Leiter Reports: A Philosophy Blog

When polio was epidemic

A PBS documentary, that features, among others, the late philosopher Lawrence Becker (who taught for many years at both Hollins College and the College of William & Mary [due to polio, he had no use of his arms, but he typed all his manuscrips with his toes]).

(Thanks to Jim Klagge for the pointer.)

"Capitalism, Social Democracy and Socialism: Which is Right for America?": the debate video is now online

Here.  (I noted previously that the texts of the opening statements were available here.)   I haven't watched the video, but I do recall one mistake I made:  I should not have seemed to agree with Professor Caplan that social security should be means-tested.  Social security is a social insurance scheme, everyone contributes, and everyone collects from it.  It is not charity, but insurance. The fact that everyone collects from the insurance scheme they contributed to is another reason it is such a popular political program, a point I did make.

One curious bit during the Q&A was a fellow who was quite incensed that I pointed out, correctly, that the capitalist ruling class in Germany supported Hitler because they were afraid of genuine socialists (not social democrats).  My point--which alas Professor Caplan steadfastly ignored--is that a serious discussion of the merits of capitalism or socialism should not be based on the bad behavior of self-proclaimed capitalists or socialists. 

It was striking that Professor Caplan did not have any real reply to my basic point about the logic of capitalism:

[C]apitalist producers must reduce their costs, for if they don’t, their competitors will do so and then drive them out of business.  Since the logic of capitalism demands reduction of production costs, and since the wages of most people under capitalism are simply “production costs” to be reduced or eliminated, this cannot end well.   The only humane alternative is socialism, that is, ultimately taking collective control of the immense productive power that capitalism generates, so that its purpose is not the endless pursuit of profit, but producing what human beings need to live and flourish.

ADDENDUM:   During the debate, Professor Caplan responded to my observation that Pinochet was also a huge fan of "Chicago School" free-market economics.  (My point, again, was that the professed allies of capitalism and socialism are irrelevant to a serious discussion.)   Professor Caplan offered the rather ghoulish response that Pinochet only killed about 3,000 people during his reign of fascist terror.   Defense-by-body-count is not really my cup of tea, but if you go that route, the population of Chile at that time (about 9 million people) is relevant:  by way of comparison, it would be the equivalent of murdering more than 90,000 Americans for political reasons (and more than 750,000 tortured--see below).   S. Wallerstein, a longtime reader from Chile, also wrote with some useful additional information:

The official figure is 3,227 killed and disappeared and 28,459 tortured.  Those figures underestimate the total because in order to be listed family members had to file a report (for which they received a small pension,   which is an incentive of course) in the case of those killed and disappeared, and the victims of torture also had to file a report (for which they received a small pension too), but in many cases,  especially that of women who were almost always raped or sexually abused during the torture, no report was filed.   

If you want to use the figures, the sources are two "non-partisan" commissions, one on deaths and disappearances and the second on torture (headed by a Catholic bishop), called the Rettig Commission  and the Valech Commission  respectively.  Looking a bit more, I see that since the original commissions, they have found 30 new cases of deaths and disappearances and 9795 new cases of torture.  

Some reading about epidemics of the past

MOVING TO FRONT FROM YESTERDAY--COMMENTS NOW OPEN FOR OTHER SUGGESTIONS

Dr. Roger Albin (Michigan) writes:

As you publicized the Snowden podcast and as many of your audience are probably compulsive readers looking for useful and engaging reading material, the following may be of interest:

Kyle Harper’s The Fate of Rome – which deals extensively with the impacts of epidemic disease on the later Roman Empire.

JR MacNeill’s Mosquito Empire – disease impacts in the history of the Western Hemisphere.

Elizabeth Fenn’s Pox Americana – on the Smallpox epidemic roughly coincident with the American Revolution and its considerable consequences.

Charles Mann’s more popular books on the impacts of the European invasion of the Western Hemisphere contain a lot of relevant material on one of the most consequential processes in modern history. 

As Harper makes abundantly clear in his fine book, epidemic disease often interacted with climate fluctuations.  Two excellent books that deal with the impacts of climate fluctuations and epidemic disease:

Geoffrey Parker’s Global Crisis – a comprehensive overview of the misnamed Little Ice Age centered on the 17^th century. 

John Brooke’s Climate Change and the Course of Global History – a remarkably ambitious overview. 

