Ebola

–Uganda appears to have finally received 1200 doses of an Ebola Sudan specific vaccine. However, we are coming up on two weeks without a new confirmed case, meaning the countdown to containment of the current outbreak is already underway. The standard operating procedures of contact tracing and quarantining appear to have won the day. Yes, there have been COVID-esque lockdowns as well, but I would say it’s not clear what additional impact these may have had. Some, maybe? Tough to say, as the historic experience, including COVID, is that these are less effective public health measures than you would think–especially over time. Good if you really need to buy a few weeks so your healthcare system doesn’t collapse, and/or you can get testing and tracing done on a serious contagious disease that has popped up and surprised you. Anything longer than a couple weeks, though, and people are going to find ways past your lockdown–and the pathogen will thus go with them.

Remember, England got the Black Death too. England was always going to get the Black Death too.

Total of ~142 confirmed cases, plus some 22 early deaths that are strongly suspicious, but not confirmed, with total mortality still in the 30% range.

Coronavirus

—TRIPLE PANDEMIC DOOM! WE IZ NOW CURSED TO HAVE ANNUAL WINTER DEATH AND DARKNESS FROM RSV, INFLUENZA AND SARS-COV-2 VARIANTS! FOREVER AND EVER, UNTIL THEY COME, AT LAST, TO CLAIM US AND ALL THAT IS DEAR! O WOE! O RUIN!

Well, yes, as SARS-CoV-2 has shifted with the omicron cousins out of pandemic “collapse your healthcare system with my high hospitalization rate” phase into an endemic slow burn. Cases will likely be more common in winter months–that’s been a decent pattern for SARS-CoV-2, as well as its common cold cousins, for ages. Again, though, the omicron variants are not particularly severe in terms of hospitalization risk. We have effective testing, and effective treatments. SARS-CoV-2 is not currently a pandemic risk.

In fact, in the US, cases are level, and about half of what they were in -August-. True story! It’s what the data says. Early COVID indicators are falling, and COVID test positive rates and total new cases are pretty level. We are nowhere near the omicron winter of a year ago. Not even close.

“But wait,” I can hear you say Relevant Local Anecdotal Experience Hypothetical Reader, “like a dozen kids in my kid’s class are out with flu/COVID/colds +/- fevers!”

Yeah, my kids’ classes too. I was in San Antonio to present some data recently and came back with a lower respiratory infection with cold-like symptoms. Tested negative for COVID twice. It’s also not flu. Honestly, with the literal “wake me in the middle of the night” leg pain, I would rule out dengue, but there is no fever… Anyways, you don’t want to hear about my otherwise self-limited symptoms that were mostly cleared by the time I’m pressing “publish” here…

All of SARS-CoV-2’s cousins are back, out and about. This is what cold and flu season used to be like. I know that feels like forever ago, and they got outcompeted by SARS-CoV-2 for about a year, and then curb stomped by social distancing–but I assure you, this is a normal pattern for winter.

“But all the RSV in the kids…” you say, Hypothetical Reader.

I did my peds rotation in med school at the tail end of an RSV season. There were always a few little kids admitted for a day or two for respiratory support. The change now, that is driving headlines, is that the last few years of social distancing kept the group of kids who would have needed that day or two of extra nebs in a hospital from meeting RSV. Until this year, when they all met it at once. Right now. So you have a larger population of kids than normal susceptible to “needs a neb RSV”. Hear me, for now do I prophesy, that next year, this will have normalized out again and only the usual scattering of kids needing some nebulizer support for their RSV will be back now that this epidemiology based blip has had a season to self correct.

Most of what you are seeing in your kids’ schools is a combination of a dull roar of COVID (yes, I too still hear of the occasional positives–but nowhere near the rate of last year, consistent with the data), some RSV, but the majority is -influenza A- and other cold viruses. All of SARS-CoV-2’s cousins re-emerging to do what used to be their annual Christmas/New Year’s business.

