Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 317

lots of pan­dem­ic and vac­ci­na­tion stuff

On Fri­days I share articles/resources about broad cul­tur­al, soci­etal and the­o­log­i­cal issues. Be sure to see the expla­na­tion and dis­claimers at the bot­tom. I wel­come your sug­ges­tions. If you read some­thing fas­ci­nat­ing please pass it my way.

This is vol­ume 317 — a prime num­ber.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. Too Good To Check: A Play In Three Acts (Scott Alexan­der, Astral Codex Ten): “Did you believe that? I mean, that’s also a pret­ty cool sto­ry, isn’t it? Right-wing news out­lets accuse the so-called ‘lib­er­al media’ of bias, then get hoist on their own petard? Seems a bit too cute. Have you clicked through to any of the links yet? No? Not even after I admit­ted I’m prob­a­bly biased here?”
  2. On vac­ci­na­tions
    • It’s Time to Stop Ratio­nal­iz­ing and Enabling Evan­gel­i­cal Vac­cine Rejec­tion (David French, The Dis­patch): “For the Chris­t­ian believ­er, the pur­suit of free­dom is insep­a­ra­ble from the pur­suit of virtue. We do not seek lib­er­ty sim­ply to sat­is­fy our desires or to appease our fears. In fact, when we pur­sue the free­dom to make our neigh­bors sick, we vio­late the social com­pact and under­mine our moral stand­ing in pol­i­tics, law, and cul­ture. Chris­t­ian lib­er­tin­ism becomes a long-term threat to reli­gious lib­er­ty itself.”
      • Although I am vac­ci­nat­ed myself, I am more sym­pa­thet­ic to vac­cine reluc­tants than French is. I def­i­nite­ly do not think it is a reli­gious lib­er­ty issue, though. It seems to me that this is more a mat­ter of per­son­al auton­o­my and the reluc­tance is large­ly dri­ven by self-inflict­ed dam­age from the author­i­ties. The CDC (for exam­ple) has repeat­ed­ly said and done extra­or­di­nar­i­ly stu­pid things in this pan­dem­ic. Very often you would have been bet­ter off doing the oppo­site of what they advo­cat­ed for. Peo­ple noticed. And so now that the offi­cial advice is to receive the vac­cine, peo­ple who are resis­tant are apply­ing an under­stand­able heuris­tic.
    • I’m a For­mer Pas­tor, and I Don’t Believe in ‘Reli­gious Exemp­tions’ to Vac­cine Man­dates (Cur­tis Chang, New York Times): “Chris­tians who request reli­gious exemp­tions rarely even try to offer sub­stan­tive bib­li­cal and the­o­log­i­cal rea­son­ing. Rather, the dri­vers for evan­gel­i­cal resis­tance are non­re­li­gious and are root­ed in deep-seat­ed sus­pi­cion of gov­ern­ment and vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty to mis­in­for­ma­tion.… The biggest threat to any legit­i­mate right is the ille­git­i­mate abuse of that right.” Rec­om­mend­ed by a stu­dent. Cur­tis Chang used to pas­tor near here and although we’ve nev­er met I emailed with him once about a book he had writ­ten.
    • NRB spokesman Dan Dar­ling fired after pro-vac­cine state­ments on ‘Morn­ing Joe’ (Bob Smi­etana, Reli­gion News Ser­vice): “Daniel Dar­ling, senior vice pres­i­dent of com­mu­ni­ca­tions for the Nation­al Reli­gious Broad­cast­ers, was fired Fri­day (Aug. 27) after refus­ing to recant his pro-vac­cine state­ments, accord­ing to a source autho­rized to speak for Dar­ling.”
    • The ACLU, Pri­or to COVID, Denounced Man­dates and Coer­cive Mea­sures to Fight Pan­demics (Glenn Green­wald, Sub­stack): “What makes the ACLU’s posi­tion so remark­able — besides the inher­ent shock of a civ­il lib­er­ties orga­ni­za­tion cham­pi­oning state man­dates over­rid­ing indi­vid­ual choice — is that, very recent­ly, the same group warned of the grave dan­gers of the very mind­set it is now push­ing. In 2008, the ACLU pub­lished a com­pre­hen­sive report on pan­demics which had one pri­ma­ry pur­pose: to denounce as dan­ger­ous and unnec­es­sary attempts by the state to man­date, coerce, and con­trol in the name of pro­tect­ing the pub­lic from pan­demics.”
  3. The pan­dem­ic more gen­er­al­ly
    1. One in 5,000 (David Leon­hardt, New York Times): “Here’s one way to think about a one-in-10,000 dai­ly chance: It would take more than three months for the com­bined risk to reach just 1 per­cent… I will con­fess to one bit of hes­i­ta­tion about walk­ing you through the data on break­through infec­tions: It’s not clear how much we should be wor­ry­ing about them. For the vac­ci­nat­ed, Covid resem­bles the flu and usu­al­ly a mild one. Soci­ety does not grind to a halt over the flu.”
