Are airplanes more dangerous now than they were during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic? No, of course not. Yet that’s what CNN implied on Sunday, in an article on “how to fly safely.” Correctly noting that the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines are only 90 percent protective against COVID-19, CNN went on to assert (incorrectly) that “translated into reality, that means for every million fully vaccinated people who fly, some 100,000 could still become infected.”

COVID-19 can and has spread on flights, of course. But even before people started getting vaccinated, confirmed cases of transmission were relatively small. “The risk of contracting coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) during air travel is lower than from an office building, classroom, supermarket, or commuter train,” an article in The Journal of the American Medical Association noted last fall. If CNN’s estimate were true, that would mean many more vaccinated people getting infected on planes as overall case counts dwindle than unvaccinated people did at the pandemic’s peak.

Luckily, CNN’s estimate is dead wrong. “NO NO NO. That’s not what that number means,” tweeted University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Professor Zeynep Tufekci yesterday, adding “this didn’t even happen when millions flew unvaccinated. So how could it make sense now?”

When we talk about a 90 percent vaccine efficacy rate, it does not mean that every single vaccinated person who is exposed to COVID-19 has a 10 percent chance of getting it; individual immune responses and other factors still apply. And it certainly doesn’t mean that 10 percent of vaccinated people in the world, a country, or a given place will catch COVID-19.

“What a ‘90% effective vaccine’ means is that the number of people who would otherwise have gotten COVID is 90% lower. It doesn’t mean that only 90% of vaccinated people are immune,” Australian journalist and University of Technology Sydney fellow Josh Szeps points out.

This would be like saying if 1,000 people go to the grocery story, 100 of them will get Covid. https://t.co/4CNrle6LMr

— Ryan Grim (@ryangrim) April 11, 2021

One million vaccinated people flying does not mean all one million people will be on flights where another passenger has COVID-19.

Even if that were the case, it does not follow that conditions—air circulation patterns, ventilation system operation, masking, proximity to the infected person, etc.—would make it possible for each vaccinated person on a flight to be significantly exposed.

And even if that were the case—the highly, highly unlikely scenario that every vaccinated person is exposed to COVID-19 in-flight—it does not follow that 10 percent of those travelers will definitely catch it. Who catches it upon exposure isn’t just a pure percentages game; it also depends on individual immune responses, amount of exposure, and more.

“One common misunderstanding is that 95% efficacy means that in the Pfizer clinical trial, 5% of vaccinated people got COVID,” writes Anna Nowogrodzki at LiveScience. “But that’s not true; the actual percentage of vaccinated people in the Pfizer (and Moderna) trials who got COVID-19 was about a hundred times less than that: 0.04%.”

Reason‘s Ronald Bailey recently looked “at what a 95 percent vaccine efficacy rate would mean in a hypothetical case in which a population of 100,000 people have all been vaccinated.”

“Applying the 1 percent rate at which unvaccinated folks became ill during the vaccine trials over three months suggests that 1,000 people in an unvaccinated population of 100,000 would fall ill,” notes Bailey. “But because all 100,000 people are vaccinated, the actual rate in the vaccinated population would be just 50 cases (0.05 x 1,000 = 50 cases).”

The CNN article has since been updated to say that while the vaccines are 90 percent protective, “that means it’s still possible to get infected.” A correction at the end of the article says “A previous version of this article incorrectly extrapolated vaccine efficacy and the probability of becoming infected with Covid-19 aboard airplanes. The risk is much lower than stated in the original version.”

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FREE MINDS

Tyler Cowen sketches out a new vision of libertarianism, after declaring last year that the libertarian movement was “pretty much hollowed out.” Taking a second look, Cowen asks: “What does it mean to be libertarian now? I would say that the purer forms of libertarianism are evolving: from a set of policy stances on political questions to a series of projects for building entire new political worlds.” With many past battles around regulation and communism won, and other old battles seemingly lost forever (health care) or unable to sustain much public interest (anti-war efforts), Cowen suggests that “much of the intellectual effort in libertarian circles is concentrated in two ideas in particular: charter cities and cryptocurrency.”

