A vaccine mandate helped win the Revolutionary War

Another check of Michigan’s COVID data today. Because of the holiday on Monday the data is likely to shift over the next couple weeks. At the moment, the week’s peak in cases per day for the last three weeks is 2215, 2174, and 3016. Over the last two weeks the deaths per day has reach 26 once and 27 twice. In response to a tweet that claimed our Founding Fathers are rolling in their graves over mask and vaccine mandates, Michael Harriot tweeted a history lesson. In 1706 a black man in Boston convinced his owner to try inoculating his family and friends against smallpox. That prompted the first anti-vaxxer movement. Half the town got sick and 1 in 7 died, though only 1 in 40 of the inoculated died. Massachusetts became the first to promote public vaccination. The next year another epidemic hit and less than 3% caught it. Thomas Jefferson, while president, mandated vaccines. James Madison created the National Vaccine Agency. Another smallpox epidemic broke out in 1900. Again vaccination was mandated. Again there was an anti-vax movement. And the Supreme Court upheld a compulsory vaccination law. In 1998 Andrew Wakefield published a study saying the MMR vaccine caused autism. It was a hoax perpetrated by a rival vaccine company. But very few news outlets that reported the study also reported the hoax. Measles killed kids around the world, except in the US, where we had a vaccine mandate. One more bit: George Washington mandated his troops be vaccinated against smallpox. That gave them an advantage over the British and helped America to become independent. Leah McElrath of Houston responded to a tweet from Dr. Peter Hotez, who wrote that Texas has passed 60,000 COVID deaths and is averaging 200 deaths a day. She wrote:

More deaths in one state in an 18 month period than the total number if Americans killed in the Vietnam War in a decade.

Today is the 20th anniversary of the attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon by planes crashing into them. The crew of a fourth plan fought back to keep it from its target. In New York many first responders helped save a great number of people and many of them lost their lives trying to save more. NPR news programs used today’s programs for remembrance. Other news outlets surely did the same. Greg Dworkin, in yesterday’s pundit roundup for Daily Kos, quoted Spencer Ackerman of the New York Times, who discussed the relationship between Sept. 11 and Jan. 6:

The war on terror accustomed white Americans to seeing themselves as counterterrorists. Armed white Americans on the far right could assemble in militias, whether in Northern states like Michigan or on the southern border, and face little in the way of law-enforcement reprisal. ... They considered themselves to be doing what America was doing all this time: combating terrorism, since, as patriots, they couldn’t be committing terrorism.

Mark Sumner of Kos reported on Wednesday Biden laid out ambitious goals for solar power. He wrote:

Getting solar power from around 4% of the nation’s electricity to 40% by 2035 will take a genuine national mobilization that adds 30 gigawatt hours of solar capacity each year. But if it’s not done, the U.S. will not reach the goals already set for reducing carbon emissions. In the process, the U.S. would create between 500,000 and 1.5 million solar-related jobs, retake a leadership position in solar power, greatly reduce greenhouse gases, create a much more flexible and reliable power grid, and not see an increase in electricity prices. All of which sounds like a goal that any nation should strive toward.

But some of the media coverage of the effort has been negative. NYT noted how the effort will strain the aluminum, silicon, steel, and glass industries and the rush to hire workers will mean many won’t be part of a union. Sumner noted, “That’s the kind of negative framing that does not happen by accident.” Yes, there are big challenges in switching from fossil fuels to renewables in the largest change industry is facing in 200 years. However, that is much better and much less expensive than doing nothing. I hope some company realizes a great place for solar panels is over big box store parking lots – actually, every parking lot. In addition to generating electricity these panels will shade cars from the hot sun – and perhaps be convenient places for recharging electric cars. McElrath tweeted a thread saying she is beginning to see herself as an accidental anarchist. She is not advocating overthrowing the state. Rather she wants us to recognize the state is no longer functioning for the greater good, isn’t meeting the needs of the people, and won’t be the agent of change we need.

Many causes of mass suffering are accelerating. Our responsiveness must reflect that acceleration. Political structures as they exist are not only failing to reflect the acceleration, they are often seemingly interfering with the efforts of groups of individuals to do so. We have to decide when our efforts to influence the system are merely serving to reinforce our fears of powerlessness in the face of profound change. We are not powerless. We have ourselves. We have each other. Perhaps it is time for our interconnection to become our focus. ... Rather than waiting on the state to save us, I am beginning to believe we must begin focusing in earnest on how more effectively to save one another. Perhaps by doing so, we can live into the future with hope rather than hopelessness, feeling empowered rather than powerless.