Covid misconceptions. Billionaires don't donate to Biden! And a letter about covid to "Dear libertarians...."

Before talking covid... you know that for years I've warned that a trumped-up "war" with Iran would serve the interests of all our nation's enemies, from the Republican Party to the Iranian mullahs, themselves, and above all Vladimir Putin, who would finally rake in all the chips. I've long praised the US Navy for calmly defusing one provocation after another, avoiding a "Tonkin Gulf" (and you all still do need to stay alert, also knowing the words "Gleiwitz" and "Reichstag Fire.")
So, why am I not beating that drum now? Because our military, intel and other officers have eyes and brains. Given that our entire 'deep state' is on red alert against efforts by Putin/Tehran/Fox/Trump to trigger an October War, what other tricks are possible?
We don't know! That's why I keep saying some zillionaire - instead of just joining the herd donating to the Biden campaign - should try some of the special things I suggested here.
Especially the "Henchman of the Year" Prize, to lure whistle-blowers and tattlers into the open. There is absolutely no better use of a million dollars, than to staunch the nefarious schemes and cheats that are right now hatching in preparation. It's the henchmen who can offer proof! And if nothing else, this would make the plotters distrust their henchmen.
Well, there is one other thing, that could do even more good. Joe Biden could start talking about pardoning the first few to step forward from among the hundreds likely now being blackmailed into treason by the KGB. Whatever they are being blackmailed for, any of them who turned the tables on their blackmailers would be salvageable 'heroes' - at least enough to find some forgiveness and a stairway out of hell. Someone in Biden's campaign should contemplate how good that would look, even if it spurred no defections. But if it did...
And yes, all this and more is in the book.
== Cautionaries about Covid/Covfefe-19 == 

As you might guess, I'm very busy these days, on often one podcast/ interview/ conference a day, sometimes two, even three. Along the way I've learned a lot. About how vaccines work, for instance, and how it's not enough just to make antibodies, or even 'neutralizing antibodies" that are effective against a viral attack. 

Look up Antibody-based Enhancement (Ab), where the victim's immune system manages to stymie one viral strain, only for the next variant to hijack those antibodies and use them as trojan horses, or spears, to attack and invade more fiercely than ever! While rare, this does happen to some promising vaccines, especially in Dengue, where the first wave can be mild and the second devastatingly lethal. Indeed, discovering such potentially dangerous quirks is one reason we have large scale trials before releasing vaccines.

Other immunological side effects happen. With the 1976 Swine Flu vaccine that Gerald Ford rushed out, the Guillame-Barré side effect was so nasty it gave birth to the current anti-vaxxer movement. Anything similar with a covid vaccine could spur vaxxers to plunge us back into the dark ages... 

...like those execrable years before the Greatest Generation saved mine from Polio and Diptheria, And yes, before Jonas Salk became the most-beloved American, terrified parents kept children indoors, away from friends and swimming pools, all summer long. 

What? You think this was our first quarantine? (Salk was the first American to approach the adoration that the Greatest Generation gave previously to Franklin... Delano... Roosevelt.)

All of which is to say that things are more complicated than reflex dogma. Not only is it dangerous to rush out the first vaccine. It's also foolish to ignore the fact that many of today's covid-asymptomatics (35%) and shruggers (the 60% who supposedly shrug it off after two weeks spent moaning in bed) are revealed to have damage afterwards in their kidneys, livers, skin, the G.I. tract and nerves. 

Those Ancillary Effects are what terrify me, since many remain hidden. even now. "Symptom relapse" is another serious problem and everyone I've met online who was infected reports having it. And there are suspected cases of "lurking" -- where the virus seems completely gone, only to spew forth later.

(Note, Spanish researchers have just put out an alert to watch out for MOUTH RASHES, which are much more dangerous than "Covid Toes," since they can make you a super-spreader. And yes I still try to scratch and sniff a lemon, daily.)

"Flattening the Curve" isn't just about making sure we have enough ICU beds, though that has saved innumerable lives. (I was involved across March-April in efforts to design DIY ventilators.)  Curve flattening is also about giving science enough time to catch up and provide situational awareness...

...something we would have had, if testing had been prioritized as a matter of national urgency, instead of sabotaged with suspicious relentlessness. And now the Trump White House is railing against a stimulus bill including money for accelerated testing and contact tracing! Consider how only Putin and his carnival barker would want to sabotage us that way.