But Cowen’s piece ignores many areas where U.S. libertarians have long been focused, continue to focus, and could do real good—for the movement, and for the country more broadly—by focusing even more. Things like ending the drug war (which is arguable just as strong and destructive as ever, despite moving away from marijuana as a target), other criminal justice/police/prison reform efforts, fighting the surveillance state, dismantling oppressive occupational licensing, staving off a bloated and all-powerful antitrust regime, and fighting for free markets and free speech despite major political party figures who increasingly can’t stand either, to name a few. And anti-war efforts seem valuable even—or especially—in the face of waning popularity.

Cryptocurrency is great, and charter cities intriguing. But U.S. cities and systems as they exist leave plenty of room for valuable, influential, and perhaps even some winnable libertarian fights, too. Building new political worlds is all good, but libertarians shouldn’t give up just yet on the one we have, either.

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FREE MARKETS

Are we headed for 1970s-style inflation? Reports about current commodity markets are eerily reminiscent of the ’70s, The Wall Street Journal says:

In 1973, the U.S. was coming off a two-year experiment in wage and price controls, which artificially depressed prices and muted signals that the economy was overheating. Then, too, the Fed pursued an easy-money policy, keeping interest rates low—though considerably higher than now, and without today’s purchases of bonds and mortgage securities….

In 2021 we’re emerging from the pandemic shutdown, which cratered growth and slammed the economy—depressing price pressures, not unlike what the price-control program did 50 years ago. Today’s Fed policies are even more expansive. And Congress has just enacted a $1.9 trillion stimulus bill—on top of earlier relief bills costing another nearly $2 trillion, a lot of which remains unspent and will continue to fuel demand this year and beyond.

Does that mean that we’re doomed to repeat the earlier disaster? Today’s fiscal stimulus clearly dwarfs anything even considered in the 1970s. Moreover, there is a palpable excitement that Americans will finally be able to discard the shackles of Covid and spend the money they saved last year and the wages they’re starting to earn again. So demand is likely to soar.

As was the case 50 years ago, there are constraints on supplies: shipping delays are blocking deliveries; manufacturers can’t get parts to ramp up production; real-estate values are skyrocketing, while lumber shortages constrain home building; and most commodity prices are rising precipitously. Experts reassure us that the annual inflation rate will rise only to about 2%. We hope they’re right, but when demand increases faster than supply, prices tend to go up.

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QUICK HITS

@TheAtlantic has a new article, suggesting we should worry about the courts of appeals in 20 years b/c many Trump appointees will be Chief Judges and might manipulate panel assignments (creating more 2R/1D panels). This piece is *deeply problematic* and misreads my scholarship.???? https://t.co/rs9fNfW7ph

— Marin K Levy (@marinklevy) April 11, 2021

• Minnesota police “fatally shot Daunte Wright, a 20-year-old Black man, during a traffic stop near Minneapolis Sunday, sparking protests and unrest that lasted into the night,” reports Axios.

• The Supreme Court says California can’t ban religious meetings in households.

• President Joe Biden is walking back a pledge to create a national commission on police oversight.

• Cartoonist Peter Bagge looks at the life of Henry David Thoreau.

• The term “‘BIPOC’ isn’t doing what you think it’s doing,” write Andrea Plaid and Christopher Macdonald-Dennis at Newsweek.

• “The Texas Supreme Court voided a restraining order against a salon owner who was jailed and fined last year for keeping her store open despite executive actions requiring the business to be closed,” reports The Hill.

• Maryland is passing a slew of criminal justice reforms.

• Defense Department police officer David Dixon, arrested last week on murder charges, is also being accused of assault.

