By Lambert Strether of Corrente.
Bird Song of the Day
Bullock’s/Baltimore Oriole, Tamarack Ranch, Logan, Colorado, United States. “Highway noise.”
In Case You Might Miss…
(1) North Carolina pulls the anti-mask bill for what seems like rational revisions (if you accept the cop-friendly, anti-protester aspect).
(2) New Trump defense trips Cohen up, putting a conviction at risk.
(3) Peggy Noonan interviews a Wildwood, NY attendee.
(4) Another CDC atrocity.
(5) RCP averages: Trump continues slow but steady advance in swing states.
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
2024
Less than a half a year to go!
RCP Poll Averages, May 17:
National results static, but most of the Swing States (more here) are incrementally, but steadily, moving Trump’s way. Pennsylvania leans more Trump this week than last. Of course, it goes without saying that these are all state polls, therefore bad, and most of the results are within the margin of error. Now, if either candidate starts breaking away in points, instead of tenths of a point…. NOTE I changed the notation: Up and down arrows for increases or decreases over last week, circles for no change. Red = Trump. Blue would be Biden if he were leading anywhere, but he isn’t.
Trump (R) (Bragg/Merchan): “Michael Cohen gives Donald Trump his best day in hush money trial so far” [CNN]. “Cohen appeared to be tripped up over an account of a call he’d previously said under oath was to discuss Trump’s hush money payment to adult film Star Stormy Daniels. It emerged under questioning on Thursday that, at least to begin with, the topic of the call was about another matter entirely…. ‘I think what happened today still is so devastating they have to do something,’ Ryan Goodman, a professor at NYU Law, told CNN’s Erin Burnett. ‘If the case ended today and there were final statements, I think there would not be a conviction.’” And this is CNN, not FOX. More: “n one of the most dramatic moments in the entire trial, Blanche drilled down on a call that Cohen placed to his boss’ bodyguard, Keith Schiller, who was with Trump on October 24, 2016. Cohen had testified earlier this week that the purpose of the call was to discuss with Trump ‘the Stormy Daniels matter and the resolution of it.’ But Blanche produced a text from Cohen to Schiller before the call in which the lawyer said he wanted to get help in dealing with a 14-year-old who was prank calling him. He didn’t mention Daniels in the text ahead of the conversation, which only lasted 96 seconds. ‘That was a lie!’ Blanche said, raising his voice. ‘You did not talk to President Trump on that night, you talked to Keith Schiller. … You can admit it.’ Blanche argued that it was impossible that Cohen would have had sufficient time to discuss the prank calls and then go on to update Trump about the complicated situation with Daniels. Cohen insisted, ‘I believe I also spoke to President Trump and told him everything regarding the Stormy Daniels matter was being worked on and it’s going to be resolved.’ Blanche then wielded a rhetorical dagger, telling Cohen: ‘We are not asking for your belief – this jury doesn’t want to hear what you think happened.’ Judge Juan Merchan sustained an immediate objection from the prosecution to the comment, but Trump’s lawyer had emphatically made his point. The exchange was so significant because – notwithstanding days of testimony and evidence put on by the prosecution to corroborate claims that Trump broke the law – the case still largely depends on Cohen, himself a convicted felon who has a proven record of lying. Since the burden to prove the case beyond a reasonable doubt lies with the prosecution, the exchange could raise the chances of at least one juror questioning Cohen’s version of events.” • Oopsie.
Trump (R) (Bragg/Merchan): “Getting Played: The Demolition of Cohen on Cross Examination Reveals ‘The Grift’ to a New York Jury” [Jonathan Turley]. “For any discerning juror, the trial has been conspicuously lacking any clear statement from the prosecutors of what crime Trump was attempting to commit by allegedly mischaracterizing payments as ‘legal expenses.’ Even liberal legal experts have continued to express doubt over what crime is being alleged as the government rests its case. There is also the failure of the prosecutors to establish that Trump even knew of how payments were denoted or that these denotations were actually fraudulent in denoting payments to a lawyer as legal expenses…. New Yorkers are a curious breed. Yes, they overwhelmingly hate Trump, but they also universally hate being treated like chumps. When they get this case, they just might look around the courtroom and decide that they are the suckers in a crooked game.”
