The thick blue cloud

Over 20 percent of Minneapolis police officers applying for permanent disability mostly related to PTSD Fox reported this morning. Early retirement requests have also spiked, and not only in  Minneapolis.

According to Fox, many of these filing, who were also veterans, claimed that dealing with the protests has been more traumatic than fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan. (Normally one might expect Fox to go ape-shit over any claim that a job was more difficult or heroic that serving in the military in a forward position, but that's Fox' situational ethics for you). While the applications have not yet been processed, it looks suspiciously like another more permanent kind of "blue flu".

While that only highlights the disconnect between law enforcement and the rest of society and that the police seem to consider themselves the oppressed rather than the oppressors, it raises a troubling practical question when thinking about police restructuring.

If police forces are down-sized or the "rotten apples" let go to be replaced with more community-minded people or other services created to take over the more touchy-feely parts of the job, there will be unintended consequences. Of particular concern is what  those who leave full time employment in the police then do, not in terms of employment but their activities more broadly.

These will likely be individuals whose views align with the alt-right. They will have weapons training, many of them apparently also ex-military. They will be angry and motivated and ripe for recruitment into right wing paramilitary organizations or domestic terrorist groups. That has the potential to turn ugly in very short order. Groups of well armed thugs, with intimate knowledge of police tactics and procedures pose a significant threat to law and order and to society. Not that reform shouldn't be undertaken, but something to take into consideration.

Another about-face

For weeks, Donald Trump has been spreading a conspiracy theory that mail-in ballots are insecure and subject to massive voter fraud. He's even sued Nevada for offering mail-in ballots to all its voters. Despite the fact the commission he established after his election to look into voting irregularities found none and that no one (aside from conspiracy theorists like Kris Kobach who headed the effort) thinks there is any significant problem with voting by mail, he has continued relentlessly to hammer this false narrative. He's also been hard at work to cripple the USPS so that his fear-mongering might actually in the end appear to have been right with long delays in vote counting arising from his defending of the postal service.

His motives, however, seemed clear; he wanted to suppress voting in predominantly Democratic neighborhoods where voting in person was likely to be especially hard, and to be able to challenge the election results if he loses in November by claiming that Biden only won because of fraudulent voting.

And then without batting an eyelid, today he tweets his support for vote-by-mail. If this head-spinning change of course seems astonishing (as it should), I suggest it comes down simply to this. Recent polling may have suggested that his message that voting by mail was a problem may have created a larger voter suppression effect for the GOP and his voters. In particular, Florida has an elderly population and is critical to his reelection. So without his Florida voters turning out, which they might fear to do, given the covid situation, his opposition to mail-in ballots was hurting him. So, about-face, quick march in the other direction.

What's really astonishing about this story is that he doesn't think people will remember that only 24 hours ago he was saying (as he had been for weeks) exactly the opposite.

Hopeless

  

Congressman Tom McClintock (California 4th district) advanced the following theory today on a call with his constituents. The reason, he suggested, that America was doing so poorly in the battle with covid-19 is that we didn't reopen fast enough. He cited Sweden as an example of a country that opened quickly and has suffered way fewer deaths. Why? The congressman asserted confidently that it was because Sweden has achieved herd immunity.

Let unpack that a little, as it seems a fairly bold claim. Since there is no vaccine, to achieve herd immunity, depending how contagious an infection is, 70% to 90% of a population needs to have contracted the disease^[1]. Since this is a highly contagious virus, we should probably use the higher number, but for the moment let's use the middle figure, 80%.

Sweden's population in 2019 was about 10 million, so 8 million people would have had to have contracted the disease for Sweden to have herd immunity as the congressman suggested. The congressman also maintained that the number of reported cases was not a good metric and that he relied on mortality as a reliable indicator. So let's do that.

The covid-19 mortality rate is widely believed to be about 0.6%, although Johns Hopkins data^[2] suggests the rate may be much higher, around 2%. Worldwide the death rate of confirmed covid-19 cases is 3.8% (if we exclude the UK which clearly has't got it's act together either, the morality among confirmed cases is still 3.6%).

Let's start with this figure; 3.6% of 8 million is about 290 thousand deaths. But Sweden has reported only 5,743 deaths, significantly lower.

If we use the 3.6% mortality rate to impute the number of cases, that gives 160 thousand or 1.5% of the population - nowhere near the 80% needed for herd immunity. If we use the lower mortality rate of 2%, that would imply an infection density of about 2.8%. And if we use the 0.6% figure, we get just 9.3%.

Only if we assume that covid-19 is about 30% less lethal than the flu do we get to a number that approaches the 80% herd immunity number.  By the way, Sweden also reports only 80 thousand cases, not 8 million.

So Congressman Tom McClintock's claim that Sweden has achieved herd immunity seems fanciful at best and illustrates why one should listen to well informed experts rather than ill-informed (or less charitably, malevolent) politicians.

^[1] https://www.jhsph.edu/covid-19/articles/achieving-herd-immunity-with-covid19.html

^[2] https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/data/mortality

TikTok, Donald

Why is Donald Trump fuming about TikTok and threatening to ban it? Wired has a long piece on the threat of Chinese eavesdropping.

Here's a much simpler explanation; revenge.

TikTok users were instrumental in over-booking Trump's last campaign rally (and the only one he's likely be able to hold, absent some particularly reckless decisions on his part) before the election. So instead of a packed stadium we had images of rows and rows of empty seats.

He was made to look foolish; which in his world is the most egregious sin imaginable. So he's out for his pound of flesh. I think that's a far more Occam's razor-ish explanation than Wired's. 

A new world order

The first two decades of the 21st century has seen a marked shift in the old century's world order. Russian belligerence has risen, authoritarianism has resurfaced in Eastern Europe, putting stress on the EU, compounded by Britain's departure. And then there is China's rise. As its economic power grew so did its influence, and outward expression of self-confidence.

Almost 200 years after James Monroe articulate what has become the Monroe Doctrine, China is embarking on a similar policy, driving out U.S. influence (what it see as interference) in its back yard. It is shaping a new world order.

Two things are accelerating that process. The first is Donald Trump, directly. He has helped China in two ways; first his abandoning of allies has weakened any collective response to China's newfound assertiveness. Second, by underestimating Xi's political and negotiating skills, not to mention his ability to outlast Trump, and by overestimating his own, he has provided China with a strategic opportunity which has used that to extend its influence globally. Already playing a long game, China has exploited the vacuum created by Trump's unwillingness and inability to play a role on the world stage.

The second is covid-19; America's botched handling of the crisis has further damaged the U.S.' reputation, and in particular highlighted many of the weaknesses of its model of democratic government, not to mention is values.  And much of that again can be laid squarely on Trump's ignorance, incompetence, and lack of seriousness in his approach to his job.

The 21st century will be a have different world order; and Trump's tenure will have a lot to do with how much diminished America's role in that order will be.

Foundation's End

Some 45 years after reading the original Foundation trilogy, I have now fished the other four books in the series.

The four books, two prequels and two sequels, came 30 years after the original trilogy and were very different in style. The original books comprised a series of fairly short episodes, each largely self contained though linked to the central theme of the Foundation, the collapsing empire and the Second Foundation. They were infused with politics and power, not to mention some memorable epigrams from Salvor Hardin; my favorite is still "Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent".

