2:00PM Water Cooler 6/28/2022 | naked capitalism

By Lambert Strether of Corrente

More soon. –lambert

Bird Song of the Day

Nightingale Wren, Cayo, Belize.

Politics

Lambert here: One reader suggested changing these quotes; I don’t think it’s a bad idea, but I need to think about it. I don’t want to be too doomy — we are not short of inventory in that department — but I don’t want to go all chipped and Pollyanna-esque, either.

“But what is government itself, but the greatest of all reflections on human nature?” –James Madison, Federalist 51

“They had learned nothing, and forgotten nothing.” –Charles Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord

“When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro.” –Hunter Thompson

Roe v. Wade

“How Did Roe Fall?” [New York Times]. “The beginning of the end of Roe v. Wade arrived on election night in November 2010. That night, control of state houses across the country flipped from Democrat to Republican, almost to the number: Democrats had controlled 27 state legislatures going in and ended up with 16; Republicans started with 14 and ended up controlling 25. Republicans swept not only the South but Democratic strongholds in the Midwest, picking up more seats nationwide than either party had in four decades. By the time the votes had been counted, they held their biggest margin since the Great Depression.” • So we have Obama’s miserably inadequate response to the Crash to thank for the loss of Roe, too. Thanks, Obama! You and Timmy sure did foam that runway!

UPDATE “Sen. Josh Hawley predicts the overturning of Roe v. Wade will cause a ‘major sorting out across the country’ and allow the GOP to ‘extend their strength in the Electoral College’” [MSN]. “‘I think we will see a major sorting out across the country that is already underway, as we speak, as states move to change their laws or adopt new laws in response to this decision,’ he said. ‘I think it’ll probably redraw some demographic lines around the country, and will lead to impacts in voting patterns, I think, all around the country.’ Hawley said that individuals may make decisions about where they choose to live in the United States based on those laws, possibly relocating in the process. ‘More and more red states, they’re going to become more red, and purple states are going to become red, and the blue states are going to get a lot bluer,’ he said. That, in turn, may give Republicans an even greater advantage in the Electoral College, the country’s system for electing presidents. Under that system, the president is decided based on the votes of 538 electors allocated to each state based on their populations.” • Legitimacy crisis, here we come (implicit in “a lot bluer”).

UPDATE “Roe Is the New Prohibition” [David Frum, The Atlantic]. “As Prohibition became a nationwide reality, Americans rapidly changed their mind about the idea. Support for Prohibition declined, then collapsed. Not only was the Volstead Act repealed, in 1933, but the Constitution was further amended so that nobody could ever try such a thing ever again. That’s where the story usually ends. But now let’s add one more chapter, the one most relevant to our present situation. When Prohibition did finally end, so too did the culture war over alcohol. Emotions that had burned fiercely for more than half a century sputtered out after 1933…. [C]ompromise is exactly what happened after Prohibition was tried…. Prohibition and Dobbs were and are projects that seek to impose the values of a cohesive and well-organized cultural minority upon a diverse and less-organized cultural majority. Those projects can work for a time, but only for a time. In a country with a representative voting system—even a system as distorted in favor of the rural and conservative as the American system was in the 1920s and is again today—the cultural majority is bound to prevail sooner or later.”

* * *

Ownage:

Water is wet and abortion kills a human being. https://t.co/DSASKRtxWj

— Tom Fitton (@TomFitton) June 26, 2022

And:

you haven’t wrecked anyone this bad since the edmund fitzgerald

— the illegal segal (@theillegalsegal) June 28, 2022

Ouch!