People aren't that "irrational"

Philosopher Kevin Dorst (Pittsburgh/Oxford) makes some very good points here; here's the crux of his argument (but the whole essay is worth a read):

In short, there is a widespread tendency to treat human deviations from standard economic models as symptoms of bias and irrationality. That is what I’m contesting. I’ll do that by arguing three things. First, deviations from such models are often perfectly rational; second, this is true of at least some widely-maligned “biases”; and third, it follows that until we scrutinize and refine the applications of such models, we will not know how many of the putative biases are truly indicators of irrationality. (To be clear: these claims don’t cast doubt on the importance of the turn from classical to behavioral economics—what they cast doubt on is the irrationalist interpretation of that turn.)

Epidemics in historical perspective

Philosopher Steve Sverdlik (SMU) called my attention to this interesting podcast with a Yale historian, made before the current pandemic.

Why the states trump Trump in most respects when it comes to the coronavirus response

Here's a very good explanation of the state of the law from a well-known public law expert, Dan Farber (Berkeley).  (We touched briefly on this the other day here.)  As I wrote ten days ago, it's "good news" right now that the U.S. is a "federal system" (at least if you're lucky enough to live in a state with competent leadership).  Trump can talk about "opening up the economy" by Easter (which is insane), but he can't actually do it, only the states can.

(Thanks to Dean Rowan for the pointer.)

Support independent bookshops during the pandemic

A suggestion from philosopher David Velleman:

If people are worried about their local independent bookstores during the crisis — or even under normal conditions — they should consider buying their books from https://bookshop.org. This site enables independent bookstores to set up their own sites within the bookshop.org domain, with all fulfillment functions performed by a third party; and in addition to the returns the bookstores earn from their bookshop.org sites, they share in a pool of returns earned by sales from the central bookstore.org site. If your book its not yet available on bookstore.org, you can become an affiliate and list the book on your own sales site. You will then earn a share of the sales, but if you already link to your books on Amazon from your personal home page, you can switch those links to bookshop.org and format them in such a way that the earnings will go to your local independent bookstore instead, if they are also affiliates. (The format is https://bookshop.org/a/xxxx/yyyyyyyyyyyyy where xxxx is the bookshop.org affiliate number of the store and yyyyyyyyyyyyy is the ISBN-13 number of the book.)

Leiter v. Trump

A funny message, from longtime reader Larry Franz:

Thank you for your COVID-19 posts. The public needs reliable information like you've been providing. We also need TV networks to stop giving the president free access to misinform the public. He's a risk to public health.

Alas, I can only address one of these issues!

Tory government to pay up to 80% of wages (up to 2500 GBP per month) of those unable to work due to pandemic

That's a far more serious response than the proposal to send out some $1,000 checks now and then.   Will it inspire the Republicans here?

Trump's and the right-wing media's disinformation campaign on coronavirus

A philosopher elsewhere kindly invited me to share the following:

I think we're seeing that Trump's initial misinformation about the risk posed by the coronavirus is causing fewer Americans to socially distance than otherwise would. Willingness to socially isolate tracks party affiliation, with way fewer Republicans than Democrats saying they're willing to do so: https://www.marketwatch.com/story/republicans-are-far-more-likely-than-democrats-to-think-the-coronavirus-threat-is-exaggerated-new-survey-finds-2020-03-10 . It's not hard to find people not just defying recommendations to socially isolate, but doing so proudly.

Right-wing media is almost certainly responsible for this.

Until sometime in March, Trump's downplaying of the pandemic was part of Fox News' editorial stance. They would often slip this in as they criticize Democrats for trying to use the crisis to their own advantage.

I know many U.S. readers are worried given that the President of the U.S. is an incompetent idiot...

...but the good news is that (1) the U.S. is a federal system, and state officials have much more immediate authority over and effect on public health measures--in many states (e.g., California, Washington, New York, Illinois, Ohio), these officials have been proactive; and (2) the "national emergency" declaration the monster-child issued frees up other actors in the federal system to do constructive things.  Just ignore Trump!  He's still a piece of garbage, and with luck he'll be gone soon.

Matt and Noah Colvin should be arrested for endangering public health

They're apparently too stupid to realize that being featured in the NYT is going to bring the wrath of people and law enforcement down on them.

