By Lambert Strether of Corrente

Fowl Music of the Day

Pacific/Winter Wren, Alberta, Canada. Too quick, however by far probably the most tuneful.

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Politics

“However what’s authorities itself, however the best of all reflections on human nature?” –James Madison, Federalist 51

“That they had realized nothing, and forgotten nothing.” –Charles Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord

“When the going will get bizarre, the bizarre flip professional.” –Hunter Thompson

Capitol Seizure

“Secret Service Deleted Jan. 6 Textual content Messages After Oversight Officers Requested Them” [The Intercept]. “The Secret Service erased textual content messages from January 5 and January 6, 2021, in response to a letter given to the January 6 committee and reviewed by The Intercept….. A high Secret Service official allegedly concerned within the try and spirit away Pence on January 6 stays in a management place on the company. Tony Ornato, a Secret Service agent whom Trump made the unprecedented choice to nominate as his deputy White Home chief of employees, reportedly knowledgeable Pence’s nationwide safety adviser, Keith Kellogg, on January 6 that brokers would relocate the vice chairman to Joint Base Andrews in Maryland. ‘You possibly can’t do this, Tony,’ Kellogg reportedly informed Ornato. “Depart him the place he’s at. He’s obtained a job to do. I do know you guys too properly. You’ll fly him to Alaska if in case you have an opportunity. Don’t do it.’ (Ornato has denied the account.) Immediately Ornato serves because the assistant director of the Secret Service’s Workplace of Coaching.” • Oh. Commentary:

Biden Administration

“POLITICO Playbook: Manchin delivers ‘crushing blow’ to Dem agenda” [Politico]. “Late Thursday evening, Sen. Joe Manchin successfully killed any probability of main climate-related provisions making their manner into Democrats’ reconciliation package deal. The West Virginian informed get together leaders that ‘he wouldn’t assist an financial package deal that incorporates new spending on local weather change or contains new tax will increase concentrating on rich People or firms,’ WaPo’s Tony Romm and Jeff Stein had been first to report, ‘marking a large setback for get together lawmakers who had hoped to advance a central ingredient of their agenda earlier than the midterm elections this fall.’ What else he mentioned: ‘Manchin informed Democratic leaders he was open to altering federal legal guidelines that may decrease pharmaceuticals prices for seniors… And the West Virginia reasonable expressed assist … for prolonged subsidies that may assist hold medical insurance prices down for hundreds of thousands of People for the subsequent two years…’” • Manchin was effective with taxing the wealthy:

Ah, properly. However….

2022

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Vote tougher:

Does anyone actually consider that Tim Ryan gained’t be the subsequent revolving villain, even when President Manchin decides to retire and fondle his coal?

FL: “GOP voter edge in Florida retains rising” [Politico]. “Voter registration numbers general proceed to point out that Democrats are getting left far behind. It’s simply one other information level on why Republicans are supremely assured they may dominate the 2022 elections in a state the place President Joe Biden is struggling and Gov. Ron DeSantis’ approval numbers stay above water. It was simply final fall that Republicans for the primary time surged previous Democrats within the variety of energetic voters within the state. A ‘milestone second’ is how one GOP official described it, a byproduct of a sustained effort that had been pushed strongly by DeSantis. The official Division of Elections information present that Republicans maintain a virtually 176,000 voter edge over Democrats. That was the quantity on the finish of Could. However unofficially it’s now greater than 180,000 and it’s anticipated that Republicans will take their voter registration benefit north of 200,000 this month. Democrats prior to now have tried to counsel routine voter listing upkeep and switching energetic to inactive voters is answerable for Republican positive factors. However the swelling rolls simply level to a state that’s trending to the GOP, helped partially by folks relocating to Florida from different components of the nation. Democrats keep leads in Florida’s city counties however they’re now trailing independents (voters formally often known as “no get together affiliation”) in almost a dozen counties with GOP majorities. DeSantis’ prediction that Florida will not be a battleground state after this yr’s election is shifting nearer into view.” • A “sustained effort” to register voters. Since when have Democrats ever been able to that? (And I’m not speaking about some squillionaire throwing some bucks at some NGO to register an id vertical at election time.)

