Category Archives: Epidemics/Pandemics

Flattening the Curve for Rich People: Wall Street, Main Street, or Willow Place?

Capitalism, Epidemics/Pandemics, Social democracy, Social Justice

 

Once again Wall Street is doing much better than Main Street. Th at should not surprise anyone.  And Wall Street is doing even much better than Willow Place. This is always an interesting phenomenon. In my view this will always happen in a system that permits plutocracy, and even worse in a system that encourages plutocracy. If we left the rich rule they would do what is in their best interests. It really is that simple.

As Scott Galloway said,

“As a nation we suffer from an idolatry of innovators. And we personify companies and believe that it all starts with the shareholders. The shareholder class is the premier class and as long as the economy is strong everything will fall into place. And we measure the economy’s health by these dangerous indices called the Nasdaq where 90% of the stock are owned by the top 10%. The Nasdaq and the Dow are not indicators of the health of our economy; they are proxies for how well the wealthy are doing. And–spoiler alert–they’re killing it.”

Again no one should be surprised by this. We have a system that is designed by the wealthy for the wealthy and inevitably such a system will deliver the goods to the wealthy. Our system does that well.

Another problem Galloway draws to our attention is that private power has been unleashed as a result deregulation. As he said, as a result of regulators doing nothing,

“… we end up with a lot of private power that has now overrun government. There are now more full-time lobbyists from Amazon that are living in Washington D.C. than there are sitting US Senators. There are more people manicuring Sheryl Sandburg and Mark Zuckerberg’s image in the communications department of Facebook than there are journalists at the Washington Post. So, we now have a situation where if you look across the market at the S&P 500, the 50 biggest companies are up for the year, the companies in the middle are down in the high single digits and the smallest 15 companies are down in double digits. We have decided that companies are either big tech monopolies, or too big to fail. That is our priority. And the wealthiest cohort in America small business owners have received one of the largest bail-outs. There will be very well publicized examples of the owners of a cupcake bakery that made it through the other end, but mostly what PPT has done is two things. Not giving  bridges to small business but giving  them piers where they are still going to go out of business, but we have just kicked the can down the road. This economy is reshaping. It’s coming down differently. And two, we have flattened the curve for rich people. Small business owners are millionaires typically, and there was no reason they needed a bailout. The big mistake here, looking back, will be we should have protected people not companies. We should have put money in the hands of people and then let them decide  what businesses survive and what perish. Capitalism and rugged individualism on the way up and cronyism and bailouts on the way down is just cronyism. It doesn’t help the economy. And money is nothing but the transfer of time and work and all we’ve decided is that we want our kids and grand kids to spend less time with their loved ones such that wealthy people now can stay wealthy.”

 

Keep the wealthy being wealthy. That is what is happening with cronyism. Is this what modern capitalism is all about?

Lessons from e-commerce

Capitalism, Decline of the west, Epidemics/Pandemics, Social democracy, Social Justice

 

 

In e-commerce it took years for the kind of growth we have seen lately. It is astonishing. I hate what Amazon is doing to small businesses around the world. I hate the thought of giving any more money to the richest man in the world (or second richest) whose employees have to wear diapers to work because they are not given enough time to go to the washroom.

Before the pandemic Jeff Bezos was earning $1 million every 50 minutes now he is doing much better than that and I have helped him out, as have millions of others. We have done that because we came to realize how convenient it was to shop from Amazon. For many things we don’t really have to go to a store to look them over. Ordering them from our homes for some of us is just easier, simpler, and cheaper.  Other businesses will have to learn that we have learned something during this pandemic and if they don’t change, we will change where and how we shop. Not for everything but for many things. Capitalists had better innovate or they will be left on the dust heap. Capitalist always say that is what they are good at. Let’s see if that’s true.

That does not mean all has been rosy. As Hari Sreenivasan pointed out to,

“It has been a boon for those who could afford it. There has been a blue collar pandemic and a white collar pandemic. For the white collar people it was great.  I can get everything from Instacard and Amazon. But if you’re an essential worker that doesn’t really apply to you.’

For others not so much. And some of us still care a little bit about fairness. Fairness and competition.

