COVID-19 notes:
Fisman: For those arguing that Ontario’s surge represents more testing: no. We can look at cases per pop, tests per pop, and cases per test. We have a surge driven by the 10-29 age group (have had for a month now), now bleeding into older adult age groups:
Comeau’s site has lots of cool dashboards: here’s link for Ontario’s key indicators
COVID – why
terminology really, really matters
… moving on from that nonsense, there is some extremely good news buried
in here. It goes as follows. At the start of the epidemic, the only people
being tested were those who were being admitted to hospital, who were seriously
ill. Many of them died. Which is why, in France, there was this very sharp,
initial case fatality rate of 35%. In the UK the initial case fatality rate was
I think 14%. Last time I looked at the UK figures, the case fatality was 5%,
and falling fast. This fall has occurred, and will occur everywhere in the
World, because as you increase your testing, you pick up more and more people
with less severe symptoms. People who are far less likely to die. The more you
test, the more the case fatality rate falls.
It falls even more dramatically when you start to test people who have no
symptoms at all. In fact, as you broaden your testing net, something else very
important happens. You gradually move from looking at the case fatality rate to
the infection fatality rate.
… It is falling, falling, everywhere. Where does it end up, this hybrid
case/infection fatality rate? Remember, we are still only testing a fraction of
the population, so we are missing the majority of people who have been
infected, mainly those who do not have symptoms. Which means that these rates
must fall further, as they always do in any pandemic.
The best place to estimate where we may finally end up with COVID, is
with the country that has tested the most people, per head of population. This
is Iceland. To quote the Centre for Evidence Based Medicine: ‘In Iceland, where
the most testing per capita has occurred, the IFR lies somewhere between 0.03%
and 0.28%.’ Sitting in the middle of 0.03% and 0.28% is 0.16%. As you can see,
Iceland, having tested more people than anywhere else, has the lowest IFR of
all. This is not a coincidence. This is an inevitable result of testing more
people.
…
Stop panicking – it’s over
Whilst everyone is panicking about the ever-increasing number of cases,
we should be celebrating them. They are demonstrating, very clearly, that COVID
is far, far, less deadly then was feared.
… I know it is going to be virtually impossible to walk the world back
from having made such a ridiculous, stupid, mistake. There are so many
reputations at stake. The entire egg production of the world will be required
to supply enough yolk to cover appropriate faces. Of course, it will be denied,
absolutely, vehemently, angrily, that anyone got anything wrong. It will be
denied that a simple error, a mix up between case fatality and infection
fatality led to this. It will even more forcefully stated that COVID remains a
deadly killer disease and that all Governments around the world have done
exactly the right thing. The actions were right, the models were correct. We
all did the RIGHT thing. Only those who are stupid, or incompetent cannot see
it.
To Beat the
Coronavirus, Build a Better Fence. With cool maps & graphics at NYT. By Tomás Pueyo,
who wrote The Hammer and The Dance
The lasting
misery of coronavirus long-haulers
Months after infection with SARS-CoV-2, some people
are still battling crushing fatigue, lung damage and other symptoms of ‘long
COVID’.
Regular Related Fare:
World Bank Warns Recovery Could Take "5
Years" but OECD Raises Global Economic Outlook, Boxing-In
'Easy-Money'-Promoting Policy-Makers
FOMC Signals Rates Unchanged Through At Least 2023
Despite GDP Forecast Upgrade
Economists Warn
Of "Fiscal Fatigue" As US Faces Economic "Wasteland"
Without Stimulus
Ian Shepherdson: "What they are doing now, (or rather what they [i.e. the govt] are not doing now), is raising the risk that large bits of the economy will be a wasteland by the time a [Covid-19] vaccine comes through," he said. "That doesn't mean it can never recover, but it does mean that the recovery will be longer and harder and more painful and there'll be a lot more misery in the meantime. It seems very counterproductive to me."
Yelp data shows
60% of business closures due to the coronavirus pandemic are now permanent
Down-to-Earth
Aspects of the US Economy in Near-Real Time
US Industrial
Production Big Disappointment In August As "V" Evaporates
But, good news is surge in intermodal shipping demand:
US Railroad
Traffic Posts First Annual Jump Since The Start Of 2020
& Container rate
records are shattered as US imports surge
& Consultant says
shippers using U.S. West Coast ports can’t book rail on BNSF and UP
Regular Fare:
Global Debt Is
Exploding At A Shocking Rate
The primary reason why the global financial system is on the verge of daily collapse, and is only held together with monetary superglue and central bank prayers thanks to now constant intervention of central banks, is because of debt.