Four months or so ago -- about the era of Gilgamesh -- back when we thought this might be just a 'bad flu' restricted to problems with lung fluid excess -- some commentators suggested "this will rock our complacency and get us taking the pandemic threat more seriously, so we'll be better prepared when something really bad hits." Well, this has proved to be worse than a 'bad flu"... 

...but that logic still holds. Some of my past sci fi has been more pertinent than I’d want! My Hugo-nominated story “The Giving Plague” deals with our complex relationships with viruses and such, including the several paths a parasite can go down, in “negotiating” with us hosts. Get it free at on my website.  

== Covid concerns that relate to... Libertarians! ==

Okay, all of that leads to the Great Swedish Experiment in going for "herd immunity," a notion much beloved of some libertarians I know, leading to the latest meme from the White House. When it didn't 'just go away,' and after a dozen other trial balloons, now it's "we're just going to have to live with it."

National Review carried an article extolling wonderful Sweden, and well.... the current condition of National Review has William F. Buckley spinning in his grave so fast that he's generating megawatts of good, clean electricity for Connecticut. (He and Barry Goldwater would have been enraged by the current right's all-out war against science and every other fact-centered profession.) 

Still, it is important to read views that dissent from the near-universal opinion I've seen expressed by sage researchers - that Sweden's experiment is a disaster. 

Consider using the standard formula for epidemics, when a disease has an R(0) replication ratio around TWO, you can make do with herd immunity if HALF of the population is fully resistant and non-contagious. 

But when R(0) gets above FIVE, as does Sars-CoV-2 when there's indoor mingling, you need 80% of the population to be fully resistant and non-contagious to get herd-immunity. And that's if every asymptomatic-infected and shrugger is fully immune and no longer spreading. It ignores the way super-spreaders appear to reach R(0) = 20+.

As for the memic aspect to this, as you know, I am an Adam Smith acolyte who believes that there should always be adult-libertarian voices at the table, questioning government over-reach. What troubles me is the reflex to assume that the major threats to liberty right now are only nanny-state bureaucrats, when human history offers a very different warning. 

Even if we include as "socialist" the murderously oppressive USSR (which in fact was Czarist+ fascist Russia using different symbols and incantations), even so, far less than 0.01% of the generations who suffered oppression had their freedoms and entrepreneurial options crushed by socialism of any kind. The vast majority of our ancestors across the last 6000 years were oppressed by one force... oligarchic-lordly inheritance cheaters of the kind who Adam Smith denounced and the U.S. Founders fought.

Seriously, how can any sincere defender of freedom and markets ignore that dismal tendency in human nature? For those who have elite wealth and influence to use it to cheat instead of letting others compete fairly? A libertarianism that ignores that absolutely central societal flaw - and Adam Smith's remedies -- is not a movement that's anywhere near as cerebral or honest as it thinks it is. 

Nor is it scientific or helpful in a crisis such as this, yammering about 'freedom to not wear a mask' while meekly obeying laws against nudity. Oy.

Musing about Coronavirus outcomes... and the Roberts Court... and the 'fundamental' lie underlying Wall Street

Pausing amid our serious choice between BLM and MAGA, let's not gorget the crisis that was already underway. Let me start by linking to some of the many podcasts and interviews I've done, across the last few weeks.

First, hosted by Dr. David Bray of the Atlantic Council: "A conversation with internationally recognized author and scientist Dr. David Brin, noted public policy professor and expert Dr. Kathryn Newcomer on the technologies, investments, and policy actions that could help us rebuild from COVID-19 on a global scale."

And one more podcast! In this one, Amanda Caniglia of The Bella Vista Social Club & Caffe joins Steve Chapel of Intellectual Capital, Alexis Dixon of Mediation Solutions International, to chat and interview me about these strange times and stranger yet to come. And yeah, I wish I had a deeper, better voice. So I try to add extra content value… plus a song. 

And Gadi Evron’s Essence of Wonder Podcast dives into the nominees for the Best Professional Artist Hugo... then interviews me about the role of science fiction in modern life. The connection between the visual and descriptive language. And other fine, diverting topics.

But I'm not the only wiseguy blathering or else trying to help change things. Fore example...

... yipe! Some of the wakened Republicans on the Lincoln Project are pulling no punches in their one-minute “Mourning in America” ad. And look up what George F. Will has been saying about the undead mutant horror that's become of his beloved Republican Party.

Meanwhile says Scott Foster, expert on Asian economics: “Stupid people have been called what's going on in the States a WWII Moment. But a real WWII economic policy with real WWII discipline may be required to get us out of this self-generated disaster. Asian manufacturing is coming back on line. While many U.S. factories are closing for good.” 

