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By Lambert Strether of Corrente.
Expensive affected person readers,
We’ve seen a drop-off in feedback throughout our unheard-of-ly bizarre spell of moderation points. Please remark as regular. Be assured that we’ve got thrown additional capability on the downside (i.e., Yves and myself) along with our moderation workforce, and that though your remark might not instantly seem, it is not going to languish. –lambert
Chicken Tune of the Day
Woodhouse’s Scrub-Jay, Cherokee Creek on the Little Snake River, Moffat, Colorado, United States. “Two cuts of calls from a pair of birds in sparse juniper forest, the only calls largely given whereas perched, and the sequence of calls largely given in flight.” I selected this variant to honor P.G. Wodehouse, who I’ve begun to reread, as a palate cleanser. (Jeeves and Bertie are nice, however I feel the Blandings Citadel sequence is peak Wodehouse.)
Politics
“So lots of the social reactions that strike us as psychological are actually a rational administration of symbolic capital.” –Pierre Bourdieu, Classification Struggles
Biden Administration
“White Home cocaine was discovered close to the Scenario Room and NOT within the West Wing customer entrance: Drug story modifications for the SECOND time as Secret Service now says dime bag was present in a extra ‘safe’ location” [Daily Mail]. Effectively, I ought to hope so! “Initially, dispatchers despatched to the White Home on Sunday to analyze the substance stated it was discovered within the library. Then it was reported to be within the West Wing foyer. Now it’s reported to be a ground beneath the foyer, in an space utilized by workers, officers, guests and VIPs.” • Hmm.
“Consultants baffled by White Home invoking Hatch Act to dodge Hunter cocaine query: ‘ridiculous’” [FOX]. “The offender behind the White Home’s July snowstorm has but to be discovered.” lol. Extra: “[White House deputy press secretary Andrew Bates] invoked the Hatch Act — laws that prohibits federal staff from speaking about or utilizing federal assets for marketing campaign functions — to dodge the query on former President Trump’s declare that the Colombian bam-bam belonged to the president or his son…. Former Bush administration ethics chief Richard Painter, who ran for Congress as a Democrat final cycle, informed Fox Information Digital that he has ‘given lectures on the White Home’ and printed articles on the Hatch Act, however the invoice ‘doesn’t cowl snorting cocaine.’”
2024
Time for the Countdown Clock!
* * * “Could Trump Quickly Attain His Waterloo” [Peggy Noonan, Wall Street Journal]. “If you happen to ceaselessly have a display screen on, your impression this summer time is that every one the hungry issues are coming nearer in. The sharks are coming nearer to shore, the seashores immediately closed. Bears have been coming in nearer for years, deer too. Alligators are advancing onto the golf course and creeping out of the pond.” That’s the lead, which I might actually file beneath Zeitgeist Watch. Leads like which might be why I’m a Nooners fan. Extra.: “This weekend at a celebration, one among Mr. Trump’s New York supporters, a former officeholder, rapidly made his approach to me to talk of his hero. He referred to the Abraham Accords and the financial system and stated: ‘Absolutely you may admit he was a superb president.’ He was all wound up, so I spoke slowly. ‘I’ll inform you what he’s: He’s a foul man. I do know it, and if I had been a much less courteous individual I might say that you recognize it, too.’ He was startled, didn’t reply, and actually took a step again. As a result of, I feel, he does understand it. However doesn’t ever anticipate it to be stated. A journalist in our cluster stated, musingly, ‘That was a wonderful instance of apophasis,’ the rhetorical gadget of claiming one thing by saying you’re not going to say it. All of us moved on, however that was the genuine sound of a sure political dialogue. ‘Absolutely you may admit he made France nice once more.’ ‘He’s a foul man.’ Its antecedents stretch again in historical past. Political cults are by no means good, typically rise, at all times cross. Could it this time come sooner relatively than later.” • Hmm. Should a President be “a superb man”? If Males had been angels….
“Trump almost doubles fundraising in second quarter amid mounting authorized challenges” [ABC]. “Former President Donald Trump’s joint fundraising workforce raked in additional than $35 million between March and June of this yr, a marketing campaign spokesperson informed ABC Information. The second quarter haul is almost double Crew Trump’s first quarter whole of $18.8 million from earlier this yr, an indication that the previous president’s fundraising operation is ramping up amid his mounting authorized challenges… The Bedminster fundraiser introduced him greater than $2 million in donations, and in lower than every week, the Trump marketing campaign raised $7 million from the federal indictment. Equally, Trump’s workforce raised $7 million inside three days of the information of his Manhattan indictment dropping.”
