CR: COVID-19 --Political Talk

[StassneyHorn 6574]

so we should buy the dip with Moderna and Pfizer? Apologies for Stonking the CR

[washparkhorn 9939]

1 hour ago, StassneyHorn said:

so we should buy the dip with Moderna and Pfizer?

I think they ended positive on the day?

 

Edited May 7, 2021 by washparkhorn

[Dahobbs 17526]

2 hours ago, Anastasis said:

No, I am using the right definition of the term. You beg the question. There is no real evidence that IP waivers will yield an increase in production. Moderna signaled that they would waive patent protections in October 2020. Since then, nobody has stepped up to produce. So nobody has really articulated a path towards clear and tangible benefit, or even near term potential benefit, of waiving IP protection. However, we have some very clear down side risks, with actual real world examples of what can go wrong with manufacturing (even in highly regulated facilities producing the less complex vaccines). This whole discussion is ungrounded feel good messaging with no impact on the real world issues at stake, which is the excellent realm of politicians I realize.  Problem is that the downside risks are greater than the upside.  We don't need to FAFO on this one, either in the short term or the longer term with precedent setting. 

My conclusion wasn't based on there being a benefit. In fact, I expressly stated that it probably wouldn't change much. What I said is that it wouldn't hurt, and I haven't yet seen anyone explain how it could. So, no, I wasn't begging the question. My reasoning wasn't based on there being any benefit at all. 

Edited May 7, 2021 by Dahobbs

[Anastasis 23463]

5 minutes ago, Dahobbs said:

What I said is that it wouldn't hurt, and I haven't yet seen anyone explain how it could.

The downside risks have been explained. 

6 minutes ago, Dahobbs said:

My reasoning wasn't based on there being any benefit at all.

Other than feel good nonsense with no real world upside, why are we even having this discussion then. 

[Dahobbs 17526]

27 minutes ago, Anastasis said:

The downside risks have been explained. 

Other than feel good nonsense with no real world upside, why are we even having this discussion then. 

Where? Are you talking about the possibility someone screws up? That is a pretty indirect risk that could arise even if the original patent holder was building an additional facility. It's also a risk that I feel the host country is entitled to take. If they screw up on implementing a vaccine, even if loosely based on other patents, then that is on them. Besides, the primary reason to allow free licensing of patents isn't to give another party the know how, it is to allow them to produce the vaccine without risking any liability for infringing someone else's patent (as happens all the time, even when a company isn't intentionally relying on prior patents).

But, I agree it isn't worth much of a fight. I'm just saying it isn't worth enough to fight against either. So, I'll ask you, why are we having this conversation? The patent holders aren't going to lose out on anything.

In short, someone wants it and thinks it will help. They are probably wrong. Just do it and move on. And hey, if they are right and it helps get vaccines to people in need faster, well then that is just a bonus. 

Edited May 7, 2021 by Dahobbs

[JimmyJames 12271]

Sack. Champion of the working man. Lol. 

[DDD Dad 14325]

A perspective on the real world impact of waiving IP...
https://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2021/05/06/waiving-ip
Waiving IP
By Derek Lowe 6 May, 2021
The announcement by the Biden administration about waiving IP rights to the coronavirus vaccines obviously calls for some comment. Keep in mind that I have been doing research in the pharma industry for over 30 years now, so my viewpoint is obviously going to be affected by that, for better and for worse.
With that said, what you think about this move will depend on what you hope to accomplish by it. Let’s go to the immediate practical concern: will it open up the near-term supply of vaccines to the world? It will probably come as no surprise, but no, I don’t think it will do that. One big reason is that I don’t think that patent rights are the main reason for supply constraints – they’re not the bottleneck or the “rate-limiting step”, to use the language of chemistry. IP could be, if several other bottlenecks would get out of the way, but for now I don’t think that it is. Update: Alex Tabarrok on this issue here.
 

