2:00PM Water Cooler 8/23/2024

By Lambert Strether of Corrente

Bird Song of the Day

California Thrasher, California Botanic Garden (formerly Rancho Santa Ana BG), Los Angeles, California, United States. I wondered if reader TH had been to this garden, but at least according to a search on that location, no.

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In Case You Might Miss…

In Case You Might Miss…

1. Kennedy live briefing at 2:00PM ET.
2. This week’s RCP polling averages (neck and neck).
3. New Covid charts (no improvements)
4. The toll of scientific lies.

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Politics

“So many of the social reactions that strike us as psychological are in fact a rational management of symbolic capital.” –Pierre Bourdieu, Classification Struggles

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2024

Less than one hundred days to go!

Friday’s RCP Poll Averages:

Good news for Trump in that last week’s deterioration seems to have been slowed, although we shall have to see if Kamala gets a convention “bounce.” Remember, however, that all the fluctuations — in fact, all the leads — are within the margin of error. If you read most of the press, you’d think Kamala has this race in the bag. It’s not so. Do note, however, Trump’s deterioration in North Carolina: +2.4 last week to +0.9 this week, when OG pollster Sabato moved it to “toss-up” status from “lean Republican.” No wonder Trump held a rally there this week. NOTE With Kennedy, it would seem, about to drop out, I started tracking the national percentage as “Top Battlegrounds,” where Trump’s shrinking lead is +0.1 this week (as opposed to “5-Way RCP Average, where Harris led by +1.1 last week).

“Democratic pollsters have a warning about Kamala Harris’ lead” [Politico]. “Here at the Democratic convention this week, some in the party’s professional class are trying to tamp down the exuberance. Officials with the top pro-Harris super PAC said their polling ‘is much less rosy’ than public surveys. Other Democratic pollsters noted that — even if their polling is right — Trump still maintains a lot of advantages…. There are plenty of warning signs hidden in the data: A poll commissioned by the Democratic messaging firm Navigator Research and unveiled during the convention showed Harris and Trump essentially tied across the swing-state map. And the candidate characteristics that are best correlated with voters’ preferences — whether a candidate is up to the job, has the right vision and is a strong leader — generally favored Trump in the survey. And then there’s the prospect of another polling error. Polls underestimated Trump in both 2020 and 2016…. The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee’s post-2020 report found larger-than-expected numbers of low-propensity GOP voters turned out, giving Republican candidates an unforeseen boost.” • Probably not a lucky break, then, that Trump almost got whacked. That sort of thing people remember.

“Democrats Taste Victory in November. But Are They Too Confident?” [New York Times]. “By Thursday evening, the convention floor was buzzing as delegates milled about in the hour before programming kicked off on the final night. Nearly every walkway was mobbed, making moving through the floor laborious. But no one appeared bothered. Several delegates said they remained excited, but had also taken the sobering messages to heart.” In other words, an ideal environment for super-spreading — both of Covid and of groupthink. For example: “Andrew Ashiofu, 41, a delegate from Washington State, was confident. ‘Right from the Sunday when she announced, we’ve seen it,’ he said. ‘We’ve seen people all coming together, the unity across all people. We’ve seen it in the way she’s raising funds, people donating massively to her. We’ve seen it in the polls. We’ve seen it everywhere. We’re seeing it right now.’ ‘America,’ he predicted, “is united to make sure Kamala Harris wins in November.'” • Well… That’s not what the numbers say at all. In any case, “except for the weirdos” is implicit in “unity across all people” and “America is united.” Frankly, I find the possibility that Ashiofu actually believes what he’s saying more frightening than the idea that he’s lying or engaging in puffery.

“The Mysterious Case of the Undecided Vote” [John Halpin, The Liberal Patriot]. “In practice, the bulk of party spending in elections does not underwrite a finely tuned political radar capable of identifying and pursuing the small percentage of truly persuadable voters. Rather, it pays for a fire hose of information and attacks indiscriminately sprayed on various local and state electorates without much, if any, understanding of who is seeing their partisan materials, how they are interpreting competing bits of information, and what ultimately will move undecided Americans to either vote or make up their mind. Even when political ads and messages are targeted online—or on radio and television—there’s a great deal of wishful thinking that party messages and attacks actually reach intended audiences, and more importantly, influence those people on digital platforms or watching particular programs who have yet to decide how they will vote. American ingenuity has solved a lot of problems in the world and created amazing scientific and technological advancements to help all of humanity. Yet, somehow, we still can’t figure out undecided voters and how best to interact with them. It’s mostly a guess. Why? There’s one obvious reason for this lack of understanding, and one more empirical reason. First, voting is a private act and it’s really no one’s business how other people plan to vote in an election, if they plan to vote at all…. Second, extrapolating from these inexact methods, parties do have a pretty good understanding of what reluctant and undecided voters tend to look like demographically: they are generally younger with less formal education and income, they mostly don’t like or care about politics, and they hold idiosyncratic views on economic and social issues that don’t easily fit into traditional ideological and partisan models. But these analyses are still vague and don’t really give campaigns a concrete list of people or groups in specific areas to motivate and persuade. So, lacking precise information, parties end up just blasting out ads and emails and slapping together messages hoping the content is solid and persuasive—and that someone, somewhere who is hesitant about their voting intention actually pays attention.”

