Year: 2021

So yesterday we learned that Kim Potter (the cop that killed Daunte Wright) thought that she was holding her taser when she fired the fatal shot that killed him. 

I watched the video, and I believe that’s what happened. I know that’s not a popular assessment, but it’s what I saw. She was genuinely horrified when she realized that she shot her gun at him. That’s not where the central problem of this encounter lies in my opinion. 

The fact that they pulled Duante over because of a fucking air freshener is the problem. The cops claim that he was pulled over for expired tags, but the fact that they didn’t release that part of the video tells me that the family is probably telling the truth when they say that he was pulled over for the air freshener in his car. That’s where the racism started. 

I live in Manhattan now, so I don’t have a car. When I lived in CA and did drive, I never used air fresheners so I’m not an expert here but I’m very certain that white people don’t get pulled over for their goddamned air fresheners. I’ve never known anyone who got pulled over for such an obviously stupid reason, and I’ve never heard a story of anyone being pulled over under those circumstance. When I was in CA, I lived in the bay area and then an upper class neighborhood in LA. Believe me when I tell tell you that an “I got pulled over for an air freshener” story would have reverberated in the privileged neighborhoods that I’ve lived in. It doesn’t fucking happen. 

That’s where the problem is; cops instigate more contact with people of color than they do with nice white folks. The more engagement you have with a community, the more infractions or crimes you’re going to find. That’s an obvious truth that no one whose being an honest actor can deny. I’m not going to get into the stats of white marijuana usage vs black marijuana usage and the gigantic disparity in incarceration rates because you can look that up, and that’s not what this post is specifically about. The point is that the more you police a community, you will find more reasons for arrests.

This should be the focus of our conversations. If you find yourself getting into the minutiae of unpacking every aspect of these encounters, you’ve missed the central issue with the racism in policing in America. “Why did he run?”, “he was resisting arrest”… all of these things are irrelevant. I’m not even going to get into the fight or flight instincts that any group of people would develop if they were constantly being harassed by cops. That’s not the central issue here. 

Of course Caron Nazario drove a few miles to get to a well lit and more populated area to pull over for the cops. Of course he did. He wanted to increase his odds of survival. Daunte Wright’s instinct to run from police is also understandable but none of those details are as important as why they had those interactions in the first place. Do not find yourself getting sucked into these discussions. When you do, you’re accepting someone else’s deliberately distracting framing of the issue.  

There is not one shred of data in any corner of this country to suggest that people of color aren’t being forced to interact with police exponentially more often than white people. Not a single shred, and anyone who suggests otherwise is a fucking racist and you should feel free to point that out after they fail to provide any data to support that assertion. It’s not in the FBI crime reports, it’s not in any city’s data (such as it is) that they track on policing in their city.  

The racism begins with instigating the interaction. Full stop. Until we address the disparity in the number of interactions that cops have with different racial groups, we’re just chasing our tails and falling down rabbit holes where we find ourselves having inane conversations about whether Derick Chauvin was the unluckiest bastard in the world for having his knee adjacent to George Floyd’s neck at the exact moment that died of a drug overdose. 

Stop it. This isn’t getting us anywhere. Let’s all stay focused on the central problem here and demand more of the kind of data that we need on how often cops instigate interactions with different racial groups.    

Last week, I read an article about how Germany has a surplus of over 1.4M doses of Astra Zeneca because people are missing their appointments to hold out for Pfizer. 

I read another article today about how governors are concerned about the optics of distributing Johnson & Johnson to low income neighborhoods where people are harder to track down for vaccination. 

Someone on Twitter this morning asked, “How immune are you after the first dose of Moderna?”. 

There’s still a lot of vaccine misconception out there, so I’m going to try and address some. 

First off, none of the vaccines will prevent you from getting COVID. None of them. No one is claiming that about their vaccine. What we’re talking about when we refer to the efficacy of a vaccine, is how effective are they at keeping you out of the hospital with just a mild or moderate case that you can recover from at home. That’s all we’re talking about. We’re not even at the stage of talking about whether you can spread the virus after you’ve been vaccinated. The assumption at this point is that you can, and that you should stay masked up until we know more. 