Scott Galloway is a professor Marketing who was interviewed by Sreenivasan on Amanpour & Company and he agreed completely:

“If you’re in the top 10% of income earners there is no change in employment. It means you’re no more vulnerable than you were before the pandemic. There’s a 60% likelihood you can work from home. You can spend more time with your family. You maybe got 10 hours back a week. If you make less than $40,000 a year, 40% of those people have lost their jobs and less than 10% can work from home. You don’t like to say this out loud, but if you’re in the top 10% and you’re blessed with good health you’re most likely spending more time with Netflix, your kids, and less time commuting, and by the way your stocks are probably up and I would argue that a lot of the stimulus unfortunately hasn’t been about arresting the pandemic, and helping our neediest, it’s been about flattening the curve for rich people. The savings rate in American has never been higher. The Nasdaq has never been higher. If you do a google search for covid and markets you’ll find more articles than if you do covid and mortality. It’s as if as a nation our priorities are reflected in our spending. The velocity of death is unprecedented. More people are dying every day from this than any crisis in history! And that’s meaningful. But what would be profoundly tragic would be if the Nasdaq declines! At least that’s what our spending seems to indicate. We want to save restaurants but not keep schools open. We seem to want to ensure that the markets are washed in liquidity and people are wanting stimulus, but we aren’t protecting people. We see infection rates rise. And we see our health professionals wanting for PPE equipment. It does definitely seem that we have decided that corporations are people and they are the ones that we have to save.”

 

And remember all of this is not coming from some crazy leftwing extremist. This is coming from a self-described enthusiast for capitalism. He is an insider. He likes the system. Perhaps not as much as Zwaagstra does, but he is no bleeding socialist. He just thinks the current system sucks. It sucks because the rich people are swimming in cash while those who are not are taking their chances serving the rich people. They are called essential workers, but they are not paid like it.

Capitalism in the time of Pandemic

Capitalism, Epidemics/Pandemics

On television I  recently heard Scott Galloway, a Professor of Marketing  at New York University Stern School of Business who also wrote a book called Post Corona: From Crisis to Opportunity. I heard him interviewed on a few different television shows recently flogging his book.

He is very interesting. Scott Galloway is an enthusiast for capitalism, just like Michael Zwaagstra a local counsellor. But that is where the resemblance ends. Zwaagstra recently wrote an article in our local Carillon News and said capitalism was doing just fine and he could hardly wait to get right back to it without any changes. Our member of Parliament, Ted Falk, thinks the same way. Why change what’s pretty  close to perfect? Zwaagstra and Falk both dismissed any suggestion that anything should change, he liked it exactly the way it was. Of course, those most comfortable with things as they are tend to feel that way.

Scott Galloway is different. He is enthusiastic about capitalism, but he believes changes are needed. Badly.

Hari Sreenivasan on Amanpour & Company interviewed Galloway and pointed out that in the US more than 250,000 people have already died from Covid-19. Of course, since then many more have died.  Sreenivasan pointed out that the disease has exposed some serious weaknesses in the American economy, but has also provided an opportunity to fix some of those weaknesses. Someone once said, we should never waste a crisis. Zwaagstra and the other Panglosses want to do exactly that. Why fix something that is not broken?

Galloway pointed out that before the pandemic there were a lot of people who were optimistic to the point of arrogance. The system was working well for many people, but for others it was disastrous. The pandemic made clear to all that many of the governmental institutions had been woefully underfunded. Galloway is a capitalist, but he recognized the importance of government. The crisis has allowed us to spend more time with our families, it has allowed us to look closely at our educational system. Our health care system needs a close examination in the light of what we have learned from the pandemic. It has shown how e-commerce can work. To him, unlike Zwaagstra, a crisis is a terrible thing to waste.

In health care Galloway believes the greatest shift in stakeholder value is about to occur in the business history of the US. In the US 17% of the GDP is heath care.

Here is what he said,

 

“It is arguably the largest business in the world clocking in at 3 or 4 trillion dollars a year, but the outcomes have been decreasing. Life expectancy has been going down and mortality is stuck at a certain level. Customer satisfaction is pretty anemic. The medical profession as retail is probably the second worst retail in America behind gas stations. Imagine going to a store for a sunblock and someone sides a plexi-glass gives you a form and says to you ‘Here fill out this paperwork and we’ll see you in 30 minutes! It’s a fairly uninspiring experience. The exciting thing is that 99% of the people who have contracted, endured, and developed anti-bodies for the coronavirus did it without entering a doctor’s office let alone a hospital.”

 

Professor Galloway said  he got his Covid-19 test in his kitchen. Things are changing rapidly and sometimes for the better.

“Just as e-commerce took the store to your living room, just as the movie theater moved into your living room, the doctor’s office, hospitals, and diagnostics moved to your house.”

These things are a sea change. I had a doctor’s examination from my cottage at the lake while the doctor was in his office. I had a blemish or spot on my head that worried me. My wife took a photo and emailed it to the doctor who looked at it and said, “I think it’s benign.”  While I wished he could have said that with a little more confidence it was a shockingly good experience with my physician.

