Thursday, March 11, 2021
Death toll after COVID vaccines climbs to 1,637, CDC denies link
They never got the chance to offer the lifesaving gift. Doctors were doing everything they could to get Kurill stable, but nothing seemed to work. Hawley said his daughter’s liver, kidney and heart shut down. Hawley, who was with his daughter when she died, said it didn’t make any sense. She died, he said, 30 hours after they arrived in the emergency room. ...
“Over 92 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines were administered in the United States from December 14, 2020, through March 8, 2021. During this time, VAERS received 1,637 reports of death (0.0018%) among people who received a COVID-19 vaccine. CDC and FDA physicians review each case report of death as soon as notified and CDC requests medical records to further assess reports. A review of available clinical information including death certificates, autopsy, and medical records revealed no evidence that vaccination contributed to patient deaths. CDC and FDA will continue to investigate reports of adverse events, including deaths, reported to VAERS.“, the CDC reported on its website.
Wednesday, March 10, 2021
Current hospitalizations for COVID-19 have dropped by about 11,000 between March 1-9, 2021 in the US
 |
| California (blue), Texas (pink), Florida (green), New York (gray) |
Examples of US States back-filling death data from COVID-19 in recent days
Data from the following dates looks anomalous in the graphs, way out of proportion to daily experience. This has been a common phenomenon throughout the pandemic. It just sticks out more now. These aren't deaths all actually occurring on the dates indicated. I suspect that with the general decline in cases and deaths, states are both catching up on death investigations as well as finding this to be an opportune time to update the data. But in some states, like Missouri, the practice seems to be quite habitual.
Minnesota: 140 (Mar 9)
Kansas: 73 (Mar 3)
Oklahoma: 167 (Mar 9)
Missouri: 105 (Mar 9)
163 (Mar 3)
Virginia: 383 (Mar 3, the crescendo of 12 straight such days)
Ohio: 160 (Mar 9)
752 (Mar 5)
Daily new deaths nationwide are averaging 1,597 per day in the first 9 days of March. Sustained over the course of the month that would lead to fewer than 50,000 deaths and make March at the worst the 5th worst month for new deaths.
Daily new cases are averaging 62,914 per day. That would lead to 1.95 million cases if sustained over the whole month and make it at the worst the 5th worst for new cases.
About 18.4% of the population 18 and over has received at least one dose of a vaccine through March 9th. That is roughly 46 million people. That should add big momentum to the case declines, and eventually to the deaths.
Friday, March 5, 2021
The list of adverse reactions to Pfizer's COVID vaccine in the US makes for interesting reading
Some reactions to Pfizer's COVID vaccine reported to US VAERS for 14,649 events through 2/26:
Blindness: 20
Blurry vision: 122
Chest pain: 361
Chest discomfort: 485
Cardiac arrest: 70
Thrombosis/stroke: 30
Spontaneous abortion: 30
Facial paralysis: 199
Death: 475
Sense losses: touch (671), smell (129), taste (134)
Swelling: lymphatic (362), lips (182), throat (160), face (203), tongue (181), peripheral (206)
Severe itching: 787
Rash: 781
Hives/urticaria: 572
Tingling sensations: 873
Oral tingling: 418
Joint pain: 760
Tight throat: 315
Anaphylactic reaction: 143
Fever: 2,018
https://vaers.hhs.gov/data.html
Full-time employment in the US in February 2021 continues to SUCK
47.5% of the civilian US non-institutional population had full-time jobs in February 2021. The average level in 2020 was 47.3%.
Missing full-time in February relative to the 2019 average of 50.4% is 7.5 million.
Relative to the all-time high in 2000 at 53.6%, missing full-time is a whopping 15.87 million.
Thursday, March 4, 2021
Monday, March 1, 2021
US COVID-19 update through Feb 2021
Daily new cases have dropped dramatically in February 2021, but still average 85,863 per day and remain higher than for any month before last November when the country was still in a fit of hysteria about the pandemic.
Daily new deaths had their third worst month in February 2021 and are still higher than in April last.
Hospitalizations have dropped dramatically in February to 48,871 on Saturday 2/27. Peak Saturday level was January 9th at 130,781. The Saturday peak last summer occurred on 7/25 with 59,301 hospitalized. The Saturday peak last April occurred on 4/18 with 57,761 hospitalized.
The Covid Tracking Project at The Atlantic will unaccountably stop collecting such data on March 7th. I say unaccountably because the absolute low in Saturday hospitalizations after the April outbreak was 27,967 on June 20th and the October lows never matched that. We're not even close to those levels yet. It's WAY too early to conclude that data collection should cease when the previous lows haven't yet been taken out.
