2:00PM Water Cooler 12/6/2023

By Lambert Strether of Corrente.

Bird Song of the Day

Highland Tinamou, Huila, Colombia.

* * *

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

“White House interns demand a Middle East cease-fire in letter to Biden” [NBC]. “A group of White House interns joined the growing list of administration officials applying internal pressure to President Joe Biden to call for a permanent cease-fire between Israel and Hamas, sending him a letter late Tuesday that accuses him of having ‘ignored’ the ‘pleas of the American people.’ The letter, first shared with NBC News and addressed to Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, is supported by more than 40 interns who work in the White House and other executive branch offices, according to the text. ‘We, the undersigned Fall 2023 White House and Executive Office of the President interns, will no longer remain silent on the ongoing genocide of the Palestinian people,’ the interns wrote.” But: “The writers, like those at other agencies who have sent similar missives in recent weeks, declined to sign their names to the letter. Instead, they identified themselves by offices — including the Executive Office of the President, the Office of the Vice President and the Domestic Policy Council — and as ‘Palestinian, Jewish, Arab, Muslim, Christian, Black, Asian, Latine, White, and Queer.’ Last month, more than 500 political appointees sent Biden a similar letter. They also declined to make their names public.” • Latine v. Latinx.

2024

Less than a year to go!

* * *

“Biden tells donors: ‘If Trump wasn’t running I’m not sure I’d be running. We cannot let him win'” [Associated Press]. “The president was using a trio of fundraisers to caution against what might happen should his predecessor again claim control of the White House, noting that Trump has described himself as his supporters’ ‘retribution’ and has vowed to root out ‘vermin’ in the country. ‘We’ve got to get it done, not because of me. … If Trump wasn’t running I’m not sure I’d be running. We cannot let him win,’ Biden said, hitting the last words slowly for emphasis.” • In Biden’s mind, apparently, he’s the only Democrat who can beat Trump. He could actually be right….

“House Democrats ditch ‘Bidenomics’ messaging” [Axios]. “The Biden team is largely dismissive of critics within their own party — a confidence forged by proving such doubters wrong in the past.”

“First brother James Biden ducks impeachment deposition — for now” [New York Post]. “President Biden’s brother James won’t appear for questioning Wednesday as specified in a House Oversight Committee subpoena — after his legal team argued there was ‘no justification’ for the demand. House Republicans believe James Biden ultimately will comply with the subpoena, but it’s unclear when that might happen — while first son Hunter Biden’s legal team has yet to say if he will appear for a scheduled Dec. 13 interview. ‘It’s not happening tomorrow, but we are in communication with his attorney about scheduling a time for him to come in,’ a committee spokesperson said of James Biden. The first brother’s attorney Paul Fishman, however, did not specifically commit to complying with the subpoena, telling The Post in a terse statement: ‘We have been in contact with the Oversight Committee staff about their requests.’ In a Nov. 8 statement, Fishman argued that ‘there is no justification for this subpoena’ and that ‘Jim Biden has never involved his brother in his business dealings.'” That’s what cut-outs are for! More: “The White House has argued that the impeachment inquiry has no legal authority because of the lack of an authorizing House floor vote — prompting Republicans to consider retroactively taking that step as soon as this week.”

* * *

“These Democrats could be contenders for their party’s nomination in 2028. But first, they must boost Biden in 2024” [CNN]. California Gov. Gavin Newsom, Rep. Ro Khanna, Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, Arizona Sen. Mark Kelly, and Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg. “CNN’s conversations with two dozen people close to the speculated candidates and many of the Democrats themselves detailed what many of them say is the core struggle, in the words of an adviser to one of the people whose name often gets mentioned as presidential material, ‘how to sell Joe Biden better than Joe Biden is selling himself,’ while also not selling themselves too hard – as several of Newsom’s potential future primary opponents privately gripe he is doing. Biden aides are also keeping tabs and keeping score – with megadonor and Biden campaign co-chair Jeffrey Katzenberg chiding a number of the Democrats directly that the best way to get powerful fundraisers and other top leaders in their corner for 2028 is to be what he calls the ‘MVP’ of getting the president re-elected in 2024, according to people who have heard him. Biden aides are reinforcing this point. Aides tell some of the Democrats to take note of how much money Newsom has raised for Biden’s reelection campaign already. Or they nudge some of those who have been less active to do more cheerleading for Biden on cable news. ‘You want to lead the Democratic Party, you better pay your dues in helping the Democratic Party – especially at a time like this that is so existential,’ said Rep. Ro Khanna, who is open about eyeing his own run for 2028. He has already had conversations with top Biden adviser Anita Dunn and aides in Wilmington about where he will deployed, beyond his own debate with Republican presidential contender Vivek Ramaswamy last month.”

