The Brutality of Nature

When I read the very intriguing book ‘The Life of Pi’, I was shocked when the author suggested that animals in zoos were not to be pitied.  He pointed out that an animal’s life is one of constant stress, always in danger of either starvation or becoming another animal’s dinner.  The zoo offered a refuge and relief from never ending anxiety, though at a price of some level of boredom perhaps.

We celebrate nature and revel in its wildness.  The natural world is beautiful and fascinating, but it is also brutal.  I have to look away when a nature film captures the hunting and ultimate killing of a young gazelle by a lion or the gruesome envenomation and subsequent swallowing of a small rodent by a rattlesnake.  These are very natural events, but they are difficult to watch.

Nature is not necessarily cruel, but it is violent and merciless.  Normal hunting for food is vicious, but there is an understandable survival instinct behind it.  Other animal behaviors that seem to border on cruelty, such as cats toying with their victims, deadly territorial battles between members of the same species, adults murdering the young of other families (and sometimes even their own), and other seemingly malevolent acts, can all be characterized as behaviors dictated by the idiosyncrasies of evolution.  However, I cannot help but suspect that there are random, more savage variations in the animal kingdom not unlike human psychopaths and sadists.

Almost all animals are potential prey for some other animal, which must make one’s daily rounds anything but tranquil.  The so-called apex predators, who sit at the top, have only humans to fear, but that does not make their life a bed of roses.  Starvation is always looming, and there are also the often-violent territorial disputes to give one pause.

Fortunately, animals seem to be indifferent to philosophical reflection, so their life of constant anxiety doesn’t appear to lead to severe depression.  And one does see occasional bouts of playfulness and fun in some species, so perhaps there is some joy in being an animal other than the pleasure of fulfilling basic needs.

Many animals are herbivores or omnivores who obtain all or some portion of their nutrition from plants.  Herbivores are only cruel to plants and that seems less objectionable to our human sensibilities.  Plants seem unlikely to be stricken by fear or pain, though there is some evidence that complex plant groups, such as old growth forests, have more sensations than we realize.

Having had to claw our way up the food chain over the eons, it is only ‘natural’ that we human beings have a bit of the wild animal remaining in us.  We kill and maim, we fight over territory (and many other things, for that matter) and we do whatever is necessary to survive. Are we destined to murder one another for all eternity? 

We dare to envision a world where human beings live in harmony, where war and crime have vanished from the earth.  We are closer to that vision today than any time in history and have, to a great extent, ceased celebrating violence and conquest as an acceptable pastime.  We do not appear to be condemned to endless savagery.  We can rise above it.

But the natural world will never cease to be violent.  Brutality will continue to rule the savannah, the jungle and the forest, and even the nooks and crannies of our houses and gardens.  We cannot insist on a truce in the animal world, however appealing that thought might be.  We have no choice but to accept animals eating other animals as a fact of life.  We must rationalize the pain and anguish it inflicts as a necessary mechanism of nature and of life.   However, the human achievement of peace and harmony is something that could, in theory, come to pass, and it is a noble goal for humankind.  If it should ever occur, it will indeed be a ‘supernatural’ feat.  And perhaps we could even indulge in some claims of exceptionalism!

The Joys and Sorrows of Cynicism

I occasionally succumb to the temptation of cynicism.  There is a kind of delicious thrill in heaping scorn on the whole human enterprise.  Sometimes the hypocrisy, the pretensions, the duplicity, and all the contradictions are simply too glaring to ignore.  So, I shed all my idealism and most of my empathy and indulge my darker, more mischievous side.

I truly want to believe in the potential nobility of humankind, but it is often damn hard to discern among the pettiness and bad faith that one sees everywhere, and that often prevails in human affairs.  And there is something cathartic in allowing one’s cynical side to revel in the sheer absurdity of it all.  It purges one’s soul.

These bouts of cynicism are also born of a certain ennui or boredom.  I grow weary of the same conversations, the same topics - the vacation chronicles, the weather updates, the golf and fishing escapades, the stock market, the retirement plans.  The challenge of cleverly lampooning our sad, mediocre existences provides stimulating entertainment for a while.