    2. New Details Emerge About Coro­n­avirus Research at Chi­nese Lab (Sharon Lern­er & Mara Hvis­ten­dahl, The Inter­cept): “The doc­u­ments con­tain sev­er­al crit­i­cal details about the research in Wuhan, includ­ing the fact that key exper­i­men­tal work with human­ized mice was con­duct­ed at a biosafe­ty lev­el 3 lab at Wuhan Uni­ver­si­ty Cen­ter for Ani­mal Exper­i­ment — and not at the Wuhan Insti­tute of Virol­o­gy, as was pre­vi­ous­ly assumed.” Rec­om­mend­ed by a stu­dent
    3. New Stud­ies Find Evi­dence Of ‘Super­hu­man’ Immu­ni­ty To COVID-19 In Some Indi­vid­u­als (Michaleen Doucleff, NPR): “In fact, these anti­bod­ies were even able to deac­ti­vate a virus engi­neered, on pur­pose, to be high­ly resis­tant to neu­tral­iza­tion. This virus con­tained 20 muta­tions that are known to pre­vent SARS-CoV­‑2 anti­bod­ies from bind­ing to it. Anti­bod­ies from peo­ple who were only vac­ci­nat­ed or who only had pri­or coro­n­avirus infec­tions were essen­tial­ly use­less against this mutant virus. But anti­bod­ies in peo­ple with the ‘hybrid immu­ni­ty’ could neu­tral­ize it.”
  4. Steven Pinker Thinks Your Sense of Immi­nent Doom Is Wrong (David March­ese, New York Times): “Giv­en that vir­tu­al­ly every cli­mate sci­en­tist believes that human activ­i­ty is warm­ing the plan­et, how could any­one deny it? The answer is, peo­ple don’t nec­es­sar­i­ly believe what sci­en­tists say because they cor­rect­ly sense that with­in acad­e­mia a per­son can get pun­ished for unortho­dox beliefs.”
    • Includ­ing entire­ly for that excerpt. What I find fas­ci­nat­ing is that the jour­nal­ist is dis­mis­sive of this idea, which is not only clear­ly true but at the root of much soci­etal dys­func­tion. We have a cri­sis of con­fi­dence in our cul­ture because our experts seem deter­mined to demon­strate their untrust­wor­thi­ness again and again. Jour­nal­ists are even more to blame than aca­d­e­mics, which is why I think it is so hard for this jour­nal­ist to accept Pinker’s claim.
  5. Per­spec­tive: The moral util­i­ty of his­to­ry (Jon Meacham, Deseret News): “As a mat­ter of observ­able fact, the Unit­ed States, through its spo­radic adher­ence to its finest aspi­ra­tions, is the most durable exper­i­ment in plu­ral­is­tic repub­li­can­ism the world has known. Oth­er nation­al rev­o­lu­tions have descend­ed into dic­ta­tor­ship and per­se­cu­tion; ours has pro­duced envi­able, if frag­ile, demo­c­ra­t­ic insti­tu­tions. In the main, the Amer­i­ca of the 21st cen­tu­ry is, for all its short­com­ings, freer and more accept­ing than it has ever been.” Rec­om­mend­ed by an alum­nus.
  6. On the Texas abor­tion law
    1. Texas’ Abor­tion Law Should Force Amer­i­ca to Change Its Ways (Karen Swal­low Pri­or, New York Times): “In Amer­i­ca, of all the preg­nan­cies that don’t end in mis­car­riage, near­ly one in five is abort­ed; this is a soci­ety in which things are wild­ly off track. A world like this, spun by forces that lead to that many lives being undone, doesn’t hap­pen by chance. It takes all of us. It takes a vil­lage to make abor­tion seem like the best choice. We can change our ways, though.” The author is an Eng­lish pro­fes­sor at South­east­ern Bap­tist The­o­log­i­cal Sem­i­nary.
    2. The Pro-Life Move­ment Must Tran­scend Pol­i­tics (David French, The Dis­patch): “To be pro-life does not mean sup­port­ing every pos­si­ble strat­e­gy, even if only tem­porar­i­ly suc­cess­ful (a Texas state court has already issued a broad injunc­tion against the law), designed to ban or lim­it abor­tion. Strate­gies designed to ban abor­tion do not nec­es­sar­i­ly help end abor­tion, and end­ing abor­tion is the ulti­mate aim of the pro-life move­ment.”
    3. How a for­mer SLS pro­fes­sor and Hoover fel­low helped shape the Texas abor­tion ban (Sari­na Deb and Geor­gia Rosen­berg, Stan­ford Dai­ly): “Jonathan Mitchell was a vis­it­ing pro­fes­sor at Stan­ford Law School and for­mer fel­low at the Hoover Insti­tu­tion when he the­o­rized the legal mech­a­nism which laid the ground­work for the con­tro­ver­sial Texas abor­tion ban that went into effect last week. If states want­ed to cir­cum­vent judi­cial review, Mitchell wrote in a 2018 law review arti­cle, they could del­e­gate the pow­er of enforce­ment to pri­vate cit­i­zens. That is exact­ly what S.B. 8 does.”
  7. Strate­gic Cit­ing (Alex Tabar­rok, Mar­gin­al Rev­o­lu­tion): “[Schol­ars are more like­ly to cite oth­er schol­ars who can help them out]… The find­ing is robust to con­trol­ling for self-cita­tions, own-jour­nal cita­tions, and a vari­ety of oth­er pos­si­bil­i­ties. The authors also show that deceased authors get few­er cita­tions than matched liv­ing authors. For exam­ple, liv­ing Nobel prize win­ners get more cita­tions than dead ones even when they were award­ed the prize joint­ly.”

