Should governments hire and pay workers to check vaccine papers outside restaurants?

by philg

“In-N-Out closes in San Francisco over refusal to enforce vaccine mandate” (Guardian, 10/20):

In-N-Out burger has become the first restaurant in San Francisco to be temporarily closed for failing to enforce the city’s vaccine mandate. City officials made the move on 14 October after the burger chain said it won’t force staff to check that customers were fully vaccinated before allowing them to dine inside the restaurant.

“We refuse to become the vaccination police for any government,” Arnie Wensinger, the company’s chief legal and business officer, said in a statement. “It is unreasonable, invasive and unsafe to force our restaurant associates to segregate customers into those who may be served and those who may not.”

Do we say that In-N-Out Burger is boldly #Resisting the San Francisco city government’s demand that they check vaccine papers for each would-be customer? Or maybe we say that In-N-Out Burger is weakly hesitating to do the right thing?

Let’s ignore the question of whether the policy makes sense given that COVID-19 vaccines don’t prevent infection or transmission (and, in fact, might increase infection/transmission because vaccinated people will take more risk than the unvaccinated). That leaves us with a big question: Why would it be restaurant workers’ job to perform this police-type job? If the government makes it illegal for people without vaccine papers to eat in restaurants, shouldn’t the government station “vaccine wardens” just outside the restaurants and pay these wardens? (They can be armed with guns, since Americans love the idea of government workers with guns, or simply tightly connected to nearby armed police officers who can use force as necessary.)

Alternatively, automate the process, as I suggested in August: How can city vaccination requirements be enforced without RFID chips in residents’ necks? The government owns the city sidewalks from which people walk into restaurants in urban areas where vaccine document checks are now required. As a condition of continued employment, the government can install RFID chips in working citizens’ necks (migrants and those on welfare would be exempt, as with current vaccine requirements). Scanners overhead the sidewalk outside restaurants could notice if anyone unvaccinated is going in and then automatically deduct a fine from the working citizen’s paycheck. Receipts from fining the unrighteous could be used by cities to acquire original Hunter Biden paintings for municipal buildings.

Here I am at In-N-Out on the way back to Reno from Burning Man 2014, thus earning me the Playa name of “Double Double.”

Update, November 1… Swiss police use concrete to block access to Covid sceptic restaurant (The Local):

Police in Switzerland have placed several large concrete blocks in front of a bar in the canton of Valais after the bar owners repeatedly refused to enforce the country’s Covid measures.
After the owner of the Walliserkanne restaurant in Zermatt (Valais) failed to comply several times with the obligation to check the customers’ Covid certificates, local police took a drastic measure of installing cement blocks in front of the entrance.

Covid certificates – which show that someone has been fully vaccinated, recovered or has tested negative to the virus – have been required to eat and drink in indoor areas in Switzerland since mid-September.

Both owners were arrested by the police on Sunday morning.

A fine of up to CHF10,000 can be levied, while jail time is also possible in aggravated cases.

There’s a photo too:

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German and Swiss restaurants refuse to accept CDC cards as proof of vaccination

by philg

I was chatting with a pilot friend who returned to his native Germany recently and reported that he’d been unable to get into restaurants. “They refused to accept my CDC card as proof of vaccination,” he said, “because they said it was too easy to forge one.”

I mentioned this at a pilot gathering in Palm Beach and one of the guys at my table said, “the same thing happened to me in Switzerland. Nobody would accept the CDC card.”

What papers do you need to show? “It’s called a European vaccine certificate,” my German friend explained. “You get this from a pharmacist [QR code with some text] then load in app or if you are old show on paper. It’s tied to a Europe-wide database and issued by the local CDC equivalent. It can only be put into the database by authorized pharmacists and some other designated officials, but not doctors.”

So enjoy your trip to Europe, but if you got vaccinated in the U.S., don’t plan to be indoors at museums, restaurants, etc.