 
Non-IP Constraints on Vaccine Supply
I’ve gone over these other problems before, but here’s a brief summary of those – not in any order, because it’s difficult to rank them and those ranks change. An obvious first problem is hardware: you need specific sorts of cell culture tanks for the adenovirus vaccines, and the right kind of filtration apparatus for both the mRNA and adenovirus ones. You also need specialized mixing equipment for the formation of the mRNA lipid nanoparticles. A good proportion of the world’s supply of such hardware is already producing the vaccines, to the best of my knowledge. Second, you need some key consumable equipment to go along with the hardware. Cell culture bags have been a limiting step for the Novavax subunit vaccine, as have the actual filtration membranes needed for it and others. These are not in short supply because of patents, and waiving vaccine patents will not make them appear. Third, you need some key reagents. Among others, there’s an “end-capping” enzyme that has been a supply constraint, and there are the lipids needed for the mRNA nanoparticles, for those two vaccines. Those lipids are indeed proprietary, but their synthesis is also subject to physical constraints that have nothing to do with patent rights, such as the availability of the ultimate starting materials. Supplies have been increasing via the tried and true method of offering people money to make more, but switching over equipment and getting the synthesis to work within acceptable QC is not as fast a process as you might imagine. Fourth, for all these processes, there is a shortage of actual people to make the tech transfer work. For most reasonably complicated processes, it helps a great deal to have experienced people come out and troubleshoot, because the number of tiny things that can go wrong is not easy to quantify. Moderna, for one, has said that a limiting factor in their tech-transfer efforts is that they simply do not have enough trained people to go around. And keep in mind that these all have to do with producing a stream of liquid vaccine solution – but you need what the industry calls “fill-and-finish” capacity to deal with it after that. Filling and capping sterile vials for injection is a specialized business and the great majority of large-scale capacity is already being used for the existing vaccines. Time and money will fix that, and has been, but waiving vaccine patents won’t.
Short Term Versus Long Term Supply
The mention of scale deserves some comment. We need to vaccinate billions of people around the world – no argument there. But that means that if you’re working under the constraints above, your time and effort are best spent on the largest capacity manufacturing efforts available. I believe that the majority of these are already enlisted in the vaccine production efforts, though, both in the production and fill-and-finish areas. I have seen people talking about how now every country will be able to produce its own vaccines, but that’s not a feasible or useful idea. Most countries do not have industrial cell culture capacity or sterile fill-and-finish lines, and trying to start them from scratch is not a good use of the time, money, and effort. It would be like deciding that Switzerland needs to be self-sufficient in sushi.
Look at a part of pharma world that (while it has its technical aspects, for sure) is much less demanding than vaccines, the production of small-molecule generic drugs. The chemical matter involved is off-patent, and nonpatented routes are available for them. But the great majority of these drugs are still made in a handful of countries, and if you trace the starting material supply chains back, the list of countries and suppliers narrow still more. As with most industries, you find yourself going back to the people with the expertise and equipment to produce things on large scale.
As mentioned several times during the above, these supply problems are all fixable. Indeed, many of them are already greatly improved compared to the situation a few months ago. But from what I can see, none of this fixing would have been aided by waiving the patent rights to the vaccines themselves at some earlier date. The supply of vaccines has been increasing, and would continue to increase without the patent waiver idea. The constraints are physical ones, supply chains and engineering ones, not legal.
We actually have some proof of this already. As others have noted, Moderna announced last October that they would not enforce any of their own patents on the production of the vaccine. But this has not led, as far as I can tell, to any non-Moderna production of it, or even the announcement that anyone is thinking about it. A more cynical person than I am – they exist – might conclude that Moderna knew this full well when they made their announcement, but in either case, this situation largely obtains because of the constraints above.
What Does the Patent Waiver Proposal Entail?
We also need to talk about what the Biden administration has proposed. Despite some headlines, the announcement was not something like “All patents are waived”. The actual text uses this language:
“The administration believes strongly in intellectual property protections, but in service of ending this pandemic supports the waiver of these protections for COVID-19 vaccines. We will actively participate in text-based negotiations with the World Trade Organization (WTO) needed to make that happen. These negotiations will take time given the consensus-based nature of the institution and the complexity of the issues involved.”
That last sentence is actually a bit of a warning and a bit of cover for the amount of time that this will take. No IP has been waived yet, because the WTO and the World Intellectual Property Organization (the international framework for patent protection that most countries belong to) are going to have to weigh in on this. There are several countries involved in the existing patents, and they will all have their say as well. The WTO meets next in June, and at that point we’ll start to see how protracted a process this will be. It could indeed take a while, and what emerges at the end of it is of course not yet clear. Not every government involved is going to be thrilled.