Meanwhile, the hospitalization data collected by the University of Minnesota continues to show the second wave still in decline at the end of February. The worst states (NY in gray, CA in blue, TX in pink, and FL in green) for hospitalizations are shown in the graphs. The declines are welcome, but levels remain elevated.
Daily new case data in a number of countries, e.g. Brazil, Finland, Hungary, Czechia, France, Italy, Poland, Ukraine, Sweden, in recent weeks has turned upward to one degree or another. This could be a harbinger of a coming seasonal surge.
Meanwhile about 7.5% of the US is fully vaccinated, and 15% partially vaccinated.
It remains to be seen how effective the vaccines will be against mutations, and how durable the vaccines will be over time.
Sunday, February 28, 2021
Friday, February 26, 2021
Thursday, February 25, 2021
Despite non-stop recruitment propaganda, the LGBT share of the US population rises to only 5.6%, and most of that is bi, and most of that is female
5.6% of US adults are LGBT, up from 4.5% in 2017.
3.1% of Americans identify as bisexual, 1.4% as gay, 0.7% as lesbian and 0.6% as transgender.
The rise in Americans saying they are bisexual is driven by women:
[O]ver 3% of US adults say they are bisexual (a sexual identity in which someone is attracted to people of their gender or other genders). This is up from just over 1% in 2008. (The GSS allowed individuals to self-classify as “heterosexual or straight,” “gay, lesbian, homosexual,” “bisexual,” or “don’t know.”) An analysis of the GSS data by the sociologists D’Lane Compton and Tristan Bridges shows that the change has been almost entirely due to an increase in the number of bisexual women . . ..
Wednesday, February 24, 2021
Tiger Woods' father groomed him for golf, but inserted a self-destruct device in the training
"A close family friend said Woods learned his philandering ways from watching his father have sex with blondes in a Winnebago RV that he parked next to golf courses when they practiced in his childhood."
Monday, February 22, 2021
Sunday, February 21, 2021
Hospitalization data from the states worst affected by COVID-19 show two distinct waves of the pandemic, the second more severe in California and Texas and less severe in New York and Florida
Florida, Texas and California all lagged the outbreak in New York, but the experience of all four coincide in the second wave, which is clearly now receding.
The Spanish Flu pandemic had three waves.
1918 Pandemic Influenza: Three Waves
 |
| New York (gray), Florida (green), California (blue), Texas (pink) |
LOL, The Atlantic has declared the pandemic over and will stop collecting data on March 7, 2021
It's good to be a Democrat.
Meanwhile through Feb 20 2,802 people in the US have died of COVID-19 every single damn day in February, the second highest daily death rate measured monthly since the beginning of the pandemic.
Everyone thinks the recent big drop in cases means it's over? What a joke.
New cases in Feb just through 2/20 total 1.873 million, far exceeding May 2020's 1.799 million. The country went into SHUT DOWN mode with far fewer new cases in March 2020: 188,461. In April when so many Americans perished there were just 1.075 million new cases.
It's way too early to stop collecting data, unless of course you have an axe to grind, like the neo-cons did when Goldberg at The Atlantic insisted Iraq had WMD.
The more things change, the more they stay the same.
Saturday, February 20, 2021
Now that Rush Limbaugh is dead, The Daily Beast fills the gap with a chopadickoffame story
Inside the World of Backstreet Castrators, Cutters and Eunuch-Makers :
Some people born with penises and testicles want to keep the former, but lose the latter—though some choose to keep their empty scrotums. (There is a dedicated Reddit forum for the latter group to share photos of their genitals: Empty Sacks, “for those who had the balls to give theirs up.”) Others want to keep the genitalia they were born with and add new genitalia on top. ... (Mexico and Thailand have both been hot spots for quick-and-easy but largely unregulated clinical castrations, penectomies, and similar procedures for at least a couple of decades now.) ... the greater availability of open and official care—far more than horror stories and crackdowns—has led to a drastic decline in demand for cutters, which means there are now fewer of them practicing than there were five or ten years ago.
Friday, February 19, 2021
Peggy Noonan has second thoughts, recalls with fondness the crabbed public square of Fairness Doctrine infamy
What a shock, right? Roman Catholic from Brooklyn thinks Methodist hick from Missouri should have been shut up long ago.
Rush Limbaugh’s Complicated Legacy :
By the 1980s it was being argued that the doctrine itself was hurting free speech: It was a governmental intrusion on the freedom of broadcasters, and, perversely, it inhibited the presentation of controversial issues. There were so many voices in the marketplace, and more were coming; fairness and balance would sort themselves out.
