Trying to Time Your Covid Shot to the Next Wave is Idiotic

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Wednesday September 20, 2023 · 9:28 PM PDT

2023/09/20 · 21:28

Shit happens. Today, shit happened to me, quite literally - I had an acute emergency involving raw sewage flooding a significant portion of my apartment. Several hours and a few thousand dollars later, the problem itself is adequately resolved; they attacked the standing water (which mercifully didn't seep too much into the vinyl floor), threw out personal belongings that had been compromised, and treated the floor and furniture with antimicrobial chemicals. But that's not where I'm going with this.

Inevitably, fixing a problem like this involves interacting with people who may or may not be wearing masks, may or may not be in the habit of taking covid tests, and may or may not be up-to-date on their boosters. There is no way to anticipate such unavoidable human interactions, nor does the power dynamic permit micromanaging the person you're depending on to keep your space livable. I'm a property/casualty insurance examiner, and believe me when I say that this kind of thing is way, way more common than you realize. If there's one thing I've learned, it's that deferring hiring professionals to fix the issue promptly would have made the problem significantly - often, catastrophically - worse.

Meanwhile — I had to get an urgent physical therapy appointment, because of what they determined to be adhesive capsulitis, or frozen shoulder. I’m going to be experiencing a higher than normal amount of exposure over the next few weeks, and the PT may or may not work. And if it doesn’t? Hello, steroid injections — which are immunosuppressive, rendering vaccines more or less useless (if you’ve already built up an inventory of antibodies you’re good). Were I to have waited until winter, I’d have had to choose between vaccination and excruciating, nauseating pain. There was no way I could have predicted this a few months ago. You just never know.

I mention this because I see that a lot of folks are trying to time their boosters to line up with holidays, or they're trying to anticipate waves, or whatever. Let me be blunt: this is a fool's errand.

There is no way to anticipate when you're going to be thrown into a situation where people are unmasked, untested, and necessarily in your home. It's not hard to imagine a version of my scenario in which my ample collection of N95's had gotten severely contaminated by feces. Nor is there any way to know that you could end up on an immunosuppressant for a while. You can decline an invite to a holiday party, a cruise, a wedding, probably even a funeral; you can't duck out of fixing a toilet backing up into your tub and seeping into your bedroom. And if offered regular steroid injections in November, I’m taking them.

The *only* way to be prepared for a situation like this is to get boosted ASAP. The time to get boosted is BEFORE your next property/casualty emergency, and before you’re thrust into a situation where you’re put on immunosuppressive drugs to deal with nauseating pain. And that can happen any time.

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Spotted Lanternflies: Real Talk

Couchsachraga

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Friday September 23, 2022 · 5:42 PM PDT

2022/09/23 · 17:42

If you’re in New York City, New Jersey, or parts of Pennsylvania you’ve probably seen a few of these around: spotted lanternflies. They’re considered to have paninvasive potential, which means they have the following characteristics:

easily transported
they’re able to establish themselves just about anywhere
they have potential to damage economically important crops

Mercifully, they’re a slow moving threat, compared to pandemic viruses. This isn’t meant to minimize the threat in any way.

What’s important to understand about these critters is that their spread is largely because of us humans. They’re plant hoppers, meaning they don’t fly very far. They’d be unable to spread as much as they have without assistance from human technology: automobiles, trains, boats, and planes. That’s not to suggest that we give up travel and commerce. It does demand a certain amount of curiosity and willingness to educate oneself — and a general sense of humility. More on that later.

Currently Pennsylvania has the most experience with them so far. They haven’t quite reached Pennsylvania’s grape crops, but people who understand the situation a lot better than I do are concerned that they’re a threat. Pennsylvania’s Agriculture Department has gone so far as to start requiring commercial vehicles that go in and out of quarantined counties to obtain spotted lanternfly permits, which strikes me as a sensible administrative control. Whether other states follow suit with similar measures will depend on how successful Pennsylvania is compared to neighboring states. Often, natural experiments are the only way to figure out what “treatments” are effective.

In New York, they were first seen on Staten Island. There are several ferries that go between Staten Island and parts of Manhattan, and the Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge connects Staten Island directly to Brooklyn. As a result, they’ve spread to many parts of New York City, although my immediate neighborhood is untouched by them, so far. New York also has a wine industry concentrated mostly in the Finger Lakes, and the concern is that they might make their way there. At this point, New York’s Ag and Markets Department has in some sense “written off” New York City at the moment, and they’re advising us to kill them on sight. I’m going to come back to this.

Outside of New York City, they’re advising people to report sightings to Ag and Markets. They have other suggestions too, like helping New York survey areas for spotted lanternflies and their preferred tree (Tree of Heaven, itself an invasive species). It doesn’t feel as productive as going on squishing them, but it’s infinitely more valuable.

Wherever you are, your state certainly has at least one land grant university and they’ll be on top of this stuff. You can also find your state’s agriculture department. Follow their lead — don’t try to color outside the lines. This includes an important reading comprehension exercise: almost every official website urges us to kill spotted lanternflies when we see them. What they don’t suggest is that you drive out to a spotted lanternfly infested area just to kill the poor things. Not only is that in poor taste — and fundamentally, soul damaging — it’s also likely to be a net bad. It’s on par with “war tourism” and I won’t hesitate to judge you if you do anything like that. As I noted above, they wouldn’t have been able to spread as far as they have without us chauffeuring them. That means that any spotted lanternfly you see outside of Asia probably only exists because of humans. As such, they’re very much conscripts in the army of life, and if you do find the need to send them on to the next world, treat that with the sorrow and solemnity it deserves.

The Time Change Kills. Abolish It.

Couchsachraga

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Saturday March 12, 2022 · 2:19 PM PST

2022/03/12 · 14:19

With all the horrible stuff going on right now, it’s easy to forget the stuff that’s still important to keep on our collective to-do lists. One of those things is getting rid of the damn time change.

Here are the key points. I may add links and references in later edits.

