More USDA Programs

Secretary Vilsack announced new programs and more money for existing ones. 

I didn't see any more money for FSA administration but I just skimmed.  

Freedom Versus Fairness--the Pandemic and Fischer

 Some time ago David Hackett Fischer wrote a book comparing the USA and New Zealand.

I thought of that book when I read this Post opinion piece. 

As you might understand from the title, Fischer sees the societies as different.  Although they're both "settler societies", the key to the US is "freedom", the key to New Zealand is "fairness".   I remember his argument was in part based on the histories--we fought the British to establish autonomy, freedom; New Zealand was settled later when the UK had learned better to deal with their colonies.  Also, in the years between the settling of America and the settling of New Zealand the nature of British society had changed from a hierarchical aristocratic society to one with the urban working class arising. 

While I remember Fischer dealing with the Maori influence on the overall society, I can't say he saw the same factors as in the op-ed.  But the overall effect is the same--concern about the impact of one's actions on others, particularly the fairness of the impacts.  

So, in the pandemic we have lots of resisters to the masks and lockdowns here, because people say it impairs our freedoms.  In NZ they could impose restrictions because infecting others would be unfair. 

The Persistence of Folk Wisdom--Memes?

The current effort to vaccinate for Covid-19 has run into resistance, particularly among black Americans.  The conventional wisdom explains this by the past history of science mistreating blacks, in particular the Tuskegee experiment.

The participants in the study are all dead now, the last one dying 15 years ago.  The study itself ended in 1972.

Assuming the conventional wisdom is correct, the extent to which people have become aware of it, and the duration of the time since the ending is striking. I wonder if sociologists have studied the factors which account for this penetration of the public consciousness, particularly in comparison with other memes.

{Here's further discussion of the issue--perhaps the meme lives longer in the minds of the intellectuals than the lay person?]

On Improving Statistical Infrastructure

The Covid Tracking project announces its end. 

But the work itself—compiling, cleaning, standardizing, and making sense of COVID-19 data from 56 individual states and territories—is properly the work of federal public health agencies. Not only because these efforts are a governmental responsibility—which they are—but because federal teams have access to far more comprehensive data than we do, and can mandate compliance with at least some standards and requirements.

I wholeheartedly agree with this, and hope the Biden/Harris administration devotes money and attention to improving our statistical infrastructure, given the deficiencies revealed by pandemic.  

Health Providers and Vaccine

 Had my dental appointment today.  It's a pain, but at my age I need to be careful with my teeth, something I wasn't during most of my life.

I am puzzled--my dental hygienist was commenting on the provision of vaccines to pharmacies.  I wasn't quick on the draw--about 2 hours later I think to wonder--has she not received her vaccine shot?  I thought that category would be close to the top.

Telephones with TV = Zoom Meetings

 I wrote earlier on my memories of various trials of adding pictures/TV to the telephone--all of which failed.  

GovExec has a piece which may summarize the change from the pandemic:

"“The most important outcome of the pandemic wasn’t that it taught you how to use Zoom, but rather that it forced everybody else to use Zoom,” Autor told me. "We all leapfrogged over the coordination problem at the exact same time.” Meetings, business lunches, work trips—all these things will still happen in the after world."

It's an important point--just knowing that people with whom you need to communicate use the new method is great.  It's rather like 20 years ago when you knew someone might have an email address, but maybe they only remembered to check it once in a blue moon, so you'd use the telephone instead of email.  

Have We Seen the Peak?

 It's possible the pandemic has peaked in the US with the graph of new infections flattening, possibly starting a decline, which would then be followed by a similar change in hospitalizations and deaths.  

The conjunction of 400,000 deaths, the Biden inauguration, and the peak would be significant.

Haircut Time

 Had my second haircut since the start of the pandemic today.  Some trepidation, given the new surge of cases which has hit Virginia, though not as hard here as elsewhere in the country.  

Covid-19 Impacts on Society

 This FCW article argues that Covid-19 should impact the government's priorities on IT. Ir's part of a larger set of speculations over the long term impacts. Maybe:

• broadband access is more important so everyone can work and study from home?
• people who for the first time were forced into using online services will continue to use them, and expect their availability?
• on-line shopping is growing and the old brick and mortar department stores, and smaller outfits, are obsolete?
• lots of restaurants going out of business, more delivery services, and perhaps more home cooking?
• more family togetherness?

Chill: My Words for the Country

 I'm reminded of Wouk's "The Caine Mutiny" which I read multiple times in youth.  There was a couplet in it which I remember, notable because I don't remember much poetry.:

When in trouble or in doubt

Run in circles,

Scream and shout.

IIRC it was being applied to the USNavy, as their response to problems, perhaps by Lt. Keefer, but I may be wrong.