This is why many comments on this decision have called it as much of a public relations move as anything else. I can see the point. It is indeed a big step for a US administration to call for something like this, because the US (with a large proportion of the R&D-driven industry in the world) has traditionally been very hard-line on patent protection. But calling for it is not the same as delivering it (for various definitions of “it” and various values assigned to them!) For now, the US government has agreed to start to think about how to negotiate the issue, with details to follow at an undetermined later point.
The Desirability of IP Waivers, and of Patents in General
I know that many people are ready to argue these points, and I can see why. They’re fun. They’re emotional, and lend themselves to ringing statements of righteous principle, and I feel the temptation as much as anyone. But I’m going to try to hold back, which is one reason I’m writing this post this morning instead of banging something out last night.
First off, I am simply not going to take on the “Big Pharma is evil and they deserve what’s coming to them” point of view. Boy, can you find a lot of that one on social media, and I’m trying not to respond to all of it (although I have slipped a few times). So let me just say that I have not worked the past thirty-something years of my life to poison people, to keep them sick, or to bury cures so no one can find them. I have seen good friends, colleagues, and beloved members of my own family succumb to the very diseases that I have researched treatments for, and if I could have done something for them, I would have. I know it’s fun for passionate activists and grandstanding politicians to pretend that that they’re battling hordes of Vile Inhuman Pharma Fascists, but folks, it’s actually mostly a bunch of people like me. That’s not to say that we don’t have some real bastards in this business, but guess what? So do you, in yours. We stock the buildings with people, and they’re not all gems. I hate the Martin Shkrelis of the world as much as you do.
Now, to patents themselves. It’s not that great a use of our time to have the fight right here, either, but it will come as no surprise that I think that intellectual property protections, while they can be abused, are a net good. I think that incentives are a good thing, and that IP rights provide an incentive to take the risks needed to discover things. But those are broad terms. The degree of such protection and how long it lasts are of course key things to get right, and you can get them wrong, too. For example, I think that current US copyright law is way too restrictive and should be rolled back to something less lengthy. Imagine if drug patents lasted through the lifetimes of the inventors and 70 years past that! Penicillin wouldn’t be generic yet.
Remember, a patent is not a secret. You have to disclose how your invention works and how to make it work in order to be granted one, and others can go ahead and get to work on how to make you obsolete based on that information. Also remember that for many drugs, by the time the patent issues, it often has eaten up most of its lifetime. The clock doesn’t start ticking from approval; it starts from the application priority date. I have found over the years that many people outside of R&D do not realize these two points.
I can imagine different ways of doing it, though, most of which involve some other way of rewarding inventors via prizes and the like. For these to work well, though, I believe that such prizes would need to be on the same order of magnitude as the value of a patent as we issue them now. A tricky aspect of this is that this value is not always immediately obvious – sometimes things turn out to be more valuable, and sometimes less than they appeared. That’s another detail to be worked out in a prize system, but there are several ways to do it. With such systems, you’re still recognizing that there is such a thing as valuable intellectual property – you’re just finding a different way to reward it.
What I don’t see working, though, is the “Get rid of all intellectual property, everything should be free” viewpoint. I’m not even going to debate it, because to be honest, I lost my taste back in college for endless wrangling about infuriating hypotheticals, and that’s all this proposal is. I refuse to take it seriously, and I refuse to take seriously the people who attempt to advance it.
But that means that proposals to abrogate existing IP protections need to be taken seriously, because I believe that you’re messing around with something of great importance. In its crudest form, an IP waiver is a direct taking of such property from its discoverers and owners without compensation, and I don’t like it at all. A system that allows such things to happen whenever people really feel like it will not work as well as one in which property rights are protected.
All That Money
I realize that this talk of IP waivers comes, as fate would have it, while some of the vaccine companies are reporting earnings on the vaccines themselves. Pfizer, for example, has said that they may well have $26 billion of sales of the vaccine that they developed with BioNTech. And while I don’t know what the actual profit will be, it’s going to still be a lot. Allow me to be offensive: good for them. 26 billion is a small fraction of the economic damage that’s been done during the year because of the pandemic, and these vaccines are really the only way out of it. Add to that the incalculable social and psychological damages, and it’s a damned cheap price for all of the vaccines put together. Remember, there was no guarantee that any of these things would work – several large and very competent drug companies (Merck, GSK, Sanofi) failed in their own vaccine efforts.
The vaccines that have worked have been the result of years of work by both academia and industry. Both of these groups have hoped to profit by their efforts. And as I never seem to get tired of pointing out, a lot of that work went into discovering things that didn’t work. RNA constructs that fell apart or didn’t produce much protein. Formulations that didn’t deliver, or were toxic. Viral vectors that weren’t worked-out enough, or couldn’t be produced in sufficient quantity. Genetic payloads that weren’t written in quite the right ways. So when something finally does work, I am all for being able to profit from it, and to cheer on the people who are hoping to profit from the discoveries that are working their way through the academic and industrial labs now.
 

