Wednesday’s Forum
Steven L. Taylor
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Wednesday, December 22, 2021
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70 comments
About Steven L. Taylor
Steven L. Taylor is a Professor of Political Science and a College of Arts and Sciences Dean. His main areas of expertise include parties, elections, and the institutional design of democracies. His most recent book is the co-authored
A Different Democracy: American Government in a 31-Country Perspective. He earned his Ph.D. from the University of Texas and his BA from the University of California, Irvine. He has been blogging since 2003 (originally at the now defunct Poliblog).
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Andy had a comment in a thread yesterday that I think is worth unpacking:
I hear variations of this argument but it is conflating two concepts which are actually independent: determination of the level of risk, and willingness to assume risk. The latter is subjective but the former is most certainly not. To give an example, the risk that you will not succeed in drawing that inside straight is precisely calculable; your willingness to assume that risk is subjective. Further, a mathematician with expertise in statistics is the person you want calculating that risk; your friend Joe who never got the concept of negative numbers in fifth grade or what “x” represents in high school algebra is extremely unlikely to correctly calculate it regardless of his confidence level.
If one thinks about it, it’s not surprising. People forced to live closer and for much more time than they are used to under stressful conditions are far more likely to bicker and argue. Not exactly an encouraging environment for intimacy.
From Why are women ‘failing’ to reproduce? Maybe it’s time to ask them:
Putting the planet ahead of parenthood… How selfish of them! Silly people, wanting their children to have a place to live!
@MarkedMan: I keep thinking that there’s also a psychological aspect to it that has the potential to impact sales. Without the federal mask mandate, we’d be seeing in real-time what percentage of the traveling public is willing to accept what level of risk.
Airlines can bleat all they want about HEPA filters, but being in a small, confined space for an extended period of time with a bunch of strangers is an ideal situation for spreading illness. Those of us who used to fly fairly regularly know full well that you can get sick while flying.
The airlines have to know that for a certain percentage of fliers–myself included–having and enforcing a mask requirement is a necessary component of me being comfortable enough to purchase a ticket until this dang thing is no longer a pandemic but endemic (and there are actual definitions of this, not just “eh, we’re tired of complying”). I don’t think I’m alone on this.
On balance, as numbers are climbing and this virus is still raging, most reasonable people will get that being trapped on a plane with strangers–many of whom would be more than willing to lie about having symptoms (or be asymptomatic or pre-symptomatic)–puts you at higher risk for exposure. Thankfully, the mask requirement is a federal mandate and not up to the airlines, but honestly, I’m not flying Southwest because everything I’ve read says that they are total slackers about enforcing mask use.
TL;DR: there’s a sales aspect here too that would affect their bottom line.
@OzarkHillbilly: Wrong link.
Correct link.
@OzarkHillbilly:
Except that’s not what’s happening. Declining birth rates were a thing before all of this, and people would give the same base reason: “I don’t want to bring a child into this terrible world”. Hell… the term DINK is from the 80’s–showing that not having kids was popular enough 40 years ago to get its own acronym.
The fact is simply that increased wealth and security is directly linked with reduced birth rates. When child mortality drops and you don’t need your kids to support you when you’re old, the reasons for having them diminish.
@OzarkHillbilly: The pills are interesting. My understanding is that their effectiveness is predominantly based on using them within 3 days of the onset of symptoms, which implies a level of awareness and monitoring that the great un-vaxed possess simply do not have, either because of capacity or denialism.
OTOH, it sheds new light on the administration’s recent emphasis on home testing. Even our resident trumpers might quietly pick up a self test from an out of town drugstore and then privately see their doctor for a prescription if they start to develop symptoms. That way they wouldn’t have to break stride on their “Everyone’s an idiot! Fauci is the Devil” tirade.
Filed under “Don’t get mad; get even …”
France just cut a $19 billion arms deal with the UAE, which essentially replaces a recently suspended $23 billion arms deal with the US. It’s also getting quite chummy with Qatar and SA.
Ooh la la 😀
@Mu Yixiao: I know. The comment was in direct response to this:
“She references a Spectator cover story from October that blamed “baby doomers” for “putting the planet ahead of parenthood”.”
As far as, “I don’t want to bring a child into this terrible world”. I’ve been on this planet for 63 years. If I had a nickel for every time I heard that sentiment expressed, I’d be living my best life on the Riviera.
