In his Wall Street Journal op-ed Marty Makary is sharply critical of the Centers for Disease Control’s (CDC) present guidance for people who’ve received their COVID-19 inoculations:

In its guidance the CDC says the risks of infection in vaccinated people “cannot be completely eliminated.” True, we don’t have conclusive data that guarantees vaccination reduces risk to zero. We never will. We are operating in the realm of medical discretion based on the best available data, as practicing physicians have always done. The CDC highlights the vaccines’ stunning success but is ridiculously cautious about its implications. Public-health officials focus myopically on transmission risk while all but ignoring the broader health crisis stemming from isolation. The CDC acknowledges “potential” risks of isolation, but doesn’t go into details.

It’s time to liberate vaccinated people to restore their relationships and rebuild their lives. That would encourage vaccination by giving hesitant people a vivid incentive to have the shots.

His concluding advice is

Once a month has passed after your first shot, go back to normal.

while also advising to continue to wear a facemask in public. The quick summary of what he’s advocating is that he charges the CDC with ignoring the science in favor of the precautionary principle in a futile search for perfect safety.

I’m in no position either to agree or disagree with Dr. Makary or the CDC for that matter. I can only repeat what I’ve been saying for most of the last year which is that I wish that public officials were sharing more of their reasoning and the basis for their guidance rather than making ex cathedra pronouncements. There are facts, facts that are discounted, and assumptions. When people an distinguish among them they have a much better chance for making an informed decision.

As I’ve mentioned before my Schuler ancestors came from Switzerland. I’m five generations removed from Switzerland. An ancestor of mine drafted the Federal Charter of 1291, the constitutional founding document of the Old Swiss Conferation. That undoubtedly explains why I follow Swiss news more closely than most people do.

Switzerland recently voted in referendum to ban the wearing of face coverings in public. The target of the ban was clear from the advertising supporting the referendum: burqas. Medical masks are explicitly exempted from the ban. In a piece in the Wall Street Journal Tunku Varadarajan quotes a Swiss Muslim woman, a prominent supporter of the ban:

Ms. Manea is quick to dismiss the argument that the ban curbs freedom. You can’t separate the burqa and niqab from their “religious and political contexts” and turn this into “a simple question of ‘choice.’ ” The burqa didn’t “come out of nowhere” and Muslim women haven’t “decided to embrace it on a whim.” Many Western feminists, she says, tend to “neutralize the context, as if it is of no consequence.” She urges those who are squeamish about the ban to ask which ideology teaches women to cover themselves completely. What are its theological features? What does it say about women?

The burqa is “a symbol,” she says. When you see it in a Western society, “it indicates that a neofundamentalist Islam is at work.” Women, according to this worldview, are a “source of evil, to be covered from head to toe to protect men from seduction. They are perpetual minors, to be controlled by their male guardian.”

In her view, the burqa is the “face” of Islamist separatism in Western societies. It represents a form of Islam that “leads to the secession of Muslim minorities” into closed enclaves, paving the ground for radicalizing “disoriented youth.” So when we see women in burqas in the West, Ms. Manea warns, “think of the ideology they embody. It is not choice we should look at in this discussion,” but the consequences of leaving the dangers unaddressed.

This is no minor matter for the Swiss. It goes to the very heart of their society. To the best of my knowledge Switzerland is the largest (and oldest) direct democracy in the world. The only that can be preserved is that Switzerland is at base a consensus-based society. It’s also one of the most Catholic countries in Europe. It’s unclear to me how Switzerland can simultaneously maintain its consensus but become multicultural. I think that’s an issue the Swiss are struggling with.

In his Wall Street Journal column Jason L. Riley characterizes the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 (the “COVID-19 relief bill”) as including a reboot of the Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society program:

Johnson’s stated goal was a reduction in dependency, not simply a redistribution of wealth to the poor. “The days of the dole in our country are numbered,” he declared in 1964. Alas, the opposite occurred. After his antipoverty programs were implemented, the proportion of people who relied on government aid to stay above the poverty line increased, a sharp reversal of the pre-Great Society trend.