In 1987 the doctrine was abolished, a significant Reagan-era reform. But I don’t know. Let me be apostate again. Has anything in our political culture gotten better since it was removed? Aren’t things more polarized, more bitter, less stable?
I’m not sure it was good for America.
Imagine if religion were similarly circumscribed.
From 17 distinct religious groups in 1776 and about 3,200 congregations, today there are north of 300 groups and 300,000 congregations.
The lack of unanimity surely bothers devout believers in one or the other, some of whom are certain everyone else is going to hell, and something should be done to stop it.
I suspect the one true church of Peggy Noonan feels the same way, except its liberalism has invented the half-way house of Purgatory to roast malefactors until ready for Valhalla.
Deal with it, Peggy. It's still a Protestant country.
Wednesday, February 17, 2021
Rush Limbaugh dead at 70, FOX obituary includes famous "preamble to the Constitution" blunder from CPAC 2009
Rush Limbaugh, conservative talk radio pioneer, dead at 70 :
"We believe that the preamble to the Constitution contains an inarguable truth that we are all endowed by our creator with certain inalienable rights, among them life, liberty, Freedom and the pursuit of happiness."
The mistake is fairly typical, both of Rush, and of Rush's audience the Baby Boom for whom basic knowledge of civics had long been in decline. For Rush, and for them, conservatism was always more aspirational than actual, often conflating present perspectives with historical realities.
An example is the Straussians who in our time explicitly argued for the unity of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, giving Thomas Jefferson's more revolutionary, Enlightenment-tinged views in the former too much sway over the interpretation of the latter.
The irony of that fusionism was always that Jefferson sought for the United States "to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them", not the "exceptional" American position touted by Limbaugh as an heir of America's post-war position of global domination.
The Constitution's preamble expressed a matter-of-factly self-interested goal, "to secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity", a country of Americans, by Americans, and for Americans, not a nation of immigrants, by immigrants, and for immigrants, not a nation of heroes marching forth in search of monsters to destroy. America's founding was above all modest, which is perhaps the surest indicator of its inherent conservatism.
If Rush Limbaugh slaughtered the important details on a regular basis, what made the show so enjoyable was the entertainment, which largely came from the sheer pleasure Rush derived from doing it and communicating it, "having more fun than a human being should be allowed to have". If nothing else, Rush Limbaugh was a conservative of enjoyment, and who doesn't want to be around people having a good time? It is one reason for Rush's tremendous success in a career spanning more than three decades.
Students of conservatism might think this a whimsy, not to be taken seriously, but no less a figure than Russell Kirk devoted a chapter to such conservatism in his "The Conservative Mind". Rush himself, from time to time, in his own non-academic way had observed how liberals are not funny and don't have fun, and in this he was on to something. Generally speaking conservatives possess contentment to a far greater degree than do liberals, derived from a judiciously formed view of the self as sinners saved by grace. It is a freeing thing which allows people to accept things as they are, even as God accepts sinners as they are.
Of course in the post-war there has been a tremendous amount for Americans to enjoy, to the point that we have become completely distracted by this. One may rightly say we have overdone it, and that enjoyment has frankly become conservatives' Achilles' heel. It has produced a myriad of problems, not the least of which has been a failure to reproduce, inattention to religion, and a proclivity for the easy politics of the executive where we look for one man to save us. As America was not built by Protestants enjoying religious entertainments and all-you-can-eat brunches on Sundays, it will not be recovered, if that is still possible, but by serious, religious people who work hard, deny themselves, and save.
Rush Limbaugh was an optimist about America because he still believed there were enough individual Americans remaining who exemplified the old virtues. America's future will depend on Rush having been right.
Tuesday, February 16, 2021
Monday, February 15, 2021
It would be silly for Republicans to waste any time on a Trump candidacy in 2024
Who in their right mind wants to go to all that trouble just to elect a lame duck?
Republicans need a president who can get something accomplished in office. Only the threat of re-election to a second term gives force to a first term. That no longer applies in Trump's case.
He is a spent force who would be a mere place-holder.
By definition, anyone's prospects are better than his.
It would be a colossal waste of time and money to spend either on someone who has already been given the opportunity and come up short. If Trump were worthy of the office again, he would acknowledge that.
Sunday, February 14, 2021
Friday, February 12, 2021
Thursday, February 11, 2021
NeverTrump lunatics, led by Evan McMuffinhead and themselves fractured, hold ZOOM call to form 3rd Party in headlong rush to formalize GOP fracture over "nativism"
Add in a new "Patriot Party" and the GOP will be an utter shambles.