PA: “Household firm of Dr. Oz had largest effective in ICE historical past” [New York Post]. “A tree-trimming firm partly owned by Dr. Oz and his spouse Lisa’s household was fined $95 million by the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement company over a scheme to knowingly make use of unlawful immigrants. The effective towards Asplundh Tree Specialists Co. was the most important ever levied in ICE historical past in response to a 2017 company press launch.”• Oops. From February, nonetheless germane.

PA:

Fetterman is proudly owning Oz on the Twitter, for positive. (See Individuals, “Contained in the New Jersey Mansion Dr. Oz and His Spouse Lisa Constructed from Scratch 20 Years In the past.”)

PA: “Greater than 1 million voters have switched to the GOP during the last yr, information present” [Inquirer]. “Greater than 1 million voters throughout 43 states have switched to the Republican Get together during the last yr, in response to voter registration information analyzed by The Related Press. The beforehand unreported quantity displays a phenomenon that’s enjoying out in nearly each area of the nation — Democratic and Republican states together with cities and small cities — within the interval since President Joe Biden changed former President Donald Trump. However nowhere is the shift extra pronounced — and harmful for Democrats — than within the suburbs, the place well-educated swing voters who turned towards Trump’s Republican Get together lately seem like swinging again. Over the past yr, way more individuals are switching to the GOP throughout suburban counties from Denver to Atlanta and Pittsburgh and Cleveland. Republicans additionally gained floor in counties round medium-size cities similar to Harrisburg, Pennsylvania; Raleigh, North Carolina; Augusta, Georgia; and Des Moines, Iowa.” • Hmm.

2024

“Shadow 2024 race: Newsom vs. DeSantis” [Politico]. • This useful chart reveals the oligarchy you’d be voting in with Newsom:

I don’t know if there’s an equal for DeSantis. Is he too backed by interlocking multigenerational outdated cash?

Republican Funhouse

“The Texas Republican Get together platform is official. What it says and what we realized” [Star-Telegram]. “Along with calling homosexuality “an irregular way of life alternative,” the platform opposes identical intercourse marriage. . Delegates voted to exchange the property tax system, assist faculty alternative and reject “essential race principle” and gun free zones. The platform requires medical freedom and the repeal of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Delegates additionally rejected “essential race principle” and supported a legislation “extra complete” than the one in Florida that prohibits instruction on sexual orientation or gender id…. ‘That is form of the gloves off second for the Republican Get together,’ mentioned Brandon Rottinghaus, a College of Houston political science professor.” The gloves weren’t off already? Extra: “The platform can be used as a method to push lawmakers additional in delegates’ desired path in a state the place a Democrat hasn’t gained statewide workplace since 1994. ‘There’ll all the time be Republicans who see … the form of insurance policies the bottom needs as being manner too far,’ Rottinghaus mentioned. ‘The bottom, the activists know that they should set the bar increased in order that they’ll use that as a method to stress these leaders to steadily transfer in that path.’” • What an idea!

Democrats en Déshabillé

I’ve moved my standing remarks on the Democrat Get together (“the Democrat Get together is a rotting corpse that may’t bury itself”) to a separate, back-dated publish, to which I’ll periodically add materials, summarizing the addition right here in a “stay” Water Cooler. (Hopefully, some Bourdieu.) It seems that defining the Democrat Get together is, actually, a tough drawback. I do suppose the paragraph that follows is on level all the way in which again to 2016, if not earlier than:

The Democrat Get together is the political expression of the category energy of PMC, their base (lucidly defined by Thomas Frank in Pay attention, Liberal!). ; if the Democrat Get together didn’t exist, the PMC must invent it. . (“PMC” modulo “class expatriates,” in fact.) Second, all of the working components of the Get together reinforce one another. Depart apart characterizing the relationships between components of the Get together (ka-ching, however not solely) these components comprise a community — a Flex Internet? An iron octagon? — of funders, distributors, apparatchiks, electeds, NGOs, and miscellaneous mercenaries, with property within the press and the intelligence group.

Observe, in fact, that the category energy of the PMC each expresses and is proscribed by different courses; oligarchs and American gentry (see ‘industrial mannequin’ of Ferguson, Jorgensen, and Jie) and the working class spring to thoughts. Suck up, kick down.

