COVID-19 notes:
The main objective of this article is to critically appraise the
coronavirus mortality estimation presented to Congress. Informational texts
from the World Health Organization and the Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention are compared with coronavirus mortality calculations in
Congressional testimony. Results of this critical appraisal reveal information
bias and selection bias in coronavirus mortality overestimation, most likely
caused by misclassifying an influenza infection fatality rate as a case
fatality rate.
But: Epidemiologist Rod Jackson: Why Covid is at
least 10 times more deadly than the flu
Estimates of the proportion of people who die from Covid-19 have been
controversial, with some even dismissing it as similar to a bad flu. There are
three main problems accounting for this controversy. In this article, I
describe each of these problems and some of the ways that epidemiologists such
as me me try to deal with them.
COVID-19
patients who get enough vitamin D are 52% less likely to die of the infection,
study finds
Can we, like,
stop praising Sweden now?
‘A bit
unnerving’: COVID-19 survivors worried about future consequences
SARS-CoV-2 vaccines in development
Regular Related Fare:
Coronavirus
Economic Distress Hitting Indebted Professionals
The Wall Street Journal
describes tonight how the line between two tiers of the Covid economy isn’t as
tidy as many might think. It isn’t just hourly workers in service businesses
like restaurants and hotels who are seeing smaller or even no paycheck. High
income professionals are also in distress due to having relatively high level
of borrowings which makes them vulnerable to declines in income.
We warned early on, as did a Bloomberg story in June, that layoffs would
increase higher up the job ladder as it became more evident that Covid-19
damage was not just severe but long-lived. From the Bloomberg account (note the
chart is interactive, so go to the original story if you’d like to play with
it):
The pandemic isn’t finished with the U.S.
labor market, threatening a second wave of job cuts—this time among
white-collar workers.
Close to 6 million jobs are potentially on the
line, according to Bloomberg Economics. That includes higher-paid supervisors
in sectors where frontline workers were hit first, such as restaurants and
hotels. It also includes the knock on-effects to connected industries such as
professional services, finance and real estate.
And the Bloomberg analysis found that these “second wave” losses would have
a disproportionate impact:
While not as high in number as the initial
wave of layoffs, the second round will still pack a sizable economic punch, as
it will include middle-class Americans who drive discretionary spending, a
major growth engine.
Laid-Off Workers
Cut Spending, Hunt for Jobs as Extra Unemployment Benefits Run Out
Coronavirus and
US Job Postings Through September 18: Data from Indeed.com
Ernie Tedeschi: Data from Homebase and UI claims have so far been
consistent with +700K payroll jobs in September seasonally-adjusted
Upside-Down Markets: Profits, Inflation and Equity
Valuation in Fiscal Policy Regimes (hat tip: Ahmed, via Ian)
An upside-down market is a market in which good news functions as bad
news and bad news functions as good news. The force that turns markets
upside-down is policy. News, good or bad, triggers a countervailing policy
response with effects that outweigh the original implications of the news
itself.
… Right now, there's a bullish asymmetry in the potential for an
upside-down dynamic to take hold. If things get worse, the economy will
probably get more fiscal stimulus—potentially an unlimited amount, pending the
outcome of the upcoming election. But if things get better, the Fed is not going
to immediately tighten. Instead, the Fed is going to wait until it sees
persistent demand-driven inflation above 2%—an outcome that could be difficult
to achieve, particularly if inflation is measured on a core PCE basis. Of
course, the investment community has already sniffed out this bullish
asymmetry; it's one of the main reasons why the market has been able to set
aside the ongoing uncertainties of the COVID-19 pandemic and trade its way back
to all-time highs.
Regular Fare:
Global banks
defy U.S. crackdowns by serving oligarchs, criminals and terrorists
The FinCEN Files show trillions in tainted dollars flow freely through
major banks, swamping a broken enforcement system.
… Though a vast amount, the $2 trillion in suspicious transactions
identified within this set of documents is just a drop in a far larger flood of
dirty money gushing through banks around the world. The FinCEN Files represent less than 0.02% of
the more than 12 million suspicious activity reports that financial
institutions filed with FinCEN between 2011 and 2017.