== The Roberts Court: commanded by their masters to end their own relevance ==

I used to think that Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts cared most about the institution of the Court. That is what he talks about most. But I’m now convinced that’s a cover-scam. Roberts knows that his current trajectory - relentlessly abetting every cheat that shatters 250 years of constitutionally democratic precedent - will eventually lead to the people rising up to bypass an ‘institution’ that's now more corrupt than it was under John Taney. He is as suborned - and likely blackmailed - as anyone in DC.

On Contrary Brin blog, we’ve been discussing what happens if - faced with just such a popular rising and imminent electoral collapse - the GOP is ordered by its masters to prevent any election happening at all, in November. Or else to wage war on the perceived legitimacy of that election. The following is cogent from that discussion:

“A violation of the Constitution as clear as halting the election for anything short of holocaust-apocalypse level emergency would need all three branches' support to sustain, plus broad popular acceptance -- which won't happen. And the states, not the Feds, have authority and mechanism to actually run elections. So what happens if Lord Farquaad declares an election cancellation, SCOTUS agrees, and states vote anyway? Remember, the House is the ultimate arbiter on the validity of both its own members and on the election of the President; the Senate is the ultimate arbiter on the validity of its own members and on the election of Vice President.” In short, it is entirely possible (by design!) to elect a Congress and a new President even in the face of Federal executive and judiciary opposition. And if necessary, that's what will happen.”

That paragraph invites contemplation of enough potentially weird outcomes that exceed even those I speculated in the “Exit Strategies" chapter of Polemical Judo. For example, a Biden-Trump presidency? No, won’t happen, because the House votes for president with one vote per state, favoring redders, despite whatever the vast majority of the people want. No, if it comes to that, it will be civil war, after all... exactly as Putin and Murdoch want.

I would add that there is precedent for proceeding with a new Congress even if many states did not choose to participate in the election. To be clear- almost none of the representatives or Senators elected from seceding states in 1860 showed up for Congress in early 1861. None after elections in 1862 and 1864, and hence the quorum in the Capitol was based upon those still participating. Hence, if Trump were to "defer" the November 2020 election - or declare a boycott that neo-confederate states participated in - the rest of the states could hold their elections as usual, then have their electors vote and send their Representatives to the new Congress. 

The precedent for those states who withdrew is clear. They are ignored.

== Wisdom from a science fictional seer ==

My colleague and bro Kim Stanley Robinson has a major article - The Coronavirus is Re-writing our Imaginations - in The New Yorker. (That alone is a victory for modernity, since that zine used to issue lynching-jeremiads against science fiction, with insipid regularity.) Robinson’s thought-provoking piece takes a mile-high perspective on our ructious time. 

“It’s very likely that there will be more water shortages. And food shortages, electricity outages, devastating storms, droughts, floods. These are easy calls. They’re baked into the situation we’ve already created, in part by ignoring warnings that scientists have been issuing since the nineteen-sixties. Some shocks will be local, others regional, but many will be global, because, as this crisis shows, we are interconnected as a biosphere and a civilization.

“Imagine a heat wave hot enough to kill anyone not in an air-conditioned space, then imagine power failures happening during such a heat wave. (The novel I’ve just finished begins with this scenario, so it scares me most of all.) Imagine pandemics deadlier than the coronavirus. These events, and others like them, are easier to imagine now than they were back in January, when they were the stuff of dystopian science fiction. But science fiction is the realism of our time. The sense that we are all now stuck in a science-fiction novel that we’re writing together—that’s another sign of the emerging structure of feeling.

“Science-fiction writers don’t know anything more about the future than anyone else. Human history is too unpredictable; from this moment, we could descend into a mass-extinction event or rise into an age of general prosperity. Still, if you read science fiction, you may be a little less surprised by whatever does happen. Often, science fiction traces the ramifications of a single postulated change; readers co-create, judging the writers’ plausibility and ingenuity, interrogating their theories of history. Doing this repeatedly is a kind of training. It can help you feel more oriented in the history we’re making now. This radical spread of possibilities, good to bad, which creates such a profound disorientation; this tentative awareness of the emerging next stage—these are also new feelings in our time.”

Like me, Robinson is fascinated by horizons of perception… what thresholds of future possibility people are willing to ponder and act upon. In novels and public statements he has long fretted that our neighbors are used to fobbing off on future generations potentially lethal environmental problems… a concern I shared via Earth and Existence. (See my elucidation of “Horizon Theory".)

