Covid Update December 29, 2020 - Use a single dose (for now)

 How has Covid affected the US?

It looks like the US has turned the corner of the third wave but we are still loosing too many lifes.  The overall toll of the pandemic to date is illustrated by looking at total weekly deaths in the US this year compared to previous years. Overall, Covid effect continues to result in excess deaths.  Note that this is an increase in overall deaths including more Covid deaths, more suicides, and likely reduced accidents.

Bring on the vaccines!

The actual design of the vaccine (Moderna's with Pfizer's shortly after) was complete January 2020. There was significant supportive safety data for the vaccines at the beginning of the pandemic. The actual safety data for the specific vaccine was available May 2020.   It has been months waiting for the FDA bureaucratic generation and review of additional efficacy and safety data.  What if we had taken a different approach, balancing the known risk with a reasonable estimate of safety of vaccine to greatly greatly accelerate emergency use authorization?  How many lives would we have saved?  Given the Pfizer data shows that one dose has a significant effect, why not go with 1 dose for now?  How many lives would we save?  UPDATE - UK today decided to go with 1 initial shot to save lives.

How's the US doing?

Relative to the major EU countries and Canada the US has been on the high end of cases (positive tests per million) but more in the middle of the pack in deaths per million.  Given that positive tests are affected by testing availability, non-random population sampling, and inter-country events/requirements, it is not a perfect measure of actual cases per million.  Deaths, however, are most likley the ultimate measure of Covid effect.

How are Individual states doing?

Data on cases (positive tests), hospitalizations and deaths in individual states shows that most states have had or are in their 3rd wave.  And, while total hospitalizations in the US is at a high level, most states are at a lower level than the worst hit states were early in the pandemic.  I highlight Illinois (my state), New York (where my daughters are)  and CA, NY, FL and TX to illustrate some of the larger states.

What's happening within the states?

Looking at what's happening in the largest counties in the US (over 1 million) shows the high level of cases (positive tests and note that during the first few month of the pandemic there was a severe limit of testing and as a result it is very likely that there was a much, much higher level of cases than shown through positive tests) and recent increase in deaths, noting that the deaths are still, thankfully, much lower than early in the pandemic.

Trickle Down DID work!

Everyone is richer.  

Recent buzz from London is that a study shows that trickle down didn't work.  However, if one reads the paper, what it says is that changes to taxes on the top 1% did not lessen income inequality.  But, and this is the big but, trickle down was never claimed to be the secret to reducing income inequality  It was positioned as the best way to improve all levels of income.  And guess what?  It does.  Yes, the highest earners are making 1.7x's more in income.  But the lowest earners are making 1.2 x's more.  And that's in the face of the least skilled workers having to compete with a developing world. 

The rich already pay more than their fair share.

And, as is clear, the highest earners are already paying 1/3 of their income to the federal government, not to mention additional taxes they pay at the state level.  How much more should someone pay to the government for their value creation.

The Data Does Not Support Stopping Responsible Socially Distanced Indoor Dining

As scary and obtrusive as it may sound, Google is able to "track mobility" of it's users: " We aggregated, anonymized data to chart movement trends over time by geography, across different high-level categories of places such as retail and recreation, groceries and pharmacies, parks, transit stations, workplaces, and residential."

Below is Cook County Il's mobility data showing the  mobility for various activities as a result of Covid.   

When mobility data for restaurants/recreation is compared to cases per million for Cook County and DuPage County IL there is no clear relationship between mobility and cases per million.

It may be that if there was more granular data available such as age, bars versus restaurants, etc., it is possible a more clear relationship might be identifiable.  But for now, it is not clear that going to restaurants in a responsible socially distanced manner, led to the recent increase in cases.

Bruh! We are Taxing the Rich

I am always amazed at what people can get away with saying.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is practicing her capitalistic rights by selling merch with the slogan: "Tax the Rich."  Despite having a degree in economics from Boston University, it is not clear how she justifies her position.  Maybe 5 years of bartending, working long double shifts and working her fingers to the bone, before becoming the woke darling of the left and liberal media, caused her to loose whatever abilities she had to understand facts and use logic to make a valid point.

I used the recent CBO Income Distribution Data to look at what US households are making in income (includes all income including government transfers) and paying in taxes.  What did I find?