Trump (R) (Bragg/Merchan): “On Trump and the Elusive Fantasy of a 2024 Election Game-Changer” [Susan Glasser, The New Yorker]. “Much harder to predict is whether even a conviction in this case might finally move the largely immovable American electorate. Polls hint that the answer is just maybe yes, at least among a small percentage of Republicans who do not identify as part of the Party’s most fervently pro-Trump maga base. In a Reuters/Ipsos poll on the eve of the New York trial, for example, twenty-four per cent of Republicans, including thirteen per cent of Trump supporters, said that they would not support him in November if he was convicted of a felony. But, with the trial finishing its fifth week and rapidly moving toward a verdict, experience strongly suggests that some skepticism is in order. The story of the past eight years is littered with examples of Republicans accepting the previously unimaginable from Trump. Why should this time be any different?” •
Trump (R) (Bragg/Merchan): “Michael Cohen on the Stand, Part I” [Lawfare]. May 13: “You’re active on Twitter? Correct. And TikTok? Correct. You do a nightly live TikTok? He’s live on TikTok for more than an hour nightly. What’s the point of doing it? To build an audience, to create community, to vent. I’m having trouble sleeping, so it’s an outlet. You also make money off of it? It does make money, Cohen admits, though it’s not significant. Since Cohen started ‘TikToking nightly’ (Blanche’s words) six weeks ago, how many times a week do you talk about Trump? Well I only do it six days a week, Cohen says (chuckles from the press), so I’d say about six times a week.” • Worth reading in full, but unless I missed something — time presses — neither Cohen nor Trump was really marked up on the first day.
Trump (R) (Bragg/Merchan): “Michael Cohen pressed on his crimes and lies as defense attacks key Trump hush money trial witness” [Associated Press]. That’s quite a headline from the normally staid AP. “In one clip played in court Thursday, Cohen could be heard using an expletive and saying he truly hopes ‘that this man ends up in prison.’ ‘It won’t bring back the year that I lost or the damage done to my family. But revenge is a dish best served cold,’ Cohen was heard saying. ‘You better believe that I want this man to go down.’ Cohen acknowledged he has continued to attack Trump, even during the trial.”
Trump (R): “A New Jersey Friend Is Sticking With Trump” [Peggy Noonan, Wall Street Journal]. “have a friend who lives in western New Jersey near a lake. Dee is middle aged, works in sales in a service industry, had been a politically independent moderate most of her life, voted for Donald Trump in 2016 and, less fervently, 2020. When I last saw her, in February, she and her husband felt drawn to Robert F. Kennedy Jr. but that feeling has cooled. She didn’t like it that his family endorsed Joe Biden: ‘That was weird.’ She has also concluded the 2024 election will be close. “I think I’m not willing to take a chance, to experiment at this point.” So they are back to Donald Trump, with revived enthusiasm…. I asked Dee what she saw and experienced [at the Wildwood, NJ rally]. This is what I heard: Trump may scare you, but he makes her feel safe. ‘It was like he made you feel everything’s gonna be OK. The economy’s gonna get better; everybody’s freaking out about the border, but he’ll get it stopped.’…. At the rally she felt part of a rebel army, yet she also thinks the rallygoers represent the mass of regular Americans so maybe they’re not the rebels but the majority. She finds him hilarious. When he riffs about Al Capone and Hannibal Lecter he’s goofing with the crowd and being comical because he’s an entertainer. ‘He’s very funny and sarcastic,’ Dee says. ‘It’s like a husband sometimes.’ She does not trust the press, nor does she hate them. She just thinks they lie because they have preconceived notions and agendas: ‘They think we are smelly Walmart shoppers with no teeth.’ She says this not with bitterness but as a dry descriptor…. It went all day. ‘You’re on line at 8 a.m. for a 5 p.m. start. There were thousands on line with us. We made a bunch of friends. Everyone was friendly, peaceful.’” And on January 6: “I asked about Jan 6. Why didn’t that change her view of Trump? I, and many others, understand it as a singular event. Breaking in, smashing doors and windows, beating cops, threatening the vice president’s life—this was a violent assault on an institution that was also an assault on the Constitution. Doesn’t it threaten or imply something about the future? She said she understood but sees it differently. In Wildwood, ‘we had a bunch of Jan. 6 people in the crowd around us. Middle-aged white women—grandma. . . . The thing about Jan. 6 is we see it as a two-part story. His speech that day was a Trump speech, the crowd was a Trump crowd, it was kind of normal. Part 2 was the people up at the Capitol. But the people just at the speech, they quietly left, they got on the bus, they went home. There was the speech and the insanity up the street. We talked, I heard people say, ‘We left.” ‘There were some bad people and some agitators. They shouldn’t have gone in there. Some people broke windows, shouldn’t have happened. And some old ladies go to jail!’ ‘A lot of what happened at the Capitol—a lot of that was created. A constant narrative to make Trump look as bad as possible at all times.’” • “Dee lives in an affluent suburban community.” Still worth a read…
