By Lambert Strether of Corrente.
Bird Song of the Day
Horned Screamer, Hato El Milagro, Cojedes, Venezuela. ” Neotropical Institute Cut # 6. Bulk reel: 09 Weather: Fair. This may be same pair but now in a different tree. (Note the speed of this may be slightly off as @ end I started to get the warning signal.) (Scardafella squammata in background.)” I couldn’t resist the name of the bird….
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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
The Constitutional Order
“Challenges to Trump’s eligibility are murky at best. But there is a clear way to stop him” [Editorial Board, Boston Globe]. “A number of legal scholars and experts from across the ideological spectrum, from the Federalist Society’s William Baude and Michael Stokes Paulsen, to Harvard Law professor emeritus Laurence Tribe, to conservative retired judge J. Michael Luttig have argued that this provision in itself bars Trump from ever returning to the Oval Office. Yet so far, the challengers have been winless. Courts in Michigan and Minnesota have refused to order that Trump be removed from primary election ballots, either because Congress has failed to speak on the matter or because the decision to place nominees on the ballot is up to political parties, not courts. But in Colorado, the challengers’ loss was even more potentially disastrous. While District Judge Sarah B. Wallace ruled that Trump did ‘engage in an insurrection,’ because Section 3 does not clearly and unmistakably refer to the office of the presidency, she wrote, she could not ’embrace an interpretation which would disqualify a presidential candidate.’ This theory — that the presidency is exempt from the disqualification clause — has been embraced by a growing number of legal experts, including Northwestern University law professor Steven Calabresi…. Even if a host of constitutional scholars and respected legal leaders believe the issue is clear cut, as the three rulings that have been issued so far prove, it is anything but. With the novel questions that these legal challenges present, it would be foolhardy to believe that this is the most surefire way to keep Trump out of office permanently. There is a definite way to do so: at the ballot box.” • Yep.
“President Trump Can Not Be Disqualified” [Steven G. Calabresi, Wall Street Journal]. From September 14, still germane: “Former U.S. Attorney General Michael Mukasey’s op-ed “Was Trump ‘an Officer of the United States’?” (Sept. 8) has caused me to change my mind about an argument that I have had with Prof. Seth Barrett Tillman for 25 years. Mr. Mukasey is right: Looked at in the context of the Disqualification Clause of the 14th Amendment, the president is neither an ‘officer of the United States,’ nor, obviously, a ‘member of Congress.’ That must be why the Constitution prescribes a separate oath for the president. As a result, former President Donald Trump isn’t covered by the Disqualification Clause, and he is eligible to be on the ballot in the 2024 presidential election.” • A novel argument, and some heartburning on it (see here and here). Calabresi is President of the Federalist Society.
2024
Less than a year to go!
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“Experts weigh in on whether DeSantis’ Iowa strategy will be enough to topple Trump: ‘Hail Mary’” [FOX]. “Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis recently earned two key Iowa endorsements as he continues to push campaign resources into the state, a move that political experts tell Fox News Digital is an ‘all in’ strategy as he looks to upset former President Trump in an uphill battle that could make or break his presidential ambitions next year. Shortly after receiving the endorsement of Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds, DeSantis was endorsed by influential Iowa evangelical leader Bob Vander Plaats who said ‘there’s definitely a shot that the former president can be beat here’ despite Trump leading DeSantis by at least 30 points, according to the Real Clear Politics average, with just over six weeks until the Iowa caucus…. DeSantis and his primary Super PAC, Never Back Down, have poured a vast majority of their resources into Iowa in a strategy that GOP strategist Alex Conant, founding partner at Firehouse Strategies, told Fox News Digital is a strategy born out of ‘necessity’ and that recognizes the ‘political reality that if Trump wins Iowa’ it is ‘hard to see how he is stopped anywhere.’” • Meanwhile, back in Florida:
By what authority does the State of Florida have the ability to forge an “alliance” with a foreign country? pic.twitter.com/kiZ5k7HEdF
— Michael Tracey (@mtracey) November 27, 2023
I suppose this will play in the pulpits?
