Hong Hate Horoscope: Week of September 6, 2021
Ok, so maybe even every other week is a little ambitious now (special Tuesday edition today due to the holiday!)
Good journalism/Cool shit
This was good (and a good comparison to chicken pox (can you imagine if that vaccine was created today?):
And that’s a bigger reason to immunize children—to protect those who cannot protect themselves.
In the late 1990s, when the varicella vaccine was still new, I was a young pediatrician. I spent a lot of time persuading parents to immunize their children against chicken pox. They would argue that the disease was mild, not a big deal, and that the risks of the shot outweighed the benefits. The disease wasn’t mild for everyone, though. It posed a significant risk to adults who’d never had it. It also posed a risk to babies.
Even though we couldn’t vaccinate kids until their first birthday, by vaccinating those who were older, we began to prevent nearly all infant deaths from varicella. Vaccinating kids made others safer. Even if children themselves are at lower risk, they’re still part of our shared humanity, and immunizing them will help to protect society as a whole. [The Atlantic]
The Coronavirus Is Here Forever. This Is How We Live With It.
On Covid becoming endemic and an important point on the psychology of the disease:
The transition to endemic COVID-19 is also a psychological one. When everyone has some immunity, a COVID-19 diagnosis becomes as routine as diagnosis of strep or flu—not good news, but not a reason for particular fear or worry or embarrassment either. That means unlearning a year of messaging that said COVID-19 was not just a flu. If the confusion around the CDC dropping mask recommendations for the vaccinated earlier this summer is any indication, this transition to endemicity might be psychologically rocky. Reopening felt too fast for some, too slow for others. “People are having a hard time understanding one another’s risk tolerance,” says Julie Downs, a psychologist who studies health decisions at Carnegie Mellon University.
With the flu, we as a society generally agree on the risk we were willing to tolerate. With COVID-19, we do not yet agree. Realistically, the risk will be much smaller than it is right now amid a Delta wave, but it will never be gone. “We need to prepare people that it’s not going to come down to zero. It’s going to come down to some level we find acceptable,” Downs says. Better vaccines and better treatments might reduce the risk of COVID-19 even further. The experience may also prompt people to take all respiratory viruses more seriously, leading to lasting changes in mask wearing and ventilation. Endemic COVID-19 means finding a new, tolerable way to live with this virus. It will feel strange for a while and then it will not. It will be normal. [The Atlantic]
This, from Matt, was really good about Amtrak and what should be next for our rail system (note: it totally won’t happen though).
Climate change won't stop while America hates trains and walking
Americans are insane.
In a tweet about the study, the think tank framed the shift as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic. That may be the reasoning that the respondents had when answering. Looking at the chart, though, I only saw a major self-inflicted handicap to America actually halting climate change’s effects. [MSNBC]
On how we fucked up in Afghanistan. [New Yorker]
Sports hot takes
The legend of Orlando Pace, the most dominant lineman in college football history
Fun article about Orlando Pace (full of lots of weird, somewhat sexist asides about hot women? I’m really not sure those are needed). [ESPN]
Health, politics, and academia
These Maps Tell the Story of Two Americas: One Parched, One Soaked
Some more good maps on climate change from the Times. [New York Times]
Good News: There’s a Labor Shortage.
Some light reading on labor economics. [New York Times]
Hate reading
Psst, hey. You wanna get upset about people being dumb on housing? Read this.
It’s occurred to me that we can build middle-class housing, protect tenants, build public housing, repurpose abandoned or underwater buildings and fight homelessness at the same time. But this would require a lot of what you called solidarity between different spheres in the housing realm. How does one accomplish this?
I want to make a distinction between “all housing matters” and housing justice. Housing justice is a set of programs and policies focused on the experiences and needs of communities on the front lines of dispossession and displacement. It recognizes that the land and wealth loss suffered by such communities has often been the grounds for gentrification and other forms of urban development. Most important for the issue at hand, housing justice insists that the housing market is the problem, not the solution.
I think solidarity can be built between organizations and movements that share this approach, as we are seeing in the struggles that link unhoused neighbors with precariously housed tenants. But I do not think that such solidarity is possible with those who advocate market solutions to the housing crisis and imply that housing benefits will trickle down to those who are suffering or that such suffering is simply the human costs of all markets. As is the case with all markets, housing markets are a far cry from demand and supply equilibrium. Instead, they are controlled and manipulated by powerful actors who exercise dominance, evade regulation and thrive on the income and geographical segmentation of such markets. If building a certain type of housing means valorizing these actors and their extractive business models, then that runs contrary to housing justice and only aids the exploitation of those facing housing insecurity. There’s a wonderful line by one of my favorite decolonial thinkers, Walter Mignolo, that applies here: “Why would you want to save capitalism and not save human beings?”
lol what the hell is this bullshit. “people who build housing are evil, so don’t let them build housing, instead use eminent domain (!?!?!) to let the government take over housing” is an absolutely INSANE take. (also psst, guess what? you know actually what type of housing is being valorized the most? single family homes, buddy.)
yes we should save human beings. just maybe housing them would help. [New York Times]
All These Simultaneous Disasters Are Messing With Our Brains
Guest columnist Michael Stadler, being quoted: “Honest question: do people honestly think we are living through uniquely disastrous times? Because we are…not. I don’t want to downplay Covid but in the history of human pandemics, it’s not even a blip.”
He’s right, these articles are dumb and say more about the media than the times we actually live in. [The Atlantic]
You can’t make me eat these foods
The whitest column I’ve ever seen:
Indian food. The Indian subcontinent has vastly enriched the world, giving us chess, buttons, the mathematical concept of zero, shampoo, modern-day nonviolent political resistance, Chutes and Ladders, the Fibonacci sequence, rock candy, cataract surgery, cashmere, USB ports ... and the only ethnic cuisine in the world insanely based entirely on one spice. If you like Indian curries, yay, you like Indian food! If you think Indian curries taste like something that could knock a vulture off a meat wagon, you do not like Indian food. I don’t get it, as a culinary principle. It is as though the French passed a law requiring every dish to be slathered in smashed, pureed snails. (I’d personally have no problem with that, but you might, and I would sympathize.)
Sounds like someone who has never had Indian food ever before and thinks “curry” is a spice. [Washington Post]
The FDA Really Did Have to Take This Long (ed. note: no it did not, you pricks)
Another spicy, yet bad take! Let’s start with the subheader:
If vaccine approval feels maddeningly scrupulous, that’s because the alternative is worse.
Ok… what’s this alternative? That we… wait for it… lose trust in the FDA.
No, really. Are you done laughing?
We lose trust in the FDA, an institution that we’ve already lost trust in because they’ve dawdled on this bullshit for so long. This is the exact attitude that the Japanese have on workplace culture: you have to stay at work, even if you’ve done all your work for the day? Why? Because you need to LOOK LIKE you’re being busy.
It’s all bullshit man. The data’s been there for ages. Whatever rare complications there are, I’m sure that over the billions of doses, we’ve found them. You’re putting the pause on it in the fucking appearance that you’re being careful.
Did you hear that? You’re killing people to “appear” like you’re doing something, to appear like you’re recovering your reputation.
There’s no “push and pull,” there’s only the truth and bullshit. This column, is clearly bullshit. [The Atlantic]