Good Night, Stinkin Prig

I have a dream.

At 12.01 PM on 20 January, 2021 wannaBePresident Huey Long 2024 gets indicted by both the Manhattan DA and the New York AG on criminal charges.

Boeing Boeing - part the thirteenth

One aspect of the now flying again MAX is how little has been written about a previous, and far more pervasive, issue with the 737. An extensive report from 'The Seattle Times' , in five parts, details a decades long screw up in design and engineering, and long term cover up. The issue was that the rudder of the 737, from the outset in the mid-60s, was a shitty design and implementation. It was engineering too clever by half to save a couple of bucks. Literally. Planes crashed and people were killed. Boeing, the FAA, and, to a lesser extent, the NTSB let it happen. The FAA, in particular, had already been captured by Boeing.

A shorter piece is in the wiki. Same basic facts, without the extensive history.

Deep state. Yeah, right. Owned by American Big Bidnezz.

Parallax View - part the thirty eighth

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

  >= 1,000 -   957 
100 to 999 - 1,760

(New) grand total of counties reads at 3,132. 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.

Something of a mixed bag. The Topo map shows a marked decrease in the total for upper groups, and remarkable thinning out of 100+ counties in the Northern Plains. On the other hand, the Johns Hopkins derived map (per capita) continues to show that area deep in disease.

The CNN map, also per capita, continues to show the Northern Plains still quite hot.

Yet, on the next hand, the NYT map, again per capita, shows the Northern Plains abating, but the mid-south from Tennessee on west pushing ever upward. Of course, The Times admits the obvious:

Holiday reporting quirks will likely blur the country's data. Testing was expected to decrease around Christmas and New Year's, and many states have said they will not report data on certain days. More typical reporting patterns were expected to resume in early January.

Is this data showing we're around the curve, or just cheering for finding a lode of fool's gold? Fauci:

And the reason I'm concerned and my colleagues in public health are concerned also is that we very well might see a post-seasonal, in the sense of Christmas, New Year's, surge, and, as I have described it, as a surge upon a surge, because, if you look at the slope, the incline of cases that we have experienced as we have gone into the late fall and soon-to-be-early winter, it is really quite troubling.

My bet goes to significant under-reporting over the holiday, since the last Topo map before Christmas had the 1000+ group at 979 and the 100-999 group at 1,760. The bottom two groups totalled 26. The chances that the two ends of the spectrum would shift so fast isn't likely. We'll see what happens to the data during the week. If there's been under-reporting, it may catch up. Or reporting will continue to be spotty until at least 11 January 2021.

Parallax View - parth the thirty seventh

Another week's up (well, a bit less), so here are Monday's numbers:

  >= 1,000 -   979
100 to 999 - 1,779

(New) grand total of counties reads at 3,133. 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.

Not much to report on the data front. County total is up a tad. The bridging through the middle America axis continues apace, except for South Dakota and Nebraska. The top groups have, more or less, swapped spit and the bottom two have dropped a tick. Neither condition represents progress in getting Covid under control.

One is tempted to discuss Batshit J. Moron's attempts at coup and ignoring, totally, the Covid situation, but that would turn this weekly entry into a text that would rival "War and Peace" in extent.

Thought For The Day - 21 December 2020

If it doesn't have a spike protein, is it still a coronavirus? If it still has a spike protein, does it matter how it might otherwise mutate, even if it changes its attack vector? If it still has a spike protein, won't the mRNA vaccines still work, even if it changes its attack vector? If it sheds its spike protein, will it become another, hopefully less damaging virus? So many questions. Let's look for some answers.

Here's a preliminary answer, and a bit dated (in pandemic time), from August

What scientists can say is that the virus seems to tolerate mutations to this key piece of the coronavirus, and more elaborate methods of focusing immune responses may become necessary. "But just because we find that there are mutations that are tolerated, it doesn't necessarily mean anything bad is going to happen," Greaney said.

Furthermore, here is an undated report (but cites others from the August time frame) on how mutations happen and what happens as a result.

The G614 mutation significantly impacts antigenicity of the virus, but not at all in the way we were expecting. The G form of Spike is more sensitive to neutralizing antibodies than the D form. This was reproducible in mice, monkeys, and humans (Weissman 2020).

If you don't read the whole paper, the G form is the mutated Covid, while the D form is the original (so far as I know) from Wuhan. In other words, the mRNA vaccines blocking the spike protein shouldn't/won't be diminshed by this mutation.

Thought For The Day - 19 December 2020

Well, that didn't take long. Well, a tad longer than I expected, still, I was able to get my post out just under the wire yesterday:

There could also have been a hit on our ridiculous voting machines during the election, which is now obvious that I won big, making it an even more corrupted embarrassment for the USA.
-- wannaBePresident Huey Long 2024

Didn't, yet, add the assertion that Russia was really, really backing Hillary. 'Just look what they did to me!!!' 'Me!!!' Nor blaming Krebs's CISA for 'losing the election!'

May be tomorrow?

To be clear, while computer based, none of the Batshit J. Moron's whipping boy voting systems are vulnerable to the hack.

Dominion Voting Systems does not now - nor has it ever - used the SolarWinds Orion Platform, which was subject of the DHS emergency directive dated December 13, 2020 (Emergency Directive 21-01).

Which is not to assert that some state election systems don't use Orion somewhere on their network(s). The key to understanding the hack is that, while it entered through the bathroom Windows, the purpose of the hack was to control the network. Many (most?) voting machines run on antique versions of Windows (not Dominion, as it happens). Which is to say, if those machines are networked with other sub-nets with Orion support, they were vulnerable.

The bottom line, so to speak, is 'security through obscurity'

To be clear, individual machines are notoriously vulnerable to hackers, but the decentralized nature of the US's election infrastructure means that it's hard to change votes en-masse.

To bad I haven't read that statement in the Lamestream press. I suppose that civlians, or idiots like Benito Trumpilini, just assume that every computing device is set up for Twitter and every other internet option. Not yet.

Thought For The Day - 18 December 2020

Now, as we learn more about the Russian cyber hack, we can see what comes next.

` 1 - wannaBePresident Huey Long 2024 will tie the hack to Chris Krebs, since the initial intrusion was in the spring, under his watch.

` 2 - Therefore, Batshit J. Moron will use this incursion as more 'evidence' that the 2020 election had to have been hacked by the Russians. And that Krebs's assertion that the election was the most secure, etc. has to be bullshit; he didn't even see a hack in his own systems. ex-President AuH₂O 2020 will say, 'see, the Russians have been after me from the beginnning'.

A Treasure Map

Another attempt to map the 2020 election. Well worth the look. In all, the urban/rural, blue/red, Dem/Fascist grouping holds. Although the author does make the point that some of those places are, shall we say, mixed. After all, there are some old, angry, grievance driven white guys in the Boston metro.

Note the legend shows not just the candidate symbols, but tells the reader that each glyph is 250,000 votes. That's significant. In my native New England, which you'll immediately note if you've spent any time here, the Red dots are in the shitkicker places while the Blue dots are in and around cities. As the author intended and explains, another point of the map is to refute, "Try to Impeach this" from 2016. Which report also fact checked the map, and found blue counties morphed to red, and none the other way round.

As the author tells us, presidents aren't elected by who gets the most land.

