I’m wondering if it is time to make a $5 coin suitable for tipping essential workers. The U.S. has a history going back to 1795 with $5 coins; just over 100 years ago, a $5 coin had a quarter ounce of gold in it, which today would be worth $430. The $5 coin wouldn’t blow away if left on the outdoor restaurant tables that are now mandatory. It could also be left on a front step for an Amazon delivery contractor.
The U.S. government says the Tuskegee Airmen “fought two wars” (one of which was against racism). (This is the opposite of what Charles McGee said at Oshkosh back in 2019; asked “What was it like to be black in 1940 when segregation prevailed?” he answered “I went to high school in the North and we didn’t have segregation.”)
How about a series with scenes of a modern-day hero? The double-masked soldier for social justice sits at a desk eating Doritos. After looking both ways to make sure nobody is within 100′, the N95-masked hero takes a break from Zoom to add a #StopAsianHate sign in among the rainbow flag, BLM banner, and “In this house we believe…” sign in his/her/zir/their yard. The concerned citizen updates his/her/zir/their Facebook profile picture from #StopAsianHate (a week for this cause is enough) back to #StayHomeSaveLives. He/she/ze/they rolls up his/her/zir/their sleeve to accept the sacrament of investigational non-FDA approved vaccine. As in A Rake’s Progress, the story ends in tragedy. Our Mask and Shutdown Karen, now fully vaccinated, decides to attend a rally demanding justice for the BIPOC and stands closer than 6′ from his/her/zir/their brothers/sisters/binary-resisters in arms. The final scene for the reverse shows the felled-by-a-variant social justice warrior dying in the ICU, attended by a BIPOC physician and BIPOC nurse, an immigrant via the DREAM Act.
Separately, another potential advantage for the $5 coin is that if the $trillions of additional government spending generate inflation, it will be the right denomination for purchasing a drink from a vending machine (already at $3 at the Atlanta Zoo, April 2021; see photo below).
A European eyeglass retailer published a screen time index based on data gathered in mid-October 2020 (i.e., during coronapanic).
Americans were champions at watching TV, dominating all other nations (175 minutes/day compared to 119 minutes in Ireland and 113 in Switzerland). Colombia and Mexico were the only other nations that came close to matching our couch potato achievement.
And, before we wisely decided, in response to a virus that attacks the obese, to lock ourselves into our apartments and park next to the fridge, how were we doing with obesity? Our government loves to sort us by race:
If you’re a white guy whom United Airlines doesn’t want to hire, there is a 75 percent chance you’re “overweight” (i.e., fat). If you’re a Black woman whom United Airlines does want to hire, there is an 80 percent chance you’re “overweight”. Maybe after a few of these quota-arranged training classes graduate it will be time to un-mothball the Airbus A380s (1,265,000 lbs. max gross weight)!
[My recollection is that taking an average within the NHANES data reveals that American “women” (whatever that term might mean) actually have a higher BMI than American “men”. That’s not necessarily inconsistent with the above tables, which look only at those who’ve exceeded a threshold, but maybe it is worth exploring.]
Aircraft can hold large numbers of persons in close proximity for long periods, which can increase the risk for transmission of infectious disease.* Current CDC guidelines recommend against travel for persons who have not been vaccinated against COVID-19, and a January 2021 CDC order requires masking for all persons while on airplanes.†,§ Research suggests that seating proximity on aircraft is associated with increased risk for infection with SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19 (1,2). However, studies quantifying the benefit of specific distancing strategies to prevent transmission, such as keeping aircraft cabin middle seats vacant, are limited. Using bacteriophage MS2 virus as a surrogate for airborne SARS-CoV-2, CDC and Kansas State University (KSU) modeled the relationship between SARS-CoV-2 exposure and aircraft seating proximity, including full occupancy and vacant middle seat occupancy scenarios. Compared with exposures in full occupancy scenarios, relative exposure in vacant middle seat scenarios was reduced by 23% to 57% depending upon the modeling approach. A 23% exposure reduction was observed for a single passenger who was in the same row and two seats away from the SARS-COV-2 source, rather than in an adjacent middle seat. When quantifying exposure reduction to a full 120-passenger cabin rather than to a single person, exposure reductions ranging from 35.0% to 39.4% were predicted. A 57% exposure reduction was observed under the vacant middle seat condition in a scenario involving a three-row section that contained a mix of SARS-CoV-2 sources and other passengers. Based on this laboratory model, a vacant middle seat reduces risk for exposure to SARS-CoV-2 from nearby passengers. These data suggest that increasing physical distance between passengers and lowering passenger density could help reduce potential COVID-19 exposures during air travel. Physical distancing of airplane passengers, including through policies such as middle seat vacancy, could provide additional reductions in SARS-CoV-2 exposure risk.
For a whole year I have wondered how it can possibly be legal for airlines to pack cramped aluminum tubes 100 percent full with potentially plagued people (see below). The government has used its awesome power to shut down outdoor tennis doubles, for example, and beaches.
