Tag: news

Those who follow the culture wars in the medieval studies community may be aware of a blog called In the Middle (though its URL identifies the blog as “In the Medieval Middle”, which might have been the blog’s previous name). I bring this up because, if you want to link to that blog on Facebook, you won’t be able to, because Facebook will tell you that the blog goes against its community standards on spam.

Why? The “community standards on spam” aren’t themselves very transparent, and there’s no obvious reason why this particular blog should have been flagged in that way. Nor does this fit the popular story of Facebook censoring conservatives, because this blog is more aligned with the far left (critical race theory, etc.) To be clear (because this is a law and policy blog): I absolutely support Facebook’s legal and moral right to “censor” whoever they like, left or right; Facebook is a private entity, just as private as when Zuckerberg was working on it in his dorm room many years ago. Facebook’s choosing what posts to allow (provided it’s consistent with whatever contract they may have made with their users) is just an exercise of their fundamental right of freedom of association. (Nor, as an antitrust scholar, do I favor any antitrust lawsuits against Facebook. I just wish the government would leave Facebook alone.) Still, all I’m saying is, this particular choice of Facebook’s is peculiar; I hope it’s just the result of some dumb algorithm, and I hope they reverse that decision as soon as some live person gets around to looking at it.

That said, suppose you had read, in the journal Medieval Encounters, a review essay of the book The Invention of Race in the European Middle Ages by Geraldine Heng (one of the In the Middle bloggers). And suppose you wanted to post a link to Heng’s response to that essay in a Facebook post. Facebook won’t allow you to do that. Much as I support Facebook on a political level, there’s no particular reason for me to want to facilitate that choice of theirs, so here’s the link right here.

from Latest – Reason.com https://ift.tt/3rlG9x1
via IFTTT

On Friday, GOP Senator Ted Cruz blocked a bipartisan bill that would have granted political asylum to residents of Hong Kong, fleeing China’s increasingly oppressive rule there. Reason writer Eric Boehm has an excellent article critiquing Cruz’s lame rationale for his actions. Among other things, he points out that the same theory would have justified keeping out Cruz’s own father (who came to the US as a refugee from Cuba):

First, Cruz politicized the attempt to provide an exit strategy for Hongkongers, calling the bill a Democratic plot to “advance their long-standing goals on changing immigration laws.” But the bill has a bipartisan list of cosponsors and passed the House earlier this month by a voice vote—usually an indicator of such broad support that no roll call is demanded.

Second, Cruz maligned Hong Kong refugees as potential spies, arguing that China would use the special immigration status to slip its agents into the United States. Except, well, China doesn’t seem to have any trouble doing that already, and recipients of political asylum would have to undergo a background check before their status is granted. If anything, the bill’s passage would ensure that immigrants from Hong Kong to America are subject to more vetting than they might otherwise receive.

Again, Cruz’s father’s story stands in stark contrast. Prior to fleeing to America, Rafael Cruz had worked for the Castro government in Cuba [small correction: he actually supported Castro before the latter came to power, but later recanted those views after coming to the United States]. If Ted were a member of the U.S. Senate at the time, would he have viewed his own father as a potential spy who should not be trusted with political asylum?…

Cruz’s biography aside, there is a more important and obvious point. Granting political asylum to Hongkongers looking to flee China is absolutely the right thing for the United States to do, politically and economically.

Politically, the image of tens of thousands of Hongkongers fleeing China’s takeover of the city by relocating to the United States would be an international humiliation for the regime in Beijing. That’s why China has tried to stop the United Kingdom from extending special immigration status to residents of Hong Kong—and the U.K. has responded, correctly, by turning its passport-making machines up to 11.

Economically, China’s loss would be America’s gain. An influx of people from Hong Kong—and the knowledge, skills, money, and entrepreneurship they would bring—would be an economic boon for the United States, particularly if they resettle in areas where the population is stagnant or declining.

Instead of seizing that opportunity, America got the spectacle of a child of a political refugee slamming a door in the face of people seeking the same opportunity that his own father once received.

