The World and Everything in It - August 16, 2021

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Good morning!

A law professor sues his employer over its COVID-19 vaccine mandate.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: That’s ahead on Legal Docket.

Also, on the Monday Moneybeat we learn there really is no such thing as a free lunch.

Plus, the WORLD History Book. Today, the 50th anniversary of a landmark monetary policy.

REICHARD: It’s Monday, August 16th. This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Mary Reichard.

BROWN: And I’m Myrna Brown. Good morning!

REICHARD: Now here’s Kent Covington with the news.

KENT COVINGTON, NEWS ANCHOR: Afghan president flees country as Taliban move into Kabul » The Taliban’s conquest in Afghanistan is virtually complete.

President Ashraf Gani fled the country on Sunday. He joined thousands of his fellow citizens in a stampede fleeing the advancing Taliban.

Secretary of State Tony Blinken said the United States and its allies invested a great deal in the Afghan military and did not expect it to fold so quickly.

BLINKEN: That force proved incapable of defending the country, and that did happen more rapidly than we anticipated.

Some experts say when U.S. troops departed, morale within the Afghan military plummeted, leading to mass defections.

The Taliban fanned out across the capital on Sunday. And an official with the militant group said it would soon announce the creation of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan from the presidential palace in Kabul.

That was the name of the country under Taliban rule before U.S.-led forces ousted them after the 9/11 attacks.

Republicans on Capitol Hill are calling President Biden’s decision to withdraw from Afghanistan a tragic mistake. Wyoming Congresswoman Liz Cheney...

CHENEY: We’ve now created a situation where, as we get to the 20th anniversary of 9/11, we are surrendering Afghanistan to the terrorist organization that housed al Qaeda when they plotted and planned the attacks against us.

President Biden has maintained that it was the right decision and he does not regret the move.

The capital city of Kabul was gripped by panic on Sunday, with helicopters racing overhead, evacuating personnel from the U.S. Embassy. Smoke billowed into the clouds above the compound as staff destroyed important documents, and officials lowered the American flag.

Haiti reeling from powerful weekend earthquake » The people of Haiti are still digging through the rubble today after a powerful earthquake struck on Saturday.

The 7.2 magnitude quake killed more than 300 people, injured thousands, and destroyed hundreds of homes. Some people left without shelter have been sleeping on soccer fields.

Senate Majority leader Chuck Schumer said Sunday that Haiti will need help recovering from the disaster.

SCHUMER: Our government has to do everything and go all out with financing, with personnel, with everything it can do to help the Hatian people.

The quake almost entirely destroyed some towns and triggered landslides that hampered rescue efforts in some of the hardest-hit areas.

The disaster added to the plight of Haitians who were already grappling with the pandemic, a presidential assassination, and a wave of gang violence.

COVID-19 delta surge continues » The COVID-19 delta variant continues its rampage across the country. After a very brief dip in new cases last week, infections have continued to rise.

More than 140,000 Americans are testing positive each day. That’s 14 times greater than the caseload in late June.

National Institutes of Health Director, Dr. Francis Collins…

COLLINS: All we can say is if this is going very steeply upward with no signs of having peaked out. So I will be surprised if we don’t cross 200,000 cases a day in the next couple of weeks, and that’s heartbreaking considering we never thought we would be back in that space again.

Fortunately, hospitalizations and deaths have not increased quite as dramatically as the number of new cases, but both numbers are up.

Deaths have more than doubled since the first of July, now more than 500 per day.

During that same period, hospitalizations have increased sixfold. More than 10,000 new admissions each day.

A new analysis of cases in 40 states suggests unvaccinated people are still at least 20 times more likely to fall seriously ill.

Dr. Donald Yealy at Univ. of Pittsburgh Medical Center said that’s consistent with what his hospital is seeing as most new patients are unvaccinated.

YEALY: They make up the biggest chunk of our admissions and particularly people who need advanced care or succumb to the illness. It’s either them or people who have underlying immune system limits that don’t let them respond well to either the vaccine or the infection.