In fact he sees hope in our current, self-interested interest in flattening-the-curve. 

“We’re now confronting a miniature version of the tragedy of the time horizon. We’ve decided to sacrifice over these months so that, in the future, people won’t suffer as much as they would otherwise. In this case, the time horizon is so short that we are the future people. It’s harder to come to grips with the fact that we’re living in a long-term crisis that will not end in our lifetimes. But it’s meaningful to notice that, all together, we are capable of learning to extend our care further along the time horizon. Amid the tragedy and death, this is one source of pleasure. Even though our economic system ignores reality, we can act when we have to.”

Hey, guarded optimism is my own schtick, as well, bro. Any other civilization would have crushed gadflies like thee and me… and most of our readers, too. And the scientists and front line workers and fact professions who will likely — in just the nick of time - save us all. So we’re already ahead of the game, just by continuing to play, and having hope.

== The Biggest Lie of Wall Street Parasites ==

Mark Anderson of the Strategic News Service offers an excellent missive on energy flows in nature!  It is vital to understand we’re still part of an ecosystem that relies upon thermodynamics, even in economics. If fact, I’d like to add a couple of points about economics mythologies.

1) We are learning a hard lesson: that one of the wretched mistakes of the MBA caste has been to over-emphasize “efficiency” at all costs. Just-in-time systems developed by Toyota in the 1970s and 80s - based partly on teachings of industrial guru W. Edwards Demming - had terrific effects on pushing the envelope of quality on assembly lines. But when it exaggerated into a cult aversion to ever stockpiling parts on-site, industrial Japan grew fragile and then collapsed when they took a hit, as in the Fukushima debacle. Picture a marathoner with 0% body fat abruptly dropped into the desert for a multi-week survival trek.

In nature, the animals who are ‘efficient’ in a niche keep winning and winning… till hard times hit and suddenly each genus loses most of the specialist species that had branched-off. A lesson is to give Resilience equal priority to Efficiency. 

I’ve been urging twenty different measures to make society more robust vs. future shocks. (I’m interviewed here by Peter Denning for the ACM on what simple measures - technological and social - might help accomplish this.)

2) Ask Wall Streeters to justify the spectacular costs of their activities — fully aware that 99.99% of it does not generate investment capital for companies innovating improved goods and services. They will recite their magical catechism-incantation — that they help to “discover the true price of equities and companies and capital.” 

This rationalization is issued not as the mumbo-jumbo that it is, but as an axiom of faith, based upon the one time that's a service, when companies do raise fresh capital via IPO or other original equity sales. But the rest of the time, by nibbling at the edges of every transaction, Streeters claim they help to “smooth” the slope of value. It sounds plausible, till you realize —

— that it is stunning malarkey-juju, based on absolutely nothing whatsoever. Certainly no analogues in nature, where health is defined by how FEW steps there are along the steep energy slopes that lead from sunlight to photosynthesizing plants, from plants to herbivores, from herbivores to carnivores, to poop and carrion that feed scavengers and microbes. Five big steps? Six or seven? In that case, everyone is pretty healthy and each layer is doing pretty well, supping in turn along the downward flowing river of free energy from the sun.

So what happens in nature when there are many, many increments, nibbling along the edges and “smoothing the slope”? 
It’s called parasitism. 
The plants are sickly from fungus. 
Herbivores are bleary-eyed and scrawny from tapeworm and the scraggly-mangy lions are desperate. 
Parasites are gobbling the energy increments, leaving barely enough for the main participants to stagger on.

Does that sound like today’s corporations, small companies and entrepreneurs? Bled at every phase by commissions and arbitrage fees and consultants and insider trades and vast vampire-siphonings by a CEO caste that is no longer recruited from the innovators or shop-floor engineers (as they are still, in China), but installed by fellow board members, all part of an incestuous cabal of 5000 golf buddies.

Nothing could be more anti-competitive and more… soviet. Or more like the parasitism that brings both economies and ecologies to the very brink.

== Whimsey… thoughpossible to ponder… ==

This DIY Guillotine has… chops. Though Ikea left out the support braces, ropes, latches and pulleys!

Your Corona/Covid/Covfefe sideways update

In a moment, much of interest - including startling slides - about the covid-crisis. But first: the Trumpist-Foxite war against all fact professions is zeroing in on a central goal, to crush or eliminate all of the 75 inspectors general in US agencies, for their inconvenient dedication to fact-centered professionalism. See the horrifying progress of this purge... any one incident of which would have enraged any Republican, if a Democratic President even hinted at it.