Capitol Seizure

UPDATE “Could Trump Face Justice Over the Fraudulent Electors?” [The Bulwark]. “[I]t arguably borders on insanity to believe that law enforcement will, at long last, find the weak spot in Trump’s otherwise impenetrable armor of impunity. But if anything can, my money is on the fake elector scheme. Five months ago I wrote that the scheme to sign and submit phony electoral certificates in five states, executed by mostly low-level local officials, could mushroom into potential criminal accountability for high-level officials in Trump’s orbit, up to and including Trump himself… Over a two-day period last week, at least nine people in four different states reportedly received federal grand jury subpoenas in connection with the fake elector investigation. The recipients included not only some of the phony electors themselves but also ‘aides to Mr. Trump’s campaign.’ Federal agents also executed search warrants directed at the chairman of the Nevada Republican party and the party’s secretary.” And: “The final link in the chain was supplied last week when the House January 6th committee revealed that none other than the chairwoman of the Republican National Committee, Ronna McDaniel, had directly linked Trump to the fake elector scheme. McDaniel recounted that Trump had personally called her to put his attorney John Eastman on the line ‘to talk about the importance of the R.N.C. helping the campaign gather these contingent electors.’ Read the word ‘contingent’ to be a self-protective euphemism for ‘fake.’ While the Jan. 6th Committee of McDaniel’s conversation with Trump and Eastman, it occurred after December 11, when all fifty states had certified the election results and Trump’s final Supreme Court challenge had been rejected, there were no serious ‘contingencies’ left.” • Something to watch. Maybe the walls will close in. (I agree that the hearings are pointless if law enforcement does not close in. One retrospectively legalizes a coup only in Third World countries.)

“John Eastman’s long, strange trip to the heart of the Jan. 6 investigation” [Los Angeles Times]. “Eastman remains a senior fellow at the [Claremont Institute], which, after decades on the geographical and intellectual fringes of the right, found new prominence during the Trump years. The think tank’s embrace of upheaval and crisis as necessary to usher in America’s renewal aligned neatly with the norms-busting president. Claremonsters, as they call themselves, use apocalyptic rhetoric to convey the staggering stakes, as they see them, or to at least get people’s attention. That cataclysmic viewpoint spilled into the Jan. 6 hearings, when former White House lawyer Eric Herschmann said in a deposition that he had warned Eastman his scheme to have the vice president invalidate the election would ’cause riots in the streets.’ ‘And [Eastman] said words to the effect of, ‘There has been violence in the history of our country, Eric, to protect the democracy or protect the republic,’ Herschmann said. Eastman was so committed to this line of thinking that he continued to seek avenues to overturn Trump’s loss, even in the immediate aftermath of the attack on the U.S. Capitol. He unsuccessfully sought a pardon from Trump and now finds himself potentially in criminal jeopardy. ‘Unfortunately, he drank the Kool-Aid that President Trump was selling — that the election was a fraud,’ [John Yoo, a former lawyer in George W. Bush’s administration and a tenured professor at UC Berkeley] said.” • Holy moley, John Yoo, who “justified” torture for Bush, is now a RINO. Strange times. (To its credit, the Times mentions Yoo’s role.)

“How the House Jan. 6 Panel Has Redefined the Congressional Hearing” [New York Times]. “The five sessions the panel has produced so far this month resemble a tightly scripted television series. Each episode has a defined story with a beginning, middle and end. Heroes and villains are clearly identified. Only a few of the committee members speak at any given hearing, and those who do often read from teleprompters. The answers to the questions are known before they are asked. There is no grandstanding or partisan rancor.” • I think WaterGate was pretty tightly scripted; lawyers never ask questions they don’t know the answer to. But I guess “Made for TV” hearings are new. Once again, we live in the stupidest timeline.

Biden Administration

Democrat flaccidity (1): “Fighting for”:

I know there are women out there who are afraid. To those of you who feel alone and scared: I want you to know the President and I are fighting for you and your rights. We are in this fight together. pic.twitter.com/1J54ZY2aYk

— Vice President Kamala Harris (@VP) June 24, 2022

Shorter: “I’m in a plane and you’re not.””

Democrat flaccidity (2): “Strategic strategy”:

Q Will the president dedicate travel to the abortion issue to reach out to young ppl and women who are angry? @PressSec: “I don’t have anything to read out to you specifically on a strategy — a strategic strategy — around the decision that was made by the Court yesterday”

— Jordan Fabian (@Jordanfabian) June 25, 2022

Shorter: “We’re waiting to see how it polls with suburban women.”

“”It Feels Like They Couldn’t Care Less”: Democrats Under Fire After Overturning of Roe” [Eoin Higgins, The Flashpoint]. Lots of quotes from protesters, including this: “I just can’t get behind people basically fundraising off my health—and the health and lives of other potentially pregnant people,’ Lauren said.”

