.) The same sex couple on not having access to goods and services. (Obviously, they can still exercise the right to be married without the cake.)
.
I suspect any country that has civil rights doesn’t get down to a list that addresses every unforseen situation in a way that is entirely clear.
.
(BTW: The cake baker case ended up getting a pass on both sides counts. In the end, a committee of some sort in whichever state was found to have been hostile to religion entirely…. so their ruling was set aside without engaging whether the cakebakers freedome of speech would be violated by making him design and create the cake. So that’s still “out there”.)
Phil Scadden,
We have a really good idea of what the framers intended. They’re called the Federalist Papers and also the Anti-Federalist Papers. The framers were extremely concerned with the failure of pure democracies to last and with problems like the tyranny of the majority. They didn’t like standing armies and the Second Amendment’s prohibition on restricting the individuals right to keep and bear arms was, in fact, designed to prevent government tyranny.
But they also were quite aware of human failings and the government was designed to be run by imperfect humans, not Philosopher Kings, with the individual branches acting as checks and balances. One thing they didn’t anticipate was career politicians. If they had, term limits might have been included.
Mike,
What Federalist 78 said about the weakness of the SC remains true today. They have control neither of the sword nor the purse, they have only the power of judgement. The power of the SC rests on the sufferance of the executive. This keeps the SC from overstepping too severely, to badly paraphrase and summarize.
Look, I’ll grant that not everything worked out as intended. Clearly our Federal military superpower was not envisioned. One could argue that the founders did not envision the role of the Supreme Court in judicial activism I suppose.
What I really meant to get at is what DeWitt says above:
Exactly. They designed the system with the awareness of human failings and awareness of human lust for power clearly in mind.
[Edit: Judicial activism and the Federalist/AntiFederalist papers have been extensively discussed in history. here for example.]
Apologies Mike. I missed your comment here:
Obviously we’re on the same page in that regard. But I wouldn’t have bothered with my last comment had I noticed yours.
SteveF – wow, that seems a bit hasty. The point of conflict is the rights of others, not conflict with government policy. I dont see how you ever discount others equal rights in asserting your own.
For Lucia’s example, I struggle with the idea that freedom of speech (or expression) in how you decorate your cake give you a right to coerce a service provider into a contract against their will.
Mike,
I’ve been re-reading Brutus / Anti-Federalist 78-81. You (and he) may have a point; maybe Madison got this wrong. I wouldn’t say that they didn’t see it coming, because they argued about judicial supremacy. But maybe Madison was on the wrong end of this one. I don’t know.
[It’s a rabbit hole and a whole study in itself. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/2015/05/19/the-myth-of-judicial-supremacy/ — more knowledgeable people than me have read and wrote more on the subject than I’d imagined before the subject came up here. I don’t know.]
Phil,
That’s not the argument. The conflict is:
1) From POV of same sex couple: They want to buy a cake. The state law where they are from bars those providing public services (like selling cakes) from discriminating based on sexual orientation. So cake baker should have to sell them a cake. They see their ability to buy cakes on the same basis as everyone else as a right.
.
2) From pov of baker. This isn’t just a cake. They want this cake to be specially designed to convey a message of celebration and approval of same sex marriage. He won’t design a cake that conveys a message, and like wise wouldn’t sell it if some other customer came in and sold it. So he see this as speech and his view is his religion prohibits him from making this sort of speech. (His behavior suggests this is his real view.) So he claims forcing him to design, create and sell such a cake would violate his pov.
.
Our 1st amendment protects both freedom of speech and freedom of religion. It has long recognized “speech” broadly (e.g. wearing black armbands as protest is speech ) It has long recognized the freedom of speech to include not being compelled to speak. But the specific issue of whether making this sort of cake is “speech” has not been addressed.
.
On the “state law” requiring stores to not discriminate based on various protected statuses: some of these based on race, religion and sex have held up. So if he was merely trying to refuse to sell non-custom cup-cakes on a rack of cup-cakes to gays, he would lose.
.
But there is a dispute over whether this is “just a cake” vs. “something that communicate a message which they are asking him in particular to design and create”. There is also a dispute whether he is refusing to sell to gays or whether his is refusing to sell a certain product (cake celebrating the marriage of gays). If it’s the former– that would violate the public accomondation law. But if it’s the latter– well, you aren’t required to sell chocolate chip cookies just because you sell butter cookies. So then there might be no violation.
.
But if the cake is not speech, then the cake baker likely either has to stop selling custom designed cakes altogether or he may have to make it for the same sex couple. (For at least some time the baker did stop selling wedding cakes which was a major financial hit to him.)
.
This case made it to SCOTUS. But in the end, the justices punted because a committe in whatever state it was had a hearing to make a ruling. And it was clear the hearing was not fair because someone on the committee was openly hostile toward religion. So their decision was set aside for not providing due process or equal protection… or perhaps violating some federal law.
.
We still don’t know if custom designed wedding cakes can be “speech” nor if a baker can be forced to design and sell such a thing for a same sex wedding!
Ina surprise move, Trump nominates himself for a lifetime appointment to the SC, ha ha.
Yes, we need to whittle away at the necessary “limitations” on freedom of expression. Great idea, because that has never been known to go wrong. It’s so predictable from do gooders who are quite sure they know exactly who needs to be shut up and when, you know, because they can rise above it all and make clear judgments on who the evil doers are.
.
Let’s just examine Facebook, Twitter, et. al. Remember when these “reasonable” limits were just going to be used for extremists such as Alex Jones? These powers will be used extra judiciously just for ISIS recruiters and the real Nazis, dang gummit! Who do you think we are, Stalin?
.
That was 2018. Fast forward only two effing years later and they are banning people left and right, attaching fact finder notes to Trump posts and on and on and on. These companies are private so they can do as they wish, but this serves notice on what happens when you crack the door open for the armies of speech busybodies. I’ll take chaos on the Internet any day before I give someone the power to go fix it to their taste. Somehow everyone becomes a Nazi when it comes time to censor speech you disagree with.
.
One of the reasons I ended up voting for Trump was the SC, and specifically a hard line on free speech. And they have delivered.
Phil Scadden (Comment #190812): “I struggle with the idea that freedom of speech (or expression) in how you decorate your cake give you a right to coerce a service provider into a contract against their will.”
.
But that is the sort of madness that American courts have reached. So now there is a desperate battle between those who want to use the courts to coerce people into endorsing/supporting the Left’s inanities and those who think that such changes, if they are to occur, are the province of elected officials.
If the election becomes a legal crisis and the SC splits on a decision 4-4 then I think we will have quite a mess on our hands.
Tom Scharf,
Exactly. A 4-4 vote leaves whatever the lower court decided in place. But with mail balloting, we could have multiple cases reaching opposite conclusions and not be able to resolve them.
mark bofill (Comment #190813): “I’ve been re-reading Brutus / Anti-Federalist 78-81.”
.
I have only been vaguely aware of the Anti-Federalist, but that essay was quite interesting. I’d say that Brutus nailed it on the long term but that Hamilton, in Federalist 78, got it right in the short term:
In the early days of the Republic, the Court had no way to enforce its will and was sometimes ignored. That happened less often then it might have since the Court was circumspect about making rulings that would and could be ignored. But over time, the Court gained more and more respect until its judgement came to be regarded as sacrosanct and to ignore the Court was deemed sacrilegious. Then the court had gained the power that Brutus feared. And it is now being gradually corrupted by that power.
To a non-american, can someone quickly summerise what arguments could be made so that court determines the outcome of an election? Is this about postal/absentee voting? Is this only a likely problem if Trump loses, or there legal arguments that Biden could launch if Biden loses? I dont get it.
Phil Scadden (Comment #190825): “To a non-american, can someone quickly summerise what arguments could be made so that court determines the outcome of an election?”
.
Mainly arguments over the validity of mail-in ballots, which the Democrats are promoting since they provide such fertile soil for fraud. Also, the manner of conducting recounts, such as in Bush v Gore (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bush_v._Gore). The Biden campaign has lined up some 600 lawyers to contest results.
The Democrats also seem to be planning to subvert the process of certifying electors in states with Democrat governors that Trump might carry.
Phil,
The crux of the issue (and why Democrats are preparing 600 lawyers to fight state results) is that many Democrats simply think both state voting laws (eg. you have to be able to prove who you are to vote) and the Constitution (electoral college with state representation rather than direct popular election of presidents) are not legitimate. They know that changing the Constitution is not possible because small population states would never go along with it, and they can’t get every state to change voting laws, so they are doing their best to subvert both the parts of the Constitution and state voting laws they don’t like. It is always the same with the left: the ends justify the means, no matter the means.
Phil Scadden
Not directly. The current potential problem is that some individual states have written legislation that creates a risk that state will not have counted all their ballots in time to certify the vote. At that point all sorts of possibilities ensue and the likelihood of a suit about something is high. That suit would be decided by SCOTUS. (States must submit their results by Dec. 23 and Congress must count on the 6th.)
Either could launch arguments. It all depends how it goes. In fact, my guess is suits are likelier if Trump appears to have won on election day. This is owing to which states made changes to rules for mail in ballots that increase the risk their votes won’t be counted in time.
.
What’s happened is that some states have ruled that people may request mail in ballots with a very short time before the election. Then they’ve also ruled that they will count ballots that arrive after election day, even if the have no postage. The “calendar” problem is that these late ballots can’t just be run through a machine and counted. People need to look at the outer privacy envelope, check the signature, check if that person voted then if the signature is ok take out the ballot and then tally it.
.
In Illinois, the normal process is we do this for all ballots on election day. What happens is poll workers do all this, then the run the ballot through the counting machine. It’s counted. so we are done. It takes about oh… 4 minutes per ballot. (I worked the polls.)
.
So why should it take longer after the poll? Well.. it’s still not a lot longer to do. BUT on election day, we have tons of poll workeres hired to man the polls. (They pay a nominal amount. ) But everyone of these workers only work that day. Of course we have some regular election staff– but it’s not that many.
.
Now the issue is then: What happens if election staff are _slowly_ counting? Well, they won’t be ready to certify their vote. Then each state is going to have to decide what to do, meanwhile, we might have suits. The candidate most likely to sue is the one who seems to have lost but who is gaining in the recount. Or basically, the one who might lose if the late ballots don’t help him.
.
People claim they think GOP ballots will tend to be in person; mail in by Dems. So….
.
But really: who might sue will depend on precisely what happens on election day.
.
Metronome’s digital clock in Manhattan has been reprogrammed to illustrate a critical window for action to prevent the effects of global warming from becoming irreversible.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/20/arts/design/climate-clock-metronome-nyc.html
Spoiler alert: The “deadline” seems to be end of 2027.
Phil,
FWIW, the Bush-Gore election ended up with a decision at the Supreme Court. The court didn’t technically call the election. The problem was Florida was still counting votes on Dec 12. There were various date deadlinesin FL law, and there is definitely a date deadline in the US constitution regarding when FL has to submit it’s ballots. The electoral college was scheduled to meet Dec 28.
.
Bush was leading. He’d was leading after the first count. Gore had filed for a recount. Among other things: Gore was asking FL to apply different standards to counting ballots in different counties. (This was a big mistake on his part. Oddly, I thought it was a big PR mistake, and an unfair thing to ask. It turned to be a key legal mistake.)
Various things happened… time flies like an arrow. Some hard deadlines were approaching.
.
WRT to “gamesmanship”.
.
IF the recount was finished *in time* FL would get their electoral votes in before a “safe harbor” date. Whoever won the recount won the presidential election. The official vote had already been “certified” by the state. Bush was ahead by 537 votes, but it was close. Gore could hope he would pull ahead, wanted the certification overturned based on a recount (which he hoped would show him pulling ahead.)
.
IF the recount was NOT finished *in time*, FL might get their votes in but *after* the “safe harbor” date. So Congress could dispute the votes, and Congress would decide whether to accept FL’s votes. There was a very strong likelihood Congress would dispute a win for Bush and so override the outcome of the recount and give the election to Gore.
.
There were things FL could do one way or the other– so lots of things come into play if the vote tally gets delayed. There were lots of suit involved at State and Federal levels. It was a thorny situation.
.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bush_v._Gore Gore should have requested the full state be recounted. You can see why at the Wikipedia article. He didn’t. He thought the parts of the state he wanted recounted would take him over the top– they evidently would not have.)
Mike M.
In fairness, I don’t think the motive for mail in ballots is fraud. It is true there is a greater potential for fraud with mail in. That’s still not the motive.
lucia (Comment #190855): “In fairness, I don’t think the motive for mail in ballots is fraud. It is true there is a greater potential for fraud with mail in. That’s still not the motive.”
.
It is often difficult to infer motive. You may be right; actually you are surely right for *some* people. But I think for the people driving the process, the virus is only an excuse. The real motive is fraud. Otherwise they would not be screaming that there is no risk of fraud, or pushing the elimination of security safeguards, or advocating for ballot harvesting.
Here’s a little ‘light’ reading on the immune system response to SARS-CoV-2 and the effect of aging on that response. IOW, if you’re old, you’re screwed. My probably naive impression is that a vaccine that produces antibodies may not be enough.
https://www.cell.com/action/showPdf?pii=S0092-8674%2820%2931235-6
This is a pretty good article on what went down by the players who were involved:
.
The Bush-Gore Recount Is an Omen for 2020
An oral history of the craziest presidential election in modern history
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2020/08/bush-gore-florida-recount-oral-history/614404/
.
“Joseph Geller (chair, Miami-Dade Democratic Party): When the first of the official campaign people started trickling in, somehow they made a decision, I believe without asking us, that they were only interested in manual recounts in Miami-Dade, Broward, Palm Beach, and Volusia. Well, you know, that could be their opinion, but that might have been the moment where the campaign was lost.”
.
Florida was a statistical tie, crazy close, different counting methods literally changed the outcome. As mentioned above Gore screwed the pooch when he decided to only ask for recounts in heavily Democratic counties instead of statewide. It was a strategy of keep recounting until you are winning and then declare it is over. Don’t read this article if you aren’t yet cynical about politics, it will ruin your utopia.
.
An important point to make is that months later the media teamed up and counted all the votes they got by FOIA using different counting methods and … Bush won 10 out of 12 counting methods as I recall.
DeWitt,
Ya well, aging is inevitably fatal. Apparently there is a fairly rich publication history of studies showing the decline of naive T-cells with age. Funny enough, that decline in naive T-cell starts just after puberty….. which is also when people become much more susceptible to symptomatic covid-19 infection. Could be coincidental I guess, but maybe not.
DeWitt,
It’s almost like we are intentionally pre-programmed to die, ha ha. Evolution telling us that we are just little cogs in their grand plan.
MIkeM
.
I disagree with your reasoning. They are exaggerating “small risk” just as their opponents are over hyping the risk. Both sides are taking exaggerated views because the think it will get them what they want: more mail in voting or less mail in voting. That doesn’t mean their motive is to commit or prevent fraud.
.
Illinois always had mail in ballots.
.
My father helped old ladies with their mail in ballots in Florida. I was surprised people were allowed to help old ladies– owing to the obvious increased potential for fraud. But it was already allowed in Florida. The alternative was that it was very difficult for the quite elderly mostly ladies who lived in the HUD housing where Dad’s aunt Dolo lived to get to the polls and vote. The motive for letting someone help them was to not disenfranchise these elderly.
Lucia,
The motive may be to not disenfranchise elderly voters, but the problem becomes the extent of the ‘help’ allowed. There are plenty of people suffering from dementia (even excluding ‘Fracking’ Joe Biden) who could be ‘helped’ to vote for pretty much whoever the helper wanted. Helpers are not allowed in voting booths, and for good reasons. The potential for abuse with mail-in ballots is real, and plans to send ballots to every person on the list of registered voters (many of whom are either dead or no longer a resident!) only makes that potential greater. I fully expect a nightmare of conflict after the election, almost entirely due to newly adopted mail in ballot rules….. including demands that ballots sent AFTER election day be counted.
Curious that when both parties conveniently change their position on SC justices being seated before an election that apparently only one side is hypocritical according to the arbiters of truth and justice in the media. I’m going to go out on a limb and suggest what really matters is who is holding the Presidency and Senate at the time.
.
I’m not even sure a SC justice will be able to be seated at all if the Senate and Executive are split at the moment.
Did the repubs actually change their position? ISTM the argument was the repubs held the senate and so wouldn’t vote in an SCJ for a lame duck president until after the election. If the dems held the senate, they could, and most certainly would, do the same.
Tom Scharf: “I’m not even sure a SC justice will be able to be seated at all if the Senate and Executive are split at the moment.”
Trump w/a Dem Senate — quite possibly not. Dems seem to think this worth a scorched-earth opposition
Biden w/a Rep Senate — I think one would pass, given that it’s replacing Ginsburg. But if a conservative Justice retires/dies, I think we’d also see opposition to any nominee.
Tom Scharf,
I agree, it is very unlikely that any SC justice could be seated if the presidency and Senate are controlled by different parties. That is mainly the fault of SC Justices who decided that they could make up new constitutional rights and laws whenever they saw fit, starting with John Marshall.
.
In reading the Federalists papers, I think it is pretty clear that there was never any intent by the authors of the constitution for the SC to become superior to, and effectively dictate policies to the Federal elective branches and the States, but that is, unfortunately, what has actually happened. Only Congress can fix this using two steps: 1) Drastically reducing the number of Federal judges… one to three judges per circuit and three SC justices seems about right to me….. ‘unpacking’ the courts may be a good description for a drastic reduction in the size of the Federal Judiciary, and it would greatly reduce the damage to public policy that the Federal Courts do. 2) Congress should explicitly strip the Federal Courts of the power to review most laws…. limiting judicial review would be hugely helpful by taking Federal judges out of the business of defacto lawmaking. A broad reduction in the Federal Courts’ jurisdiction of review would eliminate most of the politically motivated shenanigans we have seen from the Courts in the last two decades.
Whenever the discussions runs to the Supreme Court, the Constitution and the appointment of Supreme Court Justices I personally would prefer to talk about the flaws in our form of government that were there from the beginning and those that have developed over time. I am particularly concerned that we use the sanctity of the Constitution as currently interpreted by 5 Justices as cover for what otherwise might be considered infringements of the government on our natural rights. Using the Founding Fathers’ views on the Constitution as interpreted by the citizens and legal authorities can provide additional cover in some cases for real and potential infringements.
Some may say we need to be contextual in the original sin of slavery being allowed in origins of the Constitution but it was, like other comprises with liberty, a political move to gain favor with some states in ratification of the document. The Constitution was originally only intended to restrict and limit the powers of the federal government and allowed state and local governments to be much more involved in individuals’ lives depending on their state constitutions. The courts’ interpretation of the 14th amendment changed that, but again in the beginning there were compromises that involved personal liberties. The individual rights enumerated in Bill of Rights were amendments to Constitution.
The legal system under which the Constitution operates has under the guise of national emergencies not prevented and in some cases, in effect, looked the other way concerning the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II and the Sedition Act of 1918, enacted during World War I, and the suspension of the writ of habeas corpus under Lincoln during the Civil War which was first by executive order before congress enacted the suspension into law.
The attempt to make an unconstitutional case for the lock downs during the Covid-19 crisis will find no relief from the legal system in a general way with perhaps the only judgments involved being the duration of restrictions and the fairness of their application. The no questions asked lockdowns being limited by the Constitution gets a polling opinion of US citizens highly in favor of it not being in violation of the Constitution. I am curious whether this citizen response and with a number of governors and mayors with no hesitation or apparent limitations to impose restrictions on individuals will not be used in much less severe or generally not reacted to cases of communicable diseases. It will be public opinion and not the Supreme Court that decides.
As for the forthcoming attempt by the Republicans to get their judge on the court, I see many problems arising. With Murkowski of Alaska winning only 44% of the vote in 2016 and Collins trailing in the Maine polls, I see these two ladies making a decision based on preservation of their political careers with little thought about the importance of the Supreme Court Justice. There is an election for a Senate seat in Arizona that could put the count of votes down to an even 50-50 and with a Romney vote, much like a McCain one, it could well be vengeance time against Trump. I believe there is a very good chance the Republicans will find a way to lose this one. Those Republicans who vote against will become MSM heroes – at least until the next election.
Kenneth,
A federal court through out Penn.’s restrictions. The problem is not that courts won’t eventually throw these out. It is that the process is s_l_o_w. Also what restrictions are legal does depend to some extent on how bad the contagion is but regardless of how bad, the executive has to be at least somewhat consistent in application. Penn’s governor evidently was not consistent (at all).
.
Of course, lack of consistency does tend to be the hallmark of capricious restrictions that are unnecessary. Because if restrictions on movement were required for a “black death” like plague, governors probably would do their darndest to enforce them equally for BLM protests and family funerals.
.
Yep. Politicians are politicians.
Kenneth Fritsch (Comment #190875): “With Murkowski of Alaska winning only 44% of the vote in 2016”
.
In a four way race in which the Dem finished last with 12% and the Libertarian (who endorsed Trump) finished second. In 2010, Murkowski won the election as a write in candidate after the Libertarian guy beat her in the primary. Seems to me that handing a Supreme Court seat to the Democrats would be politically unwise, if not downright suicidal, for Murkowski.
SteveF: What sort of majority would congress to enact changes to courts?
lucia (Comment #190876)
That decision in PA can certainly be appealed and if it is I have doubts whether it will stand as originally adjudicated. The US legal system will and has stood behind quarantine orders from the being. My concerns are that harsh restrictions could endure as long as everybody suffered from the same treatment and – as you say justice is slow – could endure for a long time. There is also the rather subjective definition of what infectious diseases and at what level of infectiousness can be considered for harshly restrictive lockdowns. If most of the public is with safety at all costs I do not see a legal remedy for the minority that might be out a job or a business or healthy mental state.
I think the fact that most government workers get paid while others in the private sector have to depend on government unemployment makes it easier for the popularity of lockdowns to persist as does the promise of the unrealistic process of government to print money and hand it out to the afflicted.
” It is always the same with the left: the ends justify the means, no matter the means.”
I think you need a peculiar blindness to not see the RIGHT playing exactly the same game. (Starting with block or not block SC nominations).
Your ideological wars are killing you. Both sides are fighting demons that dont exist.
Phil Scadden,
The lower courts were created by Congress. Only the Supreme Court is mentioned in the Constitution. So a simple majority in the House and the Senate is enough to make quite radical changes unless the President vetoes the bill, in which case it requires a 2/3 majority in both houses to override. Also, the number of justices on the Supreme Court is not specified. FDR threatened to pack the Court when they overturned some of his programs. The Court folded and packing didn’t happen.The jurisdiction of the federal courts can also be restricted or modified by an act of Congress. That hasn’t happened very often.
Mike M. (Comment #190878)
Mike, she may be suicidal but she has indicted that she will not vote to approve the Justice this term. She well may be looking at the current Senate race in Alaska that has the Republican and Democrat candidates even. Politicians may be politicians but I think the Democrats have in the recent past towed the party line and their philosophy much better than the Republicans.
Phil Scadden,
The last example of an SC nominee being approved by Senate controlled by a different party than the President in an election year was a Republican controlled Senate approving the nomination by Democrat Grover Cleveland of Melville Fuller in 1888. Cleveland was defeated for re-election by Republican Benjamin Harrison. No Democrat controlled Senate has ever approved the nomination by a Republican President of an SC justice in an election year. This isn’t the end justifying the means, it’s historical precedent. And that’s not to mention the danger of an even number of justices on the court resulting in no decision.
Kenneth,
Nitpick: It’s toed the line, not towed.
SteveF (I think),
Nitpick: It’s hoist by your own petard, not on. A petard was an explosive device used to breach city gates, or something like that, not a gibbet or a crane from which one could be suspended.
Edit: The Shakespeare quotation from Hamlet is: “Hoist with his own petard;” So on is still wrong.
DeWitt,
My petard stands corrected.
SteveF (Comment #190866)
What you say about potential ballot harvesting from people who can be bought or are mentally incapacitated or do not care who is elected is definitely an issue with mail-in voting. Whether it occurs or not is not really the issue. We could have people vote without registration or by simply signing an affidavit if we were not concerned with POTENTIAL problems. I think the authorities are depending on signature comparisons to control for potential fraud.
In my youth I was a Republican poll watcher in Chicago in the Johnson-Goldwater election. The Democrat precinct leader was initially going into the booth with voters and pulling the lever for them until we pointed out to him that that was not legal. We had a Chicago cop get involved as an adjudicator who knew nothing about the voting laws and were supposed to have been intimidated by some young men asking us why were present.
When I was in the streets outside the polling place I saw people being paid in butter and other food items for voting. People on stretchers were wheeled in to vote. The local government elected politician showed up in his Cadillac with a young girl friend and was shaking the hands of all the poll judges – Democrat and Republican who all referred to the precinct leader as if he were a god. When I asked the precinct leader why he was putting in such an effort to get votes when Johnson was heavily favored to win IL, he said he was paid by the vote. Goldwater got 5% of the vote in that precinct. When I saw a voter go behind the curtain to vote and did not hear the lever being pulled for a long time I figured that might be a vote for Goldwater – by intent or accident.
Phil,
The left and right are qualitatively different: The left demands fundamental change in governance. The right does not. ‘progressives’ want change they believe is progress. Conservatives want to, well, conserve constitutional government. The pressure for dramatic change is from the left, not the right.
.
WRT Congress changing the Federal courts: historically it would have been a bare majority in the House and 60% in the Senate. But Democrats are promising to change Senate rules to pass legislation with a bare majority if Biden wins and they control the Senate; followed by increasing the number of judges on the Supreme Court, sweeping social legislation, increased taxes, and admitting Puerto Rico as a State, changing the legal status of Washington DC to be a State, and perhaps splitting California into three separate states…. each with two senators for Democrats. Democrats want permanent power and will do most anything to get it.
DeWitt Payne (Comment #190886)
DeWitt, I was referring to towing the line over to one’s partisan view point.
Actually thanks for pointing out my error. When I write in a hurry I sometimes have this feeling that the line does not fit, but if it is not misspelled or grammatically incorrect I have to depend on a nit picker.
” Democrats want permanent power and will do most anything to get it.”
In my observation, so do the Republicans. Twain’s insight is long lost.
Oh a question for those reading the federalist papers. Did they mean for the president to have so much power and to set the government agenda? it seems a terrible flaw if true.
Phil Scadden (Comment #190881): “I think you need a peculiar blindness to not see the RIGHT playing exactly the same game. (Starting with block or not block SC nominations).”
.
Not so. Appointing a judge requires agreement between President and Senate. To prevent gridlock when power is divided, the Senate usually defers to the President, as long as the nominee is reasonable. An exception is in a presidential election year, where the attitude has been to let the voters resolve the disagreement. That has been what is done for 200+ years. It is the principle enunciated by the Chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee 30 years ago; one Joe Biden. It is what McConnell did 4 years ago and what McConnell is doing now. There is absolutely no precedent for what the Democrats are demanding. None.
.
Phil Scadden: “Your ideological wars are killing you.”
.
Indeed.
.
Phil Scadden: “Both sides are fighting demons that dont exist.”
.
Nope. The Left hates America is determined to destroy our political system and our society. That is not imaginary. Unfortunately, half the population won’t believe that since they don’t want to believe that could be true.
Mike M,
Yes, the left has grown ever more extreme in their demands to ‘fundamentally change how people lead their livesâ€. The universities, and even public school teachers, have been trending ever more left, and have engaged in indoctrination for a couple of generations. They turn out graduates who know little of US history, and what they know is distorted and inaccurate. Even organizations like Pew Research have demonstrated that the political divide in the USA is because Democrats have moved dramatically left over the past 20 years, while republicans have stayed pretty much the same. I do not expect someone like Phil to know this, but he is completely mistaken when he suggests the widening divide is equally due to Republicans and Democrats. It is 100% due to Democrats moving ever left, not Republicans moving right.
Phil,
I’m usually pretty open to the idea that I’ve got blind spots due to my ideology. I’ll admit that I don’t *see* the Right doing the same thing, but I have an expectation that I wouldn’t be able to see that clearly. Normally I’d be interested in getting your viewpoint on it, as I think it’s interesting to get a look where I normally can’t see.
Unfortunately I’m death marching a project right now and have no real time to talk. Maybe another day.
“The Left hates America is determined to destroy our political system and our society.”
Wow! I have yet to meet any democrat, in person or online who hates America. Quite the reverse to the point of ridiculousness really. But oh yes, I have certainly met ones who wish to improve your poitical system as people here have too. Destroy society? Now that needs some definition. What exactly is being destroyed?
I shouldn’t be, but I will.
I’m pretty sure there are leftists who view America as a fundamentally (systemically, I should say) unjust system and who essentially want revolution. I think those are a minority. I think a more sizeable chunk of the left also views the U.S. as systemically unjust and want to radically transform the country without revolution / using traditional political channels.
The calls on twitter recently to ‘burn it down’ if McConnell tries to push through a nomination; how do you view these?
The left in general has a philosophy of the government solving most problems that currently arise. They have little faith in individual initiative, creativeness and adaptability without the overwhelming intervention of government.
Reference to the two major parties is a much less clear picture. The Democrats are more inclined to push for government intervention in economic affairs and the Republicans more inclined for the government, through the military, to have, at least, a greater influence if not intervention in the international arena. There are overlapping and historically changing priorities in all areas that is allowed by partisan politics whereby if the other party does it is bad if my party does it is good or at least somehow rationalized.
Interestingly the old compromise tactic, whereby the Republicans want, for example, a bigger military budget and the Democrats want a bigger budget for domestic affairs, where the compromise is to spend on both items and the national debt be hanged, is very much alive and well.
My worry as a libertarian is that the trend is very much in the direction of more power to government with the Democrats generally in the lead and the Republicans following hesitantly if not sometimes only a step or two behind.
Political parties eventually follow the intelligentsia and unfortunately in these times that is definitely to the left and favoring more government control. That battle will be won or lost with ideas and not in the voting booth.
“The calls on twitter recently to ‘burn it down’ if McConnell tries to push through a nomination; how do you view these?”
Well I dont follow US news nor twitter at all to be aware till I looked it up but I guess I see them about the same as alt-right militias threatening civil war if Trump loses. ie either extremists or mostly outraged rhetoric and very very far from views of politicians or voting public. I would go with knee-jerk reaction to idea that it was fine to block Obama’s nomination as too close to an election but not fine to block Trumps. ie Senate not playing by their own stated rules. (I accept that Senate are playing by the ACTUAL rules, but that wasnt the reasons given for blocking Obama. Namely:
“Given that we are in the midst of the presidential election process, we believe that the American people should seize the opportunity to weigh in on whom they trust to nominate the next person for a lifetime appointment to the Supreme Court,”)
If it turned out to be more than rhetoric from pissed-off people, then I would be worried. Ditto for militias.
Kenneth,
Your take on the Republicans being interventionist militarily is a relatively recent phenomenon. As recently as the 1952 election, Robert Taft, who lost the nomination to Eisenhower, was an avowed isolationist. Our involvements in most of the great wars during the twentieth century were initiated under Democratic presidents, Wilson for WWI, FDR for WWII, Truman for Korea and Kennedy and Johnson for Vietnam. Eisenhower was elected to end the Korean War, which he did. And in his farewell speech, he warned against militarism.
Phil,
Thanks for your response.
But it has been more than rhetoric from pissed off people. BLM is a leftist movement. There have been riots, fires, significant property destruction and murders committed over the past several months.
There is not an equal distribution of the violence seen between the right and the left.
https://thefederalist.com/2020/09/16/study-up-to-95-percent-of-2020-u-s-riots-are-linked-to-black-lives-matter/
Phil Scadden (Comment #190899): “Wow! I have yet to meet any democrat, in person or online who hates America.”
.
I did not say Democrats, I said the Left. Most Democrats do not hate America or want to destroy it. But they have fallen for the propaganda of those who do and they are supporting policies, candidates, and a party that are under the influence of those who do.
.
The New York Times has dedicated a great deal of space to the 1619 Project. That project is dedicated to spreading hate for America and its institutions. It is now finding its way into our schools, where it will fit right in with all the other anti-American propaganda being fed to our children. The object is to delegitimize our system of government and destroy our institutions.
.
There are riots taking place in cities all over America, in some places night after night. There are mobs intimidating ordinary citizens, simply for being white. And sometimes killing citizens just for supporting Trump.There are organized gangs of bullies harassing and trying to intimidate Republican office holders. Teams of vandals were destroying statues as part of their project of destroying our history, for the ultimate purpose of tearing down the institutions rooted in that history.
.
Every one of those rioters, every member of those mobs and gangs, and all of the vandals are Biden voters. They do what they do because they hate America. Biden and the Democrats are happy to accept their support as indicated by the fact that they refuse to condemn the groups behind those acts. They are not typical Biden voters, but their goals are aligned with those setting Democrat party policy and pulling Biden’s strings.
.
The billionaire George Soros has been pumping huge amounts of money into electing prosecutors dedicated to keeping criminals out of prison. The point is to destabilize society. Part of that project is demonizing the police. That is fine with Biden and Harris; in fact Harris has helped to raise money for that project. Neither will stand up for the police and Harris has heaped praise on criminals while showing indifference to police shot by criminals.
.
The Democrats are making baseless claims about Trump not accepting the result of the election, while the Democrats push policies designed to promote fraud. That is part of a policy of delegitimizing the current system. It is working: Only 22% of Americans think the election will be free and fair against 46% who think it won’t be. That skepticism is not very dependent on party.
.
The Left denies the reality of biological sex while insisting that men can have babies, should be allowed to use women’s locker rooms, and compete as girls in athletic composition. If they can brainwash people into believing that, then they have complete control of their minds. Virtually all Democrat politicians are willing to play along, as are their allies in the media.
.
Democrats refuse to denounce either Burn Loot Murder or the Fascists of Antifa. Those are openly anti-American organizations that actively promote violence, racism, and division while supporting socialism and advocating the destruction of the family.
.
The Left hates America. They want to destroy our institutions. They want to replace them with a system they control and that can be used to subjugate the population. They must be stopped.
Phil Scadden,
Again, you seem to think that the same rules should apply to a Senate and President of the same party and when they are different. They don’t and almost never have. If there had been hearings and a vote for Garland during 2016, he would most likely have been rejected. Hence, there was no point in going through the motions. It’s still possible that Trump’s nominee won’t pass. But there is a reasonable chance of approval, unlike Garland, and, given the likelihood of legal challenges to the election, it’s important to have a full nine justices.
My reply to Phil Scadden is in moderation. Don’t know why.
mark bofill,
And then there’s the Black Shirts of Antifa as well as Burn, Loot and Murder.
deWitt – I do get why it is different. I have understood when it was explained to me. However, McConnell was selling it one way when it was Obama’s nominee and another now. The honest response would have been “a republican senate doesnt want your democratic nominee and we will block it any way we can because we can”. And sure, I understand why he WOULDNT say that. Just doesnt look good when it is other way round and you change your tune. People understandably get annoyed.
As to unrest, well when you have growing inequality gap, a history of racism and an underclass marked by colour, then you are going to have trouble until such stage as you address the issue. If you dont like democrats method then suggest better, but mostly it seems GOP is pretty happy with things as they are. Maybe a bit upset about blacks being uppity??? Good luck with that.
Phil,
The growing inequality argument is really not so clear as you suggest. Look at some actual income distribution data if you want to better understand the situation in the States: https://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2018/07/12/appendix-a-income-distributions-of-whites-blacks-hispanics-and-asians-in-the-u-s-1970-and-2016/
The “growing income inequity†is mainly due to the growth of a very small fraction (on the order of 1%) of mainly whites and asians, but also some blacks and hispanics, with vey high incomes relative to the population as a whole. In fact, for most of the other 99%, black income has increased relative to white income since 1970. The glaring discrepancy with whites is NOT in the bulk of the black population, but in a significant group (say a third) with extremely low average incomes… and these are the people in larger cities that have all the burning, looting, and murdering. There are plenty of reasons why this ‘underclass’ of poor people has not changed much since 1970: poor education, most children born out of wedlock (or even a committed relationship), mostly single parent households, drug use, widespread criminality, welfare dependency, and more. But the suggestion the problem stems entirely, or even mostly, from racial discrimination is plainly false: black people, (and white, asian, and hispanic) who do the things consistent with success are on average much more successful. What is needed is mostly cultural change, and nobody is talking about that. The demands for income redistribution, ‘reparations’, and endless racial preferences in education, hiring, and promotion will never address the root of the problem. Nor will it help to call people racists who are absolutely not racists. That way lies chaos.
Phi Scadden,
Yep. Politicians tend to sell things rather than just say it’s is what it is. My view is both sides want to paint their choices as being motivated some sort of general principle that will guide them forever. This is especially true if you hear the “sound bite” version of what they say. When they seem to reverse in the future (which they always do) they point to some “difference”. There always is a difference, so they can always do it.
.