@Mu Yixiao:
Absolutely. For a couple of decades now the US wouldn’t have reached replacement rate without immigration, both because of direct immigration and because first and second generation immigrants have a higher birthrate than long term native population.
The worry has always been that declining population will result in a scarcity of labor, and therefore a dwindling economy. I don’t think that’s actually a problem right now. I suspect there is still a very large percentage of jobs that could be automated, and that number is actually going up, not down. The more difficult question is how do we put purchasing power in the hands of retirees? If they are not earning a salary, how do they get income (and confidence in future income) to spend rather than save?
Interestingly, the UMWA just came out, loudly, against Manchin’s opposition to BBB & urged him to reconsider. We’ll have to see how much, if at all, Manchin cares about a pissed off mine workers union.
@MarkedMan: Denial is not a river in Egypt, and I’ve never known a person who was completely immune to it. I don’t know how we surmount that obstacle.
I suspect these drugs will have very little in the way of a positive impact on the unvaccinated. After all, “it’s no worse than the flu if one is healthy,” and they all live very healthy lifestyles, not to mention that ivermectin is the real cure.
@OzarkHillbilly: @MarkedMan:
As Jax noted near the end of yesterday’s open forum, the U.S. army has come up with what appears to be a very promising Covid vaccine.
@CSK: Yep, I’ve read of it. Sounds to good to be true to my skeptical ears, so I’ll believe it when I see it.
Which isn’t to say that I reject the very idea, just that I have read of thousands of miracle cures that never quite deliver. It would be really nice if this one did.
@OzarkHillbilly:
James Joyner writes for Defense One, which initially published the report about this vax, so it’s a legit source of information. The news has been reported elsewhere as well.
@Jen:
Every time I hear the the airline exec tout their HEPA filters I wonder if they really believe their own BS.
Their filtration system might be effective if all exhaled air were collected and passed through their HEPA filters (all persons on board breath into a collection system that is then processed).
As great as their filters might be, my breathing the exhalation of the guy beside or behind me is not being filtered and therefore exposing my lungs.
@CSK: It’s not a matter of the source. Peer review always knocks things down a notch or 12 from initial reports.
@Bob@Youngstown: Exactly. And anyone with any sense understands this intuitively.
Also, people can be really gross. I was on a flight in November and the teenage kid next to me kept lowering his mask to pick his nose.
Every time I get home after flying I take the hottest shower my skin can tolerate, Silkwood-style.
Maybe birth rates resulting in population growth are not “natural.” Over the last ten thousand years population grew very slowly for the most part. Yes, pregnancy rates were high, but infant mortality, maternal mortality, war, famine, and pestilence kept population growth down. Technology resulted in better medicine and improved farm output, and we had bursts of population growth. We are now returning to the baseline. I would guess that high reproductive rates were not due to free will choices by previous generations, and people are now freed from those outcomes.
I’m not saying that this is good, but clearly the efforts of many governments to increase fertility, especially of the “right” people, have not been successful.
My thesis: Low population growth is normal.
@HarvardLaw92:
Interesting. There’s a low-grade cold war going on between Turkey and Qatar on the one hand, and Saudi and UAE (plus Egypt sort of) on the other. We sell arms to both sides, I suppose we can’t sniff at the French doing likewise.
@OzarkHillbilly:
Well, I’m hoping for the best in this case.
@Slugger:
Interesting. Various commentators upstream are correct that as income rises, birth rates drop. As women are educated or go into the workplace, ditto. And no government anywhere, despite some impressive incentives, has managed to change that to any significant degree. Of course the invention of effective birth control is the mechanism that makes it all possible.
It’s surprising in one way: giving birth is a whole hell of a lot safer, easier and less painful than at any time in human history. At the same time survival rates for newborns are through the roof. If what we really wanted was lots of children to love we’d be popping them out left and right. But economic incentives have reversed – kids aren’t your low-cost farm workers now, they’re enormous expenses and huge pains in the ass.*
Once the means – birth control – arrived on the scene, economics weighed in and the whole childbirth plus child-rearing ordeal became much less attractive. For all the sentimental talk of love and preciousness and cuteness and whatnot, money spoke the loudest.
*Insert joke re: if they’re pains in the ass, you’ve got your biology confused.