Asimov's style changed completely in the 'quels. They are longer to begin with; and there is a single story in each in place of the small self-contained episodes of the original trilogy (hereafter just the "trilogy").  While he draws nicely on his robot stories, weaving them into both the pre- and se-quels, they are ultimately less satisfying.

The ideas are sparser, and that's not just because the books are longer. The big ideas, psycho-history in Foundation, the Mule in Foundation and Empire and the Second Foundation in its eponymous volume seem conspicuously absent. Gaia was not an original Asimov conception. And they lack the suspense that permeated the trilogy.

My final thought for the evening, is that Asimov couldn't decide whether to bring the series to an end.  Having woven the threads to bring the protagonists of the last volume face to face with R. Daneel Olivaw where he could easily have left things, he chose instead to hint, in the very last sentence, of a malevolent alien intelligence from another galaxy.

To my mind that was gratuitous; all the the pieces had been seemingly carefully orchestrated into the final "ah-ha" moment, providing a relatively satisfying clicking together of the last piece of the puzzle, yet he seems somehow to have balked at the last minute. Perhaps he got cold feet about bringing the series to a close, indeed bringing both streams of work to a close. We will likely never know.

But while the cliff-hanger ending (literally) to the Italian job ("Hang on a minute, lads. I've got a great idea."), this seemed contrived and out of place. A slightly sad way to end to one of the most important contributions to the science fiction genre.     

Postpone the election!

That's what Trump would dearly like. Why? One, he wants more time to see if the pandemic will magically disappear (he may not yet have learned that magic doesn't work against viruses).

Second, it gives him more time for a vaccine to appear that he will then claim credit for.

"So I said to Faucci, 'why not see of we could use crisper to cut the virus in half, that would kill it, right, if you cut in down the middle, like with a knife, into two pieces, that's was crisper does, right', and nobody knew that until I told them, at least that's what people are telling me, and Faucci said he'd look into that, I don't know why nobody likes me, my poll numbers should be better than Faucci's 'cos I came up with the vaccine, only the fake news media is saying it was science".

Let's also remember that delaying elections and disputing their legitimacy is precisely what autocrats do to cling on to power.   

"Stunning" 3rd quarter predicted

The Trump administration is predicting a huge rise in GDP for the 3rd quarter. Two notes of caution are in order. First, take an extreme example if the economy shrinks from $20t to $13.3t, a reduction of 33% and then grows by 50% it may look like we're way better off but in fact were back to exactly where we were: $20t.

Put another way, if the economy contracts 9.5% and then expands 9.5%, GDP will be about 1% lower than it was before decrease. But no doubt Trump will claim that the rise is thanks to his stable genius.

And we should forget that none of this is going to happen if people can't go back to work because the pandemic isn't under control or the jobs they had before covid have disappeared.

DACA

One constitutional crisis after another; Trump continues to break new ground when it comes to pushing past the boundaries. Sending DHS "troops" without invitation from the States was last week's violation. This week's is the DHS thumbing its nose at the SCOTUS decision that it must reinstate DACA. Yes it's part of a pattern, but this is perhaps the most serious to date by far. Prior efforts to violate the law were rebuffed by the courts and Trump backed down. But this time he's simply doubling down, ignoring SCOTUS' decision.

There is no higher democratic authority to determine what is or is not lawful. That he is ignoring it indicates we have left the domain of democracy and are on the precipice of authoritarianism. So, where do we go when an administration ignores the ultimate rule of law. We are living in perilous times.

The question is "what now"?       

Partisan differences on tech - are really the same issue

The Trump acolytes complain that they're being targeted by social media companies. Dems are worried that social media not doing enough to deal with disinformation (lies) hate speech. These are not different issues. The tweets that are being targeted are disinformation (lies) hate speech; and they're almost always posted by the Trump acolytes. 

"One question still dogs Trump: Why not try harder to solve the coronavirus crisis?"

That headline was in a lengthy piece in today's Washington Post. But the answer seems quite simple. Trump knows that he has failed up to this point, and that it is unlikely, even if he were to apply himself the problem, that he could turn it around. So if he does engage now, his efforts would almost certainly be seen as having failed. And that he cannot tolerate.

By the same token, his reluctance to engage directly in the spring, choosing rather to claim it was a States' problem, was likely for much the same reason: he knew he really wasn't guaranteed a win and so he didn't want to play. And while in his prior jobs that strategy might have worked, this a field of play he can't simply walk away from. It's really not just someone else's problem. 

Person man woman camera TV

On his favorite TV soap box this evening, Trump waxed lyrical about how well he'd done on a cognitive impairment test. His performance was unusually disturbing even by Trumpian standards.

First, boasting about how well he'd done is a bit like bragging that you passed a covid-91 test. That's good but nothing to brag about. He almost certainly lied about "his perfect score" but again that's par for the course, just as was his likely exaggeration about the reaction of those who administered the test. The whole episode was quite comic, and a little pathetic. One might feel pity were he not such a raging narcissistic sociopath.

But the real questions that need to be asked are, first why did he take the test at all, second did he volunteer or was he advised to take it, and finally how many previous presidents have been asked (or volunteered) to take such a test.   

If, as I suspect it is, it is extremely rare for a sitting president to take such a test, then if he volunteered to take it, this is simply evidence of his ignorance as to its intended purpose. And if it was suggested to him by his staff, what were they seeing that made them worried that he was cognitively impaired.

Granted we've seen plenty, but the little things that reasonable people might construe as warning signs of dementia, slurring of speech, inability to focus, loss of sophisticated vocabulary, all are things his inner circle would likely overlook. So for one of them to persuade him to take the test (assuming someone didn't take it for him) they must have seen something they considered sufficiently serious to risk getting fired for disloyalty. Now that's alarming. 

A ploy, but not without costs

Trump's threat to send federal law enforcement, "Trump's Troops" as Oregon's governor Kate Brown aptly described them, can best be seen as an electoral ploy. They are certainly not helping the situation, indeed their presence is inflammatory. Unfortunately, that's exactly the point. Trump wants to provoke scenes of violence between his troops and protesters to have footage and an emotive issue for the upcoming election. He's already running the campaign ads, and Fox screens little else. 

Having military forces act at the behest of a country's leader is generally associated with authoritarian despots; Rodrigo Duterte, Kim Jong Un, Vladimir Putin, Recep Tayyip Erdogan are all leaders Trump seems to regards as role models, people whose unchecked power he appears to envy.

Of course that's not the only similarity in behavior between Trump and your typical dictator. Undermining confidence in the press, intervening in the administration of justice, surrounding himself with trusted fools rather than independent-thinking experts, fawning over the military, and pushing a xenophobic nationalist agenda are also characteristic behaviors. And before we boject that we are a democracy, not a dictatorship, it's worth remembering that not all despots are un-elected.

America isn't quite the Philippines, yet, but what the last three and a half yours have shown is just how easy it is for a president to trample the norms that were once the hallmark of a well reasonably well ordered society and come surprisingly close.   