“DeSantis raises $20M in second quarter” [The Hill]. “Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’s (R) presidential marketing campaign raised $20 million through the second quarter of 2023. The marketing campaign stated in a launch that the full, introduced in through the first six weeks that DeSantis has been within the race, is the most important first-quarter submitting from a non-incumbent Republican candidate in additional than a decade.”
* * * “Chris Christie is aware of how you can work with Democrats. It is likely to be a legal responsibility.” [Politico]. “In each of his presidential marketing campaign launches — this yr and in 2016 — Christie has emphasised his bipartisan bona fides as an asset in comparison with Donald Trump and a area of candidates crowded with governors accustomed to coping with compliant GOP legislatures. There’s only one downside: there’s little proof GOP major voters care that the previous New Jersey governor can work throughout the aisle with Democrats.” And: “In his eight years because the Republican governor of New Jersey, Christie typically labored carefully with the Democratic-led Legislature to cross among the most consequential insurance policies of current reminiscence. He capped property tax will increase; eradicated the property tax; ; realigned the upper schooling system; overhauled the troubled police division in one of the harmful cities in America; and renewed New Jersey’s Transportation Belief Fund to help long-term infrastructure initiatives.” • Hey, possibly Christie’s the man to deliver the Grand Cut price over the end line!
“Most of $60M in Youngkin’s studying restoration grants went to to increased earnings households” [Richmond Times-Dispatch]. “Initially introduced as a $30 million initiative, the fund was doubled to $60 million to fulfill demand, Youngkin introduced Thursday. Lower than 1 / 4 of the households who obtained a grant had been eligible for the bigger grant that was given to college students whose household earnings doesn’t exceed 300% of the federal poverty stage. For a household of three, that threshold is $74,580. Of these, 8,247 college students certified for the $3,000 grant that was obtainable to households whose earnings doesn’t exceed 300% of the federal poverty restrict. However greater than three quarters of the scholars — 26,403 — obtained the $1,500 grant, which was obtainable to households whose earnings exceeds the edge.”
* * * “Biden’s bargain-basement marketing campaign technique” [Politico]. “Joe Biden is operating his reelection bid on a budget. The president has employed fewer than 20 marketing campaign aides. His workforce hasn’t but introduced a 2024 headquarters. His first political rally this yr was paid for by different organizations. … ‘Proper now, we’ve got a fine-tuned race automobile right here. In some unspecified time in the future, we are going to construct out an enormous, substantial, aggressive group and enterprise,’ [Biden campaign co-chair Jeffrey Katzenberg said’ said. ‘We don’t need to do that today. It literally would be a waste of money.’ Biden’s approach, while designed to save money, carries the risk of keeping his approval ratings at the low level where they are today. It also could limit his ability to better define the contours of the campaign at a time when the Republican field is bludgeoning each other in their own primary…. Biden’s campaign and pro-Biden super PACs have spent $7.5 million on broadcast, cable and digital ads since he launched his reelection bid, according to an analysis by the ad-tracking firm AdImpact. GOP frontrunner and former President Donald Trump’s campaign and an outside group backing him have spent $16.4 million in the same time period, with the vast majority of that outlay coming from his super PAC. There are lots of potential reasons for Biden’s thriftiness. As the incumbent president, he doesn’t need to chase headlines. Because he doesn’t have a serious primary opponent, he’s not under pressure to hit the gas yet in early-voting states, either. And like previous presidents who have run for reelection, he can travel to critical battlegrounds on the taxpayer dime.”
“Why Americans aren’t giving Biden credit on improving economy, according to experts” [ABC]. “‘There’s been this unprecedented hole between what the information exhibits us is occurring within the financial system and what individuals suppose is occurring within the financial system,’ Heidi Shierholz, president of the nonpartisan Financial Coverage Institute, informed ABC Information…. One main cause why voters might not be giving Biden credit score, economists stated, is that inflation remains to be uncomfortably excessive and wages have solely simply began to maintain up with value hikes. Powell stated final week the goal inflation price of two% will not be anticipated to be reached till 2025, and extra rate of interest hikes may very well be in retailer to deliver that knowledge level down.”