* * *

“We Have to Strengthen the Gig Economy and Its Workers in 2024. Here’s How” [Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. & Michael Bernick, Newsweek]. “Yet there is a darker side to the gig economy. Because they must cover their own expenses, those who rely on the gig economy as their main source of income can struggle to even earn minimum wage. Usually, they have no access to health coverage, pensions, workers’ compensation, or unemployment insurance. Because at times they offer employers a lower-cost alternative to traditional employees, they can undercut wages and undermine labor unions. Some contend that the gig economy threatens the grand bargain of the 20th century between labor and capital, which depended on labor unions to press for a robust share of industrial profits and a strong social safety net. The gig economy has hastened the widening of the gap between the haves and the have-nots, which threatens the stability of our democracy. But there are several things we can do to strengthen the position of gig workers in 2024.” • Interestingly, co-author Bernick was the former director of the Department of Labor in Newsom’s home state.

“Presidential candidate RFK Jr. admits he flew on Jeffrey Epstein’s jet TWICE and went ‘fossil hunting’ with him in South Dakota – then says ‘My wife had some kind of a relationship with Ghislaine Maxwell'” [Daily Mail]. “Presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said Tuesday night that he’d flown twice on pedophile Jeffrey Epstein’s private jet and that his ex-wife was friendly with his infamous madam Ghislaine Maxwell…. Speaking to Jesse Watters on Tuesday, he admitted his allegedly brief connections to Epstein, a pedophile with extraordinary power and influence that has connected him to politicians in both parties, including former presidents Bill Clinton and Donald Trump…. He claims that he’s been ‘very open’ about this from the beginning of his campaign and said this was long before Epstein became known for his multitude of sex crimes. ‘It was before anybody knew about Jeffrey Epstein’s, you know, nefarious issues. And I agree with you that all of this information should be released.'” • Get that out the way.

* * *

Americana:

Saw this today in Columbia, Pennsylvania pic.twitter.com/kYmEUUf7B8

— wild hearts can’t be broken (@JulieChrysty) December 3, 2023

* * *

“FL:‘No conspiracy.’ Florida Democrats explain cancellation of state presidential primary” [Miami Herald]. “The Florida Democratic Party is standing by its decision to scrap its presidential primary after it submitted only President Joe Biden’s name for the 2024 ballot…. [Marianne] Williamson and [Cenk] Uygur said they sent a letter on Friday to the Florida Democratic Party asking that their names be submitted to the Florida Secretary of State’s office so they can be put on the primary ballot. Another candidate, Democratic U.S. Rep. Dean Phillips of Minnesota, is preparing to send his own letter to the party, a spokesperson for his campaign said. Jeff Weaver, a senior adviser to Phillips, said that the campaign was looking at a range of options to try to get the Minnesota congressman’s name on the Florida primary ballot, including a potential lawsuit or an effort at the 2024 Democratic National Convention to challenge the credentials of Florida’s delegates…. But the Democratic party says the decision was made weeks ago, and its hands are tied…. The party chose its roster of candidates at a meeting of its state executive committee in October — a decision that went under the radar. Eden Giagnorio, the Florida Democratic Party’s communications director, said that Biden was the only candidate nominated for the ballot and was consequently the only one whose name was submitted to the Secretary of State’s Office. She said that the process by which the party determines which names to submit for the primary ballot was routine and had been made available on the party’s website months ago. ‘It was posted for months. It wasn’t a secret. There was no conspiracy,’ Giagnorio said. ‘They didn’t get any votes. It’s not our responsibility to whip for them.’ The party’s delegate selection plan, however, doesn’t give candidates a deadline to ask the party to be placed on the ballot.” • Anyhow, Florida Democrats seem happy:

