Biden and COVID: A C-minus to be Generous

 

A week or two ago, I could see COVID test kits on at least some pharmacy shelves.  In some places they were sold out, in some they were locked up and controlled, and in some places still plentiful. Currently they are sold out at stores, though still available online.  I felt mixed about this. Present on the shelves meant people were not buying enough.  Sold out meant not enough were being made.  Other countries have test kits everywhere.  Why can't we?

Vanity Fair and the Washington Post are running stories on the Biden Administration's abject failure to make tests cheap and plentiful, as they are in many other countries.  Biden's excuse -- the omicron wave was not foreseeable.  Maybe not, but the problem was obvious well before the omicron wave began.  It should have been obvious when Israel and the United Kingdom, ahead of us in vaccinations, began having a secondary wave of breakthrough infections.  It should certainly have been apparent when the delta wave began this summer.  I am no expert, but I have been beating this drum since August.  Public health experts have been making the argument from the start of the Administration.  And now Biden says he wishes he had acted two months ago. No, you should have acted at least six months ago.  I can excuse thinking that a vaccine that appeared 90% effective would be sufficient.  But by June it was apparent from evidence in Israel that immunity began to wane after about six months, and the delta variant was on the march.  At that point, it should have been apparent that vaccines alone would not be sufficient and you should have started looking at other options.

Vanity Fair outlines some of the bureaucratic obstacles to a better testing regimen:

Difficulties include a regulatory gauntlet intent on vetting devices for exquisite sensitivity, rather than public-health utility; a medical fiefdom in which doctors tend to view patient test results as theirs alone to convey; and a policy suspicion, however inchoate, that too many rapid tests might somehow signal to wary Americans that they could test their way through the pandemic and skip vaccinations altogether. These are obstacles.  They are not excuses.  The whole point of effective leadership is to cut through this sort of red tape.  A good start would be to free the tests from the FDA by reclassifying them as public health, rather than medical.  If that didn't release enough tests onto the market, invoke the Defense Production Act.  If that was still not enough, go on the same wartime footing for tests as for vaccines. 

And while the recent focus has been on tests there are other measures that Biden could have taken as well -- measures such as expanding production and distribution of N-95 masks, offering financial support for quarantines, improving ventilation, or ensuring that vaccination is international and world-wide.  That last is particularly important. Done right, it just might have prevented the delta and omicron variants from developing at all.

A few things I will say in Biden's defense.  First, the failure to get India and South Africa vaccinated in time to stop delta and omicron was the whole world's fault and not ours alone.  Second, omicron will probably swamp any possible testing response, no matter how good.  And, finally, regardless of what Biden did, it would no doubt become a culture war issue and meet with aggressive right-wing attempts to block it.  More on that in my next post.

The Debt Ceiling Again

 Can someone explain to be why, given a one-time opportunity to raise the debt ceiling by simple majority vote in the Senate, the Democrats raised it by a mere 2.5 trillion?  That kicks the can down past the 2022 election but almost guarantees a showdown, assuming Republicans win at least one house in that election, as they almost certainly will.  Why not raise it by 10 trillion or 20 trillion, or 100 trillion for that matter.  At a bare minimum, raise it enough to kick the can past the 2024 election.

New reports (cannot find the story any more) suggest a showdown in 2023 similar to the ones we have had in the past, with Republican holding the debt ceiling hostage to massive spending cuts.  Well, that would be bad, but if it is the worst that happens it is something we can live with.  Many times in the Clinton and Obama Administrations we have come close to a breach and always backed away at the last minute. Showdowns in the Obama Administration took place under conditions of depressed economy, in which deep spending cuts were a serious blow.  Currently, the economy is growing so fast it is straining our capacity and causing inflation. Certainly we can withstand deep spending cuts under current economic conditions.  Besides, Republicans have always found that fulminating against government spending in the abstract is one thing.  Identifying specific cuts is quite another.