Now I’m beginning to wonder at the disparate treatment accorded to airlines and cruise ships. It is legal for an airliner to depart 100 percent full with no testing of anyone before or after. It is not legal for a cruise ship to depart 30 percent full with vaccinated and tested passengers who can easily be tested prior to disembarking. The exposure on a cruise ship is for a longer period of time, of course, but the airlines cumulatively pack a ton of people together for 16 hours per day (and those people are packed closer together in airports than they would be on a cruise ship). Could we be seeing a disparity in lobbying power? From a December 2018 trip to Cuba on Royal Caribbean, two sitting ducks for any virus:
India became the country with the world’s second highest number of confirmed COVID-19 cases on Monday, surpassing Brazil, and now second only to the United States.
India now has 13.5 million confirmed cases, compared to the U.S.’s 31.1 million. The country is currently in the midst of a second wave of the virus, with confirmed daily infections reaching an all-time high of 168,912 on Monday.
Dividing by 1.4 billion is apparently too challenging for American journalists. How about the Brits? From the Guardian:
This week has marked a series of grim Covid milestones for India. It was this week the country once again outstripped Brazil to become the second-worst affected globally, with a total of over 13.68m cases.
In other words, India has suffered more from COVID-19 than a country in which 100 percent of the population died of COVID-19, just as long as that country had only 13 million people.
How bad are things in what TIME and the Guardian say is the worst-plagued country on Earth? The country has suffered 125 COVID-19-tagged deaths per million inhabitants (ranking). That compares to 2,530 per million here in Massachusetts (states ranked; note that this is per 100,000 so multiply by 10). Maybe they will be getting worse, though. If things get 20X as bad as they’ve been in India, the situation will be about as bad as it is right now in Massachusetts.
The trend certainly does not look good. I wonder if this proves what Dr. Jill Biden, M.D.’s colleague Dr. Jeff Goldblum said: “Life Finds a Way.” The non-Chinese Wuhan-edition coronavirus was perhaps not a good fit for hosts in India, which is why, adjusted for population size, not much happened during Coronawave #1 (TIME: “health experts had predicted that India, with a population more than four times the size of the U.S., would quickly become the world’s worst-hit country”). But now the virus, with approximately 30,000 base pairs, has evolved. How much? Here’s the March of the Mutants:
If there isn’t already, there should soon be a coronavirus suitable for any host: Indian, not Indian, vaccinated, not vaccinated, etc.
On the third hand, what goes up exponentially might well come down exponentially. So far the actual daily death rate from Coronawave #2 in India is lower than during the first wave. The higher case rate could simply be an artifact of increased test availability.
Readers: What’s your best guess as to how events unfold in India? My guess is based on regression to the mean. India was an outlier (125 deaths per million). When the dust settles, India will be somewhere in the middle (right now the worldwide average is about 375 deaths per million; 3 million deaths in a population of 8 billion). Perhaps we’d have to adjust for the fact that the median age in India is roughly 27, slightly younger than the world median (around 30).
Related:
“India sees record surges in cases due to coronavirus variants” (New Scientist): The surge appears to be driven mainly by the more transmissible B.1.1.7 variant from the UK, which is causing around 40 per cent of cases in Asia, according to pathogen-tracking project Nextstrain. Another 16 per cent of cases are due to the B.1.351 variant that evolved in South Africa.
People who refuse to get the COVID-19 vaccine will have higher health-care costs. The rest of us will foot the bill.
Imagine it’s 2026. A man shows up in an emergency room, wheezing. He’s got pneumonia, and it’s hitting him hard. He tells one of the doctors that he had COVID-19 a few years earlier, in late 2021. He had refused to get vaccinated, and ended up contracting the coronavirus months after most people got their shots. Why did he refuse? Something about politics, or pushing back on government control, or a post he saw on Facebook. He doesn’t really remember. His lungs do, though: By the end of the day, he’s on a ventilator.
You’ll pay for that man’s decisions. So will I. We all will—in insurance premiums, if he has a plan with your provider, or in tax dollars, if the emergency room he goes to is in a public hospital. The vaccine refusers could cost us billions. Maybe more, over the next few decades, with all the complications they could develop. And we can’t do anything about it except hope that more people get their shots than those who say they will right now.
… A new study found that 34 percent of COVID-19 survivors are diagnosed with a neurological or psychological condition within six months of recovering from the initial illness. …
As lockdowns are lifted, [former Obama administration official Kathleen] Sebelius hopes that vaccine passports will create social pressure, which might wear down hesitancy if unvaccinated people are barred from sports games, concerts, and other public events.