Poverty rates at the time tell a similar story. It’s true that privation fell under Johnson in the 1960s, but that had already been happening for more than a decade before his war on poverty began. The poverty rate was approximately 30% in 1950 but had dropped to 18% by 1964. Moreover, as the scholar Charles Murray detailed in his landmark study, “Losing Ground,” the poverty rate would start to increase in the 1970s, after two decades of steady decline, and even as Johnson’s successors threw more and more money at creating new antipoverty programs or expanding the existing ones.

“The real [inflation-adjusted] annual expenditures of the 1970s were far larger—by many orders of magnitude, for some of the programs—than expenditures in the sixties,” Mr. Murray wrote. Yet “the number of people living in poverty stopped declining just as public-assistance program budgets and the rate of increase in those budgets were highest.”

concluding

History shows that no government program has been able to match what people can do for themselves, and this applies equally to some of society’s most historically marginalized groups. No Great Society program was ever able to match the rate of progress made by blacks—in poverty reduction, income, homeownership or other measures—before that program’s implementation. Instead of helping, welfare-state expansions too often become lures and traps, inflicting damage that can last generations.

You can argue forever over what the impact of the Great Society Program might have been but you can’t argue that it didn’t change incentives or, much as you might wish it weren’t the case, that incentives don’t matter. I supported some aspects of it, for example the Head Start education program, until its failure to live up to cost-benefit analysis became undeniable. Whether a prudent use of the money or not, it’s still in place.

In my view we don’t need a new or bolstered social safety net as much as we need resolution of the contradictions already present in our government programs, particularly welfare, healthcare, education, immigration, and trade.

In his Washington Post column Josh Rogin draws attention to the material concurrence of the Biden Administration with the facts in the “fact sheet” released by Mike Pompeo on January 15 on the possibility that SARS-CoV-2 originated in the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) laboratories:

After reviewing the Trump administration’s underlying evidence, none of which has been released publicly, the Biden State Department determined that some of the facts in the Jan. 15 statement are supported by either U.S. government information or public sources, a senior State Department official told me. But that doesn’t mean the Biden team is endorsing Trump’s or Pottinger’s assertion that the lab was probably involved.

“There wasn’t significant or meaningful disagreement regarding the information presented in the fact sheet,” the senior State Department official said. “No one is disputing the information, the fact that these data points exist, the fact that they are accurate. Where there was some discomfort was that [the Trump administration] put spin on the ball.”

The emphasis is mine. The “fact sheet” itself can be read here. In other words they’re accusing the Trump Administration of cherry-picking the information to make a case and, although they agree that the WIV might have been the source of the virus, they demur from concluding that was its source. That’s better than the WHO which wouldn’t even consider the possibility.

As is frequently the case for pundits in these discussions he closes by emphasizing that searching for the source of SARS-CoV-2 isn’t about assigning blame but is necessary to prepare for future pandemics:

The origin of the pandemic is not just about blame. If the source of the outbreak can’t be determined, its true path can’t be traced and crucial scientific information for preventing the next outbreak can’t be learned. The Biden administration is trying to take a neutral stance on the issue, even though the fact-finding process has become entangled in domestic politics, as well as U.S.-China relations.

“We certainly care a great deal about the origin of this virus, not only for reasons of accountability, but also for public health implications going forward,” the official said. “If we are going to prevent future outbreaks, epidemics or, God forbid, pandemics, we need to know how the last one started. . . . Whichever theory the facts bear out, that’s where we’ll go.”

I think there are a couple of other factors that should be entertained. Research at the WIV was being funded in part by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) National Institute of Health (NIH). The Chinese authorities have not lived up to their part of the bargain when we offered that funding which was that the CDC NIH was to share in any and all results. Plus if the WIV is participating in military research CDC NIH funding would be extremely problematic.

Not to mention that if the federal government could identify the WIV as the source of SARS-CoV-2 it would put wings on the lawsuits against Chinese SEOs or other companies with substantial control by the Chinese government which have either already been filed or I would expect to be filed.

