Context of social media polarizing & tech fraud

 In what way can a dominant narrative be both accurate and unintentionally misleading?

The conventional wisdom is that we live in a time of political polarization. However, it turns out that few people are actually polarized. How many of us actually know of anyone who has become polarized? Perhaps a friend of a friend has gotten swept up in conspiracy theories. But ordinary life just keeps chugging along for 85% of Americans. And the 15% who are polarized were always polarized. Moreover, this disaffection might only be political in a superficial way. Perhaps a parallel might be found in academia, where most professors are not political, and those who are political are mostly political in a “fantasy football” kind of way. In fact, it seems like the alienated people who get into conspiracy theories are the same kind of people who would have joined religious cults in the 1970s. The conspiracy theories today have a political varnish, but the essence of the conspiracy subculture is to pull away from the real world and political engagement into collective fantasy.

We blame social media for polarization. Indeed, social media deliberately amplifies engagement by feeding people news and information that triggers their anger. But it’s not certain that social media is the primary issue in the polarization of the electorate (or, at least, the polarization of a small segment of it). Blaming social media might be equivalent to the way that comic books were blamed for the crime wave of the 1950s (which still remains a mystery). Social media might have become a scapegoat the way outsiders are demonized in a small town, with a sense that “Everything was so beautiful and perfect until they moved in.” In reality, things were never so great and there have been ongoing changes throughout society that might have triggered polarization more than social media has (for example, the abandonment of the working class by both political parties).

First, if social media did not deliberately engage people politically, people might still use social media in such a way that this would happen anyway. For example, Twitter does not require people to identify themselves and this seems to promote hostility; on Facebook people do generally identify themselves and there is possibly more hostility.

Second, one must also look at the creeping changes in mainstream media. When Ted Turner first launched CNN, it was quite different from today’s CNN. CNN back then was truly international and cosmopolitan and professional, with international reporters like Peter Arnett reporting live from war zones. Today, CNN feels both domesticated and slick, like watching Good Morning America, and newscasters on CNN seem just as openly biased as Fox News. In fact, to what extent is the rise of Fox News a reaction to the changes at CNN?

Third, there was always polarization. The kind of older and rural men who watch Fox News always existed — but they used to listen to AM radio. The young people who used to listen to FM radio now watch late night talk shows (which back in Johnny Carson’s day was the domain of old men with insomnia). So, again, only the medium has changed. Moreover, unlike AM radio, everyone encounters Fox News and CNN — and so we are actually less stuck in isolated siloes. But this new visibility of political extremes in itself does not reflect an increase in polarization among most people. The mainstream media once had a formal, objective, and cold feel, but today the vibe is different. One could once see this kind of evolution in TV shows like “LA Law”. After years of popularity and critical recognition, they would chase their fading popularity by shedding the realism that once made them respectable in favor of outrageous stunts. Perhaps a CNN that once felt so bracing for viewers in the 1980s came to feel boring and so they jumped the shark.

The choice was made to not regulate the “new media” the way that the “old media” such as newspapers is regulated. The negative legacy of this might not be political polarization, but rather the cryptocurrency bubble. That is, the techno-utopianism that underpinned an unregulated social media merged with the speculative instincts that seemed to have been unleashed in the 1980s and the offspring of this joining was cryptocurrency. If the financial sector had gotten in on the crypto boom the way they had wanted to, the economy might be worse now than in 2009. 

The lasting lesson of all of this might be the legitimacy and relevance of TRADITION. The centuries of legal tradition that had evolved around regulating public speech in the English-speaking world was therefore largely ignored with the rise of social media. There never was a “new media” that had a radically different nature from newspapers and radio and television. Moreover, perhaps the same is true of the “new economy”. Like the deinstitutionalization of mentally ill people onto the streets in the 1970s, the 1990s attitudes towards new technology were a reaction to repression in communist states. It was left-wing techno-utopian anarchists (some of them teenagers) who urged that the “new media” should be a realm of pure, unrestricted freedom because, they felt, “all information must be liberated”. That assault on privacy and liberty was quickly adopted by the new mega-corporations whose core business became trading in everyone’s personal information. 

In sum, much has been written about how social media has intensified a toxic political culture — but upon reflection there is rarely any empirical proof provided in relevant discussions of social media. There seem to be polarizing influences in the mainstream media that did not exist before that few have noticed. Social media might be a target of criticism because of its relative newness, the way that Walmart and MicroSoft were once lamented as “monopolies” that dominated our lives because they were new and suddenly ubiquitous. Nevertheless, the criticism that popular romanticism blinded policy on public speech in the early days of social media is valid but its malignant influence lies in areas outside of politics. 

An analogy to the decontextualized criticism of social media might be found in the debate on gun control. The connection between gun violence and the availability of guns is unmistakable.

.https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/10/2/16399418/america-mass-shooting-gun-violence-statistics-charts

Another issue is the types of guns that Americans are drawn to. In Europe, police officers can be seen carrying relatively small .32 revolvers, and the breach-loading shotgun is the typical rifle owned by civilians. In the USA, Americans buy the guns that cops use — and the American police use military-grade weapons, in particular, the NATO standard 9 mm semi-automatic pistol and the AR-15 rifle. But the guns that Americans buy keep getting more powerful because the narcotics that Americans get high on keep getting more powerful — and small calibers will simply not have enough stopping power. When police encountered enough violent people high on PCP (angle dust), there was a shift to using mace or putting suspects in choke holds; but people who have been hit with chemicals or choked out are put in a sitting position (in a police car) with their hands behind their backs (handcuffed), it turns out that they can go into cardiac arrest. There was then another policy shift toward using solid steel batons to subdue people who don’t listen or seem irrational and who might be on drugs — although this also describes many mentally ills people. (Also, there are now more women police officers, and they are not going to choke or beat anyone because they are too small, so there is more emphasis on using guns.)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Let_It_Fall:_Los_Angeles_1982%E2%80%931992

Europeans like the French are old-fashioned alcoholics, and Americans are drug addicts. In the future, there will be narcotics more powerful than anything anyone can conceive, and American police and civilians will respond rationally with greater firepower — with harsh side-effects on American society.

(“Dr. No”, 1962, James Bond reluctantly upgrades from a .25 to a .32)

.

(“The Irishman”, 2019, The cops call a .32 a woman’s gun)

.

(“Traffik”, 1989, speech about new drugs in penultimate scene)

.

(“Let It Fall”, 2017, trailer)

.

Just as we need to contextualize the way that social media stimulates political polarization, we need to contextualize fraud in the tech industry. 

Recently, there seems to have been a sudden reversal in the public perception of tech leaders who have been found to be engaged in fraud. 

They were once perceived as visionaries but now they are seen as sociopaths.

The argument here is that they might be better understood as overconfident, over-educated fools who are engaged in the same kind of speculation that has seized the entire culture.

A contrast might be made with the financier Bernie Madoff, who turned his firm into a total pyramid scheme.

Investment firms invest in each other — but none of them invested in Madoff because the growth of his profits was too impressive and divorced from the fluctuations of the stock market.

They knew that something was wrong, but they could not conceive that Madoff was engaged in an outright Ponzi scheme.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernie_Madoff

In 1999, financial analyst Harry Markopolos had informed the SEC that he believed it was legally and mathematically impossible to achieve the gains Madoff claimed to deliver. According to Markopolos, it took him four minutes to conclude that Madoff’s numbers did not add up, and another minute to suspect they were fraudulent.^[86]

After four hours of failed attempts to replicate Madoff’s numbers, Markopolos believed he had mathematically proven Madoff was a fraud.^[87] He was ignored by the SEC’s Boston office in 2000 and 2001, as well as by Meaghan Cheung at the SEC’s New York office in 2005 and 2007 when he presented further evidence. He has since co-authored a book with Gaytri D. Kachroo, the leader of his legal team, titled No One Would Listen. The book details the frustrating efforts he and his legal team made over a ten-year period to alert the government, the industry, and the press about Madoff’s fraud.^[86]

Although Madoff’s wealth management business ultimately grew into a multibillion-dollar operation, none of the major derivatives firms traded with him because they did not believe his numbers were real. None of the major Wall Street firms invested with him, and several high-ranking executives at those firms suspected his operations and claims were not legitimate.^[87] Others contended it was inconceivable that the growing volume of Madoff’s accounts could be competently and legitimately serviced by his documented accounting/auditing firm, a three-person firm with only one active accountant.