It seems vital to keep reminding this particular audience of what one of the truest Americans said - with (alas!) prophetic insight about one age-old trend among some of his countrymen:

"Throw in a Depression for good measure, promise a material heaven here on earth, add a dash of anti-Semitism, anti-Catholicism, anti-Negrosim, and a good large dose of anti-“furriners” in general and anti-intellectuals here at home, and the result might be something quite frightening – particularly when one recalls that our voting system is such that a minority distributed as pluralities in enough states can constitute a working majority in Washington."

Jiminy! Robert A. Heinlein wrote that in the early 1950s! Is there anything he did not hit right on the head? Heck, he even nailed the dominionist "Prosperity Gospel" so popular among Ted Cruz types, promising fervid followers that their "material heaven here on earth" will come by righteously seizing the property of unbelievers. 

Seriously, read his last paragraph (above) again and again to your MAGAs who might be reachable.  Then recall that Heinlein portrayed Nehemiah Scudder taking the White House against the will of a majority, in 2012. (He also spoke of America sinking into "The Crazy Years.") 

Meanwhile... winter is coming. Our latest whistleblower, former top vaccine official Rick Bright, fired by the Trump administration, recently warned Congress that the U.S. faces its "darkest winter in modern history" if it fails to develop a coordinated, effective response to the pandemic. (Late news. Bright is no longer the "latest" fired IG. Two more in just the last week,)

== Covid/covfefe update -- from our unusual angle ==

(1) There is a simple, capitalist/market solution to surging protests against “oppressive” closures of public gatherings like bars and church services. It’s called insurance. Let such groups do as they like, so long as they take out policies to remediate any subsequent outbreaks… and so long as they gather names/addresses of participants/ parishioners/ customers for contact tracing if their event endangers the public with a flareup. Note: except for random compliance audits, the state won’t get that info, only the proprietor. Also…

… if you’re so sure it’s safe, then convincing an insurance company to give reasonable rates should be a cinch, especially since many are run by Republican moguls. Hey! Don’t trust government bureaucrats? Then do it the market way! 

-- MEANWHILE…

(2) Wuhan reported no new Covid-19 cases since April 3rd*. But six new cases just emerged. So now they plan to test all 11 million people citywide in 10 days. That's what you do if you're serious about getting the virus under control and returning to modified normalcy. We (the U.S.) haven't conducted 11 million tests nationwide during this entire pandemic. 

(* With the usual caveat that you can't believe everything coming out of China)

(3) With our regular alumni reunion cancelled, Caltech posted a zoom replacement seminar day. One talk on Covid clarified some scary things. I will append below several of the slides that are frighteningly self-explanatory. Note that nearly all of the downturn in infection rates in the US is because of New York's success turning things around. Russia, India, Brazil and the U.S. are all scary. Meanwhile Florida and other states are desperately avoiding truth-telling by redefining death-attribution and reporting. It won't work. Because of those inconvenient fact-people.

(4) Two (...now five(!)...) previously “negative” sailors aboard the USS Theodore Roosevelt in Guam just tested positive, upsetting every schedule to get back in operation. The first one failed to report four days having lost his sense of smell. Indications are that one's sense of smell diminishes by the third day after infection with the novel coronavirus. 

And hence... EVERYONE, SCRATCH AND SNIFF A LEMON, DAILY!

(5) Have any of you out there noticed the surge of road repair work going on? Two months (more) ago I proposed the "Pothole Solution" to under-employment while the streets are mostly empty. I guess the idea was obvious.

(6) Hey, why aren't we seeing FOOD TRUCKS roaming neighborhoods, just like the ice cream trucks of old? With flyers they could let every home know a schedule or make orders to be dropped off. Izzit happening near you?

— AND FINALLY… An astonishing number of Sars-CoV-2 (covfefe) traits have made it more insidious than the original Sars-Cov-1 (SARS). The incredibly long and highly variable asymptomatic contagious period is the main reason for its pervasive spread and why mask discipline is vital.

But other things scare me even more and make me deeply worried and (yes) a little suspicious… like evidence of nerve and kidney damage, even when the lungs are spared. And the still unknown answer to the antibody/immunity question. (Seriously? Still? Shouldn’t the recovered be volunteering en masse for hospital duties? Or be flocking to their own bars and church services and events, so we can get an answer to that vital question? Shouldn’t Elon staff his factory with the recovered?)