Parallax View - part the thirty sixth

Another week's up (well, a bit more), so here are today's numbers:

  >= 1,000 -   969
100 to 999 - 1,790

(New) grand total of counties reads at 3,130. 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 Topo folks just updated the map (last was 10 December) as I was about to hit publish, so a day more than the usual week. No need for an update.

Total counties is down a tick, just. Top groups are at 2,759, up a tad, but continuing to grow. Bottom groups are up a tick to 26.

Bridges, do we have bridges! There are plenty of routes now available for the Memorial Trophy Dash. Depending on how you count, and using a single longitude rather than two, it's anywhere from 5 to 9; more if you count the splits and merges to the west. The western longitude, from Big Bend Texas to Montana, is nearly solid; how soon will that Covid Divide disappear? "Won't be no Covid where Real Americans live!!" The ambiguity arises from the fact that some spurs merge on one side of the main Covid Divide or the other and thus might be conservatively counted as a single bridge.

Early reporting had it that the White House Superspreaders were to get shots from the first batch. Talk about rewarding truly bad behavior!! Since then, that has been retracted. We'll see if that actually happens.

Thought For The Day - 14 December 2020 [update]

The last entry in the 'Thought For The Day' series included this

To wit, we've no evidence yet whether any of them is sterilizing/neutralizing.

'Them', of course are the myriad Covid vaccines.

Today's reporting emphasizes this problem

Dr. Sandro Cinti, an infectious disease specialist and medical professor at the University of Michigan, explained that it remains unclear whether people vaccinated against the virus can still infect someone else.

The trials only tracked Covid-19 in people who were showing symptoms. But according to the CDC, about 40% of cases are in people who show no symptoms.i

"You have to wear your mask," he said. "What they didn't look at was if you get the vaccine and you're protected, can you still get some virus that then goes in your nose and then infect somebody else."

None of the good doctors had the gonads to warn the rest of us that the hoax-and-personal-freedom cabal will instantly stop wearing masks and keeping distance and congregating. Nice guys these doctors, but let's get real: the larger segment of the population most likely to infect, for a long time, won't be the vaccinated group, but the Covidiots.

[update]
Well, that didn't take long. The original text was written before I consumed my dead trees NYT, so I only just read this more extensive piece on the issue. Still and all, no explicit discussion of outing lying Covidiots, but that's pretty clear: keep out the fakers. Of note is the historical fact that smallpox ID cards were mandatory as far back as 1880, when Real America still existed.

Death of an Island - part the seventh [update]

Well, the mainstream media haven't, that I've yet seen, made the effort to discuss the existential threat faced by Block Island, or other USofA tourist dependent islands. But here's a signature piece on the Caribbean experience.

The Bahamas reopened to tourism on July 1 after a two-month lockdown, confident the islands had the spread of coronavirus under control. Almost immediately, the number of cases in the Bahamas spiked. Many tourists came from Florida, which has had more than 430,000 coronavirus cases, a figure larger than the entire population of the Bahamas.

One hopes that my beloved Island fares better.

The above is the content of the last episode in this saga, from July. Reporting in 'The Block Island Times' since then have, mostly, been non-negative. Town revenue when last reported was down, but by less than it might have been.

But...

For the last few weeks, the Medical Center has been reporting increasing number of cases. This is from today's story.

"I would say 30 of them are from that point, and 20 of those 40 are in the last 10 days. It's blossomed for us," said Warcup. He noted that in the past he had seen many asymptomatic cases, but "in the last 10 days we have been seeing more symptomatic respiratory symptoms."

As everywhere else, if populations ignore the science, bad things happen. The Island has about 900 settled residents, and some second home folks who spend time there well off season. We stay, mostly, during off season. When we left to go at the end of October, 'The Times' reported that the last waste water Covid test came up 0. Phew. In the last six weeks, geometric progression is teaching Islanders some math. A significant proportion of Islanders could be in danger before New Years if they don't mind their Ps and Qs.

[update]
This is exactly the point.

A virus carrying one mutation -- a small genetic change they've flagged as C2416T -- was apparently carried to the conference by a single person, and ended up infecting 245,000 people. A second viral strain with a mutation known as G26233T ended up in 88,000 people.

Ain't science a gas?

Moochers

Once again, Blue States taxes pay for what red states refuse to provide their citizens.

The US government plans to give SpaceX nearly a billion dollars to beam internet from space to people across rural America, where three out of five people say access to broadband is still a pressing issue. ... The FCC did award the bulk of the $9 billion worth of subsidies to more traditional providers.

If this sounds a tad familiar, well it is. Remember the Motorola satellite phone, known mostly as Iridium? Never much of a player, and this paper spells out why. The paper is a couple of years old, but still sets out the issues.

And what about 10s of thousands of teeny objects in low Earth orbit? Too small to radar track? Will the next ISS or moon or Mars rocket smash into some? Have a read of the wiki page which collects much of the background.

Dear God, will this mooching off the productive states never end!

Moscow Mitch is always happy to send money to the slovenly in his caucus, but as he tries evermore to reduce the Blue States to red state poverty, he'll be killing the redneck's Golden Goose. What other source of moolah does he think there is? Stupid is as stupid does.

By The Numbers - part the third

Well, all states have reached 99% and Safe Harbor has passed, so what's the numbers?

2016  Trump -   62,984,828
      Clinton - 65,853,514
      Whackos -  5,946,559

2020  Trump - 74,222,484
      Biden - 81,282,896

So, a bit more than 7,000,000 in favor of Sleepy Joe. One number not often mentioned: a bit more than 5,000,000 of that margin is just California.

The major takeaway from these numbers is simple: Trump in 2020 did a smidgeon better than Trump + Whackos in 2016. In round numbers:
2016 - 69,000,000
2020 - 74,000,000

The Democrats, on the other hand, blew the top off with 16,000,000 more votes.

The Biden margin is 7,060,412. Not a can of creamed corn, that. And it did reach 7 million without a whole lot of effort.

Of course, the question is, is it reasonable to infer that 2016 Whackos have gone all in on Trump this year? Certainly the Johnson folks would. The Stein, possibly a tad less, but more likely than for Biden. More than a 7 million margin's a landslide anyway you dice it.

Wins By a Nose

Two interesting pieces in today's NYT, one about "Bloom County" highlighting Opus's Nose, and the other finally going somewhat deeper into the process of sterilizing/neutralizing (though neither term is used) vaccines. The bottom line, as usual and discussed in these missives before, is that being vaccinated may, likely will, lead to a surge. "We don't need no stinkin mask!!"

Vaccinated people who have a high viral load but don't have symptoms "would actually be, in some ways, even worse spreaders because they may be under a false sense of security," Dr. Maldonado said.

Or a true sense of arrogance.

Maple Syrup, Yum!

In a recent crossword puzzle blog argument over maple syrup, the contest was among Vermonters, New Yorkers, and, wait for it... Canadians. Turned out, one of the contestants (not I, alas) availed themselves of the wiki or similar and demonstrated that Canada is the world leader in maple syrup.

Today, after rapid growth in the 1990s, Canada produces more than 80 percent of the world's maple syrup, producing about 73 million kg (80,000 short tons) in 2016.

Who knew? Not this, mostly life-long, New Englander. I was crushed. Ah, but now it's time for our Northern Neighbors who are being crushed.

"Over the last few days, we've seen new records of Covid-19 cases in a number of provinces. Hospitalizations are rising, families are losing people and our most vulnerable are at risk. Just because we're getting closer to vaccines doesn't mean we can afford to become complacent," warned Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau during a press conference Monday.