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Democrat National Convention Vignettes:

Kamala (D): Oopsie:

The sheriff featured by Democrats last night is same sheriff we recently sued over taking cash from private equity-owned telecom companies to eliminate the ability of children to visit their parents in jail, on the theory that families would spend more money on monopoly calls. https://t.co/888sdowib9

— Alec Karakatsanis (@equalityAlec) August 23, 2024

“Harris plants her flag in Chicago: The future is now” [Eugene Robinson, WaPo]. “It is quite possible that the next president of the United States will be a woman of color; a woman who is Black and South Asian; a woman who is the daughter of immigrants from Jamaica and India. A woman who graduated from a historically Black college, Howard University. A woman who belongs to Alpha Kappa Alpha, one of the “Divine Nine” historically Black sororities and fraternities. A woman who is part of an interracial marriage and the “Momala” in a blended family.” • Well….

On the bright side, it’s been interesting to watch Kamala’s personal journey of discovery in her various political campaigns: From Indian, to Black, to (quite recently) “Black, dammit. What are you, racist?” to Robinson’s “woman of color.” One sees the advantages of the semantic flexibility, of course.

Kamala (D): “The Speech of Kamala Harris’s Lifetime” [Susan Glasser, The New Yorker]. The lead: “The Chicks sang the national anthem.” • Ah, memories. “Dixie Chicks comments on George W. Bush“:

In March 2003, the American country band the Dixie Chicks publicly criticized President George W. Bush, triggering a backlash. At a concert in London during their Top of the World Tour, the lead singer, Natalie Maines, said the Dixie Chicks were ashamed Bush was from the same state as them, and that they did not support the imminent invasion of Iraq.

The Dixie Chicks were one of the most popular American country acts at the time. After the statement was reported by the British newspaper The Guardian, it triggered a backlash from American country listeners, who were mostly right-wing and supported the war. The Dixie Chicks were blacklisted by many country radio stations, received death threats and were criticized by other country musicians. Sales of their music and concert tickets declined and they lost corporate sponsorship. A few days later, Maines issued an apology, saying her remark had been disrespectful. She rescinded the apology in 2006, saying she felt Bush deserved no respect.

I can’t make search cough up any links, but in my recollection the Democrats were wholly behind Bush at that point, and few to none of them came to the DIxie Chicks’ defense (“The events were documented in the 2006 documentary Dixie Chicks: Shut Up and Sing.[2] The television network NBC refused to air a commercial for the documentary, citing a policy against ads dealing with “public controversy”. The commercials were also declined by CW.”)

Fast forward to the present, when we’re all one big happy family!

Kamala (D): “DNC Day 4: Kamala’s Coronation” [New York Magazine]. A welcome dash of cold water: “The fourth and final night of the Democratic National Convention had its moments — Elizabeth Warren’s early remarks, the Central Park Five, adorable children from the extended Harris family, Gabby Giffords, and yes, at moments Kamala Harris herself in her acceptance speech. But it will be more remembered by what didn’t happen: there was no surprise appearance from Beyonce or Taylor Swift, despite rumors and expectations there would be. There was not even a Mitt Romney or a George W. Bush or another unexpected Republican luminary, despite rumors there would be, rumors that the Harris campaign could have extinguished but chose not to. Instead, bizarrely, there were prime time addresses from dinosaurs like Leon Panetta, and almost proudly anti-charisma politicians like Roy Cooper, the governor of North Carolina, and Arizona senator Mark Kelly.”

Kamala (D): “Harris offers ‘new way forward’ as she launches into dead heat contest against Trump” [Washington Times]. “”I am so happy now. It’s almost like weeping has endured through the night, but joy cometh in the morning and, in many ways, we see a new day dawning in America,” said Sen. Cory A. Booker of New Jersey. “Page being turned.'” • It’s a neat trick, presenting yourself as a fresh face after having been in office nearly four years. Then again, if you made virtually no positive impression, you can “serve as a blank screen on which people of vastly different political stripes project their own views,” a trick the Democrats tried sixteen (long, long) years ago, with success (at least or them).