So much interesting stuff in here! The CDC estimates that roughly half of Americans have had a COVID infection, so if we accept the above statistic, roughly 17 percent of us are the walking wounded, with new neurological and psychological deficits. The Obama official is excited by the idea that everyone should have to carry some kind of proof of vaccination in order to participate in society. Maybe this will be a smartphone app or a RFID wristband (or my own favorite: RFID neck chip, as proven in dogs). Mx. Sebelius would, presumably, react with horror if someone suggested that one form of ID be required in order to vote, but now a much more onerous task will be imposed on those who wish to shop for groceries at Target.
The Atlantic makes the point that Democrats bear “The White Man’s Burden”. They work hard at their elite/government jobs while the non-whites (Republicans) clog up ICUs and hog ventilators that Democrats fund.
Take up the White Man’s burden— In patience to abide, To veil the threat of terror And check the show of pride; By open speech and simple, An hundred times made plain. To seek another’s profit, And work another’s gain.
With enough federal and state orders and restrictions on the non-vaccinated, presumably the recalcitrant can be coerced eventually. But what about a group of people over whom the Feds have a lot of control, i.e., migrants? They no longer try to sneak across the border, but instead run right into the arms of the nearest government worker. Roughly 96 percent of these folks will be here in the U.S. forever. Many of the “children” saying that they’re under 18 have a biological age that is older than 18 and therefore they would easily fall into the emergency use authorization age range for the vaccines that are currently being used (though not “FDA-approved”) in the U.S.
If these folks are going to live in the U.S. forever and they’re going to be on Medicaid or “charity care” forever and we believe that these vaccines will actually reduce long-term health care costs, why not set up vaccine clinics at the detention and processing facilities for migrants (who are not in a “concentration camp” and who are not “kept in cages”, unlike from 2017 through early 2021)?
This could also be a good opportunity prototype a federal vaccine passport. By definition, the migrants are “undocumented” so they need a document-free way of showing that they’ve had the shot that entitles them to walk free amongst the righteous (vaccinated) natives.
The argument can’t be that the migrant lifestyle prevents infection. See photo below from “Biden administration spending $60 million per week to shelter unaccompanied minors” (Washington Post article, but Texas Tribune photo). Just as the Swedish MD/PhDs predicted, humans don’t bother with the 6′ distance requirement once you give them a paper mask and tell them that #Science says it works.
The argument can’t be that there aren’t enough migrants to make it worth the trouble of setting up a vaccine tent with refrigerator and technician. The above-linked article says “about 22,000 to 26,000 unaccompanied minors will arrive at the border each month and require federal care” (that’s just the minors; there are also plenty of adults).
What is the argument against immediate vaccination for those migrants who want it? That the children are unaccompanied and therefore the feds are unable to get parents to consent? Teenagers can get abortions without parental consent here in Massachusetts. Why not a vaccine that #Science says will save their lives? (Our legislature couldn’t find time to pass a legal framework for all of the restrictions that have been imposed by 66 (so far) executive orders, but in December 2020 they did manage to pass a new abortion law. See “Groundbreaking Massachusetts Abortion Law Repeals Parental Consent for Older Teens” (Ms. Magazine):
Last week, the Massachusetts legislature passed a groundbreaking new law creating an affirmative right to abortion in the state, expanding abortion access after 24 weeks, and removing a parental consent requirement for 16- and 17-year-olds. … We are saying that women and pregnant people should be trusted to make the personal decisions about their body and if, when and how to become pregnant that we know they’re perfectly capable of making and there should not be barriers, especially barriers that disproportionately impact low-income people and people of color.
“women” and “pregnant people” can be trusted, which means that a “man” can be trusted only if he becomes pregnant? So at least young “women” and “pregnant people” among the migrants should be entrusted to make their own decisions about whether to take a non-approved vaccine.)
Compared to a purely private system, in which vaccine vendors merely shipped product to customers who’d ordered it, you might think that one advantage of top-down centrally managed vaccine allocation would be that vaccines would be rushed to the states that are suffering the worst plague at any given moment. “CDC director says Michigan can’t vaccinate its way out of COVID-19 surge” (ABC):
The answer to Michigan’s COVID-19 surge is “to close things down,” according to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky, not an increase in vaccine supply that the state’s governor and other public health experts have called for.
Michigan’s Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer declared her state a “COVID hotspot” as cases continue to rise and has asked the federal government to increase vaccines in response.
“I believe government’s role is, when we can’t take action to protect ourselves, the government must step in,” Whitmer said on Monday. “That’s where we were a year ago. That’s where we were four months ago. We’re in a different moment. Every one of us has the ability and knowledge to do what it takes.”
“If we try to vaccinate our way out of what is happening is Michigan, we will be disappointed it took so long for the vaccine to work,” said Walensky. “We know that if vaccines go in arms today, we will not see an effect of those vaccines, depending on the vaccine for somewhere between two to six weeks.”
(The comment shows that #Science is completely different in the UK and the US. In the UK, the two-dose vaccines work well enough after one shot that the second can be delayed (in order to maximize the number of people who get the first dose). In the U.S, a shot that is considered effective in the U.K. is considered useless until 6 weeks later (two weeks after the second shot.)