Here's the moment where the Florida Democratic Party nominated Biden. I'm told by a party member that it was not explained to people that by nominating him, that also would keep other candidates off the ballot. Even enthusiastic supporters of Biden would not have purposely… https://t.co/LA1l4yuAof

— Ryan Grim (@ryangrim) December 1, 2023

IA: “Why Ron DeSantis Doesn’t Have a Prayer in Iowa” [Benjamin Wallace-Wells, The New Yorker]. “DeSantis’s task in Iowa has always seemed straightforward: he just had to be Ted Cruz. In 2016, Cruz had campaigned in the state relentlessly, drawing on its deep evangelical tradition, and had beaten Trump by five points. Cruz’s chief strategist in that race, Jeff Roe, is now one of DeSantis’s most prominent advisers, and the Florida governor has followed the same blueprint, taking a very hard line on abortion and other social issues and campaigning so relentlessly across Iowa’s small towns that Jasper County had been, until Saturday, the only one of the ninety-nine counties in the state that he had yet to visit. Even for those political observers unimpressed by DeSantis’s stump presence or underwhelmed by his indecisiveness about how to take on Trump, the 2016 example seemed to set an appealingly reachable bar. We weren’t talking about Ronald Reagan. Even if you were a pretty run-of-the-mill retail campaigner, surely it wasn’t too much to ask of an aspirant to the Presidency of the United States that he match Ted Cruz…. In Iowa, DeSantis has a clear opportunity: an electorate that has always been skeptical of Trump, no religious-right alternative, and a local political establishment that is in his corner. But they still need a candidate who can provide some contrast with the former President.”

IA: “Joe Biden is the grinch of Iowa” [Unherd]. “And here is why the Democrats’ difficulties matter in the Republican race: there is not much to do in Iowa; it gets dark early in the winter. If you are an Iowan Democrat, you really do look forward to the jamboree coming to town every four years. So if this time, you know your opinion doesn’t count. So how about… whisper it… becoming a Republican for a night? You can: Iowa has same-day registration rights. Your nice neighbours are already voting for Trump: maybe go with them to the church hall and pay a small dollar sum and take part. Cast a ballot. And remember these are Midwesterners with no sense of wickedness or irony: they will take it seriously and vote not for Trump (who, if they are Democrats they will think is evil), but for someone they can approve of, probably Haley, even if she might go on to win the nomination and beat their man Biden next November. Might the result of the Iowa Republican caucus be significantly affected by disaffected Dems? It’s not beyond the realms of the possible.” • Amusing! This is a nice wrap-up of the zeitgeist in IA and NH since Biden nobbled them in favor of SC, the state whose Democrat machine gave us Obama, Clinton, and Biden.

Republican Funhouse

Business as usual:

Senator Tommy Tuberville bought puts against Elon Musk's Tesla in November.

He bought $50k in $TSLA $190 puts expiring 12/15/2023.

He also got options in $TXN, $KO, $X, $LPX & $AMAT.

Yes you read that right.

A US Senator has leveraged positions over companies they legislate. pic.twitter.com/EjrF8CI96N

— unusual_whales (@unusual_whales) December 2, 2023

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.

* * *

“State-level Democrats are raking in small-dollar cash” [Axios]. “The Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee, which heads the party’s efforts to win control of state legislatures, is smashing records for off-year grassroots fundraising. For decades, Republican have trounced Democrats at the state level — helped by their ability to control the redistricting process in key states. The record $5.5 million DLCC has brought in from small-dollar donors this year will be key for flipping seats in 2024. The fundraising numbers come after a series of special elections in which state-level Democrats have outperformed President Biden’s 2020 results. Democrats also managed to take control of the Virginia General Assembly this year, despite significant effort and spending by Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin to gain state control. DLCC has already raised 145% of their total grassroots haul from 2019, the last comparable cycle, according to their stats provided to Axios.” • DLCC sent out that mailer I savaged yesterday. So what do I know….

“MoveOn Carries Out Layoffs as Liberal Groups Struggle to Raise Money” [New York Times]. “The liberal activist organization MoveOn laid off at least 18 employees this week, in the latest sign of a slowdown in donations from small donors to left-leaning causes and candidates…. Democratic candidates and liberal organizations have been struggling to keep up the fund-raising pace they enjoyed during the presidency of Donald J. Trump and even in the early years of President Biden’s administration. Officials at liberal groups and Democratic campaigns have attributed their cash crunch to changes in how tech companies like Google and Apple filter fund-raising solicitations, as well as to dampened enthusiasm for Mr. Biden and an economy that has left donors less willing to fork over money.”

