The Ethics of Being Vaccinated

If all goes well, I will receive my second Covid-19 vaccination on February 13. I should have strong immunity by a week later. Does this mean that I resume all normal activities as of February 20?

I don't think so.

Vaccination virtually precludes the risk of dying from Covid-19 — at least for all variants of the virus that are known so far. Vaccination also reduces the likelihood of getting seriously ill to an acceptably low number. I might still become ill from Covid-19, but it's highly unlikely that I will need medical care.

However, the authorities say there is no evidence yet that a vaccinated person cannot transmit the disease. If I were concerned only about my own health, I might choose to disregard the health of everyone I encounter by returning to my usual routine. But I'm not that callous. Passing the disease to someone not yet vaccinated who becomes seriously ill, or who dies, is not a responsibility that I want to bear.

So at a minimum (or until vaccination is proved to prevent contagion), I will wait for almost all people age 65+ in this vicinity to be vaccinated before I start to resume pre-Covid activity — still wearing a mask, of course. I might even wait longer, such as until 60% of the entire population has been vaccinated. I have friends in their early 60s. They are at less risk than I for serious disease, but they are at more risk than people in their 20s and 30s.

But there are other ethical questions. For over 25 years, I've met a friend for breakfast at a restaurant every week. He and I quit meeting in March, 2020. We've used Skype ever since. What about the restaurant staff who, almost certainly, have been financially impacted by reductions in patronage? What is my ethical responsibility to them? The more cautious I remain, the lower their income.

Also, what about anti-vaxxers? There is a temptation to disregard them on the basis that they've made a deliberate, if unfortunate and possibly tragic, choice that our culture and government allows them to make. On the other hand, even anti-vaxxers are people worthy of consideration — whether they deserve it or not. When I see someone on an Interstate highway riding a motorcycle at 75 mph without a helmet, I wonder "What the hell is he (or she) thinking?" But neverthess I take extra care until he or she is no longer in sight. An anti-vaxxer presents me with a similar dilemma.

Covid-19 keeps bringing us new things to think through.

First Amendment rights on social media? Ha!

I have read complaints from some persons to the effect that actions by Facebook, Twitter, etc to remove certain posts and certain accounts is a violation of those persons' First Amendment rights.

Hogwash! It appears that none of those persons took Civics in high school or remembers the content.

The First Amendment limits governmental restrictions on free speech. It says nothing about private restrictions. If someone comes onto my property and paints an objectionable slogan on my house, I have every right to remove the slogan and to order that person not to enter my property again — even if I invited him or her onto my property in the first place. That's an exercise of my lawful rights.

Facebook, Twitter, etc are private enterprises. When you sign up for their services, you are deemed to accept their Terms of Service. Hardly anyone ever reads TOS documents, but you should. The TOS generally gives the service provider every prerogative you can imagine.

Furthermore, you're not paying anything for Facebook, Twitter, etc. Thus there are no consumer protections, no Uniform Commercial Code, or other laws that you could attempt to invoke. (And if there were, you'd face a lengthy court battle against a battalion of smart, well-financed lawyers.)

Lastly, keep in mind that as corporate persons, Facebook and Twitter and the like have their own rights under law. I find it fascinating that the persons who decried the U.S. Supreme Court's opinion in Citizens United — in particular, persons who believe corporations should have no rights — are more than happy for corporations to exercise their rights in this instance.

Do the world a favor, please. If you hear someone complaining about their purported First Amendment rights on social media, please correct them. Gently and respectfully, but firmly.

The effectiveness of vaccination

I look forward to being vaccinated for COVID-19. However, being vaccinated does not mean that I can ignore the risk of contracting COVID-19 from then on. Vaccination simply makes the risk much smaller.

Refer to this graph:

You and I are currently in the blue sector. The probability of contracting the disease is relatively high. By "relatively" I mean relative to the purple, orange, and yellow sectors. As long as we remain in the blue sector, each of us can minimize the risk by observing social distancing, practicing good personal hygiene such as hand-washing, and (most importantly) staying away from confined spaces where people who don't wear masks are or have recently been. We know about life in the blue sector already so there's no point in my writing about it.