Four risks

First, foreign interference. Clearly Russia and China, not to mention the DPRK, all want another Trump term. The first two have well developed cyber operations and Russia has already shown its hand four years ago. All see how easy it has been to manipulate Trump. North Korea still has its nukes and has gotten lots of air time on the international stage. Russia has proven completely immune from push back from Trump over: 2016 election interference; the poisoning of a dissident in the UK; propping up Bashar al Assad in Syria. China has had little to worry about as it clamps down on free speech, conducts what seems like ethnic cleansing of the Uyghurs, and strips Hong Kong of its special status granted in its treaty granting independence from Britain. And those are just the actors we know about.

Then there is voter suppression, whether in the form of a lack of polling places in strategic areas and the purging of voter rolls orchestrated by red state governors, a lack of mail-in ballots, not to mention the likelihood of the results being disputed, perhaps in court, if on November 4th the results are close but it looks like Trump might not have won. And there is always the potential for a random third party candidate, Kanye West for example, to come in as a spoiler, siphon of some of the African American vote and hand Trump the victory. 

Third is the potential for errors in polling. Although pollsters are confident they right this time, there are reasons to give at least a little credence to the Fox/Trump axis of evil which is asserting that the polls don't reflect his actual level of support among voters. They claim, interestingly, that lots of people will vote for him but are embarrassed to admit that to pollsters. It that's the case, it suggests they know what they would be doing (voting Trump back in) is wrong but will do it anyway. Either that or they are being super strategic, lulling Biden's people into a false sense of security: unlikely I admit. But a comfortable lead for Biden might induce complacency, reduce his turnout and let Trump sneak back in.       

Finally, and despite what most commentators are now saying, it is possible that things might change dramatically before November and Trump's sagging campaign might recover. One thing that would mean all bets are off would be the availability of a vaccine. Even if it's not widely deployed, having a vile for Trump to hold up for the cameras would put many concerned American's fears to rest and he could trumpet this as all his doing (the result of his Ward Speed Operation). Then he'd have something very real, very relevant and tangible to sell and that almost certainly would tighten the race.

So let's not count any chickens before their vaccinated.

Spot the villain

  

Testing, testing, testing. It's been about 18 weeks since I left the property; that's more than an entire semester. You'd think that in that time the country could have gotten its act together on testing; that was what the lock-down was supposed to help with. Buy time, keep the numbers low, ramp up testing and tracing so that when we reopened, we'd be in a position to quickly isolate cases, quarantine and treat; that we we'd be resuming economic activity and aggressively controlling the spread.

But we (by which I mean Trump's administration) dropped the ball. That's not completely fair, of course. They really never picked it up in the first place. Happy talk about "it will magically disappear when it gets warm", "can we look into that?" about disinfectant, well, all of that utter piffle meant that there was no concerted federally led effort.

Testing was and is seen as shining light on the fact Trump managed to mishandle the situation letting it turn into a truly monumental disaster, both medically and economically. According to his niece, he lacks any empathy and so all he cares about is a metric by which he will be judged. And if we tests less we appear to have fewer cases.  But having fewer cases doesn't mean more people aren't getting sick.  It just means we don't know who and where they are so we have no way of controlling the spread.

And because we still don't have testing at scale, results are coming back in 7 days, which is comparable to the incubation period of the virus. So people may well realize they are sick before their test results come back. In the mean time they have been merrily passing the virus on.

Once the rate of new case arrivals exceeds the capacity to test trace and isolate, it's game over; at that point we can't stop it and it will rip largely unimpeded through the community. Only mask-wearing will slow it sufficiently to prevent hospital capacity being completely overwhelmed.

And of course, as has been well documented, for a variety of reasons it will hit poor communities and communities of color hardest.

But Trump doesn't give a damn; he just wants to create the impression that things are going well so that he can win re-election. Still more people will die needlessly.

So, which one of these two fine gentlemen is the sociopath?

(Trick question: they both are, but only one is real).

Blue flu

I heard something deeply disturbing from a friend yesterday. Some friends of his from his childhood days who are in law enforcement told him that there has been a recent surge in handgun sales; mainly women (and I'm assuming white women), who apparently are "really frightened" (his words).

My immediate supposition is that these are people who watch Fox and who have been fed a diet of anti-Black vitriol (wrapped up as defending law and order and our heritage!) and incessant reporting of every violent incident committed by a person of color anywhere in the nation. (Fox needs to be shut down but  they hide behind the First Amendment to peddle their brand of thinly disguised hate speech).

But I digress; so their fear, he said is in some sense real because, and I'm quoting as best as I can recall, "the police as simply not going to respond [to 911 calls] because of the potential liability".

This is outrageous. It is symptomatic of the sense of victim-hood of those like Trump, who have been in positions of power an privilege and are now fearful that they are finally about to be reined in.  It has nothing to do with "liability" - qualified immunity hasn't been dismantled yet - so is likely just another case of the "blue flu", a way for the police to flex their power. In a sense, it's extortion: "leave us alone or we won't keep you safe" is the implied threat. And it's more invidious and less honest that going on strike - but then this isn't a bargaining situation, so what would they be striking for?

If that's the road we are on, there is no alternative to but dismantle police departments and replace them with a service that is committed to the welfare of the communities they are supposed to serve. More training is largely ineffective when it is working against the deeply embedded culture of bias and violence that so many police departments seem to suffer from.

Stuck in the middle

We can only return to "normal" in two ways; when the virus is crushed (i.e., no one has the virus so it can't be spread) or when 90% of are immune, either because they have had the infection or they have been vaccinated. At the moment, with cases rising out of control but at only about 1% of the population having had the virus, we are neither free of the virus nor do we collectively have herd immunity to impeded its spread. Se we are, to use Porter's terminology, "Stick in the middle".

P.S., Susan Collins, after his acquittal in the Senate, said: "I hope the President learned his lesson". Senator; on what planet were you living the three years prior? And now do you think he's learned  his lesson. Indeed has he learned anything? Ever? Not much, apparently, according to his niece.

Testing and Tracing

Testing and tracing are not separate, but two essential parts of Testing, tracing, (treat) and quarantine.

Tracing is of no use without timely data; which comes, at least in theory, from testing.  So even if tests are not just "available" but carried out, they are of little use unless the results arrive before carried become symptomatic. Once they are ill they will likely not be circulating and if they are hospitalized they will be tested on-site anyway.

And so suggesting that some testing sites offer 15 minute turnaround, when those sites are hospitals is another pointless distraction. If you're tested in hospital chances are you are there because you're sick and have had the virus for some time. Tracing at that point is too late and would involve too many people.

So are we there yet on testing? Absolutely not.     

Stone's commutation

Trump's decision to commute Roger Stone's sentence has stuck many as unnecessarily risky in the run up to the election. It appears to send a message of cronyism, of looking after one’s own even if they are guilty (and this is not a pardon so Trump seems to either acknowledge Stone's guilt or considered a pardon a bridge too far).  And while his "deplorables" won't care, it will give many of his less committed supporter pause. So why, when most around him were advising against, did he make such a bone-headed decision?  In fact it may be quite rational, calculating even, and signals two inter-related things.

First that he realizes his chances of being elected are now slim and since he's already lost many of the "non-deplorables" who helped put him in office, his commuting of Stone's sentence won't really matter much. He has said "I could stand in the middle of 5th Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn't lose voters," so he likely believes that for his die hard supported this matters not an iota.

