By Lambert Strether of Corrente.
Patient readers, I had a household debacle, and got a very late start. Hence, I will do politics first, since we had Super Tuesday. Then I will do Covid, as part of orts and scraps. Sorry! –lambert UPDATE Covid charts soon.
Bird Song of the Day
Mrs. Moreau’s Warbler, Morogoro, Tanzania. Sounds like a synthesizer making space noises!
Some readers asked for something table of contents-like, so here are a few highlights amidst the density:
High- or Lowlights
(1) Reader query on the CDC.
(2) Open source P2P search software.
(3) Cuomo to be accountable for nursing home deaths?
(4) Super Tuesday.
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 (Insurrection)
“The Court’s Colorado Decision Wasn’t About the Law” [George Conway, The Atlantic]. “What little logic that does appear is in the form of a policy argument. The Court correctly points out that, when it comes to the presidency, if states were allowed to enforce Section 3 in federal races, a “patchwork” could result, particularly as to presidential candidates. You could have different states applying different standards under Section 3 in different proceedings with different procedures and on differing records, and they could reach differing results as to a particular candidate for the presidency. This, the Court felt, was bad.” • If you don’t like Justice Chase (“[A] construction, which must necessarily occasion great public and private mischief, must never be preferred to a construction which will occasion neither”), then perhaps Justice Jackson (“[the Constitution is not] a suicide pact”) will do. If Conway thinks that a gaggle of Blue States deciding election 2024 with a “patchwork” of evidentiary standards and entities is the path to a legitimate Biden win, then I want whatever he’s smoking.
Biden Administration
“Security fence to go up at Capitol for State of the Union” [Roll Call]. “A security fence will surround the Capitol as President Joe Biden delivers his State of the Union address on March 7, according to three sources familiar with the decision. The Capitol Police Board on Friday approved the installation of the fencing. A security fence went up around the Capitol for last year’s State of the Union speech. The State of the Union is designated as a National Special Security Event, the highest security status the federal government can assign to an event. These are determined by the size, scope and potential threat profile. U.S. Secret Service spokesperson Anthony Guglielmi said people should expect to see a heavy law enforcement presence around the Capitol complex. He noted that there will be technology, plainclothes officers and support teams.”
“The Press Is Ready to Feast on Biden’s State of the Union” [Politico]. “Except for this year’s. Thanks to the stream of memory lapses that burble from the president’s lips like a Rocky Mountain stream, his stiff gait, his falls, his use of the shorter and sturdier set of stairs on Air Force One and even his own self-effacing jokes about his age, Biden has effortlessly attracted the volume of attention that makes him the envy of previous presidents. Unfortunately for Joe, it’s the wrong sort of attention because it makes him look infirm — veering into inept. And it’s happening right as the 2024 presidential campaign is on the verge of being set, as a rematch between Biden and Donald Trump. The amount of media and social media scrutiny that the address will blast at Biden will likely exceed the power of a billion suns. His every handshake coming down the aisle, his every step taken, his every word spoken, will be magnified a hundred times over by the press, his political opposition and voters as they take his measure. And it’s only fair. Biden is asking for another term, and the press is tasked with vetting the candidates the best they can.”
“Ukraine first lady declines State of the Union invitation?” [The Hill]. “Ukraine’s first lady Olena Zelenska was invited to attend President Biden’s State of the Union address but is unable to come, according to the White House…. The White House had also invited Yulia Navalnaya, the widow of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, but she was also unable to come, according to the White House.”
