Month: January 2022

Today is inflation day. There's no need to be cowardly about this, so let's just dive right in:

The headline inflation number for December was 7.1%, a small increase from last month's 6.9%.

That's measuring prices compared to a year ago. However, if you measure inflation over the past month (and then multiply by 12, approximately, to calculate an annual rate) you get an inflation rate of 5.6%, down considerably from its peak a couple of months ago.

You can interpret this in multiple ways:

• Republican spin: Eek! Inflation is even higher than last month! We're doomed!
• Democratic spin: Inflation is high, but it's peaking. And the monthly number shows that the inflationary impulse is declining, which should show up in the headline number fairly soon.

These are both true. My own view, for what it's worth, is that (a) high inflation has been more persistent than I would have guessed, but (b) inflationary pressure really is declining. "Transitory," it turns out, is longer than most of us figured.

My own fairly mild view of inflation is driven largely by looking at personal savings:

We pumped a huge amount of money into the economy over the past two years, and what happened is that people saved a large part of it and then spent it down over time. However, it's all gone now: personal savings by the end of 2021 was fully back to its long-term trend level of about $1 trillion.

With that monetary impulse gone, I expect demand to settle down as well, with inflation following suit a little later. We shall see.

Alex Tabarrok notes today that the Omicron variant is so different from the original Wuhan variant of COVID-19 that there was no guarantee that existing vaccines would work against it. But they did:

We got lucky. But for how long will our luck last? Do we really have to wait for a more transmissible, more deadly, more vaccine escaping variant before we act?

Where are the variant-specific boosters? The FDA has said they would approve them quickly, without new efficacy trials so I don’t think the problem is primarily regulatory. Why not catch-up to the virus and maybe even get a jump ahead with pan-coronavirus vaccines?

....Why the failure to invest more broadly? Mostly I blame American lethargy.

I don't understand this kind of reasoning. Both Moderna and Pfizer announced in November that they planned to produce an Omicron-specific vaccine within 100 days if turned out to be needed. About a week later, testing showed that current vaccines weren't very effective against Omicron and both companies announced that they had immediately started work on new boosters. Yesterday, Pfizer's CEO said that “we hope to have 50-100 million doses of the omicron specific vaccine available by late March/early April.” They are also acquiring new technology that should cut future development of new vaccines from 100 days to 60 days.

As for pan-coronavirus vaccines, there are a dozen labs and companies working on that. The version being developed at the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research recently completed its Phase 1 human trial.

So I don't really see the case for American lethargy. And that's before even mentioning the fact that Europe also has labs and pharmaceutical companies. Do we suffer from a pan-European lethargy too?

I think the real answer here is the sadly most boring one: Development of Omicron vaccines began nearly instantly after testing was finished on the current vaccine, but it takes a while to move into production. A pan-coronavirus vaccine has also been in the works for quite a while, but it's a really hard scientific problem. There's no getting around that.

Did you know that Irvine has its very own lake? We do! This is Lake Irvine, created by damming Santiago Creek with the Santiago Dam, built in 1929.

It's always surprised me that we could create even a small lake by damming Santiago Creek, which is called a creek for a reason. But I guess during rainy season it manages to pour a few hundred acre feet of water into the lake bed.

Also, it's not actually in Irvine. It's just named after the Irvine family, the same as everything else in this neck of the woods.

Canada is apparently a COVID nightmare these days:

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Monday advised Americans to avoid travel to Canada, citing “very high” levels of the coronavirus. Canada was placed under a Level 4 travel health notice — the highest category.

....“Because of the current situation in Canada, even fully vaccinated travelers may be at risk for getting and spreading Covid-19 variants,” the C.D.C. said.

This makes no sense. It's true that COVID cases have soared in Canada, but by every possible measure they're still in better shape than us. They have a lower case rate, a lower hospitalization rate, a lower death rate, and a lower number of unvaccinated yahoos. Visiting Canada is safer—substantially safer—than staying in the United States. Here's what it looks like in numbers, with Canada scaled to 100% in each category:

So why advise people not to visit? It's nuts.

For that matter, travel restrictions in general are nuts. If you accept only fully vaccinated visitors—and every country does—then the visitors you're getting are safer than your own populace. They're 100% vaccinated! You should welcome them and their money.

So why don't we? Why doesn't everyone?

From the Washington Post:

President Biden plans to deliver a hard-hitting speech on voting rights in Atlanta on Tuesday, saying the issue is fundamental to America, calling for passage of sweeping legislation and denouncing in detail the impact of voting restrictions in states like Georgia.

As always, this is a bit mysterious. A Republican filibuster is assured, which means Democrats need 60 votes for passage, which they'll never get. Nor can the legislation be passed under reconciliation rules, which would require only 51 votes. Literally the only way to pass this legislation is to abolish the filibuster, and Democrats don't have the votes for that either.

So why push so hard on it? Is it political theater, designed to show progressives that Biden did everything he could possibly do? Is it designed to embarrass Republicans for voting against it? I've never been clear on what's going on.

What's more, it's also not clear what the legislation would really accomplish. Consider voter turnout in presidential elections since 1980:

Democrats have been (successfully) broadening voting laws all this time, while Republicans have been fighting them. The result has been nothing. The trendline for voter turnout has been dead flat for 40 years.

Here's the same chart, but with every state represented:

The point of this is that it doesn't show a lot of variance. Turnout is higher than average in some states and lower in others, but for the most part all of them are moving right along with the national average. Nothing special has happened thanks to either Democratic liberalization (motor voter law, early voting, etc.) or Republican suppression (photo IDs, caging lists).