There’s scant evidence, at best, that it has any benefit in terms of energy savings.
There is a growing body of research suggesting that link the time change to increases in car accidents, heart attacks, and suicide.
The statement “The benefits of disrupting the circadian rhythms of hundreds of millions of people, all at the same time, outweigh the risks and costs.” is so prima facie absurd that the burden of proof should really be 100% on anyone who subscribes to it.
This is doable. There is currently bipartisan legislation in Congress calling for “locking the clock” or “ditching the switch”, that would allow states to adopt permanent daylight savings time. Alternatively, under the current statute, states don’t need Congressional approval to adopt “standard” time year round. I really don’t have a dog in the fight, as far as which of these we ultimately pick.
As to the relative importance of something as seemingly trivial as abolishing the time change, to other important threats, I pose this question:

Does being chased by a tiger make keeping your shoes tied more or less important?

Happy New Year! You're Going to Get Covid. Go Easy on Yourself

Couchsachraga

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Saturday January 01, 2022 · 2:48 AM PST

2022/01/01 · 02:48

Welcome to 2022. This isn’t 2020, and it isn’t 2021. The latest version of Covid — Omicron — is insanely transmissible. In the past week, a cousin, two co-workers (one of whom may have exposed me), two of my parents friends, There are a number of possible reasons for this:

A recent New York Times article suggested Omicron may survive longer in the air. Or more generally, outside the human body.
It may replicate 70 times as fast in the bronchial tract
A recent preprint sheds light on Omicron’s ability to evade antibodies, as well as its ability to bind to infect mice (it’s even been postulated that Omicron evolved in mice)

That’s on top of all the other ways that Covid might spread, that haven’t been fully accounted for. Fecal-oral and fecal-aerosol transmission still haven’t been ruled out, after almost two years, and there’s certainly ample circumstantial evidence that some of that is happening (hard to imagine how else it could have made its way to over a third of white tailed deer, other than wastewater). The number of susceptible animal hosts is staggering enough that Covid probably qualifies as a panzootic (mustelids — animals like minks, otters, badgers, etc — are extremely prone to infection).

All this is to say, that in the early days of the pandemic — remember them? — there were things you could reasonably do to guarantee not catching Covid. Abscond from densely packed urban areas, or if that wasn’t possible at least isolate in your apartment. Although I live alone in my rent stabilized studio in Brooklyn, and wear an N95 when I’m out of the home, I’m under no illusion that it’s not just a matter of time before it finds me. Remember — again, thinking back to the early days — medical professionals, people who one assumes were on their A-game — were coming down with it left, right, and center? That’s because they were practically swimming in Covid every day. That’s all of us now. It’s everywhere, and it’s ludicrously airborne.

This is not to say that you shouldn’t do your level best to avoid it as long as possible. Flattening the curve still matters — it’s better for everyone if we try not to get sick at the same time. On the other hand if it turns out that, in some places, the curve is “unflattenable” then that’s something we need to reckon with too, which might be why the CDC was left making the unpopular suggestion to shorten isolation time s. If 20% of the community is infected, and you’re 90% certain that you’ve cleared the virus after five days, that’s probably good enough — especially if you’re an essential worker.

But make no mistake — it’s here to stay, and it’s going to find you. If it’s not specifically Omicron that gets you, it’s probably going to be something pretty similar. The virus has shown a remarkable amount of convergent evolution, meaning that variants aren’t very variable, so whatever process gave rise to Omicron in the first place could very easily reoccur, and give rise to something predictably similar (that’s good news, in a sense).

Do your best to delay it as long as possible. Wear a better mask, and get boosted if you haven’t already. The Swiss cheese theory of risk mitigation is still very much applicable. But understand that whatever you do, there are always going to be tiny holes, literally and figuratively (did you know, for instance, that N95’s don’t work nearly as well if you have facial hair? or that N95’s need to be frequently changed? or that somehow, Covid managed to get from one room to another in a quarantine hotel in Hong Kong, despite the fact that neither of the fully vaccinated guests left their rooms?). The point is that however much you do, there will always be one more thing you could have done, and there’s simply no way any of us are so good that we’re going to keep dodging this forever. As a case in point, this is Katelyn Jetelina, the author of the Your Local Epidemiologist on substack, led with this in a recent post:

I was hoping for a relatively quiet week. But, as with a lot of people right now, SARS-CoV-2 finally caught up with my little family. I finally got a break at our “hot mess express” house to get a handle on the current state of affairs. This is where we are today…

To quote Thomas Huxley:

“The chess-board is the world; the pieces are the phenomena of the universe; the rules of the game are what we call the laws of Nature. The player on the other side is hidden from us. We know that his play is always fair, and patient. But also we know, to our cost, that he never overlooks a mistake, or makes the smallest allowance for ignorance.”

You’re going to get it. Put it off as long as you can, say until Paxlovid becomes widely available, or until people in your life who are immunocompromised can get Evusheld or until hospitals aren’t as overwhelmed. Talk to your household members and your doctor about what to do when that happens when the dam breaks. But make no mistake: you’re going to get it. And when you do, be kind to yourself. You still put it off as long as you could, but you put it off long enough to keep the curve flat.

Happy New Year, and wishing you a speedy recovery.

You Will Get Omicron

Couchsachraga

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Tuesday December 21, 2021 · 4:23 AM PST

2021/12/21 · 04:23

I’ve owned all of two cars in my life. The first one I owned as a 1995 Toyota Corolla. In late December 2012, I was driving to work along a windy road in Ballston Spa, New York, when I hit a patch of black ice. My car started to head inexorably towards a nearby guard rail. Once I accepted that that was going to happen, a weird sense of calm came over me: It’s only a guard rail, not another car; the guard rail is keeping my car from going into a ditch, with me inside; my car has a bumper, a crumple zone, and driver side airbags, and I’m wearing a seatbelt. The car will probably end up totaled, but my insurance will pay for it. The car was, of course, totaled, I came out unscathed. My insurance company dropped me the next time it came up for renewal — totaling a car is a great way to flunk an underwriting review, dontcha know.

I find myself thinking back to that, contemplating the next few weeks in Brooklyn. Omicron appears to be insanely transmissible, like sci-fi movie grade transmissible. I think I have a pretty good idea why; there are two main reasons, and they’re both really cool in a nerdy science-y way.

