Month: December 2021

This is the Segerstrom Center Christmas Tree. It's a real tree, but with some branches cut and others carefully added to make it completely symmetrical. That's how things roll here in the OC.

Merry Christmas to everyone, and I hope you can take a day off from politics and just relax. At least for a day, things aren't as bad as you think.

Want some good news? I mean, genuinely good news? Check this out:

According to the Washington Post, fatal shootings of unarmed suspects plummeted in 2021. The total number dropped from 60 to 25, with big drops recorded for every racial and ethnic group.

Maybe the George Floyd protests had some effect after all.

According to Google, these were the top trends in 2021:

It's worth noting that six of these are about money. So the top ten really looks like this:

1. Money, money, money.

7. Georgia Senate race
8. Hurricane Ida
9. Kyle Rittenhouse
10. Afghanistan

Make of this what you will.

Hilbert was not in a very cooperative mood yesterday when I tried to take his picture alongside his Christmas ornament, so eventually Marian just lugged him onto her lap and told him to behave. As you can see, he was none too happy about that. But he did hold still long enough to get a picture of both his face and its facsimile.

Are the FDA and CDC too slow to change their recommendations based on the latest science? Probably. They're big bureaucracies, after all, and big bureaucracies aren't famous for being nimble. Beyond that, though, are their procedures even more badly designed than you'd think? I hate to pick on James Surowiecki over this, but a tweet this evening exposes the problem perfectly:

I’m sure a few weeks from now - or maybe a couple of months - the CDC will finally revise its recommendations, and say that any vaxxed person who tests negative after 7 (or maybe even 5 days) can exit isolation. But given that that decision is inevitable, why not make it now?

— James Surowiecki (@JamesSurowiecki) December 24, 2021

"Inevitable." So if you think, say, that the FDA took too long to approve the first vaccines, you're basically saying they delayed approval past the point when it was inevitable and everyone knew they were going to do it. So why not just do it then?

But this just prompts another question: When do you know it's inevitable? And how do you know? It can't just be a gut feeling. It has to be based on something you can put down on paper.

In other words, a procedure. If you think the FDA was too slow, you need to suggest an alternate procedure for emergency approval of vaccines. In the case of isolation, you need to suggest an alternate procedure for deciding what evidence you need before moving from 10 days to 7. So I tweeted back, "On which day did it become inevitable?" Here is Suroweicki's answer:

It became inevitable on Tuesday, when Fauci floated the idea publicly.

— James Surowiecki (@JamesSurowiecki) December 24, 2021

That's pretty much what I was afraid of. This is obviously not a procedure of any kind at all, either good or bad. It's just a gut reaction.

I've never been opposed to the notion that the FDA could improve the way it does business. But when it comes to approving drugs or providing public health guidelines, it has to have procedures of some kind in place. It will always be possible to nitpick them after the fact, but that's just trash talk. You need to put procedures in place before the fact, and then follow them if you want the public to have any faith in your recommendations at all.

So if you think the FDA or CDC are too slow, that's fine. It's your God-given right to gripe about bureaucratic inertia. But if you want to be taken seriously, you need to demonstrate that you actually know what their procedures are now and then make proposals for how they should be changed. It's very, very rarely that I see anyone do that.

Depending on how you count, the current home page of the Wall Street Journal has four or five Omicron stories taking up the top of the page. The LA Times has seven. The New York Times has eight or nine. And the Washington Post has an astonishing 12.

Maybe that's overdoing things a bit? Instead, let's take a look at the latest exciting economic news from the BEA. First off, Americans are continuing to spend lots of money:

Hooray for us! The economy is obviously continuing to do pretty well if everyone is spending a lot more than they did last year.

In other news from the BEA, here's how each state is doing on the economic growth front:

There's not really much of a pattern here aside from the northern Mountain States all doing pretty poorly. Hawaii is the growth champion at +6.0%, while New Hampshire and North Dakota bring up the rear at -3.3%. How is your state doing?

The famous clock tower at the Farmer's Market in Los Angeles is all dressed up for Christmas. Only one shopping day left!

Via the LA Times, here's a chart about COVID booster shots from a presentation given at a San Francisco Health Commission meeting:

The effectiveness of protecting against a symptomatic case of Omicron goes from 5% to 48% following a booster shot. Protection against a trip to the hospital goes from 67% to 91%.

GET YOURSELF BOOSTED!

Take a look at this chart of COVID cases and deaths in Great Britain. Apologies for the hated dual-axis chart, but I didn't have much choice:

In January, cases peak and then, a couple of weeks later, deaths peak. In the summer, cases begin to rise steadily and then, a couple of weeks later, deaths also start to rise steadily.

But in December, cases begin to spike enormously and then, two weeks later. . .

Nothing. The death rate is going down.

The same thing is true in Canada and the United States. But in France, both cases and deaths are up. And in Germany, cases are down but deaths are up.

I don't know what this means. But Omicron sure is different from Alpha and Delta.

Here's some surprising news that might cheer you up a bit:

National update: on the current trajectory, there will actually be a few *more* Biden-won congressional districts after redistricting than there are now (224/435).

— Dave Wasserman (@Redistrict) December 22, 2021

Dave Wasserman knows as much about this stuff as anyone alive, so if he says redistricting isn't hurting Democrats—and might even help them a little—then that's probably the case.

Now, he also warns that there are going to be a bunch of very close seats that will hinge on Joe Biden's popularity. So it's still a tough year. But maybe not quite so tough as we thought.