But cynicism is a double-edged sword.  Its intoxication is short-lived and if indulged too long will eventually transform itself into a hangover of an even deeper despair.  The witty skewering of the world ultimately becomes a self-indictment.  It can paint oneself into a corner where philosophical escape is difficult.

So, beware the joys of cynicism, for the sorrows will surely follow, as night follows day.  It is best to sip from the cup rather than take long draughts.  Being a cynic is a lovely caprice, but making a career of it is bound to lead down a very dark path.

The Gordian Knot of Crime, Guns and Police

We are facing a long-delayed reckoning in America.  We have observed the ceaseless saga of drugs, crime, increased incarceration, police militarization and over-policing from the safety of our protected neighborhoods.  We know that something is terribly wrong, but we haven’t the will to demand change, because, for us, it is an abstraction that doesn’t really impact us.

In recent years, the videos of unarmed black men and women being killed by police have launched the BLM movement and sparked efforts to reconsider the style of policing prevalent in our country.  But there are stark partisan differences in opinions on these efforts.  Conservatives view the BLM movement very negatively and claim that it has resulted in police being hesitant to perform their duties and therefore caused higher levels of crime and violence.

It is evident that policing in neighborhoods of color has become a warlike activity.  Police and conservatives claim that the increased crime rate and omni-presence of guns in these areas requires hyper-vigilance and a different set of behaviors than ordinary policing.  Civil rights groups and liberals believe that there is systemic racism throughout the police force and that profiling and uber-aggressive policing are key factors in the escalation of force and violence.

While it is clear that policing in America needs to be re-evaluated to address such things as racial profiling, unprovoked stops and overly aggressive reactions to non-threatening situations, there is much, much more to this escalating problem than police reform.

America is beset by a tangled web of societal problems, not just policing problems.  The combination of poverty, joblessness, broken families and schools, drugs and guns has created a volatile mixture in most of urban America and threatens to extend its reach into suburban and rural America as well.  The COVID pandemic has exacerbated these problems even further.

Is there more crime in neighborhoods of color? Is policing a dangerous job in those areas?  Perhaps so.  But is the solution to simply increase police presence and level of force and put more people in prison?  Of course not!  That only creates a vicious cycle that will eventually result in widespread civic chaos and a societal death spiral.

The Gordian Knot of declining civil stability is not hard to describe.  Impoverished single parent families lose their children to the streets at an early age.  The schools are broken and ineffective.  Drugs and guns are everywhere.  Jobs are at best menial and low-paid, and often unavailable, especially after one has a criminal record.  Crime, especially drug and gang-related, is rampant and seductive, as it offers a much higher return on time invested than any other activity.  Men who cycle in and out of prison abandon families and are surrounded by other men traveling similar hopeless paths.

Conservatives bemoan these characteristics and somehow draw the conclusion that people of color have only themselves to blame for their own cultural degradation.  They continue to believe that the solution is for our society to severely limit any assistance so that ‘these people’ will be forced to pull themselves up by their bootstraps and correct their flaws and criminality.

But the problem has steadily escalated for more than 60 years, through both conservative and liberal political administrations.  It is not going away.  Indeed, it is at a crisis point and threatens to unravel our society.

The details of a solution are not easy to discern.  But what is obvious is that some steps must be made, or we will face increasing unrest in our society.  Here are the steps that I believe would begin to positively impact the situation:

• Change drug laws to minimize police activity around drugs, eliminate sentences for usage, drastically reduce it for selling unless a weapon is involved
• Dramatically increase drug rehab and counseling programs – treat drugs as a social problem rather than a crime
• Police should be trained more extensively on defusing tense situations and avoiding physical altercations whenever possible
• Create a national jobs program for people with criminal records and require their participation when they are released from prison.
• Outlaw all possession of guns outside the home unless hunting or target shooting in approved facilities.  Use random searches with severe consequences to enforce this.  Yes, I know this has the potential to amplify racial profiling problems, but it is the only way to transition to a safer policing environment, which is the sine qua non for reducing police brutality.  And yes, I know the old trope that says when you outlaw guns only outlaws will have guns, but I am quite certain that is a fallacious argument against stricter control.
• Invest energetically in schools in poor areas, including pre-kindergarten, day care and after school programs.  Ramp up youth programs. Get kids off the street.
• End the practice of police performing traffic stops.  Use technology to capture speeding, stoplight running and other traffic violations, and allow police to notify drivers electronically if their lights aren’t working or if their tags are not up to date. 