As Galloway said,

“This might give us not just an opportunity to reduce costs but to take us off our heels as a nation being reactive and defensive about our health and get on our toes and talk more about primary care. It made people more comfortable with their relationship with their health care provider. Amazon just announced that they would have 24/7 pharmacists available and 2-hour delivery. So, we could see an explosion of innovation in health care. You could arguably say it is the most exciting place to be in our economy post-covid. Regulations have come crashing down. Consumers are now comfortable receiving health care over their hand held in their home.”

I admit that describes me. I want to see my doctor from time to time, but often I don’t need to go his or her office. By phone or ipad often is good enough and saves me a lot of time. My time is valuable too.

Galloway had some less complementary things to say about capitalism. I will explore those next.

On the Edge of a moral catastrophe: Hoarding Vaccines is not the same as  hoarding toilet paper

Epidemics/Pandemics, Ethics

 

It is often said that a war brings out the best of people and the worst of people. I think a pandemic works the same way. There have been some genuine heroes. I remember hearing about this nurse who went around the US to help out hospitals in the worst possible circumstances when they were on the verge of being overwhelmed and would not have survived without heroic people like her. She was not able to get health insurance anymore because the insurance companies were smart. They knew she was taking crazy chances by going to hospitals swamped with Covid-19. And then she had to deal with people who did not believe the disease was real, even as they were dying. If the nurses had good sense—like the insurance companies—they would have said sorry I can’t help you. But they went any way.

 

Then there were the people like me from rich countries like Canada complaining that our  government was not getting the vaccines out fast enough.  Every government was criticized. Usually, the governments were all doing the best they could in novel circumstances without a proper playbook.

Yet, there were also people who cheated. Like the rich people who flew to the Yukon to pose as local people who were getting the vaccine faster than the people down south because indigenous people were suffering disproportionately.

Yet we are all in the west benefiting from dubious morality.  This is what The Guardian reported when the global deaths from Covid-19 exceeded 2 million:

“Meanwhile, the head of the World Health Organization has said the world is on the edge of a “catastrophic moral failure” in the distribution of Covid-19 vaccines with just 25 doses administered across all poor countries compared with 39 million in wealthier ones.”

 

Hoarding vaccines is not the same as  hoarding toilet paper.

Why are African Americans suspicious about vaccines?

Epidemics/Pandemics, Ethics, racism

 

Unfortunately, the colonial past of the USA and Canada means that African American and indigenous people have little trust in their governments.  For good reason they fear they might be taken advantage of because that has happened so often in the past. This is a stark reminder of the legacy of exploitation on the basis of race in both countries. The consequences of that racism are long, sinewy and durable.

In the US one incident stands out. That relates to 40 years of deadly experimentation at Tuskegee by Alabama scientists saturated with the dominant ideology of the time–white supremacy. Those experiments bred suspicion–justifiable suspicion. Those suspicions are now haunting the United States many decades later when it needs the trust of everyone–including African Americans.

It is well-known that historically people of colour have been taken advantage of during health emergencies. The African American men of Tuskegee Alabama were one group that was shamelessly exploited men.

More than 40 years ago scientists got the idea that they would like to “observe the natural history of syphilis.” They wanted to use subjects that were completely unaware that they were involved in an experiment as otherwise the data might be contaminated.  Well, the data was clean; the minds of the experimenters were not.

To keep the minds of the subjects uncompromised, the experimenters thought it would be reasonable to lie to their subjects about what was going on. The subjects thought they were being treated for blood problems. Actually, they had syphilis and were not being treated for blood problems or even for the life-threatening illness they did not know they had.

These experiments were not conducted by some shady medical operatives. They were conducted by the United States Public Health Service (USPHS). It was an offshoot of the government! As Ada McVean explained, “Even after penicillin was discovered as a safe and reliable cure for syphilis, the majority of men did not receive it.”

Here is the really horrific fact. As McVean said,

“Multiple times throughout the experiment researchers actively worked to ensure that their subjects did not receive treatment for syphilis.”

 Actually, the researchers took active steps to prevent participants from getting treatment that could have saved their lives.

Most of us have heard of experiments Nazis conducted on prisoners of war and in the death camps. Those prisoners had no choice. They were the victims of a totalitarian state.  How much better off were the African Americans?

Eventually  there was huge outrage across America. A Class action lawsuit was launched, as it should. In 1974, after I had already been in Law School for nearly 3 years, to put the time into context, Congress passed a law that scientists would be required to obtain informed consent from all subjects, even African Americans.

