By Lambert Strether of Corrente.
Bird Song of the Day
House Sparrow, Lori Wilson Park, Brevard, Florida, United States. “Males fighting.”
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
Capitol Seizure
“Prosecutor: Proud Boys viewed themselves as ‘Trump’s army’” [Associated Press] • Including the informers and agents provocateurs?
Biden Administration
Well, all I can say is I hope the neurological damage isn’t significant:
But perhaps that’s a forlorn hope–
“Biden caught with crib notes detailing reporter’s question prior to calling on her during press conference” [FOX]. “As Biden spoke alongside South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol in the White House Rose Garden, a photographer captured a small cheat-sheet in the president’s hand signaling he had advanced knowledge of a question from Los Angeles Times journalist Courtney Subramanian. The small paper also included a picture of the reporter along with the pronunciation breakdown of her last name. “Question #1″ was handwritten at the top of the sheet, indicating the president should call on her first at the conclusion of his remarks.” • Wowsers. It’s almost as if the entire press conference is scripted. On the bright side, I guess we know how Karine Jean-Pierre makes bank. The photo:
Good staff work, though!
2024
“Biden takes steps to keep progressives unified as he kicks off his re-election bid” [NBC]. “While President Joe Biden’s team was quietly making plans to launch his re-election campaign, top advisers inside and outside the White House started an outreach effort to hold on to a crucial piece of the Democratic coalition: progressives. Roughly a month before his campaign announcement, longtime Biden adviser Anita Dunn invited Faiz Shakir, the campaign manager for Sen. Bernie Sanders’ 2020 bid, to the White House. The meeting was a check-in with Shakir, who remains a political adviser to Sanders, to make sure he and other progressives knew they still had an open line to Biden’s team. The invitation was part of a lengthy outreach effort by senior administration officials to progressive leaders, much of it led by newly minted White House chief of staff Jeff Zients, whose appointment was greeted with a degree of skepticism by some in the progressive wing of the party. Zients has personally reached out to Sanders, I-Vt., Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass. — two progressive rivals Biden dispatched in the 2020 primaries — and House Progressive Caucus Chair Pramila Jayapal, D-Wash., sources familiar with each of the talks said. All three have said they will support Biden next year.” • So Jeff Zients “reached out.” That was all it took. Ye Gods.
“What Biden has to fear” [Brookings Institution]. “[T]he country is geared up, amidst a fair amount of complaining, for a Biden-Trump rematch. In that scenario Biden probably wins. The biggest complaint about him is his age. It factors into a wide variety of questions about him. And yet, in the two most recent elections, 2020 and 2022, we saw that age didn’t matter much — people can think Biden is too old, they can think someone else should run and yet, when push comes to shove, they voted for Biden and Democrats anyways. That’s because, in a Biden-Trump race many people simply don’t want Trump. Trump continues to rely, as he did throughout his presidency, on the care and feeding of his base which was just big enough in 2016 to elect him and just small enough in 2020 to defeat him. At no point in his short political career has he tried to expand his base — as most politicians do.” • Not so. The Democrats do not, institutionally, seek to expand their base beyond the PMC. What they do is identity-driven one-offs in particular campaigns. Then they shut that effort down, and wait for the next election. Contrast Howard Dean’s 50-state strategy, which actually handed Democrats victory in 2006, and was promptly dismantled by Obama and Rahm Emanuel. They would rather die as a party than change.
“Why Biden may have to forfeit the first contest in his re-election bid to Marianne Williamson or RFK Jr.” [NBC]. “President Joe Biden just announced his re-election campaign, but he’s already on track to sacrifice New Hampshire’s famed primary to a fringe rival like Marianne Williamson or Robert Kennedy Jr. The unusual situation is one of Biden’s own making, thanks to the new primary calendar the Democratic National Committee ratified at his behest in February, which seeks to demote Iowa and New Hampshire and prohibits candidates from campaigning — or even putting their name on the ballot — in a state that jumps the line. The problem is that New Hampshire and Iowa, both of which Biden lost in 2020, plan to disregard the DNC and hold their contests first anyway, most likely forcing Biden to forfeit the first unofficial contests of 2024.” Huh?! More: “The rules apply to Williamson and Kennedy as well, but they’ve indicated they’re willing to accept the DNC’s unspecified penalties for rule violations since they’re running anti-establishment campaigns anyway. While those contests will most likely be inconsequential to the delegate math of Biden’s re-nomination, it may nonetheless be embarrassing for the president of the United States to nominally lose to Williamson, a self-help author who has never held elective office, or Kennedy, an anti-vaccine activist with a famous last name. They are the only other Democrats in the race at the moment. While Biden’s campaign would likely shrug off the outcome of contests it didn’t even compete in, the situation could be nerve-wracking for ever-anxious Democrats and spark new questions about a bigger-name Democrat challenging Biden.” • Ha ha! That’s what Biden gets for paying off Clyburn and putting South Carolina first!