* * * “Electoral Faculty Scores: Count on One other Extremely Aggressive Election” [Sabato’s Crystal Ball]. “For the needs of those scores, we’re contemplating a rematch of the 2020 election — Joe Biden versus Donald Trump — because the likeliest matchup, however not one that’s set in stone. Regardless of a mess of weaknesses, akin to an approval score in simply the low 40s and widespread concern about his age and talent to do the job, Biden doesn’t have credible opposition inside his personal occasion, drawing solely fringe challengers Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Marianne Williamson [and Cornel West (!)]. It could be that Biden might or ought to have drawn a stronger challenger, and possibly one thing occurs that entices that form of challenger into the race. However as of now, Biden seems to be heading in the right direction to renomination. Trump faces legit authorized issues, particularly following his current indictment over critical allegations that he improperly retained extremely delicate authorities paperwork. Nevertheless, we’d by no means presume an precise responsible verdict on this or one other case till it truly occurs — nor are we even certain a responsible verdict would stop Trump’s renomination. It could be that the load of Trump’s issues step by step reduces his stage of help over the course of this calendar yr main into subsequent yr’s primaries, permitting a rival to consolidate the non-Trump portion of the occasion and actually push him within the primaries. Or possibly Trump is compelled to take some form of plea deal that entails him leaving the race. These caveats apart, we see a celebration that’s nonetheless broadly comfy with Trump as its nominee. Till that modifications, he’s the favourite.” • Let the maps start!
Republican Funhouse
“The brand new energy couple taking up Wall Avenue: J.D. Vance and Elizabeth Warren” [Politico]. “Sen. J.D. Vance — the Trump-backing former enterprise capitalist — is attempting to steer Republicans in a brand new trigger: cracking down on huge banks. Following a Senate marketing campaign by which he pledged to prioritize rural America over titans of trade, the Ohio lawmaker is utilizing a seat on the Banking Committee to flex his populist bona fides, teaming up with Democrats together with Sens. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Dick Durbin of Illinois on payments that the trade’s largest gamers despise — whereas championing laws that protects smaller banks. He’s taking a lead function in advancing bipartisan proposals that will penalize financial institution executives when their corporations fail, make it tougher for big lenders to get larger by buying different banks and rein in bank card charges. Alongside the way in which, he’s had some success in recruiting fellow Republicans to the trigger — creating recent complications for large financial institution lobbyists, who’re gearing as much as combat the Vance-backed insurance policies. Warren, who enlisted Vance to construct GOP help for a invoice to claw again compensation from executives of failed banks, stated he’s been “terrific to work with.”
“Freedom Caucus members voted to oust Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene. It’s unclear if it labored.” [NBC]. “Almost two weeks in the past, members of the Home Freedom Caucus took a vote to oust Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., from the ultraconservative group. It’s nonetheless unclear whether or not that vote was profitable. Because the June 23 Freedom Caucus assembly, Chairman Scott Perry, R-Pa., and Greene have had a number of conversations. However a Republican supply conversant in the conversations stated Perry has in a roundabout way notified Greene that she has been kicked out of the caucus…. The caucus voted on Greene, who goes by the nickname MTG, after a few of her conservative colleagues had grown livid over her help for the profitable bid by Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., for speaker and his debt ceiling take care of President Joe Biden. However the closing straw might have been her conflict final month with Rep. Lauren Boebert, R-Colo., whom she referred to as a ‘little b—-‘ on the Home ground.”
Democrats en Déshabillé
Affected person readers, it appears that evidently individuals are truly studying the back-dated put up! However I’ve not up to date it, and there are numerous updates. So I should do this. –lambert
I’ve moved my standing remarks on the Democrat Occasion (“the Democrat Occasion is a rotting corpse that may’t bury itself”) to a separate, back-dated put up, to which I’ll periodically add materials, summarizing the addition right here in a “reside” Water Cooler. (Hopefully, some Bourdieu.) It seems that defining the Democrat Occasion is, actually, a tough downside. I do suppose the paragraph that follows is on level all the way in which again to 2016, if not earlier than:
The Democrat Occasion is the political expression of the category energy of PMC, their base (lucidly defined by Thomas Frank in Hear, Liberal!). ; if the Democrat Occasion didn’t exist, the PMC must invent it. . (“PMC” modulo “class expatriates,” after all.) Second, all of the working elements of the Occasion reinforce one another. Depart apart characterizing the relationships between components of the Occasion (ka-ching, however not fully) these components comprise a community — a Flex Web? An iron octagon? — of funders, distributors, apparatchiks, electeds, NGOs, and miscellaneous mercenaries, with property within the press and the intelligence group.
Notice, after all, that the category energy of the PMC each expresses and is proscribed by different lessons; oligarchs and American gentry (see ‘industrial mannequin’ of Ferguson, Jorgensen, and Jie) and the working class spring to thoughts. Suck up, kick down.
* * * DiFi blazing the path for the youthful technology:
In April 2018, Mark Zuckerberg testified earlier than the Senate’s Judiciary Committee, which Feinstein sat on.
However in Jan 2018, months earlier than she purchased $250,000 in FB inventory.
Solely in Could 2018 did she disclose $META buy.