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“‘An actual chilling impact’: A Lefty Scholar is Dumping CAP — For AEI” [Politico]. Ruy Teixeira: “‘My perspective is, the only most essential factor to deal with within the social system is the financial system,’ he tells me. ‘It’s class.’ We’re sitting in AEI’s elegantly furnished library. Down the corridor, there’s a boisterous occasion celebrating the conservative mental Harvey Mansfield. William Kristol, clad in a go well with, has simply left the room. Teixeira’s untucked shirt and sneakers aren’t the one factor that appears misplaced. ‘I’m only a social democrat, man. Making an attempt to make the world a greater place.’ How Teixeira got here to be speaking in regards to the essentiality of sophistication politics whereas sitting a number of ft from a stack of books by Lynne Cheney says a terrific deal in regards to the state of the American left, the place the 70-year-old researcher felt alienated — and in regards to the American proper, the place a once-dominant suppose tank that fell afoul of Trump die-hards has introduced him aboard. To listen to Teixeira inform it, CAP, and the remainder of Washington’s institution-based left, stopped being a spot the place he may do the work he wished. The rationale, he says, is that the relentless deal with race, gender, and id in traditionally liberal foundations and suppose tanks has made it arduous to do work that appears at society by different prisms. It additionally makes folks nervous about initiatives that might be accused of giving quick shrift to anti-racism efforts. ‘I’d say that anyone who has a essentially class-oriented perspective, who thinks that’s a extra essential lens and doesn’t assume that any disparity is mechanically a lens of racism or sexism or what have you ever … I feel that perspective is just not congenial in most left establishments,’ he says.” • I do know it is a lonely battle, however there’s no such factor as a left that doens’t put class first. That Teixeira thinks, apparently, that he was doing that every one alongside…. properly, irony abounds. Commentary:

And:

Realignment and Legitimacy

“Pushed To The Brink” [Jesse & Tyrel Ventura, Die First Then Quit]. “From the Police, to the Supreme Court docket, to Congress, throughout the board U.S. residents are dropping religion in our very important establishments in file numbers. Notably, the largest drops in citizen confidence from final yr to this yr had been discovered within the establishments of the Presidency and the U.S. Supreme Court docket. They each fell 15 and 11 p.c, respectively. This doesn’t come as a shock given how feckless the Biden Administration has been when confronted with the foremost political, economical, and social challenges we’ve seen during the last yr. Rising inflation, Roe v. Wade, Local weather Change… simply vote tougher…. This nostril dive cuts throughout all get together strains as properly…. How a lot farther can we fall or perhaps the higher query is what occurs to a populace that loses all religion in its establishments? The reply to that perhaps present in a current polling information collected by the College of Chicago’s Institute of Politics, which found {that a} majority of American’s consider their authorities is corrupt and rigged towards them. Pigging backing on that, the information additionally revealed that ‘a couple of in 4 People are so alienated from their authorities that they consider it might ‘quickly be essential to take up arms’ towards it.’ One in 4 People. That’s a very scary statistic. That ought to make anybody’s blood run chilly after studying it. Violent revolution is just not the reply. Any pupil of historical past will let you know {that a} political revolution based mostly on violence infrequently brings precise freedom to a rustic.” • 1789? 1776?

“Why Crime Is Scarier Now” [Peggy Noonan]. On cops: “We respect the blue right here however I’m more and more disturbed by what I see of policing in America. Since the latest mass shootings I’m considering of how a lot it has modified in my lifetime. Cops was guys in a blue cotton uniform with a holster and gun. Now they’re like bulked-up Nineties cartoon superheroes—militarized, mechanized, armored up, heavy helmets and vests, all of the gear and tools, the lengthy weapons and vans like tanks. They swarm in like a military—so a lot of them!—and there’s one thing muscle-bound about it, heavy on type and guidelines and by the ebook. However who wrote this ebook? The cops of the ’70s—they shot the dangerous man. Cops now bark into communications programs and coordinate and inform civilians to depart the world. And none of it appears more practical than prior to now however much less. A report from Texas State College on the missed alternatives at Uvalde notes {that a} policeman had a bead on the shooter early on and from far-off, requested his supervisor for permission to take the shot and didn’t get a response. And so the assassin obtained into the classroom with the youngsters. The report additionally mentioned the cops ought to have gone in by the home windows. You learn and also you suppose: Guys, this isn’t working. You’ve got to rethink how you use…. They’re positive good at word-saving. They’re rapid with their eloquence—Our hearts are damaged; these had been our moms and daughters—however their excellence and effectiveness are much less obvious. I don’t suppose folks belief them as a lot as they used to, and that is separate and distinct from the damaging racial prices of current years…. It isn’t good. And if I’m seeing it, others are.” • Once you’ve misplaced Peggy Noonan….

