More coronavirus tribalism about Vietnam

Vox reports on Vietnam's alleged COVID miracle (with noting some caveats), which I've questioned before, along with other pro-developing world tribalism, noting late last summer that it was easy for Vietnam to claim it had "beat COVID" when it hadn't tested anybody to see if they had it in the first place. Since that time, it's gotten WORSE! From 164th to 175 in per capita testing! Neither Vox nor the Western reporter of a trio — nice polite Canadian, if her Twitter handle's correct — responded to a callout. Shock me. So, I've called it out — AND commenters swallowing the Vox Kool-Aid, presumably BlueAnon / BlueMAGA tribalists — on its Facebook page.

I've still not received feedback from there, either, at least from Vox.

In addition, Vox and the other touters of an alleged Vietnamese COVID miracle also ignore that the USS Theodore Roosevelt, the COVID-stricken aircraft carrier, appeared to pick up the coronavirus from a stop in Da Nang. For the carrier to have been that COVID-stricken, it had to hit a number of COVID-positive residents while on leave.

Anyway, this is tribalism at its most simplistic.

(And, update May 29, it's even more fallacious than ever. Vietnam didn't "crush" COVID either earlier this year, nor last year per my "questioned before" link, and it now faces a new wave, based on the Indian variant reportedly combining with the British one.)

First (and doorknob help me for sounding like Robert Wright), but this type of tribalism engages in zero-sum thought when this isn't a zero-sum situation. That is, even if Vietnam WERE a miracle, that by itself is no proof that the US blew it. Or, for the Trumpeys, even if Trump WERE right on everything from interior heat and light (cue Sarah Cooper) to HCQ (cue Ben Carson) that doesn't mean Vietnam was wrong. 

(There may be some types of tribalism that aren't founded on zero-sum tussling, but, in general, it seems to be a foundational idea.)

Second, with Vox being one of those net-only news sites that likes to talk about ideas similar to "fearless journalism" of Daily Beast, my inductive undercutting of their whole story took FIVE SECONDS. I've already got Worldometers' US data for COVID as a standing tab in my browser. I just had to Mac-right-click "countries" to get that to open in a separate tab, click the "testing per 1M" row header to get countries to list by that, do an Apple-F and search for "Vietnam" and then see a "175" next to its name.

Third, such tribalism, especially when of the easily refuted type, is often within the two duopoly parties, or related conservative-vs-liberal arrangement. It's inside a narrow political box and is shallow and stale. It also reflects that, to riff on Clauswitz and per a recent post, a reflection that American politics is becoming ersatz religiousness by other means. It gets even worse when SJW types populate the left hand of the duopoly's tribalism. It's the same type of tribalism that leads BlueMAGA types to give a pass to Fauci for his telling of Platonic noble lies.

Fourth, it's lazy and bad journalism. Plenty of Westerners have shown that elsewhere by naively and uncritically buying claims of the White Helmets while making no effort to be anywhere near Syria.

This all said, why Vox didn't respond, a Vietnamese national DID on its FB page. Here's our dialogue starting with his response to my testing numbers:

Tran Hai 

because why would you test the entire population if there is no breakout? Waste the money for what? Now, if you just look at the tests done per case - you would be in for a ride.  

Me 

Why would you assume there's no breakout if you're not doing more testing? And, tests per case vs general population testing is apples and oranges.  

Tran Hai 

Because 1st: mass testing were done after every breakout and the number of cases can actually be tracked 2nd: Covid is not invisible, as soon as an outbreak hits the hospital will be alerted 3rd: testing per case is using contact tracing, and contact tracing is vastly more efficient then using the whack-a-mole method 4th: using all that money for border screening and immigration testing is money well-spent  

Me

Since you're 175 in per-capita testing, I don't think mass testing was done every breakout. Besides, if Vietnam had only 35 or whatever deaths, there weren't mass breakouts in the first place, were there now? Ooops. Worldometers testing includes contact tracing as part of total tracing; your whack-a-mole comes close to strawmanning. 

Also, contra the first ... the USS Theodore Roosevelt got its mass coronavirus problems from leave on Da Nang, obviously.  

Tran Hai 

what apples and oranges: Taiwan, South Korea, New Zealand and Australia - all successful countries with the same application of contact tracing having a similar level of tests per case is too tough for your brain to comprehend? You are the one who play apples and oranges here. 

Me 

Australia, 57th in per capita testing; New Zealand 84th; South Korea 121st; Taiwan 179th. And, all claim low COVID death rates, too. Rather than cite all as success stories, perhaps we need to be suspicious of all of them, too.

Let's go beyond this.

First, re all those countries above, asymptomatic transmission means that looking only at contact tracing means some numbers are missing, surely.

