2:00PM Water Cooler 12/12/2023

By Lambert Strether of Corrente.

Bird Song of the Day

Arctic Loon, Finnmark, Norway. “Large expense of open water on the river. Other Behaviors: Counter Singing.”

* * *

Politics

“So many of the social reactions that strike us as psychological are in fact a rational management of symbolic capital.” –Pierre Bourdieu, Classification Struggles

Biden Administration

‘I’m a Zionist’: Biden Promises to Back Israel Until They ‘Get Rid’ of Hamas. But There Is Fine Print [News18]. “‘I ran into trouble and criticism when I said a few years ago that you don’t have to be Jewish to be a Zionist, and I am a Zionist. We continue to provide military assistance until they get rid of Hamas. Were there no Israel, there wouldn’t be a Jew in the world who is safe. As I said after the attack, my commitment to the safety of the Jewish people, and the security of Israel, its right to exist as an independent Jewish state, is unshakeable,’ Biden said…. ‘But, but, we have to be careful — they have to be careful. The whole world’s public opinion can shift overnight. We can’t let that happen,’ Biden said, referring to the growing death toll in Gaza.” • Fine print, but you need a magnifying class to read it.

“Biden’s State Dept. paid NewsGuard to tar organizations like ours” [New York Post]. “NewsGuard bills itself ‘The Internet Trust Tool’ and purports to offer ‘transparent tools to counter misinformation for readers, brands, and democracies,’ which admittedly sounds impressive. But what is the likely outcome when the US government funds this corporation through something called the Global Engagement Center? A lawsuit Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton filed in federal court Wednesday along with The Daily Wire and The Federalist declares the outcome was the State Department funding technology that could ‘render disfavored press outlets unprofitable.’ And when they’re suppressed, their advertising revenues drop. And if their advertising revenues drop far enough, they will eventually be forced to exit the market. We know this to be NewsGuard’s modus operandi because it did this to us at the American Institute for Economic Research. In October 2020, AIER hosted the conference that produced the Great Barrington Declaration, a statement that opposed the use of lockdowns during the COVID pandemic. The GBD’s text went viral, but it also provoked the wrath of the federal government. National Institutes of Health chief Francis Collins instructed Anthony Fauci to wage a ‘quick and devastating published take down’ of the document, which was the first major scientific challenge to their disastrous lockdown strategy. The GBD also placed us on NewsGuard’s radar, prompting the organization to conduct a ‘fact-check’ rating of our website. Although it represented itself as a neutral and unbiased company, it quickly became clear NewsGuard intended to push a pro-lockdown agenda.” • GBD was a polemic device, not a “scientific challenge” (one of the authors was an economist from that house of ill-fame, Stanford, ffs). GBD’s eugenicist authors are scum. As is NewsGuard, which should be dismantled. (If you really want fact-checking, reconstitute the blogosphere, where such matters were rapidly crowd-sourced with no platforms.)

“‘We’ll Be at Each Others’ Throats’: Fiona Hill on What Happens If Putin Wins” [Politico]. “Hill sees U.S. domestic politics as the main obstacle to Ukraine’s ability to win. She has long warned, including in a book published after she left the White House, that high levels of partisanship in the United States promote authoritarianism both at home and around the world. She’s been talking to some lawmakers about Ukraine, and she’s worried that their partisanship has blinded them to the dangers the country faces if Putin gets his way. ‘The problem is that many members of Congress don’t want to see President Biden win on any front,’ she said. ‘People are incapable now of separating off ‘giving Biden a win’ from actually allowing Ukraine to win. They are thinking less about U.S. national security, European security, international security and foreign policy, and much more about how they can humiliate Biden.'” • And how, pray tell, is Ukraine to be “allowed to win”? Nukes? NATO boots on the ground? Wunderwaffen? (The headline is deeply ironic, since Hill basically took point on Trump’s second impeachment, ostensibly over his call to Zekensky, but in reality about The Blob asserting its authority.)

2024

Less than a year to go!

* * *

“Special counsel reveals plans to use Trump’s phone data at trial” [Politico]. “Special counsel Jack Smith has extracted data from the cell phone Donald Trump used while in the White House and plans to present evidence of his findings to a Washington, D.C. jury to demonstrate how Trump used the phone in the weeks during which he attempted to subvert the 2020 election. In a court filing Monday, Smith indicated that he plans to call an expert witness who extracted and reviewed data copied from Trump’s phone, as well as a phone used by another unidentified individual in Trump’s orbit. The data from Trump’s phone could reveal day-to-day details of his final weeks in office, including his daily movements, his Twitter habits and any other aides who had access to his accounts and devices. The data, for example, could help show whether Trump personally approved or sent a fateful tweet attacking his vice president, Mike Pence, during the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol. It’s unclear, though, what the extent of Smith’s access to Trump’s phone was. While Smith described in the filing using the data to view images, websites and locations, it’s unclear if he accessed the substance of Trump’s communications or if anything was shielded due to executive privilege or other limits.” • The walls are closing in?

