One of the curves thrown at us by COVID-19 is that there’s a large number of asymptomatic people out there, infecting others but with no sign of infection themselves (which is among the reasons why taking people’s temperatures before admitting them to a venue strikes some as mere theater). The challenge presented by asymptomatic carriers is that the signs have all been removed; since tests take time, are still not widely available in the U.S., and none of us can just look at each other and see the virus, we have to rely on visible indications of its hidden presence — knowing that their absence really might not tell us all that much. Continue reading “Just Dealing With the Symptoms”
Taking the Popular Wisdom Seriously is a Little Disturbing, No?
As a quick following-up to this morning’s earlier post on how quickly we tend to conclude, but only in some cases, that certain gunmen in mass shootings are “lone wolves” (whose actions couldn’t be anticipated), it occurred to me that there’s a largely unseen ramification to attributing individual, psychological motives to the actions of white guys as opposed to the ease with which many of us seem to attribute planned, political motives to pretty much everyone else who does something heinous. Continue reading “Taking the Popular Wisdom Seriously is a Little Disturbing, No?”