“Hunter Biden’s legal team meets with Justice Department prosecutors” [NBC]. “Hunter Biden’s legal team met with prosecutors at the Justice Department on Wednesday to discuss potential charges against Biden, the president’s son, in the Delaware criminal investigation, two sources familiar with the matter said. The meeting included representation from the U.S. attorney’s office in Delaware and the Justice Department, the sources said. The Justice Department and the Delaware U.S. attorney’s office declined to comment. Hunter Biden’s attorney did not immediately respond to a request for comment. NBC News has reported that federal prosecutors are considering charging the younger Biden with two misdemeanor counts of failure to file taxes, a felony count of tax evasion related to a business expense for a year of taxes and a potential felony gun charge related to a firearms purchase.” • That’s it? Contrasts rather sharply with the full court press on Trump!
“Disney Sues DeSantis Over Control of Its Florida Resort” [New York Times]. “Last year, under pressure from its employees, Disney criticized a Florida education law prohibiting classroom discussion of sexual orientation and gender identity for young students. Almost instantly, Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida started calling the company ‘Woke Disney’ and vowing to show it who was boss. ‘If Disney wants to pick a fight, they chose the wrong guy,’ Mr. DeSantis wrote in a fund-raising email at the time. Since then, Florida legislators, at the urging of Mr. DeSantis, have targeted Disney — the state’s largest taxpayer — with a variety of hostile measures. In February, they ended Disney’s long-held ability to self-govern its 25,000-acre resort as if it were a county. Last week, Mr. DeSantis announced plans to subject Disney to new ride inspection regulations. Disney has quietly maneuvered to protect itself, enraging the governor and his allies. On Wednesday, however, the company decided enough was enough: Disney filed a First Amendment lawsuit against Mr. DeSantis and a five-member board that oversees government services at Disney World in federal court, claiming ‘a targeted campaign of government retaliation.’ ‘In America, the government cannot punish you for speaking your mind,’ Disney said in its complaint, which was filed in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Florida. Disney had criticized the Parental Rights in Education law, which opponents labeled ‘Don’t Say Gay’ and which prohibits classroom discussion of sexual orientation and gender identity for students through the third grade. The DeSantis administration recently expanded the ban through Grade 12.” • I’m not finding this controversy very edifying. Why on earth was giving a corporation the powers of a county ever a good idea? And is Disney’s theory of the case novel? Surely a corporation cannot “speak its mind”? Finally, I’m ready to declare the whole “Sex Education” thing — or whatever they call it these days — a failure. Why not delete it from the curriculum entirely and put the resources elsewhere? I realize that would destroy a lucrative consulting industry and zero out some administrative slots, but maybe that’s not such a bad thing?
“Appeals court rejects Trump’s effort to block Pence from testifying in Jan. 6 probe” [NBC]. “The U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Washington refused to block Pence’s subpoena after Trump filed an appeal this month to halt a lower court decision ordering Pence to testify. The decision is under seal, but the denial of Trump’s emergency motion was referenced in the court docket. Trump can still appeal to the Supreme Court but has not indicated whether he will…. Pence’s subpoena was issued by special counsel Jack Smith, who was appointed in November by Attorney General Merrick Garland to oversee the Justice Department’s investigations into Trump’s role in Jan. 6 and his alleged mishandling of classified documents after leaving office.”