All those traits - plus the notorious ability of corona viruses to cause immunity amnesia - beggar the imagination when we’re asked to believe this is just an escaped bat-pangolin virus. Just sayin’.

Covid insights... but don't forget the political implications.

Alert: With oil near $0, there's no reason for a vulnerable US carrier group to be anywhere near the dangerously confined and provocative Straits of Hormuz... except to serve as a "Tonkin Gulf" trip wire. Putin needs a US-Iran war to raise both oil prices and Trump's polls. Keep an eye on this.

 == Some Covid-related flash thoughts ==

(1) ‘Might the many who have but have antibodies, but no symptoms, have been exposed through food rather than breathing?" asks Joseph Carroll. 'Attenuated, it may not reproduce fast enough to outrace immunity." We assume the virus is killed in stomach acids. But the esophagus other points of entry might offer attenuated lethality... to many, not all. Even if true, don't restart "edibles" versions of “Corona Parties” yet! Because the virus can be brutal outside the lungs, if it gains traction almost anywhere. “[It] can attack almost anything in the body [and] Its ferocity is breathtaking.”  Both views may be partly right, for some populations and some strains. 

(2) Meanwhile, this article in the South China Morning Post suggests that Covid-19's mutation rate is far higher than previously thought, with some strains - like the one attacking most of Europe and New York - being especially aggressive and deadly.

(3) And yes it's either criminal negligence or much worse. For example: the National Security Council gave Donald Trump a 69-page pandemic plan three years ago — he ignored it. Snopes has verified: “The Trump administration fired the U.S. pandemic response team in 2018 to cut costs.” And that's just one of maybe fifty culpable failures.

(And there were ignored warnings from science fiction. My Hugo-nominated story “The Giving Plague” explores our complex relationships with viruses and such, including the several paths a parasite can go down, in “negotiating” with us hosts… and yes read it for free.)

(4) The anti-malarial drug hydroxychloroquine Trump touted is linked to higher rates of death in VA coronavirus patients, a VA study says. Even more strongly it says "no net benefit." And yes, when combined with that antibiotic.

(5) We need right now to start massing tracking of even the non-symptomatic infected for hidden effects. We mentioned non-lung damage, above. But further, some viruses are known to have downstream effects like triggering cancers. While I doubt this... or an HIV-style immune system attack... it means "we'll get past this" merits adding a "maybe."

(6) Lots of infected/recovered folks donating plasma for experiments using serum from covid survivors to help the ill. (I wasn't able to give my 96th pint because I'm (probably) pure and uninfected! Can't have that!) Here's a summary of efforts to evaluate this possible treatment.

(7) A couple of non-covid blips: Most years I try to warn folks in March to be wary when traveling during the 3rd week of April. Nut jobs often go rampaging on 4/19 - the anniversary of the Waco Debacle and Oklahoma City bombing. And the next day is old Adolf's birthday and Columbine Day. (Why did cannabis folks choose 4/20? Were they nuts?) And now the Nova Scotia shooter. See other mid-April jolts here. And Stay safe. Beware Holnists.

Oh but the 4th week of April starts with Earth Day... now its 50th Anniversary. So take heart. And yes, Earth.

(7) Finally, a Republican-led Senate review unanimously supported the conclusion of the intelligence community that Russia interfered in the 2016 election, undercutting claims by President Trump and his allies that the findings were those of a “deep state” seeking to undermine his victory. Demand wagers from your MAGAs, now that every GOP senator agrees with the Deep State.

== The contrast that nails them ==

“Biden's Health Play In a COVID-19 Economy: Lower Medicare's Eligibility Age To 60.”  

Well, yes, that is half of my recommendation! But it's the other half that would make election-winning headlines. 

Also include all children, up to age 25! You'll gain converts from most parents in America! Then comes the capper. Include an escalator. A year after the law takes effect, the not-covered age range becomes 27-to-58... then 28-to-57... then 29-to-56... automatically. Watch how quickly insurance companies then rush to (at last) negotiate in good faith.

And even if the GOP retakes Congress (as they did in '94 and 2010) they won't dare rip this away from the nation's kids. Unlike "Medicare for all," this could easily be afforded out of just ending Supply Side voodoo. And hence, no need to rail over "How you gonna pay for it?" Since the more complex issues have been put off for later (middle aged folks stay with employer insurance or medicaid,... at first), This version could pass within one month of a new Congress sitting in session. And support would span the spectrum from AOC types to moderates to sane Republicans.  

So good for you Joe. That's a baby step toward something both truly disruptive and affordable. See more in Polemical Judo.