Attention: Donald Trump will be holding a press conference at Mar-a-Lago on January 6, 2022, the first anniversary of the Capitol insurrection.
@Michael Reynolds:
This is true, but it is still not a ton of fun–having witnessed it thrice, I understand why so many women used to die in childbirth. My wife’s first was a long labor and a challenging birth that required some medical intervention and the second required an emergency c-section at 3am. The third was relatively easy, a scheduled c-section.
@MarkedMan:
Pardon my pedantry, but the word you’re looking for is “extrinsic”, not “subjective”.
The willingness to assume risk is objective. Indeed your specific example includes one of the most obvious objective measures of willingness to assume risk: the amount of money one is willing to wager provides a very precise numerical measure of how much risk a particular player is willing to assume which the game is comparing this measure to each of the other players as the betting continues.
While willingness to assume risk is objective, it is not however and intrinsic property of humanity and thus varies extrinsically both from individual to individual and for a given individual based on context.
@Steven L. Taylor:
I watched one. That was enough. What came next was harder: the kid was two months early so it was off to the NICU for a couple weeks. Spoiler: she survived to plague me with impertinence, disobedience and outright contempt whenever technology was involved.
@Michael Reynolds:
I think it was mostly Macron needed a win heading into April, but yea, I agree. I’d love to see the discount they had to cut on those fighters to get the deal closed.
@Michael Reynolds:
“…impertinence, disobedience, and outright contempt…”
Gee, I wonder from whom she inherited those traits? 😀
@CSK:
God enjoys his little jokes.
@Michael Reynolds:
Well, as they would have said in eighteenth-century England, she’s a saucy wench.
@OzarkHillbilly:..Putting the planet ahead of parenthood… How selfish of them! Silly people, wanting their children to have a place to live!
@Mu Yixiao:..Hell… the term DINK is from the 80’s–showing that not having kids was popular enough 40 years ago to get its own acronym.
Norman Lear and his crew at All in the Family covered this issue in an episode that aired September 8, 1975.
@Stormy Dragon:
I was responding to Andy – subjective was his word, although I may have used it in my own. Equally important variable: ability to understand a complex risk.
But you glided over the main point. Andy was claiming risk itself is a variable. I was pointing out that risk is calculable and, for complex risk, may require an expert to calculate. Willingness to assume risk is a varable.
@MarkedMan:
Might be more accurate to say that risk is estimable, and willingness to assume risk would depend (at least in part) on the degree of faith one places in the accuracy of the estimates.
Update on my Mom’s COVID: so far mild symptoms. At this point she hardly sounds like she even has a cold. She still has her senses of taste and smell which seems to be a difference between the Omicron and earlier variants, so we’re assuming Omicron is what she got.
My brother is still working on getting her the monoclonal antibody treatment. It’s not overstating things to say this is an utterly confusing and colossal pain in the ass. Who can authorize it? Who writes the order? Where does the order go? When the order is finally sent, how do we know when to take her? Nobody knows! It’s ridiculous. Two and a half days on the phone, my poor brother. Apparently the order’s in and now it’s “don’t call us, we’ll call you.”
But at this point…fingers crossed, her case seems relatively mild. Of course with COVID things can go south in a hurry, so I won’t relax until I know she’s been treated.
(Am I a bad son for wanting it to be just bad enough that it doesn’t kill her but makes her say “shit, I don’t want to go through that again, time to get vaccinated?”)
@MarkedMan:
I’m going to nitpick.
Probability and risk are not the same thing. In your example of cards, the probability is an objective number that can be calculated. But the risk is subjective. Risk is a function of “pain vs. reward based on the probability”*. If I’m playing poker for Oreos, there’s no risk. If I’m playing $1 limit, it’s low risk (I can afford it). If I’m playing $100, it’s high risk (it could really hurt me financially).
If Elon Musk was sitting in that same $100-limit game, the risk to him would be non-existent–even though the probability of any hand is exactly the same for both of us.
==============
* Dictionary definition: “a situation involving exposure to danger”. If there’s no danger, there’s no risk.
@MarkedMan:
No, I got your point, which is why I categorized my response as pedantry instead of being substantive.