When Madoff was finally arrested, he just laughed and asked “What took you so long?”

Madoff’s flippancy at being caught was interpreted as proof of his sociopathy.

Yet as former chairman of NASDAQ, Madoff was always highly respected within financial circles, and there is no classic pattern of sociopathic behavior in his early life.

In fact, when Madoff was initially investigated five years prior to his eventual arrest, he was dismayed that the most basic review of his finances was never made.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernie_Madoff

I was astonished. They never even looked at my stock records. If investigators had checked with The Depository Trust Company, a central securities depository, it would’ve been easy for them to see. If you’re looking at a Ponzi scheme, it’s the first thing you do.

It was the high regard in which he was held that enabled him to scam so many smart people.

Madoff was held in high esteem because so much of his earlier career had been scrupulous.

Madoff targeted wealthy American Jewish communities, using his in-group status to obtain investments from Jewish individuals and institutions. Affected Jewish charitable organizations considered victims of this affinity fraud include Hadassah, the Women’s Zionist Organization of America, the Elie Wiesel Foundation and Steven Spielberg‘s Wunderkinder Foundation. Jewish federations and hospitals lost millions of dollars, forcing some organizations to close. The Lappin Foundation, for instance, was forced to close temporarily because it had invested its funds with Madoff.

Madoff got his start in penny stocks, and there is the possibility that he engaged in fraud in order to survive and then found that this made him extremely successful.

Of course, he would have know that he would have eventually been caught, but turning himself in would have been suicidal in his mind.

The cases of traders who lost billions of dollars and covered it up and destroyed their firms is instructive.

After making one bad bet, they tried to cover their losses by hiding it and making bigger and more reckless bets which simply snowballed their losses.

In later interviews, they described getting caught as a huge relief after all their lies and hiding and anxiety.

Madoff might have been different in that he owned the firm and everybody admired him — and so the scam just kept on rolling along.

Of course he would have laughed at getting caught because he had expected to get caught decades ago.

The difference between Madoff and would-be tech leaders who go to prison for fraud is that they don’t perceive their fraud as fraud.

The business culture that they are immersed in involves a “fake it ’til you make it” mentality.

That is, certain tech leaders have a business plan that they see as visionary but they know does not yet function — but they feel that it will in the future.

For example, after getting fired from Apple in the 1980s, Steve Jobs went into building a $10,000 computer for the educational market; when that failed, he focused on developing the software of that computer as a product that Apple would buy — and which would serve as a Trojan horse for him to get back into the leadership at Apple.

It might be tempting for young tech entrepreneurs to extrapolate from such a lesson and feel that although they have a product that turns out to be bogus, something great will come of it.

That might be the kind of thinking that Elon Musk is engaged in after his impulsive purchase of Twitter.

Musk seems to have brainstormed that Twitter could be turned into a payment app — and then might have pivoted again to the idea of using Twitter to build a conservative media empire (which steals the spotlight from both Fox News and Donald Trump).

This mentality of being able to radically change plans is said to characterize the software industry from which Musk originates.

This is the source of much humor in HBO’s “Silicon Valley”, in which a company building a product (like a compression program) suddenly switches to developing a totally different product (like a server).

But this mix of superficial public image, inner emptiness, and exuberant confidence in a glorious future seems to pervade American culture in general.

Once upon a time, students went to college and majored in accounting and pharmacy in order to make a life for themselves in their trade.

Today, high school students spend their free time building their own personal brand — although they have no real product to sell.

This is because they assume that in the future they will have something worth selling.

That there are graduates of Stanford and MIT engaging in outrageous fraud doesn’t mean they know that they are doing so because that’s become central to the culture.

Just as we need to contextualize the way that social media stimulates political polarization, we need to contextualize fraud in the tech industry. 

Universal coronavirus vaccines

 Japan has launched a five-year, $2 billion initiative to develop the capacity to be able to create a vaccine within 100 days from the start of a future pandemic.

That is, when a possible plague is detected and its genome is sequenced, Japan will be able to produce vaccines three months later.

.https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-03000-3

Japan’s $2-billion initiative to prep pandemic vaccines in 100 days

A new centre will invest in shots for a range of infectious diseases so the country is ready for future outbreaks.

After recognizing that Japan was slow to develop vaccines for COVID-19, the government has pledged to invest US$2 billion in a vaccine-research initiative to ensure that the country is ready to respond promptly to future epidemics.

The Strategic Center of Biomedical Advanced Vaccine Research and Development for Preparedness and Response (SCARDA) will initially invest in vaccine research for eight pathogens, including coronaviruses, monkeypox, dengue virus and Zika virus, using a range of technologies for vaccine delivery, such as mRNA technology, viral vectors and recombinant proteins.

In recognition of this delay, the Japanese government established SCARDA in March; the centre will launch formally in November, says Ishii. The government has realized that developing vaccines is complicated and takes resources, and has given the field a boost, says Toshihiro Horii, a vaccinologist at Osaka University. “That is a tremendously huge amount of money,” he says.

Japan’s initiative is modeled after Western programs.

Hundred-day goal

SCARDA’s aim will be to produce diagnostic tests, treatments and vaccines ready for large-scale production within the first 100 days of a pathogen with pandemic potential being identified. This 100-day mission was first proposed by the United Kingdom in 2021, and backed by the other countries in the G7 group of wealthy nations. Similar initiatives include the US Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Agency (BARDA); this coordinates the development of vaccines, drugs and diagnostics in response to public-health emergencies, including pandemics, and invested in several COVID-19 vaccines.

“Since SCARDA is a new organization, it has much to learn from BARDA,” and other initiatives funding vaccines such as the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations, says Michinari Hamaguchi, director general of SCARDA.

Two particular programs within this initiative are notable:

• The development of universal coronavirus vaccine that people would take once a year for protection against any and all coronaviruses.
• The development of vaccines for more specific coronaviruses related to SARS diseases.

Two of SCARDA’s first approved projects aim to develop universal coronavirus vaccines and vaccines against a group of coronaviruses related to severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), such as SARS-CoV-2. Another project will create a fast-track system for evaluating vaccine candidates.

Japan’s centre will operate with around 30 members of staff and funding to last 5 years. Of the allotted $2 billion, $1.2 billion will go to vaccine research and development projects, and $400 million will be used to support start-ups in drug development. Another $400 million will be spent on setting up a virtual network of centres of excellence for basic research in vaccine science, and testing vaccine candidates in early-stage trials. The goal is “to find seeds for future vaccines”, says Kawaoka.

In addition to the central research centre based in Tokyo, there will be four core institutes — Osaka University, Nagasaki University, Hokkaido University and Chiba University. Another five institutions will provide support services such as animal models.

The Japanese initiative is modeled after the Western initiatives, but the article does not mention to what degree there is cooperation or redundancy between them.

One of the motives of the initiative might be the technological spin offs that might result from any scientific breakthrough.

For example, the mRNA vaccines are applicable to the treatment of cancer.

An analogy might be the New Zealand government’s subsidies to its film industry, which also benefits New Zealand’s software industry and its tourism industry.

A more focused effort is to develop a “universal” vaccine that would apply to any and all possible mutations of the Covid-19 virus (SARS-CoV-2).

Such a vaccine might be available in 2024.

As narrow as this ambition might seem because it focuses only on the Covid virus, historically, it would be an unprecedented achievement.

.https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20220815-the-hunt-for-a-universal-covid-19-jab

[A] challenge that has long proved insurmountable for scientists [is] to develop vaccines that can not only protect against a single coronavirus, but multiple strains, varieties, and perhaps even entire families of them. A comparable feat has never been managed in the history of virology, after more than two decades of chasing the same goal in influenza yielded little of note. Some have even compared the task’s ambition, scope and difficulty to the infamous Manhattan Project of the 1940s, which pushed the boundaries of physics at the time, and yielded the world’s first atomic bomb.

