Etiquette



DP Etiquette

First rule: Don't be a jackass.

Other rules: Do not attack or insult people you disagree with. Engage with facts, logic and beliefs. Out of respect for others, please provide some sources for the facts and truths you rely on if you are asked for that. If emotion is getting out of hand, get it back in hand. To limit dehumanizing people, don't call people or whole groups of people disrespectful names, e.g., stupid, dumb or liar. Insulting people is counterproductive to rational discussion. Insult makes people angry and defensive. All points of view are welcome, right, center, left and elsewhere. Just disagree, but don't be belligerent or reject inconvenient facts, truths or defensible reasoning.

Saturday, August 7, 2021

How to cope with bad world news

  When bad news breaks, it can be hard to escape from it. You might find it tricky to unplug or think about other things. It’s totally normal to feel overwhelmed by the news, especially when good news stories can seem harder to come by. So, if you’re feeling down about the world, we’ve got some tips for you.


This might help if:​

  • you've been feeling overwhelmed by the news
  • you don’t know how to react to bad world news
  • you’re finding it hard to disconnect from the media.

Reacting to bad world news​

There are endless kinds of news stories that can make you feel really down. Some common reactions to bad world news include feeling:
  • anxious and worried
  • depressed and sad
  • helpless
  • confused
  • angry.

Why does bad world news affect us?​

On a planet with almost eight billion people, it’s really easy to feel disconnected. But when a world tragedy strikes, feelings of worry, sadness and grief are more common than you might think.
When we see upsetting information, our bodies react by releasing stress hormones to deal with the negative emotions. As news outlets can also be skewed towards reporting bad news over good news, this can create long-term negative effects on our wellbeing.

How can I cope with bad world news?​

There are a few things you can do to help.

1. Learn to switch off​

It’s easier said than done, but taking a break from social media and the news can do a lot to help tackle the effects of bad world news. A majority of social media users will see shared news articles on their feeds, and with the media’s emphasis on negative news, it’s easy to be overwhelmed by your time on social media.
If you notice yourself feeling down because of the things you’re seeing on social media or in the news, take a break. You could try going for a walk, reading a book, listening to music or a podcast, playing a game, or just being outside in the fresh air without your devices.
In the long term, you could set yourself some rules. For example:
  • Only check the news at one or two set times per day.
  • Schedule blocks of time every day that are free of social media. You could try not using social media/your phone for three hours after you wake up, so you can start the day fresh, or for a couple of hours before you go to bed, to help you properly unwind.
  • Make sure every day to spend at least 15 minutes on self-care or an activity you enjoy.
Check out some more tips on taming your social media use.

2. Rethink your news sources​

For some people, staying on top of what’s going on in the world is pretty important. Many news sources are focused more on getting clicks and views than on providing unbiased information. This is why the language used in some news articles or videos can be over the top, which can trigger a bigger emotional response.
Good news reporting has these characteristics:
  • It is focused on the truth. Not only does it verify facts, but it also presents them in an accurate context.
  • It is fair and doesn’t take sides. All sides of an issue are presented, and the context of the story is never left out intentionally in order to influence a reader’s understanding.
  • It is independent. Reporters aren’t influenced by sources in any way, including for personal or financial gain.
  • It is accountable. Any errors or unfair coverage are acknowledged and corrected.
Have a look at where you’re getting your news:
  • Is it from reputable, objective sources that are emotionally neutral?
  • Are you getting the full picture, or just snippets from social media and news headlines?
  • Are there any sources that upset you less than others?
If you find that certain sources keep popping up and often leave you feeling upset, you can always unfollow or block them.

3. Try to understand why the news is upsetting you​

Sometimes, world news can hit close to home. Whether it’s a tragedy in your family’s country of origin, or the death of a person you really admire, world news can feel very personal. If what you’re feeling is more than just a sense of empathy for those affected by a tragedy, it’s worth speaking about it to someone you trust. Chat to your friends, family or even a counsellor about how the news is affecting you. The simple act of talking can help you process what’s going on and make you feel a whole lot better. Get more tips on talking to someone you trust.

4. Have ‘no news’ time with loved ones​

Spending time with friends or family can help boost your mood. Whether it’s doing an activity together, like cooking or walking your pet, or just having a chat, it can help you take your mind off things. Mention to your loved one that you don’t want to talk about news or current affairs. You could even specify which issue or story you want to avoid for the moment.

5. Accept your level of control​

When something bad happens, our immediate response may be to ask ourselves what we can do to help, and how we can put an end to it. Feeling helpless is a natural response, and one that can cause stress.
While there are usually things, big and small, that we can do to help a situation, we can’t stop it entirely on our own. Learning to understand how much influence we can have over something is a very important step in reducing the stress we might feel on hearing bad news.
We’re not saying that you shouldn’t try to help. In fact, helping out and trying to do something positive can often make us feel better. But we need to understand what is the most helpful way to contribute to a cause, and learn to accept the limits.