It will take time for these changes to make a big difference, but there is really no alternative.  We are putting band aids on a festering wound that will kill us if no other treatment is initiated.  The Gordian Knot of our legacy of slavery and neglect will not be solved by a simple blow of the sword as Alexander the Great is purported to have done.  It will require a careful untying of all the many strands.

 

 

Vaccine Ethics

There is no starker example of inequity in the world than the rollout of the COVID vaccine.  It was easy to predict.  Richer nations were always going to be vaccinated first. Was there ever a chance to make vaccine access more equitable?  How much will this unequal access affect the further evolution of the pandemic and the death toll?

The development of the COVID vaccine itself has been an amazing and inspirational case of international cooperation and organizational efficiency.  The vaccines currently being distributed across the world – Moderna, Pfizer, Astrazeneca, Sputnik and Sinovac – were developed in a space of time previously considered impossible for vaccines.  The world can truly be proud of this accomplishment.  As in all things, the motivations were a mix of noble, intellectual and monetary ambitions, but the overall result is simply wonderful and incredible.

In early-2020, at the start of the pandemic, efforts to coordinate international cooperation on testing, treatment and vaccine research, and ultimately develop vaccines were initiated by the G-20 through the Access to COVID-19 Tools Accelerator and a Call to Action was published by the World Health Organization (WHO).  One of the 3 pillars of this effort was COVAX, a public/private cooperation to ensure distribution of COVID vaccine to low and middle income countries.

The USA, under the Trump administration, had severed ties and support with the WHO and stated in September, 2020 that it would not support COVAX.  Thus, the USA did not participate in this effort until early this year (2021), when the new Biden administration rejoined the WHO and committed support and funding to COVAX.  The USA has now made a larger funding commitment to COVAX than any other country ($4B), which is certainly the way it should be, considering that the USA is the wealthiest country in the world.

As of the middle of April, 2021, COVAX had only delivered 39 million vaccines doses, falling short of its goal of distributing 100 million by the end of March.  It is likely that the rate of distribution will increase dramatically once the USA and the EU have reduced their caseloads and hospitalizations to a ‘manageable’ level. Hopefully this will occur by mid-summer.  Moderna has now committed to providing 500 million doses to developing countries starting in the 4^th quarter of this year.

The Biden administration has focused most of its effort on vaccinating US citizens, but has just announced that it will send all of its Astrazeneca inventory, some 60 million doses, to low and middle income countries in the next several months.

China and Russia have developed vaccines and have negotiated distribution deals with some developing nations independently.  There is speculation among western nations that China and Russia will use these relationships in a quid pro quo manner to obtain special status in trade or military alliances. 

The moral and ethical questions regarding vaccine distribution are challenging.  Every country’s government is by its definition responsible first and foremost for the welfare of its own citizens.  Its generosity toward other nations and the world in general is secondary, though where that line is drawn varies significantly in different nations.  This difference in perspective from an individual’s decision to share with or help others is part of the moral dilemma that society faces – the moral man, immoral society dichotomy.

The failure of the wealthier countries to share the vaccine with developing nations is certainly distressing, but it is not surprising.  There is some logic to it.  One could perhaps use the analogy of the airplane instruction for people to put their own oxygen masks on before assisting others. This may sound paternalistic, but it reflects the difficult decision-making process in the real world.

This analogy breaks down somewhat as vaccine distribution is not a binary decision.  Perhaps a greater amount of vaccine distribution to developing nations could have been done without much adverse effect on the USA and the EU.  But an argument can be made that the overall effort to stop the contagion is more likely to be successful if the wealthier countries get their outbreaks under control as quickly as possible and then focus on providing aid to other nations. 

