Archive for November, 2020

And Nero Fiddled While Rome Burned

Friday, November 20th, 2020

Speaking on CBS this morning, Secretary of Health and Human Services Alex Azar said the delay in allowing President Elect Biden’s transition team to meet with Trump Administration health officials will cause no harm to anyone, because, “The same career professionals there on January 19th will be there on January 21st.” Hmmmm.

Have you ever had the exquisite experience of being part of a team buying a company? If you answered “yes” you know what that involves. Even if, as buyer, you intend to make no operational changes, which, admittedly, is rare, there is a lot to learn as you approach  the sale. Data rooms are complicated. So are the people you’ll be employing. What senior staff will you keep? Who will go? After you execute a Term Sheet, understanding product development, the logistics of distribution and the financial labyrinth will take time, usually more than a few months.

Suppose the company you’re buying is Amazon, the company owned by Jeff Bezos, the richest person in the world. Amazon’s reported operating expenses for the year ending 30 September 2020 were $328.04 billion. Try to wrap your head around how long such a purchase would take and what it would involve. It would be an awesome undertaking.

Now, think of the U.S. government. According to the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analyisis, U.S. expenditures for the 2019 fiscal year, ending 30 June 2020, were $7.3 trillion, a tad larger than Amazon’s operating expenses.

The 2021 budget for Health & Human Services, which runs 184 pages, calls for $1.3 trillion in spending; 1.2 trillion for mandatory programs like Medicare and Medicaid and $94 billion in discretionary spending.

We are engaged in two massive efforts: first, to control the spread of the novel coronavirus, and second, to vaccinate 330 million people as quickly as humanly possible – twice. Atul Gawande, a member of Biden’s Coronavirus Transition Team, in an interview following Azar’s, said roadblocks delaying the baton pass will, not could, cost lives, thousands of them. He said Azar’s claim that no one would be hurt by delaying the transition is “absolutely not true.”

Consider that Pfizer announced this morning that it will file for Emergency Use Authorization for its vaccine today. But the Biden team has had zero conversations with HHS. Not CDC, not FDA, not CMS, not NIH. Not a soul in government.

Meanwhile, back at the White House, Donald Trump remains out of sight, concentrating on manufacturing out-of-this-world conspiracy theories rather than on the job the Electoral College hired him to do in 2016. He’s giving the term “grasping at straws” an entirely new meaning. Nothing is too outlandish. Case in point: His fairy-tail spouting “Personal Lawyer’s” cringe-worthy press conference yesterday. Everything that comes out of Rudy Giuliani’s mouth these days is full of what makes the grass grow green and tall, but people are buying it.

This is sticking a very sharp knife into American Democracy.

According to a new Reuters/Ipsos poll conducted from 13 to 17 November, 55% of Republicans surveyed think Donald Trump “rightfully won” the election, only to have it stolen from him by widespread voter fraud. Only 55% of all adults in the United States surveyed by the poll said they believed the Nov. 3 presidential election was “legitimate and accurate,” and 28% said they thought the election was “the result of illegal voting or election rigging,” which is up 12 points from four years ago. It is unfathomable why so many of our neighbors fixate on the rigged election theme with the intensity of devoted biblical scholars. They have become habituated to believing the rants that spew from Mr. Trump and his sycophant toadies. And in this case, old habits don’t so much as die hard, as they refuse to die at all.

One can only hope Joe Biden and his team, whenever they’re able to begin taking the reins of government, will find a way to clean America’s gaping societal wound and start the healing.

How optimistic about that are you?

Now There Are Two, And Other Thoughts

Monday, November 16th, 2020

The Moderna Vaccine

Moderna’s announcement today that its vaccine candidate, mRNA-1273, is more than 94.5% effective in early trial results is wonderful news. Pfizer’s similar announcement from last week about its vaccine, BNT162b2, (also mRNA-based) gives us great hope that by mid-2021 the U.S. may have vaccinated most of the country’s population.

One advantage Moderna has over Pfizer is that its vaccine does not require “ultra cold storage,” as in minus 103 degrees Fahrenheit. As we wrote here, Pfizer says it has developed specially designed, temperature-controlled shipping packages, using dry ice, to keep its vials at roughly minus 103 below Fahrenheit for up to 10 days. But what happens if the doses are not used in ten days? This is one of the many things that is concerning governors and health care experts who are wrestling with the logistics of large-scale vaccinations.