The place where you'd expect to see some divergence is in Southern states. Here's what they look like:

This is confusing to read, but the takeaway is simple: even in the South, nearly all states have basically followed the national trend. There are four exceptions (heavier lines) that started out well below the national average and then climbed above it. Of those, three have become steadily less Republican and more Democratic over the years, which might explain the change in turnout. The fourth is South Carolina, and I don't know what their story is.

Still, if you take this all together it doesn't seem as though any of the hundreds of voting measures that have become law over the past few decades have accomplished much. The biggest one was the motor voter act in 1993, which required states to offer registration both at DMV offices and by mail. But it had no apparent effect on turnout at all.¹

This is a very broad look at things, and perhaps a more sophisticated analysis would show some subtle changes. But they'd be pretty subtle. What's more, they'd be kind of pointless anyway since recent research challenges the conventional wisdom that high turnout helps Democrats and low turnout helps Republicans. In fact, it turns out that increased or decreased turnout doesn't help or hurt either party by more than a hair.

So here we have some legislation that's morally laudable but can't pass and wouldn't do a lot of good even if it did. What really matters is either (a) passing a narrower bill that might get Republican support, or (b) introducing a bill that focuses solely on how votes are counted, which might truly embarrass Republicans if they voted against it.²

I don't understand what's going on and I never have. Perhaps it will all become clear once the current bills are put up to a vote.

¹You might be thinking that voter laws do have an effect, but Democratic and Republican efforts simply cancel each other out. That's possible. But research into specific types of voter laws seldom show high effectiveness. Nor do things differ much in red vs. blue states, even though they presumably enact only their preferred subset of voter laws. And of course there's the evidence of motor voter, a huge change that produced almost no effect.

Turnout aside, it's possible—maybe—that liberalized voter laws make voting more convenient, but there's not much rigorous research to demonstrate that, and in any case the effect would have to be very small in order to have no knock-on effects on ultimate voter turnout.

²And they would vote against it. Undermining the vote counting process is too essential to their Trumpish brand these days. But at least this is something that would make a decent campaign issue since most centrists are pretty appalled when they hear about this, even if they approve of voter ID and other "anti-fraud" measures.

I forgot to check the CDC's latest estimate of Omicron prevalence in the US back when it was released, but better late than never. Here it is:

Two weeks ago the CDC estimated a skyrocketing Omicron proportion that would have reached 100% by mid-December. Last week they cut their estimate way back. This week, like Goldilocks, they've settled on something in between.

As always, note that recent estimates are just that: a "nowcast" model of the proportion of Omicron. Only the older data points, the ones marked with a circle, are based on actual surveillance data.

In any case, all three projections suggest that we're now pretty close to 100% Omicron only four weeks after it was introduced. That's an unbelievably fast spread.

A few days ago I tossed out the idea that we needed to figure out a level of COVID prevalence that, in general, justifies shutting down schools. However, after a brief Twitter conversation with Cheryl Rofer I wondered yet again just what the current COVID prevalence is. That is, how many people are currently infected with COVID?

After looking around for a while I learned that no one even tries to track this and report it. And Mike the Mad Biologist is plenty mad about it. Still, it turns out that a very good estimate is simply the number of new cases over the past two weeks, divided by population. Here it is for every state in the union:

Figures like this are available down to the county level too.

My thought is this: Parents don't want their kids going to unsafe schools. But parents also don't want endless and unpredictable lockdowns based on little more than the best guesses of local officials.

This means that our best bet is probably something rule based. I don't know what the right rule is, but something along these lines:

• If the local prevalence of COVID rises above x%, then all schoolkids in the county are tested.
• If the positive test percentage is above y%, then school is canceled. If not, wait a week (?) and do it again if prevalence stays high.
• When prevalence drops below z%, school is placed back in session.

There may be other data points beside prevalence that are important too. I don't know. But what I'm suggesting is that we should create some kind of simple metric, even if it's imperfect, that guides school closures. If prevalence were reported on a web dashboard, parents could check it daily and prepare themselves if it looked like school closure might be on the horizon.

This would give parents confidence that schools were being closed based on firm numbers, not a finger in the wind. More importantly, it would also give them confidence that closures wouldn't drag on forever. Schools would reopen when the metric says so.¹

I'm writing this suggestion in sand, not concrete. I want conversation. Does a reasonable metric even exist? What do epidemiologists think? Would it be good to adopt one? Would parents like it? What kind of exceptions should we make?

And, of course, note that this is strictly about shutting schools due to widespread COVID infection. It has nothing to do with closing schools for other reasons, such as too many teachers being out sick.

Thoughts?

¹I'm agnostic on the question of what schools do when they're shut down. Maybe they declare a holiday. Maybe they start up remote teaching. This would probably vary depending on local preferences.

This is a giant goldenrod growing on the shore of Lake Martin in Louisiana. That's about all I can think to say about it. Sorry.

A couple of days ago the Economic Policy Institute posted this chart:

The point here is that there is no "Great Resignation," with its implication that people are tired of working and leaving their jobs in droves. Rather, there's a "Great Hiring." People aren't quitting their jobs to get more hammock time, they're quitting their jobs because they're getting better offers elsewhere.

Thanks to assistance packages passed on a bipartisan basis first, and then solely by Democrats later, the US economy is better now than it was two years ago. That's pretty remarkable, and if the price we pay is a bit of extra inflation for a while then that's not really much of a price. How many other large countries can say they've done better?

Come on, people. Get vaxxed. Give yourself a break and give our exhausted doctors and nurse a break too.