And second, if he's not re-elected there are plenty of shady dealings from his past that the Southern District of New York has been looking into since he came to prominence that, if things go badly, could have serious consequence for him. Since he can't run out the clock on the statute of limitations by exerting executive privilege and presidential immunity if he's turfed out of the White House, Roger Stone, had he been he locked up, might have been "persuaded" to dish dirt on Trump in exchange for a shortening of his sentence. By commuting his sentence the risk that Stone rolls on him goes away.

The last gasp of the Deep State?

There can be little doubt, except in the minds of Trump's most deluded supporters that he has botched his handling of the covid-19 pandemic.  His hoping it will "magically" go away, his abdication of responsibility to the States, his failure to listen to experts, and his refusal to model important behavior, together have led to a resurgence in cases that is uniquely American. What has become clear is that he is a no more than a huckster, an con-artist, devoid of substance (not to mention ethics or a conscience), incapable of dealing with complexity; in other words inept, incapable and unfit for his office. In organizational terms he would be an example of the Peter Principle (except that governments aren't hierarchies elections aren't won on merit). But the bottom line is that when push came to shove, when he was faced with a real external threat and not just a political problem that he could bully or gas-light his way out of, he has failed: very visibly, and with horrendous consequences.

So Biden, or let's face it anyone less venal and marginally smarter than Trump and that's probably 99% of the population, would have likely beaten him in November. That's not to take anything away from Joe Biden (who though experienced and competent I find a little dull an uninspiring) but to draw attention to the fact that the election is a referendum on Trump's administration. So Biden ought to be looking at an easy win. But that conclusion might be premature. The election is still four months away and a lot can change before November.

What could help Trump turn round his flagging campaign and his declining poll numbers? His best play might be to say that he's still the most gifted manager of all time, a genius among geniuses, but that he was undermined by people in the deep state who intentionally sabotaged his utterly brilliant covid-19 response. Had they simply done what he suggested (which will retroactively be adjusted as needed) we'd all be sitting in the sun drinking margaritas and enjoying the 4 weeks paid vacation he would have granted had he not been betrayed by people who were supposed to be working for him. Or something along those lines.

Four things covid-19 related

The second wave is now here. New infection rates are rising fast with Anthony Fauci predicting that without a change in behavior we could quickly reach a hundred thousand  new cases a day.  It's worth reflecting on what that number means in terms of a containment strategy. If it takes a week for contact tracers to track down all those who have been exposed to a new case, we'll need three quarters of a million contact tracers. If we don't trace contacts effectively, if some get through the net, the number of cases will continue to grow. Eventually, perhaps quite soon, the prevalence of infection we will be such that we will no longer be able to get ahead of it; simply put, it will be out of control.

We got here through a series of miss-steps and missed opportunities. First, we did not act soon enough. Had there been a focused, coordinated effort at containment early on, with rapid tracing and isolation, we might have crushed the curve while it was still small; now it's a monster.

Second, was the problem of "mixed messaging". That's simply GOP spin to placate Trump as the messaging wasn't mixed at all. Fauci was clear from the outset about the need to wear masks. Trump was equally clear, just on the wrong side of the issue, and remains he there six months into the crisis. Masks are essential to slowing the spread. Fauci told us this, science told us this but Trump thought he knew better.  But the result was that one message went to Trump supporters, amplified by the GOP and red state governors, and a completely different message went to those who have inherited the legacy of the enlightenment.

Third, Trump failed to mobilize any coordinated fact-based response, choosing to abdicate responsibility to the governors, some of whom acted, many of whom (those in red states) who didn't. And because covid-19 doesn't have a party affiliation, it wasn't simply a blue state problem as many red states, like Texas and Florida, are belatedly discovering.

Fourth we squandered the time the eventual lock-down afforded us and failed to make the investment in resources needed to make reopening safe. We don't have enough contact tracers or have sufficiently clear guidelines for how reopening should take place.

And finally, many states (the red ones again) reopened to early, leading to a resurgence in transmission. And because people in states that did have lock-downs saw others taking a less onerous approach, the incentive to stick to the guidelines or ordinances was undermined. That, combined with the eroding trust in critical institutions (like science) and the libertarian streak that is part of "American Exceptionalism", not to mention, in many cases, a refusal by law enforcement to enforce state and county ordinances (so much for our law and order society when the police get to pick and chose which ordinances they implement), resulted in widespread disregard for measures that would have slowed covid-19's progress. As people cheated on their diet of social distancing and mask-wearing, the infection continued to spread largely unabated.

Understanding the metrics makes a big difference. Happy talk from Trump is, of course, getting in the way. He boasts that deaths are going down and claims credit for having gotten the pandemic under control. That's nonsense.  First, death rates lag infections by two to three weeks so the recent spike in infections will soon manifest as a rise in mortality. Second, infections are being seen in higher proportion in the young and less vulnerable, so while the number of deaths may not rise as quickly, the infection is still circulating ever more widely in the community. Third, if the mortality rate is falling because of an improved understanding of the way covid-19 acts and more effective medical interventions, there is no policy that Trump's administration is remotely associated with that in any way connects to better treatment. His only claim to fame with regard to the practice of medicine is to have recommended the drinking of disinfectant. And one can't forget his ridiculous claim that more testing leads to more cases. Infection density is not a function of testing; only our understanding of where cases are.

While we're talking about metrics, the June job numbers came in over expectations. Two points; first, much of the data was collected before the recent spike and subsequent re-imposition of lock-downs and similar restrictions to combat spread, so unemployment will go back up again in July.

Second, the "expectation" was based on sober predictions about reopening happening at a relatively measured pace; instead states opened quickly, so while employment recovered quickly so the covid-19's spread.  It it that rush to reopen in the hopes of a V-shaped recovery that will bring about a W-shaped (or even a VW shaped) recovery.     

The "cancel culture" lie

As catchy as "cancel culture" might sound to Trump's base; it is, unsurprisingly, in essence just  another lie, a catchy term concocted by Fox to stir up the base.

Those asking for monuments glorifying historical figures who were either directly involved in slavery or supporters of it to be taken down are not "cancelling" anything. The movement is advocating exactly the opposite; it is seeking the reinstatement of parts of America's history that the descendants of the perpetrators of slavery had previously expunged.

They are asking that the history, written by those who prefer that the sins of their ancestors be forgotten, either because they don't care or because it makes them uncomfortable, be corrected to reflect things that had been intentionally omitted. That has nothing to do with "cancelling culture"; it's called setting the record straight.

Another false equivalence

 

Trump's enablers and defenders have been arguing that there is no difference in terms of a public health risk of being potential super-spreader events between his rallies and the BLM protests.

Here is why the comparison is bogus.

BLM protest

Trump Rally, Tulsa Oklahoma

BLM Protest

Trump Rally, Tulsa Oklahoma

To recap: BLM was outdoors (lower transmission risk) while Trump's rally was indoors (higher transmission risk); and masks were the norm at the BLM protest (lower transmission risk) while they were the exception and the Trump rally (higher transmission risk).

Pity the Fool

"You can fool all the people some of the time and some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time."  'Don the Con' [I think he'd like that one, if it weren't about him] is coming a cropper against that hard truth.

