The No-Brainer Solution To The College Question

The question being, not simply "should colleges reopen this fall", but HOW should they reopen?  Now that the COVID-19 pandemic is waning in practically all of the USA, even in the Sunbelt whose most recent wave just peaked in July and early August per Worldometer statistics, the answer should be obvious given the relatively low risk that traditional college aged young people typically are from the virus.  That is, a return to near normal from the start:

• Plan on reopening on time in August without delay.
• Compress the fall semester between opening day and Thanksgiving break, with no breaks or long weekends in between, and remain closed from Thanksgiving until early January, limiting the back-and forth.
• Allow the option of online coursework in addition to in-person classes.
• Require masks and/or social distancing only in classrooms and certain other publicly accessible buildings, otherwise don't force it.
• Limit dining hall occupancy to 50% of capacity.
• Allow gatherings up to 500 people outdoors, and 50 people indoors or 50% of a room's capacity, whichever is lesser. (That would be about a handful of people in a typical dorm room, or about 25 to 50 people in a typical house party.)
• Put hand sanitizer stations and mask kiosks everywhere, and vigorously and regularly disinfect classrooms and campus buildings.
• In the event of an actual outbreak on campus, simply cancel in-person classes for no more than two weeks at a time (mainly to protect commuter students), but do NOT close down completely and/or send students back home to infect their parents and grandparents!
• Isolate the sick and those who were in direct contact with them.  No one else.
• Make virus testing free and readily available for all upon request.

That's it.  Otherwise, it's back to the old normal for the most part.  And come the spring semester, hopefully 100% back to the old normal once again when they all build herd immunity if they don't already have it.  (How else are they gonna do it?)

And of course, make the 21 drinking age (and smoking and toking age) the absolute lowest enforcement priority.  And in general, treat college students as the young ADULTS that they actually are, and trust them to use their own judgment.  Why is that even such a controversial concept these days?

It is long past time to allow a typical (or at least near-typical) college experience to finally return.  No need for the sort of draconian or dystopian rules on campus that some colleges like Duke University are doing.  So what are we waiting for?

DISCLAIMER:  Neither Twenty-One Debunked nor the True Spirit of America Party encourage or condone the practice of "corona parties" or any other deliberate or grossly negligent mass infection-inducing behavior.  Seriously, now is really NOT the time to tempt fate!  Keep calm and carry on, live your life, and have fun, but still take precautions, use common sense, avoid excessive crowding in general, and if you have any sort of questionable symptoms, stay the hell home and don't have any guests over!  Young people, this means you too.

NOVEMBER UPDATE:   Three months later, Twenty-One Debunked still stands by what we originally said in August, with the added caveat that students should perhaps have all been initially tested for the virus upon arrival at college, which many colleges did not.  And perhaps exit testing before students leave for Thanksgiving break and/or winter break as well.

Does Cannabis Legalization Really Lead To More Traffic Deaths?

One of the most infamous anti-legalization talking points is that legalizing cannabis would inevitably cause carnage on the highways.  And we have thoroughly debunked that specious claim before.

But what about the recent pair of newer studies that appear to find a modest uptick in traffic deaths after legalization?  In contrast to previous studies that generally found no link with traffic casualities in the first three years after recreational legalization, one of the newer ones found an increase in traffic fatalities in the most recent year in which data were available, though still no shorter-term increase (echoing another study from last year that didn't find any uptick until five years later), while the second one found an increase (compared to synthetic controls) in Colorado but not in Washington for some reason.

Far from clarifying the issue, these newer studies leave the reader with more questions than answers.  Why so much heterogeneity and inconsistency between various studies and locations?  Why such a long time lag for the apparent effect to occur, especially given that repealing alcohol Prohibition in 1933 was associated with short-term increase in traffic fatalities per VMT that went back down to 1930-1931 levels by 1936?  And why have medical cannabis legalization laws been consistently associated with long-term decreases in traffic deaths, given the increased availability and vast gray area between recreational and medical use in practice?

Three things come to mind:  changes in tourism (thus skewing the numerator but not the denominator in per-capita crash death calculations), changes in gas prices (lower prices lead to more crashes and deaths), and changes in cannabis prices (lower prices leading to more use and possibly more stoned driving).  The first two can produce specious and spurious inferences when they are not controlled for, while the third factor as we have seen takes several years for prices to fall after recreational legalization, possibly explaining the apparent time lag with fatalities.  (That can, of course, be resolved simply by raising the taxes on cannabis.)  Or most likely of all, as per Occam's Razor, the vast inconsistencies simply mean that any supposed causal link between legalization and carnage on the highways was spurious all along.

Also, it is notable there does not seem to be such an effect seen in Canada, despite their lower age limits for cannabis (18 or 19, instead of 21 in the US states that legalized).  While Quebec recently raised it to 21 on January 1, 2020, there would still be over a year's worth of data for 2019 and late 2018 when it was still 18.  And Alberta's age limit still remains 18 for all three substances--alcohol, tobacco, and cannabis.

Thus, as per the overall weight of the evidence, Twenty-One Debunked will continue to declare this specious claim debunked for the time being.

Don't Ban Alcohol. Tax It Instead, And Restrict Quantities.

South Africa has had the dubious distinction of being the only country in the (non-Muslim) world to ban all alcohol sales during their coronavirus lockdown.  They recently lifted that ban.

To be clear, Twenty-One Debunked does NOT support such a thing at all, as it is excessive and overbroad.  We also don't support general lockdowns either, given that they are also of dubious effectiveness and fly directly in the face of a supposedly free society and its Constitution.  But it is true nonetheless that alcohol abuse (and alcohol-related domestic violence and child abuse) is a problem in nearly all lockdown countries regardless, and large gatherings are of course a very big no-no during the still-ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.  Now is clearly NOT the time to throw a kegger!  Thus, we support the following done in the USA for the remaining duration of the pandemic, which we define as at until least 30 days after the number of new cases reaches and remains at zero, or for 90 days total, whichever is longer:

• Raise the taxes on alcohol, dramatically.
• Maintain and enforce a ban on non-essential gatherings of 500 people or more, with perhaps a lower, double-digit limit on indoor gatherings specifically (since those are riskier).
• Ban the sale of kegs to anyone who is not a licensed bar or restaurant owner.
• Put a cap on the amount of alcohol an individual can purchase per person per day, such as no more than one case or 30-pack of beer, one gallon of wine, or two liters of hard alcohol less than or equal to 100 proof or one liter of hard alcohol greater than 100 proof.
• Reopen bars and restaurants with "Swedish rules" for the first couple of weeks:  restrict occupancy, table service only, outdoor seating preferred, no eating or drinking perpendicular (standing up).  Delay the reopening of nightclubs and casinos until a few weeks after bars reopen.
• For the first couple of weeks, require restaurant and bar staff to wear masks, and patrons to wear masks while not eating or drinking.
• Crack down heavily on drunk driving, drunk violence, and domestic and child abuse.
• Put a moratorium on enforcement of the 21 drinking age for any 18-20 year olds who are drinking responsibly and following such protocols above.  (Of course, the drinking age should be lowered to 18 yesterday.)

So what are we waiting for?