I agree with the assessment of the editors of the Wall Street Journal about the election:

Chatter is swirling around Dominion Voting, a company that supplies equipment in some 28 states. What seems to have launched this theory was an early misreport of results in Antrim County, Mich. In 2016 Mr. Trump won 62% of its 13,600 ballots, so eyebrows rose this year when the initial tallies showed Mr. Biden up by 3,000.

In reality, Mr. Trump had won 61% of Antrim County. The unofficial reporting was wrong, but the underlying votes were counted correctly. As officials later explained: In October the county had to tweak the ballot information for two local races. Tabulating machines in the affected areas were updated, but others weren’t. On Election Day the differing data didn’t line up right after being merged. But the printouts from the tabulators showed accurate totals.

and

No voting system is foolproof, and hiccups are inevitable in a country with roughly 3,000 counties. The distributed nature of American elections is a strength on this point, since voting is handled by innumerable local officials instead of a few central authorities. Texas has declined to certify Dominion systems for its elections. The examiners objected to everything from the “tedious” and “unintuitive” setup, to a crash they witnessed in an adjudication module, to an indicator light that hackers could hypothetically remove to get at a USB port.

But so far there’s no good evidence of voting problems that would come close to Mr. Biden’s lead of 73,000 votes in Pennsylvania or 145,000 in Michigan. In Georgia, the Republican Secretary of State last week ordered a hand recount of all five million ballots. The effort turned up 2,600 missing votes that Floyd County forgot to upload. Adding them would cut Mr. Biden’s lead to slightly north of 13,000. But the error isn’t Dominion’s fault, and it better hope no glitches are revealed, given its 10-year contract with the state for $107 million.

If Georgia’s recount doesn’t find big irregularities, then these claims should be put to rest. In the George W. Bush years, the conspiratorial left focused on Diebold, a maker of electronic voting machines. It would be a mistake for anyone on the right to go down a similar dead end, especially if Georgia’s paper ballots give the same result as the computers.

Yes, I recognize that the outcome of the election has hinged largely on the results from just four cities (Philadelphia, Atlanta, Detroit, and Milwaukee) and there are statistical peculiarities in the vote totals in each of those cities. The world is full of odd statistical peculiarities.

As I have been saying for some time, in the absence of some actual evidence of wrongdoing, more than statistical anomalies, this election is over and Joe Biden has been elected.

The editors of the Wall Street Journal comment on a diktat issued to California Gov. Scott Newsom by BLM:

Identity politics was a debacle for Democrats on Nov. 3, not least in California where voters defeated a constitutional amendment to allow racial preferences in schools and government. But don’t tell that to Black Lives Matter, which has delivered its new orders to Gov. Gavin Newsom: “He Must Appoint a Black Woman to the Senate.”

The internet message to supporters says that, with Kamala Harris leaving to be Vice President, the Senate will soon have no black women. They recommend Reps. Karen Bass or Barbara Lee. South Carolina’s Tim Scott is a black Republican man, who doesn’t count in BLM world.

Let’s see what Mr. Newsom does. He has presidential ambitions and rarely bucks progressive interest groups. On the other hand, the vote against racial preferences was 57.1%-42.9%, and the measure lost in 52 of 58 counties.

I don’t live in California so it’s none of my business but were I Gov. Newsom I would appoint California state senator-elect Monique Limón to the job. She appears to be a rising star in California politics.

If you contend that to represent people in the Congress you must be a member of the group to which they belong (I would not make that claim but it is an article of faith among some), a Hispanic U. S. senator in California is long overdue. Half of California’s population is Hispanic; 6% of California’s population is black. BLM is not demanding representation; they are demanding over-representation while a group more important to California’s politics remains underrepresented.

In his most recent Washington Post column Henry Olsen touches on a subject I’ve been talking about for years, urging conservatives to support a “Buy American” requirement to bid on federal contracts:

Biden’s Buy American plan is a modest attempt to reverse some of these trends. Among its many components, Biden has pledged to use taxpayer dollars to buy goods made in the United States rather than elsewhere. He reiterated that pledge Monday, saying, “No government contracts will be given to companies that don’t make their products in America.” That won’t suddenly bring manufacturing back from overseas, but it will have an effect on the margins. Just as important: It sends a signal to U.S.-based companies that they need to balance political concerns and cost when making decisions about where to locate factories.