The Republican Senate blocked Garland because they preferred to hope a Trump would be elected (as unlikely as that seemed) and then get their own nominee. Some Senators also hoped this would help them be re-elected and keep control of the Senate. That worked.
.
They now want to put a more conservative justice on the Supreme court. So they will move to put on on.
.
Of course, the Democrats wanted the opposite in both cases. We can find all sorts of quote mining to read them sounding like the “principle” by which they operated totally reversed since last time. It hasn’t: the principles are that you use your position to get your preferred policy outcomes, to improve your reelectibility (so you can continue to get your preferred outcomes) and so on. In the meantime the pull out other high minded sounding fake “principles”.
.
I didn’t think the politicians were governed by these sound bite “principles” or “rules” last time around and I don’t this time.
Phil Scadden: “However, McConnell was selling it one way when it was Obama’s nominee and another now.”
I agree with you on the flexibility (to put it nicely) of politicians’ positions. However, McConnell *did* mention in 2016 that his refusal to accept Obama’s nomination was based on the party split between the Senate and the Presidency. Cf. https://www.nationalreview.com/bench-memos/left-desperate-distorts-mitch-mcconnell-on-scalia-vacancy/
As Lucia noted, “There always is a difference” in circumstances to justify a change in position. To some extent, McConnell enunciated a “principle” in 2016 with a conditional which does not hold at the moment, so (to my mind) gets a pass *on this one*. As I recall Lindsey Graham, on the other hand, did not qualify what he said, so that reads to me as pure political expediency.
It’s also true that all (most?) Democrats all pushed in 2016 for Obama to nominate a SC justice (which he did) and for the Senate to confirm him (which they did not). Again, political expediency that now they find it improper to nominate and confirm.
Phil,
There’s so much that’s wrong in there that it’s hard to unpack.
You assert without evidence that the unrest is due to growing inequality, a history of racism, and an underclass marked by colour. I wish there was a kind way to say this, but there isn’t. You don’t appear know what you’re talking about. There is no ‘underclass marked by colour’ in the U.S. Your vision of the U.S. is some seventy years out of date.
You assert without supporting evidence that the unrest is due to a growing inequality gap, a history of racism, and this underclass marked by colour. In fact, the riots and violence were spawned by the filming and widespread distribution of video of George Floyd’s death. The horrific footage causes (quite properly) strong emotional responses that do not line up with statistical reality. More white men are killed every year by police than black men. The number of police killings of unarmed suspects is miniscule in the first place relative to the arrest rate, but the data do not support a racist narrative. Needless to say, this has not stopped the media and politicians from exploiting the incident to further their agendas.
I don’t like what Democrats propose and I think Republicans do suggest better. Note that the cities with ongoing outbreaks of rioting, arson, looting, and murder are (and have been) Democrat controlled in many cases for decades. The out of wedlock birthrate among Blacks has skyrocketed since 1970; one can argue as a consequence of government intervention and the Great Society programs. This has consequences; to escape poverty, teens should follow these three rules: 1. Finish high school (at minimum) 2. Wait till at least 21 to have kids and get married 3. Get a full time job. Some of the inequality in black America is due to bad government policy. Some of it is cultural. I don’t think we fix culture with policy, but I don’t know.
Regarding your last remark about blacks getting uppity, I have this suggestion. If you mean to accuse me of racism, do so openly and directly. Don’t belittle both of us by being a weasel in the conversation. You might not know, but I’m actually the son of Cuban immigrants who came here penniless (although educated). I have nephews who are black. There is a wide world of difference between racists thinking blacks inferior and deciding that they are ‘uppity’, and people worrying about rioting, looting, arson, and murder on the streets of their cities. When you make remarks like this, you burn through the good faith credit I extend you fast.
mark bofill,
“Regarding your last remark about blacks getting uppity, I have this suggestion. If you mean to accuse me of racism, do so openly and directly. Don’t belittle both of us by being a weasel in the conversation.“
.
You said it much better than I would have…. I was too offended and pissed to respond directly to that slur.
Thanks Steve.
HaroldW,
“As I recall Lindsey Graham, on the other hand, did not qualify what he said, so that reads to me as pure political expediency.”
.
Yes, politicians often do and say things which are politically expedient. Sometimes they even lie, mislead, and misrepresent, even if that damages someone, for political expediency.
.
Graham, says that he changed his mind about election year confirmations because of the treatment of Bret Kavanaugh by Democrats during his confirmation. He was more than a little unhappy at the time: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GUydig67A9w
.
All politicians want power, but only some will stop at nothing to get it.
DeWitt Payne (Comment #190908)
DeWitt when I wrote the following I had in mind what you point to in your post. It is allowed sometimes by principles.
There are overlapping and historically changing priorities in all areas that is allowed by partisan politics whereby if the other party does it is bad if my party does it is good or at least somehow rationalized.
What mark bofill said (Comment #190939). But I will add a couple things.
Under Trump, incomes for blacks and other minorities have risen at record rates and had reduced the gap with whites, at least prelockdown.
Lindsey Graham is a weasel who makes politicians look bad, a really difficult feat.
I believe the plantation politics of the inner cities where the Democrat party has been in control for years and citizens there have become dependent on government and by proxy the Democrat party is in no danger of changing anytime soon. Those politicians are pretty happy with things as they are with perhaps the exception of wanting to make this citizenry more dependent on government and expanding the domain for dependency.
That might be applied to a black Republican or Libertarian by the plantation politicians.
Look Phil, all whites are racist. This is an indisputable fact proven by learned scholars in Critical Theory. Only by accepting that whites are inherently bad people can they properly join the fight against against racism and be an ally to people of color. To fail to accept that they are racist is an example of “white fragility”, an inability to come to terms with their racism. So, whites can either be a racists in denial, the lowest of the low, or they can accept that they are racist and work to make amends to those their existence is oppressing by doing what they ask and finally becoming anti-racist.
.
What say you, Phil?
It seems Romney won’t be torpedoing the Senate Republicans.
https://www.politico.com/news/2020/09/22/romney-supports-holding-a-vote-on-next-supreme-court-nominee-419898
Phil,
“Maybe a bit upset about blacks being uppity???”.
.
I guess you must feel you are losing the argument when you stoop to that garbage, ha ha. If only we were as wonderful as you then all our problems in America would be solved. This isn’t a complex multi-factor social problem, it’s just a matter of being right thinking and finding the correct out group to blame for their moral failings. If you can please forward us the magic solution you used for the MÄori down there we would appreciate being enlightened. Maybe it’s complicated for NZ though, unlike everywhere else.
This from the NYT of all places:
Some Protests Against Police Brutality Take a More Confrontational Approach
The protests are moving into white residential neighborhoods, where activists demand that people choose a side.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/21/us/black-lives-matter-protests-tactics.html
.
Summary: Portland protesters now going in white neighborhoods and demanding compliance to their demands.
.
“Mr. Moses was initially not sure what the protesters were upset about, but as he got closer, he saw it: His neighbors had an American flag on display.
“It went from a peaceful march, calling out the names, to all of a sudden, bang, ‘How dare you fly the American flag?’†said Mr. Moses, who is Black and runs a nonprofit group in the Portland, Ore., area. “They said take it down. They wouldn’t leave. They said they’re going to come back and burn the house down.â€
Mr. Moses and others blocked the demonstrators and told them to leave.
“We don’t go around terrorizing folks to try and force them to do something they don’t want to do,†said Mr. Moses, whose nonprofit group provides support for local homeless people. “I’m a veteran. I’m for these liberties.â€
.
This is a very strange article, it goes from documenting clearly unacceptable behavior to attempting to justify it, to kind of condemning it. It’s a bit incoherent, like it went through 1000 editing revisions.
.
A bit of an understatement, but protesting in people’s neighborhoods is a bad idea. That’s a line you cannot cross. Even the true believer readers at the NYT find this quite ugly, even if for the sole reason they think so is it’s bad tactics.
I think before being offended by a remark delivered by an individual one should consider the source. I would have expected the same – maybe in somewhat different terms – from the plantation politicians who operate in our inner cities.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Structural_discrimination_in_New_Zealand#:~:text=Structural%20Discrimination%20is%20not%20given,both%20direct%20and%20indirect%20discrimination
Nic Lewis at Climate etc. has an informative post on herd immunity and T-cells.
Kenneth,
All the things we have discussed here in some detail.
Here’s some innovation, Bloomberg is paying off the debts of FL felons so they can vote. Everyone wins, FL/crime victims gets more money, felons get their debts paid off, and then they can vote if they are so inclined. It’s no doubt a way of buying votes but I bet it’s much more economical than trying to do it through TV ads.
Tom Scharf,
Weird. So does Florida law say felons can’t vote if they are in debt but can if they are not? Weird law.
Ok… I see
https://www.cnn.com/2020/09/22/politics/bloomberg-felon-florida-vote/index.html
.
It’s a specific type of debt that prevents them from voting.
.
Well… I guess Florida will see an influx of money.
Lucia,
30,000 felons represent a significant voting block, but only if they actually vote. My guess is Bloomberg is going to be disappointed with their turnout. I mean, felons don’t normally have a high level of civic responsibility.
SteveF,
Agreed. I suspect Bloomberg will get a smaller result than he hopes. Florida will still get the money that otherwise might not get paid.
I imagine Bloomberg did a big “sort by how much owed” before he paid any bills. I never did get very excited either way about this as I thought this was a pretty unmotivated voting block and don’t object to people voting after time served. I’m sure it could make a difference in a very narrow election, but otherwise not so much.
.
“The bill, however, would restore voting rights only for individuals who have completed all terms of their sentence — which includes fully paying restitution and fines or fees ordered by the court, not including fees racked up after sentencing.”
.
Restitution can be big money. Curious wording above, so white prisoners aren’t eligible, ha ha?
SteveF – Same source but 2020 overview. https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2020/02/07/6-facts-about-economic-inequality-in-the-u-s/
On 2018 data, the income gap has grown though actual income has steadily risen.
I wasnt actually talking about racial income inequality as such but in general terms because of the effects on society and the resentment that builds. As I said earlier, the identification of a underclass with markers like race or religion is plain dangerous to civil society.
Lucia – yes, I agree that fault is with politicians in general not one side. Schumer changing his tune too.
Mark Bofill. See the link from SteveF for evidence that poor are more likely to be non-white. Hard to read any American history without getting impression of history of racism (same for my country, by way, it is built in I think). And yes more white men appear to be shot by police, but not in proportion to population size, dated data but https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2014/aug/21/michael-medved/talk-show-host-police-kill-more-whites-blacks/ has some sources. It seems people protesting perceive a bias whether it exists or not. I am pretty sure many Pacifika and Maori here would agree too. If you yourself in the position of one of those protesting, do you think heavy putdowns by police and state troopers are going to change your perception? You say you think that republicans have better plan for fixing the problems? What would these be?
I do unreserved apologize for the uppity remark. I frankly knew I crossed a line when I wrote and should have edited it. Call it trying to get my head around Mike’s response. I do not see Trump’s republicans producing policies that would help and found it easy to assume that they preferred the situation as it is, without the rioting.
DaveJR – i am all acknowledging the problem and trying to deal with it. I also do not think racism is white-only. In common to all humanity.
Suppose Bloomberg pays $20 million to allow lots of felons to vote in Florida. Could Trump not spend $50 million to pay off $1,000 of debts of say 50,000 in-debt rural Pennsylvanians? I mean there is no quid pro quo, so how could that be any different than Bloomberg’s naked political expenditure? Seems to me there is no difference.
Phil,
I don’t have time to go dig up the statistic, but I believe blacks commit something like 50% of the violent crime (or maybe it’s homicides) despite the fact that they constitute only 13.4% of the population. I don’t see that taken into account– I mean sure; looking at just relative population sizes one would think blacks are disproportionately killed by police, but that’s misleading. We’re talking about people in situations with the police. It may well be that black people have more police encounters. It’s not surprising if they are committing a disproportionate amount of violent crime.
I will respond to this when I have time. I’m sorry, my death march is nearing the ‘death’ part — my deadline draws nigh.
Phil,
Apology refused. Way out of line, and clear evidence of bad faith. It is exactly the garbage we hear so often from ‘progressives’ in the states. See ya.
Phil,
I strongly disagree with SteveF, unless he was being sarcastic. You made an immoderate statement and apologized. Bygones. I have done it myself.
I’m with Mike.
Mike M,
At least I don’t think anyone who disagrees with me is a racist. You may think accusing people you do not even know of racism is OK. I don’t.
If he called us silly or stupid it would be one thing but “uppity blacks†from a guy that lives in another country. No thanks. I’ll just put him on the list of non serious posters.
BTW, I was pissed off enough last night when I saw that comment to look up demographics for his country and my non relevant state(CO). We have more population than his country and we’re not just in a few highly populated cities but we elect more minorities to positions of power than NZ ever has. Quit with the “you’re racist†crap. And whatever you do don’t look up immigration requirements.
Mark, in any society, I believe most of the crime will be committed by whoever in the bottom socio-economic classes. ie crime rate among catholics in N Ireland is higher protestants by considerable margin. https://cain.ulster.ac.uk/issues/police/docs/ipos-mori_2007_crime_research.pdf
However,you make a good point the killings should be factored by no. of encounters rather than straight population stats. I dont believe that data is available. As understand though, there is a clear perception of bias and that is driving the riots irrespective of whether it is true or not.
Phil,
I don’t disagree that there is a perception of bias. I will agree that a perception of bias is fueling rioting.
[Edit: I believe I’ve read things that indicate that there is a relationship between relative poverty and crime rates, although I’ve never taken the time to investigate these claims to my satisfaction. But I can tentatively agree with that as well.]
lucia,
I just saw that an iconic Chicago hotel, the Palmer House Hilton, is in foreclosure. The owners, Thor Equities, are in default on its $333.2 million first mortgage. What a shame.
DeWitt,
I stayed there once for a few days when I attended a trade show in Chicago. Nice old hotel; pretty well kept up when I stayed there. Another casualty of the covid-19 pandemic.
SteveF,
I would say the overreaction to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Phil
“I dont believe that data is available. As understand though, there is a clear perception of bias and that is driving the riots irrespective of whether it is true or not.â€
That data is available and there have been studies that prove there is no correlation between white cops killing black people or black cops killing white people. It’s usually cops being forced into a bad situation and doing things they’d rather not do to prevent something worse. Race be damned.
And, like I believe, it’s not a race thing it’s a socio-economic thing where when the cops go to the “bad†place in town they’re a bit more edgy. Regardless of race. Wouldn’t you be?
I will briefly add this — in our current spate of riots (say since George Floyd’s death) there is some evidence to suggest that .. how shall we call them? Career rioters? Professional instigators? I don’t know – may be involved. Take Kenosha. A large percent of the rioters arrested were from out of state. Some from far away. Plane tickets cost money.
It’s not clear to me that we have a simple causal correlation in our current riots between socio-economics and rioting. I wouldn’t say that in this case.
Shrug. Neither here nor there, really.
Reflecting further, I think I should say that I started visiting this blog to hear viewpoints that were different from my own, first on climate and then because of a curiousity about American politics. Lucia is a thoughtful commentator. I have been wrong many times in my life and I dont trust my rationality.
While it doesnt matter what people’s opinions of me are, I would have to say that SteveF is a commentator whose opinions I look for and respect. Based on numerous comments, I do not believe him to be a racist.
I am less than convinced about Trump however. If that is enough for Lucia to ban me, so be it, but that would be my honest opinion.
Mark, what is a large percentage? https://www.jsonline.com/story/news/local/2020/08/31/jacob-blake-shooting-many-arrests-kenosha-outside-city/3451114001/
Seems many that were not from Kenosha were not from very far away. That is not to say rent-a-rioter doesnt exist, but I would also expect committed activists to move to hot-spots as happens with many forms of protests.
Here is what appears to be a good review article on transmission of the Wuhan virus:
https://www.acpjournals.org/doi/full/10.7326/M20-5008
Unfortunately, paywalled.
But there is a nice summary here: https://healthy-skeptic.com/2020/09/20/transmission-of-cv-19/
mark bofill (Comment #190981): “I believe I’ve read things that indicate that there is a relationship between relative poverty and crime rates,”
.
I have seen the same claim. I suspect it is a case of common cause. Parents who raise their kids in a way that is likely to lead to economic success are unlikely to raise criminals. Neglectful parents who don’t teach their kids discipline and a work ethic are more likely to raise kids who will be poor and also more likely to raise criminals. Since people tend to raise their kids similar to the way they were raised, those tendencies get passed on to the next generation.
Phil,
I certainly wouldn’t ban someone for having a bad opinion of or doubts about Trump!!
Phil,
Now that I check I see that the number was relatively small; about a dozen from Washington and Oregon.
Thanks.
Mike M.,
If you use the link from the blog, you get what looks like the whole paper in html rather than pdf.
https://www.acpjournals.org/doi/10.7326/M20-5008
I found the second comment quite interesting:
Phil,
I haven’t looked for or at the list of towns people were from. But the article does say most were from WI. As I’ve mentioned, when I was in high school, the drinking age in WI was lower than in IL. Lots of kids would drive to Kenosha to drink. It’s a 37 minute drive from the town I grew up in to Kenosha. Most of that drive would have been in IL. Kenosha is just on the other side of the border. So if it’s mostly people from WI and IL, it’s not evidence of “rent a rioter”.
.
Admittedly, Chicago is a big of a drive to Kenosha. But not a ridiculous one.
Obama campaign in 2012 required everyone attending their election night party to put in hours campaigning in Wisconsin.
No more than an hour and a half from Hyde Park.
Lucia, did Pleasant Prairie not exist then?
MikeN,
It probably existed. Though… I don’t specifically remember. Perhaps no bars? If you wanted to drink, you went to Kenosha.
.
I’m pretty sure my father-in-law liked the Mars Cheese Castle. But it’s not a bar!
.
Of course, Pleasant Prarie is in Kenosha county. So it’s still Kenosha… just not the town. 🙂
Phil,
I apologize for the slipshod quality of this, as mentioned I’m direly short on time. But I’ve been looking at rioter mugshots.
Here:https://www.oregonlive.com/portland/2016/11/mugshots_ids_released_of_25_ar.html
and here:
https://kvoa.com/news/local-news/2020/06/01/tpd-arrests-nearly-20-people-during-protests-over-the-weekend/
I see a pretty substantial number of non-black people in those mugshots.
Heck, here’s one where the offenders are specifically idenitified as wealthy:
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8714681/NYPD-releases-mugshots-wealthy-UES-student-six-caused-100-000-damage-stores.html
————–
Now I can find other groups of mugshots with more black people in them. But this idea that social-economically oppressed blacks are rioting because of their oppression seems questionable to me. I’m not saying that’s not a component, but I am saying I think there is more to the story than that.
Nic Lewis’ post at Judith’s blog is interesting mostly for the comments, since nearly everything Nic writes about we have already discussed at length here. Despite growing evidence, many people in the comment thread simply refuse to accept that herd immunity now suppresses spread of the virus in many places (for example, some are suggesting a new disaster is just around the corner in Sweden when cooler weather arrives). I find the almost complete refusal to accept clear evidence of herd immunity and endless speculation about continued danger quite shocking. It only makes any sense to me in terms of politics…. it seems they want to make sure voters remain terrified until after the election.
.
Nic’s post is informative, but probably not exactly in the way he intended.
Consider the riots in Detroit, Watts, etc. 50 years ago. What percentage of the rioters do you suppose were not local? Very few, I would think, since they were spontaneous, relatively short-lived events. So if 40% of the Kenosha rioters were from Kenosha, with another 40% from within a few hours driving distance, and the rest from farther away; that is a very different thing. No doubt, only a small number are professional instigators and the rest are volunteers.
.
From what I have seen, most of the rioters are white. We have seen white “protestors” subjecting black cops to racists chants:
https://nypost.com/2020/07/17/cop-reports-frightening-racist-chants-from-white-blm-supporters/,
berating black police officers:
https://www.foxnews.com/us/dc-white-protester-yell-face-black-police-officers-part-of-problem,
and even physically assaulting black officers:
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/viral-video-shows-white-protesters-surrounding-and-attacking-black-police-officer-during-george-floyd-protest.
Purely out of curiosity, does anyone know what percentage of the white supremacists rioting in Charlottesville were local? They managed to kill one person, considerably more efficient than those leftist wimps who only burned a couple of buildings.
Thomas Fuller (Comment #191007
I doubt that any decent thinking person is going to want judge which despicable group is more despicable.
T Fuller: “Purely out of curiosity, does anyone know what percentage of the white supremacists rioting in Charlottesville were local? They managed to kill one person, considerably more efficient than those leftist wimps who only burned a couple of buildings.”
Another unhinged posting by you. The white supremacists groups didn’t kill anyone. One white supremacist did. There was one day of rioting in Va. The Leftie/Marxists have been rioting for several months in a coordinated manner and the riots have probably led to the deaths of about 10-20 people and have caused huge amounts of property damage. No comparison at all between the two different movements with respect to the damage caused and lives lost.
Well, FBI Director Wray has tried. Here’s how he describes Antifa:
“Wray said the FBI sees the left-wing anti-fascist movement known as Antifa “as more of an ideology or a movement than an organization,†though some domestic terrorism investigations target those who self-identify with the Antifa movement.
And he said the FBI has seen individuals who identified with the Antifa movement “coalescing regionally into what you might describe as small groups or nodes. And we are actively investigating the potential violence from those regional nodes, if you will.â€
As opposed to Qanon: “Wray said the FBI views QAnon, a far-right conspiracy group asserting that there is a secret battle against so-called deep state actors engaged in a global child sex trafficking ring, “as less of an organization and more of a complex set of conspiracy theories. The FBI reportedly has dubbed QAnon, which Trump has praised and several Republican congressional candidates had voiced support for, a domestic terrorism threat.”
On Black Lives Matter: “Some Republican lawmakers have called for investigations into Antifa and its funding in connection to arsons and riots that were spurred during demonstrations that started in the wake of Black Lives Matter protests. The FBI has not identified Black Lives Matter “in any way,†Wray said.”
Boogaloo: ”
Boogaloos is considered a right-leaning, anti-government movement that started online and reportedly has connections to white supremacy and advocating for a second civil war. Wray said Boogaloos, like Antifa, is more of a movement or an ideology than a group itself.
Self-identifying members of Boogaloos have been charged in connection with the shooting death of a federal agent in California, as well as providing support from Minnesota to Hamas, a militant Islamic Palestinian nationalist movement, lawmakers and Wray said.
“I think one of the things that a lot of people don’t understand about people who subscribe to this sort of Boogaloo thinking is that their main focus is just dismantling, tearing down government, and they’re less clear on what it is they think they’re going to replace government with,†Wray said. “I’m not even sure they would all agree with each other.â€
My summary: Antifa is basically window breaking that gets out of control. White supremacy groups are armed, dangerous and murderous.
I live in Portland, Oregon. Every summer since long before Trump the Antifas (mostly drifting down from Seattle) have confronted various white supremacist groups (mostly drifting across the river from Vancouver, WA) at the riverfront park, where they exchange fisticuffs and insults very much like the Jets and the Sharks.
Over the past three years it has escalated.
JD Ohio, I find your comment repugnant. I have seen the video of that demonstration several times.
I’m sure you’re a decent human being who cares about his family and community.
But I find what you wrote repugnant.
Fuller once again shows up to “better understand” different views. Throws in a partisan grenade leaving everyone wondering exactly what point he is making. My tribe’s extremists are less vile than your tribe’s extremists! Or something. I’m not a supporter of any of these people.
Thomas Fuller,
Thanks, actually helps the point I was trying to make. I understood Phil to be arguing that the causes of the rioting could be simplified down to a response to socio-economic oppression of an underclass. Not sure that the right wing groups you mention fit that explanation either.
Thomas
The difficulty with that characterization is that leftist-group riots are actually happening and sustained. The white supremicist groups aren’t tearing down buildings, blowing things up, seizing city centers and so on. They are throwing molotov cocktails. Parts of Kenosha look like European cities after they were bombed in WWII.
.
Perhaps the white supremicists are all armed. Perhaps they have ideas. Perhaps they have rhetoric. Perhaps they want to kill everyone and over throw the government. I think it’s likely at least some do. But at least for now they mostly appear to be couch potatoes compared to the leftist groups who are out there destroying things. I mean… either those dangerous white supremicists are couch potatoes or there just aren’t enough of them to march out and do whatever it is they all want to do.
Out of control window breaker engaging in fistcuffs in Portland. Note that he is not one of the armed, dangerous and murderous types, he is much different.
https://abcnews.go.com/US/court-documents-detail-moments-leading-deadly-protest-shooting/story?id=72837959
Hiya Lucia! How are you?
Well, white supremacists/Boogaloos/whatever kill cops in Oakland trying to pin it on Black Lives Matter, get arrested for burning buildings in Portland while masquerading as antifas, etc., so I don’t think ‘a plague on both their houses’ is appropriate.
I would cheerfully send the antifas to jail. They infiltrated BLM just as much as the white supremacists. They are thugs.
But the Klan (oh, sorry–white supremacists) plan, plot, bomb and kill. When they march they yell ‘Jews will not replace us.’ They repeatedly drive cars through protests with serious, sometimes fatal, results.
Category difference.
Purely out of curiosity, does anyone know what the words “white supremacy” actually mean? Is there a common definition or is this a phrase subject to Humpty Dumpty usage?
Hmm, I suppose that’s a rhetorical question. Alright, my answer is it has become a shibboleth that in it’s current usage means “people I disagree with”.
Trying to reduce the participants in these protests/riots down to a single cause is a fool’s errand. There are multiple groups with multiple motivations. True believers in the protests for change, fair weather protesters, straight out criminal opportunists, looter opportunists, bored teenagers, political extremists who want a revolution, etc. There seems to be a different vibe at all these places once the sun sets.
.
The partisans on both sides demand that the other side must own “their” extremists when they have little control over it. This bickering is tiring. Groups do need to disavow violence or they will be tainted by it. This is particularity difficult for loose leaderless organizations, the extreme elements get a lot of notice and it does not get disavowed because nobody is in charge.
Tom Scharf, not quite the same degree of premeditation as found here:
When sheriff’s deputies searched a white van on June 6 in a wooded hamlet in Santa Cruz County, they found ammunition, firearms, bomb-making equipment — and a ballistic vest with a curious patch.
The patch contained an igloo and Hawaiian-style print, markings associated with a growing, extremist, anti-government movement aimed at fomenting unrest and civil war.
On Tuesday, federal law enforcement officials announced that they were charging Air Force Sgt. Steven Carrillo, 32, the alleged owner of that vest, and suspected accomplice Robert A. Justus Jr., 30, of Millbrae in the May 29 shooting death of a federal security officer in Oakland.
Officials said Carrillo, who also faces state charges in the June 6 killing of a Santa Cruz sheriff’s deputy, was a follower of the “boogaloo†movement, which a federal complaint said is not a fixed group but includes people who identify themselves as militia and target perceived government tyranny.
So, to be clear: I fully support BLM. I reject antifa and Boogaloo, Qanon, etc. I reject violence from all, whether planned or spontaneous.
But I don’t equate ‘Get your knee off our necks’ with ‘Jews will not replace us.’
Thomas
I would thing “a plague on both their houses” would be entirely appropriate.
I’d cheerfully send both to jail. So yeah: a plague on both their houses.
Huh? Have you not seen the devastation wrought by BLM riots?!!! I hate to break it to you, but this is not a “category difference”.
BTW: I don’t care if you call them Klan or white supremists. I have no problem with you criticising them. But somehow trying to paint the leftist rioters as innocent or in a different category is idiotic.
Thomas
Your main concern seems to be rhetoric, not actual violence. Sorry, but destroying cities, rioting, throwing molotov cocktails and so on isn’t a different “category” from driving into crowds because you think the phrase “Get off or necks” isn’t as bad as the phrase “Jews will not replace us”.
Thomas Fuller,
Not really sure what point you are trying to make. Are you suggesting that all the rioting, looting, arson, and assaults are OK for leftist groups and BLM because some crazy right wing group at some point did some bad things? If so, that is a weird take, and one I would expect to hear from a spoiled 6 year old, not a thinking adult.
.
But in any case, one day of rioting, causing one tragic death, do not compare to months of rioting, assaults, looting, arson and multiple deaths…. not to mention the really swell idea of accosting people sitting in restaurants and demanding they say things they don’t believe… or else. Or marching into neighborhoods to torment residents and demand they admit to being racists. If you think this is all going to work out well for the protesters, or make their desired policies more likely, then you detached from reality.
Earle,
White supremecists exist. I don’t think they are numerous. I’m perfectly willing to believe they are violent, and they say horrible things. The problem I have with Thomas is he seems to want to excuse all the violence by leftists. Yeah… he says he’d happily jail antifa.
.
Well… I’d happily jail people who throw molitov cocktails, break windows, loot etc.
Earle,
There are multiple definitions. There is the commonly understood KKK guys carrying torches definition, and there is an expanded academic definition which basically means a supporter of the systemic system that keeps white people unfairly in power. In this view something like voting for Trump makes one a white supremacist.
.
These positions are conflated intentionally by partisans, it’s a motte-and-bailey fallacy. They want to tar people with the first definition and withdraw to the second definition when challenged.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motte-and-bailey_fallacy
Tom Scharf, I don’t (and most on my side don’t) think that everyone who voted for Trump is a racist.
I do (and most on my side do) think that all the racists voted for Trump.
Lucia
If by both their houses you mean antifa and white supremacists, okay. But I don’t think BLM is the same–not in intent, not in behavior.
Thomas,
“I fully support BLM.”
You mean you support all this?
“The platform includes six tenets: end the war on black people, economic justice, divest-invest, community control, political power and, perhaps most importantly, reparations.”
.
Most of that seems straight out of a Marxist diatribe…. except for the reparations part. All of it is absolutely unhinged, and is not going to happen.
Thomas,
Maybe I’m missing the point. But I ask you to believe that you’re not telling us anything we don’t already know about your positions and beliefs.
Thomas
Oh? I think the secret sauce to your not thinking BLM and Antifa behavior are distinct seems to be just decree which ever person throws a molotov cocktain is not BLM. Because honestly, I don’t think you can tell the difference. And also: if BLM as a groups really didn’t want these outcomes, they’d push the rioters out. They’d take steps to distinguish themselves instead of letting the violent ones remain there and organizing things where they keep reappearing.
.
I’ve said this before to you. I said it when you somehow didn’t want us to focus on the rioters rather than BLM’s “message” and so on. My view is if BLM wants peaceful protest they should figure out how to have peaceful protests. Plenty of other groups have and will continue to do so.
.
I don’t understand why you don’t see that it is a responsibility of those who want to protest and avoid violence to take positive actions to oust the violent and/or stop and think about how to organize their protests so that those who are looting, burning, injuring people and so on can’t take advantage of the riots for cover.
.
The looters, rioters and so on are materialzing over and over and over at BLM “events”. Because BLM takes no action to oust the looters, rioters etc, I have no confidence they don’t ‘intend’ that to happen. Sorry, but “whoopsie! Happened again! Gosh… didn’t expect that.” Doesn’t strike me as evidence they “don’t intend” it to happen.
.
Just giving a PC sounding name to a group doesn’t make it non-violent. If violence erupts everywhere they go… well… honestly, I think that’s what they intend.
Thomas Fuller,
I have no idea what the point is here. If you want to believe your tribe’s bad people are less worse than someone else then you need to find someone who supports the KKK (or at least won’t condemn it) and argue with them about it. As far as I can tell you are arguing against the null set here.
.
People who commit crimes should be held accountable regardless of their political leanings and their wonderful intent on committing these crimes. Do you have a different position than this?
.
What you seem to be doing is implying that not taking a knee for BLM is the same as shouting ‘Jews will not replace us.’. Or something, because I can’t figure it out. These are not mutually exclusive positions.
Maybe we watch different tv coverage. In the coverage I saw, BLM people were confronting antifa, taking away their spray paint, pushing them away from buildings.
I have no doubt that some among the BLM did throw molotov cocktails, loot and break shit. I also have no doubt that they were a tiny fraction of those marching alongside the BLM.
Intent counts. It’s not an excuse for violence or condoning violence, but intent counts.
SteveF, except for the reparations part, yeah. And I would support properly structured and limited reparations, come to think of it.
It’s semantics but I think it’s closer to antifa co-opted BLM than the opposite of BLM co-opted antifa. There is the “daytime BLM” which seems pretty reasonable overall, and the “nighttime BLM” which seems less reasonable and much more prone to * pointless * violence.
.
Daytime BLM = mandatory body cameras for police.
Nighttime BLM = ACAB, shoot fireworks at police
.
BLM needs to disassociate itself from the violent mob or they will be (and have been) successfully tarred with the nighttime mob behavior. No spokesman, no way to officially condemn the behavior.
.
This also occurred with the Tea Party. If you don’t purge the radicals, your movement will die.
Thomas,
WTF.
BLM Chicago leadership came out and said looting is a form of reparations. That doesn’t seem like part of any noble intent to me. The whole idea of criminality is based on racism, according to Chicago BLM leader Ariel Atkins.
She doesn’t support peaceful protests.
She doesn’t give a crap about the destruction they’re causing:
Here.
https://nypost.com/2020/08/13/blm-organizer-who-called-looting-reparations-doubles-down/
Now I’ll give you that not all BLM chapters are the same. Chicago’s BLM seems particularly virulent. Some of the others have explicitly come out and condemned violence, rioting, and looting if memory serves. Not all of them though. It’s a mixed bag.
Thomas
You are right. I haven’t seen that. Where did this supposedly happen? And when? Is it on youtube? Link?
.
BLM ‘protest’ have been frequently marked by violence, looting, burning. BLM continues to announce them and have them.
.
Has BLM put out a formal declaration condeming the violent protestors? I could have missed it, so if you are aware of one, could you link to it. Have they changed their protest to instruct their people to leave at 4 pm and then done it so the only remaining people are not BLM? My impression is no.
I guess we can all agree that the “the non-violent people in the protest were non-violent”. You can call this set the “real BLM”. The real KKK doesn’t drive cars into people. See how that works?
.
The problem with this argument is what happens when you ask the violent people in the mob if they support BLM.
Thomas,
“And I would support properly structured and limited reparations, come to think of it.”
.
Are you familiar with the expression ‘poison pill’? How about ‘FUBAR’?
.
You support “reparations” to people never enslaved by people who never were involved in slavery? Really, it is never going to happen. Perhaps you think guilt for slavery 6 generations back passes down through families; sort of like the British royal family should be held responsible for the behavior of Henry the Eighth, or maybe the acts of William the Conqueror.
.
Lemme see… on my fathers side, everyone was poor and came from Ireland to the States in the late 19th century. Not a slave owner to be found. On my mother’s side they came from Canada and Scotland, also late 19th century. There may have been some French Canadian blood in the Canadian line… nobody knows for sure. But no slavery in Canada. So please tell me how I inherited guilt and an obligation to pay people living today for things that happened 150+ years ago with no historical link to me or any of my ancestors. FUBAR.
I’ve seen video of confrontations between protests groups and trying to stop the idiots from doing their idiotic things that tarnish the movement. Many people recognize violence is a bad thing. People have different motivations. Antifa wins after dark though.
https://www.tmz.com/2020/05/31/black-woman-confronts-two-white-protesters-tagging-starbucks-blm/
https://www.kgw.com/article/news/local/protests/neighbors-confront-destructive-protesters-get-splattered-with-paint/283-fe4d5b1d-dfc8-46b9-9535-79a6d023d636
https://blockclubchicago.org/2020/08/12/older-englewood-leaders-to-young-protesters-dont-disrupt-our-neighborhood-and-leave-us-with-pissed-off-police/
https://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/1292474/Black-Lives-Matter-George-Floyd-socialists-antifa-London-Parliament-Square-racism-latest
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SWjWrZDaow4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2XvqRcz0EL4
SteveF, I believe you are wrong.
Slavery ended with the civil war. Repression of African Americans, denial of education, property rights and employment opportunities did not.
You are not responsible for what your great-great grandfather did. We are all responsible for improving this country.
I think a GI Bill for Black Americans, interest free loans for home and small business purchase, tuition free education, etc., maybe going back to 40 acres and a mule… And since I’m all for Medicare for all, I don’t need to say extra stuff about healthcare…
Yeah, I’m in for that.
Thomas,
“You are not responsible for what your great-great grandfather did.” One small area of agreement.
.
Everything else is nuts. Somehow a dirt-poor white person in rural Kentucky has to fund interest free loans for better off black entrepreneurs? That is crazy. Public policies can’t be racially discriminating… it is against existing laws, against the equal protection clause of the Constitution, and most of all, is profoundly immoral and unjust. It is you who is wrong about all this.
.
“We are all responsible for improving this country.”
Sure, and the things you want would make the country far worse, not ‘improved’. That is the fundamental disagreement.