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“Sure, Joe Biden is pretty old: Listen, could you do what he’s doing?” [Salon]. “Would it be ideal to have someone younger than 80? Sure it would. But that’s not reality this time around. And that imaginary 45-year-old wouldn’t have the extensive institutional and foreign policy experience that Joe Biden has. The Democratic Party has quite a few truly worthy (and perhaps even charismatic) future candidates for the highest office waiting in the wings, gaining more experience in governing and serving all the citizens in their districts or states, not just the ones who voted for them. But those candidates will need a liberal democracy in place (i.e., basic rule of law, support for voting rights, willingness to compromise on policies and acceptance of the peaceful transfer of power) for us to find out what they can do to move us forward. If you think 80 is really old — well, in some cases it is. People sometimes die much younger than that. In the two months since I retired, I’ve lost two close friends. But let’s list just a few older people who are still out there killing it: Paul McCartney is touring again and puts on vigorous three-hour concerts (without breaks). He turned 81 in June. Mick Jagger is still doing that chicken-strut thing he learned from Tina Turner, and celebrated his 80th birthday in July. At 97, Mel Brooks is sharper (and a lot funnier) than you or me. So is the amazing Norman Lear, at 101. Many notable scientists, philosophers, poets, artists and people in other demanding fields function at a high level, mentally and physically, deep into their lives. Moreover, emotional well-being tends to increase in old age, as personal ambitions drop away and we allow ourselves the time to just be. (These findings do not apply to people who never grow up, by the way.) Biden stays active, eats a good diet, has social intelligence and awareness of others’ needs, has varied interests and solves complex problems daily — those, it seems, are the habits and characteristics of ‘super agers.’ He is buoyed by a loving wife and family [dear Hunter!], because he’s earned that love. (The Beatles would approve.)” • As an old codger myself — though not nearly as old as Biden — I’m not unsympathetic. But in Biden’s case, and leaving the long list of concerning incidents aside, I’m deeply suspicious of this “With age comes wisdom” narrative in Biden’s case. Exhibit 1: Ukraine, a war we are about to lose. Exhibit 2: Gaza, a war we will never win. Besides, a dog that bites people says something about the master, and what it says is not “social intelligence.” Anyhow, Joe Biden owes me six hundred bucks.
“Biden’s mishandling of documents, his family’s business schemes threaten our national security” [James Comer, FOX]. “The House Oversight Committee has obtained financial records revealing the Biden family members, their business associates and their related companies received significant payments from individuals and companies in China, Russia, Ukraine, Kazakhstan and Romania. President Biden has repeatedly lied to the American people about his knowledge of and participation in his family’s business dealings. Not only did Joe Biden know about his family’s business dealings, but he was also involved and financially benefited from them. Based on witness testimony, then-Vice President Joe Biden spoke with Hunter Biden’s business associates by phone at least 20 times, dined with foreign oligarchs and a Burisma executive who collectively wired millions to the Bidens, and had coffee with Hunter Biden’s Chinese business partner in Beijing. The House Oversight Committee also has traced bank records revealing that Joe Biden received $40,000 in proceeds from China in the form of a personal check from his brother, James Biden and sister-in-law, Sara Biden. Even if this check was loan repayment from James Biden as the White House asserts, it still shows how Joe Biden benefited from his family cashing in on his name – with money from China no less.” • In this article,Comer mixes up his excellent work on bank records with the separate track on classified documents (which excite nobody outside the Beltway. And I don’t care that Trump’s been charged with the same stupidity, so this might even the score. Please can we for once keep our talking points clean). Stick with the [family blogging] bank records and hammer on the timeline, my advice. At the very minimum, Hunter traded on his Father’s name, with his Father’s knowledge, with the result that the tributaries of the Biden clan were periodically refreshed with cash. Granted, none of this has the eerie, complex beauty of the Clinton Foundation, and it’s all mind-bogglingly petty and sordid, but how can it possibly be OK? It’s a very simple story: The Pastor’s family have their hands in the collection plate. Sell that, ffs, and keep it simple!