EXCLUSIVE-Dozens of former Republican officials in talks to form anti-Trump third party :
More than 120 of them held a Zoom call last Friday to discuss the breakaway group, which would run on a platform of "principled conservatism," including adherence to the Constitution and the rule of law - ideas those involved say have been trashed by Trump. ...
Evan McMullin, who was chief policy director for the House Republican Conference and ran as an independent in the 2016 presidential election, told Reuters that he co-hosted the Zoom call with former officials concerned about Trump's grip on Republicans and the nativist turn the party has taken.
Three other people confirmed to Reuters the call and the discussions for a potential splinter party, but asked not to be identified.
Among the call participants were John Mitnick, general counsel for the Department of Homeland Security under Trump; former Republican congressman Charlie Dent; Elizabeth Neumann, deputy chief of staff in the Homeland Security Department under Trump; and Miles Taylor, another former Trump homeland security official. ...
Call participants said they were particularly dismayed by the fact that more than half of the Republicans in Congress - eight senators and 139 House representatives - voted to block certification of Biden's election victory just hours after the Capitol siege. ...
McMullin said just over 40% of those on last week's Zoom call backed the idea of a breakaway, national third party. Another option under discussion is to form a "faction" that would operate either inside the current Republican Party or outside it.
Libertarian survey: Republicans are sharply divided over Trump, the QAnon child sex conspiracy, and the use of force
Among Trump voters 53% view themselves as GOP supporters vs. 47% who view themselves as Trump supporters.
29% of Republicans believe Trump was fighting a global sex trafficking ring whereas 30% do not. 43% of Republicans were . . . uncertain about this, which is kind of shocking when you consider that . . . Jeffrey Epstein didn't kill himself.
55% of Republicans support the use of force to stop the decline of the traditional American way of life and its values, but 43% oppose this. A clear majority of Republicans, however, oppose using violence to achieve political ends even when elected leaders fail to act to "protect America", whatever that means.
The survey, a project of the libertarian American Enterprise Institute, notably fails to ask any questions about immigration, which was the beginning, middle, and end of the Trump 2016 run for the presidency and also his most colossal failure.
It's more expedient for libertarians who want to fling open the borders, in league with Democrats, to have Trump "major in the minors" and paint him in the worst light at those things than to expose the widespread popular support for immigration restriction at which he failed.
That issue lurks underneath the survey's result which found that:
There is bipartisan agreement that the American system of democracy is failing to address the concerns and needs of the public. Nearly seven in 10 (69 percent) Americans agree that American democracy serves the interests of only the wealthy and powerful. Seventy percent of Democrats and 66 percent of Republicans hold this view.
After the ballots are counted: Conspiracies, political violence, and American exceptionalism
Wednesday, February 10, 2021
Sunday, February 7, 2021
V is for victory, V is for violence: Molly Ball never tells you the meaning of her election 2020 story, but you can figure it out
The meaning is that the left threatened violence if Trump got re-elected, and made good on that threat with the summer down payment in the George Floyd riots. The threat created the default attitude at every level of the process to capitulate and avoid a repeat: Either accept the results of an election where nearly half the votes cast were of a kind most susceptible to fraud, or else.
That's what made the US Chamber of Commerce and the National Association of Evangelicals cave to the left's long active operation one week before Nov 3.
It's all in there, but you have to think about it because Molly isn't going to just hand that narrative to you.
The Secret History of the Shadow Campaign That Saved the 2020 Election :
The summer uprising had shown that people power could have a massive impact. Activists began preparing to reprise the demonstrations if Trump tried to steal the election. “Americans plan widespread protests if Trump interferes with election,” Reuters reported in October, one of many such stories. More than 150 liberal groups, from the Women’s March to the Sierra Club to Color of Change, from Democrats.com to the Democratic Socialists of America, joined the “Protect the Results” coalition. The group’s now defunct website had a map listing 400 planned postelection demonstrations, to be activated via text message as soon as Nov. 4. To stop the coup they feared, the left was ready to flood the streets.
About a week before Election Day, Podhorzer received an unexpected message: the U.S. Chamber of Commerce wanted to talk.
The AFL-CIO and the Chamber have a long history of antagonism. Though neither organization is explicitly partisan, the influential business lobby has poured hundreds of millions of dollars into Republican campaigns, just as the nation’s unions funnel hundreds of millions to Democrats. On one side is labor, on the other management, locked in an eternal struggle for power and resources.