Feinstein praised $META within the listening to and is up +70%
— unusual_whales (@unusual_whales) July 4, 2023
“How Mayor Adams Took a U-Activate McGuinness Boulevard Redesign” [The City]. Leaving apart the main points, right here is the important thing paragraph: “Many of the staffers had been informed to go away the decision, whereas the mayor and a handful of prime officers remained. After that assembly was over, staffers had been informed town needed to work to give you a ‘compromise proposal.’” • As we noticed yesterday, Adams’ workers actually doesn’t like him.
Realignment and Legitimacy
“Nonreligious Individuals Are The New Abortion Voters” [FiveThirtyEight]. • Useful chart:
Nonreligious Individuals Are The New Abortion Voters
#COVID19
“I’m in earnest — I can’t equivocate — I can’t excuse — I can’t retreat a single inch — AND I WILL BE HEARD.” –William Lloyd Garrison
Assets, United States (Nationwide): Transmission (CDC); Wastewater (CDC, Biobot; contains many counties; Wastewater Scan, contains drilldown by zip); Variants (CDC; Walgreens); “Iowa COVID-19 Tracker” (in IA, however nationwide knowledge). “An infection Management, Emergency Administration, Security, and Common Ideas” (particularly on hospitalization by metropolis).
Lambert right here: Readers, thanks for the collective effort. To replace any entry, do be happy to contact me on the deal with given with the vegetation. Please put “COVID” within the topic line. Thanks!
Assets, United States (Native): AK (dashboard); AL (dashboard); AR (dashboard); AZ (dashboard); CA (dashboard; Marin, dashboard; Stanford, wastewater; Oakland, wastewater); CO (dashboard; wastewater); CT (dashboard); DE (dashboard); FL (wastewater); GA (wastewater); HI (dashboard); IA (wastewater reviews); ID (dashboard, Boise; dashboard, wastewater, Central Idaho; wastewater, Coeur d’Alene; dashboard, Spokane County); IL (wastewater); IN (dashboard); KS (dashboard; wastewater, Lawrence); KY (dashboard, Louisville); LA (dashboard); MA (wastewater); MD (dashboard); ME (dashboard); MI (wastewater; wastewater); MN (dashboard); MO (wastewater); MS (dashboard); MT (dashboard); NC (dashboard); ND (dashboard; wastewater); NE (dashboard); NH (wastewater); NJ (dashboard); NM (dashboard); NV (dashboard; wastewater, Southern NV); NY (dashboard); OH (dashboard); OK (dashboard); OR (dashboard); PA (dashboard); RI (dashboard); SC (dashboard); SD (dashboard); TN (dashboard); TX (dashboard); UT (wastewater); VA (dashboard); VT (dashboard); WA (dashboard; dashboard); WI (wastewater); WV (wastewater); WY (wastewater).
Assets, Canada (Nationwide): Wastewater (Authorities of Canada).
Assets, Canada (Provincial): ON (wastewater); QC (les eaux usées); BC, Vancouver (wastewater).
Hat tricks to useful readers: anon (2), Art_DogCT, B24S, CanCyn, ChiGal, Chuck L, Festoonic, FM, FreeMarketApologist (4), Gumbo, hop2it, JB, JEHR, JF, JL Joe, John, JM (10), JustAnotherVolunteer, JW, KatieBird, LL, Michael King, KF, LaRuse, mrsyk, MT, MT_Wild, otisyves, Petal (6), RK (2), RL, RM, Rod, sq. coats (11), tennesseewaltzer, Utah, Bob White (3).
Keep secure on the market!
Maskstravaganza
Truthfully, I’m beginning to suppose that our solely resolution might be some form of huge religious awakening:
bonus: our sufferers are sometimes 70+ years previous
— margaret (she/her) (@margaretforreal) July 4, 2023
No teachings of any main faith or any ethical philosophy I do know of would approve of that nurse’s query, or the logic that led them to ask it. It’s surprising.
Eventually, we will see individuals’s arms once more:
I feel if surgeons simply wipe their arms on their shirts we must be good to go.
Let’s reside life.
— Jonathan Mesiano-Crookston 🌬️🔅#COV1DisAirborne (@jmcrookston) July 5, 2023
Covid is Airborne
“Results of Corsi-Rosenthal packing containers on indoor air contaminants: non-targeted evaluation utilizing excessive decision mass spectrometry” [Nature]. From the Summary: “Utilizing a pure experiment, we sampled indoor air earlier than and through set up of CR packing containers in 17 rooms inside an occupied workplace constructing. We measured VOCs and SVOCs utilizing gasoline chromatography (GC) excessive decision mass spectrometry (HRMS) with electron ionization (EI) and liquid chromatography (LC) HRMS in damaging and optimistic electrospray ionization (ESI). We examined space depend modifications throughout vs. earlier than operation of the CR packing containers utilizing linear combined fashions… We used [non-targeted and suspect screening analysis (NTA and SSA] to exhibit that .”
