As reminders…

Alpha–Variant first identified in the UK

Beta–Variant first identified in South Africa

Gamma–Variant first identified in Brazil

Delta–Variant first identified in India

Also as a reminder:

Ebola:

Now up to at least 11 confirmed cases, with the last confirmed case on October 30th. All are in known transmission chains so far, and ring vaccination continues around the known cases. If ring vaccination has been successful, cases should level off here in the next week or two. If they have transmission outside of known chains at the moment, case numbers should tell us that as well. Transmission outside currently known chains remains a possibility, as just under 10% of known contacts have been lost to follow up.

Malaria:

Malaria? Yes, malaria! Not because it’s a major outbreak or a pandemic of any kind, but because it has been such an enormous public health menace for a long time and there is important news about it.

Malaria is endemic in many countries of the world and is responsible for millions of deaths per year. It killed 200 million in -just- the 1800s- (that’s about 2.5 world war 2’s combined military and civilian deaths for perspective. And again, that was just the 19th century for malaria. It’s been around a lot longer than that, and has undoubtedly killed more people than small pox, the flu, and tuberculosis combined.

There are even claims out there that malaria has killed half of all humans who ever lived, mostly by virtue of us living in a mostly tropical band for tens of thousands of years. That one may be a little exaggerated, but suffice to say, malaria has historically been a big infectious disease problem for humanity.

So what is the update worthy news?

The WHO recently endorsed GlaxoSmithKline’s RTS,S/AS01 vaccine against malaria, the first to show significant efficacy in phase 3 studies. The vaccine itself was initially developed in partnership with the Walter Reed Army Medical Research institute back in 1984, targeting a protein found on the surface of the form of malaria (sporozite) that the parasite is in when it is first injected into the blood. Experiments radiation inactivated sporozoites showed that the immune system could generate a protective response to this protein.

The past 30+ years have been devoted to finding a way to turn this protein into a vaccine friendly form where the immune system would recognize and respond to it. Hence, all the scientific excitement that the mRNA vaccines in particular worked so well out of the gate against SARS-CoV-2 — doesn’t always happen that way.

Regardless, to pull that feat off took clipping the important part of the malaria protein off and fusing it to the hepatitis B surface antigen, which is the protein of hepatitis B that is used for the hep B vaccine. Basically, the immune system sees the hep B protein which elicits a robust immune response by itself, and in the course of processing the hep B protein, the immune cells go “what the hell is this?” to the part of the malaria protein now attached to the end.

“Dunno. Better kill it with fire too…” your immune cells say, and so they start to make an antibody response to the malaria protein as well.

The vaccine is a 4 shot series, and in phase 3 testing, reduced new symptomatic malaria cases by ~30% and severe malaria cases by about 30% as well in kids age 5-17 months at 4 years post injection. Within the first year, it’s more effective, reducing malaria by ~56%.

That’s not a 90% reduction, but it’s a huge advance, and with pilot studies in African nations over the last couple years showing that it works real world and in major vaccination campaigns, has gotten full WHO approval for a wider roll out.

And that’s an important first huge step in a disease that has been a major burden for a very long time.

Coronavirus:

–Around the horn: Overall, cases in the US continue to slowly wind down. However, your regional results may vary. You have two general pockets of stable to increasing cases right now. The headline earner has been Colorado, where lay writers have been mystified at Colorado’s slow steady increase in new COVID cases, despite a high vaccination rate compared to much of the rest of the nation. The truth is Colorado and several of its neighbors have all seen stable to rising cases. Geographically, the per capita action is happening in the south of Colorado. But the four corners regions of Arizona, New Mexico, Utah and Colorado are all seeing increased cases (with pops in Utah and New Mexico also in their bigger cities, and New Mexico along its southern border as well). The other major source of steady to rising cases is the cold weather states like Maine, Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota etc. While Minnesota is seeing almost state wide steady to increasing cases, it is the northern most parts of the others that are seeing an uptick, like the UP in Michigan. There is nothing immediately obvious connecting the broader four counties region with the US-Canadian border region in terms of weather, but I do suspect that the US-Canada experience is the fall-winter “pop” like we saw last year. The good news is that this pop is not remotely as extreme as last fall/winter’s activity, suggesting that natural immunity and vaccination are muting the wave. The bad news is that it has muted, or even slightly reversed, the falling delta wave in these areas too. If the weather does matter, we should start to see pops in the Big Sky and Midwest by Thanksgiving, or shortly after, and their velocity will tell us a lot about likely future “waves”.

