Bill Fell 8/16-17/20

According to Ani Pema Chodron, Anam Thubten gave a teaching that if you paused 108 times per day for six months, you’d be enlightened.  

1.

Out the front door, barely break of day
Sudden unforeseen hit of heat
Down the driveway, turn left
Me and my tall shadow head west
Down to the greenbelt, head-fake right, go left 
A soft glow coats the redwoods, ginkoes 
Fronting an oddly opaque blackdrop 
Blanket of clouds no doubt?
Why do I not pause?

2.

Borrowing a corner of Chestnut Park
We, a small-group of meditators take our seats, 
Removing masks . . . quietly gongggging . . .  breathing;  
Hawk-less, squirrel-less, subdued spaciousness
Scrub jays own the air
A sudden flash barely beside my left eye
Is that?  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Yes!  
Enmeshed in perfect rolling thunder
A southwest flash, but . . . .
Is that where the sounds started?
If it happens again, I need a count
Filling-up this now with ever-more storylines
Sympathetic nervous system invoked
Why do I not pause?

3.

Now, THAT CERTAINLY was a raindrop.   
Up front, Amanda flashes a friendly face  
Refreshing drips soak through, a cooling relief 
But where might all THIS be headed?   
When do we take cover under a yoga mat? 
Who’s the first to make a move?   
Just sit tight  Fill-up this new now with commentary 
Why do I not pause ?   

I think this illustrated graph of U.S. Energy Consumption for 2019 is worth taking a close look at in order to gain a little understanding of how we use, and loss, energy. The “rejected” energy blocks represent efficiency loses that are not usable. One of the big ones is the 24.2 lost from electrical generation. About 1/3 of the power gets to the user, the rest is lost in generation and transmission. Unfortunately, this diagram includes “transmission loses” within generation loses. About 18 quads are transmission loses and about 6 occur during generation. Another interesting one is the transportation portion of petroleum use. When powered by internal combustion, about 80% is lost to heat, 20% to motion. Clearly there are a lot of opportunities to make major reductions in primary energy use through conservation and switching how and where power comes from.

The task before us with regard to CO2 production and global warming is daunting. We need to decrease the energy consumption on the right-hand side by a combination of improved efficiency and changing what we do. We also need to decrease the use of natural gas, coal and petroleum for energy production. There are issues beyond CO2 production that come into play and need to be considered. For example, beyond the problem of burning natural gas(NG) producing CO2, the drilling and shipping of NG releases vast amounts of methane into the atmosphere. Therefore, reducing the amount of NG used, also reduces the amount of another green house gas in the form of methane. Coal has a similar double or triple advantage in the form of less destruction of the environment (lakes, rivers, mountain tops, etc), but reduces the amount of many pollutants (including radioactive compounds) into the environment. Similarly, capturing methane at landfills to produce electricity also reduces the amount of methane released into the atmosphere.

However, some “improvements” such as increased use of biomass is very problematic if that entails wholesale destruction of vast stretches of forest lands while harvesting trees to be ground up for use as bio-fuels. Diverting methane from land fills is one thing, cutting down thousands of square miles of forest is entirely different. Not all solutions are created equal in terms of green house gas reduction and overall improvements to the environment (or at least, reduced degradation of the environment).

This is a very complex problem, one that has dollar signs associated with each of these paths. Part of the problem is that the dollars in terms of costs and benefits are not distributed evenly. It is almost a zero sum game, where each increase in one location is accompanied by a lose in another – and different people or organizations own and control the various paths.

It appears that we are entering a pretty dangerous phase of the pandemic. People are getting vaccinated and thinking that is the end of their problems. Others are seeing the numbers dropping and feel like we are at the end – and there is no longer any need to follow “the rules” or be vaccinated. In both cases even those of us who have been “being good” are tempted to go out and play after a year of being cooped up. We are all ready to see people, especially our friends and family. The CDC is fueling this idea by telling us that it is fine to have small, indoor, meetings with a small group of friends without masks or social distancing as long as everyone has been vaccinated.

