29 May 2021

Your Cheatin Heart - part the sixth

June 15, 2021 

New York Times
by A. Corres Pondent
RED STATES WITH SPARSE VACCINATIONS EXPLODE WITH COVID

To the surprise of No One, the Red States, which have been lax in getting their populations vaccinated, are experiencing a resurgence in Covid. The curve started back up on May 14, the day after the CDC and President Biden announced that the fully vaccinated are free to go about their lives without a mask in all venues, not just outdoors.

To the surprise of No One, all those Red State Yahoos immediately dis-masked, even though the majority eligible for vaccines have refused to be vaccinated. If the rest of the country is fortunate, the Yahoos will infect themselves to death.

[update 14 May]
Here's the vaccination record for the states. The bottom of the barrel
At the other end, the five states with the lowest percentage of people with one dose are Mississippi, Louisiana, Alabama, Wyoming and Idaho.
So, one dose isn't the best measure, but still. Here's the benchmark as of 14 May behind the June 15 lede from the NYT.

Since the point is daily trend, updated to use reported daily cases. Per 100K is only reported, in this source, as 7-day.
             cases    per 100K
Mississippi    201     8 
Louisiana 421 10
Alabama 285 6 cases data on the 14th is way whacky, so stick with 7-day average
Wyoming 83 12
Idaho 167 9
We'll stop by the data every now and again to see whether the Oracle turns out to be correct. One actually hopes not, since Covid doesn't respect state lines.

[update 21 May]
             cases    per 100K
Mississippi    105     5 
Louisiana 340 9
Alabama 443 6
Wyoming 70 14
Idaho 167 9
[updated 28 May]
             cases    per 100K
Mississippi    131     5 
Louisiana 354 9
Alabama 228 5
Wyoming 96 12
Idaho 135 8
Remember when Canada closed its borders with the the Covid-dirty USofA?
Government leaders in both countries first announced the border closure more than one year ago on March 21, 2020, and have extended the order on a near-monthly basis since.
When Canada was a paragon of good sense and effective policy? Canada has been recently mentioned here because the facts on the ground, as they say, have changed. While no where near Brazil or India in absolute numbers (the population is a small fraction of either of those countries), Canada is experiencing yet another surge; some say third while others this is the fourth.

Today's report focuses on Manitoba. Recall that Canada's governmental structure is not just a Little USofA; it is actually more of a Confederate State's Rights nation. Provincial government has more authority then US states. For instance
The situation is a remarkable reversal. Manitoba once stood out as an example of the effectiveness of tight restrictions, like closing its borders to the rest of Canada, to curb the spread of the virus.
Now:
Over the past two weeks, the province has reported a daily average of 35 new cases per 100,000 people, far exceeding Canada as a whole, which is averaging about 10. Manitoba has more than twice as many new cases per day than the next-highest state or province.
Across the globe, the truth is manifest: containment of a pathogen as Covid-19 means you cannot 'open up' the economy/society as soon as the case count drops a bit. In fact, just opening at some arbitrary lower case count, without instituting aggressive testing and contact tracing means that Dat Ole Exponential Growth will come aroarin back. Why would it not? Lack of those two effective measures is how we got to last January in the first place (thanks to ex-President AuH2O 2020). Combine opening at some lower case count without testing and contact tracing and with low a vaccination rate guarantees another surge. Canada is a poster child for how not to do it. Most provinces are in about the same boat as Manitoba. In order to nip such a pathogen in the bud, so to say, the healthcare system has to know, lickety split, who's newly infected, who they got it from, and who they may have infected. It was last year that most of the USofA gave up on testing and tracing because Covid had been allowed to explode past the testing and tracing capacity.

