By Lambert Strether of Corrente.
Bird Song of the Day
From Ethopia. I thought cranes would have more interesting calls than they do, but they all honk in more or less the same way.
#COVID19
At reader request, I’ve added this daily chart from 91-DIVOC. The data is the Johns Hopkins CSSE data. Here is the site.
I feel I’m engaging in a macabre form of tape-watching. All the charts are becoming dull — approaching nominal, if you accept the “new normal” of cases, for example.
Still whoops. I guess we’ll see if Biden abandoning masks provides sufficient incentive.
“Nearly 3 in 5 Unvaccinated Adults Say a Big Financial Incentive Would Sway Them to Get a COVID-19 Shot” [Morning Consult]. “57% of unvaccinated adults said a $1,000 savings bond would sway them to get a COVID-19 shot, while 43% said as much about a smaller $50 reward.” • Quite a spread.
“They Haven’t Gotten a Covid Vaccine Yet. But They Aren’t ‘Hesitant’ Either” [Amy Harmon and Josh Holder, New York Times]. Actual reporting:
According to a new U.S. census estimate, some 30 million American adults who are open to getting a coronavirus vaccine have not managed to actually do so. Their ranks are larger than the hesitant — more than the 28 million who said they would probably or definitely not get vaccinated, and than the 16 million who said they were unsure…. If the attention has centered on the vaccine hesitant, these are the vaccine amenable. In interviews, their stated reasons for not getting vaccines are disparate, complex and sometimes shifting….
They are, for the most part, America’s working class, contending with jobs and family obligations that make for scarce discretionary time. About half of them live in households with incomes of less than $50,000 a year; another 30 percent have annual household incomes between $50,000 and $100,000, according to an analysis of the census data by Justin Feldman, a social epidemiologist at Harvard. Eighty-one percent do not have a college degree. Some have health issues or disabilities or face language barriers that can make getting inoculated against Covid-19 seem daunting. Others do not have a regular doctor, and some are socially isolated.
“I know you’re trying to find out the reason people aren’t doing it,” Mr. Grayson said on a recent afternoon. “I’m going to tell you. People are trying to take care of their household. You don’t have much time in the day.”
“What might help this situation,” added Mr. Grayson, “is if it was like Domino’s Pizza and you could call someone and say, ‘Can I get my shot?’ And they come give it to you.”
The PMC didn’t give consideration to “equity” in vaccine delivery for working class people as such. Shocker!
Another case where — hear me out — talking to people (here a focus group of 20 young women) produced interesting results:
14/ Not having to wear a mask was NOT an incentive to get vaccinated.
One woman said that she didn't mind masking and socially distance indefinitely.
Several felt that they had CONTROL over mitigation measures like masking & social distancing but not over COVID vaccines.
— Céline Gounder, MD, ScM, FIDSA (@celinegounder) May 13, 2021
I pulled out this Tweet because it’s relevant to today’s masking discussion, but the whole thread is worth reading.
“Ohio’s million-dollar idea: Lottery prizes for vaccinations” [Associated Press]. “Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine unveiled a lottery system Wednesday to entice people to get COVID-19 shots, offering a weekly $1 million prize and full-ride college scholarships in a creative bid to overcome the vaccine hesitancy that remains a stubborn problem across the nation. The move comes as governors, health officials and community leaders are coming up with creative incentives to get more shots in arms, including insider access to NFL locker rooms and an Indianapolis 500 garage, cash incentives, various other promotions.” • Maybe listen to Mr. Grayson?
Case count by United States regions:
Continued good news. I have added an anti-triumphalist black line; as far as cases go, we are at the same level of the first wave.
The Midwest in detail:
Continued good news. Looks like I can abandon this chart when Michigan is no longer an outlier.
Big states (New York, Florida, Texas, California):
Continued good news.
Down, except for the West, now flat.
DIVOC-91 no longer updates hospitalization and death so I went and found some substitutes; neither provide regional data.
Hospitalization (CDC):
I have helpfully added an anti-triumphalist black line.
Deaths (Our World in Data):
I have helpfully added an anti-triumphalist black line.
Politics
“But what is government itself, but the greatest of all reflections on human nature?” –James Madison, Federalist 51
“They had one weapon left and both knew it: treachery.” –Frank Herbert, Dune
“They had learned nothing, and forgotten nothing.” –Charles Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord
Biden Administration
“CDC lifts indoor mask guidelines for fully vaccinated people. What does it actually mean?” [USA Today]. “The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced new masking guidelines Thursday that carry welcome words: Fully vaccinated Americans, for the most part, no longer need to wear masks indoors…. Health experts say the new CDC guidelines may encourage more people to get vaccinated by enticing them with tangible benefits, but it may also add to the confusion of mask etiquette in the United States.” • I have to say, it’s not clear to me how this decision was made. The science did not change. So far as I can see, the numbers show there’s plenty of virus out there, vaccination or no (and that’s leaving aside the entry of variants of concern like B.1.617). Just like school re-opening, the idea appeared in the zeitgeist, and then was a done deal. Science, apparently, did not enter. That makes me nervous, since it feels to me like an emanation from the hive mind of the PMC, the Democrat base, who Thomas Frank labels “the fuck-up class,” and for good reason. Hence, I’ve file this under “Biden Administration,” not “Health Care,” since I assume that Biden was the driver, not CDC, and that the reasoning was political. Political, as for example:
America has been waiting for this day for a long time pic.twitter.com/aiTiAIZzxk
— Jen Psaki (@PressSec) May 13, 2021
UPDATE And political, as for example:
Biden speaks about new CDC guidance that fully vaccinated Americans no longer need to wear masks in most situations: "We've had too much conflict, too much bitterness, too much anger, too much politicalization of this issue about wearing a mask. Let's put it to rest." pic.twitter.com/YWHb1Am7Wk
— CBS News (@CBSNews) May 13, 2021
Put it to rest by abandoning it?
“Remarks by President Biden on the COVID-19 Response and the Vaccination Program” (transcript) [Whitehouse.gov]. • Policy aside, this is a very good speech, albeit very Biden. This caught my eye:
I need to single out one more group to praise: the American people. The American people. For more than a year, you’ve endured so much and so many lost jobs, so many businesses lost, so many lives upended, and so many months that our kids couldn’t be in school. You couldn’t see your friends or family. All the moments that mattered so much — from birthdays to weddings to graduations — all postponed.
I’ve been whinging about this, so — you’re welcome!
What Biden said (1):
The rule is now simple: get vaccinated or wear a mask until you do.
The choice is yours.
— President Biden (@POTUS) May 13, 2021
I’m extremely dubious about this. Since when is it a good idea to frame a shift in public health policy as a transaction? I can hear Trump saying this (try it in Trump’s voice).
What Biden said (2):
Folks, if you’re fully vaccinated — you no longer need to wear a mask.
If you’re not vaccinated yet — go to https://t.co/4MYpWqXVVo to find a shot, and mask up until you’re fully vaccinated. pic.twitter.com/qcyG2WyCG2
— President Biden (@POTUS) May 13, 2021
What the CDC said:
UPDATE: If you are fully vaccinated against #COVID19, you can resume activities without wearing a mask or staying 6 feet apart, except where required by federal, state, local, tribal or territorial laws, incl. local business and workplace guidance. More: https://t.co/FJMon7WlFO
— CDC (@CDCgov) May 13, 2021
You’ll notice this is not what Biden said.
I am with Fiegl-Ding on this. I don’t get “Why now?,” I don’t see the science, and I don’t see health benefits:
2) This is too risky in my opinion. asymptomatic transmission efficacy is only in the 70s-80s even for the best vaccines. Much lower for others and for some variants. https://t.co/DnQPASecqj
— Eric Feigl-Ding (@DrEricDing) May 13, 2021
Notice that the CDC — before the masking announcement — stopped tracking “breakthroughs” in vaccinated people. You’d think that, if we were going to make an enormous policy change on masking, we’d want more data, and not less.
The new mask guidelines also shove enforcement right back onto frontline essential workers:
Now the federal govt is basically saying, "If you still have to wear a mask, it's b/c that business told you to…get mad at them"
…and people absolutely will.
They're specifically creating incentive to eradicate masks (literally the opposite of what we should be doing).
— DP'd by Moderna (@angryblkhoemo) May 13, 2021
UPDATE And essential workers aren’t happy about that:
Union representing 1.3 million grocery and retail workers calls CDC mask announcement “confusing” pic.twitter.com/oD476kVoX8
— davidshepardson (@davidshepardson) May 13, 2021
UPDATE And how do we back out if there’s another resurgence in the Fall?