But behind the scenes, the business community was engaged in its own anxious discussions about how the election and its aftermath might unfold. The summer’s racial-justice protests had sent a signal to business owners too: the potential for economy-disrupting civil disorder. “With tensions running high, there was a lot of concern about unrest around the election, or a breakdown in our normal way we handle contentious elections,” says Neil Bradley, the Chamber’s executive vice president and chief policy officer. These worries had led the Chamber to release a pre-election statement with the Business Roundtable, a Washington-based CEOs’ group, as well as associations of manufacturers, wholesalers and retailers, calling for patience and confidence as votes were counted.
But Bradley wanted to send a broader, more bipartisan message. He reached out to Podhorzer, through an intermediary both men declined to name. Agreeing that their unlikely alliance would be powerful, they began to discuss a joint statement pledging their organizations’ shared commitment to a fair and peaceful election. They chose their words carefully and scheduled the statement’s release for maximum impact. As it was being finalized, Christian leaders signaled their interest in joining, further broadening its reach.
The statement was released on Election Day, under the names of Chamber CEO Thomas Donohue, AFL-CIO president Richard Trumka, and the heads of the National Association of Evangelicals and the National African American Clergy Network. “It is imperative that election officials be given the space and time to count every vote in accordance with applicable laws,” it stated. “We call on the media, the candidates and the American people to exercise patience with the process and trust in our system, even if it requires more time than usual.” The groups added, “Although we may not always agree on desired outcomes up and down the ballot, we are united in our call for the American democratic process to proceed without violence, intimidation or any other tactic that makes us weaker as a nation.”
Saturday, February 6, 2021
Indiana did a massive COVID deaths back-fill on Feb 4, skewing the averages
South Carolina and Iowa also appear to have backfilled 230-250 deaths on each of three recent occasions. It's fairly common for this to happen around the country as death investigations conclude, but the Indiana backfill is a real whopper.
Friday, February 5, 2021
In January 2021 just 47.4% of the civilian population had full-time jobs, compared with 2020's average of 47.3%
Biden reportedly said in response to the employment situation summary today:
"At that rate it's going to take ten years to get back to full employment. That's not hyperbole that's a fact."
The fact is employment has never recovered to pre-Great Recession levels, and Biden is as little likely to fix that as were Obama and Trump.
The Reagan era tax reforms hollowed out the labor economy.
Before Reagan, high marginal tax rates on ordinary income steered that income into capital investment, gains from which received preferential tax treatment if held long enough. The investment grew the economy, providing good jobs for Americans and tax revenues for government at all levels. The arrangement distrusted rich people to do the right thing with their money, but rewarded them if they did.
Reagan libertarianism changed all that.
We were sold the idea that lower taxes on high ordinary incomes would still result in capital investment because we could trust people to do the right thing with their own money.
Guess what? Libertarian trust of human nature turned out to be as false as liberal trust of human nature.
Under the influence of libertarian free trade dogma and growing globalization, that investment went abroad where there was far cheaper labor, lower taxes and less regulation. Profits soared for the few, bringing the number of billionaires from less than fifty in the 1980s to nearly 800 today. Meanwhile the good jobs gradually disappeared and income inequality soared.
Ordinary people today cannot afford cars, educations, health care, and houses as a result.
Add in cheap labor competition from immigration at a clip of 1 million a year and you can understand how Trump was so popular, however incompetent and narcissistic he was.
Trump may be gone, but the people remain screwed by these problems and by the time serving politicians and 2.8 million federal bureaucrats working for pensions who stand in the way.
Returning to the status quo ante might fix it, but it would take a generation to start feeling it. And who among us has the vision and the cojones to pull it off?
Certainly not the women and snowflakes who cry crocodile tears of fear on the House floor. Certainly not the sailors on board the Chafee who are in a panic because the cooks are infected with COVID.
The country is rotting from the inside out. All it will take to bring it down is . . . a series of unfortunate events.
Wednesday, February 3, 2021
Tuesday, February 2, 2021
Climate Update for KGRR: January 2021
Climate Update for KGRR: January 2021
Max T 41, Mean 48
Min T 11, Mean -3
Av T 28.1, Mean 23.8
Precip 1.37, Mean 2.07
Snow 9.9, Mean 18.4
HDD 1136, Mean 1269
HDD season to date 3413, Mean 3754 (season to date 9.08% below the mean)
Sunday, January 31, 2021
Saturday, January 30, 2021
For now, the Pfizer vaccine appears to be the one to get, if you've got the choice, because the coronavirus is mutating
The new Novavax vaccine is just 49% effective vs. the new South Africa coronavirus strain B.1.351 which emerged last October and was just reported in two cases in South Carolina.