The point of this essay isn't about schadenfreude. It's about us ignoring history, in this case, their's. Canada has its Thanksgiving in October, the 12^th this year. And guess what? Canada had a post chowdown Covid surge. Did wannaBePresident Huey Long 2024 and his Covid taskforce pay attention and provide evidence in their warning? Apparently not, but the WaPo did; other news outlets as well.

Even though something like 90% of Canadians live within 100 miles of the USofA border, their climate runs about a month ahead, at least in the fall. Indoor socializing increased. Who would have thought that might happen? Why repeat the failures of others who are on the same path, just further along? I can't think of a reason.

Thought For The Day - 8 December 2020

You may have read it here first, but the various news feeds last night finally got around to the punch line wrt Covid vaccines. To wit, we've no evidence yet whether any of them is sterilizing/neutralizing. That quality is important, because if they're not, and folks who get the shot assume that they'll never be contagious, yet anothe reason for another surge on top of whatever one is currently in place.

So, we have two flies in the ointment: the quality of the vaccines and knuckleheads who fake having been vaccinated. Ragin contagion.

Have a nice day.

Parallax View - part the thirty fifth

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

  >= 1,000 -   909
100 to 999 - 1,788

(New) grand total of counties reads at 3,132. 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.

Now that it's been reported that you'll get a tracking card for your vaccinations, I expect the Red state knuckledraggers will subvert the system. It would be useful to have stickers like wearing one of those 'I Voted' stickers, except with 'I be vaccinated'. Of course, there'd spring up a robust black market in counterfeit stickers just so the anti-vaxxers and Covid deniers and general idiots can stop with the masks and distancing and such. Wouldn't surprise me that, once the actual cards go into circulation, counterfeits will appear; just so the Covidiots can have one to show when they get accosted. Never underestimate the perfidy of rednecks. 'I ain't gettin no shot, but I won't wear no mask neither, so I'll get me a fake card to show'.

Numerous reports that other countries are instituting 'I be vaccinated' identification as well. Just let's see if there's any enforcement.

The biggest issue with this week's map: the bottom two groups now amount to just 25 counties, or that the top two groups amount to 2,697! There are now, at least, seven bridges across the longitude from Galveston to Manitoba crossing only 100+ counties. Yikes! Paul Bunyan hop along with no trouble.

I suppose it's bad form to cheer, but Rudy getting nabbed is both poetic justice and no surprise. Whether he ends up bunking with Herman in the Afterlife is the remaining question.

Live By The Sword

Yet another in the continuing, but infrequent thank Keynes, installment featuring Greg Mankiw. In today's episode of "How the Stone Heart Bleeds", we find Greg ignoring the key factor explaining the decline of interest rates since, about, Reagan.

As income inequality has risen over the past few decades, resources have shifted from poorer households to richer ones. To the extent that the rich have higher propensities to save, more money flows into capital markets to fund investment.

That's the first of six bullets he offers to explain why interest rates decline: over supply. He painlessly ignores the other side of the coin, which is that the rich have a long history of, and well documented, much lower marginal propensity to consume. In other words, throw more moolah at a rich man, say by substantially cutting his taxes, he'll put almost all of it into passive savings (not bloody likely, matey) and assets, like say, the stock market. Such folks aren't in the business of building "more money flows into capital markets to fund investment", but in chasing capital gains, not dividends or physical capital acquisition generated returns. As more moolah flows in, share prices rise and E/P (yes, the pros recognize the inverse) ratios drop to meet Fed instrument interest rates; modulo real risk. That's your answer as to why the stock market hits all time highs in the midst of a pandemic and depression. Mo money, mo price. Greg doesn't mention that, of course.

The other side of the income inequality is just that the 99% have, relatively, less to spend on consumer goods and services, so producers have less incentive to build or replace production. And, of course, they haven't. As usual with the micro-view of any macroeconomic problem, thanks be to Samuelson, it is assumed and asserted that macro problems are analyzed as if they're just a mass of micro problems. If this pandemic has shown anything at all, economically and quantly speaking, it's that the collapse of aggregate demand is what drives us into depression. It's a leading indicator, not trailing.

One might also speculate that technological progress is running up against Mother Nature. Once the periodic table was filled in, ignoring for practical purposes the super-heavy (mostly manmade) elements, the limits of invention were set. Yes, on the organic side, the number of molecules to be concocted is virtually infinite, but not so on the inorganic side. To the extent that software has eaten the economy, how will we pull off the equivalent of the farm to factory migration of the first half of the 20^th, since the notion of re-training a 50 year old at-best-GED generic flunky into, say, a game coder. Or a C++ coder to write the next GL application? Moving from farm to factory, and better living standards, didn't demand significantly greater skill sets. One might reasonably argue that being a farmer takes more smarts than turning a wrench in Ford's River Rouge plant.

Mask of The Red Death - part the second

We will bury you. -- Nikita Khrushchev/1956

Does anyone really think the Soviets, aka today's Russians, have stopped? Of course not. Colluding with Russia might surely be considered treason. The first installment in this series was two and a half years ago:

My time in DC convinces me that the intelligence community, the NSA in particular, has the Trump Tapes. It's perfectly legal for NSA/CIA/FBI to sweep up Americans who engage with foreigners in treasonous activities. Doesn't matter where their feet are at the time. The cabal knows what it did, and was counting on not winning to keep their activities from public view. Thus the FISA nonsense. They just wanted the money. Just as Jared extorted from Qatar. In due time, the community will release the tapes. Whether Orange Julius Caesar spends time in prison is the only question.

So, yesterday it was reported that wannaBePresident Huey Long 2024's stooges he recently shoved into DoD are blocking Biden's transition folks from talking to DoD intelligence. As it happens, NSA reports up the chain of command at DoD. One might wonder what it is that wannaBePresident Huey Long 2024 doesn't want them to know? As was said two and a half years ago, NSA and wannaBePresident Huey Long 2024 know what he did, who he and his stooges communicated with, and what information was passed betwixt them.

The end game is now crystal clear. Stop Biden from seeing the raw feeds captured by NSA (I suspect he was privy at the time, after all he was second in command) before he can get that pardon, however done. If Biden has any hope of actually getting anything done, he as to
1 - spike wannaBePresident Huey Long 2024 for good and ever
2 - cow Senate Republicans

The best, perhaps only, way to accomplish that is to show the American people the receipts. He has to do it. And if before Inauguration, all the better. Before wannaBePresident Huey Long 2024 has the chance to get his pardon. Although, outing him after he's scuttled off to his lair might also aid in revealing him to be the craven coward that he truly is. Getting him a room at The Gray Bar Hotel is an extra.

Have I mentioned that I spent some time, around the time of Iran Contra, on Jack Anderson's staff? Not long, as it turned out, but long enough to report on another guns for money scheme, the guns going to Ghana. You can look it up. Met some spooks out in suburban Maryland in the course of the reporting. They look and act like what you see in the movies and the teevee. They know what wannaBePresident Huey Long 2024 did.

I Told You So - 4 December 2020

Way back in January, these missives observed that wannaBePresident Huey Long 2024 would ultimately take the martial law step to remain in power. Just like any petit dictator.

So, another day, another batshit moron. Now, where did I put my jackboots and brown shirt?