Speaking of flu, here’s the US data as of 15 Dec 2022 (when I last accessed this at CDC.gov):

Again, black line with red triangles is this season. It looks to have hit its localized peak within the last couple weeks, but some prolonged downtrend similar to 2019-2020 (green line, before COVID) and 2018-2019 (purple line, before COVID) is likely. Similar to 2017-2018 (blue line, before COVID), you just have a really brisk, and in this case, unusually early, flu season underway. Flu activity is high everywhere in the US right now. Again, the circulating strain seems well matched by this year’s vaccine.

So if you have not gotten your flu vaccine yet, WTF are you waiting for?!?!?!

Other than trying for the scare headlines all caps’d at the start of this section, I don’t get why the media continues to lump COVID into all of this. COVID is a supporting character at the moment. This is a flu story, along with the usual host of cold baddies common to this time of year. Other than the 2 minute local news update that flu activity is high and remember to get your flu shot that this -used- to get back before COVID, there’s not much really to say. Yet, here are we, with all the triple pandemic doom headlines again…

<sigh>

–Around the horn, you continue to see activity in Italy (oddly), and “general neighborhood of China.” China’s official cases are dropping, but this coincides with China dropping most official testing and the rumors on the ground are that they are having the Winter of Omicron that the rest of the world had last year. Everyone, except maybe not their brother because a one child policy had some demographic consequences, either has COVID or knows someone who does in China. Again, at least per on the ground reports out of there.

Speaking of dropping a lot of the official testing requirements, China has clearly responded to the protests we were covering by an absolute Chinese media blitz of “COVID–Not That Bad!” and “COVID–Omicron Is Really Just A Flu You Guys!” stories, while accelerating the removal of a lot of the “Zero COVID” policies.

Sadly, there is a non-zero chance that China now winds up with the worst of both worlds. They have endured years of cruel restrictions because the vaccines developed by their government were not adequate enough to allow exit from Zero COVID even during previous waves of SARS-CoV-2, and do not have much hope for slowing the omicron variants. There remains no mention of the availability of the acute treatments that have proven so effective in much of the rest of the world. The social policies and restrictions of Zero COVID were so severe and long lasting that the Chinese people finally snapped, and said no more–as even their patience and endurance snapped when Zero COVID literally trapped innocent Chinese citizens inside burning buildings. But now as the government, realizing its terrible mistake, moves to reverse all of those policies, it is worth remembering that China, on average, is older than most countries in the world and has very high rates of diabetes. Even though omicron variants are much less severe on average, there is a substantial population with the greatest risk factors for severe COVID there.

With less ability to mitigate via vaccination and acute therapy, and less available intensive care bed space. Rumors also abound that even though restrictions are falling, most citizens remain quite cautious because of the high level of current spread.

So China could get all the worst of the most restrictive, cruel, and longest lasting “social distancing” restrictions and lockdowns, with its economic, mental and physical health consequences as well as a really nasty COVID wave, despite being mostly omicron.

All based on the errors of judgment of a small cadre of its highest government leaders.

We imagine this cannot be easy on the conscience of those whose honor Xi has betrayed, those entrusted to enforce what they were told, and sincerely believed, were necessary measures for the greater good and safety of the Chinese people. How many of those, like perhaps some of the Chinese visitors to our website, were tasked with carrying out orders which must cause them heartache and shame now? How many times did they have to ignore the cries and pleas of their starving fellow citizens, sealed inside apartment buildings, because Xi was clearly following outdated science to have reversed course so suddenly, so completely? How many children, who did not understand why, were separated from parents as families were dragged into quarantine for what the CCP authorities now admit are variants no worse than the flu? How glad Xi, and the high leaders of the CCP must be, that it was not they who had to face their families, their neighbors, their friends and fellow citizens in such moments of anguish! It was not they who were left to explain cruel measures to children.

Measures which were, now clearly, mere vanity.

