Huge COVID-19 outbreak among fully vaccinated Texas prison inmates mirrors huge Provincetown, MA, outbreak among fully vaccinated gay revelers July 4: The vaccinated are spreading the disease

 Story BURIED by AP Obama here (Drudge also buried the story last night, shown below):

NEW YORK — A new study of Texas prison inmates provides more evidence that coronavirus can spread even in groups where most people are vaccinated.

A COVID-19 outbreak at a federal prison in July and August infected 172 male inmates in two prison housing units, according to a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report released Tuesday.

About 80% of the inmates in the units had been vaccinated. More than 90% of the unvaccinated inmates wound up being infected, as did 70% of the fully vaccinated prisoners.

Severe illness, however, was more common among the unvaccinated. The hospitalization rate was almost 10 times higher for them compared with those who got the shots.

It echoes research into a July outbreak in Provincetown, Massachusetts, where several hundred people were infected -- about three-quarters of whom were fully vaccinated.

Such reports have prompted a renewed push by health officials for even vaccinated people to wear masks and take other precautions. They believe the delta variant, a version of coronavirus that spreads more easily, and possibly waning immunity may be playing a role.

The authors did not identify the prison, but media reports in July detailed a similar-sized outbreak at the federal prison in Texarkana.

Just look at that html:

https://apnews.com/article/business-health-education-florida-pandemics-9aa03a247c10215079cafff898b60ab7

 

 

June 2021 to date is 2nd rainiest June ever in Grand Rapids, MI, and one of just 23 months since 1892 with 8 inches of rain or more, ranking 14th so far

June 2021 to date is the 14th rainiest month in Grand Rapids, MI, since 1892:

 

Jun 1892: 13.22

Sep 1986: 11.85

Apr 2013: 11.10

May 2001: 10.01

Oct 2017:  9.69

May 2000: 9.59

Sep 2008:  9.54

Sep 1981:  9.52

May 2004: 9.29

Sep 1961:  9.15

Jul 1992:   8.83

Aug 1987: 8.46

Jul 1950:   8.42

 

Jun 1-26, 2021: 8.40

 

Oct 1954: 8.32

Apr 1909: 8.29

May 1981: 8.29

Jun 1967: 8.21

Sep 1993: 8.20

Sep 1915: 8.11

Jul 1994: 8.07

Jun 2010: 8.04

Jun 1928: 8.03.

 

Among the 23 months with 8 inches of rain or more in Grand Rapids, MI, since 1892, June 24-26, 2021 stands out as one of just five 2-3 consecutive day rain events with 5.5 inches or more:

May 10-11, 1981: 6.51 inches of rain

Sep 9-11, 1986:    6.43

 

Jun 24-26, 2021:  6.17

 

May 14-16, 2001: 5.97

Jul 5-7, 1994:       5.54.

 

74% of the 23 months with 8 inches of rain or more in GR occurred after 1960, consistent with the higher rainfall trend generally in the graph below.

 

The June 2021 event caused a run on portable submersible pumps needed by homeowners to evacuate pooling water in low areas and basements due to saturated ground. Flood warnings remain in effect for the area through Monday.

 

Even so, Grand Rapids is still running over 2 inches behind on mean rainfall year-to-date.

 

June 26, 2021 ranks 7th for daily maximum rainfall on a single day in June since 1892 at 2.81 inches.

 

The most rain ever to fall on a single day in Grand Rapids is 4.22 inches, occurring on June 5, 1905 and again on August 19, 1939. Those extreme events are associated with the hotter, dryer pre-1960 half of the graph.

 

Mean annual daily maximum precipitation in GR is 2.27 inches, with June ranking the highest month at 1.29, followed by September at 1.26.

 

 

Jason Lewis on the Rush Limbaugh Show this week was lighting his hair on fire about inflation

Jason Lewis' remedy for inflation, which came in at 5% year over year in May, actually 4.9%, is the standard remedy: The Fed should raise the interest rate, which is effectively zero at the moment and has been for some time.

