The Jewish Prayer Modeh Ani Is Much More Than Saying Thanks

How we wake up in the morning can set the tone for the rest of the day. Research shows that morning routines can increase productivity, lower stress, improve confidence, and boost energy levels. Judaism gives us a ritual that helps us as we awaken from our slumber. Upon waking up, Jewish tradition teaches us to utter the following words:

מודה אני לפנוך מלך חי וקים שהחזרת בי נשמתי בחמלה. רבה אמונתך

I give thanks before You, living and eternal king, for You have mercifully restored my soul within me. Your faithfulness is great. 

Part of what I like about this prayer is its simplicity. The blessing has twelve words and yet it has so much wisdom packed into it. The most common interpretation given for this blessing is that it is about starting your day off by expressing gratitude. I do not disagree with this interpretation. I wrote about Modeh Ani and the importance of being grateful about a decade ago. One of the Hebrew words for "Jew" (יהודי) comes from the same verb as "to thank" (להודות). Jewish tradition teaches that a Jew is to say 100 blessings a day (Talmud, Menachot 43b). When I look at the Modeh Ani blessing, I see more significance in the text than simply another opportunity to say "Thank You." Here are some insights that I was able to come up with:

1. Life is more than just the self. One takeaway from this blessing is the syntax. The verb comes before the subject. While this syntax occurs in biblical Hebrew, I think saying מודה אני instead of אני מודה teaches us a lesson. While there are merits to self-care, the word order reminds us that there is something bigger than us. We need to focus on the loftier aspects of life before we focus on ourselves. 
2. Confronting one's mortality. This point surrounding one's mortality becomes more salient when we look at what we are thankful for when reciting Modeh Ani. The blessing thanks us for having another day on this planet. Marcus Aurelius said in his text Meditations (2:11) that "you could leave life right now. Let that determine what you say, do, and think." Even if one is young and healthy, waking up to live another day is not a given. This is where the practice of memento mori comes in. Modeh Ani both reminds us that we have a limited time on Earth while emphasizing we should be thankful for the time that we have. 
3. Awareness. The phrase מודה אני does not only mean "I give thanks." The word מודה can also mean "to acknowledge' or "to rise to the understanding of." We do not only give thanks by saying this prayer. We also rise to the understanding of why we give thanks, and by extension, life's purpose. Awareness is key to life. It would explain why one of the morning blessings in Judaism is to ask G-d for discernment (אשר נתן לשכוי בינה להבחין בין יום יבין לילה).  
4. Sense of renewal. Each day is a new day of life. Yes, there are things we wake up with that were there yesterday: imperfections, emotional baggage, and problems. Modeh Ani reminds us that we have the opportunity to tackle those problems, to do better, to make this day unique and ours, and to figure out where we are going in life. 
5. Our past does not define our future. Our brains are wired in a way that alert us to danger and the malaise in life, which comes from our hardwired negativity bias. We can use Modeh Ani to transcend the negativity bias and begin our day in a more positive mindset. Our thoughts have a major influence on how we perceive and live life. We are not tied to natural impulse to look at things negatively. Research shows that gratitude can increase happiness, decrease depression, and improve sleep quality. Per the previous point, that also means we are not tied to our past because the past definitionally is not the present. If times are bad, we can remind ourselves that they can be better. If times are good, we can remind ourselves to appreciate the good while we have it or we can find ways to make it even better. In any case, the status quo is not an inevitability. 
6. Finding ritual that speaks to us. This is a tangential point, but one that I want to make. This does not have to do with the words of the prayer, but when the prayer was created. While it takes some inspiration from the Talmud and Tanach (Hebrew Bible), the prayer Modeh Ani itself was first used much later at the end of the 16th century C.E. I would have thought that the Modeh Ani prayer dated back to biblical or talmudic times, but it is not. It is relatively new within Jewish history. It is both interesting and comforting to find rituals that were created in more modern times that still fit within the mold of Jewish tradition. It also makes me think of our own capacity to create rituals that are both meaningful to modern times and our experiences while still being characteristically Jewish.
7. A call for being more compassionate. In the blessing, we state that G-d returns our soul to us "with mercy" (בחמלה). Assuming we take the the theology in this prayer literally, G-d does not give us another day based on our merits, but rather His mercy. I can quibble about whether "why bad things happen to good people" or "why do good people have to die." But let's take it literally for a moment because Judaism teaches us an important lesson: that we are created in His Image. This form of imitatio Dei, known as בצלם אלקים, means that we aspire to take on G-d's virtues. If G-d gives us another day because His compassion, we too should find ways to be more compassionate in life. 
8. Being trustworthy. When we end the blessing with רבה אמונתך ("your faithfulness is great"), we are establishing a sense of trust in G-d. This ending implies that one is to entrust G-d to return the soul the following morning. Since we are to imitate G-d, it means that we should find ways to be more trustworthy in our interpersonal relations. 
9. Trusting ourselves. If G-d is Sovereign of the universe and G-d can trust us, that should mean that we should be able to trust ourselves. He gave us the ability to live life to the fullest, to succeed, and the tools to handle adversity. Speaking of adversity....
10. Gratitude is not solely for the good times. The phrase רבה אמונתך comes from Lamentations 3:23. The Book of Lamentations has much calamity, including raping, pillaging, and murder. In this text, it seems as if G-d has abandoned the Jewish people. But the end of the Book of Lamentations remind us that even the bad times do not last forever. It does not mean that we ignore or neglect the calamity or problems in our lives. Modeh Ani teaches that instead of dwelling or wallowing, we are meant to use gratitude, awareness, compassion, and steadfastness to get through the bad times, as well as enhance the good times with these virtues. 