“Biden’s Best Possible State of the Union Is a Populist Street Fight” [The New Republic]. “Biden is in a near-disaster zone with working-class voters, it’s true. Before we get into that, let’s quickly correct one assertion often made by pundits that’s just wrong. Biden does not need to win the working class. He didn’t in 2020. Exit polls from that year show that Trump won non-college voters—the closest proxy to working class in such polls—by 50 to 48 percent. Trump crushed Biden among white voters with no college degree, 67 to 32 percent. But Biden pummeled Trump by even more among voters of color with no college degree, 72 to 26 percent. If Biden can just keep it close among non-college voters overall (who comprised 59 percent of the electorate in 2020), he can win. But he’s not there right now, especially with the erosion of support among Black and Latino working-class men that we’ve seen in poll after poll. If he can’t change that, he’s in deep trouble.” And: “It’s maddening because middle-out economics—the economic theory that Biden embraces and promotes—is entirely about shifting wealth from the top back to the middle and working classes. The whole idea in a nutshell is that growth comes not from cutting rich people’s taxes and waiting for them to invest, but from making private and public investments, financed in part by rich people’s money, directed toward the middle and working classes so that these people have a fair shot at fulfilling their potential and living better and more secure lives. Throw in his passionate support of labor unions [like the railroad workers], and Biden is more on the side of working-class people than any president since arguably Harry Truman. But the fact that he’s not getting a lot of credit is not puzzling, because either (a) nobody knows about this wealth transfer or (b) they kind of know it, but they don’t really believe it. There are reasons for this: First, Biden has not been a very effective salesman for his ideas and accomplishments. He also suffers for the fact that his party, writ large, isn’t entirely on the same page.” • And by not “on the same page” we mean “vehemently opposed” when their class oxen are gored.
Handy list of Biden’s betrayals on Covid:
Most lethal, consequential “Lucy and the Football” move ever. No doubt Biden will be treating CDC’s “one day” guidance as an enormous victory, even if the pre-SOTU timing was a complete coincidence [snort]. And speaking of those guidelines:
22. He doesn’t have time to spend four years neck deep in research. So, whose advice is this?
Does the WH make use of FarUV technology and increased ventilation? Probably. But not at a cafe in Iowa. Not on the campaign trail.
Does he use a daily antiviral? Which one(s)? /22
— Chalis Montgomery (@TheChalis) March 5, 2024
2024
Less than a year to go!
Super Tuesday: “Takeaways from Super Tuesday” [CNN]. “President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump made their rematch all but official, with both notching huge Super Tuesday wins and Nikki Haley dropping out of the GOP presidential race. More than a dozen states held primaries or caucuses on Tuesday, the biggest day of the nominating races so far as the 2024 presidential campaign accelerates and leaves the one-by-one march through early-voting states behind. Both Biden and Trump saw familiar signs of potential general election weaknesses: progressives casting ballots for “uncommitted” rather than Biden, college-educated suburbanites choosing Haley over Trump.” • Handy maps:
Super Tuesday: “Donald Trump and Adam Schiff Are the Biggest Winners of Super Tuesday” [Cook Political Report]. “Donald Trump’s decisive showing on Tuesday — he won 14 of the 15 contests and 722 delegates — wasn’t surprising. But, at the start of 2023, this outcome was far from a given. At this point in 2023, polling showed Trump polling at just 46% while an ascendent and well-funded Florida governor looked well-positioned to make the race for the nomination a serious contest. A year later, Ron DeSantis is long gone, and Trump’s lone remaining opponent, Nikki Haley, only managed to pick up 46 delegates and one primary state victory (Vermont). Exit polls in North Carolina and Virginia confirmed a long-standing pattern of Trump running up the score among Republican and non-college voters, but narrowly winning, or losing, college educated and independent voters to Haley.”
Super Tuesday: “7 things Super Tuesday just taught us about the November election” [Politico]. The deck: “Biden and Trump romped on Super Tuesday. But there were warning signs for both of them.” More: “If Tuesday night cemented anything, it was that any lingering chance of Trump or Biden not getting through their primaries has become the stuff of fanfic fever dreams. Large swaths of voters in both parties aren’t relishing a 2020 rematch, polls show. And now, they’re going to have to get used to it.” Or, as we say, “live with it.” More: “From Colorado to Virginia, it was clear that the GOP’s down-ballot problems will only be exacerbated by Trump’s problems in the suburbs. In Virginia, the former president lost suburbs like Alexandria and Arlington to Haley, along with the state capital of Richmond and city of Charlottesville, home to the University of Virginia. In Colorado, he lost Denver and Boulder. ‘He consistently loses the most educated counties in every state,’ said GOP pollster Christine Matthews. ‘In Virginia, this was definitely true, but it was true in South Carolina, too. And everywhere. … I don’t think he wins them back by talking about how much Black voters love his mug shot T-shirt or let Russia attack NATO allies who haven’t paid their dues.’ Trump set out to remake the GOP into more of a working-class party — and November could test whether trading white-collar voters for blue-collar ones is a winning strategy in swing states.” And: “But it was in Minnesota, which hasn’t gone for a Republican for president since Richard Nixon in 1972, where Biden saw a less surprising but more threatening setback. The ‘uncommitted’ option on the ballot there had as big a night as it did in Michigan, winning 19 percent of the vote with 89 percent counted. The state’s politically significant Somali population, concentrated around the Twin Cities, rebuked Biden’s handling of the Israel-Hamas war…. But come this fall, Biden can hardly afford such a defection in the pivotal blue wall state.”
