1) Is Australia still a democracy? Over at The Atlantic, Conor Friedersdorf is inclined to think not. The article is eye opening about the extent of the curtailment of human rights in Australia. To me this is one of the clearest examples of how COVID undermined democracy, one of the themes of my May 2020 lecture on the political economy effects of the pandemic.
2) What are the geopolitical consequences of America's withdrawal from Afghanistan? They may not be as obvious as one would think, argue Yaroslav Trofimov and Jeremy Page in a wide-ranging WSJ article.
3) Relatedly, Harvard's Joshua Kertzer penned an insightful article in Foreign Affairs, on the credibility and reputation costs of the Afghanistan withdrawal. I learned a lot from this article - in particular that credibility and reputation are not the same thing. Credibility is context-dependent so world powers should not interpret the US withdrawal from Afghanistan as necessarily representing a lack of commitment to pursuing other goals. In that sense, the US may not have necessarily lost credibility. Reputation is a more all-encompassing concept and Professor Kertzer argues that the US did indeed suffer a loss of reputation, especially in terms of perceptions of its competence. Just semantics? You be the judge.
4) A recent randomized controlled trial (RCT) in Bangladesh is the most convincing evidence that I have seen that masks reduce the spread of COVID. Other evidence cited in favor of mask mandates until now relied on observational studies, from which causal inference is dubious. And existing RCT studies on the effectiveness of masks in preventing the transmission of respiratory diseases tended to find weak effects, though most of these studies were not about COVID per se. Note however that the Bangladesh study finds considerable heterogeneity in the effectiveness of masks, especially across age groups and mask types. And it is not clear that the findings apply to the Delta variant, as the intervention occurred from November 2020 to January 2021. Details of the study can be found here.
5) Senator Manchin (D-WV) on why he won't support the $3.5 trillion reconciliation package now being crafted in Congress. In this summer's offering of Global Trends I predicted that this package would not pass (a recording exists!). I hold to that prediction. Moreover, let me specify things more precisely: I did not predict: "this specific package will not pass, but some watered-down version will pass". I predicted that nothing would pass. The infrastructure package that already passed the Senate is another matter, but if I had to bet I would wager that this one won't become law either. I think it will die in the House, from lack of support from the progressive wing of the Democratic Party. But I am much more confident of the first prediction.
I was a little shocked at the first article about Australia and COVID protocols undermining their democracy. However, it was very eye-opening to another perspective. On the other hand, my partner is an Australian citizen with a severe disability. The extra protocols in place make him feel like the system cares about him as one of the most vulnerable in the population. He sees what is happening here in America and worries more for my life as a disabled American than he does for his. He looks at the (hopefully) temporary loss of freedoms as worth the trade-off for his life. He questions why places like the US value freedoms over protecting their most vulnerable populations.
Posted by: Carolanne L | 09/06/2021 at 10:24 PM