People saying “subjective” when they mean “extrinsic” is just one of my pet peeves. =)
America is now in fascism’s legal phase
Considering the times, last week I picked up Hannah Arendt’s Origins of Totalitarianism It begins with a discussion of antisemitism, the parallels are easy to draw. I need to add Toni Morrison’s talk to my reading list.
@HarvardLaw92:
@Michael Reynolds:
It’s a long term thing that the Saudi’s have hedged their arms purchase bets.
IIRC about half the Saudi air force is European made: Typhoons, Tornados, Saab AEW.
Not bought much French before, though there were serious talks re. Mirage 4000 before they decided to go for mix F-15 and Tornado; a third whole system would have been a bit rich even for Riyadh.
re. Turkey, it’s interesting that France is also selling warships to Greece (also edging out a US sale) And Rafales; and a defence treaty additional to NATO!
Also of interest: the US is increasing force basing in northern Greece, IMO indicating desire for alternative basing options to Turkey in event of conflict with Russia and/or full breach with Ankara.
So the Franco-Greek deals aren’t overriding that strategic imperative.
@HarvardLaw92: Is “minus 12” on the pool for this question taken yet?
@OzarkHillbilly: My guess would be a similar impact to that of Tamiflu and that the effectiveness window may be the critical point. Another question in my mind is if the biological in question is safe to take if you DON’T have Covid-19 with in-home rapid tests (assuming you have one available) are still spotty last I heard and the test you take at the doctor’s office routinely having results several days away.
@CSK: Yet another reason not to tune into CNN.
@Mikey: Wa! I wish I could send you the clinic I go to for your town. The doctor/owner’s message before you wait in the phone tree currently includes “remember, if you get Covid, we can set you up with monoclonal antibody treatment right here in our office, so call us first.”
@Just nutha ignint cracker:
The glad tidings appear to have been announced on a number of other news outlets as well.
Work’s been worse than usual, as everyone is attempting to finish enough of it so we can leave early on the 24th.
I thought of an odd question: do dogs understand clothes?
All dogs I had worse a sweater when it was cold. All three of them found the means to remove it without human help (then they engaged in shivering sometimes).
Emm liked to chew on the oversize sleeve of an old sweatshirt I sometimes wore around the house, while I was wearing it. She clearly knew she wasn’t hurting me, but did she know the clothes were not part of me?
The other thing any dog owner must have noticed, is their dogs can spend lots of time sniffing our laundry, as well as shoes and slippers by the bed (mine did).
This reminds me of some lines in season 1 of Miracle Workers, when God is explaining the weird animals in his planet:
Man: what’s a cow?
God: It’s like a large dog you can get a drink from.
Man: And what’s a dog?
God: It’s like a small cow you can be friends with.
I often think tautology works really well in comedy.
@Kathy:
It’s your odor on the clothing. There is nothing our pug likes more than rollicking in the dirty laundry when one of us is trying to sort it. He’ll pull stuff off the bed our out of the hamper if it is left open and drag it to his bed. Sometimes he gums it, other times just lays on it.
All our dogs have had a thing for dirty clothing. The sweatier the better.
Dirty clothes are the bees knees to a dog.
@Kathy: @Sleeping Dog:
I’ve heard and read that when your dog is very young, and you have to leave it alone for a few hours, you should put a dry bath towel you’ve used in the dog’s bed so that the dog will be reassured by your scent.
I’ve never known a dog that didn’t adore dirty laundry, particularly underwear.
My dog likes to take my dirty socks out to the back yard and carefully bury them.
He does not dig a hole for them in places where a new hole would be obvious, he goes for the bark and then noses the bark back over the place, a deliberate effort to conceal. He does not want them to be found again.
@CSK: Dirty underwear are the BEST, according to my daughter’s puppy. Clean ones will do, in a pinch, she’s figured out how to open dresser drawers, drag out some undies, chew out the crotch, then puts them back! Pants, too, but she has no luck putting them back. The legs are too long, I guess. 😛
A minor rant about unimportant shit that annoys me to no end.
I’m an “Administrative Assistant” (glorified secretarial pool). Our job is to support the other departments.
But unlike most of my fellow admins (who are half my age) I have a Swiss army knife of skills* and experience. I’m the one that gets called for the weird shit.
So… I’ve been assigned to a project for Marketing. They’re releasing a new product (and, it seems, updating some older ones) early next year. The product sheets for each of these products is being revamped–in 9 different languages.