Thomas,
“Tom Scharf, I don’t (and most on my side don’t) think that everyone who voted for Trump is a racist.
I do (and most on my side do) think that all the racists voted for Trump.”
.
Sounds a lot like you are channeling Hillary and her ‘basket of deplorables’ comment….. and just like Hillary, you are completely wrong about that too. Can you give us a quick estimate of how many racists you think there are in the USA…. you know, just round numbers… 10%, 20%, 30%?
My trolling detection meter just pegged.
Tom Scharf,
Yeah, pretty much. I’d be happy to discuss if there was something to discuss, but it’s mostly — I’m Thomas Fuller and I’m a socialist, let me explain what that means. I mean, that’s fine. We all know that. It’s not a viewpoint that many people who comment here share. So.. So what.
[Edit: maybe I misunderstood you. Who’s trolling here?]
Tom Scharf,
“My trolling detection meter just pegged.”
.
What did I write to peg your meter?
Fuller: “JD Ohio, I find your comment repugnant. I have seen the video of that demonstration several times.
I’m sure you’re a decent human being who cares about his family and community.”
The white supremacists in Va. were propagating a filthy disgusting, inhumane ideology. However, they haven’t done the damage that BLM has done. I have seen videos and pictures of Manhattan, Minneapolis, Seattle and Los Angeles — no comparison at all.
The BLM leaders openly espouse Marxism, which is a filthy disgusting ideology. Here is a quote from Marx, which fits in perfectly with BLM violence and the damage it has done:
“there is only one way in which the murderous death agonies of the old society and the bloody birth throes of the new society can be shortened, simplified and concentrated, and that way is revolutionary terror. As if to ensure that his readers got the point, Marx immediately and chillingly added: “Is that clear, gentlemen?†https://www.catholicworldreport.com/2018/05/04/remembering-karl-marx-prophet-of-violence-and-terror/
How anyone with a brain or conscience could be a Marxist or support Marxism (which the BLM and Dem party do) is beyond me. If I was using your frame of reference, I would call it repugnant.
SteveF, I haven’t researched it thoroughly, but my basic impression is that the tax burden on dirt poor people of any skin color in Kentucky is a) not high and b) unlikely to be affected by new government programs of any size.
Here is a video 6 minutes long and driving in Manhattan that documents the devastation there. https://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=manhattan+devastation+caused+by+riots&docid=607986615653630037&mid=D8C17C24552F975B39F9D8C17C24552F975B39F9&view=detail&FORM=VIRE
……
Tiffanies, Dior, Chanel boarded up. All of the watches stolen from Breitling’s (sp). The Leftie media is an accomplice of BLM and tries to hide this from the public.
Sorry for not including in previous post, but editing time expired. See this link describing half a billion dollars of BLM inspired damages in Minneapolis. https://spectator.org/minneapolis-500-million-property-damage-riots-protests-police/
BLM will not disavow antifa because they are the same group.
One BLM leader,’We are trained Marxists.’
Up until a week ago, BLM statement of beliefs was on their website, which included
“We disrupt the Western-prescribed nuclear family structure requirement by supporting each other as extended families and ‘villages’ that collectively care for one another, especially our children, to the degree that mothers, parents and children are comfortable.â€
It’s no surprise that they would implement The Killing Fields.
https://www.outkick.com/blm101-we-are-winning-the-war-black-lives-matter-scrubs-beliefs/
Tom,
I saw the first one. It’s a single isolated black woman chatising the white women. NO ONE in BLM joins the black woman. BLM leadership hasn’t stood up to condemn those tagging.
The second is a person who “supports” but who is not herself a “BLM” confronting someone. This is common– but it is not BLM telling them to go away.
BTW Tom, I should add that in the first video the white woman thinks she is part of BLM. Maybe you don’t. Maybe the black woman doesn’t think she is. But there’s no official list of members.
On the several with neighborhood people telling people to go away: Sorry but those are neighborhood people lecturuigm BLM people to go away. You can’t just find black people telling people to go away and say that’s BLM telling people to do something. Not all black people are members of BLM. Not every action by a black person is an action by BLM.
.
Yes. there is evidence that quite a few Black people disapprove of the actions of some members BLM. That isn’t an example of BLM telling antifa or looters to go away.
This one is the story of a neighborhood member who is not in BLM chastising BLM members from outside the neighborhood for coming to Englewood to have their protest
https://blockclubchicago.org/2020/08/12/older-englewood-leaders-to-young-protesters-dont-disrupt-our-neighborhood-and-leave-us-with-pissed-off-police/
So it is precisely not an example of BLM telling antifa where to go. It is an example of neighborhood people telling BLM to stay out and/or to organize protest through the neighborhood activist group who is not BLM.
This one is also not an example of BLM confronting a looter/rioter. It’s a BLM person (or at least someone who think they are BLM) telling someone who is not a rioter to not chant socialist slogans.
.
So while it does show a BLM person (in the UK) telling someone to stick to the “Black LIves” issue, it has nothing to do with telling looters etc. to go away.
https://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/1292474/Black-Lives-Matter-George-Floyd-socialists-antifa-London-Parliament-Square-racism-latest
This one is one Black person Jon Bones Jones who went to the BLM event confronting others at the event — the ones showm taking crowbars to windoes. The others probbly think they are just as much part of BLM as Jones. There’s no evidence they are “antifa”. So as far as i can tell it’s evidence that some BLM want to be peaceful others don’t.
BLM heads are silent on this matter. So once again: not evidence of BLM organizers doing diddly squat to stop violence. It is evidence that some members think it’s “supposed” to be non-violent while others think it is supposed to be violent.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SWjWrZDaow4
Lucia, when you write “So as far as i can tell it’s evidence that some BLM want to be peaceful others don’t,” I agree. Having watched a lot of the protests (and having participated in two up here in Portlandia), I imagine we may just disagree on proportions.
The two I attended were 100% peaceful. Lots of moms with kids. No problem whatsoever. Anecdote, not data, of course. But it does help shape my view.
Thomas
I think what we really disagree on is responsibility of members and leaders of a group that is non-violent.
.
At this point it’s very clear that the protests spark violence. In fact this was obvious long, long ago. I think the non-violent ones have the responsiblity of observing reality and not doint things that give cover to the violent ones.
.
Long ago, I suggested to you that the non-violent protestors who were operating around Chicago should pick venues where there was almost nothing to loot. I now think in addition to that, the non-violent ones need to discuss in advance and agree on times when protests end— ( complying with curfew would be a minimum.) And they should announce they were leaving. Leaders should have megaphones and announce they were leaving.
.
Instead, these things are organized precisely the way one would organize them if they wanted to provide cover for violence and looting.
.
Whether the non-violent are the majority or the minority, it is the responsibility of the non-violent to not give cover to the minority. If the non-violent really are in the majority and they do this, the violent will minority will vanish because they won’t be able to hide in the crowd. If the nonviolent are in the minority…. well… then the looting will continue.
.
As long as the group that claims to be non-violent does things in ways that give cover to violence knowing violence is consistently triggered by this behavior, then their claim to non-violence is a dubious claim. In fact: they become violent by proxy which is something of a distinction without a difference.
Thomas
Sure. Some are. But they don’t erase the others– like Kenosha etc.
Thomas Fuller (Comment #191058): “I imagine we may just disagree on proportions.”
.
It seems to me that the issue is leadership. There are peaceful protestors and violent rioters. But the leadership refuses to denounce the latter and there are indications that the leadership supports the latter.
——–
lucia: “Instead, these things are organized precisely the way one would organize them if they wanted to provide cover for violence and looting.”
.
Exactly. At this point, the organizers can not plead ignorance as to the consequences of their actions.
The problem I have is what looks like the conflation of white supremacy and white privilege. White supremacy is, to me, reasonably well defined and polite society does not tolerate it. White privilege, OTOH, is a more recent and, to me, ill-defined concept. AFAICT, the people promoting the concept of white privilege have no serious plan for combating it. My guess is that if you’re white and successful, you should feel guilty. How that is supposed to end whatever white privilege is supposed to be is beyond me.
When I was on South Congress street in Austin a few years ago, a couple of people were asking for signatures on a petition to end white privilege, or that you were opposed to it or something. I didn’t really pay attention because it seemed so pointless.
The only way I might accept modest reparations, certainly not on the order of $150,000 per capita, would be if that would mean the complete end of racial preferences in any way, shape or form. That would include the elimination of ‘what race are you’ questions on any government or industry form. But I don’t expect that to happen either. Democrats don’t want to let Blacks off their plantation.
Well, I’m not a big fan of white privilege when examples are trotted out. I can sort of understand the concept–no, that’s weaselly. I do understand that most whites start off with advantages that most minorities do not.
But as a concept it’s pretty easy to abuse.
DeWitt Payne (Comment #191062): “My guess is that if you’re white and successful, you should feel guilty.”
.
That is not how it works. The way it works is that if you are a poor white kid from Appalachia and you lose your spot in a good college to a less qualified upper middle class black kid, then you are the beneficiary of white privilege and should feel guilty.
.
It is racism, pure and simple.
DeWitt,
“The only way I might accept modest reparations, certainly not on the order of $150,000 per capita, would be if that would mean the complete end of racial preferences in any way, shape or form. That would include the elimination of ‘what race are you’ questions on any government or industry form. But I don’t expect that to happen either.”
.
Of course not. Racial preferences are never going to end unless the SC comes to its senses and says “the way to stop racism is to stop practicing official racism” and declares racially based preferences strictly unlawful. Since Sandra O’Connor, the SC hasn’t been saying anything of the sort.
.
Here is the problem: Even a significant capital infusion is not going to change the way poor people (of any race!) behave; a change in culture is the only thing that will bring a change in the way poor people behave. A capital infusion based on race isn’t going to change culture, but would be blatantly unconstitutional.
Mike M,
“It is racism, pure and simple.”
.
Exactly.
White skin = white privilege. That’s the definition pushed by the Critical Race Theorists and CRT forms the basis of anti-racism.
.
The basic premise is that people with white skin are born racist. They can either admit they are racist and work to oppress themselves for the benefit of everyone who isn’t white, or they can live in denial that they are racist and be pariahs. Sounds crazy, which is why it needs to be seen to be believed.
White fragility by DiAngelo and How to be an Anti-racist by Kendi are two best sellers pushing this racist nonsense mainstream and into schools, with the help of useful idiots.
” I understood Phil to be arguing that the causes of the rioting could be simplified down to a response to socio-economic oppression of an underclass”
I dont believe that. I am not much in favour of single-cause explanations of complex problems. I do think increasing inequality provides an unhealthy breeding ground for malcontents and anything the provides a tribal identification (race, religion) makes it downright dangerous. Problems of envy, entitlement, and perceptions of oppression whether real or not. I dont think this is enough by itself, to cause big problems but compounded with other triggers then it does.
Phil,
Honestly, I don’t think increasing inequality had much to do with it. I do think concerns about police violence is an issue. I think another major factor is that lots of people have nothing to do on semi-lockdowns. These closures actually hit the working people in lower economic strata hardest. The’ve been milling around. Even if they have some replacement income, their lives are more unsettled than mine. So they decided to go.. and then a subset were violent.
.
And we were off to the races as they say.
Phil,
Thanks. I misunderstood you. Next time I’ll ask if I understand you properly up front, save time and pain.
It looks like Bloomberg’s voter buying scheme may be illegal. According to the Florida elections department:
https://www.dailywire.com/news/breaking-florida-ag-refers-bloomberg-to-fbi-for-criminal-investigation-after-he-pledged-to-pay-felons-fines-so-they-can-vote-in-apparent-attempt-to-boost-biden
/ SarcSillyTag
What?? Buying voters isn’t legal?!? That’ll be news to Bloomberg who after all tried to buy the Dem nomination.
The mostly peaceful protests in KY tonight had 2 police officers shot.
.
The Dallas shooting of 5 police basically ended any sympathy for BLM in the last go around. With the assault on police in LA recently (protesters shouting at the hospital “we hope they die”, nice touch) this may end up the same.
.
You can’t do this stuff and expect the media to keep covering for you, even they have limits.
The ‘George Floyd Died of an Overdose’ Theory
https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/09/the-george-floyd-died-of-an-overdose-theory/
.
“A witness who’d spent the day with Floyd, for instance, reported that Floyd had a drug addiction, and that despite acting normal for most of the day, “after returning to the vehicle from Cup Foods, Mr. Floyd fell asleep in the driver’s seat of the car.†Said this witness, “it was so fast I look at him and I’m like all of sudden you know he’s just sleeping, he was sleeping.â€
Such “nodding off†is one symptom of a fentanyl overdose.”
.
“The defense suggests that Floyd may have been swallowing drugs, and notes that he admitted taking pills during a previous arrest in May of 2019.”
.
I still think there is negligence on the police’s part here, but this OD defense is a big problem for the prosecution. If the cops walk, it’s going to be because of this.
Tom– If he walks. At the same time, it sounds like the specifics of the charge make “he might have died anyway” not a defense. Also,in Minn merely contributing to the death is a problem for Chauvin. So Chauvin’s actions to someone who was “prepped” to die would still be murder according to MN law.
.
(FWIW: That’s they way I see murder too. Actions that contribute to death do not become “not murder” merely because the person was vulnerable and more likely to die. But according to the article you linked, that’s specifically the law in MN.)
Tom Scharf,
That NR article appears to be paywalled.
SteveF,
George Floyd wasn’t ‘prepped’ to die. He was dying. It isn’t a slam dunk that what Chauvin or the other cops at the scene did contributed to the process already underway. Floyd was resisting an apparently valid arrest so the police were allowed by law to subdue him. The question would seem to be, did Chauvin use excessive and unreasonable force. I don’t think so, but I’m not going to be on the jury.
Back on the topic of a Supreme Court nomination in the final year of a President’s term, here is a historical summary.
When Pres & Senate were of the same party: Of 10 vacancies where nominations were made prior to election day, 9 were filled. In 9 other cases where nominations were made after Election Day, 8 were filled, with the exception having been ineligible until the next Congress, at which time his name was re-submitted and approved.
Mike M. (Comment #190989): “Here is what appears to be a good review article on transmission of the Wuhan virus:
https://www.acpjournals.org/doi/full/10.7326/M20-5008”
.
Turns out it is not paywalled, but you need an account to download the PDF. The account is free. Normally, I regard such freebies as an invitation to be tracked, but I am guessing that the American College of Physicians is safe enough.
“But I don’t expect that to happen either. Democrats don’t want to let Blacks off their plantation.”
DeWitt, I have used the analogy of “planation politics” to describe some similarities of the Black person’s condition on the slave plantations to that of those living in the inner cities. Some would defer from that comparison as they would from using any comparisons to the Nazis. Some would also claim that a voluntary dependency on the government by various groups of citizens has more to do with a feeling of need of a safety net and security even whle claiming that that government effort has failed. The link below makes those arguments.
https://www.nationalreview.com/2013/07/plantation-theory-kevin-d-williamson/
There are, however, similarities in the inner city governments with that of plantation owners even though there is no subjection as there was under slavery. Unfortunately for those suffering from government intervention it can appear to be done with all good intentions and as such unintended consequences can be ignored for long periods of time. There might be some parts of the inner city unintended consequences that eventually get acknowledged, like the demolitions of public housing, but the system as a whole yet prevails. Building public housing might not even have had initially good intentions since it was rather obvious from the beginning that it kept housing separated by race.
Number one in my view as most detrimental to the people living under conditions of the plantation and inner city is that of the broken family and how the system of inner city dependency on government has led to that result. There is matter of inadequate education provided by those in control and the feeling of no ladders of opportunity from those denied. Even when a system of choice is available for education the powers to be want only what they can control available. There was a lot of violence used on the plantations to keep people in line and in fear. While in the inner cities it is not the government that perpetuates the condition of violence it certainly does exist despite the government and with resulting fears amongst the citizenry.
I suspect that overcoming and addressing the inter city problems will require a rebellion whereby the people there throw off the shackles of government and be allowed more control of their lives. This will not happen any time in the near future because once any group of people endure under the dependency of the government there does become the issue of giving up security and certainty in changing even a broken system. This condition has nothing to do with race as we might see when senior citizens invoke the third rail of politics when anyone suggestions changing Social Security and Medicare.
Anthony Fauci was on the news this morning stating that anyone who believed that the herd immunity threshold was on the order of 20% was “alone.” It was just a sound bite, but I would bet that no one asked him how he explained the results in Sweden if the HIT was 50% or more.
Even more disgusting was an interview with Jeff Daniels, who plays James Comey in the upcoming TV miniseries The Comey Rule, based on Comey’s book, A Higher Loyalty. Needless to say, Comey is the hero verging on sainthood and Trump the villain.
DeWitt,
“George Floyd wasn’t ‘prepped’ to die.”
.
I think you have me confused with someone else… I never wrote anything about Floyd being ‘prepped’ to die.
.
Still, I am reasonably certain Chauvin is toast.
DeWitt,
” Comey is the hero verging on sainthood.”
.
I think he is a criminal, but he will never face charges. Most unfortunate; if you do not punish criminal behavior, you get more of it.
“Anthony Fauci was on the news this morning stating that anyone who believed that the herd immunity threshold was on the order of 20% was “alone.—
.
The evidence is clear and overwhelming: the decline in cases and deaths in many places is consistent with herd immunity, and little else. Fauci is delusional, or beginning to suffer from dementia. Maybe both.
SteveF,
Sorry, that was lucia not you.
lucia,
So you’re effectively saying that if someone who has a heart condition, commits a crime, resists arrest, has a heart attack during the struggle and dies, then he was murdered by the police? I don’t think so. No officer was charged with a crime for shooting Breonna Taylor because they were acting correctly.
Speaking of which, the news is still saying that the police didn’t knock and didn’t identify themselves when executing the warrant, apparently based only on the testimony of the boyfriend who shot first. Apparently there is a civilian witness who disagrees completely. The rule is: know what you’re shooting at before you pull the trigger. The person 100% responsible for Breonna Taylor’s death is her boyfriend, not the police.
Dewitt,
Yes, I said “prepped to die”. That’s the most those who want to say Chauvin killed him come close to showing. Enlarged heart? High blood Fentanyl? Difficulty breathing? None of that amounts to “was dying”. It amounts to was in delicate condition and it might be easier for the kneed to the neck to kill him than otherwise. But it’s not “was dying”.
.
I realize the jury might let Chauvin off. But Floyd was walking around, talking, driving and etc when the police stopped him. He struggled– and some have wanted to complain showed signs of super human strength– that’s not “dying”. He complained of shortness of breath– but that’s not “was dying”.
Dewitt,
I notice you left out, is taken to the ground, has a knee applied to his neck for a long time, and becomes unconscious while the knee is at his neck and then the person applying the knee to the neck continues to apply the knee to the neck.
.
No: I’m not “effectively saying” something I did not say. You leaving out the details of those actions that make people conclude he was killed by the cops actions doesn’t mean I am leaving them out when discussing the incident.
.
I don’t see any connection with Breonna Taylor’s situation here.
DeWitt,
“No officer was charged with a crime for shooting Breonna Taylor because they were acting correctly.”
.
Apples and bananas; Floyd was not shooting at officers.
.
Of course officers being shot at (and one of them shot!) can return fire…. and not just officers: anyone. Breonna Taylor was also involved in her ex-boyfriends drug sale business. She should have stayed away from said ex-boyfriend. I note here (as John Kennedy said) that life is unfair. Her ex-boyfriend shot at the police, but survived, apparently by using her body as a shield.
DeWitt Payne (Comment #191091): “The person 100% responsible for Breonna Taylor’s death is her boyfriend, not the police.”
.
I am not convinced of that. When you break down someone’s door at one a.m., It is not unreasonable that the person might react in a manner that is less than cool and calm.
.
The real issue here is no-knock warrants. They seem to be used far more than they should be. I don’t know what justification the authorities had for that warrant, but it seems suspicious.
——–
SteveF (Comment #191094): “Breonna Taylor was also involved in her ex-boyfriends drug sale business.”
.
What evidence is there for that? Real question.
.
SteveF: ” She should have stayed away from said ex-boyfriend.”
.
Given that the ex-boyfriend was in jail and that he was her EX-boyfriend, it kinda sounds like she was staying away from him.
.
SteveF: “Her ex-boyfriend shot at the police but survived,”
.
It was the guy she was sleeping with. That does not sound like an EX-boyfriend. I think the ex-boyfriend was in jail.
.
SteveF: “apparently by using her body as a shield.”
.
That is the first I heard that. Do you have a source? It does seem strange that the guy the police shot something like 20 rounds at survived while someone else got hit 5 times.
Apparently this wasn’t a no-knock warrant though. The police state they changed the warrant and it was announce and enter. One witness claims he heard them announce “Police”. The boyfriend may very well have not heard it because he was asleep, but did wake up when the door was busted down. Once again this is a situation where body cameras would resolve the issue, none were worn.
.
Busting down doors is risky business and there are legitimate questions about when this should occur, but the boyfriend started shooting before anyone else and that’s why nobody is getting charged here. There are lots of strange things in this case, it smells a bit weird.
.
However when police enter and get fired on, then results are going to be bad for those doing the firing. The girlfriend dying is tragic, but she was hanging out with a drug dealer / felon and they have her on camera hitting trap houses with her boyfriend, so she knew what was going on.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/30/us/breonna-taylor-police-killing.html
.
Not quite an innocent bystander as the narrative would suggest, but there are probably many ways this situation could have been avoided by the police.
MikeM
They can call him an EX. But
https://abcnews.go.com/US/timeline-inside-investigation-breonna-taylors-killing-aftermath/story?id=71217247
Sharing an apartment is not “staying away from”. Having said that, I don’t think the question of whether he was an EX or not is the issue that got the police off. Even questions about her involvement in any drug deals are not the issue.
The cops were not indicted because he was shooting at them and in fact was the first to start shooting. I understand why he might shoot — thinking someone is breaking in and might attack him. In fact, that would be a plausible reaction for a drug dealer whether or not they shouted “Police” before breaking down the door. But the relevant fact is: he was shooting at the police.
.
If it was no knock– this tragedy means people serioulsy need to consider the use of no knock.
.
But yeah… Breonna put her self in danger by living in an apartment with a drug dealer. That doesn’t necessarily make her “not innocent”. It also doesn’t maker it “ok” that she got shot. But vis-a-vis the police– her boyfriend was definitely shooting first. It isn’t “maybe”.
Apparently the drug dealer was her ex-boyfriend, and her current boyfriend (who had no criminal record) was the one who did the shooting. Exactly what the relationship was with the ex-boyfriend drug dealer at the time of the shooting is a bit mysterious, perhaps no ongoing relationship. The ex-boyfriend had his mailing address at her house or something so exactly why the police did a search there is perhaps bad information on their part.
.
It looks like a clusterf*** all around.
Ahh… Ok. So the “EX” is Jamarcus Glover. She might have been staying away from him. But… still not relevant. The issue was the boyfriend was shooting. Police do get to shoot back at someone who is shooting at them.
.
Things went wrong– but they were being shot at.
Tom Scharf
Oh for sure.
The actual shooting was justified. The problem is all the screw ups that led to the shooting. The no-knock warrant. Not realizing that the drug dealer was no longer her boyfriend. Not properly survieling the apartment so that they did not know who was there. Executing the no-knock warrant as some weird hybrid of a no-knock and a regular warrant, so that it was not really executed according to the procedure for either.
.
It seems that all laws were followed, but it is still the fault of the police department. Civil liability, not criminal liability. Which may explain why they paid out so much in the settlement.
MikeM
Sure. But the department wasn’t being indicted.
.
The civil trial against appropriate targets should go differently.
This is all pretty simple: 1) don’t sell drugs, 2) don’t hold money for people selling drugs, 3) don’t shoot at people who have guns, 4) don’t have a boyfriend who sleeps with a gun by his side.
I have read that there were several thousands of dollars cash in the apartment. I do not know if that is true or not, but if true, then that strongly suggests drug dealing.
All I can say is the KY attorney general, who happens to be black, is an obvious racist and opposed to the advancement of African Americans like himself and his family.
.
Please. It is all so nutty that it is hard to take seriously.
MikeM, of the 20 shots, 10 were fired from the parking lot. This officer is the one who has been charged.
Reportedly the drug dealer was wiretapped and he said he kept cash with the deceased.
AG said it was not a no-knock warrant.
The police could just do the arrests in the afternoon. Their purpose behind these warrants is to catch the suspects off guard and less likely to shoot or destroy evidence. In this case, the person became more likely to shoot due to the surprise.
MikeN (Comment #191107): “AG said it was not a no-knock warrant.”
.
It most certainly was a no-knock warrant. A normal search warrant is served in the daytime and the police have to allow time to answer the door. That was not done. And even the witness who said the police identified themselves said they only did it once.
.
What they did was probably legal only because they had a no-knock warrant. I do not think it would have been legal to serve a normal search warrant that way.
.
MikeN : “Their purpose behind these warrants is to catch the suspects off guard and less likely to shoot or destroy evidence. In this case, the person became more likely to shoot due to the surprise.”
.
Yes, that is the purpose of the no-knock warrant. Had they just busted the door down, Taylor would probably still be alive since the boyfriend would have had no time to react. Had they proceeded like a normal warrant, Taylor would be alive. But they did it in a way that got the worst of both: they allowed just enough time for a shocked, disoriented reaction.
I have seen a fair amount of back and forth here as to whether George Floyd died independently of the pressure on his neck. Here is one recent article that summarizes the evidence. I haven’t followed this closely, so other than to state it appears to be a reasonable analysis, I have little to say. https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/09/the-george-floyd-died-of-an-overdose-theory/?utm_source=recirc-desktop&utm_medium=article&utm_campaign=river&utm_content=more-in-tag&utm_term=first
I am very frustrated by the way that police involved deaths are treated. It seems to be all about finger pointing. I think they should be treated like airplane crashes. There should be a careful investigation to determine what happened with the priority being how to keep it from happening again. Then there should be a system for implementing the lessons learned.
.
Of course, the investigation might expose criminal or civil liability, which should be acted on. But that should not be the priority.
.
Mini-rant over.
MikeM
I don’t see how anyone could do anything to prevent the public outcry against police after Floyd’s death. Generally speaking, you can’t put rules in place over public reaction.
.
The public quite naturally reacts differently in plane crashes because no one thinks the pilots or airlines did that out of malice, prejudice, motive to kill the passengers and so on.
JD Ohio,
That article has already been linked in this thread. The problem is it’s paywalled (NR+). I can only read the first paragraph.
DeWitt,
I managed to read it all with no paywall suggesting I pay. I reloaded, and I can still read it. One of the important issues that it highlights is this:
All “substantial” means is “of considerable importance, size, or worth”. So Chauvin’s actions don’t need to be the only thing involved in Floyd’s dying or even the main thing but of “considerable importance”.
.
That Chauvin was walking around, breathing and (and even accused of “super human strength”) before being put to the ground, and nearly pulseless and passed out after being put to the ground and having a knee to his neck for a long feakin’ time while those around the police warned the Chauvin that his actions were killing Floyd is going to make it hard to convince people that the knee to the neck was not a substantial causal factor in the death.
.
Another observsation is this
.
This “coincidental” issue is one I keep bringing up. That officers are still guilty if the shortened the life of someone who is dying significantly reduces the force of any defense argument that Floyd was in the process of dying. Shortening the life of someone who is dying is still considered killing them at law.
.
Chauvin’s attorneys may convince a jury or they may get a hung jury. But the gist of the article is that given what the law is they don’t actually amount to “not guilty”. That defense is going to have to argue that the knee to the neck did not contribute substantially to the death. Floyd went from moving/ talking to passed out and having no detectable pulse while the knee was to the neck. It’s going to be a tough road to convince people the knee to the neck didn’t contribute to the death.
One can right click on some paywall articles and open in incognito (or private) window and read some articles. They use cookies to let you read a few articles free and this method effectively resets the free article count. It is hit or miss with different sites.
There has been a lot of “car attacks peaceful protesters” narrative going around. Of the few that I have tracked down the reality seems to be the exact opposite. Confused driver wonders into protest, tries to get out, and subsequently gets attacked by the protesters (who are primed to think they are getting attacked). This one from yesterday is a bit hilarious because it is a Prius doing the “attacking”.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OhASWfJupqA
lucia (Comment #191116)
September 25th, 2020 at 9:59 am
It is all well and good that the public reacted to these killings but in my view I do not believe that the reactions are dealing with root causes of the problems. First of all the politicians running these governments where the shootings have taken place are able to separate themselves from the problems and not take responsibility for agencies over which they ultimately have authority. There has been little or no discussion of police unions keeping “bad” cops on the force. The amount of law enforcement time and effort spent on drug crimes where the participants are only harming themselves and not others gets very little coverage. Decriminalizing drugs is hardly discussed even when much of the inner city killings are related to illegal drug activities and drug gangs. The no knock warrants are primarily related to drug crimes and appear to me to be a process with a lot of potential dangers for those involved in victimless crimes.
The only cause put forth that gets attention is this vague reference to structural racism and white privilege. It would appear that this approach allows virtue signaling and vague promises of changes vis a vis race relations to replace any specific and detailed discussion of the root causes and required changes to address these causes. The more vague and general that this so-called problem is defined the less individual responsibility for it is required.
Tom Scharf,
I tried a private window, a different browser, VPN on, no luck.
This is from Tampa a couple days ago.
https://twitter.com/ByJoshFiallo/status/1308916037983834113
.
The driver ultimately refused to press charges against the car walker, so no deterrent. I do enjoy the protest mentality that the drivers are the problem here. These are out of control mobs. What you rarely see is the mob trying to get their bad actors to stop their behavior, but that is the very definition of mobs. The individuals seem to be performing for each other. Unfortunately for the actual peaceful protesters these scenes are dominating coverage lately.
DeWitt,
I’ll leave this up for a couple days.
https://1drv.ms/b/s!AoGdp8Ktf6eyi6sn4EUqUIacR99gCA?e=VkKqEx
I guess an unanswered question is: Have there been other similar instances of knee on the neck that did not end fatally? Obviously there are, but let’s say the defense shows evidence that this is used often without any problems, or they show a series of videos of this being used for long periods without unfortunate outcomes. This will bolster their story of simultaneous OD.
.
I’m not sure if the argument here is knee to the neck is always dangerous and should never have been used, or that it was just improperly done. I would say the OD defense is a stretch but this is what the defense will likely show. Even if it was “properly done” the cops are still negligent for not checking on his condition and not rendering aid sooner.
.
However I think a jury member who has heard of this case many times and seen the video will be surprised to learn that he had a potentially lethal dose of fentanyl and wonder why that was never brought up in any media coverage. They may then view the narrative differently going forward.
Tom,
The fentanyl is brought up in media coverage. It’s not brought up on many youtube videos– but those are just videos uploaded.
I hadn’t heard he had such a high level until I specifically searched for the level and what would be lethal. I think this has been ignored by the usual suspects but was highlighted by the other usual suspects. Jurors who only listen to one side of the media may be completely unaware.
lucia (Comment #191116): “I don’t see how anyone could do anything to prevent the public outcry against police after Floyd’s death. Generally speaking, you can’t put rules in place over public reaction.”
.
I did not say there should be no public reaction. My complaint is over the lack of any official mechanism to fix things.
.
lucia: “The public quite naturally reacts differently in plane crashes because no one thinks the pilots or airlines did that out of malice, prejudice, motive to kill the passengers and so on.”
.
Such motives are usually not a factor in police involved deaths. And pure greed has been a factor in major airline crashes.
I think a big factor in public reaction to airline crashes is that they know that problems will be fixed.
MikeM
Well, aviation is overseen at the federal level. That allows one mechanism. Local police are overseen at the local level.
No. But it’s possible and even plausible in some instances. It’s really rather implausible that a pilot crashed a jet because he decided african-americans could be treated differently had a grudge against a passenger and so on.
.
It’s not mine. It’s that I think it’s unlikely that the pilot is guilty of murder etc.
lucia (Comment #191129): “No. But it’s possible and even plausible in some instances. It’s really rather implausible that a pilot crashed a jet because he decided african-americans could be treated differently had a grudge against a passenger and so on.”
.
No difference. Yes, sometimes a police involved death is due to base motives on the part of the officer. But those are a very tiny fraction of all officer involved deaths. And base motives have been the cause of a number of airliner crashes.
.
As a fraction of deaths, base motives have been a *much* bigger factor in airliner crashes than police killings. If you limit that to base motives by pilots, it is not obvious in which such motives are a bigger factor.
.
lucia: “It’s that I think it’s unlikely that the pilot is guilty of murder etc.”
.
Yet there have been a number of cases of a pilot murdering everyone on the plane.
MikeM,
I don’t see how that’s “no difference”. In one case something is plausible. In the other it’s not. That’s a difference. The rate when it’s true in the situation where it is plausible does not make the difference vanish.
.
“Base motives” is a change of subject. “Base motives” include the airline wanting to save money and stinting on mechanical checks. That still doesn’t make it plausible that a pilot (who is himself on the jet) crashed a jet because he decided it’s ok to treat african americans badly.
.
The difference has to do with the specific type of base motives that are plausible. Erasing that into merely base doesn’t cut it.
.
Perhaps. Can you give examples with a commercial airline?
.
If it’s a private airplane crashing on purpose, this just becomes a regular old murder. It will be investigated by the police in addition to anyone regulating the airlines.
Egyptian co-pilot crashes a commercial plane March 2002
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EgyptAir_Flight_990
A Germanwings flight a few years ago was crashed by the pilot. That is likely what happened with the disappeared Malaysian Flight 370, but of course we don’t really know. A Silk Air flight a few years before. The Egyptian flight that was crashed by the pilot after taking off from New York, maybe 20 years ago.
Then there are the flights crashed by passengers. And by bombs. Or shot down.
Some form of intentional homicide is a substantial fraction of commercial airliner crashes.
An on duty cop kills someone.There is some probability, Pcop, that it was unjustified.
A commercial airliner crashes. The is some probability, Ppilot, that a member of the cockpit crew did it on purpose.
I am pretty sure that Ppilot > Pcop. By at least an order of magnitude. Maybe two orders of magnitude.
I am surprised to realize that. I think it is actually an indicator of the incredible safety of commercial aviation.
Mike M,
Over the past 20 years there have been some 600 million commercial flights. Over that time perhaps half a dozen were purposely crashed by pilot/copilot…. so 1 in 100 million chance. The number of arrests in the USA has averaged about 13 million per year for the last 20 years, so about 260 million arrests in total. To be equal in chance to a pilot or copilot crashing a plane, that would be 2.6 unjustified killings. I am pretty sure there have been more than 2.6 unjustified killings during arrest over the past 20 years.
.
Of course, plane crashes kill everyone on board, so the total number of passengers killed by crazy pilots is probably higher than unjustified killings by cops during arrests.
Note a big difference between the pilot crashing a plane and a cop killing a someone: the pilot dies too.
.
Another big difference: There are a lot fewer cases of pilots crashing planes.
.
Yes. In contrast, there are a lot more instances of police killing people even if the total number of people killed in crashes is high owing to the large number of people on planes.
.
Of course the public reacts differently to a pilot who kills himself along with a lot of people relative to a cop who kills an unarmed person.
MikeM,
I would also note that many killings by cops do not result in much news coverage. So I think you are wrong to diagnose what happened in the small fraction of cases that triggered recent unrest with there being something wrong with “the process”. (I’m not even sure these cases suggest there is something wrong with “the process”).
It’s kind of fun to see where Blackboard discussions go sometimes.
Sort of like an Asperger stream of consciousness poetry slam.
Jesus I need glasses. I thought Mike had written ‘there is some probability, poop, that it was unjustified…
Earle
heh. I like that.
DeWitt P. “That article has already been linked in this thread. The problem is it’s paywalled (NR+). I can only read the first paragraph.”
I have about 5 browsers. Firefox, Chrome, Opera, Maxthon among them. I know you tried one different browser, but I believe this site only has a few articles. I have had good luck with Maxthon reading otherwise paywalled articles, and I believe this is how I accessed this article. The more browsers the merrier and about 98% of the time, I get to paywalled articles.
Have you tried Brave browser?
It has this weird Bitcoin mechanism that lets blog owners get money as the users direct, who are paid for seeing some ads.
It appears to be as fast as they claim, though it does open a lot of processes in Windows.
The NYT walks back “Defund The Police”, as if they weren’t the #1 cheerleader of this effort all along. Seems like they figured out it will have electoral consequences.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/26/us/politics/minneapolis-defund-police.html
.
“Councilor Andrew Johnson, one of the nine members who supported the pledge in June, said in an interview that he meant the words “in spirit,†not by the letter. ”
.
the pledge was “up for interpretationâ€
.
“it was very clear that most of us had interpreted that language differently.â€
.
““I think our pledge created confusion in the community and in our wardsâ€
.
They “have gotten used to these kinds of progressive purity tests,â€
.