Friday, August 6, 2021

Climate change update

Ocean current system may collapse 
A Washington Post article brings up the periodically mentioned topic of deep Atlantic ocean currents and their slowdown. The currents act as Earth's air conditioner by distributing heat away from the equator to North Atlantic regions. Climate scientists have been warning about this issue for at least the last 20 years. If the current stops, and it can, the climate of Europe, eastern Canada, the eastern US and maybe other regions are projected to undergo major changes. 

Human-caused warming has led to an “almost complete loss of stability” in the system that drives Atlantic Ocean currents, a new study has found — raising the worrying prospect that this critical aquatic “conveyor belt” could be close to collapse.

In recent years, scientists have warned about a weakening of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC), which transports warm, salty water from the tropics to northern Europe and then sends colder water back south along the ocean floor. Researchers who study ancient climate change have also uncovered evidence that the AMOC can turn off abruptly, causing wild temperature swings and other dramatic shifts in global weather systems.

Scientists haven’t directly observed the AMOC slowing down. But the new analysis, published Thursday in the journal Nature Climate Change, draws on more than a century of ocean temperature and salinity data to show significant changes in eight indirect measures of the circulation’s strength.

These indicators suggest that the AMOC is running out of steam, making it more susceptible to disruptions that might knock it out of equilibrium, said study author Niklas Boers, a researcher at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany.

If the circulation shuts down, it could bring extreme cold to Europe and parts of North America, raise sea levels along the U.S. East Coast and disrupt seasonal monsoons that provide water to much of the world.  
“This is an increase in understanding … of how close to a tipping point the AMOC might already be,” said Levke Caesar, a climate physicist at Maynooth University who was not involved in the study.
Since we do not know at what point the currents might shut down, we are playing Russian Roulette with this aspect (and all others) of the environment. Under current conditions, i.e., heavily polluting modern civilization and ~8 billion humans on the planet, effects on ocean currents can be seen as an externality of modern civilization and unregulated business operations. Maybe there will be serious or catastrophic consequences, or maybe not. Maybe bad things will happen fairly soon, but maybe not.


Global warming has unleashed a new major source of natural methane emissions
Methane is a potent greenhouse gas pollutant, about 20 times more heat-trapping than carbon dioxide. At present, human activity releases about 12 gigatons more carbon into the air each year than the Earth can recycle by natural processes. One gigaton is 1 billion tons, or 1,000 million tons. Natural methane emissions contribute to an increasing atmospheric carbon level, which is the major cause of global warming and the climate changes that are now underway. A Washington Post articleScientists expected thawing wetlands in Siberia’s permafrost. What they found is ‘much more dangerous,’ describes the situation:  
Scientists have long been worried about what many call “the methane bomb” — the potentially catastrophic release of methane from thawing wetlands in Siberia’s permafrost.

But now a study by three geologists says that a heat wave in 2020 has revealed a surge in methane emissions “potentially in much higher amounts” from a different source: thawing rock formations in the Arctic permafrost.

The difference is that thawing wetlands releases “microbial” methane from the decay of soil and organic matter, while thawing limestone — or carbonate rock — releases hydrocarbons and gas hydrates from reservoirs both below and within the permafrost, making it “much more dangerous” than past studies have suggested.

Nikolaus Froitzheim, who teaches at the Institute of Geosciences at the University of Bonn, said that he and two colleagues used satellite maps that measured intense methane concentrations over two “conspicuous elongated areas” of limestone — stripes that were several miles wide and up to 375 miles long — in the Taymyr Peninsula and the area around northern Siberia.

The study was published by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Surface temperatures during the heat wave in 2020 soared to 10.8 degrees Fahrenheit above the 1979-2000 norms. In the long stripes, there is hardly any soil, and vegetation is scarce, the study says. So the limestone crops out of the surface. As the rock formations warm up, cracks and pockets opened up, releasing methane that had been trapped inside.  
Normally the frozen permafrost acts as a cap, sealing methane below. It also can lock up gas hydrates, which are crystalline solids of frozen water that contain huge amounts of methane. Unstable at normal sea-level pressure and temperatures, gas hydrates can be dangerously explosive as temperatures rise.

The study said that gas hydrates in the Earth’s permafrost are estimated to contain 20 gigatons of carbon. That’s a small percentage of all carbon trapped in the permafrost, but the continued warming of gas hydrates could cause disruptive and rapid releases of methane from rock outcrops.
So, it's not just methane in rocks, but also microbial sources of carbon production that can release carbon into the atmosphere. Since we do not know if there is a tipping point at which arctic methane and other carbon pollutants might be released rapidly or what the effects of that might be, we are playing Russian Roulette with this aspect (and all others) of the environment.


