Nearly 50,000 Americans died of COVID-19 in 2023 according to the CDC, and ABC News thinks 300 a week is a headline in 2025

 Why are more than 300 people in the US still dying from COVID every week?

The 350 a week rate from April is the equivalent of 18,200 annually. 

Slow news day.

Wastewater analysis shows infection levels near their all-time lows.

 

 

If ivermectin ever made a difference to COVID-19 outcomes in Africa, it sure didn't in Latin and South America

Wide distribution of ivermectin in Africa to combat river blindness does not appear to have had anything to do whatsoever with low death rates from COVID-19 in places like Angola (62 deaths per million of population), Kenya (120), and Nigeria (16).

It turns out that ivermectin was widely distributed in eight Latin and South American countries from June, August, and December 2020, but all of them had steeply higher death rates from the disease:

Peru 6,945

Brazil 3,396

Mexico 2,654

Panama 2,089

Bolivia 1,974

Guatemala 1,222

Honduras 1,165

El Salvador 652.

 

Exposure to fresh air and full spectrum sunlight with its infrared and ultraviolet radiation has been shown to speed recovery from the disease:

 

 

Trump's tariffs will bankrupt thousands of American businesses and millions will be unemployed as a result

 So says Ryan Petersen, founder and CEO of Flexport, in The Wall Street Journal, here:

... If the tariffs on Chinese goods continue at this rate, he says, thousands of American companies will fail and millions of employees will lose their jobs. ...

When the pandemic clogged up supply chains, he rented a boat so he could tour the Port of Long Beach, Calif., and see the bottlenecks for himself.

When he’s not cruising around ports for information, he’s getting it directly from his company’s 13,000 customers. They are companies that sell electronics, furniture, clothing, toys, diapers, pet feeders—basically everything. He makes it a priority to talk with as many of them as he possibly can. ...

This past week, he traveled from San Francisco to Washington, D.C., where he spent two days meeting with government officials to make the case that tariffs pose an existential threat to his customers. ...

Core pce inflation numbers were finally updated in this chart by the BEA at 147pm EDT showing revisions but the same old story: No core inflation progress in a year

Core inflation in Mar 2025 year over year is 2.64%, still ahead of the lowest reading in the last year at 2.63% in Jun 2024.

Core inflation has been sideways for a year and more, and nowhere near 2% or below as in the pre-pandemic era.

The revised 2.96% for Feb 2025 is equivalent to the 2.97% reading in Mar 2024.

That Feb spike helps explain why the 1Q2025 reading was up 3.5% from 4Q2024.

Fareed Zakaria: Trump uses an unprecedented eight national emergency declarations for his own end run around the constitution, the Congress, and the courts

 ... Trump has declared eight national emergencies in his first 100 days, more than any other president. ...

Invoking an emergency has come to mean that the president can bypass Congress, intimidate courts, and run roughshod over normal procedures, even civil liberties. And while the current number is striking, it’s not a Trumpian innovation. Presidents have become addicted to emergency powers, unlike many other countries. The U.S. Constitution says nothing about how to declare or end an emergency. This has allowed presidents to organically assume a wide range of powers. This usually happened during wartime. ...

Today, Americans are living under dozens of ongoing national emergencies, mostly tied to foreign policy like sanctions. The oldest standing one, targeting Iran, dates back to the Carter administration. Others come from the post-9/11 era, when Congress granted the executive branch sweeping new powers, all in the name of national security. Both parties have used emergency powers to serve their broader agendas. In 2022, President Joe Biden attempted to forgive student loan debt by using an emergency authority related to the COVID-19 pandemic. ...

More.

Like failing to establish a formula for the continued growth of representation, thus unwittingly concentrating power in an oligarchic Congress by default, the constitution's silence about emergencies is yet one more example of the founders' inability to imagine every which way one branch might try to exploit it, which is an increasingly pressing problem in our increasingly illiberal society.

