Gongol.com Archives: March 2021
March 19, 2021
Why the US should redirect its excess vaccines to other countries
Writing about WWII, Eisenhower noted with awe, "There was no sight in the war that so impressed me with the industrial might of America as the wreckage on the landing beaches. To any other nation the disaster would have been almost decisive; but so great was America's productive capacity that the great storm occasioned little more than a ripple in the development of our build-up." This has been America's not-at-all-secret weapon for almost a century: The unrivaled capacity of our economic system to move faster than any other, and to scale up in a way no other economy can. It's not just that our economy is really big, it's that we select for decisive action, risk-taking, and a disposition in favor of innovation. Command economies can't match it. ■ There are cases where the government can act as a catalyst -- and should. The choice to facilitate the simultaneous development of multiple Covid-19 vaccines through Operation Warp Speed is a fine example of this, and it's a lesson that ought to be remembered. The many-eggs-in-many-baskets approach may result in a surplus of outputs (like vaccine doses) that may be inefficient by strictly economic terms, but there are circumstances so exigent that it's better to overshoot than to undershoot. As Bill Gates once put it, "Even the Manhattan Project pursued both the plutonium bomb and the uranium bomb -- and both worked!" ■ A lesson worth taking away from Operation Warp Speed is that government can get more of highly desirable outcomes when it does enough to bulk up the rewards for achieving them. Subsidizing a guaranteed market for vaccine purchases gave the pharmaceutical companies the requisite incentives to pursue the goal at flank speed. This makes a compelling case for our government to fund results-based inducement prizes to achieve other worthwhile goals where the public interest could be served by speedy innovation. If the private sector receives a clear signal that a successful solution to a major public problem will be rewarded mightily, then the market will do more to find that solution than it otherwise might. This is a lesson we ought to apply to issues like energy and transportation innovations that can have huge effects on public-interest goals in areas like defense and environmental quality. ■ While we're at it, it's evidently time to do a lot more thinking about issues of ventilation and climate control inside our buildings. A New York Times headline puts it: "How Windows are Crucial to Reopening Schools". Even if we had unfailing certainty that we could stop Covid-19 with vaccines, we need to be thinking ahead to the next pandemic while we're fighting this one. Respiratory viruses aren't going away, and if there's anything we should be learning (and reflecting upon) about pre-pandemic life, it's that we've been really complacent about making each other sick -- in workplaces, schools, and other settings. The CDC says that influenza rates this season have been one-quarter of the rates seen in a previously low-severity flu season. We're not going to be eager to put up with social distancing forever, but we shouldn't lose sight of how careful management of air quality has done to keep us from getting sick in this extraordinary year. This, again, would be an area ripe for inducement prizes to incentivize big new innovations for making our indoor air quality healthier, even after the pandemic is gone. ■ "American exceptionalism" shouldn't be a lazy catchphrase -- we really should be more conscious of how we benefit from an extraordinary system that can do really big things faster and more competently than any rival system. And we don't even need to be selfish about it: Sharing our successes and rallying other countries to ally themselves with our vision of the world will only help us grow stronger over the long term. We don't need vassal states; we need friendly collaborators and eager trading partners.
Because our two biggest population centers are only two hours apart, it only makes sense for Iowa and Nebraska to do things like practicing Severe Weather Awareness Week together. This kind of coordination especially makes sense, considering that the vast majority of Nebraskans are covered by the Omaha National Weather Service office, which also has responsibility for eight of Iowa's 99 counties. But for perspective: It would take you no less than 12 hours to drive from Chadron, Nebraska, to Keokuk, Iowa. It's about 675 miles (as the crow flies) from the northwest corner of the combined two-state area to the southeast. In Europe, that would be roughly the distance from Brussels to Budapest.
Cruise industry looks to resume sailing in June
Royal Caribbean is going to let vaccinated passengers aboard in the summer, with stops in a handful of places around the Caribbean. One expected stop will be in Sint Maarten, where four in five workers does something tied to tourism.
Chicago dyed the river green after all
Name a holiday that can beat St. Patrick's Day for pure frivolity of celebration.
Contested Iowa Congressional seat should have been decided for good -- in Iowa
Josh Douglas: "[W]e should reinforce a democratic norm that elections are final when certified or that losing candidates must use the more neutral procedures in state law to challenge the result". The fact the losing candidate is appealing the result to Congress itself is a real problem. She lost a close race; she didn't die.
Sometimes one encounters a story that serves as a reminder of just how much cultural and social convergence is taking place around the world. It's not happening because anyone is forcing it, but because most people just want to be happy and left alone to make their own choices. Such is the case in India, where a social-media-driven response to a politician's lament about women wearing ripped jeans illustrates just how little people really differ.
Performative-outrage artists whine about tough times
Some people have little to offer beyond being a malcontent with a mic, and those people ought to leave the media so that the airwaves can be used for conversations that further the public interest.
A grieving son shares a profile of his mother, who was murdered in Atlanta
The Milky Way, 100,000 pixels across
Truly mesmerizing work