Can you imagine have given, or received, let alone carried out, an order for some of the cruelest rumors and reports of “Zero COVID” policies in China? How would you feel, what would you think, if you carried those orders out, sincere in your duty, and in your belief that your leadership could be trusted, and such deliberate callousness was essential to maintain order and safety? Only to now be told that it was all, all unnecessary? That it has not stopped COVID from spreading in China, never could, but “oh well–it’s not that bad”, and you were resolutely carrying out cruelty for “nothing worse than the flu”?

Only to see COVID spread anyways, like wild fire, now? Even if nothing worse than the flu, sheer force of numbers in China will have a very human consequence. 0.1% mortality of a large number is still a large number.

How could you possibly feel if you were one of those in China carrying out these orders now? Certainly not heroic.

Oh, betrayed, I imagine.

I would feel betrayed.

How could the Chinese Communist Party, and Xi, have been so wrong about COVID? How could they have touted vaccines that failed? How could the Xi and the CCP have endured and endorsed, or leave open to local “misinterpretation”, “Zero COVID” policies that have lead to such great and long suffering of the Chinese people? Which have clearly, in the end, failed to protect China?

How can men of honor, men who care about the duty to their families, abide such a terrible betrayal by Xi and the CCP? Xi and the CCP have turned the very best inside such men against them. They used their honor, their duty, their sincere desire to do whatever necessary for China in time of crisis. And turned it against these men. The very men who answer the bell. Who rise to the challenge. Who went where they were told they could help. Did what they were told would help. With courage. With sincerity. With conviction.

But now, all of it was clearly lies. All of it was vanity.

The honor of these men betrayed. For vanity.

Worse, it is these men of honor and duty who must now struggle to meet the eyes of their neighbors and family because of the mistakes and lies of this government. Not Xi. Not the CCP senior leaders. They are sheltered from the rightful and just questions of the Chinese people about these errors. Even if these errors are corrected quickly now, can that wipe away the stain on the honor of such men, tasked with carrying out such poor decisions? Betrayed into believing they were doing what was right, even if their leaders clearly now admit that they knew better, have known better, and betrayed these men of honor anyways?

What happens with the next set of orders that impose hardships on their fellow citizens? How can men of honor, men of dignity, now not question what else Xi and the CCP have gotten wrong or will get wrong? Xi and the CCP have proven themselves capable of abusing the honor of such men. Can a man of honor still be called such if he allows himself to be abused again?

Are they not men?

Oh, my Chinese readers, ask yourself, in the quiet of your own hearts, if China can achieve the greatness she deserves, and has earned, if these are its leaders. Look to your orders, then to your hearts. Look to your honor and spirit–for there is where China is great.

Heaven is high, my website readers, and the emperor is far away.

Socioeconomic

–As for my other readers, speaking of institutions and credibilities in bonfires, I give you the week (weeks, now?) in schismogenesis. For the same set of facts and events, you now have the following duel in the public sphere (via Raul Ilargi Meijer, in a re-posted blog article I found):