* * *

“Joe Biden has an electoral math problem to solve” [CNN]. “Assuming Trump secures the Republican nomination (a pretty good assumption at the moment), if he can flip Georgia and Michigan and their 31 combined Electoral College votes, he would need to flip just one more battleground state that Biden won in 2020. These include Arizona, with its 11 Electoral College votes; Pennsylvania with 19; or Wisconsin with 10…. A swing of a few hundred thousand of the nearly 5 million votes from Georgians expected to cast a ballot in 2024 is the key to the state’s 16 electoral votes. In 2020, Biden got 306 electoral votes to Trump’s 232. Trump needs to pick up 38 more electoral votes beyond what he won the last time to reach the magic number of 270. In Michigan, part of the ‘blue wall’ Biden rebuilt in 2020, he beat Trump by 154,188 votes, a decisive improvement over 2016, when Clinton lost to Trump by just 10,704 votes. Today, Trump is polling at 50% in CNN’s Michigan poll compared with Biden’s 40%. It’s telling that 10% of registered Michigan voters said they won’t vote for either man, but the frustration seems to be breaking against Biden at the moment in a hypothetical race for the state’s 15 electoral votes.” • I hope Trump pays his airplane mechanics extremely well….

“Poll: A fifth of Black voters want ‘someone else’ instead of Trump or Biden” [Politico]. “One of the best-respected polls of voters of color shows President Joe Biden is facing strong headwinds among his most loyal base of support: Black Americans. In the GenForward survey released on Tuesday and shared first with POLITICO, nearly 1 in 5 Black Americans, 17 percent, said they would vote for former President Donald Trump. And 20 percent of Black respondents said they would vote for ‘someone else’ other than Biden or Trump. According to the survey, about three-quarters of Black respondents said they would vote if the presidential election were held today, a figure that trails the number of white voters who said they would vote today by 10 points… Black adults backed Biden more than any other racial group in the survey, but the president notched just 63 percent among this bloc. It also represents a significant jump for Trump among Black voters overall. During the 2020 presidential election, AP VoteCast found Trump won 8 percent of Black voters, versus 91 percent voting for Biden.”

* * *

“With the Indictment and Inquiry, Democrats Now Face a Moment of Maddening Truth” [Jonathan Turley]. “One of the false narratives being bandied about is that there is no proof that the influence peddling of Biden’s son and brothers benefited the president himself. Thus, the argument goes, even though he was the subject of the influence peddling, Joe Biden did not legally or constitutionally benefit from the payments to constitute bribery or other crimes. That is utter nonsense. The courts have repeatedly found that benefits to family members (far more modest than the millions in this case) can constitute bribery for a politician. That has also been the position of the Justice Department in past cases. Regardless of whether Hunter or his associates were speaking truthfully about handing over percentages of these funds to Joe Biden, he practically and legally benefited from the millions going to his family. Even if members insist that they are not yet convinced, it makes no sense to insist that there is no direct evidence while opposing efforts to establish such evidence.”

“Who Is Sara Biden? Joe’s In-Law Emerges as Central Figure in Foreign Cash Deals” [RealClearInvestigations]. ” Sara Jones Biden has emerged as a key figure in the mushrooming Biden foreign influence-peddling scandal. GOP lawmakers seek to question the 64-year-old licensed attorney as part of their investigation of President Biden for possible impeachable offenses, including bribery. They are especially interested in subpoenaed bank records that include almost a quarter million dollars in checks Sara Biden wrote to her brother-in-law Joe, conspicuously marking them as ‘loan repayment.’ Republicans want to ask her about the origin of those loans and whether checks ‘were funded by Biden influence-peddling schemes with China.’ …. Although Hunter and Jim Biden’s questionable business dealings – and their possible blessing from the president – are drawing increasing scrutiny, Sara Biden has drawn little attention until now. But court records and other documents show she has been a central player in the Biden family business for decades. They show how her and her husband’s desire for a lifestyle they could not quite afford has repeatedly led them to form relationships with shady figures and enterprises that often ended in lawsuits and even criminal investigations. Looming over it all is Joe Biden. Documents recently obtained by government watchdog America First Legal, under a Freedom of Information Act request, reveal that Sara and Jim’s main business, the Lion Hall Group, shows up in more than 3,735 emails generated by the former Vice President Biden’s office. The sheer volume of communications concerning his brother and sister-in-law’s business appears to contradict Biden’s repeated claims over the years that he was never involved in, or even aware of, his family’s business dealings.” •

“Hunter Biden tax evasion indictment shields president from Burisma scrutiny” [Washington Times]. “The nine-count tax fraud indictment against Hunter Biden delves into sex workers and drugs but overlooks unpaid taxes from his million-dollar salary at Burisma, a Ukrainian gas company that new whistleblower emails suggest received a helping hand from then-Vice President Biden. The president’s son faces up to 17 years in prison for evading $1.4 million in taxes…. The federal charges leave out a key period of tax evasion: Hunter Biden’s first year serving on the board of Burisma Holdings, where he was hired, according to witnesses, to help the company evade a corruption probe through the help of his powerful father. The indictment also excludes charges for failing to register as a foreign lobbyist, despite Hunter Biden’s efforts to sell the “Biden brand” to foreign business partners.

* * *

CA: “‘A political dust storm in the Central Valley’: McCarthy’s succession is getting messy” [Politico]. “Soon after McCarthy announced his plans to step down, his onetime district director, Assemblymember Vince Fong, opted not to run for the seat. Other state and local politicians similarly declined, effectively clearing the field for state Sen. Shannon Grove, who started her political career on McCarthy’s urging. Grove, though, stunned Central Valley political circles late Sunday by announcing that, “After prayerful consideration and thoughtful discussions” with family, she would not run after all. Fong followed up with his own change of heart and launched a congressional bid a day later…. An orderly torch-passing is easier said than done.”