Testing and Monitoring
“Evolution of the Pulse Ox” (PDF) [Chest]. “We’re additionally excited to announce that the Nationwide Coronary heart, Lung, and Blood Institute has lately launched a Small Enterprise Innovation Analysis proposal (PHS2023-1 NIH/NHLBI Subject 114). The Small Enterprise Innovation Analysis provides two phases of funding to develop a novel pulse oximeter for sufferers prone to desaturation, together with these recovered from COVID19. It should be wi-fi and movement insensitive, and should interface with cell gadgets to make userfriendly knowledge obtainable throughout train, actions of every day residing, or sleep. This can assist lower limitations of entry to pulse oximeter info by permitting steady, at-home, and unsupervised monitoring. The proposal additionally stresses the significance of topic variety in measurements to keep away from systematic error in people with darker pores and skin tones.” • That is nice. I might additionally file this beneath “Search for the Helpers!”
Transmission
Simply to hammer on airline journey as soon as extra, requoting Taleb from Hyperlinks final week:
Systemic Threat of Pandemic by way of Novel Pathogens – Coronavirus: A Notice (PDF) Joseph Norman, Yaneer Bar-Yam, Nassim Nicholas Taleb. From 2020, explicated right here at NC, nonetheless extremely germane. “It is going to value one thing to cut back mobility within the quick time period, however to fail accomplish that will finally value all the pieces—if not from this occasion, then one sooner or later.”
More true phrases–
“Dispersal patterns and affect of air journey through the world growth of SARS-CoV-2 variants of concern” [Cell]. The Highlights:
International phylogenetic evaluation reveals dispersal of VOCs alongside worldwide flight community
Omicron unfold to 5 occasions extra international locations inside 100 days of emergence than different VOCs
Delta and Omicron dispersed from secondary hubs throughout occasions of accelerating air journey
Extremely related international locations had been main world and regional exporters of VOCs
Useful maps:
See additionally “COVID-19 and Class in the USA” [Naked Capitalism] and “How the Virus Gained” [New York Times]. The next will not be about Covid per se, however is related to airline dealing with of biohazards typically–
“Airline passenger finds aircraft ground soaked in blood” [CNN]. “However what [Habib Battah] did discover beneath the cat carriers was a moist stain on the ground – about 20 inches lengthy and extensive, he says. He flagged down a passing flight attendant. ‘I stated it smells like merde – s**t. She handed me moist wipes. I began wiping and it was crimson – blood crimson. And it saved developing crimson. I used to be like, ‘What the hell is that this?’ I simply wished to see what it was. After some time, one of many flight attendants stated, ‘You’d higher go wash your arms, and listed below are some gloves.” As Battah was cleansing, the flight attendant had handed the message on to her coworkers, and the captain was radioing Paris, asking what on earth was the blood crimson stain beneath seats 30A and 30B. The information got here again from Air France HQ: it was human blood. The day earlier than, on a Paris -Boston flight, a male passenger had suffered what Battah says the crew referred to as a ‘hemorrhage.’ [Why? ‘Tis a mystery!] The passenger had survived, and the captain of that flight had requested that the realm be cleaned for the plane’s subsequent flight again to Paris – however seemingly the cleaners had forgotten in regards to the ground.” Oh. Additionally: “The truth is, the diarrhea might have been extra hazardous than the blood. [Dr Richard Dawood, specialist in travel medicine at London’s Fleet Street Clinic] says that cleansing diarrhea with out disinfecting it – as Battah ended up doing within the galley, close to the meals preparation space – can ‘aerosolize’ its particles.” • Oh, swell. (There’s a homily on hand-washing within the piece, however nothing on aerosols.) Good factor it wasn’t ebola….
An infection
Superspreading occasions at out of doors live shows:
I am unable to discover a correct quotation but, however I will spotlight this anyway:
Marzán-Rodríguez et al. “A COVID-19 Tremendous Spreader Occasion Related to an Out of doors Music Live performance—Puerto Rico, December 2021.” Puerto Rico Division of Well being.
≥3,118 Omicron instances in two Dangerous Bunny live shows. https://t.co/MG2vW5N4hH pic.twitter.com/P42pdLhGBG
— midnucas #FueraLUMA 🇵🇷 (@midnucas) April 23, 2023
For instance:
For this reason we will’t have good issues, and why we’re nonetheless the place we’re after over 3 years pic.twitter.com/5QU5BPmrNf
— Jess (@MeetJess) July 6, 2023
“One thing Terrible”
Lambert right here: I’m getting the sensation that the “One thing Terrible” is likely to be a sawtooth sample — variant after variant — that averages out to a completely excessive plateau. A lot of exceptionally nasty sequelae, probably deriving from immune dysregulation (says this layperson). To which we would add mind harm, together with character modifications therefrom.
