By The Numbers - part the eighth

Boris BadEnough is, was, and always be a grifter, just like wannaBePresident Huey Long 2024. He and his handlers managed to convince the poorly educated shitkickers that mainland Europe was the enemy, and the UK (insignificant islands that they are) had the economic ooomph to best the mainland. And so it was.

Today we get the first report on the consequences of allowing the minimally intelligent to vote

The United Kingdom exported goods worth £8.1 billion ($11.3 billion) to the European Union in its first month completely outside the bloc, a 41% decline compared to December, according to the Office for National Statistics. The drop off in trade is similar when compared to January 2020, ONS data shows.

This was totally predictable, and was predicted by those not enthrall to Right Wingnut propaganda. Next, at some point, we'll see reporting on what the loss of Brussels' support to the needy shires of Britain has on the shitkickers. Will they finally get it? Or not? Will Boris BadEnough's administration replace the lost subsidy monies from Brussels? Or not?

Parallax View - part the forty eighth

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

  >= 1,000 -   407
100 to 999 - 1,415

(New) grand total of counties reads at 3,105. 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.

[2 March] Once again, one of The Stooges does it again. I am sure it will work out just fine.

Gov. Greg Abbott announced Tuesday he's lifting the mask mandate in Texas, even as health officials warn not to ease safety restrictions.
...
Also, effective next Wednesday, all businesses of any type are allowed to open 100%, Abbott said.

Well, just like the Social Darwinist approach to electricity.

[7 March] Once again, DeSantis is DeLuded. Remember this tracing from a year ago? I'll bet we'll see it again in a few weeks. Ronny VirusSeed is at it again. And, for good measure, Bolsonaro has gone batshit crazy, again.

Brazil's outbreak, among the worst in the world, has become a source of global concern as new, more contagious variants have become dominant in much of the country. Scientists say there is worrisome evidence that the variants can make reinfections more likely and they are urgently studying whether these variants reduce the efficacy of vaccines.

[8 March] So, today's report indicates that Ronny VirusSeed has a perfect situation to plant Covid at least as widely as he did last year.

So far, the agency has reported more than 2,600 known cases of the variant [B.1.1.7] across 46 states, Puerto Rico and Washington DC. Nearly a quarter of those cases are in Florida.
[my emphasis]

Conundrum - part the second

Another conundrum to puzzle over.

We now have the J&J 70% solution, and Fauci, et al tell us take whatever vaccine is available soonest. The reason is simple: all of the vaccines keep you out of the hospital and out of the morgue. The worst that can happen is a mild case of 'the flu'. Take the damn vaccine.

We also know, nearly from the beginning of this problem, that mild to moderate Covid is the main source of long-haul syndrome.

About 33% of COVID-19 patients who were never sick enough to require hospitalization continue to complain months later of symptoms like fatigue, loss of smell or taste and "brain fog," University of Washington (UW) researchers found.

"We were surprised to have one-third of people with mild illness still experiencing symptoms," said lead researcher Jennifer Logue. She's a research scientist with the UW department of medicine's division of allergy and infectious diseases, in Seattle. "If you contract coronavirus, there's a good chance you could experience a lingering effect."

Now, there's the conundrum, if we end up converting lots of folks into mild disease, are we just trading severe disease at the outset for, perhaps life-long, debilitation? Only The Shadow knows.

Parallax View - part the forty seventh

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

  >= 1,000 -   484
100 to 999 - 1,501

(New) grand total of counties reads at 3,113. 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.

[24 Feb] One explanation, hinted at here a few times, for the cliff dive of infections beginning the first week of January is that wannaBePresident Huey Long 2024's Herd Mentality has, in fact, occurred. Here's a news bit from last June:

Number Of Americans Infected With Virus Could Be 10 Times Higher Than Official Count, CDC Chief Warns

By CDC Director Robert Redfield's estimate, that means that up to 24 million Americans may have been infected by the virus. "Our best estimate right now is for every case reported there were actually 10 other infections," Redfield said.

Since today's total, from the NYT Covid page is 28.3 million (aka, 88.6% if you times 10 and divide by 330 million Americans), that's darn tootin Herd Mentality.

Of course, the Right Wingnuts have a logic problem, in that they've spent the last year claiming the reported number of infections is inflated by the Fake News Media and the Deep State, so if they now turn around and say that the real number is 283 million infections and we're out of the woods and can go back to Normalcy, huh? A rock and a hard place that even the shitkickers in the empty counties can't help but notice.

A growing number of conservatives (especially fringe sites like Alex Jones' Infowars) are embracing a conspiracy that government-approved death tolls are inflated for various political reasons—and some reports suggest President Trump will soon endorse the murky theory as well.

[26 Feb.] Yet another conundrum: the pundits are reporting that the reason for the cliff dive in infections since the first week in January is due to vaccination in nursing homes and the like. Okay? Here's the conundrum: the spike in infections that started after Labor Day (yes, that is when we started to climb the top hill of the Cyclone) is clearly seen in the NYT graph, with the ultimate spike coming after Turkey Day. As you can see, there were, if the numbers are accurate, dips after Turkey Day and Christmas. Now we have the cliff dive following New Years.

So, the question, do these numbers jibe with nursing homes? It seems to me no. Going back to at least, March it was clear that nursing homes were a problem, and steps started to be implemented to keep outsiders from bringing in Covid.