First, it appears to infect cells and replicate more efficiently in bronchial tissue. From the article:

A study led by researchers from the LKS Faculty of Medicine at The University of Hong Kong (HKUMed) provides the first information on how the novel Variant of Concern (VOC) of SARS-CoV-2, the Omicron SARS-CoV-2 infect human respiratory tract. The researchers found that Omicron SARS-CoV-2 infects and multiplies 70 times faster than the Delta variant and original SARS-CoV-2 in human bronchus, which may explain why Omicron may transmit faster between humans than previous variants. Their study also showed that the Omicron infection in the lung is significantly lower than the original SARS-CoV-2, which may be an indicator of lower disease severity. This research is currently under peer review for publication.

Second — and this is close to my heart, because it uses computational fluid dynamics and really cool computer modeling — it appears to last a lot longer in the air, according to a recent New York Times article. Here’s the relevant quote:

The buzzing activity Dr. Amaro and her colleagues witnessed offered clues about how viruses survive inside aerosols. The mucins, for example, did not just wander idly around the aerosol. The negatively charged mucins were attracted to the positively charged spike proteins. Charged atoms such as calcium fly around the droplet, exerting powerful forces on molecules they encounter.

Dr. Amaro speculated that the mucins act as a shield. If the virus moves too close to the surface of the aerosol, the mucins push them back in, so that they aren’t exposed to the deadly air.

“What we think is that it’s actually covering itself in these mucins, and that’s acting like a protective coating for it during flight,” Dr. Amaro said.

This discovery may help explain how the Delta variant became so widespread. Delta’s spike proteins have a more positive charge than those on earlier forms of the coronavirus. As a result, mucins huddle more closely around them. That attraction could potentially make the mucins a better shield.

Every now and then, one of the simulated coronaviruses flipped open a spike protein, surprising the scientists. “The Delta variant opens much more easily than the original strain that we had simulated,” Dr. Amaro said.

Once a coronavirus enters someone’s nose or lungs, the Delta spike’s wide opening may make it better at infecting a cell. But Dr. Amaro suspects that it’s bad for a coronavirus to open a spike protein when it’s still inside an aerosol, perhaps hours away from infecting a new host. “If it opens too soon, it could just fall apart,” Dr. Amaro said.

Some of the molecules that are abundant inside aerosols may be able to lock the spike shut for the journey, she said. Certain lung surfactants can fit into a pocket on the surface of the spike protein, preventing it from swinging open.

To test that idea and explore others, Dr. Amaro and her colleagues are stretching out the time frame of their simulation a hundred times, from ten billionths of a second to a millionth of a second. They’ll also investigate how the acidity inside an aerosol and the humidity of the air around it may change the virus.

Dr. Amaro and her colleagues are making plans to build an Omicron variant next and observe how it behaves in an aerosol. They want to wait for structural biologists to work out the three-dimensional shape of its spike proteins before getting started. But just looking at the early findings about Omicron, Dr. Amaro already sees one important feature: “It is even more positively charged,” she said.

Because Omicron’s spike proteins are even more positively charged than Delta’s, it may build a better mucin shield in aerosols. And that may help make it even more transmissible.

Now, even the original strain had an aerosol half life of about 2.7 hours. Now, imagine starting with significantly more virus that’s hardier in the air.

This requires a big rethink of who we might consider to be a “close contact.” If you live in an apartment building with shared hallways, ducts, or vents, you should consider everyone in your building — and especially your floor and your “line” — to be close contacts. In the beginning there were genuine fears that apartment buildings were going to be “vertical cruise ships.” For the most part, that didn’t turn out to be the case in the United States, but our luck has probably run out on that score. Unless your apartment is sealed tight like a submarine or a spaceship, the virus will have no trouble making its way through the cracks in your door. Aerosols are going to tend to follow a Brownian motion and eventually fill up all available indoor space uniformly. If you haven’t already rigged up an air purifier, you’re too late.

So here I am. I think I’ve got a hand I can work with; I’m quadruple vaxed (I’m not going to get into reasons or the nexus of risk factors at play for me, but the best way to explain it is that I’m in survival mode and really, truly, honey badger don’t give a shit, honey badger just takes what it wants). I’m resigned to the fact that, no matter what I do, I’m going to get it in the next couple weeks, and I’m making contingency plans accordingly. So should you. Obviously, you should get boosted if you haven’t already. Going back to the car analogy — you have a date with a guard rail, and you’d better have all the appropriate safety features ready.

Key to NYC One Week In: Or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Vaccine Passports

Couchsachraga

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Tuesday September 21, 2021 · 3:14 AM PDT

2021/09/21 · 03:14

It’s been about a week since New York City began - at least, nominally - enforcing its new Key to NYC program. That’s our new mandate requiring proof of vaccination for indoor dining. I’ve eaten out several times since it started, and I think that’s given me some new insight into how this ordinance is going to work. I’m not nearly as skeptical of it as I was, and I hope that what I’m about to share helps convince some of the businesses that are hostile to the idea that it’s worth their effort to comply cheerfully.

To be clear, I’ve always been in favor of strong mandates — including hefty fines for people who willfully refuse to get vaccinated. My issue with vaccine passport systems had to do with the feasibility of actually enforcing them, and the burdens placed on frontline workers in enforcing them.

I work for state government, and I’ve been doing a lot of field work lately in different parts of the city - Queens and Staten Island, to be specific. Staten Island, as I’m sure you’re aware, is somewhat more Republican than the rest of the city, so not surprisingly there’s a bit more resistance to the mandate. A few places I saw had desperate handwritten signs saying “Take Out Only”. One pizza parlor in Brooklyn turned its tables upside down. A Dunkin Donuts in Queens had a sign that apologized for being closed for indoor dining for the foreseeable future. I encountered outright defiance at a deli in Manhattan’s financial district when I showed my CDC card. I can’t remember the exact words but it was something like “I don’t care if you’re not vaccinated, I don’t believe in all that.” It’s not clear what the cashier hoped to gain by saying that. A few doors down, at a similar place, they were keeping their trays behind the counter, and when I asked for a tray, they asked to see my CDC card and took down my name and number “in case the health department came around.” A diner in Hell’s Kitchen had the dining section cordoned off, and checked my ID and CDC card (I have both on a lanyard) at a distance of about four feet. I very much doubt they were able to read either. More on that below.

In the month between when the order was announced and the beginning of enforcement, it seems there wasn’t a lot done to educate the general public. Whether that’s because of a lack of resources or because they genuinely didn’t know exactly how to educate people on it is anyone’s guess. There’s very little daylight between education and regulation. The best auditors I know are the ones who are able to teach regulated entities the how’s and why’s of compliance. I don’t know the extent to which venues were provided with education and guidance.