* * * Anecdotal knowledge, however lots of it:
Minimizers at all times level to one thing you may see, that’s fast, like faculty closing. They by no means level to something you can’t see, and is long-term; like mind harm in youngsters.
Elite Maleficence
“Acquired COVID from a beloved one who was at work? Their employer owes you nothing, California court docket guidelines” [CalMatters (cinta)]. “A Bay Space woodworking worker caught COVID on the job and introduced it house through the top of the pandemic. His spouse contracted the sickness and her signs had been extreme – at one level, she wanted a respirator to breathe. However she can not declare employees’ compensation accidents from the an infection, the California Supreme Courtroom dominated in the present day in reply to questions from a federal appellate court docket, as a result of whereas doing so could be an ethical good, that good is outweighed by the potential flood of litigation that will pressure companies to shut, tie up courts and ship business insurance coverage charges skyrocketing. ‘,’ affiliate justice Carol Corrigan wrote within the ruling. ‘These and different coverage issues lead us to conclude that employers don’t owe a tort-based responsibility to nonemployees to forestall the unfold of COVID-19.’ It was the second main loss for California staff searching for compensation for COVID infections handed to members of the family. Final yr, a longtime worker of See’s Candies misplaced a employees’ comp declare after she contracted COVID and handed it to her husband, who died. Staff’ comp is inherently a discount, Corrigan wrote in a unanimous opinion: Workers get some assure that they’ll be paid within the occasion of an damage suffered on the job, regardless of whether or not they had been at fault, and employers get to restrict the quantity and extent of that compensation.” • tl;dr: Dangerous for enterprise.
Case Information
NOT UPDATED From BioBot wastewater knowledge, June 29:
Lambert right here: Slight uptrend, confirmed by airport wastewater (and native wastewater samples in California). Absent a brand new variant to race although the dry tinder, I don’t see an oncoming debacle even with July 4 journey. However loads of individuals will nonetheless get sick (once more).=
Variants
From CDC, July 8:
Lambert right here: EG.5 transferring like a bat out of hell, exhibiting unactionable nature (uselessness) of those CDC two-week-lag charts (right here, and in positivity, too). They’re not even performative!
From CDC, June 24:
Lambert right here: Undecided what to make of this. I’m used to seeing a brand new variant take down the beforehand dominant variant. Right here it seems to be like we’ve got a “tag workforce,” all working collectively to chop XBB.1.5 all the way down to dimension. I certain hope the volunteers doing Pangolin, on which this chart relies upon, don’t all transfer on the inexperienced fields and pastures new (or have their entry to services reduce by directors of unwell intent).
CDC: “As of Could 11, genomic surveillance knowledge might be reported biweekly, based mostly on the supply of optimistic check specimens.” “Biweeekly: 1. occurring each two weeks. 2. occurring twice every week; semiweekly.” Seems to be like CDC has chosen sense #1. In essence, they’re telling us variants are nothing to fret about. Time will inform.
Covid Emergency Room Visits
NOT UPDATED From CDC NCIRD Surveillance, July 1:
NOTE “Charts and knowledge supplied by CDC, updates Wednesday by 8am. For the previous yr, utilizing a rolling 52-week interval.” So not your entire pandemic, FFS (the implicit message right here being that Covid is “identical to the flu,” which is why the seasonal “rolling 52-week interval” is suitable for eachMR SUBLIMINAL I hate these individuals a lot. Discover additionally that this chart exhibits, a minimum of for its time interval, that Covid is not seasonal, regardless that CDC is attempting to get us to consider that it’s, presumably to allow them to piggyback on the prevailing institutional equipment for injections.
Positivity
NOT UPDATED From Walgreens, July 5:
5.7%. Large leap, although absolutely the numbers are nonetheless very small relative to June 2022, say.
From CDC, June 19:
Lambert right here: That is the CDC’s “Traveler-Primarily based Genomic Surveillance” knowledge. They are saying “maps,” however I don’t see one….
Deaths
NOT UPDATED Iowa COVID-19 Tracker, June 28:
Lambert right here: The WHO knowledge is nugatory, so I changed it with the Iowa Covid Information Tracker. Their technique: “These knowledge have been sourced, by way of the API from the CDC: https://knowledge.cdc.gov/NCHS/Situations-Contributing-to-COVID-19-Deaths-by-Stat/hk9y-quqm. This visualization updates on Wednesday evenings. Information are provisional and are adjusted weekly by the CDC.” I can’t appear to get a pop-up that exhibits a complete of the three causes (prime proper). Readers?