Johnson & Johnson's new vaccine is just 57% effective against it.
Moderna says its vaccine is "far less effective against the South Africa strain".
Pfizer's vaccine appears to be the most robust of them all, "only slightly less effective against the South Africa variant compared with the others."
Story here.
Friday, January 29, 2021
Johns Hopkins: The COVID-19 case fatality rate to date in South Africa is 2.99% vs. 1.68% in the US
Virus variant from South Africa detected in US for 1st time:
The variant first found in South Africa was detected in October. Since then, it has been found in at least 30 other countries.
It is not obvious that the mutation found in October is responsible for the outsized increases in cases and deaths recently observed in South Africa. Both rose in tandem not until the beginning of December, and the mutation could have been present earlier. Seasonal factors may be at work. July is South Africa's winter, January its summer. Elevation moderates summer high temperatures and latitude its winter lows.
Thursday, January 28, 2021
Berman and Milanovic show increased "intersection between the top decile of capital-income recipients and labor-income earners" since Reagan 1986 tax reform has led to higher income inequality
Regrettably the study does not mention another factor, how free-trade, particularly with China and East Asia generally, helped drive wages in the US at the bottom ever lower. The Reagan era produced a perfect storm of screwed for the bottom half in America.
Here:
Where does homoploutia come from? The data do not allow us to determine that with certainty, but they allow to investigate what is consistent with individual hypotheses. There is strong evidence that increased wage-stretching that began around 1980 is associated with the rising homoploutia (the other alternatives that do not perform as well are rising inequality of capital incomes and rising capital share).
The link between higher inequality of labor incomes and homoploutia might have occurred in two ways. The first is that many high-earning individuals saved a large share of their wages, invested it, and after some years began receiving large capital incomes. The second is that many capital-rich people decided, perhaps because of changed social norms, or because top jobs became more lucrative as marginal tax rates were reduced, not to treat university education as “luxury consumption” but rather to use it to secure good jobs. It could be, of course, that both mechanisms were at work.
Monday, January 25, 2021
Sunday, January 24, 2021
US COVID-19 Update for first 23 days of January 2021: January remains on track to be the worst month yet but may turn out to be a hump month
Total announced US COVID-19 cases, first 23 days of Jan 2021: 5,021,670 or 218,333 per day.
Dec 2020 cases per day: 206,809.
Nov 2020 cases per day: 146,872.
Self-reported mask compliance rates of 49% are probably still quite exaggerated. People who complain that health safety mandates don't work never contend with that fact. The virus wouldn't be spreading the way it is if it were really true that people are finally doing what's been asked of them.
Total announced US COVID-19 deaths, first 23 days of Jan 2021: 71351, or 3102 per day.
Dec 2020 rate was 2516 per day.
Apr 2020 rate was 1961 per day.
Hospitalizations on Sat Jan 23: 113,609. Peak appears to have occurred Jan 6: 132,474.
Up-to-date charts for 2020:
Friday, January 22, 2021
Wednesday, January 20, 2021
Tuesday, January 19, 2021
US COVID-19 deaths plough right through 400k mark in Johns Hopkins data today
This morning the figure was still 399,500 but this evening is already past 401k.
Think of it as Donald Trump's retirement number on his last full day in office.
Update for COVID-19 English-speaking world case fatality rates as of 1/19/21
Per Johns Hopkins University (data changes slightly as we write):
Global totals:
deaths 2,044,445 / cases 95,703,104
Case fatality rate 2.13%
G-7 nations Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, UK, US, plus Australia and New Zealand:
deaths 713,992 / cases 36,041,142
Case fatality rate 1.98%
Rest of the world 2.23%
Ten other nations with the largest English-speaking populations (India, Pakistan, Nigeria, Philippines, Bangladesh, Egypt, Ghana, Russia, Thailand, South Africa / data quality obviously varies):
deaths 295,121 / cases 17,399,153
Case fatality rate 1.69%
South Korea, not shown above, is a good example of how no matter what nations seem to do to stop the spread of the disease, case fatality rates everywhere seem to be ending up in the vicinity of 2%.
Early on South Korea was impressing with a rate well below 1%, but today it is at 1.75%. Japan is up to 1.33%. Much vaunted New Zealand is up to 1.10%.
Compared with Canada 2.51%, France 2.38%, Germany 2.32%, Italy 3.45%, the UK 2.61%, and Australia 3.16%, the good ole USA 1.657% is doing much better than the hysterical headlines would have you believe.