“Nobody Wants Your RBG Candle Anymore” [Politico]. ” According to Leah Kenyon, the [buyer at Politics & Prose, the highbrow Connecticut Avenue bookstore,] sideline items — the refrigerator magnets and coasters and bobbleheads that tempt customers from a high-profile display near the front entrance — sales of politics merchandise is down in 2023 after a long boom. On the first weekend of the holiday shopping season, the store’s main line of political novelty socks was off by 36 percent compared with the same span last year….. Trump, meanwhile, supercharged the liberal desire to advertise loyalties, spurring into being an entire resistance economy of clever (they hope) content creators who set out to turn the 45th president’s antagonists into real-time heroes. ‘We had a ‘Nevertheless She Persisted’ T-shirt for sale within 24 hours,’ of the Senate silencing Warren over her speech against Trump’s attorney general nominee, said Draper. Like any consumer trend, it wasn’t going to last forever. A few years back, ‘there were a lot of individuals you could make product for,’ Draper told me. The fall-off ‘almost gets back to the mystery for Democrats’ flummoxed by sagging poll numbers. ‘I think everything on the progressive side of things kind of peaked last summer with the overturning of Roe,’ he said of the T-shirt market. ‘That was the last big thing. It had been one big run kind of starting with the Women’s March.'” • So “Our Democracy” doesn’t translate into merch.

“‘She got so mad at me’: book on the ‘Squad’ details AOC-Pelosi clashes” [Guardian]. “[AOC and Pelosi’s] first ‘live meeting’, [Ryan] Grim says, came in July 2018 at a restaurant in San Francisco, which Pelosi represents. Then 76, Pelosi had been in Congress since 1987, Democratic House leader since 2003 and speaker from 2007 to 2011. The older woman spoke for nearly the entire lunch, dishing out her trademark looping, run-on sentences to her bewildered companions. ‘She just keeps talking; it’s a fascinating thing,’ Saikat Chakrabarti, then AOC’s chief of staff, recalls. ‘We were eating, and she just talked the entire time without even taking a break. And I wasn’t sure exactly what she was saying, but I was like, ‘Huh, OK.” ‘Getting Pelosi’s unfiltered thoughts was both eye-opening and disturbing,’ Grim writes. ‘Ocasio-Cortez, who had made the slogan ‘Abolish Ice’ [US Immigration and Customs Enforcement] central to her challenge to Crowley, was particularly perplexed to hear Pelosi say that the phrase had been injected into American political discourse by the Russians and that Democrats needed to quash it. ‘AOC wondered, ‘This is how the leader of the party thinks?'” • Pelosi’s “looping sentences.” Narcisssism?

#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!

* * *

Look for the Helpers

“Detroit family tackles asthma with DIY air filters — and measures the results” [Outlier]. Fascinating because the impetus for the project was a workship to build Corsi-Rosenthal boxes, but that name isn’t used, meaning the concept is now out there “in the wild,” which is very good news. Air quality monitoring in real time: “At the workshop, Aiden and five other kids were also outfitted with a shiny new backpack and a portable air quality sensor roughly the shape of a TV remote. The kids can strap these to their backpacks, and the monitor connects to a smartphone app. Aidan and Dominique can see on the app what he’s breathing in real-time. The monitors track particulate matter (PM 10 and PM 2.5), nitrogen oxide and volatile organic compounds.”

Covid is Airborne

“Short-term exposure to indoor PM2.5 in office buildings and cognitive performance in adults: An intervention study” [Building and Environment]. N = 60. “This on-site experimental trial examined a wide range of cognitive functions and their relationship with short-term indoor exposures to PM2.5 within workplace settings. A comprehensive analysis covering five cognitive domains including 16 cognitive skills was presented. We found office workers had significantly lower reaction times for a correct response indicating higher cognitive performance in 9 out of 16 skills when working in comparatively lower PM2.5 concentrations. Within those 9 skills, the accuracy in 3 of the 9 skills (where available as the metric) was also statistically significant different (better) in the intervention. The effect sizes ranged from small to moderate, with the largest effect sizes found for ACC and IES in Contextual Working Memory and Visual Short-Term Memory.”