This is crucial to rebuilding the implicit social contract Americans have with each other. U.S. firms and workers have traditionally benefited together from economic growth. But the rapid outsourcing of U.S.-based jobs, coupled with the rapid insourcing of foreign workers, have severed that link for too many of our fellow citizens. This in turn leads to justifiable resentment as well as isolationist and extreme nationalist tendencies. It also provides more fuel for socialists who argue that capitalism itself needs to be restructured. It’s simply not politically tenable in a democracy for a growing percentage of Americans to believe that the political and economic systems don’t care about their well-being.

Critics will contend that measures such as these are “protectionist” and will decrease overall economic growth. Let’s grant that for the sake of argument. So what? Modern governments have long sanctioned economic interventions that reduce economic efficiency in the name of social cohesion. That’s precisely what welfare programs such as Social Security and Medicare do: They transfer wealth from the most productive elements of society to less economically productive people to ensure that everyone has some tangible benefit from economic activity and growth.

There is no theoretical difference between “free trade” and “laissez-faire” economics, which perhaps is why those who most fervently believe in the latter more stridently argue for the former. Fortunately for all of us, we have long since left a pure interpretation of free markets behind for the more stable and equitable mixed economy all free nations now enjoy.

That leads pretty naturally to the question I ask in the title of this post. My bet would be that companies will do some of both.

I think that the requirement will need to be worded very carefully and receive close oversight, something we have not been very good at for decades. It should be extended to the entire companies rather than merely the divisions bidding on the contract and it should pertain to the entire supply chain for the goods or services rather than some more narrow definition. It should perhaps be restructured as “Buy North American”.

I got a chuckle out of this passage from the column:

By this point, it should be uncontroversial that U.S. global trade policies in the past two decades have significantly harmed millions of Americans and their communities.

Maybe it should be uncontroversial but that trade has not harmed Americans and their communities has been the consensus view among Republicans and Democrats alike since the Reagan Administration or before regardless of the evidence to the contrary. I would submit that the requirement will face opposition both from conservatives and transnational progressives.

I would also like to remark on this:

Buying American will surely cost taxpayers more for the same goods.

Maybe. Maybe not. The benefits of trade with China in particular have been greatly exaggerated. But I’ll certainly agree that if you overstate the benefits and understate the costs, trade will always pass a cost-benefit analysis. And don’t try to lecture me about comparative advantage. I probably read and understood what David Ricardo wrote about it two hundred years ago before you were born. Regardless of Ricardo’s argument absolute advantage overwhelms comparative advantage in nearly every case.

The editors of the Washington Post urge the Congress to pass an additional COVID-19 subsidy bill as quickly as possible:

When negotiations between Ms. Pelosi and the Trump administration broke off before the Nov. 3 election, the latter had upped its offer to $1.9 trillion, but the speaker objected that the proposal lacked details such as a plan for containing the virus, and in any case was smaller than a $2.2 trillion plan the House passed in early October. Meanwhile, President Trump was sending mixed signals, while Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) was refusing to accept anything more than $500 billion.

If Ms. Pelosi’s strategy was to hold out until a Democratic sweep increased her leverage, it didn’t quite work out. Though Joe Biden is president-elect, Democrats retained the House by a narrow majority and control of the Senate awaits two Georgia runoffs. The precise distribution of clout in Washington is anyone’s guess — but the nation’s needs, especially those of the working poor and the unemployed, are beyond question. Priorities for a new package include extending eviction limits and special unemployment benefits for gig workers, another round of forgivable no-interest loans to small businesses, and aid to state and local governments, which are facing a likely $240 billion revenue shortfall for the current fiscal year, according to new estimates by economists Jeffrey Clemens and Stan Veuger. Possibly at least some elements may be attached to a spending bill that Congress must pass by Dec. 11 to avoid a partial government shutdown.

I would assume that there would be some figure between $500 million and $2.2 trillion on which the two houses of Congress compromise during the lame duck session and I would urge the House Democrats to enter into reconciliation with the Senate to achieve that objective. They should be willing to come up with a “clean bill” that eliminates appropriations unrelated to the present crisis and limits bailouts to state and local governments. It should also include substantial oversight. At least hereabouts the state has done rather little to curb its profligate spending ways, instead relying on the promise of a bailout from the federal government or additional revenue from a graduated state income tax that will now not be forthcoming.