Will Omicron Finally Have People Lose Faith in Cloth Face Masks?

In spite of mixed messaging at the beginning at the pandemic, most public health officials have recommended throughout the pandemic that people wear face masks to help slow the rate of transmission of COVID-19. What should have been a simple scientific question of efficacy became marred with politics. The pre-pandemic understanding of face mask usage was that healthy individuals masking up did nothing to stop spread (Desai and Mehrotra, 2020). It became apparent early on in the pandemic, at least for me, that N95 and surgical masks were more effective than cloth masks.  But maybe COVID was different from past respiratory infections. At the beginning of the pandemic, it made more sense to take on the precautionary principle until we knew what we were dealing with, both in terms of the disease burden of COVID and the effectiveness of masks. 

Some facets have changed and others have stayed the same since the beginning of the pandemic. One notable aspect of the face mask debate that has not changed is that the evidence base for cloth face masks is still low (see my analysis on the existing face mask research here, here, here, here, and here). As I pointed out in December, face masks have been shown to somewhat slow down droplet transmission, but lacks correlative evidence in terms of affecting infection outcome. While I was supportive of a temporary face mask mandate at the beginning, my agnosticism on face masks went from in favor of the mandates to being against them by the time that the Delta variant reared its ugly head. Given the low evidence base, I cannot state that they do not work, unlike with ineffective and harmful lockdowns. At the same time, I cannot say that they do work either. At best, the cloth face masks had minimal impact on COVID transmission. A University of Minnesota review of face masks concluded that "it should be well-known by now that wearing cloth face coverings or surgical masks, universal or otherwise, has a very minor role to play in preventing person-to-person transmission. It is time to stop overselling their efficacy and unrealistic expectations about their ability to end the pandemic." At worst, wearing the face masks was performative and an attempt to force compliance with government fiat to keep people in line. 

Whichever scenario it may be, I can say that two major features have changed since the beginning of the pandemic. One is our ability to respond to COVID is better for two reasons: improved treatments and vaccines. Vaccines are especially important because they are the single-most important public health measure that has helped reduce severe COVID cases, COVID hospitalizations, and COVID-related deaths. 

The other facet of this pandemic that has changed since the beginning has been the variants have been more transmissible. Delta was more contagious than the Alpha variant. I personally did not think that it would be probable, but there was a strain that is even more transmissible: Omicron. 