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Biden and the Democrats try a Great Leap Forward?

by philg

The Fall and Rise of China, a course by Richard Baum (late professor at UCLA), has an interesting section on the Great Leap Forward (1958-1962). Essentially the Chinese economy didn’t produce enough to give the government the resources that was required to meet the leaders’ objectives. Without any analysis or claims that the measures they were taking represented a likely optimum, the government introduced one policy after another in hopes of increasing the amount of money flowing into the capital. The Chinese Great Leap Forward had a big emphasis on infrastructure, albeit not subsidized child care as “infrastructure”, but dams and other massive civil engineering works (these ultimately proved to have been poor investments).

The parallels aren’t perfect. Mao was trying to create a society in which every able-bodied person worked; the U.S. is a work-optional society in which ever-more people can get paid for not working (child support plaintiff, means-tested housing/health care/SNAP/Obamaphone beneficiary, alimony plaintiff, stay-at-home parent, SSI or TANF recipient, 1.5-year unemployment check recipient, etc.). Americans these days get upset when they hear about powerful people having sex with the less powerful; according to the professor, Mao, then in his 60s, partied with teenage girls every night (bedroom with oversized bed (since multiple teenage girls would occupy simultaneously) next to a dance hall).

The high-level picture seems similar. The proposed corporate tax rates are not being set based on the idea that they will lead to a optimum balance of economic growth, competitive positioning with respect to Europe, and revenue for the government without discouraging effort and investment. The new rates are justified with “we need the money”. We’ll assess capital gains tax against people with $1.0001 billion in assets, but not those with $0.99999 billion (it would be a lot simpler just to eliminate the charitable contribution deduction so that the super rich couldn’t avoid taxation by stuffing money into foundations).

Readers: Do you think there is a parallel here?

(Also, if the federal unrealized capital gains tax on billionaires goes through, why can’t the billionaires simply move to Puerto Rico for 183 days per year and pay 4% income tax instead? Could it be that this is the way the Democrats pull Puerto Rico in as the 51st state? If all of the billionaires move there to escape the new 20 percent haircut (and why won’t California add 13 percent on top?), isn’t the most obvious solution to make P.R. a standard part of the U.S. and therefore subject to conventional federal taxation? Or maybe the Feds will say that the tax still applies even for those who flee to Puerto Rico because the gains happened while the targets of the tax were still living within the 50 states.)

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Inflation would be 10 percent per year if house prices were included

by philg

Ever wonder what the inflation statistic would be if it included some of the big purchases that people actually make, e.g., houses? A Wall Street economist, Joe Carson, recently wrote a piece on the current inflation situation:

Including house prices in the official consumer inflation statistics would lift the reported figure to roughly 10% and rival the early 1980s. Still, excluding the non-market shelter index from the official price statistics shows consumer price inflation running as hot as it did during the oil price spike of 2008. Both represent the fastest increase since the early 1980s, illustrating the breadth and speed of the current inflation cycle.

Other measures of inflation have already exceeded the reported figures of the early 1980s. Core intermediate prices for materials and supplies, which are part of the monthly producer price report, have jumped over 20%, well above the high readings of the 1980s.

If official government inflation is 6 percent, is it reasonable to say that 4% more would be added if actual house prices were included? From the same piece:

The initial signs of a new inflation cycle appeared in the housing market. In 2020, during the pandemic, house price prices rose 10%, according to the Case-Shiller. That was more than three times faster than the gain of the prior year and the most rapid increase since 2013. Some have argued that high and rising prices are self-correcting as buyers balk at the high prices. Yet, after increasing 10%, house prices posted a 15% increase, and the latest data shows a record 19.5% increase in the past year.

19.5 percent in this one component does seem as though it could translate to 4 percent for prices overall.