== Judo your way past their reflex defenses ==

It is a grievous error for democrats to leap and proclaim "deficits don't matter!" Savvy guys like Reich and Krugman have been doing this and it's a trap. A free giveaway of a choice campaign rejoinder that just reinforces an image that helps Fox hold onto working stiffs. 

Vastly better is to shout: "Republicans are the budget-busting wastrel biggest spenders! Not only do they almost ALWAYS throw away more money and increase debt faster (care to bet on it?) but they waste it on "supply side voodoo" gifts to the super rich and oligarchs and mafias....

"...At least we'd spend it on making healthy, educated children who can then compete with the rich in flat-fair-open markets. Yes Democrats would spend extra in a recession, as FDR did, but look at the states! In good times, Democrats pay down debt! No Republican does that, ever!"

Anyway, there is a reason why US conservatives and especially libertarians never mention Adam Smith, who taught the fantastic creative power of flat-fair competition. They veer away to worship Milton Friedman and “Supply Side” incantations, or Ayn Rand, or apocalypse fetishism… or sigging a playground bully, rather than face the pure fact that Adam Smith today would be a Roosevelt Democrat:

"Civil government, so far as it is instituted for the security of property, is in reality instituted for the defence of the rich against the poor, or of those who have some property against those who have none at all." 

          -Adam Smith, The Wealth Of Nations (1776)

== Political potpourri ==

A member of the Supreme Court Bar resigns and tells John Roberts off. Wow, on target and apropos of this era’s John Taney.

And double wow in contrast, what a deep bench of women Biden could choose a running mate. Michigan Governor Whitmer has had a lot of attention, lately. Bottoms and Duckworth and Masto offer big diversity points while being solid folks. (Duckworth also has political and veteran chops, though is from a bluest state.) I doubt Klobuchar, who does nothing to salve the left. Harris is strong on paper (and ranks #1 on this list), but yipe do her huge brains and savvy and feistiness (and racial points) make up for the sense she has knives up her sleeves, eyeing everyone in sight?

Okay, a year ago I predicted Biden-Warren. And that he'll depart after 3 years, giving her nine, after she garners some executive experience. (She has none, but is a fast learner.)

Let's be clear on the Veep Record. Democrats always pick someone who is qualified to serve as president... and who is somewhat boring. 

Republican nominees since WWII have all but once picked a living horror, a wretched "ticket balancer" who is spectacularly not-qualified, with no thought to the national consequences.

That exception? Ronald Reagan chose as running mate a fellow who - on paper - was supremely well-qualified... and who went on to be the very worst US president of the 20th Century... who set the stage for two of the worst in the history of the republic.

Want another consistent pattern? Democratic ex-presidents are manic, they spend the rest of their lives scooting around busy trying to save the world. e.g. Jimmy Carter. Republican presidents always "retire to the ranch" or golf or paint. The pattern goes back (perfectly) to Ike. 

== Twitter metrics ==

And now some other analytics that could help you convince someone about the emperor’s non-clothes…

The New York Times analyzed Trump's 11,390 tweets since becoming president, and found he praised himself 2,026 times

Stylistic variation on the Donald Trump Twitter account: A linguistic analysis of tweets posted between 2009 and 2018.

A Text Analysis of Trump's Tweets - an Online Project.

Twitter Analysis shows How Trump Tweets Differently About Nonwhite Lawmakers.

Do not let Covid distract you from what's important -- saving the Western Enlightenment Experiment and the American dynamic progress toward better horizons. This crisis should make you more determined than ever.

What to do during Cov-Fe-Fe (Covid Forced-exile From-employment). Some of you are writing fiction. Even science fiction!

First a brief historical note about the "Asian Flu" of 1957, quoting: "Maurice Hilleman, a doctor later regarded as the godfather of vaccines, in 1957 read about a nasty flu outbreak in Hong Kong that mentioned glassy-eyed children at a clinic, tipping him off that these deaths meant the next big flu pandemic.” Hilleman requested samples of the virus be shipped to U.S. drugmakers right away so they could get a vaccine ready. Though 70,000 people in the United States ultimately died, “some predicted that the U.S. death toll would have reached 1 million without the vaccine that Hilleman called for... Health officials widely credited that vaccine with saving many lives.” 

What differed then? Well, Dwight Eisenhower was a different kind of president. And the Greatest Generation admired science and expertise. And the most popular American at the time was named Jonas Salk. Make America that kind of great again.

(Read about that event and other far worse plagues from history.)