Everything to date has been "spinnable": Russian meddling in the 2016 election, "very fine people; on both sides" at Charlottesville; "I'm not a racist, I have black friends", the economy is all his doing [it's not], holding up aid to Ukraine for dirt on Joe Biden, deals with China on IP theft [there isn't one], with the DPRK on nukes [nothing there either], peace in the middle east; there's always a spin he (or Kayleigh MacNinny) can pull out of his kiester.

But as the polls seem to suggest, covid-19 is different. There's no spinning rising infection rates, over-run hospitals and a mounting death toll. The pandemic has exploded the myth of "the competent business manager" who can fix Washington. The curtain has been drawn back to reveal a cheap huckster in an expensive suit.  His ability to fool everyone all of the time has run its course and reality has, finally, caught up with him.

Wait, WHAT?

"Tucker Carlson appears to be edging out Jared Kushner in the battle for President Trump's ear."

This was in today's Axios PM email. Can one imagine, pre-Trump, ever seeing anything quite so bizarre; that the president's son-in-law (nepotism) is being supplanted by venal television presenter.

More depressing still is the revelation that Trump's tepid and belated conversion to criminal justice reform was not a conversion out of conviction but born of political expedience, a decision he reportedly now regrets since he "probably won't win any more Black support because of it".

Remember the good old days when some were wondering whether Trump was a racist ("very fine people, on both sides"); well, to all those skeptics out there, you saw what he retweeted this weekend, so now you know!

And he won't "he won't do anything that could be seen as undercutting police". He probably thinks he's going to need all the protection from the police he can get when he's evicted from the White House, so don't do anything that would lead to a case of the blue flu when he needs them.

Integrity and trust

Many have lamented the decline in trust of institutions, and government in particular. Trust in government has been undermined when politician like Ronald Reagan assert that government is the problem, not the solution. 

When political figures, for example, Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz, Tom Cotton, Lindsey Graham, and Mitch McConnell state that as a matter of principle the US Senate should not confirm a president's Supreme Court nominee "in an election year", or "after the primary season is under way", but "let the people decide" through the election of the net president; but then just four years letter they take exactly the opposite position, it is not surprising that the public sees this as astounding hypocrisy.

But there is more than just hypocrisy; it means that politicians and leaders cannot be taken at their word. It undermines trust and makes governing more difficult because "the government" and those who run it cannot be trusted. 

That has consequences as the covid crisis has shown. Even if the GOP hadn't disparaged mask-wearing, a lack of trust in government makes it less likely that people will take actions that would result in crushing the virus. The result has been over two hundred thousand unnecessary deaths. 

It also undermines the values that a well ordered society depends on. If integrity is not modeled by political leaders, we cannot expect people to value it either. That degrades our social intersections and makes life sadder and less rewarding in general.   

Deserting a sinking ship

Politico reported that Mike Pence has shifted from defending Trump to complimenting the governors over their handling of the covid-19 crisis.  Lindsey Graham is asking for a briefing as to what the President knew about Russia, the Taliban and alleged bounty payments. 

One has to wonder, particular in Pense's case, whether Trump's tanking poll numbers are a factor in their apparent slight change of heart. If they are seeing the writing on the wall, they may be calculating that the time has come to abandon Trump's ship of state.

Trump's Titanic administration has plowed through one iceberg after another; but then it hit the tiny corona virus and has begun taking on water. As we approach the November watershed, we may well see more of Trump's GOP enablers and administration cronies stop bailing and start swimming away before they are taken down in the undertow as Trump's Titanic sinks under the weight of its most colossal screw-up yet.

Donny's choice

Donald Trump's penchant for doubling down on prior mistakes has run out of road, stopped in its tracks by the reality of something that is not susceptible to obfuscation and lies.

Covid-19's containment was never adequate, reopening was premature and poorly implemented, and the result has been the second wave; not in November but in July.

Much of the blame can be placed squarely at Trump's door; his early inaction, his continual downplaying of the risks, his premature happy talk, and his push to restart the economy. But most of all, and this is what will haunt him now, his refusal to wear a face mask.

The current reemergence of the virus has narrowed his choices to three. He can pretend covid-19 will disappear if he does nothing. Like a toddler who can't believe bad things should happen to him, if he ignores it someone (his daddy) will make the nasty flu go away.  He can impose another lock-down.  Or, he can begin wearing a mask (that's the only way he can undo the damage he did by politicizing mask wearing and get his army of deplorables to do the right thing). 

All, from his point of view, are terrible alternatives, though the first is the only one that will be good for everyone else. Doing nothing will result either in a huge resurgence of infection and many more deaths; or it will make the governors who assume the mantle of responsibility look good and by contrast make him look ineffectual.  A second lock-down would be hugely unpopular; without more safety net money, business will go broke, and people loose their homes, hardship will be intolerable for many. Even with financial mitigation, people are fed up with SIP.  So the only choice left him is to model mask wearing. But that would mean admitting publicly that he was wrong. Obviously that's too bitter a pill for someone with his Dunning-Kruger sized ego to swallow.

SCOTUS and DACA

The Supreme Court ruled that the way in which the Trump administration ended the DACA program was illegal in a 5-4 decision on Monday. The ruling is narrow, speaking only to the process by which DACA was ended.  As one attorney noted today, SCOTUS has in effect provided a road map for the administration to follow in terminating the program. Moreover, there is lack of clarity from USCIS as to whether it will accept new applications.  In one interpretation of the decision, the program has been legally reinstated to its original so it should be accepting new applications; but it is operating under an administration that has made it clear it does not want the program to continue, so unless the agency believes it is on solid legal footing to reopen application it is unlikely to provide guidance on the issue.

Whether restarting the program is legal or not, a question that will almost certainly be the subject of legal challenges from both sides depending on how the USCIS proceeds, its senior officials may be wary upsetting Trump for fear of retaliation (sorry - "dismissal for cause"), particularly in an election year when Trump will doubtless want to make immigration an issue to roust his base to the polls. 

So the question is what will the administration do - and when. It seems likely that USCIS will hold of an processing any new applications until the issue is settled in court. And it is also likely that Trump will have Homeland Security go through the process of terminating DACA in a way that satisfies Monday's Supreme Court ruling with all possible speed. With only five months to the election, Trump will be desperate to have at least one win in his pocket and terminating DACA  is looking like his only real shot.             

Voluntary restructuring

In response to Rayshard Brook's killing, Atlanta's police department fired Garrett Rolfe, the policeman who shot Brooks. Rolfe has now been charged with murder in the killing.

Today, a number of Atlanta's policemen "called in sick".  They should be fired.

Remember Reagan's response to the air traffic controllers' strike?   He argued that their actions imperiled public safety and he fired them. If ever there was a textbook case of employees with a public safety mandate being derelict in their duty, these striking, sorry, "unewell" policemen are poster children.

What's more it reinforces the point that training and reform aren't going to change the deeply ingrained culture or racism that clearly exists in Atlanta's police department. Restructuring is absolutely essential.

Firing those who have shown they are clearly unwilling to change, who have in effect owned up to being the “bad apples” so many GOP apologists talk about, would be a great start at cleaning house.  