Thankfully, the preliminary data show that the omicron variant is less likely to hospitalize than Delta. Its increased infectivity show that it still remains a threat to healthcare systems in the short-run. But if the United Kingdom and nations in southern Africa, the places furthest along in the omicron wave, are an indication of anything, the omicron wave very well could drop as quickly as it rose. Omicron's high transmissibility can also mean that enough people will incur natural immunity that it can, combined with vaccine immunity, put us at a place of herd immunity, as the Lancet points out (Murray, 2022). 

But what about until we reach the point where the pandemic becomes endemic? Are the masks doing anything to help slow the spread of omicron or have we reached the point where cloth face masks are a form of public health theater or virtue-signaling? Arguments against cloth face masks only seem to have gotten stronger with the latest variant, and experts are starting to understand that cloth masks have minimal to no positive impact. CNN medical analyst Dr. Leana Wen, who has been strict with COVID-related public health measures, said last December that cloth face masks are nothing more than facial decorations and are not appropriate to fight COVID. The Kaiser Foundation admits that cloth face masks are not going to cut it with Omicron. The Mayo Clinic has begun requiring patients and visitors wear more effective masks in lieu of cloth masks. Although the CDC does not bother to quantify the effects, its latest mask guidance finally admits that cloth face masks are less effective than other mask alternatives.

The projections at the University of Washington's Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) show a minimal impact. IHME has the COVID death count at 5,955,911 as of January 5, 2022. With its current projections, it predicts the global death toll will increase to 6,326,655 people. IHME projects that even with 80 percent face mask usage, it will reduce global deaths by 18,183. This means that at best, masks could reduce COVID deaths over the next four months by 4.9 percent. This would imply that face mask usage will have minimal impact, certainly relative to what face mask proponents would wish for. 

What does this all mean? Have we finally met a virus so transmissible that face masks make little to no difference? Can we accept that COVID is here to stay? England has at least realized the futility of face mask mandates and has lifted their mask mandate. Sweden never had a face mask mandate; it dropped its face mask recommendation last summer. The United States seems to be going in the opposite direction. Although the U.S. government had been hoarding 750 million N95 masks, it is looking to finally ship them out. That is subpar timing considering that the New York Times declared a couple of days ago that Omicron is in retreat. Yet one of Biden's campaign promises was to "shut down the virus." If I had to guess, the Biden administration is doubling down to seem tough on that campaign promise, although the upcoming midterm election cycle might change the administration's tune in the upcoming weeks. 

I cannot predict which direction the Biden administration is going to take. If I were to be cynical enough, I would surmise that Biden will declare victory over COVID shortly before the November elections to give the Democrats running for re-election the best chance. On the other hand, intransigence, lack of political will, and fear might keep this country on the stringent end of public health measures. 

I pointed out back in October that this pandemic will not formally end until we as a society can start to accept risk again. If the Biden administration's continued response to this pandemic and face masks is an indication of anything, it means that we as a society most likely have the majority of 2022 to deal with the fear-mongering, the inaccurate insistence that we can eradicate COVID, and the continued moving of goalposts to some unattainable utopia. The continued emphasis on face masks, in spite of highly questionable efficacy, signals that the U.S. government will be in pandemic mode after the metrics improve. I wonder how many more months or variants it will take for the COVID fear-mongers to realize the folly of their take on the pandemic. Time will tell, but given the Biden administration's handling of the pandemic, I am not optimistic. 

New Mandatory GMO Labeling in U.S. Will Not Do Any Favors (And Will Probably Make Matters Worse)

Genetically modified organisms, or GMOs for short, have been a source of controversy over the years. Those who derisively criticize foods with GMO ingredients as Frankenfoods have pushed for GMO labeling. Their dream has come true. In 2016, Congress passed the National Bioengineered Food Disclosure Standard (NBFDS). This Standard states that there is to be a national mandatory standard for labeling GMOs as "bioengineered." At the beginning of this year, the Standard took into effect and products made with genetically modified ingredients are legally required to be labelled as "bioengineered."  As nice as it sounds to keep consumers well-informed, mandating GMO labels comes with its own share of issues. 

