Month: April 2024

From Anna North at Vox:

Over the last 30 years, nearly every wealthy country in the world has made it much safer for people to have babies. Only one outlier has moved in the opposite direction: the United States, where the rate of people dying in childbirth continues, stubbornly and tragically, to rise. In 2021, 1,205 US women died from birth-related causes, up from 754 in 2019.

This isn't true, though I can hardly blame North for the error. Her numbers come straight from the CDC, which published them even though it knows they're wrong. Here are the real numbers:

The CDC published a detailed study showing that the reported increase in maternal mortality was due solely to the addition of a pregnancy checkbox to the standard death certificate. When they checked the actual cause of death, there was no increase at all in maternal mortality.

But they've nonetheless continued to publish the raw numbers, even though they're completely wrong. Because of this, the myth of the rise in maternal mortality continues to spread.¹

Now, it is true, as North says, that maternal mortality is much higher among Black mothers than it is among white mothers. However, North is a little too credulous here. The solutions she highlights have little evidence of success, and anyway, the evidence we do have points fairly strongly away from racism as a cause.

¹Actually, we have no idea what's happened since 2018, since the CDC has never bothered to publish corrected numbers since then.

Um, what?

Luckily for Trump, I guess there are no pictures. Can you imagine the storm of posts he'd be writing if Joe Biden had done this? Hell, there was a storm of posts when Joe Biden didn't do this but a few carefully selected pictures made it look like he had.

Alex Tabarrok says a record number of drugs are in short supply right now. But is this really true? Here are the latest figures from the University of Utah:

Huh. Usually when people say this they haven't bothered to check the actual figures. But things have changed since the last time I looked in mid-2022. We really do have a record number of pharmaceuticals in short supply right now.

Why do I keep reading Mideast hawks decrying the Iranian attack on Israel as "unprecedented" and demanding retaliation? They understand why it happened, right?

IT WAS BECAUSE ISRAEL ATTACKED IRAN AND KILLED 16 PEOPLE, INCLUDING TWO OF THEIR GENERALS AND TWO CIVILIANS.

The Israeli airstrike on April 1 was aimed at Iran's embassy in Damascus. That's legally Iranian territory.

Does Israel seriously think they can do this and should expect to suffer no consequences—not even the light tap they got in return? That's insane.

If you've heard of the PISA test, you probably think of it as an international test of math and reading skills among high school students. But there's more. For example, they ask principals if bullying is a big problem in their schools. Here are the results for 2015:

The Netherlands is the world champ of high school bullying! Who would have guessed?

Of course, different countries might have different ideas about what "bullying is a big problem" means. Maybe the Dutch think that dissing someone's shoes is a five-alarm fire. Still, it's kind of interesting.

Francis Collins, former head of NIH, writes about his recent diagnosis of prostate cancer:

Things took a turn about a month ago when my PSA rose sharply to 22 — normal at my age is less than 5. An MRI scan showed that the tumor had significantly enlarged.... New biopsies taken from the mass showed transformation into a much more aggressive cancer.... Thus, that PET scan, which was ordered to determine if the cancer had spread beyond the prostate.... A few hours later, when my doctors showed me the scan results, I felt a rush of profound relief and gratitude. There was no detectable evidence of cancer outside of the primary tumor.

This all got done in a month? Here's how things have played out for me:

• November 18: PSA test = 15.7.
• February 7: PSA test = 17.
• February 27: Meet with nurse to answer some apparently pointless questions.
• March 7: PSA test = 25.7.
• March 29: Biopsy performed.
• April 9: Biopsy results delivered.
• April 10: I send a note to my urologist asking about the upcoming test schedule. I'm informed he won't speak to me. Ever. He's too busy.
• April 16: Bone scan scheduled.
• April 18: CT scan scheduled.
• May 17: PET scan scheduled.

All told, it will be six months between the first high PSA result and a PET scan to determine how far the cancer has spread.

I've been wondering quite a bit about the fact that no one seems to have any sense of urgency about my prostate cancer, but I figured maybe this was normal. Even following the biopsy result of "large and aggressive" it will be five weeks before all the scans are complete and treatment can begin. This is longer than the entire time that Collins had to spend from high PSA to PET scan result.

How much does a "large and aggressive" cancer grow in six months? Has my treatment been unusually slow or did Collins get treatment that was unusually fast? I have no idea who I could ask to even find out.

The national media is finally catching up with the latest crime data:

Homicides Are Plummeting in American Cities

Homicides in American cities are falling at the fastest pace in decades, bringing them close to levels they were at before a pandemic-era jump.