“I think the initial announcement created a certain level of confusion from residents at a time when the city really needed that stability,â€
.
This is by far my favorite: “In the meantime, “defunding the police†has become a talking point for state and national Republicans looking to paint liberals as anti-law-enforcement.”
.
Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha. Yes, Republicans “pounce” on the literal exact words liberals are using and help spread the word far and wide. Isn’t that helping? How dare those people twist the words of right thinking do gooders. Lest one not forget a recent NYT article:
.
Yes, We Mean Literally Abolish the Police
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/12/opinion/sunday/floyd-abolish-defund-police.html
Tom Scharf,
I tried your onedrive link, but still no article. It said it couldn’t find the reference. An incognito window in Chrome didn’t work either. It still said I’m out of free articles.
I used to be a print subscriber to National Review. I even donated extra money in the annual fund raising drives they had then. But after WFB died, it seemed to go downhill and I eventually didn’t renew my subscription. I have no intention of giving them any more of my money.
I just removed it earlier, ha ha. Not quick enough. It’s a PDF of the article. Try this one:
https://1drv.ms/b/s!AoGdp8Ktf6eyi6so5-zspDr71D_ybw?e=0F9lKR
Tom Scharf,
Thanks.
Not impressed, to put it mildly. They don’t say, for example, if the review by the Armed Forces Medical Examiner System was blind or not. Stating that some labs have been incompetent in the past does nothing to prove that this analysis was wrong. Tolerance to the psychoactive effects of fentanyl does not necessarily mean equal tolerance to the toxic effects. Definitely not going to subscribe again.
Blood levels after death are pretty much all we have to go on to determine cause of death. They also didn’t mention that not only was there 11ng/mL of fentanyl, there was also 5.6 ng/mL of norfentanyl, the main metabolite of fentanyl, which is also toxic. norfentanyl has a significantly lower molecular weight than fentanyl, so the molar concentration would be higher for the same weight concentration. Also, according to this article, the redistribution of fentanyl postmortem is somewhat controversial and may depend on how the drug was administered, say by patch, where there is little redistribution, or an intravenous bolus, where there’s a lot.
Conclusion: The author didn’t do his homework.
Also, if the Hennepin County ME had been doing a proper job, and not just shilling for the prosecution, the stomach contents and liver should have been analyzed for fentanyl. They did that for Prince, who definitely died from a fentanyl overdose.
Defunding the police is in my view merely a blockheaded slogan for leftists who are not certain how to go about changing the system. They have a number of hang-ups I am sure, for example, starting with police unions given their approval of public unions in general. If defunding the police, however, meant that what was desired was a police force that could operate more efficiently and with less funding and interferences in individuals lives I would have a few suggestions.
Number one would be publicizing how public unions can drive policy that is more in tune with what benefits the union members than the taxpaying citizens.
There a number of duties with which trained police are directly involved which could be handled by lower paid and lesser trained workers or better who are trained for a more specific duty. In my view a trained police person should be trained to handle almost entirely violent crime. It appears that violent crime occupies approximately 4% of police work.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/19/upshot/unrest-police-time-violent-crime.html
Victimless crimes should be considered both from how they are currently handled by the police and how the laws concerning these crimes can be changed/eliminated. The prohibition period of alcohol should have been a lesson on how making victimless crimes illegal creates crimes with victims. It also encourages law enforcement to infringe legally (no knock) and illegally on individual rights.
Decentralize the police agencies in highly populated areas and particularly in urban areas and inner cities. Give the neighborhoods more control over the police and even to the extent of deciding how or whether they are funded and who they hire. What works in one neighborhood will not necessarily hold for another. And who better to know what might work than the locals.
Kenneth,
All sound bite slogans are, in the end, blockhead slogans. Evidently, “Defund the police” sometimes really means “Defund the police”, sometimes it means something more nuanced. What precisely is left to the imagination.
.
“Black Lives Matter” taken literally is something that clearly anyone would agree with. But evidently, agreeing “Of course. All Lives Matter”, is an offensive retort. For the latter to be an offensive retort, “Black Lives Matter” must communicate something in addition to the obvious literal implication. But what precisely? And if it communicates something else, then how can someone say they “fully endorse” the statement unless we somehow all know everything the three word slogan conveys. When explained, perhaps someone can say they “fully endorse it” or perhaps they agree with some of the things it conveys and not others.
.
There have always been other slogans. “Better Dead than Red” (really?! ) “Might makes right”. “My way or the highway”. “All you need is Love” (ohs not food?)
.
Sometimes you know what they mean, sometimes you don’t.
Kenneth
One problem here is that you have to define “victimless”. The Breona Taylor tragedy involved drug running. (She wasn’t running them, but that was the crime they were pursuing.) Floyd’s was passing counterfeit currency. That doesn’t have an individual victim, but I don’t consider this victimless.
.
These aren’t like prostitution which when it involve consenting adults is generally victimless.
.
So many of the cases that are inspiring the slogan “Defund the Police” are not in the category we generally consider “victimless”. I mean seriously, I don’t think merely sending a social worker out to to discuss alternate employment options with a drug runner probably isn’t going to stop that behavior by individuals who are already doing it.
.
I’m all for improved education and so on. But we do need to be somewhat realistic about which circumstances can be dealt with using social workers or social programs.
lucia (Comment #191159)
September 27th, 2020 at 7:51 am
Lucia, I will go with the definition for victimless crimes used in the link below.
https://wiki.mises.org/mediawiki/index.php?title=Victimless_crime&action=edit
Not having the police involved does not mean that the void would be best filled by social workers. That void would be much better served with family and friends and perhaps community organizations. Both the police and social workers are trained to deal with these situations in a rather personally disinterested manner and too frequently with an evolved cynical and cold approach. You need people involved who care and have a personal stake in the matter.
I would submit that while crime rates in the US have been decreasing over past decades, some inner cities are suffering from crimes related to drug wars that are in turn the result of the government’s War on Drugs. Like Prohibition making drugs illegal creates crimes of not only the act of selling and purchasing the illicit drugs but of those related to finding money to purchase drugs and those involved with turf wars.
https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2014/10/inner-city-violence-in-the-age-of-mass-incarceration/382154/
lucia (Comment #191159): “These aren’t like prostitution which when it involve consenting adults is generally victimless.”
.
Prostitution is not victimless when you have solicitation taking place on the street in front of your home or business, or when the house next to yours is turned into a whorehouse. It is also not victimless when the prostitutes are victims of human trafficking or kept in thrall to a pimp via, say, drug addiction.
.
You might say that the latter do not constitute consent. That is true, but as a practical matter is not much of a difference. Such violations of consent are usually only uncovered in the process of enforcing anti-prostitution laws. So the elimination of such laws is an invitation to trafficking.
Mike,
That sounds like an argument for legalization and regulation more than anything else to me.
“Indeed, without the War on Drugs, the level of gun violence that plagues so many poor inner-city neighborhoods today simply would not exist.”
.
Not at all convinced of that. Certainly some gun crimes are drug related, but the thesis fails when assuming ending the War on Drugs means civilian on civilian drug related gun crimes will end. Legalizing drugs won’t end the black market, especially if the legal market is hit with onerous taxes that the black market avoids. Lots of gun crimes are unrelated to drug running, basically stupid immature idiots with guns.
.
I’m not a big fan of prison terms for drug crimes except when it ends in violence. There is no doubt illicit drugs are causing problems but I see this more as a social problem than a criminal problem. There is room for legitimate debate here.
.
I think I would sum up a lot of gun crime as: When you have very little in life and not a lot of future prospects then all you have is your self respect, and when someone tries to take that from you then that is worth fighting to the death over for many people. Do not publicly humiliate someone who has nothing to lose and a gun.
Mike M. (Comment #191162)
September 27th, 2020 at 10:17 am
The victimless laws are aimed at prostitution in any form. The side issues you brought up are separate and of which some are not victimless. Once a victimless activity becomes a crime it invites other criminal and supporting activities.
There are lots of activities in every day life that are not outlawed because those actions can have related criminal activity.
Tom Scharf (Comment #191165)
September 27th, 2020 at 10:46 am
That would sound like an argument for decriminalizing it – unless you feel social problems should be made illegal.
I do not buy the down and out mantra many attribute as a root cause factor to crime and particularly in the inner cities. Violent crime rates overall have been improving, but not with the shootings related to drug wars in the inner cities. I doubt very much that the down and out feeling is confined to high crime areas.
The down and out effect could very well be overcome with emotional support from the family, but for those groups who have been made more dependent on government the family unit has suffered. Dependency by itself can lead to a down and out feeling.
mark bofill (Comment #191163): “That sounds like an argument for legalization and regulation more than anything else to me.”
.
The regulated market will be more expensive than the unregulated market, possibly much more expensive. So there will still be a black market. So enforcement will then focus on the less well off.
I’m not sure that’s so. Possibly. If the unregulated market is illegal, it seems to me that that increases costs, although I really don’t know anything about it.
[Edit: I wonder if I can find or research alcohol prices before, during, and after Prohibition…]
Kennet
Having voids filled by family, and friends isn’t going to work if family and friends are the problem. That can often be the case when a person’s life falls apart. Over history and society, there have been parents who abuse, use or live off kids. Children have been known to steal from and abuse the lederly. Someone a person thinks is a friend might be a grifter.
.
When family and friends do love and support someone, yes, it’s best. In other situations, it can lead to uncontrolled abuse.
.
I find indirect accounts in passing here and there that claim alcohol prices rose during Prohibition by several hundred percent. *shrug* Mostly I see articles talking about alcohol consumption rather than price.
Kenneth,
I read your link and left wondering if that definition means passing counterfeit currency is considered victimless. Similarly, I wonder if “knowingly receiving stolen goods” is considered victimless. Or bigamy when bigamist succeeds in keeping it a secret from the multiple spouses.
Unless aggression is defined much more broadly than I ordinarily understand them, these do not involve “aggression”. I consider them very different from prostitution or drug use. I also don’t consider them “victimless”.
mark bofill,
Here you go… 1926 Chicago Speakeasy prices. https://calumet412.com/post/17114315378/prohibition-era-speakeasy-menu-c1926-chicago
.
Note that inflation has increased today’s prices by a factor of about 14.7, so those $0.25 drinks were $3.67 in today’s dollars, and a bottle of champagne $30 to $100 in today’s dollars.
.
The prices don’t seem at all out of line to me, and if anything considerably cheaper. Of course, income levels, even taking account of inflation, were MUCH lower than today. If you take into account the difference in inflation adjusted median income (probably a factor of three or more), those prices were probably pretty high for the customers.
.
Alcohol consumption did decline compared to pre-prohibition, but by the end of prohibition had recovered to about 70% of the pre-prohibition level.
Thanks Steve. I stand corrected.
No, wait. Those prices were inflated due to supply.
Meh, maybe I chose a poor example. I’d need to find something for sale that one can buy legally but under regulation and something one can buy illegally without regulation.
shrug.
mark bofill (Comment #191175): “I’d need to find something for sale that one can buy legally but under regulation and something one can buy illegally without regulation.”
.
Marijuana.
Good example. I read that legal marijuana is up to 50% more expensive here, so I’ll agree that I got that wrong.
Thanks Mike.
Lucia, the common libertarian definition of aggression includes fraud, counterfitting and other like crimes that do not involve direct physical aggression, but are regression nonetheless. These activities are obviously not between consenting individuals. Rothbard has spelled out the rationale of what aggression is in a violent crime – if you are interested.
Family members can be a source of abuse and violence, but overall families are a much better source of guidance and comfort for members than is an impersonal government agency. Families have been the most important social unit from historical times. Government intervention over time has weakened that important unit.
Leaders of BML have advocated for a lesser influence of the family unit. This may be part of a Marxist view of family.
Mark, making something legal and than regulating and taxing it with the politician’s favorite tax for the poor, i.e. the sin tax, can make the consumable expensive and encourage a black market. Quite frankly politicians do not care about the social consequences, their interests are finding sources of revenue that the taxpayer will swallow.
I was wondering about others experiences here with political yard signs and the potential significance thereof. I live in what is probably considered an upper middle class neighborhood with the housing within a few square blocks ranging from $180,000 dollar condos to multi-million dollar castle like homes. The neighbors are primarily professionals and small business owners. My area was a Republican stronghold for years, but has been tending less Republican in recent past times and elected a Democrat representative to congress for the first time in nearly 50 years. Although I live in IL which is a very blue state I think my neighborhood might be considered purple in a national context.
The signs I see in walks around the neighborhood are very heavy for the first time Democrat representative followed by a lot, if not somewhat less in totals, for Biden-Harris. The Republican candidate running for representative who has won several local and state elections and almost won a primary for governor against the incumbent has some signs but far fewer than her opponent. There are absolutely no signs for Trump and there were signs for him 4 years ago. If there is a silent contingency out there for Trump it is very silent. There are a few BLM signs.
Based on my neighborhood observations and national polling I see the makings in this election for a left wing revolution. I think that conservatives and my libertarian colleagues should be thinking about the consequences. In IL there is a constitutional amendment on the ballot to go from a flat to a graduated income tax. If that passes I will very seriously consider moving out of the state even though family obligations make that difficult.
Kenneth
Ok. Then they need to keep repeating this over and over lest those coming across their discussions think they mean the same thing other people thing it means. Or perhaps they should coins a new word!
Overall families are better. But poor families are going to be positively correlated with poor outcomes. So it’s not clear we can count on families fixing behavior of mal-factors or saving those who are abused.
Which is bad advice. But at the same time I don’t think you can suggest that when problems arise we should just leave it to families rather than having other systems in place. This certainly shouldn’t be either /or.
Signs about Huntsville AL are essentially the same as four years ago. If anything, I am seeing slightly more open support for Trump (there were virtually no signs or bumper stickers back then). Interestingly enough, I’m seeing some Trump signs in extremely liberal neighborhoods (like the plateau of Monte Sano).
Kenneth,
Yes. I think Trump is likely to lose badly.
.
Also: yes, I will move if the tax amendment passes. So will lots of people.
Kenneth,
Interesting observations. I have no doubt that Trump has offended a lot of middle and upper middle class people; let’s face it, his behavior routinely ranges between out-of-control and odious, topped with a heavy dose of offensive self-congratulation. In spite of people telling him since long before he took office that his behavior is damaging, he either can’t or won’t tone it down long enough to think carefully about what he is going to say (or tweet).
.
That said, I think the “social unacceptability” of someone explicitly supporting Trump has grown far more than his actual loss of support, especially in regions where a large number of people stridently oppose him. Lots of people say (anonymously, of course) that they do not tell their friends, neighbors, or co-workers about their support for Trump, because they know that any admission of support will lead to an unpleasant conversation… or far worse. It is much like the crazy idea you should shun someone (or get them fired!) based on their political beliefs. That lunacy appears to have been adopted by most everyone on the left of the political spectrum; they simply will not accept anyone could possibly hold fundamentally different views of what is best for the country’s future, or that Trump, despite his many obvious flaws, is a lesser evil than someone suffering dementia, and who will soon leave office…. President Harris?!? Yikes!
.
So I am not convinced Trump will lose in November. Of course he may well lose… there is a price to pay for acting like a jerk and a half much of the time, no matter what you have accomplished in office. But I think there are plenty of “shy” Trump supporters who will vote for him, and they will surprise the pollsters again. I will be surprised if the election is not very close.
I don’t know what’s going to happen in November. It seems a lot less unlikely to me that Trump could win this time than last time. Polling is similar; Biden’s lead at this point is slightly larger than Clinton’s was at this time, and appears more stable than Clinton’s was.
Beats me. We’ll soon find out.
mark,
Yep. We’ll know soon enough. Possibly early November, if not perhaps late November.
Anyone besides me watching the debate Tuesday?
Curiously there is almost zero political physical advertising in my area with yard signs, bumper stickers, etc., and this is a battleground state. TV is a bit different, which is saturated with political ads to the point of making it unwatchable (… and the always in FL message that Social Security will be “gone” in 3 years …)
.
I thought Trump was going to lose badly last time, and the only thing more amazing than 2016 would be if Trump could act like a clown for 4 years and then win again. I’m not expecting that to happen.
Somebody in Illinois is going to have to pay past due bills. They are going to have to raise taxes and reduce services, there is no other way out except for a federal bailout which would be wildly unpopular. This was a monumental disaster before covid hit, and that has only made it worse. Illinois needs to retract the previous amendment that made future union benefits untouchable. You would need to be crazy to move to Illinois I think.
Tom Scharf
Perhaps default or bankruptcy are possible.
.
Yes. The amendment we NEED is to retract the one that makes future union benefits untouchable. That’s not the one they proposed.
States can’t declare bankruptcy at the moment, but that could change if Congress sees fit. They can’t agree on what day of the week it is now. Defaulting on loans and bonds would just make future borrowing impossible. It’s not a good situation to say the least. Some of the union benefit arrangements are such that they agree to forego Social Security and their retirements are purely city/state based. Good deal for the mobsters but I’d hate to be those retired people now depending on the good will of future IL taxpayers.
Mark,
No, I’ll read the transcript later. I can hardly tolerate listening to any politician for very long…. those two will make it especially intolerable; an obnoxious arrogant buffoon vs an Alzheimer patient trying to spout answers he is listening to in his earphone? Add to that the preening performance art of the ‘reporters’ trying to ‘get’ OMB, and I have to say “no thanksâ€.
.
Come to think of it I, couldn’t listen to Obama after his first year or so in office either (too obviously arrogant and dishonest), and Hillary…. 10 times worse than Obama. I could listen to Bill Clinton, even when I knew he was lying, probably because he knew we all knew he was lying (was almost like an inside joke; I half expected he would wink at the camera when he told an obvious whopper). Reagan was no problem. Bush the elder seemed horribly uncomfortable and out of place (a patrician having to talk to the rabble) and Bush the younger was just not very smart, and difficult to listen to for very long. Jerry Ford just wanted to find a way to escape a fate he never asked for, and it showed. Jimmy Carter was so dumb I thought his head was actually full of peanuts; listening to Jimmy
made people less intelligent.
.
So I have avoided presidential debates for a while.
Mark,
This is a reasonable facsimile of how the debate questions will be asked by the ‘disinterested moderators’…. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=5ohlA__xABw
Tom, Lucia,
Bankruptcy for Illinois (and other states) only works if the bankruptcy process addresses the root causes of the bankruptcy… and that is public employee retirement benefits. Since that will never be allowed, bankruptcy will just steal from all the other people and companies the state owes money to. Unless the Democrats in Congress manage to steal from the rest of the country to bail out states like Illinois, the problem will continue. But after bankruptcy nobody is going to extend credit to the state. Increasing taxes is not going to work either, since many people will just move away. Ultimately, retirement benefits are going to have to be cut. The only question is how much damage will be done before that happens.
SteveF writes, “But after bankruptcy nobody is going to extend credit to the state.”
Argentina.
Thomas,
Argentina bonds are essentially junk rated, and current annual yield is ~40%. That is unsustainable. It is because investors recognize the risk of extending credit to Argentina. If Illinois can walk away from its debts like Argentina can, then investors will treat Illinois debt much like Argentina’s. Illinois has no choice but to reduce its long term (and unsustainable) financial obligations…. unless Congress and a Democrat president bail them out by making other people pay those obligations.
Detroit went bankrupt. I think their bonds were upgraded from junk status within a year. Don’t know what they are now.
Part of the bankruptcy settlement in Detroit was that the unions accepted a lump sum payment in lieu of all future obligations.
——
I think that Argentina went bankrupt and restructured its debt. Then the defaulted a couple times on the required payments. So of course their credit is trash.
The Federal Government bailing out Illinois would be just kicking the can down the road a few years. Total Federal debt is increasing at an increasing rate. We’re very close to finding out if MMT works whether we planned to or not. Biden proposes to raise taxes, but nowhere near enough to fund his spending proposals. Raising taxes on those with higher incomes never raises as much money as expected.
States will get better financing terms because they aren’t allowed to declare bankruptcy. There is no free lunch here. People will be less likely to hand you new money if you have failed to pay back old money. Some people will do it but you will need to give them better terms.
If Trump manages to get a 3rd justice on the SC, and manages to not launch the nukes in the next 3 months then it will all have been worth it. Many of the left’s most egregious excesses will never pass an originalist SC view.
Tom,
It’s pretty much a done deal; McConnell has the votes he needs.
FL went in phase 3 reopening. Much to the tut-tutters chagrin the case rates are still falling although pretty much leveled off with moderately high death rates still. The virus continues to be very difficult to predict both where the escalations will be and when and where the declines will be, and their acceleration rates, and when a second/third phase will occur. It’s appears it is now the midwest’s time in “the box”, and the south is exiting the same. In summary the virus is still in charge.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2020/national/coronavirus-us-cases-deaths/?itid=hp_pandemic-guide-box
.
My father watches MSNBC 24/7 and he can’t form a sentence with vaccine in it without the word election, ha ha. He’s lost a bit of sharpness but it seems Team Science is willing to downplay and inject doubt into a vaccine if it helps Trump in any way. I finally got him to say he will take his doctor’s advice on the situation.
SteveF
Oh… absolutely.
Less than 12 hours to go, and Biden still has not bowed out of the debate.
.
I am sure that he has spent weeks memorizing various canned statements. I think that is how he did as well as he did in the final debate last March. Sanders never really went after Biden, so Sleepy Joe had no need to think on his feet. I am guessing that the key for Trump tonight will to be push Biden out of his prepared lines and make him improvise; the result will likely be incoherence. I like Trump’s chances.
I’m not holding my breath, but I agree with you that that’s what Trump ought to shoot for. If Biden is well prepared and maintains discipline he’ll more or less ignore Trump and just answer Chris Wallace’s questions. Doubtless his responses will contain prepackaged attacks on Trump.
I’m not expecting a Biden meltdown. He’ll creak through I think.
mark bofill (Comment #191210): “I’m not expecting a Biden meltdown. He’ll creak through I think.”
.
I am hoping for a meltdown, but I have no idea what to expect. He did way better than I expected against Sanders in March, but Sanders never pressed him. And lately Biden has been so confused, even when reading from a teleprompter. But he will be well prepared.
.
So we shall see. A reason to watch.
Curious framing by NPR: “Taylor’s boyfriend, Kenneth Walker, has said he thought the officers were intruders and fired a warning shot. Then officers opened fire.”
.
Perhaps it might be important for readers to know the detail that the alleged “warning shot” hit a police officer in the leg.
I think all these lids over the past weeks that they said was for debate prep, was exactly that. They changed his sleep schedule to wake up later, and thus his sundowning would not happen at 9PM.
I read the medicine they might be giving him produces incontinence. Now I read that they requested a 30 min break every 30 minutes.
I still wonder if this is a big fakeout to lower expectations.
Mark Steyn takes a look:
https://www.steynonline.com/10656/world-record-breaking-expectation-lowering
MIkeN,
Odd, I was not aware that US Presidents always get a 30 minute break each hour. I’m trying to understand how that works in a crisis.
.
BTW,
I did not find incontinence as a side effect of any of the common early stage dementia drugs. Some anti-psychotics do have that side effect. Maybe they are just giving him caffeine.
This story is popping up all over the place: https://townhall.com/tipsheet/katiepavlich/2020/09/29/breaking-russia-hillary-set-it-up-n2577153
More hooey, if you ask me. I think every bit of it was hooey Russian counter intelligence from day one.
mark,
Yep. All sorts of unverifiable stuff comes up before elections. Also, all sorts of stuff that might need investigation but which you… can’t…. quite… check spin on.
.
This year a bit early because people’s ballots are coming. Mine arrived yesterday.
Lucia,
“Mine arrived yesterday.“
.
You must be another Trump vote for sure. 😉 But in Illinois, it really doesn’t matter who you vote for in the presidential election.
Our biggest concern is local races. Jim’s brother Robert works for the county and knows some of the people in races lower down the political rungs.
Lucia,
“ Our biggest concern is local races.â€
.
Why?
Aww lucia. You should mask up and go vote in person. You could be part of something historic this year- it’s just faintly conceivable that on the evening of November 3rd the polls will close showing Trump has won Illinois!
Of course, the next day or so the mail in ballots will be counted and we’ll all return to reality.
Showtime! So it begins.
SteveF,
Real estate taxes, local schools, taxes for the forest preserve…..
.
The Illinois “Fair Tax” bill is a biggie too.
Biden isn’t senile, but he’s fighting outside of his weight class.
But Biden is probably meeting his low expectations and Trump is not really on his game.
Mike, I agree. Biden is meeting low expectations.
Is Trump capable of shutting up for 2 consecutive minutes?
Not a rhetorical question.
Think Biden made 2 major gaffes at the beginning of the debate. Said 100 million people had pre-existing conditions. Out of 330 million people in the US, this is almost certainly wrong. There are not 100 million people with significant pre-existing conditions that would affect private insurance. Also, the 7 million survivors of covid, do not have pre-existing conditions. Maybe 5% of them will have something significant. Most of them are better off for having survived the disease.
Can’t stand watching debate. Trump needs to let Biden talk. When Biden is stumbling into the weeds, Trump saves him by interrupting. Have only watched 10 or 20% of the debate.
Harold,
No, he’s not.
.
That’s quite true.
Biden survived largely due to Trump errors. Trump’s interruptions shielded Biden from having to spend time answering Wallace’s questions, and Chris Wallace was asking harder questions than anyone in the media has been asking him. Pity.
Did. Not. Watch.
.
Going. To. Bed.
Well, that was miserable.
I think mark is right that Trump should have let Wallace do more of the work of challenging Biden.
Lucia: “Did. Not. Watch.”
You. Did. Not. Miss. Anything.”
According to CBS’s post-game poll, 17% of respondents claimed that the debates were “informative”. I find that very hard to believe; should be a figure not significantly above zero.
They also asked “who won?”. Well, neither candidate did anything for me, so I’d say Jo Jorgensen. Not sure how much of that is due to expectation or true reaction.
I have not watched or read the transcript of a political debate for years. Debates of the US presidential form have never been informative. Trump by removing the veneer of political smooth talk has shown just how dishonest and misleading at best political talk is.
It would be more informative to have candidates answer a series of questions in writing followed by critiques/replies by the opponent, again in writing. The candidates could use support from others just as they would do as President.
I not only dislike these debates, but find them an affront to my intelligence.
I didn’t watch the debate because I was interested in learning more about each candidates position[s]. I watched because I’m intensely interested in the outcome of the election, and I didn’t want to rely on second hand accounts of what happened.
shrug.
I don’t think I’ve watched a debate since Reagan, and that was useless. This is just manufactured drama, performance theater. If you like it for entertainment then that is fine, but if you expect to be informed then you will undoubtedly be disappointed.
.
Examine what people have actually done in the past and you will be way better informed on what to expect in the future relative to their political talking points. The left/right are anchored to their platforms and the near robots they put out are hard to differentiate election to election. It is true that the right currently has an orangish clown robot but the meaningful positions remain unchanged.
.
The media keeps trafficking in the myth that people vote based on a referendum on political character, who can talk the smoothest and appear the smartest.
.
Who went to the finest finishing school? I don’t think this is true at all. People have a priority of values and that leads them to a voting decision that any debate is very unlikely to change. If I care about freedom of speech and a hands off government mentality was anything anybody said last night important? I very much doubt it.
The media has gotten their talking point unified.
.
Q: “Are you willing, tonight, to condemn white supremacists and militia groups and to say they need to stand down?â€
A: “Sure, I’m prepared to do that. But I would say almost everything I see is from the left wing, not from the right wing. If you look, I’m willing to do anything. I want to see peace.”
.
The Atlantic: “President Donald Trump refused to clearly condemn white supremacy”
NYT: Trump Won’t Condemn White Supremacy
NPR: From Debate Stage, Trump Declines To Denounce White Supremacy
.
Yawn. A very uncharitable interpretation of the answer I would suggest. Then Biden goes on to say antifa is an idea, not an organization which is left unchallenged by the media. A pretty dishonest review of that subject relative to the latest mostly peaceful protests. Keep digging that credibility grave.
Trump had one job–convincing suburban white women that it was okay to vote for him.
As with every other time that he had one job, he failed.
I don’t know Thomas. He totally dominated Biden. I’ve read that the book ‘Fifty Shades of Grey’ is popular among the demographic you’re referencing.
The debate was pretty hot.
~grins~
🙂
It was a Rorschach debate.
Good luck arguing over whether the inkblot was a narwhale or a SEAL Team Six assault.
Wallace had to be a media hack trying to GOTCHA! the bad orange man. Would much rather he didn’t predicate all his questions with the MSM talking-points and instead enforce some discipline on the speakers. But no. He failed the country, bigly.
Thomas,
“Trump had one job–convincing suburban white women that it was okay to vote for him.”
.
Well, that may be a bit of an oversimplification. 😉
.
FWIW, my wife absolutely loathes Trump and thinks he is a horrible person, but she may end up voting for him because she so strongly disagrees with most all of the policies so many Democrats broadly support: BLM, Burn-Loot-Murder (which is not exactly the same as BLM), embracing all the ‘woke’ PC nonsense along with organized efforts to destroy….socially, financially, and professionally….. anyone who won’t get with the woke program, third trimester abortions, wealth confiscation, etc, etc. My observation is white women pretty much all agree Trump is horrible. What I am not sure about is if they are willing to ignore the frightening policies of those on the left who will dominate any Biden administration.
Earl,
I think you mean narwhal. It is probably BOTH a narwhal and a SEAL assault.
Did you read it, Mark? I never got around to it, but my aunt, who passed away in August, read the whole series while in hospice.
I think she died happy…. 🙂
Sadly, no. So many dirty books, so little time…
As a side note to the debate, media here are reporting that 20 minutes into the debate “moving to New Zealand” started trending on google. By end of the debate it was at 100 on google’s 0-100 popularity scale. A plague on both your houses?
On other hand, we had our second leader’s debate last night. If would-be immigrants had watched that fractious affair, they may have changed their minds.
Phil Scadden (Comment #191250): “On other hand, we had our second leader’s debate last night. If would-be immigrants had watched that fractious affair, they may have changed their minds.”
.
🙂
The debate last night reminded me of the leader’s debates in Canada.
When I first moved to Canada, I was stunned by how petty and mean their politics were. After a while, I realized it was not worse or better than in the States, just different.
Recent shennigans in US and UK achieved what I thought was impossible – it made our politicians look not too bad.
The politics is certainly different in different countries, but politicians are depressingly similar.
@StevF
Whoops, thanks for catching the typo.
@PhilScadden
The phrase “moving to Canada” has been a popular “threat” that gets aired every four years. It’s funny how few (any?) actually do.
Yep, for sure. Real immigration from US is tiny – maybe 2000 extra residents since Nov 2016, and of course impossible this year unless you had already got permanent resident status. Presumably easy enough to find out how many actually do move to Canada. It is a funnny reaction however.
My impression is it’s not especially easy for Americans to move to Canada. 🙂
Hollywood actors like to threaten to do it but rarely seem to. Perhaps they discover the tax consequences are adverse. (During the Obama administration they did make it very expensive for rich people to give up US citizenship. For others… not so much.)
Lucia,
“ During the Obama administration they did make it very expensive for rich people to give up US citizenship. For others… not so much.â€
.
Perfectly consistent with the “You didn’t build that†mentality of Mr Obama. Not to mention the often stated desire for wealth confiscation at death. For those who have never actually built anything, assigning all success to “the support of the community†is a facile position to hold. Facile, but still mistaken, as the lack of innovation and economic growth in the world’s socialist paradises clearly shows.
We’ve always had some sort of expirtation tax. The 2008 one is the Heart Act. It’s discusssed at Wikipedia.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expatriation_tax
It sounds like the way it works is you pay taxes as if you liquidated all assets (including pensions and so on.)
Lucia,
There are many millions of citizens who live outside the States, most either for employment or low cost retirement. They remain subject to US income taxes, with some income exemption and credits for taxes paid elsewhere.
.
The number who renounce US citizenship to become citizens of other countries, mostly to avoid US taxes, is tiny (about 5,000 per year). These are almost all very wealthy individuals who have large assets outside the States and are willing to forfeit a substantial fraction of all US assets to escape US taxes on the rest. The process is often described as difficult and extremely costly (high exit taxes).
.
Edit: cross posted.
Phil,
Here’s an article. It’s a bit stale
https://abcnews.go.com/US/inside-university-illinois-massive-covid-19-testing-operation/story?id=72686799
From September 10
But note that on Sept 2, the did lock down because they discovered they’d has more than 400 new positives since the start of school. (More than modeling predicted.) This was because of large parties over the “past weekendâ€. But evidently, they then got transmission down.
The testing is also helping them find who is getting infected
I’ll try to find something newer. Obviously, final reports from researchers will take time. But unlike some other schools, UofI has not gone online.
This was the modeling problem
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-02611-y
more
.
So… some groups need to be watched more carefully. (Frats have been known for partying.) They need to go snag the positives instead of thinking they’ll all act like responsible people and head on into quarantine on their own.
.
I haven’t read much since– so that’s generally good news with this sort of thing.
“People who made those bad choices have been suspended”
.
Sounds like a great reason to not talk to contact tracers.
Tom,
Maybe. But perhaps they’ll suspend you if you refuse getting tested regularly and/or if you fail to talk to tracers. Basically: if you somehow can’t manage to talk to a tracer you can’t go to class either. (The school knows your class schedule after all. They can send a note to the professor or teaching assistant in charge telling them to bar someone from entrance– or I think they can.)
This won’t prevent lying, but it could at least make people talk. Just keeping them out of class would prevent spread in class even if it doesn’t help outside of class.
If the goal is to prevent the spread of the disease, there should be no penalty attached to talking to a contact tracer and it should be as confidential as can be made possible. If the goal is to punish wrong doers then the rules change, at the very least contact tracers should then make it clear up front anything people say can and will be used against them.
.
I’m pretty much against the use of state power to enforce covid restrictions on private citizens (which are not quarantines of already ill people). There are always going to be some people who are not going to comply and I just don’t see much benefit here to punishing them and a whole lot of drawbacks. I think there are a some over zealous people out there who want society made perfectly safe for them and others need to be punished for any exceptions.
.
FL recently banned the punishment of individuals for covid restrictions, but businesses can still be held accountable, a decent trade off I think. There are some gray areas here though.
.
Man refused to disband party that violated COVID order, gets year in jail
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2020/09/man-gets-year-in-jail-for-throwing-parties-in-violation-of-covid-order/
lucia,
Did UIUC start by testing everybody? I ask because a person can test positive for weeks after they are no longer contagious. So if a person tests positive shortly after testing negative, then they have likely been recently infected and have a significant chance of being contagious. But if the first test is positive, then the person is probably not contagious.
Do they do confirmatory tests, to guard against false positives?
Even the NYT is beginning to notice that antifa isn’t an illusion:
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/30/opinion/anarchists-protests-black-lives-matter.html
We get, for example, a black clad, masked person who breaks a store window with a crowbar during a ‘protest’ and then vanishes back into the crowd.
Edit: IMO, the debate was a disaster for Trump. At this point he is dead meat. That could still change, but it would require change from Trump that has a vanishingly small probability of happening. I’m reminded of the Mr. Garrison character in South Park in 2016. He was the Trump stand-in. He kept saying more and more outrageous things because he didn’t want to be President. It didn’t work then, but I think it will this time.
Thanks Lucia. That is extremely interesting and quite encouraging. I hope the saliva test method can be more widely deployed (as in available in NZ). Our universities are screaming for restrictions on foreign students to be relaxed and want to run their own managed isolation centres. Problems with private security both here and in Australia (outbreak in Victoria blamed on a security guard bonking someone in quarantine) have made the government leery of such arrangements but widespread, cheap testing regimes should make it possible. Only 81 infections a day is a bit eye-popping for here.
I dont have any problem with sanctions against people going out socially while knowingly having the virus. Seems no different from driving under the influence. If you are avoiding contact tracers and testing, then that suggests the person suspects they have the virus and dont want their social life curtailed.
“If you are avoiding contact tracers and testing, then that suggests the person suspects they have the virus and don’t want their social life curtailed.”
,
“I’m from the government, I’m here to help”.
.
Only half of people even talk to contact tracers when reached in the US. Only half of people are contacted within 24 hours. That’s a 25% hit rate. 10x more people get the virus than get verified through testing. That’s 90% of people outside of the testing and contact tracing system.
.
If contact tracers are going to put somebody on a quarantine monitoring list under penalty of law, then I sure won’t be answering the phone. If my neighbor Phil is going to be peeking out his window at me with his speed dial set to Quarantine PD then I’m not going to tell Phil someone in my house has an illness.
.
The way you prevent not getting ill from others is not going out socially yourself. People spread the illness before they show symptoms, many have mild symptoms, many can’t discriminate between covid and the many assorted allergies and so forth we deal with all the time. Many are just in denial when they first get sick. The most contagious time of 2 days before and 2 days after symptoms appear a person likely won’t have a test result back. That’s why the virus is as successful as it is. It’s not a bunch of hooligans with immoral behavior that is the primary source of the virus.