Frankly, Katrina vanden Heuvel’s Washington Post column on strengthening the labor movement puzzles me. Here’s her thesis:

This is a moment of immense promise: By elevating pro-labor legislation and policies, we have the opportunity to revive union power and launch a new labor movement for the 21st century.

Strengthening unions would play a critical part in tackling our country’s staggering inequality. As proposals to raise the minimum wage to $15 face an uncertain future, expanding the ranks of organized labor would give more people a living wage. The Labor Department reports unionized workers’ median earnings are about 19 percent higher than those of nonunion workers. Unions also shrink wage gaps for women and for workers of color.

What’s unclear to me is how she intends to strengthen unions. I think that unions are strongest in a tight labor market. AFAICT the Biden Administration is doing everything in its power to loosen the labor market.

To the loose domestic labor market add offshoring and importing goods we used to manufacture here. If you want the lots of working people to improve, you’ll want a tighter labor market, less offshoring, and fewer imports. I just don’t see how you can accomplish it via legislation without dealing with those fundamentals.

It would also help if she distinguished between public sector unions and workers and private sector unions and workers which she does not do.

In an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal, Judy Shelton, whom I understand is persona non grata in some quarters for showing affection for the gold standard, opens the op-ed with a statistic I found sobering:

The 25 largest U.S. banks currently hold 45.7% of their assets in loans and leases, according to Fed data released Friday, down from 54.1% this time last year. Meantime, their year-over-year holdings of Treasury and agency securities increased 33.5%. This reflects more-stringent borrowing standards and diminished loan demand. But it also reveals a subtle yet persistent change in how banks operate.

going on to explain the ways that the Federal Reserve has discouraged banks from lending over the last dozen years or so. She concludes:

America’s future as a free-market economy depends on surmounting a fundamental quandary: All entrepreneurial endeavor that is potentially productive is inherently risky. It is the nature of capitalism. Nevertheless, access to financial capital is vital for improving a person’s prospects for economic prosperity—an essential aspect of achieving the American dream.

The Fed must avoid turning banks into government utilities through its carrot-and-stick approach of providing incentives for the accumulation of reserve balances while enforcing compliance parameters that discourage risk-taking. The goal is to stimulate, not stultify, productive economic activity—the kind that raises output and justifies increased wages. Workers do best when banks find it profitable to invest in private enterprise, to become reliable partners with the people who aspire to create products and provide services.

The decisions of the central bank are meant to support, not to supplant, the real economy. The Fed’s killing-with-kindness approach risks permanent scarring of banking relationships by curtailing access to credit. No wonder the movement to democratize finance is being pursued increasingly through nonbank institutions.

The United States hasn’t been a “free-market economy” for most of my adult life and that has never been truer than today. The best you could say is that the U. S. is a mixed economy, much of it poorly managed by the federal government. The federal government has been picking winners and losers for decades. It’s not hard to tell the difference. The winners are winning and the losers are losing. But also consider this:

The fastest growing component of GDP by far is net federal outlays. It’s nearly a third of GDP—more than at any time since World War II. The Democratic congressional leadership have made it clear that the $1.9T spending bill they’ve already passed is just a start. What the economy will look like when they’re done we can only speculate but it certainly won’t be a free-market economy.

From J. P. Morgan via Michael Batnick comes a very interesting chart of the personal savings rate over the last 60 years and it’s actually pretty astonishing. Cruise on over and take a look at it. It doesn’t flat-out prove anything but it suggests a lot and I’ve going to reflect on what it suggests in this post.

To put that personal savings rate into perspective in 2020 the personal savings rate was higher than it’s been in my lifetime. that’s a higher savings rate than Japan or Switzerland in 2015—both are countries well known for high savings rates. It’s not as high as China’s personal savings rate. In general a high savings rate means that people are worried about the future and Americans were more worried in 2020 than any time I can remember.

The household savings rate was absolutely terrible during the Aughts. That’s also the period during which American industries were being offshored, largely to China. I suspect those two things are related.

That high a savings rate suggests that the handouts from the federal government in 2020 didn’t stimulate much of anything other than savings. It was badly designed—not nearly targeted enough. Will the new round of handouts stimulate the economy or be saved? I’m not sanguine about that.

