Category Archives: Uncategorized

We Are Totally Fucked

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COVID Tracking Project's daily four graphs: Daily Tests, Daily Cases, Currently Hospitalized and Daily Deaths. All have two humps from earlier in the year that subside, and a third one rising wildly, far higher than any of the previous ones.

We are totally fucked. There is no way we’re not going back on lockdown. This is the way it goes: the rate of positive tests goes up, then, followed by a couple of week lag, the rate of hospitalization follows, followed by another couple of week lag, then the death rate goes up. 1,506 people died from COVID-19 today. The experts keep on making these predictions that keep on turning out to be too conservative. The current warning is that daily deaths could go over 2,000 per day. We are going to go over 2,000 deaths per day next week. The thing we should be thinking is that we are going to go over 3,000 death per day this winter. That’s going to be 100,000 Americans dead per month.

“But people aren’t dying at the same rate from COVID-19 as they were early in the pandemic” (compare the bumps in the pink and grey graphs). We’ve learned things. We have some treatments now. But remember that whole discussion we had about flattening the curve back in Spring? You will also remember that there were two lines on those graphs back then: one was COVID-19 infections and the other line was hospital capacity. The importance of flattening the curve was so as not to exceed hospital capacity. What doctors have learned and the treatments we’ve developed don’t do anything if you can’t get into a hospital where they can be administered. We are already at nearly 80,000 people currently hospitalized. We are about to start exceeding hospital capacity all over the country, at which point the death rate is going to skyrocket. “But we can surge capacity.” The only reason we could surge capacity in Spring was because COVID-19 outbreaks were limited to a few regions in California, Washington and New York. It’s everywhere now. There is no area that can afford to loan personnel to other states. Once hospital capacity is exceeded, that’s it: people are going to start dying anonymously at home.

For the next 60 days, the Federal government isn’t going to do a thing about this. In fact, insofar as the Trump administration can be said to have a policy at all, unchecked spread is it. Almost as shocking is the degree to which Democrats in Congress and Governorships are supine in the face of Trump’s total abdication. The next two months are going to be the most gruesome of any of our lives.

John Bolton Almost Knows What’s Happening

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I tuned in to a little Fox News last night and watched Sean Hannity’s interview with John Bolton. Politics aside, the aggression and hysteria Sean Hannity are too suffocating to endure. However, while the political tone of his analysis is all wrong, John Bolton actually gave decent expression to a few insights (“In Defense of Democracy,” Hannity, Fox News, 22 June 2009). Specifically, he explained very well the cause of the administration’s reserve with respect to Iran:

The real reason that he [Obama] won’t speak out has nothing to do with this argument that we don’t want to meddle. The Iranian regime is already accusing us of that. The real reason is the president is determined to find a way to try and negotiate with the regime — with Khamenei, with Ahmadinejad — about their nuclear weapons program. This is a policy doomed to failure, but it explains why he won’t speak out in defense of representative government and individual liberty in Iran.

It’s not that President Obama’s position has “nothing to do with this argument that we don’t want to mettle.” Unlike certain other administrations for whom the sensitivities of foreign political cultures simply don’t exist, or are such trifles as not to figure in their calculations, President Obama is aware that the U.S. has an unpleasant past in Iran that is a significant part of Iranian national consciousness. The administration actually doesn’t want to meddle.

Qualification made, the administration’s policy toward Iran grows from multiple motives. One of which is the desire to do something about Iran’s nuclear weapons program, no matter the outcome of the election. And it’s not as if this is some bizarre act of cynicism. Iran’s nuclear program is an issue of paramount importance to the U.S. (as President Obama adequately said at a number of points in Tuesday’s press conference; video parts 1, 2, 3, 4, 5; transcript). And it’s not as if the assessment of the Obama Administration that a negotiated solution is possible is beyond imagining. It’s the policy that the Bush Administration would have pursued had Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice ever been able to outmaneuver Vice President Dick. But since The Decider never was much of a decider, the Bush Administration spent the whole of its second term paralyzed over what to do about Iran.

Which brings me to Mr. Bolton’s second point. The thing about Fox News is that it doesn’t even make sense on its own terms. Mr. Hannity asks if President Obama is giving the Iranian régime a green light for a crackdown by not saying enough. Mr. Bolton’s not so sure:

Well I think it’s mostly right except I would say this: because — including during the Bush Administration — we did not prepare adequately for this potential revolutionary moment, we’re not really in a position now to offer much concrete assistance and I don’t want America to be in a position where we urge people in the streets and then watch them die. I’d rather be a little bit prudent and prepare for the long term where we really can provide concrete assistance.

So after spending the bulk of the interview using President Obama’s restrained position on Iran as a cudgel with which to bludgeon the administration, Mr. Bolton turns around and admits that there’s really nothing we can do and that he would “rather be a little bit prudent.” So what’s wrong with President Obama’s position again?

We’ve been down this road before. In February of 1991, after the First Gulf War, President George Bush, Sr. encouraged the Shi’a and the Kurds to overthrow Saddam Hussein. When an uprising began, the United States then opted to do nothing, and Hussein crushed the rebellion, killing 60-100,000 Iraqis. Mr. Bolton is correct to suggest that we don’t want to repeat that catastrophe.

September 11th

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In the days after 11 September 2001, as the disbelief and shock began to subside in favor of a sense of what had happened and what came next, CNN uncovered an old documentary, Building the World Trade Center, made by the New York Port Authority and aired it’s entire twenty minutes. I was lucky to catch it and it has since become a favorite piece of film for me. The first ten minutes of the video are an interesting, if stylistically dated, discussion of some of the features of the site and novel construction techniques and design features employed in the building. What makes me return to the film again and again is that at about time 10:05 — on the factual tidbit that after the foundational structures were in place construction proceeded according to a formula at the rate of about three floors every ten days — the film switches from informative documentary to whimsical art film. Set to Johann Strauss, Jr.’s Vianna Blood is an uninterrupted five minute dance of building rising. Watch a crane operator rotate a huge section of sheet metal at 12:25-12:36, the pan around the partly completed towers at 13:44-14:00 or the documentary makers themselves at 14:20-14:25 — it could be Stanly Kubrick. It’s a wonderful little paean to labor and ingenuity and capitalism.