The top 20% of households makes 51.1% of all of the US income and pays 67.5% of all of the taxes.  The second highest quintile makes 19.07% and pays 16.8%.  The middle quintile 13.8% and 9.1%.  The second to lowest makes 9.8% and pays 4.8%.  And the bottom quintile makes 5.6% of the nations income and pays only 1.8% of the nations taxes.

Note that this is just the Federal level of taxes.  There are additional taxes, progressive in most states, that are also being paid. 

Below you can see we are already taxing the rich at much higher tax rates than other quintiles of income.  How much higher does AOC want? 

AOC - Bruh - We are already taxing the rich!

Maybe we ought to start thinking "Fair Share" is treating everyone equally (flat tax.)

What is unfair if someone makes twice as much as another by working twice as hard, twice as smart or twice as long or even gets twice as lucky and then pays twice as much in taxes.  Isn't that fair?  Treating everyone's fruits of their labor equally, taking the same percentage?   Give everyone the same incentive to work harder, longer, smarter to create and keep more value.

We can take care of those who need it by redesigning our social safety nets for unlucky individuals recognizing that there will be lazy people traying to take advantage of them, to guarantee adequate food, shelter and health care and good education.  Offer this safety net to all.  Tax all income the same (wages, capital gains, dividends, inheritance, etc.).  That sounds fair to me.

Covid Update 11/29/2020

 

US cases and deaths have started to decline and let's hope hospitalizations are starting to flatten soon.

Illinois' cases, hospitalizations and deaths are all dropping.

State cases, hospitalizations and deaths per million shown below.

And the US continues to be about "average" when comparing deaths to major EU countries, UK and Canada, though France may soon surpass the US

The British are Coming -Why We Should Only Count Citizens

 

Thoughts on the Census – Only use citizens count for allocating Representatives.

The Constitution, simply, as amended, requires the enumeration of persons in the US for allocating Representatives, now fixed at 435, to the States.

Given the importance of this allocation, as evidenced by the struggles in the framing of the Constitution related to relative power of states, it would seem clear and obvious that this enumeration was intended to be of citizens.

To make this point as simple and unequivocal as possible there is one clear hypothetical situation that makes this conclusion obvious. In 1790 the Census count was 3.89 million (129 Representative.) Let’s say a nefarious Governor of Georgia, back in 1790, who wanted to get an unfair allocation of Representatives, took the current Democrat’s position that all persons should be counted and invited 1 million British soldiers to visit Georgia, which had 82 thousand persons without these visitors, for a month or two during the Census. This would have added 34 Representatives and increased Georgia’s share of Representatives from 2% to 22%.

Given the breadth and depth of thought that went into the Constitution, in part evidenced by the large number of Federalist papers which make obvious both the wide range of behaviors anticipated, both with and without malice, and the desire to make absolutely clear that States should have Representatives proportional to their population, it is inconceivable that the Framers intent of enumeration would allow and include non-citizens.

https://x.com/moxlosllc/status/1765832594518647005?s=12

My "Woke" Niece Thinks I am a Racist

 My "Woke" Niece Thinks I am a Racist

 

Why?

When I saw the video of the Minneapolis police building burning during the initial George Floyd riots, I asked her “How she could support such violent protesting.”   

My woke niece called me a racist and defended it as a reasonable reaction to the systemic racism that blacks experience today as evidenced by Floyd’s death and that police shootings were the leading cause of young black male deaths. 

I looked into the CDC data for cause of death and learned that the leading cause of young (10-29y) male black deaths was actually non-police homicides, almost always by other blacks, and that police shootings, whether justified or not, was only 2%.

My “woke” niece called me a racist.

She then claimed that police were racist because they shoot blacks 3xs more than whites.  I looked into the FBI crime data and the Washington Post’s police shooting data and found that blacks committed 6.9x’s more homicides and 3.6x’s more violent crimes and explained that this data might explain that police aren’t racist but actually shooting blacks at a lower ratio when you take into account the crime rates.

She said she doesn’t care what the data says and my “woke” niece called me a racist. 

I then shared a research paper from Roland Fryer PhD (a well-respected black Harvard economics professor) that was able collect unique data from police departments, where, to his admitted surprise, he found that police shot blacks disproportionately less than whites when violent crime rates are taken into account.  He did find that police used “force” slightly more, but qualified that he didn’t have any data related to behaviors and attitudes to determine whether this was a racial behavior. 

My “woke” niece called me a racist and then said that blacks were unfairly pulled over by police. 