This was the week the pieces of the puzzle really came together for me. I’ll try to break down the various pieces, and do my best to put them together.

The first piece of the puzzle is who the mandate is directed at. Namely, customers. The sign that’s supposed to be posted on the door to every restaurant makes that clear: “New York City requires you to be vaccinated against Covid-19 to enter.” This is significant; the primary target of the regulation is the individuals, not businesses. The mandate requires businesses to post signs and check if you’re vaccinated. It doesn’t require businesses to verify, authenticate, examine, or analyze the proof that’s presented to them. The incident at Carmine’s provides a good example of what’s not required. Namely, businesses are not expected to police incoming patrons. They’re not expected to spot forgeries, for instance. Indeed the types of proof of vaccination and identity could include documents from so many different jurisdictions that it’s simply not possible to keep up. You’d have to develop some sort of point system similar to what’s used at the DMV to “score” various types of documents. There’s a similar scoring system for employment eligibility documents, where you have to prove identity and work eligibility. And in practice, when private businesses do attempt to “play cop” things can get bad pretty quickly. This is exactly what happened at Carmine’s when the waitress suspected that some of the CDC cards were fake, and given the racial aspects, it has eerie parallels with the George Floyd incident in 2020 - which began when a clerk suspected that a $20 bill was fake. Selective enforcement, profiling, and alert fatigue are all real issues - but they aren’t if we allow for the process to be something less demanding.

So what exactly is expected, if it’s not a rigorous verification? Answer: it’s a legal ritual that signifies that the incoming customer accepts the mandate. The proof of vaccination and identity are props in a ceremony. This appearance of rigor isn’t about end results, but about solemnity. It’s similar to what I do when I notarize stuff for people. In fact, I’ve notarized quite a lot of stuff for people over the past 18+ months. First, I notarized a lot of things online pursuant to New York’s executive order. Then when I got vaccinated and the executive order expired, I started notarizing things for people in my building. (You’ll be interested to know that notaries aren’t allowed to refuse to notarize things for unvaccinated people; good thing I had my booster). Here’s what happens when I notarize stuff. You give me your ID. I look at it. I check that it has your name on it, that it has someone’s photo, and that it indicates some sort of state, city, school, or country. What I don’t do - and what I’m not required to do - is do any sort of in-depth examination of whether you’ve presented me with something fake. Nor do I do a careful examination of your handwriting, against the signature on your ID. Handwriting changes over time, people injure their dominant hands, and handwriting analysis is a pretty hoaky pseudo-science anyway. When it comes to the document being notarized, I don’t check to see if you’re of sound mind (I’m not a psychologist) and when I’m administering an oath I have no way of knowing whether you actually believe what you’re signing your name to - I’m not a polygraph machine.I don’t do any of these things. That’s because it’s not about the genuineness of the documents that are presented; it’s the act of presenting the documents. If you’re such a socoipath as to present me with fake credentials, that’s on you, not me. Notarization is about me educating you that the shit that you’re attaching your name to is a big fucking deal. If I’ve done that, I’ve succeeded. Some of my friends who’ve worked as bouncers at bars describe a similar standard. It’s all about the appearances. These kinds of ceremonial acts are predicated on the idea of accepting whatever putative proof is presented - emphasizing the sanctity of the fragile web of trust that binds us together. Indeed, forgery wouldn’t be considered such a serious crime if rank and file officials like me were expected to catch fakes with ease - the system would be self-healing.

This may seem horrific to the people who expect at-the-door vaccination checks to screen people out. Even the most well-designed app can’t do that. Louisiana’s mobile driver’s license comes close - the “bouncer” scans the QR code and pulls up your name, photo, and vaccination status from an official state database. But even there, there’s a real risk of “deep fakes” - indeed, there have already been cases of anti-vax pharmacists entering fraudulent information in official immunization registries. That’s pretty much the perfect crime, once it’s been pulled off. The only way one could ever catch it would be to start taking random antibody titers of restaurant patrons. The only real value these sorts of upgrades have is to increase the solemnity of the ritual. Going back to the notary analogy, the QR codes and phone apps are similar to the fancy “seal” that some notaries (who aren’t me) like to use. New York stopped requiring seals a while ago. And we don’t even require stamps any more - the notary just needs to put their name, license number, county where they were qualified, and date of expiration of their commission.

It’s easy to dismiss all this as mere “verification theater.” Surely, with a deadly infectious disease, we should have something a bit more airtight? But the level of enforcement for that kind of system is a fool’s errand. It would require, among other things, thousands of undercover cops to present fake-fake-proof to people checking vaccination status, just to “see if they’re on the ball.” I very much doubt that’s going to happen. As it is, we don’t have the manpower for that, because that sort of “secret shopper” thing is a pretty specialized skill set, and government workers have been retiring in droves. Those that remain have other, similar covert ops to attend to, like making sure that supermarket scales are accurate, taxi meters aren’t being hacked, gas isn’t being watered down, cars are being properly inspected for safety and emissions, alcohol and tobacco isn’t being sold to minors, and escolar isn’t being passed off as tuna. To its credit, the city appears to be pulling people from multiple municipal agencies to verify compliance, but the kind of compliance they’re looking for is exactly the kind of ritual described above: are the people doing the verification conveying sufficient solemnity and gravitas? If so, the venue gets its check mark. My guess is that it’s being incorporated into annual and semi-annual inspections done by various agencies as “one more thing to look for” as a way of reducing the marginal cost. That’s probably considered sufficient - and rightly so.

Viewing the process in this way should be good news for venues concerned about compliance with the mandate. And just because there isn’t an expectation of rigorous examination of documents doesn’t mean it’s not working. If it convinces a few more people to get vaccinated, it’s working. If it conveys seriousness, it’s working. If it causes infection rates to go down, it’s working. And if it survives as a banal ritual, that’s something I can live with. Venues are not being asked to play “cop”, they’re being asked to be notaries. Or wedding officiants. Take your pick.