Biden (D): “Biden’s team had a few demands for a Trump debate. A major one: No crowd” [Politico]. “An empty TV studio could, Biden aides feel, deprive their GOP rival of a major advantage when they face off. ‘Trump feeds off the crowd, they give him life,’ said one Biden adviser who was granted anonymity in order to discuss internal strategy. ‘We wanted to take that away.’ There were several conditions that the Biden team felt were necessary in order to agree to a debate with the former president, among them that at least one forum take place before the start of early voting and that the hosts weren’t from outlets with an ideological bent toward Trump. But in interviews with more than a half dozen officials and advisers who were not authorized to discuss private conversations, the issue of the crowd was consistent. Among their concerns were that the audience noise could disadvantage Biden, who sometimes has trouble hearing amid a din. They also wanted to ensure that there was a clean tempo and cadence to the debate and that it not turn into a shouting match or spectacle.” • Assuming the debate rules permit cellphones, maybe the Trump campaign could set up a watch party, then stream it to Trump’s phone. He could hold up the phone showing the cheering crowd at appropriate moments.
Biden (D): “Biden’s labor report card: Historian gives ‘Union Joe’ a higher grade than any president since FDR” [Erik Loomis, The Conversation]. In fact, the NLRB is much improved (not that Biden is running on that). This caught my eye: “In terms of Biden’s actions, the low point came in 2022, when he used the Railway Labor Act of 1926 to stop the railroad union from striking for better sick leave.” Not that I’m bitter. More: “Biden officials argued that the economy could not afford a rail shutdown, but political considerations around inflation before the midterm elections probably contributed to the administration’s response. At the same time, the Biden administration continued working behind the scenes to pressure rail companies to grant the workers their demands, and they largely did. Union leaders credit Biden for helping them get this victory for their workers. At the same time, the Biden administration continued working behind the scenes to pressure rail companies to grant the workers their demands, and they largely did. Union leaders credit Biden for helping them get this victory for their workers.” • The quote is from IBEW, but surely there are more central rail unions? Can readers comment?
BIden (D): “The Working Class-Sized Hole in Democratic Support Widens” [Ruy Teixiera, The Liberal Patriot]. “The Times poll provides data across the six key Presidential battleground states—Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin—as well as data for each of these individual states. Here is what I found: Across the battleground, Biden is losing to Trump among working-class voters by 16 points. That compares to Biden’s national working-class deficit of just 4 points in 2020…. The October-to-May deterioration among working-class voters is actually a bit worse among likely voters…. The October-to-May deterioration is also worse among nonwhite working-class voters. Biden was ahead among these voters in the battleground states by 16 points last October (note that this compares to the 48 point advantage Biden had nationally in 2020). But his advantage among nonwhite working class voters has fallen to single digits—9 points—in the new data.” • Worth reading in full.
Biden (D): “Kamala for governor? She jokes, but the state lacks a giant” [Politico]. Eighteen paragraphs down: “Vice President Kamala Harris has joked to friends that she may return to California to run for governor if Democrats lose the White House this fall, taking a page from Richard Nixon, two people familiar with her remarks said. ‘That did not happen,’ Harris spokesperson Kirsten Allen told Politico in response. ‘This November, the vice president will be preparing to be inaugurated for the second term of the Biden-Harris administration.” • That’s the only serious mention of Harris. So the headline is trying to make a story where no story — that we know about — exists. Which is interesting in itself.
“The most powerful pro-Israel group in American politics isn’t… talking about Israel” [Politico]. “The most prominent pro-Israel group in American politics has promised to pour tens of millions of dollars into this year’s elections. But it’s mostly not talking about Israel. The American Israel Public Affairs Committee has entered several congressional races so far, attacking some candidates and boosting their own. But the topic of Israel has come up only minimally, in a handful of Republican races. And the group hasn’t talked about Israel in Democratic primaries at all.” • That’s clarifying. Now we’re just talking price, right?
