The latest editorial from the editors of the Washington Post provides a pretty good example of why I think that the inoculating process will take a lot longer than people seem to think:

THE WORLD HEALTH Organization’s director-general, Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, warned in August that no country could afford to go it alone in fighting the pandemic. Nations already depend on global supply chains for everything from diagnostic testing to personal protective equipment, he said, and they must avoid “vaccine nationalism” when it comes to the most powerful tool to fight covid-19. When the Group of 20 leaders held their virtual summit meeting last weekend, they again declared their intent not to hoard lifesaving vaccines, saying, “We will spare no effort to ensure their affordable and equitable access for all people.”

But as vaccines come closer to reality, wealthy nations of the world have already taken care of their own needs and signed contracts to buy up hundreds of millions of vaccine doses. And the poor? A global risk-sharing procurement initiative to ensure fair and equitable access to vaccines, the Covax Facility, could bring them protection, but only if it can get sufficient funding in 2021. This is the world’s best chance to help the poorest populations confront the pandemic, being led by the WHO, the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations and Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance.

concluding:

The world’s wealthiest countries are on the verge of a science triumph with the arrival of an effective vaccine in less than a year. But in this moment of need, the haves should also extend a hand to the have-nots. As Dr. Tedros said in August, “No one is safe until everyone is safe.”

In other words don’t just think in terms of 330 million people in the U. S. but in terms of 7.5 billion people in the world. Assume that the certified and approved vaccine makers can produce enough vaccine in aggregate to inoculate 2 billion people. That means it would take at least 4 years to inoculate everybody. If you think they can produce more, you’ll need to provide evidence since that’s not what the pharma companies themselves are saying.

In his Washington Post column Josh Rogin says that the Biden Administration’s policies with respect to China should be expected to be much like the Trump Administrations’s, just more predictable and with stronger complaints about China’s internal human rights violations:

The Biden administration-in-waiting is sending clear signals about its China approach, which will look very different from President Trump’s — at least on the surface. But at the same time, President-elect Joe Biden’s personnel picks so far portend a strategy that maintains the Trump administration’s core thrust of focusing on competition — not engagement — with Beijing. That should comfort nervous allies even if it doesn’t satisfy hawkish Republicans.

He expands on that a bit:

Biden’s announcement he plans to nominate Antony Blinken as secretary of state and Jake Sullivan as national security adviser shows he is making a break from the Obama White House’s engagement-focused China policy. There were fears in the region that Susan Rice, who resisted a more competitive strategy when she was national security adviser, might have become America’s top diplomat.

Blinken laid out his thinking on China in a July Hudson Institute event, when he argued that Trump put the United States in a weaker strategic position vis-a-vis China by undermining alliances and waffling on values promotion. Blinken promised to rally allies toward the mission of pushing back on China’s various bad behaviors.

“There is a growing consensus across parties that China poses a series of new challenges and that the status quo was really not sustainable,” he said. “We are in a competition with China, and there’s nothing wrong with competition, if it’s fair.”

I’m not sure how you might consider China’s competition to be fair when it relies on slave labor and its environmental and labor laws aren’t enforced. Or with a country whose policy is so patently zero-sum (we win; you lose) as China’s.

My view has long been that we should be imposing Pigouvian tariffs in the estimated amount of what it would cost China to enforce its own laws plus the estimated cost to U. S. businesses of Chinese hacking and intellectual property theft.

This Thanksgiving will be a strange, rather sad one for me. I started cooking Thanksgiving dinners for a crowd well over 50 years ago, first for my parents and siblings and whatever guests were invited, then for my mom and siblings and guests after my dad had died, for my siblings and spouses after they married, and for my siblings, spouses, and their children after they started to arrive. Not all of my siblings and their families every year, of course, but frequently. We’ve had as many as 20 and generally no fewer than five. I may have gone to one of my siblings’ homes one Thanksgiving and just forgotten but it’s probably 60 family Thanksgiving dinners I’ve cooked.

This year it’s just my wife and me. No siblings or their families. No guests. I’ll put a picture of the table up after it’s been set.

I’m making the same things as I’ve made for years just downsized. Well, I didn’t make my cranberry sauce. We’ve got the cranberry mold my wife has made for years. That’s plenty. Maybe I’ll make my cranberry sauce in a day or so. I have the cranberries, the bourbon, and the black pepper. Just need to get some shallots and a lemon.

One of my nieces texted my wife to tell her she was giving making my wife’s famous pumpkin chiffon pie a try for the first time and her husband was smoking a turkey so I guess we’ve inspired the next generation at least a little.