Rayshard Brooks

Rayshard Brooks fell asleep at a Wendy's drive-though and was shot and killed by the police.

Fox blowhards like Dan Bongino have screamed and yelled that Brooks brought this on himself, that the police had no option in that situation. After all Brooks pointed a tazer at them (the one he took from one of the on-scene officers) so what else could they have done?  That's of course complete BS.

Of course they had an option; namely to not kill him. First, they were not in grave danger; the tazer Books had taken is non lethal so the use of deadly force seems clearly excessive.  Second, what's the downside of simply letting him go? He was drunk, close to home and they could simply have impounded his car and served a ticket for drunk driving if they wanted when he came to collect it. He was not armed. He was not a danger to anyone. He was not driving drunk. So why shoot him in the back? Shooting someone running away is not consistent with the use of force in self defense. 

Bongino, like most of his thinkwithhisdick testosterone-fueled, enraged colleagues, is offended that a black man did not obey white a authority figure; and that makes him apoplectic. Law and order, in his mind, is really about power and control, in Secretary Mark Esper's words "dominating the battle space".

And the GOP's response? Crickets. That's where the GOP has been dragged by its white supremacist fringe. That's why they no longer have any moral authority. And that's why they need to be unceremoniously turfed out of office in November. 

Policing in America

African Americans have suffered from racial discrimination for many many years, and the feelings of resentment of oppression which have reached boiling point since George Floyd's killing ten days ago, are a function of a variety of causal factors (white flight, poor inner-city schooling, unequal criminal justice and sentencing); but the the most proximate cause for concern must be policing.

While is also true that it it not just African Americans who feel intimidated scared and belittled by the police, it remains the case that interactions between African Americans and the police are more likely to escalate into a violence than between the police and non-URMs.  So a good place to start, given the inflection point we seem to be at, is policing. 

Defunding police departments, which has a similar ring to it as "Abolish ICE!" is both simplistic, and ultimately politically counter productive. Police departments arguably have two major problems; first it is widely accepted that they are being asked to do more, in terms of scope, than ever before and with insufficient resources or training.  Second, and more importantly, they are often steeped in culture with deep roots in white supremacy. Recruiting more African Americans into their ranks won't solve that second problem, because cultures are perpetuated by a critical mass which will mean African Americans will be in a minority in their ranks and any change will be to their manifest function and beliefs, not to their latent functions and beliefs.

But to take money away from police departments without reducing the scope of their responsibilities will exacerbate rather than solve the problem. And while the majority, silent or not, are white supremacist sympathizers or at least blind-eye-turners, the culture of police departments will not change. Karl Weick noted that "organisation don't have cultures - they are cultures which is why they are so difficult to change".

The only way change will happen is if municipalities completely dismantle their police departments, and then rebuild them from scratch, with:

• different people with no background in policing,
• new management drawn from more progressive thinkers in the ranks of the police   
• different procedures, 
• new training, 
• new accountability systems and measures, 
• and new community oversight.           

And this problem is so entrenched and police departments so decentralized that no federal intervention will make any difference. This is not a federal problem; its not even a state problem; its a municipality and county community problem.   Certainly municipalities could use help from national experts but the heavy lifting has to be local. (That is unless States decided to roll local departments into a state-wide police force). 

A National Health Service

One of the unexpected consequences of the response to the novel corona virus has been the effect of the cancellation of all elective procedures in anticipation of a flood of covid-19 patients. Combined with lock-downs and a fear of going to public places, hospitals are loosing revenue and some may go bankrupt. If a significant sector of the economy (about 20% of GDP) goes broke, that will have long term implications for the recovery, not to mention health care delivery. 

Contrast that to the state run National Health Service. Not only does health care in the UK (like most of the rest of the developed world) only account for about half what it costs Americans, there is no danger that hospitals will "go out of business". 

The NHS may not provide some of the cutting edge procedures that elite, but it does provide at least as good care to every member of society in the UK as the American private healthcare system does for those lucky enough to have health insurance but not wealthy enough to pay for "premium" treatment. And it provides immeasurable better care than can be accessed by those without money and without health insurance.

Suppose, for a moment that many of America's hospitals do go broke. What can be done? First, there is an odd echo of under-capitalization of systemically important financial institutions here. So might government, state of federal, bail them out? It's possible; and perhaps there might be similar provision sin the legislation appropriating the bailout funds requiring hospitals undergo an equivalent stress-testing procedure, and that they maintain adequate reserves to continue operations during a similar event in the future.

Another option, however, would be to acquire those failing hospitals to begin the construction of a state-run health service. This might best be done at the stare rather than the federal level. And they one could make some useful comparisons in the US context of two different approaches to health care delivery.

Masking insecurity

Why does Trump still refuse to wear a mask in public? He says he has done in private and that his refusal to model CDC recommended behavior is just to troll the media. That is certainly part of the explanation, but there are two other factors to consider.

First, since he initially took the pandemic too lightly and ignoring science decided not to wear one, , he now can't admit he was wrong, so he's committed to his failing course of action. And there there is the optic. He doesn't want there to be any images of him wearing a mask anywhere that might be used by his opponents in the in the upcoming election.

If all the images of him are of a man looking totally normal while all those around him are wearing masks, he thinks it will make him look super human. For his supporters of course everything he does is seen as super human. But subconsciously, it might work on independent voters. That's a problem for Joe Biden. 

Globalization

These calipers, which measure to one thousandth of an inch and a hundredth of a millimetre have been one of the most useful tools I have. This kind of accuracy was unheard of when I was beginning to use tools like this 45 years ago. As importantly, a set of vernier calipers, yesteryear's equivalent,  could have cost at least $30 to $50. These I think were $15, and of course, were made in China. So about 10 times more accurate and at least half as expensive; that kind of 20X gain in value is seldom noted when we discuss globalization, where the focus has generally been on the hollowing out of middle class American manufacturing. But it begs the question how is China able to deliver this kind of order-of-magnitude increase in value creation?

That increase in value creation may be attributed to lower Chinese labor costs; if labor costs are a quarter US labor costs^[1], and direct labor is half the costs of the product, the saving would be about 37%; so a $30 item might cost only $19. If labor costs in China were a tenth of those in the US^[2], it might bring the cost down to about $16. The comparison is difficult because many of the products that purport to be made in the USA may only be assembled in the USA with parts sourced from China.

However this doesn't take into consideration innovation. The dominant design today seems to have settled on something pretty similar (if not identical) to the calipers in the picture.  Where that innovation occurred is an interesting question. China could have developed the technology in this product itself or it could have reverse-engineered an existing American tool; the second is more likely. And if elements of that technology were protected by US and international patents, whether Chinese manufacturers respected them is a second question (and the answer is probably not). So one reason these calipers were so cheap might be that China didn't have to invest as much in R&D as the original inventors.

This presents a real problem for US manufacturers. If they invested in R&D and if patent laws were enforced they, could charge a premium price for their product to recoup their R&D costs. But if patents are not enforced, and their product is copied and priced much lower they cannot compete and so they have no incentive to innovate; indeed to do so would put them at a cooperative disadvantage.