Context: it's a huge, high stakes war and we need 
powerful allies, regardless of motives
This post is intended to exemplify and make clear the global scope, urgency and seriousness of climate change.

Among a couple of other things, the post here yesterday, Chapter review: Moral Money, was intended to point out that there seems to be a major corporate and business change in thinking about the relevance of environmental damage that arises from normal business operations. In the past, the business community ignored or denied that environmental damage was real and/or important. There was a gigaton of deceit, emotional manipulation and lying to the public going on. 

Now, at least some of the business community leadership seems to be changing its mind about that. The motive behind that mindset change probably comes mostly from corporate greed, fear and self-interest, not altruism or anything else. But setting motive aside, dealing seriously with climate change will require acceptance by most of the leadership of most major corporations and financial institutions. It is clear by now, that the business and finance sectors have major political power and they get what they want via campaign contributions and lobbyists, both of which have worked ruthlessly and in as much secrecy as they could for decades to oppose serious regulation and political action on climate change. 

When one combines what is in this blog post with yesterday's Moral Money post, the absolute necessity of buy-in by the corporate and finance sectors becomes clear. The modern Republican Party is hell bent on stopping and reversing environmental protection laws in the name of their demagogic fascist, anti-government, anti-regulation ideology. That ideology, now amounting to an intolerant, aggressive religion in fact, will not change. Other than occasional fig leaf adjustments for public relations purposes, i.e., deceit and manipulation, here will be no help from the fascist GOP in dealing with climate change. The demagogic FGOP lie will remain the same as it has been for decades: government is bad and always fails, but unregulated free markets are always good and succeed.

Never forget the FGOP war cry: "I'm here from the government, and I'm here to help." That sums up the intense cynical hate and loathing of government that oozes from every pore and orifice in America's political right. Those are the folks hell-bent on playing Russian Roulette with the environment, mostly because they are hell-bent on accumulating ultimate power and wealth, the environment, society and everything else be damned. 'Everything else' includes democracy and the rule of law.


Questions: 
1. This comes back to yesterday's Moral Money post: Is the business and finance communities' commitment to fighting climate change real or just lies, deceit and empty public relations noise?

2. Is the FGOP as rigidly opposed to government action in dealing with climate change as described here, or is there a stirring of genuine concern among some real (non-fascist), mostly young, republicans?[1]


Footnote: 
A recent NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist poll showed climate change is the top issue for Democratic voters. For Republicans, it barely registers overall, but there is a growing generational divide.

A recent Pew Research Center survey shows Republicans 18 to 39 years old are more concerned about the climate than their elders. By a nearly two-to-one margin they are more likely to agree that "human activity contributes a great deal to climate change," and "the federal government is doing too little to reduce the effects of climate change."

Some of these young conservatives are starting environmental groups and becoming climate activists. And now they're pushing their party to do more.

Maybe some of the young 'uns believe that humans cause climate change, but do they reject government regulation or taxation as part of the solution and instead want deregulated markets to run free and wild to solve the problem? Whose side are they really on? Do they even know, i.e., because their ideology and tribe won't let them know?

Thursday, August 5, 2021

Chapter review: Moral Money

Introduction & context 
Moral Money is chapter 10 of Gillian Tett’s 2021 book, Anthro-vision: A New Way to See in Business and Life. Tett is an anthropologist by academic training and an influential financial journalist and editor at the Financial Times by profession. One of the things anthropologists key on is areas of silence about things that groups, tribes and people do not talk about.

The message here is generally positive. But the good news is packaged with cautionary observations about human nature that most readers here will be familiar with by now. The good news is that concern in American society for dealing with climate change really is beginning to influence the business community in beneficial ways. Some people may be aware of that, but I wasn’t. The caution is that humans will be human, even in the face major threat. The threat turns out to be what is useful here, but it isn’t concern for the climate. It is concern for power and wealth.

On August 19, 2019, I raised the matter of business morals in a post entitled Big Business Morality: Considering More Than Just Shareholders? That post was triggered by a letter that CEOs of ~200 major companies signed, e.g., Walmart, United Airlines, Amazon, Apple, Dow, Exxon Mobile, BP (British Petroleum), etc. These people are members of a powerful but quiet organization called the Business Roundtable. 

On its face, the letter seemed to be a repudiation of Milton Friedman’s narrow ideology that CEOs with a social conscience were “subversive” and a threat to the only moral imperative any company should have, namely profit. But because the language of the letter was both non-binding and hopelessly vague, I concluded it was just an empty PR stunt. I read the intent as only to try to make businesses look like they cared about something meaningful other than profit and not a meaningful expression of  something else. The open letter is here -- see the “Statement on the Purpose of a Corporation.” The five business principles the CEOs claimed to want to follow seemed to repudiate the idea that social conscience is subversive and bad for economic markets. Instead of a statement of worship of profit, they expressed some form of a social conscience.
 

