This week, trying Thursday night instead of Friday morning. And shorter, bullet point like notes.

Well that was fast

I ended last time with this:

"Protests are mounting in Minnesota, and increasingly, elsewhere. Started by yet another extreme example of police brutality. I think this will be a huge story by next week (going to get much worse), and I'll write about it then."

That was on 5/28, or 11 days ago. Looks like quite an understatement now.

Since then, the protests have evolved from general anger and looting, and are now calling for massive changes to American policing. The moderate end is talking about demilitarization and better training. The extreme end is calling for total abolition of police. And incredibly, the middle (of the protestors) seems to have settled on a massive defunding of departments everywhere.

We haven't seen any mainstream politicians jump on that train yet, likely because the majority of Americans don't support it.

The Problem with Police

It's all about incentives, baby. And currently, there are some really dysfunctional ones.

At the bureaucratic level, governments are more likely to increase police funding after crime goes up, thinking "it's getting bad out there, we better fund the police." But this is paying for the result you don't want! Police exist to reduce crime. So if crime goes up, departments should be punished, not rewarded with extra money.

At the department level, the incentives are clearly to push incidents under the rug. If you have an issue with an officer, what can be gained by sharing that info up the chain? Nothing.

Departments also have police unions to contend with. Unions generally are a bad idea in 2020, and are a worse idea for public sector employees. For cops specifically, they are a nightmare. Unions are the main reason you see problem cops stay on the force more or less no matter what.

Finally, at the individual level, cops feel much too protected from the consequences of their actions. Qualified Immunity assures that it's essentially impossible to convict a cop of anything he hasn't done at least once before, and when the case turns civil, settlements are paid by taxpayers with no cost to the officer.

My Police Proposal

Fix the incentives, fix the problem.

At the bureaucratic level, we should set budgets for police further in advance. If they can't keep crime at or under reasonable targets, fire the whole department and start fresh. It worked for Camden NJ.

At the department level, abolish police unions.

At the individual level, end qualified immunity. Then make officers personally liable for settlements resulting from their actions. Of course, they'll go get insurance (just like doctors have malpractice insurance). So then the officers will be held accountable by insurance companies looking out for their shareholder value - something they are quite good at.

Finally - and this is where I might lose some of you - make an officer's gun his last resort.

Despite the fact that cops signed up for this "dangerous" job, they do still have a right to protect themselves. So they should be allowed a gun (just like the rest of us). Also like the rest of us, they shouldn't be allowed to wield that weapon with impunity.

I say, if a cop unholsters his weapon, he's automatically suspended without pay for a month.

If he fires it? Automatic pink slip. He should have to choose whether to protect his life, or keep his job.

If you'd like to contribute to an organization pursuing incentive-compatible policies for police, check out Campaign Zero (h/t Gon).

Lockdowns are over

In other news, the protests have been the straw that broke the shelter-in-place (that's the expression right?).

After weeks of debating whether it is safe to go to the coffee shop, Epidemiologists took one look at protests and said "why the fuck not?".

In an unbelievable letter, over 1,000 health care professionals and epidemiologists said that they are ok with protests because "white supremacy is a more dangerous virus than Covid" or something similarly absurd.*

This is what it looks like when an entire profession sells itself down the river. The public is never going to trust these people again.

And for what? Some virtue points in the form of likes and retweets?

You know how every time a conversation about global warming comes up, someone says "scientific consensus" and that's supposed to end the conversation? Well it's clear that "scientific consensus" is absolute bullshit, because as we see here - they can all agree for the same stupid reason!

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*If you actually need numbers to demonstrate the absurdity of this (you shouldn't - epidemiologists exist to keep us safe from the actual virus-y types of virus that are made of, you know, germs, and not political viruses), here you go. 110,000 Americans have died from Covid so far. That's ~110 times the TOTAL number of people of ALL RACES killed by police each year.

WHO at it again, those rascals

The WHO is finally recommending, as of this past weekend(!), that people wear masks.

Someone noted on twitter that this is like the Internet Explorer meme, but in real life.

Anyway, after finally getting on the mask train, they announced yesterday that asymptomatic people are very unlikely to spread the virus.

This isn't wrong. This is... stupid.

It's also mostly wrong. Probably dangerously so. Why say it?

When they did contact tracing, they found that most people thought they got the virus from people with symptoms. Which makes sense, because if you've heard anyone cough in the last 6 months, you probably remember that. They also point out that symptomatic people are more likely to cough, and coughing spreads virus.

Here's my favorite part. They also point to the (subtle) difference between asymptomatic and pre-symptomatic. So they aren't saying that *people without symptoms yet* rarely spread the virus, they are saying that *people who never have symptoms* rarely spread the virus.

Within 24 hours they realized this is not effective public health messaging (you had one job), and walked it back.

At this point, if you oppose withdrawing from the WHO, it's just because you don't like Trump.

Don't mess with Texas (or anyone else outside your household)

Covid is getting bad worse in Texas.

And in 13 other states too.

This is all from pre-protest infections. Uh oh.

Thanks for reading, see you next week!

Kit