Super Tuesday: “How did ‘uncommitted’ perform on ballots across the country?” [USA Today]. MN: 18.9%; MI (last week) 13%; NC: 12.7%; MA: 9.4%; CO: 8.1%; TN: 7.9%; AL: 6%; IA: 3.9%. Could be a lot in a close race. More:
“Uncommitted” got a whopping 19% in Minnesota with virtually no organizing, but this graph is even more telling than the overall number. In many places it was over 50%, & in 2 over 75%! They talk about “younger voters”, but note the age range goes up to 34. Not just college kids! pic.twitter.com/yKIGiTX3pz
— Left I on the News (@leftiblog) March 6, 2024
Another view of “protest votes”:
Super Tues states w largest anti-Biden Protest Vote:
Minnesota:
Biden 71
Uncomm 19
Dean 8
Marianne 1Massachusetts:
Biden 83
No Pref 9
Dean 5
Marianne 3Colorado:
Biden 84
Uncomm 8
Dean 3
Marianne 3North Carolina:
Biden 87
Uncomm 13
(Dean & Marianne blocked from ballot)— Krystal Ball (@krystalball) March 6, 2024
Super Tuesday: “How the ‘Uncommitted’ Effort to Protest Biden Has Spread in Super Tuesday States” [New York Times]. “The campaigns have been fragmented, organized with far less time and resources than Michigan’s operation. Many were planned in a matter of days, well after early voting had already begun, and several organizers declined to articulate specific benchmarks for what would constitute success on Tuesday night beyond the goal of seeing Mr. Biden move his position.”
Super Tuesday: “Nikki Haley suspends her campaign and leaves Donald Trump as the last major Republican candidate” [Associated Press]. “Nikki Haley suspended her presidential campaign on Wednesday after being soundly defeated across the country on Super Tuesday… ‘It is now up to Donald Trump to earn the votes of those in our party and beyond it who did not support him. And I hope he does that,’ she said. ‘At its best, politics is about bringing people into your cause, not turning them away. And our conservative cause badly needs more people.’”
Super Tuesday: “Dean Phillips ends presidential campaign and endorses Biden” [NBC]. “‘I’m going to suspend my campaign and I will be, right now, endorsing President Biden because the choices are so clear,’ he said in a Minnesota radio interview on WCCO’s ‘The Chad Hartman Show.’ ‘The alternative, Donald Trump, is a very dangerous, dangerous man,’ he continued. ‘I would simply ask and invite and encourage Haley supporters, Trump supporters, uncommitted supporters to unify behind decency and integrity.’”
Super Tuesday: AIPAC a paper tiger?
And really a seismic result for Dave Min to fend off nearly $5 million in AIPAC ads and reach the runoff. Will AIPAC endorse the Republican in November? pic.twitter.com/JwU9xPCmt7
— David Dayen (@ddayen) March 6, 2024
Min also has a DUI conviction, so he’s not without vulnerabilities.