“Writer tells jury in lawsuit trial: ‘Donald Trump raped me’” [Associated Press]. “Carroll testified that she crossed paths with Trump at the revolving door to Bergdorf Goodman on an unspecified Thursday evening in spring 1996. At the time, she was writing a long-running advice column in Elle magazine, having also written for ‘SNL.’ Trump was a real estate magnate and social figure in New York. She said he asked her advice about selecting a gift for a woman, and she was delighted to oblige. As an advice columnist, to have Trump ask for gift guidance ‘was a wonderful prospect,’ and Carroll figured she would end up with a funny story, she said. She testified that she suggested a hat, but he pivoted to lingerie, and soon they were bantering about the bodysuit. Amused and flirting, she went along, laughing even as he closed the door to the dressing room, perhaps even as he pushed her against a wall. But then, she alleges, Trump stamped his mouth onto hers, yanked down her tights and shoved his hand and then his penis inside her while she struggled against him. She said she finally kneed him off her and fled. Carroll said that for decades, she told no one except two friends because she was afraid Trump would retaliate, because she ‘thought it was my fault’ and because she thought many people blame rape victims for what happened to them.”
“Former Arkansas Governor Asa Hutchinson formally announces White House bid” [Reuters]. “In his formal announcement speech, Hutchinson did not name Trump, but appeared to break with him on foreign policy by decrying the isolationist approach Trump took to international issues when president. ‘Isolationism only leads to weakness and weakness leads to war,’ Hutchinson said. His formal kick-off speech followed an announcement earlier this month that he was running for president. Hutchinson, who has little name recognition nationally, will present himself to Republican primary voters as a more moderate alternative to Trump and Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, another conservative firebrand who is expected to announce his presidential campaign soon. Moderation is a tough sell in Republican primary battles, which attract mostly conservative voters.” • How is supporting the Ukraine War, which I assume Hutchison’s brave assault on “isolationism” is code for, “moderate”?
Republican Funhouse
“Column: The GOP’s debt ceiling proposal bundles every bad policy idea into one noxious package” [Michael Hiltzik, Los Angeles Times]. “The GOP proposal would gut Medicaid and food stamp eligibility for millions of Americans, including 21 million Medicaid enrollees alone, according to the Department of Health and Human Services. It would turn the clock back on efforts to wean the U.S. from fossil fuels and prepare for the next inevitable pandemic. It would increase the burden on people struggling with student debt and throttle an untold number of nondefense programs such as anti-pollution enforcement and consumer protection. It would roll back tax enforcement, giving the green light to tax evasion by the rich. It is, in short, a one-stop shop for every chuckleheaded idea that Republicans have cooked up to undermine the public interest over the decades.” • It’s so bad you’d almost think the Democrats are good….
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.
“Democrats’ State-Level Comeback Hits Its Limits” [HuffPo]. “[Democrat Janet] Protasiewicz’s eventual 11-point victory [in Wisconsin’s Supreme Court election] was the latest example of how Democrats have made major progress in clawing back power at the state level, with party leaders in key states effectively turning state-level elections into extensions of national political causes, tying them to the outcome of the next presidential election and hyping up the importance of state-by-state battles over abortion rights. The strategy has fired up college-educated voters, who are more likely to vote in off-year elections, and convinced liberals around the country to pour small-dollar donations into electoral contests once considered far too obscure to merit outside investment. The results of these tactics speak for themselves: 57% of Americans live in a state with a Democratic governor. The 17 states where Democrats have a trifecta ― meaning they control the governorship and both chambers of the state legislature ― equal 41.6% of the country’s population. The 22 Republican trifectas, mostly built in smaller states, amount to just 39.6% of the country. But as the party continues a long slog back from its 2010 wipeout ― when Republicans jumped from 9 trifectas to 22 in a single night and gained control of a redistricting process enabling them to lock Democrats out of power in states across the country ― the chances for further progress are shrinking.” • Once more, the liberal Democrat PMC base is too small for them to govern effectively — or at least democratically — but they will die as a party rather than expand it.
“N.Y.C. Libraries Stave Off Sunday Closings in Adams’s New Budget Plan” [New York Times]. “Mayor Eric Adams announced on Wednesday that he would exempt New York City’s public libraries from his latest round of threatened budget cuts, sparing them from closing many of their branches on weekends.” • Many? Many?! No branches should be closed!
