Category: How to unpack?

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How to unpack? Politics Scale Measurement Thoughts

How should we unpack? – This Moment, 9-20-21

When I started this project, my limited knowledge has me in a state of long-term learning while I try to make sure my tone isn’t mixed in with my own feeling.

COVID-19

Here we will be seeing how my stated July theory on COVID-19. I’ve written a few pieces which can be used as other examples to show my interest and care in writing on the virus. The entire thread can be found here but the main hypothesis from analyzing the data was, “The most at risk populations are adults between the ages of 25-60 whom are unvaccinated, as well as children too young to be vaccinated. There’s a exponentially compounding issue here.” The briefest way I could summarize what it is lead me to that thought follows as such:

  • The US has a large group of very vaccine hesitant working age adults
  • Obese adults (42% of all adults) face the highest risk for mortality
  • Children and teenagers are mostly not vaccinated
  • The US was 5 to 6 weeks out behind the U.K. as far as COVID impact w/ greater overall obesity rates at the time (7.21.21/7.26.21)

Given all of this three questions were itching at me which drove myself to feel quite strongly about vaccine mandates.

  1. What’s 5-6 weeks out from 7.21.21, an interview with Michael Osterholm (Director at CIDRAP, the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy) on the Majority Report?
  2. Are there any potential overlaps between the two most at risk populations? Underlined above for clarity
  3. Are there any looming catalyst/super spreader events or situations happening between July 21st and September 1st

I’m not going to lose everyone with the numbers as there’s a base and foundation we have to accept based on the information we have or had at the time.

The American elderly have fairly good vaccinated rates comparing to the whole population. At the time of the thread on July 26th, four out of five adults of retirement age were fully vaccinated and almost 90% had at least one shot. It would stand that while there’s still 5-6 million unvaccinated elderly people, they’re vaccine rates are greater than younger Americans.

Now there’s going to be a very key thing to grasp here that will require a little mental labor, and good faith to begin to wrestle with. It’s no conspiracy that first time parents are getting older for a multitude of different issues. What causes that isn’t the point to focus on but more than it is happening. Secondly, to my second question, are there potential overlaps between the most at risk populations (children/teens & working age unvaccinated adults)? Here’s a couple things we can say:

  • Average age of first time mothers in 1972 was 21 years old, up to 26 in 2018
  • Average age of first time fathers in 1972 was 27 years old, up to 31 in 2018

There’s no judgement for having children whenever people do. This is to simple illustrate & understand this is the current meta or dynamic for families as they exist and where the behavior is trending.

Speaking generally, while future parents are trending to be older, the larger group of people already alive and living today are under the prior number dynamics. Teenagers born between 2004-2007, on average, have parents in their early to mid 40’s or the prime of their working years. Generally, 40% of those adults are obese which has been linked to poor outcomes irrespective of age. If you isolate for non-obese and obese people in a specific age or population, the obese are going to have worse outcomes with COVID-19.

As we mentioned above, the largest group of unvaccinated people at this point in July, and now, are the working age adults not vaccinated already and children and teenagers. Until very very recently, there was no proper dosage amount that’s been tested for safety. This is currently under FDA review. It would then stand that these groups of unvaccinated populations could potentially compound to create multiplicative issues.

If we can establish this as a general baseline, and not take this as a prescription to individuals upon various approaches for a population can this next part be fruitful. I’ll clarify again that there’s no judgment or approach I’m looking to analyze for this apparent behavior, more that these are things we can take away broadly from the data available to us. Enough qualifiers, there were two consecutive events that occurred in-between the period of time from the formation of the theory to early September, Sturgis Bike Rally and the beginning of the scholastic year for most students around the country.

On Sturgis, it’s important to understand the impact it had on COVID cases and deaths last August. Cases and deaths function as lagging indicators and understanding that cycle is important to capture shared social events that impacted and propagated the spread of the virus. I would recommend looking back on cases from August through October of last year to see what wild-type COVID’s growth occurred from these events. Hybrid schooling and remote schooling was most often utilized when possible which is distinctly different from last year to today. Back when I wrote as the effects of Sturgis was beginning to be felt (8.30.20) I wrote these ominous statements, “This is going to be very dark. Things are going to get worst.” This was back when the U.S. death toll was still well short of 200,000. We’ve more than tripled the deaths in a year. Even with the introduction of the vaccine, we apparently lost another 2,000 lives to COVID-19 over the weekend, averaging 1,800-1,900 Monday through Friday last week. These growing cases and deaths would substantiate the pieces of the theory relating to the risks of opening up schools with little to no restrictions (unknown, but would seem risky), and Sturgis (certifiably known) could be some of the major factors to this COVID growth today.

