Neither did Belgium, France, Chile, Peru, Italy etc.... etc.... etc.... They all did worse.

I've been meaning to write a piece, I've just been very busy. Short summary:

1) The vaccine's success raises the value of lockdowns and other measures. With a knowable closing date, these strategies can have their costs defined and allow planning

2) Sweden's pop-up in death rates (after a long hiatus) suggests that the bar for long-term protection is higher. How much higher is unclear. The pop could be due to expiring immunity, movement into communities that hadn't previously been exposed or.... either way they didn't stay at near zero.

3) I'm not going to take the mRNA vaccines at this time. I trust the people involved (my sister runs a statistical analysis team working on the vaccine for one of the companies). It is just that the long-term data is unknown. I would, however, recommend it for older people. Long-term effects (or potential effects on the next generation) are less relevant and the risks are greater. I'm going to wait on either more data or the conventional vaccines.

4) The vaccines will help *tremendously*. By protecting the old and most of the vulnerable they will cut death rates massively. Interestingly, we don't know if they prevent *infection.* We just know they cut symptomatic disease. So they may have little impact on herd immunity. They will, however, cut deaths. The average age of death in Israel is still hovering around 80 - getting to asymptomatic cases for >60s would be a wonderful thing.

5) The big and very very hard question is: when is it enough? When is it enough to open society again. This is a question I have no answer for. It is one we constantly struggle with, and not just with corona. Motorcycles are legal. You can leave the home with the flu. Sugary drinks are legal. Smoking is highly limited. In each of these cases, we've come to some sort of understanding of risks vs. freedoms. Corona will never totally go away, I don't think. So we have to grapple with this. The answer isn't: we can stop when deaths are zero. The world doesn't tend to work that way.

6) The questions surrounding China's role have to be examined. This is on two levels. One: was this very unusual virus engineered? Two: why did Asian countries seem to be so much less impacted? Yes, some are very efficient and organized. But others... well, they aren't known for their highly functional administration.

I'll put this in a post.

*My* thought is that Trump loses. The Supreme Court is fragile and can't unless Barrett abstains or votes against Trump, find in his favor. They might even decline to take cases.

On a more general note, my mother used to point out that there has always been electoral fraud. You can only fight it between elections (thus conflicts no Voter ID, Voter Rights Acts, against New York and Chicago Machines, the occasional criminal case....). If you fight it after the election then democracy can't function. After all, they needed a literal mob to force a quorum to vote on the Constitution and the black vote was definitely suppressed. You can't unwind past electoral fraud and suppression. You'll never resolve anything.

You can just make the future better. Short of genuine uncertainty (e.g. hanging chads) and massive irregularity if Trump loses the state counts then he loses the election - and that should be allowed to happen.

I haven't run the data, but I imagine we're seeing the no-peak states pick up - as predicted above.

My basic thought on US politics is that it has gotten seriously South American. We have Caudillos vs. Entrenched Elites. Caudillos are there to ride in and rescue the day but they basically lack any ideology or (often) brains beyond those necessary for caudillo politics. Trump is a caudillo. He is attacked for being racist, anti-Semitic, anti-woman, anti-LGBT etc... but none of that would have been attached to him prior to politics. That's just his opposition painting him with a particular brush. An immoral idiot, yes, but actually closer to the supposed dream of a social liberal and economic conservative than say Romney, Pence, McCain or Bush. All that said, he remains a caudillo. He is flexible so long as he stays in power. And, over time, caudillos end up a part of the entrenched elite or establishing their own. Hillary and Biden represents the "Entrenched Elites." They build up a powerful state of bureaucrats and functionaries and deep deep corruption. They don't have big personalities but they use the state to serve their entrenched interests and they can slowly drag everything down. We saw, economically, that the disruption of a Trump was very effective in economics, foreign policy, regulation and more. Although he spoke like an idiot, he didn't actually handle the virus much differently than Biden or others in the opposition were calling for. The only consistent policy of the left was to call whatever Trump was doing wrong. All that said, you don't want a caudillo for more than one term. They end up warping institutions around themselves. I think Biden and the increasingly hard left - because of their intelligence and well-meaning ideas - will devastate the US economy and actively harm our allies. I prefer stupid to wise. That said, with Biden corona will no longer be a political football and the media will just stop talking about it - because they don't want to criticize Biden. Biden, though, will yield to the temptation to try to make the world predictable (lockdowns etc....) and this will come at a severe cost, although it will be quiet. If we get Trump, we'll end up with a continual ramping up of the political volume. He is seen as the liberal version of the anti-Christ. We'll also see a continued corruption of institutions by those in Trump's camp. I guess one benefit of Trump is that people don't stay in his camp for long. So a more peaceful public forum, accompanied by long-term decline or a noisy forum with the distant possibility of rejuvenation (caudillos almost never succeed). Personally, I think these options are terrible. So terrible that I find myself not really caring. None of this is healthy. All of it is predictable. Even Aristotle wrote about how democracies end up corrupted and people look to a demagogue to rescue them. Personally, I think the only road out is a serious curtailment of Federal power. These singular people, Presidents, just can't be allowed to matter as much as they do. Your town or neighborhood councilperson should have more of an impact than your President should - after all, you're a lot closer to being responsible for them and them for you.

I deviate, but not quite in that direction :)

Nope

I've seen data on both sides of this. Obviously masks are not 100%. I still wear one, if for nothing else than to make others more comfortable. I fall squarely into the "I'll follow every regulation while I kick and scream about how stupid they are" camp.

You mean like they hack transit cards or bank cards? You can attach a hefty fine to people who alter or modify bands and you can interrogate the band using NFC just as with a transit card.

So what's the cutoff where we allow people not to wear masks? Or do we end up with seasonal mandates - perhaps people should required to wear masks during winter to cut flu deaths?

I've supported mask wearing, I wear a mask. But there has to be a reasonable cut off at which these mandates reliably disappear - becoming widespread voluntary practice (as they have been in much of Asia for years).

It isn't just about masks. When do a governor's emergency powers cease? When *must* restrictions be lifted? Our death rates have tumbled - states people were condemning due to their limited shutdowns (e.g. Florida and Texas) never got close to NJ, NY and the other first-round states in terms of deaths.

After all, these mandates could continue. They can be used to ban fatty or sugary foods - they kill people. They can be used to make cigarettes illegal - ditto. They can be used to outlaw mass demonstrations (contagion opportunities) or etc.... In the name of public health and security, liberty can be reliably eaten away.

There are those, probably including people on this site, who feel that the measures enacted to stop Al-Qaeda after 9/11 were extended too far. Rights were eaten away in the name of security and many of those rights were never returned.

When it comes to Covid, we're more aware of the restrictions. I think it is fair to ask: when do what were once normal rights (not to cover your face, to run your restaurant at full capacity, to attend a full church) return?

Is there a cut-off at which people can say 'enough!'

Nobody seems to be suggesting one. So, in the interests of a path our of this reality, I've suggested an alternative that will naturally time out once the epidemic has been allowed - and even encouraged - to run its course.