GMOs Are Not Bad for Your Health

When I criticized the state of California for trying to pass a similar law in 2012, one of my main arguments against such a labeling scheme was that GMOs do not present unique risks to an individual's health. My argument holds as much today as it did a decade ago. GMOs are as safe as any other food. If you need proof of that, here are some examples of medical experts confirming that very point:

• The World Health Organization states that "All genetically modified foods currently available on the international market have passed safety assessments and no effects on human health have been shown as a result of consuming GM foods."
• After reviewing more than 900 studies, the National Academies of Science concluded that "no differences have been found that implicate a higher risk to human health and safety from [current] GE foods from their non-GE counterparts (2016, p. 19)."
• In the European Union, they all but ban GMOs. Even so, the European Commission looked at multiple studies over 25 years to realize that "biotechnology, and in particular GMOs, are not per se more risky than e.g. conventional plant breeding technologies (2010, p. 16)."
• Pew Research surveyed 3,748 scientists from the American Association for the Advancement of Scientists. Pew found that 88 percent of scientists surveyed agree that GMOs are safe to eat. Contrast that with the 37 percent of U.S. adults who believe that it is safe. 
• Italian researchers conducted a meta-analysis of 6,006 studies (Pellegrino et al., 2018). Aside from showing that there is greater crop yield with GMOs, GMO crops have lower rates of mycotoxins, fumonisins, and thricotecens, all of which cause economic loss and harm to humans and animals. In other words, this meta-analysis argues that GMOs are healthier.
• In March 2020, the USDA said that "GMO foods are carefully studied before they are sold to the public to ensure they are as safe as the foods we currently eat. These studies show that GMOs do not affect you differently than non-GMO foods."

GMO Label Laws Are Unnecessary

If all of that empirical evidence and advice from premier medical organizations is not enough to sway you, the U.S. Department of Agriculture admitted in 2018 that NBFDS "is not expected to have any benefits to human health or the environment." The very government agency that is to enforce this GMO labelling knows that its GMO labeling regulations will have no effect on human health. So much for "following the science!"

However, it is more than the health implications to show that mandatory GMO labels are useless. According to the Center for Food Safety, 75 percent of food in the U.S. contains GMOs. If GMOs are really that pervasive and commonly used, what practical function would such a label have? That concern seems to have played out in practice. As researchers from University of Wisconsin-Madison, University of Amherst, and Cornell University concluded in a November 2021 paper, "In the presence of existing non-GMO labels, mandatory labelling did not have any additional effect on demand (Adalja et al., 2021)." When Vermont briefly had its state-level GMO labeling scheme, a University of Vermont researcher found that GMO labeling laws actually decreased opposition to GMOs (Kolodinsky and Lusk, 2018). 

Repercussions for Agricultural Sector

Not only is the science nearly unanimous on the fact that GMOs are not uniquely bad for one's health. Finding ways to limit GMO production will mean harming the agricultural sector. Genetically engineered crops are commonly used for such species as corn, soybeans, alfalfa, cotton, and canola. The American Enterprise Institute illustrates how less of these technologies limits crop production (Brester, 2018). Using alternatives would mean needing to use more water, land, and other inputs to keep up with global food production. A trio of Danish researchers similarly concluded that the European Union's current GMO laws hinder Europe's agricultural production (Christiansen et al., 2019).

Undermining Science and Scientific Credibility

We have had enough bad scientific advice and restrictions surrounding the COVID pandemic, whether that has been lockdowns, travel bans, mask mandates, or school closures. The missteps of the CDC and FDA had resulted in greater mistrust in public health, with about half of Americans not trusting these institutions. This Standard continues to erode trust in public health advice because it ends us legitimizing bad science. The Standard compels companies to engage in a form of speech that misleads customers in thinking GMOs are bad. 