I’ll finish this section with a brief statement about the context of the obesity among adults in the country. No one wants to be seen as obese in the current society so I’ll be as clear and direct as possible with this.

Taking all context above into account and remaining general, the largest population of the unvaccinated are working age adults and children and teenagers. Obesity being one of the leading predictors for poor outcomes is empirical. It’s also known that with the overlap of these populations irrespective of obesity. We know Sturgis propagated the virus in the past and while it’s unknown, there’s some early reporting of issues of children and teens getting COVID, likely exposing their households and their working age parent(s). We known adults over the age of 20 are obese at a rate of 42%. Lastly, we understand the delta variant to have the same viral cycle but with a yield is 2-3x the yield of the wild-type variant.

It means we can say with confidence, that given what we know, the at risk populations have a degree of compounding overlap. It poses an extreme risk to those working age adults whom are obese that are still unvaccinated. Looking at where we’ve been just over a year ago to this moment and it feels that very little has changed. Well… except a more concentrated group of at risk people which is incredibly disheartening.

Afghanistan

It’s both good we’ve now ended our 20 year violent engagement in Afghanistan and that there was never going to be an perfect withdrawal process. Often I find a lot of critiques from the right start by making perfection the enemy of the good which is ultimately defeatist and anti-political engagement. It is community destroying and promotes apathy when we should be promoting civic engagement on a much more local level.

Pokémon Unite

Blastoise needs a nerf and Slowbro needs a buff.

Sports

Without basketball, what do we even have? One more month of dread…

Alex Jones

Terrible conspiracy theorist & incredibly harmful entertainer was quite attractive when he was young.

Texas Abortion Law

Generally, I’m not going to be okay with giving the state the power to police what consenting adults do. What an induvial chooses to do with their body is their own business. It’s also quite incredible that while a man assumes none of the actual burden and risk with carrying a child, some feel they have superior input to what a women should or shouldn’t be able to do with their bodies. It sounds like expanding the states power to infringe on the rights of the individual is what occurring in Texas. While it may be abhorrent to yourself or a group, whether or not something is “okay” with any individual group is not a reason for illegality or state sponsored action to curb. Ultimately your individual preferences are not supposed to reflective of federal or even state law as the idea of separation of church and state is pretty important to the founding documents and the development of the state.

Met Gala & A.O.C.

I think it can be tricky to understand the calculus of wearing a dress broad casting your ideas/ideals. While there’s various approaches to growing the civically engaged population, I’m not about to preach efficacy or say one way is better than another. My only point would be if the approach puts a sour taste in your mouth, then extend the possibility that you may not be the audience.

Personally I don’t give a shit about a lot of these events so I don’t care. I’m only making a comment that attempting to limit the avenues for growing a population and starting a conversation is when you also limit the range of a groups political aim.

Brian Laundrie

He did that shit. I’m not a legal professional, and this is just my opinion, but he killed his fiancé.

Border Patrol

Regardless of how righteous you might feel in treating other human beings of different populations and culture, maybe don’t invoke loaded imagery. What’s being reported here is not just the poor imagery, but blaming asylum seekers for doing what is within both international and U.S. law seems to show a complete misunderstanding of issues. My goal is to not be overly inflammatory; however if the behavior and imagery of the border patrol agents does not bother you, please fix the bankruptcy of empathy and take a step back to understand they’re following the law when trying to come here via asylum. You’re sick in the head if you feel the boarder agents are justified in their behavior and treatment of those migrants.

School Shooting – Virginia

Gun violence will continue to be normalized but nothing is normal about the growing threat of shooters on school grounds.

