It’s Friday. Here in the PNW, we just enjoyed our first of several false springs, causing us to look forward to July 5, when winter finally relents and summer arrives and we forget that it stinks we don’t get a real spring. There are a bunch of new Rounduppers receiving their first email from me. Welcome!
Neanderthal Thinking
There’s something in my brain that fixates on certain words or phrases when I first hear or read them. I think the word or phrase is funny or interesting and try to use it in conversation as much as possible. I think it’s endearing and fun, but it’s probably actually annoying, or so says my wife.
Joe Biden triggered me big time this week when he described as “Neanderthal thinking” the decisions by the governors of Texas and Mississippi to eliminate business capacity limits and scrap their mask mandates. I researched Neanderthals. I tweeted about Neanderthals and their thinking. I changed my Facebook profile picture to that of a Neanderthal thinking (actual text from my wife: “What is your profile picture of ??? Have you gone mad”). I’ve been writing this Roundup in my head ever since because I'm so excited to share with you my thoughts on Neanderthal thinking. And yes, looking at all this objectively, I’ve probably gone mad.
President Biden’s comment is reminiscent of Barack Obama’s observation, made at a fundraiser in San Francisco, that working class voters in Pennsylvania “cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them,” instead of doing what all rational, fair-minded people should do, which is to vote Democrat. Biden’s oft-stated goal of unity apparently takes a back seat to insulting the thought process leading to different policies than he prefers.
The thing is, no one knows how what Texas and Mississippi are doing will work out. Not me, not Biden, not Anthony Fauci not TX Gov. Greg Abbott or MS Gov. Tate Reeves. In December and January, most of the public health establishment was predicting a continued surge in cases. Instead, beginning in mid-January, cases began plummeting even though people were operating mostly under the same restrictions they had been earlier in the winter and fall, when cases were rising.
Moreover, as I’ve written before, there’s reason to believe that there may not be a strong correlation between strict COVID restrictions and good COVID outcomes. In an environment of declining case numbers, increasingly available vaccines that most states (not Oregon!) have targeted at the most vulnerable populations, ample hospital space and vastly improved COVID treatments, it’s not clearly wrong or Neanderthalish to eliminate restrictions. We know how brutally harmful many of those restrictions have been. Governors should be looking for ways to ease restrictions.
Indeed, even members of the non-clinging, non-Neanderthal party are beginning to relax things. Connecticut Gov. John Larson is reopening restaurants and many other indoor businesses at full capacity, while maintaining the state’s mask mandate. Even Oregon’s Kate Brown has intervened to stop some counties from slipping from “high” back into “extreme” risk, which would lead to indoor restaurant and other business closures and restrictions. Is that defilement of the science-driven risk level system, handed down from on high, the result of Neanderthal thinking?
To be sure, Mississippi and Texas have gone farther in relaxing rules than Connecticut and Oregon. However, nothing they’ve done precludes people in those states from wearing masks and avoiding crowded businesses if they wish. That’s what my family and I would do if we lived in one of those states.
In a complex but improving environment in which experts and governors and presidents and everyone else have gotten things wrong, it’s not Neanderthal thinking to allow people to make more decisions for themselves. It’s the type of thinking all of our leaders should be engaged in right now. We don’t know if Texas and Mississippi have moved too far, too fast, but it would be great news for everyone who doesn’t delight in controlling the lives of other people if those clinging Neanderthals down south got this one right.
Whence COVID?
One long-simmering mystery of the last year or so is how did the coronavirus that causes COVID make its way to humans? There are two primary theories: (1) The virus passed from a bat to humans naturally, perhaps via an intermediary animal like a pangolin; and (2) the virus leaked or escaped from one of two virus research laboratories located in Wuhan, China, the city in which the outbreak began.
The question about how humans came to get sick from COVID is an incredibly important one because it would be great if we could avoid something like this happening again. To do that, we need to know what happened, because the measures to mitigate the risk of transmission to humans of future coronaviruses would look different if this one transmitted naturally, or due to a lab accident.
Because this is 2021, of course, the process of figuring out what happened is highly political. The World Health Organization has been studying the source of transmission. Its scientists and others recently began signaling they believe the virus transmitted naturally to humans. China, which is very sensitive to the theory that a Wuhan lab may have caused COVID, was very happy.
Now, though, a group of scientists outside WHO have expressed concern about that direction, arguing that WHO cannot issue a report yet because China has not provided it adequate access to laboratory and early victim data to draw an accurate conclusion. WHO has indeed scrapped plans to issue an interim report. To its credit, the Biden administration has expressed skepticism about China’s cooperation with the investigation.
Most scientists believe that the virus transmitted to humans naturally, not via a laboratory accident. That may well be true. Scientists know a lot more about science than I do. On the other hand, not all scientists agree, China’s acting like it has something to hide, and, boy, it’s a pretty big coincidence that the jump to humans happened in the city that houses two Chinese viral laboratories, at least one of which studies coronaviruses in bats.
If the virus did escape from a Chinese lab, and China has hid that fact for a year, that’s really bad news, but news we need to know. The fallout would be international outrage and a significant ratcheting up of tensions between the U.S. and China. It would be unpleasant and dangerous, but better to know the truth so that it may be dealt with. And, if the lab escape theory can be thoroughly and reliably discarded, it’s best to do so in order to minimize dangerous misconceptions.
Atlas Shirked
Paid subscribers received this article about how the best and brightest Americans, or at least many of them, aren’t reacting to government overreach in the manner predicted by Ayn Rand in her novel Atlas Shrugged. Here’s a taste:
Ayn Rand envisioned a world in which the most capable would seek to maximize their freedom. In reality, the trend is decidedly in the opposite direction. At least in the near term, the defense of individual liberty must be shouldered by Americans at the middle and lower rungs of the socio-economic ladder. Increasing numbers of those at the top use their perch to dictate conformity, control and collectivization.
If you’re not a paid subscriber, you’re inexplicably allowing $5/month to stand between you and the pure bliss activated by access to the entire universe of Oregon Roundup content. Just sayin’.
Have a great weekend!