Observing the current state of the COVID pandemic, it is clear that certain developing countries are indeed struggling and in desperate need of the vaccine, particularly Latin American countries.  If one measures the relative mortality impact by the statistic deaths/million, then Brazil (1901), Peru (1853) and possibly Mexico (1670, but likely inaccurate) have had worse fatality rates than the USA (1776).

The highest deaths/million are generally in the developed nations, extending from the USA to the EU, especially the eastern European countries.  African countries have so far evaded the worst of the pandemic, a mystery that has baffled epidemiologists.  South Africa (908) and Tunisia (907), the worst hit, are still only at half the USA fatality rate. Most African nations are below 100!  A delay in vaccine distribution to those countries could allow the contagion to take root, but at this point there does not seem to be a desperate need.

And Asian countries have generally been quite resilient and effective in their management of the contagion, with no countries in the top 100 for fatality rate!  India and the Philippines are both at 157, though India is currently experiencing a very dramatic and tragic outbreak.

In my assessment, even if the vaccine distribution is currently unfair and monopolized by the wealthier nations, the long-term consequences may not be that catastrophic.  One might even be able to successfully argue that the current distribution of vaccine will result in saving the most lives across the world.  This is, of course, not out of design.  The wealthy nations would be hoarding and selfishly focusing on their own needs even if the contagion were rampant in other parts of the world.  But fortunately, that is not the case!

Patriotism and Community Spirit

Americans consider themselves very patriotic.  Indeed, flag-waving and claims of American exceptionalism are everywhere.  Many people have the stars and stripes flying over their homes.  We celebrate rapturously on Independence Day, sending glorious fireworks high into the sky to express our patriotic fervor.

We are proud to be American.  We believe that our country is the best place in the world to live, that we have more freedom, more opportunity, more of everything!  Most of us have never been outside of the United States, but we feel this anyway.  We believe that our economy and way of life are unique and that the rest of the world would love to be Americans.

We also complain bitterly about any Americans who criticize our country or perform protests in sporting events or through music or the arts.  We heap contempt on historians and journalists who interpret our current state or history in any manner that doesn’t depict it as a uniquely virtuous example for the world to study and follow.

It is human nature to take pride in certain aspects of one’s life.  Normally, being proud of something is a result of having accomplished some feat or having worked hard to reach some goal.   But the fact that our being American is purely an accident of birth and not any sort of achievement doesn’t seem to deter us from flaunting our American pride and patriotism.  The ironic nature of this type of pride doesn’t seem to occur to us.

Interestingly, this rabid patriotism doesn’t seem to extend far beyond lip service or superficial expressions of community, especially if it impinges on any so-called ‘freedoms’.  One would think that such fervent patriotism would imply a willingness to sacrifice for the good of the community, to place a higher value on the common good than in indulging all of one’s individual desires. 

But this is not the case in America.  Indeed, we have less allegiance to the ‘social compact’ – the obligation to support the entire community - than any other developed nation.  The examples of this are numerous:

• COVID – The resistance to mask-wearing, shutdowns and social distancing because of their curtailment of ‘freedom’.  The refusal to be vaccinated when it would clearly help end the pandemic.
• Healthcare – the reluctance to provide universal, free healthcare to all citizens in the wealthiest nation on earth
• Recycling – the paltry efforts to recycle waste and reuse materials to support the environment because it isn’t convenient to do so
• Transportation – the unwillingness to invest in public transportation that would help lower income citizens immeasurably
• Energy – the arms race of larger and larger gas-guzzling vehicles in the face of climate change and environmental destruction
• Education – the huge disparity in education, exacerbated by the growth of private schools and wealth disparities
• Guns – we are more concerned with our individual ‘freedom’ to own guns than in finding a way to reduce shootings, suicides and gun-associated crime in our society.

