Kevin Drum

The Republican "audit" of presidential ballots in Arizona is proceeding apace. However, thanks to the rigorous approach they're taking the job is still only 10% done. So don't expect final results anytime soon.

But I'm curious about something. After they've finished X-raying the ballots; shoving them into a mass spectrometer; inspecting them with an electron microscope; conducting random MRI tests; performing ink analyses; checking for nanoparticles; examining them for radioactive trace elements; hydrolyzing a few samples to check for free radicals—after they've done all this, what happens if they still can't figure out a way to plausibly toss out enough ballots to give Trump a win? What then?

Will they say they were "just asking questions" and were never trying to overturn anything in the first place? Will they invent a whole bunch of "discrepancies" and then claim no one will ever know who really won? Or, when the end is obviously near, will they regretfully announce they've run out of money and can't complete the job?

Just wondering.

Charles Gaba tweeted out the following chart today:

States that voted for Donald Trump have the lowest COVID-19 vaccination rates. But be careful. Here's a similar chart:

States with the lowest population density also have the lowest vaccination rate. The problem is that population density is highly correlated with support for Trump. So which is the real underlying cause of low vaccination rates: support for Trump or the presence of lots of rural voters? Or maybe it's something else entirely.

It's not impossible to untangle effects like this, but it's hard. And once you've done it, you still don't know for sure that you've accounted for every possible confounder. This was the point of my post earlier today about the historical source of Republican vaccine skepticism, which goes back for decades. It might have something to do with conservatism. It might have something to do with Republicanism. But it almost certainly has very little to do with Trumpism.

I was out and about on Saturday and ended up dropping by the shopping mall formerly known as The City. (The name may be familiar to the few of you who managed to finish Philip K. Dick's quasi-novel VALIS, though it was miscapitalized there.) The City has gone through many rebirths and retcons and what have you, and is currently known as The Outlets at Orange, even though most of the stores don't appear to be outlets at all, just ordinary stores.

Anyway, I took a few pictures and this is what it looked like. It's kind of weird. Orange County is ground zero for a lot of anti-mask nutbaggery, but out in real life nearly everyone is masked up. Even after the CDC's latest announcement, most people continue to wear masks outdoors, let alone indoors. I'd say about 75% of the crowd at the mall was wearing masks.

I'm reposting this since a lot of people might not have seen it over the weekend.

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Not everyone wants to get the COVID-19 vaccine. Hesitance is highest among young people, the Black community, and, of course—Republicans.

This is nothing new. Here is the historical reaction of Americans to getting vaccines¹:

Overall response to the COVID-19 vaccine is right in line with historical averages. What's more, Republicans have always been more hesitant about vaccines than Democrats—though with a twist:

As you can see, Republicans have always been more wary of vaccines. That wariness has increased over time, but it's been stable since 2000 and obviously has nothing to do with Donald Trump. In fact, the especially big difference in the uptake of the COVID-19 vaccine isn't due to Republicans becoming more hesitant at all. It's due to Democrats becoming less hesitant. Democrats are about 20 points more enthusiastic about the COVID-19 vaccine than they have been about other vaccines.

There's an important point here: People are hesitant about vaccines for different reasons, and conservatives have historically been more hesitant than average about them. This means that loud snarking about Republicans being idiot zealots willing to kill themselves just for partisan satisfaction misses the point: their hesitance has little to do with Donald Trump or Tucker Carlson or the polarization of modern politics. Vaccine yahooism may have made things worse at the margins, but that's about it. Conservatives have always been this way.

I don't know why this is. Maybe it's due to natural conservative suspicion of the federal government. Jonathan Haidt might say it's due to conservative belief in the sanctity of the human body. Or, since a big part of the difference is due to rural residents, it might have something to do with longtime rural suspicion of new technology.

In any case, those are the sorts of things we should be looking at if we really and truly want to increase vaccination rates.² It's more fun to go after Tucker Carlson—and I encourage everyone to continue doing this—but the evidence says that's not really the primary underlying issue here. Something else unrelated to the present day is at fault. We should try to figure this out with the same empathy and understanding that we feel toward young people and Black doubters.

¹Historical data from Gallup. Annual flu data from the CDC. Current COVID-19 data from the Kaiser tracking poll.

²I do.