Our Famously Free Press
“Tucker Carlson breaks silence after Fox News departure with Twitter video: ‘See you soon’” [CBS]. “In the video, the controversial former cable host started by addressing the audience with ‘things you notice when you take a little time off,’ like how ‘unbelievably stupid most of the debates you see on television are.’ Carlson made no mention of Fox News or the reasons behind his departure from the network, where he was its most-watched anchor. In his signature delivery, and seated in what seemed like a professional studio, Carlson criticized both political parties and lamented that the ‘big topics get virtually no discussion.’ ‘Both political parties and their donors have reached consensus on what benefits them, and they actively collude to shut down any conversation about it,’ Carlson says. ‘Suddenly, the United States looks very much like a one party state. That’s a depressing realization, but it’s not permanent. The video — which runs a little over two minutes, and was seen by 1.7 million people within the hour after it was posted — is sure to invite more speculation about what’s next for Carlson, an influential figure in conservative media and politics. ‘Where can you still find Americans saying true things? There aren’t many places left, but there are some,’ Carlson said near the end, before signing off with ‘see you soon.’” • Here’s the video:
I actively avoid television news and cable, so I’ve seen Carlson in action very, very rarely. His eyes look a bit fixed to me. I also wish I knew what the framed document on the left is.
Realignment and Legitimacy
“Analysis: ARC Pastors Enriched Through Hillsong ‘Celebrity Preacher’s Scam’ [The Roys Report]. “[Association of Related Churches (ARC) is one of the largest church planting organizations in North America, with over 1,000 churches in its network. Like Hillsong, ARC is charismatic in its theology and has a similar emphasis on growing megachurches with slick programming, youth-oriented worship, and charismatic pastors.” • Lots and lots of whistleblower documents, too. Ugly and reprehensible. Pharisaical.
#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); Variants (CDC; Walgreens); “Iowa COVID-19 Tracker” (in IA, but national data).
Lambert here: Readers, thanks for the collective effort. We are now up to 50/50 states (100%). This is really great! (It occurs to me that there are uses to which this data might be put, beyond helping people with “personal risk assessments” appropriate to their state. For example, thinking pessimistically, we might maintain the list and see which states go dark and when. We might also tabulate the properties of each site and look for differences and commonalities, for example the use of GIS (an exercise in Federalism). I do not that CA remains a little sketchy; it feels a little odd that there’s no statewide site, but I’ve never been able to find one. Also, my working assumption was that each state would have one site. That’s turned out not to be true; see e.g. ID. Trivially, it means I need to punctuate this list properly. Less trivially, there may be more local sites that should be added. NY city in NY state springs to mind, but I’m sure there are others. FL also springs to mind as a special case, because DeSantis will most probably be a Presidental candidate, and IIRC there was some foofra about their state dashboard. Thanks again!
Resources, United States (Local): AK (dashboard); AL (dashboard); AR (dashboard); AZ (dashboard); CA (dashboard; Marin); 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: Art_DogCT, B24S, CanCyn, ChiGal, Chuck L, Festoonic, FM, FreeMarketApologist (4), Gumbo, hop2it, JB, JEHR, JF, JL Joe, John, JM (9), JW, KatieBird, LL, Michael King, KF, LaRuse, mrsyk, MT, otisyves, Petal (5), RK (2), RL, RM, Rod, square coats (11), tennesseewaltzer, Utah, Bob White (3).
Look for the Helpers
“COVID-19 Nicknames Get a Makeover” [Time]. “Gregory is an evolutionary biologist at Canada’s University of Guelph and the unofficial spokesperson for the small group of scientists fighting for clearer (and catchier) pandemic nomenclature. The team, which includes a science teacher from Indiana and academics across disciplines in Italy, Australia, and more, first assembled on Twitter. There, they’d been assigning creature-based nicknaming efforts for COVID-19 subvariants they deemed significant long before they began receiving media coverage for Kraken; they’d named others Gryphon, Basilisk, and Minotaur, for example. But Kraken drew the first real attention to the project. And not all of that attention was positive. When the name caught on, some experts expressed concern that it could unnecessarily stoke fear because of its monstrous connotations. Meanwhile, the World Health Organization (WHO), which had led (and still does lead) the scientific discourse around COVID-19 nomenclature, remained conspicuously silent on the nickname in interviews at the time. ‘There was a lot of talk like, This is fear mongering, and it’s causing panic,’ Gregory says. ‘And I’m like, ‘None of that happened.” Meanwhile, the [WHO] was saying stuff like it’s the most transmissible variant ever. That’s scarier to me than this goofy mythological name.’ Whether it was goofy or scary, the name Kraken stole enough attention to convince Gregory and his colleagues that maybe they would have been better off using more neutral names. So, on Feb. 13, the team debuted an updated system with an extensive user guide, which utilizes the names of constellations and other celestial objects rather than mythological creatures. And unlike in an ordered system like the Greek alphabet, Gregory is unlikely to run out of names.” • So a team of public-spirited helpers is trying to work with WHO, and WHO — hold onto your hats here, folks, is having none of it.