 

Shit. I’m agreeing with Anastasis now.

Not sure waiving IP is the cure all here. I’d rather see us throw money at the pharma companies to get them to produce-sufficient product or safely license the technology and oversee production remotely.

[Anastasis 23463]

20 minutes ago, DDD Dad said:

Shit. I’m agreeing with Anastasis now.

[Mole 4330]

Just following up on that daily mail sack link, it’s comparing 2020 election results with jobs. Even if the jobs analysis was accurate, what conclusions should be drawn from such a chart?

The implication is that “blue” states suffered greater losses due to “blue” policies and vice versa, but the partisan affiliation was based on 2020 presidential election results, not state leadership.

Whoever made that chart studied How to Lie with Statistics well. Chapters 7 and 8 (The semi attached figure & post-how rides again) seem pretty relevant.

Actually, if you dig into it, it looks like the whole book is covered. Such efficiency.

[Anastasis 23463]

49 minutes ago, Dahobbs said:

Where?

Posts #34781, #34782, and #34785 for starters. 

53 minutes ago, Dahobbs said:

In short, someone wants it and thinks it will help. They are probably wrong. Just do it and move on. And hey, if they are right and it helps get vaccines to people in need faster, well then that is just a bonus. 

And if they shit the bed, they further undermine confidence in vaccines, with particularly focused impact on the third world perception where variant emergence is the greatest risk.  For a strategy that appears to be based on nothing more than optics, you are taking a narrow view of the potential impact wrt vaccine confidence. It's not clear to me what the motivation is here.  At least it is not clear what anchor it has in terms of real world outcomes.  

[Dahobbs 17526]

1 minute ago, Anastasis said:

Posts #34781, #34782, and #34785 for starters. 

And if they shit the bed, they further undermine confidence in vaccines, with particularly focused impact on the third world perception where variant emergence is the greatest risk.  For a strategy that appears to be based on nothing more than optics, you are taking a narrow view of the potential impact wrt vaccine confidence. It's not clear to me what the motivation is here.  At least it is not clear what anchor it has in terms of real world outcomes.  

I really doubt anyone gets far enough to shit the bed for the reasons you've mentioned previously. I just don't think it is a big enough deal for fight over. The optics are good in providing the waiver. I think the positive message associated with providing the waiver is worth the very small likelihood of any harm arising. Moderna apparently agrees with me. 

But, as I said, I absolutely agree that it isn't worth a ton of energy and our effort should be spent elsewhere. 

[bolverk 29655]

8 hours ago, Johnny Sack said:

 

8 hours ago, workswithseed said:

Oregon did much better than I thought. 

 

7 hours ago, Johnny Sack said:

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9543237/Dem-states-lost-jobs-double-rate-Republican-ones-pandemic.html

 

Here is your source.

This is a really 1) odd, 2) superficial, and 3) misleading "analysis."

1. It measures the job change from December 2020 to February 2021, portraying that two-month period as indicative of a year-long event. Wouldn't it make more sense to measure job change from March 2020 to March 2021 to coincide with the actual pandemic to see its full effect? March 2021 data (albeit preliminary) are available after all.
2. It doesn't take into account the unique structure of each state's economy and, therefore, makes a broad statement that all job changes were equally affected by shutdowns and the pandemic. For example, is it any wonder that Nevada and Hawaii show the biggest declines since their economies are largely dependent on tourism? What percentage of each state's job base was considered "essential" during the first half of the pandemic and were, therefore, not cut?
3. It has color-coded the states according to how they voted for Biden, as if that had any direct bearing on the number of jobs that were cut prior to or even after he was elected when it's the states' respective governors  who called the shots on restrictions.

All three of the above points leads me to believe its a bullshit article for the lazy and stupid who are not looking for answers but who are only wanting a predetermined belief to be reinforced by using shoddy numbers and a half-assed "analysis."

Edited May 7, 2021 by bolverk
grammer

[Anastasis 23463]

1 minute ago, Dahobbs said:

I really doubt anyone gets far enough to shit the bed for the reasons you've mentioned previously. I just don't think it is a big enough deal for fight over. The optics are good in providing the waiver. I think the positive message associated with providing the waiver is worth the very small likelihood of any harm arising. Moderna apparently agrees with me. 

But, as I said, I absolutely agree that it isn't worth a ton of energy and our effort should be spent elsewhere. 

I think that we fundamentally agree.  We both think that this is masturbatory with no real world impact.  We just disagree about the benefits of watching in the mirror as the masturbation play out. 

[Johnny Sack 8397]

5 minutes ago, bolverk said:

 

 

This is a really 1) odd, 2) superficial, and 3) misleading "analysis."