Meanwhile, the New York Times says that Michigan is unable to use the vaccine that it has been sent: “Ms. Whitmer has pleaded with the White House to send extra doses, even as her state has used just 78 percent of those delivered so far.” Maybe this is an example of “The war is not meant to be won. It is meant to be continuous.” (Screenplay for an adaptation of Orwell’s 1984). The federal government would rather see a governor closing schools, businesses, etc. than actually stop the virus. If not, though, refusing to send extra vaccine to an extra-plagued state seems to contradict common sense. Why not send vaccines and, if necessary, personnel qualified to deliver them, to the areas of the U.S. that are suffering from the highest case/death rate? Then wait two weeks (UK #Science) or six weeks (US #Science) for the plague to recede.
Anxious for a COVID shot? The state will open appointments up to everyone in another week, but you may not even have to wait that long — if you’re willing to drive a few extra miles to get the jab.
A handful of vaccination sites, faced with a surplus of shots, have opened their doors wide to all adults, regardless of age, employment status, medical history or where they live. All California adults 16 and older will be eligible starting April 15, but until then, demand for vaccinations and rules for who can get one vary widely from county to county and even clinic to clinic. That means finding an appointment has turned into something of an Easter egg hunt for determined Bay Area vaccine seekers, many of whom are too desperate to wait another week or worry shots will become even harder to come by once everyone in the state is eligible. Plus, the state has confirmed it expects its supply of vaccines to drop in the coming weeks, likely slowing first-dose appointments and adding to the anxiety.
UC Davis Medical Center this week began offering vaccines to all California residents 16 and older after as many as 1,500 appointments were going unused each day.
“We decided it was better to fill those appointments with people eager to be vaccinated, rather than leave slots unfilled as we waited for the calendar to turn to April 15,” spokeswoman Tricia Tomiyoshi wrote in an emailed statement. “Every vaccination is a step closer to ending this pandemic.”
It turns out that California state government, one of the most lavishly funded enterprises in human history, is no better at allocating scarce items than was the Soviet government. Thus, we have the scenes that Americans used to deride the Soviets for, e.g., people lining up once they hear that something is available, one traveling to obtain a scarce item for which a surplus exists somewhere else.
See also this Washington Post article on how vaccine doses are piling up in federal government warehouses (like at the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark) because states, e.g., plague-ridden Michigan, aren’t ordering them (due to an inability to organize and use the vaccine doses that they already have). North Carolina didn’t order their vaccine doses because it was spring break and a worldwide emergency severe enough to shut down education, social life, work, gym, suspend the Constitution (e.g., First Amendment right to assemble), etc. wasn’t enough of an emergency to force a change of plans.
One might think that the above would shake Americans’ determination to expand the size and role of the government, but instead the opposite seems to be occurring. It is a mystery to me!
(On the other hand, we could also argue that the toilet paper, paper towel, and hand sanitizer shortages of spring 2020 show that the market economy can’t cope either. The big stores weren’t willing to raise prices such that the market cleared in an Econ 101 fashion. To sell Charmin at 2-3X the regular price would have tarnished their reputation via an accusation of price gouging and profiteering. On the other hand, paper towels and toilet paper were never truly unavailable here in the Boston area. We had to buy brands we weren’t familiar with and in small quantities, e.g., at CVS and the local small grocery store, because the big box stores were sold out at their regular prices.)
Related:
American central planners tackle vaccine scarcity (December 31, 2020): I wonder if something more like a market economy could have done this better. The bureaucrats can send free vaccine doses to hospitals, medical and dental offices, and nursing homes. Whatever is left over goes to whatever clinic or facility bids the highest. The bidding process is necessary to ensure that clinics that have the most streamlined and efficient procedures are the ones who will get the vaccine and also to ensure that clinics won’t let doses get spoiled or expire. … At least to judge by my Facebook feed, there are a lot of suburban white and Asian Americans who feel that the cost of lockdown is negligible. They’re happy to work from home (4,000 to 6,000 square feet), order deliveries, refrain from socializing in person. These folks don’t need a vaccine because if the government recommends that they stay home for the next 5 years they will cheerfully comply. But, on the other hand, there is no central database of the Happily Shutdown. Thus, the market would be the best way to keep these folks from clogging up the vaccine line. They know that they’ll be home for another year or two, so why should they pay $500 for a shot? They’ll wait for the price to come down to $100.
President Trump said Friday that every American would have access to a coronavirus vaccine by April, contradicting his own statement of two days earlier and sowing deeper confusion about the process and timing of vaccine approval and distribution.
When Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Robert Redfield said earlier in the week that the general public was unlikely to get access to a vaccine until the second and third quarters of 2021, echoing other scientific leaders in the administration, Trump said he’d misspoken.
“I think he made a mistake with that statement,” Trump said Wednesday. “When he said it, I believe he was confused. I’m just telling you we’re ready to go.”