CBO at it again, projecting higher Treasury
yields;
their forecasting model may need to be tweaked; seems they didn’t get the
memo about persistently lower growth and underwhelming inflation
Couple of interesting charts from Tedeschi:
Bubble Fare:
US small-cap firms are running record leverage
The Astonishing
Lack of Value in Value
Halfway Between
the Gutter and the Stars
Somehow, the name “econophysics” can be misleading, as it is an
interdisciplinary axis of research that was put forward by physicists like Per
Bak or Didier Sornette. The study of complex systems has implications in almost
every branch of science (e.g. seismology, cosmology, climatology, biology,
anthropology, sociology, economics), and what is striking is the fact that so
many systems exhibit very similar patterns also known as self-organized
criticality. If humans are part of nature, then it seems legit to assume that
their complex interactions obey to natural laws.
Thinking outside the box has always been essential, including for
scientists or traders. While most economists postulate how the economy is
supposed to work, and then built beautiful but meaningless theoretical
frameworks on top of that, physicists like Bak argue that the right
intellectual approach is to understand how nature works first, before trying to
build any predictive model.
The LPPLS model is all about that. When a financial
market is overwhelmingly dominated by a narrative, with all participants sharing
the same opinion, then it tends toward a form of swarm intelligence, a
singularity. But such a state is highly unstable and the system because
vulnerable as there is no support since all investors have capitulated.
Researchers like Sornette have shown that such moments are characterized
by typical patterns like an acceleration of fluctuations, as the fight between
bulls and bears is getting fiercer.
Of course, the action of the Fed will be decisive for the evolution of
the market until the end of the year (or at least until November 3).
But the thing is, it is a bubble. And like all bubbles
in human history, it will pop. And there will be no happy ending. No need to
be a rock-star physicist to understand that.
(not just) for the ESG crowd:
The one chance we have: The pandemic gave the world a golden opportunity to fix the climate crisis. We’re about to waste it.
The world is approaching a tipping point on climate change, when
protecting the future of civilization will require dramatic interventions.
Avoiding this scenario will require a green economic transformation – and thus
a radical overhaul of corporate governance, finance, policy, and energy
systems.
What If
Preventing Collapse Isn’t Profitable?
A Green New Deal
without growth?
‘Math Doesn’t
Yet Add Up’ for Utility Decarbonization Goals: Deloitte
There are big gaps between U.S. utilities’ net-zero targets and their
plans for retiring coal and gas plants
Copenhagen:
World's First Carbon-Neutral Smart City by 2025
UofT Prof Jessica Green: Less Talk, More
Walk: Why Climate Change Demands Activism in the Academy
Discussion Paper: Big Oil Reality
Check — Assessing Oil And Gas Climate Plans
Introducing “The
Slick,” a New State-Based Reporting Project on Oil, Climate and Politics
Considering climate change’s existential threat, the dearth of regional
reporting on the corporate forces driving global warming is striking.
ESG Quote of the Week:
Katharine Hayhoe: “It’s as if we’ve been
smoking a pack of cigarettes a day for decades” and the world is now feeling
the effects but “we’re not dead yet.”
EXTRA FARE:
Quote of the Week:
Manson: Here’s a factoid to ruin
your Sunday morning breakfast: the human mind did not evolve to be good at
understanding truth — the human mind evolved to be good at understanding what
is most useful for the human mind. And spoiler alert: what is useful is usually
not true. It turns out that we are not very objective in our beliefs. It turns
out that our perceptions and reasoning are heavily influenced by cognitive
biases.
COVID Fare that for some reason I don’t want to publish internally:
In Which We
Debunk A Covidiot Pamphlet. In which Moon of Alabama dismantles Off-Guardian B.S.
’ll try one more time, if
only to show you that me heart’s in the right place. Yes, lockdowns work, and
so do facemasks. But that doesn’t mean all lockdowns or facemasks or
requirements for either work all the time. The UK was very late with its first
lockdown, and let in a million people through their airports without testing
them. After they did lock down, another 100,000 came in, no testing.
And now people there say
lockdowns don’t work. Have you seen this report, or that report? Sorry, but I
don’t have to. A virus spreads by jumping from host to potential host. Keep
them apart and it can’t spread. I don’t need a “scientific” probe to figure
that one out. The principle of a lockdown works, but that’s still only half the
story.
The facemask thing is a little
more complex perhaps. But it’s complicated only because various governments
have neglected to do the one thing they should have: make sure they have the
best facemask ready for everyone, the one mask that is proven to be effective,
preferably mass-produced in their country/state/territory. But have you seen
N95 facilities being erected where you are?
