Month: March 2021

Bob Somerby is musing today about the surprisingly low COVID-19 mortality rate in the Asia-Pacific region. This is something I've written about before, and it's even more remarkable than it seems at first glance. Here's a chart showing cumulative deaths for every country of any size in the region. I'm using the dreaded log scale so that I can include the US and Europe without creating a chart ten feet high.

Don't let that log scale fool you! The worst Asian country, Indonesia, has a death rate ten times better than the US and Europe. The best countries are literally 1000x better or more, and you get similar results if you look at cases. The case rate in Vietnam is 3000x better than the US.

The most common explanation for this is that Asian countries developed a new culture after the SARS epidemic of 2004 and are now instantly on the alert when a new virus appears. It's also possible that some of these countries have unreliable reporting. I can buy this, but only to a certain extent. It could explain a response that's 2x better, or even 5x or 10x better—maybe. But 100x? 1000x? Or 5000x, which is the difference between Vietnam and the US?

This is not a topic that's been ignored, but the experts have mostly been unable to figure out what's going on. I'm pretty convinced that something we haven't yet isolated accounts for this, but I have no idea what.

Courtesy of the EPA, this chart shows the average horsepower of new cars and pickup trucks sold in the US since 1980:

It's almost impossible to find a car these days that boasts only 100 horsepower—the average in 1980—but the Toyota Yaris clocks in at 106 hp. This gives it an EPA mileage rating of 35 mpg.

In other words, a fleet of vehicles with modern technology and an average of 100 hp would deliver a fleet average of about 35 mpg. Instead, we've used technology mostly to increase horsepower. Average fleet horsepower for all US vehicles (cars, trucks, SUVs, everything) has increased from 103 hp in 1980 to 247 hp in 2020. As a result, average fleet mileage since 1980 has increased only from 19 mpg to 26 mpg.

If our current overall fleet mileage were instead 35 mpg, we would save nearly 40 billion gallons of gasoline per year. That amounts to a reduction of 350 million tonnes of CO₂, which is about 6% of total US emissions.

Would that be worth it? Your call.

POSTSCRIPT: The Toyota Yaris accelerates from 0 to 60 in 9.6 seconds. That's about the same as the Mazda RX-7 I owned in 1980, and only slightly worse than the Subaru Forester I own now. As a comparison, the RX-7 (0-60 in 10 seconds) seemed pretty sprightly to me back in the day, while the Forester feels gutless even though it's actually faster than the RX-7 (0-60 in 8.6 seconds). This is how our expectations have changed thanks to the ever increasing horsepower of US vehicles.

As we all know, many states have opened up completely now that COVID-19 vaccinations are ramping up swiftly and mortality rates have dropped substantially. This is not what I'd do if I were in charge. I'd continue to wait another month or so.

At the same time, what these states are doing isn't entirely stupid or irrational. The basic case is pretty simple. First of all, the highest infection rate by far is among the very elderly, especially those in nursing homes. But they were the first to be vaccinated, and since then confirmed cases among nursing home residents and staff have plummeted:

With nursing home residents and workers getting close to fully vaccinated, we can expect the case rate to continue falling. We can also expect the death rate, which is already less than half what it was at the beginning of the year, to continue falling as well.

Second, the mortality rate among other age groups has dropped substantially too. Here are the mortality rates for February:

So the thinking goes like this: We're doing a good job with nursing home residents and there's every reason to believe that will continue. The mortality rate for the elderly outside of nursing homes continues to be fairly high, so they should probably continue to isolate for another month or two. However, just because they have to isolate doesn't mean that everyone should isolate even if their risk is low. And it is: The average death rate for adults under 50 was about 9 per million in February, almost exactly the same as the automobile death rate. And no one suggests we should all stop driving, do they?

This is not the most cautious approach to the pandemic, but neither is it ridiculous—especially with rising vaccination rates almost certain to keep pushing both case and death rates down. (Though in no case does it excuse the pigheaded insistence on removing mandates for masking and social distancing, both of which are minimally troublesome and clearly save lives.)

Overall, then, opening up now makes sense if your willingness to accept risk is just a little higher than average. I imagine that risk acceptance exists on a bell curve just like almost everything else, so it's bound to be the case that some states will open up early, a whole bunch will open up a little later, and a few will be laggards. That's just human nature.

Here’s the officially reported coronavirus death toll through March 12. The raw data from Johns Hopkins is here.

Hilbert is not doing anything especially interesting in this picture, but he certainly looks magnificent, doesn't he? The light was perfect and all I had to do was point my camera in his direction and press the shutter button. Natural feline nobility took over from there.

This should come as a surprise to no one:

The Los Angeles Police Department mishandled the unrest that erupted on L.A. streets after the death of George Floyd, a result of poor planning, inadequate training and a disregard for rules on mass arrests and crowd control that were established after past failures to manage protests, according to a new report commissioned by the City Council.

“It is unfortunate that the same issues have arisen again and again, with the department being unable or unwilling to rectify the problem,” the report, prepared by a team of former LAPD commanders, stated.

Obviously I'm no expert on police management of protesters, but I think Rule #1 is: If they want to march, let 'em march. Sure, it will tie up traffic, but that's a price worth paying. The main goal of the police should be to protect the protesters and manage the protest route, while deploying most of their force elsewhere to handle opportunistic looters.

I can't say this for sure about other cities, but I watched plenty of coverage of Los Angeles and there was no question that the protesters were basically peaceful and could have been handled pretty easily if they'd just been shown a little bit of respect. Instead they got curfews and riot cops and road closures. So stupid.

Here’s the officially reported coronavirus death toll through March 11. The raw data from Johns Hopkins is here.

I've got no special reason to post this, but for some reason I was mulling over the question of Japan and its astronomical debt levels. In theory, this should cause an increase in inflation and a slowdown in growth, but that doesn't really seem to be the case. Inflation in Japan remains stubbornly low, and GDP growth is pretty good when you account for their aging population:

Up until 2016 the US and Japan were growing at about the same rate per working-age person. That's only changed recently, as the US recorded several years of strong growth while Japan stagnated. Is this because high debt levels have finally caught up to them? The next few years will tell us. For now, however, they really aren't much behind us.

This is a cymbidium orchid, or so I'm told by the gardener of the house. To me, it's just a pretty flower.

Last week I regaled you with the story of the famous Dutch writer who had been chosen to translate Amanda Gorman's poem, "The Hill We Climb," but who then withdrew after a critic insisted that the translation should be done by a “spoken-word artist, young, female and unapologetically Black.”

Today brings word that the same thing has happened with the Catalan translation:

A Catalan translator has been removed from a job translating the poem by National Youth Poet Laureate Amanda Gorman that she presented at President Biden’s inauguration because, as a White man, he did not fit the “profile,” AFP reported.

....“They told me that I am not suitable to translate it,” Obiols told AFP. “They did not question my abilities, but they were looking for a different profile, which had to be a woman, young, activist and preferably Black.”

Well, that should be no trouble. All they need is a professional English-Catalan translator who is Black, female, under 30, and active in social justice movements. The northeast corner of Spain is probably swarming with people who meet these requirements.

At this rate, Gorman's poem is either (a) never going to be translated because it's too damn much trouble for minimal revenue, or (b) it will be translated widely but badly because the pool of qualified translators has been cut down to almost nothing.  Progress!