"Socialism, social democracy, and capitalism: which is right for America?"

The economist Noah Williams (Wisconsin) who organized Wednesday's debate has now made available both his opening remarks, plus the opening statements by myself and Professor Bryan Caplan (George Mason).   The event was recorded and that will be available at a later date.

A great public service announcement from your Italian grandma

This is nicely done:

 

An argument against closing lower schools (*not* universities)

This is interesting.  Universities serve an older population than schoolchildren, but one that is more likely than the younger kids to both get and transmit COVID-19.  (If that's incorrect, I welcome links in the comments.)  The article also makes the point that to actually be effective in stopping an epidemic, schools would have to be closed for months.  So far no one is talking about that, at least not that I've seen.

The U.S. has 484 *discovered* cases of the new coronavirus, it clearly has several thousand people who are infected

This is exactly right, from a Harvard epidemiologist:   "Media: you need to stop reporting on new cases in the US. They are newly discovered. I know you don't mean to but by saying the literal case numbers you are playing into the false narrative that things are under control in the US."

ADDENDUM: This study estimates almost 10,000 infections in the U.S. currently, although given the size of the country, it still would not be as bad as what we're seeing right now in Italy and South Korea.  But it's early days.   Take precautions:  no handshaking, avoid crowds, frequent hand washing, stay home if you're not well, regardless of the reason.

From a doctor in Italy, on the frontline of the epidemic there

This is in Italian, but Google translate will give you the feel for it.   As he says:  this is not just a "bad flu."  It' makes for gripping reading.

Coronavirus on Twitter

I follow this epidemiologist, who is generally quite informative and links to useful resources.  Note his alarm about the situation in Seattle, also his criticism of the W.H.O.'s idiotic announcement of a fatality rate of more than 3% for the virus.   In dysfunctional countries, like Iran and the U.S., which aren't doing enough testing, the case fatality rate looks like it's 3% and 8%, respectively, but that's because they're doing a terrible job testing people.  We know that in China, the rate in Wuhan was quite a bit higher (over 4%) compared to the rest of the country (under 1%), mostly explained by Wuhan being overwhelmed and caught by surprise in the early stages.   By contrast, South Korea, with its aggressive and widespread testing, has a fatality rate (so far) of about 0.5%.   Singapore, with more than 100 cases (they too have done a good job controlling further spread), has no fatalities.  The rate for the "Diamond Princess" cruise ship is about 1% to date, remarkably low given the petrie dish of disease that was created.

And if you want to be alarmed in America, check out this tweet.

"Super Tuesday" post-mortem

Biden is back.   Massive African-American support throughout the South was crucial, but he also did well with the "suburban women" demographic (take a look at Virginia, where Sanders was crushed by Biden) and working class voters.   Biden may have enough delgates to get the nomination without the intervention of super delegates.   One can only hope that the early stages of his dementia don't become even more apparent in the coming months.

The massive media campaign against Sanders, led by the New York Times, had its desired effect.  But apart from that, Sanders really still hasn't made sufficient inroads with African-American voters, despite his popularity with Hispanic voters.

How incompetent is the CDC?

See for yourself.  Could we please put South Korea in charge?

ADDENDUM: Or maybe China?   Locking down cities was not the most important thing they did; instead, it was contact tracing, aggressive testing, and cancelling public gatherings.  This is also striking:

You look at the big, long lists of all the cases and identify those where you have clusterings in space and time and try to investigate what kind of clustering happened: Was it in a hospital, an old-age home, theaters, restaurants? We found it was predominantly in families. It’s not a big surprise; China had shut down a lot of the other ways people could gather. And family clusters are the closest, longest exposures [to the virus], and getting the virus is a function of whether someone’s got it, how long they’re exposed, and how much virus they are shedding.

“This is a disease that is in the cases and their close contacts. It’s not a hidden enemy lurking behind bushes.”

More of a surprise, and this is something we still don’t understand, is how little virus there was in the much broader community. Everywhere we went, we tried to find and understand how many tests had been done, how many people were tested, and who were they.

In Guangdong province, for example, there were 320,000 tests done in people coming to fever clinics, outpatient clinics. And at the peak of the outbreak, 0.47 percent of those tests were positive. People keep saying [the cases are the] tip of the iceberg. But we couldn’t find that. We found there’s a lot of people who are cases, a lot of close contacts — but not a lot of asymptomatic circulation of this virus in the bigger population. And that’s different from flu. In flu, you’ll find this virus right through the child population, right through blood samples of 20 to 40 percent of the population.