However, at the same time we are being told that there are several new variants that are much more lethal and spread much easier. In addition, organizations such as UC Davis point out that they continue to require regular asymptomatic testing for access to their facilities. They say that this testing continues to be absolutely essential, even for vaccinated people, because we do not yet know everything about the effectiveness of COVID-19 vaccines in preventing transmission or infection. It is known that the vaccines protect us from serious illness, but it is not known if they prevent us from spreading the coronavirus. UC Davis continues on to state that there is a risk that the virus may find harbor in our upper respiratory tract even after we are vaccinated. So, by getting tested regularly, we are protecting our families and friends as they wait to get vaccinated.

This is starting to sound a little like double-speak to me. We are being told that it is acceptable to meet in small indoor groups without masks or social distancing, but that it isn’t safe to do so. It might be safe for the people who are doing the gathering, but maybe not so safe for those that we then contact that aren’t yet vaccinated (assuming the vaccination works as well as they claim – which we are told unknown with the new variants).

I read this apparent double message to mean that they believe the serious infection rates are low enough to not overwhelm the hospitals. I DO NOT see anything anywhere saying that this behavior is “safe” – especially for those who are still at risk that might encounter those that have been gathering. They are saying it won’t overwhelm the medical system – period. Unfortunately, it is pretty clear that giving vaccinations without continuing all of the protective measures has the potential for creating a very large cohort of non-symptomatic infectious people capable of stealthily spreading the virus to those who are unable or unwilling to be vaccinated including those that are not yet in the approved list, those that have pre-existing conditions that prevent them from being vaccinated, and children under the age of 18 (maybe it is now 16).

My personal thoughts on this are that I am not venturing out yet. I am waiting to hear that vaccination prevents infection and spreading of the virus. My guess is that we won’t hear that because it doesn’t do that, but testing should provide the necessary data soon. If the vaccinations do not prevent infection and spreading, then there is a problem until such time as all of the people that I might encounter are no longer at risk of getting it. I don’t trust the groups of people that I might socialize with to avoid contact with anyone that might be infected – in fact, I am absolutely positive that they haven’t done that and won’t do it now.

I wonder if those that refuse to be vaccinated or follow stringent safety measures would be willing to refuse admission to a hospital should they become infected? It seems only fair that they accept the natural consequences of their behavior. Silly me – of course they would want to be treated, they just don’t want to be bothered with the other parts. Oh well, that seems to be a part of being “human”.

Last night a friend of mine (Lori White) was a contestant on Jeopardy. This isn’t a game show I spend much time with, but check it out now and then when there isn’t much else going on and I want to watch something on TV. It was interesting how much more exciting it was with a friend in the contest. I noticed a couple of things of interest. For one, the other two contestants help their hands behind the podium and therefore you couldn’t tell what they were doing to get to answer. Lori had a push button thing in her hand so you could see her attempting to be first to respond. The previous winner was very fast, I couldn’t see any time delay, but Lori was pushing and pushing, but not so often getting in there first. She looked frustrated, and I was VERY frustrated – I wanted to hear her answer the questions, which she did in ways that would be totally impossible for me to compete with no matter how much time I got to try to get my mind focused – but honestly there wasn’t anything to focus on, I knew very few of the answers.

It was an exciting game with the points shifting back and forth with things like “double jeopardy” and other leveling features. In the end she won!!! So I guess she is going to be back tonight (or whenever the next game is aired). I have a ton of questions to ask her when I see her next. Does she get to keep what she won last night? Of does that somehow get wrapped up in the entire series, or maybe it isn’t actually what she makes? If so, it was almost $19,000 – not a bad evening. Also, was it live, or was it recorded some time ago? Was it fun?? She was really excited to go to the show, I sure hope she had a ball.

However that goes, congratulations Lori for a splendid game!

I apologize for the long gap in my “daily” posts. It isn’t that I have been ignoring this web site, it is because I have been using my time budget to change the website – hopefully for the better. The experience has been an interesting one that alternates between not having an idea of how to start, followed by experiments and frustrations, eventually calming down with a bit of “success” – only to realize that the success was but a stepping stone on an invisible path: then returning to not having an idea of how to start from that point.

