Cats, charts, and politics
The latest data from the military show that roughly 30,000 active-duty service members remain unvaccinated against COVID-19, despite a Defense Department mandate issued in August and deadlines that have passed.
We're all about the charts around here, so let's render this in chart form:
Sigh. If we could do this well for the whole country the pandemic would be over.
Yuval Levin is on the right track about election reform. He says—and I agree—that detailed rules about things like days of voting, photo IDs, and mail ballots aren't really that important, especially since it's clear that no legislation addressing these things can possibly pass. Instead, we should try to pass a bill limited to the truly pressing issue of preventing partisan manipulation of the vote after an election:
Democrats and Republicans should turn to narrowly tailored legislation focused on postelection administration. Such a bill could, for instance, limit the ability of state officials to remove local election administrators without cause, and prohibit the harassment of election workers (as happened, for example, in Georgia after the 2020 election). It could mandate a mechanism for postelection audits while requiring a clear standard for rendering election results final.
It could provide for uniform transparency procedures and codify the role of election monitors. It could prescribe an oath for all election administrators committing to transparently and impartially obey the law. And it could modernize and simplify the Electoral Count Act of 1887, which still governs Congress’s and the vice president’s roles in certifying presidential elections.
Could we get Republicans to vote for something like this? Maybe. It might be worth a try.
Unfortunately, there's one thing that a bill like this—or any other bill—can't address: the possibility of a rogue legislature overturning the popular vote and sending its own slate of presidential electors to Washington DC. This is thanks to the Constitution, which states:
Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors . . .
An extreme interpretation of this clause suggests that legislatures can direct the appointment of electors any way it wants. If a legislature decides after the election that the legislature itself should appoint electors, that's perfectly legitimate.
That is, it's legitimate if the Supreme Court agrees that it is. Probably they wouldn't, but you never know with the current gang. And if they decide to ditch 200+ years of precedent and rule that legislatures can do anything they want, no law can stop them. Only a constitutional amendment can.
And what are the odds of getting that passed?
This is the starboard transept of St. Peter's Basilica. The top photo is fairly close up, while the bottom photo is a panorama shot that shows the entire thing in all its glory.
I think it's safe to say that our current frenzy over COVID testing is considerably greater than it was during last winter's surge. Does anyone disagree?
But why? Testing is more important when you don't have a vaccine. It's more important when the severity of infection is worse. It's more important when things have just started to open up again and we really don't know how that's going to work out.
In other words, it's less important now than it was a year ago. So why the unholy frenzy?
At a guess, I'd say it's simply because rapid at-home tests are widely available now but are in slightly short supply. That provides the perfect environment for panic. You should be able to get a test, but you can't. At least, not always. A year ago, we just shrugged because no one really thought it was a widely available thing in the first place.
I'm not sure I have a point to make here, aside from the fact that I think it's time to rein in the testing panic a bit. It's probably also time to rein in the overall COVID panic a bit, but this message is aimed more at the media than at ordinary people. News coverage of COVID is just beyond belief these days. Newspapers, TV, and the internet are blanketed every day with stories about new COVID records; reports of new CDC recommendations; interviews with people who think the new CDC recommendations are stupid; feature stories about how COVID is affecting _______ ; op-eds accusing everyone else of being either too strict or too loose about COVID rules; essays about what we've all learned from COVID; news about how things are going in Israel; other news about why we should ignore how things are going in Israel; feelgood clickbait about people who braved COVID to see an old friend; stories about the latest antics from a red-state governor positioning himself for 2024; and of course all the latest statistics in an EZ-to-read dashboard format.
If you are vaxxed and boosted, your current odds of getting COVID are roughly 1 in 500 over the course of a month. If you're under 65, your odds of a serious infection are about 1 in 5,000. Your odds of dying are 1 in 200,000. Calm down.
A few days ago I wrote that we should stop "blaming everything on social media." I based this on the fact that research just doesn't seem to back it up. Social media isn't all strawberries and clear skies, but overall its effect seems to be mostly neutral or even moderately positive.
But research is hard to do in this area and it's usually years behind anyway. So when a longtime reader sent me a different perspective, I figured it was worth posting to give the other side of the story. Here it is.
I'm a longtime reader and appreciate your work. I became—and have remained since—a daily visitor to the site starting when I lived in Chile as a college student two decades ago, when your writing was a connection to home.
Since then I've gone on to teach, coach, and be an administrator in public high schools in Oregon and earned my master's and doctorate in education. I've worked through the years of mass adoption of cell phones and deployment of social media.
I've read in multiple pieces—most recently in your ten worst trends post—where you've stated we need to stop blaming social media for ills because it, holistically, probably is a net positive. In my experience with students specifically—and this is something I hear from every teacher, educational assistant, counselor, parent, coach, and administrator I've spoken with—cell phones and social media have had a massive negative impact on quality of life for teens. A few examples:
These are just a few things that come to mind. And while it by no means applies to all students, these were exceptionally common themes. Moreover, schools in which I work and as reported by colleagues are overwhelmed with teen mental health challenges—suicidal ideation, depression, anxiety, etc.—at unbelievably high levels. We simply can't keep up.