* * *

Penny Pritzker is a busy lady:

IL: “Partnerships Provide Momentum for Ukraine Industrial Base” [Military Spot]. “Among the interagency pathways is a newly announced Ukraine Deal Team comprising representatives from the Defense, Commerce and State departments focused on helping U.S. companies access Ukrainian markets.  ’This deal team will deploy all available U.S. government tools, including resources and expertise, to help U.S. companies compete and succeed in the Ukrainian defense industry,’ said Penny Pritzker, the U.S. special representative for Ukraine’s economic recovery. ” Commentary:

Zelensky met with US arms manufacturers yesterday in Washington, DC. Here he is pictured alongside executives from Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Northrop Grumman, General Dynamics, and others. Looks like many lucrative business opportunities still ahead for these valued partners pic.twitter.com/PIV1Z2stgb

— Michael Tracey (@mtracey) December 12, 2023

IL: “As Harvard president faces pressure to resign, some faculty show support” [New York Times]. “[Harvard President Claudine] Gay last week told The Harvard Crimson that she had the support of Penny Pritzker, leader of the 12-person Harvard Corporation, who is a former Obama administration official. Gay is also a member of the Harvard Corporation. Pritzker could not be reached for comment Sunday.”

Republican Funhouse

“Gubernatorial candidate Mac Warner: ‘The election was stolen, and it was stolen by the CIA'” [MetroNews]. Nineteen paragraphs in, we get to the theory of the case: “Warner’s basis for questioning the 2020 presidential election, discussed briefly during last week’s gubernatorial debate, has taken a twist. By pointing toward the Central Intelligence Agency, he is making an argument that information about Hunter Biden’s laptop recovered from a repair shop in October 2020 was suppressed from full consideration by voters. Warner said all was revealed ‘when Mike Morell testified under oath to Jim Jordan that, yes, he colluded with Antony Blinken to sell a lie to the American people two weeks before the election for the very purpose of throwing the presidential election. How does it not get stolen if the FBI covers it up and Mark Zuckerberg pays $400 million to put his thumb on the scale? That’s not fair.'” That’s a big tangle to parse.” • Yes, that’s how The Blob works: Lots of tangles (though I missed The Zuckerberg™ having anything to do with Dear Hunter’s laptop, so I don’t know what Warner’s on about there). Certainly “But Hunter’s laptop!” is just as valid as “But her emails!” Much moreso, in fact, since the suppression of the New York Post’s story was a major operation that involved United States government actors working for a political party, on behalf of one candidate and against another. I’ve muttered for some time that Trump should have made this story the lynchpin of his “stolen election” campaign, and not election fraud — theoretically possible, absolutely question, but unproven in this instance — first because it had the great merit of being true, and second because it directly assaulted his real, or at least, political enemies.

“Project Veritas CEO Jumps Ship After Finding ‘Evidence of Past Illegality'” [The Daily Beast]. “Hannah Giles, the CEO of conservative nonprofit Project Veritas, announced her resignation ‘effective immediately’ on Monday, saying she’d unwittingly ‘stepped into an unsalvageable mess’ upon taking the job earlier this year. Giles was named the group’s chief executive four months after its messy breakup with founder James O’Keefe in February. In a statement posted to X, she claimed she’d taken over an organization ‘wrought with strong evidence of past illegality and past financial improprieties.’ Suggesting she’d had no prior knowledge of the infamously embattled nonprofit’s alleged improprieties, Giles continued on to say that once she’d ‘discovered’ the evidence, ‘I brought the information to the appropriate law enforcement agencies.'” • O’Keefe was a piece of work. Not on the scale of WMDs or RussiaGate, of course; penny ante grifting.

Democrats en Déshabillé

Patient readers, it seems that people are actually reading the back-dated post! But I have not updated it, and there are many updates. So I will have to do that. –lambert

I have moved my standing remarks on the Democrat Party (“the Democrat Party is a rotting corpse that can’t bury itself”) to a separate, back-dated post, to which I will periodically add material, summarizing the addition here in a “live” Water Cooler. (Hopefully, some Bourdieu.) It turns out that defining the Democrat Party is, in fact, a hard problem. I do think the paragraph that follows is on point all the way back to 2016, if not before:

The Democrat Party is the political expression of the class power of PMC, their base (lucidly explained by Thomas Frank in Listen, Liberal!). It follows that the Democrat Party is as “unreformable” as the PMC is unreformable; if the Democrat Party did not exist, the PMC would have to invent it. If the Democrat Party fails to govern, that’s because the PMC lacks the capability to govern. (“PMC” modulo “class expatriates,” of course.) Second, all the working parts of the Party reinforce each other. Leave aside characterizing the relationships between elements of the Party (ka-ching, but not entirely) those elements comprise a network — a Flex Net? An iron octagon? — of funders, vendors, apparatchiks, electeds, NGOs, and miscellaneous mercenaries, with assets in the press and the intelligence community.

Note, of course, that the class power of the PMC both expresses and is limited by other classes; oligarchs and American gentry (see ‘industrial model’ of Ferguson, Jorgensen, and Jie) and the working class spring to mind. Suck up, kick down.

