Month: January 2022

Here is the typical timeline of a CDC recommendation:

1. Somebody publishes research suggesting that things have changed. This gets reported.
2. A cadre of loud and persistent critics begins demanding that the CDC skip its usual bureaucratic dilly-dallying and change its guidelines now. Science has spoken. This gets reported.
3. Someone leaks the news that the CDC is thinking about announcing a change. This gets reported.
4. The CDC announces new guidance. This gets reported
5. A new pack of critics begins yelling that the CDC blew it and the guidelines really should have stated something different. This gets reported.
6. Someone finds a source in the FDA who says the the CDC never consulted with them, and this explains why they screwed things up. This gets reported.
7. The CDC explains its guidelines with some added nuance. This gets reported.
8. Every doctor and pseudo-doctor on TV, radio, and social media begins to loudly debate the guidelines. In newspapers and on local TV, reporters produce pieces listing the pros and cons of each side.
9. After inhaling all this, half the country complains that the CDC waited too long. The other half complains that they acted too quickly and caved to political expediency. A third half complains that they just can't keep up with the CDC's constantly changing advice.
10. Somebody publishes research suggesting that something else has changed. This gets reported

Rinse and repeat.

What's the best way of dealing with COVID-19? Here's a series of charts which suggests that the obvious answer is probably also the right one.

I've chosen the six largest countries in Western Europe as comparisons. These countries are rich and have healthcare systems similar to ours. They're large, so they have the same necessity to deal with COVID via jumbo-sized bureaucratic programs. And they all probably have reliable reporting programs.

First off, here are the current case rates for the US and the other six countries:

The US is about middle of the pack even though we have a very high percentage of Omicron. This suggests that in terms of preventing transmission, we aren't doing too badly. Next up is hospital patients:

We're lapping everyone on hospitalizations. This suggests that even though our case rate is moderate, and our Omicron percentage is high, we nonetheless have more serious cases than our European comparison group. Next is ICU patients:

These are the most serious cases, and once again we're doing worse than the others. Next up is deaths:

These are obviously the most serious cases of all, and as of this week we're way ahead of everyone else.

In summary: we're moderate in terms of cases; high in terms of hospitalization and ICU patients; and really high in terms of deaths. We don't have more COVID than anyone else, but we have the worst COVID. Why? Is it lack of testing?

We could do better, and I assume these numbers don't account for at-home tests, but we seem to be about middle of the pack. And although testing has multiple benefits, the main one is probably to reduce transmission, not the severity of illness. So that leaves us with:

This is what fits the evidence. (And it doesn't really matter which measure of vaccine administration I use. We're bad at all of them.) In terms of the countermeasures that prevent transmission of COVID—masks, closures, testing, distancing, etc.—we're apparently performing at a roughly average level. But when it comes to the countermeasure that's most effective at preventing hospitalizations and death—vaccines and more vaccines—we're at the bottom of the pack.

I don't know what to do about that, but it sure seems that this is by far our biggest problem. It would be nice if more people wore masks and stayed away from others, but it's essential that they get vaccinated. This is what we should put our biggest effort into.

What would it mean to decide we're going to "live with COVID"? One thing it doesn't mean is that we shrug our shoulders and decide to ignore it and lead our lives the way we used to. Rather, it means agreeing on a set of countermeasures that we think we can live with on a long-term basis. For example:

Things we'd pretty much make permanent:

• Get vaxxed and then get boosted every year or so. (Details would depend on our evolving understanding of vaccine effectiveness.)
• Mask up at indoor public places. But not routinely at work. (Or should we bow to reality and give up on masks entirely?)
• Require proof of vaccination for large indoor events.
• Close schools only briefly and only on rare occasions when prevalence is high locally and 2-3% of students have tested positive.

On a long-term basis, we should do more research on the kind of ventilation that's best for reducing airborne transmission within large buildings. Then, probably over the course of years, we should subsidize investment in improved building ventilation.

Things we'd stop doing except in dire emergencies:

• Testing requirements for entry to another country.
• Routine testing requirements in general (instead rely more on proof of vaccination).
• Broad business shutdowns.
• Restaurant shutdowns.
• Remote learning.
• Rigorous social distancing requirements.
• Reduced capacity requirements.

I'm tossing this out more as a conversation starter than anything else. But it does seem as if we need to agree on something, and ideally it would be worldwide agreement so that the rules are clear and well-known no matter where you are.