.
The number of people getting ill from intentional exposure from knowingly ill people is likely tiny. That’s paranoia, there isn’t a hoard of virus zombies hunting people out there.
MikeM
Yes. Fast antigen test, and repeated twice weekly.
Yes. This is why they are testing twice weekly. It’s the first positive that’s an issue from the pov of contagion. They then confirm with another test and isolate.
Yes. But since the “penalty” for being positive is something like going into quarantine and taking online classes for a while, I don’t consider false positives are the tale of horribles “some” like to make out on certain blogs.
.
It’s not like they put you to death, through you in prison, perform a mastectomy or cut your balls off.
Thanks, lucia. So it would seem that they should be getting good data on false positives and long after the fact positives. Have they released such data?
Tom
It’s not just socially. At a university, the “way” would be to not go to in person classes. So if a university wants to hold in person classes and limit spread, they need to find a way to prevent the contagious from being in the class while they are contagious (which is not a long period.
Yep. The goal of testing at Illinois is to find them just before the those first two days before they are ill, then isolate.
.
They aren’t really using contact tracers to find these people. I’m guessing the students weren’t so much evading “contact tracers” as evading phone calls from those who would tell them they had positive results.
.
Well… the students who want to go to parties the first week of school aren’t hooligans. They are just kids who feel ok and want to go to a party. But that means people need to deal with that if they want to slow the spread.
Lucia,
“It’s not like they put you to death, through you in prison, perform a mastectomy or cut your balls off.”
.
Ouch! Steps guaranteed to reduce enrollment. 😉
MikeM
Well… the program’s been going little over a month. So I would suggest it’s a bit early to expect that. I suspect they will eventually release it.
Lucia,
“good data on false positives”
.
Would seem to depend on who they last kissed.
I find the evolution of the pandemic in Europe very interesting. Look at Spain, Italy, and France. Recent case rates have jumped, but deaths per case look like they have dropped to under 1 in 100. IOW, the people in Europe getting the virus now are completely different from who got it in the “first wave”. The drop in fatalities per case is astounding.
Tom, I find that just hard to understand. Why would you not speak to a contact tracer? The contact tracers here appear to have corralled our most recent outbreak and they seem to be shutting down the Australian outbreak too, helped by a pretty hard lockdown over there. As of few days ago, contact tracers hit 100% contact. It seems effective in Vietnam and South Korea too, without the lockdowns. Once you have people who are exposed but not yet infectious isolating, then virus has nowhere to go.
“The number of people getting ill from intentional exposure from knowingly ill people is likely tiny”
A difficult to no. to measure, but Australia is happy https://www.theage.com.au/national/victoria/very-disappointing-people-with-covid-19-not-staying-home-going-to-work-20200730-p55gwf.html
Contact tracing there is finding workplace transmission very common.
Steve, I think you are right about the people getting it in Europe. I see reports of various countries being far more proactive in protecting nursing homes second time around. More testing, hard lockdowns, no contractors/staff working in multiple homes. I think the key statistic to look at is the age structure of cases.
Phil Scadden (Comment #191285),
It sounds to me like a lot of Australians are very unhappy. If I understand that link, a guy was stopped at a checkpoint and fined over a thousand dollars for the crime of buying a coffee, Four others with huge fines for (gasp!) going fishing. That sort of repression will lead to an explosion. At least I hope so.
.
And it sounds like people are refusing to stay home after getting a positive test. So it is pretty clear that the public is not buying in. They are just submitting.
Phil,
It’s fundamentally a trust in government issue.
.
This is better viewed within the viewpoint of the recent discussions of whether talking to the FBI is a good idea. The FBI has made a habit of creating the crime during the interview (you misspoke, misremembered, etc.) and then they tell you to turn state’s evidence or they will charge you with a felony for “lying” to the FBI. Martha Stewart, Flynn, etc. This doesn’t happen to very many people, but it happens to exactly zero people who don’t talk to the FBI.
.
One of the reasons you wouldn’t talk to a contact tracer is you can just handle it yourself. There is no particular reason the government needs to get involved. This is an option, not a requirement.
.
I don’t feel comfortable revealing personal information to the government unless I fully understand that they won’t use it against me. There are plenty of people in the US who faced with “irresponsible” behavior that they disagree with will want criminal penalties applied. My city has had over 800 calls to the police over mask issues. The judgment calls here for the covid busybodies are inevitably different for their in and out groups. I’d prefer to avoid the covid tribunal by never allowing it to occur in the first place.
.
One can still act responsibly and reject government oversight. There is citizen’s trust in government, and there is also government’s trust in citizens.
.
“Mr Andrews confirmed authorities are building capacity so teams of ADF and health officials will soon be visiting and doorknocking every positive case.”. Ha ha, that would just never fly in the US, and knowing that would be in place many people would choose not to get tested. I think those doorknockers would become familiar with the phrase “get the f*** off my lawn” in the US. The US clearly values liberty and privacy more than other places. Perhaps this is why the outbreak is larger here, but nobody said there were no downsides to liberty.
.
As for NZ and Australia I hope they remain mostly clear until a vaccine is available, but I think this may be mostly good fortune rather than a compliant population.
Tom Scharf,
“My city has had over 800 calls to the police over mask issues. The judgment calls here for the covid busybodies are inevitably different for their in and out groups.â€
.
Which is why, I guess, Santos put an end to all that nonsense. I will proudly *not* wear a mask when I arrive in Florida in a couple of weeks. No doubt I will be forced to use a mask by certain retail establishments and restaurants, but I will do my best to avoid those, and make sure they know that it is costing them business. Really, I think the madness is all but over save for the shouting. Some will never accept that, of course. I don’t care a bit if they never do.
Mike M. The crime isnt going fishing or buying a coffee. The crime is putting people at risk by potentially spreading the infection. Again, I dont see difference between that and getting behind the wheel of car when under the influence. Do you consider that undue state control of a persons liberty? And yes, a lot of Australians are extremely unhappy – with the idiots not following the rules designed to keep people safe.
Tom – and if people dont act responsibly, infecting vunerable people and causing economic damage, then what?
I do think the population is highly motivated to eliminate the infection – many polls have confirmed that – but the government is also has a realistic view of human nature and so we have enforcement too – mostly “education” but fines for repeat offenders and enforced quarantine for high risk. Actually, during last outbreak, health officials were moving positive cases and their families into managed quarantine (hotels). It is not clear whether this was enforced but the director of health certainly has the powers to enforce it if he chose to. However, people are certainly compliant to point of cooperating with contact tracers and getting tested. That has been the key to control.
I read somewhere that if you wanted to understand the societal dynamic of the US, then the key word would be “Liberty”. The equivalent in NZ and Australia would be “Fair go, mate”. Obviously we have a much higher trust of the government. After all, we elected them.
Phil,
You think you are controlling the virus, but I very much doubt that. That is an illusion. The south and midwest in the US very much controlled the virus as well, right up until they didn’t. Europe controlled the virus after a lockdown, until they didn’t. India and Brazil were spared for reasons nobody really understood until they were no longer spared.
.
And if you want to believe that India and the UK didn’t give out enough fines for fishing that is your prerogative. The biggest nanny states in the US were hit the hardest, there just isn’t much of a correlation between government suppression efforts and success that I see. The virus is clearly winning on its terms. You either get a vaccine taken by most of the people or hit herd immunity. Otherwise halting this pandemic is like trying to stop the tide from coming in at this point. You are going to get wet eventually.
Tom, perhaps define “control”? The aim is no community transmission for most of the time. (There is always a cases showing up in the managed isolation centres. Everyone goes into those on entry to the country for 14 days, with tests at day 3 and 12. If you test positive, you are moved to managed quarantine which is a whole lot tighter but with medical facilities as well). At the moment, it appears that we have got no community transmission going on, and didnt have any going on from April to August.
“Control” to us, also means that when the border is breached (and it will happen again), then contact tracing, testing and isolation will clean up the infections fast with localised lockdowns if necessary to help the contact tracers.
And, yes I agree that only exit is via herd immunity, and in our case that will hopefully be a vaccine.
I would also say that elimination or tight control as in here, Australia (to lesser degree), Vietnam, China, South Korea, Taiwan, does not appear to be an option for the USA, certainly at this stage.
Just for curiosity, how do you think the US would have reacted if Wuhan had got an Ebola outbreak instead?
Phil,
Whether people would be reluctant to talk to contact tracers depends on the potential consequences of talking to them or even what people fear are potential consequences.
.
As far as I am aware, the only consequences of talking to the contact tracers at University of Illinois is they will provide you information on taking a 2nd confirmatory test and quarantine for you. That potentially means online classes and no parties or dates for two weeks. 🙁
.
Honestly, I can imagine there would be students who would want to evade quarantine to be able to go to parties. But they might not be willing to risk suspension.
.
OTOH: I think even if the student who tested makes themselves scarce when contact tracers show up, the University should find themselves well able to block students from the dorm cafeteria and classes for that period of time. However, they might not actually be able to monitor parties for students living outside dorms (which is a lot of students.)
.
The fact is: this program really is different from blanket “stay at home” or travel restrictions for everyone. The whole point of the testing is to avoid that while keeping in person school in session.
Phil,
Perhaps a movie quote sums it up: Kyle Reese: Listen, and understand. That terminator is out there. It can’t be bargained with. It can’t be reasoned with. It doesn’t feel pity, or remorse, or fear. And it absolutely will not stop, ever, until you are dead.
The Terminator
.
But it sure helps to be on a low density island far far away. Hawaii was very successful for a while. You can’t stay locked down forever, you can’t close your borders forever. They do not yet even understand how these breakouts really occur, they barely understand anything realistically. They don’t even understand why breakouts stop. And the whole world has covid. It may be as simple as one or two super spreaders events at the wrong places and the wrong time and containment efforts are then useless. It’s certainly worth it to try hard to keep it out at this point, but don’t fool yourself that government policy is a magic prophylactic.
.
The list of successful containments is an ever dwindling list and we are only about 6 months in. Portions of Africa are still contained with very little effective government in place. It’s all very mysterious and seemingly random. I’d rather be living in NZ at the moment, ha ha.
Tom
They only need to stay closed until the vaccine is available. One hopes that’s early next year.
.
If the vaccine never comes…. the cost of vigilance will be perpetual vigilance.
.
I suspect the vaccine will not be perfect and enough people will refuse it that the disease may continue to be around. I am hoping we have other monitoring working too though. The University of Airzona study will be intersting. If it works, they would probably be able to do something like monitor effluent at all k-12 which will relieve anxiety. Also at university dorms, any congregate living and so on. That sort of thing would allow responses before small outbreaks grow to become large outbreaks.
I agree that the border controls are not a magic prophyletic – the index case for the august outbreak was coldstore packer but there is still no link from him to the border other than frozen food so no way to know if the border hole was plugged. We have also had isolated breaches in quarantine (eg a maintenence worker using a lift shortly after an active case). More worrying was someone who did their 14 days and 2 negative tests but got sick a few day after going home with a genome that matched two cases on same flight into NZ. Fortunately the tracers mopped these up before there was community spread (thought we need another week to be really sure of that).
But they have so far proved pretty effective – effective enough for some semblence of normal life including concerts, sports games and so on. And yes, there are many many times when I am happy to be living in a isolated island at the bottom of the world.
Tom Scharf (Comment #191290): “You think you are controlling the virus, but I very much doubt that. That is an illusion. The south and midwest in the US very much controlled the virus as well, right up until they didn’t. … ”
.
Indeed. If you live on an isolated island, are lucky enough to learn of the presence of the virus while there are still just a handful of cases, have some good luck in corralling those cases, and maintain strict control of your borders, then it would seem possible to keep the virus out, at least for a time.
.
But in the U.S., the authorities were focused on cases from China and cruise ships while the virus was spreading from China to Italy to New York City and then all over the country. By the time that was noticed, tens of thousands were infected. Once you have a situation like that, control is no longer possible.
.
In many states, the transmission rates started dropping not just before the lockdowns but even before people started to much change their behavior. In other states, the first big surge came post lockdown. In some places, opening up was no problem. In others, it was no problem for a while and then positive tests took off. No pattern to any of it other than the virus does what the virus does. There is only the illusion of control, and that only if you really want to believe.
Setting politics aside, I wish President Trump and the First Lady rapid recoveries.
I think they don’t have symptoms yet. So I wish them minor to no symptoms. We’ll see.
https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2020/09/k-overlooked-variable-driving-pandemic/616548/
Andrew P
Very early on… I found myself at the Glendora at a friday night practice talking to a very nice, personable lady I’d met once before. I realized…. “Whoa! This is close to the worst possible situation I could be in!”
.
This nice, personable, single lady drove to Glendora from Indiana. She went to large group dance gathering between 5 and 7 nights a week. Based on her drive to Glendora, she tolerated commutes of 30 minutes. The dance hall had fairly loud music and roughly 1/2 the dancers go to other dances fairly often.
.
The only saving grade at Glendora is the room was very large. So there was more air to dilute things than would be typical of a bar. I don’t know that it was ventilated– no one was telling people to get refresh air in back in Feb.
.
So… yeah. I knew super-spreading was going to be a thing. I don’t think that’s “overlooked”. The fact of that and the possible effect of herd immunity has been discussed a long time.
.
But honestly, while I think that means that the % recovered in the population needs to be lower than otherwise expected to prevent exponential growth, that won’t necessarily mean the virus will be gone any time soon. We’d have to model something with bursty-ness (owing the high dispersion) to figure out when the virus might be quenched. I haven’t run such a model. I’m guessing…. this virus is going to be around.
.
I’m waiting for the vacinne or methods and protocols for self testing. (Yes.. I’d tolerate “passports” where people submit tests to be able to events in large crowded locations. No one has an absolute “right” to entry into some privately run place. I’d be find with airlines, dance halls, bars and restaurants turning people away if they can’t show a recent “negative” from an antigen test.)
NYT says Trump has mild symptoms. It takes a week or so for them to develop to something worse. Boris was down for at least a month and was hospitalized in the UK. Trump is a high risk case.
.
2-5 days to develop symptoms, anyone at the debate will have a nervous few days coming up. The vector currently looks like Trump’s assistant Hicks. Showed symptoms Wed night. The order of detection is not necessarily the order of transmission, not that this is super important at this point.
.
It’s not very surprising to see Trump catch the virus. Politician is risky business during a pandemic, Biden should realistically just stay in his basement.
.
To sum it up, nobody deserves to die of this sh**, even Trump. Short circuiting all the speculation, the initial schadenfreude of this situation will lead one to the conclusion that an unfortunate outcome for Trump would likely improve chances for Republicans with Pence at the head of the ticket and the sympathy generated.
.
2020, this year has been crazy. Can we please have a completely boring 2021? I need some sleep.
An aide to Melania came down with symptoms the day before Melania and the President tested positive. From what I have read, it typically takes a few days from exposure to test positive and 2-3 days from being able to test positive to symptoms (if symptoms develop). One is significantly infectious from the day before symptoms to 1-2 days after symptoms. So it sounds like the aide was not the source.
.
I guess we should know by Monday if they get symptoms. I hope they both stay well.
.
I hope they are taking their hydroxychoroquine and zinc.
In the future I would expect for things like cruises that there would be a test at the dock and a vaccine requirement to step on board the ship. I wouldn’t be surprised that everyone would be carrying a card certifying a vaccine or having already caught the virus. It’s as much a fight against paranoia/anxiety as the virus itself.
Thanks, Andrew P (Comment #191300). That is a very good article. The matter of overdispersion has been raised on this site a number of time over the last six months, but mainly with regard to its impact on the herd immunity threshold. But it is also vital for effective contact tracing, as the Japanese have been doing. And it goes a long way toward explaining the seeming ransom behavior of the epidemic.
.
Plus, it exposes the total stupidity of fining people for buying a coffee or going fishing.
Mike M,
Trump plays lots of golf, so he probably has plenty of non-active vitamin D. If he develops symptomatic illness, then the Florida statistics put his risk of death (for age 74) somewhere near 4%. If he were hospitalized, the risk of death jumps to much higher levels.
“Plus, it exposes the total stupidity of fining people for buying a coffee or going fishing.â€
.
Something no longer possible in Florida thanks to Gov DeSantis.
The Atlantic article was actually pretty good…. not blatantly leftist like most everything the Atlantic publishes. The reporter actually showed some level of actual understanding (Paredo’s 80:20 rule!) that is almost totally absent in most journalism today.
.
It seems to me that if the spread is mainly do to a few “super-spreaders†and “super-spreading eventsâ€, then that presents more effective opportunities to limit the spread. More accurate modeling of the spread would have to involve a stochastic component, but I think more importantly, include some measure of who is a potential super-spreader. For example, there is overwhelming evidence that young children are almost never spreaders, never mind super-spreaders. My guess is that viral load, environment, and behavior will all turn out to be important…. and viral load ought to correlate with severity of symptoms; people who never develop symptoms are probably less likely to be super-spreaders.
.
One thing the article fails to address is the large drop in fatalities per confirmed case; in Europe, second-wave death rates are dramatically lower than in March and April, suggesting that far fewer older people are catching the virus than in the first wave.
It seems that pretty much anyone who develops symptoms is a potential superspreader. It is not so much who as where and when. If on the day before developing symptoms (i.e., the day when you are at peak infectiousness) you go to an event with a lot of people in a not so well ventilated room, then you have a very good chance of becoming a superspreader. The odds are much higher if you are talking a lot or singing while in that room.
Mike M.,
I don’t think that’s correct. To be a superspreader, you have to be the type of person who frequently goes to places and events that would result in a superspread event as well as being infectious at the time. That’s not true of everyone, to put it mildly. That’s why you get 10% of the infected causing 80% of the cases. That implies that 90% of people have an R of less than one. If everyone were a potential superspreader, Ro would be a whole lot higher.
DeWitt Payne (Comment #191312): “To be a superspreader, you have to be the type of person who frequently goes to places and events that would result in a superspread event as well as being infectious at the time.”
.
No, frequency only affects the probability, not the possibility. Unless you *never* go to such places, you are a *potential* superspreader. But some people are much more likely than others to be a superspreader.
The only study I could find relating age to super-spreading was for cases in Georgia, in both rural and urban areas. They concluded that people under 65 were much more likely (by a factor of ~3) to be super-spreaders. I would guess that is related mostly to behavior.
The unknowing symptom free super spreader is the most likely reason I think for this thing breaking containment. Waiting for symptoms to get tested has been a losing cause. This thing is nasty.
The CDC says:
.
The CDC estimates of asymptomatic cases ranges from only 10% (!) to 70%, but is also said to be wildly uncertain. So the question of whether asymptomatic spread is significant is answered by the CDC as “we don’t know”. But I would bet that investigations of super-spread events usually find someone who was symptomatic or became symptomatic; I have not seen any claims of totally unexplained super-spread events, where the spreader was never identified.
Tom Scharf (Comment #191315): “The unknowing symptom free super spreader is the most likely reason I think for this thing breaking containment.”
.
That does not seem to be the case. All the evidence points to asymptomatic people being not very contagious. Even strongly symptomatic people are only highly contagious for 2 or 3 days, starting about a day before symptoms, and are no longer contagious at all after about a week. The Typhoid Mary scenario got a lot of attention six months ago, but has turned out to not be an issue.
SteveF,
I can’t help but imagine that peak live viral load in the body is higher in people who eventually get symptoms. Time above the threshold to spread is probably longer. Do I have data…. nope. Just seems likely.
.
So yeah, my guess like yours is that for the same behavior, super-spreading is more likely in people who eventually show symptoms.
.
That said: even if we were sure of this, it wouldn’t help us a lot in preventing spread since the seem to spread before they have symptoms. We can’t create a rule to isolate only those who will go on to develop symptoms in the future. Or… we could create a rule, but we can’t implement it.
.
Fast antigen tests done frequently with isolation of those who are positive has potential to limit spread. Barring that: done before people go to large gatherings.
.
I don’t know how other people feel, but I know I wouldn’t want to go to a nephew or nieces wedding when I was contagious. I don’t want to go if other people are likely contagious. One fast antigen test done before I take a trip (so I don’t waste the time and energy traveling) and another the morning on the test seems to me a good thing. I’d love it if everyone else took one too.
.
Of course.. to do that we need to have lots of capacity which we don’t have.
.
I certainly wouldn’t mind if the church and reception venue required people to take antigen tests.
MikeM
The day before symptoms start, a person is asymptomatic. Sure… one might quibble they are pre symptomatic. But the fact is: they don’t have symptoms until they have symptoms.
.
I get that you might think this corrects a “misconception” that the asymptomatic spread. But most people consider this asumptomatic spread. And in any case: these people don’t have symptoms and so are tempted to break quarantine. The temptation would be especially strong if their only reason for being quarantined was a contact tracer warning them they’d been in contact with someone. At least a test positive might convince some (though not all) that they are contagious. They might then stay home.
MikeM
If this got a lot of attention, I missed it. . . I mostly read about spread by people who didn’t have symptoms yet with the possibility some who never got ill might spread for an equally short period.
.
As far as I am aware that’s still the story.
.
I never read stories where people suggested there were asymptomatic spreaders out there spreading for weeks, months and looknig forward, potentially years. That would be a Typhoid Mary scenario. I didn’t hear that circulating as any favored theory. ( Of course, it could be included in the “well… we really don’t know”. But that’s not really a favored theory.)
We still don’t have an explanation for how 57 Argentine sailors developed COVID-19 after a 14 day quarantine on shore before sailing and 35 straight days at sea.
https://news.yahoo.com/mystery-argentine-sailors-infected-virus-35-days-sea-035702418.html
Lucia,
FWIW, the CDC is careful to clearly differentiate between pre-symptomatic and asymptomatic spread. Pre-symptomatic cases are 100% certain contagious; asymptomatic cases may or may not be contagious. They really don’t know.
.
I get that a pre-symptomatic individual doesn’t have symptoms…. so many would call them ‘asymptomatic’, but there is a clear distinction. It is especially important to differentiate since the number of asymptomatic cases may be (and I think likely is) much greater than the number of symptomatic cases, and because nobody knows if asymptomatic cases are likely to be involved in super-spread events.
.
If asymptomatic cases are much more common than symptomatic cases, and can cause super-spread events, then controlling the spread becomes much more difficult, except via herd immunity. If everyone who has not recovered from the virus has to be considered a potential super-spreader 100% of the time, then any hope of controlling the spread requires that everyone be tested on a very frequent basis to see if they have live virus, or everyone permanently locked down awaiting a vaccine. I don’t see either option as very practical.
DeWitt,
If asymptomatic cases are very common, and asymptomatic people are infectious, but not very infectious, then it doesn’t seem so mysterious. An asymptomatic sailor passes it to one or two others… who also are asymptomatic, etc. Finally someone has a symptomatic case, and the shit hits the super-spreading fan.
SteveF,
Your scenario sounds extremely unlikely aboard a ship. It’s a nearly perfect superspreader environment. You don’t have separate cabins for the crew like on a cruise ship.
SteveF,
All the sailors tested negative prior to the two week quarantine before leaving port. I suppose that one could have been just infected, remained asymptomatic, passed it to another who remained asymptomatic, etc. But for 7 weeks? Seems a very long stretch.
DeWitt,
The new story says:
.
I would not be even a little surprised if one or more of a group of sailors at a hotel for 14 days broke quarantine; sex could even have been involved. (Note that prostitution is legal in Argentina.) It is also puzzling that they say 57 of 61 on board tested positive for the virus, but did not say how many were symptomatic. One of the great things about the MSM is that their reporting rarely provides any useful information, but plenty of hysteria.
lucia (Comment #191318): “That said: even if we were sure of this, it wouldn’t help us a lot in preventing spread since the seem to spread before they have symptoms.”
.
The Japanese seem to have use of that to very great effect. They find likely clusters, then have a good idea of who are likely to develop symptoms soon. You only need to isolate people for a few days to get most of the benefit from isolation.
MikeM
Do you have a link that shows they can identify which show symptoms soon, isolate them and then release the others? That would be interesting to read.
SteveF,
They said a few of the crew were exhibiting symptoms, but that was after 35 days at sea. The time line still doesn’t work unless the incubation period for the initially infected sailor, assuming that he was infected on day 14 of the on shore quarantine, was a lot longer than 5 days. The probability of an initial R of one, which you postulate for your scenario, on board a trawler at sea is, IMO, vanishingly small.
SteveF,
I know the CDC differentiates. But most people don’t when writing a comment at a blog. So, I think MikeM’s was off the mark when correcting Tom. Ref
There are “symptom free” spreaders. Whether they are super-spreaders or not, we cant be sure. But Mark “correcting” that and then saying people do spread before the show symptoms actually only showed that Tom is correct that there are symptom free spreaders.
.
I agree that we don’t know if the totally asymptomatic– who never show symptoms– can or cannot spread. I would tend to expect they spread less or not at all because their body viral loads probably are never high. But we don’t know that.
DeWitt,
“They said a few of the crew were exhibiting symptoms.”
. Well, if that is the case, then there doesn’t seem to be a mystery at all: young healthy sailors at sea spread the virus…. most never show symptoms, but when later tested, nearly 100% have been exposed… and don’t have significant symptoms. Makes the long term passing of the virus without symptomatic illness being noted seem not so terribly unlikely.
.
Heck, if only a handful got sick enough to suggest there was a problem, then it is hard for me to get too excited about the whole episode. Now, if they were tested every few days for 35 days at sea and nobody had the virus, and then suddenly everyone got the virus, I would be more interested.
I may have misinterpreted what Tom wrote. I thought that at *this* blog we had learned to differentiate between ‘asymptomatic’ and ‘presymptomatic’.
.
I don’t have details on how the Japanese deal with isolation once they identify a cluster. Just that they give that a lot of credit for controlling the epidemic.
MikeM,
I read they look for clusters. Most articles say they “encourage” people to isolate. I assumed they encouraged everyone and don’t have a magic 8 ball to identify who will become symptomatic and who won’t.
Yes, I was inexact in my wording. The most likely super spreaders I think are the presymptomatic people who are unaware they are sick, but highly contagious. This is the most dangerous time. Even if this is only 24 hours it is long enough to cause serious problems.
.
Most people are responsible enough to not go to super spreader type scenarios after they are showing symptoms, and I would suggest that the level of knowledge most people have is such that they assume they can’t spread the virus until they are sick. This detail is not covered very well in the media.
.
It remains a bit outrageous that we still do not know how contagious truly asymptomatic people are. The winds seems to be blowing in the direction that they are not a major issue.
I find it it a bit curious that the media is hot on the trail of anyone Trump and company might have infected … but is completely uninterested in the trail to how Trump himself got infected.
.
In other totally unrelated news: “Three White House reporters tested positive for Covid-19 on Friday”, ha ha. Aren’t the heroic science minded media always wearing masks? There is quite a number of people in and around the place with confirmed infections, 2 senators now.
Tom,
I think I pretty much figured political dinners and gatherings were not healthy places to hang out.
The President of Notre Dame was there when Barrett was introduced. He was shaking hands and not wearing a mask. Mike Lee was also there, and ended up infected.
MikeN (Comment #191341): “The President of Notre Dame was there when”
.
Where? When?
I guess MikeN was referring to the event last Saturday introducing Barrett as Trump’s SCOTUS nominee. It sounds like a bunch of people who were there have tested positive in the last few days, consistent with having caught it then. But no one there seems to have tested positive early enough to have been the source. And everyone at the event was tested earlier in the day.
https://www.foxbusiness.com/politics/covid-19-cases-mount-in-trumps-orbit-as-president-remains-hospitalized
.
It seems that RNC chair Ronna McDaniel tested positive on Wednesday, but no info on if that was one of the rapid tests or if she had symptoms before that. And she was not at the Barrett event.
.
The whole thing casts doubt on testing as a magic bullet to prevent spread.
Mike M,
The only magic bullet is being immune, or at least strongly resistant. A vaccine may give people that immunity, or it may not. A vaccine may be available in 6 months, 12 months, or maybe never.
.
It is clear you can eliminate virtually all contact with people and eliminate most all risk of contracting the illness. (OK, except maybe for Argentine sailors. 😉 ) Eliminating that risk comes with a considerable cost…. social, emotional, and economic. For some people, specifically those at high risk of serious illness or death, the risk clearly outweighs the cost. For others, specifically the young and healthy, the risk is minuscule compared to the cost.
.
The very divisive political question is: who bears the cost for reducing the risk for those who are at significant risk? Should that cost of risk reduction be forced upon everyone, so that the net cost is much reduced for some people but greatly increased for others? (As has been the obvious case in most places in the States… eg school kids, college students, and those under 50 in general suffering cost far, far greater than benefit.) Or should risk versus cost be more of a personal benefit/personal cost decision? Which is (of course) my personal preference.
.
I believe there is no one-size-fits-all answer, and like much of what has happened in the past decade, imposition of a one-size-fits-all answer has caused social damage. I hope the lesson this nightmare teaches for the next time is that imposing certain people’s cost on everyone is socially destructive. I am not sure that is what will be learned.
SteveF (Comment #191359)
“Or should risk versus cost be more of a personal benefit/personal cost decision? Which is (of course) my personal preference.”
_____
But your personal preference could have consequences for other people if you get Covid-19. Even before knowing you are infected you could infect other people who in turn could infect even more,
some of whom could become seriously ill, even die.
SteveF,
I believe the lesson that will be drawn by the politicians is that it can be done with impunity.
OK_Max,
“Even before knowing you are infected you could infect other people who in turn could infect even more”
.
Of course; I could infect others, and they could infect others, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc.
.
Seems to me you are not really addressing the fundamental issue: what is required of someone acing on their own, independent of others? If you say there is a possibility that someone could infect someone else, and that is absolutely prohibited, then nothing, absolutely no public behavior at all, is allowed.
.
I believe your take on this, as usual, is the take of an immature 7 year old.
Sure. But for the most part, only if they decide to circulate instead of sheltering.
.
Certainly the argument can be made that the people who decide the risk is worth at have accepted the risk. For the most part, those at the Rose Garden would have known there was risk associated with their choice to go to that party.
.
Hey… I’m not going to political events.
BTW: The screening tests were not universal. Mis. Take.
https://reason.com/2020/10/03/will-the-senate-have-a-quorum-to-confirm-judge-barrett/
SteveF (Comment #191368)
“If you say there is a possibility that someone could infect someone else, and that is absolutely prohibited, then nothing, absolutely no public behavior at all, is allowed.”
________
Yes, but I didn’t say “absolutely no public behavior at all.” For me, some public behavior is necessary, some is not. I reduce the risk of Covid-19 to myself and others by avoiding bars, restaurants, and other ‘high risk” places.
Perhaps I misunderstood what you meant when you wrote “Or should risk versus cost be more of a personal benefit/personal cost decision? Which is (of course) my personal preference.â€
But it sounded like you don’t care much about how your behavior affects others.
OK_Max (Comment #191371): “For me, some public behavior is necessary, some is not. I reduce the risk of Covid-19 to myself and others by avoiding bars, restaurants, and other ‘high risk†places.”
.
You have every right to do so. So why should others be prohibited from making their own risk assessments and decisions? That is a real question since you seem to be saying that others should be denied that right.
So far as I can tell, there is no evidence that anyone at the Barrett intro got sick within a day or two. Am I missing something? If not, I don’t see how someone was infectious enough to infect a whole bunch of people in an outdoor event. Sounds like people are jumping to conclusions as to where the transmission occurred.
MikeM
Yes. No one thinks the median incubation period is as little as two days.
Uhmmm…. There are photos of people leaning toward each other face to face. . .
Sounds like one of those people is you.
Maxok,
“ But it sounded like you don’t care much about how your behavior affects others.â€
yes, I care very little about this. People are independent agents. There are costs snd benefits, but people should not imagine othe s are obliged to do what is clearly not in their personal interests
lucia (Comment #191374): “Yes. No one thinks the median incubation period is as little as two days.”
.
What has that got to do with anything? The source should have been sick within a day or two.
.
lucia: “Sounds like one of those people is you.”
.
Definitely not, since I am not drawing a conclusion. I am questioning a conclusion.
Mike M. (Comment #191372)
“So why should others be prohibited from making their own risk assessments and decisions? That is a real question since you seem to be saying that others should be denied that right.”
______
I’m not sure what you mean by “denied that right.” I am not prohibited from making my own risks assessments and decisions. But if what I do breaks the law, I may face consequences (fines, jail).
Even if what I do doesn’t break the law, but makes me feel guilt, that also is a consequence.
OK_Max (Comment #191377): “I’m not sure what you mean by “denied that right.â€
.
There should be no lockdowns. Businesses should be allowed to remain open and to put rules in place to protect staff and customers. People should be allowed to decide for themselves what risks they want to take.
Do you agree or disagree?
If you agree, fine. I misunderstood you. If you disagree, then what part of “denied that right” did you not understand?
Not if asymptomatic transmission or light symptom transmission is possible.
SteveF, I like your cost/benefit approach to appropriate behavior for Covid-19 and the extent of government involvement, but at the same time would like to point out why such an approach is not working in the US and probably the world.
There are large groups of people who are shielded from the consequences by being compensated whether they work or not. That would be the case for a lot of government workers and particularly public school teachers. They do not have to consider, at least, from an economic standpoint the cost/benefits involved.
There is another group more generally shielded economically and that is those who can work remotely.
An even bigger consideration is that the US government and most governments of developed nations have very freely spent and indebted huge sums of funds that I judge has convinced many citizens that they will be rescued, again at least economically, from the consequences of the government imposed restrictions. They either believe in the magic of printing money or only consider short term consequences of the huge government expenditures. Otherwise we would be hearing and talking about the long term consequences.
There is another group of people which is probably larger than a lot of us here would imagine that have no problem with government dictates over theirs and others private lives. Their only complaint is that there may be some not as obedient as they are.
I, unfortunately, think you will see this all play out in the upcoming elections and to the benefit of the Democrats.
Governments have less control over the noneconomic discomfort of the pandemic, but invoking a continuing emergency and patriotic duty (to the state) can help.
OK_Max
Ok… so now we have to figure out if you are making a legal or moral argument.
.
Many things are legal; other things are illegal. Something that were apparently illegal turn out to be legal. (See Michigan and other states where the court over turned “law” made by governors decree.)
.
Some things that are legal are wrong; some that are illegal are right. But if you are talking about something illegal and so to be avoid because of legal penalties you should say so directly, not refer to the consequences to others.
lucia (Comment #191380): “Not if asymptomatic transmission or light symptom transmission is possible.”
.
We are not talking about one or two cases, the count now seems to be 12, plus two who were not at the event. *If* it happened at that event, then a bunch of people got infected, either by someone who tested negative just before or was only outside.
.
Those who are asymptomatic are not usually highly contagious. Does the test gives false negatives even with someone shedding a lot of virus? It seems like two unlikely things are needed: A highly contagious asymptomatic carrier and a negative test for that person in spite of a lot of shedding. Maybe not impossible, but it seems very unlikely.
.
Outdoor transmission is rare. An asymptomatic (but not presymptomatic) person causing a superspread event outdoors? That hardly seems possible.
From an online medical dictionary (the first one that came up):
https://medical-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/false+negative
and
.
So whether a test is a false negative depends on the purpose of the test. If the purpose is “have I been infected”, then there can certainly be false negatives. But if the purpose is “am I contagious”, then the same test might never give false negatives. I do not know if the rapid antigen tests gives false negatives when used for the latter purpose.
Mike M
“People should be allowed to decide for themselves what risks they want to take.”
Would have to ask whether you think the employees get to decide what risks they are prepared to take if the protection rules that the employer puts in place are woefully inadequate?
MikeM
It turns out not everyone was tested. Yes. It might have happened outside. I’ve seen photos of the gathering. People were face to face and close. As in “Italian family gathering close”. I’d be not at all surprised if it happened in that outdoor environment.
.
Sure. But most outdoor events aren’t gatherings like that one. People still recommend not talking with your face less than 1 ft apart outdoors. There is nothing about “outdoors” that fixes that issue.
Phil,
The problem with the employee’s analogy is that employees already follow directions for the employer to some extent. So to a large extent once employed, the employee doesn’t decide what risks to take. That’s why we have rule for employees.
.
I do think generally, we want people to decide what risks to take. But, otoh, I do like speed limits, stop signs and so on on roads. So there are some places where we have rules to permit cooperation and shared use of resource.
Kenneth,
You are right that many people are shielded from most economic consequences, at least in the short term. Those who have the same salary no matter what (teachers, other public employees) and those who can do their job from home are mostly insulated for the time being. There may, and likely will, be longer term consequences from overall economic contraction, higher future taxes and/or much higher inflation.
.
I think the bigger moral issue is that the immediate economic costs of government restrictions have fallen mostly on people least able to afford those costs, with widespread unemployment and catastrophic losses for restaurants and rest of the service sector.
