Mr. Market Gets Phat

ex-President AuH₂O 2020 continues to bray about how Mr. Market is his lodestar for the economy. Not that he's done much to support the real economy.

Today (9:44) brings this from briefing.com

Longer-dated Treasuries are up for the fourth straight session in a flight-to-safety trade, while shorter-dated maturities remain anchored by the Fed. The 2-yr yield is flat at 0.15%, and the 10-yr yield is down 0.76%. The U.S. Dollar Index is up 0.6% to 93.47.

Even if Powell and his immedicate predecessors have/had moved 'the' interest rate to near zero, Mr. Market has done so on his own.

Herd Mentality - part the third

Part the second began thus:

Way back in March one of these missives postulated that the evidence then available said that herd immunity was nothing like a slam dunk.

Well, today brings more data. And it's no better.

"We observe a significant decline in the proportion of the population with detectable antibodies over three rounds of national surveillance, using a self-administered lateral flow test, 12, 18 and 24 weeks after the first peak of infections in England," the team wrote in a pre-print version of their report, released before peer review.

and

"This is consistent with evidence that immunity to seasonal coronaviruses declines over 6 to 12 months after infection and emerging data on SARS-CoV-2 that also detected a decrease over time in antibody levels in individuals followed in longitudinal studies,"

The nub of the problem is simply that, as the common cold, immunity is fleeting. It will likely be necessary to get an annual vaccination/booster. And all of the course for the whole population will take ages. Wear your mask.

Parallax View - part the twenty ninth

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

  >= 1,000 -   357
100 to 999 - 1,615 

(New) grand total of counties reads at 3,115. 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 ex-President AuH₂O 2020's perpetual lying.

[24 October]
Loyal readers may remember the call for the Covid Sea to Shining Sea Memorial 100+ Trophy Dash. Back in those halcyon days, one could travel a Southern Route through 25+ counties, but try as I might, I couldn't subsequently (nod to Borat, naturally) get past those two niggling New Mexico counties. They just wouldn't infect. Then the Topo folks changed the criterion from total to current. Almost made it. No other route presented itself. Until today (perhaps earlier this week?). One can traverse the USofA, furtively, solely through 100+ counties, from Maine to Washington. It's a very circuitous route, but thanks to those dunderheads in the Northern Plains, we have a winner. Perhaps it will persist until the regular Monday essay. With daily cases, last I saw, widely topping 80,000 seems something of a sure bet.

[24 October]
Well, today's (Monday, as per usual) map is even more explosive. While there isn't a more straight line route from sea to shining sea, the counts are rising rather quickly. Yeah, we're rounding the curve, into a tunnel, and the Sunset Express is doing 90 mph right at us. Meadows just got finished throwing in the towel. That's how you protect your fellow Americans. And the tome McEnany dropped on Stahl is, effectively, a bunch of empty pages. Only the stupid will buy it as a cheaper, better ACA.

Worth noting: if you display all groups but 10 to 24 (largest of the Blue), the two lowest Blue counties nearly disappear in a sea of Orange and Red. Quite appropriate, don't you think? Orange Julius Caesar meets the Red states?

[totally OT]
Well, Belichick lost again. Before the season started, Kornheiser and Wilbon bet each other over who would have the better season - Belichick or Brady. Wilbon took Belichick and Kornheiser Brady. When they made the bet, I took Brady. Not that I like either of those two, but Belichick never did much until Brady fell into his lap; he was still languishing in the sixth round, after all. He wasn't the on-the-org-chart General Manager, although he does get credit for choosing Brady. I doubt we'll ever know the truth about who pulled the trigger. It sure looks like now what every thinking person has known since organized sports existed: the players make the management.

Parallax View - part the twenty eighth

[Off to the island for our annual pilgrimage. Waste water analysis last showed 0 Covid, but even more of the island will be shut down than usual for the time of year, and the common area of the facility is off limits. Sigh. At least the weather is predicted to warm up after a rainy Saturday's travel to it. Anyway, this episode is running early since I don't laptop, and won't have my workflow flowing for the normal Monday night posting.]

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

  >= 1,000 - 304
100 to 999 - 1,507 

(New) grand total of counties reads at 3,107. 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 ex-President AuH₂O 2020's perpetual lying.

This one's has to be terse; off to catch the boat to the island. Batshit J. Moron's notion that we're 'rounding the corner' or bend or the edge is yet another Big Lie. Hopefully only the few empty heads in the shit kicking empty counties will be stupid enough to vote for ex-President AuH₂O 2020 because they believe such nonsense. May be they'll see that $46 billion bribe as sufficient payment to be cannon fodder in his genocidal Herd Mentality effort. Yeah, we may be going around a sharp bend, but that just means we'll be heading into the Sunset Limited coming our way. May be he'll really rip off his dress shirt, show us his Superman jersey, run down the tracks, and stop the train. Ya think?

This is also, it seems, Friday data, but still, I'd suggest doing the previously described visual analysis of adjacent groups. Note also that the two smallest group counts have fallen off a cliff. Total keeps creeping up (but not too many left, so...), and the small group counts keep falling. They's gots to go somewhere. Lots of promotions in the middle executive ranks. The three groups under 1,000+ are ominous: the lower count counties are nearly always surronded by (or, at least, abutting) counties with the next higher count. Oops.