An article over at Recode about rapid antigen tests for COVID-19 was posted early Friday and has been up ever since. It notes that the rapid tests aren't as accurate as PCR tests:

So you might be wondering: What’s the point if rapid tests aren’t as accurate as PCR tests? Well, rapid antigen tests, which look for a specific protein on the Covid-19 virus, remain extremely effective at confirming positive cases. Put simply, if you test positive on a rapid test, you almost certainly have Covid-19. If you test negative, in some cases, you might still test positive on a PCR test, which is much more sensitive because it tests for genetic evidence of the virus. Rapid tests may not pick up positive cases in people who have been vaccinated or who have recently recovered from Covid-19, since they may produce less virus, one expert told Recode.

This is 180 degrees wrong, isn't it? The PPV (Positive Predictive Value) of most rapid tests is little better than 50-50 if you're asymptomatic and live in an area with normal prevalence of COVID. (If you have symptoms, then a positive result is pretty reliable.) In either case, if you get a positive result you should isolate and then test again the next day.

Conversely, if you get a negative result, the odds are almost 100% that you don't have COVID at that moment. Tomorrow, of course, is another story.

I wondered if I was going crazy, so I checked myself on this after reading the Recode piece. Everything I read confirms that it's a positive result that's less accurate. Can anybody suggest an explanation for this?

The very first cat blogging Friday of 2022 is upon us, and today Hilbert gets center stage. We haven't been outside much lately since Charlie can't join us there, and Hilbert doesn't go out very often either now that he can't follow Hopper out to see what she's up to. But on Thursday we went outside and it was just like old times. Hilbert led us out to the front lawn, where he rolled around deliriously in the sunshine. It's been months since he's done that, though that's probably because neither Marian nor I have gone out to play with him.

Anyway, a good time was had by all—except for Charlie, who watched us through the window and squealed at us. Sorry Charlie!

This picture was taken in the backyard, shortly before all the fun began.

Dan Foster thinks the White House is playing fast and loose with employment numbers:

"White House Rapid Response Director" doesn't mention labor participation rate and historic lows. Easy to have lower unemployment when nobody is looking for work. https://t.co/eoyFizRUi6 https://t.co/9C0m8VquBv

— Foster (@foster_type) January 7, 2022

This just isn't true. The labor force participation rate has been declining for decades, for reasons that still aren't entirely understood. But it has nothing to do with the pandemic or Biden or anything else currently going on.

It's easy to see this. If you draw a trendline from 2000 through 2019—thus eliminating the pandemic years—and then extend it through 2021, you'll see that we're right on trend. If you take a look just at prime-age workers, which is a better gauge of the labor market, you get this:

There's no hocus-pocus here, no smoke and mirrors. The participation rate for prime-age men is slightly above trend and the rate for prime-age women is more than a percentage point above trend. In other words, it's at historically normal levels. People who want work are looking for it and getting jobs. That's why both the headline unemployment rate and the broader U6 measure of unemployment are both very, very low right now.

We can do better. Maybe someday we'll figure out how to turn around the historic trend of lower participation in the workforce. For now, though, the employment picture looks pretty good. It just does.

Over at New York, Kevin Dugan tells us not to be fooled by a low unemployment rate. In reality, the job market sucks:

It used to be that when the economy was humming and jobs were plentiful, it was a pretty reliable indicator that people were happy with who was nominally leading the country.

....What’s changed since then...the quality of those jobs have been eroding....disaffected Midwesterners who’d seen their manufacturing jobs outsourced....And these unemployment rates are all based on a shrinking workforce, largely because of the number of Boomers aging out of their jobs, though that’s accelerated during the pandemic as people stayed home to do childcare or protect their health. When you factor in those people, and those who’d like to work even more than they are now, it makes for a wide cross-section of discontent.

This is a very widespread sentiment, but where does it come from? The Midwestern manufacturing thing was real during the aughts, but not a lot anymore. And wage growth for white workers (the supposedly most disaffected ones) in the Midwest has been about average over the past 20 years.

As for Boomers retiring, I'm not sure what that has to do with job satisfaction. And the number of people who want to work more is at nearly historic lows—and still dropping. And of course there's this:

There's a bit of a drop in job satisfaction during the pandemic, which is hardly surprising, but on a longer term basis it looks like job satisfaction is moderately up, not down.

I understand that it's frustrating for widely held views to be constantly answered with a bunch of dispassionate charts and data points. And maybe the data is wrong. Maybe it just doesn't reach deeply enough to get at the real dissatisfactions with working life in the United States.

But on the other hand . . . maybe it's all the anecdotal stuff that's wrong. Maybe the narrative is wrong. There are, of course, people who are dissatisfied with their jobs. There always are. And maybe that's concentrated in the kind of people (young, smart, verbal) who write a lot about this.