[One Popular] Narrative

• As a worldwide ‘public square,’ Twitter should be heavily regulated for misinformation and spamming by hostile interests. Twitter bears a responsibility to take action against disinformation and hate. Content moderation on platforms like Twitter is absolutely necessary to safeguard our democracy. As a private company Twitter is under no legal obligation to protect free speech and everything Twitter has done is within the law. Twitter and other social media platforms were instrumental in combating disinformation about Covid 19, climate change, election integrity and the war in Ukraine.
• Elon Musk is an arrogant, toxic person. He doesn’t really care about free speech. His goals in purchasing Twitter are political. His takeover of Twitter is the most terrifying development in recent history. His purchase of Twitter will destroy it by driving away advertisers and providing a platform for Neo-Nazis and other hate-speechers. Under Musk, Twitter is a scammer’s paradise. Elon Musk decimated the staff of Twitter (breaking Federal labor laws) while restoring accounts that spread disinformation. Control of Twitter involves national security risks and Musk’s takeover should be investigated by the US Government.
• The so-called “Twitter Files” are a feast for conspiracy theorists and have re-enlivened the influence of entities like QAnon. Journalists like Matt Taibbi writing about the Twitter Files are selling their souls to do PR work for the richest man in the world. The Twitter Files entries are sloppy, anecdotal and devoid of context. They are a nothing event about nothing event. The hysteria surrounding the Twitter Files is being used by Republicans for political gain.
• The Hunter Biden laptop story was difficult and the truth was not known early and so caution was justified. There is no evidence in the Twitter Files that the government was involved in the suppression of the Hunter Biden Laptop story. There is nothing on Hunter Biden’s laptop that actually implicates Joe Biden. James Baker took the careful approach and urged Twitter to weigh both sides of the Hunter Biden Laptop story before proceeding.
• Hate speech has dramatically increased since Must took over Twitter and these hateful tweets will lead to violence against the already marginalized. Right wing accounts such as those of Donald Trump, Project Veritas and the Babylon Bee should continue to be banned.

[The Other Popular] Narrative

• Twitter management was openly against free speech and used techniques such as “Visibility Filtering” to limit the reach of some posts. Twitter had secret blacklist files to limit the distribution of certain tweets specifically targeting right wing users. Twitter and other social media platforms have been instrumental in distributing disinformation and hiding the truth about Covid 19, climate change, election integrity and the war in Ukraine. Twitter censorship was used by the Democrats for political gain
• Elon Musk is a hero. He bought Twitter to restore free speech. Twitter, pre-Musk, was a major accomplice and enabler in selling-out America’s future. Twitter was bloated with excess and left wing employees.
• The Twitter Files show that the DNC and FBI were directly involved in suppressing free speech and prove that the 2020 elections were not free and fair. Twitter was clearly involved in election interference. The government interactions with Twitter were similar to Nazi propaganda methods. Twitter employees and their government contacts should be made to answer for their actions before congress. So-called journalists criticizing Matt Taibbi for his work on the Twitter Files are embarrassing in their uniformity and mindless support of a corrupt system.
• The files on Hunter Biden’s laptop prove that Joe Biden used his office to make money and Twitter’s suppression of the laptop story was done to help get Joe Biden elected. It is a bigger scandal than Watergate. James Baker was involved in RussiaGate at the FBI and the Hunter Biden Laptop suppression at Twitter. Baker deleted some of the content that should have been in the Twitter Files.
• The claims that hate speech has increased on Twitter since Musk’s takeover are utterly false. Hate speech is not tolerated on Twitter. Twitter largely ignored child trafficking issues until Musk took over. Lifting the ban on Donald Trump, Project Veritas and the Babylon Bee on Twitter are victories for free speech.

Undoubtedly, you recognize one of those narratives. The other you are probably aware of as well, but only in opposition to the one you know. The very raw material of schismogenesis, as you will recall.

Of course, which of those versions you are being told is weaponized entirely to your already existing ideas. And its end goal is to reinforce that divide–by presenting a polar opposite interpretation of. the. same. facts.

Now behold schismogenesis, doing its dark and sinister work. For if you look at the facts these narratives describe, in isolation, without the offered guidance, analysis and “interpretative” assistance you might decide that your interpretation agrees with some bullet points in one narrative, but also some of the bullets in the other. Or you may merely think that some of the bullets are over their skis in their interpretation of the evidence, and are making too sweeping a claim or generalization. Doesn’t matter. The Overton window being imposed, hard and fast, across all media for this particular event, will try to force you all or none into one of those two stories. The gravity it will use is tribalism. For if you do not agree to all claims, as laid out, you will be left without a side–certainly under suspicion for not being clear headed, rational member of your tribe. You might be going soft. Weak kneed on us. And you are not a weak or ill-informed person, are you? This preys on the bias, hardwired into your DNA, from the ages past when you needed the tribe, needed to be a co-operative hunter gatherer. Your DNA remembers those times, is built for the long haul like that. Even if you are not. You are temporary–it is your genes, the sequences of A,C,G, and T, that can span the eons. And they know that you are but another in the growing line of the last of the big game hunting hominids, Homo sapiens–and Homo sapiens don’t take down mastadons alone, yo. So the tribal drums beat deep within us, hardened by our evolutionary history.