* * *

“How Tax-Exempt Nonprofits Skirt U.S. Law to Turn Out the Democrat Base in Elections” [RealClearInvestigations]. “More than 150 progressive nonprofits spent $1.35 billion on political activities in 2021 and 2022, according to data compiled by Restoration of America, a conservative political action committee. Although there are no readily available estimates of comparable conservative efforts, observers say they are overmatched…. The groups work around legal restrictions on nonprofits that accept tax-deductible donations by selectively engaging in nonpartisan efforts including boosting voter education and participation. But, like the estimated $332 million that Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla Chan donated to public elections offices to help run the 2020 elections, much of it winds up in the hands of groups that operate in liberal strongholds and work with reliably Democratic constituencies. Much of the switch from party and campaign activity to nonprofits stems from a changing political landscape, which de-emphasizes the short-term goals of candidates (winning elections) to a longer-term vision for party dominance, said Sasha Issenberg, author of ‘The Victory Lab: The Secret Science of Winning Campaigns.'” • I think Issenberg has got hold of the wrong end of the stick. If the Democrat Party outsources “party and campaign activity” to NGOs, instead of keeping what I would have thought was a core competence in-house, that means that the NGOs are looking upward to squillionaire funders, seeking to service their whims, instead of outward to voters, seeking to meet their needs. As we indeed see. This is the very reverse of a project for “party dominance.” As we also see.

“A Democratic campaign deploys the first synthetic AI caller” [Politico]. “Voters in south-central Pennsylvania began getting calls over the weekend from a completely artificial person campaigning on behalf of a Democratic congressional candidate.” • Voters in south-central Pennsylvania began getting calls over the weekend from a Democratic congressional candidate campaigning on behalf a completely artificial person. Makes as much sense either way. Maybe they’ve been using an AI to generate that mail I keep posting. Who knows, who cares…

Realignment and Legitimacy

“Thousands of blue state residents flock to Idaho, bringing conservative politics with them: data” [FOX]. • Fortunately, you can get ticky-tacky suburbs in Idaho just as well as you can anywhere else:

“Ranch,” ffs.

#COVID19

“I am in earnest — I will not equivocate — I will not excuse — I will not retreat a single inch — AND I WILL BE HEARD.” –William Lloyd Garrison

Resources, United States (National): Transmission (CDC); Wastewater (CDC, Biobot; includes many counties; Wastewater Scan, includes drilldown by zip); Variants (CDC; Walgreens); “Iowa COVID-19 Tracker” (in IA, but national data). “Infection Control, Emergency Management, Safety, and General Thoughts” (especially on hospitalization by city).

Lambert here: Readers, thanks for the collective effort. To update any entry, do feel free to contact me at the address given with the plants. Please put “COVID” in the subject line. Thank you!

Resources, United States (Local): 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 reports); 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).

Resources, Canada (National): Wastewater (Government of Canada).

Resources, Canada (Provincial): ON (wastewater); QC (les eaux usées); BC, Vancouver (wastewater).

Hat tips to helpful 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, square coats (11), tennesseewaltzer, Utah, Bob White (3).

Stay safe out there!

* * *

Covid is Airborne

Christmas Cheer:

“To avoid getting sick on a plane, choose your seat wisely” [Sydney Morning Herald]. “According to the same study, which tracked 1500 transcontinental airline passengers in the US, an aisle sitter interacted with an average 64 people over the course of a flight, while for a window sitter this dwindled to just 12 other people…. Irrespective of where you sit, you can reduce your chances of infection by wearing a mask and turning on your air vent. Drinking alcohol reduces your immune system, and so does dehydration and a dry nose. Stay hydrated and use a nasal spray.” • No matter the form of transport, I arrange the air vents so they blow air away from me. NOTE I left out a sentence that said if you sit next to an infected person you’re “doomed.” I would want to know the confounders on that (like, say, a Darth Vader mask).

” Brits told to ‘elbow bump’ family members this Christmas as 100-day cough that can crack ribs & cause seizures runs rife” [The Sun]. The deck: “People should also wear masks to stop the spread of the disease, experts say.” • So, fomites in the headline, masks in the deck. Better than nothing, I suppose. NOTE: I did do a cursory search to see if whooping cough, UPDATE now having a resurgence in the seemingly immune dysregulated UK, is airborne. Most of the sources say “droplets,” and coughing or sneezing, and not talking or breathing (and confusingly, the bureaucratic fudge “aerosol droplets” is now propagating in that field). Now, I have big priors on aerosols vs. droplets, as readers know, so all the droplet dogma from the usual suspects triggers my hermeneutic of suspicion. That said, although whooping cough is very contagious, I find no mentiona of a very high R0, or any epidemiology showing superspreading. And I suppose it does make sense that a disease optimized to create “whooping” “cough” would indeed spread by that mechanism. Readers?

* * *

“Bioaerosol” [Wikipedia, sorry]. “Bioaerosols (short for biological aerosols) are a subcategory of particles released from terrestrial and marine ecosystems into the atmosphere. They consist of both living and non-living components, such as fungi, pollen, bacteria and viruses. Common sources of bioaerosols include soil, water, and sewage. Bioaerosols are typically introduced into the air via wind turbulence over a surface. Once in the atmosphere, they can be transported locally or globally: common wind patterns/strengths are responsible for local dispersal, while tropical storms and dust plumes can move bioaerosols between continents. Over ocean surfaces, bioaerosols are generated via sea spray and bubbles Bioaerosols can transmit microbial pathogens, endotoxins, and allergens to which humans are sensitive.” • It would be wonderful if some clever person would devise a cellphone sensor that detected bioaerosols, and displayed them as an overlay with whatever the camera sees. That way, I could hold up my phone, and see (for example) PM2.5 particles as a haze of grey, and, ideally — I’m sure this isn’t easy, and I’m not sure it’s even possible — SARS-CoV-2 in red….

