Herd Immunity

I talked to a senior White House official earlier this evening about all of these people, hundreds of people sitting side by side in the audience, not wearing masks, and the senior White House official brushed off these concerns about the lack of social distancing at the president’s speech. And get this, this quote might blow you away, “Everybody is going to catch this thing eventually.” – Jim Acosta, CNN Chief WH Correspondent, link

I would guess the senior White House official is Stephen Miller, who would be a Nazi if only he were not Jewish. In any event, the Trump administration, probably all the way up to Donald Trump himself, subscribes to the eugenic theory of herd immunity, the idea that if one lets a disease run rampant through a population, it will die out and the surviving population will be a stronger one.

But this is fantasy. If it were so, all of the great plagues would have died out centuries ago and there would be no influenza, no measles, mumps, chicken pox, polio, bubonic plague. Over the centuries, Europeans developed limited resistance to all of these. Over the centuries, the surviving pathogens became less deadly to Europeans. But the diseases never died out. When the diseases arrived in the New World they ripped through a population with no immunity. The things that finally killed smallpox and polio were vaccination, quarantine, tracking, tracing – the public health measures that the Trump administration refuses to take against COVID-19.

Nazi Nazi Nazi.

Robots Discover Mental Vulnerability in Humanity

…And all of a sudden, Q is everywhere. 

For people who don't know, QAnon is an incredibly stupid and crazy conspiracy theory, and it has at least hundreds of thousands, possibly millions, of adherents. The founders of the movement, even, are surprised by its reach. Ben Collins writes on Twitter: “These aren't just boomer memes and 4chan shitposters anymore. They're moms who were radicalized in wellness Facebook groups they've never even heard of.”

Green New Deal: Why Run the Numbers?

An Essay on Global Systems and Project Management

 

If you’ve been reading me for a while, you know I’ve been saying “run the numbers” for about a year now.

It occurred to me to wonder why no-one else is saying this. (This turns out not to be quite true. There is a group of futurists who do say it, but I had to go looking.) And then it occurred to me to wonder, why am I saying this?

Quick Thoughts on the Pardon of Roger Stone

The USA is Constitutionally unable to deal with Presidential malfeasance. Andrew Jackson got away with sending the Tsalagi on the Trail of Tears, Andrew Johnson got away pardoning the Confederate traitors, Hayes let the South build Jim Crow, Wilson introduced Jim Crow to the Federal bureaucracy, Teddy Roosevelt invaded the Philippines because he felt like it, Nixon got away with treason, Reagan got away with treason, and Trump is getting away with treason.

We need change. I haven't figured out what kind of change is needed, but we need change.

Policing, Policy, Murder, Racism, and Corruption

White Americans are shocked, shocked to discover that they are living in a police state.

 

On the 25^th of May 2020, Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin murdered African-American George Floyd in cold blood while officers Tou Thou, Thomas Lane, and J. Alexander Kueng looked on. The murder was recorded on video and posted to Twitter. The Minneapolis police department (MPD) then announced that Floyd had “died a short time” after a “medical incident.” The MPD police union president, Lt. Bob Kroll, said: “Now is not the time to rush to judgment and immediately condemn our officers.”

“Let people die, that's the whole damn plan.”

Jim Wright, writing on Facebook on the Republican health care plan: “Let people die, that's the whole damn plan.”

The left has been saying this for decades. The fascist streak in US politics has taken over the Republican Party. Republicans have become fascists, fascists rape, torture, and kill people just to assert their authority. Orwell knew. Orwell's monstrous interrogator O'Brien said: “How does one man assert his power over another, Winston? […] By making him suffer. Obedience is not enough. Unless he is suffering, how can you be sure that he is obeying your will and not his own? Power is in inflicting pain and humiliation.”

Anyone who has walked the picket line outside a deadly workplace (and those have come back, even before COVID-19), fought the goons – they know.

Orwell, again, “You must get rid of those nineteenth-century ideas about the laws of Nature. We make the laws of Nature. […] The earth is as old as we are, no older. How could it be older? Nothing exists except through human consciousness.”

So even though death and disease surround them, Republicans will deny death and disease and die themselves.

This is the malignant narcissism that Dr. Lee and her co-authors wrote about in The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump. Trump is the mirror of it, but he is not the source.

What do we do about it?

Leviticus 13 and Deuteronomy 24: the Bible Supports Social Distancing

The Israelites knew plague.

“Tzaarat,” whose diagnosis and management is described in Leviticus 13 and mentioned in ‪Deuteronomy 24:8, is the name of a group of skin diseases, and is usually translated as “leprosy” – Hansen’s disease – but it is not Hansen’s disease, which doesn’t seem to have actually been present in Israel in biblical times.

Rabbinical teaching sees tzaarat as a physical manifestation of spiritual failing, yet the Torah itself says nothing of this: tzaarat is the name for a physical disease for which Leviticus 13:1-46 give a protocol for diagnosis, treatment, and management. Leviticus 13:47-59 describes identifying tzaarat in cloth. Deuteronomy 24:8 advises victims to follow the instructions of the Levite healers. Perhaps the ancients thought that skin and cloth rotted in similar ways, or perhaps tzaarat was caused by a fungus which also affected fabric. Scientific medical commentators cannot identify tzaarat; it may not be a currently active disease, or it may be so rare as to be relegated to obscure papers and texts.

Leviticus 13 describes a protocol of isolation, examination, and monitoring for tzaarat. (One commentator even gives a flowchart of the protocol.) In extreme cases, when the disease would not heal, the victim was pronounced tame (טָמֵא, taw-MAY), unclean, and required to isolate themselves until they healed.

What has this to do with modern Christians? The Old Testament recognizes the existence of physical disease and the need for diagnosis and quarantine as appropriate: god did not prevent disease. When modern Christians say that god will protect them against COVID-19 and that there is no need for precautions, distancing, or quarantine, they are adopting an unbiblical stance. Deuteronomy advises victims to do the equivalent of following their doctor’s orders. When Christians say that they do not need to do so because god will protect them, or that quarantine is an infringement on their rights, you can answer them that the Israelites knew plague, and that their own laws told them to quarantine if necessary.