One of my few teeVee addictions is "Air Disasters", which The Wife deplores since I've always had an antipathy to flying (I don't trust engineers as a group). Yet knowing this about self, I'm still fascinated by the show, for the simple reason that it's a showcase for how other engineers tease out the failure of an airplane flight. Sometimes it's just that the crew screwed up. Other times, more interestingly and importantly, the investigators discover some systemic issue, sometimes with the aircraft model, other times with the ATC system, and sometimes with the regulators. Always, at least in the show, the system, broadly, learns from the disaster, and institutes changes to prevent a recurrence. On the whole, globally, politicians have refused to learn anything about quashing Covid.

We've got another couple of weeks to see whether the vaccine resistent states have their own, localized, surges. So far the numbers are mixed. Stay tuned.

25 May 2021

I Still Hate Neil Irwin - part the eighteenth

My, but we of the dead trees NYT have to wait. Today's Times has the reporting (most of it, anyway) I've been waiting for Mr. Irwin to write for a vewy, vewy long time. The subject, inflation. Note the date on the link: 20 May. Yikes!

But, I suppose, better late than never. The point of the piece is that inflation isn't solely the product of money-grubbing, overpaid serfs, i.e. wage push. Finally, he discusses the other forms, and in particular, inflation in limited sectors caused by immediate term shortage. IOW, after more than a year of Covid contraction, and a vewy, vewy rapid vaccination regime (well, in the consumer sourcing Blue States, at least), production needs some time to ramp back up. And given that a significant proportion of consumer goods, even those with American brand names, come from Asia, supply won't re-appear with a snap of the fingers.

So, he starts with some pertinent questions:
Is this a change in relative prices, or a change in overall prices? Are the prices of items becoming more expensive likely to rise further, stay the same, or go down? Are wages also rising? Is inflation so high and erratic that it is hard to plan ahead? And is this really inflation at all, or is it a shift in the price of investments like stocks and bonds?
Regular reader may see one question with which I've always disagreed with Mr. Irwin: the soaring of Mr. Market's prices since the Great Recession is still just inflation; lots of analysts have been saying for most of those years that P/E ratios are whacky. One might also argue, I have, that the Fed's QE/bond buying effort to keep nominal interest rates very low also drives up stock prices. Vis-a-vis Damn Gimmint zero-risk instruments, aka the opportunity cost, more moolah flows to stocks, pushing up prices, and lowering the interest analog, the inverse of P/E.

And, then the crux of the current matter
The core challenge of an economy emerging from a pandemic is that numerous industries are going through major shocks in demand and supply simultaneously. That means more big swings in relative price than usual.
It's going to take some time for those widgets to get here by boat from Asia. Just that simple.

23 May 2021

Your Cheatin Heart - part the fifth

June 15, 2021 

New York Times
by A. Corres Pondent
RED STATES WITH SPARSE VACCINATIONS EXPLODE WITH COVID

To the surprise of No One, the Red States, which have been lax in getting their populations vaccinated, are experiencing a resurgence in Covid. The curve started back up on May 14, the day after the CDC and President Biden announced that the fully vaccinated are free to go about their lives without a mask in all venues, not just outdoors.

To the surprise of No One, all those Red State Yahoos immediately dis-masked, even though the majority eligible for vaccines have refused to be vaccinated. If the rest of the country is fortunate, the Yahoos will infect themselves to death.

[update 14 May]
Here's the vaccination record for the states. The bottom of the barrel
At the other end, the five states with the lowest percentage of people with one dose are Mississippi, Louisiana, Alabama, Wyoming and Idaho.
So, one dose isn't the best measure, but still. Here's the benchmark as of 14 May behind the June 15 lede from the NYT.

Since the point is daily trend, updated to use reported daily cases. Per 100K is only reported, in this source, as 7-day.
             cases    per 100K
Mississippi    201     8 
Louisiana 421 10
Alabama 285 6 cases data on the 14th is way whacky, so stick with 7-day average
Wyoming 83 12
Idaho 167 9
We'll stop by the data every now and again to see whether the Oracle turns out to be correct. One actually hopes not, since Covid doesn't respect state lines.

