The Consultant Security Blanket

 As technology and society grow more complicated, the easy out for managers of an organization is to offload their uncertainties and angst to a consultant.  At the very least it kicks the problem down the road.  Sometimes more time is all that's needed to gain some clarity, perhaps even to have the problem solve itself.  Sometimes more time enables the organization to learn to deal with the new.  Sometimes the troublemakers who are raising cain about an issue have grown up, gone out, or gone to the grave, and some other issues are being raised by other troublemakers. 

A Test of Masks and Social Distancing: House of Representatives

 The NYTimes had a graphic on the Representatives and Senators who contracted covid-19 virus.  I was interested because at the Powerline blog one or more of the bloggers had expressed skepticism over the efficacy of face masks and social distancing in combating the disease. I think enough time has passed for a fair evaluation.  I also think the members of Congress are roughly similar so a comparison by party is valid.  The outcome: 44 Republicans and 17 Democrats have contracted the disease.

I don't know whether that's statistically significant, but it impresses me.

Could We Do a Free Speech Circuit Breaker?

 The stock exchanges have "circuit breakers"--on a day when there's panic selling and the indices drop through the floor, they can suspend trading to allow nerves to calm down.

Kindergarteners have "time out".

Is it possible we could do something similar with social media?  Rather than the drastic remedy of prohibitions, simply slow the twitter storm or whatever. Suppose X has 20 million followers, and he sends out a tweet. Instead of all 20 million receiving it in milliseconds, spread the impact over hours or days. 

Relying on Kaiser--More on Vaccination

 When I wrote before about getting vaccinated, I assumed that Kaiser would notify me when I was eligible and they had the vaccine.  Having revisited their site today I'm not sure that's right.  I've not seen any discussion from either Kaiser or Fairfax.

I see Fairfax County Health Department has a vaccine registration app, which I've completed. A fair number of questions on health--allergies, etc. but it was easy enough to complete in a couple minutes. (I'm a vanilla case, answering "no" to most of the questions.) Notably, they didn't ask for my medical provider so they don't have an obvious way to cross check with Kaiser.

We Are Who We Thought We Are?

 Lots of discussion--"this isn't who we are" or "this is exactly who we are".

The idea of "imagined communities" is relevant.  People imagine what America is, they develop an image of who we are which is based on stereotypes and narratives from the media, schools, movies and TV, etc.  So when a big event happens, it can be inconsistent with the image. That's not necessarily the case however.  For example if we looked at the reactions shortly after 9/11 or the Boston marathon bombing  I'd guess most people thought the reaction to the events was very "American" or "Boston" ("Boston strong").  

Over the long run I suppose the image is sustained if the positive events outweigh the negative events.

Getting Vaccinated

 I suspect one of the big problems in vaccinating the U.S. is the degree to which it relies on bottom-up action.

What I mean is that presumably you can identify the hospitals, clinics, and long-term care facilities in your state, deliver vaccines to those sites, and rely on their management to get their people vaccinated.  But once you go past that, once you start allowing people who are 65 or 75 and older to be vaccinated, you are essentially asking those people to take some initiative. 

At best, like me, their health care provider, Kaiser Permanente in my case, will notify them when they have vaccine available.  But people who don't have a healthcare provider with resources will have to search out a pharmacy.

As I write I realize the situation is not that different for the flu vaccine. Apparently 60-65 percent have gotten that vaccine in the past.  

Seems as if this is a situation where we don't know until we see the history.

Organic Farming Has a Weakness

 Give credit to Grist for publishing this piece on regenerative grazing (a version of organic farming which reduces carbon emissions from beef cattle by capturing carbon in the soil).

A new analysis says there is indeed a big reduction in emissions, but the problem is the regenerative system requires more land, 2.5 times more land.

I may have blogged on this before--I think this applies to row crops as well.  Doing a rotation among row crops, small grains, and legumes requires more land for the legumes, as well as a market for the hay.

Impeachment?

 I believe Trump deserves to be impeached, again, but I don't believe there's enough time to do so.  I fear setting a bad precedent for future impeachments if we don't devote more time to developing the case, and we don't have the time.  

Nor is there enough support in the Senate to convict.

So my bottom line is for Congress to pass a resolution of censure.

Congressional Review Act Lives!

 Slate notes  that Warnock and Ossoff's victories mean the reviving of the Congressional Review Act.  

I've posted about it before--it briefly allows Congress to revoke regulations passed within the last 60 business days, and makes it more difficult to reinstate them later. That last bit hasn't been tested yet, while the Republicans made extensive use of it in 2017 to revoke Obama's last regulations.

I suspect lawyers will be interested to see how things play out. I know the papers have cited a number of different issues on which the Trump administration has been moving recently. One of the most recent was limiting the basis for regulatory action to research for which the data is publicly available, an issue of big concern on climate change. 

Unbelievable But Not Unprecedented?

 I haven't thought the events at the Capitol today would happen.  So I'm very surprised.

But, I happen to be reading American Maelstorm,by Michael Cohen, on the 1968 election.  It's a reminder that we've had tough times before. We easily forget how much unrest we've had in our past.