Frieden's complaint

 Former CDC Director Tom Frieden talked with an editor at BMJ. He did not mince words:

In the US what we’ve seen is a response [to the Covid-19 pandemic] that wasn’t organised, wasn’t based on science, and didn’t communicate openly, honestly, or forthrightly with the American public. So I’m enormously encouraged by the start of the Biden administration where it’s very clear there’s organisation, there’s a plan, there’s clear communication, and science will rule again. 

Q:It must have been painful to watch as political appointees to the CDC began making decisions about data, policy, and recommendations

It really was unprecedented. The CDC was undermined, sidelined, and maligned in a way that has never happened before. Materials were put on the CDC website that weren’t written by the CDC. I would compare that to someone writing graffiti on a national monument, except as someone pointed out to me [at least in that case] everyone knows it’s graffiti. I think it’ll take some time for the trust in the CDC to be regained. . . . 

At the press conference at which the CDC announced the recommendation that people should wear masks, President Trump said, I’m not going to wear a mask. Now, if President Trump had said, I don’t want the CDC issuing a recommendation that people wear masks, that would have been within his authority—[though] I wouldn’t agree with it [and think] it would have been a terrible mistake. But to have the complete dysfunctionality of a government that’s recommending masks and at the very same press conference, undermining that recommendation was really mind boggling.

 

Okay, that's important for Americans to know. So why is this only happening in a British medical journal? Eric Alterman's e-mail newsletter may help us understand:

Thanks to a heads-up from Mediaite, we may take a moment to focus on what ought to be considered a seminal moment in the history of the White House press corps. It came last week when, during one of Jen Psaki’s briefings, NBC News White House correspondent Peter Alexander tried to script Joe Biden with a demand that he praise Donald Trump’s vaccine performance. I swear I’m not making this up.

(One reason, by the way, that even political obsessives may not be aware of it is the fact that, as Eric Boehlert notes, while CNN ran “virtually every minute of every White House press briefing live and in its entirety,” it stopped after a month of Biden’s.)

Sounding like a made man in the Trump crime family, Alexander complained that, in Biden’s speech to the nation last week, “there was no mention of the president under whose administration these vaccines were developed … Does former President Trump not deserve any credit on vaccines?” Psaki didn’t take the bait, praising “science and medical experts,” who, you know, actually developed the vaccine, and also noting that “most of the infrastructure to vaccinate people was not in place when Biden took office.” After not getting the answer he wanted, Alexander nevertheless kept at it. “But on the development of the vaccines, it was Operation Warp Speed that was invented, executed, initiated under the former president.”

That’s all bad enough. But here is what would be called “the beauty part” were it not so damn morally, intellectually, and professionally revolting. Alexander went on: “So in the spirit of bipartisanship and unity last night, as opposed to the first comments which were about the denials in the first days, weeks or months, why not just say, ‘With credit to the previous administration and the former president for putting us in this position, we are glad that we have been able to move it forward?’”

Got that? This guy is not from Fox or Newsmax or Breitbart or OAN or Gateway Pundit or Ben Shapiro or National Review or Sinclair or The Daily Caller or The Washington Times, etc., etc. And he’s not merely demanding to know why the president is not crediting the man who regularly accuses him of being senile and having stolen the election and having a son who belongs in jail and of hating his country, but the man who in his spare time totally screwed up virtually everything having to do with both the virus and vaccine, because in addition to all of the above he’s an egomaniacal psychopath. That’s why, when Stephen Colbert asked Dr. Fauci “what changed” under Biden, the good doctor grinningly replied, “Everything.” Don’t forget also that we know that the Trump administration did not bother to come up with a plan to distribute the vaccine, though even here, Alexander took up the Trump team’s dishonest propaganda: “You can’t say it was absolutely not usable at all,” though, in fact, dropping vaccines off at the airport in each state and saying, “Go to it, guys,” is pretty damn close to unusable.