Variants
“Chasing SARS-CoV-2 XBB.1.16 Recombinant Lineage in India and the Clinical Profile of XBB.1.16 cases in Maharashtra, India” (preprint) [medRxiv]. N = 2,856. “The study reveals that XBB.1.16* lineage has become the most predominant SARS-CoV-2 lineage in India. The study also shows that the clinical features and outcome of XBB.1.16* cases were similar to those of other co-circulating Omicron lineage infected cases in Maharashtra, India.”
Infection
“Are repeat COVID infections dangerous? What the science says” [Nature]. ” Experts estimate that the majority of the world’s population has been infected at least once; in the United States, some estimates suggest that as many as 65% of people have had multiple infections. And it’s likely that in the decades to come, we’re all destined to get COVID-19 many more times.” Good job.” I think there’s a lot of faux “balance” in the post. This on the VA study — “500,000 people who were infected by SARS-CoV-2 once, and about 41,000 who had 2 or more confirmed infections” — seems to me the important passage: “Having COVID-19 more than once is worse than having it just once. ‘It’s not really surprising,’ [Ziyad Al-Aly, an epidemiologist at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, Missouri[ says. If you get hit in the head twice, he says, it will be worse than one blow. People with repeat infections were twice as likely to die and three times as likely to be hospitalized, have heart problems or experience blood clots than were people who infected only once.MR SUBLIMINAL You mean the plan is for people not to get infected once, or twice, but multiple times in their lifetimes. Those hammer blows add up!
Policy
Follow-up on the silent shrink:
Good news! She doesn’t think I’m bonkers. She was just checking her understanding of eugenics was in line with mine, and the long silence was her working out how to reply in a way that would make sense to me. I’m very pleased. https://t.co/TocBfyOrgT
— Put an effing mask on! (@PoliticalAdrift) April 27, 2023
Elite Maleficence
Mission accomplished:
1 in 10!!
“This virus is here to stay, & all countries will need to learn to manage it alongside other infectious diseases.”
Tedros added that an estimated 1 in 10 infections resulted in Long Covid, suggesting that hundreds of millions of people would need longer-term care.
1/2— Kate Pritchard (@KatePri14608408) April 26, 2023
Note 1 in 10 infections, not patients. I think this is called a “mass disabling event”?
“As Federal Emergency Declaration Expires, the Picture of the Pandemic Grows Fuzzier” [Government Executive]. “The pandemic gave federal officials expanded power to access crucial data about the spread of COVID-19, but that authority will change when the public health emergency sunsets in May. That, along with the end of popular COVID trackers, will make it harder for policymakers and the public to keep an eye on COVID and other threats.” • Good. Great!
If you’re sick, don’t come to our hospital (unless you’re here for the ratio):
Ok for the half-wits trying to justify this because they can’t do anything about it. No, it does not make sense.