Bristol newspaper names and shames adult men threatening Greta Thunberg on social media

What a collection of winners!

UC Santa Cruz fires striking TAs

What a disgrace--straight from the Reagan playbook.

Blast from the past: the swine flu pandemic in 2009...

...which turned out not to be too bad (but we didn't know that in Spring 2009).   Since one of my kids has asthma, I followed that one fairly closely as well.

Lao-Tzu, Plato and the movie "Parasite"

Political theorist David Lay Williams (DePaul) comments.

South Korea has drive-through coronavirus testing...

...why doesn't the U.S.?  From what I'm reading, it seems clear that the virus is already widespread in certain communities, but because the CDC has been so hopelessly incompetent at testing, we don't know how widespread or where.   The Johns Hopkins COVID-19 tracker is a useful resource; I expect that now that testing is becoming more widespread that the U.S. numbers will jump into the hundreds over the next week, just as happend in Italy.

UPDATE:  Japan is also clearly undercounting, and no doubt on purpose:  they are supposed to host the summer olympics. 

ANOTHER:  Thanks to the CDC decision to only test those with China connections, it looks like the virus has been circulating in the state of Washington for at least six weeks, undetected (according to a University of Washington researcher).

The U.S. election and the coronavirus

It seems clear the coronavirus pandemic is going to trigger a recession in the U.S. and probably globally, barring a sudden change in the course of its spread.   As we know from Achen and Bartels, voters often hold incumbents responsible for bad events, especially if there is any narrative supporting such responsibility (and sometimes even when there isn't).   All this bodes ill for Trump, which is maybe the only good news in this impending disaster.  

We also know that the rate of death from coronavirus is higher the older the infected person is; in China, it topped 10% for those in their 80s, and was almost 10% for those in their 70s, for example.  (The percentages may be lower if it turns out there are many infected people in these age groups with no or mild symptoms.)  We have a lot of septuagenarians running for President, who seem very good bets to acquire coronavirus before the average citizen given how much time they spend shaking hands and schmoozing with LOTS of people everywhere.  What will happen if, say, Sanders is incapacitated for weeks due to infection?  And if Sanders, who is on track to win the Democratic nomination, were to succumb to the virus in the months ahead, what then?

"Teens for Mayor Pete"

This satirical site captures his vacuity well; an excerpt:

POLICIES:

Policies are vital to any candidate. In fact, policies are the cornerstone of a Democracy and Democracy is what makes America the country it is today.

Health Care

In the U.S. some have Health Care, while others do not. Some believe Health Care should be public, while others believe it should be private. That is their opinion, and opinions are one of the many things we are allowed to have.

Employment

Every year the number of Americans that are unemployed changes. Sometimes it is up, but other times... other times it is down. And that is a fact.

Climate Change

Climate change is a hotly debated Issue both in person and online. What do you think about Climate Change? Because, that is what I think too.

Ruling class media v. Bernie Sanders

This is a pretty good video:

ADDENDUM:  By the way, that's Mimi Rocah who said Bernie "makes her skin crawl" and she doesn't know why.  I have an idea:  maybe she's an anti-semite?  They do tend to have that reaction to gruff, assertive Jews like Bernie.

 

Senator Sanders speaks the truth about AIPAC...

...and, of course, AIPAC goes crazy. 

UPDATE:   Senators Warren and Klobuchar, as well as Mayor Pete, are also taking a pass on AIPAC.   Remarkable and wonderful!

Democratic primaries and the general election

So even the mainstream media has acknowledged that Sanders is the clear front-runner.  I gave money initially to Warren, but once it became clear she isn't registering with enough voters, I'm now giving only to Sanders.  I still expect this to come down to Sanders and Bloomberg, with the only real uncertainty being whether Sanders will prevail on the first round; if not, the super delegates will probably throw it to Bloomberg.   On the merits of what they stand for, Sanders and Warren are the easy choices by my lights; I wish I could be as confident as my diehard Sanders friends that he can actually win in the general election against Trump.  I think it's possible, but very far from certain.  He is a good bet to recapture working-class and union voters in the Midwest; he's also a good bet to lose those "suburban soccer moms" that powered the Democrats to victory in the House in 2018.  I doubt they'll vote for Trump in significant numbers, but they may sit things out.  Some Republicans that would have voted for Biden or Bloomberg will also sit out a Sanders v. Trump match.   If Sanders picks an African-American running mate, his odds go up, since very high African-American turnout will be crucial.  The unknown is how this all adds up. 