I guess there’s a glass half full way of looking at it. Today’s savings means the possibility of more consumption in the future. That’s balanced by John Maynard Keynes’s wisecrack that in the long run we’re all dead.

I can see several different scenarios for ending the COVID-19 outbreak in the U. S. One of them is to inoculate enough people in the U. S. against the disease so that between those who have some natural immunity either because they’ve already had it or they’re otherwise naturally immune and those who’ve been inoculated that the disease stops spreading. Or at least its spread slows. The “gotcha” on that is “people in the U. S.”. that strategy presupposes the ability and willingness to stop people entering the country who are carrying the disease.

We could also forcibly inoculate people entering the country against the disease but somehow I can’t envision that happening.

Another way is to be prepared to inoculate the entire world against the disease. As I’ve been saying for most of the last year, inoculating 7 billion people is a problem a couple of orders of magnitude more complicated and expensive than inoculating 330 million (or 200 million or whatever it takes).

What does the Biden Administration have in mind? If, in their zeal to be more virtuous than the hated Trump Administration, they decline from testing and quarantining people entering the country, do they just prefer that the outbreak continue indefinitely? Won’t that expose them to the same charges they’ve been leveling against the Trump Administration’s response to the disease?

It takes Bhaskar Sunkara quite a while to get to the point in his piece in the Guardian about the limitations of the present demands for “equity” and its emphasis on action by private companies:

First, it might satisfy younger staffers who want to feel like they’re working for companies that are stalwarts of anti-racism. Second, some consumers might like such anti-racist gesturing. Third, showing a commitment to diversity and arranging for a diversity consultant to come in is cheaper than dealing with an anti-discrimination lawsuit, having to deal with a Twitter-led consumer boycott for a misstep, or paying black and brown workers more.

Yet even if corporations aren’t driving the race-conscious awakening, they’re willing to adapt to the new environment because the political demands flowing from activists are increasingly compatible with corporate profit-making and governance. Corporations are also more than happy to monetize the new social justice interest. Just think of Hollywood – which once blacklisted socialist actors and directors in the cold war – rushing to make films with watered-down accounts of Black Panther leaders like Fred Hampton (who was a Marxist) or the Chicago Seven (all of whom were radical anti-capitalists at the time).

Similarly, companies like Apple, where workers in the secretive Chinese complex that manufactures iPhones attracted global concern after a spate of suicides, just brought out a special edition $429 Black Unity Apple Watch that was marketed for Black History Month. Apple says: “The Black Unity Sport Band is inspired by the pan-African flag and made from soft, high-performance fluoroelastomer with a pin-and-tuck closure laser-etched with ‘Truth. Power. Solidarity.’” Where is the power or solidarity for the workers toiling in factories in China, one might wonder? Or for child workers in the Democratic Republic of Congo who toil and die in mines extracting raw materials like cobalt that are used in iPhones. One doesn’t hear anything about that kind of material injustice affecting the working class from the global south when corporations make their self-congratulatory PR statements around inclusion.

They would rather focus on symbolism and racial-justice-themed commodities and products than contend with more expansive state oversight of private employment decisions, like an affirmative action program. Better to have Kendall Jenner appearing in a schmaltzy BLM-themed Pepsi ad than paying more in taxes to help working-class people in the form of an expanded welfare state and cash transfers.

I wish he’d submit some evidence that there’s actually a connecting link between “paying more in taxes” and helping “working-class people”. In the U. S. the primary effect of higher marginal tax rates and a complicated personal and corporate income tax system is to enhance the power of Congress who then sells exemptions from the tax to the highest bidders. And for some reason increased revenues never go to help the poor but to hire people ostensibly to help the poor. The NGOs, contractors, employees, and higher wages for them always seem to materialize but the help for the poor is harder to demonstrate.

As I’ve said in other posts we’ve been here before, cf. Tom Wolfe’s “Mau-mauing the Flak Catchers” only this time the flak catchers are corporate HR departments rather than beleaguered federal, state, and local government employees.