Trump's tariffs mean that the skies will be empty, along with the shelves

 Boeing hopes to find new buyers for up to 50 planes returned by China

... Two Boeing jets have returned to the US from China, with another on the way, after the imposition of steep 125% tariffs on American imports. China imposed the levies in retaliation to the White House’s 145% rate that threatens to significantly slow down the world economy. ...

Blank Sailings Rattle Trans-Pacific Trade as China Imports Nosedive

... Container shipping companies have blanked at least 80 sailings this month, compared to 51 in March 2020, when volumes crashed amid early Covid-19 lockdowns, Sea-Intelligence said. ...

COVID-19 vaccine and flu vaccine uptake has been pretty low through the end of February

 ... As of February 2025, 21.2% of adults 18+ in the U.S. have received a 2024–25 COVID-19 vaccine and 42.8% have received a 2024–25 flu vaccine. ...

More.

COVID-19 prevalence is low at the end of March 2025

 

The US depression in road travel from COVID-19 ended in 2024 and lasted five years

 The 3.257 trillion miles of 2019 was exceeded in 2024 by 5 billion miles, on an average annual basis.

The depression in road travel from the Great Financial Crisis lasted eight years, from 2007 to 2015.

Previous to that we had similar, but smaller contractions in US road travel, from 1979 to 1982, three years, and from 1973 to 1975, two years, precipitated by the oil trade shocks of the Iranian Revolution and the Yom Kippur War respectively.

You are now free to move about the country.

 

Imbeciles Trump and Musk claim millions over the age of 100 get Social Security when it is 89,106 people in December 2024 lol

Trump loves Whoppers.

Smell the farts of nothing has changed.

In 2015 Trump used Rush Limbaugh Math and came up with 42% unemployed lol. "Not in labor force" is not a measure of unemployment.

These Social Security claims are loonier than Joe Biden and Kamala Harris saying 200 million and more had already died of COVID in the United States during their campaign for president-vice president in 2020. Joe corrected himself eventually. Trump and Musk WILL NOT.

... The [Social Security] issue has been repeatedly identified by inspectors general at the agency, but the Social Security Administration has argued that updating old records was costly and unnecessary.

Per the agency’s online records, just 89,106 people — not tens of millions — over the age of 99 received retirement benefits in December 2024, out of the more than 70 million people who receive benefits each year.

It’s a “humiliating mistake for anyone else to make, but they’re doubling and tripling down on it,” said Kathleen Romig, director of Social Security and disability policy at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a left-leaning think tank that addresses government spending. ...

More.

Meanwhile the US population 65 years old and older was only about 59 million in 2023. Hello.

 

Meanwhile, speaking of wholesale prices, you are paying $9+ a dozen for eggs in some places because producer prices averaged $4.62 in December

 That would be 75-cents for an egg that cost the producer about 19-cents.

I got a $1 off 18 eggs yesterday at a nearby health food store and paid $6.99, 39-cents each.

Why eggs are selling for over $9 a dozen in some places—and when prices are expected to drop

The biggest factor pushing up egg prices is a wave of avian flu, which began in early 2022 and led to the culling of millions of egg-laying hens. With demand remaining steady, the reduced supply has caused prices to rise.

This is the second time egg prices have surged since 2022, following a previous wave of avian flu that wiped out large numbers of egg-laying hens and caused supply shortages that year. Avian flu has wiped out over 100 million chickens since a major outbreak began in early 2022.

 

You would think chicken prices would go up, too, but I consistently get chicken thighs in bulk at Sam's for $1.38/lb, and have done so right through the pandemic.

And the rotisserie chicken remains $4.98, too.

We'll get December consumer prices tomorrow. Here's November's chart for eggs:

 

 

COVID-19 in the US is at an historic low for this time of year

 COVID-19 in national US wastewater analysis:

12/28/24: 04.75

12/30/23: 13.28

12/31/22: 10.99

1/1/22: 17.17