“America’s crisis-industrial advanced” [The New Statesman]. The headline is misleading; that is actually about the opportunity of civil battle in america. “We’d characterise the final two and half a long time on the planet’s most prosperous states – and the US particularly – as a interval of disaster compression and rising fatalism. The onset of the millennium didn’t carry in regards to the apocalypse foretold by Y2K fantasists, however yielded as a substitute to sluggish rolling disaster with endemic options. We’re folks stalked by periodic monetary collapse, damaging climate occasions, immanent civic violence and airborne demise. Area-wasting hurricanes, tsunamis and wildfires are the backdrop to each day life on our warming planet. Riotous mass protests towards governing authority expose the illegitimate face of ostensibly democratic types of rule. People who realized to bowl alone, confronted rising mid-life mortality, self-medicated with opioids, obtained locked up and gunned down within the outdated de-industrialised city core, struggled to make hire, stockpiled weapons, trolled for the subsequent Columbine, Sandy Hook or Uvalde within the suburbs and hinterlands, in flip conjured Trump as a form of perverse mirror. The promise to ‘Make America Nice Once more’, not like Obama’s enjoining ‘Hope and Change’, and even Bush’s dream of ‘A New American Century’, represented a aware involution – a not solely inadvertent mockery of the pretensions of these prior idealistic schemes, affirmation that the liberal patrimony has been spent. It’s the darkness of this imaginative and prescient that has given rise to a cottage trade of criers warning of impending civil battle.”

“The Time for Leftist Extralegal Motion Has Lastly Come” [Freddie deBoer]. “[W]ith the demise of Roe, the time has lastly come when folks on the left can and can actually do one thing, in that they may work exterior of the legislation to supply abortion companies to girls who stay in locations the place that service is illegitimate. I think about this can principally contain getting girls into pro-choice states to get the process, which can not essentially be prison – though you may definitely think about anti-abortion states drawing up draconian legal guidelines to punish girls who depart the state to safe an abortion. Typically, I feel there might be clandestine abortions carried out in states the place each moms and suppliers threat arrest…. Both manner, serving to girls terminate undesirable pregnancies that the state would compel them to carry to time period represents actual, efficient direct motion. It will likely be an Underground Railroad for abortion….. Key to understanding this second is to acknowledge that offering abortion companies in contravention of the legislation is just not politics. It’s not an motion designed to vary minds. There’s no future election or coalition-building that it’s trying to affect. Success is just not depending on being common; success is solely the termination of undesirable pregnancies. It’s direct motion within the purest type. It’s not civil disobedience within the sense of breaking the legislation to point out the injustice of the legislation, not ‘bearing witness,’ not an indication of rage or of energy, not an enchantment to the voters. The procedures themselves are the aim and the purpose.” • It’s, in different phrases, not performative.

“Sen. Josh Hawley predicts the overturning of Roe v. Wade will trigger a ‘main checking out throughout the nation’ and permit the GOP to ‘prolong their energy within the Electoral School’” [Business Insider]. From late June, nonetheless germane: “‘I actually do suppose that that is going to be a watershed second in American politics,’ [Hawley] mentioned on a name with reporters on Friday. ‘The primary choice — the 1973 Roe choice — essentially reshaped American politics, it ushered within the rise of the Christian conservative motion, it led to the forming of what turned the Reagan coalition in 1980.’” • This feels like a delusion of origin. I’m not in any respect conversant with motion conservatism within the Seventies and Nineteen Eighties. Readers, is that this delusion true?