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Trump:

Trump (R): “Trump, Georgia Gov. Kemp exchange praise after lengthy rift” [The Hill]. “Former President Trump and Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp (R) seemingly tried Thursday to put their lengthy feud in the rearview mirror ahead of November’s election. Kemp went on Sean Hannity’s Fox News show, a favorite program of the former president, and said the focus needed to be on putting Trump back in the White House. ‘We gotta win. We gotta win from the top of the ticket on down,’ Kemp said. ‘We need to send Donald Trump back to the White House. We need to retake the Senate. We need to hold the House.’ Trump posted on Truth Social shortly after Kemp’s appearance on Fox News to express his approval. ‘Thank you to #BrianKempGA for all of your help and support in Georgia, where a win is so important to the success of our Party and, most importantly, our Country,’ Trump posted. ‘I look forward to working with you, your team, and all of my friends in Georgia to help MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!'”

Trump (R): On his live blog for Kamala’s speech:

He’s spiraling. #DNC2024 pic.twitter.com/9WEXrkFi4L

— Eliza Orlins (@elizaorlins) August 23, 2024

Looks to me like these guys just slam a pejorative on a screen shot and send it out…

Vance:

This is possibly the worst advance work I’ve ever seen

– staff wasn’t briefed and doesn’t know who he is
– staff declines to be seen on camera
– principal (JD) doesn’t know how or what to order
– dead silence between stilted questions
– no supporters included for filler https://t.co/Fp1qb2QxYg

— Conor Rogers (@conorjrogers) August 22, 2024

Yikes!

Kennedy:

Kennedy (I): “WATCH LIVE: RFK Jr. holds briefing on his presidential campaign after withdrawal from Arizona ballot” [PBS]. “Robert F. Kennedy Jr. will hold a news briefing on Friday, a day after he withdrew from the ballot in Arizona, as Donald Trump is set to appear only a few miles away in the Phoenix area. Fueling speculation that Kennedy could drop his independent presidential bid and endorse the Republican nominee. Trump, campaigning Thursday in southern Arizona at the U.S.-Mexico border, said that ‘no plans have been made’ for Kennedy to appear with him on Friday. But he noted they would be in the same city at the same time.”

Syndemics

“I am in earnest — I will not equivocate — I will not excuse — I will not retreat a single inch — AND I WILL BE HEARD.” –William Lloyd Garrison

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Covid Resources, United States (National): Transmission (CDC); Wastewater (CDC, Biobot; includes many counties; Wastewater Scan, includes drilldown by zip); Variants (CDC; Walgreens); “Iowa COVID-19 Tracker” (in IA, but national data). “Infection Control, Emergency Management, Safety, and General Thoughts” (especially on hospitalization by city).

Lambert here: Readers, thanks for the collective effort. To update any entry, do feel free to contact me at the address given with the plants. Please put “COVID” in the subject line. Thank you!

Resources, United States (Local): AK (dashboard); AL (dashboard); AR (dashboard); AZ (dashboard); CA (dashboard; Marin, dashboard; Stanford, wastewater; Oakland, wastewater); CO (dashboard; wastewater); CT (dashboard); DE (dashboard); FL (wastewater); GA (wastewater); HI (dashboard); IA (wastewater reports); ID (dashboard, Boise; dashboard, wastewater, Central Idaho; wastewater, Coeur d’Alene; dashboard, Spokane County); IL (wastewater); IN (dashboard); KS (dashboard; wastewater, Lawrence); KY (dashboard, Louisville); LA (dashboard); MA (wastewater); MD (dashboard); ME (dashboard); MI (wastewater; wastewater); MN (dashboard); MO (wastewater); MS (dashboard); MT (dashboard); NC (dashboard); ND (dashboard; wastewater); NE (dashboard); NH (wastewater); NJ (dashboard); NM (dashboard); NV (dashboard; wastewater, Southern NV); NY (dashboard); OH (dashboard); OK (dashboard); OR (dashboard); PA (dashboard); RI (dashboard); SC (dashboard); SD (dashboard); TN (dashboard); TX (dashboard); UT (wastewater); VA (dashboard); VT (dashboard); WA (dashboard; dashboard); WI (wastewater); WV (wastewater); WY (wastewater).

Resources, Canada (National): Wastewater (Government of Canada).

Resources, Canada (Provincial): ON (wastewater); QC (les eaux usées); BC (wastewater); BC, Vancouver (wastewater).

