Let's look at some case counts for states with high vaccination rates.
New Hampshire has given at least one dose to 84.9% of its population.
Vermont has given at least one dose to 65.2% of its population.
Massachusetts has given at least one dose to 62.4% of its population.
Hawaii has given at least one dose to 60.9% of its population.
New Jersey has given at least one dose to 56.1% of its population.
Pennsylvania has given at least one dose to 54.6% of its population.
California has given at least one shot to 53.1% of its population.
And New York has given at least one shot to 51.8% of its population.
Of all of these, the only really worrying result is Hawaii, which has given 60.9% of is population at least one shot, but hasn't seen cases start to trend steadily downward yet.
I wonder why. Low levels of acquired immunity? Pockets of unvaxed people partying?
Washington is also...not amazing? 51.9% first-shot vaccination rate, but at best you can see the very beginning of a downtrend.
Anyway, the upshot here is that vaccines do work, but the game isn't over once you hit 50%. Antivaxers hoping to free-ride on other people should think again, and go get their shots.
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Russia's empire is a nested hierarchy. At the center is Moscow. Under them are mid-tier Russian cities and rural areas, then subject peoples like the Buryats, Sakha, and these African folks.
The closer you are to the center, the less fighting you do, and the more money you get.
In fact, the circles of Russian hierarchy don't stop at Moscow. There are privileged subgroups of Muscovites, then more privileged groups inside that circle, all the way up to the Tsar himself.
The principle still holds: Closer to the center = less fighting, more money.
The advantage of this organizational structure is that the more power you have, the less likely you are to ever suffer negative consequences from adverse shocks or bad decisions. All the losses from failed wars, bad economic decisions, etc. get taken by the less powerful.
In fact, it's not law even now. This executive order is (sadly) AGAINST the law and will probably be struck down, because our asylum law says we can't discriminate against asylum claimants for crossing the border illegally. That law needs to be changed by Congress.
The problem is that the U.S. is a party to the 1967 UN Convention on the Status of Refugees, which says that your asylum system can't discriminate against people for being in the country illegally. We wrote our domestic law to comply with that treaty.
The non-discrimination provision is obviously stupid, so what we need to do is flout the 1967 UN Convention on the Status of Refugees, and simply amend our domestic law to say "You can't claim asylum if you crossed illegally". But this would require an act of Congress.
About 8% of students have participated in the protests on one side or the other. That's a substantial number, but less than the 21% who joined BLM protests in May/June 2020 (and the latter were pretty much all on one side of the issue).
The Palestine protesters have created a dream Palestine that is almost entirely disconnected from the real place, in which all of their fantasies of a perfect society are realized.
Most weebs don't actually want to live in Japan. They want to live in a local subculture of their own creation, whose values are based on gentleness and romance -- the ideals that attracted them to Japanese fantasies and made those fantasies resonate.
Comparisons between the Cultural Revolution and the Woke Era get laughed at. The Woke Era didn't use violence, of course. But the *motivation* of people wanting to overturn social hierarchies, especially students wanting to overturn academic hierarchies, is recognizably similar.
In 2010s America, there was a widespread desire to overturn local social hierarchies -- the classroom authority of teachers and professors, the cultural power of entertainment stars, the authority of nonprofit execs and heads of civic organizations.
In 1960s China, overturning local hierarchies happened via physical mob violence. In 2010, it happened through online mobs destroying people's reputations on social media. Obviously, the second is far preferable to the first. This is why economic development is good!