Angela Merkel was asked if she would get the Astra Zeneca vaccine (I don’t know why we’re pretending she’s not already vaccinated). She replied that she would not because she’s 66 and in Germany, Astra Zeneca is only approved for people under the age of 65. They put out a very sketchy (and scientifically unsound) study that claims it’s only 8% effective on those who are over 65.  While it may (we’re still not seeing definitive proof in the UK to support this) be less effective on people over the age of 65, we need to understand what “less effective” means? It means if you’re over 80, you only have a 19% chance of ending up on the hospital. In other words, it’s 81% effective. 

I don’t know why Merkel would say something so reckless and stupid, but her words have resonated and the people she represents aren’t getting Astra Zeneca vaccines. 

Everyone is focused on getting the vaccine with the ‘highest percentage’. There’s more to it than that. I got my first dose of Moderna last week. My top 2 choices were (and still are, although I’m already wed to Moderna) Astra Zeneca and Johnson and Johnson. Since this pandemic started, I’ve done a stupid amount of reading about it. I’ve read hundreds of scientific studies, some of which I understand, some of which I’m reasonably certain I misunderstood. I actually scheduled a call with the Chief Science Officer of my company to discuss what I thought I understood with him. I have a concern about the long term efficacy of m-RNA vaccines. They’ve been in development for several years now, but COVID is the first time anyone has tried them. The primary issue with them is the short term efficacy. They don’t seem to produce the same response from your own immune system that (for example) the polio or measles vaccines do. They just don’t seem to produce a meaningful t cell response from the natural immune system. That’s why we hadn’t seen one until COVID. We (by we, I mean all of us including the scientists who created these vaccines) don’t know how long either of the m-RNA COVID vaccines will provide protection for. We just have to wait and see. 

For that reason, I concluded that the two vaccines that were more like traditional vaccines were more likely to produce the kind of t cell response that your body needs to give you long term protection. Our Chief Science Officer agreed with my conclusions, so my thought process isn’t totally off base.

So why did I get a Moderna shot? Because it’s imperative for all of us to get vaccinated as soon as possible. The higher the vaccination rate is, the fewer hosts this virus will have Fewer hosts = fewer mutations. 

That was a little imprecise, and some of you may have spotted an inconsistency in what I’m saying so let me clarify. The vaccines mean that your body will produce an immediate immune response to COVID, which will keep the viral load down. The lower the viral load is, the less severe the symptoms you will have. Also, it appears that if you have a lower viral load, you’re not as efficient a transmitter as someone with a higher viral load and that what you’re infecting others with is a lower viral load case of COVID. Mutations are errors in replication. The lower the viral load, the less of the virus there is to replicate and therefore create errors in replication. 

You have to get vaccinated with whatever you can get, as soon as you can get it. That’s the bottom line. 

I don’t agree about the narrative regarding the optics of distributing J&J to poorer neighborhoods. NYC was going to send mobile vaccination trucks to lower income neighborhoods as soon as J&J started rolling in. This makes sense to me, as only one visit would be needed There would be no need to schedule second vaccination appointments at locations that the people who received the first injection might or might not be able to get to. The logistics of scheduling two interaction with people using trucks sounds like a nightmare, and doesn’t make much sense to me especially knowing that J&J will 100% keep you out of the hospital if you get COVID 50 or more days after your vaccination. Plus, J&J has much more favorable storage requirements that lend themselves to mobile vaccination. 

Instead of worrying about the “optics” of getting low income people vaccinated with the product that makes the most sense in this situation, we need to deal with the perception problems that lead people to believe that J&J (and Astra Zeneca for that matter) are “subpar” choices. They’re absolutely not, and if I had been given an option when I showed up for my vaccination appointment, I would 100% have chosen J&J. 

We need to get people in every corner of this planet vaccinated as soon as possible. The lack of understanding about the different vaccines shouldn’t slow those efforts down. Educating people should not be the Herculean task that it’s become in the digital age. 

So I got my first dose of vaccine last night. I have to say that this experience has run the gamut from abhorrent to elation. I thought I would share some thoughts.

First, let me say that I became eligible for the vaccine twelve days ago. I only spend eight days trying to land an appointment, so I’m aware that my experience is far better than it has been for many but it wasn’t good. The snow storms hit the country a few days before my eligibility date so I knew that vaccine shipments were definitely going to be delayed. That’s what I knew. What I felt was an urgency to get an appointment as soon as possible so for eight days, I had over a dozen tabs open in my browser dedicated to finding an appointment. I refreshed and answered qualifying questions fifty to sixty times a day in between work calls. It was frustrating, sometimes maddening, but it needed to be done. 