We won’t know if Pfizer’s and Moderna”s vaccines can really do what it seems they might be able to do until the final results of their trials are known, but there is one thing we won’t know even then: How long will they protect us from the Coronavirus? Although both companies will follow all test subjects for a couple of years, if they each file quickly for and receive Emergency Use Authorization, which is all but guaranteed, they will go to market with about four months of data.

Will this lack of certainty about long-term protection cause people to forego vaccination? Personally, I don’t think so. But there is another possibility.

As we have seen for many months, despite the lack of competent leadership from 1600 Pennsylvania avenue, there are significant segments of the population taking the virus more seriously than others: seniors, those who are health-compromised, and myriad others who have paid attention to the science. It is conceivable these groups will take the vaccine, but refuse to return to any semblance of pre-pandemic life until long-term efficacy is known, and that won’t happen until well into 2022. If this happens, it is likely that masks, remote work, telehealth, and a host of other accommodations we’ve made due to the pandemic are here for quite some time longer.

Speaking of vaccines, here comes China

Flying under the media radar was an article in Foreign Affairs (subscription required) from 5 November by Eyck Freymann and Justin Stebbing. China Is Winning The Vaccine Race: How Beijing Positioned Itself as the Savior of the Developing World is an eye-opening look at China’s herculean effort to rebound from its tragically bungled initial response to COVID-19. From the article:

As a result, the disease spread around the world, crippling economies, killing more than 1.2 million people, and badly damaging Beijing’s image. In 2021, China plans to redeem itself by vaccinating a large chunk of the global population. Although it faces stiff competition from the United States and other Western nations in the race to develop the first vaccine, Beijing is poised to dominate the distribution of vaccines to the developing world—and to reap the strategic benefits of doing so.

Four of the 11 worldwide vaccine candidates are Chinese. The most promising of these, developed by Wuhan-based Sinopharm, is already being given to frontline workers in the United Arab Emirates.

Half the world’s population lives in the developing world, and Donald Trump’s administration, with its America First mantra, has no plans to distribute vaccines to that half of humanity, leaving a wide open door through which China is already walking. Also from the article:

The United States has declined to participate in a World Health Organization (WHO) initiative to deliver two billion vaccine doses to at-risk populations in developing countries, and it has not extended financing to or signed preferential vaccine distribution deals with such countries, as China has done.

While the U.S. will supply vaccines to its own citizenry and sell them to other developed countries, the vast underbelly of humanity will go a-begging. The emerging markets of Asia, Africa, the Middle East, and Latin America can barely afford vaccines, China has seized this opportunity by announcing subsidies and striking loan deals with the eighteen countries where its vaccine candidates are now in Phase Three clinical trials. As far back as May, Chinese President Xi Jinping promised that any successful Chinese vaccine would be used for a “global public good.” Thus far, he has kept that promise.

Throughout the pandemic (and, for that matter, the entire Trump presidency), America has ignored no, stiff armed the half of humanity most in need. This is just another Everest the incoming Biden Administration will have to climb as it tries to undo four years of foreign policy misfeasance, which the Oxford English Dictionary defines as “the wrongful exercise of lawful authority.” Kind of fits, doesn’t it?

Barack Obama returns

President Obama jumped back into the political scene as a force for Joe Biden during the recent campaign. Our first Black president did his part to help rally the African American vote, which proved so consequential in Biden’s victory.

Now, President Obama has written the first book in what will be a multi-book memoir. The Promised Land goes on sale tomorrow. So, he’s begun the book interview marathon, that, in his case, will be widely covered by the media. Case in point Yesterday, he turned up twice on CBS, first with Gayle King on CBS Sunday Morning and second with Scott Pelley on Sixty Minutes.

I’m sure the book is interesting and will sell a gazillion copies, but that’s not what I want to mention here. No, I’d like to end this column with a little story Mr. Obama told at the end of his interview with Ms. King.

Having become a private citizen at 12:01 pm, 20 January 2017, the former president began to reacclimate to private life. For security reasons, he was still prohibited from driving himself. So, as he tells it, there he is in the backseat of some vehicle checking his iPad and being driven somewhere by a Secret Service Officer. Then, the car slows and stops. Since this never happens in a presidential motorcade, he wonders why they stopped. Had something happened? Was there some danger? He looks up and sees the red light. At that moment, another car drives up beside him and he sees children playing in the back seat. As he told Ms. King, “Welcome to private life, Barack.”