2022

* * *

UPDATE OK: “Republicans Race for Runoff in Oklahoma Senate Special Election” [Bloomberg (Super Extra)]. “The biggest question in Tuesday’s special election primary for a Senate seat in Oklahoma is which one of the dozen other Republicans will face Rep. Markwayne Mullin in a runoff…. Despite Mullin’s likely edge, a runoff will allow candidates to sharpen their messages after a primary that was mainly about who is the most conservative on social issues. All the leading primary candidates tout religious values and oppose abortion rights and gun control. They all espouse loyalty to former President Donald Trump, though Trump hasn’t endorsed anyone in the race….. Scott Pruitt, who headed the Environmental Protection Agency in the Trump Administration, is the best-known candidate nationally and was expected to be a factor. But he trails badly in fundraising and polling, and is a long-shot to make the runoff, political analysts in the state said… In a brief interview, Mullin, now in his fifth House term, touted his business background as head of a family plumbing company and said the main difference between him and the other candidates is ‘the resumé.’ With ‘this many Republicans in the reddest state in the union, policy—most of the time—we’re going to line up on,’ Mullin said.”

2024

“Trump Voters Need a New Direction” [Peggy Noonan]. A big slab of quotation, but as readers know, I stan for Nooners. “In 2016 Trump supporters called an audible, threw the long ball, and to the shock of all won. There were things beyond country-love and insight in the Trumpian brew—the joy of social resentment, some jacked-up nihilism, the pleasure of suddenly having comrades and belonging to something, of suddenly having power and being able to rub your so-called superiors’ faces in it. But there was strategy, too. Republicans can argue about Donald Trump’s single term. He was not strictly speaking a capable man, which surprised those who think the rich are. It’s not that he couldn’t make a deal; it’s that he never knew where the deal was, didn’t know who to go to because he didn’t understand Washington. The border is more overwhelmed than ever, the wall wasn’t built, China continues to loom. But there were no new wars, and conservative justices joined the high court…. Now we jump to this moment, to the Jan. 6 committee and the testimony—under oath—of Mr. Trump’s loyalists, who worked for him in the White House and led his 2020 re-election effort. What they said in essence—and again, under oath—is that the idea the election was stolen was all made up, pure fiction, a deliberate lie aimed at overturning the election. This was an act against the Constitution, against the formal and informal arrangements and traditions better people had labored to maintain for more than two centuries. The president’s people had told him he hadn’t won. On election night, according to one witness, everyone said so but an ‘inebriated’ Rudy Giuliani. But a drunk Rudy wasn’t enough, so Mr. Trump looked around for kooks, crooks and freaks. He didn’t have to look far because America has lots of them, and Trumpworld more than most. Their efforts were knocked down in the courts by Trump-appointed judges and rebuffed in the states by Republican officials. Mr. Trump tried to get his vice president to go along, but he refused. So he threw his most passionate supporters on the ground into it, and told them to march on the Capitol. ‘Be there, will be wild!’ Those poor stupid [oops] people did. From the testimony of those arrested: ‘Trump asked us to come,’ said Robert Schornack. Eric Barber: ‘He personally asked us to come to D.C. that day . . . for everything he’s done for us, if this is the only thing he’s gonna ask of me, I’ll do it.’ Daniel Herendeen understood Trump to be saying, ‘Come to D.C., big things are gonna happen.’ More than 800 people were arrested. Some have served painful time; there was at least one suicide. There is no record of Mr. Trump visiting them in prison. There is no record of his paying their bills. No record of his taking responsibility for their actions and requesting mercy. No record they were shown a cent of the $250 million Mr. Trump’s small-donor fundraising operation took in after the election. The 1/6 hearings have been a powerful indictment, well-documented and undeniable. It is wishful thinking on the part of Trump supporters to dismiss the hearings on the grounds that most Americans didn’t watch them. Everything said will filter out and down, seep into the general knowledge base, and come to be understood as “what happened.” It will further damage Mr. Trump’s standing.” • Old bourbon though she is, I always think Nooners is worth a read. Concluding: “Trump voters: Call an audible again. Look at the field and the facts, be strategic. Donald Trump, in the 2016 primaries, tended to win with about a third of the vote. In a field of 17 that was enough. It’s looking like the GOP field could be larger than expected in 2024, and of course Mr. Trump could run again and win the nomination again. It will be easier for him if past Trump voters fail to think strategically, and if donors big and small don’t move early to winnow the field…. So that’s what I tell Trump voters: Be serious. Move quickly. Let go of the anvil that, in the most buoyant waters imaginable, will sink you to the bottom of the sea.” • A conscious reference to: “When you’re opponent’s drowning, throw ’em an anvil”?