Hat tips to helpful readers: Alexis, anon (2), Art_DogCT, B24S, CanCyn, ChiGal, Chuck L, Festoonic, FM, FreeMarketApologist (4), Gumbo, hop2it, JB, JEHR, JF, JL Joe, John, JM (10), JustAnotherVolunteer, JW, KatieBird, KF, LL, Michael King, KF, LaRuse, mrsyk, MT, MT_Wild, otisyves, Petal (6), RK (2), RL, RM, Rod, square coats (11), tennesseewaltzer, Tom B., Utah, Bob White (3).

Stay safe out there!

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TABLE 1: Daily Covid Charts

Lambert here: Worth noting that national Emergency Room admissions are as high as they were in the first wave, in 2020.

Wastewater
★ This week[1] CDC August 20:	Last Week[2] CDC (until next week):
Variants★ [3] CDC August 17	Emergency Room Visits[4] CDC August 10
Hospitalization
★ New York[5] New York State, data August 22:	National [6] CDC July 27:
Positivity
National[7] Walgreens August 20:	Ohio[8] Cleveland Clinic August 17:
Travelers Data
Positivity[9] CDC July 29:	Variants[10] CDC July 29:
Deaths
Weekly Deaths vs. % Positivity [11]CDC August 10:	Weekly Deaths vs. ED Visits [12]CDC August 10:

LEGEND

1) ★ for charts new today; all others are not updated.

2) For a full-size/full-resolution image, Command-click (MacOS) or right-click (Windows) on the chart thumbnail and “open image in new tab.”

NOTES

[1] (CDC) This week’s wastewater map, with hot spots annotated. Keeps spreading.

[2] (CDC) Last week’s wastewater map.

[3] (CDC Variants) KP.* very popular. XDV.1 flat.

[4] (ER) Worth noting Emergency Department use is now on a par with the first wave, in 2020.

[5] (Hospitalization: NY) Going down. Doesn’t need to be a permanent thing, of course. (The New York city area has form; in 2020, as the home of two international airports (JFK and EWR) it was an important entry point for the virus into the country (and from thence up the Hudson River valley, as the rich sought to escape, and then around the country through air travel.)

Lambert here: Since things are bad out on the West Coast, I went looking for California hospitalization data to compare with New York’s, and found this: “Due to changes in reporting requirements for hospitals, CDPH is no longer including hospitalization data on the CDPH dashboard. CDPH remains committed to monitoring the severe outcomes of COVID-19 and influenza, including the impact on hospitals. CDC’s National Healthcare Safety Network (NHSN) will remain open to accept data, and CDC and CDPH strongly encourage all facilities to continue reporting.” Thanks, Mandy!

[6] (Hospitalization: CDC). The visualization suppresses what is, in percentage terms, a significant increase.

[7] (Walgreens) Fiddling and diddling.

[8] (Cleveland) Jumping.

[9] (Travelers: Positivity) Up. Those sh*theads at CDC have changed the chart so that it doesn’t even run back to 1/21/23, as it used to, but now starts 1/1/24. There’s also no way to adjust the time range. CDC really doesn’t want you to be able to take a historical view of the pandemic, or compare one surge to another. In an any case, that’s why the shape of the curve has changed.

[10] (Travelers: Variants) The new variant in China, XDV.1, is not showing up here.

[11] Deaths low, but positivity up.

[12] Deaths low, ED up.

Stats Watch

There are no official statistics of interest today.

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Today’s Fear & Greed Index: 51 Neutral (previous close: 47 Neutral) [CNN]. One week ago: 35 (Fear). (0 is Extreme Fear; 100 is Extreme Greed). Last updated Aug 23 at 1:05:41 PM ET.

Zeitgeist Watch

“How Deep Can Humans Really Go?” (press release) [McGill University]. “Freediving is an extreme sport in which the freediver (FD) descends and returns using a single breath…. How is it that organisms made to live on dry land are able to descend 214 meters with one breath?… There are several critical physiological responses that are theorized to permit FDs to reach these impressive depths. The first is the mammalian diving reflex. This is an autonomic reflex found in diving mammals that activates a series of responses that reduce O2 consumption following the cessation of breathing, known as apnea. Another critical mechanism is a centralized shift of blood known as the thoracic blood shift (TBS) in which there is movement of blood from the extremities of the body toward the central thoracic cavity. This increase in central blood volume allows for the reduction of TLC past the RV and prevents lung squeeze as the blood occupies the space of the shrunken lungs. Finally, the frog breathing technique permits FD to breathe past their TLC. During frog-breathing, the diver takes gulps air into their lungs after having already filled them. This is thought to increase the oxygen content in their lungs and prolong their time underwater. But as impressive as the physical adaptations of the human body are under these conditions, the mental adaptation might be even more astonishing. FDs have to learn to go against one of the most basic human urges, the urge to breathe. … Every time physiologists believe they have found the absolute limit of free diving, they are disproved by the newest world record. This begs the question – can we find the limit to freediving? Currently, it is believed that maximal diving depth is not restricted by breath-hold time, but rather by the degree of hypoxemia, that is lowest blood oxygen saturation, that can be withstood upon ascent. ”