Time A is when I get the first vaccination. I enter the purple sector. Note that the risk of contracting COVID-19 does not decrease immediately; there is no indication that being vaccinated only once confers any immunity. But after the second vaccination, the risk begins to fall rapidly. Even so, it takes a little while after the second injection for immunity to be maximized. The purple sector represents this delay.

At time B, the vaccine has conferred on me as much immunity as it will. I enter the orange sector. Note that the risk of contracting COVID-19 during the orange sector is not zero. The vaccine is only 95% effective, so the risk of contracting COVID-19 never falls to zero. Therefore I will still have to make decisions about, for example, going to an indoor hockey game. Over time, the risk in the orange sector falls slowly as more and more people become immune.

Of course, even though the risk in the orange sector never goes to zero, the risk is much lower than in the blue sector before I was vaccinated. Vaccination is still the right thing to do even if the vaccine is not perfect. Every person who gets vaccinated pushes us farther to the right in the orange sector.

So what's time C? The yellow region represents the indefinite period of time when the risk of contracting COVID-19 reaches a baseline. The virus will still be out there, and not everyone will be immune, and I won't be completely immune either. This yellow sector could extend for decades — or at least until someone develops a vaccine that is 100% effective. In the absence of a perfect vaccine, COVID-19 will remain a threat to health in the sense that heart trouble, cancer, stroke, automobile accident, etc are threats to health. We will simply have to accept this threat like we accept the others.

It's too soon to say what life in the yellow sector will be like. Travel in third world countries, for example, may still be somewhat risky compared to travel in first world countries. But that's always always been true. What level of caution will I exercise? Will I expect people around me to wear masks if I'm uncertain of their vaccination status? The more antivaxxers there are, the more I will have to think about that. Will hand sanitizer and household bleach still be difficult to find at the grocery store? I don't know.

The combination of medical science to produce a highly effective vaccine and the political and social determination to ensure near-universal vaccination eventually eradicated smallpox. I'd like to believe that in 25-50 years, the SARS-CoV-2 virus will be eradicated completely. But because the SARS family of coronaviruses appears to mutate, don't count on complete eradication. Ever. Like the risk of nuclear war, we will have to accept the risk of some kind of SARS as a fact of life.

What's this "rescan" for TV?

You may have seen references to an upcoming "rescan" for over-the-air television receivers. I'll explain it.

Radio frequencies for over-the-air or "broadcast" TV — the only kind of TV there was, before cable TV and later satellite TV were started in the 1970s —  are assigned in terms of channels. In the U.S., over-the-air TV channels initially went from 2-13 ("VHF") and 14-80 ("UHF"). Most of the radio spectrum from 54 to 890 MHz was tied up, essentially, for over-the-air TV. Of course there are many other users of radio spectrum in that same range: FM radio stations, aircraft traffic control, police and fire, industrial radio, and on and on. God isn't making any more radio spectrum; what we have is all that we'll ever have, so naturally there is contention for spectrum among the various users of it.

When the technology to provide cellular telephone service became feasible in the late 1970s, some amount of radio spectrum had to be made available for it. The solution was to take away channels 70-83 from over-the-air TV and reallocate those frequencies to the cellular system operators. A small number of broadcast TV stations using channels 70-83 had to relocate to other channels. This explains why TV sets quit having channels 70-83 on their dials after 1983.

Cellular turned out to be a bigger success than most people anticipated, and it didn't take them long to use up all the frequencies that had been TV channels 70-83. The solution was to give the over-the-air TV stations another haircut. Channels 52-69 were taken and reallocated to the cellular system operators. This time, those operators (AT&T, Verizon, Sprint, etc) had to pay billions of dollars for the spectrum they obtained. Some of this money was used to offset the costs that broadcast TV stations in channels 52-69 incurred when they had to move below channel 52.

The next big change was digital TV. To prevent confusion, the TV industry developed the notion of a "virtual" channel number. In Raleigh, for example, the dominant broadcast TV station has been WRAL, using channel 5 since it went on the air in the 1950s. Because there was going to be a transition period when both the new digital transmitters and the old analog transmitters were on the air, the digital transmitters were assigned to different "physical" channel numbers so that the digital and analog signals did not interfere. But the viewing public would still use virtual channel 5 to receive WRAL on digital TV; there was intelligence in the TV receiver that mapped virtual channel 5 to whatever physical channel the digital transmitter for WRAL happened to have been assigned…in this example, physical channel 48. When you turned your digital TV to WRAL, you might have thought you were still watching channel 5, and in a sense you were; but the signal was actually being sent to you on channel 48.