Yet, tragically, conveniently, available to Bernays’ Acoyltes.

Schismogenesis depends on this.

So your natural inclination will be to stay to your side, and draw the conclusions you are already being given from the usual, comfortable silos, from those high priests and prophets of your chosen “tribe.” Your DNA will approve, for this is easy. It’s comfortable. You can make the “right” conclusions, agreed upon by all the people you like and love the most–it’s those “Others” who are deceived and led astray. If they are not all simply bad and disingenuous people. Well, not all. All is extreme. At least some of them. You will concede that, for you have virtue, and thus compassion and understanding. Moreover, you are wise. Clever. You can see around the game being played here, by the Acolytes driving these narratives. The one for the other side especially. You see what they are really getting on about. Maybe, just maybe, you can lead some of those Others back to the light. But not their priests and prophets, whom you strongly suspect have ulterior, or maybe not so ulterior, authoritarian tendencies. No, not them. So you pick the narrative whose bullet points already align with ideas you have been given elsewhere, before. Rhymes and echoes, reinforcing themes of the story you already know. It is your story, as much as it is your tribes’ (punctuation intended). The story you have chosen. The one you enjoy to read.

The one that makes you the hero/heroine. Or at least, among friends, and the company of heroes.

As you already know you are…

“Indeed the safest road to Hell is the gradual one–the gentle slope, soft underfoot, without sudden turnings, without milestones, without signposts…” –CS Lewis, “The Screwtape Letters”

–Yes, yes… “Physician! Heal thyself!!!” you command me, Skewering Hypothetical Reader.

I’m trying.

Try with me?

–I suspect the reason the tribal divide is so sharp over Twitter is because of the ability of social media to project, and thus control, narrative. The Overton window for younger generations has long since moved from newspapers and TV to social media:

You might be interested to know that 75% of Twitter users in April of 2021 (most recent data I could find with a “top hits” search) were age 18-49. There are easily 130 million Americans in that age group, which spans millenials, Gen X, and the early part of Gen Y.

That is the single largest block of US voters -and- conveniently, the key consumer demographic. The center mass of political and economic opinion.

And Twitter speaks straight to a whole bunch of them. In real time.

“Viral” reaction to events, to stories, to narratives. In real time. There is no more powerful way for Common Knowledge to be adopted. But not only the story becomes common knowledge, but the emotional reaction to the story becomes common knowledge. We have written before on the research showing how including emotional language, and provoking emotional reaction, can change your focus and interpretation of events, and what your likely reaction will be. How does social media do this? Through the common knowledge game. As Ben Hunt of Epsilon Theory would say, “the crowd is watching the crowd for its reaction.” If one person starts to boo or cheer, the crowd notices, and if they are not immediately shushed, more will be emboldened to boo or cheer. For example, Google this exact search “UFC woo crowd.” I’ll wait. What you are looking for all the list of the top hits. They will be forum posts and questions going back 5 years complaining/asking about the distinct high pitched “woo!” that someone in the crowd will yell at UFC events when the current round in the fight is getting slow. One “woo!” will happen, but then you’ll hear others in quick succession start to pick up in a cacophony that ends as a picturesque interpretation of howler monkeys along on the Amazon.

(In fact, if you have ever wondered what you sound like to your dog or cat, that is what you sound like to them–a pack of monkeys that just. don’t. shut. up. Dogs and cats are -far- less verbal in their communication than humans–cats especially. But I digress.)