Pandemics
“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
Covid 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!
Airborne Transmission: Covid
“Explosive household spread of the SARS-CoV-2 Omicron variant in China in late 2022” [Building and Environment]. N = 12,037. From the Abstract: “Immediately after easing the 3-year zero-COVID policy in mainland China, an explosive spread of the Omicron variant of SARS-CoV-2 occurred in late 2022, despite most people staying at home.” Showing that non-pharmaceutical interventions are, in fact, effective. More: “Better ventilation in shared corridors and living rooms was associated with a lower household daily incidence rate and a lower fever occurrence.” More: “Residing on upper floors was associated with a higher daily incidence rate.” Amoy Gardens redux. More: “Wearing an N95 respirator when leaving home could effectively reduce household infection risk. The observed similarity in the peak infection rate and its date of occurrence in different provincial regions suggest the spontaneous and simultaneous spread of the Omicron variant across the country. Crowded households, poor ventilation in shared common corridors, and residing on upper floors were associated with a higher incidence and more symptoms of disease.” • Fine, fine, but where’s the RCT? Anyhow…. I still remain bewildered and appalled that China, with three years to work with, didn’t even begin to approach ventilation; as if the world’s greatest manufacturing power couldn’t put an HVAC in every room and commercial space. The only thing I can conclude is that for China’s ruling class, just as for our own, that ultimately the deaths were the point.
Maskstravaganza
“NC House temporarily shelves bill barring the wearing of masks. Move comes as objections continue” [Winston-Salem Journal]. “[HB237] was placed into the gatekeeper House Rules and Operations committee, which typically meets on Tuesday afternoons and Wednesday and Thursday mornings. However, House speaker Tim Moore, R-Cleveland, has the discretion during session to take a bill out of committee and place it on the floor calendar. The expectation is that the House will reject Senate changes to the bill and send it to a concurrence committee to reach a potential compromise on the language…. A Change.org petition urging lawmakers to rethink the bill has already gotten nearly 3,700 signatures. The petition cites concerns about people who wear masks for medical reasons. Sen. Danny Britt Jr., R-Scotland, told the Senate Rules and Operations committee earlier Wednesday that ‘we’re still in discussions with the House on how to tailor the medical exception to this mask policy for folks who may suffer from communicable diseases.’
‘We want to ensure that this doesn’t violate the Americans with Disabilities Act, so there will be some tweaking along the way.’” • Partial good news? In any case, it couldn’t hurt to keep up the pressure: Here again is the petition and (from yesterday) here are some numbers to call. Maybe that Buck Newton nimrod got stuffed back in his box? Nice to see the Biden Administration weighing in, too. BWA-HA-HA-HA-HA!!!! Not.
Vaccines
“Adjuvanted subunit intranasal vaccine prevents SARS-CoV-2 onward transmission in hamsters” [bioRxiv]. From the Abstract: “Most COVID-19 vaccine trials have focused on recipient protection, not protection of their contacts, a critical need. As a subunit intranasal COVID-19 vaccine reduced nasopharyngeal virus more than did an intramuscular (IM) vaccine, we hypothesized that this vaccine might reduce onward transmission to others. We vaccinated hamsters with either the IM-administrated Moderna mRNA vaccine twice or one dose of mRNA IM followed by adjuvanted subunit intranasal vaccine. 24 hours after SARS-CoV-2 challenge, these animals were housed with naïve recipients in a contactless chamber that allows airborne transmission. Onward airborne transmission was profoundly blocked: the donor and recipients of the intranasal vaccine-boosted group had lower oral and lung viral loads (VL), which correlated with mucosal ACE2 inhibition activity. These data strongly support the use of the intranasal vaccine as a boost to protect not only the vaccinated person, but also people exposed to the vaccinated person, a key public health goal.” • Good news (although optimistic about the goals of public health).
Testing and Tracking
A ray of hope on hospital data:
Last week, the requirement for US hospitals to report key COVID data to the federal government ended.
