The Adventures of My Pet Hamster

On this July 4, when we are ravaged by pandemic and incompetent leadership masquerading as populist totalitarianism, it is good to remind ourselves of the declaration that was made in a different age – on July 4, 1776. Then, the Second Continental Congress adopted what is now referred to as the “Declaration of Independence,” establishing the reason that the 13 British American colonies viewed themselves as a distinct nation separate from the Empire.

This transcript comes from the National Archives. I highlight below in bold those grievances that apply today. This document is not perfect from a modern perspective; it is an old and terrible view that the native peoples of this continent were “savages,” a view propagated by the racist thinking of the day (which still permeates our institutions today). It literally applied only to “Men” at the time, and women would see their own slow slog toward equality stretch out over centuries. And of course, let us now forget nor diminish the fact that the Colonies, and later the United States, was a slave-holding nation. But learning from these many imperfections, and realizing that we again have many of the same grievances, we should contemplate the words of this document.

In Congress, July 4, 1776

The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America,

When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.–That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, –That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.–Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.

He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.

He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.

He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.

He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.

He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the Legislative powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.

He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.

He has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary powers.

He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.

He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harrass our people, and eat out their substance.

He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.

He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power.

He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:

For Quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:

For protecting them, by a mock Trial, from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:

For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:

For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:

For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury:

For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences

For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies:

For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws, and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:

For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.

He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.

He has plundered our seas, ravaged our Coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.

He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.

He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.

He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our Brittish brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.

We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States; that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.

Since things have been getting grim in Texas, mirrored in the COVID-19 rise in my own county (Collin), I thought it would be good to learn about one of the things that can help mitigate the spread of SARS-CoV-2 (the virus) without a vaccine. That thing is testing.

Testing for COVID-19 in the community is one of the prongs of a necessary local and national strategy to control and minimize infections from the deadly virus. The three legs [1] of this strategy are:

• Testing frequently to get a snapshot of transmission and spread in the community;
• Isolation of infected and contact tracing to get ahead of the transmission of the virus;
• Social distancing and measures to prevent the person-to-person spread of the virus.

I got curious about one aspect of testing: how much testing should the U.S. be doing each day to get the snapshot needed to make rational decisions about protecting the community?

The answer is basically: half-a-million to one million tests each day.

An example of this recommendation comes from the Harvard Global Health Initiative [2]. This source is cited by projects such as the Covid Tracking Project [3] and other institutions trying to track the virus while spreading information to help the community prevent its spread.

At the current moment, the HGHI recommends the U.S. execute at least 900,000 tests each day. This is the minimum required to achieve the one leg of the above three-legged strategy: testing, tracing, distancing. Previously, the HGHI recommended 500,000 per day as a minimum, but they determined this minimum was too little to do the job. They recently upped their guidance.

Charts of daily tests in the U.S. look like this one, made by the Covid Tracking Project:

Even in one of their recent Tweets, the Covid Tracking Project noted that the number on their charts (500,000 per day) is now an outdated minimum recommendation, and it was only EVER the minimum anyway. The U.S. only met this old minimum target in early June, THREE MONTHS after public health officials said that frequent and voluminous testing was a necessary component to survive the pandemic long enough to develop a vaccine. The lies of the federal administration are laid bare by the above chart; while it might have been possible for people to get a test, not enough testing was actually being done. Part of this was lack of reliable tests, or shortages of testing components, or overly strict criteria for who can get a test in the first place [4]. But the simple fact is that regardless of the reason, while other nations mustered the minimum required effort to stem the tide of the pandemic, the U.S. dawdled, then failed, and only recently seems to be achieving anything close to the bare minimum.

But what about at the local level? Sure, the U.S. is barely doing the outdated bare minimum now, but what about a local region like Collin County? Maybe the national testing minimum has been achieved thanks to a few well-funded and thoughtful regions of the country, while many other regions have simply not been doing what’s necessary or expected. Since states have been left by the federal government to fend for themselves, one expects a wide variation state-by-state. So let’s look at Collin County and the numbers.

The population of the U.S. is currently about 328.2 million people. The population of Collin County, TX is about 1.035 million people. So if the U.S. should be conducting a minimum of 900,000 tests each day, and tests should be evenly distributed across the U.S. by population, we can estimate the minimum number of tests per day that should be conducted in my home county.

The answer is about 2800 tests per day.

What are the actual numbers? The chart below illustrates the answer.

The reality is a crushing disappointment. Collin County is only reporting about 600-800 tests per day, almost a factor of 5 below the daily recommended minimum.

At the local level, my own county gets a failing grade. It’s also been lax in supporting the other legs of the three-leg strategy. People are not required to follow good social distancing practice, especially wearing masks to prevent others from catching any coronavirus you might be shedding. Very little information seems to be available about the contact tracing effort. In testing, we are falling far short of the bare minimum.

As I remind my students, doing the bare minimum earns you a C. Doing far less than that is F country.

Resources

[1] https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/downloads/php/CDC-Activities-Initiatives-for-COVID-19-Response.pdf
[2] https://globalepidemics.org/2020/05/13/ashish-jha-testimony-5-13-2020/
[3] https://covidtracking.com/
[4] For a representative example, see https://whyy.org/episodes/troubles-with-covid-testing/