This is another 'appointee' at DoD by wannaBePresident Huey Long 2024

On December 2, [Scott O'Grady, a former fighter pilot and Trump loyalist] retweeted an account that shared an article that said former national security adviser Michael Flynn had shared a petition that called for martial law. He then retweeted the same account which suggested that Trump should declare martial law.

How long until wannaBePresident Huey Long 2024 sees the light?

Parallax View - part the thirty fourth dot five [update]

Another half (or thereabouts) week's up, so here are today's numbers:

  >= 1,000 -   860
100 to 999 - 1,806

(New) grand total of counties reads at 3,132. 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.

Happy days are here again!! Recall back when the Covid Sea to Shining Sea Memorial 100+ Trophy Dash was first proposed? This was in the height of the Southern Excursion of Covid, and there was nearly a straight shot from the Atlantic to the Pacific, starting in Virginia-Florida to California. But those two recalcitrant counties in New Mexico, Hildago and Grant, neither of which could get its act together and reach 100 active cases (this was after the change in definition instituted by Topo folks). They are, after all, small population jurisdictions: Hildago at 4,198 and Grant at 26,998. Well, thanks be to the good folks in Grant county and Callahan County, TX, the final bricks in the Yellow Brick Road from Atlantic to Pacific have been laid. To be fair to the rest of the Covidiots, there's also been some filling in of qualifying counties (eight, count 'em eight, bridges including across North Dakota and south Texas) through the Deep South states, but none necessary to complete the journey.

Let's hear it for Grant County!!

Vicissitudes being what they are, just in case either county backslides between now and Monday, a commeration seemed appropriate. Enjoy.

I Told You So - 2 December 2020

Way back in January, these missives observed that wannaBePresident Huey Long 2024 would ultimately take the martial law step to remain in power. Just like any petit dictator.

Well, Flynn has floated it

Recently pardoned former National Security Advisor and retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn and Atlanta-based attorney L. Lin Wood joined a growing list of President Donald Trump's devotees calling for martial law and having the military oversee a new presidential election.

How long until wannaBePresident Huey Long 2024 sees the light?

Parallax View - part the thirty fourth

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

  >= 1,000 -   821
100 to 999 - 1,816

(New) grand total of counties reads at 3,130. 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.

Well, what a difference a week makes. Today's data show that there are bridges between East and West along the north-south axis from North Dakota to Texas. Depending on how you trace, every state has at least one bridge of counties. I count 6. Yee Ha!! We'll soon have a third of counties at 100 cases. Considering the sparse populations in many of these states, bad, bad news.

Lowest two groups amount to only 33. The counties' total remains the same as last week, so, logically there is bigly climbing up the ladder. We all eagerly await the 'effect' of those millions who just had to have Turkey Day somewhere else.

Back To The Future - part the fourth

Way back in 2010, shortly after these endeavors began, was offered up this notion:

I had been thinking for sometime that always connected, sort of, devices on a network are semantically identical to the VT-220/RS-232/database/unix systems of my youth. In such a semantic, with appropriately provisioned multi-core/processor/SSD machines, BCNF databases with server-side editing of screens is perfectly, well, appropriate. Back to a future worth living (as opposed to the 3270 old future of the current web).

Well, now a decade later, I find this posting

But web browsers have become more capable, and cloud computing now enables a lot of sophisticated stuff to happen off the physical phone.

IOW, the device is a semi-dumb terminal, whether the PC or phone. The future looks wonderful.

Thought For The Day - 25 November 2020

How's this for a stinker?

With a limited supply of some number of vaccines in the offing, what will be the negative side-effect of this availability? What? A negative side-effect? How can that be?

Well, here's how. Those who do get the shot(s) will feel free to go about maskless, since they think (and some of the medical community, too?) that this 'protection' also means they're not infectious. Turns out, no one yet knows whether any of these vaccines turn out to be sterilizing, and that is what is needed to provide both protection and non-infection. Place your bets.

So what is worse, once these vaccines are out there, those with brains of a chicken and not vaccinated will take to not wearing masks. Faking protection. One could, and I will, predict a spike after vaccinations begin. You can bet the farm.

Parallax View - part the thirty third dot five

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

  >= 1,000 -   761 
100 to 999 - 1,808 

(New) grand total of counties reads at 3,130. 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.

There are now four routes from Sea to Shining Sea.

Another week where an unscheduled update begged for existence. Earlier in the week, one connection (they're all arrayed from Texas to Canada) was lost, so down to three. It looked like, as one might assume, may haps the Red states were getting with the program. Alas, no. Today there are five connections in the plains states. It's only a guess whether they'll stabilize, or whether one or two will drop below the threshold. I'd bet against that, of course. The pincer movement, from SoCal driving northeast and the Deep South driving northwest, mentioned many episodes ago has taken the territory (all but a handful of counties) at the 25 case threshold for some time. If it works at 100, well...

Given that all the red blooded Americans are 'headed home' for Thanksgiving, free to infect far and wide, what's your estimate of the odds more of those counties reach 100 within the next month? Yet more bridges to connect Covid from Sea to Shining Sea. With a little bit of luck, you could chose any interstate that your heart desires, and get across country in truly sick counties. Just don't stop to meet and greet the natives.

These connections are through, relatively, low population counties in low population states, modulo Texas, which has lots and lots of sparsely populated territory (Map 3); but more Big Blue Cities than the shitkicker folks would like. "Voters? We don't need no stinkin voters!!!" One can see how Texas is headed toward an intramural revolution in due time; shitkickers try to drive out the city slickers. But that's another episode. For these purposes, if all those counties, arrayed from south to north, reach the 100 count threshold, we's in big trouble Huck.

Parallax View - part the thirty third

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

  >= 1,000 -   740 
100 to 999 - 1,795 

(New) grand total of counties reads at 3,130. 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.

There are now four routes from Sea to Shining Sea. Still no Deep South route. Note that the 1,000⁺ group has jumped, a lot. Enough that it dropped the 100-999 group. And, to boot, the two smallest groups continue to shrink. Going up the ladder, of course, from 56 last week to 43. The week before that was 82.

Hospitalizations continue to break records. But we're rounding the curve.

Fraud

So, who's the fraud? Listen to President Huey Long 2024 and it's just the Democrats. But if you believe that, then you have to believe that all those Trumpsters that gave him those 73 million votes (he got about 63 million in 2016) stood in line amidst the pandemic for an extra 10 million. Remember that Johnson and Stein voters, just as whacko, totaled nearly 6 million in 2016. So, one might infer, that Dear Leader Yo! Semite of Thigh Land actually underperformed to Trump+Whacko total of 69 million, since he didn't pull in a heap of new votes. Recall that the Democrat, so far (New York still hasn't cracked 80% counted) has 80 million against 66 million in 2016, for a growth of 14 million. Not a close horse race.

Turns out, there appear to be heaps of fraudulent mail in Batshit J. Moron votes, too.

One stat that is interesting, though, is that [in Pennsylvania] 84 percent of registered Democrats who have been sent mail-in or absentee ballots have returned them, compared with 74 percent of Republicans.

Of course, there's not yet (and may never be) an accounting of how many of those voters who didn't return ballots went on to vote in person.

40 Minutes

Last night's '60 Minutes' had two of three segments which gave one pause.

