Why aren’t emails to an at-work lover copyrighted?

by philg

Academia is always great for showing those with inferior credentials (i.e., “inferiors”) how to think and behave appropriately. University of Michigan recently fired its president for having sex with someone else who works at the University of Michigan. The press release:

After an investigation, we learned that Dr. Schlissel, over a period of years, used his University email account to communicate with that subordinate in a manner inconsistent with the dignity and reputation of the University. In the interest of full public disclosure, we have released dozens of Dr. Schlissel’s communications that illustrate this inappropriate conduct …

(He’s actually a real doctor, not merely someone lacking the creativity to quit grad school before getting a Ph.D.: “Mark Schlissel, MD, PhD”)

A 118-page PDF is available as a link. Note that the sex/knish partner is “Individual 1”, implying that this guy had a Cuomo-style stable of females, but no “Individual 2” appears.

Suppose that Mark Schlissel had identified as a member of the 2SLGBTQQIA+ community and used his official email account to make reservations at some of the places featured in “San Francisco tells gay bathhouses, ‘Welcome back!'” (Bay Area Reporter, January 25, 2021, just in time to catch a few more COVID-19 waves!):

The city’s public health department has rescinded the restrictions that have kept such businesses from operating in the city since the mid-1980s. A legacy from the height of the AIDS epidemic, bathhouses in San Francisco until now could not have private rooms with locked doors and were required to monitor the sex of their patrons.

Those regulations, when put into effect, resulted in a de facto ban on gay bathhouses in San Francisco, leaving residents to have to travel to such businesses in Berkeley and in San Jose. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the lone gay bathhouse left in the Bay Area is Steamworks in the East Bay and it remains closed because of the health crisis.

While gay sex clubs without private, locked rooms continued to operate in the city, most eventually closed their doors. There is just one in operation today: Eros on upper Market Street in the city’s LGBTQ Castro district.

The venues must provide safe sex materials free of charge, such as lubricants and condoms. Those establishments with locked rooms must have such materials stocked in each room.

And all such businesses need to provide wash-up facilities for their patrons where they have access to hot and cold running water, liquid soap, hand sanitizer and paper towels.

Presumably the Board of Regents would have celebrated their president’s decision to live the university’s values. Instead of getting to know 50 new male friends at a bathhouse, however, the implication is that President Schlissel was having sex with 1 female friend from work and that they were organizing the sex around athletic events, Saudi filmmaker Safa Al Ahmad events, and articles from Harvard Business Review about how to breathe (a skill that folks who’ve paid $500,000+ in Ivy League tuition may not have mastered, apparently; one tip for easier breathing… move to Florida and then you don’t have to try to do it through a mask). Rather than enhancing campus Pride, as the bathhouse visits might have, the (cisgender?) heterosexual office romance was “inconsistent with the dignity and reputation of the University.” (But if the Board hadn’t fired Dr. Schlissel and released the emails, thus telling everyone about this exciting situation, how would the reputation of the university been affected?)

This post is not about whether the Board made the right decision, but how it is possible for them to publish 118 pages of the president’s emails from a copyright perspective. The university IT folks had the technical means to dig into the president’s account, of course, but can they publish these documents without permission? I guess they can because they did, but how?

Tougher question: What does Mark Schlissel, MD, PhD do now if he wants to continue working? Emigrate to China or France? No American university can hire him, right?

The Michigan commerce mural above is from the Guardian Building, in Detroit (Returning from EAA AirVenture (‘Oshkosh”), August 2021), and contains some job ideas if Dr. Schlissel wants to stay local.

Related:

  • “Why did University of Michigan fire Mark Schlissel? He broke a rule he introduced this summer” (MLive): At the July Board of Regents meeting, he announced an overhaul of sexual misconduct policy changes, particularly the prohibition of relationships between subordinates and supervisors. There would be zero tolerance for someone in a leadership position to “solicit a personal or romantic relationship with someone they have a supervisory authority or career influence over,” he said at the time.
  • The Wikipedia page for this guy mentions that he was criticized for not following the science in maxxing out the university’s level of coronapanic. In other words, a group of elite Americans rejected as unscientific the leadership of an MD, PhD (professor of microbiology and immunology as well as a professor of internal medicine). Paging Dr. Tegnell!
  • Real World Divorce chapter on Michigan (in case the doctor’s wife decides it is time to cash out)
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The Serbian Mushrik is cast out of the Antipodal Mecca

by philg

From “Why Are Non-Muslims Not Allowed Into The Cities Of Mecca And Madinah?” (Inside Saudi):

In Islam, the cities of Mecca and Madinah are considered as places of peace, refuge, and sanctuary for Muslims only. Non-Muslims termed Mushriks are prohibited in order to keep it that way.

