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.