The @CDCgov guidance can be debated as to whether it was too soon, should've ben tailored to local epidemiology, etc. But MY biggest concern is the missed opportunity to communicate how fluid the situation still is & manage expectations about possible return to "abnormalcy" 🧵(1/ https://t.co/NmuUHCeLup
— Josh Barocas, MD (@jabarocas) May 14, 2021
* * * “Jared Bernstein on Taxes, Spending and Inflation” (transcript) [Tracy Alloway and Joe Weisenthal, Bloomberg]. (I like their Odd Lots podcast.) Bernstein: “Which is that when comes to managing inflation, that is first and last, beginning and end — I want to just really emphasize this, the remit of the Federal Reserve, not the White House. Clearly we are tracking, carefully-monitoring inflationary developments, and by the way, not just in the data, which we’re doing with the regular data, the high-frequency data, but also anecdotes — I mean, this is something we’re tracking extremely carefully. But when it comes to managing price pressures, that’s the job of the Federal Reserve. So that kind of independence of the Fed is a huge value of, of course, our administration.”
Republican Funhouse
UPDATE The World’s Greatest Troll™:
This post by Trump was shared in the big QAnon influencers Telegram group — a group with 215,000 of Trump's most hardcore supporters. How do we think it will be received there? pic.twitter.com/mjY8MucBXe
— Arieh Kovler (@ariehkovler) May 14, 2021
Trump, hilariously, fails to mention either Big Pharma or scientists in general. With those qualifications, Trump is again in the mode of saying the unspeakable truth. (Also, do read the responses from Q. To me, it looks like with this statement, Trump (a) is betting on continued vaccine success, and (b) throwing Q under the bus. Presidential timber?)
Stats Watch
Manufacturing: “April 2021 Headline Industrial Production Improves” [Econintersect]. “The headlines say seasonally adjusted Industrial Production (IP) improved month-over-month – and remains in expansion year-over-year due to comparison to the pandemic lockdown period one year ago. Our analysis shows the three-month rolling average improved.”
Inflation: “April 2021 Import Year-over-Year Inflation Grows To +10.6%” [Econintersect]. “Year-over-year import price indices inflation grew from +7.0 % to +10.6 %.”
Retail: “Headline Retail Sales Unchanged in April 2021” [Econintersect]. “Retail sales was little changed according to US Census headline data. The three-month rolling average improved. Year-over-Year growth also significantly improved mostly due to comparison to the lockdown period one year ago.”
Employment Situation:
ICYMI: the disincentive explanation for the April drop-off in payroll gains fails to fit the sectoral data. If a $300 weekly supplement was having that effect, we should see it more visibly in low-wage sectors, but we don't. Mid- & high-wage sectors account for bulk of slowdown pic.twitter.com/A6QLRHjWnF
— Skanda Amarnath ( Neoliberal Sellout ) (@IrvingSwisher) May 12, 2021
Commodities: “Colonial Pipeline did pay ransom to hackers, sources now say” [CNN]. “The company halted operations because its billing system was compromised, three people briefed on the matter told CNN, and they were concerned they wouldn’t be able to figure out how much to bill customers for fuel they received. One person familiar with the response said the billing system is central to the unfettered operation of the pipeline. That is part of the reason getting it back up and running has taken time, this person said.” • Validating Zero Day’s suggestion in Water Cooler on 5/10. Now do hospitals…
Commodities: “Citgo secures U.S. government’s second Jones Act waiver amid fuel crunch” [Reuters]. “The Biden administration granted oil refiner Citgo Petroleum a Jones Act shipping waiver allowing it to move fuel between U.S. ports on a foreign flagged vessel, two sources told Reuters on Friday, making it the second company to secure one this week. The waivers are intended to help ease distribution of fuel after a major pipeline serving the U.S. East Coast was forced shut by a cyberattack last week, triggering widespread shortages of gasoline, diesel and jet fuel.”
Shipping: “Mississippi River Reopens to Vessel Traffic in Memphis as Backed Up Barges Top 1,000” [gCaptain]. “The U.S. Coast Guard lifted the waterway restriction on the Mississippi River near I-40 bridge in Memphis, Tennessee after it was deemed safe for vessels to transit beneath the bridge. The Mississippi River is now open to all vessel traffic with no restrictions. As of Friday, there were 62 vessels and 1,058 barges in queue prior.”
Retail: “Walmart to Buy Virtual Fitting-Room Startup to Help Apparel Unit” [Bloomberg]. “Walmart Inc. agreed to acquire Zeekit, an Israeli startup whose technology lets customers try on clothing without ever entering a store’s fitting room…. Shoppers can upload a picture of themselves, or choose a model that best represents their height, shape and skin tone…. As part of the deal, Walmart will halt Zeekit’s work with other apparel retailers, a representative said. It’s unclear exactly when Walmart customers will be able to use the service.”
The Bezzle: Uber:
Uber is not a business in the traditional sense. It's a "bezzle" ("the magic interval when a confidence trickster knows he has the money he has appropriated but the victim does not yet understand that he has lost it").
— Cory Doctorow (@doctorow) May 13, 2021
Nice to see Doctorow (who has been on fire lately) using “bezzle” as a term. There are rather a lot of bezzles about.
Today’s Fear & Greed Index: 40 Fear (previous close: 40 Fear) [CNN]. One week ago: 55 (Neutral). (0 is Extreme Fear; 100 is Extreme Greed). Last updated May 14 at 11:45am.
Health Care
“Where Are We in the Quest for Coronavirus Treatments?” [Bloomberg]. • Dudes. No Ivermectin. Not saying it’s a panacea, but it deserves to be on the list. In fact, the whole idea of repurposing existing drugs doesn’t appear.
“The 60-Year-Old Scientific Screwup That Helped Covid Kill” [Wired]. On the battle to have aerosols recognized as the main mode of Covid transmission. Lots of detective work and twists and turns! Here is one such: “Still, the droplet dogma reigned. In early October, Marr and a group of scientists and doctors published a letter in Science urging everyone to get on the same page about how infectious particles move, starting with ditching the 5-micron threshold. Only then could they provide clear and effective advice to the public. That same day, the CDC updated its guidance to acknowledge that SARS-CoV-2 can spread through long-lingering aerosols. But it didn’t emphasize them.” • Trench warfare, it is. And they’re still screwing it up; recall Biden promoting useless and dangerous Plexiglass barriers the other day, which are no protection against aerosols at all.
“How Did We Get Here: What Are Droplets and Aerosols and How Far Do They Go? A Historical Perspective on the Transmission of Respiratory Infectious Diseases” [SSRN]. Covering the same ground as the previous article, but as scholarship. The Abstract:
The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed major gaps in our understanding of the transmission of viruses through the air. These gaps slowed recognition of airborne transmission of the disease, contributed to muddled public health policies, and impeded clear messaging on how best to slow transmission of COVID-19. In particular, current recommendations have been based on four tenets: 1) respiratory disease transmission routes can be viewed mostly in a binary manner of “droplets” versus “aerosols”; 2) this dichotomy depends on droplet size alone; 3) the cutoff size between these routes of transmission is 5 μm; and 4) there is a dichotomy in the distance at which transmission by each route is relevant. Yet, a relationship between these assertions is not supported by current scientific knowledge. Here, we revisit the historical foundation of these notions, and how they became entangled from the 1800s to today, with a complex interplay among various fields of science and medicine. This journey into the past highlights potential solutions for better collaboration and integration of scientific results into practice for building a more resilient society with more sound, far-sighted, and effective public health policies.
One reason I like the aerosol thought collective is that conspicuously justify meet Mr. Roger’s injunction: “Look for the helpers.” Which WHO and CDC consistently have failed to do.
“A paradigm shift to combat indoor respiratory infection” [Science]. “There is great disparity in the way we think about and address different sources of environmental infection. Governments have for decades promulgated a large amount of legislation and invested heavily in food safety, sanitation, and drinking water for public health purposes. By contrast, airborne pathogens and respiratory infections, whether seasonal influenza or COVID-19, are addressed fairly weakly, if at all, in terms of regulations, standards, and building design and operation, pertaining to the air we breathe. We suggest that the rapid growth in our understanding of the mechanisms behind respiratory infection transmission should drive a paradigm shift in how we view and address the transmission of respiratory infections to protect against unnecessary suffering and economic losses. It starts with a recognition that preventing respiratory infection, like reducing waterborne or foodborne disease, is a tractable problem.” • The stupidest possible outcome is what we forget everything we learned about aersols during the pandemic, so place your bets.
More vaccinated people with asymptomatic infections:
Anecdote….. I do a lot of asymptomatic PCR testing of people in workplaces. The majority of people infected are vaccinated. The big difference is vaccinated people are NOT becoming symptomatic. The million dollar question is can they transmit? CT’s at peak at 25…. so, yes?