“Nukit Torch Far-UVC Lights (Set of Four) [Naomi Wu’s Cyber Night-Market]. “Far-UVC is a useful layer on top of masking, and adds a measure of safety, but it should never be considered justification to unmask in situations you normally would wear one. Early on in the pandemic, it was hoped that a single, small Far-UVC device could offer ‘near-field’ protection- create a zone of light around a person that would destroy pathogens before they were inhaled. Devices- including wearable ones, were made and tested, but in the end, the math for a single small emitter, providing any near-field protection, just does not work.” • Pricey, and I’m skeptical, but still Wu is in there punching, and that’s good. (The device should be no closer than 50cm/~19.7″ to the person, so I’m not sure whether it would work on a plane.

Maskstravaganza

Followup on German Health Minister Karl Lauterbach’s remarks on Long Covid:

The 3% (probability of Long Covid if you are vaccinated) estimate cited by the German Health Minister seems consistent with other estimates I have seen, in the low single figure range https://t.co/y5MJ9d1taF

— Michael A Osborne (@maosbot) December 5, 2023

Variants

“Evolution and neutralization escape of the SARS-CoV-2 BA.2.86 subvariant” [Nature]. “Overall, our results indicate that, although the Omicron BA.2.86 subvariant has evolved extensive escape from neutralizing antibodies, it is recognized by convalescent plasma to a similar degree as the XBB.1.5 subvariant. This similarity in recognition might explain the comparatively slow spread of this variant.”

Transmission

“Tracing the footprints of SARS-CoV-2 in oceanic waters” [Science of the Total Environment]. “The study reveals the existence of SARS-CoV-2 RNA in 16.3 % of samples, including remote oceanic waters. The Omicron variant was detected in samples from the Atlantic Ocean and the Mediterranean Sea.” • The conclusion: More research needed.

Treatment

“Remission of severe forms of long COVID following monoclonal antibody (MCA) infusions: A report of signal index cases and call for targeted research” [The American Journal of Emergency Medicine]. N = 3. “These index cases provide compelling clinical signals that [monoclonal antibody (MCA)] infusions may be capable of treating long COVID in certain cases, including those with severe debilitation. While the complete and sustained remissions observed here may only apply to long COVID resulting from pre-Delta variants and the specific MCA infused, the striking rapid and complete remissions observed in these cases also provide mechanistic implications for treating/managing other post-viral chronic conditions and long COVID from other variants.”

Prevention

“Dose matters: HIV drug could prevent coronaviruses, study finds” [Medical Xpress]. “New research by the University of Bristol has shown how an HIV drug could stop many coronavirus diseases, including the SARS-CoV-2 variants, when given to infected cells at the right concentration. The findings could strengthen the arsenal of antiviral drugs available to combat current and future coronavirus outbreaks….The research, using automated image analysis for a screening and parallel comparison of the anti-coronavirus effects of cobicistat and ritonavir, found cobicistat and ritonavir both act against all eight VOCs of SARS-CoV-2 that were tested as well as against other human coronaviruses, including MERS-CoV. The findings indicate that cobicistat is more powerful than ritonavir. Both drugs displayed anti-coronavirus activity in vitro at dosages that are well tolerated, but higher than those currently used for booster activity of anti-HIV drugs and in Paxlovid.” • The original.

“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.

* * *

Policy

“Negligence Cases Against Hospitals for Negligent Transmission of Coronavirus” [Arnold and Smith Personal Injury Lawyers]. Maybe this will get the hospital’s attention:

Persons infected in a hospital with COVID-19 may pursue claims against the facility for the following potential breaches of the duty to exercise reasonable care:

• Failure to adequately train staff on how to properly deal with patients exhibiting virus symptoms;
• Failure to test employees and patients for the virus;
• Failure to screen employees and patients for symptoms;
• Failure to enact reasonable safety protocols such as mandating the use of protective clothing and requiring social distancing measures to protect patients;
• Failure to quarantine patients exhibiting COVID-19 symptoms;
• Failure to screen hospital guests for symptoms;
• Failure to enact disinfectant and social distancing guidelines for employees;
• Failure to close facilities to guests, to protect patients.