“Why Ron DeSantis Can Beat Trump in 2024” [Jonathan Chait, New York Magazine]. “If you want to get a sense of which way the Republican Party is headed in 2024, here are two straws in the wind. First, Gary Fineout reported that Ron DeSantis might not seek Donald Trump’s endorsement in his reelection contest for governor — a risk DeSantis can probably afford, given the Republican tidal wave that will be at his back in November. Second, a poll of likely Republican-primary voters in New Hampshire found DeSantis edging out Trump 39 percent to 37 percent. If you still think DeSantis is only floating a presidential campaign in the hopes Trump will back out, think again. DeSantis is building a campaign to take on Trump. And he can win. … [DeSantis] is the beneficiary of a concerted effort by Republican elites to promote his candidacy. The coordination behind DeSantis is reminiscent of how the party coalesced behind George W. Bush in 1999. What had begun as a wide-open race with multiple contestants winnowed very quickly as the word got out that Bush was the pick. Something very much like that is occurring with DeSantis. DeSantis is hoovering up cash from the party’s donor class, including the support of at least 42 billionaires. The most telling fact about the New Hampshire poll is that while DeSantis leads Trump by just two points overall, he leads among Fox News watchers by 14 points and among conservative radio listeners by 16 points. Republicans who consume conservative media are getting the message. The voters who are not yet tuned in to conservative media may still name Trump in polls, but they are likely to follow.” • So the 1/6 Committee — see Nooners, above — is doing the RINOs a solid?

“The Man Most Responsible for Ending Roe Worries That It Could Hurt His Party” [New York Times]. “Publicly, former President Donald J. Trump heralded the Supreme Court’s ruling on Friday ending federal abortion protections as a victory. Yet, as he faces possible prosecution over his efforts to subvert the 2020 election and prepares for a likely 2024 presidential campaign, Mr. Trump has privately told friends and advisers the ruling will be ‘bad for Republicans.’ When a draft copy of the decision leaked in May, Mr. Trump began telling friends and advisers that it would anger suburban women, a group who helped tilt the 2020 race to President Biden, and would lead to a backlash against Republicans in the November midterm elections. In other conversations, Mr. Trump has told people that measures like the Texas state law banning most abortions after six weeks and allowing citizens to file lawsuits against people who enable abortions are ‘so stupid,’ according to a person with direct knowledge of the discussions. The Supreme Court let the measure stand in December 2021.”

UPDATE “Biden Irked by Democrats Who Won’t Take ‘Yes’ for an Answer on 2024” [New York Times]. “Earlier this month, when Senator Bernie Sanders said he would not challenge President Biden in 2024, Mr. Biden was so relieved he invited his former rival to dinner at the White House the next night. Mr. Biden has been eager for signs of loyalty — and they have been few and far between.” Well, I’m glad Sanders got a dinner out of all this, at least. I wonder if he broke any china? And then there’s this: “ declined to say whether he would consider such a run or if he planned to back Mr. Biden. ‘We’re just trying to do our daily thing, brother,’ Mr. Manchin said. ‘Trying to do what we got to do that’s good for the country.’” Oh. More: “The president has made clear he wants a primary calendar that better reflects the party’s racial diversity, all but assuring the demise of first-in-the-nation status for the Iowa, which was hostile to Mr. Biden in his last two presidential bids. Senior Democrats are considering moving up Michigan, a critical general election state where the president has a number of allies in labor and elected office.” Wait. Doesn’t Biden owe Clyburn? And this: “But White House aides believe they can direct Mrs. Clinton’s energy toward assisting with the public response to the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe.” A-a-a-a-u-u-u-g-h-h-h!!! My eyes!!!!! The reporter really emptied his Rolodex, didn’t he? Well worth a read.

Democrats en Déshabillé

I have moved my standing remarks on the Democrat Party (“the Democrat Party is a rotting corpse that can’t bury itself”) to a separate, back-dated post, to which I will periodically add material, summarizing the addition here in a “live” Water Cooler. (Hopefully, some Bourdieu.) It turns out that defining the Democrat Party is, in fact, a hard problem. I do think the paragraph that follows is on point all the way back to 2016, if not before:

The Democrat Party is the political expression of the class power of PMC, their base (lucidly explained by Thomas Frank in Listen, Liberal!). ; if the Democrat Party did not exist, the PMC would have to invent it. . (“PMC” modulo “class expatriates,” of course.) Second, all the working parts of the Party reinforce each other. Leave aside characterizing the relationships between elements of the Party (ka-ching, but not entirely) those elements comprise a network — a Flex Net? An iron octagon? — of funders, vendors, apparatchiks, electeds, NGOs, and miscellaneous mercenaries, with assets in the press and the intelligence community.

