EDITOR’S NOTE: This is the third of a recurring (and likely irregular) series of quick-hits. Because, not everything needs a thousand words. Thanks for reading!
An Odd Hill
A few readers took umbrage at my use of salty language in asking (yes, asking, I made no mention of mandates) that people wear masks when in public places among strangers, to help mitigate the COVID-19 epidemic. Yeah, yeah, I get the flies and honey bit, but I’m inclined to believe that none of them would have budged one millimeter from their anti-mask positions no matter how I asked or what supporting evidence I offered.
I get the psychology regarding lockdowns. I get the distrust of government (over a million words on this blog should suffice as evidence). I get the eye-roll at politicians who have flip-flopped on the matter, who’ve been wrong, who’ve been pushy and arrogant, and who were disliked even before the epidemic. I even get the psychology of masks.
But, in terms of impositions on one’s daily routine, wearing a mask when near strangers is REALLY low on the list. I find it a very odd “hill to die on,” a strange rallying point against purported oppression. Of all the things to take a stand against, they pick this?
Free Markets and Fear
As my wife and I were perusing the streaming services for stuff to watch last night, I was struck by the, to put it ironically, lack of diversity in available content. Seemingly every offering nowadays includes some elements that affirm the writers and producers are socially aware and very affirmatively “diverse,” often to the point of historical anachronism or dissonance. Characters will cough up occasional bits of dialogue intended to affirm that the writers are on the right side of woke. The established grievance hierarchies are all conformed to. Language of the era that’s out of favor today is scrubbed from historical tales. If you want content that’s not awash in woke (not anti-woke, but simply free of it), good luck.
Concurrently, companies are suddenly tripping all over each other to assert social justice bona fides. Old trademarks, logos, and mascots are being defenestrated.
And, people are losing their jobs for years-old or decades-old “transgressions” against the (rapidly mutating) standards of today.
Proponents of our current cultural upheaval tell us free-marketeers that this is simply our free market working as it should. They don’t understand the stark difference between market pressures born of wanting to satisfy customers’ evolving tastes and market pressures born of fear.
There’s a principle, (mis)attributed to Voltaire, that reads:
I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.
It is at the core of the principle of free speech, and its essence is at the core of all other individual liberties. You don’t have to condone something to allow it. Yet, we are in the midst of a “Great Awokening” that many have (correctly, IMO) noted mirrors France’s Reign of Terror and Mao’s Cultural Revolution. Today, we have Critical Race Theory and Critical Social Justice, both descendants of the execrable critical theory of the Marxists who established the Frankfurt School of social theory a century ago. The essence of these “criticals” is simply to criticize, endlessly, with the ultimate goal the destruction of the existing fabric of society, so that a new order can arise, one with a Marxist foundation. We all know how that’d go.
Someone posited that woke culture without cancel culture would be perfectly fine. That’s because it would be truly voluntary, it would be a set of opinions and an effort to advance those opinions in the marketplace of ideas. However, when intimidation is folded into the mix, freedom gets overridden. The essence of free markets is that interactions and exchanges are voluntary. But, when one side feels coercion, whether it be direct or “see what happened to someone else who didn’t comply?” tacit, there is no liberty.
Immunity Freeloaders
The COVID pandemic has spawned countless armchair epidemiological statisticians, people who grab a few numbers out of the ether and make (often detailed, to two or three significant figures) predictions as to the true lethality of the virus. Early on, many such were on the “it’s going to kill us all” side of the fence. Today, I see more and more on the “government is exaggerating” side of the fence.
Nestled in among and swarming around those folks are many who think that the way out of this is to get to herd immunity ASAP, simply by letting young and healthy people get sick.
I wonder how many in that crowd would refuse a vaccine if/when it becomes available?
I also wonder how many in that crowd resent and argue against their taxes being used for welfare freeloaders?
Herd immunity sounds like a grand idea… that is, until someone you know gets sick and dies in the process of getting there.
BLM Will Not Fix Policing
The wake of the George Floyd killing produced a slew of ideas for changing policy to reduce the chance of such tragedies going forward. I covered many of the good ones on this blog. Alas, it took a breathtakingly short amount of time for the moment to slip by, and for the movement to be corrupted. In the blink of an eye, the good ideas about fixing the police were replaced by a movement to simply eliminate policing. Policy declarations from on high (i.e. the politicians whose past support of blatantly anti-poor-minority policies like policing-for-profit, civil asset forfeiture, etc., has cost them nothing, not even re-election) gave a free pass to the criminals who, ironically, prey on the communities the movement purports to champion. “Defund the Police” turned out to be about OPM rather than preventing future abuses. Division, rather than constructive remedy, became the rallying cry.
In short, things that would work were replaced by politics-as-usual. As one anonymous sage put it,
A solution means the gravy train is over.