#COVID19

Maskstravaganza: “Masks matter for greater than mandates” [Virology Down Under]. This text makes the need for layered safety (“Swiss Cheese Mannequin”) crystal clear. Provided that “the dose makes the poison,” any measure that decreases virus particles inhaled is nice, so mix them. “The quantity of virus that’s required to create a detectable an infection that results in illness is the minimal infectious dose. Nonhuman primate research have reported between 10s of SARS-CoV-2 viral particles required for the physique to recognise an infection (mount an immune response) to 100s of viral particles for the physique to develop a fever in response to an an infection after being inhaled. A virus gaining a profitable foothold and occurring to copy and trigger illness is expounded to the scale of the dose. Dose may be affected by the size of publicity to an contaminated supply, the proximity to that supply and the way a lot virus the supply is emitting…. Vaccination additionally has a task in lowering viral hundreds for some weeks after vaccination.[18,20,29] We all know that when a breakthrough an infection does happen – that’s, an infection of a vaccinated individual – the quantity of virus current within the newly contaminated however vaccinated individual doesn’t actually differ from the quantity in an unvaccinated contaminated individual.[18,19] Breakthrough infections are more likely to result in infectious infections. So, as others have mentioned, we want greater than a vaccine-only technique to scale back the chance of transmitting an infectious dose of SARS-CoV-2 (or influenza virus, or respiratory syncytial virus, or a rhinovirus…)” • Effectively value studying in full. This remark was attention-grabbing: “Good masks sporting has given me grim amusement to being as efficient as these pushing abstinence. If carried out correctly, it’ll work. Sadly, the thoughts is weak.” Nonetheless, because the AIDS disaster teaches us, the right comparability is just not abstinence, however condoms which, although imperfect, nonetheless provide safety. So the commenter’s jouissance of “grim amusement” is misplaced.

Maskstravaganza: “Affiliation between Faculty Masks Mandates and SARS-CoV-2 Pupil Infections: Proof from a Pure Experiment of Neighboring Ok-12 Districts in North Dakota” (preprint) [Research Square]. “Our research took benefit of a novel pure experiment of two adjoining Ok-12 faculty districts in Fargo, North Dakota, one which had a masks mandate and one which didn’t within the fall of the 2021-2022 tutorial yr. Within the winter, each districts adopted a masks-optional coverage permitting for a partial crossover research design. We noticed no vital distinction between pupil case charges whereas the districts had differing masking insurance policies (IRR 0.99; 95% CI: 0.92 to 1.07) nor whereas they’d the identical masks insurance policies (IRR 1.04; 95% CI: 0.92 to 1.16). The IRRs throughout the 2 intervals had been additionally not considerably totally different (p = 0.40). Our findings contribute to a rising physique of literature which suggests school-based masks mandates have restricted to no influence on the case charges of COVID-19 amongst Ok-12 college students.” • Hmm.

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“Pandemic Nihilism” (07/14/22) (podcast) [Death Panel]. “We talk about a brand new chorus that pushing for a return of pandemic mitigations is ‘moralizing even because the BA.5 wave takes maintain.” • Wonderful podcast, all the time value a hear.

“The influence of Lengthy COVID on the UK workforce” [Applied Economics Letters]. “COVID-19 is extra more likely to result in Lengthy COVID amongst individuals of working age. We define the primary estimates of the influence of Lengthy Covid on employment within the UK. Utilizing estimates of cumulative prevalence of Lengthy COVID, activity-limiting Lengthy COVID within the working-age inhabitants and of financial inactivity and job loss ensuing from Lengthy COVID, we offer proof of the profound influence of Lengthy COVID on nationwide labour provide. For the reason that begin of the pandemic, cumulatively 2.9 million folks of working age (7% of the full) within the UK have had, or nonetheless have, Lengthy COVID. This determine will proceed to rise because of very excessive an infection charges within the Omicron wave. For the reason that starting of the pandemic, financial inactivity because of long-term illness has risen by 120,900 among the many working-age inhabitants, fuelling the UK’s present labour scarcity. An estimated 80,000 folks have left employment because of Lengthy COVID.”

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For those who missed it, right here’s a publish on my queasiness with CDC numbers, particularly case rely, which I (nonetheless) think about most essential, regardless of what Walensky’s psychos at CDC who invented “group ranges” suppose. However these are the numbers we have now.

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Lambert right here: The CDC website was down right this moment, so the one CDC information that’s up to date got here in good ol’ dependable PDF type from healthdata.gov.