The pernicious class politics of "diversity blather"

The President of Oberlin College, in order to save perhaps $2 million per year, proposes to fire more than 100 dining services and custodial employees represented by the U.A.W. in order to hire outside vending services which "are better able to reach economies of scale based on their size and expertise."   Translation:  these services will pay lower wages with fewer benefits, so will cost less--since the unionized workers being fired no doubt enjoy better salaries and benefits.   "It is our hope that many employees will be given the opportunity to interview for jobs with the newly selected vendors," reports the magnanimous President, without any irony.   "Hope"?   Surely Oberlin could make it a condition of a new contract with vendors, but they obviously won't.

Oberlin is hardly alone in making moves like this, it's a tried-and-true way of reducing labor costs at the expense of the lives of a hundred-or-so working class people.  But in case someone might actually care about the lives of working-class people, the President assures us that "we have kept sacrosanct our commitment to financial aid to ensure diversity."  Well, that's a relief.  I bet that financial aid adds up to a couple of million dollars as well.   But since diversity is more important than the ability of unnamed working-class people to live minimally decent lives, we can all rest easy knowing the college has its priorities straight.

ADDENDUM:  Here's another benefit that the fired employees will lose:  tuition benefits for their children (see pp. 5-6).  But at least there is financial aid still for "diversity"!  (Thanks to Paul Weithman for calling this to my attention.)

Thomas Piketty discusses his new book, "Capitalism and Ideology"...

...at Tocqueville 21.

Members of the "White Rose" resistance to Nazism were executed on this day in 1943

If you don't know the story, you can check out this short video.  (This longer film is very good.)  Actual examples of moral courage are few and far between, but this was the real deal.

"Escape from Wuhan"

Gripping piece of writing by philosopher Spencer Case, who had been on faculty at Wuhan University.  Professor Case tells me that his "colleagues Matt Lutz, Tim Perrine and many Chinese philosophy faculty -- I'm not sure how many -- remain stuck in the lockdown."

Bloomberg at the Las Vegas Democratic debate

I saw it with my own eyes!

In a demonstration of the high level of enthusiasm the former New York City mayor enjoys among the electorate, surging presidential candidate Michael Bloomberg was met with a standing ovation during the Democratic debate Wednesday as he promised to “rule you peasants with an iron fist.” “Kneel before me and tremble, you piteous wretches, for I am your new sovereign ruler and my will is infallible,” said Bloomberg, cutting into his rivals’ speaking time as his pledge to “vanquish my enemies and reward my supplicants” was met with thunderous applause by thousands of assembled audience members. “You peons, you mean as little to me as a clump of dirt to a mighty mountain, and I’ll step on the necks of every last one of you on my quest for greater and greater power. Gaze upon your new God and fear my capricious wrath.” At press time, the audience had broken out into chants of “Bloomberg! Bloomberg!” as armed guards emerged from the exits to indiscriminately beat them with batons.

Jokes aside, I'm amazed by the naivety of my academic friends who think that because Senator Warren sliced and diced Bloomberg in the debate that he's finished.  (I didn't watch the debate, just read the post-mortems.)   If only it worked that way...but it doesn't.

David Rieff did not like Samantha Power's book

Not philosophers (although I encountered it on a philosophy friend's FB page), but amusingly damning:

Power writes in her introduction that, “We make sense of our lives through stories.” It is a revealing moment. ...[N]ot all of the stories we tell ourselves are true, and in Power’s case the stories she tells herself and now retails to her readers more often than not are prophylactics against understanding. Repeating that the United States is the world’s greatest nation when it has the lowest social mobility of any developed country, or that it is a leader in human dignity when it has the highest incarceration rates in the world and is the only OECD country besides Japan and South Korea to have the death penalty, not to mention an undemocratic system for electing presidents and politics hopelessly corrupted by money—all phenomena that long predate Donald Trump’s presidency (Power belongs proudly to the “Trump is an aberration” school)—is absurd. And saying that America has nothing to apologize for is to enter the realm of fantasy....