I found the Stanford data (Stanford Open Policing Project) that shows that blacks were indeed pulled over disproportionately.  However, the data also showed that the percent of time police found something of concern was the same for blacks and whites, evidence that the stops aren’t racial but are justified (at least as much as white stops.)

My “woke” niece called me a racist and then said to look at the incarceration rate where blacks are disproportionately incarcerated. 

I then showed her data that showed that black immigrants are incarcerated at the same rate as whites regardless of income or education level whereas black Americans are incarcerated at much higher rates and then I asked her how systemic racism differentiates between black immigrants and black Americans. 

My “woke” niece called me a racist and said look at mortgage rates where data shows that blacks pay more than whites on average.  

I looked at the studies and data regarding mortgage rates and found that on average blacks do pay more than whites. Yet those same studies pointed out that they had no data on the credit worthiness of the two different groups including key factors that would determine credit worthiness such as FICA scores and therefore could not conclude anything about race. 

My “woke” niece called me a racist and told me to read White Fragility. 

I then reviewed Coates, Kendi, and DiAngelo and Critical Race Theory(CRT) and how this narrative pointed out all of the disparities between blacks and whites (wealth, income, incarceration, crime, police shootings, etc) and concludes it can only be systemic racism.

I brought up the great differences in teen births and fatherless homes and questioned the culture and behaviors in certain communities.

My “woke” niece called me racist. 

She claimed this country was founded as a white supremacy racist country (Project 1619.) 

Project 1619 is a New York Times’ narrative that America was founded to preserve slavery that is being widely promoted and being encouraged as part of schools' history curriculum. I’ve enjoyed learning about the founding of this country, the constitution, its ratification, and the founding fathers.  Project 1619, to me, was a false narrative. This country was founded in 1776/1787 with a necessary compromise between the north and the south. A compromise that tore this country apart as time went on through the Civil War to finally end slavery.  The false narrative of Project 1619 has now been  widely criticized by historians and that the NYT has been quietly removing many of the outlandish claims.

I shared this.

My “woke” niece called me a racist and said we should defund the police.

I looked at interactions with police and showed that the data did not support that police were racists  in arrests, use of force or shooting when crime rates were taken into account and shared that what I hear from many inner city voices was that while they may want police reform, there is little interest in reducing police presence.   

My “woke” niece called me a racist. 

I shared thoughtful studies and pieces by well-respected black scholars (Sowell, Steele, Loury, Hughes, etc), successful black businessmen/leaders (Riley, Carson, Payne, etc) and, yes, Candace Owens.  All of these black conservatives, in a deeper, more thorough, and more in depth way than I could ever hope, have disputed systemic racism as the primary cause for the disparities, highlighted that this propagated false narrative cannot even define systemic racism in any meaningful way, point out how CRT essentially takes away agency (individual responsibility and capability) from blacks, encourages a victim mentality, lowers the expectations for personal responsibility and accountability and is, in fact, hurting blacks and this country.

They also point out that there is no excuse for black behaviors when you look at violent crime data.  Blacks commit 30% more crimes against whites than their population proportion, 483% more crimes against black than their proportion, whereas whites commit only 1/6 of the crimes against blacks than their proportion.

My “woke” niece called me a racist and said she wasn’t going to waste any time reading anything from conservatives. 

So.  My “woke” niece thinks I am a racist.

1. I think this false narrative is tearing this country apart. 
2. I think Critical Race Theory is hurting blacks.
3. I think woke liberals use the word racist to try to scare/intimidate anyone who doesn’t want to support whatever the woke liberals want.
4. I think willful ignorance stifles discourse and I sleep well every night

[NOTE1 – Obviously, systemic racism was widely pervasive in the early years of our country and even in recent history with Jim Crow laws and redlining, etc.  However, I think systemic racism TODAY is hard to find, though I welcome any data that supports such claims.]

[NOTE2 – I am sure some racism exists today, any racism is bad and we should continue to work to reduce it,  but I think it is only a minor factor today in anyone’s ability to succeed and in fact there are clear advantages to being black for getting into college, getting a corporate job or promotion.]

[NOTE3 – I am sure some excess police force is used today, excess police force is bad and we should continue to try to reduce it but, excess police force is not a major factor in anyone’s ability to succeed.]

Below are two sources that are relatively easy to digest that may be of interest.

