Kevin Drum

A large RCT mask study was recently conducted in Norway. It involved about 4,000 people, half of whom wore surgical masks when they were outside the house and half of whom didn't. Here are the results:

The folks who wore masks got COVID at a slightly higher rate than those who didn't.

On the bright side, the mask wearers apparently got fewer colds and other respiratory diseases. So that's good.

But if it's COVID you're worried about, this is yet more evidence that it's N95 or nothing. Surgical masks and cloth masks have either small or no protective effects.

POSTSCRIPT: The study lasted two weeks, which suggests that over the course of a year more than a quarter of all people get COVID. That's a lot! Be careful out there.

This is Gustav Klimt's Judith at the Belvedere Museum in Vienna.

We now have all the important economic indicators for the second quarter of 2024:

• Real GDP grew 2.8%
• The unemployment rate was 4.0%.
• Inflation was down to 2.8%.
• Real wages were up 1%.
• Real disposable personal income was up 1.3%.
• Real consumption was up 1.5%.

What's not to like?

I promise not to turn this into a '70s music blog, but over the course of my various peregrinations this week I now have four or five hours of "70s on 7" under my belt. And on the drive to Anaheim¹ this morning it occurred to me that during this time I haven't heard a single Fleetwood Mac song. Also nothing from Bruce Springsteen. Nothing from Abba. Nothing from Pink Floyd. Nothing from Wings. Nothing from Steely Dan. Nothing from the Bee Gees. Nothing from Elton John.

I'm not saying these are all great bands. Opinions will vary. But they were all big acts in the '70s. I suppose it's praiseworthy that "70s on 7" isn't saturated with just the stuff we've all heard a thousand times, but doesn't it seem odd that in 4+ hours I haven't heard a single song from any of these groups?

¹Anaheim is where the radiation clinic is located. I'm writing this in the waiting room.

The Atlanta Fed was right on target. GDP growth in Q2 clocked in at 2.8%:

There's nothing special to report in the details. Personal consumption was up; investment was up: and government production was up. This is just a very nice, positive report.

On Thursday morning the BEA will announce its first estimate of GDP growth in Q2. Here is the Atlanta Fed's final model-driven forecast:

The blue chip forecast from human beings is 1.8%. By the time most of you read this we should know who got closer.

Did Joe Biden really appoint Kamala Harris as a "border czar"? Nope. Here's an AP dispatch reporting what happened:

Harris is tasked with overseeing diplomatic efforts to deal with issues spurring migration in the Northern Triangle countries of El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras, as well as pressing them to strengthen enforcement on their own borders, administration officials said. She’s also tasked with developing and implementing a long-term strategy that gets at the root causes of migration from those countries.

At lunch today a friend urged me to revisit Biden's actual announcement. So I did. Here it is (cleaned up slightly):

I’ve asked her, the VP, today — because she’s the most qualified person to do it — to lead our efforts with Mexico and the Northern Triangle and the countries that are going to need help in stemming the migration to our southern border.

....The Vice President has agreed to lead our diplomatic effort and work with those nations to accept the returnees, and enhance migration enforcement at their borders. We’re already talking with Mexico about that; she’s already done that.

This is about as clear as it could be. Biden was reinstituting an Obama-era program that addressed the "root causes" of migration from Central America: gang violence, drug trafficking, hurricanes, floods, earthquakes, and so forth. Harris was in charge of working with key countries on this and distributing $700 million in funding. Here's how it worked out:

Illegal migration from the three countries Harris targeted declined from 50% of the total to less than 20% today. In raw numbers, migration from those countries peaked at about 100,000 shortly after Harris took over and began declining after that. Total migration today is less than 30,000 per month.

If there was ever an actual border czar, it was and is Alejandro Mayorkas, the Secretary of Homeland Security. Republicans know this very well. They even tried to impeach him for being a bad czar.

This is a sunbittern at the LA Zoo. After it flashed its tail at me I stuck around for quite a while hoping for a repeat, but this was the best I got. When it's fully spread out and up in the air it's pretty spectacular.

I grew up in the '70s, so naturally I like '70s music. I thought.

But a couple of days ago I had to take my car into the shop for some body work and I'm now driving a loaner vehicle. It has Sirius XM available, so I've been listening to their "70s on 7" channel on my drives to and from radiation treatment.

And.......boy, there's a lot of dreck! I'd consigned to the memory hole all the forgettable detritus the '70s left behind. I only remember the stuff I liked.

Oh well. At least the '60s are still great. Right?

Here's an interesting chart I ran into a couple of days ago:

The University of Michigan has long been the gold standard in consumer sentiment surveys, but Goldman Sachs has its own consumer sentiment index that it constructs by monitoring Twitter on a daily basis. As you can see, the two measures are usually pretty close.

But if I'm reading this chart right, the Goldman Sachs index suddenly skyrocketed in the month of June. The UMich index didn't.

What's going on? And if the Goldman Sachs index is correct, what on earth happened in June to cause a sudden bout of good cheer from consumers? Has the reality of a strong economy and low inflation finally had an impact?

I dunno. Stay tuned.