And viewing the checking process as a ritual has some interesting — nay, achingly beautiful — corollaries. First and foremost, the solemnity of the ritual can be imbued with a deeper meaning. When you’re being asked to show your proof, pause for a moment to think of the hundreds of thousands of lives lost to this deadly disease, and if it hasn’t touched you, give thanks to whatever gods you believe in. Second, think of whatever follows - the nice meal, the movie, the concert - as a post-ritual celebration, following the formal ceremony when you entered the room. Third, consider tipping the “vaccine bouncer” on the way out. It’s customary to tip wedding officiants, bars typically have cover charges for exactly this reason, and this author accepts payment for his notarial services. Fourth, the posers that do get through are mostly hurting themselves, damaging their own souls by desecrating something sacred. The ritual is stronger than that, because all rituals are.

The process of having to check vaccination status need not be the burdensome policing task feared by many restaurant owners. It can be beautiful.

Fine the Living S**t out of Anti-Vaxxers

Couchsachraga

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Thursday August 12, 2021 · 8:39 AM PDT

2021/08/12 · 08:39

There may have been a time, not too long ago, when it was enough simply to exclude the willfully unvaccinated from public spaces. That ship has sailed. The unvaccinated are a threat to public safety wherever they are. Here are a few reasons:

The Delta variant has an R0 of at least 6:

With an R0 of six, delta will be extremely difficult to slow down unless populations reach high levels of vaccination, Wenseleers says. And even then surges in cases will still occur, as is now happening in Iceland and parts of the U.S. The vaccine is less than 90% effective at stopping infections with delta, meaning at least 1 in 10 people could have breakthrough infections. And vaccinated people can still spread the virus. In addition, people who aren't vaccinated have a very high risk of infection, Wenseleers says. "Anyone that chooses not to get vaccinated will in all likelihood get infected by the delta variant over the coming months."

www.npr.org/...

The virus has already become endemic in wildlife, including white tailed deer:

Researchers with the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) analyzed blood samples from more than 600 deer in Michigan, Illinois, New York, and Pennsylvania over the past decade, and they discovered that 152 wild deer, 40 percent of the deer tested from January through March 2021, had antibodies to SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19. Another three deer from January 2020 also had antibodies.

www.nationalgeographic.com/...

There’s also evidence that the virus may be circulating in sewer rats:

The data is preliminary and has not been peer-reviewed or published in a scientific journal. Some outside experts say it’s far too early to raise alarms. But there’s one troubling possibility about where the new sewer mutations are coming from, according to a preprint study published by the researchers on Thursday.

As with other animals, COVID-19 could be infecting dogs and rats, leading to new mutations and an outbreak in New York City’s sewers. While animal-to-human transmission of the virus is exceedingly rare, it has been seen in the U.S. in minks.

www.thecity.nyc/...

Putting them under house arrest won’t even cut it, especially if they happen to live in apartment buildings:

Just nine people got sick from SARS-CoV-2 in Guangzhou, where the apartment building was located, and none died. But there are similarities, says University of Hong Kong mechanical engineer Yuguo Li, who studied both cases. Li’s group—along with teams from the Guangdong Provincial Center for Disease Control and Prevention and Guangzhou CDC—describe their new findings this week in the Annals of Internal Medicine. (China CDC mentioned the cases in less detail in a paper published late last month, as first reported by Bloomberg.)

Here’s what is known about the COVID-19 episode: All five members of a family living in a 15th floor apartment tested positive for SARS-CoV-2 in late January, after most of them had visited Wuhan, where the pandemic started. A few days later, two middle-aged couples living on the 25th and 27th floors—part of a stack of vertically arranged apartments directly above the flat in question and all sharing the same waste pipes—became ill. They had not traveled or been in close contact with a sick person during China’s lockdown.

Li’s team compiled a range of evidence suggesting the two couples were exposed to fecal aerosols from their neighbors more than 10 floors below through their shared waste pipes. Camera footage from elevators indicated that the families did not cross paths. Among more than 200 air and surface samples collected in the high-rise in mid-February, the only ones testing positive for SARS-CoV-2 came from the 15th floor family’s apartment and a vacant apartment’s bathroom on the 16th floor directly above. Finally, a tracer gas that Li’s team piped into the 15th floor apartment’s drainpipe exited in the 25th and 27th floor apartment bathrooms.

Even if you don’t infect anyone else, the disease is a threat to public safety. For instance, the hallmark symptom, loss of smell, is a known fire safety hazard. This is not simply theoretical:

Bianca Rivera, 19, quickly evacuated her family, who didn't realize the house was on fire after losing their sense of smell due to Covid-19. Rivera, who didn't have the virus, said she was awake early in the morning on Jan. 15 when she smelled burning plastic.

www.nbcnews.com/...

If you’ve been paying attention, you’ll know that fire hazards are everyone’s business.

Even garden variety colds can increase the risk of car accidents. Can you imagine the impact of millions of motorists suffering from brain fog due to Long Covid?

Half measures such as vaccine passports place an undue burden on overworked, underpaid frontline workers to police who is and isn’t vaccinated. Moreover, instruments such as vaccine passports, and the verification theater that’s associated with them are predicated on the idea that there’s a meaningful difference between public and private spaces. The facts outlined above demonstrate that this is no longer the case. You could be holed up in a cabin in South Dakota — and you’re still a threat to public safety if you’re not vaccinated.

Enough already. Vaccination needs to be mandatory, across the board, for everyone.

Specifically, we need to give everyone 30 days to either (1) produce a valid medical excuse from a licensed physician or (2) get vaccinated. Anyone who doesn’t would incur a $15,000 fine. This does not need to be done at the federal level. Cities and states that are so inclined can start doing this right now. Most states (and some cities) already have immunization registries, and can easily check who is and isn’t vaccinated. Fines for not getting vaccinated have ample precedent. The oft-cited Jacobson v. Massachusetts case was about — you guessed it — a fine, albeit a somewhat smaller one ($5, or about $150 in today’s dollars). More recently, in 2019, New York City mandated measles vaccines to everyone in Williamsburg — with a $1,000 penalty for anyone who defied the mandate.

The beauty of fines is that they cross state lines, once they become civil judgments. Once you’re subject to a judgment, you’re on the hook for the fine no matter where you run. The government can seize your assets, freeze your bank account, or garnish your wages — whatever it needs to do to recover the money that it’s owed. And a well enforced fine would be functionally equivalent to a robust “passport” system and could be rolled out in a fraction of the time. If you don’t get vaccinated, your disposable income would simply evaporate.