Why did the United States suffer such high fatalities from COVID-19? Was it:

1. CDC incompetence
2. FDA sluggishness
3. Donald Trump's mismanagement
4. Poor preparedness planning left over from the Obama administration

Now let's rephrase the question. Why did the the United States and all of Europe suffer such high fatalities from COVID-19? Was it:

1. CDC incompetence
2. FDA sluggishness
3. Donald Trump's mismanagement
4. Poor preparedness planning left over from the Obama administration

This rephrasing should make it evident that none of these answers—or anything else unique to the United States—makes sense. Europe had good quality tests earlier than us, but it did them no good. Europe responded sooner than we did, but it did them no good. Europe had shortages of PPE etc. just like we did. Europe had the opportunity to establish travel restrictions before the US, but didn't. European health agencies provided roughly the same masking advice we did. Etc.

In other words, everyone needs to stop the CDC/FDA/Trump blame game because it's wrong. It's obvious that the United States isn't unique among Western nations, and by definition that means the primary cause of our high mortality rate is also not something unique to the US. Our premature reopening in May of last year was responsible for a higher summer death rate, and Donald Trump can certainly be blamed for that, but that's about all.

This is the question you should ask anyone who insists on blaming the virulence of the pandemic on some specifically American screwup: "But what about Europe?" If their theory doesn't explain Europe too, you can just toss it out immediately.

Here’s the officially reported coronavirus death toll through May 16. The raw data from Johns Hopkins is here.

Here’s the officially reported coronavirus death toll through May 15. The raw data from Johns Hopkins is here.

The American public continued to spend, spend, spend in April:

In March retail spending shot up well above the trendline of the past few years, and in April it stayed there. This is not yet enough to make up for the 3-month plunge last year, but it's getting there.

Unsurprisingly, we're all getting offline and starting to do more of our shopping out in the real world:

This only goes through the end of 2020, and I wouldn't be surprised if we're back on trend by the middle of this year.

While I was looking up these numbers, I got curious about spending at the start of the pandemic. There was a huge downward spike starting in mid-March, but different products went down more than others:

Grocery spending actually went up, which is no surprise since (a) everyone has to eat, and (b) all the restaurants were closed. Beyond that, I'm a little hard pressed to tell any kind of unified story about these numbers, though it sure looks like once the pandemic became official we all decided almost immediately that we didn't care how we looked anymore, which would explain the massive drop in spending on clothes and personal care.

Can you make up a story that explains all this? If so, you can join the pundit narrative hall of fame. For this assignment, pretend you're David Brooks.

A few days ago the CDC changed its official guidance about COVID-19, finally acknowledging that one of the primary transmission routes for the virus is via airborne aerosols. This prompted a lot of criticism about the CDC being extraordinarily late to admit this.

There's a lot I could say about this, but I won't for now. I just want to ask one question: Why does anyone care? The CDC's official guidance may have been slow to change, but as early as last May they were publishing research that acknowledged the possibility of airborne transmission. In August they formed a task force to investigate transmission modes. By September Dr. Fauci was publicly conceding that COVID transmission was "much more aerosol than we thought." In October the CDC's official guidance acknowledged the existence of airborne transmission. Super-spreader events (which are indicative of airborne transmission) had already been in the regulatory eye for months. And very early on the CDC was recommending better ventilation to rein in virus transmission, which mostly matters only if the virus is airborne.

So we were already focused on super-spreader events and the CDC was recommending better ventilation. What would have been different if the CDC had acknowledged the aerosol infection route earlier? A little less obsessive surface cleaning? (Though the CDC always said that surface transmission was rare.) Social distancing at ten feet instead of six?

I'm not sure, but this is a genuine question. I know that hospitals fought against acknowledging airborne transmission because it would have required them to adopt protective gear that was both more expensive and more cumbersome. An official change in CDC guidance would have had a big impact on them. Beyond that, though, I'm a little hard put to figure out what would have changed outside the hospital world if the CDC had been quicker on the ball. As Fauci said in October,"Rather than getting bent out of shape of, what's the evidence of 5%, 10%, 20%—aerosol transmission almost certainly occurs, then act like it's occurring. And then do the same thing you've been doing otherwise."

So: was the public response to COVID-19 really hindered much by the CDC's sluggish official guidance? Can anyone help me out here?

Here’s the officially reported coronavirus death toll through May 14. The raw data from Johns Hopkins is here.