Initial and continuing jobless claims: back to being “less awful” This morning’s initial and continued jobless claims resume the trend of “less awful” numbers. New jobless claims fell to under 1,000,000 for the first time on an un-adjusted basis – 984,192, to be specific (gold in the graph below). After seasonal adjustment, they declined 249,000 […]
July jobs report: a very good *relative* gain – perhaps the last HEADLINES: 1,763,000 million jobs gained. Together with the gains of May and June, this makes up about 42% of the 22.1 million job losses in March and April. U3 unemployment rate declined -0.9% from 11.1% to 10.2%, compared with the January low of 3.5%. […]
Because of what Trump is doing to the post office postal shipments are being delayed. If you use mail order services to take care of your prescriptions you should order your refills as soon as you can to keep from running out of your drugs. I just had to have my doctor write a new […]
The Disaster That Lebanon Has Become It is now on the front pages with a massive explosion of over 2000 tons of ammonium nitrate in a warehouse near Beirut’s port, with over 100 dead and thousands injured and possibly more than 300,000 displaced from their homes. Juan Cole reports that this had been dangerously […]
Coronavirus dashboard for July 28: the “pain threshold” exists, and leads to a decline in new cases Total US coronavirus cases: 4,275,188 Average daily cases last 7 days: 65,896 Total US coronavirus deaths: 140,309 Average daily deaths last 7 days: 1,004 (Source: COVID Tracking Project) Several months ago I wrote: my forecast over the past […]
“Republicans finally get “death panels,” Hullabaloo, Tom Sullivan, July, 26, 2020 Dr. Jose Vasquez, the health officer for Starr County, Texas located on the US-Mexico border “The situation is desperate.” At the only hospital in the county, over 50% of patients are testing positive for the COVID-19 virus — 40 new coronavirus cases were reported […]
(Dan here…a note for reality) Full liability release for businesses and hospitals It’s necessary, Mitch McConnell and his colleagues say, because of a “flood” of frivolous lawsuits crushing businesses and threatening economic recovery. So it’s important to say this clearly and out loud: there is no crisis of COVID-19 litigation. It’s made-up, it doesn’t exist, it’s […]
A month ago, when the public health community was warning about the dangers of premature opening and our reality show President was turning mask-wearing into a culture war issue, David Henderson and Jonathan Lipow decided to use precious space on the Wall Street Journal op ed page to publish an essay titled “The Data Are In: […]
Important questions from my friend Paula W…….. ! Listen up world! Betsy DeVos, we have a few questions for you: • If a teacher tests positive for COVID-19 are they required to quarantine for 2-3 weeks? Is their sick leave covered, paid? • If that teacher has 5 classes a day with 30 students each, […]
A Framework for Coronavirus Policy There are two general ways to reduce the transmission of the virus. One is “engineering”, changing the physical environment, the other is “social”, changing behavior to keep people distant from each other. Under engineering, we can include not only physical partitions, UV lighting and ventilation, but also mask-wearing and other […]