Trump then said a vaccine would be ready in weeks and swiftly made available, despite the fact that no one knows yet when sufficient data will be collected from clinical trials to show that one of the vaccines in late-stage trials is effective or safe.
President Joe Biden said Tuesday that all adults in the U.S. should be eligible to receive the Covid-19 vaccine by April 19 … The new deadline to expand eligibility — which is two weeks earlier than Biden had previously targeted — should not be difficult to meet since several states have already begun administering the vaccine to anyone over 16 who wants it.
“The virus is spreading because we have too many people who see the end in sight think we are at the finish line already,” Biden said. “Let me be deadly earnest with you, we aren’t finished. We still have a lot of work to do. We’re still in a life and death race against this virus. Until we get more people vaccinated we need everyone to wash their hands, socially distance and mask up.”
Asked why Biden was announcing the new timeframe when nearly every state has already moved up eligibility to the April date, Psaki said the president wanted to provide clarity and remind seniors to hurry to get their shots before the lines get long.
In case the “Experts say the president’s latest timeline is nearly impossible to confirm since none of the vaccines in development have been proved effective…” is cut off on mobile, here’s a screen shot from the desktop Twitter:
“Italy Pushes Back as Health Care Workers Shun Covid Vaccines” (NYT, March 31): Prime Minister Mario Draghi issued a decree requiring that workers in health care facilities be vaccinated, a move that will test the legal limits of his government’s efforts to stem coronavirus outbreaks. … “Unfortunately there is huge part of doctors who are deeply ignorant,” said Mr. Burioni[a virologist with a Ph.D., but not a “Dr.” like Dr. Jill Biden, M.D.], who suggested that perhaps “the selection process for bringing people to gain a medical degree and then the medical license is not effective enough.” … Salvatore Giuffrida, the director of the hospital, Europe’s fourth largest, said he favored a vaccination requirement because it would also keep medical workers healthy and would strengthen defensive lines as a brutal third wave spreads through northern Italy.
A family kicked off a Southwest flight after their two-year-old could not keep his face mask on turned to Facebook to complain and were offered a private flight by a family friend.
He said his family woke up at three in the morning to prepare for their flight out of Denver, Colorado.
‘I practiced with him at least two or three times at the house and every time he threw it off, but I figured that [Southwest] would work with us on the plane because he’s two,’ Michelle Harvey said.
FOX 7 reports that Peck flew his twin-engine airplane to Denver, picked up the family, and flew them to Austin at no charge.
There are already pilot groups for flying medical patients (Angel Flight and PALS), dogs (Pilots N Paws), sea turtles (Turtles Fly Too; see also Merry Christmas to the Sea Turtles and Merry Christmas (again) to the Sea Turtles). If we assume that coronapanic never ends and that recalcitrant toddlers remain recalcitrant, could it be time for a new volunteer pilot group for transporting families who don’t want their trip to turn into a mask fight? Light planes are at their best when some of the seats are occupied by children (reasonably low in weight despite one or more years of lockdown, unlike their adult counterparts).
Readers: What should the group be called? Winged Unmasked Brats (“WUB”)? Terrible Twos Take To The Skies (“TTTTTS”)?
As Joe Biden is discovering, sometimes it is best to put children in a cage…
And, in case anyone wants to see just how effective masks (for which we will fight to the death, if necessary), lockdowns, and vaccines are against our viral nemesis, here’s Sweden (unvaccinated, unmasked, unlocked) versus Israel (fully vaccinated (older/vulnerable), masked, and locked-until-recently; source):
From the above, applying the principles of coronascience, we can infer that masks, lockdowns, and vaccines work so well that applying these interventions in Israel stops a plague 2000+ miles away in Sweden.
In that September article, I pointed out that a non-evolving virus is better off if masks don’t work:
Coronavirus is thankful when we wear masks because our misplaced faith in masks leads us to delay taking effective action against the virus, e.g., building shade structures and holding school outdoors (changing the calendar in northern states so that the school year is during the warm months), decluttering retail stores, etc.
[Update: my new example of why faith in masks spreads coronavirus… the government having told them that a bandana (which, in fact, is not worn) is highly effective PPE, people are happy to pack themselves cheek-to-cheek in a 100% full airliner. If “scientists” hadn’t sold the public on masks, it wouldn’t be legal for airlines to operate 100% full flights (flown by non-white-males) and consumers wouldn’t want to get on such a flight. Without faith in masks, the coronanxious would stay home, which is where they can actually be safe.]
and also that coronavirus might be better off if masks do work and people wear them correctly and consistently:
Consider what happens in an unmasked “give the finger to the virus” population, such as Sweden. The virus flourishes for about three months and then fails. Compare to the slow burn of the mostly-masked U.S. and the not-fade-away of completely-masked France…
Maybe the masks protect enough people that the virus can sustain itself at a low-to-medium boil. Especially in a geographically large area in which epidemics have been on different schedules, the virus keeps finding mask-protected populations to infect. The virus stays topmost in our minds, our hearts, and our media. Shouldn’t coronavirus then thank us for our service to it?
