Spent some time in the ER this weekend for what looked like it might be a detached retina and thankfully was not. It has become clear to me that a lot of health care workers aren't exactly against getting vaccinated; they just want to be vaccinated two months from now.
My solution to this is to say "You're getting priority because you're essential. If you don't take it, you will be the absolute last person in line to get it, and you get no sick pay if you test+. It's your right, I'm not going to argue, decide right now."
America does not have time to mess around while all the nation's health care workers try to be almost, but not quite, at the front of the line. Use it or give it to someone who's happy to take the risk. (It me!)
And just in general, I think that should be policy: when your number is called, you go, or you wait until everyone else who wants it has it. We can't all free ride, and we shouldn't cater to everyone who tries.

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More from @asymmetricinfo

8 Jan
I want to call out this particular point in my larger tweetstorm, because it sorta maps onto a dumb talking point from the left: "The government can borrow and spend any amount we want. American *can't* have a Greek-style debt crisis, because we borrow in our own currency!"
My right-wing followers, of course, understand why this won't fly: America borrowing in dollars, and under US law rather than some neutral third country, is not a law of nature. People with money could easily decide it was too risky to make us dollar-denominated loans.
(Or at least, at any price we'd want to pay.)

What would make them decide this? The fastest way would be for America to borrow a metric crap ton of money, and then default or let inflation eat away the value of our loans so we're repaying pennies on the dollar in real terms.
Read 9 tweets
8 Jan
It turns out to be bad idea for people who have large public microphones to act as if they're venting to their 120 Facebook friends.
And oh, look, this is a perfect segue to a tweetstorm about my latest column! washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/…
So I've been saying Trump is dangerous basically since the beginning. Not because I thought he was going to cancel elections and become a dictator; I didn't think he had the competence, or American institutions the vulnerability, for that.
Read 25 tweets
30 Dec 20
This seems like a good time to discuss my most recently printed column,. Because this effect shows up strongly in the responses to it.

washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/…
And also, frankly, in the responses to the column that preceded it, which discussed the CDC's "Let some old people die in the name of equity" vaccination strategy.

washingtonpost.com/opinions/publi…

But we'll leave that for another tweetstorm.
Back to the column at hand, which was about the people I follow who called covid-19 as a big problem AHEAD of the big mid-March shift in the upper-middle-class professional consensus. What sort of people were they?
Read 20 tweets
29 Dec 20
Many people have had this thought, none of them have been able to produce strong empirical evidence for it. If this effect were really compelling, America wouldn't have a more dynamic economy than Europe, but it does, despite a pretty bad regulatory and tax architecture.
There were a lot of predictions that Obamacare would goose the rate of entrepreneurship, and the theory is the same: by derisking a startup, it should make it easier to form one. Didn't show up in the numbers: bls.gov/bdm/entreprene…
On the margin might this produce a small effect? Maybe. But there could also be countervailing effects; for example, the higher taxes necessary to pay for a large welfare state might reduce the potential return to entrepreneurship, making people less interested in it.
Read 5 tweets
23 Dec 20
Still think that whatever its ostensible subject, an enormous amount of performative rage on the internet--and its audience counterpart, rage-seeking--is about using rage to suppress more normal anxiety and sadness about quotidien things like death, aging, loneliness, failure.
This works only temporarily and in the meantime makes everything worse, but it does work temporarily. Hard to think about your unsatisfying marriage or your mother's decline into dementia when you're so mad at some jerk in Tuscaloosa or Portland who said something awful!
When internet rage targets you, instead of getting worked up into an equally towering dudgeon, consider the attacker is probably sad and frightened & trying to deal with that, albeit unproductively, like we all do sometimes. Give them the benefit of the doubt, and a little grace.
Read 6 tweets
21 Dec 20
Last chance to order Christmas gifts! So here's the guide, one last time:
cookerymonster.substack.com

And here are the cookbook recommendations I didn't write up, because my day job intervened.
The Apple Lover’s Cookbook: amzn.to/3axIq2o You mayn't think you want an entire cookbook about apples. I sure didn't, but then my father sent me one anyway. It turns out it's charming, packed with information about apples, & boasts an apple crisp recipe identical to mine.
Jacques Pepin Fast Fast Food My Way (amzn.to/2JV6pNt) More Fast Food My Way (amzn.to/3oq6IPp) and Quick and Simple (amzn.to/33JMuYU)Unafraid to use cans and boxes, but unlike most such recipes, actually good. A godsend for those who are sick of cooking.
Read 13 tweets

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