1. It measures the job change from December 2020 to February 2021, portraying that two-month period as indicative of a year-long event. Wouldn't it make more sense to measure job change from March 2020 to March 2021 to coincide with the actual pandemic to see its full effect? March 2021 data (albeit preliminary) are available after all.
2. It doesn't take into account the unique structure of each state's economy and, therefore, makes a broad statement that all job changes were equally affected by shutdowns and the pandemic. For example, is it any wonder that Nevada and Hawaii show the biggest declines since their economies are largely dependent on tourism? What percentage of each state's job base was considered "essential" during the first half of the pandemic and were, therefore, not cut?
3. It has color-coded the states according to how they voted for Biden, as if that had any direct bearing on the number of jobs that were cut prior to or even after he was elected when it's the states' respective governors  who called the shots on restrictions.

All three of the above points leads me to believe its a bullshit article for the lazy and stupid who are not looking for answers but who are only wanting a predetermined belief to be reinforced by using shoddy numbers and a half-assed "analysis."

It measures unemployment changes from Feb 2020 to December 2020.  

[InkaUtexas 25868]

41 minutes ago, bolverk said:

 

 

This is a really 1) odd, 2) superficial, and 3) misleading "analysis."

1. It measures the job change from December 2020 to February 2021, portraying that two-month period as indicative of a year-long event. Wouldn't it make more sense to measure job change from March 2020 to March 2021 to coincide with the actual pandemic to see its full effect? March 2021 data (albeit preliminary) are available after all.
2. It doesn't take into account the unique structure of each state's economy and, therefore, makes a broad statement that all job changes were equally affected by shutdowns and the pandemic. For example, is it any wonder that Nevada and Hawaii show the biggest declines since their economies are largely dependent on tourism? What percentage of each state's job base was considered "essential" during the first half of the pandemic and were, therefore, not cut?
3. It has color-coded the states according to how they voted for Biden, as if that had any direct bearing on the number of jobs that were cut prior to or even after he was elected when it's the states' respective governors  who called the shots on restrictions.

All three of the above points leads me to believe its a bullshit article for the lazy and stupid who are not looking for answers but who are only wanting a predetermined belief to be reinforced by using shoddy numbers and a half-assed "analysis."

So you mean the Daily Mail? I prefer The Star for my earth shattering news and in depth analysis. on the DM an article like this will be hidden by the latest Royals drama, some sad story from Leeds and a bit about some odd K-Pop star I do not follow. But I do enjoy their coverage of British party debauchery. They know how to include a few upstarts  Upskirts...  

Edited May 7, 2021 by InkaUtexas
Damn Surly Auto-correct should know upskirt vs. Upstart... 

[bolverk 29655]

2 minutes ago, Johnny Sack said:

It measures unemployment changes from Feb 2020 to December 2020.  

Alright, so I misread that but why did they stop in December when we have much more recent data. Also, it's not measuring "unemployment changes," it's measuring "employment changes." Those are very different things. But, of course, there are two major data sets used for "employment" and they don't specify which one they use.

One is derived from the Local Unemployment Area Statistics (LAUS) program which is a monthly household survey asking people if they are employed. The other is a measure of employment based on the actual job count from the Current Employment Statistics (CES) program. This one counts jobs instead of people (some people hold more than one).

That said, why don't they extend their analysis to use more current figures and just stop in December? Why do they attribute November 2020 patterns to orders given by governors that affected restrictions? Why don't they look at the actual types of jobs that were affected?

Shit, just look at Midland and Odessa and compare then to Austin. I can guarantee you that folks out in the Permian Basin, by and large, didn't take this shit seriously? In Austin, we sure did. From March 2020 to March 2021, those two cities lost a little more than 16% of their job base. Austin only lost 1.3%. Houston lost 5.5%. What do you think had to do with those discrepancies? Could it have been, I don't know, the actual structure of their local economies?

My initial misreading of the timeframe takes very little away from my critique of this really shallow and shitty "analysis" and does nothing to dissuade me from viewing it as something intended to reinforce preexisting notions of easily triggered Republicans.

[Anastasis 23463]

14 minutes ago, InkaUtexas said:

So you mean the Daily Mail? I prefer The Star for my earth shattering news and in depth analysis. on the DM an article like this will be hidden by the latest Royals drama, some sad story from Leeds and a bit about some odd K-Pop star I do not follow. But I do enjoy their coverage of British party debauchery. They know how to include a few upstarts. 