I would add that the anti-espionage rationale could be and often has been used to bar refugees from almost any oppressive regime hostile or potentially hostile to the US. Among other things, it was one of the justifications used for barring Jews fleeing Nazi Germany in the 1930s. This is one of many objections to expanding migration rights that can easily be addressed by “keyhole solutions” that deal with potential problems by more targeted and less draconian means than keeping people out. We can simply vet people before giving them access to classified information, as is routinely done with native-born Americans applying for jobs with security clearances.

If the fear is that Hong Kong refugees might give the Chinese government information that isn’t classified, but instead is readily available to the public, that is something Chinese intelligence (and other adversaries) can easily obtain anyway. One of the costs of having a generally free society is that anyone who wants to—including foreign powers—can easily obtain a wide range of useful information. But this disadvantage is outweighed by the may benefits of openness, as proven by the success of relatively free societies in outcompeting closed authoritarian and totalitarian states.

In this May post, I offered a more detailed defense of accepting Hongkongers -and of extending that openness to mainland victims of Chinese government oppression (some of whom have suffered far worse atrocities than anything yet seen in Hong Kong). In that post, I also address a range of other objections to opening the door to Chinese refugees, including claims that it might spread the Covid-19 virus, and that it would be unfair to privilege Chinese refugees over those facing comparable oppression elsewhere. Among other things, I highlighted how too many conservatives—including, now Cruz, who has especially strong reason to know better—have forgotten the lessons their ideological forbears learned during the Cold War:

During the Cold War, American conservatives readily understood that welcoming refugees from Cuba, the Soviet Union, and other communist nations was a major boost to America’s prestige and a blow to that of the communists. The better political system is the one people “vote with their feet” to live under, not the one many risked their lives to flee. I myself was one of the fortunate beneficiaries of this understanding.

Tragically, today many conservatives have lost sight of what their predecessors knew. Instead of welcoming Chinese, they foolishly want to make it harder for them to come, by, for example, barring Chinese students from studying STEM subjects at US universities (after which many seek to stay in the US and continue contributing to the economy and our technological development). It is almost as if these supposed China hawks would prefer for the brutal Chinese government to retain control over as many talented people as possible….

We can, if we choose, once again be the nation that even the populations of our adversaries can aspire to join. That’s a much better image than being the nation that closes its doors to almost all migrants and refugees seeking permanent residency, and brutally separates families at the border. Not only is the former nation more just than the latter. It also has a much better chance of effectively countering China in any geopolitical competition, and winning world opinion over to our side.

from Latest – Reason.com https://ift.tt/3nGkFZI
via IFTTT

When he blocked enforcement of state and local bans on indoor and outdoor dining in San Diego County last week, Superior Court Judge Joel Wohlfeil cited a lack of evidence that restaurants complying with COVID-19 safeguards posed a significant public health risk. Politicians and public health officials tend to assume that dining out is an important source of coronavirus transmission. But while the evidence is limited and mixed, data from New York and California suggest that restaurants’ role in the epidemic has been exaggerated in at least some parts of the country.

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who allowed indoor dining in New York City to resume at the end of September, shut it down again last week. Yet the statewide contact tracing data that Cuomo released on December 11 indicate that restaurants account for a very small share of COVID-19 infections. According to Cuomo’s numbers, which are based on 46,000 cases since September, just 1.4 percent of infections were traced to “restaurants and bars.”

The percentages reported for retailers, gyms, and “hair & personal care” were even tinier: 0.6 percent, 0.14 percent, and 0.06 percent, respectively. But all of these sources paled in comparison with “household/social gatherings,” which accounted for 74 percent of the cases.

Cuomo’s numbers did not indicate what share of the cases associated with restaurants and other businesses involved customers rather than employees. But data from Los Angeles County—the most populous local jurisdiction in the country, with 10 million residents—shed some light on that question. The Los Angeles County Department of Public Health reports 500 COVID-19 clusters involving three or more laboratory-confirmed cases in nonresidential settings. About 40 of those (8 percent) involved restaurants, with the number of cases ranging from three to 12. But all of the cases involved employees rather than diners.