I am finding this process to be highly frustrating because I have almost no “mental model” of how the web site works. The tool that I am using, Word Press, provides two views to the website creator. One view is through “blocks” of material (such as the drop down menu, the “sidebar” area, and the pages) that can be selected, moved around, modified in certain ways. This is fine for those that design by “messing around” – but that is not my style. I like to know “how it works.” For people like me, WordPress provides the completely opposite view – all of the html computer code that creates those blocks. So you can switch to that view and have much more control, but when I do it feels like I am faced with a big pile of letters and numbers in no particular order. Yicks! Does this mean I have to learn yet another computer language? Oh my goodness, that is a daunting task.

Perhaps I will eventually have to step off into the abyss and learn the version of html that is used because that seems to be my way of doing things. It reminds me of when I was first learning to drive. In those days a stick shift, with a clutch, was the option. I was having a hell of time using the clutch without jerking and jumping around. My friends mastered it quickly just be fiddling around until they “got it.” Not me, there was no amount of fiddling that was helping. Luckily, one of my brothers was working on his car and had the engine and transmission out of the car and on the shop floor. I took it apart until I could see what was in the bell housing where the clutch assembly “lives.” At that point I could see how the clutch worked, what levers and springs did what and why. From that moment on shifting smoothy was a piece of cake – I understood how it worked so I could make it work. I am having that problem again with this website. I still don’t know how it works, but it is slowly coming into focus.

So… please bare with me while I go through a period of changing, fixing, and hopefully improving the layout and presentation of the materials. I think it is getting better, but there is always a good possibility that I will completely change my approach and the look and feel will change a lot – or maybe not.

Last Friday I watched a CNN special on Qanon. It was very interesting for many reasons, not least of which was the idea that Q is supposedly an actual person that is providing “hints” to his/her/their followers about things to check out, and what to look for. The approach seems to be to launch a “theory” that is usually a radical claim of some sort or another (such as there being overwhelming election fraud, or global warning is a hoax, or Bill Gates is doing whatever he is suspected of doing this week). The “hints” provided by Q give some directions concerning what to look for when researching the validity of the theory – and some hints of how to interpret the things that are found. These hints get passed around and changed by the followers in much the same way as the game of “postoffice” changes the messages shared from person to person. It seemed to be a little like those computer games where you explore all sorts of unknown and spooky places. The found objects might be numbers in a particular pattern, or colors, or symbols or “special phrases” uttered by powerful people, or…. all sorts things. The point is that the followers are implementing something along the lines of the “scientific approach” in the search for the “real truth.” They have a theory, have an idea of what would support or reject that theory, spend lots of time and effort “researching” the issues, and end up validating their theory. The resultant beliefs are extremely strong and very difficult to change. This is sort of what I do when doing my own “research” on things I hear and see, especially on social media. However, I get good facts instead of crazy ideas. (He says slightly tongue in cheek).

There is another interesting thing that apparently happens when using the on-line search tools. Those tools “remember” you and give answers that are in alignment with your personal interests and beliefs. Therefore, if for example, you are against vaccinations, search on the topic often looking supporting information and then ask a questions concerning their safety and efficacy you will be taken to web sites that support your beliefs that vaccinations are dangerous and not effective. (These new sources of information are usually based upon social media and internet searches rather than original sources.) If however, you are a health care professional doing your normal job and ask the same questions, you will be taken to health care sites that demonstrate their safety and efficacy (usually including lots of data from studies primary source investigations). The result is that one person gets support of their theory that vaccinations are bad and dangerous, the other person gets support of their belief that they are good and beneficial. We are all stuck with trying to find a way to get to the best information without becoming unduly influenced by lies, half-truths, and “cult knowledge” (which isn’t really knowledge at all).

This CNN program brought up the question of what does it take for people to convince themselves that they are correct? It seems like there is perhaps a particular sequence of operations that we, as people, go through in order to solidify our understanding of truth. Maybe it is as simple as what I outlined above. (1) Notice something unknown, (2) make a theory of why that might happen, (3) devise tests to validate or reject the theory, (4) believe. Maybe the very process of researching a theory through experiment, literature research, discussions with others is what counts. If that research somehow gets misdirected, then the outcome is not valid – but we believe it is. There are many, many examples of this kind of thing happening in “real” science, with real scientists doing in-depth oversight reviews and other things to try to find and correct these types of bias errors. It is not just a problem with “them,” it is also a problem for “us.”