For example, Hindus believe that Brahma is one and many. Also, 80% of Christians believe in the Trinity that God is three equal and eternal persons in the form of God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit.

The very fact that the Mushrik believes and acts on the basis of polytheism makes him/her a Mushrik and in effect spiritually Narjis (unclean) in the eyes of Allah.

It is NOT the case that he/she is unclean in the physical sense but only in the spiritual sense.

From CNN:

“Rightly or wrongly” tennis star Novak Djokovic is perceived as endorsing anti-vaccination views — and his presence in Australia could influence people, said lawyer Stephen Lloyd, who is acting for the government.

Lloyd said it was “common sense and uncontroversial” to assume that people would listen to Djokovic’s views, given what we know about the power of celebrity.

According to Lloyd, Immigration Minister Alex Hawke doesn’t need to show evidence that Djokovic is influencing people’s views to cancel his visa — just that there’s a risk that he might.

He said Hawke made the decision to cancel Djokovic’s visa in accordance with the Australia’s Migration Act that enables the minister to bar someone who “may” or “might” pose a risk to public health.

From an American point of view, the Australian government’s position isn’t novel. While at least 10 million undocumented immigrants are welcome to stay in the U.S. (even after being ordered deported, as with Barack Obama’s Aunt Zeituni) and there is no requirement that those who walk across the border and avail themselves of our multi-year asylum process accept Science and the Sacrament of Vaccination, there is no realistic way for an American to express him/her/zir/theirself if he/she/ze/they endorse anti-vaccination views. Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube will ban heretics. I recently met a recruiter who had 5,000 LinkedIn contacts and was subject to a “lifetime ban” in the fall of 2020. (She appealed the decision and got a response that they’d “reviewed [her] private messages” and decided to sustain the ban.) She had posted skepticism that mask orders (bandanas at the time!) and U.S.-style lockdowns were effective in long-term reduction of COVID-19 deaths.

The New York Times says that Djokovic has been cast out via a flight from Australia to comparatively free Dubai. Let’s check “the curve”. From a few days ago:

Now that Djokovic has left via Dubai, and thus the sanctity of Australia has been restored, it does look as though the curve is flattening. From the Google:

Advantage, #Science?

Samizdat currently circulating among Irish sports fans via WhatsApp:

(Facebook owns WhatsApp, but due to tech limitations, it can’t read messages that are exchanged among users and therefore it can’t easily hunt down and ban the unrighteous.)

Related:

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Trying to make sense of the Supreme Court rulings on the vaccine orders

by philg

We tried to predict what the Supreme Court would do with President Biden’s vaccine mandates on health care workers and on employees of larger companies (see Supreme Court hears arguments on forced vaccination in two parallel universes).

In the ruling on the health care industry, dependent on the twin rivers of Medicare and Medicaid cash, the Supreme Court said the following:

In many facilities, 35% or more of staff remain unvaccinated, … and those staff, the Secretary explained, pose a serious threat to the health and safety of patients. That determination was based on data showing that the COVID–19 virus can spread rapidly among healthcare workers and from them to patients, and that such spread is more likely when healthcare workers are unvaccinated.

the Secretary also found that “fear of exposure” to the virus “from unvaccinated health care staff can lead patients to themselves forgo seeking medically necessary care,” creating a further “ris[k] to patient health and safety.”

(The last one is interesting. Suppose that we find that patients are uncomfortable with white cisgender heterosexual physicians, whom they perceive as intellectually inferior due to being able to slide into medical school via privilege. Can the government order that the health care industry hire only the BIPOC and 2SLGBTQQIA+? Otherwise patients might forgo seeking medically necessary care.)