[update 21 May]
             cases    per 100K
Mississippi    105     5 
Louisiana 340 9
Alabama 443 6
Wyoming 70 14
Idaho 167 9
Mixed result. Most are down, but some are already headed up. For myself, I didn't (and don't) expect the upswing until 15 June; it takes about a month for behaviorial changes to manifest in the data.

Going forward, reporting will consist of what's new since the last part; not much reason to wade through it all from the start, even if top posting. The data blocks will be in toto, so trend is clear.

Your Cheatin Heart - part the fourth

June 15, 2021 

New York Times
by A. Corres Pondent
RED STATES WITH SPARSE VACCINATIONS EXPLODE WITH COVID

To the surprise of No One, the Red States, which have been lax in getting their populations vaccinated, are experiencing a resurgence in Covid. The curve started back up on May 14, the day after the CDC and President Biden announced that the fully vaccinated are free to go about their lives without a mask in all venues, not just outdoors.

To the surprise of No One, all those Red State Yahoos immediately dis-masked, even though the majority eligible for vaccines have refused to be vaccinated. If the rest of the country is fortunate, the Yahoos will infect themselves to death.

[update 14 May]
Here's the vaccination record for the states. The bottom of the barrel
At the other end, the five states with the lowest percentage of people with one dose are Mississippi, Louisiana, Alabama, Wyoming and Idaho.
So, one dose isn't the best measure, but still. Here's the benchmark as of 14 May behind the June 15 lede from the NYT
             cases    per 100K
Mississippi    226     8 
Louisiana 457 10
Alabama 290 6
Wyoming 67 12
Idaho 164 9
We'll stop by the data every now and again to see whether the Oracle turns out to be correct. One actually hopes not, since Covid doesn't respect state lines.

[update 18 May]
Well, that didn't take long
"I say this respectfully to the CDC but we really need to get back to a point where it's encouraging (people) to get vaccinated and more of that focus rather than celebrating our newfound freedoms," the mayor of Kansas City, Missouri, told CNN on Monday. "Because the honor system just ain't working here, I don't think it's going to work in a lot of parts in this country," Mayor Quinton Lucas said.
[my emphasis]
"a lot of parts"? May be his Red neighbors?

[update 19 May] The train is picking up speed; that A. Corres Pondent article may drop before 15 June. Just sayin.
Ten states have vaccinated less than half of their adult residents with at least one dose, and their average per capita case rate was about 19% higher than those seven states that have already reached the Biden administration's goal. The 10 states that have vaccinated less than half of their adult residents -- Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Idaho, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina, Tennessee, West Virginia and Wyoming -- reported an average of more than 78 new cases per 100,000 people over the past week.

18 May 2021

Your Cheatin Heart - part the third

June 15, 2021 

New York Times
by A. Corres Pondent
RED STATES WITH SPARSE VACCINATIONS EXPLODE WITH COVID

To the surprise of No One, the Red States, which have been lax in getting their populations vaccinated, are experiencing a resurgence in Covid. The curve started back up on May 14, the day after the CDC and President Biden announced that the fully vaccinated are free to go about their lives without a mask in all venues, not just outdoors.

To the surprise of No One, all those Red State Yahoos immediately dis-masked, even though the majority eligible for vaccines have refused to be vaccinated. If the rest of the country is fortunate, the Yahoos will infect themselves to death.

[update 14 May]
Here's the vaccination record for the states. The bottom of the barrel
At the other end, the five states with the lowest percentage of people with one dose are Mississippi, Louisiana, Alabama, Wyoming and Idaho.
So, one dose isn't the best measure, but still. Here's the benchmark as of 14 May behind the June 15 lede from the NYT
             cases    per 100K
Mississippi    226     8 
Louisiana 457 10
Alabama 290 6
Wyoming 67 12
Idaho 164 9
We'll stop by the data every now and again to see whether the Oracle turns out to be correct. One actually hopes not, since Covid doesn't respect state lines.