What about an evolving coronavirus, which is what we plainly have now? If we’d let the virus rage in the spring of 2020, at this point there wouldn’t be any humans left without antibodies to the not-Chinese Wuhan edition of the virus. If we assume that shutdowns and masks work, the result is that there are always going to be pockets of humans with no resistance and among whom a mini- or maxi-plague can rage. Isn’t that situation more conducive to mutations than if we’d gotten it all over with in spring 2020 and swept up?
I ran this question by my medical school professor friend. “Your thinking would have been conventional in epidemiology through 2019,” he responded, “but is unacceptable today. Another way to look at this is that humans and the virus, without these interventions into the ecosystem, would have coevolved. Think about what happens when people try to manage forests, putting out fires as best they can. Mostly what they accomplish is preserving a tremendous amount of fuel for a fire that will far exceed their ability to control.“
So… if you get infected with one of these double- or triple-mutant viruses after your vaccination, thank your nearest Shutdown Karen?
(Speaking of vaccinations, is the above irrelevant now that vaccines exist against the pre-mutation virus? I don’t think so. There are a lot of countries that are unlikely to achieve high vaccination rates. Even if the vaccines were guaranteed risk-free in a letter from God, why would people who live in countries with low COVID death rates, e.g., in Sub-Saharan Africa (map), want to go to the effort, inconvenience, and expense of getting it? Due to travel restrictions, folks from these countries have been mostly excluded from Europe and the U.S. so they wouldn’t have gotten exposure to the original non-Chinese Wuhan version of the virus. So the mutant coronavirus can always find a naïve population in which to multiply happily and we will have our travel shutdown to thank for that.)
Evidence against the above hypothesis… Brazil. The country did have a raging plague, unmitigated by orders from the president, and now is home to variants. On the third hand, Brazil was not, in fact, unmasked and open like Sweden. The president didn’t lock down the country, but the legislature and state governors were free to order masks, close schools, and generally lock things down. (example) In fact, lockdowns were so severe that researchers trying to obtain blood samples in May and June 2020 for antibody tests often couldn’t get them. (Lancet article: “By contrast with the federal government, most state governors and city mayors enforced closure of schools, shops, and non-essential services, and recommended the use of face masks.”)
Evidence for the above hypothesis… Sweden, yet again! The Swedes let the plague rage in the spring and it disappeared for the summer (i.e., the Swedes weren’t continuously incubating coronavirus) only to reappear in late November, just as the Swedish MD/PhDs said that it would. There is no “Stockholm variant” or “Swedish variant” of the coronavirus. The fearsome variants are all coming from Church of Shutdown countries: UK, South Africa, and Brazil (as noted above, a Church of Shutdown nation despite a heretic being president). From the Wikipedia page on the South Africa lockdown:
… all gatherings except for funerals were prohibited. Restaurants, taverns, bottle stores and all other stores not selling essential goods were to close during the lockdown period. [unlike in Maskachusetts where alcohol and marijuana were “essential”!] Schools, already closed a week before the lockdown period, will not reopen until after the lockdown. Non-exempt people are only allowed to leave their homes during this period to access health services, collect social grants, attend small funerals (no more than 50 people) and shop for essential goods. … South Africans were ordered not to take their dogs for a walk during the lockdown, though they may walk them around their house or apartment building
All borders of the country are closed during the lockdown, except for designated ports of entry for the transportation of fuel, cargo, and goods. International and domestic passenger flights are prohibited, except for flights authorised by the Ministry of Transport, for the evacuation of South African nationals in foreign countries, and for certain repatriations
Separately, perhaps because I have so often used my phone from the Harvard Medical School campus, Facebook seems to think that I am a physician. Here’s an ad that the 68,000 folks at the American Medical Student Association wanted me to see:
They will teach me how to turn a “pregnant person” (remember that men can be pregnant) into a not-pregnant person via pills. As Uncle Joe Biden said, “If you don’t love abortion, you ain’t a doctor”? Separately, why does the physician have lighter skin than the patient? Isn’t this ad perpetuating stereotypes? Why not go all-in and show the darker-skinned patient with Medicaid and EBT cards?
“Thank you for your presentation,” said [Kieran] Bhattacharya, according to an audio recording of the event. “I had a few questions, just to clarify your definition of microaggressions. Is it a requirement, to be a victim of microaggression, that you are a member of a marginalized group?”
Adams replied that it wasn’t a requirement.
Bhattacharya suggested that this was contradictory, since a slide in her presentation had defined microaggressions as negative interactions with members of marginalized groups.
Meanwhile, the Academic Standards and Achievement Committee met to to discuss the concern card. This committee voted to send Bhattacharya a written reminder to “show mutual respect” to faculty members and “express yourself appropriately.” The committee also suggested that he get counseling.