I should also mention that I object to using the term “stimulus” to describe the proposed spending. While you’re locking down businesses and restricting trade and people aren’t paying their rents (or taxes), you’re stimulating very little other than saving but there are people who genuinely need money if they are not to starve. We should focus our attention on them.

Last week Pfizer announced its COVID-19 vaccine was 90% effective. Later in the week Moderna one-upped them by announcing that their vaccine, also based on messenger RNA (mRNA) was 95% effective. The Associated Press reports that Pfizer has riposted:

Pfizer says that more interim results from its ongoing coronavirus vaccine study suggest the shots are 95% effective and that the vaccine protects older people most at risk of dying from COVID-19.

The announcement, just a week after Pfizer first revealed promising preliminary results, comes as the company is preparing within days to formally ask U.S. regulators to allow emergency use of the vaccine.

Pfizer initially had estimated its vaccine, developed with German partner BioNTech, was more than 90% effective after 94 infections had been counted. With Wednesday’s announcement, the company now has accumulated 170 infections in the study — and said only eight of them occurred in volunteers who got the actual vaccine rather than a dummy shot. One of those eight developed severe disease, the company said.

The company has not yet released detailed data on its study, and results have not been analyzed by independent experts.

Pfizer said its vaccine was more than 94% effective in adults over age 65, though it is not clear how the company determined effectiveness in older adults, with only eight infections in the vaccinated group to analyze and no breakdown provided of those people’s ages.

Earlier this week Moderna, Inc. announced that its experimental vaccine appears to be 94.5% effective after an interim analysis of its late-stage study.

Pfizer says it now has the data on the vaccine’s safety needed to seek emergency authorization from the Food and Drug Administration.

The company didn’t disclose safety details but said no serious vaccine side effects have been reported, with the most common problem being fatigue after the second vaccine dose, affecting about 4% of participants.

The study has enrolled nearly 44,000 people in the U.S. and five other countries. The trial will continue to collect safety and efficacy data on volunteers for two more years.

Pfizer and BioNTech said they expect to produce up to 50 million vaccine doses globally in 2020 and up to 1.3 billion doses in 2021.

That’s all good news and I hope it proves out.

As I reflected on the discussion in comments to my post yesterday, in which I argued that, given the novelty of the vaccine’s modality and the state of knowledge about both the vaccine and the virus, it would be prudent to do a little more testing before mass distribution while everyone else argued that mass inoculations should begin immediately because it might save lives, that there really is no right answer. It depends entirely on the assessment of relative risks in the absence of information.

A couple of more points that should be made. Even with multiple companies producing vaccines, it will still take years to inoculate the number of people envisioned whether that’s 60% of the world’s population or more. And that will probably require substantial U. S. subsidies for other countries and making inoculations mandatory as smallpox was.

This op-ed by Salmaan Keshavjee and Tom Nicholson in the Wall Street Journal raised some questions for me. In the op-ed they recommend two “low-cost and effective approaches” for mitigating the risks of spreading COVID-19:

The installation of a simple technology that deactivates germs could make public spaces safer against viruses and bacteria for decades. Also, while new vaccines are making the headlines, a nearly century-old vaccine that costs pennies per dose and is already used by hundreds of millions of people world-wide can help reduce severe outcomes from respiratory infections.

The former tool is upper-room UVC germicidal lighting. These fixtures look like glorified bug-zappers, but the bugs they zap are viruses and bacteria, not insects. The technology has been around since 1937, when it was first used against a measles outbreak—an airborne virus more contagious than Covid-19—in a Philadelphia school. Studies show that when optimally used in concert with good ventilation systems, UVC germicidal lighting provides the same effect as completely replacing the air in a room more than 10 times an hour. This reduces transmission and is a safe, effective layer of protection against threatening airborne diseases in crowded indoor settings.

The devices are manufactured in America and have been supplied to U.S.-funded programs around the world through the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the U.S. Agency for International Development. Outfitting indoor public spaces with these devices would cost considerably less than the trillions already spent by the federal government to mitigate the economic impact of this crisis. Our data from implementation of this approach in Oklahoma City indicate that installing these bug zappers in a typical building costs less than $6 a square foot. Maintenance and upkeep are cheap and simple. From Utica College in New York to the Salvation Army of Central Oklahoma, and from Los Angeles International Airport to the Cambridge Friends School in Massachusetts, these lights are already on and providing a layer of important protection.