I banded together with a group of friends to work together to get us all appointments. I wake up very early in the morning because I have a couple of very self centered cats who hold their breakfast in much higher regard than my sleep. They wake me up just before 5 am every day. I have a rule about getting off the computer and phone by 8 pm every day. I had read that this helps with sleep, and I really needed help sleeping through the pandemic. It works, by the way. The sooner you unplug, the sooner your mind starts to wind down. So I took the 5 am shift for searching for appointments. Between us, we had 5 am to midnight covered. About 10 minutes after my last refresh, I got a text from one of my vaccine hunter partners letting me know that her husband’s boyfriend (it’s complicated) had just landed an appointment in Queens. I immediately refreshed on a site that aggregates most of the state run sites (it’s turbovax.com if you’re in NY and need help). For the first time in 8 days, there were appointments. Lots of appointments in eight or nine locations. I immediately got to work and used the muscle memory I had built up at that point to quickly fill out the form and secure the appointment for myself. My friend snagged an appointment for another friend who has three very serious comorbidities, and who couldn’t get an appointment up to that point. Once I had secured my appointment, I got to work scheduling one for a friend. Our appointments were for three days later so we were all elated. 

On the morning that we all got our appointments, I read a story in the Times about a woman who was trying to help her 87 year old mother get an appointment with no luck. Her mother isn’t computer or smart phone savvy, and the daughter isn’t lucky enough to have a work-from-home job. I had been reading stories like that one on almost a daily basis so I was acutely aware of my privilege every single time I refreshed a tab. But what was I going to do? Not use every tool in my toolbox to secure an appointment? That’s clearly not a rational option for anyone, I don’t care how aware you are of the magnitude of fuckery in this Hunger Games system we have set up in the richest country in the world. Getting COVID was not likely to turn out well for me so getting vaccinated was my top priority. 

I spoke with a friend of mine in Northern California on the day that I secured my appointment. He’s a 62 year old cancer survivor who is currently taking immunosuppressants for arthritis. He wasn’t able to get an appointment. He has a friend who heard that if you show up to a big vaccination center in Santa Rosa at 8 am, you can put your name on a waitlist to get any left over doses. His friend got vaccinated on the second day he went. My friend went the next morning and got his vaccine on the spot. We talked about the guilt that comes with getting vaccinated right now. We talked about how it feels to take a shot away from a poor elderly person in bad health. But again, not doing everything you can to secure a vaccine is not an option. This process should not include a combination of elation and guilt. 

After I got my appointment, I started thinking of ways that I can organize to help disadvantaged people get their vaccines. I spoke with a couple of older people on my block who haven’t been able to get vaccinated, and I got the information that I need to work on booking appointments for them but I want to do more. I’m still trying to figure out how to approach this. Getting tech savvy volunteers to perpetually refresh their browsers is not a hurdle. I can use social media for that. Getting to the people who need help is the tricky part. When I was waiting in line for my vaccine last night, I heard that NYCHA (New York City Housing Authority) was going to start sending mobile vaccination units to low income housing units as soon as the J&J vaccine arrives. I might try and help out with that. I’m not sure, but I will figure something out because I need to deal with the guilt. 

Now on to the happy part (mostly) of my story. I arrived at 4:50 for my 5:10 vaccine appointment. When I got there, I discovered that the line went down the block, around the corner, and down 2 more blocks. I wasn’t surprised because I had just experienced the most healthcare that I’d ever consumed  so far. I had a horrifying night in the ER, another night in the hospital, and a subsequent surgery. Everything is fine now, and it was (in the grand scheme of things) a minor medical emergency but seeing our healthcare system up close and personal is eye opening, even if you’re intellectually aware of the issues. I digress. A few people in line were shocked at the length of the line. They envisioned walking and getting their shot at the time that their appointments were scheduled. I knew better so I was prepared for a long wait. Anyway, I made some friends over the course of the nearly two hours that we waited in line.  

We came to learn that a large shipment of the Moderna vaccine that had been delayed due to the storm had dropped unexpectedly, which is why all of those appointments had opened up in several locations that were not vaccine hubs. Because we weren’t at a big hub location, they didn’t really have the system down enough to get people in and out quickly. But we got our shots and in the end, that’s all that mattered. 