[update 18 May]
Well, that didn't take long
"I say this respectfully to the CDC but we really need to get back to a point where it's encouraging (people) to get vaccinated and more of that focus rather than celebrating our newfound freedoms," the mayor of Kansas City, Missouri, told CNN on Monday. "Because the honor system just ain't working here, I don't think it's going to work in a lot of parts in this country," Mayor Quinton Lucas said.
[my emphasis]
"a lot of parts"? May be his Red neighbors?

17 May 2021

The Red and The Blue - part the third

There is not much that pisses me off more than Red politicians who boast about helping their constituents with aid they voted against. The various Covid relief is just the latest example.

But this has been going on since at least FDR, who brought electricity, water, sewers, roads and much of the infrastructure to the rural areas, especially the South, that the state politicians refused to provide. And yet, the voters continue to elect them. To be fair, what is perhaps the largest collections of mansions in one place is Newport, Rhode Island. Our go-to destination is Block Island, also Rhode Island, and it's on the way to Nantcuket style exclusion. The rich get richer and the poor have kids.

Appalachia is likely the epitome of laissez-faire governance, and the poster child of Red state government that ignores the needs of its people and lets the Blue states, through the federal government, make up the difference. Note that the opiod crisis was/is significantly, if not majority, an Appalachian experience.

Well, today's news brings two reports highlighting this passive-aggressive attitude of Red state government.

This first is an obituary of one Eula Hall, who created a modicum of healthcare in eastern Kentucky pretty much on her own.
Among many other things, Mrs. Hall operated the Mud Creek Clinic in eastern Kentucky for mountain people, many of them coal miners and members of their families. One night in 1982, someone looking for drugs set fire to the place. When her patients showed up the next morning to find that the clinic was gone, Mrs. Hall did not miss a beat. She and a doctor set up shop on a picnic table, had a phone installed on a nearby tree and kept their appointments.
The second is a lengthy report on rural high speed innterTubes. Once again, the Blue states will pay to 'uplift' the Red states through the auspices of Biden's initiatives. All with the intent, on the part of the Red state politicians, to draw economic advantage they didn't invest in. Way to go guys.
Rural areas have complained for years that slow, unreliable or simply unavailable internet access is restricting their economic growth. But the pandemic has given new urgency to those concerns, at the same time that President Biden\u2019s infrastructure plan — which includes $100 billion to improve broadband access — has raised hope that the problem might finally be addressed.
The report focuses on a town in Iowa, home to a very Right Wingnut coterie of politicians.
Running against socialism when Trump larded $60bn on agribusiness in the past two years over disasters of his own making seemed like a thin soup. A rural electorate immersed in Fox News, Sinclair Broadcasting and Facebook lapped it up. The propaganda (Democrats eat babies – it's right there on social media), the preachers in the pulpit damning liberal judges and politicians, and a relentless ground game that saw Iowa Republicans register 20,000 more voters than Democrats put a seemingly indelible red lock on what used to be a purple state.
Just like they did under FDR, and less so under LBJ who tied the Great Society to racial equity, they want the benefits for free. Whatever happened to personal responsibility? Who are the real Welfare Queens, anyway? The net flows of money through DC have been from Blue states, which progress, to Red states, which exalt the CSA for decades.

14 May 2021

Your Cheatin Heart - part the second

June 15, 2021 

New York Times
by A. Corres Pondent
RED STATES WITH SPARSE VACCINATIONS EXPLODE WITH COVID

To the surprise of No One, the Red States, which have been lax in getting their populations vaccinated, are experiencing a resurgence in Covid. The curve started back up on May 14, the day after the CDC and President Biden announced that the fully vaccinated are free to go about their lives without a mask in all venues, not just outdoors.

To the surprise of No One, all those Red State Yahoos immediately dis-masked, even though the majority eligible for vaccines have refused to be vaccinated. If the rest of the country is fortunate, the Yahoos will infect themselves to death.

