Author: Kevin Drum

Just a quick reminder: There is no more evidence today in favor of the lab-leak theory than there ever has been. Which is to say, none. This isn't me taking sides one way or the other, it's just a fact. There's still zero direct evidence for the lab-leak theory and exactly the same amount of circumstantial evidence as always (first outbreak was in Wuhan, Chinese leaders have been extremely defensive, zoonotic origin still not proven, etc.).

The lab-leak theory is the journalistic shiny object of the day, but that's all. The actual evidence one way or the other hasn't changed a bit.

UPDATE: Cheryl Rofer notes here the yearlong effort to shop the lab-leak theory by Mike Pompeo and the Murdoch media empire. Apparently they've finally been successful.

The first federal program to give cash to poor people was called Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC), passed in 1935 as part of the New Deal. It was aimed at widows with children, a group that, at the time, everyone agreed should be supported with cash specifically so they didn't have to work and could instead devote time to raising their families.

In the '60s AFDC was steadily expanded to include anyone with children, which made the program increasingly unpopular. Widows during the Great Depression were one thing, but single mothers without jobs during good economic times were quite another—especially because so many of them were now urban and Black. In the '90s, the AFDC rolls started to increase, reaching a high point of 14 million recipients, and public support for cash payments designed to allow women not to work floundered. As a result of all this, Bill Clinton promised during the 1992 presidential campaign to "end welfare as we know it."

In 1995 AFDC was abolished and replaced with Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF). Its emphasis was on work, and it put limits on how long unemployed mothers could receive assistance. As a result, the TANF rolls fell dramatically:

The average benefit from AFDC slowly dropped in the '70s and '80s, and that decline continued after the switch to TANF:

Today, the TANF rolls have dropped to about 3 million people and monthly checks average about $170. For practical purposes, cash welfare has been all but eliminated.

Data comes from the Department of Health and Human Services. Total recipients are here (Appendix A, TANF Table 1) and here (Table 7 Indicator 3). Average benefits are here through 2011 and extrapolated from CBPP estimate of average 2010-2020 decrease here (Appendix Table 3) for 2012-2018.

Sadly, Thursday's report of negative deaths did not indicate a breakthrough in resurrection technology. It was just a mistake that's now been fixed. In reality, 428 people died of COVID-19 on Thursday and 436 on Friday.

Here’s the officially reported coronavirus death toll through June 11. The raw data from Johns Hopkins is here.

What is Hilbert doing on the fence? Answer: trying to work up the nerve to jump into our neighbor's yard so he can prove he's every bit as brave as Hopper. It took him a while to work himself up to this, but eventually he jumped down. Hopper was unimpressed. She just walks through the gate anyway.

How likely are Republicans—or Americans in general—to support a coup? Let's take a look:

These are not all the same thing, of course. I was just trying to get a quick and dirty sense of how open Republicans are, in general, to the notion of a coup if they think that things have gotten out of control. Roughly speaking, we have three polls over the past decade that suggest support of 38%, 43%, and 47%. In other words, Republican support for Donald Trump as our "real president" isn't really anything new. It's just a more concrete version of their usual vague support for coups.

Is this good news or bad? I think it's probably . . . good? Maybe? It sort of shows that all the coup talk is just typical right-wing talk and probably doesn't mean that much. But then again, maybe it means that a lot of Republicans are really and truly coup supporters and will jump on board for real the next time there's a chance.

Either way, it's disturbing as hell. Even the lower level of Democratic support for coups is nothing to brush aside. What the hell is wrong with us?

By using antibody levels to measure vaccine efficacy, a team of researchers was able to estimate how good fractional doses of various vaccines are. Here are the results:

A half dose of the Pfizer vaccine has an efficacy of about 80%, which is still better than a full dose of the J&J or AstraZeneca vaccines. But the big winner is the Moderna vaccine, which displays nearly its full efficacy even at a quarter dosage.

It's too late for this to make much difference in the US or Europe, but we're going to need billions of doses of vaccine to protect the rest of the world. If the Moderna vaccine can be stretched 4x, it can protect a whole lot more people. Combined with news that the Moderna vaccine can be transported using standard refrigeration, it has the potential to be a significant factor in vaccinating Africa and Asia over the next year if production can be ramped up.

In 1975 about 7 million workers claimed disability benefits via the two main disability programs run by the federal government: Supplemental Security Income (SSI) and Disability Insurance (DI). In the most recent year more than 16 million workers claimed disability benefits, amounting to about 5% of the population:

Disability benefits have grown slowly since the early '90s. DI benefits currently average about $1,500 per month while SSI benefits average about $500 per month. Taken together, the two programs pay out an average of $1,000 per month:

Disability programs were a frequent target of "crisis frenzy" up until 2015. Partly this was because applications had doubled between 2000 and 2010; partly because of concerns that applications for childrens' disability were being abused; and partly because the Disability Insurance trust fund was in dire shape. However, in 2013 applications suddenly began to decline for reasons that remain unclear, and that in turn saved the DI trust fund. Today the program's financial footing is secure for at least another decade.

Data comes from the Social Security Administration here and here and from Wikipedia here.

UPDATE: The initial version of this post accounted only for DI outlays. I've updated it to include both DI and SSI.

The US reported -20 deaths on Thursday, which means either (a) the bio boffins have some seriously great news to report, or (b) it's just some kind of statistical artifact that will be corrected soon. Probably the latter, I suppose.

Here’s the officially reported coronavirus death toll through June 10. The raw data from Johns Hopkins is here.

The Earned Income Tax Credit is one of the biggest but least known of the Big Six federal welfare programs aimed at the poor. It is available only to people who work and file a tax return, and most of the benefits are paid to individuals with children

EITC, as the name suggests, is a tax credit, but it's a refundable tax credit. This means that you get it even if you owe no taxes, which makes it a straightforward cash payment. At the height of the Great Recession nearly 30 million people claimed the EITC each year, but that number declined as the economy recovered. In 2018 there were about 26 million people who claimed the EITC, amounting to a little over 8% of the population:

The EITC was a largely bipartisan program during the Reagan era and became steadily more generous through the mid-90s. After that, Republicans turned against it and average payments flattened out at about $2,500 per person:

The American Rescue Plan, passed earlier this year, made EITC substantially more generous, especially for filers with no children, but only temporarily. It will revert to its older parameters in 2023 unless Congress makes the changes permanent.

All data comes from the Tax Policy Center here.

This is a geranium biokovo growing in our front yard. It was named the perennial of the year in 2015!