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Just months into President Joe Biden’s tenure, his early calls for “unity” look not only insincere—something we expect of any politician—but positively laughable. Last week, he threatened executive action to tighten restrictions on privately owned firearms in a move bound to infuriate gun owners, including millions of people who purchased tools for self-defense for the first time amid the chaos of the past year. Much of the country is certain to ignore his dictates, including state and local governments who have already vowed that they won’t enforce such rules. Forget unity—the president has found an effective means of deepening the country’s divisions.

“I asked the Attorney General and his team to identify for me immediate, concrete actions I could can take now without having to go through the Congress,” the president huffed from the White House on April 8. “And today, I’m announcing several initial steps my administration is taking to curb this epidemic of gun violence.”

The legality and wisdom of his proposed restrictions on arm braces and “ghost guns” aside—Jacob Sullum ably dissected those schemes elsewhere—Biden’s plan to bypass Congress is a wild departure from his insistence at his inauguration that “my whole soul is in this: Bringing America together. Uniting our people. And uniting our nation.” After all, he’s bypassing Congress specifically because lawmakers are very definitely not unified around an anti-gun agenda. That includes Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.), from Biden’s own party.

Also not unified around attempts to restrict self-defense rights are states and localities the federal government relies on for most of the muscle to enforce its laws.

“On Thursday President Biden is expected to announce a series of executive actions addressing gun violence,” Arizona’s ABC 15 affiliate noted before the president’s speech. “No matter what those actions are, there is a very good chance that in Arizona, they’ll be ignored.” The news story came after Gov. Doug Ducey signed a bill prohibiting all political subdivisions of the state from using personnel or resources to enforce laws incompatible with Arizona’s own gun regulations. 

Wait. States can go their own way on gun policy? You bet. 

“Although the federal government may use its power of the purse to encourage states to adopt certain criminal laws, it is limited by the Tenth Amendment—which prevents the federal government from directing states to enact specific legislation—in its ability to directly influence state policy or requiring state officials to enforce federal law,” a 2014 Congressional Research Service report concluded with regard to marijuana. The results of the constitutional principle are seen in the in the states that have legalized marijuana, as well as sanctuary cities that refuse to cooperate with federal immigration enforcement. Guns are just another area in which states can tell the feds to enforce their own laws without local assistance.

Many individual gun fanciers are equally unimpressed by the president’s desire to limit access to firearms. In March, as gun control bills worked their way through Congress and Biden hinted at executive action, FBI background checks for commercial firearm sales hit a new record at almost 4.7 million, up from 3.7 million a year earlier. The AR-15 pistols and DIY gun kits targeted by the president’s orders are in especially high demand among buyers picking them up while they’re still available. Presumably, people rushing to pay rising prices for soon-to-be restricted items aren’t doing so because of their eagerness to surrender them once the rules change.

So much for unity.

Biden doesn’t require state, local, or individual cooperation for his pick to head the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives, but the selection of David Chipman is a clear indicator that “unity” isn’t a priority at the moment. As an advisor to Giffords, a group dedicated to severely restricting self-defense rights, Chipman mocked gun owners, saying in 2020, “They might think that they’re die-hard, ready to go, but unfortunately they’re more like Tiger King and they’re putting themselves and their family in danger.” He also advocates to the point of dishonesty for the federal government’s bloody conduct during the 1993 Waco fiasco. His nomination is a red flag to gun owners.

“David Chipman, whom President Biden seeks to empower in order to continue his long train of abuses going back to the Waco, Texas murders committed by agents of the federal government, has led a career marked by outright lies, opportunism, and a brazen willingness, if not outright desire, to assault the natural rights of the American people,” the pro-gun Firearms Policy Coalition objected.

There’s no guarantee that Chipman will formally gain the ATF post (only one nominee has been confirmed to the position since Senate approval was first required in 2006) but no “unity” can be found in an appointee who is openly contemptuous of, and despised by, a large segment of the population.