Anyhow it's a corollary of the Harshaw Rule--trouble and doubt occurs often when you're doing things for the first time, at least the first time within living memory.  That's what we as a world and a nation are doing now with covid-19.  It's new enough we have no assurance in what we're doing, so we get uptight and snap and fight.

Someone today noted that we have a huge number of different school systems, private, public, parochial, in different jurisdictions, all of which are using different approaches to handling schooling for the fall. Different because we don't know what are "best practices" for sure.

Lots of recriminations among the politicians about whose positions in the first quarter of the year were correct. I'm firm in my belief that the president screwed up, and continues to screw up the response. But, it's true enough we're all screwing up because we don't know now what we'll know in a year from now.  

So I think people should chill, at least a bit, and put more emphasis on who's learned what and what process will be most enlightening and educational. 

Reopening Schools--Possible Baby Steps

Fairfax County just announced they'll start schools 100 percent using distance learning.

I sympathize with the problems school boards and principals have in dealing with the pandemic. 

In tackling new problems I like to work with baby steps.  In that light, my idea, worth no dollars and with no experience in teaching through Zoom or whatever, would be:

• start by moving teachers into school buildings and have them do distance learning from the school, using school facilities.  I'd assume that by and large schools have things, wifi,computers,etc. than teachers have at home.  Teaching from school would also help by allowing teachers to share ideas and troubleshooting.  And having them eat lunch at the school would test that process. Having people in school would test the maintenance and support personnel.  Teachers who are leary of their exposure to the virus in a school context might be willing to try if the immediate environment--the school-- only contains their peers, not their students. 
• assuming no major problems, a next baby step would be to open the school to those students who don't have good access at home. Again, still teaching using distance learning, but in the school building using school facilities.
• other steps might be to  expand the school week, so as make more use of the facilities, but that would require more money to hire teaching assistants.

The Infection Chain

As I've said before, the progress of the pandemic seemsto have been from the most mobile and therefore whitest and wealthiest people, seeding various countries, then within the country a progression down the chain from most connected to least connected with the most vulnerable. Think of it as a forest fire, with the progression being governed by which unburned spots are most closely connected to burning spots, and the most flammable material in each spot.

So California and Washington had early cases. The Northeast was hard hit. Then things seemed tosubside for a bit, but there were warning cases in meat packing and nursing homes, etc. 

Then things moved south and west, as the networks hooked up to the vulnerable.  This is my explanation for California as well--the first wave there was the mobile upper class, the new wave is hitting Latinos and African Americans.

There's been a learning curve, particularly in the health professions, so we're in better shape thanwe were on May 1, though we now realize we weren't in as good shape as we thought then.

At What Point Does Covid-19 Become Another Flu?

President Trump notoriously dismissed Covid-19 early on as just another flu.  That was quickly disproved.  I wonder, though, whether there is a point at which influenza and Covid-19 are really comparable.

Apparently flu kills from 20,000 to 80,000 people a year.  20,000 divided by 50 weeks equals 400 a week, 80,000 would equal 1600 a week.  Deaths are just one metric.  Another consideration is severity of illness and longevity of effects.  My impression is that on both counts Covid-19 has been worse than flu in that regard. 

[Updated:  a senior moment--confusing weeks and days--100 deaths a day would mean 36,500 deaths a year.  If we're currently averaging 5-600 deaths a day, we still have a long way to go.]

The idea of comparing covid-19 and the flu was discredited by its extensive use in the early days of the pandemic to minimize the dangers of the covid-19.  But now it seems to me that we're focusing exclusively on covid-19 and, perhaps, losing some perspective on the overall picture.

The Last Mile Problem in Government--AMS

One of the problems of our government is the threads connecting national legislation to local effectiveness are often broken. 

I think I just found one such case today.  The USDA's Agricultural Marketing Service has a program called "Farmers to Families Food Box".  Briefly the concept is to buy food, mostly perishable, which can't find a market under our pandemic conditions, and provide it in boxes to needy families. I'm thinking the boxing is a new idea being pushed by Secretary Perdue.

AMS has experience buying perishable food and providing it to schools for school lunches, tribes, etc.etc. But this is a new program using money appropriated by Congress (and perhaps CCC funding, not sure).  So AMS ran a new bidding process to find more vendors capable of handling the boxing and distribution to nonprofit organizations..  (I'm not sure how much overlap between the vendors in the new program and those AMS has dealt with before.  I do know there has been some scrutiny of some vendors with allegations political influence was involved in awards to new vendors.) 

So my picture is, you've this established network of AMS procurements, intermediaries, and recipients.  But now you have new additional money, additional intermediaries, and hopefully new recipients.  Where the threat is broken in my metaphor is the last mile problem--connecting new recipients with the old or new intermediaries.