Our patriotism and love of country is a rather strange, contradictory attribute.  We are in love with a certain idea of America, not in the community itself.  We love America abstractly, not concretely.  We love America as long as it gives us a maximum of freedom and a minimum of social obligation.  We love a mythical America of the past, an America that was never as ideal as we made it out to be, and one that is untenable in the finite world that we now inhabit.

There is a big difference between patriotism and true community spirit.  The former is an empty shell of communal vanity, the latter an action-oriented pursuit of a better world.  We need less flag-waving and more spirited actions to make our community, and ultimately all communities, thrive.

COVID, Confusion and Unintended Consequences

The COVID-19 pandemic has been devastating and tragic.  It is not over yet, and it remains to be seen whether the world can achieve a state of normalcy in the near future.  The vaccine rollout is well underway, especially in developed nations, but new variants and the abandonment of safety measures may allow the virus to continue to reap a harvest of death and sickness for many more months.

When one looks back at the way the pandemic occurred there are many interesting facets to explore.  I will look at a few in this essay.  No doubt there will be exhaustive research in the years ahead to attempt to shed light on the many mysteries of the pandemic.  There are so many variables to consider and so much data to analyze.  It will take a vast effort to comprehend its course and there will certainly be multiple conflicting theories, but hopefully a much better understanding of how to manage through a pandemic of this nature will emerge.

The first thing I will describe are the interesting comparisons between COVID and the yearly influenza that have stubbornly diminished the gravity that many people assigned to the pandemic.  Trump and his entourage trivialized COVID initially by comparing it to the flu, and armchair epidemiologists still continue to come up with fatality rate comparisons that in their minds equate COVID and the flu.

First, one look at the hospitalizations and healthcare overload crises that continue to occur with COVID should be evidence enough that there is a vast difference.  However, putting that aside, the impact of COVID compared to the flu is dramatically different.  Unfortunately, the CDC itself unwittingly contributed to the confusion on this comparison.

In 2004 the CDC changed its methodology for reporting flu ‘burden’.  In fact, no one knows how many people die from the flu each year.  Very few (less than 500 each year) deaths can be directly linked to the flu via positive tests for the virus.  Instead, the CDC uses a statistical analysis of deaths from diseases that the flu may cause – primarily pneumonia – and estimates the number of deaths.

The change in reporting was made to encourage vaccination.  There was a concern that people were not taking the flu seriously.  So, a public relations effort was initiated to more or less ‘scare’ people into getting the vaccine.  It was done with the best of intentions, but the unintended consequence was to make large numbers of deaths seem like the typical result of any virus.  The CDC’s PR campaign estimates the number of yearly flu deaths at 30k – 60k.  The actual death numbers could be a few thousand. 

Critics will retort that COVID deaths are also inflated.  However, this is unlikely to be the case because COVID deaths have almost all been verified by testing for the virus, and the deaths correspond very well with the excess deaths that have occurred (the number of deaths in excess of the statistically reliable yearly average).

Few people understand statistics.  The IFR (infection fatality rate) of COVID has been difficult to pin down in real time but it is estimated to be between 0.8 and 1.0, meaning about one out of a hundred COVID infected people will die.  The IFR for the flu is estimated at 0.1, but given the uncertainties and history of flu death assignment, the true number is probably much lower.  The 10-fold difference (or much greater in all likelihood) is huge, but somehow people have continued to play down the dangers of the COVID pandemic in comparison to the flu.

Another interesting aspect of the pandemic is the history of preventive measures different countries took to combat the spread of COVID-19.  There are many mysteries surrounding the manner in which the pandemic developed and spread.  For example, the lack of catastrophic impact in many developing nations in Africa is very hard to understand, even accounting for differences in average age.

The primary countermeasures used by developed nations were the following:  economic shutdown or partial shutdowns, forbidding or severely limiting group activities, encouraging and enforcing social distancing and mask-wearing, and severely curtailing travel.

The countries that strictly enforced these measures in the first wave of the pandemic were successful in either totally eliminating the contagion (New Zealand, Australia, Japan, Vietnam, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Korea, China and others) or reducing the level of contagion to a ‘manageable’ level.  For example, Europe was able to get their positivity rates (% of tests that were positive for COVID) under 1-3% and resume relatively normal life from mid-May to mid-September because they locked down until the rates were very low and conducted mass testing and tracking programs thereafter.