Note, of course, that the class power of the PMC both expresses and is limited by other classes; oligarchs and American gentry (see ‘industrial model’ of Ferguson, Jorgensen, and Jie) and the working class spring to mind. Suck up, kick down.

* * *

AOC on a “legitimacy crisis”:

Past Presidents, from Lincoln to FDR, understood the dangerous stakes of allowing an unchecked Court overreach its authority and threaten our democracy.

Lincoln ignored the court to issue the emancipation proclamation.

FDR, in the plunges of the Great Depression, also sought…

— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) June 25, 2022

AOC asking the Democrat leadership to, well, lead….

Realignment and Legitimacy

“America Is Sliding Into the Long Pandemic Defeat” [Ed Yong, The Atlantic]. Another great slab of quotation, I apologize: “In 2018, while reporting on pandemic preparedness in the Democratic Republic of Congo, I heard many people joking about the fictional 15th article of the country’s constitution: Débrouillez-vous, or ‘Figure it out yourself.’ It was a droll and weary acknowledgment that the government won’t save you, and you must make do with the resources you’ve got. The United States is now firmly in the débrouillez-vous era of the COVID-19 pandemic.” We call it “personal risk assessment.” More: “Across the country, almost all government efforts to curtail the coronavirus have evaporated….. I have interviewed dozens of other local officials, community organizers, and grassroots groups who are also swimming furiously against the tide of governmental apathy to push some pandemic response forward, even if incrementally. This is an endeavor that all of American society would benefit from; it is currently concentrated among a network of exhausted individuals who are trying to figure out this pandemic, while living up to public health’s central tenet: Protect the health of all people, and the most vulnerable especially…. Building a stronger public-health system demands an unfettering of the moral imagination: Americans need to believe that their government should invest in systems that keep everyone safer from disease—and to trust that such systems are even possible. But throughout his decades-long career, [AIDS activist and Yale epidemiologist Greg] Gonsalves has witnessed social safety nets being repeatedly shredded, leading to ‘a collapse of any faith in the state to do good,’ he told me. That faith eroded further when public institutions buckled during the pandemic, and when two successive administrations failed to control the coronavirus. The resulting ‘pandemic fatigue’ is not just a craving for the status quo, but a deep cynicism over the possibility of something better. [a Keynesian beauty contest, but one where the minimizers were given the megaphone by the 1%] —. ‘People can imagine a world with crypto-banking and the metaverse, so why is it so hard to imagine a world with less disease and death?’ Céline Gounder of Kaiser Health News said.” • The entire piece is well worth a read. For me, the pervasive sense that the United States has just given up is very, very hard to bear; I don’t recognize the country any more, as Yves said the other day. (Of course, Yong is arguing against this thesis — and efforts like Corsi boxes, hard-core masking, and Covid meetups support him — so perhaps we might distinguish between the so-called “United States” and elites (who may not have “given up,” and may well be actively malevolent), and within elites between capital and its enablers in the PMC). Ah well, nevertheless.

* * *

In the Blue paradise of California:

A cash bail schedule is like a menu. It means that, after you are arrested, you can’t get out of jail unless you pay a cash amount that is listed on a chart. The chart requires different amounts of cash for different cases. If you’re too poor, you’re separated from your family.

— Alec Karakatsanis (@equalityAlec) June 28, 2022

And:

Many people will die in the LA County jail because of this schedule. Four people died in the jail in ten days in the beginning of March alone. 1000s of people will lose their jobs/housing, and 10,000s of LA children will be separated from their parents. https://t.co/GIJjrGTvQF

