Return of the Mask

Today’s ranty Ruminant finds Jonah alternately perplexed and irritated by the state of the COVID-19 ...

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Today’s ranty Ruminant finds Jonah alternately perplexed and irritated by the state of the COVID-19 pandemic, illiberalism in politics, and folks who think Twitter is real life. He begins by digging into the CDC’s revised guidance on masks and the possible implications of America’s stalling vaccine campaign. From there, things get nerdy, as Jonah explores the state of conservative institutions and weirdness of internet culture. Any cartoonists listening should stick around until the end for some striking inspiration.

Show Notes:

– Christian Schneider on anti-racism

– Jonah on the new mask mandates

– Wednesday’s “news”letter

– Last year’s kooky Washington Times piece on masks

– Crisis and Leviathan, by Robert Higgs

– The Dispatch Podcast on the CDC and January 6

– The Remnant with Tim Carney

– Marty Makary on the push to vaccinate children

– Laura K. Field’s essay on the Claremont Institute

– The Remnant with Dan McLaughlin

– Scarlett Johansson sues Disney

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Comments (32)
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  1. Avatar photo
    Ben Connelly

    Totally with you on where the CDC and masks are right now. One of the things I enjoyed most about being vaccinated was that the CDC lifted the mask mandate the day I got my second dose and suddenly I didn’t need a mask anywhere. I think you’re right on Biden: it’s not in his political interest to have more lockdowns because if we have another year of remote school and masks the Democrats will get shellacked in the midterms.

    Fascinating discussion of Claremont. I’ll have to go check out that article. I was wondering about this recently. A close colleague of a close relative is a politics professor at Claremont (unless he retired) and I’m not sure where he stands on this stuff.

    When are we going to get Jonah replying to himself at the end of the podcast saying, “No you won’t this is a podcast” ?

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    Peter Schwartz

    Cornell/Harvard...nailed it.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?reload=9&v=d7Rjk1WGHp8

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    JamesA

    Johan, Yet another sublime Saturday morning podcast. The only problem is that every time I listen to your podcast it reminds me of all the mediocre college professors I had to endure in college and how much I actually paid to listen to them.
    Since you mentioned "The Bulwark," and "GLOP," in short order you might be interested in how I found the GLOP podcast. In 2019, I discovered "The Bulwark," while watching Charlie Sykes on "Deadline Whitehouse." (I know, terrible show). Then I heard David French as a guest on Mr. Sykes's podcast. From there it was "The Dispatch," to "The Remnant," to "GLOP."
    Also, I don't understand the comparison between "The Bulwark," to "The Dispatch." For me, they both have a lot of value while scratching a different itch.
    Cheers, James.

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      Angie

      Yeah me too and The Bulwark is how I found out about the Dispatch

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  4. ExploreOK

    I read the article on the Claremont Institute yesterday and felt sick to my stomach. Seeing the cultural and political resentment being bred there is what I imagine it would be like to stumble upon a rotting corpse. Even that doesn't seem to do the situation justice, for it is a living and metastasizing rot. It is grotesque, the ability of Trump to intellectually and morally bankrupt individuals and institutions.

    And it is a feature now of many right or center-right publications to breed a similar, not so fundamentally grotesque, cultural and political resentment and distrust, and it concerns me. Even NR does not seem to have been exempt, and I relied on them heavily during the Trump years except during the run-up to the 2020 election when they seemed to falter, and still seem to not have recovered.

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    1. GregS

      I started reading NRO around 2004 and stuck with them until late 2020, when I just couldn't stomach it any more. They're lost, and the majority of their writers seem to have fully embraced the idea that fascism, as long as it is led by the GOP, is preferable to Democrats.

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    2. Brett C

      +1 to your experience with NR. I can't read that anymore

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  5. DocHeartless

    Jonah, the discussion of the Claremont Institute was fascinating. I just finished reading the article at the Bulwark and, while interesting, it didn't really address the most intriguing dynamic in the saga--how did this happen at the Institute? The latter 3/4s of the article focused on how crazy-balls they are right now, which is definitely 11 on the crazy-o-meter. But I was itching to know how they lost their way.

    Someone mentioned here that it's the inevitable consequence of rational minds leaving and filling the void with weaker souls. I'm sure there's truth to that. Nonetheless, that doesn't answer the question of how the founding idealists allowed poor minds to infiltrate their groups. With respect to members of The Dispatch, it's not like you are the only humans on the planet that can keep your heads.