The old saw is that in order for a theory to get overthrown you have to wait long enough for the original believers to die. While this is usually said somewhat in jest, there is a very real nugget of truth in it. Once you build a belief into your mind it is extremely difficult to root it out – and scientists are nothing if not strong believers in the fundamental theories. They let the little things change with ease, but try to mess with the fundamentals takes something special – such as Mr. Einstein’s proposition that the reason that the speed of light is always measured to be the same everywhere is that it is! That little question turned into the two theories of relativity and all that followed from them. But it took over 260 years, and dozens of experiments by as many top scientists to finally decide that perhaps Newton was fundamentally wrong. Beliefs backed up by extensive observation, testing and research are difficult to shake – whether the person is someone following Qanon or Newton.

This brings me to a fundamental question: “Are American’s beliefs being tampered with by enemy agents? (internal or external). And if so, is there a means of intervening? Are we actually being the subject of outside agents using “mind control” techniques, or are we just unable to recognize reality because we haven’t learned how to do so?

One of the key theoretical elements of our current economic system is that the idea of “supply and demand” is exquisitely sensitive to the comparative values of goods and services – it is considered to be “the” correct way to find a fair value. However, it also seems to have some inherent problems that result in clearly incorrect valuations unless appropriate controls are put into place on the process. Last week’s energy crisis in Texas dramatically pointed out one of these problems. There were multiple instances of people getting power bills that were on the order of a hundred times “normal.” One example that was shown on the news was a man whose usual power bill is $200 a month getting a bill for $17,000. Apparently the reason for this is that since all of the power, and most of the natural gas supply, had been put out of commission by the cold weather – there was almost no supply. However, the demand remained unchanged. That means that the ratio of costs automatically tipped, resulting in these outlandish overvaluation of the power that was delivered, creating the startling bills.

There were many things wrong with what happened. One was that the customer have no way of knowing the actual cost of fuel at the time that they are using it. They signed up to a contract that said the amount that they pay is based upon the instantaneous price point of energy – under the assumption that paying a fixed price would require the power companies to add a “cushion” resulting in higher prices. The problem with this is while it might result in lower instantaneous prices, it can also work the other way and result in higher (shockingly higher) prices. The idea of only paying the “real” price makes sense if you know the real price, and you have the ability to adjust your demand when necessary. However, in situations such as what happened in Texas none of that applied. They didn’t know the price they were paying, and they needed to keep power on for heat, lights and cooking. They didn’t find out about the change in price until after they had used the product and incurred the cost. This is clearly not in alignment with any of the economic theories that posit a balancing of costs because knowledge and negotiations between the buyer and seller.

This all happened largely because Texas considers itself “free and independent”, without regulations as much as possible. Because of this they disconnected themselves from other national grids, removed or didn’t implement regulations concerning the maintenance and design of grid components, and allowed the price of energy to fluctuate without bounds. Therefore, when the terrible weather (which happens every few years), they hadn’t weatherized their energy system, couldn’t get emergency power from out of the state, and prices skyrocketed. It was all very predictable (and had been predicted), but nothing was done about those predictions.

I think this presents us with a very interesting, and sad, example of why an appropriate level of regulations are necessary. In order for a large, interconnected, highly unstable economy (such as exists in the USA) to function properly and equitably regulations are absolutely necessary. The discussion shouldn’t be polarized like it is these days with the too sides going into the far extremes. The discussion should be on figuring out what needs to be regulated and what doesn’t, and how to achieve an optimal level of regulation to provide necessary protections and at the same time not stifle creativity. We need regulations and standards, but we also need to be sensitive to only regulate what needs to be regulated. Clearly, when profits are involved we cannot depend upon companies regulating themselves – that has been shown far too often to be a seemingly impossible expectation.

As an aside, the idea of not interconnecting the State’s power grid with the other major power grids in nearby states reminds me of the bad old days when each region’s railroads used a different gauge (distance between tracks). That was all well and good, but sure made it difficult to share resources or do business across state lines. Apparently there were more than 20 different gauges in use at the same time. That became a real problem during the Civil war because everything had to be unloaded and reloaded (by hand) at each transition. However, it might have some utility in preventing an enemy neighbor from just rolling on it. Of course that is easily fixed. Australia still has this problem of multiple gauges in the same country. Some places have a third rail to accommodate two different gauges on one track, I have been told that there are devices that change the spacing of train wheels (although I never saw them in action), and otherwise there is a lot of unloading and loading to transfer shipments. I am sort of surprised that Texas didn’t go all out and institute a difference frequency and/or voltage standard for their State.