Trump (R): “Arizona investigators issue grand jury subpoenas as state’s 2020 Trump election probe accelerates” [Politico]. “Arizona prosecutors in recent weeks issued grand jury subpoenas to multiple people linked to Donald Trump’s 2020 campaign, a sharp acceleration of their criminal investigation into efforts to overturn Joe Biden’s victory in the state… Mayes’ investigators are scrutinizing the so-called “alternate electors” who signed paperwork falsely claiming that Trump had won the state. Prosecutors in Georgia, Michigan and Nevada have already brought charges against pro-Trump fake electors in their states. Mayes’ team has also asked people about Trump himself, as well as former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows and Trump attorneys John Eastman and Kenneth Chesebro. Chesebro, an architect of Trump’s scheme to organize slates of false electors in six states won by Biden, pleaded guilty for his role in that scheme in Georgia, and he has cooperated with investigators in Nevada, Michigan and Wisconsin. He agreed late last year to speak to Arizona prosecutors as well.” • To me, this is the most dangerous lawsuit of all, and the one that may have already holed Trump below the waterline, because some of the “contingent electors” were innocents who got sucked in. Voters may well feel that players do what they do, on each side. But when the players start shooting civilians, that’s quite another thing. (I don’t know if the Democrats are capable of playing it that way, since that would imply that all Trump voters are not evil, but if they can bring themselves to, I think it would be the most effective approach.)
Trump (R): “Trump lawfare update” [Washington Examiner]. A useful summary, concluding “The reason for the Democratic panic is this: Some in the party think, sure, President Joe Biden is weak and his polls are terrible, but if he falters, there is always lawfare. We’ve thrown case after case against Trump. Surely one of them will work. Now, there has been a lot of movement with the big six cases. Five of them might not be resolved, or resolved in Biden’s favor, before the election. So it could be that the entire hopes of the Democratic Party and all those who seek to bring down Trump before Election Day rest with Bragg.” Bragg’s case is the Trump’s payments to a mistress: “Bragg[‘s] charges were weak. It’s really a bunch of misdemeanors that Bragg conjured into felonies through a legally questionable maneuver.” Seems like normal practice in New York.” And: “The other cases, bad as some of them are, got more respect and attention, and Bragg stepped into the background, offering to delay trying his case while the others went first. But now all those cases have encountered problems, and Bragg is steaming ahead to a March 25 trial date, less than three weeks away. It’s a bad case, but it’s a case.”
Trump (R): “FAU poll shows 1 in 7 Republicans don’t plan to vote for Trump in November” [Orlando Sentinel]. “The poll asked people — Democrats, Republicans and independents — who said they aren’t voting for Trump in November why. There were two central reasons people cited for their intentions not to vote for Trump in the fall. (1) His track record as president and his performance on Jan. 6, 2021, the day of the attempted insurrection aimed at stopping the official declaration of President Joe Biden’s victory (cited by 30%); (2) The way Trump conducts himself personally (cited by 21%). There were notable differences by political party. Among Democrats, 31% cited his presidential performance/Jan. 6. Among Republicans, 29% cited his personal behavior. The exact question was, ‘Why are you not voting for Donald Trump?’” And, on abortion: “Just 4% said it was their top concern.” • The question reason #1 really was “His track record as president including his performance on Jan. 6th.” If this were a journal paper, I’d say there were confounders.
Biden (D): Yikes:
Staffer yelling “Thank you” to get the press outta there…
Biden (D): “The White House is betting the election on a theory of skewed polls” (excerpt) [Nate Silver, Silver Bulletin]. “One of the oddities of my career covering politics is that Democrats have never really been down in the polls of a presidential race — until now…. So it’s easy enough to see why Democratic campaign officials have a certain confidence, sometimes verging on swagger. Or at least those officials most closely associated with Biden, since the one election out of the four that Democrats lost (2016) was the one when Biden wasn’t on the ticket…. If you held the election today, it wouldn’t be a fait accompli: Biden would be in an analogous position to Trump in 2016, within striking distance in the event of a systematic polling error. But Trump would be favored…. This matters more, because one reason polls in March aren’t historically all that reliable is because campaigns have the opportunity to change course and tweak a strategy that isn’t working. And yet, blessed with a lot of runway and faced with abundant evidence that voters have soured on Biden — his approval rating is 38 percent — Democratic officials have mostly reacted with denial.” • Democrats?! Below the fold (sigh), Silver reacts to Osnos’ New Yorker piece yesterday. Another reaction to that article–
Biden (D): “Is Biden in Denial About the Polls?” [Jonathan Chait, New York Magazine]. “The most disturbing possibility of Biden’s posture of polling denial is not that it’s sincere but that it comes from a sense of entitlement. According to Osnos, Biden’s view is ‘I’ve earned this.’ In other words, he believes his presidency has been successful enough that he does not deserve to be facing questions about his effectiveness.” • A posture very appealing to the PMC generally.