One of the things I miss about making the AUS-LHR hop is the tabloid selection. 

[InkaUtexas 25868]

7 minutes ago, Anastasis said:

One of the things I miss about making the AUS-LHR hop is the tabloid selection. 

Spent a year near the brit army in Afghanistan and that was the only reading we could find in English. Yeah, I got hooked on it a bit. Every time we would go into Brit PX I would grab tabloids and pipe tobacco. Only shit they had I wanted. 

[StassneyHorn 6574]

42 minutes ago, Johnny Sack said:

It measures unemployment changes from Feb 2020 to December 2020.  

Why did Donald Trump allow this to happen?

[Anastasis 23463]

That and Blantons gold. 

[StassneyHorn 6574]

43 minutes ago, Johnny Sack said:

It measures unemployment changes from Feb 2020 to December 2020.  

Why did Donald Trump allow this to happen?

[WhatTheBuck 28775]

8 hours ago, Judge Roybeanbag said:

You can't lose what you never had.  

Wow, California really kicks Texas’ ass.

<Running and hiding under my bed in the 7th largest State economy in the country.>

[Johnny Sack 8397]

1 hour ago, bolverk said:

Alright, so I misread that but why did they stop in December when we have much more recent data. Also, it's not measuring "unemployment changes," it's measuring "employment changes." Those are very different things. But, of course, there are two major data sets used for "employment" and they don't specify which one they use.

One is derived from the Local Unemployment Area Statistics (LAUS) program which is a monthly household survey asking people if they are employed. The other is a measure of employment based on the actual job count from the Current Employment Statistics (CES) program. This one counts jobs instead of people (some people hold more than one).

That said, why don't they extend their analysis to use more current figures and just stop in December? Why do they attribute November 2020 patterns to orders given by governors that affected restrictions? Why don't they look at the actual types of jobs that were affected?

Shit, just look at Midland and Odessa and compare then to Austin. I can guarantee you that folks out in the Permian Basin, by and large, didn't take this shit seriously? In Austin, we sure did. From March 2020 to March 2021, those two cities lost a little more than 16% of their job base. Austin only lost 1.3%. Houston lost 5.5%. What do you think had to do with those discrepancies? Could it have been, I don't know, the actual structure of their local economies?

My initial misreading of the timeframe takes very little away from my critique of this really shallow and shitty "analysis" and does nothing to dissuade me from viewing it as something intended to reinforce preexisting notions of easily triggered Republicans.

I don’t know why they chose that.  I doubt much as changed.  I check most recent BLS unemployment stats.  With all their huge structural advantages, California has the 6th, and New York has the 2nd, worst  unemployment rates in the USA.  

[lmao 178]

Trevor Noah questioning the CDC and guidelines

 

[Bama Chick 28596]

The Daily Mail lol

[washparkhorn 9939]

2 hours ago, Johnny Sack said:

 With all their huge structural advantages, California has the 6th, and New York has the 2nd, worst  unemployment rates in the USA.  

Structural advantages in normal times can be an anchor in a massively deadly pandemic.

(Texas has the 13th worst unemployment rate, by the way) - https://www.bls.gov/web/laus/laumstrk.htm

The why is multifactorial and preliminary.

• Scaling down affects more in states with "hardest hit" industries.
• Destination States - CA/Hawaii/NY were severely hit with the loss of travelers. So was Orlando, by the way, showing a reluctance of travelers to travel.
• Non-Destination States -Nebraska, South Dakota, Vermont, North Dakota, Iowa, Missouri, Utah, South Carolina, Montana, and Oklahoma have the best unemployment rates.
• Dominant businesses in each state affect unemployment (WFH has knock on effects, e.g., services ancillary to maintaining office space)
• wage replacement rates show little if any correlation (i.e. there is no evidence the safety net is turning into a hammock). See https://oui.doleta.gov/unemploy/repl_ratio/repl_ratio_rpt.asp

Just a few ideas - but the data remains fuzzy and the waves have hit states differently and at different times - noise that must be filtered.

Edited May 7, 2021 by washparkhorn

[Dahobbs 17526]

10 hours ago, Anastasis said:

I think that we fundamentally agree.  We both think that this is masturbatory with no real world impact.  We just disagree about the benefits of watching in the mirror as the masturbation play out. 

Yup, but I think in your analogy we disagree on the value of masturbation itself. I've always thought it was pretty valuable.

Edited May 7, 2021 by Dahobbs

[Dahobbs 17526]

11 hours ago, bolverk said:

Alright, so I misread that but why did they stop in December when we have much more recent data. Also, it's not measuring "unemployment changes," it's measuring "employment changes." Those are very different things. But, of course, there are two major data sets used for "employment" and they don't specify which one they use.