[update 14 May]
Here's the vaccination record for the states. The bottom of the barrel
At the other end, the five states with the lowest percentage of people with one dose are Mississippi, Louisiana, Alabama, Wyoming and Idaho.
So, one dose isn't the best measure, but still. Here's the benchmark as of 14 May behind the June 15 lede from the NYT
             cases    per 100K
Mississippi    226     8 
Louisiana 457 10
Alabama 290 6
Wyoming 67 12
Idaho 164 9
We'll stop by the data every now and again to see whether the Oracle turns out to be correct. One actually hopes not, since Covid doesn't respect state lines.

I Still Hate Neil Irwin - part the seventeenth

Once again, we find Mr. Irwin cadging from some of my earlier musings. I don't see the Times until it shows up on the front step, which in this case was an hour or so ago.
Well, Friday the thirteenth falls on a Thursday this month, and the Right Wingnuts in the crowd are bloviating on 'Inflation is Here!!! We must punish the lower classes!!'. No, it isn't; at least in the excess moolah version, which is the only version that the Right Wingnuts admit to.
Today, Mr. Irwin writes
But let's imagine that, in response to the problem, the Fed raised interest rates or that Congress increased taxes to claw back stimulus payments.

Those actions alone wouldn't create more microchips or let rental car companies undo decisions from a year ago. Higher interest rates or taxes might even make things worse, if the actions led suppliers to hold back on investing in new capacity for fear demand would fall in the future.
The problem? Production shortages.

The central fact of the American economy in mid-2021 is that demand for all sorts of goods and services has surged. But supplies are coming back slowly, with the economy acting like a creaky machine that was turned off for a year and has some rusty parts. The result, as underlined in new government data this week, is shortages and price inflation across many parts of the economy. That is putting the Biden administration and the Federal Reserve in a jam that is only partly of their own making.
The bleating of the Phat Cats should be ignored. Along with Greene and other total nutballs.

13 May 2021

Your Cheatin Heart

June 15, 2021 

New York Times
by A. Corres Pondent
RED STATES WITH SPARSE VACCINATIONS EXPLODE WITH COVID
To the surprise of No One, the Red States, which have been lax in getting their populations vaccinated, are experiencing a resurgence in Covid. The curve started back up on May 14, the day after the CDC and President Biden announced that the fully vaccinated are free to go about their lives without a mask in all venues, not just outdoors.

To the surprise of No One, all those Red State Yahoos immediately dis-masked, even though the majority eligible for vaccines have refused to be vaccinated. If the rest of the country is fortunate, the Yahoos will infect themselves to death.

Thought For The Day - 13 May 2021

Well, Friday the thirteenth falls on a Thursday this month, and the Right Wingnuts in the crowd are bloviating on 'Inflation is Here!!! We must punish the lower classes!!'. No, it isn't; at least in the excess moolah version, which is the only version that the Right Wingnuts admit to. Or, in other words, whenever there's a hint of price appreciation (outside of Mr. Market's prices, of course), they yell and scream that Joe Sixpack has too much moolah and we 'have to, just have to, even if it hurts the Little People!! rein in wages'. It's a sacrifice the Little People are very willing to pay. They told us so. Just like geezers said they'd be delighted to risk dying in order to keep the Engine of Commerce humming along a year ago; bah humbug on masks and distancing and store-front closings. We heard them. Yes, we did.

Baloney, of course. The edging up of producer prices is driven by output shortages, accumulated during the Pandemic Recession when producers, in their own defense, reduced production. Only so much inventory build can be justified, especially when the end of the Pandemic Recession isn't penciled in the calendar with a Date Certain. While Covid-19 raced through the population in weeks, rebuilding the economy will take a tad longer.

Once producers are convinced that the Pandemic Recession has run its course, output will increase to meet demand. Don't forget that we're still in the neighborhood of being down 8 million jobs vis-a-vis pre-Pandemic Recession. To assert that there's some slack in the Engine of Commerce is a bit of an understatement. The evil bit: all those people facing businesses, restaurants and retail and the like, may decide that they can get along just fine, and make more profit, with the skeleton staffing they've adapted to over the last year. Mark my words. They ain't all that many Joe Sixpacks flush with cash, running out to scarf up doodads. There just isn't.