Equally problematic is the decision to enter the Chinese market. Often doing so would require the sharing of IP and thus puts them in the same position as if their products had been copied illegally. But the alternative is to cede the market to Chinese firms who would likely reverse engineer their products, flout patent protections and capture the entire Chinese market. So until China enforces patent protections, it's a catch-22 problem for US firms. And the Chinese government has absolutely no incentive to enforce international patents, since to do so would impede both its acquisition of IP and its economic growth.       

[1] https://countryeconomy.com/countries/compare/china/usa?sc=XE0H

[2] https://www.huffpost.com/entry/average-cost-factory-worker_n_1327413

Russian Poker, American Roulette

Would you object if I held a revolver to your head with only one bullet in the cylinder, gave it a spin and pulled the trigger?

After all it's my 2nd amendment right to bear arms, and there is only a 1 in 6 chance that you will die, and with the required six foot separation for social distancing, I could easily miss, so even if the gun did go off there's a good chance you might live (results vary based on make and model).

If you are infected with covid-19 and you are not wearing a mask, those may be fairly similar odds as a person you are talking to has of living.

What non-mask-wearers are playing is a twisted version of Russian Roulette (sometimes called Russian Poker) in which they are taking reckless chances not with their own lives, but with other people's lives; that's American Roulette.

Strategic procrastination

The GOP is in no hurry to work on a fourth stimulus bill.  They complain that existing allocations have not been spent. They worry that provisions for voting by mail will hurt them by preferentially enfranchising Democratic voters. They want liability protection for small businesses (of which more later). These are the overt justifications; but another plausible explanation is that they want to force people back to work, regardless of the disparate impact and risks of a fast re-opening.

States can't run deficits, That means that as income declines with people out of work and taxes plummeting, states must either cut services or raise revenues; and since they can't borrow, the only way to raise revenues is to get the economy re-started.  And with the economy restarting, the message in the run up to the election will be "we beat it, we put money back in your pockets, while the Dem's wanted to keep you poor to protect the illegals".

It's bold, quite clever, but risky; if the second wave does return, something made much more likely by fast re-opening, they may get the blame. But if Trump has shown us one thing it's how effectively he can shift blame onto others. So when the second wave comes, the message will be "that's not on us, that's on the governors". The recovery will be more V than L shaped, the stock market will be near twenty eight thousand. Most people feel life is back to normal.

The GOP has evidently concluded that to remain in power, a few more deaths are worth it to get the economy back on track. When Senator Patrick Toomey re-frames the lock-down as simply an effort to prevent the healthcare system from being overwhelmed he can declare "mission accomplished" despite rising the number of cases and the infection growth rate R, still being being very close to one nationally and much grater than one in many states. That's a clear indication that his priority is the economy, not mitigation of the disease.

When economic activity is the top priority, liability protection becomes important; it allows small business owners to restart with much less rigorous covid-related health precautions than they would implement if they were at risk of being sued. That helps accelerate the reopening.  And Trump's continued refusal to wear a mask is part and parcel of the blasé, "covid is nothing terribly serious" attitude he wants to project to get consumers back to work and back to buying. 

Of course the death toll will be higher that it would otherwise have been, but that's hard to prove; comparisons of an actual outcome with an unrealized path not followed are easy to manipulate: "That's what some scientists predicted but here's another scientist who says something quite different". We've seen that cherry-picking of scientific outliers in the climate change debate. Without the vaccine some (the old and the sick) will have to voluntarily self-quarantine; but in the GOP playbook that's OK since they are not economically vital and if some of them vote for the Dem's, that's a price worth paying.

Inconvenient science

Just as science provided us with, in Al Gore's words, an "inconvenient truth" about the climate crisis, so science seems now to be inconvenient to Trump's political ambitions.

Early on in his handling of the pandemic, science seemed irrelevant to Trump. He said covid-19 was less of a problem than the flu; he said he had a hunch it would magically disappear. Then the death-toll began to rise and he discovered science could be a useful political prop that allowed him hours of free air-time for his non-stop re-election campaigning after he could no longer hold his rallies.

But as unemployment rose to depression-era levels, the economy began to sputter and the prospect of a quick stock market recovery began to fade, science suddenly became inconvenient. He considered disbanding the pandemic task force and then reconsidered when he found out it was really popular.

Ultimately, however, the need to put the country back to work, in order to keep his 'economic miracle' (i.e. tax-cut juiced economy) alive, made a slow reopening a real problem for him. The CDC's reopening guidelines were too restrictive for Trump's political timetable and "would never see the light of day".  A watered down version of the guidelines were hastily produced, the Obama administration's science-based pandemic preparedness plan that a week ago didn't exist was miraculously found and found wanting, the scientists, including Anthony Fauci were lambasted, and the value of their work questioned. 

Trump's untethered bravado was on full display today when he pronounced: "I just want to make something clear. It’s very important. Vaccine or no vaccine, we’re back. And we’re starting a process. In many cases they don’t have vaccines and a virus or a flu comes and you fight through it".     

We were are now set on a course in which in many parts of the country, caution has been thrown to the wind. We can only hope that "science" was overly cautious and that things won't be quite as bad as feared. 

Hope for the future

If Trump has taught us just one thing (although in fact he has taught us many) is it that the absence of good leadership in a crisis is why good leadership matters.

Had he been listening to expert advice, the covid-19 epidemic in the US would have been far less severe. Had he surrounded himself with competent people rather than sycophantic opportunists, implementation of the response to covid-19 would have been better. Had he not lied so consistently while in office, he could have sent a coherent message people might have believed. And had he been concerned with the country rather then his own ego and reelection, we might have had a policy response that saved lives and avoided unnecessary economic hardship.

The "who do you want to pick up the phone at 3am?", Hilary Clinton's 2008 primary campaign slogan is suddenly more than just an abstract idea. If there is one person who should not be answering the phone at 3am (or at any time for that matter), it's Trump.  He has shown us very clearly what leadership isn't and covid-19 has shown us why that matters.

Unexpected consequences

Tushman and Anderson (1996) wrote about technological discontinuities, disruptive technological changes that give rise to an era of ferment in which new technological standards emerge.

Covid-19 is will represent a similarly disruptive discontinuity. Many things will change in the new post-covid-19 normal.  Air travel will fall dramatically and air fares rise sharply. Tourism across continents or very long distances will stop (there no points taking a two week vacation to visit the UK if you have to be quarantined for two weeks when you arrive and then another two when you return. So leisure time will be spent at more local destinations.

Global supply chains will become more local with production being repatriated. With a disentangling of physical trade relationships, may come a similar rationalization of financial flows and interconnections.
 
Public transit will be able to accommodate only a fraction of their usual daily volume; flexible working hours will help but won't be enough. People will have to walk or cycle to work, meaning a preference for more local employment. More people may work from home; but if that is to be effective they will need more space, leading to an exodus from very dense cities where space is at a premium.

As knowledge workers work from home, time saved in not having to commute might allow them to be more involved locally, strengthening local civic engagement. That might lead to further disengagement with federal politics in the US, perhaps similar to the way may Europeans feel about the European Parliament.

There is talk of transforming education with on-line making access possible in the short-term with social distancing. Along with that may come a push for universal high-speed internet access which will further facilitate some of the transformations.

As we reflect on the lessons of covid-19, changes to health care and inequality may come, though that depends on getting past the partisan and cultural divide.     