Money is being thrown at the target in unprecedented sums. CEPI have allocated an initial budget of around $200m (£169m/€193m), with the NIH adding an additional $36m (£30m/€35m) to the pot. Buoyed by their success in developing one of the first Covid-19 vaccines, Moderna has recently entered the fray, announcing their intention to produce a vaccine which could protect against all four coronaviruses that cause the common cold.

Heeney knows the road ahead better than anyone, having also spent the last few years attempting to develop a single vaccine that can protect against different viral haemorrhagic fevers – Ebola, Marburg virus and Lassa fever.

The ultimate goal is to develop a universal vaccine that would protect against all forms of coronaviruses.

However, this will not be achieved until further off in the future.

Developing vaccines that would protect against variants of Covid is therefore a steppingstone to the greater goal of creating a vaccine that would apply to all coronaviruses.

All scientists agree that a truly universal vaccine, which could protect against every single coronavirus that might emerge in future, would be a genuinely game-changing moment for human health, especially in the wake of the devastation caused by the Sars, Mers and Sars-CoV-2 (the virus that causes Covid-19) outbreaks of the last 20 years.

But while this would be the pinnacle of pan-coronavirus vaccine research, it remains to be seen whether it can actually be achieved. Instead some feel that various intermediate targets are more realistic, before scientists consider expanding the remit of these jabs.

As a result, the first step towards a possible universal coronavirus vaccine is likely to be a so-called “variant-proof” vaccine, which aims to protect against all current and future strains of Sars-CoV-2 and help end the worst impacts of the pandemic. With the continuing emergence of problematic variants causing repeated surges in case numbers and hospitalisations, beginning with Alpha in September 2020, to Delta, Omicron, and now BA.4 and BA.5, the need for such a vaccine remains high.All sorts of vaccine technologies are being explored.

In order to do this, scientists are trialling a kaleidoscope of vaccine technologies. They range from modified, harmless viruses known as adenoviruses to ferritin nanoparticles and self-amplifying RNA, which works in a similar fashion to messenger RNA (mRNA) except it can copy itself once inside the body’s cells, meaning much smaller doses are needed.

In each case, the general idea is more or less the same. Whether carried by a nanoparticle or an adenovirus, each vaccine contains a variety of different fragments of the Sars-CoV-2 virus’ spike proteins (which the virus uses to bind to human cells to gain access), and nucleocapsid proteins (which store its genetic material). Some vaccine-makers are looking to incorporate as many fragments as possible to increase the chances of having a broader immune response, while others are focusing on specific parts of the virus that seem to be conserved across each of the strains that have emerged so far. At Duke University, virologists are targeting a particular part of the spike protein known as the receptor binding domain (RBD), as this region appears to have relatively little variation between different forms of the same coronavirus.

Because of the increased complexity of the challenge, progress will be slower compared to the first wave of Covid-19 vaccines. None of the variant-proof vaccines in development have progressed beyond phase I clinical trials (the first test in humans), but the initial data appears to be promising.

Some scientists, however, are looking to develop universal vaccines that take aim at less notorious viruses.

For example, sometimes when we catch a cold, we say that we have a case of the “flu”.

However, many of those cases of the “flu” are not actually caused by influenza viruses.

In fact, some of those inconvenient colds that knock us out for a couple of days are caused by obscure coronaviruses.

Tackling the common cold

Rather than entering the competitive landscape of Covid-19 vaccines, other researchers have decided to look at different forms of pan-coronavirus vaccines.

These are OC43, HKU1, 229E, and NL63, not household names, but the majority of us will have unknowingly encountered them at some point in our lives. They are responsible for around 30% of common colds in adults, and while these viruses have nowhere near the fatality rate of Sars-CoV-2, they can still lead to lower respiratory tract infections and pneumonia in the vulnerable.
There is also an effort to develop a vaccine that would protect against SARS-related coronaviruses.

This in itself is already an ambitious goal, attempting to vaccinate against a group of different coronaviruses, but other scientists are setting the bar even higher. Rather than designing vaccines against existing viruses, they want to initiate humanity’s preparations for the next pandemic.

Pamela Bjorkman, a professor of biology and biological engineering at the California Institute of Technology, is leading a project to develop a jab which can immunise against any sarbecoronavirus – severe acute respiratory syndrome–related coronavirus – a collective which includes Sars, Mers, Sars-CoV-2 as well as other as-yet-unknown threats harboured within animals. Heeney’s team is targeting an even larger viral cluster – the entire group of betacoronaviruses, one of four groups of coronaviruses which includes the sarbecoronavirus sub-group.

While a pan-betacoronavirus jab would still not come close to being a universal coronavirus vaccine – it would still leave the other three groups of coronaviruses, alpha, delta and gamma, untargeted – it is still an incredibly challenging goal. To illustrate the sheer scale of the task, there are thought to be thousands of as-yet undiscovered betacoronaviruses residing within more than 400 different bat species.

Universal vaccines for coronaviruses might be more feasible than universal vaccines for influenza viruses because coronaviruses mutate at a slower rate.

The big question for all pan-coronavirus vaccine developers is whether they can succeed where pan-influenza vaccines have failed. The NIH’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases unit has an annual budget of approximately $220m (£180m/€212m) for universal flu vaccine research but progress has been minimal despite decades of striving. However, there is hope that the challenge may be slightly less complex in coronaviruses because in general, they are not so prone to mutating.

Scientists are hopeful that the first variant-proof Covid-19 vaccines will be available by 2024, potentially ushering in a wave of coronavirus jabs offering increasingly broad protection. For many, this would be up there with some of the most important breakthroughs in modern healthcare.

.

The bigger question is how many people will get vaccinated if universal vaccines are developed?

For example, as of late 2022 with regard to the Covid vaccines:

• 20% of Americans have not been vaccinated even once, 
• one-third of Americans have not gotten a second dose of vaccine, and
• two-thirds of Americans have not gotten their third dose.

Hundreds of Americans are dying each day from Covid, and it is primarily because they have not been adequately vaccinated.

Dr. Anthony Fauci noted that with the availability of safe and effective vaccines, there is no reason why ANYONE should be dying of Covid.

Who should get the new boosters, and when?

.https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/vaccines/stay-up-to-date.html

CDC recommends that people ages 12 years and older receive one updated (bivalent) booster if it has been at least 2 months since their last COVID-19 vaccine dose, whether that was:

• Their final primary series dose, or
• An original (monovalent) booster

People who have had more than one original (monovalent) booster are also recommended to get an updated (bivalent) booster.

The new boosters are called “bivalent” because they prepare the body to fight for both the original strain of Covid as well as the new variants.

This offers protection from many variants, because when the immune system faces different versions of the same virus it generates broader protections overall.

A booster with the new vaccines decrease the likelihood of infection and severe illness and help reduce transmission of the virus.

It could also decrease the likelihood of developing long Covid.

Also, despite common claims to the contrary, vaccines still help dampen spread, and boosters can further reduce transmission of the disease.

This includes reducing infections in the first place, and thus help protect especially the more vulnerable.

Even when variants cause breakthroughs, vaccines still prevent serious illness and death, and even more so with boosters.

However, for various reasons, Americans are not getting the new boosters.

.https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/15/opinion/covid-booster-shot.html

.

How often will people be reinfected with Covid?

There were almost no reinfections during the first year of Covid in 2020.

However, since the arrival of variants, everybody is experiencing reinfection.

.https://www.newyorker.com/science/annals-of-medicine/how-many-times-will-you-get-covid

During the first year of the pandemic, when reports of coronavirus reinfections started to trickle in, the phenomenon was considered exceedingly rare—“a microliter-sized drop in the bucket,” as one virologist put it. As of October, 2020, the world had recorded thirty-eight million coronavirus cases and fewer than five confirmed reinfections. Two years later, the bucket is overflowing. It’s now clear that not only will just about everyone contract the coronavirus, but we’re all likely to be infected multiple times. The virus evolves too efficiently, our immunity wanes too quickly, and, although covid vaccines have proved remarkably durable against serious illness, they haven’t managed to break the chain of transmission.