Now, with all that said, I'm not citing any data or large/small studies that verify these claims. And, of course, I'm not claiming it is a causal relationship that cell phones and social media caused these things. That said, I have hours and hours and hours of experience putting the target squarely on those things.
I'm writing because I thought it would be interesting to hear you expand on your thoughts about social media being a force for good. It would be interesting to see how you make sense of some of the ideas I share above and whether they land or simply sound like a bunch of anecdotal rubbish.
Kevin here again. Since I always have the last word on my own blog, I feel it would be a little unfair to say a lot about this. But I'll toss out a few comments.
I'm not a teacher, but I've heard all this stuff too. I don't question that it's real. But what I really want to know is how widespread it is. Here are a few more detailed comments that help to address this.
Sleep: At the risk of being Pollyannish, surely parents can simply take cell phones away from their kids at night if it's truly causing havoc with their sleep? Or would I just get laughed at for suggesting something so naive? This Pew survey from 2019 is also worth a look:
This is typical of research vs. anecdote, and it's hard to know which to accept. But if Pew is to be believed, kids are getting more sleep than they used to—though I can't figure out what could possibly have caused this.
24/7 bullying: Point taken. That said, survey evidence suggests—surprisingly—that cyberbullying has been pretty flat over the years. In addition, the total amount of bullying has actually decreased.
Distraction: I've heard about this problem since long before social media was popular. It sure seems like there ought to be some kind of decent answer that doesn't involve all the kids tossing their phones in a sack or something.
Non-screen activities: This is an interesting one! So I headed over to the American Time Use Survey conducted every year by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Here's what it tells us:
The ATUS is a high-quality survey of long standing. However, it only breaks down the youngest age group to 15-24, which is obviously a problem. Also, it's oriented toward adults and doesn't include any questions about cell phone or social media use.
That said, sleeping is up a bit and TV watching is down a bit. The chart above shows everything else of interest. In-person socializing is down, but homework and sports are up, and volunteering is pretty steady. If ATUS can be trusted, teens and young adults aren't cutting back on non-screen activities.
FOMO: I don't have anything to say about this aside from the fact that it's been a central fact of teen life pretty much forever.
Put this all together, and it's hard to pick out a serious impact from social media. So I'll toss out some speculation: there are some kids who are heavy social media users, but their numbers are small enough that they don't move the needle on survey averages. However, their problems are big enough that they do overwhelm teachers in person. As we all know, a few unruly kids can disrupt an entire class.
That's just a guess, though. Another possibility is that survey instrument averages are just too crude to pick up much, and anecdotal evidence really is superior.
And finally, I've heard so much about the deterioration of teen mental health that I definitely believe this is a real thing. What I don't know is what's causing it. Social media is an obvious candidate, but there are others too.
I guess I ended up writing a lot about this after all. Sorry. Welcome to the life of a blogger.
Some products satisfy preexisting needs; some need to manufacture a perceived deficiency to move units. Modern politics generates demand by manufacturing grievances.
This is pretty much the Fox News raison d'être. Like the makers of many useless cosmetic products, they can exist only if they create problems their buyers never knew existed and then convince them that only using their product will solve these previously unrecognized problems.
Masks? An invasion of your freedom! CRT? They're brainwashing white kids! The 2020 election? It wasn't lost, it was stolen! Some judge had to take down his Ten Commandments plaque? Your Bible is next!
There was a time when this kind of thing was restricted to mimeographed newsletters mailed to maybe hundreds or thousands of people. But Fox News is the Henry Ford of outrage: the first to truly industrialize and then mass produce feverish outrage.
Their secret? Better technology and better motivation. Better technology requires money, and that in turn provides the motivation for creating an outrage machine that works at industrial scale. Unlike the lunatics of yore, they don't do it because of sincere if muddled beliefs. They do it because it makes lots of money. Deliberate and profit-driven business processes are far more efficient, scalable, and sustainable than any barmy halfwittery could ever be.
A federal judge granted a preliminary injunction on Monday blocking the Defense Department from taking action against a group of 35 Navy sailors who had refused to get a coronavirus vaccine, raising questions on how it might shape the Pentagon’s requirement that all U.S. troops get vaccinated.
U.S. District Judge Reed O’Connor found that . . .
Ah, I see: Reed O'Connor. You can always trust him to rule against anything associated with Democrats. But even for him, this is odd reasoning:
“This Court does not make light of COVID-19′s impact on the military. Collectively, our armed forces have lost over 80 lives to COVID-19 over the course of the pandemic,” O’Connor wrote Monday in a 26-page order.
But the judge added that the “loss of religious liberties outweighs any forthcoming harm to the Navy,” and that “even the direst circumstances cannot justify the loss of constitutional rights.”
....“The Navy has not granted a religious exemption to any vaccine in recent memory,” O’Connor wrote. “It merely rubber stamps each denial.”
