 Welcome, and good afternoon or good evening, everybody, depending on where you are. Welcome to Think Tech Hawaii. Time for responsible change, and we have the great honor and pleasure of having with us today. Tina Patterson, experienced mediator, arbitrator, business coach, and a lady of many talents and gifts in Germantown, Maryland. We have Jim Alfini, former dean and professor at Northern Illinois and South Texas Schools of Law in Houston, and Ben Davis, longtime now professor emeritus, University of Toledo School of Law, who refers to himself as dude emeritus, along with a few other noted colleagues. And while we've kind of started with the general area of concerns about public health, safety, and welfare, we're open to pretty much anything that's on your mind that are concerns these days that we can try and shed some of that nice moonlit glow in my background on. Jim, good to have you back. What's on your mind most pressing these days? Well, Chuck, a couple of months ago, I thought we were coming to the beginning of the end. Didn't we all feel pretty comfortable a couple of months ago compared to now? And then all of a sudden we've got the Delta variant and we've got ICU's disappearing. I was on a call earlier today with some people in Hawaii. They tell me Hawaii's going to a virtual shutdown, which is terrible for your economy, certainly this time of year. And so, you know, what's happening here? Well, if you're going to ask the question what single thing, what single conflict, um, is causing us to go into this at best a millennium, so at worst a try, vaccinators versus the anti-vaccinators. I still don't quite understand why so many people are not vaccinated. I can sort of understand religious reasons. I certainly can understand health reasons, but there are a lot of people, one of the news commentators, national news commentators, interviewed people who were in the hospital right now who had not been vaccinated. And every single one of them was not an anti-vaccinator. That is, the person didn't have any ideological or religious or other objections, just hadn't gotten around to it. And, you know, maybe they'd been mildly opposed, but still, my God, you know, I mean, we'd be out of this situation if just that many more people would take a sensible approach to vaccination. And as we know, because viruses survive by mutating, there are time windows. If you miss a seminal time window to control virus, you give it time to mutate, to become more pervasive, more contagious, more severe. I think also we have to speak to the irresponsibility of governmental leaders in different places in not really pushing for vaccination. I mean, I remember being a kid, and I think it was the Salk vaccine or whatever it was, and there's basically a notice set out that you had to go up to the local elementary school on this day and take one of these sugar cubes. And that was it. I mean, there was not a, you know, it was uniform straight up and down the line. Public health authorities at the local, state, and federal levels were just listened to, and we just went along with it. Now it seems to be everything is about, I mean, obviously there's politics, but it's all about negotiation, if I could say, as opposed to actually doing the, if I could say it like that, the ordering that used to happen with the Salk vaccine. I mean, when we've introduced this idea of, we introduced this idea of this is something you can think about doing, as opposed to the idea that this is something that you have to do. What you get is a lot of people saying, well, I'll think about doing it, but I got other things to do and all that. Even if you're not an AVEX, you don't have that sense of urgency to actually have everyone go ahead and take care of it. And I really find it appalling, really, that you're getting these governmental leaders who are not just doing what seems to me should have been done, could still be done, maybe, which is to just mandate that every person get a shot and it's free. And that should be that little message from the top to the bottom, every level, mayor, state governor, whatever, legislators, judges, I don't care what part of the whole separation of powers and federalism, just one simple message. Everybody's got to get the shot. And that's it. Obviously, it's profitable for somebody for this mess to be here. I always believe that in the background, there's always going to be, if you say certain things and you see money coming to you because you say certain things, kind of encourages people, especially with politicians, to keep saying those things. But at some point, there's got to be a coherence to it all, even in our federalism, which I can remember there being as a child with regards to this public health measure. The politics were what they were, but the public health measure issue for polio, I think things like that, it was very, very clear with really no second guess. So what's different now, Tina, from back then? I know that's before your time. The polio piece may be before my time, but when I was a child, you automatically received a DPT shot. So polio was addressed. But for me, during my childhood years, it was then coming home with telling my parents that tomorrow I was going to be receiving a shot for measles. There wasn't a maybe think about it, don't send your daughter or son in. It was, this is going to happen. I think there's a couple of elements that have changed. And I think both James as well as Ben have touched upon them. Some of it is ideological, but some of it is also where we're looking at efficiencies, where we're looking at revenue generation. And I'm hearing from colleagues of mine that they are struggling with going back into the office and being told, you've got to go back into the office when businesses are saying at the same time, we've had some of our most productive and highest revenue generating years and the past 18 months, which literally shows that people can be productive at home. The money's coming in. So why do people need to be in the office if you really don't have protocols in place to one safeguard people so that they're not contracting the virus or that the spaces that they're in communally are either cleaned or disinfected in some way. I know that there are some organizations that are