Other areas seeing surprising upticks are a broad swath of Germany and Eastern Europe, including Austria, the Ukraine, Russia. This is slowly moving West and South across Europe, as Belgium, the Netherlands, and Greece also show quite significant new numbers of cases. Denmark is re-imposing some social distancing measures. France is also starting to tick up a bit again. There is a mix of vaccines, vaccination rates, and social distancing responses all over there. Belgium, for example, actually has a quite high vaccination rate with nearly 75%, while Greece is more a general Euro-average 60%. Does make one wonder, though, if this is the fall-winter pop, and as SARS-CoV-2 settles into an endemic state worldwide, if it shares seasonality with the flu going forward…

–So let’s follow that thought for a moment. The genie is out of the bottle and SARS-CoV-2 is unlikely to leave us going forward. But we know that hospitalization rates and death rates are down, and the virus is most likely to mutate in contagious, but less dangerous forms. We also have increasing numbers of effective new treatments coming online (more on those in a second).

Barring some horrible mutation (and SARS-CoV-2 is less mutation prone than influenza), the virus is highly unlikely to be able to collapse entire health care systems again. We can simply keep too many people out of the hospital at this point, even at current staffing levels. At some point, this will be recognized by the political and Science^TM! consensus and the more drastic social distancing measures disappear. Even the vaccine passports for travel or entry that are being enforced with wide geographic variation will start to dwindle away as well.

This will all happen. When, I don’t know. Again:

These are all, ultimately, political decisions.

What I think it does mean is that a seasonal booster is offered for at least a little while. I know we Sciencepalooza’d the case for boosters, and the science is strongest for those 65 and up or with known severe risk factors. For the rest of us, though, there’s really not a great deal of evidence of loss of immunity that leads to a higher risk of hospitalization from SARS-CoV-2.

Is there a greater chance, over time, that you will get symptomatic COVID–a “breakthrough” case that is the typical “hit by truck” clinical COVID, or clinical flu, for a few days? Maybe shorter if you get a rapid diagnostic showing symptoms + positive SARS-CoV-2 test and get one of several treatment options?

Yeah, chances are good for that. If seasonal boosters become a thing and you want to minimize your chances of several days of miserable unplanned downtime, and/or the risk of catching COVID and inadvertently spreading it to others, boosters might be something you choose to do. Similar to the quite optional flu vaccine offered every fall (and should probably have similar medical ethics to it).

In fact, that’s the reason I get the flu vaccine every year–minimize my chances of “hit by truck” downtime and chances of spreading that to others. Have I had breakthrough flu? Once, but the vaccine did shorten the typical duration of symptoms.

So that’s a long way of saying I do expect seasonal boosters to start being offered by next year, but those will be alongside a number of treatment options if you get breakthrough disease or pass on the booster and catch symptomatic COVID.

–As for me personally, before you I even quote you in italics Hypothetical Reader? I have -not- gotten a booster and have no near term plans to do so. Am still quite content with the indicators of immunity I have seen from my dose much earlier this year. I know a geriatrician who has been delaying it, mostly because that person wants to time the “Pfizer flu” they got after their second dose of the initial vaccine series to a more convenient time, if they were going to get it. My wife got her booster because she is in a direct patient facing role and her specialty sees a lot of patients who are high risk for severe COVID–she did that months ago without incident.

If you are over 65 or have known risk factors for severe COVID, you should definitely talk to your healthcare provider about a booster.

Everyone else? I’m not get eat your lunch one way or the other. I understand forgoing a booster; I understand if you choose to get one.

Your medical autonomy is cool with me.

–Also, got a lot of feedback last week on just how inscrutable my position on vaccination for 5-11 year olds was. But the main point appeared to come through loud and clear. Which is amazing, because I did not think I was remotely that talented a writer!