May all of my readers and those with whom they celebrate whether near or far have a happy Thanksgiving!

In his latest Wall Street Journal column Walter Russell Mead makes what strikes me as a reasonable analysis of what he divines from the appointments that Joe Biden has made so far about the likely foreign policy of the Biden Administration. I’m tempted to quote it in full and it deserves to be read in its entirety but I’ll excerpt it.

1. It doesn’t suggest a third Obama term.

As a former chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and a hands-on vice president, Mr. Biden comes to the White House with more foreign-policy experience than any post-World War II president besides Dwight Eisenhower and George H.W. Bush. America’s new foreign policy will have Mr. Biden’s fingerprints all over it; the president-elect knows what he wants and is choosing a team he believes can deliver it.

The second, related point the appointments make is that Joe Biden has turned to what Obama adviser Ben Rhodes famously called “the Blob”—experienced foreign-policy insiders who work comfortably within the key assumptions that have guided U.S. foreign policy since the late 1940s.

I’m not as optimistic about that as Dr. Mead. IMO U. S. foreign policy has been seriously flawed for at least the last sixty years. Assumptions about the Soviet Union, strategic alliances (anyone remember SEATO?), Latin America, and Europe have all been erroneous for much of that time or more. The obsession with the Middle East is more recent—largely since the Arab Oil Embargo if that tells you anything. Jonathan Pollard was just released from prison which is a nice reminder.

2. His foreign policy will not be supported either by progressives or by Republicans.

This is not the Squad’s dream team, but the president-elect seems untroubled by that perception.

That said, nobody should mistake this for a Republican administration. Mr. Biden’s expected nominees may be centrists, but it is the Democratic mainstream in which they swim. They are, for example, multilateralists not out of pragmatism (like, say, James Baker and George H.W. Bush), but out of conviction.

or, to use Dr. Mead’s taxonomy, they are solidly Wilsonian in their views. That will predispose them to intervene when the more pragmatic would step back.

3. Climate change will be a major focus.

As they see it, climate change is not only a direct threat to international peace and American well-being; it is an issue that links the administration’s foreign and domestic policies and offers an opportunity to split progressive greens away from more isolationist, anticorporate voices on the Democratic left. Linking a global push for an accelerated transition to a net-zero carbon economy (in the relatively distant future) with a domestic infrastructure program focused on green energy can, the new team believes, energize a coalition behind Biden-style centrism at home and abroad.

While I agree there will be more attention paid during a Biden Administration than there has been under previous previous administrations, I also think that practically everyone will be disappointed. This is not the 1980s. China’s and India’s increasing emissions will guarantee that nothing we can do will have any effect. I wonder when advocates will start to realize that the increased emissions not to mention particulate emissions from implementing the measures they support will overwhelm the results they intend to gain? At a first approximation my guess is never—they’re too solidly intentionalists.

4. A “pivot to Asia”?

American foreign-policy’s focus, however, will continue to shift toward the Indo-Pacific. This is very much a “pivot to Asia” foreign-policy team that’s likely to pursue a more robust policy in the East than the Obama administration did. The new team’s critique of Trump-era China policy was on means more than ends.

I don’t honestly understand how Dr. Mead arrives at that conclusion. So far this team looks pretty darned eurocentric to me.

5. Stronger alliances will strengthen our hand.

Poor relations with allies, particularly in Europe, meant Team Trump couldn’t marshal a united front on economic matters with China. In Team Biden’s view, this was a fatal flaw that undercut the Trump administration’s Indo-Pacific strategy.

Globally, besides Iran, which will hope for a return to some version of the nuclear agreement, Germany and Japan are probably the chief beneficiaries of the coming shift in U.S. policy. Berlin can expect a renewed close partnership with Washington. Haggling over its NATO contribution and trade surplus will be off the front burner as America recommits to the multilateral and green goals dear to German hearts. Tokyo can expect continued close support from the U.S. in the face of the China challenge from a less volatile administration with, again, a less mercantilist trade policy.

IMO this is a fundamental miscalculation. In reality we have no allies. The Europeans and Japan only support us as long as we’re furthering their own foreign policy objectives otherwise they view us more as threat than asset. They only turn to us when other threats look greater. For Japan that time is now which is why they’re been pretty supportive of the Trump Administration. If the Germans see Russia and China as threats, they’ll turn to us. If they see them more as customers or vendors, they’ll oppose us.

He concludes:

The new U.S. foreign-policy leadership is less a team of rivals than a reunion of friends. Let us wish them the best as they prepare for the challenges of leading the world’s greatest power through a stormy and tumultuous time.