Rational people now fear Covid not for the death that it might have caused prior to the vaccines but because reinfection may cause them long-term harm.

The so-called “endemic stage” that was promised turns out to be rougher and somewhat more dangerous than what we had anticipated.

On the whole, however, things are continuing to improve on the Covid front with each new round of vaccinations — and reinfections — as humans slowly build their immunity to Covid.

In the U.S., covid is still on pace to kill more than a hundred thousand people per year; many of us share the reasonable worry that some future reinfection will be the one that causes longer-term harm to our health and quality of life. Has our battle with covid-19 come to such a standstill that a slow burn of disruption, debility, and death will continue for years to come?

The specialists I consulted for this story shared a conviction that, despite the relentlessness of reinfections, our covid woes are slowly starting to recede. They said that, although coronavirus infections will always carry risks, and we may still suffer periodic surges and new variants, infections should get less serious and less frequent as our immunity grows. Vaccines and therapeutics will also continue to improve, helping to lessen the worst effects of reinfection. But the duration and severity of this transitional period matters, too. How many times will we have to sit through quarantines and ride out symptoms, worrying how bad this one might be? How many more surprises could the coronavirus have in store?

The rate of reinfection has increased with each new variant.

The reinfection era began in earnest last winter, when the Omicron variant first spread around the globe. A recent study conducted in Serbia found that for people who were infected in the first twenty months of the pandemic, the risk of reinfection rose steadily but slowly: at six months, around one in a hundred had been reinfected; at twelve months, one in twenty; and at eighteen months, one in five. But Omicron sent reinfections skyrocketing. Nearly ninety per cent of all reinfections occurred in the study’s final month, January, 2022. (The researchers found that one in a hundred reinfections led to hospitalization, and one in a thousand resulted in death.) By some estimates, the initial Omicron outbreak caused ten times as many reinfections as the earlier Delta variant. And Omicron now circulates in the form of even more contagious subvariants, such as BA.4 and BA.5.

However, reinfection is inconsequential as long as our immunity to Covid has not faded, if our system still recognizes a mutated virus, and if exposure is only to small amounts of virus.

Fundamentally, our risk of reinfections depends on three main factors: 

• how much our immunity has waned, 
• how much the virus has changed, and 
• how much of it we encounter. 

Our collective immunity increases with infections, reinfections, and vaccines. Booster shots are meant to slow the drawdowns in our immunity, and the recently approved bivalent vaccines, which target the Omicron subvariants BA.4 and BA.5, may be particularly helpful. But the immune system must be judicious: it encounters countless threats and can’t maintain enormous standing armies for each one. Over time, our bodies pare back their defenses, and whether we’re reinfected depends partly on how quickly and intensely they remobilize during the next encounter.

Our immune protections also exert pressure on the virus to evolve around them. Viruses can change so much that the body has trouble recognizing and subduing them. The original Omicron variant had at least thirty-two mutations on its spike protein—twice as many as Delta—and, in recent months, its subvariants have accumulated many more. sars-CoV-2 is mutating faster than any of its cousin coronaviruses—faster, even, than the world’s dominant flu strain.

Finally, the chance you’re reinfected is a function of “viral dose.” It’s more than just a numbers game: our immune cells have to be stationed in the right places. “It’s like real estate in Manhattan,” Florian Krammer, a virologist at Mount Sinai’s Medical School, told me. “Location really matters.” covid vaccines injected into muscle produce relatively high levels of antibodies in the blood and lungs, but not in the nose, mouth, and upper airways, where the coronavirus usually enters. (Natural infection seems to produce a longer-lasting immune response in the nasal cavity.) That’s why scientists are so interested in mucosal vaccines, which are administered in the nose or mouth. India and China recently authorized such vaccines, but it’s still not clear how effective they’ll be.

There are four other types of coronaviruses other than the Covid virus that afflict humans

However, they cause only cold symptoms because the human immune system knows how to deal with them. 

This familiarity also reduces the frequency of infection because the immune system has learned how to block the virus from reproducing even a little in the body.

Thus, these viruses tend to reinfect humans only every three years, either with or without symptoms. 

Humans are now gradually developing an immunity to Covid.

Within five years or sooner, humanity might reach a point where we will only be reinfected with Covid once every five years. 

But that would still mean that many of us could get Covid ten times or more in our lifetimes.

Importantly, reinfection might still be a big problem — for some people.

People who are reinfected by the virus are much more likely to suffer a range of medical problems in subsequent months, including heart attacks, strokes, breathing problems, mental-health problems, and kidney disorders, according to a major new analysis of U.S. veterans.

There are some caveats. The study has not yet been published in a peer-reviewed journal, and many veterans are older men with multiple medical conditions, so they have a higher level of risk than the general population. It’s also possible that people who get reinfected are somehow dissimilar from those who don’t. Al-Aly was careful to note that a second infection isn’t necessarily worse than a first one—rather, that it’s worse than not getting reinfected at all.

The bad news is that getting reinfected with Covid might remain risky.

The “good” news is that people die all the time from viruses, but with Covid vaccines and reinfections the deaths won’t be as overwhelming as they were in 2020.

Recently, I called Florian Krammer, the Mount Sinai virologist, and outlined a pessimistic scenario: a future in which covid reinfections are common, dangerous, and inevitable. “When you say it like that, it sounds very bad,” Krammer admitted. “But I actually don’t see it that way.” There’s nothing special about the coronavirus, he argued. Yes, sars-CoV-2 caused a global pandemic, but he thinks that was primarily because of its novelty. We perceive the virus as unique because we’re so focussed on it—it’s one of the most closely studied pathogens in human history—but it obeys the same general rules as other viruses.

Viruses have always caused a variety of immediate and lasting health problems. It’s just that “most people haven’t been paying attention,” Krammer said. Long before this pandemic, for example, viral infections were linked to diabetes, cancer, heart problems, and autoimmune conditions. Five years ago, in her book on the 1918 influenza pandemic, the journalist Laura Spinney wrote about people who suffered prolonged weakness, fatigue, brain fog, insomnia, and mood changes. 

In parts of Africa, post-viral syndromes were so widespread among farmers that they’re thought to have triggered a famine. Recent research suggests that even non-pandemic influenza may be associated with protracted symptoms: according to researchers at Oxford, nearly a third of people who contract the flu virus today report symptoms that resemble long covid, and could be suffering what might be called “long flu.”

“In the long run, sars-CoV-2 will be just another respiratory virus,” Krammer predicted.

Al-Aly was less sanguine. He sees little reason that covid risks will necessarily drop to the level of influenza, and, in any case, we’re not there yet. “We have to balance the need for normalcy with the need to protect the health of the people,” he said. Still, he agreed with Krammer and the other experts on one thing: the added burden of a third, fourth, or fifth infection will probably be lower than the first or second. Each new infection may come with diminishing marginal pains. “There will come a point where reinfection will not add more risk,” Al-Aly said. “Whether that is the sixth or seventh or nth infection, we don’t know yet.”

.

Vaccine hesitancy might be as greater in parts of the developing world than in the USA.

In the developing world, however, vaccine hesitancy might not primarily be based on political polarization or lessened social cohesion and loss of social trust.

In fact, quite the opposite, if the case of New Caledonia is any indication.

The source of vaccine hesitancy in the developing world might be traditions that underpin social cohesion. 

From a March, 2022 New York Times story:

.https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/12/world/australia/new-caledonia-coronavirus.html

On Pacific Islands Covid Once Spared, an Outbreak Accentuates Inequality

New Caledonia escaped the coronavirus for a year and a half, but a surge in cases has led to a state of emergency, with the disease disproportionately hurting the French territory’s Indigenous people.

Historically, people in New Caledonia have responded to pandemics by sealing their borders for years.