Some photos:
https://www.politico.com/news/2020/10/02/trump-timeline-activities-425041
1) You can see people were seated outside but shoulder to shoulder. Those who tested positive are labeled. They are close to each other.
.
Scroll down to photo showing Scalia, Azar and Christie. These guys lean toward each other for fist bumps. So their faces are close. One of the guys mouth is opened as if saying “Hey!”. It’s a nice weather day– no strong wind. This is not a time where the wind is going to come and sweep away that breath– it’s going straight at people. The UV doesn’t have time to kill that virus in the period it goes from the infected to the infectee.
.
There are reasons ventilation and sun cut spreading. But they aren’t really at work here. Even BLM protests have people generally more spread out than this. This is a “friendly” gathering. And the outdoor people were NOT tested. Those coming to an inside gathering were tested (and we, the public, still don’t know for sure if they were all tested nor when.)
Sure, since they get to decide whether or not to be employees.
I should add: it’s also still possible that many of the people in the inner circle were infected before the party. They may have socialized with Hope Hicks. They might not yet have been infectious at the time of the party– but being infected a few days before and all flipping to positive test results could be giving the appearance of a super-spreader event. We don’t really know.
Most tests have false positives and false negatives.
There is also specificity and sensitivity to consider.
The situation the test is done in and the person themselves, age etc is important.
What I found interesting is the sheer number of important people around the world who seem to have caught the virus re the general population.
Out of proportion to the general infective rate?
I know 1 person only who has caught Covid. Obviously Australia is wildly different to America.Yet we have had some Parliamentarians come down with it.
Is it the lifestyle, the social contact numbers, the attitude?
In Trump’s case was it an accident, carelessness or enemy action?
Those are the three choices usually.
I see two other options getting air, faking an illness or deliberately getting an illness.
What a weird press we have.
angech,
Faking a covid illness, never mind multiple illnesses, would require a vast conspiracy to pull off… the suggestion of such a conspiracy is laughable. It mostly reveals that many of Trump’s political opponents have at best a tenuous grip on sanity. Trump has literally driven them crazy.
angech
I’m reasonably sure the answer is yes.
.
I would expect politicians and people in the public sphere to catch Covid at higher than average rates. These people tend to be gregarious, extroverted glad-handers and risk takers. Also, isolating is very “costly” to them from the point of view of getting elected, networking and so on. Social circulation is essential to fundraising, getting endorsements and generally promoting oneself as a candidate for office. People who cloister themselves don’t do that don’t win elections. Pressing the flesh is a big thing in politics.
.
Politicians aren’t computer programmers who can very easily maintain isolation while pounding code and who can communicate online just as easily as in person. There isn’t a strong need for being emotive or social in programming; there is in politics.
.
Well….I might intentionally try to get a “corona virus cold” on the theory it might protect me from Covid!! I have no idea how to go about that though. (If only I knew someone from a research lab who kept some cold virus around. 🙂 But I don’t 🙁 )
.
Of course, given uncertainty, I would afterwards still tend to behave myself as if the cold gave me no protection, while hoping it did give me some protection. 🙂
Phil Scadden (Comment #191394): “Would have to ask whether you think the employees get to decide what risks they are prepared to take if the protection rules that the employer puts in place are woefully inadequate?”
.
That is a significant change of topic from the exchange between SteveF, OK_Max, and myself. It would come under the heading of occupational health and safety. The government does establish rules for such and employees have the right to refuse unsafe work without retribution. That would still be the case. There would no doubt have to be some new rules, including protection for the jobs of high risk individuals.
It is going too far to force employers to lay everyone off while leaving customers and suppliers in the lurch.
SteveF #191359. This is very good summary of the trade off here. On top of this is also the fact that the presumed fix isn’t * proven * effective. Places with strict enforcement aren’t virus free, one can argue they are lower risk but there are many cases where comparisons between strict enforcement and lax enforcement produce results that don’t support either argument. FL is in the bottom half of the country now and has aggressive reopening. These things muddy the water even further.
lucia (Comment #191399): “There are reasons ventilation and sun cut spreading. But they aren’t really at work here.”
.
Yes, they are at work. Individual aerosol particles do not have enough virus to have a significant chance of causing an infection. I imagine that big droplets might, but that would require coughing, sneezing, or spittle spewing shouting directly at someone. What probably happens indoors is that particle concentration builds up due to the continued emission of particles and people get continued exposure.
.
Could a person have given it to his neighbor? Sure. To someone 3 seats over and 4 seats back? Very unlikely. To a bunch of such someones? Uh, no.
———-
lucia (Comment #191401): “We don’t really know.”
.
That is all I am saying. Well, that and if it was the Rose Garden event, then it was really remarkable.
———–
Addition:
lucia (Comment #191399): “Those who tested positive are labeled. They are close to each other.”
.
That is *some* of those who tested positive; 7 of 12 (at last count). Notably not including Trump. And interspersed with many others, with Christie quite a ways off. The real pattern might be “White House inner circle”.
Kenneth Fritsch
“would like to point out why such an approach is not working in the US and probably the world”
.
This is true, but what we have here is that this virus and a normally operating world are fundamentally not compatible. There is no government fix here. The will of the government and people can’t make this go away once containment is broken. Find effective treatments or wait for herd immunity. Given those unfortunate circumstances it is a game of balancing risk / reward where there is obviously going to be some disagreement.
.
I think people should just accept there is going to be reasonable disagreement and stop trying to convert people. Although it seems a bit messy in the US it is almost the optimum path as we have 50 states all trying different rules and as long as we can * learn and change * along the way we can hopefully balance things without too much damage. There’s going to be damage.
It should be pointed out that the entire concept of public bars fails the externalities test without even bringing up covid. People driving home drunk, supporting alcoholism, etc. The point is that society accepts these type of things already. We are not a “do no harm” society by choice. Where we draw these lines is a cat fight.
Phil,
“Would have to ask whether you think the employees get to decide what risks they are prepared to take if the protection rules that the employer puts in place are woefully inadequate?”
.
Welcome Back Carter, Horshack!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ju-lptJweTc
.
I can answer that one, ha ha. My wife has been working from home for 6 months and they asked her to come back to work. She’s planning on retiring in January so realistically this was an easy decision of “no thanks!”. The short answer is you can be fired for refusing a reasonable work offer, and it is legally interpreted as you quitting (no unemployment benefits).
.
The long answer is that “woefully inadequate” has not been legally worked out yet and the covid work rules are the wild west for the moment. There is some easy stuff such as social distancing, temperature checks, masks, closing shared break rooms etc.
.
What the company wants to avoid is “forcing” someone to return under threat of job loss and then that person dying from work related covid. The US is very litigious and given the numbers of cases there is going to be a feeding frenzy on this scenario for personal injury attorneys. So … the lawyers will work it out.
.
The company strategy appears to be to go to extreme efforts to have the employee return “voluntarily” (no threat of job loss) or try to force them to quit without being formally fired. She asked for a leave of absence until a vaccine and that appears to be no go as well. It’s an ongoing situation and we expect the company to fire her pretty soon. I’m not upset about it. This is happening x100,000 across the the US and the world.
.
The company sent a presentation on all the things they are doing and they seem reasonable and the risk is likely fairly low, but certainly not zero for reasons we have discussed here, and it’s certainly safer to just stay at home. However most people aren’t in a situation where they have this option of retiring, I’m glad we do.
MikeM
Even if true, this factoid is irrelevant. They are close enough that groups of droplets may hit their face.
Have there been reports that someone was specifically monitoring the crowd and we can be certain no one sneezed, coughed or cleared their throat? I don’t think so. And if I heard that, I wouldn’t believe it. I often sneeze ones or twice on a walk. Pollen you know. . . I’ve been known to clear my throat with a cough from time to time.
Sure. Which is a mode of exposure This doesn’t exclude droplets from almost face to face contact outdoors as another mechanism. There was a friendly crowd. These people may have stood quite close while socializing.
Here is Bar and Kelly Conway
https://pbs.twimg.com/card_img/1312217451279638535/Yet_PdyZ?format=jpg&name=small
You can see how close people are in this slide show.
https://www.newsweek.com/arrogant-irresponsible-bill-barr-faces-criticism-over-refusal-quarantine-after-rose-garden-1536223#slideshow/1645778
.
There a picture of Bar shaking hands with a guy. That gives you scale. Chris Christie and a woman are also in the picture. Since you have scale, you can tell Chris Christie is very close to the woman. It’s not some trick of the camera focus– people are close to each other.
.
This degree of closeness is consistent with a congenial social event especially with gregarious friendly politicians surrounded by people in their own political group.
.
This is not an “ordinary” outdoor event. It’s not even a protest where people don’t know each other and some would be wary and keep distance from others. Yes, it’s outdoors. But people are packed.
.
I wouldn’t go to an outdoor restaurant that had us packed like those chairs. I look for space between tables– and the tables themselves create space. (I went to a restaurant with mom. It was under an awning. They put 6 feet between tables. But even w/o covid, there would have been at least enough space for waiters to get through. Those chairs are so close forward and back that you’d have to shift if someone decided to leave to go to the bathroom.
I attended a tournament on Friday evening at our taekwondo school. It was the first tournament in the state this year. I didn’t compete but served as a tournament official. The school kept the numbers below the threshold allowed by our current municipal order, and there were a lot of folks wearing masks.
Most of the students are kids twelve and under, and they behaved as if there wasn’t a pandemic. I started out wearing a mask but it was the first time I tried wearing one while being moderately active. It was hot and I was sweating, which the the mask made worse. I lasted about two hours before I took it off.
About an hour later I caught myself chatting with someone much closer than the recommended social distance. It wasn’t a conscious decision, it just was the distance for comfortable conversation. Much like Barr and Conway in the picture above. And I’m not an extrovert by any stretch of the imagination.
By the end of the night I had consigned myself to the possibility that someone in the crowd may have been contagious with COVID-19. Or any other viral infection. But it was a fun night, my wife got to compete in board breaking and forms, and everyone got to feel a slight return to normalcy.
I wish my school would reopen. 🙁
Earle,
My guess would be one big difference between your event the Rose Garden event was that people were face to face maskless almost immediately. In contrast, at your event, people wore masks at least part of the time and reminded themselves to stand apart and so on.
.
Yes…. probably everyone realized they’d been too close on some occasions, but it wasn’t pretty much SOP for every one all the time.
.
The only way to avoid getting too close sometimes is to avoid social events. I would have avoided the Rose Garden. But if it was my kid at taekwondo, I might have decided to go. The risk/reward ratio would be different for me because the reward would be different. (I‘d get pretty much zero emotional, professional or social reward going to the Rose Garden event.)
I’m not sure I should observe this…. But The White House Gift Shop is selling a “Donald J Trump Defeats Covid” coin. You can pre-order now, it ships Nov7.
https://www.whitehousegiftshop.com/product-p/trump-defeats-covid.htm
Here’s the not quite socially correct thing to observe:
Sadly, the long term value of this will likely be greater if he dies. (Sort of like Dewey beats Truman headlines.)
This whole business about the Rose Garden smacks of the media wanting to turn it into a morality play about the the Bad Orange Man and his Evil Minions. One does not hear so much about the RNC Chair, the members of the press core, or the person on the White House domestic staff. Possibly because they don’t fit the narrative.
.
It seems to me that close contact would mean close enough to feel the other person’s breath. I say that because any particle or droplet small enough to be inhaled must be small enough that it pretty much follows the airflow. So if the emitter is not breathing on you then the particles are getting diluted into the ambient air. Individual particles of that size will not carry enough virus to have a decent chance of infection unless you happen to inhale a lot of them. The odds of that happening are higher if you are closer to the emitter, but still very low during a brief conversation.
.
If there is evidence of such happening, I’d like to see it.
https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2020/07/why-arent-we-talking-more-about-airborne-transmission/614737/
MikeM
I think that’s rather unfair. I think it’s pretty darn natural for the press to focus on the Rose Garden when so many people who were infected where at the party.
“It seems to me” is not exactly a strong supporting argument.
I’m pretty sure the expression “say it don’t spray it” exists because some people’s speech generates actual drops that hit other people’s faces. I’m not going to go all fluid dynamicsph.d. on you, but the fact that some people’s speech does this means that some people’s speech can send even smaller particles into people’s faces.
.
Neither you, nor I and likely no one knows this. So I think you are resorting to some claims here. Possibly motivated thinking.
.
If there is evidence it can’t, I’d like to see it.
.
You seem to be making some very confident claims about facts. Some of the claims are implausible. So…. know one knows. But demanding evidence your claim is wrong doesn’t actually support the strength of your claim. It just means we don’t know some things.
MikeM
We all agree on this. But that doesn’t address the fact that this outdoor event is very different from most that have been occurring (and most that occur.) It differs in terms of how close people get to each other, how much they are likely to talk, lean in and yada, yada…. This is not people strolling around the block. It’s not people sitting in small groups at the beach. It is very specifically social, very specifically croweded. It is very specifically a “gladhanding” “how the hell are you” type of crowed all of whom are greating each other rather than, for example, having a family sitting on their towels spaced away from another family sitting on their towel with no one interacting.
The media was angling hard on the “when did Trump know” storyline the past few days. They really wanted to show he exposed others when he knew he was infected. This falls right in line with the outgroup is reckless immoral perps and the ingroup are always innocent victims. Had this been a Biden positive they would be overturning every rock to determine the path to Biden, not the path from him. That search would end when the transmission chain discovered a plausible person in the outgroup to blame.
.
There is little doubt this is an embarrassment for the Republicans, an own goal, and the scale of the outbreak might have been avoidable. It won’t be helpful in November.
Tom,
Sure. They aren’t looking so much at “who infected Trump”. But. Still. Lots of people at that party got infected. It’s natural for people to notice that.
.
I have no idea if “Trump knew”. I don’t even have an opinion about whether he would go ahead and infect people if he knew or not. Maybe he would… maybe not. If he did, it was a stupid decision (in addition to a morally bad one). If he did not… well… he did not.
.
I wouldn’t have gone to that party.
It’s more likely I think the events before and after the outdoor ceremony were the main contributors to transmission if it occurred then. They were all hanging out somewhere and indoors perhaps.
Tom–
Could be. The preponderance of the people reported as infected are “main actors”. So it could have happened indoors. The chain could have started earlier too. We just don’t know.
.
And then there would be the “I’m writing fiction type conspiracy theory X”.
Yes, if we don’t need anymore reminders, don’t go to indoor parties where there isn’t social distancing, better to not go period. It can go wrong even with recently tested people. It should also be noted that they behaved like this for months before it went wrong.
.
Politicians do have to appear “brave” and show leadership. I remember Bush throwing out the first pitch after 9/11 in NYC and I thought that was crazy and unnecessary (looking back it wasn’t), but it was politically useful I think. The line between brave and stupid is pretty narrow for politics. Overlapping sets.
Tom
Yes.
.
That said: I am planning to go to a competition in November. . .
.
It won’t be quite as huggy… but the competition will be indoors. (I need to get a nice looking mask. I also may need a less complicated smooth dress…This one is so complicated I’m in the ladies room for freakin’ ever. Better get that NOW.)
Lucia,
A competition in November…. I guess some things are worth risking death for. 😉 What exactly those things are depends on the person. I’ve been risking death by playing golf all along. But ballroom dancing would be too dangerous for me!
.
Good luck in the competition.
Ballroom dancing is way too dangerous for me, I’d probably die of embarrassment on the spot. It’s really hard to maintain discipline in social situations when others aren’t. I went into the clubhouse during a golf rain delay and we had a few drinks waiting it out. Nobody was wearing masks, even the staff (a clear violation of county requirements). I wore my mask anyway. Somebody said something about it and I responded “covid paranoia”, and that was it, nothing more. There are weird social dynamics at play here. I won’t go back in there again.
This is an interesting article on Antifa strategy. It seems more neutral and thoughtful than most.
.
The Conservative Trans Woman Who Went Undercover With Antifa in Portland
https://reason.com/2020/10/02/the-conservative-trans-woman-who-went-undercover-with-antifa-in-portland/
.
“Strategically what they’re doing is, they’re forcing a dilemma action. A dilemma action is when you put your opponent in a no-win situation. Your enemy has to react. If they don’t react, they look weak; if they do react, they have to react in a certain way where it looks like it’s an overreaction.”
Tom,
That’s why you need to practice.
Yes. If someone approaches enthusiastically and wants to hug, shake hands, etc, distancing looks like recoiling. That’s hard to do without giving the impression of… recoiling.
.
And worse there are some aggressive non-mask wearers out there. They are going to say something. Having to give explanations or debate the issue is no fun. So you end up either matching the group social expectations or not going there. So, not going ends up being the thing.
.
I’ve been to previous competitions and I know that on the positive side: The dance floor isn’t crowded. I will only dance in dance hold with my pro. (He will dance with other amateurs, but it’s still finite.) The competitions don’t attract zillions of audience members– especially not the Bronze level I compete. I can be pretty sure the hotel will have good ventilation.
.
On the other hand, there will definitely be a fair number of people in the room. Some will have traveled. There will be different levels of “Covid paranoia”. So it will be an activity that is very high on my range of risk of infection.
.
But…. I am tired of this s*hit. . .
Oh well…we’ll see.
lucia (Comment #191441)
October 4th, 2020 at 7:34 pm
Lucia, I am surprised – no make that shocked – that after your admonitions here at your blog concerning Covid-19 precautions announcing that you are going dancing again.
But seriously have you looked into the precautions the dance competition will be taking. Are there any Covid infection statistics concerning such gatherings? Is it still considered consensus opinion that wearing masks is a one way precaution for those in the vicinity of the masked person but not so much for the masked one?
If my grandkids approach me for a hug (and they have and I hope continue to do so) all thoughts of Covid momentarily vanish. I have done only one handshake since the Covid restrictions were in place which I did accidently when my daughter-in-law introduced me to an acquaintance of hers. I realized what I did almost immediately and apologized to the shakee. He said not to worry and that it did not bother him. My two sons are very cautious around me and when I tell them that I am in very good shape they always counter with but you are old.
I had commented earlier that I thought the Republicans would find a way to screw up getting their appointee on the Supreme Court. I had not thought of the possibility of having a nomination party and getting a number of the critical participants in the process of appointment get infected with Covid, but let us see how that dumb act plays out. Trump keeps feeding the MSM with goodies (for them and their opposition to him). I see where he is down 13 points to Biden in polling before the Covid incident with the polling on that incident certainly not favoring him. I think Trump and the Republican party are toast for this election cycle with the near future seeing the MSM cheering on the left wing revolution.
Only four weeks and a day to go! Well, plus some time for the mail-ins…
Kenneth,
They will almost certainly require masks. I have heard no stories of anyone being affected at a ballroom dance competition. On the other hand, most were cancelled.
I don’t have grandchildren.
Yes. I think the GOP is toast for this election.
Kenneth,
“I think Trump and the Republican party are toast for this election cycle with the near future seeing the MSM cheering on the left wing revolution.”
.
I sure hope you are mistaken about that. It is not that I am wild about Trump (as I have said many times, he acts like a buffoon and a jerk most of the time). The problem is that the left is like a ratchet: once they put some crazy policy in place, it becomes essentially impossible to undo and return to a sane policy. Yes, if the left oversteps, which they certainly will should they have brief control of both houses and the presidency, they will put in place lots of terribly damaging laws and regulations….. which the public will broadly reject. But even if they then lose control of the Senate in 2022 as a consequence, the damage will already have been done, and it will be nearly impossible to ever reverse.
.
Be afraid, be very afraid.
I suspect Trump’s odds are worse than last [cycle], but looking at the polls in battleground states [and the handicap in polling he overcame last year] I can’t say I think Trump has no chance at all. I think it could still go either way. Don’t know. I’m trying to mentally prepare myself for a Biden victory though.
For example, RCP finds Trump doing very slightly better (+0.4, noise range really) this year than he did in 2016 in a bunch of battleground states:
https://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2020/president/us/trump-vs-biden-top-battleground-states-2020-vs-2016/
Looking at 538’s data, Trump is approximately where he was on Oct 7’th 2016 on Nate Silver’s forecast:
https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/2016-election-forecast/
So… shrug. Beats me.
Biden’s polling shows steadier numbers than Clinton’s did. He has better national averages, but who cares; popular vote determines nothing as we all well know.
The doctors on NBC news disparaging Trump’s doctors without any access to his medical records are really annoying. My favorite comment is about the dexamethasone treatment: “They’re not using evidence-based medicine.” Of course neither were the doctors who first used it on critically ill patients. They keep referring to a ‘standard of care’. AFAIK, there is no such thing for COVID-19. The CDC has recommendations, but I don’t think they qualify as a standard of care. We don’t know enough for that. In fact, I vaguely remember articles complaining about how far behind the CDC was compared to current practice not all that long ago. I’m pretty sure NBC’s ER doctor is from NYC. While they’re doing better now, their history isn’t good, so I don’t trust him at all.
It would be a little better if they would show a little more humility, but saying ‘arrogant doctor’ is redundant.
DeWitt,
Trump seems to have survived so far.
lucia,
It gets worse. During the coverage of Trump’s return to the White House tonight, one doctor said that Trump was still shedding ‘live’ virus. There is absolutely no way he could know this for a fact. In Trump’s doctor’s press conference earlier today, I seem to remember that they mentioned culturing samples from Trump and live virus wasn’t found, but I could be wrong about that. But at least I admit I don’t know everything.
Anybody watching Biden’s Town Meeting with Lester Holt? A repeat of Love it or List It on HGTV was more attractive to me. Disclaimer: my daughter works for Scripps Productions (HGTV, Food, etc.) which was bought by Discovery Channel recently.
I was tutoring earlier…. then I wrapped up some stuff… then I watched some Enola Holmes.
Trump rips his mask off in front of God and everybody at the WH upon return, what a troll this guy is. The media is absolutely losing its mind. Everything people love and hate about Trump in one moment.
I know some people who actually went out to dinner (first time in a long while) last Friday to celebrate Trump’s illness. Not joking.
DeWitt,
Each time I think the MSM has maxed out the volume on hatred of Trump, they find a way to increase it again. All coverage I have seen recently (which I admit I limit) is 100% Trump-hating 100% of the time. Trump may not be “literally Hitlerâ€, but the MSM have certainly become nothing more than Pravda-like outlets for the left. They should be ashamed of themselves; they won’t be. The left is quite incapable of shame.
There is no way that Biden is physically and mentally up to being president. His campaign called a lid (shutting him down for the day) 11 times in September. There was some coverage of that before the debate, with debate prep being blamed. But it seems he has taken 5 days off since the debate, although I can only find one source:
https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/trump-win-2020-lawn-slide-jimmy-failla
Mike M,
Biden has obvious signs of dementia, and there is ample documented evidence…. the word salads, the constant confusion over numbers, the substitution of words with similar sounds but with completely different meanings, the inability to recall a common word mid-sentence, and the inability to read a teleprompter without getting lost.
.
That doesn’t mean he won’t win the election, since most of the obvious evidence of dementia is suppressed by the MSM. They will only notice Joe’s dementia after the election, when they will start preparing the public to get rid of Joe and get Kamala into office.
.
If I were moderating the debates I would start with a series of simple questions like “How much is 18 plus 7?” and “How much is 7 times 21?” and “What is 144 divided by 12?”. Biden almost certainly could not give accurate answers unless he gets them through an earphone.
Biden’s polling has been around 51%. Hillary even with bigger leads was polling around 45%.
Dennis Prager’s latest column should be read by all never-trumpers. It probably won’t help, but at least they might have to think about consequences.
https://patriotpost.us/opinion/73934-to-all-those-who-vote-for-the-man-not-the-party-2020-10-06
MikeN,
I should look this up, but weren’t the minor candidates, Ron Johnson and whats-her-name, polling a lot higher in 2016 than 2020?
I’m not sure, but it was not enough to matter The key was Trump’s number was going up and down to make the polling leads for Hillary, sometimes going into the 20s. 45-32 vs closing the gap to 44-42.
Hillary was leading Trump by more than that closer to the election last cycle.
https://time.com/4546942/hillary-clinton-donald-trump-lead-poll/
This was near the end of October.
There are differences, sure. There are similarities too.
[Edit: That was just one specific poll. I’m sure her averages were lower. Still. Who knows.]
“They will only notice Joe’s dementia after the election”
.
I noticed this about the tech media when they were so in love with everything Apple. You wouldn’t get a real iPhone review until the next one came out, in which case they would point out everything wrong with the prior version. The new version was bright, shiny, and flawless.
WSJ: Europe’s Second Covid Wave Starts to Spill Over From Young to Old
https://www.wsj.com/articles/europes-second-covid-wave-starts-to-spill-over-from-young-to-old-11601982003
.
“Since the summer, Europe’s second wave of the coronavirus has mainly affected young people, who usually have mild or no symptoms. But infections are beginning to leak into older age groups, the latest data show, often spreading from younger to older members of the same family.”
I haven’t rechecked this for errors, but here’s what I see in battleground states on RCP between 2016 and 2020 on Oct 6’th
GA: C(41.8) T(46.5) [+4.7], B(46.8) T(46.5) [-0.3]
OH: C(44.0) T(45.2) [+1.2], B(47.6) T(46.4) [-1.2]
NC: C(45.4) T(43.2) [-2.2], B(48.2) T(47.0) [-1.2]
FL: C(46.6) T(43.4) [-3.2], B(48.0) T(45.6) [-2.4]
AZ: C(41.8) T(42.5) [+0.7], B(49.0) T(45.6) [-3.4]
PA: C(49.0) T(41.5) [-7.5], B(50.2) T(44.2) [-6.0]
WI: C(45.0) T(39.5) [-5.5], B(50.2) T(44.6) [-5.6]
So — Trump is doing considerably worse in GA according to the polling. Worse in Ohio. Better in North Carolina. Better in Florida. Worse in Arizona. Better in Pennsylvania. Slightly worse in Wisconsin.
Percentages for both parties are up from 2016.
Shrug. I don’t see a clear call in these numbers, given 2016. Trump could lose. Trump might win. It always seems unlikely as hell to me that Trump could ever possibly win, did in 2016 too, but. I don’t know.
The central gulf coast is taking a beating this year from hurricanes, it’s like it was for FL in 2005. What happened then was that people in FL were so exhausted from one after another that nobody evacuated for the later hurricanes.
An expectation that the polls are going to be biased again this time around is probably not warranted. Enjoy your last months with the clown in chief.
.
The good news is that everything wrong with the world will now be Biden’s fault, and the media will be full of rainbow and butterfly stories (and how the minority party is trying to kill innocent oppressed butterflies). Democracy itself will be saved, as the definition of democracy is apparently the correct side winning.
.
CNN / MSNBC ratings will tank, Fox will rise. Journalism will enter a financial crisis as all their hate readers will dry up. A few months of “Trump was defeated but his legacy lives on” articles will wear thin quickly.
.
Of course Biden will be full of comments about how he is trying to clean up all the previous administrations disasters. Obama did this for at least two years. The media will stop personalizing government action, everything that was framed as Trump’s malicious doings and mistakes will be framed as the US administration’s mistakes. There will be calls for unity, where unity means thinking like progressives. Iran will be our friend, and the Norks will be our enemy, because … well I’m not sure.
.
What to do with all the Trump haters out there after their moment of ecstasy? What will they do with their time? I laugh at the previous absolute certainty that Bush was the worst president ever. I’m guessing we will have a new title holder. Governing is hard work, and I don’t expect things to look much different a year from now.
What makes you say that?
One would assume that pollsters care about accuracy, studied what went wrong, and tried harder this time around. There were no definitive single source errors here, it was a combination of events, Comey disclosure, shy Trump voters, etc. etc. Most of these errors pointed in one direction. I don’t foresee that happening again. Historically this polling has been accurate enough and within their error margins on the whole with a few whiffs here and there. On top of that there will be no complacency this time around and probability meters at the NYT telling everyone Biden has it in the bag.
.
Trump is going to need some help, maybe he will get it, maybe not. The outlook is grim, and he will likely shoot himself in the foot a few more times, and the opposition probably has a few dirty trick surprises left.
Thanks Tom.
Tom Scharf,
I can’t say Trump will likely win, since he has to essentially draw to an inside straight to win again. But I do think the polling suffers some of the same errors as in 2016. Specifically, I am guessing the “shy Trump” vote is, if anything, considerably stronger now than in 2016. So I expect the actual Trump vote to be higher than the polls in states where it matters.
.
Of course, Trump does his level best every day (often multiple times per day!) to say and do things to offend moderate voters. The strutting self-promotion and nonstop bragging has done real, and completely unnecessary, damage to his support among moderate voters. There is no upper bound to the politically stupid things Trump may do over the next 4 weeks
.
I think a secondary factor is the Biden dementia issue: lots of people are probably reluctant to say “No, I can’t vote for Biden because he has dementia” even though they probably suspect (or believe) he has dementia. The pollsters are not ever going to ask about Joe’s dementia. How much the uncomfortable “dementia factor” is misleading the pollsters is hard to say.
I think that would be an easier thing to say. ‘It’s not that I like Trump. Biden is just not up for the job.’
70K positive Wuhan virus tests among college students. 3 hospitalizations. Total lack of perspective.
https://healthy-skeptic.com/2020/10/06/updated-college-stats/
SteveF, I don’t know who you are or how else to contact you, but I want to let you know that I discussed your work, here:
https://sealevel.info/sensitivity.html#stevef
Dave Burton,
Thanks for letting me know. As to who I am: I am an aging chemist/chemical engineer who first read about the claims of climate ‘science’ 15 or so years ago, and quickly concluded it was more accurately described as ‘climate politics‘.
.
Outside of pure fluff fields like behavioral ‘science’, sociology, and political ‘science’, I had never encountered so much political bias in a supposedly serious field of study. It was and is a field which can’t seem to ever divorce itself from the political preferences of its practitioners. There is certainly a very real warming effect from rising GHG’s in the atmosphere, and there has been warming that is most likely due to that forcing. But all the rest…. multi-meter sea level increases by 2100, large sections of earth too hot to permit habitation, catastrophic species loss, (and loss of human fertility, more acne, falling crop yields, more malaria, etc… the list is long and stupid) are the purest rubbish I have ever seen published in respectable journals.
.
Most of the ‘projected’ catastrophes would be worthy of nothing but loud laughter save for that numbskull lefty politicians want to use the rubbish to justify policies which will impoverish people and take away their personal liberties (Green New Deal, for example). Those crazy policies would in fact be a catastrophe for people everywhere; my only interest in climate ‘science’ has been to keep that very real political catastrophe from happening.
SteveF, I agree with you, on every syllable.
â€â€â€â€â€â€ â€â€
There used to be a wonderful English gentleman named Prof. John Brignell, who had a website called “Number Watch,†which was “devoted to the monitoring of the misleading numbers that rain down on us via the media.†He also used to maintain a prodigious list of “things [said to be] caused by global warming.†Sadly, he died in 2018. This photo was from his site:
https://sealevel.info/prof_john_brignell.png
â€â€â€â€â€â€ â€â€
Please review what I’ve written about the impact of Happer’s calculations & Feldman’s measurements on your ECS calculations, and let me know what you think about it. My contact information is on my web site.
Lucia (Comment #191452)
October 5th, 2020 at 2:53
“Yes. I think the GOP is toast for this election.”
–
So do I.
Can we be wrong for a second time in 4 years?
–
Like the month before Christmas.
With a big media advent calendar giving a daily surprise.
–
Today 11.00 am your time might be interesting Wray and DOJ, no Barr.
What is going on?
How big will it be?
angech,
Wray appears to want to protect the institution, not fundamentally reform how it operates. That may be because Wray is a never-Trumper and he wants to stay on if Biden wins, or maybe he knows the people at the FBI are most all on the ‘progressive’ side of the political spectrum and real reform is essentially impossible.
.
One thing is for certain: Wray does not want the lawless shenanigans at the FBI in 2916 and 2017 publicly examined, and he has resisted every disclosure of information about misconduct. I expect nothing interesting to come out of the hearing. If Trump wins re-election, I believe Wray will be promptly fired, along with Gina Haskel at CIA and several others.
Dave Burton,
I looked at the paper by Feldman et al. They measured the effect of rising CO2 by integrating spectral emissions in the clear sky CO2 spectral region over a decade at two locations. I plugged the measured rise in CO2 over that decade into the standard equation for CO2 forcing:
forcing = 5.35 * ln(385/370)
and I get a value of 0.21 watt per square meter. Feldman’s most probable value was 0.20 +/-0.05. I just don’t see any discrepancy. There is a lot of uncertainty in the Feldman data, but the measurements do not appear to me to call the standard equation for forcing into question. I think the seasonal oscillation in atmospheric CO2 is also consistent with the measured oscillation in the Feldman data.
FWIW, each time I have looked at claims that forcing by CO2 (and other GHG’s) is much lower than the “standard valueâ€, I have found those claims to be dubious at best, and utterly wrong at worst. How forcing translates into projected surface warming, and more importantly, the consequences of that warming, is where the science fades and the politics takes over.
SteveF (Comment #191526)
October 7th, 2020 at 5:59 am
Forcing from CO2, N2O and CH4, as well as the other major GHG contributors, are well understood. The negative forcing from aerosol/cloud effects has much more uncertainty.
SteveF, I am in the process of finishing an analysis of how modelers for CMIP5 and CMIP6 models have used variations in negative forcing in the Historical period (1850 or 1861 to 2014) to compensate changes in GMST for the individual models differences in climate sensitivity while at the same time allowing the models to exhibit consistency between GMST changes and climate sensitivity in the Future period (2015-2100).
Kenneth,
Yes, aerosols in particular (pun intended 😉 ) have always been used to make all the models look better compared to past temperature records…. even though the individual models are very different in diagnosed sensitivity. Before Argo constrained ocean heat uptake, the modelers had at least three completely unconstrained variables to make their models look accurate, now they have just aerosols and clouds. John von Neuman would probably have been amused.
.
I note that the IPCC continues to say the aerosol effects are very uncertain…. no doubt to accommodate the crazy range of diagnosed sensitivities in the models. The broad acceptance of wildly conflicting models by climate science was one of the things than convinced me early on that climate ‘science’ projections are basically politically motivated rubbish, and should be ignored.
If Trump manages to lose the election it will be largely self inflected. The media and so forth try their hardest to perform character assassination on Trump, that is expected and baked into the equation by most people, but Trump didn’t have to make it so easy for them.
.
Many of the media attacks are unfair and malicious, they are uncountable by now. Let’s just say it is a target rich environment and there is plenty of valid criticism. Part of the appeal of Trump is his complete disregard for media opinion, but still you do need a minimal filter between brain and keyboard if you want to be reelected.
.
With Biden and progressives in charge you will get the same or likely worse level of government malfeasance and incompetence, just written at a college level essay level. The media believes elections should be decided on who looks better at a debate, but the illusion of competence by “speaking well” means very little to me. Note the high level word salads that fill in as arguments for racial preferences and free speech limitations.
.
The strength of the US system is capitalism, the Constitution, the SC, the Bill of Rights, and the large lethargic system itself. It’s full of problems, but would you rather move to Venezuela? This system survived Trump and it will survive whoever wins next month.
In a win for libertarians, courts have ruled lockdown orders in MI and PA unconstitutional.
https://reason.com/2020/09/14/federal-court-rules-pennsylvanias-lockdown-order-unconstitutional/
.
“His (judge) opinion also cites comments from Wolf’s chief of staff about how large protests—which the governor attended—didn’t lead to a “super spreader” event as evidence that restrictions on gatherings were overly broad.”
.
I knew that craziness was going to come back to bite them. Talk about incomprehensible word salads, justifying lockdowns while applauding BLM protests.
Tom,
I agree with you. As Shapiro puts it: if Trump loses it’s on Trump..
I’ve also observed anecdotally that many people who go berzerk over Trump do so complaining about what he says, rather than what he actually does or the impact of what he does. It’s almost as if these people would prefer an eloquent bullshitter with ineffective policies.
Almost 20 years ago, I was working with climate models for a class. They had us working with a simplified version that could run in minutes. We would provide 3 input parameters- aerosols, clouds, and oceans, to go with emissions policy.
It had a built in economic model, so I think the last input was a general policy and not specific emissions.
Favorable numbers in all three could push warming down to 1C, unfavorable could push it 7C at least, for the same policy.
mark bofill,
“It’s almost as if these people would prefer an eloquent bullshitter with ineffective policies.”
.
You mean like Bill Clinton? Always ‘felt your pain’, always bit his lip to keep from weeping about your pain… very politically effective, very much BS. One good thing about Clinton was that he was quite willing to compromise; not so the current crop of deranged lefties.
Tom Scharf,
“This system survived Trump and it will survive whoever wins next month.”
.
I hope you are right, but I am sure we have never had a demented Chauncy Gardiner elected president.