The second tool is a vaccine that hundreds of millions of people have taken for years with almost no side effects—the antituberculosis vaccine BCG. It has been used for almost a century to protect the most vulnerable against tuberculosis and can be almost immediately produced in large quantities at low cost. A study funded by the National Institutes of Health and published last month in the journal Cell showed that BCG vaccination triggers a general immune response that decreases viral respiratory tract infections by 79% among the elderly.

My question with respect to the first strategy is how widespread is the use of these lights in hospital settings presently? I they’re not universal why not?

With respect to the second strategy, is there a reason it should not be implemented of which I’m just not aware? I don’t know enough to react.

The reliably pro-business subsidy editors of the Wall Street Journal ask an important question—will the members of Joe Biden’s COVID-19 task force support fast-tracking the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines?

Some critics of the Trump FDA’s accelerated approvals are on Mr. Biden’s Covid task force. Take Ezekiel Emanuel, who helped inspire ObamaCare’s bureaucratic panel for cutting Medicare spending, which Congress has since repealed. He believes government needs to clamp down on doctors who prescribe treatments that incrementally help patients, especially the elderly with fewer years to live.

Then there’s David Kessler, the FDA commissioner in the George H.W. Bush and Clinton Administrations. Mr. Kessler let the agency be hijacked by trial lawyers and banned most silicone breast implants because of unascertainable risks, which many women said they were willing to bear. During his tenure, approvals of new medical devices ground to a halt.

One of the big jobs of “the FDA commissioner is to put their body on the line in between all the forces that want to influence the agency,” Mr. Kessler told Politico in August. What he meant is the agency should ignore doctors and patients who want access to therapies that don’t pass this “expert” bureaucratic obstacle course.

Perhaps I’m the dog in the manger here but I think a healthy skepticism should be applied to both Pfizer and Moderna’s vaccine for a simple reason: to the best of my knowledge we have no experience at all with its modality of operation. Has any treatment or therapy using “messenger RNA” (mRNA) been in use for any substantial period of time?

I think I understand the urgency with which many including the editors view the situation but I would urge caution. There are so many things we just don’t know. Do treatments involving mRNA have side effects, particularly side effects which take considerable time to emerge, of which we are presently completely unaware? Yogi Berra’s advice is relevant: in theory there’s no difference between theory and practice but in practice there is. How long will the protection last? What are the effects of repeated inoculations, not just twice as required by the vaccines but possibly many times?

Another factor to take into account: even with fast-tracked approval and multiple vendors it will take years to inoculate enough people to make a substantial difference. If we were to limit inoculation just to the U. S. and it had widespread acceptance it would still take a couple of years. We’re talking about inoculating 7.5 billion people and we can’t even get everybody to inoculate their kids against measles. After the smallpox vaccine was invented it took 184 years before smallpox was eradicated. It’s been nearly 70 years since the polio vaccine was invented and polio is still not eradicated. Dealing with COVID-19 will be a marathon not a sprint.

Speaking of rhyming, in his latest Wall Street Journal column Walter Russell Mead draws some important lessons from the situation in Ethiopia:

For students of world politics, the Ethiopian conflict holds two vital lessons. The first is an important reminder that much of the conventional wisdom in the West about geopolitical developments in the rest of the world is firmly embedded in a mix of ignorance, wishful thinking and projection. Mr. Ahmed, like former rock stars of the global do-gooding circuit Aung San Suu Kyi and Paul Kagame, has never been the figure his Western admirers imagined. He emerged from a career in the Ethiopian intelligence service, and his vision of his role and the future of his country has little to do with the fantasies of his foreign admirers. Myanmar’s Ms. Suu Kyi, Rwanda’s Mr. Kagame and Mr. Ahmed are complex figures in countries where the rules are weak, the stakes are existential, and scruples are necessarily few. The inane rituals of celebration and reprobation that self-described moral leaders in the West alternately inflict on these leaders are noise, not signal. Serious people need to tune it out.

The second lesson is even more important. When it comes to sub-Saharan Africa and other places undergoing rapid economic development and social change, Western thinkers need a paradigm shift. Since the end of colonial rule, many Western observers have naively assumed that ethnic and religious tensions would fade away with economic development.