WhyDoes Racial Inequality Exist? – Glen Loury

ColemanHughes and Glenn Loury on Race in America, Patriotism, and College Campuses

 

They say it never rains in southern California…

They say it never rains in Southern California....that's good because you won't be able to eat inside.

It seems like California may be over reacting.

If you look at Covid cases, hospitalizations, and deaths, California is increasing but they are significantly lower than many states are and have been.

There are significant negative economic, social and psychological effects when you have severe economic shut downs.

I’m especially curious how responsibly socially distant indoor dining contributes. 

I’m very suspicious that there are house parties and other not responsibly socially distanced gatherings that are significantly contributing. 

Could a groundhog do a better job?

Could a groundhog do a better job? 

Based on data shared by Steven J Miller PhD Mathematics (Princeton), now at Williams College,  there were 165,412 absentee ballots sent to registered Republicans that were never returned (this appears to be a factual number.)  Based on a phone survey of 20,000 of these registered voters, it is estimated that 41,000-54,000 were not requested by the voter and 39,000-56,000 were returned by the voter but not received by vote counters. 

In Pennsylvania you cannot vote in person if you’ve requested an absentee ballot and do not bring the absentee ballot to the polls.

What does it mean?

I don’t know, but there are some questions. 

What would the Democratic non-returned absentee ballot day to look like?

What were the numbers from previous years?

Why do I continually hear there’s no evidence whatsoever of voter fraud, but then find this type of information in very obscure places and I don’t see it in in normal places?

Did the people responding to the survey lie?

Did the people that claim they did not ask for absentee ballot, try to vote in person and were prevented?

I am amazed by the lack of interest by mainstream media and by the lack of integrity in the voting system of such a great country.

Covid vs the Flu

 

Elderly and people with significant health conditions should be extra careful, but the rest of us can take reasonable social distancing and hygienic precautions and not expect to have greater risk than the Flu.

 Covid is New

 A key point to understand before looking at the risk related to Covid and comparing it to the Flu is that the the US population has, essentially, a naïve immune system when exposed to Covid.  While there is some possibility that there is some limited immune system memory due to previous corona cold virus exposures, there has been no exposure to Sars Cov2.  This is different from the Flu, where there is essentially a primed immune system from the combination of vaccinations and previous exposures to somewhat similar viruses.  As shown below, in 2019 54% of the population received the Flu vaccine and more vulnerable populations have a higher incidence of vaccination (0-17y 50.4%, 18-49y 34.2%, 50-64y 46.8%, 65+y 68.7%).

Covid has Similar Mortality Rates as the Flu (but because it is new we need to be more careful)

 To determine the fatality rate of Covid experts first estimate how many people had Covid based on seroprevalence data (measures of antibodies in random samples of population).  This number is often greater than the number of persons testing positive as there are many asymptomatic cases that never suspect they are ill and never get tested but never the less they still formed antibodies.  These number of cases are then used with the number of Covid deaths to determine the fatility rate.  The CDC estimates the following fatality rates: 0-17y 0.003%, 20-49y 0.02%, 50-69y 0.5%, 70+y 5.4%.  The WHO estimates the overall facility rate is ~0.14%.  While for some reason the CDC uses somewhat different age brackets for the Flu, the CDC has very similar fatality rates of the Flu: 0-17 0.006%, 20-49 0.02%, 50-69y 0.5%, 70+ 5.4%; and has an average fatality rate of 0.14%.   Covid does appear to be more dangerous to the elderly, but it is possible that there may be some selection bias as older people with significant health conditions are more likely to get Flu vaccinations but there was no vaccine available for Covid.

   

 

EXPEDITE the Vaccine!

 

(Updated 11/24/20 Originally Published 11/19/20)

Now that the Independent Safety Panel has released the data for Moderna and Pfizer it appears there are two very effective vaccines.  Now we need the Government bureaucracy of the FDA to move quickly.  We have ~1,485 1,125 people dying every day(45,170 37,000 every month) so hopefully the FDA recognizes the need to move quickly.  Right now optimistically (dramatically faster than normal and anything before) it is estimated that:

Companies will submit data to FDA within days [happened 11/20]

FDA will have their internal review (1-2 weeks)

FDA will have independent panel of doctors review (1-2 weeks) [scheduled Dec 10]

FDA decides (1 week)

CDC holds public hearing to review data and explore who should get and when (1 week)

CDC decides who should get when.(1 week) 

Why not start the independent panel of Doctor review and CDC review in parallel and maybe get this done in 2-3 weeks instead of 7 or more?