With a locally sourced complete diet and an economy based on subsistence, this is not the kind of challenge it would pose to a globally integrated modern society.

Unfortunately, the habits of the people have not caught up to the reality of living in a modern France administered from Paris.

With the introduction of vaccines, New Caledonia was opened to travel — but the New Caledonians largely failed to get vaccinated.

They were hit hard by the Delta variant.

NOUMÉA, New Caledonia — Festooned with hibiscus flowers and woven palm fronds, scores of guests gathered for a celebration during New Caledonia’s wedding season. The aroma of grilled fish and yams bathed in coconut milk wafted over the revelers on the island of Lifou, population 10,000.

The celebration on the atoll in late August seemed safe. For a year and a half, New Caledonia, a French territory in the South Pacific, had escaped the coronavirus pandemic. Quarantines and border controls kept the virus out, just like they had done during the worst of the influenza pandemic a century earlier.

But by mid-September, the Delta variant was racing across New Caledonia, home to about 270,000 people. Of the nearly 13,300 people who tested positive within the span of a few weeks, more than 280 people died, a higher mortality rate than what the United States or France experienced last year.

The Omicron variant has been more merciful than the Delta, but vaccination rates remain relatively low in New Caledonia.

Of all the South Pacific islands recently struggling with outbreaks, New Caledonia was among the most inundated, prompting the government to declare a state of emergency earlier this year. Less than 70 percent of the population has been fully vaccinated, despite plentiful supplies. (Few people here have died from Omicron, compared with Delta, and the surge has eased in recent days.)

Local vaccine resistance might at first seem libertarian — but the mentality is really traditionalistic and communal.

A protest encampment on a coastal road in Nouméa, the capital, is decorated with hand-scrawled signs declaring “non” to vaccine mandates and health passes.

Serious coronavirus infections have disproportionately affected New Caledonians of Pacific Island descent, highlighting social inequalities in a territory that is agonizing over whether to break free of France.

What some observers often do not notice is that indigenous peoples tend to be ultraconservative and their lives are governed by tradition, religion, and ritual.

An independence referendum in December failed in part because many Indigenous Kanaks, who make up about 40 percent of the population, boycotted the vote. They had called for a delay because traditional mourning rituals for those who died of Covid precluded political campaigning. (After so many deaths from Delta, some New Caledonians have been consumed by the Kanak rituals of grief, which unfold over a year.) Paris, unmoved, forged ahead with the referendum.

The habits of American journalists might be to perceive indigenous peoples as victims of “inequality”, but this sort of analysis might be compromised.

In fact, the indigenous people of New Caledonia have some of the best medical facilities in all of France.

New Caledonia’s health system benefits from the largess of the French state, which heavily subsidizes the territory. Critically ill Covid patients are warded in a state-of-the-art intensive care unit at the Médipôle Hospital near Nouméa, far fancier than many facilities in France. When cases spiked last year, about 300 medical professionals converged on New Caledonia, coming from France and its overseas territories.

But the strong social safety net hasn’t bridged the divide between New Caledonia’s population of Indigenous Oceanians and largely white migrants. Eighty percent of doctors at Médipôle are from France, hospital officials said. There are few Kanak doctors in all of New Caledonia, and none at Médipôle.

The real problem in New Caledonia might be too much equality.

As equal citizens of a generous French state, the indigenous peoples have lost control of their borders and their way of life.

High levels of diabetes, hypertension and obesity among people of South Pacific descent have compounded New Caledonia’s Covid crisis, doctors said. The territory may be one of the richest places in the South Pacific because of French subsidies and mineral wealth, but the income gap is wide. Most of New Caledonia’s impoverished people are Melanesian Kanaks and Polynesian immigrants from a pinprick French territory called Wallis and Futuna. European settlers, who make up about one-quarter of the population, tend to occupy the upper wealth rungs.

As Frenchmen, New Caledonians are compelled to accept an unhealthy and alienating existence.

As more Kanaks move from tribal villages to Nouméa, congregating in grim apartment blocks, they leave behind gardens brimming with taro, yam and plentiful vegetables and fruits.

But fresh produce is expensive in the capital, with prices skewed by the high salaries given to employees of the French state. In Nouméa, boulangeries selling croissants made with imported French butter stand next to groceries offering wilted greens at exorbitant prices. The cheapest fare is processed snacks and sugary sodas.

“When I was a child, there were few fat people here,” said Dr. Thierry de Greslan, 52, a neurologist at Médipôle. “But our sedentary lifestyles and bad diet have created a terrible problem, and that has made us very scared of Covid.”

When the French did attempt to be benevolent, it so often made things worse.

A scattering of islands strewn north of New Zealand, New Caledonia has long seen its history shaped by disease. Europeans arrived in the 19th century, bringing with them pathogens and toxic notions of empire. The French colonial administration herded Kanaks onto reservations and stole their land.

Diseases like cholera and smallpox proliferated. A campaign to force Kanaks to whitewash their homes led to high cancer rates from the asbestos in the white clay. Three-quarters of a century after their first contact with Europeans, the Kanak population had declined by about half.

One of the bright spots of New Caledonia’s history was their ability to restrict travel during the 1918 influenza pandemic.

The locals seem to have thought that the same policy of restricted travel would remain in place until Covid largely disappeared from the world.

Thus, so many indigenous New Caledonians did not get themselves vaccinated.

However, French courts determined that with the availability of Covid vaccines, the restrictions on travel were illegal.

But when the influenza pandemic began racing around the world a century ago, New Caledonia was one of the few places on the planet to emerge largely unscathed. A strict quarantine kept the virus out until 1921, by which time its virulence had diminished.

In January 2021, New Caledonia was one of the world’s first places to receive ample coronavirus vaccines. The territory had boosters available before much of France. Yet when Delta hit, less than half of the population had been vaccinated.

“There is a closed island mentality, so people thought they were safe,” said Yannick Slamet, the health minister of New Caledonia. “People forget history quickly.”

But when the influenza pandemic began racing around the world a century ago, New Caledonia was one of the few places on the planet to emerge largely unscathed. A strict quarantine kept the virus out until 1921, by which time its virulence had diminished.

In January 2021, New Caledonia was one of the world’s first places to receive ample coronavirus vaccines. The territory had boosters available before much of France. Yet when Delta hit, less than half of the population had been vaccinated.

“There is a closed island mentality, so people thought they were safe,” said Yannick Slamet, the health minister of New Caledonia. “People forget history quickly.”

Anti-vaccination rallies in New Caledonia are one of the few places where the socially conservative native and the libertarian Frenchman interact and agree.

Anti-vaccination rallies are one of the few events in Nouméa that draw both Kanaks and white New Caledonians in an otherwise often segregated society. At a demonstration late last year in front of the New Caledonian Congress, with its wooden totems standing guard, protesters set up speakers and danced to Bob Marley. They hissed at onlookers wearing masks.

One Kanak protester, a hospital worker, said she drew inspiration from QAnon. She wanted to know how to get in touch with the far-right conspiracy movement. Another, of European descent, said he didn’t want the state dictating his life, even if he supported France continuing its rule over New Caledonia.Last month, tribal leaders in Lifou, one of the first Covid hot spots in New Caledonia, forced the airport to briefly close to protest a rule requiring health passes or testing for travelers. In January, an anti-vaccination and health pass mandate protest in Nouméa attracted 1,000 people. Covid restrictions have since eased.

Again, if the issue of vaccine hesitancy is “inequality” as the New York Times article asserts, it is not the inequality between the French and the indigenous peoples that is causing it.

Vaccine hesitancy in the case of New Caledonia seems to be based on the past reliance on border closures, and a traditionalist mind frame that assumes that this policy still exist.

That seems distinct from the vaccine hesitancy of France’s population.

There is a subset of France’s population that violently opposes any government initiative.

This is the reaction against a highly centralized French state, and the persistence of the spirit of the French Revolution.

There is also the populist phenomenon of vaccine resistance that was explored during the Canadian trucking strike.

Truck driving was pointed out to be a classic isolated existence that has become more isolated because of Covid restrictions and the decline of labor unions.