Yesterday was the beginning of “spring cleaning” in my shop. My approach to working in my shop leaves much to be desired from many points of view. One of my really “bad” habits is that I tend to not put things away as I work on projects. Things just get left out on the surfaces for easy access, but after awhile they pile up to the point where I no longer can find them when needed. When that happens it is once again time to put things back where they “live.” Of course that means that the old adage of “a place for everything and everything in its place” becomes important – but unfortunately it is not the situation in my shop. There are places for many things, but there is always a great deal of “overflow” having no home. This stuff just keeps floating around on the surface – always in the way and looking messy.

My wife and I live on a five acre piece of land that could be a “mini-farm”, but is really just a huge back yard. Bigger than we can, or want, to maintain. Our solution to this is to hire part time folks to help out with the “yard” work. This arrangement helps us and gives them a flexible job. However, when it rains we make up jobs that aren’t really necessary so they can work out of the rain – but keep some work going their way. Often this extra work has to do with “cleaning up,” which is where my problem with not have a place for everything comes up.

In an effort to make things look nice and neat, these folks have a tendency to put that loose stuff that is floating around into five gallon buckets – all jumbled indiscriminately together! I end up with buckets of unknown stuff hidden in the corners of the shop. This makes things look nice, but of course it also means that I have no idea where any of it is, leading to great frustration when I need something. As disorganized the situation appeared before, at least I could find things. The approach of filling buckets is just the opposite.

I decided that part of the problem is that don’t have any way to provide enough “homes” for all of the little odds and ends. I have some really nice plastic bins that hang on a wall, but not enough of them. They look like this

These are great, but there are no nearly enough of them. There are more hanger spaces than I have bins, so a partial solution to my problem of not enough “homes” is to purchase more bins. Unfortunately, the local hardware stores don’t stock the same brand of bins. They all stock other brands that make almost identical bins. These other brands make bins that are the same colors, same thickness, apparently the same molds with different brand names. As far as I can tell, these other brands are “knock offs” of the original ones that I purchased decades ago. I took a sample to the hardware store to do side-by-side comparisons and they seemed identical in every way, so I purchased a bunch of them.

I was all set and ready to start “organizing” when I got home, but found that the new bins wouldn’t quite fit the tabs on the wall rack. I could get them on by using two hands and quite a bit of force, but they didn’t just slide right on like the original ones. Upon careful inspection I found that they weren’t “exactly” the same. The original ones have tiny ridges in the tab that hooks onto the rack. Like this:

Those two little “bumps” in the middle keep the opening large, and straight, enough to fit onto the wall unit. That little detail wasn’t included in the “re-engineering” of the knock-offs. This little detail, this little oversight, transformed a cleaver “borrowing” of a design from a quality item to an item that doesn’t work.

I am writing this as an example of the kinds of things that separate quality products from so-so ones. It is the reason that I often pay a little more for something that appears to be “the same.” Tiny differences can change the experience of using the product from being easy and comfortable, to difficult and frustrating. Sometimes the differences are as blatantly obvious as the lack of the tiny tabs, sometimes it is hidden in the properties of the materials – perhaps the difference is just a short cut on the heat treatment of the metal being used. Often the “short cut” doesn’t even change the cost of production, as in the case of the bins where the presence of the tiny bumps would have cost nothing – but the understanding of the features of the higher quality product was not recognized. “Quality” is the sum total of all the “little things.” Mass production aimed at continually achieving ever smaller savings results in the continued spirally down of many products and many production techniques – worldwide. In most cases these cost improvement don’t translate into cheaper products for the consumer, they only translate into higher profits and lower quality products.