Yet, as I said, the legacy of exploitation is long and hard. That history is part of the reason that African Americans are reluctant to take vaccines even when their physicians or friends recommend them. And now the United States desperately needs the cooperation of African Americans. If insufficient numbers elect to take the vaccines the United States will not attain herd immunity and then the virus will continue to spread among the unvaccinated communities and, perhaps, even affect those who have been vaccinated, if the virus continues to mutate and evolve to  achieve victory over the vaccines. This poses a real risk to all Americans! Sometimes the effects of historic injustices can be felt through the generations.

McVean summarized the problem this way:

“We know all about evil Nazis who experimented on prisoners. We condemn the scientists in Marvel movies who carry out tests on prisoners of war. But we’d do well to remember that America has also used its own people as lab rats. Yet to this day, no one has been prosecuted for their role in dooming 399 men to syphilis.”

This is why historic injustices require truth and reconciliation. That is a lesson the United States has not learned. Canada claims to have learned, it but I am not sure they have.

 

Should Indigenous People trust White-man’s Medicine?

Epidemics/Pandemics, Indigenous People After Contact

 

Some people wonder why Indigenous people are suspicious of vaccines. The shouldn’t be.

Indigenous people in Canada, like African American people in the United States, have many reasons to be suspicious of statements made by Canadian Health authorities about what is good for indigenous people. Indigenous people have been lied to and exploited by Canadian health officials too many times to be sanguine about the advice they get from them. They have good reason for saying those health authorities do not have their best interests in mind.

 

At a time when all of Canada needs Indigenous people to trust the Canadian health authorities so that we can together achieve herd immunity and prevent the virus from mutating any more than it has, that would benefit everyone in Canada,  indigenous people are demonstrating hesitancy to take the vaccines that are available. The longer the disease is in Canada without being checked the more likely it is that the virus will mutate and perhaps become more harmful and overcome our defences including vaccines.

Yet as Elisa Levi an MD Candidate at the Michael G. DeGroote School of Medicine, member of Chippewas of Nawash, and Yellowhead Institute Research Fellow said about indigenous people,

“But it is equally important that they are given all the information necessary to make an informed decision and that their concerns are respected. Some members of Indigenous communities have legitimate concerns around medical treatments, rooted in historical trauma.”

 

We need to get Indigenous communities on side. Because of their high degree of socio-economic marginalization they suffer disproportionate risks of health problems and if they go untreated we all suffer. We need them on side not just to help them, but to help us too! As Levi said, “With a vaccine that is 95 per cent effective, it has been projected that 70 percent uptake is needed for community immunity.”

 However, to get them on side, we must take into consideration the historical trauma they have suffered because it has led to understandable vaccine hesitancy. As Levi put it,

“Indigenous people have good reason to distrust government.” There are many reasons for distrust, but here is an important one: “in the 1940s, government scientists performed nutrition experiments on Indigenous people without consent in some of these hospitals, as they did with children in residential schools.”

 

The history of Canada’s residential schools is horrific. I intend to blog about this more fully, but for now, I think now this issue relates the pandemic and our historic treatment of indigenous children.

As Leslie Young reported in Global News,

“Before 1940, tuberculosis was a leading cause of death in residential schools – even more than in the general population, the report found. In 1880, the tuberculosis death rate in Montreal and Toronto peaked at 200 out of every 100,000 people, according to the report.

The death rate from tuberculosis at residential schools meanwhile was upwards of 4,000 out of every 100,000 people, according to one contemporary estimate at the turn of the century.”

 

In other words, at its peak the death rate from tuberculosis was 20 times higher in residential schools than in Montreal and Toronto!

 Of course the indigenous children were subjected to even more deception than that. Experiments were conducted on them just as American scientists subjected African American children. It was all part a pattern of white supremacy. Non-white children just did not count. They weren’t important. They weren’t even human. As Young reported,

“Students at various residential schools were also used as involuntary guinea pigs in a variety of experiments, notably a number of studies on nutrition.

Students were given more or less milk, some were given vitamin C tablets (and others were not), some were given vitamin-enriched flour, and others were not. The intent was to determine whether these dietary interventions cut the incidence of various diseases – but the control group students were never given the chance to share in any benefits, and in some cases, children were denied access to dental care or iron supplements.

 

They were also used as research subjects without their or their parents’ consent.

All of this was camouflaged as science. But it was pure racism. To the white authorities the children were just objects. Dehumanized objects that they could do with as they chose.