Maskstravaganza

Masks are for scientists, not the little people:

These videos fill me with a blinding white-hot fury.

Scientists are mandated BY THE FUCKING @CDCDirector to wear this gear.

Yet she sends our kids to school with smiles.

JFC. Sorry folks….I really try to bite my tongue, but JFC!

We all are collateral damage to them. https://t.co/eoaLsK7WoZ

— Lazarus Long (@LazarusLong13) December 12, 2023

“She” being Maskless Mandy.

Scientific Communication

“Reporting on Long Covid Taught Me to Be a Better Journalist” [Ed Yong, New York Times]. “As the pandemic wore on, many grim outcomes I warned about came to pass, and most societal changes I hoped for did not. I watched two successive administrations make avoidable mistakes, and then make them anew with each successive surge or variant. I witnessed almost every publication that I once held in esteem become complicit in normalizing a level of death once billed as incalculable. It was galling, crushing work that wrecked my faith in journalism and its institutions. But the solace that many long-haulers drew from my pieces gave me solace in turn. It convinced me that there is still a point to this horrible work, a purpose in bearing witness to suffering and a reason to continue shouting into the abyss. Sometimes, even if just slightly, the abyss brightens.” • Citizen science is a bright spot, as Yong points out. Well worth a read.

ChatGPT reflecting how conventional wisdom — which is what the Large Language Models of AI aggregate — has been changing. In a good way:

Someone tell Bonnie Henry. Screenshots : pic.twitter.com/nAJ6aRBOP2

— IlluminatiPizza666 (@IPizza666) December 12, 2023

Love “somebody tell Bonnie Henry.” And those GBD goons, too; loud and well-funded as they are, they’re slowly losing (unless they start manipulating the training sets, I suppose; I wouldn’t put it past them or, more to the point, their funders, the Koch Brothers).

Transmission

Unexpectedly, “personal risk assessment” tends to involve other people:

Sequelae

“Post-acute COVID-19 complications in UK doctors: results of a cross-sectional survey Get access Arrow” [Occupational Medicine]. Survey. From the Abstract: “Of 795 responses, 603 fulfilled the inclusion criteria of being a UK-based medical doctor experiencing one or more post-acute COVID complications. Twenty-eight per cent reported a lack of adequate Respiratory Protective Equipment at the time of contracting COVID-19. Eighteen per cent of eligible respondents reported that they had been unable to return to work since acquiring COVID. Post-acute COVID (Long COVID) in UK doctors is a substantial burden for respondents to our questionnaire. The results indicated that insufficient respiratory protection could have contributed to occupational disease, with COVID-19 being contracted in the workplace, and resultant post-COVID complications. Although it may be too late to address the perceived determinants of inadequate protection for those already suffering with Long COVID, more investment is needed in rehabilitation and support of those afflicted.”

Treatment

“Inhalation of a fog of hypochlorous acid (HOCl): Biochemical, antimicrobial, and pathological assessment” (preprint) [ResearchSquare]. “Evidence is emerging of the beneficial effects of inhaling microaerosolized hypochlorous acid (HOCl) as an intervention in the prevention and treatment of respiratory virus infections, including SARS CoV-2. However, little information is available about the effects of inhalation of homogenous HOCl solutions in normal human subjects or in experimental animals. In this report we establish through independent laboratories that the SARS-CoV-2 virus is rapidly inactivated by exposure to HOCl. Inhalation of an aerosolized form of the same HOCl solution by rodents, in accordance with a US-EPA acute 4-hour inhalation toxicity protocol, then provided observational, gross pathological, and histopathological evidence that their pulmonary exposure did not result in any difference when compared to control animals. During the pandemic lockdown, subjective impressions of exposure to aerosolized HOCl were submitted as self-reported responses by employees of a machine-tool shop located in Tacoma, Washington, about 35 miles from Seattle. At that location exposure to HOCl was adopted by a subset of employees as a routine for entry into the facilities. Under short-term, controlled conditions those individuals breathed HOCl misted from a reservoir containing 180 ppm free active chlorine (FAC). Their reports were used to arrive at inferences regarding the effects of exposure.” • I would not try this at home; I’m posting this to lay down a marker (and it does seem that a mister would be a good way of distributing some SARS-CoV-2 lethal subtance. But that’s just my priors talking).

Prevention

“Saline nasal irrigation and gargling in COVID-19: a multidisciplinary review of effects on viral load, mucosal dynamics, and patient outcomes” [Frontiers in Public Health]. “With unrelenting SARS-CoV-2 variants, additional COVID-19 mitigation strategies are needed. Oral and nasal saline irrigation (SI) is a traditional approach for respiratory infections/diseases. As a multidisciplinary network with expertise/experience with saline, we conducted a narrative review to examine mechanisms of action and clinical outcomes associated with nasal SI, gargling, spray, or nebulization in COVID-19. SI was found to reduce SARS-CoV-2 nasopharyngeal loads and hasten viral clearance….. Prophylaxis was documented adjunctive to personal protective equipment. COVID-19 patients experienced significant symptom relief, while overall data suggest lower hospitalization risk. We found no harm and hence recommend SI use, as safe, inexpensive, and easy-to-use hygiene measure, complementary to hand washing or mask-wearing. In view of mainly small studies, large well-controlled or surveillance studies can help to further validate the outcomes and to implement its use.” • As usual, NPIs get no funding. No rents!