Moral money
Tett starts by pointing out that in general and for a long time, companies and economic markets have largely ignored the costs of dealing with externalities, including various kinds of damage to the environment and society. That makes sense because ignoring those costs generally increases profit. Exceptions arise when government passes laws that make companies deal with externalities. The corporate attitude was to let society and government deal with the damage companies leave in their wake as they generate as much profit as possible, as fast as possible. The belief was that whatever damage companies create is more than offset by the social good and wealth the companies created. 

The Business Roundtable letter linked to above expressed what is now commonly referred to in the business community as ESG, environmental, social and governance, principles. Tett described what drove the CEOs to write and sign that letter:
“.... investors were shunning fossil oil and gas stock because they feared that the sector would not be as profitable in the future as it had been in the past, because governments were clamping down on the use of fossil fuel, and consumers were agitating over climate change. That had created anxiety about ‘stranded assets,’ shorthand for the idea that the oil and gas reserves that fossil fuel companies owned might turn out to be worthless, making the company less valuable than investors had assumed. Or to put it another way, issues such as the environment has previously seemed to sit outside investors’ and economists’ models. They were called ‘externalities’ and often ignored. Now the externalities were threatening to become so important that they were overturning the models. The idea of keeping them ‘external’ looked increasingly ridiculous --- as any anthropologist knew it was.

The way that most investors framed this dramatic shift in attitude was in terms of the rise of the ‘sustainability’ movement or ‘green finance’ --- or with reference to [ESG principles]. Another frame that was also used was ‘stakeholderism,’ or the idea that people running companies should not simply aim to produce returns for shareholders --- as men such as Milton Friedman .... had once argued .... but to protect the interests of all stakeholders: employees, the wider society, suppliers, and so on.”

Tett described the mindset change that the Business Roundtable CEOs were expressing as one of changing from a narrow tunnel vision lens to a wider lateral vision lens that anthropologists try to view the world through. Tett takes this as evidence that the lateral vision mindset has gone a long way toward shifting attitudes in the business community, and on balance the change is for the better.

Tett admits that when she first saw the Business Roundtable letter and a hoard of emails from businesses about their commitment to ESG, her silent response was “ESG should stand for eye-roll, sneer and groan.” She didn't buy it.

Since Tett is influential and a well-known journalist, she was given direct access to some of the CEOs who signed the letter. Her interviews with them convinced her that their mindset change was real and there was more substance to the letter than she initially believed. She keyed in on key words and phrases, ESG, sustainability, green business, etc., and probed their real meanings in all of her areas of major contact. She found the same thing she saw in the CEO world in the financial sector and in the government and philanthropy sectors. Many investors were looking to finance companies with a broader mindset than just brass knuckles profit. 

There was a major convergence of thinking going on that she was unaware of until she opened her mind (applied lateral vision) to the possibility that ESG stood for something other than eye-roll, sneer and groan.

Over time, Tett kept listening and refined her understanding of what was going on as she learned more. She describes it like this:
But do people like [USB Bank chairman Axel] Weber really believe this stuff? .... The idea that banks were selling ESG products seemed a little like priests in the medieval Catholic church selling ‘indulgences’ .... the noise in the system [ESG, sustainability, green, etc.] was concealing a more important area of silence.

The issue at stake revolved around risk management. If you listened to the noise around ESG, it seemed that the movement was all about activism: vocal campaigners were calling for social and environmental change, and companies and financial groups were shouting about what they were doing to support this. But if you looked more closely at ESG, with an anthropologist’s lens, it was clear that there was a second factor at work that was less openly discussed: self-interest. A growing number of business and financial leaders were using ESG to protect themselves. The activists who had initially launched the EGS movement a decade or two earlier usually did not want to admit this.

But while activists who wanted proactively wanted to change the world had started the ESG movement, by 2017 it seemed that many investors has the less ambitious goal of simply avoiding doing any harm to the wider world. ‘That’s the sustainability crew,’ I told colleagues. Then there was a bigger --- and even less ambitious --- cohort who were primarily interested in ESG because they wanted to avoid doing harm to themselves. That category included asset managers who did not want to lose money on fossil fuel stranded assets, or invest in companies that faced reputation risks, be that around sexual abuse inside the office .... or human rights abuse in the supply chain or racial issues .... Similarly, corporate boards did not want to be tripped up by nasty surprises, or see shareholders flee or scandals erupt that might cause executives to lose their jobs.