One of the primary jobs of a hospital is infection control and triage- determining who is sick enough to need a higher level of care before things get far worse.…
— Naomi Wu 机械妖姬 (@RealSexyCyborg) April 26, 2023
The Jackpot
“The next pandemic could be ‘as infectious as this one but far more lethal’—and make COVID look like a cakewalk, expert warns” [Fortune]. Bob Wachter. Hilarity ensues. Anyhow: “Wachter isn’t the only expert to raise the possibility of an equally transmissible but more lethal pandemic pathogen. COVID’s ability to infect more efficiently has skyrocketed since 2019, soaring from near the bottom of the list of contagious diseases to near the top, where it battles with measles for supremacy. It’s possible that ultra-transmissible Omicron evolves to become more deadly, experts warn—though there’s no telling just how likely this scenario is, or when the transition might occur, if it ever does. That said, such a development may not be far off. Scientists are watching COVID evolution for the potential development of a variant that has Omicron’s transmissibility with the lethality of Delta. Such a scenario, while not a ‘nightmare,’ would be ‘a problem,’ Raj Rajnarayanan, assistant dean of research and associate professor at the New York Institute of Technology campus in Jonesboro, Ark., and a top COVID-variant tracker, recently told Fortune. ‘What’s to say that we’re not going to eventually see a COVID that has both?’ Dr. Michael Osterholm, director of the University of Minnesota’s Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy (CIDRAP), told Fortune last fall. He was speaking of transmissibility and the lethality of SARS, MERS, or worse. If COVID evolution were to take a turn for the worse, powers that be would need to decide whether it constituted a new pandemic and warranted a new name entirely—perhaps SARS-CoV-3—or if it was simply an extension of the current pandemic, which is still ongoing, according to the World Health Organization.” • Russian Roulette was worse odds. So that’s alright then.
Looks like “leveling off to a high plateau” across the board. (I still think “Something Awful” is coming, however. I mean, besides what we already know about.) Stay safe out there!
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 (with, of course, deeper knowledge of the sequelae “we” have already decided to accept or, rather, to profit from). That will be the operational definition of “living with Covid.” More as I think on this. In addition, I recurated my Twitter feed for my new account, and it may be I’m creating a echo chamber. That said, it seems to me that the knobs on Covid had gone up to 13, partly because science is popping, which demands more gaslighting, and partly because that “Covid is over” bubble maintenance is, I believe, more pundit-intensive than our betters believed it would be.
Case Data
NOT UPDATED BioBot wastewater data from April 24:
Lambert here: Unless the United States is completely, er, exceptional, we should be seeing an increase here soon.
For now, I’m going to use this national wastewater data as the best proxy for case data (ignoring the clinical case data portion of this chart, which in my view “goes bad” after March 2022, for reasons as yet unexplained). At least we can spot trends, and compare current levels to equivalent past levels.
Variants
NOT UPDATED From CDC, April 22, 2023. Here we go again:
Lambert here: Looks like XBB.1.16 is rolling right along. Though XBB 1.9.1 is in the race as well.
Covid Emergency Room Visits
NOT UPDATED From CDC NCIRD Surveillance, from April 22:
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. Anyhow, I added a grey “Fauci line” just to show that Covid wasn’t “over” when they started saying it was, and it’s not over now. 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.
Positivity
A kind reader discovered that Walgreens had reduced its frequency to once a week. No updates, however, since April 11.
Deaths
NOT UPDATED Death rate (Our World in Data):
Lambert here: WHO turned off the feed? Odd that Walgreen’s positivity shut down on April 11, and the WHO death count on April 12. Was there a memo I didn’t get?
Total: 1,159,662 – 1,159,417 = 245 (245 * 365 = 89,425 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).
Excess Deaths
NOT UPDATED Excess deaths (The Economist), published April 23:
Lambert here: Based on a machine-learning model. (The CDC has an excess estimate too, but since it ran forever with a massive typo in the Legend, I figured nobody was really looking at it, so I got rid it. )
Stats Watch
GDP: “United States GDP Growth Rate” [Trading Economics]. “The US economy grew by an annualized 1.1 percent in Q1 2023, slowing from a 2.6 percent expansion in the previous quarter and missing market expectations of a 2 percent growth, a preliminary estimate showed. It was the weakest pace of expansion since Q2 2022, as business investment growth slowed down, inventories declined and rising interest rates continued to hurt the housing market.”
Employment Situation: “United States Initial Jobless Claims” [Trading Economics]. “The number of Americans filing for unemployment benefits fell by 16 thousand to 230 thousand on the week ending April 22nd, surprising market expectations of 249 thousand. It was the first decrease in new unemployment claims in three weeks, challenging recent data that pointed to some softening in the labor market and resuming the trend of stubbornly tight labor conditions despite the Federal Reserve’s aggressive rate hikes.”