The core of the above-cited section is that a lawyer, with no technical or scientific training, has decided to disagree with a Stanford Medical School professor (see “Benefit of COVID-19 vaccination accounting for potential risk compensation” (Nature)) who found that the vaccinated might actually be more likely to get infected and spread disease if you assume (a) an imperfect vaccine, and (b) humans take more risks once they’ve been told that they’re invulnerable due to vaccination. (see also Perfect illustration of risk compensation rendering COVID-19 vaccines ineffective and Why doesn’t the raging plague in Maskachusetts cause doubt among the true believers in Faucism?)

So the Supreme Court accepts as scientific fact that vaccination and casting out the unvaccinated are critical to #StopTheSpread. This, plus potential patient discomfort with heretical providers, led to the Court approving Biden’s order.

In the ruling on generic private employers, however, COVID-19 seems to be a different, much milder, disease. Certainly COVID-19 does not present a “grave danger” to humans nor is SARS-CoV-2 “toxic or physically harmful.”

[workplace-related orders from the Pharaoh] are permissible, however, only in the narrowest of circumstances: the Secretary must show (1) “that employees are exposed to grave danger from exposure to substances or agents determined to be toxic or physically harmful or from new hazards,” and (2) that the “emergency standard is necessary to protect employees from such danger.”

So too could OSHA regulate risks associated with working in particularly crowded or cramped environments. But the danger present in such workplaces differs in both degree and kind from the everyday risk of contracting COVID–19 that all face. OSHA’s indiscriminate approach fails to account for this crucial distinction— between occupational risk and risk more generally—and accordingly the mandate takes on the character of a general public health measure,

The last paragraph says that there is an inevitable risk of COVID-19 exposure based on inhabiting the biosphere for workers, but, based on the previous ruling, this is apparently untrue for patients visiting Medicare- and Medicaid-funded health care facilities.

Let’s see who among us got this right…

  • I was at 50% (correct about health care order being approved, a 95 percent prediction and incorrect on my “less confident” prediction that the workplace order would be approved)
  • Craig said “I’m predicting the court will find the federal vaccine mandate to be an overreach simply because the narrative is already shifting towards Omicron <= flu and we must learn to live with it (like you predicted). There is no federal mandate for flu vaccinations, although I believe some federal agencies like VA hospitals can require staff to have flu immunizations.” (he didn’t separate out the two issues before the Court, but I think we might have to give him 100% since he mentioned “federal agencies” (and any enterprise on the Medicare/Medicaid dole is essentially a federal agency)
  • Jack was at 50%: “My guess is the Court will rule against the Biden administration — seems that a substantial number of Americans are opposed to the vaccine mandate & therefore any mandate will be widely ignored. Affects the Court’s legitimacy to uphold law that will be ignored & will encourage civil disobedience. Also, as a matter of numbers, the statist justices are in the minority.”
  • JT was at 50%: “Predict struck down and that it’s a blessing for Biden. It’s obvious it doesn’t stop the spread so all a mandate could possibly do is create onerous bureaucracy people hate.”

Can these rulings be considered logically consistent? There are sicker/older people who go to hospitals than to work. But on the other hand, hospital staff are highly competent at using the masks that the government says stop COVID-19 transmission. Also, the ruling is based on the vaccines being highly effective and sicker/older people are generally vaccinated. And if they can catch COVID-19 nonetheless, they will eventually catch COVID-19 indirectly from people who get COVID-19 in the unsafe workplaces. Ivan pointed out that “Sotomayor claimed that the federal government has ‘a police power to protect workers'”. If we combine these two orders do we find that the federal government has a police power to protect those visiting health care facilities, but as soon as the visit is over the police power evaporates?

Color me confused! The Supreme Court accepts that vaccination leads to reduced COVID-19 infection and transmission, and that the peasantry believe this as well, and therefore the government can order doctors and nurses to be vaccinated. Yet the government cannot order this vital protection for workers outside of health care? And, though this issue wasn’t before the Court, it sounds as though, unless prohibited by state law (as in Florida!), a mayor can order the peasants within a city to be vaccinated if they want to leave their hovels (see Washington, D.C. vaccine papers and Photo ID checks start tomorrow for example).

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School administrators comfort the afflicted

by philg

Everyone and his/her/zir/their brother/sister/binary-resister in fully-masked fully-vaccinated Massachusetts is testing positive for a deadly virus (but this in no way diminishes our faith in masks and vaccines). The exponential spread of the mask-blocked vaccine-neutralized plague in the masked-and-vaccinated school population leads to a rash of emails from schools informing parents that a child has been tarred with the “close contact” brush. Here’s an example from a middle school in Maskachusetts:

Dear Parents and Caregivers,

I am writing to inform you that we learned today that a student in 7th grade tested positive for Covid. Your child is considered a close contact. The date of the last exposure was January 12, 2022.

Close contacts will participate in the Test and Stay program with a daily test through Tuesday of next week. You will only be notified if your child tests positive during Test & Stay. As a reminder, students who are identified as close contacts who are participating in the district COVID Testing Program may stay in school as long as they are asymptomatic.

Close contacts are not permitted to attend after school activities. Please limit exposure outside of the home and monitor for symptoms.

A close contact at school is defined as someone who has been within 3 feet of distance of the positive individual while indoors, while wearing a mask, for at least fifteen minutes, within a 24 hour period.

We cannot provide specific information about the person who tested positive. School personnel are working with the family as they navigate this stressful experience.

If you have any questions or concerns please feel free to contact me.

Respectfully,

[*** name elided ***]

Lincoln School, 5-8 Principal

The highlighted content is what fascinates me. Suppose that the family comprises typical Massachusetts residents, a.k.a., Followers of Science. In that case, they believe that they have been exposed to a virus that often has crippling and/or fatal consequences within households containing middle school-age kids. Who will comfort them as they shop for coffins and grave sites? “School personnel.”

My Facebook feed was packed with parents proud of youngsters who are refusing to attend in-person school. See “Students don’t want to learn in a ‘COVID petri dish.’ They’re walking out to prove their point.” (USA Today, 1/14):

Despite surging COVID-19 cases across the country, fueled by the highly-contagious omicron variant, Quinlan said many Boston schools have started to take precautions less seriously, often not enforcing masking or social distancing.

“We are the ones who have been in this environment every day. It’s our bodies that we’re putting at risk,” said Kayla Quinlan, a 16-year-old student activist at Boston Day and Evening Academy. “Students should have a say in what their learning environment looks like, but our voices are always left out.”

“It feels like a breeding ground for COVID, like a COVID petri dish,” she said. “How are you supposed to feel safe?”

See also “Students, seeing lax coronavirus protocols, walk out and call in sick to protest in-person classes” (Washington Post):

Thai Jones, a lecturer at Columbia University who studies radical social movements, said the rise of student activism amid the omicron threat reminds him of the youth movement for gun safety that sprang up after the 2018 mass shooting at a Parkland, Fla., high school and of ongoing teen-led advocacy around climate change.

“What ties those movements together is these are all times when grown-ups have failed young people, where the politics of adults have really let down teenagers,” Jones said. “And so young people have decided to take matters into their own hands.”

(Old people have failed young people by not locking them down for another few years in order to protect old people from a virus that kills old people?)

Circling back to Facebook, each post celebrating the walkout was heavily “liked” and attracted supportive comments.

What’s happening in the Florida Free State, by contrast? We went to the Stuart Boat Show yesterday and found a fellow refugee from New England. Her summary of Massachusetts-based relatives’ current concerns: “Omicron is an anagram for ‘moronic’.”

Lest you think that everyone in Florida is ignorant regarding #Science-based methods of fighting a virus that attacks the obese, here’s a fully-masked Follower of Fauci ordering fried Oreos and a funnel cake:

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Romantic first date conversation advice

by philg

Today is the day that Tinder users will have to provide proof of vaccination in order to meet in a Boston restaurant (NPR). From there, they can decide whether it is time to go to the marijuana store (“essential” and, therefore, never shut down, unlike the Boston schools, which were closed for more than one year) and then to have sex (also perfectly legal at all times since March 2020, unlike indoor tennis, which was banned by Covidcrats at various points due to the filthy germ exchange that is inevitable during backhand strokes (consider the swearing/shouting!)).

What should our young lovers talk about after they’ve exchanged health records? Following a traditional family Christmas dinner at Singing Bamboo Chinese Restaurant, I received the following: “A beautiful person is with you, confide your problems.”

I’m not in a position to try this out in a dating situation, but I tried it within our household. The results were not promising except with Mindy the Crippler, our golden retriever.