Agreed.

What metrics can we use to assess the success of this new/old foreign policy team? I’ve already proposed some. I also note that Dr. Mead does not mention immigration, legal or not, in his assessment. IMO the Biden Administration will be very much pro-immigration which pragmatically means that are also pro-low wages for Americans. That’s sure to earn them the approval of Big Tech.

The editors of the Washington Post are enthusiastic about the foreign policy and security team Joe Biden is assemblng:

PRESIDENT-ELECT Joe Biden’s choices for his national security team will please those who hope, as we do, that he will quickly replace President Trump’s chauvinist and self-defeating “America First” policies with a return to liberal internationalism, with its focus on building and leading alliances and promoting democratic values. But the nominations also ought to encourage anyone who values experience, expertise, integrity and fundamental competence in U.S. government leaders.

and

The nominations could be portrayed as the return of a foreign policy establishment that led the United States to failure in the Middle East and elsewhere. But Mr. Biden’s team has reflected deeply on the shortcomings of the Obama administration and the ways in which the world has changed in the past four years. In an essay published last year, Mr. Sullivan said the United States must reassert its global role, but in new ways: It must fashion “a different kind of leadership, giving others a greater voice along with greater accountability.”

I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt, a chance.

I’ll be impressed if they start no new wars or deepen our commitment in present wars, if they can counter the challenges posed by China without doing very much what the Trump Administration has, and if they can rebuild alliances rather than just crafting venues for our notional allies to act as free riders. If they have a plan for increasing wages for U. S. workers and revitalizing the U. S. economy, without tariffs and without controlling our southern border, they should articulate it as quickly as possible.

Chicago Mayor Lightfoot has gotten her budget passed. The Chicago Tribune reports:

Chicago aldermen on Tuesday narrowly approved Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s $12.8 billion “pandemic budget” for 2021, a package that will fund city government through the next fiscal year while closing a projected $1.2 billion budget deficit spurred by coronavirus pandemic-driven revenue losses to municipal coffers.

Among other things, the package includes a $94 million property tax hike, as well as increases in fees and fines. Aldermen voted 28-22 in support of Lightfoot’s property tax increase and 29-21 to pass her budget.

I’ve read through the budget. It relies primarily on borrowing and a generous application of smoke and mirrors to balance.

Borrowing implies one or all of three things:

1. You believe the city will grow.
2. You plan to consume less in the future.
3. You plan to tax more in the future.

It is a terrible strategy for a shrinking city like Chicago. And it assumes that the credit rating agencies won’t lower Chicago’s bond rating to junk, effectively cutting off the spigot. Does anyone believe that Chicago’s elected officials intend to spend less in the future? It’s absurd on its face—they have shown no such inclination in the past. That suggests that the plan is to tax more forever and ever amen.

No public employees will be laid off as a result of this budget. No union employees’ wages will be cut as a result of this budget and non-union employees will be required to take five unpaid furlough days, a nominal reduction.

To place this in some personal perspective over the last ten months I have worked harder than at any time in my career. I have taken a steep pay cut. Every single day I have wondered whether I would be laid off. My house is worth about what it was 20 years ago. During that period our property taxes have more than tripled.

The clear message is that we’re not all in this together. If you’re a public employee you’re prospering, safe, and secure. If you’re not a public employee, not so much.

To my newly-elected alderman. You had one job: hold the line on taxes. Instead you voted with the mayor. Don’t expect to be re-elected.

I honestly don’t know what to make of this study in Nature. Here’s the abstract:

Stringent COVID-19 control measures were imposed in Wuhan between January 23 and April 8, 2020. Estimates of the prevalence of infection following the release of restrictions could inform post-lockdown pandemic management. Here, we describe a city-wide SARS-CoV-2 nucleic acid screening programme between May 14 and June 1, 2020 in Wuhan. All city residents aged six years or older were eligible and 9,899,828 (92.9%) participated. No new symptomatic cases and 300 asymptomatic cases (detection rate 0.303/10,000, 95% CI 0.270–0.339/10,000) were identified. There were no positive tests amongst 1,174 close contacts of asymptomatic cases. 107 of 34,424 previously recovered COVID-19 patients tested positive again (re-positive rate 0.31%, 95% CI 0.423–0.574%). The prevalence of SARS-CoV-2 infection in Wuhan was therefore very low five to eight weeks after the end of lockdown.

and

Virus cultures were negative for all asymptomatic positive and repositive cases, indicating no “viable virus” in positive cases detected in this study.