Cost of GMO Labeling Scheme

Not only has the USDA admitted that the GMO regulations will do nothing to help with health or the environment, but that these regulations will cost taxpayers. The USDA calculated that the costs of NBFDS would "range from $598 million to $3.5 billion for the first year, with ongoing annual costs between $114 million and $225 million." Is this a lot in the grand scheme of things? No. Remember that the U.S. GDP for 2020 was $20.9 trillion and that the federal government spent $6.8 trillion in fiscal year 2021. Even using the higher estimates of the Standard's costs (i.e., over $5 billion over the next decade), they seem like drops in the bucket in comparison to the U.S. economy. At the same time, we are talking about a labeling scheme that does nothing to protect consumer health and does harm to the agricultural sector. Paying one cent is too much, never mind spending millions. 

Conclusion

One of the main purposes of food labels is to warn the consumer about potential health risks. Why create a GMO label if the science is telling us there is no unique health threat caused by GMOs? Why are we spending taxpayer dollars to undermine health expertise, as well as the agricultural sector? If a producer wants to voluntarily label their products "GMO-free," that is their prerogative. However, the U.S. government has no business thrusting such a pointless labeling scheme on to the American people.

Are Biden's Tariff-Rate Quotas on European Steel an Improvement Over Trump's Steel Tariffs?

One of the most irritating parts about the Trump presidency and his attempt to "Make America Great Again" was his protectionism. Trump's favorite weapon of choice in his attempts to restrict imports from other countries was the tariff. The tariff that had considerable impact was when he made the decision in March 2018 to implement a 25 percent tariff on steel. This tariff was not only placed on China, but also on U.S. allies in Europe. Trump's argument for the tariffs was that he was helping out the U.S. manufacturing industry. When I criticized Trump's steel tariff, I pointed out how it would cause net job loss, increase prices for the U.S. consumer for multiple goods, create negative macroeconomic effects, increase the likelihood of trade wars, and do next to nothing to prevent the decline in U.S. manufacturing that Trump was trying to minimize. A year later, I illustrated how the results of Trump's tariffs aligned with economic theory. In other words, in spite of Trump's assertion that we would be doing so much winning, the American economy and the American people did anything but win as a result of his tariffs. 

Given how evident the damage caused by Trump's tariffs, I was hoping that Biden would have done the simple, yet effective policy reversal by eliminating Trump's tariffs. Instead of reducing the tariff rate to 0 percent, Biden made a different agreement with the European Union: a tariff-rate quota (TRQ) system on steel and aluminum. The TRQ acts as a hybrid between a tariff and an import quota. To clarify the trade jargon here, a tariff is a tax imposed on imports entering a country. An import quota is a limit of a quantity of a certain good that can enter the country. In the case of a TRQ, anything below the threshold is either taxed at a reduced rate or is duty-free. If the quantity of imports exceeds the agreed-upon threshold, then a larger tax is imposed on the goods that surpass that threshold. Essentially, a TRQ is a two-tier tariff system. To get a summary of the economics of TRQs, you can read what the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) published here.

Here is how Biden's latest TRQ works. As of January 1, 2022, a TRQ on steel and aluminum coming in from the European Union went into effect. The Trump-era tariffs for steel imported from other countries still remains in effect. Under this TRQ, the annual import volume on steel from Europe is 3.3 million metric tons (MMT). The TRQs are based on a first-come, first-serve system. The first 3.3 MMT of steel that enters the United States from the European Union will not be subject to tariffs. If the imports exceed the 3.3 MMT quota, any subsequent steel imports will be walloped with the 25 percent tariffs. 

The question to ask ourselves is whether Biden's TRQ was an acceptable trade policy choice. As we see from the chart provided by the USDA report below, much of the answer to that question will depend on whether steel imports are high enough to make the quota binding or not. I worry for a few reasons that steel imports would exceed the quota. One, European countries will be incentivized to import steel earlier than later so they can get the discounted rate. Two, steel import data show that the annual average imported from 2017 to 2019 would have rendered this quota binding. Three, the American Iron and Steel Institute found that U.S. steel imports increased 44.6 percent from November 2020 to November 2021. Four, the World Steel Association projects that steel demand is only to increase through 2022. 