If a hospital failed to take reasonable steps to protect patients from exposure to COVID-19, a person injured by the facility’s negligence may be entitled to bring a claim against the hospital. The professionals at Arnold & Smith, PLLC can assist hospital patients or guests who believe they contracted COVID-19 at a hospital.

Consulations are said to be free. Any NC readers in North Carolina game?

Elite Maleficence

.Failure to protect: COVID infection control policy privileges poor-quality evidence” (preprint) [Mark Ungrin, Matthew Oliver, Julia M. Wright, Jonathan Mesiano-Crookston, Malgorzata Gasperowicz, David Fisman, and Corinna Nielson]. A brutal takedown of “Loeb M, Bartholomew A, Hashmi M, Tarhuni W, Hassany M, Youngster I, et al. Medical Masks Versus N95 Respirators for Preventing COVID-19 Among Health Care Workers. Ann Intern Med. 2022 Dec;175(12):1629–38” (“Loeb”):

The failure to immediately recognize the urgent need to control airborne spread of COVID-19, including use of adequate personal protective equipment for an airborne pathogen, represents a major medical error that cost “an enormous number of lives”. Made in the face of significant scientific evidence and a clear requirement to adhere to a precautionary approach, it has still not been fully remedied. To understand the substantial, ongoing gap between science and policy, we carried out an in-depth investigation of an illustrative publication authored by prominent authorities in the fields of Public Health and Infection Prevention and Control, describing a trial of medical masks and N95 respirators for the prevention of COVID-19. Although it was portrayed as among the highest quality evidence available within the Evidence-Based Medicine decision- making paradigm, we found this work to be deeply flawed to the extent that it does not meet basic standards of scientific rigour. Extensive prior work in the respiratory protection field – sufficiently well-established to be incorporated into both national standards and specific recommendations made to address infection control failures in SARS – was ignored. Randomization was compromised, with a statistically significant correlation between female sex and allocation to the higher-risk arm of the trial. Significant conflicts of interest in favour of the reported finding that medical masks are noninferior to N95 respirators in preventing COVID-19 transmission were not disclosed. Prespecified analyses were omitted, and the finding of noninferiority is entirely a product of inappropriate alterations to the trial that were not prospectively registered. Despite numerous flaws biasing the outcome towards a finding of noninferiority, re-analysis using the prespecified approach and noninferiority criterion unambiguously reverses the reported outcome of the trial.

Wouldn’t you know it, that darn “Loeb” study is referenced in footnote 6 of HICPAC’s “Healthcare Personnel Use of N95 Respirators or Medical/ Surgical Masks for Protection Against Respiratory Infections: A Systematic Review and MetaAnalysis” (see NC here). Footnote 6 is the sole support for this claim by HICPAC:

Despite the evidence that N95 respirators are better than medical masks at filtering particles, the evidence of effectiveness of surgical masks relative to N95 respirators to prevent transmission of viral respiratory infections in actual use, has been less conclusive.⁶.

BWA-HA-HA-HA-HA!!! The intern cleaning up the “Systematic Review” is going to have even more work!

* * *

Case Data

From BioBot wastewater data, December 4:

Lambert here: Biden’s doing great. His Omicron spike is, of course, incomparable, but now he’s beaten Trump’s case count for both January and September 2021. In 2023! Case counts moving smartly upward (and tinfoil hat time: This is the, er, inflection point CDC was trying to conceal when they gave the contract to Verily and didn’t ensure a seamless transition). Only 19 superspreading days until Christmas!

Regional data:

Those near-vertical curves in the Midwest and the Northeast are concerning, although as ever with Biobot you have to watch for backward revisions.

Variants

NOT UPDATED From CDC, November25:

Lambert here: Top of the leaderboard: HV.1, EG.5 a strong second, but BA.2.86 coming up fast on the outside.

From CDC, November 11:

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

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 6:

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]).

NOT UPDATED Here’s a different CDC visualization on hospitalization, nationwide, not by state, but with a date, at least. November 25:

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

NOT UPDATED From Walgreens, December 4:

0.2%. 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.

NOT UPDATED From CDC, traveler’s data, November 13:

Down, albeit in the rear view mirror. And here are the variants for travelers, November 6:

BA.2.86 20% of the the total last week, 25% of the total this week.