“The polls keep getting worse for Biden” [Politico]. “The president’s standing in head-to-head matchups with Trump is falling: Among the latest surveys this month from 13 separate pollsters, Biden’s position is worse than their previous polls in all but two of them…. And while polls suggest most of the movement comes from voters abandoning Biden — who might become undecided but not swing to supporting Trump — the Republican has also started to gain steam. Trump’s vote share in the national polling average is higher now than at any point in the past year. The state-level data are just as striking: In addition to those New York Times/Siena polls, within the last week and a half, other surveys have shown Trump ahead by 8 points in Arizona and 5 points up in Michigan.” • Handy chart:
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“Senate rankings: 5 seats most likely to flip” [The Hill]. • West Virginia, Montana, Ohio, Arizona, Pennsylvania. Arizona and Pennsylvania are swing states too, interestingly.
CA: “Race in open California district could be pivotal to House control” [Roll Call]. “The 47th district includes a swath of southern California stretching along the Pacific from the retirement villages of Seal Beach to the conservative enclaves of Huntington Beach and Newport Beach. It reaches to Irvine, the region’s fast growing and increasingly diverse biotech and education hub…. Democrats are fighting to hold on to the southern California battleground — which is likely to play a key role in determining which party controls the House — and are split between state Sen. Dave Min and community activist Joanna Weiss. Under California’s rules, the top two finishers — regardless of party affiliation — in the March 5 primary will appear on the November ballot… [T]he GOP has its sights on the open seat in the 47th. The party’s hopes rest with Scott Baugh, a former member of the state assembly, who came within 3 percentage points of ousting Porter in 2022, despite being outspent $26 million to $3 million.”
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“Democrats Race To Get Abortion on Swing State Ballots To Blunt Biden’s Sinking Poll Numbers” [New York Sun]. “Democrats are racing to put abortion on the ballot in 2024 after seeing victories on every state ballot it’s been on since the overturning of Roe v. Wade…. In addition to Ohio, state ballot measures have been successful in California, Kansas, Kentucky, Michigan, Montana, and Vermont since 2022’s Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision. … New York and Maryland already have questions on the ‘24 ballot to determine if each state will enshrine abortion into its constitution. A series of similar pro-abortion ballot efforts are underway in states ranging from Arizona and Colorado to Florida and Missouri, with traction coming in some states more than others.” • Good thing we never codified Roe into legislation!
Republican Funhouse
“The Blueprint” [Harold Myerson, The American Prospect]. “Earlier this year, Project 2025 published a 920-page manifesto called Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise, laying out its agenda for Trump or any other Republican who should win the White House. The book consists chiefly of the world’s longest enemies list, with detailed instructions on how to target them, oust them, and reverse their policies, both real and imagined.” Another way of saying this is that Republicans have always been a more serious party than Democrats, at least in my lifetime. Contrast Obama, who, for example, rationalized and legitimized Bush’s felonious program of warrantless surveillance, and looked forward and not backward on torture. To be fair, Obama probably didn’t consider spooks “enemies.” More: “This is not the first time Heritage has sketched out a blueprint for a conservative presidency. In 1980, the think tank aided another neophyte politician with revolutionary aspirations—Ronald Reagan—with a report, also called Mandate for Leadership, that stretched to 1,100 pages and covered virtually every nook and cranny of government…. A subsequent edition of Mandate for Leadership has been produced for every presidential election since 1980. This