That is not how things work. During the past 20 years, Ethiopia has consistently posted some of the best growth rates in Africa, but ethnic tensions have risen with gross domestic product. Illiterate peasants scratching a bare subsistence from the soil don’t care much about how their government works. As literacy, living standards and access to information rise, that changes.

European and Ottoman history followed a similar pattern. Nationalism rose with levels of development—and democracy, linked to nationalism, was more often a destabilizing force leading to conflict than a calming force leading to peace.

“Tribalism,” as ethnic nationalism in postcolonial Africa is sometimes dismissively and condescendingly called, is not a remnant of the past destined to fade as modernization progresses. It is a sleeping giant that, as it awakens, will test the stability and perhaps alter the borders of many African countries.

I don’t think that the rise of tribalism is limited to Africa. I believe it underpins what we have been seeing for the last generation in Europe both in the form of nationalist as well as separatist movements in places as far-flung as Hungary, Spain, and Scotland.

And then there’s the example of the United States. Is what we’re seeing here the emergence of tribal separatist movements based on race? I certainly see an increase in tribalism here and as long as there’s good money to be made from fomenting resentment I think it will only increase.

If you’re not familiar with the term, Schadenfreude is a German word meaning “taking joy in the troubles of others”. I will confess to a sense of Schadenfreude on reading this article in the Los Angeles Times by Richard Read, the LAT’s Seattle Bureau Chief. The short version of it is that the Bolsheviksare now turning on the Mensheviks:

PORTLAND, Ore. — The day after President-elect Joe Biden delivered his victory speech, telling the nation it was time to heal and unite, a clandestine Twitter account — @safePDXprotest — summoned Portland anarchists.
Meet at Laurelhurst Park at 8 p.m. and “Wear Bloc & Be Water,” the message said, calling for black garb and vigilance to evade police for a protest “in solidarity with BLM” — Black Lives Matter.

The 50 or so people who showed up — nearly all of them white — looked like ninjas as they put on balaclavas, hoods and scarves. Some carried gas masks.

The call to action had declared “No Masters” — leaders, in the parlance of 19th century European anarchists — but the crowd huddled around one young man as he lambasted liberals for celebrating the defeat of President Trump while capitalism and the political system remained entrenched.

“They can show up to dance ’cause of Orange Man bad, but they can’t be out here fighting with us,” he said. “So that’s why we’re going. … I’m tired of liberal complacency.”

Word spread through the group that the target tonight would be the local headquarters of the Democratic Party.

Somebody started beating a drum as a chant broke out: “F— Joe Biden!”

Then the anarchists marched into the upscale neighborhood, intent on destruction.

If you’re not familiar with my allusion above, let me explain it for you. There were actually two Russian revolutions in 1917: the February Revolution and the October Revolution. The Tsar was overthrown by three (at least) factions: the Mensheviks (literally “minority”), the Bolsheviks (literally “majority”), and the Socialist Revolutionaries. The names were ironic since by all appearances the Mensheviks outnumbered the Bolsheviks somewhat and were certainly more moderate. Following the February Revolution the Mensheviks joined the liberal provisional government. Following the collapse of the provisional government the Mensheviks lost influence and in the October Revolution AKA Bolshevik Revolution the Bolsheviks put down the Mensheviks, Socialist Revolutionaries, and liberals to form their own government. There are echoes of this in what’s reported in the article above. History may not repeat itself but it does rhyme.

I won’t both fisking Mr. Read’s article but I will comment on this:

Black activists and community leaders, who generally view the defeat of Trump as an opportunity for change within the system, said the anarchists are hijacking the movement and undermining the push for racial justice by continuing to commit violence.

By what authority does Mr. Read who is white speak for them? Just a question. I think it’s a bit more complicated than that. I think the original leadership of BLM was Marxist, at least that’s what it said on their website until that was expunged, and that while many black activists are Marxists or progressives most blacks are neither Marxists nor even progressives but moderates and even conservatives. Shorter: I don’t believe that viewpoints among blacks are as monolithic as Mr. Read would have you believe.

All of this could have been prevented by putting the rule of law above other political goals. Now we’ve got to hope that the national Democratic Party will recognize the risks and show more foresight than the party has in Portland.