Weekly covid update. Recall my primary tracking metric is new cases/day, which is essentially a velocity. As is usual for any population infection, it follows an exponential decline: very quick drop followed by a flattening which only reaches zero at infinity. Nationally we are now in the flattening portion of the delta. For 50 days the derivative of cases/day (acceleration) was about -3100 cases/day^2; for the last 10 days it is now -540 cases/day^2. Cases/day is now about -22000 and will slowly continue in a negative direction, but not rapidly as before.
Serious cases continue their steady decline now sitting at about 1400, which is the lowest since March of 2020. As a percentage of active cases, serious cases are now 0.08%.
On the state level for the ones I track, Florida, Georgia, and NC, now entering the flattening. CT in a very slow decline, though deaths have dropped from 13/day to 3/day rolling 14 day average. At peak of alpha CT had a rate of 40/day. After a long upward trend, NH showing signs of turning around, but the effect on national numbers is low as they average about 300/day. Colorado is the exception where cases continue to climb now at over 3000/day which is significant compared to national numbers. Deaths in CO also continue to rise over the past 60 days going from 5/day to now 30/day.
Thanks for the update, physicsguy.
I was considerably annoyed that my county in NC, and Raleigh, still have a mask mandate in effect, which meant I had to cope with it during my session with my trainer at the gym. Foolishness.
And my neighbor, the work-from-home IBM coder, still hasn’t had an answer on her application for a religious exemption on the vaccine. In-company rumor is that IBM is stringing this out to prevent people from taking accumulated vacation days before being laid off.
I understand that Watts had an extensive collection of suits made for/worn by Edward VIII/Prince of Wales.
Kate – It may be that some companies are stringing out the vaccine mandate layoffs in hope that the situation will resolve itself. With such a tight labor market and COVID declining precipitously as physicsguy laid out, I suspect that many companies are loathe to lay people off now over an OSHA mandate that is likely to be enjoined soon after it is propagated anyway.
I’m not sure that the people implementing the mandates particularly care if they ultimately results in layoffs. I suspect that bumping up the overall vax rates with the threat is sufficient is enough for many of them. It’s frustrating to me that so many fail to see anything wrong with government threatening an action beyond its power if they deem it to be for a good cause.
“…for a good cause…”
Um, er, careful there. I’m sure you mean well, but, uh, things just could get a wee bit out of hand—always a possibility even in cases where the government is NOT an uber-corrupt, criminal enterprise…keeping in mind Murphy’s Law and its various nuanced derivatives.
Just watching this great cover by LLB when I realized… Pink Floyd, some 40+ years later, describing the current state of public education in the US today….who knew? Happy Virginia election day!
Guy Benson from townhall.com weighs in on the Virginia election
“here’s [one easy prediction](https://www.cnbc.com/2021/10/27/democrats-take-lead-in-early-voting-in-virginias-highly-competitive-governors-race-.html): Republican Glenn Youngkin will easily win the ballots being cast on Election Day itself. Right-leaning voters tend to vote on the big day, while left-leaning voters have gravitated toward early and mail-in voting options – which the Democratic Party tends to emphasize more. As we’ve been saying, **the core question about the final outcome tonight is whether Youngkin’s haul of freshly-processed ballots can catch up with and overtake the lead Democrat Terry McAuliffe has built and banked over the course of the last month-and-a-half** (Virginia’s early voting [started September 17](https://www.elections.virginia.gov/casting-a-ballot/calendars-schedules/upcoming-elections.html), which is absurdly early, in my opinion). Can he pull this off? *Will* he pull this off?
Scorcese used Devo’s “Satisfaction” in his film, “Casino.” Its herky-jerkiness somehow fit the glitzy/ugly feel of a Las Vegas casino.
Scorcese often has well-chosen rock music. Robbie Robertson of “The Band” usually has a hand in those soundtracks.
There’s a fun book titled “What Would Keith Richards Do?” It’s a tongue-in-check allusion to “What Would Jesus Do?” and contains many delicious quotes organically organized from Keith, but it is half-serious. One just might learn something from Keith…
Anyway. Keith Richards as an artist comes down on the side claiming he does not create his songs, he finds them or is found by them.
__________________________________
…my attitude to songs is that I’m an antenna. I wait, I sit down and play an instrument. The only bit I do is knock it into shape.
__________________________________
Or, in the case of “Satisfaction” he falls asleep, hears the riff in a dream, wakes up blearily and records it into a cassette player.
Some Nancy Pelosi content to warm the cockles of your hearts:
Sometimes I ponder Asian creativity. The iconic Chinese and Japanese art and poetry plus a few films reach me, but not much otherwise.
I’m sure much of it is cultural bias. Nonetheless, I see Asians embracing Western classical music and think it’s great but wonder about their classical music.
Or could they have invented rock’n’roll?
To speak in stereotypes, Asian societies look terribly regimented and I do question how much original creation can occur.
God knows, the West is a mess. Always was and I’m sure always will. But we’ve got in some good shots.
@Huxley:
What price this Creativity? Taken a stroll around Union Square of late?
As Goldman/Spengler points out, there are more Western classical music students in China today than in the entire West. Chinese classical music was a thing for the literati (i.e. Mandarinate) — a tiny percentage of the population.There’s folk music — something else again. But the true classical music along with calligraphy and ink painting were the preserve of scholarly gentleman amateurs. Allusive. Impressionistic. But you’d have to be of the Literati to appreciate much of it at all. Different world back when. They don’t live in it now any more than you or I live in Mozart’s Vienna or one of the Esterhazy palaces.
It’s where we’re going, not where we been that matters to us and our descendants. Or be a miserable NHS Snaggle Teeth Englishman whining about American Crassness ca. 1970….
East Asians totally get the Creativity Gap thing. They know that all is not perfect with their educational systems and modes of being… but then all they have to do is look at Union Square which is shit-smeared and populated by screaming dangerous Schizophrenics… or Drag Queen Story Hour. Everything is a trade off. They are cautiously going their way.
I’d point out too that Pragmatism is just as important as Creativity. East Asians are very pragmatic. If something works or can be repurposed to do something new and interesting, they just do it and get it done — no need to spend a whole lot of time farting deep philosophical thoughts. They are mystified why we Whiteys spend so much time expressing opinions (which mostly ultimately don’t matter) and not doing.
Not to say I’m not fond of what the West was and still could be after sufficient trial by fire… but the East Asian perspective is more nuanced than Regimental Yellow HiveBots.
Re Classical Music… in all fairness to Indians who I famously cannot abide, Indian Classical Music whilst being very different is a magnificent and profound cultural achievement.
The tycoon class in HK / China are noticing that a generation of their children have gone to the Ivies and come back Lesbians or with other @#$%ed up firmware hacks and are no-longer uniformly impressed with the results. Less wealthy strivers have to risk it regardless.
Zaphod:
I don’t see Creativity/Regimentation, Creativity/Pragmatism as binaries. They are continuums. I wonder where the optimum is found.
At some point I will argue for Union Square shit-and-schizos, if the benefit is Godel, Escher and Bach (et al.).
Point taken on Indian music.
Zaphod:
Here’s a piece from 1971 I found mesmerizing and still listen to on occasion:
It’s a collaboration with the LSO, Andre Previn and Jean-Pierre Rampal.
@Huxley:
Show me Current Year 2021 Goedel, Escher, and Bach. Oh wait… they’re working for Connecticut Hedge Funds. And they just invested your pension fund in a complicated swap instrument involving China Evergrande 😀
The optimum was probably USA ca. 1960. Which would require a lot of classes of people to get back in their figurative boxes and STFU. Otherwise Britain ~1820-~1880. I chop them off arbitrarily at 1880 because German metallurgy and chemistry and instrument making far surpassed them in the next two decades — during which time other trends were beginning to manifest in Britain: cf Kipling’s Gehazi —> London still a financial powerhouse today, but all industry and social capital well and truly stripmined.
Ed Dutton says that Genius requires a mix of high IQ and psychopathy. The true genius has to be quite goal-oriented and abrasive because geniuses upset the current paradigms and get a lot of pushback. Shrinking violets who are smart just won’t push the envelope so far. Dutton claims that there’s less prevalence of psychopathy in East Asians, which (along with Cultural arguments) is a potential limiter for genius production. Furthermore East Asian bell curve is narrower but mean is to the right of White Americans. So fewer retards and dummies, more generally capable folk with good executive planning function, but proportionately not as many out in that extreme right tail > 150.
There’s always a sweet spot and an equilibrium (if only temporary). Right now there is a kind of unstable equilibrium. A few Whiteys have the super genius ideas and the East Asians manufacture them and often copy them. The rest of the Whiteys get to have Drag Queen Story Hour and BLM.
@Huxley:
Ravi Shankar + “the LSO, Andre Previn and Jean-Pierre Rampal.”
If that isn’t a late 60s turn of the 70s cultural cliche in < 10 words, I don’t know what is!
Just missing some Pan Pipes.
But seriously will listen.
@Huxley:
PS: Sod Ravi Shankar… the Tabla Guy though! I wonder if he can do that and sing? 😀
I picked this up from a comment at a Legal Insurrection post today.
Does anyone have another take on it?
Kind if …. interesting, although they don’t say which states got the good and which got the bad.
An investigation of data found in the USA’s Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) has revealed that extremely high numbers of adverse reactions and deaths have been reported against specific lot numbers of the Covid-19 vaccines several times, meaning deadly batches of the experimental injections have now been identified.
But what’s perhaps more concerning is that the “deadly” lots were distributed widely across the United States whilst other “benign” lots were sent to just a few locations.
…
But the investigation of VAERS data also revealed that reported deaths due to the Pfizer vaccine were again only associated with certain batches of the jab. The chart above shows that 96% of the lots of Pfizer vaccine had zero death reports made against them. Meaning the 2,828 reported deaths were associated with just 4% of the lots of Pfizer vaccine.
Five lot numbers were associated with 61-80 deaths each, a further 5 lot numbers were associated with 81-100 deaths each, and just 2 separate lot numbers were associated with over 100 deaths each.
…
As you can see from the above table 4,289 different lots of Pfizer vaccine were distributed to 12 states or less across the USA, recording 9,141 adverse event reports against them alongside 99 deaths and 657 hospitalisations. This equates to an average of 2 adverse event reports per lot and 0 deaths and hospitalisations.
However, a further 130 different lots of Pfizer vaccine were distributed to between 13-50 states across the USA, recording 166,170 adverse event reports, 2,799 deaths, and 14,155 hospitalisations. This equates to an average of 1,278 adverse event reports per lot number, alongside 22 deaths and 109 hospitalisations.
This data therefore shows that each lot from the 130 different lot numbers of Pfizer Covid-19 vaccine distributed to more than 13 states, harmed on average 639 times more people, hospitalised on average 109 times more people, and killed on average 22 times more people.
Similarly for Moderna, although perhaps not the same spread by state.
Lots of graphs, data from VAERS, and a comparison to mortality per lot for the standard flu vaccines in the past.
The CDC caused an uproar in early September 2021, after it changed its definitions of “vaccination” and “vaccine.” For years, the CDC had set definitions for vaccination/vaccine that discussed immunity. This all changed on September 1, 2021.
…
People noticed. Representative Thomas Massie was among the first to discuss the change, noting the definition went from “immunity” to “protection”.
…
Of course, the usual suspects defended the CDC. The Washington Post, for example, cast doubt that the CDC changed the definition because of issues with the COVID-19 vaccines. The CDC tried to downplay the change, stating “slight changes in wording over time … haven’t impacted the overall definition.”
Internal CDC E-Mails
CDC emails we obtained via the Freedom of Information Act reveal CDC worries with how the performance of the COVID-19 vaccines didn’t match the CDC’s own definition of “vaccine”/“vaccination”. The CDC’s Ministry of Truth went hard at work in the face of legitimate public questions on this issue.
Emails detail the reason.
After taking some suggestions, the CDC’s Lead Health Communication Specialist went up the food chain to propose changes to the definitions: “I need to update this page Immunization Basics | CDC since these definitions are outdated and being used by some to say COVID-19 vaccines are not vaccines per CDC’s own definition.”
…
There you have it. Affirmative action for the multinational corporations. Why have them improve their vaccines when you can just change the definition of vaccine to fit their ineffective vaccines?
Congrats to all the skeptics out there – you raised enough hell that the the CDC went and tried to change reality.
Good morning.
Weekly covid update. Recall my primary tracking metric is new cases/day, which is essentially a velocity. As is usual for any population infection, it follows an exponential decline: very quick drop followed by a flattening which only reaches zero at infinity. Nationally we are now in the flattening portion of the delta. For 50 days the derivative of cases/day (acceleration) was about -3100 cases/day^2; for the last 10 days it is now -540 cases/day^2. Cases/day is now about -22000 and will slowly continue in a negative direction, but not rapidly as before.
Serious cases continue their steady decline now sitting at about 1400, which is the lowest since March of 2020. As a percentage of active cases, serious cases are now 0.08%.
On the state level for the ones I track, Florida, Georgia, and NC, now entering the flattening. CT in a very slow decline, though deaths have dropped from 13/day to 3/day rolling 14 day average. At peak of alpha CT had a rate of 40/day. After a long upward trend, NH showing signs of turning around, but the effect on national numbers is low as they average about 300/day. Colorado is the exception where cases continue to climb now at over 3000/day which is significant compared to national numbers. Deaths in CO also continue to rise over the past 60 days going from 5/day to now 30/day.
Thanks for the update, physicsguy.
I was considerably annoyed that my county in NC, and Raleigh, still have a mask mandate in effect, which meant I had to cope with it during my session with my trainer at the gym. Foolishness.
And my neighbor, the work-from-home IBM coder, still hasn’t had an answer on her application for a religious exemption on the vaccine. In-company rumor is that IBM is stringing this out to prevent people from taking accumulated vacation days before being laid off.
I understand that Watts had an extensive collection of suits made for/worn by Edward VIII/Prince of Wales.
Kate – It may be that some companies are stringing out the vaccine mandate layoffs in hope that the situation will resolve itself. With such a tight labor market and COVID declining precipitously as physicsguy laid out, I suspect that many companies are loathe to lay people off now over an OSHA mandate that is likely to be enjoined soon after it is propagated anyway.
I’m not sure that the people implementing the mandates particularly care if they ultimately results in layoffs. I suspect that bumping up the overall vax rates with the threat is sufficient is enough for many of them. It’s frustrating to me that so many fail to see anything wrong with government threatening an action beyond its power if they deem it to be for a good cause.
“…for a good cause…”
Um, er, careful there. I’m sure you mean well, but, uh, things just could get a wee bit out of hand—always a possibility even in cases where the government is NOT an uber-corrupt, criminal enterprise…keeping in mind Murphy’s Law and its various nuanced derivatives.
Just watching this great cover by LLB when I realized… Pink Floyd, some 40+ years later, describing the current state of public education in the US today….who knew? Happy Virginia election day!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ojosdnm3f4&list=RD_ojosdnm3f4&start_radio=1
VDH Grand Slam
https://victorhanson.com/who-eventually-won-the-cold-war/
“…for a good cause…” (cont.)…
Censorship for the good of the people!
https://twitter.com/mrddmia/status/1455538329974362120
Next up: Canceling people/news/opinions/institutions/associations for the good of the people!!
Some more music fun. Battle of the cover bands:
LLB:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OTDfWIDaBjQ&list=RD_ojosdnm3f4&index=6
and same song, by HSCC:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sXYE4ElWUkc
Guy Benson from townhall.com weighs in on the Virginia election
“here’s [one easy prediction](https://www.cnbc.com/2021/10/27/democrats-take-lead-in-early-voting-in-virginias-highly-competitive-governors-race-.html): Republican Glenn Youngkin will easily win the ballots being cast on Election Day itself. Right-leaning voters tend to vote on the big day, while left-leaning voters have gravitated toward early and mail-in voting options – which the Democratic Party tends to emphasize more. As we’ve been saying, **the core question about the final outcome tonight is whether Youngkin’s haul of freshly-processed ballots can catch up with and overtake the lead Democrat Terry McAuliffe has built and banked over the course of the last month-and-a-half** (Virginia’s early voting [started September 17](https://www.elections.virginia.gov/casting-a-ballot/calendars-schedules/upcoming-elections.html), which is absurdly early, in my opinion). Can he pull this off? *Will* he pull this off?
https://townhall.com/tipsheet/guybenson/2021/11/02/prediction-time-who-wins-in-virginia-n2598349
Just one thing in the news media
The reappearance of Greta Mania’ in Glasgow?
What’s a propaganda behind her…..
Since the Prof. of Rock brought it up. Devo does Satisfaction.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jadvt7CbH1o
TommyJay:
Scorcese used Devo’s “Satisfaction” in his film, “Casino.” Its herky-jerkiness somehow fit the glitzy/ugly feel of a Las Vegas casino.
Scorcese often has well-chosen rock music. Robbie Robertson of “The Band” usually has a hand in those soundtracks.
There’s a fun book titled “What Would Keith Richards Do?” It’s a tongue-in-check allusion to “What Would Jesus Do?” and contains many delicious quotes organically organized from Keith, but it is half-serious. One just might learn something from Keith…
Anyway. Keith Richards as an artist comes down on the side claiming he does not create his songs, he finds them or is found by them.
__________________________________
…my attitude to songs is that I’m an antenna. I wait, I sit down and play an instrument. The only bit I do is knock it into shape.
__________________________________
Or, in the case of “Satisfaction” he falls asleep, hears the riff in a dream, wakes up blearily and records it into a cassette player.
Some Nancy Pelosi content to warm the cockles of your hearts:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FJofc7xR00g
Grovel, grovel.
Zaphod:
Sometimes I ponder Asian creativity. The iconic Chinese and Japanese art and poetry plus a few films reach me, but not much otherwise.
I’m sure much of it is cultural bias. Nonetheless, I see Asians embracing Western classical music and think it’s great but wonder about their classical music.
Or could they have invented rock’n’roll?
To speak in stereotypes, Asian societies look terribly regimented and I do question how much original creation can occur.
God knows, the West is a mess. Always was and I’m sure always will. But we’ve got in some good shots.
@Huxley:
What price this Creativity? Taken a stroll around Union Square of late?
As Goldman/Spengler points out, there are more Western classical music students in China today than in the entire West. Chinese classical music was a thing for the literati (i.e. Mandarinate) — a tiny percentage of the population.There’s folk music — something else again. But the true classical music along with calligraphy and ink painting were the preserve of scholarly gentleman amateurs. Allusive. Impressionistic. But you’d have to be of the Literati to appreciate much of it at all. Different world back when. They don’t live in it now any more than you or I live in Mozart’s Vienna or one of the Esterhazy palaces.
It’s where we’re going, not where we been that matters to us and our descendants. Or be a miserable NHS Snaggle Teeth Englishman whining about American Crassness ca. 1970….
East Asians totally get the Creativity Gap thing. They know that all is not perfect with their educational systems and modes of being… but then all they have to do is look at Union Square which is shit-smeared and populated by screaming dangerous Schizophrenics… or Drag Queen Story Hour. Everything is a trade off. They are cautiously going their way.
I’d point out too that Pragmatism is just as important as Creativity. East Asians are very pragmatic. If something works or can be repurposed to do something new and interesting, they just do it and get it done — no need to spend a whole lot of time farting deep philosophical thoughts. They are mystified why we Whiteys spend so much time expressing opinions (which mostly ultimately don’t matter) and not doing.
Not to say I’m not fond of what the West was and still could be after sufficient trial by fire… but the East Asian perspective is more nuanced than Regimental Yellow HiveBots.
Re Classical Music… in all fairness to Indians who I famously cannot abide, Indian Classical Music whilst being very different is a magnificent and profound cultural achievement.
The tycoon class in HK / China are noticing that a generation of their children have gone to the Ivies and come back Lesbians or with other @#$%ed up firmware hacks and are no-longer uniformly impressed with the results. Less wealthy strivers have to risk it regardless.
Zaphod:
I don’t see Creativity/Regimentation, Creativity/Pragmatism as binaries. They are continuums. I wonder where the optimum is found.
At some point I will argue for Union Square shit-and-schizos, if the benefit is Godel, Escher and Bach (et al.).
Point taken on Indian music.
Zaphod:
Here’s a piece from 1971 I found mesmerizing and still listen to on occasion:
–Ravi Shankar, “Concerto for Sitar & Orchestra” (Fourth Movement)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o0hJFvH3ups
It’s a collaboration with the LSO, Andre Previn and Jean-Pierre Rampal.
@Huxley:
Show me Current Year 2021 Goedel, Escher, and Bach. Oh wait… they’re working for Connecticut Hedge Funds. And they just invested your pension fund in a complicated swap instrument involving China Evergrande 😀
The optimum was probably USA ca. 1960. Which would require a lot of classes of people to get back in their figurative boxes and STFU. Otherwise Britain ~1820-~1880. I chop them off arbitrarily at 1880 because German metallurgy and chemistry and instrument making far surpassed them in the next two decades — during which time other trends were beginning to manifest in Britain: cf Kipling’s Gehazi —> London still a financial powerhouse today, but all industry and social capital well and truly stripmined.
Ed Dutton says that Genius requires a mix of high IQ and psychopathy. The true genius has to be quite goal-oriented and abrasive because geniuses upset the current paradigms and get a lot of pushback. Shrinking violets who are smart just won’t push the envelope so far. Dutton claims that there’s less prevalence of psychopathy in East Asians, which (along with Cultural arguments) is a potential limiter for genius production. Furthermore East Asian bell curve is narrower but mean is to the right of White Americans. So fewer retards and dummies, more generally capable folk with good executive planning function, but proportionately not as many out in that extreme right tail > 150.
There’s always a sweet spot and an equilibrium (if only temporary). Right now there is a kind of unstable equilibrium. A few Whiteys have the super genius ideas and the East Asians manufacture them and often copy them. The rest of the Whiteys get to have Drag Queen Story Hour and BLM.
@Huxley:
Ravi Shankar + “the LSO, Andre Previn and Jean-Pierre Rampal.”
If that isn’t a late 60s turn of the 70s cultural cliche in < 10 words, I don’t know what is!
Just missing some Pan Pipes.
But seriously will listen.
@Huxley:
PS: Sod Ravi Shankar… the Tabla Guy though! I wonder if he can do that and sing? 😀
PRC Covid Blip:
https://www.scmp.com/news/china/science/article/3154654/record-93-cases-single-day-chinas-delta-outbreak-continues
Winter is coming.
And a bit more:
https://www.news.com.au/world/coronavirus/global/stock-up-china-says-amid-new-covid-outbreak/news-story/8ecf72226329ad971b16074c61e0ec8e
I picked this up from a comment at a Legal Insurrection post today.
Does anyone have another take on it?
Kind if …. interesting, although they don’t say which states got the good and which got the bad.
https://theexpose.uk/2021/10/31/100-percent-of-covid-19-vaccine-deaths-caused-by-just-5-percent-of-the-batches-produced/
Similarly for Moderna, although perhaps not the same spread by state.
Lots of graphs, data from VAERS, and a comparison to mortality per lot for the standard flu vaccines in the past.
Can we say “collusion” now?
https://technofog.substack.com/p/cdc-emails-our-definition-of-vaccine
Emails detail the reason.
Bonus – all the issues of the day, illustrated.
https://www.bookwormroom.com/2021/10/30/bookworm-beat-10-30-21-the-world-out-of-control-illustrated-edition/
The Satisfaction riff played on horns would sound boss.