Matthew Yglesias is the kind of guy, if you were drowning, he wouldn’t lift a finger but instead tell you that you actually have plenty of oxygen in the water you’re breathing, it’s just not in a usable form.
Month: March 2021
Pop In
An important step in not taking yourself too seriously is embracing the fact that you like pop music just like everybody else
— Devon ☀️ (@devonzuegel) March 31, 2021
Always liked pop music, never claimed I didn’t.
Just like everything else, nearly, too.
Detour
Outdoor mask decree met with dismay by Spain’s tourism industry.
Heh. People do hilariously useless stuff because at “least it’s something.”
Assethole
Typical of Yglesias, this is deeply, deeply stupid.
That’s not even what people mean by asset price inflation, as this comment points out. Who gives a flip about the very narrow definition the economics field has for it? And the definition is also related to the contention in economics that there is no such thing as a bubble, which is also specious and based on the-market-is-always-right ideology.
Also, dipshit Yglesias is using the most technical definition of inflation* to weasel out of the fact that the goods and services that consumers need most — housing, child care, medical care — have all risen enormously in price, while you can get a great deal on a fucking TV. Like this helps or matters. (“Let them eat 75 inch Vizios.”)
I kind of wish I’d gone to Harvard, so I could get away with being so wrong and deliriously obtuse and people would still line up to laud me for it.
I’ll just leave this here:
*What he means by “But that’s not what inflation is” is that inflation is technically a measure of the rise of prices of all items and services in the economy over time, not specific instances of same. So, if your TV and your computer get way cheaper, and you can no longer afford medical care or school, you’re still good, because as long as it averages out, inflation hasn’t risen. Tada!
Loss of Perspective
To repeat, we can have two out of three: public health safety, medical privacy concerning Covid status, or an open economy.
Those who refuse to consider relaxing Covid status privacy are implicitly calling either for keeping the economy closed or for disregarding public health. https://t.co/YC1yQEtjY2
— Nils Gilman (@nils_gilman) March 30, 2021
Yeah, no vax passport, no international travel, economy is much worse off. Need vax passport ASAP.
And if you’re worried about being tracked, get rid of your smartphone or computer first. Way, way more tracking there already than this will ever be.
Ending Things
Don’t Believe the Doomsayers. Vaccines Will End The Pandemic.
Yes, they will. When you see the libs saying that even in 10 years we’ll be wearing 40 masks, only going outside once a year to receive our ritual shaming, don’t believe them. It’s not gonna play out that way, and that’d be true even if we had no vaccines.
Some people like the feeling of doom, I think. It’s predictable and feels consequential.
Safe Tea
I see this phrase “completely safe” being bandied about, mostly by liberals, and these days mostly (but not always) about Covid. As in, I don’t want to do this and that until it’s “completely safe.”
DUMBASS AIN’T A THING IN THE UNIVERSE COMPLETELY SAFE.
Where, just where, did this desire and illusion of complete safety come from? Why are so many people obsessed with it? It just does not and cannot exist. This is what gestates the lockdown lifers and the new hikikomori I guess, this illusion of all-encompassing safety.
To quote Victoria Williams, “That which you fear the most, could meet you halfway.” Seems that very few understand this. Live your life. Do things. Take safety measures, get vaccinated. But nothing is completely safe. Never was, never will be. Live a little; no one else will do it for you. Cowering under your bed, hiding from the light, is no way to live or to be.
Flav
We sampled tap water across the US – and found arsenic, lead and toxic chemicals.
In the US, we just call that “flavor!”
Taste the FREEDOM!!!!!
Sturgeon
New research released by the CDC estimates an 80% reduction in transmission 14 days after shot 1, and a 90% reduction 14 days after shot 2. I'm not saying that if you follow me you'll get all the CDC announcements a month in advance but you'd have gotten this one. https://t.co/5DePDDj6RE
— Kelsey Piper (@KelseyTuoc) March 30, 2021
Shit, I didn’t provide a hard estimate (should have), but I knew the vaccines would reduce transmission that much because I can fucking read, all the while “experts” were saying it was impossible.