  • Boston is the Cradle of Liberty (TM) and we fought to escape high taxes and tyranny imposed by what is today the U.K. How are things over there in tyranny-land? Taxes for entrepreneurs in the UK are at a total rate of 10 percent (compare to about 29 percent for federal, Obamacare, and Massachusetts state tax on long-term capital gains!). Boston forces 12-year-olds to take a non-FDA-approved (experimental use authorized only) medicine, against a 2.25-year-old version of a virus that kills old people, to get a meal (5-year-olds will be forced starting in March and they’ll get an experimental drug against a 2.5-year-old version of SARS-CoV-2). The UK is not the Florida Free State, but anyone can eat in a restaurant and there are no vaccine requirements for those under 18 (over 18 need vaccine papers to get into nightclubs and music venues with over 10,000 seats (BBC, 12/16)).
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Washington, D.C. vaccine papers and Photo ID checks start tomorrow

by philg

Let’s check in to see how things are going at the Center of the Free World (TM). From the mayor of Washington, D.C.:

Adults need a photo ID to go more or less anywhere in the city. If we believe the Washington Post, restaurants, coffee shops, gyms, and bowling alleys in D.C. are about to get richer, whiter, more Anglophone, and younger… “Getting a photo ID so you can vote is easy. Unless you’re poor, black, Latino or elderly” (WaPo, May 2016):

many election experts say that the process for obtaining a photo ID can be far more difficult than it looks for hundreds of thousands of people across the country who do not have the required photo identification cards. Those most likely to be affected are elderly citizens, African Americans, Hispanics and low-income residents.

“A lot of people don’t realize what it takes to obtain an ID without the proper identification and papers,” said Abbie Kamin, a lawyer who has worked with the Campaign Legal Center to help Texans obtain the proper identification to vote. “Many people will give up and not even bother trying to vote.”

What does a Washington Post-selected expert on being poor, Black, Latinx, and elderly look like? From abbiekamin.com:

vaxdc.dc.gov provides a helpful poster for local businesses:

“Beginning on January 15, 2022, businesses shall display prominently, visible to patrons prior to entry, a notice informing patrons that proof of vaccination is required to enter any indoor portion of a covered location. Before patrons can access the indoor portion of the business, a business is required to check the patron’s proof of vaccination.”

Related:

  • “Coronavirus (COVID-19) Update: FDA Authorizes Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 Vaccine for Emergency Use in Adolescents in Another Important Action in Fight Against Pandemic” (fda.gov): Today, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration expanded the emergency use authorization (EUA) for the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 Vaccine for the prevention of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) to include adolescents 12 through 15 years of age. (i.e., the medicine that 12-year-olds are required to take in order to eat in a restaurant is not FDA-approved, but can be used for “emergency use” (e.g., if a doctor thinks that a slender healthy 12-year-old might be killed by a virus that regularly kills senior citizens with multiple comorbidities, he/she/ze/they could roll the dice with the 12-year-old’s immune system and stick the kid))
  • ACLU on photo ID: Voter ID laws deprive many voters of their right to vote, reduce participation, and stand in direct opposition to our country’s trend of including more Americans in the democratic process. Many Americans do not have one of the forms of identification states acceptable for voting. These voters are disproportionately low-income, racial and ethnic minorities, the elderly, and people with disabilities.
  • ACLU on Civil Liberties and Vaccine Mandates: Far from compromising civil liberties, vaccine mandates actually further them.
  • ACLU on mask mandates: As millions of children head back to school, some states have banned mask mandates on school grounds [including Florida!]. As of this recording, school districts in eight states cannot require students to wear a mask in school; if they do, many risk losing crucial state funding. This ban ignores national recommendations by the CDC to wear a mask indoors for those who are unvaccinated or in an area of high COVID transmission. For children with disabilities or families with high-risk medical conditions, the ban makes in-person learning perilous. Many children are forced back into remote learning even though studies have shown students — particularly students of color and those with disabilities — fall behind when they can’t attend school in person. Excluding these children from in-person learning violates federal law which is why the ACLU’s Disability Rights Program is suing on behalf of groups of parents with vulnerable children in both South Carolina and Iowa.
  • “Voter ID laws a burden on poor, black Americans, research shows” (Guardian) (“research” can be considered another word for “Science”!)
  • “Why It Is so Hard to Vote If You’re Black, Poor or Elderly in America” (Newsweek): More than half of all states require voters to show ID when they cast a ballot, yanking the most vulnerable in U.S. society from the electoral process. On Monday, a federal judge ruled that Texas’ electoral law, which requires voters to show photo ID before casting a ballot, intentionally discriminates against black and Hispanic voters.
  • “Voter Suppression Is Warping Democracy” (Atlantic): Nine percent of black respondents and 9 percent of Hispanic respondents indicated that, in the last election, they (or someone in their household) were told that they lacked the proper identification to vote. Just 3 percent of whites said the same.
  • and… from the academic heavyweights: “Racial Microaggressions Related to Voter ID Laws in the United States” (Race, Gender & Class, Vol. 24, No. 1-2): This paper attempts to examine the microaggressions related to current voter ID laws along with various moderns tactics of disenfranchisement, many of which were adopted in 2008 and 2012 presidential elections.
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Elon Musk pinball machine

