Month: March 2020

I visited China on a press junket 10 years ago, before Premier Xi Jinping arrived on the scene and ended his country’s brief flirtation with perestroika (“authoritarian deliberation,” in academic parlance). Even during that golden age of openness, Beijing’s autocrats clearly controlled the messaging about everything. Every official at every level of government we met gave the exact same answer to every question, as if reading talking points from a national memo.

China’s talking points now seem to have gone international, if the headlines about its allegedly stellar success in fighting the coronavirus are any indication. The World Health Organization went on a “fact-finding trip” to the country and came back congratulating it on its “unique and unprecedented public health response.” Yale University’s Nicholas Christakis has dubbed Chinese autocrats’ ability to restrict the movement of hundreds of millions of people “deeply impressive.” He added that China’s “collectivist culture and…authoritarian government” had “allowed this enormous, widespread response.” (The Uighurs might have a different point of view.) The New York Times‘ Donald McNeil has praised China’s “enormous success in beating down its epidemic” compared to America’s sluggish response.

But China might not be revealing the full human cost of its totalitarian tactics.

It is clear now that authorities in Wuhan, the town of 11 million where the disease originally broke out, kept denying that human-to-human transmission was happening even after 739 people, including 419 medical staff, had become infected (a claim that the World Health Organization, to its eternal shame, endorsed until mid-January). They closed the live animal market where the disease had originated—without any notice or explanation to the perplexed vendors—and called it a day. The doctor who raised an alarm and tried to warn his international colleagues was booked for “severely disturbing the social order” and put under house arrest. (He died in February from the virus.) The scientists who proved this was a new and serious disease were forced to destroy their samples and branded “rumormongers.” If researchers in other countries had been allowed access to those samples, we might be closer to a cure or a vaccine by now. All of this allowed the disease to spread freely for almost two months in China and beyond.

Had the Chinese authorities been open even three weeks sooner, a study by U.K’s University of Southampton assessed, the number of corornavirus cases could have been reduced by 95 percent and the world may well have been spared a pandemic. Why didn’t they do so? It’s not because they wanted to infect the world, as conspiracy theorists are claiming; it’s not because they have strange culinary habits, as xenophobes are nattering. It’s because the country’s closed system blocked the flow of information and thwarted the spontaneous alarm systems that open societies have.

To be sure, President Donald Trump also initially downplayed the threat. And federal bureaucrats repeatedly blocked the University of Washington’s Helen Chu from pursuing her suspicions that the disease had made an appearance in her state. But Chu, in contrast to the Chinese doctor, has become a national hero, and the Trump administration has been severely criticized for ignoring such early warnings.

This experience will be a lesson for future administrations. But China, unlike America, has a long history of epidemics and yet seems to have learned no lessons at all. Some of the most devastating flu pandemics of the 20th century—such as the Asian flu of 1957, which killed 1.1 million people worldwide and 116,000 in the U.S.—originated in China. More recently, China generated the bird flu and SARS. Yet its first instinct is to shoot the messenger, given that it imprisoned the doctor who raised the alarm during SARS too.

Why do the Chinese rulers keep making the same mistake over and over again? Because authoritarian regimes care about the survival of their people only to the extent that it ensures their own survival. Opening channels for the hoi polloi to communicate creates too many dangerous possibilities for subversion. But the absence of these channels also means that China’s autocracy can use ruthless measures to combat the crisis without fearing public criticism—let alone a revolt—when it so chooses.

And, boy, was it ruthless.

Once Xi woke up to the corona threat, he declared war not so much on the virus as on the Chinese people themselves, using high-tech surveillance and social control to monitor every move, every action. As leaders in other countries pleaded with their people to stay at home and self-quarantine, his Communist authorities moved with lighting speed to lock down 60 million Chinese in the Hubei province—most of who had no idea that an epidemic was brewing, thanks to aggressive censorship. They also mobilized the country’s omnipresent army of monitors to keep tabs on every move of every Hubei resident without any regard for individual privacy or human rights.

They required popular apps like AliPay and WeChat, China’s Venmos, to install software to track users’ movements. China Telecom color-coded phones in traffic-light red, green, and yellow, based on their risk of carrying the virus. This let guards at train station checkpoints know who to let through and who to stop.

Pharmacies were told to take the temperature of anyone who bought cold medicine and notify authorities of the results. Every apartment building and every residential complex implemented something called “closed management.” Using private cars was banned, and residents were barred from leaving the complex without permission, which was given for only a few hours a day to one family member to purchase essentials. Meanwhile, 300,000 “grid workers”—paid employees of the Communist Party and volunteers—patrolled the streets and guarded complexes. Those who didn’t cooperate were promptly reported to the local police.

