What are the factors in assessing a vaccine? Offhand I would say effectiveness, safety, persistence, and cost. So, for example, the smallpox vaccine produced protection against smallpox for 95% of those who received it (highly effective), the protection lasted for decades (persistent), .1% of those vaccinated experienced serious reactions and .001% experienced life-threatening complications (generally safe), and it cost about %5 per patient (inexpensive) so it was a good vaccine.

Assuming that 30% of the population is susceptible to SARS-CoV-2 (that’s roughly how many people contracted “Spanish flu” in the U. S. in 1918) and that the case mortality rate is 4% that means that for a COVID-19 vaccine to be safe enough, it would be reasonable say that the prevalence of severe complications should be no more than 1.2% of those immunized (preferably much less). How long should it last? I would think that immunization with a short half-life would be no better than no immunization at all.

As to cost a vaccine could be pretty expensive and still be worthwhile. No wonder so many companies are trying to find one. I’m actually more worried about effectiveness, safety, and persistence. Those are why I’m skeptical of a good vaccine being developed in the next year.

Rather than quoting passages from Steve Clemons’s post at The Hill on the complexity of returning things to being “Made in America”. I’ll just suggest that you take a look at it and make a couple of more points.

My first point is that, although I do believe that we need an economy that does more primary and secondary production rather than relying as heavily as we do on tertiary production, I am less interested in “Made in America” than I am in having more resilient supply chains. In part that will necessarily mean more primary and secondary production in the U. S. but it will also mean not being completely dependent on any single country for strategic necessities, particularly China.

My second point, riffing off Mr. Clemons’s networking analogy is that the present problem with our supply chains for nearly everything from electronics to food and pharmaceuticals is that they aren’t enough like the Internet. I won’t dwell on the mechanics of it too much but the original purpose of the protocols that became the Internet was to provide resilient networking in the case of nuclear war and part of that technology is the ability to route around inoperative segments of the network. In theory a good supply chain will implement that sort of resilience but they rarely do. There are many reasons for that but one of them is that it can be darned hard to determine whether overseas second sources are actually second sources at all.

It doesn’t really matter whether 100% of the active ingredients in 10% of your pharmaceuticals or 10% of the active ingredients are only made in China. As long as it’s not 0% you still have a vulnerable supply chain.

If your calculations of efficiency don’t take that into account, you’re not calculating actual efficiency but speculating. Our problem is that CEOs are rewarded for just that kind of reckless behavior and rarely punished when their gambles don’t pay off.

Music sure to make you do a double take. I think this may be a sign of the Apocalypse.

There is a stormlet brewing over the report on unalienable rights commissioned by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. It has yet to break and I will refrain from commenting on it until it does. So far the anticipatory commentary just tells me that progressives hate Mike Pompeo.

William Galston, promoting what he calls “a grand bargain to reopen public schools”, states the issue pretty well, I think:

A balanced assessment of reopening schools must include the negative consequences of keeping them closed. For students without underlying conditions, the balance tilts toward reopening, in part because Covid-19 largely spares them from what older people suffer. This forces us to confront an uncomfortable truth: The interests of students aren’t perfectly aligned with the interests of teachers and staff, for whom Covid-19 could be life-threatening.

and consider the costs and limitations:

Even in areas where the virus is under control, additional measures will be needed to protect the health of students, teachers and staff, which in turn will minimize the risks to parents and communities. Think masks and other personal protective equipment, a measure of social distancing, strictly enforced hand hygiene, weekly diagnostic testing supplemented by daily temperature checks, and clear procedures for quarantining infectious students and staff. Spaces within schools will have to be reconfigured, and some may need upgraded ventilation systems as well.

No one knows for sure how much all this will cost, but the sum will be substantial, with the federal government stepping up to support state budgets. If the next round of Covid-19 legislation doesn’t do this, many schools cannot be responsibly reopened. And at this late date, it makes no sense to condition federal aid on timetables for reopening that many jurisdictions can’t meet.

I think that some formula needs to be devised for determining just how much the federal government the federal government will “support state budgets”. It should be on a per capita basis or a per student basis or a need basis or some of all three but it should emphatically not be as a percentage of costs. The federal government should not be underwriting past bad policy decisions by state and local governments. Here in Chicago old bad decisions raise the costs of education by about 30% and that should not be borne by federal taxpayers.

He makes what to me looks like a prudent observation:

This said, making schools as resistant as possible to Covid-19 cannot mean making adults as safe from the pandemic as they would be at home. But as several gold-standard studies have emphasized, hunkering down has negative consequences for children and adolescents, including loneliness, lack of physical activity, substance abuse, depression and suicide.

and proposes hazard pay for teachers:

Unlike members of our all-volunteer military, teachers are being asked to run risks they didn’t sign up for. They should be given hazard pay for the duration of the pandemic, along with first-dollar health-insurance coverage for themselves and their families. But if teachers are to remain true to their long-held position that teaching is a vocation, they have responsibilities to others that go beyond self-interest.

There will also need to be some dramatic changes in work rules. For example, seniority cannot be the standard for work schedules or assignments.

I’m gratified to see Alex Berezow making some of the same points that I have made in a recent piece of his at the American Council on Science and Health:

There are three different population groups whose safety we must worry about: School kids, faculty and staff, and children’s families back home. They each face a different set of risks, some of which are in direct conflict with each other. Let’s consider the students, first.