“Who Will Win Control of the House in 2024? California May Hold the Key” [New York Times]. “Of the 16 House districts won by Mr. Biden but currently in Republican hands, five are in California, making the state a linchpin of the party’s hopes of retaking the [House], where Republicans currently hold a three-seat majority…. On the whole, Democrats start at a slight numerical disadvantage when it comes to taking back the House. Gerrymandering and the natural sorting of voters between dense urban areas that are heavily Democratic and vast rural districts that are strongly Republican have left vanishingly few in play.” • “Natural”? When you read “natural,” always consider rewriting as “artificial.” • Handy chart on House ratings, from Larry Sabato’s Center for American Politics:
Republican Funhouse
“GOP lawmakers send Andrew Cuomo subpoena over COVID policies” [News Nation]. “A House committee led by Republicans issued a subpoena Tuesday to former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, asking him to provide a deposition on his COVID-19 policies, according to a letter obtained by NewsNation. The subpoena, sent by the House Select Committee on the Coronavirus Response and signed by GOP Rep. James Comer of Kentucky, asks Cuomo to give a deposition on May 24. Specifically, lawmakers are asking for information on his COVID policies as they relate to nursing homes during the early days of the pandemic. Cuomo left office in 2021 after a report by New York Attorney General Letitia James concluded he sexually harassed at least 11 women, which he has denied. When it comes to the pandemic, critics have said Cuomo understated the true death toll in nursing homes by thousands, with fatalities fueled by a state order that effectively forced such places to accept recovering COVID-19 patients.” • This is especially great because the Republicans aren’t going for a winger kneejerk talking point, but accountabilty for a real issue: Cuomo’s slaughter of elders (which Democrats could not bring themselves to do. Sexual harassment is bad, no question, but imagine prioritizing it over the deaths of thousands).
#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 (wastewater); BC, Vancouver (wastewater).
Hat tips to helpful readers: Alexis, 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, Tom B., Utah, Bob White (3).
Stay safe out there!
Testing and Tracking
The United States is not a serious country:
living in europe, i can order a bulk box of 25 SARS-CoV-2 rapid tests for thirty cents a test, aka 7,5€ for 25 rapids. people in the US are getting fleeced. https://t.co/eq1mxnEvF8
— Lola Q. Germs (@LolaGerms) March 6, 2024
Sequelae
“SARS-CoV-2 causes brain inflammation and induces Lewy body formation in macaques” [bioRxiv]. From 2021, still germane. From the Abstract: “SARS-CoV-2 may cause acute respiratory disease, but the infection can also initiate neurological symptoms. Here we show that SARS-CoV-2 infection causes brain inflammation in the macaque model. An increased metabolic activity in the pituitary gland of two macaques was observed by longitudinal positron emission tomography-computed tomography (PET-CT). Post-mortem analysis demonstrated infiltration of T-cells and activated microglia in the brain, and viral RNA was detected in brain tissues from one animal. We observed Lewy bodies in brains of all rhesus macaques. These data emphasize the virus’ capability to induce neuropathology in this nonhuman primate model for SARS-CoV-2 infection. As in humans, Lewy body formation is an indication for the development of Parkinson’s disease, this data represents a warning for potential long-term neurological effects after SARS-CoV-2 infection.” • “Monkeys exaggerate, and mice lie.” Nevertheless.
