The New World-- Triage, Censorship, Iziki, Social Distancing... Conservative Self Extinction

The other day, I cooked up an old side dish I used to make when I was a chef in Amsterdam in the 1970s-- carrots, daikon and iziki. Except I had no iziki in the house and used nori as a substitute. It was delicious but it wasn't the same. So the next day, I suited up with the Base Camp N-99 mask I bought for hiking in the Himalayas a couple of years ago, along with the wrap-around shades Al Jourgenson gave me, and headed out for Erewhon, the health food supermarket, across town. Observations from my excursion: construction sites are still all open and functioning, many not-even-close-to-essential shops on Melrose were still open, like furniture stores, and most depressing, the people waiting on the long line in front of Erewhon was about one tenth masked. I didn't see a single masked employee inside the store either. And the shelves were largely bare of anything worthwhile and there wasn't only no iziki, there wasn't even any nori. Plenty of fresh fruits and veggies though. I have a feeling that a significant number of people don't know how to prepare anything that isn't in a can or box.

Writing for the Wall Street Journal this weekend, Holman Jenkins had some downright dire predictions about the efficacy of social distancing and the coming great shut down. That route, he wrote "is likely no cure at all. We might hold off an expected surge in coronavirus cases for two or three weeks with the kind of extraordinarily destructive economic lockdowns seen in California, New York and elsewhere. But unless warmer weather is coming to our rescue, [a crazy idea since COVID-19 has done just fine in Thailand's 90 degree weather] Americans probably won’t accept the social devastation that would be inflicted by a five-month or 18-month campaign of virus suppression of the sort promoted, variously, by the U.K.’s Imperial College London, Germany’s Robert Koch Institute and other public-health think tanks. Mandatory social distancing might well break down. (Look for speakeasies to re-emerge in New York and other shut-in cities.) The government might well face a choice of coercion or seeing its authority collapse. I’m not being alarmist. This is a lesson the World Health Organization’s Bruce Aylward brought back from Wuhan. People with flu-like symptoms had to be isolated in dormitories, hospitals and stadiums. Asking them to self-isolate voluntarily didn’t work."

Yet on Friday, a new Gallup poll seems to have indicated a rosier picture: Americans Rapidly Answering The Call To Isolate, Prepare. Linda Saad's toplines:

• After limited early adoption, majorities now avoiding routine interactions-- good, most people will live through this
• About half have stocked up on food, medical and household supplies-- again, good; an indication most people will survive
• Republicans still lag in social distancing-- best yet, the herd thinning will result in less disgusting, worthless, stupid conservatives

Saad wrote that "In the span of a week, Americans have gone from tepid adoption of social distancing to majorities engaging in nearly every major practice advocated by government and health officials as ways to contain community spread of the novel coronavirus. But there is a long way to go to approach full compliance. Gallup polling conducted March 13-15 and March 16-19 shows the biggest increases in social distancing occurring with those avoiding public places like grocery stores and restaurants (+24 percentage points to 54% doing this) and avoiding small social gatherings (+23 points to 46%). Majorities last weekend were already avoiding traveling by airplane or mass transit and avoiding events with large crowds out of concern for coronavirus. But with 20-point jumps in these behaviors this week, more than 70% of Americans are now on board with them... The trend shows Americans are moving less quickly to stockpile essential supplies, something that could be important in the event a household is quarantined due to illness, or if groceries and other supplies were to become scarce in the coming weeks and months. Just over half of Americans, 52%, say they have stocked up on food, medical or cleaning supplies as a safeguard from coronavirus disruption, up 13 points since the first polling period... [A]bout one in five are not considering stocking up on supplies."

The first response of one of my friends was to run out and buy a shotgun. I read that gun shops have long lines.

In the earlier survey 41% of respondents "described themselves as very likely to comply if public health officials recommend everyone stay home for a month should there be a serious outbreak of coronavirus in their community" and that rose to 51% in just a week-- even before Californians, New Yorkers and Illinoisans were ordered to shelter in place. Among the rebels: 14% said they were "somewhat unlikely" to comply in the first survey and 16% said they were "very unlikely" to comply. That changed in the second survey when 11% said "somewhat unlikely" and 12% said "very unlikely."

Saad interprets that to mean that "The country is approaching universal adherence to avoidance of large crowds and travel, with more than seven in 10 adults of all age groups, all political parties and regions saying they are already eschewing these activities. More variation is seen at the level of smaller interactions, including staying away from stores and restaurants and foregoing visits with friends and family. While more Americans across the societal spectrum are taking both precautions, women, residents of the Northeast, those living in high population density areas, and Democrats are more likely to be doing so than residents living in other regions, particularly the South and Midwest, in low-density areas, and Republicans."

From survey one to survey two these were the partisan changes among the percentage of Americans reporting they are avoiding public places such as stores and restaurants (before restaurants were shut down in several states, counties and cities):

• Democrats went from 41% complying to 65% complying, an increase of 24 points
• Independents went from 27% complying to 54% complying, an increase of 27 points
• Republicans went from 21% complying to 43% complying, an increase of 22 points

And where are people least likely to comply? The South, of course. Just 48%. If I were a mathematician I would try to figure out how long it would take for Southern Republicans to make themselves extinct.

Triage is coming to American hospitals. Doctors should probably take this demographic information when they are forced to decide who lives and who... doesn't get treatment. After all, older Republican men in the South seem determined to make themselves and this around them sick. Why should hospitals forced to chose who to use scare sources on waste it on them? Women, Democrats and Independents, younger people, non-Southerners are the people who are willing to accept societal restrictions to save themselves and those around them (and the country and species). Shouldn't they be saved first? Wouldn't the world be better off with fewer old, male, selfish Republican Southerners? Hard to admit... but you know it's true. Karen Weise and Mike Baker, reporting for the NY Times:

Medical leaders in Washington State, which has the highest number of coronavirus deaths in the country, have quietly begun preparing a bleak triage strategy to determine which patients may have to be denied complete medical care in the event that the health system becomes overwhelmed by the coronavirus in the coming weeks.

Fearing a critical shortage of supplies, including the ventilators needed to help the most seriously ill patients breathe, state officials and hospital leaders held a conference call on Wednesday night to discuss the plans, according to several people involved in the talks. The triage document, still under consideration, will assess factors such as age, health and likelihood of survival in determining who will get access to full care and who will merely be provided comfort care, with the expectation that they will die.

The effort is statewide so individual doctors and hospitals will not be left to make such decisions, said Cassie Sauer, chief executive of the Washington State Hospital Association, one of the groups convening the call.

“It’s protecting the clinicians so you don’t have one person who’s kind of playing God,” she said, adding, “It is chilling, and it should not happen in America.”

Ms. Sauer stressed that several things, including more hospital beds and equipment, could reduce the need to make such decisions. “This country has resources,” she said.

The state has been urgently seeking ventilators for patients and protective masks for health care workers, including from the Strategic National Stockpile, a repository of critical medical supplies for public health emergencies. Officials have also been looking to have the U.S. Navy hospital ship Mercy, which has 80 intensive care beds, dock near Seattle to handle seriously ill patients other than those who have contracted Covid-19, the disease caused by the virus.

In the meantime, officials in King County have begun building a field hospital on a soccer field north of Seattle. One large hospital system based in the area has started making masks and face shields by hand. Hospitals have already postponed elective surgeries to preserve resources.

Dr. Chris Spitters, the interim health officer for the Snohomish Health District, where the nation’s first coronavirus case was diagnosed, was part of the group that discussed the rationing proposals this week. He said that while the crisis strategies were not something anyone wants to anticipate, it would be worse not to be ready in the event they were needed.

I saw my oncologist last week. She was distressed when she told me the hospital had been approached-- she didn't say by who-- about beginning to think about cutting off care in "the future" to elderly cancer patients. Hopefully it won't be so then can provide care to male Southern Republicans drunk on Corona beer and mumbling about the pandemic being a hoax.

A corollary: a friend of mine living in China predicted this morning that there is likely to be "domestic deployments of troops that will probably be focused on protecting hospitals and vital supplies from rogue citizens." He also called my attention to the early stages of censorship starting up-- innocently-- right now. The intensified censorship of Internet 'misinformation' (let's all keep in mind the "infallibility" of official sources) could become more permanent, with relatively small pullbacks after the pandemic burns out, because such censorship is a relatively cheap and an efficient way to perform what the National Security State sees as a core function of Internet gatekeepers."

Twitter is among the major internet companies that have stepped up to play an active role in countering “misinformation” about the risks of and response to the coronavirus, although critics fear the measures it has announced could do more harm than good.

This week, the social media platform announced that it’s taking a “wide range of actions on potentially abusive and manipulative content” related to the subject, and to that end it is broadening his definition of “harmful” content.

Content that may be removed includes “denial of global or local health authority recommendations” (such as discouraging people from engaging in “social distancing”); descriptions of “ineffective” treatment or prevention methods, “even if made in jest”; “denial of established scientific facts” from “global and local health authorities”; urging people to go out to local businesses in defiance of government mandates; statements such as “ignore news about COVID-19, it’s just an attempt to destroy capitalism by crashing the stock market”; “unverified” claims that could “incite people to action and cause widespread panic”; impersonation of official government bodies, including parody accounts; and more.

While some of these rules are fairly straightforward, the language about humorous content can be seen as overreach, particularly if it affects obvious satire or jokes that, while potentially in poor taste, are obviously not meant to be taken as real information.

Twitter’s language also could potentially cross the line from halting the spread of misinformation into stifling legitimate debate about the wisdom of government’s response as well as the true threat of the virus, a relatively new and evolving situation on which the experts themselves are not of one mind.

Per “social distancing” recommendations, Twitter is taking on this task with reduced manpower, meaning it will be increasing its reliance on “machine learning and automation” to monitor and remove objectionable content. The company acknowledges that artificial systems “can sometimes lack the context that our teams bring, and this may result in us making mistakes,” so it will not be suspending any of the accounts whose content is removed by these systems.

Twitter is part of a joint effort by tech giants including Google, Facebook, LinkedIn, Microsoft, and Reddit to fight “fraud and misinformation about the virus” while “elevating authoritative content on our platforms, and sharing critical updates in coordination with government healthcare agencies around the world.”

Google’s own efforts in that regard have already produced some hiccups, such as inadvertently blocking legitimate news apps and even the U.S. Centers for Disease Control from appearing in certain searches on the Google Play store.