Enough of my evangelizing about the apparent slow slide into meritocracy. I just wanted to share what I thought was an interesting case of an “almost” (but not quite) successful clone of a successful product. The outcome was that I returned the bins to the local store and instead purchased them online from Amazon. I try to make as many purchases as possible locally, even when the costs are a bit higher and I have drive 40 miles to get to town (20 miles each way) to get them. But I am finding that harder and harder to do because the selections at the local stores are rapidly shrinking, but also because the quality of merchandise offered is steadily going below my personal cutoff for “acceptable.” I avoid buying inexpensive (meaning low quality) tools and equipment because it is just too expensive due to “not quite” working, with frustrations instead of joy in its use, and the much shorter life before it breaks and has to be replaced.

While researching material for my new “paper” (or perhaps, book) on the global energy situation, I found an interesting relationship that surprises. I started my research by looking into the question of global population growth over the past 200 years. As I expected, when plotted on a graph the curve took the familiar shape of an exponential growth curve – one that is well into the “hockey stick” portion of the curve. Out of curiosity I decided to plot a curve of the global energy use over the same period of time. The results are shown on this graph:

The thing that stood out to me is the rather amazing similarities in the shape of the two curves. As I anticipated, the energy used per capita has been increasing over time as the energy use changed from mostly manual energy (which doesn’t show up on the graph) to more use of external energy sources. I was unable to determine exactly what was considered as “energy use” two hundred years ago, I assume it is referencing sources such as water power, burning of wood and coal, and possibly wind power. I don’t think it included power provided by humans or their domestic animals. In any case, those sources of power would have been minor. The important part of this to me is the observation that even throughout the introduction of the industrial age, there is a strong correlational between the growth rate of the population and that the growth rate of the use of energy – with the use of energy growing substantially faster than the overall population starting at about the time of world war II.

Finding ourselves at this point on the upward turning bend in the growth curve means that things are going to get very much worse very quickly. No matter how you look at it, we are rapidly approaching the point in time when the available resources will be used up, the point where not only can we continue to grow, but the impacts of such growth will become catastrophic in terms of lack of available resources to support the population. Unfortunately, not only will the resources be unable to sustain the vastly increase population, but even after the size of the population collapses we will be in serious trouble because the accessible resources needed to support a much smaller population will have been used up and will no longer be available

This is a similar curve that we were presented with last March with the introduction of covid-19. At that time we were on a curve roughly equivalent to 1850 on the blue curve of the graph. At that time there were a few thousand fatalities from the disease world wide. At that time, it was clear that a major pandemic was underway, even though at the time there were almost no cases in the world outside of China. We followed an exponential growth curve from the initial zero cases to over 400,000 deaths in the USA alone in a year. The curve would have been MUCH steeper had we not instituted heroic efforts to “flatten the curve.” The time line for that has the same general shape as for population and energy use, but over a different duration.

The graph of population versus energy use makes it clear that real problem is with the global rate of population growth. It is driving the use of energy, and driving it is ways that we will be unlikely to be able to maintain by just providing more energy. The only solution is to “flatten the curve” by reducing per capita consumption (or, I suppose, rapidly reduce the population). Given that we would rather avoid a rapid die-out of our population, the only solution is to find ways to get by on the energy from that can be sustained long into the future. I am convinced that this will require finding ways to reduce our use of energy while maintaining an acceptable lifestyle. It seems to me that this points to a need to achieve massive improvements in the efficiency for everything that depends upon energy use. There might still be time to “flatten the curve” of our energy demand if we really take on the problem as an existential one, which happens to be the case. Letting the curve continue steepening has only one possible outcome, which will not be a problem for “the earth” because the earth doesn’t care about anything, but it will be a huge problem for humans.

While listening to a local news report yesterday I heard something that really made me stop and wonder what the world is coming to. The reporter was interviewing a fire chief concerning the level of protection concerning covid-19 required by firemen in his department. The specific question was whether or not they were all getting vaccinated, but the answer turned out to be much broader than that. The answer brought up very concerning implications for the heath and safety of the community. His answer was that not only was the decision to get vaccinated or not a personal choice, but so is the use of other protective measures such as masking/distancing/sanitation. His position is that whether or not first responders want to take precautions against spreading communicable disease is the personal choice of the individual. What immediately sprang to mind upon hearing this was the example of “typhoid Mary.” Mary became famous a little over 100 years ago for being the first known case of an asymptomatic infected person accidentally (and unknowingly) spreading a deadly infectious disease throughout a community. In her case she “only” infected 53 people with a horrible disease, “only” three of whom died. The importance of her lesson was how deadly and dangerous the situation is when there are asymptomatic people with highly contagious deadly diseases in daily contact with those who are at risk. I can’t imagine a situation that is more ripe for this kind of problem than the situation where first responders are asymptotically infected while doing their job.