In late October, by contrast, Los Angeles County Public Health Director Barbara Ferrer said “we’ve…seen somewhere between 10 and 15 percent of our cases being connected to a dining experience.” A month later, the ABC station in Los Angeles reported, based on county data, that “restaurants have been linked to less than 4% of coronavirus outbreaks in non-residential settings.”

The difference between “cases” and “outbreaks” may explain some of that gap. But during a press briefing on November 23, Ferrer conceded that estimating the contribution of particular infection sources is an iffy proposition. “I wish we could answer this question,” she said. “I think people would feel better if we could say with certainty where people got infected, but we just can’t.”

California Gov. Gavin Newsom banned indoor dining in Los Angeles County at the beginning of July. Last month the county imposed a ban on outdoor dining that was blocked earlier this month by Superior Court Judge James Chalfant, who said it was “not grounded in science, evidence, or logic.” But by then, Los Angeles County was subject to a state ban on outdoor dining that kicks in when a region’s available ICU capacity drops below 15 percent.

California Health and Human Services Secretary Mark Ghaly has admitted that the ban was not based on evidence that outdoor dining was playing a significant role in spreading COVID-19. Ghaly said the policy is “not a comment on the relative safety of outdoor dining” but is instead aimed at discouraging Californians from leaving home.

Judge Wohlfeil did not merely question the ban on outdoor dining. He said neither San Diego County nor state officials had presented any evidence that indoor dining, when operated in compliance with occupancy limits and other COVID-19 safeguards, was contributing to the local spread of the disease either.

The San Diego County Health and Human Services Agency reports that “bars and restaurants” accounted for 9.2 percent of “potential community exposure settings” mentioned by people who tested positive for COVID-19 in interviews conducted from June 5 to December 12. But the agency adds this caveat: “Potential community exposure settings are defined as indoor or outdoor locations in which cases came within 6 feet of anyone who was not a household member for at least 15 minutes during the 2-14 days prior to symptom onset, even if the case wore a mask or facial covering. Potential exposure settings are places case-patients visited during their exposure period, not confirmed sources of infection. Persons may have visited more than one location.”

Most people (54 percent) did not mention any potential exposure settings, while less than 5 percent mentioned “group gatherings.” The latter result is surprising, given that New York’s findings say “household/social gatherings” account for three-quarters of cases. Although people might be reluctant to admit getting together with members of other households, it is not clear why they would especially reluctant in San Diego County. Maybe New York’s contact tracers are simply better at eliciting that information.

The evidence implicating restaurant dining in the spread of COVID-19 is largely indirect. A study of 10 states that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention published in September, for example, found that people who tested positive for COVID-19 in July were more than twice as likely as control subjects who had tested negative to report visiting a restaurant in the two weeks prior to symptom onset. “Exposures and activities where mask use and social distancing are difficult to maintain, including going to places that offer on-site eating or drinking, might be important risk factors for acquiring COVID-19,” the researchers concluded.

The study found “no significant differences” between cases and controls with regard to several other possible risk factors, including shopping, spending time in an office, visiting a salon, going to a gym, visiting a bar or coffeeshop, attending church, using public transportation, and gathering with others in a home, whether the number of people was fewer or greater than 10. So if this study implicates restaurants, it also seems to absolve those other settings, which many politicians believe are risky enough to justify government restrictions. The finding regarding social gatherings is especially puzzling in light of New York’s data.

A PLoS One study published in October looked at interstate differences in case numbers and trends during the early stages of the epidemic last spring. The researchers found that “early social distancing restrictions, particularly on restaurant operations, [were] correlated with increased doubling times”—i.e., how long it took for the number of confirmed cases to double. Leaving aside the difficulty of disentangling causation from correlation, this study is not directly relevant to the question currently facing policy makers: whether allowing restaurants to operate with “social distancing restrictions” and other safeguards poses an intolerable risk.