Now the entire world is
walking around with masks that they all can see offer little protection, and
mostly where they have little effect. Moreover, I see lots of people here in
Athens who washed them with their underwear and wear them again the next day,
because they’ve been told they have to cover their face with something
anything. But that’s not how this works. What little protection those blueish
masks that are everywhere offer, is gone once you wash them. What’s left is
merely symbolic.
And as for the well-meaning
crowd that make their own masks, stop trying, those things don’t do a thing and
they make you look stupid. There are actually norms and data and whatnot for
this, and putting your panties on your face does not comply with any science
whatsoever. It’s just scaring people, and we have enough of that, thank you.
Non-woven masks work best, that mean anything to you?
The droplets that the virus hitchhikes
on to get from one host to another are way too small to be stopped by granny
getting creative with her bathroom curtains. But it’s not you, it’s your
government which should have had an N95 mask production facility in place
months ago.
They should also have
mass-produced vitamin D, and zinc, because these cheap elements would have
decreased the new cases, and the severity of them, by probably half. But no
western government that I know of has even mentioned the role of these cheap
supplements in the COVID story.
How odd is that? It appears
to be in line with the hydroxychloroquine story, which went from “It will kill
you!” when Trump first mentioned it in public, to “It’s not effective” in
Fauci’s terminology. But medical doctors I’m talking to still maintain it
works, and perhaps more importantly, continue to treat their infected patients
with it.
Sort of the same thing goes
for the western Big Pharma attempts to get a vaccine, there were 239 of those
trials last time I counted. But there’s never been a vaccine for any of the
many coronaviruses, and not for lack of trying. Unless you count the Russian
Sputnik V, developed in a fundamentally different way from the western ones,
but that wouldn’t make Big Pharma any profits, so we all choose to just ignore
and discard it.
It’s “funny” to see how all
those politicians like the power to tell people what to do, lock them down
etc., but when their measures don’t work, and that’s the case all over Europe,
they blame their people and never themselves. I haven’t seen even one say, I’m
sorry, I failed, I step down. Instead they all talk about doing more of what
didn’t work. More lockdowns. Hey, you failed, move over!
In countries like Britain
and Holland, they’re so busy trying not to explain how and why they still
didn’t have enough PCR testing capacity 9 months into the pandemic, that they
completely fail to see that PCR is the wrong testing method to use on a grand
scale. Holland has “identified” 5 rapid testing options and needs until
November for their “experts” to find the best one.
Meanwhile they have a “rapid
test test” facility where doctors and nurses apply the tests, which should cost
perhaps €1 a piece max, but which set you back a very reasonable €225. Good
lord. The incompetence is not going to stop here and now, it’s engrained in the
political and societal brains and structures.
And it’s not just the
politicians, the “experts” also refuse to see and acknowledge that they are
utter failures. They, too, blame the people. But just like they should have all
secured access to 100 N95 masks for every individual, and Vit. D and zinc, and
HCQ if people still get sick, they should have made rapid tests available for
everyone to use at home, twice a week or so, if only just to ease the pressure.
But health care has been institutionalized, so that will only happen when
things get terribly out of hand.
All these failures have cost
a lot of lives, and will continue to do so, and do a huge amount of damage
economically and mentally. The idea of second lockdowns is insane, given that
no N95 masks, no Vit. D, no zinc, no HCQ were ever made available. But the
lockdowns will come regardless. Because the politicians and experts can and
will blame it all on you.
In an event like this,
people’s worlds get much smaller, and they only know what their “local” media
tell them, and those media are in line with the respective political systems.
In crisis times, you as a journalist don’t attack the leading party, no matter
how badly they fail, because they will deflect any criticism right back onto
you, and say it’s your critical reports that made people behave badly.
It’s circular logic at its finest. And since all these fine people in all these fine countries got it all wrong in the same way, they can use each other for cover. France can point their finger at Spain, and they at Italy, and all hail the King of Sweden. …
Socio-political Fare:
… then there’s the miasma
hanging over the Swamp, a toxic mist of lies, misdirection, dis-info, propaganda, bad faith,
and sedition, illuminated by pulsing blue gaslight that affords a toxic blanket
of protection to the denizens of the Swamp. Now a storm is brewing. …
The climate is changing, all
right, but not in the way that some think it is. The political climate is
changing, and what has been a pestilential subtropical sink on the Potomac is
overdue for that cleansing we’ve heard about. …
Case in point: Joe Biden.