First responders are highly likely to be exposed to infected persons because that is their job – they respond when people are in distress. Therefore, the opportunity for first responders to become exposed to a disease such as covid is extremely high. In fact it is so high for some other diseases that being vaccinated is a job requirement, not a personal option. The same situation applies to other jobs such as teaching in public schools – vaccinations for certain diseases are mandatory. In addition to a high risk of them to be exposed and infected, there is also an extremely high risk of an asymptomatic responder infecting the “patient” because of the necessary extremely close proximity in many cases involving serious illness or injury (such as when helping at an automobile accident). The nature of the job is to work very hard (lots of heavy breathing, lots of shouting to communicate in the chaos of an event, etc.) in extremely close quarters with serious ill or injured persons whose immunity might be very low because of their condition. It is practically impossible to maintain any “social distancing” or to effectively wear face masks during typical events unless there is a clear and present danger to the fireman, at which point they do have the option to wear highly protective masks with supplied air – but this is seldom done except in situations where there are known respiratory hazards (such as smoke or chemicals). The “mental model” is all about protecting the first responders from the environment or disease from the person being helped, there is little or not consideration about protecting that person from the first responder.

I recently happened to observe a group of first responders in their “time off” mode of interacting with each other and their non-responder friends. They were taking absolutely zero measures to protect each other by wearing masks, distancing, or in any other observable actions. I assume that this is a direct response to the fact that they are regularly forced into the untenable situation of having to perform vital duties that radically violate all proposed safety protocols of masking, distance, avoiding contact, sanitizing after every potential encounter, etc. I can understand a point of view of since it is impossible to avoid the risk when doing the job involving the unknown public, there is little point in taking those precautions when dealing with colleagues and friends in social situations. I get that point of view – they are almost certainly going to be exposed during “work”, so why take so many difficult actions when relaxing during off hours?

This sets up a situation that is exactly why first responders should be mandated to be vaccinated ASAP. They present a grave danger to the public because of the nature of their job if they become carriers (asymptomatic or otherwise) of the virus. The point isn’t whether they are “brave enough” (or proud enough) to be willing to expose themselves and their family to the disease, it is that THEY are the danger to those that they so heroically serve. The risk being decided upon by the fire chief is not about whether the responders will get the disease, it is about whether they will spread it. In my opinion, the “choice” before the individual firemen shouldn’t be whether or not they want to be vaccinated (and do all of the other appropriate precautionary measures, including being tested on a very regular basis), it is whether or not they want to act as firemen for the duration of this pandemic. I agree that there is a personal choice to be made, but it is not whether or not to be vaccinated, it is whether or not you want the job.

By the way, it is my additional opinion that everyone should have a similar choice about complying with the protective measures of social distancing, hand washing, masking, etc. If they don’t want to do that, then they should be willing to stay out of all public places (quarantine themselves from the general public), and be willing to turn down any medical services associated with covid infection. That would make it a truly personal decision about how they want to deal with the risks, but those decisions would not impact the rest of the public that do not wish to be exposed because of someone else’s personal decision. Perhaps the results of being caught violating the rules and regulations with regard to masking and other this is just a citation, a citation that prevents that person from receiving medical attention or other public assistance associated with having the disease – thus freeing up the medical staff and facilities those of us that do not wish to die from the disease. As it is they are insisting upon having their cake and eating it too. They want their “freedom” but then expect the rest of us to pay the price associated with their choice. I think they should pay for their choices by accepting the natural results that come from them. (This is slightly “tongue in cheek” along the lines of Jonathan Swift’s1729 essay the “modest proposal” for solving the devastating food shortage in Ireland – it is likely to be an unpopular solution but it does seem to offer a fair criteria for making the choice of ignoring the public impacts of the current pandemic.)