Manufacturing: “United States Kansas Fed Manufacturing Index” [Trading Economics]. “The Kansas City Fed’s Manufacturing Production index fell to -21 in April 2023 from 3 in the previous month, the lowest since May 2020 and below market expectations of 3. The decline was driven more by nondurable goods plants, especially printing, plastics, paper, and food manufacturing. All month-over-month indexes declined, except for the raw materials prices, finished product prices, average employee workweek, and supplier delivery time indexes.”
The Bezzle: “There Is Something Very Wrong at Uber” [Slate]. “”What is going on in the product management part of this company?” Emil Michael, Uber’s former chief business officer and no fan of Khosrowshahi, told me on Big Technology Podcast this week. “If I were him, I’d go right to the product management team and some heads would probably roll.’” • What product? It’s a taxi company. What’s to add? Butlers? Ejection seats? Hookers and blow? Maybe it’s time to admit that capital finally got something it wanted from Uber — a whole form of exploitation in the form of gig workers — and shutter the experiment. Win win.
The Economy: “How will we know if the US economy is in a recession?” [Associated Press]. “The government’s report Thursday that the economy grew at a 1.1% annual rate last quarter signaled that one of the most-anticipated recessions in recent U.S. history has yet to arrive. Many economists, though, still expect a recession to hit as soon as the current April-June quarter — or soon thereafter. The economy’s expansion in the first three months of the year was driven mostly by healthy consumer spending, yet shoppers turned more cautious toward the end of the quarter. Businesses also cut their spending on equipment, a trend that has continued. The list of obstacles the economy faces keeps growing. The Federal Reserve has raised its benchmark interest rate nine times in the past year to the highest level in 17 years, thereby elevating the cost of borrowing for consumers and businesses. Inflation has eased slowly but steadily in response. Yet price increases are still persistently high. And last month the collapse of two large banks resulted in a whole new threat: A pullback in lending by the financial system that could weaken growth even further. A report on business conditions by the Fed this month found that banks were tightening credit to preserve capital, which makes it harder for companies to borrow and expand. Fed economists are forecasting a ‘mild recession’ for later this year. Six months of economic decline are a long-held informal definition of a recession. Yet nothing is simple in a post-pandemic economy in which growth was negative in the first half of last year but the job market remained robust, with ultra-low unemployment and healthy levels of hiring.” • So nobody knows anything…
The Economy: “US Import Gain Means Flexport Sees No Recession for Some Months” [Bloomberg]. “A steady increase in consumption and signs that US imports are set to rebound mean the world’s biggest economy isn’t set for a recession — at least for now. That’s according to forecasts released this week by supply-chain technology firm Flexport. ‘A recession may well be on the way, but from the latest data, we’re not seeing it arriving in the next few months,’ said Phil Levy, the San Francisco-based company’s chief economist. The assessment lines up with the views of some key policymakers who’ve spoken in recent days. Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis President James Bullard said yesterday that recession fears are overblown despite recent banking turmoil, and that more interest-rate hikes are needed to counter persistent inflation. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen is also among those who think the US can avoid such a contraction.”
The Economy: “Why goods spending isn’t falling” [Financial Times]. “There is an enigma at the centre of the US economy: what’s up with goods spending? The conventional story is well known. Fearing a pandemic depression, Congress and the Federal Reserve unleashed enormous fiscal and monetary stimulus. Everyone was afraid of in-person services businesses, so all that money flooded into the goods sector…. Much ink was spilled about the great goods-to-services rotation: goods spending should return to trend as services spending rises. In the last year or so, it’s been all about inflation and spending in services. But what if that’s wrong? What if real goods spending never falls back to its pre-pandemic trend, but instead plateaus at a higher level? It’s now been three years since lockdowns began and any trend-reversion is hard to spot.”
Today’s Fear & Greed Index: 57 Greed (previous close: 51 Neutral) [CNN]. One week ago: 63 (Greed). (0 is Extreme Fear; 100 is Extreme Greed). Last updated Apr 26 at 1:37 PM ET.
Healthcare
“Urgent care survey links high expectation for antibiotics with patient satisfaction” [Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy]. “Antibiotics were prescribed for 53.4% of adult patients and 36.0% of pediatric patients. Logistic regression analysis found that antibiotic prescription had no effect on patient satisfaction among adult patients reporting low expectation scores, but medium-to-very-high expectation scores were associated with higher levels of satisfaction upon receiving antibiotics and with lower levels of satisfaction when antibiotics were not prescribed. No statistically significant association was found for pediatric visits.” • If you think of your patients as, well, patients, that doesn’t matter at all. If you think of them as customers, it matters a lot.