Local governments outside Hubei offered hundred of dollars in rewards to those who reported returning migrant workers from Wuhan and family members who hosted them. In other words, neighbors were rewarded for snitching on neighbors. More chillingly, authorities reportedly barged into homes, and hauled away sick patients, and put them in quarantine camps. In one eastern province, they barricaded a family that had returned from Wuhan, essentially imprisoning it in its home.

China has dazzled the world by building two hospitals in 10 days and many quarantine shelters by employing (read: conscripting) thousands of people round the clock. As an authoritarian country, China could single-mindedly focus on one goal—containing the spread of the disease. Its primary purpose in building hospitals and quarantine shelters was separating and isolating patients, not necessarily treating them or helping them. (One of those rapidly built quarantine hotels collapsed, killing 10.)

In democratic countries, by contrast, the policy response has focused on both containment and treatment. Even as states have imposed lockdowns or quarantines to flatten the curve, they have also simultaneously tried to boost their treatment capacity to maintain their standards of care.

Over the past few weeks, the world has been horrified by stories from hard-hit Western countries like Italy and Spain about doctors having to do a grim triage to determine whether to save the young or the old, the healthy or those with preexisting conditions. In America, it’s a national scandal that not every patient who needs a ventilator might get one. But in China, the government essentially performed an even grimmer triage with entire towns and provinces. The New York Times‘ Javier Hernandez reports that there is a widespread sense among Wuhan residents that they were sacrificed to save the country.

The Chinese government is trying to tell us that it heroically stopped corona. Instead of falling for it, the world should question the spin. Only when China’s autocrats open themselves to scrutiny—both by a robust domestic press and outside media—will the world have any confidence that they are serious about avoiding the next pandemic. So far, they aren’t offering any cause for optimism.

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Faced with nationwide closures and an empty release schedule, movie theaters are asking for bailout money. The chief of the theater owner’s lobby pitched it this way: As public gathering places, theaters are uniquely affected by the spread of COVID-19, and also comparatively inexpensive to prop up. The theater industry hasn’t named a dollar figure, but for less than the price of bailing out one airline, you could save the entire theater industry, he told The New York Times. What’s one more airplane brand next to the magic of the silver screen? Besides, people will need someplace to go when it’s all over.

I am a little bit sympathetic to this line of thinking. I rarely fly, but I see movies frequently. Over the course of my life, movie theaters have provided me with thousands of hours of escape, entertainment, and engagement, both by myself and in the company of others. I genuinely believe that theaters, as director Christopher Nolan recently wrote, are a “vital part of social life.” 

Still, I have to wonder: Have any of these people seen Bloodshot? 

Bloodshot is a PG-13 action film starring Vin Diesel, based on a somewhat obscure comic book from the 1990s, directed by a first-timer with a background in computer animation. If you asked a machine learning program to survey the last several years of theatrical releases and then generate its own by algorithm, it would probably come up with something like this. Bloodshot is very nearly the median Hollywood film. 

The movie was initially released in theaters two weeks ago, playing on about 2,800 movie screens domestically. Since then, a few things have changed. 

Today, barely any movie theaters are still open in the United States. As a result, many movies that were scheduled to open in the next several months have been delayed until after our viral apocalypse. In the meantime, several recent theatrical releases have found their way to video on demand. Normally this takes months, since theater owners have negotiated an exclusivity period with movie studios. But what’s a theatrical release window when there are no theaters to release into? 

That is why, for a mere $19.99, you can now own-to-stream a 4k digital copy of Bloodshot from Amazon, iTunes, and other fine purveyors of high-quality ones and zeroes.

It’s appropriate for a movie about a soldier given a digital rebirth. Diesel plays Ray Garrison, who is resurrected after losing both his wife and his life on a mission abroad. In his reincarnated form, he’s a supersoldier held together by nanites, tiny bio-machines that rapidly heal wounds and give him super strength. Naturally, he seeks revenge, and with the help of a similarly super-powered squad of nano-soldiers, brought together by Dr. Emil Harting, a twitchy scientist played by Guy Pearce, he embarks on a mission to take down the sociopathic Martin Axe (Toby Kebbell), who stole everything from him. 

From there, the movie goes roughly where you expect it to go—and then, perhaps, a little further, with a twist that essentially turns into a kind of over-muscled sci-fi action-movie riff on Groundhog Day, albeit without the wit or light-footedness that made Edge of Tomorrow so enjoyable. Connoisseurs of slow-motion punching will no doubt appreciate the many slow-motion punches, along with the reasonably competent action scenes that director David S.F. Wilson builds with them. Generally speaking, you can tell what’s going on, which is high praise for today’s mid-budget action movies. 