— Erin Bromage Ph.D. (@ErinBromage) May 13, 2021
Covid and domestic air travel:
A wonderful map from @PatriciaTreble 's @macleans article on covid spread within Canada via domestic air travel. This is a huge issue for variants, and for risk to the Atlantic and North. https://t.co/ZFU9YsEXIl pic.twitter.com/rL7Cb8ctlx
— David Fisman (@DFisman) May 14, 2021
The Biosphere
“‘Microfarms’ come to South L.A. frontyards, bringing fresh produce to food deserts” [Los Angeles Times]. “The Asante Microfarm is not a vegetable garden for private use, a large urban farm or community garden for a small group of green thumbs. Rather, Hargins has designed an urban farm just big enough to fit in a front yard, real estate most people use for decoration… The crops grow from nutrient-rich sacks of compost and the whole farm is supported by an irrigation system that not only recycles water but uses just 8% of the water previously used for grass. The farm was built using part of a $50,000 LA2050 grant from the Goldhirsh Foundation but will be sustained by subscriptions that cost $36 per month and $43 with delivery. For that, subscribers get a 3-pound mix of greens and vegetables every week.” • This is what to do with front lawns!
L’Affaire Joffrey Epstein
“The Women Who Enabled Jeffrey Epstein” [Politico]. “Dozens of these women worked for Epstein, formally or informally. If you think of this group as a pyramid, at the top sits Maxwell, a longtime Epstein employee and confidante who now stands accused of recruiting minors for Epstein and sex-trafficking a 14-year-old girl, charges she denies. Below her were women Epstein employed as assistants, who allegedly scheduled and managed dozens of minors for Epstein to abuse. There were also women like Oh who brought friends to meet Epstein and received gifts or access to his wealth. These women aren’t household names, even for people following Epstein’s story. But his victims say they were key to grooming and deceiving them and allowing Epstein to operate with impunity. In fact, most of Epstein’s victims were introduced to him through other women, according to the 12 victims I’ve spoken with over the past year and a half, as well as dozens of allegations in court and in the media. Often, victims say, it was the women around Epstein who tried to make them feel comfortable, as if what they were experiencing was normal or harmless.”
Guillotine Watch
“Former investment executive gets 3 months in college scam” [ABC]. “A former private equity executive who cofounded an investment fund with U2′s Bono was sentenced Wednesday to three months in prison for his role in the college admissions bribery scheme. William McGlashan, Jr. appeared at times to fight back tears as he told the judge he was deeply sorry for his actions and was ready to serve his punishment behind bars. ‘In a world where fairness is in short supply what I did is totally unacceptable,’ McGlashan said in the hearing held via videoconference. ‘I’m totally committed to using my resources and time to making a positive impact in the world the rest of my life,’ he said. McGlashan, a former TPG Capital senior executive, admitted in February to paying $50,000 to have someone secretly correct his son’s ACT answers. Among more than 60 letters of support for McGlashan filed by his lawyers was a letter from McGlashan’s son, who told the judge that nothing other than ‘parental insanity’ explains his father’s involvement in the scheme.”
Class Warfare
“Dissatisfied retail workers are leaving the industry because of abusive customers and low pay, and that’s making the labor crunch worse” [Business Insider]. “The final straw for leaving the job, she said, was realizing how her pay compared to the increasingly pricey drinks Starbucks sells. ‘The thing that really radicalized me was that our starting wage ($9) is less than one average customer’s ticket,’ she told Insider.” • Now do surplus value.
“Culture, Politics, and the Unreal Economy” [The Bellows]. “How should contemporary materialism address this contradiction? For starters, the cornerstone of Marx’s teaching—the famed theory of surplus value, or otherwise known as the principle of self-ownership of one’s labor—has been rendered preposterous in today’s growing economy of fragmented gig work, crowdsourced content cults of Patreon and Onlyfans, and the left’s leviathan pact with institutional media, higher education, and well-salaried professional-managerial coalitions. As independent contractors, gig workers and freelance content creators technically “control” and “own” their labor. This makes their central grievance precarity, and not “exploitation” in the strict Marxian sense, which refers to the extraction of surplus value by an employer.” • Hmm. See above.
“The Republican theory of unemployment is classic Marx” [Ryan Cooper, The Week]. “[I]nstead of calling for better wages, or setting up child care systems, or anything else, Republicans are trying to fix the problem by starving out people on unemployment — taking their money so they will have no choice but to immediately look for work, and capitalists will once again have the industrial reserve army at their beck and call. It’s like conservatives have been reading Marx not to learn why they should overthrow the bourgeoisie, but as a sort of manual for how best to exploit the working class.”
“Judge approves UAW watchdog, triggers referendum vote on direct elections” [Detroit News]. “A federal judge judge Wednesday appointed a government watchdog to oversee the corruption-plagued United Auto Workers on Wednesday, one day after former President Dennis Williams was sentenced to 21 months in prison. The move by U.S. District Judge David Lawson to appoint New York attorney Neil Barofsky is part of a broader deal reached between federal prosecutors and the UAW to settle a long-running criminal investigation targeting the union. The appointment sets in motion a process that could give UAW members the first chance in the union’s history to directly elect new leaders. Within six months of selecting the monitor, the UAW must hold a referendum vote on amending the constitution to allow for the direct election of the UAW’s executive board.” • Neil Barofksy.
“Space tourist guides and lab meat scientists: These are the jobs of the future” [CNBC]. “The data was cited in Bank of America’s “Future of Work” report, published Wednesday, which looked even further ahead, considering the creation of new roles. It referred to World Economic Forum findings which showed that nearly two-thirds of children now starting school will work in jobs that have not even been invented yet. The Bank of America strategists who authored the report pointed out that many next-generation technologies, such as artificial intelligence, the internet of things, augmented and virtual reality, are still in their infancy. However, they argued it would be key to anticipate the jobs needed to work in these areas of innovation so people can ‘adapt their skillset with the relevant education for the workplace of tomorrow.'” • “Infancy” is rather begging the question, no?
News of the Wired
“Compsci boffin publishes proof-of-concept code for 54-year-old zero-day in Universal Turing Machine” [The Register (R)]. “[Pontus Johnson, a] computer science professor from Sweden has discovered an arbitrary code execution vuln in the Universal Turing Machine, one of the earliest computer designs in history – though he admits it has ‘no real-world implications.'” • Oh? More: “‘The universal Turing machine is generally considered to be the simplest, most abstract model of a computer,’ wrote Johnson in his paper. Through exploiting the Minsky-spec UTM’s lack of input validation, he was able to trick it into running a program he had put together.” • Rather like a SQL injection. More: “Philosophically, Johnson’s vuln (which has been assigned as CVE-2021-32471) raises deeper questions for hardware and firmware designers alike to think upon, he told us: ‘Some people say that security needs to be built in from the start; you can’t add it later. But in this case, all the mitigations of this that I could think of, they need to be add-ons, you can’t build it into this machine. And if this is the mother of all computers, then it seems to me that you cannot build security in from the start.'” … Professor Alan Woodward of the University of Surrey [commented:] ‘It seems to support the adage that nothing is totally secure once it’s actually implemented.'” • Seems pretty real-world to me…
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126 comments
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Sharing this paper because I think the commentariat would appreciate seeing the CDC calling its shot.
If they’re correct, it looks like we should see nearly zero US cases by mid July. I really hope they’re right.
Thanks, that’s good. (I recall, at some point, simply drawing a line with the existing slope on the case chart until it hit the time axis. IIRC I had late June, but wev. (Dangerously, this conceals hot spots, e.g. airports and resorts, which I’d speculate is where we will see renewed spread if it happens (and if it is detected, the CDC having decided not to report on asymptomatic transmission by the vaccinated)).
The flu also disappeared in late spring/summer.
And came back as a Christmas Present.
It is too early to celebrate. The current level of infections over the Winter season signals success.
> It is too early to celebrate.
Well, that’s why I keep drawing helpful black lines on the charts
Agreed. In my region, Corona was non-existent last summer. Cases started to climb late September (schools?, return from vacations?, indoor socialising?) and we were in lockdown by December. Reason – less shared indoor air during summer?
That said, as far as I can make out, there is not really a consensus as to why the seasonal flu is seasonal.
Super interesting, thanks for posting this. puts the CDC announcement into more context.
Why are they treating the disease as if its not really a threat anymore? Because they have data saying it won’t be, and that we are on our way to almost zero cases.
Interestingly, the paper hedges on NPIs (non Pharma interventions, ie, masks and distancing):
Administration seems to have read everything but the caveats in the conclusion.
I am flashing on a couple of things. First I remember a long time Buddhist and friend’s reaction to what I would now probably call a PMC buddhist in vogue acquaintance recounting how they chanted for the lucrative new job…successfully. Later my friend told me of their dismay that someone so misunderstood the point of Buddhism and thought of it as a magical means of achieving western success. The other being of my time looking at A Course in Miracles, another thing often mistaken for a magical think of things in the right way and it all comes to you method. (If you really look at it carefully it is about changing your perspective, your expectations AND your reactions to the world.)
There is some deeply magical thinking going on regarding people, viruses, and the effectiveness of ignoring bad news. They want it to be over, they have some data and a model that says it could be, so it is. Forget the details that point otherwise.
Yep and as Lambert says below, it’s not even data, it’s a model.
it’s embarrassing
> Because they have data saying it won’t be, and that we are on our way to almost zero cases.
As I read it, they don’t have data. They have models.
A less risky approach would be to define a limit (say, zero) and unmask after we reach the limit, plus a decent interval.