“Something Awful”

Lambert here: I’m getting the feeling that the “Something Awful” might be a sawtooth pattern — variant after variant — that averages out to a permanently high plateau. Lots of exceptionally nasty sequelae, most likely deriving from immune dysregulation (says this layperson). To which we might add brain damage, including personality changes therefrom.

* * *

“Coronavirus epidemic broke out in East Asia around 25,000 years ago, gene study shows” [ABC Australia]. “Coronaviruses have sparked some massive disease outbreaks in living memory, but we’ve actually been battling them for millennia, according to a new study… [A] team of Australian and US scientists has discovered that a coronavirus epidemic broke out in East Asia around 25,000 years ago. According to their study, reported today in Current Biology, evidence of this can be seen in the genomes of modern-day people from the region. ‘It wreaked havoc in the population and left significant genetic scars,’ said study co-author Kirill Alexandrov, a synthetic biologist at the Queensland University of Technology.” • So how’s that herd immunity project coming?

“Replication-Competent Virus Detected in Blood of a Fatal COVID-19 Case” [Annals of Internal Medicine]. N = 1 (autopsy). From the Discussion: “Our case proves that replication-competent SARS-CoV-2 can traffic in blood during COVID-19 and seed tissues throughout the body. … Further studies are needed to determine the implications of our findings for persons infected with SARS-CoV-2 variants, those with mild illness, persons recently vaccinated, or persons with waning immunity after natural infection or vaccination.”

Elite Maleficence

Fun with words:

Herd Immunity
Hybrid Immunity
Mild
Seasonal
Normal
Rare
RCT
Uptick
Susceptibles
Anxious
Endemic
The Economy
Post-Pandemic https://t.co/bU8I08aaA1

— Conor Browne (@brownecfm) December 12, 2023

The quote is indeed from Herbert’s Children of Dune (from the Bene Gesserit’s Panoplia Prophetica. Not sure whether they applied this dictum to their own thinking).

Pro-infection avant la lettre:

It’s wild that public health is now literally run by the philosophy of Dwight Schrute. pic.twitter.com/Xvh2sJZ1Vm

— Radical Centrist, wrathful tantric deity 🇺🇦🇹🇼 (@RadCentrism) December 9, 2023

* * *

Case Data

NOT UPDATED From BioBot wastewater data, December 11:

Lambert here: At last Biden’s beaten every one of Trump’s previous spikes, so a round of applause for The Big Guy. The slight plateauing in the national numbers doesn’t make sense to me because I can’t see an organic reason for it (unless the spread from Thanksgiving is somehow being damped out, which seems implausible). I’m guessing backward revision will make the plateau go away. Only 14 superspreading days until Christmas!

Regional data:

Hard to see why the regional split (and it sure would be nice to have more granular data). Weather forcing Northerners indoors? Seems facile. There’s snow in the Rockies (green color, West), for example.

Variants

NOT UPDATED From CDC, December 9:

Lambert here: JN.1, shown on the NowCast for the first time, coming up fast on the outside, while BA.2.86 fades.

From CDC, November25:

Lambert here: I sure hope the volunteers doing Pangolin, on which this chart depends, don’t all move on the green fields and pastures new (or have their access to facilities cut by administrators of ill intent).

CDC: “As of May 11, genomic surveillance data will be reported biweekly, based on the availability of positive test specimens.” “Biweeekly: 1. occurring every two weeks. 2. occurring twice a week; semiweekly.” Looks like CDC has chosen sense #1. In essence, they’re telling us variants are nothing to worry about. Time will tell.

Covid Emergency Room Visits

NOT UPDATED From CDC NCIRD Surveillance, December 2:

Lambert here: Slight increases in some age groups, conforming to wastewater data. Only a week’s lag, so this may be our best current nationwide, current indicator.

NOTE “Charts and data provided by CDC, updates Wednesday by 8am. For the past year, using a rolling 52-week period.” So not the entire pandemic, FFS (the implicit message here being that Covid is “just like the flu,” which is why the seasonal “rolling 52-week period” is appropriate for both_{MR SUBLIMINAL I hate these people so much}. Notice also that this chart shows, at least for its time period, that Covid is not seasonal, even though CDC is trying to get us to believe that it is, presumably so they can piggyback on the existing institutional apparatus for injections. And of course, we’re not even getting into the quality of the wastewater sites that we have as a proxy for Covid infection overall.

Hospitalization

Bellwether New York City, data as of December 12:

Steadily up. New York state as a whole looks more like a spike. (I hate this metric because the lag makes it deceptive, although the hospital-centric public health establishment loves it, hospitalization and deaths being the only metrics that matter [snort]).

Here’s a different CDC visualization on hospitalization, nationwide, not by state, but with a date, at least. December 2:

Up, up, up!

Lambert here: “Maps, charts, and data provided by CDC, updates weekly for the previous MMWR week (Sunday-Saturday) on Thursdays (Deaths, Emergency Department Visits, Test Positivity) and weekly the following Mondays (Hospitalizations) by 8 pm ET†”. So where the heck is the update, CDC?

Positivity

From Walgreens, December 11:

0.5%. Up. (It would be interesting to survey this population generally; these are people who, despite a tsunami of official propaganda and enormous peer pressure, went and got tested anyhow.)