Roughly 51 percent of the U.S. population is now fully vaccinated.

Tropical storm Fred heads for Gulf Coast » Tropical Storm Fred is barreling over the Gulf of Mexico this morning as it takes aim at the Gulf Coast.

The eye of the storm will likely hit the western portion of the Florida Panhandle sometime tonight with forecasted 50 mile per hour winds.

Powerful winds will likely also hit Alabama’s Gulf Coast.

But above all, Richard Pasch with the National Hurricane Center says Fred will be a major rain event.

PASCH: We could see up to 12 inches in a few spots, in the Florida Big Bend and Panhandle area.

But forecasters say the worst of the weather could actually be further inland throughout the week. Fred is expected to bring heavy rain and the risk of flash floods to at least a half-dozen states in the Southeast. And it could dump several inches of rain as far north as Pennsylvania.

I’m Kent Covington. Straight ahead: challenging vaccine mandates in court.

Plus, gold fever infects Canada.

This is The World and Everything in It.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: It’s The World and Everything in It for the 16th of August, 2021. We’re so glad you’ve joined us today. Good morning! I’m Myrna Brown.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: And I’m Mary Reichard. It’s time for Legal Docket.

Today, challenges to COVID-19 vaccine mandates from students, employees, and as we'll hear from in a moment, a professor.

BROWN: Last week, eight students from Indiana University filed a request for an emergency injunction with the Supreme Court. They object to their school’s requirement that they get COVID-19 shots before returning to campus—unless they qualify under a medical or religious exemption.

If they don’t comply, they can’t attend the school.

On Thursday, Justice Amy Coney Barrett denied their request. This leaves in effect the lower court’s decision to let the school enforce its mandate.

REICHARD: But that won’t put an end to the challenges to one-size-fits-all policies with regard to how to manage COVID on campuses.

Todd Zywicki is a law professor at George Mason University. He’s taught there for 23 years. This May, the school announced a new requirement: either get the COVID vaccine or submit to regular testing and wear a mask. And if you choose not to reveal your vaccine status, you risk job loss and won’t receive merit pay increases.

Professor Zywicki explains.

ZYWICKI: I was one of the unlucky people who was probably one of the first people in America who got COVID. I was unlucky enough to be at a conference in New York City the last weekend of February, 2020. And sure enough, the next week, I started experiencing symptoms like I had never experienced from any illness before in my life.

Testing was scarce and the results often iffy. Zywicki recovered without getting a definitive diagnosis at that time. 

But before returning to the classroom in fall of 2020, he got an antibodies test.

ZYWICKI: And they came back and confirmed that I had antibodies at that time and confirmed that I had a prior COVID infection. And so since that time, I’ve been regularly testing myself for antibodies on a regular basis. And then this spring, I interacted with an immunologist, and got a quantitative antibodies test this spring that show that I have very high antibodies levels, my antibodies levels were as high as somebody who had been just after they've been vaccinated.

And given those high levels of antibodies, his immunologist deemed it unnecessary for him to get a COVID-19 shot.

ZYWICKI: ...the medical evidence is very clear that those who have contracted COVID and recovered are not only at the same risk level of anybody who gets vaccinated for COVID, but actually at elevated risk of side effects. So, in his opinion, and in my view, by George Mason trying to force me to get vaccinated in order to teach my students this fall, it's really no benefit and all cost to me. It’s none of the benefits with all the risks of side effects that anybody else has.

Zywicki told me that his medical history figures into his calculations, as well; it puts him at further risk for side effects from a vaccine.

ZYWICKI: Let me be clear, Mary, if, if the COVID vaccine had existed in March 2020 when I first got it, it would have been a no brainer for me to get it at that time. I don't recommend anybody get COVID. I had COVID. I don't want to get COVID again. And I'm not cavalier by doing things that are appropriate precautions to protect me from getting reinfected with COVID. But my immunologist has made it very clear to me that in this case, when my immunity is so strong, that it's risky for me to get the vaccine at this point.