Fines would not require any additional legislation — they can be implemented by state, local, and tribal health departments, under existing authority (it’s a general misconception that government agencies require additional statutes in order to promulgate regulations; one working definition of “agency” is that it’s a self-contained mini-government with executive, legislative, and judicial functions baked in).

At least one recent poll shows broad support for “blanket” vaccine mandates — as many as 64% nationally, and even majorities in Texas (65%) and Florida (64%). A simple mandate, backed by a fine, would likely appeal to a number of people who would rather “mandate vaccination and be done with it” than spend the next year or so having to ask people whether they’re vaccinated.

Nothing short of fines will suffice. Others have suggested that insurance companies could simply charge higher premiums to people who don’t get vaccinated. The problem with that approach is that insurance companies are regulated almost completely at the state level, thanks to the McCarran-Ferguson Act. States such as Florida would not hesitate to ban insurance companies operating in Florida from “discriminating” against the unvaccinated. This is not theoretical; in 2014, the Florida legislature passed a law barring insurance companies from “discriminating” against gun owners, even though there is ample evidence that gun owners are bad risks for every single insurance line.

Some might say that this would unfairly burden people with lower income. It doesn’t have to. The money collected from fines could be earmarked for mitigating the risk of Covid in other ways: better ventilation, testing, treatments, etc. Indeed, one of the roles of fines to force people to pay for negative externalities created by their socially irresponsible choices.

No more kid gloves. It’s time to get real, and fine the heck out of the anti-vaxxers.

It's OK to find out if someone's vaccinated...without even asking them.

Couchsachraga

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Friday August 06, 2021 · 1:02 PM PDT

2021/08/06 · 13:02

There’s been a lot of discussion about whether it’s OK to ask people if they’re vaccinated. Of course it is. You know, freedom of speech and all. But it’s kind of beside the point, and at the end of the day it’s too much work for those of us who might be asked to shoulder the burden of asking them.

There’s a better way. It’s perfectly OK for your employer, your landlord, your insurance company, your bank, your gym, or your school — I’m sure I’m leaving some people out — to obtain that information directly from your city or state immunization registry, and they can all make a fairly credible case that they’re entitled to that information. I’m referring to 45 CFR § 164.512 — Uses and disclosures for which an authorization or opportunity to agree or object is not required.

Pertinent language:

(j) Standard: Uses and disclosures to avert a serious threat to health or safety -

(1) Permitted disclosures. A covered entity may, consistent with applicable law and standards of ethical conduct, use or disclose protected health information, if the covered entity, in good faith, believes the use or disclosure:

(i)

(A) Is necessary to prevent or lessen a serious and imminent threat to the health or safety of a person or the public; and

(B) Is to a person or persons reasonably able to prevent or lessen the threat, including the target of the threat;

Hmm, do unvaccinated people pose a serious threat to health and safety? Yup.
Are the kinds of entities I listed above “reasonably able to prevent or lessen the threat”? Damn straight they are!

It’s time to take off the kid gloves.

Why the CDC cards are probably good enough

Couchsachraga

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Friday May 28, 2021 · 2:18 PM PDT

2021/05/28 · 14:18

This is going to be a three part diary in which I try to strike a middle ground between the hard “we need vaccine passport apps yesterday” and the “let’s ban any sort of verification of vaccination status” camps. It’s not obvious that this should be a partisan issue, with the ACLU, Republican governors, and the Biden administration on one side of the divide and Andrew Cuomo, Boris Johnson, Benjamin Netanyahu on the other. So I’m hoping against hope that we can cool this down before this spins into yet another partisan issue that really shouldn’t be.

Stop me when this sounds familiar: the CDC cards we get are a bunch of flimsy pieces of paper, they’re easy to forge! Before long we’re going to be awash in fake CDC cards!

Breathe. They’re going to work just fine.

Before getting started, it’s worth taking a step back and thinking about why we’re verifying proof of vaccination status. Is it because we expect groups of people to be 100% vaccinated before we’re safe from outbreaks, variants, and the like? No. The best we can do is mitigate risk. The question then becomes whether the marginal effort required to build a high tech “vaccine passport” system is worth the effort and the risks associated with that.

What does it mean for a document — a piece of paper, or a physical token such as a phone, or an email — to “prove” a fact? Can a document ever prove anything? Well, no. It’s a document. It doesn’t prove a damn thing, in the same way that religious texts don’t prove the existence of cherubim. From a societal point of view, to say that a documents “proves” or “authenticates” something just means that (a) the person who perpetrates the forgery can eventually be caught, if the forgery results in harm to someone else (b) there are consequences to getting caught forging the document that are adequate to deter forgery.

Both of these things are true with the CDC cards. Here’s the scenario. An entity such as a school, summer camp, workplace, sports stadium, cruise ship, or airline wants to screen for vaccination status. So they ask for everyone’s driver’s licenses and CDC cards.

Suppose someone presents their CDC card and photo ID to you. In the upper right hand corner you’ll notice a couple logos — one for the United States Department of Health and Human Services, and another for the Centers for Disease Control. These both happen to be federal agencies.

Here’s what the United States criminal code has to say about that:

Whoever fraudulently or wrongfully affixes or impresses the seal of any department or agency of the United States, to or upon any certificate, instrument, commission, document, or paper or with knowledge of its fraudulent character, with wrongful or fraudulent intent, uses, buys, procures, sells, or transfers to another any such certificate, instrument, commission, document, or paper, to which or upon which said seal has been so fraudulently affixed or impressed, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than five years, or both. (18 U.S.C. § 1017)

Indeed, the FBI has issued a warning to anyone with the audacity to forge these cards:

If You Make or Buy a Fake COVID-19 Vaccination Record Card, You Endanger Yourself and Those Around You, and You Are Breaking the Law

Then what? Well, there are two possibilities. Either the person who faked the card wasn’t infectious or they were. If they don’t infect anyone, then it doesn’t matter. So say there’s an outbreak at your venue. The local health department initiates an investigation. You provide them with the contact information of the people who attended — as required, if we’re still in a state of emergency.

Because the people who attended the event presented ostensibly authentic official government documents, the FBI can initiate an investigation. As a law enforcement agency, they can invoke an exception to HIPAA and verify the information with your state or local health department:

A covered entity may disclose to a law enforcement official protected health information that the covered entity believes in good faith constitutes evidence of criminal conduct that occurred on the premises of the covered entity.

