Month: April 2020

I have been insufficiently pessimistic

benfell

Pandemic

Since coming to Pittsburgh, I’ve come to suspect that the over-the-top displays of patriotism, the flags, the guns, the ubiquitous memorials for veterans and war dead, which have made me wonder what folks are compensating for, are in fact white supremacist displays.[1] Here it is again, albeit outside Pittsburgh, as authoritarian populists again blur the distinction with paleoconservatism, protesting lockdowns and attacking Jews.[2] I have to wonder what the father in that Jewish family that runs my favorite vegan restaurant—it really is good—around here thinks now.[3]

Meanwhile, reading David Wallace-Wells,[4] it seems to me the headline attached to his article misleads: Though we might—I find this unduly optimistic—indeed be approaching a point where the lockdowns might ease, we are likely not even the tenth of the way the headline, but not the article, claims. And the capitalist god demands human sacrifice[5] and right-wingers are all too anxious to appease.[6]

This keeps being a story that keeps getting worse than I imagine. It’s not uncommon for me to be overly pessimistic. It’s unusual, but not rare, that I might be insufficiently pessimistic or cynical. But this pandemic has exposed me as insufficiently pessimistic repeatedly and that is truly something to behold.

Eric Cortellessa, “US far-right extremists are now calling social distancing a Nazi policy,” Times of Israel, April 17, 2020, https://www.timesofisrael.com/us-far-right-extremists-are-now-calling-social-distancing-a-nazi-policy/

David Wallace-Wells, “We Are Probably Only One-Tenth of the Way Through This Pandemic,” New York, April 17, 2020, https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/04/we-are-probably-only-a-tenth-of-the-way-through-the-pandemic.html

  1. [1]David Benfell, “The banners and the guns: Flagrant racism in Pittsburgh,” Not Housebroken, October 12, 2019, https://disunitedstates.org/2019/09/20/the-banners-and-the-guns-flagrant-racism-in-pittsburgh/; David Benfell, “Militia territory,” Not Housebroken, November 22, 2019, https://disunitedstates.org/2019/11/22/militia-territory/; David Benfell, “An unhealthy relationship with guns,” Not Housebroken, January 1, 2020, https://disunitedstates.org/2020/01/01/an-unhealthy-relationship-with-guns/↩
  2. [2]Eric Cortellessa, “US far-right extremists are now calling social distancing a Nazi policy,” Times of Israel, April 17, 2020, https://www.timesofisrael.com/us-far-right-extremists-are-now-calling-social-distancing-a-nazi-policy/↩
  3. [3]David Benfell, “An impatient capitalist god demands human sacrifice. Now,” Not Housebroken, April 17, 2020, https://disunitedstates.org/2020/04/15/an-impatient-capitalist-god-demands-human-sacrifice-now/↩
  4. [4]David Wallace-Wells, “We Are Probably Only One-Tenth of the Way Through This Pandemic,” New York, April 17, 2020, https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/04/we-are-probably-only-a-tenth-of-the-way-through-the-pandemic.html↩
  5. [5]David Benfell, “An impatient capitalist god demands human sacrifice. Now,” Not Housebroken, April 17, 2020, https://disunitedstates.org/2020/04/15/an-impatient-capitalist-god-demands-human-sacrifice-now/↩
  6. [6]Eric Cortellessa, “US far-right extremists are now calling social distancing a Nazi policy,” Times of Israel, April 17, 2020, https://www.timesofisrael.com/us-far-right-extremists-are-now-calling-social-distancing-a-nazi-policy/↩

Even in a pandemic, cops are still, inexcusably, cops

benfell

Police

Even in a pandemic, cops are still, inexcusably, cops.