Time passed, and we began to have more cellular telephones in operation than people. (Some people have more than one cellular phone.) Once again, the cellular system operators began to run out of spectrum — complicated by the fact that data had displaced voice as the major use of cellular phones. It's time again to reallocate spectrum from broadcast TV stations to the cellular system operators, who again have spent billions of dollars for their new assignments.

In September, all broadcast TV stations must use physical channel numbers 36 and below. Channel 37 has always been reserved for radio astronomy, and channels 38-51 will be reused for cellular. This time, nearly all TV stations are moving their physical channels in what the industry calls a "repack".

With one exception, you the viewer can be oblivious to all this because you use only the virtual channel numbers that you're familiar with. In Raleigh, WRAL will still be virtual channel 5. However, in reality WRAL is moving from physical channel 48 to physical channel 17. Your TV set doesn't know that this is happening unless you press a RESCAN button (or something similar) on your TV set so that it remaps all the virtual channels to physical channels. That's why all the broadcast TV stations are telling you about rescan day.

For Raleigh, this is how the repack plays out:

• WRAL, virtual 5, current physical 48, new physical 17
• WRAZ, virtual 50, current physical 49, new physical 15
• WLFL, virtual 22, current physical 27, new physical 18
• WUNC main transmitter in Chapel Hill, virtual 4, current physical 25, new physical 20
• WUNC aux transmitter in Garner (the WRAL antenna farm), virtual 4, current physical 30, new physical 19
• WTVD, virtual 11, current physical 11, new physical 9
• WNCN, virtual 17, current physical 17, new physical 8
• WRDC, virtual 28, current physical 28, new physical 14

No one in the Triangle area should have to get a new antennas for over-the-air TV. WTVD had remained on VHF when it went digital, so everyone in the Triangle should already be using an antenna that does both VHF and UHF. However, if you live in another area of the country, it's possible that you had all UHF before the repack and you will have a mix of VHF and UHF after the repack. If that's the case and your antenna was UHF-only, you may have to get a new antenna that does both VHF and UHF.

Seem complicated? Well, this is the 35,000-foot view. The details are a lot more complicated than I've written here, but I hope I've given you the basic information to understand what's happening.

If you get TV from cable, fiber, or satellite, none of this matters to you. Channel numbers on cable, fiber, and satellite are a different world.

Fire remains a threat

The sad sight of the burning Notre Dame in Paris reminds us that fire remains a threat to our buildings, our heritage, and our lives. Unfortunately, Notre Dame is just the latest in a series of fires that have destroyed cultural and historical repositories. Because of the travel patterns of Americans, Notre Dame is much more familar — what percentage of people reading this have been inside Notre Dame? — but here are others.

• The National Museum of Brazil was destroyed by fire last year.
• National Museum of Natural History in New Delhi, India was destroyed by fire in 2016. (It was a modern building with a sprinkler system, but the sprinkler system was out of service.)
• Much of Windsor Castle in the UK was destroyed by fire in 1992. Likewise York Minster in 1984.

This list doesn't include the recent devastation of cultural and historic materials in Yemen, Syria, or Iraq. Wikipedia has a long list of "destroyed heritage". Some of these losses are attributable to earthquakes and floods. Others are of human origin.

Retrofitting old buildings with sprinkler systems and replacement of fire-proof materials with fire-resistant materials are costly and disruptive. In many cases, including Notre Dame, available funds could hardly offset the advance of deterioration; increasing the resistance of the building to fire was just not on anyone's radar. Furthermore, the sprinklers themselves can cause massive water damage if activated. It appears inevitable that we lose one or two of these sites every decade. I wish it weren't true, but it's a painful reminder that the things we build and the things we collect are as transient as we ourselves.

Who will run?

I'd really like to see a Democrat move into the White House in January, 2021. But for that to happen, a Democrat must be elected — and a necessary condition for that to happen is that an electable Democrat wins the nomination of the Democratic Party.

At present it's quite unclear who that electable Democrat might be.