One is derived from the Local Unemployment Area Statistics (LAUS) program which is a monthly household survey asking people if they are employed. The other is a measure of employment based on the actual job count from the Current Employment Statistics (CES) program. This one counts jobs instead of people (some people hold more than one).

That said, why don't they extend their analysis to use more current figures and just stop in December? Why do they attribute November 2020 patterns to orders given by governors that affected restrictions? Why don't they look at the actual types of jobs that were affected?

Shit, just look at Midland and Odessa and compare then to Austin. I can guarantee you that folks out in the Permian Basin, by and large, didn't take this shit seriously? In Austin, we sure did. From March 2020 to March 2021, those two cities lost a little more than 16% of their job base. Austin only lost 1.3%. Houston lost 5.5%. What do you think had to do with those discrepancies? Could it have been, I don't know, the actual structure of their local economies?

My initial misreading of the timeframe takes very little away from my critique of this really shallow and shitty "analysis" and does nothing to dissuade me from viewing it as something intended to reinforce preexisting notions of easily triggered Republicans.

I'm not sure their numbers are entirely wrong, but I can't figure out how to match them. And what they have for states like Idaho is plainly incorrect. I've been using the numbers from https://www.bls.gov/regions/home.htm. I've compared changes in total employment, unemployment, and unemployment rate (both on a relative and absolute measure). They don't indicate where the data comes from (it just says federal data) or how they arrived at their numbers. 

 

 

[gmr548 16576]

I for one find it ridiculous that anyone would question a chart from an openly partisan outlet with questionable sourcing that attempts to attribute there actions of Republican governors in MA, NH, VT, MD, GA, and AZ to Democrats while attempting to attribute the actions of Democratic governors in LA, MT, and NC to Republicans. The Daily Mail has obviously considered all relevant context here and is absolutely not intentionally producing misinformation. Johnny Sack dropped the mic on you betacuck soy boy libtards. Enjoy being owned!

[wildcat09 29346]

I can't believe travel to Vegas dropped during a a near-global depression caused by a pandemic. Obviously the Democrats' fault.

[UTCzech III 2907]

I say, let 'em crash.

 

[Aqua Buddha 14582]

49 minutes ago, UTCzech III said:

I say, let 'em crash.

 

The owner of the company that sold it to them is a major Republican donor.  We're all surprised about that, I know.

https://littlesis.org/person/226940-Patrick_M_Schmidt

[Sawbonz 27541]

1 hour ago, UTCzech III said:

I say, let 'em crash.

 

Man I would hang onto them. You never know when a malaria outbreak might come up

[4th&Five 41516]

 

[Anastasis 23463]

 

Takes about 5 seconds of rubbing two brain cells together to understand what VAERS actually is and what the limitations of the data are.

 

[lmao 178]

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2021/05/liberals-covid-19-science-denial-lockdown/618780/

Inflammatory headline but makes some decent points.

[MC Fresh Breath 4074]

Leopards ate their faces.

Quote

 

74 sickened in COVID-19 outbreak at Peoples Church in Salem
Last year, Peoples Church joined 9 other Oregon churches in a legal effort to overturn Gov. Kate Brown’s COVID-19 restrictions.

SALEM, Ore. — Oregon health officials say at least 74 people linked to a church in Salem have contracted COVID-19.

The Oregon Health Authority started investigating the outbreak at the Peoples Church on April 6, The Statesman Journal reported. The state did not release information about the outbreak until Wednesday.

The church’s website and Facebook page indicates in-person services and events continue to be held there including Mother’s Day services scheduled for Sunday. Officials at Peoples Church declined to respond to questions from the newspaper or acknowledge their specific outbreak.

"We are concerned about the COVID-19 surge in Oregon. This statewide increase has impacted our entire region, including our church family," church spokesman Brent Kintz said in an email on behalf of church leadership.

Last year, Peoples Church joined nine other Oregon churches in a legal effort to overturn Gov. Kate Brown’s COVID-19 restrictions. The complaint, filed by California-based Pacific Justice Institute, argued that restrictions on churches violate constitutional protections for religious freedom.

According to the church’s Facebook page, Lead Pastor Scott Erickson and his wife, Bonnie, both were hospitalized with COVID-19 last month.

In a video message posted to the church’s Facebook page April 14, Executive Pastor Tom Murray encouraged those who attend in person to physically distance, and stay home if they are ill.