That’s a large and growing segment of the population, as FBI figures demonstrate. Nine of the ten top recorded weeks for firearm background checks occurred in the past year, and two of them were last month. Last year concluded with a total of 39.7 million background checks, the highest annual count recorded. While there’s not a one-to-one correlation between background checks and sales, there’s no doubt that ownership is through the roof, including millions of new owners: “40 percent of sales were conducted to purchasers who have never previously owned a firearm,” the National Shooting Sports Foundation, a trade association, revealed last August.

Gun ownership is increasingly diverse, too. It’s surging among African-Americans repelled by biased law enforcement. It’s also soaring among people with left-of-center political views who would normally be expected to constitute the constituency for tighter restrictions and nominees like Chipman. These new owners joined the ranks of people who realize that a chaotic era and a politically divided population require them to look to themselves for self-defense rather than rely on government institutions. Biden is going to face some challenges convincing even many of those who voted for him to unite behind his attacks on their ability to defend themselves.

Of course, politicians often rely not on a united population, but on one that’s fragmented in ways that help them attain and hold office. Despite his inaugural verbiage, that’s certainly what Joe Biden is doing. Like many of his predecessors, he strokes just enough of the population to maintain power while antagonizing the rest. That’s been an effective strategy for lots of political officials who don’t care about the long-term consequences, but it’s brought the country to brink of disaster and made thoughts of unity a national joke.

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Most states no longer have criminal libel laws, which generally punish knowing lies that damage people’s reputations. But some have created criminal impersonation statutes, which (among other things) punish a particular kind of libel: one accomplished by pretending to be a person, and then saying offensive things in that role, which damages the person’s reputation.

The New York Rafael Golb / Dead Sea Scrolls case offers one example of how the criminal impersonation statute can be applied. And I just came across another, in California, which just led to a man to be “sentenced to serve 180 days in jail [suspended, provided he not reoffend for the next year], placed on probation for one year, and ordered to pay victim restitution.” Here’s the People’s Version of the Facts from the prosecution’s sentencing brief:

On June 28, 2020 Carmen Gonce … entered the Sandbox Coffee wearing a mask and complained because the cashier was unmasked. The cashier, Cebriana Habicht, was a trainee and the daughter of Gina Bacon …. Habicht told the customer she should do her homework. Gonce started filming Habicht and Habicht photographed Gonce.

When Gonce left, Habicht photographed Gonce’s car and got her name off of the receipt because Gonce used a credit card. Habicht told Bacon what occurred and provided Bacon her video. Bacon then allegedly posted the photos and Gone’s name on Bacon’s group’s Facebook page This kicked off an Internet campaign for and against Gonce/Habicht and Sandbox Coffeehouse (where Habicht only worked for one day.) Sandbox Coffeehouse suffered lost business, reputation and vandalism.

Starting on or about July 13, 2020, the defendant Edgar Castrejon began impersonating Gina Bacon, Yoshi Arelas and the We Have Rights Corporation, organizers of the Open Ventura County protests. Bacon was an organizer of the large but peaceful protest at the Ventura Government Center.

Castrejon copied Bacon’s real Facebook (FB) page in order to make a fraudulent account in her name. The defendant used his fake Bacon account to make fraudulent virulently racist posts and to claim Bacon’s group were bringing guns to a protest at Dr. Levin’s house. Dr. Levin is the Ventura County Public Health Officer. He then posted a screen shot of those fraudulent posts in many FB community forums for approx.. two weeks and they went viral.

Predictably, Bacon and her daughter were subjected to violent threats, doxing and contacts with Bacon’s employer. “BLM” was spray painted on her house and the coffee shop where her daughter had worked for three days. She had to move out of her house. Her former employer publicly criticized her….