Nationwide, homicides dropped around 20% in 133 cities from the beginning of the year through the end of March compared with the same period in 2023, according to crime-data analyst Jeff Asher, who tabulated statistics from police departments across the country.

Here is approximately what the murder rate looks like based on the FBI's annual reports through 2022; their quarterly reports for 2023; and Jeff Asher's estimate for the first quarter of 2024:

The Washington Post has a piece today about Truth Social that describes how proud they are that they have hundreds of thousands of retail investors:

Jerry Dean McLain first bet on former president Donald Trump’s Truth Social two years ago.... That nest egg has lost about half its value in the past two weeks as Trump Media & Technology Group’s share price dropped from $66 after its public debut last month to $32 on Friday. But McLain, 71, who owns a tree-removal service outside Oklahoma City, said he’s not worried. If anything, he wants to buy more. “I know good and well it’s in Trump’s hands, and he’s got plans,” he said. “I have no doubt it’s going to explode sometime.”

....Todd Schlanger, an interior designer at a furniture store in West Palm Beach who said Trump had been one of his customers, said he’s invested about $20,000 in total and is buying new shares every week.... He suspects the recent drops in share price have been the result of “stock manipulation” from an “organized effort” to make the company look bad. There’s no proof of such a campaign, but Schlanger is convinced. “It’s got to be political,” he said, from all the “liberals that are trying to knock it down.”

In this case, "retail investors" is a euphemism for "suckers we can drain of cash." I feel sorry for these guys no matter how demented they sound. They're going to lose everything, just like all the retail investors who invested in Trump's casinos in the '90s, and all because the country's greatest con man has them in his sights. He doesn't even need the money. He just figures it's out there, and if he ruins the lives of a hundred thousand fans to get it, why not?

The performative bullshit just never stops. Here's a press release from Mac Warner, the West Virginia Secretary of State:

In March of 2021, President Biden signed Executive Order 14019 (the “EO”), which improperly claims, “it is the responsibility of the Federal Government to expand access to, and education about, voter registration and election information[.]”

....There is no such responsibility enumerated in the U.S. Constitution.... “Article 1 Section 4 of the U.S. Constitution says the times, places, and manner of holding elections, shall be left to the state legislatures,” said Secretary Warner. “West Virginia will emphatically not give up our State’s duty to register voters in a nonpartisan manner to the Federal Government, nor will we accept voter registration forms collected by Federal agents. White House overtaking of State responsibilities is something we will fight all the way to the Supreme Court,” Warner promised.

Needless to say, Warner has left something out. Article 1 Section 4 of the Constitution says:

The Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections for Senators and Representatives, shall be prescribed in each State by the Legislature thereof; but the Congress may at any time by Law make or alter such Regulations.

And guess what? Congress did indeed alter these regulations in the NVRA, known to its friends as the Motor Voter Act. It directs states to:

designate specific government offices as one-stop voter registration agencies — including federal recruitment offices for the armed forces, as a means to facilitate electoral participation by servicemembers. Those recruitment offices are part of the Biden Administration. And contrary to the Secretary’s email header, it’s hard to imagine that Secretary Warner, himself a veteran, plans to refuse the servicemembers’ voter registrations collected there.

That's from Justin Levitt at Election Law Blog. Even small children are familiar with this, since DMV offices throughout the country are now the main place where people register to vote. Nor does anyone in the Biden administration have any intention of forcing West Virginia to do anything new. Federal entities can become voter registration sites only with the state's blessing.

But Warner—do I even need to bother saying he's a Republican?—apparently needs something to rile up the base. It's an election year, after all, and Warner is looking to upgrade himself to governor. The primary is only a few weeks away, so it's time to break out the MAGA outrage, even if he has to invent it out of whole cloth.

A couple of weeks ago Israel launched a missile attack on the Iranian embassy in Damascus, killing a general of the Revolutionary Guard. Today Iran retaliated:

Drones? And a few small missiles? All of which Iran knew would be routinely shot down? This was obviously intended to be a pinprick attack, just enough to save face but not to do any serious damage. It couldn't be more obvious if Iran spelled out a message on the moon.

For now, anyway, this is yet another example of President Biden getting the job done. He made it clear to Iran that they crossed a line a few months ago, when a militia attack killed three American soldiers, and they've been quiet ever since. They couldn't literally do nothing in response to the embassy attack, but this is the next best thing. They plainly have no interest in escalating things to a point that might get the US directly involved.