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Let me try to give you some cover on masks. Not long ago I walked into my doctor’s waiting room. I had a mask around my neck but was’t wearing it. There was a sitting waiting to be called. I always try to be jovial with the receptionists and this day it wasn’t an exception, so there I was blurting jokes without a mask. At one point I turned to the lady and noticed she had a mask and was looking at me in disapproval. My instant reaction was to say oops and put on the mask. I did it purely out of respect, and who knows, maybe I was a vector and didn’t know it.
Let’s be clear, however, the only thing that is going to fix the problem is BOTH reaching herd immunity and a vaccine. A vaccine will only reduce the threshold for herd immunity and my best guess is that we still have a ways to go. In the meantime all we can do is pick how many and who dies on the way. We know that the odds for the young are better than even with the regular flu so we shouldn’t hesitate to get them out of the house and without masks. That way we will all be on the way to herd immunity faster. On the other hand we do need to protect the elderly, and the young may want to wear masks in their presence. Not the other way around, however.
A sitting lady waiting to be called. My bad.
Linked in my post is an article discussing Tate Reeves, the governor of Mississippi, and his thoughts about accelerating herd immunity by letting the young get sick. He posits, and I find little to quibble with, that accelerating a drive to herd immunity will overwhelm hospitals, and displace people who need other treatments.
Flattening the curve was about buying the system time. Time to learn how to treat patients, time to manage the initial onrush of patients, time to develop strategies… and time to develop a vaccine. Trying to speed things along now would work contrary to the successes of flattening the curve.
I’ll ask again – why is it such a big deal to wear a mask when near strangers? I haven’t gotten an answer to that that isn’t a combination of “I don’t want to because I’m being told I should” and “they don’t work.” As to the latter, there are certainly conflicting studies (and there’s also an unfortunate degradation to a binary state in opinions, as if mitigation by reducing spray from 12 feet to 3 doesn’t count), but given the really minor degree of inconvenience, I don’t see a sound argument for *not* erring on the side of caution. As to the former, I addressed it in the previous mask article.
Don’t get me wrong, Peter. Of course there is nothing wrong with flattening the curve. I made my answer too short and quick and I should have added managing the number of deaths and who, including balancing the whole thing with hospital capacity and deaths from excessive confinement and from the depth and duration of the inevitable economic slowdown. It’s all a balancing act.
I would let kids go to school because both they and their teachers are all in the lowest risk category, with the risks being less than for normal flu. As long as you do keep elderly teachers away I would expect that they would not contribute to overwhelming hospitals but if there are any doubts because of the local circumstances of course hold them back.
As to Tate Reeves, I do have a quibble with his logic but of course if he already has a hospital capacity problem he should slow down. But let’s go to his logic. Start by accepting his 40% infected for there to be herd capacity. That doesn’t mean that all 40% are going to develop symptoms that require them to be hospitalized but he assumes they will. The whole thing can only be evaluated by looking at their triage and response procedures. I had all of the symptoms except temperature and called my pulmonary doctor. Despite my 80 years, COPD, and being on oxygen, he didn’t have me come in. Instead he hit me with three drugs including Z-Pak and Levaquin, which is in the family that includes hydroxychloroquine (my pharmacist expressed her unhappiness with Levaquin in the mix). Then of course there is the question of the different effect on age groups.
As too masks, I have no problem with them, but we have to understand that they are not the panacea they are made out to be, and that as long as the curve is sufficiently flattened they are counterproductive in our journey to herd immunity. The exceptions are the elderly but there it is the young that should keep them on in order not to infect the old. I insist that my daughter uses one when she gets too close to me. It’s for my good, not hers.
When I read your “… but given the really minor degree of inconvenience…” I keep thinking Pascal’s Wager (I really need to read a good description on that…)
I think minor degree of inconvenience could apply to hydroxychloroquine and some use of disinfectants, etc. both have had pro and con articles published on them.
I think the reason for the wearing the mask is part of social politeness, the people I interact with have no way of know if I’m infected or not, and the same for me concerning them.
as to why refuse to wear the mask, people are funny some don’t like being told what to do, some find them uncomfortable, and I’m sure some think it all part of a government conspiracy (first it searing masks then it will be having to wear pants… more likely having to purchase a licence to go out…who knows what thoughts are under a tin foil hat.
HCQ was, quite unfortunately, politicized by people who would prefer Trump be wrong than actually have a treatment option for COVID patients. Apart from that, though, it is a drug and does come with risk of side effects. Of course, if the alternative is death, the risk profile changes.
Masks carry no risk, the folks who come up with BS to excuse their resistance notwithstanding. Thus, all it is, is an inconvenience, and as I noted, a minor one. Indeed, people don’t like being told what to do, and that goes double when it’s someone from the other team doing the telling. With virtually no down side, the degree of up-side or certitude of efficacy required to tip the scales positive is really low. So, even if there’s uncertainty (the science is trending in a pro-mask direction), the rationale for not wearing one isn’t scientific.