Second, re Vietnam itself? Not sure if the Rainier Sheas of the world would excoriate Vietnam for either right deviationism or left deviationism vs Glorious Xi Jinping Thought, but, it is a Communist nation exercising hard control over data release, just like Beijing:

In the case of Vietnam, only the Ministry of Health can declare the number of positive cases. Hospitals and clinics cannot independently publish numbers, while any unofficial counts can be subjected to a penalty.  ... 

Vietnam’s reporting of a low number of infections and zero deaths helps the Communist Party (CPV) overcome domestic distrust in light of recent legitimacy crises. Before the outbreak, the CPV was under intense pressure from dissidents at home and aboard. A deadly clash between the government and villagers over a longstanding land dispute took place in early January. ... 

However, the Covid-19 outbreak gave the CPV an opportunity to burnish its image after the land grab and other charges of corruption.

Now, it's true that the Lowy Institute of Australia is sort of a Down Under version of neocon-leaning, winger-leaning within the bipartisan foreign policy establishment, so these grafs above should be taken with a small grain of salt. But not, I think, a huge one. One of the links within the Lowy piece has the Vietnamese government claiming this:

According to information from the Ministry of Public Security, taking advantage of the COVID-19 epidemic, hostile and reactionary forces at home and abroad spread on cyberspace a lot of false information, distorting the epidemic situation. and the direction and administration of the Government, the Ministry of Health and ministries, branches and localities in epidemic prevention efforts.  

In addition, many people take advantage of the epidemic situation to spread false information or give information that is inaccurate, unconfirmed, and speculated according to their views, personal perceptions to sentence views, like sentences, and cause confusion. bring in the public opinion.

If a local hospital can't officially report a case as COVID, maybe it's not allowed to do contact tracing, among other things?  Given this above, I'd assume that's likely.

I would like to thank Tran Hai for inspiring me into the additional round of internet search on this issue.

Texas Progressives roundup: Marijuana support and more

Plenty of stuff in this week's roundup.

We've got hypothetical 2022 Texas state race information, the latest Lege nuttery on guns, education funding and more, and even world religious news.

So, let's dig in!

State

The Snooze says would-be ConservaDem (he WOULD be) Matthew McConaughey highly outpolls Strangeabbott in a purely hypothetical match for gov. Always beware of polls like this involving celebrity candidates.

Also of note: The same story says a majority of Texans oppose "permitless carry." And, kudo to the Snooze for its not using another phrase which shall not be used here either.

Liz Hanks brings the many low points of the permitless carry debate.

As week before last, when all but two Senate Democrat legiscritters made patriotism the last refuge of a scoundrel, seven of of their House compatriots voted to remove all restrictions from gun nutz. Will any be primaried?

Because of the number of power plants down for maintenance, electricity ran tight in Tex-ass again last week. Waiting for renewables to get blamed, even though they don't run power plants.

Will the Lege do another clawback on further rounds of education-focused federal stimulus funds? Well, it may whack state funds from districts that did online-only classes during the school year.

Wingnuts and even the mild mannered Glenn Hegar bitched after Team Biden revoked an extension of Texas' Medicaid 1115 waiver granted by Team Trump last year. The revocation is on solid procedural grounds for lack of transparency in the extension process. Kuff has more background.

R.G. Ratcliffe talks about Abbott's rise to be the most powerful governor post-Reconstruction.

Off the Kuff analyzed the propagandist's advantage in pushing voter suppression bills.

State Rep. Erin Zwiener reacts to the passage of anti-trans bill HB1399, while her colleague Rep. Gina Hinojosa answers Dan Patrick's questions about voter suppression in SB7. 

Reform Austin covers Briscoe Cain's history of supporting voter suppression.

Could arrests for misdemeanor C traffic stops be eliminated? Grits has the latest.

Yvonne Marquez profiles 10-year-old transsexual activist Kai Shappley.

The Dallas Voice compares this year's Lege to a pack of schoolyard bullies.

The TPA mourns the passing of Jim Henley, Houston educator and former HCDE Trustee, who mentored many of today's young Democratic leaders.

Metromess

The shitstorm that is Collin College President Neal Matkin has moved from the Dallas Observer's coverage to D Mag, which means it's big stuff. (D Mag, in turn, links to the Chronicle of Higher Education, which means it's REALLY big shit within academia.)

National

NM Gov Michelle Lujan Grisham appears to have been paying off the man who accused her of assault, that is, sexual assault crotch grab style. "INNterestingly," NM Political Report ... isn't reporting on it, even after me posting to its Facebook page. Oh, this is more common than you think.

Everything you wanted to know about the Solar Winds hack-attack is on NPR (other than the issue of how much of this the US does, of course).

Alexis McGill Johnston, head of Planned Parenthood, admits it's time for an honest reckoning about the legacy of founder Margaret Sanger on eugenics.