What I would ask, if I didn’t already know better, is what the hell is an NBC reporter doing trying to script the president on behalf of Trump in the first place? And no less important, why is he doing so, when, even narrowly speaking, he’s talking bullshit? And why didn’t the rest of the room burst out in hysterics? And why hasn’t he been fired for it? And really, how can we ever believe anything he ever reports again, knowing that this is his attitude toward covering the Biden administration? And what business does NBC News think it’s in, anyway?

This is a short newsletter, so here are some short answers.

• White House reporters think their job is to play “gotcha,” not to get news.

• White House reporters cannot admit that one of America’s two major political parties has become a cult in thrall to autocratic, conspiracy-minded lunatics who care not a whit about governance, even if that means hundreds of thousands of people must die unnecessarily.

• There are exceptions, of course, but most TV journalists think of themselves as entertainers, not as news gatherers. They care about their Q Ratings far more than about telling the truth. They understand, likely accurately, that their corporate bosses don’t want the truth and their audiences have not been prepared to hear it. That’s why they loved Trump; he cast them as “the enemy of the people” and gave them a clear role to play. It’s also why the members of the White House press still have not figured out how to handle a president whose only concern is how to get the job done that he was elected to do, without theatrics and the kind of childish playacting that so many White House reporters think the job entails.

 

. . .

Wednesday Bible Study: Meet the new boss, same as the old boss

As I briefly mentioned previously, scholars believe that the core of the Book of Joshua was written at about the same time as Deuteronomy, perhaps based on some older sources, but probably didn't take its final form until much later. In any case, D was obviously aware of its basic contents. 

 

The purported events of the book happened hundreds of years before it was written. Like everything that has gone before, Joshua is almost certainly entirely fictitious. The Israelites did not conquer Canaan from the east. They were indigenous to the area. There is no archaeological evidence of the conquest and sacking of the various cities described here. It helps that like Moses, Joshua has no descendants, which avoids any resulting problems. 

 

This will no doubt offend some people, but it is too obvious not to point out that the Book of Joshua casts the Israelites in the role of Nazis and Joshua in the role of Hitler, the difference being that they win their lebensraum. Perhaps a more precise analogy would be the European conquest of the Americas. The entire book is a long litany of massacres, enslavement, torture and murder. The point of all this is to demonstrate the greatness of Yahweh, but of course this is not his character in modern, Rabbinical Judaism. The relevance of the Book of Joshua to present-day Judaism and Christianity is apparent in only the most extremist versions. For most believers, it is best left unmentioned. Anyway, the first chapter just records the passing of the baton.

1 After the death of Moses the servant of the Lord, the Lord said to Joshua son of Nun, Moses’ aide: ² “Moses my servant is dead. Now then, you and all these people, get ready to cross the Jordan River into the land I am about to give to them—to the Israelites. ³ I will give you every place where you set your foot, as I promised Moses. ⁴ Your territory will extend from the desert to Lebanon, and from the great river, the Euphrates—all the Hittite country—to the Mediterranean Sea in the west. ⁵ 

Actually the territory of the Israelites never extended this far.

No one will be able to stand against you all the days of your life. As I was with Moses, so I will be with you; I will never leave you nor forsake you. ⁶ Be strong and courageous, because you will lead these people to inherit the land I swore to their ancestors to give them.

⁷ “Be strong and very courageous. Be careful to obey all the law my servant Moses gave you; do not turn from it to the right or to the left, that you may be successful wherever you go. ⁸ Keep this Book of the Law always on your lips; meditate on it day and night, so that you may be careful to do everything written in it. Then you will be prosperous and successful. ⁹ Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous. Do not be afraid; do not be discouraged, for the Lord your God will be with you wherever you go.”

¹⁰ So Joshua ordered the officers of the people: ¹¹ “Go through the camp and tell the people, ‘Get your provisions ready. Three days from now you will cross the Jordan here to go in and take possession of the land the Lord your God is giving you for your own.’”

