Cats, charts, and politics
This is a daisy fleabane growing on the shore of Lake Martin in Louisiana. It's a good example of the way I take pictures of flowers these days. Instead of getting up close, I zoom out to 600 mm and then get a few feet away. This gives me a nice, narrow angle of view and a very shallow depth of field. I shoot almost all flowers this way.
Over at National Review, Andrew Stuttaford warns that our national debt could become unsustainable in the future. It's the usual stuff: interest rates might go up, there might be no market for our bonds, and our national debt could skyrocket up to 200% of GDP or more.
I'm not unsympathetic. I'm no deficit hawk, but neither do I think we can happily ignore all this and run whatever deficits we want. Still, every time I think about the perils of the national debt, this chart brings me back down to earth:
Japan has been cheerfully plugging along for many years with a national debt over 200% of GDP—and growing. Nor has this caused them any big problems. Their growth rate since 1980 is a little lower than ours, but only a little, and most of it is probably caused by the aging of their population, not their national debt.
None of this proves that we can do the same thing, but it sure suggests that a modern economy in a rich, stable country can get away with a lot more than we used to think.
POSTSCRIPT: And one more thing: it's possible to reduce the deficit by raising taxes. This is not the kind of thing that NR supports, but it's something all the rest of us can certainly keep in mind.
How useful are face masks in halting the transmission of COVID-19? There are two things to look at.
First, how well do they protect the wearer? Here are the results of a literature review done last year:
These are not super great results, and the authors warn that most of the studies were underpowered and had large error bars. N95 masks did a better job than the others, but most likely masks in general do little to protect wearers.
More important is how well masks prevent transmission of COVID within a community. I couldn't find any recent literature reviews that address this, but an informal review in JAMA earlier this year listed eleven studies of mask wearing on community spread of COVID:
This article presents no overall estimate of how well mask-wearing works to slow the spread of COVID, nor does it estimate how good each of these individual studies is. That said, an eyeball review of the results suggests that masks are effective at slowing the transmission of COVID if they're widely used.
The CDC keeps track of mask studies on its website here. Their list is more current than the JAMA list, and virtually all studies continue to show that masks are effective at slowing the spread of COVID:
At least ten studies have confirmed the benefit of universal masking in community level analyses: in a unified hospital system, a German city, two U.S. states, a panel of 15 U.S. states and Washington, D.C., as well as both Canada and the U.S. nationally....Two of these studies and an additional analysis of data from 200 countries that included the U.S. also demonstrated reductions in mortality. Another 10-site study showed reductions in hospitalization growth rates following mask mandate implementation. A separate series of cross-sectional surveys in the U.S. suggested that a 10% increase in self-reported mask wearing tripled the likelihood of stopping community transmission.
But what type of mask works best? Good studies on this are hard to find, but in general N95 masks are best, surgical masks are good, and cloth masks are lousy. You should especially use N95 masks if you're going to be in close proximity to others for long periods, for example on a long airplane trip or an all-day meeting in a stuffy room.
Based on all this evidence, my view is that masking up indoors isn't a game changer like vaccines, but it's a pretty good countermeasure that easily wins a cost-benefit analysis. So why not do it?
Jim Geraghty is skeptical of China's alleged success against COVID-19:
To hear China tell it, they have barely had any cases of infection from the hyper-contagious Omicron variant. The South China Morning Post wrote yesterday, “so far China has reported nine Covid-19 cases caused by the Omicron variant, including two who were infected by a man returning from Canada.”
....The Chinese official health statistics are insanely implausible. Even if we want to give Chinese policies of city-wide lockdowns and quarantining people by welding apartment doors shut the broadest possible benefit of the doubt, it’s simply not plausible that a virus that has proven wildly contagious in every other country suddenly became shy and socially-awkward once it entered the jurisdiction of the Chinese Communist Party.
Yeah, I have the same skepticism. I mean, take a look at the reported case rate for China and its closest neighbors:
China's officially reported case rate is 37x lower than Myanmar's, and that's the closest comparison. Their case rate is 1600x lower than Vietnam's.
There's nothing new about this. On a cumulative basis, China's case rate is 250x lower than Vietnam's and 450x lower than Thailand's.
I dunno. This all just seems so implausible.