Did this make the whole venture hypocritical? Many journalists thought so. However, I saw it as a victory of sorts for the original founders of the movement. History shows that when a revolution takes place, it tends to succeed not when a tiny minority of committed activists embrace a cause, but when a silent majority decide that it is too dangerous or pointless to resist change. ESG was nearing this tipping point since the mainstream was starting to be pulled along by the tide, even if they did not want to define themselves as activists at all.”
Tett speculated that by 2017, there was enough worry among CEOs that there was too much uncertainty and instability. At the 2017 Davos meeting, business leaders expressed the realization that progress could go in reverse and history seems to go in pendulum-like trends. The 2008 financial crisis obliterated the previous rock solid belief that financial innovation was always good. The crisis was caused by financial innovations, CDOs and the like, that most people did not and could not understand. That undermined the rock solid belief that free-market capitalism could solve all problems.

So, the corporate and finance worlds embraced ESG. Tett estimates that by the autumn of 2019, at least $32 trillion had been invested by ESG standards. Some estimates were higher. But ESG wasn’t based only on concern about people or the environment. As Tett put it, “there was a more negative, less discussed incentive too: a fear of metaphorical pitchforks.” 

For moral authority for ESG and a social conscience, and in opposition to Friedman’s assertion that social conscience is subversive, Tett points to Adam Smith’s second book published in 1759, The Theory of Moral Sentiments. There, Smith argued that markets and commerce could work only if there was a shared moral and social foundation among the business sector, government and the rest of society.  

A last point: a comparison with Christian nationalism 
It took Tett a combination of (i) her open-mindedness, life experiences, intelligence and academic training, (ii) a lot of time and persistence, and (iii) access to high level executives in business and finance, to finally arrive at this description of the motives behind the mindset change from narrow to lateral. She admits that her story faces a lot of disbelief and misunderstanding:
“.... journalists faced a story that was developing in a slow-moving, elliptical trend because of clunky acronyms and technical jargon that alienated outsiders. [the same thing that led to the 2008 financial disaster] .... The EGS sector was also opaque and fragmented, since it had been run in a cottage-industry style: .... It was tough to get an overarching picture of what was underway. .... ESG was everywhere but nowhere.”
IMO, that description of ESG sounds a lot like Christian nationalism. Powerful, fragmented, hard to see in clear detail and everywhere but nowhere. There really are complex things in our society that are hard to see and understand, and thus easy to dismiss as a mirage.


Questions: Has public agitation about climate change had an impact on the development of ESG, or is the business community just spewing deceptive public relations to minimize losses and lawsuits? Is it possible to be both cynical and not-cynical about ESG, i.e., to have mixed and maybe even contradictory motives? 

Tuesday, August 3, 2021

Do you care??


                                

Mike Barnicle, a frequent guest on MSNBC’s Morning Joe, said this morning that he thinks the biggest problem with our U.S. society is “apathy” … or what I always sarcastically refer to as people being “At the Mall©.”  In other words, people in general have more mundane interests versus those nasty politics.

But I think Barnicle is absolutely right.  Our population is rather ignorant of and apathetic to the U.S.’s political state of affairs, the greater worldly state of affairs, and governmental operations in general.  My guess is that at least half the adult population (over 18) would fail a general civics/politics test.  I have no hard stats to back that up, but just a gut feeling from watching and listening.  So, when I hear a politician say “the people are smart,” I cringe. I know it’s just pandering and isn’t, can’t be, the unvarnished truth.  The general public is not politically smart, but rather more self-absorbed within their limited bubbles.  That’s been my observation anyway. 

What’s even more remarkable to some of us is, the something they can know about (i.e., the here and now) is trumped, in many cases, by the something they can’t know about (i.e., the there and later).  I refer to religions now.  God, et al., seemingly takes up more of their attention-span than politics.  Don’t get me wrong, I understand the appeal of religions.  They are a believed way, though unknown, to self-preserve, which normally would take up most everyone’s attention priority. 

I don’t know, maybe politics is just too frustrating or even too complicated for people to get.  It does seem like this far, far away “thing,” many times removed from their everyday lives.  So why worry about it or waste their time on it?  Que Sera, Sera (Whatever Will Be, Will Be)."

Now the questions:

-Do you agree that the U.S. has an apathy problem, when it comes to politics?  If yes,

-Do you think politicians take advantage of the nation’s apathy (to advance their own agendas while apathetic people are not looking)?  “While cat’s away, mice will play Syndrome.”

Discuss. 

Thanks for posting and recommending.

Federal government fails to protect itself against hackers

In another dismal report on failings in government, a new report indicates that federal bureaucracies are unable or unwilling to be competent. The Washington Post writes:
A blistering Senate report in 2019 found dangerous cybersecurity lapses at eight government agencies, including unpatched computer bugs and citizens’ personal information left vulnerable to hacking.

Two years later, things are barely any better.

A 2021 update released this morning by the Senate Homeland Security Committee found seven of the eight agencies had made only minimal improvements during the past two years. Only the Department of Homeland Security, which includes the government’s lead cybersecurity agency, is doing substantially better.

