Links October 31, 2022

~ Laura

The midterms are going to be very bad. Here, in the New York metro area, people are about to elect a whole bunch of folks that normally wouldn’t have a chance here. Dan Drezner says this election is not politics as usual. Post-November, we could be talking about the impeachment of Biden, along with a whole host of other horrible scenarios. I think the Democrats need new leadership, a new message, and greater inroads into disenfranchised communities, who for some reason think that Donald Trump is their savior. Yeah, I have no idea how to do that, but we have to try.

Emily Oster says we need to declare COVID amnesty over all the bad moves that we made during the early months of the pandemic. Nah. People wrote off kids like mine and never actually provided the high dosage tutoring or other restorative measures. I’m not over it.

This old Atlantic article about the two genomes of rats in New York City came up in my timeline. Steve and I talked about this on Saturday’s date night.

Some work done by relief agencies and non-profits in New York City. The beneficiaries need more than gift cards and occasional hand-outs. They need high-end social services under one roof.

Published by Laura

9 thoughts on “Links October 31, 2022”

  1. ‘ I think the Democrats need new leadership, a new message, and greater inroads into disenfranchised communities, who for some reason think that Donald Trump is their savior.’ Arnold Kling quotes Richard Hanania with some views about why they think Trump is their guy: https://arnoldkling.substack.com/p/richard-hananias-theory-of-the-culture.

    Protip: referring to Trump’s voters as ‘deplorables’ will not get you where you want to go…

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  3. Emily Oster is one of the good ones…but we haven’t finished all of our COVID business yet.

    As things are today, if we had another big novel virus, our reaction to it would be a total disaster, because so many people feel bitter about how we handled COVID.

    I’ve heard that there was actually a big pandemic game plan composed before COVID…but the people at the top wound up free-styling, paying little attention to the guidelines that were written when people weren’t freaked out.

    Another thing: the CDC and the FDA desperately need a housecleaning and some credibility. They have done a lot of dumb, dumb stuff.

    Also, now that it’s clear that our current COVID vaccinations aren’t going to be stopping transmission, some apologies are in order to everybody who was fired, threatened with firing, or excluded from school or other vital services for not being vaccinated.

    And, do we have adequate stockpiles of medical equipment? Let’s not do that stupid thing where we acquire stockpiles, use them or and let them expire, and then discover (when we have an actual emergency) that we don’t have emergency supplies of N95s for hospital workers and nursing home staff. (At my house, I do a yearly check of our emergency supplies, which I mostly keep for tornado and storm purposes.)

    It’s time to have a COVID-19 commission, do an autopsy of everything people screwed up on (like we DO NOT CLOSE PLAYGROUNDS for a respiratory virus), make a plan to do better, and then implement the plan.

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    1. “Emily Oster is one of the good ones…”

      “I’ve heard that there was actually a big pandemic game plan composed before COVID…but the people at the top wound up free-styling, paying little attention to the guidelines that were written when people weren’t freaked out.”

      Um… yeah. Everyone who wasn’t watching Fox News heard that. I mean, I don’t know if you were watching Fox or in that ecosystem for news or if you were distracted by other stuff, but it is pretty well known that the Obama administration left a plan for dealing with a pandemic, and the Trump administration threw it out.

      https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/obama-team-left-pandemic-playbook-for-trump-administration-officials-confirm

      “And, do we have adequate stockpiles of medical equipment? Let’s not do that stupid thing where we acquire stockpiles, use them or and let them expire, and then discover (when we have an actual emergency) that we don’t have emergency supplies of N95s for hospital workers and nursing home staff. ”

      If you feel this way, you should definitely not vote for Republicans next week.

      https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/fact-check-trump-falsely-claims-obama-left-him-nothing-national-n1201406

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      1. Wendy said, “Um… yeah. Everyone who wasn’t watching Fox News heard that. I mean, I don’t know if you were watching Fox or in that ecosystem for news or if you were distracted by other stuff, but it is pretty well known that the Obama administration left a plan for dealing with a pandemic, and the Trump administration threw it out.”