As Garrison, Diesel spends the movie hulking and glowering in hopes that this will serve as a rough substitute for acting. He has a volcanically low voice that will challenge even the most competent subwoofer, but it’s the only place his character shows signs of depth. You learn more about Garrison from the various performance monitors set up in Dr. Hartin’s lab than from Diesel’s one-note performance. At one point, the camera cuts to a screen purporting to monitor his “brain activity.” It’s low. 

In some ways, this is just par for the course for Diesel—an international superstar thanks to the Fast and the Furious franchise, but better understood as B-movie brawn. He has frequently dabbled in modestly budgeted action cheese. This has occasionally produced high-quality results, as in Pitch Black…but it has also occasionally given us movies like The Last Witch Hunter. (With a title like that, one can at least take solace in the hope that there won’t be any sequels.).  

Diesel has a predilection for gloomy pulp, the sort of enjoyable trash that’s best enjoyed in a college dorm room around 2 a.m. or as a television matinee on an afternoon spent channel surfing or app browsing. Bloodshot is no exception. It’s a movie that was intended for theaters, and it even briefly surfaced in them. But it works better at home, from the comfort of one’s own couch, probably while keeping a distracted eye on one’s phone. It’s not a movie that needs to be watched so much as one that you wouldn’t mind having on. Bloodshot is not a great movie by any means, but watching it from the comfort of my basement living room, I thought: This is not too bad. 

I like movies—especially movies seen in a theater—as much as anyone. I hope our theaters reopen soon. And I genuinely worry that if this pause in theatrical viewing extends long enough, it will ultimately eliminate much of the theatrical experience as we have always known it. But I am also mindful of the potential for salutary effects from this otherwise awful scenario. 

It’s true, as the theater owners say, that when this stay-at-home nightmare is over, people will need someplace to go. But no one needs to go out to see a replacement-level actioner like Bloodshot. Perhaps, in our post-viral rebirth, movies like this will more frequently find a fast route to the couch-based viewing where they are best appreciated. 

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From Lakewood (N.J.), where there has been a good deal of noncompliance with the ban on gatherings, and police response to such noncompliance (see here and here for past incidents):

Ocean County Prosecutor Bradley D. Billhimer and Lakewood Township Police Chief Gregory Meyer announced that on Sunday, March 29, 2020, Eliezer Silber, 37, and Miriam Silber, 34, both of Lakewood, were charged with five counts of Child Endangerment in violation of N.J.S.A. 9:6-1.

On March 29, 2020, members of the Lakewood Township Police Department were summoned to a residence on Alamitos Drive for a report of a gathering of people blocking the street.  This gathering was in violation of Executive Order No. 107 signed by Governor Phil Murphy on March 21, 2020, which bans gatherings of individuals, whether they be at weddings, parties, celebrations, or other social events.

Upon arrival, Officers discovered a gathering of approximately 40-50 people, including children, on the front lawn and in the street in front of the residence.  The Officers ordered the crowd to disperse, and made contact with the owners of the residence, Eliezer and Miriam Silber.  Eliezer Silber was charged with Violating Any Rule or Regulation Adopted by the Governor in violation of APP.A: 9-49h, as well as Endangering the Welfare of his five children who were at the gathering.  Miriam Silber was likewise charged with Endangering the Welfare of her five children.  They are both required to appear at a future court date in Ocean County Superior Court.

“As I have previously stated, it is my sworn duty to protect all of the residents of Ocean County.  That obligation applies across the board,” stated Prosecutor Billhimer.  “My Office will prosecute any individual who defies or breaks the law, State of Emergency or otherwise.  Everyone must respect and follow the law,” the Prosecutor stated.  “The men & women of the Lakewood Police Department have done an exceptional job in the face of a public health crisis. Their efforts are truly commendable,” Prosecutor Billhimer concluded.

The public and media are reminded that all defendants are innocent until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt in a court of law.

Thanks to Larry Seltzer for the pointer.

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If, like me, you’ve received not one but three mailings from the U.S. Census Bureau proclaiming “Your Response Is Required By Law,” you’re probably wondering whether to respond, toss the questionnaire in the trash, or fill it with bogus information. We’re in good company, since about a third of households plan to ignore the census, according to the government itself.

In the past, I’ve filled in preposterous answers, then repeated them with a straight face when a harried-looking census field worker knocked on my door (that’s a pleasure I’ll miss this year, with in-person interviews suspended). It’s good fun, it denies potentially dangerous information to a government agency that has a history of misusing the data it collects and, if repeated far and wide, it might spur nosy bureaucrats to try something less intrusive.