The argument is that with the decline of civil society, people turn toward conspiracy theories to simulate the feeling of being in an embattled community.

In any case, it might be useful to glance at what territorial status means in the French republic to better understand New Caledonia.

Overseas territories of France like New Caledonia that were once a part of France’s empire have varying statuses. 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overseas_France

Overseas France (French: France d’outre-mer)^{[note 3]} consists of 13 French-administered territories outside Europe, mostly the remains of the French colonial empire that chose to remain a part of the French state under various statuses after decolonization. They are part of the European Union. This collective name is used in everyday life in France but is not an administrative designation in its own right. Instead, the five overseas regions have exactly the same administrative status as the metropolitan regions; the five overseas collectivities are semi-autonomous; and New Caledonia is an autonomous territory.

Outside Europe, four broad classes of overseas French territorial administration currently exist: 

1. overseas departments/regions, 
2. overseas collectivities, 
3. the sui generis territory of New Caledonia, and 
4. uninhabited territories. 

From a legal and administrative standpoint, these four classes have varying legal status and levels of autonomy, although all permanently inhabited territories have representation in both France’s National Assembly and Senate, which together make up the French Parliament.

On the face of it, New Caledonia’s political status as an autonomous territory does not seem immediately comparable to any territory of the USA.

In the USA, there seems to be a continuum of political integration that involves a tradeoff between power and autonomy.

• The 50 states of the USA enjoy political representation and, with it, power and financial patronage; 
• territories like Puerto Rico do not pay federal taxes, but have only a non-voting representative in the US House; and
• territories that become independent nations have the greatest independence but are now on their own.

.

This leads us to a detour into re-imagining territorial status.

The thought-experiment here is to imagine a new kind of territorial entity that would enjoy the best of both worlds.

Such a territory would enjoin autonomy and zero federal taxes, but maintain political power and substantial federal investment.

The goal would be economic development and diversification to offset the tendency for small, geographically isolated places to be economically doomed.

The “problem” is that New Caledonia has something like this mix of autonomy and generosity from the central government — but it largely remains in a state of semi-development.

That seems to be the way people in New Caledonia want it to be so it is not really a problem in their eyes.

That might also be true of American territories.

For example, it’s been said that the typical dream of Puerto Ricans is to live on a small farm next door to their parents’ small farm.

But a small farm in Puerto Rico is really small and pre-industrial, with the chickens and the goats and the gandules bean plants.

Not everybody wants a modern, dynamic economy.

But the larger thought-experiment behind re-imagining territorial status is to figure out a way to make a country like Singapore apply to be an American territory.

For example, the Soviet Union had a federal system that incorporated over a dozen distinct nation-states in a “union of socialist republics”.

 There were ideological and practical considerations behind this arrangement.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_delimitation_in_the_Soviet_Union

Rationale

Russia had conquered Central Asia in the 19th century by annexing the formerly independent khanates of Kokand and Khiva and the Emirate of Bukhara. After the Communists took power in 1917 and created the Soviet Union it was decided to divide Central Asia into ethnically based republics in a process known as National Territorial Delimitation (NTD). This was in line with Communist theory that nationalism was a necessary step on the path towards an eventually communist society, and Joseph Stalin’s definition of a nation as being “a historically constituted, stable community of people, formed on the basis of a common language, territory, economic life, and psychological make-up manifested in a common culture”.

NTD is commonly portrayed as being nothing more than a cynical exercise in divide and rule, a deliberately Machiavellian attempt by Stalin to maintain Soviet hegemony over the region by artificially dividing its inhabitants into separate nations and with borders deliberately drawn so as to leave minorities within each state.^[13] Though indeed Russia was concerned at the possible threat of pan-Turkic nationalism,^[14] as expressed for example with the Basmachi movement of the 1920s, closer analysis informed by the primary sources paints a much more nuanced picture than is commonly presented.

NTD also aimed to create ‘viable’ entities, with economic, geographical, agricultural and infrastructural matters also to be taken into account and frequently trumping those of ethnicity.^[21][22] The attempt to balance these contradictory aims within an overall nationalist framework proved exceedingly difficult and often impossible, resulting in the drawing of often tortuously convoluted borders, multiple enclaves and the unavoidable creation of large minorities who ended up living in the ‘wrong’ republic. Additionally the Soviets never intended for these borders to become international frontiers.

There is one more possibility not mentioned above that explains this willingness of Soviet leaders to recognize and respect non-Russian political and ethnic identity (made visible in ostentatiously gifting Russian land to other nationalities within the USSR).

This policy would facilitate the expansion of the USSR by reassuring other nations that they could maintain their cultures and administrative structures as members of the federation.

Drawing inspiration from the USSR, the idea here is that the USA would develop an additional territorial status that would appeal to small, prosperous countries like Singapore.

• Singaporeans would be able to freely travel to and work in the USA.
• Singaporeans would pay minimal US federal taxes.
• Singaporeans would have their own laws and complete political autonomy.
• Singapore would have voting representatives in the US House.

Singapore would be put under American protection, but otherwise Singapore would remain Singapore.

Moreover, something like this new territorial arrangement would be available to an independent Scotland, Quebec, or Texas.

With Texas as a territory of the USA, there would be no federal taxes in Texas, the USA would handle Texas’s foreign policy, Texas would get representation in the US House — but Texas would otherwise be an independent country.

Divest from & ban fossil fuels (flat carbon-fee dividend)

 Throughout the 1980s, there were organized student protests at American universities against Apartheid in white-ruled South Africa. 

The common goal of such protests was to get the university to remove corporations involved in South Africa’s economy from the university’s financial investments.

The campus anti-apartheid protests were often large and turbulent. 

There have been no such widespread and intense protests in the current age of global warming to get universities to divest from fossil fuels. 

There have been protests for divestment, and some schools like Harvard have divested from investing in fossil fuels.

Nevertheless, fossil fuels divestment has not captured the attention of the nation the way Apartheid protest did in the 1980s — and the way civil rights did in 2020.

How to explain this relative acquiescence on campus?

There might be numerous reasons, but one reason might be that it is easier to sympathize with people when they are far away.

Historians have noted the similarities of Hollywood stars adopting children in developing countries with Roman aristocrats establishing orphanages in Africa and the Middle East.

Romans at the time slyly observed that the poor of Rome never received that kind of generosity from those who aided foreign orphans.

People can be concerned for those who are far away in either space and time yet remain indifferent toward or afraid of those same kinds of people when they are up close.

For example, homelessness in one’s own town reminds us of our own guilt and culpability, as well as the complexity of the issue and the lack of simple solutions.

But this can be taken even further.

It seems like people are often more concerned for the disadvantaged in distant lands than they are for themselves.

One can become passionately idealistic about injustice abroad with the ease of gasoline being ignited.

In contrast, sustained awareness of the vulnerability of one’s own way of life — and one’s own existence — to a global issue is too horrible to think about.

.

.

.

There is a remarkable absence of protests against universities’ investments in the fossil fuel industry compared to protest in the past over other things that are largely forgotten (such as student protests for divestment from apartheid-era South Africa). 

There are also fewer protests than one would expect against banks that invest in fossil fuels. 

JP Morgan Chase is a classic case.

• Chase is the leading bank in terms of financing the fossil fuels industry.
• In 2020, it announced that it would cease to invest in coal companies.
• In 2021, it provided Russia’s Gazprom with $1.1 billion in fossil fuel financing. 
• In October of 2021, it announced that it would reach net-zero emissions from its lending and investment portfolios by 2050.

It would seem that JP Morgan Chase launched a 30-year plan in 2020 to gradually move away from fossil fuels and this plan commenced with ending financing for coal.

Skimming through the internet, however, it does not seem that JP Morgan Chase has released their exact timeline for divesting from fossil fuels.

Perhaps JP Morgan Chase is now focused on gradually divesting from the oil industry and will later divest from natural gas investments.

Again, there seems to be relatively little public pressure on universities and banks to divest from fossil fuels.