by philg

Here are some photos from a recent excursion to the Silverball Pinball Museum in Delray Beach, Florida. Statistics that folks in NY, MA, and CA are passionate about watching showed that Florida was in the midst of a raging COVID-19 plague at the time, but patrons were not discouraged nor, typically, masked.

A 1984 Space Shuttle machine reflects the period’s enthusiasm about NASA’s can-do spirit (first launch 1981, ultimate cost 250X more than planned by the best and brightest government scientists (who were following #Science)):

Here’s one from 1976 that celebrates an individual, Elton John:

What if we combine and update these ideas into a modern machine: Elon Musk!

The score is in dollars and the player’s goal is to hit $300 billion for a replay. The game follows the authoritative biography. The first challenge is to move X.com and Confinity together to form PayPal by hitting a bunch of targets. Once that is accomplished, the score goes up by $1.5 billion. The next goal is to move NASA, represented by a lumbering dinosaur, to award a contract to SpaceX. Success results in the score going up by $1.6 billion. Then there is the “build a roadster” challenge in which all of the world’s batteries have to be gathered up by endlessly repeated cycles of hitting bumpers. Once the roadster is built, the Tesla component of the score goes up by $10 billion. Plaintiff Justine Musk comes out from the sidelines to attack Elon in family court. If the player can successfully unlock the prenuptial agreement, she goes away without significantly denting the score (otherwise the player loses 50% to the plaintiff and 10% for legal fees). SolarCity is represented by an albatross and, if captured by the player, results in the score going down by $2 billion. If the ramps are used successfully, a tunnel opens up labeled “Boring Company”. A platoon of Covidcrats pops up to close the Tesla factory. If the player can hit each one with a ball “Reopen Factory and Move to Texas” mode is activated (score boost of $50 billion). Jeff Bezos and Bill Gates run in from the sidelines trying to grab the “world’s richest douche” trophy in the middle. If the player can get the ball into two traps, family court plaintiffs come out to attack both Bezos and Gates, reducing them in size by half. Bill Gates, whether or not reduced in size by half by years of family court action, comes out with a massive syringe and attempts to jab all of the other characters with a COVID-19 vaccine. If the player can get the ball to escape up a ramp, the machine enters “Knucklehead mode“.

Elizabeth Warren pops up in full Native American elder regalia. If the player can hit each feather on a headdress with the ball, Senator Karen disappears. In the “Philip the Sourpuss” special edition of the machine, 600 lb. gorillas named “Toyota”, “Honda”, “Hyundai”, “Ford”, “GM”, and “Volkswagen” come out to attack Elon with electric vehicles that cost less than whatever Tesla can produce, that are much quieter and more comfortable on the highway, and that don’t have an iPad stuck in the middle of the dashboard as the only interface. In this special edition game, there is no way to beat the gorillas and the player’s score goes to $100 billion, reflecting only the value of SpaceX.

Here’s some artwork from another machine at the same venue that can be adapted for the Elizabeth Warren segment:

Readers: What do you think of this idea for a pinball machine? Or it could also be a videogame. In general, wouldn’t it be awesome to have biography-based pinball and videogames?

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Will Americans use their free at-home test kits to ensure negative official test results as needed?

by philg

In a triumph of central planning, the test kits that nobody can buy will now be free. “Insurers Will Have to Cover 8 At-Home Virus Tests Per Month” (New York Times, 1/10):

The Biden administration announced the new guidelines as it continued to work to get coronavirus tests to people regardless of their insurance status.

