(2022-09-15) Covid 9/15/22 Permanent Normal

Zvi Mowshowitz: Covid-19 9/15/22: Permanent Normal. the CDC is going to be using the term ‘vaccine-derived Poliovirus’ and seriously, what the hell are you thinking, yes I know it is technically right but wow I do not want to hear the CDC talk about boosting public confidence in anything ever again.

Executive Summary
Covalent boosters now available wherever vaccines are administered.
Covid cases dropped unexpectedly.
The dog that didn’t bark: Zero monkeypox news of note.

Thread and report on NEPA and the need for permitting reform. While I have many things I would love to change, NEPA has taken over the top spot

Good News, Everyone

I presume I do not need to tell any of my readers to get vaccinated for Polio

My current understanding of how groups like this work is that they think this way: What is important is the sacred value of Justice, which means the suffering of bad monkeys (blame primate). The bad monkeys must be punished and the Sacrifices to the Gods must be made. No amount of good outcomes, no amount of making the world better and people’s lives better, including the very people you claim to be advocating for, can hold a candle to that. Climate here means ‘punish monkeys that are bad on climate.’ Also important to this model: Everyone is a bad monkey.

The War on Cancer Will Continue

This is the ‘throw government money at problems and things improve’ model. We keep throwing more money at cancer and doing it mostly in incremental ways that have at most small impacts. We may or may not reduce cancer death rates but I would be surprised to see much impact from the announced program - it reads like Do More rather than looking at what would cut the enemy.

The Impact of Marginal Tax Rates

My guess is that until we fix the completely broken the way we assign research grants and choose which efforts to back, and are able to try things capable of working, throwing more government money at cancer won’t have much effect.

Are these social taxes a huge deal? It certainly seems like they are.

Not Covid

He Admit It

New Matt Yglesias and Laura McGann podcast called Bad Takes. First episode is on Climate Justice advocates who opposed the IRA saying it would do ‘more harm than good.’ Key quote: “There is a group of people whose goal is not to reduce carbon emissions. It is to block fossil fuel projects.” He notices this has little to do with our natural understanding of Climate or Justice

Monkeypox

Physical World Modeling

Covid Vaccine Booster Boosting

None of the above explanations make it unreasonable to get boosted. I continue to think it is a good idea to get boosted once if you haven’t been yet, and that it is reasonable to get boosted again periodically.

The annual booster can still work if it is based on the presumption that Covid will take place in month-in-advance-predictable waves. There is a distinct ‘flu season’ and thus we are told to delay vaccination for flu if possible to get maximum effect. If Covid proves sufficiently seasonal, getting a short right before a predictable winter surge is still a reasonable choice. Alternatively, surges going forward can be caused by new variants, which again will give us enough warning to pivot into getting boosters when we hear the news, for a on-the-ball subset of the full we.

yes. There are definitely people who 100% seriously advocate Permanent Midnight. I believe that if those people got their way, a majority of them would label any opposition to their position as harmful misinformation and ask it to be censored. Earlier in the pandemic, they often got their way on that. Fortunately, they mostly lost.

Predictions of Permanent Midnight

Are We All Right?

I consider the sane versions of the expectation of Permanent Midnight to have been a self-defeating prophecy

I may or may not have had Covid about two weeks ago.

never got tested

Amy Klobuchar’s latest attempt to break the internet is for now dead, as Cruz uses his powers of despicability for good. The US Congress was seriously considering requiring tech companies to pay for links. Next up in attempting to break the internet (after California, of course) will therefore be the Biden Administration. They are calling for ‘fundamental reforms to section 230’ and ‘increased child protections.’