I mean, this is the agency that butchered test kits, masking, aerosols, and VAMS. They have form and it’s bad.
good point about data! but models are good enough for most people.
Anyway. It’s a super strange agency.
I think it should be disbanded and reformed, with attention to a revised mission statement. It’s clearly struck out in a negative direction.
The paper’s summary:
Non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) = “public health policies, such as physical distancing and masking”.
Relaxing mask wearing at this juncture seems overly optimistic according to the models in this paper.
> Relaxing mask wearing at this juncture seems overly optimistic according to the models in this paper.
Indeed, triumphalist! They couldn’t wait a few weeks? They couldn’t want until the case count hit zero? Why now? It’s cray cray.
If that is true, then why not keep wearing masks until that point. Then they can say “Look, we won, take off your mask!”
Instead we get this wishy washy impossible to enforce policy. Oh and now the teenagers in schools are taking hold if this. Biden and Co could have waited til the end of June
I guess they got a huge “donation” from Pharma.
This makes sense as business development at this crucial juncture in the infection curve: perilously close, and on a trajectory for eradication.
Don’t want that: that would be communism.
As far as I know, based on conversations with local NIH and NIOSH buddies, and dealing with the HVAC side of things professionally, the mask relaxation is coming because of summer.
It’s a combination of people assuming fewer things will be done inside and that mask compliance will be harder to maintain. So they’re getting ahead of the mob to look like they’re leading it, while hoping it doesn’t tank progress. They might be right that this is a good risk for them to take. Anecdotally I can say there are a hundred or so local parents who have been fuming about their kids having to wear masks outside while at school. I think we’ve reached the end of any good will and public compliance with this policy. I have no doubt I will still see people masked despite this latest change in guidance. But I do believe the number I see will be close to the number of people who would have happily worn masks regardless of CDC advice during this time.
” So they’re getting ahead of the mob to look like they’re leading it, while hoping it doesn’t tank progress.”
remind me why these people are 1. getting paid so handsomely and 2. aren’t in an asylum/home somewhere….
and :
“I have no doubt I will still see people masked despite this latest change in guidance. But I do believe the number I see will be close to the number of people who would have happily worn masks regardless of CDC advice during this time.”
that’s whatr i just saw on our twice a month run to chemo in san antone…with usual stop in to a truck stop, a giant hardware store, a target and the fredericksburg heb(real grocery store) on the way back.
most were unmasked…despite the continued presence of the signage requiring them.
employees were all wearing them, properly.
i suspise that the masked were mostly people either with some medical problem, or the familia thereof.
it’s texas…so few True Believers in Demparty orthodoxy.
If it makes you feel any better about it, most of the real workers and their bosses in these public health related agencies aren’t paid that well. The better paid ones are the consultants they hire.
> As far as I know, based on conversations with local NIH and NIOSH buddies, and dealing with the HVAC side of things professionally, the mask relaxation is coming because of summer.
Right! Memorial Day weekend is the first travel day of the summer, and it’s important to get as many people as possible driving*, flying, eating at restaurants, and interacting with extended families unmasked.
NOTE * Also why Biden acted so fast on the the Colonial pipeline?
Great stuff. I’ve been gleaning things from NC all day and posting them over at Daily Kos (a favored pastime of mine), where there is considerable confusion over and questioning of the wisdom of administration’s current guidelines, which the CDC paper you linked would seem to deem inadvisable. Whatever happened to “follow the science?”
> High vaccination coverage and compliance with NPIs are essential to control COVID-19 and prevent surges in hospitalizations and deaths in the coming months.
So whatever Biden thinks CDC told him, it has nothing whatever to do with the CDC modeling report, because what he did doesn’t follow their recommendations. (There are a lot of qualification further down in the speech — the cynical would say ass-covering — but the message Biden (and Psaki) wanted to deliver is clear from their tweets, and that message is at the top of the speech.) So the reason Biden acted when he acted is unknown.
Appreciate your coverage of this, Lambert, and the whole NC commentariat for their thoughts. I have like an hour a day for news, so can’t bring myself to read probable life draining sinkhole articles from proven poor MSM outlets, so miss stuff like the rare actually good NYT article you mention above.
There’s a newly converted worker co-op t-shirt business up in Lambert’s neck of the woods:
https://bangordailynews.com/2021/05/12/news/midcoast/employees-purchase-iconic-maine-t-shirt-company/
The uses of color and layout for the cluster designs is quite beautiful … but begins to appear formulaic after scanning the retail catalog. That is disturbing from the standpoint of Art and a worker co-op. I like the water-based inks. But screening T-shirts is — at least as far as I know — a relatively low capital easy-in, easy-out business and unless a buyer is hardcore “Buy American” it is a business that cannot compete with foreign replicators — e.g. the Disney [I assume Disney gets its printing done outside the U.S.] and Walmart printed T-shirts [Same assumption based on its consistency with other Walmart inventory]. The “Earth Art” designs are interesting but hardly compare with what I regard as far more sophisticated patterns and designs by the Indians Tribes of the Pacific Northwest Coast or the dream art of the Australian Aborigines.
I would hope that a worker co-op were more creative than Liberty Graphics appears at a quick look. Further thought suggests the co-op purchased a space in marketing T-shirts and not a printed T-shirt producing company per se.
Trader Joe’s says fully vaccinated customers don’t have to wear masks in stores
Snip: “Trader Joe’s is keeping many of its pandemic policies in place, such as wellness checks for employees and spacing people out within its stores, according to the company’s statement. The grocery chain will not request or require proof of vaccination from its customers, Trader Joe’s spokesperson Kenya Friend-Daniel told CNN Business in an email. She noted that employees still have to wear masks at this time.”
One funny consequence is that people with masks will get mistaken for employees. Happened to me at a redneck riviera Marriott the other day, and I was in a bathing suit reading my phone at the time! I was surprised by this, and happy to share my knowledge of the pool hotel distribution process, but in the future I might have some fun with it and give incorrect advice or wrong directions.
Please don’t. Ultimately some hotel worker or group of staff will get yelled at (or worse) because their boss thought they were screwing up, when it wasn’t their fault at all. Have the grace to quietly set aside your questioner’s assumption that you must be staff because you match their mental image of what staff look like, and say ‘I don’t know, I’m just a guest here. You might ask at the front desk.’
why so nice?
i tell em:” i own the gowaddamm place, stop making stupid assumptions and being so sheeplike.”
unexamined assumptions are one of our biggest problems.
they should be shamed.
Hip hip hooray!
I haven’t read it yet, and yes, it’s the NY Times, but the headline is definitely an attention-grabber:
Meet the Nun Who Wants You to Remember You Will Die
For some reason, nuns going “metal” seems really appropriate these days, and I whole-heartedly approve of it.
—–
Also stumbled across this science story in the Asia Times, which sounds pretty cool and also sort of crazy (Giant lasers! Summoning matter from the chaos of space!)
I’ve never thought of trying an experiment trying to run the mass-energy equivalence in reverse:
China on brink of laser-matter breakthrough
Hey, we’re halfway on the way to replicators!
my first thought, as well…but:jeebus!: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hohlraum
anything bigger than bench size should prolly be done somewhere else, in my humble opinion.
like Titan.
some idiot will weaponise it if we don’t get the replicator down, first.
Talk about timing, right as I opened this water cooler up and was scrolling through the masking talk, I got an email from our HR department. We had another co-worker test positive for Covid. But not to worry. They’ve been out of this office since midday yesterday and anyone who’d been in contact with them has been notified. I’ve been back in the office for a month, which was absolutely as long as they’d let me work from home. Since then, they’ve been mask optional and maybe half of us are wearing masks.
I’m vaccinated, but I’m really trying to make it through this without getting Covid.
The new mask rule is Biden’s Mission Accomplished banner. Couldn’t even wait six months to declare victory.
But while we all remember that as a huge gaffe from W, it amazingly didn’t stop him from being re-elected, so maybe they figure why not?
Also amazingly, it’s now 18 years later, and we still aren’t out of Afghanistan or Iraq. I hope this announcement is not a realization that we’ll never overcome COVID either, so they’d better call it good before that sinks in.
And they’ve already calculated an “acceptable” level of casualties just as they have every year for those first two fiascos. It’s just to be a normal part of life.
And oh, BTW, there’s an “or else” attached to Biden’s invitation. Otherwise, they’re idiots to think this new policy will get anti-vaxxers to relent. After all, they weren’t wearing masks anyway.
…and there’s a lot of money to be made on booster shots.
i’m sure bill gates wants to normalize genetic manipulation…
It takes real effort be cynical enough…
And oh, BTW, there’s an “or else” attached to Biden’s invitation. Otherwise, they’re idiots to think this new policy will get anti-vaxxers to relent. After all, they weren’t wearing masks anyway.
Is the brunch crowd expected to turn around and now proudly display their unmasked vaccine virtue? I’m pre-vaccine, but when I’m post-vaccine, I’ll be wearing a mask until new cases in the county are new arrivals. Or maybe a few weeks after that.