Geezers (aka, 65 and up) -

The report, a return to some 90⁺ folks first done in 2014, details what has happened to some of those in a study on aging. Much of the report centered on memory deterioration, in particular what is, and is not, Alzheimer's. Turns out that memory loss, aka dementia, may well not be mostly Alzheimer's, but other pathologies. We see bunches of brain sections, some with plaques and tangles and some not. Some with are from people who never demonstrated Alzheimer's symptoms. Some not, did have symptoms. And some reveal other memory deterioration, TDP-43 which looks like Alzheimer's in living patients.

That was all very interesting, but then the segment jumped the shark.

One of the researchers in the study tells Lesley Stahl that of the people born today, half with live past 100. Such bullshit, and from someone who ought to know better.

One need only look at the data. Pick some date in the past, such as 1932 (FDR's socialism begins) or 1900 (an arbitrary, but reasonable demarcation between 'old medicine' and 'new medicine') as your baseline and 2,000 as your endpoint. Now, ask yourself two questions: 1 - what has been the change in life expectancy at birth 2 - what has been the change in life expectancy at 65 (the Right Wingnuts claim that the age was chosen for Social Security because that was average life expectancy)

The answer to 1 is: multiple decades.
The answer to 2 is: a few years.

It's absolutely not that 'people are living longer', it's that if you don't die young, you're just as likely to get really old as you ever were.

What's going on here? Simple: from your baseline date to 2,000, medicine (and some public health programs) drastically reduced the mortality of folks younger than geezerhood. Move the center of mass of a distribution to the right, and you move the mean/average too. You may or may not move the median, depending on lots of things. Childhood mortality, in particular due mostly to vaccines, plummeted. Anti-smoking campaigns reduced the number of smokers, and thus lung cancer. Workplace deaths plummeted as well, Covid in meat plants today notwithstanding. And so on.

Look at life expectancy at 65 for both your baseline date and 2,000 and you'll see a tiny fraction of increase compared to at birth. It's OK for innumerate civilians to be gulled by this, but a professional aging researcher? Boy howdy.

We've made little progress, at the cost of many billions of dollars, in reducing the mortality of age-related disease in the geezer cohort: cancers and cardiovascular. In the main, you'll get a few months more, much of it hooked up to IVs.

Now, there is one way that the assertion might be partially correct: if more folks are healthier as they reach 65, due to ongoing progress with the younger folks, then the 65 and over cohorts will enter healthier and thus more will make it to 100. But that's not the same as prolonging the lives of those who pass 65.

Are there areas of medicine aimed at the younger than 65 cohort which have not yet been solved? It seems, to me, pretty much not. Cancers, modulo those treated with Gleevec, have not been, by any definition, cured. Diabetes is rampant. Cardiovascular therapeutics are not moving very rapidly. And so on.

Long haulers -

The main takeaway, to me, was the possible explanations for why long haulers exist at all. Until they began banging a drum, "hey! we're here, dummies!", the received wisdom was that recovered meant immune and back to normal. Now we know that ain't necessarily so. And those who are long haul tend to be in the 20 to 40 cohort. One unsettling explanation for how long haul comes to be is that the immune system goes berserk.

Which leads me to wonder: these fancy, never before distributed technology, mRNA vaccines have short term 95% efficacy (I don't believe that number is the meaningful one, but that's for another episode). But what if that efficacy is the result of turbo-charging the immune system? Will we be trading some immunity for a swath of the population in long haul? Just askin.

Looser

The Left has been hawking the notion that Batshit J. Moron is pouting so stupidly because he's tasting public loss for the first time. Every time I hear that, I want to scream, since my lower brain stem memory is chock-a-block with bunches. Not the least being 6 (or 4 or 5, by some accounts) bankruptcies.

Rather than scouring the innterTubes for primary sources, I just asked, and came up with this top 10 list.

Then there's the spectacular losses from all those golf courses he just has to have. And, to no surprise, he cheats.

I Told You So - 21 November 2020

Way back in April I said (or speculated, but from logic) that asymps were key to transmission of Covid:

Given the length of contagion of asymps, low response cases, and ease of travel for such folk, the phat lady ain't even started to warm up those vocal chords. It'll be many months til she sings the first note.

The notion that, once we knew Covid was on the loose, even the uneducated morons in the Red states would cuddle up to sneezing, coughing, spewing sympomatics was ludicrous. Transmission this intense had to be hidden. It was. It is.

Well, boy howdy today CDC admits that asymps and presymps are key to transmission.

"Most SARS-CoV-2 infections are spread by people without symptoms," the agency said in a section of its website devoted to explaining the science of how to use masks to control the spread of the virus.

And, naturally

"Among people who do develop symptomatic illness, transmission risk peaks in the days just before symptom onset (presymptomatic infection) and for a few days thereafter."

Finally, for those morons who assert that the wee little critters float through the air all by their microscopic selves, and are asserted to flow through masks unabated, and thus masks are worthless

Cloth masks can stop people from exhaling the little globs of mucus or saliva that carry the virus.

(The NYT has a graphic that shows how masks work.)

The wee little critters ride side saddle on the droplets. Why wouldn't they? Why leave the nutrient rich, moist, warm, comfy lungs voluntarily?

Hey, Blanch!! Let's climb out and venture into the cold cruel world!! C'mon!! Do a swan dive of the tongue. It'll be fun.

They may be only partially cellular, but they ain't suicidal.

Sorry Dear, But I'm Sterile

One thing about the vaccines that has caused me some puzzlement: is it the case that being vaccinated, successfully, also mean that one never becomes infectious after exposure? Yes, we are told that the two vaccines about to be EUA are 95% effective in preventing illness in the person. But does that mean that the person never sheds virus to others?

That is the other question. Well, a recent piece from Bloomberg provides some answers. Sort of. And it is what I expected. The question boils down to: do these vaccines provide sterilizing immunity?

Immunity due to neutralizing antibodies is also known as sterilizing immunity, as the immune system eliminates the infectious particle before any infection takes place.

So, no infection in the person, ergo no shedding of infecting virus.

Rather than lots of quoting from the Bloomberg piece, just have a look.

By The Numbers - part the second

Can't wait for those snails in New York to finish counting, so let's go. All of the others are over 90%, and the vast majority are at 99%.

Once again, it's coming down to whether the national poll was right, and certain state polls were wrong. All things considered, it's just as likely that ex-President AuH₂O 2020's friends in the election machine industry (Georgia, Georgia the whole vote through) boosted his total (ES&S is not Dominion that Batshit J. Moron whined about and got the Georgia contract, in case anyone's interested). Not so outlandish. Consider the numbers. 2020, as of today at 1:27 PM

2016  Trump -   62,984,828
      Clinton - 65,853,514
      Whackos -  5,946,559

2020  Trump - 73,250,931
      Biden - 78,913,328

estimated additional margin from New York - 1,176,501
(they're lollygagging at just 76% counted, and calculated with current share %-ages)

The major takeaway from these numbers is simple: Trump in 2020 did a smidgeon better than Trump + Whackos in 2016. In round numbers:
2016 69,000,000
2020 73,000,000

The Democrats, on the other hand, blew the top off with 14,000,000 more votes.

The Biden margin is 6,838,898. Not a can of creamed corn, that. And it could reach 7 million without a whole lot of effort.

Of course, the question is, is it reasonable to infer that 2016 Whackos have gone all in on Trump this year? Certainly the Johnson folks would. The Stein, possibly a tad less, but more likely than for Biden. Nearly 7 million margin's a landslide anyway you dice it.