Amy Goodman and Denis Moynihan, “Meet the African-American Doctor Who Tests the Homeless for COVID-19. He was Handcuffed by Miami Police,” Democracy Now, April 16, 2020, https://www.democracynow.org/2020/4/16/meet_the_african_american_doctor_who

Pandemic

The Telegraph is much too diplomatic with China and with Donald Trump. No one believed the earlier numbers from Wuhan; even if China is now being fully transparent, which I assume no one believes, the data issues[1] that plague other places also plague China.[2] And Trump’s “plan” has no force.[3]

When I caught a Lyft to retrieve my car yesterday, my driver and I were both speaking through masks. Probably neither of us understood the other well. But he was saying something about there not being “very many Chinese” someplace—I presume either the apartment complex where I live or near my mechanic—mostly whites and African-Americans (the latter term is the one he used; I avoid it because some Blacks, especially from the Caribbean, choose other ways of identifying themselves—it’s actually best to ask folks how they self-identify).

It’s a problem I haven’t thought about much. I have heard about bigotry against but haven’t really myself even considered blaming people of Chinese origin for the coronavirus in part because China is a huge country. There are an awful lot of people who weren’t anywhere near Wuhan, including some here in the U.S., and so had absolutely nothing to do with the particular wet markets that are generally blamed for providing this virus a bridge from non-human to human animals. And when it comes to non-human to human animal bridges, the Chinese are very, very far from alone.[4] This is by no means a vegan world and this is yet one more reason it needs to be.

But I’m guessing that such bigotry lies behind that driver’s choice of topic (which probably violates Lyft’s rules).

Natasha Lindstrom, “Gov. Wolf: No specific date for ending covid-19 shutdown, getting ‘back to life as we once knew it,’” TribLive, April 16, 2020, https://triblive.com/news/pennsylvania/gov-wolf-no-specific-date-for-ending-covid-19-shutdown-getting-back-to-life-as-we-once-knew-it/

Ben Riley-Smith, “Donald Trump launches plan to ‘open up America again’ after coronavirus lockdown,” Telegraph, April 17, 2020, https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/04/16/donald-trump-launches-plan-open-america-coronavirus-lockdown/

Sophia Yan, “China adds nearly 1,300 coronavirus deaths to official Wuhan toll, blaming reporting delays,” Telegraph, April 17, 2020, https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/04/17/china-adds-nearly-1300-coronavirus-deaths-official-wuhan-toll/

  1. [1]David Benfell, “When ‘good’ news might not be so good,” Not Housebroken, April 2, 2020, https://disunitedstates.org/2020/04/02/when-good-news-might-not-be-so-good/; Emma Brown, Beth Reinhard, and Aaron C. Davis, “Coronavirus death toll: Americans are almost certainly dying of covid-19 but being left out of the official count,” Washington Post, April 5, 2020, https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/coronavirus-death-toll-americans-are-almost-certainly-dying-of-covid-19-but-being-left-out-of-the-official-count/2020/04/05/71d67982-747e-11ea-87da-77a8136c1a6d_story.html; Jennifer Levitz, Mike Cherney, and Daniel Michaels, “U.S. Coronavirus Death Toll Passes Italy, Becoming World’s Highest,” Wall Street Journal, April 11, 2020, https://www.wsj.com/articles/health-officials-plead-for-public-to-observe-a-locked-down-easter-11586592822; Yascha Mounk, “This Is Just the Beginning,” Atlantic, March 25, 2020, https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/03/national-shutdown-least-bad-option/608683/; Wall Street Journal, “Testing for Coronavirus: What We Know About Covid-19 Tests and Treatment,” April 14, 2020, https://www.wsj.com/articles/who-has-covid-19-what-we-know-about-tests-for-the-new-coronavirus-11585868185↩
  2. [2]Sophia Yan, “China adds nearly 1,300 coronavirus deaths to official Wuhan toll, blaming reporting delays,” Telegraph, April 17, 2020, https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/04/17/china-adds-nearly-1300-coronavirus-deaths-official-wuhan-toll/↩
  3. [3]Ben Riley-Smith, “Donald Trump launches plan to ‘open up America again’ after coronavirus lockdown,” Telegraph, April 17, 2020, https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/04/16/donald-trump-launches-plan-open-america-coronavirus-lockdown/↩
  4. [4]Jared Diamond, Guns, Germs, and Steel (New York: W. W. Norton, 1999).↩

‘The right type of people dying’

benfell

It’s been another day at home with the car getting an oil change and its tires swapped from the snow tires I bought last November to the tires I drove cross country on. The latter are better in heavy rain, which is a lot more common here than it was in California and right now, I think the risk is higher of rain than snow. I’m publishing this while waiting for a Lyft to take me back to the mechanic.