But there’s a proposed HHS/CMS rule that would change this, and require hospitals to report key COVID, flu, and RSV hospitalization data *outside* of public health emergencies. https://t.co/R2kGlgv1ry pic.twitter.com/6aQ7A8cbTa
— Dr. Lucky Tran (@luckytran) May 9, 2024
Sequelae: Covid
“What do we know about covid-19’s effects on the brain?” [BMJ]. “Is it the virus entering the brain? This is a complex issue and the subject of much debate. In vitro studies have found that the virus disrupts the blood-brain barrier, although this was seen only with the original wild-type SARS-CoV-2 and omicron variants. This research also found that the virus may affect the function of cells in the central nervous system. Because loss of smell is a common symptom, some researchers have suggested that the virus may enter the brain through the olfactory system. Stephen Griffin, virologist at the University of Leeds, notes that the UK Biobank study recorded ‘reduced grey matter thickness—comprised of the main cellular ‘bodies’ of neurons, rather than their tendril-like projections—in parts of the brain linked with olfactory sensing, namely the limbic system and primary olfactory cortex,’ which could be evidence for this route of entry. However, there’s little other evidence that the virus enters cells in the brain. Schifitto says, ‘There’s been one report suggesting the virus gets into astrocytes; others have not really found the virus in specific cells.’ But he adds, ‘The virus can cause damage without infecting cells. If it’s activating other cells in the brain that cause inflammation, you don’t need the virus to be there to cause problems. The amount of cytokines in the blood could activate, for example, microglia, a classical cell type involved in chronic neuroinflammation.’”
Celebrity Watch
Swift — whose entourage works hard not to infect the star — could do so much good, at no cost to herself. So much for the sensitive singer-songwriter:
I know she’s not alone, but sheesh!
Elite Maleficence
“CDC Releases Guidance for Preventing Spread of Infections in Schools to Keep Children Healthy and Learning” (press release) [CDC]. • Mandy slaughters more innocent children:
To be fair, I don’t know all the diseases to which school kids are subject; Covid is airborne; the RSV literature is infested with droplet dogma jargon, so I assume institutional inertia prevails rather than science, but RSV is also airborne as an aerosol; ditto for the flu. So when I comment exclusively on Covid, I think it’s fair to say I’m covering all three. Covid is also the most deadly, so it would make sense to anyone but CDC to make it the priority. I have helpfully annotated the press release (links available on request; time presses):
[1] Forgotten nothing, learned nothing (although to be fair, there’s no recommendation for Plexiglass barriers).
[2] Handwashing and “respiratory etiquette” (coughing into your elbow) do nothing against Covid.
[3] Heaven forfend you should do anything to improve ventilation now, like putting HVAC filters and Corsi-Rosenthal boxes in the schoolrooms; as far as Mandy is concerned, such devices might as well be science fiction. Of course, if you’re a rich district, like Newton, MA, you can protect your children right away, but if you’re not, then sure, wait. Why not?
[3] (oops) Fomite theatre. Sure, cleaning is good, but can we please not deceive ourselves
[4] Vaccinations do not, of course, prevent transmission.
[5] “Ill” as shown by symptoms, of course. But Covid spreads asymptomatically, which is why clean air should be the default, and not a reactive measure.
[6] What is “PPE”? Moonsuits? Below, they say “masks” (and not respirators). Which is it?
[7] No. No, they don’t. This is all fomite transmission-related. None of this will help with Covid at all.
[8] Masks as the absolutely last resort. For any sane teacher — and any sane parent — and especailly in a school that will have ten more years of bad ventilation because that’s when the “remodeling” will take place, masks should be the first resort. I mean, if CDC’s priority is indeed “keeping children healthy,” which it obviously is not.
“Pro-Infection Doctors Didn’t Just Want Kids in School. They Wanted Them There Unvaccinated, Untested, and Unmasked. They Wanted Them Infected” [Science-Based Medicine]. “It’s all enough to make one think that children learning in classrooms wasn’t the main priority for pro-infection doctors. Rather, their chief objective was to infect as many children as quickly as possible to hasten the arrival of herd immunity, and schools were just a tool to accomplish this goal- a goal they shared with their wealthy libertarian friend who told kids to dropout of public schools so they can smoke after their shift at Walmart and Chic-Fil-A.” • Yep.