Also, please, PLEASE don't inject politics (trying to avoid giving Trump administration any credit for speed of the vaccine) and let's hope we don't delay the process while we argue/struggle with unimportant (compared to the magnitude of the problem) issues like identity politics (have studied vaccine in enough "groups."

Let's save lives and EXPEDITE the vaccine!

Illinois has Turned the Corner (Hopefully)

The increased mitigation beginning October 23rd and/or the public's behavior as cases increased appear to be having the needed/intended effect as cases have started to drop and as Illinois has once again reached two of CDC's critical thresholds (graphs above.) Let's hope the the trend continues.  

Personally I am curious as to the contribution of socially distanced indoor dining (something I need every lunch to get out my office)  and bars and private gatherings (house parties.)  I am suspicious that responsible socially distanced indoor dining was not a key problem but the bars and house parties were, but but I don't have data to evaluate.  A hint might be that the ratio of cases to hospitalizations (see below) appears to be increasing, hinting that maybe more younger healthier people were getting the virus.

The below three graphs show how Illinois compares to other states in cases, hospitalization and deaths.

DEMOCRATS. Stop the Excuses

Democrats and Liberal Media. STOP the Excuses!  This is ruining our country

This weekend I had heard of and then saw clips of Trump supporters, no matter how futile or the justification, or lack thereof, peaceably assembling and voicing their support for Trump.

I saw clips later in the day where people were stealing personal property of others,  a grandmother sucker punched from behind, diners harassed and having commercial grade fireworks launched at them, and a father with three kids walking sucker punched from behind.

I saw onlookers cheering it on and filming it. 

Today I hear the democratic and liberal media talking points. EXCUSES. 

We don’t know the context. 

The people documenting committing violence may have been provoked. 

We condemn violence from both sides. 

What other side?

What context justifies these abhorrent acts of violence?

I fear for our country‘s future if we continue to allow violence against those who disagree with others. 

Money Doesn’t Grow on Trees (Really!)

Recent article by John Cochrane

“The danger the US faces, the danger we should repeat and keep in mind, is a debt crisis. We print our own money, so the result may be a sharp inflation that wipes away the value of debt rather than an even more disruptive default, but the consequences will be almost as dire.”

https://review.chicagobooth.edu/economics/2020/article/debt-still-matters

Voter Fraud - The absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.

I “think” Biden won but it sure is opaque.

After hearing claims ranging from “there was massive vote fraud” to “there’s no evidence of voter fraud” I decided to take a shallow look.

Interestingly, or maybe sadly,  there is a lack of publicly, easily accessible data available to really look at this question.

One source of data, being used to claim clear evidence of voter fraud,  is from somebody that analyzed “scraped” data from the NYT website as they updated their results.  However, even though there are interesting questions raised by this data, I do not think the data is sufficient to make any conclusions. 

In the attached charts there are several things visible to note from reported Michigan data:

1. It does appear that there is some signal from mail in voting where, because of the randomness involved in mail handling and delivery, that allows you to actually observe it to some extent.  This is the “straightish” line below.  In fact it is the jumps in this line that some claim is a clear signal of voter fraud.  However, because the data does not include information at a more granular level than state, it is not possible to know if the shifts are some effect of different parts of a state counting mail in votes during different and separate times during the count. 
2. There are some unique data points that appear anomalous that have both a significant number of votes and a very significant skew towards Democrats.  For example one dump was of 149,772 votes with 94.32% for Biden. Once again, without more detail on the source of these dumps within the state, it is not possible to conclude much about these points. 
3. Since the data reported on NYT is actually data they purchase from another company that provides details of election results for a price, there is also the possibility that the data reported on the NYT is not perfectly reflected of actual state data being reported. 

CONCLUSIONS

1. It should be possible to look at actual state voting counts by the discrete vote counting regions in a state over time to identify anomalies, as it appears that there is enough randomness in mail in votes due to handling, delivery, etc. that mail in votes within a discrete voting area should have a constant signal.
2. There are potentially statistically unique counts reported that warrant examination, assuming NYT data is representative of actual count reported.
3. For those claiming there is no evidence of voter fraud.  That might actually be true. However, because there is no publicly available data to examine, it’s also possible that there is no evidence because the data isn’t available and those who like the current purported outcome, have no interest/desire to look.
4. Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean that they are not out to get you (Louis Lerner, Steele Dossier,etc.)