That’s a good analogy, exactly how it appears to me.
Some vaccines prevent infection, the ones currently available don’t. Elementary logic, so one can only surmise this decision is a political one. Just another form of denialism.
‘The new mask rule is Biden’s Mission Accomplished banner’
Gawd – you’re right. That is exactly this. And like Lambert says, you can read Biden’s words with Trump’s bludgeoning style of speaking. Good thing that there will be no variants of this virus on the way to blow this all up. And trying to starve people to make them go back to work? That is something that Trump would do. In fact, a lot of what Biden does is just continuing Trump’s policies and it is like having Trump still in power – but without all the crazy tweets.
is biden even on twitter, or does he have people for that?
i honestly didn’t think to look.
‘is biden even on twitter’
I think that he still sends telegrams.
yeah, hunter gets his allowance through western union
> is biden even on twitter, or does he have people for that?
I don’t know how we could tell; it’s rather like the Turing test, isn’t it?
Trump also had people, but there were plenty of tweets from the Trump account that were the true, unbuttoned Trump.
On a visceral level one almost wants this to blow up in their faces, but the reality is that Biden, Harris and the rest of our overlords are scheduled for variant-specific boosters in July/August, and will have them immediately available at any future moment, and if they are unlucky enough to actually get sick despite that, there will be no expense spared for their treatment
While if the summer is relatively calm, there is not going to be a huge urgency in the general population to be vaccinated for the winter.
And once again it is going to be one set of people doing the suffering and dying and another set enjoying the “governing” of the crisis, with almost no overlap between them.
But where we are right now, without another mass vaccination campaign starting in September, it looks likely the winter of 2021-22 will be a lot worse than the one of 2020-21 (unless we go under lockdown again, which is hard to see how it will happen). Moderna’s recent paper on the variant-specific boosters was very clear — there is no protection against P.1 and B.1.351 beyond 6-8 months even if you are fully vaccinated, and who knows what is brewing under the surface in India, South America and Africa right now. The Indian variant is actually not that far off in terms of immune evasion, the one that has emerged from Columbia has not been tested yet, but based on the sequence, it should be at least as immune evasive as P.1, and a month and a half ago the most mutated strain known so far popped up from random screening of Tanzanian travelers in South Africa.
There are still many more long months of Southern Hemisphere winter for the incubators of new strains In Africa and South America to be running full steam (and both Manaus and South Africa are entering a third wave now — we will see what comes out of that) and then there is, of course, India — whose current strains actually first appeared in 2020, it’s just that for some mysterious reason they did not blew up until very recently. There is no knowing what is evolving during the current surge there with hundreds of millions infected…
It will be “managed” though — the death trackers have disappeared from the mainstream media websites, and the media has never been so fully captured before while it had a political incentive to report bad news last year, which it does not have now. If you don’t report it, it has not happened. Expect to see states greatly reducing their reporting of cases and deaths too. Some have already started in fact And the US can easily tolerate a few hundred thousand deaths each winter (it already did so without blinking once), probably more.
As long as the truly important people are safe, and it can be kept out of sight, it is not a problem.
> But where we are right now, without another mass vaccination campaign starting in September, it looks likely the winter of 2021-22 will be a lot worse than the one of 2020-21 (unless we go under lockdown again, which is hard to see how it will happen).
Of course, I hope you are wrong. But we have seen the same pattern many times: The numbers go down, and then government, pressured by business, relaxes prematurely, and then the numbers go up again. This looks like the same pattern to me (all the more because Biden’s policy decisions
seems to bewas not based on anything CDC published (i.e., the May 5 model paper).Worse, as you point out, Biden has managed to discredit non-pharmaceutical interventions by adopting conservative framing that they infringe on “freedom” (“The right to infect shall not be infringed”). So I don’t know how many arrows are left in the quiver for an upsurge.
> the US can easily tolerate a few hundred thousand deaths each winter (it already did so without blinking once), probably more
Well, it’s good to know we can take casualties, especially in defense of values like “I’m gonna live my life” (which Biden also adopted).
> The new mask rule is Biden’s Mission Accomplished banner. Couldn’t even wait six months to declare victory.
Well urged.
Y-e-e-e-c-c-c-h-h-h!
Podcast:
Investigative Reporter Julie K. Brown exposed Jeffrey Epstein’s crimes to the world. Now his survivors are fighting for the truth. This season, host Tara Palmeri follows the women who are making their own justice
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/broken-seeking-justice/id1478460758
Re that I 40 bridge over the Mississippi–gateway to the West. I’ve driven over it many times. Who knew I was taking my life in my hands? The river may be open again but they say the bridge repair will take months (there is a nearby alternative for a different interstate).
I don’t normally think of a bridge feeling one way or another but that one felt unsafe to me for the last 30 years. Crossed it a couple of hundred times and it always gave me pause.
US warns extremists may strike as virus restrictions ease
A national terrorism alert issued Friday warns that violent extremists may take advantage of the easing of pandemic restrictions to conduct attacks.
The alert does not cite any specific threats.
may take advantage
potential danger
could create
may seek
Without naming any specific potential targets
warned of the lingering potential for violence
may embolden extremists
The department did not cite any specific plots then either
heightened threat environment
it believed would persist for weeks
The National Terrorism Advisory System bulletin issued by the Department of Homeland Security is an extension of one issued earlier this year in the wake of the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol. That alert was due to expire Saturday.
This new alert expires Aug. 13.
https://apnews.com/article/health-coronavirus-pandemic-government-and-politics-7788f527ec6c429be2cdf4392f473157
Relax, get a jab and a beer, have fun. But also be very scared. Until Aug 13, at least. We’ll update you then. Now get out there and live, dammit!
Fear and consumption.
IIRC, an old Robin Williams joke about terrorism warnings was “We don’t know when. We don’t know where. We don’t how. But it will be very baaad for you!”
Maybe they can bring back George Bush’s colour coded terror alerts again. It will be just like old times again and should become very useful in next year’s midterms-
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homeland_Security_Advisory_System
I had to access the API for that stupid thing for some websites back in the day. Users had the very latest updates on our color level. ‘Wrote Once, Never Maintained’
Why doesn’t Biden do a vaccinometer?
It’s an algo, chill.
No Turing test needed.
I have yet to see anyone having a drink with the straw poked thru the mask.
Was the liability waiver extended to mom and pop biz?
In the Gounder twitter thread:
Saying the quiet part out loud, eh?
Not so sure about this: “We need to do more to take down misinformation.” I would start with official misinformation. The idea of controlling the Internet to ban all misinformation is Utopian. Honest authorities honest, on the other hand, strikes me as a more realistic goal.
Just speculation here, but could the increasing amount of give-a-ways be encouraging people to hold off on getting the vax who may be in search for a better deal? You have to figure that the people most frightened of contracting COVID already received their jab, leaving the openly hostile and the more ambivalent who will get the vax because it is the thing to do. With the ever increasing free-bes, maybe that will create its own disincentive.
I began thinking along those same lines when I read the first announcement of incentives to get vaccinated. (They began with a free coffee or ice cream cone, but now they’ve grown to a chance for $1M)
I did get vaccinated but received no ‘reward’ for it.
I feel that incentives will only encourage people to hold off should we need boosters, or if another pandemic comes along during our lifetimes. Yet another reason for people to be hesitant, even if they do feel it’s important to be vaccinated. As you said–they may hold out for better incentives.
Could future conversations become, “On, no. I’m not ready to be vaccinated until I qualify for one of those million dollar incentives”, while people lay dying around them? Society must be bribed to do the right thing for the good of mankind?
Sometimes (too often), we humans just suck.
if people thinking “I will get vaccinated and this is over for the rest of my life”, they are in for a rude awakening.
The optimistic scenario is that we will need biannual boosters.
The more likely one is annual boosters.
It is not out of the realm of possibilities it will be semiannual at least for some time.
I’d like some Medicare for All with that jab.
My dream would be that we keep strict mask mandates until we have M4A. That’d put pressure on getting M4A done.
It’d make most sense, medically: ensuring people are as safe as we can be, until we have health care to be treated, should we get sick.
But they don’t care about us.
Gorgeous scilla. I am reminded when I get home I want to plant some!
I was thinking Chionodoxa forbesii, Glory of the Snow.
Agree with Chionodoxa
Which is a Scilla now.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scilla_sect._Chionodoxa
Colonial Pipeline: Is paying off extortion the same as paying a bribe ? or paying terrorists ? Isn’t a crime being committed if money is used like this ?
I am not a lawyer, but would like to hear from someone who is on this….
The news is attempting to frame the extortionists as terrorists, so that implies a yes to paying terrorists.
Anyway with the reveal that the only broken bit was the billing system, I think it’s worth recognising that it was the Colonial Pipeline Company that was holding the east coast to ransom, not the hackers. Colonial could have let the oil flow and found another way to manage cost (including asking the government to stump up), but they instead shut down supply.