But here is my fear.  My fear is that this time when Republicans won't swerve in this game of chicken.  I see two possible scenarios here.

Scenario one:  Republicans refuse to raise the debt ceiling.  A breach occurs.  No one knows what happens next.  At a minimum, government loses much of its ability to pay its bills.  When Obama was President, he announced that the treasury would pay bills on a first-come-first-serve basis and had no capacity to set priorities.  If that happens, more and more claimants will start getting their checks late -- and later, and later and later and later.  That's the best case scenario. If the treasury has no way to give priority to holders of government debt, they, too, will start getting paid late.  At a minimum, this will cause investors to demand higher interest on US debt and raise interest rates down the line. Or maybe investors will start dumping US debt and a massive financial crisis will ensue.  No one knows.

It seems a safe bet that allowing the debt ceiling to be breached will become unpopular once it becomes apparent that there is some inconvenience involved. But that is precisely the point.  Republicans will refuse to raise the debt ceiling until worse and worse consequences result, treating the worst consequences as a feature, not a bug, because they can blame them on Biden. 

Of course, Biden will blame Republicans right back, and Presidents tend to prevail in showdowns of this kind.  If Republicans allow a debt ceiling breach solely to hurt the country and blame it on Biden, they will probably eventually end up backing down and spend the rest of his term obstructing any attempt to deal with the consequences. But the consequences could be dire.

Scenario two:  Well, there is talk of naming Trump as Speaker of the House.  Many have asked whether he would want the job which does, after all, call for quite a bit of work. The Speaker presides over the House sessions, assigns members of the majority party to committees, assigns bills to committees, decides what bills to bring to the floor, and serves as head of the majority party caucus and enforces party discipline.  Trump would do fine in that last role, no doubt, tweeting out the party position and threatening a primary challenge to anyone who disagreed.  But the rest of the job calls for a lot of work that does not seem like the sort of thing Trump would care for.

But that is not the real point. If named Speaker, Trump would no doubt allow his second-in-command to handle most of the actual day-to-day work.  What would be really important would be that the would be third in line of succession.  So what are the chances that would be important?  Well, presumably our security is good enough that is most unlikely that the President and Vice President would both be assassinated.  Impeachment is also out of the question.  The Senate is currently split equally between the parties.  In 2022, 14 Democrats and 20 Republicans are up for reelection.  That means that even in the unlikely event of the Republicans winning every single Senate seat, they would still not have enough votes to convict.

But there is a third way for the presidency to fall empty -- by resignation.  So suppose Republicans win control of the House and name Trump as Speaker.  And then suppose they refuse to raise the debt ceiling.  Disasters of all kinds occur and then the Republicans name their condition to raise the debt ceiling -- the President and Vice President must both resign and restore Donald Trump to office.

Call it far-fetched if you want.  But wouldn't it be better just to raise the debt ceiling high enough to make it impossible?

Reflections on Omicron

 

Things feel very strange now -- terrifying and hopeful at the same time.  Terrifying that we are about to have the biggest wave of COVID yet, one that will dwarf all others, though it is expected to be brief.  Hopeful in that for the first time there is an effective treatment that may finally remove the danger of overloading the healthcare system.  Hopeful in that the US Army may come forward with a super-vaccine effective against all variants (though for how long remains to be seen).  Terrifying in that the treatment will take several months to be widely available.  We don't have months.  The Omicron wave will be receding before effective treatment, let along an effective vaccine, becomes widely available.  In the meantime, we are trying to put out a forest fire with an eyedropper.  

So, hell for the next month or so. And then, dare we hope for a return to normalcy?  Can normalcy return after the wave of hell?  Did it feel like this last November, when Pfizer announced its vaccine even as we braced for a long, dark winter?

Two strange quotes haunt me, quotes about hope and joy after terror.