But no matter how I look, it never shows up in the data. Overall, among Black and white, men and women, Midwest and Northeast, blue collar and white collar, high school and college grads—in fact, among nearly every demographic segment you can think of, there's little evidence of either widespread job unhappiness or growing job unhappiness.

So maybe the narrative is wrong? Maybe both liberals and conservatives, each for different reasons, want it to be true that people are unhappy with their jobs and their lives. So we all keep saying it. Maybe we should all stop.

The American economy gained 199,000 jobs last month. We need 90,000 new jobs just to keep up with population growth, which means that net job growth clocked in at 109,000 jobs. That's pretty weak, but about half a million people moved from unemployment to employment and the headline unemployment rate fell yet again to 3.9%.

There's other good news, too: Among blue-collar workers, hourly wages were up an annualized 8.5% from November and weekly wages were up 12.2%. Even with inflation running around 7%, that's a nice increase. On the less bright side, wages were flat on a year-over-year basis.

Despite the weak headline jobs number, this is a fairly healthy report. We could still use stronger job creation, but I continue to suspect that we're being fooled by reports of the "Great Resignation" and other things. Once you look at historical trends, it seems to me that we're closer to full employment than we might think. There's still a little ways to go, but only a little.

After I got back from lunch this afternoon I checked to see what the twittering classes were twittering about. It turns out that one of their big targets was an essay in Politico by John Harris about the underlying cause of our current political discontent. The problem, Harris says, is that unlike previous periods of turbulence, we don't really have one this time:

The real Civil War was about slavery — at the start, to restrict its territorial expansion, by war’s end to eliminate it entirely. Capitalists opposed to the New Deal knew why they loathed FDR — he was fundamentally shifting the balance of power between public and private sectors — and FDR knew, too: “They are unanimous in their hate for me, and I welcome their hatred.” The unrest of the 1960s was about ending segregation and stopping the Vietnam War.

Only in recent years have we seen foundation-shaking political conflict — both sides believing the other would turn the United States into something unrecognizable — with no obvious and easily summarized root cause. What is the fundamental question that hangs in the balance between the people who hate Trump and what he stands for and the people who love Trump and hate those who hate him? This is less an ideological conflict than a psychological one.

Harris is taking a lot of flak for suggesting that there's no big underlying cause to our current unrest. So let's examine the two most obvious candidates: race and money, with a focus on white men since they're the ones who seem most discontented.

---

Let's look at race first. Here's the non-white population of the country:

Are white people petrified about becoming "a minority in their own country"? Many of them probably are. But the rise of the non-white population has been on nearly a straight-line trajectory since 1950. Why would it suddenly turn into a huge source of discontent around 2000? One possibility is that it simply hit a critical mass: it was only when the non-white population rose to about a third of the total that white people began to notice they were increasingly not the majority skin color anymore.

Immigration angst is another racially-fueled concern. How do Republicans feel about that?

There's nothing much going on here. Republican dissatisfaction with immigration dropped in the '90s and has been hovering around 60% since 2000. Those are high numbers, but they haven't changed much.

Here's a direct measure of white racial resentment over the past few decades:

It went up a bit during the Obama years and then fell back down in 2016. Taken as a whole, nothing here suggests that racial resentment has been growing more intense lately—although the data doesn't yet cover the 2020 election, which took place after the George Floyd murder and the summer BLM protests.

Overall, it's hard to conclude that race and immigration have played huge roles in whatever it is that's eating us. It's obviously been an issue throughout the entire history of the nation, but the evidence suggests that, as an underlying cause, it's no more an issue now than it's ever been.

---

Now let's take a look at money. For starters, did China take all our jobs away? There's no question that this happened to some extent during the 2000-2010 period, but how much? Here's the labor force participation rate for prime working-age men:

The participation rate has been slowly declining for half a century, and nothing special happened during the aughts. Still, maybe pay dropped dramatically? Let's check:

This chart shows the famous white working class (white, no college, second quartile earnings) and it turns out that their earnings dropped a few percent during the aughts but that's all. The Great Recession did some more damage, and then they recovered by 2020.

But did they lose ground to Black men, thus stirring up some racial animus? Nope. They were $176 ahead of them in 2000 and $177 ahead in 2020.

Overall, the money theory is similar to the race theory: there are some things here that aren't great—fewer men working, flat wages—but they're part of trends that have been in place for decades. Nothing special has happened over the past 20 years.

---

The conclusion here is hard to avoid: neither racial animus nor worries about jobs and the economy seem to have recently skyrocketed among large numbers of white Americans. It's hard to believe that either of these things, on their own, are what's torn the country apart. There must be something else at work.

But what?

Here's a handsome little house finch hanging around our house after snacking at our suet feeder. Chirp chirp.