¹² But to the Reubenites, the Gadites and the half-tribe of Manasseh, Joshua said, ¹³ “Remember the command that Moses the servant of the Lord gave you after he said, ‘The Lord your God will give you rest by giving you this land.’ ¹⁴ Your wives, your children and your livestock may stay in the land that Moses gave you east of the Jordan, but all your fighting men, ready for battle, must cross over ahead of your fellow Israelites. You are to help them ¹⁵ until the Lord gives them rest, as he has done for you, and until they too have taken possession of the land the Lord your God is giving them. After that, you may go back and occupy your own land, which Moses the servant of the Lord gave you east of the Jordan toward the sunrise.”

¹⁶ Then they answered Joshua, “Whatever you have commanded us we will do, and wherever you send us we will go. ¹⁷ Just as we fully obeyed Moses, so we will obey you. Only may the Lord your God be with you as he was with Moses. ¹⁸ Whoever rebels against your word and does not obey it, whatever you may command them, will be put to death. Only be strong and courageous!”

I want to say one word to you, just one word:

Plastics. That was famous advice given to Dustin Hoffman's character in The Graduate, and if we were only concerned about Benjamin Braddock's financial future, it was actually excellent advice. But the recent discussion in the comments prompted me to hoist the issue to the front page. The problem of plastic waste is already catastrophic, and it's on track to get worse. 

 

There are lots of good sources about this, including the Wikipedia article, but look out: there are industry front groups that are pretending to want to do something about it but they're largely fraudulent. As commenters have noted, recycling is a core fraud. The idea that we can all be virtuous by tossing our plastic waste in the blue bin, and then everything is okay, is an intentional deceit. Maybe 8% of plastic gets recycled, and the biggest contributors to the problem of plastic waste in the environment are not recyclable at all. National Geographic has some background:

 

• Half of all plastics ever manufactured have been made in the last 15 years.

• Production increased exponentially, from 2.3 million tons in 1950 to 448 million tons by 2015. Production is expected to double by 2050.

• Every year, about 8 million tons of plastic waste escapes into the oceans from coastal nations. That’s the equivalent of setting five garbage bags full of trash on every foot of coastline around the world.

• Plastics often contain additives making them stronger, more flexible, and durable. But many of these additives can extend the life of products if they become litter, with some estimates ranging to at least 400 years to break down.

 

The most damage from plastic waste occurs in the oceans, where creatures consume it and are weakened or killed. While there may be some promise in creating degradable plastics, the products that are available now are almost as fraudulent as recycling. They only break down under engineered conditions, and are nearly as persistent in the natural environment as plastic shopping bags. There are ways to greatly reduce and ultimately nearly eliminate single use plastic. Many states and towns, for example, have banned single use plastic shopping bags. You have to bring our own reusable bag, and in my case I already had a bunch because they give away tote bags at academic conferences. The merchants love it because it saves them money. (The grocery business is extremely low margin.) My infinitimart sells reusable mesh bags for produce that you can use instead of the little plastic bags on rolls. No need for a straw in your drink! But these measures are pretty trivial compared to the magnitude of the problem, which will require strong political action.

I won't go into all that in more depth here, but one thing you probably didn't think about is that those disposable face masks everybody is wearing now are largely made of plastic, which breaks down into non-degradable microfibers, and people are throwing away 3 million of them every day. I actually don't dispose of them, because I only wear one for short periods while shopping, basically, and you can in fact reuse them dozens of times if that's all you do. But washable, reusable cloth masks are a better choice. You can even make your own. It's a small, very small thing, but it's easy, and can even save you a few pennies.

Sunday Sermonette: The end

With the death of Moses, we now come to the end of Deuteronomy and the end of the Torah. The Book of Joshua, which follows, continues the same story with the prophesied conquest of Canaan from the west. Scholars believe that core portions of Joshua were written at about the same time as Deuteronomy, but it didn't take it's final form until much later. Like Deuteronomy, it depicts events that purportedly took place hundreds of years before it was written, and it is entirely fictitious. We'll say more about this next time when we introduce it. For now, this is short and semi-sweet.