I work at a restaurant. It is going back to 80% capacity. All the staff has gotten vaccinated. I’m very concerned about getting covid and passing it to my children. I had explained months ago to my co-workers you can/will still get covid with vaccine. They didn’t really pay attention then but half the yankees’ coaching staff getting covid caught their attention. Our restaurant is large capacity and and about zero ventilation. I’m very concerned by the fall, a new (worse) variant will arrive and another outbreak will happen.
I’m very concerned by the fall, a new (worse) variant will arrive
Kids are dirty little creatures, and they aren’t vaccinated. It seems like a small thing, but adults wearing masks to set an example for kids instead of Biden’s mindless smile bs is what being an adult is supposed to be.
Despite everyone in the house now having their first vaccine shot we’re going to keep using masks until the daily case numbers get down to days and days of zero. It’s getting better here in BC but only relatively as the third wave and new variants mean that “only” 600 cases in a 24 hour period is good news.
I suppose we can thank the US for seriously stress-testing the “vaccines or broke” strategy for dealing with Covid. If the case numbers there keep declining as they have been even as all other precautions are dropped it would indicate that the vaccines are going to be effective. Hell of a way to do an experimental test though.
Since we are now officially ignoring a portion of new infections you might want to make your time measurement period weeks or even months when looking at the US.
Variants could be a big punch in our stomach as we encourage tourism and ignore mitigation methods. Just saying…
Sorry to hear this. I wonder whether, in our fabulous democracy, we will ever be able to hold to account all the authorities responsible for reopening if it turns out to be basically a massacre. Also, let’s not lose sight of those who manage to survive covid infection but only with major and possibly lifelong damage to vital organs.
To AM, regarding today’s plantidote –
“Daffodils or jonquils”? Yes. Botanically they are in the same genus – Narcissus (just to muddy the water a bit more). There are over ten horticultural ‘divisions’ of Narcissus, based on particulars of color, petal count, habit, blooming time, and other plant geek details. Jonquils, for example, are smaller in stature than what are termed ‘daffodils’, have smaller flowers and foliage, and in the old days jonquil cultivars were almost exclusively yellow. As of 2008 there were over 27,000 cultivar names in the International Daffodil Register maintained by the Royal Horticultural Society. Old school hybridizing of Narcissus is fairly easy, the seed relatively easily germinated, and one can have flowering-size bulbs in as little as three years, and enthusiasts have been facilitating Narcissus sex for a very, very long time.
Perhaps the reason then is outside of science and health. Summer approaches, lots of money to be spent on vacation and tourism. Throughout all of this I have thought of this scene from Jaws:
It’s a Great White eating machine!
I caught a fleeting mention on TV, perhaps from Walensky, of a recent accumulation of new evidence suggesting that unmasking is safe. No details given, and the questioner didn’t follow up. Another noble lie? Anyway, everyone in our household is fully vaccinated and still masking.
In fact, I’m beginning to think long-term. Suppose this stuff never really goes away and continues to kill and cripple (long covid) tens or hundreds of thousands a year in the US. How can we individually or in small communities jury-rig a decently rewarding life under such circumstances?
“small communities” can be forgiving of strange idiosyncrasies, after sufficient time.
these folks out here took around 23 years to accept me, long haired poetry spouting crazy-eyed and prone to giving history sermons, and all.
if i feel the need to mask up long term, they’ll get over it.
numerous people have been wearing masks during cedar season for years.
only made a big deal out of this latest thing due to trump, et alia.
unless he successfully emerges from his lair, the animus will fade away.
the truly stupid anyway will be the last to let it go.
The Seychelles fully vaccinated 63% of the population (the US is at 47% with one does and 35% fully vaccinated right now), then reopened fully, internally and for tourists.
The result?
Nobody since the beginning of the pandemic had ever had 300/100K per day positives. Not even 200, not even 150, the worst waves have been around 100-120 (at least officially, it certainly did happen in some places where testing was low)). The Seychelles is at 320/100K this week.
Yes, it’s Coronavac + AstraZeneca, not Pfizer+Moderna, but still.
Similar situation in the Maldives — vaccinated 45% of the population, opened up, right now at 215/100K cases a day.
Nobody has any intention to care about whether you live a decently rewarding life. Nobody has any intention to care about whether you live, period.
This is the most depressing part about the whole COVID story — class warfare moved from the realm of economics towards direct physical extermination. And yet the masses not only did not realize what happened, but are cheering for the fact that the virus is now endemic and the US will not do anything about it beyond vaccination. By extension, the same thing is happening in most of the rest of the world.
The proper reaction was to realize that this is the ruling class telling everyone “you are physically disposable and we will readily end your life if it suits our purposes”, and to act accordingly, but not such awareness developed — the propaganda machine did its job marvelously.
My impression is that, right about now, we’re hitting the “vaccine tipping point”—when the vaccine supply exceeds the demand.
This change in policy seems (to me) to reflect some idea (warranted by the data or not) that either the vaccines are sufficiently protective against infection and transmission to warrant the change in policy or, whether or not the vaccines are sufficiently protective to warrant that change, the change in policy provides at least an incentive to get vaccinated (i.e., it addresses the question “If I still have to wear a mask after I get vaccinated, what’s the point?”*) or, perhaps, both.
*Not that I’m endorsing the question by stating it. I think avoiding serious illness, hospitalization or death would provide sufficient incentive but maybe that’s just me.
“Notice that the CDC — before the masking announcement — stopped tracking “breakthroughs” in vaccinated people. You’d think that, if we were going to make an enormous policy change on masking, we’d want more data, and not less….”
That’s so every time a case, like nearly 10 fully vaccinated Yankees organization (players included) test positive for Covid, itwill have to be a media report that will be called anectdotal.
Everybody has to watch out for themselves or you are just an itty bitty stat in the minds of quants…not human.
Re: the CDC mask rule.
I spoke to a friend of mine that is unvaccinated shortly after the CDC announced the no mask guidance. He said it was BS and the CDC just did it to try and force people to get the vaccines and it was a government plot. His views are usually a bit out there so I tried to move on while sort of agreeing that the CDC’s guidance was not pure science. He asked me, “So you basically agree with me that the CDC is full of [familyblog] and can’t be trusted.” I had to grudgingly agree.
I also spoke with a bunch of my PMC colleagues that are the exact opposite in terms of vaccines and politics. All of them said they thought the CDC’s guidance was pure politics as soon as they heard it. While supportive of the idea of getting more vaccines in arms, they wondered whether people would just lie.
The most striking thing is that no one seemed to have any faith that the CDC was doing this based on “science.” The media tends to claim all unvaccinated are Trump loving trolls and people continuing to push for masks and resisting school openings as liberals unwilling to get past the pandemic. It’s neither. A large number, possibly large majority of Americans do not believe that the CDC is a credible, non-political body. This is possibly an epic own goal that the agency will not recover from if there is a later surge.
> A large number, possibly large majority of Americans do not believe that the CDC is a credible, non-political body.
Of course the CDC is political and always was. Not necessarily in the way Trump politicized it for his personal aggrandizement, but in the way that its mission is to impact public health, not any particular person’s health, with minimal disruption to the status quo.
Inevitably they do cost-benefit analyses but few of us would consider our own death to be an acceptable cost.
It’s apples and oranges.
It really does sound like some Cass Sunstein “NUDGE” Bs for sure.
What is annoying about this announcement is that the CDC doesn’t explain what evidence it is using. It is like Moses with the Ten Commandments.
They are trying to get everyone to take their masks off, so that the facial recognition surveillance cameras everywhere will be able to identify people land track their movements again.
I’m going to keep wearing my mask, thank you. Fuck Biden and his surveillance state.
I like wearing the mask for the simple reason of being harder to recognize. And it also frees me from that uniquely American expectation to smile my way through the day.
In other countries, notably Russia, the American smile culture is considered to be weird.
i’m still doing the bandannas i started this with, circa february, 2020.
i like the outlaw aspect of it…and it gels with my general appearance of erudite barbarian/person who lives in a hedgerow.
full effect acts as a reliable barrier between myself and strangers.
(i understand the limitations of this filtration device, but reckon that it’s good enough for cleaning the chicken house, and i get closer to chickens than i ever get to nonfamilia humans)
Thank you. I have had really aggressive demands to smile on cue, hate hate hate it. Glad to hear it’s not a global phenomenon.
I also love being able to curse free-roaming clods under my breath while out and about. Will miss the masks when they go away.
RE: “The Women Who Enabled Jeffrey Epstein” [Politico].
Talk me down, but I still maintain that Giselle Mawell was the protected one. It’s J.E. that went to jail twiice and died under mysterious circumstances.
So what’s really going on?
I won’t talk you down. Study her father’s history.