Sixty-five days from now, Donald Trump will begin to encounter his own red lights for which he must stop. That will be a reality show worth watching.

 

 

This Is Madness

Friday, November 13th, 2020

Let’s start with the numbers.

Global Cases

Global COVID-19 cases are rising and the rise is accelerating, as documented by the Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center. There have been nearly 53 million cases around the world, 660 thousand yesterday. There have now been about 1.25 million deaths, and the death rate is also rising.

U.S. Cases

According to the New York Times Latest Map and Case Count, America’s case rate is surging faster than at any time in the pandemic.

Consider these four points from the above chart:

Since the beginning of COVID-19 in the U.S., the health care community has made tremendous gains in treating the disease, that is, in preventing deaths. However, no one yet knows the extent of long-term complications due to contracting the virus. Although COVID-19 primarily affects the lungs, it can damage many other organs as well. This organ damage may increase the risk of long-term health problems. Regardless, deaths are once again rising.

With respect to keeping safe, absolutely nothing has changed since the beginning of the pandemic. Hand washing/sanitizing, social distancing, mask wearing, and testing are, to this day, the only things we can do to control the disease. At some point in the future, perhaps by mid-spring, the vaccine cavalry will come charging over the hill. But until then, we’re on our own. COVID-19 is the enemy, the opposition, and we have to outlast it. Everyone needs to put on the moral cloak of responsibility.

It would be nice if that moral cloak were to become moral leadership from the White House, but the Trump Administration, obscenely obsessed with fighting the will of the majority, has gone AWOL, once again leaving the states to fight the disease by themselves, and most are now fully engaged.

Consider Ohio, where Republican Governor Mike DeWine is doing everything he and his team can to drive home the need for masks, hand washing and social distancing. Case in point: His Department of Health created a compelling video to illustrate the value of social distancing.

One of the most tragic things I have ever observed is going on right now across America. Millions of people have been persuaded the washing, wearing and distancing things are lies meant to steal the soul of the nation in a socialistic, Mephistophelean conspiracy. They believe government is trampling on their “rights.” Meanwhile, many of them get sick, some of them die, and they bring great harm to their neighbors who are trying to do the right thing. This is madness.

Can We Ever Learn From History?

Tuesday, November 10th, 2020

Yesterday was the 82nd anniversary of Kristallnacht, Germany’s Night of Broken Glass.

Two days prior to Kristallnacht, Herschel Grynszpan, a 17-year-old Polish Jew, had assassinated Ernst vom Rath, a young diplomat at the German embassy in Paris, shooting him five times at close range. This gave Hitler and his Minister of Propaganda*, Joseph Goebbels, the excuse they needed to organize a pogrom against Jews in Germany and parts of Austria and Czechoslovakia.

Goebbels told an assembly of National Socialists, “The Führer has decided that … demonstrations should not be prepared or organized by the (Nazi) Party, but insofar as they erupt spontaneously, they are not to be hampered.”

And so, on 9 November 1938, thousands of Nazis and Hitler Youth erupted “spontaneously,” attacking Jewish homes, schools, synagogues and businesses, smashing windows and destroying property. They put everything Jewish to the torch. Firefighters were told to let the fires burn themselves out. Goebbels instructed police to round up as many Jewish young men as possible and cram them into jails.

As far back as 1925 when he wrote his autobiographical Mein Kampf (My Struggle) from jail, Adolph Hitler had made known his anti Semitic intentions. And by 1933 the people of the UK and America knew also, because in that year Mein Kampf was translated into English. Nobody paid attention.

Kristallnacht was Hitler’s first, large scale, organized and overt attack on Jews. Consequently, many historians consider 9 November 1938 the beginning of the Holocaust.

Immediately following the close of the Second World War, social scientists and historians began trying to figure out why so many Germans had, lemminglike, followed, even embraced, hate-filled Hitlerism. The answers are complicated.

Following the First World War, the victors had punished Germany in monumental fashion, both economically and politically. Germans resented this with seething anger. Hitler capitalized on this.

Then there was the Great Depression of the early 1930s, which plunged Germany into even more profound economic chaos. Hitler took advantage of this, also, calling on Germans to throw off the yoke of humiliation. He gave fiery speeches, observed by American and British diplomats, which should have alerted governments to what was coming, but did not.