In all, then, two situations must be true for the nursing home & vaccination hypothesis as explanation for the cliff dive to itself be true:
1 - it was nursing home residents that drove the rocket ride from Labor Day
2 - the efforts to isolate nursing homes from outside Covid were a dismal failure (this report indicates not quite dismal, but not markedly greater than general community)

While one might see how 2 could be true, 1 being true stretches credulity. Reviewing the reporting following Labor Day, there is no extra weight put to nursing homes as the site of increase, rather the ususal Covidiot suspects: parties and such among the young at heart. This report supports such:

By November 6, 2020, approximately 569,000 - 616,000 COVID-19 cases and 91,500 deaths were reported among LTCF residents and staff members in the United States, accounting for 6% of total state COVID-19 cases...

IOW, long term care wasn't the site of the rocket ride. How, then, could it be the site of the cliff dive?

Now we have the scientists that be warning that the cliff dive is heading back up (see today's NYT Covid graph). And Newsom and Cuomo being flagellated, more or less over 'restrictions'. They both should retaliate with the truth: case counts go up when the populations refuse to do what they're told, just like 2 year olds.

It is still a puzzlement. But I am still not convinced that nursing home vaccinations could drive down an infection situation not made in nursing homes in the first place. The usual suspect is data fiddling in the Red states. We gotta prove wannaBePresident Huey Long 2024's Nero fiddling was the correct response!!

Parallax View - part the forty sixth

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

  >= 1,000 -   575 
100 to 999 - 1,583

(New) grand total of counties reads at 3,116. 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 only news of note is that David Kesslar, on MSNBC, noted that one possible explanation for the cliff dive in infections is that vaccinations of the 75+ cohort has an unexpectedly large impact on transmission. I am not sure I buy that explanation, since, by now, all those travelers/revelers from Turkey Day to New Year's Day would be separated from the congregant settings. As improbable as it seems to me, Herd Mentality, especially in the Red State Axis is a possible explanation for the dive. That axis has shown the greatest shift from red to blue.

In all, I remain suspicious. Here is a report (second sourced, on 6 February)

The number of coronavirus tests administered daily in the United States has been trending downward for more than two weeks. And though experts say the trend is too fresh to set off major alarm bells, the decline raises the possibility that testing has reached a ceiling at a time when scientists say the nation should be conducting millions more tests per day to help stop the spread of the virus.

It is also true, from the NYT Covid page, that hospitalizations have fallen nearly as fast. It is a puzzlement.

By The Numbers - part the seventh

Just to show how dumb Texans are, here's the official building code frost line:

10 inches

The states with that depth or less are either warmed by the Pacific or the Gulf or the Atlantic. Texas is, and always has been, in the bull's-eye of jet stream incursions, whether from negative NAO or Polar Vortex. Always has been.

Somewhat oddly, one might say, Connecticut and Rhode Island have deeper frost lines than Massachusetts, yet are a tad more southerly and coastal. I'm going to guess that the MA number is an average of Boston area and Western counties. Let's go see. Here's a helpful map, courtesy of the Damn Leftwing Gummint. As can be seen, if you pick a town say Pittsfield, then zoom out, you'll see that frost line does increase as you move from the Boston bay area west.

In engineering, there is the principle of 'margin of safety'; it is everywhere in civil engineering of occupied structures. I recall 'knowing' that elevator cables are required to support more than the designed maximum load, 100% or twice design load is the figure that sticks. Well, here is a 'professional' view

The combined strength of the cables must exceed the weight of the fully loaded car by ten times (safety factor of 10). In most instances, each individual cable will be able to hold more than the car weight, and, oftentimes an elevator may have as many as eight such cables.

So, from an engineering point of view, burying water pipes only to the 'expected' frost depth is a margin of safety of zero. Not insulating gas transport pipes is a margin of safety less than zero. Not winterizing turbines, ditto. Northern Europe, even Greenland, manages to run both just fine in winter. About loss of solar when it is snowing, that one rests at the feet of Mother Nature.

Of Feuerstein

Adam Feuerstein is something of an enfant terrible (although recently admitted to 53 yoa), but does offer up an interesting tweet every now and again. This recent one is one such. The interesting bit isn't his tweet, but rather one of the comments:

Most small cap PMs are underweight biotech. It only matters when they start losing to the benchmark due to this factor for a period of time. It may be concerning but remember, those who questioned tech's influence on S&P500 in 2017 got burned underweight FAANG.
-- Spreckels_Organ

Two maxims of playing the market

- past performance is no indicator of future results
- never, ever, conflate the performance (past or current) of one sector with the future of another

The reason for those maxims is as simple as the Sun rising in the West: Mr. Market's reactions are to events, not data. The data generating process and the event occurrence process in those sectors are as different as the Sun and the Moon. Tech works from some fundamental and, reasonably, well understood laws from Mother Nature, but bio-pharm? If you ever took science in college, especially chemistry, then you will recall the length and weight of the Organic book vis-avis Inorganic; tech operates in the latter while bio-pharm the former. No to forget that the boundary between chemistry and physics makes bio-pharm heavy in the former while tech is heavy in the latter. Again, the laws of physics are far more regular. Tech is Latin while bio-pharm is American English; one is structure the other is chaos. Throw in a big stinking pile of biology? The 90%+ failure rate and the serendipitous discovery of so many compounds makes predicting, especially the future, so difficult (a tip of the Hatlo Hat to Yogi).