Oh man, Israel again…
Recent studies would strongly suggest the Corona flu should be thought of as an epithelial disease — a disease that deleteriously affects the circulatory system. These findings remind me of something I read decades ago — in the old Atlantic Magazine (?) — suggesting — I believe — that if cancer or heart disease were genetic they should long ago have disappeared along with those who carried their causative genes [I am not sure how to think about type-1 diabetes]. Perhaps it were not unwise to fund studies of the long-term affects from the various “benign” flus and colds Humankind endures. The chicken pox and herpes simplex certainly suggest the desirability of funding such studies … and I believe NO research contracts should be allowed in funding such studies. We have a surfeit of dubious statistics but a great starvation of testable causal explanations.
I remain confounded by the inability of our public health authorities [lower case may too little deprecate their title] to identify and characterize super spreaders. Why is it so difficult to test for the Corona virus? Is there no way to target some molecule that would bind to the Corona virus ex vivo? Is there no way to tie that molecule to a molecule that phosphoresces in UV light. I recall seeing two different saliva testing techniques that used the approach in this sketch. Is there no way to test for the numbers of Corona virus a person might be producing? Is there no way to study how the numbers of Corona virus particle might relate to someone who is a superspreader? Is there no way to test subjects who have been vaccinated to determine whether they might still be producing and spreading the virus … and might still be experiencing the life shortening, or at least life complicating. reductions in the elasticity of their circulatory system?
Could we actually have eliminated a lot of respiratory diseases already with more ethical HVAC design?
Low point on who knows what.
First Rahm, now Neera:
I just knew we would never get rid of Neera or Rahm. Might have been Neera that suggested the new CDC guidelines… you know to help business This person has been wrong about everything forever! I also saw John Pedesta who has seemingly been in hiding giving Biden advice about not working or waiting on the GOP. He already knew he had Neera in the white house to make sure Biden stopped anything progressive from happening.
This was very bad news.
It was too much to hope that she would accept that she had worn out her welcome outside of the Democratic inner circle bubble and ride off into the sunset. But I did…
Thanks for reminding me of this woman’s existence. /sarc
well she will be good at scolding and withholding, kind of a nurse ratched sort…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=faeEnoYcT7w
I want my cigarettes!
There’ll be some squabbles of course…
neenerneeenerneener
Get to work serfs!
I have to say, it’s not clear to me how this decision was made. The science did not change. So far as I can see, the numbers show there’s plenty of virus out there, vaccination or no (and that’s leaving aside the entry of variants of concern like B.1.617). Just like school re-opening, the idea appeared in the zeitgeist, and then was a done deal. Science, apparently, did not enter.
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When I worked at the FDA, the phrase (we’ll make a science based decision) was used. It was ridiculous than, and it is ridiculous now. Science can’t make what are moral and legal decisions that reflect the values of the society. Science can be used to rationalize and justify a decision, but you can’t say that the resulting decision of what human action to take is what science would say.
For example, scientifically, how many traffic fatalities (caused by automobiles) should be allowed? I’ll wait – I’m retired, so I have plenty of time – while you go to the great science publication or book that provides the answer….
Later….much later. Now, there may be publications that advocate how many fatalities the US should permit, but the argument is not a scientific argument – it is a legal, or moral, or values argument.
Is the number of fatalities that should be allowed zero? Or some other number? Who and how is that non-Zero number determined? When automobiles were first introduced, any number of drivers and pedestrians were killed by the contraptions. It was not a scientific decision to allow automobiles to continue to operate, even though they obviously killed people. Sure, people can assert cost/benefit analysis is scientific, but I would say any such analysis is chalk full of human value judgements.
So there is no scientific publication that addresses how many people should die by automobile traffic collisions. It is a decision rendered by the societal institutions of law and government and however else people determine mitigation measures for any number of activities, including determining what activities should even be addressed by societal rules.
BTW, say the answer was zero. Even with seatbelts and airbags, that would mean not only a speed limit of zero, but removing all automobiles – lest someone running and not paying attention run into a car sitting somewhere with enough force to kill themselves.
everyone should read this comment–thanks, Dan!
Yes the so called Scientific[tm] reasoning/rational is just ideological symbology embedded into the maths … just as it is with orthodox economics.
skippy
May 14, 2021 at 9:47 pm
If I have said it once, I have said it a zillon times – when people use the market as some kind of euphemism for natural law, it is simply a contrived rationale for the rich running the system to their own advantage. It is not physics, chemistry, or geology (or a 1,000 years ago – God) that permits Zuckerberg and Bezos to be billionaires. It is human VOLITION – laws are written and rules made (OR laws and rules NOT enforced) that advantage the wealthy to become more wealthy.
If the rationale of competition was truly enforced, neither Zuckerberg or Bezos (why was Bezos permitted not to pay state sales taxes? His excuses are laughable) would have amassed such wealth.
There is a major difference between traffic fatalities and infectious disease.
People need to move from one place to another at a speed faster than walking.
There will be a non-zero number of fatalities associated with that, that is correct.
There is absolutely no need for people to be infected with deadly viruses if there is a well established algorithm to be followed for the eradication of those viruses.
GM
May 15, 2021 at 12:11 am
There is a major difference between traffic fatalities and infectious disease.
Certainly there is a difference between traffic accidents and infectious diseases. What I was trying to convey is the tradeoff of risk versus benefit.
So let’s look at HIV. I happened to be at FDA during the AIDS protests. The issue was faster, less rigorous clinical trials to support approval, of the status quo at the time. Protestors thought FDA was hidebound, and they were right to a certain extent. FDA defended itself by saying approving drugs when you really didn’t know how effective they were did aids patients no favors. But there was an irreducible risk to speeding up clinical trials – which had to be balanced against NOT DOING IT FASTER. No amount of data could make that decision – its just data.
People need to move from one place to another at a speed faster than walking.
NO THEY DON’T – for eons, the only locomotion of humans was walking. Your value judgement is that humans have to move faster than walking. The political system agrees with you, EVEN THOUGH it means people will die. (btw, people would die by walking as well)
There is absolutely no need for people to be infected with deadly viruses if there is a well established algorithm to be followed for the eradication of those viruses.
Perhaps there is no “need” but people still get infected with HIV, mostly because people do not follow the precautions necessary to preclude infection. There are several viruses that possibly could be eliminated – but to do that effectively would be quite onerous, and the POLITICAL systems of the world would not implement the necessary measures.
> Science can’t make what are moral and legal decisions that reflect the values of the society.
I should have made my position more clear.
During the Trump administration, the liberal Democrat line was that the CDC had become “politicized,” and that Covid decisions were best based on “the science” (which in practice became whatever Fauci was saying at any particular moment). This was obviously ridiculous, (a) who gave the CDC a Philosopher King license, anyhow, (b) the CDC obviously has political imperatives of its own (not least to evade accountability for its debacles(, and (c) as you point out, in a democracy, “moral and legal decisions that reflect the values of the society” should be political. Point (c) is the important one.
What frosts me is that so far as I can tell, science didn’t factor into Biden’s political decision-making at all (exactly as it did not when he gave his imprimatur to plexiglass screens in schools). As readers point out on this thread, the May 5 CDC model does not justify the policy Biden adopted. So, more Biden Fog™. We have a decision with enormous consequences with no clear understanding of why it was made.
Also, speaking of values, Biden and the liberal Democrats seem to have adopted the conservative position that well-proven public health measures are somehow infringements on “freedom.” That’s going to be fabulously destructive with the next respiratory pandemic, when we don’t have a vaccine, and Biden has managed to discredit workable non-pharmaceutical interventions*.
NOTE * Brilliant framing, since it implies pharma is the default.
Lambert Strether
May 15, 2021 at 2:32 am
I agree with what you say as far as it goes.
(a) who gave the CDC a Philosopher King license, anyhow,
Basically, our political system. During the licensing of the polio vaccine, there was debate about approving a live polio vaccine (versus the inactive). There are mind boggling risks versus benefits. Decisions have to be made…or not made, which is a decision in and of itself.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/307445/
(Advantages and disadvantages of killed and live poliomyelitis vaccines)
Could polio be eliminated from the face of the earth? Scientifically, I believe it is possible. Politically, I believe it is impossible. Because different people have different values.
Also, speaking of values, Biden and the liberal Democrats seem to have adopted the conservative position that well-proven public health measures are somehow infringements on “freedom.”
Because they are.
Going back to AIDS, closing the bathhouses in San Francisco (and other places as well) was a debate about freedom versus harm to the individual AND the community. I think it was irrational to frequent bath houses during the early days of the AIDS epidemic, but the fact that I thought there was only one rational answer doesn’t mean that everybody agrees with me. There was debate to limit individual freedom of movement and association and Sanity prevailed. But in private, there was no way to enforce wearing a condom other than persuasion.
Or take wearing motorcycle helmets – laws and mores evolved to make wearing a helmet mandatory (you know, it is beyond dispute that riding a motorcycle is more dangerous than riding in a car – so WHY is motorcycling allowed?)
Covid milestone – 600,000 U. S. deaths as per Worldometer.
An odd thing about the John’s Hopkins Covid Dashboard site vis-a-vis this site is that the numbers match up in every way with every country or region with the lone exception being U. S. deaths. Odd.