At the very least, one might expect there would at least be some minimal pressure to get the banks to divulge the timeline of their divestment from fossil fuels.

But even that does not seem to exist.

.

.

.

JP Morgan Chase has a 30-year timeline to divest from fossil fuels that was launched in 2020.

JP Morgan Chase no longer finances the coal industry.

However, this might not be such an accomplishment because natural gas had begun to underprice coal in 2012.

Can JP Morgan Chase’s plan for divestment from fossil fuels be accelerated and the time frame shortened?

How quickly could America get off fossil fuels?

It has been argued that the US already has everything it needs to decarbonize by 2035.

.https://www.vox.com/energy-and-environment/21349200/climate-change-fossil-fuels-rewiring-america-electrify

Despite the titanic effort it would take to decarbonize, the US doesn’t need any new technologies and it doesn’t require any grand national sacrifice. All it needs, in this view, is a serious commitment to building the necessary machines and creating a regulatory and policy environment that supports their rapid deployment.

In a nutshell, he has shown that it’s possible to eliminate 70 percent to 80 percent of US carbon emissions by 2035 through rapid deployment of existing electrification technologies, with little-to-no carbon capture and sequestration. Doing so would slash US energy demand by around half, save consumers money, and keep the country on a 1.5° pathway without requiring particular behavior changes. Everyone could still have their same cars and houses — they would just need to be electric.

Specifically, it is possible to reduce US emissions 70 percent to 80 percent by 2035 (and to zero by 2050) through rapid electrification, relying on five already well-developed technologies: wind and solar power plants, rooftop solar, electric vehicles, heat pumps, and batteries.

Second, to decarbonize in time, substitution of clean-energy technologies for their fossil-fuel counterparts must ramp up to 100 percent as fast as possible, after a brief period of industrial mobilization. Every time a gas or diesel car is replaced, it must be replaced with an EV; every time an oil or gas furnace is replaced, it must be replaced with a heat pump; every time a coal or gas power plant goes offline, it must be replaced with renewable energy.

This perspective helps to inform a couple of provisional goals:

• American universities must divest from fossil fuels immediately — as a moral imperative based on the unique societal mission of universities.
• All American banks must divest completely from fossil fuels by 2035 based on what seems to be possible even by relying on current technology.

.

.

.

American universities and banks must divest from fossil fuels.

Could fossil fuels be banned?

According to the internet, there are currently moves to ban: 

• advertising and sponsorships by fossil fuels companies;
• fossil fuel use in new buildings;
• new fossil fuel leasing and permitting on public land.

Politically, the first two initiatives might be possible.

But ceasing to develop oil and gas on public lands might backfire politically.

That’s a lot of jobs that would be sacrificed.

Would it be possible to ban imports of fossil fuels?

And in which time frame?

A legislative proposal in California would ban oil from problematic countries.

https://www.10news.com/news/in-depth/in-depth-bill-would-ban-most-foreign-oil-in-california

SAN DIEGO (KGTV) – A new bill in the California Legislature would effectively ban almost all of the foreign oil imported into California.

Senate Bill 1319 would prohibit oil imports “if the source of the oil is a foreign nation with demonstrated human rights abuses… or a foreign nation with environmental standards that are lower than those in California.”

State Sen. Shannon Grove, a Republican from Bakersfield, is the sponsor. She says the bill would help the environment by favoring oil produced in California, which has stricter environmental rules for drilling and oil production.

“What you can do is produce oil under the strictest and most environmental quality regulatory processes to make it safe,” she says.

According to the California Energy Commission, the state imported 56.2% of its oil from foreign countries in 2021. Alaska provided 14.9% of California’s oil. In-state oil accounted for 28.9%. Grove says the state should decrease its dependence on foreign oil to help the environment and the economy.

This might suggest a timeframe for banning foreign fossil fuels from the USA:

• Immediately ban foreign fossil fuels that originate from problematic countries (Russia, Brazil, Saudi Arabia).
• Ban all foreign fossil fuels by 2035.

.

.

.

A carbon tax is a tax levied on the carbon emissions required to produce goods and services.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_tax

Carbon taxes are intended to make visible the “hidden” social costs of carbon emissions, which are otherwise felt only in indirect ways like more severe weather events. In this way, they are designed to reduce carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions by increasing prices of the fossil fuels that emit them when burned. This both decreases demand for goods and services that produce high emissions and incentivizes making them less carbon-intensive.^[1] In its simplest form, a carbon tax covers only CO₂ emissions; however, it could also cover other greenhouse gases, such as methane or nitrous oxide, by taxing such emissions based on their CO₂-equivalent global warming potential.^[2] When a hydrocarbon fuel such as coal, petroleum, or natural gas is burned, most or all of its carbon is converted to CO
2. 

In a way, a carbon tax is not really a tax but rather a fee that compensates for the “negative externalities” that are imposed on the public by private economic activity.

In fact, pollution is the classic example of a negative externality.

Greenhouse gas emissions cause climate change, which damages the environment and human health. This negative externality can be reduced by taxing carbon content at any point in the product cycle.

It’s been argued that suppressing demand by imposing carbon fees is really the only way to alter behavior to limit carbon emissions.

This is because attempts to lower fuel consumption by increasing efficiency only backfire because increased efficiency lowers prices and thus stimulates consumption.

For example, when highly efficient machinery that burned less coal was installed in British factories, coal consumption did not fall as expected.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox

In economics, the Jevons paradox (/ˈdʒɛvənz/; sometimes Jevons effect) occurs when technological progress or government policy increases the efficiency with which a resource is used (reducing the amount necessary for any one use), but the falling cost of use increases its demand, negating reductions in resource use.During the Industrial Revolution, it was believed that highly efficient machines that would use less fuel and so less coal would be consumed.

This is because demand for those goods increased because the price of those goods had fallen thanks to less coal being consumed in their production.

The issue has been re-examined by modern economists studying consumption rebound effects from improved energy efficiency. In addition to reducing the amount needed for a given use, improved efficiency also lowers the relative cost of using a resource, which increases the quantity demanded. This counteracts (to some extent) the reduction in use from improved efficiency. Additionally, improved efficiency increases real incomes and accelerates economic growth, further increasing the demand for resources. The Jevons’ effect occurs when the effect from increased demand predominates, and the improved efficiency results in a faster rate of resource utilization.

Considerable debate exists about the size of the rebound in energy efficiency and the relevance of the Jevons’ effect to energy conservation. Some dismiss the effect, while others worry that it may be self-defeating to pursue sustainability by increasing energy efficiency.^[3] Some environmental economists have proposed that efficiency gains be coupled with conservation policies that keep the cost of use the same (or higher) to avoid the Jevons’ effect.^[6] Conservation policies that increase cost of use (such as cap and trade or green taxes) can be used to control the rebound effect.

In a very American example, the government imposes fuel standards upon the automotive industry, and this has led to breakthroughs in automobile fuel efficiency.

However, contrary to the intentions of the US government, as American vehicles have become much more fuel efficient, they have become much larger because they are cheaper to operate.

• For example, the average fuel efficiency of a VW Beetle in 1972 was about 22 miles per gallon. 
• Fifty years later, the 3.3 liter V-6 Ford F-150 gets 24 mpg on the highway.

Likewise, when people do buy a compact car, they end up burning just as much fuel as they used to because now they drive around more.

Only a rise in the price of fuel can get the public to adopt a lifestyle in which they are cutting back on fuel consumption — the way they did after the oil shocks in 1973 and 1978 (and 2008).

However, raised fuel prices can lead to civil strife.

France is a case in point.

The French government made a push for carbon fees in 2009.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_tax#France

In 2009, France detailed a carbon tax with a levy on oil, gas, and coal consumption by households and businesses that was supposed to come into effect on 1 January 2010. The tax would affect households and businesses, which would have raised the cost of a litre of unleaded fuel by about four euro cents (25 US cents per gallon). The total estimated income from the carbon tax would have been between €3–4.5 billion annually, with 55 percent from households and 45 percent from businesses. The tax would not have applied to electricity, which in France comes mostly from nuclear power.