One comes from the epilogue of Orson Welles' War of the Worlds radio broadcast.  We hear the catastrophic of Martian appearing everywhere, the army overrun, New York overcome by mysterious black smoke, and one last radio broadcaster asking is there anyone there.  Then a handful of survivors in an post-apocalyptic landscape, scrounging about until they find the Martian have succumbed to earth disease they had no resistance to.  And then, somehow, everything goes back to normal and the narrator gives the epilogue:

Strange to watch children playing in the streets. Strange to watch young people strolling on the green where the new spring grass heals the last black scars of the bruised earth. Strange to watch the sight seers enter the museum where the disassembled part of a Martian marching are kept on public view.

Very strange indeed.  How everything went from total destruction to as if nothing had happened is never explained.  (Listen to the broadcast, by the way.  It is most satisfyingly creepy.  In particular, the prologue about people going on about their lives, unaware of the looming catastrophe feels way too real when I look back on the beginning of 2020).

 The other quote is from the long-forgotten movie 2010: The Year We Made Contact, a sequel to 2001: A Space Odyssey. 2010 is a Cold War movie, about a joint US-Soviet expedition to Jupiter to find out what happened to the rocket ship that was lost in 2001.  Cold War tensions rise, both in the expedition and on earth, and WWIII seems eminent when Jupiter is transformed into a new sun, and this miracle inspires world peace.  (The problems a new sun would cause are unaddressed).  Yes, the whole framework seems laughable in retrospect, but the filmography makes it uplifting, especially the astronaut's message to his son, "Your children will be born in a world of two suns. They will never know a sky without them. You can tell them that you remember when there was a pitch black sky with no bright star, and people feared the night."

If this new vaccine and new treatment truly mean we can return to life as it was before the pandemic, that is the sort of message we should tell our children to tell their children.

Copper Beeches: Another Possible Explanation

Copper Beech

Since I can't seem to stop obsessing about Sherlock Holmes and The Adventure of the Copper Beeches, a few more comments.

There really are a lot of red flags about Violet Hunter's job offer, and I have come up with another explanation that might have occurred to Sherlock Holmes.  The real explanation -- that Miss Hunter was hired to impersonate her employer's daughter who is being held captive -- seems unlikely to occur to anyone who has not read way too many Gothic novels, a category unlikely to include Sherlock Holmes!  At the same time, there were plenty of red flags to suggest something disturbing.

Too many Gothic novels

Red flag 1:  Her prospective employer, Jephro Rucastle, jumped in his chair as soon as he saw her and said, "That will do. . . . I could not ask for anything better. Capital! capital!"  This is without knowing anything about her at all.  Clearly Mr. Rucastle is choosing her solely for her looks, and by far the most plausible explanation is a lecherous one.

Red flag 2: When Miss Hunter tries to discuss what she can actually teach, Mr. Rucastle dismissed it as unimportant compared to her "bearing" and "deportment."  Just how much can he meaningfully take in about her "bearing" and "deportment" at a single look?  All this talk of "bearing" and "deportment" is just a euphemism for saying he is hiring her for her looks.  Again, a lecherous explanation seems the most likely.

Red flag 3: He then offers to pay 100 pounds a year, an extraordinary salary for a governess and offers an advance.  Sounds like a very serious lecherous design here.  Run!

Red flag 4:  Something feels wrong about the whole thing, so Miss Hunter asks Mr. Rucastle where he lives.  He has an isolated country house, five miles from the nearest town.  Taken by itself, that would not necessarily be alarming.  Governesses were apparently more widely employed in rural than urban areas because there were fewer schools in rural areas, so the country house by itself is nothing out the the ordinary.  But (as Holmes later comments), a vaguely sinister situation is a lot more alarming in a rural than an urban area because it is much more difficult to escape or summon help.