Private insurers will soon have to cover the cost of eight at-home coronavirus tests per member per month, the Biden administration said Monday.

“Today’s action further removes financial barriers and expands access to Covid-19 tests for millions of people,” Chiquita Brooks-LaSure, the Biden administration’s Medicare and Medicaid chief, said in a statement about the new guidelines.

From the CVS around the corner from our apartment, also on January 10:

(It’s Florida, so, even in Palm Beach County, apparently there is no demand for a “please wear a mask” sign on the front door.)

A family of four would be entitled to 384 kits per year, which happens to be exactly 384 more kits than are available at all of the CVS stores within 20 miles right now. Joe Biden’s campaign site, November 2, 2020:

As President Biden is not a liar like the previous dictator, presumably Uncle Joe will make good on this campaign promise and when that glorious day arrives, someone can actually get 384 kits. What could he/she/ze/they possibly do with them?

One use scenario comes from the comments on Protected by masks on a 100-percent full flight in which SK describes a family that was excluded from returning from Cancun to Seattle by air due to having tested positive while on vacation. They legally took a domestic flight to Tijuana, legally crossed the land border (no test required, whether one is a current or future U.S. citizen!), and then another domestic flight from San Diego to Seattle.

Suppose this family wanted to be sure of catching their flight home to Seattle and they had all of the reagent fluid from their 384 kits. What would stop them from, before taking the official test, using this fluid as a nasal spray to bind to whatever antibodies the official test’s reagent is going to bind to? Then they flush their noses with saline and/or alcohol spray. Five minutes later, they take their official tests. At that point, isn’t it likely that there wouldn’t be enough test-triggering stuff left in their noses to result in positive tests?

(And, actually, this makes me wonder how big families can travel internationally right now. Isn’t it virtually certain that at least one child, for example, will test positive? At that point, though, the entire family will be stuck in quarantine prison for 10 days. Who would willingly take this risk?)

A recent Facebook post:

In other words, the trip to Jamaica turned into a prison experience, albeit a prison with a view.

Related:

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The Federal Reserve Bank president who said not to print money

by philg

Happy Lucky 13 day! Given the recent headlines, e.g., “Inflation rises 7% over the past year, highest since 1982” (CNBC), let’s look at “The Fed’s Doomsday Prophet Has a Dire Warning About Where We’re Headed” (Politico).

In 2010, Hoenig was president of the Federal Reserve regional bank in Kansas City. As part of his job, Hoenig had a seat on the Fed’s most powerful policy committee, and that’s where he lodged one of the longest-running string of “no” votes in the bank’s history.

Between 2008 and 2014, the Federal Reserve printed more than $3.5 trillion in new bills. To put that in perspective, it’s roughly triple the amount of money that the Fed created in its first 95 years of existence. Three centuries’ worth of growth in the money supply was crammed into a few short years. The money poured through the veins of the financial system and stoked demand for assets like stocks, corporate debt and commercial real estate bonds, driving up prices across markets. Hoenig was the one Fed leader who voted consistently against this course of action, starting in 2010. In doing so, he pitted himself against the Fed’s powerful chair at the time, Ben Bernanke, who was widely regarded as a hero for the ambitious rescue plans he designed and oversaw.

Hoenig lost his fight. Throughout 2010, the FOMC votes were routinely 11 against one, with Hoenig being the one. He retired from the Fed in late 2011, and after that, a reputation hardened around Hoenig as the man who got it wrong. He is remembered as something like a cranky Old Testament prophet who warned incessantly, and incorrectly, about one thing: the threat of coming inflation.

So… he predicted inflation but was off by about 12 years as to when it would arrive? How is that different or better than predicting a big stock market crash at some point in the future?

But this version of history isn’t true. While Hoenig was concerned about inflation, that isn’t what solely what drove him to lodge his string of dissents. The historical record shows that Hoenig was worried primarily that the Fed was taking a risky path that would deepen income inequality, stoke dangerous asset bubbles and enrich the biggest banks over everyone else. He also warned that it would suck the Fed into a money-printing quagmire that the central bank would not be able to escape without destabilizing the entire financial system.