Less intrusive would be nice. Census questions, you may have noticed, go a bit beyond the simple head count authorized by the Constitution. Article 1, Section 2 of the Constitution specifies an “actual Enumeration … within every subsequent Term of ten Years, in such Manner as they shall by Law direct.”

There’s nothing in there about demanding names, the types of our homes, the nature of our relationships with the people with whom we live, our ethnicity, or the details of our finances (if you were unlucky enough to get the old long form or the modern American Community Survey). That’s all just bureaucratic curiosity.

Our answers are supposed to be confidential.

“The Census Bureau cannot release any identifiable information about you, your home, or your business, even to law enforcement agencies. The law ensures that your private data is protected and that your answers cannot be used against you by any government agency or court,” the Census Bureau website assures us.

If only that were true. In reality, laws change, and governments use information however they please once they have it—sometimes in nasty ways.

“Despite decades of denials, government records confirm that the U.S. Census Bureau provided the U.S. Secret Service with names and addresses of Japanese-Americans during World War II,” Scientific American reported in 2007. “The Census Bureau surveys the population every decade with detailed questionnaires but is barred by law from revealing data that could be linked to specific individuals. The Second War Powers Act of 1942 temporarily repealed that protection to assist in the roundup of Japanese-Americans for imprisonment in internment camps in California and six other states during the war.”

More recently, “the Census Bureau provided neighborhood data on Arab-Americans to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security in 2002,” the article added.

So when the Census Bureau frets that “fewer than seven in ten householders said they intend to fill out the census form,” with many Americans citing “privacy concerns, fear of repercussions, and general distrust of government,” you’re looking at self-inflicted wounds. The Census Bureau worked hard to earn that distrust.

Fortunately, there’s a game plan for dealing with a hostile population that refuses to answer nosy questions posed by government workers. Even before the U.S. Census Bureau alienated the public, its Dutch counterpart, Statistics Netherlands, managed to do the same. As a result, people stopped responding and the Dutch government had to find a solution.

“The last traditional census in the Netherlands, in 1971, met with many privacy objections against the collection of integral information about the population living in the Netherlands,” according to Eric Schulte Nordholt of Statistics Netherlands, writing in 2015. “This increased the non-response problem, and non-response was expected to be even higher if another traditional census were to be held in the Netherlands.”

With questionnaires increasingly ignored, Statistics Netherlands stopped bugging people and switched to using publicly available data along with samples and statistical adjustments.

While head counts in the Netherlands are now less intrusive than the old census, not everything the Dutch do translates to the American context. Statistics Netherlands relies on standardized population registers that don’t exist in the United States, and would be difficult—justifiably so, I think—to impose on a mobile and distrustful population. People worried about the abuse of data collected every 10 years aren’t going to want to continuously update their whereabouts with Big Brother.

But government has plenty of information on us as it is, from its own records and from private sources. The Census Bureau is already considering “starting the 2030 Census with an ‘in-office’ enumeration of the population using existing government administrative records,” reveals a 2016 report. Between Social Security and the Internal Revenue Service, 90 percent or more “of the U.S. population could be located.”

The Census Bureau would then fill in the gaps as needed. That approach may turn out to be more accurate than a traditional census faced with growing noncompliance and deliberately misleading responses.

As for the interesting questions about finances, ethnicity, and plumbing that the Census Bureau likes to add to the authorized tally… I could point out that the government is only supposed to count us, not interrogate us. But the Census Bureau concedes that most of the information it wants exists in government records, if only it would look.

Figuring out how many Americans there are based on existing administrative records may not only be more accurate than the old-style census, it would likely be a lot cheaper.

“A register-based census costing less than 1 percent of a traditional census is not exceptional,” points out Nordholt of Statistics Netherlands. “A traditional census in the Netherlands would cost a few hundred million euros, while with this method it costs ‘only’ around 1.4 million euros.”

Elsewhere, Statistics Netherlands reveals that the total staff required for the 2011 census was 15 people.

A national head-count based on administrative records would not only be less intrusive, cheaper, and closer to constitutional intent than old-style questionnaires; it would also be safer. Census workers would never again have to go door-to-door in a world that will probably retain concerns about contagion even after the COVID-19 pandemic passes.

Was the guy at the last house coughing because he was sick or just to needle an unwelcome visitor? That won’t be a concern for bureaucrats working desks rather than pounding pavement.

So, if you’re worried at all, toss away that census form or fill it with nonsense with a clear conscience. You’re helping to push the feds to count us in a less annoying way.

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