BOE Steps Up
Negative Rates Work as Economic Threats Mount
Tankus: What We
Learned-And What We Didn't- From the September 2020 Powell Press Conference. Overall, a Disappointing Experience
So, what did we learn?
Number one: The Federal Reserve has repudiated it’s earlier policy
stances … This is important because it is a concrete illustration that the Fed
has shifted to a more “dovish” policy and away from its historic tendency to
generate unemployment to preempt rising inflation
…
Number Three: The Federal Reserve is still claiming it will hit its
targets- “in the longer run”. … What is remarkable about these forecasts is
that they clearly establish that the Federal Reserve expects to
fail for the “foreseeable” future. By their own forecast admission, they are
unable (or as I’ll discuss later, perhaps unwilling) to hit their targets. This
suggests that they need new tools or another independent administrative agency,
likely a fiscal one, needs to be created to hit these macroeconomic targets.
Remarkably, the chairman said that this forecast assumed an additional fiscal package from congress,
so if congress doesn’t come through (and at this point that seems likely),
economic outcomes will be much worse than what they’ve forecasted.
A Staggering 84% Of All S&P500 Assets Are Now Intangible
Bubble Fare:
Technically
Speaking: Is Everything “Priced In?”
Lots Of Risks To The Bullish Outlook
The market has fully priced in whatever economic recovery we are likely
to see near-term.
1.
There is clear evidence of weakening economic
data and slower earnings growth.
2.
Investors are counting on a “vaccine” to
restore the economy to its previous strength fully.
3.
The markets have entirely discounted the
potential for an election “event.”
4.
Market participants have discounted the need
the additional stimulus to sustain economic growth and recovery.
5.
The Fed is on the sidelines for now. Without
additional Treasury issuance, the Fed has less ability to provide additional
liquidity to the market.
6.
While the economy is indeed recovering, along
with employment, it will still likely fall well short of pre-pandemic levels
stifling future earnings growth and revenues.
7.
Investors are paying exceedingly high
valuations based on a full earnings recovery, which is unlikely to be the case.
…
The reason we suggest selling any rally is because, until the pattern
changes, the market exhibiting all
traits of a “topping process.”
·
Weak participation
·
Failure at long-term resistance
·
Extreme bullish speculation
·
Negative divergences in relative strength
The
5-Ingredients For Another Market Event Remains
The ingredients: Leverage, Valuations, Psychology, Ownership, Momentum
(not just) for the ESG crowd:
The tipping points at the heart of the climate crisis
Ending The War
Against The Climate Movement
Trump hasn’t just made it easier for fossil fuel
companies to increase emissions — he has also changed rules to make it harder
for climate activists to fight back.
Democrats’
Climate Change Lies.
The Republicans lie about the harm they do to the
planet, and the Democrats lie and pretend they’re not doing the very same
things.
It is easy to blame Donald Trump, who among other things famously
withdrew from the 2015 Paris climate accords. Although it must be pointed out
that the agreement is an honor system-based declaration of intent and not a
requirement to take action. Signatory nations chose goals for themselves while
also allowing temperature increases that are deadly for people living in the
global south. The agreement specifically states that industrialized nations
don’t have to pay compensation for the damage they do to the rest of the world.
Trump’s stunt gives the impression that Democrats are serious about fighting
climate change, but the facts prove otherwise.
Barack Obama recently took to twitter with photos of orange California
skies and implored voters to act. “Protecting our planet is on the ballot. Vote
like your life depends on it -- because it does.” He didn’t say who voters
should support. One assumes he meant the Democrats, but they have turned their
backs on their own timid, mealy-mouthed proclamations of concern.
The Democratic National Committee (DNC) removed language from its
platform which called for ending government subsidies to fossil fuel companies.
That betrayal was just as well, because the Democrats’ record on the
environment is nothing like the image they project on social media.
