Category: finance

conspiracies, finance, lookintoit, media, Politics, science, Uncategorized

The Anti-Mask League of 1918

Matthew Kray

For some reason the unroll bot Thread Reader is not working on twitter, so I compiled this thread to make it easier for people to read/share. Here is the original thread:

https://twitter.com/timkmak/status/1251936242834563073


So, starting in Sept 2018 San Francisco suffered from Spanish Flu pandemic. Initial mask wearing was good — around 80 percent. By November cases were down, and public health officials recommended re-opening the city. Residents rushed to entertainment venues after having been denied this communal joy for months. The Mayor himself was fined by his own police chief after going to a show without a mask. But a second wave surged in Dec 1918, and SF’s Health Officer again urged people to wear masks voluntarily

Left to their own devices, most citizens – by one count 90 % – refused to wear masks. Businesses, concerned about Christmas sales, opposed. So did Culinary Workers union. San Francisco residents were fed up. This was the second wave of the pandemic, and they had already spent months between Sept and Nov being hassled, fined and even arrested for not having a mask on. Challenges of constitutionality were heard. Christian Scientists objected, arguing that it was “subversive of personal liberty and constitutional rights.” Civil libertarians argued that if health officials could force them to wear masks, then it could force them to inoculate “or any experiment or indignity.” The San Francisco Chronicle turned against the notion of mandatory masks.

Was the death rate high enough to justify remasking?

Wasn’t this just the return of normal seasonal colds?

How much was this due to a public ‘scare’ and hype?

An op-ed ran in the local paper w/headline ‘What’s The Use?’ after a man got sick despite following public health guidelines. A promised vaccine turned out to be bogus 100s of citizens congregated on Dec 16 to debate a masking order. On Dec. 18 someone had sent what appeared to be an improvised explosive device to San Francisco’s public health official signed, ‘Compliments from John.’ (!!!)

The story via historian Alfred W. Crosby:

San Francisco’s Public Health Officer stuck by his guns, refusing to back down, and saying there was evidence that masks helped!

He implored the public to look to the data! Wear masks! They help!

But the public declined to listen to SF’s Public Health Officer. On Dec 19, officials voted down a mandatory mask order. “The dollar sign is exalted above the health sign,” sighed the public health officer. By far the worst day of flu/pneumonia deaths followed on Dec 30. Flu got worse in San Francisco when masking was voluntary.

A representative of organized labor relented: “It is of no time to quibble over the worth of the mask. It is the best thing we have found to date, and if you have anything better, for God’s sake, give it to us.” So on Jan 10, 1919 local officials voted to approve a new mandatory mask order after 600 new cases were reported that day. Citizens were arrested/fined for not having masks on, but widespread disobedience of the order continue & large numbers of citizens refused to wear masks.

Protests continued:

Over 2,000 people attended an event formed by San Franciscans called themselves ‘THE ANTI-MASK LEAGUE,’ denouncing the mandatory masking ordinance. The gathering was of “public spirited citizens, skeptical physicians and fanatics,” writes historian Crosby. Moderates in the Anti-Mask League wanted to circulate an anti-mask petition. Extremists wanted to initiate recall proceedings of SF’s Public Health Officer. Chaos broke out until someone shouted, “I rented this hall and now I’m going to turn out the lights.” (Mak note: lol)

The San Francisco Public Health Officer was a man named Dr. William C. Hassler. Think of him as the 1919 Dr. Fauci. Ignored by those who didn’t want to believe the data, threatened with violence, Hassler was conscientious and performed his job with distinction.

I haven’t read anything about how many people became sick DUE to the Anti-Mask League event, where 1000s gathered to protest without masks. So we may not know how many people, if any, became sick due to this congregation but safe to say it was not helpful during pandemic. On Jan 17, the day the masking ordinance went into effect, the # of new cases/deaths declined, the first decline in quite some time. This continued until the epidemic faded, a signal that the mask ordinance had helped wipe out the Spanish Flu in San Francisco. Of course, the SF Public Health Officer — the 1919 version of Dr. Fauci, got no credit for the decline in influenza cases. People continued to gripe about the masking even after the pandemic had been stalled by it. No one seemed to credit masking for the success of blunting the Spanish Flu in San Francisco — because, well, the crisis faded due to its success. “Rarely has the evidence in support of a scientific hypothesis been more overwhelming and more deceiving,” writes historian Crosby.

Ultimately San Francisco was one of the American cities hardest hit by the Spanish Flu. 673 per 100,000 people died during the pandemic due to influenza and pneumonia, per U of Michigan. 50K cases total and 3,500 were killed, per Crosby.

PHOTO: Masks being worn by players during a baseball game, in newspaper Mar 1, 1919 via The Independent

The 1918/1919 protests against mask wearing and other public health measures have parallels to today. We learn through this episode that various groups of Americans have been pushing back against public health measures for more than a hundred years — and for similar reasons!! In learning about the Anti-Mask League of 1919, we see many of the same human elements as today: a portion of the population resistant to the measures; a business community crying out for relief; a second wave after an initial loosening; threats to public health officials. This is essentially a report that I pieced together by reading sources after getting curious about the 1919 Anti-Mask League. Any mistakes are my own.