Whole: 1,168,485 – 1,168,414 = 71 (71 * 365 = 25,915 deaths per yr, in the present day’s YouGenicist™ quantity for “residing with” Covid (fairly a bit increased than the minimizers would really like, although they’ll discuss themselves into something. If the YouGenicist™ metric retains chugging alongside like this, I could should determine that is what the powers-that-be contemplate “mission achieved” for this explicit tranche of loss of life and illness).
• “The pandemic’s true loss of life toll” [The Economist]. “These knowledge clarify that covid-19 has led to the deaths of much more individuals than official statistics counsel (see our briefing). Measured by extra deaths as a share of inhabitants, lots of the world’s hardest-hit international locations are in Latin America. Though Russia’s official loss of life tally means that it has protected its residents tolerably properly, its numbers on whole mortality suggest that it has actually been hit fairly arduous by covid-19. Equally, we estimate that India’s loss of life toll is definitely within the hundreds of thousands, relatively than the tons of of hundreds. On the different finish of the desk, a handful of nations have truly had fewer individuals die through the pandemic than in earlier years. Though excess-deaths statistics are probably the most complete measure of the human value of covid-19, they’re solely loosely tied to the quantity of people that have been contaminated with SARS-CoV-2. As a result of the virus is a lot deadlier for older individuals than it’s among the many younger, loss of life tolls are closely influenced by the age construction of a rustic’s inhabitants. ” • Yikes:
Extra Deaths
Extra deaths (The Economist), July 7:
Lambert right here: That is now being up to date every day. Odd. Primarily based on a machine-learning mannequin. (The CDC has an extra estimate too, however because it ran ceaselessly with an enormous typo within the Legend, I figured no one was actually it, so I bought rid it. )
Stats Watch
Employment Scenario: “United States Unemployment Charge” [Trading Economics]. “The unemployment price within the US decreased barely to three.6 p.c in June 2023, which is decrease than Could’s seven-month excessive of three.7 p.c and according to market expectations. The jobless price has fluctuated between 3.4 p.c and three.7 p.c since March 2022, indicating a persistently tight labor market and permitting the Federal Reserve the flexibleness to proceed elevating rates of interest as a method to fight inflation.”
Tech: “Twitter Star Journos ‘Cautiously’ Transfer Over to Threads” [Daily Beast]. “It’s a side of social media that different journalists should undertake and broaden upon in an effort to survive in a aggressive area, stated Taylor Lorenz, a tech columnist for The Washington Publish. In her protection of the content material creation area, Lorenz (roughly 349,000 Twitter followers, 46,300 Threads followers) has been an early adopter of assorted Twitter options since Musk’s acquisition of the platform final November. She stated the loss of life of Vine (paradoxically, a Twitter-owned app) in 2017 compelled her topics, together with YouTube superstars MrBeast and Logan Paul, to study to diversify their audiences—a lesson reporters may gain advantage from. ‘Journalists have been so overly depending on Twitter,’ Lorenz stated. ‘That’s been a nuke legal responsibility for them for a very long time. The loss of life of Twitter is educating journalists that you must diversify your viewers. You need to have a approach to attain your readers straight, simply being a bit of extra on the market on social platforms and never placing your eggs in a single basket.’ Lorenz, as produce other journalists who spoke to The Day by day Beast, stated she doesn’t remorse the period of time and power she’s dedicated to Twitter. The platform allowed her to have interaction straight along with her viewers, serving to form story angles and determine new sources she in any other case wouldn’t have discovered. However even earlier than and through Musk’s possession, Twitter’s standing as a web-based watering gap has since been diminished, she stated. ‘I actually do really feel like Twitter has form of abdicated its function because the city sq. of the web,’ Lorenz stated. ‘It’s simply not that anymore, and I feel we’re form of determining the place the subsequent place is.’” • Wholesale censorship by the organs of state safety isn’t the very first thing I consider after I hear the phrase “city sq..”
Tech: “You may’t put up a**, Threads is doomed” [TechCrunch]. “Within the 24 hours because it launched, Threads has doomed itself to being a vanilla platform the place manufacturers can thrive, however shitposting flounders. It’ll by no means be a real Twitter rival with such uptight moderation and no assure of anonymity. Threads, like Fb, is for customers who in all probability wouldn’t have used Twitter anyway.”
At this time’s Concern & Greed Index: 81 Excessive Greed (earlier shut: 78 Excessive Greed) [CNN]. One week in the past: 83 (Excessive Greed). (0 is Excessive Concern; 100 is Excessive Greed). Final up to date Jul 7 at 1:35 PM ET.
