Trend for average temperature in Grand Rapids, Michigan, is 0.3 degrees F above the mean 1898-2020

 

Climate Update for KGRR: February 2021

Climate Update for KGRR: February 2021

Max T 48, Mean 50

Min T -12, Mean -2

Av T 20.8, Mean 24.5

Precip 1.84, Mean 1.79

Snow 30.6, Mean 13.3

Heating Degree Days 1231, Mean 1136

HDD to date 4644, Mean to date 4890, season to date 5% below mean

Mean annual HDD 6702, Max was 7712 in 1904 (15.1% above mean, coldest ever), Min was 5253 in 2012 (21.6% below mean, warmest ever)

Feb 2021 was the 30th coldest Feb on record in Grand Rapids, MI, bringing the year to date down to 5% warmer than normal from 9% last month. 

Johns Hopkins: US COVID deaths reach 530k

 

Death toll after COVID vaccines climbs to 1,637, CDC denies link

Utah woman, 39, dies 4 days after 2nd dose of COVID-19 vaccine; autopsy ordered :

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.

So far very few coronavirus cases from variants have been identified in the US, fewer than 3,500

 

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. 

"As of March 3, the CDC has received reports of 97,458 adverse events with 1,381 deaths in people who have taken at least one dose of the approved COVID-19 vaccines"

 COVID-19 vaccine side effects & deaths: The lack of information on how, where to report

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.

The price of gasoline has shot up 32% since Democrat Joe Biden was elected last November

 

Johns Hopkins: US COVID deaths reach 520k, and 21.5% of those are since Biden's inauguration

 

Daily new cases of coronavirus in Europe are headed the wrong way again

 

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.

  

California last week joined Ohio and Indiana in the COVID death backfill phenomenon with over a thousand added on 2/24

 

Johns Hopkins: US COVID-19 deaths hit 510k, 101k dead of COVID since Biden became president

Very impressive.

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.

Gallup.

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 . . .. 

Tiger Woods' father groomed him for golf, but inserted a self-destruct device in the training

Tiger Woods was 'agitated and impatient and almost hit another car as he sped out of five-star resort' on his way to country club just 15 minutes before horror LA crash that shattered his right leg and left him needing surgery :

"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."

Remember when Trump said if we stopped coronavirus testing, the number of cases would go down? He was rightly mocked, but that's exactly what Biden appears to be doing.

 

Johns Hopkins: US COVID deaths reach 500k

 

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.

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. 

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.

Johns Hopkins: 490k dead from COVID in USA, 81,825 since Biden inaugurated

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.

Ohio went on a three-day tear Feb 11-13 backfilling COVID deaths totaling nearly 4,500

 

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.

They don't call it "Sunny South Florida" for nothing

 

Ohio back-filled hundreds of COVID deaths for Feb 11th totaling 721

 

Johns Hopkins: US COVID deaths climb to 480k, 77,383 have died since Biden became president

 

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

Johns Hopkins: US COVID deaths hit 470k mark, 67,539 added since Biden was inaugurated president on Jan 20

 

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.”

Johns Hopkins: US COVID deaths passed through the 460k mark today

 

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.

 

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.

Johns Hopkins: US COVID-19 deaths hit 450k today

 

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)

Johns Hopkins: US COVID deaths climb to 440k

 

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.

ROBINHOOD: WE HAD TO KILL THE STOCK TRADES IN ORDER TO SAVE THE STOCK TRADERS

Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev: Had To Pause Trading On Meme Stocks Thursday To Protect Customers, Ourselves

 

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.

Johns Hopkins: US COVID-19 deaths passed through the 430k mark today

 

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. 

Johns Hopkins: US COVID-19 deaths climb to 420k

 

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:

Was QAnon started by this joker?

 

Johns Hopkins: US COVID deaths hit 410k

 

Trump clown show ends, Biden nightmare begins

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.  

In past hits to full-time employment in the early 1990s, after 2000 and 2007, part-time usually soared, but it tanked in 2020 right along with full-time

 

Johns Hopkins: US COVID deaths climb to 390k, world deaths to 2m

 

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.

Johns Hopkins: US COVID deaths climb to 380k

 

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

LOL, Drudge shows Peter Meijer and orangutan

 

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.

Johns Hopkins: US COVID deaths rise to 370k

 

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.

Johns Hopkins: US COVID deaths hit 360k

 

Thanks to the fools in the GOP and in MAGA, you can kiss your country goodbye as both US Senate seats in Georgia flip Democrat

8:30am Wednesday

 

11:00pm Tuesday