I started by drafting a few tweets and then spent an hour and a half researching it last night. One thing led to another…

SOURCES:

The University of Michigan’s Influenza Encyclopedia
The San Francisco Chronicle’s archives
America’s Forgotten Pandemic: The Influenza of 1918 by Alfred W. Crosby
American Pandemic by Nancy Bristow

/END THREAD

automation, finance, middle class, Uncategorized

Being Poor Is Expensive

Matthew Kray

$$$$$$$$$$

With Presidential Candidate Andrew Yang in the news bringing Universal Basic Income more into the public sphere, we are reminded just how difficult it can sometimes be to get ahead. There are statistics that show quite a dismal view of how many people are able to afford a financial emergency and of how many people live paycheck to paycheck or close to it. We’d like to see struggling people do things to lift themselves out of poverty but sometimes we don’t really think about just how hard it is to get real momentum going in that direction. The context here from AndrewYang and from scottsantens is that with a small extra income each month it can help people to be able to take care a lot of things that can go a long towards improving our health, our quality of life, and even a long term lift out of poverty. With that said, we started a list with the following tweet:

The list keeps growing even as I post this, so the commentary below is just a few of the highlights, feel free to join the discussion on twitter by commenting on the post linked above (or by commenting below).

@kieronsrees above leads to thoughts about all kinds of payment issues. You get a discount for paying certain bills all in one payment instead of monthly. Similarly:
-Paying up front ensures you can buy things without paying interest
-A lot of companies offer discounts if you put your payments on autopay, but when you’re living paycheck to paycheck autopay doesn’t always work because you worry about a payment being pulled the day before a certain deposit clears, then you get overdraft fees (this has happened to me).

This one, from @paprikapink, is huge. Can’t afford to fix the car, can’t afford not to.


Above, from @hellseathinks, is another one that hits close to home for me. I’d like to buy less from places that don’t guarantee good work conditions, fair pay, and sustainable practices. For me that meant trying to buy American products as often as possible- but they are more expensive.

As we went through this list it also got me thinking about how people might want to move for any host of reasons. Maybe they want to be closer to family and a support network (free babysitting while they work!), maybe they are unhappy with their state’s drug or abortion laws, or maybe they’d like to a state with no income tax. The problem is, even moving for a job opportunity is difficult because moving is expensive!

There are many people who aren’t spending their money frivelously, they are counting every penny, tracking their bank accounts meticulously, they are barely keeping their head above water and just a little bit extra, any break, could make a huge difference in quality of life & mental health.



automation, college, finance, middle class, real estate, student loans

The Student Debt Crisis Is An Attack On The Middle Class

Matthew Kray

In the uproar about student debt we often hear people say things like “Well, they shouldn’t have taken out 50k+ in debt for a degree that isn’t marketable!” But lost in this argument are a few factors that seem to play a very important role.

First, we must consider the cultural narrative at the time. For generations people used education and home buying as THE go-to methods of upward mobility. Many GenX and early Millennials were raised on the idea that that’s what you do- you go to college because it puts you in a better demographic, the degree makes you more marketable. Many of these same kids were told their entire lives to pursue what you’re passionate about so that you never have to work a day in your life. Their parents and/or grandparents had been grinding for decades and they wanted better for their kids.

Not to get too far off topic, but you can see the power of this cultural narrative in how popular those Adjustable Rate Mortgages (ARM) were that contributed to the housing crisis. So many people were making money on their houses. They were taking out their equity and using the money to increase their quality of life, people were flipping houses and making a profit, getting their real estate license and making money-finding any job in the real estate market was like learning how to print money. “Home values always go up!” people said. “Even though you many not be able to scrape together enough money to put 20% down, or afford the full payment now, if just get yourself into the home with an interest only loan, the value of the home will pay you back later. You can always refinance when the home value goes up, and it always does.” But when the bill came due before the value went up, people weren’t ready. The music stopped and there just wasn’t enough chairs. In hindsight this is all obvious, don’t buy a house that you can’t afford! But at the time, the cultural narrative was strong, and nobody likes to see so many of their peers making money in a market and feel like they are the ones getting left behind, being foolish for being so conservative and cautious, letting everyone else reap the rewards for an obvious way to advance your financial situation.

So people see ways to accumulate wealth all around them, especially in an internet and social media era when it’s so easy to see every single way that people find to make money. Go to school, get a good job, buy a house. Here’s where tuition comes in. For families who could afford it, the parents or grandparents pay for school, and the kid graduates with a degree (and the accompanying connections) and it’s off to the races. For some students they maybe even got need-based scholarships. But there is a large group of kids who were taught that college was the way to move advance their social status. Their parents couldn’t afford to put them through school, maybe the parents didn’t go to college themselves, but things would be better if you just make it happen- whatever it takes. Take the loans, it’s good debt, it’s tax deductible, you are investing in yourself because when you graduate instead of starting your career at 25k/year you can apply for jobs that start at 40k that require a degree.

Then the market changed. The internet bubble burst in 2001 and the housing recession in 2008. And automation. The rug got pulled out.

For many of these kids they have followed the rules their entire lives: they did well in school, they did what their parents and teachers have told them to do for their entire lives, and now we want to blame them for having the gall to go to college and not becoming an engineer or an accountant. To make this large scale judgement is to ignore the large scale narrative that college was the answer, by any means necessary.

I had been thinking about this topic for a while but credit to this WSJ article for inspiring me to finally put my thoughts down.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/your-parents-financial-advice-is-kind-of-wrong-11568367000