34 Then Moses climbed Mount Nebo from the plains of Moab to the top of Pisgah, across from Jericho. There the Lord showed him the whole land—from Gilead to Dan, ² all of Naphtali, the territory of Ephraim and Manasseh, all the land of Judah as far as the Mediterranean Sea, ³ the Negev and the whole region from the Valley of Jericho, the City of Palms, as far as Zoar. ⁴ Then the Lord said to him, “This is the land I promised on oath to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob when I said, ‘I will give it to your descendants.’ I have let you see it with your eyes, but you will not cross over into it.”

⁵ And Moses the servant of the Lord died there in Moab, as the Lord had said. ⁶ He buried him^[a] in Moab, in the valley opposite Beth Peor, but to this day no one knows where his grave is. ⁷ 

Apparently God buried Moses personally. 

Moses was a hundred and twenty years old when he died, yet his eyes were not weak nor his strength gone. ⁸ The Israelites grieved for Moses in the plains of Moab thirty days, until the time of weeping and mourning was over.

⁹ Now Joshua son of Nun was filled with the spirit^[b] of wisdom because Moses had laid his hands on him. So the Israelites listened to him and did what the Lord had commanded Moses.

¹⁰ Since then, no prophet has risen in Israel like Moses, whom the Lord knew face to face, ¹¹ who did all those signs and wonders the Lord sent him to do in Egypt—to Pharaoh and to all his officials and to his whole land. ¹² For no one has ever shown the mighty power or performed the awesome deeds that Moses did in the sight of all Israel.

Footnotes

1. Deuteronomy 34:6 Or He was buried
2. Deuteronomy 34:9 Or Spirit

Impossible

 I finally broke down and tried the impossible burger. They sell it at my local superduperhyperultramegamart, so I figured I didn't have an excuse not to. I haven't eaten beef for about 45 years, so I really didn't remember what it tastes like and I had some trepidation. Everybody says it's a convincing imitation, and I thought I might be grossed out.

Well, no, I wasn't really grossed out, but on the other hand I didn't feel like I'd been missing anything. I actually think some of the veggie burgers you can get (or make yourself) that aren't pretending to be meat are better. And by the way they are also nutritionally superior. But since the vast majority of the earth's population apparently feels that they just have to be eating something that at least seems to be meat, please do go for it. A plant based diet requires 1/10 of the land surface and fossil fuels and other unsustainable inputs that it takes to grow feed for animals. Our species can't survive if everybody has to eat meat. So if you just have to have it, and this does the requisite floating of your boat, please do go for it. 

I was actually hoping to find "meat" balls but they only had burger and sausage. In fact the soy-based meatballs that have been around for 20 years are just fine, they work great in meatball subs or spaghetti and meatballs. So if your problem is that you just didn't know how to make vegetarian meals and it was too hard to learn, that's no longer operative. There is no longer any reason for anybody to eat the flesh of tetrapods.

One more thing: It comes encased in a whole lot of largely non-recyclable plastic. That's a definite count against it. When I worked as a short-order cook in my youth our frozen hamburger patties came in a cardboard box, separated by slips of paper. I presume the manufacturers want to see the product and that it looks like actual ground beef, but it does work against the purpose.

More on how to think

The argument from authority is fallacious only under specific circumstances. The range of human knowledge is so vast, and knowledge in specific areas so deep, that none of us can have a substantial grasp of more than a fraction of our heritage of learning. I don't know much about opera, shipbuilding, barley cultivation, electrical engineering, parasitology, Sanskrit literature, or the mathematics of infinities. Obviously, the list of subjects I don't know much or anything about is orders of magnitude larger than the subjects about which I have some substantial grasp -- enough to read critically what others write -- and the subjects about which I can legitimately claim to be an authority are even fewer. That's why I pay an auto mechanic and and electrician as well as a physician.

So, as we go through life, we have to depend on experts to provide conclusions about most matters. That is the only wise and sane way to live. Knowing which experts to trust would be very challenging indeed if we didn't have credentialing and peer review systems. Whether you like it or not, people who have advanced degrees and get their papers published in peer reviewed journals are much more likely to be reliable authorities than any random blowhard. And that's also why we have certification and/or licensing systems for auto mechanics, electricians and physicians.