Similarly, a Stanford University model based on mobility data projects how infections tied to particular business categories “would increase if we returned this category to pre-pandemic levels of mobility without taking additional precautions like increased mask-wearing or occupancy caps.” According to the model, “reopening full-service restaurants has the largest predicted impact on infections, due to the large number of restaurants as well as their high visit densities and long dwell times.” Fitness centers are the second most significant contributor to disease spread in this model.

Again, these projections counterfactually assume that restaurants and other businesses will operate as they did prior to the pandemic. They also focus on public “points of interest,” meaning they exclude the private gatherings that New York found accounted for the vast majority of infections. The fact that restaurants and gyms following COVID-19 precautions accounted for a very small or negligible share of cases traced in New York suggests that such businesses can operate without contributing much to the spread of COVID-19.

Restaurants may be a more significant source of virus transmission in other jurisdictions. In Houston, where restaurants have been allowed to operate at 75 percent of capacity since mid-September (compared to 25 percent in New York City prior to last week’s ban), 8.7 percent of people who tested positive for COVID-19 have reported restaurants as a potential source of exposure in interviews conducted since June 1.

During her presentation in October, Ferrer claimed that in Louisiana, “25 percent of cases had their origins in bars and restaurants.” That figure, which was reported in August, excludes outbreaks in “congregate settings” such as nursing homes and prisons, which together account for a large share of infections. Leaving out those sources, according to the latest data from Louisiana, restaurants have accounted for 7 percent of cases.

Ferrer also claimed that “in Maryland, 12 percent of cases were traced back to restaurants.” The actual finding, which Gov. Larry Hogan reported in late July based on “recent interviews conducted with COVID-19 patients,” was that 12 percent of them were employed by restaurants. Hogan also said 23 percent of the COVID-positive people who were interviewed reported eating in restaurants, which does not necessarily mean that is where they were infected. By comparison, 54 percent of the interviewees said they worked outside their homes, and 39 percent said they had visited stores—both of which Hogan likewise described as “higher-risk locations.”

California HealthLine notes that contact tracing varies widely across the country and is woefully inadequate in many places, which makes it hard to get a handle on the role that restaurants (or other sources) are playing in virus transmission. State and local restrictions on restaurants also vary widely, which compounds the difficulty. In the absence of better data, politicians continue to issue edicts that wreck local businesses without any confidence that it will do much good.

from Latest – Reason.com https://ift.tt/38sgxG3
via IFTTT

Federal courts often have to apply state law; when the state law is not clear, they could either infer how state courts would interpret it, or certify the question to the state’s supreme court (if that court authorizes such certifications). In Friday’s McMillan v. Amazon.com, Inc., a Fifth Circuit panel—Judge Don Willett (who used to sit on the Texas Supreme Court), joined by Judge Gregg Costa and Jacques Wiener—certified to the Texas Supreme Court the question:

Under Texas products-liability law, is Amazon a “seller” of third-party products sold on Amazon’s website when Amazon does not hold title to the product but controls the process of the transaction and delivery through Amazon’s Fulfillment by Amazon program?

Of course, such certification may sometimes delay the federal case, but here’s what Judge Willett had to say:

A final note, regarding timing. When certification was raised at oral argument, McMillan’s counsel, while conceding “clearly, that’s an option,” surmised that any ruling from the Texas SupremeCourt might take “a couple of years” due to COVID-related delays. Such concern is misplaced. To its immense credit, and for several years in a row, the Supreme Court of Texas has decided every argued case by the end of June. And the coronavirus has failed to slow the Court’s pace this Term. To be sure, today’s case is a vital and vexing one. But by long tradition, the Texas Supreme Court graciously accepts and prioritizes certified questions from this circuit, and we are confident that the Court’s impressive streak of timely clearing its docket will remain unbroken.⁵¹

And here’s footnote 51:

⁵¹ No pressure.

from Latest – Reason.com https://ift.tt/2J8secr
via IFTTT