12 May 2021

Liar's Poker

It could be that some readers have a passing interest in horse racing, especially during the Triple Crown season. I fall into that category, though I've never placed a bet. I have, not surprisingly, long ago formed the opinion that Bob Baffert is a fundamental cheat. Just like wannaBePresident Huey Long 2024, though I don't know whether they're Best Buds.

The crux of Baffert's excuse is that some ointment containing some amount of betamethasone made its way into the horse's bloodstream, thus causing the positive test. Now, that whole idea struck me as outlandish, to put it kindly, when I first read it. So, off to the innterTubes. This is a professional vet's assessment.
Q: Would the levels of betamethasone detected in Medina Spirit also have required him to have ingested the topical ointment?

A: No way to know. I don't know that there's any pharmacokinetic data on concentrations of betamethasone following topical treatment. And again–because I never make anything easy, right–that would depend on the condition of the skin, too. Intact skin would likely absorb less into the blood stream than inflamed skin, or an open wound where there's more direct contact between the blood and the blood vessels and the medication.
So, how much betamethasone is there in Otomax?
Each gram of Otomax Otic Ointment contains... USP equivalent to 1 mg betamethasone
That's one milligram. The test said there were 21 picograms (per what?) in the blood sample. A picogram is one trillionth of a gram, vs. one thousandth in the ointment. It doesn't take much to run afoul. On the other hand, given the volume of blood in a horse, and if the measure is per gram, that could be a lot of beta. Some reports said that this was twice the allowed limit, others that Kentucky now has an absolute ban.

For comparison, a 1,100 lb. horse has 40 liters of blood. Humans, 5 liters. For dogs, for which Otomax was created to clear ear infections, a Labrador retriever for example, it's 2.35 liters.

So, where does speculation leave us? Is it likely that an ointment meant to topically treat ear infections in a 2.35 liter animal could generate a measurable quantity in a 40 liter animal, applied not in the ear? Color me No Bloody Way.

Quants Hubris - part the ninth

Blythe Masters rides again! Again! And again!! And again!!!

After all this time, one might surmise that the Regulators That Be would pay attention to the practice of creating and selling synthetic assests. It isn't as if such shenanigans haven't been fatal in the past. Well, guess again. The only saving grace, to the extent one could feel so, is that the dim bulb Regulators That Be are Brits. Wait... These are the same folks dumb enough to be flummoxed into Brexit by a few snake oil salesmen, playing on latent jingoism.
Greensill Capital's supply chain finance business wasn't regulated in Britain but the Financial Conduct Authority did have supervision of the company to ensure it complied with anti-money-laundering rules.
Drop the ball much? This is what Greensill was doing:
[B]ut Greensill added a twist. It packaged the invoices and other receivables by the suppliers into assets that were then sold to investors through funds. The company also provided financing to companies based on "future receivables," which were based on transactions that hadn't yet happened.
Ah, c'mon Man! Social Darwinism Finance. One might wonder how many billions Greensill socked away up to the collapse, just like the Sacklers? Regulators That Be have a vital role in macro policy: disallow behaviours which can fail far beyond the assets of the bad/stupid actors to cover. They get away, at least, scot-free or maybe with a tidy nest egg that'll keep them in a small villa in the South of France in perpetuity.

10 May 2021

Conspiracy Theory Number One [update]

Color me cynical, but given how eager Putin has been to prop up ex-President AuH2O 2020, I expect that the pipeline attack is yet another favor. Puts those Northern Blue States in a bind. Just what wannaBePresident Huey Long 2024 desires. Prove me wrong.

[update]
Are you surprised? Much scouring yielded only one organ with the, obvious, attribution.
Once they gain access to Windows domain credentials, they will deploy the ransomware throughout the network to encrypt devices.
Thank you Mr. Bill.

07 May 2021

I Forgot My Lithium Pill!