while from the discussion section:

This study has several limitations that need to be discussed. First, this was a cross-sectional screening programme, and we are unable to assess the changes over time in asymptomatic positive and reoperative results. Second, although a positive result of nucleic acid testing reveals the existence of the viral RNAs, some false negative results were likely to have occurred, in particular due to the relatively low level of virus loads in asymptomatic infected individuals, inadequate collection of samples, and limited accuracy of the testing technology13. Although the screening programme provided no direct evidence on the sensitivity and specificity of the testing method used, a meta-analysis reported a pooled sensitivity of 73% (95% CI 68–78%) for nasopharayngeal and throat swab testing of COVID-1914. Testing kits used in the screening programme were publicly purchased by the government and these kits have been widely used in China and other countries.

I also have a question: how did they define “asymptomatic”?

I have reservations about this study not for the least because of its origins. However, if true, doesn’t it suggest that the approach taken by governors in most states has been wrong? The necessary mitigation would appear to be mandatory quarantining of the symptomatic. And that wearing masks and social distancing is most effective when practiced by the symptomatic. While distasteful is that not a lot more manageable with fewer adverse consequences than shuttering businesses?

I read Sheryll Cashin’s piece in Politico on addressing the problem of systemic racism with alacrity, hoping to see some specific, pointed, and effective proposals. I was disappointed but not particularly surprised at how limited her suggestions were. These are about as specific as they get:

Advocates have argued that because redlined federal mortgage-insurance programs invested hundreds of billions (in present dollars) in pro-white wealth-building, new investments should be allocated now to Black communities. A $60 billion investment in communities hit hardest by Covid-19 could be financed by repealing the tax breaks for large corporations that were included in the first federal Covid-19 relief package. Alternatively, Senator Cory Booker and others have proposed focusing on targeted investment in redlined communities, including by providing “baby bonds” to every child born in the United States.

Bolder still, Congress could atone for the federal legacy of promoting segregation by enacting a law that bans exclusionary zoning—local laws that privilege single-family homes and exclude denser, affordable housing. Congress could also condition federal infrastructure or other spending on measurable local progress in creating affordable housing in high-opportunity areas. Biden has promised to back similar legislation sponsored by House Majority Whip Jim Clyburn and Booker.

Booker and Clyburn also proposed a bill in 2018 that would achieve racial equity in federal spending by applying a formula across all federal programs to ensure targeted spending in census tracts with persistent poverty. Biden backed the bill in his campaign platform. He also proposed to eliminate the $23 billion gap in what America spends on white vs. nonwhite school districts by nearly tripling existing funding for the Title I program for high poverty schools—an infusion that would require increased appropriations from Congress.

Does “systemic racism” really mean we don’t spend enough at the federal level on programs that specifically benefit black people?

But for its constitutional problems I would be tempted to support the banning of “exclusionary zoning” if only for the amusement value of watching Contra Costa County, Westchester County, or towns like Malibu, lily-white places that reliably support progressive causes, dash to get themselves exempted from the provisions. I can only characterize believing that you can equalize the disparity in educational spending of “white vs. nonwhite school districts” by additional federal spending as tremendously naive. State and local spending on K-12 education in 2020 will be around $800 billion—more than ten times present federal spending on education. That’s more than is spent on Medicare or Defense and nearly as much as Social Security. Suffice it to say that you can’t get there by repealing Trump’s personal and corporate income tax cuts. Or, indeed, by taxing the rich unless you stretch your definition of “the rich” to include anyone earning more than $80,000 per year.

I think it is far more likely that hopeful blacks will be disappointed by the Biden Administration’s actions on racial equity just as they were with those of the Obama Administration. It’s like Lucy and the football. As long as blockhead Charlie Brown keeps trusting Lucy to hold the football while he kicks, he shouldn’t be surprised when she pulls it away at the last moment.

I also wonder when people will figure out that studies like the one I linked to yesterday are to systemic racism what the Michelson-Morley experiment was to the ether?

I hasten to point out that whatever my views of “systemic racism” I think that anti-black racism is real and requires policy to remediate it. I have seen it first hand, both 60 years ago and much, much more recently.

What are the predictions on cabinet-level appointments in the Biden Administration for any of the following:

• Bernie Sanders
• Elizabeth Warren
• Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez
• Ilhan Omar
• Ayanna Presley
• Rashida Tlaib

Update

Comments have brought up a good point. How many Clintonistas will Biden appoint to cabinet-level positions? My guess is that at a first approximation none.