— Alec Karakatsanis (@equalityAlec) June 28, 2022

#COVID19

I am but a humble tape-watcher, and I’m perplexed about the current state of play. Case data is showing the fiddling-and-diddling behavior characteristic of a peak. However, nothing I hear in anecdotal case data tells me there’s any relief. Hospitalization data (trailing) is easing (and so the hospital-centric public health establishment probably thinks Covid is done). Positivity data (leading) has been fiddling and diddling as it too does at peaks. Then again, waste-water data (leading) is slightly down. The wild card is variants BA.4/5 (and I thought we were supposed to be giving names to these things). All the variant sources I have say BA.4/5 are up, but they differ as to how much and where, and the data is two weeks behind (hat tip, CDC; who could have known we’d need to track variant data?). I am reminded of the “stairstep” (see the Case count chart below: I muttered about this at the time) that marked the Delta/Omicron transition, just before Omicron’s amazing take-off. Perhaps a BA.4/5 transition will exhibit the same behavior. OTOH, I could be projecting patterns into clouds.

• “China’s Shock Covid Shift Adds Fuel to World-Beating Stock Rally” [Bloomberg]. “Chinese shares rallied ever closer to a bull market after Beijing unexpectedly halved the mandatory quarantine period, boosting optimism of a shift away from the government’s Covid Zero policy that has clouded the outlook for investors.” • Clarifying! And see Rule #2.

• ”The BA.5 story” [Eric Topol, Ground Truths]. The lead: “The Omicron sub-variant BA.5 is the worst version of the virus that we’ve seen. It takes immune escape, already extensive, to the next level, and, as a function of that, enhanced transmissibility, well beyond Omicron (BA.1) and other Omicron family variants that we’ve seen (including BA.1.1, BA.2, BA.2.12.1, and BA.4). You could say it’s not so bad because there hasn’t been a marked rise in hospitalizations and deaths as we saw with Omicron, but that’s only because we had such a striking adverse impact from Omicron, for which there is at least some cross-immunity (BA.1 to BA.5).” More: “Obviously, the non-pharmacologic mitigating measures that include high-quality make (N95/KN95), physical distancing, ventilation and air filtration would help, but pandemic fatigue [and official propaganda]. has led to very low level of adoption…. There is no right answer but variant chasing is a flawed approach. By the time a BA.5 vaccine booster is potentially available, who knows what will be the predominant strain? All of this gets back to the vital need for new generation of vaccines that are universal, that is variant-proof—either against all sarbecoviruses or against all β-coronaviruses. And the pivotal importance of nasal vaccines to promote mucosal immunity and help block the transmission chain. These goals are paramount, along with more and better antiviral drugs, but they are not getting adequate traction or priority.”

• Long Thread on personal risk assessment:

Useful, but it would sure be helpful when doing my “personal risk assessment” homework if official data sources weren’t incomplete, corrupted, or going dark, ffs.

“The next epidemic may be here. The U.S. isn’t ready for it” [STAT]. “If HIV and Covid-19 were wake-up calls for the government to prioritize public health, monkeypox shows the consequences of hitting the snooze button too many times.”

• “What do we learn?”

If you missed it, here’s a post on my queasiness with CDC numbers, especially case count, which I (still) consider most important, despite what Walensky’s psychos at CDC who invented “community levels” think. But these are the numbers we have.

91-DIVOC is back (hosanna, hosanna) and with it my beloved state and regional breakdowns. So long, New York Times! Case count for the United States:

The totals are more or less level, but under the hood the BA.4/5 are making up a greater and greater proportion of cases. There was a weird, plateau-like “fiddling and diddling” stage before the Omicron explosion, too. This conjuncture feels the same. Remember that cases are undercounted, one source saying by a factor of six, Gottlieb thinking we only pick up one in seven or eight.) Hence, I take the case count and multiply it by six to approximate the real level of cases, and draw the DNC-blue “Biden Line” at that point. Yesterday, the count was ~ 103,000. Today, it’s 106,300, and 106,300 * 6 = a Biden line at 618,000. At least we have confirmation that the extraordinary mass of case anecdotes had a basis in reality. (Remember these data points are weekly averages, so daily fluctuations are smoothed out.) The black “Fauci Line” is a counter to triumphalism, since it compares current levels to past crises.

• ”National Numbers, June 26″ [Covid Data Dispatch]. “New hospital admissions, the number of COVID-19 patients who sought treatment, rose slightly in the last week: about 4,400 patients were admitted each day nationwide, compared to 4,300 last week. Wastewater data from Biobot shows a national plateau, as coronavirus levels drop in the Northeast and West while rising in the South and remaining stagnant in the Midwest. Most likely, the rise of immune-evading Omicron subvariants BA.4 and BA.5 is preventing a BA.2-initiated wave from truly dipping back down.” • So I am not the only tapewatcher with this intuition….