How am I presupposed to carry out my private threat evaluation correctly when the putatively most authoritative supply of knowledge is down?

And talking of the CDC:

Eric Feigl-Ding is a far nicer and extra tolerant person who I’m. I don’t “love the CDC” in any respect.

Case Rely

Case rely for america:

It’s beginning to really feel just like the practice is rolling. Let’s see what subsequent week brings. There was a bizarre, plateau-like “fiddling and diddling” stage earlier than the Omicron explosion, too. This conjuncture feels the identical. Beneath the hood the BA.4/BA.5 are making up a better and better proportion of circumstances. Do not forget that circumstances are undercounted, one supply saying by an element of six, Gottlieb considering we solely choose up one in seven or eight.) Therefore, I take the case rely and multiply it by six to approximate the true degree of circumstances, and draw the DNC-blue “Biden Line” at that time. The earlier rely was ~137,000. Immediately, it’s ~125,200 and 125,200 * 6 = a Biden line at 751,200 per day. That’s relatively lots of circumstances per day, when you concentrate on it. Not less than we have now affirmation that the extraordinary mass of case anecdotes we’ve seen have a foundation in actuality. (Keep in mind these information factors are weekly averages, so each day fluctuations are smoothed out.) The black “Fauci Line” is a counter to triumphalism, because it compares present ranges to previous crises.

Regional case rely for 4 weeks:

Now the South and West.

The South:

Florida and Texas, now neck and neck.

The West:

Appears to be like like Washington determined to not be part of the get together in spite of everything, which accounts for many of the nationwide decline. So, dangerous information as I speculated.

Positivity

From the Walgreen’s check positivity tracker:

3.0%, again to single digits. (I’m wondering if there’s a Keynesian Magnificence Contest impact, right here; that’s, if folks encounter a sympotomatic individual, whether or not of their social circle or in regular exercise, they’re extra more likely to get a check, as a result of they consider, appropriately, that it’s extra seemingly they are going to be contaminated.) What we’re seeing right here is the steepest and largest acceleration of positivity on Walgreen’s chart.

Transmission

NOTE: I shall most definitely not be utilizing the CDC’s new “Community Level” metric. Because CDC has combined a leading indicator (cases) with a lagging one (hospitalization) their new metric is a poor warning sign of a surge, and a poor way to assess personal risk. In addition, Covid is a disease you don’t want to get. Even if you are not hospitalized, you can suffer from Long Covid, vascular issues, and neurological issues. For these reasons, case counts — known to be underestimated, due to home test kits — deserve to stand alone as a number to be tracked, no matter how much the political operatives in CDC leadership would like to obfuscate it. That the “green map” (which Topol calls a “capitulation” and a “deception”) is still up and being taken seriously verges on the criminal. Use the community transmission immediately below.

WEBSITE DOWN Here is CDC’s interactive map by county set to community transmission. This is the map CDC wants only hospitals to look at, not you. For June 30 – July 6:

Established order, i.e. it’s a not-over pandemic.

Lambert right here: After the transfer from the CDC to the laughingly named ‘https://healthdata.gov,” this discover appeared: “Efficient June 22, 2022, the Group Profile Report will solely be up to date twice per week, on Wednesdays and Fridays.” So now the administration has belatedly come to the belief that we’re in a BA.5 surge, and but important information for making our private threat evaluation is just obtainable twice per week. What’s the over/beneath on whether or not they truly ship tomorrow?

Speedy Riser information, by county (CDC), July 7:

Texas, Louisiana, New Mexico, Alabama, Illinois all higher. California higher, oddlly. I don’t like these little pink speckles in New York, as a result of the Northeast has been quiet for a while (word slight rise in case information). What’s that every one about

Earlier Speedy Riser information:

Hospitalization information, by state (CDC), July 7:

Very unstable. Haven’t seen so little inexperienced (good) in fairly a while.

Variants

Lambert right here: It’s past irritating how sluggish the variant information is. I appeared for extra charts: California doesn’t to a BA.4/BA.5 breakdown. New York does nevertheless it, too, is on a molasses-like two-week cycle. Does no one within the public well being institution get a promotion for monitoring variants? Are there no grants? Is there a single lab that does this work, and everyone will get the outcomes from them? Extra sources from readers welcome [grinds teeth, bangs head on desk].