So the main point is this… The chances of Bad Things happening to a 5-11 year old with no other risk factors if they actually got COVID are incredibly small. Not zero, but incredibly small. The chances of Bad Things happening to a 5-11 year old with no other risks factors if they get the vaccine are ALSO incredibly small. Not zero, but incredibly small.

No matter what you decide, the chances of a Bad Thing happening are very small. The chances are very close. To again stress how narrow the risk/benefit ratio being discussed here is, this is from the FDA itself:

This is the most applicable scenario in that document, with 90% vaccine efficacy against new cases (100% versus hospitalization), and COVID rates at approximately what they are now. The numbers are in cases per million, so 77 COVID-19 ICU stays per million kids prevented by the vaccine, for 34 excess myo/pericarditis ICU stays per million kids this age–assuming that the highest myo/pericarditis rate (teenage males) is the same for all 5-11 year olds.

Those are not especially impressive numbers in either direction. If you have a kid with known risk factors, yes, definitely talk to your healthcare provider about vaccination. If you don’t, and you choose to wait while the high risk factor kids get a shot they need, I totally understand. The risk from the vaccine is tiny, and the schools are likely to force your hand eventually though. And even if your school does not, you may want to travel someplace with the kids that will insist on the vaccine as well. So there are “freedom of movement” considerations as well–and don’t “@” me, I am not one of the politicians making those decisions. Again, looking effective is just as good as actually being effective to them.

On the other hand, if you choose to vaccinate right now, I also totally understand (especially if your kids have risk factors). Yes, there is a tiny risk from the vaccine–but the risks from the virus itself in this age group for kids without known risk factors are small as well.

Like I said last week, everyone was going to read that section of my update to try and decide which side of that decision I am on, and influenced heavily by the narrative of your preferred tribe. Why I stuck to the numbers.

Because my position is, truly–I understand, no matter which way you choose. I get your choice, and you absolutely have the right to your choice.

That will come down, as I said last week, to which of those two tiny risks you prefer to mitigate. I’m not going to clutch pearls and make moral accusations about your decision–those are your kids.

But, and this is another very important takeaway message, you should talk to your pediatrician to come to a decision you are comfortable with given your kids’ medical history and risks.

Hopefully that clarifies my lack of clarity : )

–The better question, Hypothetical Reader, was “If you were on one of those advisory panels for the CDC or FDA, asked to recommend the reduced dose shot for 5-11 year old kids, what would -you- have said based on the evidence that is out there?”

No one asked me that question though, and that is a Q&A for a different day. There are nuances to it that you can see in the comments that were collected by the media from those who were on those panels–if you read them closely. There is a reason I linked those articles about those comments from panelists a couple weeks ago. The link is in the lead story in the coronavirus section of this update and came with a “high recommend” at time to follow that link and read the whole article.

–So speaking of new treatments, one of the big announcements this week is an update of the old and the other is really relatively new.

Again, because they apply to competitors of my employer who has a similar treatment with EUA for acute SARS-CoV-2, my comments will be very limited and thank your for understanding.

Regeneron toplined the results of a Phase 3 with a slightly adjusted cocktail of monoclonal antibodies to SARS-CoV-2 and showed at least 85% effectiveness in preventing hospitalization with them if used early in symptomatic COVID.

Pfizer also toplined a Phase 3 that showed their new treatment (which is a combination of two pills) reduced the risk of hospitalization or death in acute COVID in high risk patients by 89%. The treatment itself is a new protease inhibitor (PF-07321332), targeting a SARS-CoV-2 protein called 3C-Like protease (3CL protease). Which is to say this drug is designed to pop into the 3CL protease and stop it from processing SARS-CoV-2’s proteins to form a functioning virus. There is no human protein similar to this, and unlike the Merck drug, does NOT work by jacking SARS-CoV-2’s RNA up, so side effect profile has been pretty minimal. The drug is taken in a short course in combination with ritonavir, which is an already on the market HIV drug.

Why are you taking an HIV drug with the new SARS-CoV-2 inhibitor? Has nothing to do with HIV, and more to do with the fact that these two drugs are cleared by the same set of liver enzymes. The idea is that the liver will become so preoccupied clearing the HIV drug that it won’t clear the SARS-CoV-2 inhibitor as fast, meaning more of the SARS-CoV-2 inhibitor will be around for longer to help it control the virus better.