iteration, very much in the spirit of Trump, is lighter on policy and heavier on retribution…. Heritage’s knowledge of the federal vacancy process becomes useful. Under the Federal Vacancies Reform Act, for most federal agencies, a vacancy at the top means that the next available deputy becomes the acting head. Project 2025 sees a path to manipulating this law to ensure loyalists take control. ‘Where a career employee holds a leadership position,’ explains Ken Cuccinelli, the former acting deputy homeland security secretary under Trump, ‘that position should be deemed vacant for line-of-succession purposes, and the next eligible political appointee in the sequence should assume acting authority.’ Other authors call for political appointees to be put into the line of succession directly, ‘selected by the President-elect’s transition team’ and ‘in place the first day of the Administration.’ This gambit would hand over the administrative state to those dedicated to crushing it. That would combine with the restoration of Trump’s October 2020 ‘Schedule F’ order, which would reassign up to 50,000 civil service workers with a designation that robs them of employment protections, making them easier to terminate. So the leadership of executive branch agencies would be ideologues, and many bureaucrats under their care could be fired at will.” • I’m imagining a CDC run by Great Barrington types, here; Jay Bhattacharya dousing a dumpsterfull of mask in gasoline and tossing a match, instead of Maskless Mandy breathing bioeffluent all over everybody. I dunno. If he did that, maybe America’s college towns would mask up, 100%, overnight…..
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.
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#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!
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Look for the Helpers
Gracious in victory:
You never know what might happen if you try.
A person that has openly mocked me for COVID precautions is looking after sick kids…and had every window and door open, and a HEPA filter on.
I said nothing.
I’m happy for them.
— Dr Noor Bari (@NjbBari3) November 26, 2023
Maskstravaganza
Bubble, bubble, toil and trouble:
Wearing an FFP3 mask protects you against airborne pathogens and pollution. 🫁
This mask was worn to a performance of Macbeth 🎭.
Other people will have brought this muck home in their lungs, including the actors who will be exposed daily….#WearAMask😷 pic.twitter.com/qEDjDfOAtx
— Clinically Vulnerable Families 💙💜💗 (@cv_cev) November 25, 2023
Variants
You may not be interested in variants, but variants are interested in you. T. Ryan Gregory:
Sequelae
“Covid linked to deadly diseases, Parkinsons, Alzheimers, bowel disease” [News.com]. “As Australia enters its eighth Covid wave, researchers are warning of a possible link between Covid and a range of devastating diseases such as Parkinsons, Alzheimers as well as auto-immune conditions like bowel disease and rheumatoid arthritis. More than 10,000 Australians reported contracting the virus in the last seven days but the true figure could be much larger as it is no longer a requirement to lodge a positive test with a person’s state. Added to that new data revealed only 1.9 million Australian adults have received a Covid vaccination in the last six months, and many of these will be approaching six months since their last infection. But researchers are now suggesting Aussies should be worried not just about the impact of the virus in the short term — they should consider how it might impact them long-term.” • Nothing NC readers don’t know. But significant that this message, at least, has reached the mainstream.
“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.
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Airborne AIDS?
When the first researchers started to propose that Covid would cause AIDS like immune dysfunction, one of the main pushbacks was that since Covid had infected most of the population, we should be seeing surges of opportunistic infections & bacterial pneumoniae if that was true. https://t.co/cmZl4q7Cdb
— Stephanie Tait ♿️ (@StephTaitWrites) November 24, 2023
“Immune deficiency,” after all….