Red flag 5: All this is for one child, but he sounds like quite a handful. "One child--one dear little romper just six years old. Oh, if you could see him killing cockroaches with a slipper! Smack! smack! smack! Three gone before you could wink!"  This raises, for the first time, the possibility of a non-lecherous explanation.  Maybe Mr. Rucastle is offering so high a salary just to put up with so incorrigible a child, and what she can teach less important than the ability to impose any sort of discipline at all.  That would not explain why Mr. Rucastle chose Violet Hunter at a glance.  Maybe she resembles the only person who has any sway with the child -- his older half-sister, perhaps, or an earlier governess -- and his father thinks this may have a calming effect.  The problem with this explanation is that Mr. Rucastle seems to approve of his son's cruelty and violence, so it seems unlikely that he is looking for a restraining influence.  This approval would also suggest that Mr. Rucastle's genial manner is act and that he has cruel and violent tendencies of his own.*  So the balance of the clues still point Violet going to an isolated country house to work for a lecherous employer who approves of his son's cruel and violent nature and may be cruel and violent himself. Not a good situation!

Red flag 6:  Mr. Rucastle's wife is quirky and demanding and expects Miss Hunter to wear a certain dress, sit in a certain chair, and cut her hair short.  This leads to Miss Hunter's explanation -- that Mrs. Rucastle is insane and her husband humors her to keep her from being institutionalized.  This would explain the inordinate salary and the lack of interest in what Violet can teach, if her real job is to manage a crazy woman.  It might somewhat account for the child's behavior -- he is acting out because his mother's erratic behavior upsets him. It does not explain why Mr. Rucastle chose Miss Hunter at a glance.  As with the incorrigible child hypothesis, maybe Violet resembles a former caretaker who had a calming influence.  Alternately, if the lecherous employer explanation is true, these quirky little demands may be a power play -- Mrs. Rucastle taking out her anger at her wayward husband by being a petty tyrant toward the governess.  Or, if Miss Hunter is being hired to manage an incorrigible child, these little quirks may be things that have a calming influence on him.  And maybe Mr. Rucastle wants Violet to cut her hair so his incorrigible child (or his crazy wife) can't grab it.  

So, now we have three possible explanations -- lecherous employer, incorrigible child, or crazy wife.  The hair, in any event, was a bridge too far and convinced Miss Hunter to refuse the job.

Red flag 7:  After Miss Hunter's refusal, Mr. Rucastle tracked her down to her address and offered an even higher salary to cut her hair and come to work for him. Such a fixation on one governess once again suggests that his interests are lecherous.  But the letter also asks Miss Hunter to wear a specific electric blue dress that belonged to his daughter Alice, now in Philadelphia. This raises a fourth possibility -- that Miss Hunter is being hired for her resemblance to Alice.  But why?  I suggested several reasons, from her father simply missing her, to wanting to role-play, to incest.

Well, that raises seven red flags, but still not quite seven explanations. If only each red flag offered a new possible explanation!  But in my view, not being Sherlock Holmes, they do not.

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*Indeed, this child turns out to be a budding little sociopath with a fondness for torturing small animals.  Holmes sees this as a clear reflection on his father.  That could be unfair.  Sometimes good parents have bad children, for reasons not clearly understood.  But if Mr. Rucastle approves of his little sociopath's sadism, that is a different matter altogether.

Adventure of the Copper Beeches -- Conclusion

TV Tropes comments that in Sherlock Holmes stories, the woman is always innocent.  In Copper Beeches, that apparently applies even to Mrs. Toller.  She wraps up the loose ends that the clues in the story did not fill.  She says that she was Alice Rucastle's only friend in the household. Alice inherited an annuity from her mother that she let her father manage.  However, a husband would not accept the situation so quietly, so when a suitor began courting Alice, her father tried to make her sign over the annuity before he would allow the marriage.  It was the stress over the annuity that made Alice fall sick and led to her hair being cut off.  Mr. Rucastle took Alice prisoner, but Mrs. Toller remained in communication with her suitor and arranged the rescue.  Presumably the annuity would go to someone other than her father if Alice died before him, or it would have been a simple matter for him to have let her die in her illness, but that is not discussed.  Holmes was somewhat skeptical that Mrs. Toller was acting entirely out of the goodness of her heart and suggested she had been bribed, which Mrs. Toller did not dispute.