It’s a similar idea to why the treatment of methanol poisoning is alcohol. Yes, you read that correctly–but methanol poisoning is pretty serious, and if you are looking to drink, just drink rather than poison yourself with methanol. Methanol and ethanol, as you can guess from the name, are molecularly very similar and both get processed by alcohol dehydrogenase in the liver. However, when methanol is processed it releases byproducts that are really bad for you. So the treatment of acute methanol posioning is to occupy alcohol dehydrogenase with something other than methanol to process, slowing the accumulation of bad byproducts of methanol. Thus, you treat acute methanol poisoning with enough ethanol (or fomepizole) to keep alcohol dehydrogenase too busy with this “distraction” treatment to turn methanol into the stuff that is killing you.

Then they clear the methanol out with dialysis, which, again, is why you should NOT poison yourself with methanol just to be treated with ethanol.

But it is a useful analogy to the “confuse the processing enzyme with a similar molecule” idea behind Pfizer’s two pill COVID combo.

–While we are on the subject of Pfizer though, their CEO gave a rather…adventurous…interview this week. One of the summary points:

Compare and contrast that with this and it’s understandable that some were upset with the CEO’s choice of words there.

Now, I suspect the Pfizer CEO was getting carried away thinking about comments and criticisms, some less rationally founded than others, about a drug Pfizer developed and he believes in. One -hopes- this is hyperbole. After all, who defines what constitutes “misinformation”? As a thought experiment, if Moderna were to market its COVID vaccine on studies that have shown slightly higher and more durable efficacy rates, is that “misinformation” if that statistical lead doesn’t hold up in larger, longer studies or in the real world? How you can demonstrate menas rae to the “misinformation” to make it criminal? Even in something as woefully wrong as “Plandemic”, can you demonstrate intent to harm–beyond a reasonable doubt? After all, were those behind “Plandemic” merely idiots who believe their crazy because they don’t know any better, or were they out to harm others by preventing them taking a drug which reduced (massively and significantly), but did not completely eliminate, their risk of severe COVID?

Anyways, starting to wonder if I worry too much about what I might say in these updates where it intersects my employer or competitors if the Pfizer CEO is out there just dropping bombs like that.

–Speaking of Moderna, Germany is the latest of multiple European countries to no longer be offering the Moderna vaccine to anyone younger than 30 over concerns about the rate of myocarditis/pericarditis with that vaccine.

–In fact, on the internet, there are also rumblings of ERs filling with seriously ill patients with non-COVID disease, presenting with blood clots, heart disease (including heart attacks) etc. This has caused some to question if this is finally the “proof” of serious long term vaccine consequences, with much online pointing at VAERS.

First off, this is all anecdotal. Some ERs are seeing more patients and more severe disease; some are not. COVID vaccination status appears to have nothing to do with it, although this needs more formal study. That’s why you have VAERS, which is a collection of possible vaccine associated adverse events that need additional follow up to confirm if the vaccine caused the problem, or was just administered around the same time. Again, quite a few of these are likely to be “just administered around the same time” because you are handing out a lot of vaccines, and this is a highly publicized vaccine were reporting of anything remotely around the same time is likely to get put into VAERS. So wait for all of data to mature. Speaking of which, if all of the blood clots and heart disease were in vaccinated patients, that might be a story. In fact, it would be a story. That it is not a story is itself the story because with a 60% vaccination rate in the US alone, we should see this quickly.

Remember too with a US vaccination rate of about 60%, a lot of people presenting with a heart attack will have been vaccinated by chance alone. Similarly, we would expect about 60% of those in car accidents to be vaccinated–possibly even more, since vaccinated people may have gotten the vaccine to be going places, and are thus more likely to be in their cars. Is the vaccine causing car accidents too? With 40% unvaccinated, we should see pretty quickly if there is a big and important difference in rates like blood clots and heart attacks between the vaccinated and unvaccinated that is attributable to long(er) term vaccine risk, even though vaccinated people are more likely to be elderly or at risk (due to obesity, diabetes, existing heart disease etc) and that is why they got the vaccine in the first place. This is an achievable study; someone will do it, and avoid jumping to conclusions before it’s done.

