Where We're Headed With This Pandemic?

Some very sobering to the point of possibly frightening information, data and predictions on this COVID-19 and the coming Fall, Winter and flu season. From The Hill today:

A new study indicates that even if Americans adhere to current social distancing guidelines for months, the U.S. death toll, which is now near 92,000 with 1.5 cases of infection reported, will likely triple by the end of the year due to the coronavirus.

The study, conducted by the Comparative Health Outcomes, Policy and Economics Institute at the University of Washington's School of Pharmacy, found that 1.3 percent of those who exhibit COVID-19 symptoms die. As Reid Wilson writes, the infection fatality rate of the coronavirus is 13 times higher than a bad influenza season.

“COVID-19 infection is deadlier than flu — we can put that debate to rest,” said Anirban Basu, a health economist at the University of Washington who authored the study.

If the infection fatality rate stands, with the virus spreading even before most states open their economies and relax social distancing restrictions, COVID-19 could claim between 350,000 and 1.2 million American lives by the end of this year, the study found.

Potentially very sobering indeed, I thought.

Stay safe, campers. Be well. Best of luck to all of us.

Corporate America, Running Amuck

If you've been paying attention at all to the news lately, especially about corporations and what they're doing and doing to us Americans, it's likely you've been disheartened. I know I have been. And I don't even have high expectations of them.

First there was this, from AT&T, last October, putting unfounded charges on their customers bills:

AT&T Fined $105 Million by FTC for 'Cramming' Charges

Then there was this, a few weeks ago, again from and about AT&T and the way they supply internet service:

AT&T Fined $100M for Throttling 'Unlimited Data'

It seems AT&T said if you got internet from them, you'd have "unlimited data." Trouble was, they didn't bother to tell those same customers that when they got to a certain level of data usage, their internet speed would slow. Nice, huh?

Then there was this, yesterday, from Google, also on computers:

Google Secretly Spying On Computer Users

Then there was this from Whole Foods last year:

Whole Foods Will Pay $800,000 for Price-Gouging

Finally, not to be done there, this came out yesterday, too:

Afternoon Bulletin: Whole Foods in Legal Trouble for Inflating Prices (Again)

So for anyone, anyone who thinks we can or should do with little or no government, when corporations and the wealthy can do these kinds of things to us, I say they must be crazy.

Or they're part of these corporations and doing these very same things to us all.

Missouri, Kansas rankings on annual "KIds Count" survey

Here's where you stand to date, Missouri and Kansas on the things that are important, overall, for the children of our respective states (click on picture for easier reading):

Missouri, number 27, overall and Kansas 16.

We have work to do, folks.  It's for our children.

There is a TON of great, hard data here, too. Here's a Yahoo! News article on it, with links:

Best—and worst—states to be a kid

Here's a link to the actual organization that compiles the data:

Kids Count

and this:

KIDS COUNT - Annie E. Casey Foundation

And their Facebook page, since I'm kind of supporting them here:

KIDS COUNT | Facebook

Finally, information on the group as to who they are and what they do:

Annie E. Casey Foundation - Wikipedia

How many hours at minimum wage to pay just for an apartment in Missouri and Kansas?

Check it out for yourself (click on image for larger view):

Incontrovertible statistics and hard data on guns, violence, shootings and killings in America

From an article in The Atlantic Monthly from last year, not today:

The Geography of Gun Deaths

"...what are the factors that are associated with firearm deaths at the state level?

Poverty is one. The correlation between death by gun and poverty at the state level is .59.

An economy dominated by working class jobs is another. Having a high percentage of working class jobs is closely associated with firearm deaths (.55).

And, not surprisingly, firearm-related deaths are positively correlated with the rates of high school students that carry weapons on school property (.54).

What about politics? It's hard to quantify political rhetoric, but we can distinguish blue from red states. Taking the voting patterns from the 2008 presidential election, we found a striking pattern: Firearm-related deaths were positively associated with states that voted for McCain (.66) and negatively associated with states that voted for Obama (-.66). Though this association is likely to infuriate many people, the statistics are unmistakable. Partisan affiliations alone cannot explain them; most likely they stem from two broader, underlying factors - the economic and employment makeup of the states and their policies toward guns and gun ownership.

Firearm deaths were far less likely to occur in states with higher levels of college graduates (-.64) and more creative class jobs (-.52).

Gun deaths were also less likely in states with higher levels of economic development(with a correlation of -.32 to economic output) and higher levels of happiness and well-being (-.41).

And for all the terrifying talk about violence-prone immigrants, states with more immigrants have lower levels of gun-related deaths (the correlation between the two being -.34).

And what about gun control? As of July 29 of last year, Arizona became one of only three states that allows its citizens to carry concealed weapons without a permit. Might tighter gun control laws make a difference? Our analysis suggests that they do.

The map overlays the map of firearm deaths above with gun control restrictions by state. It highlights states which have one of three gun control restrictions in place - assault weapons' bans, trigger locks, or safe storage requirements.

Firearm deaths are significantly lower in states with stricter gun control legislation. Though the sample sizes are small, we find substantial negative correlations between firearm deaths and states that ban assault weapons (-.45), require trigger locks (-.42), and mandate safe storage requirements for guns (-.48).