Categories
How to unpack? Politics Scale Measurement Thoughts

How should we unpack? -White Supremacy (Pt 2)

Topics: Killings by Police, Prison, Poverty, Home Ownership, & Market Measures (Business)

Early this week I was being enraged by the idea that anyone could ever defend the baseless idea that there’s no such thing as systemic racism. I’m not even sure if the point isn’t to deny that systemic racism doesn’t exist, but to minimize the scope of the problem. I tried to pull the best facts I could to have a document that highlights not only the existence but the very scale of these issues in the things Americans care about most. Front of mind are shared impacts in this immediate moment before touching on Pt.3 which would be legislation should look like to right the undeniable existence of white supremacy through systematic racism. This will likely get long so please use: ctrl + f and use the topics we’re going to cover for ease of navigation.

Killings by Police
Whenever someone is killed by the police, it should be viewed as a failure to prevent loss of life. It means that officers have failed in their duty to deescalate a situation by focusing on protection and safety with their service. Instead of focusing on those cases to which evil seeps from the shadows with anticipation, (Pt. 4 should that come), this is a quick point in that focuses on data gathered on statista.com and PEW research center for population to measure how the cop murder rate compared between Black and White Americans.
Averaging murders by police from 2017-2019 in reported communities (Black, Hispanic, & White) gives you an average of 759 average annual killings, 409 being White, 222 being Black, and 128 being Hispanic. Taking the PEW data from 2017, populations of those groups is that 64% of the total population is white, 12% is Black, and 16% are Hispanic. Now we bring together to the population of those murdered by police and their proportion of total population to compare these groups to each other. While white victims are 53% of all police killings, by their comparison to population they’re killed at a rate 2.9 times less than black Americans on average every year.
On a very basic level, this translates to for every white American killed by the police, three black Americans are killed. If you scaled the populations to equal size, that’s almost 1200 black people killed every year.

Prison
From the latest report from prisonpolicy.org and diving into the actual prison data from the PEW data center more than shows that white supremacist simply used the stipulation to continue the slave industry. Highlighted at the end of Pt. 1, slavery is allowed if it’s subjugating convicted prisoners. I proposed that they were successful and the proof is in the data. First is that the size of the problem is never fully captured. The “Justice System” controls over 7 million people which more than half are on probation of some form.
Second anywhere from 2-2.4 Million people are in prison at any give time. About half a million of that population have not been convicted and are sitting in jails because they cannot pay their bail (tax on the poor; indentured servitude). Add the people there for non-violent drug offenses and you have 900,000 to 1,000,000 people in jail whom are simply not convicted or convicted of minor drug offenses.
Rounding out the scaled view and comparing the prison population compared as we did before to the total population of Black and White people, the incarceration rate is 6:1. To frame it the same way, for every one white person incarcerated, there are six black persons incarcerated.

Poverty
Pairing the data from Census’s from mid 2000’s to about 2011 and a sponsored cite of the Economic Policy Institute (EPI; stateofworkingamerica.org), removed from most of Trumps America to highlight how these issues are only amplified by Trump and conservative legislation. Poverty for Native American’s is the highest the Census found at 27% with Black poverty trailing right behind being at 25.8%. Pairing that with the state of working america provides (27.4%), you can average out 26-27% poverty rate for black Americans. Hispanic poverty rest in a range that varies greatly, anywhere from 16-26%, depending on country of ethnicity. In contrast, the white poverty rate rests between 10% (SOWA.org) and 11% (Census) respectively. These numbers have already been scaled per their comparison to their respective populations.
Poverty is the measure of income inequality to some degree since those in poverty are threatened by great degree from those with unequaled wealth . Consistency is important and a bit dry, but for every white person subjected to poverty and austerity, 2.6-2.7 black Americans are subjected to that same financial austerity. Add trigger happy cops and the pressures of the prison-for-profit pipeline measured above, it’s hard to imagine how black people in this country could stand for these injustices any longer.
The next four points are for those tone deaf and filled with empty platitudes. Simply saying things like, “Invest in property/Buy a home,” or “Take a risk and start a business,” will accomplish nothing if the person speaking doesn’t mention the context to which people in adverse situations live. There’s also the moment we’re in and how underlying things we know are bleaker still.

Home Ownership
In an analysis of data by CNBC with the Urban Institute, the current gap of black and white home ownership in America is 30%. To give that stark number further context, the gap was 27% in 1960 back when housing legislation was explicitly and fundamentally racist. That’s just over a 10% increase from a period of explicit racist housing and redlining policy, to another period where those policies have been deemed unconstitutional. I’m personally unable to square that right now but I will unpack this in another piece to which I can learn more and bring a nuanced point of view. The gap being in a range between 27-30% is unacceptable and regardless and is another arrow in the quiver of “proof” of systemic racism.