On November 26, this suggestion became a mandate: The student was informed that he must be evaluated by psychological services before returning to classes.
The author of Medical School 2020 went through a lot of these, but wisely kept his own counsel!
TL;DR: We decided that the west coast was too old, that Miami was too congested, and that Jupiter, Florida, specifically the MacArthur Foundation-planned Abacoa section, was perfect.
Prior to 2020 the political control of a state or town had little impact on day-to-day life, with the exception of custody, alimony, and child support law. Republicans and Democrats might disagree regarding tax rates, government spending, zoning regulations, etc., but not about whether it should be legal to leave one’s house, go to work, attend school, breathe without a mask, interact with other humans without getting an injection, etc. After 2020, however, it is unclear why anyone would choose to be part of a political minority. For a Democrat, being in a Republican-run state means risking death from respiratory viruses that aren’t being controlled with Science (lockdowns, mask orders, coerced vaccination, 12-18-month school closure). For a Republican, being in a Democrat-run state means that one’s children aren’t guaranteed an education (though they might get surgery and show up at the breakfast table sporting a different gender), that one might lose what had been First Amendment rights, e.g., freedom of assembly, and that one will be surrounded by virtuous yard signs and bumper stickers.
For a Republican escaping a Democrat-run state, it doesn’t make sense to move to a place with a state income or estate tax (see Effect on children’s wealth when parents move to Florida). So the search process starts with intersecting the states that remained relatively free during coronapanic and income-tax-free states, which yields South Dakota, Alaska, Florida, and Tennessee. South Dakota is an awesome state for domestic asset protection trusts (along with Nevada, this is where America’s billionaires keep their trusts, but the ultimate protection may not work unless you live in SD or NV) and thus is a good place to preserve wealth from potential plaintiffs. It is a lovely place to spend the summer, but if you have school-age children you might not enjoy being stuck there December through February. With apologies to friends in Anchorage, that goes double for Alaska! Now we’re down to Florida and Tennessee. Nashville, for example, is reasonably nice in January, with average highs of 48 degrees, but Tennessee is more of a working state than a fun/retirement state. If you’re going to move, why not move to a playground? And Miami, oddly enough, despite being much warmer in winter is actually slightly cooler in the summer than Nashville. The WalletHub ranking of Coronafreedom may not give the full picture for Tennessee, whose governor declined the Central Tyrant job and did not order everyone to wear masks. However, unlike in Florida, where the governor forbade local tyrants from imposing mask laws with fines, the Tennessee governor simply delegated tyranny to counties: “Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, there has not been a statewide mask mandate in place in the state of Tennessee, however, local authorities were given the authority to issue mask mandates within their own jurisdictions.” A state with empowered local tyrants is not exactly free! Thus, as so many fleeing Wall Streeters have discovered, it all comes down to Florida.
This is a report on my own January/February exploration trip to Florida in the Cirrus SR20...
Gainesville. Beautiful campus for University of Florida, but not a beautiful or vibrant town. Apparently when the smart young people graduate they go somewhere else. Particularly unsuitable for aviation enthusiasts as the (great) airport is on the opposite side of town from the nicer real estate (tucked away in suburban developments that have a minimal relationship to Gainesville). At least with respect to Covid-19, the students seem smarter than the (cowering out of personal fear) Ivy League to whom I’ve talked recently. “We’d behave differently,” one sophomore said, “if we lived with our grandparents, but we don’t. There is no reason for us to be afraid of getting the virus and we live more than 100 miles away from our older relatives. Classes are mostly remote, so the only people that we interact with are other young people who aren’t at risk.”
Guess which department has the ugliest building? Note the students hunting for shark’s teeth in a nearby park and the selfie park at the FBO.
Sarasota. Folks with kids will want to live on the mainland rather than one of the islands (great for beach access, but the traffic can be slow getting on/off for the various services and activities that kids need). The neighborhood around the Southside Elementary School is probably the most desirable, with Camino Real being the best street and anything east of the Tamiami Trail being cheaper. Overall, however, Sarasota is more geared around the retired than those of school age. Great airport shared by air carriers and general aviation, about 13 minutes from the Southside school.
The Ringling (world’s only fine art and circus museum!) and the latest condo development for oligarchs (from my friend’s boat).
View from my friend’s apartment and his neighborhood from the air on departure…
Naples. A nice walkable downtown area. Attractive architecture. World-class restaurants at Manhattan prices (if restaurants in Manhattan were open!). There are some young people in town, but they’re apparently mostly tourists. As with Sarasota, dominated by the retired. In fact, the saying goes that “People retire to Sarasota so that they can visit their parents in Naples.” Great airport, 10 minutes from downtown, that is used only for general aviation. It was so busy in late January that jets parked on the ramp were interlaced like jets in a hangar (i.e., it wouldn’t have been possible to get one out of the middle without an hour or two of tugging).