And, of course, not even the MSNBC Snowflakes have the brains to consider the numbers. Sad.

Parallax View - part the thirty second

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

  >= 1,000 -   618
100 to 999 - 1,803

(New) grand total of counties reads at 3,125. 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.

What's most noticeable this week is that the 'feeder' groups, the bottom two, have fallen to 56. That's it, given the total has been pretty much static for a while. There's nowhere to go but up. And we have a winner for the Covid Sea to Shining Sea Memorial 100+ Trophy Dash southern route. The connection is from Gray county, TX to Hutchinson county. The Deep South route continues to be blocked in southwest New Mexico.

The Covid Tracking Project has a similar map, which displays a per capita number. And the highest numbers run from the Deep South to the Northern Plains. Here in the pointy headed snowflake New England, things are much better, and we had to endure the initial onslaught without much help from anyone or knowledge about what works. We got things back from the brink. And many of us said that those western Red states ought not to be smug. Your time will come. And it has, in spades.

By The Numbers

There is, again, a bunch of weeping and wailing about the 'polls' being totally screwed up this time around. All things considered, it's just as likely that ex-President AuH₂O 2020's friends in the election machine industry boosted his total. Not so outlandish. Consider the numbers. 2020, as of today at 12:24 PM

2016  Trump -   62,984,828
      Clinton - 65,853,514
      Whackos -  5,946,559

2020  Trump - 72,640,768
      Biden - 77,958,009

The major takeaway from these numbers is simple: Trump in 2020 did a smidgeon better than Trump + NotTrump in 2016. In round numbers:
2016 69,000,000
2020 72,000,000

Of course, the question is, is it reasonable to infer that 2016 Whackos have gone all in on Trump this year? Certainly the Johnson folks would. The Stein, possibly a tad less, but more likely than for Biden. The polls, once again at the national level, will be well within the margin of error. Last estimate of final margin for Biden is ~8,000,000. That's a landslide anyway you dice it.

And, of course, not even the MSNBC Snowflakes have the brains to consider the numbers. Sad.

D'oh!

Sometimes I lose respect for 'business reporters', who appear to be totally divorced from even Econ 101. This has come up before, of course, during the Great Recession, but it bears repeating. The housing market is driven by the population's net earnings. If people's real net income goes up, housing sellers can charge more. But, as always, there's a catch. That Catch-22 is that, to a home buyer, neither the house price nor the mortgage rate is the defining restriction. The defining restriction is the monthly mortgage payment. Some lenders check the potential buyer's financials, and have a maximum percentage of that net position as the limit on how much house that buyer can have.

The thing is: the monthly nut is a function of both price and interest rate. As a result, when one goes up, the other goes down because the slackening of the one leaves more room in the monthly nut for the other to fill. And there's no way the bank or the seller is going to leave even a buck on the table. Way back in the Stagflation of the mid-70s one could get a house really cheap since the mortgage rate was well above 10% (not the most unbiased source, but what the hell).

So, today brings this report; quel fromage!! House prices go up just when interest rates are at their ebb. Who wooda thunk it?

While mortgage rates remain at record lows, home prices are rising in more areas across the country.

Yeah, no shit Sherlock. Damn. And these knuckleheads get paid to write his drek.

I Told You So - 10 November 2020

It was just a few days ago when you read this in a missive:

Sleepy Joe has to order the release of the unredacted Mueller report and the full audio of every contact between Russians (and their surrogates)

In other words, once again, out the bastard to shut him and his lemmings up. Well, on today's Nicole Wallace MSNBC show she asked Frank Figluzzi why ex-President AuH₂O 2020 was behaving erratically and made that point, and went a step further, which I've also considered but not voiced in these missives, that I recall. Ex-President AuH₂O 2020 is fully capable and willing to sell out all that intelligence he disregarded. Now that's it worth a few bucks, he'll sell. Based on reporting, he ain't got a pot to piss in nor a window to toss it out of.

That should keep you awake at night. Stuffing DoD with idiots may, just may, portend a coup. That will keep you awake tomorrow night.

Parallax View - part the thirty first

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

  >= 1,000 -   498 
100 to 999 - 1,783 

(New) grand total of counties reads at 3,126. 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.

Still no direct southern route, but you can get there once you're past South Dakota and dive down to Arizona, and thence onto California. Once in SoCal, you can wend your way up to the Canadian border. Just don't try to cross into BC. No, no, no!!

The number of counties in the two bottom groups is down to 82, which means, of course, that nearly the entire country is up to its sphincter in Covid. These are in low population areas, so getting to 100 current infections in such counties would mean rather considerable devastation. We already know that populated rural areas are nearly out of hospital space, ICU or not.

The Pfizer/German vaccine reported data today, claiming 90% immunity. Color me skeptical. There's 0 evidence that an mRNA vaccine can be so effective. Previous attempts with mRNA vaccines haven't been so hot. May be the tenth time's the charm. Or not. The duration of immunity measured in the trial may well not be long enough to get from Patient 0 to Patient 70% (or whatever). Without that level of durability, it's just a case of a dog chasing its tail. Here's a somewhat more measured report.

Keep in mind what that 90% is actually measuring: of the Covid cases naturally occuring, 90% were in the placebo group, NOT that 90% of the vaccine group did NOT get infected when exposed to the same level of Covid in the same environment etc., whether in placebo or vaccine. In stat terms, are both groups balanced with respect to factors of disease? Figures don't lie, and all that. Based on reports, we have no idea what the incidence of Covid exposure is in either group.

Or, as a paid pundit puts it:

"When the trials started there were a lot more cases in the U.S. at that time," said Dr. Vamil Divan, an analyst at the bank Mizuho. "That's a key unknown. How many of these participants are enrolled in hotter areas versus New York or Boston?"

And so on for numerous factors, known and unknown.

These Boots Are Made For Walking

Trump has made no public indication that he plans to concede or recognize the legitimacy of Biden's victory, and CNN has reported that his campaign is planning a messaging blitz to fuel its argument -- unsupported by any evidence to date -- that the President's second term is being stolen from him through corrupt vote counts in battleground states. -- CNN/9 November 2020

Martial law is on the way. Time to get your jackboots on.

He's Melting

The wicked witch is dead. One had hoped for a Tuesday Blue Tsunami, but the actual event might well be more satisfying.

Like Mussolini, ex-President AuH₂O 2020 was, metaphorically, strung up by his heels in the town square. And fileted, ever so slowly, in tiny pieces until only the fat and bones remained. Took four or five days, depending on when you started counting. Satisfactory.

Sleepy Joe currently leads the popular vote by more than 4,000,000; the newscritters see the possibility that he hits a total of 80,000,000 and margin in the vicinity of 8,000,000. Not quite AuH₂O territory, but it will do.

Fortunately ex-President AuH₂O 2020 is on the way out. Unfortunately, I am reminded that one of the talkinghead critters had the gonads (a couple of months ago) to say what I've been thinking since longer ago than that: ex-President AuH₂O 2020 is perfectly willing to sell to the Russians and/or Chinese and/or North Koreans and/or Any Tinpot Dictator all the intelligence material that only he is privy to (modulo the agents who collect it). Not that there's no precedent for him doing that; the Russians in the Oval Office might give you a clue. Hope that helps you sleep.