        I don’t know details (you’ll notice that the article you posted didn’t really explain what the plan was), but I remember hearing (maybe from Vinay Prasad) that a lot of the blue state pandemic response also didn’t track with the pre-COVID pandemic plans. For example, if I remember correctly, we weren’t actually supposed to shut down the schools!

        “If you feel this way, you should definitely not vote for Republicans next week.”

        My understanding that a lot of N95 stockpiles were initially created under GWB as part of the post-9/11 emergency preparedness.

        https://www.sent-trib.com/2022/03/16/ohios-stockpile-got-its-start-after-the-attacks-of-sept-11/

        From that article, it seems like there’s a historically fairly consistent process where we have an emergency, stockpile supplies for that emergency, let the stuff expire, then have another emergency, stockpile supplies for that emergency, etc.

        That’s a really dumb way to operate. Somebody needs to be in charge of rotating supplies and there needs to be a budget for replacing stuff.

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      2. “I don’t know details (you’ll notice that the article you posted didn’t really explain what the plan was)”

        Probably because it was a complex logistical explanation that can’t be summed up in a sentence or two. That part doesn’t surprise me. Also, we have to consider that there are some national security implications about pandemic response considering potential overlap between naturally occurring viruses and bioweapons.

        “I don’t know details (you’ll notice that the article you posted didn’t really explain what the plan was), but I remember hearing (maybe from Vinay Prasad)”

        A credible source.
        (That was my sarcastic voice.)

        “My understanding that a lot of N95 stockpiles were initially created under GWB”

        1. Sorry, I mispoke. I should have said, “If you feel this way, you should definitely not vote for the neofascists calling themselves Republicans next week.”
        2. N95 masks were only invented in 1995, for what that’s worth. I supposed we could trash Clinton for not acting immediately, but he was distracted by other things for a bit. Though… it does look like the CDC started the stockpile in 1999:
        “CDC launches National Pharmaceutical Stockpile (now the Strategic National Stockpile), a stockpile of drugs, vaccines, and other medical products and supplies, to provide for the emergency health security of the United States and its territories.” from here: https://www.cdc.gov/museum/timeline/1990.html So maybe Clinton did find time.

        I admit I am grumpy and anxious about next week and the very very stupid choices a lot of people are about to make. (I texted my sisters and asked how likely it was that my BILs would vote for Lee Zeldin in NY. One sister said “my husband doesn’t vote.” The other said, “My husband will vote the way I tell him to vote.” The other was silent, so I count that overall as 1 win, 1 loss, and 1 abstain. I’ll take it.) (I do predict Lee Zeldin will win, fwiw. He will be handicapped by a primarily Democratic state legislature, so it won’t be as horrible as living in a state like Texas or Florida.) I also have been working 7-day weeks since late September and worrying about my mom, who was recently diagnosed with having had a previous stroke at some unknown point in the last year that is giving her memory issues. Plus I am trying to avoid f*ing COVID. Yesterday (Thursday) morning I got two emails from students I saw in classes Tuesday afternoon and Wednesday afternoon that they’d tested positive. Plus I spent last night at a very crowded pub quiz at the local Athenaeum. (I won’t go to concerts or restaurants, but offer me free pizza and a Del’s Shandy, and I will happily sit my maskless self in a stuffy overheated basement room with 50+ people for the chance to use my trivia skills to win an Athenaeum tote bag.) (Spoiler: sadly, my team did not win.)

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      1. God, I hate Breitbart. So nasty, so wrong. As much as I would love for this election to be about education policy — my pet topic, of course — it’s not. This election is about the economy. Who buys the eggs, the milk, and soccer uniforms? Suburban moms. They are freaked about expenses and worried about whether their kids will get jobs. All the statistics are saying that this is an economy election, so I doubt that Oster’s column matters much at all.

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