45 CFR § 164.512 (f)(5)

But wait! There’s more! The feds are also legally entitled to verify your driver’s license (or non-driver ID):

Personal information referred to in subsection (a) ... may be disclosed...[for] use by any government agency, including any court or law enforcement agency, in carrying out its functions, or any private person or entity acting on behalf of a Federal, State, or local agency in carrying out its functions.

18 U.S. Code § 2721 (b)(1)

TLDR: once you fake a government document, and faking that government document results in harm to others, the FBI can verify both your health information and your identity. To quote Walter Sobchak, you’re entering a world of pain.

Now compare this to the marginal effort required to build a bespoke, high tech, “vaccine passport.” First, there are the equity issues: not everyone has a smart phone. By contrast, everybody gets a CDC card. Next, there are all those GOP governors going around banning vaccine passports outright. Next you have to ask yourself whether the a vaccine passport is really buying you that much more security for it to be worth it. For that I refer you to an article that recently appeared in the Atlantic:

Digital vaccine-passport systems overcome vaccine cards’ awkward physicality, but just as hygiene theater turned cleaning into a false sense of pandemic security, vaccine passports risk becoming verification theater, especially if deployed in only a small number of states. In March, New York launched Excelsior Pass, a free app that claims to provide secure vaccine verification for entry into venues such as theaters and stadiums. Hawaii plans to introduce a system backed by the same company, and California has adopted a policy that seems to require a similar app. Excelsior Pass does plug into state databa ses to produce a screen or printout with a bar code that can be scanned by another app. But this is all limited by the fact that the databases record only shots administered in New York State. And the app isn’t magic; not much is stopping someone from sharing their own screenshots or printouts with someone else.

Bingo. The author continues:

When I asked an Excelsior Pass help-desk agent how a business could confirm that a pass actually belonged to its holder, she said it was the first time anyone had asked that question. “As far as I know, there is no way,” she said. A vaccine-scanning agent could check the pass against a holder’s ID, but only a name and date of birth appear on the Excelsior Pass anyway. The New York governor’s office told me that hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers are downloading Excelsior Pass each day, and that “passes must be verified against a photo ID.” In a high-traffic environment such as a stadium or even a restaurant, though, it’s hard to believe that everyone will take the time to do so.

The other passes, such as Israel’s green passes, aren’t much better. I suppose Louisiana’s mobile driver’s licenses might work, although the ACLU has legitimate concerns about those.

As a point of order, I want to be clear that I’m comparing our friend the CDC cards to the “vax pass” options that actually exist, not the theoretical ones that probably aren’t ever going to make it to market. For instance, I’d love it if at some point vaccination status could be incorporated into one of the trusted traveler programs under the jurisdiction of the Department of Homeland Security. You’re most likely to make a lot of random contacts when you travel, which means that the overdispersion phenomenon becomes that much more relevant. As much as possible, vaccination status should be verified off site, to minimize the risk of conflict. Anti-vaxers are a violent bunch, and the last thing we should be doing is expecting low paid frontline workers to engage them directly. Even having an instrument that’s hard to forge is fraught with peril, with the potential for escalation. For example — and I hate to bring this up, but it’s an uncomfortable truth — the clerk Christopher Martin, who correctly identified George Floyd’s forged twenty dollar bill, is still traumatized and guilt-ridden.

YouTube Video

We do not have the luxury of creating some system of screening people out in some mythical version of our society in which we don’t have a deeply broken system of enforcing laws and adequately protecting frontline workers from violent customers. We have the hot mess that we have, and to pretend otherwise is a dangerous fantasy. What all this adds up to is: in most cases, attempting to screen people as they enter the building is more trouble than it’s worth and comes with its own set of risks that I very much doubt that we’re ready for. The focus should be on deterrence, which is the product of the severity of the punishment and the probability of getting caught. Even a low probability of getting caught can be compensated with a large enough fine.

It should also be noted that the pedigree of the idea of vaccine passports is appalling. Some of the early suggestions were that people be tested for antibodies, the idea being that the system shouldn’t distinguish between people who were vaccinated and those who had acquired immunity naturally. That sounds fine, until you realize that even some people who do get vaccinated may fail to develop antibodies, and end up being an increased risk to others. I don’t know about you, but I’m in no mood to go back to the early 20th century, where we used a strict law enforcement model to prosecute people with TB and chronic typhoid. But that’s a topic for my next diary. Stay tuned.

Republicans Hate Mobility

Couchsachraga

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Thursday May 16, 2019 · 4:26 AM PDT

2019/05/16 · 04:26

For years now, like many of you, I've struggled to figure out some overarching theme to Republican philosophies. What's the link between their religious and social conservatism and their fiscal policies? What does abortion have to do with low taxes and cuts to welfare benefits, or tighter borders?

The answer is that they hate mobility. Of all kinds. Geographic, social, economic, you name it. If you're not born into wealth and power, they want you stuck. Think about it.

They want to force women to have babies, keeping them in one place.
They want people graduating from college to be mired in debt for the rest of their lives, making it harder for them to move on with their lives.
They appear to want higher interest rates when a lot of people are employed and lower interest rates when they aren’t; that makes it harder to live when you aren’t working and harder to save when you are. Sounds like treading water to me!
In the last tax bill they got rid of the above the line — I repeat, above the line — deduction for moving expenses.
While were’ on that abominable tax bill, they made a subtle tweak to the tax code that actually increases the net cost of divorce — making it that much more difficult to get out of a bad marriage.
Also in the last tax bill — by getting rid of 1031 exchanges (except for real estate — gosh, guess who benefits from that?) they effectively made bartering more difficult.
They want to make it harder to immigrate to the United States. If other countries respond in kind, by making it harder for U.S. citizens to leave this country — well, I kind of suspect that’s a feature, not a bug. They’ve slashed funding for the U.S. State Department, making it all but certain that it will be harder to get a passport (or get a passport renewed) — either in the form of higher fees or longer delays.
They’re generally pro-prison. It’s no accident that one of their rallying cries in 2016 was “Lock Her Up.”
They tend to favor reductions in funding for public transportation.

Seriously, if you want to get a pretty good sense of what these guys (and let’s face it, they’re mostly guys) will do next, just ask yourself — what’s the most likely to keep people from moving around?