That said, in the US COVID-19 is still sixteen and half times more deadly than influenza. This is a serious crisis, the long term health effects of which are not known.
A recent long term study from May to November in the US showed an alarming rise in hospitalizations for COVID among children. Another study from the UK indicated an alarming rise in the death rate for individuals six months after recovering from COVID. The impact of the disease on the human vascular system is typically acute in the lungs, but remains a still not well understood threat to the rest of the body and its organs.
You don't want to get it. 24 million in the US already have, just 7% of the population.
Sunday, January 17, 2021
Friday, January 15, 2021
Thursday, January 14, 2021
Fred Upton, Republican chucklehead, MI-6, waits until the very last hours of the Trump administration to declare: "But it is time to say: Enough is enough”
What courage! What principle! What restraint!
Upton joined nine other Republicans in the US House, including my own freshman congressman Peter Meijer, Republican chucklehead, MI-3, and all the Democrats, 222 of them, to impeach Trump a second time 232-197. Four Republicans did not vote.
The roll call is here. Upton is quoted here.
Upton, 67, has spent his life as a useless heir to a Whirlpool fortune estimated under $10 million. Once an aspiring journalist with a B.A. in journalism, instead he became a staffer to the libertarian Republican Representative David Stockman in the late 1970s and followed him to OMB under Reagan in the early 1980s. He first ran for Congress in 1986, eleven years after graduating from the U of M. He has been a congressional pest ever since, aren't they all?, who has inflicted on the American people such things as lightbulb bans, eventually styling himself as a moderate.
Meijer, now 33, is embarking on a similar trajectory, but with a gappy resume. Reportedly worth $50 million from the Meijer grocery store chain, Meijer has landed in Congress also after a decade of searching for himself.
Meijer got in to West Point but ignominiously dropped out after one year, became an Army Reservist, and went to Columbia in 2008 where he salvaged himself with a B.A. in anthropology by 2012. He interrupted this period at Columbia with service in Iraq in 2010-2011 as a sergeant. Post graduation in 2012 he served with an NGO 2013-2015. He took a wife in 2016, and an MBA from NYU, apparently 2016-2017. Then there was a brief stint in 2018 with Ilitch Holdings of billionaire family fame as an "analyst" which ended in January 2019. When Justin Amash left the Republican Party in July 2019, Meijer announced his candidacy.
Just as Upton took up the occasion of the Capitol attack as a moment of historic gravitas which inspired him to rise to impeach Trump, Meijer similarly has over-dramatized it by relating it to the drama of his "combat" experience as an intelligence advisor in Iraq (insert smirk here). He also laughably pondered out loud the danger those in the order of presidential succession were in from the trespassers on January 6. He reminds one of no one so much as the ex-bartender become US Representative, AOC, who has similarly made it a point to appear distraught and blow everything completely out of proportion to the reality in keeping with her modus operandi everywhere. Think of red-lipsticked Alexandria at the border fence a while ago, clad in white, head in her hands, weeping, sporting her $600 wristwatch.
The lefty Michael Tracey has framed such over-the-top demonstrativeness as "unhinged threat inflation" in recent days, which is exactly what we're being subjected to for demagogic purposes. The manipulation of the American people is nothing new, it's just that these young people are probably less aware of it as a technique than they are themselves victims and mimickers of the technique.
No so with Upton. He is the old hand who is too grown up and knowing for this, who knows just when to say just enough in order to receive huzzahs as a statesman instead of the harangues for the seat-warmer he is in reality.
Somehow the American people are content to let such people put us $28 trillion in debt. We chuckleheads have the chuckleheads we deserve.
Tuesday, January 12, 2021
Monday, January 11, 2021
Climate Update for KGRR: December 2020 and 2020 Annual
Climate Update for KGRR: December 2020
Max T 53, Mean 53, Annual Max T 94, Mean 94
Min T 18, Mean 4, Annual Min T 4, Mean -7, tied for eighth highest on record with 2010 and 1911
Av T 32.4, Mean 28.4, Annual Av T 50.1, Mean 48.2, fifteenth highest on record
Rain 2.81, Mean 2.45, Annual 37.44, Mean 34.77
Snow 4.9, Mean 16, Snow season to date 5.3, Mean 22.7
HDD 1001, Mean 1128, HDD season to date 2277, Mean 2485
CDD Annual 832, Mean 694, Peak year was in 1921 at 1200
By average temperature 2020 was 3.9% warmer than the mean, not because the shorter summer season was especially hot but because minimum temperatures in the longer winter season moderated.