The USA, under a President who encouraged states to abandon lockdown much earlier than they should have and expressed skepticism of masks and other social measures, never achieved a positivity rate below 7-8% and never mobilized enough testing and tracing to subdue the virus.  Thus, the USA was unable to resume anything close to normal life.

Some countries, and in particular the European countries, ran out of patience with the lockdowns and social measures and the late summer holiday period sparked a new, invigorated outbreak that has continued to defy control measures to this day.

The USA has continued to have a high case rate and a high death rate throughout, though not as dramatic recently as some of the European nations.

The last confusing aspect of COVID that I want to address here is the tendency to grade the performance of individual countries by looking at the death rate per million and then do comparisons based on this statistic.  This is specious reasoning.  Each country faces a unique set of circumstances and its performance must be based on an overall analysis of its response, not just on a single statistic.  Brazil, universally condemned for its poor response, has a death rate of 1754/M today, while the UK has one of 1867/M.  The UK made some mistakes, especially early on, but to suggest that somehow Brazil outperformed the UK based on this statistic would be ludicrous.

It is very difficult to compare one nation with another.  There are so many variables to consider.  However, it is clear that the countries who have had strong public adherence to basic health measures such as masks and social distancing have fared much better than countries where people are skeptical of medical advice and stubbornly insisting on their ‘freedom’ to do as they please.

The dilemma every country faces – whether to sustain economic and social activity versus enforcing healthcare policies and regulations – is not easily navigated.  What is clear is that the countries who aggressively pursued public health policies from the start fared much better than those (like the USA) that dithered and abandoned their efforts at the earliest opportunity.

Free Market Religion and the Fear of Giving an Inch

Religious fundamentalists are desperately afraid of nuance or ambiguity.  They fiercely protect their beliefs by refusing to acknowledge anything that might begin the erosion process.  They instinctively recognize that the slightest chink in their armor of faith will precipitate, like the legendary hole in the dike, a disastrous sweeping away of their certainty and their fragile worldview.

For example, they claim biblical inerrancy even in the face of absurd contradictions such as the biblical acceptance of slavery and the long-discarded biblical punishments for blasphemy or violating the sabbath.  They refuse to accept scientific certainties about the geological age of the earth or the evolution of the human species.  Since the time of Galileo (and no doubt well before that in less historically publicized efforts), religious zealots have fought a rearguard battle against reason, science, enlightenment and logic.

A similar battle is being waged today by free market zealots against any efforts by the government to rectify income and wealth inequalities.  Any reasonable person, viewing the dramatic trends over the last 30 years, would have to admit that income and wealth have skewed dangerously toward a small percentage of the world’s citizens.  This trend is particularly evident in the USA.  Incomes and wealth for the bottom 2/3 of workers have stagnated as the upper class has become preposterously rich.

The efforts to address this imbalance center on a variety of taxation proposals, both corporate and individual.  There is no cry to abandon capitalism, to institute pure socialism or communism, or even to radically redistribute income. The measures proposed seek to obtain some portion of corporate profits and the income of the wealthy to fund much needed infrastructure projects, to combat climate effects, and to provide a more stable base for working families.

But free market zealots cling stubbornly to the mantra that the free market must be protected from any government manipulation and that the magical invisible hand will somehow guide the economy toward a happy and more equitable future.  Like their theological counterparts, they are fearful that any concession will bring about a total collapse of their carefully constructed house of cards.

And so, they trot out the classic counterarguments:  that this is class warfare, that the current efforts are expressions of envy of the ‘successful’ and rich.  They label it big government overreach and the road to socialism. 

If they would give an inch or two to allow modest efforts to test how we can improve the current polarization, then in the long run they would probably preserve a reasonable role for free market advocates.  But like the religious fundamentalists, who are unwittingly contributing to the rapid decline of all religious institutions, the free market curmudgeons will bring about their own demise with their stubborn refusal to budge at all in the face of obvious and imminent danger.