Market Measures / Businesses
Taking the numbers from the Small Business Administration, by volume of business’ their size relative to their distribution of population is the least deviated. As we’ve state above, white people make up 64% of the population, black people are 12%, and Hispanic or Latin is 16%. Now there’s still some deviation since white owned business’ make up 71% of all total business (19 million). Looking at black owned business’ at 9.5% (2.6 million), and Latin owned business’ being 12.2% (3.3 million) of the totality of the industry.
There’s ultimately nothing nefarious about the amount of business’ being slightly larger or smaller than percentage of total population. The proof of the inequality stands in the total market sales and the control of U.S. work force (roughly 162 million people). Total market sales is a measure of the liquid economy; goods and services provided to the consuming American people. While white business’ make up 71% of business’, they have 88% of the market sales, and controls 86.5% of the U.S. work force. Conversely black business’ are just under 10% of the business sector, and only make up 1.3% of the market and 1.7% of the work force. Now to be clear, these boundaries aren’t clearly defined but the best way to frame total market sales to the laymen is this is the data that feeds the Stock Market and capital injections (i.e, investments). It’s important to grasping that the idea of market based financial options for attaining and growing black wealth is only true in a very limited and specific scope.
It didn’t happen without immense and continued adversity accompanied with being completely ‘present’ and within a social prison; just another rabbit hole for another time.
Bringing this back to the subject, that is a 9:1 ratio of money going to white verse black business’ despite the relative matching of amount of business being within reason of population. This bleakly illustrates that while there’s been progress from a society with explicitly racist laws, unfortunately there’s a superficiality to the gains made and a severity of the ones in front of us.

In this pieces finality is the goal of summarizing before I asses substantive and legislative measures for progress. The problems do not exist in a silo so the above was the background to understanding the very simple and basic ask that black lives matter. Imagine a world where you were three times as likely to be killed by police than if you were white. Should you be fortunate enough to live, you’re also arrested at six times the rate of white Americans. Compared to your community of color, almost three times as many black Americans are in poverty compared to white Americans. I hope to get a grasp onto how the housing gap is larger now than in 1960, but it still speaks to how ingrained this problem is. In the rare chance a black American isn’t involved in a debilitating pressures of a racist judicial system and are able to persist and start their own business and begin generating wealth, the economy funnels money to white owned business’.
At this point I always try and share one quote from James Baldwin. The quote is but the tip of the iceberg in recognition of the pain Black american’s are subjected to. It’s long, like this series here will be because there’s a lot to consider in the scale of systematic racism.

To be a Negro in this country and to be relatively conscious is to be in a state of rage almost, almost all of the time — and in one’s work. And part of the rage is this: It isn’t only what is happening to you. But it’s what’s happening all around you and all of the time in the face of the most extraordinary and criminal indifference, indifference of most white people in this country, and their ignorance. Now, since this is so, it’s a great temptation to simplify the issues under the illusion that if you simplify them enough, people will recognize them. I think this illusion is very dangerous because, in fact, it isn’t the way it works. A complex thing can’t be made simple. You simply have to try to deal with it in all its complexity and hope to get that complexity across.

James Baldwin, 1961 Radio interview about what it’s like to be Black in America

~Until next time

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How to unpack? Politics

How should we unpack? – Subsidies

Subsidies- a sum of money granted by the government or a public body to assist an industry or business so that the price of a commodity or service may remain low or competitive.

However the statement makes you feel I have a question that I can’t make sense of. Is this different from state sponsorship? Regardless of what you feel of any specific subsidies or groups of subsidies, is it just another way of having state sponsored business? Well due to the decision of corporation having a right to vote, I believe we can look at subsidies from a leftist point of view. If corporations can vote as actual people do, I’ve got a new industry in need of help to make whole. The Peoples of the United States are part of a union called the workforce. In one of the most shocking moments within our own “societal measure of economies”, that workforce is down currently between 10-25%. That’s not even the analysis of how many of those jobs are barely keeping out of homelessness.