Actually I was thinking about President Obama, although now that you mention it President Clinton fits the bill too. We can argue about whether or not Obama’s policies were effective, but I don’t think anyone would argue that the man was not well spoken.
mark bofill,
“I don’t think anyone would argue that the man was not well spoken.”
.
Agreed. And better, he could be eloquent in standard American English, or turn on an African-American dialect… depending on his listening audience. He was really quite talented at that sort of thing. A bit like when I switch from English to Portuguese, but easier… and less honest.
.
But just remember, ‘you didn’t build that’!
Tom Scharf (Comment #191539): “The strength of the US system is capitalism, the Constitution, the SC, the Bill of Rights, and the large lethargic system itself. It’s full of problems, but would you rather move to Venezuela? This system survived Trump and it will survive whoever wins next month.”
.
There is no guarantee that the Constitution, Bill of Rights, and Supreme Court will survive if the Dems gain full control of the government in this election. Many Dems are promising to destroy those things. Then capitalism will likely follow. We might not have to move to Venezuela. It might come to us.
Mike M,
I had an interesting (and troubling) discussion with two nephews the other day… late 20’s early 30’s both. They loath Trump, of course, but the policies they support seem to me disconnected from economic reality. They said they demand economic justice. I asked what they think that would involve. The best they could come up with was a $15 or $20 per hour Federal minimum wage. When I said, “But some workers aren’t worth anything like $20 per hour” they went ballistic. My question of “Why not $50 or $60 per hour minimum?” was not even heard, as far as I could tell. I do believe the damage to education by the left in the USA is becoming ever worse, and I am very worried Venezuela style government could indeed be coming to us.
SteveF (Comment #191536)
October 7th, 2020 at 9:32 am
In my analysis as an aside I did note that there is a disconnection between the Historical and Future scenario ensemble of models for delta N – which is ocean heat uptake. I judge the aerosol/cloud effect to be larger and a bigger factor in GMST compensation in the Historical period.
I have been pondering submitting my analysis to Climate Etc. Judy Curry does a great job of editing.
Tom Scharf (Comment #191539)
October 7th, 2020 at 10:54 am
I agree with most of what you say but I am not as confident as you that great and permanent damage will be avoided if the far left with the MSM backing is in charge of the government over the next few years.
We can survive a crazy President and even more readily a demented one, but that is really not the issue. I also see a general shift in potential voters thinking to the left and particularly with the younger ones. If they get out the vote like I think will happen this time (thanks in great measure to Trump) I see changes being made at a rapid pace. It will be people like you and me who will be the outsiders with crazy ideas. TS and KF will become the latter-day AOC.
Kenneth,
“TS and KF will become the latter-day AOC.”
.
I have my doubts. The left is much less tolerant of ideas that are outside ‘acceptable thought’ than the right. If you are still around, you and TS are more likely to be imprisoned (or worse) for wrong-think than being a later-day AOC. AOC is almost unimaginably stupid and dangerous, of course, but nobody on the right suggests anything worse for her than returning to a more appropriate employment like bar-tending. AOC and her ilk are not so forgiving.
Sometimes what it takes to convince people they are wrong is give them exactly what they are asking for. People who want unrestricted capitalism will soon find out starving people with little to offer the knowledge economy tend to rob and steal to stay alive. Tax the rich too much and they disappear to another state. There is enough real forcings to prevent the crazies from doing crazy things en masse.
.
I don’t think packing the court has a chance because too many moderate democrats will see it as a bridge too far, and the right will in fact find that a perfectly appropriate time to find their inner arsonist. The conservative leaning court has handed the left some significant victories lately so it isn’t exactly a political organ as the pundits suggest.
.
AOC is not America, she is just another self serving Paris Hilton celebrity.
I think this way sometimes, along the lines that Kenneth points out. He may be utterly correct.
I like to believe that the movement that elected Trump was a response to this, and that a sufficiently large minority of people dislike the far left vision which has been gradually manifesting in our culture and society over the past several years. I look and take the evidence that I see, that the more extreme elements of the left have actually turned on the moderate left and that the moderate left realizes it (harper letter example again), and that the extreme elements on the left have turned on each other to some extent (trans-male vs lesbians for example), as hopeful developments.
Remember, we hear the loudest and most obnoxious voices best. Media and social media amplify those. They are still a minority, although if they continue to dominate our culture and discourse that may change.
The youth concern me most as well. We’ve been bleeding from that wound for a long time and maybe we finally realize that the situation is serious, with Trump at least going after critical theory in government. It’s a shame he didn’t go after tax dollars to universities to teach critical theory and create activists. I don’t know how, when or if the blood loss from this will end.
I have hope though. Trump may be out in 2020, but we’ll move on with a conservative SC and who knows how these things will play out. My evidence is scant, but my faith is that we’re not going to end up like Venezuela.
Shrug.
The Democrat party has been clear about the profligate spending on colossal government programs that they have in mind if they control the government in Washington. Where are these so-called moderates in either major party who are arguing against or even showing any hesitation concerning these Democrat promises? We have the Federal Reserve Chairman begging for more spending by the Federal government. I thought his job was that of central banker and not a lobbyist.
A moderate politician is most often hoping that label will get him/her elected but that does not mean that they have a moderate political philosophy – just that their good at hiding their true philosophy from the voter. A landslide or near landslide victory in November will have consequences. It will be called a mandate. It will embolden the moderates to show their true colors and induce the weaker ones in the opposition party to retune their political philosophy.
No, we will not become Venezuela in the near future. After all it took a resource rich nation like Venezuela a while to fall apart. But do look for more emergencies in the future for the government to gain more and lasting power.
SteveF, you can belittle AOC, but the Democrats do not.
https://www.marketwatch.com/story/biden-campaign-taps-progressive-committee-leaders-in-joint-effort-with-sanders-including-ocasio-cortez-on-climate-2020-05-13
Kenneth,
AOC is an idiot. Really doesn’t matter much if she is assigned by a demented old man to plan future economic destruction jointly with an ancient Bolshevik, she is still an idiot. She doesn’t know much of anything, and she has never done anything productive, save maybe for mixing bar drinks. Really, the description “lightweight†is far too heavy a lift for her minimal intellect.
I think AOC is just acting stupid. She grew up wealthy. I think she would have heard of a garbage disposal before:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oB9JWd0ifPw
She also wan an Intel prize for her science experiment, and got a star named after her as a result.
Future madam President isn’t off to an amazing start. Pleasure to listen to Pence as opposed to Trump I must say.
I am finding Kamrade Harris to be very grating.
The nice, polite format is having the effect that the moderator asks a question and the candidates ignore it.
I think historically the Democrats (starry eyed dreamers) promise all kind of wild spending programs and ironically depend on the Republicans (grumpy old men with the wallet) to shut it down. They then blame the failure to fund all the crazy stuff on the Republicans, the Republicans gladly take credit, and things go forward. The left had complete control in 2009 and only spent a measly $1T (ha ha) on the Obama stimulus. They did get Obamacare through which had a more lasting impact, but medical insurance remains an unsolved problem.
.
The main danger I think is a blue state bailout disguised as covid relief. Fortunately tax increases are never popular, so good luck with no matter how it’s just the rich or it’s for such great causes.
Not.Watching.
That said: MikeM, I was expecting you wouldn’t like her. 🙂
I was expecting to not like Harris. It is worse than I expected.
SteveF, being an idiot is not disqualifying for politicians. She well could be a useful idiot for the left – something like Republicans hoped Trump would be for them.
I hope Trump reviews this debate and learns from his VP. He won’t, but he really ought to.
I don’t think it is so much that Trump can’t or won’t learn, it is that he is who he is, so that is what he will be.
——
I don’t think that AOC is an idiot.But she is a doctrinaire leftist who refuses to think about the trade offs of their desired policies.
I watched the entire debate because I hadn’t seen much of Harris before. I thought she did well. As a former prosecutor she should know how to debate. Pence did ok, but ran over his time a lot. He didn’t, however, interrupt Harris frequently like Trump did with Biden.
I was distracted for a minute by the fly crawling across Pence’s hair, and don’t know what he said during that brief period.
SteveF (Comment #191551)
October 7th, 2020 at 12:30 pm
When I said, “But some workers aren’t worth anything like $20 per hour†they went ballistic.
__________
True, some workers aren’t qualified for $20 per hour jobs. Some aren’t even qualified for living-wage jobs. So we can (a) let the government and/or charities make up the difference, or (b) let these workers and their children live in poverty. I believe we opt for trying to make up some of the difference through progressive taxation and work credits.
Mike M,
“I don’t think that AOC is an idiot.“
Have you listened to her talk? If she isn’t then she has missed her calling as an actress. I agree she is a doctrinaire leftist; that takes no intelligence at all.
OK_Max,
Two problems: First, unless immigration is severely restricted, there are literally billions of poor, uneducated people who are even less qualified to earn $15 to $20 per hour, and who would happily migrate to the States for a guaranteed “living wageâ€. Second, the fundamental cause of long term multi-generational poverty is a destructive culture that does not embrace the behaviors which lead to greater wealth: education, avoiding criminality, saving, not having kids outside a stable relationship, etc. It is the culture that needs to change. Giving people money (directly or indirectly via subsidies) does not solve the problem at all, only kicks the can down the road.
OK_Max,
We have progressive taxation. Obviously, that only helps if someone has a job.
.
We have an earned income tax credit. Biden and Harris could propose to increase that– it’s a better idea. But the cost of that program is obvious. So they would rather propose a high minimum wage which won’t help those unqualified to work The reason it’ wont is the jobs they can do will disappear just as they have in the cities where the minimum wage has been raised.
.
Disappear how? you might ask? Well… restaurants are replacing cashiers with order kiosks where customers enter their own orders. Same can at grocery stores (technology to eliminate check out lines is being developed and used at places like Whole foods.) Robots replace some people. And so on. Increasing the minimum wage gives companies incentives to switch to all of these things sooner rather than later.
I see this morning that the WSJ editorial page agreed with my assessment of Federal Reserve Chairman Powell as a lobbyist for more congressional spending and being way out of his job description.
I do not know how many here read the WSJ, but I am finding many of the articles appearing in the “news” sections of the paper uninformative and with headlines that imply something different than the information that the article attempts to present. Sometimes I will read an article quickly and think that it had said next to nothing. When I look for something on a reread I find I have for a second time wasted time on next to nothing. Most of the in-depth information comes from the editorial pages where a discerning reader can garner some world view information from articles there.
There evidently is a major journalistic and political divide between the “news” and editorial people at the WSJ. A few months back the news workers at the WSJ petitioned for some major changes in the editorial pages. That incident was revealed on the editorial pages and followed by a high administrative official of the paper offering a rather neutral message attempting, I think, to assuage those complaints of readers favoring the editorial staff.
IMO, the push for a vaccine borders on recklessness. So when I saw the following story a couple days ago, I was somewhat pleased:
https://www.statnews.com/2020/10/06/race-for-covid-19-vaccine-slows-as-regulators-top-warp-speed-official-tap-the-breaks/
Good.
Wow. So Trump saying the vaccine might be ready by election day was not just wishful thinking.
I thought it strange that they are changing the rules in the middle of the trials.
It sounds to me like it ought to be three months. For everyone in the trial.
———
This morning the penny dropped.
(1) The FDA set rules for the trials.
(2) It started to look like one vaccine might meet all the requirements by election day.
(3) The FDA changed the rules.
Kenneth,
The term ‘moderate democrat’ is an oxymoron. No such animal exists at the Federal level. I ask anyone who believes that they do exist to name one Democrat Senator or Congressperson who is as unreliable for the Democrats as Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski or even Mitt Romney are for the Republicans. I laughed during the last election when the Democrat candidate for the House for our district claimed that he wouldn’t be Nancy Pelosi’s lapdog. Of course he had no chance anyway. But if he wasn’t flat out lying, then he was an idiot. A true moderate Democrat would almost certainly only last one term in office. He would face a very well funded progressive candidate in the next primary.
I also mostly don’t read the ‘news’ articles in the WSJ. It’s probably very hard to find journalists who aren’t progressive.
DeWitt Payne (Comment #191622): “The term ‘moderate democrat’ is an oxymoron. No such animal exists at the Federal level.”
.
I am inclined to agree.
.
DeWitt Payne: “I ask anyone who believes that they do exist to name one Democrat Senator or Congressperson who is as unreliable for the Democrats as Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski or even Mitt Romney are for the Republicans.”
.
That is quite a low bar. I don’t know how to quantify it, but I can think of three who might be able to clear it:
Xochitl Torres Small (D-NM)
Tulsi Gabbard (D-HI)
Joe Manchin (D-WV)
Gabbard is certainly no moderate, but she is willing to go against the rest of her party.
Mike M.,
I know people in the Pfizer trial. They will be followed for at least two years. But with ‘only’ 30,000 people in the trial, things like the Guillain Barre syndrome from the swine flu vaccine in 1976 (1:100,000 risk) are unlikely to show up. My guess is that this change, or perhaps clarification, is because they know the committees that have to vote on approval wouldn’t approve without that data.
Mike M.,
Manchin makes a lot of noise, but when push comes to shove, he always votes with the rest of the party. He only gets a pass when his vote doesn’t matter, like for Kavanaugh. He has zero effect on party policy, very unlike, say, Susan Collins. I’m less familiar with Small and Gabbard, but my guess would be that it’s similar with them.
DeWitt,
One of the main reasons I didn’t want to sign up for a trial is:
1) I might be given the placebo.
2) I might have to agree to NOT get a vaccine for 2 years even if one is approved!!
I didn’t actually look into the risk of (2)… but something I read gave me the impression I would need to agree to that.
When I said ‘moderate left’ in my comment earlier, I was thinking of voters and not politicians. I don’t know if there are any ‘moderate Democrat’ politicians at the Federal level.
Mike M, DeWitt,
This site: https://www.govtrack.us/congress/members/joe_manchin/412391
suggests Manchin is more conservative than nearly all other Dems. I can’t vouch for the accuracy of the analysis, but what it appears to me is that senators in competitive states mostly vote to please their constituents, not based on their own ideology. For example, Sinema (Arizona) was an absolutely flaming progressive until she ran for the Senate in a relatively conservative state…. now she is rated the most conservative Democrat…. more conservative than Republican Collins (Maine). It looks like Senators in competitive states also tend to get on committees that don’t have so many ideological battles. The slope of leadership (power) versus ideological purity among Democrats very clearly shows the most extreme Senators having more power. Not nearly as clear among Republicans.
.
DeWitt, I agree that on most divisive ideological votes, pretty much every Democrat senator votes with the party. Republicans? Not so much. I think it has to do with the greater risk Democrats face of being removed from office by a primary opponent who is far to their left.
lucia (Comment #191627): “1) I might be given the placebo.”
.
Why would that be a problem? You’d be no worse off than you are.
.
lucia: “2) I might have to agree to NOT get a vaccine for 2 years even if one is approved!!”
.
I can’t believe that. It is common to cut drug trials short once they are clearly successful. That is done so that people in the placebo arm can receive the drug; to do otherwise would be unethical. It would surely be the same with a vaccine.
——–
Addition: You probably have to agree to not get a different vaccine until the trial you are in is concluded.
SteveF (Comment #191629): “This site: https://www.govtrack.us/congress/members/joe_manchin/412391
suggests Manchin is more conservative than nearly all other Dems. I can’t vouch for the accuracy of the analysis, but what it appears to me is that senators in competitive states mostly vote to please their constituents, not based on their own ideology.”
.
That charts show Manchin to the right of two Republicans. There are 5-7 Senators in the realtive “middle”, depending on just how how you define middle.
3D, 2R if middle is defined by the rightmost D (Manchin) and the leftmost R (Collins).
4D, 2R, 1I if you define the middle as the region between the two bunches (from Manchin to King).
Of course, such analyses vary according to what votes are included.
.
What really matters is not whether Congress critters sometimes go against their party. It is whether they cause the overall vote to go against their party. Party leaders are happy to let members vote to please their constituents as long as the final outcome is unaffected.
lucia,
You can always withdraw from the trial, which is what would happen if you took a different vaccine before the trial was stopped. I looked at the 135 page Pfizer protocol ( https://pfe-pfizercom-d8-prod.s3.amazonaws.com/2020-09/C4591001_Clinical_Protocol.pdf ). TMI.
Here’s a link to the Greater Barrington Declaration petition on the damage being done by lockdowns.
https://gbdeclaration.org/
The usual suspects are calling this pushing grandma off a cliff.
Manchin is from WV, Trump carried WV by 40 points. I don’t think any other Democrat stands a chance of getting elected in WV at this time. There are many red lines he cannot cross and get reelected. He’s actually a pretty decent person in my view. I think there was zero chance he was not going to vote for Kavanaugh. He did the clever political thing by waiting it out to make sure he wasn’t the deciding vote. I would not be surprised to see him switch parties when he gets sick and tired of the song and dance to please progressives.
I think we need to review a vaccine candidate on its merits once we know the facts. I find it odd the rules would be changed late in the game. The headline number will be its effectiveness. I find any connection between the vaccine and the election a complete distraction and don’t understand why the FDA, a normal person, or a vaccine company would care. Some things are bigger than politics, somebody please notify the media and Twitter.
Tom Scharf,
” I would not be surprised to see him switch parties when he gets sick and tired of the song and dance to please progressives.”
.
I will be shocked (but happy) if that happens. If McConnell could offer Manchin enough incentives (leadership posts, committees, etc) for Manchin to switch parties, then he should. The only way I think it could happen is if Manchin believes he is never going to win re-election as a Democrat.
Tom Scharf,
“I think we need to review a vaccine candidate on its merits once we know the facts. I find it odd the rules would be changed late in the game. The headline number will be its effectiveness.”
.
Sure. But I think the reality is the longer the approval process takes, the less impact (lives saved, illnesses avoided) the vaccine is going to have. If the approvals don’t happen until some time next year, and significant distribution doesn’t happen until some time in 2022, then the practical impact will be minimal in many if not most countries, because the pandemic will be over in those places. Were the vaccine likely will make a difference, even if long delayed, is where isolation and diligence have kept the pandemic at bay.
Tom Scharf (Comment #191636): “Some things are bigger than politics”
.
No, some things SHOULD be bigger than politics.
There is no way that the FDA should let politics interfere with vaccine approval. Sadly, things are not always what they should be.
Why did the FDA change the rules in the middle of trials? I see one reason. It is awful. Is there another?
Mike M,
“Why did the FDA change the rules in the middle of trials? I see one reason. It is awful. Is there another?”
.
I’m confident the MSM will hound the FDA for an explanation for the delay. Aren’t you?
.
But seriously, the change is almost certainly politically motivated. The FDA is run by a bunch of bureaucrats who loath Trump, just like the bureaucrats in every federal agency, not to mention all the generals and admirals Obama promoted. The FDA set the rules with the bureaucrats thinking nobody could possibly have a vaccine approved by the election; they changed the rules when it appeared someone could…. it is the most plausible explanation.
The media tying vaccine safety to the election and politics undermines the safety of vaccines narrative. Changing the rules makes it look like they are making up the rules as they go along. It seems the rules being changed though are for “emergency use authorization” and not the standard vaccine approval.
.
One assumes if Biden wins then the vaccine will miraculously become super safe and effective overnight and anyone who questions the safety will be ostracized for their antivax flat earthism.
MikeM
Yes. That’s what I mean by
After all: the different vaccine might be approved. But the trial for the one I participated in might not be concluded. Then if I had gotten the placebo, I would not be able to get an existing approved vaccine.
I read over the October guidance. IMHO, the FDA is actually trying to maximize covid 19 deaths until some time mid to late next year.
.
The guidance document introduces a series of hurdles, most of which will significantly delay application for approval. The document also says essentially: “If you clear all these hurdles, then we will take your application under consideration.”
.
The FDA guidance seems to me bizarrely disconnected from the risk covid 19 poses to the elderly; where a substantial fraction will die if they contract the illness. If they were sensible bureaucrats (an oxymoron, I know), they would authorize use on those most at risk of death (the elderly), then worry later about the long term effects of the vaccine on 18 to 50 year olds. Really, the risk of adverse effects of the vaccine on people don’t get the vaccine is zero, and nearly all covid 19 deaths are among those over 60. One might even consider death worse than an unexpected adverse effect. It is like the FDA wants very elderly people to die for no good reason.
.
The most bizarre request of all for slowdown (from the head of Operation Warp Speed, no joke) is that companies don’t even apply for approval until they have “large scale manufacturing” in place and are ready to start producing. This request alone could push back the approval process by months. He says that he “doesn’t want to disappoint the public” by not having millions of doses available when a vaccine is approved. I can’t even wrap my head around this request.
.
It’s all crazy on its face.
Mike M.
Presumably, you mean Trump’s push to get the FDA to drop requirements the FDA wants to impose is reckless. It looks like Trump is deciding not to push like that.
The article you linked indicates the FDA is maintaining or escalating safety rules like
I don’t see how this indicates there is a reckless push for a vaccine (unless you mean on Trump’s part.)
Ok… now I’m not sure I know what you are complaining about. This final bit sounds like your complaint is the FDA is not being reckless enough!
Lucia,
“Then if I had gotten the placebo, I would not be able to get an existing approved vaccine.”
.
Actually, I think you can leave a trial any time your want. It is not a prison sentence. Why do you think you would not be able to get a different vaccine if one were approved?
Well…. I would have agreed to not leave. I’m not technically required to stick to that agreement — but I would be abandoning the trial. I don’t really want to enter a trial knowing full well I plan to abandon it if another vaccine is approved.
Lucia,
“I don’t really want to enter a trial knowing full well I plan to abandon it if another vaccine is approved.”
.
Fair enough, but I doubt you really want to enter a vaccine trial. Or have you changed your mind about getting vaccinated early?
.
Anyway, I think it is all moot: by the time a vaccine receives FDA approval and people in your risk category can actually get a vaccination (end of 2021 to mid 2022 is my guess for general availability), all the vaccine trials will be long over, and you could get a vaccination even if you had enrolled in an earlier trial.
.
Which is not to say any of the vaccines will be very effective. If they all turn out to be near 50% effective, what would that change for people not at serious risk? I think not much. Yes, probably worth getting, but 50% lower risk doesn’t really allow you to go dancing with abandon. ;-o
SteveF,
If you’re asking if I would want to be vacinnated early outside a trial: Not especially. As long as they are happening, I’m happy to wait to see what safety trials show.
.
It’s a little different to get vacinnated early if I’m actually part of a study. Then there is an upside of contributing to “science”. But just getting in line first once it’s approved? Not much upside. I’d just be pushing out someone who needs it more and wouldn’t be “studied”.
But yeah… I spent about 3 minutes reading a leaflet and decided no. So obviously, I’m not hell bent on participating in trials.
I’ll get the vacinne if it’s 50% effective. Yea.. still at risk. But 50% lower for me and collaterally I reduce the risk for others.
lucia (Comment #191646):
???
Those are my words, not yours.
lucia (Comment #191627): “2) I might have to agree to NOT get a vaccine for 2 years even if one is approved!!”
Very different, since even with the slower schedule the trials will be only a few months.
lucia (Comment #191649),
Sigh. I am happy the FDA is being a little less reckless. I am unhappy that their reason appears to have nothing to do with safety or public health.
SteveF (Comment #191648): “The most bizarre request of all for slowdown (from the head of Operation Warp Speed, no joke) is that companies don’t even apply for approval until they have “large scale manufacturing†in place and are ready to start producing.”
.
I don’t see the problem. As I recall (increasingly risky), the government is already buying vaccine doses and guaranteeing future purchases even if the vaccine is not approved.
Mike M
Yes. And you, in your words, are describing the situation I thought I would put myself in if I entered a trial.
.
You wrote this:
Yes. I would have agreed to do that. And having agreed to do that, that would mean that I could not get a different vaccinne until the trial I was in was over. So if a different vaccine had been approved I would not be able to get it. (That is: assuming I was going to keep my agreement.)
.
This stipulation– stated in your words would mean I would be blocked from getting a vaccine because I was part of an ongoing trial.
Huh? With the slower schedule the trials require waiting to see whether there are side effects and could continue for a longer time.
MikeM
What I don’t understand is what part about the FDA’s behavior you consider reckless. You linked to an article that discusses how cautious they are being and how they are slowing down. That’s not a “reckless push“. I could see calling it undue caution but that’s not a reckless push.
.
Could you clarify (a) What you think the FDA is doing wrong, (b) Why you think that thing is a “push” and (c) why you think that thing they are ‘pushing’ is ‘reckless’. Because you don’t seem to have described this directly. And the link was to something that suggested they were not pushing at all– but rather slowing and putting roadblocks in place.
SteveF (Comment #191614)
October 8th, 2020 at 6:18 am
OK_Max,
“Second, the fundamental cause of long term multi-generational poverty is a destructive culture that does not embrace the behaviors which lead to greater wealth: education, avoiding criminality, saving, not having kids outside a stable relationship, etc. It is the culture that needs to change. Giving people money (directly or indirectly via subsidies) does not solve the problem at all, only kicks the can down the road.”
__________
It sounds like you are talking about the poor who don’t work or work very little. I was talking about the working poor, the poor who have full-time jobs year round, but don’t earn enough to escape poverty. The progressive income tax and the earned income tax credit give them more incentive to work. Otherwise, some might just work long enough to draw unemployment or turn to crime. Assistance that encourages the poor to work seems like a good idea to me.
One possible problem is the high birth rate of the poor, and the possibility assistance would lead to an even higher birth rate and eventually a surplus of unskilled workers. On the other hand, I’m not sure the progressive income tax and earned income tax credit cause a higher birth rate among the poor.
Mike M,
“I don’t see the problem.”
.
The problem is that adding things that must be done before applying for approval obviously delays approval. Yes, the companies have minimal financial risk, because they are being mainly funded by the taxpayers. The public, at least those most at risk of death, do face increased chance of death if the process is dragged out.
.
FWIW, I would never suggest young healthy people get the “emergency” vaccine for two separate reasons: first, if an effective vaccine becomes available soon, it should go to those truly at risk, and second, since young healthy people have minimal chance of death from a covid 19 infection, giving an “emergency approved” vaccine to them entails unnecessary risk that can’t be justified. It is the apparent unwillingness of the FDA to take risks and benefits for a covid 19 vaccine into account that most rankles.
lucia (Comment #191615)
October 8th, 2020 at 7:25 am
OK_Max,
” The reason it’ wont is the jobs they can do will disappear just as they have in the cities where the minimum wage has been raised.”
_______
While I don’t advocate a minimum wage I also question whether it eliminates jobs much. I think employers just pass it on to customers.
But I could be wrong. The Fed minimum wage isn’t very high. I haven’t looked at the minimum wage in all States.
BTW, the labor-saving innovation you described does eliminate the need for checkers at cash registers. Theoretically, checker’s wages could be reduced enough to make the self check-out machines uneconomic. But that might be a wage too low to attract qualified workers.
lucia,
The FDA has always weighted risks higher than benefits, AFAICT.
The trial followup will last two years. The trials will only last long enough to determine effectiveness or lack of it. Initially, that could be a matter of weeks. The estimate of the infection rate with 30,000 in the study for Pfizer is 32 exposures/month. With 32 documented infections, if six or less are in the vaccinated group, then you have 99+% confidence that the vaccine is 50% effective and the trial can be stopped. That is, no new participants will be signed up.
OTOH, if it’s 16 and 16, then the vaccine probably isn’t effective and the trial may be stopped. The followup procedures for the members of the trial will continue. The trial will also be over when there are 120 total infections. They will be looking for asymptomatic infections using blood tests. The trial started in late July.
What I don’t know is when, after the trial is stopped because it’s successful, are the participants unblinded and when those who received a placebo can get the vaccine. But I seriously doubt it’s two years. It’s probably more like weeks. I don’t think you need a placebo control group for safety, but more people would improve the statistics for safety and lower the detection limit for rare complications.
SteveF
Now… see this criticism I understand. But this is criticizing them for blocking or slowing down distribution to those who have an emergency need. So it doesn’t sound like a candidate for what MikeM considers “pushing” “recklessly”.
.
To me, it at least sounds like MikeM is complaining that someone is trying to push things out too fast with too little testing. That would certainly not be what I see the FDA doing. The FDA appears to be putting unnecessarily roadblocks in place.
.
The only person in the government who is trying to get things to go faster seems to be Trump! And yet, MikeM doesn’t seem to be criticizing Trump . . .
.
So I’m puzzled by what actions MikeM is concerned about and I’m mystified who he thinks is taking those actions!
.
FWIW: I’d be for the FDA allowing companies to apply for emergency approval before having humongous reserves in place. That gets the process underway. The approval process itself takes time, so companies could still be working out logistics to distribute vaccinne later.
.
Then also make it clear the emergency approval is only for distribution to specific categories– medical workers and those living in nursing homes and so on. We don’t need enough vaccinne for the entire planet to fill that need.
.
Anyway… why do we need to have a stockpile of vaccine before it’s approved. We’d just throw it out if it fails approval. Or even if it is approved, we then have a stockpile of old vaccine. I don’t see how this rule is a good one.
Further information on the Pfizer trial:
https://www.pfizer.com/news/press-release/press-release-detail/pfizer-and-biontech-propose-expansion-pivotal-covid-19
The trial has been expanded to 44,000 to include populations that had been excluded in the earlier part of the trial. For example, the minimum age has been reduced to 16 from 18.
One of the very interesting developments in covid world is the change in rate of death per confirmed case. See for example France: https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/france/
It looks like current rate of death per confirmed case (looking back at the confirmed case rate three weeks ago versus current death rate) is about 1 in 140. That is so remarkably different from France’s first wave (~1 death in 5 cases) that it is almost shocking. The studies about the pandemic that are published in the next few years should be interesting when they try to explain this evolution.
DeWitt,
“For example, the minimum age has been reduced to 16 from 18.”
.
I think they have gone mad.
.
I do hope that they release some efficacy results by the end of October. I doubt they will.
lucia (Comment #191669): “To me, it at least sounds like MikeM is complaining that someone is trying to push things out too fast with too little testing.”
.
Right. I think they are trying to push the vaccine too fast, with insufficient testing. I *thought* I made that clear (“bordering on reckless”).
.
lucia: “The FDA appears to be putting unnecessarily roadblocks in place.”
.
No, they have been greasing the skids. They just took a little of the grease off.
.
lucia: “The only person in the government who is trying to get things to go faster seems to be Trump! And yet, MikeM doesn’t seem to be criticizing Trump”.
.
Trump certainly wants it to go as fast as possible. Of course he does. I do not criticize him for wanting that. But I would definitely criticize him if he were ignoring advice re safety and forcing the experts to make unsafe decision. I am not aware of any evidence that he has done that; so far as I know, the FDA, Big Pharma, Fauci, etc. have all been on board with Operation Warp Speed.
.
There is now a conflict between Trump and the FDA because the FDA appears to have made a political decision to slow things down. If you think it is a safety based decision, please provide some evidence. What does the FDA know now that they did not know six months ago? So far as I can tell, just one thing: A vaccine might actually be ready before the election, unless they change the rules.
MIke M
You didn’t say who “they” were. You linked to an article showing the FDA putting roadblocks into the process. So no, it was not at all clear who you were considering reckless nor what.
Well, at least now you are telling us your interpretation of their actions.
Well… I don’t think anyone can be criticized for wanting. We know he wants it for political reasons: He thinks it will help him with reelection.
.
But he isn’t merely wanting. He is the one pushing which is what you claim you dislike. So, he is the one pushing for what you don’t like, the FDA is putting roadblocks into his doing it, but you criticize the FDA but not him. That’s confusing. But at least now you are saying it.
.
I’m neither criticizing or endorsing their decision. I’m merely pointing out their actions the opposite of “pushing”. And pushing is what you criticized them for. They aren’t pushing.
Mike M.,
That’s wrong. The testing protocol is the standard FDA vaccine testing protocol. There are no shortcuts. The shortcut was in the production of the vaccine candidates. Rather than growing things in eggs, they manufacture them, which gives them a lot more options.
lucia,
I checked with my friend in the Pfizer trial. Once the vaccine is shown to be effective, the participants who received a placebo will be given the option to receive the vaccine. If it’s not effective the placebo receivers will still be notified. This is now standard practice for vaccine trials.
SteveF,
I wish worldometers would list new cases and new deaths as per million as well as the absolute number like they do for total cases and total deaths. France, for example, has about twice the number of new cases per million as the US, but about half the number of new deaths. I suspect a large fraction of that is for the same reason as why we spend a lot more on health care; we’re just not very healthy. Oops, I forgot. It’s all Trump’s fault. /sarc
DeWitt. Interesting proposition. France seems to score better than USA on things like life expectancy, mortality but these are also influenced by availability and affordability of healthcare. Obesity is one other gross estimate of population health (and relevant to covid survivability) and US sits at 36.2% compared to 21.6%. I hope someone takes the time to estimate how much of variance in death rates is due to factors like this, especially after the initial wave.
Also interesting is extent of damage in Asian countries cf other parts of the world. You would expect unreliable data in some, but even rich countries are doing ok. Yes, public health response is different, but I wonder to whether factors like obesity or perhaps more common T-Cell reactivity because of exposure to similar coranaviruses?
DeWitt,
But what happens if a different vaccine is approved? There are lots of trials going on. If I’m i Pfizers trial and someone elses gets approved but Pfizer’s is still going on… then what do I do?
lucia,
As I said, you can always withdraw from a vaccine trial. Nobody is holding a gun to your head. But there is no guarantee that you could get the other vaccine in a timely fashion and, unless the other vaccine was highly effective, I don’t see much upside in withdrawing since you would probably find out whether the vaccine trial you were in was successful in a few months. If you were in the placebo half, I think you get first call on the vaccine.
DeWitt Payne (Comment #191679): “That’s wrong. The testing protocol is the standard FDA vaccine testing protocol. There are no shortcuts.”
.
Do you have any evidence for that? It seems hard to find info on the length of vaccine clinical trials, but the things being said 6 months ago were 12-18 months, even with the fast transitions from one phase to the next.
DeWitt,
There are no doubt many factors which contribute to differences. Certainly less healthy people are more likely to die, but the overwhelming factor seems to be age distribution of the population. Look at countries in africa with median ages under 20: there is no pandemic at all…. in spite of extreme poverty and lack of health care; in countries with very few susceptible people there are few deaths.
.
In the states, deaths are almost all among those over 60, and especially those over 65, rich or poor. But for the same age, the case rate is much higher for poorer people. In my county in Florida, first and second generation hispanics are about 15% of the population, but over 50% of the cases and deaths in the county. Wealthier (non-hispanic) people are infected much less often. I am sure there are multiple factors (more crowded housing, more multi-generation households, more jobs which lead to exposure, maybe worse overall health, maybe cultural factors) which explain the difference in number of cases. One of the differences between the USA and France could just be far fewer poor people (as a % of the population) in France. If you look at case and death rates for only middle class and higher in the USA, I suspect you will find rates more like France.
.
Finally, we should keep in mind that most European countries, including France, had very high deaths per case in the ‘first wave’ but are all drastically lower now. Certainly treatment has improved, but the huge drop can most easily be explained by the human capacity to learn from experience: elderly people are just being exposed much less often. Those elderly people, and those around them, are now aware of the need to avoid exposure. Among the young, not so much…. so rising second wave cases. Politicians, especially on the left, will continue to ignore rational pleas to allow young people to be exposed to build herd immunity, while protecting the elderly. But young people now understand they are not personally at much risk, and are beginning to act that way.
lucia (Comment #191669): “The FDA appears to be putting unnecessarily roadblocks in place.”
.
OK, for the sake of discussion, I will concede that. My main concern is with the reason for the change in rules. What do you think is the FDA’s reason?
Part of the reason for a huge relative drop in death rates is that testing was rationed during the first wave in Europe. So the confirmed cases was likely a lot higher in the first wave all thing equal. There is no doubt that age and general health matters. Obesity is a factor and the US is very much “great” in that category.
My understanding is that career scientists at the FDA said that many side effects do not exhibit themselves until after 2-3 months after taking the vaccine. For a normal vaccine approval the rules are already in place to wait at least that long. For emergency use authorization the rules are flexible and they decided recently to put that rule in place for covid vaccines. The timing of this is unclear and it seems more like conservative scientists getting nervous at the FDA.
.
It should be noted an effective treatment like regeneron (not sure how effective this one is) is just as good as a vaccine in many aspects. People aren’t worried about getting sick, they are worried about dying, or passing along a virus that kills others.
Tom Scharf (Comment #191708): “The timing of this is unclear and it seems more like conservative scientists getting nervous at the FDA.”
.
That could be. Maybe they figured it would take at least 3 months to get enough cases to assess the effectiveness. But that just raises two more questions.
(1) If most side effects take 2-3 months to manifest, then shouldn’t the minimum duration be 3 months?