Aggressive low-interest-rate policy has been the rule since 2002, with the brief escalation from 2005-2007 during the housing bubble being the exception. Over those 19 years through 2020, the average effective federal funds rate (DFF) has been 1.36%.

Contrast that with the 19 year period previous to that, from 1983-2001, when the DFF averaged 6.27%.

That should have kept inflation under control, right?

Well, no.

Under the low interest rate regime we've had an average annual change in CPI of just 2.01%. For the previous period with the higher DFF we had higher inflation, 3.24% per annum on average.

All inflation is bad. At 2% per annum the value of your pile of assets is cut in half in 35 years. At 3% it's closer to 20 years.

What kind of conservatism is it to advocate for either one?

Real conservatives believe in sound money. Less unsound money won't do.

The evidence is the two things, the fed funds rate and CPI, aren't correlated.

And CPI is rightly mocked because its components do not capture the inflation which has infected the cost of education, health care, housing, stocks, gold, intellectual property, et cetera in our life times.

It's the purchasing power of the dollar which has continued its inexorable decline which is the problem. We haven't had a sound dollar policy since the advent of the Great War in 1914. The desire for an independent monetary policy conducted by a Federal Reserve from 1913 came at the price of the ongoing robbery of the wealth of the people. World War couldn't have been financed without it, nor the Welfare State after it.

It's hardly a coincidence that political conservatism has been in retreat from the same time. You make a lie of the money in your pocket, you make a lie of everything else, too. Slowly at first, and then suddenly.

This American swindle will not continue forever.

 

The rental vacancy rate in the US turned sharply upward beginning in July 2020 and continues higher in 1Q2021

 

The home vacancy rate in the US in 2020 hit a new all-time low of 1%

 

The ratio of owner-occupied to renter-occupied housing soared in 2020 as pandemic hysteria gripped the US and people sought refuge

 

The on-going housing bubble

I checked the value of my home on Zillow today.

It's nuts.

After 13 years the estimated price is up 6.5% per annum.

On the other hand, the house I previously owned and sold is up only 0.8% per annum over the same period.

Two entirely different houses, two entirely different locations, two completely different histories. What seems like a bubble living in my current house wouldn't seem like one living in my old one.

The best way I've found to think about this is to ask, How much of a house will my income buy? For bubble purposes nationally, even though housing is a regional and local matter, use median household income and median sales price.

Here's the chart of that data as currently available.

In 2020 the Median Sales Price of Houses Sold for the United States (MSPUS) averaged a new high of almost $337k. We don't yet have the median household income figure for 2020, but it's likely to be bad news, skewing the graph lower again as less income buys a smaller share of increasingly expensive housing.

As you can plainly see, the trend for the percentage of a house purchased by an income has been all downhill since the end of Reagan Bull in 2000. The percentage really fell a lot during the housing bubble which peaked in 2005-06, helping precipitate GFC1. Incomes fell a lot after the Great Financial Crisis because people lost their jobs by the millions and never got them back and so less income purchased less house. Housing prices bottomed in 2012 and then rebounded slowly. Incomes did not, however, and what you made just kept buying less in the low range of 19%. 

That all sucked. Obama really sucked. Sucked historically bad. Record-setting bad. 

You'll notice things really improved in 2019, however. That's because median household income shot up $5k to over $68k (Trump tax cuts), and the median sales price of a house actually fell $5k to $320k. Your higher income bought more of a slightly cheaper house, not as much as the good old days, but more.

Unfortunately in 2020 median sales price shot up almost $17k while millions upon millions lost their jobs. The feds enacted foreclosure forbearance so that 2.3 million homes whose owners lost their jobs never came onto the market. But desperate people who wanted out of cities snarfed up inventory. Demand far exceeded supply, so prices went up. 

But even at 21.5% in 2019 housing was nowhere near affordable like it was from 1987-2001. It was a nice, hopeful moment, while it lasted.

I'm guessing it's going to be quite a while, though, before we ever see even that again.