Because “it’s the vaccine” is an extraordinary claim, requiring extraordinary proof.

Why do I say that? Again, I’m going to point to the dog that is not barking. If the spike protein by itself is causing these longer term risks of heart disease, blood clots etc., why have we NOT seen that in fully recovered COVID patients, who in many cases were pumping out just as much spike protein, and for longer, than the mRNA vaccines cause it to be produced?

I know, I know… Long COVID. Turns out there is a 26,000+ patient French study out this week where they found long COVID rates depend greatly on knowing you had the virus before. Basically, the incidence of long COVID drops precipitously when they asked people who were antibody positive, but did not recall having COVID symptoms (about 60% of the antibody positives, for the record). If long COVID had a strong, virus associated biological underpinning, you would expect about the same number of long COVID symptoms in those with antibodies but no memory of COVID symptoms as you would in those who knew they had it. Instead, the ones who did not realize they already caught COVID asymptomatically have -far- lower rates of long COVID symptoms. You can read the full JAMA published article here or Alex Berenson’s short but excellent summary of the high points here. Now, I will not go as far as Alex to say “long COVID doesn’t exist” as patients who were severely infected can have lingering symptoms that probably are due to the virus or lingering Ah-nold immune reactions. But those symptoms do not include heart attacks, blood clots and the like to suggest the spike protein is magically increasing this risk long-term. The dog is still silent.

It is worth mentioning that the same psychology applying to long COVID reports will also apply to the vaccine, where knowing you had this new kind of vaccine is enough to cause you to at least consider blaming that for every stubbed toe and sniffle.

So unlikely that these internet rumors of ERs filling nefariously with unreported and poorly reported vaccine complications are true. That will require more evidence and a dedicated study, which is easily achievable.

The more probable explanation is actually the social decisions that were made around the virus. The “lockdown weight gains” when the gyms were closed predispose to blood lots and heart attacks. So does all the stress everyone has been having. Chronic diseases went undermanaged when clinics were converted to COVID acute care offices, and are only just now getting back to peds or whatever they were. Elective procedures were pushed out until they became less elective. People were afraid to go the hospital or clinic, trying to maintain social distance. In other words, there are non-vaccine explanations that are just, if not more, explanatory–and may be pandemic related in a different way. Here’s another article with a little more detail on that.

–Shifting to socioeconomic news…

In the anecdotal, this past weekend I was running my son to swimming practice last Saturday morning. Ordinarily, I switch over from the radio to Spotify, but kept the radio going once I heard what the hosts were talking about. Oddly enough, it was about impacts from supply chain issues. One of them had recently replaced a washer/dryer in their house, and was describing the ordeal. Places he called might have either the washer or the dryer–never the two together. He was told more than once that the store had been told that only 11 of the particular appliance would be available that month for the entire region. So you wound up placing an order, paying money, and then waiting for it to eventually deliver. Same for fridges apparently, and waits for sofas and couches appear to be up to 20 weeks. Several delivery appointments were cancelled on the DJ. Was just interesting that all of three of the radio hosts were complaining about this, and had run into similar problems on appliances and furniture. Although there are some signs that supply chains are moving a little better via the broader data, that is still going to trickle down a bit.

It’s also been several weeks since I have stopped for gas or gone through the soda aisle at the grocery store and it has not looked picked clean, with only a few lonely 20 ozs of each product still on the shelves.

In the less anecdotal, China’s major power producer announced this weekend that coal supplies have improved with recent price controls and the grid stabilized a bit. That said, they also expected at least some power disruption to businesses in particular over the winter, and much of China got socked with a pretty big snowstorm and cold weather this past week, which will increase demand even as they try to stabilize supply.

Also worth mentioning that all price controls will do is push a coal crunch further some unknown time into the future, as what that Chinese electric company I mentioned is doing is what all of them will be doing–buying as much coal as they can at the fixed price. The crunch down the road comes if (when) that price turns out to be below the cost of mining and transporting that coal, and there ain’t no mo’ coal at the fixed price. It just never gets brought out of the ground or shipped. And then, Virginia, we have that most deceptively benign of economic phrases: “price discovery.”