Pandemic

My mother and her cousin have both sewn and sent me washable masks. Just in time, it would seem. I will be stylishly in style.

Megan Guza, “Pennsylvania orders businesses to turn away customers who don’t wear masks,” Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, April 15, 2020, https://triblive.com/news/pennsylvania/pennsylvania-orders-businesses-to-turn-away-customers-who-dont-wear-masks/

Recession

As I said, An impatient capitalist god demands human sacrifice. Now. There are a number of agendas at work and this is what makes me so cynical that anything good can come of all of this.

Justin Lahart, “Great Depression Unemployment Levels Are on Tap,” Wall Street Journal, April 16, 2020, https://www.wsj.com/articles/great-depression-unemployment-levels-are-on-tap-11587053071

Heather Long, “U.S. now has 22 million unemployed as economy sinks toward Depression-like scenario,” Washington Post, April 16, 2020, https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2020/04/16/unemployment-claims-coronavirus/

Horse race

Let them eat Jeni’s ice cream?

benfell

Recession

There is a new blog post entitled, “An impatient capitalist god demands human sacrifice. Now.”

Nancy Pelosi attached a video to her tweet revealing she has some very nice looking (apparently each costing over $11,000) large refrigerators/freezers in her kitchen, exposing her hoarding capacity.

Even forgiving the fact of the ice cream, and the fact of a brand of the stuff I’ve never even heard of, more than one commented that there’s far better ice cream to be had in San Francisco (Pelosi’s house is in the Pacific Heights neighborhood, overlooking the Marina district and almost certainly with a view of the nicer parts of the San Francisco Bay, including Alcatraz, Angel Island, the Golden Gate Bridge, and Marin County).

Eric Morath, Harriet Torry, and Gwynn Guilford, “A Second Round of Coronavirus Layoffs Has Begun. Few Are Safe,” Wall Street Journal, April 14, 2020, https://www.wsj.com/articles/a-second-round-of-coronavirus-layoffs-has-begun-no-one-is-safe-11586872387

David Harrison, “Lack of Savings Worsens the Pain of Coronavirus Downturn,” Wall Street Journal, April 15, 2020, https://www.wsj.com/articles/lack-ofsavingsworsens-the-pain-of-coronavirus-downturn-11586943001

I, an ‘essential worker’

benfell

My patience is now officially blown with the lockdown.

I have the misfortune of being an “essential worker.” Because I drive for Lyft and Uber. Because I haven’t been able to find a real job in over nineteen years.[1]

I normally cut orders off about twenty minutes before sunset largely because I don’t want to be caught out traversing or picking up or dropping off in neighborhoods where the gun and knife club comes to order shortly after sunset.

But tonight, my last ride ran a bit long with multiple stops. Fine, I thought. Giant Eagle is open until ten pm.

Being vegan, there aren’t a lot of places I can eat in Pittsburgh and they’re all hurting with the lockdown. I’d really like for them to survive. And it happened, the way home from that last ride took me right past D’s Six Pax and Dogz on South Braddock in the Regent Square area of Edgewood. So I stopped, picked up their veggie hot dog and wished them all well, ate it and some fries on the way to my next stop.

I’d also noticed some bird shit (it’s that time of year) on my car earlier, so I stopped at a drive through car wash and wiped down the interior while it did its thing on the exterior.

I pulled up to the Giant Eagle about two minutes before nine pm. Guess what? They’re closed.