…
Neither of the two capitalist parties is in any position to stop the
planet from heating up. That is because both do the bidding of the corporations
causing the record breaking temperatures to occur. One party lies about the
damage it is causing and promotes easily dismissed quackery to defend itself.
As usual, the Democrats sneer and pretend to act differently when at every
opportunity they do the very same things that are killing the planet.
‘The dark side of meritocracy’ in America today
the time-honoured question remains: does the US economy exist to serve
the people, or does the citizenry exist to serve the economy? The Covid-19
crisis has put this puzzle into especially stark relief.
… A succession of administrations have frayed the social safety net and
dismantled regulatory controls. Corporate money has bought unprecedented
influence in electoral campaigns and reaped unprecedented political power in
return. In The Triumph of Doubt: Dark money and the science of deception, the
epidemiologist David Michaels details many of the victories these corporate
interests have won. Michaels, the former head of the Occupational Safety and
Health Administration under the Barack Obama administration, spent years
weighing the survival of workers and citizens against the short-term profits of
corporations. In his book, he documents not only a shocking disregard for human
welfare on the part of big business, but also a co-ordinated effort to
compromise the culture of knowledge itself.
… The pseudo-scientific and political opposition to acknowledgment of
climate breakdown … funded by some of the largest corporations, wealthiest
families, and most conservative foundations in the United States, has convinced
a substantial and politically potent portion of Americans that government
regulations of any kind are an attack on the free-market “liberty” of
corporations, families and individuals.
… Koch-funded groups have subverted language with Orwellian flair:
Americans for Prosperity promotes regressive tax policies and wage suppression;
the Heartland Institute promotes the despoliation of the American landscape by
sowing doubt about climate and environmental hazards.
Related: How Charles Koch
Is Buying Credibility With Academic Investments
Quotes of the Week:
Noam Chomsky: “At the time of writing, concern for the COVID-19
crisis is virtually all-consuming. That’s understandable. It is severe and is
severely disrupting lives. But it will pass, though at horrendous cost, and
there will be recovery. There will not be recovery from the melting of the
arctic ice sheets and the other consequences of global warming. Not everyone is
ignoring the advancing existential crisis. The sociopaths dedicated to
accelerating the disaster continue to pursue their efforts, relentlessly. As
before, Trump and his courtiers take pride in leading the race to destruction.”
Pics of the Week:
EXTRA FARE:
Socio-political Fare:
We lost because
we weren’t big enough. Where now for Anglo-American
socialism?
Trump didn’t win in 2016
because of any significant surge in support for White supremacy or the
Republicans, but because millions of Democrat-leaning voters would not vote for
Hillary Clinton. It’s these people that Biden must excite.
At the same time, if he is
to overcome Trump’s resources and his own limitations, he will need money from
the financial and business interests that traditionally bankroll Democratic
campaigns. Harris’ nomination is as much about securing their support as
enthusing Black and women voters. Presumably this will free Biden somewhat to
woo those older, white, mainly working-class voters who were attracted to Trump
by his economic populism but often expressed enthusiasm for Bernie Sanders.
…
Biden himself, in his rare moments of
lucidity, sometimes gives the
impression of being a figure that we really haven’t seen before in either
country: a fully paid-up member of the neoliberal political class who actually realises that the
historical moment has changed, demanding a radical divergence from the policy norms of the past
quarter-century. There’s no reason why a cynical and pragmatic politician
couldn’t draw that conclusion for themselves without any ideological
conversion, and it’s a remarkable testimony to the power of ideology that so few seem to
have done so, in the face of the obvious historical reality on either side of the Atlantic.
…
Anglo-American liberalism likes to tell itself a story. According to that story, the years since the
1950s have encompassed a great era of progress. Despite the inconvenient
intercession of events like the Iraq war, or conservative attempts to suppress
LGBTQ equality, the past few decades are generally seen in a positive light: a
steady march from the darkness of post-war social conformity, into the light of
a diverse and tolerant twenty-first century culture.
None of this is simply
untrue. Many people now inhabit societies that tolerate a diversity of
lifestyles, beliefs, identities and customs that has no historic precedent in
the history of human civilisation. For some of us, opportunities for
self-expression and self-fulfilment have expanded almost beyond the most
utopian dreams of earlier generations. But these opportunities have not been
widely shared. In fact they have been denied to growing numbers of the poorest
people, with ever-more appalling flagrancy, as the institutions of post-war social-democracy
have retreated.