They paint a picture of a government that, despite years of warning shots, is ill-prepared to withstand hacks from Russia, China and elsewhere.

“It is clear that the data entrusted to these eight key agencies remains at risk,” the report states. “As hackers, both state-sponsored and otherwise, become increasingly sophisticated and persistent, Congress and the executive branch cannot continue to allow [personally identifiable information] and national security secrets to remain vulnerable.”
  • During a hacking exercise, investigators were able to access hundreds of documents containing people’s personal information from the Department of Education, including 200 credit card numbers. The department’s IT staff didn’t block them or even notice.
  • The Transportation Department inspector general found nearly 15,000 IT devices, including more than 7,000 phones, that were being used by employees and contractors for which the department had no record.
That speaks for itself.

Questions: 
1. Who or what is mostly responsible for the federal failure to protect against hackers, e.g., failed congressional oversight (too gridlocked and busy doing partisan bickering and crackpot propagandizing?), failure of federal agency leadership to follow advice, failed presidential leadership (too busy propagandizing and attacking opponents and government?), decades of vicious Republican Party attacks on the federal government and competence itself, voters electing incompetent federal politicians, the Christian God's righteous punishment of America for being too secular and accepting of the LGBQT community and racial minorities, lead in the drinking water, increased consumption of organic food by federal employees[1], etc.?

2. Who or what comes in 2nd?


Footnote: 
1. 
Wot??



Monday, August 2, 2021

What just happened? Was that a Biden/CDC coverup?

(Note: I apologize for the absence of paragraph breaks in this post. I typed with plenty of space between paras, but they do not appear on the preview.) I know it's important, and for some people also fun, to talk about the worst elements of the GOP. I do plenty of that myself regarding domestic terrorists,Christian Nationalists etc. But though it's important to discuss those threats to democracy, the Biden admin's handling of Covid has been confused, confusing, full of rosy-eyed but factually incorrect propaganda, and most recently, it would seem a cover-up of the extent and significance of outbreaks of Covid (Delta) which only reached the public this past Friday after a whistleblower leaked internal documents to the Washington Post the preceding day. https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2021/07/29/cdc-mask-guidance/ 

CDC director, Rochelle Walensky has been a rather mercurial communicator throughout her tenure so far. At present she, like President Biden, is laying the blame for the current, game-changing Delta surge on the unvaccinated alone. Now, I'm the last person to deny that those who actively oppose vaccination and masks, then go out to crowded venues with impunity, are significant drivers of the surge and should be subject to mandates. They are more dangerous than drunk drivers, because 1 such person can infect multiple others with a deadly virus. But this is not the big story this week. It is NOT the reason for the reversal of CDC guidelines which is what has spurred a rash of new mandates, and led to Ms. Walensky's announcement of the reversal of policy guidelines on Tuesday, July, 27. It isn't what caused Joe Biden to make a 1/2 hour speech to the nation two days later. So what just happened? We were told by Walensky and Biden that unfortunately it turns out that it turns out that fully vaxxed folks can act as vehicles of transmission for Delta after all. But no data was put forward, though Walensky mentioned that these conclusions were data-driven. Many scientists and citizens alike asked just what data she was referring to. She had stated in her comments that we are "at a pivotal point" because of the situation, but had not shared any empirical information. The coverage was a bit surreal. Suddenly, the NY Times reported that New Yorkers were "scared all over again," though I noted with cognitive dissonance that they were out and about unmasked on the Upper West Side as if nothing had been said by the CDC. It had only been a few days since the last of the store signs mandating masks came down, and people were jazzed about the new "post-pandemic" vibe in the city. ( https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/28/nyregion/new-york-masks-virus-mood.html?action=click&module=Top%20Stories&pgtype=Homepage) 