NOT UPDATED Variant information, nationwide (Walgreens), June 30:

WEBSITE DOWN Variant information, nationwide (CDC), June 25:

BA.5 shifting alongside properly.

• “Why the Omicron offshoot BA.5 is a giant deal” [CNN]. “After the Omicron tidal wave washed over america in January and the smaller rise in circumstances within the spring attributable to the BA.2 subvariant, it might need appeared just like the coronavirus might be ignored for some time. In any case, the US Facilities for Illness Management and Prevention estimated in December that just about all People had been vaccinated or have antibodies from a previous an infection. Absolutely all that immunity purchased some respiration room. However all of a sudden, many individuals who had recovered from Covid-19 as lately as March or April discovered themselves exhausted, coughing and looking at two pink strains on a speedy check. How may this be occurring once more — and so quickly? The perpetrator this time is one more Omicron offshoot, BA.5. It has three key mutations in its spike protein that make it each higher at infecting our cells and more proficient at slipping previous our immune defenses.

In simply over two months, BA.5 outcompeted its predecessors to turn into the dominant explanation for Covid-19 in america.” • Arduous to consider that CDC might be outmaneuvered, however right here we’re.

Wastewater

WEBSITE DOWN Wastewater information (CDC), Jun 25, 2022 – Jul 09, 2022:

Numerous orange, extra pink. Not good. This chart works a bit like speedy riser counties: “This metric reveals whether or not SARS-CoV-2 ranges at a website are at present increased or decrease than previous historic ranges on the identical website. 0% means ranges are the bottom they’ve been on the website; 100% means ranges are the very best they’ve been on the website.” So, there’s a bunch of pink dots on the West Coast. That’s 100%, so meaning “ranges are the very best they’ve ever been.” Not damaged down by variant, CDC, good job.

Deaths

Demise price (Our World in Knowledge):

Complete: 1,048,232 1,047,794. I’ve added an anti-triumphalist Fauci Line. It’s good that for deaths I’ve a pleasant, easy, each day chart that simply retains chugging alongside, not like every thing else CDC and the White Home are screwing up or letting go darkish, good job.

Stats Watch

Manufacturing: “United States NY Empire State Manufacturing Index” [Trading Economics]. “The New York Empire State Manufacturing Index rose to 11.1 in July of 2022 from -1.2 in June, the very best in three months and beating market expectations of -2. New orders elevated marginally, and shipments expanded considerably. Unfilled orders edged decrease for a second consecutive month. Supply occasions lengthened on the slowest tempo in months, and inventories picked up. Labor market indicators pointed to a strong enhance in employment and a barely longer common workweek. Whereas nonetheless elevated, each the costs paid and costs obtained indexes moved considerably decrease, pointing to a deceleration in value will increase. Corporations turned pessimistic in regards to the six-month outlook, a uncommon incidence within the survey’s historical past.”

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The Bezzle: “Moneylike” [Cory Doctorow, Cory Doctorow]. Doctorow embraces MMT (although not Hudson on the origin of cash). “For instance, it explains why Web3 — notionally a mission to remake the online with out Massive Tech chokepoints — is so intently related to cryptocurrency. It’s not simply the ideological notion that if we paid for issues, corporations would abandon surveillance and sensationalism (a doubtful proposition!), it’s the concept that the web might be remade as one thing that may solely be utilized by individuals who have cryptocurrency tokens. The web is just not a luxurious, it’s a necessity, because the pandemic and the lockdown proved. With out the web, you’re reduce off from household life, healthcare, employment, leisure, entry to authorities companies, political discourse, civic life, and romance. These are all belongings you want, not simply belongings you need. For those who want cryptocurrency to entry these companies on a alternative, transactional web constructed on the blockchain, then you’ll do work and promote items in trade for cryptocurrency tokens. They are going to turn into the brand new hut-tax, and the truth that everybody who needs the issues the web gives has to commerce work or items for cryptos will make cryptos very moneylike.”

The Bezzle:

“Rekt”? Wasn’t that all the time the endgame?

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Immediately’s Concern & Greed Index: 27 Concern (earlier shut: 23 Excessive Concern) [CNN]. One week in the past: 29 (Concern). (0 is Excessive Concern; 100 is Excessive Greed). Final up to date Jul 15 at 2:17 PM EDT.