In a related note, inflation in China’s producer price index hit 13.5%, the highest rise since they started keeping records in 1995. Evergrande continues to play chicken with the full grace period of its bond payments, meeting the latest only by selling two corporate jets and one of it’s CEO’s houses. Unsurprisingly, other large Chinese property developers are having difficulty making bond payments, and their bond prices are collapsing as Evergrande’s collapse starts to spread through their market. China relieved the pressure somewhat by backing off regulations it just imposed months ago on the property and technology sectors.

But that says something as well about how much understanding and control the CCP has if it has to back off those regulations meant to control these known risks in these sectors so quickly because these sectors were so quickly sliding out of control!

If China prints or does any kind of significant QE to shore up the collapsing property sector (where, again, 70% of the average Chinese citizen’s wealth sits), they only risk running already record inflation even higher and average citizen’s savings will be melted down in terms of their purchasing power. If China does nothing, and continues to let the large developers fall, average citizens’ savings will be wiped out as price discovery comes to the famous ghost cities of the Chinese property boom.

Not a great place for China to be, right now–but they’re not alone between rocks and hard places.

Opinions about the global risk of what is slowly unraveling in China are all over the place because China’s financial system is quite opaque, and not as obviously interconnected with the rest of the global financial system as the big banks that went down in the global financial crisis of 2007-9. There are warnings out there though. I don’t know enough about it to have a strong opinion.

Just know that it’s happening, and it’s all the socioeconomic effects we said would be precipitated by shutdowns and disruptions in economies in response to the pandemic.

Closer to home is continued political wrangling over vaccine mandates and exemptions at businesses, as the President’s executive order for mandates at companies or OSHA fines is destined to be decided by courts. In the meantime, we have discussed some of the public service sector impacts where mandate deadlines were earliest, such as police and fire staffing in cities like New York and Chicago. Lost in the shuffle is what vaccine mandates for both employees as well as customers in some places will necessarily mean, based on demographics of vaccine resistance (which still is comparatively high in some minorities). Thus, we have the Los Angeles Times doing a decent write up at the link here of the disproportionately terrible effect these mandates will have on businesses by, and/or primarily for, people of color who will be challenged to comply with some of the mandates being dictated on high at state and national levels.

Inflation, particularly in cost of living items like gas, food and housing, remains prominent. Similar to China, both producer price index and consumer price indexes of inflation have come in over expectation in the US this week. President Biden directed the economic council to “pursue means to try to further reduce these costs, and have asked the Federal Trade Commission to strike back at any market manipulation or price gouging in [the energy] sector.”

With energy procurement issues running from India through Europe to China, and China in particular telling its energy companies to secure supplies “at any cost”, it ain’t market manipulation that is causing this.

Meanwhile, MSNBC announced this new opinion piece on their website via Twitter:

Then MSNBC deleted that tweet in a matter of hours after they were destroyed in the responses. The many, many commenters pointed out, often through their own lived experience, that inflation disproportionately affects the poor (who can now afford even less) and has long been called the most regressive tax of all.

Goldman Sachs has raised their year end CPI estimate every month this year, from a little over 2% when inflation was “transitory” to 5% and change last month.  They also expect inflation at least near this level to persist through 2022, when they believe the clearing supply chains they mentioned (and we covered last week) should build inventory and lead to greater “competition” among businesses.  That will be deflationary, and bring CPI back down to Goldilocks 2%.

And we had better hope so, because if inflation starts taking off and/or prolonging, the Fed may have to raise interest rates. If/when it does, this will tend to raise the interest that the US government must pay on its treasury debt. Given the current, and increasing, level of US national debt, it will not take much of a raise before the interest payments alone crowd out all other spending, ranging from Medicare through the military. We’re not there yet–but it’s a non-zero risk at this point.

And again, we mention the Goldman Sachs’ economists have raised their inflation estimate every month this year, and their 2022 prognostication should be viewed with this in mind.

But what does this mean to you? Well, wage growth is expected to be 4% on average this year, according to the same guys at Goldman.  Your raise may vary of course.  But anything less than at least 5% means you are losing money in terms of what you can actually buy with it.

And people aren’t stupid.  I’m sure they can tell that. 