saying, we'll address this in January 2022 because there's just too many variables right now for us to consider. And others are saying, well, we've said we're coming back in September. It's too late. We literally can't save face if we retract, but you can save face. You can literally say, you know what, we've revisited this. We know that the Delta and Lambda variants are of concern. We are seeing messaging regarding booster shots. We've decided to rethink this and we'll hold off until January until we have more conclusive information about how we can protect people. I'm probably not answering your question directly, but I do see that these are elements of what makes the conflict, it's not singular. It's multiple aspects. It's the small business saying, I'm losing business. I can't stay in business. That service I used to perform, I can no longer perform, but it's also the employer who says, I want you back in the office. And the ideological space where you've got governors fighting with mayors and mayors saying, we're moving forward with this or rhetoric that a state has a high number of cases of COVID because of a certain racial or ethnic group, and then tying it to a political affiliation, which at the end of the day is a bunch of rubbish. And it goes back to why aren't you getting vaccinated at the end of the day? So let me ask the three of you this question. We've had a period of four years of some of the most intensive, fear-mongering, disinformation, uncertainty, anxiety intentionally sown for control of political and economic power and authority. What's the role of that? And what's going on now? I'd like to go back for a moment to a point that you all have made, Tina in particular. And that is the leadership factor. Here we are up in Chicago. Our primary residence is Houston, Texas, but we have friends and family. Both of our sons are up here in Chicago. So we tend to spend most of the summer in Chicago. And we're thinking twice now about going back to Houston or when. And it's largely because of the leadership. In Texas, we have a governor who, I serve this politics. That doesn't be sensible. He has not been sensible in terms of encouraging people to be vaccinated or wear masks or what have you. And up here in Illinois, we have just the opposite. And so I hate to say it, but one of the reasons we're staying in Illinois rather than going back to Texas is leadership. I understand perfectly what you're saying, Jim, because there's this sense of, at least for me, it's a sense of I'm watching insanity. I'm watching really completely untethered reaction to a virus which is completely indifferent to any of that. It's just seeking to propagate itself and mutate. And you either deal with it or you don't. And I look at these people who are these leaders and I'm aghast of what they say. And I guess I'm aghast of the people who would reelect them after this whenever that happens or minimize what's going on. I mean, correct me if I'm wrong, but aren't we over 600,000 people have died in the United States from this? I mean, that's more than the Civil War. It's more than World War II. And right now, the death toll is in the places where there are large numbers of unvaccinated people. I mean, it's linear almost. And yet these people, these leaders, are playing footsie. The one thing I also found kind of obscene is I guess there's some treatment called monoclonal antibodies, which is expensive. So rather than do the preventive thing of getting the vaccination, there's this push to get more of this monoclonal antibody treatment of people who are sick, right, which is an expensive apparently relative to the vaccination approach. I mean, it is really what there's a term as backwards, thinking, unbelievable. But here we are. We watch it. It's appalling. And I'm absolutely I'm devastated for the ordinary American citizen who's got all this going on in their life, who's trying to figure their way through it. And you don't have to be a rocket science to have a certain amount of uncertainty about what to do or what not to do with all the different noise there because you're not hearing a common story, which is get the shot. Not everyone is not saying get the shot. That's all that needs to be said. And here it is. You can go down to your Walgreens now and get it in two seconds. You don't even have to get an appointment anymore. All you have to do is just go in and get the shot. It's even gotten the approval, the final approval from the FDA, right? So it's not emergency, whatever. I don't know what has to happen for... Well, you do see that the numbers of vaccinations have gone up significantly. But when I see that there are children now who are getting sick and the child ICU's are filling up and the idea of a parent, one of the worst nightmares of any parent, as all you know, is that they would bury their own child, right? I mean, does it have to get to that level for people to say, okay, I will get the shot? I don't know. It's just... But it's appalling. Seems hard to remember. Go ahead, Jim. No, I'm sorry. There are some things that in some ways we can't control, like kids going back to school unvaccinated. We don't have a vaccine that's approved for five to 11-year-olds. And that's a lot of people coming back home every day, potentially infecting people who even may be vaccinated in their family and they're carrying it around. And the kids, some of the kids may not show symptoms. They may be asymptomatic. But still, it's hard for me to believe that the coronavirus isn't savage enough to mutate and have a greater effect on children, for instance, than it has in the past. It's scary. It's scary. I think we could have gotten out of this situation if we'd all been sensible, but that hasn't happened. But now we're on the verge of areas that we really don't have much control over. And there's only 25% of the world, too. That's another part of what I saw last night, that's getting vaccinated at this point. And so the mutation process is going on with 75% of the world's population. So it's a worldwide problem of getting the vaccinations done to sort of head the virus off at the pass. Because if we're talking about Delta and Lambda, I don't know my Latin characters where we're at, but you've got 8 billion, 6 billion people out there who