I've said it before, but it bears repeating. Sleepy Joe has to order the release of the unredacted Mueller report and the full audio of every contact between Russians (and their surrogates) and ex-President AuH₂O 2020 (ditto) at 12:01 pm 20 January. Out the bastard full and complete. Only then can the sane folks, particularly those who were gulled by the Ghoul, finally understand what the last four years were all about. If he were only a useful idiot (not chatting directly with Russian agents, for instance) rather than a conspirator, that would be a smidgeon of evidence in his favor. I doubt it, but I won't ignore the possiblity.

Count on Me

The Trumpians continue with the canard that all votes must be counted by the end of election day. Needless to say, but I will anyway, for at least the first hundred years (from ancient American History class memory), the first 'automated' way to vote was some form of retained paper ballot.

Voting is the cornerstone of American democracy, but the United States Constitution doesn't say exactly how Americans should cast their ballots in elections. Article 1, Section 4 simply states that it's up to each state to determine "The Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections." Over the past 200 years, the mechanics of voting have evolved from open-air "voice votes" to touch screen digital consoles.

So when did sort of machine voting happen? According to this piece:

In the late 19th-century, Jacob H. Myers invented his lever-operated "Automatic Booth" voting machine, an engineering marvel that would come to dominate American elections from 1910 through 1980.

Another source has this to say:

By 1934, about a sixth of all presidential ballots were being cast on mechanical voting machines, essentially all made by the same manufacturer.

While I can't find a document with a date, it appears that 'instant' voting tabulation wasn't possible, nation wide, until WWII or even later.

So the Trumpians are fools, once again. What they choose to ignore: 1) 'calling' the election by AP (almost always) is based on recorded votes and expected results from unreported precincts (i.e., precinct Q in state Y has always voted Democrat, so the remaining votes will likely be Democrat) and 2) votes aren't certified by the states until weeks later (mostly) anyway. It's only the certified vote that determines who's President, not a loser concession speech. Certification dates are all over the calendar, from (in 2020) Nov. 5 to Dec. 11.

And we're still not done. The 'electors' vote on Dec. 14. That's what determines who won. So put on a pot of coffee and set a spell.

By George!

For such a long time, I've been wracking my brain to figure out how a Big Blue City Plague managed to find its way into God's Country of the upper Midwest and Northern Plains. I mean, those places don't take kindly to city slickers from Back East. Don't tarry too long in Fargo.

Then, the Fog parted. By George!! I've got it. And so, I have a modest proposal. George Soros is a well known Jewish billionaire terrorist, and knows perfectly well that New York City is having a growing problem with Brooklyn Hasidim spreading Covid liberally within that community. Well, the solution is simple for a guy with that much money. Pay a few hundred of the infecteds to clean up to look like normal New Yorkers, and send 747s loaded with them to all those dinky cities out West. They only need to stay a few days to spread the plague widely, hanging out in saloons and salad bars and Dew Drop Inns. In no time at all, God's Country is Hell on Earth. A perfect plan.

I hope I figured it out first. I must act Swiftly. Wouldn't want to be lagging behind QAnon.

I Told You So - 5 November 2020 [update]

Very early on, I puzzled and mused on the most important factor at issue in this election: what's going to happen with the Johnson voters from '16? So far as I could tell when I first mentioned it in these missives, and ever since, not one of the many pundits who weighed in mentioned this in any way. (Turns out, long before the campaign started, there was this missive.)

My take was that these 4,489,341 voters were going to go to ex-President AuH₂O 2020. One could raise a similar question about Stein's 1,457,218 as well. (numbers from the wiki.) I concluded that Johnson voters were in Trump's pocket and Stein's would stay home smoking weed ("drinking Merlot" earlier). In other words, the Democrat would start out with at least a 4 million vote deficit.

Well, lo and behold, we get this reporting today from the NYT (Baker and Haberman)

He received at least 68 million votes, or five million more than he did in 2016, and commanded about 48 percent of the popular vote, meaning he retained the support of nearly half of the public despite four years of scandal, setbacks, impeachment and the brutal coronavirus outbreak that has killed more than 233,000 Americans. [one need only (re-)read Fromm's "Escape From Freedom" to know why.]

Note: that's, sort of, on the front page of my dead trees version. Sort of, because my copy of the paper (printed hours and hours ago) says, "at least four million".

I told you so.

Parallax View - part the thirtieth

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

  >= 1,000 -   417
100 to 999 - 1,698 

(New) grand total of counties reads at 3,125. 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.

The northern route for the Memorial Trophy Dash remains in place. The southern route is nearly connected, if only a laggard teeny (by Texan standards) county would just get to work.

Carnac Predicts - part the fourth

It is very hard to predict, especially the future.
-- Niels Bohr (or may be Yogi Berra or Mark Twain or ...)

Thus encouraged, let's game some scenario about the outcome of Election Day, not so much as to who'll win (Biden in a landslide if the fiddling by the Trumpicans is sequestered), but what might come of the Covid pandemic. The two situations are connected, alas.

Here's what we 'know'.

1 - Democrats have chosen mail-in voting much greater than Trumpicans.

Trump supporters are more than twice as likely as Biden supporters to say they plan to vote in person on Election Day (50% vs. 20%).

Thus we should expect the pre-election day infections to continue pretty much on the same course in Blue areas following election day, while Red areas should spike even higher. Thanksgiving won't be giving much thanks in Red areas. We 'know' that congregant activities, less so outdoors than in, lead to more infection. In-person voting is a mix. That 50% level seems kind of squishy support for ex-President AuH₂O 2020, don't you think? Shouldn't it be closer to 90%? Shouldn't they be following Batshit J. Moron faithfully? Covid isn't a problem? May be they're not all as dumb as a sack of hair?

2 - The CDC now says that 15 minutes of contact with an infected, and need not be continuous, is sufficient to lead to infection. In-person voting in Red areas is most likely to be among the mask deniers, and thus conducive to spread. Bigly.

3 - There were spikes, albeit small-ish and localized, following primaries earlier in the year.

4 - Since some states ban mail-in vote counting before election day, it's likely that early results from such states will have ex-President AuH₂O 2020 in the lead; unless the Blue Wave is a Total Tsunami, of course. And see 6, below.

5 - Some evidence/reporting that rallies do lead to localized Covid spikes. As you would expect, ceteris paribus.

6 - The determining factor: what effect will the evident nationwide spike over the last weeks have on the Trumpican preference for in-person voting? What we know today is somewhat dated and from polling.

A - They'll do it anyway, thus leading to an initial ex-President AuH₂O 2020 vote lead and subsequent spike in Covid in Red Areas. They'll feel like they won; by dying.
B - They'll see the grim reaper waiting at the polling place door, choose self-preservation, and go home instead. The Blue Wave becomes a Blue Tsunami.

I'm not about to predict whether A or B will dominate, but keep in mind that the average Trumpican is old, white, barely educated, sick, and rural; not the sort of folk who'll do well if struck with Covid. Not that most of them understand that, given their predilection for attending those rallies.

Carnac isn't willing to stick his neck out, too much, with regard to the election outcome, but whatever the outcome, a spike-upon-the-spike is pretty much a slam dunk in Red areas. They don't believe in Covid, it's all a Left Wing Hoax, so let's not send them any resources to support their (soon to be) overrun hospitals. Seems fair to me.

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.

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.

Silver Lining

Said to The Wife a few weeks ago that the Pandemic Recession is really bad news for Dear Leader Yo! Semite of Thigh Land for a perverse and cynical reason: all those folks made redundant by his stupid Covid-19 response have plenty of time to vote.