The Atlantic has an excellent article on its website that lists all contenders of both parties. I immediately dismiss Bernie Sanders and Joe Biden because they're too old. Whatever their positives may be, the nation doesn't need another forgetful geriatric with his hands "on the button", as was the case in the last years of Ronald Reagan's presidency.

At this point I am intrigued by Amy Klobuchar.

• She has a strong educational and professional background,
• she's been in the U.S. Senate long enough to know how Washington works,
• she takes positions that appeal to unaffiliateds,
• she's good under pressure (according to the Kavanaugh confirmation hearings),
• she demonstrated good political judgment by becoming an early adopter of Barack Obama in 2008, and
• aside from complaints that she's difficult to work for, she's kept herself very clean through 20 years of elected office.

My gut tells me Klobuchar can succeed when Elizabeth Warren might not.

As for the others identified by The Atlantic — Kamala Harris, Pete Buttigieg, Julián Castro, John Delaney, Tulsi Gabbard, Kirsten Gillibrand, Andrew Yang, Marianne Williamson, Cory Booker, John Kickenlooper, Jay Inslee, Mike Bloomberg, Steve Bullock, Sherrod Brown, Eric Swalwell, Terry McAuliffe, Tim Ryan, Seth Moulton, Beto O'Rourke, Michael Bennet, Stacey Abrams, Bill De Blasio, Eric Holder, Mitch Landrieu, Andrew Cuomo, and Eric Garcetti — I don't see a potential winner, although it's early yet.

And please don't mention Hillary Clinton.

A Saturday morning ritual

After my parents passed away in 2013 I brought home their Bose Wave radio and put it in our kitchen. One could say that most of the time, it plays "oldies"… because Monday-Friday, 8-5 it's tuned to WCPE, our local classical station (and of the top-ten classic streaming sources worldwide). Just about everything in classical music on the radio is an oldie.

But on Saturday mornings, the radio goes to WKIX 102.9, Carolina's Greatest Hits. Remastered versions of Kasey Casem's American Top 40 play until 10 am. Today's program was from exactly 39 years ago, February 2, 1980. The #1 was Michael Jackson's Rock with You and #2 was Do That to Me One More Time by Captain and Tennille. Having heard Muskrat Love too often I was not a big fan of Captain and Tennille, but my mother was a babysitter for the Tennille family (four daughters) so I'm disposed to be generous.

I like to follow along AT40 by reading the "cue sheets" and looking up the songs on Wikipedia using the kitchen laptop. For example, Rock with You was written by Rod Temperton — perhaps not a household name, but he also wrote Thriller; my favorite song performed by Manhattan Transfer, Mystery; and many more. As I get older, I pay more attention to who wrote lyrics and music, as well as who wrote screen plays for movies and TV. For many popular songs and movies, there is a fascinating story about how the piece came to be performed and produced, a story separate from what we usually hear about the performers themselves. Rock with You was first offered to Karen Carpenter (!) who turned it down. Well, in her defense she probably couldn't imagine what Quincy Jones could do with it. Jones now has 80 Grammy nominations and 27 Grammy awards. I'm not sure he is done yet, even at age 85.

AT40 finishes at 10 am, and then it's just one oldie after another. The game starts, who was the performer and what year did it come out? Most of the time, I can identify the performer and get within 2 years of the date. If Gail is in the kitchen too, between us we almost always can answer those questions. What's interesting to me is that I can usually peg the date by remembering where I listened to the song:

• AM in the 1962 Ford Galaxie? 1972 or earlier.
• AM in the 1972 Olds Cutlass? 1973-1981.
• FM in the 1982 VW Jetta? 1982 onward. This was the first car I owned that had an FM radio.

Sometimes I have specific memories of exactly where I was when I heard a song. For Midnight Train to Georgia, for example, I was caught in an ice storm on US 78 between Birmingham and Atlanta. I had visited a girl friend for the weekend and was on my way back to Georgia Tech. I finally got off the road and spent an unplanned night in a Holiday Inn in Bremen, Ga. The song was playing as I turned into the hotel's parking lot. This is not hyperthymesia like Marilu Henner has, to be sure. That's ok — having too good a memory can be a curse instead of a blessing. Anyway, my power of memory does seem to be slipping a bit as I approach Medicare sign-up!