{"id":74067,"date":"2020-05-08T11:00:00","date_gmt":"2020-05-08T16:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=74067"},"modified":"2020-07-29T08:06:40","modified_gmt":"2020-07-29T13:06:40","slug":"shot-in-the-dark-todays-news-over-a-month-ago","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=74067","title":{"rendered":"Shot In The Dark: Today’s News, Over A Month Ago"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

With all due respect to Professor Glenn Reynolds – who may have done more than any single person to launch this blog, a third of a lifetime ago – I was observing that three of the biggest killers of the Covid plague, density, transit, bureaucracy and censorship, well over a month back<\/a>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

But they all deserve repeating. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Density:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The coronavirus has been much more deadly in places like New York City or Boston\u00a0than in rural settings. As demographer Joel Kotkin notes, Los Angeles has done much better than other big cities, because\u00a0it\u2019s less dense<\/a>. \u201cL.A.\u2019s sprawling, multi-polar urban form, by its nature, results in far less ‘exposure density’ to the contagion than more densely packed urban areas, particularly those where large, crowded workplaces are common and workers are mass-transit-dependent…<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Transit:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Kotkin mentions mass transit, and an MIT study found that NYC subways were a \u201dmajor disseminator<\/a>\u201d\u00a0of the coronavirus in New York. This is unsurprising: New York City subways are crowded, poorly ventilated\u00a0and filthy. The city is only just now\u00a0starting to clean them<\/a>\u00a0every night.\u00a0(A bit late.) Cars come with built-in social-distancing: With a car, you\u2019re riding in a metal and glass bubble with filtered air. Subways and buses, not so much. Whether this virus sounds the \u201ddeath knell<\/a>\u201d\u00a0for mass transit\u00a0or not, people will be far more reluctant to ride packed vehicles in the future.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Minnesota’s favorite, Bureaucracy:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Early on, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention\u00a0declared COVID-19 a\u00a0public health emergency<\/a>, which raised the bar for testing requirements. As a result, hospitals and universities faced significant barriers to getting alternative tests approved by the Food and Drug Administration.\u00a0<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Censorship:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Chinese government censored reports of the Wuhan coronavirus outbreak,\u00a0punished doctors<\/a>\u00a0who talked about it\u00a0and lied to the world for weeks\u00a0\u2014\u00a0while allowing\u00a0flights from the infected area<\/a>\u00a0to carry people from Wuhan all over the world.\u00a0Now some authoritarian types are claiming that the spread of virus misinformation on social media offers a new justification for censorship of ordinary people.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

And let’s not forget perhaps the most insidious form of censorship of all – the notion that “science” is is an orthodox canon of knowledge bestowed upon the proles by high priests of knowledge, more like the medieval Catholic Church than a framework for relentless questioning and skepticism. That – and the media and social media establishment’s efforts to stymie dissent – could wind up being the biggest killers of people and destroyers of freedom of all. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

With all due respect to Professor Glenn Reynolds – who may have done more than any single person to launch this blog, a third of a lifetime ago – I was observing that three of the biggest killers of the Covid plague, density, transit, bureaucracy and censorship, well over a month back. But they all […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[416],"tags":[423],"class_list":["post-74067","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-covid19","tag-the-endless-emergency"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74067","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=74067"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74067\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":74068,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74067\/revisions\/74068"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=74067"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=74067"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=74067"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}