Many will wonder in the days to come whether the sole and otherwise
inexplicable reason for his elevation to candidate-for-president was a ruse to
avoid prosecution — his own and others. The matter was neatly laid out a year
ago during the impeachment ploy: After the color revolution in Ukraine, 2014,
Mr. Biden was designated not just “point man” overseeing American interests in
that sad-sack country, but specifically as a watchdog against the notorious
deep corruption of Ukraine’s entire political ecosystem — as if, you
understand, the internal workings of Ukraine’s politics was any of our business
in the first place.
The evidence aired publicly
last year suggests that Mr. Biden jumped head-first and whole-heartedly into
the hog-trough of loose money there, netting his son Hunter and cohorts
millions of dollars for no-show jobs on the board of natgas company, Burisma. And
then, of course, Mr. Biden stupidly bragged on a recorded panel session at the
Council on Foreign Relations about threatening to withhold US aid money as a
lever to induce Ukraine President Petro Poroshenko to fire a prosecutor looking
into Burisma’s sketchy affairs. Naturally, the Democratic Party impeachment
crew accused Mr. Trump of doing exactly what Mr. Biden accomplished a few years
earlier. …
All of which is to say that
the Democratic Party has other things to worry about besides who will replace Ruth
Bader Ginsburg on the Supreme Court. That may be hard to believe but it’s how
things are now after four years of implacable, seditious perfidy from the
party.…
Speaking of which: RBG, another example of the cult of
personality, like the Obamas, or, say, Mother Teresa; its not that she didn’t
do good things for women’s rights; but she was hardly the paragon of virtue
that some who fall prone to hero-worship seem to believe; see, for example:
Matt Stoller’s
tweet thread:
I'm confused by RBG, as I don't really understand how she understood the point
of law or what she meant by being committed to liberalism or equality. The best
I can come up with is that she was a Clinton Democrat, a Watergate Baby style
judge appointed Carter then Clinton.
Betrayal,
Infuriating Betrayal.
(as an aside: I truly hate
Trump. And yet the Democrats have made me hate them more.)
'Permanent Coup'
excerpt: How Biden pushed to quash investigation of company paying son
$80k/month
Lee Camp: What’s the
Difference Between ‘Villain’ Assange & ‘Intrepid’ Woodward?
Ben Norton: Leaked docs
expose massive Syria propaganda operation waged by Western govt contractors and
media
Western government-funded
intelligence cutouts trained Syrian opposition leaders, planted stories in media
outlets from BBC to Al Jazeera, and ran a cadre of journalists. A trove of
leaked documents exposes the propaganda network.
Throw Sand In
The Gears Of The Machine
Humanity will continue along
its self-destructive trajectory until the masses use the power of their numbers
to force real change. Humanity will not use the power of its numbers to force
real change as long as it’s being successfully propagandized not to do so. The
oligarchic propaganda machine is therefore the primary barrier to our
transition from our self-destructive patterns into a healthy collaborative
relationship with each other and with our ecosystem.
So throw sand in the gears
of the machine. If enough of us throw enough sand, we can cause the whole thing
to break down.
Kill public trust in the
mass media by exposing their lies at every opportunity, from whatever platform
you can gain access to. Anywhere you can find an audience, whether it’s an
audience of one or ten thousand, kill public trust in the establishment
propaganda engine.
Amplify solid voices,
arguments, narratives and facts that those in power don’t want amplified….
Humanity will either awaken
from its propaganda-induced trance or it won’t. ... When you have a species
that is being pushed along a self-destructive trajectory by plutocratic
propaganda built in service of plutocratic agendas, all you can do is show them
they’re being lied to and give them the opportunity to transcend the lies.
Sadly, more RIP Fare:
The Death of
Andre Vltchek, A Passionate Warrior for Truth
In this age of arm-chair reporters, he stood out for his boldness and
indefatigable courage. He told it straight.
An example of Andre’s anti-war views: In The Small
Canadian City of Regina, Resistance Is Brewing
And, on youtube: André Vltchek: NATO, Canada
& Western Imperialism
Better yet is his article here: Love, Western
Nihilism and Revolutionary Optimism
Satirical Fare:
Trump Announces
He Will Only Leave Office If A Challenger Beats Him In Ritual Combat
Hiker Wandering
Through Oregon Forest Enjoying Vibrant Reds And Golds Of Fall
Tweets of the Week:
Democrats’ Supreme Court
hypocrisy: 2020 Dems should listen to their 2016 selves
Fun Tweet of the Week:
Bonus Site of the Week:
Why the Year 1971 Changed Everything
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