Stop me if I'm wrong, but belonging to the military compromises all sorts of normal constitutional rights. The military services are actually pretty careful about religion, but free speech is certainly not encouraged. Peaceable assembly is more or less under their control. Freedom of the press doesn't exist. There are lots of guns around, but only under their direct supervision. A warrant to search your belongings? Not so much. (See Mayo v. Foley, "An Officer and a Gentleman," 1982.)
Am I misconstruing something? Restricting constitutional rights is surely something not to be done lightly, but "good order and discipline" is usually sufficient reason. That being the case, "preventing massive plagues on naval vessels" seems like it would easily qualify too.
Here's the result of my latest M-protein test:
There's nothing really new here. Last month we reduced my chemo med from 4 mg to 3 mg, trying to find the happy place where the multiple myeloma is still under control but my immune system isn't being too badly compromised. Ideally, the result would be only a small increase in the level of cancer cells—which is apparently what happened—accompanied by better results in my neutrophil counts—which hasn't happened yet. It might take a few months to find the ideal dose that accomplishes both.
In the meantime, the only effect is that I'm more tired than usual, likely due to the low blood counts. That's annoying. But then again, now that I'm retired it doesn't really matter that much, does it?
I happened to come across a Twitter squall about student debt a few hours ago, and it prompted me to share a couple of things. Maybe they're obvious, maybe they aren't. Here they are.
First off, it strikes me that whenever we talk about student debt, we should split debtors into at least three categories:
I don't care much about #1. I have some sympathy for #2, but I'm not super outraged about it. And then there's #3, which just pisses me off.
You might disagree with my ranking, but at the very least we should all be careful to specify who we're talking about when we write about canceling student debt. It's usually #2, I think, but I'd sure like to see us pay more attention to #3.
The big problem with the mechanics of student debt is that universities are run by states but we're trying to fix it with federal action. I'm not especially sure how to square this circle in any kind of efficient way. If the feds keep offering more and more money in the form of scholarships, grants, and loans, states will just hoover up all the money by increasing the cost of tuition until they reach the maximum amount students are willing to pay. There's no simple way to prevent states from doing this, and so far there hasn't been a limit to how much students are willing to pay.
This leads to my second question about canceling student debt: what happens after we cancel it? A whole bunch of college graduates will be deliriously happy, but what about the class of 2022? And 2023? Their debt hasn't been canceled and the whole rat race starts all over again—with no great solution in sight.
This doesn't make much sense, does it? But what's the answer? We can't keep canceling debt year after year, since that amounts to just giving students money. But if we don't, then everybody up to the class of 2021 suddenly has no debt while the classes of 2022+ are screwed. I don't know about you, but if I were part of the class of 2022 I'd be pretty unhappy about this.
I've mentioned before that I've never dived deeply into the student debt issue because it doesn't make my top ten list of important problems. That said, there's an obvious conflict when you think about student debt from a 10,000 foot level. On the one hand, a highly educated populace is good for all of us, which means we should make higher education as accessible as possible. On the other hand, cheap university educations are financed by the general public while the recipients are almost entirely people who are going to benefit handsomely from this taxpayer provided largess. Is this fair? Maybe not, but on the third hand, all these taxpayers will benefit from the generally stronger society they get when more people are highly educated. This is too subtle for most people to appreciate, but it's still real.
So it's kind of a mess, isn't it? It was easier after World War II, when cheap higher education helped lots of working class people in addition to middle and upper class folks. But everything we did back then worked superbly, and today university education is overwhelmingly the preserve of the middle and upper middle classes.
Taking all these contradictions together, I come out on the side of offering fairly cheap higher education. The problem is that I think this can only truly happen via state action, and states simply don't agree with me. Unless I'm missing an exception, every single state has enormously raised the cost of public higher education, and they've done it without much pushback from the electorate.
So what's the permanent² constituency for canceling student debt or reducing the cost of attending university? Revealed preference suggests, unfortunately, that there really isn't much of one. This is a big problem, no?
¹President Obama tried to do something about this, but President Trump immediately reversed it for no special reason except that he hates Obama.
²The temporary constituency, of course, is families with 16-year-olds along with the 16-year-olds themselves once they become 22-year-olds. But the family constituency fades as the kids grow up, and the kids themselves are a small and ever-changing population that can usually be safely ignored.
I guess this is nothing new, but here's a recent clip of Jon Stewart slamming J. K. Rowling for portraying the goblin bankers in the Harry Potter universe as caricatures of Jews:
So @jonstewart recently broke Hollywood's complete silence on @jk_rowling unapologetically maintaining antisemitic folklore through Harry Potter. pic.twitter.com/ezWrxpzryB
— raf (@rafaelshimunov) January 3, 2022
I don't have a side to take in this, but in the books the goblins are just goblins. Unless I'm misremembering, there's nothing to suggest any kind of Jewish resemblance. So if the goblins in the films are Jewish caricatures, that's all up to the filmmakers, isn't it?
Am I missing something here?