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

Things Glen Found Interesting A While Ago

Every week I’ll high­light an old­er link still worth your con­sid­er­a­tion. This week we have Why Being a Fos­ter Child Made Me a Con­ser­v­a­tive (Rob Hen­der­son, New York Times): “Indi­vid­u­als have rights. But they also have respon­si­bil­i­ties. For instance, when I say par­ents should pri­or­i­tize their chil­dren over their careers, there is a sense of unease among my peers. They think I want to blame indi­vid­u­als rather than a neb­u­lous foe like pover­ty. They are most­ly right.” At the time of writ­ing, the author had just grad­u­at­ed from Yale. Worth read­ing regard­less of your polit­i­cal alle­giances. First shared in vol­ume 153.

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In the time of King David, the tribe of Issachar pro­duced shrewd war­riors “who under­stood the times and knew what Israel should do” (1 Chron 12:32). In a sim­i­lar way, we need to become wise peo­ple whose faith inter­acts with the world. I pray this email gives you greater insight, so that you may con­tin­ue the tra­di­tion of Issachar.

Disclaimer

Chi Alpha is not a par­ti­san orga­ni­za­tion. To para­phrase anoth­er min­is­ter: we are not about the donkey’s agen­da and we are not about the elephant’s agen­da — we are about the Lamb’s agen­da. Hav­ing said that, I read wide­ly (in part because I believe we should aspire to pass the ide­o­log­i­cal Tur­ing test and in part because I do not believe I can fair­ly say “I agree” or “I dis­agree” until I can say “I under­stand”) and may at times share arti­cles that have a strong par­ti­san bias sim­ply because I find the arti­cle stim­u­lat­ing. The upshot: you should not assume I agree with every­thing an author says in an arti­cle I men­tion, much less things the author has said in oth­er arti­cles (although if I strong­ly dis­agree with some­thing in the arti­cle I’ll usu­al­ly men­tion it). And to the extent you can dis­cern my opin­ions, please under­stand that they are my own and not nec­es­sar­i­ly those of Chi Alpha or any oth­er orga­ni­za­tion I may be per­ceived to rep­re­sent. Also, remem­ber that I’m not report­ing news — I’m giv­ing you a selec­tion of things I found inter­est­ing. There’s a lot hap­pen­ing in the world that’s not mak­ing an appear­ance here because I haven’t found stim­u­lat­ing arti­cles writ­ten about it. If this was for­ward­ed to you and you want to receive future emails, sign up here. You can also view the archives.

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