There have been a handful of missives in these endeavors over the last few years, going back to at least 2016, that ponder the use of battery electrics. So far, no one has created an element better at electrical energy density than lithium (creating such an element would make one rather rich), so that's what is used to make Tesla, et al batteries. Most of the metal is being mined outside the USofA, and for good reason: it is a filthy business, made manifest in today's NYT.

You would do well to read it up. It's, kind of, the repeat of my story from high school or junior high school. The teacher posed a question to the class: would increasing centrally electrified public transport, metros and trolley cars and the like, while decreasing personal autos reduce air pollution? This was long before the notion of climate change or global warming was a signficant part of public discourse. Humbly, I leaped into the breach and offered that it would depend on the efficiency and emissions of power plants vis-a-vis auto engines. I don't believe there was a strong answer to the question.

As the earlier missives in these endeavors have pointed out, all such comparisons can lead to intelligent decisions only if such comparisons calculate goods and bads on an end-to-end basis. Just because a Tesla emits no emissions while you drive doesn't mean that none were emitted from extraction of all the natural resources needed to make that Tesla as well as the processes undertaken to make that Tesla. The article spends a lot of ink delving into an answer to that question.

Balls To The Wall - part the first

Wow!! Just, Wow!! Years ago The Wife insisted we go to Bermuda, with what turned out to be the last of our money. Sailed from NYC on a Norwegian Cruise Line ship that was decades old, and was soon sold off to an even lower class English line. They cut it in half, added several tens of feet to the hull, and went merrily on their way.

I found out later that NCL, how it is commonly referred, is, within the industry, de-acronymed as No Class Line. So it comes as a great shock to read today that the CEO has taken a rational stand against Ronny VirusSeed©:
"At the end of the day, cruise ships have motors, propellers and rudders, and God forbid we can't operate in the state of Florida for whatever reason, then there are other states that we do operate from, and we can operate from the Caribbean for a ship that otherwise would have gone to Florida," CEO Frank Del Rio said during the company's quarterly earnings call.
Not the company I expected to do more than blather. It's not the voter suppression issue, of course, but it ain't nuthin.

04 May 2021

Country Roads

How's an interstate travel ban sound? Now that we're down, mostly, to the two main anti-vaccine groups, Trumpsters and Godnuts, let's make sure they're bottled up in their own hollers and revival tents in their Ruby Red States. Come this winter of our disconnect, may be they'll kill off a substantial number of themselves. The Blacks-only-enforced voter suppression gigs will be offset. A bit. That's 'Good Eats'. And, following on with speculation/prediction in these missives, the 'experts' now conclude that garden variety herd immunity is out of reach. Among the reasons: by elongating the vaccinations, Covid has more time to mutate; with upwards of 30% of Americans (the Real Americans) refusing to be vaccinated we get a double whammy, both more time to mutate and more bodies to infect; so, given both of the forgoing, the probability that a vaccine-resistent mutation can erupt here in the USofA increases.

Here are some current numbers on vaccinations and infections. One ought not to be surprised they go together like a horse and carriage. You'll note that these are nearly all Trump States or Trump Counties. Who would have guessed?

More than one epidemiologist is warning that if the USofA doesn't act as a communal society with a common enemy, winter 21-22 will look rather like 20-21. The biggest IF is, if Covid gets an extended period of time to transmit and mutate (and visits from shithole countries like India and Brazil), the greater the likelihood that a new surge, disconnected from original Covid-19, will be visited upon us. A price of Personal Freedom the Trumpsters and Godnuts are willing to pay; it seems. If only they get sick and die, then let them. But they have no right to visit that on the rest of us.

Thought For The Day - 4 May 2021

About those new and interesting voter suppression efforts in the Ruby Red Rural States. If you believe that any of those new laws and regulations are enforced anywhere but Black or Brown or Hispanic precincts, you're quite out of your skull. The fish-belly whites will get all of the water and snacks they need. Not, of course, that they'll really need either since their voting lines will be only three or four deep.