My patience is blown. I suffer a lot of indignities as an “essential worker.” The pay really sucks and, although I handle more of my own costs directly, I’m really on the same level as a cab driver, even with my Ph.D. The least the powers that be could do is let me buy some fucking groceries.

Israel

At this point, I’m very strongly tempted to ignore the political crisis in Israel. It hasn’t seemed to be moving toward resolution. Except, that the president there, Reuven Rivlin, is losing patience. And it seems that, in this, one of the few occasions where he actually matters, he has a few tricks of his own.[2] I’m mostly archiving this because I suspect that however all this turns out, Rivlin’s moves just might prove pivotal.

Haviv Rettig Gur, “Israel’s frustrated president threatens new elections – in a bid to avoid them,” Times of Israel, April 13, 2020, https://www.timesofisrael.com/a-frustrated-rivlin-threatens-new-elections-in-a-bid-to-avoid-them/

  1. [1]David Benfell, “About my job hunt,” Not Housebroken, n.d., https://disunitedstates.org/about-my-job-hunt/↩
  2. [2]Haviv Rettig Gur, “Israel’s frustrated president threatens new elections – in a bid to avoid them,” Times of Israel, April 13, 2020, https://www.timesofisrael.com/a-frustrated-rivlin-threatens-new-elections-in-a-bid-to-avoid-them/↩

Easter grumpiness

benfell

Somebody really needs to explain this closing for Easter thing.

I mean, really. Especially when you’re a Jewish family running a vegan restaurant out in the middle of fucking nowhere (okay, I exaggerate a bit here) that I have to drive a long ways to get to (40 minutes, usually, from my apartment). How does that even remotely make sense?

I buy my coffee there. I have enough for today (Monday). I’m not so sure about tomorrow. And they’re closed on Mondays anyway.

Pandemic

In the following screenshot, taken early this morning, I’m looking at the Johns Hopkins map a bit differently. Here, while the U.S. continues to have eye-popping numbers in cumulative confirmed cases, we’re starting to see a global flattening of the curve on daily cases (figure 1).[1] In evaluating hospital capacity, this is what matters.
FireShot Capture 127 - COVID-19 Map - Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center_ - coronavirus.jhu.edu
Fig. 1. Screenshot, taken at 2:10 am Eastern on April 13, of Johns Hopkins global map of COVID-19 cases.[2]

They’ve added a U.S. map, but it only shows cumulative confirmed cases, and of course there’s no flattening of the curve here. Still, it remedies some defects of the global map, in that you can actually see how many, over 20,000, have died in the U.S. from COVID-19. They really don’t have that broken out that way in the global map. And you can drill down to see the county of your choice.

There are two always very good questions that, as a human scientist, I ask:

  1. Epistemology: How do we know what we claim to know?
  2. Critical Theory: Among other things (like—this is the biggie—about power relationships), what’s missing? And why is it missing?

When the Wall Street Journal prints that “[t]he actual number of cases is likely higher, experts say, due to lack of widespread testing, false negatives and differences in reporting standards,”[3] I can see that this is correct.

I can see also that there have been nearly 100,000 more cases in the U.S. and well over 1,000 more deaths in New York City, just since I wrote my last blog post on the topic on April 9th.[4]

It’s a very scary time.

  1. [1]Center for Systems Science and Engineering, “Coronavirus COVID-19 Global Cases,” April 13, 2020, Johns Hopkins University, https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/map.html↩
  2. [2]Center for Systems Science and Engineering, “Coronavirus COVID-19 Global Cases,” April 11, 2020, Johns Hopkins University, https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/map.html↩
  3. [3]Jennifer Levitz, Mike Cherney, and Daniel Michaels, “U.S. Coronavirus Death Toll Passes Italy, Becoming World’s Highest,” Wall Street Journal, April 11, 2020, https://www.wsj.com/articles/health-officials-plead-for-public-to-observe-a-locked-down-easter-11586592822↩
  4. [4]Center for Systems Science and Engineering, “Coronavirus COVID-19 Global Cases,” April 13, 2020, Johns Hopkins University, https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/map.html↩

Yeah, we’re just killing people

benfell

There is a new blog post entitled, “Anarchism, speech, and democracy.”