However, experts are not always right. We have to believe them most of the time, but I or someone I refer you to presents a well documented, well reasoned argument that you are not inclined to agree with -- whether because it does not accord with your preconceptions or your religious reverence for Donald J. Trump, for example -- it is not a valid  response to say either "The great sage Simplicio thinks otherwise so I can ignore this," nor to say "This is just an argument from authority." The former is indeed the argument from authority. If Simplicio has provided an argument that rebuts my offer, you need to say what that is so we can evaluate it. It may well be that Simplicio is wrong after all. On the other hand, what I have offered is not an argument from authority, it is an actual argument that happens to have been provided by authorities. You need to read the argument and, if you find something wrong with it, say what that is. That it comes from authority is not a reason to reject it, it is a reason to accept it by default, and the burden is on you to show why it is wrong.

 

The Lancet is based in Britain but it is an international journal of public health and medicine. The editors frequently commission panels on matters of interest internationally or in specific regions. The authors of the Lancet report on public health in the Trump era are in fact Americans. As with all Lancet commissions, they represent a range of expertise and the sections on particular issues are written by people with the specifically relevant expertise. 

 

 

Wednesday Bible study: One more thing

It so happens there is an article in the NYT today about Deuteronomy. It's paywalled,  so you may not be able to read it. It's about a scholar with the unfortunate name of Dershowitz (no relation apparently) who thinks that a text found in 1883 and proclaimed to be an early version of part of Deuteronomy, and commonly believed to be a forger, was not a forgery after all. That's a complicated sentence. Anyway, if you're interested and you can read it, great. Meanwhile I thought I'd just excerpt this paragraph which briefly explains the common understanding of the nature of Deuteronomy, which is more or less as I described it earlier but is well-stated here.

Deuteronomy, as it appears in the Bible, contains Moses’ farewell sermon to the Israelites before they enter the Promised Land. In his address, Moses recalls their history, and emphasizes the importance of following the laws, including the Ten Commandments (first revealed in Exodus), which he then restates.

Ironically, Deuteronomy itself has been described as a “pious forgery,” as scholars call works created to justify a particular belief or practice. The Hebrew Bible states that during the reign of Josiah, around 622 B.C.E., priests discovered an ancient “Book of the Law” in the Temple in Jerusalem. Since the 19th century, scholars have held that Deuteronomy (or its nucleus of laws) was that book, which in fact had been composed shortly beforehand to justify the centralization of worship at the Temple and other priestly reforms.

Wednesday Bible Study: The blessing of the tribes

As he prepares for death, Moses blesses each of the tribes in turn. However, the list of the tribes of Israel varies from place to place in the Bible. In this instance, there are only 11. Simeon, Ephraim, and Manasseh, each of which appear elsewhere, are omitted here. The usual number we think of is 12, but it's 13 in Numbers 1. Here's a handy dandy table from SAB:

 

 

 

 

33 This is the blessing with which Moses the man of God blessed the children of Israel before his death. ² He said,

“The Lord came from Sinai,
    and dawned from Se′ir upon us;^[a]
    he shone forth from Mount Paran,
he came from the ten thousands of holy ones,
    with flaming fire^[b] at his right hand.

Oddly, the tens of thousands of holy ones are not mentioned in the original, in Exodus.

 
³ Yea, he loved his people;^[c]
    all those consecrated to him were in his^[d] hand;
so they followed^[e] in thy steps,
    receiving direction from thee,
⁴ when Moses commanded us a law,
    as a possession for the assembly of Jacob.
⁵ Thus the Lord became king in Jesh′urun,
    when the heads of the people were gathered,
    all the tribes of Israel together.

⁶ “Let Reuben live, and not die,
    nor let his men be few.”

⁷ And this he said of Judah:

“Hear, O Lord, the voice of Judah,
    and bring him in to his people.
With thy hands contend^[f] for him,
    and be a help against his adversaries.”