Elite Maleficence
“The CDC’s new, relaxed Covid isolation guidance makes perfect sense” [STAT]. “. Instead, those in charge of public health guidance should consider the burden it imposes on people to change their behavior, balanced against the health benefits the change can offer to them and those around them. The CDC’s new guidance on what to do after a Covid infection has been controversial among some. It says that you should isolate when symptomatic but when the fever subsides and symptoms improve, you can end isolation. Using this lens of burdens and benefits, the new approach makes a lot of sense.” • That’s not the CDC’s job (nor is it the CDPH’s, as I show here). This “balance” is a political choice — one would hope one democratically arrived at — and those decisions are not within CDC’s remit. (I realize this puts me into the box with those who want to destroy the administrative state, but here we are.) Even if the CDC had not butchered testing, masking, aerosol transmission, scientific communication, isolation guidance, and leadership that modeled non-pharmaceutical interventions, the CDC should not be doing this. (My reaction to the headline was: “What is STAT thinking? Then I saw the author.) Readers, I would like very much to follow up on alert reader Steven V’s suggestion of filing a “writ of mandamus.” My first step was to try to determine on what statutory basis the CDC operates (apparently beginning with the Public Health Service Act of 1912 (!). CDC itself is an incredible tangle of re-orgs. Can any readers help me out with some sources on this? Ideally, a law review article with lots of footnotes (maybe even from the ACT-UP era?).
TABLE 1: Daily Covid Charts
LEGEND
1) ★ for charts new today; all others are not updated.
2) For a full-size/full-resolution image, Command-click (MacOS) or right-click (Windows) on the chart thumbnail and “open image in new tab.”
NOTES
[1] (Biobot) Biobot drops, conformant to Walgreen positivity data (if that is indeed not a data artifact). Note, however, the area “under the curve,” besides looking at peaks. That area is larger under Biden than under Trump, and it seems to be rising steadily if unevenly.
[2] (Biobot) Regional separation re-emerges.
[3] (CDC Variants) 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.
[4] (ER) Does not support Biobot data. “Charts and data provided by CDC, updates Wednesday by 8am. For the past year, using a rolling 52-week period.”
[5] (Hospitalization: NY) Not flattening.
[6] (Hospitalization: CDC) Still down. “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†”.
[7] (Walgreens) That’s a big drop! 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. UPDATE Given the extraordinary and sudden drop-off, I thought I’d check to see if the population being tested changed in some way. Here are the absolute numbers on February 14, at the edge of the cliff:
And here are the absolute numbers on March 3:
As you can see, there’s an order of magnitude decrease in those testing between those two dates. Was there an event on or about February 14 that is a candidate suggesting an account of this massive shift in behavior? Why yes, yes there is:
“CDC plans to drop five-day covid isolation guidelines” [WaPo] (February 13, 2024).
[8] (Cleveland) Flattening, consistent with Biobot data.
[9] (Travelers: Posivitity) Now up, albeit in the rear view mirror.
[10] (Travelers: Variants) Backward revisions remove NV.1 data. JN.1 dominates utterly.
Stats Watch
Employment Situation: “United States Job Quits” [Trading Economics]. “The number of job quits in the United States declined by 54,000 from the previous month to 3.385 million in January 2024, down from December’s revised figure of 3.439 million and touching the lowest level since January 2021.”
The Bezzle: “Worldcoin hit with temporary ban in Spain over privacy concerns” [TechCrunch]. “Spain’s data protection authority has ordered Worldcoin to temporarily stop collecting and processing personal data from the market. It must also stop processing any data it previously collected there. The controversial, Sam Altman-founded eyeball-scanning blockchain crypto project started operations in the market last July, as part of a global rollout. The Spanish authority is using ‘urgency procedure’ powers contained in the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) for the temporary data processing cessation order — which means the order can have a maximum duration of three months (so until mid June).”
Tech: Utopia this is not:
Today’s Fear & Greed Index: 75 Extreme Greed (previous close: 74 Greed) [CNN]. One week ago: 78 (Extreme Greed). (0 is Extreme Fear; 100 is Extreme Greed). Last updated Mar 6 at 1:15:38 PM ET
News of the Wired
YaCy is free software for your own search engine” [Yacy.net]. “Imagine if, rather than relying on the proprietary software of a large professional search engine operator, your search engine was run across many private devices, not under the control of any one company or individual. Well, that’s what YaCy does!” • Interesting, though requires Java or docker. (The demo page is very slow to load, presumably being overloaded by Hacker News traffic.)
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, lichen, 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 TH:
TH writes: “There are things about this image not to like – the dead rose leaves, the dead juniper branches, etc. But it has sort of a rustic, somewhat congested, mature garden feel that I like. It’s probably obvious that the bright splash of yellow was my favorite part of the scene.”
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!