Class Warfare

“The hidden prices of the intermediary financial system” [Strategy+Business]. “The prices of middlemen are multiplying, and showing in locations the place we would not anticipate, together with increased charges paid to realtors for home gross sales. However for [author Kathryn] Choose, prices transcend mere financial hazards and symbolize a man-made middleman that diminishes the integrity of direct trade. In additional forceful passages, she prices probably the most dominant intermediaries with contributing to loneliness, isolation, and lack of ‘human flourishing’ around the globe. … Finally, the reader is challenged to think about the human values that direct buying can present. Choose presents quite a few examples of ways in which customers can purchase immediately from native establishments and boutique ventures (think about your native bookseller!). She believes that direct trade fosters connection and group whereas selling a extra simply, resilient, and accountable financial system, and she or he shares tangible steps towards realizing this imaginative and prescient. Direct is an enthralling reminder of the hidden prices which can be typically bundled into small positive factors, and the human advantages made attainable when shopping for regionally.” I’m unsure what The Bearded Onewhoul should say about “the integrity of direct trade.” I grant one can have markets with out capitalism, however is that this actually nostalgia for social relations beneath industrial, versus monetary, capitalism?

Information of the Wired

“Auditors Dishonest on Ethics Exams – Who’s Stunned?” [The Dig]. “Drawing on a profession stuffed with scrutiny of economic {and professional} break-down and misfeasance, I educate a course in enterprise and legislation faculties that explores the explanations for dangerous selections and behaviors. There’s a core theme within the shortcomings of the supposed ‘good guys’ — whether or not throughout the credit score disaster of 2007-2008, the halting and inconsistent reactions to the COVID pandemic, the recurrent scandals from Enron to Wirecard, or the persistent outbreaks — that, each time, set off the acquainted cry, ‘The place had been the auditors?’ Particularly, as fallible people, all of us are vulnerable to the short and instinctive selections that activated ‘combat or flight’ for our primitive ancestors whose DNA we inherit. It was adequate to safeguard a prehistoric tribe, however ill-suited to the complexities of contemporary life the place, by bias and error, we’re led to undesirable judgments and selections….. The accounting career has contributed to a public expectation of auditor efficiency that exceeds its failure-avoidance capabilities, eliding the inevitable break-downs that inhere in any advanced system of human design and operation. As context for this newest outbreak of test-cheating, the complete mannequin for monetary info assurance, designed within the Victorian period and largely unevolved since, has but to acknowledge and apply a half-century of insightful scholarship into the complexities of human conduct…. This counsels neither cynicism nor despair. As a substitute it’s a problem that requires methods which can be higher knowledgeable and designed.” • Hmm. Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?

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Contact info for vegetation: Readers, be happy to contact me at lambert [UNDERSCORE] strether [DOT] corrente [AT] yahoo [DOT] com, to (a) learn the way to ship me a verify if you’re allergic to PayPal and (b) to learn the way to ship me pictures of vegetation. Greens are effective! Fungi and coral are deemed to be honorary vegetation! In order for you your deal with to look as a credit score, please place it in the beginning of your mail in parentheses: (thus). In any other case, I’ll anonymize through the use of your initials. See the earlier Water Cooler (with plant) right here. From RH:

RH writes: “Blackberry blossoms.”

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Readers: Water Cooler is a standalone entity not coated by the lately concluded and — thanks! — profitable annual NC fundraiser. So if you happen to see a hyperlink you particularly like, or an merchandise you wouldn’t see wherever else, please don’t hesitate to specific your appreciation in tangible type. Keep in mind, a tip jar is for tipping! Common constructive suggestions each makes me really feel good and lets me know I’m heading in the right direction with protection. After I get no donations for 5 or ten days I get apprehensive. Extra tangibly, a continuing trickle of donations helps me with bills, and I think about that trickle when setting fundraising objectives:

Right here is the display that may seem, which I’ve helpfully annotated:

For those who hate PayPal, you may e mail me at lambert [UNDERSCORE] strether [DOT] corrente [AT] yahoo [DOT] com, and I provides you with instructions on the best way to ship a verify. Thanks!

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