Most problematic: the 1,000+ group is dispersed everywhere, and not too surprisingly, surronded by or abutting 100 to 999 counties. Double oops.

As I type, the new casecount from yesterday was 62,830. It's updated frequently, so YMMV.

Atlas, ex-President AuH₂O 2020, and their lemmings seem to take Sweden as the exemplar. Some in Sweden claim that their herd immunity approach has worked. May be yes or no. But what is clear is that, 1)Sweden is fully Socialist both in governing and mindset, and thus more willing to follow behavioral rules and 2) a fraction of the USofA both in territorial extent and population. In other words, a much smaller country of people willing to adhere to a social contract. The Rural Radical Right Wingnuts?? Not so much. We see it in the explosive growth of Covid in God's Country.

Sweden:  population -  10,343,403    territory -   173,860 sq mi
US of A: population - 328,239,523    territory - 3,796,742 sq mi 
[the wiki]

Ever try to herd cats?

Psycho

The guy is going to get annihilated and he's going to get humiliated and then the question is going to be what is he going to do in the aftermath? We'll have to see what happens at that point as well. -- Anthony Scaramucci/2020

The Left Wingnuts are getting really, really skittish these last few weeks. They can't accept 'yes' for an answer. The specter of those 77,900 deluded voters in PA, MI, and WI just won't shut up. There is reason to question the angst. In 2016, there were enough 'loose lips sink ships' Closet Trumpsters to flummox the polls. But again, polls aren't designed to find 77,900 votes. Certainly not nationaly, nor even in three large-ish states.

Let's start with why ex-President AuH₂O 2020 was able to corral those voters. They were basically uneducated rural old white guys who wouldn't countenance a bitchy old lady as president who was a closet nigger lover; no siree. More importantly, his self-described superiority as a bidnezzman went generally unchallenged in those regions.

But the psychology, on both sides, is completely different in 2020. Of course, in 2016 he promoted himself as the bomb throwing disrupter who would make life better for all you Joe Sixpacks out in the shit kicking counties. As it has come to pass, that hasn't happened. He did get caught on video in that fancy steakhouse telling his 1% buddies that they'd get their tax cut. And, as it happens, he's shipping $46 billion to the shit kickers in the next few days. Hey, why not buy the votes? The problem is there aren't nearly as many shit kickers as city rat chasers. Arithmetic is a bitch. Which explains why Red State administrations are pulling out all the stops to 'stop' voting. As Batshit J. Moron said, "[L]evels of voting that if you'd ever agreed to it, you'd never have a Republican elected in this country again."

In 2016, the Trump Independents and Trump Democrats kept themselves hidden (certainly from their wives/significant others); too gnarly for public affirmation. Kind of like a Russian infiltration. Now, not so much. If you're a zealous Trumpster, you scream to the heavens, since ex-President AuH₂O 2020 and you are on a mission from God. A full tank of gas, and all that.

In other words, the hidden Trumpster this year is not hidden. The psychology has changed. They're not hiding from the polls, far from it, they're screaming (and infecting) as widely as they can.

Will Dear Leader Yo! Semite of Thigh Land's utter failure to protect both his family and his White House staff from Covid-19 be the final straw? Could be.

About those October Surprises? Bash has tossed in the towel on Unmasking, "the worse than Watergate" scandal. A few weeks back, Durham allowed that no report would be forthcoming before Dictatorship Day. Most, especially of the Left Snowflake crowd, inferred that Durham had grown some gonads and told Batshit J. Moron to stuff it. But there is another explanation, to wit, Durham not only confirmed that the Russia probe was fully warranted, but that Batshit J. Moron really, really is up to his sphincter in Russians. Not a helpful report leading up to November 3. If he's re-elected, and the Senate doesn't flip, the report will be ignored by the Solons and dictatorship follows.

Base Less - part the second

Ipsos has been polling on ex-President AuH₂O 2020 with respect to Covid.

As of 6 October, Batshit J. Moron gets about 29% approval. That's the base.

Who Was That Masked Man?

Another 'investigation' producing Nada. Not the Durham fiasco, just one that was even more bizarre: how dare you unmask my Russian connections!! What's joyous is that ex-President AuH₂O 2020 and his cronies have been far more aggressive in the process:

There were more than 10,000 unmaskings last year and nearly 17,000 in 2018, according to the Office of the Director of National Intelligence's Statistical Transparency reports. There were 9,529 in 2017, Trump's first year in office.

Under the Obama administration, there were about 9,217 unmaskings in 2016 and only 654 in 2015.

The whole idea behind unmasking is to find out who the Enemy has been talking to here in the USofA, it's not to 'out' somebody you know is your political enemy. How could you? Until the unmasking happens, you don't know who the individual is. You may suspect it's Don Jr., but you don't know.

I, for one, would be pleased as punch to know whether all the unmasking under Batshit J. Moron just confirms that he and his minions are still on Putin's payroll