Marjorie Taylor Greene has (for now) disassociated herself from an "America First Caucus." Lauren Boebert? Silencio so far.

Keith Ellison moves from one-time darling of the Berners to cop-shielding ConservaDem Minnesota AG. His chief of staff says "required to defend," but, he could have pled for the judge to rule against state police, even a directed verdict-type injunction, as part of the plea.

Marijuana legalization? More people want it. My thoughts and caveats.

World

SocraticGadfly, switching from politics to his second blog, says that Martin Luther almost certainly did NOT say "Here I stand, I can do no other," 500 years ago.

Earth Day 2021: Earth Day to May Day

As yours truly blogged at Independent Political Report, ecosocialists within the Green Party have it exactly correct: Earth Day to May Day is the only way to look at April 20. Per Albert Einstein's famous comment about insanity, we cannot truly and fully address climate change within the same capitalist system that has foisted climate change on our planet in the first place.

At the same time, many libertarians in Green clothing, like nutter William Pounds and his ilk, hate this. They hate anything with a whiff of socialism. And, as libertarians, they hate anything with a whiff of the regulatory state, which is also needed. Voluntary collectives, especially when the European idea of "libertarian" that's behind "libertarian socialism" is twisted into the American idea of libertarianism, can't do it. And, many of them, like Chad Wilson, have other problems.

The Green Party is going to crack up anyway, between the Howie-haters / Jesse Ventura cultists (and Dario Hunter fellow travelers), on one hand, and so-called "trans activists" ("trans" by itself is not a word except as the first word in the name of an old GM car or an old airline, and "transgender" is not "transsexual") demanding everybody run them up the flagpole and salute them while booting the Georgia Green Party on the other. (None of this should be taken as implying that I agree with everything some Georgia GP representatives have stated, either on this issue or other issues.)

But, with or without party alignment, I can still fight for ecosocialism on Earth Day. (The SPUSA has its own bits of "trans activism" problems from what I've heard.)

We want pot! We want it legal! We want it now!

As Texas is now semi-surrounded by New Mexico's legalization of recreational marijuana, Oklahoma still looking at ersatz full legalization, and Arkansas having medical legalization, per my updated blog post about that, Pew Research says 91 percent of Merika wants at least medical legalization, and 60 percent want the full meal deal.

Related, to a degree? The NYT explains the backdrop of state laws banning hanging air fresheners from mirrors. It notes that's why Daunte Wright was stopped in Minnesota — the law is often a pretext wedge.

That said, I'd like to see a state learn from both booze and tobacco and legalize it, but only with labeling and with THC-prorated taxes.

By the first, I mean, just like cigs have to list tar and nicotine, pot has to list THC, AND it has to list it versus "ditch weed."

By the second, I mean that 20 percent THC would be taxed as much as twice as much as 10 percent THC. I'd even be open to putting a cap on max THC.

Coronavirus Week 54: Gaslighting in the name of science

The idea that surface contamination is a major factor in coronavirus transmission had been fading long before the CDC officially said: It largely taint so.

So, how did we get here?

At the Atlantic, Derek Thompson talks a bit about how some scientists had vested professional interest in the surface transmission area. So much so that they were engaging in gaslighting on the issue. Yes, gaslighting.

Zeynep Tufekci has the details, in a long read.

But, as with Fauci's Platonic noble lies, "we" really shouldn't be surprised. Scientists are human and pretending otherwise is the first step of engaging in scientism.

The NYT says we need to stop overworrying about COVID variants, at least as long as we're already vaccinated.

A pair of medical ethics professors says Johnson and Johnson vaccines never should have been paused.

As several states have dropped mask mandates and others consider it, Oregon may extend its version.

Lisa Gray highlights the work of a Houston woman who has helped over 500 people get vaccine appointments.

The rise of the nones and politics as the new religion

The rise of the "Nones" in America doesn't mean a decline in belief, per this from the Atlantic:

"(W)hat was once religious belief has now been channeled into political belief."

That said, there is no "god-shaped hole." There IS, rather, a "god-belief-shaped hole." The idea of a "god-shaped hole" is Augustinian bullshit.

The "nones" may indeed, per the SJW division of liberals (who are NOT leftists) may act in ways the second link states. But, with people acting like there is one, that may happen.

On the right, as the Religious Right had made the church politics in a way that the Black church really had not (and, in some ways, was forced to), with tied with the rise of Trumpism. So, they're already prepared for that.

What this will mean for the future? SJWs versus a more secularized version of the Religious Right, or the Religious White? A (non-lethal, we hope?) version of the Thirty Years War?

 

What the Atlantic really misses is that politics and religion in America both smack too much of tribalism in many cases, and that the Nones are just bringing a liberal tribalism to the political table. 

It also misses, per this great Politico piece about political activism in the Gilded Age, that politics as ersatz religion ain't necessarily new.