The Times article didn't shed much light on what was so new and urgent:
For a fleeting moment, New York was a city reveling in itself. Just a month ago officials declared it fully open for business; masks slipped to chins and restaurants packed in customers as vaccines rolled out. The virus seemed to be losing. Today, the coronavirus has crept back, in a new, more infectious form that has driven up cases and hospitalizations, primarily among those still refusing vaccination, sending a city just staggering back to life into a tailspin.
Didn't we all know this? What did it mean to say that "today" the virus crept back in "more infectious form?" Weren't the newspapers filled with articles about Delta for months before that? Were we not warned in early May when the UK classed it as a "Variant of Concern," and delayed all reopening? Did we not follow the news from Israel which was warning us that they were seeing many breakthrough infections in late June? The Wall ST. Journal reported this on June, 25 and it certainly got my attention:
About half of adults infected in an outbreak of the Delta variant of Covid-19 in Israel were fully inoculated with the Pfizer Inc. vaccine, prompting the government to reimpose an indoor mask requirement [my emph.] and other measures to contain the highly transmissible strain. Preliminary findings by Israeli health officials suggest about 90% of new infections were likely caused by the Delta variant, according to Ran Balicer, who leads an expert advisory panel on Covid-19 for the government. Children under 16, most of whom haven’t been vaccinated, accounted for about half of those infected, he said. https://www.wsj.com/articles/vaccinated-people-account-for-half-of-new-covid-19-delta-cases-in-israeli-outbreak-11624624326?mod=article_inline
In mid July, Israel found that one reason for breakthrough infection (though not the only) was the "waning efficacy of Pfizer vaccine." Surely, one would guess the US gov't was taking these alarming reports and warnings seriously. On August 1, in the wake of a CDC leak (I'll get to that) Bloomberg News and the Boston Globe published the following grim report:
Half of the infections in Israel now are among the fully vaccinated, and public health officials are beginning to see signs of more serious disease among them, said Sharon Alroy-Preis, the nation’s Director of Public Health Services. She said that infections for people vaccinated in January are double those vaccinated in March, an apparent decrease in effectiveness over time that has led Israel to begin booster shots. She said infections were particularly problematic for people 60 and older. “It’s not just the fact that we’re seeing more disease, but they’re getting to severe and critical conditions,” she said... ( https://www.bostonglobe.com/2021/08/01/nation/israel-sees-waning-coronavirus-vaccine-effectiveness/?p1=Article_Recirc_Most_Popular )
Today, Sharon Alroy-Preis was interviewed on Face The Nation, after weeks of almost no coverage of this critical information in the US media (The Wall ST. Journal being an exception). During all these reversals of fortune in Israel, the UK, France, Indonesia et al., what was the US doing to prepare for the inevitable? How did they respond to the warnings based on alarming statistics and facts? Well, on July 4th, Biden declared "Independence from Covid" for the nation, stressing only the need to continue getting Americans vaxxed. This was consistent with his messsaging starting in mid-May, when the CDC advised all vaccinated Americans to discard their masks for almost all situations (including around their own unvaxxed children) and to stop social distancing."“Anyone who is fully vaccinated can participate in indoor and outdoor activities, large or small, without wearing a mask or physical distancing,” CDC Director Rochelle Walensky declared in May. This decision was made at the same time the UK was delaying reopening and reimposing mask mandates due to Delta, about which they warned the US gov't. But to make matters even worse, the guidelines specifically stipulated that there should be no system for requiring proof of vaccination, but rather, the CDC expected the unvaccinated to continue wearing masks on the basis of what was called an "honor system." 

Gee, do ya think folks who plot the kidnapping of a governor over mask mandates would "honor" any CDC system that they keep masking up? All those who had demonstrated, all the Republican politicians who had equated masks with "slavery" and the vaccine with a gov't conspiracy, they were to wear masks on scout's honor? A pathetic mistake, and one that was not conceded or reversed until now-- sort of. What was Biden saying during the intervening months in his statements to the press? In May, announcing the unmasking of America, he thanked all the American "patriots" who had been called by him and the admin to roll their sleeves up, and had responded definitively. Of course, this was an odd moment to be so grateful. After all, back then something like only 40-45% of eligible Americans were fully vaccinated. Instead of reinforcing vaccinations with the effective protocols of social distancing (esp. for the majority of Americans who were not vaccinated) and face coverings, that opportunity was squandered on a feel-goood anouncement. "Take off your mask...go and live your life again." Though many private companies and stores did not immediately make such a transition, over weeks the masks came off vaccinated and unvaccinated alike, mass-gatherings resumed, and talk of the "post-pandemic" era was ubiquitous. 