House prices in our neighborhood are so high that one homeowner has subleased the backyard to a research facility:

Related:

  • “Owners’ Equivalent Rent and Price Stability” (PennMutual): In 1983, the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) made a change to an integral component of inflation indexes. The adoption of owners’ equivalent rent (OER) to estimate shelter costs meant home purchases would no longer be considered a consumption expenditure but instead a capital asset or investment. OER is determined by a monthly survey of consumers who own a primary residence. The survey asks how much consumers would pay to rent instead of own their home. OER represents approximately 25% of the Consumer Price Index and 12% of personal consumption expenditures (PCE). … Why has OER exhibited such stability versus market-based measures of shelter costs? Economists have observed that owner-occupied rental estimates tend to be “sticky” relative to market-based rental costs. Homeowners tend to underestimate rent appreciation during expansionary periods and overestimate it during recessionary periods. … The idea that home purchase costs are not an expenditure but an investment is likely difficult to understand for first-time homebuyers confronted with unaffordable housing options.
  • What if you want to live in your car (on “camping mode”) instead? Tesla prices were up about 10 percent in the past few months and went up another 5 percent today (Reuters)
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Shut down Facebook for public health reasons?

by philg

Facebook has been in the news lately due to testimony at the Senate by Frances Haugen (imagine how much better off the company would be if they’d never hired him/her/zir/them!). From “Here are 4 key points from the Facebook whistleblower’s testimony on Capitol Hill” (NPR):

Haugen has leaked one Facebook study that found that 13.5% of U.K. teen girls in one survey say their suicidal thoughts became more frequent after starting on Instagram.

Another leaked study found 17% of teen girls say their eating disorders got worse after using Instagram.

About 32% of teen girls said that when they felt bad about their bodies, Instagram made them feel worse, Facebook’s researchers found, which was first reported by the Journal.

From Harvard’s McLean Hospital, “The Social Dilemma: Social Media and Your Mental Health”:

The platforms are designed to be addictive and are associated with anxiety, depression, and even physical ailments.

A 2018 British study tied social media use to decreased, disrupted, and delayed sleep, which is associated with depression, memory loss, and poor academic performance. Social media use can affect users’ physical health even more directly. Researchers know the connection between the mind and the gut can turn anxiety and depression into nausea, headaches, muscle tension, and tremors.

We’ve been willing to suspend or eliminate what had been considered fundamental and/or Constitutionally guaranteed rights in hopes of reducing the death rate tagged to COVID-19. Children couldn’t go to school for a year in American cities; adults couldn’t gather despite a First Amendment purportedly preventing the government from restricting their right to assemble. The potential loss of life-years from social-media-induced teen suicide is larger than whatever we might have saved via coronashutdowns (even if we assume that lockdowns and masks had some effect, COVID-19 was killing people at a median age of 82).

Why not declare that social media represents a public health emergency (Harvard re: racism as a public health crisis) and make Facebook, Instagram, et al. illegal in the U.S.? (order that ISPs block access to their IP addresses, accept a bit of leakage from Americans getting in via VPNs from the Free States of Russia, Scandinavia, etc., maybe require some FATCA-style rules so that companies are required to screen out American citizens regardless of VPN use)

Recent envy-provoking posts from Facebook friends… let’s call this one “I went to the Rolling Stones with friends while you were bored at home.”

Numerous “My kids are smiling, healthy, and happy, while yours are bratty, congested, and sulking” (variation: “My kid got into the elite college from which your kid was recently rejected”) and “I am on vacation somewhere beautiful while you are stuck at work wearing a mask 8 hours/day.”

Related:

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Art Institute of Chicago reenacts Glengarry Glen Ross

by philg

“Art Institute of Chicago Ends a Docent Program, and Sets Off a Backlash” (NYT):

Museum officials decided that one area in need of an overhaul was its 60-year-old program of volunteer educators, known as docents, who greet school groups and lead tours.

So last month the board overseeing the program sent a letter to the museum’s 82 active docents — most of whom were white older women — informing the volunteers that their program was being ended. The letter said that the museum would phase in a new model relying on paid educators and volunteers “in a way that allows community members of all income levels to participate, responds to issues of class and income equity, and does not require financial flexibility to participate.”