Well shit I am grumpy today. But that’s because I wish people were actually good at their jobs.
Lab Out
Former CDC chief says “most likely” cause of coronavirus is that it “escaped” from a lab.
Uh oh. China is gonna get angry.
“I am of the point of view that I still think the most likely etiology of this pathogen in Wuhan was from a laboratory, you know, escaped,” Redfield told CNN’s Dr. Sanjay Gupta during an interview taped in January, to be aired in full Sunday. “Now, other people don’t believe that, that’s fine. Science will eventually figure it out. It’s not unusual for respiratory pathogens that are being worked on in the laboratory to infect the laboratory worker.”
Exactly. Happens rather frequently.
Eg Me On
I’m glad when I was in Egypt, I did things I wasn’t supposed to do, saw things I wasn’t supposed to see, hung out with people I wasn’t supposed to hang out with, and in general just ignored rules and regulations left and right.
I mean, I am a paratrooper, right? We’re supposed to do that kinda shit. And I did.
Stoned
I'm always profoundly disturbed by how stupid humans are when I'm doing this sort of thinking. Man, are we dull, dull, dull.
Retrospective on basic tech is good for this. Read the improvements in basic steam engines. Seem obvious in hindsight, but they took generations.
— Ian Welsh (@iwelsh) March 30, 2021
I think about this a lot when I consider that, even if you are talking about just Homo sapiens, we used the same stone tools with some variations and improvements for 200,000+ years.
We’re still those apes barely up from the savannah.
Swing of Things
It’s been really interesting to watch people swing from nonchalance and “just the flu” beliefs during the first stages of the pandemic to how those people are now. When it was a dire and unknown threat they underestimated it and were wrong, and now when it is known and we are defeating it these same people are doom-mongering and are wailing and claiming the world is ending.
I guess they are consistent in being wrong, but that’s in no way a good thing.
No Doom
I don’t quite agree that a slight rise in cases is a surge, but this article has some good news.
Carefully done studies on large populations show a very low rate of reinfection for this coronavirus: less than 1 percent.
I’d been wondering about the reinfection rate, so that answers that. It’s about what I expected as it matches other similar viruses. We don’t yet know the infection immunity period for this one, but I’d expect it in people with normal immune systems to be about two years, which the article also mentions.
It’s hard to know exactly how long, because the virus is so new, but for SARS (the related coronavirus that almost sparked a pandemic in 2003), people who were infected retained an antibody response, and thus protection, for an average of two years.
This is great, too:
And it gets better: Yesterday, the CDC released real-life data showing that, just two weeks after even a single dose, the two mRNA vaccines were 80 percent effective in preventing infection. The effectiveness rose to 90 percent after the second, booster dose. People in the study were routinely tested regardless of whether they had symptoms, so we know that vaccines prevented not just symptomatic illness—the vaccine-efficacy rate reported in the trials—but any infection.
Remember when “experts” were lining the fuck up to say that was impossible? Where ya’ll at now?
Anyway, none of this will matter to the lockdown lifers and lockdown lovers (two distnct, but related, groups) so we must work very hard to resist them.
Chumping
Don’t want a vaccine passport? Fine. How about a TAX for those who refuse to get vaccinated, proportional to the additional costs and burdens they impose on society as a result of needing to have the ‘freedom” to spread their potentially COVID variant-infected aerosol everywhere?
— Asha Rangappa (@AshaRangappa_) March 30, 2021
Nah, just house arrest would be ok. No jabby, no jobby.
Got my first vaccine shot today. It was the Moderna one as expected. Shoulder is a bit sore, but the after-effects are so mild I still worked out (legs and abs) seven hours later.
Anyone who doesn’t get vaccinated is a chump who is also harming the rest of us. Double-chump, then.