Pandemic

When I looked this evening, New York City had exceeded 6,300 deaths from COVID-19,[1] well over double the toll from the 9/11 attacks. Nationally, the toll is now the highest of any country in the world. “The actual number of cases is likely higher, experts say, due to lack of widespread testing, false negatives and differences in reporting standards.”[2]

Meanwhile, my skepticism about the effectiveness of “stay at home” orders is increasing. As I’m out driving for Lyft (I haven’t worked for Uber in a while now), I’m seeing more people out, pretty much everywhere I go, among people of every race, in every neighborhood. Traffic, while still far below the usual Pittsburgh unbelievably horrible, is increasing. While some of these trips are surely necessary—I saw a line outside a Trader Joe’s stretched down the block—I think people really just can’t sustain this and we perhaps really ought to be considering how, if we can’t manage to stay in our relatively comfortable homes, we expect prisoners to remain incarcerated without some serious mental health effects for, in some cases, decades.

Eugene Scott, “4 reasons coronavirus is hitting black communities so hard,” Washington Post, April 10, 2020, https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/04/10/4-reasons-coronavirus-is-hitting-black-communities-so-hard/

Jennifer Levitz, Mike Cherney, and Daniel Michaels, “U.S. Coronavirus Death Toll Passes Italy, Becoming World’s Highest,” Wall Street Journal, April 11, 2020, https://www.wsj.com/articles/health-officials-plead-for-public-to-observe-a-locked-down-easter-11586592822

  1. [1]Center for Systems Science and Engineering, “Coronavirus COVID-19 Global Cases,” April 11, 2020, Johns Hopkins University, https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/map.html↩
  2. [2]Jennifer Levitz, Mike Cherney, and Daniel Michaels, “U.S. Coronavirus Death Toll Passes Italy, Becoming World’s Highest,” Wall Street Journal, April 11, 2020, https://www.wsj.com/articles/health-officials-plead-for-public-to-observe-a-locked-down-easter-11586592822↩

Unreliable COVID-19 tests might be a problem

benfell

Pandemic

Uh oh. South Korea is finding some patients thought to have been cured of COVID-19 have apparently been reinfected:[1]

Fear of re-infection in recovered patients is also growing in China, where the virus first emerged last December, after reports that some tested positive again – and even died from the disease – after supposedly recovering and leaving hospital. There’s little understanding of why this happens, although some believe that the problem may lie in inconsistencies in test results.[2]

The article does not make clear what sort of “inconsistencies” are being found in the test results,[3] however, false negatives, such as those anecdotally reported previously,[4] might account for the phenomenon.

“A patient is deemed fully recovered when two tests conducted with a 24-hour interval show negative results,”[5] but if the negatives are false—and repeatedly so—then the patient will have been incorrectly “deemed fully recovered” when s/he is in fact still sick and s/he indeed might die.

This is another reason you need reliable tests.

Kyunghee Park, “Coronavirus May ‘Reactivate’ in Cured Patients, Korean CDC Says,” Bloomberg, April 9, 2020, https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-04-09/coronavirus-may-reactivate-in-cured-patients-korean-cdc-says