That is why the greatest
uprising against racial injustice of recent times has come just three and a
half years after the first Black President of the USA left office. The same
history that made possible the emergence and consolidation of a Black middle
class, that made a Black head of state seem possible in America, did nothing to
weaken the tendency for municipal police forces to treat Black communities like
subjugated people under military occupation. In fact that history only made the
situation worse.
Several things are
simultaneously true. Today, if you have a degree and a professional salary,
then your chances of being held back because of your gender, your sexual
orientation or the colour of your skin have never been lower. That doesn’t mean
you won’t be held back at all, or that you won’t continue to suffer indignity
and harassment in many quarters. At the same time, if you don’t enjoy those
economic advantages, then the freedoms apparently granted to you by this brave
new liberal world are of very little use: and this is more true every year, as
inequality intensifies, as real wages stagnate, as the power of unions and
local urban communities continues its 40-year decline.
The twentieth-century labour
movement and the institutions of the welfare state were notoriously racist and
misogynistic, at their worst. But they also afforded a degree of basic economic
protection for the poorest workers that has been systematically stripped away
since the 1970s. For poor white workers,
especially straight men, the decline in the value accorded to their cultural
status as straight white men has coincided with a decline in their economic and
political power. In some, this provokes intense resentment of an increasingly
cosmopolitan political elite that drives support for a far-Right agenda. It’s
these resentments that push so many voters – alienated from the culture of the
cosmopolitan elite – into the arms of the nationalist Right. …
Taibbi: The
Post-Objectivity Era
We live in a time of incredible political division. Many of us have had the experience of talking to someone whose idea of reality seems to be completely different from our own. It’s become difficult to have an argument in the traditional sense. People with differing opinions are often no longer even working from the same commonly-accepted set of facts. It’s a problem that has a lot to do with changes in how we receive and digest information, especially through the news media. … the press has gone from selling a vision of reality they perceive to be acceptable to a broad mean, to selling division.
Other (KDJ-inspired) Fare:
the stubborn simplicity of
the Democratic Party’s coup narrative. Their elites have worked themselves and
their base into a frothing lather of existential fright. In article after article,
liberal intellectuals and activists have been talking for months about how
Trump could steal the election or refuse to leave the White House even if he
loses. But if the Right dares to point out that Democrats are actually changing
the rules of the electoral process and actually speaking publicly about
refusing to concede even if they lose, well, this only proves that the Right is
going to steal the election and refuse to concede if they lose!
… As Anton and even Kilgore
observe, Hillary Clinton and company have already put Biden and Harris on
notice—along with the rest of us—that the Democrat ticket must refuse to
concede, no matter how lopsided the loss. Is this report from the Daily Beast
wrong? “Inside the coalition, there is dispute over whether Biden should even
concede if he wins the popular vote but loses the Electoral College…. The
Transition Integrity Project noted that there would be immense pressure on
Biden to fight it out.” You get that? Even if Trump wins the Electoral College
and therefore the presidency, like every other President in American history,
the Left is preparing to—to what, exactly?
Apparently Biden
WANTS To Lose The Election
I suspect Democrats lose because not just because they are incompetent but because they don’t actually care. Losing is fine, they’ll still be OK. Pelosi will still be rich as Croesus, Biden will be fine, Harris will fine. Winning is nice enough, but they don’t need to win. They don’t even have a power drive, they’re people with sinecures protecting them savagely, but since they don’t need to win to keep their comfortable lives, only keep control of the party, they are only savage to those who threaten their control of the party (the left), not to the right.
Biden may win, but if so, it
will be because he backs into victory. To lose against Trump, after Trump has
overseen the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression and been
incompetent enough to lose at least 150 thousand more lives to Covid than
necessary, will, however, be its own sort of awe-inspiring achievement, trumping
even Hillary’s loss in 2016.
Heart Hate Obama Fare:
The Plot Against Libya: An Obama-Biden-Clinton Criminal Conspiracy
This is Libya, the real Libya. The Libya that has been constructed from the ashes of the US-NATO war that deposed Muammar Gaddafi and the government of the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya. The Libya now fractured into warring factions, each backed by a variety of international actors whose interest in the country is anything but humanitarian.
