I grabbed the wrong graph in that last post. A good graph but what I meant to post was the GDP chart. From the same Calculated Risk blog:

A chart of personal income, less transfer payments, from the Calculated Risk blog. Pretty big leg down during covid-19.

There is lots of controversy about counting Covid-19 deaths. Partly because you don’t die directly of covid-19, you die from complications of covid-19, which could be pneumonia, a heart attack, etc.

Turns out we know statistically with a pretty high degree of accuracy how many people will die in the US every year. Looking at how many extra (excess) deaths we can get a good look at how many people are dying from Covid-19.

This has a couple of effects. Someone who would have died this year anyway, doesn’t show up in this number. This washes out older, sicker Covid-19 victims, which leads to a conservative estimate. In the real world they would be Covid-19 deaths. If you have terminal cancer and get in a car wreck the week before you would have died of cancer, you are still listed (for statistical purposes) as being a car accident victim.

The CDC counts 300,000 excess deaths from late January until the beginning of October.

Excess Deaths Associated with COVID-19, by Age and Race and Ethnicity — United States, January 26–October 3, 2020

As I’m have mentioned, I grew up in David Duke’s Louisiana, so that probably colors (ahem) my political views. It is sad that I have seen American politics dominated by racist overtures to voters, recently by Republicans but before that by Democrats.

The recent use of social media platforms for this purpose hasn’t been deeply discussed, at least in public. It isn’t so much a problem that social media has given a neutral meeting place to neo-Klansmen as that it has given monied political groups an effective and stealth way of contacting and organizing these groups. Rather than run broadcast ads that are viewed by everyone and can be judged for fairness and accuracy and are open for discussion, targeted ads in platforms like facebook allow massive amounts of information to flow from political actors to voters, without any scrutiny. This is completely new and (I believe) unhealthy for an open democracy. More from the Boston Review of Books:

The Politics of White Anxiety

I try to keep up with the news and understand what is going on in the world. I understand these are unusual times and there are many things happening, especially here in the US. Much of this ends up being “political”, which means it is based on theory and power and desired outcomes, not actual facts. Not that any of these issues are inherently political, that is, directly having to do with political power and governance. Things with no business being discussed in a political context have been “politicized”, as they say. This is seldom good for the country, though it is often good for a group of even a few individuals.

As I watch the US Senate debate saving businesses and actual lives, I had a hard time accepting what I am seeing. This article confirms my worst suspicions. Many, many people in the US are being made to suffer so that a few politicians can keep their power and their jobs. Sadly, there isn’t any other way to look at it.

Why Mitch McConnell is trying to kill a big stimulus before the election

i was fortunate enough to catch a glimpse of the Weinermobile recently! A good NYT article on the Oscar Meyer Weinermobile fleet.

After watching many years of gerrymandering (Austin is split five or six ways) and various forms of voter suppression, the dam may be about to burst. This means a lot here in Texas, but it will mean a lot for the rest of the country, too.

The new Texas ‘Spindletop’ might be ready to blow