  1. [1]Kyunghee Park, “Coronavirus May ‘Reactivate’ in Cured Patients, Korean CDC Says,” Bloomberg, April 9, 2020, https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-04-09/coronavirus-may-reactivate-in-cured-patients-korean-cdc-says↩
  2. [2]Kyunghee Park, “Coronavirus May ‘Reactivate’ in Cured Patients, Korean CDC Says,” Bloomberg, April 9, 2020, https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-04-09/coronavirus-may-reactivate-in-cured-patients-korean-cdc-says↩
  3. [3]Kyunghee Park, “Coronavirus May ‘Reactivate’ in Cured Patients, Korean CDC Says,” Bloomberg, April 9, 2020, https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-04-09/coronavirus-may-reactivate-in-cured-patients-korean-cdc-says↩
  4. [4]Christopher Weaver, “Questions About Accuracy of Coronavirus Tests Sow Worry,” Wall Street Journal, April 2, 2020, https://www.wsj.com/articles/questions-about-accuracy-of-coronavirus-tests-sow-worry-11585836001↩
  5. [5]Kyunghee Park, “Coronavirus May ‘Reactivate’ in Cured Patients, Korean CDC Says,” Bloomberg, April 9, 2020, https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-04-09/coronavirus-may-reactivate-in-cured-patients-korean-cdc-says↩

Money above human life

benfell

It is April 10 and it is snowing out and even beginning to stick on the grass outside my apartment.

I still have my snow tires on. I’ve been feeling this was fairly ridiculous with the warmer weather lately but locals have informed me it is wise to keep them on.

That said, the temperature is 33° F; the road surfaces will likely remain above freezing. Snow tires are likely not necessary under such conditions. Likely.

Pandemic

As I expected, Donald Trump is indeed pushing for an early re-opening of the U.S. economy. The ghost of the 1918 influenza pandemic, in which a premature re-opening led to a second peak in cases and deaths,[1] may haunt, but the capitalist god demands human sacrifice and soon.[2] This is how we run the world and never forget that money counts for more than human life.[3]

Matt Zapotosky et al., “Trump administration pushing to reopen much of the U.S. next month,” Washington Post, April 9, 2020, https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/trump-reopen-us-economy/2020/04/09/10d42b4a-7a7b-11ea-9bee-c5bf9d2e3288_story.html

  1. [1]Matt Zapotosky et al., “Trump administration pushing to reopen much of the U.S. next month,” Washington Post, April 9, 2020, https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/trump-reopen-us-economy/2020/04/09/10d42b4a-7a7b-11ea-9bee-c5bf9d2e3288_story.html↩
  2. [2]David Benfell, “The capitalist death cult,” Not Housebroken, March 27, 2020, https://disunitedstates.org/2020/03/27/the-capitalist-death-cult/↩
  3. [3]David Benfell, “Paying for money with human lives,” Not Housebroken, February 18, 2015, https://disunitedstates.org/2015/02/18/paying-for-money-with-human-lives/; David Benfell, “The worst of times and the worst of humanity,” Not Housebroken, April 2, 2020, https://disunitedstates.org/2020/04/02/the-worst-of-times-and-the-worst-of-humanity/↩

The Great Depression, redux?

benfell

I have no reason for pride tonight.

I got the car back from the mechanic. He fixed control rods and a fan that had started making noise the day before I took it in and got it through the annual Pennsylvania-required inspection.

The steering seems tighter and the brakes somewhat firmer. I had probably been driving with broken control rods for months, at some risk to my own and to my passengers’ safety. I had no idea. And Spitzer, which had been so anxious to flag my rear brakes as needing immediate attention when they still had over fifty percent remaining, never noticed.

Pandemic

unnamed
Fig. 1. We can only wish. Meme included in a semi-private email, April 8, 2020, artist uncredited, fair use.

I had been working on a new blog entry entitled, “I fear for our world,” when I got the call from my mechanic that my car was done. And so I took off, went to work, and didn’t get either the blog entry or this issue out until this evening.

Caitlin Oprysko, “Jerry Falwell Jr. says warrants are out for 2 journalists after critical stories on coronavirus decision,” Politico, April 8, 2020, https://www.politico.com/news/2020/04/08/liberty-university-falwell-reporters-warrants-176346

Heather Long and Andrew Van Dam, “6.6 million Americans filed for unemployment last week, bringing the pandemic total to over 17 million,” Washington Post, April 9, 2020, https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2020/04/09/66-million-americans-filed-unemployed-last-week-bringing-pandemic-total-over-17-million/