⁸ And of Levi he said,

“Give to Levi^[g] thy Thummim,
    and thy Urim to thy godly one,
whom thou didst test at Massah,

The Thummim and Urim are magic divining stones, you may recall.

 
    with whom thou didst strive at the waters of Mer′ibah;
⁹ who said of his father and mother,
    ‘I regard them not’;
he disowned his brothers,
    and ignored his children.
For they observed thy word,
    and kept thy covenant.
¹⁰ They shall teach Jacob thy ordinances,
    and Israel thy law;
they shall put incense before thee,
    and whole burnt offering upon thy altar.
¹¹ Bless, O Lord, his substance,
    and accept the work of his hands;
crush the loins of his adversaries,
    of those that hate him, that they rise not again.”

¹² Of Benjamin he said,

“The beloved of the Lord,
    he dwells in safety by him;
he encompasses him all the day long,
    and makes his dwelling between his shoulders.”

¹³ And of Joseph he said,

“Blessed by the Lord be his land,
    with the choicest gifts of heaven above,^[h]
    and of the deep that couches beneath,
¹⁴ with the choicest fruits of the sun,
    and the rich yield of the months,
¹⁵ with the finest produce of the ancient mountains,
    and the abundance of the everlasting hills,
¹⁶ with the best gifts of the earth and its fulness,
    and the favor of him that dwelt in the bush.
Let these come upon the head of Joseph,
    and upon the crown of the head of him that is prince among his brothers.
¹⁷ His firstling bull has majesty,
    and his horns are the horns of a wild ox;
with them he shall push the peoples,
    all of them, to the ends of the earth;
such are the ten thousands of E′phraim,
    and such are the thousands of Manas′seh.”

¹⁸ And of Zeb′ulun he said,

“Rejoice, Zeb′ulun, in your going out;
    and Is′sachar, in your tents.
¹⁹ They shall call peoples to their mountain;
    there they offer right sacrifices;
for they suck the affluence of the seas
    and the hidden treasures of the sand.”

²⁰ And of Gad he said,

“Blessed be he who enlarges Gad!
    Gad couches like a lion,
    he tears the arm, and the crown of the head.
²¹ He chose the best of the land for himself,
    for there a commander’s portion was reserved;
and he came to the heads of the people,
    with Israel he executed the commands
    and just decrees of the Lord.”

²² And of Dan he said,

“Dan is a lion’s whelp,
    that leaps forth from Bashan.”

²³ And of Naph′tali he said,

“O Naph′tali, satisfied with favor,
    and full of the blessing of the Lord,
    possess the lake and the south.”

²⁴ And of Asher he said,

“Blessed above sons be Asher;
    let him be the favorite of his brothers,
    and let him dip his foot in oil.
²⁵ Your bars shall be iron and bronze;
    and as your days, so shall your strength be.

²⁶ “There is none like God, O Jesh′urun,
    who rides through the heavens to your help,
    and in his majesty through the skies.
²⁷ The eternal God is your dwelling place,
    and underneath are the everlasting arms.
And he thrust out the enemy before you,
    and said, Destroy.
²⁸ So Israel dwelt in safety,
    the fountain of Jacob alone,
in a land of grain and wine;
    yea, his heavens drop down dew.
²⁹ Happy are you, O Israel! Who is like you,
    a people saved by the Lord,
the shield of your help,
    and the sword of your triumph!
Your enemies shall come fawning to you;
    and you shall tread upon their high places.”

Footnotes

1. Deuteronomy 33:2 Gk Syr Vg: Heb them
2. Deuteronomy 33:2 The meaning of the Hebrew word is uncertain
3. Deuteronomy 33:3 Gk: Heb peoples
4. Deuteronomy 33:3 Heb thy
5. Deuteronomy 33:3 The meaning of the Hebrew word is uncertain
6. Deuteronomy 33:7 Cn: Heb with his hands he contended
7. Deuteronomy 33:8 Gk: Heb lacks Give to Levi
8. Deuteronomy 33:13 Two Heb Mss and Tg: Heb with the dew