If shutting down the economy with some degree of agency will cause a rise in mortality, what about a shutting down due to the fragility of institutions? What about the newly termed “essential” jobs? Defined just as a basic needs (consumable/service) so people could function in times of crisis; the way the structures cut growth incentives for profit. It’s not really an argument although I’ll listen for a bit so long as its cogent. Have empathy and sorrow for the loss of life. We know the limits of the current systems and leaders incapable of understanding the moment. Now there needs to be a lot of work in framing the argument for differences achievable right now with goals for the future. If they say corporations are people, the people’s corporation need subsidies because the people’s ‘industry‘ is the work force because that workforce comprises all of industry.

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How to unpack? Scale Measurement Thoughts

Can we unpack COVID-19?

Truth be told, I’m not sure what’s going to happen but the trends are not looking great. In some ways you first need the story of the numbers which can now give us a glimpse of what we can expect because some places in the world have gone through a viral cycle of sorts. Now while the context of numbers can be lost on some, I want to share where I’m getting this from Duc C. Vuong. A lot of what of this is will be based off his video(s) late in August. He’s been a great resource all through the pandemic but before we get into the roots, the focus is trying to understand whats happening in the world.

During the first wave* of the pandemic we had no context for the numbers of infected and those who died. On April 1st when Spain and France were the face of the pandemic as Italy was beginning to drop, Spain had 9,700 cases (8,000 7-day avg) and on August 28th, they had almost 9800 cases (7,600 7-day avg). Likewise, France had 4,800 cases (4,500 7-day avg) and just had 7,000 cases (4600 7-day avg) on August 28th. The last piece of context is Italy and at their peak when most of the Western World, sadly, began to emphasize with the people suffering from COVID-19. At their peak they were are over 5,000 cases, sustained for over a week. While not as radical, they’re not at the same pace, cases have begun to rise as they’re climbing above 20% of their countries first peak.

*In America, please read: start. context below

In the United States, there was no end to the first wave… for the understanding of the impacts there.

As for the United States, which never flattened the numbers of cases or deaths to any sort of most of the world achieved as, our outcomes may be the most bleak. Now that we have the context for countries above as to where they stand right now (very bleak), how do we contextualize the space the United States is in. An effective way is to attempt to try and focus on the stories the numbers are telling us based on the past six months. Now while I am political this is about empathy as sad or pathetic as that might sound. On the chance anyone outside of my world has a chance to see this and maybe live would be the context above for the analysis below.

There are a few things we can glean from past to give us an idea of the numbers for tomorrow. First would be that the second wave is worse than the first. For countries like Spain and France, unless behavior curbs dramatically, they can see case numbers two to three fold of the first wave. If Italy was on the brink at 5,000 cases a day for a week, what happens if the second wave peak is at 12,000 cases a day? Will their systems collapse and what would that do to all cause mortality? How much non-direct death will be caused from the sheer scale of COVID (3.4% death rate globally: 8-30-2020)? Will there be enough treatment through therapies, or a vaccine by some miracle, to help bring outliers in death rate closer to the mean? Will it be significant enough to combat the pressure that volume of cases puts on their medical systems? Those are the kind of questions Europeans should be asking themselves right now if there’s any way to stymie the second wave begin to crash, west to east.

If those are the questions Europe what are the ones Americans face? What questions give us the context of what’s in front of us? In some ways our adversity is similar, but also quite different. While the scale paints a picture of a death rate between 3 -4% globally, that is not how the United States measure the current crisis. If you took the deaths of Spain (29,000), Italy (35,000), and France(30,000) and compare that to the United States alone the United States during the same period, we still double the deaths. By a factor of 2:1 of COVID mortality since the pandemic began on not a 1:1 comparison, but a 1:3 instead. Simply put, the only way I can contextualize COVID in America is doing what you can to prevent death. How much? It’s not even quantifiable but when we begin to realistically cross into a conversation of being too cautious, maybe that’s when we can find the value of how much or for how long. It’s not relevant when we can’t even prevent the death occurring in this country.

The idea that between 15,000 & 20,000 cases a day before we collectively thought we needed to close schools. Opening them will allow the virus to grow exponentially more than if schools waited a semester especially based on how much worse the loss of life has been in the States. The haphazard decision to open schools by the white house and that being at around 40,000-50,000 cases a day now, how do you begin to reconcile closing them before 20,000 daily cases and opening them before they fall below even 40,000.

