Editors’ Blog

So much of story of 2021 has been about the polarization over vaccines and the battle to get the country vaccinated against COVID. You know all this story with all its trials and permutations. But for all of this it’s worth stepping back and recognizing this fact: the United States is overwhelmingly vaccinated. At the moment, 80% of people over the age of 12 in the United States have received at least one vaccine dose and 69% are fully vaccinated. Over the age of 18 those stats are 82% and 71%. (The over-12 metric is critical because 5-12 year olds have only become eligible this month; those under the age of five remain ineligible.)

None of this is to underestimate the importance of increased vaccination or the destruction that has been wrought by the willful politicization of the COVID vaccine. But sometimes we have the idea that the country is divided on this issue. And that’s not quite right. Overwhelmingly, adults and those eligible to be vaccinated are vaccinated. A small minority of the adult population remains unvaccinated.

Remember the last time Republicans took credit for legislation they actively opposed?

We reported earlier today that anti-BIF Rep. Gary Palmer (R-AL) lauded the passage of the bipartisan infrastructure bill just hours after President Biden signed it into law this week, praising at least one element of the package that will provide crucial funding to complete construction work on one of his “top priorities” as a lawmaker — the Birmingham Northern Beltline, a six-lane bypass route around Birmingham, Alabama.

Messaging is generally the most overrated aspect of electoral politics. But it’s not nothing. And Democrats need to do better at it. I just wrote a way too long post on this. But it really comes down to this. President Biden has to learn a lesson from President Trump and brag more about the economy. A lot more. And do it consistently. In every public setting. And about COVID too.

Job reports have been up and down this year. But they’ve actually been consistently revised upward after the fact. That’s happened every month for the last six months for a total of 625,000 additional new jobs. In August the number doubled. But this gets drowned out. Revisions of earlier months don’t make headlines. That’s life. But the power of the presidency is to push these things to the front of the conversation.

The far-right’s push to make America the Wild West again continues.

Over the last half dozen years the rightist-populist (shorthand: Trumpist) war on expertise has created a highly polarized conversation about the role of expertise in democratic public life. But the debate about booster shots shows how those of us who are on Team Expertise have perhaps slightly overshot in this contentious public conversation. Or perhaps ‘overshot’ isn’t the right word. It shows how once we set aside conversations with idiots and bullshit artists there are real nuances, as there always has been, in the balance between expertise and democratic self-governance.

Let’s start by making a few points clear. Especially in the hard sciences we really should defer to people with professional expertise. Not sign off all decision-making, mind you, but really show great deference to the organized and systematic accumulation of knowledge which is a centerpiece – perhaps the centerpiece – of our civilization. The question is often on what questions specifically is the expertise relevant?

Here’s where you get to the booster question.

The latest from the jury deliberations in Kenosha.

There’s little question that a COVID booster shot increases your immunity to COVID infection. Data out of Israel from the late summer and early fall leaves little question about that. The public debate – setting aside questions of global vaccine equity – has been about how long that increased protection lasts and whether it matters. Let’s take the second part first. The most important protection you get from COVID vaccination is protection against severe illness and death. A year’s worth of data shows that protection against bad outcomes remains robust even though protection against infection declines substantially after about 6 months. For healthy people under 65 is it worth another round of vaccination, especially if that top off of increased protection only lasts a few months?

Here’s the list of Republican members of Congress bold enough to attend the White House signing ceremony for the bipartisan infrastructure bill yesterday.

See signs of backlash against them from Trump, MAGA world, or the folks back home? Email us.

Upon the anniversary of her near-assassination at Jonestown, Rep. Jackie Speier (D-CA) announces she won’t seek re-election:

President Donald Trump and his administration’s handling of the COVID-19 pandemic, particularly in the earliest days of the virus’ spread in the U.S., was an unmitigated disaster. We covered this as it unfolded for months and months.

But new media reports and documents released by a congressional committee probing the prior administration’s steering during 2020 confirm jarring new details about just how far the Trump White House went to interfere with the release of crucial public health-related information to the American people.