Elite Maleficence
“Moderna is Spying on You” [Lee Fang, Unherd]. “[A]s demand for [Moderna’s] vaccinations has diminished, inevitably, so too have its earnings. This year, its only marketable product lies unused and the company has recorded steep losses…. The most important thing for Moderna is that people keep having their jabs. Smart ads are part of that. But more important is to push back aggressively against any prevailing anti-vax narrative and engage where possible in any discussions around vaccine policy. That’s where the Moderna disinformation department comes in. Behind the scenes, the marketing arm of the company has been working with former law enforcement officials and public health officials to monitor and influence vaccine policy. Key to this is a drug industry-funded NGO called Public Good Projects. According to documents we have seen, PGP works closely with social media platforms, government agencies and news websites to confront the ‘root cause of vaccine hesitancy’ by rapidly identifying and ‘shutting down misinformation.’ A network of 45,000 healthcare professionals are given talking points ‘and advice on how to respond when vaccine misinformation goes mainstream’, according to an email from Moderna…. Despite the growing backlash against social media censorship, the network of fact-checking nonprofits has grown at an industrial pace, providing opaque opportunities for private and public interests to take subtle control over the public discourse. Such sophistication in blending public-health messaging and corporate advertising should concern anyone with an interest in how government controls free speech.” • A parallel effort:
BREAKING: Fed-funded NewsGuard, which blacklists & demonetizes news outlets for “COVID myths” & “anti vaccine misinformation,” is bankrolled by Publicis Groupe, which reps COVID vax maker Pfizer, and run by gen manager Matt Skibinski, whose father has worked for Pfizer for 20 yrs
— Paul Sperry (@paulsperry_) November 27, 2023
“US Department of Health official who conspired with Anthony Fauci to downplay COVID lab-leak theory reveals ‘agonising’ over his actions” [Sky News]. “he former Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response at the US Department of Health, Dr Robert Kadlec, has told Sky News he feels obligated to reveal confidential discussions he had with Dr Fauci, America’s top infectious diseases adviser, about diverting attention away from the lab leak theory…. Dr Kadlec, who worked for presidents George W. Bush and Donald Trump and lead American efforts to develop a Covid-19 vaccine, said his intention in initially downplaying a lab leak was to encourage co-operation from China in the early days of the outbreak….. Dr Kadlec felt that Fauci had other reasons for wanting to divert attention away from the Wuhan Institute of Virology. He said Fauci was likely worried about his reputation if it eventuated that his agency had funded the gain-of-function research that sparked the outbreak. ‘That would be a natural reaction of him or anybody, particularly I think, for him saying, what could this do to me and to our institute as a consequence if we were found to have some culpability or some involvement in this?’” • Cf. Proverbs 28:1.
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Case Data
From BioBot wastewater data, November 27:
Lambert here: 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).
Regional data:
That Midwest near-vertical curve is 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
NOT UPDATED From CDC NCIRD Surveillance, November 18:
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 until Verily gets its house in order (and working class-centric, since I would doubt the upper crust goes to the ER).
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 bothMR 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.
Hospitalization
Bellwether New York City, data as of November 27:
Level-ish, but I bet hospitalization drops over the holiday weekend. Let’s wait and see. 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 11:
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, November 20:
0.5%. Decline arrested. (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, November 11:
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, October 30:
Down, albeit in the rear view mirror. And here are the variants for travelers, October 30:
Deaths
Total: 1,183,396 – 1,183,379 = 17 (17 * 365 = 6,205 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: Based on a machine-learning model.
Stats Watch
There are no officals statistics of interest today.
* * *
Manufacturing: Tern is a bit of a doomer. Nevertheless:
Does make you wonder how many other, well, PMC have similar “briefs.”
Tech: “Meta Designed Products to Capitalize on Teen Vulnerabilities, States Allege” [Wall Street Journal]. “An internal 2020 Meta presentation shows that the company sought to engineer its products to capitalize on the parts of youth psychology that render teens ‘predisposed to impulse, peer pressure, and potentially harmful risky behavior,’ the filings show…. ‘Teens are insatiable when it comes to ‘feel good’ dopamine effects,’ the Meta presentation shows, according to the unredacted filing, describing the company’s existing product as already well-suited to providing the sort of stimuli that trigger the potent neurotransmitter. ‘And every time one of our teen users finds something unexpected their brains deliver them a dopamine hit.’ Well-being concerns were especially pronounced for younger teens, some Meta executives involved with youth well-being issues internally acknowledged. ‘It’s not ‘regulators’ or ‘critics’ who think Instagram is unhealthy for young teens—it’s everyone from researchers and academic experts to parents,’ Karina Newton, Instagram’s head of policy, wrote in a May 2021 email cited by the attorneys general. ‘The blueprint of the app is inherently not designed for an age group that don’t have the same cognitive and emotional skills that older teens do.’ Meta says it didn’t design its products to be addictive for teens. ‘The complaint mischaracterizes our work using selective quotes and cherry-picked documents,’ said Stephanie Otway, a spokeswoman for the company.” • Uh-huh [nods vigorously].