Hitler  instilled in the German people an us-against-them world view, or Weltanshauung. They would have followed him anywhere, and they did.

A week ago today, more than 70 million Americans voted for Donald Trump. That’s four million more than voted for him in 2016. Although I’m sure perhaps half of them voted out of economic self interest – they like his policies enough to stomach his lies and boorishness – what about the other half, the cheering cult, his own lemminglike followers at his rallies and beyond? As Hitler before him, Trump has sold them the us-against-them Kool Aid, and they have swallowed without questioning and without caring if whatever comes out of their Leader’s mouth is true or not.

As far as I can see, Joe Biden won the presidency and the republican party won the election. Not a single state legislature flipped. Republicans gained seats in the House, and are on the verge of holding on to the Senate. The last time we had a democrat elected president and a republican senate was 1885, 135 years ago, with the presidency of Grover Cleveland.

Donald Trump will eventually leave the White House, but he’s not going away, and neither are his followers or Trumpism. He gets tremendous satisfaction from his Rallies. Can you see him abandoning them? No, he will continue to stoke fear and hatred, just as a certain Austrian wannabe artist did long ago.

If you think 2020 was bad politically, just wait until you get to experience 2021.

Good luck to us all.

* Originally, Goebbels opposed the word propaganda, because in the public usage of the day it connoted – wait for it – Lies!

Shameful Leaders Play Chicken With The Economy Hanging In The Balance

Monday, November 9th, 2020

Today, the Bureau of Labor Statistics announced productivity, output and earnings data for Q3, 2020. This follows its announcement three days ago that the nation’s unemployment rate in October had fallen to 6.9%, the 6th consecutive month it has dropped.

While the drop in the unemployment rate is certainly good news, the long-term unemployed (those jobless for 27 weeks or more) increased by 1.2 million to 3.6 million, accounting for 32.5 percent of the total unemployed. Further, the country has seen only half of the 22 million people who lost jobs due to the pandemic return to the workforce.

Regarding today’s announcement, while productivity and output rose 43.5% and 38.6%, respectively, real earnings, a very important number, dropped 9.1% in Q3.

Most of the relief bills passed earlier in the pandemic have expired, including the $2.2 trillion CARES Act, which provided for additional unemployment benefits of up to $600 a week for many individuals.

The Federal Reserve, led by Chairman Jerome Powell, as well as the nation’s leading economists, have been arguing for months that we need a second relief package. Powell maintains that businesses, cities and states, and the unemployed are in dire need of help. On 6 October, in a speech to the National Association for Business Economics, he said the unemployment rate would be closer to 11% were it not for misclassification of idle workers and for people leaving the workforce. He warned the group that without additional support, the economy could slip into a downward spiral “as weakness feeds on weakness.”

Powell and his colleagues at the Federal Reserve say we need a new relief package NOW, and we need it to be BIG. Personally, I am not optimistic about that. I’m no economist, but I have friends who are, and they are not optimistic, either, at least not in the short term. And, although the 74 million (and increasing) Americans who voted for Joe Biden are happy Donald Trump has been handed his walking papers, we remain a house divided now more than ever. Some of us are euphoric, some in denial, others in despair, still others angry beyond words. It will take time and a lot of compassion for healing to even begin. But time is something many of our neighbors in horrific economic difficulties through no fault of their own simply don’t have.

In the next few days and weeks we’ll discover if our elected leaders can get out of the way of their ego-driven lust for power and display enough moral fiber, presuming they have some, to help the businesses, cities, states, and millions of our fellow citizens who hang by their fingertips over the edge of an economic abyss.

 

One Day More

Monday, November 2nd, 2020

Music is built on mathematics. Together they form humanity’s only universal language. With that in mind, here’s One Day More, the greatest Act One Finale in the history of theatre. Just to set the tone and get your blood moving.

“Tomorrow we’ll discover what our God in heaven has in store.”

No gloom and doom today. Just a thank you to all who have voted and who will vote. We’ll probably wind up with the largest vote count in the history of the country in both raw numbers and as a percentage of population. If Donald Trump has done nothing else, and he sure has done a lot, he’s brought out the vote.

After the dust settles, we’ll get more into that “done a lot” thing.

Stay safe.