it can mutate through into various and various mutations and then come back to the places where no longer the vaccine works as well. We are really at an extermination level event here. In a way it feels like in those movies where there is something that is implacable coming at us and we seem to be like, what is it, like Nero fiddling while Rome burns. It's just crazy. I don't think we're anywhere near there, but as much of a liberal Democrat as I am, I'm wondering if somewhere down the road, martial law has got the right thing. God, I'm sounding like the guy I wanted out of the White House now, but I remember when I was in the army. It was during the Vietnam era, I was a draft FD. There were a whole bunch of us drafties. A second or third day at the reception center, they put us on this line and we moved down the line and there were medics on both sides with these shotguns. I mean, I don't mean shotguns, but guns that gave you a shot and we just kept getting shots in our arms for all sorts of things, vaccines for everything, exotic diseases that we probably could never get, but we were forced to do it. I don't know, Chuck, if there's any, if we're going in a positive direction here, you may want to pick another topic. Right. Well, before you folks came on, Tina and I were talking about Afghanistan and I was actually in Saigon in spring of 1975, so we'll save that for another occasion. Is there a way to get people to take this seriously enough to put the most vulnerable first, the kids first, the communities first, those who are least protected first? Because unless that happens, how do we get control of it? Tina, you might want to step in and correct me, but I don't believe it's very difficult, it seems, in America for the logic to be that logic. The logic is more, it seems to be that if you have power and influence, you get to get there first. Whatever the line is, you get to maneuver the line so you get to get ahead of time and then you can do a mea culpa on social media about the fact you got the shot two weeks before everyone else was supposed to, but people are completely selfish about these things. They've got their logics, which is that fear and all those things, but to be orderly in the United States about these things, at least at this time, I don't see us being capable of being that way. It's really sad. I would say that one thing that was sort of self-developed was remember when the vaccine was available for people 65 and older first, right? Well, from what I understand is that the numbers of who vaccinated themselves was substantial, like 75% or something like that. So in self-interest, even selfish, people did it. But as you move down the age groups, the numbers keep declining. And of course, we get down to the issue of the people in their 20s who will think that they're invincible, right? And that's one of the saddest things is to see people being very sick or very young. There was one group I gave an exception for my head, and maybe I'm just being overly something. But I think that women who are in childbearing age, where there hadn't been tests done about the effect of the virus, I can understand that hesitation, okay? I can understand that. But for men, I couldn't see why there is some kind of conspiracy thing that men would become sterile or something like that. There was no basis for that. We've had enough time to figure this out. And unfortunately, there's enough interest in not doing what needs to be done, which is getting the shots. We kind of are in a mess. Are there individuals that people listen to that could step forward? I'm thinking in particular about religious leaders. I mean, this is still a pretty religious country. And in the past, religious leaders have played hero roles at different times. And couldn't we ask them to step up and get in there and have a vaccination day at the church or the synagogue or whatever. Yeah. Jim, I agree with you. But herein lies the conflict. So we have, and I'll use his excellency, the Pope, he's encouraged people to be vaccinated. And then we have other faith leaders saying, don't you trust God? God will take care of you. Come to Sunday service. And this happened very early with COVID. Come to Sunday service. And the much many people in the congregation got ill because they believed, as was told by their leader, that you'll be fine. You just need to pray about it. And so while I agree with you, we're not getting a concurrent message. We're not getting a single message. It's one person saying, yes, the other person saying, no, the other is saying, oh, ye, a little faith, if you had faith, you would follow along with what I'm saying and not get vaccinated. To which it's a confusing mix. I know personally of a friend who had a party and had individuals come over and one of the individuals said, well, the Bible says I shouldn't get vaccinated. I personally would like to see that first because I have to find it. But it, but to your point, if we had, if the message was actually an agreement and saying, you know, go get vaccinated. This is really not about you. This is bigger than you go get vaccinated. But we're not hearing that. And maybe I'm hoping though, Tina, that some of those religious leaders that were anti-vaxxers have changed their tune now. We're probably members of their congregation did fall to the, to the virus. And I'm hoping that some of them, you know, again, have changed their mind and are willing to say so. But yeah, you're right. I mean, it's, it's really, is there, is there a sense? Do we have a sense that people are less likely to act in the public good than they used to? Have we gone to a point where, you know, Americans, too many Americans are sort of rugged individualists. They don't care about anybody but themselves. I don't know. And while we're out of time for today, we're at a point where once again, this is a good reason to come back, rejoin us in two weeks. We still have a lot to try and work through here. And all of us are left with a thought. Who and how do we get across to people? Please put the health and safety of others first, your family, your communities, your neighborhood, people you come in contact with, your colleagues, please do that. Thank you all for joining us. We'll be back in two weeks. Come back and join us.