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Today’s Fear & Greed Index: 67 Greed (previous close: 68 Greed) [CNN]. One week ago: 64 (Greed). (0 is Extreme Fear; 100 is Extreme Greed). Last updated Nov 27 at 1:36:08 PM ET.
Rapture Index: Closes unchanged. Again!! [Rapture Ready]. Record High, October 10, 2016: 189. Current: 187. (Remember that bringing on the Rapture is good.) NOTE on #42 Plagues: “The coronavirus pandemic has maxed out this category.” More honest than most! •
Zeitgeist Watch
This account is one of my guilty pleassures:
Some Black Friday Shoe Sales
1. Meermin: Even at full retail, this brand offers some of the best values in men’s footwear. These shoes are Goodyear welted, which means you can more easily resole them when the soles wear down. The uppers are also made from full-grain leather, so… pic.twitter.com/dLdRdGv8f8
— derek guy (@dieworkwear) November 26, 2023
Nevertheless, well-made, well-cut men’s clothing lasts for years. If you can afford the initial outlay, it’s well worth it.
Class Warfare
“Wealth Systems in RPGs” [Troy Press]. “Clearly there are a wealth of ways to handle currency in tabletop role-playing games.” • The idea of “wealth” seems a little… constricted.
News of the Wired
“The Weight of New York City: Possible Contributions to Subsidence From Anthropogenic Sources” [Earth’s Future]. “As coastal cities grow globally, the combination of construction densification and sea level rise imply increasing inundation hazard. The point of the paper is to raise awareness that every additional high-rise building constructed at coastal, river, or lakefront settings could contribute to future flood risk, and that mitigation strategies may need to be included. The subsidence mapping concept helps to quantify the hazard and adds specificity to soil types and conditions. We present satellite data that show that the city is sinking 1–2 mm/tr with some areas subsiding much faster.”
Thesis, antithesis:
my real take on the death of the humanities is that we could undeath them by introducing a new kind of semicolon that establishes two independent clauses are in contradiction. it would look like the below, and it would enable a generation of dialectical thought that would free us pic.twitter.com/OpDRR21k0i
— isabel (@_unwell) November 27, 2023
What about synthesis?
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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 Sub-Boreal:
Sub-Boreal writes: “I passed these large half-barrel planters full of zinnias on my daily bike ride recently. We haven’t had a killing frost yet this fall at lower elevations in this part of central British Columbia, so flower gardens are getting an extended blooming season. And I’m getting a lot more tomatoes than usual to ripen on the vine!” I’ve always used Zinnias for borders, or simply scattered about. I’ve never seen them in pots before!
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Readers: Water Cooler is a standalone entity not covered by the annual NC fundraiser. So if you see a link you especially like, or an item you wouldn’t see anywhere else, please do not hesitate to express your appreciation in tangible form. Remember, a tip jar is for tipping! Regular positive feedback both makes me feel good and lets me know I’m on the right track with coverage. When I get no donations for five or ten days I get worried. More tangibly, a constant trickle of donations helps me with expenses, and I factor in that trickle when setting fundraising goals:
Here is the screen that will appear, which I have helpfully annotated:
If you hate PayPal, you can email me at lambert [UNDERSCORE] strether [DOT] corrente [AT] yahoo [DOT] com, and I will give you directions on how to send a check. Thank you!
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