== Are some of you taking on the Great Humanican Novel? == 

While my life has changed less than most… e.g. exercising with weights instead of at the gym… I have seen a surge in news media and podcasters wanting interviews. They claim it’s for wisdom or insights about the near and farther future… but I suspect many are just bored, or need filler.

Another uptick is from folks wanting to do spec scripts based on some of my stories.* And yes, there are many fine ‘possibles’ to be found in my three collections. Someone, someday, will do “Dr. Pak’s Preschool” right and creep-out millions!  

But most prevalent in the era of Covfefe are pleas from the house-quarantined, seeking advice about writing! Both nonfiction books and (especially) science fiction stories and novels. (Ignore the slander phrase "novel-coronavirus"! They are trying to deter you!)

Yes, this happens more mildly during NaNoWriMo November (National Novel Writing Month.) Only now with greater urgency! At-minimum, it’s a more creative use of time than binge-TV and maybe a lifetime opportunity to check that item off a bucket list. And so, to those of you with an ear for dialogue and a feel for character and sense-of-story… and willingness to work hard while seeking criticism… to all of you talented up-and-comers I say –

-- to Go Away! The field is full! Have you tried jigsaw puzzles?

Um, just kidding! We’re all readers, too! And someone out there might be just on the verge of creating the Great Humanican Novel -- a tale so deeply moving it will change us all for the better. For that reason… and others… I am among the few “best-selling authors” who always responds personally to every such appeal. (I do not promise always to do that! Stephen King used to, but physically can’t anymore, alas; Nice guy, BTW.)

 Oh, sure, I have some shortcuts, like “canned advice” that I paste into most responses, using QuickKeys, before adding some bits apropos to each person. So it occurred to me. Why don’t I share that now, with all of you? 

For one thing, it might keep some of you from emailing me! (Except to say thanks and to promise me a copy of the award-winning best-seller I helped to inspire? ;-) 

More importantly, maybe some practical tools and tricks will help a few of you achieve that glimmering goal, and thus enrich us all.

== David Brin’s Canned Advice Note ==

Dear _____

Naturally I’m pleased you are writing and I do want to offer my encouragement. Still, there is good news and bad news in this modern era. The good: there are so many new ways to get heard or read or published that any persistent person can get out there.  Talent and good ideas will see the light of day!  The bad news… it is so easy to get "published," bypassing traditional channels, that millions can convince themselves "I am a published author!" without passing through the old grinding mill, in which my generation honed our skills by dint of relentless pain. 

 . . . . . . . . (Insert apropos personal note in here! ____)

Alas, fiction writing is a complex art that involves a lot of tradecraft... as it would if you took up landscape painting or silver smithing. It is insufficient simply having ideas and being skilled at nonfiction-prose, nor does a lifetime of reading stories prepare you to write them.

Story telling is incantatory magic and there are aspects to the incantation process that are mostly invisible to the incantation recipient (reader). Skills at rapid-opening, point-of-view, showing-not-telling, action, evading passive-voice and so on are achieved by studied workshopping -- and as in most arts, the whole thing is predicated upon ineffable things like talent, e.g. an ear for dialogue that only a few people have. Indeed, point-of-view (POV) is so hard that half of would be writers never "get" it, no matter how many years they put in.

This is not meant to be discouraging! It is to suggest that extensive workshopping and skill-building are as important today as they were 30 years ago.  And to do that, you need to do one of the most difficult  but rewarding things a mature human can do – relish and seek criticism.

And enjoy whatever level you reach! Seriously. Tell a story. Even give it a way (as I am virtually giving away my sci fi comedy!)
No matter what, you'll be a creator of worlds. 
A kind of deity. 
An artist.

This answer is already too long. So what I can do is point you to an "advice article" that I've posted online, containing a distillation of wisdom and answers to questions I've been sent across 20 years.  (Note, most authors never answer at all.) 

I can also offer a general site containing advice bits from other top writers.

Then there is my advice video!  

Many people have found these items extremely helpful. I hope you will. But either way, do persevere.

Good luck!

David Brin

== Anything Specific? ==

All right that was a bit vague and general. There's lots more specific advice and pointers if you follow the links. And down below in comments. If enough of you ask, I may append some very specific examples of common beginner mistakes and how to avoid them.

Beyond that, however, the adventure is yours. Enjoy. And at-risk of violating my own rule against repetition… persevere!


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* Re spec scripts: I do require a very strong, signed release! And real experience is required. And this applies only to short fiction, not novels or series. Sorry.