Deaths

Total: 1,184,189 – 1,184,159 – 1,183,754 – 1,183,664 = 30 (30 * 365 = 10,950 deaths per year, today’s YouGenicist™ number for “living with” Covid (quite a bit higher than the minimizers would like, though they can talk themselves into anything. If the YouGenicist™ metric keeps chugging along like this, I may just have to decide this is what the powers-that-be consider “mission accomplished” for this particular tranche of death and disease). 

Lambert here: This number is too small no matter what. Iowa Covid19 Tracker hasn’t been updated since September 27, 2023. I may have to revert to CDC data. Yech.

Excess Deaths

NOT UPDATED The Economist, November 18:

Lambert here: Gonna have to whack this, too. How does an automated model not update? Based on a machine-learning model.

Stats Watch

Employment Situation: “United States ADP Employment Change” [Trading Economics]. “Private businesses in the US hired 103K workers in November 2023, below a downwardly revised 106K in October and expectations of 130K.”

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Tech: “Electric vehicle miles traveled per 1,000 residents” [Axios]. Handy map:

Tech: “Governments spying on Apple, Google users through push notifications – US senator” [Reuters]. “Apps of all kinds rely on push notifications to alert smartphone users to incoming messages, breaking news, and other updates. These are the audible ‘dings’ or visual indicators users get when they receive an email or their sports team wins a game. What users often do not realize is that almost all such notifications travel over Google and Apple’s servers. That gives the two companies unique insight into the traffic flowing from those apps to their users, and in turn puts them ‘in a unique position to facilitate government surveillance of how users are using particular apps,’ Wyden said. He asked the Department of Justice to ‘repeal or modify any policies’ that hindered public discussions of push notification spying.”

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Today’s Fear & Greed Index: 65 Greed (previous close: 66 Greed) [CNN]. One week ago: 64 (Greed). (0 is Extreme Fear; 100 is Extreme Greed). Last updated Dec 6 at 1:31:08 PM ET.

Zeitgeist Watch

“Doomsday community wants people to live in 575 bunkers for ‘when all hell breaks loose'” [Metro]. “A doomsday community is in search of residents to live in its 575 bunkers which can reportedly fit up to 10,000 people. In the Black Hills mountain range in South Dakota, a former army base which stored munitions has been repurposed into bunkers. The base has since been transformed into liveable bunkers aimed at providing an ‘epic humanitarian survival project’ – not just for the top 1%. Dante Vicino, the executive director of Vivos, who runs the doomsday bunkers, told AbsolutelyBusiness.com: ”Average people’ can now reserve their spot for when all hell breaks loose. ‘Vivos, now known as an epic humanitarian survival project, is fully prepared for whatever and whenever events may unfold.’ Mr Vicino said members of the doomsday group are not ‘preppers’ or the ‘elite’, but ‘well-educated, average people’ who want to protect their families during uncertain times.”

Class Warfare

“Long life billionaires – Part 1” [Alan Neale, When we are Real]. “There are a number of tech billionaires who invest in innovations which they believe to have life extending potential, including” Jeff Bezos, Peter Thiel, Sergey Brin and Larry Page, Sam Altman, Vitalek Buterin, Bryan Johnson, and Martine Rothblatt. I wonder whether the “innovations” will be available to everyone, or only the very wealthy?

News of the Wired

“An Open Letter to the Python Software Foundation” [Python Africa]. • Yikes.

“How I rewired my brain in six weeks” [BBC]. “Over time I found I was able to keep my mind more restful – I was better able to zone out busy thoughts. It was quite, if you will excuse the pun, mind-bending to see these results to my brain on a big screen in front of me. Just by being mindful, I had managed to increase a part of my brain that prevents my mind wandering too much.” • Before you dismiss as woo woo — and PMC woo woo at that — do consider that if one of the more pessimistic outcomes of the Covid pandemic comes true, we’re going to need to heal rather a lot of brain damage.

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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 GD:

GD writes: “Desert Thorn-Apple says Wikipedia. Seen at sunrise in Baja. Wikipedia also identifies this member of the Nightshade family and as an annual that only blooms one night and, the following day, shrivels into a seed pod for the next generation. Guess my timing was pretty good for this one.”

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