Look, conservatism is opposed to change. That’s what it’s about. I may not agree with that, but I’m not going to begrudge them for it. In any given circumstance, there might be lots of valid reasons for staying put. What I wouldn’t have guessed — but I’m certain of now — is that they aren’t content simply to make the case for not changing. If conservatism is about not changing, mobility is about having the ability to move, to change. We need to recognize this, and we need to fight for it, because they aren’t taking any prisoners.

Brace yourself. It's a long way down (this is going to be depressing).

Couchsachraga

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Monday March 26, 2018 · 6:40 PM PDT

2018/03/26 · 18:40

Okay, well whether this is depressing depends on what you make of it. And I do think that if we're going to win this, we need to understand what we're really up against. Now that I've got that out of the way, here goes.

Everyone can see how Trump keeps firing people and replacing people with loyalists. Now, some people say that means we've got him on the cornered, that it's only a matter of time before he spontaneously combusts. We can hope, I guess.

The problem with that line of thinking, as far as I can tell, is the math. There are still about 50 million die-hard Trump supporters out there. Whenever things don't go their way, Trump and those fiercely loyal supporters blame what they call the “deep state” what I call the scaffolding of civil society. By the most generous definition of that term, it would include everybody employed by the federal government, which is about 2 million. That’s a long way from 50 million. What if we add in everyone who works at any level government? That would include state, local, municipal, special purpose (water, sewer, school, garbage, library, mosquito control and what-have-you) — still barely over 20 million. Even if throw in certain key industries like education (public and private), banking, insurance, law, and media — that might get us close to 40 million. My point here is that it’s still not enough.

Bottom line: Trump and his ilk have the authority, the leverage and most alarmingly the manpower to take over all of our institutions, completely, decisively, and crushingly. Starting from the federal government and working their way down. I worry that what we’re seeing now is just the beginning of Trump and his cannibals flexing their muscles.

I don’t claim to have a solution for this. I do know that it will have to involve way more than cheap shots. It will require a resolve and coordination on our part that I’ve yet to see. It will require all hands on deck and we will need to redouble our efforts to become more involved not just in activism (which is of course worthy) but also getting ourselves to….battle stations.

Resist.

Florida's cafeteria libertarianism

Couchsachraga

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Thursday February 15, 2018 · 5:10 PM PST

2018/02/15 · 17:10

Talk to any gun owner, and they'll invariably invoke the idea of “freedom.” Freedom is an interesting thing. We’ve been conditioned to think of freedom as an infinite resource, limited only by government. We’ve also been weaned on the idea that our freedoms are precious. Which is already a contradiction. Something can't be both infinite and precious. But I digress.

I'm always a little leery of pointing out inconsistencies; after all, every inconsistency has a “mirror image” inconsistency. And really, every issue should be dealt with on its own terms. Otherwise, I'm technically guilty of an ad hominem attack.

But sometimes, something comes along that's so egregious that I'd really be remiss not to point it out. This is one of those times.

In 2014, Florida passed a law for forbidding insurance companies from experience rating gun ownership. That would be Fla. Ch. Stat. 790.338(7) which states (emphasis mine):

An insurer issuing any type of insurance policy pursuant to chapter 627 may not deny coverage, increase any premium, or otherwise discriminate against any insured or applicant for insurance on the basis of or upon reliance upon the lawful ownership or possession of a firearm or ammunition or the lawful use or storage of a firearm or ammunition. Nothing herein shall prevent an insurer from considering the fair market value of firearms or ammunition in the setting of premiums for scheduled personal property coverage.

Take a moment to digest that. It’s one thing to refuse to enact sensible gun control legislation. It’s quite another to pass laws that specifically restrict the freedom of private entities from taking matters into their own hands. These same “leave things to the private sector” folks won’t even let private insurance companies use math to, say, offer discounts to policyholders who don’t have guns. Some of the things insurance companies do routinely take into account include: ownership of an aggressive dog, alcohol and tobacco use, history of mental illness, weight, accident history, family history of cancer, sex, age, and zip code. But gun ownership, which corresponds to an actual adult choice, with risks and consequences? Forget about it.

In contrast, let’s look at Fla. Ch. Stat. 761.061:

(1) The following individuals or entities may not be required to solemnize any marriage or provide services, accommodations, facilities, goods, or privileges for a purpose related to the solemnization, formation, or celebration of any marriage if such an action would cause the individual or entity to violate a sincerely held religious belief of the individual or entity:
(a) A church;

(b) A religious organization;

(c) A religious corporation or association;

(d) A religious fraternal benefit society;

(e) A religious school or educational institution;

(f) An integrated auxiliary of a church;

(g) An individual employed by a church or religious organization while acting in the scope of that employment;

(h) A clergy member; or

(i) A minister.

(2) A refusal to solemnize any marriage or provide services, accommodations, facilities, goods, or privileges under subsection (1) may not serve as the basis for:
(a) A civil cause of action against any entity or individual protected under subsection (1); or

(b) A civil cause of action, criminal cause of action, or any other action by this state or a political subdivision to penalize or withhold benefits or privileges, including tax exemptions or governmental contracts, grants, or licenses, from any entity or individual protected under subsection (1).

Got that? Insurance companies using rational business decision making processes to reduce their costs? That’s illegal in Florida. But a religious organization refusing to do business because they hate gays? Totally cool.

I can’t think of a clearer example of the hypocrisy of the self-styled libertarians.

What both of these examples show is the inherent fallacy that I hinted at in the first paragraph. I believe quite firmly that freedom is really a finite resource, which can only be moved from one place to another. Maybe you remember this trope from shortly after 9/11 in the run-up to the Iraq war.

I contend that this slogan (printed on T-shirts and fridge magnets and beautifully lampooned in Team America: World Police) is absolutely correct. Sometimes, you pay for one of your freedoms with another freedom. Sometimes, somebody else has to give something up. I’d love to see us do a proper brainstorming session on all the examples of this — there are many, if you take the time to think about it. If you take a freshman math, physics, or chemistry class you might learn about degrees of freedom. I think that’s a pretty good metaphor for what I’m talking about, and I like to think this is more than mere wordplay.

I hope this diary helps get you started when framing these issues.

Cheers,

Cooch

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