Back Pedaling

As you may have seen, there's a replacement for Satchel Paige on the front page, and reflects what was apparent from the beginning, that not all vaccines halt infectiousness as well as infection. And, as wannaBePresident Huey Long 2024 claimed, I'm immune and don't need to mask or distance or hand wash (not). The whole idea of Herd Mentality is that those vaccinated, if a sufficient proportion of the population is vaccinated/recovered, are the barrier to transmission. And that's not necessarily so.

Yes, one hopes, they won't get sick (again) if exposed to Covid, but do they not transmit if exposed? Aye, matey, thar's the rub. Sterilizing vaccines do that, to a greater or lesser extent, but the evidence so far is that neither the recovered nor the vaccinated never harbor Covid virus and thus can't transmit. If that apparent truth is totally factual, how is Herd Mentality achieved?

A few days ago 'Scientific American' gave an assessment.

The question of whether immunization prevents recipients from becoming ill and from infecting others is not unique to the current pandemic.

For example:

The two main categories of inoculations against polioviruses confer different types of immunity. The inactivated polio vaccine (IPV) protects against systemic infection and consequent paralysis but does not stop viral replication in the gut, so it offers no indirect protection to unvaccinated individuals. The oral polio vaccine (OPV) generates localized intestinal immunity, preventing infection and protecting against disease and transmission.

So, after you get that first shot and after you get the second shot and after the innoculation period has past
- mask
- distance
- wash those filthy hands

Until CDC/WHO tells us that Covid is history. Which is likely to be measured in months, not weeks, and perhaps a year or more after the 75^th percentile person is innoculated.

The Gift That Keeps on Giving

You likely, being of a certain age, know the adage 'Herpes, the gift the keeps on giving'. We now have, for a day or so, the Herpes President. He insists on yet another ego supporting superspreader event. Anything to make his id feel better.

Trump is scheduled to deliver remarks before his final departure from Joint Base Andrews on Wednesday, where a military-style ceremony is being planned. Invitations have gone out to Trump's friends, allies and former administration officials saying it will begin at 8 a.m. ET. Each invitee is allowed five guests; organizers hope to secure a large crowd because Trump has complained about the size of his gatherings in the past.
...
One official familiar with the planning said organizers are anxious that a crowd will not materialize on Wednesday morning. But the official said the event would proceed anyway.

Oh!!! The shame of it all!!

Suppose they gave a War and Nobody Came?
-- Charlotte Keys/1966

Are You Hip Or Square?

Regular readers likely have noticed that oft times you'll see: "statistics isn't all that difficult, it's just squared differences". That's a bit dogmatic, but nearly always true of stat problems involving finding the central tendancy of a pile of numbers; regression being the most famous example. Even with non-linear models or wacky distributions, you'll see something like, "if we assume sufficiently large sample, we can use the normal approximation...", which then allows the pile of numbers to be used to calculate the parameters. Very convenient that.

Well, turns out, I'm not the only dogmatist in the world. And I'm not sure, but think his is a tad more so than mine:

All the impressive achievements of deep learning amount to just curve fitting.
-- Judea Pearl

The quote leads off the article, but is not from the mouth of the author; Smith sets out to show that Pearl is, basically, right. What's also interesting, from a teeVee point of view, is that the project being discussed is from Max Tegmark, who I see in numerous episodes of "How the Universe Works". My impression has been that he's mostly a naysayer when it comes to the more envelope pushing bits of cosmology.

So, no, AI isn't the next Newton or Einstein or Feynman. Interesting: AI is mostly being used to flog consumer widgets. Mammon always wins.

Parallax View - part the forty first

Another week's up, so here are today's numbers:

  >= 1,000 -   943
100 to 999 - 1,683

(New) grand total of counties reads at 3,123. While I've not gotten into an argument with the Topo folks over this re-definition of 'affected' counties, it certainly looks like a move to bolster wannaBePresident Huey Long 2024's perpetual lying.

The major reporting outlets still assert that there's missing data. If not, then the Northern Plains folk are really behaving well, since the axis from Texas to Manitoba is eerily vacant at the 100+ level. There remain multiple paths for the Memorial Trophy Dash from Nebraska south to the Mexican border.

We do know that Reagan California is exploding with Covid. Back in March/April I had something of screaming match with a relative in metro San Diego when Newsom ordered those beaches closed. Let's see... late April. Said relative is a healthcare provider, and ought to know better. I guess if you spend enough time in Reagan California, some part of your brain atrophies. Exponential growth is worse the higher the base; Reagan California is learning (one hopes) that painful lesson.

A note from elsewhere. One hopes that you readers don't need reminding, but just in case.

Far too many vaccinated folks (esp. wannaBePresident Huey Long 2024) assume that being vaccinated means no mask, no distance, no hand washing. The medics know better, and have been saying so. None of these vaccines is proven to be sterilizing, which means that if one encounters Covid two things are true:
1 - you (95%) won't get sick
2 - you (100%) won't infect others

None of these vaccines do 2.

Ergo, until Herd Mentality is reached, even the vaccinated, unless they're also malignant narcissists, must continue to behave in a public health positive manner.

Base Less - part the third

Yet another data point demonstrating the size of ex-President AuH₂O 2020's true, hard core base.

The public mostly rejects the baseless conspiracy theory behind the rioting -- that Biden did not legitimately win enough votes to become president: 65% say that he did legitimately win enough votes, but a sizable share (23%) -- and particularly among Republicans (58%) -- believe that conspiracy theory to be true and that there is solid evidence to support it.

Viewed one way, that 23% number is below my view of 25% as the hard core base. Viewed another, it's gold in them thar hills for minority rule through the power of the Senate. Ah, to be an autocratic minority!! Well, there's not much better than that, eh what? Jackson and Jefferson would be proud that their notion of shitkicker control of government has finally come to pass.

Bad Dog!! Bad Dog!!

From the beginning, it looked to me that wannaBePresident Huey Long 2024's base stood around 25% of the electorate. My reasoning has always been that his support, real blind approval, had to come from those with minimal critical thinking ability at the nether end of the Republican party, which has been the distant minority affiliation for decades. He just lies so much, always with the goal of ego-flation. Put another way, his blind approval comes from the minimally educated, bigoted white folks who live vicariously through his malignanat narcissism: "If I were as rich and nasty as him, I'd be just as nasty!".

In sum, a quarter

In the poll, three-quarters of respondents said Trump bears either a lot or some responsibility for the riot, while only 24 percent said he isn't responsible at all. [my emphasis]

Only those completely in thrall to exPresident Mumford would absolve him.

Today's news is a bit better, but damning with faint praise

It means Trump will be the first president in the polling era to end his first term with an approval of below 40%, the first with a disapproval rating north of 50% and the first with a negative net (approval - disapproval) rating.

This was always an attempt at minority rule at best, and elected dictatorship at worst. The insurrection showed anyone with functioning eyesight who his supporters are: "Swamp People" the uneducated rural elite determined to tell us city folks that they're the ones to run a modern country. Swell.

Thought For The Day - 15 January 2021

Riddle me this, BatPerson.

What's the rush to charge the insurrectionists? ex-President AuH₂O 2020 has only until noon next Wednesday to pardon the insurrectionists. A blanket pre-emptive pardon won't survive even this Right Wingnut Supremes, therefore what, exactly, is to be gained by charging insurrectionists by name before 12:01 PM, Wednesday?

Keep you mouths shut until the evil is out of town.