Just ask MSNBC’s Twitter team…

–Think piece for this week…

“‘…for our‘, talking collectively as a community of Jesus, ‘for our struggle is not against flesh and blood...'”

“So just pause real quick here. So he’s in a context where some Jewish communities were still persecuting these early followers of Jesus for the blasphemous idea that the Messiah was the crucified and resurrected Lord. The Roman authorities are using violence and even execution to stamp out this new movement and Paul has the audacity to say ‘Yeah, you realize like the Jews and the Romans, they are not our real enemy. That’s not where our struggle is.’ Like, are you kidding? They’re at my door with guns! And Paul says ‘No, they’re not your enemy at all.'”

“‘Here’s your enemy,’ he says. ‘Our struggle is not against flesh and blood, it’s against the rulers, the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.‘ It’s the same words he used in chapter 1. “

“So here’s a whole theme. He talks about ‘the powers‘ in this letter, in Corinthians, in Romans, in Colossians, and Paul has this idea that this is not about a demon under every bush. This is about there are powers that work to influence and exploit the collective brokenness of humanity that are working to destroy human beings.”

Dr. Tim Mackie, “All Things New”, part 2, a commentary on Paul’s letter to the Ephesians.

“There are powers that work to influence and exploit the collective brokenness of humanity that are working to destroy human beings” struck me as timely thought in the current milieu (let alone the milieu of millennia). How often do we speak now of narratives, of the politicization of all things, of the seemingly widening divide and loss of connection these days? There are powers at work to influence and exploit collective brokenness, to confuse us into pointing the finger at one another.

Don’t get lost in if these are spiritual or secular powers. Those of you who are of spiritual predisposition will already see the spiritual at work through the secular. Those of you who are of more secular predisposition, who prefer not to invoke the spiritual at all, can read “powers” as “incentives and attitudes” and reach the same important points.

Because we can all agree that if you look at the world around you there are -clearly- forces at work to influence and exploit humanity to destroy human beings. The low hanging fruit example is the algorithms of social media driving to ever more extremist content, or a media business model that has established competing narrative silos that it then feeds. Even something like politics, where the incentive is to appear effective, whether you actually are or not. The reason for the bonfire of institutional credibilities is the clarity that the incentives and attitudes for many institutions are no longer what we thought they were, and in some cases are increasing the collective brokenness. Occasionally, I would argue it’s even more raw in some circumstances. There is clear and obvious work being done to influence and exploit the collective brokenness of humanity on many levels, and that ultimately works to destroy human beings. Through anger. Through callousness. Through indifference. Through contempt.

Every generation tends to view its crises as unique, but history, as they say, rhymes. We have covered before the echoes from the lessons of pandemic and public health response to the socioeconomic and political fall out of the Black Death to the last nearly two years now. The crises of every generation have been the culmination of the same kind of influences, changed only by specific circumstance, culture and technology, to influence, exploit and ultimately worsen humanity’s collective brokenness. Sometimes it is the crisis itself and sometimes it is the response to the crisis that leaves humanity worse or better off.

The zeitgeist just feels like tension, like the potential energy of rope or rubber band getting twisted up. We know, looking at out at the world, looking in our hearts, that a lot isn’t working, and that many forces clearly are attempting to increase the collective brokenness. We know that change is coming, but it’s not clear when. When, though, will be sudden. Cathartic. And carry us all in the flood. So what has us all on edge is knowing the flood is coming, and we will ride the current in one of only two directions. At its end, we will have stood, reasserted justice, connection and all of the blessings of our better nature–proved that “created in the image of a loving God” is not ironic mockery in our hearts and how we treat one another in whatever is coming after. Or we will have been washed up at the flood’s end, crushed and stunned, with only desolate wreckage around us–angry, bitter and alone, with each wretched survivor for themselves. More broken than ever before.

The “powers that work to influence and exploit the collective brokenness of humanity that are working to destroy human beings” at drawing up to the highest tide yet for our present generations. They are not idle.

Are you?

–Your chances of catching coronavirus are equivalent to the chances that you hit the drum break if you clicked that last link…

–Your chances of catching Ebola are equivalent to the chances the Packers will be fooled twice when Aaron Rodgers shows them this vaccination card:

<Paladin>