While the causes of individual acts of mass violence always differ, our analysis shows fatal gun violence is less likely to occur in richer states with more post-industrial knowledge economies, higher levels of college graduates, and tighter gun laws. Factors like drug use, stress levels, and mental illness are much less significant than might be assumed.

Link to original article: http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2011/01/the-geography-of-gun-deaths/69354/

Statistic of the day

From the "You think you have it tough?" department:

"For every dollar of non-home wealth owned by white families, people of color have only one cent."

Links: http://www.commondreams.org/view/2012/05/14-0; http://arc.org/downloads/2009_race_recession_0909.pdf

Important column from our own Arthur Brisbane

Former Kansas Citian and Star employee Arthur Brisbane asked what I think is both an important question and a stupid one, all at once, recently in The New York Times. It was: "Should The Times Be a Truth Vigilante?" (link at bottom). I'm sure he/they meant well but it has to be asked, if the newspaper media and PBS and NPR can't be "truth vigilantes" for society, who, exactly, is going to perform that role? This becomes even more important and true as we get more and more dependent on computers and websites for information and current events. We have already been made far too keenly aware of the fact that people only go to sites to reinforce beliefs they already hold, instead of to be told what actually is, even if it disagrees with already-held beliefs. My question is, if not you, NY Times, and again, PBS and NPR, then to whom are we to turn for hard data and "truth", instead of opinion? Link: http://publiceditor.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/01/12/should-the-times-be-a-truth-vigilante/?pagewanted=all

Remember when GM's Onstar seemed like a good and innocent idea?

Yeah, me too. That's how old I am. Now? Did you see this? "OnStar to sell customer location and other data" “'Big Brother' is not only watching, but may soon be selling what he sees. Wired magazine’s “Threat Level” blog says OnStar, a vehicle tracking service owned by General Motors, emailed subscribers this week alerting them to a change in policy that allows the company to sell customer data to anyone they choose, even after the service is canceled."It seems everyone, everyone, from the government to Facebook to Onstar and who knows who all, is bound and determined to get information on us and sell it to the highest bidder. Links: http://blogs.ajc.com/news-to-me/2011/09/21/onstar-to-sell-customer-location-and-other-data/; http://www.bing.com/search?q=onstar+selling+data&src=IE-SearchBox&FORM=IE8SRC

This is why scientists think there is global climate change--and why we need to be concerned

Photos show dramatic shrinking of Mount Everest glaciers Glaciers on Mount Everest are shrinking, according to startling new photographs. The two pictures show an "alarming" retreat in ice over more than 80 years. The first was taken in 1921 by British mountaineer George Mallory, who later died trying to conquer Everest. The Asia Society commissioned the same picture to be taken of the main Rongbuk glacier on the northern slope of Mount Everest in Tibet in 2007. The new picture by mountaineer David Breashears show that the glacier is shrunk and withered. A spokesman for the Asia Society said the picture was proof the ice is melting because of climate change, threatening water sources in highly populated areas of India and China. "The photographs reveal a startling truth: the ice of the Himalaya is disappearing," he said. "They reveal an alarming loss in ice mass." It's not because Al Gore wants to benefit commercially from global warming or whatever we call it (though he may, I'm not disputing that---nor do I care). It's because the 2 ice caps and, to my knowledge, all the glaciers on the planet are melting and shrinking at alarming, heretofore unseen rates, folks. And that's hard scientific data--not opinion. Link to original post: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/earthnews/7895611/Photos-show-dramatic-shrinking-of-Mount-Everest-glaciers.html

Moving on

We are in such a huge era of change, financially and technologically and people just have little idea, it seems, about what's going on and where we're headed.

I've felt that one of the great things that's happening to us, concerning the environment, is the elimination of newspapers.

Delivering news daily on sheets of new, virgin paper simply makes no good sense. It's antiquated and destructive.

We should get our news online as soon as possible and then power all those computers with solar energy from photovoltaic cells and do away with the power companies.

That's fodder for another entry.

What's really unfortunate about eliminating newspapers is that it does away with the Fourth Estate.

Hell, we almost don't have anyone now, to inform us of what our government is doing nationally and internationally.

With all that this, Bush Administration has gotten away with in these last 8 years, it seems more likely than ever that governments could and would, possibly, in nightmarish form, get away with whatever they want since no one would be there, in strength, to report their actions and activities.

Would the Nixon administration have fallen even as late as it did if not for 2 reporters at the Washington Post, doing research and digging and persevering?

The conclusion of almost everyone is no.

Besides the somewhat "universal experience" and information that we all get as a culture, this is a very real issue and problem for us, culturally, nationally.

I think the consensus is, too, that, even with a proliferation of blogs, they don't--and won't--have the power of The New York Times or other media.

And sure, maybe this will change and some other reporting structure will come into being but it seems the collapse of a great deal of print journalism is going to fail before these other organizations come into being.

In short order, things are changing and going to change a great deal more.

The "man on the street" isn't too much aware of what's going on, too, I believe.


More on change soon...