Lambert here: Patient readers, I’m going to have to rethink this beautifully formatted table. Looks like Biobot data still functions, CDC variant data functions, ER visits are dead, New York hospitalization seems to be dead since 5/1 [No, it’s alive!], when CDC stopped mandatory hospital data collection, Walgreens functions, Cleveland Clinic functions, CDC traveler’s data functions, New York Times death data has stopped. (Note that the two metrics the hospital-centric CDC cared about, hospitalization and deaths, have both gone down). Ideally I would replace hospitalization and death data, but I’m not sure how. I might also expand the wastewater section to include (yech) Verily data, H5N1 if I can get it. Suggestions and sources welcome.
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) Slight upward movement, supported by yesterday’s Walgreen’s positivity.
[2] (Biobot) No backward revisons….
[3] (CDC Variants) FWIW, given that the model completely missed KP.2.
[4] (ER) CDC seems to have killed this off, since the link is broken, I think in favor of this thing. I will try to confirm. UPDATE Yes, leave it to CDC to kill a page, and then announce it was archived a day later. And heaven forfend CDC should explain where to go to get equivalent data, if any. I liked the ER data, because it seemed really hard to game.
[5] (Hospitalization: NY) Flat. The data is now updating again. I suppose to a tame epidemiologist it looks like “endemicity,” but to me it looks like another tranche of lethality.
[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) Slight uptick.
[8] (Cleveland) Leveling out.
[9] (Travelers: Posivitity) Up and down.
[10] (Travelers: Variants) KP.2 enters the chat, as does B.1.1.529 (with backward revision).
[11] Looks like the Times isn’t reporting death data any more? Maybe I need to go back to The Economist….
Stats Watch
There are no official statistics of interest today.
Tech: “”I lost trust”: Why the OpenAI team in charge of safeguarding humanity imploded” [Vox]. “For months, OpenAI has been losing employees who care deeply about making sure AI is safe. Now, the company is positively hemorrhaging them. Ilya Sutskever and Jan Leike announced their departures from OpenAI, the maker of ChatGPT, on Tuesday. They were the leaders of the company’s superalignment team — the team tasked with ensuring that AI stays aligned with the goals of its makers, rather than acting unpredictably and harming humanity. They’re not the only ones who’ve left. Since last November — when OpenAI’s board tried to fire CEO Sam Altman only to see him quickly claw his way back to power — at least five more of the company’s most safety-conscious employees have either quit or been pushed out. What’s going on here? If you’ve been following the saga on social media, you might think OpenAI secretly made a huge technological breakthrough. The meme ‘What did Ilya see?’ speculates that Sutskever, the former chief scientist, left because he saw something horrifying, like an AI system that could destroy humanity. But the real answer may have less to do with pessimism about technology and more to do with pessimism about humans — and one human in particular: Altman. According to sources familiar with the company, safety-minded employees have lost faith in him. ‘It’s a process of trust collapsing bit by bit, like dominoes falling one by one,’ a person with inside knowledge of the company told me, speaking on condition of anonymity.” • Why on earth would anybody except stupid money trust Sam Altman?
Today’s Fear & Greed Index: 64 Greed (previous close: 60 Greed) [CNN]. One week ago: 46 (Neutral). (0 is Extreme Fear; 100 is Extreme Greed). Last updated May 17 at 1:58:59 PM ET.
The Gallery
Alert reader MB writes: “Sharing because I think readers will appreciate this. Sesshu Toyo, landscape 1495 (!) I hope you can see the variety of strokes and washes”:
Serendipitously, the tones go nicely with Carla’s image below.
News of the Wired
“Mechanical Movements of the Cold War: How the Soviets Revolutionized Wristwatches” [Collector’s Weekly]. “Then I popped off the back, expecting the typical interior: a battery, some metal circuitry and a plastic spacer. Instead, everything was beautifully finished—brushed metal gears, springs, and red ruby jewels. These are true rubies that are synthetically made, since rubies are extremely sturdy and resistant to the effects of continued friction. If you imagine a mechanical watch that’s ticking all day, every day, on someone’s wrist, there’s an enormous amount of friction that all of these parts incur. The classic ticking sound you hear in a mechanical watch represents various movements inside, and the vast majority of mechanical watches employ rubies so they can strike and pivot hundreds of thousands of times per day without wearing away.” • Fun stuff!
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)
Carla writes: “Wade Chapel, Lakeview Cemetery, Cleveland, OH, April 23, 2024.” A lovely day in early spring. I can’t photograph the sky to save my life, let alone a low-key sky like this….
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