We must remember, that these children were often taken away from their parents without their parents consent, to places where many were subjected to horrific emotional, physical and sexual abuse and then they were not protected from tuberculosis. And we did that all of that, purportedly, for their own good. At least that is what non-indigenous Canadians claimed. It was done because the officials said the parents of the indigenous children did not know how to take care of their children. They were incompetent parents, the adults said.

How can we expect indigenous people ever to trust the rest of us again? This demonstrates how historic injustice can come back to haunt the perpetrators and their successors. Now when non-indigenous Canadians  need the  cooperation of indigenous people, the lack of trust is seriously harmful to everyone.

 

The Common Good in a time of pandemic

Epidemics/Pandemics, Ethics, The Commons

 

In talking about vaccines, there is another significant and extremely interesting issue. I think we in Canada would acknowledge, unlike perhaps our neighbours to the south, that if you live in a society where only people of wealth and privilege have access to the vaccines that is unjust. I think the Americans have come to realize this too.  We and they  really are in this together, and that if everyone, or most people at least, don’t get vaccinated, we  will never achieve herd immunity. I think as a result Americans too have decided to make vaccines freely available to everyone. I guess they would call it “socialism, at least  for vaccines.”

In Canada this was never an issue, and we early on made the decision that the cost of the vaccines will be born collectively. I think we have made, through our elected political leaders, the right decision. Everyone who wants the vaccine should be able to have it at public expense.  Vaccines are a public good. In some countries that is not so clear. Then, I would submit, the case for justifying restrictions only on those who did not “voluntarily” take the vaccinations would be an uneasy one. It would be harder to justify the restrictions in such a society. Thankfully, that is not an issue in Canada. That shows the advantage of doing some things for the common good.

Most of us have come to appreciate that, except for some religious groups like the Church of God Restoration. They don’t appear to believe in the common good. They want to exercise their religious rights whether that is good for everyone or not.

As I said earlier, the government must justify its restrictions and the onus of proving that the restrictions are in fact justified is on the government. If the government is not able to prove the restrictions are justified on the basis I have shown, those restrictions cannot survive a challenge. Some people have argued that because it is estimated that it will take between 6-8 months to vaccinate everyone it is not a good idea to usher in a phased opening up of restrictions for those who have got the vaccine, because this will erode public trust and confidence in the system. People will feel resentful at what they believe is inequity. As a result, social cohesion is being jeopardized by such an approach. Social solidarity is a very valuable common good. That has been amplified demonstrated over and over again during this pandemic. We need social cohesion and trust. Without that we cannot have good government or good social and health policy. We must be careful not to jeopardize this important social good.

This is an argument worth considering. My own view is that this is a risk worth taking.  I recognize that social solidarity is common good that must be included in our weighing and balancing of those goods. I think those of us who are not at the head of the line for vaccines have to learn to suck it up for the common good. Those of us who do that must not be consumed by resentment. For the greater good, we have to learn to accept that. Then, if we do that successfully, we will have achieved greater social solidarity because those who got the advantages will be forced to acknowledge what those who got their benefits later agreed to allow others to go first.

Added to that, we must also consider that opening up the economy on a phased in basis, rather than waiting until everyone is safe, will bring about substantial economic benefits to which we will all have access. Then this would make economic and social sense. That would also be a common good.  The common good is very important.

I hope I am not being a Pollyanna a here. I would like to know what others think.

Difficult Cases make Bad Law and Bad Rules

Epidemics/Pandemics, Ethics, Freedom

 

Even with all the facts and good principles, there  usually are some difficult cases in many ethical disputes. There always are difficult cases in ethical disputes. What should be done about people who can’t be vaccinated for good reasons? For example, I understand pregnant women are being advised not to take the vaccines until enough scientific evidence is obtained that confirms it is safe for their fetus. Recently I heard that advice is being moderated by some doctors.

What should be done about people who have underlying medical conditions that make it unwise or unhealthy for them to take vaccines? Perhaps such people might have to wait until enough other people have taken the vaccines that herd immunity has been established. That is unfortunate for them, but is it  not a reasonable restriction to keep them isolated until it is safe for them to do so? Is it too much to ask them to remain at home and if they venture out social distance from others? Perhaps reasonable accommodation can be arranged for such people. If they venture out unprotected, they don’t harm only themselves. They endanger us all and our medial system as well. People should be allowed to do as they please (at least more than now) after they achieve anti-bodies or vaccines. Until it is established that they can’t transmit the virus we have the right to demand they follow health restrictions.

Freedom is an important good, but it is not  an absolute one.