Again, in June, Biden stated, "Take off your mask. You've earned the right." On July 22, "“You’re not going to get COVID if you have these vaccinations." But by July 22, anybody living near Provincetown already knew that to be false if they followed local news or the Boston Globe. A significant outbreak among the unvaccinated had been occurring following July 4 celebrations in Cape Cod. The result was harrowing, and a shock to those vaccinated persons who became quite sick. It is truly astounding that not only did the government not issue a statement on the outbreak of Delta among mostly unvaccinated people in Cape Cod, but the mainstream media outlets somehow found it unworthy of their attention. Indeed, most of the country found out only after a whistleblower in the CDC, it is unknown who, leaked an internal document which revealed that the outbreak in Massachusetts was the main cause of the CDC's reversal of policy guidelines, along with the ungodly transmissability-- "more contagious than the common cold.. as contagious as chickenpox." The power-point document also stated that unvaxxed persons infected had as much virus as vaccinated cases, implying the ability to shed the virus just as easily as them. It should have been an embarrassing and disgraceful moment for the administration. Yet Walensky released the document the following day(just Friday), as if she had planned to do so all along, and she spun the report until it somehow fit back into the narrative that the only problem we face is the unvaccinatmed. That is absurd on its face as she conceded that the outbreak in Cape Cod was the decisive catalyst of the CDC reversal, and that event was about anything but the "unvaccinated." Let there be no doubt that unvaccinated people are getting sick and transmitting covid to others-- in some cases their own children or elderly parents. This is an outrage. It would be otherwise had the CDC cautioned parents to wear masks around unvaccinated children and their grandparents. Some data from the state of Massachusetts may help us to imagine the true situation. The Boston Globe reports:
In the most recent tally, 6,373 Massachusetts residents have contracted so-called breakthrough cases of COVID-19 — an infinitesimal percentage of those who have been vaccinated but still a source of anxiety for many and heartbreak for the families of 91 who have died. https://www.bostonglobe.com/2021/07/29/nation/this-is-what-its-like-have-breakthrough-case-covid-19/
What has Ms. Walensky got to say about this? In an interview with McCatchy Press she stated that:
“Our guidance in May said that fully vaccinated people could take off their masks safely, and that unvaccinated people should continue to wear them. Unfortunately, that’s not how it played out,” Walensky said in a phone interview with McClatchy. “Unvaccinated people took off their masks as well. And that’s what led us to where we are today.” https://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/coronavirus/article253156748.html
The May, 13 "Honor System" guidance had prompted almost universal abondonment of masking in the US by early Summer, yet the leaked CDC document stated in bold red print that "universal masking is essential to reduce transmission of the Delta variant." (see p. 21 of leaked document here: https://www.washingtonpost.com/context/cdc-breakthrough-infections/94390e3a-5e45-44a5-ac40-2744e4e25f2e/ ) 

Clearly, one of the main drivers of the surge of infections in the US has been the consequence of dismissing the need for such masking, and neglecting to reccomend, at the very least, some system by means of which the unvaccinated would be prevented from mingling with the vaccinated in crowded places. No such mistakes were conceded. "The science had changed," Walensky stated on Fox this AM. What science? The CDC did not uncover the outbreak in Cape Cod. Citizen journalists and scientists in that highly vaccinated and health-conscious community brought their findings to the government. As for the CDC, on May 1, it incautiously stopped collecting information on the spread of covid with the exception of cases that ended up in the hospital and recorded covid deaths. It was all rather strange, as Walensky had just recently teared up on national TV and warned Americans (in mid-March) of "imminent doom" due to low vaccination rates. However, the majority of Americans were still unvaccinated, and Delta was on the rise when contact tracing was abandoned. The failure to admit that the Biden Admin/CDC took their eyes off the ball, preached a rosy but empirically false story of "post pandemic America/Independence from Covid," did nothing as unvaccinated teens and young adults went out to reopened bars and clubs, frat parties, etc. and are now among the most prevalent victims found in hospitals across the country, and repeatedly claimed that "you can't get covid if you're vaccinated" despite evidence from other countries and our own to the contrary-- the fact that no admission of error is made, and that mainstream media indulge the fantasy of a diligent and empirically-based thinking process in the CDC, all this should arouse confusion and perhaps indignation among citizens who have suffered profoundly due to bad advice and misinformation. 

 Yet still, the official line is that "breakthrough cases are extremely rare" (Fauci on Face the Nation today). Since the CDC stopped looking at breakthrough cases on May, 1, except in cases of hospitalization, one wonders just how these unequivocal statements are supported. Given what we know about Israel, the UK and now our own country, it seems that we should look first and speak later about the prevalence of breakthrough. Similarly, Fauci stated that among the breakthrough cases, symptoms are "either none or minimal." (ibid) . Really? Maybe he should read accounts of the illness published in thee Boston Globe last week where many discussed illnesses with high fever, no sense of taste or smell, loss of appetite, inability to think clearly, etc. (see: https://www.bostonglobe.com/2021/07/29/nation/this-is-what-its-like-have-breakthrough-case-covid-19/ ) 

One of the victims profiled who was in her 90s-- but had been healthy before the covid bout-- died . Perhaps Fauci can console the family that their loss was "minimal." And others in Massachusetts have met the same fate. The Boston Globe reports:
In the most recent tally, 6,373 Massachusetts residents have contracted so-called breakthrough cases of COVID-19 — an infinitesimal percentage of those who have been vaccinated but still a source of anxiety for many and heartbreak for the families of 91 who have died.(ibid)
Today, I saw many fellow New Yorkers in the park with masks. In particular, and with great concern, I noted almost everyone with toddlers and children wore a mask. Only last week such was not the case. The CDC in May told us that if we were vaccinated we could hug and kiss our unvaccinated children; invite members of other vaccinated households in for meals sans masks, and go into crowded places unmasked with impunity. As punk singer Johnny Rotten once asked an audience famously, "Ever get the feeling you've been cheated?"