Photo Book

“No one’s ready for this” [The Verge]. “In explosion from the side of an old brick building. A crashed bicycle in a city intersection. A cockroach in a box of takeout. It took less than 10 seconds to create each of these images with the Reimagine tool in the Pixel 9’s Magic Editor. They are crisp. They are in full color. They are high-fidelity. There is no suspicious background blur, no tell-tale sixth finger. These photographs are extraordinarily convincing, and they are all extremely fucking fake. Anyone who buys a Pixel 9 — the latest model of Google’s flagship phone, available starting this week — will have access to the easiest, breeziest user interface for top-tier lies, built right into their mobile device. This is all but certain to become the norm, with similar features already available on competing devices and rolling out on others in the near future. When a smartphone ‘just works,’ it’s usually a good thing; here, it’s the entire problem in the first place…. [I]t would be disingenuous to say that photographs have never been considered reliable evidence. Everyone who is reading this article in 2024 grew up in an era where a photograph was, by default, a representation of the truth. A staged scene with movie effects, a digital photo manipulation, or more recently, a deepfake — these were potential deceptions to take into account, but they were outliers in the realm of possibility. It took specialized knowledge and specialized tools to sabotage the intuitive trust in a photograph. Fake was the exception, not the rule. If I say Tiananmen Square, you will, most likely, envision the same photograph I do. This also goes for Abu Ghraib or napalm girl. These images have defined wars and revolutions; they have encapsulated truth to a degree that is impossible to fully express. There was no reason to express why these photos matter, why they are so pivotal, why we put so much value in them. Our trust in photography was so deep that when we spent time discussing veracity in images, it was more important to belabor the point that it was possible for photographs to be fake, sometimes. This is all about to flip — the default assumption about a photo is about to become that it’s faked, because creating realistic and believable fake photos is now trivial to do.” • Parodoxically (?), that might create a new market for the authentic….

News of the Wired

“The staggering death toll of scientific lies” [Vox]. “[Don] Poldermans was a prolific medical researcher at Erasmus Medical Center in the Netherlands, where he analyzed the standards of care for cardiac surgery, publishing a series of definitive studies from 1999 until the early 2010s. One crucial question he studied: Should you give patients a beta blocker, which lowers blood pressure, before certain heart surgeries? Poldermans’s research said yes. European medical guidelines (and to a lesser extent US guidelines) recommended it accordingly. The problem? Poldermans’s data was reportedly fake…. Tens of millions of heart surgeries were conducted across the US and Europe during the years from 2009 to 2013 when those misguided guidelines were in place. One provocative analysis from cardiologists Graham Cole and Darrel Francis estimated that there were 800,000 deaths compared to if the best practices had been established five years sooner. While that exact number is hotly contested, a 27 percent increase in mortality for a common procedure for years on end can add up to an extraordinary death toll.” • It would really be nice to find a system in our society that wasn’t stacking up the bodies one way or another.

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Contact information for plants: Readers, feel free to contact me at lambert [UNDERSCORE] strether [DOT] corrente [AT] yahoo [DOT] com, to (a) find out how to send me a check if you are allergic to PayPal and (b) to find out how to send me images of plants. Vegetables are fine! Fungi, lichen, and coral are deemed to be honorary plants! If you want your handle to appear as a credit, please place it at the start of your mail in parentheses: (thus). Otherwise, I will anonymize by using your initials. See the previous Water Cooler (with plant) here. From Desert Dog:

Desert Dog writes: “It’s been a rather devastating spring here in Easter Montana. First we had a late season Arctic freeze the almost killed the elm trees, but left a few branches with some leaves on some trees, others not so lucky. Then we had a major wind strom that blew through knocking down a lot of trees as well as tons of branches. The town got its act together and the citizens all went out and gathered limbs and piled them in trucks and trailers and headed to the dump with them. Lots of these half dead trees are being cut down and the fallen ones will be removed, hopefully made into firewood.” Maybe desert pines are dessicated and make better firewood than Maine pines do.

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