Steel industry trends combined with economic incentive signal that 2022 steel imports would most probably exceed the limit in the TRQ. What we cannot know at this time is by how much. Even so, we know based on previous tariffs that any of the imports beyond the quota will be subject to the 25 percent tariffs. In theory, Biden's TRQ sounds like an improvement over the Trump's policy because it would mean fewer goods subject to high tariffs. It also reduced trade tensions between the United States and the European Union, as well as remove previously existing forms of EU tariff retaliation. However, I take issue with Biden's TRQ for a number of reasons.

1. The tariffs under Section 232 were intended for exigent national security reasons. While Trump had spurious reasoning for his usage of Section 232, Biden is not even hiding his reasoning for the reckless usage of Section 232: climate change.
2. Speaking of flaunting certain violation of norms, Biden's TRQ violates the World Trade Organization (WTO) rules. More specifically, the most favored nation (MFN) principle in WTO agreements states that if a member reduces export restrictions on one country, it has to do so for all countries. If some of the most prominent members of the WTO cannot follow its own rules, it undermines the validity of the WTO.
3. This violation of WTO norms not only has the potential to harm relations with other such countries as the United Kingdom, Japan, and South Korea. Biden kept the Section 232 tariffs on these allies because he claimed that the tariffs are good for national security. If we extended the same deal (or even a better deal) to these nations, we could also help ease the bottleneck in our supply chains.    
4. There are 54 distinct quotas, which means more enforcement and red tape. The complexities within the quota score-keeping mean more politicking and more rent-seeking. This will also make it more difficult for domestic producers who rely on imported steel and aluminum inputs to find what works best for their business. Larger steel- and aluminum-using domestic firms will be at an advantage because they will have the manpower to navigate the paperwork and the bureaucracy to get the import quota rights. 
• As economist Anne Krueger makes clear, "Because they [European firms] will not have to sell more cheaply to offset what used to be 25 percent, they can instead raise their prices on their exports within the quota quantity." What was once tariff revenue for the U.S. government is now revenue for European producers of steel and aluminum. Larger steel- and aluminum-using domestic producers will also be in a better position to seek financial relief (much like we saw in the Trump administration), which means an erosion of competitiveness and productivity growth throughout multiple markets. 
5. Supply and demand are changing constantly. There is no bureaucrat who has the clairvoyance to predict how the markets are going to play out and which quota would be acceptable. As domestic demand increases, the percent of foreign steel as a share of the market increases. Given that the quotas set are below average of import levels from 2017-2019 and demand is projected to increase, the quotas currently in place will most probably be restrictive in terms of growth for the multiple industries with steel as an input.  
6. As the Coalition of American Metal Manufacturers points out, U.S. steel-using manufacturers are losing business to competitors in other countries because the protectionism does not allow them to have access to the raw materials necessary to stay competitive in the global market. While limiting supply and driving up prices helps domestic steelmakers, it hurts downstream producers that use steel as an input, which ultimately hurts U.S. consumers. 
7. A TRQ is definitionally a two-tier tariff system. As such, one does not get rid of all the costs of tariffs by switching it with a TRQ. Even with the best implementation, one merely minimizes the distortionary, negative effects of tariffs (see here, here, and here for my past analysis on the harm of tariffs). Whether we are talking about tariffs, import quotas, or tariff-rate quotas, they all distort the competitive market for the worst. 

Conclusion: I did not think it would be possible for a president to do a comparable amount of damage to trade as Trump did, but then along came Biden. What the net effects of the TRQs are still unknown because it depends on how well implementation goes. While Biden's move solved some problems with the TRQ, it also caused others. Biden could have simply removed the tariffs and allowed free trade to flourish. Instead, he opted for a more convoluted form of protectionism entangled with bureaucracy and red tape. Whether it was Trump's misguided attempt to punish foreign nations or a misguided attempt at climate change policy, it is ultimately U.S. consumers and downstream manufacturers that pay the price for this nonsensical trade policy. One thing has been made abundantly clear in recent U.S. trade policy: neither the Republican Party nor the Democratic Party presently care to help out the American people by making trade freer.