I contacted George Mason University officials for comment. They declined to be interviewed, but did write in an email that (the university has) “been guided by currently available medical and scientific information and the guidance issued by federal and state public health agencies.”

Zywicki’s lawyer, Jenin Jeunes, thinks that skirts the real issue here. Zywicki’s lawsuit claims the vaccine policy violates the 9th and 14th amendments that protect the rights to privacy and due process.

JEUNES: ...amendments in terms of protecting bodily autonomy and the ability to decline medical interventions, the right to decline medical interventions, because they're effectively coercing people into getting the vaccine by subjecting them to disciplinary action if they don't.

To back that up, the petition cites a 1990 Supreme Court decision that said “a forcible injection...into a nonconsenting person’s body represents a substantial interference with that person’s liberty.”

And that’s not all.

JEUNES: We're also arguing that it's unconstitutional conditions, which means that the government cannot premise enjoyment of constitutional rights on giving something up or or only giving you those rights if you do something, so we're arguing that because GMU is only allowing professor Zywicki to do certain things or be treated the same as other people, if he gets the vaccine, they're effectively withholding constitutional rights from him, which violates this doctrine.

Jeunes pointed out that George Mason University is a state school, so it is subject to constitutional strictures. These arguments would not apply to a private school.

Another legal argument involves the law of emergency use authorization, EUA, as applied to the COVID shots. That law says anyone who gets the vaccine must be informed of the option to accept or to refuse it, along with alternatives to the product and the risks and benefits of getting it.

JEUNES: The EUA statute requires the free and informed consent of recipients that's emergency use authorization statute, and these COVID vaccines have only been authorized under it. So the Supremacy Clause of the United States Constitution says that federal law's supreme and state laws or policies or local laws or policies that conflict with it must fall. And so we're arguing that by coercing people into getting the vaccine, GMU is violating the supremacy clause. And under that the policies fall.

In short, Zywicki alleges the school’s policy tries to force its way past informed consent and infringe upon his rights by forcing a vaccine that he simply doesn’t need.

Jeunes said at first, she and Zywicki asked that the university treat him as though he were vaccinated, given his antibody levels. Not insist on masking and distancing as though he had no antibodies.

JEUNES: So we attached declarations from several very good scientists attesting to the durability and robustness of natural immunity and the fact that there's no valid reason for differentiating between a vaccine and natural immunity.

Professor Zywicki says he’s not challenging that George Mason University can draw a distinction between those who have a reasonable level of immunity and prevention of community spread.

ZYWICKI: But we are saying that if they're going to make that distinction, that they have to have a reason to treat the natural immunity as if we are unvaccinated rather than vaccinated.

Zywicki wrote on the opinion pages of the Wall Street Journal dated August 6th, a piece called Why I am Suing over my Employer’s Vaccine Mandate. It got over 1,900 comments, mostly negative. A common reply was along the lines of, “his arguments sound a lot like the arguments against seat belts and measles shots.”

ZYWICKI: I've already got the seat belt. I've got the best seat belt, in my view, which is natural immunity, natural immunity later. Again, I've had COVID, I don't want to get it again. I'm obviously going to take appropriate care. But me and my immunologist understand that better and understand what the benefits and risks of this are than mid level bureaucrats in the university administration applying a one size fits all templates with that, that don't know anything about my health experiences.

Lawyer Jeunes doesn’t think Justice Amy Coney Barrett’s leaving Indiana university’s mandate in place has much effect on this case.

Different arguments, different facts; Zywicki has natural immunity, and as a tenured professor, he stands to lose a lot more than a student who could attend school elsewhere.

Jeunes pointed out that students are routinely required to show proof of having received various vaccines, but professors are not. What’s more:

JEUNES: It's important to know that a lot of states actually exempt children who've had a disease like measles from the school's vaccine requirement for that disease. So if you've had chickenpox or you've had measles, you can present evidence of that and you're exempt from the vaccine requirements.