Many expect these changes to be temporary; but in may cases these will not be reversible and so the impact will be permanent. 

This is in inflection point in history; there will be unexpected consequences, of course, but if one thing is certain it is that the future will be very different from the past.

Questionable motives?

Perhaps I'm being too cynical, but I can't help wondering why UnitedHealth, a large medical insurer, has decide to share some windfall profits with its customers.

It is because it is concerned that the covid-19 pandemic has exposed some of the shortcomings of the US heath care system and wants to paint itself as one of the "good guys", should Congress decide to do a complete remake of healthcare in the US?

Anarchy

Dan Crenshaw (R-Texas), appearing on Fox this morning, lambasted a judge who had sentenced Salon owner Shelly Luther to 7 days incarceration.

Luther had defied a court order to close her shop, and was defiant and unapologetic when she was sentenced.  She made it clear she had no intention of obeying the court and would keep her shop open.

Crenshaw's argument was that it is an individual's right to defy any ordnance they believe to be unreasonable.  There's a term for people who philosophical position; "anarchists". 

Those who believe in the rule of law must also accept the law applies equally to all, and that individuals cannot simply choose which ones they consider "reasonable".

Even if he were to moderate his position from defying any ordnance they believe to be unreasonable, to defying any ordnance they believe to be unconstitutional, there is still a legal process by which laws may be challenged. Encouraging people to ignore due process and take matters into their won hands is still a big step on the road to anarchy. 

What is predictable but also irritating is that, ironically, its usually Republicans who bang on about the rule of law.  Yet here is a Republican loudly encouraging people to only obey laws they like; assuming Crenshaw is indeed a Republican and not an anarchist (aka "libertarian"), his position is absurdly hypocritical.

Loose talk can cost lives

During the Second World War, the public (on both sides of the Atlantic) was encouraged to be careful with what they said in public. Eighty years later, some people appear not to have understood that. Take Ingraham for example. A week ago she chuckled approvingly while Rudi Guliani ridiculed contact tracing, saying that we should have contact tracing for heart disease, cancer and obesity.  And yesterday she suggested that there was no evidence that social distancing worked. Both are not only demonstrably wrong, they also undermine the efforts that sensible people are making to contain the spread of covid-19.

Encouraging people not to trust science, not to trust experts and not to take the precautions that will curb the virus' spread will not only cause more people to die unnecessarily, it will also mean the mitigation efforts will have to remain in place longer causing needless economic hardship as well. And since she can't possibly be stupid enough not to know that what she is saying is arrant nonsense, and says it anyway, that can only mean she is completely indifferent to the consequences - and that makes her a sociopath.

These are not the only bozos who are either clueless (Hannity) or indifferent to this loose talk and the cast of unsavory characters below is far from complete; but they are the public face of an organization that is undermining societal cohesion, partly out of a self-interest-based ideology, partly in pursuit of profit. Were there any justice in the world they would be held to account and live out the remainder of their sorry lives in jail as restitution for the lives their loose talk will have taken and the misery it will have caused; but of course there isn't. Since none of them appear troubled by anything remotely resembling a conscience, perhaps fate will allow that they or people they care about (if there are any) fall victim to the virus they are helping to propagate. That's the kind of Old Testament justice of which they would approve. And it would be poetic indeed.

Perhaps we should call these people what they are: traitors in the war on covid-19.

Rationale

Yesterday, Trump announced he was disbanding the Corona Virus Task Force. One must assume he decided to do so because it was dragging its feet on reopening the economy, contradicting him when he went of on a flight of fancy (about hydroxychloroquine, injecting disinfectant etc.) which made him look bad, and generally sending depressing messages about the likely death toll. None of this was helping him get re-elected.

Today however, he suddenly reversed course, announcing that he was keeping the task force after all. Why? Well, and I quote: "I had no idea it was so popular".

So lets review. He was going to disband the task force because science was getting in the way of his reelection. Then he reinstated it, not out of some new-found respect for science, but because it was "popular" and he figured that keeping it was good for his reelection.

That's the kind of focused, goal-oriented leadership we've come to expect.

Equilibrium

California's Governor Newsome has been talking about reopening based on the numbers. Austria is using a 14 day window to gauge the impact of a step-wise approach. In this model I compare three scenarios: complete and indefinite re-opening after shelter-in-place is lifted; complete re-opening after shelter-in-place is lifted but reimposed if number trend upward for 14 straight days and lifted if they trend down for for 14 straight days;  and finally a partial re-opening after shelter-in-place is lifted but reimposed if number trend upward for 14 straight days and lifted to that 'partial' level if they trend down for for 14 straight days.   

The results suggest that a total return to normal behavior whenever the numbers trend upward leads to an oscillating cycle of relaxation and re imposition of the shelter-in-place restrictions. Moreover the virus appears to circulate for longer than if it simply burnt itself out after a single shelter-in-place event.

However a return not to 'normal' but to a 'new normal', modeled here as a 20% reduction in social interactions, significantly dampens the oscillations and reduces infection rates faster than the second scenario.

Contact tracing app: promoting widespread adoption

On February 28th, I made this suggestion to a friend who works at Google:

"Assuming it doesn't yet exist, how fast could Google develop/adapt an app to track face to face interactions that might be used to back and forward trace covid-19? Developing an accurate social network graph based on recall is hard, and having a real time data collection would allow the CDC to quickly trace those who have been exposed. What do you think?"

I elaborated on the idea about three weeks ago, when I wrote about an exit ramp from the shelter-in-place order.

"Technology could help here; an app if widely adopted that recorded all other apps in Bluetooth range proximity could help in that contact tracing effort, but like all apps with network effects, widespread adoption is needed to make it effective. Once such an app is developed, adoption might be accelerated if localities (towns, counties) required all restaurants to require the app be installed and active for all their patrons.

Another possibility is to require Fit-bit and similar health monitoring app companies to share data; this could be aggregated and annonymized giving a broad picture of small regions that may be heating up, triggering localized lock-downs; or it could be shared with personal data sent to the CDC (and the local authorities) to ensure that infected people are prevented from circulating freely in the community".

About two weeks after that, it was reported that Google and Apple were collaborating on an app to do exactly this - a contact tracing app.

One of the issues influencing its effectiveness is how widespread is its adoption. Google and Apple are solving the problem in a way that is likely to run into enormous backlash once people understand what they are doing; they are going to embed the app into the operating system and distribute it as the next update.

I predict the uproar will be enormous when people realize that tech firms are surreptitiously collecting data on their interactions and their health. Court challenges are inevitable. So we may need to fall back on voluntary adoption.

One way of making the app more attractive to users, and thus to promote its use without a mandate (or its inclusion by "default") is to enhance the value it delivers. As it is, the contact tracing data is useful to society as a whole but less useful to the individual participating in the data collection effort by using the app.  But what if the app could also tell you what the likelihood is that someone you are within 6 feet of has the virus? That would enable people to make their own real-time social distancing choices. Those concerned for their own health might find this a very useful feature.  Individualists would appreciate it, even if they were not concerned for their (or societies) health since it would allow for a relaxation of blanket restrictions on association. That could promote adoption if people saw use of the app as a reasonable trade off between monitoring and an extension of shelter-in-place.