2020 was a disaster for full-time employment, wiping out eight years of progress, however anemic those were: 13 million full-time potential missing on average relative to 2006 peak at 52.3%
 |
| It took Reagan/Bush just six years to reach 52% after the early 1980s recessions, still unparalleled |
Sunday, January 10, 2021
For some reason Peter Meijer, Justin Amash's replacement, feels the need to parade his combat cred, basically admits to mental illness: "fully uniformed", "parachute in ... not literally", "a through and through combatant"
Here, apparently because some people doubt it. He did, after all, bail out of West Point and will forever live with the stigma.
Read the whole thing and you'll see the freshman congressman is already psychoanalyzing his colleagues while admitting to the need for some himself.
Unbelievable. This is what we elect to Congress. A rich kid trying to be somebody.
There's a lot of things I respect about Rep. Amash. At the end of the day, you're going to be your own person. I think much of my approach is guided by my experiences overseas. I was fully uniformed, a through-and-through combatant in Iraq; I'd do intelligence operations. That gave me one vantage point. When I was working in disaster response efforts around the world, you—not literally, but kind of—parachute into an area, whether it was the Philippines or South Sudan, domestic response for tornadoes and hurricanes. You have to make a little bit of order out of the chaos. And then when I was in Afghanistan later for a couple of years, as a conflict analyst for the humanitarian aid community, that was a very different perspective, too. But I saw a sense of, how do things fall apart and how can they be rebuilt? ...
We've inserted ourselves into the middle of civil wars; we've taken sides. Sometimes those sides switch. In Iraq, we're backing the Sunnis one time, we're backing the Shia the other. In Afghanistan, it becomes a shifting set of alliances.
Ultimately I think that erodes something at the core of our national soul that we kind of paper over. That's something that I'll have to sit on a therapist's couch to better understand.
Saturday, January 9, 2021
Rush Limbaugh reverts to the status quo ante Trump, reads Ben Domenech article on the air caricaturing Capitol MAGA
Here's Domenech, the husband of Megan McCain, daughter of John:
An apolitical viewer of the summer of 2020 would learn one distinct lesson: If you want to be heard, if you want to be listened to, you need to go into the streets, make a ruckus, set things on fire, and tear down icons of America. This disrespect will be welcomed, hailed, and supported if your cause is just and your motives are righteous.
Just about everyone who showed up on Capitol Hill yesterday believed that about why they were there . . ..
Anyone remotely familiar with the sequence of events on Wednesday January 6 recognizes that while Trump was still speaking at 1:07pm, and boring the huge crowd to death far away on the Ellipse, a smaller faction was already over at the Capitol breaking in at 1:03pm. The Blaze's Elijah Schaffer was there documenting the whole thing, and frankly, inflaming the situation as "revolution" when what it was was a juvenile stunt. Just look at the left's similar reaction to the event. This is an elementary playground squabble by grown-ups who never grew up, elevated to national importance by the children running the media and the Democrat Party.
We are not a serious country. But I repeat myself.
The bios of some of these flamboyant mental cases whose pictures you have probably seen after they broke into the Capitol reveal them to be anything but Trumpists, yet Domenech, and Limbaugh, are as content to lump them all together as the GOP House and Senate is to ignore the efforts of Senators Josh Hawley and Ted Cruz to investigate Election 2020 improprieties.
Business as usual. The left and the media caricature the right, and Con Inc. joins right in.
The left wins because the right eats it own. Every. Damn. Time.
Wednesday, January 6, 2021
Tuesday, January 5, 2021
Saturday, January 2, 2021
US COVID-19 Summary for 2020 plus Jan 2021 death projection
Cumulative cases 20.026m
Cumulative deaths 0.346m
case fatality rate 1.73%
(us-covid-tracker.com, data subject to revision)
Cumulative hospitalizations 686,158
Cumulative deaths 336,779
percent dead 49.1% (not all deaths were hospitalized, obviously)
Peak Saturday for hospitalizations was 12/26 with 117,344
(covidtracking.com, data values last revised 1/2/21 and also subject to change)
Worst months for deaths:
Dec 78,016 (2,516/day)
Apr 58,836 (1,961/day)
May 41,239 (1,330/day)
Nov 37,513 (1,250/day)
Aug 29,610 (955/day)
(us-covid-tracker.com)
Nov cases 4.406m
Dec deaths 78,016
cfr 1.77%
Dec cases 6.4111m
Projected new deaths for Jan 2021 at 1.7%: 108,988
Friday, January 1, 2021
Michael Savage from his last radio broadcast: "You'll never be disappointed in fearing the worst"
Catch the podcast here: https://michaelsavage.com/
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