But this Libya was built not by Donald Trump and his gang of degenerate fascist ghouls. No, it was the great humanitarian Barack Obama, along with Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden, Susan Rice, Samantha Power and their harmonious peace circle of liberal interventionists who wrought this devastation. With bright-eyed speeches about freedom and self-determination, the First Black President, along with his NATO comrades in France and Britain, unleashed the dogs of war on an African nation seen by much of the world as a paragon of economic and social development.
But this is no mere journalistic exercise to document just one of the innumerable crimes carried out in the name of the American people. No, this is us, the antiwar left in the United States, peering through the cracks in the imperial artifice – crumbling as it is from internal rot and political decay – to shine a light through the gloom named Trump and directly into the heart of darkness.
There are truths that must be made plain lest they be buried like so many bodies in the desert sand.
The War on Libya: A Criminal Conspiracy
To understand the depth of criminality involved in the US-NATO war on Libya, we must unravel a complex story involving actors from both the US and Europe who quite literally conspired to bring about this war, while simultaneously exposing the unconstitutional, imperial presidency as embodied by Mr. Hope and Change himself.
In doing so, a picture emerges that is strikingly at odds with the dominant narrative about good intentions and bad dictators. For although Gaddafi was presented as the villain par excellence in this story told by the Empire’s scribes in corporate media, it is in fact Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden, former French President Nicholas Sarkozy, French philosopher-cum-neocolonial adventurist Bernard Henri-Levy, and former UK Prime Minister David Cameron, who are the real malevolent forces. It was they, not Gaddafi, who waged a blatantly illegal war on false pretenses and for their own aggrandizement. It was they, not Gaddafi, who conspired to plunge Libya into chaos and civil war from which it is yet to emerge. It was they who beat the war drums while proclaiming peace on earth and good will to men. ...
Tweet thread of the Week:
Obama: “When there is a vacancy on the SCOTUS, the
President is to nominate someone, the Senate is to consider that nomination...
There's no unwritten law that says that it can only be done on off-years.
That's not in the Constitution text.” … “The Constitution says that I nominate
candidates for SCOTUS when there's a vacancy... [The Senate's] job is to give
this person a hearing, to show the courtesy of meeting with them. They are then
free to vote whatever their conscience dictates." … "I'm going to do
my job. I'm going to nominate somebody... It's not as if the Senate calendar is
so full that we do not have time to get this done."
R.I.P. Fare:
RIP Stephen Cohen, a friend and guide who spent the last four years of his life standing against a tidal wave of hysterical Cold War hostility with elegance and erudition. His intellectual courage was anchored in experience and scholarship his antagonists could never match.
On Friday, 18 September,
professor Steve Cohen passed away in New York City and we, the “dissident”
community of Americans standing for peace with Russia – and for peace with the
world at large – lost a towering intellectual and skillful defender of our
cause
… At all times and on all occasions, Steve Cohen was a voice of reason above all. The problem of our age is that we are now not only living in a post-factual world, but in a post-logic world. The public reads day after day the most outrageous and illogical assertions about alleged Russian misdeeds posted by our most respected mainstream media including The New York Times and The Washington Post. Almost no one dares to raise a hand and suggest that this reporting is propaganda and that the public is being brainwashed. Steve did exactly that in War With Russia? in a brilliant and restrained text.
Stephen Cohen
Has Died. Remember His Urgent Warnings Against The New Cold War.
As one of the precious few
western voices of sanity on the subject of Russia while everyone else has been
frantically flushing their brains down the toilet, this is a real loss. I
myself have cited Cohen’s expert analysis many times in my own work, and his
perspective has played a formative role in my understanding of what’s really
going on with the monolithic cross-partisan manufacturing of consent for
increased western aggressions against Moscow.
Fun Tweet of the Week:
America — according to Accordian Trump...
(Bonus) Quotes of the Week:
Johnstone: The Kafkaesque extradition trial of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange continues, with each frustrating day making it clearer than the day before that what we are watching is nothing other than a staged performance by the US and UK governments to explain why it’s okay for powerful governments to jail journalists who expose inconvenient truths about them.
Ian Welsh: “I always wanted to live in a Mediterranean
climate like California’s, but who knows where will have that climate in a few
years?”
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