The new plan calls for hiring paid educators — Ms. Stein invited the volunteers to apply for those positions — and then developing a new program over the next few years. In 2023, she wrote, “unpaid volunteer educators will be reintroduced via a redesigned model” that includes updated protocols for “recruitment, application, training, and assessment.” She offered the departing docents museum memberships.

A number of museums have been trying to address how to get more people of color into the hiring pipeline, in part by removing financial barriers. Organizations like the Minnesota Alliance for Volunteer Advancement encourage nonprofit and government organizations “to engage volunteers who reflect the racial and ethnic diversity of the communities they serve.” And there have been widespread calls for salary reforms, since systems that rely on unpaid volunteers and interns tend to favor those who can afford to work for little to nothing.

And a 2020 article in Slate headlined “Museums Have a Docent Problem” described what it called “the struggle to train a mostly white, unpaid tour guide corps to talk about race.”

(i.e., Karen is fired)

It might sound bizarre for an institutional that is constantly asking for donations to fire a huge volunteer staff, thus giving the appearance of having money to burn. On the other hand, David Mamet is from Chicago, so it makes sense that a Chicago institution would re-enact the famous Alec Baldwin scene from Glengarry Glen Ross in which the real estate salesmen are required to reapply for their jobs. “Put. That. Coffee. Down. Coffee’s for closers. … The good news is you’re fired. The bad news is all of you have just one week to regain your jobs. … First prize is a Cadillac Eldorado. Second prize is a set of steak knives. Third prize is you’re fired.” (If the parallels are not obvious, see highlighted sections above where docents can re-apply and also where museum memberships (“steak knives”) are offered.)

Here’s the clip, in case you’re wondering about how to resolve any HR issues within our own enterprise …

Remember: “A loser is a loser.”

(I wrote the above post just before Alec Baldwin shot and killed Halyna Hutchins on the set of Rust.)

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My most recent Obama moment

by philg

An acquaintance who is a Hilton Platinum member was able to give an unworthy person Hilton Gold status and she selected me. At the time, I said “Now I know how Barack Obama felt when he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.”

Here’s a more recent example of unearned status/credit:

Dear Philip,

I am seeking permission to use your quote from a Schinn article as an epigraph in my upcoming book, [title regarding children, climate change, and their tender feelings]

Thank you in advance for all you do,

[author]

“Children can be frightened if they don’t know there are adults who care about climate change and are trying to fix problems. It can help battle the sense of helplessness and powerlessness.” -Philip Greenspun (Shinn, 2020)

Regular readers of this blog know how important I think it is when a frenetically consuming American speaks sincerely about his/her/zir/their pure intention to “fix problems” and heal our beloved planet. The best way to raise critical awareness is to apply a climate change bumper sticker on a 6,000 lb. pavement-melting SUV.

The quote seems to originate in “Your Guide to Talking With Kids of All Ages About Climate Change”:

Wendy Greenspun, a New York–based clinical psychologist engaged in climate issues. … Children can be frightened if they don’t know there are adults who care about climate change and are trying to fix problems,” notes Greenspun. “It can help battle the sense of helplessness and powerlessness.” Let them know that there are, in fact, millions of adults who are working to protect kids, to answer our own questions about climate change, and to figure out the steps we will take to get to where we need to be, together.

Millions of adults working to protect kids and billions of adults working to burn fossil fuels as fast as time and budget permit!

I thought that readers would appreciate my moment of Climate Sensitivity Glory!