NOT UPDATED From Cleveland Clinic, December 2:

Lambert here: Increase (with backward revision; guess they thought it was over). I know this is just Ohio, but the Cleveland Clinic is good*, and we’re starved for data, so…. NOTE * Even if hospital infection control is trying to kill patients by eliminating universal masking with N95s.

From CDC, traveler’s data, November 20:

Turning upward.

Down, albeit in the rear view mirror. And here are the variants for travelers, November 20:

BA.2.86 zipping right along. If this data were delivered in anything like a timely fashion, it would be a pretty good predictor.

Deaths

NOT UPDATED Here is the New York Times, based on CDC data, December 2:

That the absolute numbers of deaths are down, but the percentage of deaths is up, is interesting.

Stats Watch

Inflation: “United States Consumer Price Index (CPI)” [Trading Economics]. “The CPI in the United States increased by 3.1% year-on-year to 307.05 points in November 2023, slightly above the market’s expectations of 306.9 points. The rise in prices for food (2.9%) and shelter (6.5%), among others, counterbalanced declines in energy costs (-5.4%) and used cars and trucks (-3.8%).”

Business Optimism: “United States NFIB Business Optimism Index” [Trading Economics]. “The NFIB Small Business Optimism Index in the United States fell for a fourth consecutive month to 90.6 in November 2023, a new low since May, compared to 90.7 in October and forecasts of 90.7. “Job openings on Main Street remain elevated as the economy saw a strong third quarter. However, even with the growing economy, small business owners have not seen a strong wave of workers to fill their open positions. Inflation also continues to be an issue among small businesses”, said NFIB Chief Economist Bill Dunkelberg.”

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The Bezzle: “The Telecom Industry Is Very Mad Because The FCC MIGHT Examine High Broadband Prices” [TechDirt]. “We’ve long noted how the FCC (regardless of party) largely ignores how muted competition and monopolization drives up prices for consumers. The agency often talks a good (if ambiguous) game about ‘bridging the digital divide,’ but they don’t collect and share pricing data proving market failure, nor are they capable of admitting monopolies exist and are harmful in public-facing messaging.,,, Back in November, the agency issued a Notice of Inquiry (NOI) pondering whether they should more seriously analyze the cost of broadband when making those determinations (yes, duh)…. But even the faint possibility of the FCC looking at expensive U.S. broadband has been enough to send telecom lobbyists into a tizzy, with cable lobbying organizations arguing in filings that even asking the question is ‘inappropriate’…. The majority of Americans live under a monopoly or duopoly for broadband access protected by state and federal corruption. This muted competition consistently results in spotty coverage, high prices, slow speeds, and comically terrible customer service. And again, FCC officials can’t even openly admit there’s a monopoly/duopoly problem, much less field concrete solutions to the problem…. The fact that it’s 2023 and the FCC and [National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA)] have only fairly recently realized they should be considering affordability in broadband access policy genuinely speaks for itself.”

The Bezzle: “Column: This porn company makes millions by shaming porn consumers” [Michael Hiltzik, Los Angeles Times]. “Since September 2017, Strike 3 has filed more than 12,440 lawsuits in federal courts alleging that defendants infringed its copyrights by downloading its movies via BitTorrent… The lawsuits follow a standard road map. Strike 3, like other similar plaintiffs, starts by identifying the defendant only by his or her IP address, a designation typically assigned to users’ computers by their internet service provider, ostensibly used to download content from BitTorrent. At that stage, the defendant is identified in court papers only as ‘John Doe.’ The plaintiffs then ask a federal judge for permission to subpoena the internet service provider — which could be AT&T, Spectrum, Frontier, or another provider — for the name and address of the subscriber with that IP address. Judges have almost invariably granted these requests routinely. Armed with the name, the plaintiffs proceed by sending a letter implicitly threatening the subscriber with public exposure as a pornography viewer and explicitly with the statutory penalties for infringement written into federal copyright law — up to $150,000 for willful infringement or $750 otherwise…. It’s impossible to pinpoint the profits that can be made from this courthouse strategy. J. Curtis Edmondson, a Portland, Ore., lawyer who is among the few who pushed back against a Strike 3 case and won, estimates that Strike 3 ‘pulls in about $15 million to $20 million a year from its lawsuits.’ That would make the cases ‘way more profitable than selling their product.'” • Much more appalling detail in the article.

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Today’s Fear & Greed Index: 68 Greed (previous close: 67 Greed) [CNN]. One week ago: 67 (Greed). (0 is Extreme Fear; 100 is Extreme Greed). Last updated Dec 11 at 1:08:05 PM ET.