So applying that to Professor Zywicki, Jeunes believes he should prevail in this case because he has natural immunity, and that's one of the main arguments.

JEUNES: Another issue is that the measles vaccine has been proven to be very effective at stopping transmission. So there's a good herd immunity argument to be made for it. Whereas the COVID vaccine doesn't seem to be very good at preventing transmission, it's more for the person who gets it. So it's you know, that's an argument for sort of the individual being able to make the decision to get it him or herself.

Different disease management targets, changing law, individual choice, coercive measures versus persuasive measures—all of these factors mean we’ll be hearing about this kind of litigation for some time.

And that’s this week’s Legal Docket!

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Next up on The World and Everything in It: the Monday Moneybeat.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: Financial analyst and adviser David Bahnsen joins us now for our conversation on the economy. David, good morning to you.

DAVID BAHNSEN, GUEST: Well, good morning. Good to be with you.

BROWN: I want to talk about public policy in just a moment—all the new spending Washington is considering, but I have been following your great analysis on employment all throughout Covid and the lockdowns, so I’d like to begin with the current jobs picture.

Now, we were not together last week, following the July jobs report that saw nearly 950,000 new jobs added. But I also see that the latest job-openings number continues to be greater than the number of people who remain out of work.

I should just let you pick the appropriate metric, and just tell me how you appraise the jobs situation right now.

BAHNSEN: Both of those things can be true at once. And both of them can reflect different things. And I think that's what's going on here. One little caveat, I would, or I guess, maybe nuances, the better word on the 950,000 July jobs is that there are a significant amount, I believe the number was close to 200,000, that are teachers and school employees that go back into work in the July season, though the cyclicality of the annual school year, they're off the employment rolls for a period and then they come back on. And so there's always a sort of seasonal factor, various nuances like that happen all the time. And it's one of the things I've said on this show, many times COVID is that three month rolling averages of the monthly jobs data, or when it's the initial jobless claims that come out weekly, three week rolling averages give us I think, less of lumpy data to look at. And on a three month rolling average with the 950,000 jobs referred to it's much less impressive. It's much less robust. And so I think it's definitely getting better, 25 states now turning down the federal unemployment assistance is very helpful. But then when you point out that there are still 10 million job openings. And that's more than the amount of people that are still out of work from COVID, it does speak to a mismatch of who's available in this labor force versus some of the types of jobs that are needed. Traditionally, entry level jobs and leisure and hospitality were not hard to fill. And those are the people that don't want to go find jobs right now. And so that's where a significant amount of the job openings lie. And I think that that's a cultural problem as much as an economic one.

BROWN: Here’s how I’d like to get into the subject of the infrastructure bill and the budget process in Washington: I’d like to begin by reading a paragraph from a Wall Street Journal article on the federal deficit. I’ve edited slightly by leaving the actual numbers out. So listen to this:

“The U.S. budget deficit narrowed … during the first 10 months of the fiscal year … [compared with] the same period a year earlier, with the gap between spending and revenue shrinking as the recovery from the pandemic-induced slump boosted tax collection.”

That’s from a newspaper story, so it doesn’t read great on the radio. Sorry about that.

But a couple of things struck me about this: Remember, I left out the numbers. The story is touting a lower deficit but that “lower deficit” (for 10 months, not even a full year) is two-and-a-half trillion dollars. And compared with the previous year, that’s lower.

But the number itself seems astronomical!

So that’s the context for infrastructure and the budget process going on right now. I think when people hear about massive deficits—and then hear that Washington is on the brink of adding more to the deficit—if they’re like me, they want to just throw up their hands.

But can you tell me where we’re at right now on the new spending proposals—both the infrastructure piece and the 2022 budget bill?