    I'm slightly curious as to the backstory of Claremont, but what I am most interested in is the institutional defenses in place at The Remnant. If we've learned anything over the last five years, it's that ideological corruption is enormously more likely than we thought it was. This is no insult to you fine folks at this brilliant and honorable new publication. Rather, it seems prudent to take a page out of the founding fathers' playbook and recognize our own deep frailty and propensity toward righteous errors.

    The moorings of your pirate skiff (avoidance of clickbait, what-aboutism, and straw men and the embrace of rationality, self-correction, data, and honest criticism of all who deserve it) are outstanding. But do you think it would be wise to institute some type of regular review of your values? I'm sure you have already--I smile every time I hear the crew's groans of frustration toward Steve as he criticizes getting close to clickbait-style topics. But I think you all would be much better off with having more of this internal analysis rather than less.

    Just an idea, but maybe a surgeons style "biggest mistakes of the year party" among the staff. You could have white elephant gifts and drinking games from your top five "least Dispatch-y" pods or articles from the year. It could be completely private (no need to involve us peons) and as painless/fun as possible. It might also serve as just a regular reminder of how critical those foundational principles are, how inevitable it is to drift from them from time to time, and how necessary it is to continually police yourself.

    Forgive me if I sound patronizing. I just love you guys so much, it would break my heart if you drifted even a tenth toward the direction of CI. Keep on keeping on, brother!

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    1. Avatar photo
      Mudskipper

      I think the underlying message of Field's reporting on the Claremont Institute is that its rigid and highly ideological world view was its undoing. Essentially, the people there were absolutists, who had difficulty imagining other perspectives or living in a world with shades of gray. Included in this was a near-religious mythology about America's founding. And as such, they conceived of liberals and liberalism as their mortal enemy.

      It is essentially what we've seen in some other conservative circles: owning and defeating the libs is the highest good, which transcends any other principle.

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      Victor Clairmont

      “ Someone mentioned here that it's the inevitable consequence of rational minds leaving and filling the void with weaker souls”

      *cough was that me? *cough cough*

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  6. Scott Mc

    The Disney part would not surprise anyone ever involved with them in a legal dispute. They have a heavy legal approach in general. Case or no case. This one is just in the news most are kept away. They are big if you didn’t notice.

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      Pastorfbt

      I'm on Team ScarJo but there's no legal theories involved there. Just saying.😏

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    pdxdude

    Is this a “Return of the Mack” pun?

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  8. Mads Lindstrøm

    Jonah says offhandedly that there is good arguments on both sides of the eviction moratorium debate. Are there really though. What is the good argument for the CDC (not in charge of economic policy) to suspend the property rights of landlords?

    If it had been congress to suspend the property rights of landlords, it would still be deeply problematic with respect to federalism, basic fairness (why should landlords pay this particular bill?), as a loony economic policy, ... but at least it would be a political act made by politicians. But for non elected bureaucrats to just suspend private property rights is scary. If it is OK for the CDC to suspend private property, what can they not do? What is the limiting principle? Private property is a bedrock of western liberal democracies and we cannot have medical officials suspend it on a whim. I really cannot understand the lack of outrage on this issue.

    In left wing Denmark where I live, it has to my knowledge not even been suggested to do a eviction moratorium. I think because even left wingers here can see it is idiotic.

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    1. DJ

      I'm a landlord and sympathetic to the plight of tenants, but the CDC mandate was ridiculous and unenforceable. Fortunately we were able to get some funds from the stimulus.

      We did evict some tenants for bad behavior - at least two were straight-up drug dealers.

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      1. Mads Lindstrøm

        You write it is unenforceable, which is a surprise to me. A good surprise, but a surprise nonetheless. I have seen videos of landlords not being able to evict non paying renters. Maybe these problems are fake or few and far between. So why do you write it is non-enforceable? Or is it non-enforceable when throwing out drug dealers but enforceable for evicting non-paying renters?

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      CynthiaW

      "If it is OK for the CDC to suspend private property, what can they not do? What is the limiting principle?"

      There is none. The only way to protect everyone from illness is free everything for everyone, delivered to your door by ... robots, I guess. What could go wrong?

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  9. Avatar photo
    Silvertide

    Jonah I can understand your frustration with wearing a mask but I think you have missed out on some important information regarding covid. You seem to only be looking at deaths but what that fails to convey is also the fact that we have no data on what issues are caused by what is being called long covid. This is covid where adults and children have low or no symptom covid but then have a symptom that lasts weeks, months, or years (we are not sure). Right now I couldn't tell you what the percentage is because it's not something that has been heavily tracked. but from what I could gather it appears to be anywhere from 1% to 10%. Why this is so serious is because even a 1% rate could have a drastic impact on the future of this country if our children end up with chronic or lifetime issues.

