Things that went whizzing by that I want to remember: First: Third doses—hell, first doses—are in short supply worldwide. Masks and avoiding crowding together in effective batcaves are not in short supply worldwide. So let me second Claudia on this: there is no either/or tradeoff here. To say that we should focus on vaccines “instead of” masks and social distancing and other extremely cheap and easy non-pharmaceutical measures to deal with the fact that there are three days during which you are infectious before you know you are—well, the “either/or” in place of “both/and” is something I find hard to interpret except as a form of two-sided affinity fraud
Wearing masks accepts that it is mete, just, and our bounden duty to comply with the exercise of the civil power for the greater good.
Mammonites reject any concept of "greater good"; there is good for them, and bad for them, and nothing else. They're not strong on accepting that the civil power might properly be applied to constraining their conduct at all, ever.
This makes it look like a technocratic solution -- vaccines -- might be a compromise position; it avoids having to confront mammonites.
The vaccines are not anything like powerful enough for that to work; against wild type, aggressive mandatory vaccination might have worked. (but only might). Against Delta, it won't, and against Omicron perhaps a greater won't. Aggressive mandatory vaccination _and_ aggressive mandatory public health measures _and_ long-term movement controls _and_ truly aggressive efforts to extirpate the disease in animal reservoirs will all be required.
I could wish for a greater political will to this end; I could wish for a general acknowledgement that extirpation is the only practical course. And while I'm wishing, I could wish that someone in the halls of power would notice that if there are humans in 2100, mammonism will be extinct. We're not getting through this by agreeing that whatever you've done, you get to keep the loot.
The problem is not that the NYT "notable" books list is short of science books, but rather that the NYT is even considered an arbiter of "notable" books. It reminds me of Allan Bloom's 1980s railing about the decline of liberal education as if there was a loss when education was no longer focussed on a set of ideas he was exposed to. (Note the NYT gave his book (The Closing of the American Mind) a +ve early review, whereas later reviews by others were far more -ve.) I suspect that the problem is that some want a high place in the pantheon of culture which would require limiting that cultural extent to be encompassed by a single mind. If CP Snow was correct about the Two Cultures (and watching archived BBC shows supports that view), then there are realms of culture that are no longer mainstream. Just as internet commerce by Amazon enabled long-tailed products, so social media allowed the viable fragmentation of interests. Those of us who love science have no problem finding good books on almost any domain of science and can happily ignore the entreaties of those who would peddle other interests.
If we really believe that diversity is a good thing for civilizational adaptability, then this fragmentation is desirable, even if those wishing to maintain a homogenous culture would wish otherwise.
Wearing masks accepts that it is mete, just, and our bounden duty to comply with the exercise of the civil power for the greater good.
Mammonites reject any concept of "greater good"; there is good for them, and bad for them, and nothing else. They're not strong on accepting that the civil power might properly be applied to constraining their conduct at all, ever.
This makes it look like a technocratic solution -- vaccines -- might be a compromise position; it avoids having to confront mammonites.
The vaccines are not anything like powerful enough for that to work; against wild type, aggressive mandatory vaccination might have worked. (but only might). Against Delta, it won't, and against Omicron perhaps a greater won't. Aggressive mandatory vaccination _and_ aggressive mandatory public health measures _and_ long-term movement controls _and_ truly aggressive efforts to extirpate the disease in animal reservoirs will all be required.
I could wish for a greater political will to this end; I could wish for a general acknowledgement that extirpation is the only practical course. And while I'm wishing, I could wish that someone in the halls of power would notice that if there are humans in 2100, mammonism will be extinct. We're not getting through this by agreeing that whatever you've done, you get to keep the loot.
re: How Notable Is Science?
The problem is not that the NYT "notable" books list is short of science books, but rather that the NYT is even considered an arbiter of "notable" books. It reminds me of Allan Bloom's 1980s railing about the decline of liberal education as if there was a loss when education was no longer focussed on a set of ideas he was exposed to. (Note the NYT gave his book (The Closing of the American Mind) a +ve early review, whereas later reviews by others were far more -ve.) I suspect that the problem is that some want a high place in the pantheon of culture which would require limiting that cultural extent to be encompassed by a single mind. If CP Snow was correct about the Two Cultures (and watching archived BBC shows supports that view), then there are realms of culture that are no longer mainstream. Just as internet commerce by Amazon enabled long-tailed products, so social media allowed the viable fragmentation of interests. Those of us who love science have no problem finding good books on almost any domain of science and can happily ignore the entreaties of those who would peddle other interests.
If we really believe that diversity is a good thing for civilizational adaptability, then this fragmentation is desirable, even if those wishing to maintain a homogenous culture would wish otherwise.