Marion County has been in the "high risk" category for the past several months, with the exception of April 30-May 6, when it was moved to "extreme risk." In both categories, people are required to wear masks and remain 6 feet apart.

The church’s recent Facebook photos of gatherings show neither masks nor physical distancing. Peoples Church is a non-denominational Assemblies of God church.

 

https://www.kgw.com/article/news/health/coronavirus/74-sickened-covid-19-outbreak-peoples-church-salem-oregon/283-5bee44df-064b-4748-b8cf-36b06381e060

[jimmyjazz 45889]

17 hours ago, Anastasis said:

Takes about 5 seconds of rubbing two brain cells together to understand what VAERS actually is and what the limitations of the data are.

This is what happens when our science education takes a shit.

[MC Fresh Breath 4074]

On the better news front for the US

Coronavirus cases hit a seven-month low
 

Quote

 

Coronavirus infections in the U.S. are now at their lowest levels in seven months, thanks to the vaccines.

The big picture: The vaccines are turning the tide in America's battle with the coronavirus. Deaths and serious illnesses have dropped significantly, and now cases are falling too — an important piece of protection for the future, if we can keep it up.

By the numbers: The U.S. averaged about 48,000 new cases per day over the past week.

That’s a 13% improvement over the week before, and it’s the first time since October that average daily cases have dipped below 50,000.
20 states saw fewer new cases over the past week than they did the week before, while outbreaks got bigger in 10 states.
New Jersey saw the biggest improvement over the past week, with a 40% drop in new cases, followed by Connecticut, at 30%.
Why it’s happening: Over half of all American adults have now gotten at least one shot of a vaccine, and 41% of adults are fully vaccinated.

Between the lines: It took a while for the U.S. vaccination drive to translate into a sustained decline in the number of new cases, and the virus is still surging worldwide.

Because the virus has already been able to spread so widely, it will likely stay in our lives for years to come, thanks to new variants that will continue to evolve.
Future variants may be deadlier, or more able to evade our existing vaccines. For now, though, the vaccines appear to be highly effective against nearly every common variant.
The bottom line: The vaccines are working. They are saving lives and beating back the virus right now, and they can minimize the virus’ presence in our lives in the future — if enough people get them.

 

https://www.axios.com/coronavirus-cases-infections-vaccines-variants-cc1d83ed-6523-43d9-9032-91b2ba08cb37.html

[PenelopeWitherspoon 19100]

You can't lose what you never had.  

It's be interesting to see that per capita. New York is about half the population of CA.

[Neonmoon 38129]

Shots in Arms

 

[Anastasis 23463]

I kinda miss triple's nonsense, but the FLCCC twitter feed is a suitable substitute.

 

 

[InkaUtexas 25868]

23 minutes ago, PenelopeWitherspoon said:

On 5/6/2021 at 2:02 PM, Judge Roybeanbag said:

You can't lose what you never had.  

It's be interesting to see that per capita. New York is about half the population of CA.

I would also like to see the benefits from Federal spending per state. Not just social programs, but military, etc. 

[washparkhorn 9939]

13 minutes ago, PenelopeWitherspoon said:

It's be interesting to see that per capita. New York is about half the population of CA.

you are right.

1. DC ($201,000)

2. NY ($87K)

3. Mass ($84K)

4. Washington State ($80K)

5. Connecticut ($80K)

6. California ($78K)

. . . 13. Colorado ($67K)

. . . 24. Texas ($59K)

. . . 26. Oregon ($59K)

. . . 39. Florida ($50K)

. . . 51. Mississippi ($38K)

[washparkhorn 9939]

4 minutes ago, InkaUtexas said:

I would also like to see the benefits from Federal spending per state. Not just social programs, but military, etc. 

Challenge - rejected. Too difficult for my small brain. But a great question.

[HenryJames 66038]

 

[MC Fresh Breath 4074]

For all I know, other MLB teams are doing things like this as well.

 

 

[cactusflinthead 27598]

 

[Aqua Buddha 14582]

10 minutes ago, cactusflinthead said:

 

Another factor is 80% of India is, quite frankly, a third world country insofar as infrastructure and cleanliness.  They're also and incredibly dense population.  The mystery is how it took them this long to get where they are now.

[cactusflinthead 27598]

20 minutes ago, Aqua Buddha said:

Another factor is 80% of India is, quite frankly, a third world country insofar as infrastructure and cleanliness.  They're also and incredibly dense population.  The mystery is how it took them this long to get where they are now.

Modi doesn't give a shit. That's how. Is India more densely populated than SK?