My task is to take the supplied translations and insert them into the InDesign documents for each language (6 docs/language).
Easy, right? Just copy & paste the German or Russian or Chinese in place of the English. Easy-peasy, lemon-squeezy!
BZZZZT! Wrong answer!
I have no idea who created these documents, but I want to print them all out, roll them up, wrap them in stretch-wrap, and use them to bludgeon that person silly. These are the most sloppy, un-thought-through InDesign files I’ve ever had to deal with. The most basic practices are ignored. Rather than “This was created by a highly-skilled designer working for a world-wide industry leader”, it’s “this was slapped together by a high-school student who left it until the night before it was due”.
Sure, the end product looks good. But… making any changes requires digital gymnastics of an olympic level.
=======================
* I’ve worked a lot of jobs in a lot of industries.
@Mu Yixiao: And so, yet again, an argument devolves to definition. I view the “risk” of drawing an inside straight as being exactly calculable. You contend that the “risk” must include the impact of a negative result. I assume that if you accept my definition then you would agree with me. If I accepted your definition I would agree with you.
Also very interesting, in Covid news and needle-phobia.
https://www.kake.com/story/45519078/scared-of-needles-trials-for-covid-vaccine-in-pill-form-underway-in-wichita
No Edit button, so I’ll add this here….if you’re in Kansas, unvaccinated, and reading this, here’s a different option!
@Jax:
You’d think they were developing the first medical pill ever. I mean, if there’s something the pharmaceutical industry has down cold, is how to deliver medication taken orally and through the digestive system.
@Kathy: I like how they added the part about how it survives the digestive system because it’s pretty obvious some of our unvaxxed (cough cough) friends on here don’t understand how a lot of things work. 😛
@Kathy: Plus, $1,5oo and no needles! Plus the chance of not dying of Covid! Win win.
@CSK:
Almost anything with your scent is comforting for them. We’ve had dogs that when we need to leave them at the kennel while we were gone, we’d send along an old dirty shirt for them. Others were hammerheads and couldn’t wait for us to leave so they could be with the other dogs at the kennel.
@Jax:
What? Like the 5G chip and the super-duper magnets won’t survive with the pill through the intestines?
@Kathy: Shhhhh!!! You’re not supposed to mention superior cell phone reception and the ability to shit barbed wire out your ass with magnets! 😛
Did you see the Dallas Q’s think they’ve been hit with Anthrax because they caught Covid? Waiting for them to show up on the Herman Cain awards.
https://www.vice.com/en/article/k7wz5a/people-got-sick-at-a-conspiracy-conference-theyre-sure-its-anthrax
@Jax:
Two things:
1) I’m so certain about what they’re ill with, I’d be willing to bet them everything I own and can borrow and steal, that it’s not anthrax.
2) This wouldn’t have happened if they’d taken an anthrax vaccine 🙂
@CSK:
Our pup, who is 11, has never touched the laundry basket. It’s on the floor in our bedroom and she has zero interest. Zero. She’s also never tried to get on our bed, and I’ve left bacon cooling on the counter and left the room and she hasn’t touched it.
I can’t decide if she’s really well-behaved, understands boundaries, or just isn’t that bright.
@Jax: I’m sorry but WTAF is this??
And…this is quite a sentence:
I’m agog.
@Jen: I’m going with “They’re gonna wish it was anthrax and not stupidity” for $500, Jen. 😛
There’s a vaccine and treatment for anthrax. But not stupidity. Not even with a 2×4 or duct tape.
@Jen:
One time at the Main Street Station buffet in Vegas, there was this couple with a service dog, which are allowed in the dining room. The dog lay under their table, eyes open and looking here and there from time to time, but utterly calm.
Every other dog surrounded by lots of food and lots of people would be moving around, excitedly, sniffing and begging. This one, I’m assuming still, was really well trained.
@Jen:
If she has pups, I’ll take one,please.
@Jax: @Jen:
They want to believe someone poisoned them with anthrax spores because it makes them feel important, as if they’re a real threat to the Deep State that needs to be eliminated.
@Jen: “as a result of impaling his leg on an arrow in an accident in his brother’s garage weeks previously.“
Left unsaid, alcohol may have been been involved.
@Jax: how did the polio sugar cube vaccine survive?
@Jen:
@Scott O: