Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

‘Forty-two’ said Deep Thought, with infinite majesty and calm.

Dinky Hocker Shoots Smack!

Impressively dumb. Congratulations.

Shocking, but not surprising.

The revolution will be supervised.

The Math Demands It!

Too inconsequential to be sued

Our job is not to persuade Republicans but to defeat them.

Also, too.

Gastritis Broke My Calculator

Where tasty lettuce and good mustard aren’t elitist.

What fresh hell is this?

An almost top 10,000 blog!

Mission Accomplished!

Consistently wrong since 2002

I thought we were promised Infrastructure Week

No one could have predicted…

An army of rabid, anonymous commenters

Good luck with your asparagus.

Proof that we need a blogger ethics panel.

Saul Alinsky is my co-pilot

Hot Air and Ill Informed Banter

Just a few bad apples.

Naturally gregarious and alpha

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COVID-19 Coronavirus Update: Tuesday / Wednesday, May 26-27

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Guest Post: “Denial of Science”

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Thank you, Schroedinger’s Cat:

We are in the middle of a global pandemic, a cold virus gone viral. The death toll due to Covid-19 is rising everyday. May isn’t even over and we have already crossed 100,000 deaths in the United States alone.

The virus has bought the whole world to it knees. Almost no one alive today has seen an epidemic on this scale. So paranoia is running amok even among people who should know better. The closest parallel is the Spanish Flu that swept the globe almost a hundred years ago. First it was China and then it was Italy and now we are at the eye of this storm. So far our response has been anything but surefooted. States are scrambling to get medical supplies while the federal response has been halting and inadequate to combat the scale of the unfolding disaster. A microscopic virus invisible to the naked eye has brought the behemoth of the global economy to a complete standstill.

But was this inevitable? The federal response to the pandemic has been guided more by wishful thinking and posturing than by hard scientific data. What explains all the missteps and the fits and starts to combat this pandemic? At the heart of this unfolding tragedy is the scientific and numerical illiteracy that plagues our society, from ordinary citizens to the President. Climate change deniers, anti-vaxxers and people who believe that the earth is flat have been proliferating for sometime now. Some of them have ascended to the highest positions of power. Isaac Asimov said it better than I ever could in his 1980 essay.

The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.- Isaac Asimov

This cult of ignorance is proving costly to our health as the death toll keeps rising due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Infectious diseases experts have been warning about a pandemic at the scale of the 1918 flu pandemic for a while now. The President and his team had been warned by experts as far back as January that a catastrophe was looming. They knew yet they did nothing. They disregarded the scientific consensus about the virus just like they have disregarded the scientific consensus about climate change.

One look at the graph of the exponential spread of infection should have scared anyone. Unfortunately for us some one didn’t pay attention in their high school math class or their intelligence briefings for that matter.

People who disregard science forget one thing, you don’t have to believe in science for it to be true. The laws of nature work whether or not you believe in them. The earth’s gravitational acceleration is g =9.8 m/s2 even if you think that the earth is flat. Viruses can infect you even if you are an anti-vaxxer. But ignorance of science and math is not without consequence. People who promote falsehoods that vaccines cause autism are bringing back infectious diseases like measles which were considered eradicated. They also vote into office elected officials who deny climate change and twiddle their thumbs as a virulent virus ravages the nation. They gut budgets that fund our research infrastructure from the CDC to the NIH and NSF. They want to gut CDC funding during a pandemic. The research budgets which were trimmed because of sequestration (across the board funding cuts to the funding of government agencies to enforce fiscal discipline enacted in 2012) never bounced back when the economy did. Gutting research funding while cutting taxes for the wealthy and corporations is like burning seed corn to have a party right now.

Everyone wants a vaccine for COVID-19 in a hurry now but scientific expertise and research excellence don’t happen in a day or even a year. There is no just-in-time research. It has to be funded generously and in a consistent manner so that people are willing to dedicate their lives to careers in science which for the most part is hard lonely work with little glory. And who else but the government can do this when the rewards, if they exist, are distant?

Investment in science and math is essential for our very survival. This includes support for science and math education, K-12 and beyond and robust federal funding for both pure and applied research. I hope that this pandemic has taught us that ignorance of science comes at a steep price, the price tag is 100,000 dead Americans and counting.

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1332 waivers and state budget crunches

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49 of 50 states have balanced budget requirements. States are experiencing a massive revenue shortfall due to the COVID pandemic. State budgets have core priorities of education, medical care, criminal justice and civil courts, transportation, infrastructure and recreation on public lands. State budgets also have short run fixed costs of pensions and debt upkeep as well. After those expenses, other add-ons can be included.

One of the add-ons that about a dozen states have chosen to spend money is Section 1332 reinsurance waivers for the ACA individual market. These waivers have a couple of different flavors but fundamentally they are similar. A source of money that is not tied to premiums is injected into the claim paying pool. This external money takes on a share of the claims and allows premiums to drop. The lower premium level triggers lower federal subsidy payments which then gets recycled back into the external source of money. The key here is the external source of money. Some states use general fund revenues, others use a general insurer assessment while others have other dedicated funding streams.

These waivers serve a fairly small number of people in the state. The waivers make insurance cheaper for individuals earning over 400% FPL and slightly more expensive for subsidized individuals who choose a plan that costs less than the benchmark plan. The marginal cost of insuring one extra person is fairly high.

States will have to make very hard choices in the next several weeks as updated revenue and expenditure projections come in. 1332 waivers can be either reduced or eliminated to free up the funding stream that went to the waiver. The freed up funds could be redirected to other, higher priority programs.

Below is the language from the Colorado 1332 waiver approval letter that outlines early termination procedures. The key is a notification by July 1st.

1332 waiver termination language

If a waiver was to be terminated, we should hear rumbles in the next week or so and then comment periods in two or three weeks.

This is worth keeping an eye on.

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COVID-19 Coronavirus Update: Monday/Tuesday, May 25-26

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More Longer Pandemic Reads, Prior to the ‘Work’ Week

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This actually is a good, “sensible” at-this-point-in-time guide (with charts, for science!), if you want something not too depressing to share:

… In particular, so-called superspreading events seem to be a major cause of infections. One London School of Hygiene analysis suggested that 80% of the secondary transmissions were caused by just 10% of infected people. In other words, if you want to avoid getting COVID-19, one of your major focuses should be avoiding a superspreading event.

So as Utahns leave their homes and reengage with society, we thought now would be a good time to scour the research to note where these events have been documented and where they haven’t. We can also learn about the circumstances that led to each superspreading event, and do our best to avoid them…

TL; DR — Stay away from bars, clubs, buffets, and sports venues. Be cautious about buses, planes, gyms, malls, and offices. Grocery stores (grab & go) and (possibly? probably?) voting sites should be okay, though! As for church-going and family gatherings: “Churches can be the site of community-changing superspreading events… Avoid hugging and sharing food, especially while sick.”

(Jesus and your grandma both love you, but they didn’t raise you to be an idiot.)


This, on the other hand, is just plain terrifying:

When you talk to intensive care doctors across the UK, exhausted after weeks of dealing with the ravages of Covid-19, the phrase that emerges time after time is, “We’ve never seen anything like this before.”

They knew a new disease was coming, and they were expecting resources to be stretched by an unknown respiratory infection which had first appeared in China at the end of last year.

And as the number of cases increased, doctors up and down the UK were reading first-hand accounts from colleagues in China, and then in Italy – in scientific journals and on social media – about the intensity of infection.

“It felt in some ways like we were trying to prepare for the D-Day landings,” says Barbara Miles, clinical director of intensive care at Glasgow Royal Infirmary, “with three weeks to get ready and not a great deal of knowledge about what we would be facing”.

But what arrived in the UK as winter turned into spring took even the most experienced ICU specialists by surprise.

Most people infected with the coronavirus have only mild symptoms, or sometimes none at all. But in many thousands of patients who fall critically ill, Covid-19 is a disease of alarming complexity.

What follows is a summary, often in their own words, of what doctors have learnt about how Covid-19 attacks the human body, and what they still need to know…

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COVID-19 Coronavirus Update: Sunday/Monday, May 24-25

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(This is very much a “Show Us on the Doll Where the Invisible Hand Touched You” situation; rural counties, desperate for funding & jobs, leapt at the chance to permit penitentiaries and meat-packing plants rejected by more urbanized areas with better financial options… and the prisons / plants were happy to base themselves in areas where fewer residents and cash-strapped local officials were less likely to complain about shoddy standards. But those same rural counties still don’t have the funds, or the personnel, to fight a pandemic — and the big corporations responsible for the ‘hotspots’ have damned little incentive to help out.)

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COVID-19 Coronavirus Update: Saturday / Sunday, May 23-24

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Saturday-Service Open Thread: If Trump Loves ‘His’ Evangelicals So Much, Why Is He Trying to Get Them Killed?

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(When I was growing up “in the Church”, there was an ongoing mostly-underground war between the bishops (as representatives of the official Catholic hierarchy) and the parish priests (representatives of their local communities). That may have changed in the past forty years, but the argument went back to at least the Dark Ages, so… )

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Open Thread: Saturday Morning (Political) Cartoons

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Saturday morning cartoons, with a side of links to some coronavirus podcasts, all courtesy of one of our jackals.

I only know her by name, so as soon as she gets back to me with her nym, I will add it here.  Hmm, I believe it’s a her, but now that I think about it, it’s one of those names that can go either way.

Update:  Cartoon and other links came from Jackal:  August West.  I guess I was wrong about the gender!

Saturday Morning Cartoons

via The Moderate Voice, a nice roundup of Trump cartoons:

Trump’s Coronavirus Performance Through the Eyes of Political Cartoonists

***

Update:  PODCASTS

I haven’t listened to any of these podcasts, so I can’t vouch for them personally.

Coronavirus 411 alerts, updates, and information
https://tunein.com/podcasts/News–Politics-Podcasts/Coronavirus-411-alerts-updates-and-information-p1289595/

Coronavirus Daily Briefing
https://art19.com/shows/coronavirus-daily-briefing

Coronavirus: Fact vs Fiction with Dr. Sanjay Gupta
https://www.cnn.com/audio/podcasts/corona-virus

Coronavirus Global Update (BBC World Service)
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/w13xtv39

Coronavirus Today: Alerts and Updates with Dr. Brian McDonough
https://open.spotify.com/show/2cW5kWzQna8DOU28RpDHyt

Epidemic With Dr. Celine Gounder and Ronald Klain
https://open.spotify.com/show/3DLvofLCx0o7adGqnfZvxl

Social Distance with Dr. James Hamblin
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/id1502770015

Viral: Coronavirus
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/viral-coronavirus/id1500978005

Open thread.

 

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Saturday Morning Open Thread: Eid Mubarak!

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Hardly the usual celebratory holiday, but people are doing their best to help keep everyone safe. Also from Al Jazeera, “Michigan Muslims find new ways to celebrate Eid amid a pandemic”:

Eid al-Fitr in the US state of Michigan this year is going to be very different, said Mahmoud Al-Hadidi, a physician and chairman of the Michigan Muslim Community Council.

There will be no mass prayers in the mosques, no communal breakfasts, no carnival and no evening parties. Even family gatherings will be limited.

“Usually we have a huge party at my house with 400 to 500 people,” Al-Hadidi told Al Jazeera.

“I’m not gonna be doing that this year,” Al-Hadidi said. “I’m going to be with my immediate family, and we’re staying at home.”

But the curbs on mass social gatherings put in place to contain the spread of the coronavirus, expected to last through at least May 28, have not dampened the holiday spirit. And residents of southeast Michigan, home to one of the largest Muslim communities in the United States, say they have found innovative ways to welcome the three-day holiday marking the end of the fasting month of Ramadan, while adhering to social-distancing measures…

Thousands are expected to tune in on Sunday morning for a live Eid sermon that will be aired on local television and streamed on social media. Later in the day, cars will be able to line up outside several mosques to enjoy live music and to receive gift bags for children, in this year’s first-ever drive-thru Eid event.

***********
Speaking of the disruption of religious holidays…

And some of my fellow Olds might be reminded of a certain Bob & Ray sketch…

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COVID-19 Coronavirus Update: Friday-Saturday, May 22-23

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Hey, Look! Another Post About Kristi Noem

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If you want to read about how Kristi wrote a note to Daddy Trump and waah waah waahed about the CRST and Oglala Sioux Tribe (Pine Ridge) running checkpoints and infringing on precious freedums, Wonkette has that covered. Instead, I want to write about the excellent marshaling of resources by the tiny Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe (CRST). There will be pictures and visual aids, but no test, so the rest is going below the fold.

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Blood donors and biased samples

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Once I feed the cats and finish posting this post, I am going to donate blood. I am O+ without CMV which evidently makes the hematologists very happy to schedule me on a regular basis. One part of the e-mail campaign for this donation was a promise that my blood would be tested for COVID-19 antibodies and I would be notified of the results in a week.

I can understand why the blood bank wants to screen for COVID as a means of insuring a safe blood supply. However we can’t think that the numbers will tell us much about a region’s COVID exposure. This is attractive but almost useless for systemic surveillance.

Blood donors are a self-selected population. Before donating blood, a donor has to have answered over forty questions of a basic current health and long term medical history. One of the knock-out questions is if you have had the cold or flu recently. Screening blood for COVID antibodies might allow for a plausible lower boundary of regional infection history. This population is likely to notable underestimate disease prevalence.

The other challenge that we need to be aware of if any blood donor infection and recovered figures are released is the problem of false positives. If we assume that the blood donor population that is screened is likely to have a lower than population average incidence rate, than we also have to assume that a higher proportion of the reported positivity rate is false positives. If we assume that a regional cumulative COVID prevalence rate is 10% and the test returns 1% false positives and no false negatives, than the false positives will be about 8% of the total reported positives. If we assume prevalence is 5% then the false positives are 16% of the reported positives. If we assume prevalence of 2.5%, 29% of the total reported positives are false positives. The Positive Predictive Value of the tests that have Emergency Use Authorizations (EUA) from the FDA are frequently below 90% if we assume a 5% population prevalence.

Since we are assuming that blood donors are less likely than the general population to be infected, the value of the testing result being reported back to the individual donor is going to be low.

And this is problematic. If someone receives notification that they have COVID-19 antibodies, they are likely to act on that information and engage in behaviors that are more likely to increase spread risk. If they are truly immune, this is not a big deal. But if they are not immune, they are more likely to be an unsuspecting spreader during a non-symptomatic phase of a future infection.

Communicating these types of results for a low incidence but high impact disease is tough as the information is likely to change behaviors.

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COVID-19 Coronavirus Update – Thursday / Friday, May 21-22

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