    I also have a real problem with your views on "elite" people such as Fauci and others. While I don't think they should be in charge we do need our government to be influenced by capable and rational people who's life is spent on whatever subject is being worked on whether that is covid, or climate change, or thwarting terrorist attacks. It is a little sickening to hear you and others say that these people get off on controlling others lives during a time of crisis. To me one of the most detrimental things the republican party has done was to wage a war against experts and data for the last 20 years. This attack on information and information specialists has lead to the rise of trump and those people who do not believe the truth even when you show them video or they watch it live. We cannot have trust in society if half the country believes any and every expert is a liar and out to get them.

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    1. DocHeartless

      The potential of long covid is a legitimate concern, but there is so much uncertainty surrounding it, it is difficult to make recommendations. While many would take the argument of, "If we can't say for sure that it is not a problem, we need to treat it like it is a problem just to be sure." I would argue that this is a very dangerous position that leads to perpetual fear and restrictions. Also, and this was a brief part of Jonah's point but should be expanded, there are very real consequences of excessive protectiveness in the form of mental health and economic destruction. I do not have the numbers present, but if suicides, loss of businesses/employment, and relationship/social development problems exceeded that of long term covid, would it still be worth it?
      I am a huge proponent of science, but I think a clear-eyed analysis of the behavior of scientists should lead us to admit that they are human and as flawed as everyone. I really liked Jonah's take that they are more likely infected by group-think and single-mindedness than an unconscious desire to maintain their own power and relevance. Honestly, my mind was slipping toward that latter motivation, but I now think Jonah's absolutely correct and it is the former (thank you for that revelation, Jonah!).
      But it seems hard to argue that there hasn't been very large and damaging mistakes made because of that group think. Just to name a few:

      The anti-mask statements made early in the pandemic. Maybe understandable as a strategic position to preserve masks for frontliners, but it damaged credibility.

      The permission given to the BLM protests in the summer while also supporting lockdowns elsewhere.

      The lack of challenge trials. These would have intentionally infected young people with Covid to jump start potential treatments and vaccine testing. This sounds horrific, but there are long traditions of this practice and there were tens of thousands of volunteers. How many lives would have been saved if vaccines had been approved three months earlier?

      Temporary withdrawal of the J&J vaccine over absurdly low probability of complications during pregnancy. Any college statistician could see that this was never going to be a problem but it significantly raised vaccine hesitancy.

      The absurdly long time it took for testing review and is currently taking for full review now.

      The host of significant changes on recommendations without sufficient explanation for why the recommendations are changing in that way and at that moment.

      The lack of comparison of Covid harm with other deleterious health effects like drug overdose, mental health damages, and suicides.

      For these reasons among others, I think it is appropriate that we take the perspectives of health care professionals as simply one data point among many others. The health care professionals are not incorporating mental health and economic effects into their calculations, so it is incumbent on us to do so.

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    Tracie

    I learned yesterday evening at a co-worker's yard party how many nurses at my job refused the vaccine. (I'm a therapist in a nursing home "SNF" rehab.)

    Some of the refusers are loudmouth crazy types who I'd expect to believe in conspiracy theories. Some of them are people I respect. People I seek out when a patient needs something.

    At least two of them, I was told, were people who already had the virus. Of course, this is no defense. I have plenty of patients and co-workers who had the virus and also got a vaccine, mRNA (Pfizer) in the case of my co-workers. Two of my co-workers tested positive in the week after their first dose, and had been only a few days out of quarantine when they got the second dose. They're fine. One of them was at the yard party last night and figures she's spectacularly immune.

    Two of my doctors think the heart palpitations I developed in September 2020 - three months before I got first dose - were due to a COVID infection in March 2020, which was recorded as a negative flu swab. Got my Pfizer doses in Dec / Jan 2020-2021. I'm fine. In fact, I'm hopeful that the mRNA vaccine calmed whatever inflammatory mechanism caused the heart palpitations, and that I'll be able to ease off these beta-blockers in a year or so.

    To my knowledge, most of our mainly elderly patients got the vaccine, even if they had the virus. It's life or death for them. The only patient I recently encountered who refused the vaccine was quite young by nursing home standards (50s) and had had the virus. He was confined to his room, and we had to double mask / gown / glove before entering.

    As for workers, I say bring on the mandates. No one without a legitimate medical reason, such as auto-immune disease, should be allowed to work with at risk populations and not get vaccinated. We will never really understand the anti-vaxxers' reasons. The idea behind herd immunity is that we protect the minority of people who have a medical reason for not getting the vaccine.

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