(2) You or I would not have thought about that issue six months ago. But the people setting the rules are supposed to be experts who were thinking *very* carefully about what the rules should be. So why did they not include that in the original rules? There is no excuse for overlooking the issue. If they thought it would not matter in practice, then there would have been no harm to including a minimum duration. And if they anticipated that it might matter, than there is no excuse for not including it.
.
I don’t see any way that this does not reflect very badly on the FDA.
Tom Scharf,
“It should be noted an effective treatment like regeneron (not sure how effective this one is) is just as good as a vaccine in many aspects.”
.
I don’t think that treatment is approved by the FDA either. The FDA can’t stop Trump from receiving it, but they sure can stop everyone else.
Mike M,
“I don’t see any way that this does not reflect very badly on the FDA.”
.
The people making these decisions at the FDA are faceless unknowns (or very nearly so). They remind me of the old Saturday Night Live skit about the phone companies that held monopolies on telephone service in the States: “We don’t care, because we don’t have to.” (https://vimeo.com/355556831)
.
I think if Trump wins re-election, then he may just direct the FDA to revise their covid 19 vaccine guidance, which he has the authority to do. Like all Federal bureaucracies, the FDA doesn’t want to ever reduce regulations or make them easier to comply with; the FDA exists to keep people from doing things they would otherwise be free to do.
.
One personal experience: Many years ago, the FDA promulgated regulations on software used to operate laboratory instruments. The regulations were so complex and convoluted that they were effectively impossible to comply with; a relatively simple program to control an instrument would become a horrific monstrosity which would cost a fortune to write and even more to maintain. The FDA itself later acknowledged the problems with the regulation. So they issued “guidance” about how they would treat all the software in actual use which was not truly compliant (which at the time was nearly all….most everyone fudged it to claim “compliance”). The message was simple: “We will screw whoever we are unhappy with, so don’t bitch.” The regulation, in spite of being utterly nutty, was never changed. Once again: “We don’t care, because we don’t have to.”
I’d like to see a citation for the assertion that side effects don’t show up for 2-3 months. Guillain Barre Syndrome, for example manifests in days to weeks, not months. Also, several trials, including the Pfizer trial, started in late July, even allowing for the three weeks between the two doses of the vaccine, if it is a two dose regimen, by the end of October, for many members of the trial it will have been at least two months since they were vaccinated.
Pfizer told their participants that the trial was set up according to standard FDA vaccine approval procedures. I don’t think it’s up to me to prove that statement was correct or provide supporting evidence other than the protocol itself. The full protocol for the Pfizer trial is available ( https://pfe-pfizercom-d8-prod.s3.amazonaws.com/2020-09/C4591001_Clinical_Protocol.pdf ).
SteveF,
Was that Good Laboratory Practices? Then there’s ISO 9000.
*groan*
I worked in a research laboratory and said that we couldn’t do our job if we had to work under GLP. We got all the stuff from the plant for which the plant control labs said they didn’t have a method. If we had to work under GLP, we wouldn’t have had a method either.
DeWitt Payne (Comment #191716): “Pfizer told their participants that the trial was set up according to standard FDA vaccine approval procedures.”
.
I have no doubt that is true (both that they said it and that what they said is true). That statement clarifies something, at least for me. My issue is not with the way the study is designed. It is is with the rules for granting an EUA. Those are, of course, different from what is required for a normal approval. They will not require the completion of the entire trial. So I guess my concern is whether the EUA are too different from the usual rules.
.
In the document you linked to on page 30 under “3. OBJECTIVES, ESTIMANDS, AND ENDPOINTS”, “3.2. For Phase 2/3” it says:
“In participants receiving at least 1 dose of study intervention, the percentage of participants reporting: … SAEs from Dose 1 to 6 months after the last dose”
SAE being Serious Adverse Event. So that will obviously not be required for the EUA.
Then on page 31: “To evaluate the efficacy of prophylactic BNT162b2 against confirmed severe COVID-19”.
That is a different objective than on page 30, which omits “severe”. It seems that is also something that will not be required for the EUA, since they are unlikely to have sufficient statistical power in just a couple months.
Also on page 31: “To evaluate the immune response over time to prophylactic BNT162b2 and persistence of immune response”
Apparently not required for the EUA since that will require an extended period of time.
———
The EUA might be appropriate for special cases. But no way will I want to get the vaccine before formal approval.
DeWitt,
21CFR11
.
ISO 9000 series compliance is mostly a waste of time; bookkeeping. Doesn’t improve anything, just proves you can do accurate bookkeeping…. and have the money to spend on getting certified.
MikeM
Their reason for going from the old (reasonable) rules to the new ones is politics.
I see where Trump and Pelosi are only 0.4 trillion dollars apart of the so-called stimulus package (1.8 versus 2.2 trillion). They are in the meantime calling each other crazy. Based on this profligate spending I judge they are both correct – about the crazy call that is.
What happens to a defeated Trump? I think he goes back to his Democrat roots and blames all his problems on the Republicans.
Kenneth,
Trump is a bozo, Pelosi is truly crazy.
Who cares. I think a defeated Trump is an irrelevant Trump.
Townhall and I still think reports of Trump’s election demise are premature. I don’t know if he’s going to win or lose.
https://townhall.com/tipsheet/mattvespa/2020/10/10/the-shy-trump-vote-is-bigger-this-year-and-who-they-are-should-shake-democrats-n2577613
mark bofill,
I think those declaring Trump is going to lose should consider the Twain quote about reports of Twain’s own death. Seems to me Trump could very well lose, but he also has a reasonable chance of winning. Win or lose, it will most likely be a close election, with a relative handful of votes in competitive states determining the winner, even if the electoral college vote is not very close (as in 2016). Whoever wins, I hope they will consider that nearly half (or even more than half!) the country is opposed to their policies. Following the siren song of pure majority rule will damage the country.
SteveF,
Yup.
Do not count Trump out. A recent Gallup poll found that 56% of registered voters say they are better off than 4 years ago while only 32% say they are worse off. Much better than the numbers Obama had 8 years ago or Bush 8 years before that.
Here is an interview with Moncef Slaoui, head of Operation Warp Speed:
https://www.marketwatch.com/story/trumps-vaccine-czar-says-the-first-vaccine-should-be-submitted-for-emergency-authorization-around-thanksgiving-2020-10-08
.
Scary stuff. As DeWitt has pointed out, the vaccine trial protocols are set up in the usual way. The Pfizer protocol he provided (Comment #191716) seems consistent with that. There is no way that they will reach the conditions for normal approval before next spring or summer.
.
The EUA will short circuit that process. That would be fine if it were only to allow the vaccine for limited high risk groups. But that is not what Slaoui has in mind:
He wants general vaccination of the population before the normal trials are complete.
Mike M.,
Define complete. You can’t prove anything is safe. Your beginning to remind me of the opposition to GMO foods.
The old way would have been to have a six month Phase 1 trial followed by review by the FDA, which could take another six months. Then there would be a Phase 2 trial, which wouldn’t tell you much because with the usual number of people in a phase 2 trial, it would take years to get enough people infected to have any idea of of effectiveness, followed by another six month review by the FDA. Finally there would be a Phase 3 trial lasting at least six months with another six month review of the data by the FDA. There’s no point in even trying to develop a vaccine without collapsing the schedule a lot. In the Pfizer trial, Phase1, 2 and 3 are being run concurrently and the FDA has promised to review data reports in a week or less. The idea that this is somehow scary does not compute.
No one is going to hold a gun to your head and make you get a vaccination if you don’t want one.
DeWitt Payne (Comment #191761): “there would be a Phase 3 trial lasting at least six months”.
.
That is not being done. That is my complaint.
I have no problem with greasing the skids to get to Phase 3. I have no problem with not wasting time with approval once Phase 3 is complete. I have no problem with limited use before Phase 3 is complete. I have a problem with general use before Phase 3 is complete. That is what the experts are planning.
.
Do I trust the experts? No I do not. If you have been paying attention to the news for the last 8 months then you know why, even if you somehow don’t agree.
.
It is not like this virus is all that bad. Yes, it occasionally triggers a dysfunctional immune reaction that is very bad. We don’t understand that reaction. So the vaccine process is being short circuited with a disease that we don’t understand, but can treat. That is reckless.
Updated list of the “Rose Garden” cases:
https://www.politico.com/news/2020/10/02/trump-white-house-coronavirus-positive-425229#debate
Note that a lot of the people on the list were not at the Rose Garden event. That includes Hope Hicks and Ronna McDaniel, who seems to be the first two people to become symptomatic and test positive.
.
It also includes “11 cases stemming from pre-debate planning and set-up” https://clecityhall.com/2020/10/02/city-of-cleveland-statement-regarding-post-debate-covid-19-cases-update-194/
The press release does not say when that planing and setup happened. But given that they had the test results by the Friday after the debate, it must have been at least a day or two before the debate and at most a couple days after the Rose Garden event.
From the WSJ:
https://www.wsj.com/articles/coronavirus-was-spreading-in-u-s-months-before-travel-bans-and-lockdowns-11602277918?mod=searchresults&page=2&pos=7
If that’s true, then I think Ro for SARS-CoV-2 cannot be about 2.5, it must be a lot less. Calculating Ro from daily deaths according to a simple SEIR model will not give you the right answer because the fundamental assumptions are wrong. Right now we can only guess how many people have been exposed to and infected by SARS-CoV-2. But we can be reasonably sure that it’s a lot more than the number of confirmed cases.
The idea that we could have done a better job when we had no idea what was actually happening and, in fact, could not have known is ludicrous. I suspect the reason that other countries like Germany seem to have done better is that the virus was introduced a lot later than in the US and Italy.
Mike M.,
The trial will be over when there is sufficient data to accept or reject the hypothesis that the vaccine is at least 50% effective. That could happen with as few as 32 participants infected. It will definitely happen when 162 participants are infected. The participants will be followed for two years. So do we need to wait two years or two months after effectiveness has been demonstrated?
The vaccine is not so much for the disease as for the economy. Since we foolishly went down the highly damaging extreme lockdown road, we need to have an exit strategy. That’s a vaccine. The progressives like Cuomo and the MSM are too committed to the lockdown strategy to ever admit they were wrong and reverse course.
DeWitt Payne (Comment #191765): “The vaccine is not so much for the disease as for the economy. Since we foolishly went down the highly damaging extreme lockdown road, we need to have an exit strategy. That’s a vaccine. The progressives like Cuomo and the MSM are too committed to the lockdown strategy to ever admit they were wrong and reverse course.”
.
I agree completely. Let’s hope that one expert led disaster does not lead to another.
Let’s hope the sort of excess worry among the political class that resulted in the lockdown doesn’t result in excess worry that blocks a useful vaccine and keeps us prisoner to perpetual lock-down.
.
MikeM:
It sounds like your concern is you want phase 3 to take some minimum amount if time, period. It seems you want this minimum amount if time to be required even if the vaccine is shown to work well before that time passes. So you are making time per se a criterion.
.
I don’t think time per se should be a criterion. I don’t think a history where time happened to be on the calendar for less urgent things is a good reason why we need to require that amount of time to pass. In fact: I think it’s silly.
.
So: no I don’t think it’s reckless to not insist on some strange “rule” about time per-se. I think the rule is silly.
SteveF (Comment #191752)
October 10th, 2020 at 7:08 am
“Whoever wins, I hope they will consider that nearly half (or even more than half!) the country is opposed to their policies. Following the siren song of pure majority rule will damage the country.”
________
True, but you have to play to those who elected you. On some issues it’s hard to find middle ground.
OK_Max,
“ True, but you have to play to those who elected you. On some issues it’s hard to find middle ground.â€
.
Umm, which middle ground is that?
.
What I have observed is that progressive Dems pretty much adopt the standard bolshevik position, and then back up from there toward normal if it is politically expedient. For politicians like Occasional
Cortex, it is always the bolshevik position they adopt, with no need to back toward politically expedient.
Lucia, I think MikeM’s point is that to show a vaccine works well requires a minimum amount of time, in order to see negative reactions to the vaccine.
lucia (Comment #191773): “It sounds like your concern is you want phase 3 to take some minimum amount if time, period. It seems you want this minimum amount if time to be required even if the vaccine is shown to work well before that time passes.”
.
Yes, that is one of my concerns. I think some minimum time is needed to show that the vaccine works well. There are three reasons for that, two seem to be standard in vaccine testing protocols. Assuming that the Pfizer design is a standard protocol, then six months should be allowed to test for significant adverse reactions. And there is the question of for how long the vaccine is effective. Surely six months of effectiveness is not too much to ask for.
.
But there is another concern. The Wuhan virus does not kill directly; it sometimes triggers a dysfunctional immune response that can be deadly. It will take time to determine if the vaccine is effective against that dysfunctional response since that response is somewhat rare and, apparently, becoming rarer.
.
That is not just a question of statistical power. The vaccine triggers a surge in antibodies. After some months, the antibodies fade. After that, the response to an infection is down to the secondary immune response. Will that response be effective? Will it be dysfunctional? We. Do. Not. Know.
———
Now, if this virus were as serious as first claimed, that is, sufficiently serious to justify the extreme measures taken, then it might make sense to take significant risks with the vaccine. But as it is, the main purpose of the vaccine is not to protect us from the virus. It is to relieve us from the worst consequences of the insane response to the virus.
.
There is a much safer way to do that. Well, not safer for certain individuals’ careers. But safer for the rest of us.
Re SteveF (Comment #191775)
SteveF, as you know there are small groups of extremists on both the left and right. Both may “pretty much adopt the standard bolshevik position” if by that position you mean they are not willing to compromise. Since they are small, I’m not sure their willingness matters much.
Politicians can play to one or the other group of extremists, but I think in most places most votes come from the center, and most politicians try to appeal to that center or middle-ground.
The problem comes when about one-half of the voters strongly oppose a law that the other half strongly favors (e.g., abortion). There is no middle-ground. One solution is States rights. Abortion, for example, could be legal in some States, illegal in others, depending on what the voters in different States want. Some might say this lack on uniformity in law could weaken the union. I don’t know.
OK_Mak,
“ One solution is States rights.â€
.
Sure. That has always been the position of those who opposed Roe on Constitutional grounds. But I think that kind of solution is never acceptable to most on the left.
.
Back in the early 1970’s there was a clear divergence of social opinion on abortion. Some states allowed abortion (with restrictions), but most did not. A 19 year old cousin of mine from New Hampshire had traveled to New York specifically to get an abortion early in a pregnancy shortly after it became legal in New York. (She was something of a fool, and became pregnant again by the same guy within a year, but that is a different story.) Roe attempted to removed abortion from political.discussion, but IMO, set the stage for endless political fights and terrible social damage. It was probably among the most politically divisive opinions the SC ever issued, and I think it was both both unwise and terribly destructive, but more importantly, unconstitutional on its face. Had Roe never been decided as a ‘constitutional right’, abortion would have remained just another of the many issues resolved locally by state statute. Roe, and multiple other SC decisions following Roe of newly ‘discovered’ constitutional rights, caused endless and unnecessary social damage. That damage continues to this day.
.
With regard to the standard Bolshevik position: Of course Bolsheviks do not compromise on policy. I think if you evaluate the political positions of the left and right fairly, you will see that the resistance to compromise is mainly on the left. It is a bit like asking the Pope to compromise on whether or not there is a God: compromise on the left is usually considered immoral. Bill clinton could compromise, today’s lefty clowns can’t.
Mike M,
If covid 19 vaccine were being promoted as something to give to children then I would completely agree with you: any vaccine for those at minimal personal risk must be virtually risk free. But the covid vaccines (there are many) will for certain be administered first to those at substantial risk of death from covid 19. By the time immunization for kids is contemplated, there will already be a long history of immunization of older people to evaluate risk of the vaccine. I would NEVER suggest young people get the vaccine… but the risks and benefits for 75 year olds is not the sane as 10 year olds, and any effort by the FDA to balance risks and benefits for those two cohorts is at best foolish and more accurately idiotic. But it is a bureaucracy, and so almost by definition idiotic in its actions.
MikeN
I know this is general point. But he has not made a case that 2 months is not enough time to release the vaccine for the uses that will actually occur– which is to those at most risk. His argument for “lots” of time doesn’t explain why any particular amount of time is either enough or not enough for any particular purpose.
MIkeM
So. F-in. What….. We. Can. Take. It. Again. ….. Just. Like. We. Did. With. Polio. Boosters.
.
I got a polio booster sometime in 2nd or 3rd grade. (I know what school I was at.) We all got one. It was routine.
.
I would take the vaccine if it fades. You don’t have to. Your desire to avoid it isn’t a good reason not to block availability to the elderly living in congregate living or to not have it available to medical personal who might prefer protection.
.
Yes. I get it. For some reason, you think the time that was considered ok when time was not of the essense and that was picked merely for convenience to have a predictable protocol is some magical time that must be “enough”. Or at least that seems to be your argument for that amount of time. Because you’ve advanced none other.
SteveF, I think the vaccine will be made mandatory to return to school.
MikeN,
Should someone propose it be made mandatory, we can discuss the need for further safety testing for something that is mandatory. But hypothetical that someone might later propose a mandatory use is no reason to block releasing the drug for non-mandatory use.
.
I’m pretty sure there are lots of school teachers who want the vaccine. Making it impossible for them to get it because you fear the possibility that someone will make it mandatory is foolish.
I am NOT against the vaccine being available. I have clearly stated that, at least twice, I think. I am objecting to the idea that 25-30% of the population will be vaccinated in the first couple months of the EUA, with the rate accelerating. That implies almost everyone vaccinated by the time a vaccine gets formally approved next summer, in the best case scenario.
Mike,
No one is suggesting people who don’t want to get vaccinated will have to. So if you don’t want to…. don’t. I’ll be happy to get vaccinated without having to wait for some arbitrary time criteria of 6 months. There is nothing magic about 6 months. I think releasing it faster to deal with a pandemic is a good thing.
.
But if you don’t want it, don’t take it. I’m sure there will be plenty of people like you who will want to wait. Some will never take it. No skin off my nose.
.
But I still don’t have the slightest notion why you think those of us who want it should be deprived just because you have some attachment to “6 months” or “formal approval”.
Sounds like MikeM needs to be asked a Biden type question like do you want to deny people the opportunity to get vaccinated for Covid-19 before the so-called formal approval. Yes or no. I think his answer might be no, but I am not sure of that.
Kenneth Fritsch (Comment #191808): “do you want to deny people the opportunity to get vaccinated for Covid-19 before the so-called formal approval”
.
Mike M. (Comment #191795): “I am NOT against the vaccine being available.”
.
I am against people being stampeded into getting a potentially unsafe vaccine without being warned that it has not been fully tested.
.
I am tempted to ask lucia is she thinks we should abolish the FDA and let people decide for themselves the benefits and risks of medications. I am guessing that her answer would be no. But I am curious as to whether she thinks they should be a whole lot less conservative.
lucia (Comment #191797): “But I still don’t have the slightest notion why you think those of us who want it should be deprived”
.
I have NEVER said that and I have explicitly said otherwise several times.
———-
But just to play devil’s advocate, there is an argument to be made in favor of that straw man. It is that a vaccine disaster will undermine support for vaccines in general.
If people are warned that testing is not complete, that risk is significantly reduced. But if people are told “this vaccine is definitely safe” and it turns out not to be true, then a third disaster will likely be added to the chain.
MikeM
1. The FDA is being very clear that this is an emergency authorization.
2. No one is being “stampeded”. You don’t have to take it.
.
You can keep saying you are not concerned it is available but you keep not stating what specific concrete action the FDA or feds are doing that bothers you. You just resort to hand waving like saying people being “stampeded” and having us infer what actions you actually mean.
.
So….since you keep insisting it’s not availability that bothers you, can you please tell me precisely what action by the FDA are you really concerned about? Because… sorry, it looks like the concrete action you think constitutes “stampeding” is making the vaccine available. So if it’s not that, you need to say what it is.
MikeM
.
Here what you claim concerns you is at least clear. But the “if” is already fulfilled.
.
1. The FDA has said this is emergency authorization. You know this.
2. They have not said it’s definitely safe. You know this.
3. You are people. People are being told this and the vaccine isn’t available yet!
.
So, you should not be “concerned”. I absolutely don’t understand why you keep expressing concern about things like “people being stampeded” when you know that the FDA is informing people.
Mike
Well… you’ve asked a question with two branches.
.
I think we would keep the FDA as body. But I think people should have much greater discretion to decide for themselves the benefits and risks of medications. I think they should release medicines under preliminary authorizations nearly all the time.
Mike M,
I can’t speak for Lucia, but I wish the FDA was a whole lot more sensible, not abolished. They seem to me to disconnect risks from benefits and costs from benefits. The FDA is also a gigantic bureaucracy with nearly infinite inertia and zero motivation to change. This episode shows those weaknesses at the FDA.
.
MikeN,
If anyone insists that kids get a vaccination before returning to school, there will be a court fight, and I suspect in the end kids will not be forced to get covid vaccinations. Covid poses no real threat to kids, and the data is very clear. Teachers, especially those over 50, should get a vaccination, but even they can’t be forced to. It’s all crazy talk.
.
I know a 6 year old who caught the virus. She had a fever of 100.1F and tested positive. Her parents gave her a child-size dose of acetaminophen and her temperature return to normal. No other symptoms, and she tested negative 5 days later. Her 9 year old sister tested negative at the same time and negative again 10 days after that. Covid is not as dangerous to kids as flu virus, and nobody is suggesting kids get flu vaccine.
Lucia,
Cross posted…. typing very slowly on an iPhone.
The graph at this site is very informative: https://www.cato.org/blog/employment-federal-health-agencies
.
Under Bush employment at FDA was flat, under Obama, employment at FDA skyrocketed, but under Trump it has actually fallen slightly. There might even be some dislike of all things Trump at FDA.
.
The FDA’s incompetence in delaying tests for covid was glaring, and they continue to slow production of masks that actually can filter out aerosols carrying covid 19 virus. The FDA has arguably made the worst public health emergency in the last century even worse not better. Were the FDA subject to the kind of scrutiny for performance they insist on for drugs, they would never be approved to operate.
SteveF
And if the CDC or FDA was suggesting or promoting it, then I would criticize them. Also, lots of parents would ignore them. Many already do so and refuse other vaccines. Those people aren’t going to suddenly flip (unless kids start getting sick.)
.
The FDA giving emergency authorization and encouraging companies to make vaccine available is not “stampeding” anyone into taking it. It’s not encouraging kids to take it. It’s not suggesting it be mandatory and so on.
.
The actual concrete steps the FDA is taking amount to not blocking it and facilitating availability. Meanwhile, it’s quite clear to anyone reading the stories discussing project WARP speed that the authorization that might occur in a few months is an emergency one.
.
The FDA is very clear on the emergency nature of the status already. The “worry” they will suddenly transition from their current clarity to opacity sometime in the future when the vaccine actually is available seems to be little more than pearl clutching.
.
SteveF: “nobody is suggesting kids get flu vaccine.”
Not so; in Massachusetts, it’s compulsory: “Republican Gov. Charlie Baker issued the first-of-its-kind [flu shot] requirement for students from preschool through college.”
https://www.politico.com/news/2020/10/09/colleges-require-flu-shots-coronavirus-428407
SteveF, I agree kids are at low risk.
Nevertheless, the local basketball league has rules in place of 10′ distancing and masks while on the bench, and coaches wear masks throughout. The soccer league, outdoors, doesn’t have kids masks while on the bench but does have spectators wear masks including to and from the parking lot, the teams as well.
Soccer has a questionnaire everyone must fill out online before appearing at practices or matches. Basketball has a separate compliance manager for each team, that will take everyone’s temperature before they appear.
I think it is likely schools will add this to their vaccination requirements to come back. It just takes a few votes on the school board to say for safety sake, we should only let in those who have taken the vaccine.
The bigotry against hydroxychlorquine is remarkable. I normally find Alex Berezow to be a reasonable science journalist. But here he has a column triumphantly claiming “proof” that HCQ does not work:
https://www.acsh.org/news/2020/10/08/covid-trial-proves-hydroxychloroquine-does-not-help-treat-coronavirus-15077
.
So what is the proof? First he cites a meta-analysis of five studies on HCQ in non-hospitalized patients. All five studies found a positive effect, ranging from 17% to 50%. But all had error bars that included no effect. Combining them shows a positive effect at better than 95% confidence. Berezow dismisses that with an airy “That is iffy, at best”.
.
Then he cites a study on hospitalized patients that quite clearly shows no benefit. Of course, that is not what the HCQ supporters say it is good for; they advocate HCQ to keep people out of the hospital. And the study used maximal dosing of HCQ with no zinc or antibiotics. I don’t think that is what the HCQ advocates recommend. So the study is little more than demolishing a straw man.
.
Sigh.
MikeN,
I agree that irrational rules are often promulgated. They also often lead to court fights. In the case of an emergency authorized vaccine, I think the courts will rule that forcing kids to get the vaccine is dangerous and not needed.
.
Harold W,
Almost unbelievable, but we must remember it is the people’s republic, where no lefty is too crazy to win election. And Charlie Baker is no more a Republican than I am a Marxist.
Captain Obvious must remind everyone that it is also a “vaccine disaster†if a perfectly good vaccine is withheld for safety monitoring while a 1000 people are dying a day in the US. If there is no reasonable theory that waiting two months will exceed the interim death rate (60K?) then the vaccine should probably be released. Not doing challenge trials was insanity.
.
There are worst case scenarios where a bad vaccine could impose more harm than it prevents, but I would like to see some real data on those risks * and * trade that off versus the excess deaths that will occur while waiting the period X that is suggested. There is very little info here as far as I can tell. The mere possibility of a bad outcome is not enough by itself to stop the release of vaccine during an ongoing pandemic in my view. The world has risks, we need to understand them, and not be foolish one way or the other.
I think there will be an army of pundits that will overstate the vaccine’s safety and effectiveness once it becomes available, especially after the election. That is what pundits do, overstate everything. They will do this because it will be a moral crusade to get the vaccine out once the politics are dropped. You think the bile against non-maskers is bad, just wait for the anti-covid-vax people to be lined up for ostracization. Harris saying she won’t trust a vaccine under Trump was a really bad idea and very counter productive. The entire politicization of this was 100% poison. If only we had a vaccine for petty politics.
I judge from some recent communications with my Democrat representative and two senators that the FDA gets a pass on having any problems.
The link below sums up some of this thinking by the FDA and its supporters.
https://mises.org/wire/its-time-track-fdas-death-toll
WSJ interviews leader of Operation Warp Speed.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-captain-of-operation-warp-speed-11602278486
.
“The trials, Mr. Slauoi emphasizes, are run “absolutely as usual.†The improvements in speed come from administrative streamlining. Vaccine makers have been able to do in six to seven months what would usually take six or seven years by eliminating what Mr. Slaoui calls “dead time†between phases—for instance, by preparing trial sites and recruiting volunteers in advance. “As soon as [vaccines] were in technical work, so still in the lab and in animals, we already were preparing the sites for the Phase 1 trial, but also, critically, for the Phase 2 and Phase 3 trials.â€
.
“So he hesitates to predict when a vaccine will be approved or become available to the public: “It’s extremely unlikely that is achieved in October; it’s slightly more likely in November, it’s more likely in December, and it’s really, really likely in January. Where it’s going to be, I don’t know; nobody knows.â€
.
“But he adds a promising note: The two mRNA vaccines by Moderna and Pfizer, which are furthest along in clinical trials, seem to work well in older people. “That, to me, is very, very reassuring, because that’s the highest hurdle.â€
Tom Scharf (Comment #191823): “Captain Obvious must remind everyone that it is also a “vaccine disaster†if a perfectly good vaccine is withheld for safety monitoring while a 1000 people are dying a day in the US. If there is no reasonable theory that waiting two months will exceed the interim death rate (60K?) then the vaccine should probably be released. Not doing challenge trials was insanity.”
.
I agree, with the proviso that it be used for those actually at significant risk.
———-
Tom Scharf (Comment #191824): “I think there will be an army of pundits that will overstate the vaccine’s safety and effectiveness once it becomes available … it will be a moral crusade …”
.
Indeed. The general public does not know the difference between an EUA and full approval. And the fear mongers will do all they can to bury the difference.
——–
Tom Scharf (Comment #191826) quoting the WSJ: “The trials, Mr. Slauoi emphasizes, are run “absolutely as usual.†The improvements in speed come from administrative streamlining.”
.
Slauoi’s statement may be true but is misleading. The EUA will be issued long before Phase 3 is completed as usual.
mikeN
I’m sure at least one school board somewhere will try almost anything. Many try to supress free speech at a drop of a hat, I’m sure some will try to force vaccinations.
If a school board does that, it would be a reason to push back on a school board not on the FDA. It certainly would not be a reason to slow distribution of vaccine to people who want it.
.
If a school board tries to require a vaccine that has not yet passed full approval, parents should demand online options continue and likely also sue to block the requirement Given the situation at hand, I’m sure parents could find pro-bono lawyers or some sort of interest group to assume the expenses of the cases.
.
While the suit is pending, I’m sure the school will be required to either provide online lessons to the individual kids whose parents object, continue online for everyone, or allow those kids into school. But, presumably, the parents who object to having their kids vaccinated shouldn’t mind these options. My guess is the school boards who tried to mandate vaccine would decide to have everyone continue online.
MikeM
Ok. Rubber meets road. Do you want rules that allow me to get it? Or does your proviso mean I can’t get it? Real Question.
.
Because if your answer is I, Lucia don’t get to chose to get it… well… Nanny state. Sorry, but that’s just wrong.
MikeM,
Nothing misleading about what he said. For some reason, you are hyper-focused on the time table associated with “as usually”. But “as usual” is associated a with a time table where there is little harm associated with a long time table. The time table isn’t necessarily optimun, it’s just that it doesn’t matter so they chose one for the administrative conveinience of bureaucrats. That’s not “safety”. That’s not “efficacy”. That’s not “science” and so on.
MikeM
Huh? As far as I can tell you are mongering fear!!! You want to promulgate “worry” about utterly hypothetical things that can go wrong.
lucia (Comment #191835): “Do you want rules that allow me to get it?”
.
Yes. But you should have to sign a waiver that acknowledges that the effectiveness and risks beyond N months have not been evaluated and that you take such risks on yourself.
I’d sign the waiver. But that’s not the remotely close to your previous restrtion of
.
It seems you really only mean we should have the garden variety informed consent that is required for loads of medical procedures. I’ve been presented with and signed many such waivers for medical procedure.
.
Obviously, I have no objection to these sorts of forms presented for scads of treatments to be presented and required to have the vaccine.
Considering the vaccine isn’t being tested in children (the Pfizer trial is limited to age 16 and above), it would seem to me to be to be difficult to justify vaccinating children under 16. What I have seen leans towards school children being infected by teachers, not the other way around. So it would make more sense to require teachers to be vaccinated before they can interact with students rather than the other way around.
On a different topic, here’s an interesting re-definition of “court packing”:
“[The Barrett nomination is] the court-packing the public should be focused on,†[Biden] said.
Re the most recent events in Portland, I think that supporters of “Indigenous Peoples Day of Rage†should self deport. To stay here would be hypocritical.
HaroldW,
Yep. Political people (on both sides) tend to like to seize language. Obviously, appointing a replacement is not what the word “court packing” has meant. It’s not court packing even if it means the court will lean more to the D or R side than before.
.
Court packing refers to what was threatened in the Roosevelt administration– to specifically increase the number of justices on the Supreme court to give an administration a chance to install fresh appointments outside the normal rate due to attrition from death and retirement.
.
That the Dems are trying to change the meaning of the word means they know people understand what’s wrong with what we traditionally call “court packing”. Some want to do what is called “court packing” and pretend it’s no different from… well… the normal appointment process. They don’t want to have to defend “court packing”, so they don’t like the existence of a word that clearly communicates the process they are undertaking.
.
Of course, we see lots of phrases get thrown out in lots of areas. BLM, “prolife”, “prochoice”, “diversity” and so on and so on. These get used as single word that might mean a whole shitwad of other things at the same time. The multiple possible meanings permit the common tactic of demogouge: equivocation.
The media deals with words so they tend to start thinking they have mystical power. Climate change activism was failing so scads of “climate change communication” papers were released which posited that people simply need to be psychologically manipulated in the proper manner and everyone will line up with the proper morals. Realistically when the debate gets to this point it usually means the argument has been lost on its merits and the losing side refuses to accept this and alter their negotiation position.
.
With climate change the erroneous thought has typically been “if only we can make them say climate change is real then we will have a blank check to do anything we want, including lots of unrelated progressive agenda items”. Well, no. What do you want to do about it? How effective will that solution be? How much will it cost? The virtue signalers on the left get into silly one- upmanship battles of who can propose the biggest green programs that aren’t exactly helpful to their cause.
.
There aren’t any magic words that are going to grease the skids for a party selling return to normalcy and democratic norms that is going to make court packing look sane.
My opinion is the business about differences in tax policy is another word game. Is Biden going to raise taxes? Oh, only on people making 400K a year or more. That and cancel Trump’s tax cuts.
Uh, what?
Cancel Trump tax cuts and lots of people will see a tax increase. Lots of people who make less than 400K a year will see a tax increase. It’s fine if Democrats think it’s a good idea, but the insistence that they aren’t going to raise everybody’s taxes is just dishonest.
Lot of dumb games like that this cycle I think.
Very few if any politicians are above playing word games. Some are more sophisticated at it and might even get away with it from some potential voters who are not already part of their fan club. Others like Trump are so obvious at this game that they are more readily detected.
What bothers me more than politicians playing these games (and that does bother me a lot) are journalist and/or editors who use misleading bylines or phrases in their articles and only call attention to political word game playing when it is done by the “other” side.
Kenneth Fritsch,
With the possible exception of the WSJ editorial board and some of the op-ed writers published there, do you know of any journalists or editors who don’t? I can’t think of anyone off the top of my head.
mark bofill,
“… the insistence that they aren’t going to raise everybody’s taxes is just dishonest.â€
.
Lie, cheat, fabricate, mislead…. my. experience is the Dems will do pretty much anything to get power. But don’t worry, no matter what they say, they will raise taxes….. a lot…. to fund wealth transfer. It is good to keep in mind that they quite routinely say marginal Federal rates above 70% or even 80% are “fair .. along with near 100% wealth confiscation at death. “Fairâ€, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder.
Public service announcement.
The term ‘sexual preference’ is offensive.
Use the term ‘sexual orientation’ instead.
here
…
But what about people who are gender fluid, do they not have a variable preference?!? [Edit: Certainly they do not have a fixed orientation!]
Oh nevermind; Orange man bad, ACB very bad, mark bofill racist msyogynist transphobe. Got it.
Steve,
Yeah, pretty much.
DeWitt Payne (Comment #191931)
October 13th, 2020 at 12:25 pm
OK, I admit most politicians and journalists bother me – a lot.
Wow. An old laptop and hard drive of Hunter Biden’s have surfaced with emails between him and Vadym Pozharskyi, a top executive at Burisma. Quotes below are from a rather chaotic Fox news article: https://www.foxnews.com/politics/hunter-biden-ukraine-burisma-adviser-email
.
Shortly after Biden joined the board Pozharskyi emailed him complaining about a Ukrainian prosecutor trying to shake them down and saying:
Biden replied asking for more details.
.
Months passed and Pozharskyi emailed:
.
Then some months later, Joe Biden got the prosecutor fired.
Remember that Joe Biden claims to have had not contact with Burisma or any knowledge of his son’s dealings with Burisma.
WSJ: Europe Overtakes U.S. in New Cases of Covid-19
https://www.wsj.com/articles/europe-overtakes-u-s-in-new-cases-of-covid-as-restrictions-tighten-11602669748
.
“This week, Europe overtook the U.S. in a key metric that tracks the virus’s spread while accounting for differences in population size. The 27 countries of the European Union and the U.K. recorded 78,000 cases a day on average over a seven-day period ending on Oct. 12, or 152 cases for every million residents. The U.S. recorded 49,000 a day on average over the same period, about 150 for every million residents.”
“Countries including France, Spain, the Netherlands, Belgium and the U.K. reported new daily infections in excess of 250 per million people a day—higher than the U.S. reported during its July peak.”
.
Deaths are still lower than the US but have notably increased in the past month. A previous WSJ article this week said public health experts in Europe said they didn’t want to impose large lockdowns because they believe they would not be complied with at this point. Absent is the moralizing across the media for this view.
.
Delaying a vaccine seems like a bad idea. It’s quite possible the NE in the US could see the same thing as winter approaches. This will be a test of the low HIT theory.
Great idea: Senate To Be Replaced With Room Full Of Monkeys Throwing Feces
(The article was written 2 years ago, but still relevant.)
Tom,
Yep…. I want vaccine.
Nic Lewis has posted at Climate etc. a discussion of a recent paper concerning cross-reactive CD4+ T cells and the potential effects on herd immunity threshold and severity of the Covid-19 disease.