While the US may not be able to have a national strike, may I suggest that everyone keep wearing their masks as a yellow vest style movement saying we don’t trust our government officials anymore? Will the government ever make laws against mask wearing?
They’ll have to pry my mask from my cold, dead face :)
“I’m not really sure what the message is this week, so I’ll just keep wearing my mask around people.”
“Are vaccinated people safe this week or do we have to protect them?”
“I was in early for the shots so now I want to be safe.”
Report back to me when…I don’t know, when it makes sense.
Israeli-Palestinian Strife Widens as Frantic Calls for Calm Go Unheeded
The widening sense of mayhem in Israel and the Palestinian territories came as Israeli airstrikes brought mass evacuations and funerals to Gaza, and as Hamas rockets singed Israeli towns for a fifth consecutive day.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/14/world/middleeast/israel-gaza-west-bank.html
Gaza funerals and mass evacuations are one thing, but singeing towns? Must be a war crime. Israel has a right to exist.
‘Israel has a right to exist.’
Does Palestine? And as a separate State? According to Netanyahu and Israel’s entire political establishment, no.
There’s no chance of a separate state at this point. The “facts on the ground” Israel has intentionally created over the years have eliminated any prospect. Israel and its minions never intended for there to be two states. And you don’t the hear two-state mantra invoked as much as it was even a few years ago. Most know its a non-starter anyway, and now the cat is almost entirely out of the bag.
Entirely agree here. The two State solution is dead. What I don’t understand is what is Israel’s final endgame for those Palestinians in what would amount to a greater Israel. I believe that Israel has need of only several thousand of those Palestinians as cheap labour but what about all those other millions? Where does Israel expect them to go? It won’t be Jordan no matter how many times Israel tries to claim that that should be the designated Palestinian State. Will one day they be expelled like Idi Amin did with Asians in Kenya decades ago? It is obvious that Israeli Arabs are next on the chopping block for expulsion to Palestinian territories but what then?
I don’t know Rev. I don’t know.
I’m going to keep calling and writing my representatives. I had given up on that, but I have to do it for my own psyche at this point. And I’m not going to remain quiet. I’ve become more comfortable talking about Israel. I know the facts, the history, and I recognize how people are trained through years of propaganda to reflexively defend Israel, even when they don’t intend to.
For instance, a common phrase when the subject comes up is something along the lines of, “Well, they’ve been fighting in the Middle East forever.” This isn’t accurate, and I try to introduce some facts about Palestine and Zionist terrorism into the conversation. It’s amazing how many people don’t know about Irgun, the Stern gang, etc. The original terrorists, if you will.
https://www.palestineremembered.com/
> What I don’t understand is what is Israel’s final endgame for those Palestinians in what would amount to a greater Israel
I don’t know if you’ve seen this video, but it’s pretty frightening:
‘I don’t know if you’ve seen this video’
Ohh, yes. I saw that video last year and Abby Martin was not looking for extremists to interview but ordinary people on the streets. Brought back memories that. Back in the late 70s I was in apartheid South Africa for a coupla weeks. Guess who went to the wrong main railway station in Jo’burg and wondered briefly – and in disbelief that this could be so – why I was the only non-black person in sight. I talked to some Afrikaners there who were a lot like some of those Israelis and talked like them about black people but in fairness, a lot of young people I talked to just wanted to be rid of the system.
Israel does not have a right to commit crimes against Palestinians. Israel does not have a right to steal Palestinian land and homes. Israel does not have a right to kidnap and torture Palestinians. Israel does not have a right to assassinate Palestinians. Israel does not have a right to put Palestinians on a “diet” to starve them. Israel does not have a right to discriminate against non-Jews. Israel does not have a right to prevent Palestinians from engaging in economic activity. Zionism does not have a right to go into a foreign land, dispossess the native inhabitants in the name of religious bigotry, and take everything from them that they have spent their entire lives building. Israel does not have a right to exterminate the native culture that has a history and roots going back thousands of years.
Israel is the last chapter of Western colonialism, a mindset that views non-Europeans as subhumans with no legal rights. In this mindset, taking everything from Palestinians is perfectly O.K., because they are not European and have no rights. The Palestinians have tried everything to seek redress from the international community over the routine crimes committed against them every day, so far to no avail, varying from violent to non-violent tactics. Now we are in one of the violent phases and I expect there will be more lecturing to the Palestinians: “Why can’t these defective people use non-violence? Where is the Palestinian Ghandi??”. A few years ago there was a remarkable non-violent protest against the impossible conditions in Gaza which was met with bullets and massive violence, with little complaint from Israel’s apologists.
“The Women Who Enabled Jeffrey Epstein”
‘From schedulers to socialites, they helped keep the late financier’s sex trafficking scheme operating, or helped rehabilitate him after he faced jail time. Now some say they’re victims.’
Yes, they would say that now, wouldn’t they?
Worth noting that virtue is gender-fluid.
Jesus wept. Just came across the following article by Australia’s former deputy chief medical officer saying that COVID-19 eradication is a “false idol” and we just have to get use to it as we open the borders. The last time we had a major outbreak, about 900 people died, States had to slam their borders shut, business were forced to close bringing chaos to the economy and people were forced into lockdown – and this doc says yes, let’s just get use to it? And we didn’t even have the Indian variant on the scene back then. What is wrong with people like these? Seriously, WTF? Is he the sort of people that the federal government in Oz been getting their medical information from? Sorry, but this guy should go and STFU-
https://www.smh.com.au/national/former-deputy-chief-doc-warns-australia-must-reopen-borders-prepare-for-the-return-of-covid-19-20210514-p57s1u.html
He needs to work harder to reach U.S. standards. My favorite was the Texas governor saying old people should be content to die to make it easier for young people. Are we living in a Soylent Green movie?
The medical officer may be correct, though. It may not be feasible to eliminate COVID, as the flu has not been eliminated. Having said that, the anti-COVID efforts so far haven’t exactly been optimal, so we can’t judge what is achievable from the results so far. There is definitely room for improvement, although even countries with a good response are facing problems. I guess South Korea, Vietnam, and New Zealand are countries that can boast good responses.
I shouldn’t have used the word “correct”; just opening the borders does sound weird, like this fellow is tired and wants to give up fighting COVID. I guess I feel pessimistic that COVID will be eliminated.
After futzing about with my yarn diagram and squinting at it from odd angles, I had a thought that I can’t shake, what if the Colonial ransomware debacale was not actually a cyber attack, but a sort of deniable capital strike against gnd/regulation? I know this idea is firmly in the realm of being out there, but is it also possible?
I’m not saying it was jamie dimon, but I’m also not saying it wasn’t jamie dimon…
OK, speaking of Dimon (Demon?), here’s a review of his CEO letter.
Yes, link working… And, in one thrill of my young bloggerhood, NC has actually linked to itssimplerthanitlooks.blogspot.com a while ago. It’s nice to be acknowledged by those you admire.
One other interesting event: After I posted the Dimon review, Google reported my blog to my browsers as dangerous (distributing malware, etc.), which is just silly since it’s a blogger.com freebie, but hey, I guess anyone can rat on a site they don’t like. It’s out of the dangerous category now, but it’s a sobering reminder of how tenuous is our supply of information.
This is the week that showed that government by and for the people is no more. All that matters is corporate profits. An effective comprehensive national public health campaign to eliminate coronavirus is dead and buried.
A conscious decision was made to end masking and social distancing and rely solely on mRNA vaccines to eliminate coronavirus. A second thought or reading the comments above shows that the model is flawed. The decision is ridiculous. The number of new coronavirus cases will never be zero in the USA on October 1, 2021. Coronavirus is endemic in the Americas and actively transmitting itself with no national public health campaign to stop it. Over half of the population is not vaccinated. The black line in the chart above shows the number of cases now is a little higher than the first peak that shut down New York State. Air transport and private jets will bring in new variants plus the ones mutated in the Americas.
Unless all our prayers are answered, when the fourth spike hits next winter, the Biden/Harris Administration will fail like the previous one. The USA will rip apart.
Re the CCs new advice. Now the Defence Department is dropping the requirement for vaccinated troops to be masked because of the new CDC guidelines. That was quick. Maybe a little too quick-
https://www.military.com/daily-news/2021/05/14/dod-drops-mask-requirement-fully-vaccinated-troops-staff.html
RE: “Culture, Politics, and the Unreal Economy”
“…the manner in which economic activity is no longer driven by concrete commodities or tangible use-values, but rather by collective affect and social relation..”
Whew…I thought problems like the Suez back-up and the Mississppi River bridge issue and a whole host of infrastructure projects were something to worry about.
Just need an NTF of a bridge and a canal and maybe the problems like those are an easy fix.
I guess I’m hallacinating all the things arounds my house that must have been manufactured by armies of people from somewhere….
It’s going to get real for silly mofos soon enough…
I thought cranes would have more interesting calls than they do, but they all honk in more or less the same way.
Even with the falsetto at 0:12? :)