Power’s good intentions are not at issue. But like so many well-meaning servants of the Pax Americana before her, Power profoundly misunderstands her own role. Cicero wrote of Cato that he “gives his opinion as if he were in Plato’s Republic, not in Romulus’ cesspool,” and that is Power’s error as well. For when she writes extensively about America’s successes and failures but never of America’s crimes and complicity in crimes, she is engaged in an exercise in idolatry, and idolatry of a particularly exasperating and mediocre kind: self-idolatry. Power is well aware of the dangers of imperial overreach, but she writes as though she remains insensible to the dangers of imperialism itself. This, it seems, is what passes for idealism in the Washington policy establishment these days.

Strong statement by former Department of Justice lawyers protesting political meddling in prosecutions and sentencing

More than 1100 signatures, including, according to one law professor, about 100 former lawyers who served in the DOJ in the Trump Administration; 85% overall served DOJ in Republican administrations.   AG Barr needs to go.

Bloomberg's "stop-and-frisk" policy in NYC

This is a quite damning account.  (By the way, I do wish people on the left would stop calling Bloomberg a "racist":  he's plainly not (as the multiple endorsements from Democratic African-American elected officials might suggest).  He's a member of the ruling class, and he's incapable of significant empathy with those not in his class.  That includes poor African-Americans, but as many of his policies as Mayor makes clear, it includes many others.   The stop-and-frisk policy was damaging enough without further diluting the meaning of the word "racist.")

A propos the coronavirus...

...and our post the other day:  this is not good news (e.g., 8 of 50 documented cases from Singapore [which does more reliable reporting than China] are in the ICU).

If Sanders doesn't carry union voters, including in the midwest, he can't win...

...so this is a hugely ominous sign.  Other unions will have similar reactions I strongly suspect.

ADDENDUM:  On the other hand...but it's still early days.

Battle of the New York "billionaires"

Trump v. Bloomberg.   Bloomberg does have the potential to make Trump apoplectic, since he's got many of the same New York verbal street-fighter instincts.  In terms of winning, I think the Sanders approach is ultimately better, which is to keep his eye on the ball (i.e,. the issues), instead of on the goofball.

William Barr's moment of truth

This sums up his choices.  His choice has profound implications for the rule of law, at least at the federal level.  (Since the U.S. has a federal system, the state attorney generals have considerable autonomy, although some offenses may be purely federal ones.)

Attention Democratic Party: the blog readers have spoken!

So with more than 800 votes since yesterday afternoon, here are the results:

Bernie Sanders:        49%

Elizabeth Warren:    20%

Amy Klobuchar:       12%

Mike Bloomberg:      10%

Pete Buttigieg:          6%

Joe Biden:                 2%

Tom Steyer:               1%

I've notified the DNC that the people who count have spoken! 

Only a poll of blog readers can bring clarity to the 2020 Democratic nomination contest

Only Americans should vote!   The masses await your guidance!

More reason to think the Democratic primary contest will come down to Sanders and Bloomberg

Biden's dysmal fifth-place finish in New Hampshire is the beginning of the end.  Creepy Pete will do poorly in South Carolina and Nevada.  Senator Warren, sadly, looks to be finished.  Senator Klobuchar will also do poorly in South Carolina and Nevada.   Bloomberg, meanwhile, is targetting the crucial demographic he needs for the Democratic nomination, beyond the suburban voters that have drifted away from the Repugs and that he'll lock up easily over Sanders.  And, of course, he has more financial resources than any of his competitors.  Given that the Democratic Party has been for at least thirty years now merely the prudent and less vicious wing of the ruling class, what could be more apt than nominating a billionaire to take on the perfect symbol of the imprudent and very vicious wing of the ruling class?

UPDATE:  As if on cue!  (Thanks to Jerry Dworkin for the pointer.)

Moral grandstanding at the Oscar ceremonies?

Philosophers Justin Tosi (Texas Tech) and Brandon Warmke (Bowling Green) comment.  The discussion is quite nuanced, making it all the more remarkable that it appears on the CNN website!

(Thanks to Alan White for the pointer.)