BAHNSEN: Yeah, let me comment on both of those things. The issue you bring up of course, is borderline comical. This is a sort of sadistic way of making my point, but I think people will get it. If someone said I murdered 18 people last year, but I've only murdered 13 people this year, it doesn't strike me as something that would really cheer a lot of people up. And in this particular case, the deficit is a constant addition to the national debt. But in fairness, we have run a budget deficit of some sort every year, except for one, going back 30 plus years. So the issue is the size of the deficit relative to the growth of the economy. And whether it went down a few 100 billion or not versus the astronomical number of last year is a completely moot point. And, of course, they know that the fact of matter is, to your point, the size of the deficit is the issue, not the fact that it went down a small amount. And it is still the second largest budget deficit in our country's history, the infrastructure bill is going to pass. And so the senate now has done their part and voted. And of course, the one issue that remains is the progressives in the house holding it up. And so I think the democrats have put themselves in a very difficult position here, because what the progressives are saying is, you give us the three and a half trillion dollar bill first, or passed by the Senate, or we don't vote for infrastructure. But passing that three and a half trillion dollar budget bill will be politically dangerous for the Democrats. But then if they don't go forward, passing the infrastructure bill, because they don't get the three and a half trillion budget, then not getting the infrastructure bill is politically dangerous for the Democrats, the three and a half trillion is gonna come down a lot. And I still think they'll end up getting a bill done in the end, the bigger question for listeners to be thinking about is whether or not that will be good enough for the progressives. The budget deal could get killed, because the progressives don't like the diminished size of it. And so there's very competing parties at play here. Really what's going to end up happening, the fate of the bill for people who feel about this the way I do, and I imagine a lot of our listeners, the fate of the bill is actually in the hands of either moderate Democrats or progressive Democrats. And there's a couple of different outcomes that could end up coming. The one outcome that I really feel most confident will not happen is the worst one, which is this bill passing as it is, this resolution.

BROWN: I’m curious what you have to say about President Biden’s ban on landlords evicting tenants who aren’t paying their rent. It seems that the Supreme Court would look unfavorably at this new “eviction moratorium” and it seems that the president knows this, too, but that he’s buying time—knowing the legal process moves slowly.

But this strikes me, David, as a textbook example of a government attempt begun under the previous president and continued by this president to serve up what I think you’d call an economic “free lunch.” Now, you have a book coming out this fall saying “There’s No Free Lunch” and so I’m guessing you’d tell us that with this eviction moratorium—somebody’s picking up the check, so to speak.

BROWN: David Bahnsen—financial analyst and adviser. He writes at dividendcafe.com.  And that’s your Monday Moneybeat. Thanks David, appreciate it. It was fun!

BAHNSEN: Thanks for having me.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: Next up on The World and Everything In It: The WORLD History Book.

Today, the end of the gold standard in the United States, goldbugs swarm Canada, and the birth of one of Tennessee’s golden sons. Here’s senior correspondent Katie Gaultney.

SONG: “BALLAD OF DAVY CROCKETT,” FESS PARKER

KATIE GAULTNEY, SENIOR CORRESPONDENT: Davy Crockett, “King of the Wild Frontier.” Today we remember Crockett for the anniversary of his birth—235 years ago, on August 17, 1786.

David Crockett was born in what’s now Greene County, Tennessee, but at the time was part of North Carolina. His family was poor, and he earned his grit at an early age, working to pay down his father’s debt. Later, as a representative in the Tennessee General Assembly, he fought for advancement opportunities for the poor.

Then came Washington, D.C. Congressman Crockett was 19 years younger than another famous Tennessean—President Andrew Jackson. They often butted heads. One point of contention was the Indian Removal Act, proposed by Jackson to force Native Americans off their lands. The 1955 Disney film, Davy Crockett: King of the Wild Frontier, recreated Crockett’s protests. Actor Fess Parker played the title character as he addressed his peers in Congress.