Regional case count:

The South:

Seems like the South has its own jurisdictional differences. And holy moley, Florida? What’s witih your data? I know it’s released weekly, but these stairsteps? You can’t keep losing reports in a drawer; it looks odd!

From the Walgreen’s test positivity tracker:

1.2%. (I’m leaving the corporate logo on as a slap to and check on the goons at CDC.)

NOT UPDATED Wastewater data, regional (Biobot Analytics), June 22:

STILL BROKEN Wastewater data (CDC), June 4 – June 18:

CDC’s wastewater chart is down again.

NOT UPDATED Variant data, regional (Biobot), June 8:

Out of date compared to Walgreens (below) but still showing doubling behavior.

Variant data, national (Walgreens), June 22:

Nice doubling behavior, implying BA.4/5 should be happily dominant just in time for the travel weekend of July 4, good job everyone.

Variant data, national (CDC), June 11:

Doubling behavior moving along quite briskly.

Lambert here: It’s beyond frustrating how slow the variant data is. I looked for more charts: California doesn’t to a BA.4/BA.5 breakdown. New York does (BA.4/BA.5 is 27.7% as of June 18) but it, too, is on a molasses-like two-week cycle. Does nobody in the public health establishment get a promotion for tracking variants? Are there no grants?? Is there a single lab that does this work, and everybody gets the results from them? Additional sources from readers welcome [grinds teeth, bangs head on desk].

NOT UPDATED AGAIN WTF IS WRONG WITH THESE PEOPLE From CDC Community Profile Reports (PDFs), “Rapid Riser” counties:

No matter what else the CDC butchered, this report has been regular as clockwork since forever. Now it’s stopped for two days (and wastewater collection for three). From the data perspective, the CDC is a controlled flight into terrain, with all the instruments dead.

The previous release:

NOTE I shall most certainly not be using the CDC’s new “Community Level” metric. Because CDC has combined a leading indicator (cases) with a lagging one (hospitalization) their new metric is a poor warning sign of a surge, and a poor way to assess personal risk. In addition, Covid is a disease you don’t want to get. Even if you are not hospitalized, you can suffer from Long Covid, vascular issues, and neurological issues. For these reasons, case counts — known to be underestimated, due to home test kits — deserve to stand alone as a number to be tracked, no matter how much the political operatives in CDC leadership would like to obfuscate it. That the “green map” (which Topol calls a “capitulation” and a “deception”) is still up and being taken seriously verges on the criminal. Use the community transmission immediately below.

Here is CDC’s interactive map by county set to community transmission. This is the map CDC wants only hospitals to look at, not you:

West Coast, and Midwest are all red. More and more orange (“substantial”) on the East Coast, with some yellow breaking out. Great Plains speckled with yellow and blue.

NOT UPDATED AGAIN WTF IS WRONG WITH THESE PEOPLE Hospitalization (CDC Community Profile):

Very volatile. And speaking of BA.4/BA.5:

Get ready.

Death rate (Our World in Data):

Total: 1,041,027 1,040,805. I have added an anti-triumphalist Fauci Line.

Stats Watch

Inventories: “United States Wholesale Inventories” [Trading Economics]. “Wholesale inventories in the US rose 2 percent month-over-month to $880.6 billion in May of 2022, easing from an upwardly revised 2.3 percent advance in April, a preliminary estimate showed. Both durable goods (2.2 percent vs 2.4 percent in April) and nondurable (1.8 percent vs 2.2 percent) stocks increased at a softer pace. .” • That seems like rather a lot.

Manufacturing: “United States Richmond Fed Manufacturing Index” [Trading Economics]. “The Richmond Fed composite manufacturing index fell to -19 in June of 2022 from -9 in May, as two of its three component indexes dropped further into negative territory. The indexes for shipments (-16 vs -14 in May) and volume of new orders (-38 vs -29) declined while the employment index rose (23 vs 8). The wage index also remained elevated, despite a minor downward shift, indicating that a large share of firms continue to report increasing wages.”