What is happening at the UFC crowds is common knowledge in microcosm. Once it is acceptable in the crowd to “woo!” in response to the slow grappling at the edge of the octagon, that emotional reaction will spread.

Just like re-tweets, ratios, likes, and #hashtags. And the algorithm will push as suggestions for you those reactions in the crowd, those takes, which are spreading the fastest.

The very loudest of the “woo!”s.

This makes Twitter very valuable real estate in the battle for control of your mind and the ability to influence you–especially if you are in its target demographic. Even if you don’t personally use Twitter, people your age, whom you trust, absolutely do. Or the other social media we use. They are hearing all the “woo!” And they will shout some of that “woo!” along to you. Thus, the common knowledge, both of events, and how others are reacting to events and what the tribal consensus in both emotion and interpretation of events, are coming back to you through them.

Through people you love the most, and trust the most.

If you think control of Twitter and other social media doesn’t matter, look at the early response to the Ukraine invasion, and how Ukraine mobilized quickly to get the message out via social media. Look at the common playbook for all authoritarian regimes. If there are protests, social media showing them gets clipped early. Many of them control outright the only social media permitted in their countries–precisely so they can control the common knowledge of their citizens.

Yes, Virginia, if you can put a finger on the scale of this kind of technology, that can so dynamically shift common knowledge in a society, you could use it for nefarious ends. Who controls Twitter, and all such social media writ large, and who makes decisions and how on what messages are promoted and what are censored–who sets the Overton window in this brave new world–matters. It matters quite a lot.

And the knives out war between the tribes quoted in the blue above is all the proof you need of the importance of these questions.

They battle for the high ground–I wonder if their motives deserve to be there.

“Back to the principles. Of course governments want to shape and control the public conversation, and will use every method at their disposal to do so, including the media. And the power a corporation wields to do the same is only growing. It’s critical that the people have tools to resist this, and that those tools are ultimately owned by the people. Allowing a government or a few corporations to own the public conversation is a path towards centralized control.” –Jack Dorsey, Twitter Founder and Ex-CEO, in public letter/response to the on-going “Twitter Files.”

–Finally, some socioeconomic speed round updates. Protests continue in Peru and Iran. Global food prices have leveled off from this summer, but remain historically elevated (by a LOT) versus the last 8-9 years. Cooking oil remains especially precious. In the US, crop reports confirmed our anecdotal observations over the summer. For most crops, and certainly the big staples, total number of acres planted was down versus last year (but not a huge drop), and yield per acre was down slightly too. That said, overall production, although down, is still within the range of the last 8-10 years. Despite droughts and fertilizer availability/cost concerns, the US farmer got it done. And will need to again. I think a lot of the marginal production capacity to meet food and energy gaps likely to persist globally for the next few years is found in North America.

That said, West Coast energy prices have been looking very European as unusually cold weather strained the grid and started a draw on natural gas storage, while nat gas pipeline outages have constrained supply into the region. Forecasts for a huge swath of the US are pretty cold next week too…

–Your chances of catching Ebola are equivalent to the chances you knew that there was research out there suggesting that Jupiter, long thought to be a sponge protecting Earth from planet killer asteroids with its large mass, and thus gravity, tending to pull asteroids to it instead of the other planets in the inner solar system, is really more of a double edged sword.

For that gravity acts in all directions around Jupiter, so for certain approaches of asteroids, instead of drawing them inexorably into its gravity well and taking the hit on its surface, merely adjusts their flight path a little. Which could actually move an asteroid that would have missed Earth entirely into becoming a near miss of Jupiter, and then accelerating it towards Earth on a direct collision course now.

Making your net chances of Ebola equivalent to the chances that Jupiter is hurling a planet killer towards you right. now.

–Your chances of catching coronavirus are equivalent to the chances that if Jupiter is indeed pitching the doomsday space rock our way, it’s because Jupiter knows we did Pluto dirty when we took away its official planet status–and still isn’t over it.

<Paladin>