The Fed is now in a vise. Inflation is rising faster than the Fed believed it would even a few months ago, with higher prices for gas, goods and automobiles being fueled by the Fed’s unprecedented money printing programs. This comes after years of the Fed steadily pumping up the price of assets like stocks and bonds through its zero-percent interest rates and quantitative easing during and after Hoenig’s time on the FOMC. To respond to rising inflation, the Fed has signaled that it will start hiking interest rates next year. But if that happens, there is every reason to expect that it will cause stock and bond markets to fall, perhaps precipitously, or even cause a recession.

How does centrally-planned inflation work?

When the Fed kept interest rates low during the 1970s, it encouraged farmers around Kansas City to take on more cheap debt and buy more land. As cheap loans boosted demand for land, it pushed up land prices — something that might be expected to cool off demand.

But the logic of asset bubbles has the opposite effect. Rising land prices actually enticed more people to borrow money and buy yet more land because the borrowers expected the land value to only increase, producing a handsome payoff down the road. Higher prices led to more borrowing, which led to higher prices and more borrowing still. The wheel continued to spin as long as debt was cheap compared to the expected payoff of rising asset prices.

The bankers’ logic followed a similar path. The bankers saw farmland as collateral on the loans, and they believed the collateral would only rise in value. This gave bankers the confidence to keep extending loans because they believed the farmers would be able to repay them as land prices increased. This is how asset bubbles escalate in a loop that intensifies with each rotation, with the reality of today’s higher asset prices driving the value of tomorrow’s asset prices ever higher, increasing the momentum even further.

And the central planners, back in the 1980s messed up the flip side of this too, causing bank failures when farmland prices fell only 27 percent.

I recommend the article for its historical perspective. Don’t complain if you don’t find a solution to our current situation (high inflation; mediocre economic growth once adjusted for population growth). Part of this banker’s point was that there is no good way to stop printing money.

What did cars look like the last time inflation was this high? Here’s an example from a classic car gathering in our neighborhood:

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Non-white people considered high-risk when it is time to get COVID-19 medicine, but low-risk when gathering

by philg

Welcome to Covidcratic Logic Lesson #731.

From the Followers of Science in California, Order of the Health Officer of the County Of Sonoma C19-35:

To slow the spread of Coronavirus Disease 2019 (“COVID-19”), this Order prohibits large gatherings, as defined, as well as gatherings of 12 or more individuals of any age who are at higher risk for severe illness from COVID-19, for the duration of this Order.

For the purpose of this Order, “individuals of any age higher risk for severe illness from COVID-19” means Persons with Certain Medical Conditions as defined by the CDC: https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/need-extra-precautions/people-with-medical-conditions.html.

If we follow the CDC link we learn that having HIV (a disease not in any way associated with the 2SLGBTQQIA+ community) or being obese (a disease not in any way associated with having been locked down next to the fridge for two years) puts a person at higher risk, and therefore unable to gather legally (not in any way guaranteed by the First Amendment). Being non-white, however, does not prevent a person from gathering legally up to the 50-person limit that the Sonoma Covidcrats have established for the low-risk.

Both Federal and state Covidcrats, on the other hand, say that, when it is time to hand out the life-saving new COVID-19 treatment pills, skin color is important. “FDA wants race, ethnicity factored in administering COVID drugs” links to New York State and Utah policies. The Utah one is more precise:

If a person ages from 51 years old to 100 years old during 14 days to flatten the curve, his/her/zir/their point score goes up by 2 (from 3 to 5). If a person, on the other hand, embraces a non-white racial identity (like Rachel Dolezal or Justin Trudeau or any Virginia Democrat), he/she/ze/they gets the same 2-point boost. According to the table above, a white-identifying 51-year-old, in other words, has the same risk of being killed by SARS-CoV-2 as a 100-year-old who identifies as non-white and/or as white+Latinx. But this risk equivalence is to be used only for purposes of allocating scarce medical treatment and never for purposes of restricting the freedom to assemble.

A healthy BIPOC-identifying or Latinx-identifying resident of the U.S., in other words, is low risk for the purposes of Covidcratic centrally planned gathering restrictions and high risk for the purpose of Covidcratic centrally planned medicine allocation.

(Fans of chivalry will note that identifying as “male” (however that term is currently understood) adds 1 point on the Utah scale. How can this be applied if a COVID-19 patient shows up unconscious and is not able to explain his/her/zir/their current gender ID and preferred pronouns?)

Expert analysis of the advantages of being white:

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