Guillotine Watch
“Elizabeth Holmes delays going to prison with another appeal” [Associated Press]. “Disgraced Theranos CEO Elizabeth Holmes has avoided starting her more than 11-year prison sentence on Thursday by deploying the same legal maneuver that enabled her co-conspirator in a blood-testing hoax to remain free for an additional month. Holmes’ lawyers on Wednesday informed U.S. District Judge Edward Davila that she won’t be reporting to prison as scheduled because she had filed an appeal of a decision that he issued earlier this month ordering her to begin her sentence on April 27.” And: “The news of Holmes’ latest legal maneuver emerged the same day that it was announced one of the federal prosecutors who helped convict her is leaving the U.S. Attorney’s office in San Jose, California. Jeffrey Schenk, who also helped convict Balwani in that trial, will specialize in defending people accused of white-collar crimes as a partner for the law firm Jones Day in Silicon Valley.” • A double-header for les tricoteuses…
Class Warfare
“Of Birds and Men: DuPont, Corporate Penalties and the Law” [Confined Space]. “Just over 18 years ago, I wrote a post entitled ‘Of Fish and Men’ where I observed that ‘The penalty for killing fish and crabs is far higher than the penalty for killing a worker.’ That post recounted a 2001 chemical tank explosion at a Motiva refinery in Delaware City, Delaware, where Motiva employee Jeffrey Davis was killed. Davis’s body was dissolved in sulphuric acid that spilled from the tank. Only the steel shanks of his boots were found. OSHA issued a $175,000 OSHA fine against Motiva for violations of the Process Safety Management Standard, which at that time was far higher than normal OSHA penalties for killing workers. EPA, on the other hand, fined Motiva $12 million because spent sulfuric acid from the tank spilled into the Delaware River, resulting in thousands of dead fish and crabs. EPA’s penalty was almost 70 times higher than the OSHA penalty. Almost two decades later, things aren’t much better…. Yesterday, EPA announced a $23 million fine against DuPont after a toxic release killed four employees in 2015 at the Dupont plant in La Porte, Texas…. DuPont’s main crime: violation of the Clean Air Act…. Meanwhile, OSHA had fined the company $99,000 (later raised to $106,000) for the four fatalities: one repeat and several serious violations of the Process Safety Management standard.”
“San Francisco drops case against transient who bashed ex-fire commish with crowbar, says it was ‘self-defense’” [New York Post]. • San Francisco fire commissioner Don Carmignani in action:
EXCLUSIVE: Defense attorneys for the man accused of attacking former SF Fire Commissioner Don Carmignani say the person shown in this video bear spraying a homeless person in the face appears to be Carmignani.
The video, taken in November 2021, is part of a trove of new evidence… pic.twitter.com/tLaUqqDGjP
— The San Francisco Standard (@sfstandard) April 26, 2023
Carmignani seems to make a habit of this. Back in the day, I helped serve homeless people dinner, and at one point I was silently shown a Bible page, on which was written: “When somebody says ‘You deserve this, punch them in the face and say “Did you deserve that?”
News of the Wired
“Why Tocqueville matters” [New Statesman]. “Despite accusations that he was ignorant of rapid social change, burgeoning industry and attendant social inequality in America and Britain, Tocqueville’s visits to Manchester and Liverpool in 1835 show an attention to the consequences of industrialisation. In Manchester, he recognised that a new aristocracy had been created out of industry, one that felt no obligations whatsoever to the people it depended on. In the English countryside, Tocqueville readily saw how modernisation had transformed peasants into wage labourers. These observations, not connected to or informed by any broader economic theory, were made ten years before the publication of Engels’ Condition of the Working Class in England.”
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 SK:
SK writes: “Our front entrance. It took a few years, but I like how the ‘lawn’ looks like a meadow of blossoms, for now at least…” Big poppies fan here. Also, this photo is beautifully composed, but I can’t really say why…. I think it’s because the mass of red color has a shape of its own…
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