If I understand the program correctly, which is a problem, AMS and the administration are making the assumption that existing nonprofits can make the connection.  But a question on the FSA employee group Facebook page raised the question.  Checking the AMS sit they have a list of the approved vendors who are getting the food and boxing it.  But there is no national database showing which nonprofits the vendors are dealing with. So the question is, if Jane Doe in Mississippi is interested in getting a box--who does she contact?  As far as I can see, she has to use the phone book to locate a nonprofit which might be  distributing the boxes.

The Tale of Two Graphs?

What's going on with the pandemic in the US?

From the NYTimes page, the graph of the new cases has been reasonably steady for a while, before taking an upturn in the last days.  (Might be the effect of protests, or the effect of reopenings.)

But the graph of deaths has been trending down steadily, and that continues.  So either more testing is finding more of the less serious cases, or the virus is becoming less virulent, or something else.

I'd guess the first,

{Update:I've seen a discussion that the increased testing is more and more of younger people, who aren't as susceptible to covid-19.  It makes sense that generally we focused our limited tests on the worse cases--i.e., assisted living/nursing homes, etc. and now the drive-through testing spots are getting active adults.]

What Should We Have Done?

Based on what we know about the pandemic and Covid-19 now, what should we have done back in time, say on Mar. 1.  Obviously, I think, we should have been ordering supplies, PPE, ventilators, whatever.  But given that we lacked sufficient tests, supplies, and contact tracers, what should we have done?

To me the answer is we should have focused on the areas and facilities which resulted in the most human contact--the dense areas of NY, NJ, MA, etc., the assisted living facilities, the prisons, the meat packing facilities.  For those areas we might have been stuck with the tactics we ended up using, social distancing, lockdowns, quarantines.

For the other areas I think we should have tried to leap to our current Phase II/III strategies, more distancing and lots of contact tracing. 

This two-part strategy might have been a tough sell; in an emergency we like to think everyone is treated the same.  But we've seen the problems in maintaining a uniform strategy across states, and the nation.

Scalia Says a Strong Economy--Not So

The Secretary of Labor, Mr. Scalia, says we have a strong economy. 

He's wrong.  We had a strong economy in January 2020; one which well by many of the usual criteria and under the conditions existing at the beginning of the year.  But those conditions changed; covid-19 emerged and suddenly our economic activity had to deal with a new world, one to which it was poorly adapted. 

We won't have a strong economy until we can adjust to these new conditions.

What Will Change After Pandemic and BLM and Election?

I think we may err in expecting a lot of change after 2020 ends. My sketchy thoughts:

• yes, if Biden wins  there will be a lot of change in government, but mostly it will be reversion to the norm.  Even if Biden carries in a solid majority in the Senate, I don't expect changes on order of LBJ's Great Society in 1965-68.  Or even Reagan's changes.  I'd add a qualifier--there may be a lot of changes on the international front, which will force more changes than we can see now.
• full recovery from the pandemic will take years. I'd expect the major changes to be the result of people getting more used to online everything. But otherwise I'd expect reversion to the norm generally.
• the current BLM protests will result in some moderately important changes in law, justice, and policing, but not much more.

The theme here is, I think, the power of old habits and the past.  I hope to live long enough to see how wrong I am.

Pandemic From 30,000 Feet Again

This is based on the NYTimes summary as of June 13.

It seems to me you can categorize states by the shapes of their case graphs:

• States with one defined peak, and a fairly consistent decline from that peak.  This would include the NY/NJ/CT/MA states, with early peaks, and a number of other states which were slower to peak.
• States with two fairly clear peaks, which might include FL, TN, KY
• States which have never reached a peak--i.e., their case load is still climbing. Includes CA, TX,  AL, UT, NC, SC, AR, KY,
• Small states with too few cases to evaluate.
• Mixed cases

Trying to create a story from this data, I go back to my previous pandemic post:  

• the East Coast states were hit early because they are both well networked with Europe and dense.  That meant they weren't prepared and got overwhelmed early, but they learned to take covid-19 seriously and adopted measures which reduced spread.
• other states didn't take the virus that seriously (i.e., even if they were officially locked down, public compliance was less than in the hard hit states), meaning if they were networked like FL, they could have an early peak and then a later one.
• possibly two peaks reflects a matter of luck, the virus hitting nursing homes, etc. once, then a slower spread to the more general population.

The Effect of Graphics

Both the NYTimes and the Washington Post have graphs showing the deaths due to the covid-19 virus over the days since Mar. 1.  The Post's graph is on the front page, spanning one column, which represents 1/6 of the width of the paper.  The Times' graph is on page 4, in their coronavirus update column, which is double width--two columns. 

I've not measured the height scale, but the general effect is that the Post's graph shows a steep decline after a vertical rise in cases while the Times shows a much more gradual decline.  Same data, different impressions.