This picture was taken exactly two years ago. We have a bunch of rain forecast for this week, so perhaps boys will be out sledding soon.
This hasn't gotten a ton of publicity, but it looks like the long-awaited "super vaccine" may now be within reach:
Within weeks, scientists at the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research expect to announce that they have developed a vaccine that is effective against COVID-19 and all its variants, even Omicron, as well as previous SARS-origin viruses that have killed millions of people worldwide.
....Walter Reed’s Spike Ferritin Nanoparticle COVID-19 vaccine, or SpFN, completed animal trials earlier this year with positive results. Phase 1 of human trials, wrapped up this month, again with positive results that are undergoing final review, Dr. Kayvon Modjarrad, director of Walter Reed’s infectious diseases branch, said in an exclusive interview with Defense One on Tuesday. The new vaccine will still need to undergo phase 2 and phase 3 trials.
There are several caveats here. The first, obviously, is that the new vaccine has to undergo Phase 2 and Phase 3 trials before it can be approved for the general population. The second is that even if it works, we don't yet know how effective it is. And the third is that we don't know how long it lasts.
Ironically, testing is being delayed because so many people are already vaxed or have gotten COVID. This makes it hard to find a proper test population, especially since the unvaxed are mostly people who don't want to get vaxed and sure as hell don't want to be guinea pigs for a new vaccine. It's always something, isn't it?
In the Washington Post, Rachel Rueckert complains that it's a pain in the butt being a teetotaler. I concur! Even though about a quarter of American adults are nondrinkers, people still look at you a little funny if you don't drink. And this causes problems:
Standing in a dim bar for the annual work party or a festive meet-and-greet with my graduate school classmates, I order a Shirley Temple, just to have something fizzy and reddish to hold....I’m relaxed, having a good time — enjoying the radio soundtrack and the casual conversation — until a well-meaning person asks me what I’m drinking. Then comes the shock, followed by a response tinged with pity or slight offense (as if my choice reflects judgment about theirs). “Why don’t you drink?”
....I’ve tried for most of my adult life to satisfy these curious inquiries with a revolving set of answers. The first: I grew up in a devout Mormon home in suburban Utah....The second: I have boring preferences....Another response: It’s too pricey....Another: Bad memories....Another: I’m the designated driver....Another: Addiction runs in my family.
Here's a better excuse: I hate the taste of alcohol. In my case this is true, but it doesn't matter if it's a bit of a white lie. I've never come across anybody who keeps digging much after I say this.
One other thing: that Shirley Temple sends the wrong message. Try sipping a coke, or ginger ale, or something like that. You'll get fewer people who even ask you about it in the first place.
This concludes Kevin's life advice for teetotalers. You may now return to your normal business.
Remember that estimate last week from the CDC that Omicron now accounted for 73% of all COVID cases? This is now inoperative. Here are this week's estimates:
The CDC now estimates that last week Omicron accounted for 22% of all cases, not 73%. This week it's up to 58%. Maybe.
Obviously the CDC's surveillance methods have pretty high error bars. It's also worth noting that they're based on modeled estimates for the two most current weeks. We'll have to wait until next week to get actual results for the week of December 18.
Don't take this for more than it's worth, but here's the latest data on COVID death rates in Sweden and its neighbors:
Sweden's cumulative death toll from COVID is still three times higher than Denmark's, but Denmark is skyrocketing up the league charts right now, and both Norway and Finland have seen significant increases as well.
There are still countries that have done consistently well throughout the entire pandemic—Canada is notable in this regard—but there are fewer and fewer all the time. For the most part, it seems as if every country eventually falls to the virus, regardless of what countermeasures they've put in place.
Last night I wrote a post that made an offhand reference to school bullying. That prompted a Twitter comment, which in turn has prompted me to present the data we have on school bullying. Here it is for all bullying and separately for cyberbulling:
It would be nice to have data going back further, but the survey methodology before 2005 was so different that it's impossible to make comparisons before then. This is the best we've got.
However, we do have data going back a little further that shows the percentage of students who are afraid of "attack or harm" when they attend school. Here it is:
It's worth noting a few things:
Contrary to widespread belief, the evidence suggests that our schools have gotten quite a bit safer and more tolerant over the past few decades. I'm willing to bet that this trend started around 1990.