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Florida now has the lowest COVID-19 risk of all mainland U.S. states

by philg

CovidActNow, a Web site for Shutdown Karens (‘We support data- and science-backed policies and decision-making’), starts with a map of “Vaccination progress” by state:

The primacy accorded the vaccine percentage is a good reflection of where America’s Shutdown Karens are mentally right now. The virus itself is no longer that interesting, even if it manages to kill someone (“Thank Fauci he/she/ze/they was vaccinated and therefore died in a state of grace” will become part of our standard eulogy for anyone killed by Covid?). If the reader is interested enough to scroll down, the page includes a map of states color-coded by risk:

The map reminds us to stay in our bunkers because, of course, nowhere is safe. There is no “low risk” state to be found (“risk” is a function of “daily new cases per 100K (incidence), infection rate (Rt), and test positivity”). But there is one state that is only “medium” risk: Florida! The state that explicitly rejects science (at least according to the NYT) has the lowest current COVID-19 risk (if we go beyond the mainland, Hawaii has a slightly lower daily new case rate and soon-to-be-a-state Puerto Rico (Senator AOC!) is substantially lower).

Separately, who can see a correlation between vaccine virtue and risk level? Pennsylvania, for example, has a high vaccination rate and also a “very high” risk level. Is this a Paging Dr. Ioannidis situation? (current COVID-19 vaccines are somewhat effective, but vaccinated people will go out and party more, thus eliminating most or all of the benefit, at least when it comes to infection and transmission; see “Benefit of COVID-19 vaccination accounting for potential risk compensation”)

Related:

  • states ranked by COVID-19 death rate (the Florida Free State now tied with fully-masked and often-shut Maskachusetts, but these data are not adjusted for percentage of population over 65, in which case FL would look much better (not that Floridians would care; they don’t measure the overall success of a society by the COVID-19 death rate))
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Tesla store as installation art

by philg

From the imaginatively named The Gardens Mall in Palm Beach Gardens, Florida, the Tesla store:

Answers the question, “What if you asked an artist to create a car dealer installation for Chinati in Marfa, Texas?”

A couple of doors down, a shop offered bracelets with inspirational messages. What were the two most inspiring messages, meriting a featured location just outside the shop door? “Survivor” and “I Am Enough”:

Perhaps my students will get together and give me an “I am way more than enough” bracelet to commemorate their time with me this semester! (And, of course, “Survivor” bracelets for themselves!)

What do Americans love to do most these days? According to the Amazon 4-star store, play Xbox and Nintendo Switch:

The mall doesn’t have quite the burned-out apocalyptic feeling of a Boston-area mall, but there were some vacancies and the place was fairly empty on a weekday afternoon:

I don’t know why U.S. malls can’t go in the Chinese direction and rent space to after-school programs (upper floors of all the malls in Shanghai that I visited).

Loosely related, a sign in a shopfront at a strip mall 10 minutes south:

But wouldn’t a much better way to fight natural selection, rather than wearing a mask that is about 11 percent effective (surgical; population-wide; “In the intervention group, 7.62% of people had COVID-19-like symptoms, compared with 8.62% in the control group.”) or 0 percent effective (cloth), be to stay home and/or restrict one’s in-person shopping to outdoor kiosks? If avoiding COVID-19 is our priority and we are going to #FollowScience by wearing a non-N95 mask, why not #FollowScience all the way by staying home?

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Social justice and vaccination crusaders meet IEEE floating point arithmetic (Facebook)

by philg

For several years I’ve been a member of “Airplanes for Sale” on Facebook. The software at Facebook apparently thinks that an airplane is a car and therefore tries to display the mileage. The result is “NaN“, a value in the IEEE floating point arithmetic standard used for the result of dividing by zero and similar outrages against Mathematical Justice. Here’s an example: “1999 Cessna 172 R · Driven NaN miles”

With all of humanity’s money (except for the cash that Google and Apple have harvested) and a healthy fraction of the world’s best programmers, you might think that Facebook would have noticed that it was displaying this internal value from IEEE floating point to end-users. The company’s software is smart enough to flag anyone who has questioned the idea that a COVID-19 vaccine is in the best interest of a 20-year-old. The company had the energy to kick Donald Trump off the platform (to keep us safe from another insurrection, was the justification). But they don’t have anything left over to catch this error that occurs literally millions of times per day (87,000 members in this group times lots of ads that show NaN).

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