The Bezzle: “Crypto exchange CoinFlex is raising $47 million through a new coin after a major investor fails to pay debt” [CNBC]. “Cryptocurrency exchange CoinFlex on Tuesday issued a new token to raise funds in a bid to restart withdrawals for its customers, after one client failed to repay a massive debt. CoinFlex said it would issue $47 million worth of a digital coin, offering 20% interest, which it’s calling Recovery Value USD, or rvUSD…. The company declined to name the investor, but said the individual ‘is a high-integrity person of significant means, experiencing temporary liquidity issues due to a credit (and price) crunch in crypto markets (and non-crypto markets), with substantial shareholdings in several unicorn private companies and a large portfolio.’ By issuing the new rvUSD tokens, CoinFlex will be hoping to raise enough money to cover the shortfall in its books left by the investor and resume withdrawals for users. It is offering a 20% interest rate for people willing to buy rvUSD to entice investors.” • Wild!

The Bezzle: “why CoinFlex’s halting of withdrawals suggests far more serious institutional implosions are on the crypto horizon” [Reddit]. “i have a hypothesis that one of the reasons we are seeing mega-whales (read: probably but not necessarily exchange owners) engage in activities like the looting of DeFi platforms (look for the Solend threads in here), exchanges (this post, maybe also the AEX Global situation), and possibly each other (see update1 above) is because they have burned so much capital trying to keep the price of Bitcoin above certain levels that they need to find new pools of capital to use for that purpose. i have a mathematical model that tries to guess when they will go bust given various assumptions. it’s not a good enough model to share but i will say that with extremely generous assumptions i computed that they could not prop up the price at $30K more than 6-8 months.” • Perhaps somebody who understands what these crooks are up to can explain.

UPDATE Manufacturing: “Boeing 737 MAX mid-air emergencies revealed as US agency prepares to probe production issues” [ABC Australia]. Boeing’s troubled 737 MAX planes — which have twice crashed, killing 346 people — have experienced at least six mid-air emergencies and dozens of groundings in the year after an extensive probe cleared them to fly. …. An ABC investigation can also reveal the US government will announce a new audit examining Boeing’s production oversight of the 737 MAX planes…. All MAX planes worldwide were grounded after the second crash as a 20-month safety review was carried out. But in April last year, five months after they were cleared to fly again, 100 MAX jets were again withdrawn from service after the discovery of an electrical fault in the cockpit that could result in the loss of critical flight functions. Boeing told the ABC it traced the problem back to a change in production processes at its Utah factory.” Another union-busting facility, I presume. More: “Kwasi Adjekum, an assistant professor of aviation at the University of North Dakota and a former air crash investigator, identified seven of the mid-air emergencies as being very serious and said Boeing had cut corners with the design of the MAX and suffered persistent manufacturing problems. But he said .” • Oh great.

Today’s Fear & Greed Index: 28 Fear (previous close: 28 Extreme Fear) [CNN]. One week ago: 19 (Extreme Fear). (0 is Extreme Fear; 100 is Extreme Greed). Last updated Jun 28 at 1:54 PM EDT.

Rapture Index: Closes up one on Interest Rates. “Rates are being pushed up by higher inflation” [Rapture Ready]. Record High, October 10, 2016: 189. Current: 189. (Remember that bringing on the Rapture is good.) I’ve been waiting for the Rapture Index to hit the all time high again. Now it has.

The Gallery

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News of the Wired

“Did I make it harder to sell your crappy, used crypto mining graphics card? Good” [TechRadar]. “A used graphics card just isn’t a good purchase right now. I said so, and I have no interest in making it easier for a lot of shady crypto miners to sell their worn-out GPUs by holding my tongue on this…. My interest is our entire readership, and given current inflation and cost-of-living issues, a lot of readers might be tempted to buy a used RTX 3080. I advised them that they might be buying a lemon and that there’s no way to tell a good card from a bad one.” • News you can use for gamers in the readership.

Contact information for plants: Readers, feel free to contact me at lambert [UNDERSCORE] strether [DOT] corrente [AT] yahoo [DOT] com, to (a) find out how to send me a check if you are allergic to PayPal and (b) to find out how to send me images of plants. Vegetables are fine! Fungi and coral are deemed to be honorary plants! If you want your handle to appear as a credit, please place it at the start of your mail in parentheses: (thus). Otherwise, I will anonymize by using your initials. See the previous Water Cooler (with plant) here. From RM:

RM writers: “After two years of serious drought up in the short grass prairie, it’s nice to see this little display. I have been on serious notice that they are NOT to be mowed over.”

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