The threat that the coronavirus poses to children and young adults is not zero, but it’s extremely small.

continuing:

From the students’ perspective, the benefits of a school closure are minimal. The negative consequences, however, are considerable. Young children need to play with others, and older children need to learn. They all need to socialize. Preventing this will delay their development and education. For these reasons, The Economist endorses opening schools first as lockdowns ease because “[t]he costs of keeping them closed are too high.”

The calculation changes when we consider the risks to teachers, staff, and students’ families, who obviously are in older age demographics.

and concluding:

Regardless of how one looks at the data, they all point in the same direction: COVID-19 poses a very minor threat to students. The threat of reopening schools, therefore, is the health of teachers, faculty, and childrens’ families. Measures should be aimed at protecting those populations.

I think that there should be individualized assessments of children’s needs. Some kids may even be benefiting from the suspension of in-person education. For others it may make no difference. Both of those groups should be allowed to continue with online education. But for still others the lack of structure and in-person education may result in permanent deficits and I would hazard a guess that the kids most at risk are those with the greatest needs. A way should be found for those students to receive the education they need.

The Chicago Teachers’ Union is, characteristically, taking a less nuanced stance, as the Sun-Times reports:

As schools face the immense challenge of protecting their students, teachers and staff members during the coronavirus pandemic, the Chicago Teachers Union is urging the district to start school in the fall with remote learning.

“We stand for a safe and equitable reopening of the schools, but today COVID-19 cases are soaring instead of dissipating,” CTU President Jesse Sharkey was quoted as saying in the news release Wednesday. “There is simply no way to guarantee safety for in-school learning during an out-of-control pandemic — and that means we must revert to remote learning until the spread of this virus is contained.”

Who will be harmed the most under their plan? Mostly black and Hispanic kids and kids with special needs.

Assuming his most recent Washington Post column is any gauge, I think it’s fair to say that George Will doesn’t much care for President Trump:

Under the most frivolous person ever to hold any great nation’s highest office, this nation is in a downward spiral. This spiral has not reached its nadir, but at least it has reached a point where worse is helpful, and worse can be confidently expected.

The nation’s floundering government is now administered by a gangster regime. It is helpful to have this made obvious as voters contemplate renewing the regime’s lease on the executive branch. Roger Stone adopted the argot of B-grade mobster movies when he said he would not “roll on” Donald Trump. By commuting Stone’s sentence, Stone’s beneficiary played his part in this down-market drama, showing gratitude for Stone’s version of omertà (the Mafia code of silence), which involved lots of speaking but much lying. Because the pandemic prevents both presidential candidates from bouncing around the continent like popcorn in a skillet, the electorate can concentrate on other things, including Trump’s selection of friends such as Stone and Paul Manafort, dregs from the bottom of the Republican barrel.

concluding:

This nation built the Empire State Building, groundbreaking to official opening, in 410 days during the Depression, and the Pentagon in 16 months during wartime. Today’s less serious nation is unable to competently combat a pandemic, or even reliably conduct elections. This is what national decline looks like.

I’m not as upset as Mr. Will because every presidential administration of recent memory has been a “gangster regime”. It has been a steady decline that has been going on for 30 years at least. As to his final plaint, sadly this isn’t the same nation as the one he recalls. How can it be when Pulitzer Prizes are awarded for NYT features that reject all of the values in which that nation believed?

I’ve complained before about the Trump Administration’s handling of the pandemic in the past, listing a number of steps that I think President Trump should have and could have done. I think he’s playing a strong hand badly.

Would doing those things have made the difference between the pandemic ending in May and what has actually happened? I doubt it. But they might have helped a little.

At Defense One Marcus Weisgerber makes the argument that the U. S. may need to nationalize military aircraft production:

The United States might need to nationalize parts of the military aviation sector if the Pentagon does not come up with new ways to buy planes that stimulate more competition in private industry, a top Air Force official warned.

Will Roper, the head of Air Force acquisition, spoke Tuesday morning as the service finalizes ambitious plans to buy a new series of combat fighter jets called the Digital Century Series.

“We have multiple vendors who can still build a high-end, tactical platform,” Roper told reporters. “I think it’s really important that we find a new model where there are no big winners and no big losers, but continual competition.”

Lockheed Martin and Boeing are the only U.S. companies that make tactical fighter jets. Boeing’s F-15 Eagle and F/A-18 Super Hornet are considered a generation behind Lockheed’s F-22 Raptor and F-35 Lightning II. Boeing and Sweden’s Saab are building the new T-7 pilot training jet.

Northrop Grumman is the only U.S. manufacturer of a heavy bomber. Boeing’s KC-46 is the only aerial tanker in serial production and Lockheed’s C-130 Super Hercules tactical transport is the only military cargo plane in production. There are no strategic, long-range military transports in production.

The very same argument can be applied to a lot of military hardware including heavy armor, artillery, and aircraft carriers.

IMO the issue is due less to loss of capability than to consolidation and reduced demand. Unless you believe that we will be buying a lot more military hardware in the coming years, we probably should be doing a major reassessment of what our military should be prepared to do and how it will do it.