However, from the beginning there was pushback from one segment of the French population.

On 30 December 2009, the bill was blocked by the French Constitutional Council, which said it included too many exceptions. Among those exceptions, certain industries were excluded that would have made the taxes unequal and inefficient. They included exemptions for agriculture, fishing, trucking, and farming. French President Nicolas Sarkozy, although he vowed to “lead the fight to save the human race from global warming”, was forced to back down after mass social protests led to strikes. He wanted support from the rest of the European Union before proceeding.

Carbon fees were finally implemented in France in 2014.

In 2014, a carbon tax was implemented. Prime Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault announced the new Climate Energy Contribution (CEC) on 21 September 2013. The tax would apply at a rate of €7/tonne CO2 in 2014, €14.50 in 2015 and rising to €22 in 2016.^[114] As of 2018, the carbon tax was at €44.60/tonne.^[115] and was due to increase every year to reach €65.40/tonne in 2020 and €86.20/tonne in 2022.

The planned gradual increase in carbon fees led to violent and prolonged rebellion by a segment of the French population.

After weeks of protests by the “Gilets Jaunes” (yellow vests) against the rise of gas prices, French President Emmanuel Macron announced on 4 December 2018, the tax would not be increased in 2019 as planned.

Journalists and French authorities closely examined the dynamics of the “yellow vest” protests.

The protesters were found to be working-class people who lived in small houses outside the city and commuted to work in their cars.

This is exactly the lifestyle that they want, and they do not want to live in the city in an apartment near their work, nor do they want to commute on mass transit.

Entertainment is dear to them, and once a week they like to eat out or go to the movies or attend a sporting event.

As carbon fees rise slightly, they can still get by, but they cannot afford their modest entertainment and so existence becomes unbearable to them.

They then become agitated and violent and threaten the stability of the French republic.

Carbon fees are therefore absolutely necessary yet politically unacceptable.

.

.

.

There is one conceptual advantage to insisting that so-called “carbon taxes” are really fees.

It offers a way to make carbon taxes (fees) politically palatable.  

A tax has the primary purpose of raising revenue. By contrast, a fee recoups the cost of providing a service from a beneficiary.

• In other words, taxes exist to fund government goods and services, like the military.
• In contrast, fees for negative externalities like pollution reimburse those who are negatively impacted and deter those who are imposing the externalities.

The biggest problem with carbon “taxes” is that they are “regressive” because they have a disproportionate impact on less affluent people. 

This is because fuel expenditures (for transportation and home energy) make up a larger percentage of the household budgets of people who are socioeconomically disadvantaged.

The proposal:

Carbon fees would be returned to the American people in the form of a dividend that would be the same amount for all Americans.

For example, if carbon fees brought in $2,000 a year to the government for every American, then the dividend would be worth a flat $2,000.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_fee_and_dividend

A carbon fee and dividend or climate income is a system to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and address climate change. The system imposes a carbon tax on the sale of fossil fuels, and then distributes the revenue of this tax over the entire population (equally, on a per-person basis) as a monthly income or regular payment.Designed to maintain or improve economic vitality while speeding the transition to a sustainable energy economy, carbon fee and dividend has been proposed as an alternative to emission reduction mechanisms such as complex regulatory approaches, cap and trade or a straightforward carbon tax. While there is general agreement among scientists and economists on the need for a carbon tax, economists are generally neutral on specific uses for the revenue, though there tends to be more support than opposition for returning the revenue as a dividend to taxpayers.

This refund would not consist of a once-a-year payout after taxes had been filed.

Rather, Americans would receive a monthly deposit in their bank account.

After all, the French “yellow jackets” show how sensitive much of the public can be to being deprived of even a small amount of “beer money” due to carbon taxes.

People need to be reimbursed on a more frequent basis.

The “fair tax” scheme provides a model.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FairTax#Monthly_tax_rebate

Monthly tax rebate

The rebate is meant to eliminate the taxation of household necessities and make the plan progressive. Households would register once a year with their sales tax administering authority, providing the names and social security numbers of each household member. The Social Security Administration would disburse the monthly rebate payments in the form of a paper check via U.S. Mail, an electronic funds transfer to a bank account, or a “smartcard” that can be used like a debit card.

.

.

.

One problem with universal flat carbon-fee dividends is that millions of Americans do not have access to a bank account.

These adults who do not have their own bank accounts are referred to as the unbanked.

The unbanked are described by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) as those adults without an account at a bank or other financial institution and are considered to be outside the mainstream for one reason or another. 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unbanked

One report found the nationwide rates to be 7.7% unbanked and 17.9% underbanked, with the most unbanked state Mississippi, at 16.4%. 

The Federal Reserve estimated there are 55 million unbanked or underbanked adult Americans in 2018, which account for 22 percent of U.S. households.

Places where over 20% of residents have no bank accounts include Miami, Florida; Detroit, Michigan; Laredo, Texas; Newark, New Jersey; Hialeah, Florida; Hidalgo County, Texas; The Bronx; and Cameron County, Texas. 

Many counties with fewer than 100,000 residents had even higher rates, including Starr County, Texas, at 32.7%. Some census tracts in Savannah, Georgia; Cleveland, Ohio; Nashville, Tennessee; and Atlanta, Georgia had over 40% unbanked residents.

Some reasons a person might not have a bank account include:

• Lack of access via a nearby bank branch or mobile phone
• Minimum balance fees
• Distrust of the banking system, typically due to lack of transparency regarding fees and deposit timing
• No access to government-issued ID, which is required to open a bank account

Being unbanked is sometimes by choice.

It is an expensive choice.

https://www.investopedia.com/terms/u/unbanked.asp

Why Is Being Unbanked a Problem?

Being unbanked can be undesirable for several reasons. Alternative financial services, such as cash-checking services and payday loans, are much more costly. What’s more, without a bank account, people don’t generate the data they need to establish creditworthiness. As a result, when it comes time to cover an emergency car repair or medical bill, a payday loan may be their only option. These extra costs significantly hurt families who are already struggling to make ends meet.

So why do people not open a bank account?

Understanding the Unbanked

Unbanked people generally pay for things in cash or else purchase money orders or prepaid debit cards. Unbanked people also typically do not have insurance, pensions, or any other type of professional money-related services. They may take advantage of alternative financial services, such as check-cashing and payday lending, if such services are available to them.

Why People Become Unbanked

The main reason for being unbanked, according to the FDIC study, is cost—those who are unbanked can’t meet banks’ minimum requirement balances. Another way of looking at it: Traditional banks don’t provide access to the financial services and products unbanked populations need. For instance, someone living paycheck-to-paycheck with very low or volatile income, may not be able to wait for a paycheck to clear at a bank. So they turn to a check-cashing service, which will provide cash immediately, albeit for a fee.

In neighborhoods that are “bank deserts,” such alternative financial services are also likely more common and open longer hours—in other words, more accessible and convenient than arranging for transportation to and from bank branches during limited banking hours. These high transaction costs (e.g. time/cost to visit bank branches, inconvenient hours), lack of clarity about fees, and alternative products that provided a more compelling value proposition have all been identified as reasons people are unbanked.

Lack of trust in banking institutions can also come into play. Distrust was the second main reason cited in the FDIC study for being unbanked—not surprising given the history of lending discrimination experienced by Blacks and Latinx in the U.S. and the lingering inequities. For instance, predominantly Black and Latinx neighborhoods have been targeted for predatory lending, including subprime mortgages. Recent immigrants who experienced banking crises in their countries of origin may also lack trust in banks.

The “underbanked” are an example of people who have bank accounts but choose to use more expensive methods to transfer money.

Again, they make up almost one-fifth of the American population.

Unbanked vs. underbanked

Underbanked is a related term. It refers to families who have checking or savings accounts but often rely on alternative financial services such as money orders, check-cashing services, and payday loans, as opposed to traditional loans and credit cards, to manage their finances.

In terms of universal flat carbon-fee dividends, the underbanked already do have access to bank accounts where their dividends could be forwarded.