This just in: people are waiting in line for multiple hours to vote early, in person. Why not? Couldn't happen to a nastier guy.

Parallax View - part the twenty seventh

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

  >= 1,000 - 285
100 to 999 - 1,466

(New) grand total of counties reads at 3,102. 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 is the first crossing of the 3,100 threshold of total counties since the re-definition. Yahoo!! Looking at the USGS/Census Bureau definition(s) of 'county', we find on the order of 3,141 total entities. Of the other defined entities, Alaska seems the least likely to contribute. Well... if you slide the map to look at Alaska, behold! Some surprisingly large numbers. So, I guess the country has rounded the corner to eliminating Covid-19? Don't you think so too?

As to what the numbers imply, let's start with the Big Bang: 100 to 999. No where near that count before, and it keeps sucking up the lower levels inexorably; they keep losing count while the total creeps up. This does not bode well, despite what Batshit J. Moron keeps saying. Cowabunga! to quote Snoopy, the Phantom Surfer.

The 1,000+ counties are now dispersed across the country, no longer just in those evil Coastal Blue States; in fact mostly in the Heartland where Real Americans live. Given that most of that territory consists of much smaller population counties, the per-capita rates there must be through the roof. Well, let's not just guess, let's go see... another interesting map, which displays the per-capita counts by grouping. And, yes, the Southeast and upper Midwest lead the pack. And, furthermore, there's a distinct path north from Texas to the Dakotas that's also evident from the Topo maps. God's country is no protection from Covid-19, despite what the Right Wingnuts clearly believe.

The density in the Southeast is particularly bothersome. As ex-President AuH₂O 2020 so stupidly said back in February

Feb. 10: Now, the virus that we're talking about having to do — you know, a lot of people think that goes away in April with the heat — as the heat comes in. Typically, that will go away in April. We're in great shape though. We have 12 cases — 11 cases, and many of them are in good shape now.

Clearly, what's going to happen once all those folks, mask-denying all, go indoors like everybody else? A virus grows in Birmingham?

Apples and Oranges - part the second

Today the Left Wing News contained much angst, comparing the 2016 Clinton/Trump poll numbers to current Biden/Trump poll numbers. Their point: the margin for Clinton and Biden vis-a-vis Trump, and she still lost. None of these whiners put this margin in context. Which context is simple: Johnson pulled 5% and Stein pulled 2%. My arithmetic says that's a 7% solution.

The poll shows Clinton with 50% support to Trump's 38%, with 5% backing Libertarian Gary Johnson and 2% supporting the Green Party's Jill Stein.

Now, naturally, in 2016 if both Johnson and Stein had been absent, the likely results would be the same in the electoral college. And Trump might well have won the popular vote, given that a Johnson voter would have gone with Trump, and a Stein voter would have stayed home drinking Merlot. This year, there's no leakage. Keep that in mind.

Crazy as a Bat

 

Well, whether steroid induced (likely) or just another hail Mary attempt, much of the left wing news is making much hay over Batshit J. Moron's declaration that all negotiations over the next Covid Relief legislation halt.

THIS JUST IN: Batshit J. Moron just tweeted that airlines should get a few billion right away. We return you to our missive already in progress.

I'm not convinced. Remember that Batshit J. Moron thinks that he has absolute power and can negotiate always from the power chair. So, given that, what's going on? Simple: he's telling Rural Radical Right Wingnuts that there'll be NO Covid Relief legislation if he isn't re-elected. Of course, if he's thrown out on his ear, that just means there'll be a short delay in crafting legislation, moreso if, as seems likely today, the Senate flips to the Democrats. The worse case is 20 January 2021.

Just another blackmail attempt by a low-class grifter.

What the RRRWs don't get, because they're pitifully uneducated and lack the ability to critically think, is that if Batshit J. Moron is legitimately re-elected and the Senate doesn't flip (because they're flummoxed by the Moron), the Covid legislation will be pitifully teeny. And most of it will go to Big Business, especially real estate and such. Here's what Powell expects if the Damn Gummint doesn't take the economic fracturing seriously

A second wave of coronavirus could "more significantly limit economic activity, not to mention the tragic effects on lives and well-being," Powell said. "Managing this risk as the expansion continues will require following medical experts' guidance, including using masks and social-distancing measures." In addition to gaining control of the pandemic, Powell reiterated his calls for more fiscal stimulus aimed at supporting America's most vulnerable.

The 'most vulnerable' doesn't include the millionaires and billionaires who visit Mar-a-Lago.

Thought For The Day - 5 October 2020

Did you see the beached trout gasping for breath atop the South Portico? Not even your average third-world dictatorship would keep such an idiot.

Parallax View - part the twenty sixth

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

  >= 1,000 - 259 
100 to 999 - 1,379

(New) grand total of counties reads at 3,097. 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.  

Well, what can I say? Some times bad things happen to bad people. Some times the arrogant and the stupid get punished by Karma or Mother Nature or God. 

And some times the 1% get far better treatment for the bad that happens to them. In a bit more than a month, Dear Leader Yo! Semite of Thigh Land will make another attempt to destroy health care for tens of millions of 99%-ers who don't have nearly instant access to one of the top medical facility on the planet and the only extant drug therapies. If you're among the hoi polloi, you're told to isolate until your symptoms become severe. Don't you dare go to the hospital (as Christie just did) at the onset of Covid. Don't you dare. Okay, so you end up ventilated just because your disease progression is so severe that nothing much else can be done when you're finally allowed in past the security system. 

WaPo, behind paywall so I won't put in a link, reported that the quick transfer to Walter Reed was specifically timed super early just so Batshit J. Moron could be videoed walking to the chopper. Of course. 

Right Wingnut Radical Populists all behave the same way, and all have the gift of gab to convince the uneducated to support them. If only these knuckleheads were just those being pillaged by the RWRPs, I wouldn't care less. But, of course, we all get to suffer. Moscow Mitch keeps his corner of power thanks to the knuckleheads. On the other hand, we're one baby step closer to President Pelosi. I wonder if Moscow Mitch and the rest of the Radical Right have caught on? 

[3 October] Putin's Other Puppy, Ron Johnson, has been re-infected with Covid. The Radical Right is reaping the reward of ignoring the virus and the science of beating it. Good on them. 

[5 October] A bit of analysis. Just a bit. The first version using the high-end groups was 6 July. Here is the count for the top three groups that week:

  >= 1,000 - 361
100 to 999 - 1,053
  25 to 99 - 930

total is 2,214 

And here is the count for this week:

  >= 1,000 - 259
100 to 999 - 1,379
  25 to 99 - 918 

total is 2,556 

So, in about three months, the high count groups taken together have increased by about 350. And there's about 350 more now in the second place group knocking on the Big Door. Yeah, Covid is in the rearview mirror. (Also note that in August, Topo folks switched to 'current infections'.) 

The two major differences over the period (other than the basis for count): 

- drop in 1,000+ counties; mostly in the northeast, southwest, and Florida. 

- very large increase in second and third group counts running up the center of the country; aka God's Country, aka Red States. 

If life goes as it has been, one might reasonably expect the 1,000+ group count to skyrocket over the next two to three weeks. We'll see. Remember, that piece of the USofA has a boat load of rural counties, so if the migration does happen, it will mean that the per capita counts in those counties must be sky high. We'll see about that, too.