Guide Nook
“The place be your jibes now?” [London Review of Books]. “As I learn, I believed Wallace will need to have been taken by one thing quite simple, the smallest sensual truth: that as an IRS employee you’re issued a brand new social safety quantity, in essence a brand new identification, an opportunity to begin over. The previous quantity, the previous life, ‘merely disappeared, from an identification standpoint’. An entire novel might take flesh from that truth, one in regards to the concept of bureaucratic identification versus particular person identification: recollections, moms, sideburn phases, the way in which we see ourselves. That we’re, at our core, an individual; within the mattress of our household, a reputation; and out on this planet, a quantity. After all, as so typically with Wallace, on precise investigation this seems to not be true. The actual fact withdraws itself, and solely the epiphany stays. Why did he flip to it? As a result of it was not possible, in all probability – simply as Infinite Jest had been to him fifteen years earlier. And when he took on the not possible e book, one thing generally occurred to him: a run, a state of stream, a pure streak. As those that are vulnerable to them know, these simulate actual residing, which we’re one way or the other barred from in any other case. ‘I’m deep into one thing lengthy,’ he wrote to Pietsch in 2006, ‘and it’s arduous for me to get again into it after I’m pulled away.’ He developed a behavior of not leaving the home, in case he would possibly write that day. ‘As soon as after I pressed him,’ Pietsch stated, ‘he described engaged on the brand new novel as like wrestling sheets of balsa wooden in a excessive wind.’ As he writes in one among his most sometimes tall-tale essays, ‘By-product Sport in Twister Alley’, he was, as a ‘near-great’ junior tennis participant, at his best in dangerous situations. In fiction, he creates them; he serves himself sleet, hail, solar within the eye, all for the possibility to play by means of them.” • I did learn Infinite Jest; terriffic portrait of Boston AA. However….
Zeitgeist Watch
“The Unusual, Contagious Historical past of Bulimia” [New York Magazine]. From 2017, nonetheless germane. “Using the practice house later that afternoon, I mull over the mechanisms that enable distinctive individuals to share common expressions and related empathetic responses to at least one one other. Automated attunement guides us to unintentional mirroring of ideas, behaviors, and emotions, phenomana that share a language perceptible on a stage of the invisible, unknowable unconscious. I contemplate the findings of Brenner-Liss, who like others, trusts that consciousness is a vessel for therapy and remedy. But, as Russell and Baker found, consciousness will exacerbate a social contagion occasion, the identical approach that spreading data about bulimia helped to triple the frequency of recent instances in 10-to-39-year-old ladies between the late eighties and early nineties. The speed dipped a bit as therapy caught up with the sickness, however the quantity rose steeply once more in 1992, shortly after Princess Diana publicly disclosed her battle with bulimia. Her revelation introduced large consciousness to the situation. It corresponded each with an uptick in individuals searching for therapy for the primary time, in addition to an explosion of recent instances because the unusual contagion unfold farther than ever. There’s no simple reply right here, sadly. Stopping a social contagion generally means utilizing instruments of remission and transmission, exploiting a remedy that additionally spreads the illness. Finally, it’s a numbers recreation: avoid wasting, lose others, and hope towards hope that in the long run we come out forward.” • “Social contagion” is actual. Price studying in full.
Class Warfare
“The MTV technology’s unemployment downside” [Politico]. “Staff born between 1964 and 1980 — these at present aged 44 to 59 — characterize ‘successfully all the improve’ in America’s unemployed inhabitants over the past half yr, in accordance with analysis by Glassdoor’s Chief Economist Aaron Terrazas. As of Could, these employees represented roughly 1 / 4 of these unemployed, in comparison with lower than 20 p.c in late 2022. And it’s taking these employees for much longer to search out new jobs. ‘I fear about Gen Xers who had been laid off and have both voluntarily or involuntarily taken a very long time to search out new jobs,’ Terrazas, a former Treasury official, stated in an interview. ‘Perhaps that’s as a result of they’ve cushions the place they’ll afford the posh of discovering a superb match. Perhaps it’s as a result of they’re simply not discovering good matches.’”
Information of the Wired
“Protesters are disabling robotaxis with site visitors cones” [Metro UK]. “A gaggle of activists in San Francisco have been disabling driverless taxis by putting site visitors cones on their hoods. The group, which calls itself the ‘Week of Cone’, is protesting the unfold of robotaxi providers within the metropolis. What began with a now-viral prank on Twitter and TikTok has gained help amongst residents who’re sick of the automobiles malfunctioning and blocking site visitors. The group’s technique of turning off the robotaxis is easy. They place a site visitors cone on the automobile’s hood, which triggers the automobile’s sensors to suppose there’s an impediment. The automobile then stops and refuses to maneuver till the cone is eliminated.”
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