CROCKETT: Expansion ain’t no excuse for persecuting a whole part of our people just because their skins is red and they're uneducated to our ways…

Crockett’s principled stand cost him reelection in 1831. Crockett said in his memoir that despite the political cost, he didn’t regret his stand against what he considered a “wicked, unjust measure.” He wrote, “my conscience yet tells me that I gave a good honest vote, and one that I believe will not make me ashamed in the day of judgement.”

Moving now from the “greenest state in the land of the free” to the subarctic of Canada’s Yukon Territory.

SONG: “OH MY DARLING CLEMENTINE”

It’s been 125 years since three prospectors found gold in a tributary of the Klondike River, near the border with Alaska.

That discovery came on August 16, 1896. Gold fever prompted tens of thousands to board boats and sail north from Seattle. It was so remote, there were no supplies on site, and no horses. Quebec’s McCord Museum highlighted how remote the gold-rich land was.

DOCUMENTARY: Because communications were so slow between the Klondike and what residents called “the outside,” it was not until the spring of 1897 that the world learned of the discovery.

Once word did begin to spread—nearly a year after those prospectors struck gold—the frenzy began. Over three years, 100,000 headed to Klondike, most arriving at the makeshift port of Skagway, then heading the rest of the way—about 350 miles, depending on the trail. The trip to the gold fields sent dreamers over treacherous terrain—and it took three months.

Disease, hypothermia, malnutrition, and avalanches thinned the herd; only about 30,000 actually made it. The Klondike Gold Rush yielded 75 tons of gold equal to about $1 billion by today’s standards. Most left empty handed, but others became wildly wealthy. In the summer of 1899, prospectors discovered gold on the beaches of Nome, Alaska, drawing thousands of gold bugs away from the Klondike.

And from stocking up on gold to abandoning it.

August 15th marks 50 years since President Richard Nixon completed the United States’ break from the gold standard by ending foreign investors’ ability to convert dollars to gold in 1971.

NIXON: We must protect the position of the American dollar as a pillar of monetary stability around the world...

The United States had been on the gold standard since 1879. Under that standard, the U.S. dollar correlated to a certain amount of actual gold.

The gold standard had been on its way out for decades. In the 1930s, the U.S. government under President Franklin Delano Roosevelt stopped redeeming federal reserve notes—that is, dollar bills—for gold coins.

NEWSREEL: A bank holiday in effect two days after FDR’s inauguration was the first measure to halt the drift toward economic chaos that had begun with the Great Depression of ‘29. One immediate result: Not enough ready money to go around, as if there ever was!

In the late 1960s and early 1970s, the United States printed a lot of money. That weakened the purchasing power of the dollar, and foreign banks and private investors began to cash in their U.S. dollars for gold coins. But, Nixon put a stop to that.

NIXON: I have directed the Secretary of the Treasury to take the action necessary to defend the dollar against the speculators. I have directed Secretary Connolly to suspend temporarily the convertibility of the dollar into gold or other Reserve assets…

Today, the United States follows a fiat system, meaning the dollar isn’t backed by any actual commodity.

In 2019, Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell answered a congresswoman who asked if he thought the country should return to the gold standard. Short answer? No.

POWELL: You’ve assigned us the job of two direct, real economy objectives: maximum employment, stable prices. If you assigned us, “Stabilize the price of gold,” monetary policy could do that, but the other things would fluctuate…

All that glitters is certainly not gold. Today, no currency in the world uses the gold standard.

SONG: “FOR THE LOVE OF MONEY,” THE O’JAYS

That’s this week’s History Book. I’m Katie Gaultney.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: Tomorrow: more on vaccine mandates, where the choice is get the COVID shot or lose your job.

And, a change of heart. We’ll tell you the story of one man’s life-giving gift.

That and more tomorrow.

I’m Myrna Brown.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: And I’m Mary Reichard.

The World and Everything in It comes to you from WORLD Radio.

WORLD’s mission is biblically objective journalism that informs, educates, and inspires.

All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to Himself, and gave us the ministry of reconciliation; that is, in Christ, God was reconciling the world to Himself...

Go now in grace and peace.

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