Not a great piece of "public philosophy": on Strawson and the coronavirus

I've noted with appreciation some of philosopher Regina Rini's past public work, but her debut essay for a new "ethics" series at the TLS is neither a good piece of work nor a good advertisement for philosophy.   The subject is the arrival of the novel coronavirus in Toronto, where Professor Rini teaches (at York University):

Toronto has a large Chinese Canadian community, particularly in the suburb of Markham. When I heard that someone had arrived with coronavirus from China, I admit that my first thought was to avoid restaurants in Markham for a bit.  My second thought was that my first was dangerous, probably more dangerous than the disease itself.

"[M]ore dangerous than the disease itself"?   You can read a vivid description of the condition of the sick for yourself:  those with symptoms (we have no idea what percent of the infected develop symptoms) appear to suffer for two to three weeks before recovering, if they do.  Ignoring that half of new infections are passed on by those who are not themselves symptomatic and that the virus appears to be spread just like regular influenza, Professor Rini assures us that,

Even in the unlikely chance you did catch coronavirus, the statistics suggest your risk of dying is quite small. As of February 4, with around 20,000 cases confirmed in China, 425 of those patients have died. Such a fatality rate is far less than that of Ebola or SARS.

This is an egregious mistake:   all the experts agree that we have no idea what the fatality rate of this new virus is; here's but one example:

Usually, simple math would determine this “case fatality” ratio: divide the total number of deaths by the total number of people infected. In an emerging epidemic, however, both numbers keep changing, and sometimes at different speeds. This makes simple division impossible; you will invariably get it wrong.

For example:  we don't know how many of those infected are asymptomatic, or simply not showing up in official data; we don't know how many are dying of the virus without ever coming to the attention of medical personnel; we don't know how many of the tens of thousands recently infected will die in the coming weeks; and so on.   So this is "public philosophy" predicated on a falsehood.

But even if the mortality rate were 2% (as Professor Rini supposes), that would make it 20 times more fatal than seasonal flu.   Why should anyone be nonchalant about an infection that has a 1 in 50 chance of killing you?  If you want to convince the public that philosophers lack sense, this would be a good way to do it!  Would people drive cars or fly in planes if those were the odds?  

Good news for unmarried fornicators in Virginia

You'll soon be legal!

Will it come down to Sanders and Bloomberg?

If you take a look at the national and state polls at 538, the big story is the rise of Bloomberg in the "Super Tuesday" states and nationally.   With Biden poised to come in 4th or 5th in New Hampshire, after a bad loss in Iowa, his only hope is South Carolina, where he probably will win, but that's unlikely to be enough to save him.  Mayor Pete will do miserably in South Carolina and Nevada, and then come Super Tuesday the "moderate" Democrats will vote for Bloomberg as their best hope (it helps that, unlike Biden, he's cognitively functional and can speak English and that, unlike Mayor Pete, he has substantive things to say [but that aren't too scary for "moderates"--he's the ideal suburban "soccer Mom" candidate]).   If it comes down to a brokered convention, one can guess whom the "establishment" will support as between Bloomberg and Sanders.

"Creepy Pete"

This is actually pretty apt:

“We had the belief that in the face of exhaustion and cynicism and division, in spite of every trampled norm and every poisonous tweak,” [Mayor Pete] said, “that a rising majority of Americans was hungry for action and ready for new answers.”

What action? What answers? What is this? The whole timbre and cadence of his speech seemed to be modeled after the rhetoric of Barack Obama. But it lacked all the reassuring notes of specificity that seemed to prove Obama was an actual human being, inhabiting a corporeal body in the same space-time continuum that I inhabit.

Buttigieg’s speech, on the other hand, resembled a kind of mad-lib speech in which none of the blanks had been filled. Obama was promising not just “action” but to turn back the rising sea levels. How did Pete Buttigieg manage to beat Kamala Harris, Joe Biden, Amy Klobuchar, and a dozen other people with more charm (such as Andrew Yang) with this utter pablum?

I’m not saying for sure that Pete Buttigieg is a robot or a phenomenon of massive psychotic projection. I can’t prove that. All I can say is that when he came out on stage in Iowa, I felt like we were undergoing a coup.

To be fair, I'm not sure Mayor Pete's pablum is worse than "Change we can believe in."

UPDATE:  The Onion nailed this last April!  (Thanks to Ruchira Paul for the pointer.)