So we got our shots and moved to another waiting room where our second appointments were going to be scheduled. There was high fiving and elation in that room. A year’s worth of stress and fear had finally been released (at least a little bit). It was really an environment of unmitigated joy. For a few minutes I and all of my new friends let go of the guilt and allowed ourselves to be happy. 

Except for that last part, this isn’t how things should be. Obviously, we weren’t going to get 7.5 billion doses of vaccinations over night so the rollout was going to be slower than anyone would like but this system of fucking the already fucked that we have here in America is super fucked. Germany, France, and Italy were out of vaccines for several days (sometimes a whole week) at a time but they’re distributing much more equitably than we are. I actually just read a story about how Germany has a huge surplus of Astra Zeneca because people are missing their appointments and holding out for Pfizer. Those people would be morons. You get whatever vaccine you can get, as soon as you can get it. The fewer hosts this virus has, the fewer opportunities it has to mutate. Even with the supply shortages, poor people aren’t getting extra fucked in Germany and the middle class feel so comfortable with the German healthcare and distribution systems, that they’re getting picky. All of my friends in Europe say that people are being contacted for appointments. No one is playing the Hunger Games there. 

Personally, I’ve concluded that Astra Zeneca and J&J are the two best options to create the kind of t cell response that will produce long term immunity but I gladly got my Moderna shot last night because none of us can see the future and it’s important to get vaccinated as soon as possible.  

So my point here was to share my experience and to tell you that if you’re experiencing guilt and frustration, you’re not alone. Get your appointment as soon as you can. Follow up on tips, go to mega vaccine centers and see if you can snag any surplus shots. Do anything you can to get that needle in your arm. Get your shot! If you can, help someone who doesn’t have the resources you have to get theirs. This might make the Hunger Games a little more palatable for you. 

Here’s WaPo’s headline about the woman who was shot in DC yesterday.

Interesting. That’s the main thing that the Washington Post wants you to know about her. She’s an air force veteran who served in Afghanistan and Iraq. That’s nice. The next thing they tell you about her is that she was one of the rioters who broke a window in the Capital building, and that she was shot while she was jumping through that window. 

It isn’t until two thirds of the way through the article that we learn that she was a batshit crazy Q-anon conspiracy theorist. 

But she’s a veteran!

Does anyone in their right minds think that a black person (ANY black person) who gets shot by the cops get the same treatment from the media? I’m fairly certain that if she were black, the headline would have read: A woman who was shot was part of a pro-Trump mob that stormed the Capitol. 

I didn’t see any details about her military record. I wonder if anyone tried to look at it to see if she was ever disciplined the way they always look for a criminal record when a black person is shot?

Also, did you notice the picture they used? Doesn’t she look nice? They didn’t use any of her whacky zealot MAGA pictures on her social media. How nice for her. Black people always get the mugshot, handcuffed, or generally unflattering picture treatment. 

You know what else I noticed? That half the country isn’t in agreement that she deserved to get shot because; what was she doing breaking into the capital building? If she hadn’t been doing that, she would be alive today. I do see some dumb dumbs on social media saying that, but it’s not half the country the way it was with (for example) Michael Brown. 

Isn’t that interesting?

To be clear, I don’t think that she deserved to be shot by the police. I don’t believe that anyone should be shot by police unless they’re shooting first. That is the only circumstance in which I would be comfortable with a cop shooting a citizen. I’m not even okay with a cop shooting someone wielding a knife. That is not equal force to neutralize an immediate threat. My position on that will not change based on who the shooting victim is. 

Is my heart bleeding because this woman was shot? I’ve got to be honest, it’s not. I don’t feel an overwhelming sense of sadness over her death, but I do feel an overwhelming sense of sadness over the state of policing in America. My desire to fix the system won’t allow me to be happy about this shooting, or to even find it tolerable and I don’t care how batshit crazy she was. This isn’t about her. It’s about the next victim of a police shooting. 

But I digress. The point of this post is really to show you how the media helps to shape our collective unconscious biases. We all have them, regardless of how “woke” we think we are. I have them, and I check them every single day. Our biases are largely manufactured by exactly this kind of crap, and I plan on highlighting things like more often.