Not only do the decisions bare skepticism relating to safety and caution, but the numbers also paint the American reality is worse than the very bleak outlook for Europe. Can the United States rapidly change the behavior of the people? Will there be a fundamental change as far as the white houses approach to COVID? If the numbers of cases can grow as Spain and France are projected above, has the number of people infected potentially limit the growth due to the scale of those already infected? Certainly the United States will have a new peak, but since the first wave never ended, there’s less certainty that can be drawn.

To round out the view Americans should adopt to accomplish as much prevention of death is difficult as our scenario is so different. Personally I believe that sharing our fears and emotions in this moment could be a start (virtually). Outside of that, keeping circles of peoples those whom you truly consider family physically and communicate remotely whether for work or your friends whom are outside of that and be empathetic. This is going to be very dark. Things are going to get worst. As far as death we’re top of the charts and it’s not close. With that, keep in contact with your friends and loved ones. Maintain the distance when in social spaces and do what you can to protect your mouth and nose from either spreading or contracting the virus. In short, wear your masks, wash your hands, and form preventive habits to give you and your family the best chance for lessened pain.

~Stay safe

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How to unpack? Politics

How should we unpack? – White Supremacy (Pt 1)

First, this will be returned to because the biggest issue is first not approaching this from a human looking at an experience of human misery inflected on black people & Native people in the United States.

Below will be sort of a relearning of history that will make you questions what our history class was worth, and rethink when and how we tell it. In short, if you’re informed about this, consider waiting for Pt. 2… whenever that will be. Or check it our to verify what you’re reading.

I like to start by thinking of questions that only exist to say, “but,”. Not because their not useful, but to weed out those whom require a much greater cost (time, patience). If the only point of question is to ONLY bring up doubt without evidence, stop and disengage. The real issue is we’re all ego driven people whom viscerally believe ourselves over others by nature of being alive. In these tense and scary times, us humans can react emotionally and that can create some very divided beliefs. Even so, if we’re to have discourse and have a prosperous society, we must have institutions people believe in. For that to exist, we need to understand our history and the many mistakes that we can learn and correct our entire human experience… is how the argument goes. While the colonization of the Native people and the current day America’s (Central, North, South, or otherwise) is its own tragedy, the humanity stealing and raping white supremacists enacted on black people is unconscionable. In fact it is so deprived, they were in the dreams of what may be the purest form of evil with the systemic video biography and corresponding data the monsters of WWII tracked. Now lets level set.

Long ago in the 1960’s that interracial marriage was illegal. At this point only 51 or 52 years ago was this and a larger scope of corrective policies written as a start of righting the wrong of slavery.
Jim Crow Laws and their impact can only be measured after knowing the scope of impact. The only summary you can take away is the persistence of people who hold these beliefs to deny black people humanity. They’re so ingrained in almost every part of our world and experience. Central Park Karen knows exactly what to do to that would give any person of color an indication of how deep these thoughts are embedded and rot our society.

“The people who settled the country had a fatal flaw. They could recognize a man when they saw one. They knew he wasn’t anything but a man… the only way to justify the role this chattel was playing in one’s life, was to say that he was not a man. For if he wasn’t, then no crime had been committed. That lie is the Basis of our present trouble.”

Eddie Glaude, quoting James Baldwin’s “The White Problem”

The whole essay is entirely worth reading in full but James Baldwin is one of the best voices in precisely showing the links to the past and their effects on the structures build from them echo their very horrors to the present.

Last data point that needs to be shared before Pt. 2 is that prior to the Civil War, there was roughly 4 million black slaves in the United States (1860). To give that a scale of measure, today there are anywhere from 2-2.5 million people incarcerated in the United States. The very caveat of the 13th amendment; “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction,” and understanding that is also the first action of white supremacists answer to that amendment. They tried to create laws specifically to punish black people for the very reason of being black. Since the amendment allowed their to be an exception, they abused that to continue slavery masked under industry (prisons, private or otherwise). Sadly they were successful, but it doesn’t mean society today must accept their vile behavior. We must call it evil and condemn it out of our society.

Until next time~

9-18-20- Pt.2