Castrejon’s first impersonation of Bacon on Facebook was on approx. July 15, 2020, and contained a screen shot of a post made under the name “Gina Bacon” which stated, “We must keep Ventura county white. We got to get rid of all those #blm things out of here. I would say people but blacks are ruining our way of like and should not be considered human .#keepventurawhite #whitelivesmatter #blacklivesdontmatter”

Following the above post, Castrejon, writing under the name “Johnny Ahpleseed.” made the following statement about Bacon’s comment, “Hi! My name is Gina Bacon and Im your local neighborhood racist here in Ventura County. Keep an eye out for me when you see me. # GinaBacon #Ventura #VVenturaCounty #RRacist #BBlackLivesMatter #Dox” According to the Urban dictionary, the term “dox” means to put “personal information about people on the Internet, often including real name, known aliases, address, phone number, SSN, credit card number, etc.” In Bacon’s case, her residence was vandalized….

After articles were written in the newspaper, other victims came forward or were identified. For example, Candy Herzog argued with Castrejon on Facebook regarding a church opening up during COVID. Soon thereafter, Castrejon impersonated Herzog in a FB post by posting the following under her name:

“I hope you and your nigger kids get raped and murdered. If I ever find you I will put a bullet in your head.” Another forged post read, “why is it people like you just don’t die. Someone should rape your family.” Much like what happened to Bacon, Herzog’s employer was called and alerted of the post….

The main charge in the case appears to be under Cal. Penal Code § 528.5, a misdemeanor punishable by up to a year in jail and a $1000 fine (plus possibly an order for restitution to compensate the victims):

(a) Notwithstanding any other provision of law, any person who knowingly and without consent credibly impersonates another actual person through or on an Internet Web site or by other electronic means for purposes of harming, intimidating, threatening, or defrauding another person is guilty of a public offense punishable pursuant to subdivision (d).

(b) For purposes of this section, an impersonation is credible if another person would reasonably believe, or did reasonably believe, that the defendant was or is the person who was impersonated.

(c) For purposes of this section, “electronic means” shall include opening an e-mail account or an account or profile on a social networking Internet Web site in another person’s name.

I assume that the purpose to harm a person’s reputation would qualify under the “purpose[] of harming” language; compare People v. Golb (N.Y. 2014), which concluded that the New York statute’s requirement of “intent … to injure” included intent to injure reputation. (A purpose to get some readers to damage the person’s property, or physically injure the person, would also qualify, but such a specific purpose might often be hard to prove.)

I’d love to hear what our readers think about this. Are these criminal statutes a good idea? If you think “purposes of harming” or “intimidating” are too broad, would they be a good idea if limited to credible impersonation intended to damage reputation (or to threaten or to defraud)?

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This past weekend, we hosted the semifinal rounds for the Harlan Institute-Ashbrook Virtual Supreme Court competition. The teams were superb. Truly, these high school students could compete in any law school moot court competition. We will announce the advancing teams shortly. Here, I would like to thank all of the judges who volunteered their time: John Sparks, Ryan Brown, Christopher Riaño, Jen Deibel, Samantha Vajskop, Curtis Herbert, and Rebecca Taibleson. We are especially grateful to Deputy SG Taibleson, who argued Torres, and prevailed!

Match #1

Petitioner: Team 8006 School: West Windsor-Plainsboro High School North Students: Rithika Iyengar and Siddharth Satish Location: Plainsboro Township, New Jersey Petitioner Brief Preliminary Round

Respondent: Team 7860 School: Creekview High School Students: Brian Kang and Angela Nguyen Location: Carrolton, Texas Petitioner Brief Preliminary Round

 

Match #2

Petitioner: Team 7872 School: BASIS Peoria Students: Senou Kounouho and Ayaan Siddiqui Location: Peoria, Arizona Petitioner Brief Preliminary Round

Respondent: Team 7852 School: Frisco CTE Center Students: Anita Ashok and Kashish Bastola Location: Frisco, Texas Respondent Brief Preliminary Round

 