Miami. The ultimate party town now that Los Angeles and New York have locked themselves out of the running and probably even before. “I can never get any work done here,” said one of the private equity guys I was with. KTMB is the preferred airport and it is a long haul from Miami Beach (nearly 40 minutes without traffic). KOPF is a little closer, but nobody seems to like it. If you aren’t going to hit the clubs and don’t have to be in the city for work, why put up with the congestion, traffic, and high real estate prices?
The Wynwood Walls (decluttered now that they’re charging $10 to get in), breakfast cereals for the Age of Coronapanic (Franken Fat, Cap’n Corn Starch, Obesie Os from Killkidds), transportation on which it would be good to get Dr. Fauci’s opinion regarding safety, and a group of #ScienceDeniers gathering at a rooftop club.
Key West. We went there in a Cirrus Vision Jet to visit a Massachusetts friend who is passionate about kiteboarding and expanding government so that wise Democrats can accomplish more. As it happens, however, he lives in Key West 183 days per year and thus escapes Massachusetts state income and estate taxes. It will be folks other than him who pay for the bigger government that he advocates. Key West is so small that I think it would be tough to find specialized teachers, coaches, doctors, etc. for the modern-day helicopter parented child. The airport has a short-ish runway (5,000′) and is monopolized, with associated monopoly rates, by Bill Gates’s Signature Flight Support (jet fuel for private jet owners who are as concerned as Bill G about climate change).
Wellington Aero Club. West of Palm Beach, right up against the $25 million horse barns of America’s billionaires, you can open your garage door and taxi your twin-engine turbojet out to the 4,000′ private runway (FD38). Good public schools. Great country club for golf and tennis next door. I had a nice time here visiting a friend whose wife is a serious horse rider, but I wouldn’t want to be this far from the beach (30-40 minutes, depending on the specific beach). (See “How a Sleepy Florida Town Became the Horse Riding Capital of the World” and the 30-horse single-family stable below) My friend in Wellington (also a passionate advocate of bigger government who is careful to spend 183 days in the tax-free Land of the Deplorables!) suggested Abacoa, within Jupiter, Florida, as the best family location.
Jupiter: Palm Beach-Fort Lauderdale-Miami can be thought of as a single city, completely jammed, and with the automobile as the primary means of transportation. Juno Beach and Jupiter are the first communities on the north side of this megacity (though the Census Bureau considers them still part of the Miami metro area). The smartest folks in Germany, i.e., those who run the Max Planck Institute, picked Jupiter as the location for their one and only U.S. research lab (in neuroscience). If you’re in Jupiter you’re within a 1.5-hour drive of almost anything that you might need, e.g., the Miami International Airport and a nonstop flight to Europe, but 99 percent of needs can be handled locally. (Disney World is 2:20 away by car.) A tennis coach at the Jupiter Ocean & Racquet Club, a world class facility for (unmasked!) young learners and also great for adults, echoed my friend in Wellington regarding Abacoa, a MacArthur Foundation-created New Urbanism planned-but-not-gated community. “The schools for Abacoa are better than for the wealthier/closer-to-the-beach areas of Jupiter,” he said. [We later learned that the neighborhoods near the beach tend to be older and seasonal; not good for kids looking to play after school.] He pointed out that many of the nation’s most successful people, who could live anywhere they chose, had chosen to live in and around Jupiter. In a state that is blessed with magnificent airports, Abacoa/Jupiter got the short end of the stick. Palm Beach International is about 20 minutes away and the prices are almost reasonable due to the fact that there are three FBOs on the field. On the other hand, nobody is ever going to build T-hangars at KPBI. The North Palm Beach airport, F45, is roughly the same driving distance and it does have T-hangars, but the runway is a little short (4,300′), there is no control tower, and it is a monopoly Signature location (Jet A at $7.21/gallon; compare to $3.70 at Fort Lauderdale Executive (KFXE))
If you didn’t think inequality was as bad as the media tells you… (on the ramp at KPBI; 1960 Debonair and a newly certified Gulfstream G600):
Just south of the airport…
Abacoa. This is a planned “new urbanism” community, a bit like what you might have seen in the Truman Show movie (Seaside, Florida). It is an artificial town in that it is possible to walk/bike to a “town center”, which does have some good restaurants and a coffee shop, but the critical services, such as supermarket and Home Depot, are in strip malls on the edges or across a major road from Abacoa itself. Without traffic, it is an 11-minute drive to a beautiful dog-friendly beach.
That’s what I was able to learn in a two-week trip (including flying the Cirrus up and down the East Coast, which takes about 13 days, depending on the weather…). Measured by whether it is legal to walk out your door without a mask on, go to work, open the doors of your business to customers, send your children to school, let you children enjoy an unmasked after-school activity, etc., every part of Florida offers more freedom than New York, Massachusetts, or California. For someone accustomed to the suburban Northeast, the small yards and tightly packed houses seem like the biggest negative. In the parts of
