Hey,
I’m flying back from Dallas right now. The FBI will never look for the body there! Ooops, did I say that out loud?
Anyway, I’m trying to come up with an easy “news”letter topic but I’m distracted by the fact that a woman in front of me is—I defecate you negatory—reading a physical copy of Meatingplace magazine, the “premier multimedia information source for the red meat and poultry processing industry.” And it looks fascinating. I really wanted to read the story on how you can turn deboning poultry waste into ground meat profits, but she turned the page and the website has a paywall.
If you could stay numb to the wholesale industrialized slaughter of animals, I think it would be a lot of fun to be the editor of a magazine like that because of all the opportunities for punny headlines. “Regulators Chicken Out on Poultry Guidelines,” “Consumers Balk-Balk-Balk at Higher Meat Prices,” “Experts Say it Behooves Ewe Not to Let any Parts Go to Waste,” “Meat the Press—that will give you even thinner strips of beef,” etc.
All right, I apologize. Let’s just do some rank punditry.
I’m no fan of Kevin McCarthy. Frankly, he’s sold so much of his soul I’m amazed he can still shave, given that he can’t possibly see a reflection in the mirror anymore.
If he gets deposed as minority leader, I won’t shed any tears. But I do think this is a slightly weird moment to be demanding his head for not stopping the infrastructure bill from passing. And I really find the outrage at the 13 Republicans who voted for the bill to be over the top.
Just for the record, I would have voted against the bill. I don’t think we need it, I don’t think we can afford it, and the states—swimming in COVID bailout cash—can take care of any pressing needs. There are definitely worthwhile things in it, but our nation’s infrastructure is not “crumbling” and we do not have an infrastructure “crisis.” We do have, I believe, a mounting debt crisis.
But the anger at McCarthy and the “RINO” 13 isn’t primarily policy driven. If it were, we would have heard a lot more screaming at Mitch McConnell, Lindsey Graham, and the 17 other Republican senators who voted for the same bill last summer. Heck, we would have heard a lot of pushback against Trump’s calls for massive infrastructure spending when he was president. I can think of a few writers who’ve been consistent on this, but not a lot of politicians.
Then again, most of the critics, including Trump, are honest on this point. The real betrayal is that these Republicans bailed out Nancy Pelosi and the “Squad” and gave Biden a bipartisan win when he was flailing. I get it. But you know what? He’s still flailing and will continue to flail.
The one place where I’m fairly sympathetic to those who want to see the 13 Republicans pelted from the public stage with rotting cabbage and semi-frozen fish is on the charge that their support of the infrastructure bill has made it more likely the Build Back Better package will pass. I say “sympathetic” because I really oppose that thing. But as an analytical matter, I just don’t know that they’re right. If I were convinced by their case, I could support grabbing hefty mackerel and hucking it at some of those guys. But I don’t see it. I’m not saying they’re wrong, just that I’m not convinced they’re right. And even if they are, the anger really seems justified only if the 13 agreed with it, too.
But you know what? I hate this topic. So let’s move on.
Getting past COVID
The Morning Dispatch has an excellent explainer on the new Pfizer COVID treatment, Paxlovid. If administered within three days of a patient developing COVID symptoms, it is 89 percent effective at reducing the risk of hospitalization and death.
Originally, the argument for taking extraordinary measures to combat the virus was as much about preventing spread as it was about preventing the medical system from being overwhelmed. Now, more than half the country is fully vaccinated and millions of others are carrying natural antibodies from having had COVID. When you combine that with a treatment that will prevent hospitalization, it’s time to treat COVID like other corona and flu viruses: something people should try to avoid getting, but not something that fundamentally changes how we live.
Instead, it looks like a lot of public health types are making the reverse argument: We should respond to the threat of colds and flus the way we’ve responded to COVID. That’s nuts.
Longtime readers know that I’ve long opposed both maskaphobia and maskophilia. Making masks into a contested insignia in the culture war always struck me as stupid. Liberals often think right-wingers are the only ones who’ve done this. But they’re wrong. Liberal virtue-signaling about wearing masks is one of the reasons many right-wingers obsess about not wearing masks. And conservative virtue-signaling about not wearing masks is one of the reasons liberals obsess about wearing them. It’s a pas de deux of culture war idiocy.
On the merits, there was a time when liberals had the better arguments on their side. But that time is over. If you have to justify continued mask wearing on the grounds that it helps prevent getting a cold or the flu, as CDC Director Rochelle Walinski is now doing, you’re no longer making an argument about a global health emergency. You’re just nannying people.
That said, I think the same principle of reasonableness should rule. If you’re immunocompromised and want to wear a mask, go for it. Heck, if you have a big vacation planned and want to take extra precautions so you don’t get sick right before you go, wear a mask. Or quarantine yourself in a plastic bubble. Whatever helps you sleep at night. But enough with the mask mandates, enough with the lectures. Alex Madrigal wrote this very long, tortured piece in The Atlantic about how terrifying it was that he got COVID after 18 months of being super-cautious. He got it, but because he was vaccinated it was basically a cold. And yet we’re treated to soul-searching, what-does-it-all-mean, can life ever be normal? angst. The moral of the story should be: If you’re vaccinated and generally healthy, COVID is no big deal.
It’s time to let go.
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