Match #3

Petitioner: Team 8018 School: Judge Barefoot Sanders Law Magnet Students: Elena Rembert and Melanie Rojas Location: Dallas, Texas Petitioner Brief Preliminary Round

Respondent: Team 7890 School: Syosset High School Students: Rachel Lin and Kelly Kim Location: Syosset, New York Respondent Brief Preliminary Round

 

Match #4

Petitioner: Team 7881 School: Paradise Honors High School Students: Cameron Rose and Nathan Spalding Location: Surprise, Arizona Petitioner Brief Preliminary Round

Respondent: Team 8022 School: Judge Barefoot Sanders Law Magnet Students: Avery Rose and Brooke Sanchez Location: Dallas, Texas Respondent Brief Preliminary Round

 

Match #5

Petitioner: Team 7859 School: Creekview High School Students: Makaylia Askew and Elizabeth Adeoye Location: Carrolton, Texas Petitioner Brief Preliminary Round

Respondent: Team 7988 School: Greenwich High School Students: Steven Blank and Benjamin Shi Location: Greenwich, Connecticut Respondent Brief Preliminary Round

 

 

Match #6

Petitioner: Team 7847 School: The Founders Academy Students: Francesca Vesey and James Inamorati Location: Manchester, New Hampshire Petitioner Brief Preliminary Round

Respondent: Team 7856 School: Creekview High School Students: Abby Park and Shemaiah DeJorge Location: Carrollton, Texas Respondent Brief Preliminary Round

 

Match #7

Petitioner: Team 7899 School: The Baldwin School Students: Wynne Conger and Grace Halak Location: Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania Petitioner Brief Preliminary Round

Respondent: Team 7875 School: BASIS Peoria Students: Pranav Saravanan and Siddhant Urunkar Location: Peoria, Arizona Respondent Brief Preliminary Round

 

Match #8

Petitioner: Team 7855 School: Creekview High School Students: Jaqueline Aleman and Daniel Sawyers Location: Carrolton, Texas Petitioner Brief Preliminary Round

Respondent: Team 7976 School: Joel Barlow High School Students: Catherine Gutowski and Leighton Schur Location: Redding, Connecticut Respondent Brief Preliminary Round

 

Match #9

Petitioner: Team 7987 School: Greenwich High School Students: Veda Swaminathan and Skyler Zinker Location: Greenwich, Connecticut Petitioner Brief Preliminary Round

Respondent: Team 8007 School: West Windsor-Plainsboro High School North Students: Akshat Agarwal and Jonathan Hu Location: Plainsboro Township, New Jersey Respondent Brief Preliminary Round

 

Match #10

Petitioner: Team 8017 School: Judge Barefoot Sanders Law Magnet Students: Charlotte Ortiz and Cora Hughes Location: Dallas, Texas Petitioner Brief Preliminary Round

Respondent: Team 8023 School: Judge Barefoot Sanders Law Magnet Students: Semira Morgan and Katelayn Vault Location: Dallas, Texas Respondent Brief Preliminary Round

 

Match #11

Petitioner: Team 7974 School: Homeschool Students: Campbell Collins and Gabriella Lovins Location: Austin, Texas Petitioner Brief Preliminary Round

Respondent: Team 7810 School: Eastside Catholic High School Students: Sam Niehl and Ruoya Huang Location: Sammamish, Washington Respondent Brief Preliminary Round

 

Match #12

Petitioner: Team 7857 School: Creekview High School Students: Brandon Fantine and Elizaveta Frolova Location: Carrolton, Texas Petitioner Brief Preliminary Round

Respondent: Team 7476 School: Pine Crest School Students: Pedro Ribeiro and Yuvraj Tuli Location: Fort Lauderdale, Florida Respondent Brief Preliminary Round

 

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4/12/1945: President Harry Truman’s inauguration. He would make four appointments to the Supreme Court: Chief Justice Vinson, and Justices Burton, Clarke, and Minton.

 

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