BRIEFLY NOTED: For 2021-09-11 Sa
Things that went whizzing by that I want to remember:
FIRST:
Beth Moll: Unvaccinated Are 5X More Likely to Catch Delta, 11X More Likely to Die: ‘Three fresh CDC studies show vaccines holding up against delta…. Fully vaccinated people are about five times less likely to become infected with delta, 10 times less likely to be hospitalized with COVID–19 from delta, and 11 times less likely to die from the variant…. Fully vaccinated people were about 11 times less likely to get an infection in the pre-delta period, compared with the unvaccinated (with a 95 percent confidence interval of 7.8 to 15.8). That ratio dropped to 4.6 less likely in the post-delta period (with a 95 percent confidence interval of 2.5 to 8.5). For hospitalizations prior to delta, fully vaccinated people were 13 times less likely to wind up in the hospital than the unvaccinated (confidence interval of 11.3 to 15.6). After delta, that ratio dropped slightly to 10 times less likely (confidence interval of 8.1 to 13.3). The fully vaccinated were 16.6 times less likely to die of COVID–19 prior to delta (confidence interval of 13.5 to 20.4) and 11.3 times less likely to die after delta (confidence interval of 9.1 to 13.9)…. For vaccine protection against infection, they estimated that effectiveness dropped from 91 percent to 78 percent with delta. For protection against hospitalizations, effectiveness appeared to go from 92 percent to 90 percent, and for death, from 94 percent to 91 percent. One troubling note was that the declines in protection were more pronounced in older age groups, with those ages 65 and older seeing larger drops…
PLUS:
Conor Kelly: ’A pretty massive gap in COVID case rates has opened up between counties that voted for Trump last Nov and those that voted for Biden. It’s the largest such gap of the pandemic thus far. Right now, counties Trump carried by 10 or more points have over 2x higher case rates… LINK: <https://twitter. com/CohoKelly/status/1436515303324848132>
ONE VIDEO:
Aimee Mann (2019): Pleasantville NY <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Os8nsW5Ce5A>:
VERY BRIEFLY NOTED:
Stanley M. Elkins & Eric McKitrick (1993): The Age of Federalism: The Early American Republic, 1788–1800<https://archive.org/details/ageoffederalism00elki>
Alan Cole & Tim B. Lee: Full Stack Economics <https://fullstackeconomics.com/>
Juggalos For Responsible Flushing: ’Explains a lot about our current situation that Leon Panetta knows so little about Afghanistan that he thinks the Taliban and ISIS are allies… <https://twitter .com/ebarcuzzi/status/1429939677230821378>
Ellsworth C. Carlson (1957): The Kaiping Mines, 1877–1912 <https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt1tfjbkj> | 6 Projects of the Self-Strengthening Movement: ‘1. Kiangnan (Jiangnan) Arsenal…. 2. Fuzhou Shipyard…. 3. China Merchants’ Steam Navigation Company…. 4. Kaiping Coal Mine…. 5. Shanghai Cotton Cloth Mill…. 6. Han-Ye-Ping Iron and Coal Company… <https://searchinginhistory.blogspot.com/2020/12/6-projects-of-self-strengthening.html> | The Times of London: A Historical Document: The Kaiping Mines <https://www.bradford-delong.com/2007/08/a-historical-do.html> | Kaiping Mines: Memorandum of Agreement Between Chang Yen-Mao and Herbert Hoover<https://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2007/07/kaiping-mines-m.html>
Andrew Kaczynski: ’Going through my notes of old Vance interviews from 2016. Vance voted for Evan McMullin and one of his main critiques of Trump was he appealed with “cultural heroin” of bashing Muslims/immigrants. He called Trump “reprehensible” for this and said it led the party to a dark place… <https://twitter. com/KFILE/status/1429848481678741511>
Nick Beaudrot: ’It hasn’t penetrated national coverage but covid is a regional crisis in the Greater South, and an unpleasant but manageable problem elsewhere…
PARAGRAPHS:
David Reifschneider & David Wilcox: Another Reason to Raise the Fed’s Inflation Target: An Employment and Output Boom: ’In 2012, the Federal Reserve formally adopted an inflation target and set it at 2 percent, in line with the level chosen by many other central banks. In hindsight, this setting left policymakers with too little room to cut interest rates when they want to fight recessions. Many researchers have noted that if central banks raised their inflation targets—either individually or in concert—they could do a better job in the long run of keeping inflation near its target and the workforce fully employed. This Policy Brief highlights an additional and less-noted consequence of raising the inflation target modestly: The economy could enjoy a temporary but substantial boom in employment and output as it adjusted to the increase in the target. Model simulations suggest that if the target were lifted to 3 percent, the unemployment rate could average 3⁄4 percentage point or more below its sustainable level during the first 15 years after the higher target is announced…
LINK: <https://www.piie.com/sites/default/files/documents/pb21-19.pdf>
Jeet Heer: Robert E. Lee Loses Again: ‘Du Bois ends by making a crucial distinction between military valour and moral courage: “It is the punishment of the South that its Robert Lees and Jefferson Davises will always be tall, handsome and well-born. That their courage will be physical and not moral. That their leadership will be weak compliance with public opinion and never costly and unswerving revolt for justice and right. It is ridiculous to seek to excuse Robert Lee as the most formidable agency this nation ever raised to make 4 million human beings goods instead of men. Either he knew what slavery meant when he helped maim and murder thousands in its defense, or he did not. If he did not he was a fool. If he did, Robert Lee was a traitor and a rebel – not indeed to his country, but to humanity and humanity’s God”… LINK:
Derek Thompson: ’Quick thought on the remote work study, which got some people riled up. The 20th century office is a bundle of REAL WORK—desk work, meeting spaces—and SORTA WORK—lunch, chats, serendipitous convos. The biggest advantage of offices isn’t REAL WORK. It’s the SORTA WORK stuff. What I think we only barely understand—because it’s really really hard to study—is how much does in-person “Sorta Work” matter for creativity and productivity? Is idle chatter a critical carrier wave for psychological safety? Or is easily replaceable by Slack, Twitter, etc? My bet for now is that: 1. The Harvard Business Review Mafia has almost certainly overplayed the benefits of serendipity. 2. The pro-WFH group probably underrates how psychologically discombobulating it can be for extroverts to interface w/ peers via only screens for too long…
LINK:
It is useful to see how the per capita infection rates have diverged based on the response to PH rules and vaccination rates. This highlights the differences which can be lost when comparing the accumulated infection and death rates that show relatively similar outcomes.
What is concerning is that even when presented with such evidence, there is no acknowledgment that just maybe this is a problem to be corrected. Rather, it seems this is the desired outcome as it scares the blue states' voters that red-state voters will eventually nurture a variant that will sweep through the blue states. Is this a mentality akin to the Confederacy losing a larger %age of their population but after Reconstruction claiming they had "shown those damn Yankees"?
It is enough for a technocrat to cry over their analyses.
I live in a California county with just a 35% vaccination rate. For a while it seemed as though many locals thought the pandemic was over and were going about maskless. Fortunately, this seems to have changed somewhat. This gives me some hope, especially as there is some evidence the current surge may have peaked. But with the latest research suggestion that the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine is less effective than the Moderna vaccine with the delta variant, we are not out of the woods yet.
The LeonHardt article in the NYTimes suggesting that Democrats were over-cautious based on the probabilities, it was based on a static analysis of the pandemic. Caution is still advisable as new variants may puncture the immunity of the vaccinated, booster shots or not. Plus, mask-wearing and social distancing is still effective in reducing transmission rates and therefore the opportunity to become infected or ill, as well as reducing the probability of locally generating new variants. Better to let those variants appear elsewhere and give us time to prepare updated vaccines before a really deadly variant emerges more like the 1918 Spanish Flu.
"Robert Lee was a traitor and a rebel – not indeed to his country, but to humanity and humanity’s God”…"
I do not know who or what is humanity's God is. But IIRC, Christianity was quite supportive of slavery and its supporters made arguments why it was moral and supported by God. What we call white supremacism today was accepted as the natural place of Caucasians as the superior "race" and therefore to be on top of the evolutionary pyramid and therefore could subject other races to a lower standard, much as humans had subjected the animals. This strain of thinking has never completely been expunged, especially in the US.
It was mainly the sect of Quakers that started the abolition of slavery movement in England in the 18th century. Their opponents were mostly the mainstream Church of England. So two Christian sects had opposing views of slavery backed by their different interpretations of the Bible.
I find it interesting that Adam Smith argued against slavery as it was inefficient. Had it been determined that slavery was more efficient, would he have supported slavery?