When I first read the story, I found Mrs. Toller's revelations rather annoying.  As she commented, it meant that all their pains were wasted, that things would have been exactly the same if they had done nothing.  And it upended assumptions and introduced material outside the clues the readers were allowed.

But after reading the story again and thinking it over, Mrs. Toller's role is essential, because without it, the story would have had an extraordinary number of far-fetched coincidences.  Think about it.  Violet Hunter just happens to get into the forbidden wing of the house when Toller is too incapacitated by drink to release the hound.  Her employer lets her go to town the day after threatening her life.  And it just so happens that the next day is the day that the Rucastles are going out, Toller is incapacitated by drink, and the rescue is planned.  What are the chances?

But it becomes somewhat more plausible if the whole thing was planned.  Holmes comments, and Mrs. Toller confirms, that she and the young man were deliberately supplying Toller with drink to get him out of the way.  One can imaging that Mrs. Toller communicated to the young man that the Rucastles were going out the next day, so if they could provide Toller with enough drink, the rescue could proceed.  Toller, like the enterprising alcoholic that he was, got into the liquor sooner than they had planned and was soon so drunk that he both left the key unguarded and was unable to release the hound.  Thus Violet was able to venture into the mystery wing and see signs of a captive the day before the rescue was planned.  Although Toller somewhat disrupted things by getting drunk too soon, it was a simple matter to supply him with enough drink to keep in out of the way for two days instead of one, and the rescue could otherwise proceed as planned. As for why Mr. Rucastle would let Miss Hunter to into a town with a train station the day after threatening her life -- well, I can't help you there.

On the other hand, there is plenty of evidence Mr. Rucastle is not all that smart, or is over-confident in his charms.  Hiring Violet Hunter at a glance, dismissing as unimportant what she would actually teach his son, and offering an excessive salary all set off alarm bells.  If he had been smarter, he would have turned on the charm, chatted with her, and pretended to hit it off.  He would have asked about what she could teach and feigned interest, said it was just what he was looking for.  Instead of offering an unheard-of salary, he might have asked about wearing a particular dress or sitting in a particular chair and offered to compensate her for these little quirks with a salary that was generous but not alarming -- perhaps five pounds a month, or sixty a year.  That would have seemed a whole lot less suspicious.

Of course, there would still be the matter of her hair, and Rucastle would somehow have to come up with a plausible reason for Violet to cut it.   The most obvious suggestion would be to admit part of the truth -- that he was hiring Miss Hunter, not just for her accomplishments, but for her resemblance to his late daughter, Alice and his wish to be reminded of her. Certainly when Miss Hunter found the hair in the drawer, she would know where it came from. On the other hand, the approach would have its drawbacks.  When she saw the young man staring, she would probably guess that he was a suitor of Alice, confused at seeming to see her alive, and suggest they invite him in and introduce him.  That might not be unsurmountable.  Mr. Rucastle could dismiss him as a gold digger whose attentions were unwanted.*  Miss Hunter might even grasp the purpose of the dog.  But figuring out that Alice as not dead, but being held captive, seems a bridge too far.

In short, kudos to Sherlock Holmes for solving the mystery, and too bad it didn't matter. In any event, the story ends happily. Watson reports that Mr. Rucastle survived but only as an invalid in the care of his devoted wife, and his servants, who know enough to have complete job security.  Alice and her suitor were married, while Violet Hunter became head of a private school.  Watson had hoped that Holmes might take a romantic interest in her, but he cared only for the mystery.

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*And after all, in both literary convention and reality, father trying to protect daughter's money from grasping husband was more common than husband trying to protect wife's money from grasping father.