The Gallery

“Monet: Painting Is Terribly Difficult” [London Review of Books]. “These men weren’t struggling for the rent, occasionally stretching the rules to put food on the table; they were, or had become, institutionally – and constitutionally – corrupt. But is it surprising? The art market is international and barely regulated; its products are easily transportable, squirrelled away in freeports or swiftly turned into cash. Grifters, fakers and thieves naturally abound. There is often a cosy nexus between artists, dealers, gallerists and critics; value – or at least, price – is constantly moving, usually upwards; and there are an increasing number of very rich people for whom art is a status symbol. Authenticating a work is difficult, and a lot may depend on it. How might a grateful owner or potential purchaser reward such connoisseurship? The classic example is that of Bernard Berenson – in Hughes’s mocking words, ‘the disinterested, Goethean sage of I Tatti’ – who charged his employer 25 per cent on the sale of any work he had authenticated. Today there are art advisers at the shoulder of new money; the deference might be difficult, but parts of the job must be pretty easy. Warhol, tick; Koons, tick; Basquiat, tick; Picasso, tick; Freud, tick; Banksy and Bacon, tick tick; and so on. When and where did it all start? Probably in Paris; more unexpectedly, when the Impressionists came along For centuries, the Salon had ruled over taste, over what was and wasn’t art, and therefore over most artists’ incomes. There had been the famous Salon des Refusés in 1863, but that experiment in imperial permissiveness was not to be repeated. So the Impressionists, following Courbet’s example, put on their own exhibitions, the first in 1874. They made little money but received a good deal of publicity. Gradually, the stranglehold of the Salon was loosened: it had traditionally been such that some collectors, seeing a work in an artist’s studio, might offer to buy it as long as the Salon jury found it good enough (and uncontentious enough) to be hung on their walls. At the same time, a younger generation of more imaginative dealers came along, looking for new buyers not just on the home market but abroad, especially in London and New York. Then there was the press: both the critics themselves and the hacks who sought scandal and sensation. Critical mass had arrived: that nexus of artist, dealer, critic and curator, plus shock value and a rising market. Monet, as leader of the Impressionists and the group’s highest earner, was at the heart of this new world.” • Interestingly, Bourdieu believes that Manet, not Monet, devised a new modality of the visible (reproducing his thesis crudely). But it looks like Monet… Well, the best things in life are free. But you can give them to the birds and the bees, I want Monet…

Games

“The Invisible Bunnies That Power World of Warcraft” [Kotaku]. “‘A lot of stuff behind the scenes that you wouldn’t expect to be a spell in WoW runs using the spell system,’ [WoW encounter designer Nathaniel Chapman] said. ‘Spells need casters, so we often have to rely on spawning in an invisible creature to be the one to actually ‘cast’ the spell. Other things that creatures are good at doing would be hard to implement any other way, so we use an invisible creature instead.’ … Different games use different invisible creatures. For WoW, it’s mostly bunnies. Chapman pointed me to a list of bunnies in the game, noting that every bunny on the list that’s not categorized as a “critter” is an invisible bunny oompa-loompaing around in the background of WoW’s endless chocolate factory. The list, I should add, is 1,000 damn entries long. These bunnies have some incredible names, too. For instance, there’s the Projections And Plans Kill Credit Bunny. I’m also partial to Pony Gun Bunny. Why is WoW a front for a morally questionable bunny labor operation? The short version is, programmers’ time is limited, and [Non-player character (NPC)’s] time is not.”

Guillotine Watch

“Bay Area CEO accused in lawsuit of enslaving assistant, taking her into ‘dark abyss of sexual horror'” [Mercury News]. “On Thursday, a woman identified as Jane Doe sued Tradeshift and [CEO Christian] Lanng, claiming Lanng, within months of her hiring as his executive assistant, coerced her into signing a ‘slave contract.'” • That “slave contract” is straight up Silicon Valley libertarianism, reminding me of Andrew Dittmer’s glorious six-parter, “Journey into a Libertarian Future” (2019):

ANDREW: Still, as a libertarian, aren’t you against coercion?

[CODE NAME CAIN (CNC)]: Coercion? Obviously you don’t understand what you’re talking about. Coercion is only when someone interferes with rights someone else actually holds. Criminals can forfeit their rights through their own choices. When that happens, requiring them to make restitution for their actions doesn’t violate their rights.

ANDREW: Will there be any other people in the free society who will be slaves?

CNC: Slaves?! Don’t you know that the first condition of a libertarian society is that everyone owns themselves?

ANDREW: Sorry, I meant to say: effectively slaves in a rights-respecting manner.

CNC: Oh. Hmmm. Let me think about that.

ANDREW: For example, suppose someone signs a business contract and then, later, can’t fulfill the terms of the contract. What would happen?

CNC: In a libertarian society, sanctity of contract is absolutely fundamental.

ANDREW: Let me be a little more specific. Suppose some guy can’t pay his debts. Would he be allowed to declare bankruptcy and move on, or would he become, in a rights-respecting manner, the effective slave of whoever had loaned him the money?

Class Warfare

News of the Wired

“The evolution of the On/Off power switch symbol” [Commonsense Design]. “Then we start to see the form shown in the two photos above right: a bastardized version combining the 1-in-a-circle with a 1 in the same symbol. This makes no sense at all – the correct representation would have been 1/0, for On slash Off. Instead we get On slash OnOff. Sloppy thinking… Such erroneous contractions are often seen in spoken language – as in ‘IT technology’, which expands to ‘information technology technology’ (there’s even a company by that name, and its slogan, amusingly, is ‘We make sense of IT’). But now we see the same error invading the more compact space of visual symbols.” • The photos:

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Contact information for plants: Readers, feel free to contact me at lambert [UNDERSCORE] strether [DOT] corrente [AT] yahoo [DOT] com, to (a) find out how to send me a check if you are allergic to PayPal and (b) to find out how to send me images of plants. Vegetables are fine! Fungi and coral are deemed to be honorary plants! If you want your handle to appear as a credit, please place it at the start of your mail in parentheses: (thus). Otherwise, I will anonymize by using your initials. See the previous Water Cooler (with plant) here. From CM:

CM writes: “Death and rebirth! An island on Lake Huron.”

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